Concerns
The FPS in Black Rose Keep got me a bit concernd for the first time ever, all the past streams FPS as been a solid 45+ leaning to a constant 60. But in this stream the FPS in BRK was really bad, I don’t know if it was on the streamers end or twitches end, but it look really bad, wich was weird because FPS as always been great.
Feedback and observations
The damage from mobs seem very low, when the group is figthing a single mob they never seem to be in danger of wiping, was this because of the Full set of armour cohh had access to, was the healer too good (looking at you joppa). And Even when the group was fighting multiple mobs the tank seem to be toped off most of the time, never going bellow 40% (keeping in mind this is the tank with least AC, what will the other 2 tank look like in the same situation? Never dipping bellow 70%?)
slightly lower level mobs don’t seem to be a threat, when they were entering BRK and clearing the first few rooms there were some questionable pulls, but the group was never in any danger, is this intended or is it a balance issue, In my mind, if a group pulls badly 4+ mobs, even if they are lower lever -5 levels it should pose a bit of a challenge. Nothing extremely hard, but they should deal enough damage to put the group on its toes, but the lower level mobs should also die quite quickly. And blue cons should not be a pushover.
Edit: after watching the Hiveleader strem, it was clear that Cohh was overgeared as hell for that content, the warrior tanks health looked like a Yo-yo in the most recent stream, and they're supposed to be the best AC tanks xd.
Aggro and threat generation seem to be off, in single target fights the tank never seem to loose aggro, and this has been consistent in all of the streams, is the groups dps to low?, are tank overbuffed on threat? Is this intended or not, even in single target fights tanks should be able to loose aggro is the Dpser’s are not carefull.
I don’t know if what I’m saying is actually a thing or not but it seem like it, when AVP was shown the distant landscape and trees seemed to not have shadows and shaders active and as the player got closer they gradually became visible (the shaders and the shadows), I don’t know if this is correct or not, but it seemed to me that distant trees look a bit bland and “tacked on” with their colours washed out.
I know I’m annoying as hell with the animations, but they’re really important to me it’s something you see 100% of the play time and getting them right will help the game a lot with first impressions, having animations that feel “weighty and grounded” and having movement animations where the characters don’t “slide or Glide” and actually look like they have weight when moving would do wonders. The new idle animations are a huge step in the right direction and if everything else is done to that standard Pantheon will be well set.
Another thing I’m really pushy on is the debuffs icons under the mobs name, I noticed that in the new stream you can see all debuffs a mobs has, even if you’re not targeting them, this is awful to the game, it trivializes encounter awareness, it makes it so much easier to multi-dot it’s not even funny, Mezzing/CC’ing multiple targets will be a joke with this feature, please consider removing it, and reverting it back to the previous iteration where you could only see the debuffs of your current target. I also notice that it shows your party debuffs (if a party member is affect by negative debuffs) this also makes dispelling trivial, because there’s a red icon pops up instantly telling you “look a party member as a negative effect dispels/decurse/cleanse it fast” no need for situational awareness, or watching what the mobs are doing, who they are attacking who they are casting on, there’s simply an icon that pops up as soon as you need to dispel.
Minor User interface
The combat log takes to much screen space, maybe merge it with the "general" and "debug" tabs and just make another tab named "combat"
Damage number have a really thin font and that makes it look like I'm doing low damage (stupid I know, but just feels like it.) I like chunky thick font on the damage numbers.
Praises
The idle animations are great, the characters models no longer look like standing dools waiting to be moved, adds a lot of life to the game
The environments and coming a long beautifully, Black rose keep looks even better, like a fortress were loads of bandits live in, with toons of small mesh details, AVP is stunning, the landscape terrain look natural, and it’s the first time I’ve gotten a vibe of a big forest zone where I could actually get lost in (in an MMO).
Ambient sounds are well good.
The new armour looks sick, realistic enough with a touch of fantasy, it’s really good srsly.
