Some thoughts and questions that came to mind after reading through the Newsletter this month. (Yet another lengthy post by Goofy)
Weapon Techniques:
We see that Techniques will have their own Resource now called 'Readiness' which will be the same for all classes and different from their normal Class Resource(s). Readiness seems to increase passively, but also will be granted when dealing and taking damage. We are not told what the max Readiness will be. VIPs will learn this weekend so maybe they just neglected to mention it, but some of us info Junkies are not VIPs and won't be taking part in the Pre-Alpha (:sadface:).
Dear Devs Perhaps one of the Dev's can let us know what the Max Readiness will be (since VIPs will have NDA so can't ask one of them).
We also saw in the last Dev update that Rogues will have an Ability called 'Opportunism' which let's them use 1 Opportunity to grant themselves 250 Readiness.
Dear Devs: Will Rogues be the only class that can boost their Readiness or will this be a unique feature of the Rogue that gives him a slight Technique usage advantage.
We now know that only the Main Hand is used when determining what Weapon Techniques can be employed.
This brings up a question about Weapon Swapping while in Combat. We know that Gear will not be swappable during combat, but most people assume that Weapons will be swappable during combat.
Dear Devs: Can we get some clarification on if Weapons will be blocked from In Combat swapping? What if you just want to swap your Main Hand and Offhand in combat?
If we can swap, can we swap instantly back and forth or will there be a swap time and maybe even a cooldown to swapping weapons?
Also if we can swap, will players be able to add Multiple Techniques from different weapon types to the LAS and they will be greyed out while you have the wrong weapon equipped but then become available as soon as you swap?
One other aspect of Techniques that I have wondered about is if these are meant to be Auto-Attack replacements or act like normal Abilities or Spells? In some games there are abilities which activate on the next Auto-Attack swing. For example in WoW Classic the Warrior class had abilities such as Heroic Strike which when used would turn your next Normal Auto-Attack swing into a more powerful Heroic Strike swing with added damage.
The Tooltips we have seen so far (iirc) for Techniques have all said they are 'Instant' but this could just mean that they fire off on the next Auto-Attack, rather than having a casting time, thus making that Attack the special Technique Attack instead of a normal weapon swing.
Dear Devs: Are Techniques supposed to change your Auto-Attack swing into a new Attack? Or are they instantly triggered Attacks that are seperate from your Auto-Attack, thus not inturrupting your normal swinging?
Endurance Changes
Dear Devs: Since Endurance is only used for Sprinting, Climbing and Jumping now; Will the classes that previously listed Endurance as one of their two resources be getting new Unique Resources or will there be a new 'general' resource that all these classes will share. The classes in question seem to be: Warrior, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue.
Near Death
If I am understanding this section correctly... During Combat only Healing (ie Healers) will be able to bring people out of the Near Death state, but while Out of Combat all classes will be able to use a 'Bandaging' skill to Revive someone from Near Death.
Dear Devs: So this brings up a few questions:
1) When you are in Near-Death you presumably have a special Near-Death HP pool which you will be losing as you Bleed out. Will this be a set value for all players of all classes or will your Near-Death HP pool be based on your Normal HP pool? Ie: Will a player with a higher normal Max HP also have a higher Near-Death HP pool? Or will some classes have a higher Near-Death HP pool (tanks for example)?
2) Let's imagine that a Near-Death player has 100 HP and it starts to bleed away. When he is at 50 HP left in his Near-Death state let's imagine that a Healer casts a Heal that grants 200 HP. This should be enough to revive the player from his Near-Death state. Will the Healing amount be shared over the Near-Death (first 50hp) and Revived (remaining 150hp) state to carry over leaving him with 150 HP as he stands up. Or will the Heal only revive him with 1hp and he will need to be healed again in order to bring the player back up? Or will the heal automatically Revive the player and then grant him the 200 HP?
3) Bandaging seems to take time... we are told Multiple players working together on a bandaging will increase the speed of the Bandaging. Will the Bleeding-out be paused while the Bandaging is being done or will the player continue Bleeding while others are trying to bandage him; Can you still bleed out if the bandaging takes too long? Or can a player with only 1 HP left in his Near-Death still be saved if the Bandaging starts before he fully dies and as long as the bandaging doesn't get inturrupted.
Remnance - Soul Memory
We are told that a player corpse will now be called 'Remnance' (although I'm sure most poeple will still just call them corpses). If I'm understanding correctly... if you die you lose 10% of your current level in experience, but if you recover your Remnence you will gain a Soul Memory with that experience in it which will then be added as 'bonus' exp over time as you gain Experience normally. This seems to work sort of like 'Rested Experience' worked in World of Warcraft; You keep getting this bonus exp until your Soul Memory is used up. A Soul Memory will only hold a Max of 3 deaths worth of Experience (30% of a level). Thus if you're Soul Memory is too full you will permanently lose the experience that would go over this Soul Memory's cap.
