Improving on the solid foundation that is the Combat System

[Roekai]

So, I got into a discussion in Global about the structure of group combat, and I wanted to write up my thoughts because they were getting drowned out in global and I don't do a good job of articulating my thoughts without having time to prepare them. To recap (for those not online @ the time) we were talking about late game grouping (50+), more specifically the structure of the group and the individual roles being played by the group members.

I think we all can recognize, including the Dev team, that there is too much emphasis on damage in combat, and not enough emphasis on power management (a problem which I have a mathematical answer/solution to). As a result of this emphasis on damage, a player is gimping himself if he does not take advantage of his (2) most damaging skills, regardless of skill. With these two button builds, where everything is based around the hardest hitting attacks, no matter what skill you are using (from Shield to Fire magic; I mean shit, even I use Finishing Blow/Knee Kick to do 75% of my damage), combat is "can I burn through this mob before it can hit me 3 times and kill me."

In groups, the problem gets exponentially worse. The last time I was in Gaz I barely had enough time to use two fucking skills before the orcs died; good thing I have a DoT/Rage build, right? Now I know much of that has to do with how optimized our gear is, but I still see it as a problem. In fact, the only times anyone ever wipes in Gaz anymore is with a bad pull or huge re-pop (again, which I can fix).

I suggested in Global there be more of an emphasis on the Trinity (but expanded from Tank/Healer/Dps to Tank/Healer/DPS/CC/Puller(slashOfftank)/Utility(think EQ Bard).

I was shat all over.

People think this will restrict them, but I contend it will do precisely the opposite. Instead of being pigeonholed into a 2-button damage mash to be most effective, people will be able to choose a distinct role (or, any combination of that). Hell, you could even keep the 2-button mash builds to keep people from bitching - they would eventually become OBSOLETE MULES (paging Broken Matt) anyways, so it would matter not.

Take, for example, Psychology. A few healing abilities, a few damage abilities, a few crowd control abilities. Lots of choices, lots of ways to build your toon, right? Wrong. What is your role in a group? DPS as fast as you can, maybe mezzing one of the four adds before the group wipes, throwing in a heal or two giving everyone one more second to spam their high damage abilities.

You take away the healing abilities, and increase the crowd control abilities. Make it so Psychology has a fear, a charm, an aoe mez, a quick casting time short mez, and a long casting time long mez. This way, the player can choose to be either a pure CC and have a very defined role or can do half damage skills half CC, or however way you want to mix it. (edit: and then you have all your mods on top of that for customization)

Same thing with druid. Take away the ability to do damage, make them Buff/Debuff and Healing. So when you see a druid you're like "okay, is this guy gunna be a buff/debuff druid, a healer, or a mix? and what is his other skill? Is he Druid/Psych Pure healer/Pure CC or is he half healer half buff&debuff/half damage half cc?

Then you bring back evasion (which makes the lower damage lower power cost skills factually mathematically better than the high damaging attacks, and voila, you have sustained, fluid and structured combat with complete creativity to build you toon however you want, rather than be forced to do damage blowing through mobs and then wipe when the respawn happens.

I got real lazy with it at the end im tired of writing and thinking i hope you guys got the idea.

[Aionlasting]

Hi Roekai,

Epi here. I was one of the people who shat on you. I apologize. :D haha.. jk.. I didn't shat on you >:)))))

Anyhooo... the most fun I ever had in group combat was with Asheron call 2 group hunting. In that, there were numerous rolls beyond the trinity in the way you mention. There was the enchanter who buffed the groups damage. There was the sorcerer who debuffed the enemy and whose debuffed stacked with the enchanter. There was the healer who kept the group alive. There was the tank. There was the dps. All these were necessary for a successful hunt against powerful 'elite mobs' as they have come to be known. Previously we just called them 'group mobs.'

I think the problem with elite mobs in this game is they don't force groups to have a good composition. I keep going back to Ac2 because it was my favorite game but in that game, elite mobs, i.e. group mobs, had so much armor that without a debuffer, a sorcerer, or enchanter (a buffer), the elite mobs would take forever to die with an all dps group because they would evade too many attacks and the armor was so thick that hits that did land did little damage. Not to mention they hit way too hard, that without a tank, unless you seriously out leveled them, didn't stand a chance.

I do agree with you that the group aspect of this game, especially combat and group hunting, needs addressing.

I think the solution to the problem is to change the base properties in elite/group mobs to where they require something like a debuffer/enchanter to either reduce hteir defenses or buff the groups damage to the point it can overcome those defenses and make them hit hard enough to where a tank is necessary and a healer becomes a necessity.

Leave solo mobs alone as they are.

Ok I'm sorry if my ideas are terrible... ac2 wasn't popular, so I can't imagine my solution being popular... but maybe its what the group content needs to make it work, make it fun, and make it challenging?


Thanks for sharing your thoughts friend :)

[Roekai]

"I think the solution to the problem is to change the base properties in elite/group mobs to where they require something like a debuffer/enchanter to either reduce hteir defenses or buff the groups damage to the point it can overcome those defenses and make them hit hard enough to where a tank is necessary and a healer becomes a necessity."

I agree with you here, but that would be impossible without making changes to the skills like I outlined above. without a true debuffer or true healer, all that enhancing the mobs would accomplish would be making them unbeatable.

[Aionlasting]

I c your point. So maybe making the combat skills more biased towards one kind of role without completely eliminating their options for flexibility. I.E. Making psycology more of a control role, making druids more of a heal role, making pig more of a buffing role, making bard more of a healing role, but without completely erasing their viability to solo or go into a combat role should they need to? That would make sense to me. One thing we don't really have in this game is a debuffer role which would be cool to see. Something that would make , alongside with making combat skills more niche, buffing group monsters armor and evasion a viable fix to the current problem.

