Important - Regarding Skill Development

[Nurvus]

One thing that any game can easily have is loads of different abilities. It doesn't make it better. Just makes it last longer until its depth of gameplay comes through.

Often abilities have the identical effect with different animations.
Taking Cabal Online as the easiest example I can point out, every class has the straight-line cannon-style special ability, every class has the massive AoE ability, and in the end, all there is in difference is whether the class is mainly ranged or not, and its appearance.

Some players, when they realize that, lose interest in the game.
At first all is new and exciting, everyone wants to find out. And when they learn the game reasonably well, not everyone endures the boredom of repetitivity.

What I am trying to point out, is that a game is the coolest to play the more intertwined abilities are.
Abilities with conditional effects. Abilities that have additional effects upon existing effects.
- Casting a Fireball that leaves a burning effect, and then using a spell to Conflagrate that burn into an explosion.
- Casting a mass fire spell that also burns you, and then another fire spell that is most powerful when you are burning.
- Casting a Water spell on an opponent to render the target unable to avoid Lightning abilities.
- Casting a spell that gratns great protection you while touching the ground, and having enemies use spells that throw you into the air to be able to damage you effectively.

The best games to look at, regarding such combinations - in my opinion - are probably Guild Wars and the card game Magic the Gathering.

Many strategies and combos between effects and abilities make games extremely exciting to play in the short and long terms.

It does give extra work to the developpers, but, what comes cheap at first, may become expensive later ;)

[Ronin]

*nods* Very nice.
I tried Cabal, boring game, even leveling up got repetitive after a while...I picked the um...force sword thing, but a very nice suggestion here.

[reddo]

http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/4/4a/Immolate.jpg + http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/b/bf/Glowing_Gaze.jpg
*cough*

Nice Idea though.

[Ronin]

http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/4/4a/Immolate.jpg + http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/b/bf/Glowing_Gaze.jpg
*cough*

Nice Idea though.

Hey, http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/3/36/Shatterstone.jpg + http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/01/Glowing_Ice.jpg much better.

Didn't say the idea was Original. Besides the OP mentioned GW as a source of inspiration anyway.

[MESS14H]

One thing that any game can easily have is loads of different abilities. It doesn't make it better. Just makes it last longer until its depth of gameplay comes through.

Often abilities have the identical effect with different animations.
Taking Cabal Online as the easiest example I can point out, every class has the straight-line cannon-style special ability, every class has the massive AoE ability, and in the end, all there is in difference is whether the class is mainly ranged or not, and its appearance.

Some players, when they realize that, lose interest in the game.
At first all is new and exciting, everyone wants to find out. And when they learn the game reasonably well, not everyone endures the boredom of repetitivity.

What I am trying to point out, is that a game is the coolest to play the more intertwined abilities are.
Abilities with conditional effects. Abilities that have additional effects upon existing effects.
- Casting a Fireball that leaves a burning effect, and then using a spell to Conflagrate that burn into an explosion.
- Casting a mass fire spell that also burns you, and then another fire spell that is most powerful when you are burning.
- Casting a Water spell on an opponent to render the target unable to avoid Lightning abilities.
- Casting a spell that gratns great protection you while touching the ground, and having enemies use spells that throw you into the air to be able to damage you effectively.

The best games to look at, regarding such combinations - in my opinion - are probably Guild Wars and the card game Magic the Gathering.

Many strategies and combos between effects and abilities make games extremely exciting to play in the short and long terms.

It does give extra work to the developpers, but, what comes cheap at first, may become expensive later ;)

Yes having someone specialize in abilitys that work on abilitys to produce a unique effect is something id like to see in KW
Predefined archutypes implament a rock, paper, scissors theory that create the universal effect that you mentioned. The developers try to liven things up a bit now and then by adding new abilitys that enevitably get toned down again (aka nerfed )to resolve balancing issues created by the effects of the new skills and abilitys.
This is the model of most 2nd generation mmos and it will be seen that the only way to facilitate continuos growth of the games community is to have this implamentation of new skills and abilitys and then to reiterate them again at a later date to continue over and over again.

[reddo]

Hey, http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/3/36/Shatterstone.jpg + http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/01/Glowing_Ice.jpg much better.

Didn't say the idea was Original. Besides the OP mentioned GW as a source of inspiration anyway.
Oh, I didn't read that part. Woops.
The idea is nice for those who prefer to make a strategy first. But without some skill flaws, the battles will consist of A certain pattern of skills being repeated. In other words, improvisation ought to be more pronounced. The most skillful players can get out of a tight situation with what they can use. This provides versatility and opportunity for an enemy player to pivot the tide.

