I agree that you can have those situations- thats why I clarified that "usually" your gameplay can be impeded by lack of mana- but it depends on how the combat is designed. Regardless, even if you can still "act" with badly managed mana, you still have much more limited options, otherwise mana shouldn't even be a thing if it doesn't affect your options. So, you have "more" gameplay with more mana, so thats kind of ny thought process for wanting to have control over its management, rather than hoping someone else does it right so that way I have the most options available to me as often as possible.
Yeah, but in my experience lack of HP is the same limiter as lack of mana. I wouldn't attack a mob that hits for 20% of my HP if I only had 30% of it. And I'd either need a healer to restore my HP or I'd need to wait for regen.
And while Azherae is correct that a lot of games provide you with some ways of circumventing the mob's attacks, so your value of 30% HP goes way up, I'd imagine that mana's value is higher than HP's by default. I could be wrong in that assumption though and every ability use reduces your mana by ~20%, but then I'd personally highly dislike that design.
You're actually thinking about that slightly backwards for a lot of the 'better' games.
HP restoration is low AND target damage is low.
Having lower HP restoration values makes it easier to balance PvP AND PvE. Mobs don't need to have massive jumps in damage, they hit for 5-10% of your HP and you spend your time 'figuring out how to make sure their big abilities don't go off' and 'managing your HP inflow'.
So you can 'spend time at lower HP' somewhat more safely and make MORE choices instead of 'well I am either basically at full health or dead' (Neverwinter).
So far, Ashes is this design type.
"Choose the enemy where when you run out of mana, you can probably still finish them before they tick your HP down."
As a healer I say this is more engaging for me personally as well. Big heals should cost big mana and draw big aggro, but I also shouldn't be NEEDING to use them, and I mean on nearly ANYONE but the most glass-cannon Mage or Rogue who should be figuring out how to not get HIT ever.
That's my opinion. Abilities take meaningful chunks of your mana but you don't need to use them that often if you don't want to. Again, this is already Ashes' design as we understand it now. If it changes much, I won't exactly be surprised, but this is the way it was EXPLAINED so I would hope it stays similar for all those 'unfortunate souls' like me who saw what we considered good combat design and went 'yes I wanna play that!'
As Steven always says, if you're not enjoying the combat, it's going to be rough.
You're actually thinking about that slightly backwards for a lot of the 'better' games.
HP restoration is low AND target damage is low.
Having lower HP restoration values makes it easier to balance PvP AND PvE. Mobs don't need to have massive jumps in damage, they hit for 5-10% of your HP and you spend your time 'figuring out how to make sure their big abilities don't go off' and 'managing your HP inflow'.
L2's design warped my thinking too much. If I was solo - I had no buffs so any stronger mob would do a ton of dmg. If I was in a party - it was always a constant one with a healer and an MP manager. The "middleground" of those would be higher rated servers where you had a full buff w/o a party, but then you'd be fighting the same strong party mobs, so they'd still do pretty big chunks of your HP.
So yeah, if Ashes manages to step away from the L2's buff design and its utter REQUIREMENT for farm - the game would most likely be way closer to what you're saying. And at that point I'll just learn to play it the way it's meant to be played.
Yeah, but in my experience lack of HP is the same limiter as lack of mana. I wouldn't attack a mob that hits for 20% of my HP if I only had 30% of it. And I'd either need a healer to restore my HP or I'd need to wait for regen.
And while Azherae is correct that a lot of games provide you with some ways of circumventing the mob's attacks, so your value of 30% HP goes way up, I'd imagine that mana's value is higher than HP's by default. I could be wrong in that assumption though and every ability use reduces your mana by ~20%, but then I'd personally highly dislike that design.
I guess thats the point we disagree on- I think that the hp maintains its gameplay value much more than the mana does. Mainly because as long as you are alive, you have access to all of your tools, even if you don't utilize them you still have that choice. Wheras, the lower your mana, the less tools you have available, which kind of removes that choice- assuming the mana system functions as intended and is there for a reason.
I don't like when one or two classes are 'expected' to restore mana to others and content ends up balanced around that because I feel the lack of those classes leads to 'less gameplay' and the stigma around the situations that arise leads to multi-boxing and other negative outcomes, particularly since many support players seem to prefer their classes to be easier mechanically.
To me, the game that has best addressed mana regeneration is EQ2.
The game has similar regeneration to EQ, but only in combat. As soon as you leave combat, regeneration of both mana and HP is exponentially faster. They did this in part to address the need to bring an enchanter along with every group, but also just in part to speed gameplay up.
This left mana management as skill a vital skill in the game still though, and there are 4 classes out of the 24 that assist others with it.
However, since you only really need to consider mana management within the context of a single pull (or a single chain pull), it meant it wasn't essential to always bring one of these classes with you. It would be better on a lot of content to bring an additional DPS - though any of the above four classes were always welcome to come along. Sure, you needed to bring these classes with you on content that was expected to take more than 10 minutes per pull, but this content was designed for organized guilds, and so meeting the requirement for specific classes to be present was considered a part of meeting the requirement for the content as a whole (you wouldn't form a raid without an appropriate number of tanks and healers, adding support to this acceptable).
In comparison to other games, mana management in EQ2 was quite varied. You had your in combat regen rate, which was boosted by some gear and support classes, but also via some gear effects (for a while, a boost of 7 mana per second in combat was the effect on the best caster robe in the game, and when paired with 5 on a set of quest boots, was basically god tier).
But then you also had your out of combat regen, which was boosted via beverages. At the level range in which a 12 per second increase to mana in combat was considered god tier, the standard player made drink would increase out of combat regen by 60 per second.
On top of those two different regens, you obviously had your four support classes who were able to boost in combat regen, but also cast essentially mana heals.
Your glass cannon caster classes all had a small ability to convert some HP to mana on themselves, as well as a slow casting ability to heal some mana on a target (which could be themselves). Then you had two Summoner classes that had the ability to an item in to the inventory of anyone in their group, and when activated, this item would boost their mana by an amount (one was a direct mana heal, the other a mana heal over time).
Then you have items such as manastone which was a quested item that would restore a small amount of mana when used (around 300 from memory - using the above regen numbers for context on that). This used a small amount of HP, but had a cooldown of 45 seconds as This was able to be upgraded later on to providing a flat 5% of your mana back to you (300 mana at level 90 was not enough to cast a single spell).
There were also a few other items to boost mana - I had one that you could use once per 24 hours, that would just replenish your mana back to 100%.
Then there were potions. The game had two types of potion to restore power per level range (instant and over time), and had two rarities of each potion. At the same level where 12 mana per second on gear was god tier, the common potion to restore power instantly was restoring 295 power (the rare one was just over 400). The mana over time potions restore mana every 3 seconds and last for 30 seconds (meaning 11 ticks of the potion), and the common one was regenerating 26 per tick, while the rare one waws 36. Potions had a cooldown of 165 seconds per potion type (so you could use one instant and one over time potion every 2 minutes and 45 seconds).
