Welcome to Project: Gorgon!


Project: Gorgon is a 3D fantasy MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. We won't be guiding you through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project: Gorgon also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

The Project: Gorgon development team is led by industry veteran Eric Heimburg. Eric has over a decade of experience working as a Senior and Lead Engineer, Developer, Designer and Producer on successful games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online and other successful Massively Multiplayer Online Games.



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  1. #1
    Junior Member Sunchaser's Avatar
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    A discussion of psi waves in mentalism

    Hi all,

    I've been playing the game for a while now but have never used the forums. Today I'd like to talk and ask about psi waves, and felt like this is the best place to elucidate my opinion and receive feedback. In particular, I felt like psi waves are unnecessarily complex and punishing, and make mentalism a skill I found extra trouble enjoying.
    Please note that this is coming from a player no-where near endgame, and is more focused on early/mid-game (e.g. dailies) aspects of the game. In addition, I've tried to get into mentalism several times but have always failed. As such, there may be aspects of psi-waves and mentalism which I have not considered or are wrongly opinionated, and I'd appreciate feedback.

    Psi waves are a set of skills which, once initiated, provide buffs or health/armor/power regenerations for 60s. They share a common cooldown of 20s, so ideally one can stack up 3 waves simultaneously, potentially of the same wave (e.g. 3 healing waves). My issue with psi waves is simply that why they'd stack 3 times instead of, say, 2 times (i.e. with a shared cooldown of 30s, after rebalancing). Below I'll try to argue why the 3 stacks make the skills unnecessarily complex.

    There are two advantages of the current system (over 30s shared cooldown) that I can think of:
    Pros 1) With a 20s shared cooldown, each psi wave can have an effect of 0%, 33%(ABB), 50%(ABAB), 66%(AAB) or 100%(AAA) of their full potential (considering every combination in a 60s window). With a 30s shared cooldown, each psi wave can have an effect of 0%, 50%(AB), 100%(AA) of the full potential. Is the freedom to have 33% and 66% effect (instead of just doing 50%) really significant? This is a clear no to me, but feel free to argue otherwise.

    Pros 2) Allowing 3 stacks means that one can have 3 distinct waves simultaneously. However, I would imagine any optimal playstyles will only want at most 2 simultaneous waves, considering how mods work and the fact that particular skills will always be better in a given scenario (gk/dailies etc). Again, I haven't experienced the end game such as gk, nor have I got that deep into mentalism, so this opinion could be wrong.



    On the other hand, there are several things in psi waves that felt unsatisfying to use (and I have to imagine I can't be alone in this):
    Cons 1) Needing to cast the spell 3 times (per minute or cycle) is unnecessarily annoying and punishing (and it's much more than the fact that casting 3 spells instead of 2 takes an extra second). From a new player perspective, if one forgets to cast the wave on time, they are punished much more heavily than when the shared cooldown is 30s. In particular, with a 30s shared cooldown, casting the 2nd wave between 30 and 60s means a total efficiency between 100% and 50% (linearly). This could potentially be much lower with the current system, if the new player delays both the 2nd and 3rd wave. Now, an argument could be made that the game should not be balanced around errors. However, this is an issue even for the ideal player. Even when playing optimally, the player can still be stunned and feared. In addition, psi waves are hardly a priority that the player might often need to delay it for other spells (e.g. to heal or kill). The current system, since we have to cast waves thrice per minute, also has a (33%) larger window for such issues for delays to take place.
    If nothing else, I feel like only having to stack twice will make the skill feel much less clunky.


    Cons 2) Related to Pros 1, the 50% effect scenario of the system actually creates windows of 33%(BAB) and 66%(ABA). This is an unnecessary complexity that may create spots of vulnerability. For instance, the heal wave are half as effective in half of the windows which might lead to potential deaths. Similarly, having only one adrenaline wave instead of two might mean that the group is not able to kill an orge in time before their rage attack, leading to massive stuns, broken bones, and potentially deaths. Now, don't get me wrong - waves are mere supplements with small effects and heal waves should only be marginal heals that round off the corners of actual healing spells. Still, my point is that this is an unnecessary complex aspect of psi waves that is only more harm than good (however slightly).

