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Zaodai posted:Well, and flat out you have to consider how to even fight them. Do you just give every class things that can effectively cleave large amounts of mobs to deal with Summoners? Then you have to retweak your entire PvE setup. Or how it might be easier to just kill the summoner.
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Jul 28, 2020 22:40
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Zaodai posted:The problem is usually balance and load related, because while you can control how much a player has to fight in a dungeon or in the world, you can't control what happens when 20 summoners show up to swarm something with 10 pets a piece. Ah right, I had forgotten about the old Diablo 2 "8 zoo necros in a single game" framerate experience. I for one look forward to 250 vs 250 summoner only PvP battles, else promises have been broken. 
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Jul 28, 2020 23:29
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Vanguard Warden posted:Ah right, I had forgotten about the old Diablo 2 "8 zoo necros in a single game" framerate experience. I for one look forward to 250 vs 250 summoner only PvP battles, else promises have been broken. I mean keep in mind, that's just Summoner / Cleric. But Summoner / Summoner is probably going to double down on the ability to summon poo poo and have more poo poo to summon.
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Jul 29, 2020 03:43
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Necromancers and other multi-minion types suck in MMOs because the number of minions you get will never make up for the golden rule that you can't kill more than two or three mobs at a time. It's even worse in pvp because nobody would tackle the AI problem of keeping your pets out of area effect damage, and only in the past few years have developers given in to just making pets have a passive damage resistance to all AE damage. They're better off in diablo-likes because you get to kill lots at a time. I can think of one exception though: Animists in DAoC, where your pets are turrets that can be stacked and you can put them anywhere and forget about them.
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Jul 29, 2020 04:18
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Masterminds in City of Heroes were really cool.
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Jul 29, 2020 04:20
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For all that I appear to be making GBS threads on Summoners in MMOs, they were immediately what stood out to me when I saw the class type list. I like playing pet classes (and damage over time classes, the other impossible to balance class!), so it will be interesting to see what their plan is. I just expect that if Summoners get implemented, they're going to be either super good, super bad, or see-saw between the two on any given patch. They are exceedingly hard to balance is all I'm saying.
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Jul 29, 2020 04:22
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Kaysette posted:Masterminds in City of Heroes were really cool. Oh yeah, them too. But not all pet types were equal in the roll-over-multiple-mobs department.
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Jul 29, 2020 04:28
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SweetBro posted:"flying" is pretty much just a debug feature. Content development to support it is what would normally take up most of the time, but that's only an issue if you actually need to make content for it. It’s only a debug feature if you don’t care about how finished the terrain looks from flight. This exact thing is the reason why blizzard had to redo the old world for cataclysm. You can’t hand wave it away as “lol no clip” because that’s objectively not what it is. If everyone is stuck on the ground you get to cut some corners and make certain things not actually solid, since players can’t reach them, but now suddenly you have to do all that work because you want a couple of guys to feel special? If it’s supposed to be a pvp raid thing, you can still do that with just big monsters that the guilds can capture as a group and keep around for defending sieges. The whole thing stinks of weird grognard desires of being the king of the world and lording it over peasants. Coupled with this being the brain child of this dude paying for devs to make his vision and it’s really not hard to see how this is gonna turn out.
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Jul 29, 2020 08:07
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LITERALLY MY FETISH posted:It’s only a debug feature if you don’t care about how finished the terrain looks from flight. This exact thing is the reason why blizzard had to redo the old world for cataclysm. You can’t hand wave it away as “lol no clip” because that’s objectively not what it is. If everyone is stuck on the ground you get to cut some corners and make certain things not actually solid, since players can’t reach them, but now suddenly you have to do all that work because you want a couple of guys to feel special? If it’s supposed to be a pvp raid thing, you can still do that with just big monsters that the guilds can capture as a group and keep around for defending sieges. It's 2020 though, technology has come far enough where you won't even have "unconnected textures" in the mountains anyhow, a computer is just going to handle all that non-sense and blend it all. Making your world look pretty from more than just what a player on the ground can see is also not just for flying mounts but allows you to add a lot more verticality in the game if you wish- I mean, I don't want flying mounts as much as the next guy, but at this point I'll take an autistic vision where 80% of the ideas are actually good and a chance to fail over whatever the gently caress people think is good in MMO's right now like ESO / FF14 (because those games are genuinely top shelf poo poo) and sacrifice 30 people on flying mounts on the server. I genuinely believe this game has as much chance as any other MMO to succeed but at least they're listening, so go to the forums and argue your case on why there should be zero flying mounts because like what's the other loving option? Wait 10 more years for Pantheon to say "Actually, we've run out of money and the game isn't done" hobocrunch fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Jul 29, 2020 |
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Jul 29, 2020 10:03
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Freakazoid_ posted:Necromancers and other multi-minion types suck in MMOs because the number of minions you get will never make up for the golden rule that you can't kill more than two or three mobs at a time. It's even worse in pvp because nobody would tackle the AI problem of keeping your pets out of area effect damage, and only in the past few years have developers given in to just making pets have a passive damage resistance to all AE damage. necros in gw1 were very powerful, just because you could raise like 16 things at a time or somesuch. and the drawbacks were specifically "all the minions bunch up on your target, so an elementalist can blow them all up with 2-3 spells" and "if the necro dies, your entire team is going to get murdered instantly because skeletons are now hostile to everything" i thought that was a good implementation of it. yeah the skeletons are very powerful, but they're also dumb & dangerous.
