Disclaimer: I haven't read all of the posts, but I am for a "meditation" that doesn't require /sit. Thematically/RP wise it is immersion breaking for me. Hot and heavy combat, people scrambling for their lives, enemies dying all around you, one of your buddies becomes mortally wounded... but you decide to sit down and close your eyes to clear your head for a minute... maybe take a few deep breaths.
Goosfrabah!
https://media.giphy.com/media/4TvpUgQtPSE0PFoX6l/giphy.gif
No one has to sit to generate Mana, it just so happens that it is the fastest way to do so.
Melee classes have to sit to heal faster if they don't have a healer, the healer has to heal the melee so they don't get the crap beat out of them.
It's a team effort, everyone has a role.
Could alternate mid-range recovery ideas be added? Sure, as long as they don't make casters over-powered, anymore than making melee classes health regen faster without sitting. maybe just a standing meditation pose, that is really nothing more than an animation change from sitting, but still has the drawbacks of hving to stop meditation pose to cast or move.
Naunet said:You've yet to convince me that sitting down in combat makes for compelling gameplay. Meanwhile, you continue to mischaracterize my own statements as somehow wanting to not have to think about mana regen.
All the pure casters have skills to regain mana if you look at their abilities and could have even more we don't know about since all the abilities have not been released. The healers are the ones who look like they will have to med in combat and out. As much as I agree it doesn't look that compelling to sit around medding and their could be a way to make it more interesting. I understand why its needed for various reasons, which I will try to explain to the best of my ability with only the 1/3 of information we have on classes that we are making a big deal out of.
1. They say its so people can strategize,socialize, and take breaks this could be partly true but I think this is more of an excuse.
2. Its most likely the real factor is that if they didn't find way to stop people from constantly moving having non instanced dungeons would be impossible without completely altering the way they do combat. Three groups could just wipe out an entire zone easy leaving a lot of people unhappy unless you made it into fighting tons of mobs all the time to slow people down instead of slow and dangerous combat.
3. Its an easy trick to increase difficulty of fights without creating a bunch of twitch based AE combat early on. The fastest way to kill a group is for the healer to have no mana, may not be the most interesting way to die but it is effective and makes not mana conservation the main skill of a good healer.
4. The truth is we don't know all the skills the classes are going to have, how gear will effect mana regen, and even how the final form of medding is going to be with the chance it could be a fixed amount of time with percent base mana regen.
Fulton said:No one has to sit to generate Mana, it just so happens that it is the fastest way to do so.Melee classes have to sit to heal faster if they don't have a healer, the healer has to heal the melee so they don't get the crap beat out of them.
It's a team effort, everyone has a role.
Could alternate mid-range recovery ideas be added? Sure, as long as they don't make casters over-powered, anymore than making melee classes health regen faster without sitting. maybe just a standing meditation pose, that is really nothing more than an animation change from sitting, but still has the drawbacks of hving to stop meditation pose to cast or move.
Comparing mana regen to health in melee is not quite accurate. Casters have health, too, after all.
I don't think sitting should be a mechanic at all. Out of combat regen - sure. But why the need to sit? And definitely something that shouldn't be happening mid-combat. Combat should be engaging, and sitting (or "posing") is not engaging.
Naunet said:Fulton said:No one has to sit to generate Mana, it just so happens that it is the fastest way to do so.Melee classes have to sit to heal faster if they don't have a healer, the healer has to heal the melee so they don't get the crap beat out of them.
It's a team effort, everyone has a role.
Could alternate mid-range recovery ideas be added? Sure, as long as they don't make casters over-powered, anymore than making melee classes health regen faster without sitting. maybe just a standing meditation pose, that is really nothing more than an animation change from sitting, but still has the drawbacks of hving to stop meditation pose to cast or move.
Comparing mana regen to health in melee is not quite accurate. Casters have health, too, after all.
I don't think sitting should be a mechanic at all. Out of combat regen - sure. But why the need to sit? And definitely something that shouldn't be happening mid-combat. Combat should be engaging, and sitting (or "posing") is not engaging.
I disagree about comapring health to mana.
