Suggestions for Summoner, skills and gameplay from a veteran MMORPG player
Hello, PC based mmorpgs are my favourite games to play, and have been playing them since I was a young teenager. Games I played (but not limited to, and in no particular order) include World of Warcraft, Aion, Archeage, Guildwars 2, Maplestory, Perfect World, Allods, Neverwinter, Cabal Online, Runes of Magic, Flyff, Rift, LOTRO, Blade and Soul, The Secret World, D&D online, Vindictus, Lost Ark, City of Heroes, Terra, Wildstar, Black Desert Online, SOLO, SWTOR, and a few others.
I mainly just want to give my opinion and suggestions on a few things:
Number of skills available for use at a time on your hot bar:
There has been a trend towards less amount of skills available for use on your hotbar at a time in newer MMORPGS…. and while I understand that it is redundant to have more skills when you’re only going to be using a few of them, I personally find it more fun, interesting and immersive when we have access to more skills and more variety of skills that we can use depending on the situation.
For example, Some skills for single target, some for aoe, some that are CCs, some that are support/buffs, some for movement/manoeuvrability etc…It can make combat pretty boring when you are just spamming the same skills over and over. I think somewhere around 20-25 skills is a good amount to have, perhaps more or less depending on the personal playstyle of the person and the build they create.
Summoner suggestions:
The summoner class is my go to class in most mmorpgs. So here is my suggestion for it:
What summoner should be like:
-Summoner should be able to summon multiple pets at a time, each one with a specific role. Perhaps with certain subclass combinations, you instead summon a single pet that is stronger, but again have options for different pet types (tank/healer/support).
-The summoner themselves should be able to contribute independently, aside from their pets, such as casting damage/healing/support skills, while their pets are also damaging/healing/supporting at the same time.
-The summoner should be able to control the pets, but also be able to set some skills on auto cast, so you’re not having to do everything.
-The summoner should have skills that are used to directly support your pets, such as heals/buffs that work only on your pets. Or other skills that interact with your pets only, instead of other people.
-Pets that you summon, should remain permanently until either they die or are unsummoned.
-Pets should be more than just an extension of the summoner. Some games I played had a summoner where the pet just followed you and would shoot at your target. This felt pretty pointless. A pet should contribute more in a way that the summoner can’t already do directly on their own.
What summoner should *not* be like:
-Please do not make it so that the summoner is just playing solely through their pets. I played summoner in sword of legends online, and basically when you cast a skill, the summoner would just dance around, and the skill you cast would be done by your pet only. This felt completely pointless and redundant because I felt like I might as well just play a mage, and when I cast a skill, it would come directly through me, which would be completely equivalent. The summoner did not feel like a summoner at all. A good summoner class should have damage/healing/support skills coming from both the summoner directly *and* their pets at the same time.
-Do not make pets useless for boss battles. In some games I played, your summons were made useless during bosses because they were just killed by the boss’s aoe, or would make the fight more difficult for certain mechanics due to their bad AI or simply because they were there.
- Do not make pets summoned with a time limit, forcing you to repeatedly having to summon them every fight which is pretty annoying. Exception to this is perhaps an ultimate summon that is stronger.
A good example of a well made summoner class:
so far my favourite iteration of the summoner class is Perfect World’s Mystic class. The Mystic in PW was able to summon 4 pets at a time, each one with a specialty, one was melee physical damage dealer (with cc), one a ranged magic damage dealer (that could also silence the target), one was a tank (that had aoe damage and debuffs), and one was a support (that cast shields and heals). An additional “ultimate” pet that could be summoned temporarily that was more powerful than all the others.
Additionally, the mystic could summon stationary plants that had different effects, such as attacking, debuffing or healing. Furthermore, the mystic themselves had access to damage skills (both instant and over time), some healing skills, as well as skills that interacted with the summons, such as temporarily empowering your pets, taking power from your pets, or lysing/destroying your plant summons for specific effects.
This created a very dynamic and fun class, that was a “jack of all trades-master of none” type of class that could switch focus depending on the situation. The tank pet with aid of heals could tank pretty well, but not as long or as good as the actual tank class, they could heal quite well but lacked the support skills of an actual healer class, and could also deal a good amount of damage but not as high as pure dps classes. In a party this meant that the tank pet could tank temporarily in case the tank died, giving enough time for the tank to get revived, and the mystic would throw out a mix of dps and heals that allowed them to do a good amount of damage while also helping keep the party alive. The mix of instant and over time skills meant that the mystic always had ticks of damage or heals going out which allowed them the freedom to switch between them as needed.
Cooperation, player housing, pvp, instant travel, and Final thoughts
Encouraging cooperation:
The thing I enjoy most about mmorpgs, is playing with others, cooperating and working together to achieve goals. So I would really like to see this game having lots of things that encourage working together with other players, some things for small parties, while other things for entire guilds. I think it would also be nice to have both guilds and alliances comprised of say 3 guilds.
Player housing
While I think it’s nice to give players their own house on their own, I think it would also be nice to allow groups of friends to be able to get together and have a larger homestead that we can share, and have different resources for growing crops/materials and crafting. I believe AOC is already implementing something like this, so I just want to say that it’s something I really like.
PVP
As someone who enjoys pvp I love the sound of node siege, and caravans that allow the player to opt in for pvp without forcing them to have to do pvp, this is a great balance that satisfies both pvp and pve players. I hope that you continue to make pvp something that has an impact, and is not just meaningless pointless killing of each other. I also really like the idea that caravans are a high risk, high reward type of pvp, ie. Maybe traveling through more dangerous/further routes, leads to greater yield of payout, while you still have the option of shorter/safer routes, that yield less of a payout. I also hope that you continue keeping pvp as part of the open world, and not just instanced. Although some instanced pvp can be added as well. Again, I believe AOC is already going in this direction, I just want to say that this is great.
Instant Travel
I understand that you do not want to add too much instant travel in the game because it defeats the purpose of having an open world, however I just want to say that we should have some degree of access to instant travel or air ships that take us to places to some degree. Some of us have limited time to play, and I don’t want to have to spent 20 mins just running from one location to another.
Final thoughts
Overall, I am very happy with the direction that this game is going in. I have been excited about this game since it was still in its crowdfunding stages. I very much look forward to playing it.
