In the most recent Newletter Joppa discussed the changes to combat and wrote, "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."
Does this quote imply the TTK has been decreased IF players utilize abilities in a synergistic manner? Thoughts?
I liked everything stated except what looked like team maneuvers. If it is implemented in a natural way like for example a warrior uses a powerful move that nocks an enemy on its back and a rouge sees this opportunity to uses his downward stab ability knowing it will do more damage hitting the vulnerable belly. But if it is more like what I saw in EQ 2 early days I will be disappointed. It just changed player rotations to group rotations.
I really do like games that have abilities but you do not always want to use them. Even EQ had some of this like saving your stuns for when the healer or caster was casting. It was a small thing but it made combat and your abilities so much more interesting.
Still concerns or no concerns it will really take using it for me to have a real opinion.
IMO:
Agreed, Susurrus. EQ2 Heroic Opportunities were even more restrictive than LOTRO Fellowship Maneuvers, but both are what they're describing, if not in form, in function.
The problem with them is that it requires players to do things that are counter-intuitive. (Like Healers being required to nuke when the tank is dying)
I can't see how they're going to implement a combat system that permits player agency with LAS and this? You get 8+6, but if you pick the "wrong" 8+6, then can you participate in the group rotation?
Seems unlikely by design, or less likely by design, which leads everyone to running the exact same loadout by class.
I prefer Vanguards status application and exploitation system, personally: Full player agency, no LAS, incredibly strong group co-op synergy.
Now, if they were to finally ditch Pantheon LAS, and make the 'opportune moments' group driven based on status effects alone? That has potential, depending on details.
Their current description of 'opportune moments' makes combat sound exceedingly boring, tedious, and repetitive, to me. Removing uptime is also.. very problematic in the face of: half the classes being required to be in combat to generate combat-required resources versus half the classes being required to be OUT of combat to generate combat-required resources, an illogical design that so far has no reasonable explanation.
I think this is what? The third time in ~8 years (coming up on Feb 2022) they'll have re-designed all the combat roles, classes and combat loop? maybe it's 4? I've lost track. ;)
I'm in favor of creating reasons for a player to have to think for a moment - their skill has refreshed - should I click it again or wait for a better opportunity? That removes the feeling of just thinking having everything mashed at once is the best strategy.
Key to the player being able to respond specifically to different enemy actions is the player being able to know what these actions are and have enough time to respond.
If you have to see small movements and then know what it means, know what options you have, and click on the right icon within half a second the there will be very few good players other than teenagers. That certainly won't leave much room for many of us.
VR in the name of all the Gods please don't have anything like "action combat" where *player* vision and reflexes and connection speeds rule and *character* development, skills, gear and the like are almost afterthoughts.
vjek said:IMO:
Agreed, Susurrus. EQ2 Heroic Opportunities were even more restrictive than LOTRO Fellowship Maneuvers, but both are what they're describing, if not in form, in function.
The problem with them is that it requires players to do things that are counter-intuitive. (Like Healers being required to nuke when the tank is dying)
I can't see how they're going to implement a combat system that permits player agency with LAS and this? You get 8+6, but if you pick the "wrong" 8+6, then can you participate in the group rotation?
Seems unlikely by design, or less likely by design, which leads everyone to running the exact same loadout by class.Their current description of 'opportune moments' makes combat sound exceedingly boring, tedious, and repetitive, to me. Removing uptime is also.. very problematic in the face of: half the classes being required to be in combat to generate combat-required resources versus half the classes being required to be OUT of combat to generate combat-required resources, an illogical design that so far has no reasonable explanation.
I think this is what? The third time in ~8 years (coming up on Feb 2022) they'll have re-designed all the combat roles, classes and combat loop? maybe it's 4? I've lost track. ;)
I cannot agree more. Just the reading of these 'inflection points' just screams EQ2 Heroic Opportunites or other such garbage. Why is this needed when, through the various abilities of the NPCs (combined with their dispositions and traits) would render this garbage irrelevant? VR has gone and an one for years now about how Dispositions and Traits will make combat more interesting, more fluid and dynamic which, frankly, is all that is needed.
And you're right, Vjek, we're just a couple months away from 8 years into development and even the most basic of combat roles, classes and whatnot is still largely undecided...and then they decide to chuck this junk into the mix?
