Keno Monster said:I have yet to hear a compelling argument for a severely limited action set. I would love to hear VR chime in and defend this decision with actual data on why they think it's necessary. This is a real time MMO, not a turn based strategy game. If the desire is to require meaningful decision making in combat, how does limiting the action set so drastically promote that? There is no logic in stating decisions will be more difficult or more important to make when you have so many fewer options. Is the argument now that preparation out of combat is more important than decision making in combat? That is extremely weak.
This was extremely disappointing news with seemingly no justification other than "EQ did it". I might be the biggest EQ can do no wrong fan boi around, and that argument holds no water, even with me. This is an archaic design that harkens back to the single player turn based games that influenced MMOs 20+ years ago. If the game doesn't spam bloated skills and abilities at players, there is no sound reason to restrict gameplay like this. It is tedious, and simply does not feel good as a player to be restricted in such a manner, again, for seemingly no good reason. A LAS like this does not promote strategy, it restricts it.
We're 5+ years in to development. VR should be able to make strong logical arguments for why certain mechanics are, or are not, being used. Instead of "we feel" or "we think" or "we plan", tell us what the exact reasoning is behind this decision and how the game will be better for it. This is potentially a gameplay defining decision, and VR should be able to defend it. What type of things is VR going to pair with a LAS to make it anything other than a tedious, arbitrary restriction?
I love transparency and I love accountability, and I believe both are necessary and very helpful for our team, both now and ongoing.
Don't ever stop pushing us to do better as a Development Team, both in the quality of our work and the quality of our communication.
- Joppa 02/16/15
I dunno i personally like the fact youre going to have to find time to swap spells in combat, its almost like calling on a greater power for a rare situation. That or maybe 8 is overkill for the actual abilities/spells you'll be using, you have to keep in mind that this is the original release of the game, and its extremely wise to leave yourself room to grow, for instance when i get my review at work and they give me goals for my next review, i only complete 25% of them because i still get my raise and i can do part of the rest of them for my next review and it looks good on paper.
I wouldn't complain too much about 8-10 slots if you could change spells mid-fight. Not being able to change spells is just a bad decision.
So, I am able to sit and gain enough concentration to meditate and regain mana during a fight but I am too stupid to load up a new spell? I would argue it takes more skill to quickly flip through and load up a few spells in an "oh shi*" situation then to stop and pause before every encounter to make sure you have the ideal spells up. That just sounds tedious.
beautifully said:I wouldn't complain too much about 8-10 slots if you could change spells mid-fight.
If we can change during a fight then the 14 slots just harken back to EQ1 where you could quickly sit, change spells and continue on. Though my slight preference would be more than 8 offsensive/defensive focused slots, I'll adapt.
Vandraad said:beautifully said:I wouldn't complain too much about 8-10 slots if you could change spells mid-fight.
If we can change during a fight then the 14 slots just harken back to EQ1 where you could quickly sit, change spells and continue on. Though my slight preference would be more than 8 offsensive/defensive focused slots, I'll adapt.
If you could sit down and change spells then you probably weren't aggro in a fight. Sitting during a fight in EQ1 got you instant aggro generally.
zewtastic said:Vandraad said:beautifully said:I wouldn't complain too much about 8-10 slots if you could change spells mid-fight.
If we can change during a fight then the 14 slots just harken back to EQ1 where you could quickly sit, change spells and continue on. Though my slight preference would be more than 8 offsensive/defensive focused slots, I'll adapt.
If you could sit down and change spells then you probably weren't aggro in a fight. Sitting during a fight in EQ1 got you instant aggro generally.
Not true at all. Sitting was not an instant aggro, far from it. Yes, sitting did lower your effective level compared to the NPCs around you (that is why you could walk by a level 1 Orc Pawn at level 60 and it would ignore you but sit down and it would attack), but that effect did not overwrite an active hate list.
I assume we're talking about early EQ1.
Upon a pull, bringing a mob back to the group, any sitting player could usually expect to be instantly attacked.
Yes, once a mob was fully engaged, and a tank had built up enough hate to hold aggro, then sitting became more possible. But not always.