[Crissa]

Suggesting trinity combat in a game that was made not to have it kinda would be expected to be unpopular: This is where people went to escape using the same mechanics! So that was kinda predictable. That said, Global probably also isn't the best place to continue deep discussions, either ^-^;

Roekai But good on you for deciding to wrap it up and expand your comments here where long form is better ^-^

If you take away anyone's ability to do damage, you've removed their ability to work alone. That's a serious problem with trinity-style mechanics that's rarely answered.

Probably what we need are more inter-player combo abilities - things which work when in concert - and more key word abilities - things which require some player to react to. The rage-interrupt is an example of this.



One of the mechanics I liked in original Horizons was when you engaged in combat with an NPC, you (and the mob) were locked into a push-pull positioning system. Someone tanking could only really grab a couple mobs at a time, as too many and they'd get surrounded and pounded upon. Some builds were better at this than others, but every player would have to keep some 'tanking' abilities on hand to grab adds and keep them from other players' back sides or from your own. It was a very slow combat system, though. (And running away was a little more difficult as you were forced in a crouch in the direction of the mob attacking you and had to specifically move away from it)

[Roekai]

"If you take away anyone's ability to do damage, you've removed their ability to work alone. That's a serious problem with trinity-style mechanics that's rarely answered."

I wouldn't be taking away anyone's ability to do damage, or the ability to work alone. You want to do damage? Pick a DPS skill (i.e. Archery) or a solo oriented skill (Necromancer). And, you will still be able to do damage - its not like I want healers to be unable to attack. edit: In most trinity games, you are locked into a role - in this game, you could play any role you wanted at any time. edit II: the whole idea that one's ability to solo is tied to ones ability to do high damage to me, is insane. in my experiences, the high DPS classes should be the ones least capable of soloing.



"Probably what we need are more inter-player combo abilities - things which work when in concert - and more key word abilities - things which require some player to react to. The rage-interrupt is an example of this."

I emphatically HATE this idea. Once you start having combos and link abilities, now I have lost the ability to select the order or how I want to use my skills. If combat becomes a sequence of following commands to do the most damage, then I am out for good. I do not want to be told how to play or what buttons to press.

TLDR: i want this "I.E. Making psycology more of a control role, making druids more of a heal role, making pig more of a buffing role, making bard more of a healing role, but without completely erasing their viability to solo or go into a combat role should they need to?"

not" take away anyone's ability to do damage, you've removed their ability to work alone. "

[Aionlasting]

I seem to find agreement with Roekai. With this games flexibility in allowing players the ability to swap combat skills on the fly , not being locked into a class, there seems little reason not to make those classes a little more niche (and specific) if not for anything than provide the developers the flexibility and room they need to make fun engaging group content beyond merely 'blow it up as fast as you can....' Personally it would make group hunting a lot more fun and interesting in my humble opinion. I wouldn't mind it.

I also don't like the thought of forcing combo's into the combat system between various classes because then it requires players to play sequentially and in a specific order which sounds very suffocating and limiting.

Hope my post made sense. I'm also in favor with allowing support classes some ability to solo but because we have the option to change our skills on the fly, its really not a problem if they are limited in that way in order to make them more effective and specialized in others, i.e. support, debuff, crowd control, healing, tanking etc...

[Throwback]

I'm not high level at all, but there are some mechanisms that are really good for making combat interesting on a solo level: Rage and armour and evasion.

When you fight these mobs as a group, of course you are going to kill them all quickly - that seems obvious.

Perhaps it would be better to have dungeons which are only ever intended for groups, and every mob in them is group difficulty. Now if everyone is DPS, you die - so someone had better be a tank. And maybe you need to worry about adds, so someone needs to mez, and maybe the mobs have aoe damage so someone needs to heal. One mob in particular has a brutal rage attack, so someone has to build solely for rage management.

There's a lot that can be solved just with the environment that doesn't necessarily need changes to the systems already in place.

[lileth]

Hi Roekai,

Epi here. I was one of the people who shat on you. I apologize. :D haha.. jk.. I didn't shat on you >:)))))

Anyhooo... the most fun I ever had in group combat was with Asheron call 2 group hunting. In that, there were numerous rolls beyond the trinity in the way you mention. There was the enchanter who buffed the groups damage. There was the sorcerer who debuffed the enemy and whose debuffed stacked with the enchanter. There was the healer who kept the group alive. There was the tank. There was the dps. All these were necessary for a successful hunt against powerful 'elite mobs' as they have come to be known. Previously we just called them 'group mobs.'

I completely agree with you here Aion.

And as you said: "...there were numerous rolls beyond the trinity in the way you mention..."


PG isn't AC2 but there were some great aspects that I'm surprised aren't similar.

I'll make the following comments and the devs will know who I am in PG. I had the most high level solo played deso toons in AC2 and I was one of he last PG players to get my personalized key email from the devs. I'm playing PG like I played AC2. I have tons of time to play being an old lady married to a gaming husband and love testing out specs and leveling toons is easy when you like exploring and killing mobs. I am in no rush to level, it just happens when you you're ingame a lot.

Having said that, I'm female and will let you guys argue/discuss how to make it work. And given Erics background with AC2 he knows what we're talking about.

I loved playing my:
sorc/debuff
enchanter
clawbearer
tummy healer
lug sage

I currently play and have lvld these skills:
fm
bc
druid
arch
hammer

Obviously not capped as I have plently to do ingame.

Given the flexibility with skills I could easily see a CB for solo play that uses his healer skills in a support role for grouping.
I definitely miss my role as debuffer/sorc.

Anyways, my 2 cents.

[lileth]

I'm not high level at all, but there are some mechanisms that are really good for making combat interesting on a solo level: Rage and armour and evasion.

When you fight these mobs as a group, of course you are going to kill them all quickly - that seems obvious.