We are told: "Additional functions surrounding Resurrection and Remnance Recovery will be introduced at a later date."
Dear Devs: So some questions:
1) Will one of the 'functions' to be introduced later be Healers Ressurections granting you back some of the lost Experience instantly thus reducing the amount of Exp you need to regain using your Soul Memory?
2) Depending on the answer of question 1. If you recover your Remnance and your lost Exp goes into Soul Memory and then you later find a Healer, can said Healer Ressurect your already recovered Remnance to give you back some of that exp instantly? Presumably reducing your Soul Memory by that amount. Or can a Healer cast the Ressurection onto a player directly (without needing the Remnence) to pull some of that lost Experience from their Soul Memory and instantly grant it to the player?
Combat Enhancements
One of the points made in this section was: "... enabling degrees of delayed decision-making to facilitate communication, and further diversifying the gameplay experience between individual classes and – more explicitly – the differing roles such as casters and melee."
Along with this we see that a Global Cooldown has been increased to 2.5 seconds which seems to further slow down combat, thus facilitating this 'delayed decision-making'. Yet then we see that all Spells have been removed from this Global Cooldown.
In the past the Dev's often seemed to Interchangeably use the terms Abilities and Spells. It didn't matter which one you used... you were referring to the Active Attacks or Defenses or what have you. A Spell cast by a Wizard was no different than an Ability used by a Wizard. An Ability used by a Monk was no different than a Spell cast by a Monk. Or so we thought...
Yet as I've read through this Newsletter it seems that there seems to be a much more distinct difference between these two Terms. Along with Techniques being yet a 3rd term that also is different.
We could make the guess that Abilities will be Melee classes while Spells will be for the Caster types. But is this really right? Perhaps it will be Resource dependant. We know that several classes have at least 2 different class Resources (and now + Readiness for Techniques).
Could all classes then have both Abilities and Spells? For example: A Cleric Spell uses Mana, but a Cleric Ability uses Celestial Power. A Warrior Spell uses Resilience and a Warrior Ability uses Battle Points.
If this were the case, we could see how class Abilities are meant to require some active planning and forethought since it will be tied to this long 2.5 second Global Cooldown. If you use one Ability you'll be locked out of another for 2.5 seconds. While Spells on the other hand are meant to be usable at any time in reaction to things with no worry about Global Cooldown.
This would make sense for example for Tank classes. Their offensive attacks being Abilities and tied to Global Cooldown... if you use your Stun you can't use your Leap for 2.5 seconds. While Defensives and Taunts can be Spells which are not tied to Global Cooldown. You can use a Shield Block Spell and not be locked out from using Will to Live Spell since no Global Cooldown.
Obviously I'm just making guesses here...
Dear Devs: Could one of you Dev's Clarify what makes something an Ability and what makes it a Spell. Is it just Mana users have Spells and Non-Mana users have Abilities, or do all classes have both types?
"The methods used to determine the potency of spells and abilities have been revised to facilitate longer-term scaling."
This means that Damages / Healing / Durations / Effects will be much more tied to your stats than to the abilities themselves. This means that you'll be able to use low level Abilities/Spells all the way up in levels and the Damage will simply scale up as you improve your characters power.
"As a result, Ability lines have been deprecated. Although some spells continue to offer more potent alternatives at later levels, these are treated as their own abilities and may be assigned to the limited action set in tandem with their less (or more) powerful counterparts."
This basically means that while your Abilities/Spells will just scale up as you do... they still wanted to allow some specific ways to let players 'Down Rank' for specific Abiltiy/Spells. Even though they normally want to stay away from Down Ranking.
Resting
This Resting mechanic seems to be tied to 'Sitting' and will automatically increase HP and Mana recovery as soon as you sit. Yet if you are in Combat it will delay Resting for 10 seconds.
We were told in the Techniques section that Readiness would decay while Resting, but would remain for 10 minutes in between fights. So we can assume that if you don't Rest you won't decay any Readiness for 10 minutes; But if you need to Rest in order to regain Mana or HP you'll then lose some of that Readiness while you are Resting.
Dear Devs: It would be nice if one of the Dev's could tell us which (if any) other class Resources other than Mana may regen faster while Resting. This is somewhat connected to the previous question about classes that previously used Endurance and what their new Resource will be. I'm making a guess that Endurance will also regen faster while Resting?
