Concern: Content and Classes

[Arvalo85]

Yes actually you could not remove buffs in l2 at all even at current.

however in the coming gracia patch in a few weeks or less you will finally be able to after 4 long years.

[Calindor]

Originally Posted by Arvalo85

wow you just dont quit do ya?

anyways Aion is not ment to be geared at people doing lots of 1v1's its built for mass pvpve. So what your thinking about is moot anyways.

fairly sure chanters buffs are bound to them and the party they are in, if you leave it you loose the effects.

oh....

my....

god...

i've been facepalming every one of your posts I've seen in the last 3 days.

Originally Posted by Chaos_Theory

What about class buffs....You could say the same thing about their buffs. Easy way to do it is to make class buff just as powerful as a chanter's buffs. A chanter can give buffs to a class that normally doesn't have access to those type of buffs. A feature that could be cool to stop buffing characters to the max is a system of diminishing returns. The more buffs you have the weaker they are.

Being buffed by someone in a 1vs1 situation isn't 1vs1 since someone else outside of the match is altering the outcome in a person's favor. If a characters is already pre-buffed then they will mst likley be some skills to strip buffs.

You L2 guys make it seem like buffs were un-removable. Were they?

Yes, but what is the purpose of making a buff class, *a class who's main purpose in the game is to buff* if their buffs arent benificial.

What you just said is exactly the reason they will be boxed, "A chanter can give buffs to a class that normall doesnt have access..."..So obviously the buffs would make them better, even if they were equivalent to self buffs from other classes, then each class would be getting those self buffs from all the others. The buffs have to be beneficial, or else there is no purpose to the class. The buffs have to be considered in 1v1 balancing for the chanter, because they are his own buffs, while his opponent would have none...What I mean is when they consider balancing in a fight vs a gladiator. The gladiator unbuffed has to be relative in strength to a chanter with buffs, otherwise chanter's would destroy everything in a 1v1. So that means the buffs have to increase their strength, and when they apply those to the rest of the party, the whole party grows...and if the buffs arent usefull like that, then whats the purpose of a buffing class.



And arvalo is talking about the wrong thing, yes buffs were removable in L2..several classes had the ability to cancel buffs, and heroes all have weapons that cancel buffs, so after a minute or two in a mass pvp, most of your buffs are gone unless you have a good buffer who knows how to conserve mana and when to buff what, watching when people's buffs get cancelled. What he's talking about is if someone casts a buff on you, you cannot remove it yourself, you have to let the duration go through.


And there is no such thing as mass pvp balancing, what is it, my combination of 50 classes is worse than yours! Nerf everything!...What they consider is how valuable a chanter or cleric is to have in a party for PvP, or Are 4 rangers in a party going to be OP and beat 2 parties of gladiators, sins and spiritmasters, etc...Everybody is equivalent in mass pvp, they will all have amounts of each classes

[Chaos_Theory]

Originally Posted by Calindor

What you just said is exactly the reason they will be boxed, "A chanter can give buffs to a class that normall doesnt have access..."..So obviously the buffs would make them better, even if they were equivalent to self buffs from other classes, then each class would be getting those self buffs from all the others. The buffs have to be beneficial, or else there is no purpose to the class. The buffs have to be considered in 1v1 balancing for the chanter, because they are his own buffs, while his opponent would have none...What I mean is when they consider balancing in a fight vs a gladiator. The gladiator unbuffed has to be relative in strength to a chanter with buffs, otherwise chanter's would destroy everything in a 1v1. So that means the buffs have to increase their strength, and when they apply those to the rest of the party, the whole party grows...and if the buffs arent usefull like that, then whats the purpose of a buffing class.

The chanter's buffs do not have to be godly just useful. It seems like in L2 that if you were not buffed you were basically useless I think class buffs can change that by making each class self sufficient in small pvp. In large pvp of course chanters will most likley be mandatory. I think that is what I mis-understood. Like I said previously it seems that buffs were so important in L2 that you couldn't get anything done w/o them.

Chanter's buffing themselves can easily be avoidable by making buffs "target ally only." GW has this so the very strong buffs and skills could only be used on allies only so the player couldn't be OP. Their were also buffs that only targeted yourself.

