Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
The evolution of the role
Rungar
Member RarePosts: 1,132
Roles have changed a bit in
the last two decades. Games like eq and daoc had many roles including tank,
healer, crowd controller, speed, buffing and dps. More recent games narrowed
that down to tank, healer, dps in recent game like ESO.
The older games while more complex had the Achilles heel of the difficulty forming groups and getting all the right components together. This was especially true in a game like daoc where you could have 8 players in a group.
With the consolidation and basically removal of some of the roles the size of groups dropped accordingly to facilitate the creation of groups faster. For instance was has a 5 man group and eso a 4 man group. In many ways this also dumbed down the gameplay especially where crowd control is concerned.
this created a new problem. Players decided amongst themselves that they would rather play the dps classes rather than the healing and especially tank classes. This is best seen in the groupfinders where it could take up to 30 minutes for a dps but 30 seconds for a tank. The player trend to avoid the other two roles in favor of dps basically brought us back to where we started.
Difficulty to make groups with the available players.
I have a different idea of roles I will share with you that I think can actually solve this problem this time without having to dumb down the game. My roles consist of Fighter, Mage and Rogue. There is no such thing as a dps because all roles can inherently do damage with their own specific methods.
This alone should create a better distribution among players since all players both want to do dps and also identify with one of the three archetypes/roles.
So what makes a role a role is not whether or not they can do damage or tank or heal, but rather how they do damage, and avoid it.
First i put all the roles into a triangle with one at each point. Each third represents the map of that role.
So our fighter role is a close range martial weapons fighting expert. This includes a number of weapon and armor types, weapon skills and various close range crowd control. The fighter is excellent at fighting other martial close range enemies and absorbing melee damage.
Our mage role is a magic expert. This role uses channeling devices such as staves and wands ( and swords sometimes!) and relies on magic for offense and defense. This role has long range crowd control abilities. This role is excellent at fighting other magic types and absorbing magic damage.
The rogue role is a situational expert. This uses a combination of martial weapons and consumables such as poisons, smoke bombs and magical devices. This role is excellent at surprise and non frontal attacks and relies on evasion for defense.
There is no longer a healing role. Instead healing is an almost complete preemptive/mitigation process. Fighters use armor, mages use magical shielding and rogues use evasion. There is no heal that you can directly spam out to top everyone up. Instead you rely on your mitigation and crowd control abilities. The only heals in the game revolve around non combat regeneration effects.
If you are a fighter, mage enemies can chew you up if your not careful. Your armor wont help much with magical attacks. If you are a mage your shield's wont help much with that mace or claw that is about to rip you open. If your a rogue anything that hits you will hurt and are particularly weak to area effect attacks martial or magic but have better action combat (op roll dodge, but no one can roll dodge certain aoe).
Thus all roles are needed for group play as the enemies will be organized to play to the strengths and weaknesses of each role. Many mobs will have martial abilities, many magic abilities and between them they will have single target and area effect abilities as well.
How a group works then is you rotate the proper role for the situation as the target. Sometimes no role will be optimal. In this game you fight fire with a bigger fire, not water.
Unlike players, creatures might not have the same weaknesses you do. A ghost for instance has a strong physical defense and a weak magical defense, but has a strong magical attack. Its up to the players to know who is best for what situation, and thus all have to actually learn the game. Pressing a taunt button or chucking heals does not apply here. Send in your best guy while the rest try to kill it.
Since there is little actual healing, the game will feature a strong array of preventative measures like slows, fumbles, shields, roots, sleeps, stuns, blinds and other forms of crowd control to augment the action combat and role mitigation. Each role has access to unique versions that fit their role. For instance only the mage role will have the sleep spell, and likewise only rogue can snare. All roles will have also have common control methods but will differ in how they are deployed. Some might be ranged while others close and again others might need to be setup.
You are expected to survive based on your deployment of crowd control, role mitigation and action combat abilities. There is no taunt or heal to save you, but there are other things each role can bring to the table to save you. A mage can extent shields augmenting your magic defense, fighters can guard augmenting you martial defense, and rogues can enhance your evasion abilities. One role cannot be op because its missing a large portion of the mitigation pie. You need the other roles.
The older games while more complex had the Achilles heel of the difficulty forming groups and getting all the right components together. This was especially true in a game like daoc where you could have 8 players in a group.
