MMORPG Combat Systems.

I've been thinking about MMORPG combat lately, and would like to hear your 2 cents:
- What features make a combat system Good? For instance, effect/ability warmup/cooldown, global MP/stamina, abilities such as rooting, leeching etc.
- Which style of combat is more "interesting"? For example, GW is more realtime (Diablo-ish), while RoE's is quasi turn-based (more deliberate and maybe strategic).
- Should there be differences in PvE and PVP combat? And if so, how is this reflected in the combat of the MMOs you've played?

Personally I don''t like any current MMORPG combat system. I''d like to see something much more realistic in nature.

MoonDragon:

No, realism sucks. Realism means that (from my limited knowledge) Mongol mounted archers pretty much crush everything until someone invents firearms. Not really an exciting game. Reality isn''t balanced, it isn''t fun, it isn''t fair, and it often isn''t terribly interesting. There''s no variety of weapons or skill choices; whatever technology allows to be the best wins,. and anyone who doesn''t train in it loses. Also, it makes a lousy basis for a combat system because people don''t have hit points. One good stab/shot from behind and they die. That would be fun.. for griefers..

Oh, also, it means that most opponents are going to be at approximately the same skill level as your character. And death is permanent. If you personally kill five orcs before you buy it, you''re fairly amazing. And forget winning if two or more come at you at a time.

Yes, I know, you probably don''t want all of that.. but hey, you issued a blanket statement.

Okay, I should provide something constructive.

Pacing, ie how fast people/mobs die in combat, is key. Too fast and player abilities become ""I Win"" buttons, deciding the entire fight in one press, and people get one-shotted. Too slow and everyone is either bored or exhausted.

Crowd control abilities are great for pve combat, but a terrible idea in pvp - they''re liable to become ""I Win"" buttons again; DAoC RvR was very susceptible to this, and I read someone''s account of getting killed by a priest in WoW who was 6 levels below them.. because the priest had a fear spell.

Narrowly-defined classes with extreme strengths in single areas are good for PvE, since they create interdependency, which is what creates group tactics. They endanger solo PvE though - try to solo in EQ1, or try to solo as a support class in DAoC - and are a major problem in PvP. DAoC''s RvR.. well, Hibernia groups, pre-Frontiers, *required* two druids and at least one, preferably two bards to be competitive. This isn''t a ""I want to be uber and kill everyone"" requirement, this is a ""I want to, I don''t know, win a fight occasionally"" requirement.

One thing DAoC did that I liked a lot. Abilities that change the course of a fight radically but are limited to use once every, say, 30 minutes are lots of fun - they create opportunity for dramatic saves, they give players reason to be more cautious because their resources are running low, they''re just neat.

There, that''s about $0.02 worth of opinion. I can come up with more as necessary

"Svlad" wrote:

Yes, I know, you probably don''t want all of that.. but hey, you issued a blanket statement. :)

Actually... I want most of that. This is why I''m waiting with quivering anticipation for Trials of Ascention. I do disagree with your assesment of how military strategy is always reduced to one single ""win under all conditions"" weapon usage, but not enough to really argue it too much.

Unlike you, I believe that a potential, lucky, one hit kill favours the victim and not the griefer. If a potential griefer is aware of the fact that no matter what he does, his victim stands a decent chance of getting a one hit kill on him, he may rethink his desire to ""grief"" his victim. In fact, the word ""grief"" then becomes very questionable in that context to begin with.

But then again, I did not really ask for an ultimate simulation of the real life either. There is a lot of gray area between WoW combat and the true real life combat. I''m thinking more something in the lines of Counter-Strike realism.

The first post gave me a flashback to college exams.

MoonDragon:

The problem with one-hit kills in a MMORPG comtext is lag.. no, the two main problems with one-hit kills in a MMORPG context are lag and the fact that griefers are more prepared for combat than victims.. no, the three main problems are.. can I come in again?

Seriously, if your dream MMORPG has a serious death penalty for PvP death, even if that penalty is just ""spend ten minutes walking back to your corpse, completely invincible"", having luck be that big of a factor in combat is.. less than fun. Gord help you if you take a ""realistic"" death penalty.

Lag in a system with one-hit kills is also not much fun. That''s why MMORPG players play MMORPGs, not FPSs - wanting to not have the fight decided by who strikes first is a fairly common desire here.

