Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I don't see the trinity as that big a deal. What exactly is the vision for how PVE encounters are to go, without some form of the trinity? Aggro bouncing around, lots of kiting and running around, DPS classes scaling back constantly so as not to draw aggro? Or what?Yes.
Dynamic, unpredictable combat where uber specialists are a liability as often as an asset.
The trinity is the worst thing to ever happen to RPG's imo. Well, second worst, after endgame.
I will add a big detail : collision. I don't need aggro so much, if I can put my body between my enemy and the monsters.
Goblin Squad Member
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So what are those tactics?
With the core four roles, the intention is something like this:
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- The Fighters hit the front lines and try to tie up as many targets as possible with CC and body blocking. They hit hard enough that you can't just ignore them (and they hit even harder if you're provoking Opportunity trying to ignore them).
- The Clerics are behind the Fighters. They're tough, but not as tough as the Fighters, so they can take hits, and they're a little more mobile than the Fighters. They try to intercept anyone rushing past the Fighters to get to the squishier characters and slow them down long enough for the squishies to reposition. When they're not catching strays, they heal and buff, or lob focus attacks at the other team's midline.
- The Wizards are in the back, making a terrible nuisance of themselves with CC, debuffs, and direct damage. The enemy would love to paste them, but they're fast and their team is running interference for them so they can hit and then move (possibly running far enough back that the enemy wastes a lot of time trying to chase them down while the other allies are doing damage).
- The Rogues are hitting any enemy that's focused on someone else, and then fading back and running when they capture someone's attention. They do the best DPS in the game against a target that
So the Strategy is -
Tanks tank
Healers heal & buff
dps dps's
Classic definition of Trinity.
The fact that your giving tanks different skills to accomplish they're role doesn't make it not-Trinity.
Not-Trinity means that any part of the balanced group you describe above could be completely replaced by one of the other legs of the trinity and have equal chance of success.
Would a group of all tanks and clerics, of equal skills, level and gear have an equal chance of succeeding vs. a balanced group?
If the answer isn't yes, then its a trinity.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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The Trinity depends on Tanking. Tanking defined as "the ability to control and focus the attacks of the opponents and absorb those attacks".
If the Tank mechanic is introduced it means that the other classes can be fragile and one-dimensional because they aren't supposed to be hit by the most damaging attacks the group will encounter.
In D&D and Pathfinder there are no Tanks. The Wizards, Cleics and Rogues are very likely to be targetd by high-damage effects and attacks. Those characters must diversify away (gear and character abilities) from purely dealing damage or purely supporting the Tank or the result against a GM that plays the encounter intelligently without pulling punches will be a TPK.
Our PvE enemies should attack the Wizard even if the Fighter is trying to stop them. And the Cleric and Rogue need to think that when they get close enough to support or sneak attack, they're at risk of getting whacked too.
That's not "the Trinity".
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Goblin Squad Member
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Would a group of all tanks and clerics, of equal skills, level and gear have an equal chance of succeeding vs. a balanced group?
If the answer isn't yes, then its a trinity.
I'm going to say that a group of 2 Fighters and 2 Clerics would probably fair better! The 2 Fighters are not only hard to kill but have strong attacks on their own and having 2 Clerics in the group all but ensures survival through healing and extra dps.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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When able, I'd like to test 2 clerics keeping Battle Rage and Defending Weapon up on one fighter, healing as needed. I'm pretty sure that as until doing so draws aggro to the clerics, such trio would roll any of the melee PvE groups. (Groups with range, especially non-physical range, might be challenging.)
What does Battle Rage do? The text just says "Riposting 1r, Mind Blank".
It might be a good feat for the Barbarically-Inclined while we wait for the actual barbarian feats to come out.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Riposting is a melee attack buff that expires when you make your next melee attack (or when the time runs out).
Mind Blank makes you harder to Crowd Control with action-stopping effects like Nausea and (I think) Interrupt. Since not a lot of CCs are in yet, it's not as useful as it will be eventually. It is a stacking buff that isn't currently displayed on the UI. It should fall off the player at the rate of 5 stacks per round, and adds its total value to your defense for the CC effect. For example, if you have 20 stacks, you treat your defense as 20 higher when we calculate how long a CC lasts and whether it's downgraded to a lesser CC.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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What about "Defending"?