With the consolidation and basically removal of some of the roles the size of groups dropped accordingly to facilitate the creation of groups faster. For instance was has a 5 man group and eso a 4 man group. In many ways this also dumbed down the gameplay especially where crowd control is concerned.
this created a new problem. Players decided amongst themselves that they would rather play the dps classes rather than the healing and especially tank classes. This is best seen in the groupfinders where it could take up to 30 minutes for a dps but 30 seconds for a tank. The player trend to avoid the other two roles in favor of dps basically brought us back to where we started.
Difficulty to make groups with the available players.
I have a different idea of roles I will share with you that I think can actually solve this problem this time without having to dumb down the game. My roles consist of Fighter, Mage and Rogue. There is no such thing as a dps because all roles can inherently do damage with their own specific methods.
This alone should create a better distribution among players since all players both want to do dps and also identify with one of the three archetypes/roles.
So what makes a role a role is not whether or not they can do damage or tank or heal, but rather how they do damage, and avoid it.
First i put all the roles into a triangle with one at each point. Each third represents the map of that role.
So our fighter role is a close range martial weapons fighting expert. This includes a number of weapon and armor types, weapon skills and various close range crowd control. The fighter is excellent at fighting other martial close range enemies and absorbing melee damage.
Our mage role is a magic expert. This role uses channeling devices such as staves and wands ( and swords sometimes!) and relies on magic for offense and defense. This role has long range crowd control abilities. This role is excellent at fighting other magic types and absorbing magic damage.
The rogue role is a situational expert. This uses a combination of martial weapons and consumables such as poisons, smoke bombs and magical devices. This role is excellent at surprise and non frontal attacks and relies on evasion for defense.
There is no longer a healing role. Instead healing is an almost complete preemptive/mitigation process. Fighters use armor, mages use magical shielding and rogues use evasion. There is no heal that you can directly spam out to top everyone up. Instead you rely on your mitigation and crowd control abilities. The only heals in the game revolve around non combat regeneration effects.
If you are a fighter, mage enemies can chew you up if your not careful. Your armor wont help much with magical attacks. If you are a mage your shield's wont help much with that mace or claw that is about to rip you open. If your a rogue anything that hits you will hurt and are particularly weak to area effect attacks martial or magic but have better action combat (op roll dodge, but no one can roll dodge certain aoe).
Thus all roles are needed for group play as the enemies will be organized to play to the strengths and weaknesses of each role. Many mobs will have martial abilities, many magic abilities and between them they will have single target and area effect abilities as well.
How a group works then is you rotate the proper role for the situation as the target. Sometimes no role will be optimal. In this game you fight fire with a bigger fire, not water.
Unlike players, creatures might not have the same weaknesses you do. A ghost for instance has a strong physical defense and a weak magical defense, but has a strong magical attack. Its up to the players to know who is best for what situation, and thus all have to actually learn the game. Pressing a taunt button or chucking heals does not apply here. Send in your best guy while the rest try to kill it.
Since there is little actual healing, the game will feature a strong array of preventative measures like slows, fumbles, shields, roots, sleeps, stuns, blinds and other forms of crowd control to augment the action combat and role mitigation. Each role has access to unique versions that fit their role. For instance only the mage role will have the sleep spell, and likewise only rogue can snare. All roles will have also have common control methods but will differ in how they are deployed. Some might be ranged while others close and again others might need to be setup.
You are expected to survive based on your deployment of crowd control, role mitigation and action combat abilities. There is no taunt or heal to save you, but there are other things each role can bring to the table to save you. A mage can extent shields augmenting your magic defense, fighters can guard augmenting you martial defense, and rogues can enhance your evasion abilities. One role cannot be op because its missing a large portion of the mitigation pie. You need the other roles.
.05 of a second to midnight
Comments
Of course depending on the enemy you will be situationally op toward some enemies and this is also by design to allow for soloing. You wont be able to solo everything and will have to be smart about the fights you pick. For instance its a bad idea for a rogue to fight the mushroom burster which features area effect necrotic spores. Your dodge rolls will do nothing against that area effect. Keep in mind that there is no experience in this game, no low hanging fruit. You might need those spore casings for something. You cant necessarily just grind something else that plays to your strengths.
Some groups of enemies may have multiple types such as a goblin posse might have a shaman and warriors. You will need to know how to play and determine what your up against.
