Kilsin said:In One Word - Describe your thoughts on Global Cooldowns for spells and abilities? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
Ok, now that youv'e got our feedback, what are the developer's opinions on them?
While these threads are cute and funny, actually knowing what VR thinks about these topics would be nice to know. I could not care less about what the playerbase thinks. I want to know what the devs think.
MauvaisOeil said:Nephele said:Undesireable.
Explanation: GCD's exist to prevent players from rapidly using many different abilities together (spamming). They're a limiter. They're necessary in systems where your abilities are just different flavors of attacks.
What I would like to see in Pantheon is that abilities are meaningful choices in terms of where and how you use them - where you don't just go into a fight mashing your favored rotation.
I'm in favor of combat requiring thought, rather than just muscle memory. So to me, GCDs are undesirable.
If I may ask, I never understood how can a GCD be undersirable, or even as I have seen on theses boards, having a strong lobby against.
There need to be something avoiding someone to trigger his 10 or 12 LAS in one keypress, wether it is GCD, recover after action (variable for every action), or a casting time.
How could something "different" be designed to limit the possibility of doing 2, 3 or 12 sword attacks in a single second, than one of the three mensionned above solutions ? (Used by different games, GCD is known for WoW, Recover exists in GW2 but it's cloudy and pretty undocumented, and casting time was used in EQ2 for every action).
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm against cooldowns all-up. I support cooldowns on abilities to prevent them from being used repeatedly over and over. But I don't like a global cooldown specifically because it puts the emphasis on the next ability - ie, the rotation.
What I want is a situation where you have 10-12 abilities on your hotbar, and use them sparingly. So rather than combat being an exercise in 2...3...4... 7... 1.. 5... 2... 3... 4, instead combat is "ok, he's stunned, so 4. Oof, I'm taking too much damage, so 7. Ack, that one is running, 9. That one's nearly dead, hit it with my finisher, 3! That one's trying to cast something, interrupt. 5!"
If you make each ability situationally useful, you should be able to prevent someone from ever wanting to trigger multiple abilities one after the other - which, in turn, means you don't really need a GCD at that point.
That's why I said GCDs are undesirable. Because they end up being a design crutch that allows you to give players more buttons to mash, at the expense of those buttons really being as meaningful and useful on their own.
Despite the spirit of 'ONE' word... I thought I'd respond.
Nephele said: "Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm against cooldowns all-up. I support cooldowns on abilities to prevent them from being used repeatedly over and over. But I don't like a global cooldown specifically because it puts the emphasis on the next ability - ie, the rotation ....
If you make each ability situationally useful, you should be able to prevent someone from ever wanting to trigger multiple abilities one after the other - which, in turn, means you don't really need a GCD at that point.
That's why I said GCDs are undesirable. Because they end up being a design crutch that allows you to give players more buttons to mash, at the expense of those buttons really being as meaningful and useful on their own."
While I do understand the point about not being able to trigger all your abilities at once, I think one of the other major reasons for the GCD is so that it limits how 'Twitch' the game is rather than decision based.
Nephele said: "What I want is a situation where you have 10-12 abilities on your hotbar, and use them sparingly. So rather than combat being an exercise in 2...3...4... 7... 1.. 5... 2... 3... 4, instead combat is "ok, he's stunned, so 4. Oof, I'm taking too much damage, so 7. Ack, that one is running, 9. That one's nearly dead, hit it with my finisher, 3! That one's trying to cast something, interrupt. 5!""
In your little example there, you are showcasing a 'reaction' type system. You use your abilities in response to a given stimulus, ie When it's the appropriate moment. This is great and I agree this is how abilities should be used. But in your example with NO GDC this means that you can always fire off your desired ability in a reflex way no matter how quickly the event happens. You don't have to make a decision on if you should use an ability at a given moment (or in a rotation) because it doesn't lock out your other abilities and so will not effect your choice for the next stimuli.
Also, with no GCD the players with insane 'twitch' skill are thus able to perform at a much higher level than players with less 'twitch' skill. Some very high reaction time players may be able to react to every single event with the correct ability even if they happen almost simultaneously, while other players will struggle to keep up and will not always be able to react to everything that is happening.
The VR Dev's have pointed out that they want to avoid making the game too 'twitch' based.
Of course, any game with real time action will have at least some Twitch requirement. So it's not as if reaction times are totally irrelevant. One of the 'knobs' they can use to tune how much 'twitch' is involved is by adjusting the GCD. If it's insanely short GCD (or none) then more twitch is involved. If it's an incredibly long GCD then reaction time is almost irrelevant. The Dev's would want to find the sweet spot where the GCD is enough of a duration to limit 'twitch', but not long enough to remove reaction time entirely.
