EQ Never

Reasonable compromise.

Pyros_sl said:

After playing GW2 I'm not sure it's such a great idea. I liked the Vanguard way though, movement penalty while casting. You can still move but it's not like full speed so you still have the tradeoff move the fuck away/ do damage which I feel is kinda important. It also reduces the impact of instant cast spells if you can just move at full speed while casting long spells.

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Casting while moving is fine in my opinion, you can still have channeled spells with none or reduced movement.

Dumar_sl said:

Did you ask him if he came from WoW?

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He probably couldn't afford to play WOW.

These are have been mmo ideas popping around in my head for years. Away from button mashing and more toward a game that rewards thinking and preparation over fast twitch. Everquest was the only MMO I know of that directly translated a players knowledge and experience into ingame effectiveness to any extent.

I'm aware its just me, but I really want a game that moves away from archetype classes. Why can one person swing a sword and another cant? Why can one person do magic and another cant? There hasn't been a good MMO that explains that in the context of the game.

Maybe one day there will be a game where anyone CAN do anything they want, its just the limitations on practice and preparation that limit them. Weight allowance is a great tool for this. Stop allowing people to carry dozens of weapons and multiple suits of armor. Also make magic much more difficult, burdensome and powerful. For example two players gear out for a dungeon crawl. Player one has been working his melee/tank type skills. He has been crafting his armor, learning move combos, increasing his strength through runes, potions, and practice. He is a good tank because of actual training and experience in game.

I would like to see players learn melee skills in actual move combos, somewhat like a fighting game, but not that complicated. Focusing mostly on putting together efficient and effective combos of moves predicated by weapons used and fighting style. Any melee COULD do anything.. but why would a 6'10 tank work jab combos with his broad sword and shield? Players would learn moves in game and they would be unlocked by various means.

It would be up to the player to use whatever ones he wants, in whatever style, most effectively for what he wants to do. Basic examples for a sword and board warrior would be: Thrust; high/low/middle (low damage, high speed, high hit probability, low effort, med taunt, maintains defense) Cross Slice; Vertical/Horizontal (High dam, slow speed, high effort, high taunt, opens defense). Low Cut (low damage, med speed, med effort, low taunt, med hit probability, maintains defense, +movement debuff), High Cut (High Damage, Slow Speed, High Effort, Low Hit Probability, med taunt, +Crit/Kill Shot bonus)

These basic attacks would be paired with a defense that included how they held their shield (max protect, most effective vs large creatures, heavy attacks, -damage for attacks, some attacks not available from this this stance; Dueling Sheild (+damage, -defense, all attacks available + special shield attacks).

There would also be sword blocks, mostly simple stuff that would ask the player to anticipate what attack is coming, (high, low, mid, Overhead, left/right flank) Successful blocks would allow for special parries or ripostes and lower defense of opponent. This would really open up dueling and make pvp much more interesting.

Magic would be another beast. I would put a heavy emphasis on the magic user being prepared to use magic and cast certain spells. Enough regents, focus objects, materials. Wearing the right equipment (i.e. not plate armor) like robes that can hold these materials and augment power. Casting a spell would be like a mini crafting skill. It takes some time, it takes some preparation, it has variables... but it can be fucking devastating..

Id even like to see an interface for casting like the game Black&White from Lionshead, where you had to make certain symbols to cast the spell while holding certain objects with your mouse, and the more precise your drawing, and better the regent, the more effective the spell. A spell casters abilities would depend on what materials they had, what spells they were had memorized and practiced, what they were wearing.

Anyone could do healing, or Damage, or necromancy, as long as they were prepared. More powerful spells would have high demands and be more complicated. There would be no shitty high level mages.

Those are interesting ideas, and a lot of them have been done before. I disagree with most of them, but it's a matter of taste. I also edited your post so it's more readable. Paragraphs man.

Good post though, here is my reply:

Weight restrictions: I like this idea if the game is designed around it. In my opinion you need to create a game where a player, locked into a single role, wouldn't need multiple sets of gear for group and solo play. It can work, but you'll need to design the game so a tank, with tank gear, isn't completely useless unless he's in a dungeon with 4-5 other people.

Combat: That's very very twitchy and I'm not sure you can do that in an arcade like fashion, especially online with latency and client-server lag. You would have to automate it to a certain degree and create a system that is turn based or heavy autoattack based where you input your character's stance and aim and let your character fight on his own (that might be fun and make Tad happy).

Even with a spell system like Black and White, would be impossible to do because there will be autohotkey scripts that make you move your mouse perfectly for spells by just pressing a single button and it would almost be impossible to detect.

The problem with a character being able to perform any role is that people will become expected to perform any role. People should play the roles they want to play without the pressure of having to perform roles that they get little to no enjoyment out of. Once your character is defined to a role, the process of changing that role should be similar to leveling a new character all together.

That really depends on design. In rift's system that is easily the case because players can do complete role shifts with a press of a button and are expected to have 5-6 different builds saved up. More often than not you don't need an extra set of gear, unless you're doing more difficult content.

But in games like FFXI(V) where leveling different aspects of your character is difficult, it is understood you might not have everything unlocked where as in Rift, you always have abilities unlocked just by leveling.

The slow walk casting in vanguard was awesome. I agree with the person that said having to stop all the time feels really outdated now. In vanguard it wasnt too manic, it just meant that u could tip toe in to position while casting your nuke, really nice.

