Sevens said:But wouldnt this reduce or eliminat the social aspect of said downtime? I mean the whole purpose and the whole reason people are asking for EQ style downtime IS for the social interaction in game that it allows...If I have to play a medding mini game then I dont have the time to piss around and BS with my group mates. Sorry I dont believe that every single second of game time must be crammed with dev imposed "entertainment". Let me sit down (or however they handle the med animation) and relax for a few mins
This is during combat, not after combat. This is not during downtime, nor should it prevent the need for downtime. This is just something during combat so you aren't just sitting down all the time while everyone else is fighting. That is not generally where the social interaction occurs besides, "Attack this, mez that, stop that runner!"
Sevens said:Liav said:Sevens said:I agree with this, dont want every class to have spells/abilites to up mana regen...that should be in the realm of a few classes (chanters, bards, necro pumps, mage items and canni). I really really dont want the every class can do everything syndrome that has killed so many other MMOs
This unfortunately sounds like copy & pasting EQ's mana recovery tools perfectly.
I don't know why Necros ever had the ability to pump mana. It's so out of place for the class in general. As for Mages, same thing. I always thought mod rods were out of place. Canni I can be on board with, though. Enchanters and Bards too, because Enchanters are Bards are just straight up utility classes.
I hate that Mages and Necros were often forced into not performing their main function because of one gimmicky, out of place ability in their toolkit that outweighs their main fuction (DPS).
I agree with you actually, I can see necros with lich turning life into mana for self use but never understood why they could then pump other characters....the only reason I give a semi-pass on Mages with the mod rod is that mages were summoners, able to pull useful items out of thin air but yeah if they did away with that in Pantheon I wouldnt mind one bit
I remember ranger healing my necro buddy so he could pump mana to the chantys and clerics. Had to use my ranger mana for something :p
Dullahan said:Sevens said:But wouldnt this reduce or eliminat the social aspect of said downtime? I mean the whole purpose and the whole reason people are asking for EQ style downtime IS for the social interaction in game that it allows...If I have to play a medding mini game then I dont have the time to piss around and BS with my group mates. Sorry I dont believe that every single second of game time must be crammed with dev imposed "entertainment". Let me sit down (or however they handle the med animation) and relax for a few mins
This is during combat, not after combat. This is not during downtime, nor should it prevent the need for downtime. This is just something during combat so you aren't just sitting down all the time while everyone else is fighting. That is not generally where the social interaction occurs besides, "Attack this, mez that, stop that runner!"
Ah, okay that makes sense
Ashvaild said:Sevens said:Liav said:Sevens said:I agree with this, dont want every class to have spells/abilites to up mana regen...that should be in the realm of a few classes (chanters, bards, necro pumps, mage items and canni). I really really dont want the every class can do everything syndrome that has killed so many other MMOs
This unfortunately sounds like copy & pasting EQ's mana recovery tools perfectly.
I don't know why Necros ever had the ability to pump mana. It's so out of place for the class in general. As for Mages, same thing. I always thought mod rods were out of place. Canni I can be on board with, though. Enchanters and Bards too, because Enchanters are Bards are just straight up utility classes.
I hate that Mages and Necros were often forced into not performing their main function because of one gimmicky, out of place ability in their toolkit that outweighs their main fuction (DPS).
I agree with you actually, I can see necros with lich turning life into mana for self use but never understood why they could then pump other characters....the only reason I give a semi-pass on Mages with the mod rod is that mages were summoners, able to pull useful items out of thin air but yeah if they did away with that in Pantheon I wouldnt mind one bit
I remember ranger healing my necro buddy so he could pump mana to the chantys and clerics. Had to use my ranger mana for something :p
You mean you had to use your Ranger for something, period?
J/K!
I hated feeding mana as a necro (main). There was such a stigma about necros not being able to really do damage that it was sometimes the only way I could get into groups/raids though. It was a largley false stigma, but perception is a powerful thing, and it was rooted (IMO) in many necros having the abiliity to solo up and not learning the finesse it took to actually play a necro well in groups/raids. Pet pathing was also a nightmare, but a good necro could generally control the pet, or at the very least bannish it and fiegn the second it warped before agro became a problem.
But I think you could still use the concept in a way that would provide that utility to a necro without turning them into a battery. If it's possible for a necro to eat his own life to provide himself mana, why couldn't he do that to other targets? Or to make that transition from one target to another?
Pantheon has offensive and defensive targets, right? How about a spell that allows the necro to target a mob, and put a dot on it that drains it's life and transfers that energy in the form of mana to another target, like the healer? At higher levels you could actually do this with AOE's too. That would be dangerous as hell if you had CC trying to lock things down, but that brings in another layer of player knowledge/skill, which I applaud. Hell, if you really wanted to go all out, you could give necro's the ability to create a localized mana climate that produced that kind of effect on all hostiles. It wouldnt help with downtime (no hostiles), but it would give the group a bit more of a mana pool to work with in combat. Pretty damn nice, really.
