Darck said:If you can pay attention to your surroundings while meditating then are you actually meditating? That makes no sense. It was a risk to do it in a dangerous area, and part of the trade-offs needed to be a caster.
Pretty much and it was also one of the reasons I disliked when EQ added the multi-camera angles. I mean, if you think about it, allowing multiple angles and 3rd person view is technically a form of cheat as it is information a player gets outside of the practical spectrum of the characters abilities (what explains how every class has the ability to see 360 degrees from muiltiple vantage points at a whim). How do you explain or reason that type advantage in play? I just never understood it.
Meditation, unequivocally, needs to stay.
Resource management is one of the chief factors missing in most modern MMOS. And with Pantheon, sadly, likely not including reagents and ammo, they are already walking on the line of just becoming another game in this regard.
bigdogchris said:Meditation, unequivocally, needs to stay.
Resource management is one of the chief factors missing in most modern MMOS. And with Pantheon, sadly, likely not including reagents and ammo, they are already walking on the line of just becoming another game in this regard.
That is what worries me. Everyone talks about the "good old days" and then claims that all of the "hardships" are things of the past. Then they go on about how games today no longer catch that feeling of accomplishment or hold a player long term like EQ did.
They don't realize that everything that was an impediment to game play was exactly why they enjoyed the sucess of achieving in the game. Who thinks getting an easy win is meaningful? It really is the numerous subtle elements of obstacles in play that define a solid and meaningful progression in play.
Tanix said:Darck said:If you can pay attention to your surroundings while meditating then are you actually meditating? That makes no sense. It was a risk to do it in a dangerous area, and part of the trade-offs needed to be a caster.
Pretty much and it was also one of the reasons I disliked when EQ added the multi-camera angles. I mean, if you think about it, allowing multiple angles and 3rd person view is technically a form of cheat as it is information a player gets outside of the practical spectrum of the characters abilities (what explains how every class has the ability to see 360 degrees from muiltiple vantage points at a whim). How do you explain or reason that type advantage in play? I just never understood it.
Don't get me started on Third Person view. In that mode you have just eliminated a player skill, that skill being situational awareness while looking out your character's eyes. Gets even worse in Over the Shoulder third person. I always feel like I have something stuck in my eye in that view even moreso than standard third person, its maddening.
Tanix said:That is what worries me. Everyone talks about the "good old days" and then claims that all of the "hardships" are things of the past. Then they go on about how games today no longer catch that feeling of accomplishment or hold a player long term like EQ did.
They don't realize that everything that was an impediment to game play was exactly why they enjoyed the sucess of achieving in the game. Who thinks getting an easy win is meaningful? It really is the numerous subtle elements of obstacles in play that define a solid and meaningful progression in play.
Yep, true feeling of achievement is measure in an almost meta-game state and not just a sum of your level and gear.
It feels good when you survive a harsh environment with limited resources and come out on top. Why are MMO developers afraid to bring that back?
I always prefer a game where I had to manage my resources. Combat management is key for a great experience at least in my prospective.
However, that goddam slow mana regeneration outside from a fight is obnoxious and not fun.
If you like to sit down and wait let me tell you this story.
Between the time
When the oceans drank Terminus
And the rise of the old Gods
There was an age undreamed of
And onto this, some siting Wizard or Mage or Enchanter or some other dude that needed mana was waiting for it.
Destined to wear the jeweled crown
Of Farthale upon a troubled brow
It is I, his chronicler
Who alone can tell thee of his saga
Let me tell you of the days of high adventure and some lame mana pause!
Ayren said:I always prefer a game where I had to manage my resources. Combat management is key for a great experience at least in my prospective.
However, that goddam slow mana regeneration outside from a fight is obnoxious and not fun.
If you like to sit down and wait let me tell you this story.
Between the time
When the oceans drank Terminus
And the rise of the old Gods
There was an age undreamed of
And onto this, some siting Wizard or Mage or Enchanter or some other dude that needed mana was waiting for it.
Destined to wear the jeweled crown
Of Farthale upon a troubled brow
It is I, his chronicler
Who alone can tell thee of his saga
Let me tell you of the days of high adventure and some lame mana pause!