These potions were useful enough to buy, have and use, but were by no means a substitute for a class and/or gear that could regen mana.
Then the game also had various items that had a chance to proc a mana heal on you based on various triggers.
So, all up, EQ's mana management system was complex, and I would go as far as to say it was also quite deep. In practice, if you were not raiding, all you would do is set your stack of drink to auto-consume and consider mana to be managed - you may consider using a mana potion if you are out soloing and mismanage things a little.
If you were raiding, however, you would need to make use of all of the above - not only were you in situations where you would be in combat for 30 or more minutes (you would exhaust mana in about 2 minutes without any regen), but there were encounters that would wipe the raid if a single member of said raid had their mana go 1 point outside of a specified range. Fortunately there were not many of these encounters - they functioned as a gatekeeper to ensure you didn't have any morons in your raid, but were not fun. Since they were gatekeepers though, once any given character had killed it once, they didn't need to do it again.
As a final point on mana management in EQ2, my class had an ability called manaburn that would use up all mana I had left, leaving me with 0, and would convert that at a 4/1 ratio in to damage on my target. I used this ability right at the start of many raids so that the tank could then use an ability to put himself 1 hate point higher than the person at the top of the mobs hate list, meaning the tank was essentially able to generate a million points of hate in a few seconds where most others in the raid were only able to generate tens of thousands of damage (basically, the tank had an insurmountable amount of hate on that one target). This meant that I was very often 8 seconds in to a multi-minute raid encounter with absolutely no power - but the game provided enough tools for this to not be an issue if everyone in the raid worked together (I had those items from summoners, I had the other glass cannons sending me some power, I used my manastone for it's 300 power, and I had the bards and chanters all doing their bit as well.
While I am sure there are games out there with mana mechanics akin to EQ2's in terms of depth and complexity, I've yet to see them.
A recent comment exchange with @Azherae in another thread, inspired me to create this discussion as i feel it might be very imporatant for Ashes gameplay as a whole.
Lineage 2, one of the games AoC draws alot of inspirations from, had one of the harshest Mana Management systems in any MMORPG i've ever played, where there were no mana potions, were mana costs were steep and there was 2 essential classes almost completely dedicated to the management of mana of their party and that every 9man-party would wan't atleast 1 of them,
then there is a clue we got considering Alpha 1 mages had a specific mana recharging skill . Those pieces of informations makes me believe Mages will not only be a DPS class but will also play the role of the "Party Mana Manager" in Ashes and that Ashes will have an "harder than average Mana Management system.
With all that in mind, in this thread i would like to know people's opinions and experiences in other games and their expectations for Ashes regarding this topic.
I hope the system will not be a copy past of L2 and will be something different. I also hope there will be potions.
I know many people are nostalgic of L2 but according to me it wasn’t the best MMO of all time.
You're actually thinking about that slightly backwards for a lot of the 'better' games.
HP restoration is low AND target damage is low.
Having lower HP restoration values makes it easier to balance PvP AND PvE. Mobs don't need to have massive jumps in damage, they hit for 5-10% of your HP and you spend your time 'figuring out how to make sure their big abilities don't go off' and 'managing your HP inflow'.
L2's design warped my thinking too much. If I was solo - I had no buffs so any stronger mob would do a ton of dmg. If I was in a party - it was always a constant one with a healer and an MP manager. The "middleground" of those would be higher rated servers where you had a full buff w/o a party, but then you'd be fighting the same strong party mobs, so they'd still do pretty big chunks of your HP.
So yeah, if Ashes manages to step away from the L2's buff design and its utter REQUIREMENT for farm - the game would most likely be way closer to what you're saying. And at that point I'll just learn to play it the way it's meant to be played.
A basic example then of the difference from my experience. Note that I'm VERY explicitly targeting 'a mob that has a design that only exists because they were trying to get a function, not a theme'. Not all FFXI enemies are this way, nor are they all as interesting, but you'll understand what I mean in a moment.
FFXI Goblins all carry bombs.
They don't hit super hard with their melee attacks. But the bomb TP move can. Otherwise it does decent AoE fire damage, approx equal to all in party nearby, it doesn't 'divide up damage'. But it's still not crippling. Nothing that a Tank wouldn't shrug off EVEN if taking damage normally. Have a White Mage with you to ward against Fire Damage and you're even better off.
But AoE healing is EXPENSIVE. And therefore if you were to 'keep pulling Goblins', eventually people's HP starts dropping into a range where it is dangerous. Why do Goblins have bombs though? What made THAT a thematic goblin concept?
It isn't. It BECAME one, but it's a mechanical thing they were going for and chose to put it on the 'first and most ubiquitious Beastman enemy' to make them a threat and teach you what to expect from damage based enemies in the game.
There's a second function to these bombs. They have a 'suicide bomb' mode. TP moves are random, and that version can be selected randomly. It DOES look different, but only if you're actually looking at the Goblin (they drop the bomb instead of lobbing it). It does damage by how much HP the Goblin has remaining. MOST of the time this isn't enough to kill you. If you were solo, this move is technically almost GOOD. The Goblin dies after using it, you get the exp, if your HP was high, you didn't die, even if you got low. If you did enough damage to it first, you didn't die because it's HP wasn't high enough.
But if you are in a party, and you aren't on the ball when the Goblin's HP is high, someone might die if you had been fighting Goblins before then and didn't top off everyone.
You don't think about 'how much standard damage a Goblin does' when fighting them if your tank is half-decent. You think about 'How much Mana it will take for your whole party to tank through multiple Bomb Tosses' and then play around them.
But you can't just go 'well we barely need a Tank then' because their OTHER move is 'Goblin Rush' which is like 5x melee strike damage (It's only 3-4 hits, so that's separate).
Relative to mana management and healing, therefore, you have 'a mob that doesn't do crippling damage unless you aren't paying attention but requires higher mana management skill (or lots of resting) to face', that STILL has the ability to just drop people if you aren't paying attention, and in a really strange way too.
Assume you pull one without full HP because you're confident that your healer is about to top you up before it even arrives, and your Healer suddenly lags offline. The immediate thing to do is 'nobody engage except Tank and even they should hold back' -> 'Mage puts up defensive spells that they normally don't waste mana on in a group' -> 'Mage nukes the hell out of the Goblin so it doesn't have enough HP for suicide bomb to kill everyone' -> 'Mage sits still while Tank pulls it off them' -> 'wait for healer to return'.
This is a great discussion, thank you all who have contributed to it.
For us old L2 vets who cherish some or all of that game, some comments in various threads got me wondering if it might be helpful to sometimes refer to 'Early L2' as compared to 'Late L2' since the game evolved and changed over the years. It also had some significant differences on unofficial servers.