Spellcasting Changes
So it's cool that DD spells cannot be fully resisted and will do at least 12% of the total damage at minimum.
With DoTs and Debuffs we do see a inconsistency with wording though... It says: "Damage-over-Time and Debuff effects are now applied with variable durations..." based on your skill vs resistance. Yet Weak and Moderate Resists list 50% or 25% damage dealt rather than referring to a Duration. This would suggest that the DoTs would have reduced Damage per Tick rather than a reduced Duration. Although I guess it could mean it reduces the duration in order to lower the damage by those amounts while keeping the Damage per Tick the same.
It just seems like a weird way to express it.
Experience Adjustments
"The amount of experience earned for defeating enemies has been adjusted such that the amount of experience earned remains constant based on the relative level between the player and their target."
This means that if you are level 1 and you kill a level 1 enemy you may be granted 100 experience. If you are level 40 and you kill a level 40 enemy you would also be granted 100 experience. This obviously makes it a lot easier for them to adjust the leveling curve and time to level because only your 'required' experience will change as you level instead of it also changing the amount 'gained' when you kill things.
Equipment Slot Consolidation
RIP Shoulders, Arms, Bracers x2 and Face.... 5 Slots gone.
Dear Devs: Um... If we are losing Shoulders, Arms and Bracers doesn't that mean everyone will have no visable Armor anywhere on your arms? From your Chestplate to your Gloves there is nothing? I guess it helps you show off your Biceps
.... continuation since I seem to have hit the post limit.
Item Flags
Lifebound Flag means you keep the item on death even if not equipped... Though items will default to a container's properties if put in said container. They give us the example of a Lifebound item being placed in a non-Lifebound container will still stay on your Remnance when you die even though it's Lifebound. But this obviously suggests that there may be 'Lifebound' containers which would have the opposite effect, ie: allowing Deathbound items to stay with you when you die instead of remaining on Remnance if you put them in a Lifebound Bag.
Item Drop Rules
"NPCs can now be expected to drop the weapon they are holding"
Dear Devs: Will this only ever apply to Weapons?
Or will Humanoid enemies also wear Armor or Accessories that they drop? If an NPC is going to drop a +Cold Resistance Ring will it wear it and thus have higher Cold Resistance than normal? I'm guessing that only Weapons are implemented as of now, but do you have plans to allow NPCs to equip other items from their drop pool?
Bo Staff
I made a specific post about the Monk Bo Staff. You can find it Here.
Patch Notes
"Removed an innate bonus to threat generation that was granted to tank classes."
I'm guessing this will let them balance specific class Threat generation abilities easier. Also making Threat generation more tied to active choices rather than just a passive bonus.
"Added support for attributes, stats, skills and resists to be driven to negative values."
Well that sounds ominous! Could you actually be so debuffed that your Abilities actually do Negative damage and actually Heal enemies? Or could a Healer be debuffed to the point where his heals actually Hurt his allies?
"Standardized the duration of long-duration buffs to 36 minutes"
This is a change from the April 3, 2020 stream (source where we were told that standard long duration buffs were 40 minutes. Joppa then went on to say that Mastery for these buffs could extend the durations up to an hour. Then with the Greater Mastery system you may be able to extend it even more.
I'm guessing that Mastery will still effect these durations, but perhaps this has changed and 36 minutes is meant to be max?
"A UI element has been added to player health bars to reflect when an absorption shield ... is active"
This is awesome and something I was hoping they would add. Great news.
"Adjusted the criteria and messaging for Consider messages."
As I recommended in This Post I think it would be a great idea if the Consider system had it's own UI window. Possibly as a Toggle or on button-down. So if you hold down C the window stays open and it closes when you release C; or you press C once to open the consider window and press C again to close it.
If you are really going to be increasing the kinds of info the Consider system is going to give us, it would be so much better if it had it's own UI window instead of just spamming your chat with multiple lines of text.
"Item values have been restricted to only be displayed in item tooltips while interacting with a vendor."
Honestly I think this is just a PITA (Pain in the Tushy) since it just means you can't see how much a vendor will buy an item for unless you are actually at the vendor. I understand that Faction will potentially effect the prices, but since this is going to be something that 3rd party websites will list for you it only motivates players to feel like they need to keep such websites open while they adventure so they can look up vendor prices on loot.
I would suggest that tooltips should at least list the "Price at Neutral Faction: X coin value" at the minimum.
Well that's enough I guess... how many of you actually made it through everything?
Cool questions, well written. I'm excited to hear more about most of these too.