The slow pace of EQ provided a different style of play. Because mana was finite and took time to regen, players had to strongly consider how they approached a given situation. While games like WoW or other fast regen games are focused on the management during combat, EQ forced you to consider outside of this. If you pulled too much and left yourself depleted, you might not be ready for a suprise pather, or maybe a suprise pop of a rare mob on the next respawn. This forced players to not only consider their resources during a fight, but throughout their entire adventure. It is a subtle thing mana/health recovery, but a key aspect to endurance based game play and why some of the most intense moments people had in EQ was not the "heat" of the battle, but the anticipation of over doing it or being unprepared for something.
This is something that was designed into AD&D as well (which EQ got a lot of its ideas from). There were random encounter tables and many elements which did not allow players to simply "fast forward" to a point where they were a 100%. Mages took so many hours of rest per spell level to memorize a spell, priests only got their spells once a day, etc... The point is that management over the course of encounters was just as important as the encounter itself and while it may be boring, it was an integral component of play. A game shouldn't be "fun" at every moment (not in the sense that it provides constant gratification at every second), there are ups and downs, successes and failures, fun times and not so fun times. This in my opinon is what made EQ in the successful times so rewarding.
I knew, that someone will bring the argument about the out of combat regen, in terms of that you have to be more careful whit the next pull and that this will add some depth in the mechanics. I agree that this can be a cool mechanic because you have to be more careful. However, EQ1 was to extreme.
World of Warcraft Vanilla had the best mix in my opinion. Slow in combat regeneration and slow out of combat regeneration. However, if you sat down and used a drink (only possible out of combat) then you got max mana in 30 sec +-. If someone engaged in a fight in that time that was problematic and often a wipe.
There is no depth in a system where you have to wait for minutes for full mana. Even some of the main developer from EQ1 had too say, that they put to many down times in the game and if I don’t mistaken even Brad McQuaid said that in an interview long time ago.
Ayren said:However, EQ1 was to extreme.
Sorry to say, but i disagree. Especially as a new player, this time actually allowed / forced me to think of new tactics, gear choices and actually learning the class i was playing to be more efficient / productive. Other games i have played had this part increased to a point where i could victor many regular mobs without learning the class or be most efficient, untill i had to raid and actually had to learn. Which in my opinion is too late in the game itsself to learn. You should already know your class and options you have before you get to a point of raiding.
If it is indeed too slow, i would suggest to have level equivalent mana potions you can purchase from players or merchants. This would then also require you to manage your money a bit (which would result in more favored camping spots than others), but will give you the option to choose better xp less money and vice versa and balance things out again.
All in all, on a level 1 character having a downtime of 1 minute per mob seems fair. Where at higher levels this would increase as the powerpool increases. But this in turn would also mean you can fight more mobs back to back. So at level 50 fighting 5 mobs causing 5 minutes downtime (without modifiers) i think is fair.
Let me start off by appolgizing if this has been mentioned already as I have not read all 10 pages of this thread.
I love reasource management so I actually agree with meditation to a point. But my biggest concern with the meditation I have seen in the streams so far is it appears to really down play being a caster. What I mean by this is if you are rogue it appears you can fight the whole fight maybe not doing max DPS during it, but somethign to do. Watching videos with Wizards in them they are sitting half the fight. So is it it going to be Burn phase, sit phase, burn phase sit phase. I personally would rather see more down time in between pulls and less durning fights.
Lots to balance out. But if rogue/ranger/monks end up putting out the same DPS at the end of a fight cause of sustained damage. I could see more peole playing them then the Spikey DPS of casters that have to in battle meditate. Then again maybe I am wrong. Right now it appears casters are the person in a sports car gunning it red light to red light and melee is the truck just driving a never really having to stop for a light.
Maybe a solution isn't with how deitation works but how spells work. Maybe big mana spending spells need major ramp time so you end up using them at end of fights not begining. With all this said it is really early in the build.
Ayren said:I knew, that someone will bring the argument about the out of combat regen, in terms of that you have to be more careful whit the next pull and that this will add some depth in the mechanics. I agree that this can be a cool mechanic because you have to be more careful. However, EQ1 was to extreme.
World of Warcraft Vanilla had the best mix in my opinion. Slow in combat regeneration and slow out of combat regeneration. However, if you sat down and used a drink (only possible out of combat) then you got max mana in 30 sec +-. If someone engaged in a fight in that time that was problematic and often a wipe.
There is no depth in a system where you have to wait for minutes for full mana. Even some of the main developer from EQ1 had too say, that they put to many down times in the game and if I don’t mistaken even Brad McQuaid said that in an interview long time ago.
