So if you can tell me how to really balance ranged vs melee, without making ranged the stupid OP playstyle it all too often ends up as, I am listening.
Crying that you have limiters on your ranged build, is not winning any points with me.
Well I think you are making some valid points for many games, however this is all due to bad design.
There are games where people can play melee classes and be the last standing and in some games melee classes are the best classes regardless of of unlimited mana or not. Diablo 3 comes to mind here.
In ESO bosses have spell mechanics that attack ranged characters, like spikes coming from the ground, or from ceiling or just random ranged attacks.
In Dark Souls bosses have closing attacks that force Mages to constantly be on the move or die.
So what you are describing is mainly caused by what I'm talking about. If you limit mages mana pool or number of spells then you have to make their spells OP to balance that. Which is why mages can come in and burst DPS by dumping their mana bar. How is that strategy?
Melee chars are balanced by high armor, ability to parry and block.
So yeah D&D games where high level mages just come in and put down the IWIN button 1 shot bomb is exactly the lack of good design I'm talking about.
So a mage that just magic dumps there spells then sits and watches the rest of fight, how is that good design? Some of these old D&D based magic games need to catch up to 2022.
Again, as long as the Melee is taking any damage at all, they have a solid fixed limiter on how long they can engage the mob in combat, till such point they will no longer be able to fight.
Defenses and damage mitigation like Armor, Blocking, etc, are at best are a means of delay the inevitable, they do not change the fact that this solid, fixed limiter is still imposed on all melee classes.
In fact, Blocking is a rather deceiving mechanic in the games that have it, as the games that have this feature put in, it almost always puts the melee in a position where they have to chose between damage mitigation (Block) or doing damage (Attack). As such, unless the melee has another means of DPS, like other players, pets, hirelings, etc, all blocking does is artificially extend the combat with no real gain on the melee players part.
Now, some games, like GW2, which allow a melee (all classes actually) to unlimited heal themselves, does pretty much give a melee infinite HP, they also provided unlimited means for ranged and casters as well, but they also filled the game with 1-shot-kill mechanics to combat this. Which made it so that traditional tank builds could not be made, and the whole game is nothing but a DPS challenge, with various kinds of armor being just for show.
In a game like DDO, the entire premise of dungeon running is resource management. Players need to bring all they think they will need into the quest, and try to beat it. In DDO, limiters are a very direct aspect of the game, as such, any limiter they remove or lessen, decreases the overall difficulty and challenge that class would face. This is why allowing for AA's to have unlimited arrows made ranged OP AF.
Now, what's your solution?
One means could be, Endless Mana but weak ass spells, so you have to pew pew 10 times larger than the melee, because you have no fixed limiter, so it becomes a game where you need to trade speed of the kill for having limiters in place, are you going to tell me with a straight face that you would not think that trade off sucks balls?
Another means could be, Huge Time Delays/Cooldowns, so while you can cast unlimited super big nukes, you can only cast one every 5 min, and then need to use other weaker spells, in-between, that have shorter cool downs, with the simple mechanic the weaker the spells, the faster the CD, but we all know that sounds like the making of a lot of bitching and moaning.
So how to propose to really balance things so that casters/ranged are not in fact the i-win easy button class?
And that is just the thing, every player that I have met that plays casters, especially arcane style nuke based casters, all want the same thing, devastating unlimited power, they want OP nuke spells, and no limit on how much they can cast them.
Is that balanced? Hell no. So what happens, is everyone suddenly plays a caster. Makes for a stupid game, like why give players options if only one choice is worth a damn.
Now, In DDO, they have something called SLA (Spell Like Abilities) for casters, they are mainly cantrips, where after you are done blowing your mana pool like a fucking porn star, you can fall back and pew pew with endless low level spells, just in case you really suck with being able to manage your resources in a fight.
DDO also allows you mix classes, so if you wanted to, you could play a fighter/wizard battle mage, and after you blew your wad of mana, you could draw your big overcompensating axe, and charge into combat. They even have Trait line called Eldritch Knight, just for the players that want to play in that style.
So as a DDO player, I don't see the problem with telling a wizard "Oh, you blew your mana pool at the start of the fight like a fucking dumbass, well find a way to make yourself useful" because you can in fact in DDO build to cast spells and engage in combat.
To me, I think that is in fact the best solution, I mean, after all, Gandaf went to town kicking ass with a Sword and Staff, no reason your wizard should not be able to do the same.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I think limited mana is good. Classes should play differently, and it's one of the things that make playing a caster different experience from playing a melee.
That's interesting. I agree. Playing a magic user should play differently from a melee character.
How to do that is the question, right?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Are these "just numbers?" Fatigue, mana, hit points/health are all just "limiters", right, as Ungood pointed out?
How far and/or deep do you want to go? Do you want a game where every player can do everything?