See, without a healing caster to heal, a melee will have to sit between fights to regen health.
A caster, without a melee to tank, will either burn all their mana casting from a distance, or get the crap beat out of them, either way they have to sit and regen too.
Now, put a caster with a melee, and while yes, it sucks that the caster has to med more than the melee has to sit (Assuming the caster is a healer), it is so that the fights can continue in an effecient stream. Otherwise, it is fight, then EVERYONE sit and regen, then fight again.
If that caster is DPS, then at some point even the melee will have to sit and regen his health.
So, what I think you are really arguing is that healing classes, often are found to need to med mid fight in order to keep the tank alive, in order to keep the group alive.
Again, team effort here, everyone has a role. When you break it down, everyone has to regen something, sometime, it just so happens that, for efficiency, healers will need to spend time medding mid-combat. again, if you don't want to, don't and then the group can sit and regen together. But I presume that would not go over well in most groups looking for effieciency.
Naunet: Combat should be engaging, and sitting (or "posing") is not engaging.
I just want to say that I totally understand your point here Naunet. If you are not doing something and are just waiting... how can you call this 'engaging'. It does sound counter to the way people think of the word.
The word Engaging basically means: Appealing or Interesting. Sitting down waiting doesn't really sound like appealing combat.
I think that when the VR Dev's talk about 'engaging' gameplay, they are not really referring to how 'active' the gameplay is, but rather the draw to it being about tactics and decisions rather than just about rapidly pressing your buttons in a practiced pattern over and over until the fight is over.
In World of Warcraft the combat was very 'active' in that the player usually followed the ABC rule: Always Be Casting. If you stopped activity (were not casting) you were doing it wrong. That game was designed for this kind of gameplay. You always had to be doing something or you were not doing your job and were letting your groupmates down. Some people do find this very engaging. As they really like to feel that they are actively working hard to win the fight.
So Naunet I totally understand if this is your thing and you want to always be doing something active during combat. This may be what you are used too and you really enjoy it.
In Pantheon the game is being designed so that combat isn't 'Always Be Casting'. You don't always engage in every fight the same way. If every fight was 'immediately used all your mana by spamming your spells until OOM' some people wouldn't find this very engaging. Just active.
The Patheon type of gameplay is about the decisions one makes during the combat, instead of just the level of 'activity'. The 'Engaging' or Appealing part of this type of gameplay is in learning when to act, and when to not act. When to spend and when to gain resources.
Don't get me wrong... perhaps there will be some fights in Pantheon where just burning all your mana in an all out race to kill the target might actually be the tactic for that fight. But in other fights, you may need to choose when is the best time to burn mana and when is the best time to worry about gaining mana.
Even non-mana users in Pantheon are likely going to need to make decisions about how they fight, rather than just following a practiced rotation or ability priority. For example, the Monk Chakra system seems to be designed so that his Chakra is fully consumed each time he uses a Chakra ability. So using one Chakra ability basically locks out the rest until he builds up his Chakra again. But some abilities only become available when you've saved a higher amount of Chakra. So he needs to decide if he uses a low cost Chakra ability as soon as he has enough for it... or if he let's it build up each time unlocking more of the abilities just in case he needs to use one (such as an inturrupt ability like a stun or silence).
So deciding when to float extra Chakra and when to use it quickly is part of his resource management. This choosing which Chakra ability to use and at which moment is how his fight style is engaging. Even if it means at some times he isn't as active as at other times because he is saving up Chakra to unlock higher cost abilities. (note: we don't know for sure if Chakra will work this way, it just was described this way in the reveal, so we will see how this plays out as the monk Chakra system gets shown in the future).
I think the real crux of this conversation is the fact that 'meditating' is just pressing a hotkey to activate a passive mode. If you aren't actively spending Mana by casting a spell, you are basically activating a 'passive waiting mode'. So you press your hotkey for 'Damage' spell, then you press your hotkey for 'passive regain mana mode'. Then you press your button for 'Other damage' spell, and then you hit your hotkey for 'passive regain mana mode' again.
