Notice how spells are not simply the core ones found in most games? (ie damage/healing).
I'm well aware theres a lot of rather dull rule systems out there, like TES.
Sorry, but thats not the standard I rate my combat systems against. The standard I rate combat systems against is still Baldurs Gate 2's magic system, the most complex and fun system I've seen in any game.
Of course even Vanguard came short of that, but then again spells like Timestop, Simulacrum or Contingency wont really work that well in a MMO anyway.
Then again Vanguard had some stuff BG2 didnt, like permanent pets one can buff, heal and equip.
You had tons of utility spells, tons of situational spells.
There were crowd control spells to slow movement, to stop movement, to
mesmerize, to stun, etc... there were special spells for escaping in
combat (succor was aa spell that would port you and your party to the
zone entrance, or there were spells that would jump you around in short
distances). There were gate spells, shield spells, invis, see invis,
etc... the list goes on.
And now guess if Vanguard had such abilities, too.
What Sinist and Dullahan said. They said it better than I could have.
They tried to sugarcoat with walls of text that you only have 10
abilities to chose from. Plus some riddiculous claims about Vanguard
combat from Dullahan.
But they utterly failed, since its not possible to sugarcoat that, and Dullahans concepts about Vanguards combat are far off, too.
Having only 10 abilities with a lot more to choose from is 1:1 the same system as in Guild Wars, except the later was limited to just 8 abilities, and in my experience, that quickly gets dead boring. Because you indeed end up in exactly the situation described before - you spam a small set of abilities, over and over, because they're the best dps you can make.
Yeah you will swap some situational stuff, too, but if its anything like Vanguards diplomacy that means you have a huge book of stuff of which 90% is superflous crap you never need but still have to scroll through all the time, to find the stuff you actually would need.
I'm well aware theres a lot of rather dull rule systems out there, like TES.
Sorry,
but thats not the standard I rate my combat systems against. The
standard I rate combat systems against is still Baldurs Gate 2's magic
system, the most complex and fun system I've seen in any game.
Of
course even Vanguard came short of that, but then again spells like
Timestop, Simulacrum or Contingency wont really work that well in a MMO
anyway.
Then again Vanguard had some stuff BG2 didnt, like permanent pets one can buff, heal and equip.
EQ derived its inspiration from a lot of D&D aspects. The spells in EQ were very much like the D&D spells, with numerous utilities, combat/non-combat focuses, and situational spells. My point about games today is they focus on simplistic combat only and have removed all of the utilities to opt for providing convenience to players in travel, being able to see at all time, etc...
EQ had gate/bind, see invis, see invis undead, invisibility, ultravision, infravision, run speed spells, levitate, illusion spells, etc...
EQ is probably the closest to D&Ds system than any game out there with its non-combat focused spells. Click that link I provided, go through all the classes spells, it is exactly what you are seeking and I think Pantheon is going to continue and expand on that form of play.
You had tons of utility spells, tons of situational spells.
There were crowd control spells to slow movement, to stop movement, to
mesmerize, to stun, etc... there were special spells for escaping in
combat (succor was aa spell that would port you and your party to the
zone entrance, or there were spells that would jump you around in short
distances). There were gate spells, shield spells, invis, see invis,
etc... the list goes on.
Yep, but my point is the context of the game mechanic, which I will explain in your next response.
While, somehow, having douzens of abilities to choose from apparently is ... NOT ?
Having all your spells available at all times means there is no need to select which is best for a given environment. There is no choice, no pro/con play in thinking about what is best needed for the party, environment, etc.... and then dealing with the consequences of such a decision as when you have all spells available at all times, you have the perfect solution for all situations at all times. It removes a strategy game play element.
Take two wizards and put them in a group. Will they be the same? Maybe... maybe not, it all depends on the spells they decide to memorize. One may choose a significantly different design of play compared to the other, there by giving uniqueness between the two in any given situation and possibly allowing both to design a complimentary setup where each serves a given role focus.
While it certainly is nice to have the exact spell you need up at any given time, it also is exactly what removes game play that can be derived from not having that spell up. For instance, things go south in the group, you need a special spell you didn't have memorized and you try to sit down and memorize that one spell, but keep getting hit by a mob who runs over to you every time you sit down. You call to the tank, to pick up the mob and taunt it away so you can get your spell memed and get the situation in control, but the darn mob keeps turning and hitting you, or casting on you. ARRRRG!!!
None of that tenseness of play would exist if you had all spells available to you at any time. Now I am not saying it should be like GW2, the idea is to make you select the best tools for a given situation at the moment, not lock you away with a choice that is impractical to adjust. EQ allowed the casters to change their spells in and out of combat, but... when you sat, it cause MASSIVE agro, so it wasn't an "easy" thing to do (though it was possible with many tricks).
