BradSTL
28-12-04, 04:20
In this thread (http://forum.neocron.com/showthread.php?p=1722879#post1722879), I saw something that really annoyed me, because it's just so wrong:
Fighting in AO...
TAB,Q,TAB,TAB,Q,TAB,Q,TAB,Q,TAB,TAB,TAB,Q, etc.
Now, I quit Anarchy Online years ago. The odds that Nidhogg and I were playing at the same time are nearly zero. What's more, he doesn't tell me what character name(s) he was playing, or on what server. But just from this one remark I can tell you something about Nidhogg ... he wasn't very good at Anarchy Online. Either he spent almost no time in team PvE, or he sucked at it so bad that he spent his whole time in Anarchy Online being bitched out by other team members. Why? Because there's a heck of a lot of strategy in Anarchy Online. And unless Nidhogg is kidding us here, he obviously missed all of it.
In Anarchy Online, the various professions are vastly different from each other. Some have all the hitpoints and all the armor, but only mediocre damage dealing abilities. Some have insane damage output, but no hit points or armor. Some fight through two, three, or more remote controlled pets that have to be managed simultaneously. There are healers who can heal but are fragile and do no damage; there are healers with a balance of both healing and damage output, there are healers who can only do healing-over-time while taking advantage of their high runspeed and automatic dodge abilities. When you sort it all out, you end up with at least six distinct combat subspecialties. Pullers try to lure enemies back into traps set up by the other players. Crowd controllers calm, mesmerize, or paralyze excess enemies to hold them back out of the fight so the team can fight targets one at a time. Healers only heal, desperately trying not to attract aggro so they can concentrate their energy on keeping the front line troops alive. Nukers save their attacks until the target is almost dead and then finish it off fast, so that it goes down before it can transfer its attention to their fragile selves. Meatshields use taunts to make sure that enemies only the characters with the most hit points and armor, themselves, get attacked, and doing so make life easier for the healers by guaranteeing they mostly only have to concentrate on healing one person. And even the easiest of those roles, the damage dealers, have to be taught carefully how not to attract extra enemies into the kill zone and how not to accidentally draw fire to themselves and away from the meatshield. And that doesn't even count the complexity of managing the variety of buffs and debuffs in Anarchy Online. In virtually every other game, team PvE strategy is critical, absolutely essential if you're going to fight any enemy that's likely to give halfway decent XP or drop anything useful in the way of loot. Whether or not everybody on the team knows their role determines whether the team lives or dies.
Now, in Neocron, if you're a PPU, the strategy in Neocron is pretty much the same as it is in Anarchy Online: watch the team indicators and try not to run out of psi energy (mana pool) while keeping the damage dealers on your team alive. Except, of course, in Neocron it's about 1000% easier, because in Neocron, healers are nigh invulnerable, as opposed to Anarchy Online where healers, being among the most fragile classes in the game, have to worry about doing their job without attracting incoming fire. Now, for everybody else, the damage dealing professions in Neocron, what's the strategy? It's the same for everybody:
1) Use your four movement keys and your mouse to keep the cursor over the enemy, and dodge back and forth a little.
2) Keep holding the left mouse button down.
Wow! That's complex! How long did it take you to figure it out? Except, of course, that most people never do figure it out. I've played this game with some of the best and (some days I think) all of the worst, and for example I can count on the thumbs of one hand all of the players I've met in the entire history of this game who make any halfway serious effort to stay out of the path of incoming long-range friendly fire. Maybe I see more of this than most, because I'm a big believer in the strategy of attacking enemies from the next time zone over, so I mostly play rifle spies and droner spies. I know that when I see attacks passing me on the left, and a team member arrow at the edge of the screen that says I've got members of my team behind me on the left, then I know that when I dodge I'm going to have to dodge right, not left. But no, your average Neocron player knows only to keep that cursor centered on the target and to keep moving, so they die as much to outgoing friendly fire in the back as they do to incoming hostile fire from the front.
There are a lot of things that Neocron does better than Anarchy Online. Neocron's world design looks a heck of a lot better, a heck of a lot more realistic. Neocron's vehicles are much better looking (for all that AO's vehicles work better). Neocron's factions and sides are much more interesting. Neocron's trade skills are a heck of a lot better implemented. And best of all, while Reakktor occasionally doesn't have time to deal with us, especially with problems of individual players, well, after you've played Anarchy Online for a while you'll long for the day where you never heard from the company that runs your MMOG; their customer "service" people are the rudest, most hostile you've ever met ... and I still say this even after having dealt with Sony.
