Consumables & Combat -- tedious or tactical?

  • (posted elsewhere -- re-posted here because I think it's an important glimpse into Pantheon and our combat system)


    IMHO some of you may be confusing implementation with idea.  i agree there have been bad (and good) consumable implementations in MMOs and MUDs.  Just because you have seen bad implementations, please don't assume the idea is bad.  It's like underwater combat... we've had discussions where people were initially against it because they hated Kedge Keep.  They didn't like the clunky controls.  They didn't like the implementation.  But after we discussed it more, we agreed, especially with physics being part of Unity, that we could make it really cool (think the battle room in Ender's Game)... and different.  Variety is a good thing. Needing to learning new tactics when fighting in different Climates = good.


    So, sure, potions in some games can be a pain in the butt.  But they don't have to be in Pantheon.  Let me talk about traditional potions and combat, keeping in mind that a consumable system is much more than that (it can include food that you eat to give you some HP, it can mean reagents you need in order to cast a spell, etc.).  Right now though I'm talking about consumables during combat... I'll refer to them as potions, although they don't literally all have to look like a potion.


    Consuming a potion in combat is a Tactical Decision.  Ultimately it's no different than choosing to cast a spell or use an ability in combat. You are either initiating something proactively or you are reacting to something.   


    What does this ability/spell/potion do?  They could do any number of things, but we probably want them to be somewhat distinct, otherwise why have all three.  Abilities are usually like a kick or a block.  A spell is a fireball or a heal.  A potion is probably more akin to a spell than an ability (say, a stone-skin potion -- there will likely be spells that do something similar).  The difference is to cast a specific spell, you need to be a specific class and you need to have it memmed.  To consume a potion, you will likely not have to be a certain class.


    Now here's where we have to be careful.  Class interdependence in a group-focused game like Pantheon is paramount.  If I can just chug heal potions as a warrior, then why do i need a healer in the group?  We definitely don't want anything like that at all.


    One thing that is not yet set in stone is the ratio of items to buffs to consumables.  What this means, is when you enter combat, how important is your armor or your buffs or the spells that will be cast on you or the consumables you may consume.  Is it 80% items, 10% buffs and spells and 10% consumables?  We don't know yet, but it's safe to say, given that Pantheon is an item-centric game as well, that items will be very important.  Your level relative to the level of the NPC you are fighting is also important.  Sufffice it to say, there are many factors.


    The key is to make sure they are all important.  You will need the best items you can find.  You will need pre-combat buffs.  You will need spells cast on you during combat.  And consumables can be important too.  And, as I mentioned in my first post, who you are fighting... the context... will matter too.  If your group is going up against a special encounter, say a boss mob or two, and these guys drop some good stuff, then all of the above really matters and you'd better plan and prep accordingly.  On the other hand, if you're just clearing out some yard trash, you don't need to tactially prep nearly to the same degree.


    What's important is that ratio and the components of that ratio.  If you can use a potion *instead* of a buff, or a mid-combat heal, making you less reliant on a certain class in your group, then that's bad.  If you can use a potion *instead* of needing great gear, then that is a problem.  


    Here's one way to look at it:  no one thinks the tank's equipment sucks because he needs to be healed mid-combat, right?  He could have top-notch tanking gear, but he's still going to need to be healed.  The same is with consumables.  They don't replace the need for gear or buffs or in-combat spells; rather, they're just another component you may want to bring to bear in a difficult encounter.  They just work differently.  Your gear is permanent -- you put it on, and it works.  Buffs can't really be cast during combat, and you will be limited to how many buffs and of what type, so it's a tactical decision you make before tackling an encounter -- which buffs should be put on which players, depending upon their role.  In-combat spells are very transient -- you cast a heal on your buddy and then, before you know it, it's time to cast something else, all depending upon what's happening.  Did the mob switch suddenly to another character?  Or did it cast an absorb damage shield on itself?  The caster needs to make sure he or she is paying attention, and that he casts the right spells at the right time on the right group mate.


