After returning to Everquest for a bit a few ramblings about things I liked and some that I didn't.
1. Pulling is an art and one that has been sorely missed.
2. Crowd Control done right is a big addition to games. The number of mobs that you can mez should only be limited by the player.
3. I like tanks having a very limited aoe aggro generator. Single targetting and building enough hate to keep healers/debuffers clean is fun.
4. Everquest combat is really lacking, just straight spank and tank on everything. Where are the rune abilities, force block, the things that I really enjoyed in Vanguard. Hopefully combat won't be like a console game, but i do want enough special abilities that it is interesting.
5. Love items being rare. Spent the better part of two days in Guk camping items and didn't get them. Guess what, I still have reason to log in. Excellent.
6. That reminds me, I still enjoy camps as much as crawls if not more.
7. Running out of mana being a concern that has to be monitored rather than every class has endless ability to cast forever. Love trying to maintain aggro while balancing enough mana that I can keep pulling.
8. Boring encounters, all so straight forward.
9. Love the class interdependancy. Every class is wanted and whatever group build you have leaves you missing something.
Can't wait for Pantheon. Oh the possibilities.
1. Yep. My favorite thing in gaming was pulling in EQ, pretty much.
2. Yep.
4. Sure, but I'd rather too little than too much.
5. Yep, EQ ftw in that regard.
6. For sure. "Crawls" end up being races through the same instance over and over. Gag.
7. Being efficient in EQ was so important and made doing the little things right really fun.
8. Elaborate?
9. Yep. You could group 3 monks and 3 wizards and figure out a way to have fun and kick ass.
Agreed on all points except for maybe the combat parts. I love EQ's slower paced spam-less combat. Every MMO now requires you to constantly be mashing buttons over and over. That isn't exciting, fun, or engaging, it's exhausting and mind numbing. I'd rather have far fewer buttons and/or only need to use them strategically.
The current infatuation with games being "ACTION ACTION pow pow push all the buttons dodge roll anime michael bay explosions" is strikingly bad. I don't want to play light up whack-a-mole. I want to play an RPG.
If I went into my D&D session as a wizard and kept constantly blowing all my spells like you do in an MMO, I'd be dead before 2nd or 3rd level.
picks86 said:The current infatuation with games being "ACTION ACTION pow pow push all the buttons dodge roll anime michael bay explosions" is strikingly bad. I don't want to play light up whack-a-mole. I want to play an RPG.
I agree. Very bad. And if that wasn't bad enough basically every MMO compounds this by allowing classes to dps and heal and tank at the click of a button.
Slower, more thoughtful, more meaningful, more tactical abilities and actions make a MMO feel so much better.
I play lots of FPS/RTS/MOBA's and don't need things slow... But in an MMO is makes zero sense design-wise to let everyone do everything and have them mash buttons constantly.
I personally think there can be a happy medium between the slower paced combat and Twitch. I think there should be movement out of fire and attacks that can be dodged or parried via abilities. However twitch combat tends to be fun at first but lack the depth.
Final Fantasy XIV had a nice combination I believe of the slower hot bar combat but the upped the speed a little to make it feel like you could always do something. They had a 1.5 second global cool down so it didn’t feel like I was mashing keys but it also wasn’t so slow that I felt like I could get a cup of coffee between abilities.
picks86 said:Agreed on all points except for maybe the combat parts. I love EQ's slower paced spam-less combat. Every MMO now requires you to constantly be mashing buttons over and over. That isn't exciting, fun, or engaging, it's exhausting and mind numbing. I'd rather have far fewer buttons and/or only need to use them strategically.
The current infatuation with games being "ACTION ACTION pow pow push all the buttons dodge roll anime michael bay explosions" is strikingly bad. I don't want to play light up whack-a-mole. I want to play an RPG.
If I went into my D&D session as a wizard and kept constantly blowing all my spells like you do in an MMO, I'd be dead before 2nd or 3rd level.
I really don't think it's today's fast paced combat, or the number of skills/buttons that creates the spammy combat, but, rather, the fast regeneration in combat and especially out of it in those games. EQ's combat was much more memorable and less spammy, because EQ required resource management, and because of it, encounters took longer which allowed for strategy within combat (CC, etc.). You couldn't burn through all your skills/spells simply because mana was finite and recovering it took a significant amount of time. If you look at EQlive today with out of combat regeneration, it is spammy just like every other game.
