Before you get it twisted, I'm not talking about fighting stuff as we fly around the world.
We had a good discussion back a few posts about fighting things that fly and how this could be improved or should it even be a thing. We also had a screenshot a couple dev streams back that showed two-thirds of Silent Plains which was mostly empty. But there was something that stood out to me.
This shot of the windmills that are dispersed around Silent Plains on many of the "thorns". But in between these two are bridges. Wow. That sent my head spinning.
In many, many RPGs there are battles fought on high places, either on bridges or on airships that are against flying monsters. This generally causes you to change strategies and use ranged abilities only to fight the monster. There's no reason why there shouldn't be content in an MMORPG that plays by the same rules. Our loadouts on our Limited Action Bar are intended to be highly customizable and change with different encounters. Why can't this be for targets that cause you to use ranged abilities.
Imagine there are drakes that are flying around these bridges. You tag one and it aggroes. It divebombs targets with AOE melee attacks or shoots venomous spit or tail spines. If your melee member can pull off a shieldwall or a CC can pull off a stun while it is diving, it crashes to the bridge and you have a few seconds to attack before it flies off again. Even more fun, if your wizard kills it while it is not on the bridge, it falls all the way to the ground 4ooft below and there's no way to loot it unless you run all the way back down. Or if it falls that far from being killed, the corpse despawns as it is pulverized on the ground. This would be enormously fun content to fight, cuase ranged abilities to be more meaningful, and cause the melee classes to think outside the box on how to help their party most. These encounter designs can be used all sorts of places. Maybe dragons don't land until they take a certain amount of ranged damage. Maybe ghosts fly up instead of horizontally if they are feared or if fleeing from combat. If you don't have any strong ranged combat classes, you're not going to be able to tackle that content until you do. That's the same as content that is too challenging for other group class make-ups. Please, please put this kind of content in game, keeping with yalls love of single player RPGs and trying to mirror content into the MMORPG genre. It is very much needed.
I like these ideas. I'm picturing them not just on bridges and high places but also while climbing. Imagine large condors ripping you off of cliffs allowing you to fall to your death. Maybe proficiency and a climbing kit will allow you to secure yourself to the cliff and turn what would have been a fall to the equivalent of a knockback. The climbing kits could be crafted and take durability damage on use. As you take hits the chance the kit fails could increase.
dorotea said:I think "needs" is not at all the right word. And if the game has something like this there will doubtlessly be complaints that it is much harder for melee than for ranged classes.
Fine with me I rarely play melee classes.
I take your meaning and I do believe that you are technically correct (the best kind of correct), but I also think that we can assume that OP wasn't saying "either they have aerial combat or the game will completely fail". Let us accept that he/she was saying something more along the lines of "Man, I really really really (x1000) hope that they have aerial combat".
Oh I assure you that I understood what the OP meant and wasn't trying to pick on the wording. Well, not too much. One of my pet peeves is the assumption by some people that anything that they *want* is something that *needs* to be done. An attitude sometimes referred to as "entitlement". The OP clearly did not mean that but I still, and somewhat unfairly, couldn't resist the response.
Then again, to me "cool" still means a low temperature. LOL still means something actually worth laughing out loud about. And KEEP OFF OF MY GRASS!!!
Benonai said:Before you get it twisted, I'm not talking about fighting stuff as we fly around the world.
We had a good discussion back a few posts about fighting things that fly and how this could be improved or should it even be a thing. We also had a screenshot a couple dev streams back that showed two-thirds of Silent Plains which was mostly empty. But there was something that stood out to me.
This shot of the windmills that are dispersed around Silent Plains on many of the "thorns". But in between these two are bridges. Wow. That sent my head spinning.
In many, many RPGs there are battles fought on high places, either on bridges or on airships that are against flying monsters. This generally causes you to change strategies and use ranged abilities only to fight the monster. There's no reason why there shouldn't be content in an MMORPG that plays by the same rules. Our loadouts on our Limited Action Bar are intended to be highly customizable and change with different encounters. Why can't this be for targets that cause you to use ranged abilities.
