Three visions for CU

Hairyzac

I wanted to share three visions I have for Camelot Unchained.  I am very excited for the entire idea of this game.  Targeting a niche market and removing PvE.  PvP is what I love.  There are however things that I feel are integral in making this game fun for me in the long term.  I will list a few below.

 

1.  Tab targeting is the way to go.  I will not have fun in this game if I am trying to line up crosshairs like a first person shooter.  Sure it works in some games because people are playing that game because they obviously enjoy action combat.  I feel like I am very much the niche market Mr. Jacobs is making this game for, and I do believe this market will want a traditional tab targeting system.  I know I do.

 

2.  Crowd control will be in the game.  This is a good thing.  One thing that would be bad though would be INSTANT crowd control.  Any and all type of crowd control should have a cast time in CU.  There is no skill or challenge in just tapping a button and instantly rendering an enemy useless for X amount of seconds.  There needs to be risk/reward in every part of this game especially in the combat and crowd control.  Players should be forced to think and make critical decisions before casting a powerful crowd control.  Also I feel one crowd control per class is enough in an RvR game that will probably have around 8 person groups.  8 different types of crowd control I think is enough with the correct cool downs.  If you even gave players 2 crowd controls, then all of a sudden you have 16 different crowd controls (32 counting both sides of a battle) and people will become frustrated if battles are just determined by who can overlap their 16 ways of crowd control first successfully.

 

3.  The combat system should be fair to both melee and caster classes.  Inherintly melee seem to be very powerful in many games including MMOs.  One example is swtor.  Melee classes are very strong in that game and as far as damage in PvP combat goes, there is only one ranged class that can even compare to all of the melee classes except for one.  Why is this?  Well melee classes don't really cast spells usually.  They swing a sword or some other type of weapon.  Thus, they can move around a lot while doing a lot of damage.  Melee has less risk/reward.  A caster on the other hand, that is forced to stop moving and cast spells while wearing the weakest armor possible, is at a huge disadvantage right from the beginning of any fight against melee.  The risk is huge when stopping to cast.  So what I would hope for in this game would be a combat system that balances this out.  I still want casters to have to stop and cast their spells and abilities, but that shouldn't make them so much weaker than melee.  One way to do this is to make caster abilties strong.  If you are forced to stand still and be target practice for the enemy, then whatever you are standing still for X amount of seconds to cast should be very powerful depending on how long it takes to get off in combat.

 

Now I could go on but I feel a short list of three things is a good way to begin discussion at this point in the game's development.  Comment or make a list of your own.

Niix_Ozek

So basically DAOC with no instant CC abilities.

 

+1

Hairyzac

Originally posted by Niix_Ozek

So basically DAOC with no instant CC abilities.

 

+1

I think it is cool to note that I never played Dark Age (and I am sad I never got in on it).  These visions are just what I feel make an MMO combat sytem fun, engaging, and fair.

Niix_Ozek

Basically those are the main success of DAOC.

 

Tab targetting system works perfectly with the melee style combat / interuptable stand still caster system.

Daoc had lots of CC, maybe too much ? and it did have a lot of insants and maybe it shouldn't have but it worked.

Casters normally did more damage than melee, if you had a caster free spamming, your group would normally be dead very fast. This was maybe later in the game as early melee had a huge advantage, maybe because people didn't understand how to peel / help out their support as it is an integral part of success in that type of game.

 

I really hope you're right though, those 3 things are key for the success of CU .. at least for me.

General_Dru-Zod

I like the rock, paper, scissor system better.

Plus I dont remember Daoc having alot of insta CC other than the speed classes. Remember most of the mezzes had casting time however you probably didnt notice because High End RvR characters had max DEX and RR points into casting time so it seemed "instant".

Hairyzac

Thanks for the short explanation.  Peels are indeed a huge part of games like these.  I still feel a large portion of players are lost on that aspect though.