However, EQlaunch wasn't perfect, and I think EQ's style can be improved on, as warriors need more than "just" taunt/slam or taunt/kick. But, introduce more skills for the warrior using the mold of EQ's combat in Pantheon. Warriors could have shouts, bleeds, hamstring etc. , but they need to have a resource as well - endurance, which is also finite and takes a long time to recover. Resource management must make a return or we won't have the slow-paced strategy of combat, and the combat will be "spammy." And, as a result with resource management, this also promotes grouping since downtime is a thing, no one wants to solo regen 5 minutes+ of endurance or mana, so people will want to group because the gameplay promotes it as mobs can be killed on a regular basis, or if they choose to solo, are significantly penalized.
It's the path of least resistance argument - with a significant penalty with downtime, many more people will choose to group as it's "easier" versus the alternative with soloing and fast regeneration.
This is why I would 100% disagree with the OP's thought that EQ's combat was "boring" - some of the skillsets most definitely were, but you could expand those skillsets and still keep the framework that made EQ combat great.
@Raidan I must add that I am not against resource management. I 100% agree that resource management should be part of EVERY encounter. Healer should have to manage their mana by popping cool downs during fights to help restore mana etc. and if too many people are taking damage that could seriously hamper the chance of success because the healers might not have enough mana to finish the fight. I think every role should have to manage a resource.
With that said, I think that the older games (EQ, Dark Age of Camelot, etc.) were a little too far towards the having to wait. Not enough action. I personally because this wasn’t 100% because of design of the game as much as hardware requirements back in the day that limited what a server could handle. I think that the original EQ or DAoC servers wouldn’t be able to handle all of the commands that newer twitch MMORPGs throw at them. That isn’t their fault it us just their age. I feel modern games have been so dumbed down by Twitch combat that is doesn’t take a coordinated team of people to conquer an encounter if you can just dodge your way to victory but I don’t think we need to go back to only being able to use 5 abilities before having to sit down to regenerate resources. There should be cool down abilities that people can use that will hamper their effectiveness in combat in order to help regain their resources.
My two coppers.
Raidan said:picks86 said:Agreed on all points except for maybe the combat parts. I love EQ's slower paced spam-less combat. Every MMO now requires you to constantly be mashing buttons over and over. That isn't exciting, fun, or engaging, it's exhausting and mind numbing. I'd rather have far fewer buttons and/or only need to use them strategically.
The current infatuation with games being "ACTION ACTION pow pow push all the buttons dodge roll anime michael bay explosions" is strikingly bad. I don't want to play light up whack-a-mole. I want to play an RPG.
If I went into my D&D session as a wizard and kept constantly blowing all my spells like you do in an MMO, I'd be dead before 2nd or 3rd level.
I really don't think it's today's fast paced combat, or the number of skills/buttons that creates the spammy combat, but, rather, the fast regeneration in combat and especially out of it in those games. EQ's combat was much more memorable and less spammy, because EQ required resource management, and because of it, encounters took longer which allowed for strategy within combat (CC, etc.). You couldn't burn through all your skills/spells simply because mana was finite and recovering it took a significant amount of time. If you look at EQlive today with out of combat regeneration, it is spammy just like every other game.
However, EQlaunch wasn't perfect, and I think EQ's style can be improved on, as warriors need more than "just" taunt/slam or taunt/kick. But, introduce more skills for the warrior using the mold of EQ's combat in Pantheon. Warriors could have shouts, bleeds, hamstring etc. , but they need to have a resource as well - endurance, which is also finite and takes a long time to recover. Resource management must make a return or we won't have the slow-paced strategy of combat, and the combat will be "spammy." And, as a result with resource management, this also promotes grouping since downtime is a thing, no one wants to solo regen 5 minutes+ of endurance or mana, so people will want to group because the gameplay promotes it as mobs can be killed on a regular basis, or if they choose to solo, are significantly penalized.
It's the path of least resistance argument - with a significant penalty with downtime, many more people will choose to group as it's "easier" versus the alternative with soloing and fast regeneration.
