MMO Weekly: Sci-Fi MMOs' Clearly Defined Roles

06 Jul 2010 at 14:28:22 by Jeff Hollis

Aloha, my fellow online MMOers, and welcome to this week's edition of MMO Weekly.  This week I'm finally getting around to talking about some of the information revealed at this most recent E3, as it pertains to The Old Republic and game play.

Now look, a lot of people have talked about a lot of the information that BioWare revealed at E3, and that's all fine and good.  I have to say, however, in regard to virtually all the commentary I've read, heard, and seen discussed, that everyone seems to be missing the point. (Quite frankly, I'm sometimes quite disappointed in my fellow MMO journalists.  Everyone seems to have been wowed by the new trailer.  “Oooooh, a trailer showing some awesome Star Wars-ey action!  This game is gonna rock!)  While the trailer is awesome, I picked up on something in the gameplay demo that most seem to have missed.  The big deal, for me, is that BioWare really demonstrated that they are getting the big picture in a way that other sci-fi MMOs have not.

As I've written before, sci-fi MMOs have generally lost their way because of two phenomena.  One, there is a marked tendency to try to make hybrids of MMOs with first person shooters.  This hasn't worked out very well, at all, in the past.  Two, every character class/species combination basically boils down to being a guy with a futuristic machine gun.  (“I'm a doctor.  I heal people.  And I have this HUGE BADASS LASER GATLING GUN!” or “I'm an engineer.  I fix things and build robots.  And I have this HUGE FREAKING GAUSS AUTOCANNON!”, etc.)  So yeah, clearly defined roles in futuristic online RPGs have been left somewhat wanting.  In The Old Republic, it seems that BioWare is well aware of these phenomenon, and has taken steps to design their game differently.

First up, does TOR contain any FPS elements?  The answer is clearly a big fat 'No'.  BioWare is definitively designing a pure-blooded MMO.  Not an MMOFPS, but a pure MMO.  When you shoot a target, your twitch response isn't on the line.  Many MMO players do not enjoy FPS games, but really do like the elements of gearing up, min-maxing their stats, and tweaking their talent trees.  BioWare is catering to that demographic.  So yeah, the kids playing Modern Warfare 2 may not fall in love with The Old Republic, but the huge numbers of hungry MMO fanbois and fangurls out in orcville will embrace this approach with open arms.

Secondly, are the roles clearly defined, or does the game suffer from the “everyone's got a machine gun” syndrome?  Well, in one particularly telling video demo, BioWare shows how players in a Republic group utilise their disparate talents to act as a team, and to take down a couple of mini-bosses.  Consider the various roles we were shown:

• The Republic Commando is the tank.  He does a big of ranged tanking, which is something we've never effectively seen before in an MMO.  He gets the boss mob's attention, and he holds onto the aggro.   
• The Jedi Knight appears to be the off tank, as he grabs the aggro from other spawns and then DPSes them to death.  It's possible the JK is a DPS class, but this wasn't clear, and there are apparently variants for both styles of play, depending on your talents.  No matter, the JK does a bit of crowd control/off tanking, and contributes to the team.
• The Smuggler is a ranged DPS class, and does exactly that throughout the encounter.  He pours out DPS on both the bosses, and their spawns, as needed.  (He also has some healing ability.)  We don't know much about the smuggler class as of yet, so we look forward to seeing all they can do.  I'm guessing – and it's just that, a guess – that they'll have some stealth skills in addition to their DPS abilities, but this remains to be seen. 
• The Jedi Consular is the healer of the group, and acts as a traditional healer in any MMO should.  She keeps the tank up, and she throws some extra heals on everyone else when she can.

A couple of other points need to be made.  While we haven't seen ranged tanking before, once you see it, you get it.  The commando has aggro management skills, and he has the armor to absorb a lot of abuse.  Now understanding what ranged tanking looks like in an MMO, I can better envision much better how the game is going to be played.

Additionally, the role of the healer is one I liked.  The consular was not simply restricted to healing only; she also did a bit of offense.  She did a bit of crowd control on some repair droids that come into the picture, and she lights each mini-boss on fire.  (I'm not entirely sure it's her who's laying down that DOT, but it's my best guess).  As I've written before, I think that this is the future of healing classes, as it makes them more well rounded, more fun to play, and even more useful to the group.

You'll also notice that the game doesn't simply boil down to the “everyone has a hi-tech machine gun” thing I wrote about earlier.  Everyone is doing something cool, and something noticeably different from what the other members of the team are doing.  The consular is healing, dotting, and doing a bit of crowd control, all with the force.  The Jedi knight is doing a lot of melee DPS damage, though some ranged force damage is also on the table, and he's also managing the aggro of the adds.  The smuggler is doing a lot of damage with pistols and grenades and, according to the commentary, has some secondary healing ability.  The tank has a big assault weapon, and does both ranged and (according to other BioWare info that's been revealed) can even do some melee damage with it.   The point I'm making is that the classes all look, feel, and play differently from one another.  Since this is a role playing game, this is important.  

Check out the video for yourself, and see if you can spot what I'm talking about:

 

The bottom line is that this video gives me hope.  While no one can say that TOR is going to be the next great MMO, it's refreshing to see that BioWare is working to overcome the pitfalls that have plagued virtually every prior sci-fi MMO to come down the pike.  I do realise this is very early gameplay footage, but I have some concrete hope that this game pans out.   

Having said that, it's now time to wrap up this week's article.  If, despite your better judgment, you somehow found this so-called 'article' amusing, please visit us over at Coolorama.com, where we cover this kind of extremely important subject matter each and every day.  For now, ciao!

Comment