Do you know what makes players think during a fight? When the fight takes time, where the chance to win or lose can swing back and forth several times, where you might make a mistake but through concerted effort and quick thinking you push the balanced back into you favor. Its the very short TTKs that are just 'spam click everything super fast to win'.
VR, this is not needed. Finalize all the stuff you already have started, then look to see what else might be needed but FFS don't tack this one because someone saw something similar in another game and though "oh, Pantheon needs that so we don't seem so niche."
Great question I wish we would have an answer to but we will only have speculation. My hope is they are focusing on limiting resources to change how people play the game. The TTK could very stay the same if people play together but get even longer if the group zergs everything with no synergy. The TTK is just a dial they control through out alpha and beta to have fun content. It is meaningless until locked in. Keep tweaking it until average fights are long enough to work together.
Limited resources has become rare for MMOs. You only spam the optimal attacks for your PC only. Games that have tried to have the group combos like EQ2 failed to make it count due to unlimited resources. You can't spam abilities every .42 seconds while synergizing them with the group.
Limiting the resources accomplishes exactly what they said they are after. "where the emphasis is on players using powerful skills at opportune moments" You are forced to ration your attacks rather than spam them. Good groups and synergies will work together to get more out of their limited resources.
In a limited resources game, you have an incentive to spend your mana/energy/stamina/etc efficiently. Finding the optimal abilities to use with the players in your group will take some getting used to. You may throw fuel on the fire or fan the flames in one group to help the fire wizard but primarily hurl stones to shatter frozen targets for the ice wizard. The monk may find it better to stun mobs setting a rogue up to backstab for crazy damage rather than do a damaging kick themselves. It will be difficult to balance, but it will make combat far more interesting than the unchanging single target rotation we see nomatter who is in your group.
I hope we can see the combos rarely interfering with eachother. The wizard in the group may be synergizing with the tank while the rogue and the monk are synergizing their own abiliites. Short of something like trying to have the target burning and wet I hope most of the options would just work together.
I hope it is rare for players to ignore what everyone in the group does and do their own thing. If spamming one ability back to back to back burning all your mana is the best DPS then you can be damn sure players will hit one button. I would rather we need to use our "powerful skills at opportune moments"
Be sure to friend the random PC who is your perfect synergy :D
Edit: @Vandraad they already had synergies working way back in the shaman video that debuted mastery system. Changing up combat to find a balance they want is exactly what they are expected to do while building the game. The fact it took so long to get this close to alpha is a problem for another thread.
Jobeson said:Edit: @Vandraad they already had synergies working way back in the shaman video that debuted mastery system. Changing up combat to find a balance they want is exactly what they are expected to do while building the game. The fact it took so long to get this close to alpha is a problem for another thread.
Class synergies were a thing from the beginning, but it was much more organic and not a potential "wait for this specific event to then click this button" type synergy. Those are just 'lets play whack-a-mole'.
IMO:
Plus, there are so many better more flexible ways to do this to provide player agency. How?
- encounter limits on ability use
- reuse timers on abilities that only apply during an ecnounter
- group co-op reset of both of the above
- status application
- status exploitation
- group-only abilities (abilities that can only be used while grouped)
- group-only status application and exploitation (being able to apply and exploit certain status effects only while grouped)
I mean, looking at DnD/Pathfinder frameworks alone, there are so many of these things that are solved problem with certain abilities requiring certain durations. Free actions, half-round action, full round actions, multi-round actions. Daily limits (which could apply as encounter limits, in Pantheon), concentration, and more.
Another missed opportunity, from my perspective. And still more scope creep. The never-ending scope creep.
It will be necessary to provide ad-hoc, no-timer counters to disposition abilities, and especially so with multi-disposition single/boss mobs. To do otherwise will simply create never ending frustration coupling inflections with LAS. What's been just describe by the dev team is the opposite of this, as it removes or decreases player agency:
Brad/Aradune, 2017: " ... Good points and I agree in general: if we change something in-game dynamically, then you guys need to be able to react dynamically ... "
bigdogchris said:I'm in favor of creating reasons for a player to have to think for a moment - their skill has refreshed - should I click it again or wait for a better opportunity? That removes the feeling of just thinking having everything mashed at once is the best strategy.
