Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Grave

I think that problem exists only in a small minority of raiding guilds

All I have to say to that is, "LF1M healer then g2g"

[khalid]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

And as we've discussed before, mana as a finite limiting mechanic sucks donkey balls.

Best part about Warhammer right there, that they completely got rid of the mana mechanic. Warhammer had so many things right and so many things wrong . The melee healers and the other healers were very well done as far as healing classes go.

And yeah, Cancel Casting needs to die in a fire. If that is what defines "skill", then the term skill has been dumbed down to be meaningless.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by khalid

Best part about Warhammer right there, that they completely got rid of the mana mechanic. Warhammer had so many things right and so many things wrong . The melee healers and the other healers were very well done as far as healing classes go.

And yeah, Cancel Casting needs to die in a fire. If that is what defines "skill", then the term skill has been dumbed down to be meaningless.

Warhammer melee healers had one big issue though, their main single target heal was a channeling melee attack. They had awesome group heals to compensate, but again it becomes quickly very annoying when you can't solo heal your tank through an hard encounter because your class was designed with such a specific role in mind(healing AEs). Or well you could by using that heal, but it could be interupted at the first hit you'd take, AEs for example, which is ironic considering the focus of the class. It was still an enjoyable class(both of them actually, I played both mirrors and they were both fun, even though warrior priests were definitely better, at least early on) but they made slight mistakes in its conception, mostly that single target heal. At the very least it should have been specable to 0%interuption with the healing tree(I believe it was only 50% even when you used the slot).

The energy concept however is definitely a good idea and every game should go for this, it offers more dynamic choices than having a huge slow regen pool like most mana stuff. That or VG healers systems: Bloodmage could simply convert their health into mana, then get some health back while damaging the mobs and healing their main target, while disciple had a special ressource generated through melee combat to power their main heals, but also had access to direct heal through a normal mana pool. But really, no point in making stuff complicated(disciples had 4 bars, health, endurance for melee attacks, mana for mana based heals and jin which were like combo points to use main heals).

[Grave]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

All I have to say to that is, "LF1M healer then g2g"

But that's exactly what the hybridization that we discussed earlier solves. That's the entire point I'm trying to make here.

What do you always have too much of? DPS. What if 3 out of 4 healers played like DPS, and did respectable DPS only below pure Rogues/Mages?

Suddenly a lot more people are rolling them and the healer shortage we see now disappears.

A huge part of why people don't play healers is they are afraid to have the responsibility. It's stressful for them and they'd rather just have fun blasting away. The second a healing class can be played that way with the healing handled through auto proc group heals, defensive target heals, and so on where they never have to look at that HP bars, you'll see a ton of healers available.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Grave

But that's exactly what the hybridization that we discussed earlier solves. That's the entire point I'm trying to make here.

What do you always have too much of? DPS. What if 3 out of 4 healers played like DPS, and did respectable DPS only below pure Rogues/Mages?

Suddenly a lot more people are rolling them and the healer shortage we see now disappears.

A huge part of why people don't play healers is they are afraid to have the responsibility. It's stressful for them and they'd rather just have fun blasting away. The second a healing class can be played that way with the healing handled through auto proc group heals, defensive target heals, and so on where they never have to look at that HP bars, you'll see a ton of healers available.

Actually doesn't quite work that way. If you can heal stuff without actually healing like you said, then there's basically no healing class anymore. I guess that can work, but we go back to the issue of having no real healing classes which will frustrate quite a lot of people. The VG/war hybrid healers are fun to play because they're still healers, heals just don't happen on their own, you still play as a healer, you do targetting, choose the appropriate heal/damage ability, setup the right combos and work around your cooldowns, all this so you can keep your tank/group up. The DPS part only adds soloability and fun, but it's still secondary.

If you still make those healers,while you've made healing more fun, that doesn't mean people will play them, or won't play them like retards(aka won't heal). Let me give you an example. In wow, how many retadin or enhance shamans have you grouped with that actually helped on heals when needed? It's part of their core mechanics(maelstrom and art of war instant cast heals from melee attacks), but most people playing these classes play them for dps and ignore the whole healing(or dispelling) aspect of it. You'd still need "LF1M Healer" to get a group going even if you had 4 hybrids who could heal because chances are these 4 people would be total retards and couldn't heal decently anyway, would spec for DPS, gear for it, and only use dps attacks instead of their hybrid attacks. Or you make healing entirely passive, see first paragraph.

