I know it isnt.
That is what I said. It becomes like it by implicating the same problems for a similar design. The more “things” you add, the more “things to balance the things” you need to add. Rules, counters, replacers, equivalency. Once you start this path, you might aswell use classes and turn it into a theme park mmo.
The only difference between creating a system of interpolated paths of gameplay and classes is that you dont give specific names to each interpolated build.
And, game development theory aside:
You will never make a game combat not be a repetitive exercise of doing something or other. A IRL fight is the same thing. Movies might show something “aestethic” to attract audiences with impracticle ineffective moves and way too much “telegraphing” and sped up shoot, along with nausea inducing camera cuts and shakes, but fighting is pretty much a repetition of small actions in sequence.
What you are describing is the “illusion of variety” given by the fact that mechanically identical actions are said to be different actions. A hunter arrow in a game and a mage fireball in a game are the exact same action, they have different rules, but they are ranged attacks that either trace or collide to inflict certain damages and certain debuffs or buffs.
What makes a game fighting system tedious or not is not what it mechanically is, but what it seems to be. It is not builds, it is not several names in a board to put in shortcuts that does it, it is the game itself that disguises the tedious nature of the combat into something you feel important, relevant, different or interesting.
If not that, how come the top selling and top playing games are based on even more repetition ?
The problem with the post is that it is a change that does not solve the problem.
Citing other games only further that realization.
Elden Ring is a nice example:
If you get to people who really put thought into it, the majority of them make better arguments for the fact that combat there is BORING. Google Elden Ring Combat is Boring and you will see.
The main thing about Elden ring is not how combat goes, but encounters are designed. The act of combat in itself is as monotone as most games are. You can have 200 spells to choose, what happens is grouping them in sequences you name, which are in a fight probably used interchangebly into “weak”, “strong”, “recuperating” and “finishing”.
People stop thinking about spells and builds the moment combat start, and might as well be light, hard, dodge and finisher blows, and it will be the same thing.
That is why people use addons and scripts in games with lots of spells. Most people dont want to micromanage combat that will become essentially smash buttons. This has been the truth since the long before many of the people talking about it was even born. Dune 2 was a RTS game which actually introduced the idea of tons of bindings you would do “mindlessly” once you decided to do one thing. So Ctrl This, Shift That, X, Y and Z, and you have a base and 4 “workers” gathering resources, wait resources, again some other shitf that ctrl this A, B, C, 20 warriors, Ctrl Tab, Ctrl A, Ctrl F, A , 20 warriors attacking the nearest enemy.
Again, what makes game boring is not the repetitive nature of what you do to control or select what you do, is the design that goes into putting that ALWAYS repetitive process into something exciting.
Elden ring is not different in the repetitive “simple minded” nature of combat, what it has is a “well rounded encounter design” Conan Exiles does not have. Encounter design cannot even be defined by “all you can do” with your character if it can do tons of things, otherwise 90% of your player base will simply “do something else”.
Or do you think everyone playing a game want to have to choose dozens of things and think about dozens of things every single time they want to go fight some big boss ? THAT is what is insane.
