Poll: MMO's don't require skill.

[Lazzi]

every game require skill. In MMO's you kick and make sur some thing die befor you to, in FPS you click and hope you kill it, in racing games you turn and work with up to 3 other buttons. while rythme games require working a beat.

so yes every game requires skill to play, now im going to go and play me soem chinese checkers.

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

I think the most skill oriented MMORPG would probably be guild wars. You only get to have 8 attack slots so you have to choose your skills wisely and make sure they can work in any situation and that's a ***** to do. WoW takes little skill only a serious time commitment and yes I've played WoW so I'm not just trolling.

Guild Wars reference! You win. (not sarcastic)

It takes a certain amount of skill, sure. Sort of like how 2Fort takes a certain amount of skill. (For those of you not following along at home that means that MMOs take a different kind of skill)

TF2 DOES take a lot of skill. It's my go to excuse as to why I suck so hard at it.

 

[Aries_Split]

Okay, let me rephrase this so that it makes sense. It DOES require skill within the light that a player needs to know:

A. Attack Patterns
B. How to use their own class
C. Movement and technique

However, this isn't skill on the same level as a fighting game, FPS, or anything technical. Not knocking ALL MMO's and RPG's for this, however the majority of MMO's all cater to someone's ability to play on the same field REGARDLESS OF SKILL (winkwink Balacing knudgeknudge) instead of having default gamer instincts.

These kids on WoW these days would get schooled in 2Fort. The real one, not the TF2 Toy Story knockoff.

Play Lunia, then STFU.

 

[Littaly]

It require a different type of skill: Social skill.

You can be an a-hole and the world's greatest Halo player, but you won't above 5 man instances in WoW.

The social skill required in MMOs is minimal.

It depends on how you define being a successful MMO player. A skilled PvP player requires no social skill. But to stick with a guild for long enough for them to take down the Lich King you do need a lot, especially if you want to be there for the kill. Being a guild officer is also a heavy task, you won't get respect if people don't feel comfortable around you, and you won't stay on your position long if people don't like you. I'm not even gonna go into guild leading, to lead a successful guild is a task you need to be a natural leader to do, not only be respected and liked by your fellow members, but also able to organize it in a way that satisfies everyone.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Like in most games, sheer button mashing will get you so far, but I challenge you to take down the Manaetic Behemoth on the Plane of Innovation without skill/co-operation and a few KEI's.

 

[Jursa]

I've played MMO's in my life and people who think MMO's don't require skill are the reason I left, because they usually suck and piss others off. MMO's are pretty much turn based battles only with you nudging your played in one direction or the other. The main point of the game is builds, gear and stats, once those are worked out well you're good to go, but people seem to fail at doing even one of those three quite often.

 

[CIA]

I think the most skill oriented MMORPG would probably be guild wars. You only get to have 8 attack slots so you have to choose your skills wisely and make sure they can work in any situation and that's a ***** to do. WoW takes little skill only a serious time commitment and yes I've played WoW so I'm not just trolling.

Guild Wars reference! You win. (not sarcastic)

It takes a certain amount of skill, sure. Sort of like how 2Fort takes a certain amount of skill. (For those of you not following along at home that means that MMOs take a different kind of skill)

TF2 DOES take a lot of skill. It's my go to excuse as to why I suck so hard at it.

I never said that it didn't take a lot of skill.

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

I never said that it didn't take a lot of skill.

I know, I was agreeing with you. My bad for not making it clearer.

 

[letsnoobtehpwns]

i chose the 3rd one.

 

[Signa]

MMO's don't require much skills at all really. Just click on the mob and hope it dies before you do. I play FFXI and the only skills you need is to know are always fight in a party and paladin is overall the best and safest job to solo as. Ok ok there also the encyclopedic knowledge required to abuse enemy weaknesses but almost nobody does that unless there a Black Mage in FFXI.

You sir suck. Now I don't play anymore and haven't for 3 years. But, I mean common seriously.. Paladin as the best solo job? Are you retarded? Have you never heard of beast master which basically solo's all of it's levels until around 65? Or maybe a Red Mage/Ninja Soloing many of the Notorious Monsters? Hell Paladin is an alright tank but even in most cases it's better to have a Ninja/Warrior. So please before you start saying something requires no skill, at least know something about the game. Every line in your post is absolute gold to anyone who's played for a fair while.

This thread is a little TL;DR for me because I don't really care, but I felt this post was worth commenting on.

Wouldn't this be evidence of how MMOs don't require skill because you need to only choose the right class to do well in certain situations? I mean (having never played FFXI), if a paladin is a good tank, but not the best for PvE in the long term, wouldn't a person with good gaming skills be able to overcome this disadvantage? Compare to TF2. A medic is not a good combatant, but I have a friend that kicks ass with one. If TF2 was FFXI, a medic (or white mage) wouldn't be able to really kill much, no matter how well the player plays the game. Granted, there is a little luck involved, like having your enemy not facing you while you run up with your bone saw, but how would you expect to get away with anything like that in an MMO?

 

[Bagaloo]

*Snip*

QFT.

Any genre of game can be boiled down to basics that require absolutely no skill to grasp. To steal Belair's point; its the people who take the game beyond basic level that will start to develop skill.

 

[Veekter]

i don't count thought/strategy as skill, so i say they don't

Thought and strategy is the basis OF skill...

@topic

Management and mathematics skill; I.E. Will this +16 strength increase my attack power more than these gloves which give +34 melee attack power?

true, but when i think gaming skill i think of the twitchy reflexes you get from playing excessive counter-strike

I see. So strategic discipline and knowledge of tactics in, say, Starcraft and Dawn of War, doesn't constitute skill?

not unless you're required to react in a precise way with split-second timing,
but mmorpg skill is different from general game skill

 

[Archemetis]

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.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

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)

 

[Gormers1]

It depends on what youre doing in-game. For example if youre doing standard quests or doing some pvp etc.

 

[AgentZed]

A real skill MMO would be theoretically an MMO that doesn't require gear, skillups, but twitch like CS.

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.

 

[Jirekianu]

Okay, let me rephrase this so that it makes sense. It DOES require skill within the light that a player needs to know:

A. Attack Patterns
B. How to use their own class
C. Movement and technique

However, this isn't skill on the same level as a fighting game, FPS, or anything technical. Not knocking ALL MMO's and RPG's for this, however the majority of MMO's all cater to someone's ability to play on the same field REGARDLESS OF SKILL (winkwink Balacing knudgeknudge) instead of having default gamer instincts.

These kids on WoW these days would get schooled in 2Fort. The real one, not the TF2 Toy Story knockoff.

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.

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.