philo said:stellarmind said:it's kind of like a phillips screwdriver and a flathead. technically if i'm careful and dexterious enough, i could use a flathead to undo a philips screw, even if i forgot my philips screwdriver somewhere XD
This is a really good point stellar. Another benefit of a limited bar is forcing players to be creative. Maybe they don't have the exact abilities loaded that they need. Can they figure out a way to overcome the situation with a less than optimal hotbar loadout? Sometimes. That can be exciting.
shaman, for example does have a 'flathead' usuable in most jobs(hand of avelu). it can compensate for weak spots in shaman healing.
let's say the major mob here is frogs in a zone.
there's 3 typs of dispositions the frogs can have: poisonous(high dot damage), explosive(high burst damage) and jumpy(high sustained damge)
each of the 3 types require a unique las setup elsewise the chance of being able to heal the damage is degraded significantly <20%
since the dispositions are 'hidden'(from what i understand unless someone has the required amount of perception to identify them) the shaman can't possibly setup a las8 uas6 to compensate for 3 dispositions.
so devs would need a way for players to pre identify OR create only 2 dispositions in which the player can accommadate the las8 uas6 for OR allow more than las8 uas6 to account for the dispositions.
Iksar said:Every class/role is going to have at least half their bar almost glued on there with their bread and butter role abilities with very little change. Only a few slots will truly be flexible, and only slightly so.
There will always be the "go to" spells that a lot of people want on there. and? It makes making skill choices tough sometimes, as it should be. Maybe you go without runeskin or without a HoT or haste or slow etc. Good...Though if half of your hotbar is set in stone there is a balance issue with those spells. That is not how it has to be. That's bad design.
Iksar said:This is a really good point stellar. Another benefit of a limited bar is forcing players to be creative. Maybe they don't have the exact abilities loaded that they need. Can they figure out a way to overcome the situation with a less than optimal hotbar loadout? Sometimes. That can be exciting.
This can be just as realized with no limits and longer than MMO average cooldowns. More interesting and complex ways to use a wide range of abilities depending on what is happening but certainly no guarantee you can win every little thing, reading a situation wrong and blowing a cooldown could just as easily spell a wipe. You can distance players from dull rotation based gameplay quite a lot with varying long to longer cooldowns that might not be available every encounter or even every few.
The risk mounts the longer an encounter or chain of pulls goes.
You are right, cooldowns of course add to that as well. Again, and? It is the same concept. One just takes it a step further. Limiting both the number of skills you can use at once, and the duration of time in between using skills both have a similar outcome of forcing the player to make choices.
Though whether the action sets are limited or not doesn't necessarily change the cooldown.
Unsure if this is the case or not but, I find it intriguing that someone might be ok with limiting skills with long cooldowns but not limiting them in other ways. That seems shortsighted.
stellarmind said:... so devs would need a way for players to pre identify OR create only 2 dispositions in which the player can accommadate the las8 uas6 for OR allow more than las8 uas6 to account for the dispositions.Correct. That's the "LAS limits encounter design" critical assessment that's been repeated several times, several ways, by several posters in this thread. :)
Why would the number of dispositions possible have anything to do with the amount of skills a player can have loaded at once?
philo said:Why would the number of dispositions possible have anything to do with the amount of skills a player can have loaded at once?
because if the disposition is random and i don't account for the possibilities, it gurantees a wipe just to figure out what the disposition is. i guess a work around is to have the tank or offtank die once to identify what the disposition is or keep the healer ooc until said healer can adjust bar to be able to heal the damage coming in. but that frustrating for the player that needs to die or have a off healer so that the 'main healer' can compensate for the time it takes to swap las
philo said:Though whether the action sets are limited or not doesn't necessarily change the cooldown.
Unsure if this is the case or not but, I find it intriguing that someone might be ok with limiting skills with long cooldowns but not limiting them in other ways. That seems shortsighted.
The difference is how long you can take different cooldowns and how much you can break up simple rotations & rote build spend dynamics. If you have a wide range of abilities available but many have cooldowns from 30 seconds to 8ish minutes (Mend was 6 minutes in EQ, impactful & precious cooldown) and mobs are commonly hard enough (on their own and via different dispositions) to require usage of these different abilities as resources, then you have far more variance in what you as a player will be doing fight to fight, mob to mob, even in the same area all without having to fight/toggle through the UI all the time during a play session, swapping between preset disposition loadouts. You have more choices and opportunity to use the tools your class has to offer, more time to express skillfull play both as an individual and as a group.