Perhaps it would be better to have dungeons which are only ever intended for groups, and every mob in them is group difficulty. Now if everyone is DPS, you die - so someone had better be a tank. And maybe you need to worry about adds, so someone needs to mez, and maybe the mobs have aoe damage so someone needs to heal. One mob in particular has a brutal rage attack, so someone has to build solely for rage management.

There's a lot that can be solved just with the environment that doesn't necessarily need changes to the systems already in place.

Excellent points imho and it reminded me of what another female player told me. Her hushand and son sucked her into gaming because they needed a healer and she got hooked. Not saying chics are healer prone but she and I were discussing specs with PG and how to fulfill the roles we've enjoyed in previous games given the specs in PG.

Maybe guys just weren't that into healing and debuffing but I know this, given I leveled a debuff toon and a healer toon I spent at least 4 hours a day on mana runs because I was in high demand. We had at least 4 world time zone manas. Obviously, each toon was only allowed one 1 hour mana boost a day but I was constantly being called on and made myself available to fulfill the needed role for the other groups.

It also made for great community relations and friends.

[Roekai]

do i get my item yet?

edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/projectgorgon/comments/875b3a/buffer_class/

edit II:https://www.reddit.com/r/projectgorgon/comments/85tztp/looking_for_consistently_good_dps_build/

[Crissa]

I wouldn't be taking away anyone's ability to do damage, or the ability to work alone. You want to do damage? Pick a DPS skill...You literally just said you're taking away damage and that they have to pick DPS to solo. So now support classes have to level four skills to keep up. (By the way, this is economics in action: The economy of damage vs time vs survivability.)


in my experiences, the high DPS classes should be the ones least capable of soloing.You don't make alot of friends, do you?


I emphatically HATE this idea. Once you start having combos and link abilities, now I have lost the ability to select the order...How do you select the order now? By selecting the order that makes the most damage. If combos between players linked up with mob abilities, then you'd be forced not to just do one, optimum, rotation of skills, but would have to pay attention to the actions on the battlefield. That sortof sounds fun, I get bored of using the same sequence all the time. I wish it was more optimal for me to hold off on my Barrage instead of using it the second it was up. Anything to not use power commands one after the other. Maybe dungeons could count for being 'in combat' longer or in longer sequences as well, so that mediating your power consumption to DPS would actually matter.

I like the idea of the game being a situational puzzle that has many solutions. Sometimes they're obvious, and sometimes there will be many ways. That I think we should aim for.

Anything to keep everyone busy and away from 'One guy yells at the mobs with his sequence, the other guys get to just do their one thing, and one guy has to play whack a mole while the others don't manage their own damage/position/interactions taken.'

I've played all the roles in the trinity. I've tanked in Gorgon. But I like that Gorgon is about experimenting.

[Cowinator]

It's all DPS.

Years ago, we chose specific roles in a group and did the dungeons...but it makes it much tougher to complete. I will agree that burning through almost all mobs is the easiest path to victory.

Having said that, I've never focused on max dps or gear and there's many things, after years of play that I cannot complete even in my main spec.

I'd love for them to spice it up with more variety, challenges and difficulty while still allowing people the freedom to choose their role.

If you look back at trinity style games, you will see that many choose DPS simply because it was the most desirable outside of a group. Then, there are those dedicated souls who enjoy healing, buffing, tanking and support. Support style play is more my niche and I've always enjoyed it in games.

[Karnix]

Play what you want to play.
But....in the end...if you roll fire/archery and spend weeks re-rolling super maxed 70 yellows, you can solo most of GK.

Suggestion:
The game needs to incentivize players to group by disrupting the following cycle:

You can literally solo this entire game using the following steps:
1.) Spawn in, find Kirean (he lives at panthers), tag along with until your 50/50
2.) Get someone to make you 50/50 winter set
3.) Power-level Leatherworking, Augmentation, Transmutation in parallel
4.) Farm panthers for money (when Kirean is sleeping)
5.) Craft lvl 70 yellows, reroll until you can solo GK.
6.) ...Group???? :(
7.) Drunk gardening cause gardening is true end game tbh

Idea: lvl 80 dungeon that cant be soloed and takes full group (or 2 groups if you want to introduce raiding, then we can get on the dkp hype train we all miss so much) of super maxed 70s coordinating ccs,power regen, healing, and damage to have a glimmer of hope to complete. Drops are way better than lvl 70 max gear and look really cool. You can replace lvl 80 dungeon with lvl 80 world boss.

[INXS]

dps dps dps...yeah yeah...whatev....GK is a fun place to hunt especially in a group, doesn't matter what your skills are every single person contributes to the party, your not max dps, it don't matter, i've never seen someone asking for the measuring tape so sizes could be measured up or people bragging about the damage they can dish out. I go to GK with friends/acquaintances because i like hunting in there, team work at it's finest everyone contributing the best of their caracter to make it work, some runs are a bit slower than others, some runs can handle a crisis while others can't, best part of GK every group has a unique chemistry and that what makes it fun, no real control on the outcome. Don't think just fire/archery can solo GK, i've seen druid/staff, bard/psyc farming solo in there and i'm sure there's some other builds that can, if you build you caracter right you can solo in there plain and simple, again the gear is the make or break factor. If you can make yourself the ultimate fully modded self rolled gear and have aquired weapons/jewelry from GK and are able to solo it now, good for you! If they do make a lv 80 dungeon, then it's going to drop lv80 gear, now we back to square one.

[Roekai]

dps dps dps...yeah yeah...whatev....GK is a fun place to hunt...I go to GK with friends/acquaintances because i like hunting in there, team work at it's finest ...if you build you caracter right you can solo in there plain and simple...lv 80 dungeon, then it's going to drop lv80 gear, now we back to square one.

so, basically, your counter argument is "whatev" and your supporting evidence is you "like hunting there." interesting.