Also the fact that you'd have "pure" DPS classes mixed in totally breaks the point. Pure DPS classes are the reason hybrids don't work, because they always have to be better because they're pure. If anything, remove the pure classes. Have all the classes be hybrid. Some DPS would be the CC hybrids, other debuff hybrids, other healing hybrids and lastly tank hybrids. Mix it up a bit however you prefer, but you NEVER want pure DPS. This only bring endless whinning about how Class X can do as much DPS(because the pure dps player sucks) and at the same time do this or that while pure dps can't. Just give them something to do.

Make one or 2 play like a pure dps(debuff one for example, applies all debuff on normal attacks, no pure debuff ability, so joe the retard doesn't think, eh I'm not gonna debuff, I could be DPSing instead, see makata posts about rogues for a good example, another passive raid healing DPS a bit like shadowpriests in wow), but it should still be an hybrid, bringing something to the raid/group.

Then you can have healers hybrids that actually do real healing, but can also do good/equal dps. And you can have tanks that do good dps too, so then you fix the ratio of raiding so it has more dps than healer/tanks compared to normal groups, and all the additional healers/tanks can dps just fine. Guess you need to hardcap heals through one way or another though, so you don't just stack 5tanks and 20healers, or simply force the debuff/dps hybrids to be in high number too.

[Rezz]

The defensive support class concept can be branched out to supplemental classes in general. One class isn't a dedicated healer per say, but instead he has an aura akin to EQ bardsong that heals in a radius around him. Hell, just supplant the bard there. Now you have passive ae regeneration that offsets incoming damage from multiple (small) sources. Give all base tank classes the ability to either absorb damage from group/raid member or offset a specific portion or sacrifice health or something so that health on the main tank can be better guarded or re-used. Have it on cooldown or a set% that gets spread around. Maybe the "warrior" class shares all damage he takes with his personal group, which all take 10% of all damage he takes, but it also reduces the damage the warrior takes by 5% per group member. So in an arbitrary guess of 5 people in a group, the warrior is taking 25% less damage himself while everyone in the group is taking 10% of the damage he takes per swing. Again, small sources offset by ae regen.

Now, lets say that the AE regen stacks. Instead of granting a buff that is overwritten, it continually stacks with itself up to whatever the desired raid max for the game is (lets go with 30 for the sake of arguement) where regen with 30 bards all pumping the same song gets to fairly insane levels, but without a serious means of damage dealing and tanking fights will be extremely long and complicated with lots of aggro switching nonstop as the bards wouldn't have a reliable taunt or detaunt to change who is getting hit in any given moment. This gives you the flexibility of adding what you want and removing what you want from any group makeup, yet still clearly defines that a more balanced force will be an easier force to take something, yet lacking your bard archetypes for the day doesn't negate your ability to raid, it simply replaces the song with other defensive abilities to spread damage even thinner or with the third possiblity: pain suppression/release. Lets create a class that doesn't heal, but instead changes how damage is applied. Say this Damage Arranger class puts a "rune" type effect on the tank. The rune has a 500 damage limit on it and the tank takes no damage while under it's effect. Now, when this rune has reached its limit, a spell icon pops up for the DA and he has 10 seconds to cast this Pain Arrangement spell on any other player who isn't the initial target. When this spell lands, the recipient takes 600 damage over 5 seconds before the debuff fades. When this debuff fades off, the DA can then cast his rune spell again. Make multiple types with varying damage amounts and durations as well as effects when they go off on another player. These classes stack in that damage could be evenly split amongst all runes currently on the tank so that having 1 tank and 29 DAs would be terribly slow compared to having more damage oriented classes up front, but the tank would never realistically die until the DAs die from overassigning pain. If the DAs are smart about it, they could rotate damage effectively and keep the tank up till the fight is over, meaning doable but not perfect.

Passive AE healing and targeted damage assignment that isn't nearly wack-a-mole as current mmos yet still requires thought process to effectively use. Make these classes have other utility abilties as well as damage dealing capabilities (think.. well, think EQ bard for the bard character and blood mage sacrificing his own health to do damage ala VG) that allow you to effectively stack them. Obviously this is really simplified, but it is possible to maintain the support archetypes in games (and the players they cater to) while still fundamentally changing the lifebar management game on a major level. Instead of staring at life bars, you glance up when a rune fades and apply it to some poor shmuck who needs it. Instead of burning all 4 song slots (random number, yay twisting though) on dps and haste buffs, you look at overall raid health and decide to pump out regen and damage reduction songs. Make the other things the classes can do take precedence but still keep the ability to protect when necessary.

