It was the Conjurer (with an item) by release. But within the same map only.
Player summoning has been mentioned in passing. While unofficial, like everything at this point, I think we can count on it being in game. Likely a Summoner class spell in Pantheon.
Conjurors were the only class with CoH in EQ2. I think the cooldown was around 2-3 minutes and each cast would consume a soft glowing pearl. You could summon a full raid to the bottom of a dungeon in less than 20 minutes if you had a few conjurors grouped up with classes that could lower the reuse of their abilities. (Troubadors with Jesters Cap, for example.) It's a class defining ability, IMO. That said, there is potential for abuse with it so I'm sure a lot of care and consideration will have to go into it's implementation if it does end up being a thing in Pantheon.
From the FAQ:
Pantheon will have meaningful travel -- players will need to travel to new areas and face the dangers that come with such a journey. That said, there will be spells like 'Call of the Hero', which summons an ally to your side if they are grouped with you. There will also be a caravan-like system, where a player can log out whilst in a group and then log back in and still be with the group, even if that group has moved. There will also be additional ways to help groups come together and stay together. But it's also important to note that this doesn't mean people will be able to travel as they please, to anywhere in the world, at a whim; especially if they haven't travelled there by foot or horse at least once (e.g. players will need to unlock certain regions by travelling there first). More details to come as we get closer to beta and launch.
Also, watch this clip: 02:56:33 Summoning spells
oneADseven said:Conjurors were the only class with CoH in EQ2. I think the cooldown was around 2-3 minutes and each cast would consume a soft glowing pearl. You could summon a full raid to the bottom of a dungeon in less than 20 minutes if you had a few conjurors grouped up with classes that could lower the reuse of their abilities. (Troubadors with Jesters Cap, for example.) It's a class defining ability, IMO. That said, there is potential for abuse with it so I'm sure a lot of care and consideration will have to go into it's implementation if it does end up being a thing in Pantheon.
I've always thought 'skills' like that weren't so much class-defining for one as horribly restrictive for all the others.
Something as enabling as being able to get a group or raid together with instant travel by simply being a particular class (and having a rich guild for the components) always seemed to trivialise things. Maybe I just never had a big, rich guild and didn't know enough summoners *shrug*.
I do think that Call of the Heros should only work if the player being summoned has already been to that location and even already been with that group.
Tralyan said:Kinda on the anti-summon team here. Most of us are firmly against things that automatically transport to your desired location. Group finders, teleport spires, instant travel.
What makes summoning more acceptable here? Genuine question.
Limited availability I'd imagine and it might be a higher level spell, maybe a somewhat expensive reagent too or a long cooldown prohibiting rapid summons. I imagine it will be limited to Summoners and therefore a small portion of the total playerbase, maybe 8% or less.
Interesting topic. A general group teleport would arouse the wrath of most but allowing the same result over 5-15 minutes by use of a class ability generates more ...balanced ....discussion.
Jumping on Tralyan's question I would recommend either or both of two constraints.
One - usable only in a dungeon, and if you leave the dungeon you are teleported back to where you came from. This would prevent use of the summons ability to bypass content and areas, it would just be usable to facilitate grouping. If you want to group to do landscape quests you need to find your way to them.
Two - you need to have been to the dungeon already, so the summons would save you time getting back to a place you have been, not allow you an express trip to where you have never been.
Preechr said:If the Summoner's spell fizzles,the Summonee should die
When a spell fizzles,it simply doesnt go off yet uses mana. Its not a "critical fail" like when you roll a 1 in D&D. Bad things don't happen on fizzles like that.
Would love to see a couple classes have a summon spell. Make it a money-sink (group's and the summoned will gladly donate/tip the summoner). Summon within same zone only. A cooldown on the summon spell (30 min / 1 hr ?). Will help groups in dungeons get replacements to them without having to fight back and forth to the entrance every so often.
Oh, can't summon if either person has aggro or is in combat? Stuff to avoid exploits...
Don't want to see summoning from different zones. Don't want it to be free or without a cooldown.
I think VG did things right: All the healers could summon players (within the zone). Summoning players wasn't a class ability, but rather a role ability. And IMO that didn't in any way "break" the game. I'm fine with some limititations on the spell however, like a reasonable cooldown.
Kaen said:Would love to see a couple classes have a summon spell. Make it a money-sink (group's and the summoned will gladly donate/tip the summoner). Summon within same zone only. A cooldown on the summon spell (30 min / 1 hr ?). Will help groups in dungeons get replacements to them without having to fight back and forth to the entrance every so often.
Oh, can't summon if either person has aggro or is in combat? Stuff to avoid exploits...
Don't want to see summoning from different zones. Don't want it to be free or without a cooldown.
Wasn't the 'caravan' system going to handle this, though?