I'll just give my opinion on one of them. I personally think weapon swapping in combat should be pretty limited. Feels obvious that rangers will need to be able to swap between bow and melee during combat, so maybe allowing others to make switches would be reasonable, but with a cost. Maybe it takes, I dunno, 2 seconds? You might miss an auto attack or two while swapping?
Ranarius said:Feels obvious that rangers will need to be able to swap between bow and melee during combat, so maybe allowing others to make switches would be reasonable
Well with Melee vs Range weapons you wouldn't need to do any swapping because you can have both equipped at the same time. Your attacks will juse use whichever they are required to use. Which of course brings up an interesting question... Will Auto-Attacks swap automatically based on your distance from the target?
Eg. You're Melee'ing with your sword and then the enemy moves away from you or you move back away from the enemy, will your character automatically swap to shooting your Equipped bow since you can no longer reach the target with your sword?
Or will there be seperate Auto-Attack and Auto-Shoot keys and you will need to manually stop Auto-Attack and engage Auto-Shoot in order to swap? and vice versa of course.
I was also looking at my own question and maybe I wasn't as clear about it...
Goofy said: "What if you just want to swap your Main Hand and Offhand in combat?"
What I meant was: What if you just want to swap the 2 weapons you already have equipped into opposite hands. So for example, if you have a Sword in Main Hand and an Axe in Offhand. Can you maybe flip them so that the Axe is now in Main Hand and the Sword is in the Offhand. You didn't have to reach into your bag for a new weapon, you just juggle swap hands with the 2 weapons you already have equipped.
LOTRO recently eliminated weapon swapping in combat. Partly because it "forced" people who wanted to be near the top of the dps charts to frequently switch back and forth for various reasons tied to the game's systems. Very few players felt this enhanced the "fun" of gameplay and quite a few felt it made things tedious and less enjoyable.
From a realism point of view it makes sense to either prohibit swapping while an enemy is in melee range or impose a huge penalty. Such as a minute without being able to attack and any enemy attacking getting automatic critical hits since you would essentially be defenseless (hard to use a shield while changing weapons, after all). For that matter why limit this to melee range - so ditto for a switch in combat if an enemy is attacking you at range.
IMO:
If they remove weapon swapping, then it further limits encounter design, or further pushes LAS into the territory of facilitating failure.
What does that mean? It means that every mechanic that restricts or reduces player agency means you can't have truly dynamic enounters. There's hundreds of posts on these forums over the years about this topic, but that's a summary. If you give the players less choice, you also give designers less choice in encounter design.
If the players can't respond to a change in the encounter, then there are two possible outcomes. Either they partially or completely fail, (one or all die) or they are forced to fight, via mechanics, and not by their own choice from not-an-ideal position.
An example, an encounter begins with creatures that are susceptible so slashing/piercing, but resistant to blunt. Ok, so everyone who can uses their slashers and piercers.
Then, randomly, and there's no way to tell ahead of time, and no way to adjust because of LAS, the encounter shifts to slashing/piercing immune, but susceptible to blunt.
Ok, so.. now what? Your melee all get to sit there with their fingers up their butts, because their slasher/piercers can't be used (all mobs are now immune to slash/pierce) and despite knowing they could switch to their blunt weapons, which they have in their bags, they can't, because LAS and/or no-weapon-swapping-in-combat prevents it. Unless, maybe, you're one of the few "special" classes that can leave combat and do whatever you want? Change weapons, change the entire LAS loadout, change part of their LAS loadout? Who knows?
This creates a tremendous amount of frustration on the part of some paying customers. Especially those that aren't playing those "special" classes, if they exist.
Then you can repeat this with elemental vs. mystic damage, or even ice vs. fire, or any non-melee dmg category vs. any other non-melee damage category, for casters. With 8+6 LAS and no-weapon-swapping, success is now based on RNGesus either blessing or cursing you. Entirely unlike EQ1. :) Even though.. well, yeah.. clearly, we're way past any attempt at what made EQ1 great. hehehe.
And frankly, every designer I know doesn't like this kind of restriction, because it means it restricts the dynamic nature of encounters they can implement for content.
Which is certainly a choice, but when you say you don't want to call your game niche, then put in mechanics that restrict the target demographic such that it likely will be niche, it's a bit.. confusing.
Who knows what VR will actually do in the end? Their fundamental tenets, design goals, features, scope, and schedules are apparently now changing dramatically every month. /shrug
Just wanted to say great writeup goofy.
I think the biggest change that sticks out (while I know it was mentioned before) is that spells will no longer have a chance to be exceptionally good but many different levels of exceptionally bad.