Regarding the claim that that''ll make griefers think about what they do.. I doubt it. One, griefers don''t think, aside from inventing novel ways to inflict pain on others. (If some reader doesn''t think these people exist, please go read about old-school UO for a while.) Two, griefers don''t really care whether their character dies, suffers consequences, etc, so long as they can inflict misery on other people. Three, by definition griefers are the people with the most energy invested in winning PvP fights. They''re going to minimize that risk to the greatest degree possible - most likely, to them it won''t represent a very substantial fear.

That said.. it sounds like what you want is a MMO First-Person-Slasher, substituting twitch for strategic gameplay. I think it''s a good idea. I''m not sure you should claim it''s a MMORPG, though; RPGs, seeing as how they haven''t involved roleplaying for years now (with rare exceptions), are mostly about slower-paced (compared to FPSs) strategic combat. You sound like you want to be more of a member of the subgenre Planetside occupies.

I think there could be some sort of shift into twitchier combat without moving all the way to Planetside. The difficulty, of course, is in making twitch count without making it the be-all and end-all. Even making combat more interactive would be a significant stride; look at some of the recent Mario games (M&L Superstar Saga is the only one I''ve played) where it''s primarily turn-based combat, but the player can still do things when it''s not their ''turn''.

In that vein, I think it''d be cool to have parry as an active skill, rather than a passive one. I see my opponent start to move, I hit the parry button. If I time it right, I parry. If not, I get hit. To push it more into RPGness, make a higher parry skill perform the move faster; if I have a low parry skill, I have to start my parry at the very instant the bad guy moves, but a high skill would give me more leeway. I''m sure that that could be extrapolated into other aspects of combat (dodging, special moves, etc) without too much effort. (Think about how cool a feint would be if your character actually twitched, and your opponent could actually fall for it, as opposed to a text message telling you if it worked or not. :))

The difference between PvP and PvE would be obvious; a server controls your opponent in one case, and another person does in the other. Obviously you run into the same AI pitfalls trying to run a more complicated combat system as you do with any other significant AI endeavor.

I''d like to see a move not necessarily away from but at least further down the path for MMORPG combat, and I think interactivity is a good place to start. Less one button, get a sandwich combat. Sure, let people do it that way if they want. They''ll get their asses handed to them by people who know and use the system, and that''s the way it should be. Make twitch skills be part of the equation, but temper your character''s reaction times based on character skill level. I think it''d work.

EDIT: yes, lag then factors into it. Lag also factors into pure twitch games online. If you can''t control a factor, and it won''t necessarily interfere with what you want to do, I say ignore it and see how it goes.

Having a hybrid between WoW and Planetside combat would be ideal in my book. With the balanced tipped towards the twitchier Planetside.

PvE content affords longevity. PvP content needs to be refreshed rapidly in order to not get stale. PvP games also typically lack character customization and appearance improvement.

One great thing Planetside did was balance the need to have newbies be useful and yet there is a reason to ""level"" to become more versatile. They didnt go far enough.

Imagine this scenario. Level 50 character can pound a level 1 character in one shot. However, said level one character can drive a tank to run over said level 50 character and kill him instantly. Level 1 character can also man a turret in a tower and given enough time and eye hand coordination, take out many level 50 characters. Level 1 character can also take stealth or engineering and plant mini turrets.

You balance the game so that a level 1 has to be much more skillful and use his environment and equiptment to kill a level 50. Likewise, the level 50 just needs situational knowledge of when he''s vulnerable and need less strategy to kill a level one character since the equiptment he is using is far more powerful and yet slightly less powerful than vehicles, and turret emplacements. He has tactics to counter a single level 1''s skillset, but cant manage 3-4 diverse level 1 skill sets. So, a level 50 in a tank is equal in stature to a level 1 in a tank. However, a level 50 without a tank can nearly withstand a tank driven by a level 1, whereas a level 1 stands no chance unless the tank has its attention focused elsewhere.

From the WoW side of our hybrid, we would need to make adjustments to simplify their classes for PvP. They should break everything down like the Druid. Every class has enough skills for 3-4 characters. Druids, seperate their skills for their different shapeshifting forms. Other classes just have it all lumped together. Fumbling for the right skill in a situation (and you will come across a situation for all skills) will be an exercise in frustration.