[Aionlasting]

dps dps dps...yeah yeah...whatev....GK is a fun place to hunt especially in a group, doesn't matter what your skills are every single person contributes to the party, your not max dps, it don't matter, i've never seen someone asking for the measuring tape so sizes could be measured up or people bragging about the damage they can dish out. I go to GK with friends/acquaintances because i like hunting in there, team work at it's finest everyone contributing the best of their caracter to make it work, some runs are a bit slower than others, some runs can handle a crisis while others can't, best part of GK every group has a unique chemistry and that what makes it fun, no real control on the outcome. Don't think just fire/archery can solo GK, i've seen druid/staff, bard/psyc farming solo in there and i'm sure there's some other builds that can, if you build you caracter right you can solo in there plain and simple, again the gear is the make or break factor. If you can make yourself the ultimate fully modded self rolled gear and have aquired weapons/jewelry from GK and are able to solo it now, good for you! If they do make a lv 80 dungeon, then it's going to drop lv80 gear, now we back to square one.

I don't really think it has anything to do with the desire for a "measuring tape" to "brag." Is that what you hear when people brainstorm about ways to make group content more fun and engaging rather than the current format of "everyone try and blow it up as fast as you can?"

You talk about everyone contributing, and you are right, but can't people be allowed to contribute in other ways besides 'hit it with your big stick?' Can't we have content that encourages and promotes varied playstyles beyond dps and rewards diverse group compositions? Why must group content just boil down to doing the most damage as fast as you can? I would much rather see group content that forces us to make use of more than just dps mechanics. For some of that to occur, it might require making certain combat classes more specialized, which again would not be an issue because players can switch classes on the fly and are not locked into any one combat class like they are in other MMO's. If a player gets tired of healing, or buffing, or debuffing, or tanking, or dpsing, they can switch to another combat class that offers the style they want.

It sounds to me like your upset about this discussion because you really want to be allowed to solo GROUP content. Huh? That really isn't right and I hope the developers don't take that stance. Why should a level 70 player be able to solo level 70 group content? I could understand if you out leveled the dungeon by a bit , that would make sense then, to come back and solo it, but hopefuly at that point the gear would not be relevant to you and other players of appropriate level can take up the challenge. There exists plenty of solo content and dungeons in this game. We are discussing group content.

[INXS]

Funny how out of the whole paragraph you only see the word " solo ". * slow clap * And i don't solo in GK if that's what you implying.

[Karamasha]

Support/Healing is my preferd role in mmorpgs, i hope this game allow me to play this in the lategame.

[Roekai]

I don't know how else to put this, other than I don't think INXS (or Crissa for that matter) understand the argument.

I don't really understand how what you guys are saying relates to the post. You have to provide some sort of evidence or logical argument, rather than just musings.

[sudostahp]

I don't know how else to put this, other than I don't think INXS (or Crissa for that matter) understand the argument.

I don't really understand how what you guys are saying relates to the post. You have to provide some sort of evidence or logical argument, rather than just musings.

/r/iamverysmart

Seriously though, it's a game marketed as a sandbox. Why would it make sense for this game to force players into trinity adherence? There's tons of other games out there if you like being forced into a certain playstyle.

[Sasaki]

Monsters simply need to hit less hard, but take longer to kill. I really want my bards over time healing and buffs to be useful, but there's no point. fights are too short. You die or you don't.

[poulter]

My perspective on the points raised by Roekai:

(By the way, many of the points raised were discussed when level 60 was the cap and Labs the end-game dungeon.
I suspect many of the same answers still apply i.e. come prepared, bring food and resurrections, ensure party members skills support one another, keep behind the puller, do not start DPS too early - also known at the time as bring a Pig+ whoever else was available).

“suggested in Global there be more of an emphasis on the Trinity”
Inserted below are some comments I recently made on Steam:
“My take on it is that the 'traditional' Holy Trinity approach is not used in PG.

What is used in high-level instances is a:
'Puller' who goes forward and brings back to the group, one or two monsters
Rage /Crowd controller who stuns, freezes a monster so that it can't attack /move
Damagers (which is everyone) who kill /further stun /control the monsters as quick as possible

Group healing is usually done by damage dealers secondary specs. e.g. archer /bard, wolf /psychology, fire mage /battle chemistry, x /mentalism. That is no dedicated healer, but lots of AOE healing happening in the background

By carrying different gear sets & loadouts, people can change role, damage type, damage vs. heal vs control ratios on a per fight basis (which is a pre-requisite for some boss fights in the current end-game content).”

As you can see, there are still the equivalent of ‘jobs’/roles, just a different emphasis.


“there is too much emphasis on damage in combat, and not enough emphasis on power management”
Power management is a sub-game in itself and with the changes to food and gourmand about a year ago, they moved food from being an ‘afterthought’ to a central part of the game. These changes when they were made, generated a lot of discussion and resulted in testers over-hauling their builds.

Most vets I know use both meals and snacks plus flowers to ensure that they have enough power regeneration. Many include power generation as part of their build /modifications.
It is also common for at least one group member in the GK groups that I participate in to be providing background AOE power regeneration.

“barely had enough time to use two fucking skills before the orcs died”
My personal take on this is that I expect to get 3 to 4 hits (using different spells) on GK elites /combat when in a group of 6, meaning that it takes 18 to 24 hits to down one.
If I remember, correctly Citan designed combats to last for circa 15 seconds, so this is probably quicker than average, but given the gear in use, to be expected.

“only times anyone ever wipes in Gaz anymore is with a bad pull ”
I agree with this up to a point, but would add:
I often still see many tombstones in GK (mainly non-vet names), so it isn’t that easy
A lot of vets now run GK with level 70 max crafted and augmented gear
People now have a lot more experience with the game and GK
It used to be a lot harder and less predictable (Hook Shot anyone?)

