In the new community stream I noticed something weird about the global cooldown on spells, specifically on damaging spells with a cast time.
Most of the damaging spells with a cast time, have a global cooldown, but the global cooldown only happens after the spell finishes casting, leaving the player 1-1.5 secs of doing nothing in between casts, which I know is how EQ worked (but in EQ you could time your meditation sit with the server tick rate, and instantly sit after the spell finished casting to gain an extra tick of mana in-between casts and get back up qucikly after the mana tick and start casting again, that made caster gameplay really fun), but not being able to smoothly chain cast makes the gameplay of caster characters (and melee), feel somewhat clunky. Having smooth chain casting is way more enjoyable to play. Is this an oversight or intended feature? Also does the mediation mana gain work like in EQ only giving you mana when the server ticks or does meditation have it’s own individual “tick” that start counting from 0 every time you start meditating.
I also notice some other weird things going on with the GCD, there’s no GCD on instant cast abilities (even if they deal damage), there’s no GCD on buffs and some debuffs also have no GCD, CC abilities have no GCD (even if they have a cast time), melee classes (and the ranger) have no GCD on most physical attacks/abilities. The only abilities that have GCD on melee classes are the ones with a cast time and magic damage dealing properties (and heals also have a gcd).
Another weird thing I noticed was a double offensive target on the “TehMartini” stream at around 10:04, is it a UI bug or wizard features because it didn’t seem to happen on any other class POV.
jpedrote said:In the new community stream I noticed something weird about the global cooldown on spells, specifically on damaging spells with a cast time.
Most of the damaging spells with a cast time, have a global cooldown, but the global cooldown only happens after the spell finishes casting, leaving the player 1-1.5 secs of doing nothing in between casts, ...
Wow, Joppa really has it in for casters, eh? First we get the "feature" of consuming mana while casting, (instead of at the end, like EQ1) and now this? smh.
At least FD is still overpowered, so Monk will always be an option. :)
Vjek, being a math engineer nerd that I am. If x = infinity then x / infinity does not equal zero. Unless of course you could get a derivative of each infinity and conclude that the denominator infinity is infinitying faster than the denominator. Just saying ;)
jpedrote I hope youre in early testing because those are some eagle eyes my man.
Bradley said:Vjek, being a math engineer nerd that I am. If x = infinity then x / infinity does not equal zero. Unless of course you could get a derivative of each infinity and conclude that the denominator infinity is infinitying faster than the denominator. Just saying ;)
jpedrote I hope youre in early testing because those are some eagle eyes my man.
Hehe, I just want alpha testing to start so I can spend huge ammounts of time testing all of the games features, alpha can't come soon enough.
vjek said:Wow, Joppa really has it in for casters, eh? First we get the "feature" of consuming mana while casting, (instead of at the end, like EQ1) and now this? smh.
At least FD is still overpowered, so Monk will always be an option. :)
This affects all classes, even some melee get this wierd GCD after some spells, but the wierd thing is classes like the enchanter can cast their 3+ mezzes and magic resist reduction debuffs all without GCD allowing constant chain casting, I don't understand the decision of just limiting damaging spells with this wierd after the cast GCD and making damage dealing feel cluncky.
jpedrote said: This affects all classes, even some melee get this wierd GCD after some spells, but the wierd thing is classes like the enchanter can cast their 3+ mezzes and magic resist reduction debuffs all without GCD allowing constant chain casting, I don't understand the decision of just limiting damaging spells with this wierd after the cast GCD and making damage dealing feel cluncky.
I don't understand it either. Mostly because (take your pick):
It's illogical.
It's poor design.
It's poor implementation.
It's not fun.
It's punitive.
