One thing that I’m looking forward to in Pantheon is the situational gear, and how the different climates will require us to switch gear depending where we are at or at the very least what we are doing (Fighting mobs, Questing, Trade Skilling…etc…) at any given moment. However, I find it tedious and hoary to have to switch out gear manually one slot at a time, and with all the talk about removing the needless tedious parts of gameplay this would be one of them.
I remember playing Diablo 2 and having the option of wearing 2 sets of gear at the same time but with only one of them being used until you switched over to the other set (this was done by pressing “W” on the keyboard) which was instantaneous. As an example I played a Barb and was loaded up with high DPS gear in which I would lay waste to legions of mobs in seconds, and immediately would switch gear to my Magic Find gear and start using one of my abilities “Find Item” to start finding gear or what-not… And when I was done I would switch back to my fighting gear with a press of a button and be good to go for more battles instantly.
I would like to have perhaps different presets that allowed me to hot-button different armor sets depending on the situation (High Resist Gear, High AC Gear, High DPS Gear, Fast Travel Gear…etc…) but I would be happy to have just 2 as Diablo 2 had in its game.
One thing that bothers me though is I really want the ability to switch out gear any item or armor set while in the middle of a fight. I hate how some games prevent you from switching gear while engaged in a mob, there were many times that I was using low level gear for skill-trading and a mob would sneak-up on me and I didn’t have a weapon or other gear available because I was trade skilling… Please, enable the option to switch gear while engaged in combat…
Rint
EQ2 had gear macros. You could click and it would remove all gear the second time it would put on the gear in the macro. For a tank this was a go dsend as I could cycle back and forth between gear in seconds..
As for switchihng out in battle I am against that if there are any clicky items in the game. I had a ton of gear that was click activated but had to be equipped if I could quickly put it on click and remove it I could gain a 2k ward or 5k mana and cycle the encounter. Once you pull you should be stuck in the armor you are wearing
Wont this impact the weight of the character with multiple sets on hand? I like the idea but I thought that encumbered elliments would be in the game?
Ox
I agree a 1-button switch armor is a must. I used WoW's outfitter for Tanking/DPS/Fishing/Resist/Social sets of gears.
I disagree that you should be able to switch armor mid-fight, but weapons & shield are a must. One thing I miss from EQ is switching to 1h+shield to bash a caster or switching to 2h when fighting a damage shield user.
I could have sworn they (VR) said that weight is going to be a challange to deal with. Unless they are handing out bags of infinate space then go for it but immersion takes a serious hit. I do like the gear swapping though. I have used it many times and its helpful in raids for sure. Ia to am curious on this one.
Ox
Im sorry but it doesnt break immersion A bag of holding is perfect lore in a land with dragons magic etc etc. Limited bag spaces should be implmented but burden really is unfair to some classes a tank has more need to keep several armor sets but a mage wearing cloth hardly needs several sets not to mention its cloth.
If we have no way to fast travel and it takes an hour or longer to get to some place and then you gotta leave because you are overburdened after an hour of farming that is stupid.
Kalgore said:Im sorry but it doesnt break immersion A bag of holding is perfect lore in a land with dragons magic etc etc. Limited bag spaces should be implmented but burden really is unfair to some classes a tank has more need to keep several armor sets but a mage wearing cloth hardly needs several sets not to mention its cloth.
If we have no way to fast travel and it takes an hour or longer to get to some place and then you gotta leave because you are overburdened after an hour of farming that is stupid.
I agree on the last point but I think until the VR team comes out with the limits of the inventory of a character we are poking aroud in the dark. I can remember in EQ in the early days that actually happened. Sucked but it happened. I can remember this in WOW. LotrO and Aion. That was turned off ASAP due to the outcry it created.
The immersion part was based on the game actually going to use realistic limits but I know this is a game so that can be ignored. I guess we have to wait on that.
Ox
Damn, I had this long ass response and then found out it was way off topic lol. Ugh.
