Erianaiel
12-07-2007, 05:34 AM
I did one for healing once and while pointless it was fun so here I present:
A DPS model
First of all we must point out that there are (currently) two types of fights
in the game: trash and named.
The first type of fight typically lasts less than a minute, frequently closer
to half that. The second lasts for several minutes. This is an important
distinction when it comes to caster DPS, and to a much lesser extent to melee DPS.
The second important distinction is between caster and melee DPS. Casters have
their DPS naturally restricted by their mana pool. I.e. they can do a finite
number of attacks within a given time and after that they have to wait for at
least a minute before they can contribute again (in some zones it is over 5
minutes or even longer). Melee DPS is not similarly restricted, only by the
number of swings per second. Certain skills do cost a limited resource for them
as well, but running out does not negate all their DPS.
In general, for the health of the game, it must not make a difference if DPS
is contributed through melee, casting or a combination of those two (e.g. Mages)
I.e. over a longer period of time the DPS of a specialised melee class must be
more or less the same as that of caster classes, otherwise one of the two DPS
modes is made obsolete.
This naturally means that caster DPS is burst in nature compared to melee. This
may be alleviated by the way spells are set up, but that enforced minute of down
time must be calculated into the overall DPS over a, say, 10 minute period.
We can also say that if a DPS caster goes for a sustained mode where the mana
used and recovered naturally are in balance their DPS should be roughly the
same as that of pure melee DPS classes.
Within both modes the -methods- of dealing damage may lean towards burst or
towards sustained. E.g. nukes versus dots. There is no clear similarity for
the melee DPS, but if they were made to be that way poisons would have been
a good candidate to provide sustained melee DPS. As it is the method of their
application is too cumbersome to consider them a viable DPS method.
The fact that caster DPS is burst in nature means it tends to be overpowered
in short fights. Casters can front load their DPS, and use the between time
to recover. A melee can only provide DPS when there is an enemy to fight and
unless there is one at all time then there will be downtime that reduces their
DPS, but this will not have an effect on casters since this downtime is already
compensated by their higher base damage. So this means that either the melee
DPS classes must be able to produce burst damage as well, or the sustained DPS
of casters should be a little below that of melee classes.
As the numbers get bigger it also leads to aggro issues since the burst damage
is so high that a warrior can not overcome its effect. This leads then to the
situation where casters must intentionally hold back for the first part of a
fight to allow the warrior to grab aggro before starting their contribution.
This means they must deliberately lower their DPS, but that has the unwanted
side effect of either lowering their DPS (and thus meaning a melee class would
be more effective) or their burst damage must be even higher (but that would
just make the problem even bigger).
The only clear way that would have mostly avoided (or at least postponed) this
problem is if rather than giving higher level spells and enemies simply bigger
numbers they would have mostly gotten better defenses and resists and access
to more varied ways to mess up the players' tactics. It would have kept buffing
and debuffing a more important part of the game, it would have made the utility
classes more viable and it would have slowed down the numbers inflation a lot,
giving the developers a slower development path and less problems with percentages
that as the base numbers increase tend to become really big differences.
DPS is basically controlled by 3 variables: damage, cast time and recast time.
Actually there is a fourth variable of duration time.
Damage times duration gives the maximum points of damage dealt. For nukes and
melee attacks duration is 1, and the damage is dealt all at once.
Cast time (plus the fizzle time where all attacks are blocked) is how quickly
the damage is applied obviously and for melee attacksthis is instantly (i.e.
there is no time involved in the swing or stab action that the game can use
to control DPS, unlike casters who can be interupted during the casting time).
Recast is how quickly after the initial attack it becomes available again.
Cast plus recast gives the total cycle time, but there is an important distinction
here in that a short cast time allows to chain more attacks together within a
given amount of time. Shorter cast times turn attacks into burst damage. 15
attacks with a 2 second cast time can be chained together in 30 seconds. Only
2 attacks with a 15 second cast time can be chained in that same time period.