You're using your big brain to analyze something, jpedrote, and coming to an appropriate conclusion. The real problem is, if this (and the consuming mana as you cast, instead of at the end) is working as intended, it's horrible (and the longer they leave it this way, the worse it will be perceived). If it's not working as intended, it shouldn't have been promoted/pushed to the PA server for a public demo. Either way, it makes VR look.. well, it doesn't really accurately reflect their claims of industry veterans running the show. :|
Personally? I'm leaning towards this is working as designed and intended, and it's just a terrible design and implementation. But these types of things are values on a spreadsheet that can be adjusted, so there is a tiny dim light of hope in the darkness that Alpha and Beta players may offer enough feedback to change such a core design decision. Having said that, such decisions are NOT changed easily (nor were they in Shroud, P:G, or PFO) when there is a small team, historically. It took the entire community telling Chris Spears (Shroud Dev) that trying to replicate the historically demonstrated failure of Chronicles of Spellborn was a bad idea. Nevertheless, he went ahead and implemented it and stuck with it for over a year before trying something else. (and even worse, half removing it). That was a random UI. Every skill/spell was on a random spot on the hotkey bar, and appeared randomly. Yes, I know, it sounds insane, and it is, yet... he really tried it. Again. After it already failed in another game.
Ego can play a large role in these core design decisions. Emotional investment, too. If Joppa feels this (and other similar core design decisions) is his "baby" then it will remain as is, despite all the logical criticisms and historical failure precedents.
I don't really mind the mana consumption during the cast, it makes healing cancels not as effective and that's good in my books, but the wierd GCD is really puzzling my mind.
But the thing that's stranger is that Melee don't seem to have any kind of GCD on most of their spells, after rewatching the stream, they seem to get momentaraly "locked" into using an ability, so they do seem to have a "hidden GCD" but it only last about 0.2-0.5 seconds and that's how it should be (maybe a bit longer 1-1.5 seconds) to avoid melees using 5+ abilities at the exact same time but only for the instant cast attacks, but when compared to how clunky the casters feel in comparison to the melee it really leaves me wondering.
That random UI thing seems moronic, what the hell were the devs thinking? but moving on, I don't believe this is an inteded design decision, it's really fucky, makes gameplay cluncky as hell and doesn't acomplish anything other than making you stop 1-1.5 seconds before continuing casting your other damage spells and it only triggers on damage spells. There's no need to have this wierd GCD rules just for casted damage spells if you want to slow gameplay down do it in a natural way to the gameplay, don't use a contrived GCD system that also makes casting feel cluncly to achieve that, the best way to achieve downtime without forcing it is by having a tight resource poll that does not allow you to spam **** all the time, making you manage your resources so there can be moments of the fight when you chain cast/ attack to do burst damage, and other moments where you're just meditatde or build up the resources, no need to implement a clunky GCD mechanic that only applies to some spells.
I'm sure Joppa didn't do this intentionally, the vibe I got from him was of a hardcore raider that had played many mmo's, and from the class design that's also the vibe I got, this gcd thing is probably just and oversight.
The first rule of design for just about anything. It is easier to add, improve than it is to take away/nerf.
What that means is you fudge in all design to limit initial functionality. Make things harder than you think is needed. Then slowly dial it up as you balance.
If you make a classes spells overly powerful, damage that is too high, cooldowns that are too short, players will howl and scream when you take it away. Complaints of being nerfed and broken will follow.
So you always try and start from a point where you will be improving, adding functionality. Not removing and dialing back.
@Zewtastic
Global cooldown as nothing to do with balancing or how powerfull spells are or their cooldown, it's a core mechanic of the game that is applies the same way to all spells on your spell bar.
If you don't know what it is I'll explain, the global cooldown (GCD) is a 1 - 1.5 second "recharge" cooldown that happens everytime you cast a spell or use an ability, it makes it imposible to cast another ability during that small cooldown, to avoid melee using 5 - 10 abilities all at the same time, but the problem is that in most games the GCD happens when you cast/begging casting the spell, but in Pantheon there's a wierd thing going on and you only get the GCD after the spell finishes casting, locking you out of casting for the GCD duration, making the gameplay feel cluncky because you can't chain cast damaging spells, but the most awkard part is that only some spells (mainly the ones that deal damage and have a cast time) trigger the GCD, the same does not happen to spells like mezzes that can be chain cast, your debuffs that can also be chain casted, or to melee abilities that seem to have an "hidden" GCD of 0.5 seconds to avoid melee using everything at the same time.