Which brings us to the point of what I mentioned earlier in this thread. The reason meditating has always required 'sitting' back in Everquest is because sitting down made you vulnerable. Any attacks made on you while you were sitting were auto-hit (with no chance of a miss) and always hit for the Max damage that attack would do (if it had a min-max damage range).
It also triggered a 'weakest in the herd' type of instinct in monsters. They would see the person sitting down and they would sometimes get tunnel vision seeing them as easy prey and would often ignore their 'threat' table and be-line towards that player. The distance from the monster would play some part in if the monster would get triggered like this. So sitting down right next to them was asking to get hit... but sitting down in a far off corner might mean you got ignored.\
So choosing to activate this 'passive regain mana mode' itself became a decision you had to make. Was it safe to activate meditation (ie Sit down). Did you need to move further away before doing so. Could you duck behind a wall before sitting so the enemy wouldn't see you and trigger his 'kill the weakest' mode. This was part of the 'decision' based gameplay rather than just 'active' based gameplay.
Healers often were able to heal without line of sight in Everquest and so could hide around corners most of the time, taking away any need to decide if it was ok to sit down. Not very engaging if no decision needs to be made. I actually started a thread about 'Line of Sight for Heals in Pantheon which could keep things more engaging. Check it out if you are interested.
Later on Everquest added 'Mounts' and you were able to cast spells while sitting on your mount as long as the mount was standing still. While on your mount, you were always sitting and thus always meditating. But you were not vulnerable like normal sitting. So casters just stood around on their mounts during combat casting their spells.
This meant there was no longer any detriment to meditation, nor any decision required, as long as the fight was in an area where you could be mounted. This meant meditation was no longer an engaging system.
So in order to keep Pantheon 'meditation' engaging, it needs to make you vulnerable. Even if they decide to not make you sit down, but rather just enter a trance state while standing, it still needs to have downsides like sitting did back in Everquest (before mounts). Activating a 'passive regain mana mode', no matter what it's called, needs to be a decision that could have consequences and not just a standard thing you do after every single spell.
^
But also: Just because a healer might have to take a knee during a fight sometimes (far from every or every other fight unless pulling reds) doesn't mean things are suddenly "unengaging" for them (unless they are bad). They should still be pretty engaged and actively making split decisions: do I need to move, can X/Y/Z survive another couple hits for another tick of mana regen or do I need to spend what I have on the light instead of major heal, etc.
Pressing buttons just to be pressing buttons doesn't = more fun to me, it's the opposite...and that applies to melee/non-healers too for me. Tired of every MMO being all about slamming keys every time the global cooldown is up.
Iksar said:Pressing buttons just to be pressing buttons doesn't = more fun to me, it's the opposite...and that applies to melee/non-healers too for me. Tired of every MMO being all about slamming keys every time the global cooldown is up.
Yep I agree with this completely, I still have PTSD of playing my Swashbuckler alt in a raid in EQ2 for the first time and rolling my face across the keyboard for 3 hours straight. It was the first time I ever got sore muscles from playing a video game haha, and needless to say I retired that class immediatly after that raid.
I still feel they should give unique animations per class and make it a bit more intersting as many of us have talked about throughout the discussion. I'm a firm believer in if something isn't broken don't fix it, but that doesn't mean you can't evolve that system into something better. This is one of those systems that could use some jazzing up to bring it into the modern day through class specific mechanics.
Iksar said:^
But also: Just because a healer might have to take a knee during a fight sometimes (far from every or every other fight unless pulling reds) doesn't mean things are suddenly "unengaging" for them (unless they are bad). They should still be pretty engaged and actively making split decisions: do I need to move, can X/Y/Z survive another couple hits for another tick of mana regen or do I need to spend what I have on the light instead of major heal, etc.
Pressing buttons just to be pressing buttons doesn't = more fun to me, it's the opposite...and that applies to melee/non-healers too for me. Tired of every MMO being all about slamming keys every time the global cooldown is up.
exactly. That unending debate of “should I heal or wait for another tick of mana“ is a huge part of what makes a caster exciting and interesting
Iksar said:^
But also: Just because a healer might have to take a knee during a fight sometimes (far from every or every other fight unless pulling reds) doesn't mean things are suddenly "unengaging" for them (unless they are bad). They should still be pretty engaged and actively making split decisions: do I need to move, can X/Y/Z survive another couple hits for another tick of mana regen or do I need to spend what I have on the light instead of major heal, etc.