Objective or goal oriented PvP is a must. This is another aspect in which lower levels can compete with higher level players. And also this can be an area where you can lose the battle but win the war. If there are 10 objectives some of which are common and some not. If your enemy failed all of his uncommon objectives but got 3/5 of the common ones, the other side can win the scenario if they completed most of their uncommon objectives.

For example, the start of the scenario has you escourting key personel to your sides keep. You also have to find ingredients to make ammo for the turrets or defenses. The more ingredient goals you complete the more enhancements to your defenses. You complete 5/5 of your uncommon goals so your defenses are top of the line. Your enemy only completed 2/5. Because of this, the enemy had to use more skill to take out 3/5 of your keeps hard points. While you were able to ruin your enemy''s keep by only destroying 2/5 hardpoints. Its the kind of battle where you can destroy a keep by damaging it until it hits 0 ""hit points"". Or you can destroy 5/5 hardpoints before the enemy destroys yours. The latter is much harder to do since its more likely that the hit points will reach 0 before all 5 hard points are taken out.

So one side wins 7-3. However, those points carry over to grand totals so even though you lost, you are contributing 3 points to the grand totals for your faction/home city.

In that vein, I think it''d be cool to have parry as an active skill, rather than a passive one. I see my opponent start to move, I hit the parry button. If I time it right, I parry. If not, I get hit.

I would love to have more interactivity in combat like this. Thats one of the only things that bums me out about WoW.

I frigging hate MMORPG''s in which combat relies on some arbitrary skill number/modifyer, and the only real interaction is clicking on an ""attack"" button. This is why I play games like JG and Aces High, because real skill matters, not some stupid number.

The ideal MMORPG combat would involve the ability to target individual bodyparts (a la Mechwarrior 2 and Fallout) and have this affect the motion and abilities of the opponent.
Obviously your chance if knocking the wand out of the mage''s hand is very small compared to targeting his center mass, but hey, you have a choice !
Hit his foot and he will walk slower for a while !

"Veloxi" wrote:

I frigging hate MMORPG''s in which combat relies on some arbitrary skill number/modifyer, and the only real interaction is clicking on an ""attack"" button. This is why I play games like JG and Aces High, because real skill matters, not some stupid number.

The problem with that kind of stuff is rampant cheating.

I''m not really sure what would be a good middle ground.

"Dr.Ghastly" wrote:
"Veloxi" wrote:

I frigging hate MMORPG''s in which combat relies on some arbitrary skill number/modifyer, and the only real interaction is clicking on an ""attack"" button. This is why I play games like JG and Aces High, because real skill matters, not some stupid number.

The problem with that kind of stuff is rampant cheating.

I''m not really sure what would be a good middle ground.

Cheating? How can their be cheating when the only real determining factor is the pilot''s skill with the controls? How can one ""cheat"" with their reflexes? I''ve seen cheating in JG, but not in combat or flight situations, only in exploiting economic loopholes.

"Veloxi" wrote:

Cheating? How can their be cheating when the only real determining factor is the pilot''s skill with the controls?

*cough*counterstrike*cough*
Not saying the situation is exactly the same, but when player response becomes a more significant factor, cheats seem to do a lot more damage...

Thanks for the responses, guys. Hope for some more posts here

"Svlad" wrote:

Crowd control abilities are great for pve combat, but a terrible idea in pvp - they''re liable to become ""I Win"" buttons again; DAoC RvR was very susceptible to this, and I read someone''s account of getting killed by a priest in WoW who was 6 levels below them.. because the priest had a fear spell.

Would some counter effects/abilities help solve this problem? For instance, area root could be countered by a form of dispell by a backup character.

Smials:

No. That means that the class or classes with crowd control negate abilities are now required to pvp OR ELSE. This actually relates to my comments about narrowly-defined interdependent classes and DAoC: One of the reasons the bards and druids were absolutely required was that bards could un-mez and druids could (and were therefore absolutely required to) get an ability, Group Purge, usable once every 30 minutes, that cleared all negative effects from the group.

And even with two druids and two bards it was entirely possible to be crushed in instants by groups with enough cc.

pvp games with required classes are no fun. In pve, they''re more tolerable because you can go select easier targets if you''re lacking ie a primary healer, cc, a real tank, whatever. There is no target selection in pvp; the targets select you.

Quick addendum!