I played L2 starting a few weeks after release for about five or six years. If you remember, at the beginning when any player died you could drop equipped weapon, gear and anything (except gold) out of your inventory. This applied to both death from players AND death from mobs regardless of your 'color'. In other words, you were dropping a lot of stuff frequently as a new player. If you were with your friends or guild, they would hold your items for you. If you were solo, you would have to run back and hope to find it before someone else did.
IIRC, it was then changed to dropping only inventory from your deaths, then changed to Red players were the only ones who dropped gear and weapons on death. It took several years for these changes to take place. Please correct me if I am wrong in specifics, but I recall things being quite harsh at the beginning and slowly easing up over time. This is just one example of 'early versus late L2.'
Back to the topic...as @Azherae implies above, a system where a smart and experienced player can figure out the interactions of circumstances, differing spells, equipment and other factors is an interesting system to play. I have high hopes that AoC will deliver this. I anticipate that it will be good in Alpha-2 and even better upon release.
IIRC, it was then changed to dropping only inventory from your deaths, then changed to Red players were the only ones who dropped gear and weapons on death. It took several years for these changes to take place. Please correct me if I am wrong in specifics, but I recall things being quite harsh at the beginning and slowly easing up over time. This is just one example of 'early versus late L2.'
Unless the private server that I played on at the time completely changed that mechanic, I think that by C4 it was already "only PKers drop stuff". I might be misremembering cause it's been over 15 years since I played that version of the game, but I think that's right.
But yes, early L2 was quite different from later updates and even more different from even later ones. And there's been several separations of the playerbase which all consider different version "the real L2". This is one of the main reasons why I was trying to find out which update did Steven stop playing the game at. Cause that would at least give me more context as to his experience in the game.
Back to the topic...as Azherae implies above, a system where a smart and experienced player can figure out the interactions of circumstances, differing spells, equipment and other factors is an interesting system to play. I have high hopes that AoC will deliver this. I anticipate that it will be good in Alpha-2 and even better upon release.
Yep, I definitely hope that Ashes manages to design intricate and interesting pve content. As much as I love L2, its pve was definitely super basic.
I would make mana management important and old-school, and on top of it I would give consumables such as mana potions (that are hard to craft) and runes looted from all kinds of mobs (for example dungeon or elite farming area or something similar - the harder the better - the more social it is), basically because these consumables would add game within a game, you would have to farm them daily if you are healer (especially) and prepare for upcoming sieges or raids. I would not give infinite mana due to these consumables, but I would make them work same as vanilla WoW - some 50-60% more mana during fight, which would mean if you were healer, without them you would not do well in raid content vs bosses.
If there is no need for grinding and preparing yourself then I think that is poor taste of RPG game, which revolves around preparation and progression. Having infinite mana just because you waited 10 sec in raid without casting is bad.
This may be my inexperience with deeper Mana management systems, but I am not quite sure how to make mana management meaningful outside of combat/rest pre fight. Like in the fight, I enjoy having to plan and manage it via active skills (something like trade X% of health for Y% of mana, gain X% mana but regen is slowed, etc) but I feel like having to rely on downing a 24 pack of potions every combat isn't inspired or having to eat a dish pre fight every single fight to get X,Y,Z buffs for "this guy specifically" also not particularly cool.
As long as consumables are interesting and varied enough to bring some buffs to the table while having interesting active/passive mechanics for mana regen/management I think I will be happy but I must admit I don't really know how to get it to be interesting without adding the "/sit 2 minute mana recovery post fight".
you would have to farm them daily if you are healer (especially) and prepare for upcoming sieges or raids. I would not give infinite mana due to these consumables, but I would make them work same as vanilla WoW - some 50-60% more mana during fight, which would mean if you were healer, without them you would not do well in raid content vs bosses.
Focusing on just this part. Sieges, especially as healer, can have many other forms and methods of mana management. I could see needing consumables in order to deal with the Siege Dragons as a healer, maybe, but there's no way to know precisely until we see Cleric gameplay again in a similar perspective.
I cannot imagine a level of change from A1 where a Cleric in a proper group situation (Elite or Boss fight with a group) should have access to or need 50% Mana restoration consumables. At that point the answer is 'bring more healers', and being able to get away with NOT bringing more healers, even if expensive, would just be strange.
We'll see in the coming months when the Cleric showcase drops (or not, if it's really basic and doesn't involve a 'bossfight' or 'grouping', but at that point I don't know what feedback they would ask for other than 'was this spell shiny enough?')
Having a consumable that bumps your effective mana up 50% (I'm assuming you mean over some period) is either 'required for any serious content' or 'not', in a PvX game, especially in Sieges. So whenever you see the Cleric showcase Livestream, you can probably give whatever number seems correct and we'd actually be able to discuss it.
A recent comment exchange with @Azherae in another thread, inspired me to create this discussion as i feel it might be very imporatant for Ashes gameplay as a whole.
Lineage 2, one of the games AoC draws alot of inspirations from, had one of the harshest Mana Management systems in any MMORPG i've ever played, where there were no mana potions, were mana costs were steep and there was 2 essential classes almost completely dedicated to the management of mana of their party and that every 9man-party would wan't atleast 1 of them,
then there is a clue we got considering Alpha 1 mages had a specific mana recharging skill . Those pieces of informations makes me believe Mages will not only be a DPS class but will also play the role of the "Party Mana Manager" in Ashes and that Ashes will have an "harder than average Mana Management system.
With all that in mind, in this thread i would like to know people's opinions and experiences in other games and their expectations for Ashes regarding this topic.
For health management we have the Holly Trinity.
We could imagine similar roles for mana too, where you could reduce or steal enemy mana and replenish party members mana pool.
And a role similar to the tank, with a large mana pool capable to maintain an energy shield against magic damage and maybe physical damage too.
Then those who replenish mana would not be the ones who damage the enemy mana.
September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
What if mana could work as a soft shield against spells if you have the skill for that?
And you could also transfer mana to your casters.... but if you transfer mana then you have no shield anymore
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
Lineage 2 had many skills revolving around the Mana Warfare with things like:
Direct mana recharging skills
MP cost reduction buffs and mana heal over time
even if putting themselves at risk for that
Prioritize the mana recovery of a specific party member
They also had skills to disrupt enemies mana
MP cost increasing debuffs, Mana Dots and drains
Players could specialize in the mana even further by sacrficing damage or survivability for more of it
Or have it as a survivability resource
Mana managers were basically a 4° member of the Tank Healer DPS trinity, essential for a party.
Many battles were won by protecting your party mana and destroying the enemies' party mana resources, some 9-man parties would even make their compositions around that idea.