Pressing buttons just to be pressing buttons doesn't = more fun to me, it's the opposite...and that applies to melee/non-healers too for me. Tired of every MMO being all about slamming keys every time the global cooldown is up.
/thread
Maybe medding will be a bit annoying at the beginning, but during the levelling process and earning better gear, better spells and higher skills the mana reg will grow. And a higher manareg means less med during combat.
If every part of Pantheon will satisfy us from the beginning, where will be the fun to earn something or reach something.
Does anyone realize that a mana user is actually "RESTING" when trying to regain mana(they happen to sit for the most benefit, because standing and moving around is not the best way to rest) .....go ahead and run around while resting....good luck with that....
Resting people....regaining your energy...you do it everyday of your life...it is not some evil terrible thing a developer has created....the side effect is it can promote social activities.
One similiar example for thoise who watch hockey....A hockey plyaer goes out on his shift and burns his energy...guess what he does...sits on the bench to get his wind back (REST)....
Not sure why this is a conversation, it is actually fairly realistic.
The only thing i would change is in a fight if you sit your aggro should go through the roof if the creature is semi intelligent.
Strange conversation.
Fulton said:I disagree about comapring health to mana.See, without a healing caster to heal, a melee will have to sit between fights to regen health.
A caster, without a melee to tank, will either burn all their mana casting from a distance, or get the crap beat out of them, either way they have to sit and regen too.
Now, put a caster with a melee, and while yes, it sucks that the caster has to med more than the melee has to sit (Assuming the caster is a healer), it is so that the fights can continue in an effecient stream. Otherwise, it is fight, then EVERYONE sit and regen, then fight again.
If that caster is DPS, then at some point even the melee will have to sit and regen his health.
So, what I think you are really arguing is that healing classes, often are found to need to med mid fight in order to keep the tank alive, in order to keep the group alive.
Again, team effort here, everyone has a role. When you break it down, everyone has to regen something, sometime, it just so happens that, for efficiency, healers will need to spend time medding mid-combat. again, if you don't want to, don't and then the group can sit and regen together. But I presume that would not go over well in most groups looking for effieciency.
I don't think you're quite understanding what I'm getting at.
I want mana to be a resource that must be managed. I do not think "medding" should be the method used in that management. I want to be able to manage my mana through actual spells - e.g. a cooldown that regens mana over time; a temporary buff that when pressed makes spells free to cast for X seconds; a certain order to use abilities in to regen mana; mana-positive spells that trade off throughput for mana regen.
To give you an example... Managing focus (essentially, mana) on an esper in WildStar (rest in peace) was quite engaging. The class made use of both focus and a sort of combo point system (Psi Points), with builders and finishers. I had Fixation, which did double duty as both a throughput cooldown by generating Psi Points and a focus recovery spell. I could tier up the spell Mental Boon (a finisher spell) so that it returned a small amount of focus on use (the trade off is that Mental Boon was a HoT and not as good at burst healing as other spells). One of the rune sets in my gear made it so that whenever I used a finisher spell, there was a chance that the next Bolster (a single target HoT) would be free to cast.
The class design made it so that managing your focus was an active part of playing the class. THAT is engaging gameplay. Sitting down in the middle of combat and just... waiting is not.
[edit] @GoofyWarriorGuy: Thank you for that post! I really appreciate it. :) I definitely understand your point, however I do have one quibble. You seemed to suggest that the alternative to meditating was to go into every fight by just spamming your spells til you're OOM. That is not what I've been suggesting. I think spells can be designed so that mana (or any other resource) management can be woven into the gameplay and necessitate in-the-moment decision making on the player's part. I've seen this done to great effect before, and I would love to see Pantheon build on it and advance the realm of caster class design.
