I mained a Shadow Knight in EQ2 for many years. IMHO, one of the most annoying world design features was the lack of solid walls and floors in many zones.
SKs were heavily dependent on AE abilities. Many areas, especially in the early expansions such as DoF and EoF were notorious for paper thin walls and floors. You could be deep into a dungeon, do an AE spell, and mobs from all the nearby rooms and even other floors would come and attack.
I hope that Pantheon puts significant effort into making sure AE attacks do not penetrate walls and floors/ceilings.
Thoughts? Please don't turn this into an anti-AE thread.
There were some positives to this though for pulling etc. Personally I also think it added zone knowledge as a player skill..
Sounds like an AOE was/is a sphere which clips the walls and floor and rather than truncate it at the iterfaces it just left as is for improved performance?
Outside of the technical considerations I think there should be both.. some clip and some don't and the player has to learn what spells/abilities to use when and where for depth.
I agree it would be good if walls, floors and doors actually stopped spells / aggro. You could get door aggro as well in EQ and that used to annoy me a lot. If they could fix Pantheon so that wasn't an issue that would be cool. I don't think it really adds anything to the game having it other than players just saying to themselves there are a whole bunch of spells they can no longer use because what I would term a bug existed.
I personally hope the engine is advanced enough, and that the DEV team get time enough, to use these effects to Pantheon's advantage!
I.e. Innovate Spell effects:
1. Spells/Effects that would be stopped by a 'physical' barrier.
These should be stopped when meeting any physical barrier.
E.g. Light spell or flash-bang in a tent/room.
2. Spells/Effects that would penetrate 'physical' barriers to a degree.
These would have their radius of effect affected by the 'wall type'.
E.g. Defensive grenade[1] in tent will extend outside the tent ...
E.g. Defensive grenade[1] in a stone room will stop at the walls!
3. Spells/Effects that ignore 'physical' barriers entirely.
These would simply ignore any physical barrier - though perhaps not magical ones!
E.g. 'Locate Corpse' spell would point through walls!
E.g. 'Meteor Storm' or 'Shower of lightning balls from above' would raid down on anyone within it's area of effect, unless they are under a roof!
So, you might have to beware of using certain spells in some situations
... but at least it should be consistent, not some
'oh, this map is glitched and the walls don't work properly in that corner. Didn't you know?'
Evoras, likes the idea of avoiding enemy arrows by hiding behind the Ogre!
[1] Pretty sure 'Defensive grenades' are the shrapnel ones, but please correct me if I am wrong!
This is an interesting thread, simple on the surface, but not so on implementation.
I generally agree that effects (especially visible elements) should be contained by "solid" walls and should not penetrate and directly antagonise any mobs on the other side of the wall. However, if it is a "noisy" aoe, then even though the intended effect might not impact through the wall (for instance the heat from a fireball), I don’t see why the noise of the spell wouldn't penetrate and alert anything on the other side. So, I guess it would depend on the exact situation, the thicker the wall, the less of a mob puller an aoe effects becomes.
In a perfect world, the type of aoe would come into play; the detrimental effects of a poison cloud near a high castle wall should not penetrate the castle, but I would totally understand an "ethereal orb of devastation" doing so. It would be great if damage penetration, noise penetration and visual penetration were all determined by the nature of the aoe and the object that it came up against, however, this would add significant development and processing to each system.
I honestly don't recall having this issue in any MMO (I've played all of my MMOs even Vanguard since day 1 release) other than LBRS in WoW. Sort of off-topic; I really, really hope they force the 3rd person view to come in a bit more. Seeing 360 just takes away from the skill/awareness required by groups, in addition to immersion (it makes the world seem much smaller). Inside dungeons, your heart-rate really gets higher when you're zoomed in, seeing and hearing the action more (which is more akin to the action style genre a lot of the new generation gamers are used to).
I like the idea of some abilities going through walls/ceilings and some not. AoE abilities are pretty powerful and as far as risk/reward goes I always thought them going through walls was intended. I would be really happy to see something similar to what Evoras has proposed.
I agree with the Evoras too as long as the results are intended not accidental.
Then again I've played far too many games where the main issue with floors is that you fell through them and died. I'm happy if the floor just STAYS there (excepting designed situations like pit traps).
A bit of insight, we had this issue in the middle building at the end of the stream, the staircase wasn't meshed properly and mobs would aggro through it, we patched it before the stream quite easily enough and would take the same approach on similar walls, buildings and structures, but please keep in mind, this is exactly what testing is for, meshing entire zones is a huge job and we are bound to miss places, so that is where we hope you guys can jump into testing and catch them for us, among other things. :)
Kilsin said:A bit of insight, we had this issue in the middle building at the end of the stream, the staircase wasn't meshed properly and mobs would aggro through it, we patched it before the stream quite easily enough and would take the same approach on similar walls, buildings and structures, but please keep in mind, this is exactly what testing is for, meshing entire zones is a huge job and we are bound to miss places, so that is where we hope you guys can jump into testing and catch them for us, among other things. :)
You have made my day. Thank you.