Lineage 2 had many skills revolving around the Mana Warfare with things like:
Direct mana recharging skills
MP cost reduction buffs and mana heal over time
even if putting themselves at risk for that
Prioritize the mana recovery of a specific party member
They also had skills to disrupt enemies mana
MP cost increasing debuffs, Mana Dots and drains
Players could specialize in the mana even further by sacrficing damage or survivability for more of it
Or have it as a survivability resource
Mana managers were basically a 4° member of the Tank Healer DPS trinity, essential for a party.
Many battles were won by protecting your party mana and destroying the enemies' party mana resources, some 9-man parties would even make their compositions around that idea.
And from the opposite side I guess...
The original options:
Ticks for 3 MP every 3 seconds for a base total of 150 MP restored.
Casting Time: 5 seconds
Recast Time: 18 seconds
Affected Targets: Single
Base Duration: 150 seconds
Casting Time: 8 seconds
Recast Time: 24 seconds
Affected Targets: AOE, centered on caster
Base Duration: 120 seconds
Restores 1/2 MP every 3 seconds (Ballad 1 and 2), regardless of singing/instrument skill.
Stacks with other Ballad effects.
Equipment that grants "Ballad +" or "All Songs +" increases the MP restoral by +1 MP every 3 seconds and the duration of the song by 10% per +1 level.
Conserve MP
Obtained: Black Mage Level 20
Game Description: Occasionally reduces spells' MP cost.
Job Traits are always active.
Further Notes:
The Conserve MP job trait is equivalent to "Conserve MP +25".
With a base activation rate of 25%, Conserve MP allows you to retain approximately 7 MP for every 100 MP spent. The actual amount retained may vary.
Then when people got frustrated of all the strict grouping and build limitations caused by this and started just making everything '1 Healer 1 Tank 4 Rangers' just to not have to deal with it (except of course that the healer was still preferred Red Mage so they could Refresh themselves and the Paladin tanks)
Options were added to Summoner, playstyle requirements were tweaked for a few other classes, and Auto-Refresh (1 per tick) added to some, so that one's skill could overcome the limitation if necessary, while still keeping the same thing. When new classes were added (Scholar, Corsair, Blue Mage) they came with three different ways to assist. Corsairs were like Bards and could Roll the Dice for AoE Refresh, Blue Mages could get Self-target only at the cost of something else, and Scholars could manage their own and had access to
(enemies in FFXI have MP based on their Job Class so a few that don't actually USE it still HAVE it for you to take)
Never personally experienced the 'stressors' of that era since I am, again, a Healer who is friends with a Bard, but it was apparently bad enough to cause the devs to speak on the matter directly.
I dislike harsh mana regeneration. Someone mentioned ESO which was okay, but in that game there were no cooldowns on abilities and spamming expensive abilities would make you go oom.
In this game abilities have cooldowns, so what's the point in having to manage your mana at all? Seems pointless, just a throwback to an older time that adds no value.
In this game abilities have cooldowns, so what's the point in having to manage your mana at all? Seems pointless, just a throwback to an older time that adds no value.
Mana is not endless though? You still need to manage your use? Weird take imo.
In this game abilities have cooldowns, so what's the point in having to manage your mana at all? Seems pointless, just a throwback to an older time that adds no value.
Mana is not endless though? You still need to manage your use? Weird take imo.
There is a subset of games where Mana amounts are tuned such that the player will always be left with nearly no Mana at what the game considers 'the end of a meaningful encounter'. The Encounter must end because the Mana must end. We experience the same thing in the old games, but with the mana management added for 'harder enemies that don't neatly fit into that schema'.
Imagine a game style where EVERYTHING fits into that schema. Action RPGs can do it by having longer fights have additional mechanics. MOBAs and the 'new PvP pseudo MMOs' don't need it, BDO style games recharge on hit or have "Augments" that do that so it's part of your build and you tune it to your preference.
It's correct to say that it's a throwback, I think, 'value addition' is debatable, but is usually connected to PvE imo.
Imagine a game style where EVERYTHING fits into that schema.
Dreadful. And I might've misunderstood, or maybe some other mobas don't require you to control your mana, but when I played dota2 (and it still seems to be the case, judging by the latest TI) - you had to keep an eye on your mana use at all times, cause you never knew when you might need a ton of it for the fight.
Mb Iskab was talking about the overall regeneration of mana and its speed? Then yeah, older games had slower regen so you had much more time between fights with full mana. But due to my L2 experience of all those abilities James posted, I'm very used to any given fight decreasing my mana drastically during the fight itself before it even ends, so it was always about proper control of use and mitigation of enemy burns against your mana managers.
And I'd personally prefer if Ashes had the same mechanics in pve too, because it'd just add a layer to said pve. Hell, if the game had the mob "control" features I suggested, you could trigger mob's mana burns while controlling its agro, so that you knew who'd get their mana decreased and could account for that. Which would also be useful in pvx context, under the condition that agro moving abilities exist in the game. You see enemy players approaching you while you're fighting some elite mob or a boss? Boost that mob's "TP gauge" in a particular way and redirect its agro onto the newcomers, so that the big mana burn hits them instead of you.
In this game abilities have cooldowns, so what's the point in having to manage your mana at all? Seems pointless, just a throwback to an older time that adds no value.
Mana is not endless though? You still need to manage your use? Weird take imo.
Well why not make mana endless? What purpose does managing mana serve?
Abilities have cooldowns, or at least they did in a video, so why bother having a mana bar at all? Cooldowns will make it so players can't spam powerful abilities anyways, so I don't see the point in having a mana or stamina bar.
Imagine a game style where EVERYTHING fits into that schema.
Dreadful. And I might've misunderstood, or maybe some other mobas don't require you to control your mana, but when I played dota2 (and it still seems to be the case, judging by the latest TI) - you had to keep an eye on your mana use at all times, cause you never knew when you might need a ton of it for the fight.
It is definitely meant to reward different skills.
From the MOBA side, the question is slightly different and should be tied back to Iskiab's point. If you have enough mana to use all your abilities in a fight, and then extra, the game is tuned around 'you using the extra'. The main "Between Lane Buff Boss" usually takes 2x and then if your opponents interrupt you, you use a Mana restore item or ability, but this doesn't take long.
FFXI and EQ PvE encounters of 'serious nature' last basically as long as an entire short MOBA match. You handle that by either doing what BDO does and making it so that Mana/Whatever recharges off risky hits (melee attacks for most classes) or making mana-management classes, or do what Ashes does (currently, subject to change) and sorta-tune it for both.
This is why the Cleric showcase will tell us a lot about the intentions for this game's style. Even if they show as little as the Ranger, we might be able to know if Castigation is still in, and how it works. If they fight a 'miniboss' in group (probably could manage this without giving away too much using Tank, Mage, Ranger, Cleric) we'd see any effect the Mage had.
