In no particular order, I'm going to go over some things I feel like modern MMOs got wrong, as well as various ideas. It truly isn't just 1 design choice that bombs an MMO, its several and they accumulate. (but you already know this.)
1. Monsters. - I HATED how in WoW and RIFT there was almost no difference in the HP or damage of a lvl 35 ogre or a lvl 35 buzzard. Once you realize this fact, you are no longer mentally stimulated and start to zone out. Mobs are just mobs. Everquest got it right at first but softened up over time. Running into a magic immune or physical damage immune mob was SCARY. The game made you think. You were PLAYING and having fun without even hitting buttons. You were MENTALLY stimulated.
It would be very cool if mobs could be completely different from mob to mob besides just the disposition system you guys are planning on. For example: a skeleton pit with very fast respawn with low hp skeletons that hit HARD but dont drop much gold/xp/loot. For some people/classes this might be FUN. Don't let design/balance get in the way of fun.
2. Items - Robe of the Lost Circle, Robes of Arugal, Flowing black silk sash, Grand Marshal's Claymore. You know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Items made by designers/developers, typed by hand into a database. Not randomly generated. I remember being SO bummed out around level 30-40 in WoW and RIFT when I realized there was no cool loot or adventure to be had. It broke my spirit especially in RIFT. I had no reason to explore anymore. Just go to the closest zone my level, and just grind. I wasn't adventuring anymore, and therefore wasn't mentally stimulated. I quit the game.
PLEASE take the time to add items to creatures throughout the world. Have a Pirate boss mob that drops a pearl that can be crafted into a ring(create player interaction), have a werewolf drop a sick +5 str +5 agi +5 stam cape in a certain zone. Get people excited to go out and ADVENTURE in the world, not just find mobs to grind.
3. Abilties - RIFT and to an extent warhammer went terribly wrong from the start in the same way wow went wrong after cata. Every ability did about the same damage, you just spammed. You weren't mentally stimulated anymore or having fun. You were just causing aches in your finger bones spamming and mashing keys. RIFT it seemed like literally every button did almost nothing, you just spammed and spammed and spammed. EVERQUEST and WoW Vanilla got it RIGHT. Abilities that you clicked LESS that felt STRONGER makes a more visceral and immersive experience that mentally stimulates you.
4. Mana - If mana never runs out, theres no such thing as mana!! Managing mana is mentally engaging.
5. Class Fantasy - Double dip on this. Forget about balance. Make every class unique and overpowered in its OWN way. Everquest got this RIGHT. in EQ when a wizard stood up and started casting. you knew it was about to go DOWN. The warrior in the party has his finger over the taunt button. The monk or bard immediately runs to pull. It felt GOOD. Later expansions and other games made all the casters spammers with full mana. They weren't mentally stimulating to play anymore. Everyone just became DPS. The games got boring, people quit, RIFT/Warhammer died.
6. Adventure - The moment you logged into WoW/Rift/Warhammer, heres your quest, go kill 10 mobs, repeat. These games got this WRONG. Everquest and UO got it RIGHT. Just spawn in a city or city gate or by a guild master. Dump some class fantasy on people. PLEASE try to make it feel like a world where it isn't just about logging in and grinding.
7. Itemization/Stats - EQ/WoW/RIFT/ETC got it WRONG and drove countless from their games. Imagine logging into WoW classic and queueing for arathi basin on your fresh 60 or blue geared little behind 60. You get DEMOLISHED. People start quitting and everyone thinks, I guess they burnt out /shrug. No, they weren't having FUN. Same with Everquest. Starting in Velious stats got so insane on raid gear that the players might as well have been playing another GAME. In PoP you could run into the planes and tank as ANY class if you had Time gear. If you had bazaar gear those players didn't even play with you. People got cleaved and the casuals hit max level and many QUIT. Its OKAY to have a carrot on a stick, not everyone SHOULD get everything. However people will raid for 5% more stats than normal players. 10 times stats of group gear ISNT NECESSARY.
8. Locked Areas - Areas requiring levitate or rogue picklock or group invis to access is OKAY. Let people adventure and have fun, it doesn't have to be about just gridning and EXP. Let the whiners whine.