Clerics and wizards generally sit high on the hate list with their casts. As did chanters and shaman with their slows and debuffs.
gcd? yeet. (yay skill expression)
las8? uhh. (wut less skill expression)
lus6? weird flex but okay.
all in all, we got more slots? eh. it also looks like downranking isn't going to be a thing now. i would like to drop a dime for gcd:
instant cast gcd .5 sec
normal gcd 1 sec
5 min cd spells gcd 1.5 sec
10 min cd spells gcd 2 sec
Having in combat and out of combat bars is a brilliant compromise. There will likely be 20+ in combat spells that players will have to prioritize for their bars while not having to worry about digging through the codex for skills like vinewoven bridge to help their party cross a river that they can just swim across faster than it takes to swap spells/skills around.
add: I think this will mitigate the O.P.'s legitimate concerns of immersion breaking.
My opinion:
I think the idea of the limited action set has several intents. The first is to enforce a degree of strategic choice on players. You load the things you think you'll need but you don't have access to every ability on the fly. The second is to help enable differentiation among players. If you have two shamans in a group (for example) they could both take a number of different spells. Ability points also play into this too - maybe one shaman is better at fire spells and another is better at poison spells. Finally, there's a desire to reduce ability bloat and UI clutter on the screen. Additional hotbars are one of the things that rapidly contribute to UI clutter.
We have to remember some other things as well. First, VR ostensibly wants horizontal progression to be meaningful, and intends to spread our abilities out somewhat so that we have to go and find them out in the world. It is entirely possible that 1/3 to 1/2 of the abilities we saw on Cohh's Codex are not things that would be available "by default" but that would require a serious time investment to go and earn in the game. Second, VR wants to achieve a slower and more meaningful vertical progression which means that often, new abilities become available at every level. We may or may not agree with having that many abilities in the end but no one should be able to deny that part of what makes gaining a level awesome is getting access to a new ability to use. So in addition to the things I mentioned above, VR is also trying to balance these factors as well.
I am fine with 8 "primary" abilities on the bar as a starting point for testing. I'm not going to say that it's exactly right, but I think before any of us can judge whether it is, we need to see how the classes and their abilities shake out during alpha at the least. It's not like it can't be adjusted based on our feedback during the testing process, and it'll be a lot easier for us to provide specific examples and real data about usability when that time comes. Plus, we also need to remember that whatever is landed on needs to work for ALL classes. There is no guarantee that each class will have the same number of abilities available by level 50, so we need to not pass judgement on the entire system based on a single class seen only during a stream. It may turn out that 8 slots is "just right" for most other classes and so then the question would become whether and how to reduce the number of abilities that shamans get to make that class feel better to players. Anyway, stressing over it now just seems counterproductive. I feel like this is just something where we should be saying "yup, gonna plan to give feedback on that once I actually get some hands-on time with it and have the chance to see how it feels in actual gameplay."
Spell sets and Spell book organization.
if I needed to swap out one or two spells I could drop and mem one or two spells in a second, it didnt take long. Likewise if I knew I was heading into an area with lots of undead that were immune to root (that I learned form my first death/foray into that area) I would load my undead spell set- it would be a function where I would , in off-time, stop, clear my spell bar or in this case abilities bar and then mem those spells needed for undead and take out root and maybe replace root with something else. I would then have an option to call that spell set a name. I would then load my normal spell set and go about my day.
Then, in a situation where I needed my undead spell set I would- drop and select that spell set and - ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting with machine like rapidity as fast as a computer can go those spells would load in my spell gem slots or in this case , ability bar and I would be ready to go.
No problem- I imagine the same thing will be available in pantheon? so One ability bar is fine and leaves more space to see things.
I really liked the wind shear effect! and the two types! cohh getting blown off was funny and the dwarf almost missing the jump and barely making it added nice drama, if that was accidental that was briliant. I think there should be a stronger penalty instead of being blown back to the starting island, like death. It looks like there were rivers down below- can they be fished in? those were the lighting guys teased a while back! and those red things are supposed to have something in them, the residue of a lightning strike iirc. Can the area below, be adventured in as well? it looked like there might be some rudimentary civilizations there. The murk even greyboxxed looks like it has lots of climbing opportunities in it and looks to me like there are many levels, ground, then vine then maybe one more higher up, so you could avoid the valley if your climbing was good enough maybe, but then what would you face up there? and the bat in the valley of the murk, was that one of those chubby bats we saw last time? the one getting in the way while the one australian was talking.
thanks cohh for sneaking in extra pages of shaman spells and mousing over for us to look at while the devs were talking :)
I could almost feel the windsheer effect and honestly I felt the chest glyph was too much buffering of the effect, but maybe thats intended as the chest piece would be a major piece of thing to be acclimated.
regarding acclimation, once acclimated always acclimated? or can they be swapped around?
