I think there should be an internal cooldown on passive combat skills that mitigate or negate damage. This would make high-level toons more susceptible to being overwhelmed by a large number of lower-level mobs. Why? The scenarios in which this internal CD would kick in are situations in which the high-level player has pulled agro on a very large number of mobs well below his level; those situations tend to be where the high-level is power-leveling or camping/running to a rare spawn way below his level, which are not things that will promote community in the game.
what do ya’ll think?
I think if I go fight 12 1st graders I'm going to able to mitigate their damage much better than if I fight 1 30 year old.
If the loot system is designed in a way that does not require level 20 items for bis level 50 characters this should not be an issue.
I understand the whole powerleveling thing but when it comes to fighting the harder bosses or raid targets the last thing I want is be like yup I have alet 20% dodge 15% parry and let's say a 25% block but once I do any of those I might as well have 0% for 6 seconds doesn't make a lot of sense, just have diminishing returns, it will just work out better in the long run
I remember that in EQ1 undead used to attack you no matter how much level difference there was. So lowbie skeletons or mummies would try to attack you even if they were level 10 and you were level 50.
This one time I went afk just outside Cazic Thule dungeon (back when it was a mid level zone) and happend to be standing in the path of low level skeletons roaming path. When I came back to my desk there was this pile of like 20 skeleton corpses at my feet. So I looked at my combat log and noticed that skeletons kept walking up to me, trying to attack and getting instantly reposted and one shot.
They have shown in the last couple of streams that greens won't agro. No word yet on the (infuriating) undead green ago. I did notice that sitting would still cause a green to attack though.
I don't know that I quite understand a cooldown on passive melee skills. I mean, yeah, maybe it kinda makes sense that you can't riposte as many of the attacks from each of 20 targets at the same time. But I don't understand what you're fixing either. Not when greens shouldn't agro you unless you want them to. And if you do there are plenty of reasons why you would that don't involve abusive or exploitative gameplay. Materials farming for crafting comes to mind.
Well, as you said Feshtey, there is something natural about not being able to dodge/parry attacks from 20+ mobs at the same time. So why wouldn’t the number of mobs attacking have some influence on your ability to dodge/parry/riposte?
As for this mechanic affecting boss fights, it wouldn‘t need to at all, if it is tuned to kick in at 3+ NPCs or whatever. So that‘s really a non-issue.
As for the point about farming crafting materials, do we want it to be easy for high-level toons to pull a huge number of NPCs and mow them down for crafting mats? That kind of gameplay almost always results in disruption or denial of content to level-appropriate players.
Gnog said:Well, as you said Feshtey, there is something natural about not being able to dodge/parry attacks from 20+ mobs at the same time. So why wouldn’t the number of mobs attacking have some influence on your ability to dodge/parry/riposte?
As for this mechanic affecting boss fights, it wouldn‘t need to at all, if it is tuned to kick in at 3+ NPCs or whatever. So that‘s really a non-issue.
As for the point about farming crafting materials, do we want it to be easy for high-level toons to pull a huge number of NPCs and mow them down for crafting mats? That kind of gameplay almost always results in disruption or denial of content to level-appropriate players.
There's something "natural" about about the most fit and conditioned athletes being completely gassed after a couple of minutes of sustained effort. Should be we put in mechanics that say if you fight for more than 2 minutes your stats start to degrade and you eventually become exhausted and collapse? Yeah, it's realistic, but it's a craptastic game mechanic.
Do you really want the process of collecting mundane items to be a massive timesink for a high level character? I mean, it's already going to be, but even more of a massive timesink? And to the point about disruptive behavior, that's a game management issue not a game mechanic issue. You have to give players enough freedom to do dumb s*** or you're building yet another game littered with good intentions that results in restrictive, artificial, gimmicky and annoying gameplay. There are plenty of those out there right now I'm not playing. Instead, as VR is doing, you build a game where reputation matters. If you're an ******, you get known as being an ******, and people just won't deal with you. And VR needs to invest in sufficient GM oversight so that agregious issues can be responded to in a timely way. This includes coding put into the game from the outset that logs and retains records of actions that are easily correlated and searched.