Crit in modern games is annoying because so many of your hits become crits that it is no longer an exciting event. Rare crit events are those things that give you a rush, bam look at that big number and do a little bit of bragging. I always got excited when I got a big ol backstab on my rogue or a big 'ol bomb heal crit on my clerics, but I also understand how having to balance big crits overall makes the normal damage/healing lower to compensate.
Will having only damage reductions be as exciting as the normal way we will see it now? Will we regularly hit the weak or moderate resist so that baseline is the new crit to be excited about? Or are we all going to be expectin status quo and just feel meh when resists come around. Will be interesting to see how it plays out. Can't wait for some more gameplay streams to see all of it in action.
Nexira said:Will having only damage reductions be as exciting as the normal way we will see it now? Will we regularly hit the weak or moderate resist so that baseline is the new crit to be excited about? Or are we all going to be expectin status quo and just feel meh when resists come around. Will be interesting to see how it plays out. Can't wait for some more gameplay streams to see all of it in action.
Iirc, in early EQ only warriors could hit crititally (and crippling :) , it was a class defining ability. Other classes gained crit hits a lot later, through AA. The real thing you looked at (and were exited about) was getting double attacks and dual wield hits (so basically two, three or four hits for every weapon swing). So I think no crits won't be something to worry about.
I agree with vjeks's comment, adapting to dynamic combat (both weapons AND abilities!) should really be possible. But of course, until we can get our hands on the game and try it for ourselves, we won't know if VR's vision really works.
What I found interesting in the NL is the point about deprecating spell lines. In another thread (also by Goofy?) there was the exact question about spell upgrades. The question was, for example with the mez spell, if certain ranks would be limited in what level of target mobs they could hit, and so on. Now we have a good answer, as there won't be ability "ranks" anymore, instead the basic abilities will scale with stats and level.
Thawol said:I had not realized they took those armor slots away. Kinda disapointing.
Yeah... I'm still surprised that we have no armor at all on any part of the arm anymore. Seems we are all going to be bare arm barbarians with gloves on.
My prediction is that all Chest Armors are going to have shoulder and/or sleaves included and Gloves/Gaunlets are going to go farther up the arms where bracers would be normally. We may also find things like 'Armguard' type of bracers that get equiped in the glove slots but cover the wrists and leave fingers and palms free.
Goofy, thanks for this great discussion post. I must've missed the negative stats part. I'm really intrigued about how that will work in-game. Will there be inverse affects like having negative fire stats boost ice damage and defense?
In regards to the removed equipment slots, that sucks for a gearing and build perspective for me. However, from a visual perspective I'm fully onboard. The chest always includes sleeves in games for the most part. When it doesn't, with something like a vest, the whole aesthetic is then ruined when you're forced to wear additional sleeves anyway. Plus, gloves come in different lengths if you want to hide some RP scars/tattoos.
For the weapon swapping topic, I agree with most that it's a versatility that should be included. I'm with BamBam's suggestion. 10s swap time makes it so it's not feasibly a part of anyone's rotation, but you're not stuck in a bad matchup either. This would especially be beneficial for people opting to group with others since they can be covered as they swap. Although now that I think about it, it would also be less relevant in a group since others have your back until that one battle is over..
I 100% agree with goofy on the item value. With traveling being non-trivial and inventory space being a hot commodity in most MMO's, many people will be tabbing out of the game to determine what items make the most sense to keep. That's not fun and neither is constantly being stressed about potentially tossing valuable items when you're low on space and can't remember the value of every drop without a spreadsheet.
Feastycentral said:I 100% agree with goofy on the item value. With traveling being non-trivial and inventory space being a hot commodity in most MMO's, many people will be tabbing out of the game to determine what items make the most sense to keep. That's not fun and neither is constantly being stressed about potentially tossing valuable items when you're low on space and can't remember the value of every drop without a spreadsheet.
I too agree with this 100%.
If I'm filling my inventory with "seemingly" nonsensical items that I am forced to choose to abandon for more space, only to find out days/weeks/months later that it was a rare quest item i destroyed, that will be grounds for early retirement from the game for me. A portent I want nothing to deal with again in any gaming experience. Having to reference a third party source constantly in EQ (while looting a corpse to avoid needless items in your limited/precious inventory space) was intensely infuriating and mentally fatiguing. For those that never played EQ, it wasn't uncommon to defeat something like a skeleton and find: a Rusty short sword, Bone Chips, Chipped Bone, a Glowing Bone, Piece of Bone, a tattered note, a bandage, an Elf skull or a copper ring. Some of those things sound like they could be useful or for a quest, like a glowing bone, or a tattered note, but they weren't... they were just nonsensical; They served only to introduce tedium.