The hangor orc zone was amazing, the highlight of the stream for me, when the place holder art and place holder orcs get replace that zone will the ridiculously good, it’s the perfect example of a huge outdoor dungeons that can hold multiple groups. (Also no zone line close by right? That’s gonna lead to some funny trains) just one thing, it needs more skulls and dead bodies.
The draw distance is still the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in any MMO out there, for real you’ve done a great job with the huge draw distance, to me it makes the game look that much more real and immersive, being able to see points of interest far away and actually walk there and explore is going to be awesome.
Edit: formating and typos.
I would love to see spells split from chat. It gets busy in that window. And i think the combat log is good, but maybe make things resizeable? Maybe allow abbr.?
kreed99 said:I would love to see spells split from chat. It gets busy in that window.
I would like to think that the ultimate goal is to give us much more control over ui/chat settings. The ui we currently see is probably largely placeholder still, if I had to make a guess.
jpedrote said:Another thing I’m really pushy on is the debuffs icons under the mobs name, I noticed that in the new stream you can see all debuffs a mobs has, even if you’re not targeting them, this is awful to the game, it trivializes encounter awareness, it makes it so much easier to multi-dot it’s not even funny, Mezzing/CC’ing multiple targets will be a joke with this feature, please consider removing it, and reverting it back to the previous iteration where you could only see the debuffs of your current target. I also notice that it shows your party debuffs (if a party member is affect by negative debuffs) this also makes dispelling trivial, because there’s a red icon pops up instantly telling you “look a party member as a negative effect dispels/decurse/cleanse it fast” no need for situational awareness, or watching what the mobs are doing, who they are attacking who they are casting on, there’s simply an icon that pops up as soon as you need to dispel.
I don't know, I see it more as a QoL thing being able to see at a glance what mobs have what applied to them. No need to make it tedious. Same thing with party debuffs, in fact I'd bet they can make more powerful/punishing/urgent debuffs knowing players can relatively easily see them as they are applied to party members. Constantly needing to tab through friends/foes just to get the general picture of a fight doesn't strike me as engaging gameplay and detracts from the actual combat.
I can't imagine there would be tons of people excitied if they obscured all party HP/Mana/Resource amounts unless that player was specifically being targeted. "Healing is too easy! I can just see everyones HP as it drops without having to work to figure it out! No need for awareness!"
Nikademis said:kreed99 said:I would love to see spells split from chat. It gets busy in that window.
I would like to think that the ultimate goal is to give us much more control over ui/chat settings. The ui we currently see is probably largely placeholder still, if I had to make a guess.
Thats my hope. Just adding commentary to this feedback post.
kreed99 said:I would love to see spells split from chat. It gets busy in that window.
I'm sure there are A LOT of chat options and filters... eq1 had endless filters and most games offer similar ways to pick and choose what you want to go where.
jpedrote said:Bunch of things
In regards to the damage... I thought it was fine. He was regularly getting hit for 10-20% of his life in 1 hit from the higher level mobs. To be honest, 1 mob should not be that threatening if you're fight at level mobs. The fear comes in pulling multiple mobs. The group is set up in an ideal situation with an enchanter who can mez most of the mobs without difficulty, which is going to greatly reduce the sense of danger when you're watching the game. Also I would argue that joppa is one of the better players we get to watch, so having him play a healer is going to make everything seem much more smooth.
The mobs at the beginning of the keep are probably in the low teens if not lower. Iirc they were trivial even in some of the other streams that were shown. That's a 10 level difference at level 22. Meaning the mobs are literally half the level as the players who seemed to be fully equipped for their levels. Weve seen in other streams of you pull 4 mobs that are close to your level you are most likely going to die.
Lastly. A tank should not lose aggro on a single target unless the DPS is trying to pull aggro. Even in EARLY eq ot was very hard to pull aggro off 1 mob of you were just casually dpsing. I assume that if Convo had wanted to, he would have been able to pull aggro off of cohh. But why. I'm sure the dev's were dpsing carefully knowing it was his first time playing that class and tanking.
