I remember back in EQ when you had access to 8 of your abilities at a time. I remember how much panic I'd feel when I realized I didn't have the right spell included in that set of 8 - especially when it was the spell I needed to survive. For example, every now and then when I was soloing and needed to buff myself, I'd buff - sit somewhere safe and go get a drink or whatever while I was medding... then I'd come back and pull - and then AFTER I pulled, realize that snare and root were among the spells no longer on my hotbar.
OHHH the angst that moment could bring.
I remember being excited when the "new" MMO's removed that barrier. I could have access to all of my abilities - YES PLEASE!!! Until I played it for a long time and realized I missed not only the occasional angst - but also the mental aspect of the game you went through even when you did it right.
Let's see, that pack has a healer and a caster... better have a silence or an interrupt handy...
Decisions like that - they were now gone from my gaming experience. And I MISSED them. Because now, I ALWAYS had the silence and interrupt handy. No forethought - just use.
I like the forethought aspect of going into a fight. Makes me feel like I'm getting prepared for something. Makes me feel like what I'm getting prepared for matters (doesn't needing to prepare for something make it so?)
I don't like absent mindedly running up to the next mob and just using the right thing. It makes that "right thing" seem less special - it's always there, it's never a deliberate choice... and it makes the mob feel less important... it's just another thing in my way.
To me - limiting spells is not an annoyance to be removed (as was the logic behind doing it to begin with) - it is a strategic element of gaming that adds "semblance of realism" and makes encounters more meaningful.
Thanks for reading!
Full agreement.
As an enchanter I remember also how I was always carefully memming the spells I would need for a given environment and the difficult decision that always went with it - mez or charm ? Stun or root ? Fast and slow mez or both ? The speed buff always up or not ?
This also forced to exactly study every spell and know its advanatges and inconvenients.
Do people still recall the excitement when after days and days of levelling one could AT LAST buy that spell about whose properties you have been dreaming for ages ?
Breeze level 16 anybody ? :)
Nowadays people just randomly cast anything, hardly knowing what the precise effect are.
To their discharge I'd add that in the "modern" games it doesn't really matter what kind of spell/ability you use as long as the general purpose is more or less fitting. The PCs are so powerful that you will win anyway regardless whether you use the best or very sub par spells.
In many games people don't even bother to upgrade spells because anything goes.
Being vigilant and aware... always made for a better player. There was a huge learning curve for people who didn't seek out, or find the right spells, let alone have them loaded.
How many people would roll up on a zone wall, & sit and mem new stuff for the zone ahead.. every new environment, required a different set of spells.
I am down with exactly how EQ had it, with a caveat being, that as you learn your role, your capacity to perform that role expands. (similiar to AA points giving an extra spells slot, etc.)
I concur. 8-10 max please. :-)
I'm thinking simply throw an error if you try to add too many abilities/spells to your hotkeys.
Question because I never played EQ, How did you know what spells to use for a certain area? Did you go in before and wipe? Did you learn from other players? Not saying I would mind having limited spells which I think cool downs help with some of that today. But If you have more spells that you learned why wouldn't you want to be able to use all the spells you learned or just have it to where 8-10 spells are all you'll ever have to learn.
As I've said I've never played like that before, not against playing like that understand some of the concept. Plus Brad hasn't even told us what exactly it will be yet either.
Kazingathi said:
Question because I never played EQ, How did you know what spells to use for a certain area? Did you go in before and wipe? Did you learn from other players? Not saying I would mind having limited spells which I think cool downs help with some of that today. But If you have more spells that you learned why wouldn't you want to be able to use all the spells you learned or just have it to where 8-10 spells are all you'll ever have to learn.
As I've said I've never played like that before, not against playing like that understand some of the concept. Plus Brad hasn't even told us what exactly it will be yet either.
Understandable, but your question is two-fold.
When enter a new area never before seen, you would always memorized the spells abilities THAT you felt best fit the situation. Are you alone, or with a group, etc..? brings about a great uncertainty that was EQ.
Or, if you are simply traveling through the area (zone) and ARE familiar with the environment and know specific mobs, or Guards, or whatever are near... you found people who would re-memorize spells accordingly, before traveling in.
