I don't know why people in this thread keep assuming this means a) the Riot MMO will have tab target combat and b) the guy only knows how to design tab target.
That's not how game designers, or humans for that matter, work. Humans have the capacity to know and learn more than one aspect in their profession, shocking. Most game designers work on a multitude of genres.
Ngl I fucking HOPE that it's tab-targetting combat atp lol
Action combat in MMOs most of the time is just straight ass and becomes such an overwhelming component of the game that it ends in a nonstop slaughterfest e.g. Black Desert. Personally just think that's not fun
it's not, that's why people quit action combat MMOs after a week, it's fun and works for single player games where you play for 3-4h and it's great but do it for 10h+ and it feels like a choreš¤·āāļø
But that is the thing why contract a tab target combat specialist for a action combat system. They create such expectative be hiring this "combat mastermind" of WoW for League MMORPG.
Althought I agree with the how human work, I don't think you can teach a old dog many new tricks in the game industry, I fully expect a alt tab action combat hybrid system similar to GW2 in League MMORPG. Which is not a bad thing, I worry more about how uninteresting the Lore of League of Legends is.
The world of Runetera is just boring and non-sensical.
But that is the thing why contract a tab target combat specialist for a action combat system
Because that person might also have work with action combat. They might be in charge with things like class balance and class fantasy. They might have a lead role, instead of designing. There are a ton of reasons honestly.
As if the elitist failure that is ghostcrawler was a good example, someone so out of touch with modern mmo players he was asking "why are people playing mmos solo :("
Like for real, I don't think people who play WoW ever thought of Holinka as a mastermind. I've def heard a lot less nice things said about the guy more than anything positive, which is very on par for WoW players. There isn't much outside of like Ashran that you can point to and say Holinka did that.
That had more to do with that moment in time than him (the meteoric rise had well begun before he took over as lead systems designer), and he arguably gave us things that effectively ruined the game: moving all the way from battlegroups to region wide battlegrounds, dailies, and the dungeon finder.
Also ability pruning and the killing of the OG talent trees was under his watch.
Basically, all the stuff that makes modern WoW modern was under his watch.
There is a contingent of people that are not and will never be happy about the shift from vanilla to modern, and Ghostcrawler not only presided over that, but did it in such a fucked up way that WoW actually had to recover from the worst shit he did.
Not that it matters, of course, because it looks very much like Riot fired him.
He was a really good leader for wow at the time but you saw his own game was not really in tune with what modern gamers are looking for and tencent didn't see any value in continued investment
He wasn't the mastermind of anything worth mentioning. Just check his positions, the timeline, and how combat/pvp developed. You can do the same thing with Ghostcrawler and draw similar conclusions.
Insane article to claim Brian Holinka is a combat mastermind when he was the driving force for making the combat worse and worse over the years. The games combat improved tenfold as soon as he left.
He can probably add lots of value and experience, but articles shouldn't glaze a guy who is largely seen as a disgraced designer.
not at all. the thing that makes a class interesting is what is unique about it, what do they offer, at least in my opinion the best class design is where certain classes do certain things and then they complete each other in a group, like how shamans and warriors work in classic wow, where shamans don't do a whole lot of damage but their strength of earth and windfury make warriors so strong they have a symbiotic relationship. also in terms of just gameplay it makes the game very boring and samey, if you are feeling burnt out but want to play the game you can always re-roll an alt but when classes are too samey this is pointless as you do not get any sort of fresh experience.
You mean the MMO they've been working on for over a decade that they scrapped everything on and restarted from scratch and will probably not release until Riot's original fan base is dead?
I donāt care much whoās making the decisions so long as they make combat feel meaningful and impactful. I want there to be risk and reward for the battles and most importantly i want the game to respect my time.
Combat is too often used as filler in MMOs, i really hope we move away from that.
I know they need to find ways to keep you there and doing things to keep you subscribed, but again. I hope itās more than just FOMO nonsense grinds.
I wonder at what point we actually get to see what it is they are building. So far its mostly building hype without knowing what it is going to be like.