I do know if L2 had a buff system like that and if they did.

[Arvalo85]

L2 had a fail buff system it really did. I think it was the main contribution to the decline in players Aside from the massive botting problems.

for once yeah calin is right oops i guess i miss understood what you were asking for about removal of buffs. Most mage classes did indeed have cancel which removed only 5 random buffs (in pvp most players had a full complement of 20 to 24 buffs, chances of getting something that will greatly effect their actions not so good......

untill c4 tho cancel was 100% buff removal those were the days my Spell singer was god >_<. Altho even after that heros had the option to choose a pole type weapon that had crit cancel on it. Basically with every crit there was a 5% chance to remove 5 buffs from a player, or multiple players even if your the right class or people are dumb enough to group up near you while your swinging that thing around. ( so many people are XD ) I watched 2 warlords destroy like 25 people in a hallway in aden castle once it was hilarious one was using hero pole the other just a normal WL. but 20 to 25 people without buffs hardly scratched em it was amazing XD

To my understanding of chanters thus far they do have methods for making them a valuable class to have around as a live player. From what i recall reading about them (tho it has been a couple of months) they did have measures to make them have to be in party and active to yield real benefit from them.

Anyways calin why dont you and i call this off. we ***** at each other on every thread lately. Lets just agree to disagree and leave it at that no? friendly posting is more fun anyways.

[sho]

My question is this: Complexity for the sake of complexity does what?

And why not compare this to WoW? I think it's amazingly similar even if it is made by NCsoft. People are talking of talent trees, right? Well, okay, you can spec an arms, fury, or protection warrior. Now what do we have in Aion. You have your standard two-hander gladiator, you have your dual-wielding gladiator, and then you got your templar. I mean, you get to choose to be a battle medic or a healing medic. Certainly, that counts for something, doesn't it?

People just like the idea of vast customization, which I do also. There are problems with it, however. If any of you have played Ragnarok Online, you set up this completely perfect stat build only to have it become flawed within the next content patch where a certain desirable and superior item makes you essentially waste stat points. It had this whole bonus stat system... I don't want to explain it. So you might have placed an extra point into strength whereas you could've placed several points into vitality for the extra survivability. You are not the best you can be. How about skill builds? Maybe a guy put into so much effort to grind to a level 99 Spear Lord knight only to have his main skill be nerfed in usefulness. The class is basically just cannon fodder. The build is obsolete and therefore is no longer viable. So what's the point of this certain build? RO was also very strict on stat resets. Skill resets... So I guess a remedy would be a WoW system but people don't want a WoW system.

As to the problem of the chanter becoming buffbots, if the chanters themselves are viable in solo and PvP situations I do not think it's a large concern. Examples would be unique debuffs for PvP and PvE situations. It might not completely eliminate the problem but it would certainly alleviate it. Like the Red Mage of FFXI, he had certain unique debuffs that would actually make him be considered for parties despite his jack-of-all trades motif. As long as people are willing to play the class, it's not so much a problem. L2's problem was the fact that they could bot, the lack of bot crackdowns, and the way the support classes were designed as well as buff length. 30 minute buffs vs. 2 minute buffs. You know it's true that there were more live bladedancers and swordsingers than prophets. Also, consider the overlords and warcryers, they were a viable class inside PvP that people chose to play them seriously. They had unique debuffs, nukes, stackable DoTs, etc. Prophets, however, smack on the buffs and leave it in town. The class could barely fight on its own (Olympiad's a different story). The thing I'd also like to mention is that the Prophet was still stuck with his crappy *** mage stats that symbols couldn't alleviate anyway so that light armor mastery, heavy armor mastery, etc. is instead very misleading. A person might roll the class thinking he may be able to hold his own where in fact he cannot. You may disagree with me here but you cannot argue the fact that there's always going to be a class that can fulfill a role it tries to take with the exception of buffer. Although that can also be argued because warcryers and overlords began carrying similar unstackable buffs that were much more efficient (instead of single-target buffing, it was party or clan buffs). Not only that but overlords have freakin' CP heal, but I digress... but one of the reasons it was also viable, which tends to lead away from the class just being a buffbot. They could attempt the L2 gear sets but still... same deal. Hmm, I'm a tank. Do I want to wear Tallum Heavy or the Nightmare Heavy? Maybe people are just happy with the option to play an inferior build. I'm somewhat sympathetic as I tend to choose the gimped classes or characters (tier lists? lol) so when I win, it's that much more satisfying but I digress again. It's irrational leading into my next point.

