The "dream mmorpg"

Actually, I think that what Abalieno describes IS possible. Just not as a pure, "individualistic" mmorpg. You would have to combine an individualistic play level with a strategic one. In other words: somehow mix a game like Rome Total War with a multiplayer rpg.
"Strategic-level" players would build and command the armies...individualistic players could act as heroes, spies, battlemages or whatever. Perhaps there also could be an intermediate "tactical" level of players, as unit commanders. The bulk of the fighters, however, would have to be NPC ones, either in player-controlled units or a mix of player-controlled and AI-controlled units.

Some games already combine strategic and individualistic rpg elements, like RTW (very slightly, though, but inching ever a little closer, as Medieval Total War II will have more "individualistic" looking and acting soldiers) and Spellforce I and II (which combines action RPG and RTS elements). Age of Conan apparently will allow players to command units of NPC soldiers.

What Abalieno describes is probably far in the future, but he may be right. I certainly hope so, and I will love to play it!

...and so will many mmorpg players I know. Not all, but many.

As for the "zerg" tactics, two things: First, collectives of players are impossible to organize for anything more complex than this, unless you deal with a group of relatively mature people who have known each other for some time and trust each other (in this respect, disciplined raiding guilds are probably the groups best capable of this under current conditions, and I suspect the more effective PvP "combat teams" in WoW have such a background).
But those conditions will be relatively rare. Second: the "zergy" tactics look suspiciously like tactics followed in battles between primitive tribes in New Guinea (individual attacks and retreats, facing each other off, massive but confused charges, scattering retreats, regrouping, final retreat and dissolution). Perhaps we are seeing a very "primal" pattern here?
Even if the game's combat mechanics would allow actual player battle formations, they would probably rarely be used because of the absence of the social and political conditions that in real world history led to the evolution of tactics and strategy (need for physical survival, imposition of discipline by the group or a higher authority, methods of training, etc.). So, unless the "heart" of warfare in virtual worlds is shaped by strategic- and tactical- level players and their NPC troops, PvP will probably remain dominated by zerg tactics.

Actually, I think that what Abalieno describes IS possible. Just not as a pure, "individualistic" mmorpg.

Yes, I agree. The only way to achieve this would be with a heavy reliance on NPCs. There is chance in hell that it could even begin to work with individualistic players. Unless you can line them up against a wall and shoot them for insubordination in real-life. Then it might work.

You'd basically have AI NPCs do the cool formations stuff and fighting, with players commanding them or filling various specialist roles in the battle field. Hey, I actually think something like this might work. I'm not sure that's what Abalieno is talking about though.

We're talking about a completely different kind of game here. A MMO-Version of M:TW - not a MMORPG.

the "zergy" tactics look suspiciously like tactics followed in battles between primitive tribes in New Guinea

Spear-chucker "tactics" is really the closest real-world analogy to what's happening in a PvP mass battle and I agree with your assertion that it's impossible to organize for anything more complex.

Actually, I think that what Abalieno describes IS possible. Just not as a pure, "individualistic" mmorpg. You would have to combine an individualistic play level with a strategic one. In other words: somehow mix a game like Rome Total War with a multiplayer rpg.

That's what I've been writing from the beginning. A mix of conquest PvP game with strategic, RTS and even wargame elements. Nothing too complicated but a few rules that tie together these parts.

My PvP advancement system was based from the start on ranks that you can unblock to have access to different "roles" on the battlefield. This was already all defined.

What all PvP games out there DON'T do is structure the large battles. We have group mechanics for the most part, but the bigger battles are unregulated, just scaled-up versions of the same mechanics. If you see a mindless zerg is because there was no structure in the first place.

My idea from the start has been about developing mechanics and rules that define the roles of different squadrons and give each a different "function" and objective in the battlefield. So that the players are encouraged to organize. This comes directly from the rules. Depending on your role you have a specific objective to achieve that is different from the players in another division. All collaborate together to the same "war" but the patterns of the interaction are different.

