Kilsin said:Ceythos said:We're still in the tuning phase, and as we add more NPC layers and subtle differences, we have to be careful not to swing too far one way or the other until we have all the pieces together. Thanks for the feedback, as always :)
But we're not touching backstab, right? I mean it's perfectly balanced! ;)
Kilsin ruined the bell curve vs environment with all his 800dmg backstabs... so essentially, Kilsin had 20 Wizards in his pockets. lol..
Hieromonk said:
They where lvl 7.
A red mob to them was probably lvl 10+. Not to mention, these were just overland mobs in basically what is a starting zone. So these mobs where essentially yard trash.. But as you mentioned, the actual combat tweak & mob balancing will take place all throughout alpha & beta.
It is rare to see this level & depth of combat mechanics (even in basic form), in this early of a stage of development, let alone have such good class balance... with heals vs mitigated dmg, etc (ie: roles to play).
I know, that's why I was asking. I wanted to know how much the combat pace will change by being higher level or the combat being adjusted during testing phases. Also unless they've changed their minds, they said a while back that Pantheon likely won't have as many levels as EQ did. So level 7 wouldn't be as low as we are assuming, but that may have changed ofcourse.
Also I was curious if they were allowing alot of the spells to be used as a lower level since they said content is only in for levels 1-10, so maybe some of the spells we were seeing aren't going to actually be used at level 7 when the game launches and the max level is a good deal higher. I was thinking they may have just had them usable at level 7 for testing purposes.
Kilsin said:Ceythos said:We're still in the tuning phase, and as we add more NPC layers and subtle differences, we have to be careful not to swing too far one way or the other until we have all the pieces together. Thanks for the feedback, as always :)
But we're not touching backstab, right? I mean it's perfectly balanced! ;)
One thing I feel compelled comment about is the visual combat target differentiation. When the group pulled multiple mobs, it got very difficult to visually separate the enemy from the group members.
I do appreciate the old-style con system, and, as someone mentioned earlier, I would like to drop the actual level indicator.
OCD level stuff: not auto-stacking loot would drive me crazy. I saw /drink 100 in there. It could be great to see loot crates in some of those camps.
Point to keep in mind when we're talking about combat pace: "Death will have a sting". This ain't WoW; I'm not going to be rushing head-long into a dicey encounter with a stiff death penalty on the line. I think we've forgotten the feel of the ding, and especially the "dung" due to death. I'm excited to think that groups will need to think about combat and strategy again.
I left that stream with a great over-all outlook for the game. I'll say again: I'm very impressed with the group dynamic you guys have pulled together for even low level characters. Keep up the good work!
Dropping mob level indicator would be madness unless they are going to make it so level doesn't have the same rigid effect on the player. In EQ the difference between a dark blue and a white mob was about 20% more resists, misses and damage taken. It just scaled up from there. Not knowing that in such a system would be brutal.
xtnpd said:Azraell said:Well at least I will be able to train mobs to filzin even when his in town afk... =)
That was unexpected!
HAHA no it wasn't. Anyone who knows Az knows he likes to train and anyone who knows Filzin knows he likes to ninja afk.
I am pretty damn impressed with the short term progress of such a small team. Way to go. I may have to send a starbucks delivery to the team (extra shots of course).
~Chaam
Chaam said:I am pretty damn impressed with the short term progress of such a small team. Way to go. I may have to send a starbucks delivery to the team (extra shots of course).
~Chaam
Only problem with that is you would have to send it to about 8 different places (and 3 or 4 different countries!)
xtnpd said:One thing I feel compelled comment about is the visual combat target differentiation. When the group pulled multiple mobs, it got very difficult to visually separate the enemy from the group members.
I do appreciate the old-style con system, and, as someone mentioned earlier, I would like to drop the actual level indicator.
I think if the group members got blue (or green) names, and targets got names in their con color it would help a little. Also thought things got quite hectic a few times, but man this looked great :)
I was irritated with the target indicator (on the top right) a few times, because the group was fighting (what looked like) a single mob, but there were two targets shown. Also the /con color should probably be shown in that target indicator.
Overall: I'm REALLY impressed! And sooo looking forward to some great group play, noticed how much I've been missing that when I saw the video! :)
xtnpd said:I think you missed the point there. I AM in favor of the colored con system. I'm NOT too fond of the words " this monster is three levels higher than you".
Hear hear, I was also under the impression that maybe some of the things they are able to see are more specific than what the players will be seeing, we were watching devs play after all. In the case that that's true I would really hope for there to be more mystery in the difficulty of mobs, like the good ol' color con system with undercons and all that other good stuff. I'd be in favor of that being the case with conning other players as well, for PvP purposes.
Just had a pretty cool idea I thought : What if conning was tied to a stat or skill? For example if you have low consider skill, and low wisdom or something, you may get an inaccurate color when you con, but if you have a higher wis/consider you may be able to get more information about the mob. Like if you conned a yellow with high consider/wisdom it might say "This creature would wipe the floor with you! This creature seems to have an innate resistance to fire. This creature seems to have an innate weakness to bludgeoning damage." etc
What do you guys think?