With a LAS you really don't get much leeway to have long cooldowns taking precious slots, or the abilities are so powerful they permanently hold the "oh sh**" slot. Most if not all of the abilities you can use every single fight (with the target 40-60 second normal mob encounter target), and you will be doing the same 4 or 5 things just about every fight by design.
philo said:Why would the number of dispositions possible have anything to do with the amount of skills a player can have loaded at once?Well hopefully they change their mind and it won't. :) In a logical design, it doesn't or shouldn't. In the current design, it can.
vjek said:correct. That's the "LAS limits encounter design" critical assessment that's been repeated several times, several ways, by several posters in this thread. :)
If you don't have the LAS, you can make encounters as dynamic, changing, variable as you wish, and the players can use their entire kit to deal with them, using their big customer brain to it's fullest extent. 3/4/More Multi dispositions? Bring it on. Long encounters with phases? Bosses with dynamic AI, complex scripts, variable adds? Bring it on. Chain pulling? More! Complex raid mechanics, yes please.
if it's a 187 post i skim XD. i might miss some points time to time since i'm touch and go on the forums.
philo said:There will always be the "go to" spells that a lot of people want on there. and? It makes making skill choices tough sometimes, as it should be. Maybe you go without runeskin or without a HoT or haste or slow etc. Good...Though if half of your hotbar is set in stone there is a balance issue with those spells. That is not how it has to be. That's bad design.
I believe it is safe to say that every class will have at about 5 spells/abilities that will be required on their primary action bar at any given time. As a Shaman, I already know what those will be IF I'm the sole priest in a group:
1. Slow (Scorched Fog line)
2. Single target HoT (Mantle of the Tides line)
3. Single Target HoT+Group HoT (Hand of Elemas line)
4. Group HoT (Echo of the Raindlands line)
5. Strength/Stamina Debuff that also lowers block, dodge and parry (Shackle line)
6. AC Debuff (Weathering line)
This leave just 2 optional slots, with these being the top contenders:
7. Fire bane debuff (Wreath of Coals that helps reduce chance Scorched Fog line gets resisted)
8. Snare + debuff to Shock and Cold attacks (Deluge line).
For a Shaman to do his job as a priest, given we're stuck with only HoTs, we have to mitigate incoming damage through Slow and various debuffs. That is a guaranteed 3 slots taken up at a minimum. And because we do not seem to be able to stack HoTs, if the Mantle line is insufficient, we have to follow up with the Rainland line AND the Hand line.
But this is very similar to what an EQ1 Shaman dealt with when acting as the sole priest in a group, using a specific rotation of spells for every encounter everywhere.
vjek said:philo said:Why would the number of dispositions possible have anything to do with the amount of skills a player can have loaded at once?Well hopefully they change their mind and it won't. :) In a logical design, it doesn't or shouldn't. In the current design, it can.
As has been mentioned many times by many others in the thread already, if you have multiple dispositions that require more LAS slots than you can load, it forcibly guarantees failure. Not really much more to it than that.
EDIT: damn these forums and their lack of spellcheck, despite spellcheck in messages. grr.
Isnt the objective of this game that the group as a whole comes together, to plug all the holes that the LAS bar restricts, through planning and preperation. We shouldnt be considering a single players ability to counter all boss mechanics, thats some other MMO, we should be considering how the whole group comes together with their strengths and weaknesses to overcome the mechanic, a feature oif this game which is further bolstered by a LAS in my opinion.
Make encounters hard, make them require a bit of everything, make them dynamic, make them change on the fly, and let groups work out ways with limited options to beat it by working together and maximising their potential as a group not a individual.
stellarmind said:philo said:Why would the number of dispositions possible have anything to do with the amount of skills a player can have loaded at once?
because if the disposition is random and i don't account for the possibilities, it gurantees a wipe just to figure out what the disposition is. i guess a work around is to have the tank or offtank die once to identify what the disposition is or keep the healer ooc until said healer can adjust bar to be able to heal the damage coming in. but that frustrating for the player that needs to die or have a off healer so that the 'main healer' can compensate for the time it takes to swap las
I disagree. Are you standing on the spot it spawns and aggroing it? In the stream we saw the disposition listed over the mobs head clearly. (I'd prefer if we didn't know until we were fighting the mob and saw what it did...the over the head notification of a mob with a disposition is kinda weak). Even if you are standing on the spawn and aren't prepared...so...figure out a way to drop aggro and reload the abilities you need.