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Jul 29, 2020 10:24
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LITERALLY MY FETISH posted:This exact thing is the reason why blizzard had to redo the old world for cataclysm. You can’t hand wave it away as “lol no clip” because that’s objectively not what it is. If everyone is stuck on the ground you get to cut some corners and make certain things not actually solid, since players can’t reach them, but now suddenly you have to do all that work because you want a couple of guys to feel special? This has been my thought as well. I don't mind them having this idea and wanting to implement it, but it seems like this is a feature that could at least wait until the first expansion. They seem to have this desire to implement a bazillion ideas at launch when a lot of those ideas are pretty ancillary while also requiring a lot of work. I mean, do we really need ships and naval combat right at the start too? I get that the map is divided into two islands, but was that a really necessary design decision right off the bat?
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Jul 29, 2020 14:54
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Space Monster posted:This has been my thought as well. I don't mind them having this idea and wanting to implement it, but it seems like this is a feature that could at least wait until the first expansion. They seem to have this desire to implement a bazillion ideas at launch when a lot of those ideas are pretty ancillary while also requiring a lot of work. Well I'm sure not going to rely on zepplins for intercontinental travel. That's a good way to end up randomly teleported to the Stonetalon Mountains.
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Jul 29, 2020 16:02
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Dev blog 7/31/20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI8DDBX7hD0
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Aug 1, 2020 03:14
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LITERALLY MY FETISH posted:It’s only a debug feature if you don’t care about how finished the terrain looks from flight. This exact thing is the reason why blizzard had to redo the old world for cataclysm. You can’t hand wave it away as “lol no clip” because that’s objectively not what it is. If everyone is stuck on the ground you get to cut some corners and make certain things not actually solid, since players can’t reach them, but now suddenly you have to do all that work because you want a couple of guys to feel special? If it’s supposed to be a pvp raid thing, you can still do that with just big monsters that the guilds can capture as a group and keep around for defending sieges. Yes, everything you said is mostly correct. Which is why I added the: SweetBro posted:but that's only an issue if you actually need to make content for it. No one is going to invest time in polishing or designing content for the 5 people who fly. They're gonna get to lord over the peasants, but they'll have to look like they're playing Gorgon Online or some poo poo while they're doing it. Let's face it, this the most practical approach to a stupid problem. Which going to be likely the actual approach experienced developers are going to take when appeasing the rich kid throwing money at them.
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Aug 1, 2020 07:28
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I really hope they don't listen to Asmongold's garbage suggestions on world PvP. World's biggest carebear can't even stand it if he has to PvP for farming territory...
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Aug 2, 2020 09:23
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From what i've seen so far the designers seem to have a very clear idea of what they want to do so i think the risk of that is very low.
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Aug 2, 2020 11:47
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Killstick posted:From what i've seen so far the designers seem to have a very clear idea of what they want to do so i think the risk of that is very low. For better or for worse this game has a very strong specific vision for what it wants to be.
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Aug 2, 2020 12:21
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This game is going to be a great test case for what the opposite of publisher interference looks like.
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Aug 2, 2020 14:24
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10 years ago I would have thought this was the best poo poo ever. Now I look at it and struggle to see it having a large audience or being fun. Is it just me? Giving a small minority of individuals godlike powers (flying, dragons), and making the world this constantly shifting thing that requires vast amounts of time to properly participate in just seems like it would be exhausting for all but the groggiest of nards. EvE gets away with it because it started in a different era and took a while to evolve there. It still has a reputation for having a brick wall of a learning curve and I don’t see how this will be much different.
