Thought i would post it here because it would affect everyone in some way...
What do people think of allowing mobs to be able to break the mez of another mob that has been locked down by an enchanter? This would mean the mob would have to turn away from their current target and walk over and smack the other mez'd mob to wake it up (or used ranged or whatever). The mob that was mez'd takes normal damage from the hit and wakes back up. The trade off is that in ther time he took to wake his friend up he would have been getting pummeled, so it is a risk for both sides and adds a bit more challenge for all to the sometimes potentially OP nature of mez. It also creates a sense of urgency when trying to prevent it in a fight and maybe the chance of a particular mob going for it could be based off the various personalities / tactics that each one is assigned.
Any thoughts?
I think that would be amazing. It could lead to a more spatially strategic environment if the chance of mob breaking mez was determined by proximity. A mob obviously wouldn't want to get pummelled running long distances to wake an ally, so you would have to space mobs out some to decrease the chance of them breaking mez.
Love it.
I like this idea a lot. There is another thread in these forums (I wasn't able to find it on a quick search) that generally discusses NPC intelligence and proposes some other good ideas, like this one, to improve NPC intelligence and make fights more realistic and interesting. This seems like a great addition. Would you also allow player characters to bash one another to break mezzes applied to them by NPCs? (:
I think NPCs in general should act more like players. Breaking Mez, attacking support classes as much as possible, running for their lives when outnumbered/out classed, calling for help, going to investigate something that caught the eye, you name it. I would also like to see mobs not act in predictable ways so it’s harder to “learn” how NPCs act. I think NPCs should act more like groups (when possible) and use their group's skills in better, more logical and tactical ways.
But to answer your direct question, this is a great idea. Just expand it a bit more.
I don't think they should be able to just "smack" another mob to break mez in general, they should have the same options as players do. If I'm in a group and a mob mezzes my tank, can I walk over to my tank and just "smack" him to break mez? Chances are the only way I'd be able to break the mez off of my tank is to cast some kind of debuff remover on them. The mobs should have the same option as well, if one of them has the ability to remove mez, they can cast it to do so.
Also, if breaking mez is so easy, then what is the point of the mez spell? Mob placement won't be easy at all, if near impossible, because most of the mobs will be on the same person, and mezzing one just means one of the others will break the mez. The person can't move to spread the mobs, because they will all follow him. The only real use for it at that point would be to maybe stop a mob that splits off to attack someone else in the group, and even then there is a chance that another mob will have split off to that person with the one you want to mez, or one will soon split off to that person if they are generating that much agro on a mob that is not supposed to be getting attacked by the group.
So perhaps make the mobs intelligent enough to use debuf removers to do so, but just being adjacent and wasting an attack would make mez near useless. I'm not saying at it's heart this is a bad idea, but some real though needs to be put into it to make it viable without making a class ability near useless or so difficult to use that nobody would really want to.
In general this seems like a great idea. It fits with the behaviors and dispositions feature. That being said, it should be used appropriately. So it shouldnt be something a mob can do in any situation. For instance animals and non-intelligent monsters shouldnt be breaking eachother out of mez.
How the mez was broke I don't care, but definitely think it would be cool to have mechanics like this. We have had mobs healing one another for a long time why not having them casting things like remove curse, cure poison or remove magical effect.
All the same utility abilities that are available to players should be available to the mobs in an ideal world. I would like to add in some type of intelligence factor into the mix as well. Something like a lowly Gnoll may not be smart enough to know even what a mez is little long how to remove the effect. Where as a Elf may be fully aware of the various different forms of magic in the world, allowing them access to more utility function.
Cool idea
I actually think that while this idea is interesting and really speaks to the want to have harder, smarter and challenting mobs, it's not practical. First, it would severly impact the mez classes so if you would do it for mez you better do it for root, stuns, and even taunts (where mobs can memblur/wipe the hate list).
id rather see the mobs be able to cast a dispel buff (with a casting time so that it can be potentially interrupted) mentioned before, and either have mobs linked as part of a group to cast the dispel within their group or have ai recognize that there are mobs to be dispelled within casting range.