And bards and druids weren''t the only classes with cc-defense abilities, either. Everyone could get self-only Purge, and there was an accessible artifact (I left during ToA and before Frontiers, for anyone who that makes sense to) (for those of you who don''t even play DAoC, read ''really, really irritatingly difficult-to-obtain item'' for ''artifact'') that could be activated to eat the first mez that hit you.

I had this artifact, didn''t have Purge; was more of a class thing than a player choice. But that''s another story.

Other characters also had access to Determination, which reduced all cc duration for them.

With all that, guess what? CC still dominated.

If CC and CC defenses are in a pvp game, either CC or the defenses will dominate; if you strengthen the defenses enough times, you''ll just cross over the line and the CC classes will cry instead of everyone else.

More of an addendum than I thought

"Svlad" wrote:

If CC and CC defenses are in a pvp game, either CC or the defenses will dominate; if you strengthen the defenses enough times, you''ll just cross over the line and the CC classes will cry instead of everyone else.

This is true if CC is their primary function and a class defining ability. But if they have plenty of other things to do and CC is only a minor side skill (e.g. I''m thinking stun for WoW paladins) then nerfs or counter-measures for CC will not prompt people to blow their tops. Rather it will introduce more depth to the tapistry of options available for PvP.

Svlad, it seems that your complaint is in fact, as MoonDragon put it, against such features which dominate a class''s definition and reason for use. It seems to me that once features are prominent enough to make people''s class (and therefore grouping and in-combat choices) completely deterministic, then you''re actually back to the lumberjack model of RPG combat: press Attack 1-2-3, wait, occasionally press something else. There would be little variety, and player skill would become a second or third fiddle to grinding for artifacts and abilities (levels).

It would seem like that, since I''m using DAoC so heavily as an example and it''s got both the problem of CC dominating combat and the problem of narrowly-defined classes in PvP. However, I''m not really interested in CC in PvP even in a game with broad classes.

CC in PvP is very binary and instant. Either it''s short duration, or you''ve got a defense (resistance, counterspell, etc) to it, and it doesn''t matter much.. or you die. Having CC in PvP means that you are now required to go grind for loot or levels so that you''re able to render it irrelevant, or that you need to bring someone who can, or that you need to bring your own CCer.

Instead of asking why I don''t like the idea of CC in a PvP game, why not ask why you like it? Does it really bring enough diversity and interest tactics to be worth the fact that it''s controversial, not at all fun for the victims, and difficult to balance? Wouldn''t you be better served to come up with more novel debuffs?

Oh, and one odd note.. despite having powerful CC and narrow classes and equipment and levels that heavily biased the outcome of combat, DAoC''s RvR was less deterministic than you''d expect. A specific occasion comes to mind where my group of guildies, only moderately well-equipped and leveled, utterly and very suddenly killed one of the deadliest groups on the server because we were clever. Nor was it particularly lumberjack-esque.

And I still think DAoC''s RvR could be improved on. A lot. Interesting..

CC in PvP may as well be the one hit kill scenario. Whomever, gets their CC shot in first without proper counter, wins.

This is true of all similar abilities. Root, stun, stealth, snare, charm, mez, slow and silence all cause huge PvP imbalances. It makes PvP a numbers game when it should be skill based.

"Veloxi" wrote:

I frigging hate MMORPG''s in which combat relies on some arbitrary skill number/modifyer, and the only real interaction is clicking on an ""attack"" button. This is why I play games like JG and Aces High, because real skill matters, not some stupid number.

I had about 10 different flame responses to this, but since this is GWJ and not the Vault, I''ll leave it at this: Your post is extremely belittling to MMORPG gamers and describes a level of (non)interaction that doesn''t even exist in any MMORPG I''ve ever played. Yeesh.

Basically combat is now more interactive in a lot of these games but if we get too interactive we move out of the MMORPG arena. Or we turn it into a click fest that really isn''t fun despite how good a game Diablo was.

Remember these games are basically based arround a D&D model. In D&D and most any other PnP RPG there is little interaction in a figth other than rolling the dice and selecting a spell or weapon. Sure you can do stuff like run from a battle and what not but the majority of the fight is you roll dice the DM rolls dice and the rest happens in your mind with some help hopefully from a good story telling GM.

MMORPG try to emulate this but instad of the story telling GM and you imagination we get fancy graphics.