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Aug 3, 2020 01:53
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a neurotic ai posted:and making the world this constantly shifting thing that requires vast amounts of time to properly participate in just seems like it would be exhausting for all but the groggiest of nards. What do you really expect from this type of game though? It's like- Yes it's an MMORPG but the key really is making it fun for the casual and hardcore alike. If you feel like you have no impact on the game then it's poorly designed- which goes for the hardcore also. Though, their impact should be entirely different, it's still a goal to make it satisfying for everyone. But that's like the age old unanswered game designed question "How do we get everyone to play". It also sounds like you're a little annoyed that you know you'll never be in a role that gives you a flying mount? Neither will I? I don't care though. Assuming the game is good and fun my only goal is to terrorize everyone in PvP and be in a guild that actively fights for nodes regardless of the PvE advantages. As long as I can get a bit of "notoriety" for my self, in a sense that people know who I am (I don't even need to be good at the game) I think my goal is complete.
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Aug 3, 2020 04:16
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With how rare flying mounts are allegedly going to be its almost like they're not in the game at all, so that doesn't bother me at all.
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Aug 3, 2020 07:32
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Killstick posted:This game is going to be a great test case for what the opposite of publisher interference looks like. Actually this is basically the distillation of publisher interference to its purest form. The guy with all the money is calling the shots regardless of whether or not they have any merit beyond his own preference.
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Aug 3, 2020 07:40
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SweetBro posted:Actually this is basically the distillation of publisher interference to its purest form. The guy with all the money is calling the shots regardless of whether or not they have any merit beyond his own preference. I meant more in the sense of the vision and the money residing in the same place instead of having to constantly fight the publishers market research team over the direction of the project. Whether that vision will lead to a good game or not I leave to each ones imagination.
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Aug 3, 2020 07:47
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a neurotic ai posted:10 years ago I would have thought this was the best poo poo ever. Ya'll overthinking this whole "shifting world" poo poo. In practice there now a few decaying progress meters that fill up when players grind poo poo, and a bunch of enemy spawns, quests, static visuals, and build plots that are disabled until said progress meters are filled up. They're just building a full MMO as usual and then just adding a bunch of grindy gamefied mutually exclusive content-gates. EVE is a bad comparison because EVE has never been a game about any of its mechanical systems. EVE's actual game content has always just been a backdrop for the Player - Player interactions. Which is why the overwhelming majority of its PvE is not denoted by the playerbase not by how fun or interesting it is, but it's efficacy in generating ISK, the risk for non-consensual PvP, and barrier to entry. Nobody in EVE rats, with the end goal of ratting faster.
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Aug 3, 2020 07:54
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Killstick posted:I meant more in the sense of the vision and the money residing in the same place instead of having to constantly fight the publishers market research team over the direction of the project. Whether that vision will lead to a good game or not I leave to each ones imagination. In that sense "true" indie games are a far better example. Mostly because, just because you have a vision doesn't mean that vision is actually good. Also you're pretty mistaken if you think developers fight publisher market research teams. That's not how it works. Generally speaking publishers have a portfolio of games that they would like to have at any given time. While that portfolio is commonly impacted by market research data it is not like a there's an active dialog with the developers about it. More often than not, developers themselves bend to to squeeze into a publisher's desired portfolio space to get the initial funding. The most common time where there is an active dialog with developers about this, is when the developer is failing up to live up to their end up of the bargain. But again, this is generally not done by the market researchers (it's just not their job), but is typically done by someone around the exec level.
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Aug 3, 2020 08:03
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I'm speaking metaphorically. There has historically been conflicts of vision between publishers and developers.
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Aug 3, 2020 08:42
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SweetBro posted:Ya'll overthinking this whole "shifting world" poo poo. In practice there now a few decaying progress meters that fill up when players grind poo poo, and a bunch of enemy spawns, quests, static visuals, and build plots that are disabled until said progress meters are filled up. They're just building a full MMO as usual and then just adding a bunch of grindy gamefied mutually exclusive content-gates. I think it's going to be even worse than that. One of two things will happen over tiime IMO: A) there is a static "Optimal" node pattern for maximum world bosses, loot, dungeons, the worlds all shift towards that. B) If there's no one true static option, the worlds will eventually shift into cycling the best patterns (say you keep swapping between 2 nodes capped to summon 2 different bosses)
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Aug 3, 2020 09:09
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Stormgale posted:I think it's going to be even worse than that. You are only coming from the point of view of a PvE player. Traders that don't care about PvE and will care about the nodes utilities, and PvP players will care about destroying your castle and getting your loot. Yes, there will be "cycles" but ideally these cycles are contradicted by each play style and people form different groups based on their needs.