For instance, having big booming Ice Comet spell loaded (as a wizard) while running to RunnyEye Citidel from East Commons would be a huge and massive waste of mana to cast on lowbie mobs, so you would memorized older spells, that were more mana efficient to handle MANY, MANY lower level mobs. (Wizards didn't have melee abilities..)
That is why it was uber great, when PBAE were available for wizards, who couldnt physically take much dmg. So, avoidance spells vs, combat spells, etc and what used the least amount of mana to kill a mob, was thee most important aspect.
In contrast, a Wizard could nuke a mob to death... with ONE spell... until he ran out of mana and needed 9.5 minutes to get back to full mana. Contrary to that, a Warrior never ran out of mana swinging his Swords, could stand in Runnyeye and take any amount of lowbie mobs and just mow them down, endlessly. But having to know what you are getting into, helped with what spells and abilities you memorized and had ready at a moment notice.
Only being able to have 8 spells was what made EQ great. It made you accountable.
Kazingathi said:
Not saying I would mind having limited spells which I think cool downs help with some of that today. But If you have more spells that you learned why wouldn't you want to be able to use all the spells you learned or just have it to where 8-10 spells are all you'll ever have to learn.
No, no!
You had all the spells you learned in your spell book. But in order to use them you had to "memorize" some in a battle ready spot.
These spots were 8. So if you knew 50 spells, you could only use 8 of them at any given time.
Of course memorizing a spell to replace another one during a battle was possible but it took time and you couldn't do anything else.
Nevertheless we were all doing that too - to replace a spell took something like 10 seconds.
For instance you had a mez based battle set and the pull was so horrible that everybody was going to die - you might take 10 seconds to load a charm and try a desperate charm solution to save the cleric
So when you went in an area for the first time and were on exploring mode, you generally loaded a "survival spell set" with roots, invis, mezzes, memblurs and such.
If you were joining a group for a dungeon, you would load a full battle set with stuns , augments and mezzes.
If you were going to charm solo, you had still another one.
Etc.
Then after having learned the zone, you eventually slightly adjusted your set taking in account the specificities.
I enjoyed both the way EQ1 did things and the way VG did things so I have no strong preference either way. I did like how only having 8 spell slots in EQ1 kept things strategic and you had to plan which spells were most important for your situation. Still, it did get lame at times, like when needed to buff your group on your shammy memorizing all your buffs, casting them, forgetting your buffs and then memorizing your spells needed for combat made things tiresome at times but never a huge deal if buffs last 45 minutes or more.
On the other side of the coin though I did like VG's system and does it really make sense to not have access to them all ? In real life once you learn a skill you always know it. You may get rusty from lack of use, but you always have access in your brain to what you know. If as a martial artist I know 20 techniques really well, those are always available to me, it's not like I can only access my brain for 8 at a time. I would be more in favor of simply having longer cooldowns on some abilities and for other abilities for them to be situational like only versus undead for some abilities. Perhaps other abilities only work outdoors and other abilities only work after a block . Bash may work only if you have a shield to use it, backstab only if you have a dagger, etc. etc.
Like I said though, I have no strong preference either way, I enjoyed both of Brad's games more than any other games. I would even be in favor of the return to sit down meds but that's not a deal killer for me either one way or another.
I would prefer a limited action set like EQ with one minor adjustment. It really got kind of annoying having to memorize buffs just to give someone a SoW and then have to re-memorize your normal skill(s). I would like it if we could have a small buff bar for things like SoW or other such buffs that don't turn the tide of battle.
Here's our current plan, though not set in stone:
You have all of the spells you've learned (some from trainers, rarer more powerful ones found in the depths of dungeons). You memorize X number at any time and use them. Some you can click again (providing you still have enough mana), some you cannot until you re-mem.
I also like the old school MUD concept of spell circles, where you could, say, mem 1 Major Heal, but also 2 Minor heals, because they were from a lower level spell circle. It made planning more important, and you also ended up using older spells, not just the latest and greatest.
Aradune said:
Here's our current plan, though not set in stone:
You have all of the spells you've learned (some from trainers, rarer more powerful ones found in the depths of dungeons). You memorize X number at any time and use them. Some you can click again (providing you still have enough mana), some you cannot until you re-mem.
I also like the old school MUD concept of spell circles, where you could, say, mem 1 Major Heal, but also 2 Minor heals, because they were from a lower level spell circle. It made planning more important, and you also ended up using older spells, not just the latest and greatest.