Porygon said:In regards to the damage... I thought it was fine. He was regularly getting hit for 10-20% of his life in 1 hit from the higher level mobs. To be honest, 1 mob should not be that threatening if you're fight at level mobs. The fear comes in pulling multiple mobs. The group is set up in an ideal situation with an enchanter who can mez most of the mobs without difficulty, which is going to greatly reduce the sense of danger when you're watching the game. Also I would argue that joppa is one of the better players we get to watch, so having him play a healer is going to make everything seem much more smooth.
If a single mob isn't a threat (even at level) then there won't be much challenge. Players should be fearing the single mob wrecking them and diligently ensuring adds are kept CC'd.
Iksar said:I don't know, I see it more as a QoL thing being able to see at a glance what mobs have what applied to them. No need to make it tedious. Same thing with party debuffs, in fact I'd bet they can make more powerful/punishing/urgent debuffs knowing players can relatively easily see them as they are applied to party members. Constantly needing to tab through friends/foes just to get the general picture of a fight doesn't strike me as engaging gameplay and detracts from the actual combat.
I can't imagine there would be tons of people excitied if they obscured all party HP/Mana/Resource amounts unless that player was specifically being targeted. "Healing is too easy! I can just see everyones HP as it drops without having to work to figure it out! No need for awareness!"
I can definitly see your point, and I agree that removing the ability to see player current health bar would be to much, but I would not be oppesed to hidding mana/resources and making the party frames only show the rought estimate of the targets health DnD style (uninjured, barely injured, moderatly injured, injured, etc) xd, but I guess that would be too much.
As for having to constatly tab to check everything I don't see that as a problem If you're paying attention to what going on in the figth you can figure out what's happening and will know if a party member got debuffed, or if a mob is CC'ed or has dots on it, even more if they use some sort of spell effect (the mezz alreayd has 1) poison and dieses can make you bleed green stuff or simply make you green or give you a greenish aure, etc. One thing I would like to see them add is a mouseover UI element, so when you mouseover a target a little indicator (liek this https://imgur.com/QqvuO1d ) appears in the corner of your screen, showing you the health and name (remove the level thingy) and add the current debuff they have on top of that little square. No need to physically change target, just mouse-over what target you wanna check out and keep on going, it's like a quick glance in real life, you keep doing what you're doing but get info of something else.
Porygon said:In regards to the damage... I thought it was fine. He was regularly getting hit for 10-20% of his life in 1 hit from the higher level mobs. To be honest, 1 mob should not be that threatening if you're fight at level mobs. The fear comes in pulling multiple mobs. The group is set up in an ideal situation with an enchanter who can mez most of the mobs without difficulty, which is going to greatly reduce the sense of danger when you're watching the game. Also I would argue that joppa is one of the better players we get to watch, so having him play a healer is going to make everything seem much more smooth.
The mobs at the beginning of the keep are probably in the low teens if not lower. Iirc they were trivial even in some of the other streams that were shown. That's a 10 level difference at level 22. Meaning the mobs are literally half the level as the players who seemed to be fully equipped for their levels. Weve seen in other streams of you pull 4 mobs that are close to your level you are most likely going to die.
Lastly. A tank should not lose aggro on a single target unless the DPS is trying to pull aggro. Even in EARLY eq ot was very hard to pull aggro off 1 mob of you were just casually dpsing. I assume that if Convo had wanted to, he would have been able to pull aggro off of cohh. But why. I'm sure the dev's were dpsing carefully knowing it was his first time playing that class and tanking.
The on level and high level mobs damage is fine, but I don't agree with the 1 mob should not be threatening thing, because if that's the case then there will be verry few situation where you're in actuall danger, at level mobs should 1v6 should be easy and pose no threat, but a red con should always be hard and keep the whole group on their toes. The "random" AI, romars and over pulling is what will make the game that much more intense challanging and tactical, but 1 red con should be seen as a threat, at least in my mind.
