What is going on with combat?????

Root is 2nd tier, 6 or less points to get there. Gust is 1st tier which opens up the air tree to more stun spells such as lightning, discharge & chain lighting. Granted the Chaos tree is, so far, all about utility. Confuse is 1st tier & can only be used in PvP.

I don't see the Fire tree ever having utility (it does have dots), the water tree slows/immobilizes/removes dots/heals, air has stuns/pushbacks, earth has stun/immobolizer, and death magic heals. Those are the only trees that are somewhat fleshed out & produce DPS. I don't see a any tree giving you a maraud of utility, but a choice of play style.

You can at least play a PURE water mage. Water magic provides a means to get rid of dots & heal, not to mention it currently produces the most DPS currently in-game.

Mages in UO healed =P Unless you are Rp'ing I don't see where the issue is there, but I would like to see alternative healing besides just magic.

Casting sprint or dash is instant... dash last about 10s, but sprint last an entire minute. How does focus cost go up? It is a very low focus cost... stacking it to costing no focus. The only thing that you are penalized for in movement is fizzle, and as a mage you should have no issues with fizzle if you have regs & multiple level investment in a particular spell. As a side note, besides armor, weapons/shields also increase fizzle.

Slows, stuns & roots are not worthless... hrm... They actually benefit a lot! However, I am able to kill most creatures before they even touch me, at that, 12 spiders at once without any damage taken using Fireball. I stack the fireball for minimal focus cost & it destroys the creatures in front of me.

Have you seen the crafted cloth armor benefits? You can get INT & magic damage boost! Also, the light Armor tree provides innate speed boost on two levels. Granted you don't get passive focus gains with cloth armor.

Can you elaborate? I don't quite understand this. Are you referring to skill gating?

How do you expect to heal with a pure fire mage? a pure air mage? As it is now, you can surley be a PURE Fire Mage/Air Mage, but you will lack healing.

Why do you think it's OP? If that were the case every PvP'er would be running around with it. Despite popular misconception, the damage you produce with death magic is not the amount of health you receive...

Trust me on this stuff... I PvP consistently & test skills individually on a regular basis. You do have a few points and I'm not attacking you or trying to troll you, but it seems you are having issues fully understanding the combat system. May I invite you to a combat session when we both get some time?

 

I always enjoy reading threads regarding skill balancing, simply because I invariably learn something I'd not known or discovered before - and this thread is no exception. And unless I see something that confuses me or contradicts my own experience, I typically refrain from comment - leaving the nuts and bolts to those who are more learned than I.

However, this comment just baffles me:

The way I see it, Mages practice "Magery" - ie conjuring up fireballs, lightning, magically pulling life with death - you know - things that the average "Mortal" cannot achieve.
And since "healing" someone's semi-broken body by using a "spell" certainly constitutes "magic", why on earth would a "Mage" not use it on themselves if they so wished ?

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I simply don't understand why any mage would not include healing magic in with their other magics... Help me understand.

 

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I've seen this opinion a lot, and I think the game is suffering for it. The developers has said repeatedly that levels are NOT like they are in other MMOs. You are not getting STRONGER as you level. You are gaining a breadth of skills. You gain more OPTIONS.

At level 5, you can have a few low-end skills that allow you to survive against what you see as trash mobs. At level 30, you don't have significantly higher stats than before (except for the innates you might happen to pick up), but you have more skills that offer more options. Now you can do more damage (at higher focus cost) to get the fight over quicker, or do some crowd control to avoid the fight completely. So leveling still has a point, AND (even better than most games) you still have a reason to group with those new level 5s: they have about the same stats you do, just fewer options. This helps make groups more available. The creatures you fought before are still as strong as they were, but you have learned how to deal with them more effectively.

As far as roles within the group, tanks or meat shields don't need to be able to singlehandedly fight 30 mobs at once. Thats not the goal. It is to keep those mobs from paying attention to the other members of the group who can do far more damage than the tank, or can keep the tank from being killed by those mobs. Tanks shouldn't be standing still with a ton of creatures in front of them, they should be drawing them out, pulling them toward areas where crowd control can be used effectively (ice field, root, or caltrops).

The point of the game is to play smarter, not to become a LEVEL 100 WARLOCK who can do 8,000 DPS. That is the whole reason for a flat (non-exponential) leveling system to begin with.

(That being said, it needs significant balance and polishing work, but the basis is there.)

 

Only because I consider mages separate from Clerics and Priests. Some games do cross mages over and allow them healing. I prefer a pure elemental mage over the healer mage. I don't mind having the option, but I don't want to be forced to pick up heal to survive. Bandaids and healing pots will be a good alternative.

 

I don't agree with your definition of Pure Mage.

A Pure Mage is just someone who doesn't stray far from the Magic sigil. You are going to put a lot of your skills into Focus, and then generally focus on either damage dealing, healing, or crowd control. A real PURE Mage will probably have a little of all three.

