So my first question after watching is the monk class looks like a pulling class. "Which I consider a must for raids" however it seems like you need one for normal gameplay.
This concerns me if this to be a mandatory option. Then we need a tank, healer, puller, cc, dps, flex. I was hoping more for tank, healer, cc, dps, flex, flex. Is this what they were intending with showing the monk off in the new stream? Our just a side effect of not having an enchanter?
I understand the concept of taking a long time to get to an area to farm/camp/xp etc, did it a lot in my days in EQOA. Are we going to see a summon feature for some classes?
Example: Tank disconnects and never comes back after clearing to an area for an hour.
Loot is currently free for all, in my days of EQOA was the cause of lots of fights and disbanding of groups.
Ex. Tank wants all stacks or leaves group. A rare item that is worth a lot of gold is stolen by someone who can't use it and just logs off.
What are the plans for how loot is handled? FFA, roll, NB4G, rotating?
Will all healers have a resurrect?
Any class with root, lull, mez, fd, snare type stuff can usually pull it off at least in EQ that was the case. The disposition system and other mechanics might make it a bit hairier.
Alternatively like Beefsteak said if you have CC and they are on the ball you might get away with just facepulling, it would really depend on things we don't know yet (skillsets/cooldowns and such).
They didn't have much in the way of crowd control in that group in the stream. The rogue CC was servicable and the wizard root was as well but with a proper CC class in there single pulling isn't nearly as crucial. Not to mention some of those people playing aren't entirely familiar with the classes they were playing. Think of it like trying to start a character on EQ at level 25. You're a little lost with spells and what they do and how well they work. All the tools and utilities get lost in the mix a little bit. I wouldn't worry too much about the game mechanics needing a monk to pull or the group can't function.
Pulling tools Enchanters had: Diplomacy, stun, aoe stun, mezz, aoe mezz, root, charm, slow, mem blur, and I am sure there were a few more. Monks are good pullers, especially if played right. But being a pulling chanter? it's just magic. My groups did nothing but kill. By the time they finished off a mob I was reapplying thier buffs - their next target was already standing next to them looking at the pretty lights. It was non-stop for hours sometimes.
Here's a good qauestion: What happens if you charm an Alarmist mob?
Everything else seems covered....yes there will be a summon feature available to at least one class. They haven't decided on a loot system, if any. Personally hoping need before greed doesn't exist, but I would be a fan of some kind of round robin for just common drops/coin. Anything like gems/spells/magic items etc would have to be rolled/passed on by everyone.
Let's get rid of Need before greed and replace it with a simple roll/pass. "NB4G" doesn't really have a place in this kind of game (aside from maybe groups of friends/guilds).
One thing I questioned was the aggro from the NPCs... I could not tell if some of the strange NPC behavior was because of them throwing in Dev commands or if it was really that way in the game.
1. Mobs would continually run back toward spawn point once reaggro'd which seems to be a pathing issue
2. Seems Feign Death clears all aggro if successful, unlike original EQ where you had to build up those skills. Standing up too early brought unset mobs in...
3. I noticed they said mobs behind glass wall would not aggro, very much unlike EQ where proximity aggro was a huge thing. Especially next to, above or below if using AoE spells in wrong places. If mobs did not reset at spawn point, they bring in a ton of friends...
So I am just curious how much of that is dev just controlling to keep stream going, or possible fixes needing adjustments
Pyye said:One thing I questioned was the aggro from the NPCs... I could not tell if some of the strange NPC behavior was because of them throwing in Dev commands or if it was really that way in the game.
1. Mobs would continually run back toward spawn point once reaggro'd which seems to be a pathing issue
2. Seems Feign Death clears all aggro if successful, unlike original EQ where you had to build up those skills. Standing up too early brought unset mobs in...
3. I noticed they said mobs behind glass wall would not aggro, very much unlike EQ where proximity aggro was a huge thing. Especially next to, above or below if using AoE spells in wrong places. If mobs did not reset at spawn point, they bring in a ton of friends...
So I am just curious how much of that is dev just controlling to keep stream going, or possible fixes needing adjustments
1. I think they were the Alarmists who were raising the alarm to their friends that they were under attack.
2. In EQ it seems to clear all agro on sucess. I am using it at he moment on P99 which is supposed to be classic EQ.
They were using a command like /agro off and /agro on which was typed into the chat window towards the end when they were having the respawns and playing around.