This sounds like a pretty cool idea. Although, I agree with Kelenin on how the mez should be broken. I would like it to mimic how the players would remove mez from one another, which would usually mean there is a caster dispell involved. This could make for some interesting shifts in player tactics, so I would love to see the AI have this build-in.
Dullahan said:I think that would be amazing. It could lead to a more spatially strategic environment if the chance of mob breaking mez was determined by proximity. A mob obviously wouldn't want to get pummelled running long distances to wake an ally, so you would have to space mobs out some to decrease the chance of them breaking mez.
Love it.
Thats a great idea mate, a great way to reduce the likelyhood of it happening!
Gnog said:I like this idea a lot. There is another thread in these forums (I wasn't able to find it on a quick search) that generally discusses NPC intelligence and proposes some other good ideas, like this one, to improve NPC intelligence and make fights more realistic and interesting. This seems like a great addition. Would you also allow player characters to bash one another to break mezzes applied to them by NPCs? (:
I hope that in this game mobs will be able to mez players and to have the same breaking mechanic at our fingertips would be great.
kelenin said:I don't think they should be able to just "smack" another mob to break mez in general, they should have the same options as players do. If I'm in a group and a mob mezzes my tank, can I walk over to my tank and just "smack" him to break mez? Chances are the only way I'd be able to break the mez off of my tank is to cast some kind of debuff remover on them. The mobs should have the same option as well, if one of them has the ability to remove mez, they can cast it to do so.
Also, if breaking mez is so easy, then what is the point of the mez spell? Mob placement won't be easy at all, if near impossible, because most of the mobs will be on the same person, and mezzing one just means one of the others will break the mez. The person can't move to spread the mobs, because they will all follow him. The only real use for it at that point would be to maybe stop a mob that splits off to attack someone else in the group, and even then there is a chance that another mob will have split off to that person with the one you want to mez, or one will soon split off to that person if they are generating that much agro on a mob that is not supposed to be getting attacked by the group.
So perhaps make the mobs intelligent enough to use debuf removers to do so, but just being adjacent and wasting an attack would make mez near useless. I'm not saying at it's heart this is a bad idea, but some real though needs to be put into it to make it viable without making a class ability near useless or so difficult to use that nobody would really want to.
The concept of breaking mez with damage comes from the games that pantheon is sharing some features with so thats why i thought it made sense, but yes it could be a debuff spell. Though I thought that both the damage caused by the hit and the fact that the mob has to travel to wake up his friend are 2 factors that swing some positive effect back in favour of the group when this is taking place, but yes it could be soley activated by a debuff removing spell.
I do not think this would make mez useless, it would make it so you cant mez and forget though... You wouldnt have it in a way so that the second mez lands mobs just start heading off to wake it up, there would be chances of them deciding to do so and those chances would be tweaked in testing to get the right balance. The purpose of this is to add challenge, so yes the enchanter would have to work harder to make mez as reliable and powerful as it is in its current non npc breakable state. It would also mean things like having other classes (or enchanter) using things like roots, snares and stuns to stave this off from happening would also mean more effort and attention to be paid by everyone.
Amsai said:In general this seems like a great idea. It fits with the behaviors and dispositions feature. That being said, it should be used appropriately. So it shouldnt be something a mob can do in any situation. For instance animals and non-intelligent monsters shouldnt be breaking eachother out of mez.
Yeah your right Ams, intelligent mobs only
Neuromancer said:I actually think that while this idea is interesting and really speaks to the want to have harder, smarter and challenting mobs, it's not practical. First, it would severly impact the mez classes so if you would do it for mez you better do it for root, stuns, and even taunts (where mobs can memblur/wipe the hate list).
id rather see the mobs be able to cast a dispel buff (with a casting time so that it can be potentially interrupted) mentioned before, and either have mobs linked as part of a group to cast the dispel within their group or have ai recognize that there are mobs to be dispelled within casting range.
