Logikos said:I'm not totally sold on the idea of the wizard so far, I played everquest from its release year up until like the 8th expansion and wizards were a pain to level in the early days and as i saw mentioned before it was only once AA came along that wizards really picked up class defining abilities, From what I've seen so far on wizard reveal it doesnt seem like wizards are truly a class of their own, druids have teleports and summoners/rogues will likely out dps them from what I've seen in streams so far, Yes I'm aware it's still very early days.
I'm just not seeing the wizard being the "wield a force barely imaginable in awe and effect." Perhaps I'm wrong (I hope so) and perhaps it would be a good idea to have a "Stance" type system for the wizard aswell, So like a stance for single target casting and a stance for Area Effect that would work with all spells the wizard has, Instead of making seperate AE and single target spells, Just let the stance choose. Dunno maybe a crap idea but might help with the brainstorming =) Also where is invisibility?
No wizard functionnality has been shown in streams so far, it's just placeholder spells for filling their role basically. How can you not be sold on something that haven't been streamed ?
MauvaisOeil said:Logikos said:I'm not totally sold on the idea of the wizard so far, I played everquest from its release year up until like the 8th expansion and wizards were a pain to level in the early days and as i saw mentioned before it was only once AA came along that wizards really picked up class defining abilities, From what I've seen so far on wizard reveal it doesnt seem like wizards are truly a class of their own, druids have teleports and summoners/rogues will likely out dps them from what I've seen in streams so far, Yes I'm aware it's still very early days.
I'm just not seeing the wizard being the "wield a force barely imaginable in awe and effect." Perhaps I'm wrong (I hope so) and perhaps it would be a good idea to have a "Stance" type system for the wizard aswell, So like a stance for single target casting and a stance for Area Effect that would work with all spells the wizard has, Instead of making seperate AE and single target spells, Just let the stance choose. Dunno maybe a crap idea but might help with the brainstorming =) Also where is invisibility?
No wizard functionnality has been shown in streams so far, it's just placeholder spells for filling their role basically. How can you not be sold on something that haven't been streamed ?
You should read more carefully :p "From what I've seen so far on wizard reveal" "So Far" being the operative words. As in click on classes up top of page and look at wizard, I'm basing it on that, And the streams im referring to are the http://pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/9070/pantheon-mmo-all-star-stream-august-2018-wizard-perspective : where the wiz was only on par with rogue dps, I know the wiz wasn't hammering out spells alot and a few spells in the stream are on the classes wiz page so thats what im basing my comments on.
I probably jumped a bit fast on your, however I remain very cautious of any "Pre alpha judgement". Many things aren't tweaked, and most classes aren't yet working as intended in stats and values so...
Even the direlord, the most interesting class for me yet, is broken on essence generation and it makes it negatively looking like "no strat button spam".
Keep following the next evolution of gameplay, I'm sure it will shape soon enough.
Logikos said:Yeh I totally agree, Just figured now would be the time for a little constructive criticism before everything is locked in place so the devs can get some inspiration, What did you think of the stance type system for AE and single target dmg idea MauvaisOeil ?
I like idea of "Spell forms", like for thoses who know, the Warlock in D&D (basically you get one spell at lvl 1 that increase every 2 lvl like a backstab, and all your spells derivate from it, you can unlock different shapes, different damage type, different secondary debuffs, and make whatever spell you want by mixing one shape component, one damage type and one debuff using as allways the damage of you level-scaling spell.).
Yes I like the idea, BUT.
I don't think it's fitting Pantheon's idea, for the sole reason they want us to prepare our bars with strict and locked spells. If you can change your gameplay or spell functionnality with one stance bar, then having to switch or change your spellbar is pointless. You don't have much choices to make here.
I like stance idea, but I remain cautious as they are more "stancey" for character that can assume stances : IE fighters.
I find the stacking buff idea brought out by Joppa for the Wizard more fitting the overall stance scheme : Casting a spell element attune you to this specific one, making your spell spells beeing more and more delved in it. It's not that I'm against stances, but how do you justify a stance on a caster ? Pre casting buff ? Like "Molten armor" before going into the fray ? That does sound more intuitive if casting a spell does leave on you magical residue that will enhance your next spell on the same type, and so on.
If switching to AOE with a stance is all you need, why making AOE spells at all ? Why having to choose between a hard nuke with a long cooldown (60s +) and a frequent AE with a very good mana/damage ratio if 3 or more opponents, if a stance does all the work ?
