Day two of my roundtable continued with a frank discussion why most of our MMOs seem to center on combat, and in particular, the classic turn-based, stats-more-than-skill, tank-mage-healer brand of combat which is the norm in massively multiplayer games today. Once again, these are the opinions of the group, and not necessarily my own. The group came up with:

  • Easily-modelled conflict. All stories require conflict. The conflict found in combat is easy to recreate in a video game.
  • Simple. Combat is easy to teach, and to understand.
  • Highly repeatable. An MMO needs an activity that players can repeat repeatedly, and while players get sick of the grind, there’s no question that it’s more repeatable than many other gameplay paradigms (such as puzzles).
  • Male-dominated industry. And we’re all still living our adolescent fantasies.
  • Variety of roles. The combat classes create strongly different roles that are required to cooperate in many situations, helping players both feel unique and feel like valued team members.
  • Team-based. Combat is one of the few activities that is truly more fun in a group than alone. You actually have a great sense of how other people are contributing. Compare to, say, Puzzle Pirates, where your teammates progress seems very compartmentalized and distant.
  • Tactical. Combat provides a problem solving exercise whenever the player engages a target. Compare to, say, solving a puzzle or crafting in most MMOs, which is rote repetition with little or no risk beyond the first try.
  • Cheap. Classic MMO combat is a known problem, and is systems driven, and is therefore cheaper and less risky than pursuing alternatives.
  • Immediate Gratification. Kill things get loot feels good. Admit it.
  • Heroic/Sense of Danger. Combat provides a sense of risk and of adventure. It adrenalizes the player.
  • Easy to reward. It’s easy to give appropriate rewards for risk.
  • Visceral. Players like responsive, simple, direct activities. Computers model this very well. Not to mention, it provides the eye candy.
  • Definitive/well understood. Players know how it works, and they know what to expect.
  • Provide clear problems. Taking apart an AI provides a clear, easily understood problem that it is easy to throw your characters abilities and your own skills against. Many alternatives provide fuzzier problems, which are harder to dissect.
  • Scalability. Combat is essentially the same activity when fighting 1 on 1 in newbie land, doing 40 per 1 dragon in a raid, or doing 100 v 100 in a siege.
  • Lag resistant. The nature of MMO combat makes it runnable on modern internet acceptably, although as more homes move to broadband, this will be less of a concern.
  • PVP. Killing people is alluring and, if well done, extremely fun!
  • Stat-based. This is an advantage – most players don’t have any skill. Our current billing models reward devotion.

Editor note: If you’re going to try to replace combat, the points I’d focus on the most are: Repeatable, team-based, repeatable, scalability, repeatable, tactical, repeatable and providing a variety of roles. Also, repeatable.

Next, I asked the group what was wrong with combat.

  • Too abstract. A hit is not necessarily a hit, and too many blades pass harmlessly through their target. And what is ‘aggro’ anyway?
  • Too easy to choose their own challenge. Players can always go to a challenge that is very easy for them to accomplish with little risk. Then, they can proceed to bore themselves to death.
  • Not rewarding enough. Let’s face it, now that combat has been done to death, it’s even less fun than the first time we played it.
  • Other activities are slaves to it. Combat usually becomes all encompassing, and other skills and professions must be built to support combat (i.e. alchemy is only truly useful in terms of how it supports the combat activity).
  • Can’t solo. Combat as currently built requires soloing, especially at the high levels.
  • No true diversity. No matter how classes you come up with, players devolve into tank-mage-healer, and actually will ostracize classes that perform less effectively in these roles.
  • Can’t play with friends. If you get ahead of your friends you often cannot group with them and still be effective. Why aren’t more people doing systems like City of Heroes’ Exemplar or Sidekick systems?
  • Not really interactive. You can get up and get a coke during most combats without fear — especially at low level.
  • The Spike Problem. I don’t really remember what this was.
  • Repetitive. Yeah, it’s repeatable more than most activities, but damn, we’re still sick of it.
  • Audience-limited. Combat simulators can inherently only reach to geeks. Or at least males.
  • Been there, done that. After 30 years of DikuMUD combat, couldn’t we at least see a MICROevolution?
  • Anti-social. In an environment when violence is always the first answer, it creates a ruder, more aggressive culture.
  • Not enough consequences. At this point, someone tried to start the Permadeath debate, which I stopped.

Lastly, I asked the people there to consider alternatives to combat, or at least to our current incarnation of combat. This list is short as we were coming close to our time limit.

  • Economics. “Not approachable enough”, suggested some dissenters.
  • Cybersex. “Highly repeatable”, said someone.
  • Education/Trivia.
  • Multiplayer Crafting. “Could you make a truly interesting tactical problem?” I asked.
  • Player-based Content. This could clearly be its own roundtable.
  • Card-based Combat (like Magic: the Gathering). “Not visceral enough,” argued some. “Could never be mainstream,” argued others. “Go play Guild Wars”, countered others.

Next up: Why the grind?

Original comments thread is here.