In games like WoW, the GCD was only 1.5 sec (with some types of abilities only having 1 sec). Whereas in classic EQ spells all had a 2.5 sec GCD. In EQ, sometimes using a spell without thinking first (like just following a rotation), could mean you were locked out of reacting to a situation.
For example, the mob might start casting a heal on himself, but you're locked out for 2.5 seconds and can't use your stun to interrupt that heal. So paying attention to the targets health and making the tactical decision to NOT use an ability so you can be ready to interrupt the heal your expecting is a part of the game. In a game with no GCD you don't need to make that tactical decision since you can always react to that heal as long as your 'twitch' is good enough.
The other factor to keep in mind is how does the game control how rapidly you can output your damage. The common vernacular for this is 'damage per second' or dps. How much damage can you output over a given time. As you said, you do think that individual abilities can have a built in cooldown of their own to prevent you just rapidly using the same ability over and over. So there would be an overall limit to your damage over the course of the fight, since you couldn't fire off all your abilities over and over in rapid succession. But with no GCD you could have 'burst' situations where you can activate all your abilities at once. So for that short period of time your dps would be off the charts, and then would slowly even out over a longer fight.
And what about those situations where synergies or vulnerabilities happen? Say that your abilities do double damage when the target is stunned, so you communicate with your groupmate who can stun for 1 second and you make sure all your cooldown limited abilities are off cool down and then as he stun's the target you 'burst' all your abilities at once so all of them get the 100% bonus. But with a GCD the game can limit how many of your abilities can take advantage of the stun at any given time. Good players will still be able to plan to use their biggest damage ability for that stun, so tactical communication with your teammate is helpful. But it's not exploitable.
Since an exploitable situation like that might occur without a GCD, the Dev's would likely choose 'not' to give a class that kind of double damage when a target is stunned so it couldn't be exploited. So by not having a GCD, it prevents the Dev's from having those kinds of synergies or vulnerabilities. But if the game DOES have a GCD, it gives them more options for these kinds of things, since it can be limited. It can still let 'good' players take advantage by planning which ability to use, but it won't be crazy out of control advantage.
Now obviously you may have counter arguments for these various points, and I'm not saying that a GCD is a must and that there aren't any valid arguments against it. While you may not desire a GCD, not everyone will share that opinion. Of course players who do have the 'twitch' skill to excell in an environment without a GCD may wish it isn't used. But since VR has spoken about 'twitch' as not part of their strategy, I would assume we will see some sort of GCD.
Hopefully they will find a suitable enough duration that players will find enough freedom to still be able to react when they want too and still not feel like they are useless because their reaction times aren't like they were when they were a teen.
WoW.
Also, this please:
Ok, now that youv'e got our feedback, what are the developer's opinions on them?
@Nephele & @Goofy
I simply don't think a GCD is a dire in situations where cooldowns are meaningfull and abilities aren't meant to be rotated, but even in pantheon's actual design I'm quite sure most classes have abilities they don't want to delay, and thus that should not be usable anytime.
One example would be tresh on the direlord, it's a 6s cooldown that does bleed your target and put a 4s hot on you. Except in scenarios where your target is about to die, and even there you could make use of the HoT, there is no reason to delay it anytime. The HoT covers 60% of the attack cooldown, and except if you're starving on essence, you shouldn't delay it. But if at the same time you get abyssal strike's cooldown (High damage, High self healing ability), the the reflexion occurs :
Should I prioritize my high damage ability ?
Should I potentially waste my high self healing ability if my life is too high ?
Should I prioritize my short cooldown ability ?
If there is no kind of limit, there is no reflexion : Just use both of them at the same time. Whether is it a recovery or a GCD, there must be something limiting your possibilities and forcing you into thinking, fast if possible, what do I really need first now.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:And what about those situations where synergies or vulnerabilities happen? Say that your abilities do double damage when the target is stunned, so you communicate with your groupmate who can stun for 1 second and you make sure all your cooldown limited abilities are off cool down and then as he stun's the target you 'burst' all your abilities at once so all of them get the 100% bonus. But with a GCD the game can limit how many of your abilities can take advantage of the stun at any given time. Good players will still be able to plan to use their biggest damage ability for that stun, so tactical communication with your teammate is helpful. But it's not exploitable.
Since an exploitable situation like that might occur without a GCD, the Dev's would likely choose 'not' to give a class that kind of double damage when a target is stunned so it couldn't be exploited. So by not having a GCD, it prevents the Dev's from having those kinds of synergies or vulnerabilities. But if the game DOES have a GCD, it gives them more options for these kinds of things, since it can be limited. It can still let 'good' players take advantage by planning which ability to use, but it won't be crazy out of control advantage.