“being pigeonholed into a 2-button damage mash to be most effective”
Citan has commented in the past that many testers were only using 2 or 3 spells during combat and took steps to ensure people have to use more keys /spells during combat

My personal feedback is that:
Groups: I often use 5 or 6 spells during combat
Solo: I use 9 to 10
Soloing GK patrols: I use 12+

For me the current system works and has enough unpredictability and variance in it to still be entertaining. Given the limited numbers of people enjoying PG, I don’t think the mandatory roles would be useful, but I would support greater differentiation along the lines of the level 60 cap game (e.g. a Pig was for group support, a Cow for pulling, but a Ment /Psych or Staff /Shield user was almost as good).

[Khaylara]

My thoughts on the original post

-I like the group roles rather than the dps bunch of ppl we have now as a group. I do think though that the combat skillsets will be tweaked a lot more in the future. I don't fully agree with the druid tweaks suggestions, imo a druid should be a summoner of animals, plants/vines etc but as a general idea I agree with tweaking the skills to make them more group role oriented. The difficulty is though that PG has a massive solo content and is very gear dependent so we'd get a bit locked if we choose a group oriented build. Or we'd have to have few builds (and the gear for them) in order to perform the solo tasks and the group role.

-another aspect is the aggro mechanic, that needs tlc. For example a tank should have ways of holding aggro, right? That doesn't quite happen says this fire mage, I draw aggro like mad when I play high dps builds (like fire and archery). My suggestion would be to improve the aggro-holding skills (and add some more) so the puller or tank can keep the mobs away from the healer and dds

-I personally use more than two skills, I kinda use all 12 on my main (fire/staff) but i use them the same way in a group, after the initial burst of damage from my fire abilities i stick to my staff defensive skills if i want to live (related to the lack of tanking abilities able to keep aggro off my dpsing self). Otherwise i get aggro and require rezzing^^Which means even in a group i need to heal, defend myself and dps, basically 3 in 1 instead of sticking to my group role, which is obviously "BUUUURN!".

-on evasion that's a hard no from me, some mobs evade quite well now but it has to make sense. It's normal for an infiltrator mob to dodge an arrow but not for a panther to evade a big ass firestorm. The mechanic was too unreliable for me and I'm glad it got reworked. Our evasion works fairly well, I made an evasion set and the evasion belt and it works better than my normal set against the GK mobs


As an afterthought-this conversation applies to the current end game, getting few decent sets of gear is hard for newer players even though they might be level 70 in combat skill. Which explains the tombstones:)

[Aionlasting]

Hi Kaylara,
In regards to evasian, my thoughts were only towards group mobs. So solo monsters would not be affected by an evasian buff but having group mobs with high evasian that required someone who could 'debuff' them would add to the dynamic of group compositions. It was just one idea among others. I also suggested group monsters have higher than usually armor damage mitigation(not total armor hitpoints mind you) that would require someone in the group who can debuff that mitigation to make attacks that land actually do damage. I.e. If you don't debbuf their armor then attacks that land would do like 75% reduced damage or something. Just another mechanic to try and make other classes mandatory besides dps. Again none of these ideas would affect solo hunting or monsters.

[Khaylara]

Hi:)

Sorry when I posted that I was responding only OP because I didn't read the rest in all honesty (I corrected that now, went back and read). Idk if you remember but at some point mobs were given an excessive evasion buff that Roekai loved and I hated (we disagree on many things lol). I didn't like the way it triggered, very random (and as a side note I'd like more reliable ways to trigger vulnerability too but since I'm not a coder I'll leave that to Citan) so that's why it was a hard no, it would be fine if it was made into a feature like rage attacks, you can literally see the rage meter and anticipate a rage attack, maybe if evasion, armor or other buffs and vulnerability would have a reliable trigger too it would work better? (I know vulnerability has a chance to be triggered by an ability but you have to admit it's not very reliable).
The hard no was towards re-implementing that evasion buff as it was back then, my guess is that Citan found it excessive too since he partially removed it. From what I see you kinda like the same thing as me, abilities that apply debuffs, I suggested monsters buffs be triggered by abilities too in order to allow a group to control the fights a bit more and make it more strategic if you will as opposed to just raising mobs's HP and armor which equals "bring dps" in order to burn through so much defenses. If it makes sense, imo it would make group fights more fun and less linear

[Crissa]

From what I see you kinda like the same thing as me, abilities that apply debuffs, I suggested monsters buffs be triggered by abilities too in order to allow a group to control the fights a bit more and make it more strategic if you will as opposed to just raising mobs's HP and armor which equals "bring dps" in order to burn through so much defenses. If it makes sense, imo it would make group fights more fun and less linear
That I can agree with!

If players can bring alot of keys, and the mobs have lots of little locks, that would be great. The rage fights I found fun in the past, as that meant I had to time my stuns to break a mob's concentration. Although recently it's been alot harder for me to watch this... Or switch my attacks around to take advantage, because then I lose so much DPS.

And by combos I just meant things like; a Unarmed I can throw and stun - but other players can't really take advantage of it. (And it's really hard (currently) to throw mobs in the right direction.) So it's just damage mitigation. But it would be nice if players had abilities that could key off of each other instead of just off themselves.

[Roekai]

/r/iamverysmart

Seriously though, it's a game marketed as a sandbox. Why would it make sense for this game to force players into trinity adherence? There's tons of other games out there if you like being forced into a certain playstyle.

Did you even read what I wrote? Can you respond to this?

"Take, for example, Psychology. A few healing abilities, a few damage abilities, a few crowd control abilities. Lots of choices, lots of ways to build your toon, right? Wrong. What is your role in a group? DPS as fast as you can, maybe mezzing one of the four adds before the group wipes, throwing in a heal or two giving everyone one more second to spam their high damage abilities.