I rather expect to have the ability I would want to use now not available.
To each their own, but as I explained, this subtle element of design is what created many situations that people found quite enjoyable about EQ. Sometimes always having what you want isn't always what is needed. The old saying "Necessity is the mother of invention" is the core principal we are getting at here. In order to achieve emergent play, you must create a sense of need, limiting a player and forcing them to make hard choices and deal with the tools they have. Having only a limited amount of slots up at any given time is a way to achieve that. Besides, where do you think the limited memorized spell slots came from? It was a direct translation of D&Ds Arcane memorization system. If I remember right, I think Brad was even discussing how they were to translate the idea of that system and style to EQ back then (ie the concept of mana versus losing the memorized spell on cast which was common to D&D).
They tried to sugarcoat with walls of text that you only have 10
abilities to chose from. Plus some riddiculous claims about Vanguard
combat from Dullahan.
But they utterly failed, since its not
possible to sugarcoat that, and Dullahans concepts about Vanguards
combat are far off, too.
Having only 10 abilities with a lot more
to choose from is 1:1 the same system as in Guild Wars, except the
later was limited to just 8 abilities, and in my experience, that
quickly gets dead boring. Because you indeed end up in exactly the
situation described before - you spam a small set of abilities, over and
over, because they're the best dps you can make.
Yeah you will
swap some situational stuff, too, but if its anything like Vanguards
diplomacy that means you have a huge book of stuff of which 90% is
superflous crap you never need but still have to scroll through all the
time, to find the stuff you actually would need.
What do you say to this? Seriously? You just dismissed all of the concepts to which EQ was designed, the core concept of its game play systems, then dismissed the idea of numerous spells for utility situations calling it "superflous crap" so you can have all abilities at your finger tips to cast anytime you want as you want it all the while claiming you model your systems after Baldur's Gate while completely ignoring that its system is exactly what you claim is crap and pointless.
Lastly, you mock the people who go to lengths to explain their points?
Good job, I am sure you will gain much support for your point of view, especially from the designers. After all, you don't want to be inundated with their "superflous crap", better set them straight! /boggle
@Adamantine ; the only thing ill say is you make a lot of assumptions on how gameplay will turn out. You should probably try it first...... at least. And no you cant say you already did in GW. This is Pantheon. Also the only people that will be concerned about the most dps are the dps classes.
Also the only people that will be concerned about the most dps are the dps classes.
Even then, if VR stays true to principal, the DPS won't be one trick ponies either. No class in EQ was a just a DPS class. The closest one you could call "DPS" was a rogue and that was simply because Verant never got the chance to truly implement the class as it was conceived (ie more of a thief like class from D&D) and even then, the class still emerged to have various roles using stealth and other abilities due to the fact that fights lasted too long to benefit from a "hard DPS" approach.
The DPS classes as we know them in other games I doubt will be useful in a game like Pantheon where the game is more than just a one dimensional play focus.
@Sinist ; I appreciate the clarification. And yes that was pretty much my point. He seems to think people will mostly be concerned with dps like this game will have set rotations. If I thought that for a second I wouldnt have bothered supporting the game. In so sick of rotations. I welcome choice, strategy. Im thinking situations instead of rotations.
@Sinist ; I appreciate the clarification. And yes that was pretty much my point. He seems to think people will mostly be concerned with dps like this game will have set rotations. If I thought that for a second I wouldnt have bothered supporting the game. In so sick of rotations. I welcome choice, strategy. Im thinking situations instead of rotations.
It is a common misconception about game play these days because most games do just that, they focus on simplistic DPS races and everything in the game is centered around it. For years we have games focusing on that approach and naturally this is all people think games are.
I think it is important for Pantheon to have much longer lasting fights as this causes the encounters to become more about endurance rather than a speed race to the kill to avoid having to deal with any real mechanics. I am hoping for mobs to take a long time to kill, where the option to ignore everything and just DPS isn't possible, where people will have to focus on strategy, managing resources and external factors such as pathing adds, spawns, dealing with the negative long term effects of spells and effects cast on the players, etc...
These days mobs HP are so low that DPS is always the answer, always the solution to every fight and the result is very generic button spamming arcade fest fights with zero management or concern past basic healing.
I don't like that design what so ever,having to choose from my abilities,.that assumes that i somehow forgot them,that doesn't even make sense.It falls along the lines of giving xp for doing quests,doesn't make sense.
Also combos should be player to player for the most part,solo combos are so over done and not supporting the mmo theme.Also on the combos idea,they should again make sense,you shouldn't do any old combo on some mob and it works the same all the time no matter what mob you are fighting.
Just looking at the example above,,some mechanic giving bonus flanking damage,how is that presented to be a plausible idea?Flanking or from behind damage should be constant anyhow,it only makes sense.The only differences i would design would be that Flanking offers a partial resistance while from behind offers none.
