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Three simple mistakes the devs made
leibowitz27
Member Posts: 10 Arc User
I enjoy this game, quite a lot. Wouldn't bother to post if I didn't. Most of it is excellent. Some parts need improvement, but they're complicated issues with complicated solutions.
But three things are such simple, obvious errors that I'm astonished they made it into the game.
1. No easy way to heal between fights
No, not potions. Potions are for during fights. Incidentally, this is why everyone and their grandmother takes the cleric companion; it's not that they can't make it through a fight without healing, it's that they want to be topped up before the next scrap. A good rule of game balance is this: if everyone does something, it's either too good and should be nerfed, or too necessary and should be free. Come on, lads, you're certainly not shy about borrowing from other games, and you MUST have noticed that almost every MMO makes it trivially easy to top up that green bar out of combat.
2. Skill kits breaking
What is this, 1995? This serves no purpose but to irritate players. It doesn't add challenge, it doesn't balance the economy, it doesn't do anything but make you curse and press F again. Increase the cost of skill kits if you must, but make them just plain work. There's simply no reason for them to break.
3. Tank marks
For those not familiar with guardian fighter mechanics, it works like this: they put marks on targets, that allow them to do extra aggro. But if the guardian gets hit, the marks go away. Allow me to reiterate:
If the TANK
Gets HIT
He LOSES AGGRO.
He is the tank. It is his job to have aggro, and get hit. Really, who thought this was a good idea? Maybe go find whichever dev suggested this and give him a long, hard glare.
Again, these are not the biggest problems in the game. They are just the simplest and most obvious, the easiest to fix, the ones that will be a real embarrassment if they make it out of beta. Good job on the game, looking forward to improvements large and small!
But three things are such simple, obvious errors that I'm astonished they made it into the game.
1. No easy way to heal between fights
No, not potions. Potions are for during fights. Incidentally, this is why everyone and their grandmother takes the cleric companion; it's not that they can't make it through a fight without healing, it's that they want to be topped up before the next scrap. A good rule of game balance is this: if everyone does something, it's either too good and should be nerfed, or too necessary and should be free. Come on, lads, you're certainly not shy about borrowing from other games, and you MUST have noticed that almost every MMO makes it trivially easy to top up that green bar out of combat.
2. Skill kits breaking
What is this, 1995? This serves no purpose but to irritate players. It doesn't add challenge, it doesn't balance the economy, it doesn't do anything but make you curse and press F again. Increase the cost of skill kits if you must, but make them just plain work. There's simply no reason for them to break.
3. Tank marks
For those not familiar with guardian fighter mechanics, it works like this: they put marks on targets, that allow them to do extra aggro. But if the guardian gets hit, the marks go away. Allow me to reiterate:
If the TANK
Gets HIT
He LOSES AGGRO.
He is the tank. It is his job to have aggro, and get hit. Really, who thought this was a good idea? Maybe go find whichever dev suggested this and give him a long, hard glare.
Again, these are not the biggest problems in the game. They are just the simplest and most obvious, the easiest to fix, the ones that will be a real embarrassment if they make it out of beta. Good job on the game, looking forward to improvements large and small!
Post edited by leibowitz27 on
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Comments
Agree with 3, kinda agree on 1, disagree on 2.
The tank losing agro thing? That's very dumb. There are no things more defining of a tank than grab agro/get hit.
The healing between? I'd just boost base regeneration for all by about 15-25% outside of fights.
The kits breaking? There's many things more annoying in the game than that, and it's a money sink.
2. This is fine. Certain classes just aren't trained in certain fields. Be happy they even GAVE us kits.
3. Fix this. Make it so that if anyone BUT the tank gets hit, it removes the mark (to give more incentive to avoid AoE and to try and flank)
Neverwinter is not a 'pure' trinity game where the tank is going to take all the blows and the rest will dish dmg. NW is a game where you actually HAVE to MOVE to not get HIT. Where the 'tank' is not as realiable as in other mmos.
This game is new and you must open your mind.
Best regards.
1. Campfires and portable alters will heal you if you are not in combat.
2. the skill kit breaking does seem kinda pointless maybe if there was some sort of mini game involved it would seem less random.
3. I think the mark intention is literally to pull agro off someone else once the tank is hit he has agro so that other guy is safe.
actually portable altar trigger the same regeneration as a campfire... and since finding a campfire to use your invocation is quite easy (and once u'r lvl 60 it will be uncommon to be away from protector for more than 1 hour...) their best use is just to generate a portable out of combat regen wherever u need it ^^'
still it is not the best solution... just a workaround... ^^'
2) .......I got nothing.
3) I would have to ask first; Does the mark go away if GF blocks?