The oversite is key, and there was a time in EQ when it was done relatively well. Over the years it tapered off and eventually Sony just gave up all pretenses that it was a thing at all. Again, it's a management issue not a mechanics issue.
You can bottle things up so tight that no one can ever cheat, exploit, abuse, etc. But it wont really matter if you do because no one is going to want to play your game.
Well yes, I do think it should be difficult for high-level players to gather large quantities of materials. It makes low-level participation in the economy more meaningful. And, as you noted, most games don‘t implement real-life endurance limitations because it would be detrimental to gameplay. But you don’t really explain how an internal CD on combat skills would have the same detrimental effect, so you haven’t really explained why the same deviation from what feels natural should apply.
But more generally, you seem to approach this and other design questions with EQ as the baseline. If it worked one way in EQ, it needs no justification and any limitation on EQ mechanics need some special justification. I guess we’ll just go on disagreeing about that. The idea that reputation or GM presence will address disruptive gameplay that is achievable with game mechanics is very cute, though. I don’t have the same optimism.
I am still unsure of where you are going with this Gnog. You are concerned because a high level character might go through to gather large quantities of mats, so they would implement a system where if they are surrounded by 3+ mobs, they are now unable to block/parry/riposte for X amount of time. Here are a couple of arguments for this, as I am still confused on how you would like to implement that without breaking the game.
1. A level 50 having 20 level 10's hitting on them, should almost always never get hit by them, as you have clearly gotten more powerful and better gear, OR, if they DO hit you, they deal little to almost no damage. Do you think at level 10 you can take 20 of your level 10 buddies and go kill a level 50? No, absolutely not. Internal CD for that would make no sense in the game, it would be detrimental especially in a dungeon, if you were to accidentally pull adds. How does the system know they are mezzed or not? Should it be based off of registered hits? Again, this takes unneeded resources to implement and would be a non-factor in most games.
2. Dodge/Parry/Riposte would be primary for a melee user, but what about your ranged, kiters? Would you not see an influx in ranged players who could just snare, like wizards and druids used to do in EQ1 all the time, taking 10-15 mobs at a time and just kiting and aoeing until dead? What would THEIR internal CD's be? Can't cast more than 1 spell per 15 seconds with more than 3 mobs around? You suggest a problem/issue with a primary melee class, but this would not fix classes who wish to stay at range of getting hit.
3. If a higher level character wishes to farm mats in a lower level zone, why should they be penalized for this? They put in the time and effort in order to level up, and now wish to return to farm mats. Is this not where you would also benefit as a lower level character where you can recieve buffs from said players? This only issue I would see with "taking away from level appropriate players" would be if they were kill stealing mobs you were fighting. At that point, you would have the option to report such a player.
4. It's a video game! You AGREE most games don't implement real life endurance limitations because it would be detrimental to gameplay, yet you want to make an internal CD for things such as dodge/parry/riposte based off of real life limitiations. When games start basing statistics off of real life limitations, we start to lose what makes a game so much fun and enjoyable. We are unable to cast spells in real life, should we, based on real life, not be able to have wizards, or clerics because it just cannot happen?
I'd vote against this. Mechanics like this can negatively affect high level gameplay in some backwards attempt to prevent some people from farming / PLing. Those seem to be your main concerns here.
As for farming... I highly doubt it will be profitable for high level players to go farm lower level mobs for crafting materials and such. If they are doing it... they probably have a reason to do it, and they have a right to do it without being artificially gimped IMO. Besides, crafting materials shouldn't be dropping like candy from huge swarms of mobs. It shouldn't be possible in the first place for a high level character to pull 50 mobs and get a hundred crafting items in one swoop. I don't recall seeing many high level players in CB farming CB belts... They would just buy them from the lower level players who were there killing the things. Same with just about everything I can think of, including HQ/MQ/LQ pelts. Some higher levels would farm them sometimes because they couldn't afford to buy them, but the mobs were spread out enough that it would be impractical to try to AoE farm them.