@Kastor
you can give any number of lore reason to justify it having a GCD after the cast finishes, but from a mechanical and gameplay standpoint it makes no sense, it's just cluncky, If ALL spells and abilities had a GCD after the cast and you could "meditate weave" like in EQ1 (sitting down for 0.5 secs get a mana tick get back up again and continue casting and weaving meditates inbetween casts to maximize mana regen) then ye that mechanic would be fair because it served a pourpouse, you could min-max it to get optimal mana regen while still casting as often as possible.
But if the only point of the GCD after is the cast is to stop you from casting 2 spells in a row I have to ask why? what's so bad about casting 2 spells in a row, specially when you can do it with the majority of the other non damage casted abilities (CC, instant casts, debuffs and buffs can all be cast without this after the cast GCD). Are you goint to socialize in those 1 - 1.5 secs GCD's nope, is that going to make gameplay slower, nope, you'll just keep spaming the next ability to have as little downtime as possible during the GCD, expcept it will not feel as smooth as casting 2 spells back to back.
If the goal is to make gamelay slower don't try to force it artificially with contrived mechanics like the after the cast GCD that break the smoothness of the gameplay, instead make resources matter, if a player wants to chain cast 10-15 spells let them, but make it hurt on their mana, so they need to stop and meditate after it, no need to force them stop casting for a few moments in between each cast.
Having to wait until higher level to have smooth gameplay does not seem like the best option, making players play in a cluncky way until a certain level, specially when reaching high level will take a long amount of time.
This will be especially painful in conjunction with the wizards spell weaving (high lvl abilities that turn a low lvl dmg spell into an insta cast prequisite required to cast a higher lvl spell).
Making those instacast spells have to wait a second and a half in between each cast in order to cast the higher level spell is not how I thought that would work (some require 2 "insta" cast spells in order to cast the higher lvl version). That sounds painfully slow.
...but I guess it's all in how it is balanced. If the damage spells are tuned in a way to account for the cooldown I guess that's fine. Maybe it makes combat seem a little slower but, on the flip side, at least you don't have the bard carpal tunnel song twisting issue. It does seem strange that some spells would have it and others don't though. Seems like it should be one or the other.
jpedrote said:@Zewtastic
Global cooldown as nothing to do with balancing or how powerfull spells are or their cooldown, it's a core mechanic of the game that is applies the same way to all spells on your spell bar.
If you don't know what it is I'll explain, the global cooldown (GCD) is a 1 - 1.5 second "recharge" cooldown that happens everytime you cast a spell or use an ability, it makes it imposible to cast another ability during that small cooldown, to avoid melee using 5 - 10 abilities all at the same time, but the problem is that in most games the GCD happens when you cast/begging casting the spell, but in Pantheon there's a wierd thing going on and you only get the GCD after the spell finishes casting, locking you out of casting for the GCD duration, making the gameplay feel cluncky because you can't chain cast damaging spells, but the most awkard part is that only some spells (mainly the ones that deal damage and have a cast time) trigger the GCD, the same does not happen to spells like mezzes that can be chain cast, your debuffs that can also be chain casted, or to melee abilities that seem to have an "hidden" GCD of 0.5 seconds to avoid melee using everything at the same time.
But it does, I mean it doesn't increase your damage or anything but GCD is a core mechanic in the game the same way doing damage in general is a core mechanic, so if the GCD right now is too harsh for many players it can and probably will be adjusted and for all we know it could simply be a line of code making it trigger in the wrong time,
. But to be honest with you I always thought it was weird how you got a GCD during the beginning of casting spells when it never really did anything, I mean you cast a spell and without showing you needed a mount to cast another one or simply to refocus your energy in general to cast another powerful spell seemed weird to me the enough time. So in my opinion the GCD happening in the end makes more sense but I'd be fine with it either way.
jpedrote said:@Philo
How it currently works, instant cast spells have no GCD, so you can spam instant casts back to with virtually no time in-between casts, but after you finished casting a cast time damage spell you would need to wait an extra 1 - 1.5 secs to begin casting again.