This is assuming though that the recast times in both cases are 28 seconds for
the short cast and 15 seconds for the long cast time spells (i.e. both have a
cycle time of 30 seconds).
This is not necessarily a bad thing if the 15 second attack is made 7.5 times
as powerful as the 2 second one. The problems here again are first the fact
that a long cast time takes a DPS class out of the action for a long time where
a short cast time provides, optional, flexibility. The example given here is
obviously silly since there is no way to have 15 different attacks but it does
illustrate the principle. In the example of the longer cast though two potential
flaws show up. First the amount of damage in these attacks is staggering and
they would generate an immense amount of aggro. Second, if the fight lasts not
30 but 2 seconds, the DPS in the long cast time case would be halved while the
short cast time would only lose about 7pct.
The way melee attacks are set up makes them very limited. They have no cast time
so they always are maximum burst, their damage is balanced by their recast time
giving the developers fine control over the amount of damage done, but it also
rules out any tactical choices. Basically it is a matter of press the attack
button and the whole thing goes on autofire. That is their DPS contribution so
to give melee DPS something to do they get skills that act like spells a little
in that they have to be activated manually. Very few of them have a tactical
use (though of course in the case of casters the number of tactical choices
tends to be rather limited as well, but they still have more choice in what
spell to use to best respond to a situation because they have more methods of
dealing damage: direct and through different resists, over time, area of effect,
multiple targets, point blank, attacks with secondary effects and the variety of
utility spells that are not directly damaging).
* * *
Now, after all this rambling the actual model for DPS
Caster DPS should focus on burst over sustained. To avoid problems with aggro and
to increase flexibility they should generally have shorter cast times on their
spells, the damage per cast should go down a little to compensate so the overall
DPS does not go up. Some classes could still maintain a couple of 'big booms', i.e.
slow casting high damage spells, but those should be the exception rather than the
norm. Spells to use to punch through self-heals.
Within that archetype focus can be on burst or sustained DPS. Burst classes get a
greater variety of fast casting direct damage spells that they can chain together.
Sustained classes focus on more efficient lower damage spells, but to maintain their
overall archetype this means they primarily work with dots. (the problem here is the
ramp up time and the duration of the dots. If they are expected to stack 4 dots and
the average fight is 42 seconds then the duration of some of those dots would approach
that of direct damage, so instead they need a wide variety of duration and damage that
allows them to pick the combination that is most optional for the situation).
In addition to the burst versus sustained distinction we also have the single target
versus group distinction. I.e. a burst caster class can focus on area of effect and
multiple target direct damage spells, or on single target ones, just as a sustained
caster can have single target dots or group versions of that type of spells (that
would be insect and poison clouds I think, maybe infectious diseases as well).
Finally caster DPS can be distinguished by the amount of debuffing they can do for
their own spells (this affects to an extent the degree by which they can solo). However
if the game design is to have more specialised buff and debuff classes then pure DPS
casters should have very little of this aspect. It also makes teaming up much more
mandatory, so this is a very fine line to thread.
Melee DPS needs much more work because of its current somewhat one-dimensional nature.
The only way it can be expanded right now is along the 'more damage' axis as there is
very little tactical choice involved and thus almost no other way for the developers
to affect gameplay and develop new strategies. This leads to the problems mentioned
above with ever bigger numbers and burst damage casters, amongst others.
First of all melee combat needs to get more dimension. To keep things simple it would
be along the same line as casters: burst versus sustained and single target versus group.
As an archetype the melee DPS would still shift towards the sustained DPS end of the
spectrum, meaning they can do less to temporarily increase their DPS output at the
expense of a longer downtime, but they can continue pretty much indefinitely if needed.
Still, a certain degree of downtime is necessary to prevent the game being split into
caster-only and melee-only spheres.
First of all the game must get rid of the auto-attack. Unless a players -does- something
his or her character is only defending itself (using shield and weapon to block incoming
attacks but not attempting to counterattack).