With that said, I know the devs have expressed their desire to avoid tedious tasks like excessive inventory/encumberance management.
On the weapon swap topic: I "personally" think that a global cooldown trigger to "all" skills (including auto attack timer) after swapping would be sufficient. And in the case of "weapon skills", simply have all weapon skills share the same cooldown (so swapping cannot circumvent weapon skill cooldowns). My reasoning for this is that if a "hero" were carrying a couple of sheathed weapons on their back or waist and simply wanted to sheathe one weapon for another, it likely wouldn't take that "hero" more than a second or two. I put the word hero in quotes because these are fictional characters with super human/magical powers/strengths/speeds. Anything more than a second or two is begining to lean toward tedium and instead of being something that makes weapon swapping an inconvenient alternative, has now turned into a punishment. The global cooldown to all skills and shared weapon skill cooldowns would circumvent players weapon swapping in an attempt to manipulate game mechanics and allow players to use weapon swapping as fun gameplay.
Re. Item value: 'Worth' is not just monetary or utility. One person's 'inconvenience' and even 'tedium' is another's worthwhile 'meaning' and 'choice'.
I like an inventory system and itemisation system to have meaning. I like to have to plan what I need for a session. I like to talk to other people about the loot/drops I'm unfamiliar with. I like the realism and mystery and social opportunities of not just *knowing* something is a quest item or valuable loot or just cheap junk or something in between or all three.
Like all 'old school' aspects of an MMORPG it needs to be carefully designed to minimise unecessary 'tedium' but maximise meaningful 'stuff'.
If I occasionally destroy a quest item, I know where to get it again. I presumably had fun doing that the first time, so, no big deal.
If I occasionally vendor sell something I could have traded for more from a player, I might be able to go buy-back, or I might just have to console myself with the 'value' of that experience and go get another.
@disposalist, I agree with your opinion on some people enjoying the micromanagement of their inventory and I absolutely respect that; But as you said, there needs to be a carefully designed and distinct difference between "unecessarily tedious and meaningful stuff". In my comment, I made mention of nonsense like "a tattered note" with absolutely no description, and in EQ, "a tattered note" is a key component to many quests... and some are literally useless/worthless, but they all look identical, take up that precious inventory space, and were often times not something that you could just casually go back to get another.
Again, I agree that there is a lot of perceived value in having a robust looting and inventory system, but there has to be a line drawn... and I "personally" feel that line should stop at requiring the player to either disregard items or reference a database to manage items.
Darch said:The global cooldown to all skills and shared weapon skill cooldowns would circumvent players weapon swapping in an attempt to manipulate game mechanics and allow players to use weapon swapping as fun gameplay.
I believe the idea is to not punish the player for having a very ineffective weapon equipped vs having a system that encourages (or at least doesn't discourage) weapon swapping as a mechanic. In the latter, it'll always boil down to x class must use y weapon for their most efficient technique use. Then whole systems sprout out such as using daggers for faster weapon technique build up and then swapping to the weapon with the strongest weapon technique. These systems once figured out will outweigh the downside of a single global cooldown.
As an example, FFXI allowed weapon and gear swapping in combat. It eventually became necessary to have macros and/or third party addons to swap items per skill usage which was completely unintended by the developers. For example, you would swap into all your spell speed equipment just before the really long cast high burst heal, and then your high +healing gear for the short and otherwise low healing spell.
The sense I get is that VR doesn't want swapping mid-combat to be a mechanic like that.
disposalist said:Re. Item value: 'Worth' is not just monetary or utility. One person's 'inconvenience' and even 'tedium' is another's worthwhile 'meaning' and 'choice'.
I like an inventory system and itemisation system to have meaning. I like to have to plan what I need for a session. I like to talk to other people about the loot/drops I'm unfamiliar with. I like the realism and mystery and social opportunities of not just *knowing* something is a quest item or valuable loot or just cheap junk or something in between or all three.
Thank you for this perspective. This seems to be the goal with the removal of the item value. However, knowing myself I'll still want to check each one. I'm not too worried about quest items since those are easy for them to label or I can keep track of them through a quest journal.
For me one of the most frustrating things is if my bags are full and I found a good drop. Then having to decide between tossing one of the two non-stacking pig tails or the stack of 10 pig teeth. Getting rid of the pig tail, because how much could it really be worth vs 10 teeth, only to find out the tail vendors for 30 silver and the teeth are 1s each. Granted, I'll admit it's not gamebreaking for me. I'll definitely know better for next time, but it sure will make me tab out a ton during adventures.
While we're on this topic, please make most non-equippable items stackable.