Yeah, boosting out of combat regen would be a perfectly adequate solution. Or borrowing straight from D&D 4e, where you take a "short rest" after a fight and heal up (I'm imagining a little "short rest" button that makes your character take a deep breath, wipe the sweat from their forehead, and regain 25% HP.)
And skill kits will still be a money sink if they don't break. As I said, increase the price. I'm not saying they shouldn't be one-use, that's obviously necessary. And while there are other things in the game that are more annoying, they're all complicated issues that require clever fixes. The irritation of getting "kit broken" "kit broken" "kit broken" three or more times in a row is just unnecessary. It's not like fusing enchantments, where they're trying to make money selling wards. There's simply no reason not to change it. Make them cost two silver and work once.
I actually love this about the game. It's why I made a tank; I thought it would be more active and mobile and exciting than in other games. Unfortunately, the Guardian Fighter is by far the LEAST maneuverable of any class. Pressing shift makes everyone else sprint or dodge; if you're a GF, it actually makes you slower.
But that's another discussion entirely.
no... blocking an attack doesn't end the mark... unfortunately the block bar just get eaten away pretty fast if u block every attack... (the block actually work like an absorb shield... it absorb dmg but is also limited in the total amount it can absorb before braking) a good GF know that he have to only block autoattacks and manually avoid charged attacks (elite's charged attacks eat away a bit less than half block bar... and bosses charged attack almost all...)... also block doesn't regen the same way as stam for other classes... if u ever drop to 0 block bar (block borken due to not enough block bar to shild the full hit u blocked) it will not start to regen unless u can pass a few second without taking any dmg (hard to give an exact amount of time... it may be something between 2 and 4 second... and while it can seem a short amount of time it is really hard when u'r hoping to hold aggro of multiple mobs ^^')
also many of the power that should restore your block bar don't work if u are at 0 block bar or don't work at all...
this is the main problem that makes the "tab" mark useless aside form being a 100 feet skill to start the combat from where u want instead of charging into the pack of mob... other than that u will be using the at will 20feet charge that will also aoe mark... and simply try to refresh that mark as much as u can instead of block a few attack and than loose your mark due to block brake...
this is also the reason why the only functional way to paly a GF is to spec for conqueror and go dps... you will simply aim for high dmg instead of aggro multiplier popping the aoe mark just before your big hit... and most GF doesn't even bother to equip the enanced mark passive (that futher increas by 100% your aggro generated against mob under the effect of mark) but just soket a dps passive to help them generate more dmg and so more aggro...
mark is actually a nice, new and interesting mechanic... but unfortunately it requre for the tank to be able to keep his block up with a HIGH uptime... or to be a matrix lover and avoid every single attack ^^' ... so the only way to make it really work would be to greatly increase the amount of dmg the block can sustain or it's recharge speed... but that will obviously trivialize the tanking by making the GF un unkillable creature (don't even think about the effect it would have in PvP)...
PS: forgot this; while blocking u can only use your 2 at will (and those 2 at will are special one that are linked to the block not the one that u normaly use and can change based on what power u have bought... and u need to drop your block in order to use encounter (or your base at will)... also the block have a bit (somene can argue that it's not a bit but a lot...) of delay between the press of the "shift" key and the actual activation/deactivation of the block... this mean that to block an auto attack u have to already be blocking when the attacks animation start or the attack will hit u... same thing for dropping your block in order to use an encounter... u have to wait for your block to actually drop before firing the encounter... and if ur' using an at will when u release your block this delay will futher increase...
PPS: as noted by teh above poster (I almost forget about that) the block als reduce your movemnt speed... and this added to the above mentioned delay make the guardian the slower class to avoid charged attack... it still can be done... but certainly it is much easier for a guardian to get hit by a charged aoe that it is for a TR/CW/DC...
1: not healing between fights is intended... why? because this is D&D and people cant heal on there own with out some sort of outside help. Are 2 major ways to heal in 4e well 3, potions, sleeping and healing surges. In fact you better be glad they dont add in the actual healing surge mechanic said " you can only heal X times per day" before you are unhealable peroid. Frankly i thought was a refreshing change from the /eat food mechanic we see in so many other games, and can legitimately make the game harder. IF anything i'd say healing companion is probably just to good in general and nulls that aspect of the game entirely.
2: if ask me kits shouldnt be in the game... whole idea behind the skills was to make each class have a specific skill, and make it to where if want a certain node or secret unlocked you'll need a balanced party. way it is now can just stock up on kits and call it a day and open every node in game....regardless of class AND once more this harkens back to the pen and paper game... deal with it.
