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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Make Summoners Great Again!
My formattings gonna suck, so sorry.
So in every game I can think of the summoner class is stuck with the same summons as every other summoner out there ever. Really lacks player customization. So why not make it like the other frequently seen pet class, hunters! Instead of taming wild animals a summoner can find a magic creature and magically bond with it or something to summon it. Like a golem! or a fairy! or like a magic gerbil?! I don't haven't really thought it through I've just been in love with the concept since reader the Summoner Series by Taran Matharu. Also please forgive the English, it's my first language, I've just had to much to drink. Love you, Mingo
So in every game I can think of the summoner class is stuck with the same summons as every other summoner out there ever. Really lacks player customization. So why not make it like the other frequently seen pet class, hunters! Instead of taming wild animals a summoner can find a magic creature and magically bond with it or something to summon it. Like a golem! or a fairy! or like a magic gerbil?! I don't haven't really thought it through I've just been in love with the concept since reader the Summoner Series by Taran Matharu. Also please forgive the English, it's my first language, I've just had to much to drink. Love you, Mingo
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Personally I'm not a huge fan of pet classes. I just like to be in total control of my damage. With that said, do we know summoner summons npcs/pets? The only official example/possibility I can think of was in reference to a secondary summoner tree that might summon swords. That I would be much more into: summoning weapons, tools, etc.
I really do love the idea of being able to create bonds and "tame" your summons. Go through a process and sign a blood contract with your imp, or save a fairy from a spider web. The biggest thing, like was mentioned, is making as many summons matter as possible so a "best summon" doesn't necessarily exist.
A variety of ways to do that really, the easiest being certain classes of summons, meaning that I may tame/bond with something that looks different than someone else's but they have generally or exactly the same move set. This creates variety and uniqueness in the world, while also keeping everything balanced and useful.
The issues of same creatures - like in WoW when you went for a world boss, and there was a crowd of blue daemons, everyone knows what I am talking about - can be solved easily.
Just put a "creature generator" in, but a simple one. Lets split the creature' body in the generator into six customisable parts:
- head
- torso
- left leg, right leg
- left arm, right arm
(the leg and arm ofc. is 4 legs in case of tigers, etc.)
Now, for example, a summoner with warlock skills (who met with tremendous numbers of creatures during his journey) can summon the following monstrosity:
- head: head of a black horned daemon
- left hand: collection of tentacles from a Cthulhu-like creature the warlock met before
- right hand: hand of a fire daemon
- left & right legs: combined into a vertex from a genie's "foot"
Ofc, it would require a small character-generator interface ingame, but I am sure I've never seen this idea before.
Jk, I love you Mingo. :*
On topic though: I've seen a lot of a "summoner" classes in recent years where the pet summons boil down to mostly aesthetics and they don't go all in for using the them as a damage dealer/utility bringer. My main concern would be that IF things are being summoned other than typical spells like energy blasts and hucking swords, they will actually bring something to the table.
To respond off of Nedel's question, Yes. In an MMO setting, Summoners are hard to make. It is very easy to have a Summoner overlap or simply just become a different class for balance and design reasons. I've also been frequently disappointed by how most MMO's seem to define a Summoner class. That being said, I can understand why it turned out the way it has. I won't explain "why" though, because it would make this post quite long and I doubt anyone's interested in reading my observations. ^^;;
IMHO, I think it might improve the Summoner class if they changed or added to the summoning mechanics we're used to in MMO's today. Some of the problems mentioned here just can't be fixed in an efficient manner with how they generally work without bringing up alternative problems. Class overlap, or "odd" player interaction for examples. While I love the idea of going on quests to form contracts with summons, it can very easily be interpreted as a glorified Hunter (or, since a Hunter class hasn't been announced yet, a Ranger/Summoner?).
If I could make a suggestion, it would be to "demote" the familiars we see today to utility and the Summoners auto-attack. This way, we can have a wide range of familiars for different situations. Like a buffer/debuffer, explorer/treasure hunter, secondary healer, tertiary healer/cleanser (Primary healer is in the next paragraph), scout, Single Target generalist, tank for soloing (and not dungeons), and whatever else I can't think of right now.
Then, the actual summons would have medium cast times, higher power, limited lifespan, and long cooldowns. Most of these would be ground targetable. Summon them, and they'll aoe as they appear. Rampage (or aid) for a number of seconds (let's say 12-20 secs for now), and then are automatically dismissed in another aoe. Can't spam the same one over and over again because of the long cd (so for ex. if they last for 12 seconds, then the cd would be like 36 seconds or 1 minute or something), which would encourage a rotation of summons. Or a rotation of summons with overlapping roles if something specific was required like a tank or healer. Maybe allow the Summoner to increase the duration of the summon by sacrificing health, but that'll require testing like everything else. Would also buff the familiar while they're out depending on the summon, so like maybe summoning Titania would passively buff your familiars healing abilities until her time limit. Also, if we're going with the "quest for summoning contract" idea, it would be for these ones.
If elemental strengths and weaknesses are going to be a thing in this game, that would also encourage having multiple summons of the same or similar role, and help alleviate the "tiering" problem as long as the list of possible summons doesn't get TOO large. Like, a Summoner wouldn't want to use a tanky summon that's weak against fire to tank against a fire enemy. Or if the list does get rather large, then they can make the higher tiered ones much harder to get.