There were 12 slots. Now there are 14 in total and people are still complaining. It's more than enough. This is how the game is being designed and I'm happy with it. It creates an enjoyable pace of game that is sustainable long-term, avoids ability bloat, and forces you to think ahead instead of just trying to ape rush everything. Bring on Pantheon!
@VR Thank you for separating the action bar into combat/utility bars and providing us with two extra ability slots, that will suffice!
Edit: Let's not forget that many of those pages are just upgrades of lower level abilities. There's not actually eight pages of abilities that you'll have to manage into 14 slots at level 40. We may see a couple extra ability slots added (as we did in yesterday's stream), but expecting to see an entire action bar (or five!) added just doesn't coincide with Pantheon's design. Get over it.
Flossie said:There were 12 slots. Now there are 14 in total and people are still complaining. It's more than enough. This is how the game is being designed and I'm happy with it. It creates an enjoyable pace of game that is sustainable long-term, avoids ability bloat, and forces you to think ahead instead of just trying to ape rush everything. Bring on Pantheon!
@VR Thank you for separating the action bar into combat/utility bars and providing us with two extra ability slots, that will suffice!
it's NEVER enough! i need moar! moar netflix! more likes! maor amzon prime! INSTANT DELIEVERY! MOARRRRRR BUTTONS! more content! MOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
i'm pretty happy with the stream.
i would like to see more robust gcd, but i'm very happy to see it.
It all depends, like i said before even with WoW, when it came to usually rotations most weren't even hardly above 10 abilities, not including so of your racials are such, so honestly if they went anywhere from 8-12 i would be prefectly okay with it, i think most people just hear LAS and think it ruins a part of the game, when it fact if you limit the spell list and in a way make rotations easier you can increase the difficulty of the mobs to compensate for it, which would go directly in line with the group orientated idea they have been shooting for this entire time, but if you make it UAS and make the rotations extremely complicated than the mobs would have to be easier to kill to balance it out, as you couldn't obviously do both or hardly anyone would ever be able to defeat certain content but the very best, which I'm down for but at the same time i want this game to succeed and if you do, you obviously can't do both.
Plus with UAS Soloing would be way more dominant, and look like every other game. As every game with UAS simply makes content easier than it should simply becuase they can dumb something down by having too much utility.
Nephele said:I am fine with 8 "primary" abilities on the bar as a starting point for testing. I'm not going to say that it's exactly right, but I think before any of us can judge whether it is, we need to see how the classes and their abilities shake out during alpha at the least. It's not like it can't be adjusted based on our feedback during the testing process, and it'll be a lot easier for us to provide specific examples and real data about usability when that time comes. Plus, we also need to remember that whatever is landed on needs to work for ALL classes. There is no guarantee that each class will have the same number of abilities available by level 50, so we need to not pass judgement on the entire system based on a single class seen only during a stream. It may turn out that 8 slots is "just right" for most other classes and so then the question would become whether and how to reduce the number of abilities that shamans get to make that class feel better to players. Anyway, stressing over it now just seems counterproductive. I feel like this is just something where we should be saying "yup, gonna plan to give feedback on that once I actually get some hands-on time with it and have the chance to see how it feels in actual gameplay."
There ya go, being all 'reasonable' on the forums. How are we going to have any entertaining fireworks with comments like that! And what if everybody started acting this way? Poor Kilsin would die of boredom!!
(if not obvious, I agree with this post)
Manouk said:cohh getting blown off was funny and the dwarf almost missing the jump and barely making it added nice drama, if that was accidental that was briliant. I think there should be a stronger penalty instead of being blown back to the starting island, like death.
...
regarding acclimation, once acclimated always acclimated? or can they be swapped around?
I feel confident that being blown off the platform will result in death (unless one is buffed with slow fall) in the game at release. My guess is that the Dev's adjusted that for the stream in order to avoid wasting time waiting for him to get back otherwise.
Characters have a separate UI panel where they equip their glyphs. Every elemental type has it's own slots for glyphs. So they won't take up any space in your inventory and once you equip one, you have no need to ever un-equip it unless you find a more powerful piece to replace it with.
