I like the idea of casters doing some hand motions with a gathering blue light appearing between their hands and a message like "Hokanu gathers strands of mana from around him" would be great and doesnt need to be sitting as such, but i dont object to sitting.. though i can understand why people dont like how it looks.
I guess a possible issue would be with a class that is a hybrid who needs both mana and stamina to regen (or any class if we all use stamina to a degree as kilsin said we would) which animation would take preference, maybe they would have a button to choose if they are focusing on stamina regen or mana. The benefit of sitting purely from a "making sense" perspective is that wsitting would allow for both stamina and mana to regen together at an even pace. Maybe all players irrelevent of class get to choose between either hastening regen of mana or stamina or sit to get both, so you would have to choose which you need most in the circumstance facving you or as mentioned opt for sitting to do both.
Either way like many have said entering into either state should increase agro (I think someone above was saying they dont understand why this would increase agro) but i would say this is simply because a mob can see you do this and identifies you as an easy target while in this state. As a consequence of entering this state you should have a short moment where you need to pull yourself out of this state and back into a fighting stance and be vunerable for a moment while exiting the state too, it shouldnt be an instant return to a full defence mode. Maybe the higher one of your stats gets te faster you can return to defending with skills like dodge and get the full use of your AC etc
This makes the benefit of meditating (or whatever it would be called) come at a risk for just a moment as you regaing your focus and get ready to be able to fight / cast again.
Rooting a mob or mezzing a mob so you can take a moment to focus on recharging your mana/stamina was a good inclusion in EQ and with the risk of breaking or gaining agro came with an element of danger that i think is important and as Quintra said became a great tool for a class using a cc skill to try and split mobs apart when their class may not be not have the capacity for enough dps to do this any other way.
Fluffy's ideas with various options only go to make a scenario where everyone is "meditating" not look a little odd with everyone going through exactly the same animation at the same time.
All this said as an EQ player sitting doesnt worry me much, but i understand others objections.
One of the biggest considerations VR will have to contend with is finding how to capture the spirit of the MMOs we grew up with and love without bringing in the bad stuff. What makes this particularly difficult is that the rose-tinted goggles of nostalgia are powerful.
Looking back, for me, when I see systems or mechanics like some of what we've seen in the streams where casters have to sit on the ground to regain mana, I don't find myself thinking "Oh man, I remember that, I can't wait to experience it again." Rather, I'm looking at that stuff and thinking.. well.. when considering VR's goal of creating an engaging combat experience for all classes, that mechanic seems contrary to that goal and just skirting the lines of bad design.
We have to ask ourselves: Are we doing something for the sake of it being an actually good game mechanic, or are we doing it for the sake of nostalgia? Let's learn from the both the good things and bad things that were inherent to those old MMOs we look fondly at.
I don't think having to sit frequently in combat is good design, and I hope VR can find alternative ways to create the desired effect they're looking for while making the experience a much more engaging and lively one for casters. Now, for extreme situations, could this be a viable strategy? I think in situations where too many mobs have been pulled, or casters haven't been given ample enough time to regen mana, sitting in combat should have its place (and even then, I do believe active abilities here are most appropriate).
sebbulba said:how is this a real vs. ? It doesn't make sense in ANY combat situation to sit down under any circumstance. I hope the devs aren't cheap here and give every character his "combat reg" animation or stance that suits him/her.
Only because "of ANY combat situation" I feel I want to reply with an in game scenario... (I am not saying they use sit in Pantheon, i dont mind either way. But I am just saying there are reasons why sitting could be a possibility to further accelerate mana / stamina regen. I am also no talking real life obviously in this example.
Eg. With my final ounce of mana i cast a root spell and the mob is incapacitated... knowing they are unable to move and i am completely zapped of mana, i sit to enter a medatative state regain the mana i need to cast the final firebolt as quickly as possible and the mob is dead.
Also i guess when you are extremely tired in RL it coule be argued that the best way to recover fastest is to take a seat and some deep breaths. Of course there are lots of reasons why not to sit in combat (if someone is swinging a sword at you or firing an arrow) but above is an example of one reason that is possible. Of course this may also increase the adrenaline dump / decline and that could be a negative to fighting on with gusto in RL.
