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.
Hello. Relatively new to the game here, but MMO player of many years.
First, really enjoying your game. Thank you for it.
Second. I'm searching the wiki and forums for a way to better participate in the group environment. Above all other aspects of a MMO, grouping to complete a dungeon is my favorite. After tagging along in a group last night, that I was surely under geared and under leveled for, I found myself (and my group) struggling to properly assist the tank and target to heal him / her. Somethings I noticed are listed below.
Healing: How do you quickly target group members for healing? Tried clicking the group / party GUI but that seems not to work. Rest of the party was 50 / 50 on this, so maybe it's a bug. I found F1, F2, etc to work. Indecently, right clicking party member names allowed some interaction. Left clicking did not.
Group Window: I did not see a way to resize it. This would help a bit with all aspects. Targeting to heal (if left click to target worked), and right clicking to assist. But to be honest, the party window was just to small. I expected to be able to drag the edges like other windows, but that dd not seem to work.
Assist: What's your preferred method? Right clicking the party window seems inefficient.
Macros: This applies to all above. I Googled for this, and all I got was "you will be banned" on other websites. I want to be clear, I'm talking EQ style /assist macros. /assist, /target for example. Not fully automating anything. Just wanting to make grouping easier to manage.
Again, I really like this game. I know it's in alpha and if "That's just how it is" is the answer, that's fine. But right now the grouping environment seems a bit of a mess. Curious of others thoughts.
Preface I go not spent a tremendous amount of time in parties however when I do I nearly always play support/ White Mage. Having said that perhaps it is because of my experiences with ff11/ff14 but I always found the F1-ect. keys the easiest way to target the party members in need.
perhaps an option in PG to select key bindings for either next party member and or specific party slots 1-6 ect.
I'm pretty sure left clicking the name in the party window works. It does lack solid, visible feedback that it did work, and that you are targeting your chosen ally. Your targeting orb might switch to them, and you will spin to face them and move towards them to cast, and their hit box might be up around them. But those indicators require looking away from the party window and that is kind of the last thing you want to do. Some sort of highlight or indicator in the party window would be nice, like a drop shadow or a bullet point for the active.
It is easier to notice that your abilities are working at higher levels, when adding back a couple of hundred HP to someone with 500 HP it easier to notice that you did that. Still there is confusion most of the time, because you don't know for sure that you are the one that did the heal. They could have healed themselves, got a combat refresh or been healed by someone else. If the stat bars filled up with white for a second if someone else did the repair, and filled up with some other color to indicate you did it that would give extra feedback to the players. But battle is confusing and not sure if any amount of feedback would remove that confusion.
Assist? Some game mechanic from some other game? There are so many ways that you can assist an Ally I don't see how one right click could know what to do. First Aid, Reconstruct, Revitalize, Pep Talk, Healing Injection, Lend Grace, Mud Bath, Rally, Moment of Resolve, and probably plenty more. Even if you made it easy and simple said Use Major Healing ability on Right Click of Party Member name there still be the question of which if you had one Major Heal on both ability bars. If it was automated and controllable, it would require it's own GUI. If it was automated but preset, then people would want use minor then major healing, use major then minor, use the healing that gets closest to getting them full without going over, use all heals until they are full. And that doesn't touch on Armor or Power boosts or evade or protection or accuracy. Or maybe I just misunderstand what this Assist is and what it should do.
I think the best choice is to identify particular issues and offer ideas that might address that issue. Somethings might be too difficult to implement, somethings might be on Citan's todo list already. But feedback can help improve the game, especially if it is detailed and constructive.
I believe that by asking for /assist, it was meant as something that would make it quick to target the same enemy that your partner is targeting, making the killing more efficient.
I believe that by asking for /assist, it was meant as something that would make it quick to target the same enemy that your partner is targeting, making the killing more efficient.
ah, didn't know. Thank you for the info. That might be helpful.
I haven't spent a lot of time working on the grouping UI elements since the UI-rewrite. (And I can't test it out at the moment, though I will later tonight when my build machine is available again.) Clicking on someone's name in the group window definitely should select them. For people familiar with the old group window, do you know what element of feedback is missing now?
There's no immediate plans for simple in-game macros (though we've done a bit of exploratory work for that and may add them at some point). There is however a key command you can bind in the options called, I think, "Target Selected's Target" or something like that. (Again, can't use my machine atm, it's doing heavy processing. Will update when I have the exact wording!) It will select the target of the thing you have selected. So you can select a party member than use that key to select what they have selected. You could also select a monster and use that command to target whatever the monster is attacking, so you can heal them.
Looking in the Setting>Keys there are
Select Target of Current which has a default setting of Ctrl + Backspace
also
Select Enemy Targeted by which has no default setting.
To add some context to the OP question, I'd like to explain why /assist (or similar feature) is wanted. In EQ it used to be (and probably still is) dangerous to fight too many mobs at once, even in group. You had few AoE options and a dedicated class for crowd control, so it became expected that everyone would hit the same mob and for this you would target a "master assist" character in the group and hit a /assist macro.
Eventually, the UI allowed you to tag people in group with roles (such as "tank") and you could also /assist <someone>, or /assist tank.
I don't expect PG to reach the same level of difficulty, and so far a joyful, blind slaughter of whatever comes back with the puller has been working for me. As long as people are careful to not bring more of course. Crowd control is very limited, sometimes a bad thing to do. It seems /assist isn't as useful as in EQ, but time will tell.
I think that there are potentially two easy adjustments that can be made that would make grouping easier. Selecting a member on the party screen works for me, so I'll ignore that one.
1) It would be nice if selecting a party member would also select that party members target for offense skills, or even if there was a toggle to enable that feature. This is the case in several other MMOs, and it makes it easy to select the target of the tank or the designated puller without the necessity of cycling through mobs.
2) There's currently no feedback, aside from some skills with visuals on the character, that you've healed or buffed someone in a party. A small border around a party member's health, energy, and armor could flash, blink, or path around the bar. Something like that could be an easy visual feedback mechanism that wouldn't require a healer or support character to shift focus away from the party's meter area.