It sounds like you want to play a Specialist Mage, where you have all of the Fire tree under your control, but little outside of that. That is fine, but you are effectively limiting your options. Some of the best magic is going to be part of the combo/spellweaving system; try combining fire and death (Fiery Decay is a decent example). There are lots of good synergies between the Elemental paths (Air/Earth/Fire/Water), or the Natural magic (Sun/Moon/Life/Death). There are also good quandrant-based specialties, like Druidism (Earth/Life/Water and either Sun or Moon).

I don't see a reason to limit yourself to a single skill tree, especially as a spellcaster. As I noted in the other post, the whole point of the system is breadth of skill.

 

I may have the word confused...what I mean by PURE mage is only using magery to do damage, not a sword not a pole arm...A long staff to enhance my spells would be nice too.

Yes, lots of focus and 1 or 2 trees of magic. Specializing to have my spells be more powerful. That's the type of mage I want.

You are right, with the system we have now it is a mistake to do that. This is my problem with the system. It forces me to go down many trees. Shouldn't I be able to have more powerful magic rather than multitudes of different spells?

**in melee you don't have to go down more than 1 melee tree

 

The Magic Sigil and the Combat Sigil are completely different. You only wear one type of armor or wield one type of weapon. You can certainly go down one magic tree if you want to cast the best Fire spell, for example, but that doesn't mean you are a great mage.

 

So true...Hence my problem with magery

 

A Mage is and should be the over all most powerful Avatar ...... It takes , (or should take) a long time to master ..... A mage can take on several targets if they wish ,, will they have to move and stay ahead much more than a tank with the same amount level and skill Points ( Roles eyes at the skill point points philosophy ) yes perhaps but ... mages have Mind altering magic (well Should) be it Mesmerize, Stun , Stone skin, or a Harry Potter Stupefy also known as crowd a control ...... A Mage Should not be able to take direct hits past a spell or enchantment that lessons a blow or several blows over time ... When I play a mage it is like flag foot ball if you can grab my flag i am down ......

Typically and in the Perfect world I would expect to be able to do just about anything I could think of ........Yes it would be very hard but that's what the wisdom of magery is about . We don't need to have a spell that wipes the screen of people ....just for the sake of balance but it is still not outside school of thought and never has.. its just a level no one can obtain ....

Any single Fighter that thinks or believes it is their right to be on the same level as a mage should pound sand or a anvil , one on one a mage should almost always win .. sorry but its true Most mages would not start out wealthy with the ability to afford magic ingredients for working on and practicing casting spell so they would be forced to carry a blade ,hammer,pole arm, or Bow/Xbow,,, Sorry Fellow Avatars ... it is what it is ..... but in the same thought enter the Hy bred.

Now a mage is Human and does make mistakes and does fumble so we can dial sills back some to compensate for this ...... Bottom Line Hundreds of warriors/fighters to a hand full of mages. Sweeten the deal with something skill,ability, what ever to help the fighters out number the mages .

 

Tanking kinda worked okay in the Early days. like Release 7. But now... forget about it.

 

Actually, I think you have a rather twisted take on this stuff. There are several points where I think you have your facts wrong, and when you don't I sense that you and I would disagree profoundly about what should be.

Um, no. No my character at level 30 was MASSIVELY stronger than at level 5. I was totally rocking encounters and regions that I wouldn't have dared enter.

Yeah, I didn't happen to pick up the innates, I chose to focus on them. My damage resists, spell damage boosts, and stats are where most of my points go. And so yes, I do have SIGNIFICANTLY higher stats. And they matter.

Or, with my build, I can just flat out do more damage, and regen focus faster.

Right, because getting the fight over quicker is just like holding down fast forward, right? Wrong. Speed is power. Being able to hit for 100 once right off the bat is worth FAR more than being able to hit for 10 consistently. You might catch up in a marathon, but this is video game combat, when I get the total damage needed to kill the target, I win. If my 100 damage does it in one shot, the race is over while you are still winding up your second swing. And crowd control? The ability to restrain one or more enemies while I finish off the ones in front of me? Yeah, that's not any kind of power at all, right? Try being one of the crowd controlled, while the high level character picks your group off one at a time, healing himself between fights while keeping the rest of the group locked down, then tell me that's not power.

No, they don't. Or as much money, or as good a gear set, or as many hitpoints. And frankly I'd be insulted if they did. I worked to get where I am, and having someone at level 5 able to stroll along next to me just as strong but with "fewer options" would denigrate my accomplishments.

"learned how to deal with them more effectively"? Do you mean, like, by killing them faster? Or by blocking their attacks, and being able to fight several at once? Cause that's what I'm doing now, and yes I am more effective. To me, that sounds like I'm more powerful.