3: on this i'll agree... in pen and paper mark didnt so much cause aggro as made it painful for enemies to ignore the tank BUT the mark itself never went away, it just didnt function if they attacked the tank itself. Frankly if what you said is true...that makes whole mark sysem stupid... but could be way they interpreted it as well. If attacking tank, mark no work so debuff go way, if attacking group member mark works as normal...so sort of ment to work that way? but really its a poor way to implement it.
anyway 1 and 2 arent all that valid but 3 certainly a big one but i believe they are working on tanks and aggro as we speak.
And the entire purpose of healing surges is so you can heal on your own without some sort of outside help. In 4th edition, after every fight you take a "short rest," which refreshes your encounter powers and allows you to spend healing surges to heal up all by yourself. So, 4e has exactly the sort of thing I'm saying Neverwinter should have. (Not limited per day, of course, in that respect the needs of tabletop and MMO are quite different.)
I'd be perfectly ok with this as a solution as well. Increase the value of each node, but limit people to only using their class's nodes. Jolly good. Current model minus failure chance (which is to say, kits are one-use and more expensive than currently, but they never "break,") also perfectly acceptable. But the current model, as is, with the irritating "kit broken" messages, is the worst of all the options. Everyone still uses every node, paying a trivial amount of gold for kits to do so, but they get annoyed while doing it.
No, but then it's counter productive to try and block everything as it shatters very very quickly. So you have to find a balance which is usually to let the lesser guys wail on you and when that big AoE comes around, you block it because it's actually WORTH blocking. No sense wasting your meter on auto attacks that your defense shrugs off.
But if you're letting the little guys hit you, you lose aggro.
And then they **** your cleric...........who might inadvertently pull aggro anyway because the system itself is broken.
*sigh* cmon ESO....hurry up.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I grinned at this and thought of a thousand ways to diminish the statement -- with good reason. However, I will state just this:
I think the OP is stating that as a GF there's just no viable way to heal out for him. It's fine if you're playing CW (I do too), but we can dodge plenty. GF can't do that. So...what's the option? Block until the blue bar drops and then once that's gone, what?
Edit: Trinity - Tank, healer, damage. Pretty sure that's this game.
Exactly. I wish people would actually know what they are talking about before making claims like that.
First, you took the job
Second, you came light - a four man crew for me? Fxxxxx' insulting.
But the worst mistake you made, merc .......that's right. Empty gun rack.
"Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity".
..............not this one then.............
As a Cleric I now feel better because of this.....oh wait.
"Mod 6. Oh my f****** god. It gutted the game pure and simple. And what wasn't gutted was messed up by the poorly thought out new level cap and equip. The game never recovered from that atrocity".
..............not this one then.............
I don't have a strong opinion about the skill kits. It's annoying when they break, but it's not something I'll lose sleep over. If they took them out, I would want them to include ways to get chests for skills besides Dungeoneering. Actually, I think they should do that now.
It sounds like the mark system definitely needs some tweaking. The only reason a mark should expire is being replaced by someone else's mark, death of the monster, or time. It might work better if damage was dealt to the marked monster if it attacked someone else. If the damage came from the mark, it would help build aggro for the Defender, while simulating the attack they would get in PnP. If this isn't enough to refocus the monster, the Defender needs to make themselves more annoying to the monster. The guard meter might need an increase of some sort as well, but that's for actual playtesting.
Oh, and done properly, 4th Edition D&D *isn't* a trinity game, it's a quadumvirate game:
* Defender - tank, turtle, roadblock
* Leader - healer, buffer, mover & shaker
* Striker - damage dealer
* Controller - debuffer, battlefield modifier, world shaper
broken aggro
broken queue system
repetitive dungeon bosses (more adds anyone?)
broken foundry quest selection interface
borked economy
etc...
Like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8_Ts5fMVho
Occam's Razor makes the cutting clean.
Mark in itself is not a taunt and it doesnt generate threat. All it does is add more threat for the GF when he damages a target with a mark.
So even when a GF marks a mob with aggro on a Cleric it won't actually pull the mob off unless the GF goes over there and deals enough damage that his threat is now higher than the Clerics.
I think the Mark mechanic as is is wonderful in concept but serious balance needs to be done on how threat works as a whole. Currently Clerics passively heal so many targets constantly that mobs that are still in the process of spawning generates huge threat before the GF can even target them. Balance this out and you may hardly need to touch the mark system
Now, Neverwinter Online isn't a turn based game. So to simulate this mechanic in a real-time environment, the NWO team decided that marks go away whenever the tank gets hit. That works because the idea isn't that you mark something and it stays marked forever. The idea is that you must CONSTANTLY be marking the target you want to be marked. Over and over and over. Until it's dead.
A GF isn't supposed to have marks on everything, all the time. It's supposed to use it's mark smartly, and more importantly, use it's mark over and over and over and over. That's the mechanic. If you dislike the mechanic, that's fine, but don't expect the mechanic to change. It's working as intended, because that's how marks work in 4E.