Usually, it takes "time" to become good at something. One needs to practice with weapons to become familiar with them. If a world/universe has magic in it (or possibly science?), one needs to "study" in order to become familiar with the subject.
Now, much of this is covered in the "pre-character" life before the adventure starts. Those questions asked at character creation is where this takes place, unless you have a game like Fallout 3 where all players start out as a newborn. Just imagine the outcry! LOL
So what do you (general you) want? What kind of game are you (general you) seeking to design/play?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I think limited mana is good. Classes should play differently, and it's one of the things that make playing a caster different experience from playing a melee.
That's interesting. I agree. Playing a magic user should play differently from a melee character.
How to do that is the question, right?
Yep I agree here. Making casters move the room, cast magic shields to avoid elemental damage, use CC to control summoned adds, dodge ranged damage, time spells, cast buffs this all adds to uniqueness. Has nothing to do with forcing mages to be glass cannons, then by consequence forcing them to have limited mana/spells to balance being all powerful.
Letting a mage just sit in a corner doing ranged spells or healing is just lazy design. Its not fun for anyone.
With that being said, I don't think melee classes should just be allowed to face tank auto attacks on mobs, or allow melee classes to just sit behind a mob attacking with pure immunity. They should need to block, deflect, parry, kick, dodge mechanics and move the mob around to avoid damage, otherwise if you don't they are severely punished.
I don't think all games need to force people to be super twitchy, but some movement should be required in the gameplay. Its all about balancing it.
Are these "just numbers?" Fatigue, mana, hit points/health are all just "limiters", right, as Ungood pointed out?
How far and/or deep do you want to go? Do you want a game where every player can do everything?
Usually, it takes "time" to become good at something. One needs to practice with weapons to become familiar with them. If a world/universe has magic in it (or possibly science?), one needs to "study" in order to become familiar with the subject.
Now, much of this is covered in the "pre-character" life before the adventure starts. Those questions asked at character creation is where this takes place, unless you have a game like Fallout 3 where all players start out as a newborn. Just imagine the outcry! LOL
So what do you (general you) want? What kind of game are you (general you) seeking to design/play?
I am just saying it was D&D that made it where high level mages were glass cannons that had IWIN spells. To balance this they made mages low armor and limited spells. Which in MMO's translates to low armor and limited mana.
I would argue that any class that has all the IWIN buttons is going to be hard to balance. Regardless of the roll they play.
Even in D&D rarely people want to play mages at low level because they are useless, but its also true at high level nobody wants to play with a mage companion because they become all powerful. Its just not good design. Games should move away from it.
Give mages other tools without IWIN buttons allow them to get their mana back so they can actually play the game like everyone else. Games that have mages running out of mana early then sitting around fighting with some other weapon is just dumb in 2022.
I remember playing D&D and being limited on spells...It was frustrating....IT didnt take long for me to change to a melee based character
In my opinion, that was your Dungeon Masters fault. In "my" campaign mages had more spells precisely because of that issue.
Well ultimately you can blame anything on the DM because D&D allowed them to change rules at will. However if you just followed the D&D ruleset, low level mages were the suck, and high level mages were basically all powerful.
the whole mage glass cannon thingy is fundamentally wrong. Any wizard should be very resilient to other wizards. Just like fighters should be resilient to other fighters.
These games have it all backwards due to D&D. This is why games need situational mitigation so mages and warriors alike can be what they were meant to be.
The glass cannon thing is somewhat necessary: Ranged characters need to be unable to go toe to toe against melee, just as the melee needs to have some trouble reaching the ranged characters. Otherwise you might as well just remove the range completely and give everyone the ability to attack everywhere.
There have been occasional games and classes that have gone overboard with the glass cannon stuff. But to some extend it's needed for ranged vs. melee to work at all.
Also while all ranged need to have some resiliency against other ranged, you can have rogue -type melee classes that are vulnerable against other melee and instead rely on tools that give them the ability to choose their target, get the first shot, attack from exposed direction, and otherwise better ability to control the fight.
I think limited mana is good. Classes should play differently, and it's one of the things that make playing a caster different experience from playing a melee.
That's interesting. I agree. Playing a magic user should play differently from a melee character.
How to do that is the question, right?
The way I see it, melee characters must reach their target, stick to it, and care much more about positioning. Casters have easier time with that, and that makes casters more suited to having worry about consuming some resource that's slower to regenerate.
EDIT: This is mainly for PvE. In PvP imho mana doesn't really work unless it's turn based PvP.
Brainy said: With that being said, I don't think melee classes should just be allowed to face tank auto attacks on mobs, or allow melee classes to just sit behind a mob attacking with pure immunity. They should need to block, deflect, parry, kick, dodge mechanics and move the mob around to avoid damage, otherwise if you don't they are severely punished.
