Jobeson said: They won't have the same abilities. A wizard isn't a wizard any more than a beetle is a lamborghini.
Not sure what you mean on this one. In the context of Pantheon, all wizards will have access to the same abilities (in totality - not all wizards will actually obtain all their abilities). They also have access to the same masteries (though, again, not all wizards will obtain them all).
What seems to separate them is HOW they use those abilities, and in what situations and combinations they use them.
What do you mean by "they won't have the same abilities"?
Finn said:Jobeson said: They won't have the same abilities. A wizard isn't a wizard any more than a beetle is a lamborghini.
Not sure what you mean on this one. In the context of Pantheon, all wizards will have access to the same abilities (in totality - not all wizards will actually obtain all their abilities). They also have access to the same masteries (though, again, not all wizards will obtain them all).
What seems to separate them is HOW they use those abilities, and in what situations and combinations they use them.
What do you mean by "they won't have the same abilities"?
This is all in terms of spent mastery points spent. Mastery points will change and upgrade abilities. Yes they will have the same base spell for being a wizard, but an ability that debuffs the flame resists of a target, and an ability that debuffs the flame resists of the target while giving you a 25% bonus to fireball damage are two very different abilities.
Jobeson said:This is all in terms of spent mastery points spent. Mastery points will change and upgrade abilities. Yes they will have the same base spell for being a wizard, but an ability that debuffs the flame resists of a target, and an ability that debuffs the flame resists of the target while giving you a 25% bonus to fireball damage are two very different abilities.
Yes, but everyone has the potential to make those upgrades, right? As someone else said - a wizard is a wizard. This may be just a semantics thing, but: Same abilities, same masteries, same opportunities to earn mastery points, same ability to respec...etc.
I guess I don't quite get how you are disagreeing with "a wizard is a wizard". Player skill, competence in applying thoe abilities, understanding the best way to use mastery points, familiarity with encounter mechanics, ability to react effectively to changing situations, etc. are all things that will vary from player to player, but ultimately, the class itself will be consistent regardless of who is playing it. We don't have different kinds of wizards (as a class), we have different people playing the same class.
Again, maybe I'm just getting too bogged down in the semantics.
Finn said:same ability to respec
This is the reason for pointing out the absurdity of a wizard is a wizard. A bad wizard won't be using an acceptable minmaxed build. Leveling up as a minmaxed build would likely be a serious challenge in comparison. If respecs are in the game you are expected to respec to play a certain way for dps, healing, survival, etc. Congrats on hitting the minimum point count, go respec to minmax your character. Now perhaps masteries will not be all that powerful, but they list pretty high numbers required in order to master them. How can you suddenly double your damage? Go visit the respec geni and use the FOTM build created after the last patch cycle. Be sure to use your new found superpowers to farm more masteries quickly.
Jobeson said:Finn said:same ability to respec
This is the reason for pointing out the absurdity of a wizard is a wizard. A bad wizard won't be using an acceptable minmaxed build. Leveling up as a minmaxed build would likely be a serious challenge in comparison. If respecs are in the game you are expected to respec to play a certain way for dps, healing, survival, etc. Congrats on hitting the minimum point count, go respec to minmax your character. Now perhaps masteries will not be all that powerful, but they list pretty high numbers required in order to master them. How can you suddenly double your damage? Go visit the respec geni and use the FOTM build created after the last patch cycle. Be sure to use your new found superpowers to farm more masteries quickly.
Lol, I think we are mixing topics here - your feelings on respeccing vs wizards as a class vs wizards as a player.
Ability to respec is a hotly debated topic, I know. I'll just leave that alone for now.
When it comes to wizards as a "class" vs wizards as the person playing them, I think we are saying the same thing just in different ways. In regards to the CLASS itself, a wizard is a wizard is a wizard. Same for any other class in Pantheon.
When it comes to the PLAYER behind the class - I think we agree that there will be HUGE differences in how people play or build their class. As I mentioned before, since everyone will ultimately have the same access to getting the same masteries, it will ultimately come down to how well you use them, and how well you adjust to different scenarios with your LAS.