Hairyzac

Originally posted by General_Dru-Zod

I like the rock, paper, scissor system better.

Plus I dont remember Daoc having alot of insta CC other than the speed classes. Remember most of the mezzes had casting time however you probably didnt notice because High End RvR characters had max DEX and RR points into casting time so it seemed "instant".

Well I hope this won't be the case in CU.  Being able to talent your spells to be instant, especially CC's, seems like it just dumbs down the game and strips it of any challenge in getting off key abilties at crucial moments.

Niix_Ozek

Healers had instant mezz, instant aoe mezz, instant stun, instant aoe stun, druids could spec for instant ae root/root i believe, bards had instant aoe mezz.

Alb didn't have instant aoe mezz however had fast casting sorc with longer range ae mezz to battle instant.

I never had a problem with this system, but I never complained about class imbalance either.

Speely

Yeah you are pretty much describing daoc sans insta-cc, but in regards to that: the classes that had insta-cc were balanced around that.

Also, immunity timers in daoc added a different dynamic than most mmorpgs. Sure, there were "stay there" buttons certain classes had, but implemented as they were within the overall rvr design, they had a place. Healers and Bards could insta a group easily, but it was often not wise to do so given immunity timers and Realm Abilities like Purge (which dispelled any harmful status upon you,)

So very often battles were decided by which side managed their cc most effectively, and very often those teams that spammed too early got rolled because they spazzed out and didn't think tactically and read their enemies. It is a unique game, and that's why it is so venerated.

General_Dru-Zod

Originally posted by PerfArt
Yeah you are pretty much describing daoc sans insta-cc, but in regards to that: the classes that had insta-cc were balanced around that.

Also, immunity timers in daoc added a different dynamic than most mmorpgs. Sure, there were "stay there" buttons certain classes had, but implemented as they were within the overall rvr design, they had a place. Healers and Bards could insta a group easily, but it was often not wise to do so given immunity timers and Realm Abilities like Purge (which dispelled any harmful status upon you,)

So very often battles were decided by which side managed their cc most effectively, and very often those teams that spammed too early got rolled because they spazzed out and didn't think tactically and read their enemies. It is a unique game, and that's why it is so venerated.

This.

Basically pulled the words out of my mouth..

Speely

Also, I am not aware of a game with more depth in regard to cc management than daoc. I am hoping CU continues and improves upon this.

Kryptonite_Hilo

You're in good hands if your post is exactly what you're looking for. There wasn't much insta CC and it did have lengthy timers on it. And you could never cast so fast that it "seemed" instant. Albion had the fastest casting time for CC because their CC'ers were paper wearing casters so it made sense. They also had no instant CC.

Plastic-Metal

+1

I agree. I will also bring popcorn for the ensuing debate about tab targeting versus fps in an mmo..... again.

Speely

Kryptonite: clerics had pbaoe mezz. Remember mezz bombs?

General_Dru-Zod

Originally posted by Kryptonite_Hilo
You're in good hands if your post is exactly what you're looking for. There wasn't much insta CC and it did have lengthy timers on it. And you could never cast so fast that it "seemed" instant. Albion had the fastest casting time for CC because their CC'ers were paper wearing casters so it made sense. They also had no instant CC.

At the high end level it did seem instant ... especially the 10% ToA bonus to casting speed (which overrides the hard cap) and having max Dex and Dex bonus. On my darkness spec'ed SM I would already have my second cast going before I could even seen the partical effect on my enemy.

Hairyzac

Originally posted by Plastic-Metal

+1

I agree. I will also bring popcorn for the ensuing debate about tab targeting versus fps in an mmo..... again.

I think most people who are excited about this game embrace the classic style of tab targeting.  I'm sure there are a few dissenters but there will always be some.

Kryptonite_Hilo

I honestly don't remember mezz bombs. If you were able to get that close to my group to pbae mezz then I was probably afk when it happened. I wouldn't have known if it was insta or casted, but since 99% of Alb CC was casted then I'm going to go ahead and declare it ok for me to remove the 1% (or less) pbae mez as anything other than the "oh shit, i need to kite now" button.

