Siliconemelons
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you act like this is a problem.
I will play some single player OG EQ lets go
I will play some single player OG EQ lets go
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Vanguard of the Fallen - My EQ Based RPG Project
- Thread starter Blazin
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Blazin
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The cleric class isn't currently implemented and I've decided to rework what I have on it so far. Switching it to Paladin. I want a class that I can specifically build around soloing. May be difficult to balance but if I'm fortunate enough to have people want to play my game, I have to accept that many will be doing so solo. This doesn't mean I don't take soloing into consideration with all the classes because I do but I want one that I can specifically tailor abilities more in that direction. So the Paly can be beefy like the warrior but doesn't have taunt so is less helpful to DPS as the warrior is. The paly has heals but largely self only so it doesn't displace shaman as the more supportive role. I may need to work in a CC ability that is set up in a fashion that it just doesn't work in a group. I'm not terribly concerned with classes following their D&D established roles, I am trying to respect those traditions but not following them as a hard fast rule.
Right now in play testing I'm quite pleased with group play and I'm starting to feel the tug between wanting to make a challenging group based game versus a more accessible solo friendly game but making this a multiplayer game has added a tremendous amount of additional complication and I don't want to then waste that effort building around a solo experience.
I am primarily handling difficulty tuning by trying to set up player , NPC and equipment strength such that players can solo content when they are above the level range of their target, a duo should be fighting things that are at their level or very close, and 3 and 4 person groups taking on NPCs and areas 2-3 levels above them. Overall dungeons will be harder and solo players should be able to progress and gear themselves outside of dungeons and be rewarded for taking on the risk of dungeons if they want to.
My moonshot scenario is people actually like the game and if enough people are playing it I'll do the work to let match making happen outside of LAN and let people play it more as I had intended, but since I don't know if 20 people are going to end up giving this a shot or a 1000 I'm just not sure yet how it will play out in the end.
Right now in play testing I'm quite pleased with group play and I'm starting to feel the tug between wanting to make a challenging group based game versus a more accessible solo friendly game but making this a multiplayer game has added a tremendous amount of additional complication and I don't want to then waste that effort building around a solo experience.
I am primarily handling difficulty tuning by trying to set up player , NPC and equipment strength such that players can solo content when they are above the level range of their target, a duo should be fighting things that are at their level or very close, and 3 and 4 person groups taking on NPCs and areas 2-3 levels above them. Overall dungeons will be harder and solo players should be able to progress and gear themselves outside of dungeons and be rewarded for taking on the risk of dungeons if they want to.
My moonshot scenario is people actually like the game and if enough people are playing it I'll do the work to let match making happen outside of LAN and let people play it more as I had intended, but since I don't know if 20 people are going to end up giving this a shot or a 1000 I'm just not sure yet how it will play out in the end.
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Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I hope you're designing it with reskinning in mind so it will be easy to drop all the eq assets and commercialize it once you have a fanbase.
Blazin
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I would do that if there was enough interest. As my first game I'm really focused on learning and if people are liking what I'm making they would likely support me in a commercial project.
Killed an interesting bug today related to NPC attack timers, I had an issue where if an ability changed their haste value then it would need to refigure their attack loop timer. Attack speed becomes a timer in essence obviously and changes to the stats like haste require a recalculation but I don't want NPCs to loose an attack round resetting the ability so I was attempting to save the remaining time until the next attack recalculate the new attacks speed then re start the timer with remainder I had saved previously. This was working well until there was repeated calls. I had the recalculation set to effect changes rather than specifically haste only. IF there strength has lowered I need to recalculate dmg bonuses etc. When there was group play many calls were occurring and the NPC was never getting to an attack round when they were repeatedly having new effects applied or removed (it has to be called on both ends). Still not sure I've landed on the optimal answer yet but have it working much better now, they are much less likely to miss an attack round.
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Honorary Shit-PhD
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Cool stuff man. I've been working on a couple of my own games (nothing like this) and might reach out to you at some point to talk dev stuff.
Not sure if you've addressed this yet as I haven't watched the most recent vids, but your first demo had monsters making their attack noise every attack. I'd suggest making that variable, especially for stuff like bats that screech. Not all enemy attacks need to have sounds in a game like this, I don't think. EQ didn't.
