Why, exactly? Can you explain what you want in a bard (or if you have already, point me to where)? Just curious...Big W Powah! said:
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VG Bard is fucking WIN. I"d love to see that and Bloodmage copied or something done very similar. I loved those two classes.Ninajrr said:
Zehnpai
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Seconded. The instances, the few that there were, were -really- well put together. Barrow Downs has got to be one of my favorite dungeons in any game ever. It"s just a shame it was encased in an otherwise lackluster game. How some quests would take you to special instances of normal open world places was fucking tits as well (Weathertop, etc...).Grave said:
Barrow Downs makes me pissed off that the WoW devs went, "HEY PEOPLE LIKE SM, LET"S MAKE SM TIMES 100!" without realizing the main reason it was so popular was the ridiculously good loot:time invested ratio compared to every other fucking dungeon at the time.
ToeMissile
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I never played a Bard, but BMG was my main, and by far my favorite class I"ve played in any RPG/class based game. Definitely one of the things Vanguard did right.Vatoreus said:
Caliane
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Ever play an fps with melee abilites? was getting kited really an issue?Draegan said:
Never mind speed bursts, etc that could be added.
And if casters can move while casting, casters wouldn"t NEED a ridiculous amount of snares to keep melee off of them so they can cast. Also, when you get rid of pushback same thing.
Aren"t those among the biggest complaints in pvp in mmos? Ridiculous amounts of cc?
Casting in standard mmos is currently a huge self imposed CC, and because of it, they are given CC of their own they can dish out to others so they don"t just die instantly all the time.
Big_w_powah
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EQ1.Ninajrr said:
Evolve it a bit to include some things from VG.
I love the adaptability of the EQ1 bard--whatever needed doing outside of healing--I could pass doing. When adeventuring solo, I have tools to move around, kill things when needed. I could kite or toe to toe, I was an unmatched proc god--Nobody procced more than I did, not even clerics. And my god, I felt like a pied piper, I could charm and play games with charm all goddamned day.
No, I don"t want the overpowered AE kiting. Hell, not even the overpowered swarm kiting. Some things that need to be taken from from EQ though: The Crescendo Line (30 second buff ending in a big group heal/mana boost, 2 min reuse), the funeral dirge line (big debuff that makes mob take more damage, then at the end of the debuff is a big nuke), the swarm pets, and cacophony (big, cast and forget dot on a decently long timer), ability variety, and most importantly the CC aspects.
Things that need to come from the VG side: The song system. The ability to make sustained and burn songs (an extension of the song system)..having secondary ability to the song system. I.E. the melee attacks. I believe the bard should definately be a chain type class--so they got that right here.
I don"t like how frail VG made their bards though. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to take a decent beating in EQ--By nature of the job it just needs it.
Give me those two, and I"ll be happy. Be a motherfucker to balance--but it could be done. Real bards don"t want a shit ton of DPS..They wanna walk into a group and double its effectiveness, while having -some- options outside of a group. We want versatility.
I played VG. I played a Druid. It made kiting so easy and it was retarded. It was fun for sure, but I felt like I was cheesing the game at the same time.Vatoreus said:
I"m not saying moving while casting is bad. I"m just saying it could bring about balance issues when applied to a DIKU-Fantasy MMOG. If you can balance around it go for it.Caliane said:
I think that was more a testament to the amount of snares and roots druids had more than you were able to continue moving a few steps while your casts went off. I played a sorc and I"ll definitely admit, kiting was just plain easy in that game, but I really don"t think it was the ability to move a little that made it that way.
I just think it allows for cheesing certain things, but I"m looking at it by putting the movement-casting in a system that exists today that doesn"t have it. It might work in a system that was built around that ability.Vatoreus said:
Zehnpai
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I"d go with entirely instant casts for 99% of combat abilities minus any that you want channeled. Personally I enjoy instant cast spells more. You"re already pretty much relegated to use only them in pvp as well. Much more conducive to the influx of movement orientated fights as well. When I"m playing my rogue I don"t find myself thinking, "Gee...sinister strike would be a alot more fun if it had a 3 second cast time on it!"
What about spells with cast times that when they get interupted it casts the spell anyway but a % of it"s power. No pushbacks at all. So if you begin casting a spell and you get hit at 50% cast time, there is a flat 50% reduction in effect.
Caliane
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This goes back to my statedment of healing in Teamfortress 2 is fun.Zehn - Vhex said:
Imagine healing in a mmo, especially in a pvp enviroment, where you had a instant cast, channeled spell that you had to stay in 10ft of your target, and it can be channeled while on the move.
Zehnpai
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If you want it to be particular to that spells mechanic, sure why not. I actually suggested that as a deep holy paladin talent back when we got our shit pushed in because our cast time heals were pretty much worthless in PvP.Draegan said:
But cast times are simply...well...not really fun anymore. The longer a cast time, the more likely you are to be countered or the enemy runs out of range, or they LoS you, etc...etc...just making casting a pain in the ass.
The logical counter-argument is, "WELL THAT ADDS STRATEGERY!" but I can tell you as a Paladin who spent all of S2~S4 getting his ass handed to him because he had no instants to LoS priest burns and getting my shit pushed in every time I stopped to heal...fuck strategy.
