Resource Management in Combat

In the last Q&A livestream I asked what Intrepid's thoughts were regarding resource management in combat (mana useage, etc.) and we got an answer. First of all I'd like to thank Intrepid for answering my question. The answer they gave was vague but it gives a small insight into what combat might be like in the mmorpg. Steven had this to say about it:

"Basically do we want you to be able to kill a player, in APOC, with your whole stamina bar, at the moment is yes. Taking that principle forward, utilizing your mana in an MMORPG do we want you to effectively kill a player and/or a monster with what percentage of your mana bar."

Jeff added:

"The main thing is though that we want you playing the game, without a crap ton of downtime. We don't want you to have to sit down every fight to drink."

Source:

https://youtu.be/ev42u5V7ssc?t=4426

So, the main take-away from this I think is that Intrepid don't want us to go oom on a single mob. That sounds good in theory but as noted by Steven there needs to be a balance. I've played a lot of different mmorpgs lately where your resources don't matter at all. You can kill 15-20 monsters and only use half your available mana. This to me is pointless. Why have a resource cost to your abilities if you never run out of those resources?

What are your thoughts on this? Where is a good balance of how many mobs you can kill before going oom? One thing they didn't touch on is skills to gain back resources during combat. I really like these kinds of skills as they add depth to the combat.

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unknownsystemerror

Until they show us how they plan to address all of it theorycrafting is useless. If they go with stat stacking, then people will build mana or stamina builds to increase caps, if they go with regen skills people will figure out a way to cheese those. The great thing about the alphas and maybe into the betas is that people will be breaking their plan and showing them hopefully how to fix it so their stat allocation doesn't become cookie cutter or a joke. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy and in this case, we are the enemy.

Wandering Mist

unknownsystemerror wrote: »

Until they show us how they plan to address all of it theorycrafting is useless. If they go with stat stacking, then people will build mana or stamina builds to increase caps, if they go with regen skills people will figure out a way to cheese those. The great thing about the alphas and maybe into the betas is that people will be breaking their plan and showing them hopefully how to fix it so their stat allocation doesn't become cookie cutter or a joke. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy and in this case, we are the enemy.

That's assuming there are ways of increasing your mana pool or mana regen at all. There might not be.

ArgentDawn

Wandering Mist wrote: »

unknownsystemerror wrote: »

Until they show us how they plan to address all of it theorycrafting is useless. If they go with stat stacking, then people will build mana or stamina builds to increase caps, if they go with regen skills people will figure out a way to cheese those. The great thing about the alphas and maybe into the betas is that people will be breaking their plan and showing them hopefully how to fix it so their stat allocation doesn't become cookie cutter or a joke. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy and in this case, we are the enemy.

That's assuming there are ways of increasing your mana pool or mana regen at all. There might not be.

I think that's kinda the point we don't know what their current plan is. Resource management is easy to fine tune once you have a base whether it is Regen, max resource, or efficiency based. What concerns me more is TTK. Im really hoping for "longer" fights than what we have been seeing in modern MMOs.

Damokles

A solution to the mana "problem", would be that spells are mana intensive, but that mana also regenerates quickly after combat ends.

WizardTim

A solid rule of thumb is "A tough battle should drain about 1/3rd of a player's resources".

I personally prefer systems like City of Heroes, where you constantly regenerated energy at the same rate whether you were fighting or not, but the energy expense was balanced against that regeneration. It was a fairly flexible system that allowed you to push your reserves hard and drain yourself quickly by blasting an enemy with as much firepower as you could muster, or keep a tighter reign on yourself and pace your energy consumption for a prolonged fight.

Combat resources is definitely a thing that needs lots of attention. I really hate how lazy game developers have gotten with it lately, making spell casters use mana in much the same manner that mundane fighters use stamina. And yes, I know CoH did this with everyone using Energy, but that was a fairly simple system for a fairly simple gameplay.

I'd love to see all 8 archetypes getting a completely unique resource mechanic attached to their combat. Maybe have all of them use stamina with their abilities on top of their own resource mechanic as a universal downtime meter. That way, resource mechanics don't HAVE to require downtime, but stamina means each class eventually has to stop and rest a bit, even if it's after a decent amount of combat.

I've seen plenty of resource mechanics that could be used. Most boil down to a pool like Mana/Stamina, but some could be different like charges (each ability can be used a certain number of times within the space of X minutes, or each charge requires X cool down), or some that use things like taking damage to restore the pool (something useful for tank classes), restoring at a set rate over time whether resting or not, and just using the level of activity to determine how fast it drains, etc.

George_Black

Great topic.

I would love to see Light attacks (left mouse click) not as a tool to increase dps with animation cancelling, but rather see Light atk as a 2-3 atk sequence and upon dealing the 2nd-3rd hit you restore MP.

So for every 3-4 or lets say 5-6 or 7-8 abilities that you use, you will need to perform one or two Light atk sequences to restore 3/5 of the MP you used for all those abilities.

Some players may wanna go all out and burn their MP to nuke a target. Others may want to always keep their MP in check just in case things get worse.

I dont want to see endless resources and I dont want to see kill 1 mob, rest 30s, and this mechanism is my favourite balance.

Also I would like to see a seperate stamina bar for:
Blocking
Dodging
Gap closing
Gap opening abilities

Different classes should have different costs for the above moves.
Different classes should have different size of stamina.
Stamina should regen at a steady, maybe slow pace.

Some classes could have stamina regen upon using some abilities, like a roque or smthng.

HP.

Back in the older days of mmorpgs, Healers would heal, paladins had some emergency heals, warriors had faster HP regen and some abilities in a few classes of the Darkness had life drain magic atks and lifesteal selfbuffs for short duration.

Now all I see is every class in every game have some ability:
heal for X HP with this ability
Strike for X dmg and heal for 45% with this ability.

To be honest, I like it when the group needs to take 5 after 40mins of combat to regain some HP.

This is my view on resources based on open world PvX mmorpgs.

consultant

All they have to do is put a mana generation build. For example equiping some item and having an ability that generates or saves mana.

Really from the game design point of veiw very easy to do as long as it does not get overlooked.Some games do neglect resource management but doubt this will be the case with Ashes of Creation.

Wandering Mist

consultant wrote: »

All they have to do is put a mana generation build. For example equiping some item and having an ability that generates or saves mana.

Really from the game design point of veiw very easy to do as long as it does not get overlooked.Some games do neglect resource management but doubt this will be the case with Ashes of Creation.

I'm pretty sure it's not as simple as that.

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