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Class Utility in Dungeons is Disappointing
aislingi
Member Posts: 140 Bounty Hunter
I guess Dungeons in general are, from a D&D perspective. I get that certain sacrifices need to be made to transfer a pen and paper game to mmo. But the dungeon design didn't need to be this banal.
Don't get me wrong. I LOVE this game. Its some of the most fun I've had playing an mmorpg. But dungeons have a lot of unused potential.
Out of combat utility is almost non-existent.
Rogues have no reason to disarm traps. The party runs right through, and that's kind of pathetic. Where is the D&D feel? Where is the send the rogue/warrior in to clean a trap or unlock/bash a chest/door. Where is detect secret doors?
Where is the exploration? The hidden danger, and non combat objectives? Yes its an mmorpg, but that doesn't mean a game based on elaborate dungeons more complex than most cities, has to create a mob/loot tunnel from point A to point B as the SOLE form of dungeon.
Where are the environmental options? Boss fights should incorporate classes, and their unique abilities more than simply DPS/Healing/Distraction. Where is having the warrior climb up to the rafters, and leap down on the minotaur driving a sword through its head to finish it off? Rogues swinging from ropes across the fight area swashbuckler style, or Clerics putting up fields of divine light to fend off hordes of undead, while fighters bash a door down. Or a Wizard having to put a ritual together to appease a bunch of haunted books in a library, while everyone else fends them off, and everyone participates when its ready?
Boss fights should incorporate classes and their unique abilities more than simply DPS/Healing/Distraction. This is all possible. All it takes is creativity, effort, and the will to create something beyond the status quo.
How about a fight on some giant chandeliers where the rogue needs to cut the ropes and everyone needs to leap to the next one as they swing back and forth? Or a Wizard levitating rocks to form a bridge, or solving the riddles of creepy monster weirdos. SOMETHING! Anything more than slogging your way through trash, get to caster with fighter stats, and periodically a dump truck full of adds pulls up.
Its kind of ridiculous that players are already creating Foundry missions, that provide better story, and immersion than most of the official game combined.
Don't get me wrong. I LOVE this game. Its some of the most fun I've had playing an mmorpg. But dungeons have a lot of unused potential.
Out of combat utility is almost non-existent.
Rogues have no reason to disarm traps. The party runs right through, and that's kind of pathetic. Where is the D&D feel? Where is the send the rogue/warrior in to clean a trap or unlock/bash a chest/door. Where is detect secret doors?
Where is the exploration? The hidden danger, and non combat objectives? Yes its an mmorpg, but that doesn't mean a game based on elaborate dungeons more complex than most cities, has to create a mob/loot tunnel from point A to point B as the SOLE form of dungeon.
Where are the environmental options? Boss fights should incorporate classes, and their unique abilities more than simply DPS/Healing/Distraction. Where is having the warrior climb up to the rafters, and leap down on the minotaur driving a sword through its head to finish it off? Rogues swinging from ropes across the fight area swashbuckler style, or Clerics putting up fields of divine light to fend off hordes of undead, while fighters bash a door down. Or a Wizard having to put a ritual together to appease a bunch of haunted books in a library, while everyone else fends them off, and everyone participates when its ready?
Boss fights should incorporate classes and their unique abilities more than simply DPS/Healing/Distraction. This is all possible. All it takes is creativity, effort, and the will to create something beyond the status quo.
How about a fight on some giant chandeliers where the rogue needs to cut the ropes and everyone needs to leap to the next one as they swing back and forth? Or a Wizard levitating rocks to form a bridge, or solving the riddles of creepy monster weirdos. SOMETHING! Anything more than slogging your way through trash, get to caster with fighter stats, and periodically a dump truck full of adds pulls up.
Its kind of ridiculous that players are already creating Foundry missions, that provide better story, and immersion than most of the official game combined.
I wanna go back to being weird. I like being weird. Weird's all I got, oh, and my sweet style. -Maurice Moss, The IT Crowd
Post edited by aislingi on
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Comments
The sooner you understand that the better.
This, people need to learn.
what this guy said.
This is an mmorpg with action controls. Nowhere in that makeup does investing an ounce of creativity become unfeasible.
