See, the first problem is you want the definitions for the terms you've chosen to write an article about to be convenient for you. Not accurate, not unambiguous, but convenient. For you, they mean what you choose them to mean. If you're writing an article for somebody else, if you want it to be responsible and informative, you have to choose a reference point that can be universally agreed upon, and stem evolutions of the same concept from it. Because, as tragic as that might be, most of the long-standing innovations have indeed appeared before your birth, or at least when you still were a toddler. You can't just go out and say The Beatles invented rock, Kraftwerk were the first to use a synthesizer, and Brian Eno came up with the concept of ambient music before Erik Satie. Likewise, the first automobile, calculator, and submarine were invented way before the XX century, and if anybody tells you otherwise they are being ignorant, much as you're going to be if you continue on your course, with varying results.
The second problem is that some of the people in this thread have already done more research than you should have done in the first place. So I suggest you do exactly that.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I am doing research, that is why I came to this forum full of like-minded avid gamers from the days before XBOX to ask these questions.
I need some help defining exactly what the modern idea of cooldown abilities are. But in my mind, and I am sure in the mind of many people here the different is clear. I don't remember any game since WC3, or WoW having an ability turn grey and then slowly refill until it's ready to use again. Since those days, every MMO I have ever seen had this implemented, as have many other games. If calling it a cooldown ability is the incorrect term, then enlighten me. But it certainly isn't the same as reloading a gun or punching.
it's not like I am getting paid for this, or I am writing for some magazine and I am asking you to do my research for me so I can collect a fat check. I am just writing this for fun because I get excited thinking about all the things in video games that make me happy. So there is no need to get so fierce about it, and tell me that I am doing it wrong, or that I am being ignorant.
If your definition of a cooldown is something that turns grey and proceeds slowly refilling, then it's obvious WC3 is your answer and why would you need to look any further at that point is beyond me. If that's what you've been looking for, all these people suggesting different things clearly have wasted their time suggesting their own versions.
If you want but one example of a cooldown that did not come from an RPG game, try GigaWing. Nothing turns grey or whatnot, but at least it's older than WC3.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I never played it, i'll look up some videos.
Lets bring this discussion into focus. I am not saying Cooldowns are better or worse than paying life, or paying energy. But I do think some games work much better with cooldown abilities as opposed to the other two. I am looking for examples of all the different types of ability payments and if they worked or didn't.
I think diablo had it right. Even though you payed mana, you could effectively spam your abilities and build a character to have more mana if it fit your strategy. Where as, a game like Turtles in time didn't poorly. You hard ever used your ability. I can consistently beat the SNES version without ever using the specials.
The thing with cooldowns is that it's essentially an arbitrary way to prevent you from using a move too often. There are much better ways you could implement this kind of limitation.
While it might not be in the same sense as how it works in Warcraft, there are games which involve a charge up time before being able to use them. For example, Megaman's charged shot or Guile's Sonic Boom, where you need to hold a button for a second or two before it's "primed". El Viento takes this a step further in that the longer you charge your shot, the stronger a move you can use.
One thing that's comes to mind is the special meter in the majority of fighting games. There are some moves that you aren't able to use unless you have some of this special gauge filled. This also acts as a cooldown of sorts, however, the way these bars fill up is more active, where you have to deal out some standard attacks or block them. In my opinion, this is a good implementation of a method to limit the overuse of powerful abilities.
Where as, a game like Turtles in time didn't poorly. You hard ever used your ability. I can consistently beat the SNES version without ever using the specials.
I can consistently beat Mega Man 2 without ever using the special weapons (on "normal" difficulty, anyway, and of course ignoring bossfights where certain weapons are required). Does that mean that the cost of the specials was too much? Of course not.
I'm not saying that Turtles in Time was well-designed; just that I'm getting the distinct impression that you're overestimating the cost of paying health to use an ability. Look at it this way: if the known cost of using the ability is greater than the estimated cost of not using the ability multiplied by the likelihood that your estimate is correct, then you should use the ability. If I'm 80% confident that I'm about to take a painful hit in the face which will cost twice as much as using the ability would, then using the ability will save me, on average, .6 times the cost of the ability. It's a net win.
Of course, in actual gameplay you don't have time to do that kind of math, so it generally boils down to "Crap! I'm about to get hit! Use my special!" Unless the special costs a ton of health or the mooks have really pathetic attacks, this generally ends up breaking even. That weighting of enemy power vs. special power vs. cost of special is a game balance thing, not a game theory thing, though. If it turns out that Turtles in Time really does heavily penalize the use of specials, then that probably means that either the mooks are too weak or the special is too expensive. It doesn't mean that the concept of charging health for using a special is flawed.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Well it is my opinion that the life-for ability mechanic is usually too brutal, and reduces fun. However I go accept it as a legitimate mechanic to limit special ability use. My main gripe with Turtles and X-Men is the pay-life limitation keeps me from playing the game the way I want to play it. Turtles, and especially X-Men USE their special abilities all the time. How often do you see cyclops or gambit PUNCH a sentinel? Well in this game you can use the mutant power something like 3-5 times per life before you are at 1hp and on the cusp of death. That is not how an X-Men game should be designed. There are mana solutions to this, all of which would make the game more fun to play.
Games (primarily Mass Effect currently, although for the life of me I can't remember how Knights of the Old Republic managed jedi powers...) with a abilities that cool down, but otherwise have unlimited use are much more fun to play. You get more abilities and can use them anytime. That increases fun, does not always mean a decrease in difficulty either.
