Nowadays, mmo group encounters (and especially large group encounters) are often the dance of the circles. Get out of the red circle. Stand in the green circle. Now stand on one foot and hop. Duck! Blah blah. Personally I hate all that. If I wanted to play Frogger I would just play Frogger.
Original Everquest wasn't like that. Or if it was, it was either in encounters I did not undertake or ones that went in after I left. I started to see more and more of that type of group combat beginning with WoW.
I'm wondering is Pantheon is going to stay the current course and have people play musical chairs and call it combat, or whether there will be something new? Or perhaps, something old.
"And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost."
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Comments
If I had to guess, I would say it will be EQ like in subtle play and style, but with the complexity of systems that Vanguards classes and interactions bought. So deep combat with slow endurance style play. That is at least what I would like to see. I don't mind the active combat scenarios if used sparingly, but if I see that constant "jump through the hoop" style of arcade play, I am going to be very disappointed. We have enough of that twitch play these days.
I don't mind having to dodge abilities and stuff like that. I mean hell it happened in EQ, you had to get behind a dragon to avoid a breath, or something like that. Its the degree to which you have to do it. When it becomes more about the spastic twitching to avoid things, that gets old quick.
Edit: Things I liked about EQ raiding was having to pay attention to your debuffs, and you might have to carry a dispel potion to remove a debuff that was applied to you. Or you might have something you needed to alert your healer to cure a disease, etc. There are many ways to complicate an encounter and just having you dodge circles on the ground is really a simplistic way of viewing things.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
This game and ones like it can't come fast enough...
I don't know any other MMO that actually had the pulling+CC mechanic like EQ did, the fact Pantheon will have it is interesting.
Regarding raids, I have never felt as much thrill and excitement in MMO as being the designated puller for a 54 man EQ raid. The fact I could wipe my own raid, and I managed to do this once (stupid inktu'ta stonemites), as the designated puller, was super exciting to me.
(although, where is my bard)
So: Thinking about which ability you use next is very important. Combat is quite dynamic - certain abilities only open under certain circumstances (most importantly finisher lines after critical hits), random special chances appear on the mob (weakness and expoits system), depending upon class various counters have to be considered (hitpoints of course, but also endurance and/or mana as well as various counters classes got specifically, like Jin for Monk and Disciple, Blood Points for Blood Mage, Phenomena for Druids, Virtue for Paladins, or the Dreadful Countenance debuff for Dread Knights).
Careful design of macros is important, especially because of instant cast with no global cooldown abilities and item useage (which also involved no global cooldown).
Strategy is important, especially in raids.
Positioning is important, especially in raids.
But reflexes - are not completely unimportant, but are much less important than in other games. And there are certainly not some color schemes on the ground to follow.
Especially there is a global cooldown which gives you some leeway for bad ping.
Thanks to having such a system, despite having a ping of 500ms as a european player on the last remaining server in the USA, I managed to successfully and quite well play a Dread Knight tank in Vanguard.
Despite being definitely quite undergeared for these opponents (no PotA armor), I successfully main tanked raids up to Arch Magus Zodifin and Belzane. I wasnt any great, being undergeared, but I managed. Also for example Kotasoth, Dresla, Summoner Physik, and many more (for which I wasnt undergeared). I failed at least once against Masuke, though, I dont remember why, but I think it was the first raidboss I ever tried to actually tank.
Despite being DK, I managed to snatch the aggro of most tanks a lot, except well played ones with defnitely substantly better gear. I could literally rule mobs that have been volatile against piercing damage because I had the best spear in the game (which btw sadly was from the entry level of the Ancient Port Warehouse, they never added a level 55 spear).
Thus, yes I definitely want that back.
Oh and dont think that technical advances will remove this issue. There are physical limits like lightspeed that wont go away. If I play on USA, I will have bad ping. Thats why I never did that - until the european server was hopelessly dead.
I prefer depth over worrying about ability bloat. Just give me an efficient way to swap situational abilities out.
The community here and the developers are going to have to put on some very thick armor to deflect the tantrums that will grow as the game gets more popular. I have seen it in every game of note. They have to resist the mainstream demands as those folks won't be around long, they are locusts that game hop. If they appeal to them, the result will be a game that is dead in a few months because the locusts have moved on and the core crowd having quit playing in disgust.
Obviously this is my humble opinion, but this game can not survive appealing to mainstream. It didn't work for the numerous games before it that tried, it won't work for them.
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
If you want action arcade spam, this game is not for you.
Thanks to tab targetting, I can concentrate on what ability to chose next. Which is what I want my games to be about.
Or, to answer on the intellectual level of your posting: Action combat is for people who dont like to think during their gaming. Its so kiddo.
(forgot "the") :-P
Playstyles can't be categorized as outdated, they're merely different. Twitch has been around just as long, yet you don't consider it outdated, oh the hypocrisy.
What is your point?