You take away the healing abilities, and increase the crowd control abilities. Make it so Psychology has a fear, a charm, an aoe mez, a quick casting time short mez, and a long casting time long mez. This way, the player can choose to be either a pure CC and have a very defined role or can do half damage skills half CC, or however way you want to mix it. (edit: and then you have all your mods on top of that for customization)

Same thing with druid. Take away the ability to do damage, make them Buff/Debuff and Healing. So when you see a druid you're like "okay, is this guy gunna be a buff/debuff druid, a healer, or a mix? and what is his other skill? Is he Druid/Psych Pure healer/Pure CC or is he half healer half buff&debuff/half damage half cc?"

edit: i wouldnt mind having symbotic abilities, where players could benefit from eachother (i.e. hammer can stun and make knife have a bunch of attacks that do extra damage to stunned oppenents) but if we start crossing to straight combos with command prompts im going to burn my computer.

[Daimes]

I respectfully disagree that guiding the game to a quasi-trinity style of combat will open up possibilities for combat opportunities. It will restrict what people can do with their skillset; you even admit this in your post:


You take away the healing abilities, and increase the crowd control abilities. Make it so Psychology has a fear, a charm, an aoe mez, a quick casting time short mez, and a long casting time long mez. This way, the player can choose to be either a pure CC and have a very defined role or can do half damage skills half CC, or however way you want to mix it. (edit: and then you have all your mods on top of that for customization)

Same thing with druid. Take away the ability to do damage, make them Buff/Debuff and Healing. So when you see a druid you're like "okay, is this guy gunna be a buff/debuff druid, a healer, or a mix? and what is his other skill? Is he Druid/Psych Pure healer/Pure CC or is he half healer half buff&debuff/half damage half cc?

Using Druid as an example, taking away damage-dealing abilities from Druid would prevent a great CC synergy with Bard by using Song of Discord and Brambleskin; using Psychology as an example, taking away healing prevents synergy with Mentalism. Mentalism offers decent group recovery and Psychology offers decent targeted healing and offers enchantments through Mentalism that increase the critical hit damage percentage for both skills when used together (not to mention the +X% critical chance you get from Phrenology for both skills). Most skills have planned synergies to diversify the way people can play the game, to which Citan has even confirmed. While you are free to suggest changes to skills, I would personally wait and see what skills are planned to have synergy with each other before proposing axing synergies between skills.

As for the overabundance of DPS-style classes, I would have to say it's because there is simply no need for a tank-type or healer-type class to be present with how the game is currently structured (I say need because I am also 70/70 Bard/Mentalism and usually go on dungeon runs to use burst healing, damage mitigation, and buffs to help the group; there's no need for a healer, but it helps). I am 60/70 staff/shield and have a bunch of equipment lined up for level 70/70 that would give me above 1,200 armor and have more mitigation than you can shake a stick at, but there's simply no need for all of that. Using Gazluk Keep as an example, people just pull one mob at a time and butcher it, leaving no room for healers or tanks. The only time a healer or tank is needed is for boss fights because the combat lasts for more than 5-15 seconds, thereby actually allowing healers, tanks, and DoT-style damage dealers to help out. For that reason, I would much rather see a change in design for dungeons than a change in skills and how they behave. Changing what skills do will just lead to DPS players changing what skills they use, but they will keep pulling targets one at a time.

Also, as someone with maxed staff/shield gear, tanking at the moment functionally does not work. Aggro does not register correctly on attacks. I can use Fight Me You Fools with 90,000% extra taunt, which should register almost 3 million damage taunted, but it simply doesn't (and it's not due to armor absorbing the blow or the target evading the blow, trust me I've tested). Once aggro/taunt gets fixed, then we can discuss how tanking can be introduced comfortably into Project: Gorgon.

tl;dr This honestly sounds like you want to change something that either doesn't need changing or needs fine-tuning at most, and I can see why you were called out for potentially "restricting" players; however, I can respect the dialogue you've presented and would be interested to see what you have to say as the game gets updated.

[Roekai]

i dont think the classes as they are currently structured are capable of defeating harder monsters without the fundamental change, is my problem with your sentiment. I am entirely in favor of the changes to mobs, as was discussed before, but I dont think its feasible without changes.

you need someone to be able to buff/debuff if you want a monster with insane resistances/armor; you need someone to heal effectively if fights are prolonged; you need someone to be able to manage multiple mobs if you want group encounters; and you need a pure tank if you want to have creatures that hit for very high damage.

as you stated, "tanking does not work." well, i would contend, neither does healing, or crowd control, or pulling, or buffing/debuffing. i dont know how you can say this "doesnt need changing" when you also specced tank and say "tanking does not work."

honestly, wouldn't you like it better if you were some sort of uber tank, and people sought you out because it was near impossible to kill any boss of any level appropriate dungeon without* a pure tank?

i am fully in favor of combat synergies, like brambleskin and and song of discord, but there can still be combat synergies under a revamped combat system, where players have defined roles, but can pick those roles and switch roles at any point, instead of being a DPS role by default, because we are all DPS at high level with other niche skills.

edit: "I c your point. So maybe making the combat skills more biased towards one kind of role without completely eliminating their options for flexibility. I.E. Making psycology more of a control role, making druids more of a heal role, making pig more of a buffing role, making bard more of a healing role, but without completely erasing their viability to solo or go into a combat role should they need to? That would make sense to me. One thing we don't really have in this game is a debuffer role which would be cool to see. Something that would make , alongside with making combat skills more niche, buffing group monsters armor and evasion a viable fix to the current problem. "

[Crissa]

you need someone to be able to buff/debuff if you want a monster with insane resistances/armor; you need someone to heal effectively if fights are prolonged; you need someone to be able to manage multiple mobs if you want group encounters; and you need a pure tank if you want to have creatures that hit for very high damage.
...But none of this means that players have to be specialized in these tasks, only that the team needs to carry enough into the fight.

The whole idea of tanking as a solitary thing and not something you mix with DPS is silly theatrics made for simplifying a game. Or to only heal. You just need enough of each for the fight.

The tank could be the healer. There's no particular reason not: Healing provides global threat, exactly what a tank wants. The only reason not is so that in PvP the healer can be taken out by crafty players. Enemies aren't so crafty.

