Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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Meh, you can let priests do that if your roster doesnt have necromancers, wouldnt be out of place.
Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
- Thread starter gogojira_sl
- Start date
Just to toss in a grenade , I'm sure there will be folks on both sides ,( hopefully I'm not too far in the minority and will have a few with me on this ), but screw worrying about class balance when it comes to soloing.
If the game is , and should be , based on grouping and interdependence overall , who gives a shit if someone figures out that their druid can pull shit off solo that their cleric can't dream of. If much of the content requires a group anyway , if someone figures out a couple classes can do some fun shit out in the world solo that other classes can't ,don't nerf it. Let them have their fun. It hurts no one.
Trying to balance every class for solo abilities = bland , boring , homogenized classes.
If the game is , and should be , based on grouping and interdependence overall , who gives a shit if someone figures out that their druid can pull shit off solo that their cleric can't dream of. If much of the content requires a group anyway , if someone figures out a couple classes can do some fun shit out in the world solo that other classes can't ,don't nerf it. Let them have their fun. It hurts no one.
Trying to balance every class for solo abilities = bland , boring , homogenized classes.
As another innovation, let's get multiple entrances and exits to dungeons. This is an old standby for tabletop RPGs and good dungeon design, I'd like to see it in Pantheon too.
Rogosh
Lord Nagafen Raider
- 895
- 232
I agree 100%. When you try to balance everything you slowly, but surely start to give each class small things to help them solo a bit better and so on. Next thing you know ever class is healing and dealing at the same time (i.e modern day WoW). Please none of this. And PvP is hands down my favorite thing in an MMO and I personally don't care about balance in PvP either.
They were awesome, but a big part of that awesomeness came from no loot going to waste. All of it was droppable so you could sell it or twink with it later.
Servers do not need to have 10k ppl population. If you set the threshold lower you can have contested content.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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Runnyeye, Blackburrow, SolB, and more from EQ, Blackrock, Uldaman and maybe some more from WoW. It's not that new. Still a good idea though.
popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
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These were awesome dungeons not just because they were tight and twisty and had multiple entrances, but because you actually passed through them. This might be an idea for Brad if he's wanting to go with his 'have to complete a dungeon to progress' philosophy, just make it passive, not an active achievement or something. Make it such that you want your lowbie character to get to the next higher area, you'll have to go through a dungeon, and a badass guards the exit. Of course, people gonna complain that it's denying them the right to play the game, or whatever, but shrug, people are always going to complain, may as well make the thing they're complaining about be something awesome for everyone else.
On the flying thing, I'll post something similar to what I said on the EQ Next Landmark forums. I feel that because flight is usually implemented poorly that everyone assumes it has to be and clamors to remove a feature that is just plain awesome. If you don't want to be able to fly you have no soul.
The thing is, make flight cool and fun and useful. Don't make it the defacto way to bypass any content that us time consuming or annoying.
How? I don't have a fully thought out, implemented, and tested system here. I do have ideas though.
First - Different means of flight have different advantages and disadvantages:
- Animal mount (gryphon, Pegasus, roc, giant owl, whatever) - possibly can be ridden as a normal ground mount, needs a short space to take off, can fly a decent distance before needing to rest, food can speed up rest, etc.
- Mechanical mount (plane) - needs a lot of room to take off or land (runway), can fly long distance, refuel needed (gas, magic crystals, whatever), faster than most animals
- Mechanical (helicopter) - can take off or land vertically, short distances, refueling, slow
- Magical (levitation) - vertical take off/land, duration based on mana, long cast spell required to take off, maybe propulsion spell needed to be channelled to move forward.
Second - Make landing and take off part of the formula. Being able to take off and land from anywhere on anything in any circumstance is a big part of what makes flight so overpowered and game breaking elsewhere.
- Take off is heavily mount dependent. For instance a plane you need a small runway area to take off. If you smack into a tree you take damage. Your mount takes damage. If it's a big enough tree you fail to take off.
- Landing is also mount dependent. Using the same plane you need a small landing strip as well. Obviously most people will just think to crash and then heal up so crash damage needs to be appropriate to make it undesirable and it needs to work hand in hand with other systems to make it EXTREMELY undesirable to crash in the wrong place.