The reason why i mention this is because i don't want to see any silliness like in GW2 or other games where some player is doing a somersault and somehow that also does an AOE heal to your entire group,stuff like that is to me beyond dumb.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I don't like that design what so ever,having to choose from my abilities,.that assumes that i somehow forgot them,that doesn't even make sense.It falls along the lines of giving xp for doing quests,doesn't make sense.
Also combos should be player to player for the most part,solo combos are so over done and not supporting the mmo theme.Also on the combos idea,they should again make sense,you shouldn't do any old combo on some mob and it works the same all the time no matter what mob you are fighting.
Just looking at the example above,,some mechanic giving bonus flanking damage,how is that presented to be a plausible idea?Flanking or from behind damage should be constant anyhow,it only makes sense.The only differences i would design would be that Flanking offers a partial resistance while from behind offers none.
The reason why i mention this is because i don't want to see any silliness like in GW2 or other games where some player is doing a somersault and somehow that also does an AOE heal to your entire group,stuff like that is to me beyond dumb.
GW2 didn't come up with limited spell slots. EQ had limited spell slots (which it got from D&D), it honestly does work quite well for the game. I gave lots of reasons as to why that is so, read my posts above where I explain and ask questions on things you don't understand. This has worked well. Don't use GW2 as a comparison, it is a horrible game anyway and a good example of what is wrong with most games these days.
@Adamantine ; You should probably try it first...... at least.
I already said I will try it. I'm just not optimistic I will like it.
Even MMOs like Lineage 2, which is not much of a game except if you really like certain social interactions, namely castle sieges, offered me the ability to chose from a larger array of abilities.
Being limited to a fixed number of abilities is what I've seen in Guild Wars, and I didnt liked it at all.
I never said I wanted to play EQ. If I wanted to - its still running. And I expect the "good" stuff from Vanguard to return.
EQ today is not EQ, it is WoW in an EQ suit.
What was good from Vanguard is debatable. The thing is, if you throw out all of EQ and only add that which you seem to imply is good in VG, you end up with a very close approximation of many games today with some subtle differences, which kind of defeats the point of this game in the first place.
As I said, the entire point of this design is to facilitate strategy in play. It worked very well in EQ and was an integral part of the system of play.
I prefer the limited memorized skill sets of EQ to all the available skill sets of VG. What you viewed as "good" in VG - I viewed as worse. There's plenty of suggestions that have been given why EQ was better. What made having all skills readily available in VG better outside of convenience?
I don't view having to memorize spells as having "forgot them." I view it as more of a refresher. Think about most things anyone does, they typically have a "cheat sheet" or some way to quickly recall items. It's much less realistic to think that everyone would remember every specific detail about everything they do. If you think in terms that a spell would have an incantation with multiple words/phrases to be able to cast, it would make sense that only 8-10 would be able to quickly be readily available without having to med, memorize (cheat sheet), and then be able to cast another.
Even if you don't agree though, it's another one of the elements that I would argue is worth suspending disbelief for the overall gameplay experience.
I don't find myself needing to justify the realism behind having access to only a specific set of skills. There are few times where you'll ever hear me say that, but sometimes there is no reconciling good game design and reality.
Making combat more about rotations and constant ability use did not make it more enjoyable. It actually made each ability less important, class roles overlap, and in general sacrificed strategic gameplay that anyone could enjoy for a system that relied more on quickly pressing buttons.
In EQ, time and mana were important. Resource management and using the right ability at the right time was the order of the day. Those were both missing from combat in EQ2 and Vanguard for the most part, and I believe it was largely the result of classes needing the ability to use 20-30 abilities in a single fight. It was just a step in the wrong direction, and I believe the Pantheon team realizes that.
Obviously everything is debateable. Thats one of these statements that sound like much ... but say very little.
And as I explained before:
As a general rule - Vanguard combat was simply fun. It
never was a boring press ability A, press ability B, press ability C
routine. You always had to handle a lot of complexity and had to think
about what you're doing. You had to keep track of your counters, like the Blood Mages Blood Points. You had to keep track what debuffs and hots would be running on the mob etc.
Even after playing my Cleric for YEARS, I still found alternative ways to play him.
And up to the end I had not found a single real use for the Shadow Meld stance of my Dread Knight. There never really was much point to it; maybe if I'm not tanking and needed resistances (but not the really big ones which didnt get buffed in the first place) or maybe if I wasnt tanking and needed to max DC ASAP without using the instant maximiser ability, or maybe when I wasnt tanking and had trouble hitting a mob - but thats it. The evasion bonus however is a complete mystery. And when does a tank not tank ? Very, very rarely. I still kind of suspect it was just there as a kind of oversight, or just kept purely for flavor; kind of a remains from the time when Dread Knight was supposed to be the evasion tank.
