FURY
08-31-2017, 06:50 AM
So, been out of the game a while. But, I saw some comments here on the forum that tickled an itch that I had been feeling but couldn't put my finger on for the past few weeks while playing. (And i welcome you to continue that convo here, its relatable) Also, this thread can be a bit more focuse rather than about all the changes that went into the patch. :D
So the point...
Are we entities(mobs and players) in the game too front loaded with out abilities? We have 98%(guess) of the (mob and player)skills do damage/heal now, now NOW. There is no delayed gratification in combat. This creates a problem in my mind, it means that combat comes down to stat checks and using your 1-2 heals when you are half hp to be safe against being one shot. For clarity, i'm not referring to individual skills but to combat in general as there are many ways to play there are many ways to kill things.
*snip*...
Anyways with that being said I thought I'd leave some feedback about why players head in the direction of pure dps builds so often. ( because I read all your patch notes and blogs). It has pretty much been forced upon us because of how hard mobs hit, coupled with how big heals are not spammable and heal over time abilities are much much too weak to counter you being hit for 300+ a pop. In addition to that your current system of multiple respawns encourage dps checks ....because frankly if you don't clear areas fast enough ( and keep moving with very few short rest breaks) you get swarm-raped. The multi-repop-at-once mechanic is sooooo bad in this aspect, I know your intent was to make things difficult but there is a huge difference between difficult and " if you don't kill fast enough and or take too long in one area you die with zero counter-play options."..There is literally nothing you can do to save yourself or your group when 10 things respawn on top of you...You are just dead....when I say this I mean a fully decked out group in level 70 ( optimal / transmuted /augmented ) yellows will still die if a respawn happens...god help you if you are geared in gear with 3 modifiers like you specifically mentioned in your blog.
I personally feel like big damage numbers and twitch reactions are better suited to action-rpg's( as in the kind of games with manually controlled dodge and block mechanics). The time-to-kill in this game is much to short from both ends here. As in most level-appropriate encounters are basically " you or them in 10 seconds"...if you don't kill them that fast they WILL kill you. Even your highest end ( gazluk keep ) boss fights follow this pattern, except maybe they up the time to kill to 20 seconds, after that you run out of resources for both healing and damage..so again, you or them in a short time frame.
Correct me if I am wrong here but I was under the assumption that you wanted resource management to be important to combat, currently it isn't. Mobs hitting for extraordinary amounts coupled with the sheer amount of creatures you face at once and the respawn shenannigans negate any sort of resource management, the simplest way to explain this is again...you or them, in 10 seconds.
Rage reduction and healing mechanics are correctly balanced for 1 v 1 encounters, but not for group content....no rage management skill in the game even comes close to negating the rage that 5-6 players are dishing out. Same for healing...same for tanking...it all seems to be balanced against solo situations. As you may remember I tried so very hard to make a tank build and a rage management build work...tanking is possible versus one target only( which can be useful on bosses, there are also a very few specific builds that can actually keep you alive versus multi-targets but that's mostly due to 90-100% invulnerability mechanics, such as staff spins...once those invulnerability windows are up you are just as dead as anyone else, healing is almost a non-factor.). Tanking still has a plethora of aggro issues versus multiple targets however, such as not having abilities to generate said aggro on more then one target. Rage management also is nowhere near viable as a primary build in group content.
if you would like to see people playing other roles in group content besides dps then you need to balance content for that...My advice would be to lower the mob density in group content but make every mob take much longer to kill, as in 5-10x current health totals, but also reduce their outgoing damage so it's manageable. If you are going to force players to fight 10 mobs at once they need to be the low-health variety, not 10 elites that each hit for 250-300 damage per shot. This would have the added benefit of making content that is intended for grouping be non-soloable, because you would run out of resources in a long fight by yourself...the other benefit is of course, is if someone needs to afk for 2 minutes it isn't a guaranteed wipe ( which it kind of is atm). ...
*snip*
I think this post points out most of what I am trying to convey. With the front-load, we have quick combat where players seemingly die or run away, its a stat check situation where someone kills the other first, ugh. One of the biggest encounters of MY recent memories is the Fire Golum in Gaz Keep, its a huge giant golum, loads of HP and burst enough to 1-shot a lvl 55 player. This was good in the sense that it took the group a bit of time to kill it, we had to stay out of its melee range to not get constantly knocked back. We had to chain res to keep everyone up... (not great but eh). It was dangerous, it was pretty epic (lvl 70s that were well geared having a hard time), We could feel that conflict, to fight it out to beat the encounter THAT is what was great. It took more time.
So, (and I know that Citan has already made a pass at trying to do this) maybe we can make mobs tougher with less direct impact in their attacks while at the same time taking off the edge of player attacks as-well. We cant do fights if either contender is one-shot after all. I'm sure that it can't possibly be 'just that easy' but would be a good direction to go in. Think of it as instead of stomping out the outlier skills, we just undercut every skills damage. Bringing that bar down means that fights absolutely must longer, simply because mobs and players wont be killed in 2 skill rotations.
This isn't about attacks though, this also means that Power would need to be looked into aswell, running out of power = dead player. So, we need something to *gradually, over time* an income of power to players during combat. I think that is what Citan was going for in the gear changes during the patch so we will see. Yes Combat Refresh exist, but when a player eats his power bar and is then sitting there at 7 power waiting for his basic attack to come up against a mob with a knock back into a stun... It's partially there fault yes, they used all of their allocated power, but it feels realllllly bad to just stand there, its a front loaded build. Thus if they don't kill their mob in 1-2 rotations welp, hope you have friends close else they are dead. We *could* use a more overtime power return rather than -a get power spike, await 10 seconds for your next power supply-
So I hopefully conveyed my feeling. What do you guys think?