I'm totally okay with this. But as a person that has difficulty understanding complicated mathematics and English verbage, I would hope it describes somewhat of a context everyone can relate.
Vandraad said:Do you know what makes players think during a fight? When the fight takes time, where the chance to win or lose can swing back and forth several times, where you might make a mistake but through concerted effort and quick thinking you push the balanced back into you favor. Its the very short TTKs that are just 'spam click everything super fast to win'.
And VR has stated that players will need to plan and strategize together before an engage, picking and choosing abilities for LAS. This seems to conflict with that, because situational awareness and improvising in the moment is the strategy that makes or breaks a group/raid. If I can rely on a wombo combo with another class, who cares about what the mobs are doing, or my other groupmates for that matter. Synergy is great and all, but too much and it begins to dictate gameplay. DDDA has spell syncing, which adds to the experience of being a pure caster, but I don't feel I need sorcerer pawns accompanying me everywhere I go and there's no button mashing involved. More tension is felt when your finger is hovering over a key, and you have time to contemplate, to decide when to use this ability on the mob or that ability on the group member versus yourself.
D&D example: Which dying group member should receive my last health potion, because their class abilities just might prevent a TPK? Oh right, they have to be within range. But everyone's darting around trying to create space while avoiding attacks of opportunity. And I have to take into account player skill / character tendencies.
If the TTK is shortened more and more, it's no longer a chess match, but a game of whack-a-mole as you said. A well-placed pawn (lesser ability) ought to be just as good, if not better than a bishop or rook (stronger ability) in certain situations. But those situations require time to play themselves out.
An old EQ example: Divine Aura engage to reposition lair dragon with the main assist right behind you. Dragon turns on MA and heal chain hasn't landed yet? Click off DA, soulfire the MA. Dragon's AE goes off. You forgot to Sanctify disc because DA should have still been up. Full AE damage. Low HP aggro. Dragon turns on you. Lay Hands self. Still have aggro. MA hasn't proc'd yet. Do you waste a soulfire on yourself? Decisions, decisions.
EQ is sometimes guilty of short TTK too though. Gorenaire melts in a handful of seconds to wizard nukes while knight tanks spam aggro spells and clickies for global cooldown refresh. It's cool to witness that much raw power the first few times but, overlooking the fireworks display, it's pretty one-dimensional and sure doesn't require much thought.
The high risk of running out of mana if your careless and a slow recuperation is what makes me use my head the most in combat for the fight in front of you and of course the threat of ads. I really hope they keep mana regen slow in combat and retain a long time to kill.
This is why food/drink regen buffs concern me... +mana from food/drink + mana from buffs + mana from potions. Once the market has a healthy range of high level food and potions then everyone's blue bar tends to recharge fairly fast. Of course that may not be the case here, but thats what concerns me if there are multiple ways to speed up regen.
This topic has been promoted for my CM content, please continue the discussion and have fun! :)
"Hot Topic - NPC Encounter TTK (Time To Kill) - What are your thoughts on the time it should take to kill a mob in Pantheon? Join in on the community created post on the official forums here: https://seforums.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/13375/npc-encounter-ttk #MMORPG #CommunityMatters"
Simms59 said:Does this quote imply the TTK has been decreased IF players utilize abilities in a synergistic manner? Thoughts?
But wasn't this always the case? Isn't a well grounded, oiled group working cohesively better than a group at loggerheads?
I think it's too early to tell how this may play out in Pantheon. However, everything that I've seen makes me believe that Joppa may simply be reference simple group dynamics, and (hopefully) not something like heroic opportunities. I hope. Maybe the only heroic opportunities is a well spotted root or greater heal; one that a player creates and not something artificially forced.
Lafael said:Maybe the only heroic opportunities is ...one that a player creates and not something artificially forced.
That right there says it all, VR. Give the NPCs their dispositions, traits and combat tactics and let the players, through creative application of their skills, abilities and effective communication, create these opportunities organically and not through some contrived artifical construct.
I hated EQ 2 Team moves. Does not mean Pantheon can't convice me it is a good idea anyway,... but it will be a tall order.