I also had little use for the Retaliate ability which of course triggers all the time when you're tanking, but it simply wasted a lot of endurance on not that much damage, especially since it would never ever trigger a critical hit chain.
But with only 10 abilities, I expect my routine to be 2-3, at best maybe 4 abilities, and thus my general routine of attacks to be limited to A-B, A-B-C or A-B-C-D, repeat, like in so many other games. Otherwise I wont have the space for all these utility, debuff etc abilities.
Thats quite a bit less than what Vanguard offered. Thats actually less than pretty much all other real roleplaying games offer. In Lineage 2 for example I had plenty of abilities to choose from.
Not to speak of D&D games like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights, though there it was limited to spellcasters; fighters and rogues had a lot less possibilities.
@Adamantine ; What made having all skills readily available in VG better outside of convenience?
... convenience ?!?!?!?!?!?!?
As I repeatedly have explained already - it gave combat variance, complexity, and depth !!!
And it allowed to adapt to new situations right in the middle of battle. Instead of cursing when the situation gets a whole lot different than you anticipated and you're stuck with a crippled character that cant do much.
Like for example a wizard configured for fighting ice mobs with fire spells, but then theres fire mobs as adds and all fire spells suddenly only heal the opponents. Which I think is what will probably happen a lot in Pantheon.
Convenience, that would be the usual A, B, C, repeat routine found in many games.
I don't find myself needing to justify the realism behind having
access to only a specific set of skills. There are few times where
you'll ever hear me say that, but sometimes there is no reconciling good
game design and reality.
Making combat more about rotations and
constant ability use did not make it more enjoyable. It actually made
each ability less important, class roles overlap, and in general
sacrificed strategic gameplay that anyone could enjoy for a system that
relied more on quickly pressing buttons.
In EQ, time and mana
were important. Resource management and using the right ability at the
right time was the order of the day. Those were both missing from combat
in EQ2 and Vanguard for the most part, and I believe it was largely the
result of classes needing the ability to use 20-30 abilities in a
single fight. It was just a step in the wrong direction, and I believe
the Pantheon team realizes that.
Having a lot of abilities that you need to use wisely is definitely (and obviously) a form of complexity, too.
As I repeatedly have explained already - it gave combat variance, complexity, and depth !!!
And it allowed to adapt to new situations right in the middle of battle. Instead of cursing when the situation gets a whole lot different than you anticipated and you're stuck with a crippled character that cant do much.
Like for example a wizard configured for fighting ice mobs with fire spells, but then theres fire mobs as adds and all fire spells suddenly only heal the opponents. Which I think is what will probably happen a lot in Pantheon.
Convenience, that would be the usual A, B, C, repeat routine found in many games.
Don't think "tree" based advancement such as was common in games like WoW and most of the modern MMOs. That is, they force "themes" where players are forced to choose a given set of focuses. So, your example would be a fair point in such systems, but not in systems like EQ.
In EQ, you could change out any of the 8 spells at any time in play. So the idea that you will be stuck with a crippled character isn't going to happen. You could out of combat, or during combat (with some limitations as was discussed before) drop a spell and memorize a different one. If you have enough time, you could load an entirely different set of spells.
Providing it is designed anything like EQ, this is how it will be:
You are only limited to 10 spells equipped (ie memorized and ready for use) at any given time. You will have a spell book with ALL of your spells you own (which could be quite vast). You can at any time sit, forget and memorize another spell individually or entire sets of spells. This will be restricted by the time it takes to memorize each spell (usually a cast bar that shows the progress of each spell memorized and is dependent on the level of spell) and that of taking damage while memorizing (damage interrupts the process and you have to start again).
So, you will never run into the situation you are describing unless you are constantly taking damage and can't find the time to memorize a spell. If you have a cold based spell line up, you can switch it out in between combat (or in, but I don't recommend it ) to something else.
This system is not to punish you with a choice you make permanently, it is merely to make you choose what you will have up and easily accessible at any give time. Heck, if you are in the heat of combat and there is some spell you desperately need, you will still be able to sit and mem it in combat, it will just be tricky and require a means to do it (ie root the mob, sit and med the spell or get someone to taunt and tank it will you mem another spell).
Also remember, EQ was very slow combat. You had time in your fights. It wasn't like games today where everything was a spam fest of mobs dying in seconds. There will be time to apply strategy, time to switch out a spell if need, to actually think and deal with situations, not simply needing everything at your fingertips to fire off instantly or you miss the chance.
Like I said, old school EQ is night and day different from any game out today. What may be a bad implementation in today's games, works in games like EQ. Time will tell, but I think you will see that is isn't what you are thinking.
