Ithaca said:I hear you SoWplz and I agree with you. I admire your calmness :)
Pre Alpha is time to discuss design! so even thought I trust Joppa and the team, I want to share my opinion. I hope Joppa and VR got a ton of feedback from Pre-Alpha because banners feel wrong. Let's read together more about those banners’ abilities:
On top of that, warriors can have 4 active banners later in the game simultaneously. Does this make sense to you? It seems strong, but also cumbersome because basically, it is so strong, why would you not have all 4 banners placed at all times? Does it sound fun to have to place 4 banners all the time? Why would a warrior not be using their maximum number of banners?
Why banners are doing all those difference things...I do not remember any abilities in any game doing all those difference things... maybe some epic abilities could be complex and have many different effects. but they would have long cooldown or a high cost of resources which is the opposite of those banners that are designed to be used for each encounter. That is weird.
Either limit the number of banners being active or redesign them...
Perhaps the placement of banners could influence the warriors Resilience? A resource that the warrior wants to keep as high as possible. Perhaps this could give a counterweight to the benefits of the banners? A decrease over time of Resilience or a slower increase of Resilience?
Also, imagine a group with 2 warriors or a raid with 3-4 warriors. If there is no off tanking required, you'ld have possibly 16 flags up near the boss? Does that still make sense? Or is it by allowing one Warrior to place 4 banners, that the dev's indirectly Exclude the option of having multiple warriors in one group or in raid encounters (that doesn't require off tanking)? That would seem a strong decision designwise.
As a fan of bards, I can't wait to get my hands on one in Pantheon.
The hint that bards might be able to wear plate got me somewhat by surprise.
I like how some folks suggest that bards will have Stamina as their power source. In that way, it would make sense.
It does make that those bards or the bard class in general is not designed to be as Agile /flexibel during combat as other scouts.
An enchanter (CC) is going in cloth and they'll have to manage. While a bard is able to go full plate...how will this incombat difference play out.
Does that mean the bard would have to be much more close combat to have their CC impact on mobs? Or does it hint towards a more stationary playstyle of the bard compared to other scouts?
At least it suggests that bards will need the mitigation more then the Enchanter as a scout CC. So where are the attacks coming from? Are the bards oriented towards charming mobs and is the duration of those charms so short that they have a higher risk of getting aggro when the charm wears off or breaks? Is that why the plate is for? Or is it because the range of the bards' spells (if I may call them like that) is short and the bards need to position themselves much closer to the tank in order to act their part as CC? Are we looking at hate feeders more then Mezzing? Is the bard going to 'drag'/direct loose mobs away from priests and dps and bring them towards the tank. This also could explain the necessity of plate armor.
So many questions, nice and juicy hint there dev's. Thanks !
Like others have mentioned, hopefully we can limit banners. Just the same as pets and other excess on the screen. I am reminded of that infamous pet thread a few years back where everyone was up in arms and Brad ended up backtracking and explaining himself in a way that soothed the situation.
It's not as simple as toggling them off. We need an easy way to see what everyone has up...but excess clutter on the screen is unwanted. A simple buff icon is preferable.
Hopefully they realize that for many people who are interested in this type of game graphical additions are not a primary concern. It seems like that has been the focus and development is being delayed because of it.
Armyguy0 said: I was thinking about the warrior banners. Having them spread around is of course going to make game play harder, especially for short classes. In EQ2 the druids had a tree that was helpful. Everyone hated it because it was hard to see around. If the banners are targetable that’s even worse. I have a couple ideas to mitigate this pain for the rest of the group. First you can make banner symbols that populate one banner so a group of warriors doesn’t create a banner forest. Secondly you could allow anyone that isn’t the warrior casting a banner to toggle it off as a don’t show spell effects option.
HAHA! this cracked me up but right on point, or at least a have an option to turn banners off from the view not necessarily all spells.
@Ithaca: In response to your two questions, first being about the skeptisism of the warrior's use of 4 banners and second being why people would like to see the Bard in Heavy armor.
