Please SotA incorporate more roles than the standard trinity

I don't believe in the holy trinity one bit... I think games do that because they're forgetting that we are the champions... they're placating a generation of gamers desire to be the champion by telling them "you can't all be the #1 person" so they set roles and then they benchmark success on achievements that they tell you to do... I think games should be more sandbox... everyone plays how they want and can play how they want and you don't have to fill a CC role or a tank role or any of that... you're the freakin Avatar... go fight and win because that's your job. Go be the Avatar. Screw the holy trinity (sorry that also means to screw the requirements for the other stuff... nothing personal but I think I want more sandbox )

 

You can even play the "griefer" if you want to.

 

where's my :troll: face when I need one

 

I totally understand your statement being we are "avatars" but it gets a bit muddied when we have group combat and guilds that structure roles such as healers and melee. We for go the concept of the "avatar" when we have group combat really. We are all avatars, should we all just fight without structure? No teamspeak let everyone be there own champion!

 

I think that at some point, we need to have either a hard or a soft limitation placed on which magic schools you can use in the same deck - similar to how we place hard limits on what weapons you can use in a deck. If I have a shield and mace equipped, I cannot use dual sword skills (without swapping decks). With magic, however, I can cast polar opposite spell schools in the same deck with no drawback. I feel like I'm making a choice when I decide what weapon to pick up, but with magic, I don't feel there is any choice at all. Grab some life spells, death spells, fire, ice, whatever I want.

I'd love to see a piece of gear that lowers the focus cost of a school (like Life) but increases the focus cost of Death magic. Neighboring schools would be effected but at a lesser rate. That way I'm forced to think about magic schools a lot more, just like I do with armor and weapons.

Right now its way too easy to blend many roles together. Grab some easy Earth and Ice spells for slows/roots, pick up the first two Life skills for a short/medium ranged heal, and you've got CC and healing somewhat covered. Toss on plate armor and a shield, and now you're a tank.

 

Crowd control specialized characters are an absolute nighhmare for PvP, because they end up being either absurdly overpowered and fun killing or totally worthless. There is just no way to effectively* CC someone in PvP without also ruining that persons fun.

*Clarification: No way to CC someone so effectively in PvP that it justifies having a whole character dedicated to it.

 

Slows. You can slow my casts, slow my movement, slow my attacks, increase my costs. Something I can notice, realize I'm screwed, and then turn and flee from. Now, if three guys jump me, and they are equally powered and skilled, they should beat me. If they do it by slowing and weakening me before a few quick thrusts cut me down, or by bombing me from a distance, or by surrounding me and stabbing me in the back no matter which way I turn...

That shouldn't matter. CC in PvP CAN be reasonable, if the devs don't put in retarded "You are now in a coma for 4 seconds, and cannot defend yourself while you get beaten down" Or "You are now helpless for 20 seconds, none of your abilities work, and the only thing we'll let you do is use a 60 second cooldown item that you bought just for PvP" (even though your opponent can re-cast that CC spell over and over...)

As I posted elsewhere:

Slows. You can slow my casts, slow my movement, slow my attacks, increase my costs. Something I can notice, realize I'm screwed, and then turn and flee from. Now, if three guys jump me, and they are equally powered and skilled, they should beat me. If they do it by slowing and weakening me before a few quick thrusts cut me down, or by bombing me from a distance, or by surrounding me and stabbing me in the back no matter which way I turn...

That shouldn't matter. CC in PvP CAN be reasonable, if the devs don't put in retarded "You are now in a coma for 4 seconds, and cannot defend yourself while you get beaten down" Or "You are now helpless for 20 seconds, none of your abilities work, and the only thing we'll let you do is use a 60 second cooldown item that you bought just for PvP" (even though your opponent can re-cast that CC spell

 

Soft CCs are fine, but they are not a character role by themselves. This is what a frost mage does in WoW for example, but it's still a DPS class.

What I'm trying to say is, in order for a character that is dedicated to CC to be sufficiently powerful to justify being an individual character it needs to have more CC than is ever fun to be exposed to.

 

Exactly my point. If the CCs are kept manageable, two things happen. First there is no sudden problem with CCs in PvP or PvE, the CC is made to be non-absolute and manageable. Second, because the CC isn't overwhelmingly powerful, it can become part of a character that has other advantages, like dps, durability, or healing capacity, without creating something broken.