All roles can use all weapons and armor but you wont necessarily be effective with those combinations. This is why we use the triangle role map as you can sacrifice some of your role for one or two of the other roles. For instance in the triangle the fighter and mage there are skills there at the boundary of the two. Same for fighter and rogue and same for rogue and mage. If your mostly a rogue though it will be hard to access the abilities in the fighter/mage boundary area. So you cant have it all as you have to weaken your role to gain more in the other role.
If your a fighter you'll have to give up martial mitigation to some extent and you wont necessarily get back an equal amount of magic mitigation for doing so and in either case both will be weakened depending on your choices. But you can however choose whatever you want according to the rules of the triangle role map. You can have a fighter with some mage abilities or any other combination but this will be inherently more challenging to make work because of the focus on role mitigation. You cannot just heal your way out of it. Your mitigation really matters but it might be worth it if you can access a spell or skill that works with your playstyle.
Since there is no healing per say we rely on natural regenerations instead for your health pool. These can be bolstered. Forming a group will bolster this a little with the safety buff and there are other ways but they are not active skills combat wise, more like preparations. There will be no "regeneration 2 spell" Instead the food you eat, if you've rested a couple of moments, the safety in numbers I mentioned and other similar mechanics will do be how you do that. You will also not have one guy with 50k hp and everyone else at 18k. That doesn't apply here either. Your hp/magic and stamina are determined by your food, not a +20 health armor. Eat according to your needs.
Each role has no levels but has access to training perks. These are unique things each role can find or learn. For instance between the fighter and rogue ( but on the rogue side) roles are the bow perks. There are no +2 bows or things like that but rather unique perks that can used in a loadout which has a limit. If you choose quickdraw you can shoot arrows faster but that's all it does. No stat padding as every perk actually does something unique. There is no directly dmg perk but many perks like the quickdraw can lead to more damage.
This makes your character loadout act a lot like your equipment sheet. You fill up all the slots with the applicable unique perks. For players it should be very familiar and easy to use. Just fill up the slots. Of course how you fill the slots could make a huge difference according to your playstyle but it would be very straightforward. The degree of specialization determines how many slots you have so if you could have 10 in a role if you wanted something from another role you have to give up one to get one in another role. Again keep in mind that mitigation is inherent to the role. You will always be giving up a strength to improve a weakness.
Attributes will be different as well. We use the triangle again but a different system. You don't choose your stats. You choose your race and all races start somewhere in the triangle of strength/intelligence/agility. Where you end up is completely up to you but like the role system you have to give up something to get something. If you pick the wrong race or role don't despair because you can change your course whenever you want. You might have to put a bit of work in though as your attributes change based on your playstyle. If all you do is cast magic your strength will decrease and intelligence increase. This has in game effects because your attributes determine other things i.e strength determines things like carry weight. So no matter where you started, with effort, you will end up where you intend. If you chose poorly for the role it might take a little longer to optimize your stats for that role but it isn't the end of the world.
These initially come in three forms of books: complete book, book with missing pages, and the missing pages. Finding the book is usually the fastest way to gain knowledge but not always. You can also lean knowledge another way.
A special algorithm will work in the background and asses your character each day when you log in. It will use a multivariate analysis of your previous logs and character information and if you meet certain criteria it will award you "Ah!HA i figured it out" knowledge. This will be awarded at the beginning of the play session each day to promote logging in. So you don't have to find the book but it is the easiest method to gain the knowledge. This calculation also revolves around your role so its much more difficult to learn anything outside your role if you don't actually use anything in your role. The system is an insurance policy as some knowledge is easy to get and other very difficult but if you keep working toward it, it will come to you. This systems difficulty ramps up very fast to so its easy to fill the slots but becomes much harder once you've reached that limit. This will not be visible in anyway by your character. It is an bonus insurance system that will aid you should you put the work in.
For instance you might learn a knowledge perk for picking up a weapon, or your first kill with it. You would have a limited number of slots to get going with but there might be 10 times as many perks for that role alone, and then of course there are three roles.
I use the crafting device method because it requires you to collect resources to build them once you have the knowledge/recipe. There are exceptions for the starting perks. This system means that all your characters share knowledge but, using the built devices, can have different training and thus different role perks. If you build an archery range all your characters can use it to train a perk.
