Posts tagged player-skill 
PAX East 2012: Hands-on with Perfect World's Raiderz
TERA isn't the only upcoming MMO to feature big-ass monsters and action combat. Perfect World Entertainment showed us a demo of Raiderz at last weekend's PAX East, and producer Mark Hill was pretty enthusiastic about the game's level of polish. He also made a point of highlighting the amount of ...
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The obligations to the useless
I'm going to let all of you in on a secret. Actually, it might not be a secret; everyone might have figured this out by now independent of any admission on my part. But here it is, just the same. I'm not actually a very good City of Heroes player. I mean, I'm "good" in the sense that I play ...
The Firing Line: Getting into Global Agenda
OK, so you've heard about this whole Global Agenda thing, and you've talked yourself into giving it a shot. It's completely free-to-play from start to finish these days, and the Unreal graphics, sci-fi setting, and strange mixture of hyper-competitive PvP and ultra-accessible PvE have always held ...
The Daily Grind: What is player skill, anyway?
Today it's time to tackle the somewhat touchy subject of player skill in MMORPGs. With Guild Wars 2 touting its active dodging system and TERA just on the horizon with its action-based combat, many games seem to be attempting to force individual player skill to weigh more heavily in overall ...
Free for All: What does action-based gaming mean for the future?
If you've been following recent game development, you will have noticed that action-based gaming, or gaming that requires a player to literally control the character on the screen through mouse-clicks or shortcuts, has become all the rage. It shouldn't be surprising, though, considering how ...
The Soapbox: Grinding skill instead of gear
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. One of the most troubling things I see in gamers these days is ...
Firefall dev blog talks skill vs. progression
If you're a bit apprehensive about the balance between progression mechanics and skill-based gameplay in Red 5's upcoming Firefall title, you're not alone. You're also in luck since senior designer Dave Williams has just posted a new dev blog on that very topic. So what's the answer to this ...
Behind the Mask: Some things experience points can't buy
Last week, I talked about survivability in Champions Online. I mainly talked about passive defenses and stats -- things you can plan for. Anyone can adjust a stat build to be more effective, and anyone can get a defensive passive to adjust survivability. This week, I'm going to talk about ...
Mixing skill into a multiplayer game
Clockwork Gamer posted an interesting look at skill in MMOs the other day. He categorizes skill in online games into three areas: character gear and advancement, game knowledge, and player skill. Character gear and advancement can be done by anyone-- the longer you've played a game, it's almost ...