It's a duty of the design to open up these possibilities. If what you see is just a mindless zerg is simply because that type of encounter is "unregulated". Add choices, options and defined roles and the whole situation will change.

But no NPCs. There's no need for them. There are guards in the outposts but there is no respawn and the battles are supposed to be between players.

I am not so sure whether those rules, roles, options will do anything else but create a situation where an individual character is, again, pigeonholed. I also suspect it would lead to the formation of a couple of "ideal" tactics that will be used ad nauseam.

I feel more for a game environment that simulates reality as good as possible, with physics, weather, collision detection etc., plus some very carefully considered extras like certain magical spells. For the latter, you might have to look at fantasy miniature games; they have been dealing with many of the design problems involved for decades now, ever since the 1970's.

As for NPC's versus players:

1) NPC's allow the scale of the battle to be increased upwards: not a few dozen (at most a few hundred) players, but thousands or tens of thousands of NPC's led by / intermixed with player heroes, commanders and specialists.
2) There seems to be an assumption that, if you create an environment conducive to co-operation and the application of recognisable "mass" tactics, you will get something approaching recognisable warfare. I disagree. I think some experienced, disciplined, pre-organised groups are capable of this, but this is already the case: such groups pwn their opponents in WoW's battlegrounds, and from what I hear, the worst are the ones who are also equipped with raid-derived epics...:(
Fact is, organisation and discipline are already requirements for mass PvP. They are not required to play, but sure as hell are useful, and necessary against more numerous / better equipped/ organised opponents. That it doesn't happen has to do with the players, not the rules. That the tactics we see in such cases aren't comparable to what they *ought* to be in a pre-industrial fantasy world DOES bear a relation to the way in which the world is simulated (which is rather crappy and unrealistic at the moment)
3) The sheer organisational difficulty of gathering, training and leading a force of players will always create a rather low "upper limit" for an organised force. Historically, this was done through training, obligatory military service, disciplinary measures, ideological indoctrination, a common ethos, etc. I would be surprised if, in-game, a group of 100 players could be gathered for a single fight. Re-enactors in Europe and the US (SCA as well in the USA) do it occasionally, but that is still pretty hard and involves people who, through training, study and personal inclination, WANT to simulate historical tactics and battles. Will you find many such people in a mmorpg? I very much doubt it. But you CAN relatively easily find several dozen players who would make great (NPC-manned) unit commanders, heroes and specialists.

I am not so sure whether those rules, roles, options will do anything else but create a situation where an individual character is, again, pigeonholed. I also suspect it would lead to the formation of a couple of "ideal" tactics that will be used ad nauseam.

This is like saying nothing.

Every game out there is vulnerable to "exploit" patterns. In every type of game, every genre. Even in a soccer game you could find a pattern (and there are cases in the past about this) where you can always "score".

This has nothing to do with my own ideas, it's just a possibility in every game and a design problem. We can take Civilization, or other strategic games. If I can use the same couple of strategies and always win it means that the game is vulnerable and not so well designed.

This is why we have beta tests. If a couple of ideal tactics are effective and predominant in every situation the result is that design needs works. Just that. It's a situation that would need to be analyzed, understood and then addressed.

As it happens for "balance" problems.

1) NPC's allow the scale of the battle to be increased upwards: not a few dozen (at most a few hundred) players, but thousands or tens of thousands of NPC's led by / intermixed with player heroes, commanders and specialists.

The point is to isolate the purpose of this. So what's the functional purpose? Why the need to scale the battle upwards? To have more lag?

In my idea (the dream mmorpg) NPCs exist. The players can conquer regions and "spawn" NPCs. Then give them tasks and schedules. Ideally you can set up a NPC caravan and transport goods from a region to another, assign guards to that caravan, patrol enemy zones and so on.

But these NPCs exist with a specific purpose: "automate" the boring tasks. Like hauling stuff from a place to another. Think to Eve-Online. The game has a similar structure, with the difference that you can use NPCs to automate the boring tasks. The crafting for example and the maintenance costs you have to pay to keep a zone under your control can all be automated through NPCs.