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Aug 3, 2020 10:04
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hobocrunch posted:You are only coming from the point of view of a PvE player. Traders that don't care about PvE and will care about the nodes utilities, and PvP players will care about destroying your castle and getting your loot. Yes, there will be "cycles" but ideally these cycles are contradicted by each play style and people form different groups based on their needs. This sounds plausible, but then I'm reminded of how WvW in Guild Wars 2 eventually just became two giant zergs rotating around the map in circles trading forts back and forth because that was better for XP and rewards than anything involving actual fights.
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Aug 3, 2020 10:25
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hobocrunch posted:You are only coming from the point of view of a PvE player. Traders that don't care about PvE and will care about the nodes utilities, and PvP players will care about destroying your castle and getting your loot. Yes, there will be "cycles" but ideally these cycles are contradicted by each play style and people form different groups based on their needs. I'm assuming the PVP players want to fight the bosses for loot, so sure they might fire over things but as we've seen in wow classic with the scarab lord, people will easily put PVP to the side for prestiege, also win trading. I think there are going to be more players who want access to better loot (including pvpers) who will fight the "burn em all down" types
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Aug 3, 2020 10:43
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hobocrunch posted:What do you really expect from this type of game though? It's like- Yes it's an MMORPG but the key really is making it fun for the casual and hardcore alike. If you feel like you have no impact on the game then it's poorly designed- which goes for the hardcore also. Though, their impact should be entirely different, it's still a goal to make it satisfying for everyone. But that's like the age old unanswered game designed question "How do we get everyone to play". It also sounds like you're a little annoyed that you know you'll never be in a role that gives you a flying mount? Neither will I? I don't care though. No that's not it. I think what's happened is that there are people who want MMORPGs to be more like a world, a second life, with the commensurate time requirements and investment, and there are folks like me who want to hop into the world for short bursts to crack some heads, socialise and explore. Fundamental tension arises between sweaty grognards who inhabit the world near full-time vs the dip in/dip out guys, and it is a conscious balance choice on the devs part to work out how much of an advantage the former should have over the latter. Virtually every hardcore raider complaint in WoW currently is complaining about blizzard favouring casuals over them (power progression outside of raids, trying to sabotage min-maxing etc). EVE, strangely, gets the balance really well because it allows me to make significant contributions to a fleet even as a relatively new/casual player, you only need to venture out into null sec. I don't see how AoC will cater to the 'casual' of the equation, even if they pull off this miracle of development. Either they let the streamer overlords essentially shape and control the world as they choose, in which case it is a sweatfest, or they implement some sort of 'catch-up' or casual empowerment mechanic to bridge the gap, in which case the grogs will get mad. a neurotic ai fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 11:49
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I can’t see where you got the perspective that WoW’s hardcore raiding community complains catch-up mechanics. Most of the complaints in BFA were due to lack of catch-up mechanic which Blizzard eventually releases once subscription numbers/playtime drops.. Can’t switch to your Fire Mage unless you do the time gated grind for a month to get Lucid Dreaming 3. In Shadowlands the complaint from hardcore raiding is that you’re forced to pick one covenant which provides strong spells and bonuses and if you switch or want to go back you’re going to get boned by a large grind. Hy_C fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 14:44
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a neurotic ai posted:Either they let the streamer overlords essentially shape and control the world as they choose, in which case it is a sweatfest, or they implement some sort of 'catch-up' or casual empowerment mechanic to bridge the gap, in which case the grogs will get mad. Okay I get what you're trying to get at, like the whole "a frigate in EVE can still tackle a battleship and be useful" kind of gameplay. Yeah well, WoW is an incredibly lovely game (these days) made by people who stopped caring about the overall feel of it and care more about money. With the exception of low level players, any MMO that does things correctly should be keeping the gap between the grognards and the casuals relatively small. The further you increase the gap the less fun it is for the majority of your playerbase. Even for me, if that gap is too big I won't like the game either but then I don't think anyone will. How they fix it is really the key, you just can't be giving people free items every 2 months to catch them up- It completely defeats the purpose of an MMO (And all the other poo poo WoW does.) Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Steven answered somewhere (Maybe Summit1g's interview) that the max difference between a geared player and a casual will be 50%. That's pretty drat good honestly, if you can 2v1 the best player on the server as some lovely geared idiots, I think you're useful. Vanguard Warden posted:This sounds plausible, but then I'm reminded of how WvW in Guild Wars 2 eventually just became two giant zergs rotating around the map in circles trading forts back and forth because that was better for XP and rewards than anything involving actual fights. Stormgale posted:I'm assuming the PVP players want to fight the bosses for loot, so sure they might fire over things but as we've seen in wow classic with the scarab lord, people will easily put PVP to the side for prestiege, also win trading. I think there are going to be more players who want access to better loot (including pvpers) who will fight the "burn em all down" types I'm not saying they don't have their work cut out for them in balancing the wants / needs for having different Metropolis, but that's Intrepid's entire goal. If they fail and everyone wants to have the same Metropolis or rotate between say 8 of them then they've really hosed up. Time will tell, but that's at least the plan. hobocrunch fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 14:59
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Hy_C posted:In Shadowlands the complaint from hardcore raiding is that you’re forced to pick one covenant which provides strong spells and bonuses and if you switch or want to go back you’re going to get boned by a large grind. Even those complaints are more from the Mythic+ community (of which there is obviously some overlap). Covenants are never going to work the way they want them, because they want them to be a flavorful player choice you pick because you like their setup... that then adds powerful combat and utility buttons based on your class and specialization, that like everything else will be randomly buffed and nerfed. Their solution for people bitching about having to constantly swap covenants and re-grind to be optimal is to make the penalties more and more punishing, as if that somehow solves the problem. Ion Hazzikostas is not good at his job.