So the point...
Are we entities(mobs and players) in the game too front loaded with out abilities? We have 98%(guess) of the (mob and player)skills do damage/heal now, now NOW. There is no delayed gratification in combat. This creates a problem in my mind, it means that combat comes down to stat checks and using your 1-2 heals when you are half hp to be safe against being one shot. For clarity, i'm not referring to individual skills but to combat in general as there are many ways to play there are many ways to kill things.
*snip*...
Anyways with that being said I thought I'd leave some feedback about why players head in the direction of pure dps builds so often. ( because I read all your patch notes and blogs). It has pretty much been forced upon us because of how hard mobs hit, coupled with how big heals are not spammable and heal over time abilities are much much too weak to counter you being hit for 300+ a pop. In addition to that your current system of multiple respawns encourage dps checks ....because frankly if you don't clear areas fast enough ( and keep moving with very few short rest breaks) you get swarm-raped. The multi-repop-at-once mechanic is sooooo bad in this aspect, I know your intent was to make things difficult but there is a huge difference between difficult and " if you don't kill fast enough and or take too long in one area you die with zero counter-play options."..There is literally nothing you can do to save yourself or your group when 10 things respawn on top of you...You are just dead....when I say this I mean a fully decked out group in level 70 ( optimal / transmuted /augmented ) yellows will still die if a respawn happens...god help you if you are geared in gear with 3 modifiers like you specifically mentioned in your blog.
I personally feel like big damage numbers and twitch reactions are better suited to action-rpg's( as in the kind of games with manually controlled dodge and block mechanics). The time-to-kill in this game is much to short from both ends here. As in most level-appropriate encounters are basically " you or them in 10 seconds"...if you don't kill them that fast they WILL kill you. Even your highest end ( gazluk keep ) boss fights follow this pattern, except maybe they up the time to kill to 20 seconds, after that you run out of resources for both healing and damage..so again, you or them in a short time frame.
Correct me if I am wrong here but I was under the assumption that you wanted resource management to be important to combat, currently it isn't. Mobs hitting for extraordinary amounts coupled with the sheer amount of creatures you face at once and the respawn shenannigans negate any sort of resource management, the simplest way to explain this is again...you or them, in 10 seconds.
Rage reduction and healing mechanics are correctly balanced for 1 v 1 encounters, but not for group content....no rage management skill in the game even comes close to negating the rage that 5-6 players are dishing out. Same for healing...same for tanking...it all seems to be balanced against solo situations. As you may remember I tried so very hard to make a tank build and a rage management build work...tanking is possible versus one target only( which can be useful on bosses, there are also a very few specific builds that can actually keep you alive versus multi-targets but that's mostly due to 90-100% invulnerability mechanics, such as staff spins...once those invulnerability windows are up you are just as dead as anyone else, healing is almost a non-factor.). Tanking still has a plethora of aggro issues versus multiple targets however, such as not having abilities to generate said aggro on more then one target. Rage management also is nowhere near viable as a primary build in group content.
if you would like to see people playing other roles in group content besides dps then you need to balance content for that...My advice would be to lower the mob density in group content but make every mob take much longer to kill, as in 5-10x current health totals, but also reduce their outgoing damage so it's manageable. If you are going to force players to fight 10 mobs at once they need to be the low-health variety, not 10 elites that each hit for 250-300 damage per shot. This would have the added benefit of making content that is intended for grouping be non-soloable, because you would run out of resources in a long fight by yourself...the other benefit is of course, is if someone needs to afk for 2 minutes it isn't a guaranteed wipe ( which it kind of is atm). ...
*snip*
I think this post points out most of what I am trying to convey. With the front-load, we have quick combat where players seemingly die or run away, its a stat check situation where someone kills the other first, ugh. One of the biggest encounters of MY recent memories is the Fire Golum in Gaz Keep, its a huge giant golum, loads of HP and burst enough to 1-shot a lvl 55 player. This was good in the sense that it took the group a bit of time to kill it, we had to stay out of its melee range to not get constantly knocked back. We had to chain res to keep everyone up... (not great but eh). It was dangerous, it was pretty epic (lvl 70s that were well geared having a hard time), We could feel that conflict, to fight it out to beat the encounter THAT is what was great. It took more time.
So, (and I know that Citan has already made a pass at trying to do this) maybe we can make mobs tougher with less direct impact in their attacks while at the same time taking off the edge of player attacks as-well. We cant do fights if either contender is one-shot after all. I'm sure that it can't possibly be 'just that easy' but would be a good direction to go in. Think of it as instead of stomping out the outlier skills, we just undercut every skills damage. Bringing that bar down means that fights absolutely must longer, simply because mobs and players wont be killed in 2 skill rotations.
This isn't about attacks though, this also means that Power would need to be looked into aswell, running out of power = dead player. So, we need something to *gradually, over time* an income of power to players during combat. I think that is what Citan was going for in the gear changes during the patch so we will see. Yes Combat Refresh exist, but when a player eats his power bar and is then sitting there at 7 power waiting for his basic attack to come up against a mob with a knock back into a stun... It's partially there fault yes, they used all of their allocated power, but it feels realllllly bad to just stand there, its a front loaded build. Thus if they don't kill their mob in 1-2 rotations welp, hope you have friends close else they are dead. We *could* use a more overtime power return rather than -a get power spike, await 10 seconds for your next power supply-
So I hopefully conveyed my feeling. What do you guys think?