Imagine there are drakes that are flying around these bridges. You tag one and it aggroes. It divebombs targets with AOE melee attacks or shoots venomous spit or tail spines. If your melee member can pull off a shieldwall or a CC can pull off a stun while it is diving, it crashes to the bridge and you have a few seconds to attack before it flies off again. Even more fun, if your wizard kills it while it is not on the bridge, it falls all the way to the ground 4ooft below and there's no way to loot it unless you run all the way back down. Or if it falls that far from being killed, the corpse despawns as it is pulverized on the ground. This would be enormously fun content to fight, cuase ranged abilities to be more meaningful, and cause the melee classes to think outside the box on how to help their party most. These encounter designs can be used all sorts of places. Maybe dragons don't land until they take a certain amount of ranged damage. Maybe ghosts fly up instead of horizontally if they are feared or if fleeing from combat. If you don't have any strong ranged combat classes, you're not going to be able to tackle that content until you do. That's the same as content that is too challenging for other group class make-ups. Please, please put this kind of content in game, keeping with yalls love of single player RPGs and trying to mirror content into the MMORPG genre. It is very much needed.
I actually like this idea and hope VR can incorporate it in an expansion or future update. With the game focusing on strategy and a slower pace combat style, flying npcs can be programmed to swoop down, hover and other actions to allow melee to attack it at certain points.
Rogues can attack from above and either have a slow fall or coordinate with caster to cast a slow fall. Flying npcs can use a flying bash as a type of attack allowing Tanks to use their abilities. Taunts could still work, but in a slightly different way. Every fight does not need to be abe to be perfectly tuned so melee can fight the way they are used to. It would be really interesting to switch it up once in awhile. We could start off with really simple actions(to the point of being easy just so folks can get acclimated) and increase the diversity of abilites and actions as you increase in levels. I like the potential of it.
dorotea said:I think "needs" is not at all the right word. And if the game has something like this there will doubtlessly be complaints that it is much harder for melee than for ranged classes.
Fine with me I rarely play melee classes.
Maybe it'll be harder for ranged classes. Try shooting a bow while hanging from the side of a cliff. I'll take my one handed mace to the condor's face over that.
Feastycentral said:dorotea said:I think "needs" is not at all the right word. And if the game has something like this there will doubtlessly be complaints that it is much harder for melee than for ranged classes.
Fine with me I rarely play melee classes.
Maybe it'll be harder for ranged classes. Try shooting a bow while hanging from the side of a cliff. I'll take my one handed mace to the condor's face over that.
Good point.
Feastycentral said:Counterfleche said:I hope to see flying creatures that swoop by (not hover) and try to knock climbers off cliffs.
Trying to bring back the terror of cliff divers?
I'm not familiar with that but it seems like a fun way to make climbing more interesting. It could also be used to limit some climbs to higher level characters (in addition to climbing skill requirements).
Counterfleche said:I'm not familiar with that but it seems like a fun way to make climbing more interesting. It could also be used to limit some climbs to higher level characters (in addition to climbing skill requirements).
I wrote the wrong name. It's the Cliff Racer mob from The Elder Scrolls - Morrowind game. It was known to be a very annoying aerial mob. They definitely killed me a few times when I tried the game for the first time a few years ago.
dorotea said:Oh I assure you that I understood what the OP meant and wasn't trying to pick on the wording. Well, not too much. One of my pet peeves is the assumption by some people that anything that they *want* is something that *needs* to be done. An attitude sometimes referred to as "entitlement". The OP clearly did not mean that but I still, and somewhat unfairly, couldn't resist the response.
Then again, to me "cool" still means a low temperature. LOL still means something actually worth laughing out loud about. And KEEP OFF OF MY GRASS!!!
Too many words, Dorotea. Try "GET OFF MY LAWN!" while shaking your fist at them. More pithy, and makes you look angrier. Then, regardless of what they do, mutter "Damn kids...". Trust me, it's cathartic.
~Hiwin
Flying NPCs will be far more difficult to develop with respect to proper pathing. Sure, npcs can easily handle moving around on a 2d plane (which is what most games really are) but once you throw in the 3rd axis, they just get buggy AF.
Unless we have means by which to fly ourselves (and I really hope that never happens), there is no real reason to have NPCs flying around. If they come down to the ground to fight, then why bother having them fly in the first place? If they instead stay in the air, and you have no means by which to deal ranged damage to the same degree as you can deal melee, then every non-ranged class gets shafted.
Aerial NPCs landing to engage in melee is as stupid as caster NPCs always rushing into melee range. Why bother having them be casters in the first place?
I just dont see the need and I do not believe that pathing issues when you include the 3rd dimension will be resolved. Too much work for too little reward.
Pantheon already has pathing in x,y and z axis for instance a mob/character needs to know where it is in relation to a tunnel or on the mountain side above the tunnel and swimming is flying in water (3 directions of travel). Yes pathing in 2 planes is easier and quicker to calculate but it is more than possible to do for 3. VR will already be incorporating the libraries to do pathing in all directions. We already know we have gliders; this needs a height consideration and whether it is bumping into immovable objects or not, and as mentioned, swimming.