This is why I would 100% disagree with the OP's thought that EQ's combat was "boring" - some of the skillsets most definitely were, but you could expand those skillsets and still keep the framework that made EQ combat great.
Totally agree 100% with this, resource management is absolutely critical to my enjoyment of a combat system and really must be a part of Pantheon from start to finish for me to truly enjoy the combat.
It also needs to be said but, just having resource management per fight isn't what I'm talking about, this resource management needs to carry over between fights, if I'm a wizard and I blow my load on a bad pull to thin the numbers and protect my group, I should need to wait for my meditation skills to recover my mana through the next fights after that to be ready to dps again. This should also be the case for EVERY class in the game, not just the EQ way of mana users. Every class should harness resources in the same way as casters used to in EQ, maybe some have ways of increasing their regen, but they should be small, or on very long cooldowns (harvest, Clarity).
There should be NO INCREASE in resource regeneration outside of combat, whatsoever. What you see in combat is what you get outside of combat too.
@Rallyd
Agreed 100%. I was meaning both in and out of combat in my original post. I'd only want resources to increase faster through mediate (or the melee equivalent) and/or class specific spells like clarity that would increase regen.
@Aggelos
I think there's room for action-related combat. Not Mortal Kombat style combos, but counterspells for casters and/or block, chains, finishing moves etc. for melees like VG used. The thing that I would want for Pantheon though that VG did not incorporate was the resource management. I want to have to weigh if using that counterspell or slam is worth it in the fight. Or Should I save that mana/endurance as I know we have a roamer coming or a respawn shortly? I don't want to just be able to button mash because an ability/spell refreshes or pops up and I have no fear of every running out of mana/endurance. I want players to have to pay attention and strategize within the combat and plan for future encounters rather than be able to continually click, push, or macro 1-2-3-4-5.
And, I respectfully disagree that the older style games got the out of combat regen wrong. Downtime and slow regen is necessary and the component that has been consistently been missing in all recent MMOs. If you regen too quickly, you create an environment where DPS rules. As long as you can hold agro, why not continually use the best spells and burn down mobs as quickly as possible? No need for crowd control, just /mass AoE. Without having the resource management and downtime, you lose most of the utility that made EQ classes special and encounters memorable, as fights only last a few seconds.
Without downtime, there's no point to group except for the rare exceptions when you "need" someone for loot, a quest, or a quick dungeon run. If you can solo a mob, wait a few seconds, and be ready to kill again, even if you solo at 30-40% of the speed of a group and obtain 25% the experience of one, you've effectively killed the group game as you made soloing a viable option for progression.
Downtime is one of the aspects of the game that has been removed due to developers wanting to create a game that is always fun or accessible - especially solo (and often due to gamer's complaints as we can be our own worst enemy). I think it's the one continually overlooked aspect when trying to recall what made EQ combat memorable that people want to forget/dismiss as people now are used to the quick combat/fast regen and view people wanting EQ vanilla combat as nostalgic (which, I obviously disagree with), and, again, without having it, I don't think the experience will ever be replicated.
picks86 said:Agreed on all points except for maybe the combat parts. I love EQ's slower paced spam-less combat. Every MMO now requires you to constantly be mashing buttons over and over. That isn't exciting, fun, or engaging, it's exhausting and mind numbing. I'd rather have far fewer buttons and/or only need to use them strategically.
The current infatuation with games being "ACTION ACTION pow pow push all the buttons dodge roll anime michael bay explosions" is strikingly bad. I don't want to play light up whack-a-mole. I want to play an RPG.
If I went into my D&D session as a wizard and kept constantly blowing all my spells like you do in an MMO, I'd be dead before 2nd or 3rd level.
I should clarify, my perspective is mainly from a dread knight (vanguard) or shadow knight (everquest) perspective. I wasn't overly attached to the button mashing festival that was vanguard tanking, but where it excelled was managing your self buffs and mob debuffs, and timely defensive abilities. These abilities were great when tied to encounters that required you to do more than just hold aggro. Encounters that have devastating mob abilities that are only survivable when top notch healing is met with a skilled players defensive abilities being used properly are what I am asking for. What I have played of Everquest so far, leaves little for the SK to do other than getting a clean pull and then not breaking mezzed mobs. Pretty basic combat/encounters to me. I don't want to face roll my keyboard for the entire encounter, but if I am only going to trigger 3-7 abilities in an encounter, let's make them matter to the encounter (force blocks, runes, invulns and hopefully some new additions).