I like having a LAS and not ability bloat with my screen filled with 25 hotbars. That being said, I think having only 8 slots is a little too limiting. I would like to see it be around 10, with maybe quest lines you could do to bump it up to 12 max. In EQ you could get the extra gem slots with AA, but I think having some cool questline from some sage that allowed you to get the extra 2 slots would be neat. The only downside I see with their current LAS design, is not being able to swap spells/abilities on the fly in combat. The tense situations in EQ when someone in the group died and you had to try and sit and swap out a spell without drawing aggro to help fill a need was great. Those came up all the time and it gets the adrenaline flowing. Being glued to that spell lineup until OOC is a mistake IMO, I'd like to see them reconsider that option as it opens up so much on the fly group action depending on the situation and allows you to still be semi fluid even with an LAS.
Mandalorian2K said:I like having a LAS and not ability bloat with my screen filled with 25 hotbars. That being said, I think having only 8 slots is a little too limiting. I would like to see it be around 10, with maybe quest lines you could do to bump it up to 12 max. In EQ you could get the extra gem slots with AA, but I think having some cool questline from some sage that allowed you to get the extra 2 slots would be neat. The only downside I see with their current LAS design, is not being able to swap spells/abilities on the fly in combat. The tense situations in EQ when someone in the group died and you had to try and sit and swap out a spell without drawing aggro to help fill a need was great. Those came up all the time and it gets the adrenaline flowing. Being glued to that spell lineup until OOC is a mistake IMO, I'd like to see them reconsider that option as it opens up so much on the fly group action depending on the situation and allows you to still be semi fluid even with an LAS.
i'd have a complete lock of the las8 uas6. meaningful choices right? i think it would be okay to switch them in a major hub though.
if i needed to swap mid combat, then why bother having an las to begin with?
Flossie said:There were 12 slots. Now there are 14 in total and people are still complaining. It's more than enough. This is how the game is being designed and I'm happy with it. It creates an enjoyable pace of game that is sustainable long-term, avoids ability bloat, and forces you to think ahead instead of just trying to ape rush everything. Bring on Pantheon!
@VR Thank you for separating the action bar into combat/utility bars and providing us with two extra ability slots, that will suffice!
Edit: Let's not forget that many of those pages are just upgrades of lower level abilities. There's not actually eight pages of abilities that you'll have to manage into 14 slots at level 40. We may see a couple extra ability slots added (as we did in yesterday's stream), but expecting to see an entire action bar (or five!) added just doesn't coincide with Pantheon's design. Get over it.
14 seems reasonable. I don't particularly think LAS is a good idea, because it restricts encounter design so much, but if they're going to try it, that's a good place to start, imo.
Similarly, provided you can switch pre-set bars once out of combat, then the mechanic meets the goal. As such, there's no reason to limit the number of pre-set bars or even any other type of hotbar, globally. They could simply dim during combat. Fill your screen with hotbars! (or not) and they all are inaccessible during combat, except the LAS bar.
No reasonable 2021 developer, coder, programmer, or designer would give you 80 abilities and expect you to scroll through all 80 to pick 2, manually, every time. That's ... well, that's just anti-customer. :)
Even EQ1 added spell loadout presets, eventually.
A month back, my initial reaction to having a separate bar for buffs was negative. However, after thinking about it more and seeing how it is implimented, I can see that having spells there that you would normally temporarily swap in and out, is fine.
I'm not in favor of raising the LAS above 8 though because if you start getting into the 10 or 12 (or more area) you've just entered the territory of games you said you don't want to copy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with planning out ahead of time what spells you need.
Keep in mind that many spells will likely be trivialized as you go up in levels, or not useful in certain circumstances. While you may have 8 pages of spells, you won't be actively using them on a daily basis. In these kind of games (EQ inspired) you receive abilities that are eventually replaced, though you typically still have the old version available if you want. And you may also receive many specialized spells that are only used for crafting or other situations away from combat.
vjek said:provided you can switch pre-set bars once out of combat, then the mechanic meets the goal. As such, there's no reason to limit the number of pre-set bars or even any other type of hotbar, globally. They could simply dim during combat. Fill your screen with hotbars! (or not) and they all are inaccessible during combat, except the LAS bar.
No reasonable 2021 developer, coder, programmer, or designer would give you 80 abilities and expect you to scroll through all 80 to pick 2, manually, every time. That's ... well, that's just anti-customer. :)
Even EQ1 added spell loadout presets, eventually.
