Ryzom

acridiel wrote:Well, if you use one and the same "max. dmg." stanza all the time, or your teams are always exactly balanced to what heals they need, that´s true.

But especially in Melee there´s plenty of variation to be had if you just look a little further than hitting the next mob hard enough with maximum damage to get to the (preferably maximum of course) XP in minimum time...

And apart from AoC, witch just came out with this "new system", witch other game does it better?

Any ideas to make it better?
What to do, I ask again. Don´t just complain, give ideas!!!

CU
Acridiel

Actually I think you perhaps need to re-read, as my post looked a lot more like an idea than a complaint to me.
As for 'variation that involves doing less damage' then sure. There are plenty of ineffective/inefficient ways of making skills. Other than you, I don't think they are widely used. And no, people that generally use the most efficient combinations should not be dismissed as shallow.

If you want specific ideas of stanzas to be added I can think of plenty. For the healing tree, you could add temperory buffs - eg as well as double heal and hp/sap heals you could have hp heal+increased regen buff, sap heal+reduced sap cost, etc. Many MMOs have a huge variety of buffs and debuffs, you should not need to look far to get inspiration here.

Nuking could be similar, with debuffs.

Melee is harder, in a way, but you could add a great deal more actions (various strokes,stabs,etc), some of which could work better with different types of weapons.

Its really not hard to think of stanzas that could be added, here I have just stated a few of the blindingly obvious ones, with a little imagination you could do all sorts of things.

As for the other games comment, I can't help noticing that most of the time you are saying constantly that ryzom isn't, and shouldn't be like most other MMOs, so it seems more than a little ironic that you are complaining that no other game does this here.

melee has lots possibilities of in fact - aimed hits and diferent dots/piercing/inc damage and +tohit staza, round attack and auras/powers

acridiel wrote:[...]
But especially in Melee there´s plenty of variation to be had if you just look a little further than hitting the next mob hard enough with maximum damage to get to the (preferably maximum of course) XP in minimum time...

[...]

Apart from SWG I never experienced a better melee fight.
First comes the animation. The guys have actually placed senzors on real people (fighter instructor, dancer etc) joints, captured the movements and digitized them. The movement was so smooth and immersing both in melee and dancing you hardly imagine.
Secondly comes the sequential skills. Not like LotrO and AC2. What happens in LotrO and AC2 is that using one skill enables another which is grayed untill then (Ryzom has this implemened as "after crit credits" etc). The SWG sequentiality was a logical one and purely logical. For example you have to try to make someone dizzy before attempting to KO. Dizzy doesn't enable KO attempt. Based on what you know about your opponent proffessions or skills or equipment you can try directly KO. So it's a judgement process that makes you a good fighter or a miserable one. In my opinion Ryzom needs some fine tunning because such skills are there and working only made useless by overpowering of other skills.
Third for a good melee fight you need a different angle, and in this I really don't know on what it is based. In Ryzom immersion is poor at this singular level because of the angle and camera distance (and trust me I customised it quite a lot).

First thing is costly, I don't see it implemented. Second it's already working in Ryzom, needs fine tunning. Third probably impossible.


Now from the point of view of the newbie, pvp can be great if it's free pvp, because there he has the chance to fight 1:1 against peers. OPs made pvp almost only mass warlike pvp, that's one reason why individual skills are pretty unknown, numbers are what matters, and for the newbie the experience might be frustrating. Same for the people who don't want to grind up masters fast. The SWG solution was pretty much cultural: one could take part in base wars as mass pvp, or in small squirmishes between two cities traditionally belonging to imperials/rebels. Later, player cities offered similar small fights.

If the lore would imply squirmish areas where traditionally some people hang out, newbies and less than 2 master/uber gear players could have their fun as well, while at the same time learning their skills better.

In fact i think that most of possible usages of stanzas are not cheked or not public (if someone found smth good) need more time, more competition eg more players

fadebait wrote: As for the other games comment, I can't help noticing that most of the time you are saying constantly that ryzom isn't, and shouldn't be like most other MMOs, so it seems more than a little ironic that you are complaining that no other game does this here.

*LOL* True.
But doesn´t that support my notion of it staying unique?

Oh, and great Ideas there! That´s the spirit!

arfindel wrote:Apart from SWG I never experienced a better melee fight.
First comes the animation. The guys have actually placed senzors on real people (fighter instructor, dancer etc) joints, captured the movements and digitized them. The movement was so smooth and immersing both in melee and dancing you hardly imagine.
Secondly comes the sequential skills. Not like LotrO and AC2. What happens in LotrO and AC2 is that using one skill enables another which is grayed untill then (Ryzom has this implemened as "after crit credits" etc). The SWG sequentiality was a logical one and purely logical. For example you have to try to make someone dizzy before attempting to KO. Dizzy doesn't enable KO attempt. Based on what you know about your opponent proffessions or skills or equipment you can try directly KO. So it's a judgement process that makes you a good fighter or a miserable one. In my opinion Ryzom needs some fine tunning because such skills are there and working only made useless by overpowering of other skills.
Third for a good melee fight you need a different angle, and in this I really don't know on what it is based. In Ryzom immersion is poor at this singular level because of the angle and camera distance (and trust me I customised it quite a lot).

