I think chems are being brought up because linking to the melder increases the range of the meld. Would linked chems increase the 'range' of the actual node effect (aka protection bypass) or?
The meld effects are seemingly the same for now, regardless if on a node or not. The node only matters, thus far, if it bypasses the protection scroll or not as far as effects go. The current goal is to get an agreeable meld situation, then worry about effects, which I agree with.
I think chems are being brought up because linking to the melder increases the range of the meld. Would linked chems increase the 'range' of the actual node effect (aka protection bypass) or?
Linking only affects the Woodchems radius, power is enhanced if you're in a linked meld. The reason Woodchems keep coming to mind for me is that it's the "Mage revamp" not "Melding revamp" it's unclear how far it's going to go.
Its hard to really judge it without knowing the effects then.
Would really need to see some examples of what the minor and major effects would be to make a fair assessment on it.
Why?
You can't branch out until you get a sturdy base. The effects will be designed with the base in mind, not the other way around.
I presume she meant AFTER you get the base meld-node design setup and decided on, rather than prior. Just a matter of timing throwing off her meaning.
Potential effects can give context to the strong vs weak effect aspect of the core design? Particularly because it's the option that's not the same as what we have now.
Maybe something like Weak: Procs to move people towards a node Strong: Makes it difficult to leave the node room
I think chems are being brought up because linking to the melder increases the range of the meld. Would linked chems increase the 'range' of the actual node effect (aka protection bypass) or?
Neither of the takes on what woodchem links do is precisely correct.
Being in the room with a linked person gives the woodchem increased range on their bombs. Being in the meld of a linked melder gives the woodchem +10% damage on their bombs.
Neither of these will be appreciably changed by changing to nodes, though doing so might open up different avenues of design (such as woodchems being able to merge with avatars in rooms the melder isn't in to do.. stuff?).
I have two overall concerns with the new design concept.
First, while it will make it somewhat less of a headache as you won't NEED a melder to counter a melder and therefore people aren't pushed into a class they hate... it also seems like it will make it easier for large groups to shut out smaller groups. Whereas before the bigger group made it easier to outright kill an enemy melder, it was only really easier to break the meld if the bigger group also had more melders. Having more melders actually would then *lessen* the impact of the large group, as their primaries basically don't stack so once they establish a meld they will have less of a overwhelming force than they would if they held the meld with only one melder and everyone else using a full compliment of class skills. With leylines, the larger group gains the meld breaking benefit by virtue of having more damage attacks without needing to burn primary skills on melding classes.
Second, I do fear that effects will be left basically the same and the entire project called done - tossed to players to finish by an increasingly slow and restricted envoy system, something that will be impossible. Along with the above concern I think that moving entirely away from a melding system or going with a more thorough reimagination of the class would be for the best, both short and long term.
Regarding the first point, while we're reducing the need to have a melder, we're also increasing the difficulty in breaking melds. Yeah, a larger group may have more damage attacks, but that means they're damaging the avatar rather than killing the enemy team. Breaking nodes requires a channeled action from a melder. We're introducing strength to balance out the counterplay abilities.
Melders have always been about area control, that's the role they've been in and the role we'll want to keep them in. I don't think a more thorough redesign is in the cards at this time unless you're willing to wait even longer for any changes to come about. We're working off a base here that was thought about and designed over several months already, starting over will again take months to do.
I'm wondering if it would be good to extend node influence to a one room radius, leylines aside. Thinking of things like the museum in a future rift which is lots of single adjacent rooms and, while fairly small, would be a real nuisance to cover with nodes. On the other hand, that makes breaking into a node room way harder because you can't meld adjacent.
Is the current plan for leyline rooms to block leyline formation from other melders? You said nodes can't be placed in them so I assume yes, but I'm uncertain. Naturally this wouldn't extend to the same mage.
I'm definitely a little concerned about random path choice for equal distances, but I guess you can just avoid that by forcing it with putting a node in the middle?