I take on board what your saying, but mez is a significantly more powerful spell than root or stuns and it completely changes what is going on in the fight to the point where certain wipe becomes easy street the the cast of a few spells (or just one spell sometimes). I am trying to swing the favour back to the mobs a little bit to make mez not so OP without taking away its fundamental purpose and mechanic. I think you could have a root breaking ability, and i do like the idea of mob enchanters casting mem wipe on their own guys to break taunt etc.
As a long time Enchanter, i love the mez ability so much, i do find myself often thinking jeez it is pretty damn easy to lock everything down. Just trying to keep things a little spicier! Whether its some damage or a spell or maybe a hot cup of coffee... the way it could be broken and why is a discussion to have for sure!
If there were a minimum time before the mez could be broken, that would be a good thing. Like I stated before, most of the time when you want to mez mobs, they're all grouped together. If a mob can just slap the guy next to him to instantly break it, then mez becomes useless unless you can split the mobs up first. Think about most fights where you pull multiple mobs, they are almost always on the same person, at least until your healer gets agro, and even then, most of the mobs go after the healer, so they're still grouped up. It's not easy to split mobs up. So if say a mez couldn't be broken for 5 seconds or something, that would add a little skill because the tank or whoever would know he needs to move the remaining mobs away from the mezzed one before they're allowed to break it.
Imagine the scenario where the tank pulls 3 mobs. They're all on him. You mez a mob, another mob instantly slaps the mezzed mob and breaks it, so mez did nothing. Eventually the healer gets agro from the 2 mobs the tank isn't hitting, so you mez one of them, but the other one breaks it (because they both are standing next to the healer). You instead try to mez the one the tank is on, but he's hitting it, so it breaks.
I know there are situations where you can eventually make this work, like someone else roots a mob, the tank pulls away, then the enchanter mezzes the rooted mob, but the mob is already controlled (maybe not as well as mez, but it is already controlled), so the mez didn't really have much effect unless it is a healer or wizard or something. I also know that occasionally the mobs will separate themselves, stopping to cast spells or whatever, but most of the time you end up with them all grouped together during fights.
Now with the scenario I had given above, if there was a minimum duration where it couldn't be broken, then it would likely work better, because the first one that was mezzed, the tank could pull away to distance the remaining ones from the mezzed mob.
Another thing, on the reverse side. If mobs are allowed to break mez, can't players do the same? Would only make since.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for making mez so it's not a guaranteed lock, but I don't want to make it where it becomes really super situational to be used.
It has the potential to be a great idea. As many point out - there is also the possible issue of 'overly weakening' an enchanter's tools to point where CC becomes too tricky. But, it occurs to me that some types of CC should, perhaps be breakable (if the mob is smart enough to realise this.)
Divide CC/Mez into different types! ....
.... call them 'Mental vs Physical', 'Illusory vs Stunning' or whatever you want as categories.
1. PHYSICAL BRAIN ATTACKS
Those with Stun/Disorientation/Brain-attack components:
a. This would include a Rogue sapping a mob from behind, I guess.
b. These kind of effects are pretty much with you for the duration.
c. Mobs that HEAL the target my reduce the duration, perhaps?
2. MENTAL BRAIN ATTACKS
Those purely of sleep/daze/dream/lull components:
a. These should certainly be suceptible to being broken by a slap to the face (or cold water even).
b. This mechanic may not be 'certain', but may offer a 'repeat RR at +bonus' to break mez
c. Only intelligent mobs will realise this (though AoE spells my accidently do the same)
3. WHOLE BODY ATTACKS
E.g. Those with Frozen/Stasis type effects: includes 'blindness'
a. Seems to me, nothing short of a dispel is going to help these poor suckers.
b. Perhaps massive damage might 'knock them free', but the cure is worse than the problem!
Conclusion:
This way, the chanter gets to choose between 'long effect mezzes' that smart mobs may work to shorten/remove, or 'shorter effect mezzes' that are almost impossible to remove since they aggressively attack the brain. This gives them another set of tactics in choosing their tools, rather than 'just load up the biggest duration mez i have'. For non-chanter CC'ers, it is likely they have fewer tools than chanters and so will have to pick the mobs, and situations, they use their particular flavour of mez on carefully!
