I have to say, probably my favorite bit from yesterday's Monk Gameplay stream is the concept of the accelerating recovery.
I know I'm weird.
But listen, this opens up a huge amount of play and counterplay options. When do you sit? How long do you stay seated? Can the tank take on those two mobs or should you stand up and mez one and sit back down, thus resetting- oh he's dead guess I screwed up. Well surely I can blame the healer who was also sitting and doing nothing. Or maybe the puller? Wait were those pulls or spawns? I was glued to my inventory screen.
Because they are leaning so heavily into you stopping combat to sit and recover, they encourage this with a few actions. One of which would be to put a majority of the power of long term regeneration buffs behind the resting mechanic. For instance, if you have a Breeze/Clarity type mana regeneration buff, it could add a bit of base mana regen, a bit of regen to your meditate skill, and then add a multiplier to your resting investment. So if normally you get 1 additional MP per tick per 10 seconds of resting, it could give you 1x4 additional MP per ticket per 10 seconds of resting. Emphasizing the importance of stopping and resting without forcing you to do so for too long. Some classes could also have abilities or auras that increase the speed at which you gain rested investment. This would be a great ability for a Bard to have for instance. Campfires could also help with that. Maybe you start at 1 or 2 increments of investment if you are near a campfire and a certain distance away from any hostile monsters.
With that said, it's also time to end the tyranny of the casters! Give melee meditate! Have it affect HP! You could move it all behind the investment so that it doesn't affect regular regeneration. Give us a reason to sit and stare into the fire other than facing the existential dread that hangs above us all.
I like it. Makes sense that the longer you rest the more deeply you are resting and the more benefet you get from that rest. Sitting down for 6 seconds at a time doesn't seem very restful haha.
What I'm wondering, and would like to see in action, is how this effects high level gameplay. A level 1 sitting and resting took about 30 seconds to go from 25% health to full health (approximately 30 health).
Assuming that uptick increases linearly with each "tick" after you begin to regen how will that feel when you are regaining 800 health?
Based on some very basic calculations and assumptions you could regenerate 800 health in about 3 minutes and 15 seconds of sitting with no buffs or food. And at that point you could be regaining 40+ health per tick compared to your 2 or 3 per tick if you just sit for 10 seconds.
I don't expect them to give the formulas, whether it's linear or exponential, what the starting values are, or any of that. I personally find it all pretty fascinating though so I just mess with it for fun. Either way, I really like that they're finding a way to make downtime meaningful but not take so long that you'd rather go afk and do the dishes while you rest.
Ranarius said:Oh, edit: I just rewatched part of the video and he did use the term "exponentially greater gains" when referring to staying in a resting state longer.
I think this was a classic misuse of the term "exponential" because the way it was actually described was not exponential. I actually caught that during the stream but didn't really get any clarification.
Yeah, I also enjoy the concept of accelerating recovery. I usually play healers and balancing my mana bar with the group's health is an important aspect of gameplay. I love how the addition of accelerating recovery leads to the theoretical questions of "How long can I wait to take action?" and "How much regen value can I squeeze out of this med session?".
The thing that is important to remember about downtime is that a need for "full recovery" should be based on some mistake or inneficiency in the situation. In a well balanced group pulling at a regular clip a 30 second or less downtime between pulls is totally fine because your resources are keeping up with what you're doing. The long downtime sessions should show up when you accidentally pulled too many mobs, or mobs spawned on you when you were ready, or someone in the group was casting a heal on the wron person and didn't notice till their mana was gone.
I wouldn't expect downtime between every single pull. I'd like downtime to be thought of as "over the long haul" how much downtime should there be. What mistakes should cause more downtime, etc. Long term efficiency interests me much more.
Edit: And of course depending on what level content your group is engaging in. A group that is pulling very tough mobs should have longer downtime between pulls.
Ranarius said:Edit: And of course depending on what level content your group is engaging in. A group that is pulling very tough mobs should have longer downtime between pulls.
I think this point is very important. Particularly since "Long term efficiency" depends entirely on what the group's specific goal is. Max XP/hour might be taking on the highest level mob you can find even if it means full recovery after every fight. Or it might mean killing the highest level mobs you can that don't require any downtime at all, or something in between.
For me, camping is often more about harvesting loot than XP, especially at early levels where I'm gearing up. Max loot/hour might need a completely different approach than max XP/hour.
And grouping with StoneFish will likely have the goal of max fun/hour, which I suspect will require something radically different than either of the previous examples :)