I get it now, this whole topic is born of the idea that playing melee is easy. I would suggest then for the people that think it is easy, to play it for a bit.
Give is a try out, and see how good you get at it. It might be as easy as you think it is, might not, but ideally, almost without fail, the problem comes from players that do not play melee thinking that being melee is easy and mindless.
That is because they don't see that, often times, the flankers, need to pay attention to the Main Tanks Agro, they cannot over agro the mob, and often times will have complete gear swaps to pull this stuff off, with classes like rogues using things like stealth strikes, to allow them to do higher DPS with less Agro generated, using things like bluff/jolt/feign dead, etc, to remove or lessen agro, even slowing down their attacks to allow DPS to continue, while still letting the main tank build up enough agro so they can hold the mob.
At the same time, the main tank is using incite gear, and doing all they can to maximize their DPS while not getting 1-hit destroyed in the process, to mention that the main tank will be using taunt boons to generate max agro, so that they can hold the main mob in place.
All this planning and gear building, is what allows the caster to stand in the corner, blowing their mana like it was a dime store tootsie pop, or allows the healer to sit directly behind them without fear of getting blown to bits.
This is what divides a team of good melee players, with a proper raid tank, and why they join and become a part of raider guilds that is full of people that know their shit, and realize and respect the work and effort it takes to be a top level melee, and people who have no fucking clue, and think it's just press attack and face tank.
This is also why good healers don't pug that much either, as they also get tired of the unwashed masses thinking their job is stupid easy, they just sit in the corner and heal.
Try it sometime bitches.. it ain't that easy. That is why some raids fail, and that is also why you see raid lists like "Know what the fuck to do"
Now I'll be honest, for most trash run zerg fest dungeons, "Good Enough" is often good enough, and there is enough sloppy going on that things can look stupid easy, but the dungeon is meant to be a fun grind, not a drag my nuts across sandpaper and need to farm gear for 6 months to make sure I am ready for it, type of deal.
So really.. I think that people who think Melee is stupid easy, should play it. If it's as easy as they think, it should be an easy button play style, let me know how that goes for you at end game, if you can suffer through getting to end game playing a melee.. LOL.. chances are, you won't, because if you normally played casters/ranged, you will quickly realize how much needing to get hit, to hit the mob... sucks.
In words of agent Kay from MIB "Oh yah.. try it sometime"
Are these "just numbers?" Fatigue, mana, hit points/health are all just "limiters", right, as Ungood pointed out?
How far and/or deep do you want to go? Do you want a game where every player can do everything?
Usually, it takes "time" to become good at something. One needs to practice with weapons to become familiar with them. If a world/universe has magic in it (or possibly science?), one needs to "study" in order to become familiar with the subject.
Now, much of this is covered in the "pre-character" life before the adventure starts. Those questions asked at character creation is where this takes place, unless you have a game like Fallout 3 where all players start out as a newborn. Just imagine the outcry! LOL
So what do you (general you) want? What kind of game are you (general you) seeking to design/play?
Not going to lie, I like how in DDO, you need to make choices, sometimes, hard choices.
While you can mix up to 3 classes, with 3 trait lines, racial abilities, and open trait lines, as well as being able to equip a near limitless variety of weapons and armor, and other gear, all with various boons and bonus.
There is a trade off.
If you go pure Wizard, you get the boon of having 20 pure wizard levels for the DC's of your spells, capstone, and some other advantages of being a pure wizard. If you mix in fighter, you get all the advantages that the fighter levels can give you, like weapon and armor proficiency, extra feats, additional HP, and the trait lines of the fighter class, but you lose the advantage of those wizard levels you traded off.
So there is some checks and balances to the mix, sometimes the trade off is really worth it, like for example, Wiz/Rogue builds. The advantage of Evasion, Lockpicking, Trap Disarming, and some other boons, far outweighs the advantage of 2 additional wizard levels, when it comes to basic dungeon running, which is why they are very popular builds.
Ideally, being able to do everything, IMHO, is not a good game plan, ideally, players should need to make hard choices on what they want, as that becomes their own mini game within the game, on making that perfect build that works for them.
I'll give you an example. I played a Fighter/Cleric, a few times actually, and I loved the self healing and the full barrage of weapons I could use, it was a very solid dungeon/TR build, it was a total suck storm in a raid, because it was not apex in anything, it could not heal as well as a real healer build, it could not dps against the DPS focused builds, so while running in a dungeon this build was rock solid, it was not to that next level that was needed for raids.
And I think a lot of games would do well to have that kind of makeup, where players needed to embrace that what they are playing has a purpose, and it has limits, and you know, you're not going to be king shit and the hero of the story, you're just going to be good enough to get it done.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I remember playing D&D and being limited on spells...It was frustrating....IT didnt take long for me to change to a melee based character
In my opinion, that was your Dungeon Masters fault. In "my" campaign mages had more spells precisely because of that issue.