Why is everyone so risk adverse>? Having a game where the players fail sometmees is not only fine, it is necessary. I feel like this thread is a microcosm of the way the game has been trending the last couple years since it has become more main stream.
stellarmind said:oohh here's a theory:
the typical console controller only have 10-12 buttons, excluding movement.
the reason to have such a small las8 and a uas6 is for cross platform play
DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.
Hahah I love your intensity reducing posts in these threads Stellar :) Thanks for your light heartedness!
I think that one of the main points in this argument is not that LAS as a concept is bad but rather it is the specific limit of 8. I'll go out on a limb and say that the LAS opponents would be far less critical if, say, there existed 2 bars of 12 slots each where we could put in 24 of any spell/abiliites we wanted. They would not be changeable in combat, mind you, but still offers a greater degree of flexibility and ability to strategically apply 24 spells/abilities to better (not perfectly) counter a far larger spectrum of encounters.
Let me make it clear that I'm not saying there should ONLY be 2 12-slot hotbars, just 2 12-slot hotbars for spells/abilities. We should still have quite a few additional hotbars where we can place things like bags, primary inventory slots (for activating things like potions) and items (for those items that have right click effects) or for placing macro buttons (because the game does have built-in macro capabilities from what we've seen).
stellarmind said:philo said:Why would the number of dispositions possible have anything to do with the amount of skills a player can have loaded at once?
because if the disposition is random and i don't account for the possibilities, it gurantees a wipe just to figure out what the disposition is. i guess a work around is to have the tank or offtank die once to identify what the disposition is or keep the healer ooc until said healer can adjust bar to be able to heal the damage coming in. but that frustrating for the player that needs to die or have a off healer so that the 'main healer' can compensate for the time it takes to swap las
It doesnt necessarily guarantee a wipe. Just because there are dispositions that you are not prepared for, it doesnt necessarily mean that it cannot be overcome with a non-prefered or unorthodox setup. That is part of the fun and challenge.
Vandraad said:philo said:There will always be the "go to" spells that a lot of people want on there. and? It makes making skill choices tough sometimes, as it should be. Maybe you go without runeskin or without a HoT or haste or slow etc. Good...Though if half of your hotbar is set in stone there is a balance issue with those spells. That is not how it has to be. That's bad design.
I believe it is safe to say that every class will have at about 5 spells/abilities that will be required on their primary action bar at any given time. As a Shaman, I already know what those will be IF I'm the sole priest in a group:
1. Slow (Scorched Fog line)
2. Single target HoT (Mantle of the Tides line)
3. Single Target HoT+Group HoT (Hand of Elemas line)
4. Group HoT (Echo of the Raindlands line)
5. Strength/Stamina Debuff that also lowers block, dodge and parry (Shackle line)
6. AC Debuff (Weathering line)This leave just 2 optional slots, with these being the top contenders:
7. Fire bane debuff (Wreath of Coals that helps reduce chance Scorched Fog line gets resisted)
8. Snare + debuff to Shock and Cold attacks (Deluge line).For a Shaman to do his job as a priest, given we're stuck with only HoTs, we have to mitigate incoming damage through Slow and various debuffs. That is a guaranteed 3 slots taken up at a minimum. And because we do not seem to be able to stack HoTs, if the Mantle line is insufficient, we have to follow up with the Rainland line AND the Hand line.
But this is very similar to what an EQ1 Shaman dealt with when acting as the sole priest in a group, using a specific rotation of spells for every encounter everywhere.
Maybe those are just really bad examples? There is no way you need those every fight.
Sure, if you are the only healer on a difficult fight that requires slow you will have some standard abilities that you will always want. To think that those are set in stone and shouldnt ever come off your bar? This conversation isn't bout a specific fight where you play a specific role and need X ability to counter X mob ability..