The skills and spells system works the same way. You can either find the knowledge books or the insurance system might work to your advantage. For instance if you get hit with a skill or spell you might be able to learn that base skill or spell with some exposure. Even someone in your group with the skill or spell can potentially help.
Once you have the skill or spell you can add skill/spell perks to each one to modify it to your liking. These are not levels as each perk will will add something unique to the skill or spell. Getting the skills and spells is meant to be generally easier especially initially but the difficulty ramps up in collecting all the potential perks for that skill or spell. Easy to get into, difficult to master them all. Skills and spells can also leverage your training equipment as well as their own stations so there is some overlap.
Equipment works the exact same way except the equipment has no alternate means. You have to actually find it. It does have perk slots but unlike the other progressions you do not have to craft the stations yourself. You can get someone else to do it for you. Like the character and skills the perk slots add something unique, not just random stats.
All these systems use the basic equipment loadout type methodology so they are simple to get into and understand. It is literally just like equipping armor, should you have the armor to equip.
Since this game has action combat your primary and secondary attacks would be of great importance. Additional to this there would be one weapons utility slot. This changes with your weapon and you could switch weapons like eso did it with a button press. Next would be a another 2 skill slots that do not change when you change weapons. Finally there would be 2 utility slots where you could slot anything but a skill or spell. You can use consumables like potions, bombs and reagents here.
Rather than having a set light/heavy attack you would instead select a primary or secondary attack skill from those available to that weapon so they are limited slots. Weapons are learned from roles so weapons skills are generally role skills.
Unlike eso you will not need to change weapons every point 2 seconds. You can only access the weapon and one additional skill. All weapons skills are unique similar to how you would see weapons skills in eso except they are as role based as the weapon itself.
The other 2 slots are for other skills and have no limits by role. You can put any non weapon skill or spell as you please.
This game would have a larger focus on consumables and thus two slots are required. This allows for the use of potions or traps or reagents but you have to pick and choose.
Since it is action combat the skill loadout should match the flow of combat. You would rely on your chosen spammables ( primary and secondary attack slots, and a third weapon slot. Not every weapon skill is a primary/secondary attack. Some can be passives or other function. Some can only go in that third slot. Likewise primary/secondary attacks cannot go in the weapon utility slot.
We want to move away with slotting multiple damage sources and stacking them as seen in eso.
One or both of the consumable slots can be used as a reagent slot. You don't have to use reagents in this game but you can and they will give slightly enhanced effects for one skill per slot. Reagents are not used with weapons skills.
So the reward for the event are general increases for the various perk caps. These could be very general like increasing your perk cap by 1 in your character loadout or can be specific to skill, spell, or equipment. Even within this they can be specific to a type of spell or skill or equipment. It could also be other things though like new content unlocks or new equipment/skills/spells.
This will allow players to grow over time to keep the system fresh. There would be events every so often that I call the Knowledge wave that travels the entire world. When this happens it signals an event that player can participate in. The event can be anything from a traditional kill the boss raid to a crafting task to a collecting task. If the event is successfully completed, and it does not matter by who, everyone gets whatever upgrade is offered. If the event fails, there is no reward for anyone.
This event system has a darkside as well what I call the hexwave. This wave is just like the knowledge wave except at the last second it turns red. This means you get no knowledge quest/task to complete and instead get something nasty to deal with. The integrated even system will be the main way the game matures and new content is added. It is an all or nothing system so players have to work together. Additionally while you can fail some knowledge waves others you cannot but can speed them up instead. They will definitely occur, but when they occur is somewhat up to the players.
Equipment
Equipment will come in two forms. Crafted gear and hexed gear. Hexxed gear is cursed and found in the world as drops. All hexxed gear carries penalties on use but also have the best parameters to compensate. Crafted gear has no penalties attached but is a little weaker overall than hexxed gear. Additionally you can remove the hex which removes the penalty and dulls the bonuses to be similar to crafted gear.
The penalties could be very steep so you would have a mix of crafted/unhexxed and hexxed gear in most cases. You can choose any combination though if you can live with the penalties.
There would be no armor set bonuses or things like +20 health. Armor features bonuses that are limited to the sphere of armor and type, weapons, the sphere of weapons, trinkets and jewelry would also have specific uses. the stats here would be more focused. Instead your set bonus is transferred to the perk system where multiple perks of a similar type give a bonus. The source of the role mitigation is the interaction between role perks, skill perks and equipment perks.