Here is a video of some guy playing EQ and he is going through his spells talking about them, scribing them, memorizing them, and changing them out. As you can see, he simply sits where he is at and does this. You can do this anywhere and even in combat. So, you won't be gimped somewhere with no means to change out your spells. You will always have access to all of your spells, but only able to instantly cast any 10 at a time without having to change them out easily as the video shows.
The best we can hope for with Pantheon is that it goes back to the time of Everquest, where using an ability as a caster took a large commitment of resources, and was generally pretty powerful. In this type of gameplay you won't see people casting A-B-C-D every fight because doing so should drain you of all of your resources in 1 fight.
Take an Ice Comet for example, casting this as a wizard took 400 mana, now 400 mana let's consider what that takes to regain... meditation at max skill at the level you can cast Ice Comet restored 20 mana per 6 seconds while sitting. On top of this you could have clarity 2, but that would be in raids or only the best group situations.
So 20 mana per 6 seconds that's 2 minutes of straight sitting on the floor medding just to cast 1 single spell, and that spell on average against a mob your level did about 15% of its life.
This may seem archaic in nature because you could literally spend 1 minute killing a monster and 15 minutes medding to kill another, but thats part of what made EQ great. It wasn't manageable to spam abilities on mobs because most of the abilities were major resource dumps.
The biggest problem I feel EQ had within this system is that melee didn't require the same type of strategy, you just spammed your backstab key or flying kick key. Pantheon aims to change that by making all classes rely on resources, not just casters.
Some people have said that puts casters at a disadvantage then because they don't have an auto attack.. I say casters had pets for their auto attacks, and the ones that didn't were allotted much stronger damage per resource ratio. We don't want to make the mistake of making every class feel the same I don't think, so we don't want to overbalance everything to make them all the same.
I'm not that crazy with only 10 abilities going by my GW2 and ESO experience. Traditionally, lots of abilities were well thought out in the earlier days and worked out well. It's another situation where if it's not broken don't fix it.
Lots of " so called " advancements put the industry where it is now !
how many abilities could you use at one time in EQ1?
I'm really not a fan of EQ2's ability bloat. Having 5+ bars full of situation abilities was too much. At the same time, i feel only having 10 abilities is too low. I've always thought of 20 as the perfect balance.
I'm really not a fan of EQ2's ability bloat. Having 5+ bars full of situation abilities was too much. At the same time, i feel only having 10 abilities is too low. I've always thought of 20 as the perfect balance.
Remember that a class' total abilities will probably far exceed 10. 10 will only represent active abilities and probably won't include chains or combos (if they utilize such things). You will still be able to switch to certain situational abilities like you could in EQ.
I'm really not a fan of EQ2's ability bloat. Having 5+ bars full
of situation abilities was too much. At the same time, i feel only
having 10 abilities is too low. I've always thought of 20 as the perfect
balance.
Remember that a class' total abilities will probably far exceed 10. 10
will only represent active abilities and probably won't include chains
or combos (if they utilize such things). You will still be able to
switch to certain situational abilities like you could in EQ.
I'm really not a fan of EQ2's ability bloat. Having 5+ bars full
of situation abilities was too much. At the same time, i feel only
having 10 abilities is too low. I've always thought of 20 as the perfect
balance.
Well, I dont believe in fixed numbers as upper limits.
I played Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights with approximately 60-80 different spells on my maxlevel Wizards, Sorcerers, Clerics and Druids. And it was huge fun.
If I would be asked to specify a limit for MMOs, that would be 36. Why ? Because I can handle 36 abilities with the first 6 function keys on my keyboard and one key to switch the column currently used.
Thats btw what I used in Lineage 2 - F1 to F6 for the column and Alt+F1 - F6 for selecting the row. Unfortunately Vanguard didnt allow that, because Alt+F4 always terminated the game.
Comments
I'm well aware theres a lot of rather dull rule systems out there, like TES.
Sorry, but thats not the standard I rate my combat systems against. The standard I rate combat systems against is still Baldurs Gate 2's magic system, the most complex and fun system I've seen in any game.
Of course even Vanguard came short of that, but then again spells like Timestop, Simulacrum or Contingency wont really work that well in a MMO anyway.
Then again Vanguard had some stuff BG2 didnt, like permanent pets one can buff, heal and equip.
And now guess if Vanguard had such abilities, too.
Hint: It was made by the same people.
While, somehow, having douzens of abilities to choose from apparently is ... NOT ?
I rather expect to have the ability I would want to use now not available.
They tried to sugarcoat with walls of text that you only have 10 abilities to chose from. Plus some riddiculous claims about Vanguard combat from Dullahan.
But they utterly failed, since its not possible to sugarcoat that, and Dullahans concepts about Vanguards combat are far off, too.