Third - Flying needs to be a compromise between danger and speed. You can get there faster by flying but...
- When you are flying through the air, you are visible at great distance, mobs see you and aggro from much much further away than they would on the ground. They also follow you a longer distance. You fly past a few bands of orcs, and land on a nearby hilltop. You may find yourself suddenly being assaulted by a LARGE band of orcs wanting to stab you in the face.
- There need to be encounters while in the air. Flying enemies, artillery/AA fire, primitives shooting you with bows, throwing nets etc if you get to low. Make combat in the air make sense. A Mage might lose efficiency in casting, a warrior might be able to swing his sword but do less damage and lose some kicks. Instead they might pick up a mount ability to make things more interesting (claw swipe, breath attack for an animal, guns on mechanical, etc).
- Mounts can be damaged in addition to you and if they take enough damage, crash.
Fourth - The game needs to be designed with flying in mind. That's not to say content needs to be contrived and awkward just to fit in flying. The game just needs to be aware of it.
- Based on some of what I mentioned above, areas that you don't want clean over can have dragons flying overhead, anti aircraft action on the ground, mobs that gang rape you when you land, etc.
- Rocky terrain keep planes from landing, none of the other mount types can even reach the rocky terrain due to distance limitations, landing away from the rocky terrain ends up in gang rape.
- Obvious things like force fields, lava, etc can be used where they make sense.
The point in the end is that flight should give you a way to get somewhere faster, it should let you explore, and it should be fun. It shouldn't be a 100% safe way to skip ahead, afk, escape enemies, etc.
These things do not preclude a game from having flight. It simply can't just be thrown in haphazardly to a game not designed for it. *shrug*
The thing is, make flight cool and fun and useful. Don't make it the defacto way to bypass any content that us time consuming or annoying.
How? I don't have a fully thought out, implemented, and tested system here. I do have ideas though.
First - Different means of flight have different advantages and disadvantages:
- Animal mount (gryphon, Pegasus, roc, giant owl, whatever) - possibly can be ridden as a normal ground mount, needs a short space to take off, can fly a decent distance before needing to rest, food can speed up rest, etc.
- Mechanical mount (plane) - needs a lot of room to take off or land (runway), can fly long distance, refuel needed (gas, magic crystals, whatever), faster than most animals
- Mechanical (helicopter) - can take off or land vertically, short distances, refueling, slow
- Magical (levitation) - vertical take off/land, duration based on mana, long cast spell required to take off, maybe propulsion spell needed to be channelled to move forward.
Second - Make landing and take off part of the formula. Being able to take off and land from anywhere on anything in any circumstance is a big part of what makes flight so overpowered and game breaking elsewhere.
- Take off is heavily mount dependent. For instance a plane you need a small runway area to take off. If you smack into a tree you take damage. Your mount takes damage. If it's a big enough tree you fail to take off.
- Landing is also mount dependent. Using the same plane you need a small landing strip as well. Obviously most people will just think to crash and then heal up so crash damage needs to be appropriate to make it undesirable and it needs to work hand in hand with other systems to make it EXTREMELY undesirable to crash in the wrong place.
Third - Flying needs to be a compromise between danger and speed. You can get there faster by flying but...
- When you are flying through the air, you are visible at great distance, mobs see you and aggro from much much further away than they would on the ground. They also follow you a longer distance. You fly past a few bands of orcs, and land on a nearby hilltop. You may find yourself suddenly being assaulted by a LARGE band of orcs wanting to stab you in the face.
- There need to be encounters while in the air. Flying enemies, artillery/AA fire, primitives shooting you with bows, throwing nets etc if you get to low. Make combat in the air make sense. A Mage might lose efficiency in casting, a warrior might be able to swing his sword but do less damage and lose some kicks. Instead they might pick up a mount ability to make things more interesting (claw swipe, breath attack for an animal, guns on mechanical, etc).
- Mounts can be damaged in addition to you and if they take enough damage, crash.
Fourth - The game needs to be designed with flying in mind. That's not to say content needs to be contrived and awkward just to fit in flying. The game just needs to be aware of it.