9. Randomized Stats/Gear - DONT DO IT. I was LITERALLY confused on wow vanilla back in 2004 when I killed a demonbat and got green chainmail pants. that was my very first in game ticket because I thought it was a bug. You can imagine how let down I was when I found out it was just lazy design from where they were crunched on time and did blanket loot on all mobs in the game instead of making memorable items by hand. Rift got it WRONG. I don't remember a single item on that game and it made me not WANT or APPRECIATE anything. That game died. Fast
10. Respect People's Time - If I find out in town while talking to other players that a orc bandit in some far away zone drops a no drop dagger that I want, it's already a time sink and a reward just running and finding him with my friends and getting it to drop. I will remember it and get the dopamine hit when I get it. SINCE I EARNED IT. It doesn't have to be a 4 day camp of a 1% spawn chance mob with a 3% drop rate. EVERQUEST got this WRONG on MANY quests/Items.
11. Crafted Items - Why not make items wanted/good? Wow got this right in some areas and SO wrong in others. As a 14 year old even I knew the 4 spirit 4 str green pants were JUNK. However, the Lionheart Epic helm was INSANE. Why not have gear on the lowend thats wanted as well! Why not have all rings in the game come ONLY from jewelcrafters, or all belts come ONLY from leatherworkers. Why NOT??
12. Magician - Everquest started on the right path with letting mages summon armor and weapons for other players, but due to MUD creep it got left behind and left to pretty much just pet toys. It would be VERY cool if they could summon for example, 6 hr duration weapons or armor that had cool effects or procs that made you WANT to seek a magician out. This would create player interaction that is so crucial to keeping people mentally stimulated and ENTERTAINED so they dont quit the game! WoW and RIFT got this so WRONG.
13. Rogue - Everquest got this WRONG. Just another average auto attack on melee class. Why NOT have every attack made from stealth crit for x5 damage. Make every hit with a dagger cause a stacking bleed that takes 60 seconds to bleed out but stacks 50 times. Why not make it FUN??
14. Auto Attack ON - Is OKAY! I don't need to mash buttons to have fun. Mashing does NOT = fun. Mental stimulation does. Just give me good powerful buttons to click. Wow and RIFT auto attack got detuned to where it was so weak it was just a graphic basically. It made you feel like that super epic weapon you earned really was for nothing. Those games are dying/Dead. STICK TO the REWARD you EARNED being good. Keep auto attack, keep it meaningful !!
15. PLATE armor - Keep it tanky. Make it reduce 75% damage taken from melee. It's fine. It helps fantasy. Make me want to keep the mob on the tank. Keep me mentally engaged. WoW definitely got this WRONG in the last several expansions. Plate is plate in ART ONLY.
16. Casters/Clothies - EQ got this RIGHT. Make them squishy. Punish me for casting too early on the mob before aggro is situated. Keep me mentally engaged. I will subscribe.
17. DONT LISTEN to the Squeaky Wheel! - Good Job so far on keeping to your guns about limited skill sets and other design choices. SO MANY people cant describe where wow went wrong, they jsut say it sucks and they need more loot or whatever or more dps to have fun. They don't even know what makes an MMO FUN. MMOs used to be immersive for the nerdy types but got taken over by people who didn't even know what the genre was about besides minmaxing end game content. EQ and WOW both got SUCKED INTO this hole of just making raid content for whiners on the forums. YOUR SUBS COME FROM THE ENTIRE GAME. The CASUALS.
18. Limited Skill sets - WoW and RIFT got this WRONG. SO MANY casuals cant compete or perform at the high end of WoW because they can't keybind enough macros or mash keys hard enough. The screens are cluttered with just rows and rows and rows of buttons. EQ had 8 spell gems and forced you to THINK about what spells you had out. You DIDNT DARE unmemorize root or feign death for example. Your heart would skip a beat if you misclicked and unmemmed them. EQ got this RIGHT. It mentally engaged you. Casuals and older folks enjoy this, and hardcores will play the game anyways. GOOD JOB CHRIS and TEAM for being adament about this.
19. BUFFS - WOW and RIFT got this WRONG. Buffs were so weak in those games that you didn't bother to even seek them out. It killed an entire playstyle for many people. EQ had people that sat in towns and buffed for YEARS. Literally YEARS. Buffs were strong enough and lasted long enough that it caused player interaction, and mentally engaged people. BUFF THE BOYS.