    Cons 3) Related to Pros 2, the current system which allows 3 waves might not be the best way to implement it. If the playstyle is to cast the 3 waves sequentially, then it's a very passive/unchallenging gameplay - Do we really want the difficulty in mentalism to be about casting 3 spells on time in a minute? On the other hand, If the playstyle is to choose and adapt the compositions of waves depending on the situation, then the current implementation is sub-optimal as well, considering that each time you cast a different wave it'll only be 33% of its maximum effect, and it'd take a full minute to reach maximum effect. Instead, below are some proposed alternatives that may allow change in directions of the waves to be more rapid and potent per step.



    Here are some alternative implementations of psi waves I was pondering.
    Alt 1: As I've spammed way too many times, change the cooldown from 20s to 30s, so that the psi waves are stacked twice instead of 3 times (and rebalance skills to be ~150% stronger). This is the simplest change that I feel like will streamline the mentalism gameplay experience (i.e. from tiling patterns to alternating patterns), without changing the current direction, focus, and philosophy of psi waves and mentalism as a whole.

    Alt 2: Similar to alt 1 but be such that casting a psi wave leads to a 60s cooldown to that wave, and 30s shared cooldown to others. This further simplifies the psi waves, but may allow a new direction of them as 'Here's a bunch of things psi waves/mentalism can do, pick two.' (and the devs can introduce many more psi waves, potentially niche/fun ones, if not specialized ones (e.g. extra damage, but only for some damage types)). Disabling double casting of each wave might also allow a larger design space for this purpose (i.e. don't have to worry about everyone just spamming the best wave, now they have to choose the best two (that may do different things)). Furthermore, it might allow suboptimal/conditional waves to be tuned up, and promote a 'have multiple waves in the bar but choose and adapt depending on the situation' kinda playstyle (if this is what the devs want, that is). Of course, along this line there might be an issue of mentalism being able do everything (e.g. https://forum.projectgorgon.com/show...-class-Options, not that I 100% agree with their point or want such discussions here...), so there are details to polish.

    Alt 3: No longer have shared cooldowns (but each with a 60s cooldown). Instead, inflict tradeoff when casting a psi wave while other psi waves are on (maybe self damage, maybe make each on-going waves weaker/shorter, etc). This might however promote passive gameplay if the tradeoffs are too weak. On the other hand, if we allow the player to turn off ongoing psi waves (to avoid trade-offs), or if the game only allows 2 waves and automatically turn off the oldest one when a 3rd is cast. it might allow a playstyle of 'choose and adapt depending on the situation', though perhaps with similar issues as Alt 2.

    Ultimately, there are numerous ways to implement this. But I'd like to urge the devs to take a step back and consider what they want out of psi waves (passive playstyle? choose and adapt? something else) and mentalism in general (what proportion of the gameplay is psi waves related), then the best implementation might be immediately obvious. In contrast, the direction of the current mentalism skill might be too vague and loose in terms of what they bring/ how they stand out, which hurts the implementation.


    Thank you for reading. Again, I am no-where near end-game and am also not too experienced with mentalism. So perhaps my opinions were based on wrong groundsPraise Oranges and there may be advantages of the current psi-waves implementation I didn't realize. In such case, feel free to refute my points. I also introduced a bunch of alternative implementations that may work (and may work for other support skills, say bard). However, I haven't thought about it that carefully so they might have implicit issues with them as well.

    tldr: The current implementation of psi waves are unnecessarily annoying, complex, and punishing (Cons 1&2). Any advantages of the current system (Pros 1&2) seem minimal and pointless, and the implementation does not fully enable such advantages (Cons 3). Some alternative implementations proposed that will hopefully provide insights...