Edit: Alternatively, we could also consider Final Fantasy 11's summoning mechanic where as long as the summon is out, it constantly drains mana. With stronger summons draining mana faster. This way, it becomes of a question of mana efficiency and brings up the question of "Do you want a weaker but more sustainable summon, or a stronger but more bursty summon?" Being a higher level allowing you to sustain the stronger summons for longer. This style has its own list of complaints from the playerbase which I won't get into right now though.
Personally, I would also like to get away from the whole DoT/HoT specialization as well (unless you augment for it I guess). I understand why this tends to be the go-to route when designing these kinds of classes and it works really well and is sometimes rather fun. I'm just a bit tired of seeing this combo. Again, if I were to make a suggestion, I would like something like instant summons where the summon comes out, quickly does its action, then disappears. However, I'm very much aware it's pretty much a "Mage spell" with a Summoner aesthetic. Maybe that's enough, but probably not though. I have a few ideas so that it'll be different, but I'd rather have those ideas simmer a bit more first, and this post is already getting pretty long... >_<
Amazingly enough, I read your entire post, although the dreaded "wall of text" initially discouraged me. But, I understand the propensity to wax loquacious, when talking about a subject you feel strongly about.
Having said that, I'm personally not in favor of your idea's for how summoners could work, in-game, simply because of the overly complexity to it all. The balancing issues that would ensue, would dwarf all other classes, combined, lol.
However, your idea about summons mana drainage, equally the strength of the summon holds promise. Not sure if the devs are going that route, but it sounds like it could work, in theory. And, it's simple.
Unfortunately my experience with pet classes is that universally the pet is just an extension of the player's normal skillset and if that's done poorly then it's a also a huge mess where you're trying to input commands on multiple skill bars.
Never the less I do plan to try Summoner out in AoC and the idea the devs let slip in the stream today about summons evolving is very intriguing.
I propose that there be no hard-cap limit on the number of minions a summoner can have. To balance this, each summon could have long cast time, take mana for intial summon and then also drain mana from the caster over time. Let’s do away with the summon and forget mentality and focus on the resource management and summon ability/position orchestration. Interesting game play could come from this type of resource restriction. The player could have a mass of minions for a short amount of time for harder fights, one or two for longer (if the minions are not killed and are controlled well) or any combination in between.
I think that's what we were all hoping for, so it sounds like they are right on track for that concept with it. Definitely something to look forward to since City of Heroes isn't around anymore. I loved the Mastermind and had dozens of them in various combinations. The Summoner might very well be my main character depending on how things roll out.
I'm an Altoholic. We are many. We are I.
These corpse they could reanimate would have a torso as a base and this would have to be collected. so if they wanted a biped they would need a biped torso, or they could go for a quadraped and maybe even start with an insect of arachnid torso. From there they would add Limbs and head to customize their summons. the addition of each piece would have to be balanced but they could customize their summons to perform various tasks and have different skills. Gathering each piece would have a ritual that must be performs to preserve it and would have a set amout of time to live after reanimation.
Just a few ideas of the system i would like to see.
The issues of same creatures – like in WoW when you went for a world boss, and there was a crowd of blue daemons, everyone knows what I am talking about – can be solved easily.
Just put a “creature generator” in, but a simple one. Lets split the creature’ body in the generator into six customisable parts:
– head
– torso
– left leg, right leg
– left arm, right arm
(the leg and arm ofc. is 4 legs in case of tigers, etc.)
Now, for example, a summoner with warlock skills (who met with tremendous numbers of creatures during his journey) can summon the following monstrosity:
– head: head of a black horned daemon
– left hand: collection of tentacles from a Cthulhu-like creature the warlock met before
– right hand: hand of a fire daemon
– left & right legs: combined into a vertex from a genie’s “foot”
Ofc, it would require a small character-generator interface ingame, but I am sure I’ve never seen this idea before.
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Let me tell you about a little thing called No Man's Sky..
Main issue i've seen over and over is that the pets end up being a second thought and usually get in the way.
The best i've seen are the beast master, summoner, and puppet master from final fantasy xi.
A true pet class needs to rely on the pet, I want to feel useless without my pet.
That's how I imagine it would work anyway. So really the subclass augments don't affect you so much as they would affect your summon.
Truth be told, my original plan was to go summoner, but after looking through things I'm tempted by pretty much every class, so many combinations I'd want to try. Part of me hopes that in the beta they'll give us a chance to start at level x, so we can go straight in with trying combinations out.
<a href="https://www.twitch.tv/ashesofcreation/videos/all">Twitch Stream...</a>
Say you have multiple different summons; you can have a set of abilities and each one reacts different with each summon.
There needs to be abilities that involve the player and their summon together during combat. A summon shouldn't be ignored the duration of a fight as is does minimal dps, CC one enemy constantly, or just there to tank.
The summoner and summon should almost seem like one entity, not a minor addition to the party.
Say the summoner multiple summons and abilities. Now most of these abilities should act fundamentally the same but vary differently depending on the summon. Some of the abilities will result in completely unique skill effects with the summon. And of course the summoner will have some of their own abilities to defend themselves...maybe some last resort spells, but should be relatively harmless without their summons.
Say the summoner multiple summons and abilities. Now most of these abilities should act fundamentally the same but vary differently depending on the summon. Some of the abilities will result in completely unique skill effects with the summon. And of course the summoner will have some of their own abilities to defend themselves...maybe some last resort spells, but should be relatively harmless without their summons.