I may be an outlier here but I want a slower paced MMO. I don’t like that in current MMO’s it’s basically an action game while in combat. I stopped playing a healer in FF14 because the class transitioned to require more DPS than I wanted to do. I like whack a mole with health bars. I like buffing, negating damage. Knowing when to time the heal. When I have down time between heals I don’t want to be casting additional spells to regain Mana because that’s the method of Mana region that they decided on.
I liked EQ’s mana system. I enjoyed sitting. That was when I got to socialize. If you make mana regen an interactive ability you’re removing the down time and the time where we would socialize. I don’t want to sit for 3, 5, or 10 minutes between fights… but I want to sit.
kridak said:Does anyone realize that a mana user is actually "RESTING" when trying to regain mana(they happen to sit for the most benefit, because standing and moving around is not the best way to rest) .....go ahead and run around while resting....good luck with that....
Resting people....regaining your energy...you do it everyday of your life...it is not some evil terrible thing a developer has created....the side effect is it can promote social activities.
One similiar example for thoise who watch hockey....A hockey plyaer goes out on his shift and burns his energy...guess what he does...sits on the bench to get his wind back (REST)....
Not sure why this is a conversation, it is actually fairly realistic.
The only thing i would change is in a fight if you sit your aggro should go through the roof if the creature is semi intelligent.
Strange conversation.
Just wanted to say that in your analogy, the hockey player doesn't sit down in the middle of the ring to take their "rest". What would happen to a hockey player that just took off his helmet and sat down on the ice after just body checking someone?
I'm not opposed to sitting to meditate, but I can certainly understand people's concern with retaining new players that may not be accustomed to a slower pace of gameplay. We need to appeal to a larger audience than just those of us that are financially supporting PRotF.
Darch said:I'm not opposed to sitting to meditate, but I can certainly understand people's concern with retaining new players that may not be accustomed to a slower pace of gameplay. We need to appeal to a larger audience than just those of us that are financially supporting PRotF.
I agree but you also don't want to try and appeal to too large of a demographic. I don't think they should design the game around what a few vocal forum members say... but I really don't want them trying to appeal to everyone.
There is a middleground between rapidly using abilities and doing nothing. This has been covered in other meditation threads, but there can be strategy injected into meditation that doesn't require additional button spam.
I like a slower combat pace, downtime, socialization, and all of it, but *in-combat* medding is a step too far. It is my opinion that intended downtime and socializing should occur when everyone in the group can take part in that together. In-combat medding just turns into alt-tabbing to Netflix. You can't socialize with your group when in-combat medding because they're still all busy fighting stuff.
Modern MMOs involve 100% uptime on button clicks, but EQ required 20% uptime on button clicks with some classes. I would prefer something more in the middle. Side note - having to sit immediately after each cast to maximize efficiency actually increases button spam.
A modified in-combat meditation would be my favored approach. One quick example (one of many concepts found in other threads) - you get a significantly increased fizzle rate for X seconds after in-combat medding. You still get a slow combat pace and times when you aren't button mashing, but you need to pay attention to combat and predict when you'll next need to use your abilities otherwise you'll just fizzle them.
Naunet said:I want mana to be a resource that must be managed. I do not think "medding" should be the method used in that management. I want to be able to manage my mana through actual spells - e.g. a cooldown that regens mana over time; a temporary buff that when pressed makes spells free to cast for X seconds; a certain order to use abilities in to regen mana; mana-positive spells that trade off throughput for mana regen.
To give you an example... Managing focus (essentially, mana) on an esper in WildStar (rest in peace) was quite engaging. The class made use of both focus and a sort of combo point system (Psi Points), with builders and finishers. I had Fixation, which did double duty as both a throughput cooldown by generating Psi Points and a focus recovery spell. I could tier up the spell Mental Boon (a finisher spell) so that it returned a small amount of focus on use (the trade off is that Mental Boon was a HoT and not as good at burst healing as other spells). One of the rune sets in my gear made it so that whenever I used a finisher spell, there was a chance that the next Bolster (a single target HoT) would be free to cast.
The class design made it so that managing your focus was an active part of playing the class. THAT is engaging gameplay. Sitting down in the middle of combat and just... waiting is not.