There's a lot of meld effects that interrupt channels right now. Would those be paused while a break channel is going on, or would you just have to time it so you don't get hit by meld effects in the middle of the break?
edit: oh yeah enya mentioned this but chems being able to fuse with avatars would be Cool. I'm not sure how you'd do it in a balanced way and it might be a little outside scope but
As an idea, perhaps make the channeling mage (the breaker) temporarily immune to the meld effects during the process? Not like there's any real way to game it, the breaker spends the entire time incapable of other actions to avoid the powers and would probably be faster to finish the channel than keep reseting it to have a party kill the avatar. Adds to the counterplay without having the annoyance of meld effects bypassing protection while you're trying to break it as a melder.
I think chems are being brought up because linking to the melder increases the range of the meld. Would linked chems increase the 'range' of the actual node effect (aka protection bypass) or?
Neither of the takes on what woodchem links do is precisely correct.
Being in the room with a linked person gives the woodchem increased range on their bombs. Being in the meld of a linked melder gives the woodchem +10% damage on their bombs.
Neither of these will be appreciably changed by changing to nodes, though doing so might open up different avenues of design (such as woodchems being able to merge with avatars in rooms the melder isn't in to do.. stuff?).
I may be mistaken, but a melder who is linked to a woodchem gets +1 meldable room.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
I believe chems linked to a melder have stronger bombs within the meld. Chems linked to other chems add to their bomb range. I could be mistaken though.
I guess for some clarity, what's the actual scope of the revamp?
"Mage revamp" to me implies looking at the whole of the Mage and Druid archetypes. Melders, Woodchems, as well as their secondaries and tertiaries.
Like, Woodchems exist (afaik) because there wasn't/isn't much point in being the second melder on your team. If that's not changing (or is even being reinforced) then a one over there wouldn't go astray.
The scope of the revamp is melders, mostly their primary skillsets but we'll need to consider how the secondary and tertiary skillsets work with that.
Woodchems might be something worthwhile to look at, but they operate differently and I'd rather focus on one thing at a time, so looking at them is not part of the scope at this time.
The scope of the revamp is melders, mostly their primary skillsets but we'll need to consider how the secondary and tertiary skillsets work with that.
Woodchems might be something worthwhile to look at, but they operate differently and I'd rather focus on one thing at a time, so looking at them is not part of the scope at this time.
Alright.
To flag it though, I think there's a potential discussion about the relationship between melders and woodchems depending on the value of a second melder once you get a bit further along. The less valuable a second melder is to a team the more relevant I think that discussion is.
More directly on topic, it might be worthwhile to allow people to limit the connections their nodes form.
Such as if you could limit the radius for a node so it doesn't make certain connections for example, or specifying which nodes something does connect to. There's just a bit more flexibility there that might be pretty useful.
I think if we wanted that kind of flexibility, we would probably just go back to requiring each room to be melded, and just have the caster append a 'major/lesser' at the end of something.
We'd have to consider how that would work, we really do want to leave links between nodes as a mechanic, so we'd have to consider how that type of melding would go.
As an update, I'm going to put together a plan for this base and post that based off the feedback here. We'll give one more round of feedback to that plan, then move forward on getting that coded in. While I'm doing that, I'll probably start posting the individual specs effects and skillsets to start gaining feedback on that.
One thing to consider is how much linkage between nodes is really necessary, as opposed to just having a few stronger-than-meld node rooms set up, powers to manipulate the nodes (move them around etc.), and abilities in the primary that don't REQUIRE nodes, and might even not be mutually exclusive from other melders in the way that terraining and melding are. In other words, less reliance on the meld itself and a much smoother interplay of different melds - less binary.
Along with node melding, I think there should be a much larger focus on active primary abilities [that interact with the meld] as opposed to 85% ticking passives. Part of the frustration for me with meld combat is how samey it all is. It might be effective to be spamming passives, but it doesn't have much user impact OR interactivity to the victims. There could be abilities that might be empowered based on being in the meld/terrain or, like Shaman-Lightning, have improved targeting along range nodes. Perhaps active abilities that don't hit demesne wide but allow a targeting along a node link hitting everyone *between* the two nodes but not the nodes themselves. Perhaps special attacks that only work when in a node room (or only in a link room) or the like. Swap node positions, taking everyone in one room and flipping them to the other. Shoot out a node that shoves everyone along the line to the end position. Currents that operate in specific directions (rather than towards center).