I completely agree that there will always be cookie-cutter builds that specialize in some certain role. If you somewhat stray from it slightly, you're not going to be performing your best. And with the whole discussion of class roles and party play, you're going to want your tank to be the best tank he can be. Do people want retribution paladins or holy paladins in their raid groups? People are forced to respec into roles they do not wish to play or else they are unable to attain end-game gear. Not only is there a problem with that but also the gear they usually get is to further their current role that they were forced to respec into. I want ret-noob gear, so I respec for a raid group and we go raiding. I, instead, am denied the ret gear as it would benefit a warrior instead and I get more healing gear instead. I'm perpetually stuck in this healing role which I did not want to play in the first place. They did eventually fix this with arena gear. But you get the idea. So maybe with Aion's current system, you're saved the headache where a simple switch of gear could allow you to switch roles mid-raid/dungeon. The game will probably grow and evolve so... it's a bit early to say but it's nice to have a perspective on things. I know, wall of text...

[eVenom]

Can not read wall of text, at least right now. Yeah, you 2 should stop where you are and just chill, not much of point in going on since not one will agree with the other.

[Arvalo85]

theres no way in reading all that XD i just got up.

[Lucius]

Back to the original post...
I do think that this game is lacking in the class options and race options, but I believe that if the developers put enough into the development of those classes and races then there won't be that "let down" that you expect. I like games that have 6-8 different races and 8-16 different classes but there is a problem with those games. The biggest problems are that they would either take way to long for development due to the fact that they have to make sure that all the classes are on an even keel, or they rush the development and put out a game that has 1 or more classes "unbeatable" resulting in the nerfing of the skills, neither of which is a good outcome. I would propose that the developers of Aion have decided to put more depth into the development of these 8 classes and who knows they may offer a few more classes in a future expansion, those having the same attention to detail.

[Calindor]

Originally Posted by Chaos_Theory

The chanter's buffs do not have to be godly just useful. It seems like in L2 that if you were not buffed you were basically useless I think class buffs can change that by making each class self sufficient in small pvp. In large pvp of course chanters will most likley be mandatory. I think that is what I mis-understood. Like I said previously it seems that buffs were so important in L2 that you couldn't get anything done w/o them.

Chanter's buffing themselves can easily be avoidable by making buffs "target ally only." GW has this so the very strong buffs and skills could only be used on allies only so the player couldn't be OP. Their were also buffs that only targeted yourself.

I do know if L2 had a buff system like that and if they did.

Even if they are not godly, the main concern I am expressing is...why bring a real chanter if you can box one instead. Lets say you want to solo, well normally it would be a lot more efficient (or even slightly) if you had buffs. Or what if your legion was running a party late at night that was filled up... 1/6th of the exp is taken by a chanter, would it be better for someone to box a chanter every 25 minutes, then leave party after all the buffs are given?..I cant see this not being the case unless the buffs were useless....there is a simple solution...make the buff duration shorter! If someone is there playing, does it really matter if they have to hit their buffs every 2, 5 or 25 minutes? Personally I think the shorter the better, it would add another element of skill to mass pvp, having to keep your parties grouped up in range of buffs...I'm sure everyone who's done a siege in L2 has had time where their dances/songs fade, and the BD/SWS have ran off, then you're without them or out of range.

[Arvalo85]

I just really hate boxing.... Its annoying and the need for it should be removed from any game where it is common place.

Its a huge hassle and most people that played l2 retail for long periods of time agree even if they spent most of their time on it (me included) boxing.

i hate boxing and i really dont want to do it or pay for 2 accounts so that i can have buffs.
its lame >_<. i get what your saying but boxing still sucks.