[edit] @GoofyWarriorGuy: Thank you for that post! I really appreciate it. :) I definitely understand your point, however I do have one quibble. You seemed to suggest that the alternative to meditating was to go into every fight by just spamming your spells til you're OOM. That is not what I've been suggesting. I think spells can be designed so that mana (or any other resource) management can be woven into the gameplay and necessitate in-the-moment decision making on the player's part. I've seen this done to great effect before, and I would love to see Pantheon build on it and advance the realm of caster class design.
Medding (in combat) isn't really the method used to manage resources/mana, it is more the thing that happens when the player has managed their mana however much they can and have reached a near empty fuel tank. It is mostly used in the extremes: when at the end of a chain of pulls (or during a very difficult fight/red mob) and mana is very tight or during fights where the group pulls notably lower level mobs that pose little health risk or spike damage potential allowing extra rest for longer chains. That said, if things end up at all like EQ then I would suspect that the most efficient groups will end up having healers meditating often due to constant chain pulling and skirting the line of being oom for max exp gains.
The real mana management comes in the form of using the right abilities for what is needed and at the right times. There might also be a few abilities here and there for healers that return mana/resources (we can see Druid have at least one spell and depending on how Signet of Refreshing works, Cleric might too) and I could see something like procing a free cast here or there, but I think the bulk of mana bumps that healers will be getting will come from the CC/Support classes like Enchanter/Bard and possibly Necro.
Personally I think it is better design to have mana management come almost entirely from using the right abilities for the situation (light vs strong heal, not overhealing, etc) rather than having abilities that flat out give mana return (and by necessity are then permanently locked to the hotbar).
Darch said:I'm not opposed to sitting to meditate, but I can certainly understand people's concern with retaining new players that may not be accustomed to a slower pace of gameplay. We need to appeal to a larger audience than just those of us that are financially supporting PRotF.
Hundreds of thousands of people played Brad’s games (Old EQ and Vanguard). It’s always nice to see them returning here every day. Few are forum-addicts; it’s how it was then as well. My community will be fine, and I’m not concerned.
Ainadak said:A modified in-combat meditation would be my favored approach. One quick example (one of many concepts found in other threads) - you get a significantly increased fizzle rate for X seconds after in-combat medding. You still get a slow combat pace and times when you aren't button mashing, but you need to pay attention to combat and predict when you'll next need to use your abilities otherwise you'll just fizzle them.
I absolutely hated Fizzles in EQ. Maxed ability... expect a spell to go off... fizzle. Someone dies sometimes. I don't like RNG dictating if my spell will or will not go off. I'm fine with resists on mobs, but if a healer fizzles, the tank dies, more people die... it just stops being fun.
I'm not opposed to a "debuff" after medding though. Maybe stop regening mana for X seconds after standing. I just don't want RNG dictating the death of a tank.
Im sure they can come up with alternative ways to med. maybe not as fast as sitting but maybe more productive. like say a bard has a aura or a enchanter has a debuff to where you gain minimal resorces back from melee combat. so a cleric can hit the target and gain +15mana per land but say you gain +20 while sitting. sure its not as effective as sitting based purely on gain but you help kill the mob 10seconds faster with the added dps less dmg taken.
Wobels said:Im sure they can come up with alternative ways to med. maybe not as fast as sitting but maybe more productive. like say a bard has a aura or a enchanter has a debuff to where you gain minimal resorces back from melee combat. so a cleric can hit the target and gain +15mana per land but say you gain +20 while sitting. sure its not as effective as sitting based purely on gain but you help kill the mob 10seconds faster with the added dps less dmg taken.
This is exactly why I stopped playing a healer in FF14. Mana regen basically became a joke. You'd pretty much never run out, so they increased the DPS they could do, and now healers are expected to DPS and heal. As a DPS class you just worry about your rotation and if you need to dodge or do a mechanic. As a healer you had to track your DPS rotation, fight mechanics, plus you had to be aware of all your cast times, global cooldowns, and the parties health as well as debuffs or if they were standing in fire. Do I have enough time to cast my DPS spell, wait for GCD, switch targets, and cast a heal to keep the tank alive. It stopped being fun for me. I know some healers love the engagement, but that's not why I play a healer.