    Potions are similar yet also very different.  They're consumables, so when you use one, it's gone.  How many potions you can consume over a period of time will be limited.  They will also likely be costly... the better they are, the more they're going to cost you, whether you buy them or whether they are part of a future crafting system, etc.  So you're not going to want to waste them, and you're also not going to want to drink them willy-nilly because you're limited to X potions consumed per battle, or per 10 minutes, or however it turns out we do it.  


    Here's an example... you're a DPS class.  You can tank, but not so well.  Plus, the group wants you to do a lot of damage anyway, so even if you have some decent tanking gear, you're not wearing it.  You're wearing the items that increase your damage.  The buffs other players cast on you pre-combat increase your DPS.  So now you're in-combat and dealing damage and then suddenly the mob switches to attacking you.  You're dying fast -- your hit points are crashing like a stock market.  What should your groupmates do?  Should they heal you?  Maybe.  Maybe there are enough healers who've memmed enough heals and so they can spare a few, even though they're really meant to keep the tank alive.  Should the tank try to rescue you, to taunt the mob off of you?  Absolutely.


    But does all of this happen instantly?  No.  The heal takes a certain amount of time to cast.  The rescue is quicker, but it can fail, depending on how skilled the tank is at taunting mobs off of people.  What do you do?  You can move a bit, but you don't want to run into the next room and aggro even more mobs.  Sometimes you need to stay still and take your beating.  Sometimes the group may even just let you die, because saving you risks the entire group.  Hopefully you can get a rez so you don't lose too much exp.  But even with a rez, death has a sting.


    But what if the last time you were at this merchant you found in a small village off the beaten path you'd bought some stone-skin potions?  Now, in the above scenario, when you were waiting for that heal (which may or may not come and does take a few seconds to cast) and you were waiting on that rescue (which may or may not come in time), now you drink a couple of those potions, giving you a temporary damage shield.  Now, even though you're not a tank or at least not equipped to be a tank, you can briefly tank because you bought some consumables.  And, remember, even though you might be rich and you bought 47 of these potions, you can't really change into the tank because you can only drink 2-3 of these potions every 15 minutes or so.  But those 2 or 3?  They keep you alive long enough for you to be rescued, after which you resume your role as a dual wielding cusinart machine.


    I know, a long-winded story -- sorry about that.  But I wanted to paint a picture and describe a scenario that I think depicts potions/consumables playing an important role in combat -- a good idea and, hopefully, a good implementation of that idea.  Did the stone-skin potions in the above scenario decrease class interdpendence?  No.  Did they make it so you don't need great gear?  No.  Did they make you Superman, enabling you to solo a powerful boss mob?  No.  Were they a pain to manage or to consume or to organize or find?  No, that's all about the UI -- a good inventory system will allow you to set up hotkeys, to group like-items together, etc.


    What did they do?  They allowed you to survive just a little bit longer so you could stay in the fight.  They gave you a little bit of self-dependence when something went bad, but not at the cost of overall group interdependence.  What do we need to make sure we do?  Consumables like that need to be hard to find, or cost a lot, or both.  We need to make sure they're not something you use all of the time, so they need to be rare, and then how many you can consume over a period of time needs to be limited.  How are they good for the game?  Consumables in general (and please note, I've been focusing on one specific type of consumable, the potion) are a fantastic money sink because, well, they're consumed, so you'll always want/need more.  Item sinks are key to a healthy player driven economy -- they help keep cash have value.  


    Other types of consumables can be looked at similarly... they just need to be planned out and have their place and not overlap or replace something else -- they should do what they do, and what they do should be sufficiently different than other useful abilities, spells, buffs, etc.  If they replace the necessity of gear, or groupmates being a mix of classes, or buffs, etc. then the implementation was bad.  But if the implementation is good, then they become another part of what makes you effective in the game, in a group, in the role you've assumed in that group.  They become part of the tactics you employ during combat.  And they're something that you hopefully have to learn and experiment with before you get to the point where you use them optimally.  Again, it's the situational context I love to blab about:


    Where am I, who am I, what role am I assuming, who is with me, and what am I fighting? These are quesitons you should be asking yourself fairly often when playing Pantheon.  And the more you know the answer to these questions, the more effective you're going to be.  The classes you want in your group, the buffs you want before combat, the spells you want to mem, the abilities you want to use, the items you want to wear, AND the consumables you have readily accessible... all of that should be important, and the better you are at prepping before combat and then executing during combat should matter a lot. Decisions should matter -- combat should not be mindless button mashing, and nor should it mean engaging auto-attack and then sitting back, sipping your Dr. Pepper.  