These kind of different ability ideas are something potentially to think about at this base stage, as some of that could revolve around node manipulation and the concept of having a few strong rooms instead of so many balances revolving around the maintenance of a passive network.
I also like the idea of a smaller total rooms effected by a meld in trade for either potency or activation and control. Especially with Timequakes kind of being the forefront of combat at this point, and how often any PvP kind of devolves into just a few rooms of skirmishing, I think we could afford to lessen total rooms melded. Even if say the range was 3 rooms rather than 5 for nodes, could also make it that if a node can link to two, then it can't be broken, with the caveat of killing the elemental or whatever.
I don't understand what is meant by saying 'not mutally exclusive' or really understand how that would work. Like, why would a pyromancer be able to manipulate a aquamancer meld? They are not linked to the water plane or any other elemental plane, so it doesn't really make sense to let different melds work together.
Not to mention the potential balance issues and problems that may arise from letting such a scenario play out. It becomes immensely more difficult to balance if we need to start considering how certain skills work in conjunction with every other melding skillset. I don't know that there's really any reasonable, non-intensive way to really get that to work.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what's being asked for here.
I'm all for more active skills and less passive skills, I'm fine with that. I'll certainly consider it when looking at the individual spec skills.
Make them not "pyromancer melds" and "aquamancer melds" . Aquamancer can add some water to room to allow them to use aquamancy actives in it to a limited degree, pyromancers can add sparks and they don't overwrite each other. Both the aquamancer and the pyromancer can be in the same room using their primary skills at the same time, at least to some degree larger than meldwar or damage attack. You could theoretically have two opposing nodes in the same room, and they could exist on a spectrum from where melds are now at purely exclusive to the other end with non-interactive. Like perhaps, only some effects work if there is opposition, or there's a node battle mode where the avatars smash up against each other and nullify so that neither can do anything until one is killed. Heck, this could even potentially work sort of like allergies do, but on a room: To use druid/mage abilities in a room it has to be sufficiently attuned. This is not binary like terraining but is rather points based, and isn't exclusive. Some abilities passively generate this, nodes automatically generate and upkeep this, some abilities work anywhere but are upgraded once it's high enough, others (like passives) are locked until it's high enough. It slowly decays outside of controlled territory, and is harder to build in opposed controlled territory (but NOT impossible). In this sense the primary skills are not mutually exclusive. Even inside of an aqua meld/territory control, the pyromancer can still have some use of their primary skill even if they cannot break the meld/territory control. In this model, the territory control can even be different from skillset to skillset, the core mechanic being the attunement. Perhaps pyros have weaker territory control but are much faster to build attunement "wildly" outside of it, like a raging fire. Perhaps druids can't do sprawling demesnes that spider around but can plant a totem that does a strong attunement effect in a radius. Lots of possibilities!
Or, going back to just nodes/leylines and they're exclusive, but there are still leyline connections (as opposed to a "just nodes" type design). THOSE could be non-exclusive:have the connecting rooms not be properly part of the "meld" itself, but just have some effects key off the leyline between nodes. That way melds overall would be less binary and could be both more mobile and have more engagement. In other words given melders A and B, B coming after A, with two nodes each and connected rooms a and b there could be an effect pattern like so:
[ B ] | [ A ] - [ * ] - [ a ] - [ A'] | [ b ] | [ B' ]
(Instead of B being impossible after A is in place).
What happens in the room where they cross could be... anything. Perhaps passives from A and B don't fire there, but actives targeting that room do. Perhaps actives targeting the room don't but it counts as "In Demesne" for both A and B that require that, like Shaman - Lightning. Perhaps it just counts as being affected by both leylines fully, as it is a leyline crossing! Heck, there might even be a special ability or two that specifically work at such crossings, like letting one melder attack both of the nodes of the other meld at once from that crossover point... or possibly just let A attack both of B's. That way, don't WANT crosses but can use them.