You're right, this IS an action-based combat game. So why are all the dungeon designs copied from non-action games?
EDIT: Not a single one of you four that posted right after the OP actually read what I wrote, did you?
Problem is most people just don't bother to look around and just run after the shiny glittering road like its the yellow brick road of Oz....
This sometimes frustrates me to no end
again, what this guy said.
Why would anyone waste their time running into every single wall to find secret rooms? The reason they were in D&D is ebcause classes have skills and spells to detect them, not just "run into every wall and see if I pass through".
And they didn't copy dungeons from WoW, I would really like to see your proof regarding this.
Seriously, I get that you're a defensive fanboy, but please. Find another thread to <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> in. If you don't have an argument, or a point to make, go away. I provided criticism, if you can't handle that, go to Gamefaqs.
your issue is that you expected a Tabletop RPG out of a MMO.
that will never happen.
If you're not looking around for secrets in a dungeon, you are missing the point, doing that is half the fun/where the good stuff come from. Looking for secrets has always been a staple of dungeon crawling/RPGs
angry much? sorry, but i didn't come into this thread to kiss your *** and slurp all over your ideas.
what you want, this game isn't capable of. simple as that.
if saying that makes me a "defensive fanboy" then thats fine, but I'm pretty sure you don't know what a "defensive fanboy" actually is.
I really hope there's more of it.
I mean copying the design style of dungeons. Not the literal. Don't be obtuse. The concept of a linear tube of trash, followed by pounding on a boss as adds fill in, with nothing else to enjoy. No cinematic flair, just the same banal, uninspired design.
You said this is an action game, but why are all the dungeons traditional mmorpg set ups? None of the actual dungeons take advantage fully of an action design.
Yes you are right, but this game still has a lot of D&D flavor, and its sad that a lot of people are missing it because they aren't used to looking around and taking in the atmosphere...
1 Just roll TR, level to 60, buy blue gear for gold, go to T2 dungeon, hold mouse button 1 on boss. Collect T2 loot and sell them on AH for millions.
2 Use the millions to buy the best gear for your other characters that suck in dungeons.
3 REPEAT step 1 until you have enough AD to buy enough Zen for more character slots.
4 go to step 2.
This is what smart people are doing. Just letting you know.
This has literally nothing to do with the subject of the thread, and besides seems like such a waste of good time....
Kind of like how you're own feelings were hurt when I dared to criticise a game you like. You haven't disagreed with anything, really. All You've done is come into this thread and lazily quoted people who you agree with, without putting an ounce of effort or thought into your responses.
Disagree with me all you like, but do it for a reason other than some mama bear-esque affection for a video game.
"What this guy said" over and over isn't a conversation. Its you trolling a thread that made you think about the game you're playing in a less than perfect light.
Disagree with me, in an even remotely intelligent way (and this response you gave here proves you are hardly interested in conversation)? I'll cut you some slack. Until then, go somewhere else.
trash mobs -> trash mobs -> trash mobs - trash mobs -> boss -> trash mobs -> trash mobs -> trash mobs -> boss -> purples.
I think the OP makes a valid point, there doesn't seem to be a lot of heart and soul in the dungeons, every dungeon I've been in the party seems to just robotically follow the glittery line to get purples. Which at the end of the day is something very WoW like. I'm not going to say that it's copying wow because I'm sure other MMO's have done it before WoW but WoW is my point of reference.
One huge part about D&D is building a story and RP'ing the **** out of it for maximum fun, which you can't translate into an MMO very well, and Cryptic didn't do much in creating a world story line. They had a couple story lines, but none of them really fit together, and I never found myself feeling like how I did when I was playing BG2 cursing Jon Irenicus for getting us locked up in spellhold. I guess at the end of the day I hate how MMO's are all about decking your epeen out with epics and shoving gear score in peoples faces, especially a D&D world based game. But the second poster is right, it's not really a boardgame to computer game game.
If you really want the class utility option and to have a dungeon take 40 hours, go play a table top game. I know that playing this has been a lot of fun but at the end of the day that D&D feel is missing but I know I can get it so who cares if it's not in the game, it's an aspect they had to cut out to make the game playable to the most amount of people.