And by the time people can safely AoE farm stuff like this, they are usually wealthy enough to just buy the stuff from other players instead of wasting their time.
As for preventing PLing, I'm neither really for or against it... but there are better approaches to this. I mean, this would hardly do anything to prevent a monk from FD PLing, or a druid from root/thorns PLing... Or high level casters super-buffing lower level groups. Or whatever other methods of PLing.
Doesn't make sense to me, honestly, and I would hate for it to negatively affect high level players doing high level content.
I don't really see the benefits, avoidance is already something extremely RNG by nature, and the only moment when it shines is while you are fighting multiple ennemies and the odds are close to what you can expect.
As stated, mitigation (armor) in Pantheon is the same genre as EQ, where it doesn't guarantee you a strict damage reduction as it's a gaussian repartition around a median, and you still might have chances to suffer maximum damage when fighting ennemies.
Gnog said:Well, as you said Feshtey, there is something natural about not being able to dodge/parry attacks from 20+ mobs at the same time. So why wouldn’t the number of mobs attacking have some influence on your ability to dodge/parry/riposte?
As for this mechanic affecting boss fights, it wouldn‘t need to at all, if it is tuned to kick in at 3+ NPCs or whatever. So that‘s really a non-issue.
As for the point about farming crafting materials, do we want it to be easy for high-level toons to pull a huge number of NPCs and mow them down for crafting mats? That kind of gameplay almost always results in disruption or denial of content to level-appropriate players.
The same can be said the other way around if mobs are all coming from the same direction and swing close to the same time than how dont some of them hit each other, and to dodge I would simply have to leap backwards and dodge most of the attacks.
Lots of words here and way too many assumptions (again mostly EQ based) to really respond to each post. I actually just think it makes sense that I wouldn't be able to dodge or parry attacks when I have 20 things attacking me. Just like it doesn’t make sense that I could change an entire suit of armor during combat. The suggestion this would affect “high level play” is speculation. I get that a video game doesn’t need to correspond perfectly to real world physics or physiology, but high-fantasy MMOs generally do start from a set of physical rules that resemble our own, with other lore-based (often magical) rules built on top of that. And nobody has given a good lore-based reason that our toons can dodge an infinite number of mobs. Anyway, you guys haven’t really given reasons not to limit dodge/parry/etc. based on the number of mobs hitting you. You’ve just tried to poke holes in the reasons I gave and ultimately fall back to the status quo, which is fine I guess, since that seems like a pretty standard way of viewing these things zzz
Btw, I don’t feel strongly about this at all. It‘s a super minor point about combat calculations. I am more just tired of the EQ default being so doggedly defended.
Gnog said:Lots of words here and way too many assumptions (again mostly EQ based) to really respond to each post. I actually just think it makes sense that I wouldn't be able to dodge or parry attacks when I have 20 things attacking me. Just like it doesn’t make sense that I could change an entire suit of armor during combat. The suggestion this would affect “high level play” is speculation. I get that a video game doesn’t need to correspond perfectly to real world physics or physiology, but high-fantasy MMOs generally do start from a set of physical rules that resemble our own, with other lore-based (often magical) rules built on top of that. And nobody has given a good lore-based reason that our toons can dodge an infinite number of mobs. Anyway, you guys haven’t really given reasons not to limit dodge/parry/etc. based on the number of mobs hitting you. You’ve just tried to poke holes in the reasons I gave and ultimately fall back to the status quo, which is fine I guess, since that seems like a pretty standard way of viewing these things zzz
It would be detrimental to end game encounters, like I stated earlier this is reason enough to not have it
I think the better way to solve this is to make it so large groups of mobs circle around you rather than standing on top of each other. This can probably be achieved with NPC collision and basic AI. Since block/parry/riposte only work from frontal quadrants you would always be at a disadvantage when you pull a large group of mobs that behave this way. Anything more than 3-4 mobs would try to attack you from a flanking position. As a tank I think it would be nice if rogues or other melee class NPC's tried to move behind you in order to better penetrate your avoidance, regardless of how many NPC's you have engaged. (Dodge would be the only avoidance check that works for non-frontal quadrants.) We have been abusing NPC avoidance checks for years it's about time they try to do the same to us.