The whole point would to make more people able to use a wider range of abilities more often, instead of 1 melder per faction being able to use primaries at a time in a fight and so much revolving around battling over who gets to use melds. There would still be an aspect of territory control in that whoever is doing a better job at preparing ahead of time and maintaining their territory has an advantage, but just an advantage not a total shutout of the other melder within the territory.
All of the many changes and patches have been to fiddle with how easy it is to flip the meld, but at the end of the day it's not actually a range from easy to hard, there's a point in the middle where it flips around the binary nature of holding a meld. In other words, it's like winning 49% of the vote to someone else's 51%. You can make it closer and closer, to 49.5-50.5, 49.9-50.1, 49.999999 and so on but the outcome is the same, the one above 50% gets ALL of the benefits... until you tip it over the line and suddenly it's the other way!
One way to mitigate it would be to address the fundamental nature of the demesne/meld as a binary territory control and recapture the territory control fantasy with a less binary mechanic in som fashion . Another might be (as hinted) to even further curtail the range of the territory control and restrict it to JUST nodes, but with more mobility and ease of use. Another would be to lessen the impact of the meld overall to the melder such that being in your own meld is just a small bonus but not the core of the class and not imperative to use, by more actives that gain benefit in the demesne as opposed to demesne only passives.
EDIT: as to them "working together", that's not in any way unprecedented, every other class can work with other people with the same primary in play in the combat. It's a unique (and I argue above, bad) design element of melders that only one given melder gets to use three full skillsets in any given fight at a time.
I don't know that will have the effect you really want it to. There's going to be a minimum amount of points needed to be effective and that's going to function in one of two ways
1) If the enemy melder/team can remove points, it then just becomes one melder fighting for points (so they can be effective) while the other fights to remove points (to prevent it). It is then just a binary battle of fighting to see if you can be effective or not.
2) If the enemy melder/team cannot remove points, then what's the point of requiring them to build it in the first place? So they can't do anything until they spend some balances getting points so they can be effective, all while the enemy melder is already fully effective and fighting against them.
This doesn't even cover that now instead of walking into one meld, you can potentially be walking into 3 melds, all functioning at least a minimum level of effectiveness. We'd have to really reduce the effectiveness of melds, in general, to compensate for that fact.
I can get behind more active abilities rather than passive abilities, but I don't know that these suggestions are actually accomplishing what you want them to.
Seems like the first discussion may need to be what melders are going to be like moving forward. Cause, well having your primary be pretty useless if your team already has a melder is pretty lame.
This doesn't even cover that now instead of walking into one meld, you can potentially be walking into 3 melds, all functioning at least a minimum level of effectiveness. We'd have to really reduce the effectiveness of melds, in general, to compensate for that fact.
I can get behind more active abilities rather than passive abilities, but I don't know that these suggestions are actually accomplishing what you want them to.
In the post there's a mention of the places where melds intersect potentially having their effects disabled, also how scary that could be is significantly variable because there's been no talk about what those actual effects might even be.
Maybe melds are shared by the org rather than individually owned, maybe melders are a combo class that can't cast effects but their combos cause them if they're in a meld (slightly less effective outside the meld, slightly more effective inside it ideally), maybe they do something different.
I mean, it wouldn't be significantly variable, it would have to be reduced if you could potentially have 3 (or more!) melders having effects running in one room rather than limiting it to one.
We're unlikely to veer far off the current course set at this moment. I don't really see use or need to have effects disabled if you cross leylines. It just seems to add un-needed complexity.
Comments
You can't branch out until you get a sturdy base. The effects will be designed with the base in mind, not the other way around.
Maybe something like
Weak: Procs to move people towards a node
Strong: Makes it difficult to leave the node room
Being in the room with a linked person gives the woodchem increased range on their bombs. Being in the meld of a linked melder gives the woodchem +10% damage on their bombs.
Neither of these will be appreciably changed by changing to nodes, though doing so might open up different avenues of design (such as woodchems being able to merge with avatars in rooms the melder isn't in to do.. stuff?).
