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/r/iamverysmartQuote:
Originally Posted by Roekai
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.
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.
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).
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:)
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.
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
That I can agree with!Quote:
Originally Posted by Khaylara
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.
Did you even read what I wrote? Can you respond to this?Quote:
Originally Posted by sudostahp
"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.
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:
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.Quote:
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?
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.
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. "