I'm allways amazed by thoses "You haven't really given reasons ...", there were plenty of reasons given.
Well, did you really give a reason yourself ? You don't feel it realistic, is that even a reason at all ? Fighting for hours is not realistic even, which is the first problem needing to be solved then ? Do anywone need such realism ?
Porygon said:
I think if I go fight 12 1st graders I'm going to able to mitigate their damage much better than if I fight 1 30 year old.
I don't know man, 12 1st graders with simple spears working together could totally wolf pack you a lot easier than even a 30 year old with a sword.
All kidding aside I am in favor of some form of defense reduction based on the number of mobs currently attacking you. Basically some form of flanking bonus for each additional mob that all mobs benefit from.
Princess Bride Giant said: Well you see... you use different moves when you are fighting half a dozen people, than when you only have to be worried about one! (source: https://youtu.be/tRbcNbr_mNg?t=116 )
Any good fight trainer will teach you, that the key to fighting multiple enemies is to move in such a way that the fewest people as possible can be attacking you at once. So even with 50 enemies, you really should be only getting attacked by 2 or so of them at the same time. If we are dealing with realisim that is. Didn't one of those famous guys like Bruce Lee or somebody say that you really only need to learn how to fight 4 people at once, because any more than that and it's still just fighting 4 guys at once but multiple times.
Porygon said:I think if I go fight 12 1st graders I'm going to able to mitigate their damage much better than if I fight 1 30 year old.
If the loot system is designed in a way that does not require level 20 items for bis level 50 characters this should not be an issue.
I think you will be surprised at how much damage 12 1st graders can do
Gnog said:Btw, I don’t feel strongly about this at all. It‘s a super minor point about combat calculations. I am more just tired of the EQ default being so doggedly defended.
I can respect that. But sometimes the best approach really is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
My only memory of riposte being "abused" in EQ was by me on my Paladin. When newbies were begging for coin I would simply say, "I would do you no favors by offering you charity.". If they persisted and started badgering me I'd say, "I will let you earn the money. Hit me once in combat and I'll give you a plat." - /duel. I was 50+, and they were 1-5. They would immediately start attacking and I'd just wait for the inevitable.
As far as Pantheon, sure, I suppose you could call it speculation because we don't know what the end game will be like. But who is to say it absolutely will not allow for people to pull/fight 10+ mobs at a time in certain areas if they are specialized/geared for it?
This was a very fun and effective (but also very dangerous) tactic in high level DAoC play. But with the kind of mechanic you propose, this kind of play would have been impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijaptl5zNAg
GoofyWarriorGuy said:Princess Bride Giant said: Well you see... you use different moves when you are fighting half a dozen people, than when you only have to be worried about one! (source: https://youtu.be/tRbcNbr_mNg?t=116 )
Any good fight trainer will teach you, that the key to fighting multiple enemies is to move in such a way that the fewest people as possible can be attacking you at once. So even with 50 enemies, you really should be only getting attacked by 2 or so of them at the same time. If we are dealing with realisim that is. Didn't one of those famous guys like Bruce Lee or somebody say that you really only need to learn how to fight 4 people at once, because any more than that and it's still just fighting 4 guys at once but multiple times.
Ah. Fezzik. Such wisdom from a gentle giant.