  2. #2
    Junior Member Crusader2010's Avatar
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    Nice post and I agree with it. Currently the PSI waves don't feel natural, but rather forced.
    I would like a system in which I can cast at least one wave, once every [insert random time interval here]. In other words, here's what I'd love to have:
    - no more shared cooldown between PSI waves;
    - increase the duration;
    - either impose a limit on the number of PSI waves active at any one time, or simply allow any number but make them last X seconds with 2*X cooldown;
    - if the first way is chosen, make sure we need to make hard choices regarding which of them to use and also make the cooldown equal to the duration and disallow using the same wave multiple times (because probably except for people at the late game, most of us will use as many waves for power regen as possible);
    - if the second way is chosen, disallow using the same wave multiple times but increase their effects by at least 50%.

    Another idea would be to also make them instant spells (i.e. can cast them without triggering a global cooldown nor stopping your character in place).
    PSI Waves should be "fire and forget" spells in my opinion, instead of having to constantly watch the duration and/or forcing you to not use other spells for quite a bit of time (since you need to keep refreshing them if you want to have 2-3 up). Not having a way to see the actual duration/cooldown numbers on buffs/abilities (without hovering over) doesn't help either.

  3. #3
    Member ErDrick's Avatar
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    When I tried to main mentalism a long, long time ago I actually stopped because the waves were good but annoying to constantly watch / recast.

    To me a persistent wave that is just toggle on / toggle off would have made the skill much more enjoyable to play, similar to how battlechem buffs work on yourself.

    I would have preferred something like that while increasing the power of individual waves( to compensate for not being able to stack multiples). I mean, there may be people who prefer stacking them and that's fine, but I personally found it annoying and that's why I never really used it again.

    Current system really leans towards preparing for 40 seconds before every battle if you want to be at "full power" and that's what I find annoying.

    My advice would be if you are in the same boat and Citan doesn't want to change it... to just use battlechem or bard and forget about mentalism. ( that is actually what I did). Maybe that's the intent, mental for people who aren't bothered by micromanaging and the other 2 skills I mentioned as alternatives.

  4. #4
    Senior Member Yaffy's Avatar
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    There's nothing wrong with a skill that has to dedicate a lot of effort into keeping up buffs on the party, but I do agree that having to use a wave every 20 seconds is too tedious. I don't agree with what you said about it being, risky, punishing,etc (In fact if you made the waves stronger and have a longer cooldown, it would be more punishing to miss a wave since you'd be missing out on a bigger effect).

    I think changing the cooldown of wave skills to 30 seconds is simply about making the skill less tedious to play more than anything. Yes the skill would be slightly improved because you're using less GCD's on waves, but the effects would be very minimal to the point where it would probably be unnoticeable in combat. I do want to be careful about "Quality of life" changes" that make the class too simple to play, but trying to keep up waves isn't really fun or challenging as much as it is tedious.

  5. #5
    Senior Member Mbaums's Avatar
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    I’m in the group that there is something wrong with the psi-waves, but I’m not totally sure what and how it should be fixed. Flaws with support skills are less noticeable than attack skills, so when things are readjusted, it’s easy for something like this to be left out.

    My beef with the 4 waves is that they all share the same cool-down, and builds that use 2 waves on their bars seem really neat on paper, but game-play wise I don’t find it fun and I think 2 waves are not worth taking up 2 of the 6 ability slots. Simply put, having two skills on the ability bar with the same cool down is a serious commitment, but there is no pay off.

    I would like to see a solution that makes the possibility of build that just takes every psi-wave possible. I did a suggestion awhile ago asking that the waves get unlinked cool down wise, but using a wave gives the other waves a 5–sec cool down, AND add some mod on mindreave that decreases the cool down timer of waves by a couple of seconds. The idea is, a build can exist where someone is full wave-support and has a rotation like wave, basic attack, wave, basic, wave, etc… deals trash DPS but provides the group with something unique. A group might have two people in a full party giving wild amounts of health/armor/power regen, and + damage, but would it be stronger than having two people with fire magic? The balance of support vs damage is really tricky, but I think weakening the existing psi mods and adding this would be enjoyable.