WoW was extremely fast paced regen, even at release. In the beginning, I thought this was awesome, just as I thought running back to your corpse as a ghost was cool. Over the course of playing WoW and other games as they progressed, I realized this subtle aspect of design had dramatic effects on the game.
In your example, you speak in seconds or minutes as to recovering and point out that "if someone engaged in a fight..." that there could be problems. That short of time isn't even remotely enough time to create problems and the "problem" isn't an unknown, it is a poor group behavior that resulted in creating the problem. There is no management, just the simple rule of... drink potions for a minute and then fight on, don't do anything stupid. In such little time between encounters, everything has to change in a game where it is not instanced. To deal with recovery times being so quick, spawn times have to be increased to the point where down time management is threatened if it isn't planned properly over the course of the run. The less time you give to this cycle, the less time you allow for the elements of that endurance based management play. The fact is, fast paced cycles are not very useful with spawned based systems.
The depth in the system is looking at things over all.
In a basic EQ cycle which was around 15- 30 mins for a mob re-spawn, management of the "dungeon run" was key. For instance, in EQ if you wanted to get back to Disco 2 in Seb, you had to get through some very rough areas, some with longer 30 min cycles and others with 15 min cycles. If this were WoW, you would simply bite off chunks med up to full, and move on in minutes. It might take you under a WoW system very little time to work your way back, but... under an EQ spawn cycle system where down time was a reality, it became extremely difficult to accomplish this (even more so if you planned to try and get back to near the end of the dungeon on the second level).
So, you might start your pulls, but if you were under geared or your damage ability was a bit low due to many reasons, you would find that back spawns would become a reality because you weren't killing fast enough to safely progress. This meant you needed to account for how you killed, what you killed, where you were moving to, where the static spawns were and where the roaming pathers were all while managing how much mana you used in this process. If you got a pop or extra pather on your group during battle and had to expend more mana during the battle, it didn't change the fact that you were still limited on the time you had between the next spawn behind you.
If you had people who did not know how to manage their resources well, you ended up being overrun and the group would wipe before it got even a 1/2 back to its goal. Not even your downtime was safe in this process, it was often nerve wracking because of this constant need to move forward, but that wall of time needed to recover between fights. One slip, a poor pull, or waiting too long and you wiped.
This is depth in play, but it is play outside of the "combat" itself. There is more to game play outside of hack and slash combat and this is what AD&D as well as what most cRPG systems were designed around. It isn't about the "combat", rather it is about the entire picture of play and those subtle elements of play are extremely important.
Paloo said:Let me start off by appolgizing if this has been mentioned already as I have not read all 10 pages of this thread.
I love reasource management so I actually agree with meditation to a point. But my biggest concern with the meditation I have seen in the streams so far is it appears to really down play being a caster. What I mean by this is if you are rogue it appears you can fight the whole fight maybe not doing max DPS during it, but somethign to do. Watching videos with Wizards in them they are sitting half the fight. So is it it going to be Burn phase, sit phase, burn phase sit phase. I personally would rather see more down time in between pulls and less durning fights.
Lots to balance out. But if rogue/ranger/monks end up putting out the same DPS at the end of a fight cause of sustained damage. I could see more peole playing them then the Spikey DPS of casters that have to in battle meditate. Then again maybe I am wrong. Right now it appears casters are the person in a sports car gunning it red light to red light and melee is the truck just driving a never really having to stop for a light.
Maybe a solution isn't with how deitation works but how spells work. Maybe big mana spending spells need major ramp time so you end up using them at end of fights not begining. With all this said it is really early in the build.
Start thinking away from the modern concept of DPS as the focus. This I saw became a huge issue in WoW where every class was focused on being DPS and the game began centering around burning through the fights as fast as possible. The result was numerous elements of play being cast aside to essentially make an action arcade game, not a cRPG.
It isn't about who does the biggest boom, it is about progression management in the course of play. Class wars will only end badly.
decarsul said:Ayren said:However, EQ1 was to extreme.
All in all, on a level 1 character having a downtime of 1 minute per mob seems fair. Where at higher levels this would increase as the powerpool increases. But this in turn would also mean you can fight more mobs back to back. So at level 50 fighting 5 mobs causing 5 minutes downtime (without modifiers) i think is fair.
It needs to be a bit longer. Down time should also be similar for a player naked at 1 as at 50. What should change this is various things like gear/abilities/etc...