[Nurvus]

Guild Wars is a good example of a game that offers alot with just a little.

With no more than 8 different abilities at your disposal at any one time, you can build a great strategy.
You don't have fun only by getting new skills to replace the old ones. - New skills often unlock hidden potential in old skills.

And don't get me wrong. I am not talking about making spells that directly chain into a specific spell.
I am talking about incorporating mechanics that are available in general, such as Burn, Bleed, Poison, Disease, Curse, Daze, Knockdown, Trauma, Horror, and many other effects that can be chained from and into with various abilities, to make your own combos.

Incorporating as many mechanics as possible is a plus as long as they are sound and clear. It's just another integer to match.

One example I like alot is the following:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/9/97/Ward_of_Weakness.jpg (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Ward_of_Weakness.jpg) -> http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/8/8d/Stoning.jpg (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Stoning.jpg) -> http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/3/3c/Ash_Blast.jpg (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Ash_Blast.jpg)
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Aftershock.jpg

[Ronin]

Oh, I didn't read that part. Woops.
The idea is nice for those who prefer to make a strategy first. But without some skill flaws, the battles will consist of A certain pattern of skills being repeated. In other words, improvisation ought to be more pronounced. The most skillful players can get out of a tight situation with what they can use. This provides versatility and opportunity for an enemy player to pivot the tide.
Yea, the GW skill setup of 8 skills does have a cap on improvisation which is a bit of a bummer really. So the ability to swap strategies isn't available, I had an idea that would be a 10second+5per skills swapped timer that allowed the player to swap at the cost of a rather rare resource, time. This sugguestion was made a year ago.

[Nurvus]

Oh, I didn't read that part. Woops.
The idea is nice for those who prefer to make a strategy first. But without some skill flaws, the battles will consist of A certain pattern of skills being repeated. In other words, improvisation ought to be more pronounced. The most skillful players can get out of a tight situation with what they can use. This provides versatility and opportunity for an enemy player to pivot the tide.

I didn't suggest that this game should be like Guild Wars. Guild Wars does have fundamental issues with longevity and over 50% combos are cool in concept but numbers do not support them in game, and therefore you end up using certain cycles over and over.

However, assume that Guild Wars allowed 16 skills instead of 8. And that combos would not consist of more than 4 chained skills possibly with another 2 supportive buffs.
It would change between pre-made Strategy into Real Time strategy, where most of your skills would be chosen to deal with the unexpected, since your opponent would also have 16 skills.

[Udakaizek]

One thing that any game can easily have is loads of different abilities. It doesn't make it better. Just makes it last longer until its depth of gameplay comes through.

Often abilities have the identical effect with different animations.
Taking Cabal Online as the easiest example I can point out, every class has the straight-line cannon-style special ability, every class has the massive AoE ability, and in the end, all there is in difference is whether the class is mainly ranged or not, and its appearance.

Some players, when they realize that, lose interest in the game.
At first all is new and exciting, everyone wants to find out. And when they learn the game reasonably well, not everyone endures the boredom of repetitivity.

What I am trying to point out, is that a game is the coolest to play the more intertwined abilities are.
Abilities with conditional effects. Abilities that have additional effects upon existing effects.
- Casting a Fireball that leaves a burning effect, and then using a spell to Conflagrate that burn into an explosion.
- Casting a mass fire spell that also burns you, and then another fire spell that is most powerful when you are burning.
- Casting a Water spell on an opponent to render the target unable to avoid Lightning abilities.
- Casting a spell that gratns great protection you while touching the ground, and having enemies use spells that throw you into the air to be able to damage you effectively.

The best games to look at, regarding such combinations - in my opinion - are probably Guild Wars and the card game Magic the Gathering.

Many strategies and combos between effects and abilities make games extremely exciting to play in the short and long terms.

It does give extra work to the developpers, but, what comes cheap at first, may become expensive later ;)

Great post MTG is a really good card game mainly do to the endless combination of cards u can put together to get diff results/combo's .and i have also tried cabal and a few other mmo's that have the same three abilities that just get diff names later and more powerful wich doesnt do much for the player when having to grind countless levels kinda wanna do or see something else hence mixing it up with abilities that have added effects when combined or when left on the target makes the experience in battle Random,exciting and endless outcomes