You're doing a great job, and I love that you're doing it. Keep it up!
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Hateyou
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Blazin
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My plan this week was to turn it off for DOT effects, I’ll probably turn off dot hit noise plus as you mention make it that the hit sound can only occur at a certain interval
Blazin
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For the tank players if you had to pick between these two in combat skills which would you pick:
1. A `Hunker Down` type ability where your damage output is limited but have a significant increase to survivability, an oh shit I have to buy the healer time skill.
or
2. An `Intervene` type ability that allows you to project defense on a teammate.
I'm leaning towards 1 because it helps a player feel in control of their survival, 2. requires a change of target by the tank something that in general I think should be avoided. This is the last line of abilities I'm adding for the warrior and it probably is an either or. Just wanted feedback if anyone wanted to give. In my mind the warrior has taunt tools avialable to manage saving teammates and their is "hey you suck as a tank so use intervene" feeling. I think developers put in abilities like #2 and then force encounters to make it necessary. Aggro whipe! But as a counter point I think the tank gets some satisfaction out of using an intervene in a shitty encounter and pulling a teammate through it, but it's probably used most often in a pull that is going to go to shit either way and has a low success rate of the group winning that encounter.
1. A `Hunker Down` type ability where your damage output is limited but have a significant increase to survivability, an oh shit I have to buy the healer time skill.
or
2. An `Intervene` type ability that allows you to project defense on a teammate.
I'm leaning towards 1 because it helps a player feel in control of their survival, 2. requires a change of target by the tank something that in general I think should be avoided. This is the last line of abilities I'm adding for the warrior and it probably is an either or. Just wanted feedback if anyone wanted to give. In my mind the warrior has taunt tools avialable to manage saving teammates and their is "hey you suck as a tank so use intervene" feeling. I think developers put in abilities like #2 and then force encounters to make it necessary. Aggro whipe! But as a counter point I think the tank gets some satisfaction out of using an intervene in a shitty encounter and pulling a teammate through it, but it's probably used most often in a pull that is going to go to shit either way and has a low success rate of the group winning that encounter.
Hateyou
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Both. Skill trees or subclass or some long or shared cooldown on those skills where situationally you could do either or.
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Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Yeah, I think the pick just depends on how the encounters are designed. If you have mostly controlled combat where everyone is safe focusing on burning down one mob with no aggro worries, then 1. If combat is chaotic with sketchy aggro and/or uncontrolled multiple pulls/adds, then 2. If you have both situations, the pick would be whichever is most relevant in the hardest fights. Also probably depends on how discretely you're setting up the roles for the other classes. (for example, the warrior is just supposed to tank while hybrids would be in charge of occupying adds or other classes doing disaster mitigation.)
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Honorary Shit-PhD
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I think my ideal MMO version of an Intervene mechanic would involve simply being able to body block for your allies. No re-targeting required.
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Blazin
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This is what I started thinking about maybe cast an effect out a certain range and everyone in it is protected. There is so much code and events that are triggered by your target I have to kind of build around that. Minimizing the changing of targets because the way I have it designed it can be problematic when rapidly changing targets.
I have the game broken up into tiers one for each 10 levels and skills are refreshed on the tiers but not necessarily all skills every tier. Some I can do every other and this frees up the room to add other ability chains. As a design goal I wanted to avoid classes changing too much in how they feel. I'm not knocking that as an idea but just something I don't want for this game. I don't want players to like the flow of their class then level 40 roles around and I throw them a curve ball with brand new abilities that change the classes dynamic.
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Blazin
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Dungeons are going to have multi mob pulls as a core principle and how players deal with that to be a critical aspect of success and failure. There is some CC but I don't plan for it be as powerful as enchanter CC in EQ, it's a tool but not the end all be all of multi mob pulls.
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Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Then maybe 2? but for example, if anyone playing a warrior is optimizing for AoW, they're going to want 1 no matter how much chaos happens along the way. And the extent to which other classes are both available and capable of similar mitigation could change it as well. If I always expect to grouped with a Pally, I might pick 1 even if most of the game like a Chardok crawl.
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Honorary Shit-PhD
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I woke up thinking about MMO boss design concepts and the way aggro and tanking is handled. Then also the way AE abilities are handled.