In addition MMORPG, as people always forget when they argue about ''player skill'', is not about a player''s skill or reflexes it is more about your character''s skills.

I played old school UO was in beta and played till EQ came out. It was a lot of fun but at the same time there was nothing that could be done when you were outside hunting some creature when suddenly a pack of player kills would decend on you out of the blue and more than likely kill you before you had time to react.

Player justice was non-exsistant because by time you died, recovered, and alerted some of your friends the killers were gone, logged or off to some other corner of the world.

Shadowbane tried to recapture this but add accountability with player cities which worked some but then you get into the whole problem that people do not want a fair fight. People want to fight battles they know they can win. So in the end people in general only launch into battles they have a good idea they can win and at worse come by and destroy your city when nobody is home.

Basically I yet to see a MMORPG with fair PvP and I think that should be left to the FPS, RTS, and so on crowd.

As for PvE combat a lot of people did it fairly well if you ask me.

Maladen, DAoC''s PvP is inarguably fair, give or take server population imbalances.. which, admittedly, can be extremely unfair, but hey, it''s close.

Of course, it requires entirely too much grinding in a rather crummy PvE game, and then more grinding in a raid-oriented environment, and then (what with the new expansion) presumably some more instanced grinding of some sort.. and of course some grinding in the above arenas to get equipment.. and arguably some more grinding because you need to win RvR fights to get realm points to get realm abilities.. all that to be competitive, and none of it really the focus of the game, and therefore none of it [except possibly the RvR, if yoiu don''t mind fighting at a disadvantage against more experienced players] at all enjoyable..

And then there''s the problems with the RvR itself. The one that ultimately killed all joy in the game for me is that your worst enemies often aren''t the people you''re supposed to be fighting.. they''re the people on your own side..

But all that said, I''ve still got to say. It''s fair. It''s PvP.

Fun.. well, I don''t think so anymore.

[EDIT: Forgot two forms of grinding, so sorry.]

The most fair pvp MMO has been planetside. It just lacks longevity. Its the same major thing that killed AC2. People can get to the highest levels in days and then said, ""Now what?""

"Svlad" wrote:

Maladen, DAoC''s PvP is inarguably fair, give or take server population imbalances.. which, admittedly, can be extremely unfair, but hey, it''s close.

Of course, it requires entirely too much grinding in a rather crummy PvE game, and then more grinding in a raid-oriented environment, and then (what with the new expansion) presumably some more instanced grinding of some sort.. and of course some grinding in the above arenas to get equipment.. and arguably some more grinding because you need to win RvR fights to get realm points to get realm abilities.. all that to be competitive, and none of it really the focus of the game, and therefore none of it [except possibly the RvR, if yoiu don''t mind fighting at a disadvantage against more experienced players] at all enjoyable..

And then there''s the problems with the RvR itself. The one that ultimately killed all joy in the game for me is that your worst enemies often aren''t the people you''re supposed to be fighting.. they''re the people on your own side..

But all that said, I''ve still got to say. It''s fair. It''s PvP.

Fun.. well, I don''t think so anymore.

[EDIT: Forgot two forms of grinding, so sorry.]

I played DAoC at release for some time not sure how long but a while. While it may be fair now it was anything but fair at release with 1 shot assasin kills, 1 or 2 shot archer kills that could stealth shoot and stealth again with arrow mid air and if that was not enough a run buff to boot.

Then up close midgard clerics were nasty with stuns and of course nobody could break them.

Do not get me wrong I am sure they improved on the game and I found DAoC to do a lot of things right and enjoyed my time there but did not come accross to me as a fair game at least at that time.

I agree fang and I really like planetside but do not think it is a MMORPG just a bigger version of a FPS game.

Not sure about the fast leveling I mean people made 50 in EQ2 already and people made 60 even faster in WoW so we will see if that kills them or not. I think what killed AC2 is they just did not launch with enough content period. Now they have a ton of content had they launched with just more content people would have been happier.

"maladen" wrote:

In addition MMORPG, as people always forget when they argue about ''player skill'', is not about a player''s skill or reflexes it is more about your character''s skills.

I think this is the most telling comment in your entire post. MMORPGs, and games in general, aren''t set in stone; it''s not logical to say that anything is or isn''t a part of genre X. It''s that very line of thought that prevents people from moving things forward.