EDIT: Actually, what effect will all of the combat flags have (not including all of the effects from other abilities that key off of them)? I don't see anything that keys off of "Oblivious", but I see several attacks that (conditionally) apply stacks of it, sometimes a lot of stacks of it.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Defending is a bonus to Reflex that changes to Replying as soon as you're hit in melee (Replying is the lesser version of Riposting). Riposting usually comes from Parrying in the same way (you get Parrying for a bonus to Reflex, then it turns into Riposting once you get hit in melee), but Battle Rage just goes straight to Riposting.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Effects on the same channel don't combine values, only the highest is counted. So if you have both Replying and Riposting, they're both on the same channel and add attack, so only Riposting counts. However, you might have a situation where you have a longer duration of a weaker effect, and it would resume counting after the stronger one ends.
Non-stacking effects with the same name overwrite each other completely, keeping the longest duration. So spamming a timed debuff or buff isn't a great use of your time; add it once, do something else, then add it again when the duration ends.
Stacking effects always add to each other, and fall off at a rate based on the target's Recovery per round. It's almost always good to add more of those until they cap out.
DoTs do not currently scale with max HP, but that's pretty high on my list of programming priorities so may start working before the end of Alpha. Right now, they should be doing damage equal to the stacks per round (so if you have 20 Bleeding, you take 20 damage at the end of the round). Eventually, they should do .1% of max HP per instance, so a max 100 stack will do 10% of the target's max HP per round. (So for a target with exactly 1000 HP, DoTs should currently work correctly :) ).
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Blarglelargle so complicated
I can't wait until the Dumbed Down version is released.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Is crafting materials going to be split up in some sort of tier system where rarer crafting mats increase in certain, more dangerous hexes? From the video I watched it was mentioned that some hexes will give you a higher amount of material faster, but nothing mentioned about rarity of the goods changing by hex.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Is crafting materials going to be split up in some sort of tier system where rarer crafting mats increase in certain, more dangerous hexes? From the video I watched it was mentioned that some hexes will give you a higher amount of material faster, but nothing mentioned about rarity of the goods changing by hex.
Tier 3 materials are rarer than Tiers 1 and 2. Monster hexes will drop more Tier 3 materials with the rarest materials such as skymetal coming from the crater hexes.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Trading was straight out bugged last night. Like, not working bugged. When it was working it wasn't all that difficult.
It was consistently not working in the hex of Sotterhill, and consistently working outside of the hex. Bug report filed, but the workaround obviously didn't get around.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Is this available only to Alpha backers or am I just not seeing it?Page 39 of the .docx available on Goblinworks.com
I didn't read that one fully either, since it appeared to be a duplicate and I was busy watching the livestreams.
Here it is.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Is this available only to Alpha backers or am I just not seeing it?
This doc is the one I think your looking for?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Is this available only to Alpha backers or am I just not seeing it?This doc is the one I think your looking for?
I had an account on the TSV website Decius linked but apparently can't remember my account info at the moment. Presumably it's the same document?
Anyways, thanks for the links!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I did notice in some of the video I have seen items dropped from mobs instead of broken junk or crafting mats. (I can't remember if it was a mob fight or players fighting, but I think it was mobs. I was under the impression very few if any actual usable items would be in the loot matrix for mobs. I am hoping that is the case because it would keep crafting primary in the economy instead of lootable gear.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I did notice in some of the video I have seen items dropped from mobs instead of broken junk or crafting mats. (I can't remember if it was a mob fight or players fighting, but I think it was mobs. I was under the impression very few if any actual usable items would be in the loot matrix for mobs. I am hoping that is the case because it would keep crafting primary in the economy instead of lootable gear.
It was starter-grade gear.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The Trinity depends on Tanking. Tanking defined as "the ability to control and focus the attacks of the opponents and absorb those attacks".
In D&D and Pathfinder there are no Tanks.
What??
Higher Hit Points + Higher Base Contiturion + Heavy Armor + Shield = Tank
That was at least the case for D&D and AD&D 1st and 2nd ed.
The Trinity was conceptualizer in D&D / AD&D and copied by virtually every MMO.
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You are capable of building that tank, but the enemies can and will ignore him in favor of the spellcasters.