I can see some of the arguments for it, but I feel there just has to be a better, more engaging way. I was reading through a thread regarding Pantheon on the mmorpg subreddit on Reddit, and someone stated that "afk combat is not a feature. 2 spells and stare at the wall is not a feature." I think if we remove ourselves from the nostalgic bias as best we can, it's difficult not to agree with that sentiment.
I'd have to ask, what's the deeper purpose of having a system where a caster has to sit and do nothing in the middle of a fight? And once we answer that, then ask, is there a way we can achieve this desired effect while maintaing an engaging and exciting combat experience for all classes? Having to sit and regain mana and meditate in between fights? Totally understandable and acceptable. In the middle of fights? I'm positive there's a better system we can strive for.
Sicario said:reading through a thread regarding Pantheon on the mmorpg subreddit on Reddit, and someone stated that "afk combat is not a feature. 2 spells and stare at the wall is not a feature." I think if we remove ourselves from the nostalgic bias as best we can, it's difficult not to agree with that sentiment.
I'd have to ask, what's the deeper purpose of having a system where a caster has to sit and do nothing in the middle of a fight? And once we answer that, then ask, is there a way we can achieve this desired effect while maintaing an engaging and exciting combat experience for all classes? Having to sit and regain mana and meditate in between fights? Totally understandable and acceptable. In the middle of fights? I'm positive there's a better system we can strive for.
Here is the thing as i see it, as a caster you need to manage your mana, that is a massive part of being a good caster. Casters having an essentially constant supply of mana is one thing that i find makes a lot of current mmos boring as there is no learning curb to casting and no finesse in the way you time your spells you just keep pressing a spell and you dont have to worry about running out of mana for the most part (not always but mostly) This mechanic of virtually never ending mana is boring as hell i find, maybe thats just me.
When i play EQ which seems to have a similar pace to Pantheon I dont spend my wholetime sitting on the ground i am actively casting and working the pace of my mana consumption with the speed at which the group kills and and pulls and if things are going too fast for our mana regen we slow it down if things are too slow and we always have a ton of mana we speed it up or start pulling harder mobs, multiples whatever gets us to a good balance.
So... the issue i think your question poses is not about sitting it is about learning to play to the capacity of the groups ability. Regarding the stream, because the devs are running low levels and also with EXTREMELY early builds of classes with limited spells at their disposal and also trying to rush content to show it off primarily visually you may not be seeing a group perform at optimum pace for all these reasons. So I dont think we can judge the amount of medding/sitting (whatever it is going to be) going on in the stream or the amount of waiting for mana regen going on in the stream to harshly, its an early build and the more skills at your disposal the more efficient people become and the more classes to include in the stream the greater the opportunity to see how they all gel together to create a well oiled machine of a group.
If the casters were spending their time in a mana gathering animation instead of sitting would anything change for you? Maybe you would be happy to be running around attacking the mobs with your stick and thats cool, but for me if you can be taking on a large group of mobs (as they often are) run around and attack the mobs with your staff as a caster and still retain a good amount of mana, all the while moving quickly from one set of mobs to the next to try and speed through mobs i feel like the challenge of mana conservation has been missed and I for one am looking for a different experience to that.. because there are plenty of games that play just like that atm. I am guessing (and could be wrong) but a more engaging thing in battle besides regaining mana when you are low must be being involved in more combat?
I think everyone agrees that it doesnt have to be sitting. I like the idea of gathering mana in your hands as well as the idea of sitting. Either way man a regen on a player running around and attacking should be slower than mana regen on a player doing any of the above (from anyones ideas, sitting, eating, sharpening knives & any others)
Sorry if this comes off in a bad way, it is not intentional... massive day at work and just wrote this quickly before leaving.
Edit: Post not aimed at you mate, just used your question and your quote from reddit to piggy back off for my rant.
Hokanu, great write up, I definitely appreciate your perspective, and I don't think it came off in a bad way at all! Everything I'm writing or written regarding this is definitely keeping in mind that everything we've seen so far is super early builds and the mechanics are almost certainly not optimized/polished yet. I still think there's value in this discussion so it remains on VR's radar, and hopefully when they're taking a look at these mechanics and design choices, they can look at our discussions and keep in mind the perspectives that have been shared.
I think you did a great job pointing to some of the "Why?" questions behind the concept of sitting down in the middle of combat, resource management probably being one of the bigger reasons. I'm in agreement about infinite mana or seemingly infinite mana being a bore, and resource management should be a big factor for any class, caster or not.