I find it HIGHLY unlikely that there will be "one build to rule them all" in Pantheon - there are just too many different factors. What will make a great player stand out is being able to adjust and react quicly, track with LAS will work best in a given situation, etc. Yeah, we can respec, but that will be of limited use if the PLAYER doesn't understand WHY they are respeccing.
Jobeson said:This is the reason for pointing out the absurdity of a wizard is a wizard. A bad wizard won't be using an acceptable minmaxed build. Leveling up as a minmaxed build would likely be a serious challenge in comparison. If respecs are in the game you are expected to respec to play a certain way for dps, healing, survival, etc. Congrats on hitting the minimum point count, go respec to minmax your character. Now perhaps masteries will not be all that powerful, but they list pretty high numbers required in order to master them. How can you suddenly double your damage? Go visit the respec geni and use the FOTM build created after the last patch cycle. Be sure to use your new found superpowers to farm more masteries quickly.
Still not seeing the absurdity. And we still have zero idea how restrictive mastery resets are, both in terms of cost and possible limits.
Regardless, the notion that people will be changing masteries often is kind of eye raising to me. I'd bet the vast majority of players put their points into abilities that focus on their classes core role first with maybe a utility or two getting a few points in there. A rogue putting most their points into CC in hopes they can fill groups that cannot find a real support class would be silly.
"Specs" is a bit misleading as a term for Pantheon and goes against the class/role design of this game and the emphasis on the "Quaternity." I don't see where people will be changing masteries "to play a certain way for dps, healing, survival, etc" when doing so would just be making themselves both a poor version of some other role AND a generally lesser version of their own primary role.
I never even mentioned a respec option but that is what everyone immediately went to, showing what a devisive topic it is.
That is why I am suggesting having a seperate raid group spec. Keep the decisions meaningful as you level in terms of your group role and soloing capabilities (which combine for %90+ of most people's game experience). If you make a healing focused Paladin because you spend most of your time with your Ranger BF/GF, you shouldn't be excluded from raiding because you chose to have fun, nor should you be excluded from having fun by having to minmax from your first point of mastery because you want to raid later on. The solution in the past to this problem was allowing for respecs, which make the game less meaningful. Having the ability to change your masteries in a Raid wouldn't have a huge effect on gameplay. Factor in that raiding in Pantheon will likely require grinding acclimation, climbing skill points, and possibly perception features which might alter the raid in some way. All of these things are challenging and grindy enough, so being able to switch masteries to allow for more players to raid wouldn't hurt the overall experience. Again, RL issues, network issues etc. make raiding difficult for anyone. I am all for challenge but outside influences aren't part of that challenge. Having to read forums from lvl 1 to make sure you're making your character right aren't real challenges either. If you just want to make the game harder, play with your keyboard upside down and your monitor 20 feet away from you.
Finn said:Yeah, we can respec, but that will be of limited use if the PLAYER doesn't understand WHY they are respeccing.
Copy paste had never required understanding.
Gintoki88 said:I've always thought of raids as the final test, like here try to cordinate with multiple groups showing all the work you've put into growing your class.
Never liked the idea of "Play 50 levels this way then throw it all away and play this other way now"
Same here, the more I talk about this the more I think it boils down to PC vs Player mentality. I love table top games because you focus on the character. I loved EQ because it focused on the character. New MMOs are all single player stories with max level gear farming for the players. Every single one of them plays out the same way, they all use the same system for gear and the same system for soft resetting your character, some even let you swap your race for the advantage.
People pretend doing the same thing as every other MMO on the market will somehow be different this time. Mechanics that put the focus on the player will still do that. Mechanics that put the focus on max level will still do that. I fear it may end up jokingly called a Grindy WoW.
@Jobeson
Sure, copy and pasting doesn't require understanding...but using what you copy/pasted most effectively does.
Again, based on what we have seen and been told, encounters in Pantheon will be very situational, depending on dispositions, environment, group makeup, etc.
You seem to keep ducking around this fact and assume that everyone will just be able to pop on the FOTM build in their masteries and LAS and play optimally.
You don't even see that in WoW - plenty of people copy builds and still perform like **** - why would you think that would happen in Pantheon, which has far more fluid dynamics?
@Finn Honestly, I really like this new tangent but think it should be its own thread.
