Re: Hybrid is great because it's so diverse.
The reason this got bumped is because someone made a "best of 2009" thread and I linked to this thread because I thought it was one of the best discussions we had all year. Yes, I did start the thread, and I self-nominated it.
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I'm seeing a lot of discussion about "skill" in this thread. It's always difficult to have a meaningful conversation about skill because everyone has his own conception of it. If we're not working from a universal definition, then we might all be saying some contradictory things that are nonetheless all true. Therefore, I'd like to attempt to define it before getting into it.
For me, "skill" is about options. The more options you have, the more opportunities you have to make a mistake. It's easy to always choose the correct spell when you only have two spells available to you. Magery in UO has 64 spells, about half of which are useful in ordinary PvP situations. And even among the handful of direct damage spells, there is usually one that is best to use in a given situation. Using harm instead of magic arrow or lightning instead of energy bolt can be the difference between victory and defeat. Knowing which to use and when to use it, and making the decision before the opportunity passes, are all aspects of "skill." Therefore, while you may just be "pushing buttons," it's more about which button you push and when you push it.
It's difficult to phrase, but I would define player skill as "the ability to rapidly decide the best course of action among all possible choices." And that definition means that the amount of skill increases with both the number of options one has, and the speed with which he makes his choices. This leaves us wanting something though, because one can clearly be very successful without having any skill by this definition. It is possible to simply emulate skillful players and have at least some measure of success. It also implies that we know all our options, when many players do not even know what their characters are capable of these days. Still, I think it's a pretty good start.
And it's a working model for a discussion of why it takes more skill to play a mage than a dexer - it's the number of things going through your mind, the number of decisions you have to make, and when you have to make them.
For example: A pure mage on the field needs to always monitor his mana. He needs to determine whether he has enough mana to finish off an enemy, or needs to back off adn save some for healing. He needs to decide which spell to use and when to use it. He can only move, heal, or attack one at a time, so he must also decide which is which. Some evidence of this: a good mage will stand his ground against a lumberjack and time his spells between swings of the weapon. A bad one will run a short distance before stopping to cast, allowing the axe's swing timer to reset and essentially giving the lumberjack a free shot at him. The list goes on.
Pure warriors on the other hand can move, attack, and heal all at the same time. Against other warriors they have some more involved decisions such as whether to use "joust" or "sticky" melee, which weapon to use, and which type of armor to wear. Against mages the same conditions are always true so a warrior can fight every mage the same way - maximize speed, minimize distance. Healing is always simple: if you don't have a bandage ticking already, start one. This does become more complex when combined with potions and/or magery, as timing becomes a decisive factor. Overall, warriors have fewer choices than mages do. And many of a warrior's choices, such as what armor to wear and which weapons to carry, can be made slowly and carefully, not in the heat of battle.
Thus you can clearly see by the above definition that it takes less skill to master a warrior than a mage, both in number of options and rapidity of decision. But how would you fill out the rest of a hierarchy of classes?
Some would say that tank mages take less skill than pure mages because they are more forgiving. If you run out of mana, you are not "dead in the water;" you still have your weapons to afford you some options until you can get your mana back. There is some truth there, but I would say that tank mages go pretty damn near the top, above pure mages. This is because tanks have so many options available to them, and are so easy to make mistakes with, particularly on a server which lacks "insta-swing." You must not only make all the on-the-fly decisions of a mage and all those of a warrior, but also a number of unique ones such as precasting and choosing your approach to a particular target (melee vs. magery).
I would place alchy/stun templates high as well. They are more complex than pure mages, and stun can require some thought. Timing is crucial when using involved combo attacks and resource management becomes even more critical than it is for a pure mage. And thanks to the original AOE rules being reinstated, potions must be thrown with care. Still, some alchemists treat potions as warriors do bandaids: If one's not already ticking, get one started. There is no skill in prancing around in circles and spamming potions, but it can be effective.
I am hesitant to say which template requires more skill to master. They are both fairly complex and have some of the same pro's (not useless without mana) and con's (still can't heal while moving, light armor, etc.). But I can say that it takes more skill to be effective with a tank mage than with an alchy mage, and that brings us to our next point: Balance.
Balance is another issue which needs to be defined. Some players might consider "rock paper scissors" to be a balanced game. They would be perfectly happy in a world where axers always beat mages, mages always beat fencers, and fencers always beat axers. But even though that's a stable order of things and every template seems to have as many advantages as disadvantages, can we really call it balance? I certainly wouldn't call it fun.
I believe balance exists when any PvP template can beat any other PvP template in a 1v1 situation, dependant on player skill as defined above. If you make no mistakes, you should be able to survive indefinitely. Every attack should have at least one legitimate counter that's available to each opponent. I believe we discussed counter-tactics at length earlier in the thread and found them to be somewhat lacking for purple potions and non-existant for stun punches.
And that's a problem. If you have a balanced game where players can keep up the fight until someone makes a critical mistake, then you add a single unblockable move, what's going to happen? Obviously the most successful players will be the ones who take advantage of that unblockable move, and whoever executes it first is going to win. This could still be considered highly skilled - it fits our definition as the best possible course of action among all options, and incorporates speed as well. The more skilled player will use that technique first because he is faster. Therefore, in this situation the most skilled player will always win. This is somewhat less simple in an online game where latency is as much a factor in speed as skill is.
But although the game is still skill-based, it is not balanced unless that move is available to everyone on all templates. And even if it is, since it lacks variety, it will quickly become boring. We need variety to keep the game interesting. Therefore, we need to maintain balance among all templates.
Due to the nature of melee in UO, warriors will never be as complex as mages. Combining the two or adding abilities from a third option will create still more complex characters. And these more complex characters will thus take more skill to master. We cannot change that. But we can change the degree to which the game is balanced among these different classes, regardless of the level of skill it takes to play them. I think that should be our goal.
So let's forget about the question of skill and focus on the question of balance, shall we? I've submitted that purple potions are unbalanced because there are not sufficient counters available to their intended targets. Of all the counters I've seen suggested, I have already evaluated some. "Charging the thrower" is not a counter because it still requires the target to take full damage. "Breaking the line of sight" is insufficient because there are a number of situations, including all organized pit fights, where that's impossible. "Pot kicking" isn't possible against perfectly-timed pots, and requires either client modifications or automating aspects of it to be done with an degree of success.
So what else ya got? I'm waiting for one of you pro-potion PvP masters to show me a counter I haven't disected yet or suggest one that could be implimented to restore balance without a nerf.
