Poll: MMO's don't require skill.
- Thread starter Arsen
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I would argue that skill is involved, it's more mental skill coupled with hand eye coordination, like an FPS, but it goes further then "this gun does this to human flesh and shooting a certain part of the body hurts them more" or "shoot till dead"
(I'm not trying to over-simplify FPS games, i'm not a fan but i wouldn't pretend that skill isn't involved.)
In MMO's however it's a case of having a wide catalogue of moves with varying affects and such and only a handful of tem are useful in a handful of situations., and of course being able to coordinate several people at once doing this i would say takes some real skill.
(In that sense i'm talking about leading raids and stuff, i'd never do it because i never remember half of the stuff i'd need.)
So yes, Skill in MMO's is needed.
Hell it took me 2-3 years of playing WoW to understand what i'm doing and i still get trounced in PvP means i'm not very skillful.
(I'm not trying to over-simplify FPS games, i'm not a fan but i wouldn't pretend that skill isn't involved.)
In MMO's however it's a case of having a wide catalogue of moves with varying affects and such and only a handful of tem are useful in a handful of situations., and of course being able to coordinate several people at once doing this i would say takes some real skill.
(In that sense i'm talking about leading raids and stuff, i'd never do it because i never remember half of the stuff i'd need.)
So yes, Skill in MMO's is needed.
Hell it took me 2-3 years of playing WoW to understand what i'm doing and i still get trounced in PvP means i'm not very skillful.
MMO's, like virtually anything else people can do in life does have certain skill sets associated with it. The thing is, most of the skills that allow people to excel at MMO's are remarkably diffrent than the skills required to excel in say a FPS game.
As an example, FPS games tend to focus on the "now" mindset and tend to invoke a lot of skills that revolve around snap decision making and technical ability. For the most part, the most important skills in FPS games involve target recognition and acquisition, understanding of weapon/item roles and the ability to rapidly switch between them and the capacity to understand your player's relation to the gamespace (i.e being in cover, not falling off a cliff and so on).
In MMO's on the other hand, much of the "skill" involves understanding the mechanics of your abilities and knowing when a certain ability will be most useful. Snap decisions are rare in MMO's, which often gives a player a fair amount of time to assess the situation. Since most of what players do in FPS is handled automagically by the "character" in an MMO the player's key skills involve target recognition/prioritizing and near term strategic thinking (i.e. is it quicker to hit them with 2 DOT attacks and then one big attack or perhaps 1 DOT and 2 big attacks, or should I keep the tank alive or our caster)
As an example, FPS games tend to focus on the "now" mindset and tend to invoke a lot of skills that revolve around snap decision making and technical ability. For the most part, the most important skills in FPS games involve target recognition and acquisition, understanding of weapon/item roles and the ability to rapidly switch between them and the capacity to understand your player's relation to the gamespace (i.e being in cover, not falling off a cliff and so on).
In MMO's on the other hand, much of the "skill" involves understanding the mechanics of your abilities and knowing when a certain ability will be most useful. Snap decisions are rare in MMO's, which often gives a player a fair amount of time to assess the situation. Since most of what players do in FPS is handled automagically by the "character" in an MMO the player's key skills involve target recognition/prioritizing and near term strategic thinking (i.e. is it quicker to hit them with 2 DOT attacks and then one big attack or perhaps 1 DOT and 2 big attacks, or should I keep the tank alive or our caster)
I always find it rather funny that those who make the case against MMOs requiring skill seem to think that hand-eye co-ordination is the only thing that qualifies as a skill. A skill is merely the capacity to do something well, that was learned as opposed to an innate gift. Given that nearly everyone who's played an MMO has a story about someone who was outDPS'd/out-tanked/out-healed by someone else in inferior gear, it's obvious that some people have learned the ability to DPS/tank/heal better than others. So yes, MMOs require skill. As you play, you learn how to best use your abilities, and thus your skill as a increases.