Darch said:If I'm filling my inventory with "seemingly" nonsensical items that I am forced to choose to abandon for more space, only to find out days/weeks/months later that it was a rare quest item i destroyed, that will be grounds for early retirement from the game for me.
Items being Quest related showing in tooltip is a totally different discussion and wasn't part of the newsletter that I can find.
disposalist said:If I occasionally vendor sell something I could have traded for more from a player, I might be able to go buy-back, or I might just have to console myself with the 'value' of that experience and go get another.
Item value to other players is also a totally different discussion. It's obvious that an items value to players will be much more complex and I would never suggest that VR should try to have item tooltips try and keep track of the current market rate of an item when sold to other players.
Newsletter Patch Notes said:Item values have been restricted to only be displayed in item tooltips while interacting with a vendor.
I want to make clear that my initial post was only in regards to this part of the newsletter patch notes.
This basically means that you need to be visiting a vendor with the Merchant UI open in order for an items Sell value to show on items tooltips. If you are not visiting a vendor you get to see nothing about Prices in the tooltip.
My argument is that this limitation on the item tooltip only showing price while visiting the vendor only motivates players to have an external Wiki site open that will allow you to search the item in order to see it's sale price to a vendor. My suggestion was that the Tooltip should always show you the Base Price if you sell to a Vendor in which you have Neutral faction standing with.
Now... that said... This was guessing that Vendor Prices were only going to be based on your Faction with the Vendor, and possibly being affected by Charisma. VR could be planning much more complexity to their Vendor system, and as such there could be in game reasons that this is not workable.
1) Items values may fluctuate based on location. For example:
In a region where Apples are abundant, if you try to sell an Apple in the nearby town those Vendors will only give you a few coppers since Apples are in high supply in that locale.
Yet if you travel across the continent to a seperate region where Apples are not found at all and try to sell the same Apple to those vendors they will instead give you several silver in exchange since Apples are in low supply in that location.
2) Item values may fluctuate based on Vendor's speciality. For example:
If you find that same Apple and you take it into town and sell it to a Fruit Vendor, they might give you a bunch of silver for the crisp nice Apple because the Fruit vendor will be able to quickly turn around and sell it to his fruit customers for a profit.
If you instead try to sell this Apple to the towns Weapon Vendor, he's going to need to re-sell it over to a proper Fruit Vendor as none of his customers are looking for Apples. So in order to make a profit he will only offer you a couple coppers for your Apple.
3) Item values may fluctuate based on how many of an item are being sold recently. For example:
If lots of people have been picking up Apples in the past hour and selling them in town, the local Fruit Vendor may be swamped with more Apples than the towns folk are willing to buy. So when you show up to sell your Apple he may only give you a single copper.
Another time perhaps you come to town to sell your Apple to find that the Fruit vendors are low on stock since no adventurers have been selling Apples recently. The Fruit vendor is desperate to get more Apples as his customers are lining up get some. This time the vendor is offering you several silver for your Apple.
If Pantheon is planning to have Vendors be this complex and an items value will be wildly different based on location, vendor type, and/or recent supply, then it's not really viable for them to give you an item Price in the tooltip because they have no idea which Vendor you will try to sell to and when.
Weapon Swap topic...
Newsletter said:Only the Main Hand weapon is used when determining what Weapon Techniques can be employed.
This is what sparked my question about if Players will be able to Swap weapons while in combat.
dorotea said:LOTRO recently eliminated weapon swapping in combat. Partly because it "forced" people who wanted to be near the top of the dps charts to frequently switch back and forth for various reasons tied to the game's systems. Very few players felt this enhanced the "fun" of gameplay and quite a few felt it made things tedious and less enjoyable.
While I did not know this about LOTRO, this is pretty much the thoughts I had when I saw this part of the newsletter.
If Pantheon allows weapon swapping in combat, you might be able to put a both a Sword Technique and a Mace Technique on your LAS and then quickly drop a Mace into your Main hand and fire off the Mace Technique and then drop the sword back in when you want to use the Sword Technique.
Even players who dual wield might want to swap which weapon is in the main hand and which is in the off-hand slot in order to mix up which Technique you are using.
As @dorotea said about LOTRO, this kind of thing in order to Maximize your gameplay could get rather tedious. It would be EQ Bards all over again. Those who have lived through the weapon swap dance depending on which Song you were singing know how much of a PITA this was.
So my initial thoughts were... "This might mean they are not going to allow weapon swapping while in combat at all." Hence why I tried to ask the questions I did in my first post. I was mostly trying to just find out what VR's stance on the subject is currently, since all our idea's are moot until we know which way they want to go.