We don't play classes in PG, we play skills. And we don't level skills if we're not playing them. Making a skill not useful to soloing (craft or combat) puts an extra burden on those who want to level it.

[Roekai]

"...But none of this means that players have to be specialized in these tasks, only that the team needs to carry enough into the fight."

...But none of this means that players have to be specialized in these tasks, only that the team needs to carry enough DPS into the fight. FTFY

"The whole idea of tanking as a solitary thing and not something you mix with DPS is silly theatrics made for simplifying a game. Or to only heal. You just need enough of each for the fight."

The whole idea of tanking as a solitary thing and not something you mix with DPS is silly theatrics made for simplifying a game. Or to only heal. You just need enough DPS for the fight. FTFY


"The tank could be the healer. There's no particular reason not"

Fuck it, why bother having game balance. Why not just let the player do whatever he/she wants, and be able to tank the mob, heal the mob, charm the mob, and make dinner and babysit the kids too. I mean, after all, I don't play video games for a challenge, I play to feel like God. Oh wait, no I like skill and challenge - I like to have to make decisions that impact my future instead of being able to do whatever I want whenever I want because that certainly isn't boring.

"We don't play classes in PG, we play skills. And we don't level skills if we're not playing them. Making a skill not useful to soloing (craft or combat) puts an extra burden on those who want to level it."

Way to play semantics, Crissa. I said classes instead of skills, therefore my whole argument is not valid; you win, I concede. Making a skill not useful to soloing or crafting puts an extra burden on nothing. It gives the people who don't want to play a DPS role (such as myself) the option to play a CC role, a tank role, a debuffer role, a puller role, or whatever the fuck role I want.

But yeah, we should just keep doing what we're doing and everyone can spam dps as fast as they can like a ball of zerg fuckery because why bother addressing an obvious problem when we can bury our in the sand.

basically, fuck the people who are worried about having "an extra burden." you cant be a top level scientist, a great dad, a professional athelete, and and ER surgeon at the same time.

sorry for the vitriol but im in a bad mood and frankly do not care for crissa's opinions for as long as i can remember.

edit: and for the record, i fucking love the combat system and this game. its unique and incredible how many different builds you can make. but its a god damn shame how all of those builds boil down to different ways of doing dps.

Citan, you played Everquest; tell me that roles and structure in group combat isn't a goal of yours and ill stfu forever and take a fat L on this issue and wait for that crackheads new game to come out as much as i hate McQuaid.

edit II: this is my last post on the subject. i'm becoming bitter and i've said what i think so theres no point in me shitting on every dissenting response and making an asshole of myself.

ITS FOR CHURCH, HONEY

[Crissa]

"...But none of this means that players have to be specialized in these tasks, only that the team needs to carry enough into the fight."

...But none of this means that players have to be specialized in these tasks, only that the team needs to carry enough DPS into the fight. FTFY
...When you learn how to use tags and actually respond to the arguments given, instead of replacing your foes with straw.

I'm out of this.

-Crissa

I'm also recovering from surgery, so maybe I'm off base, but I don't see anything to respond to in Roekai's response. He took my points, insulted them, and then created a version of them to knock down rather than what I meant.

[Aionlasting]

I think the vast majority of people want to see the same thing. More reason to play a class other than just as a DPS. Some people have expressed concerns, it appears, that if we make some classes excel at specific tasks such as debuffing, buffing, healing, tanking, and add any other role you can think of, that these classes will subsequently lose the ability to solo.

This concern however is mitigated in my humble opinion by the fact that project gorgon does not bind any player to one class.

There are...

1) two classes you can play at once which allows you to spice things up.
2) Secondly, and theoretically if some classes became more specific for certain roles, you could easily switch to a new class that was more solo friendly or dps oriented to maintain that soloness for those times you wanted to solo.
3) Thirdly, the changes to make some classes more role specific does not preclude all combat abilities. It is possible to give some classes more niche roles where they excel at things like group buffs, or healing, etc... without completely gutting their ability to solo.


I think Roekai was saying that without a change to classes in this game where they can be more role specific we will forever see a very bland group game style where everyone is simply smashing dps buttons because monsters don't have mechanics that force groups to assign roles and the reason monsters don't have these mechanics is because there isn't a class really that exists currently to counter them because everyone is really just a dps in disguise.

Ok.. i'll leave it at that. Hopefully that was accurate.

[lileth]

Ok.. i'll leave it at that. Hopefully that was accurate.

Excellent summary imho, ty.

[Roekai]

Excellent summary imho, ty.

agreed. he expressed what I meant far better than i did. /tips hat

[Citan]

We'll definitely see more group roles in the future... and we've had tanky content in the past. In fact, I can probably restore the "tank" role to Gazluk Keep with a single change that gives group mobs their hit points back. They were nerfed because when there were ~50 people online, there were simply no tanks available. Most players do not want to tank at all. It's not a popular role in general and never has been. And while it's definitely possible to build practically-invincible tank characters, they do take a lot of preparation. Lots of gear.

So anyway, right now, the monsters can all be burst-DPS'ed to death, and so people do that. If I give group monsters more mitigation, armor, and health, players won't be able to DPS them efficiently -- meaning they'll have to take lots of damage in the fight -- and support and tank roles will be more useful. Lots of tuning needs to happen beyond that, of course, but often in the past what has happened is that players just choose to solo instead. There weren't enough players to form groups. We do have a lot more players online right now... and probably enough to reliably have some tanks and supports... but I'm not sure if enough are high level yet.

So I'm torn -- I may restore GK elites and bosses in this upcoming update. That would be useful because we can see where things are at, and what needs to change. But I don't want to make GK basically unplayable again. So might wait another few updates for more players to get higher-level. (The somewhat lower-level dungeon known as the Labyrinth could also be made more tanky pretty easily, but again, pretty high-level.)