First, while it will make it somewhat less of a headache as you won't NEED a melder to counter a melder and therefore people aren't pushed into a class they hate... it also seems like it will make it easier for large groups to shut out smaller groups. Whereas before the bigger group made it easier to outright kill an enemy melder, it was only really easier to break the meld if the bigger group also had more melders. Having more melders actually would then *lessen* the impact of the large group, as their primaries basically don't stack so once they establish a meld they will have less of a overwhelming force than they would if they held the meld with only one melder and everyone else using a full compliment of class skills. With leylines, the larger group gains the meld breaking benefit by virtue of having more damage attacks without needing to burn primary skills on melding classes.
Second, I do fear that effects will be left basically the same and the entire project called done - tossed to players to finish by an increasingly slow and restricted envoy system, something that will be impossible. Along with the above concern I think that moving entirely away from a melding system or going with a more thorough reimagination of the class would be for the best, both short and long term.
Melders have always been about area control, that's the role they've been in and the role we'll want to keep them in. I don't think a more thorough redesign is in the cards at this time unless you're willing to wait even longer for any changes to come about. We're working off a base here that was thought about and designed over several months already, starting over will again take months to do.
"Mage revamp" to me implies looking at the whole of the Mage and Druid archetypes. Melders, Woodchems, as well as their secondaries and tertiaries.
Like, Woodchems exist (afaik) because there wasn't/isn't much point in being the second melder on your team. If that's not changing (or is even being reinforced) then a one over there wouldn't go astray.
Woodchems might be something worthwhile to look at, but they operate differently and I'd rather focus on one thing at a time, so looking at them is not part of the scope at this time.
To flag it though, I think there's a potential discussion about the relationship between melders and
woodchems depending on the value of a second melder once you get a bit further along. The less valuable a second melder is to a team the more relevant I think that discussion is.
Such as if you could limit the radius for a node so it doesn't make certain connections for example, or specifying which nodes something does connect to. There's just a bit more flexibility there that might be pretty useful.
We'd have to consider how that would work, we really do want to leave links between nodes as a mechanic, so we'd have to consider how that type of melding would go.
As an update, I'm going to put together a plan for this base and post that based off the feedback here. We'll give one more round of feedback to that plan, then move forward on getting that coded in. While I'm doing that, I'll probably start posting the individual specs effects and skillsets to start gaining feedback on that.
Along with node melding, I think there should be a much larger focus on active primary abilities [that interact with the meld] as opposed to 85% ticking passives. Part of the frustration for me with meld combat is how samey it all is. It might be effective to be spamming passives, but it doesn't have much user impact OR interactivity to the victims. There could be abilities that might be empowered based on being in the meld/terrain or, like Shaman-Lightning, have improved targeting along range nodes. Perhaps active abilities that don't hit demesne wide but allow a targeting along a node link hitting everyone *between* the two nodes but not the nodes themselves. Perhaps special attacks that only work when in a node room (or only in a link room) or the like. Swap node positions, taking everyone in one room and flipping them to the other. Shoot out a node that shoves everyone along the line to the end position. Currents that operate in specific directions (rather than towards center).
These kind of different ability ideas are something potentially to think about at this base stage, as some of that could revolve around node manipulation and the concept of having a few strong rooms instead of so many balances revolving around the maintenance of a passive network.
Not to mention the potential balance issues and problems that may arise from letting such a scenario play out. It becomes immensely more difficult to balance if we need to start considering how certain skills work in conjunction with every other melding skillset. I don't know that there's really any reasonable, non-intensive way to really get that to work.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what's being asked for here.
I'm all for more active skills and less passive skills, I'm fine with that. I'll certainly consider it when looking at the individual spec skills.
To use druid/mage abilities in a room it has to be sufficiently attuned. This is not binary like terraining but is rather points based, and isn't exclusive. Some abilities passively generate this, nodes automatically generate and upkeep this, some abilities work anywhere but are upgraded once it's high enough, others (like passives) are locked until it's high enough. It slowly decays outside of controlled territory, and is harder to build in opposed controlled territory (but NOT impossible). In this sense the primary skills are not mutually exclusive. Even inside of an aqua meld/territory control, the pyromancer can still have some use of their primary skill even if they cannot break the meld/territory control. In this model, the territory control can even be different from skillset to skillset, the core mechanic being the attunement. Perhaps pyros have weaker territory control but are much faster to build attunement "wildly" outside of it, like a raging fire. Perhaps druids can't do sprawling demesnes that spider around but can plant a totem that does a strong attunement effect in a radius. Lots of possibilities!