Having only 10 abilities with a lot more to choose from is 1:1 the same system as in Guild Wars, except the later was limited to just 8 abilities, and in my experience, that quickly gets dead boring. Because you indeed end up in exactly the situation described before - you spam a small set of abilities, over and over, because they're the best dps you can make.
Yeah you will swap some situational stuff, too, but if its anything like Vanguards diplomacy that means you have a huge book of stuff of which 90% is superflous crap you never need but still have to scroll through all the time, to find the stuff you actually would need.
EQ derived its inspiration from a lot of D&D aspects. The spells in EQ were very much like the D&D spells, with numerous utilities, combat/non-combat focuses, and situational spells. My point about games today is they focus on simplistic combat only and have removed all of the utilities to opt for providing convenience to players in travel, being able to see at all time, etc...
EQ had gate/bind, see invis, see invis undead, invisibility, ultravision, infravision, run speed spells, levitate, illusion spells, etc...
EQ is probably the closest to D&Ds system than any game out there with its non-combat focused spells. Click that link I provided, go through all the classes spells, it is exactly what you are seeking and I think Pantheon is going to continue and expand on that form of play.
Yep, but my point is the context of the game mechanic, which I will explain in your next response.
Having all your spells available at all times means there is no need to select which is best for a given environment. There is no choice, no pro/con play in thinking about what is best needed for the party, environment, etc.... and then dealing with the consequences of such a decision as when you have all spells available at all times, you have the perfect solution for all situations at all times. It removes a strategy game play element.
Take two wizards and put them in a group. Will they be the same? Maybe... maybe not, it all depends on the spells they decide to memorize. One may choose a significantly different design of play compared to the other, there by giving uniqueness between the two in any given situation and possibly allowing both to design a complimentary setup where each serves a given role focus.
While it certainly is nice to have the exact spell you need up at any given time, it also is exactly what removes game play that can be derived from not having that spell up. For instance, things go south in the group, you need a special spell you didn't have memorized and you try to sit down and memorize that one spell, but keep getting hit by a mob who runs over to you every time you sit down. You call to the tank, to pick up the mob and taunt it away so you can get your spell memed and get the situation in control, but the darn mob keeps turning and hitting you, or casting on you. ARRRRG!!!
None of that tenseness of play would exist if you had all spells available to you at any time. Now I am not saying it should be like GW2, the idea is to make you select the best tools for a given situation at the moment, not lock you away with a choice that is impractical to adjust. EQ allowed the casters to change their spells in and out of combat, but... when you sat, it cause MASSIVE agro, so it wasn't an "easy" thing to do (though it was possible with many tricks).
To each their own, but as I explained, this subtle element of design is what created many situations that people found quite enjoyable about EQ. Sometimes always having what you want isn't always what is needed. The old saying "Necessity is the mother of invention" is the core principal we are getting at here. In order to achieve emergent play, you must create a sense of need, limiting a player and forcing them to make hard choices and deal with the tools they have. Having only a limited amount of slots up at any given time is a way to achieve that. Besides, where do you think the limited memorized spell slots came from? It was a direct translation of D&Ds Arcane memorization system. If I remember right, I think Brad was even discussing how they were to translate the idea of that system and style to EQ back then (ie the concept of mana versus losing the memorized spell on cast which was common to D&D).
What do you say to this? Seriously? You just dismissed all of the concepts to which EQ was designed, the core concept of its game play systems, then dismissed the idea of numerous spells for utility situations calling it "superflous crap" so you can have all abilities at your finger tips to cast anytime you want as you want it all the while claiming you model your systems after Baldur's Gate while completely ignoring that its system is exactly what you claim is crap and pointless.
Lastly, you mock the people who go to lengths to explain their points?
Good job, I am sure you will gain much support for your point of view, especially from the designers. After all, you don't want to be inundated with their "superflous crap", better set them straight! /boggle
the only thing ill say is you make a lot of assumptions on how gameplay will turn out. You should probably try it first...... at least. And no you cant say you already did in GW. This is Pantheon. Also the only people that will be concerned about the most dps are the dps classes.
The DPS classes as we know them in other games I doubt will be useful in a game like Pantheon where the game is more than just a one dimensional play focus.
I appreciate the clarification. And yes that was pretty much my point. He seems to think people will mostly be concerned with dps like this game will have set rotations. If I thought that for a second I wouldnt have bothered supporting the game. In so sick of rotations. I welcome choice, strategy. Im thinking situations instead of rotations.
It is a common misconception about game play these days because most games do just that, they focus on simplistic DPS races and everything in the game is centered around it. For years we have games focusing on that approach and naturally this is all people think games are.
I think it is important for Pantheon to have much longer lasting fights as this causes the encounters to become more about endurance rather than a speed race to the kill to avoid having to deal with any real mechanics. I am hoping for mobs to take a long time to kill, where the option to ignore everything and just DPS isn't possible, where people will have to focus on strategy, managing resources and external factors such as pathing adds, spawns, dealing with the negative long term effects of spells and effects cast on the players, etc...