The answers to those questions of "Why?" regarding the purpose of those mechanics leads us to be able to then ask my follow-up: is there a better, more engaging way to acheive the same effect? Personally, I think so. Animations would be a great start, and personally I don't think these animations should necessarily be the super peaceful looking ones that have been proposed, it seems just a little too jarring/unrealistic (just like sitting down amidst combat). Even better, I think these animations should be tied to active abilities, some ideas for these have been proposed in earlier posts in this thread. But, I also wonder if there's a way we can minimize the need to sit/perform meditative abilities in combat (these certainly seem much more appropriate for out of combat situations) by tweaking things like cast time for spells, global cooldowns, mana costs/numbers of spells, or even introducing new mechanics like mana regen occurs faster the more mana you have, to discourage spamming multiple spells at once. These are all just ideas, obviously, I'm not saying these are the solutions, but I feel they do illustrate that there might be better ways of achieving the same effect, because there is value behind the deeper meaning of such mechanics. Let's do what we can to bring them into a much better form than what they've seen in the past.
If you read any old D&D books the group would often have to protect the mage while casting their spells. The spells might cause the mage exhaustion and they would have to rest. It really depends on how you want to portray the wizard and what you think is fun personally. This is a fantasy world and anything is possible. We could have fast travel if we want, but many are against it (including myself). I can see pure casters sitting to gain their mana back, but I'm not a fan of healers having to sit all the time. I don't recall reading any D&D books where a Cleric or Druid sits during combat on the back lines. I feel like they should be more active during combat. I'm a big fan of Mages trading off overall power of spells and utility, but are restricted to cast them only a certain amount per day. This would make casters pick and choose carefully what spells they use. The rest of the time they might be using something like a sling, staff, dagger, club, mace, (depending on the class), etc. You could probably make the days go bye fast enough for this to be feasible. Of course, I don't see something so drastic happening as they have already decided on what they want and it appears to be a lot like EQ combat mechanics.
i think that the mechanic behind meditating is good, you stop healing or dpsing to get mana back, it makes your cast more meaningfull because you can't spam them, and gives you something to manage and min/max during the fight.
The animations do not change anything about the core mechanic just add some realism to the combat and i think it would be amazing to have them implemented.
The question of "is this mechanic engaging or not" is a tricky one to answer, it's down to what the player finds engaging and that is really subjective. The pace of the casting combat (dps or healing) will be established by the developers, and so will the downtime they expect you to have during a fight, but does down time mean you just stand there and mediate or use a fancy animation to regain mana?
My take on it is that VR can make some type of chanelling spell for each class that they can constatly use to regain mana, something like a drain spirit for dpsers that does very little damage and gives them mana back, and for healers a very weak channeling heal that also restores them mana, that way the player is always "active" during the combat, having periods of high dps/heal and periods of low dps/heal to recover their mana. also there could be a spell that makes you recover a big mana chunk if lets say you channel it for the entire duration 30-45 secs.
@Sicario Your right mate on all your points and especially with continuing to discuss as we are is so important especially as we know VR are so active in here! I am always trying to preserve the importance of resource preservation being a key factor to the game for all of all classes to be using their limited resourses cleverly and the ones doing it well to be a clear difference to those who over use their powerful abilities and as a result end up with negative effects on the group such as drawing too much agro, running out of mana with the worry of adds arriving later was a terrifying concept with a harsh death penatly, having no mana left to heal etc etc. This was a steep learning curb for everyone in EQ including tanks who had to learn the perfect balance of agro management v resource.
I get worried if there wasnt a reason to take breaks and regen then everyone would be assumably able to use their abilities a lot and it would balance itsself out to be a ability spam fest. The reason a caster/rogue couldnt spam his dps in EQ is because a tank cant spam his taunt and in turn most importantly the reason a healer (who's resource management job is the most important) must choose carefully who and when to heal or else he runs out of mana and well then we are all dead! This way you have to adjust your play style with every group you are in because each and every person in the group has the potential to throw that fine balance out of whack and when they do that others have to start exhausting their resource to try and bring balance back, then all of a sudden we end up with long downtimes between fights. I guess the balance of what does each group prefer as they play.
