Overall falling was never really that dangerous in EverQuest. Safe Fall was probably the most useless Skills I ever found in EverQuest; Will this actually be in Pantheon I wonder? Is it worth putting in? Could VR actually make it useful, what with levi spells etc?
Maybe they could increase fall damage to make it more significant and realistic? Maybe "no levi" areas too? - What do you guys think? Is it Useless and should be abandoned or just needs to be improved upon?
I'm not sure about safe fall, never having played a class that had it...but the Levitation mechanic in EQ was great! I can't tell you how many places I managed to get to by using the 'bobbing' effect that Levi imparted...the top of the tower in PoK, the top of the Karanas spires, etc. Not to mention the ease of travel that being able to get to those places gave you. Of course, it could be dangerous too...with the 'broken' Z axis making you still aggro mobs sometimes, even when you were miles overhead. Fun times
I just remember trying to gain max Safe Fall and then giving up as it was "pointless" anyway.. and it got me thinking about Safe Fall in Pantheon.. what could be done to improve it? and would it even be in Pantheon in the first place?
Never got a char with 'safe fall'... but, as a squishy, I can tell you that fallnig in EQ hurt plenty.
Died falling off ramp in East Wastes
Died falling of top of keep in Overthere
Died many times looking for bank in that &^$%$£ tree-house city. (Somebody shoot them wood elves!)
Fell out of the Plane of Sky and lived!
Fell off the boat and died. Repeatedly.
Fell down the Hole.... and died.
... I could go on...
I think I am in the improve upon. I think falling should have real consequences. You got yourself into a pickle on a ledge and now you will take damage falling off it.
I don’t think Safe Fall worked all that either. If I remember correctly other spells would override it. I guess it did fall into the not very important file. I think in EQ2 they kind of abandoned it. The flying mounts took center stage. Here again I never tried to dismount in EQ. I did that in WoW a couple of times and ended up experiencing the lawn dart concept.
As far as the spell goes I think maybe revive it with some better actual performance. Maybe still take damage but not as much per say. The Levi spells never appealed to me for some reason. I could not use them to cross a river or the like. In most cases they were pretty much a stationary fluff factor in practice.
With the new world they are creating and we can crawl/climb/drop/fall into areas or spaces. It is a real interesting subject if you think about it. Good post!
Ox
Frankly, the whole premise has always seemed absurd to me. You get better at falling from high places? Seriously? The most ridiculous thing is watching someone repeatedly climb a structure to jump off to level safe fall. I've disliked it from the start. You fall, you take damage. Done.
I remember having it on my bard (lowest cap of the three classes) and it was definitely useful. GFay was safer as were many camp spots where it was easy to fall while moving so fast. Even zones where the edges were curved instead of a 90deg bend (WoS for example) it was easy to run up it during a pull (I had my reasons behind that lol) and then simply moving backwards to get off it could cause a drop.
That being said, it isn't a necessary ability imo. I liked having it and put it to use all the time, sometimes not in purpose, but I'd say it is a "convenience skill". It let me do more crazy/useful pulls plenty of times, but it also let me be really lazy when running around because I rarely would fall from a high enough place to die. On my non-bard characters I didn't really miss it though as it was maimly used when jumping off stuff and/or moving really fast while pulling.
Nikademis said:You get better at falling from high places? Seriously?
Yeah, pretty dumb concept. However, in a fantasy world with magic and all that why not? Or maybe they'll include safe fall gear :P
Kids get great 30 minutes of enjoyment toys these days.
I like safe-fall. It was nice in WoW to switch to cat-form so I could leap off a dam and survive and continue to travel. It does have it's uses, they just seem minimum. Considering the programing for this ability is extremely easy to work with, It's not bad at all to include this for a spell or certain races.
-Todd
I seem to recall in early days EQ that you could 'stumble' and fall from even small height (which could allow creature to catch you).
Certainly 'safe-fall' type skill should be able to mitigate those kind of mis-steps as long as the fall distance was below a certain (still small) distance.