Sure, learning the skill requires less time than becoming skilled at an FPS, because the amount of time it takes to learn an efficient spell rotation is insignificant compared to the amount of time it takes to noticeably improve one's hand-eye co-ordination. Oddly enough, a common complaint amongst the "FPS crowd" about MMOs is that they "take too much time". Irony, no?
If I wanted to be really pedantic, I'd could say that since everyone has hand-eye co-ordination, and FPSers have just honed this innate ability, while anyone who starts playing an MMO needs to learn the ability to play their class, so in fact FPS's require no skill, but MMOs do. But I won't say that, because at the end of the day it's all pushing buttons to make lights flash on a screen, and I refuse to acknowledge that something that can be accomplished with a lab rat and some cheese is any kind of recognisable skill. And if anyone mentions the word "cyberathelete" I will personally go invent a way to punch people over TCP/IP for the sole purpose of sucker-punching you in the groin.
If you try to compare apples and oranges you're going to ultimately be told they're two completely different things. FPS' take a whole list of skills different from MMO's to play.Arsen said:
Sure, a lot of the main stream content in MMO's is easy to handle. Especially pve content. But pvp, and high end raid content is often difficult and requires drilling and coordination. The coordination is where the difficulty most comes in. Because people seem to have trouble curbing their ego's of "I have the biggest penis in the land; worship me."
Also, no offense (read: yes, offense intended), but when you oversimplify what goes on in the game with "click on the mob and hope it dies first" doesn't bring light of the fact that as much as wow is bashed every class has dozens of skills and while they're not all used in every situation. It takes competence and skill to know when to use what.
A good comparison, by the way, for the mmo vs. fps is that while most mmos are easy as breathing to just quest around... They're hard in high end content like I said earlier. The best way to put this in FPS terms is everyone can figure out how to fire, reload, and run around. Some with slightly more competence learn how to time grenade throws and rocket launchers. While those of extremely obsessive caliber (with often just as much social retardation as the most avid WoW fan) are those who can headshot at a weapons maximum effective range with little to no missing and NOT being using an aim bot.
tl;dr - they're completely different skill sets, you wouldn't compare a plumber to a debugger for microsoft would you?
Moral of the story: Everything's different, and there's often layers of depth to any game. Eve has a complex economy and some of the calculations for most effective weapon use involves calculus. While WoW really challenges people on interpersonal coordination and knowing your own class and probably the others reasonably well. That's hundreds of different skills and knowing how they interact. Guild wars has a limited selection of abilities to choose from at one time or another. FPS games require hand eye coordination and knowledge of what is best for what situation you find yourself in.
They all require effort, knowledge, and skill. All of this culminating into one lovely word. Competence.
You could take a handful of good Starcraft players with zero MMORPG experience, hand them geared lvl80 WoW characters with basic PvP addons installed, point them towards wowwiki/arenajunkies/official forum, show them ~3 good PvP tutorial movies for their classes, show them where the battlemasters are, and they'd be far better at PvP than average lvl80 WoW player in less than a week /played, despite the 80 players probably having averages of... 3 months /played? (I have no idea.)
I used a RTS player as an example because he's going to already have both execution and tactical proficiency far superior to what is needed in WoW. What they lack is a big bunch of rote learning about skills, effects and correct responses to a given enemy move. (WoW rarely has two different good answers to anything.)
Vice versa, I don't believe in a WoW-only player becoming formidable in another genre in such a timeframe. You have game-specific knowledge, the fruits of grinding (character + gear), but little you could take with you into another game.
I used a RTS player as an example because he's going to already have both execution and tactical proficiency far superior to what is needed in WoW. What they lack is a big bunch of rote learning about skills, effects and correct responses to a given enemy move. (WoW rarely has two different good answers to anything.)
Vice versa, I don't believe in a WoW-only player becoming formidable in another genre in such a timeframe. You have game-specific knowledge, the fruits of grinding (character + gear), but little you could take with you into another game.