My bad didn't know the mobs were so low level forget it.
I don't fully agree the tank should never loose agroo on 1 mob, tanks should have the possibility of lossing aggro, it makes the game a lot more tense and the tanking role much more important, even if a DPSer's in not going all out, there should be decaying threat of the main the tank, if that doesnt happen, then the DPSer's will never have to worry about over aggro when doing relativly easy/moderate difficulty content.
Iksar said:Porygon said:In regards to the damage... I thought it was fine. He was regularly getting hit for 10-20% of his life in 1 hit from the higher level mobs. To be honest, 1 mob should not be that threatening if you're fight at level mobs. The fear comes in pulling multiple mobs. The group is set up in an ideal situation with an enchanter who can mez most of the mobs without difficulty, which is going to greatly reduce the sense of danger when you're watching the game. Also I would argue that joppa is one of the better players we get to watch, so having him play a healer is going to make everything seem much more smooth.
If a single mob isn't a threat (even at level) then there won't be much challenge. Players should be fearing the single mob wrecking them and diligently ensuring adds are kept CC'd.
A single mob being able to destroy a tank means that if you pull adds you will die. If a tank dies quickly, casters (enchanters) will die in seconds. At that point you're playing RNG with resists (think when they show the fights with the aoe sleeping boss, that boss has a mezz resisted and instantly kills the chanter) which is not a fun way to play.
1 mob should not be dangerous if the tank is the one pulling and keeping aggro on it. Multiple mobs are where the danger level increases and you need to be coordinated in order to successfully defeat these pulls.
In regards to the damage, it looks unbalanced because it's a developer stream. If you pay attention to the stream, Cohh, and the devs were geared out the wassu, beyond their level, thus making the content trival. Also they were using developer tools to make things quicker for the sake of the show. Instant Resurrection, aggro off, etc.
It's Pre-Alpha, so I am sure tuning mobs to hit harder, or do more damage should be easy for VR. I think we as regular players are goning to be safe with regards to challenge.
Porygon said:A single mob being able to destroy a tank means that if you pull adds you will die. If a tank dies quickly, casters (enchanters) will die in seconds. At that point you're playing RNG with resists (think when they show the fights with the aoe sleeping boss, that boss has a mezz resisted and instantly kills the chanter) which is not a fun way to play.
1 mob should not be dangerous if the tank is the one pulling and keeping aggro on it. Multiple mobs are where the danger level increases and you need to be coordinated in order to successfully defeat these pulls.
If you pull adds and don't CC them relatively quickly, yes. I'm not suggesting the mobs kill a tank within a few seconds but a single mob should be putting serious hurt on a tank and the healer should be working hard to keep him healed, with two mobs the healer should be in a losing battle unless someone can CC or offtank a short bit to buy a little time for some kind of CC. This game will be a total snooze if single mobs aren't threatening, it's not exactly hard to make sure your group is only fighting single mobs.
Combat is built around the idea of the quaternity, what better way for CC to be incredibly relevant (to the level that a tank or healer are)?
NPC's are still my biggest concern. They are standing 15 feet from where you are bashing their buddy and they don't "notice"? Or they are wandering down a path and stop 50 feet away from you, but lord knows they can see you. They should charge at your and fight. Or are Orc's eyesight really that bad?
Kittik said:NPC's are still my biggest concern. They are standing 15 feet from where you are bashing their buddy and they don't "notice"? Or they are wandering down a path and stop 50 feet away from you, but lord knows they can see you. They should charge at your and fight. Or are Orc's eyesight really that bad?
It's a game first and foremost. If "realism" was applied to everything then it would be impossible to fight almost any social/humanoid mobs, let alone enter any dungeons.