This would be the difference between a Rogue running full-pelt though a forest and the chasing warrior having to watch his footing in places.
But, the only thing that should survive unharmed from falling 100+ feet is a cat. (Preferably a fluffy one).
Oxillion said: With the new world they are creating and we can crawl/climb/drop/fall into areas or spaces.
As absurd as it may seem, there people that have trained to fall with more control and, therefore, take less damage. Stuntmen, NFL athletes, and people that train in parkour come to mind. As for its usefulness, I have to agree with tehtawd here as the druid in cat form is a good example that is relevant in my experiences. It became another tool in my toolbox to escape other classes while pvping more than anything else though.
That being said, I can take it or leave if it’s not put in the game to have any meaningful effect. I don’t think it would take much time from the dev team to develop, but if it’s mostly irrelevant I’d say skip it altogether.
Nikademis said:Frankly, the whole premise has always seemed absurd to me. You get better at falling from high places? Seriously? The most ridiculous thing is watching someone repeatedly climb a structure to jump off to level safe fall. I've disliked it from the start. You fall, you take damage. Done.
There is an art to falling from high places without breaking bones (or too many) and you do learn how to land. For instance if you jump off a high ledge and land with stiff legs well damn its going to be bloody painful, if you learn the timing to take the impact into your bending legs as you land and if need be roll forward with the direction you're moving in then you can greatly reduce the damage to your legs and or joints. If you grow up climbing big trees and rocks and playing full contact sports you learn how to at least try to hit the ground when a lot of force is involved.
Re the thread, I never had a safe fall char on EQ but did take some nasty damage as a caster when accidently falling off somthing or trying to follow a monks path as he jumps off random things, it seemed that it worked pretty well from the outside looking in.
What if safefall became a skill that you actually activated. I think it would be cool if by pressing jump (space) as you land, if it reduced the damage based on how close to the precise moment of impact you used it.
Personally I like the idea of safefall. I like the idea that you take heavy damage from falling. I'm a fan of realism in my mmo.
Dullahan said:What if safefall became a skill that you actually activated. I think it would be cool if by pressing jump (space) as you land, if it reduced the damage based on how close to the precise moment of impact you used it.
Personally I like the idea of safefall. I like the idea that you take heavy damage from falling. I'm a fan of realism in my mmo.
Ooh I like that, great suggestion mate! The better your skill the greater the margin of error for late or early pressing to nail a safe land. 2 thumbs up for that concept!
Hokanu said:Dullahan said:What if safefall became a skill that you actually activated. I think it would be cool if by pressing jump (space) as you land, if it reduced the damage based on how close to the precise moment of impact you used it.
Personally I like the idea of safefall. I like the idea that you take heavy damage from falling. I'm a fan of realism in my mmo.
Ooh I like that, great suggestion mate! The better your skill the greater the margin of error for late or early pressing to nail a safe land. 2 thumbs up for that concept!
Either increase margin of error or just decrease damage (or some of both). I think it would be more fun if it was always hard to time. Wouldn't want it to become too easy for someone with high skill to execute the ability perfectly every time.
Dullahan said:Hokanu said:Dullahan said:What if safefall became a skill that you actually activated. I think it would be cool if by pressing jump (space) as you land, if it reduced the damage based on how close to the precise moment of impact you used it.
Personally I like the idea of safefall. I like the idea that you take heavy damage from falling. I'm a fan of realism in my mmo.
Ooh I like that, great suggestion mate! The better your skill the greater the margin of error for late or early pressing to nail a safe land. 2 thumbs up for that concept!
Either increase margin of error or just decrease damage (or some of both). I think it would be more fun if it was always hard to time. Wouldn't want it to become too easy for someone with high skill to execute the ability perfectly every time.
Very true, i think your right, less damage instead of greater margin of error would keep it a fine user skill as well as a character skill. It would also mean that in order to get it right every time you would be best to be looking at least slightly down towards the ground below as you fall, so this would mean less success running and jumping without thought and more concentration and thought needed at the point of the jump/fall. I hope they consider this concept!