I think you are overestimating the difficulty the LAS and dispositions will bring. Granted I could be unerestimating it myself since we only have one example. I can't imagine the game would be all that difficult. I imagine it will be more of a cover your bases mentality. This will make fights reactive and not boring, which is a great design, but I don't think it will be the group reorganizes spells after every encounter fight because they specifically said that wouldn't be the case.
There may be dispositions to severely punish only fire damage so your fire wizard is burning other creatures down then only doing mana regen attacks against the mob that counters fire. It will only be a one mob in one encounter with that particular counter. Their main spec will still be the same. When a piercing resist mob comes up the ranger may go in and start meleeing instead of staying ranged if there is only a pierce resist creature alive. On raids you may swap from boss to adds because you are surprise countered on the bosses disposition. It will require people to pay attention react. Which is a great design overall.
With this said, there may be a few dispositions that combine to create wildly powerful encounters. So far they have been in the target name so I imagine we will be able to tell. Puller says, "next encounter ignores threat to go after wizards, does bonus melee damage, and is immune to stuns/snares. So just invis and hide until it is dead mr wizard."
In short, you won't need everyone swapping an ability to a stun, you will need one person in the party to have stuns incase they are needed and you will need someone paying attention so they don't accidentally get people killed.
As for environments, yes a fire zone or an underwater zone would hopefully be bad for a fire wizards damage. This will not matter for three reasons, someone that minmaxes through respecs once will respec twice if there is something like a raid that is a known hard counter to their spec. Two if your damage type is ideal in 20% of the game and countered in 20% of the game as most will likely be then you simply avoid the few places that counter you and spend additional time in the place you are overpowered. Three, they farm masteries absurdly faster in the zone where they do bonus damage to quickly shoot up into new unlocks. Do you think paladins won't spend extra time in undead zones? Players will avoid zones that are a strong counter against them.
Edit: A bad player can stay bad, but a bad player is usually still better off with the high damage spec? (obvious counter to myself / expemption to the rule being pets playing better than a bad player trying to DPS) You act as if they get the spec in a total vacuum and have to figure it all out.
Jobeson said: You can unlock every mastery in the game. If you build a super defensive tank and realize you went too far into defense you spend future masteries on an aoe /threat generation. Eventually you have both. Then you look over and regret not having the banner for a melee group so you work on unlocking that. You don't restart, you just keep progressing.
This is what I'd want - respec would make sense if we weren't able to master everything, but in the case when we can? Just keep playing. The only thing that I need is the ability to see all mastery tiers from the beginning and make smart decision about the order I think is best for my playstyle and needs.
I'd rather have attribute respec - I still don't know how much str I should dump on my wizz
Hegenox said:Jobeson said: You can unlock every mastery in the game. If you build a super defensive tank and realize you went too far into defense you spend future masteries on an aoe /threat generation. Eventually you have both. Then you look over and regret not having the banner for a melee group so you work on unlocking that. You don't restart, you just keep progressing.This is what I'd want - respec would make sense if we weren't able to master everything, but in the case when we can? Just keep playing. The only thing that I need is the ability to see all mastery tiers from the beginning and make smart decision about the order I think is best for my playstyle and needs.
I'd rather have attribute respec - I still don't know how much str I should dump on my wizz
Yeah, I think VR built a great system then undercut their own idea. Access to respecs is just not enough for people. Give them an inch...
Barring class / ability overhauls I don't think respecs should be a thing, (Fully master a skill that is then nerfed into the ground, I mean "balanced," should refund points to buy it back, that is it.)
Wait, there ARE specs?
I thought that "spec" was just "what abilities you choose to slot", where you could presumably set them up in town or class hall/guild hall/whatever.
It's a different game, but like in FFXIV's Eureka, you could change Jobs (a feature of the game) like in the rest of the game, but ONLY when you were at the main zone settlement. So what you took into the field you were stuck with until you came back.
So in this case, if you set up your Monk for off-tanking focus with reduced DPS, you can go out and camp, dungeon, etc, but until you go back to the major city to swap abilities around, THAT is what you are. So if you're a DPS Monk in a dungeon and the tank goes down, you aren't off-tank Monk, you're still DPS Monk.