The difficulty in the game shouldn't hinge on players haveing a lack of pertinent information. If someone wants to disable the debuff icons for aesthetic reasons, fine. But I really don't like the idea of having to click through a bunch of mobs to individually see what status is on each one.
I think the group had an easy time because they were overleveled for the content. They basically left BRK when they got to the part where the mobs were higher level. And a couple of the players did end up dying before the end.
I do not understand this type of post. FPS concerns in pre-alpha? how about we are excited to see about 50 players connected at the same time and enjoying the game?
Damage from monsters too low? again, why does it matter at this stage? The group was pretty high level, and was full gear. It would be much more challenging a few levels lower and without the best gear available in each slots.
How about understanding the purpose of pre-alpha before posting some topics that will make more sense to be discussed in beta?
I've played MMOs where every single trash mob was an existential threat to an appropriately geared tank. I understand that we want Pantheon to be a difficult game that makes legitimate demands on player skill... but trust me, that's not the game that would create. Given how well-geared the tank was in comparison to the level of content being explored, my eyeball assessment was that numbers luck reasonable. But, of course, numbers are months away from even approaching finality. Regardless, the challenge from "trash" content should come from overpulls, mobs requesting reinforcements, mobs that become more dangerous in combination, or groups who incorrectly evaluate their ability to handle enemies in quantity. It shouldn't be because an_orc_03 presents a serious chance of tank death.
Also, regarding the debuff icons. Please, please do not make them be visible on active targets only. That's "interface difficulty", not real difficulty. Making debuffs visible opens up a lot more interesting and emergent gameplay. Players shouldn't have to continually cycle targets in order to see -- not manage, just see -- the state of effects on those enemies. That's ... carpal tunnely.
Kittik said:NPC's are still my biggest concern. They are standing 15 feet from where you are bashing their buddy and they don't "notice"? Or they are wandering down a path and stop 50 feet away from you, but lord knows they can see you. They should charge at your and fight. Or are Orc's eyesight really that bad?
Its all about aggro radius , not to mention lots of groups or players will be in same area . if all mobs aggrod on our group then we'd wipe and so would everyone in the same area . I personally like the radius .
Kittik said:NPC's are still my biggest concern. They are standing 15 feet from where you are bashing their buddy and they don't "notice"? Or they are wandering down a path and stop 50 feet away from you, but lord knows they can see you. They should charge at your and fight. Or are Orc's eyesight really that bad?
Not sure if you're joking, but this is one of those situations where gameplay trumps realism. You can't have the entire dungeon rush players anytime players make themselves known. Enemies having a limited agro radius is a tried and true mechanic for a reason. Runners that will run and bring in more npc's is a good mechanic to use, and VR is going to use them in some places.
jpedrote said:Another thing I’m really pushy on is the debuffs icons under the mobs name, I noticed that in the new stream you can see all debuffs a mobs has, even if you’re not targeting them, this is awful to the game, it trivializes encounter awareness, it makes it so much easier to multi-dot it’s not even funny, Mezzing/CC’ing multiple targets will be a joke with this feature, please consider removing it, and reverting it back to the previous iteration where you could only see the debuffs of your current target. I also notice that it shows your party debuffs (if a party member is affect by negative debuffs) this also makes dispelling trivial, because there’s a red icon pops up instantly telling you “look a party member as a negative effect dispels/decurse/cleanse it fast” no need for situational awareness, or watching what the mobs are doing, who they are attacking who they are casting on, there’s simply an icon that pops up as soon as you need to dispel.
Strongly agree, but I doubt you'll find many others who do. Being able to see that type of info at all times regardless of target is complete cheese. For a game that's supposed to reward those who pay attention, this type of QoL feature doesn't make sense.
jpedrote said:The draw distance is still the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in any MMO out there, for real you’ve done a great job with the huge draw distance, to me it makes the game look that much more real and immersive, being able to see points of interest far away and actually walk there and explore is going to be awesome.
Strongly agree.
