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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
A: Neither.
Quaternity with classes reaching into multiple categories to varying degrees of efficacy.
I prefer a party that is ideal to the situation. One of the joys of MMORPGs is coming up with a group composition to meet the challenge at hand. If there are fast fleeing mobs, we need somebody that can slow them down so we don't cause a huge train when they run away. If there are monsters that heal themselves, we need someone that can stun and interrupt them. Need to come up with a composition that fulfills all of the roles while also maximizing DPS = ). Trying to min/max these compositions and finding players that can play their classes well was a lot of fun for me back in the day. We did some crazy stuff like killing level 26/29 named monsters at level 6 all from party composition, tactics, and strategy. Tackling each room was like a puzzle and it was all backed by a solid group composition.
If we look at other games like Pantheon, they have a variety of tanks suited to different areas. I love stuff like this. Classes may be able to fulfill multiple roles, but some things they do better than others. Figuring out how much you need of a specific role and what not to come up with the ultimate party is a blast. Do you only need a little bit of attack speed slowing or do you need the ultimate attack speed slower? Do you need somebody that can tank magic spells like a boss? Somebody to break camps? Can you get away with simple crowd control or do you need something nuts?
Not only this, you can come up with strategies around parties. For example, aoe parties that have wizards in them. I once had a party of all charmers. Even the healer could charm =P. That wasn't so good : D. Somebody's pet was always broken.
What was unfortunate with this min/maxing was that people got so good that tanks were only useful in raids : /. Finding a group as a tank was difficult unless you joined a group of players that didn't know how to play = ). I still love this choice though. I love classes being able to fill out multiple roles to varying degrees and coming up with the ultimate party for a particular bit of content. Focusing on content that my class excelled at was also fun. Plus solving that content! Each class and group had their own unique way of tackling types of content with varying degrees of difficulty and speed. A true master understood every mechanic of every class plus every mechanic of the area they were in. Only then could they form and lead the ultimate group!
One thing I hate is scaled content or content that states "you need to have this number of players" or recommends things. Handholding is the worst.
To date, I think EQ1 Trilogy (classic/kunark/velious) did party composition best. Many types of tanks, many types of healers, many types of support (pure support***), many types of dps all with varying degrees of efficacy in a variety of roles including some DPS that had some support functionality (quaternity). You looked at the complete package of each class and composed your group together with exactly what you needed to what degree for the area you were going into. It doesn't get much more in-depth or better than that.
Two examples of the best groups I've ever been in. Neither have tanks. One doesn't even have DPS.
(aoe group)
Bard
Enchanter
Enchanter
Wizard
Wizard
Cleric
(charm group)
Cleric
Shaman
Enchanter
Enchanter
Enchanter
Bard
I think there are 2 important discintions you need to make - classes vs content
I prefer freedom in classes but more tuned experience of content.
Playing those roles are fine as a byproduct, but really... what's important to me is feeling like I am a Necromancer or Ranger or Illusionist or Bard or Shadowmancer or Duelist or Hunter or Cleric/Priest.
And, I would love to go on missions/quests that require a full party of Mages or a full party of Clerics or a full party of (Ashes) Tanks.
MMORPGs have been sorely lacking in that respect.
tank = aggro holder
dps = almost all classes
healer = all clases that are focuses more in heals
You could say that all bosses actually need the first 2, and only those that are not "super easy" need the last one. However, if it would be interesting, as you mentioned on other occasions, that in the dungeons different skills of the characters are needed, either to take different routes that take us to the same side, take shortcuts, activate devices, etc. And in the case of the bosses probably need certain CC, or skills to give us greater advantage, or for the mech.
In fact there could be things inside the dungeons, which are generated randomly, this way it would not always be the same route. For example, the dungeon always has route A, to reach the boss, but in certain runs, route B is also enabled, in others the C, in others the D, and all these routes to be activated occupy certain classes, these could take us through hidden or different areas of the same dungeon. Also, in addition to routes, there may be certain devices that rarely appear on the runs, which occupy certain classes to activate them and give us a small advantage, like damage, regeneration, etc. for a while or the rest of the dungeon.
I would prefer free form groups, but that would only work (without making it easy for trinity groups) through building the games fighting system around it. There would need to be mechanics or aggro managing tricks to battle bosses, or maybe setting their high damage attaks to be dodgable. There is also an ignorance for evasion in the most mmoms these days. Why should an evasive thief who focuses on dodging not be able to distract the boss at costs of less damage output (maybe not stat wise but because of resources) or why can't an ranger not kite a boss to draw him away from the group.
In conclusion i think i would enjoy the possibility to tackle dungeons in many different ways, through strategy than just stats and skill. But thats mor ideals than reality i think rather than an half working freeform system an generic trinity system would work better.