If all CC is soft, by mandate of the Dev team, then we can have CC needing fights, CC based skill trees, and CC characters without the automatic problem with CC overpowering and unbalancing.

 

Soft CCs honestly aren't powerful enough to justify a whole character being built around them is the problem.

Look at it this way: In a 5vs5 fight if your character exists purely to CC people that character needs to inflict effects on the enemy team that reduce their overall effectiveness by about as much as one character. If you could shut down one person 100% that would meet that criteria, but shutting someone down 100% is hard CC, so no good there. Reducing the entire enemy team by 20% would be a decent soft CC, but now you run into the scaling problem: What happens in a 10vs10 fight? Is the CC character limited to only being able to affect 5 players? Can they affect all 10 players and is suddenly twice as useful as in a 5vs5? What if the character was in a 3vs3 and suddenly no matter what that character does he can only ever lend 60% effective combat strength to a team because there just aren't enough enemies to hinder. What if there is a second CC character? Do their effects stack with the first, so if there are enough they can effectively hard CC you, or can you only be affected by a single instance of the CC and every additional CC character is just useless?

It's simply a lot more practical to have the CC only be part of a character rather than the whole thing, because if your characters soft CCs only reduce, let's say, one persons effectiveness by 20% and the other 80% of you characters combat value comes from other stuff you never run into the problem of scaling, since the characters combat value doesn't have to be derived by the number of enemies they hinder.

 

Again, you are missing my point. You are arguing why hitting your head on the window is a sucky way to break into a house, and I'm around the corner trying to tell you that I found a key under the begonias. Yes, you are right, the key doesn't work on the window, but if you'd stop obsessing over the window, we could use the DOOR.

A character devoted to CC is begging to be broken. A CC that is all soft makes such a character unplayably weak, but THAT MEANS YOU CAN LET HIM HAVE OTHER THINGS. In SotA, there are no classes, so we can each mix in as much CC as we want. That means that the Devs can include potent, long range, high duration stuff for suppressing an enemy you aren't ready to fight, and aoe bursts that are tied to attacks, and all manner of variations, balanced so that they can be part of ANY build that pays for them. And the point cost can be low enough to afford because if they are all soft, they WON'T CREATE OVERPOWERED MONSTERS.

Instead of trying to imagine the way you've seen CC done in the past, imagine a game world where CC was just another tactic, a way of getting an edge. Just like cleaving armor, or stacking crit chance, or kiting.

Now, if that WERE the case, the Devs could then put in encounters into the group combat where we were expected to CC by stacking slows on mob movement and cast, and then kiting them. You could do that, OR you could come in with two tank types who were tough enough to take the pull, OR you could try stealthing past them, OR you could bomb them with a group of high DPS casters, and suddenly instead of a boring checklist march through a boring sequence of fights with powers that unbalance everything else, it's creative problem solving with powers that work the same everywhere and are all equally optional.

 

They're planning to make staves and wands give lowered fizzle chance in one school of magic, I believe.

The way I might deal with it is just double down on reagent requirements and then have the staves/wands negate the reagent requirements. So, Healing Touch might require reagents, and a fighter with a sword and shield couldn't spam a "heal button" without a fizzle chance if he didn't have the proper reagents, but someone with a Life staff would have an easier time.

 

I understand that and hopefully, somehow, they can cater to both of us because combat and grouping is FIRST and foremost in my preferences. Because if not then I will lose interest in this game. I assume we are both backers so both of our opinions are valid obviously.

I will end on this, games where you don't necessarily need someone tanking or someone healing because there is no need for it are out in abundance. Diablo, Path of Exile, any aRPG really, Guild Wars. These games are all great games in their own right but I was never a fan of GW because of this exact reason (lack of 'roles' ie everyone can heal themselves and so on) and action rpgs like Diablo only hold my interest for so long.

I LOVE hunkering down with my friends and grouping day in and day out clearing dungeons and castles and what have you. And this can only be accomplished by having lots of options and tactics in your group combat.

 

As Malak mentioned it can be done. I've seen games do this in a variety of ways. But first, most importantly, someone who chooses to CC is not solely going to CC. I consider the 'holy trinity' the primary roles and these other roles secondary roles or even secondary DPS roles. So someone who is going to CC will still primarily be a DPS class. Someone who decides they would love to get out ahead of the group and pull to keep the fight constant will still primarily be a DPS class.

