Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

Lunis said:

Are they making combat at least a little bit more complex than EQ though? I'm all for slower paced combat but the idea of casting backstab ad infinitum doesn't get my juices flowing.

Click to expand...

No idea. I hope they make melee classes more interesting.

Sithro said:

No idea. I hope they make melee classes more interesting.

Click to expand...

That's the problem with EQ-like combat.

Spell casting should be differentiated enough from melee to give it a different feeling.

If you adopt a spellbook-like style for melee 'arts', you start remaking EQ2. This would be a mistake. Hitting the same melee attack buttons over and over isn't interesting gameplay.

Positional and more active melee combat found in survival games could potentially bridge this kind of gap but that's not what this game wants to be. Maybe take a note from survival games in a different way and have a bigger focus on consumables?

I don't know how you make an EQ-like without boring melee combat. I believe this might be the big issue here. If you try the solve the problem, it will be a different game.

I hope melee combat is slow and as “boring” as possible.

Just have useful class abilities with long cooldowns that can be used situationally. I’m really tired of playing whack a mole or min maxing a rotation.

Saw Secrets in this one pimping some EQ custom box he's playing with

think i did see some video of 1 of the devs playing some type of melee where they scribed a move like "Kick" from their spell book onto a spell bar... so i think it's a little more advanced than classic EQ but who knows how far they'll go.

i don't mind classic wow melee skills (it didnt go too overboard back then). but yea shit where you gotta rotate or do 3 abilities before 1, or respond to (like a move you do after a successful block) kind of sucks. not cookie cutter shit flashing when its ready and you just mash it (whats the point).

running around to dodge an attack where there's a giant red circle on the ground is fuken lame too.


they need to create melee abilities that can be abused creatively much like original unintended eq spell mechanics (like snare kiting)... just not sure how you do that though dont have any good examples of what i'm trying to say

The less extraneous bullshit the better. Like Your_mum says, no lame ass ground effects, no laser light shows, no seizure inducing e-sports gimmicks. Basic positioning, learning ro read basic telegraphs, and learning a basic rotation, that might change depending on the boss/mob type.

I want auto attack, bash/slam, kick, taunt, and maybe one or two other skills and that is it for my warrior. I should only ever need to worry about the 1-5 keys & movement, and should never ever need to do any CTRL+ or ALT+ bullshit during a fight.

forehead said:

I hope melee combat is slow and as “boring” as possible.

Just have useful class abilities with long cooldowns that can be used situationally. I’m really tired of playing whack a mole or min maxing a rotation.

Click to expand...

To be honest, EQ's biggest pure melee strength is that they're slow and boring. It's brain off mode. One or two buttons at most.

They don't need much - take for example, warrior.

Warrior on live just needed a way to snap aggro, a way to swap in proc weapons, and a way for said proc weapons to reliably proc.
They also needed a way to mitigate damage contextually at endgame.

Everything warrior had in classic -> PoP was either passive or on a long cooldown, or was via an item the warrior acquired.

If I was remaking EQ as a spiritual successor, I'd probably remove some of the RNG with weapon procs, or an ability that can instantly channel the warrior's fury and proc both of their weapons on a somewhat longer cooldown. EQ's biggest problem with warrior was their lack of tools to manage threat. The class was otherwise one of the strongest due to their passive or long cooldown abilities otherwise, and saw many players as a result.

I trust in Shawn & co to find the right balance there - they've found a lot of the other balances when taking the best of modern games and porting them back to the formula that made EQ work, and I expect this will be no different.

Well it should be more up to others to manage their own threat I think while giving them some dangerous all out capabilities

Warrior being able to hold threat no matter what anyone else does is another kind of face roll

They could tie threat into other abilities to make it less obvious face roll and more engaging.

I want to play wizard in M&M but I've been hurt before.

I personally would love a really basic combat system. The older I get, the more my idea of a good MMO is "1998 AOL chat room with dragons".

Ikkan said:

I personally would love a really basic combat system. The older I get, the more my idea of a good MMO is "1998 AOL chat room with dragons".

Click to expand...

And the question becomes how you get those people, who are already playing a game, EQ TLPs, P99s, etc., to leave their established graphical chat rooms with dragons for another. Seems like high-risk endeavor, when those people aren't playing for the game itself but mainly just to hang out and chat.

Ikkan said:

I personally would love a really basic combat system. The older I get, the more my idea of a good MMO is "1998 AOL chat room with dragons".

Click to expand...

So TorilMUD

Complexity can come in other means, through ability interactions for instance like in a MOBA (limited ability set). simple to grasp but deep enough for endless possibilities.

You don't have to have a set rotation but casting the same spell over and over just isn't interesting, to me at least. Having 8-9 abilities, where 4 of them are your core that you use every pull and the other 4 are situational. That's where an MMO like this should land on ability usage imo. More complex than EQ but slightly less complex than classic WoW, mages notwithstanding.

So MnM is your new love huh, no more Pantheon I guess.

My rough thoughts on melee are. Melee classes should not have an auto attack. No class should. Spell casters have to click a button to make an attack so should melee classes. If you want to swing your sword, kick, punch, bash, whatever okay, click a hot key just like a magic user has to do. There should be a rock, paper, scissor game for melee, as there is with magic users and magic resistance. Melee attacks become more effective, more damage, more threat, for hitting the exposed hotspot area, like how it works in a real-life fight. Roughly, if the mob turns red you use an upper attack, if it turns blue you use a lower attack, something along those lines, these events are random so someone just can't just macro a tank box and not have to pay attention to it. It doesn't have to be super fancy, complicated, flashy, just basic. I know something like this pisses off the "watch the game auto play while we chat in a graphical chat room with dragons ", Can't please everyone.
Something along the lines of how gathering works in rust, there are hotspots you need to hit for maximum effectiveness.

Also hitting a mob's hotspot could also increase, hit, stun, stagger, and crit chance for melee.
A system like this could also be used to make pure melee class more effective and less boring to solo with, when you are waiting for a group or your friends to log on to play with. So, that the warrior, or other pure melee, does not just get benched when you are without a group.