P.S. I think traps would be fun Idea
Thinking that 40 man raids and pvp challenge material should be allowed to have crossserver interaction cause the amount of people that do those things is low so might be hard to get into one of those groups on your server.
Really there are so many things that can be done to have more tanks and healers for the trinity that free form really is not required. You could easily double the amount of tanks and healers and triple the accessability to dungeouns and raids not the amunt of tanks or healers per say.
Different types of healers/tanks/dps expounding on their abilities in unique ways sounds awesome to me as long as the principle function of their class or class combination fills a clear and present role in group dynamics.
This is, of course, just my opinion and experience, and I appreciate the opportunity to share it!
Characters: Grome | Solun
The thing thats really important to me is how engaging a role will eventually be. Some games have this issue of focusing on making DPS fun. While tanks are those dudes with an aggro pull and after they used it they go AFK get some tea because theyre useless until they can pull aggro again and supports just spam 2 healing spells onto the group. Wouldnt suprise me if they just used a makro to cast them and went AFK until the fight was over
Also something I dont like is when supports and tanks just get everything for free.
The amount a support can heal should scale with their EQ just as much as the damage of a DPS. I always find it stupid and rather boring to just give supports anything they need because they maxed out their support skills while DPS need to grind their EQ together to achieve their DPS numbers to be relevant
Same for tanks. I hope that tanks also need to scale to be able to tank all groups. A tank with no gear should not be able to tank for 3 DPS with max gear. The DPS should still pull aggro
I find it dull if supports or tanks just get free access to anything because they are max level. There should be a reason for them to get EQ other than because its shiny and they should feel in their specific roles how EQ makes their specific roles stronger rather than just boosting stats they dont need
There should also be a decent balance between DPS, Tank and Support in regard to their quantity and demand. It would be rather sad if people end up playing Tank or Support only because finding a group as DPS takes forever
To give an example, say you are getting a group together to fight a pack of fire elementals and you cant find a tank for your party but your group has two mages. In my ideal gaming experience those two mages could spec tank as their secondary making them quite resistant to elemental damage but still very weak against physical. This way the two mages could make up for lacking a tank for that specific content but at the risk of running into physical damage mobs and getting run over.
The main difficulty with this implementation would be having each classes strengths and weakness be pronounced enough while leaving room for solo play but, again, the dual class system accounts for that. As long as players have access to secondary classes early enough, they will be able to spec into combinations that, while not as optimal in group play, are much stronger for the solo play experience.
Some may ask if there are even 8 possible unique niches you could create. The answer is yes but it requires the power level of tanks to be lowered. In many current mmos, tank threat generation is far too high which leads to boring game play where the tank easily takes threat and the dps characters can just slam their faces on the keyboard with no thought to if they might pull threat off the tank. This implementation would require the tanks to have major difficulty keeping mob focus on them, leaving room for the other classes to shine.
As an example for each class's niche(this is what i though off the top of my head so there's obvious room for improvement):
1. Mage- pros: Strongest aoe elemental damage and some mediocre cc, fairly durable vs elemental damage cons: virtually no physical damage mitigation and heavy threat generation
2. Summoner-pros: strongest single target elemental damage and threat reduction through pet. can do moderate healing with some pets cons: incredibly squishy and no cc
3. Tank- pros: incredibly durable against all damage and strongest threat generation, along with high mobility when moving to defend a teammate. cons: low damage output
4. Fighter- pros: highest physical damage character and fairly strong physical damage mitigation. cons: weak against elemental damage and very high threat generation little to no cc.
5. Rogue- pros: very strong single target physical damage output with abilities to remove threat from self and nearby allies along with the ability to create poisons and antivenoms for self and allies. cons: incredibly squishy.
6. Ranger: Fairly strong single target and aoe physical damage and best single target cc in the form of traps. strong movement based kiting abilities. cons: squishy
7. Bard- pros: best group buffs and aoe cc in the form of slows and debuffs and decent dot heals cons: low personal damage output
8. cleric- pros: strongest healing class cons: lowest damage output
En mi humilde opinión de jugador, con experiencia solo en WoW, y muy poco de otros MMOs. No imagino un juego sin la llamada "trinidad" (Tank, Dps, Healer/Support), y lo veo necesario para no estropear el contenido PvE, como Raids o dungeons de 5 personas.
Y me baso solo en pensar lo inestable que se puede volver una instancia con rolles no definidos, haciendo que el progreso de la misma sea mas tosco y engorroso, generando mas frustración que diversión, como algunos aquí proponen.
Doy unos ejemplos de mecánicas que ya todos conocemos, y los pongo en situacion, para que nos entendamos.