As far as time to kill goes, I hope we get huge differences. Dungeons with mobs that have a metric crapton of HP, don't come in pairs of 10, but give much more xp per kill. I dislike games that make every level 30 identical. A level 30 Troll that is 6 meters tall should have much more HP than a level 30 gnome. It should also hit much harder. And it should give much more experience. Gnomes would usually be in packs of 3-6 tho and trolls would stand around alone, in a big cave. Every pull would be one Troll or two at most, if the puller screws up.
Really loved that design in EQ. Dungeons got so diverse. Some where relaxed, huge caves, where trains and pulling issues where never to be seen, while other dungeons just had so many mobs, chain pulled to be trains of greatness.
I want that back. To give a rough example of the times I have in mind:
More important than TTK is a huge gap in times needed beteen a huge Giant and a small gnome tho.
Having team maneuvers is literally a type of rotation. Especially if it's anything like LOTRO maneuvers.
I agree with Vandraad, the disposition system should already throw a wrench into rotations by forcing players to adjust which attacks to use. Like in that Cohh stream where those mobs became empowered by certain damage types and wiped the group. That more organically forced the group to change which attacks to use.
There are way too many variables to know if TTK will be affected even with perfect synergy. The group makeup, the encounter, mob disposition/trait type, the location, could all affect the TTK.
To answer Kilsin, I think a good TTK per mob timeframe is 30-60 seconds assuming your appropriate level and group size for the area. Again, other variables can come into play.
A quick point of clarification: our plans for 'team coordination' have no basis in Heroic Opportunities or Fellowship Maneuvers. By all means, continue to discuss why those systems didn't resonate with you, but I at least wanted to confirm that before assumptions ran too rampant.
Our goal is simply as stated: coordination. Knowing what abilities your teammates are using, and planning your tactics accordingly vs. the various challenges that will be thrown at you by NPCs, and your goals as a team.
The allusion to Vanguard's status application/exploitation system leans a bit closer, but with the added layer of those inflection points that we only gain by virtue of elements like the limited action set and less-readily available resources.
Think of it like the choice between doing what is best for yourself vs. what is best for the team. In most other MMORPGs, you are usually only focused on fulfilling a personal optimized rotation or executing very specific and rigid mechanics that you are assigned to. Our goal is to make combat feel more collaborative, with more interactions between player abilities and NPC traits and dispositions. Here's a simple example scenario:
An enemy has been placed off-balance by someone else in your party. You have enough resources for your next attack, but you need to make a decision on how you spend them: you can use them for your strongest attack and boost your personal DPS, or you can use them for for an attack that does less damage, but can exploit an off-balance state and puts the enemy into knockdown, preventing it from taking any actions for a period of time and potentially opening up another synergy for someone else in your group.
Does it make sense for you to capitalize on that in the moment? Does doing so have any adverse effects due to the NPC's own abilities and traits, or incurred diminishing returns? Perhaps your team composition, either due to classes or LAS choices, lacks a stun and needs to reserve that coordinated attack to counter a specific NPC tactic - or perhaps there's another interaction with an off-balance state that your knockdown would disrupt, and you yield to a teammate so that they can open up that other avenue.
These are just some of the layers we are looking to introduce, but at the end of the day they will be tied to the specific effects and interactions of existing abilities, not a separate 'combo' system.
Tehom said:...
Think of it like the choice between doing what is best for yourself vs. what is best for the team. In most other MMORPGs, you are usually only focused on fulfilling a personal optimized rotation or executing very specific and rigid mechanics that you are assigned to. Our goal is to make combat feel more collaborative, with more interactions between player abilities and NPC traits and dispositions....
IMO:
Speaking only for myself and those in my guild that have played both LOTRO and EQ2, your entire description and goals are identical to the reasons and practical implications, in-game of Heroic Opportunies and Fellowship Maneuvers. Only now, with the added UI restriction of LAS.
What I mean by that is, your publc design goal for the system is the same as the public design goal for those two systems. They're the same. Those developers added them for the same reasons, and the expected outcome was the same. People would use them to make tactical team based decisions in response to the encounter. Ideally agonizing tactical team based decisions.
I don't think anyone misunderstands that, at least, not in this thread so far. Your examples are exactly the intent (if not the exact wording) those other systems were implemented with.
