[Feedback Request] Cleric & Weapon Updates Shown in November Livestream

kuldar1994

How do you feel about the synergy between archetypes and status conditions?

I love synergies between different classes but I also would like to be able to trigger synergies between same classes. For example if me and my friend both like tank archetype and we often play duo it would be cool if we still could use some synergies because that makes combat more fun and challenging.


Do you think party composition should amplify the meta?

If then only slightly I guess.


What are your thoughts regarding the active blocking shown during the November Update?

Active blocking is fun and makes combat more dynamic I hope we are able to block while casting our buffing skills also.

I also think it should cost stamina when an attack is blocked and damage reduction shouldn't be 100% (even for tanks although it would make sense that tanks could hold block slightly longer and also mitigate more damage).


Share your thoughts about the hotbar, icons, minimap, party and targeting UI shown.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cleric update and weapons demo?

UI looks great I hope there will be option to turn on self debuffs that show effects duration.

About cleric class - It seems to have cool skills. Only thing that worries me a bit is ground aoe-s that have long cooldown. In fast paced combat it can feel a bit too static and if you are not lucky with it's placement it can be wasted skill. My idea would be to make ground aoe-s perhaps a bit less inpactful compared to other skills but also with short cooldown so it's possible to quickly reapply them after reposition.

kuldar1994

kuldar1994 wrote: »

How do you feel about the synergy between archetypes and status conditions?

I love synergies between different classes but I also would like to be able to trigger synergies between same classes. For example if me and my friend both like tank archetype and we often play duo it would be cool if we still could use some synergies because that makes combat more fun and challenging.

On a second thought. For AoC case 2 of a same same "archetype" players don't need to have synergies if for example tank/cleric and tank/ranger can have synergies between them - so basically synergies could be applied through different secondary archetype in that case.

Stryta

This is a little late but i wanted to share my opinions and ideas

How do you feel about the synergy between archetypes and status conditions?

i really like the idea of classes being able to synergize with each other. I like the idea of being able to stun/freeze/slow and to follow up with an attack for extra affect or bonus damage. however i dont think synergizing should be everything. An idea that came to mind when watching was having a support variant all about buffing. allowing the support to further capitalize with other classes. IE, you could buff an archers arrows or instead of healing you buff the tank to heal on damage done. you could apply a hp + mana over time buff but when applied together it would reduced the effectiveness.



Do you think party composition should amplify the meta?

Like some other comments have stated players will always find what works best. I think this should be allowed to a good potential but not to the point of making a class undesirable or by making groups 100% look for synergism. With having 64 classes comes so many possibilities and with talents that increases so much more. So maybe making things constantly changing/adapting. Watch what players do and make changes accordingly. Maybe the monsters "learn" and they no longer stay so heavily grouped or will actively avoid it or they could have other mobs dispel/buff each other.



What are your thoughts regarding the active blocking shown during the November Update?

I really like the idea. Like hey if i have a shield i want to be able to use it and not just in a minimal sort of way i think it should definitely be viable depending on class build. Maybe add different affects like heals/Dmg etc. A lot of MMOs have shields but they aren't used and in the case of the cleric or support role maybe i can shield bash an enemy to stun or silence.



Share your thoughts about the hotbar, icons, minimap, party and targeting UI shown.

Obviously its a work in progress but personally i like the idea of being able to customize my UI. Being able to change colors of Hp/mana bars and layout. however i don't think there should be too many options like being able to add so many hotbars that may give an advantage. Being able to see when other players are healing the same target in some sort of way would be nice as well.



Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cleric update and weapons demo?

With there being so many classes im sure this is probably addressed. But both allowing for a "heal Bot" build as well as a more active support build would be very nice. I love the flashy abilities as well for any class that uses spells. the only concern for me would be having the shield and not using it for anything more than blocking the occasional damage.

Thanks for reading.

effusivemind

How do you feel about the synergy between archetypes and status conditions?
I like it a lot, it's a very smart, fun, and rewarding idea.