As for the DDR thing, maybe it would be fun to have one class that is all about positioning. Maybe they place little totems that breath fire or something but they only breath in straight lines, so u have to run around lining them up. And like someone said, you could drop wards on the ground, some that you kite the mob on to and they explode like skyrim, and some that boost spellpower or something which means you have to rush back to it whenever you want to start unloading nukes. I love the idea of positioning in these newer games. Like in AoC there was cone shaped heals that meant healers had to move around to heal the whole group, and in newer games channelled spells sometimes are in a line and can be interrupted if the target runs behind a tree or whatever. I dont like ddr really but a bit of movement would be good, especially if it was just one or two classes.

The main thing i want to see with combat, is an end to watching my UI. I love vangard but its a pain in tha game because i am constantly watching my ui for thigns like when the global cooldown ends or when a certain finisher/bridge pops up or whatever. I much prefered EQ because I could watch the mob and only occasionally had quick glances at my spell gems to cast something. I love vanguards extra complexity but i wish they could somehow do that but let me watch the mob. I love in GW2 and TSW when mobs do huge attacks or an aoe or something and you have to move out the way or dive away. Makes me feel much more immersed and involved in the fight.


and as for content creation i rememebr they talked about players being able to make their own weapons and stuff. there was an article about it on the ign or something. I am sure that will be in this game.

I hope so. I like rift because the variety was a nice twist. One minute i was a mage healer, then a mage nuker, and mage support was really fun too. Hard to get bored with all the variety. But individually none of them were as fun as eq. And the casting 10 spells a second thing is just tiresome.

Draegan_sl said:

That really depends on design. In rift's system that is easily the case because players can do complete role shifts with a press of a button and are expected to have 5-6 different builds saved up. More often than not you don't need an extra set of gear, unless you're doing more difficult content.

But in games like FFXI(V) where leveling different aspects of your character is difficult, it is understood you might not have everything unlocked where as in Rift, you always have abilities unlocked just by leveling.

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Yep. I'm not against having every role available to people but it should take a serious effort to access them. Rift's way doesn't work for me and just increasing the cost of respecs is not the answer. Roles should be well defined and semi permanent, switching can be possible but not encouraged.

I hate to use EvE again as an example but their version of skills is closest to what I would do. But instead having xp be time based I would keep the old mob / quest xp system. Then you could level up in any role but only use one at a time. If you do switch roles you keep the xp in the old role but just can't access it while working on the new sets of skills. Starting on a new role would be much like rolling a new character, almost from square one.

Switching roles shouldn't be easy but not sure how hard I would make it. My inlination is towards a quest possibly involving faction. Choice should matter and it shouldn't be much easier to do a new role over just rolling a new alt. For people who like to play alts, games like Rift really do away with them. And one of the problems I have with EvE is that rolling alts on the same account is kind of pointless.

Essentially you're saying each class has a narrow role at any time that can change to another narrow role via essentially "leveling an alt"...more or less?

I'm torn on that. I enjoy classes having multiple specs to some degree that doesn't require a huge barrier to entry. Make gear more rare and you have your time sink.

I'm also interested in tanking mechanics because I'm firmly on the threat isn't fun bandwagon. Maybe AE threat is still fun. Controlling a flood but single target threat is meh. I like the survival metagame that Blizz is using now a lot. I also like tanks having group saving utility beyond threat. Cue the "WoW had zero good ideas" ragers.

althuna_sl said:

As for the DDR thing, maybe it would be fun to have one class that is all about positioning.

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EQ Monk - was all about postional pulling - how close could you get to Mob X (or X & Y) w/o aggoring Mob Y (Z) and then where do you FD to split blah blah blah. Also, I'm not adverse to rogue damage being positional - hamstring if near feet, backstab, back, blah blah blah. But needs to be very limited.

Caeden_sl said:

Essentially you're saying each class has a narrow role at any time that can change to another narrow role via essentially "leveling an alt"...more or less?

I'm torn on that. I enjoy classes having multiple specs to some degree that doesn't require a huge barrier to entry. Make gear more rare and you have your time sink.

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Pretty much.

One of reasons being is that I like to roll alts. And I like those alts to be different races that have different leveling experiences and faction. For instance rolling a human SK in Qeynos was interesting and much different than rolling a barbarian shaman in halas, a druid halfling, a half elf enchanter, a troll warrior... etc. You get the idea. When everyone can be everything then those experiences are meaningless.

And then race faction becomes meaningless since everyone will just take the easy route and roll whichever race gets along with everyone else. EQ was right to have certain classes paired up with only certain races.

Another reason is that being able to switch classes/roles whenever you want really makes Rift's combat and games like it very bland in the long run. Along with everyone being clueless how to play. People should know their class/role and to do that they have to invest real time in it. (which is also a reason not to have skill bloat or multiple hotbars).

I dont mind roles, but I want DPS to be eliminated as a role.

If you want a trinity have it be heals/tanks/supports and give everyone the same dps capabilities. In this age everyone wants/needs dps for some activities, so give it to them instead of dancing around the issue with dual spec and various restrictions. That still leaves the burden on the designers to come up with a good second role for each class since pure damage isnt its own role anymore. But that's their job after all. between all the buffs, debuffs and control abilites they can mesh together from a dozen years and as many MMOs or more they should be able to manage.