This exactly.
I've been waiting for this idea to come up. Pre-populated hotbars that stay full even when you hide them completely or turn them off. (I'm in the anti-clutter crowd). It's fine to have cooldowns and use-limits on swapping hotbars. If mem'ing an ability takes 10 seconds, then switching to a different 8 slot LAS bar should take at least 80 seconds out of combat. If you get agro during that time then you fail, and you're still stuck with the old bar. Whatever limits are needed.
But don't make me throw out a perfectly usable setup -that I'll use again in an hour- for fighting a melee Boss just so I can make a setup for a Magic casting Boss (for example). By level cap, I could see having 5-10 LAS bars worth of unique combinations that I use fairly regularly in different situations.
Jothany said:This exactly.
I've been waiting for this idea to come up. Pre-populated hotbars that stay full even when you hide them completely or turn them off. (I'm in the anti-clutter crowd). It's fine to have cooldowns and use-limits on swapping hotbars. If mem'ing an ability takes 10 seconds, then switching to a different 8 slot LAS bar should take at least 80 seconds out of combat. If you get agro during that time then you fail, and you're still stuck with the old bar. Whatever limits are needed.
But don't make me throw out a perfectly usable setup -that I'll use again in an hour- for fighting a melee Boss just so I can make a setup for a Magic casting Boss (for example). By level cap, I could see having 5-10 LAS bars worth of unique combinations that I use fairly regularly in different situations.
preset bars is fine as long as i'm locked into it and can't swap it fight to fight or on the fly. like maybe i have to setup a camp or something to swap stuff on the bar.
setting up camp is a 15 min cd.
swap preset bars and spells wisely muahahhaha.
MOAR MEANINGFUL CHOICES WITH CONSEQUENCES!
I'm guesssing we will simply see spell lines increase in power over time. For example, an Enchanter's mez spell line could see an upgrade every 5-10 levels, the most recent being the most potent, costing the most mana, with the longest mez duration, but it's a completely separate spell in your codex (the upgraded spell does not take place of the older spell). You can still access the lower level ones which have lower mez duration, but are more mana efficient.
Let's say you're in a group taking down mobs relatively quickly, but still needing to crowd control the pulls, you can opt for the lower level mez with a shorter duration, making you more mana efficent (this would be part of that 'think and prepare prior to engaging'), instead of using the most potent, most mana heavy version that mezzes mobs for far longer than you realistically need. You don't need both, the long duration, and short(er) duration spells available all of the time in that scenario, and the strategic choice has been made to make the best use of the available slots. If you only had ten spells, and they were upgraded once every ten levels, you would still have a spell book loaded with 50 spells, but you would not want / need them available to you all of the time. Just ten slots would allow you to have at least one spell from each spell line available all of the time in this scenario.
The main thing I'm struggling to understand with those absolutely obsessed with (and becoming excessively vocal about) having open action bars is the fact that, if you look at the classes page on this very website, and look through the available skills / abilities / spells for them, a large proportion of them will be able to have most of their skills / abilities / spells available to them all of the time with just 14 slots anyway.
Rogue: 20 skills / abilities. 14 slots = 70% of your abilities available, all of the time (would you really want 'Length of Rope' all the time anyway?)
Ranger: 21 skills / abilities. 14 slots = 67% of your abilities available, all of the time (going to 'Forage' during combat?)
Dire Lord: 21 skills / abilities. 14 slots = 67% of your abilities available, all of the time
Cleric: 30 skills / abilities. 14 slots = 47% of your abilities available, all of the time (three of these are passive, and one relates to meditating, so passive also)
Monk: 15 skills / abilities. 14 slots = 93% of your abilities available, all of the time
I'm aware that the above is a very simple example, and all I've done is look at a few class pages and counted the abilities / spells, but I just can't see the need to open action bars, just to allow players access to everything, instantly, all of the time. This open action bars conversation genuinely feels like it has a direct correlation between those that have grown up with everything, all of the time, resulting in OCD-type behaviour, and those of us that have seen the advent of this curse and understand how destructive it is / can be.
Lastly, I was okay with 12 slots, but the slight increase to 14 is not a bad thing. Maybe ten action slots and six for utility would be a happy medium?
[EDIT] I loved the stream, but VR, please make those lightning strikes a little less 'chunky', hehe. They felt a little bit bloated to me, but I guess that's subjective?