1. The stream was a group of lvl 25ish players going against lvl 20ish NPCs, the banners only last about 20 seconds and there are 6 of them to choose from. add: One banner won't last through a whole encounter later levels.
a. I (personally) feel that being able to lay down 4 banners at once (at later levels) could be an incredible use of tactics and timing depending on the player's actual perception... being able to negate a group of archers, charging over to increase the CC on another group, then increasing the damage another group takes vs melee damage while simultanously increasing melee DPS... a lot of room for tactics. Add: Most of the banners that we know of now won't even be used together unless there is a specific situation calling for them. At most I see two at a time being used on a "normal" basis, and likely typically only 1 at a time.
2. In EQ1 if the bard wore anything less than heavy armor, they would get smoked due to the amount of threat they got. I could offtank (very shortly) with my bard by pulling threat from slow or using my very limited charm coupled with mez to effectively CC 3 NPCs and even tank a slowed mob without having to use AoE mez. And as a personal opinion, heavy armor always looks amazing (allowing for brilliant colors and engravings/emblems etc); and Bards need to look good :)
I hear where you are coming from @Armyguy0 - I don't expect there to be any visual effects other than the banner(s) themselves like we saw in the stream (even if that was pre-Alpha stage, I don't foresee there being much more visual effects than that (judging by game mechanics stated)
Darch said: 1. The stream was a group of lvl 25ish players going against lvl 20ish NPCs, the banners only last about 20 seconds and there are 6 of them to choose from. add: One banner won't last through a whole encounter later levels.
a. I (personally) feel that being able to lay down 4 banners at once (at later levels) could be an incredible use of tactics and timing depending on the player's actual perception... being able to negate a group of archers, charging over to increase the CC on another group, then increasing the damage another group takes vs melee damage while simultanously increasing melee DPS... a lot of room for tactics. Add: Most of the banners that we know of now won't even be used together unless there is a specific situation calling for them. At most I see two at a time being used on a "normal" basis, and likely typically only 1 at a time.
That's quite unaccurate for now : Banners "only" last about 20s but if they have no cooldown, they are basically buffs /debuffs you constantly refresh every 20s when all your major abilities are on cooldown, that's just like... Twisting from EQ1's bard. I haven't seen a cooldown on them for now.
MauvaisOeil said:Not really. According to the latest stream, banners are on a specific stance bar not accounting for ability limit.
That's right I remember them talking about that now.
MauvaisOeil said:
That's quite unaccurate for now : Banners "only" last about 20s but if they have no cooldown, they are basically buffs /debuffs you constantly refresh every 20s when all your major abilities are on cooldown, that's just like... Twisting from EQ1's bard. I haven't seen a cooldown on them for now.
If Banners have no cool down, are instant cast, and off GCD, there would be no reason to not set up a marco to cast them like Bard twisting... in fact it would be almost stupid not to run a macro.
Darch said:@Ithaca: In response to your two questions, first being about the skeptisism of the warrior's use of 4 banners and second being why people would like to see the Bard in Heavy armor.
1. The stream was a group of lvl 25ish players going against lvl 20ish NPCs, the banners only last about 20 seconds and there are 6 of them to choose from. add: One banner won't last through a whole encounter later levels.
a. I (personally) feel that being able to lay down 4 banners at once (at later levels) could be an incredible use of tactics and timing depending on the player's actual perception... being able to negate a group of archers, charging over to increase the CC on another group, then increasing the damage another group takes vs melee damage while simultanously increasing melee DPS... a lot of room for tactics. Add: Most of the banners that we know of now won't even be used together unless there is a specific situation calling for them. At most I see two at a time being used on a "normal" basis, and likely typically only 1 at a time.2. In EQ1 if the bard wore anything less than heavy armor, they would get smoked due to the amount of threat they got. I could offtank (very shortly) with my bard by pulling threat from slow or using my very limited charm coupled with mez to effectively CC 3 NPCs and even tank a slowed mob without having to use AoE mez. And as a personal opinion, heavy armor always looks amazing (allowing for brilliant colors and engravings/emblems etc); and Bards need to look good :)
Sounds good to me. I did not expect warrior will need to place all those banners, I like the idea of a tactical leader, my preferences would be for those banners to be stronger with a longer cooldown, so they do not have to place them all the time. We will see in Alpha how it feels :)
Barin999 said:Ithaca said:I hear you SoWplz and I agree with you. I admire your calmness :)
Pre Alpha is time to discuss design! so even thought I trust Joppa and the team, I want to share my opinion. I hope Joppa and VR got a ton of feedback from Pre-Alpha because banners feel wrong. Let's read together more about those banners’ abilities:
On top of that, warriors can have 4 active banners later in the game simultaneously. Does this make sense to you? It seems strong, but also cumbersome because basically, it is so strong, why would you not have all 4 banners placed at all times? Does it sound fun to have to place 4 banners all the time? Why would a warrior not be using their maximum number of banners?