Again, speaking only for myself, I believe this public design goal runs counter to permitting truly dynamic encounters.
As discussed and acknwledged with Brad in 2017 (above in this thread) , if you (the company & designers) make dynamic encounters, with multi dispositions, or any aspect of combat that is not known at the start, you have to provide the paying customers the ability to react dynamically to that dynamic content.
Or
You are simply guaranteeing frustration and/or failure. And especially so when the entire kit isn't available to classes/roles. LAS makes this target narrower/smaller.
EQ2 and LOTRO had no LAS, and people still didn't enjoy their optional team-focused systems because it reduced, lessed or removed player agency/choice.
Attempting to re-apply that philosophy with LAS has no logical path forward, as far as I can see.
Like, mathematically, trying to enforce 8+6 rather than no UI/hotkey limit on the same type of system has no/less/limited success vector(s). I just don't see how it could be otherwise?
And don't misunderstand, I love the idea of grouping-required status applications, exploitation, refreshes, and rewards.
But.. not with LAS and not with whatever inflections end up being implemented as, interface-wise.
vjek said:As discussed and acknwledged with Brad in 2017 (above in this thread) , if you (the company & designers) make dynamic encounters, with multi dispositions, or any aspect of combat that is not known at the start, you have to provide the paying customers the ability to react dynamically to that dynamic content.
Or
You are simply guaranteeing frustration and/or failure. And especially so when the entire kit isn't available to classes/roles. LAS makes this target narrower/smaller.
EQ2 and LOTRO had no LAS, and people still didn't enjoy their optional team-focused systems because it reduced, lessed or removed player agency/choice.
Attempting to re-apply that philosophy with LAS has no logical path forward, as far as I can see.
I can't speak for Brad, but my takeaway from his post - and your own that prompted his response - is that 'dynamic' refers to something in the encounter changing after factors such as gear, LAS, etc. have been locked in due to initiating combat. To that end I don't view this as a departure. I agree with the sentiment, and have no designs for enemies altering their known tactics, traits, or dispositions midway through battle - and if they did to such an extreme that a complete loadout swap was required, there are ways to bake that into the encounter.
That being said, known tactics is key. One of the many gameplay loops in Pantheon is building your knowledge of the world's inhabitants, and increasing your success rate by using that familiarity against them. That includes understanding what individual enemy types may be capable of, but also what various traits and dispositions confer. Familiarizing yourself with these things - and then being able to discern those aspects of an encounter before you engage - is part of the decision-making process in choosing your loadout and, subsequently, your team's.
In other words, these are aspects of combat that can be known at the start and inform those decisions ahead of time.
It sounds like your dissatisfaction is primarily with the LAS itself, but I'd actually argue that (one of) the reasons Heroic Opportunities and Fellowship Maneuvers feel like enforced group rotations is because of the availability of resources and having all abilities available at all times. There's no opportunity cost for participating in one of these systems because as soon as you do, you can go right back to your standard rotation. The result is a de-facto expectation that everyone should be participating as often as possible in order to maximize results - and often robbing choice because a) players need to disrupt what they are doing to participate and b) the resulting effects are often so distinct that there are specific optimal routes to take.
The LAS actually benefits us here, because it means we can't design such a system with the expectation that players will always be able to participate at every opportunity (or at all), nor create such distinct effects that would lead to limited, 'optimal' choices. Any system we create that leverages interactions between abilities needs to be considerate of the LAS, which in our case means more modularity in terms of where those interactions reside, as well as constraining the benefits of those interactions such that their absence is felt, but not necessarily missed. At the same time, choosing to take advantage of those interactions means sacrificing something - time, mana, damage, etc. - that may not be easily recoverable, which emphasizes that these interactions are not inherently always beneficial, and opportunity cost has to be weighed in the moment.
Taking that a step further, these interactions actually allow players to compensate for the LAS: working together to achieve effects no one had individually slotted, and responding to aspects of an encounter that they might not otherwise have prepared for. Dynamic reactions, but in this case ones that require teamwork and communication to achieve.
As with anything though, a healthy dose of skepticism is never a bad thing, and I appreciate that you and others have expressed concerns for the potential pitfalls of such a system. Now that you know my goals for it, I'll be eager to hear feedback once you've had a chance to experience it firsthand.
