- Class balance as of now doesn't work well for 5v5s
- This is a pretty massive change to how fights will go and what classes people will pick "which from talking to people is mostly going to be warriors and healers". And I don't blame them. This new party size promotes this. It will make some classes more viable than others. Something that isn't new to hc, but this change will make it more apparent.
Before I begin, I'd like to point out that I still agree on a raid system being the best way to go. However, I completely disagree with your statement. The only thing this party size reduction does to "class viability" is
lower the viability of classes that were previously more useful in 10v10s. Luckily for us, those classes were the ones that were the most powerful!
As I said in my other post in the suggestion thread:
http://herocraftonline.com/main/thr...-limits-and-concerns.53077/page-7#post-420684
Back in Bastion, if you were goin to a big teamfight, do you know how you won that fight?
Beguilers.
Wizards.
Bards.
Clerics.
and less relevantly:
Paladins.
notable mentions:
Any warrior ever.
Why? Because of the clusterfuck of AoE's present in Herocraft. And I'm not just talking about damaging ones either. Heals and buffs were immensely powerful for these fights, if not more so.
AoE effects are more powerful the more people present.
PlagueBomb was doing somewhere around 230ish damage during Bastion.
230 damage is not much on it's own, but what about if there's a 5 man teamfight?
230 * 5 = 1150 damage.
what about 10?
230 * 10 = 2300 damage. Double. Cool!
This of course goes for heals as well...
GroupHeal can take that same 230 heal and turn it into a 2300 heal very easily. Individual buffs are less quantifiable, but the result is the same. The larger the party size, the more beneficial these things are.
Things like Clerics, Bards and Paladins being so useful in larger teamfights is directly due to the potency of AoE abilities. Paladins (and all other warriors) play a slightly...different role in all of it, but it all stems from the same issue. The tankier something is, the less it is affected negatively by AoE effects. (Whether they be positive or negative).
You state the game is not balanced around 5v5's right now. Assuming we even have any actual balance for 10v10's either, I'd like to point this out. If the game is not balanced around 5v5's, why the flying fuck are tournaments held 5v5? Should tournaments be 10v10? Should all notions of victory from previous tournaments be publicly declared "invalid" because we were not balancing for them?
No, no I don't think so. And for the record, I totally tried to balance with tournaments in mind. At least starting midway from Bastion. I tried to make supports and Warriors less viable, while increasing the viability of "single target" classes like rogues. I won't say I was entirely successful, and attributes basically threw all of that out the window, but it was
always in the back of my mind.
5 man party sizes do one thing: Reduce the number of slots that you can "ally with".
What does that mean?
* Left clicks will hit "non allied" targets.
* Harmful AoE abilities will hit "non allied" targets.
* Helpful AoE abilities will not hit "non allied" targets. (Mostly heals/buffs, but you can include GroupTeleport/Port for this as well.)
So, we have two instances of AoE, and one instance of just genuine inconvenience for melee fighters. However, lucky for us, town protection is still
aids and prevents left clicks from hitting them!
However, that is
exactly what a raid system would provide for you!
In a typical raid setup (for any MMO), you will have the following scenario.
1. A group of players will decide they wish to group.
2. Five Players group up, group is now full. This is dubbed 'Group A'
3. There are 5 additional players that wish to group together with Group A. They form their own party, and form 'Group B'.
4. Group A party leader creates a "Raid Group". The raid group contains one group, Group A.
5. Group A party leader invites Group B's party leader to join the Raid Group.
6. The raid group is now formed, and they are "loosely allied".
* Assume that all 10 players are standing on top of one block.
* A cleric from Group A uses the skill "Group Heal". Every single player in
GROUP A is healed for the amount.
* Nobody in Group B receives any healing.
* A Dragoon in Group B uses the skill Tremor.
* Nothing happens because there are no "enemies" nearby.
* All players from all groups start spamming left click while looking at each other.
* Nobody takes damage because they are all allied.
* A wizard from Group B walks to spawn and casts GroupTeleport.
* Everyone in Group B is ported to the Wizard.
* Everyone in Group A is left where they originally stood.
======
It may seem silly for me to line it all out like that, but I'm not entirely sure everyone understood what I meant by "Raid Groups" in my original posts. I don't know if this scenario is something that people agree or disagree with either.
But that's pretty much how it works right now! (Unless I am misunderstanding how the town protection system works.) Granted, you all have to be in the same town, which definitely sucks, but it's not far off from what would eventually be the reality.
Yes, not being able to port 10 people on top of one guy in a swamp is shitty. Yes, being unable to GroupHeal or Accelerando and have the effects reach 10 fucking people is "unfortunate", but it sure as hell is a lot more balanced in my eyes. Sure, there were a lot of opportunities where being able to Port/GroupTeleport your whole party of 10 people was
really nice, and if I were still playing, I'm sure it'd bug me that I couldn't do that anymore. However, I understand that it is how it should be, and so I would
personally bite the bullet in that case.