Your completely right, there would be ways to work regen back into a more active, engaging way... Maybe there could be somthing like a spell that casters have that enchants their weapons that can be turned on and off and (excuse the pun) is a double edged sword. (I thought of this just when reading @Jpedrote's post, and his idea is a great idea too) A spell that when you are actively mele attacking draws mana from each hit that connects, but if you leave it running when not attacking causes you to slowly drain your mana. The negative vs positive would work a little like the EQ necro's health / mana swap (except not with health) it was extremely helpful and powerful but if you were not paying attention to what abilities you had active would become quickly negative.
sebbulba said:how is this a real vs. ? It doesn't make sense in ANY combat situation to sit down under any circumstance. I hope the devs aren't cheap here and give every character his "combat reg" animation or stance that suits him/her.
Absolutes are always a tricky thing, Watch Avatar: the last airbend season 2 final episode
I know many played EQ but I wonder how many played it in the later years? Wizard in the early days was a lot of sitting around waiting for your moment. You had to give your tank plenty of time to build up aggro otherwise one blast and the enemy would charge you. So you'd be hanging out there waiting, then blast a few big damage spells then back to medding. You would choose higher or lower efficiency spells depending on the situation but that style basically remained the same, blast a few spells after aggro was solidified then back to regenning mana.
Fast forward to the later years and Wizards had a different, more active play style. You had some high efficiency spells that you could cast for a long time strait, then mid range damage spells that you might run out of mana in a couple minutes if you chained them, and finally a line of high damage low efficiency spells that you'd run yourself dry in a minute or less. You were basically always casting and you chose the spell and rotation based on need and efficiency. Paired with this was an AA (alternate advancement) that gave you a chance to proc a charge of a 'free cast', basically you would sometimes get the next spell for free.
So playing you might do something like use the most efficient rotation of spells to have a baseline DPS and weave in the big hitter when it was free. You could play like this for a long long time before running out of mana, but you were still almost always casting and doing something. So if the pace of enemies was a bit slower or you had a boss you really needed to burn down you'd switch it up to use the less efficient higher DPS spell rotations. Being a good wizard was about pushing as much damage as you could while balancing your mana usage and aggro. The best way to play (outside abusing out of combat regen, which while good in theory really threw the balance of resource management into a tough situation) was to match your mana consumption to the rate of killing. If you had a good puller you would use the efficient spells to keep a baseline DPS going, if your rate of killing was a bit slower you'd have more downtime/med-time so you'd jump to the next ranking efficiency/damage, and if you had a boss mob or maybe you overpulled you might just go full blast to deal with the situation and take a med break after.
In the end you were much more active in the later game than when it first came out. That's what I'm hoping for. Healing is tougher as it's a more reactive role rather than a proactive one, but the later game solved that with efficient healing over time type spells.
It shouldn't be about just balacing doing stuff and not doing stuff to manage resources, but instead about choosing what to do based on efficiency levels to balance your resource management to the situation. Medding should be for between fights or as a result of mistakes, be it inefficient use of resources or overpulling forcing that inefficiency. Medding and waiting shouldn't be part of normal efficient play.
jerus said:Being a good wizard was about pushing as much damage as you could while balancing your mana usage and aggro. The best way to play (outside abusing out of combat regen, which while good in theory really threw the balance of resource management into a tough situation) was to match your mana consumption to the rate of killing. If you had a good puller you would use the efficient spells to keep a baseline DPS going, if your rate of killing was a bit slower you'd have more downtime/med-time so you'd jump to the next ranking efficiency/damage, and if you had a boss mob or maybe you overpulled you might just go full blast to deal with the situation and take a med break after.
Thats it exactly it! And always remembering if s**t hits the fan and you have not been careful with your mana / stamina resources your possibly going to be letting the group down when they really needed a burst of epic wizard massive destroy everything and laugh in the face of danger damage.
With great power comes responsibility and the need for some spare mana :p
Of any of the mechanics, this one worries me the most. While I myself played EQ through the first few expansions and view the sitting as an "OK" way to gather mana back, my wife on the other hand missed out on EQ times and when she see's me playing on the TLP servers her comments around sitting for mana are worrysome.
She has played a healer since DAOC released and really every game since. I fear for her interest if all she does in Pantheon is "sit / stand / cast one spell / sit". I agree that mana should be important, and be managed in a way to make the combat challenging, but lets ensure the game play is also fun and engauging for all players. I believe there are ways to make the mana regen effect more meaning full than just sitting, and many have been posted here...
