Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Kreugen_sl said:

I'd actually like to see far more abilities made passive, however you are limited in that number of passive abilities you can have so that's where your ability to plan builds comes into play. Riposte, backstab, Ignite (fire spells leave a dot), Combat Builder A01. Basically any ability that you would -always- smash when available should not have to be smashed at all. Any ability you use should always be a choice, and you should rarely want to use the same ability over and over.

A simple example would be a wow rogue that doesn't have to use sinister strike/mutilate, only finishers. This essentially gives you four combat abilities with a shared cooldown of around 3-5 seconds. So you choose to either hit slice and dice (self dps buff), riposte (large damage dot), eviscerate (smaller damage dd), or kidney shot (stun) So, a rotation, but without all the spam in between.

Or maybe I'm nuts and this would bore us all to death after being used to 60apm MMOs.

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Good idea but devs would have to design around it. VGish example: flying kick is an activated ability. Fire stance and Ice stance (I forgot actual names) are passives, but they're mutually exclusive. You can either add a little dps, or add a small chance to slow. Similarly your system should have a mix of mutually exclusive passives and a few always on passives all of which can affect a particular activated ability or all activated abilities or even the auto attack.

On Rerolled? I was on FoH since... uhh, forever. I just hadn't bothered to come over to rerolled after the demise of the old FoH forums. I'm in this thread for a rather more... personally invested reason.

tad10_sl said:

There are a bunch of mmos with no auto attack and spazzy combat existing or coming out soon I don't think we need another.

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/signed

Ilucide_sl said:

On Rerolled? I was on FoH since... uhh, forever. I just hadn't bothered to come over to rerolled after the demise of the old FoH forums. I'm in this thread for a rather more... personally invested reason.

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Leet beta infoz spotted.

Kreugen_sl said:

I'd actually like to see far more abilities made passive, however you are limited in that number of passive abilities you can have so that's where your ability to plan builds comes into play. Riposte, backstab, Ignite (fire spells leave a dot), Combat Builder A01. Basically any ability that you would -always- smash when available should not have to be smashed at all. Any ability you use should always be a choice, and you should rarely want to use the same ability over and over.

A simple example would be a wow rogue that doesn't have to use sinister strike/mutilate, only finishers. This essentially gives you four combat abilities with a shared cooldown of around 3-5 seconds. So you choose to either hit slice and dice (self dps buff), riposte (large damage dot), eviscerate (smaller damage dd), or kidney shot (stun) So, a rotation, but without all the spam in between.

Or maybe I'm nuts and this would bore us all to death after being used to 60apm MMOs.

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I've written out dev theory shit for something like this. If you want to go completely away from action combat and go full auto + situational there is an interesting way to do things that extremely similar to writing a Rift macro or a combat sequence in FF10? 9?

Essentially you have whatever amount of skills that each have a pulse or tempo rating. You have basic attacks with the tempo of 1 or 2, so they go off every 1-2 "pulses" which could be like every 1.5 seconds or something. You can then have skills like Double attack or Triple Attack that shoot off 1 or two extra attacks every "basic attack". Rogue's basic attack has a tempo of 1, and a warrior would have a tempo of 2. Weapons and gear can augment this (2H warrior would have a tempo of 3? whatever). You can even have different skill levels of Double Attack so there is a chance it fires off.

Then you can add in skills that can be weaved into your pulse system like "expose weakness" a basic attack that has a tempo of 5 that debuffs the target. You can have fire procs, pick pocket procs, slow procs, whatever. But they all have pulses associated with them.

This is some old school MUD principles right here.

You have a UI where you can craft your autoattack sequences. Which is essentially like turning on and off passives but I assume we would figure some way to make it a bit more interesting.

Like a Wizard's basic attack would be a "wand" but at some point you can upgrade your basic attack to a fireball.

Then you your class would have a few action skills like backstab, bash, kick whatever that you can throw it whenever time is appropriate during combat.

Combat then becomes more about positioning and situational awareness of firing off certain abilities.

Muligan_sl said:

I like the idea of 8 slots. Just stay away from EQ2's system.

Also, is there going to be auto-attack?

I may sound like a broken record but I really believe you could copy and paste about 80% of EQ and be pretty close to a solid game. May I make another suggestion, don't expand the world outwardly with updates/expansions. Add within the world all you can. I really felt that EQ would open a continent worth of zones and i honestly needed probably 3 of them. Furthermore, I would like to see the play base still travel through old zones and use old towns. Looking back to my time of EQ, I think you could have added many of the zone within the current world and kept people connected without sending them to the moon or wherever....

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This is an excellent idea. Mix and match zones with low/mid/high level content. This doesn't mean (obviously) level 10 mobs running around with level 40 mobs, but put newer dungeons in older zones. Mixing older, more experienced players with newbies is always a good thing.

Limited slots.. around 8-10.

And I would like the system to support classes that get fewer slots, or more.
Or that certain factors, like deity choice, or the reward from a long-ass quest, can give additional slots.