I can get on board with that. For instance, Mind Wrack is a Luclin Necro spell that saps some enemy mana and converts it into a short duration buff for the group that restores mana over time. You could do the same thing with the enemy's hitpoints.
Basically, what I didn't like is a Necro being forced to not DPS so they can stand around and pump people.
Just to add my two cents to this as an EQ cleric.
First, I think most of us are in agreement that sitting idly behind a spell book is not an option. As discussed in other posts there is something inherently broken in developing a visual stunning game with enagaing, reactive combat mechanics that then requires casters to spend a majority of the game blind to what is going on. Yes, back in the old days I made a game out of sitting down and standing up, how quickly I could cast a heal and then be back to staring at my book. Not because it was inherently fun, but because I had no other choice. I remember when they phased out the spellbook visual and I instantly lamented all the things I must have missed.
Second, there is a concious effort by the devs to avoid making mana overly plentiful so that casters have to strategically spend their mana and thus the need for meditation. I imagine that there will be a lot of experimentation during alpha to find the right balance.
I assume there will be situational benefits to casting certain spells such as reduced cost for ice spells when used in cold atmosphere. Also, crafted consumables and relics that help manage mana.
My personal belief is that meditation should be tailored to individual classes. Perhaps druids get an innate boost to mana regen outdoors while necros (I know not in yet) get a bonus at night. Crusaders are more battle oriented and should recieve mana on successful hits with a blessed weapon while enchanters will be adored for their clarity spell.
Additionally each class could have a channeled ability that would boost mana regen for a short time (read takes place of sitting). A shaman might phase out of the physical world appearing as if a spirit while a wizard pulls out a tome and begins leafing through the pages. The channelled ability would prevent the caster from using other abilities and have a unique visual that other party memebers would recognize. That would add depth of game play in that tanks and melee would need to keep mobs and AoEs away from the meditating casters so as not to break the channeled effect. There could be bonuses and/or penalties attached to this to balance the mana gain. Maybe a shaman gets an AC bonus while he is phased out or perhaps there is a damaging mana backlash if the channel is interrupted before completion.
Finally, as the devs mentioned they prefer varied situational spells and abilities so it would make sense to see a long cooldown mana gain spell for different classes. For example, a cleric might have a prayer of faith that instantly restores some mana to a party memeber (bonus mana if the party member is of a similar alignment) while a summoner might conjure a mana draught that could be consumed for a large mana gain.
Bottom line there are lots of interesting ways to handle meditation without needing to sit on your arse in the middle of combat.
Two of my friends mentioned this after watching the stream. They never played EQ.. They said, "Why are they sitting during combat? That's wierd". I kinda agree.
Here's my thought and I apologize if its already been suggested, I didnt have time to read through 4 pages.
How about making meditate a seperate skill instead? When clicked the animation goes from sitting when not engaged in combat to a standing meditate stance while in combat. When active, it locks the character from doing anything until its clicked off or perhaps is automatically removed/disabled when the character moves or cast a spell. They just click the skill and it applies the correct animation depending on combat state and begins regen.
Dunkmeister
Azotate said:Additionally each class could have a channeled ability that would boost mana regen for a short time (read takes place of sitting). A shaman might phase out of the physical world appearing as if a spirit while a wizard pulls out a tome and begins leafing through the pages. The channelled ability would prevent the caster from using other abilities and have a unique visual that other party memebers would recognize. That would add depth of game play in that tanks and melee would need to keep mobs and AoEs away from the meditating casters so as not to break the channeled effect. There could be bonuses and/or penalties attached to this to balance the mana gain. Maybe a shaman gets an AC bonus while he is phased out or perhaps there is a damaging mana backlash if the channel is interrupted before completion.
Finally, as the devs mentioned they prefer varied situational spells and abilities so it would make sense to see a long cooldown mana gain spell for different classes. For example, a cleric might have a prayer of faith that instantly restores some mana to a party memeber (bonus mana if the party member is of a similar alignment) while a summoner might conjure a mana draught that could be consumed for a large mana gain.
Bottom line there are lots of interesting ways to handle meditation without needing to sit on your arse in the middle of combat.