The more perks you choose that identify with a specific role the easier it is to attain the roles mitigation through synergy. This does not mean that you cannot use other combinations but it will be more challenging than other games.
The combat would be action like eso( minus all the stacking/cancelling crap) and the feel of combat would be more like eq1. There would also be a valheim feel to it.
Sorry Scot need to hijack this reply
Death penalty
The game will feature corpse runs as the only death penalty. As mentioned elsewhere there will be a number of items called trinkets you can collect and these will give you some way to partially mitigate the corpse run. Each one will do something specific but also have a chance for disaster.
For instance the bag of bones lets you summon a protective pet to guard you on your corpse run. The downside is that the pet may be "cowardly" and thus run away when something attacks you. All the trinkets will be set up this way to offer gameplay ways to deal with that penalty. There would be enough flavor for each player type to settle on a few aids according to their play style. This could include portals, polymorphs, pets, and buffs. Each with a specific strategy and potential for disaster.
1) Polymorph Totem: When you die, after you come back you transform into one of 3 different animals to help you get back to your corpse easier. The stealthy rat, the flying crow, and the speedy fox. The polymorph lasts 15 minutes (or until you touch your corpse). You dont know which one youll get each time you die and you can cancel the effect at any time. 1 hit and you die again.
2) Amulet of Prismatic Invisibility: When you die the amulet gives you one kind of invisibility: Invisibility to undead, Invisibility to animals, Invisibility to humanoids. Which one you get is random and lasts 15 minutes. It can change focus at any time randomly.
3) Unstable Portal Token : When you die you can activate the unstable portal token and it will transport you within a certain range of your corpse...most of the time.
4) Blinking Pendant: When you die you can activate this and it will transport you a short & safe distance away from a mob that has aggroed you. It has 0-4 charges.
5) Stunning Pearl: When you die you can activate this and it will stun the next mob that does damage to you. It has 4 charges but the stun is variable from 2-5 seconds ( 10 s recharge) and there is a 5% incremental ( 5/10/15/20) chance it will stun you with each activation.
6) Vial of Purple Liquid: When you die you can activate this and it will increase your runspeed at the cost of one of your regeneration stats ( health, stamina or magicka) for 15 minutes.
7) Bag of mixed bones: When you die you can activate this and it will summon a pet that will defend you for 15 minutes. There are 3 possible pets, The wolf, the panther and the hawk. There is a chance that they will flee at the first sign of trouble.
8) Weapon signet: when you die you can activate this and it will summon a weapon for you. There is no telling how long the weapon will last or what weapon you will get. Hopefully you dont get the mystic spoon.
9) Charm of familiar feeling: Lets you summon one random item off your corpse from your equipment panel.
For the occasions that you cannot retrieve your corpse there will also be a system to allow you to get your stuff back. This will be a little more involved than a simple corpse run and might feature multiple options from requiring specific items to completing or small quest. It could even be a time limited skill testing question regarding the games lore or mechanics, and failing that a default cost. You might also be able to build your own corpse summoner that requires a certain powerful fuel.
I want death to give you environmental awareness but not be punishing or tacked on. You will never be at risk of losing your stuff permanently and all mechanics use gameplay mechanisms. Ideally death should teach you the game, not be so weak you learn nothing, or so oppressive that you wont take any risks or even play.
In the game you wont actually die immediately but will be knocked out. If you are knocked out another player can revive you with a consumable. This will be a limited time though ( like 5 minutes) so if no one helps you in that time you will die and respawn at the spawn location. You can give up at anytime and additionally while most mobs will be fooled and leave you be, some monsters, that you might not even have been fighting will be alerted and come try to finish you off.
your respawn point will always be a town based respawn. You will will be able to set this to either automatic or manual depending on your preferences. If its automatic you just have to enter the towns limits.
For this I use a concept called familiar exposure. So there are 3 roles(fighter/mage/rogue) formed in a trianglemap ( and three specializations within each of those), there are three base attributes (str/int/agi) in a triangle and there are three bars (health , magic, stamina). This gives people a general familiarity by using 3's and triangles they can visualize all the systems better which makes learning new systems much easier.
