Feedback Downtime - Health Regen

[Xavure]

I got a video that last 1m38sec (cannot upload it), my character is sitted while I wait for my health to regen. I need to do that for every 1 or 2 mobs depending on the damage it did.
I find that unacceptable to wait 1m30sec every time between fight that didnt even last that long. It means I'm more sitted that actually figthing in this game while soloing.

What I think we need to fix this:

1- Food without buff to get you to max health real quick.
2- Faster health regen while out of combat. (same speed than Stamina would be good I think)

 

[wyatt_berry_earp]

yeah at latter level it take forever to heal, the down time sucks. if your group don't have a healer or you are alone health potion don't cut it because they to have a long cool down time. this is one of the concerns i here from a lot of players

 

[Xavure]

@Undone and @AdricLives I challenge you guys to go with a defender lvl 25 solo, on the beach in Redshore to kill crocs and crabs. Do it for an hour and let me know how you feel about health regen after that.....it is as painful as it gets.

 

[Superbitsandbob]

Does innate health regen scale up as you level? If not it probably should.

 

[Undone]

Working on a potential fix for this.

 

[Blyte Plays]

Food buff tiers need more umph. It's been a while since I was hunter/provisioner, but I was saying it a lot back then that waiting 10 levels for a new tier and getting 1% more was a real let down.

Also, they need soft stats. Back when it was bear, deer, wolf etc... I said deer needs to give move speed, wolf flanking, etc..

Suggestion:
Dense gives fattest regen health and soft stat physical dmg absorb (tank food).

Lean gives middle of the road regen and flank. (striker/support food)

Light gives small regen and movement bonus (travel/harvester food)

Also might be nice to have a beverage alternative to tea, stamina is never a problem for a solo player. Perhaps have beer in the game, which can soften blows, adding some absorb value, in effect virtual bonus armor class, and -hit? Maybe you can get the hops/wheat/yeast etc.. as an uncommon byproduct of plant harvesting?

 

[RazorBrains]

I would allow people to heal themselves out of combat with bandages. It doesn't make healers irrelevant because healers heal while in combat.

As long as the solo player cannot get more XP per hour compared to a Group person it should be fine. Into this XP per hour equation, you need to count in the time it takes to get a group together and all the other downtime issues with grouping like people leaving, arriving, general complexity, and general problems.

In the end Solo needs to be viable way to progress, even in a heavily incentivized grouping game.
With that said, I would also push grouping more, where doing things like if 1 person mines a node everyone in group gets a piece of ore. If you want to push grouping, things like that will encourage grouping big time.

I am all for encouraging grouping.

 

[RazorBrains]

I don't see how a food health regen buff is going to be a good option. Unless you make the out of combat so high it comes back real fast, then you have issues with people kiting mobs waiting for regen.

Even if they increased the health regen some with a food buff. People don't want to sit around doing nothing waiting for health, 1 min, 3min, 10 min is all the same just less worse. People don't want to sit around doing nothing for any reason actually.

Bandages are an active thing people should be able to do, keeps them busy and keeps things interesting especially if there are interrupts when hit, so they have to watch for 2nd mob coming after them or respawns or whatever.

Just make sure bandages are cheap / common

 

[Blyte Plays]

Any of these things can work. Active eating like in WoW, active bandaging like in EQ/WoW/etc.., or fatter regen tiers from the current system, IE 5%+ tier advancement gains, and higher baseline in dense meats and higher advancement gains.

Light (1-10) 8% -> (10-20) 13% -> (20-30) 18%...
Lean (1-10) 12% -> (10-20) 17% -> (20-30) 22%...
Dense (1-10) 18% -> (11-20) 24% -> (20-30) 31%...

If you go with bandaids, the provisioner could make them, so the trade skill keeps its value. Of course active food or active bandaids would require more applications, and more work from provisioners than 30 min buffs, but its doable, as long as the cloth/meat is plentiful.

All roads lead to higher value in the Provisioner and less value in classes with heals. (Out of combat)

 

[RazorBrains]

I think food buffs are great for things like resistances types if someone is looking for an edge on certain types of mobs, so they bring some specific resistance food along. Or even things like states, total health, dex, weap speed etc...