That's very interesting. Thanks for the info !
Aradune said:
Here's our current plan, though not set in stone:
You have all of the spells you've learned (some from trainers, rarer more powerful ones found in the depths of dungeons). You memorize X number at any time and use them. Some you can click again (providing you still have enough mana), some you cannot until you re-mem.
I also like the old school MUD concept of spell circles, where you could, say, mem 1 Major Heal, but also 2 Minor heals, because they were from a lower level spell circle. It made planning more important, and you also ended up using older spells, not just the latest and greatest.
I can easily persuade your creative side, to make such re-mem spells^ use reagents instead..! Thus bringing in the crafting & harvesting spheres, in to making these more powerful spells work, (ie: rare ingredients, or master skills, etc), etc.. than you using a clunky "re-mem" mechanic.. ?
EQ combat was limitless... please never forget that. Every game since, has been trying to copy it.
Only the game world & technology limited/confined the players & developers in EverQuest. Those limits don't exist now.. the world is ready for EQ combat wrapped up in an open-world, with boats and housing... and a premium subscription.
I think I can see a place for both. I like the idea of reagents, etc...
I will say that I played a Warlock for a while in WoW - and I actually LOVED the whole shard thing - prep for a raid by making sure I had enough, etc... it made me feel like I was doing extra to contribute to the event. Then it got killed, because too many people felt like having to farm shards was boring, or unfair, or whatever they felt - and so Blizz dumbed yet another thing down.
In truth, I think at least some of that scenario came down to warlocks not wanting to spend the time before a raid to get shards - and then not liking that they had to reduce their damage in a raid to get shards. Such is the wont of the WoW player.
But I LOVE that sort of stuff.
Still - I also find intriguing the idea of having a spell that I KNOW I will only get one use of that is not TIME bound - or REAGENT bound - but perhaps STRATEGY / PLAYER SKILL bound.
What I'm envisioning is that an average / poor player might have such a spell / skill and truly get a single use out of it in an encounter - or multiple uses out of it that decrease their overall contribution - but that a good player - through understanding the dynamics of combat - and having an absolute mastery of their class - might know how to get multiple uses (time to re-mem the spell) within a single combat encounter without decreasing their performance.
Example: Say I'm a heavy DoT class that has such an ability - and my ability is an interrupt... AND - it's my job to keep the mob interrupted when it uses a certain ability (lets say an AoE fear)...
Now say I'm an average player - I get the mob interrupted successfully, and the very first thing I do is sit down and mem it again so it's ready for the next use - never mind me doing any DPS if I'm also supposed to be doing that.
Now say I'm a very good player - and I've taken the time to understand the mob we are fighting - I have a general "timer" in the back of my mind to know roughly when the next fear should come - and I know all of the in game queues that say it's coming soon - AND - I know that as long as I start memming the spell within a certain window of seeing a queue, I'm good. Now I have the freedom to do the interrupt, check my DoTs to make sure none of them are going to fade - get them restacked, and then mem the spell.
So I think I'd be good with some of both :)
I forgot to mention Reagents -- doh! Yes, some spells will require reagents as well. Not mutually exclusive with re-mem IMHO.
Aradune said:
I forgot to mention Reagents -- doh! Yes, some spells will require reagents as well. Not mutually exclusive with re-mem IMHO.
See..? How easily I persuaded you... : ]
Aradune said:
I forgot to mention Reagents -- doh! Yes, some spells will require reagents as well. Not mutually exclusive with re-mem IMHO.
Yay ! I remember such spells in EQ. I remember even having to have one for a weather control spell on my druid. Even my necro's robe that had a corpse summon clicky effect on it required a tiny coffin as a reagent. I like this sort of thing :)
I think TSW's system is quite good in that of all the abilities you know, you can only have 8 active and 8 passive abilities loaded as a build at any time, that included 1 epic active and passive plus 1 special weapon active and passive. If this kind of setup was modified so you could only use abilities spells from your class plus some generic stuff, with the one epic ability that maybe was a reagent or one use ability and one unique ability that could be item related or something, plus selected passives it would make for some tactical gaming. I always liked in TSW how you picked abilities within a grp so you could make sure there wasn't unnecessary duplication and that all the requirements for a fight were covered. Shame the combat in general was a little boring, with five builder. finisher. finisher rotation with the odd buff or interrupt thrown in.