What if you are grouped with another healer? Every fight doesn't require slow. Will you be fine with 1 HoT sometimes? of course...If you really think you need an ac buff every fight you are not good...i dont think you really actually think that. You were trying to make a point. I think there is a misconception in what was being discussed. We were talking about skills that were permanently on your bar. There is probably 1 HoT that you could argue you would always have up 99% of the time? Those others...not even close.
Vandraad said:I think that one of the main points in this argument is not that LAS as a concept is bad but rather it is the specific limit of 8. I'll go out on a limb and say that the LAS opponents would be far less critical if, say, there existed 2 bars of 12 slots each where we could put in 24 of any spell/abiliites we wanted. They would not be changeable in combat, mind you, but still offers a greater degree of flexibility and ability to strategically apply 24 spells/abilities to better (not perfectly) counter a far larger spectrum of encounters.
Let me make it clear that I'm not saying there should ONLY be 2 12-slot hotbars, just 2 12-slot hotbars for spells/abilities. We should still have quite a few additional hotbars where we can place things like bags, primary inventory slots (for activating things like potions) and items (for those items that have right click effects) or for placing macro buttons (because the game does have built-in macro capabilities from what we've seen).
Yea I am not necessarily married to the idea of 8/6 abilities available at a time. Like I said some pages back it can be 10/6, 12/6, 12/8, 16/6 etc etc, but it should have a hard limit at some point (Although I do think 24/6 is too much still for my taste).
arazons said:It doesnt necessarily guarantee a wipe. Just because there are dispositions that you are not prepared for, it doesnt necessarily mean that it cannot be overcome with a non-prefered or unorthodox setup. That is part of the fun and challenge.
You are indeed correct. Just because you are not specifically set up to deal with a particular disposition does not mean you're guaranteed a wipe. Yes, the chances do increase, but the same could be said for getting an extra mob on a pull, or a respawn not time properly.
Everyone needs to be mindful in this thread to stop over exagerating some points as that is not helping their agument in any way whatsoever.
Hokanu said:vjek said:philo said:Why would the number of dispositions possible have anything to do with the amount of skills a player can have loaded at once?Well hopefully they change their mind and it won't. :) In a logical design, it doesn't or shouldn't. In the current design, it can.
As has been mentioned many times by many others in the thread already, if you have multiple dispositions that require more LAS slots than you can load, it forcibly guarantees failure. Not really much more to it than that.
EDIT: damn these forums and their lack of spellcheck, despite spellcheck in messages. grr.Isnt the objective of this game that the group as a whole comes together, to plug all the holes that the LAS bar restricts, through planning and preperation. We shouldnt be considering a single players ability to counter all boss mechanics, thats some other MMO, we should be considering how the whole group comes together with their strengths and weaknesses to overcome the mechanic, a feature oif this game which is further bolstered by a LAS in my opinion.
Make encounters hard, make them require a bit of everything, make them dynamic, make them change on the fly, and let groups work out ways with limited options to beat it by working together and maximising their potential as a group not a individual.
The objective isnt negated by removal of LAS. Just because a player can do a multitude of things at any given moment, it doesn't mean that he can do all things a group needs, in the time that it's appropriate, with the reaction rate that is required, at a substantial level to replace even the other classes in the group that could otherwise fill those specific roles.
Defining who is going to primarily fill what roles in the group is still essential. The communication, the teamwork, the cohesion, the cooperation; they are all still critical. This is in no way in conflict with the objective you outlined.
I Like the LAS/UAS discussion, I didnt now what that meant at first but now I do. I re-read and now understand the points made by Vjek and Feshtey but I hope they do not become the "vocal minority".
I think Stellarmind and 1AD7 bridge the middleground nicely at times. But in all this I still like the game as is with the hot bar as is, and as others have pointed out, to be able ot drop and mem a spell in mid combast is somehting can and have done.
Example- there are mechanics in certain old games today where raid bosses, even group bosses show dynamic behavors where at one point they are only damageable by fir and then only damageable by magic- furing these times fire casters are not twiddling their thumbs. Likewise, mechanics where if a soupcon of corruption based damage is cast, wether it be spell or weapon proc, it regens the monster to full,
even so, a mechanic when a monster changes and if a smidge of fire spell is cast, it triggers AE death touches- even 5 expansions and 20 levels later to the chagrin of cutting edge level raiders that die in swaths- until it changes back and everyone knows this and are still taken aback or need to be reminded. imagine the first time.