Thanks for the clarification. So it would be the short cast time dmg spells (longer than instacast) that suffer the most. Those 0.5-3 second type of spells take a big hit as far as usefullness without even getting into the flow of combat discussion.
Riahuf22 said:But it does, I mean it doesn't increase your damage or anything but GCD is a core mechanic in the game the same way doing damage in general is a core mechanic, so if the GCD right now is too harsh for many players it can and probably will be adjusted and for all we know it could simply be a line of code making it trigger in the wrong time,
. But to be honest with you I always thought it was weird how you got a GCD during the beginning of casting spells when it never really did anything, I mean you cast a spell and without showing you needed a mount to cast another one or simply to refocus your energy in general to cast another powerful spell seemed weird to me the enough time. So in my opinion the GCD happening in the end makes more sense but I'd be fine with it either way.
I don't have a problem with the GCD being harsh, or not, I just don't see a good reason for it to exist as it currently does, it acomplishes nothing other than breaking your casting for 1 second just to be resumed right after, you'll do nothing during that GCD other than spam the next spell to have as little downtime as possible. Not to mention it only applies to a small subset of casted damaging spells. Again if there was a mechanic similar to EQ meditate were you could sit down in-between casts during the GCD and min-max to get a mana tick in-between casts it would be ok, but I'm not sure that's the case, so that small breaks serves absolutly no purpose it just stops the flow of the game.
I'm pretty sure GCD were created just to deal with instant cast spells and abilties, and avoid 5+ instant cast being used at the same exact moment.
GCD hapenning at the beggining of casted spells are just a way to make you "commit" to your chosen spell sgnify and action if there was no GCD when you started casting a spell you could quickly move to stop casting and start casting another spell right away, the GCD at the start is a way of representing your "action" and a way to look you into it, even if you choose to stop casting you already used your action for that "turn" of combat and need to wait out those extra GCD seconds before starting another action.
philo said:Thanks for the clarification. So it would be the short cast time dmg spells (longer than instacast) that suffer the most. Those 0.5-3 second type of spells take a big hit as far as usefullness without even getting into the flow of combat discussion.
Yup, finishing a 2 seconds cast just to have to wait another 1 sec before starting another cast will feel really bad. As I said I can tolerate it in EQ because I can sit and meditate during that time and wait out the mana regen tick, after the mana regen tick happens I get back up, cast another spell and quickly sit back down again, never missing a mana tick.
philo said:...but I guess it's all in how it is balanced. If the damage spells are tuned in a way to account for the cooldown I guess that's fine. Maybe it makes combat seem a little slower but, on the flip side, at least you don't have the bard carpal tunnel song twisting issue. It does seem strange that some spells would have it and others don't though. Seems like it should be one or the other.
No amount of balancing damage around it will change how horribly clunky it will feel, unfortunately.
vjek said:jpedrote said: This affects all classes, even some melee get this wierd GCD after some spells, but the wierd thing is classes like the enchanter can cast their 3+ mezzes and magic resist reduction debuffs all without GCD allowing constant chain casting, I don't understand the decision of just limiting damaging spells with this wierd after the cast GCD and making damage dealing feel cluncky.I don't understand it either. Mostly because (take your pick):
It's illogical.
It's poor design.
It's poor implementation.
It's not fun.
It's punitive.