I'm sure we will have some means of quickly switching gear, whether it be a ui element or by use of macros. What I'd like to know is when we can switch what gear. Iirc, in VG you couldn't swap armor out during combat. Will we be able to swap armor during combat in Pantheon? Weapons? And even if we do have a quick swap button or macros to swap an entire set of gear at the click of a single button will the gear swap instantly? Or will it take a few seconds to switch over?
And I agree with Kalgore on the existence of bags of holding. This is a high fantasy setting, inventory space should be nothing as long as magic is prevalent. Imo, encumberance is just a nuissance. Every high fantasy game I play finds a way so that when you find yourself weighing 100 pounds more from loot all of the sudden you can drink a potion or cast a magic spell so that you can instantly handle the weight and fast travel quickly to unload. So why even go through all the trouble of having a system for weight capacity? Just do like VG and have bags with different slots; 6, 8, 12, 24, etc.
NoobieDoo said:Damn, I had this long ass response and then found out it was way off topic lol. Ugh.
I'm sure we will have some means of quickly switching gear, whether it be a ui element or by use of macros. What I'd like to know is when we can switch what gear. Iirc, in VG you couldn't swap armor out during combat. Will we be able to swap armor during combat in Pantheon? Weapons? And even if we do have a quick swap button or macros to swap an entire set of gear at the click of a single button will the gear swap instantly? Or will it take a few seconds to switch over?
And I agree with Kalgore on the existence of bags of holding. This is a high fantasy setting, inventory space should be nothing as long as magic is prevalent. Imo, encumberance is just a nuissance. Every high fantasy game I play finds a way so that when you find yourself weighing 100 pounds more from loot all of the sudden you can drink a potion or cast a magic spell so that you can instantly handle the weight and fast travel quickly to unload. So why even go through all the trouble of having a system for weight capacity? Just do like VG and have bags with different slots; 6, 8, 12, 24, etc.
I would like to se the bigger bags to be insanly expesnive giving crafters another nice market
Dullahan said:Gear switch macros are cool, but I think each piece should take time to equip (at least as long as a global cooldown). Don't mind there being a queue but I really don't like the idea of someone donning a whole different set of gear in 1 second.
Exactly because if you're able to switch gear very quickly (near instantaneously as some have sadly suggested) you can time your gear switch to actions of the NPCs. You're facing an NPC that has a particular ability that you identify happens every 30 seconds. You could instantly switch out a full set of gear 1 second before the event, stacked in such a way to maximize your resistance to whatever your facing, only to then switch back after the effect passes. That is overpowered. The devs, if this is allowed, will then need to design content which will take into account your ability to do that thus negating the benefit of the switch.
Switching should take time. No macro, no 1-button solution. Open your bags, grab the item, drag it to the slot you want changed, drop, put other item back into bag.
I'm in two minds about in combat gear switching. I like the idea of having to have gear to adjust to the environment, but I'm not if favour of the whole taking off a suit of steel platemail and putting on a suit of mithril platemail while six orcs are beating on you with rusty swords. It's hard enough to manage this without the aid of a someone else let alone in the midst of battle. As stated above, encumbrance is also an issue with this system.
Would it not be simpler to allow magic to cover off the majority of environmental impacts to characters? For example, snowing and freezing…have the druid case protection from cold.
What I really want to see is the ability to change weapons (and shield) on the fly, with maybe a short cool down timer associated with it. Potentially this could be a warrior/crusader/dire lord only skill, with warriors getting it much earlier and potentially having later level skills reducing the cool down markedly.
I like the idea of faction modifying gear. Like the signet ring of the Pharoh, or paper bag of "da uglees" that whenever you wear it in the ogre town there is always that one drunk ogre in the tavern that will always come on to you and not stop and follow you around. But if you take off the bag!- death!