Now obviously you may have counter arguments for these various points, and I'm not saying that a GCD is a must and that there aren't any valid arguments against it. While you may not desire a GCD, not everyone will share that opinion. Of course players who do have the 'twitch' skill to excell in an environment without a GCD may wish it isn't used. But since VR has spoken about 'twitch' as not part of their strategy, I would assume we will see some sort of GCD.
Doesn't need to be a global cooldown though, I feel it might work better if each ability had a duration/animation lock instead. Instant cast abilities would skip the cast time to frontload the effect but still be animation locked for however long, so you have to be sure it's the right thing at the moment because you can't cancel out of it compared to something with a cast time that can be canceled while being cast.
Also, some shared cooldowns between certain kinds of abilities would help too. Opportunity costs.
Necessary
That being my "one word answer", I'd like to add that without GCD, everything would need to have cast times (or longer cast times than already planned), which would be lame. Don't think about the "melee with 8 attacks in one second", but think about the wizard with 6 spells in the span of 6 seconds... Things would get out of hand VERY quickly and class balance would be out of the window. Oh, a rogue can backstab for 3k... and maybe throw a potion really really fast? Well a wizard can kill a target before it even got close to them - without moving (0 skill).
I know it has been mentioned that the cast animations will be somehow tied to cast times and identifying spells/skills, but I think this is a recipe for disaster (although a very cool idea) unless the animation can be canceled easily, or if the animation is somehow interrupted, the spell/ability still goes off (assuming animation interruption wasn't intentionally tied to the spell interruption). If players find the mechanic too cumbersome... game mechanics and balance are more impartant than VFX.
Pathetic :(
For a game that is supposed to be ushering in the next era of MMO experience, it’s disappointing to know this crappy system mechanic is being considered. Especially since the Pantheon team has been championing the following quote “At Visionary Realms, we believe that the best of MMORPG design is yet to come”, and in my opinion this mechanic is not one of the best design mechanics to be introduced into a game.
I agree with what Keno Monster had to say….
Keno Monster said:Watch Kripps vid on how to do top DPS in WOW. Do we really want a game where 20% of your dps comes from anticipating when a skill comes off cooldown? That's what WOW reduced skill into. PRESS FASTER!
Please rethink this game design mechanic…
Rint
Kilsin said:In One Word - Describe your thoughts on Global Cooldowns for spells and abilities? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
Evolution
Take away what you've learned from other games and design a mechanic where the brain can not be turned off so easely and spammers are not king of Terminus.
I agree with others in that looking at countdowns or colours circling clockwise isn't all that anymore. The question might be, what is one trying to control or guide using a global mechanic?
Casting time could very much be a thing. Since it makes no sense to me, that one is able to instantaneously hit all and repeat all actions.
I see virtue in a mechanic that works in various levels of activated action points. At the start of an encounter, a player has a short variety of choice to act out; 4. As they cast these actions, they build up activity points...as they build up, it opens up new paths of higher actions/abilities (another 4?). (related to higher levels of the class?) As these paths open up, they can choose between certain lines of actions..BUT all lines can not be chosen simultaniously. The first few are still available, they are just not as strong as the lines opening up throughout the encounter. Together with the initial 4, one now has potentially 8 actions to choose from to proceed in the encounter.
So you either go Left or Right for example. The actions of the RIGHT side grey out in case of the player chosing the LEFT actionpath. At some point there might be a window of opportunity where the player can ones again chose between these paths and both lines become available for a brief period. (Well I think you catch my drift here). (beastlord in eq2 might ring a bell to some, but I wouldn't want to limit the suggestion by naming them stances)
All this with manapools in mind. Choices still need to be strategic. You don't work with cool downs per se, but the casting times and chosen paths during the encounter will form and dictate how the encounter evolves and is won or lost.
Barin999 said:
Casting time could very much be a thing. Since it makes no sense to me, that one is able to instantaneously hit all and repeat all actions.
All this with manapools in mind. Choices still need to be strategic. You don't work with cool downs per se, but the casting times and chosen paths during the encounter will form and dictate how the encounter evolves and is won or lost.
I agree that Casting Times are the way to handle this, just like in EQ. I remember literally holding my breath hoping my port spell or charm spell would activate before the mob running towards me 1-shot's me... Many times I made it, and other times I didn't... The thrill and fear of casting times made the game very unpredictable becasue other events could interfere such as casting interuptions or fizzles, or they could asssit you such as getting off a quick casting root spell (and pray it holds) while casting your long evac spell in the hopes of escaping before root breaks...
This added a huge element to gameplay...