Have you ever been a tank? There have been plenty of times that I have had to handle large groups of mobs, and if I failed to hold them or withstand their damage, everyone else died. If the group combat system in SotA calls for "Tank" type characters, that will be their job. When they get out of group combat, the same skills and stats that let them withstand hits from very large monsters, and hold down swarms of small ones, will allow them to fight multiple mobs at once. It's part and parcel to the character design.

Who's goal are we discussing now? Once again having played in several games as a tank, PREFERRING tank, being able to simultaneously fight multiple mobs was my goal. Literally, I would measure my progress and success by how many mobs I could hold at once without going down.
Now, maybe the people who think of me as an accessory, who think that "meatshield" is what is called for, don't think it's important that I be able to do anything but keep mobs off them while they sparkle, but I don't think of myself as an accessory. Tanking is a combat style all its own, and it needs to be solo viable to satisfy my standards. If I need dps and healers in order to kill anything, I'm built wrong.

Once again, in group combat, all have roles to play, but your goal shouldn't be just to fill a group role. Healers should have the ability to PvP, solo, quest/gather/craft, and play their way, as should tanks, as should dps. As should any other character role, or hybrid build. And just fyi, the classless system in SotA guarantees that nobody will ever be locked into a pre-determined vision of what their character should and should not have access to. As long as we have the classless design, if I want more damage, more healing, more functionality, or more durability... I'll just respec for it.

If the point is to play smarter, why bother with levels at ALL?? You can just play your level one character smarter and smarter. Good luck with that.

Me, I think that there are two learning curves: Mine as the player, as I learn to control the UI better, learn what tactics do and do not work... and the Character's as he or she becomes wiser, smarter, stronger, faster, and masters various skills and arcane powers.

I WANT the character to get stronger. And that is what leveling is for.

 

See, this argument is pure fantasy.
This places mages as ultimate because you see them as being cool. It's like the Super Man vs Hulk vs Thor debate. Which one wins is based on who's telling the story. All three are examples of ridiculously overpowered archetypes.

I could just as easily say that my warrior is far too strong and well armored to be taken down by some jelly-boned mage, or that my rogue is far too sneaky, and one shot of my 'anti-magick' poison would leave that mage a confused old man.

This game seeks balance between roles. There will not be some insane advantage to magick. Making it better just guarantees that nobody will play anything else. Harder to learn, you cry- Obviously not so hard that people cannot learn it anyway, say I. More expensive, you insist- Yet not so expensive that people cannot afford it, say I. There is no limiter you can put on a deliberately overpowered character that cannot be overcome through diligent and clever gamesmanship, and that is what EVERYONE will do. There will be published third party guides on "how to mage".

No, it must be balanced, so that there is a point in playing other things. Mages shouldn't be allowed to pwn face just because people think magick sounds awesome.

 

......The answer must be Superman.

And who should win between somone who can cast fireballs and someone with an iron sword and shield..........mages win

 

If i recall correctly, character progression is meant to be slower as your character levels up. That doesn't mean your character is not more powerful as it levels up... it means that the difference between a level 20 and a level 30 is greater than the difference between a level 30 and a level 40 and so on (because you earn less skill points). Since each level gives you the option to spend your skill points wherever you want, you can choose between active skills (diversity) or innate skills (power). And from my point of view Malak is currently right

On the other hand, Jayson is theoretically right since he's talking about what Port stated they wanted to achieve with the combat system... problem is the system fail to do so. Since they give players the option to invest in power through the presence of innates and stat raising as part of the skill tree, the purpose of controlled growth is flawed from the start because players run for the innates, and probably the one who has more innates win (and i think the innate nerf that happened a couple of releases ago proves me right).

I like the concept more than the current implementation, and i think that to make it work, stat progression needs to be separated from skill progression (distributed along the first 30 or 40 levels, so they represent a huge and early power boost) and also change the way innate benefits are earned (for example, linking them to the amount of points the player spent in the tree).

 

Again, that all depends on your viewpoint. I think your piddly little fireball should wash off my iron sword like a fancy water balloon, you think it should burn right through. The real issue is, exactly how much fire, and how hot a flame, and how persistent a flame can you produce. Is it enough fire to forge with? Enough to melt iron?

I have been in favor of armor granting protection vs most spells from the get go. Declaring that magick goes right through armor is precisely as baseless and arbitrary as any other declaration about magick. Show me someone who can conjure and hurl fireballs in the real world, and I'll show you a meaningful basis for comparison to armor and melee/archery.

Until that time, magick is an imaginary construct of the game, and its powers and capacities are whatever the devs say they are. If the devs decide magick goes through armor or one shots "tough" warriors, it does. If they decide that magick is repulsed by metal, then mages cannot wear armor, and metal weapon strikes fizzle spells. If the devs decide that bolt and fist spells are blocked by worn armor, then they are. All these arguments about how "cool" mages should be miss the point. A HIGH LEVEL, WELL GEARED, and INTELLIGENTLY PLAYED anything will be awesome. Mages will be powerful when they fill those conditions. So will melee characters, whether tanky-knight or backstabby-rogue. So will archers. Hence anything.