Well ultimately you can blame anything on the DM because D&D allowed them to change rules at will. However if you just followed the D&D ruleset, low level mages were the suck, and high level mages were basically all powerful.
Pretty much "sure!" But Because they can change the rules they could have made things a bit more equal.
There are too many "rules warriors" out there.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I remember playing D&D and being limited on spells...It was frustrating....IT didnt take long for me to change to a melee based character
In my opinion, that was your Dungeon Masters fault. In "my" campaign mages had more spells precisely because of that issue.
Well ultimately you can blame anything on the DM because D&D allowed them to change rules at will. However if you just followed the D&D ruleset, low level mages were the suck, and high level mages were basically all powerful.
Pretty much "sure!" But Because they can change the rules they could have made things a bit more equal.
There are too many "rules warriors" out there.
Well by the very fact that you find it necessary to change the rules implies that you agree there is a problem. If there wasn't then why would people want or need to change the rule at all.
I think they should have made the classes more equal from the start, then there wouldn't even be a need to change the rules unless you just wanted to experiment with an alternate playstyle. This is why having mages as whimps early and gods later is bad design.
I remember playing D&D and being limited on spells...It was frustrating....IT didnt take long for me to change to a melee based character
In my opinion, that was your Dungeon Masters fault. In "my" campaign mages had more spells precisely because of that issue.
Well ultimately you can blame anything on the DM because D&D allowed them to change rules at will. However if you just followed the D&D ruleset, low level mages were the suck, and high level mages were basically all powerful.
Pretty much "sure!" But Because they can change the rules they could have made things a bit more equal.
There are too many "rules warriors" out there.
Well by the very fact that you find it necessary to change the rules implies that you agree there is a problem. If there wasn't then why would people want or need to change the rule at all.
I think they should have made the classes more equal from the start, then there wouldn't even be a need to change the rules unless you just wanted to experiment with an alternate playstyle. This is why having mages as whimps early and gods later is bad design.
Just because something gets changed, does not mean it was a problem, some people like to fix what ain't broke.
Personally, I think they needed to remove mages as Gods in the later game, which was the main problem, and why they attracted all the people that just wanted to play God Mode, because, as the game went on, Mages became stupidly OP'ed.
I think a lot of MMO's do better job to address this, by simply making Mages ranged damage, as opposed to having reality warping spells.
But as I said above, without any kind of limiter to the class, ergo, giving them endless ammo, still makes them stupid OP, in compairosn to Melee, but that would also make any ranged stupid OP vs melee.
One thing I would like to see more in games, is direct counters.
What I mean by this, is one of things that I liked with D&D games was for example, a rogues ability reflect a spell back at the caster, so if the caster shot a mega blast spell, they rogue could send that back at them.
DDO has some cool things, like Death Block, which makes a person immune to death spells, so a wizard can't just use Power Word Kill on them, and insta-win. DDO also has things like spell Scarb of Protection, which absorbs spells, so when casters use their full nuclear arsenal of spells on you, it blows up the scarab and not you.
These kinds of hard counters, do make for a very dynamic game, they also remove the whole +2 is better than +1, as a absolute to the game.
When you play with situational gear, as the player needs to ask, do I want to equip the scarab, which has a limited number of times it can absorb spells before it dies, against weak ass kobold shaman, or do I want to save that for when I need to face beholders, and just equip my Dusk Heart for the time being.
This is what makes for a dynamic game.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I remember playing D&D and being limited on spells...It was frustrating....IT didnt take long for me to change to a melee based character
In my opinion, that was your Dungeon Masters fault. In "my" campaign mages had more spells precisely because of that issue.
Well ultimately you can blame anything on the DM because D&D allowed them to change rules at will. However if you just followed the D&D ruleset, low level mages were the suck, and high level mages were basically all powerful.
Pretty much "sure!" But Because they can change the rules they could have made things a bit more equal.
There are too many "rules warriors" out there.
Once during a campaign, our group only being about level 3, we ran into a dragon. My very first action was to turn around and run down a hallway, around two sets of corners, and up a flight of stairs.
The rest of the group decided to stay and fight.
The dragon breathed fire. The group took a direct hit and survived, but the fire.... according to the DM... went down the hallway, around two corners, up the flight of stairs and killed me.
IIRC, any character under level 5 automatically has a no-saving throw fear cast on them by the presence of a dragon. Rules indeed.
That was the day I quit.
Sounds like you ran into one of those 'do everything my way or else' DMs. You choose the 'or else' option, and they couldn't handle it. No room for creative problem solving.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I remember playing D&D and being limited on spells...It was frustrating....IT didnt take long for me to change to a melee based character
In my opinion, that was your Dungeon Masters fault. In "my" campaign mages had more spells precisely because of that issue.