I feel instant transport should be limited to between 'hubs' and only when you've been there and attuned and even done some kind of quest and shouldn't be restricted to something only certain classes can do, but can do willy-nilly if you are them.
I know it became almost a fundamental of EQ, but I always found it extremely annoying that druids and wizards basically made a fortune in tips from clicking a button for an hour a day. No one tipped me for risking my life and feigning dead for hours at a time or threw me 10pp for every resurrection I cast (actually, sometimes they did for that, if I came a long way, but if someone dragged their corpse to me, I wouldn't charge).
Also, the amount of times I would wait an age for a port to then decide to do the long run myself, then well into it get a /tell asking if I still needed a lift... Ugh.
Instant travel is such a core and huge advantage. Making it a class-defining ability just always felt off.
disposalist said:I know it became almost a fundamental of EQ, but I always found it extremely annoying that druids and wizards basically made a fortune in tips from clicking a button for an hour a day. No one tipped me for risking my life and feigning dead for hours at a time or threw me 10pp for every resurrection I cast (actually, sometimes they did for that, if I came a long way, but if someone dragged their corpse to me, I wouldn't charge).
Also, the amount of times I would wait an age for a port to then decide to do the long run myself, then well into it get a /tell asking if I still needed a lift... Ugh.
Instant travel is such a core and huge advantage. Making it a class-defining ability just always felt off.
I mean, a lot of the classes had things to envy but it doesn't make things bad. I envied that enchanters always had clarity at their disposal, that clerics never had to worry about finding a rez/losing exp, bards being able kite entire zones and their amazing travel songs, that monks could survive just about any wipe or train with feign death, magician for call of the hero/mod rod/free 100% weight reduction bags, shaman for exclusive rights to alchemy, and of course druid/wizard ports.
Iksar said:Tralyan said:Kinda on the anti-summon team here. Most of us are firmly against things that automatically transport to your desired location. Group finders, teleport spires, instant travel.
What makes summoning more acceptable here? Genuine question.
Limited availability I'd imagine and it might be a higher level spell, maybe a somewhat expensive reagent too or a long cooldown prohibiting rapid summons. I imagine it will be limited to Summoners and therefore a small portion of the total playerbase, maybe 8% or less.
I'm weirdly behind this - AND behind a fizzle having some kind of detrimental effects.
Something about CoH spells just rub me the wrong way. It's as if we're suspending our own personal rules simply because a raid is involved (CoH being used primarily to summon folks to raids, in my experience).
Nobody went to Guk or Unrest or Solb and CoH'd, sent /tells to random LFG folks with promises of an easy CoH to the dungeon. I mean, aside from the fact that it wasn't available. Those people would have to run or get ports just like everybody else - and for a raid, it makes even less sense to me. If you have a raid the next day, make sure you're parked there.
I realize I'm being a little pedantic here - again, it just rubs me the wrong way. Making the reagants expensive/rare or having a fizzle or a "critical fail" on a miscast mean something, then I would get behind it. Make it a gamble. Make those who didn't plan accordingly, who ask for CoH's because they didn't park at the entrance the night before, pay for their cavalier attitude of "Oh, someone can just summon me cuz this is a raid and for some reason exempt from how we expect the rest of the game to play".
Also, I sound a little snide, for which I apologize. Kinda.
Iksar said:disposalist said:I know it became almost a fundamental of EQ, but I always found it extremely annoying that druids and wizards basically made a fortune in tips from clicking a button for an hour a day. No one tipped me for risking my life and feigning dead for hours at a time or threw me 10pp for every resurrection I cast (actually, sometimes they did for that, if I came a long way, but if someone dragged their corpse to me, I wouldn't charge).
Also, the amount of times I would wait an age for a port to then decide to do the long run myself, then well into it get a /tell asking if I still needed a lift... Ugh.
Instant travel is such a core and huge advantage. Making it a class-defining ability just always felt off.
I mean, a lot of the classes had things to envy but it doesn't make things bad. I envied that enchanters always had clarity at their disposal, that clerics never had to worry about finding a rez/losing exp, bards being able kite entire zones and their amazing travel songs, that monks could survive just about any wipe or train with feign death, magician for call of the hero/mod rod/free 100% weight reduction bags, shaman for exclusive rights to alchemy, and of course druid/wizard ports.
Very true, but it's the sheer scale of the ability that makes it special in my mind. Clarity was great for mana regen, but it was equivalent to the convenience of Spirit of Wolf, maybe. Feign Death failed often and you were almost always dead as a result. Resurrection was for others - a cleric still lost XP and needed corpse recovery. Bards being able to multi-kite... yeah that was ridiculous - I seriously hope that's not in Pantheon at all. Mage bags were great until you were forced offline for a while and lost the content.