It''s fair to say, ""Up until this point, MMORPGs have been about character skills more than player skills."", and you''d be perfectly right in doing so. You could probably even get some traction saying, ""MMORPGs should be more about character skills than about player skills"", even among this crew. What doesn''t scan is saying that MMORPGs must be about character skill to the virtual exclusion of player skill. A lot of the posts in this thread seem to indicate that it''d be nice to find some midpoint between current MMORPG character-only skill and Planetside-type player-only skill.

Having played several MMORPG''s, but mainly DAoC, I think the one thing that can make or break PvP is Balance.

DAoC has the best (to-date, and in my opinion of course) PvP/PvE differentiating system, in that in order to partake in PvP you need to willingly enter a PvP zone. Once there, everyone''s fair game, but it is quite feasible to never go there if PvP isn''t your cup of tea, and you can never be griefed (PvP-wise).

DAoC''s second point of strength is the actual combat handling. On the one hand, it isn''t ''Hit auto-attack and wait'', on the other hand, it isn''t FPS-style twitch and kill/die. You have class melee/range/magic styles/abilities, you have Realm Abilities, you have Items/Artifacts, and you (mostly) have time to use them as needed. I especially like the reactive styles (such as a special attack you can do only after XXX, when XXX can be ''you dodge'', ''you get blocked'', ''you parry'' etc).

And this is where Player Skill comes in. Granted, you can only use the abilities your character gives you, but you need to play smart, ot you lose. This is painfully evident when Powerleveled characters or Ebay-bought accounts field for the first time, and have no clue how to use their powerful abilities, and lose to supposedly weaker opponents.

Now, back to balance. Balance is the most important issue whether we''re talking comparing between sides (Realms, factions, etc) or within them (between classes).

Must-have classes/abilities are a Bad Thing (tm). When a Mercenary can''t get a group unless he has Det4, or a Cabalist can''t get a group unless he''s Spirit specced (never mind what this actually means for those who don''t know DAoC, but you get the idea <winks>), that takes the fun out, because there is no room left for personal play style.

When you can''t field a group unless you have 1*ClassA, 1*ClassB, 2*ClassC etc., or otherwise you can''t compete, that is no fun.

When CC is so powerful that your group is insta-mezzed and your group purge is down (30 min timer) or you don''t have personal purge and all you can do is watch grimly as your group is mowed down at leisure, that''s bad.

Classes should be interchangeable to some degree, no class should have an ability so powerful that only a specific class can counter it or lose, and personal style/variation within a class should result in several viable specs, not one that is a must and others that are ''gimped''.

And on a personal note to smials.... Happy now? I''m reading GWJ instead of Q-in-Q Provider VLAN''s, you fiend

DAoC id a good job but it still had some big flaws.

For example it is my belief that keep capture in DAoC was about as meaningful and lasting as base capture in Planetside. Now do not get me wrong both are a lot of fun to do but a lot of people get tired of taking the same keep over and over and over because somebody came by while your army was not there and captured it.

Second with the way levels matter so much in a MMORPG PvP game it eventually gets to the point where you have to reach a certain level to ""compete"". This was fixed some with the battlegrounds and maybe they addressed it more since I last played but once you hit 35 you basically had no place to go to RvR and have it be much fun/challenge until you got to 45 or even 50.

Finally spies are a pain to deal with because you basically can do nothing to stop them. Sure it is against the TOS but sure is hard to prove if friends are using a telephone or something to pass information back and forth.

Really the best PvP game so far to date that involves leveling is Planetside. It is not really a MMORPG but it is the best there is so far and maybe if a game could run with that combat model and add some PvE it may be fairly interesting to say the least. WHile it is a twitch based game they do try to minimize that with weapon accuracy and the like so even an old man like me does ok at the game.

"Tamron" wrote:

I''m reading GWJ instead of Q-in-Q Provider VLAN''s, you fiend :lol:

Oh yes, quite happy I smelled something familiar, even though I missed the nick, mate.
Have you gone over the policing papers yet, or are they leaving that for the Hard Core (mwahaha, hard core, I slay me).

Regarding ""no one class must be counterable by only one other"" - it seems to me that this effect could be cumulative. For example, the DAoC remark that said that for a while you needed a such and such laundry list of classes for your party, or would be ineffectual in PvP. Wouldn''t solving this lead to classes (or rather, ability sets) being either rather similar to each other (interchangeable to a greater degree), or less effective?