I don’t think I would have an issue with being able to only switch to a whole armor set instantaneously while out of combat as long as I could at least switch weapons while engaged in combat. The whole point is to remove the tedious and hoary part of going through my bags finding the armor and placing them in the correct slots. As the dev’s had said they want to remove the hoary parts of yesteryear MMO’s and make things a little less tedious. As some have sadly pointed out that it could be considered “Over Powering” in some instances, but with all of the talk on situational gear that we will be encouraged to use then why would this be a bad idea? A bad idea is global cool downs on anything related to changing armor pieces or weapons (especially one at a time….) I want to play a game, and not wait 2 – 5 minutes to change armor or weapons…
As someone pointed out, it would be nice to be able to have your armor-sets focused on certain tasks, such as:
Fighting Gear - that perhaps has high ac, resists, and stat increases
Travel Gear – Leather or Cloth based gear that offers basic protection but allows for faster travel
Faction Gear – That could increase faction modifiers or help with quests…
Camouflage Gear – Could be used for just hiding in plain site (similar to invis but if you move the Camouflage is broken).
Tracking Gear – Help improve and increase the success of tracking mobs…
High Resist Gear – Offers protection against spells, diseases, poisons…etc… But doesn’t offer AC or Stats
Regen Gear - Offers regen during downtime for HP or Mana (similar to Fungus Covered Scale Tunic, Rubicite BP...etc...)
This list could go on forever, but the gist is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and until the dev’s share more information we should be more open minded about different improvements of gameplay and the removal of tedious and hoary gameplay elements.. Offering a simpler way to change out armor or weapons instantaneously is an improvement IMO..
Rint
Dullahan said:Gear switch macros are cool, but I think each piece should take time to equip (at least as long as a global cooldown). Don't mind there being a queue but I really don't like the idea of someone donning a whole different set of gear in 1 second.
Bingo.
Make it easy to switch gear sure but make it take time. I would argue a relatively significant amount of time. There's a million ways to do it but being able to switch in a second or two is not only nonsense but one step closer to what I hate about modern MMOs and gaming in general today.
The last thing i want to see is the game turning into the gear swap nightmare FFXI was. I spent more time writing situation gear scripts than actually playing. That game suffered from having to switch gear for every single ability you used if you wanted to maximize efficiency though. Hell, we even had "idle" sets with (-physical damage taken) just to run around in. I think my paladin had 12 different set of gear on me at all times and that didn't even include specific elemental resist gear (fire, water, earth, etc).
I'm all for more options gameplay wise, but not to the extreme that FFXI was.
tehtawd said: Macros will be present in the game I feel very sure about this. Weapon switching is a thing and it will be important to switch weapons during combat. I just hope the macro system will not be so extensive it plays the game for you like I'm final fantasy 14 or aion.
I may have misinterupted what was said but I do believe this was addressed in the recenet stream VR had. They basically said the ability to script/macro would not be in the game.
Valadin said:tehtawd said: Macros will be present in the game I feel very sure about this. Weapon switching is a thing and it will be important to switch weapons during combat. I just hope the macro system will not be so extensive it plays the game for you like I'm final fantasy 14 or aion.I may have misinterupted what was said but I do believe this was addressed in the recenet stream VR had. They basically said the ability to script/macro would not be in the game.
Yeah, they have made it pretty clear that they really dont like anything that automates your play in any way, or that alters the functionality of the game engine. UI Mods are one thing. Adding tools is another entirely. I wouldnt necessarily count out a quick weapon swap utility built into the game as a possibility though. Not with the emphasis that they seem to want to put on situational gear. It'd really suck to be fiighting a squishy necromancer with your sword, and having to fumble thru your iunventory to swith over to a hammer to bludgeon that necro's pet skeleton.
Feyshtey said:Yeah, they have made it pretty clear that they really dont like anything that automates your play in any way, or that alters the functionality of the game engine. UI Mods are one thing. Adding tools is another entirely. I wouldnt necessarily count out a quick weapon swap utility built into the game as a possibility though. Not with the emphasis that they seem to want to put on situational gear. It'd really suck to be fiighting a squishy necromancer with your sword, and having to fumble thru your iunventory to swith over to a hammer to bludgeon that necro's pet skeleton.
Ya, that kind of thing could be accomplished by allowing items to be bound to hotbars. I'd hope that functionality would be available.