Then its up to us to do our usual 'deconstruct the misconceptions of everyone who jumps to conclusions relative to it including ourselves'.
I'd say I'm looking forward to it, but I can imagine some paths they take the showcase style where I not only 'wouldn't be able to give feedback', I wouldn't be able to even think about it without forming potentially wrong conclusions.
Good therefore that James made this thread before the stream since I guess there's a CHANCE that this month's stream is in fact Cleric showcase?
In this game abilities have cooldowns, so what's the point in having to manage your mana at all? Seems pointless, just a throwback to an older time that adds no value.
Mana is not endless though? You still need to manage your use? Weird take imo.
Well why not make mana endless? What purpose does managing mana serve?
Abilities have cooldowns, or at least they did in a video, so why bother having a mana bar at all? Cooldowns will make it so players can't spam powerful abilities anyways, so I don't see the point in having a mana or stamina bar.
Well, for example, for healers this isn't true, and often for Mages this also isn't true.
Healers are given the option to 'burn through all their mana faster than they recharge it' in emergency situations, so we're not often actually limited by cooldowns, just mana.
Mages are often explicitly allowed to 'sit there with lots of mana and then repeatedly blast with shorter cooldowns and high risk options'. Kaaaa.... meeeee....
Anyway, can you give an example of an MMO or MMO-adjacent game you've played recently that doesn't do either? Or at least clarify if you generally play Mage or Healer or pay attention to their mana enough to know? Experiences may be different.
FFXI and EQ PvE encounters of 'serious nature' last basically as long as an entire short MOBA match. You handle that by either doing what BDO does and making it so that Mana/Whatever recharges off risky hits (melee attacks for most classes) or making mana-management classes, or do what Ashes does (currently, subject to change) and sorta-tune it for both.
Yeah, I'm used to 1h++++ "serious" encounters, so you'd usually go through waves of Invocation uses from the mana managers and keep the last wave for the last push on the boss (cause most bosses had heightened regen at last %s of hp, as I assume most of them do in most games).
Imagine a game style where EVERYTHING fits into that schema.
And I'd personally prefer if Ashes had the same mechanics in pve too, because it'd just add a layer to said pve. Hell, if the game had the mob "control" features I suggested, you could trigger mob's mana burns while controlling its agro, so that you knew who'd get their mana decreased and could account for that. Which would also be useful in pvx context, under the condition that agro moving abilities exist in the game. You see enemy players approaching you while you're fighting some elite mob or a boss? Boost that mob's "TP gauge" in a particular way and redirect its agro onto the newcomers, so that the big mana burn hits them instead of you.
To me that sounds like a cool design
Addressing this part, I love it. It would drive certain types of people crazy (because everything is mana-reliant, even Fighters) but from the 'cool mechanics and tactics' perspective, there could be some real benefits here.
One of the main ways that Intrepid could add abilities to bosses 'when you are killing them too fast' that would manage them quite well would be 'Mana Drain Aura' for example. Automatically slows down your output or means you have to bring more healers/mages, stops you from being able to burst them down too quickly, disrupts Tanking.
So a group doing WELL at the boss gets debuffed, but if that Aura affects everyone around and not just them, any group jumping in to attack them is limited as well, forcing them to bring people to handle some of the boss mechanics too instead of just 'jump in with 5 Fighters/Rogues and slaughter the people trying to fight the Boss for the lulz'.
In general, "you are killing this very fast" should probably hit 'Aura wall' of some kind instead of 'oh yeah well can you handle this big attack?' in my opinion.
This brings us back to this thread in a specific way that @Iskiab has indirectly pointed out. If Healer cooldowns are short-ish, the only reason you 'need more healers' is because the game's Mana regen is slower and smaller compared to the base. Otherwise the right answer would almost always be 'kill it faster and have the Healer use more AoE. That's my experience, anyway (incredibly simplified).
The more Healer bodies you have to 'put Mana restoration Over Time' ON, the better your survival chances, and that IS the sort of thing you can plan beforehand based on the boss. Auras only make you change your style of fighting a boss, they don't usually result in instant wipes, so they're a nice 'softer' PvE gate for raising difficulty.
In general, "you are killing this very fast" should probably hit 'Aura wall' of some kind instead of 'oh yeah well can you handle this big attack?' in my opinion.
This is pretty much what I interpreted the "anti-zerg hazards" to be. And iirc alpha1 twins had those crystals that burned player mana. Forget if it was just aura-based or explosion after a time or some other mechanic though.
One of the main ways that Intrepid could add abilities to bosses 'when you are killing them too fast' that would manage them quite well would be 'Mana Drain Aura' for example. Automatically slows down your output or means you have to bring more healers/mages, stops you from being able to burst them down too quickly, disrupts Tanking.
So a group doing WELL at the boss gets debuffed, but if that Aura affects everyone around and not just them, any group jumping in to attack them is limited as well, forcing them to bring people to handle some of the boss mechanics too instead of just 'jump in with 5 Fighters/Rogues and slaughter the people trying to fight the Boss for the lulz'.
In general, "you are killing this very fast" should probably hit 'Aura wall' of some kind instead of 'oh yeah well can you handle this big attack?' in my opinion.
Some Lineage 2 Bosses and Bosses' minions had AoE mana Mana Burning Skills, it wasn't triggered by a condition but they would randomly just use it alongside AoE Mana Degen Debuffs throught fights and yes it would affect whoever gets close enough.
Nikr mentioned the Twin Ancient bosses from A1 who had mana burning mechanics and i don't expect them to be an exception in this regard.
In this game abilities have cooldowns, so what's the point in having to manage your mana at all? Seems pointless, just a throwback to an older time that adds no value.
Mana is not endless though? You still need to manage your use? Weird take imo.
Well why not make mana endless? What purpose does managing mana serve?
Abilities have cooldowns, or at least they did in a video, so why bother having a mana bar at all? Cooldowns will make it so players can't spam powerful abilities anyways, so I don't see the point in having a mana or stamina bar.
i would prefer to get rid of cooldowns an cast time instead of mana management, work with a global cooldown for most abilities instead
the beginning of wisdom is to know you know nothing
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You're actually thinking about that slightly backwards for a lot of the 'better' games.
HP restoration is low AND target damage is low.
Having lower HP restoration values makes it easier to balance PvP AND PvE. Mobs don't need to have massive jumps in damage, they hit for 5-10% of your HP and you spend your time 'figuring out how to make sure their big abilities don't go off' and 'managing your HP inflow'.
So you can 'spend time at lower HP' somewhat more safely and make MORE choices instead of 'well I am either basically at full health or dead' (Neverwinter).
So far, Ashes is this design type.
"Choose the enemy where when you run out of mana, you can probably still finish them before they tick your HP down."
