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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
League of Legends is proof that you don't need a ton of abilities to make an exciting and complex combat system.
Adding more spells to the mix won't inherently make the gameplay more interesting, but instead, let's look at how we can make one of the existing spells more interesting.
Righteous Blessing
Target a friendly player to burst heal them and provide healing over time, as well as deal damage over time to enemies near friend.
This will be your bread and butter heal that you'd use on the tank for added dps. Fairly simple right? It should be noted that the damaging portion of the spell is rather irrelevant in your decision-making, as you would probably use this heal regardless of whether there are enemies near enough to take damage from it. The next spell on the list is
Stolen Blessing
Drop a totem to damage enemies within range and provide that damage done as heals to your allies in range
Now it's a little unclear how this would work (is the damage single-target, or aoe? Does it deal just one shot or stay for a set amount of time, etc?), but let's assume that the totem stays on the ground for 30 seconds and deals a small amount of damage to all enemies every 5 seconds.
Right now there is almost no synergy between those 2 abilities, but why not change that? For example, if you use Righteous Blessing on the totem, it will deal all of its damage and healing in one big burst as opposed to over time. Suddenly you have a choice to make on how you use those spells. You can choose to put the totem down and have it pulse for continuous damage and healing, or you can put it down and use your single target heal to deliver a big burst of aoe.
After max level u get to try so many different ways to play the class and finally find a style that feels natural for u.
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
Most complex standart rotations that i have ever seen: GW2
Go to metabattle.com and look at the raid rotation for herald power dps, chronomancer power dps, weaver power dps fresh air sword and berserker condi bannerslave (yes you heard right bannerslave
Those are complex rotations and you only have 3 utility spells together with 1 ultimate and 5 weapon abilities for each weapon (14 normal skills without powerbar skills).
I wouldn't really call the gw2 rotations complex as there is little to no decision making required. All you have to do is memorise the sequence and repeat it over and over.
Yes for Power Thiefs (or thiefs in general xD) or Shortbow Rangers. It gets another thing when your rotation is 50 moves long ;D.
If its possible let a castsequence macro play the game for me, it has let me down...
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
Future Crafting Plans: Herbalism > Alchemy & Scribe or Mining > Metalworking > Jewel cutting (Pending)
And to answer, I'm going with.... it depends on what screen I'm playing on.
I like being able to quickly see what spells/abilities I have and making a choice during battle.
However that choice just isn't possible on some screens, there just isn't space without crippling something else like vision.
I'd love to be able to swap instantly between multiple UI layouts to solve this.
So, monitor 1, I can use UI 1, monitor 2, well you get it.
I also would love for UI's to be swappable for group plays or solo.
I'd also love for 'reactive' UI's.
So for instance, you fix a healing skill as permanent, but then can fix reactive skills in slots as well.
So that if you select someone, yourself or a mob, you've got your OWN menu to choose from that depend upon the situation of that selection.
Not good at explaining right now... let me try again.
Say I am a healer.
I know that I will always want skill 1 + 2, so attach those to the relevant bars.
That bar is unreactive and will never change.
I can then choose to attach further skills that appear when my criteria of my active in game selection are met.
So as a healer, I select player A. Their health is good, they're taking minimal damage from a creature with no massive damage attacks - I'd probably leave them to it, or might want to attach a general buff/debuff if appropriate. It's ok, because I've already preset the criteria, so the skills I want are available.
Player b is then selected, and the UI changes because the criteria I've put in, is now no longer the same as before.
Their health is good, but they are taking damage - I might want to attach a slow heal over time, or go for a damage reduction/shielding or a buff/debuff. That's fine, the UI now has prioritised those for me.
Player c, they're getting slaughtered, lots of quick heals, HOT's etc etc.
Basically, I would love a game that could produce responsive UI's depending upon certain criteria, that I can pre-set.
This would be useful to all classes and players...
So I've decided to tank. Click on mob A, they meet set criteria 1, pre-chosen UI priorities adjust accordingly.
Maybe they're low level and insignificant. So you might want one quick death blow or aggro keeping bleeds because the group can handle them, but you want the focus to remain on you whilst you store up your energy for mob B.
Mob B, is criteria 2 though. It's the boss. What you want then is really going to change what options you'd prefer to see/have on the UI.
I hope you can see what I maen.
---
TLDR:
The number of skills/abilites matters less to me than the UI flexibility.
Saved UI settings so that we can swap depending upon the monitor and style of gameplay of the moment.
Lets get reactive skill menu's.
Just a waffle.
Example: A mage can choose between three different casting approaches.
1. The fast stance: The casting time is considerably shorter but the damage is diminished, like a peashooter where you dont think about the direct damage but rather want to stack dots and other effects on the enemy.
2. The neutral stance: No changes to casting speed, but the mage cant be interrupted while casting (except through interrupt abilities).
3. The power stance: The casting time is nearly doubled but the direct damage of the spell is heavily increased. The mage is interruptable by direct damage (depends on damage amount and type)
Something less calculated, I mean. It would be like trying to lift a weight before you fully recovered, so you can only lift it half way, but potentially enough to reach your desired destination, but then it could come falling back on you. A double edged sword, if you will in some capacity? But that depends on the natural flow of events, the circumstances that is.
A group of introverts is called an "Angst".
Total number of skills a character has** = 29
The minimum number of skills available at once = ((29 - the number of required*** skills) / 2) + the number of required skills
The maximum number of skills available at once = 29
The number of skill points = The minimum number of skills available at once * the cost of ranking up a skill * 3
Assuming uniform costs, no 'tree' structure and no required skills, this would result in roughly:
18,500,000,000,000,000 possible builds.
If the total number of skills a character has = 10, then, there would be roughly:
115,000 possible builds.