Just my two cents... Either way I will play, how much determines if I can get her to as well!...
jerus said:I know many played EQ but I wonder how many played it in the later years? Wizard in the early days was a lot of sitting around waiting for your moment. You had to give your tank plenty of time to build up aggro otherwise one blast and the enemy would charge you. So you'd be hanging out there waiting, then blast a few big damage spells then back to medding. You would choose higher or lower efficiency spells depending on the situation but that style basically remained the same, blast a few spells after aggro was solidified then back to regenning mana.
Fast forward to the later years and Wizards had a different, more active play style. You had some high efficiency spells that you could cast for a long time strait, then mid range damage spells that you might run out of mana in a couple minutes if you chained them, and finally a line of high damage low efficiency spells that you'd run yourself dry in a minute or less. You were basically always casting and you chose the spell and rotation based on need and efficiency. Paired with this was an AA (alternate advancement) that gave you a chance to proc a charge of a 'free cast', basically you would sometimes get the next spell for free.
So playing you might do something like use the most efficient rotation of spells to have a baseline DPS and weave in the big hitter when it was free. You could play like this for a long long time before running out of mana, but you were still almost always casting and doing something. So if the pace of enemies was a bit slower or you had a boss you really needed to burn down you'd switch it up to use the less efficient higher DPS spell rotations. Being a good wizard was about pushing as much damage as you could while balancing your mana usage and aggro. The best way to play (outside abusing out of combat regen, which while good in theory really threw the balance of resource management into a tough situation) was to match your mana consumption to the rate of killing. If you had a good puller you would use the efficient spells to keep a baseline DPS going, if your rate of killing was a bit slower you'd have more downtime/med-time so you'd jump to the next ranking efficiency/damage, and if you had a boss mob or maybe you overpulled you might just go full blast to deal with the situation and take a med break after.
In the end you were much more active in the later game than when it first came out. That's what I'm hoping for. Healing is tougher as it's a more reactive role rather than a proactive one, but the later game solved that with efficient healing over time type spells.
It shouldn't be about just balacing doing stuff and not doing stuff to manage resources, but instead about choosing what to do based on efficiency levels to balance your resource management to the situation. Medding should be for between fights or as a result of mistakes, be it inefficient use of resources or overpulling forcing that inefficiency. Medding and waiting shouldn't be part of normal efficient play.
This is one of those areas where people just want different things, I guess. I don't want to always be casting. I like the idea of waiting patiently for the right time to unleash hell. I have to admit that your explanation of how Wizard played later in EverQuest doesn't sound awful to me, but I'd rather stay away from rotations as a caster, and I believe they've said they want to get away from them for PRF also.
Shucklighter said:This is one of those areas where people just want different things, I guess. I don't want to always be casting. I like the idea of waiting patiently for the right time to unleash hell. I have to admit that your explanation of how Wizard played later in EverQuest doesn't sound awful to me, but I'd rather stay away from rotations as a caster, and I believe they've said they want to get away from them for PRF also.
I agree with Shucklighter. I'd rather not see "rotations" and would rather wait for the right time to unleash!
I can understand and respect that, but I just fear that pantheon will be a low activity gameplay where people just end up boxing full groups because they can box so effectively it'd be silly not to, and that comes with the fact that it is just paying money to be more successful, which is something bad as well.
As for Wizard gameplay, the rotation were not like say a fighting game or even like GW2 gameplay if any have played that. Not nearly that intense. It was more just a priority list of spells. Spells would have a longer re-cast time than cast time so you'd have to use more than just one spell all the time. So say Fireball is 3s cast time 6s recast, Ice bolt is 2.5s cast time 5s recast, and Magic shock is 2s cast time 4s recast. Fireball > Ice Bolt > Magic Shock is their damage rating, so you'll cast a fireball then ice bolt then magic shock and rotate those. But, then you proc your 'free cast' and substitute in one of those for an Inferno for a big shot of damage. You're only casting something every 2-3s but you do have to be paying attention and be actively doing stuff to maximize your damage.
And, as I was saying before, you could always just cast your big ones, so say Inferno and Ice Comet are those you'd just rotate between the two of them once the enemy was properly aggroed. That was an effective way to play as well. And, actually in later EQ that was the preferred way most of the time because it was easy and thanks to out of combat regen you could just take a fight or two off and be ready to go full blast for a handfull, then rinse and repeat. That's why I'm not so keen on out of combat regen like they had then, but that play style would still be valid either way, just not optimal.
