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Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen - Dev Journals: The Ethereal Energy Fueling the Mana Climate
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The world of Terminus has dramatically transformed over thousands of years through a recurring phenomena known as Planar Collisions: mysterious events where pieces of foreign worlds and realms are embedded into Terminus, bringing portions of their native people, creatures, landforms, deities and ethereal energies with them.
Be sure to post your questions for the Pantheon dev team in this article’s forum thread. We'll be collecting them and sending them on to the devs to complete over the weekend! We’ll cut off submissions in this thread on Thursday at 5:00 pm Eastern (2:00 pm Pacific).
Post edited by SBFord on
Comments
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1) So it kind of sounded like every class will have some type of "mana affinity" or is it purely "magic classes"?
2) Will we be able to carry several relics, so e.g. I can carry a red, blue and green? If so how many max are you thinking?
3) How will relics be acquired?
4) How many mana affinities (i.e. colors) are you guys thinking initially?
- Will/are there plans to utilise said system in a tiered way? [solo, group, raid, different relics for different purposes]? If a uniform "enter and receive", how are you planning to compensate in terms of balance considering all the classes we'll have?
- Will/are there plans to expand this for non-combat solutions/quests? Events or actions one can perform while affected by a climate that are NOT combat-centric?
- What exactly is your thinking in terms of relic safekeeping? Will we end up with 5,7,19 relics in the inventory bags? If not, how and why?
Pride, honour and purity
Are there any abilities or consumables to change mana climate?
1) I am personally looking for a modern version of a plate wearing, tank'ish Shadow Knight (like EQ1). Is the DireLord planned to be this type of class or is it to be more of a Necromancer? If DireLord is to be a pure class Necro, would there be any plans to bring out a tank/necro hybrid again? I miss my SK with his skelly pet and weaker lich form.
2) Will there be any limitations on Race/Class combinations? For example, the Ranger (in the past, like in EQ) was classified as a nature loving benevolent class being a Druid/Warrior type of hybrid. Will that restriction still exist or will evil or brutal & warlike races be able to roll as a Ranger, such as Skar? Or a Skar Crusader bent on unleashing an unmerciful justice from the Skar's racial point of view?
Playing: varies every day it seems.
My question for the devs is: do you have any plans to make this less tedious for folks? If my magic-user only has a few dozen fireballs left because he didn't get a chance to recharge his red relic set (say... because he was busy riding across the world since there's no fast travel), no one is really going to want him on the party. In fact, I'm not sure I'd want to play a magic-user at all like that. I'm seeing more and more time sinks appear for this game. And as an adult in my middle-age, I don't have as much free time as when I was in my twenties. So please consider this before you set too many things in stone. It seems like it would be more meaningful to have the relics give a "boost" of some sort (whether recharge, mana cost, spell strength, etc) than to limit the casting at all to having a recharged relic. Now it may be that having an empty relic doesn't restrict the ability to cast but I can't really tell from this article. It's way too general and non-specific to provide that important piece of information.
Either way, it serves as more of a temporary buff than a long term enhancement. It would probably be unlikely that having a certain relic charged will be a requirement for a group. That is like requiring only a warrior that has a special hp buff or a caster with a mana regen buff.
Does a player carry around a variety of relics, and then equip whatever one best fits the zone?
Or is one of the goals for a zone to acquire a relic while adventuring in it that fits that zone, which may then be useful for some of the zone's more challenging encounters?
I'm not sure I really get this feature. If you just pop in a red mana relic in a red mana zone, and then a blue relic in a blue zone, and so on, this doesn't sound like Brad & Co. to me. There's more to it, I am certain.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
The various races are beautiful and well designed and the Gnome in this game is the first Gnome I have ever considered playing. My concern, though, is that once the exotic (non-human, non-dwarf) races are all geared up in armor will they be indistinguishable from humans except for maybe in the facial area.
1) Will the various types of armor (cloth, leather, mail, and plate) be designed to work with the physical characteristics of each race or will they just be a one-size-fits-all where the armor looks and fits a Skar, Gnome, Archai, and Dark Myr just as the would fit on a human?
2) Will Skar armor have openings for the spikes decorating the Skar physique or will they cover them up?
3) Will the armor reveal the glowing aspects of Gnomes or will it all be covered up?
4) Essentially, will the exotic non-human races in all generic plate/chain/leather/cloth armor look the same as a human in the same armor?
Playing: varies every day it seems.
I hope other than requiring this relic that is hopefully not too restrictive to acquire, this won't become a reason to "need" to race to max levels... and the accompanying cries of boredom as certain players rush to endgame and then cry for more content because they skipped over so much to get there?
'Relics' should have a maximum capacity. Most relics are generic, can hold any flavor of specialized mana, but some 'relics' could have a focus component that allows it to only store specific flavors of mana, only one at a time.
Specialized mana is only created from player action -- conversion, harvesting, etc. Some ideas for harvesting might include:
- Destruction. When a magic item is destroyed, some of the mana used to create that object can be recaptured and reused by trapping it in a 'relic'.
'Relics' should be relatively inexpensive, a necessary implement of magic. Some generic spells can 'attune' a 'relic' to a specific owner -- the default state, 'charging' a 'relic' also attunes that relic to that caster -- or other generic spells can 'detach' the 'relic' allowing it to be traded to another user. The 'current owner' only has to touch the 'relic' to use any or all of the mana stored within it. Changing owners should take a considerable amount of time.Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Now it sounds to "Raid to kill ICE DRAGON at 9:00PM please farm your red mana"
Please Don't.
- Will you be able to use the mana / charged relics outside the mana climate? If so, how long will the relic hold it's change?
- Is it one relic for all types, or are we going to need macro buttons to swap out relics as we move around the world?
- How common will mana climates be? i.e. are they common / every day things, or something that you encounter vary rarely and only use to take down powerful enemies?
- Are mana climates in fixed locations? or are they more random? If they are random, are they totally random? Or more like Rifts rifts (i.e. semi-random spawn timer with fixed locations)?
- Is colored mana used in addition to 'normal' mana (i.e. MP), or does colored mana take the place of normal mana when it is available?
- Is it only ever 1 color that boosts a spell / ability? Or will spells / abilities have multiple mana color bonuses? E.g. green mana = bonusA, red mana = bonusB, blue mana = bonusC. And / or mixed color bonuses? E.g. grean + red mana = bonusD.
What about this game is suppose to excite me other than the "Let's make a game that looks a generation behind, plays a generation behind, and then say it's going back to the roots and all the old school cult following players will come" type of gameplay?
Will classes have the ability to fill multiple roles in groups depending on what they select ahead of time? For example - i play melee plate wearing dps classes in every MMO. I despise being relegated to tank duties simply because i prefer a specific armor. I'm obviously not talking about filling multiple roles at the same time, rather having the option to select from a few to specialize in.
That said, I do love the mana colors and this makes them a little extra neat.
http://s36.photobucket.com/user/mhoward48/media/OnwYv97.jpg.html