One minute isn't enough time to create the long play management needed in a group progression throughout an area. It has been so long that I can't remember exactly what the average downtime was in release EQ (I don't think even P1999 has it right), but I liked it much better than when they started changing it over the years. The point is to force the player to think about their approach and choices during battle. A player that nukes like crazy should have to deal with the fear of being attacked while empty on mana in an area because they over extended themselves. It is these subtle elements which defined EQ in my opinion and something that is missing in today's games.
I know some people don't enjoy medding, but I always saw it as an aspect of balance. Casters get amazingly powerful abilities, they can do all sorts of things that melee classes in particiular were unable to do. If there's no down time during combat for a wizard who can nuke for huge amount, then you see exactly what Tanix mentioned in wow, where every single encounter becomes a blow em up DPS race, followed immdiately by 30 seconds of drinking for mana and that's it.
Mages and warlocks in classic wow would bind frost/shadow bolts to their free spinning mouse wheel and just give it a rip. When it becomes an all out DPS race due to the design of the game, gameplay suffers, or is completely destroyed, imo.
Slow mana regen acts effectively as a cooldown, and as Tanix and other have said, managing this resource shrewdly makes the difference between a great player and a lesser one, or a successful dungeon crawl and a corpse retrieval. It enforces intelligent gameplay via the strategic use of the resource, and promotes meaningful decision making and not just skill spam.
When I played my wizard or mage I was always anticipating what I could do next, and that anticipation would build while I meditated, knowing that your limited but powerful actions could have a huge immdiate impact on an encounter was tremendously satisfying.
As it stands, wizards don't really have to deal with that problem in Pantheon as they can switch to casting arcane spells to get mana back which is part of the whole spell weaving thing the class is all about. Since summoner damage is mostly intended to come from their pet I imagine meditation during combat really hurting their DPS output will be minimal or likewise almost nonexistent.
What stops things from being an all out DPS race every encounter is meaningful threat management as well as having many mobs with important/dangerous things that DPS need to watch for/ensure they keep some resources on reserve for or risk death.
Ayren said:World of Warcraft Vanilla had the best mix in my opinion. Slow in combat regeneration and slow out of combat regeneration. However, if you sat down and used a drink (only possible out of combat) then you got max mana in 30 sec +-. If someone engaged in a fight in that time that was problematic and often a wipe.
That is not slow, that is absurdly fast.
Iksar said:As it stands, wizards don't really have to deal with that problem in Pantheon as they can switch to casting arcane spells to get mana back which is part of the whole spell weaving thing the class is all about. Since summoner damage is mostly intended to come from their pet I imagine meditation during combat really hurting their DPS output will be minimal or likewise almost nonexistent.
What stops things from being an all out DPS race every encounter is meaningful threat management as well as having many mobs with important/dangerous things that DPS need to watch for/ensure they keep some resources on reserve for or risk death.
In my opinion, the problem here is "time". DDO is a perfect example where time has been sped up in fights to the point where it really comes down to who gets the instant kill first. The fights are so fast, that there is no planning, no careful movement or consideration, it is just rush in, use instant kill spells wearing special mitigation armor and then push on to the next group doing the same. This threw the entire game out of whack, making non-combat spells often a wasted effort.
Threat management won't change the fact if downtime is little. All of those elements of spawn management timing in your progression, pathers and spawns poping on you, etc... those all are irrelevant if your med time is fast. The reason I say is in order to provide the balance that EQ had in its spawn times versus down time, you would have to make it so the mobs spawn on you extremely quickly. So, lets say your down time is only a minute or two. Well... what should your respawn time on mobs be? 30? 20? 10? In EQ, it was not uncommon to end up having adds, too many in a pull, etc... and with 6-8 mobs (with a couple of pathers along the time) you could end up spending near that 15 or 30 min spawn cycle to kill them off. This made that one run I explained in Seb a gauntlet run, where you had to basically conserve, fast pull, use CC, etc... and keep moving as a group to avoid the respawn.
So... if your rest time is only a minute or so, how do you balance that with this design? If players can easily plop down once combat ends and in less than a minute or maybe two be back up and running, how do you design that progression? How long should the spawns be then? This is the problem when you start speeding everything up, you lose the purpose of various concepts in game play.
Tanix said:So... if your rest time is only a minute or so, how do you balance that with this design? If players can easily plop down once combat ends and in less than a minute or maybe two be back up and running, how do you design that progression? How long should the spawns be then? This is the problem when you start speeding everything up, you lose the purpose of various concepts in game play.