Don't mind me.
It does have a good bit of flavor to it, I'll admit.,
but the whole complex, immersive D&D experience will not happen, in any MMO. it's not technically feasible.
it could happen in a co-op, 4-player RPG. but not in a MMORPG.
that's what our super-angry OP fails to understand.
any D&D MMO experience will be an underwhelming one if compared to the actual D&D Tabletop game.
Who knows, maybe in the future with Neverwinter 2, or...if i may dare hope to dream, Baldur's Gate Online :P with proper dnd feel and pacing to it
No, I expected exactly what I got.
A copy pasted mmorpg framework, with action-based combat. Which is fine! What I would like to see, is a game that makes better use of the IP, otherwise what was the point of paying for the license? You see that's a how feedback and criticism works. that it personally all you want, but there is no reason why Cryptic can't do more with their dungeons, Hell players are already doing more with the meager tools we're given in the Foundry.
So why can't professional game designers?
and this doesn't just apply to D&D based mmorpgs. Hell any MMORPG can do with having more flair, or player involvement. This isn't even a D&D pen and paper issue. Its just a lack of creativity in dungeon design that seems to be par for the course in mmo development.
Nothing I suggest needs to take 40 minutes, and clearly dungeons out there already can take a while, so its kind of moot.
you keep assuming this...but you are pretty much 100% wrong.
why write a whole paragraph to say "I agree."? I'm pretty sure if I agreed with your original post, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
would you have been more happy if I had simply repeated word-for-word the posts that I agreed with?
default response to anyone who doesn't readily wholeheartedly agree 100% with everything you say: " You are a fanboy stop trolling, blahblahblah".
again, if I had say "what this guy said" in response to your own post, this conversation wouldn't be happening.
and again, you make assumptions as to my feelings on the game, when you basically know nothing. typical arrogance from a pseudo "I'm more intelligent than you" poster.
yeah, no. I think I'll post when and where I feel like it. and you can be mad about it.
What you want from this game, it's not going to happen. It's not technically possible in a MMORPG. simple as that.
If you see that as a "mama-bearesque" defense of the game, then that is what you choose to see.
No, most of the foundry missions I have played were your basic "Run through a dungeon, kill everything, talk to a few guys, kill more stuff, get the chest at the end."
Gameplay Mechanics-wise, it's not anything more than what the Devs do.
Story and Atmosphere is where the Foundry shines. A Hidden Blade was amazing, but it wasn't because of the gameplay mechanics. It was the dialogue, and the atmosphere that did it.
OJ Saga was great, but again, not because of the gameplay mechanics. Humor and Sarcasm was what made it great.
I don't know. ask them. But I'm not gonna hold my breath waiting for them to implement a Chandelier Battle.
The dungeons can do with some more interesting mechanics besides "spawn a whole bunch of adds", but we won't ever see the amount of complexity in encounters than a Dungeon Master can come up with. Not from a technical standpoint. MMOs are limited in ways that Tabletop, and hell, single-player RPGs for that matter, are not.
To be fair, I'm only "super angry" at you, for taking the opportunity to jerk your way through this thread, with non-responses and attacking me for an argument I'm not making.
My opening post had no anger in it. I wasn't ranting. I was providing feedback to the game and how I would like to see it improved. Something you seem to have taken personally for some unfathomable reason.
I understand that a paper and pencil reproduction is impossible here, or at the very least unwise. Nothing I suggest would eliminate this game's nature. You're creating a false dichotomy where this game is either a straight no features loot run, or a direct pen and paper simulator. All because its easier for you to argue.
If anyone in this thread has taken anything personally, it's you. I didn't insult you, I didn't insult your intelligence, I didn't call you a troll. I didn't make any angry comments towards you.
I agreed with two other posters in this thread, and you decided that was grounds to attack me for no particular reason at all.
*shrug*
absolutely. SWTOR is an example of how Story-driven can work in a MMO. It is a shame that they forgot about the rest of the MMO.
however, I don't see the complexity of encounters that he has suggested, showing up in a MMO any time soon.