Reading the abovepost made me think of a certain WC3 custom game. It's called "WoW arena" and it is somewhat like the arena PvP in WoW. The sugested amount of players is 3vs3, but I find that 4vs4 or 5vs5 works fine too.

Anyways, in this game it is very important to have a healer, because you'll be able to take much less damage if you don't have one. This means that the most common strategy is to get rid of the opnents healer. Usually this means killing them. Since the healer can heal him/herself this become rather difficult unless someone playes a charactter with high dps. The healers suspect this and usually try to have a backupp plan to avoid getting killed early. Then there are some characetrs specifyecd on preventing enemys from escape.(cc)

In a 3vs3 game, the most usefull combination is usually a healer, a dps and a cc. To take out an enemy as early as posible is a big help. For that reason, the dps and the cc should focus the same target, or the cc could keep the healer bissy while the dps kills some outher enemy. All the while, the healer must heal the one with least hp, even though they still need to stay away from the outher dps. The cc could also save the healer by keeping the dps of the otuher team bissy.

As you see, this takes a lot of structure. Still, I've seen people who've never met befor come togeather and formed a great team. This is probably because anyone who's played it aleast a few times knows that the healer is very important. For this reason, it's common to pause the game befor you pick your character in order to let the teams sort out who plays what role, and how they should play it. There is even a RNG that the players can use to draw lots on who plays what. It works out really well. I think it's because teamwork is just that important. Anyplayer who's seen the game realises the wight of a healer, and thus, anyone who cares about winning would spare a few minutes to goth rough the strattegy with his team mates.

In that WoW Arena example, the strategies of the characters are so specific (and centred around a particular role combination) that it does not take long for a player to learn the role of any one part. Plus, before each game the players have time (as it is paused, they ahve as much time as they want) to talk through the strategy.

So by using limited possible strategies and communication time, this does solve the problem, and in the way I was saying: Knowing what the other players will do.

If you don't have many options, and you tell them what option you are going to take under what circumstances then it become easier to work as a team.

As you were saying, the healer heals the person with the lowest Hit points, the DPS tries to take out the other team's healer, and the CC takes out the DPS.

This is actually an implementation of Scissors/Paper/Rock.

DPS beats Healer
CC beats DPS
Healer beats CC

Quote:Original post by Edtharan
In that WoW Arena example, the strategies of the characters are so specific (and centred around a particular role combination) that it does not take long for a player to learn the role of any one part. Plus, before each game the players have time (as it is paused, they ahve as much time as they want) to talk through the strategy.

So by using limited possible strategies and communication time, this does solve the problem, and in the way I was saying: Knowing what the other players will do.

If you don't have many options, and you tell them what option you are going to take under what circumstances then it become easier to work as a team.

As you were saying, the healer heals the person with the lowest Hit points, the DPS tries to take out the other team's healer, and the CC takes out the DPS.

This is actually an implementation of Scissors/Paper/Rock.

DPS beats Healer
CC beats DPS
Healer beats CC

The roles for each character might not be as obvious as you might think. My favourit character, for example, is mainly a CC, but it has some aspects of a melee dps. However, I usally act as a spell dps by getting spell damage items. I say this to expalain that this isn't as straight forward as it may seem.

You have made a good analysis, but it's not quite true. The CC isn't usally able to kill anyone, but they are used for strategical purposes. The healer is somewhat like the king in chess, when it's lost, you're done for. The healers can heal themselfs, so to take them out you also need burst damage. To achive this, you should all focus the same enemy. The entier team must know what enemy to focus, when and how. This is were the CC comes in. Though they often can't beat outher players, they can prohibit outher players from doing there job, breakign down the enemys strategy.(No heal or no dps for example. Both can be big trouble for the enemy)

Like in chess, you want to take out the king, but you can't always focus on the king. For example, you might not want to focus your damage on the healer. Heack, you might want to spread out the damage and just scare away the healer so you can kill the one most convenient.

I might have spent a few to many words(that's me alright) but point is that the game does include quite a lot of strategy. It's not as simple as "I'm a dps, I should do damage". Most charactes can be used in nuberous ways, and very different syles of play is needed for differnet match-ups.