Yeh I see what your saying, I was just thinking along the lines of stance system but it could be called "mindset" instead to fit wizard more also i dont want to see entire system already in place being scrapped Its a solid concept! But for instance if you had levitate you could switch to AE mindset(stance) and cast on entire group in one hit, Also some spells would just not be effected by stance like personal armor buff. But each spell could have a different cooldown depending on the mindset (stance) it was cast in , So if AE stance was used on a good DD spell the DD would be split between how many mobs are hit. For instance if the DD does 1000 dmg and you use AE stance to hit 4 mobs they all take 250dmg and the cooldown could be cut by 1/4th aswell, Just thought it might be a good idea only because down the track the limited spell slots will become a bottleneck once your at max level with all spells and after expansions etc. And Overall it would take out the need to have seperate AE and DD spells on spell bar (dont want it to turn into EQ needing multiple action bars) I'm just thinking far down the track I guess.
Logikos said:Yeh I see what your saying, I was just thinking along the lines of stance system but it could be called "mindset" instead to fit wizard more also i dont want to see entire system already in place being scrapped Its a solid concept! But for instance if you had levitate you could switch to AE mindset(stance) and cast on entire group in one hit, Also some spells would just not be effected by stance like personal armor buff. But each spell could have a different cooldown depending on the mindset (stance) it was cast in , So if AE stance was used on a good DD spell the DD would be split between how many mobs are hit. For instance if the DD does 1000 dmg and you use AE stance to hit 4 mobs they all take 250dmg and the cooldown could be cut by 1/4th aswell, Just thought it might be a good idea only because down the track the limited spell slots will become a bottleneck once your at max level with all spells and after expansions etc. And Overall it would take out the need to have seperate AE and DD spells on spell bar (dont want it to turn into EQ needing multiple action bars) I'm just thinking far down the track I guess.
I do not think the design or idea is bad, just that it steps on the game core tennets : Having to choose your active skills before combat and being locked in them.
That's the whole problem for me, not that it would really fit an other MMO genre where you have all your active abilities avaliable, and stances can fit the need of ability pruning and such, but for pantheon it seems like betraying the basics of the game. Stances, for what we've seen for now (Dire lord mainly) do not affect the skill effects but only player's statistics : Hate, health and ressource generation, and crit chances with a healing proc on it.
philo said:What game tenants do you think it goes against?
It seems similar to how there will only be a limited number of spells available on your bar at once. You will only have a limited focus (stance) at any one time.
As said in my previous topic : If you can land all you spell as AOE with a single stance / whatever name it is/ switch, why would you ever have AOE spells to begin with ? Where is your choice to make between AOE, Root, Hard nuke with a long cooldown, mana preservation, etc .. ?
If a stance allow you to root targets with ice spell, then having a separate root spell is useless.
If a stance allow you to buff everyone in one spell, why bother upgrading any of your buff into a group version since a stance will carry them all ?
Etc.. : If stances are added to modify completely the spell effects and make them overlap with the need to choose and make sacrifices in your bar setup, then the basic of Pantheon's gameplay, making choices before battle, is flawed.
I guess my question was more in relation to which tenents were negated by stances?
...not that it was the original question but, to answer your questions about all those individual stances is that you simply can't do all of those things at once. So maybe a root spell is indeed useless when in an cold stance but not in a fire stance (which has other benefits not available in a cold stance). Being able to have all the benefits of all the stances at once would likely be over powered.
Maybe the issue is that you think you will be able to freely switch between stances without any draw backs? The way I understand the description is that the focus buffs will stack and I'm guessing you will not gain the full benefit of the stance until you have reached the max amount of stacks. (somewhat similar to a runekeeper in lotro when switching from dmg to healing if you have played that?) You have to build up your focus in order to gain the maximum benefit when switching from one stance to another. That will take time if I'm understanding the class desciption correctly.
At least that is how I imagine it will work when reading:
In battle, the Wizard will gain a stacking Focus buff when an ability from one of these schools is first used. Each time a spell from the same school is used in succession, this buff will continue stacking until it reaches its stacking limit.
I believe it is only at the stacking limit that we will gain the max benefits of the stance. (maybe convo or someone else can let us know if that is correct?)
Looking at the tenents I don't see what might go against them. I do see how stances might pertain to:
A commitment to a style of play that focuses on immersive combat, and engaging group mechanics.
I'm sure there are certain stances that might synergize well with certain classes or group make ups. Maybe the mana savings of the magic based stance are most valuable in a group without an enchanters mana regen etc. Hard to guess specifics but that type of thing seems likely.
This is getting confusing hehe to simplify the idea I had, It's basically to have a button (similar to stance system) that switches between Single Target or Area Effect for all spells you have memorized.. NOT a stance system that changes between cold, fire or base spells or anything, figured it'd be a good epic ability for wizards.
It would simplify spell selections you make for memorized spells a little (because its only eliminating different spells for AE or single target) and would still keep the core tenants of having to choose what spells you want memorized before a fight to a degree.
I think we are stuck in a conversation where we aren't answering to the right things :
@Philo : I'm not saying the current wizard design is against Pantheon's core philsophy, but that Logikos's stance idea is.