 

IMO, portalarium has started down a very well trodden, and very doomed path. Innates were preferable to active skills, so they nerfed innates. And yet, innates are STILL better. You can keep nerfing them until they suck, but that destroys the purpose of having them. And, since the innate skills are as much part of this game world as the actives, or the gear, or the storyline, nerfing them into suckitude will spread that effect to the game as a whole. Balancing and controlling a game by nerfing out of control elements is neverending and destructive, and has ruined far better funded and more developed games than SotA.

Regardless of where you put the stat progression or the effects of leveling/skill gain/rune placement/spirit mastery/whatever-the-hell-you-wanna-call-character-advancement, the problem comes down to this: The experience of gaining skill and strength via gameplay is one that we all seem to desire, but the EFFECT of gaining skill and experience via gameplay produces stronger and stronger characters. Where and how is that strength limited? And when you limit it, how do you avoid simultaneously limiting the experience that drew us all in in the first place?

If you cap growth, how do you keep the players from reaching maximum growth and getting bored?

 

Yeah, nerfing innates is one of the worst decisions Port made imo... Can't blame them since not all unintended developments in mechanics can't be fixed properly in this stage, so i think (hope? expect?) those measures are something temporary. To me these nerfs state they want balance between diversity and power and that's something i'd like to see as well... now it's matter of looking for the best way to achieve it.

That's the million dollar question, isn't it? If i recall correctly there is a maximum level so growth is indeed capped. What i'm talking about is to control the way players growth through each level so leveling doesn't seem as important as hanging around, do some pvp, help lower level players, and so on... so more than a growth cap is to find a way so growth is effectively slowed down.

Regarding the latter, since it's more relevant with the current discussion, current approach is that you earn less and less skill points as you level up (i think Themo has a post where he has all the numbers for all the levels, and while writing this post doing forum searches i checked that he suggested something similar) meaning that the reward your character earns for climbing levels from 20 to 29 is higher than climbing levels from 30 to 39, and so on. That doesn't work for the reasons discussed before (power is better than diversity etc) and that's the problem they need to address in a more elegant way than just a nerf (time will come). From my point of view an easy way to make it is to link the numeric benefits (currently obtained by innates) currently meant to each tree to the amount of points invested in the tree itself; that means you remove the innates and then each point invested in a tree gives you a certain amount of benefits. For example each point invested in Blades gives you x% damage, y% of attack speed and z% of critical chance with blades. Or maybe the first 10 points you invest only gives you bonus to attack speed, and the next 10 increase attack speed and critical strike and the next 10 increase all of them. Just matter of setting the numbers right.

With this, master swordsmen are the players who knows EVERYTHING about swordplay. It may make players think about investing into another skill that maybe they're not going to use just for the amount of power earned through that point invested. It effectively make pure characters better than hybrids in the use of certain skills... i can understand the frustration of people who filled up a tree because they want to master it and love every single skills featured in there just to check that its output is similar than someone that just grabbed the first skills and then filled up the innates on that tree. From my point of view this stone kills so many birds it looks like someone got pretty lucky firing a catapult. Bottom line is Each point = Diversity OR Power is wrong, correct approach is that each point = Diversity AND Power. Some exceptions:

• Innates that doesn't grant passive benefits but passive options: those are meant to be kept as innates (like stealth in light armor, for instance).
• Attributes: Attributes in skill trees is soooooo wrooooong... They're the place to spend skill points when you already took all the innates and you don't need to get more active skills. To grant the intended boost of power to low level players, attributes sould raise independently from skills through the first 30 or 40 levels. That way you make sure that the amount of power granted for characters in the first part of the leveling process is higher.

Another way of limiting access to innates is this but that gives more power to the player that has played for more time. Fair to me, but it may require more code and don't know if it's intended.

Regarding endgame activity (or alternatives to endless grind until reaching maximum level) that's matter of the stuff we'll be able to do as part of the game but apart from the main storyline. About that, i think not much has been said... but i remember how in UO all you want was to complete your skill cap to be able to fight other players and kill the big stuff... I expect devs to have this kind of activities covered, and hope to see mechanics that may reproduce that kind of experience... with the difference that, if the difference in power between my level 40 character i had in two weeks and a level 60 character after a month of gameplay... i may participate in those events without going through a lot of grinding. Not because i'll kick ass at level 40, but because i don't feel overrrun by high level characters.

 

There is some huge changes coming for combat, it is difficult to discuss combat at this stage since we wont see the new systems in play until the next few releases. I think many of you are going to like what you see though.

 

Which huge changes?