Think to a RTS. You "spawn" peons and send them to gather resources from a mine, or collect wood, build farms, find food, Etc...

So these NPCs have a functional purpose. They automate boring tasks and they defend the regions while the players are "away".

But I would be careful to use them in PvP situations because, you know, Player Vs PLAYER. That's the point. The NPCs are superfluous.

The sheer organisational difficulty of gathering, training and leading a force of players will always create a rather low "upper limit" for an organised force.

I know it's hard to portray and imagine a game that doesn't exist but this already happens in DAoC. Every day. There are leaders and there is coordination. The tactics are rather superficial, but that's because the RvR structure is rather superficial and rudimental. There are only so many elements available to toy with. It definitely doesn't have the complexity of a wargame, so the tactics remain on the superficial level.

What my idea addresses is about giving a definite purpose to those leaders. In DAoC "a leader" is just a normal player that has a different color in the chat channel. In WoW you have your class, but a raid is just a bunch of groups linked together. There isn't an emergent level of rules that go to apply to large armies. As I said: just scaled-up group mechanics.

What I want to do, instead, is about giving the leaders (as for all the other roles, there are many stratifications) SPECIAL SKILLS. Something concrete that affects directly the gameplay.

You still have your basic class and skills, but when you join a larger army you acquire brand new skills and spells that define your role and objective in the battlefield. *Concrete* skills and spells, not just "fluff" that I expect the players to swallow just because I want to.

What I planned is a whole new ruleset that goes "on top" of the basic group mechanics and that I expect to give a "structure" to those mindless zerg battles we have today.

My belief is that we have mindless zerg fights, because those fights are unregulated, unstructured. They are, functionally, just the same group mechanics. So that's the point that needs to be "advanced" to the next level.

And when you give those players CONCRETE powers, you can be sure that they WILL organize so that they can have access to them. This is not "roleplay" fluff. This is a significant, concrete advantage.

The optimal pattern you will choose if you want to prevail.

Or I'll ate my hat ;p

I think we're partly thinking of different games, probably reflecting different personal preferences. But hey, it's your dreamm mmorpg, not mine.

I will admit to ignorance concerning DaoC, except for a brief fling with the current trial version which disappeared rather quickly from my hard disk. I am rather curious about the scale of battles in that game? 100 combatants? 200? Because that is the scale I think is about the maximum that could be achieved with a relatively mature and disciplined group of players.

Am I also correct that this is the scale of combat you are envisioning? Because what I personally want to see is a combat system that could accomodate various levels of combat, from the skirmish level (handful of fighting player characters on each side) all the way to the epic battle scale (tens of thousands of NPC troops, dozens or even hundreds of player commanders/heroes/specialists).
And yes, the lag problem. I am thinking here of the long term, oh, a decade...or two...
something that requires a long evolution in terms of technology and game systems, and the combination of various systems that now exist in separate games.
As far as I am concerned, the mmorpg has come of age when I can be Conan, rising from a lowly adventurer to the King of Aquilonia...

I suppose you are thinking with your dream mmorpg more of something that might be feasible with current technology? Certainly, that line of evolution that starts from the current state of the fantasy mmorpg would benefit from a long, thorough look at their core element, which currently ranges from the individual through skirmish to squad-level (or at the very most company-level) combat.

But now the following: would a combat system that allows more structured combat for, say, groups of 100-odd players each not lead to a raid-like structure? By that, I mean that the individual player is no longer able to "shine" (either as an individual fighter or as a commander), but becomes a cog in the apparatus of the group? Organised fighting usually leaves only a limited amount of personal freedom and initiative to the individual fighter.

I do not believe though that this woukd the right direction for traditonal EQ-style PvE-MMORPGs, which traditionally take more of a CRPG stat-based approach to gaming which I personally find more fun than clicky combat.