Actually mobs and NPCs will probably need to fly around depending on their species, dragons, drakes, fairies, pheonix, pegasus and hundreds of other mythical creatures all take to the air and it is "unrealistic" to have a flying creature only fly at one level above the player heads. I can easily see a name (or 100) be flying around and doing stuff that is in the third dimension. I can easily see quests and tasks involving flying creatures. I think it is pretty reasonable for some creatures to land and others to not land when fighting, depending on size and needs (e.g. if a group hide in a cave then the mob will need to enter the cave on the ground or leave them too it, but it will need to "understand" the difference between a cave and a mountain side).
Like it or not, a 3D world will have movement in all planes. Pathing will need to be implemented for all planes.
I have promoted this topic as part of my CM content; please continue the discussion and have fun! :)
"Community Debate - Aerial Combat - How would you improve combat with flying mobs like Griffons and Dragons? Join in on this community-created thread and let us know below. https://seforums.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/13925/protf-needs-aerial-combat #MMORPG #indiegames "
Flying encounters soudn exciting. In my imagination, the key to killing a flyer is to pin it to the ground ... Otherwise they will fly away, attack from the air, and repeat.
To pin down a flyer, ropes comin handy: Arrows with ropes, magical ropes, and so on. However, strong fliers can break these ropes, and they can also lift up the player characters that are holding the ropes (gnomes are lifted easier than ogres). So the players might fix the ropes to a rock or something like that. Still, ropes might break, so a strong mob needs more ropes.
A pinned down mob cant move, so it will act as a rooted ground mob.
Just an idea.
To add, this is a problem in reverse.
Non-flying NPCs will need ways to knock players off high places such as walls and cliffs. Since climbing is a big mechanic in this game, it would be unfair just to climb a wall and watch an NPC wander hopelessly at your feet.
I believe this was mentioned in a stream with Cohh, and was answered NPCs would have a variety of skills to close distances.
Having flying mobs to me would be interesting similar to other RPGs. It's just a matter of what toolkits melee classes have to counter.
Have flying mobs become progressively harder as you level.
A level 1 pidgeon will fight you on the ground, but try to fly away at low health.
A level 30 griffon will swoop attack you, but stays on the ground for a period of time when bashed.
A level 60 dragon will murder you however it wants and dont give a F...
You guys just Blew my mind. I hadn't considered it! my mind went to Onyxia in wow.. but... might need more info. like.. will there be methods available to get up to their level (would be interesting to see how climbing would affect this), or would we mostly be relying on ranged combat / spells ? (tinkering: nets, harpoons or something?) I'll be thinking about this!
Rogues get the ability to drop down a "Length of Rope which other players can climb" so obviously climbing a rope is already a thing.
Could a Tank get a Lasso (ie. Rope) and if his throwing skill is high enough, Lasso the great flying chicken
Then if his climbing skill is high enough (Depending on the weight of the Tank, no mercy for Gnome Warriors)
If your groups Tank was too light and kept getting flown off you could use the "Copper Strategy" and everybody load him up with all their coppers to keep him on the ground.
Finally, new spin on "pulling"
First of all, I am totally OK with certain classes being stronger vs certain types of mobs. I'd be fine with flying mobs only being damaged by ranged attacks, I'd assume they are also doing less damage when they're that far away from my group. Maybe there could be an ability or two (or three) in the game where you disable the flight of a mob (a net, an ability that disables them, something that stuns them so they drop to the ground for a moment, etc).
How will you get a DRAGON to come land next to you? Probably play on it's pride or something, make it WANT to come take a bite out of you or swing it's tail at your group. Maybe they only have enough energy to fly for a certain amount of time? I know if I was a dragon I'd just go hide out in a mountain somewhere, too many dragons have been killed by adventuring heroes over the years, it's way too dangerous out there for dragons!
Ranarius said:How will you get a DRAGON to come land next to you? Probably play on it's pride or something, make it WANT to come take a bite out of you or swing it's tail at your group. Maybe they only have enough energy to fly for a certain amount of time? I know if I was a dragon I'd just go hide out in a mountain somewhere, too many dragons have been killed by adventuring heroes over the years, it's way too dangerous out there for dragons!
An alternate but fun aspect would be the exact opposite. The dragon is making its round! Everyone hide and take cover we are no match for a dragon! Depending on how large VR makes dragons and how powerful they are, having creatures that would wipe the floor with even a raid of lvl 50s as a zone's window dressing is its own form of entertainment. Viewing some mobs as natural disasters is perfectly fine.
Even more fun when players end up killing the mob that was not designed to be killed :D