I must say, there is no right or wrong answer, because all our views are self-centered and bias. But I have two arguments against your statement.
First:
It is completely possible to play the game with a group combination, that doesn’t have to wait at all for mana and can kill endlessly because as you can see in the videos not every class needs mana. In many developer/twitch videos the Wizard sits on the ground and the whole team doesn’t wait, they fight sometimes with the wizards sometimes without.
If every class had its down times that would be another situation, but right now this is not the case as you can see in the videos.
Sadly I cannot talk more specific because of some magic rules and watching gods : ) .
Second:
If you demand more down time because of certain mechanics, there must be another way.
Imagen a fight with your group lasts for 60 sec and you need 3-4 min too regenerate. 4 min = 240 sec
240 sec waiting time for full mana.
60 sec fighting time.
A fight and rest is 300 sec. That means you only play 20% of the time and other group members have to fight most of the time for you because you spend 4 times more waiting to be useful. Of course my argument and example is completely bias. But none or less in every equation you will spend at least 50% of the time doing nothing.
And on top of that, read the enchanters class description. This class was made to lower the downtimes significant for caster. https://www.pantheonmmo.com/classes/enchanter/
I hope you can understand, why I stand by my argument about less down time.
Tanix said:
Paloo said:
I love reasource management so I actually agree with meditation to a point.
Start thinking away from the modern concept of DPS as the focus. This I saw became a huge issue in WoW where every class was focused on being DPS and the game began centering around burning through the fights as fast as possible. The result was numerous elements of play being cast aside to essentially make an action arcade game, not a cRPG.
It isn't about who does the biggest boom, it is about progression management in the course of play. Class wars will only end badly.
Guess you missed this point. O I agree whole heartily about the current games that I despise. The DPS and don't stand in the fire aspect of many games today. But I am also a realist and realize people want things to do. If they can see others doing things they want to be able to do things just as well. I am not one of those people, hell I played a Bard from day one back in March 1999. I love utilities and I love resource management. If I thought it would work I would be yelling at the top of my lungs "make them have reagents" (arrows for rangers, powders for Rogues blinding powder, kindling for wizards fire spells, ect). But I do understand Mana came in existence to nullify computer games having to play the inventory management game to much.
I want and personally need Pantheon to be successful so I am not going to be Tony the Tiger running around yelling everything is greeeeeeeeeat. I know we have heard but not really seen that wizard will or should weave schools of magic to recover mana better. Love the idea it is along the idea I have always had since mana started being used instead of reagents. Which is wizard should have multiple mana pools for the various schools of magic. Fire pool, Ice pool, so on and so. Then you could have great balance between the schools pools of mana.
As I hope we all do we want to make the game best possible for the intended audience. I know the more of my family and friends I can get to play the better and longer time I will have in Terminus. People will figure out how to move thru things the fastest no matter what speed bumps you throw at them. If you played EQ back in the day think of all the Dreadlandspulling groups that would set up to mezz chain pull. A happy medium has to be produced between "to fast" and "not fast enough". Have to much down time people won't want to play.
VR could be making the best game ever created past, present or future, but without players it won't matter. NO I do not mean the need Blizzard type numbers but they do need to pay the bills every business does. So let’s all keep talking about the things we like and the things we do not like to help VR compass point in the right direction.
One more thing this is a reality type thing for me. If I am on the front line fighting a group of people and one of them sits down in a vulnerable way/spot whatever I am going to peel off and attack that person. Meditation unfortunately should come with high agro. A swordsman is fighting two people a guy with sword and a musket. The swordsmen are fighting each other, Musket fires and misses. He knows if it hits he is dead, he will move to the Musket man before he can reload, to the best of his ability.
Did a little research from the December 3rd streams. On Gnashura the final boss they port to and fight seemed good as any to look at length of Med time vs fight time. I do have to admit since I play utility or healers, those are the streams I have been watching. The Wizard does seem to have a decent mana regen design with the Ice School. The Cleric and Shaman seems awfule to me.
Cleric Med time vs actual activity time. The fight lasted 6 minutes and 52 seconds. The cleric meditated 15 times in that time frame for a toral of 4 minutes and 42 seconds. So 68% of the time the celric was really do nothing. Yes he was meditating and watching health bars but more or less doing nothing.