EQ mobs eventually had a Rampage mechanic that would be something like "hit the top 4 aggro people in melee range," albeit it always seemed fairly wonky. Both EQ and WoW had range-limited AE mechanics. I'm not sure if either game eventually had limited target AE mechanics that could only hit 5-10 people or something like that. I'm not familiar with late-stage EQ or WoW, so maybe my idea has already been created, but here it is.
I'm imagining a boss with an AE ability that may or may not have a range limitation, but it has a target limitation of 5-10 (or however many) targets, and chooses targets based on a variety of possible metrics. It could pick the chars with the top 10 total damage done since engagement. Or pick the 2nd through 11th characters on the aggro table. Or possibly some combination of that. Or pick the chars with top 5 healing done since engagement. All sorts of things. Then the ability, since it is selective, would need to be something like shooting magic missiles at the select targets. Something that lines up with this selective targeting, it can't just be an AE explosion that magically only hits 5-10 people and ignores everyone else.
Basically the intent here is to create a sense of danger for the non-tank members of the group/raid, and take mechanical pressure off of the tank/aggro system in general. It's somewhat of a proxy for having an aggro table at all. Like the point of an aggro table in a raid is so there's some minor danger added to the non-tank members, that isn't simply a blanket AE that damages everyone. If you're a mage and you nuke too hard and too fast, you're at danger of being targeted by the boss's main attack sequence and will likely die. While I think it's a decent mechanic, I also think there are probably ways to completely eschew the aggro table concept. At least with regard to swapping targets mid-fight based on somewhat arbitrary metrics.
This probably wasn't all that coherent, it's not a fully formed thought. Just wanted to share it and see if anyone sees anything interesting in it.
EQ mobs eventually had a Rampage mechanic that would be something like "hit the top 4 aggro people in melee range," albeit it always seemed fairly wonky. Both EQ and WoW had range-limited AE mechanics. I'm not sure if either game eventually had limited target AE mechanics that could only hit 5-10 people or something like that. I'm not familiar with late-stage EQ or WoW, so maybe my idea has already been created, but here it is.
I'm imagining a boss with an AE ability that may or may not have a range limitation, but it has a target limitation of 5-10 (or however many) targets, and chooses targets based on a variety of possible metrics. It could pick the chars with the top 10 total damage done since engagement. Or pick the 2nd through 11th characters on the aggro table. Or possibly some combination of that. Or pick the chars with top 5 healing done since engagement. All sorts of things. Then the ability, since it is selective, would need to be something like shooting magic missiles at the select targets. Something that lines up with this selective targeting, it can't just be an AE explosion that magically only hits 5-10 people and ignores everyone else.
Basically the intent here is to create a sense of danger for the non-tank members of the group/raid, and take mechanical pressure off of the tank/aggro system in general. It's somewhat of a proxy for having an aggro table at all. Like the point of an aggro table in a raid is so there's some minor danger added to the non-tank members, that isn't simply a blanket AE that damages everyone. If you're a mage and you nuke too hard and too fast, you're at danger of being targeted by the boss's main attack sequence and will likely die. While I think it's a decent mechanic, I also think there are probably ways to completely eschew the aggro table concept. At least with regard to swapping targets mid-fight based on somewhat arbitrary metrics.
This probably wasn't all that coherent, it's not a fully formed thought. Just wanted to share it and see if anyone sees anything interesting in it.
Blazin
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Some game mechanics I'm picking what keeps the project feasible for me versus what I feel is ideal. I'm sure there will be some things people will argue with thinking I picked them from a game theory standpoint rather than just having to make certain sacrifices. I plan to limit AoE, i do plan on having AoE taunt and when the Wizard goes in they will have some AoE but it's not going to be common place. It complicates balance and functions.
Sitting here medding right now playing with a few people. Man am I getting boned by RNG on a spawn. It's funny as the group asks me "Are you sure you didn't mess up the spawning?" I just keep telling them "Maybe there is an anti camp radius" lol
Sitting here medding right now playing with a few people. Man am I getting boned by RNG on a spawn. It's funny as the group asks me "Are you sure you didn't mess up the spawning?" I just keep telling them "Maybe there is an anti camp radius" lol
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Honorary Shit-PhD
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Haha anti-camp radius. The EQ era was so great, nobody knew shit back then. Created so many silly rumors and myths.
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