Do you think party composition should amplify the meta?
Yes. I think party comp should be very important. I think it would be fun for certain classes to have stronger potential synergy if they're spec'd for it.

What are your thoughts regarding the active blocking shown during the November Update?
I like it, as it would provide a defensive in PvP (with a limit). And one of the concerns I have is that gameplay will be too fast and people will get blown up too quickly. I also think a passive block mechanic on top of that would be fine, too. I think players who want a more defensive/tankier/durable build should be able to create it.

Share your thoughts about the hotbar, icons, minimap, party and targeting UI shown.
I like the hotbar. I appreciate that it doesn't take up too much of the screen like in WoW, for example. Party looks good, but both party and icons need better resolution, and icons need better design. Targeting could use improvement, but I'm not sure how specifically at this time.

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cleric update and weapons demo?
I thought the cleric design mechanically was very good from what I saw, and weapons also. It excites me for what else we're going to see from other archetypes.

MissionCreep

I personally don't care about (or want) active blocking in MMORPG's like this. That's what true action/first-person games are for.

If you chose Fighter or Tank as an archetype, great, you should have blocking as part of your playstyle, but I don't want it for the other 6.
(When the class doesn't include Fighter or Tank.)

I can see an argument for Rogue, that's fine too, although IMO it should just be for Rogue/Fighter or Rogue/Tank.
I don't feel like my Rogue/Mage (etc) should be worrying about active blocking.

I love status effects being tied to Archetypes or Classes (signatures) but I definitely DON'T want them to be combo situations between classes in a party. (Synergy--yes. Combo--No.)
Rift had that, it didn't work, and I personally hated it.

Solvryn

To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters:

How do you feel about the synergy between archetypes and status conditions?

It's a start.

Do you think party composition should amplify the meta?

What do you mean by this? Do you mean there should a perfect composition that dictates the meta? If that is the case, absolutely no.

What are your thoughts regarding the active blocking shown during the November Update?

It's a start.

Share your thoughts about the hotbar, icons, minimap, party and targeting UI shown.

Minimalist UI is the best UI.

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cleric update and weapons demo?

Lack of art continuity in the classes, the class abilities look out of place compared to the rest of the game.

Songcaller

I rewatched the footage. I thought the cleric basic attack looked like a fan flick. It wasn't conducive to heavy hitting. Looked more like no contact swings even when contact was made.

In general, the cleric looked stunted overall. Not sure if it's because of the low level. I assume the cleric would become more fluid at higher levels. The issue remains the basic attacks which I imagine won't change at higher levels.

Songcaller

Would also be good if we can stack Conviction to 8 stacks or more, thus, we can group heal up to 8 members (whole party) with Cleansing Wave. I would hope for two or three sources of potential Conviction seeing as there is only a 'chance' to receive conviction.

Songcaller

I love the warp boom sound effects from the cleric skills. I realise why it appears stunted, there is only one attack spell in the video which doubles as a heal alongside a plethora of support skills. The basic weapon moves are abysmal damage. The support skills are nice but it would be beneficial to add another damage move or two to lower levelled Clerics so we don't have to wait to do actions.

Songcaller

Probably want to make the spells instant cast. We already have animation locks and no animation cancelling. It will be difficult for the slow Cleric to heal through Ranger or Fighter damage. Also, many of the cleric skills seem to root the cleric.

These aspects are good in isolation but the combined treble will make the cleric too slow in pvp.