- Based on some of what I mentioned above, areas that you don't want clean over can have dragons flying overhead, anti aircraft action on the ground, mobs that gang rape you when you land, etc.
- Rocky terrain keep planes from landing, none of the other mount types can even reach the rocky terrain due to distance limitations, landing away from the rocky terrain ends up in gang rape.
- Obvious things like force fields, lava, etc can be used where they make sense.
The point in the end is that flight should give you a way to get somewhere faster, it should let you explore, and it should be fun. It shouldn't be a 100% safe way to skip ahead, afk, escape enemies, etc.
These things do not preclude a game from having flight. It simply can't just be thrown in haphazardly to a game not designed for it. *shrug*
popsicledeath
Potato del Grande
- 7,534
- 11,787
So, basically instead of avoiding a flight system that will take a lot of dev time and resources to implement at all, devote even MORE dev time and resources into it by having to add feature after feature that basically balances the last feature you added? All for what? Because flying mounts are cool and fun.
This might be prejudice of me. But I almost don't want flying mounts because I perceive the type of gamer that fights for flying mounts fighting for other bullshit that isn't at all necessary to making a game fun and rewarding, and often will just be useless fluff to attract dirty casuals. And this is coming from someone who LOVES useless fluff!
This might be prejudice of me. But I almost don't want flying mounts because I perceive the type of gamer that fights for flying mounts fighting for other bullshit that isn't at all necessary to making a game fun and rewarding, and often will just be useless fluff to attract dirty casuals. And this is coming from someone who LOVES useless fluff!
+1
I'm on board. I love PvP, and I don't care if classes are balanced, leave that for parlor games.
Edit to add-
My reasoning, I love classes that have abilities that set them apart, make them fun and unique in their own way. IMO -It's in the balancing that things get lost, I'd rather have the flavor if it meant things were unbalanced.
Drakurii
Golden Baron of the Realm
- 14,278
- 45,449
I'd like to see raid mobs that have a fairly large pool of abilities. Instead of scripted encounters the possibility of a different fight each time might exist. This week or even coming back after a wipe Boss A might throw something new and different at you. Different spells/abilities or even spawning adds or more adds. As raid leaders set up their raids it would be cool to see raid bosses that plans out an attack according to what force is attacking it.
Xaxius
Lord Nagafen Raider
- 531
- 147
Regarding leveling and progression?
There needs to be a better way. Developers need to stop making their content completely irrelevant as they build upon their game. I?ve been thinking about it quite a bit and I would love to see Brad take this game in a different direction and attempt to solve the biggest problem with the original EQ.
Start by making the racial areas your bare bones leveling progression. Make it something like 1 ? 15/20. This is where you learn the basics. Your open world mobs would be lvl 20 and scale up from there. How well you fight mobs in the world, and the dungeon for that matter, would be tied to skill acquisition/development and gear acquisition/development. This could be tied to a number of gating factors; achievement completion, maps exploration, # of mobs fought in a species, etc. Skills and Spells would progress as they could also be tied to the mobs that you fight. Crafting could be tied to acquiring various drops from dungeons to be forged together to create entry level raid equipment.
Here?s an example:
We?ll use Crushbone as the venue and you are a Wizard. As you enter the zone, mobs would be your standard lvl 20 mobs, the Orc Pawns. However, Orc Centurions are 30% tougher. They aren?t impossible in a group, but they would much more difficult than the Orc Pawns you fought at the entrance. However, the Orc Oracle and Orc Taskmasters are 100% tougher. They would all be level 20, so you could defeat them in a group of 10-15 newb-ish players or you could increase your ?skill? to fight them in a group of 5 more efficiently and effectively.
As you fight them and spend time in Crushbone your Faydwer Orc species acumen increase providing you a +dmg% modifier. You also pick up a staff in the dungeon that is an Orc Destroyer Staff, that does +30dmg to Orc magic users. Maybe your Warrior loots the Sword of Elvish Tears that does +35% dmg to Orc Melee. This ultimately culminates with your battle with Emperor Crush, who might drop a spell Faydwer Fire for your Wizard which is 30% better than your Fire Bolt spell you started into the dungeon with. Maybe killing Crush also grants you a passive ability that reduces the aggro-range of Orcs in Faydwer. Also, the weapons you gain can be reforged into Swords of Giants Slaying with combining your drops with a Giant?s Toe or something.