PS: Is it possible that some creatures can be mezzed by one type and not the other?
Do gelatinous cubes have a brain?
Wouldn't we see it floating about inside?
Why has nobody researched this yet?
Can we send a Gnome spelunker inside one to find out?
Evoras, is full of ideas for the use of Gnomes!
Evoras said:It has the potential to be a great idea. As many point out - there is also the possible issue of 'overly weakening' an enchanter's tools to point where CC becomes too tricky. But, it occurs to me that some types of CC should, perhaps be breakable (if the mob is smart enough to realise this.)
Divide CC/Mez into different types! ....
.... call them 'Mental vs Physical', 'Illusory vs Stunning' or whatever you want as categories.
1. PHYSICAL BRAIN ATTACKS
Those with Stun/Disorientation/Brain-attack components:
a. This would include a Rogue sapping a mob from behind, I guess.
b. These kind of effects are pretty much with you for the duration.
c. Mobs that HEAL the target my reduce the duration, perhaps?
2. MENTAL BRAIN ATTACKS
Those purely of sleep/daze/dream/lull components:
a. These should certainly be suceptible to being broken by a slap to the face (or cold water even).
b. This mechanic may not be 'certain', but may offer a 'repeat RR at +bonus' to break mez
c. Only intelligent mobs will realise this (though AoE spells my accidently do the same)
3. WHOLE BODY ATTACKS
E.g. Those with Frozen/Stasis type effects: includes 'blindness'
a. Seems to me, nothing short of a dispel is going to help these poor suckers.
b. Perhaps massive damage might 'knock them free', but the cure is worse than the problem!
Conclusion:
This way, the chanter gets to choose between 'long effect mezzes' that smart mobs may work to shorten/remove, or 'shorter effect mezzes' that are almost impossible to remove since they aggressively attack the brain. This gives them another set of tactics in choosing their tools, rather than 'just load up the biggest duration mez i have'. For non-chanter CC'ers, it is likely they have fewer tools than chanters and so will have to pick the mobs, and situations, they use their particular flavour of mez on carefully!
PS: Is it possible that some creatures can be mezzed by one type and not the other?
Do gelatinous cubes have a brain?
Wouldn't we see it floating about inside?
Why has nobody researched this yet?
Can we send a Gnome spelunker inside one to find out?
Evoras, is full of ideas for the use of Gnomes!
This dude and his freaking outlines! LOL
Anyway, I am pretty much always a fan of mobs being more intelligent. I think it's a good idea to have mobs work together more as a team just like we are, rather than their interactions pretty much just being limited to healing each other. I would love to see mobs be less predictable and be able to counter our tactics to some degree. Dynamic fights are more challenging and interesting. That said, I'm not convinced VR has the resources to be able to have extensive AI yet. Keyword: yet. I would love to see it in the future, but I'm not holding my breath. Seeing EQN fail to reach their goals of emergent AI drove home the harsh reality that it is still extremely difficult to have the advanced technology of our dreams. It's so much easier said than done.
But maybe I'm getting too far ahead of myself... in regards to the OP, I think that certain NPC's being able to break the mez of other NPC's is a good idea and should actually be pretty doable. The key would be to make it so that only a select few types of mobs have this ability and would maybe only be able to use it in certain situations. I don't think it would make an Enchanter obsolete at all. The Enchanter would just have to make sure that they mez (or otherwise control) that "anti-mez" mob first. Or at least just have the dps kill that mob as a priority. Every class should have their own sort of kryponite. The key is that it's situational and there is some sort of possible counterplay. But VR has already said that Enchanters wont be the gods of CC in all situations. These types of different strategies and awarenesses are what make the game fun!
Hokanu said:Thought i would post it here because it would affect everyone in some way...
What do people think of allowing mobs to be able to break the mez of another mob that has been locked down by an enchanter? This would mean the mob would have to turn away from their current target and walk over and smack the other mez'd mob to wake it up (or used ranged or whatever). The mob that was mez'd takes normal damage from the hit and wakes back up. The trade off is that in ther time he took to wake his friend up he would have been getting pummeled, so it is a risk for both sides and adds a bit more challenge for all to the sometimes potentially OP nature of mez. It also creates a sense of urgency when trying to prevent it in a fight and maybe the chance of a particular mob going for it could be based off the various personalities / tactics that each one is assigned.