One of the ways I've seen games handle stuff like you are talking about is to create skills that behave differently depending on whether or not they are being used in PvE or PvP. Such as a 'fear' ability. PvE this works fine sure but in PvP this is definitely a nightmare because if you can just freely fear someone then it's game over for the player being feared. All the devs do is make that fear act differently in PvP such as fearing for a shorter period of time, or instead of fearing it stuns, or it just plain out doesn't work in PvP.

 

I agree whole-heartedly. When I started this post I never meant I wanted these other 'roles' to be strictly that. As I stated before all the roles I have mentioned would fall under the dps classes. CC, pulling, support, utility, etc would all be dps as well as their preferred role. Or could even be a healer or maybe even a tank. I've seen some support classes with the ability to heal so definitely doesn't have to be solely dps classes.

 

THIS!!! CO-SIGNED, BOUGHT THE SHIRTS, BET THE HOUSE AND KIDS!!!

This is exactly why I want these other 'roles'. These secondary roles that aren't necessary or game-breaking or bad. They just add options and variety to how we group together and to how we accomplish our goals. To the people saying "no", or "I don't want roles", or "it's a classless system it won't work", etc. This is all I'm asking for, for grouping with my friends to be varied rather than just smashing and bashing.

How many times can you play a ranger with it feeling like a unique experience. If you've played a ranger in ANY other game I'm sure creating a ranger in this game is going to feel and play pretty much the same. DPS is a dime a dozen. A wizard or a summoner plays the same in this game as they do in any other game with a 'classless' system. I like for my DPS to have meaning rather than a rotation, which even with SotA's card based system you still end up with rotations. They are just a little more random than before.

All this stuff might already be in game. I know some of it isn't, at least yet. Like some of yous have said, the skills ARE in game. But like I said, just because they are in game doesn't mean we have need to use them. One example of the devs possibly creating the 'need' for these other roles JUST happened right here in release 19. 'NPCs will now call for help.' This makes trying to split mobs and pulling more complicated and more of a necessity.

 

Sorry to go off topic, but I just played Witcher 2 for the first time yesterday, and OMG that game is A-MAZ-ING! Does SoTA have a chance to be close to that level? Even without voice overs and CGI-quality cutscenes, which I totally understand? Everything about it is PERFECT - the story, the combat, the graphics, the engine, just... WOW. And to think I got it on a steam sale for about $8. Well, 3 just came out so that makes sense...

 

This, sadly, is simply the next domino in the chain, a symptom of a larger syndrome that leads to massive and irreparable game imbalance. Once a proliferation begins of abilities, items, and tactics that function differently depending on whether or not you are aiming them at a player controlled or non-player controlled character, two things happen. First immersion is shattered. NPCs become irrelevant, which leads to the current attitude of many PvP advocates here on these forums, who say that only a human opponent presents fun and challenge. That's because they've been surrounded by low end AIs that make up for their shortcomings with massive stats, bizarre behavioral mechanisms, and convenient but unexplained "differences" in how the various powers affect them.

Second, and this is far more damaging IMO, there are now two games. There is a game against the computer, and more and more it has nothing whatsoever to do with the other game, which is PvP. The communities diverge, and evolve away from each other, and become divided (often bitterly so). The mechanics diverge, and require totally different builds, equipment lists, and mechanics. Once this happens, then you start getting powers and items designed for ONE side that utterly imbalance the other more and more and more... and at this point the only treatment is more of the medicine that caused the problem. The more divergence is introduced, the more the game splits it's player base, and the more it becomes difficult or even impossible for players to cross back and forth between the game systems.

Then of course, you get minor symptoms, like exhausting bankspace trying to groom and keep two gear sets, and respec becomes a mandatory free thing, because players feel they should be able to hop back and forth between PvP and PvE (and then the devs innocently try to fix this by offering a limited set of specs that can be freely switched between so that people can have a PvP and a PvE, but many more players use them to have two or more wildly different builds all on one side, so the mechanism intended to rebalance respeccing instead becomes an imbalancing feature. In a classless game, this feature would effectively invalidate the decision to only let us have one character, and worse yet allow all a player's "characters" to level up simultaneously. This would then further magnify the complaint of someone leveling Swords who then suddenly became an archmagus one day, he would ALSO become a master archer, and a polearm master, and a healer...)

The list of consequences goes on and on, but the pathology is this: A house divided against itself cannot stand.

 

I want to see a game in which trite meta-mechanics from WoW and EQ are not a thing.