20. Fast Travel - DONT DO IT. Instant boat travel of old school wow and (TLP EQ) was good enough. Don't do POK and ghost town every city in the game. It shrinks the world and confuses the playerbase because they don't know how theyre actually getting anywhere. STICK TO FOOT TRAVEL.
21. Cities/Inns - Why Not make every city relevant? Why not have the Inn in Qeynos provide a stacking buff every 5 minutes you're in there. And have different cities provide different buffs? Go explore, have fun, meet up with the boys and just talk/chat or trade wares.
22. Raid content - Wow Classic had RECORD numbers of people doing molten core and BWL, even the warcraft logs owner was surprised. PEOPLE WANT ACCESSIBLE raid content!! Sometimes I just wanna come home and chill with the boys. Not dodge fire/poop on the floor while spamming my buttons for 10 minutes straight and getting stressed out. why not just make something epic in scale with rare loot that keeps people engaged that way. So many people quit when they cant do the keyboard gymnastics or are getting too much mental stress from the game. DONT DO IT.
23. Curreny - It's ok to have gold/plat sinks in the game. Especially later on. Super inflation is bad and kills the game for new players. I had some friends just quit TBC because gems they remember being 25-50g back in the day in the AH were 500-2000gold. They don't have the time to grind that much gold and dont feel like buying from china. They got discouraged and QUIT.
24. Alternative Playstyles - You guys have mentioned this. Keep at it! Dig deep and listen to ideas and find the answers within yourselves. It doesn't have to be a rollercoaster like modern MMOs.
I will GLADLY assist on items/mob database entry and design. I understand money is tight. Toss me VPN access or a google doc link and pay me/credit me later. I want this game to succeed with all of my heart for all of our sake.
-Mattness
I agree with pretty much all of your points. The only things I would maybe say is that with 10, I think it's also okay for items to be a rare find. Maybe not a 4 day campfest but also not to where it's so common that you could travel to an area and be able to get that item in an afternoon. There's got to be a little struggle for it to be worthwhile. That's also why I loved EQ's idea of corpse runs, added real danger and therefore real relief when you got your body back. This is all open to interpretation though since everyone has different levels of what they consider to make something worthwhile.
I think VR is doing a great job so far with staying true to their vision which is creating a challenging game that will be community based while also listening to player feedback.
I agree with just about all the OP's points. I did often hate the rare drop from a rare spawn thing in EQ, since "poop socking" for days was bad for my mental health. I guess there should be some balance here. Perhaps good items don't require 4 days of camping, but epic drops require something above and beyond a group of 6 people grinding a spot for a few hours to obtain. I agree that if you are not having fun and are not mentally engaged, the game will fail. I think making all parts of the game accessible to most or all people is important. I don't want to get to max level then have to spend another 6 months gearing up just to be permitted to raid.
A bit of a read and youre kinda up there on your box I see, that being said I can really argue with any of the points.
Abou the rare drops it has been mentioned that the main issue with EQ was for example only 1 mob in the whole game dropped trhe Journey Man boots, the plan for Pantheon would be to have multiple "speed boots" drop locations and they may have different names and designs but serve the same role.
This would spread the camps for such desired items out and help with the drop rates, one of the original EQ devs was famous for reminding employees how even 3% drop rate across multiple mobs was a lot higher than it sounded on paper.
I liked alot of your points, especially #1. Some monsters should have insanely more HP, some others crazy high AC that you cant tell unless fighting. The low level that kills you. Under-cons.
I would add unique, short lived, table games to 21. something to do, when you dont know what to do or waiting for something to do
Welcome to the forums. I agree with the great bulk of what you say.
"6. Adventure - The moment you logged into WoW/Rift/Warhammer, heres your quest, go kill 10 mobs, repeat. These games got this WRONG. Everquest and UO got it RIGHT. Just spawn in a city or city gate or by a guild master. Dump some class fantasy on people. PLEASE try to make it feel like a world where it isn't just about logging in and grinding."
I agree that most of the game shouldn't be following a golden path of quests from quest hub to quest hub. Pretty much all of us agree.