These days mobs HP are so low that DPS is always the answer, always the solution to every fight and the result is very generic button spamming arcade fest fights with zero management or concern past basic healing.
Also combos should be player to player for the most part,solo combos are so over done and not supporting the mmo theme.Also on the combos idea,they should again make sense,you shouldn't do any old combo on some mob and it works the same all the time no matter what mob you are fighting.
Just looking at the example above,,some mechanic giving bonus flanking damage,how is that presented to be a plausible idea?Flanking or from behind damage should be constant anyhow,it only makes sense.The only differences i would design would be that Flanking offers a partial resistance while from behind offers none.
The reason why i mention this is because i don't want to see any silliness like in GW2 or other games where some player is doing a somersault and somehow that also does an AOE heal to your entire group,stuff like that is to me beyond dumb.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I never said I wanted to play EQ. If I wanted to - its still running. And I expect the "good" stuff from Vanguard to return.
I already said I will try it. I'm just not optimistic I will like it.
Even MMOs like Lineage 2, which is not much of a game except if you really like certain social interactions, namely castle sieges, offered me the ability to chose from a larger array of abilities.
Being limited to a fixed number of abilities is what I've seen in Guild Wars, and I didnt liked it at all.
What was good from Vanguard is debatable. The thing is, if you throw out all of EQ and only add that which you seem to imply is good in VG, you end up with a very close approximation of many games today with some subtle differences, which kind of defeats the point of this game in the first place.
As I said, the entire point of this design is to facilitate strategy in play. It worked very well in EQ and was an integral part of the system of play.
Well, you may find that in a different system and environment (Pantheon will be nothing like GW, not even close in systems) it works well.
I prefer the limited memorized skill sets of EQ to all the available skill sets of VG. What you viewed as "good" in VG - I viewed as worse. There's plenty of suggestions that have been given why EQ was better. What made having all skills readily available in VG better outside of convenience?
@Wizardry
I don't view having to memorize spells as having "forgot them." I view it as more of a refresher. Think about most things anyone does, they typically have a "cheat sheet" or some way to quickly recall items. It's much less realistic to think that everyone would remember every specific detail about everything they do. If you think in terms that a spell would have an incantation with multiple words/phrases to be able to cast, it would make sense that only 8-10 would be able to quickly be readily available without having to med, memorize (cheat sheet), and then be able to cast another.
Even if you don't agree though, it's another one of the elements that I would argue is worth suspending disbelief for the overall gameplay experience.
Making combat more about rotations and constant ability use did not make it more enjoyable. It actually made each ability less important, class roles overlap, and in general sacrificed strategic gameplay that anyone could enjoy for a system that relied more on quickly pressing buttons.
In EQ, time and mana were important. Resource management and using the right ability at the right time was the order of the day. Those were both missing from combat in EQ2 and Vanguard for the most part, and I believe it was largely the result of classes needing the ability to use 20-30 abilities in a single fight. It was just a step in the wrong direction, and I believe the Pantheon team realizes that.
Obviously everything is debateable. Thats one of these statements that sound like much ... but say very little.
And as I explained before:
As a general rule - Vanguard combat was simply fun. It never was a boring press ability A, press ability B, press ability C routine. You always had to handle a lot of complexity and had to think about what you're doing. You had to keep track of your counters, like the Blood Mages Blood Points. You had to keep track what debuffs and hots would be running on the mob etc.
Even after playing my Cleric for YEARS, I still found alternative ways to play him.
And up to the end I had not found a single real use for the Shadow Meld stance of my Dread Knight. There never really was much point to it; maybe if I'm not tanking and needed resistances (but not the really big ones which didnt get buffed in the first place) or maybe if I wasnt tanking and needed to max DC ASAP without using the instant maximiser ability, or maybe when I wasnt tanking and had trouble hitting a mob - but thats it. The evasion bonus however is a complete mystery. And when does a tank not tank ? Very, very rarely. I still kind of suspect it was just there as a kind of oversight, or just kept purely for flavor; kind of a remains from the time when Dread Knight was supposed to be the evasion tank.
I also had little use for the Retaliate ability which of course triggers all the time when you're tanking, but it simply wasted a lot of endurance on not that much damage, especially since it would never ever trigger a critical hit chain.
But with only 10 abilities, I expect my routine to be 2-3, at best maybe 4 abilities, and thus my general routine of attacks to be limited to A-B, A-B-C or A-B-C-D, repeat, like in so many other games. Otherwise I wont have the space for all these utility, debuff etc abilities.
Thats quite a bit less than what Vanguard offered. Thats actually less than pretty much all other real roleplaying games offer. In Lineage 2 for example I had plenty of abilities to choose from.