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On the note of player mentality: Perhaps people are
saying these things, but I have a hard time beleiving it will become the reality. Players should not start treating every fight the same way they do as a tournament just because of the party size restriction. It seems very backwards to me that because they have a limited number of slots, they are suddenly all worried about being the most effecient with those slots. When all along they could have been doing that, and it would have been much more effective!
In Bastion though, they
did do this. I saw more fucking support in Bastion than I ever did in Haven, and I'm sure it will be the same on this map. (Mid Bastion, every god damn party had 2 disciples, 2 bards, a cleric, and 2 beguilers.) So long as AoE's dominate the Herocraft PvP scene, AoE classes will shine through.
I would also like to take a brief moment to point out right now, that if you have a problem with people always wanting to play with warriors and support classes in their groups, then why the flying fuck is it OK for tournaments to be this way? If you don't want the "most effective" strategy to be used in every situation, then the fucking strategy needs nerfed, or other strategies need buffed.
Furthermore, the main (justified) bitching came from the victims of high-level characters slaughtering Lost Souls. Shrine helped that out quite a bit, even if the world was underutilized. The leveling of the xp/drops on the PVE to equal of the PVP server hopefully will help that more peaceful world to flourish. I would go as far as to suggest that Shrine get an XP/drop *BOOST* over PVP so that it encourages population, and allows lower level players to be able to grow at a faster rate than their PVP-focused bretheren (esp. if PVP is getting xp perks).
I watched the old school massive team PVP battles that
@Apherdite posted some time ago... THAT was EPIC. If you want to promote that sort of epicness, then the party size needs to be as big as it can be, so as to not allow friendly-fire to be an issue. 95% of all MMORPG spells and actions (if not more!) create friendly-fire immunity. Herocraft should follow that same line of thinking, if at all possible.
Bigger parties promote more collaboration, more use of Teamspeak and other chat channels, and ultimately the same thing that HC is promoting within its crafting restrictions and trade: more community playing.
PVP parties should be set at 25.
PVE at 15.
RPG/Adventure at 15.
-yav
While I know that Kainzo does not actually treat HC as a "PvP server", I have a hard time seeing it any other way. And in any sandbox MMO with PvP being the focus, Friendly Fire is
on at all times, even for parties. Parties are only a method to allow "tracking" of HP, buffs/debuffs, and/or positioning via Map or overhead symbols.
And that fight was not fucking epic. I was there. It was lame as shit. We had 10ish people (with some lowbies) dicking around waiting for the freeper team to bring their 10 for a fight. We waited around for a god damn HOUR trying to let them get "prepared". While we were waiting, 10 more showed up (newerth / TC) with 3 paladins, a bard, and 2 fucking clerics. The paladin party destroyed us, and then freepers finally showed up to clean up what remained. It was a clusterfuck of AoEs and stacked support, with the winners being the ones with the most tank/support.
It may have looked fun from the outside, and the newerth/TC team had a blast I'm sure, but it was rife with class imbalance and just utter bullshit resulting from indecisive players and unlucky timing for us. An enjoyable battle to watch, but not to play in. I would prefer the game be at a point where that kind of battle can be fun for all sides involved, and I do not believe that it was the case in that instance.
And I've been in teamspeak for many of these "large fights", from multiple towns. (Umbra, TC, Newerth, freepers).
collaberation? HA! It's more akin to
"DUDE I NEED HELP I NEED HELP."
"SOMEBODY FUCKING HEAL ME!"
"GUYS WHERE ARE YOU?"
"WILL YOU ALL SHUT THE FUCK UP SO I CAN TELL WHATS GOING ON!"
"GUYS WHERE ARE YOU FIGHTING?"
"WHERE DO I GO"
Everyone: "DUDE JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP WE'RE FIGHTING!"
The type of players that play this server for the PvP are not the communicating type. From what I understand, C12 was the only one that ever actually was able to "coordinate" anything, and he's long gone. Umbra was successful at PvP due to us not needing much communication in order to understand what needed to be done, but even then, our TS was filled with random BS and stupid shoutouts. (In a few of my youtube videos you can see this, but if it was
really bad, I typically took out the TS audio and threw in music instead, or just didn't upload the fight at all)
=========
To summarize everything: I don't really agree with 10 player parties, and never have. I like the 5 man setup, but I also think not having to worry about your 5 other people is something that should be addressed. You cannot and will not stop "zergs" from occurring. That's just the nature of a PvP based sandbox. You will see 10v10s, you will see 5v5s, and you will see 10v1's, 5v1s, and so on. That's how sandbox works. The "epicness" of fights as some call it, is also irrelevant to me. I just wish to be able to "play" with people that I am friends with, and I wish others to be able to do the same.
But what I
do care about is the potency of AoE based classes in environments where "zerging" is occurring. You cannot (and should not) attempt to limit how much players can play with their friends, but you should not make the process so god damn beneficial. It needs to be possible to do so, but also maintain a non-chaotic level of balance when it happens. There should be an "upper limit" of benefits for AoE abilities, and party size is just one method of making that a reality.