Of course, all games should reward a balanced force with an easier time achieving goals, that is just hard fact, imo. But it shouldn't be impossible for -any- raid group to be successful regardless of the classes it contains. Maybe more challenging in different ways, but not impossible. But like everything else about conjecture, the hard math of abilities, stats, gear, rngs, builds, monster damage/hp/defense/abilities and everything else determine how they are balanced, but creating balanced classes from the start is a good way to set up the groundwork of what can be accomplished by any given group of players.

[Quince]

Jesus was an extraterrestrial

[Gwen Rockpounder]

It got lost in the current healing discussion but just wanted to throw something in about travel I spotted a couple of pages back.

Imho, Asherons Call got a lot right with travel. Initially you had to haul arse everywhere yourself but once you were a high enough level to survive the jump etc, there was a "sekret subway" system which enabled you to cut parts of the map out. They keyword there is parts, you still had some running to do but it cut out the 15 minute jog through 99% grey to you mob nonsense and also removed any hassles that Curt mentioned would come as part and parcel of trying to include player controlled flying through the game.

Since the game will feature an inbuilt job type system so that you won't really need alts (right!? *coughs*) once you've accessed this network once you'll never need to work at it again. Or just build in a family pass so that if there's no job system your alts can still use it etc. No-ones saying alts should auto level to max just because you've done it once (well no-one who isn't at least part loon!) but little legups like that would help. Along with auto faction gaining across all characters the account as well but that's another topic

[Grave]

Originally Posted by Pyros

Actually doesn't quite work that way. If you can heal stuff without actually healing like you said, then there's basically no healing class anymore. I guess that can work, but we go back to the issue of having no real healing classes which will frustrate quite a lot of people. The VG/war hybrid healers are fun to play because they're still healers, heals just don't happen on their own, you still play as a healer, you do targetting, choose the appropriate heal/damage ability, setup the right combos and work around your cooldowns, all this so you can keep your tank/group up. The DPS part only adds soloability and fun, but it's still secondary.

Not really. I brought up the Cleric example earlier for how one could play like a more traditional healing class, still targeting people and casting normal heals. That would be for the people who enjoy that style of play. In this case, the DPS side of the class would be automated while the Cleric focuses on healing. For the other healers, the healing side would be automated and they focus on DPSing.

Originally Posted by Pyros

If you still make those healers,while you've made healing more fun, that doesn't mean people will play them, or won't play them like retards(aka won't heal). Let me give you an example. In wow, how many retadin or enhance shamans have you grouped with that actually helped on heals when needed? It's part of their core mechanics(maelstrom and art of war instant cast heals from melee attacks), but most people playing these classes play them for dps and ignore the whole healing(or dispelling) aspect of it. You'd still need "LF1M Healer" to get a group going even if you had 4 hybrids who could heal because chances are these 4 people would be total retards and couldn't heal decently anyway, would spec for DPS, gear for it, and only use dps attacks instead of their hybrid attacks. Or you make healing entirely passive, see first paragraph.

Well, I'm all for making it completely passive for some classes, that was part of the point I was making. I'm one of those guys in your example who hates healing and when I play my Paladin I only want to play Ret. But at the same time, I do wish I had some way of providing healing without having to change my playstyle to something I don't want to do. If I could do my normal ret rotation and have it auto heal for me I'd love that, and I'd play a class like that over a pure DPS because I'd enjoy that extra benefit and group desirability.

WoW isn't the best example anyway, because specs discourage true hybrid playstyle. Even though a Warrior has defensive stance at all times, a Fury Warrior will rarely, if ever, pop it and tank something. Everything about the game tells him he "can't" do that if he isn't prot spec. This is something I'd like to get away from with these hybrids.

Originally Posted by Pyros

Also the fact that you'd have "pure" DPS classes mixed in totally breaks the point. Pure DPS classes are the reason hybrids don't work, because they always have to be better because they're pure. If anything, remove the pure classes. Have all the classes be hybrid. Some DPS would be the CC hybrids, other debuff hybrids, other healing hybrids and lastly tank hybrids. Mix it up a bit however you prefer, but you NEVER want pure DPS. This only bring endless whinning about how Class X can do as much DPS(because the pure dps player sucks) and at the same time do this or that while pure dps can't. Just give them something to do.

Make one or 2 play like a pure dps(debuff one for example, applies all debuff on normal attacks, no pure debuff ability, so joe the retard doesn't think, eh I'm not gonna debuff, I could be DPSing instead, see makata posts about rogues for a good example, another passive raid healing DPS a bit like shadowpriests in wow), but it should still be an hybrid, bringing something to the raid/group.