Likewise i use the equipment layout for the perk system because people are already familiar with that. So your character is a loadout of perks and your equipment is another layer of that. Skills is just another layer (3 layers total) forming another triangle (Character/equipment/skills) This is why I like the unique perk system. Find something and put it in the slot until you find something more to your liking. It works just like the equipment system which by now, is familiar to all players.
The controller has the same scheme to it and people are used to this. There are three different elements to it. The weapon skill slots/anyskill slots/consumable skill slots ( another set of 3).
I try to keep all similar systems operating in a 3 paradigm because people can figure that out easy and apply it to any system.
so a fighter will have access to 3 weapon general weapon types
one hand/shield, 2 hand weapons, dual wielding. Rogues have three as well and mages have three weapon structures allowing for 9 possible specializations.
Similarly each role will have access to three kinds of crowd control.
This hierarchy of three makes it really easy ( in theory) to get into the menus and learn the game. You are always being presented with three choices and three layers. Enough choices but not too many.
Armor:
Armor comes in three variations and is role based. So all fighters wear metal ( plate, chain, splint), all rogues wear animal (leather, fur, scale) and all mages wear clothes ( wool, cloth, silks) . However within that paradigm you can modify your armor the way you like using the equipment perk system. This lets you choose 3 parameters to modify the armor to your liking and we use another triangle. Fit, durability, and protection. This is done when the armor is created. Fit gives a mobility bonus, protection a defensive one, and durability is a special case of a combination of how long your armor lasts before repairs, cost of repairs and which helps prevent "shatter", a condition where taking certain hits without the proper mitigation can put your armor out of commission instantly.
Armor will not give you more and more stats like in other games. It is armor and behaves like armor. Unmitigated hits can shatter your armor.
This system is used in lieu of a critical hit system which I think is a bit played out. If you can shatter the enemies armor..all hits are "critical" hits. Doing this will be a key strategy. Some mobs will have multiple layers of armor to "shatter" and some monsters can regenerate their armor.
Additionally armor can have its own perks that you can add to certain pieces. These come in the form of magical additions you can put on your armor. Like all the others they are unique and further modify the behavior of the armor in some way. You will have three pieces of armor: head, torso, legs and each one can host up to 3 modifications ( 1 enchantment and 2 adornments). If your armor shatters you lose whatever protection they provided.
All monsters will have abilities that default target one of the three pieces, 2 of 3 or all three pieces.
additionally you will have one trinket slot and two accessory slots. Your trinket slot stays with you after death and your accessory slots cannot be shattered. This trio of equip-able items do not have extra slots.
weapons are similar to armor and also have three basic triangle attributes when created or found : Damage, durability and blocking power. A shield is considered a weapon. They also have 3 perk slots to further improve them. One slot is an enchantment slot and the other two are adornments.
You will be able to switch among 3 weapons at a time and it is expected that your weapons might break in regular use. Unlike other games switching weapons will leave you venerable to attack and there will be no incentive for dot damage stacking by cycling weapons. They are more geared toward having the right damage type for the enemy. Different weapons also switch at different speeds. Some are faster than others.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Right the "I don't need anyone else" character........
Role specialization. Each role is a specific specialization or way to play the game. Mages do magic damage and are resistant to magic. Fighters the same but physical and rogues are pure situational.
Within each role there are three weapon configurations. Fighter has one hand and shield, 2 handed weapons and dual wielded weapons.
The rogue has ranged weapons, one hand weapons, and devices.
The mage has staves, rods, and spellbooks. Within this there are also 3 damage types per role ( blunt, slash, piercing) Mages have fire, frost and lightning. Rogues share the fighter and mage damage types but are situationally specific. For instance devices can do any damage type in the game but are the hardest to deploy. Bows can only do piercing. One hand can do any melee damage type.
You can specialize in one of these weapon types or or be equally proficient with two or less proficient in 3. You can also use weapons outside your role. Depending on the monster your proficiency may be less impactful than the damage type.
Each weapon type has both unique primary weapon attacks, secondary attacks and utility. Similarly there are three basic forms of crowd control available to each role. You get the Default behavior for free but can change out these as any slott-able skill that you have access to and fits in the slot.
The weapons are mapped in the role triangle so two are at the boundary of the role and one in the middle ( splitting the triangle into three). If your a fighter and you want a bow or staff you can do it. Similarly if your a rogue and want dual wield you can do that as well as the boundary of the fighter rogue is bow & dual wield.