As a healer I say this is more engaging for me personally as well. Big heals should cost big mana and draw big aggro, but I also shouldn't be NEEDING to use them, and I mean on nearly ANYONE but the most glass-cannon Mage or Rogue who should be figuring out how to not get HIT ever.
That's my opinion. Abilities take meaningful chunks of your mana but you don't need to use them that often if you don't want to. Again, this is already Ashes' design as we understand it now. If it changes much, I won't exactly be surprised, but this is the way it was EXPLAINED so I would hope it stays similar for all those 'unfortunate souls' like me who saw what we considered good combat design and went 'yes I wanna play that!'
As Steven always says, if you're not enjoying the combat, it's going to be rough.
So yeah, if Ashes manages to step away from the L2's buff design and its utter REQUIREMENT for farm - the game would most likely be way closer to what you're saying. And at that point I'll just learn to play it the way it's meant to be played.
I guess thats the point we disagree on- I think that the hp maintains its gameplay value much more than the mana does. Mainly because as long as you are alive, you have access to all of your tools, even if you don't utilize them you still have that choice. Wheras, the lower your mana, the less tools you have available, which kind of removes that choice- assuming the mana system functions as intended and is there for a reason.
The game has similar regeneration to EQ, but only in combat. As soon as you leave combat, regeneration of both mana and HP is exponentially faster. They did this in part to address the need to bring an enchanter along with every group, but also just in part to speed gameplay up.
This left mana management as skill a vital skill in the game still though, and there are 4 classes out of the 24 that assist others with it.
However, since you only really need to consider mana management within the context of a single pull (or a single chain pull), it meant it wasn't essential to always bring one of these classes with you. It would be better on a lot of content to bring an additional DPS - though any of the above four classes were always welcome to come along. Sure, you needed to bring these classes with you on content that was expected to take more than 10 minutes per pull, but this content was designed for organized guilds, and so meeting the requirement for specific classes to be present was considered a part of meeting the requirement for the content as a whole (you wouldn't form a raid without an appropriate number of tanks and healers, adding support to this acceptable).
In comparison to other games, mana management in EQ2 was quite varied. You had your in combat regen rate, which was boosted by some gear and support classes, but also via some gear effects (for a while, a boost of 7 mana per second in combat was the effect on the best caster robe in the game, and when paired with 5 on a set of quest boots, was basically god tier).
But then you also had your out of combat regen, which was boosted via beverages. At the level range in which a 12 per second increase to mana in combat was considered god tier, the standard player made drink would increase out of combat regen by 60 per second.
On top of those two different regens, you obviously had your four support classes who were able to boost in combat regen, but also cast essentially mana heals.
Your glass cannon caster classes all had a small ability to convert some HP to mana on themselves, as well as a slow casting ability to heal some mana on a target (which could be themselves). Then you had two Summoner classes that had the ability to an item in to the inventory of anyone in their group, and when activated, this item would boost their mana by an amount (one was a direct mana heal, the other a mana heal over time).
Then you have items such as manastone which was a quested item that would restore a small amount of mana when used (around 300 from memory - using the above regen numbers for context on that). This used a small amount of HP, but had a cooldown of 45 seconds as This was able to be upgraded later on to providing a flat 5% of your mana back to you (300 mana at level 90 was not enough to cast a single spell).
There were also a few other items to boost mana - I had one that you could use once per 24 hours, that would just replenish your mana back to 100%.
Then there were potions. The game had two types of potion to restore power per level range (instant and over time), and had two rarities of each potion. At the same level where 12 mana per second on gear was god tier, the common potion to restore power instantly was restoring 295 power (the rare one was just over 400). The mana over time potions restore mana every 3 seconds and last for 30 seconds (meaning 11 ticks of the potion), and the common one was regenerating 26 per tick, while the rare one waws 36. Potions had a cooldown of 165 seconds per potion type (so you could use one instant and one over time potion every 2 minutes and 45 seconds).
These potions were useful enough to buy, have and use, but were by no means a substitute for a class and/or gear that could regen mana.
Then the game also had various items that had a chance to proc a mana heal on you based on various triggers.
So, all up, EQ's mana management system was complex, and I would go as far as to say it was also quite deep. In practice, if you were not raiding, all you would do is set your stack of drink to auto-consume and consider mana to be managed - you may consider using a mana potion if you are out soloing and mismanage things a little.
If you were raiding, however, you would need to make use of all of the above - not only were you in situations where you would be in combat for 30 or more minutes (you would exhaust mana in about 2 minutes without any regen), but there were encounters that would wipe the raid if a single member of said raid had their mana go 1 point outside of a specified range. Fortunately there were not many of these encounters - they functioned as a gatekeeper to ensure you didn't have any morons in your raid, but were not fun. Since they were gatekeepers though, once any given character had killed it once, they didn't need to do it again.
As a final point on mana management in EQ2, my class had an ability called manaburn that would use up all mana I had left, leaving me with 0, and would convert that at a 4/1 ratio in to damage on my target. I used this ability right at the start of many raids so that the tank could then use an ability to put himself 1 hate point higher than the person at the top of the mobs hate list, meaning the tank was essentially able to generate a million points of hate in a few seconds where most others in the raid were only able to generate tens of thousands of damage (basically, the tank had an insurmountable amount of hate on that one target). This meant that I was very often 8 seconds in to a multi-minute raid encounter with absolutely no power - but the game provided enough tools for this to not be an issue if everyone in the raid worked together (I had those items from summoners, I had the other glass cannons sending me some power, I used my manastone for it's 300 power, and I had the bards and chanters all doing their bit as well.
While I am sure there are games out there with mana mechanics akin to EQ2's in terms of depth and complexity, I've yet to see them.
I hope the system will not be a copy past of L2 and will be something different. I also hope there will be potions.
I know many people are nostalgic of L2 but according to me it wasn’t the best MMO of all time.
A basic example then of the difference from my experience. Note that I'm VERY explicitly targeting 'a mob that has a design that only exists because they were trying to get a function, not a theme'. Not all FFXI enemies are this way, nor are they all as interesting, but you'll understand what I mean in a moment.
FFXI Goblins all carry bombs.
They don't hit super hard with their melee attacks. But the bomb TP move can. Otherwise it does decent AoE fire damage, approx equal to all in party nearby, it doesn't 'divide up damage'. But it's still not crippling. Nothing that a Tank wouldn't shrug off EVEN if taking damage normally. Have a White Mage with you to ward against Fire Damage and you're even better off.
But AoE healing is EXPENSIVE. And therefore if you were to 'keep pulling Goblins', eventually people's HP starts dropping into a range where it is dangerous. Why do Goblins have bombs though? What made THAT a thematic goblin concept?
It isn't. It BECAME one, but it's a mechanical thing they were going for and chose to put it on the 'first and most ubiquitious Beastman enemy' to make them a threat and teach you what to expect from damage based enemies in the game.