Well ultimately you can blame anything on the DM because D&D allowed them to change rules at will. However if you just followed the D&D ruleset, low level mages were the suck, and high level mages were basically all powerful.
Pretty much "sure!" But Because they can change the rules they could have made things a bit more equal.
There are too many "rules warriors" out there.
Once during a campaign, our group only being about level 3, we ran into a dragon. My very first action was to turn around and run down a hallway, around two sets of corners, and up a flight of stairs.
The rest of the group decided to stay and fight.
The dragon breathed fire. The group took a direct hit and survived, but the fire.... according to the DM... went down the hallway, around two corners, up the flight of stairs and killed me.
IIRC, any character under level 5 automatically has a no-saving throw fear cast on them by the presence of a dragon. Rules indeed.
That was the day I quit.
LOL! I think that was the DM's way of amusing himself at your expense. It's "sort of funny" but not funny if the outcome is dire.
What he should have done, and what I would have done, was have the fire travel down the hall, up the stairs, And singe your butt but with a saving throw. I would have left the fear out.
It would have been funny but not dire. I would have also had any npc's your party came in contact with notice your burn and ask if that was a "dragonfire butt burn."
"Why, in my day, I've seen enough butt burns to know when a dragon was the perpetrator, let me tell you. There was once time about 25 years ago ... "
Or have some nymphette hit on you until they noticed the butt burn ...
CLASSIC!
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I remember playing D&D and being limited on spells...It was frustrating....IT didnt take long for me to change to a melee based character
In my opinion, that was your Dungeon Masters fault. In "my" campaign mages had more spells precisely because of that issue.
Well ultimately you can blame anything on the DM because D&D allowed them to change rules at will. However if you just followed the D&D ruleset, low level mages were the suck, and high level mages were basically all powerful.
Pretty much "sure!" But Because they can change the rules they could have made things a bit more equal.
There are too many "rules warriors" out there.
Once during a campaign, our group only being about level 3, we ran into a dragon. My very first action was to turn around and run down a hallway, around two sets of corners, and up a flight of stairs.
The rest of the group decided to stay and fight.
The dragon breathed fire. The group took a direct hit and survived, but the fire.... according to the DM... went down the hallway, around two corners, up the flight of stairs and killed me.
IIRC, any character under level 5 automatically has a no-saving throw fear cast on them by the presence of a dragon. Rules indeed.
That was the day I quit.
LOL! I think that was the DM's way of amusing himself at your expense. It's "sort of funny" but not funny if the outcome is dire.
What he should have done, and what I would have done, was have the fire travel down the hall, up the stairs, And singe your butt but with a saving throw. I would have left the fear out.
It would have been funny but not dire. I would have also had any npc's your party came in contact with notice your burn and ask if that was a "dragonfire butt burn."
"Why, in my day, I've seen enough butt burns to know when a dragon was the perpetrator, let me tell you. There was once time about 25 years ago ... "
Or have some nymphette hit on you until they noticed the butt burn ...
CLASSIC!
I would imagine some DMS might face taking a pop in the mouth for excercise their sense of "humor."
Glad I never played, I wouldn't have lasted very long.
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
I remember playing D&D and being limited on spells...It was frustrating....IT didnt take long for me to change to a melee based character
In my opinion, that was your Dungeon Masters fault. In "my" campaign mages had more spells precisely because of that issue.
Well ultimately you can blame anything on the DM because D&D allowed them to change rules at will. However if you just followed the D&D ruleset, low level mages were the suck, and high level mages were basically all powerful.
Pretty much "sure!" But Because they can change the rules they could have made things a bit more equal.
There are too many "rules warriors" out there.
Once during a campaign, our group only being about level 3, we ran into a dragon. My very first action was to turn around and run down a hallway, around two sets of corners, and up a flight of stairs.
The rest of the group decided to stay and fight.
The dragon breathed fire. The group took a direct hit and survived, but the fire.... according to the DM... went down the hallway, around two corners, up the flight of stairs and killed me.
IIRC, any character under level 5 automatically has a no-saving throw fear cast on them by the presence of a dragon. Rules indeed.
That was the day I quit.
LOL! I think that was the DM's way of amusing himself at your expense. It's "sort of funny" but not funny if the outcome is dire.
What he should have done, and what I would have done, was have the fire travel down the hall, up the stairs, And singe your butt but with a saving throw. I would have left the fear out.
It would have been funny but not dire. I would have also had any npc's your party came in contact with notice your burn and ask if that was a "dragonfire butt burn."
"Why, in my day, I've seen enough butt burns to know when a dragon was the perpetrator, let me tell you. There was once time about 25 years ago ... "
Or have some nymphette hit on you until they noticed the butt burn ...