B3njiKecske

Do you think party composition should amplify the meta?
While i think party composition is very important, punishing non-full parties is not a good idea. Because of the nature of games, most friend groups are composed of about 4 people, so that should be enough to be successful during exploration. Suggesting players to bring more men is acceptable, while punishing those who don't, not so much;

How do you feel about the synergy between archetypes and status conditions?
I think being able to do combos gives the players that wow factor that make them feel cool. But using just a single ability shouldn't be useless when not synergized (and that doesn't seem to be the case so far);

What are your thoughts regarding the active blocking shown during the November Update?
Universal blocking should be an option, but blocking with a Shield or with a Tank should be more rewarding. One thing you mentioned was the Parry action, which should NOT be universal. A mage parrying a fighters attack just doesn't make sense;

Share your thoughts about the hotbar, icons, minimap, party and targeting UI shown.
This is the reason i wanted to post. As a support main, i find that many MMOs have the whole party's health and general stats in one of the corners of the screen. Since it shows you how the whole party is doing, that is extremely helpful. However, i find that it makes the support player more focused on what's in the corner of the screen than what's happenning overall. One solution i could suggest is having a tiny health bar under every seen player. You could even have this as just a toggleable option, but it would help immensly.

Also i love the icons for the classes, but if there's some people using the same class in a party, it's going to get confusing. So i'd either go the classic MMO style of having the character portrait there, or make it a customizable icon (even just being able to customize the color would help);

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cleric update and weapons demo?
One thing i love to have as a healer in games is an ability that heals me when i heal allies.
Something i'm just a little bit concerned about is that from what i've seen, the clerics abilities don't change when you have a weapon or a staff, so i just don't see the point of the latter. I think having the staff should amplify some abilities or at least add some kind of bonus effect to them;

Songcaller

I believe Cleric self heals cone mostly from the cleric secondary. Though you could heal yourself in a1. We have hard target, soft target and free aim. Would be cool if we can get dual target for cleric - an ally and an enemy targeted at the same time like in Warhammer Online.

Songcaller

Might be best if cleric heals bolster from wisdom and cleric damage scales off will. The stats can be changed of course. The problem in a1 was the cleric damage and heals scaling off the same stat which made the cleric overpowered. I believe the cleric can return to instant casts if the healing and damage scale off different stats. This will remedy the issues at low tiers and maintain the combined power at higher tiers.

I think judgement could act like a lance like Priest of Mitra from Age of Conan if you don't want dual targeting. The lance would heal players in between the healer and target. Though I believe dual targeting would be better placed to make the best cleric possible. More convictions can be earnt, more damage can be added and the heals can be balanced. I think though that dual targeting should not be appliable to the cleric itself but for the allies. Therefore, cleric secondary would be the main source of self heals for a cleric rather than the dual targeting system from Warhanmer Online.

Edit: of course, specific skills can heal the cleric like castigation. The cleric can also select themselves to heal but self selection would clear allied and enemy targeting.

Leukael

My apologies! I should have responded sooner to this but life has been busy.

How do you feel about the synergy between archetypes and status conditions?
I like any interplay that rewards class diversity in play and coordination or consistency in play (I think both are key to allow for and not strictly one or the other.)

Do you think party composition should amplify the meta?
See prior answer. I think people combining abilities within a certain timeframe and having different classes interact in a meaningful way is good. I do feel too tight a timeframe for coordination can create the opposite results (where people dislike grouping with a class because of a high expectation) so this should be measured in how it is implemented.

I hope this interplay also continues in terms of QoL buffs classes can share with one another (think utility each class brings for another to compliment play together.)

What are your thoughts regarding the active blocking shown during the November Update?
That requires playtesting. Stamina bars I think could be useful to create more engaging play. I have always felt dodging and blocking sharing a resource should not be the case so the choice is compelling but I have a feeling that is a nightmare to balance potentially so it currently doesn't exist.

Share your thoughts about the hotbar, icons, minimap, party and targeting UI shown.
I prefer more contemporary looks and have health bars confer info in a concise way. The modern design with class colors in wow for example, grid, etc. are all examples of what I like. Think of the ui as a place to confer info rather than simply to see health. I want a heat map and not just a bar. As much as you can convey in a concise and sleek fashion has always been what I enjoy as a healer of more than 10+ years in mmos.

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cleric update and weapons demo?