On the fighter/mage boundary side we have rods and one hand and shield.
On the rogue/mage side we have one handed and staves.
so even within the role you can specialize and additionally you can go a little outside your role but there are role mitigation costs for doing so.
So you can be a fighter with a bow, a mage with a sword, or a rogue with a staff. It may not be ideal but it can be made to work and may have situational advantages. The farther away the weapon is from your primary role the harder it will be since you have to give up role mitigation to attain these things. Crowd control which also comes in threes works the same way.
This allows for freeform creation within limits so you can select a role and modify that to your liking while maintaining the overall role structure.
Your not stuck in rigid classes or have complete freedom to build. Its kind of the best of both worlds situation. Taking anything from another role will automatically increase the difficulty setting as you will lose role mitigation. That's not to say that it cant work.
Role mitigation and its affect on your character.
Role mitigation is how your character takes damage in the game. Each role has a specific strength. This comes in two forms. Each role has a specific method to absorb or negate damage.
All characters have a default behavior for block and dodge. Depending on your role this can be enhanced to great degree.
All players have a default 20% block. Fighters can increase this value to 50% for physical damage by investing on fighter role perks. Mages can do the same thing but specifically for magic damage. Rogues have neither.
All players can also juke which is a more limited form of roll dodge. Juke transforms into full roll dodge by investing in rogue role perks.
These are passive advantages. It doesn’t matter what perks you choose as long as it’s a specific role perk. This also has a synergy effect so there is a distinct difference from going from 0-1 and 9-10 where 9-10 is a greater effect.
This means that if you choose another role than your main role you will lose more of your role mitigation than you will gain with the other roles mitigation.
The second effect is passive armor synergy. Each armor piece (up to the 3 main pieces) gives you a bonus toward your passive mitigation. Like the block mitigation there is a synergy effect so if you wear your roles armor you get a stronger effect than just the armor alone.
If you wear 3 role armor pieces you get the maximum effect. Fighters have a passive physical mitigation bonus, mages a magic bonus, and rogues an evasion bonus for wearing their role armor.
You can however, wear any armor you wish and additionally mix and match them as well. Generalization in this game is considered a difficulty increase since you may have more tools available but less overall mitigation. This system maintains the framework of the role system while allowing some more inherently challenging freeform builds by more experienced players. Your damage output is not affected by role mitigation in any way and instead if a function of the weapon you use. As explained previously character perks may indirectly bolster this damage such as making your attacks faster or use less resources.
Armor, health, stam and mag
In this game you cannot be healed but can naturally regenerate and there are a number of ways to bolster this. In combat you can only bolster mag and stam regen. Health regen can only be bolstered prior to combat. Your health, mag and stam is determined only by the food you eat and can eat up to 3 foods at a time ( like valheim).
In this game you want to protect your health at all costs as you cant just heal over and over and over. It is meant to add a sense of emergency and finality to combat. If your too damaged you might have to withdraw or switchout as the only way to heal is to stop getting hit.
Armor exists in to forms: physical and magic. These can be bolstered in combat by other roles. Armor acts as a standard damage reduction effect as it reduces the damage to your health. Each armor type has a separate magical and physical rating. Metal armors have a poor magical defense and robes have a poor physical defense. Animal armor are generally lukewarm in both categories but are better fitted to aid in evasion. If your armor is shattered you will lose the effects for that piece and any related synergy effects. Your armor cannot be shattered if you block effectively. Your weapon can be though. If your weapon shatters on a block you will block that attack completely regardless of block strength.
I think the better approach is to understand why tank and healer roles are shunned and figure out ways to make playing them more desirable.
It literally could be some as simple as giving both classes bonuses in earning gold or experience which DPS doesn't get.
Many don't want to tank in ESO because they are so slow and tedious to level when soloing.
A 25% experience bonus would likely go a long way to encouraging people to play a tank or healer.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
If i did that though I thought it would make it less fun. I think crowd control is something all classes require if your not going to have traditional healing and you want players to be able to solo at least some of the content. If you remove crowd control you remove almost every strategy from soloing which i think is a bad idea.
i also wanted to get away from traditional buffing and move that into the survival aspects. Eating the food, having the fire, the cookpot etc. Buffing is a maintenance activity so i would rather have it more organic than just casting lots of spells every 15 minutes.
