Pezhead

An addiction is only bad so long as it is detrimental to the healthy lifestyle of an individual. You could be addicted to alcohol, but as long as you make enough money to support it, lead a "legal" life, aren't physically/verbally abusive to others, drink while driving or otherwise cause damage to yourself and others(beyond the loss of brain cells due to lack of oxygen) then why is it a problem? There is none. I consider myself to be "addicted" to gaming, heck I was physically addicted to styro-foam at one point. I dont eat styrofoam anymore, but I'm doing fine otherwise.
As far as MMOs go... why aren't you pumped about darkfall? Isnt that supposed to be "FPS" style combat with destructible buildings and full loot? Where you can dye our armour for camouflage and hide in the grass and jump out to slash them as they go by? And yet, it all sounds great, but without a seamless world... none of it would be possible. The style of combat that you are looking for-from what i understan-would have a difficult time functioning in a pvp setting, but in a seamless world, it will be difficult not to have pvp

You're talking like that dice-system would be somewhat like "epic" or whatever they call "massively enjoyable by nature" in the internet. This only goes as far as your imagination, but I'm telling you that anyone could imagine anything if they wanted to. That is not an argument that strengthens the genre. "Sandbox" game is nothing but a false calculation and a very cheap way of stating that you're unable to implement worthwhile elements as a developer. On top of that, the least people are actually still taking imagination as their main reason of playing MMOs (real RPers that follow an actual fictional social system, in other words, reasonable rules).
Also, more of the upcoming new titels are going the way I am suggesting and thinking about for years than ever (just check the TERA Online and read this article). This just proves that their market research isn't going the same linear way as it used to and that means that many people must have realized the same thing I did. You can even find those people in this forums. Dice-system MMOs were an abstractive fluke after Ultima Online set the pace and some others just used the simple way of monotony = dopamine factor by adding it to their own products.

All of this is way cheaper than you think it is.

And dude, isn't it reasonable that people want what they're addicted to? I just don't think that this counts as legit pro argument.

Now that foot stomp is AoE and different from the Tail Whip, which does more damage, but is only cone and the animation has a higher delay (so you have time to react and run away or block or make it stagger through attacking it's feet as fast as possible or whatever). Now which skill it uses will be decided by the dice, which gives each one of the skills a % chance of making a different scenario happening. One could add such a system to any kind of combat scenario, whether it might be PvE or PvP to "keep things interesting" (although I wouldn't really want those in PvP situations). You could even add terrain factors to PvP to make it more interesting - hell, the possibilites are endless.

You can see that it's very simple and easy to add randomness, therefore not making it depend entirely on patterns (just to defeat that argument before it comes up) to action based combat without making it luck based, at the very least totally sure when it comes to PvE situations.
But this randomness and luck factors make combat reactionary based, not luck based in action.

I might have already done it, but I'll recommend trying out Monster Hunter (even if just for the combat system) again.

One of the main reasons I am recommending coorp games is that the addiction factor isn't as high - do you know what's the main reason for that? - Because it's immersion factor by far isn't as captious. Instead of seeing your EXP bar rising, you do a mission that requires one or more friends and call it a day. You'll feel satisfied with what you accomplished, because you were able to beat that wyvern boss (or weren't, but instead sharpened your player skill and almost done it, which is satisfying enough) instead of watching your %bar going from 90 to 95% in two hours.


And you can forget about your example of defining luck or randomness in general (if you intend to use it as an argument). Of course there's always a luck factor and that's fine. The problem is that in MMORPGs the combat entirely depends on randomness and luck instead of yourself acting and to a certain satisfying point controlling that randomness yourself. In action based combat, there can be also luck involved without making it depends on an active dice. And that's very simply a passive dice. For example - if you fight an opponent, let's say a dragon in action based combat, it'll do the tail whip if you attack it from behind. Now to add passive randomness, you'd only have to add one or more possibilites, let it be a foot stomp.

