Improving on the solid foundation that is the Combat System
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
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.