Second, melee attacks need to get more methods. Right now the stab/slash/bash distinction
is not a method but a specific resistance to overcome. One way to increase the tactical
choices by melee fighters is that different types of attack have a lingering effect on
both attacker and defender, in creating localised defenses and weaknesses. I.e. bringing
up a shield to block an overhead attack also means a vulnerability on the lower body and
prevents any 'high' counter attack (and may reduce general defense because of the reduced
perception as the shield is in the way). The attacker at the same time is vulnerable to
attacks from the side because of the position of the sword. While this detailed example
is likely too complicated for everquest, the principle of it can still be applied. By
making attacks positional to a limited extent each of them can create positional defenses
and weaknesses both in attacker and defender. Melee fighters get a range of attack skills
that they must manually choose to direct the battle, and to respond to the enemy attacks.
Like for casters these attacks cost varying degrees of endurance, but melee fighters will
only use this up very slowly, but for prolongued fighting (either single target or by
chain pulling) they can get too tired to continue (or to use the more fancy counters).
Within the archetype then there are fighters who focus on slower, sustained, fighting
techniques. The exact method can vary with each class, but typically this would be using
poisons (and a less clumsy method of applying them!) and causing small wounds, followed
by fighting defensively to wait out their enemy to weaken.
There are several types of attacks that could be applicable to multiple enemies at once.
E.g. a broad sweeping stroke could hit more than one enemy in front of the fighter, as
would a whirling swing. And throwing a handfull of darts at several enemies in front of
the fighter also could be interpreted as a single attack (i.e. not requiring separate
targetting).
Similarly to support casters there would also be room for support melee fighters. These
would do less damage themselves, but would weaken their opponents (through misdirection,
blinding, traps, tangling or otherwise hampering weapons and so on).
Both support roles could be cross archetype (i.e. casters could create certain melee
vulnerabilities, just as fighters could create weaknesses to certain types of magic. E.g.
a fighter dousing an enemy in oil ...
* * *
That is about it that I can think of right now. I am aware that this is just a 'would
be nice' type of post, but I would still like to hear what others think about it.
Eri
A DPS model
First of all we must point out that there are (currently) two types of fights
in the game: trash and named.
The first type of fight typically lasts less than a minute, frequently closer
to half that. The second lasts for several minutes. This is an important
distinction when it comes to caster DPS, and to a much lesser extent to melee DPS.
The second important distinction is between caster and melee DPS. Casters have
their DPS naturally restricted by their mana pool. I.e. they can do a finite
number of attacks within a given time and after that they have to wait for at
least a minute before they can contribute again (in some zones it is over 5
minutes or even longer). Melee DPS is not similarly restricted, only by the
number of swings per second. Certain skills do cost a limited resource for them
as well, but running out does not negate all their DPS.
In general, for the health of the game, it must not make a difference if DPS
is contributed through melee, casting or a combination of those two (e.g. Mages)
I.e. over a longer period of time the DPS of a specialised melee class must be
more or less the same as that of caster classes, otherwise one of the two DPS
modes is made obsolete.
This naturally means that caster DPS is burst in nature compared to melee. This
may be alleviated by the way spells are set up, but that enforced minute of down
time must be calculated into the overall DPS over a, say, 10 minute period.
We can also say that if a DPS caster goes for a sustained mode where the mana
used and recovered naturally are in balance their DPS should be roughly the
same as that of pure melee DPS classes.
Within both modes the -methods- of dealing damage may lean towards burst or
towards sustained. E.g. nukes versus dots. There is no clear similarity for
the melee DPS, but if they were made to be that way poisons would have been
a good candidate to provide sustained melee DPS. As it is the method of their
application is too cumbersome to consider them a viable DPS method.
The fact that caster DPS is burst in nature means it tends to be overpowered
in short fights. Casters can front load their DPS, and use the between time
to recover. A melee can only provide DPS when there is an enemy to fight and
unless there is one at all time then there will be downtime that reduces their
DPS, but this will not have an effect on casters since this downtime is already
compensated by their higher base damage. So this means that either the melee
DPS classes must be able to produce burst damage as well, or the sustained DPS
of casters should be a little below that of melee classes.