The beauty of the above is that you can continue to build upon it. Obviously, you can work with the complexity and determine the difficulty sweet spot but I would consider the above to be a much more interesting game. You could also have situation when skills/spells you acquire can be combined.
For instance, perhaps the new expansion Kunark is released and you are fighting in Veeshan?s Peak. Because you were raiding since day one, you defeated Vox who granted you the spell of Ice Dragon: Smashy, Smash and Nagafen who granted the spell Fire Dragon: Doom Splatter. Those two spells, combined with the key to Veeshan?s Peak, create the spell Dragon Bad Asshatery. Take it a step further and the equipment you gathered from those previous raids (the Sword of Vox Slaying and Sword of Nagafen?s Face) combine, with the help of an experienced crafter, to form the Greatsword of Dragon Pain.
To me, this seems like a more logical way to structure your game world. It seems more realistic and it provides a variety of ways to progress.
There needs to be a better way. Developers need to stop making their content completely irrelevant as they build upon their game. I?ve been thinking about it quite a bit and I would love to see Brad take this game in a different direction and attempt to solve the biggest problem with the original EQ.
Start by making the racial areas your bare bones leveling progression. Make it something like 1 ? 15/20. This is where you learn the basics. Your open world mobs would be lvl 20 and scale up from there. How well you fight mobs in the world, and the dungeon for that matter, would be tied to skill acquisition/development and gear acquisition/development. This could be tied to a number of gating factors; achievement completion, maps exploration, # of mobs fought in a species, etc. Skills and Spells would progress as they could also be tied to the mobs that you fight. Crafting could be tied to acquiring various drops from dungeons to be forged together to create entry level raid equipment.
Here?s an example:
We?ll use Crushbone as the venue and you are a Wizard. As you enter the zone, mobs would be your standard lvl 20 mobs, the Orc Pawns. However, Orc Centurions are 30% tougher. They aren?t impossible in a group, but they would much more difficult than the Orc Pawns you fought at the entrance. However, the Orc Oracle and Orc Taskmasters are 100% tougher. They would all be level 20, so you could defeat them in a group of 10-15 newb-ish players or you could increase your ?skill? to fight them in a group of 5 more efficiently and effectively.
As you fight them and spend time in Crushbone your Faydwer Orc species acumen increase providing you a +dmg% modifier. You also pick up a staff in the dungeon that is an Orc Destroyer Staff, that does +30dmg to Orc magic users. Maybe your Warrior loots the Sword of Elvish Tears that does +35% dmg to Orc Melee. This ultimately culminates with your battle with Emperor Crush, who might drop a spell Faydwer Fire for your Wizard which is 30% better than your Fire Bolt spell you started into the dungeon with. Maybe killing Crush also grants you a passive ability that reduces the aggro-range of Orcs in Faydwer. Also, the weapons you gain can be reforged into Swords of Giants Slaying with combining your drops with a Giant?s Toe or something.
The beauty of the above is that you can continue to build upon it. Obviously, you can work with the complexity and determine the difficulty sweet spot but I would consider the above to be a much more interesting game. You could also have situation when skills/spells you acquire can be combined.
For instance, perhaps the new expansion Kunark is released and you are fighting in Veeshan?s Peak. Because you were raiding since day one, you defeated Vox who granted you the spell of Ice Dragon: Smashy, Smash and Nagafen who granted the spell Fire Dragon: Doom Splatter. Those two spells, combined with the key to Veeshan?s Peak, create the spell Dragon Bad Asshatery. Take it a step further and the equipment you gathered from those previous raids (the Sword of Vox Slaying and Sword of Nagafen?s Face) combine, with the help of an experienced crafter, to form the Greatsword of Dragon Pain.
To me, this seems like a more logical way to structure your game world. It seems more realistic and it provides a variety of ways to progress.