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 something you can't get from a drop or gain when you level up.

I'm talking about player skill.

CO is one of the few MMORPGs out there that rewards player skill greatly. The game engine itself is reasonably well-suited to tactical decisions made in the heat of battle. Being able to react quickly to things occurring in a fight also often means the difference between taking an opportunity to attack (thus ending a fight) and having that opportunity wasted by standing around and blocking.

How do you measure up? We're going to explore an issue that persists between MMOs and even between genres. The magic that can be produced by dexterous bashing of keys is obvious, and yet often overlooked. Hit the jump, and we'll figure out why.

Before we begin, I'd like to talk a little bit on the status of the Massively CO guild -- I have seen quite a few of you in the Massively chat channel (named Massively), but not enough people have been online at the same time to form a SG. In an effort to get everything rolling, I'd like to get everyone together on Sunday at 6:00 PM EST to form the SG and hopefully run some content together. I'd like to do the Serpent Lantern, since it's new, a lot of us haven't done it yet, and it's available for levels 11-40. Just send me a PM at @Auspicious if you'd like to get involved. Feel free to bring whatever character you'd like; we'll have a great time!

Is reading websites a skill?

Defining something like "player skill" is hard. Some people take "skill" to mean the difference between two keyboard monkeys playing the same character or a similar one. This is a very broad definition, and one that is not very useful. When I define player skill, I specifically refer to a player's ability to do things that cannot be copied from a strategy guide, especially those that must be done in stressful situations.

That didn't really explain it, so I'll elaborate on each point. Strategy guides offer a lot of information about a game, such as character builds and strategy breakdowns on how to beat a particular encounter. Anyone can copy a build and anyone can follow a strategy guide. I think that devising new builds and strategies falls under an umbrella I creatively call "strategy," and while it is a skill, it is too easy to reproduce by reading strategy guides, often written by the very person who made the discovery in the first place.

If you don't play CO, you are probably ready to write a flaming comment right now. Raiding in WoW isn't player skill -- it's just reading a raid strategy guide (and following it). Most battles in EVE aren't either; having the right ships, pilots, and ship fits decide the outcome of most battles (yes, I realize player skill often matters in EVE). Even though I don't consider these to be player skill, it does not mean that strategy is not incredibly important -- especially in MMORPGs.

Curse you, character creator

Unfortunately for MMORPGs, there are factors besides player skill that affect battles. Something as simple as a level or gear difference between two characters can dilute the value of player skill. In some competitive games, when the opponent has a strong advantage, he does not have to play as hard, but you have to play superbly in order to deal with it. In MMORPGs, a few pieces of gear can give the opponent a "strong advantage" all the time in a fight. In many cases, that advantage is simply insurmountable. Most of us have been in a situation where we saw a monster that was too hard, and we had to flee or die instantly. No amount of player skill can overcome situations like those.

Strategy is the most common way to solve a problem in any MMORPG. When we add a tank or healer to our team, decide to come back to a mission after gaining a few levels, or pick a set of abilities that would counter our upcoming challenge, we're using strategy. It may take some player skill to correctly utilize strategy, but it is not required beyond that small initial amount.

Even though the focus of this article is on player skill, it's important to note that most MMORPG obstacles can be overcome using strategy. The majority of MMOs don't require much player skill, even in PvP. Counter-builds and strategies are more valuable, since they invalidate any skill advantage your opponent might have. If your team of players is highly skilled, a balanced approach to PvP conflict is more advantageous, since it uses high player skill to compensate for possible slight disadvantages in strategy.

A rose by any other name...

Champions Online is somewhat unique among the MMORPG scene for validating a certain type of player skill. Normal people call it "having no life." StarCraft players call this trait "mechanics," while fighting game players call it "execution." FPS players call it "twitch." If I had to give a name to it that was appropriate for MMORPGs, it would probably be "not hitting the wrong hotkeys." In most RPGs (let alone MMOs), execution is not a particularly difficult skill to master. We don't have to hit ctrl+w+4 in order to make our character cast spells. Simply pressing a hotkey is sufficient -- we don't even need to aim our attacks, since the convenient targeting of most MMORPGs will let us hit Tab to cycle to the enemy of choice.

Champions Online is different. Not in the sense that we don't have Tab targeting, but that using skills and abilities is very active. Most buffs in CO have a very short duration, and long-term abilities are virtually nonexistent. Our Champions have to juggle a lot of temp buffs, manage crowd controls, and use powers in synergistic sequences. While this is somewhat present in other games, it's generally much less common than the "press 3, then 4, then 2 until dead" syndrome of other MMORPGs. Often an attack string can be difficult to perform or is easily interrupted, such as using Ego Sleep followed by Collective Will, or getting a lengthy buff chain fired properly before releasing a fully-charged Force Cascade.

It may seem second nature to many PvPers, but those skills are practiced and not automatic. I've watched numerous bad PvP fights. People don't pay attention to buffs and debuffs or they don't fire all their damage buffs at the same time to kill in a particular window. Sometimes they make lots of positioning mistakes, often failing to drop line of sight when the opponent deploys stationary damage pets. It isn't because these people don't know that they're supposed to use all their damage buffs before charging a nuke. It's that they get excited and accidentally waste their Imbue on a resistance debuff instead of an attack or fail to pay attention and die to lightning sigils. This sort of mental discipline takes practice. Knowing how to PvP and being able to PvP are two very different things.

Each player only moves one piece per turn

Dexterity -- or mechanics, execution, whatever -- is just one facet of the broad spectrum that is player skill. It's also the most popular of all the elements of player skill. In MMOs, dexterity is not all that important. Being able to do a fairly simple task right every time in CO is not as hard as macroing four bases in StarCraft. It's much better to focus on strategy elements. It's also much better to focus on what most people call "tactics," but I call "decision-making skills."

I think that 95% of the time that I talk about player skill, I am talking about decision-making. Most of the time that we blame someone for wiping our team, faulty decision-making was at work. In CO PvP, decision-making skills are tremendously important, especially in duels. The average skilled duelist is hard to kill with a single spike from a single character. We have to make a large series of important decisions in order to lower his health enough to spike him without seeing him heal or teleport. Decision-making skills are often important in other games' PvE, especially if a situation is unfamiliar. Your team often has to guess how to solve a particular situation, and it might not be as cut and dried as "charge in and do what you do best."

Unfortunately, due to the incredible ease of PvE in CO, player skill of any kind is somewhat marginalized in PvE. It's pretty easy to play through the game with even the most awful of strategy, so there's not much room for skill if you have any sense of how to build at all. The devs added difficulty levels, but even the hardest difficulty setting is not particularly hard for a well-tuned superhero build.

This doesn't mean that we can't hone our decision-making skills in PvE, though. A friend of mine soloed the final battle against Telios in the Monster Island Crisis without gear and without using the "magic serum" that makes the fight an even battle. The key was smart decisions. He had to decide when to attack, when to block, and how best to avoid Telios' ridiculously high damage output. Simple strategy and execution just isn't enough in that situation -- crisis management is key to making hard fights like that beatable. Other players have soloed Shadow Destroyer using the same set of skills.

When all things are equal, some things are different

In the end, when a fight is a little too tough for us, skill is what paves the way for our victory. The things we respect most are those that can't be reproduced by a strategy guide. The things we admire are those that take effort and practice to achieve. The highest points of gaming aren't granted to us just by leveling up or grinding content for months. The intangible things that separate one keyboard-smashing monkey from another are what truly makes gaming satisfying.