@Raidan I personally think after reading your last comments that we are roughly on the same page with many of the things we were discussing and I do agree with you on downtime for out of combat regeneration. I don't think soloing (to an extent) should be completely discounted but I feel that grouping should be incentivized way more than soloing. Even in open world zones let’s say you can solo most things but after each fight you need to sit down, build a camp fire, and regenerated your resources. The incentive for grouping would be that bard in your group that plays a regeneration song that increases that rate. There could be a moral buff for each member in your group that would also increase it.
So say for instance that the group size is set to 5 for arguments sake only, so for solo play I could kill 1 monster and require one minute of downtime to regenerate to 100%. Now if I went into the zone with a buddy say they give you 10% regeneration buff. So the two of us can kill 1 monster but it would only take us 54 seconds to regenerate fully before pulling again. Now a full group would grant a full 50% regeneration buff that it would only take 30 seconds to regenerate fully (even less if you had a group member that could bring an additional regeneration ability to the table). So grouping up even in the "easy" over land zones would have a greater incentive. You could kill faster and recover faster in a group. This would also encourage groups that were not completely full to see a solo player and invite them to the group. The solo player could then still be progressing at a slower pace until a passing group invites him.
As for in combat regeneration, I think there should be VERY LITTLE (to none at all). The key is resource management and the use of ability cool downs like mediate. The key to a skilled play would be knowing when to use one of these resource management abilities to regenerate. So say for melee we call it "Feint", when this ability is activated you do 50% less damage but you regenerate your mana/endurance at a specified rate. Melee would need to weave this ability during a fight to ensure they did not completely run out of their resources. If you ran completely out you would need to sit and rest to regenerate enough of the resource to use your Feint again (because it too would use some resource). Mages would have a similar skillset.
You could also take group gameplay a little further like what The Elder Scrolls Online did with synergies. There were abilities that players could use that other players could combo off of to gain additional effects. One of these abilities was a magical spear that the Templar could throw that would do a little damage and any other player could pick it up and instantly regenerate a small amount of resources. Often times a healer would toss this to help out the tanks and melee DPS but Pantheon could utilize a similar system to encourage players to work together to help manage resources as a group and bring resource management to a group level and not just solely a player level.
@Aggelos,
I don't mind having group synergies for resource management as long as it adds to class interdependence, EQ even did it a bit with necro's being able to "twitch" and share their mana among group members. And, I'm not a huge proponent on skills which allow for fast regeneration mid combat (thinking like a /mend for endurance rather than HPs in original EQ terms). I'd rather the player have to manage the resources in combat, and have group members that helped them regen like bards, shamans, enchanters, etc. That being said, if there could be some ability that was on a long cooldown, I wouldn't be opposed to testing it in alpha/beta to see how it would play out as long as the ability made "sense" for the class and wasn't just tacked on to give everyone an endurance regen ability.
The only point we really seem to be in disagreement on is the out of combat regen. I'm a staunch believer that you can't have quick regen, at all, at any point. Yes, in EQ it was punishing to regen at 1 hp standing 2 hps sitting, but it made you want to group because it was "punishing" to solo. Could soloing be done still? Sure, but it was strongly discouraged due to the mechanics. And, don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for there to be no soloing, but that the game be designed for grouping, and if people find ways to solo (and some classes better than others) than by all means, solo if you want.
However, if you create the fast regen out of combat, even if it's less effective than a group, people will take the path of least resistance and only group "when necessary." Basically, through my subjective experience, I've seen grouping become more of a selfish task, or a means to an end, and the the groups form when an item is needed, quest task needs to be completed, etc., and the group disbands shortly after. You don't have the long EQ grind groups where the social interactions truly occur and the bonds and friendships form because they aren't necessary. Without having the continued draw due group due to, yes, often punishing mechanics, that shared need for interdependency doesn't exist.