  6. #6
    Junior Member Sunchaser's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crusader2010 View Post
    Nice post and I agree with it. Currently the PSI waves don't feel natural, but rather forced.
    I would like a system in which I can cast at least one wave, once every [insert random time interval here]. In other words, here's what I'd love to have:
    - no more shared cooldown between PSI waves;
    - increase the duration;
    - either impose a limit on the number of PSI waves active at any one time, or simply allow any number but make them last X seconds with 2*X cooldown;
    - if the first way is chosen, make sure we need to make hard choices regarding which of them to use and also make the cooldown equal to the duration and disallow using the same wave multiple times (because probably except for people at the late game, most of us will use as many waves for power regen as possible);
    - if the second way is chosen, disallow using the same wave multiple times but increase their effects by at least 50%.

    Another idea would be to also make them instant spells (i.e. can cast them without triggering a global cooldown nor stopping your character in place).
    PSI Waves should be "fire and forget" spells in my opinion, instead of having to constantly watch the duration and/or forcing you to not use other spells for quite a bit of time (since you need to keep refreshing them if you want to have 2-3 up). Not having a way to see the actual duration/cooldown numbers on buffs/abilities (without hovering over) doesn't help either.
    Thanks for the response.
    Having no shared cooldown seems to be one of the more common things I hear from people in game actually (which I proposed some variants as alternative 3 in my post above). I think shifting the 'difficulty' of psi waves from casting spells on time and stacking them to choosing which to use at different times is a much more interesting one. Heck, we don't even need the psi waves to have a long cd, just don't allow stacking and limit the numbers of simultaneous waves and we'll allow making choices at a faster timescale. Though this may be more in line with bard (playing songs and switching depending on context), and I can see why thematically psi/body waves should be related to slow/slacking...

    I'm not sure if I like having cooldown twice as long as wave duration. Personally I'd like to have 100% uptime of the waves, but surely this could be one implementation if the dev chooses.

    I also love the idea of not having gcd. Fits thematically as a wave and honestly would bring down a lot of the hazzle related to stuns and delays. I mean, reactive spells should have a gcd as an opportunity cost of actions, but waves are just routines/chores we have to do to maintain the buff as you said.

  7. #7
    Junior Member Sunchaser's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ErDrick View Post
    When I tried to main mentalism a long, long time ago I actually stopped because the waves were good but annoying to constantly watch / recast.

    To me a persistent wave that is just toggle on / toggle off would have made the skill much more enjoyable to play, similar to how battlechem buffs work on yourself.

    I would have preferred something like that while increasing the power of individual waves( to compensate for not being able to stack multiples). I mean, there may be people who prefer stacking them and that's fine, but I personally found it annoying and that's why I never really used it again.

    Current system really leans towards preparing for 40 seconds before every battle if you want to be at "full power" and that's what I find annoying.

    My advice would be if you are in the same boat and Citan doesn't want to change it... to just use battlechem or bard and forget about mentalism. ( that is actually what I did). Maybe that's the intent, mental for people who aren't bothered by micromanaging and the other 2 skills I mentioned as alternatives.
    Haha I am exactly in your boat - except that I am a filthy beast which cannot use BC or bard. Druid is fun though.

    A toggle on/off sounds like a good option too. Maybe with a large cooldown/shared cooldown to make the choice meaningful.

    I honestly don't see how stacking can be appealing to anyone - though I'd like to be enlightened. Not gonna lie, while in dailies and waiting for bosses to respawn, I feel for mentalism users who have to keep spamming waves for like 10 minutes... Whatever themes the devs were intending behind stacking, I legitimately believe there's a better way to implement it.

  8. #8
    Junior Member Sunchaser's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yaffy View Post
    There's nothing wrong with a skill that has to dedicate a lot of effort into keeping up buffs on the party, but I do agree that having to use a wave every 20 seconds is too tedious. I don't agree with what you said about it being, risky, punishing,etc (In fact if you made the waves stronger and have a longer cooldown, it would be more punishing to miss a wave since you'd be missing out on a bigger effect).