Pyye, I noticed some of that, and I think we're a bit too early to tell - hopefully one of the Devs will talk about some of the behaviors and agro stuff. Pathing is something near and dear to me as someone who has in many roles, mage, tank, monk, chanter whatever - pulled for groups in dungeons. If pulls are not only difficult due to "AI" but wonky due to pathing artifacts, we will all be frustrated.
I think with the progress still being made, it's likely we will see another leap in improvement as we hit Pre-Alpha.
Pyye said:I noticed they said mobs behind glass wall would not aggro, very much unlike EQ where proximity aggro was a huge thing. Especially next to, above or below if using AoE spells in wrong places. If mobs did not reset at spawn point, they bring in a ton of friends...
Indeed, prox aggro is not a thing and VR is currently working on meshing the walls and floors so that you cannot accidentally AoE mobs in other rooms. See https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5985/solid-walls-amp-floors
mtdewme said:So my first question after watching is the monk class looks like a pulling class. "Which I consider a must for raids" however it seems like you need one for normal gameplay.
This concerns me if this to be a mandatory option. Then we need a tank, healer, puller, cc, dps, flex. I was hoping more for tank, healer, cc, dps, flex, flex. Is this what they were intending with showing the monk off in the new stream? Our just a side effect of not having an enchanter?
I understand the concept of taking a long time to get to an area to farm/camp/xp etc, did it a lot in my days in EQOA. Are we going to see a summon feature for some classes?
Example: Tank disconnects and never comes back after clearing to an area for an hour.
Loot is currently free for all, in my days of EQOA was the cause of lots of fights and disbanding of groups.
Ex. Tank wants all stacks or leaves group. A rare item that is worth a lot of gold is stolen by someone who can't use it and just logs off.
What are the plans for how loot is handled? FFA, roll, NB4G, rotating?
Will all healers have a resurrect?
I love your avatar. I will always cherish that retail box ...
While Pantheon is going back to the roots of the MMO genre, they have also evolved plenty of things along the way. Loot options happen to be an area where I think we'll see a healthy variety of options to choose from. As far as a summon feature goes ... great question! I imagine that the summoner class will get some sort of CoH ability, but would love to hear some confirmation on that. As it stands, I'll be offering a DKP bonus to all players in my guild who successfully level a summoner alt high enough to learn that ability if it is indeed something they will be able to use. As far as group compositions go, it's my understanding that we will also be testing out 8 player groups at some point. I think 6 player groups can work pretty well, but 8 player groups could indeed add another layer of base difficulty to most encounters while also reinforcing the notion that we can bring along multiple DPS classes. I have a genuine concern as it relates to DPS players finding groups. Many folks out there are worried about getting a group of that size up and running, and then maintaining it. I would argue that having 8 player groups could potentially make grouping easier as it allows more flexibility when it comes to what compositions can work for the majority of content.
BelgrimIcereaver said:I'm fairly certain they stated 6 player groups were what they were going with in the stream.
Only for now. They will likely at least experiment with 8 person groups in Pre-Alpha or Alpha when there are more people testing the game to collect sufficient data. Depending on the results of that experiment, they may take it further or they may just scrap it and go back to 6 person groups. But I would expect to have at least one testing session early on where there are groups of 8 people just to see what it's like.
mtdewme said:So my first question after watching is the monk class looks like a pulling class. "Which I consider a must for raids" however it seems like you need one for normal gameplay.
This concerns me if this to be a mandatory option. Then we need a tank, healer, puller, cc, dps, flex. I was hoping more for tank, healer, cc, dps, flex, flex. Is this what they were intending with showing the monk off in the new stream? Our just a side effect of not having an enchanter?
There will probably be a lot of ways to pull. Lull/paci/snare/fear/bows etc can all be utilized to break a camp or split mobs up. In EQ SKs were better pullers in many situations than monks. So were Bards. Even druids, rangers and clerics could pull with their abilities. Singling out monk doesn't make much sense to me. Pulling is a gameplay mechanic like any other. You need to the the "right" amount of mobs to your group just like you need to be able to defend yourself from the mobs, as you need to kill the mobs, as you need to be healed from their damage, etc etc.
mtdewme said:I understand the concept of taking a long time to get to an area to farm/camp/xp etc, did it a lot in my days in EQOA. Are we going to see a summon feature for some classes?
Example: Tank disconnects and never comes back after clearing to an area for an hour.
Brad has already said this will be a thing, but why should someone get a free ride? You said it yourself, it took you an hour to clear down there. Now someone else just gets to snap right to you? If it's an ability like call of the heroes, it should be rare and expensive.
mtdewme said:Loot is currently free for all, in my days of EQOA was the cause of lots of fights and disbanding of groups.