[Chaos_Theory]

Originally Posted by Calindor

Even if they are not godly, the main concern I am expressing is...why bring a real chanter if you can box one instead. Lets say you want to solo, well normally it would be a lot more efficient (or even slightly) if you had buffs. Or what if your legion was running a party late at night that was filled up... 1/6th of the exp is taken by a chanter, would it be better for someone to box a chanter every 25 minutes, then leave party after all the buffs are given?..I cant see this not being the case unless the buffs were useless....there is a simple solution...make the buff duration shorter! If someone is there playing, does it really matter if they have to hit their buffs every 2, 5 or 25 minutes? Personally I think the shorter the better, it would add another element of skill to mass pvp, having to keep your parties grouped up in range of buffs...I'm sure everyone who's done a siege in L2 has had time where their dances/songs fade, and the BD/SWS have ran off, then you're without them or out of range.

My post was directed on chanter's 1vs1 ability.

I agree that making buffs last a short time is an awesome idea. I would have added that, but I didn't know L2's buffs last long, to my GW comparison since the good buffs last like 20 seconds max and the crappy ones last about 90 seconds max.

WTF 20+ buffs on a character. The games I played either had a low limit or the buffs didn't last too long.

[Cai]

I really don't care how others choose to pve, be it boxing outa pt or not. Its not like Aion is going to be a grind and a half.
As long as it doesnt effect the pvp aspect, I'm cool with whatever. That including having to cater small details around for those who do care. Ex: 2min buff times, having to remain in pt to retain buffs, weak buffs, etc...

I do understand the concern however, notably coming from those who played L2. L2 was a ever perpetual grind though, and its allready known that the chanter has useful traits other than just buffing. I think it will be aight

[Nekoakurei]

I think it needs more classes, some say 8 classes is enough and the game doesnt need anymore than that because classes will get repetitive, Others say lower classes = more quality. Well i can make a game too, itll have 2 classes Mage and Fighter. Mage gets every magic spell in the book while Fighter gets every melee attack, weapon, and ability. There i just made a perfectly doable class system. There is a healer (mage), a tank (fighter), a buffer (mage), a melee damage dealer (fighter), summoner (mage), pet attacker (fighter), debuffer (mage). See 2 classes are enough to make a game work, and with only 2 classes the quality of each will be unmatched.

Now seriously, anyone can see what is wrong with that, and thats what could happen to Aion. Low class number = more stuff 1 class can do = somewhere along the line a class will become overpowered. Also more classes are simply more fun, ya 2 classes is all you need but whats the fun in only 2 classes? I think there needs to be more than 8, but the trick is finding the balance between number and quality. Too many classes and most become useless, too few makes a boring and overpowered system.

[Heion]

Originally Posted by Nekoakurei

I think it needs more classes, some say 8 classes is enough and the game doesnt need anymore than that because classes will get repetitive, Others say lower classes = more quality. Well i can make a game too, itll have 2 classes Mage and Fighter. Mage gets every magic spell in the book while Fighter gets every melee attack, weapon, and ability. There i just made a perfectly doable class system. There is a healer (mage), a tank (fighter), a buffer (mage), a melee damage dealer (fighter), summoner (mage), pet attacker (fighter), debuffer (mage). See 2 classes are enough to make a game work, and with only 2 classes the quality of each will be unmatched.

Now seriously, anyone can see what is wrong with that, and thats what could happen to Aion. Low class number = more stuff 1 class can do = somewhere along the line a class will become overpowered. Also more classes are simply more fun, ya 2 classes is all you need but whats the fun in only 2 classes? I think there needs to be more than 8, but the trick is finding the balance between number and quality. Too many classes and most become useless, too few makes a boring and overpowered system.

If you're saying that these 8 classes are too few, and makes a boring and overpowered game. Then I do not agree. I don't like it when a MMO splits what could usually be one or two classes, into too many fragments of the whole. I want variety within the classes I play, not a single specialized pattern of play.

I think these 8 classes presented so far (without having tried any of them), will be balanced and fun to play. They should not be split further and each of them given less options than they already have. That is boring in my opinion.