Combat and Restoration

[Jakensama]

You would just have to ditch the concept of very large bosses and have encounters with lots of enemies. TBH the outline they've been putting up in other threads doesnt lend itself to pve dungeons like we know them. Certainly wouldn't make sense to spend lots of time scripting instances that only the dominant factions on the server who can secure the zone get to spend time in.

[Diggles]

then no one will be tanks. and if we don't have traditional healers, fewer people will be those.

if the strat from the game developer (in this situation us) is to slant the game to a Rambo taking on multiple targets and winning; that is what everyone is going to be.

from the end bosses everyone has fought, imagine the zerg you would have to use without 'traditional' healing if the bosses were the same or worse more 'realistic'. instead of a Cheal rotation it would be a tank sacrifice rotation; and that doesn't appeal to me.

one idea i might throw out is the standard bearer in WAR. they become the traditional healers, have standard abilities and it is the 'medic' station. you could incorporate the standard 'slam' and make it a very ineffective offensive weapon at the same time for the player that wanted to skill up in 'healing'.

that, or you use traps/siege equipment to kill monsters that can beat the fuck out of humans.

you need to get your head out of the established WoW mindset dude

[Slamz]

I'm definitely not interested in the WAR/WOW style "heal the tank while he tanks the boss" type encounters.

IF we did huge bosses, I'd rather see it more like what Diggles says. When a dragon shows up, the best bet is to run away from it. Although I can conceive of a game where magic armor, magic weapons, etc, allows someone to tank a giant fire breathing lizard, I don't think you can have that mechanic without ruining PvP (and I definitely don't want to do something completely artificial like WOW/WAR, where you get some armor effect that only applies in PvE).


So if a dragon shows up, you run for it and maybe later you try and sneak up on it with a bunch of ballistas and catapults.


I can see some room for "monsters" like this -- basically dangerous creatures, big (balrogs) or small (goblins), who are too smart to act as animals but too stupid or vicious to act as a real faction. For example, you could have Nethack style randomly generated dungeons full of monsters and rich in resources which a guild/faction may want to build on top of, both to stop the monsters from getting out and to do some exploratory raiding of the dungeon. If they ever compeltely wipe the dungeon, maybe there's a periodic "cave in" or something that unleashes a new wave of monsters. We could basically imply that the planet's crust is fairly teeming with evil, tunneling beasties.

It wouldn't be a focus of the game, but more like an entertaining side game, like Nethack/Mines of Moria/etc. Although the random treasure may not be anything you can't make yourself, the variety might be interesting and may give you access to neat items that you would otherwise have a hard time creating. (e.g., a magic reflective shield made out of pure silver, and your faction doesn't have a silver mine within 200 miles.)

[Diggles]

ya, you'd have to come up ways with dealing with the beast, not just stand there and absorb dmg.

giant growth spell so you are 8ft tall and can take dmg somewhat better and able to reach vunerunble points on the dragon

tower shield of reflecting (silver or mirror like), deflects incoming spells (5% chance to reflect back to caster)

perhaps the wizards can cast some sort of 'skin of ice' which would lower dmg you take from a fire breathing dragon, the clerics can use 'wall of will/force' to block or deflect an amount of the breath (think Jean Gray from Xmen), or wizards can time the dragons breath and shoot their own cone spell back thats the opposite of what the dragons doing..and you have the locked bolts like Dragonball Z or some shit.

Ie...dragon breaths a cone of fire, wizards shoot cone of cold which negates some of the fire breath

besides the horde of treasure most dragons collect, he himself contains highly valuable materials

dragons scales - armor or shields that are ligther than metal equivilent and also resistant to that specific dragons type of breath weapon (red dragon breaths fire, and his scales are resistant to fire

dragon teeth - used to fashion magic spears that can penerate most materials

shard of dragon teeth / dragon eye / dragons blood / dragons heart - reagent in powerful wizard spells

dragons claws - used by shaman in ritual spells

dragon skull - perhaps if hung on a guild hall, wards off dragon attacks. increases trade reveune

[Vllad]

Big boss fights that require tanking/healing are for games like EQ and WoW. Their are many models that don't employ those.