Those abilities were iconic, but limited in some way. Instant travel to the other side of the world saving hours of playtime and potentially earning you a good amount of cash?... Yikes.
disposalist said:Very true, but it's the sheer scale of the ability that makes it special in my mind. Clarity was great for mana regen, but it was equivalent to the convenience of Spirit of Wolf, maybe. Feign Death failed often and you were almost always dead as a result. Resurrection was for others - a cleric still lost XP and needed corpse recovery. Bards being able to multi-kite... yeah that was ridiculous - I seriously hope that's not in Pantheon at all. Mage bags were great until you were forced offline for a while and lost the content.
Those abilities were iconic, but limited in some way. Instant travel to the other side of the world saving hours of playtime and potentially earning you a good amount of cash?... Yikes.
Clarity was a massive boon in terms of exp/hr to any group, saving hours of playtime by making leveling faster/more efficient. Feign Death did not fail often, once you got beyond 100 skill (early 20s IIRC) it had a 95% success rate. Cleric could resurrect themselves so they never had to worry about finding someone to restore their lost exp (at higher levels), rez also saved TONS of time for players by negating corpse runs, and also made quite a lot of plat as donations were sometimes massive.
It sounds like maybe it's the fact that ports could be monetized that irks you most? I mean sure it's envy inducing to be able to port all over the world more or less at will, but it was always a cool feature that made me want to make a wizard/druid if anything. Since they could port others and ports tended to be plentiful (thanks in part to those doing it for donations) I never saw a problem and not finding a port was less common than finding someone willing unless you were way off in an unused zone.
Iksar said:disposalist said:Clarity was a massive boon in terms of exp/hr to any group, saving hours of playtime by making leveling faster/more efficient. Feign Death did not fail often, once you got beyond 100 skill (early 20s IIRC) it had a 95% success rate. Cleric could resurrect themselves so they never had to worry about finding someone to restore their lost exp (at higher levels), rez also saved TONS of time for players by negating corpse runs, and also made quite a lot of plat as donations were sometimes massive.Very true, but it's the sheer scale of the ability that makes it special in my mind. Clarity was great for mana regen, but it was equivalent to the convenience of Spirit of Wolf, maybe. Feign Death failed often and you were almost always dead as a result. Resurrection was for others - a cleric still lost XP and needed corpse recovery. Bards being able to multi-kite... yeah that was ridiculous - I seriously hope that's not in Pantheon at all. Mage bags were great until you were forced offline for a while and lost the content.
Those abilities were iconic, but limited in some way. Instant travel to the other side of the world saving hours of playtime and potentially earning you a good amount of cash?... Yikes.
It sounds like maybe it's the fact that ports could be monetized that irks you most? I mean sure it's envy inducing to be able to port all over the world more or less at will, but it was always a cool feature that made me want to make a wizard/druid if anything. Since they could port others and ports tended to be plentiful (thanks in part to those doing it for donations) I never saw a problem and not finding a port was less common than finding someone willing unless you were way off in an unused zone.
Feign Death being 95% successful meant several certain deaths per session for a Monk and Clerics could only res themselves if they could get back to their corpse... usually needing a teleport... but let's not argue.
Yeah, monetising world-wide instant travel irked me. It trivialised travel and exploration and turned it into a common money-spinner for a couple of classes. It also annoyed me how massively restrictive it was on the occassions you couldn't get a port - it became a necessary evil that everyone assumed you could get - if you couldn't you lost that group spot or that sale or whatever.
I simply would like the ability to get around to be more equal in Pantheon. I don't want to have to think that if I choose any class other than "the porters" that I am dooming myself to a lot of running and a lot of paying through the nose for someone to press a button.
It's not a deal-breaker, I would just prefer another way re. something so fundamental as travel.
Feign death saved my Necro from dying hundreds of times! I dont remember a whole lot from EQ2 but I do remember how nice it was being summoned to a party when I was far from their location. I also remember clerics somehow always getting the good drops even when drops were set to random. I also remember how nice it was when I finally got my magic carpet to ride around on!
So I would like to differ between ports and CoH. While ports can be used to make money, they are sometimes dangerous (emerald junge for example) and i never felt that it is just an instant travel, especially when the port destinations are well chosen and pretty rare. CoH on the other side was mostly used in groups or raids. In groups it was used to replace a teammate, without moving back to the entrance. This was not a dealbreaker for me. Yes, for raids it was utilized much more, but at least the raids that i was participating did not have a mage parked at every raid encounter to call the whole raid from one point to the other. If CoH was used to move the raid, a lot of effort was done to get that mage (not a CoH mule) to the location.
For me this food (topic) is cooked much hotter than its being eaten in the end. I see your concerns, but I just dont think it is as bad as imagined here by some people. If this is done right (CoH and ports being very mana hungry, port locations are rare and sometimes you arrive and are directly attacked) it is a good addtion to the game.