AoE and Gameplay

[raspberry jam]

MMO (...) solo

ur doin it wrong

MMOs are inherently team games. Even ones that are intended for a large amount of soloability, such as WoW, are first and foremost team games. Thus, any implementation must consider that first.

[Wethospu]

Hmmm.. maybe something like:

Fire Blast (yeah, generic name)
Energy cost: 5, 10, 15
Casting time: 1, 2, 3 seconds
(level 1) Strike target foe for 1...60 fire damage. (Level 2) Strike target foe and 1 additional adjacent foe for 1...60 fire damage. (Level 3) Strike target foe and 2 additional adjacent foes for 1...60 fire damage.

Basically, the longer you hold down the skill button the more mobs you hit. The more enemies you want to hit the higher the cost of the spell and the longer the casting time.

I dunno.

This could lead to an interesting game mechanic.
That spells consumed energy during casting. This would favour smarter interrupting. Only problem would be that then you could use canceling a lot. That could be fixed that canceling a skill would either consume whole energy or trigger recharge timer.

Completely off-topic though.

[Nemeon Lion]

ur doin it wrong

MMOs are inherently team games. Even ones that are intended for a large amount of soloability, such as WoW, are first and foremost team games. Thus, any implementation must consider that first.

Your probably right. But it just confuses me why a class designed for AoE capabilities can't make use of it when playing solo.

Probably the reason implemented companions on GW2 was to give the solo player the ability to "team" and make full use of their class spells.

[Simply Kedde]

You're going in the right direction now. You're not really meant to be able to have a whole lotta weak bad mobs charge at you all at once to die from one or two powerful aoe spells. How'd that be fair compared to say a warrior having to bash them to death one by one?
Even if said warrior would have acces to a bit of aoe in say cyclone axe it couldn't even compare to the arcane might of an elementalist thus making an ele far superior overall.

[raspberry jam]

Indeed. The only way the warrior could have a fair role then would be to change the way she plays. When single target damage doesn't work anymore she'd have to rely on the other capability she has - great survivability. In other words, we'd be back at tank & nuke gameplay.

[Rhinala]

The caster class is designed for both AoE and single target and should be used accordingly to the situation.
I don't think as a solo play game it will have the mass enemies that gw1 have.

In the fantasy world the mage is a powerful caster with week armor, without his spells he is very easily killed (as it should be)
most of the armor solutions are implemented in the earth spells, some games use spell like mana shield where you use your mana as armor till you cancel or it is depleted (i was a bit of topic here soz)

If the game will be more about AoE you will give the ele an advantage and will cause a huge imbalance + the week armor and constant beating from the enemies will probably kill you.

[sorudo]

if they spread the enemy's out and remove the mob patrols, then you can solo but it's up to you to decide how many at ones you want to attack.
btwm GW2 isn't going to be like GW1, and they said that playing solo is possible, so i don't think the GW1 mob we know is in GW2.

[Wuzzman]

I would give a pretty decent reply, but this is thread is written on a pure pve perspective, which is almost always the least interesting perspective to view game balance on. In which I can say balancing the range aoe class will not be very important. The same old conventions used in other games will be used in here. Any pve is based on group mechanics and honestly a mage class will never aoe and tank 4-5 monsters. It will just completely removes any reason to group with classes besides another mage if they can nuke and tank at the same time. Guild Wars 2 won't change that so......

[Wuzzman]

if they spread the enemy's out and remove the mob patrols, then you can solo but it's up to you to decide how many at ones you want to attack.
btwm GW2 isn't going to be like GW1, and they said that playing solo is possible, so i don't think the GW1 mob we know is in GW2.

Solo is a funny term in Guild Wars history. If they remove henchmen, then yeah I see Guild Wars going certain routes. If you want to improve survivability between solo player and monsters and still keep the mob mechanics intake, a very simple solution is to drastically decrease the damage monsters can do and add health potions. Also giving squishes some sort of increased "evasion" rate would help as well. Of course by the time they do all this, we wouldn't be looking at Guild Wars anymore, but meh its pve what can you do.

[Akirai Annuvil]

Of course by the time they do all this, we wouldn't be looking at Guild Wars anymore, but meh its pve what can you do.

Unfortunately most players would prefer a free WoW over a free GW.

;-; Me sad.