Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

  • Guest, it's time once again for the hotly contested and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and fill out your bracket!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Once again, only you can decide!

Sithro

Molten Core Raider
1,492
193
Are they making combat at least a little bit more complex than EQ though? I'm all for slower paced combat but the idea of casting backstab ad infinitum doesn't get my juices flowing.

No idea. I hope they make melee classes more interesting.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user

Octave

Trakanon Raider
37
61
No idea. I hope they make melee classes more interesting.
That's the problem with EQ-like combat.

Spell casting should be differentiated enough from melee to give it a different feeling.

If you adopt a spellbook-like style for melee 'arts', you start remaking EQ2. This would be a mistake. Hitting the same melee attack buttons over and over isn't interesting gameplay.

Positional and more active melee combat found in survival games could potentially bridge this kind of gap but that's not what this game wants to be. Maybe take a note from survival games in a different way and have a bigger focus on consumables?

I don't know how you make an EQ-like without boring melee combat. I believe this might be the big issue here. If you try the solve the problem, it will be a different game.
 

rhinohelix

<Gold Donor>
2,860
4,662
That's the problem with EQ-like combat.

Spell casting should be differentiated enough from melee to give it a different feeling.

If you adopt a spellbook-like style for melee 'arts', you start remaking EQ2. This would be a mistake. Hitting the same melee attack buttons over and over isn't interesting gameplay.

Positional and more active melee combat found in survival games could potentially bridge this kind of gap but that's not what this game wants to be. Maybe take a note from survival games in a different way and have a bigger focus on consumables?

I don't know how you make an EQ-like without boring melee combat. I believe this might be the big issue here. If you try the solve the problem, it will be a different game.

I must be misreading your post. The only choices aren't EQ and EQ2; I guess you mean don't give Melee classes a spell book-style interface? /Shrug. Don't be stuck in the past or limit yourselves to just a single paradigm. It would be disappointing if this game were exclusively just an EQ clone. There have been a dozen great MMOs since EQ; it would be a folly if these guys didn't pick up some of those lessons in UI/World building/design and apply them to what they are building here. I am late to the thread and still learning about M&M, so maybe its part of the mission statement that it will be "Rome, just as it was at the Founding" but it seems like that would be a real waste of an opportunity for a real developer making a real game, which is something that this genre doesn't see very much anymore.
 

forehead

Trakanon Raider
193
391
I hope melee combat is slow and as “boring” as possible.

Just have useful class abilities with long cooldowns that can be used situationally. I’m really tired of playing whack a mole or min maxing a rotation.
 
  • 3Like
  • 1Worf
Reactions: 3 users

Guurn

<Bronze Donator>
5,896
30,321
I really don't need high complexity, we have fighting games and first person shooters for that, something above basic would be nice though.
 

your_mum

Trakanon Raider
263
144
think i did see some video of 1 of the devs playing some type of melee where they scribed a move like "Kick" from their spell book onto a spell bar... so i think it's a little more advanced than classic EQ but who knows how far they'll go.

i don't mind classic wow melee skills (it didnt go too overboard back then). but yea shit where you gotta rotate or do 3 abilities before 1, or respond to (like a move you do after a successful block) kind of sucks. not cookie cutter shit flashing when its ready and you just mash it (whats the point).

running around to dodge an attack where there's a giant red circle on the ground is fuken lame too.


they need to create melee abilities that can be abused creatively much like original unintended eq spell mechanics (like snare kiting)... just not sure how you do that though dont have any good examples of what i'm trying to say
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

Mur

Trakanon Raider
752
1,681
The less extraneous bullshit the better. Like Your_mum says, no lame ass ground effects, no laser light shows, no seizure inducing e-sports gimmicks. Basic positioning, learning ro read basic telegraphs, and learning a basic rotation, that might change depending on the boss/mob type.

I want auto attack, bash/slam, kick, taunt, and maybe one or two other skills and that is it for my warrior. I should only ever need to worry about the 1-5 keys & movement, and should never ever need to do any CTRL+ or ALT+ bullshit during a fight.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member
1,860
1,856
I hope melee combat is slow and as “boring” as possible.

Just have useful class abilities with long cooldowns that can be used situationally. I’m really tired of playing whack a mole or min maxing a rotation.

To be honest, EQ's biggest pure melee strength is that they're slow and boring. It's brain off mode. One or two buttons at most.

They don't need much - take for example, warrior.