@Logikos : As stated, simplifying spell selection is against the core tennets of pantheon : You should't have a simplification here, you should have choices you make before battle and if you made them wrong then you have to compose with or withouth.
@philo : I take it you never played EQ or never heard of Quad kiting ? hehe
@MauvaisOeil : I dont see it being a massive disruption to spell selection considering in EQ you would just memorize your best AE spell for your level (It didnt really effect your spell selection), So its not like you had to massively change your spell selections for 1 AE, In reality having AE toggle for all spells is a quality of life change, atleast as I see it.
@philo : I take it you never played EQ or never heard of Quad kiting ? hehe
Lets just say I played EQ heavily during its prime...
The game started once you started raiding everyday. The lvling process was like the tutorial. But regardless, quading or aoe groups etc were such a tiny portion of the game. In group and raid situations aoes were usually limited and I expect Pantheon to be the same.
On these forums I assume more often than not that everyone played EQ to some extent.
Not to mention we had a statement from a dev awhile back that quad kiting would intentionally not be a "thing". Kiting yes, quading no.
Logikos said:where the wiz was only on par with rogue dps, I know the wiz wasn't hammering out spells alot and a few spells in the stream are on the classes wiz page so thats what im basing my comments on.
I don't think wizards are going to outclass the other DPS, I'd imagine each primary DPS role class will do equal/similar DPS on average. It is a mistake to have a best in any role.
The difference between wizard and rogue DPS is likely to be along the lines of burst vs sustain. Over the course of a fight they'd end up more or less equal in DPS but if the wizard wanted to take things to 100% and go nuclear he could pump out the damage like no one else in a short period of time (which I believe is where the "wield a force barely imaginable in awe and effect" comes into play) ...though efficiency would suffer greatly and he would run out of mana (or take aggro and die) in short order.
philo said:
@philo : I take it you never played EQ or never heard of Quad kiting ? hehe
Lets just say I played EQ heavily during its prime...
The game started once you started raiding everyday. The lvling process was like the tutorial. But regardless, quading or aoe groups etc were such a tiny portion of the game. In group and raid situations aoes were usually limited and I expect Pantheon to be the same.
On these forums I assume more often than not that everyone played EQ to some extent.
Not to mention we had a statement from a dev awhile back that quad kiting would intentionally not be a "thing". Kiting yes, quading no.
It might have been a small portion of the game overall but to a wizard it was a Huge part of the game even at max level, And this game wont be a race to max level as devs have stated, Also I tried to find the comment on quading not being a thing and couldnt find it, do you have a link ? Seem's it would be very difficult to remove quading from a game that will naturally have kiting, Without nerfing AE really hard that is.
I'm not going to dig it up. But you know that quad kiting was because of the limitation of some spells in eq to hit a max of 4 mobs right? There was some mention of the reasoning behind that from the programmers side. 4 wasn't just an arbitrary number they decided upon.
And you know, it is ingrained in players to race to max lvl regardless. They can add horizontal progression requirements in the form of resistance gates or whatever...which are all easier to overcome the higher lvl you are. Incentives can be added that keep people playing like progeny and AAs but people are still going to race to max lvl. Its what options the players have once they reach max lvl that are important. There will be the option to mentor down later if there are max lvl restrictions on some content.
I'm not going to dispute that for some people kiting was a large part of the game even at max lvl. I do question how involved those players were? There was so much raid content after kunark that it was easily 80-90% of peoples play time...not counting simply grouping which usually didn't utilize ae's either. But I'm sure there were those wizards and druids who soloed a lot instead of grouping or raiding so I concede that it was probably pretty important for some. I wasn't referring to players that weren't heavily immersed in all aspects of the game when I made that comment.
philo said:I'm not going to dig it up. But you know that quad kiting was because of the limitation of some spells in eq to hit a max of 4 mobs right? There was some mention of the reasoning behind that from the programmers side. 4 wasn't just an arbitrary number they decided upon.
And you know, it is ingrained in players to race to max lvl regardless. They can add horizontal progression requirements in the form of resistance gates or whatever...which are all easier to overcome the higher lvl you are. Incentives can be added that keep people playing like progeny and AAs but people are still going to race to max lvl. Its what options the players have once they reach max lvl that are important. There will be the option to mentor down later if there are max lvl restrictions on some content.
Yes the 4 mob limit was imposed after the Chardok AE groups were basically breaking the game pulling half the zone and making insane exp.
The only mention of no Quading I could find was you mentioning it a few times in other posts.
And yeh naturally most people will rush to max level, Should be tons of end game content I hope, Just have to wait for alpha/beta to see what direction they take with all that. But some people wont have enough play time to rush to it and some just want to explore and experience everything which devs said they would try accommodate for.