Not to speak of D&D games like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights, though there it was limited to spellcasters; fighters and rogues had a lot less possibilities.
We'll see.
... convenience ?!?!?!?!?!?!?
As I repeatedly have explained already - it gave combat variance, complexity, and depth !!!
And it allowed to adapt to new situations right in the middle of battle. Instead of cursing when the situation gets a whole lot different than you anticipated and you're stuck with a crippled character that cant do much.
Like for example a wizard configured for fighting ice mobs with fire spells, but then theres fire mobs as adds and all fire spells suddenly only heal the opponents. Which I think is what will probably happen a lot in Pantheon.
Convenience, that would be the usual A, B, C, repeat routine found in many games.
Having a lot of abilities that you need to use wisely is definitely (and obviously) a form of complexity, too.
Don't think "tree" based advancement such as was common in games like WoW and most of the modern MMOs. That is, they force "themes" where players are forced to choose a given set of focuses. So, your example would be a fair point in such systems, but not in systems like EQ.
In EQ, you could change out any of the 8 spells at any time in play. So the idea that you will be stuck with a crippled character isn't going to happen. You could out of combat, or during combat (with some limitations as was discussed before) drop a spell and memorize a different one. If you have enough time, you could load an entirely different set of spells.
Providing it is designed anything like EQ, this is how it will be:
You are only limited to 10 spells equipped (ie memorized and ready for use) at any given time. You will have a spell book with ALL of your spells you own (which could be quite vast). You can at any time sit, forget and memorize another spell individually or entire sets of spells. This will be restricted by the time it takes to memorize each spell (usually a cast bar that shows the progress of each spell memorized and is dependent on the level of spell) and that of taking damage while memorizing (damage interrupts the process and you have to start again).
So, you will never run into the situation you are describing unless you are constantly taking damage and can't find the time to memorize a spell. If you have a cold based spell line up, you can switch it out in between combat (or in, but I don't recommend it ) to something else.
This system is not to punish you with a choice you make permanently, it is merely to make you choose what you will have up and easily accessible at any give time. Heck, if you are in the heat of combat and there is some spell you desperately need, you will still be able to sit and mem it in combat, it will just be tricky and require a means to do it (ie root the mob, sit and med the spell or get someone to taunt and tank it will you mem another spell).
Also remember, EQ was very slow combat. You had time in your fights. It wasn't like games today where everything was a spam fest of mobs dying in seconds. There will be time to apply strategy, time to switch out a spell if need, to actually think and deal with situations, not simply needing everything at your fingertips to fire off instantly or you miss the chance.
Like I said, old school EQ is night and day different from any game out today. What may be a bad implementation in today's games, works in games like EQ. Time will tell, but I think you will see that is isn't what you are thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtEiPzVZSY4#t=17m36s
Here is a video of some guy playing EQ and he is going through his spells talking about them, scribing them, memorizing them, and changing them out. As you can see, he simply sits where he is at and does this. You can do this anywhere and even in combat. So, you won't be gimped somewhere with no means to change out your spells. You will always have access to all of your spells, but only able to instantly cast any 10 at a time without having to change them out easily as the video shows.
Take an Ice Comet for example, casting this as a wizard took 400 mana, now 400 mana let's consider what that takes to regain... meditation at max skill at the level you can cast Ice Comet restored 20 mana per 6 seconds while sitting. On top of this you could have clarity 2, but that would be in raids or only the best group situations.
So 20 mana per 6 seconds that's 2 minutes of straight sitting on the floor medding just to cast 1 single spell, and that spell on average against a mob your level did about 15% of its life.
This may seem archaic in nature because you could literally spend 1 minute killing a monster and 15 minutes medding to kill another, but thats part of what made EQ great. It wasn't manageable to spam abilities on mobs because most of the abilities were major resource dumps.
The biggest problem I feel EQ had within this system is that melee didn't require the same type of strategy, you just spammed your backstab key or flying kick key. Pantheon aims to change that by making all classes rely on resources, not just casters.
Some people have said that puts casters at a disadvantage then because they don't have an auto attack.. I say casters had pets for their auto attacks, and the ones that didn't were allotted much stronger damage per resource ratio. We don't want to make the mistake of making every class feel the same I don't think, so we don't want to overbalance everything to make them all the same.
I played Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights with approximately 60-80 different spells on my maxlevel Wizards, Sorcerers, Clerics and Druids. And it was huge fun.
If I would be asked to specify a limit for MMOs, that would be 36. Why ? Because I can handle 36 abilities with the first 6 function keys on my keyboard and one key to switch the column currently used.
Thats btw what I used in Lineage 2 - F1 to F6 for the column and Alt+F1 - F6 for selecting the row. Unfortunately Vanguard didnt allow that, because Alt+F4 always terminated the game.