Any thoughts?
Nice idea Hokanu... I've posted about this back in July about the idea of NPC's waking up their mezzed buddies https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3697/npc-fighting-styles
I love the idea and as I stated before feel it gives the players and NPC new abilities & issues to deal with...
Rint
What I think we're overlooking is what the eventuall mesmerize spell line will eventually encompass. It won't be just 1 spell that is single target only. Mark my words we'll see targeted AE mezmerize, pointblank stuns (and possible pointblank mez) but we'll also see single target Lull or Soothe lines where the aggro radius of a mob is significantly reduced. It will be through the combination of spells and their application that will make the Enchanter a force multiplier. Then add to that the other 'control' type spells (roots, snares, blind, fear, mem-wipe). I know we're going to see a lot of options and it will be those people who apply those spells in the best possible combinations that will really succeed at the game.
Evoras said:It has the potential to be a great idea. As many point out - there is also the possible issue of 'overly weakening' an enchanter's tools to point where CC becomes too tricky. But, it occurs to me that some types of CC should, perhaps be breakable (if the mob is smart enough to realise this.)
Divide CC/Mez into different types! ....
.... call them 'Mental vs Physical', 'Illusory vs Stunning' or whatever you want as categories.
Vandraad said:What I think we're overlooking is what the eventuall mesmerize spell line will eventually encompass. It won't be just 1 spell that is single target only. Mark my words we'll see targeted AE mezmerize, pointblank stuns (and possible pointblank mez) but we'll also see single target Lull or Soothe lines where the aggro radius of a mob is significantly reduced. It will be through the combination of spells and their application that will make the Enchanter a force multiplier. Then add to that the other 'control' type spells (roots, snares, blind, fear, mem-wipe). I know we're going to see a lot of options and it will be those people who apply those spells in the best possible combinations that will really succeed at the game.
Good things to think about Evoras & Vand, there are lots of types of Mez and i would expect that the ones we focus on for this kind of thing might be the onces that are designed to stop an already agro'd mob for an extended duration in its place like Mez in all its forms (AoE & Single) but maybe not things like soothe. Soothe already has its chance to fail / resist and if that happens well we know how that pull goes down... I think there is a fair case to include root style spells in this conversation or petrify if a class ends up with that kind of spell!
I dont think you would bother with things like stuns to be included but thats just me! :)
Fear / Blind are an interesting concept... hmm.. hmm things to ponder!
kelenin said:I don't think they should be able to just "smack" another mob to break mez in general, they should have the same options as players do. If I'm in a group and a mob mezzes my tank, can I walk over to my tank and just "smack" him to break mez?
On PvP servers, that's exactly what we did.
Dullahan said:kelenin said:I don't think they should be able to just "smack" another mob to break mez in general, they should have the same options as players do. If I'm in a group and a mob mezzes my tank, can I walk over to my tank and just "smack" him to break mez?
On PvP servers, that's exactly what we did.
Yeah, thats how i had always broken a mez in the past, i think it plays well to the mechanic as well for the mob to have to move to its friend, But a dispel option makes plenty of sense too
As someone who's main was an enchanter in EQ, NPC's breaking mezz would make me soo effin' mad... but it would add some cool dynamics to the game and provide another layer of mechanics to learn. I'm also a bit of a masochist when it comes to MMO's (hurts so good), so I support this suggestion!
Occasional breaking of mezzes is fine, but rare and special. EQ2 started making almost all named or other special mobs, and eventually most mobs immune to mezzes and similar affects. This just turned the game into an AE spam. No one bothered to do starts anymore, just AE the hell out of everything.
If mezzing is a key role, dont water it down.
I think this is an absolutely fantastic idea. Space should be extremely important in deciding this. If you kite a mob over a mez'd mob it should definitely be able to smack that mob or pause and do something to break that mez. It would definitely add an interesting challenge to kiting.