(Oh, and some further clarification: 'inflection points' are not a UI element ala Heroic Opportunities. This just refers to the internal decisions you as a player must make over the course of a fight, and our desire to emphasize those decisions as they cascade over the span of battle. Which brings us back to TTK!)
Tehom said: ... I agree with the sentiment, and have no designs for enemies altering their known tactics, traits, or dispositions midway through battle - and if they did to such an extreme that a complete loadout swap was required, there are ways to bake that into the encounter. ...
IMO:
I'm not dismissing the rest of your post. I read it all, and that's great information and context, and I appreciate it.
Focusing just on the statement above, though, this was what I was trying to get across in 2017;
Such a system limits how designers can create encounters. In the long term, perhaps even indefinitely. As designers (if you are one) then as long as LAS exists, you're restricted to designing encounters that can't be truly dynamic. As customers, if we know the encounter will not be dynamic, that is, from the start of combat to the end of combat, dispositions won't change, that also limits things. It seems.. counter to logic and reason (to me, at least) to intentionally design and implement such a restrictive system, all to double-down on LAS, when other superior options exist.
And for clarity, I am 100% in favor of dynamic encounters without LAS. It gives ultimate freedom to designers and customers. Especially if an aspect of Perception could be to ascertain weaknesses and strengths from targets in-combat, to discern what statuses and exploitations would be appropriate. It creates a proactive or active feature to the combat loop, rather than a reactive or passive one.
What you've described also still leaves the possibility of a multi-disposition encounter or mob on the table, that is something that is two dispositions at once, simultaneously, and not knowing that information until the encounter begins.
That's been discussed here in the past, and iirc, the Visionary Realms team confirmed this was a possibility for the future, hence my continuing concern of designing for guaranteed frustration/failure.
If you can confirm that unknown-before-combat-starts multi-disposition mobs/encounters will never be in Pantheon, that would be nice to know. It will alleviate some of the anxiety of having to deal with this potential guaranteed frustration/failure via LAS.
Now, to your brand new piece of information (to me) that a complete loadout swap might be part of an encounter.. that's.. a big deal.
A huge potential shift in design and direction based on public information revealed to date. So, I'll ask one clarifying question:
Does this mean you will allow a potential inflection reward to be: Grant/permit one or many complete loadout swaps of the 8+6 LAS hotbar, in-combat, for all encounter/inflection participants?
Or
Do you mean you'll just have a forced/scripted state removal of all participants before the next phase/step of the encounter, during which participants can swap loadouts, if they're fast enough?
vjek said:IMO:
I should probably clarify that I view having enemies alter their known tactics different from them applying those tactics. If an enemy can do A through G - in a given fight and depending on a multitude of factors - you may only ever see it do B, C, and F, and on the next pull see A, C, E, and F - but you eventually come to understand that A through G are the tools in its belt. That is of course until you layer in a trait that lets it perform X, Y, or Z, or alters how A functions. Knowing what something can do is - in our case - different from being ready to deal with what it does do, and there's a degree of tension that we want to result from having to reconcile with unexpected outcomes.
As for multiple dispositions, I won't say "never" because there's always the potential for us to find a reason to introduce something like that. But it's not currently in the plans, and if it ever did come back around to the table we would of course have to weigh the potential impacts it has on our other designs for combat. It's a topic for another day, but when it comes to traits and dispositions as a whole I do intend for there to be a few different ways for players to ascertain them, and to your point part of that does mean giving players some potential proactive approaches and choices.
Re: a loadout swap, that is moreso me floating the idea that we could do it if we felt it was warranted and would benefit encounter design, rather than an indication of anything planned. If it were to occur, I don't presently have any designs of what that would look like.
Tehom said:
An enemy has been placed off-balance by someone else in your party. You have enough resources for your next attack, but you need to make a decision on how you spend them: you can use them for your strongest attack and boost your personal DPS, or you can use them for for an attack that does less damage, but can exploit an off-balance state and puts the enemy into knockdown, preventing it from taking any actions for a period of time and potentially opening up another synergy for someone else in your group.
This to me sounds like a natural evolution of debuffs.