Yes! I really don't like as a healer being forced into a trope of D&D cleric. I like the choice of being a bit tankier or caster in nature to be a compelling choice. I realize convention on which this game is rooted lends more to heavy armor clerics but I want there to be room to be a wizard of holy men where I work magic, I'm elegant, I'm not designed to be in the fray just like a wizard, and I play differently because of it. That being said, we really didn't dive into that part so it is possible you have a plan for it.

My biggest concern is that it is equally viable and not just possible.

Enigmatic Sage

How do you feel about the synergy between archetypes and status conditions?

I rather like the system around it. The synergy works and has lots of room for options across the class choice, religion, school etc. regardless of pvp or pve content.

Hope there is some sort of diminishing return or debuff around hard cc for pvp to prevent stun-locked pvp. This also got me thinking about AOE vs Cleave. Target limitations for both beneficial and harmful abilities/status effects. Being stun locked for too long just isn't fun for anyone haha especially with siege raining down.

Do you think party composition should amplify the meta?

I like the idea around types having beneficial counters per se as shown.

What are your thoughts regarding the active blocking shown during the November Update?

IMO, allows for more immersive class design and gameplay.

Share your thoughts about the hotbar, icons, minimap, party and targeting UI shown.

I like the simplicity of it so far. Clean UI > crowded UI.

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cleric update and weapons demo?

I like how monsters/mobs/creature act more to their fantasy nature in games.
Using zombies as an example:
is there lunar events that cause them to become enraged?
will we see variants that interact hierarchically by having juggernauts, screamers, spiders, bloater variants.

It's the "little" details in games that really make it that much better. Even an open world dungeon or raid, setting a zombie trap could be really cool depending on dungeon/biome/zone etc. maybe tombs, crypts, sinister things.

With how there was talks of giants being used in sieges for battering rams or grab on to the wall with a stair case or ladder attached, you want to see them actually perform the action and not something in between.

Tangential there, but hey

Songcaller

It would also be brilliant if the Cleric has luminous runes around the toon when the toon casts. Plus, more lumination around the weapons/hands when the cleric casts. The free target circles should also be luminous runes rather than simple circles. The effects should look gorgeous in UE5 or UE5.1.

Leiloni

Leiloni wrote: »

How do you feel about the synergy between archetypes and status conditions?
This is a neat feature and I like where it's going. Would like to see this with other classes as well.

Do you think party composition should amplify the meta?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this, but I do think the balance should be so that the ideal full party of 8 should be designed to include one of each primary archetype. Smaller groups should ideally have a Cleric, melee or tank, and ranged like we saw here.

I think an important part of MMORPG's is not merely encouraging people to group up, but having a focus on roles in those groups and that's what too many newer MMO's lack. It's right there in the "R" of RPG. So tank, melee phys dps, ranged phys dps, magic dps (usually ranged but I feel like we may see some meele magic dps in this game?), healer, support, tank, etc.

Party composition should focus on having specific roles and what unique things those roles bring to the table. A group of friends questing with a Cleric, Fighter, and Ranger, should have a leg up on a party of 3 random dps friends. If you want enough people to actually play the non-dps roles - Tank, Cleric, Support (Bard and Summoner), then those classes need to not only be really fun and powerful, but needed in every group.

What are your thoughts regarding the active blocking shown during the November Update?
Active blocking is nice but I'd like it to be balanced around having limited use. So ideally people will need to choose to use block only when they know a big hit is coming for example, but can't use it nonstop. So whether that's stamina that is reduced proportionately to the damage taken or a CD upon releasing the skill key, I don't know.


Share your thoughts about the hotbar, icons, minimap, party and targeting UI shown.
The style of the UI is a bit old school and I'd like it modernized a bit. I think having an "RPG" feel is nice as a style, but make it look modern like a new game and not something from 2005. I will say I did like the Cleric skill icon art.

The group UI needs a lot of work from a healer's perspective as well. I assume it's movable but aside from that, the team member HP bars in the group window looked difficult to click on. I'm not sure if the clickable space is small and needs to be made larger or what, but it needs to be easy and reliable enough to rapidly click on in a fraction of a second if people are going to be healing in intense PvE and PvP situations.