I agree with your ideas as well. I was going to suggest something similar. I was thinking along the lines of meditate being an actual ability to use on a 2-3 min cd that would give back say 10% mana but lock you into a 10 second or so sleep. During this you wouldn't be able to move/cast or really do anything. Making you vunerable to everything going on and/or possibly killing people if timed wrong. Adds in another layer of knowing your class and group to know when to time it. Each caster class having their own ability with various animations would be cool too. Could even give wizards (naming them as they usually tend to have much higher costing spells) an enhanced version in the later levels that would increase it to maybe 15%. Reason I suggest it being a lock is because it leaves in that level of difficulty to use due to timings and how vunerable you would be versus a channel that would allow you to cancel when/if needed with the only loss being mana. This would obviously have to mean that combat mana regen would have to be reduced/removed so that mana doesn't become an infinite resource.
I do like the idea of having class specific abilities so long as they actually match the lore of the class. Clerics with a Prayer of Faith type thing to bestow mana, summoners conjuring mana stones, maybe even Wizard being able to conjure a mana storm to give a small mana regen to an area but this would need to be limited and very long cd's or we risk running into the problem of infinite mana again with the proper class stacking.
There are lots of ways to handle mana regen and to make it interesting. We just have to find ways to balance it. If mana becomes infinite then it devalues it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if mana is too finite it will slow down gameplay to a point where stacking melee is the best option.
I dont mind the notion of some classes having abilities that translate into mana for the group, both in and out of combat. Like you I also dont want those to be significant enough to negate the need for thoughtful mana management. What I really dislike though are abilities that break the core personality of a class in a way that makes them nothing more than a mana support system for the classes that "matter". The necro mana feeds in EQ were a perfect example. What evil summoner of death and disease would waste his talents on giving power to others. Necros are takers, not givers. Paladins are holy warriors; fists of god. Not mental cheerleaders. Enchanters yeah, totally. They revolve around mental magics. That makes sense. Druids/Shaman, ok maybe with their attunement to nature and spirits, that I can buy. But even for them it should never be something for which they are expected to center their combat role around.
Beefcake said:Meditation is meant to be a time sink, not a skill-based activity. It provides a reasonable downtime for socializing and bio breaks. You make it complicated and all that goes away.
Medding is the best time to ninja AFK.
I agree, minus the "ninja," if you're my cleric. If I'm going to play Pantheon in spells of 5+ hours (or more, if we're being honest), I want some downtime built into the game. Simple, one-click meditation (whether by "sitting" or hitting a "meditation" button) seems to be the linchpin of that built-in downtime, so I would prefer not to have any mini-games for mana regen, other than some class-specific spells like cannibalize. I also like that the downtime created by meditation implicitly rewards a player or group that is more efficient with their mana pool in a given encounter (whether through better CC / damage mitigation / dps / whatever).
I don't feel that strongly about the animation of meditation, whether it be sitting or kneeling or whatever. But there is one thing I would prefer not to see in Pantheon, and that is a system that gives better mana regen (or mana regen with lower agro) for sitting on a mount. I would be disappointed if sitting on a mount yielded a major advantage in regaining mana (whether because you are always "sitting" or because you can sit without pulling sit agro) because I found it silly and annoying to always have to sit on a mount, even in combat.
Dunkmeister said:Two of my friends mentioned this after watching the stream. They never played EQ.. They said, "Why are they sitting during combat? That's wierd". I kinda agree.
Here's my thought and I apologize if its already been suggested, I didnt have time to read through 4 pages.
How about making meditate a seperate skill instead? When clicked the animation goes from sitting when not engaged in combat to a standing meditate stance while in combat. When active, it locks the character from doing anything until its clicked off or perhaps is automatically removed/disabled when the character moves or cast a spell. They just click the skill and it applies the correct animation depending on combat state and begins regen.
Dunkmeister
It was actually suggested =P, and I think it's probably the best simple solution to start with. They could just have characters kneel or something.
This discussion seems to center around certain classes more so than others. That speaks volumes to our inability to really reach a consensus.
Cleric- we have 2 situations long fights vs chain pulls.
For Chain pulls, you build more class interdependance by increasing the value of the enchanters mana regen, If you want to have crazy pulls, difficult dungeons, hour long chain pulls, bring an enchanter! I realize we don't always have the option to have an enchanter, dont chain pull. High level gaming takes high level planning and application of talents. As far as the stream goes, I think most of the issues come down to balancing in combat mana regen with encounter expectations +x% incase you get adds. If things go beserk and you survive you deserve/need the down time after the fight.
Keep sitting mana regen, but balance better to avoid needing it during fights or keep the cleric ,too engaged to sit to meditate.
In our other situation, long boss fights, Give our cleric a second pillar which regens the entire groups mana at the cost of temporary loss of his own MAXHP, lasts x amount of time, and is on a longish cooldown. That way, with planning and ingenuity he could time the piller buff during safe battle phases, remain engaged in the fight, and manage his and his teams mana in a way that doesn't trivialize mana usage decisions we all need to make.
It seems to me that any concerns with the system can still be balanced to any scenario through testing. I do want to say, tho that I am a long time EQ1 cleric, and meditation is the reason I want to 2-box...