POBS, Shattered Galaxy and City of Hero's all did big end game bosses that didn't require tanking/healing as part of their model.

In POBS when you fought lvl 55 named ships you worked on wind and splitting to break the big ships up. Hell if you had two hours to spend you could solo it if you were so inclinded.

In Shattered Galaxy you would attack with multiple squads. The encounters were in many forms. Wave fighting where people had to defend an area against wave after wave of troops. You had others where you would be surrounded, others where you had to prevent NPC's from performing certain functions. In the end you would have multiple bosses that acted as the finaly of the fight.

In City of Hero's while they had some tank and spank functions the majority of their encounters required tactical movement and strats on attacking certain combo's. Since the mobs did the same things the players did you had to put yourself in good match ups.

I think the first thing you have to get over is Bosses in WoW and EQ one shot everyone but tanks and have 10 billion hit points and require every odd person to stand on their head.

Bosses in other models are just slightly more powerful then PC's themselves. To difficult to solo but they are not gods.

The encounters are only as limited as your imagination. You don't need tanks and healers to have a lot of fun with Boss encounters.


Vllad

[Vanraw]

I think its interesting that a couple of you are so against the wow model. This is a game we all played for what? 2 or 3 years? How long did we play WAR, or POTBS? While I understand and agree with the lack of good PVP in those games, I find it interesting that you guys keep calling out examples of games that you got bored with in months.

Just an observation.

I for one agree however with the concept of the "big boss" "Tank healer" engagement. I always thought it was silly to end up managing agro so that one person, and a group of healers could win the fight, along with the "others" that added DPS. So like 40 people fight a boss and 2 or 3 classes are critical. I agree stay away from this.

However, I still think that strategic fun comes in the way of diverse classes or skills. If you want boring, then put 20 people in a game where they can be anything. In the end they will all be a set of the most powerfull skills. They will all look the same. Boring.

[Diggles]

I think its interesting that a couple of you are so against the wow model. This is a game we all played for what? 2 or 3 years? How long did we play WAR, or POTBS? While I understand and agree with the lack of good PVP in those games, I find it interesting that you guys keep calling out examples of games that you got bored with in months.

Just an observation.

I for one agree however with the concept of the "big boss" "Tank healer" engagement. I always thought it was silly to end up managing agro so that one person, and a group of healers could win the fight, along with the "others" that added DPS. So like 40 people fight a boss and 2 or 3 classes are critical. I agree stay away from this.

However, I still think that strategic fun comes in the way of diverse classes or skills. If you want boring, then put 20 people in a game where they can be anything. In the end they will all be a set of the most powerfull skills. They will all look the same. Boring.

As an example of how wrong you are, I would make you a flow chart of how different mutants in xmen can beat each other because they each have fairly unique combination of powers and vulnerabilities, but I'd be wasting my time.

[Vllad]

I think its interesting that a couple of you are so against the wow model. This is a game we all played for what? 2 or 3 years? How long did we play WAR, or POTBS? While I understand and agree with the lack of good PVP in those games, I find it interesting that you guys keep calling out examples of games that you got bored with in months.

The WoW model is the same as the EQ model. Its been done. That is not to say it wasn't a good game but that isn't the best model around any longer. WAR is a perfect example of that. I couldn't stand WAR the first day I played it.

Some of the other games I played since WoW were broken games but that doesn't mean they didn't have quality pieces to them that are far supieror to WoW.

I think you make a good observation. The next big game will not be WoW like. The next big game will be something totally different.

The only thing that kept me playing WoW was it was the least broken game we have played in the last 5 years. That is an important feature. Not being broken is different however then being really good at what it does.

The single most important factor to keep in mind is our ultimate game is a PVP game. The WOW model has proven to not be a good model copy if you want a very good PVP game.


Vllad