From the dev corner:



EverQuest Chat on November 24th at 6:00pm - 7:00pm pacific time. Melee System Enhancements!
*We will provide a link to the chat on the front page of EverQuestlive.com on the 24th.*


You've been asking for them and now we're ready to discuss them. We're taking a big departure from what many of you are used to when it comes to combat. With that in mind, here is a brief summary of these exciting enhancements to better help you target your questions to us during the live chat. Don't worry if you miss the chat, we'll post the logs on EverQuestLive.com



Increase the contributions melee classes provide in a group setting
Address the current deficit between the pure melee classes and other classes
Add more depth and potential for skilled play to melee combat
Provide a system that encourages attentiveness and decision-making skills, without focusing heavily on twitch gameplay

Take advantage of an opponent's weakness. See an opening, strike home for the kill!

Monks, Rogues and Warriors will gain the ability to recognize certain weaknesses in an opponent's defense. These "Openings" will be a variety of types and can occur based on several different situations during combat. Be quick though, an opening will not present itself for long. Strike quick with a new combat skill once your character recognizes an opening. These new combat skills are being designed just for this combat system revision. Using and maintaining these skills expends the character's Endurance (a new statistic, calculated from the character's basic stats).


Here's a combat example:

A warrior is serving as the tank for his group, standing in front of a goblin. While battling the goblin, the warrior makes an exceptional parry and is presented with an opening. An indicator appears with the "opening icon" and the word "Parry" next to it (this information also appears in the chat window).

Now is his opportunity to strike back after the exceptional parry! Only certain combat skills can be used to react to a parry opening. Other types of openings will allow the use of other skills. Some skills may be usable in response to more than one type of opening. Also, your position in relation to the target can change the effectiveness of certain skills.

In this case, our warrior knows that he can use one of three combat skills, each having some merit. One might stun the target, one might increase the hate generated by the warrior for a few rounds, and one might make it easier for everyone to hit the NPC.

In this case, our warrior elects to try to stun the goblin. He presses the appropriate button and luck smiles upon him as he successfully executes the strike, leaving the goblin standing dumbly for a combat round.

Increasing Your Endurance and Learning New Skills


Increase Endurance by increasing attributes or by acquiring special items that directly increase your Endurance pool
Find tomes or instructions manuals and take them to specific trainers to learn new skills
Choose your skills from skill categories (such as Tactical) containing skills focused to a purpose
Most openings are available only to a single character, but some are available to all nearby characters
Disciplines will be transferred to this new system
Existing Discipline timers will be reviewed, and several will probably be set to their own timer
Disciplines will require an Endurance cost
Hybrids will receive a limited Endurance pool for their disciplines
There will be other changes as well. Keep your eyes on the Test server and our update messages for more details as we move forward.

This new system is much more flexible than the existing disciplines. It will be relatively easy to add new combat skills, as well as new skills that are not limited to openings. This system creates the possibility for tremendous enhancement in the future, allowing groups a large number of options when it comes to melee combat.

Talk to you in the Live Chat!

Alan



What are some of people initial thoughts on this? Do you think it might actually be a step in the right direction, or just another bandaid?

It will probably end up overpowering, and the knights will bitch. It's an endless loop.

Only after its patched in with 3 days testing, breaks Ele/PoT encounters and gets "retuned" 4 times requiring daily patches for 2 weeks.

the concept sounds very well thought out and quite appropiate for the design direction SOE has taken since the release of LDON.

Now warriors will actually have to pay attention to the screen instead of hitting attack and playing xbox while exping.

sure, they add these interesting things after I sell all my warrior gear and decide to play an sk.. never fails.

Only after its patched in with 3 days testing, breaks Ele/PoT encounters and gets "retuned" 4 times requiring daily patches for 2 weeks.

Yea, lots of server resets means lots of raid targets up!!

Now warriors will actually have to pay attention to the screen instead of hitting attack and playing xbox while exping.

You played with Beowuulf?

hehe

It does something very interesting.

For the first time, a naked warrior will capabilities that a fully geared paladin doesn't have.

Right now, give a paladin enough gear, and they can do anything a warrior can do. But, a naked paladin can do things that a warrior can never do, no matter how much gear they have.

Both Monks and Rogues have some abilities that other classes don't have, but they are quite limited. Monks get instacast FD and a self miniLoH, and Rogues get SoS and Undead/Normal invis combo, and a qualitatively different level of lockpicking/trap removal. Compared to other classes, that doesn't make that long of a list.

With Endurance pools, and class-specific moves, it can add alot of content to the pure melee classes. Power upgrades via "spells" in each expansion gets added to the melee classes, and burst DPS vs long term DPS difference starts occurring.