So you're objecting to the decision to balance the game around rare use of special abilities (as a consequence of which, the cost of using abilities was made high), not to the decision to charge health for abilities. You're basing your view of what the game should be on how the characters fight in the comic books, with high power use; the game feels comparatively underwhelming because you aren't as powerful. The balance and mechanics of the game would work just fine if your characters were a group of random street thugs with no outside history à la Double Dragon, but since they've chosen to pull in known powerful characters from a specific franchise, they're obligated to try to make the fighting more like what those characters do in their ordinary setting. Is that about right?
Note that this has nothing whatsoever to do with cooldown mechanics or paying health for abilities. If in Turtles in Time specials were free but had a cooldown of 1 minute, you'd still have the same complaint.
On a side note, aren't the turtles' specials basically just "hit the enemies with our weapons in a slightly different fashion"? It's not like they have signature attacks, right?
EDIT: clarified wording, accidentally replied instead of editing, deleted second post, fixed edit. Whee!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Yes that is what I am saying.
Is that somehow an illegitimate opinion? If a game is going to be based on comic book characters who fight using mutant powers, then the least that game could do is allow me the pleasure if using the powers.
Why does this have nothing to do with cooldown mechanics? They gave the characters mutant powers but decided they are overpowered and the players had to pay to use them. I argue, that the payment method they chose reduced the fun of the game. Had they instead applied a cooldown mechanic the game would have been more enjoyable. Part of the fun of playing an X-Men game, is pretending to be X-Men after all.
Anyway, trying to retroactively change games now isn't the point. You can't just hot-swap the way specials work in X-Men and get a good game. Your previous comment was correct, you would just dodge and special and it's the optimal strategy. So I am not concerned with it. I wished I could use the special powers more in X-Men... whatever.
Let me ask you this question. And don't take this as a challenge, a legitimate question. Name a modern "good" game that uses a self-damage system to deal with specials.
There's nothing wrong with wanting a game to play differently than it does. What I'm trying to caution you against is suggesting that swapping mechanics around would create the game you want. Designing a game where you play as the X-Men "properly" would probably require a ground-up rules rewrite.
Modern good game? Sadly I don't play all that many modern games. :) But here's what I can think of off the top of my head:
* Diablo 2 has a Sacrifice skill for paladins that lets them take a percentage of their hitpoints in damage in exchange for greatly increasing their attack damage. It can be used to devastating effect if you're skilled, but given the way D2 encourages focusing on only a small selection of most skills, most players pick easier-to-use ones and ignore it.
* Metroid Prime 3 has Hyper Mode, which temporarily amps up Samus's attacks but costs health (with the amount of health scaling with how much of the attacks you use / how long you let the mode run).
* Stimpacks in Starcraft hurt the user in exchange for a combat boost. I don't think you'd get far if you suggested to skilled Starcraft players that they weren't worth using.
As a general rule, entries on this page should be valid examples of this concept, though I can't say much as to if they're good games. WoW is mentioned though.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I can't understand half of what you people write, so I'm not sure where you landed on the Diablo 2 discussion, but for most spells, you can spam them freely, the speed being dictated from how much of the Faster Cast Rate ability you have on your gear. You might have enough FCR to cast a spell every 8 frames (one second being 25 frames), and you can cast them for as long as your mana supply lasts.
In addition to this there are a few spells with a cooldown timer. When you cast one of these spells, you can't cast them again for a period of time, which you can't affect by wearing FCR gear, or in any other way. Fire Wall, Blizzard and Frozen Orb would be a few examples of these spells.
This may or may not be interesting for what you're discussing right now, but there you have it anyway.
Let me ask you this question. And don't take this as a challenge, a legitimate question. Name a modern "good" game that uses a self-damage system to deal with specials.
It's also worth noting that MMORPGs were around since 1970s, back when they were turn-based ASCII games
It's an interesting question what exactly could be classified as a "massively multiplayer" game.
The first multiplayer RPG which could be played over a network was probably a game named MUD (which became the name of an entire game genre). From a gameplay point of view it was similar to Zork (which in turn was similar to Colossal Cave Adventure, which is arguably the first computer RPG ever made). MUD ran initially on the internal network of Essex University until 1980, when the university connected its network to ARPANet, which was the precursor to the modern Internet, so arguably MUD was the first multiplayer Internet online game. MUD spawned many variants (some of which are still being played today), and they were the precursors to modern MMORPGs.
MUD was definitely a multiplayer online RPG. The interesting question is if it could be considered a massively multiplayer game.
Nowadays "massively multiplayer" means hundreds, if not even thousands of players. (For example a Counter Strike server running something like 20 players is generally not considered "massively multiplayer".) Back in 1980 there were probably not hundreds of people playing MUD simultaneously on the same server, so it becomes questionable if it can be considered "massively multiplayer".
On the other hand, what is "massive" and isn't could be considered in relation to the norm of the period. 50 people playing the same game at the same time could certainly be considered "massively multiplayer" in the 1980's, when 2 was usually the maximum number of players in a game, even though nowadays it probably wouldn't be considered as such (given that nowadays there are game servers with thousands of simultaneous players).
Btw, this is my 3000th post. I have to celebrate this somehow.
Have a drink!
There is an X-Men game on Xbox. I don't remember what it's called but it's an isometric beat-um up featuring tons of mutants which you can level up using some kind of skill tree. The game isn't particularly good, however the use an energy system for your mutant powers. Similar to diablo, you can put all your points into energy to develop a very impressive energy pool which allows you to spam the heck out of cyclops eye beam. Now toward the end of the game when you get to the highest level of eye-beam and can just use that constantly then I would argue the game breaks slightly. However for the first 50% of the game it's an absolute blast balancing your energy use with melee combat. Some mutants like Wolverine are "barbarian" types and require more STR and AGI then they want energy, while others like Storm and Cylopse need energy. I think this is a MUCH better x-men game than the original, and primarily because of this energy system.
I think maybe my article should change it's scope from why cooldown abilities are so great to just evolution of casting costs.