Because of this, your choices have more weight becaues you're stuck with what you took into the field until you get back. Kind of like if you go on a camping trip, you only have what you brought with you, and if you need to change that, you have to go back to town/home to swap things into/out of your backpack.
To me, that's a good system since it allows SOME flexibility (you aren't forever hard locked into a single thing from the moment you create your character), but the flexibility is limited based on your class (you can't swap between EVERY Job in the game like FFXI/FFXIV), no class can do everything (most have one primary role and a secondary role they can kind of slot into if needed), but you do have that off-role focus that you can lean more into when you select the abilities for your bar before you head out on an adventure.
So a "soloing" Ranger might go for more CC and stealth skills and probably more ranged/kiting skills, while a DPSing Ranger going out with a party to a camp might go more pure damage dealing, and a dungeon/raid Ranger would coordinate with the other party members to ensure it brings the right mix of CC and DD to deal with the dungeon encounters and probably "puller" abilities to help tanks in pulling enemy groups and funneling agro to the tank.
Speaking purely from a hypothetical position, and not suggesting this is even remotely what will be the case in Pantheon, I actually liked the idea of having options like in Rift. I'm not saying you need to be able to switch on the fly or have 3 or 4 options at the touch of a button, but having 2 options would be really nice. Using the point about warriors, it would be nice to have a full Tank build for when you're filling your role with your guild, but having another build for when you're running around in groups, say a damage build or a utility build, would be very welcome imo.
As someone who most likely plans to go the Ranger route (or something similar, we'll see as time goes on) I of course will want a build that pushes my damage. But some of the most fun I had during WoW was in the early days with a full Survival build, and being able to lock down multiple mobs with traps. And although certain raids found that incredibly useful, others not so much. But in groups, I had developed trapping techniques and timers that usually required 2 CC'ers to pull off. So having an alternative to a cookie-cutter pure damage build would add a little variety without ruining anything.
Renathras said:Wait, there ARE specs?
I thought that "spec" was just "what abilities you choose to slot", where you could presumably set them up in town or class hall/guild hall/whatever.
Sort of. There are mastery levels for many (all?) abilities and how one chooses to put their points or kind of like specing, the difference here being that you can eventually obtain all masteries (each skill can be maxed out) AND a role won't be able to become a different role by "specing" masteries in a certain way. For example a warrior who places all their points in more damage focused masteries (assuming there are many damage focused masteries for them) would not become a DPS role, they'd still fall short of someone whose primary class role is damage.
Other than that you can change your abilities any time you are out of combat, no need to go to town or anything so restrictive.
Eolair said:So having an alternative to a cookie-cutter pure damage build would add a little variety without ruining anything.
The idea of no respecs means choices matter, and the PC is a long path of progression and growth. VR doesn't like this idea so they made the system focus on the week/month timeframe? Pick a minmax build and focus on that playstyle for a while. If VR adopts two specs they might as well just make it free respec anywhere. Load masteries just like how you load abilities because at that point they have elminated the idea of player choices being relevant.
Keep in mind, a warrior, even a warrior that chooses all dps masteries and the perfect action set, will probably not compete with pure dps classes. So if that is your concern, respec'ing for raids and groups will not solve the problem you're concerned with. You won't be able to say to your guild leader "I'll just dps tonight" because his response will be "no thanks, we'll take another rogue."
I personally think it's very important that classes are restricted to what they are designed to do with some flex. A full dps spec tank should have a place in the world, but it won't replace a class designed for dps.
Ranarius said:You won't be able to say to your guild leader "I'll just dps tonight" because his response will be "no thanks, we'll take another rogue."
This will be the case every time. Always run with as few tanks as possible to make the fight easier. It is the standard plan everywhere. Only thing that could save this is dispositions may sometimes have you needing more tanks in one disposition and fewer in another. We will have to see if they can do that in a meaningful way.
Depending on how many options we get in abilities, you would easily see things like tanks with a minmaxed caster spec and a minmaxed physical spec for survival or a ranged/mobile/aoe threat spec and a single target melee threat spec. Max out a single LAS only then grow from there once you get enough mastery points. Multiple specs, just like respeccing, kill the idea of player growth because you simply get the reset button.
In the end players will get to have their cake and eat it, but VR doesn't need to try shoving the cake down the throats of everyone in the form of multiple specs.