I think safe fall should be in the game first off because it is Traditional to EQ ( you know the greatest MMORPG ever released :) ), however in my opinion it should not save you from a 100' fall, it should at max level greatly reduce damage from a survivable fall, or allow a fall a fair amount more than what would kill you.
It is a cool skill with little application in the game, but it is one of those things that some classes should have, someday it will be very handy in that one spot and everybody with you will wish they had it leveled up.
It is part of Old EQ style intelligent and emergent gameplay, and adapting something like safe fall to a situation to succeed could happen. I would gladly have safe fall as a skill to add to my tool kit.
Maybe like reducing the damage a ranged mob can do to you because you are falling in safe fall mode and it is reducing your damage. Sorry, they will remove that one from the list of possibilities now, but I am sure something else will be thought of, actually a couple things.
Sky
With all the climbing that I'm looking forward to, I certainly hope that safe fall will be in as well. My EQ monk was always kept at the top SF skill each level. When my crummy DSL failed me in the sky bridges of CoM, I was glad for SF, sneak and FD to get back up to my party without a train and not too long of a wait after I logged back in. I also used it to flee in straight lines to zones in emergencies. I loved safe fall a whole lot. 8) Sometimes, a run down a massive slope in EQ could end in death.
Whenever I see it in games, like EQII, Rift (before falling damage removal) and WoW, I am happy to have it even if I don't need it.
If falling were to have 2 (potential) effects, rather than just the one (falling damage), then i can see a usefulness for something like safe-fall, without making it over-powering and while also making it 'sensible' in terms of real-world understanding. It would be based on skills ranks and, say, agility. Poeple without the skill would have rank(0).
Falling will do
(i) Damage: This is a range based on (non-linear) distance fallen.
Small or trivial distance doing little damage, while any fall over 30-50 feet should do serious damage. Safe fall would act to reduce the 'distance fallen' by an ammount based on your skill... but subject to a minimum of, say, 20% of actual to stop you entirely mitigating all damage.
(ii) Debuff: This would be (a) slight cramp (b) sprain (c) pulled muscle or (d) torn-muscle / broken bone.
This would be a bit like a 'critical', having a % chance to happen, modified by distance bracket fallen (0-2x char height, 2-5x height, 5-10x height, 11-20x height etc). Thus you would be unlikely to injure yourself from a small drop, and even if you did, it would very likely be a (short-lived) sprain. Falling from a greater height would have a greater chance of causing an effect and it would have a greater chance of being a worse, longer-lived, effect.
Nett result:
Persons with safe fall would still take damage from falling large disrtances (though likely less damage) and probably still injure themselves - though perhaps to a lesser extent. In addition, a person with a decent safe-fall skill could run away from a nasty mob, leaping quickly down several 4-8 foot ledges and escaping. A less skilled (or un-skilled) person would likely not take appreciable damage from these 'falls' but would inevitable end up taking at least one minor impairment (movement or agility debuff) from the smallish but repeated chances of twisting his ankle etc.
PS : any such skill should be mitigated (downwards) by wearing armour or carrying shed loads of gear!
PPS This system should be relatively easy to implement since it only requires checking for each 'fall', as per regular falling damage physics, but would just need an additional calcluation to test for a debuff to be applied. Since Pantheon already has a procedure to deal with falling damage, it should be posssible to extend to include something of this nature. The specific of how hard it would be to implement will depend on coding ofc.
@Amsai,
I think it's a case of miscommunication from not playing EQ. Not all classes had safe fall in EQ, which I'm sure those who are discussing it are referencing . Only monks, rogues and bards got it at EQlaunch - with monks maxxing at 200, rogues around 100 and bards around 50ish.
And, EQ also had the levitate spell, so, I think you can feel safe that a spell like feather fall will exist in Pantheon as well? Only 5 classes had access to levitate in original EQ, and levitate also took a spell component - bat wing.
So, I would agree with you, I wouldn't want safe fall for all either, or all classes to have a levitate type spell.