Or, going back to just nodes/leylines and they're exclusive, but there are still leyline connections (as opposed to a "just nodes" type design). THOSE could be non-exclusive:have the connecting rooms not be properly part of the "meld" itself, but just have some effects key off the leyline between nodes. That way melds overall would be less binary and could be both more mobile and have more engagement. In other words given melders A and B, B coming after A, with two nodes each and connected rooms a and b there could be an effect pattern like so:
[ B ]
|
[ A ] - [ * ] - [ a ] - [ A']
|
[ b ]
|
[ B' ]
(Instead of B being impossible after A is in place).
What happens in the room where they cross could be... anything. Perhaps passives from A and B don't fire there, but actives targeting that room do. Perhaps actives targeting the room don't but it counts as "In Demesne" for both A and B that require that, like Shaman - Lightning. Perhaps it just counts as being affected by both leylines fully, as it is a leyline crossing! Heck, there might even be a special ability or two that specifically work at such crossings, like letting one melder attack both of the nodes of the other meld at once from that crossover point... or possibly just let A attack both of B's. That way, don't WANT crosses but can use them.
The whole point would to make more people able to use a wider range of abilities more often, instead of 1 melder per faction being able to use primaries at a time in a fight and so much revolving around battling over who gets to use melds. There would still be an aspect of territory control in that whoever is doing a better job at preparing ahead of time and maintaining their territory has an advantage, but just an advantage not a total shutout of the other melder within the territory.
All of the many changes and patches have been to fiddle with how easy it is to flip the meld, but at the end of the day it's not actually a range from easy to hard, there's a point in the middle where it flips around the binary nature of holding a meld. In other words, it's like winning 49% of the vote to someone else's 51%. You can make it closer and closer, to 49.5-50.5, 49.9-50.1, 49.999999 and so on but the outcome is the same, the one above 50% gets ALL of the benefits... until you tip it over the line and suddenly it's the other way!
One way to mitigate it would be to address the fundamental nature of the demesne/meld as a binary territory control and recapture the territory control fantasy with a less binary mechanic in som fashion . Another might be (as hinted) to even further curtail the range of the territory control and restrict it to JUST nodes, but with more mobility and ease of use. Another would be to lessen the impact of the meld overall to the melder such that being in your own meld is just a small bonus but not the core of the class and not imperative to use, by more actives that gain benefit in the demesne as opposed to demesne only passives.
EDIT: as to them "working together", that's not in any way unprecedented, every other class can work with other people with the same primary in play in the combat. It's a unique (and I argue above, bad) design element of melders that only one given melder gets to use three full skillsets in any given fight at a time.
1) If the enemy melder/team can remove points, it then just becomes one melder fighting for points (so they can be effective) while the other fights to remove points (to prevent it). It is then just a binary battle of fighting to see if you can be effective or not.
2) If the enemy melder/team cannot remove points, then what's the point of requiring them to build it in the first place? So they can't do anything until they spend some balances getting points so they can be effective, all while the enemy melder is already fully effective and fighting against them.
This doesn't even cover that now instead of walking into one meld, you can potentially be walking into 3 melds, all functioning at least a minimum level of effectiveness. We'd have to really reduce the effectiveness of melds, in general, to compensate for that fact.
I can get behind more active abilities rather than passive abilities, but I don't know that these suggestions are actually accomplishing what you want them to.
In the post there's a mention of the places where melds intersect potentially having their effects disabled, also how scary that could be is significantly variable because there's been no talk about what those actual effects might even be.
Maybe melds are shared by the org rather than individually owned, maybe melders are a combo class that can't cast effects but their combos cause them if they're in a meld (slightly less effective outside the meld, slightly more effective inside it ideally), maybe they do something different.
We're unlikely to veer far off the current course set at this moment. I don't really see use or need to have effects disabled if you cross leylines. It just seems to add un-needed complexity.