If you're a wizard and can debuff a targets AC, it might not benefit you. And casting that spell means you're not nuking the target. But debuffing the AC when you have a Rogue, a Monk and a Warrior in the party will do more for your group's DPS than that nuke ever would.
Similarly, you could also smack the target in the head with an ice blast. It does less damage but puts the target off balance for a second, allowing a Rogue to do a leg sweep knocking the target down. Now the target is dissoriented and flat on their back, allowing all melee attacks to hit (and possibly granting a bonus to critical hit %) or even opening up the target to a full coup de gras.
I really don't see a difference between the two. Plenty of times in other games I've had callouts about a temporary debuff and knew it was time to blow my cooldowns. Or I was given temporary immunity and knew I could stay in the fight without worry.
Now instead of just quietly casting a debuff and going on with things, you can actually coordinate with team members to pull of some cool, but ultimately optional, maneuvers. I do not see this as limiting freedom and it sounds completely different from Heroic Opportunities to me. Partly because HOs could so easily be screwed up with the constant spamming that happened in that game. Rather this lends itself to a slower more thoughtful combat, as well as pre-combat strategy. It allows you to separate the great groups from the good groups. Forces people to communicate if they want to get the most out of their class and the game. And lets people learn something new as they play. "I had no idea you could knock someone down like that! I thought Ice Blast was just a mostly useless stun!"
I hope planning ahead dose not sound like this.
Bob bring your ice blast again so I can leg sweep and Mary can kick it while it is down.
And then have combat sound like this.
Bob Ice blast now and after the other two attack.
Bob Ice blast now and after the other two attack.
...
Over simplification to better amplify my fear.
As my first statement said I will wait to judge until I can ether see it in action or play it myself but this is my fear. I might have a limited imagination but as long as planning is worth it and one members move can make an opening for another it sure sounds like the above could be the smartest way to play and I will be sad. I think the reason I did not mind weaknesses in Vanguard and hated heroic moments in EQ2 is in Vanguard the advantages were minimal while in EQ2 it was the best strategy most of the time.
Tehom said:The allusion to Vanguard's status application/exploitation system leans a bit closer, but with the added layer of those inflection points that we only gain by virtue of elements like the limited action set and less-readily available resources.
Without knowing the details, it sounds like you guys are trying too hard there. From all that has been said and explained, it just does not sound like fun, but like a hassle everyone will either ignore (if it does not cripple you) or endure (if you really need it to work well). Neither is good.
FOR ME grouping in EQ was fun, because everyone had their role. You focused on that, made sure you did not screw up and fighting pace gave enough room to chat it up and get to know each other, form friendships, guilds and so on. FOR ME, grouping in WOW and other MMOs was NOT fun, because it was all about bum rushing content in a matter of minutes, while people mostly said "hi" before bum rushing and "bye" after the 10 min run. Grouping in EQ 2 was NOT fun, because you where limited in what you could do, due to artificial restrictions and rules like linked mobs and forced rotations.
From what the Pantheon team shared up to this point, it sounds like a mix of the above, but with a strong tendency to artificial restrictions and (forced) rotations for arbitrary glory... or whatever it will bring. Likely a 20% damage boost, or a buff... or any other meaningless thing that forces people to use the system, rather than playing their toon.
As far as that goes, id love to borrow a healthy guideline from my fellow web developer friends: KISS - keep it simple stupid.
Edit: As far as the locked skill debate: I hate it. Simple as that. I really do. For me that is a 50/50 coin flip, if I am playing a game or not. If everything else is perfect, fine, ill endure it and quietly ramble about the nonsense,... but if something else major comes up, that is a straight pass for me. It really is that big of a deal FOR ME. Yes, EQ had limited slots. But it was YOUR CHOICE to risk it and memorize a different spell, mid fight. CHOICE is always good. artificial restrictions are not.
"Hey bob the wizard... we are getting swarmed by goblins,.. launch the fire ball!" - "uhm, sorry guys, I am currently in buff and single target mode and totally forgot how to cast an aoe!" --> sorry, I can't get over that nonsense. No matter how hard I try. I really do,... I want Pantheon to be the game for me. But the more I hear about it, the more I think I invested in the wrong game several years ago. It just seems to develop in a totally different direction than I thought.