I do not want clicky, frenetical combat. I DREAD it. This is why I quoted Tobold befpre going with the ravings.

A realistic combat with "twitch" elements doesn't mean that the faster you move your mouse the more you'll be effective. The movement and combat should be designed to be realistic, without allowing people circle-strafing and bunny-hopping all around you.

That would be just not possible. Add realistic controls and movements, add a fatigue sistem, add encumberance. I still want a tactical, RPG combat. With stats, damage rolls, armor values and skills. But all brought together to a direct control of your character.

What the idea explained above removes from, say, Warcraft is the reliance on the UI and to-hit rolls. But the backbone of the RPGs is still there, and even heavier than always (since I want to go back to the style of pen&paper rules, transparent for the players).

If the group stays approximately in those circles while they move and fight, the archers gain a massive defense bonus (the tanks are defending them from attacks) and each gains a bonus to range and ranged damage and the tanks get a big shield block bonus.

Interesting idea. I just saw that Age of Conan will do something like this.

The leader of the formation can decide on different formations and the degree of freedom the various players and NPC’s can have within the formation. The formation also serves as a cooperative travel system, yielding beneficial effects to the team as the collision of the formation itself protect the members at the rear. Formations yield beneficial bonuses to members, and offer a new type of depth to a RPG. In some cases it will be essential to pick the right formation to survive.

I will be interesting to see how it works out in reality.

I suggest this would depend on the scale of the battle and the degree of "fantasy" you introduce in the world.

In a huge battle (my idea of the NPC soldier masses and player commanders/heroes/specialists), the player-characters could be hardier than most (since they are exceptional compared to the NPC bulk of the population), and take quite a beating before they are killed. As for healing, in a fantasy setting I might envision a form of supernatural healing, but it might have to be applied OUTSIDE the actual combat itself. For instance, comrades carry the wounded commander's body behind the lines, where he is healed, or if dead, maybe even raised. Or perhaps the healer does go to the front rank, probably to be killed rather easily, in which case, you have one healer less and one problem more. Point is, healing should not be easy or done from a distance: it requires a measure of time, maybe even resources (mana shards, whatever) that only the healer can use, in the frontlines even risk. It has to COST and it should take EFFORT.

An alternative might be "temporary permanent death" for a player character, as long as the battle lasts, that is, he or she can't revive before the end of the battle. Such a thing would certainly be very annoying to players in the current "run-run-hit-hit-kill" kind of PvP combat systems. But in a system where combat is slower, more tactical and less (and at the same time, more) deadly? It might work in such a system, as long as the player feels that he had a hell of a fight after all, and it took effort to take him (or her) out. I would have peace with being "out of the battle" in such a case.
And it would certainly help in giving an individual battle a clear "end". Right now, open PvP in WoW, for instance, never really ends, it just...peters out, as one side disperses. Or perhaps a few return and keep on "sniping" lowbies or lone individuals in the area. It's impossible under these conditions to really "break" an enemy force.

You (Trin) wrongly associate the length of a battle with the role of the healers.

I can assure you that, while they are related in the current games, they aren't significant in any way. I can design a game with healers where you die much faster than a game without them. There isn't a real connection between the two. They are both as abstract as you want them to be.

This is just a wrong assumption that comes from the expectations and stereotypes you see in these games.

My ideas come from pen&paper games. I can assure you they support rather lengthy battles if you want. And I never played a pen&paper game with healers in the back throwing healing particles to the "tanks".

A fight is a fight. You are supposed to heal AFTER it. There's no time for healing during it, the situation is supposed to be intense.

You can take pretty much EVERY fantasy based game that isn't a mmorpg and you WOULDN'T see that strong dependence on healers.

The healer class doesn't exist because it was required to make a fight work. The healer class exist because till today we played the meta-game of "buttons and colored bars". A parody of combat.

So, if you remove the meta-game mechanics, you also don't need anymore the meta-game GUI since one goes along with the other.

The "healers" are just a byproduct of the meta-game we played till today.