Because there was a Human Being making the decisions for the NPCs.

Nonetheless, some characters were "damage sinks" (call them Tank, Brick, or Damage-Sponge, as you prefer), some were "dealers of death-en-mass", some were "buffbots" or "healers".

And until the game's AI can match a human for both logic AND intuition, we will require some sort of "aggro" mechanic.

I don't believe computing technology has improved enough to do away with "aggro" entirely. Honestly, I don't think it EVER will - the mechanics of it will simply become more and more sophisticated, more four-dimensional, and less game-able.

STO seems to be making Mobility, itself, part of the "deals damage more efficiently" equation, though. So "more damage" does not necessarily mean "lots more guns", it could instead mean "a couple extra fguns, and really good maneuverability".

Depends on the sort of cavalry in question. Light cavalry, yes. Rifle or Pistol cavalry, sure. Heavy Armored Cavalry, pre-firearms era? Mass + Speed + Numbers = Dead Peasants

Write the algorythm that produces it, then. I honetly don't think that computers, and the software that runs them, is advanced enough to do away with an aggro mechanic of SOME sort. Rather than beg for "something else", instead, perhaps you should campaign for the (IMO) more-realistically-achievable "more sophisticated".

Yeah, I wish I was a professional game designer. ^_^

I honestly and truly beleive that this is at least a LARGE PART of the case. It may be that Cryptic just couldn't mvoe entirely away from "Traditional aggro mechanics" - as I have said, I doubt technology is up to that clean of a break, just yet - but I trust them to have made a supreme effort to make those mechanics as unobtrusive as possible.

DPS has nothing inherently to do with aggro-mechanics, though. It has to do with how fast you can pump damage into your target. Literally, it is "Damage per Second".

I begin to think that you, perosnally, just are unable to see the how those terms might apply outside the traditional "holy trinity" application of aggro-mechanics.


And if it turns out that "utility for kiling things" is the baseline meter-stick by which ship hulls have been measured and designed, I'll join you in rallying an angry mob, and then distributing the torches and pitchforks outside Cryptic's corporate HQ.

Deal?

As I said earlier, we've kicked the tires on this subject before; no need to steer this thread completely off the road with more extended commentary on it.

That said:

If you go back and look at what I've written, you'll see that I've been careful not to claim that DPS is a direct outcome of choosing to copy the aggro mechanic. I've talked about the tank role as a direct outcome; the DPS and support roles are indirect follow-ons that naturally follow from the decision to implement a tank role.

This chaining effect is why I focus on aggro. I see it as the prime mover for the "trinity," so that's why I tend to dismiss deep discussions of tank/DPS/support. They're symptoms, so they're easy to see and convenient to talk about. But the underlying disease itself is the notion of aggro, which I don't agree is so inherently a part of the fundamental definition of "MMORPG" that it'll be with us forever in some form.

Time will tell which of these views was the more accurate.

Deal, as long as we can do virtual torches and simulated peasants -- the real things tend to lead to... complications. (Silence, Igor!)

Honestly, I hope it turns out that you're right and the whole "oh noes they copying DPS!!" thing proves to be an unwarranted concern on my part, either because it's not what they implemented or because they did implement it but it turned out to be the most fun approach possible.

From the comments we've seen in print so far, I'm not ready to dismiss that concern as unfounded. But if it turns out to have been wrong in either of the ways described above, I'll be the first to admit my mistake.

Again, though: if.

I wouldn't ask more than that of anyone else.

...so what about the other things that Craig said in the TTH and EBA interviews? Any "hell, yeah!" or "dude, what are you smoking?" reactions to the other stuff?

--Flatfingers

I already posted my "hell, yeah" comment. ^_^

Very nice read-thanks!

Live Long and Prosper

Epic Battle Axe has an interview up with Star Trek Online's Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich. New screenshots are included! Check it out.

Then, tell us what you think!

Nice read. Good to see the designers understand that there is lots of material to pull from.

I will read this.

What is the name of the Klingon ship they have one their site? It looks awesome!

Nice shot of the Vor'cha class. I'm constantly impressed with how much detail goes into the ships.

From the interview I'm wondering about the cosmetic versus functional ship modifications. Does this mean that a cosmetically different nacelle can be added that won't necessarily improve ship funcitons or does this mean that a different nacelle will have both a cosmetic impact (your ship looks different) and a functional impact (you go faster).

Also we've seen some of these upgrades for fed shisp, but I haven't seen any for the klingon ships. Hope that they are just as interesting as their fed counter parts.

Thanks for the info vtack. I am not too concerned that Cryptic will not do as much for the Klingon side as they have done for the Feds. However, I do think they forget to show us the Klingon stuff.