Why banners are doing all those difference things...I do not remember any abilities in any game doing all those difference things... maybe some epic abilities could be complex and have many different effects. but they would have long cooldown or a high cost of resources which is the opposite of those banners that are designed to be used for each encounter. That is weird.
Either limit the number of banners being active or redesign them...
Barin999 said:Perhaps the placement of banners could influence the warriors Resilience? A resource that the warrior wants to keep as high as possible. Perhaps this could give a counterweight to the benefits of the banners? A decrease over time of Resilience or a slower increase of Resilience?
That is what I thought, if banners affect Resilience or cost Resilience then it makes sense, warriors will need to use them wisely. If not, warriors will have to place their banners for every single encounter and that is not the best design. It feels a little cumbersome. I thought warriors already had enought responsability pulling and managing aggro.
Barin999 said:Also, imagine a group with 2 warriors or a raid with 3-4 warriors. If there is no off tanking required, you'ld have possibly 16 flags up near the boss? Does that still make sense? Or is it by allowing one Warrior to place 4 banners, that the dev's indirectly Exclude the option of having multiple warriors in one group or in raid encounters (that doesn't require off tanking)? That would seem a strong decision designwise.
My thought too. It would feel weird to me to see all those banners. If warriors are tactical leaders, don't have them spam all their banners, it needs to be somewhat realistic, let them make hard decision on what banners to use and when. I do not think we want to see 20 banners on our screen during a raid. I am favorable to let the Bards and others buffers buff the raid and groups. Buffs effects are easy on the eyes.
WarKnight said:I noticed the gnome no longer had that inner glow. Maybe reserved as a higher level quality.
I noticed that too and was really bummed! I really hope they're not removing that glow, it made them very unique. Maybe they're just in the process of tweaking the models, but I thought it looked better before than it did this time.
The whole "bard in plate" situation sort of took me by surprise actually. I never think of a bard as someone who would wear heavy plate armor. Visually, all I see is a knight with a lute in his hand. Seems strange. I've always seen bards in maybe something like mail armor or heavy leather armor of sorts. That just seems to make more sense. Especially if they plan on being a "scout" type of class. No scout would ever go out wearing heavy plate armor; just doesn't add up.
Neyos said:The whole "bard in plate" situation sort of took me by surprise actually. I never think of a bard as someone who would wear heavy plate armor. Visually, all I see is a knight with a lute in his hand. Seems strange. I've always seen bards in maybe something like mail armor or heavy leather armor of sorts. That just seems to make more sense. Especially if they plan on being a "scout" type of class. No scout would ever go out wearing heavy plate armor; just doesn't add up.
Bards that use ranged weapons I always envision as in leather/mail, Bards that use melee weapons I've always envinsioned in Plate.
One thing that stuck out to me was Cohh's character, maybe because we saw more of it than the others. While he was attacking, it looked like he would occasionally (every fourth strike, or so?) use a 2-handed animation with his sword and board. Hopefully it's just a bug. :)
Otherwise, was great to see it all and hear the thoughts of the powers that be. Can't wait for the next one!