    I think changing the cooldown of wave skills to 30 seconds is simply about making the skill less tedious to play more than anything. Yes the skill would be slightly improved because you're using less GCD's on waves, but the effects would be very minimal to the point where it would probably be unnoticeable in combat. I do want to be careful about "Quality of life" changes" that make the class too simple to play, but trying to keep up waves isn't really fun or challenging as much as it is tedious.
    To clarify on my post, I think the skill being tedious is the first and most important point I wanted to make. While everything else I proposed represent a shift in direction of mentalism and needs a lot more planning/thinking before commitment, increasing the cooldown from 20s to 30s (and possible stacks to 2, i.e. alternative 1 in my post) is the one change that I think needs to happen. It preserves the current theme of psi waves (stacking), and reduces reduce the unnecessary complexity by a lot. It is a (almost tbf) strictly better system that I believe is only rational to move toward.

    Regarding the punishing point. The comparison I was making is actually between 3 and 2 stacks (and not stacks or not). The point was that with 3 stacks, delaying the 2nd will also delay the 3rd stack, which leads to a superlinear relation of reduced efficiency in contrast to when there are only up to 2 stacks (in addition to that with 3 stacks you can mess up in the 2nd and 3rd stack). Now don't get me wrong: This is a small effect of an already minimal heal/power regen that is in no way your main source of healing (You can do the math and show that with a 10s delay of the 2nd stack, the drop in performance is like 80% and 85% for 3 and 2 max stacks respectively. something aropund that, that was while I was making the post...).

    However, the punishing aspect also holds from a psychological/game enjoyment viewpoint, messing up on the 3 stack case is so likely to happen and feels worse than messing up on when there's 2 max stacks (e.g. the former might be a constant occurance, while the latter might be more of an exception). Now, a reversed argument could be made that mastering the 3 stack will therefore provide more satisfaction, and it may be true for some. But at least for me (and I assume quite a few others) this is still much more dull than a more reactive gameplay, and really should not be the difficulty of the mentalism skill. Ultimately, if the point of psi waves is to be an easy skill to keep on for players who want to be passive (which is something I can get behind and would also enjoy), then I think the current implementation is making it unnecessarily difficult.

    I do agree that any changes might have implicit issues and need to be thought out though - but I'd love to see some of them at least tested out to improve mentalism's experience.

  9. #9
    Junior Member Sunchaser's Avatar
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    I definitely see your point. I think the current issue with psi waves is just that there's yet to be a clear vision behind it, such that the waves are trying to do multiple things but seem ambiguous as a result. And that's fine - unique and potentially cool skills like this needs to be implemented first and then tuned over time. There are multiple ways to 'fix' it, but my belief is that the choice depends on what the devs decide on the theme/direction of psi waves and mentalism as a whole.

    I'm not sure if I totally see your point that using 2 slots is too much of a commitment - especially in the sense that it's offering something other skills don't provide, and there's a mass selection of skills that have 100% active gameplay.

    The alternating between waves sounds like a cool idea and might be the improved version of stacking 3 different waves - it actually reminds me of weaver/elementalist in gw2. The only issue is that I'm not sure if this fits thematically with psi-waves and mentalism, which I guess the devs are thinking it as much slower entities. Maybe something like that could happen with bard or some dance combat skills thing. The skills also need to be designed in a way that will not give literally every buff as well.

  10. #10
    Member Jarlaxle's Avatar
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    Could we do the same for the damage shields like molten veins, fire shield and brambleskin and make it a toggle? It's pretty tedious to keep having to cast those too whenever it goes down. Feel free to adjust the damage numbers if needed. I'm sure theres other abilities that it would be great for as well, such as icy armor, etc. If a toggle ability has "on cast mods" to it then just make the buff duration permanent while keeping the recast the same so that you can get those on cast effects if wanted.



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