Sarim said:What I found interesting in the NL is the point about deprecating spell lines. In another thread (also by Goofy?) there was the exact question about spell upgrades. The question was, for example with the mez spell, if certain ranks would be limited in what level of target mobs they could hit, and so on. Now we have a good answer, as there won't be ability "ranks" anymore, instead the basic abilities will scale with stats and level.
My comments over on that other thread had to do with Mezmerise and it's Mana Costs. My thoughts were that a high level character would have a much larger Mana pool and likely have more ways to recover larger chunks of Mana. Thus the cost of Mezmerise and it's upkeep cost would be almost meaningless at high levels.
The Newsletter gave us some more info which touches on this topic...
Newsletter said:The growth rate for Health and Mana pools has been adjusted to result in smaller increases over the span of leveling, and reduce the gap between low-health and high-health class/race combinations. This change allows us to better balance the difficulty curves between levels, put greater emphasis on the role of armor, and drive more interesting choices around which mana-costing abilities to use and when.
This means that our Mana Pools will not be vastly different as we level up. As such, Mezmerise costs should still be meaningful to a higher level character without needing to artificially inflate the costs as I suggested over in that other thread.
The smaller increase to our Mana Pools as we level up will be offset by having more spell options available that have varying costs. This means that Mana management could actually become more challenging at higher levels rather than less challenging.
Newsletter said:The methods used to determine the potency of spells and abilities have been revised to facilitate longer-term scaling. As a result, ability lines have been deprecated. Although some spells continue to offer more potent alternatives at later levels, these are treated as their own abilities and may be assigned to the limited action set in tandem with their less (or more) powerful counterparts.
As you pointed out @Sarim, this means that Abilities/Spells will never get upgraded, but instead just scale with your Stats and Skills. Yet they can still offer 'Alternative' Abilities/Spells which are similar yet more potent or have slightly different effects which will allow you to still have some 'downranking'.
For example, they could add higher level 'Mezmerise' type Spells which could do things like hit multiple targets in an AoE, or have added effects like causing a State like Dazed or Slowed when the Mezmerise wears off. So you the Enchanter could then have both Mezmerise spells on your LAS and when you need the extra effects you use the higher version, but if you just need a simple Mez you use the basic one.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:
Weapon Swap topic...
Newsletter said:Only the Main Hand weapon is used when determining what Weapon Techniques can be employed.
This is what sparked my question about if Players will be able to Swap weapons while in combat.
dorotea said:LOTRO recently eliminated weapon swapping in combat. Partly because it "forced" people who wanted to be near the top of the dps charts to frequently switch back and forth for various reasons tied to the game's systems. Very few players felt this enhanced the "fun" of gameplay and quite a few felt it made things tedious and less enjoyable.
While I did not know this about LOTRO, this is pretty much the thoughts I had when I saw this part of the newsletter.
If Pantheon allows weapon swapping in combat, you might be able to put a both a Sword Technique and a Mace Technique on your LAS and then quickly drop a Mace into your Main hand and fire off the Mace Technique and then drop the sword back in when you want to use the Sword Technique.
Even players who dual wield might want to swap which weapon is in the main hand and which is in the off-hand slot in order to mix up which Technique you are using.
As @dorotea said about LOTRO, this kind of thing in order to Maximize your gameplay could get rather tedious. It would be EQ Bards all over again. Those who have lived through the weapon swap dance depending on which Song you were singing know how much of a PITA this was.
So my initial thoughts were... "This might mean they are not going to allow weapon swapping while in combat at all." Hence why I tried to ask the questions I did in my first post. I was mostly trying to just find out what VR's stance on the subject is currently, since all our idea's are moot until we know which way they want to go.
Alternatively, you could trigger weapon skill cooldowns upon equip.
Add: But as you said - our opinioins are moot until we can hear from the devs.
Darch said:
This was my solution above about the weapon swap concerns:
"On the weapon swap topic: I "personally" think that a global cooldown trigger to "all" skills (including auto attack timer) after swapping would be sufficient. And in the case of "weapon skills", simply have all weapon skills share the same cooldown (so swapping cannot circumvent weapon skill cooldowns)."
"The global cooldown to all skills and shared weapon skill cooldowns would circumvent players weapon swapping in an attempt to manipulate game mechanics and allow players to use weapon swapping as fun gameplay."Alternatively, you could trigger weapon skill cooldowns upon equip.
Add: But as you said - our opinioins are moot until we can hear from the devs.
Also lock auto attacks for the whole GCD thing so the DPS loss is real. It should clearly say "toolkit increase" and not "Marginal DPS increase" over it, but I agree on the initial idea.