You're using your big brain to analyze something, jpedrote, and coming to an appropriate conclusion. The real problem is, if this (and the consuming mana as you cast, instead of at the end) is working as intended, it's horrible (and the longer they leave it this way, the worse it will be perceived). If it's not working as intended, it shouldn't have been promoted/pushed to the PA server for a public demo. Either way, it makes VR look.. well, it doesn't really accurately reflect their claims of industry veterans running the show. :|
Personally? I'm leaning towards this is working as designed and intended, and it's just a terrible design and implementation. But these types of things are values on a spreadsheet that can be adjusted, so there is a tiny dim light of hope in the darkness that Alpha and Beta players may offer enough feedback to change such a core design decision. Having said that, such decisions are NOT changed easily (nor were they in Shroud, P:G, or PFO) when there is a small team, historically. It took the entire community telling Chris Spears (Shroud Dev) that trying to replicate the historically demonstrated failure of Chronicles of Spellborn was a bad idea. Nevertheless, he went ahead and implemented it and stuck with it for over a year before trying something else. (and even worse, half removing it). That was a random UI. Every skill/spell was on a random spot on the hotkey bar, and appeared randomly. Yes, I know, it sounds insane, and it is, yet... he really tried it. Again. After it already failed in another game.
Ego can play a large role in these core design decisions. Emotional investment, too. If Joppa feels this (and other similar core design decisions) is his "baby" then it will remain as is, despite all the logical criticisms and historical failure precedents.
I wanted to say that during the you tube stream that hive brought up the mana going down during casting. Joppa said that it is supposed to only be a visual representation for the cost of spells that if you cancel the spell you shouldn't lose mana. There will be spells or abilities that mobs can use that will cancel your cast and you will lose the mana, but canceling the spell yourself shouldn't cause you to consume the mana. I dont have the time stamp but it was fairly early on
So they created two types of interrupts?
1) self interrupt, you might not lose mana
2) mob interrupt, you will lose mana.
I'm skeptical this is true, and would have to wait until next year to test it. It also is again, illogical. Why would you have two? The player is already penalized with the recast timer. Punishing them again by consuming up to 99% of the mana and then forcing the recast (and possibly even a GCD for good measure) it's just too punitive. Making them recast isn't enough? It is in every other game.
I'm not sure I see the point in such a fundamentally punishing mechanic, even if what Joppa said is true. It wasn't necessary in EQ1, and no other MMO does this. Why distinguish your game with a punitive casting mechanic that only affects spells with a casting time? It also creates a situation where players will now focus on classes that have more instant cast abilities, and will be inclined to play those classes exclusively. And who would blame them? No GCD, no loss of mana potential, and you can cast while moving. Compared with the other penalties, it's a no-brainer which people will choose.
vjek said:So they created two types of interrupts?
1) self interrupt, you might not lose mana
2) mob interrupt, you will lose mana.
I'm skeptical this is true, and would have to wait until next year to test it. It also is again, illogical. Why would you have two? The player is already penalized with the recast timer. Punishing them again by consuming up to 99% of the mana and then forcing the recast (and possibly even a GCD for good measure) it's just too punitive. Making them recast isn't enough? It is in every other game.
I'm not sure I see the point in such a fundamentally punishing mechanic, even if what Joppa said is true. It wasn't necessary in EQ1, and no other MMO does this. Why distinguish your game with a punitive casting mechanic that only affects spells with a casting time? It also creates a situation where players will now focus on classes that have more instant cast abilities, and will be inclined to play those classes exclusively. And who would blame them? No GCD, no loss of mana potential, and you can cast while moving. Compared with the other penalties, it's a no-brainer which people will choose.
Per my understanding you will lose mana, when a mob interrupts you with the spells or abilities fallenking3620 has mentioned. I think not all spells or abilities used by mobs will cause mana loss on interruption, but only the ones that are intended to do so.
That being said, this is another mechanic to make some mobs more challenging and to break out of the usual killing routine. I like that, if it is not used too extensively.
If this is the case, the mechanics seem to be pretty similar to EQ: Interrupts do not trigger any cooldown and normal interrupts (no matter who caused them) wont let you lose mana. I cant remember any instant spell in EQ though.
So now there's three types of interrupts? This just keeps getting better and better. :)
I have zero confidence this will not end up being another kick in the junk for casters. Not a fan of even the idea of three different types of interrupts. Again, of all the ways to distinguish your MMO, this is one of the worst I've heard of in 20 years.