But what is forgotten in this discussion I feel are the ability points! those spells do other things if even 4 ability points are put in, one had boosts to DD's abother had group heals. even if one was boosted that might be enough to counter a dynamic change in a monsters fight even if one had a LAS and a sub-optimal spell set up or what the vocal minority might call - not fun or "cruel" "DEV"elopment.
One boost that covered all the small spells might allow those small spells to stack up? or the monster be resistant to all of them, one major DoT wont land, but those 10 level 2 DoT's all will land making a cumulative damage to the power of whoah proportions. many hands make light work- many many tiny hits of -1.
Maybe thats where the balance is? maybe thats what One of the former CCO's was talking about that someone quoted recently *takes a moment* when they said gar will be a factor but not the only factor, it will be a myriad of things that will contribute, so in this case, the LAS is one thing, but the AA's are another- and thats just two!.
No one is talking about AA's yet. I thought some of the branches the spells took was very interesting and very non linear. they did NOT get more powerful, they did, but not in they way I thougt they would, they did so, obliquely, in a way I needed to think about, like, If I were a shaman I might not choose to fully upgrade one, I may want to keep one lower because of the benefit with 2 AA's and not wanting the one at 3.
rhetorical question
Devs, is there a way to toggle the spells once you've maxxed the AA's? so if you wanted the 2AA version instead of the 3 AA version, you could use it? (but at the same time satisfy those with some ocd that want to fill all the slots and get all the AA's by adventuring)
Manouk said:But what is forgotten in this discussion I feel are the ability points! those spells do other things if even 4 ability points are put in, one had boosts to DD's abother had group heals. even if one was boosted that might be enough to counter a dynamic change in a monsters fight even if one had a LAS and a sub-optimal spell set up or what the vocal minority might call - not fun or "cruel" "DEV"elopment.
One boost that covered all the small spells might allow those small spells to stack up? or the monster be resistant to all of them, one major DoT wont land, but those 10 level 2 DoT's all will land making a cumulative damage to the power of whoah proportions. many hands make light work- many many tiny hits of -1.
Some might see the widening of the capabilities of a spell as a solution to the LAS debate. For myself, it concerns me somewhat.
I really like the notion of increasing the ranks of spells with the skill points. So dont get me wrong there. What concerns me is that the combination of the AA's, the fact that they broaden not just the effectivness but also the capabilities of spells, and those factors coupled with the LAS.
At what point will a player have 8 (or however many the capped number of skills slots) maxed out spells that effectively serve the function of 16 or 24 skills, and do so whether you need them in a particular execution or whether you need it to or not? Will there come a time where all the abilities that have been earned over time are reduced to 8 skill that occupy your 8 slots, and thats what you always use? And that encompasses the totality of your gameplay? Will there ever be a time when the healer simply doesn't need to have a poison cure because every cast of the rank 3 upgraded to heal does it anyway? Will the warrior never need taunt because several of their melee attacks do it already once maxed?
I deeply hope that would never be a possibiltiy. Combat would feel incredibly shallow if that were to ever become true.
Vandraad said:I think that one of the main points in this argument is not that LAS as a concept is bad but rather it is the specific limit of 8. I'll go out on a limb and say that the LAS opponents would be far less critical if, say, there existed 2 bars of 12 slots each where we could put in 24 of any spell/abiliites we wanted. They would not be changeable in combat, mind you, but still offers a greater degree of flexibility and ability to strategically apply 24 spells/abilities to better (not perfectly) counter a far larger spectrum of encounters.
Let me make it clear that I'm not saying there should ONLY be 2 12-slot hotbars, just 2 12-slot hotbars for spells/abilities. We should still have quite a few additional hotbars where we can place things like bags, primary inventory slots (for activating things like potions) and items (for those items that have right click effects) or for placing macro buttons (because the game does have built-in macro capabilities from what we've seen).
If that's what they demo'd or started with? I wouldn't have ever commented on this thread, nor any subsequent thread, on the subject. :)
And I 100% agree on the arbitrary number of "additional hotbars" that are going to be required/desired for miscellaneous or whatever other thing the player wants to assign. Seems like an expected feature.
stellarmind said: ... the typical console controller only have 10-12 buttons, excluding movement. ...