Also buffs and debuffs need to be more visible and we need options for what buffs/debuffs to see. There are ways to make this easier as well - for example Aion and TERA both would change the color of the HP bar if the party member had a debuff so I knew to cleanse it, so you don't have to clutter it with 10 different types of debuff icons. Buffs as well need to be bigger but often I might only want to see buffs I've cast, or short term buffs only, etc.

I'd like to see player as well as mob HP bars under nameplates above heads in the world (and I'd like to see player names as well as mob names in the world). Ideally mob/player HP bars would only show up if they're damaged, and let us choose in options what the threshold for this is (90% HP, 70% it shows up, anything below 100% it shows up, etc.). TERA visually did this well - they were small and didn't clutter the screen, but still visually easy to see. In the stream yesterday, you had a standard targeting window for the targeted mob, but it's easier for me to see what's going on if there's also a floating HP bar on the nameplate directly above the heads of all damaged friendly/enemy units.


Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cleric update and weapons demo?

So my initial reaction during and right after the stream was very underwhelmed and I didn't love it. But I took another look today and it's a lot better than I thought it was. I know we talked this to death in Discord immediately post-stream so I won't beat a dead horse, but the presentation needs work because it makes the game you're presenting look worse than it is. We've mentioned this for several streams now but seeing it from a healer PoV really made it obvious. I would suggest having people who know the classes well and are skilled gamers be the ones playing the classes and you can have devs and Steven talk over a video of them playing. It can be other devs, or anonymous PI spot testers (personally I like this idea best), or whoever - that you film playing in a planned, organized fashion that Steven and the 2 featured devs can record a voiceover discussion for.

That being said, what I saw of Cleric was a fairly standard start from what I can tell so no issues with that. It felt like a nicely complete skillset to start with and there were some neat mechanics thrown in like the Heal/Damage single target ability, Convictions amplifying the Chain heal (and whatever else it amplifies), the Chains synergizing with other abilities, etc.

I was a bit disappointed that it didn't feel like there were more action styled abilities. I'm ok with tab target but it felt 100% tab target and not like a hybrid skillest. A PbAoE heal and GtAoE damage/CC isn't enough for me to feel like there are action abilities to choose from simply because every tab target game already has those. I'd take the design (but not visuals) of Wildstar as inspiration for the action side of hybrid I think you're going for - long thick lines are good as "single target" heals, or longer than normal cones, or they also had things like mid range square/rectangle abilities for a "melee healer" style ability as well as a bunch of other cool things. I've seen you do stuff like this with other classes already (Mage in A1 videos had almost entirely templated action abilities like this, the Ranger jump/leap is a line) so I know you can do these types of abilities well already. I'd just love to see some of them for Cleric. I will tab target heal if I have to and have fun with it, but I'd prefer more options.

My last comment is in regards to visuals. I liked the general look of the ability animations that I saw, but they were too hard to see. Make all of the Cleric abilities much, much more visible so in the heat of combat I and anyone else paying attention can see who is healed (or damaged) and with what ability. Also make sure each animation physically connects with the target it's healing at the moment the heal goes off and supposedly heals them.

Overall everything I saw was improved from what I saw in A1, but needs a lot more work for me.

So I noticed in the Tank livestream that the Cleric's abilities were at least more noticeable so that was nice to see. I noticed the visual effects as well as the sound effects much more than I did in the Cleric stream.

Songcaller

Each time you died in the second tank video the Cleric was close to or at full mana. The cleric still needs to be made into an instant caster and also requires something to do other than heal. Would still be nice to have the luminous runes and the current sound effects combined. The fight against the elites has highlighted how useless the Cleric will be in a PvP fight against multiple opponents. The Cleric couldn't heal fast enough when more than 1 mob was on the tank at a time. Also the cleric kept pulling threat too fast from the HoTs.