You said the teamwork works good because the players know how to play there character, and they have time to talk. I agree on this, but I would like to add a third aspect. The players don't only know how to play, they also know what ahs to be done. These may sun similar, but I see a differnece. Knowing what to do, and how to do it are two separat things. A player may have a lot of skill, but unless they know wwhat eeds to be done, they will be doing there best as a player, and not as a team member.

{quote]The roles for each character might not be as obvious as you might think. My favourit character, for example, is mainly a CC, but it has some aspects of a melee dps. However, I usally act as a spell dps by getting spell damage items. I say this to expalain that this isn't as straight forward as it may seem.
Yes, I agree, that the characters are not as simple as I presented them, but I did so for clarity rather than as a detailed description.

Most characters will need to be able to do something of the other types just to give them a little flexibility. If they didn't have this flexibility, then there would not actually be any gameplay in the levels and the game would be won or lost on the planning alone.

Quote:You have made a good analysis, but it's not quite true. The CC isn't usally able to kill anyone, but they are used for strategical purposes.

When I use the term "beat", I don't mean like with a stick :) . What I mean is that they are able to prevent the target from performing its intended role. If this means killing them, then that is the result. But, it can also mean neutralising the target's powers, pushing them out of place, or anything that disrupts the purpose that the target intended.

Quote:Though they often can't beat outher players, they can prohibit outher players from doing there job, breakign down the enemys strategy.(No heal or no dps for example. Both can be big trouble for the enemy)

So yes, they do beat them. As you say the CC can prohibit the target from doing their job.

Quote:You said the teamwork works good because the players know how to play there character, and they have time to talk. I agree on this, but I would like to add a third aspect. The players don't only know how to play, they also know what ahs to be done. These may sun similar, but I see a differnece. Knowing what to do, and how to do it are two separat things. A player may have a lot of skill, but unless they know wwhat eeds to be done, they will be doing there best as a player, and not as a team member.

Yes. I agree. This was what my post was about. It is not enough to only know what to do (experienced player not used to playing in that particular group), and it is not enough to only know what the others are doing (new player, but has disused the strategy with the other players and they have told them what they will do in certain circumstances).

What you need is both.

In games that give too many options for players, then new players will find it hard to contribute to the team because they don't know what they are supposed to do.

Lack of communication and planning will make it hard for even experienced players to contribute to the team because they can't tell the other what they need doing, to what the other need doing.

But, too little options for players does not allow flexibility of strategy and makes the gameplay mechanical. Too much reliance on planning leaves little room for the skills of the actual players to contribute.

As I said, there is a "Sweet spot" where by there is enough flexibility in the characters, and enough communication opportunity.

I held Left 4 Dead up as a game that has this. Players can choose between a few different types of weapons, and these weapon types are clearly distinct. But they also have time before the level start to communicate with each other, and there are several breaks within a campaign where by they can regroup and readjust the strategies. Because they ahve time to do these, the limits of text chat are sufficiently mitigated (and they allow voice communication too).

Quote:Original post by Edtharan

Quote:The roles for each character might not be as obvious as you might think. My favourit character, for example, is mainly a CC, but it has some aspects of a melee dps. However, I usally act as a spell dps by getting spell damage items. I say this to expalain that this isn't as straight forward as it may seem.

Yes, I agree, that the characters are not as simple as I presented them, but I did so for clarity rather than as a detailed description.

Most characters will need to be able to do something of the other types just to give them a little flexibility. If they didn't have this flexibility, then there would not actually be any gameplay in the levels and the game would be won or lost on the planning alone.

This is a very important point in my opinion. You made good point about everyone knowing what role thye are suposed to forfill, but it's not always that obvious. For example, as I mentioned I play a CC, but I usullay try to act DPS. Maby the outhers expect me to use more CC and we end up without any CC at all.

Quote:

Quote:You have made a good analysis, but it's not quite true. The CC isn't usally able to kill anyone, but they are used for strategical purposes.

When I use the term "beat", I don't mean like with a stick :) . What I mean is that they are able to prevent the target from performing its intended role. If this means killing them, then that is the result. But, it can also mean neutralising the target's powers, pushing them out of place, or anything that disrupts the purpose that the target intended.