Anyways, if the combat isn't active enough that boxing isn't just as efficient as having everyone playing individual characters, then I think Pantheon will have problems.
That's a good point about boxing , Jerus. They've promised us that combat will be complex and difficult enough that boxing will be quite tough, but they've also promised we won't have twitch combat and we won't just be staring at hotbars. It will be interesting to see how they deliver on this. For now, it looks like meddling during combat is a thing. If changing the animations for medding can make other people happy while still preserving the play style I enjoy, then I'm all for it.
There just has to be other ways to bring the same effect (resource management) without having to sit down during a fight. I think there's a big case of nostalgia goggles going on here, and Blaeys' post touches on some other concerns I have regarding such a system. I mean, if we just want a one last hurrah for a couple months with all the old timers talking about the good ol' days of early EQ combat and how excited they are for it again, by all means, keep this in. If we want to foster and cultivate a new and growing community of players to show them the spirit of older MMOs that will be enough to sustain our game for years to come, then I think finding something more engaging will be necessary (and that certainly doesn't mean it needs to be twitch combat).
I just want to really stress that the later wizard play was not twitch combat or focusing on your hotbar. It was just something you did have to be aware of. You did have to watch for when you got a 'free cast' proc, but that's the only watching you had to do. I'll lay it out how I played. (names and stuff made up for examples, I don't remember things exactly)
Spellbar:
1) Fireball - 200damage, 50 mana 3s cast time 6s reuse
2) Ice Bolt - 180 damage, 45 mana, 2.5s cast time 5s reuse
3) Mana Shock - 160damage , 40 mana, 2s cast, 4s reuse.
4) Inferno - 600 damage, 300 mana, 3s cast, 5s reuse
5) Meteor - 400 damage, 130 mana - 3s cast, 5s reuse
6) Comet - 380 damage, 125 mana - 3s cast, 5s reuse
7 ) Blizzard - 550 damage, 275 mana - 3s cast, 5s reuse
8) Utility (root/gate/whatever)
So, you have a plan, and you execute. If I'm playing at max efficiency I just cast 1, then 2, then 3, mixing in 4 when I have a 'free cast'. Now, I notice we're pulling slow enough that I'm almost always max mana, so I start changing it up and start going 5 and 1, again mixing in 4 for free casts. Next pull we overpull and I want to up the dps on the first mob to play catch up and get us back into the comfortable situation. So now I'm going 5 and 6 rotated with mixed in 4's as a higher mid level mana consumption. Then the next fight I'm back to max efficiency as I catch my mana back up so it's there for when I need it. I get the mana back up and I'm back to 5 and 1 rotation. Then the boss comes out and I rotate 4 and 7 for max damage to burn that down, then run my max efficiency rotation to finish off the adds that came with the boss and then we sit for a med break.
That's about what I'd expect to do. The only 'watching' I'd be doing is keeping an eye out for the 'free cast' buff, and maybe watching my cast bar though getting the feel for 2-3s cast times will come quick and not something I'd have to pay much attention to.
Twitch gameplay to me is more like GW2 gameplay, where I see a big attack coming and I have half a second to activate the dodge otherwise I take 10k damage and go down. That's not this at all. And hotkey watching is agian like GW2 where my rotation on Engineer is having a priority list of 14 different skills with different timers so they can't even match up easily and I'll do something like Pistol 4, 3 2, move to bombs hit 2, 3, then to grenades and 2, 4 5, then to Flamethrower and 4, 3, then back to bomb and hit 2, then f3, back to grenades hit 2, back to pistol 4, 3, 2, into mortarkit hit 2, into bomb for 2, 3, back to grenades for 2, 3, then spam grenade 1... and yeah it's a freaken mess.
The wizard in EQ was just a skill every 2-3s and in the 2-3s it takes to cast a spell you choose which the next will be and so on. Hardly twitch or hotkey watching to me. Though having played GW2 and DCUO I might just have a bit more extreme of a view on how fast a game can be played. For DCUO there was a rotation for one of the DPS classes that was activate a spell that you then right clicked to combo into a second attack, you'd immediately clip that with another spell, jump to cancel the animation, then right click again to activate a rifle shot which you clipped with the first spell and just repeated that. So 5 actions and all in less than a second... and you'd do this for the entire raid, that was twitchy overly high paced gameplay for sure. So the prospect of an action every 2-3s to me is nice relaxing but still engaging play.