Shamans Med time vs actual activity time. He cut his youtube video cut the fight a littel short. We got 6 mins of the fight on the video and 4 mintues and 38 seconds he was meditating. So 76% of his time was sitting.
The Wizard did some standing not casting not sure if that was do to lag, talking or what so I won't count that. He only meditated for 12 seconds. So that is not bad at all.
Small sample size but gets the point across a little more. Seems some sort of better then just sitting to regain mana should be out there. I do want them to control the pool and not be able to toss any heal at anytime out there. So now would be the time to get it in there.
Ayren said:Tanix said:So... if your rest time is only a minute or so, how do you balance that with this design? If players can easily plop down once combat ends and in less than a minute or maybe two be back up and running, how do you design that progression? How long should the spawns be then? This is the problem when you start speeding everything up, you lose the purpose of various concepts in game play.
I must say, there is no right or wrong answer, because all our views are self-centered and bias. But I have two arguments against your statement.
First:
It is completely possible to play the game with a group combination, that doesn’t have to wait at all for mana and can kill endlessly because as you can see in the videos not every class needs mana. In many developer/twitch videos the Wizard sits on the ground and the whole team doesn’t wait, they fight sometimes with the wizards sometimes without.
If every class had its down times that would be another situation, but right now this is not the case as you can see in the videos.
Sadly I cannot talk more specific because of some magic rules and watching gods : ) .
Classes who do not have mana, require healing which requires mana. So, there will always be a need to rest. If the game ends up where certain classes can kill non stop with no downtime, they will have violated their own design tenants and to be honest, essentially be making another mainstream game (fast paced, no rest combat is a mainstream concept, counter to everything that EQ and VG was).
If such is not currently the case in the game, I am sure they will tune that later on in order to achieve this as that would be a major failure in the games design.
Ayren said:Second:
If you demand more down time because of certain mechanics, there must be another way.
Imagen a fight with your group lasts for 60 sec and you need 3-4 min too regenerate. 4 min = 240 sec
240 sec waiting time for full mana.
60 sec fighting time.
A fight and rest is 300 sec. That means you only play 20% of the time and other group members have to fight most of the time for you because you spend 4 times more waiting to be useful. Of course my argument and example is completely bias. But none or less in every equation you will spend at least 50% of the time doing nothing.
And on top of that, read the enchanters class description. This class was made to lower the downtimes significant for caster. https://www.pantheonmmo.com/classes/enchanter/
I hope you can understand, why I stand by my argument about less down time.
60 seconds is a bit too fast of a fight for an equal level mob. EQ was still slower, but the point is not to use all of your mana in a single fight. You are supposed to conserve in a group, balancing when and where to cast, etc... You do this because downtime can be a problem. If you make downtime fast to the level you would like, then we end up back with WoW design, fast paced combat blowing through areas in mass and content being eaten up in little to no time. It is counter to everthing that the original EQ/VG was.
Now you can say, they aren't making EQ/VG, but a new game. Agreed, but it is supposed to be in the spirit of those games and if the result is mainstream fast paced action combat with no real endurance based play, well.. it isn't anything like EQ or VG, it then becomes yet another flavor of the month game to which will be ate up and spit out like all the other games that are of this pace and design. At that point, I know I won't be interested in it, I can't speak for others.
Keep in mind though that a lot of this type of balance (kill time, med time, etc...) is something that is ironed out at a later stage of development. In fact, I think I even heard them say that a lot of the combat and play is sped up in videos due to time constraints.
Paloo said:
Tanix said:
Paloo said:I love reasource management so I actually agree with meditation to a point.
Start thinking away from the modern concept of DPS as the focus. This I saw became a huge issue in WoW where every class was focused on being DPS and the game began centering around burning through the fights as fast as possible. The result was numerous elements of play being cast aside to essentially make an action arcade game, not a cRPG.
It isn't about who does the biggest boom, it is about progression management in the course of play. Class wars will only end badly.
Guess you missed this point. O I agree whole heartily about the current games that I despise. The DPS and don't stand in the fire aspect of many games today. But I am also a realist and realize people want things to do. If they can see others doing things they want to be able to do things just as well. I am not one of those people, hell I played a Bard from day one back in March 1999. I love utilities and I love resource management. If I thought it would work I would be yelling at the top of my lungs "make them have reagents" (arrows for rangers, powders for Rogues blinding powder, kindling for wizards fire spells, ect). But I do understand Mana came in existence to nullify computer games having to play the inventory management game to much.