As the numbers get bigger it also leads to aggro issues since the burst damage
is so high that a warrior can not overcome its effect. This leads then to the
situation where casters must intentionally hold back for the first part of a
fight to allow the warrior to grab aggro before starting their contribution.
This means they must deliberately lower their DPS, but that has the unwanted
side effect of either lowering their DPS (and thus meaning a melee class would
be more effective) or their burst damage must be even higher (but that would
just make the problem even bigger).
The only clear way that would have mostly avoided (or at least postponed) this
problem is if rather than giving higher level spells and enemies simply bigger
numbers they would have mostly gotten better defenses and resists and access
to more varied ways to mess up the players' tactics. It would have kept buffing
and debuffing a more important part of the game, it would have made the utility
classes more viable and it would have slowed down the numbers inflation a lot,
giving the developers a slower development path and less problems with percentages
that as the base numbers increase tend to become really big differences.
DPS is basically controlled by 3 variables: damage, cast time and recast time.
Actually there is a fourth variable of duration time.
Damage times duration gives the maximum points of damage dealt. For nukes and
melee attacks duration is 1, and the damage is dealt all at once.
Cast time (plus the fizzle time where all attacks are blocked) is how quickly
the damage is applied obviously and for melee attacksthis is instantly (i.e.
there is no time involved in the swing or stab action that the game can use
to control DPS, unlike casters who can be interupted during the casting time).
Recast is how quickly after the initial attack it becomes available again.
Cast plus recast gives the total cycle time, but there is an important distinction
here in that a short cast time allows to chain more attacks together within a
given amount of time. Shorter cast times turn attacks into burst damage. 15
attacks with a 2 second cast time can be chained together in 30 seconds. Only
2 attacks with a 15 second cast time can be chained in that same time period.
This is assuming though that the recast times in both cases are 28 seconds for
the short cast and 15 seconds for the long cast time spells (i.e. both have a
cycle time of 30 seconds).
This is not necessarily a bad thing if the 15 second attack is made 7.5 times
as powerful as the 2 second one. The problems here again are first the fact
that a long cast time takes a DPS class out of the action for a long time where
a short cast time provides, optional, flexibility. The example given here is
obviously silly since there is no way to have 15 different attacks but it does
illustrate the principle. In the example of the longer cast though two potential
flaws show up. First the amount of damage in these attacks is staggering and
they would generate an immense amount of aggro. Second, if the fight lasts not
30 but 2 seconds, the DPS in the long cast time case would be halved while the
short cast time would only lose about 7pct.
The way melee attacks are set up makes them very limited. They have no cast time
so they always are maximum burst, their damage is balanced by their recast time
giving the developers fine control over the amount of damage done, but it also
rules out any tactical choices. Basically it is a matter of press the attack
button and the whole thing goes on autofire. That is their DPS contribution so
to give melee DPS something to do they get skills that act like spells a little
in that they have to be activated manually. Very few of them have a tactical
use (though of course in the case of casters the number of tactical choices
tends to be rather limited as well, but they still have more choice in what
spell to use to best respond to a situation because they have more methods of
dealing damage: direct and through different resists, over time, area of effect,
multiple targets, point blank, attacks with secondary effects and the variety of
utility spells that are not directly damaging).
* * *
Now, after all this rambling the actual model for DPS
Caster DPS should focus on burst over sustained. To avoid problems with aggro and
to increase flexibility they should generally have shorter cast times on their
spells, the damage per cast should go down a little to compensate so the overall
DPS does not go up. Some classes could still maintain a couple of 'big booms', i.e.
slow casting high damage spells, but those should be the exception rather than the
norm. Spells to use to punch through self-heals.
Within that archetype focus can be on burst or sustained DPS. Burst classes get a
greater variety of fast casting direct damage spells that they can chain together.