I have seen really effective tanks and really terrible tanks. And you want to know what the difference is? It's in how often they mark targets with TAB. Some tanks never use TAB. Others use TAB CONSTANTLY. The second kind of tank is a good tank.
1. Not an error - auto-regen out of combat is one of the silliest things MMORPG's have been doing lately.
2. Not an error - this allows them to have harder and easier checks.
3. Not an error - this makes tanking more than just a 'mark and forget' system.
Paladin's Divine Challenge (mark) is a minor action and it stays as long as the Paladin keeps attacking the target. A Fighter automatically marks everything he attacks. In PnP a fighter is very good at stopping people from getting around him and ignoring the mark can be rather painful.
1.- Agreed. In my opinion, Portable Altars are the way to go: they should heal you for a % health instead of a flat amount. In higher levels they are really lackluster and I have tons of them in my bag.
2.- No, this is the point of gold. What else you would spend it? Potions only? Think of kits as keys, you should carry a good amount of them always if you want to get the goodies from the chests.
3.- Completely agreed, I think this mistake is due to a false translation of 4e PnP rules. Combat here lasts a lot longer, it's done in real time and not in turns. The marking-consumption system is good assuming a tabletop and time to think in advance with your group, but not in an online MMO.
- Titania Silverblade, the Iron Rose of Myth Drannor (Lvl 60 GWF, Destroyer)
- Gwyneth, the Cowardly Cat Burglar Drowling (Lvl 60 TR, Saboteur)
- Lady Rowanne Firehair, Heartwarder of Sune (Lvl 33 DC)
- Satella, Sensate (LvL 44 CW, Renegade, Non-Active)
Check Steppenkat's Foundry Quest Reviews!
Yes but this isn't turn-paced, in PnP there's a lot of time to think between actions and oftenly you don't need to have such a good decision making. The current system rewards pondered, strategic decisions and not haste. But this cannot be applied in a fight where you're fighting 20 adds (which isn't necesarily bad - this is typical in a challenging PnP fight, zergling hordes for the Controllers to shine -) and there's action constantly, you can't think in advance.
- Titania Silverblade, the Iron Rose of Myth Drannor (Lvl 60 GWF, Destroyer)
- Gwyneth, the Cowardly Cat Burglar Drowling (Lvl 60 TR, Saboteur)
- Lady Rowanne Firehair, Heartwarder of Sune (Lvl 33 DC)
- Satella, Sensate (LvL 44 CW, Renegade, Non-Active)
Check Steppenkat's Foundry Quest Reviews!
Gold sink and maybe, juuuuust maybe they don't want you to have a 100% chance to pick resource node that isn't meant for your class?
In my world if the tank gets hit, he does the job well.
Don't think of marking targets same as taunting, its not, think of marking targets as a way to help peel off mob off other party member by either, taking aggro OR killing mob faster as mark debuff their resistances.
But that's the point! PWE and Cryptic don't want the Defenders in this game playing like tanks in another game. They do not want the Defenders to be tanking at all really. The mark system is there so that the Defender can grab the aggro of the 1 really important mob, while the Controller's job is to handle all the other mobs.
Let me break it down really simply.
In a standard trinity MMO, you have a tank (and usually an off tank). With the exception of AoE damage (which is usually avoidable), the tank is the ONLY character supposed to be taking any real amount of damage). Period, end of story.
In this MMO, firstly, there is no trinity system. Someone discussed the quadumvirate system that 4E, and by extension NWO, uses. In this system, the Defender is NOT a tank from a standard trinity MMO. If he was the only one taking the majority of the damage, he would die, nearly instantly. And that's how it's supposed to work. A Defender's role is NOT to tank. It's to make sure that the biggest, baddest monster around isn't messing with the party. That's it. That's their whole job. It's the Controller's job to make sure the rest of the monsters (aka adds) aren't killing the Leader While the Strikers kill them.
And I think that's the problem. People want Neverwinter to play like WoW. It doesn't. It doesn't on purpose, and not just because the source material doesn't play like WoW (no matter how much people say it does). It doesn't play like WoW because Cryptic/PWE didn't want it to play like WoW. They could have easily made a standard trinity game. They didn't. And they didn't on purpose.
So you can either play the game they designed, how it was designed (and have a good time), play it in a way it wasn't meant to be played (and be miserable), or not play it. Those are choice. Trying to get PWE/Cryptic to make Defenders into standard trinity tanks just isn't gana happen. And if you're waiting for it to happen...I got some bad news...
And yes, you CAN think, you CAN plan, and you CAN play tactically. The actual action of the game doesn't happen any faster in this game than in any other MMO. Saying that your tank can't be strategic with mark is just silly.