Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

They were on the right track with evocation as a mana gathering tool. It just needs it"s cooldown to be drastically reduced. In PvP, finding a point between cooldowns and in the flow of combat to gather a few seconds worth of mana. It isn"t entirely risk free because you have to stop casting, its channeled and has the potential to be interrupted. It"s a step up from having to fudge your way out of combat to drink.

I also see it in the same vein as rage / energy, just with a different flavor. You have a larger "guaranteed" resource pool to use, but there are inherent risks in replenishing that pool and it is not 100% effective like Rogue energy.

I don"t know, maybe the problem is just Rogues. You can rage starve a warrior to some extent, out last / drain a caster. Rogues are the fucking Terminator.

You can replace warlock with mage in the example, it doesn"t matter, he didn"t make note of lifetap, so you assume the lock isn"t tapping, he"s just basic caster example class #7. He could have said a magic fairy fighting a pedobear and it would still work, as long as one as a finite value(mana) and the other doesn"t(energy). While we"re at it, you can replace mana by apples and energy by paladin"s tears. As long as you consider apples are finite and paladin"s tears are not.

Btw, Warhammer caster uses AP bars. Same as every other class in the game. It"s just AP for everyone, and it regens at the same speed(not taking into account class specific skills and so on). That means casters don"t run out of mana, which is tons easier to balance. The mana concept, while a staple of rpgs and mmos, is basically flawed for easy balancing. It can end up balanced, but you have to adjust it every expansion or more often, based on itemization and the fact people will go for extremes, aka infinite mana with heavy regenration items, or very finite values to boost their burst dps. Or you just end up giving everyone close to infinite mana anyway, cause it"s annoying as shit to try.

The Muze said:

T Rogues are the fucking Terminator.

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Wouldn"t it be more fun if all the classes were the fucking Terminators?

I know most people here don"t give a shit about lore anymore but the whole idea behind casters from all the old school books was that they had extremely powerful spells they memorized, they cast them, then they are done for a while, until they can rest and rememorize their spells.

While I like the conceptual idea of a energy/rune/rage-like system replacing mana, it does take a lot away from the whole idea of playing a glass cannon that is physically very weak but can unleash a series of devastating spells. Sadly class balance in WoW makes a "meteor" FF-like spell silly, and the whole spellweaving shit idea in AoC turns out to be a huge dud. WAR is ok with their AP for casters, but I dunno, my "mage" feels more or less like a ranged melee due to the fight mechanics rather than a real caster.

In raids there is something challenging about balancing your use of mana potions, gems, evocation, etc so you hit 0 mana just as the boss dies. Of course it doesn"t always work out that way, and warlocks with lifetap make it a joke, but the basic idea of a class that has a finite source of power but is compensated by greater abilities a good idea imo.

Erm, explain to me then how in this same raid rogues are out damaging these "glass cannons" on just about every fight.

Lore? I"m sorry, strict lore just doesn"t always translate well to video games not too mention that I see zero reason to base anything upon past fictional work when you are building your own IP.

We are talking about a game here, not a book.

Ngruk said:

Mana is a resource right? I look at mana management as part of the "skill" involved in playing the class. Given that Latency has to be a factor, no matter how small it is a factor, isn"t "resource management" something that could/should/needs to be part of the "skill" in playing an MMO?

Getting even the slightest bit into twitchy is a scary proposition if you need to assume that everyone is hooked up and connected and the playing field is even, cool, but that"s a HUGE assumption that I don"t think you can make right now.
A few years from now who knows.

How challenging is an endless mana pool or endless rage? Fun, maybe early on, but how friggin" sleepy does that become and how fast?

There are certainly some potentially cooler ways to implement "mana" or magic power and whether it"s an inherent or gathered resource pool, but if you are staying in the non-twitchy area it sort of makes it have to be a certain way no?

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Mana isn"t a good resource; it"s a time limit.

Used right, it"s also a pacing mechanism. Unlike rage and energy, as pointed out, it allows the user to decide how they want to pace their ability use from the get go, knowing they have so much to start and will regain so much over time. Unfortunately, that"s not really how it works most of the time right now, not in the raid environment. And if it were important to Blizzard to balance classes around that concept they wouldn"t have made SPs the powerful mana battery that they are.

Something is wrong with your balance when a core mechanic of your class is thrown out the window when you add one player to your group.

I think there"s a concept that needs to be added into this discussion on mana as a resource. Average combat time. For mana (as in WoW) to be a relevant resource to manage, then you have to actually run out of mana before the fight is over. Unfortunately, running out of mana in WoW effectively means the caster cannot play any more.

Look at cooldowns. Some are around 2 minutes, maybe 3. Some are much longer. The longer cooldowns create spikes in gameplay, because they can"t be used every fight and to be "worth it" they need to be extremely powerful. Mana can be spiky in the same way, oscillating between "effectively unlimited" for the short fight, or stopping hard and being severely limited in a long fight.


As a side node, rogues are an extreme example of a high regen low storage system. Rogues can bottom out and regen back to full several times in a short fight. There"s plenty of design room left in a system like that, without copying the feel of that exactly.

Figured I"d give this thread a bump, are you guys going to this Comic-Con this year?

Ya we have a group there. Not 100% sure what will be done at this moment due to some outside circumstances but our new AD is there doing portfolio reviews in search of new artists as well as some of our design team and our VP of Creative Development.
We will be announcing a contest that will be taking place over the next few weeks/month that I think every WoW player in the world might get fired up over though.....

Does that mean the contest will be WoW related? Seems odd.

This is almost Brad type of hype! lol

kcxiv said:

This is almost Brad type of hype! lol

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Except Curt has delivered on his past pieces of "hype" for the most part.

I still don"t have that early-Alpha invite he said he"d give me, though.

You must assemble the Shrine of the Silver Monkey.

How about those of us who are bored to death of WoW and are looking for something new and different? /wink wink

Digo said:

He"s resto running with UA lock and a shadow priest. There were a few enhancement/rogue/druid teams running though.

As for shaman in arenas, they are generally one of the less represented classes because they only work in a few specific comps and are very easy to counter/lockout.

If you"re really hoping to PvP as a shaman, these are some of the more popular teams:

2v2:
Resto Shaman / Warrior

3v3:
Resto / Warrior / Ret
Resto Druid / Warrior / Enhancement

In 5s, you could run any spec. Resto in a 2345(6) which is sham/priest/pal/war/mage(lock). The shaman can also be elemental in the 2345(6). You could also run elemental with a 4 DPS team. You can also run enhancement with a cleave team, which is pal/druid/enh/rog/war.

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You missed:

Enh/war/druid or Enh/Rogue/Druid for 3s - very strong combos.

For 5"s, you can play 3 healer war/hunter, and the melee cleave combo is pal/priest - you cannot afford a resto druid healing, you need the extra dispells to keep your melee mobile.

For those of use are used to C++ being a grading system rather then a programing language what doesNaturalMotion"s Morphemedo, and why is it a good step?

Does it make them easier to do animations or something?

kcxiv said:

This is almost Brad type of hype! lol

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Please. Let those who want to drink the koolaid, drink it in peace :-/

tad10 said:

Please. Let those who want to drink the koolaid, drink it in peace :-/

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I will be giving a good look at this game as much as the next person. I think he"s trying to hype it up alot, but he"s not up to Brad level yet, but wait until stuff gets further out more and its time to really hype the game. We will see. I hope they can do it, we dont need anymore horrible to sup par launches in MMO"s right now.