I get that some people might like cast times though, but I"m wondering if that"s just not another relic from EQ that people are hanging onto. Like reagents and slow-regen mana and other retarded mechanics.
Yeah. It"s also fun because you have to constantly dodge shit and knowing when to drop heals on your HW/pyro/whatever to help kill something and keeping an eye for spies etc...etc...is part of the game.Caliane said:
Wouldn"t work as well in an MMO where you"d tape down the heal button and put the tank on auto for 90% of instances.
Honestly, in Zehn the MMO I"d probably remove healing altogether of sorts. Give every player base 1000 health with a 100 point Halo style overshield and call it morale or something. Health regenerates quickly outside of combat but not in combat. Morale regenerates at a semi-decent rate in combat so long as you haven"t been hit recently.
All classes would be DPS classes with one of three specific secondary roles. You"d have defensive classes who"s job it is to soak up damage (tank), support who"s job it is to lower a mobs damage capacity and offensive classes who focus on increasing the damage everybody else does to the mob and thus decrease encounter time.
"Healing" would be more fire and forget style abilities. Put a buff on your tank that reduces incoming damage by 30% up to 5000 damage absorbed, place a barrier on the field that disperses any spells cast through it for your ranged to stand behind, place a debuff on the boss that increases his miss chance, etc..etc...
There"d be no "restores 500 hit points" spells. CoH was somewhat like this and I really enjoyed that aspect of the game. Encounters would be more about "Can we survive long enough to kill it" and less about "Are we raid stacked enough to beat the enrage timer?"
Would do fucking wonders for pvp balance as well I imagine. No more, "Who should win? The healer focusing 100% oh healing himself or the DPSer focusing 100% on killing the healer" debates at least.
This would be kind of neat in a PVP-based game. Not sure I like it for PVE though.Zehn - Vhex said:
On the topic of spellcasting, I"m a fan of instant cast spells with cooldowns to balance them.
However, I do like the idea of spells that are powerful enough to require the caster to "concentrate" and I don"t want them to go away. Still, these can easily be made fun as well.
Look at Penance, the new Disc Priest heal in WoW. It"s a channeled spell that heals the first tick instantly, and then again twice more each second as you maintain it. This makes it versatile in the sense that you can just fire it off and keep moving if you need to, opting to lose those additional ticks, or maintain it if you choose. The result is a spell that feels both fun and powerful.
Something like that in damage form would be equally fun. I think the key is making the spell feel powerful enough that it makes sense that the caster needs to stop and concentrate on it.
If a spell does have a traditional cast time, I would prefer them to stay under 2 seconds, or even 1.5 or faster.
Caliane
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My first choice would be like that too.Zehn - Vhex said:
A few other thoughts.
I think an mmo needs to build for pvp and pve at the same time. I find it mind boggling that WoW penalizes someone that tries do both so much. (talent specs that do not mesh between the two) Just now allowing dual talent specs. And even then for a silly gold cost. If there is an opportunity for a game to hurt WoW, I think this would be the front to do it on the most.
Ideally, I would create all skills and abilities to function the same in pvp and pve. The most obvious issue there would be "hate", which is also a mechanic I"m not a fan of. I would like to see more intelligent scripting.
Npcs attacking healers BECUASE they are healers, like a pvp opponent would. And of course design it so those said healers don"t die instantly from any npc attack, like mmos seem to love to do nowadays. Even in a pve encounter this would be a far more engaging and dynamic scenario. And the aforementioned, healer needing to stay close to the person they are healing, would become relevant.
pvp is essential to a good mmo. This should be a given. It is inherent endless player created content. And the idea that pvers and pvpers are are mutually exclusive is silly.
And random thought.
What other genres would lend themselves to mmos?
Sci-fi- planet based. Space based.
Medieval fantasy-done.
Superhero-done.
Survival horror?
Fantasy- aka. OZ, Wonderland.
Alternate timeline-current/near future? aka redalert?
Post apocalyptic
Those are mostly obvious. Anyone have something interesting that hasn"t been done?
Sorry, only my first sentence was really directed at your quote. The rest was just my ramblings on the casting issue, which we agree on obviously.Zehn - Vhex said:
This stuff gets thrown around a lot, but it"s really not as simple as you try to make it sound. I personally feel an MMO needs to choose which one is important from the earliest stages of design and never look back. If it"s PVE, great, design for PVE and let PVP happen but don"t balance around it. If players cry about classes in PVP, either come up with a solution that will make the class more fun in all aspects of the game, or just ignore it. Do not ruin fun PVE gameplay for the sake of PVP.Caliane said:
If the game is PVP based, focus heavily on that and balance around it. Create PVE encounters that encourage PVP style gameplay and tactics and can serve as PVP practice (think the 5v5 encounter in Magister"s Terrace amplified) as well as PVE encounters that involve PVP. Warhammer is an example of a game that I feel knew what it wanted from the beginning.
This is the only way to have a solid game if you want abilities to function the same in PVE/PVP as you said.
If you truly want a game that is heavy on both, you need to create alternate rulesets for abilities and gear. WoW, for the most part, refuses to do this, and class design is constantly rocky because of it. Not only that, but they did not and will not now choose to focus on one or the other like I said above, and the result is BOTH PvE and PvP suffer.
Big_w_powah
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