Also: as you may know, we have another support skill, the Priest, waiting in the wings. I haven't bothered getting it ready to go because, well, no grouping means no need for healers. But it can be made to go with a couple weeks' work. Combined with the existing healing builds, that will give us lots of coverage of the basic trinity roles. I'd like to add some other roles as well, including armor-removal and crowd control. It will take iterations and lots of feedback, but it'll happen.

[Karamasha]

We'll definitely see more group roles in the future... and we've had tanky content in the past. In fact, I can probably restore the "tank" role to Gazluk Keep with a single change that gives group mobs their hit points back. They were nerfed because when there were ~50 people online, there were simply no tanks available. Most players do not want to tank at all. It's not a popular role in general and never has been. And while it's definitely possible to build practically-invincible tank characters, they do take a lot of preparation. Lots of gear.

So anyway, right now, the monsters can all be burst-DPS'ed to death, and so people do that. If I give group monsters more mitigation, armor, and health, players won't be able to DPS them efficiently -- meaning they'll have to take lots of damage in the fight -- and support and tank roles will be more useful. Lots of tuning needs to happen beyond that, of course, but often in the past what has happened is that players just choose to solo instead. There weren't enough players to form groups. We do have a lot more players online right now... and probably enough to reliably have some tanks and supports... but I'm not sure if enough are high level yet.

So I'm torn -- I may restore GK elites and bosses in this upcoming update. That would be useful because we can see where things are at, and what needs to change. But I don't want to make GK basically unplayable again. So might wait another few updates for more players to get higher-level. (The somewhat lower-level dungeon known as the Labyrinth could also be made more tanky pretty easily, but again, pretty high-level.)

Also: as you may know, we have another support skill, the Priest, waiting in the wings. I haven't bothered getting it ready to go because, well, no grouping means no need for healers. But it can be made to go with a couple weeks' work. Combined with the existing healing builds, that will give us lots of coverage of the basic trinity roles. I'd like to add some other roles as well, including armor-removal and crowd control. It will take iterations and lots of feedback, but it'll happen.

Very nice to hear, it's the group content that makes me play MMORPG.
I do like grinding and crafting too but if it's just that and solo play it gets boring really fast.
Priest/Mentalist in the future FTW

[Aionlasting]

Yes I agree, this is great news Citan. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us and why you did things the way you did. I think the larger player base will give you more data to work with and hopefully find the right balance. I'm really excited to hear about the priest class and your desire to add more ways to make group content more interesting by providing players other ways to contribute besides just dpsing! I will gladly provide more input post changes to GK if and when you do make those changes to help you with your data gathering. I think you can even try some changes targeted toward the lower level group content if you want keeping in mind that lower level players won't have all the skills necessary to deal with more mechanically challenging group monsters unless you provide the classes with their more role specific abilities earlier on in the leveling process.

[Niph]

In fact, I can probably restore the "tank" role to Gazluk Keep with a single change that gives group mobs their hit points back.

Allow me to respectfully disagree. From my own experience, as just a player and not a game designer like you are, increasing hit points of monsters is a boon for damage dealers, not tanks. If you consider extreme settings, with creatures having very high life but dealing normal damage, most types of character can sustain a fight and the winner in this kind of game is the character dealing the highest damage.

In my opinion, to make the tank role more significant, one needs to increase damage output of monsters and increase non-damaging-aggro generation + resistance on some player classes. Considering extreme settings again, with creatures having normal high points and dealing very high damage, few types of characters can survive a fight and winners are those that manage to survive long enough to kill their opponent.

Now I agree that few players like the tank role, and few players like the healer role, so increasing monster damage too much could be a bad thing too. And I agree that we can already build almost invincible characters (quoting Odinar "I don't need heals"), but I'm not too sure we can hold aggro. At least not as reliably as you could in, say, EQ.

[Roekai]

I think the reason people have historically disliked the tank/healer build is because it is so one dimensional; All three of us, Niph, Citan, and me, came from everquest. a warrior was a joke other than for tanking raid bosses, and a cleric could have been played by a modded smart mouse. i really don't forsee PG having the same problems. i think people will flock to these roles, granted they aren't completely pigeonholed like in the past.

[Crissa]

Roekai I would suggest something like that, but the keys need to be in enough hands. If you're stuck always needing an X level specific skill, that skill will be run more often than every other skill. Since we get our XP from playing the skill... Of course if every skill is distributed evenly, then it wouldn't have that problem.

So we'd need several skills which hold the keys equally for each encounter, or require every skill somewhere equally valuable so it's likely a team (with dozens of skills) happens to have one that keys right.

Citan will have to make another matrix ^-^

[Roekai]

honestly i deleted most of my comment because now that its down to the fixing of the problem and not just the diagnosing it im starting to doubt myself.

[Tagamogi]

If players can bring alot of keys, and the mobs have lots of little locks, that would be great.

I rather like this way of thinking about fights, although I'm still at a loss on how to implement it.

This may be veering a bit more into solo territory and other threads, but I think we have some existing mechanics that are getting under-used: Vulnerability, rage, debuffs, dots. I think the reason for that is that it is generally more effective to just gear for maximum up-front dps. It feels sometimes that the only special mob ability I cannot reasonably ignore is "extreme regeneration" which can, of course, be solved again by more dps (and only by more dps.)

So, before we restrict any skill's ability to do damage, I'd rather see if there's a way to make non-max-dps abilities more useful, so people would actually want to use those abilities.

I'd also like fights to take a little bit longer in general- maybe just because I have slow reaction times, but it seems that longer fights would have more opportunities for things like power regen, healing and dots to matter.

[Sasaki]

Well it's simple. If you think about in in the "key and locks" kind of way, Brute forcing the door and crushing the locks should always be possible, just much more difficult and time consuming. Getting easier the more locks you open.

[Crissa]

Brute forcing a door doesn't always work.

But right now, it sounds easier to brute force than use the keys...