I do want a significant number of quests and not just mindless slaughter of mobs by the hundreds for the experience or loot. Or for the tiny chance that sooner or later a boss will spawn. When I visit a town or village it will probably have problems. Most places are not simply happy places with no problems. How boring for a MMO player that would be - although great for the locals. So there should be quests to make the place feel real not just a backdrop as the great hero passes through. Most of us don't want another "great hero" game we want an "enjoy a living world" game. As you clearly do.
So yes - have a farmer that needs 10 wolves killed. Have a farmer that needs 10 sheep rounded up. Have two lost kids in a cave with some dangers in the way.
As long as quests aren't most of the game - as long as quests don't get yo to level-cap in a ridiculously short time - quests are a wonderful enhancement to any MMO. We should have a *lot* of them.
OP I am not assuming that you disagree with any of this. You may or you may not. I am just running with the kill 10 mobs point and pointing out that these are *good* quests if used in moderation and not as 50% of the game.
I agree with some of these, but I would say your view on many of them seems a tad off-kilter to me.
1. Monsters: A variance in mobs is heavily wanted by the development staff of PRotF, and I strongly agree that mobs should have immunities and resistances. Don't forget though, these are going to exist on computers/servers. Too intricate of a system can bog down a server's processing power. The devs definitely have this in mind, but I'd rather they didn't go TOO overboard so that the system can handle it.
2. Items: (+7 Itemization/Stats, +9 Randomized Stats/Gear) I agree that special items should exist, obviously. From my understanding the dev team is on a good path with special items that have a few mirrors from other places, so you're not killing 1 boss all the time until he drops that cool dagger. And crafting plays a big part in the gearing as well. BUT, randomized gear SHOULD exist - at least to an extent. When you fight a bandit, who's to say he didn't steal his father's +4 Str/+2 Dex Sword when he ran away from home. There's no need for a quest to describe that, you'd just stumble across a mob that has a fancy sword for a reason you can no longer ask him about. Maybe it's your lucky day and it's great for you, or maybe you're a mage and you can't even hold the thing upright properly; if that's the case, maybe you can sell it in town via the bartering system. That's the line of thought those come from, and your issues with these is largely countered by interacting with other players and trading. However, the extent this should exist, imo, is what makes sense. Like that bat you killed that dropped chainmail pants, he wasn't wearing those.. these kinds of things should come from humanoid NPCs, in contrast to animals sometimes dropping crafting materials such as sharper fangs or particularly tough pelts that can be used to make similar items.
3. Abilities: This is something I believe you and the dev team see eye to eye on. I would say that I don't 100% agree with it though. Yes, spamming buttons is bad.. most of the time. Not every class should be button spam. Retail WoWs Retribution Paladin is a fantastic bad example for this, all abilities are cooldown based and haste increases cool down rate, so they're just "press the shiny button as fast as you can" and it's not mentally engaging, it feels bad. In contrast, Retail WoWs Monk has is somewhat spammy, but the order you use the abilities matters, which at least has the potential to be good. (this is not the time or the place to talk about how WoW does a bad job with a good kit for Monks..) I strongly feel like class fantasy should have some play in it. A Warrior that is placing methodical strikes between armor plates should feel like he's attacking slowly with heavy impacting strikes, where a rogue should feel like he has a fast pace that is chipping away at the enemy's health as he causes wounds that bleed out the bigger opponent. Ultimately it is another layer of balance that the dev team faces, and while I don't completely agree with them on it I have faith they are doing what they can to make the classes fulfill their class fantasy.
4. Completely agree with you on this one. It can be frustrating to run out though.. especially when there is an intent to make mobs have a variance that may unforeseeably cause mobs to require you to use more Mana. The PRotF team WANTS "do I have enough Mana" to be a common question, but it can be tough to balance. From what I've seen they're doing a great job with this.
5. Class Fantasy: I don't think the teams needs any direction on this, they're very committed to class fantasy. I'm completely on board that each class should have a set of niches, BUT I think it should be a SET. Say Class 1 can do A, B, and C; Class 2 can do B, D, and E. At the end of the day, it feels bad to HAVE to bring a certain class to a Dungeon/Raid, and it feels just as bad to be brought (or play a class) ONLY because you can, say, pick a lock. Classes SHOULD have their own identities but an overlap in usefulness/utility is needed for balance and ultimately to enable people to play what they want instead of what the guild needs.