But anybody who says that the reason to play Neocron instead of Anarchy Online is because Neocron has more complex and interesting strategy is just plain wrong.
Fighting in AO...
TAB,Q,TAB,TAB,Q,TAB,Q,TAB,Q,TAB,TAB,TAB,Q, etc.
Now, I quit Anarchy Online years ago. The odds that Nidhogg and I were playing at the same time are nearly zero. What's more, he doesn't tell me what character name(s) he was playing, or on what server. But just from this one remark I can tell you something about Nidhogg ... he wasn't very good at Anarchy Online. Either he spent almost no time in team PvE, or he sucked at it so bad that he spent his whole time in Anarchy Online being bitched out by other team members. Why? Because there's a heck of a lot of strategy in Anarchy Online. And unless Nidhogg is kidding us here, he obviously missed all of it.
In Anarchy Online, the various professions are vastly different from each other. Some have all the hitpoints and all the armor, but only mediocre damage dealing abilities. Some have insane damage output, but no hit points or armor. Some fight through two, three, or more remote controlled pets that have to be managed simultaneously. There are healers who can heal but are fragile and do no damage; there are healers with a balance of both healing and damage output, there are healers who can only do healing-over-time while taking advantage of their high runspeed and automatic dodge abilities. When you sort it all out, you end up with at least six distinct combat subspecialties. Pullers try to lure enemies back into traps set up by the other players. Crowd controllers calm, mesmerize, or paralyze excess enemies to hold them back out of the fight so the team can fight targets one at a time. Healers only heal, desperately trying not to attract aggro so they can concentrate their energy on keeping the front line troops alive. Nukers save their attacks until the target is almost dead and then finish it off fast, so that it goes down before it can transfer its attention to their fragile selves. Meatshields use taunts to make sure that enemies only the characters with the most hit points and armor, themselves, get attacked, and doing so make life easier for the healers by guaranteeing they mostly only have to concentrate on healing one person. And even the easiest of those roles, the damage dealers, have to be taught carefully how not to attract extra enemies into the kill zone and how not to accidentally draw fire to themselves and away from the meatshield. And that doesn't even count the complexity of managing the variety of buffs and debuffs in Anarchy Online. In virtually every other game, team PvE strategy is critical, absolutely essential if you're going to fight any enemy that's likely to give halfway decent XP or drop anything useful in the way of loot. Whether or not everybody on the team knows their role determines whether the team lives or dies.
Now, in Neocron, if you're a PPU, the strategy in Neocron is pretty much the same as it is in Anarchy Online: watch the team indicators and try not to run out of psi energy (mana pool) while keeping the damage dealers on your team alive. Except, of course, in Neocron it's about 1000% easier, because in Neocron, healers are nigh invulnerable, as opposed to Anarchy Online where healers, being among the most fragile classes in the game, have to worry about doing their job without attracting incoming fire. Now, for everybody else, the damage dealing professions in Neocron, what's the strategy? It's the same for everybody:
1) Use your four movement keys and your mouse to keep the cursor over the enemy, and dodge back and forth a little.
2) Keep holding the left mouse button down.
Wow! That's complex! How long did it take you to figure it out? Except, of course, that most people never do figure it out. I've played this game with some of the best and (some days I think) all of the worst, and for example I can count on the thumbs of one hand all of the players I've met in the entire history of this game who make any halfway serious effort to stay out of the path of incoming long-range friendly fire. Maybe I see more of this than most, because I'm a big believer in the strategy of attacking enemies from the next time zone over, so I mostly play rifle spies and droner spies. I know that when I see attacks passing me on the left, and a team member arrow at the edge of the screen that says I've got members of my team behind me on the left, then I know that when I dodge I'm going to have to dodge right, not left. But no, your average Neocron player knows only to keep that cursor centered on the target and to keep moving, so they die as much to outgoing friendly fire in the back as they do to incoming hostile fire from the front.
There are a lot of things that Neocron does better than Anarchy Online. Neocron's world design looks a heck of a lot better, a heck of a lot more realistic. Neocron's vehicles are much better looking (for all that AO's vehicles work better). Neocron's factions and sides are much more interesting. Neocron's trade skills are a heck of a lot better implemented. And best of all, while Reakktor occasionally doesn't have time to deal with us, especially with problems of individual players, well, after you've played Anarchy Online for a while you'll long for the day where you never heard from the company that runs your MMOG; their customer "service" people are the rudest, most hostile you've ever met ... and I still say this even after having dealt with Sony.
But anybody who says that the reason to play Neocron instead of Anarchy Online is because Neocron has more complex and interesting strategy is just plain wrong.