One of the things that began this class discussion was balance. I'm personally fine with one or two classes doing more DPS than anyone else. If you only have two pure DPS or so, I think it'd be fine as long as they are only slightly higher DPS and they bring some type of buff/debuff that is stackable and desired by the raid. There are plenty of people who wouldn't mind doing slightly lower DPS if they were trading it for an incredible amount of utility and desirability.

If we remove specs completely, hybrids remain just as desirable as the pures due to versatility. Sure, you could grab 6 Rogues/Mages for your last few slots if you want to stack heavy DPS, but if you had a Warrior in one of those slots you're going to have a solid DPS who can also take over tanking at a moments notice. Or you might get a Druid in one of those slots who is going to be DPSing but increases the amount of raid healing you've got going on by being a DPS/Heal hybrid class.

Originally Posted by Pyros

Then you can have healers hybrids that actually do real healing, but can also do good/equal dps. And you can have tanks that do good dps too, so then you fix the ratio of raiding so it has more dps than healer/tanks compared to normal groups, and all the additional healers/tanks can dps just fine. Guess you need to hardcap heals through one way or another though, so you don't just stack 5tanks and 20healers, or simply force the debuff/dps hybrids to be in high number too.

Things would have to be carefully tuned to prevent stacking of that kind for sure. In my example, I proposed that the pure DPS have a stackable buff/debuff that increases the overall DPS of the raid. So, you could stack 20 healers, but if you do that you're going to miss out on the amazing DPS 5 Rogues/Mages would bring along with this crazy stacking buff that would've let you kill the boss much faster anyway.

I prefer a raid size of about 24 (with 6 man normal groups) and if you have around 10-12 classes, it's unlikely people will overstack a certain class because they'd want a variety of buffs, debuffs and other utility.

[Zaphid]

I think the only way to do 10 different classes is to design a hotfixing system that will buff and thus create a flavor-of-the-week class every maintenance. Maybe tie it to the amount of whining on official forums or something. At least the power balance would be always shifting.

[Tearofsoul]

38 Studios CEO Brett Close on the Big Huge Games acquisition and the Copernicus IP

[Zehn - Vhex]

I love that interview. 100% of updates about Copernicus for the next year are going to be, "The game is coming along great, we really enjoy it and we have a good team. We think players will enjoy it a lot as well. It's going to be amazing." Throw in a few buzzwords like innovative, ground breaking etc...just to juice it up.

Ah well. Can't blame them I suppose.

Originally Posted by Grave

What do you always have too much of? DPS. What if 3 out of 4 healers played like DPS, and did respectable DPS only below pure Rogues/Mages?

Arguing for pure dps classes to exist and do superior dps to all other classes in this day and age is grounds for divorce in some states Grave.

Anyways...

Originally Posted by Gwen Rockpounder

It got lost in the current healing discussion but just wanted to throw something in about travel I spotted a couple of pages back.

Just keep this in mind at all times: The first time you go somewhere it's exploration and that's fun. After that it's commuting and the only way I could actually enjoy commuting is if I got a blowjob during it.

So listen up well Curt, unless you're going to package your game with a clone Alyson Hannigan programmed to do my bidding, don't make me commute.

Relevant:

[Grave]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Arguing for pure dps classes to exist and do superior dps to all other classes in this day and age is grounds for divorce in some states Grave.

Where's the issue with it? Seems like trying to make everyone completely even causes more problems than it solves and is a total balance nightmare of constant tweaking and retweaking.

I would love for a game to come along and say " Properly played Rogues and Wizards are going to be the top DPS at all times, end of story guys" and actually stick with it. Everyone else has major utility to make up for it.

It's a hell of a lot simpler than telling everyone they will be equal and then dealing with the constant whining when Average Joe finds himself constantly out dps'd by class X. Instead, why not tell the people that actually care about the epeen DPS meter to roll a particular class or two.

I seriously doubt it would undo the fix that hybrid dps/healers would apply, resulting in too many pure DPS like we have now. It's pretty appealing to have a class that can do respectable DPS but also constantly keep itself healed. This is one of the reasons people love Ret Paladins and Blood DKs. You'd have a ton of healers running around.

[guanna]

I still like FF11's job system with subjobs over any class based system ive seen yet.

[Agraza]

DPS isn't a role. It's a measurement of an activity people perform when they're not fulfilling a role, and balancing a class toward the superiority of this activity requires a good designer to diminish that role. Unfortunately the designers then realize that DPS isn't a role, give these classes a role, and unbalance them against all the classes designed with roles that lack similar DPS.

I'm tired of re-hashing these arguments so I'm going to be an ass and not back this up. Besides, Zehn enjoys talking to the wall more than I.