I want and personally need Pantheon to be successful so I am not going to be Tony the Tiger running around yelling everything is greeeeeeeeeat. I know we have heard but not really seen that wizard will or should weave schools of magic to recover mana better. Love the idea it is along the idea I have always had since mana started being used instead of reagents. Which is wizard should have multiple mana pools for the various schools of magic. Fire pool, Ice pool, so on and so. Then you could have great balance between the schools pools of mana.
As I hope we all do we want to make the game best possible for the intended audience. I know the more of my family and friends I can get to play the better and longer time I will have in Terminus. People will figure out how to move thru things the fastest no matter what speed bumps you throw at them. If you played EQ back in the day think of all the Dreadlandspulling groups that would set up to mezz chain pull. A happy medium has to be produced between "to fast" and "not fast enough". Have to much down time people won't want to play.
VR could be making the best game ever created past, present or future, but without players it won't matter. NO I do not mean the need Blizzard type numbers but they do need to pay the bills every business does. So let’s all keep talking about the things we like and the things we do not like to help VR compass point in the right direction.
One more thing this is a reality type thing for me. If I am on the front line fighting a group of people and one of them sits down in a vulnerable way/spot whatever I am going to peel off and attack that person. Meditation unfortunately should come with high agro. A swordsman is fighting two people a guy with sword and a musket. The swordsmen are fighting each other, Musket fires and misses. He knows if it hits he is dead, he will move to the Musket man before he can reload, to the best of his ability.
See, I dont't agree with the need to appeal to a general audience. I think this approach is what killed modern games as it was the key design goal of them "Games for everyone". It is counter to what EQ and early VG provided. So, it comes down to what they want to achieve. So far, they have said they wanted to make a game that respected the old concepts of play (play that made the games so great), but bring it into the modern day with new design directions/features, yet.. still... staying in the spirit of the original games.
Problem is, if you "compromise", you aren't staying in the spirit of those games. I can only speak for myself, but I don't want compromise. I don't care if someone who loves the fast paced/no downtime play of modern games doesn't want to "wait" in their play, or be forced to pay the consequences of improper management of resources, they have literally hundreds of MMOs to choose from that serve that goal. I personally want what is no longer available outside of playing 20 year old emulators. So, if VR does not deliver, I won't be playing (which others may also not to as well, I know my 20 year old guild mates have no desire for such), so that leaves them chasing the modern gamer, which is fine, but the modern gamer dislikes pretty much everything that made EQ what it was, so then they will be chasing a crowd with the wrong game, much like LoTRO did by trying to appeal to the WoW crowd, eventually destroying the game (not their monetary scheme, just the game).
I know for myself, this is the last game I will give a chance of this nature. If it sells out, I am done, I mean... I don't like any MMO today, so it is over for me. Compromise will only kill the game for me because it is the very subtle elements I describe as to what made me love EQ and if those are gone, there is no point. /shrug
Paloo said:Did a little research from the December 3rd streams. On Gnashura the final boss they port to and fight seemed good as any to look at length of Med time vs fight time. I do have to admit since I play utility or healers, those are the streams I have been watching. The Wizard does seem to have a decent mana regen design with the Ice School. The Cleric and Shaman seems awfule to me.
Cleric Med time vs actual activity time. The fight lasted 6 minutes and 52 seconds. The cleric meditated 15 times in that time frame for a toral of 4 minutes and 42 seconds. So 68% of the time the celric was really do nothing. Yes he was meditating and watching health bars but more or less doing nothing.
Shamans Med time vs actual activity time. He cut his youtube video cut the fight a littel short. We got 6 mins of the fight on the video and 4 mintues and 38 seconds he was meditating. So 76% of his time was sitting.
The Wizard did some standing not casting not sure if that was do to lag, talking or what so I won't count that. He only meditated for 12 seconds. So that is not bad at all.
Small sample size but gets the point across a little more. Seems some sort of better then just sitting to regain mana should be out there. I do want them to control the pool and not be able to toss any heal at anytime out there. So now would be the time to get it in there.
I think the data you get from those isn't going to give a proper reflection of play due to the fact that they stated the game play is sped up to make it realistic to do a game play demo, and it is still pre-alpha, so a lot of those balancing aspects will likely be handled later on.
I really don't think the videos will be of much use to be honest.