There's a second function to these bombs. They have a 'suicide bomb' mode. TP moves are random, and that version can be selected randomly. It DOES look different, but only if you're actually looking at the Goblin (they drop the bomb instead of lobbing it). It does damage by how much HP the Goblin has remaining. MOST of the time this isn't enough to kill you. If you were solo, this move is technically almost GOOD. The Goblin dies after using it, you get the exp, if your HP was high, you didn't die, even if you got low. If you did enough damage to it first, you didn't die because it's HP wasn't high enough.
But if you are in a party, and you aren't on the ball when the Goblin's HP is high, someone might die if you had been fighting Goblins before then and didn't top off everyone.
You don't think about 'how much standard damage a Goblin does' when fighting them if your tank is half-decent. You think about 'How much Mana it will take for your whole party to tank through multiple Bomb Tosses' and then play around them.
But you can't just go 'well we barely need a Tank then' because their OTHER move is 'Goblin Rush' which is like 5x melee strike damage (It's only 3-4 hits, so that's separate).
Relative to mana management and healing, therefore, you have 'a mob that doesn't do crippling damage unless you aren't paying attention but requires higher mana management skill (or lots of resting) to face', that STILL has the ability to just drop people if you aren't paying attention, and in a really strange way too.
Assume you pull one without full HP because you're confident that your healer is about to top you up before it even arrives, and your Healer suddenly lags offline. The immediate thing to do is 'nobody engage except Tank and even they should hold back' -> 'Mage puts up defensive spells that they normally don't waste mana on in a group' -> 'Mage nukes the hell out of the Goblin so it doesn't have enough HP for suicide bomb to kill everyone' -> 'Mage sits still while Tank pulls it off them' -> 'wait for healer to return'.
For us old L2 vets who cherish some or all of that game, some comments in various threads got me wondering if it might be helpful to sometimes refer to 'Early L2' as compared to 'Late L2' since the game evolved and changed over the years. It also had some significant differences on unofficial servers.
I played L2 starting a few weeks after release for about five or six years. If you remember, at the beginning when any player died you could drop equipped weapon, gear and anything (except gold) out of your inventory. This applied to both death from players AND death from mobs regardless of your 'color'. In other words, you were dropping a lot of stuff frequently as a new player. If you were with your friends or guild, they would hold your items for you. If you were solo, you would have to run back and hope to find it before someone else did.
IIRC, it was then changed to dropping only inventory from your deaths, then changed to Red players were the only ones who dropped gear and weapons on death. It took several years for these changes to take place. Please correct me if I am wrong in specifics, but I recall things being quite harsh at the beginning and slowly easing up over time. This is just one example of 'early versus late L2.'
Back to the topic...as @Azherae implies above, a system where a smart and experienced player can figure out the interactions of circumstances, differing spells, equipment and other factors is an interesting system to play. I have high hopes that AoC will deliver this. I anticipate that it will be good in Alpha-2 and even better upon release.
But yes, early L2 was quite different from later updates and even more different from even later ones. And there's been several separations of the playerbase which all consider different version "the real L2". This is one of the main reasons why I was trying to find out which update did Steven stop playing the game at. Cause that would at least give me more context as to his experience in the game. Yep, I definitely hope that Ashes manages to design intricate and interesting pve content. As much as I love L2, its pve was definitely super basic.
If there is no need for grinding and preparing yourself then I think that is poor taste of RPG game, which revolves around preparation and progression. Having infinite mana just because you waited 10 sec in raid without casting is bad.
As long as consumables are interesting and varied enough to bring some buffs to the table while having interesting active/passive mechanics for mana regen/management I think I will be happy but I must admit I don't really know how to get it to be interesting without adding the "/sit 2 minute mana recovery post fight".
Focusing on just this part. Sieges, especially as healer, can have many other forms and methods of mana management. I could see needing consumables in order to deal with the Siege Dragons as a healer, maybe, but there's no way to know precisely until we see Cleric gameplay again in a similar perspective.
I cannot imagine a level of change from A1 where a Cleric in a proper group situation (Elite or Boss fight with a group) should have access to or need 50% Mana restoration consumables. At that point the answer is 'bring more healers', and being able to get away with NOT bringing more healers, even if expensive, would just be strange.
We'll see in the coming months when the Cleric showcase drops (or not, if it's really basic and doesn't involve a 'bossfight' or 'grouping', but at that point I don't know what feedback they would ask for other than 'was this spell shiny enough?')
Having a consumable that bumps your effective mana up 50% (I'm assuming you mean over some period) is either 'required for any serious content' or 'not', in a PvX game, especially in Sieges. So whenever you see the Cleric showcase Livestream, you can probably give whatever number seems correct and we'd actually be able to discuss it.
For health management we have the Holly Trinity.
We could imagine similar roles for mana too, where you could reduce or steal enemy mana and replenish party members mana pool.
And a role similar to the tank, with a large mana pool capable to maintain an energy shield against magic damage and maybe physical damage too.
Then those who replenish mana would not be the ones who damage the enemy mana.
And you could also transfer mana to your casters.... but if you transfer mana then you have no shield anymore
Direct mana recharging skills
MP cost reduction buffs and mana heal over time
even if putting themselves at risk for that
Prioritize the mana recovery of a specific party member
They also had skills to disrupt enemies mana
MP cost increasing debuffs, Mana Dots and drains
Players could specialize in the mana even further by sacrficing damage or survivability for more of it
Or have it as a survivability resource
Mana managers were basically a 4° member of the Tank Healer DPS trinity, essential for a party.
Many battles were won by protecting your party mana and destroying the enemies' party mana resources, some 9-man parties would even make their compositions around that idea.
Aren't we all sinners?
And from the opposite side I guess...
The original options:
Ticks for 3 MP every 3 seconds for a base total of 150 MP restored.
Casting Time: 5 seconds
Recast Time: 18 seconds
Affected Targets: Single
Base Duration: 150 seconds
Casting Time: 8 seconds
Recast Time: 24 seconds
Affected Targets: AOE, centered on caster
Base Duration: 120 seconds
Restores 1/2 MP every 3 seconds (Ballad 1 and 2), regardless of singing/instrument skill.
Stacks with other Ballad effects.
Equipment that grants "Ballad +" or "All Songs +" increases the MP restoral by +1 MP every 3 seconds and the duration of the song by 10% per +1 level.
Conserve MP
Obtained: Black Mage Level 20
Game Description: Occasionally reduces spells' MP cost.
Job Traits are always active.
Further Notes:
The Conserve MP job trait is equivalent to "Conserve MP +25".
With a base activation rate of 25%, Conserve MP allows you to retain approximately 7 MP for every 100 MP spent. The actual amount retained may vary.