- Recibir daño elevado de AoE con 5 dps peleando con el boss y ningun support ni healer con CDs globales para contrarrestar ese daño.
- Ir muriendo de a uno en uno por no poder contrarrestar o aguantar el Debuff que deja el boss tras cierta habilidad o por veces que te genere daño físico.
- No tener daño suficiente para derrotar al Boss antes de llegar al Enrage, por ser todos tanks o todos healers.
- Morir por no poder tener Dispell a ciertas habilidades de algun Boss, por ser todos Dps o Tanks.
¿Notan con estos ejemplos porque lo veo necesario ?La frustración se notara mas temprano que tarde en un grupo desequilibrado al no poder sobrellevar mecánicas de juego tan "sencillas". No me parece tan divertido como proponen.
La solución de algunos es "bajar la dificultad al contenido" para que 5 Supports puedan terminar con éxito una dungeon. ¿Bajar la dificultad? ¿Que tiene de divertido esto?
Lo divertido seria, y reitero que es mi humilde opinión, que nos encontremos con mecánicas y situaciones dentro del juego que necesiten, por ejemplo, que un Dps se pase a Tank o que un dps se vuelva healer, o boss fights sin tanks donde predomine la curación a la banda y algun NPC de la instance. Pero de ahí a poder realizar una dungeon con 5 tanks, o 5 DPS, o 5 Healers, no encuentro el RPG en eso
Espero haber sido claro, se que esta en español
Nos vemos In game.
GL & HF.
Que pasa? (No i dont speak spanish this is pretty much all of it)
The reason is simple:
People prefer different roles and this system gives them a chance to shine in their playstyles, as well as the possibility to win battles otherwise impossible.
However the definition of the roles in the trinity should be strictly practical. For example: what defines a healer should be it's innate ability to keep a tank or other team members alive through a fight that would otherwise kill them. A tank should have intrinsic properties which allow it to survive blows which would kill other players and a damage dealer should be able to deal huge amounts of damage.
I Strongly believe that trinity groups will be the player's solution to hardships, but only if the classes and archtypes are properly balanced and designed.
Your challenge is to give players the ability to specialize in a particular role or be very balanced, while still being able to survive a solo battle. My personal opinion is that the trinity is a good approach to this challenge and I think that your dual class system is a clever way to handle this topic.
-Threesouls
The max number of people in one group is 8 people ;D (one for each class)
I don't think we'll ever truly get away from the Holy Trinity. If mobs aren't doing enough damage to require a Healer, then --in my opinion-- the content isn't going to be very difficult from a combat standpoint. And if the DPS classes can take as much damage as anyone else in the party, where's the differentiation? Thus, the need for a Tank to pull mobs off the DPS.
BUT... the doesn't mean there can't still be some freeform decisions to make. What I'm liking about AOC's Class system --at least, in theory at this point-- is that you're not going to be the standard "Cleric" with a single set of end-all-be-all Skills you have to bring without being useless. Being able to bring the Trinity, while still adding variety/flavor is the way to go, I think.
In many games, healers end up doing a lot of different stuff. They heal, mitigate damage and/or smooth damage, buff/debuff, CC, remove CC (cleanse), remove DoT effects (dispel), remove debuffs, interrupt and provide group mana regen. That is a lot for one player to manage, which tends to mean that healing has a high skill ceiling and is very frustrating. Now I expect everyone will have CC abilities as this is a PvP game, and thus it seems reasonable to give healers cleanses. Everything else on that list could be reserved for a separate support role, allowing healers to concentrate on putting out the heals. Also, having support as a separate role significantly decreases the demand for healers in large groups.
From my experience in WoW raiding, in group sizes larger than ten a quite distinct support role tends to emerge anyway. I played a paladin in that game, and in a raid environment it was very much a support class since it has only single-target abilities (except for one small passive AoE heal). Although they sometimes called me "tank healer" (because I was using my heal on the tank) in truth most of what I was doing was supporting the other healers. Formalizing this role might make group composition easier.
That being said, wandering monsters probably shouldn't require any specific group composition. There's no reason for them to have complex mechanics and gathering groups don't need the hassle of making sure they've got multiple roles represented. But world bosses and dungeons should probably require at least one of all four roles. This applies to PvP too. Small groups of players of whatever composition should be able to fight each other in the open. However, people should be encouraged to put together units or companies to defend caravans. Sieges should require at least a minimal level of organization to be successful. I see a lot of castle sieges in other games that are just massive zerg rushes: no one coordinated deployment or directed troop movements. The fun of battle is in matching wits with your enemy (at least for me, and I know I'm not the only one).
Imagination is the highest kite you can fly.