Sustained classes focus on more efficient lower damage spells, but to maintain their
overall archetype this means they primarily work with dots. (the problem here is the
ramp up time and the duration of the dots. If they are expected to stack 4 dots and
the average fight is 42 seconds then the duration of some of those dots would approach
that of direct damage, so instead they need a wide variety of duration and damage that
allows them to pick the combination that is most optional for the situation).
In addition to the burst versus sustained distinction we also have the single target
versus group distinction. I.e. a burst caster class can focus on area of effect and
multiple target direct damage spells, or on single target ones, just as a sustained
caster can have single target dots or group versions of that type of spells (that
would be insect and poison clouds I think, maybe infectious diseases as well).
Finally caster DPS can be distinguished by the amount of debuffing they can do for
their own spells (this affects to an extent the degree by which they can solo). However
if the game design is to have more specialised buff and debuff classes then pure DPS
casters should have very little of this aspect. It also makes teaming up much more
mandatory, so this is a very fine line to thread.
Melee DPS needs much more work because of its current somewhat one-dimensional nature.
The only way it can be expanded right now is along the 'more damage' axis as there is
very little tactical choice involved and thus almost no other way for the developers
to affect gameplay and develop new strategies. This leads to the problems mentioned
above with ever bigger numbers and burst damage casters, amongst others.
First of all melee combat needs to get more dimension. To keep things simple it would
be along the same line as casters: burst versus sustained and single target versus group.
As an archetype the melee DPS would still shift towards the sustained DPS end of the
spectrum, meaning they can do less to temporarily increase their DPS output at the
expense of a longer downtime, but they can continue pretty much indefinitely if needed.
Still, a certain degree of downtime is necessary to prevent the game being split into
caster-only and melee-only spheres.
First of all the game must get rid of the auto-attack. Unless a players -does- something
his or her character is only defending itself (using shield and weapon to block incoming
attacks but not attempting to counterattack).
Second, melee attacks need to get more methods. Right now the stab/slash/bash distinction
is not a method but a specific resistance to overcome. One way to increase the tactical
choices by melee fighters is that different types of attack have a lingering effect on
both attacker and defender, in creating localised defenses and weaknesses. I.e. bringing
up a shield to block an overhead attack also means a vulnerability on the lower body and
prevents any 'high' counter attack (and may reduce general defense because of the reduced
perception as the shield is in the way). The attacker at the same time is vulnerable to
attacks from the side because of the position of the sword. While this detailed example
is likely too complicated for everquest, the principle of it can still be applied. By
making attacks positional to a limited extent each of them can create positional defenses
and weaknesses both in attacker and defender. Melee fighters get a range of attack skills
that they must manually choose to direct the battle, and to respond to the enemy attacks.
Like for casters these attacks cost varying degrees of endurance, but melee fighters will
only use this up very slowly, but for prolongued fighting (either single target or by
chain pulling) they can get too tired to continue (or to use the more fancy counters).
Within the archetype then there are fighters who focus on slower, sustained, fighting
techniques. The exact method can vary with each class, but typically this would be using
poisons (and a less clumsy method of applying them!) and causing small wounds, followed
by fighting defensively to wait out their enemy to weaken.
There are several types of attacks that could be applicable to multiple enemies at once.
E.g. a broad sweeping stroke could hit more than one enemy in front of the fighter, as
would a whirling swing. And throwing a handfull of darts at several enemies in front of
the fighter also could be interpreted as a single attack (i.e. not requiring separate
targetting).
Similarly to support casters there would also be room for support melee fighters. These
would do less damage themselves, but would weaken their opponents (through misdirection,
blinding, traps, tangling or otherwise hampering weapons and so on).
Both support roles could be cross archetype (i.e. casters could create certain melee
vulnerabilities, just as fighters could create weaknesses to certain types of magic. E.g.
a fighter dousing an enemy in oil ...
* * *
That is about it that I can think of right now. I am aware that this is just a 'would
be nice' type of post, but I would still like to hear what others think about it.
Eri