I’d like one skill a level that each have a particular tactical use – which i choose from a tree with different branchs – and a deck of say 5 of those skills that i can use at a time which i select to use for particular mobs and situations e.g. for a very tough single mob i might load up on defensive skills with just a riposte skill for attack while against a bunch of weak goblins when i have strong armor i load up attack and aoe attack skills.

If positioning was made important then constantly moving would make the fights dynamic while still being focused on the centre of the screen and not the hotbar. Also if the equivalent of cooldowns e.g. your riposte triggering or an ability triggered by a group member’s action, create a clickable icon in the centre of the screen that you have a second or two to click rather than the hotbar then again you get the dynamism while still watching the actual fight.

If the fighting style and combat that we have now was in place back then I don’t think I would have a friendship with anyone. Today in games it’s all about soloing unless you need to get through a specific piece of content then everyone is back to soloing.

I wouldn’t mind at all some ‘forced’ grouping at a slower pace that would give people a chance to actually make a connection. Who knows, you may even make a FRIEND or two.

Really, they should either embrace that disconnect, and deliberately make them feel more like an RTS, or they should invent something new. I think it’s that sense of compromise that makes people feel MMO combat is bad. It feels like it’s a bad version of something else, rather than a good version of its own thing.

I’d suggest too that whether people perceive MMO combat to be good or bad would depend on what other gaming experiences they have. Someone who primarily plays MMOs will probably just take it for granted, that MMO combat is a thing unto itself, rather than a poor version of some other system.

That aside, what happens to me over time while I play is that eventually i get to the point where I know the game well enough to be able to execute the strategies that have the best chance of working with very little room for improvement beyond gear upgrades. When I get to a point in playing where the gameplay becomes stagnant, it isn’t to long before I quit. This is regardless of how well the system responds, or how many abilities I have or how many moves I have in a turn.

Even games that I enjoyed thoroughly don’t have lasting appeal if I get to a point where combat become merely going through the motions. Fallout and Skyrim come to mind particularily. There is zero appeal for me to want to jump back into them, while games like WoW, Rift or even chess and Magic have lasting appeal to me simply because of how much more room for improvement there is.

As such for me the leveling game was by far the worst experiences of WoW and Rift for me from sheer boredom. Thats not to say I didn’t enjoy the stories(thats what made me continue leveling) but I took longer breaks of play, played less per week and took much longer to accomplish things while playing this part of the game. This right here is the reason I never finished leveling my SWTOR toon even though I was enjoying the story quite a bit more then most other games I had played.

MMO combat scratches my itch for battles not full of burst, and meaningful selection of skills. Particularly GW2 combat, at the moment, where its choices and skill, rather than tiers of gear that will win the fight.