The only issue that I have with what I saw was the "resouce" he uses to fuel his skills, the little bubbles are under his name in the party window. Personally, I would like to see a health bar that I can place down at my hotbar that comes with the icons for my resources. Right now, based on what I am seeing, my eyes have to be looking at the middle to know what is going on, then the bottom to see if my skills are up/about to be, then to the left to check my resources, then right to check my buffs..... that's a bit much I think. A health bar with my resources that I use for skill near my hotbar, keeps my eyes in two/three places. center to know what is going on, scan down to check my status, and scan right to check my buffs. That is a little be better than having to look all over the screen for information.
dayhjawk said:The only issue that I have with what I saw was the "resouce" he uses to fuel his skills, the little bubbles are under his name in the party window. Personally, I would like to see a health bar that I can place down at my hotbar that comes with the icons for my resources. Right now, based on what I am seeing, my eyes have to be looking at the middle to know what is going on, then the bottom to see if my skills are up/about to be, then to the left to check my resources, then right to check my buffs..... that's a bit much I think. A health bar with my resources that I use for skill near my hotbar, keeps my eyes in two/three places. center to know what is going on, scan down to check my status, and scan right to check my buffs. That is a little be better than having to look all over the screen for information.
You'll be happy to know that the Brad and the Devs have said more than once that they intend to give us maximum flexibility to adjust our UI as we like, moving windows around and turning various elements on and off. They've even spoke approvingly about allowing players to make custom skins for the UI.
MauvaisOeil said:That's quite unaccurate for now : Banners "only" last about 20s but if they have no cooldown, they are basically buffs /debuffs you constantly refresh every 20s when all your major abilities are on cooldown, that's just like... Twisting from EQ1's bard. I haven't seen a cooldown on them for now.
The 4 banners that Cohh had in the latest stream were all instant cast with a 30 second cooldown. Curiously, the tool tips for them don't give any mention of a duration....
Jothany said:MauvaisOeil said:That's quite unaccurate for now : Banners "only" last about 20s but if they have no cooldown, they are basically buffs /debuffs you constantly refresh every 20s when all your major abilities are on cooldown, that's just like... Twisting from EQ1's bard. I haven't seen a cooldown on them for now.
The 4 banners that Cohh had in the latest stream were all instant cast with a 30 second cooldown. Curiously, the tool tips for them don't give any mention of a duration....
We will see when it will shape, but I don't think there is much interest making them a 100% uptime out of GCD, that kinda break the idea of a "banner" and clutter the screen.
bigdogchris said:The dungeons are going to be quite large, there is going to be plenty of content. Plus this is only one dungeon. There are going to be multiple dungeons for the same level of players.
Keep telling yourself that. They'll run into the exact same problems EQ did, and ultimately they'll likely fix it in the same way that EQ did (using a form of instances to load-balance). Basically, if there are four main camps that support say 24-30 people, you simply create new instances of the same zone as needed and have players issue a command to load into them. So 8 instances support say 200 people. And so on. You could have hundreds of instances to balance out the load and handle the traffic.
And having multiple dungeons doesn't mean squat when you're likely to have *at least* 5-10K+ people on a server(and thats like small potatoes). Each and every dungeon will be packed and need to be load-balanced.
This isn't 1999, and their Bush League attitude is great... it will get an adjustment either before or after release when they get laughed out of town because people cannot access content because its all perma-dead.
Jothany said:dayhjawk said:The only issue that I have with what I saw was the "resouce" he uses to fuel his skills, the little bubbles are under his name in the party window. Personally, I would like to see a health bar that I can place down at my hotbar that comes with the icons for my resources. Right now, based on what I am seeing, my eyes have to be looking at the middle to know what is going on, then the bottom to see if my skills are up/about to be, then to the left to check my resources, then right to check my buffs..... that's a bit much I think. A health bar with my resources that I use for skill near my hotbar, keeps my eyes in two/three places. center to know what is going on, scan down to check my status, and scan right to check my buffs. That is a little be better than having to look all over the screen for information.
You'll be happy to know that the Brad and the Devs have said more than once that they intend to give us maximum flexibility to adjust our UI as we like, moving windows around and turning various elements on and off. They've even spoke approvingly about allowing players to make custom skins for the UI.
Yes I am aware of this but we do not know if that means adding new elements to a ui, or just customizing the default. I get that we will be able to move the UI around (hopefully) so we can put things where we need. All I was saying is that looking at the UI as it is now without taking in consideration for anything else we may or may not know is coming. Right now, our eyes are all over the place.