Ex. Tank wants all stacks or leaves group. A rare item that is worth a lot of gold is stolen by someone who can't use it and just logs off.
What are the plans for how loot is handled? FFA, roll, NB4G, rotating?
Never group with those people agian. Tell others. Don't guild them. Hopefully the community can police itself. Crappy people are going to do crappy things, but implementing too many gameplay mechanics to protect people from each other is going to limit the the game. With the good comes the bad.
8 is just too many. I DO hope they experiment with it though. It just shows that these guys really do think "outside the box". A good way to measure the difficulty of the mob was to time how long it takes to kill the mob with a specific number of people: 6 people = 47 seconds, 7 people = 32 seconds, 8 people = 21 seconds (etc.). But then you have to use a baseline as well.. 1 person takes 1 min 32 seconds. The point being here is that if you have a mob that actually REQUIRES an 8 person team to kill a mob, then you are going to make the mob VERY hard to kill for a solo player.
Of course you could just create scalable mobs so that regardless of how many people attack it, it scales the DPS/Hit points/etc. so that the encounter will always take the same amount of time...
@Krixus Not saying it shouldn't be rare or have long cooldowns for summoning someone. I fear in this age of MMO's that without some mechanic to occasionally help a group that a lot of groups will fall apart and people will eventually give up on the game. It sounds like people think a CoTH ability will be very likely which in EQOA was an hour cooldown on my Mage which would be very acceptable.
When my mage got max level he was a guild camp for rare spawns. AKA guild clears to a spot where is safe but can see a rare spawn and log out. If spawn appeared you started the summon chain, summon the other mages than rest of guild. (I think they have said that spawns will be set up in a way you won't need to do this and compete against other guilds) *Hopefully that is still true*
As for the loot discussion, yes to many mechanics are a bad thing but some basic rules for loot should be implemented. The community policing its self only goes so far in stopping the trolls.
Group size discussion. I think 8 is overkill. I like the 6 range far better than the standard 4 or 5 you see in many games now.
As a side note, it sounds from the discussion here that enchanters were a lot better at pulling in EQ than in EQOA. The only reason I ever wanted an enchanter in the group was for mana buffs or if they had a raging rhino charmed.
I concur with mtdewme regarding loot. Similarly to the regional auction house announcement, I believe a comprehensive loot system built into the UI is fundamental in a modern game. There's no reason that the rolling function can't be contained to a separate UI piece as opposed to chat channels. There's a million implementations of this that are all good and fair. For instance, EQ's new Advanced Loot UI is absolutely amazing. The implementation could be a little bit better though.
I also concur that a group size of 8 is overkill. I think 6 is about optimal, but there should be multi-group content that is smaller than a full raid. For instance, EQ2 had 12-player raid dungeons despite the 24-player maximum raid size. It served as a good inbetween for more casual players, but even then the 12-player content had challenge modes and such that were extremely difficult to beat.
With regards to Monks as pullers, I also hope that they're balanced in such a way so as to not be mandatory. Whenever the Bard class is released they should have pulling tools as well to diversify this role. Regardless, I'd consider pulling to be a form of CC. If you're missing an Ench, maybe a Monk to solo pull things is mandatory. If you don't have a Monk, get an Ench so you can mez adds. Giving puller its own separately defined role makes the roster feel very bloated and a little too niche.
One can hope that the community in Pantheon will be nicer than in most MMOs, for a variety of reasons, not least of which is its group-centered nature making a good reputation important. Of course this depends largely on server population - the larger the population the easier it is to act badly and get away with it.
But I see no reason - none at all - to make bad behavior easy when a trivially simple mechanism can prevent it.
Any drop of bind-on-acquire loot should be subject to a need/greed type of roll where any class that can't use the item cannot roll need. This has been normal for many many years and for excellent reason.
No loot should be free-for-all where instead of concentrating on doing his or her job in the group players are focusing on grabbing loot before someone else does. Maybe a free for all option for groups of friends or guildmates but this should never be the default.
Any drop of bind-on-equip loot should be subject to a roll - whether it is all greed or need/greed has been debated in other threads.
Of course, trivial loot is normally subject to other mechanisms such as round robin I am focusing on loot of real value.
Regarding group size, I hope 8 would be a good test for non-standard groups where the "quartetnity" is not filled. if you dont have a CC, you can double on another class.
Likewise if you have a good group of 6, you have two extra slots to fill in with whomever- maybe make things go a bit quicker.