CLASSIC!
I would imagine some DMS might face taking a pop in the mouth for excercise their sense of "humor."
Glad I never played, I wouldn't have lasted very long.
The staggering douchebaggery of some DM's is legendary, there some sites devoted it, and of course a reddit about it as well.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
I remember playing D&D and being limited on spells...It was frustrating....IT didnt take long for me to change to a melee based character
In my opinion, that was your Dungeon Masters fault. In "my" campaign mages had more spells precisely because of that issue.
Well ultimately you can blame anything on the DM because D&D allowed them to change rules at will. However if you just followed the D&D ruleset, low level mages were the suck, and high level mages were basically all powerful.
Pretty much "sure!" But Because they can change the rules they could have made things a bit more equal.
There are too many "rules warriors" out there.
Once during a campaign, our group only being about level 3, we ran into a dragon. My very first action was to turn around and run down a hallway, around two sets of corners, and up a flight of stairs.
The rest of the group decided to stay and fight.
The dragon breathed fire. The group took a direct hit and survived, but the fire.... according to the DM... went down the hallway, around two corners, up the flight of stairs and killed me.
IIRC, any character under level 5 automatically has a no-saving throw fear cast on them by the presence of a dragon. Rules indeed.
That was the day I quit.
It's insane how some people decide to stay and fight anything because they know Daddy DM will cutscene it away for them.
As a DM every once in a blue moon I throw an encounter they should know they can't handle. If they stay and fight, it's their own stupid fault.
I would have let you live and basically give you a private session later about escaping so you can reform the party.
"I ask myself why do so many games have it where melee classes can use an unlimited amount of attacks all fight, but casters have either a limited number of spells, or have to manage mana and switch to melee for long fights?"
Because the class can attack at range, can hit multiple targets, does not have to worry about hitting friendlies, often does not have the item decay or stamina concerns of fighters, does not have the resource burn of archers (spell comps/reagents being a thing of the past), and usually has spells equivalent in power to lightning strikes, C4, earthquakes, and nukes.
Some kind of restriction is needed.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Some of my D&D group wanted more "realistic" combat. We tried some suggestions we read Dragon Magazine and made some tweaks. What we were looking for was "hit location" type of combat. That quickly spiraled into a summer of extraordinarily long fights. Roll to hit, roll location, roll damage, adjust for location percentage (legs/arms/body/head), and figure out "disfigurement", if any. We gave up after that summer
The simplified combat had become quite enjoyable after that experiment
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Some of my D&D group wanted more "realistic" combat. We tried some suggestions we read Dragon Magazine and made some tweaks. What we were looking for was "hit location" type of combat. That quickly spiraled into a summer of extraordinarily long fights. Roll to hit, roll location, roll damage, adjust for location percentage (legs/arms/body/head), and figure out "disfigurement", if any. We gave up after that summer
The simplified combat had become quite enjoyable after that experiment
Those are always fun until you as a DM accidentally destroy a player's sword arm. Good luck telling them it was just dice rolls and you aren't out to get them lol
Comments
Defenses and damage mitigation like Armor, Blocking, etc, are at best are a means of delay the inevitable, they do not change the fact that this solid, fixed limiter is still imposed on all melee classes.
In fact, Blocking is a rather deceiving mechanic in the games that have it, as the games that have this feature put in, it almost always puts the melee in a position where they have to chose between damage mitigation (Block) or doing damage (Attack). As such, unless the melee has another means of DPS, like other players, pets, hirelings, etc, all blocking does is artificially extend the combat with no real gain on the melee players part.
Now, some games, like GW2, which allow a melee (all classes actually) to unlimited heal themselves, does pretty much give a melee infinite HP, they also provided unlimited means for ranged and casters as well, but they also filled the game with 1-shot-kill mechanics to combat this. Which made it so that traditional tank builds could not be made, and the whole game is nothing but a DPS challenge, with various kinds of armor being just for show.
In a game like DDO, the entire premise of dungeon running is resource management. Players need to bring all they think they will need into the quest, and try to beat it. In DDO, limiters are a very direct aspect of the game, as such, any limiter they remove or lessen, decreases the overall difficulty and challenge that class would face. This is why allowing for AA's to have unlimited arrows made ranged OP AF.
Now, what's your solution?
One means could be, Endless Mana but weak ass spells, so you have to pew pew 10 times larger than the melee, because you have no fixed limiter, so it becomes a game where you need to trade speed of the kill for having limiters in place, are you going to tell me with a straight face that you would not think that trade off sucks balls?
Another means could be, Huge Time Delays/Cooldowns, so while you can cast unlimited super big nukes, you can only cast one every 5 min, and then need to use other weaker spells, in-between, that have shorter cool downs, with the simple mechanic the weaker the spells, the faster the CD, but we all know that sounds like the making of a lot of bitching and moaning.