It's a pipe dream to think there will not be any required skills and, in alpha 0, costs were not uniform and there was a 'tree' structure so these numbers will be a lot lower.
It would be very exciting if skills had infinite (or as many as you have skill points and they all cost 1 skill point) ranks because you may see people running around with all their points in one skill and that skill would be very powerful but cost so much mana that they can only cast it once a day. It would also result in a lot more possible builds.
**in their skill book or whatever
***skills that would be detrimental to not take
Does everyone wanting a very low number of skills have arthritis or similar? I feel like any able bodied person should be able to reach shift, ctrl and atleast 8 other keys if their hand rests on wasd, which would give them access to a minimum of 24 keybinds.
Invincible Tank
Unrivalled Dps
Queen of Growlgate
Kraken Tamer
Super Cutie
H8 me cuz u ain't me
On that same note, acquiring the ancient texts for the stronger spells should not be a random drop found in random/specific locations. I'd prefer it to be something similar to an Easter egg hunt or a quest line.
When it comes to the number of spells, the more the merrier!
Schools of Magic:
Fire/Earth
Air/Lightning
Water/Ice
Mind/Morphing
Nature/Shapeshifting
Soul(cures)/Holy(healing)
Blessings(buffs)/Smite(mix of holy and lightning dmg)
Summoning/Conjuring
Blood(sacrifice HP for uses)/Draining
Curses(debuffs)/Agony(dots)
Darkness/Subterfuge(stealth)
... and many more!
If this appears to be a conundrum, that's because it is, I wouldn't wrap it in an enigma though that is going a bit too far.
I want to be able to build lets say a mage that does massive dps in dungeons, but then if I want to go PVP maybe I want to play something stupidly annoying with no damage spells but 20 different crowd control spells just to be annoying. That is what is fun to me.
While having spells to chose from - and even having augments to chose from - is great and all, we only do that once (once per build, at least).
Once we have selected our spells and augments, if we only have 6 - 8 spells, that means when we get in to combat, there are VERY few options we have. It is perfectly conceivable that with so few spells available to us during combat, there may be times when we only have a single spell ready to be cast. In this system, deciding what spells to take out with you would be more fun than actually going out and killing things, as that is the only time you have any options in front of you.
An MMORPG where the fun lies in sitting in town creating builds rather than out in the world using builds to kill stuff is not an MMORPG I want to play.
With so few spells, that means we wouldn't be able to have spells with long recasts. Some of the most fun I had in EQ2 was in maximizing the benefit of spells that were on 3 minute recast timers. Such spells simply can not exist in a system where players have less than 12 spells, yet due to how much more powerful they can be than a spell with a 5 second recast (while still remaining balanced), they make combat so much more fun.
You could have one spell with no cd and another with a 10m cd. That would be one way you could have such spells in a system where players have only 2 spells.
You seem to have picked 12 as the magic number out of nowhere. Why 12?
Invincible Tank
Unrivalled Dps
Queen of Growlgate
Kraken Tamer
Super Cutie
H8 me cuz u ain't me
If its about investing skillpoints to unlock further skills - like those oldschool skilltrees where you actually had to think about what to skill - I want a lot. 50+ or something, including passives and perhaps weaker versions of other skills
Just a vast variety allowing really complex and unique builds
If the game follows the modern trend of"just skill w/e you want youll have anything eventually anyway", id be happy with less than 20
Either way its important that gameplay allows some variety, I dont want to just sit using the same rotation for 5mins straight because there arent enough skills to vary it properly. So I want enough skills to have multiple rotations within the same build as well as some "flex skills" for special purposes like a def boost to prevent teamwhipes or an atk boost for bursting or a low cooldown movement ability/block skill
The chainsystem from Aion was the only thing that kept me interested in the game for a year tbh xD
It was always cool to switch up your chains in the middle of it to throw off your oponents or to adapt to a new situation.
One starter could then go into two different spells and so on.
I learned that you can nowadays create your own chains, but i still like the very first chain system the most tbh.
That would be an incredibly boring combat. Cast your 10 minute spell, and then use your one other spell for the next 10 minutes.
While one could technically say it is functioning, such a combat system would see virtually every player leave the game. Based on that, I would consider it to be broken.
12 spells was not just pulled out of nowhere, though I didn't give my reasoning, and so your question really is fair.
In order for a combat system with long recast spells to work, there needs to be a variation in recast timers. If everything is 1 - 5 second recast, other than your one big spell, then that one spell feels like a gimmick. If you have a 3 minute recast spell, then you also need a 1 minute recast, two 30 second recast and 4 15 - 20 second recast.
This variation then takes that one big spell from being a gimmick to being a part of a larger system and consideration during combat. It becomes a part of your core class, rather than a big shiny button you can occasionally press for "added effect".
That is 7 spells right taken up so far. These spells could all be reasonably expected to be on their recast timer more often than not, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect them to all be on said recast timer at the same time.
Further, if implemented well, the longer recast spells are something a player would want to use at the "right" time, rather than as soon as the recast timer is up. The easiest such consideration is if another player in your group has a buff they can cast on you to increase the damage of all your spells for 10 seconds - if you know and trust the player in your group with that buff, you would likely wait for said buff to be cast on you before using your biggest spells.
Because of all of this, along with the above 7 longer recast spells, players need shorter recast spells in their arsenal as well. If players can expect to have 12 spells, after the above 7 it would leave players with 5 short recast spells.These spells are where things like combo or chain building would take place, and from games I have seen, 5 such spells seems to be the least amount of such spells to not make things boring.
This all adds up to my assertion that a good system including long recast spells needing a minimum of 12 spells to function in a deep and enjoyable manner.