Class Roles - Debunking DPS

Starting a new series on the archetypal MMO classes, Jonathan Steinhauer begins by looking at DPS and the issue of hitting versus damaging.

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I don't see how the end effect is going to differ in moving from DPS to HPS? Surely this is just a change in semantics that will confuse most players who are now used to the DPS term?

In the dagger example, daggers are usually given a higher attack speed rather than damage so by increasing the DPS this way the HPS is also increasing.

For me DPS is not just about how rapidly I can strike but about accurate and more damaging hits. By sacrificing heavy armour I have the manoeuvrability and control to find chinks in the enemy armour or the speed to fully anticipate their moves. For RDPS this corresponds to being able to fling fireballs or deadly arrows - more damage rather than higher rate of fire.

The light/cloth armour commonly found on DPS classes also changes their defence mechanism to dodge/evade rather than parry/block. I'd also expect MDPS to have higher evasion skills than RDPS because I see an assassin type as being quick and agile, a ranger as strong and steady at drawing the bow and a mage as physically not as powerful as either.

What I've found in LOTRO as RDPS, AoC and WAR as MDPS is that what defines a DPS class is a class that focuses on killing as quickly as possible before their low survivability becomes a terminal problem. Expect short fights win or lose.

It's more than just semantics, moving away from the model of whittling away someone's health bar, according to the article's author, introduces a focus on successful hits (assuming it would then become more difficult to just walk up and stab someone with the attack button), a focus on landing killing blows, and a serious focus on proactively avoiding these hits by blocking, evasion, etc. This pretty much shatters what we have all gotten used to from the various MMOs and RPGs out there. And rightfully so, it's a much more realistic expectation.

The only issue (or perhaps to some, a plus) I see is much shorter fights, and less of a chance to pull out all those special moves. But I would welcome the shift in these rickety and dated class archetypes. Imagine how spellcasters (not necessarily healers) would have to change their defenses. As it stands now, most mages can take a good handful of hits before eating dirt, but what if you could only afford three? At most you could maybe block with your walking stick a few times, or pull off a couple good dodges, but a mage is going to need a new set of avoidance/defense spells that would play a far larger role than all those nuking spells we've come to rely on.

I think this is a really interesting topic, and I look forward to the other articles in this series. I'd also like to hear more thoughts from others about this.

I think my use of HPS may have been misleading. I intended it as an amusing analogy but it is being taken for more than that. I don't really mean it in the sense of "per second" at all. If Hits only replaces Damage then there is only a shift from one stat for another and no deeper change is achieved. The problem with the "per second" mentality is it makes MMOs almost entirely a numbers game. Numbers are important, of course, but they should play a more subservient role. I like the comment above that refers to sacrifice of heavy armor for speed of attacks and vice versa -- that speaks to balance and tactical choice for players. That is provided of course that multiple choices are good ones. Often times, there is are factors in games that makes only one choice optimal. To achieve good balance in this sense, there should be a viable place for a light armored fast attacker, a heavy armored slow attacker, and a medium armored medium attacker.

Likewise, the shift in mage mentality is spot on. The important part about Hitting is not only that it is more realistic, but also that it has the greater potential to offer tactical opportunities and choices to players then a Damage based system generally can. Oblivion offers a rare example of a Hit based system for an RPG, though I'm not sure it could crossover to MMOs in its current form and there are many more possibilities than just what it uses.

I'm going to be going into this more deeply in the upcoming articles, so I won't delve too much here, but I did want to provide some clarity.