6. Adventure: There's no reason to hate on kill quests, they have their place. What it comes down to is the REASON you're doing them. In a D&D campaign I DM'd for, I sent my players on a kill quest to kill 2 Ankegs, but it wasn't JUST a guy asking them to kill them, he had a reason for it (The local village was infected with a plague and he, and alchemist, needed Ankege chitin to make a remedy).
7. Itemization/Stats: I mostly covered this in 2, but I would also like to say: there is a balance between scaling too fast and scaling too slow. Scale too fast, and this happens, there is a major difference in starting and end game gear that is just ridiculous. Scale too slow, it feels like your time is not being honored; 4 days for a 3% increase doesn't feel good. There will always be those who will put in the time whether it's a 1% or 10% upgrade, but as someone who IS like that.. I still want my time to matter, and I WILL burn out if I don't feel like it does.
- I feel like the importance of good balance keeps coming up, may this be a show of just how much it takes to make an MMO.
8. Locked Areas: Mostly, yes. It adds to the immersion and is a fantastic addition to any MMO. However, having a certain class shouldn't make or break your ability to reach an area. The best approach to these, imo, is to supplement missing classes with crafting. We don't have anyone that can pick locks, but we do have this explosive that can break it - be warned though - it's loud and may attract attention if we don't dispatch everyone in earshot. Maybe I can take an imprint of the lock and have a blacksmith make a (1-3 time use, for balance) key for this next time we come through here. I think I've already stated my dislike of "must-have this class", realistic is having options not requiring certain people.
9. Randomized Stats/Gear: See 2.
10. Respect People's Time: Can't say I disagree with this. All we want is to spend time creating something (building a character) and we want to feel like we're being rewarded for the time we put into it. I think we all feel like modern MMOs just don't do this well anymore. It is a fine balance though, my only real advice to the devs would be: please don't put in quests where creatures have a 10% chance to drop EYES.
11. Crafted Items: The devs seem to want an emphasis on crafted items, I think they're going down a good path here. To answer your question (Why not?) though, because that doesn't make sense. These Ogres have mastered blacksmithing to create weapons and armor, but belts, they just can't figure those out.. lol. We should aim for the ability to craft items that matter, but it should be no small feat collecting materials to craft a sword that is equal to the raid boss's dropped weapon.
12. Magician: Unfortunately, I didn't play EQ. I don't hate the idea though. I will say, I think it would be better suited to have longer-lasting effects, 2-3 days perhaps. 6hrs means that everyone would NEED to find one before a raid, and then if you take more than 6hrs (not sure what the raiding is like, I've definitely been in a WoW raid that long) then you gotta all go find another.
13. Rogue: To be clear, I enjoy long DoT effects and ticking my opponent down. I think this is YOUR class fantasy preference though. What's fun to you may not be fun to the next guy. I think this should be well addressed by the mastery and limited skills systems.
14. Auto Attack ON: I'm not entirely sure I follow you on this one. I agree that the AA's got detuned to the point that they don't feel like they matter in WoW/Rift, and that feels bad, but I don't understand how the weapon doesn't feel earned when your ability damage is still directly derived from it.. I will say though, I am a big fan of "next swing" abilities that enhance your next auto attack, which make you really watch your swings and feel rewarding to land at the right time. AA's SHOULD mean something and have a bit of heft to them, but they also shouldn't be so powerful that your abilities don't matter for damage.
15. PLATE armor: I agree mostly with this. I think someone wearing plate should be able to take a hit better. There's nothing wrong with the art only approach though, not having every Deathknight or Paladin in WoW able to tank 6-7 mobs is a balance thing, and while I'm in favor of having armor make you tankier, it doesn't mean you should be immortal compared to a Mage.
16. Caster/Clothies: in contrast to what I just said, I 100% agree with this side of it. A caster's survivability comes from combat tricks (snares, stuns, kiting, etc.) it is part of a caster's playstyle.
17. DONT LISTEN to the Squeaky Wheel!: I fully agree, listening to the loud minority has been a bad move in basically every game that has content patches. But, no shade, I hope you realize the irony in you writing this, lol.
18. Limited Skill Sets: The dev teams seems to have a good handle and commitment on this one. I think we can all agree the direction they are taking it is good.