Then when people got frustrated of all the strict grouping and build limitations caused by this and started just making everything '1 Healer 1 Tank 4 Rangers' just to not have to deal with it (except of course that the healer was still preferred Red Mage so they could Refresh themselves and the Paladin tanks)
Options were added to Summoner, playstyle requirements were tweaked for a few other classes, and Auto-Refresh (1 per tick) added to some, so that one's skill could overcome the limitation if necessary, while still keeping the same thing. When new classes were added (Scholar, Corsair, Blue Mage) they came with three different ways to assist. Corsairs were like Bards and could Roll the Dice for AoE Refresh, Blue Mages could get Self-target only at the cost of something else, and Scholars could manage their own and had access to
(enemies in FFXI have MP based on their Job Class so a few that don't actually USE it still HAVE it for you to take)
Never personally experienced the 'stressors' of that era since I am, again, a Healer who is friends with a Bard, but it was apparently bad enough to cause the devs to speak on the matter directly.
In this game abilities have cooldowns, so what's the point in having to manage your mana at all? Seems pointless, just a throwback to an older time that adds no value.
There is a subset of games where Mana amounts are tuned such that the player will always be left with nearly no Mana at what the game considers 'the end of a meaningful encounter'. The Encounter must end because the Mana must end. We experience the same thing in the old games, but with the mana management added for 'harder enemies that don't neatly fit into that schema'.
Imagine a game style where EVERYTHING fits into that schema. Action RPGs can do it by having longer fights have additional mechanics. MOBAs and the 'new PvP pseudo MMOs' don't need it, BDO style games recharge on hit or have "Augments" that do that so it's part of your build and you tune it to your preference.
It's correct to say that it's a throwback, I think, 'value addition' is debatable, but is usually connected to PvE imo.
Mb Iskab was talking about the overall regeneration of mana and its speed? Then yeah, older games had slower regen so you had much more time between fights with full mana. But due to my L2 experience of all those abilities James posted, I'm very used to any given fight decreasing my mana drastically during the fight itself before it even ends, so it was always about proper control of use and mitigation of enemy burns against your mana managers.
And I'd personally prefer if Ashes had the same mechanics in pve too, because it'd just add a layer to said pve. Hell, if the game had the mob "control" features I suggested, you could trigger mob's mana burns while controlling its agro, so that you knew who'd get their mana decreased and could account for that. Which would also be useful in pvx context, under the condition that agro moving abilities exist in the game. You see enemy players approaching you while you're fighting some elite mob or a boss? Boost that mob's "TP gauge" in a particular way and redirect its agro onto the newcomers, so that the big mana burn hits them instead of you.
To me that sounds like a cool design
Well why not make mana endless? What purpose does managing mana serve?
Abilities have cooldowns, or at least they did in a video, so why bother having a mana bar at all? Cooldowns will make it so players can't spam powerful abilities anyways, so I don't see the point in having a mana or stamina bar.
It is definitely meant to reward different skills.
From the MOBA side, the question is slightly different and should be tied back to Iskiab's point. If you have enough mana to use all your abilities in a fight, and then extra, the game is tuned around 'you using the extra'. The main "Between Lane Buff Boss" usually takes 2x and then if your opponents interrupt you, you use a Mana restore item or ability, but this doesn't take long.
FFXI and EQ PvE encounters of 'serious nature' last basically as long as an entire short MOBA match. You handle that by either doing what BDO does and making it so that Mana/Whatever recharges off risky hits (melee attacks for most classes) or making mana-management classes, or do what Ashes does (currently, subject to change) and sorta-tune it for both.
This is why the Cleric showcase will tell us a lot about the intentions for this game's style. Even if they show as little as the Ranger, we might be able to know if Castigation is still in, and how it works. If they fight a 'miniboss' in group (probably could manage this without giving away too much using Tank, Mage, Ranger, Cleric) we'd see any effect the Mage had.
Then its up to us to do our usual 'deconstruct the misconceptions of everyone who jumps to conclusions relative to it including ourselves'.
I'd say I'm looking forward to it, but I can imagine some paths they take the showcase style where I not only 'wouldn't be able to give feedback', I wouldn't be able to even think about it without forming potentially wrong conclusions.
Good therefore that James made this thread before the stream since I guess there's a CHANCE that this month's stream is in fact Cleric showcase?
Well, for example, for healers this isn't true, and often for Mages this also isn't true.
Healers are given the option to 'burn through all their mana faster than they recharge it' in emergency situations, so we're not often actually limited by cooldowns, just mana.
Mages are often explicitly allowed to 'sit there with lots of mana and then repeatedly blast with shorter cooldowns and high risk options'. Kaaaa.... meeeee....
Anyway, can you give an example of an MMO or MMO-adjacent game you've played recently that doesn't do either? Or at least clarify if you generally play Mage or Healer or pay attention to their mana enough to know? Experiences may be different.
Addressing this part, I love it. It would drive certain types of people crazy (because everything is mana-reliant, even Fighters) but from the 'cool mechanics and tactics' perspective, there could be some real benefits here.
One of the main ways that Intrepid could add abilities to bosses 'when you are killing them too fast' that would manage them quite well would be 'Mana Drain Aura' for example. Automatically slows down your output or means you have to bring more healers/mages, stops you from being able to burst them down too quickly, disrupts Tanking.
So a group doing WELL at the boss gets debuffed, but if that Aura affects everyone around and not just them, any group jumping in to attack them is limited as well, forcing them to bring people to handle some of the boss mechanics too instead of just 'jump in with 5 Fighters/Rogues and slaughter the people trying to fight the Boss for the lulz'.
In general, "you are killing this very fast" should probably hit 'Aura wall' of some kind instead of 'oh yeah well can you handle this big attack?' in my opinion.
This brings us back to this thread in a specific way that @Iskiab has indirectly pointed out. If Healer cooldowns are short-ish, the only reason you 'need more healers' is because the game's Mana regen is slower and smaller compared to the base. Otherwise the right answer would almost always be 'kill it faster and have the Healer use more AoE. That's my experience, anyway (incredibly simplified).
The more Healer bodies you have to 'put Mana restoration Over Time' ON, the better your survival chances, and that IS the sort of thing you can plan beforehand based on the boss. Auras only make you change your style of fighting a boss, they don't usually result in instant wipes, so they're a nice 'softer' PvE gate for raising difficulty.
Mana Drain is just a really obvious one in Ashes.
Some Lineage 2 Bosses and Bosses' minions had AoE mana Mana Burning Skills, it wasn't triggered by a condition but they would randomly just use it alongside AoE Mana Degen Debuffs throught fights and yes it would affect whoever gets close enough.
Nikr mentioned the Twin Ancient bosses from A1 who had mana burning mechanics and i don't expect them to be an exception in this regard.
Aren't we all sinners?
i would prefer to get rid of cooldowns an cast time instead of mana management, work with a global cooldown for most abilities instead