So how to propose to really balance things so that casters/ranged are not in fact the i-win easy button class?
And that is just the thing, every player that I have met that plays casters, especially arcane style nuke based casters, all want the same thing, devastating unlimited power, they want OP nuke spells, and no limit on how much they can cast them.
Is that balanced? Hell no. So what happens, is everyone suddenly plays a caster. Makes for a stupid game, like why give players options if only one choice is worth a damn.
Now, In DDO, they have something called SLA (Spell Like Abilities) for casters, they are mainly cantrips, where after you are done blowing your mana pool like a fucking porn star, you can fall back and pew pew with endless low level spells, just in case you really suck with being able to manage your resources in a fight.
DDO also allows you mix classes, so if you wanted to, you could play a fighter/wizard battle mage, and after you blew your wad of mana, you could draw your big overcompensating axe, and charge into combat. They even have Trait line called Eldritch Knight, just for the players that want to play in that style.
So as a DDO player, I don't see the problem with telling a wizard "Oh, you blew your mana pool at the start of the fight like a fucking dumbass, well find a way to make yourself useful" because you can in fact in DDO build to cast spells and engage in combat.
To me, I think that is in fact the best solution, I mean, after all, Gandaf went to town kicking ass with a Sword and Staff, no reason your wizard should not be able to do the same.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Letting a mage just sit in a corner doing ranged spells or healing is just lazy design. Its not fun for anyone.
With that being said, I don't think melee classes should just be allowed to face tank auto attacks on mobs, or allow melee classes to just sit behind a mob attacking with pure immunity. They should need to block, deflect, parry, kick, dodge mechanics and move the mob around to avoid damage, otherwise if you don't they are severely punished.
I don't think all games need to force people to be super twitchy, but some movement should be required in the gameplay. Its all about balancing it.
I would argue that any class that has all the IWIN buttons is going to be hard to balance. Regardless of the roll they play.
Even in D&D rarely people want to play mages at low level because they are useless, but its also true at high level nobody wants to play with a mage companion because they become all powerful. Its just not good design. Games should move away from it.
Give mages other tools without IWIN buttons allow them to get their mana back so they can actually play the game like everyone else. Games that have mages running out of mana early then sitting around fighting with some other weapon is just dumb in 2022.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
There have been occasional games and classes that have gone overboard with the glass cannon stuff. But to some extend it's needed for ranged vs. melee to work at all.
Also while all ranged need to have some resiliency against other ranged, you can have rogue -type melee classes that are vulnerable against other melee and instead rely on tools that give them the ability to choose their target, get the first shot, attack from exposed direction, and otherwise better ability to control the fight.
EDIT: This is mainly for PvE. In PvP imho mana doesn't really work unless it's turn based PvP.
I get it now, this whole topic is born of the idea that playing melee is easy. I would suggest then for the people that think it is easy, to play it for a bit.
Give is a try out, and see how good you get at it. It might be as easy as you think it is, might not, but ideally, almost without fail, the problem comes from players that do not play melee thinking that being melee is easy and mindless.
That is because they don't see that, often times, the flankers, need to pay attention to the Main Tanks Agro, they cannot over agro the mob, and often times will have complete gear swaps to pull this stuff off, with classes like rogues using things like stealth strikes, to allow them to do higher DPS with less Agro generated, using things like bluff/jolt/feign dead, etc, to remove or lessen agro, even slowing down their attacks to allow DPS to continue, while still letting the main tank build up enough agro so they can hold the mob.
At the same time, the main tank is using incite gear, and doing all they can to maximize their DPS while not getting 1-hit destroyed in the process, to mention that the main tank will be using taunt boons to generate max agro, so that they can hold the main mob in place.
All this planning and gear building, is what allows the caster to stand in the corner, blowing their mana like it was a dime store tootsie pop, or allows the healer to sit directly behind them without fear of getting blown to bits.
This is what divides a team of good melee players, with a proper raid tank, and why they join and become a part of raider guilds that is full of people that know their shit, and realize and respect the work and effort it takes to be a top level melee, and people who have no fucking clue, and think it's just press attack and face tank.
This is also why good healers don't pug that much either, as they also get tired of the unwashed masses thinking their job is stupid easy, they just sit in the corner and heal.
Try it sometime bitches.. it ain't that easy. That is why some raids fail, and that is also why you see raid lists like "Know what the fuck to do"
Now I'll be honest, for most trash run zerg fest dungeons, "Good Enough" is often good enough, and there is enough sloppy going on that things can look stupid easy, but the dungeon is meant to be a fun grind, not a drag my nuts across sandpaper and need to farm gear for 6 months to make sure I am ready for it, type of deal.