The total content of these changes also matters alot. I mean, at the extreme:
Evasive and Defensive and Forditude reuse timers get decoupled. Each uses about 5 minutes of "typical" L 60 endurance-regen (ie, the rough equivilent of 2500 mana). You can only have 1 /disc active at any one time.
A "you are hit" opening for a +aggro endurance-costing move is added.
Warriors get a 2 hour reuse "refill endurance bar" hotkey ability, analagous to LoH or HT, self only.

The possibilities are deffinitely there. And SoE mentions that the system will be very flexible, so changes and additions can be made easily.

It sounds neat and all, but I still haven't figured out how it'll solve any of the real balance problems.

You can't depend on any of it, unless the "openings" are very frequent. It's not going to help warriors with fast, on-demand agro generation. It's not likely to give monks a role other than rogue-lite. It's certainly not going to balance melee vs. casters on all of these fights where being in melee range to do our damage puts us at such a disadvantage.

The whole change reeks of them copying DAoC blindly, instead of really hashing out a way to balance things decently. Weak.

BEAT YA TO IT MOTHERF&^!!!!!!!!! (http://pub142.ezboard.com/fayonaerofrm1.showMessageRange?topicID=5095.topic&start=61&stop=79)


Ok, sorry. Long day at work.

I hope that this does work out the way it sounds it does, because it will add a real "customizing" feature to the melee classes, potentially balancing out the amount of casters to the amount of melees.

Who knows, maybe the 'openings' will be 'stay open' as it were for a longer time, so the warriors would have the snap aggro feature but the time frame wouldnt be quite as good as a stun refresh timer.

One of the things I am skeptical about is the whole endurance pool, like a mana pool for warriors, but seems like it has the potential to crush warriors into the ground as well as raise them off of it. The group dynamic may or may not be broken up (depends on how many points a mid-high range warrior would have in his pool vs. the cost of aggro move) because they would have to in theory sit down or something similiar to regain their endurance.

On the other hand, it would give something else for enchanters and BLs to charge for, endurance crack! :p

bah,so now we have to suffer getting tomes and manuals like caster spells.on top of getting armor and weapons. P

One of the things I am skeptical about is the whole endurance pool, like a mana pool for warriors, but seems like it has the potential to crush warriors into the ground as well as raise them off of it. The group dynamic may or may not be broken up (depends on how many points a mid-high range warrior would have in his pool vs. the cost of aggro move) because they would have to in theory sit down or something similiar to regain their endurance.

I don't see paladins sitting down much in groups. =)

Put forward that you do not want endurance to go up faster sitting than standing.

Any bets who gets the endurance regen buffs and effects?

the berzerker class? hehe

I don't really see this is a problem, speaking from a knight's point of view. I mean this will be an upgrade, but the melee that will take advantage of it are those which play their class well, and are able to stay at a certain level of attention. If you're just another half afk warrior, it won't effect you much.

I think a lot of the melee know how much damage an sk can do when they want on raids nowadays. I mean, when I'm at a raid thats parsed I'm always pretty happy with my damage totals compared to others considering how im supposed to be so much less damage than dual wielders and etc, when I'm really not.

I think that a system like this will show pure melee how a lot of hybrids have to play in order to keep their dps as high as possible. If they don't care enough to use the system, so be it.

Granted, this is Sony so we have a vast opportunity of a chain of screw ups and tweaks that make this change completely pointless, but I think overall it will improve damage for pure melee, as long as they pay attention - that is what all the melee have been bitching about, I think.

www.gucomics.com/archives...e=20031121 (http://www.gucomics.com/archives/view.php?cdate=20031121)

since this is the idea they have brought up for discussion to help fix melee classes.........


Played DAoC, been there, done that.

I say it sucks, and go back to the drawing board.

Chand, do you know why it sucked in DoaC?

It was implemented horribly.

Lets see.
1> You had to stare that the terminal, and hit your style the moment your opening occured. If your character swung after the opening occured and before you hit your ability, your endurance was either wasted, or you got a non-style swing.

2> Anytime styles doubled your damage, so a non-style swing was a -50% damage hit.

3> The interface for queueing up styles didn't feel like fighting, but more like a poor programming system.

4> Out of the 30+ styles you had, almost all of them where chains off useless styles or useless styles themselves. Styles mostly had a variable cost, DPS boost, and a relatively trivial additional effect. The anytime styles, if you built your character carefully, where 80% to 90% as good as the best "nearly impossible to execute" style.

played a berserker to 50 in daoc. youre not telling me anything i dont already know. but thanks.

Though i guess, despite the beginning of it, your post was meant to clarify for people who havent played daoc.

Chand, do you know why it sucked in DoaC?

It was implemented horribly.

Old news to me. And I'm not expecting sony to do it correctly either. But hell, I hope they prove me wrong.
Or better yet, just come up with an original idea.