    I hope I addressed your concerns.  One in particular I saw was, "why do I need one more thing to worry about during combat?"  Well, if it's just one more thing you need to make sure you have and then click on, then yeah, that sucks, but then that would really be an indictment of our entire combat system.  We're trying to make combat something involved that you have to think about.  It should be something you need to practice to get good at.  It's something that should change somewhat depending on what class you are.  It's about action and re-action.  It's about having Answers and not just spells and abilities to damage the enemy, but needing to be able to counterspell, or deflect, or somehow negate what the enemy is trying to do to you.  It's about having the right gear on, about making sure you're wielding the best item not in general, but the best item for fighting the specific encounter you are about to face.  It's about needing to pay attention in combat, rescuing other players, blocking or avoiding certain attacks.  It's about timing -- perhaps not unleashing the massive fireball until the mob is at 15% because if you cast it early, it's going to aggro on you and, as a mage, you're going to die.  


    One more thing to worry about?  Absolutely!  There should be a lot of things to worry about before combat and in combat.  It shouldn't be predictable and boring.  It shouldn't be kick back, drink your soda, and watch your character auto-attack.  It should be about playing your class properly.  It should be about timing things right... not doing X too early or Y too late.  It should take real skill.  No, not twitch skill like in an FPS, but there is a pace and the combat is in real time.  And you should have a lot of things you could do in that combat, and so some of the skill is deciding what to do and when to do it.  If you decide to counterspell something, you need to do it at the right time.  And that's IF counterspelling was the right thing to do.  Just because you *can* counterspell that fireball doesn't mean you should.  It depends on the mob and the group you're with.  Maybe your tank can absorb the fireball because of his heat-resistant gear, so you shouldn't counterspell, you should root the mob instead.  Knowing what to do and when and having lots of options to choose from, but then making the right choice important -- that's real skill and should require you to really pay attention.  And doing all of the above should be fun, because your decisions really matter, and because the more you play, the better you're going to get at it, and the more you're going to know about the different encounters you face.


    So knowing what potions to bring to a region, and then when to use them and how often, all the while trying to avoid having to use one, because they're expensive and are meant for emergencies... to me, that's fun. I've got a plan and then when combat starts, something happens and you have to abandon all or part of the plan and react, because something unexpected occured.  I'm assuming if you're reading this, you're interested in Pantheon and the challenge we're trying to bring back.  A big part of that challenge is going to be our combat system, and making it challenging and fun at the same time is someting we simply have to make happen.


    Ok, getting off the soap box :)  I could have answered 'just the consumable' question, but using it as a segue into the more broad topic of what we're trying to pull off with our combat system was just too tempting to pass up :)  Whew!  I *want* to play this game!




  • Xandarra
    Xandarra Death is going to sting and as such we will all want to avoid it where possible. If using a potion is going to save me losing my hard earned xp, I'll more than likely use a potion. We will need something to spend our money on.
    March 17, 2014 - 2 like this
  • alejandro
    alejandro @Carrera I also prefer it when potion consumption is more of a personal choice than a group/raid mandate
    March 17, 2014 - 1 likes this
  • Maquiame
    Maquiame I like this post and I like potions.
    March 17, 2014 - 1 likes this
  • BlueEyedGator
    BlueEyedGator I think potions/consumables are absolutely important in combat regardless of the party you're with. Sometimes you just can't wait for someone else to heal you and nothing worse than needing that one extra hit to kill the boss but you don't get it because...  more
    March 19, 2014 - 1 likes this