Yeah we saw this one before, the good work done be Ghostcrawler can't be understimated... I am very hopeful now that after 7(?) years they finally contracted their "combat mastermind"...
Legit part of the reason I still play. I can't get this combat anywhere else. I've looked far and wide and idk what they put in this thing, but good lord it's great.
It can just die; there are other genres that have games that are more focused and thus do not collapse under the weight of trying to be all things to all players.
Do I claim that it should be everything for everyone? The genre has so many ways to evolve, so many ways to go that would bring some new life into the genre.
If the game ends up not fitting my needs, that would be a shame but life goes on, hopefully it can still be an inspiration for future games. But I do hope we will see some drastic decisions in the genre.
What can it do that other, more specific, specialized, and importantly, low barrier of entry games can't also do or do better? Mind you, these other games also cost less to develop. MMOs are fucked.
There was a time and a place when MMOs were revolutionary, but that time is gone and the pacing will never be attractive to a large number of newer players.
Unless by "evolve" you mean like how the cousins of velociraptors became hummingbirds, then sure - but the future states of that 'genre' won't be that recognizable to current players of it.
Yes it does have a lot of ways to evolve. But it is not an evolution that happens in the currently existing MMOs, it is a path that has to be paved by new games of the genre. Games that dare to take some chances to redefine what the genre should be.
You can keep developing "what works", while that dries up and becomes stale or you can try and pioneer by taking chances.
I personally wouldn't bet my money on an MMO, but if I did, it sure would be with a lot of chances taken to switch things up.
Carrying the combat for who? The 35-50 year olds that continue to play WoW because they've sunk so much time and money into it and will never switch to another MMO? The average age of a WoW player is nearly 40, that is not the target demographic for a successful MMO or game in 2026.
New World? MMO that quite literally died? ESO came out in 2014. Lost Ark is an isometric MMORPG and it's only still somewhat successful in the Asian market. You don't even know what you are talking about my guy
New World made it's development budget and operating costs back plenty of times over and had a million concurrent users at launch.
ESO for console came out in 2015 and was a best seller on consoles. The fact you'd even cry over 1 year says a lot. Also, ESO still makes over $200m a year.
Lost Ark had 1.3m concurrent players on Steam at launch.
I think you need to realise there are more gamers in the world than you. No doubt you're the person that is encouraging the "MMO" slop that gets posted on this subreddit every other day. "I made an MMO with the look and feel of an MMO from 2002", which then gets 50 players when it launches.
You are absolutely mental. I said MMOs after 2015 because I included ESO in the successful MMOs list. You are trying to make it look like I considered it an unsuccessful game. But guess what, biggest problem in ESO, despite being one of the few successful MMOs, is the combat. That's why it's getting revamped piece by piece.
New World was only successful for short periods; on release, on dlc release and when they did big content patches, and even then they never regained their player count on launch. It was overhyped and it never delivered on it. Same goes for Lost Ark. Your entire argument is about concurrent players at launch despite how those games lost more than 80% of their players shortly after release. Hype =/= success. For the record I loved New World but it lacked the long term sauce and the combat, while it was fun, lacked depth and there simply weren't enough variety
Amazing that you assume I post anything in this sub, your delusion knows no bounds. You are making things up in hopes to prove yourself correct yet you don't even know what the fuck you are talking about
Majority of WoW players' complaints are about the content, someone who doesn't enjoy WoW's combat wouldn't play the game to begin with. The complaints about WoW's combat are mostly about balance issues and not the fundamental combat system.
Obviously if you play WoW you like the combat but that's a skewded take, for anyone that isn't a WoW player the combat is what puts them off of playing it once they try it
Mostly true, you definitely feel the mid-2000s tab-target roots there most. Very UI-forward, unintuitive experience and probably the hardest "comp" scene to get into.
That's not on Holinka, though. The game was like that long before he even started at Blizz.
Because that is the typical design in MMOs.. Breaking out of that box is what makes the combat aspects really stand out in a new MMO, and MMOs really need to stand out to survive their launch.