Keep in mind that this early on I think you'd want combat to go faster anyway - the goal is to test ALL the various parts and how they all fit together and pace is only one of them. (e.g. # of mobs, spawn points, etc.) Later on, (late Alpha or Start of Beta would be my guess) you slow it down to what you intend and then fine tune it throughout. (Although, I expect there's probably options to slow it down even now to test some things out.)
soriana said:Keep in mind that this early on I think you'd want combat to go faster anyway - the goal is to test ALL the various parts and how they all fit together and pace is only one of them. (e.g. # of mobs, spawn points, etc.) Later on, (late Alpha or Start of Beta would be my guess) you slow it down to what you intend and then fine tune it throughout. (Although, I expect there's probably options to slow it down even now to test some things out.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume you are talking about the actual speed of attacks and what not right? I was more meaning how resilient each individual mob was, since they seemed to be rather flimsy. But as has been said in this thread already, I'm sure Brad using the Avenger and Kilsin backstabbing them into oblivion had alot to do with it.
Both mob flimsyness and high BS damage - everything. With those so high, it makes everything go faster - so, you can see what the pathing is like, the number of mobs, the "camp spots", how (different) group make-ups handle various numbers of mobs. All those need to be set "in the ballpark" before you can start tuning things like each melee hit, etc. And mob HP is part of that as well. (So is CC and buffs).
Plus there's the whole demo-aspect. Sure, mobs died quickly, but I think that's the point (at the moment) and I think it worked well - the 90 or so minute show they gave us was very well paced (maybe perfectly paced) - sure the mobs died quickly, but because of that, they could show us all sorts of stuff.
That said, I certainly hope they slow it down A LOT.
p.s. I thought the respawn timing was very good.
I dissagree on the respawn especially if they do slow down how fast a mob is kill. The heavy mana users barley had enough time to get there mana back when they started repoping. To me it's early and we will have plenty of time to figure out the timing of repop and mana useage, and I'm sure a million other things.
Kilsin said:Ceythos said:We're still in the tuning phase, and as we add more NPC layers and subtle differences, we have to be careful not to swing too far one way or the other until we have all the pieces together. Thanks for the feedback, as always :)
But we're not touching backstab, right? I mean it's perfectly balanced! ;)
as a career rogue player like Kilsin, i agree, backstab is PERFECTLY balanced. in fact....i was suprised at how WEAK it was, where were the 2k crits? i also caught what Kilsin did at the end of that stream...sneaky sneaky mr rogue, but you cannot fool another rogue!! it seems you STOLE a bunch of XP from seemingly nowhere!!, hope i learn that skill too! /steal xp
I didn't mean they should keep the respawn time fixed, but slow down the killing! I agree, that would be silly. :)
I meant that given what was going on in the demo, the respawn rate was good.
Specifically, repops came along fast enough to keep them moving, but with enough time to both recover *and* explain the game. They obviously had enough time to med, etc. (because they did just that - all the way to the boss ), but they *had* to keep moving and to constantly worry about the respawn. Both good things.
In short, it's all about balance. And I thought the respawn rate was well balanced for the demo.
(For live, I'd like to see a bit faster repops - they had a bit too much time = there wasn't *enough* challenge there. Nevertheless, that rate was needed to include the explaining part - e.g. show them the UI while we recover, etc. - As I said elsewhere, I thought the entire pace of the demo was perfect - it allowed them to show so much of the game in a minimal amount of time).
Ceythos said:Kilsin said:Ceythos said:We're still in the tuning phase, and as we add more NPC layers and subtle differences, we have to be careful not to swing too far one way or the other until we have all the pieces together. Thanks for the feedback, as always :)
But we're not touching backstab, right? I mean it's perfectly balanced! ;)
We'll let it continue to do 800+ damage as long as the target is Aradune.
Haha perfect compromise! ;)
Furty said:Kilsin said:Ceythos said:We're still in the tuning phase, and as we add more NPC layers and subtle differences, we have to be careful not to swing too far one way or the other until we have all the pieces together. Thanks for the feedback, as always :)
But we're not touching backstab, right? I mean it's perfectly balanced! ;)
as a career rogue player like Kilsin, i agree, backstab is PERFECTLY balanced. in fact....i was suprised at how WEAK it was, where were the 2k crits? i also caught what Kilsin did at the end of that stream...sneaky sneaky mr rogue, but you cannot fool another rogue!! it seems you STOLE a bunch of XP from seemingly nowhere!!, hope i learn that skill too! /steal xp
Haha I got a little carried away with backstab at the start, so I am glad Joppa got me to ease up, I was in full Rogue dps mode and out for blood, I stopped using it and only brought it out in "oh crap" moments, which there was quite a few lol but it was a lot of fun man!
Lol busted! I didn't think we were still being streamed, I thought the video was off and we were just talking and taking questions (as I didn't have twitch up, just the game client and skype), so I GM haxed to check some stuff out :P
Crazzie said:Was that rogue on steriods? hahha someone ran /dev rogue lvl 50 :) I am sure of it..
Lol, I was a legit level 7 for the whole stream in basic level appropriate gear/weapon but the backstab ability hasn't been balanced properly yet and was doing some crazy damage but right at the end I toggled GM mode and set my level to 50 and went shopping at the Rogue skills trainer ;)