Warrior on live just needed a way to snap aggro, a way to swap in proc weapons, and a way for said proc weapons to reliably proc.
They also needed a way to mitigate damage contextually at endgame.

Everything warrior had in classic -> PoP was either passive or on a long cooldown, or was via an item the warrior acquired.

If I was remaking EQ as a spiritual successor, I'd probably remove some of the RNG with weapon procs, or an ability that can instantly channel the warrior's fury and proc both of their weapons on a somewhat longer cooldown. EQ's biggest problem with warrior was their lack of tools to manage threat. The class was otherwise one of the strongest due to their passive or long cooldown abilities otherwise, and saw many players as a result.

I trust in Shawn & co to find the right balance there - they've found a lot of the other balances when taking the best of modern games and porting them back to the formula that made EQ work, and I expect this will be no different.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions: 2 users

Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
12,581
19,317
Well it should be more up to others to manage their own threat I think while giving them some dangerous all out capabilities

Warrior being able to hold threat no matter what anyone else does is another kind of face roll
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

Carthage

Golden Knight of the Realm
4
0
They could tie threat into other abilities to make it less obvious face roll and more engaging.
 

Ikkan

Molten Core Raider
261
405
I personally would love a really basic combat system. The older I get, the more my idea of a good MMO is "1998 AOL chat room with dragons".
 
  • 3Solidarity
  • 3Like
Reactions: 5 users

ili

Blackwing Lair Raider
517
193
I personally would love a really basic combat system. The older I get, the more my idea of a good MMO is "1998 AOL chat room with dragons".
And the question becomes how you get those people, who are already playing a game, EQ TLPs, P99s, etc., to leave their established graphical chat rooms with dragons for another. Seems like high-risk endeavor, when those people aren't playing for the game itself but mainly just to hang out and chat.
 

YttriumF

The Karenist Karen
<Silver Donator>
289
-840
The less extraneous bullshit the better. Like Your_mum says, no lame ass ground effects, no laser light shows, no seizure inducing e-sports gimmicks. Basic positioning, learning ro read basic telegraphs, and learning a basic rotation, that might change depending on the boss/mob type.

I want auto attack, bash/slam, kick, taunt, and maybe one or two other skills and that is it for my warrior. I should only ever need to worry about the 1-5 keys & movement, and should never ever need to do any CTRL+ or ALT+ bullshit during a fight.

Strongly Agree.

Looking forward to playing something that's unique, while at the same time not ashamed to showoff it's close relationship with late 90's early 2000's mmo's. MnM also has a great community built up around it too.
 
  • 6Like
Reactions: 5 users

Carthage

Golden Knight of the Realm
4
0
Complexity can come in other means, through ability interactions for instance like in a MOBA (limited ability set). simple to grasp but deep enough for endless possibilities.
 

Lunis

Blackwing Lair Raider
2,247
1,470
You don't have to have a set rotation but casting the same spell over and over just isn't interesting, to me at least. Having 8-9 abilities, where 4 of them are your core that you use every pull and the other 4 are situational. That's where an MMO like this should land on ability usage imo. More complex than EQ but slightly less complex than classic WoW, mages notwithstanding.
 

ili

Blackwing Lair Raider
517
193
My rough thoughts on melee are. Melee classes should not have an auto attack. No class should. Spell casters have to click a button to make an attack so should melee classes. If you want to swing your sword, kick, punch, bash, whatever okay, click a hot key just like a magic user has to do. There should be a rock, paper, scissor game for melee, as there is with magic users and magic resistance. Melee attacks become more effective, more damage, more threat, for hitting the exposed hotspot area, like how it works in a real-life fight. Roughly, if the mob turns red you use an upper attack, if it turns blue you use a lower attack, something along those lines, these events are random so someone just can't just macro a tank box and not have to pay attention to it. It doesn't have to be super fancy, complicated, flashy, just basic. I know something like this pisses off the "watch the game auto play while we chat in a graphical chat room with dragons ", Can't please everyone.
Something along the lines of how gathering works in rust, there are hotspots you need to hit for maximum effectiveness.
Also hitting a mob's hotspot could also increase, hit, stun, stagger, and crit chance for melee.
A system like this could also be used to make pure melee class more effective and less boring to solo with, when you are waiting for a group or your friends to log on to play with. So, that the warrior, or other pure melee, does not just get benched when you are without a group.
 
Last edited:
  • 1Barf
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 users