Woha, cool.
Yeah, that´s something I´d like to see in Ryzom too *dreams*
About angle and such I can´t say, because I never actually "fought" with it, but I did some "customization" too for my videos and yes, I agree that at least some of that should be ingame. The "normal" view is really a wheeee bit too limited
Here I must admit that LotRo does a pretty good job. You can zoom out far more than in Ryzom to have a much better view of your surroundings, all else is the same camera wise. And gameplay... well... it´s something to while away the wait...

CU
Acridiel

fadebait wrote:Forgot to add the thing I most would like to see changed (which I have mentioned a few other tiems on this and other forums), which is that we ahve a pretty unique skill system, where we can combine elemnts to make up our own spells.
So give us some different and interesting options!
Currently healing is mind-numbingly boring, as all you really do is sit there and spam buttons (yes there is some skill even here, about when to use bomb heals, when to cast, etc, but not much really), nuking is much the same and melee is barely and better.

Actually the ability to create your own actions is exactly what leads to this behavior. No matter how many more stanzas they put in, there's always going to be a few combinations that are optimal for any situation, with all the hundreds of other combinations being less efficient. And the most efficient way to fight will always be to spam that most efficient action over and over, because why would I ever want to use a less efficient action if can just use my most efficient one again and again?

In other MMOs the main reason you use multiple different attacks instead of just spamming your best attack over and over, is because all your attacks are on a timer. But that's not possible in a system where you can make your own actions.

That being said, I'd love to have much more different stanzas to play with! I just don't think it'd make combat any less boring or spammy...

To really have a use for lots of different actions, instead of just one most efficient action that's always best, we need a lot of different opponents. As example, for elemental magic we'd need some creatures that are immune to all but cold, some to all but poison, some to all but fire, etc etc. As opposed to the current situation where any racial spell will work efficiently against 90% of all mobs you'll face. For melee, where currently you'll want to use increase damage 90% of the time, they could use the aim stanzas for this. Make some mobs have weaker armor on their head, some on their lower front legs, etc etc. This can already be done right now without having to implement any new stanzas!

But ofcourse the more stanzas we get, the more interesting variations can be made. One more spell type I'd like to suggest here is the anti-affliction; a spell that removes an affliction from an ally.

Though when hunting you'll usually just be fighting one kind of mob over and over, so there'd still be that single most efficient action against them that you'd be using over and over. To truly make that exciting we'd also need some kind of randomizer that gives every specimen unique weaknesses. The most interesting combat I think would be when fighting differents mobs at once, like mixed groups of kitin.

sidusar wrote:Actually the ability to create your own actions is exactly what leads to this behavior. No matter how many more stanzas they put in, there's always going to be a few combinations that are optimal for any situation, with all the hundreds of other combinations being less efficient. And the most efficient way to fight will always be to spam that most efficient action over and over, because why would I ever want to use a less efficient action if can just use my most efficient one again and again?

Thta's not always true. There are many situation where is better to use a less efficient but low consuming action. It's not always right to use only the best stanza u got.

It's true that the combinations can be imnproved in number and variety but telling that you just have to spam single buttons is wrong. Or you didn't went much deep in different situations.

sidusar wrote:Actually the ability to create your own actions is exactly what leads to this behavior. No matter how many more stanzas they put in, there's always going to be a few combinations that are optimal for any situation, with all the hundreds of other combinations being less efficient. And the most efficient way to fight will always be to spam that most efficient action over and over, because why would I ever want to use a less efficient action if can just use my most efficient one again and again?

In other MMOs the main reason you use multiple different attacks instead of just spamming your best attack over and over, is because all your attacks are on a timer. But that's not possible in a system where you can make your own actions.
.

Not only. The sensibility of mobs to certain types of attacks is waaay too weak in Ryzom. Sure you can be very attentive and learn their sensitivities, but at any point a kipuka can be killed with electricity instead of the orthodox ice aso. Only Mdakaoo and Shooketh put in the end some small problems, as always solved with numbers (sigh).

Or think about the long life animals - if the meleer who tanks had ever been required to really fight, the stamina saving stanzas would really be useful.

At some point the old players find the best combos and use only those, agree. But the best combos are overly reduced in Ryzom by lack of fine tunning of the pve, armors etc. Then instead of having some oldies able to know best combos for all situations (preferably countless), you have all players older than 2 weeks who know them.

In pvp though - as long as we don't talk about mass wars - knowing and adjusting a reasonably high number of actions, at least for meleers and healers, was not so handy for everyone.

Yes, that's pretty much what I meant.

arfindel wrote: Or think about the long life animals - if the meleer who tanks had ever been required to really fight, the stamina saving stanzas would really be useful.

It´s really handy in soloing melee though
Used it quite often to great effect when hunting alone.

CU
Acridiel