MMORPG LiveStream with Richard and Starr 8/22 7pm PDT

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by smack, Aug 22, 2014.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. smack

    smack Avatar

    Messages:
    7,077
    Likes Received:
    15,288
    Trophy Points:
    153
    TEK likes this.
  2. smack

    smack Avatar

    Messages:
    7,077
    Likes Received:
    15,288
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Well, doesn't look like this happened (again). Will update when they reschedule.
     
    RDouglas likes this.
  3. smack

    smack Avatar

    Messages:
    7,077
    Likes Received:
    15,288
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Looks like this finally happened while Richard and Starr were Dragoncon. At last, here it is:



    There's an accompanying article as well:
    http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/935/feature/8894/Checking-in-on-Update-9.html

    Interesting bit of news (my highlighting):
    I do have some concerns about the current combat system. Due to the lack of knowing where your skills are going to be on your hotbar you constantly have to look at your hotbar to know which skills you can activate and when. Players have no way of knowing in advance what key binds the skills will be associated with. I find this to be very distracting. It shifts your focus from the field of combat to being on your hotbar while the game passes you by. Starr said they are talking about limiting what slots certain skills could appear in to help players having a feeling for where skills will be to help keep their attention on the action and not on the skill bar. Also combat currently has a global cooldown but they plan on taking that out for update 10.

    EDIT: For those who are also avoiding exploring the mainland, stop watching at around 29 minutes, where they show off Ardoris for the rest of the video. I think maybe I'll just listen to this portion. :confused:
     
  4. Akrondar

    Akrondar Avatar

    Messages:
    467
    Likes Received:
    809
    Trophy Points:
    43
    Interesting.

    One of the strengths of the glyph system is that you can chain without a long cooldown two or three of the same glyphs. If you "lock" a slot to only show you a limited kind of glyphs then the system will get very weird.

    My take on this subject would be to categorize all the glyphs (maybe we could customize this categorization in game), and then make them appear in order with a dinamic number of slots for every category.

    Attack glyphs, Defensive glyphs, Utility Glyphs, Potions/items, Slugs.

    They could appear on that order and move other glyphs to the side :p. Example: you have 3 glyphs (1 attack, 1 defensive, 1 utility) and one potion. If another defensive glyph is chosen by the system to appear then the utility glyph and the potion are moved to the slot on the right, and you get your two defensive glyphs together.
     
  5. smack

    smack Avatar

    Messages:
    7,077
    Likes Received:
    15,288
    Trophy Points:
    153

    Color sorting could be one way they can test out. I think they should add more deck-control / hotbar-control type skills but at the cost of skill points and/or focus penalty. Color sorting, assigning slots to colors, slots to skill type, slots to single vs. AoE, slots to a skill line, slots to melee vs ranged, etc. There are tons of possibilities to help players manage the hotbar and put their eyes back on the action.

    The Focus skill tree can be greatly expanded or perhaps they should split the tree between deck control and hotbar control?

    But I would tend to agree with Starr: continue to fine tune and enhance the iconography so over time your peripheral vision will come into play even more so you can concentrate on the fight vs the hotbar.
     
  6. Mishri

    Mishri Avatar

    Messages:
    3,812
    Likes Received:
    5,585
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Great Falls, MT
    I've always found hotbar combat distracting as I'm looking for when cooldowns are up. Usually it's because I am always paying attention to other things and not counting the seconds. As a long time raid healer in many games my eyes just flick from health bars to hot bars, took awhile to get to the point that I register what is also happening on the screen in between looking at those things. Final Fantasy 14 it isn't such a problem because I only have like 2 skills with cooldowns as a white mage. Fewer skills is usually the answer.

    What they could do is let you assign all of your skills to any number of hot bar icons (you can assign keys) that snap to grid or can free form. If the skill isn't up it's a dark gray - once it's up but on cool down a light gray, and ready for use no shading. or maybe a red shading for on cooldown (which shouldn't be too often). Then you need to be sure you have an icon for each skill in your deck. they can also have a slug icon which increments from 0 as they come up so you can discard them. Also a blank icon in case you forget to set one for a skill. Also if you get more than 1 of a skill it can do the same as it works for slugs, adds a number, you can drag+drop onto it's own icon for combos, or do the combo button + number to combo it. Combos can go into combo icons, if we need multiple we can have a few.

    They'll still need to do a "warning fade" on them... which might get tough to remember what should fade soon and what wont since we wont have the order anymore.

    What people will find is it feels more like we have a variable cooldown a long with chances of 0 cooldown. It will make people not think about the "random card draw". Also, for most of my decks I wouldn't need more than like 6 boxes... which is what a lot of games are going for, fewer hotkeys to hit.
     
  7. Apollyon9515

    Apollyon9515 Avatar

    Messages:
    62
    Likes Received:
    98
    Trophy Points:
    8
    Seems like a lot of work when they could give us the option to assign keys to certain spells like most other games and let users choose to use keys or a random deck.
     
  8. Mishri

    Mishri Avatar

    Messages:
    3,812
    Likes Received:
    5,585
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Great Falls, MT
    They do have that option it's called Locked Skills.
     
    Ravenclaw [BEAR] likes this.
  9. Apollyon9515

    Apollyon9515 Avatar

    Messages:
    62
    Likes Received:
    98
    Trophy Points:
    8
    With penalties for using it. I meant to have it like all other games out and not cost extra man's and what not.
     
  10. Rodriguez

    Rodriguez Avatar

    Messages:
    140
    Likes Received:
    241
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Switzerland
    Why is everybody always insisting to have all the advantage and none of the disadvantage?
     
  11. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

    Messages:
    18,188
    Likes Received:
    35,440
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male

    Power Gaming is built on this principle. If there's a buff but you have to give something up to get it, "why are you penalizing my style of play?"

    As a roleplaying game, I would prefer that we worry about how combat mechanics impact roleplay before we worry about the equal distribution of buffs. We're doing that in some ways, armor for example, but there are a number of other things we're doing that cater to the power gamers (as previously stated) or the casual fans where everyone gets a trophy.
     
    Rodriguez and Mishri like this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.