Listening to the fighting in the dungeons from some of the streams makes me wonder "why aren't other nearby mobs hearing this, and coming to investigate?"
I think a good ability for an enchanter type of character would be something like "Encasement of Sound" It's a AoE affect that dulls the sound generated by those in the area, so mobs not in the fight, don't hear whats going on.
This could be part of the stratgy it takes to fight in dungeons. You pull, or attack a mob, and as soon as shields and swords start to clink, other mobs come to "investigate" but if this abilty is cast (or others like it. Soften Sound; Dull sound; etc...idk) then other mobs don't hear it and won't come and add.
Problem with that is it is tedious to the point of being dull as it isn't a particularly fun or engaging spell to have to always cast (let alone keep as a near permanent slot on your bar) and it would ensure groups always bring an enchanter or don't go into dungeons.
Things like this are done for flow of gameplay/mechanics. If you go down this rabbit hole then why aren't mobs sounding the alarm as soon as a group arrives at the gates? Why can't mobs see further than 10-15 feet in front of them? etc
It would be required for those that only want one mob at time. ;-P
The AoE from an enchanter could be a self buff AoE that lasts on them for 2 hours (or something) so the enchanter needs to be near enough the middle of the fight for it to work, but it also add danger, because we all know casters want to stay at range when fighting so they don't pull aggro and die.
Also, other classes could get this ability, bard (when they ever get in the game) shamans etc...just differnt type of abilities, or skill, and my example was the bubble type skill.
Say a druid could cast "Soften Sword" on a player and thats a 2 hour buff that dulls sounds that chracter generates.
Something similar was achieved by the Pacify line of spells in EQ, except it was targeted on the mob. The spell worked by reducing the aggro radius of mobs, both direct and social.
I sometimes pulled with this line of spells on my Enc when we couldn't find a better puller, or just for a change of pace.
And when used in conjunction with a monk, you could pull off some really neat splits without having to clear much if anything.
Give it the right flavor text, and that mechanic could be used in any number of ways and could be worked to fit in with a few of the class types. Heck, if memory serves, Clerics also had this line in EQ, and Rangers may have had an outdoor-restricted version. But don't quote me on that, it's been far too long!
Irriaden said:Something similar was achieved by the Pacify line of spells in EQ, except it was targeted on the mob. The spell worked by reducing the aggro radius of mobs, both direct and social.
I sometimes pulled with this line of spells on my Enc when we couldn't find a better puller, or just for a change of pace.
And when used in conjunction with a monk, you could pull off some really neat splits without having to clear much if anything.
Give it the right flavor text, and that mechanic could be used in any number of ways and could be worked to fit in with a few of the class types. Heck, if memory serves, Clerics also had this line in EQ, and Rangers may have had an outdoor-restricted version. But don't quote me on that, it's been far too long!
Cleric had the lull line, even Monks had it around PoP or OoW, that made the even more monster puller than they were. Druids and rangers had the harmony spell, beeing one of the most powerfull because it was 1) unresistable , 2) AOE. The flaw of the lull line was that a partial resist would mean no results, but a full resist would mean aggro as if you pulled with an offensive spell, extremely counter productive, then, and why lowest level mobs of a pack were prefered for lull.
It isn't an "every type of mob" thing. It's for when mobs are close to other mobs and you don't want to que the other mobs into whats going on.
It just seems odd to me that, take todays stream, in the main hall of BRK they are fighting mobs at level 10ish but up in the balcony there are level 18-20 mobs just ignoring the slaughter of they peers. Just seems like it'd be better if they did a Hermione charm and make an illusion so mobs outside of their engagement couldn't see what they are doing...
An important note on spells (like lull for example): These different abilities allowed small groups to get creative with their options on things they can do. It made the game more dynamic. Was it a cornerstone in your average group? No. It just added a bit of flavor if you wanted to shake things up a bit.
Kittik said:It just seems odd to me that, take todays stream, in the main hall of BRK they are fighting mobs at level 10ish but up in the balcony there are level 18-20 mobs just ignoring the slaughter of they peers. Just seems like it'd be better if they did a Hermione charm and make an illusion so mobs outside of their engagement couldn't see what they are doing...
The reason things work this way is so that things don't need to be so spread out. If things worked like RL where an enemy could 'see/hear' what is obvious he should be able to see/hear, then in order to prevent this (dev's don't want every enemy in the zone to come rushing to slaughter you as soon as you engage) the design would need to make the enemies far enough apart so that this wouldn't happen. But this would then cause zones to be huge and it would take you several minutes to move from one group of enemies to the next and it causes a lot of extra game time to a normal dungeon crawl. So instead, the Dev's create a radius for each NPC that is it's bubble of "I can see and hear this far". This allows more groups of Enemies to be in a small area, without it becoming impossible to engage without causing the whole dungeon to come fight.
And this Radius is actually a group of Radius's that take into account the level of the characters in it's area. So say a Level 10 NPC can 'See/Hear' a level 10 Player at 50 units away. But that same Lvl 10 NPC can see/hear a level 1 Player at 100 units away. Then, this same Lvl 10 NPC can only see/hear a Lvl 20 player at 25 units away.
So a much higher level player can safely wander through the zone and not cause NPC's to engage unless he gets really close. But a very low level player will get spotted and attacked without much chance of getting through.