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Aug 3, 2020 15:43
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"if we put a huge grind between a huge gulf in power, nobody will bother with it so it can't become a balance issue" -MMO devs, ca. 1995 hey, it worked for EVE titans 
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Aug 3, 2020 15:49
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Also I really think "Nodes are going to be refreshed by players fighting" really overstates how much players really do like to get their stuff. See fishing pacts in Archeage, or what I understand is a general tendency for eve power blocs to stagnate (I am happy to be told i'm wrong, I only read outside stuff on eve). People will fight if there is a benefit to them, and i'm not sure looting coffers is always going to be that, when it might be more beneficial to just get stuff, or hit caravans. I think stuff like the rare mounts is dumb but fine, they can be big powerplays that high guilds can dick over. the big thing is makign sure all the people like me, who love doing random crafting stuff and filling the economy so people good at the game can murder me, feel like they can get something to.
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Aug 3, 2020 15:50
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Hy_C posted:I can’t see where you got the perspective that WoW’s hardcore raiding community complains catch-up mechanics. Most of the complaints in BFA were due to lack of catch-up mechanic which Blizzard eventually releases once subscription numbers/playtime drops.. Can’t switch to your Fire Mage unless you do the time gated grind for a month to get Lucid Dreaming 3. All of the grind exists to give casual players something to do. Grogs complain there is too much busywork so they can’t raidlog, they have to do said busywork because it offers meaningful power upgrades. They want that content removed or made redundant. I should rephrase that I don’t mean catchup mechanics in terms of getting alts up to speed, I mean catchup mechanics that keep casual players and hardcore players closer in terms of absolute numerical power, despite the vast chasm of effort between them.
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Aug 3, 2020 16:15
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a neurotic ai posted:All of the grind exists to give casual players something to do. Grogs complain there is too much busywork so they can’t raidlog, they have to do said busywork because it offers meaningful power upgrades. They want that content removed or made redundant. I get what you're expressing. An end game character's power needs to be a properly scaled logarithm of reward vs effort so you can put in more effort to get a little more advantage but not so much so that people who don't play constantly feel useless.
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Aug 3, 2020 18:50
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a neurotic ai posted:All of the grind exists to give casual players something to do. Grogs complain there is too much busywork so they can’t raidlog, they have to do said busywork because it offers meaningful power upgrades. They want that content removed or made redundant. That’s the thing, raid logging means that there is a essentially soft cap of progression by which casual players can catch up to the ground floor of the raiding scene and jump in.
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Aug 3, 2020 21:43
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Hy_C posted:That’s the thing, raid logging means that there is a essentially soft cap of progression by which casual players can catch up to the ground floor of the raiding scene and jump in. The error you’re making there is assuming that casual players want to raid. They don’t. There is quite a long list of reasons why too. ‘Raid logging’ is bad for that game. What a healthy chunk of players want us to be able to log in for an hour or two a night (but not on a schedule), do a couple activities, get some loot. WQs, emissaries, mythic+ are all things that seem basically designed with that in my mind. To make those things desirable to do they have to reward meaningful power progression, if they reward meaningful power progression, then more serious players feel compelled to do them. I’m not clairvoyant, but my suspicion is that if AoC is unable to cater to that kind of player (currently it seems like it isn’t), it will die as it does not have the resources to sustain a feature set that is roughly 1.5x-2x as broad as most other MMOs.
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Aug 4, 2020 01:45
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