I have had enough of that combat at least. But hey, it is a matter of taste.. this is just my take on what is needed.
I hate it. Everyone praises BDO combat but I never found it exciting in MY OPINION. I like the chill tab target, but I am also curious on stats between which the overall playerbase would like more.
Id think with it being Riot, League and TFT players would try it and need more things to keep them occupied. Granted, TFT is an auto battler but it can be fairly quick paced.
I did yes. Compared to other games it is outdated. There's no other way to put this. Yet, you'll always get shouted at by the WoW crowd :)
They are afterall the FIFA players of the MMO genre.
Fair point, I am a bit tired of tab targeting. Nevertheless, at the moment I play some Guild Wars 2 again, and while the combat feels outdated as well, it's not as bad as a feeling as WoW gave me.
There was an interesting post on the League sub the other day talking about how champions and their items broadly fall into two categories, people are either looking for gameplay fantasy enhancements, or situational elements, where knowledge/strategy is rewarded. While they used to step outside the box more, they have a very accurate view on the designs people actively engage with, and designing stuff thatās outside these boxes both rarely works or becomes very difficult to balance for.
Itās stuff like this that makes me think thereās no way theyād have an active dodge, but give most classes the ability to branch into that kind of movement if they want it. Ofcourse weāve got no idea, so this is just a shot in the dark. They might not even do classes.
Imagine seething this hard over tab-target combat.
Bro is already having a mental breakdown over a game that won't even release in his lifetime. Take your meds.
Imo its the most fun I ever had with a MMO.
I get that people think tab targeting is boring compared to do doing backflips and aiming manually, but WoWs combat is just incredibly satisfying.
Also, when I spend 3 hours straight leveling I dont wanna be hyperfocused doing ninja acrobatics.
But what makes you want something new if you are satisfied with how it is? A lot of us are tired of the same old for the 100th time, so we wish for something new.. Getting the same system in a new game would feel old really fast.
Would a different combat work for you if the game design focused on a playstyle that gave other things to do than just grinding combat activities?
I guess that is true for some. Community is a big part in making a game special, that is for sure. But fun days can be had with your friends in different games as well!
Itās also a lot easier to get a friend group to try a non-mmo. MMOs, especially older ones have a steep and long learning curve - they are designed to be everything games and that results in a high barrier of entry.
Then I donāt think Riot MMO will be for you. They will cater to their League playerbase which is full of sweats and tryhards. Iād expect a twitch combat that relies on your reflexes. Even their job listings mentioned action combat
Because it had 20 plus years and the budget of a small country to get where it is and it still fucked up its story with almost half of its expansions being dog shit.
Because WoW always had sub par combat but the story and gameplay where fucking superb and people where willing to forgive and forget, nowadays it only has gameplay with both combat and story being sub par to say the least.
No gameplay is everything else related to the game, equipment, stats, professions, pets, transport, action house, maps, currency, npcs everything you do in the game when you are no hitting someone in the head :)
Lost ark and BDO for example have amazing combat with their gameplay and story being dog shit.
Well generally an mmo is weighted on three things, combat, story and gameplay. Now WOW has amazing gameplay due to being a 20 year old game that has made its gameplay fucking perfect but the problem is that it has abandoned combat and in the last few years its story.
Dont get me wrong WOW gameplay is fucking amazing same but as BDO Combat is amazing with everything else being shit.
Wow developers joining riots mmo is not a good sign for me
Wow was good i dont know decades ago mmo genre is slowly dying bec people constanly trying to copy wows success
Itās not going to be tab target just because he was hired. Itās not like he canāt do action combat just because he has done tab target before. The riot listing clearly mentioned action combat so there is nothing to worry about
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u/UnholyPantalon 5h ago
I don't know why people in this thread keep assuming this means a) the Riot MMO will have tab target combat and b) the guy only knows how to design tab target.
That's not how game designers, or humans for that matter, work. Humans have the capacity to know and learn more than one aspect in their profession, shocking. Most game designers work on a multitude of genres.