 

Yes, I played many a deck out caster too and no matter how fast your SM was nuking it wasn't instant and it didn't seem instant unless you have excessively long blinks or latency issues.

Speely

Really? Well, perhaps it was a period of time before you played. Mezz bombs were very popular pre-Purge. I was only responding to clarify that Albion had insta cc.

Cheers, mate

Niix_Ozek

Who said Albion had insta cc?

Speely

Kryptonite Hilo said Albion had NO insta CC, and I was just correcting that with an example. No bigs

Stiler

Originally posted by Hairyzac

Originally posted by Plastic-Metal

+1

I agree. I will also bring popcorn for the ensuing debate about tab targeting versus fps in an mmo..... again.

I think most people who are excited about this game embrace the classic style of tab targeting.  I'm sure there are a few dissenters but there will always be some.

All I will say is that you can still have every skill, every ability in DAOC, while still having a non-tab target system for range classes like archers, etc. All it does is change how you aim, not what you can do.

I enjoyed older mmo's, but I find it more funt o actually aim a bow and spells rather then tab>off the go. Even if there is tab targetting, you can do it like Asherons call, where spells travelled in the direction of the target you had targetted, but they could be dodged and didn't just home-in on your target.

meddyck

Originally posted by Hairyzac

1.  Tab targeting is the way to go.  Agreed.

 2.  Crowd control will be in the game.  This is a good thing.  One thing that would be bad though would be INSTANT crowd control.  Any and all type of crowd control should have a cast time in CU.  There is no skill or challenge in just tapping a button and instantly rendering an enemy useless for X amount of seconds.  I would agree that ranged instant AE CC is bad. PBAE instant CC is important for healing classes having a chance to do their job rather than spending all their time being chased around or beaten down by crowds of melee.

 3.  ... So what I would hope for in this game would be a combat system that balances this out.  I still want casters to have to stop and cast their spells and abilities, but that shouldn't make them so much weaker than melee.  One way to do this is to make caster abilties strong.  If you are forced to stand still and be target practice for the enemy, then whatever you are standing still for X amount of seconds to cast should be very powerful depending on how long it takes to get off in combat. Strongly agree. I want my glass cannon to actually be a cannon not a water pistol.

 

Hairyzac

I certainly can see why there is an argument for instant CC for healers.  I'd rather everyone have a cast time on their CC's but if healers are going to have a very rough time getting off heals then they certainly need an instant aoe mez or two most likely.

Niix_Ozek

Generally the instant cc abilities healers had were on 10+ min timers, so they could only ever be used once a fight

Kvalandur

 Will have to disagree on tab targeting. But I'm not in favor of a fps type of system either really. I think there are a few games out that use different targeting methods, I think it would be great to explore some of these options. But to make people not spaz out, they could have both tab targeting AND another method, allowing the player to choose which they want to use.

 As far as CC I'm with you on limiting the number of CC spells classes are limited to. Perhaps a class that uses CC as one of their main features might have more CC spells, but all the other classes, if they get CC, should be limited to one spell. Honestly I don't think each class should get CC. I would go with just 2 perhaps 3 classes getting CC. The same with insta cast CC, maybe a class focused on CC would get 1 type of insta cast, but make it one that can be resisted or some other limiting method for it.

 I'm for balancing melee and casters overall. However I don't think casters would have to stop moving to cast ALL of their spells. Should have a couple of spells able to be cast on the move reserving the more powerful, or damaging spells requiring the player to stop in order to cast.

 Really looking forward to reliving some of those fun moments I had in DAOC in CU!

Hairyzac

Originally posted by Niix_Ozek
Generally the instant cc abilities healers had were on 10+ min timers, so they could only ever be used once a fight

That is certainly a lengthy timer.  I would agree that very strong CC's should have long cd's.