Or mix in DD-rules. Classes with double mana pools, and only 4 slots.

Ilucide_sl said:

On Rerolled? I was on FoH since... uhh, forever. I just hadn't bothered to come over to rerolled after the demise of the old FoH forums. I'm in this thread for a rather more... personally invested reason.

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So, which Pantheon dev are you

Daelos_sl said:

Limited slots.. around 8-10.

And I would like the system to support classes that get fewer slots, or more.
Or that certain factors, like deity choice, or the reward from a long-ass quest, can give additional slots.

Or mix in DD-rules. Classes with double mana pools, and only 4 slots.

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4 slots, what is that 2 attacks and 2 buffs... *boggle* why must options fit on a freakin game controller ... choice = good. limits = BAD

shabushabu_sl said:

4 slots, what is that 2 attacks and 2 buffs... *boggle* why must options fit on a freakin game controller ... choice = good. limits = BAD

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If 4 is a limit, then so is 8, or 80, or 89321312 slots. It is not inherently bad.

Providing different classes with different flavour is providing more choice.

Which would you rather play:
- A wizard with 4 slots, and 1000 mana or
- A sorcerer with 8 slots, and 500 mana

The first one will be more consistent DPS. The second will provide more utility.

shabushabu_sl said:

4 slots, what is that 2 attacks and 2 buffs... *boggle* why must options fit on a freakin game controller ... choice = good. limits = BAD

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bzzt wrong. too much choice = bad.

having limits in place requires the player to make decisions. meaningful decisions is what makes games fun.

Treesong_sl said:

3. A fantastic 1st person view (next to other views).

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Yes plz other views also I love 1st person and all but, I also like to be able to zoom out and look at stuff around me and my toon.

Aradune_sl said:

What do you guys feel about a spell/ability system where you have a fixed number of slots, so even if you know 100 spells, you can only mem a few at a time. Or, do you prefer the 'as long as I have mana' I can cast what I want?

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Please limit the number of spells on the screen. I enjoy the strategy involved when you have 100 spells but can only have 10 or so active. It makes your choices and spells much more meaningful. Plus I hate feeling like I am behind the controls of a mech (i.e EverQuest 2's 4000 spells and clickies on screen at once). The UI should not take up 65% of the screen either.

I prefer a system like the original EQ that you have to mem spells and can only have a few up at any one time. If you want to change to use others then you have to do it out of combat and sitting. As for skills something like vanguard would do but without the ability to use so many hotbars just one with a few skills on it and that is it.

Aradune_sl said:

What do you guys feel about a spell/ability system where you have a fixed number of slots, so even if you know 100 spells, you can only mem a few at a time. Or, do you prefer the 'as long as I have mana' I can cast what I want?

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I am currently playing EQ2, VG (sorta), and a personal EQEmulator. VG has it about right but if we go ol' school, 10-12 would be appropriate.

Aradune_sl said:

Agreed. If you're a cleric, you're a cleric. The finding of exotic abilities and spells is going to be a lot of fun. But it's still subject to a solid class based game. It allows you to customize your abilities to some degree (a meaningful degree) but it's not true multi-classing. You're a cleric who has some cool spells that many other clerics may not have. But you're still primarily a cleric and have a role to play. I'm just throwing out numbers right now, but it will be something like you're 90% cleric and then 10% something a bit different because of some crazy rare abilities or spells you've acquired by taking some risks in the depth of a dungeon.

Let me know if that makes sense.

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This sounds awesome! dam how I miss games like this...

Aradune_sl said:

What do you guys feel about a spell/ability system where you have a fixed number of slots, so even if you know 100 spells, you can only mem a few at a time. Or, do you prefer the 'as long as I have mana' I can cast what I want?

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I would prefer to have a fixed number of slots; like in EQ you had hundreds of spells, but you had to create strategies and know what spells to use depending on what you were doing. It made it fun and challenging because you could not use the sames spells all the time for every thing you did or you'd likely fail, or make your life increasingly more difficult.

Daelos_sl said:

If 4 is a limit, then so is 8, or 80, or 89321312 slots. It is not inherently bad.

Providing different classes with different flavour is providing more choice.

Which would you rather play:
- A wizard with 4 slots, and 1000 mana or
- A sorcerer with 8 slots, and 500 mana

The first one will be more consistent DPS. The second will provide more utility.

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I am convinced that this "few skill thing" is all about playing this shit with a controller on your couch... I do not know why you would limit what you can do in a game if it is meaningful and you can have meaningful skills in #'s greater than 10, see DDO see Vanguard.

Why am I feeling now that wildstar is turning out stupid the action MMO crowd is coming here . . . there is a reason those games don't hold anyone and simplistic spazzy( ty Tad) combat ( neverwinter, gw2, wilstar ) is one of them.

@Brad

Aside - making pvp a stretch goal is pretty clever. If Pantheon gets funded, pvpers will work to hit the stretch goal.