Sicario said:I can see some of the arguments for it, but I feel there just has to be a better, more engaging way. I was reading through a thread regarding Pantheon on the mmorpg subreddit on Reddit, and someone stated that "afk combat is not a feature. 2 spells and stare at the wall is not a feature." I think if we remove ourselves from the nostalgic bias as best we can, it's difficult not to agree with that sentiment.
I'd have to ask, what's the deeper purpose of having a system where a caster has to sit and do nothing in the middle of a fight? And once we answer that, then ask, is there a way we can achieve this desired effect while maintaing an engaging and exciting combat experience for all classes? Having to sit and regain mana and meditate in between fights? Totally understandable and acceptable. In the middle of fights? I'm positive there's a better system we can strive for.
I very much agree with this. I don't think anybody wants casters to have unlimited mana or anything close to that. Make managing mana just as essential, but make it more interesting than just sitting down for large chunks of fights. Maybe instead of sitting for long periods of time, you after a short period of sitting you can activate a "meditative state" mana-regen buff that reduces the effectiveness of your spells (~50%) but allows you to keep regening mana. Also, each successive spell you cast has a greater and greater chance to break the meditative state. Of course you could cancel the buff early in an emergency. The meditative state would have a decent cooldown, so that there would also be some strategy in when to use it. You could fall back on standard meditating if it's on cooldown.
Pretty sure this has been discussed elsewhere, but I have to stick in my comments again ;^)
I'm not too worried about animations, per se, more about the functionality and utility of 'medding'. I would love some alternatives to sit-med. It's boring.
Yes, there is a need to balance the power of the caster and yes, the dynamic of caster should be different to melee (though different casters could have different dynamics), but, there's no need for power balance to equal stationery and prone.
What I'd like to see: -
Meditation: Yeah, sure, a full-on seated meditation should be a good way to regain mana. Some more interesting and varied animations would be great to make it *seem* less boring, but to be honest, it still would be hehe.
Concentration: Entering some trance-like, semi-meditation state where the caster can still move and reposition on the battlefield. Less mana regen, but less aggro too. Maybe mana is gained in chunks and if you get interrupted to don't get any of that chunk and start over.
Mana-draw: Some kind of mana-based 'attack' that has the caster actually 'attacking' in melee range to draw mana from the target (which doesn't need to be a mana user, but perhaps a mana using monster will provide more mana). Good mana regen, but of course more dangerous and more hate/aggro generation. I envisage clerics singing a battle hymn whilst smiting with a mace, but no reason a druid can't club monsters or a wizard can't poke with a scepter. I imagine getting hit would not just interrupt, but would lose you some mana.
Wands: Ranged version of the Mana-draw. Less mana regen, but some actual health damage included. Must have line-of-sight, but perhaps you need to be stationery. Maybe mana is gained in chunks and being hit actually loses you mana.
Spell metabolise: As mentioned above, you could activate a stance that allows you to carry on casting using reduced mana, but at reduced effectiveness or a chance for spells to fail.
There could be other possibilities - I'm sure you get my idea: I don't see any reason power management (mana regen) can't be an interesting and tactical part of the game and still provide balance. Varying the mana regain rate, method, interruption chance and subsequent mana loss, aggro draw, movement, monster range and line-of-sight, cooldowns and re-use restrictions, etc. should provide lots of possibilities and choice and *add* to combat fun for casters rather than feeling like a punishment.
disposalist said:...
There could be other possibilities - I'm sure you get my idea: I don't see any reason power management (mana regen) can't be an interesting and tactical part of the game and still provide balance. Varying the mana regain rate, method, interruption chance and subsequent mana loss, aggro draw, movement, monster range and line-of-sight, cooldowns and re-use restrictions, etc. should provide lots of possibilities and choice and *add* to combat fun for casters rather than feeling like a punishment.
If they do have other things then I'd hope simply sitting and meditating is (at least) equally viable to those more active methods for those of us who don't feel the need to always be pressing buttons.
There are a lot of factors we don't know right now anyway that would determine just how much combat meditation might even take place, things like how fast healers go OOM in relation to INT casters and what means of mana conservation/return INT casters have (like the enchanter group "mana heal" with their DPS), and how much the living codex will be able to alter spells to suit the individual player's preferred playstyle.