So really.. I think that people who think Melee is stupid easy, should play it. If it's as easy as they think, it should be an easy button play style, let me know how that goes for you at end game, if you can suffer through getting to end game playing a melee.. LOL.. chances are, you won't, because if you normally played casters/ranged, you will quickly realize how much needing to get hit, to hit the mob... sucks.
In words of agent Kay from MIB "Oh yah.. try it sometime"
Not going to lie, I like how in DDO, you need to make choices, sometimes, hard choices.
While you can mix up to 3 classes, with 3 trait lines, racial abilities, and open trait lines, as well as being able to equip a near limitless variety of weapons and armor, and other gear, all with various boons and bonus.
There is a trade off.
If you go pure Wizard, you get the boon of having 20 pure wizard levels for the DC's of your spells, capstone, and some other advantages of being a pure wizard. If you mix in fighter, you get all the advantages that the fighter levels can give you, like weapon and armor proficiency, extra feats, additional HP, and the trait lines of the fighter class, but you lose the advantage of those wizard levels you traded off.
So there is some checks and balances to the mix, sometimes the trade off is really worth it, like for example, Wiz/Rogue builds. The advantage of Evasion, Lockpicking, Trap Disarming, and some other boons, far outweighs the advantage of 2 additional wizard levels, when it comes to basic dungeon running, which is why they are very popular builds.
Ideally, being able to do everything, IMHO, is not a good game plan, ideally, players should need to make hard choices on what they want, as that becomes their own mini game within the game, on making that perfect build that works for them.
I'll give you an example. I played a Fighter/Cleric, a few times actually, and I loved the self healing and the full barrage of weapons I could use, it was a very solid dungeon/TR build, it was a total suck storm in a raid, because it was not apex in anything, it could not heal as well as a real healer build, it could not dps against the DPS focused builds, so while running in a dungeon this build was rock solid, it was not to that next level that was needed for raids.
And I think a lot of games would do well to have that kind of makeup, where players needed to embrace that what they are playing has a purpose, and it has limits, and you know, you're not going to be king shit and the hero of the story, you're just going to be good enough to get it done.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I think they should have made the classes more equal from the start, then there wouldn't even be a need to change the rules unless you just wanted to experiment with an alternate playstyle. This is why having mages as whimps early and gods later is bad design.
Personally, I think they needed to remove mages as Gods in the later game, which was the main problem, and why they attracted all the people that just wanted to play God Mode, because, as the game went on, Mages became stupidly OP'ed.
I think a lot of MMO's do better job to address this, by simply making Mages ranged damage, as opposed to having reality warping spells.
But as I said above, without any kind of limiter to the class, ergo, giving them endless ammo, still makes them stupid OP, in compairosn to Melee, but that would also make any ranged stupid OP vs melee.
One thing I would like to see more in games, is direct counters.
What I mean by this, is one of things that I liked with D&D games was for example, a rogues ability reflect a spell back at the caster, so if the caster shot a mega blast spell, they rogue could send that back at them.
DDO has some cool things, like Death Block, which makes a person immune to death spells, so a wizard can't just use Power Word Kill on them, and insta-win. DDO also has things like spell Scarb of Protection, which absorbs spells, so when casters use their full nuclear arsenal of spells on you, it blows up the scarab and not you.
These kinds of hard counters, do make for a very dynamic game, they also remove the whole +2 is better than +1, as a absolute to the game.
When you play with situational gear, as the player needs to ask, do I want to equip the scarab, which has a limited number of times it can absorb spells before it dies, against weak ass kobold shaman, or do I want to save that for when I need to face beholders, and just equip my Dusk Heart for the time being.
This is what makes for a dynamic game.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
What he should have done, and what I would have done, was have the fire travel down the hall, up the stairs, And singe your butt but with a saving throw. I would have left the fear out.
It would have been funny but not dire. I would have also had any npc's your party came in contact with notice your burn and ask if that was a "dragonfire butt burn."
"Why, in my day, I've seen enough butt burns to know when a dragon was the perpetrator, let me tell you. There was once time about 25 years ago ... "
Or have some nymphette hit on you until they noticed the butt burn ...
CLASSIC!
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Glad I never played, I wouldn't have lasted very long.
"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
As a DM every once in a blue moon I throw an encounter they should know they can't handle. If they stay and fight, it's their own stupid fault.
I would have let you live and basically give you a private session later about escaping so you can reform the party.
Because the class
can attack at range,
can hit multiple targets,
does not have to worry about hitting friendlies,
often does not have the item decay or stamina concerns of fighters,
does not have the resource burn of archers (spell comps/reagents being a thing of the past),
and usually has spells equivalent in power to lightning strikes, C4, earthquakes, and nukes.
Some kind of restriction is needed.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR