It's my opinion that downtime is one of the most important and least used features in MMOs.
Downtime actually assigns value to your time, if there is no downtime in a game then your time in that game is worth less.
Downtime drives the economy by regulating the amount of items and plat that enter the server.
Melee classes should not get their health back as soon as they are out of combat like most games these days. They would need a heal or possibly a bind wound to half health.
Caster classes should take 10mins to med back a full mana bar. Buffs from Enchanters and Bards should be prized for this reason.
This also allows time for socializing and strategizing.
How do you feel about downtime ? How long is too long or too short ?
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
Taking 10 minutes to meditate to full mana is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too long. Five minutes might be fine, but ten? No way.
Downtime is nice and all and I agree, but I don't think having excessively long downtime is good either. Mobs that are 1-2 levels below you should reasonably be able to be chain pulled in a group for a pretty extended period of time. Mobs that are above your level should definitely wreck your group and require you to play very carefully.
I'd like to see them strike a balance somewhere that basically accomplishes a few things. For one, allowing people to micro-AFK (2-3 minutes) without feeling like they're holding everyone else up. As such, I think requiring 2-3 minutes worth of downtime is about the most we should expect. Also the term "downtime" doesn't necessarily have to apply to every single pull, but generally after 10-15 minutes of chain pulling you might require this downtime to get your expendable pools back.
Overall, five minutes at most for 0%-100% regeneration of any given expendable pool. Ten minutes it ridiculous, but so is 15 seconds.
Angrykiz said:Playing EQ on the TLP Phinny server right now and it takes my Wiz about 10 mins to get a full bar back.
Seems fine to me...
Kiz~
Phinigel has the out of combat bonus regeneration that I know of. Regenerating a full mana pool out of combat takes about 2-3 minutes.
I'm also trying to say that regardless of what EQ did, it may not necessarily be worth copy & pasting it just on those merits alone. Vanguard had lower downtime than EQ and it didn't ruin the social aspect of that game at all. There was plenty of time to communicate and strategize.
It does NOT have the ooc bonus...
Are you seriously saying I can't time my mana coming back ?
Kiz~
Angrykiz said:It does NOT have the ooc bonus...
Are you seriously saying I can't time my mana coming back ?
I'm sure you're completely capable of timing your mana. My UI displays the ooc regen timer so I figured it worked. I play a Rogue so I wasn't aware that it didn't work.
Even so, you didn't address the second half of my post about the fact that "EQ did it" is not necessarily a good enough justification to copy a mechanic verbatim into Pantheon.
10 mins on Phinny might be fair. I play an SK with the mana pool of a gnat, without C it takes 3-5 minutes to regen 0-100%, I'd imagine a wiz with a bigger pool would take longer. Also, stop being so angry Angrykiz, heh. That said I do think downtime in game is a decent thing. 1) Much of my best socializing "back when" was done during med breaks 2) I smoke, but I smoke outside so your med break is my smokebreak lol. Like Liav said tho, 10 min may be a bit long and 15 seconds is way out of line, I'm sure a happy medium based off gear, buff etc. can be found. We'll find out during testing eh.
Name a game that has low downtime and a good economy ?
If downtime is too short there is no push and pull between how you should be spending your resources you just empty out and regen it back.
If you have to weigh out that you may not want to dump all your mana into this tank mob because next pull is 3 casters and I'm gonna need to blast them.
If downtime is too short then the value of time played is less... If it represents a 10minute med comittment to kill something then that will have more value than something you can chain kill.
If downtime is too short then why wouldnt I just spam my most expensive spells and med it back... Like AoE spells.
If downtime is too short then there is less room for really efficient groups to shine.
All just opinion of course,
Kiz~
Garmr - My tone may come off as anger but it's really just passion for our great hobby. I'm never actually mad ;)
I would personaly vote for a higher downtime so I can soicalize like a school girl. :) I would agree that it helps get the chat going, though I also believe today with dual monitor setups and multiple PCs that people might resort to doing other things besides hanging out with each other and talking.
I wouldnt mind downtime if I have the option of using food Drink or potions to increase OOC health and mana regen. So if my group decided to chain pull and do some massive farming we could do it quicker. Having food drink and potions player crafted also promises economy for tradeskillers
Liav said:Downtime and economy have nothing to do with eachother. This is a non sequitur.
It can like I said if you offered food drink and potions that increased Mana and health regen that was all player made then a long downtime will spawn a large demand for these itesm and it kills two birds with one stone. Players have downtime and it makes sure some crafters have a very useful purpose. If one change can help several aspects of the game it should be looked
Switching gears a bit, but this is one reason I don't like action combat games. Zero downtime. I like being able to chat, look at my items, read a quest log, or look up a questline online in between pulls. With skill-based attacks and auto attacks you can at least chat during combat.
Well, I've already stated my position. I think 10 minutes is ridiculously long. Killing 6 mobs an hour is absurd and excessive. I'm not going to argue this any further.
Liav said:Well, I've already stated my position. I think 10 minutes is ridiculously long. Killing 6 mobs an hour is absurd and excessive. I'm not going to argue this any further.
Oh I agree 10 minutes after killing one mob would be crazy. I much rather chain pull for a few minutes then have to let mana regen for a few minutes
Liav said:Well, I've already stated my position. I think 10 minutes is ridiculously long. Killing 6 mobs an hour is absurd and excessive. I'm not going to argue this any further.
Killing 6 mobs is a bit absurd, way to high should be 3 max!
Sarcasm aside, I do agree that ten minutes may be a bit long, but just because it takes you ten minutes to med from 100% empty to 100% full does not mean you have to med 10 minutes after every single mob. A good grind group in EQ you would be pulling at a steady pace to keep people about 50% mana so that if a bad pull or unplanned re-pop happens your not to out of mana to react.
In the same vein that you think 6 is not enough, I feel that 60 (one mob a minute) is to fast. I think a nice area for a standard mob, same level with Avg gear for said level should be about 2 minutes per mob (counting pull time etc) this seems to be about the rate at which I pulled in EQ, maybe a bit faster in some areas depending on the overall toughness of the mob. This means a room with 10 mobs in it and a 15 minute respawn would be good for a basic group, and a stronger group would be able to handle two rooms.
No way. 10 minutes!? I guess it could work if there is enough health and mana for a decent player to play for a good 30 minutes or so. Even then id have some expendable resource (food, drink) that would drastically descrease it down to 2-3 minutes. Its one thing to try and get people socializing more its another to force them into because the only other alternative is to stare at the screen before continuing.
Angrykiz said:Garmr - My tone may come off as anger but it's really just passion for our great hobby. I'm never actually mad ;)
Haha, I get it man, just playing with ya.
Kalgore said:Liav said:Downtime and economy have nothing to do with eachother. This is a non sequitur.
It can like I said if you offered food drink and potions that increased Mana and health regen that was all player made then a long downtime will spawn a large demand for these itesm and it kills two birds with one stone. Players have downtime and it makes sure some crafters have a very useful purpose. If one change can help several aspects of the game it should be looked
How much is a manastone worth these days?
Dreconic said:Killing 6 mobs is a bit absurd, way to high should be 3 max!
Sarcasm aside, I do agree that ten minutes may be a bit long, but just because it takes you ten minutes to med from 100% empty to 100% full does not mean you have to med 10 minutes after every single mob. A good grind group in EQ you would be pulling at a steady pace to keep people about 50% mana so that if a bad pull or unplanned re-pop happens your not to out of mana to react.
In the same vein that you think 6 is not enough, I feel that 60 (one mob a minute) is to fast. I think a nice area for a standard mob, same level with Avg gear for said level should be about 2 minutes per mob (counting pull time etc) this seems to be about the rate at which I pulled in EQ, maybe a bit faster in some areas depending on the overall toughness of the mob. This means a room with 10 mobs in it and a 15 minute respawn would be good for a basic group, and a stronger group would be able to handle two rooms.
I can agree with this. The earlier phrasing just made it sound like blowing your load on one mob then taking a break for 10 minutes to recover. Maybe in the event of a particularly hard pull (like 5+ mobs at once) that could be acceptable, but yeah.
My worry is that 10 minutes of downtime at any point would basically make soloing impossible without something massively OP like a fungi. While soloing isn't the focus of Pantheon of course, 10 minute downtime for soloing in between pulls would just discourage it altogether (aside from named camps).
Two minutes-ish per kill (pull, kill, repull) eems perfectly reasonable though for a group that is level/gear appropriate for the content in question.
Let me give one example of downtime affecting economy... even though there are hundreds I'm sure.
Let's take an example I know all to well ... HG's on Phinny
I can kill 5 of these on a full mana bar bringing about 150p into my pocket.
If I could kill twice this many I would have twice as much plat... like the Enchanters do easily. These Enchanters generally aren't handing out clarity to everyone else on the hill because they would get less plat.
During med time sometimes I do ports to PoHate for 175p(110profit)... By the time I port to where they are and port to Hate then port back to EC to med its about a 25% mana bar trip.
A little over 1 HG's worth of mana. I make up a little efficiency doing that.
This is something I wouldnt bother doing tho if I could just med faster and kill more HG's.
Downtime for raid content is a whole nother thread...
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
Your post is applicable to EQ, but not Pantheon.
Making hill giants drop massive stacks of plat per kill was (imo) a design mistake that should never have happened in the first place. While downtime affects economy in this particular instance, it is more of a design flaw with the quantity of plat the mobs drop themselves than it is a problem with downtime.
Drawing parallels to EQ isn't really useful in this particular instance.
Liav said:Your post is applicable to EQ, but not Pantheon.
Making hill giants drop massive stacks of plat per kill was (imo) a design mistake that should never have happened in the first place. While downtime affects economy in this particular instance, it is more of a design flaw with the quantity of plat the mobs drop themselves than it is a problem with downtime.
Drawing parallels to EQ isn't really useful in this particular instance.
I would agree that hill giants dropping large sums of plat might have been a bad idea, however EQ is just about the only game we can compare with how Pantheon will run due to the fact that there isn't another game out that incorporates meaningful downtime into it's place sessions.
With that said I also think people may be in the wrong mindset thinking along the lines that everyone would start at full health/mana and by the end of one fight everyone would be out of mana/health. I would bet that it would take 3-5 or more mobs to run everyone down to the ragged edge of needing a med break unless we are breaking a spawn, have adds, or repops. This isn't even considering that people could be resting in between pulls to stretch out that max number of mobs that can be killed before a med break is necessary.
So while 10 minutes may seem like a lot, I think it could be both spread out over time and also wouldn't be an every fight occurrence. Either way I'm sure the team will be testing some ideas out and the regen rates for mana/health. If it were me making the decision personally I would start out really slow and if it turned out to be too slow I would speed it up. I think going the other way would be harder if you had it too fast and then tried to make it slower. There would be a lot more complaining. :)
What I personally would like to see is a nice balance so that people can't just spam heal without paying attention, or be able to solo due to the fact that they can eat some bread or drink some water and be full health in 30 seconds or less. That's what I've experienced in almost every game out today.