19. BUFFS: Again, I didn't play EQ, so I can't speak to it or its systems. I can say, I like the introduction of craftable scrolls in WoW for the lesser buffs (that were previously only able to be looted from mobs, like +4 agility). I don't like the idea of a class just joining a group, being paid to buff, then leaving.
20. Fast Travel: Mounts (especially flying) in many games take away from the experience of the game. Fast travel IS needed to some degree though. It comes back to respecting players' time. Take New World; in the Beta there were a lot of people, that I saw, complaining about having to run so much. I didn't mind because that game is heavily centered around resources, and you 'should' be picking up resources between points A and B. If there's no need to, however, then it's just Walking Simulator The MMO.. Travel between key points needs to be in the game, how it's approached will largely define the impact it has. I think a cart and horse system, which is still a time investment and gives an opportunity to view the world while cutting travel time would be a good idea, but there are still flaws to it. Oddly enough, I think the best travel solution is that of a non-MMO: The Elder Scrolls Horses in Skryim/Oblivion. Something that reduces travel time but you actively have to buy, use, and defend if you come across trouble. It encourages you to stick to roads and mostly limits you to use between cities. I'd even go as far as to say they should stay at the city they're stabled at. Did you forget your horse? too bad, learn not to, or go back and get it every time.
21. Cities/Inns: I think New World is doing the best job of this currently. Part of that is their PvP system which I would very much hate for Pantheon to adopt, but NW is doing a few things right on that front. Certain advancement quests only come from 1 city, the problem I have with it is they don't TELL you that, so you have to look it up. But this DOES create a sense of "I must engage every city to makes sure I catching my advancement quests. I'm not sure how I'd feel about PRotF adopting this, as it is both good and bad.. I don't hate your idea of buffs though, but I could see needing to stay an hour in city A to make sure you have an extra buff for a dungeon being a pain..
22. Raid content: This kind of comes back to play style. I agree that WoW has kinda gone off the rails with the number of mechanics in raid encounters. And I'm not trying to be rude, but it also comes across that you're just not able to do the higher-end raids in WoW. Difficulty is another one of those things that is hard to properly balance. Personally, I like hard fights. My favorite Raid boss in WoW was Alysrazor (pre-nerf) BECAUSE it was hard. It heavily punished mistakes and beating it felt like a huge accomplishment. Scaling back difficulty created many issues in WoW and other MMOs, many of which you've complained about here. I'm firmly for having difficult content that shouldn't be nerfed because people can't do it. Molten Core and BWL numbers are high for reasons outside of the content of the raids themselves.
23. Currency: Agreed. Gold sinks are far more important than many people realize, especially at the launch of an MMO. Look at Old School Runescape: they have since implemented gold sinks, but the initial lack of them STILL has a huge impact on the game economy. It would almost be worth tracking the amount of currency collectively given from quests and mobs to players to ensure the gold sinks in the game are effectively eating enough currency to avoid inflation as much as possible.
Counterpoint (to 23): While it is important to maintain inflation, this is also relatively solved by barter/trade between players. yes, the starting area crafting materials shouldn't cost as much as the end game crafting materials, but if the starting area mats cost that much.. get some and sell them.. now you have money to participate in the game economy. Hoarding mats can be good for a guild but individually they mean nothing sitting in a player's bank 'just in case'. Selling materials and services offsets inflation in MMOs, you need to participate in the economy using something other than the currency first.
Despite not beeing fan of capitals used to emphasise on words, I did read the whole and I do fall in the same bucket for most parts. Games and MMo's have fallen into a category of "play because of boredom" instead of "play because exciting" category. Things needs to be exciting, needs to add something to your day, etc..
I'd add a another point : Levelling should not be just passive stats gains, but should regulary unlock abilities and talents that you need to get from a city trainer or a researched/dropped scroll, as it creates movement in the playerbase and don't allow you to mindlessly grind an area with no drawbacks at all.
I forgot to mention on the point of buffs the other day.
My EQ main was a Cleric and no mmo does buffs quite like EQ did. now once you leave the group the buffs break too.
There was plenty a time I logged on and didnt feel like level grinding so I'd hang outside EC tunnel to HP buff anyone who asked, not even for the money just cause I thought it was fun at the time.
Thank you Pantheon team!!!!
