Well even in MMOs you don't necesarily need cooldowns on your regular damaging attacks/spells. If you look at World of Warcraft, most (or maybe all) classes don't have cooldowns on any of their normal damage dealing abilities. The use a different method of getting you to vary your single target attacks, by having attacks that provide dots, attacks that make your target weaker to other attacks, attacks that generate resources used by other attacks, and even classes with as many as 4 different resource bars to manage.
Where WoW does have cooldowns, and where cooldowns are most useful in general, are on it's big dramatic abilities. Abilities that summon an army or an overpowered demon to fight for you, which stun or knock back all your enemies, which heal all your allies or make you invulnerable for a time. These are the types of abilities where cooldowns are useful, because it allows you have a really big, dramatic, fun effect while still being balanced. If you were to balance these abilities around not having a cooldown, you'd have to weaken them so much that they would no longer have that epically powerful feeling when you use them.
Finally the concept of long cooldowns on spells shouldn't be too alien to anyone who grew up playing D&D or computer games based on D&D (From Pool of Radiance to Baldur's Gate). Back then all of your spells had a cooldown of one day. These were the games that really pioneered the use of long cooldown times to balance out dramatic effects.
Where WoW does have cooldowns, and where cooldowns are most useful in general, are on it's big dramatic abilities. Abilities that summon an army or an overpowered demon to fight for you, which stun or knock back all your enemies, which heal all your allies or make you invulnerable for a time. These are the types of abilities where cooldowns are useful, because it allows you have a really big, dramatic, fun effect while still being balanced. If you were to balance these abilities around not having a cooldown, you'd have to weaken them so much that they would no longer have that epically powerful feeling when you use them.
Finally the concept of long cooldowns on spells shouldn't be too alien to anyone who grew up playing D&D or computer games based on D&D (From Pool of Radiance to Baldur's Gate). Back then all of your spells had a cooldown of one day. These were the games that really pioneered the use of long cooldown times to balance out dramatic effects.
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