I dont mind negativity at all. Say what you have to say.
as far as the strategy goes if you consider modern games theres really no strategy to it at all. There is not one mob that you cant just go kill no matter what class you are or makeup. All classes can kill everything with ease and not much to think about unless its meant for a group. When's the last time you changed your strategy because of a certain creature type? There's no mob that is best avoided.
so each role has a glaring handicap built in that when soloing will make you think twice before engaging..depending on the mob type.
this pushes some of the strategy into the design of the monsters which i dont think get a second thought in mmos. Since there are now different combinations possible to keep it interesting. Casters and magic mobs require a different strategy than brute force mobs. So depending on the roles you have and the strengths and weakness of the mobs there is much more strategy available.
so in a group you have the following strategies.
you fight him, i fight this one, you fight that one.
these are all magic so mages engage first
these are all brute force so fighters engage first
these are magic and brute force take this one by surprise and lure into trap
this one has aoe so well try to keep at range
cc all the adds while we take out the tough one
anyway you look at it, there is much more strategy than tank and spank. Its simple enough to understand but there is complexity there as well.
Tanks are the fastest to level in eso since all you need to do is queue to the groupfinder. Having leveled up a number of tanks in all classes i cant agree with you there. They arent really harder to solo either. All you have to do is change out your heavy armor for medium armor and slot a few different skills. I think its a meme for those who are too lazy to change armor and skills. lol.
the real reason why people dont want to tank in eso is because they get oneshot if they miss a block in most vet content since 2016 or the dps is so abysmal that you cant finish even the easy dungeons. They also dont tank because theres no place for them in raids since most raids only need 1 tank.
Discussion / The DE-evolution of the role..
this is because it wasnt shared properly. In my vision any role might be the best tank based on what your fighting. Its shared equally among all the roles and all we need to do is be creative, for once, when designing the monsters.
You see in FFXi you received a bonus by chain killing and the longer the chain the shorter the time to pull if off.
Without a true DPS role it would take too long so no bonus and there is of course more to it.The more you ask of your healer the more hate the healer attains until the healer becomes the tank.If it takes too long w/o a dps role then the healer also runs out of mana.
It is not about each player doing some damage it is about surviving the damage taken.
You cannot allow ANY player to equal the mobs stats or it becomes way too easy/simple.This is why specific roles are so important and allow players to win battles that would be impossible solo.
I am not sure many truly realize how simple math is within combat.There would never be any challenge if your healing could outlast the mobs dps.So it takes a VERY fine tuned design to offer a challenge and feel some sort of accomplishment.
Most games fail at some point,the math becomes destorted and/or devs try and cover up poor design by simply making bosses immune to anything you have that is powerful.When playing a games combat system,you just have to "get it" or you don't and imo most people play blindly,their blinkers set on loot/reward.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Totally forgot that in ESO just because one is a tank it doesn't mean you can't slot gear and skills to do more DPs....
I've been slogging it out the entire way in a pure tanking build... definitely a head slapping moment.
I've even been using dressing room to switch between several builds, but never thought about using medium armor or slotting more DPS oriented skills.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
it happens, lol.
No matter which role you choose in my setup you will eventually have to be the tank and crowd controller in addition to the dps role. The healing role is replaced with ways to use your role mitigation to enhance your teams but its unique to the role. There is no healing at all.
having healing actually is the root cause for the mega hp impervious to everything boss mob. A fight can go on a very long time due to healing, often indefinitely. I envision fights to be shorter and more tactical.
I dont see a problem with players being strong but it has to be situational. In eq1 a cleric was generally a poor soloer unless the mob was undead. Thats the kind of strategy thats needed. You can solo some stuff, but for other stuff your simply not set up for it. Each role has this limitation.
this is also why you have to get rid of levels and experience. With levels and experience players will seek out low hanging fruit and focus that for as long as it works. This lets them bypass systems meant for challenge and is the primary reason developers dont put any time into designing the monsters. The tough ones will just be avoided.
taking away that incentive opens the door for more variability in the challenge a mob can present for a particular role. As long as every mob drops useful resources it kind of works itself out.
So for example I always thought GW2 had more role merging and was more easy mode than ESO, but maybe ESO became the more easy mode MMO in the end? Bear in mind it has been a few years since I played either of them.