But a CC can not only prevent a DPS from forfilling it's role. It can preevent a healer or even anouther CC from forfilling there role. (Rock, paper, nuke) But at the same time they can only keep the enemy in that state for a few seconds, making it very important with who to target, and when. It works best if it's planned on forhand so that when I for example silence the enemy healer, the dps is ready to take out the enemy with the least HP.(Which works even better if you spread out the damage so the enemy won't know who were going to focus)

Quote:

Quote:You said the teamwork works good because the players know how to play there character, and they have time to talk. I agree on this, but I would like to add a third aspect. The players don't only know how to play, they also know what has to be done. These may seam similar, but I see a differnece. Knowing what to do, and how to do it are two separat things. A player may have a lot of skill, but unless they know what needs to be done, they will be doing there best as a player, and not as a team member.

Yes. I agree. This was what my post was about. It is not enough to only know what to do (experienced player not used to playing in that particular group), and it is not enough to only know what the others are doing (new player, but has disused the strategy with the other players and they have told them what they will do in certain circumstances).

What you need is both.

In games that give too many options for players, then new players will find it hard to contribute to the team because they don't know what they are supposed to do.

Lack of communication and planning will make it hard for even experienced players to contribute to the team because they can't tell the other what they need doing, to what the other need doing.

But, too little options for players does not allow flexibility of strategy and makes the gameplay mechanical. Too much reliance on planning leaves little room for the skills of the actual players to contribute.

As I said, there is a "Sweet spot" where by there is enough flexibility in the characters, and enough communication opportunity.

I held Left 4 Dead up as a game that has this. Players can choose between a few different types of weapons, and these weapon types are clearly distinct. But they also have time before the level start to communicate with each other, and there are several breaks within a campaign where by they can regroup and readjust the strategies. Because they ahve time to do these, the limits of text chat are sufficiently mitigated (and they allow voice communication too).

I storngly suport those breaks were the players can readjust the strategies. WoW arena has those. You play best out of 15 and after each round, all players will level up and get gold to buy new items. They can discuss what items they need to buy, and what skills they should pick. Aswell as how to use it most efficiently in the upcomming combat.

What I meant with "knowing what needs to be done" is that basicly everyone playing WoW arena knows that they need a healer, and they also know that they need DPS to take out the healer. This nakes teamwork betwean random people easyer, because if you for example play healer, your allies are expecting you to heal them, everythign ells is up to you. While experienced teams might go into details, the unexperienced will use more general strategy such as "you heal", "Get some defence" and "We should focus their DPS". While the more experienced teams will probably do better, even the unexperienced team will have a propper strategy.(And were not tryign to make a game were every plan is equaly good, are we?)

This "sweet spot" sounds like an interesting phenomenon. If I assume that WoW arena is in that sweetspot, then I think it's because everyoen has a role, but within that role it's up to the player to do there best. In L4D it's not hard to come up with a general strategy, but you don't know exactly what will hapend(Like in WoW arena) so you'll have to improvise. Same goes for WoW arena. The very basics of the game is to kill the enemy, and survive there attacks. So both players will have planed a way to attack and a way to survive. This would almost lead to a stale-mate, were it not for CC skills. They can be used ofensivly, to hinder the enemy's survival plan, or dfensivly, to hinder the enemys attack plan. So it's very common that your plan does not work quite as well as you might hade hoped, becaus the enemy will probably have a CC too. This results in an improvisation that makes use of whatever is left from the original plan.

I think the question is how can we design games so that teamwork is more easily accomplished?

The last few posts in this thread are centered around how different games tend to develop into having different team play strategies, based on the mechanics of the games involved. The original post was centered around the negative aspects of playing with people you don't know well (if at all).

What I am wondering is how can the players learn the mechanics of the game and after time be able to fit a particular group role more easily? All the talk of the WoW Arena mechanics is great but what about for people who don't play the Arena? How do they learn what the roles are they need to fulfill?

Are there mAybe some general principles for designing ways to get new players up to speed so that when someone unfamiliar with the strategies involved gets randomly put into a group, everyone in that group can still have an enjoyable play experience?

I think we might be underestemating of in-game information. Such as sugestions from the game on how to optemize your teamwork. Sometimes you could have the player not ethe efect of the team work, like in many shooter the game tells you when you got a HS. If the gamer pays any atention at all he will probably note how effective that strategy worked in comparison.