Or they'll mind control him and turn him on the party.
Or just hit him with touch attacks and fireballs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You and I have clearly had different experiences with those games, Bludd.
Apparently so, in most cases the fighter in my groups would "tank" the mobs, the cleric would keep him healthy, the magic user would use his spells from a distance and the thief / assassin would move in and out of combat and backstab when possible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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By Crom, I surely am glad to have played pen and paper games in the days when tanks stored hot water and DPS meant Department of Public Safety. Though probably an inevitable game mechanic in most MMORPGs, I find The Trinity boringly reductionist. If PFO does nothing else but liberate players from a handful of boring builds and cookie-cutter rotations, it will be a success in my eyes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You and I have clearly had different experiences with those games, Bludd.Apparently so, in most cases the fighter in my groups would "tank" the mobs, the cleric would keep him healthy, the magic user would use his spells from a distance and the thief / assassin would move in and out of combat and backstab when possible.
This is absolutely what those characters are designed to do, except generally if you can get away with actually doing it it's a sign that the person running the game doesn't want to make his friends angry by murdering the supports first, even though the intelligent thing to do would be to kill off the guy(s) who are making Mr. Meatstick nigh invulnerable, then take care of him after he is no longer lugging around the benefits of 3/4 of the party.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is absolutely what those characters are designed to do, except generally if you can get away with actually doing it it's a sign that the person running the game doesn't want to make his friends angry by murdering the supports first, even though the intelligent thing to do would be to kill off the guy(s) who are making Mr. Meatstick nigh invulnerable, then take care of him after he is no longer lugging around the benefits of 3/4 of the party.You and I have clearly had different experiences with those games, Bludd.Apparently so, in most cases the fighter in my groups would "tank" the mobs, the cleric would keep him healthy, the magic user would use his spells from a distance and the thief / assassin would move in and out of combat and backstab when possible.
I'm not saying that the trinity is or was ideal, and I hope character skills sets are not ask cookie-cutter. I was simply arguing against the notion that the trinity did not exist in D&D / AD&D. It was perhaps created there.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Originally, being the biggest, meanest character physically meant just that, but over time it evolved to mean 'the only character that should ever get hit' - which is definitely not the style intended or desired by D&D. The idea of building a meat-shield character certainly existed, but it wasn't 'the only effective way to play' and in fact using the tactic would get you killed as often as it would let you breeze through an encounter, unless your DM lacked any desire/ability to adapt his tactics or challenge you.
Similarly, the idea of a cleric only being valuable because they can heal the fighter and the wizard only being valuable because they can enhance the fighter or rogue were not unique when MMOs essentially cast these ideals in iron, but before that time effective gameplay was defined by being intelligent and varied - meaning while you could say the trinity existed, it certainly was not the be-all end-all tactic it is now.
So sure, it existed, I'll grant you, but at the time, that wasn't a bad thing. The fact that the tactic has become a stand-in for thinking on your feet is the bad thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As for my first impressions, I have not played the game yet, but having watched a few hours of the streaming video, I have one major area of concern.
Graphics.. Yes I know it is Alpha. Yes I know that Ryan has said the game will not be pushing for the highest level of graphics. These will not change the fact, and undeniable fact....
Graphics are the first thing someone sees of the game. If they look 6 years old, they look 5 years older than most PC gamers are looking for.
If you look at this comment from MMORPG (a response to criticism of the price of Alpha access):
The $1,000 is pretty reasonable when you consider it covers the cost of time travel to return to a time when these graphics and animations would be considered good.
I think it is sad when the parent company of an IP is not willing to invest in it's own product. Man up Paizo.
If we are in any way looking at the final graphics that will be presented to OE, or even the latter stages of EE, this is going to be a terribly steep hurdle for PFO's marketing to overcome.
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Personally, I think the graphics look fine. I think those gamers're just spoiled by Guild Wars and the graphics arms race. ;D
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Goblin Squad Member
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Graphics are over rated in my opinion as well as a money sync and added stress on my computer. Would rather have more features, better battles, and escalations than graphics. Also, for as much money and time they have invested the game looks good.
Gamers may be spoiled, and graphics may not be everything, but that doesn't change the fact that there's a standard and not holding up to it will doom the game