We’ve previously communicated that our vision for combat Pantheon is one that steers away from the rotation-based approach that is so pervasive in tab-targeting MMORPGs, and instead encourages tactical decision-making, teamwork, and conscientious resource management. We believe that it’s important for abilities in Pantheon to feel impactful, and part of how we intend to achieve that is by emphasizing the costs, benefits, and risks associated with when and why an ability is used.
Whether it’s spending mana for a heal, risking time to launch a powerful offensive spell, or holding back for a team maneuver, our goal is to create inflection points throughout the course of an encounter – and in the moments in-between – where the emphasis is on players using powerful skills at opportune moments rather than trying to maintain uptime for the sake of uptime.
Nearly all of our class resources, ability costs, cooldowns, and potencies are being adjusted to better meet this vision, and we are introducing new functionality and features intended to reward mindful ability use and team coordination.
The importance of individual stats in Pantheon – be they core attributes, skills, or other modifiers – is paramount to creating the iconic and desirable itemization model we have in mind. Individual point gains should feel like a noticeable improvement, and the tighter we constrain those numbers while enhancing their effects, the more we can ensure that loot maintains value and longevity.
We have overhauled these aspects of the game to create better clarity in what individual attributes contribute to, and to promote desirability in attributes that may not otherwise be considered ‘core’ to a given class. By taking a ground-up approach to these improvements, we have also made substantial enhancements to the underlying formulas and sub-stats that enable us to create items with even more nuanced benefits, as well as significant gains to the effects of buffs and debuffs that influence these stats.
Having distinct classes with their own strengths and weaknesses is a core tenet of Pantheon’s development, and our combat improvements will allow us to explore the depth of those differences more than ever. Feeding off the changes to our attributes and skills, we are able to better specify where our classes excel over others. For example, Wizards – though undisputed masters of direct damage – may find that not only are their debuffing spells fewer, but that they don’t land quite as reliably as an Enchanter’s.
These differences have been extrapolated across the entire spectrum of core combat skills – both offensive and defensive – and are intended to synergize with our goals for deliberate ability choices and expanded itemization options to encourage players to weigh between enhancing their strengths or shoring up their weaknesses based on their personal goals and their role in a team, and to embark on further adventures to build up their arsenal.
This is why I really hope mobs and players should have their own skills per level similar to classes. Move away from every PC and NPC gets 5 offense and 5 defense each level with roughly the same hp per level.
I hate the generic MMO mindset of lvl 40 vs lvl 50 means you need x% hit chance per level and the target has increased x% chance to hit you. I wish it depended on the mobs. Cloth armored casters shouldn't be god tanks just because they have 10 levels on the mob. At the same time, a mage blocking spells from a lower level mage makes perfect sense. You would know how to deal with weaker magic more easily. It doesn't mean a mage should be able to punch a lower level monk in the face with ease simply because the mage is 10 levels higher.
A warrior should have an easier time hitting a higher level wizard than they would have hitting a lower level martial. In too many MMOs 10 levels means godhood from universal stats tied to class vs class.
Some stuff I agree with some I don't, I understand the last thing devs want is for players to be passed over and left out just because of the class they choose or like to play. Look at original WoW for this, originally fire did no damage to the draguns, that means no one would take a fire mage to go kill Onyxia, that means fire mages couldn't get Onyxia gears, and at this time respeccing could be a very costly thing. This is why in WoW,and so goes WoW so goes other mmos, stuff like dps buffs and the like got "streamlined." Paladins had a set spot cause they were the only one with pally buffs, so what did they do, they gave other classes the same buffs, Shamans the only ones with Heroism/bloodlust, why not give it to hunter pets and mages too. Wizards and rogues do insane damage, then why would you take hunter? When one class does something others can't it creates an imbalance and leaves folks out, so I understand why devs do what they do to balance everything, do I like it, no not all the time. In FFXIV the original before they destroyed it and remade it, stuff like piercing damage doing more to certain enemies still existed, which made groups fighting Ifrit for relics consist of a paladin, a white mage, and the rest dragoons, but it was ok there because you could be a dragoon for one dungeon, then swap to a monk or a black mage for the next. It's a difficult balance to make a game with having a strong class identity but still having some sort of balance so folks don't get left out.