Why would someone want to escape in a virtual world that excessively? I mean, I can see the point of saying that you somehow escape from your surroundings if you play a videogame or overall any kind of game.
But when someone is saying that and playing a MMO for 6+ hours a day, that's not okay. That's a problem in itself. I mean, you aren't talking to someone who's only studied phsychology and philosophy and is debating, because he likes to listen to himself. You're talking to someone who had that problem himself for a long time without realizing it himself. When I look at all the people in this forums and their pro arguments regarding that matter, I can see my past self trying to defend what he does - just because he does and wants to convince others and the most himself that what he does isn't a waste. MMOs are not about fun anymore as soon as you're seriously talking about "escaping" in that kind of spectrum. And if a game isn't just about fun, it's transformed into a serious problem.

The problem is that your 'game immersion' for some reason seems to be more important than gameplay mechanics. Do you play MMOs to meet people and form relationships on the internet, while staring on a monitor and typing on a keyboard or are you playing them because you enjoy playing games? And don't even try to tell me that you do it for both reasons. This is one of the main problems in MMOs - people seem to find the chat more important than the actual game. No wonder the genre is so ****ed up.

And to your WoW example - I am not only talking about balance, but mainly about the fact that dice-system combat isn't combat, but gambling. This may be fine if you play D&D or Warhammer in your room with friends, because the "social factor" (which is hundred times as real as it is in the internet) is actually there and compensates for it (just like when playing monopoly or parcheesi). People who enjoy the dice-system are simply lying to themselves and being tricked by the monotony = dopamine factor. I know what I'm talking about - I was a victim for longer than five years myself.

I am... Busy. Way too busy.
You're lucky enough to have your message noticed by me this quickly ._.
And what about you? How're you doing?

I don't know how the PvP in MHFO looks like (although I could try it, there's no IP block, just Kanji text only), but I do know how they made PvP in the PS2 Monster Hunter days and that looked like this:

Every player has their own boss wyvern and able to control their actions by playing the specific horn. Either the one who loses his wyvern first (they have HP, but lots of more than you do) or who dies himself by being beaten by the enemy wyvern.

Although you can already guess it's tendency about PvP by just reading the title of the game "Monster Hunter".

Instanced. Any quest you take.
There are no levels, no experience points. You gain new quests if you managed to finish one and you unlock a new series of quests if you gain a higher rank (there are 999 ranks in MHFO, just do give you an idea of the number of quests, which mostly look like the one you've probably seen in your thread).

I understand that you have trouble seeing those games as MMORPGs (in the general understanding, they're more of a Coorp-game, but since they're online and can be played with a massive audience in a persistent world, technically they are MMOs - also it has many of the other subsidiary things a MMO of your understand has as well - such as crafting, guilds, minigames, housing etc. pp.), especially as a gamer who's grown up with the general understanding of dice-system MMOs (I am one myself). I'd much rather chose an open world if it was possible to still warrant a gameplay-oriented audience. The point is that with the current development functions, you can't.
Just for the feeling of an open world, which pretty much ****es up any kind of reasonable gameplay and balance due to reasonable rules connected to that intention being too difficult to implement, I personally would always chose quality gameplay over very simplified gameplay that an open world MMO is currently doomed to fall under.

MMORPGs naturally are about character progression, which is fine. What I don't get is why that character progression has direct, and exorbitant (it's not just having twice the HP and stats, due to the dice system it's completely impossiblr to win against someone who's higher, no matter how high your potential player skill may be - it doesn't matter at all) influence to winning and losing. All I'm asking for is implementing essential basic moves that everyone always has and that never change for anyone and this isn't possible when using dice-system combat. Well, actually it is through implementing a combo bar for example, but it wouldn't really look and feel cool, rather annoying.
In short - All I'm asking for are basic essential (combat) actions that never change, a level 100 character having three times as much power as a level 1 instead of 50-1000 times, but instead other useful things, such as the ability to wall jump, always being able to see the targeted enemy on the mini map, not being as much effected as a level 1 from a wyverns scream (your character wouldn't be paralyzed as long) and I could list many more. Those things.