I'd argue that if one spell line from one class allows for groups to have an entirely different playstyle and rate of killing, then the spell line and class is overbalanced and broken. Particularly if that one class is also the best at one of the core roles (cc). It places undo emphasis on that one class and the perception quickly becomes "this group sucks, we have no chanter".
Now this is not to say that I want everything to be fair. I don't. I think it's entirely valid for a class to be more desired than others. But not to the point that it can completely change the way all groups prefer to operate. I'd make the same argument for clerics vs other healers. If things slow down slightly because you have a druid healer rather than a cleric, I'm fine with that. If your rate of advancement drops to 60% or there's group content you simply cant do at the appropriate level without a cleric, it's broken. Raids I'll make some concessions for. With 40 people you really should be able to come up with a couple of clerics.
Of course the flip side of all this is watering down all the classes and removing uniqueness. It's a really tough balancing act.
Beefcake said:If everyone can regenerate mana on their own through a special mechanic, that eliminates half the purpose of the Enchanter. The same reason non-healers should not heal in combat.
The idea to give each class a purpose and a role. This not about all classes doing everything.
Let healers heal and chanters mez/regen. Otherwise, we will all end up playing DPS characters like other games.
Think you missed the entire point to these thoughts. They aren't about doing away with the need for chanters. It's about finding new ways to handle mana regen in combat without sitting around being inactive. It's not always a good time when 75% of your life is spent sitting on your butt watching everyone else play the game.
Enitzu said:Think you missed the entire point to these thoughts. They aren't about doing away with the need for chanters. It's about finding new ways to handle mana regen in combat without sitting around being inactive. It's not always a good time when 75% of your life is spent sitting on your butt watching everyone else play the game.
Exactly.
Enchanters can still accelerate mana regen. Sitting in the middle of combat is just outdated and nonsensical. Keep players engaged with the game.
Not sure how many of you all played eqoa but I did and I preferred it to eq pc. Melee classes never had to worry about mana, just if they pulled aggro off the tank or not, and I'd like for it to be similar in pantheon.....now let's move to casters.... In eqoa the easiest way to never go oom during raids or chain pulling is to have your friendly bard or enchanter in group....this lessened the speed at which each individual mob dies...but overall it's faster experience. The second best way to avoid consistently going oom is to have a power path necro in grp...the nuked for dmg....and the dmg was converted to manage for the grp (necrosis other option was blood path...nuke for slight heals) The third way to avoid lots of down time was to either buy drinks or have a mage make some and spam them occasionally to keep mana up...you spammed them as the tank went to pull the next group to kill. Unless you had a bard or enchanter your group had to stop every half hour for bio breaks.....and usually on the second break our tank would go and repair. Cannabilize was a skill that was used as well for super mana intensive pulls and raids, but as with everything else you had to be careful with them or you could end your own life. Since necromancer and bards will not be handy on launch, there needs to be a happy medium created to curb excessive down times in normal experience grps or low lvl raids...if you have to stop more than once every 20m...it's too much.
Forgot to say....necromancers got their path choices at 20...30...40..50
Mages gradually could make better potions at around the same rate....just like level restrictions on store potions....
And bards/enchanter should have a way to upgrade base mana regeneration abilities as they level...or get new and better ones....i just remember that the gap of mana needed was vastly different at lvl 10 and 20...so depending on how it's implementated would depend on my opinion
I also remember talking about this at some point earlier, can't remember when really. I would like to see some sort of cool animation with meditation, as others have suggested. Make it an actual ability that each caster class has, that can be used like a spell. I totally see how it would be boring for some new players to think that they are going to be sitting around during fights, heck I have been doing it for years and have no desire to go back to it either :P
Meditation should be just that, and the longer/deeper the meditation the more effective it should be.
Like for example after 30 seconds of continuous medding, you get a 25% regen rate boost, at 60 seconds you get a 50% boost, and it resets as soon as you stop medding.
this would help those full refill times, just a bit, but not overpowering.
Youmu said:Maybe we shouldn't hang up to much on the word Meditation. Think more about this as "Mana regen mechanic X", just because it was called meditation in one game does not mean it can't be something else.
Concur. EQ is actually the only game I'm aware of that had an explicit separate skill for mana regen. In every other game I've played, consumables and buffs have been the primary forms of supplemental mana regenration. EQ lacked consumables as an option for that so, to me, it seems like consumables could entirely replace it and have the added benefit of bolstering a crafting profession.
I see someone never played Summoner well, Amsai. Trying to use Predator Claws every 45 seconds and then Diablo's necro ball in the air was totally impossible without tracking your regen ticks properly. I loved that ****, made me feel so prepared in comparison to people who were half assing.