Just not a big fan on increasing regen rate, as I don't think it will do much. If people are just waiting around for health due to regen, if they wait for 1 min or 45 secs either way its inactive downtime to me. Game needs an out of combat self heal to remove the downtime.

If you have too many food buff items, then it becomes an inventory issue.

I get your point thou, food, bandage or potion for quick health is pretty much equivalent. I would keep potions separate in this game, as the cost is so high, it doesn't really make sense to use them after battle to heal to full. Need something cheap and plentiful. Cloth Band-Aids seem to make the most sense to me.

 

[Superbitsandbob]

My attitudes have softened towards these types of old school MMO mechanics over the years but wouldn't a regen rate out of combat that gets you up and running again quickly go against that philosophy of downtime between pulls and what not? Like in early EQ.

Not against it but just not sure what the expectation is of downtime from a design perspective. As in EQ because of the regen rates it was much harder for some classes to solo.

 

[RazorBrains]

Well personally I am from the mindset of POSITIVE reasons to group. Making solo bad via downtime to encourage grouping is not ideal way of doing it IMO. Devs will ultimately decide, but Solo players, and partial solo players represent a huge player base. Additionally even group players like myself that almost always group only, also will occasionally solo if I cant get a group. Especially if I'm waiting around for people or whatever. I personally don't like it when I do solo if its just super painful downtime between actions. Just sitting around watching health tick up is horrible to me personally.

I think things that discourage grouping is for example, when there is a random chest people find, and only 1 item inside has to be split between 6 players, versus when a solo person finds a chest they get all the loot. So mechanics where 1 item per person in a group in each chest, would be a Positive improvement to encourage grouping. Same goes for Nodes etc...

Mobs will need to die 6X+ faster with grouping versus solo. Or alternately a group can kill mobs 6x+ better than if they were solo (not just xp), so the loot from that should be 6x+ better.

Solo players being able to farm gold faster than groups because gold is split between entire group is a problem. So balancing that needs to be done.

 

[RazorBrains]

My attitudes have softened towards these types of old school MMO mechanics over the years but wouldn't a regen rate out of combat that gets you up and running again quickly go against that philosophy of downtime between pulls and what not? Like in early EQ.

Not against it but just not sure what the expectation is of downtime from a design perspective. As in EQ because of the regen rates it was much harder for some classes to solo.

This is a valid point. A lot has to be considered when improving solo play, if they make it too good then everyone will solo, because solo is so much easier to do normally.

Personally I am from the mindset of POSITIVE reasons to group. Making solo bad via downtime to encourage grouping is not ideal way of doing it IMO. Devs will ultimately decide, but Solo players, and partial solo players represent a huge player base. Additionally even group players like myself that almost always group only, also will occasionally solo if I cant get a group. Especially if I'm waiting around for people or whatever. I personally don't like it when I do solo if its just super painful downtime between actions. Just sitting around watching health tick up is horrible to me personally.

I think things that discourage grouping is for example, when there is a random chest people find, and only 1 item inside has to be split between 6 players, versus when a solo person finds a chest they get all the loot. So mechanics where 1 item per person in a group in each chest, would be a Positive improvement to encourage grouping. Same goes for Nodes etc...

Mobs will need to die 6X+ faster with grouping versus solo. Or alternately a group can kill mobs 6x+ better than if they were solo (not just xp), so the loot from that should be 6x+ better.

Solo players being able to farm gold faster than groups because gold is split between entire group is a problem. So balancing that needs to be done.

 

[Blyte Plays]

I get this game confused with others, but I believe a design philosophy of this one, has been slow pacing, to encourage socialization. Socialization isnt always viable while soloing. We try and get on the discord and chat while we solo, not just group.. but there aren't always folks available, then you want to focus on efficiency and time management. I can understand turn around time can be frustrating... I've soloed the same beach xavure is speaking about. It's a lonely place lol.

If recovery becomes so fast that a group of all strikers (or sprinkle in one tank for a little more durability) just bouncing aggro around is now viable, because they can just burst encounters down, bandaid and repeat, or even drop combat stance and bandaid mid fight/potion.. it could be bad, it could be interesting as well, and make the game more dynamically viable, I dont know.. just something to think about.

I have nothing to spend money on but level 30 potions, and I drink them like koolaid already. Give me a quick bandaid too, and I'm gonna be non-stop killing.

All I need to do is burst one combat with stamina, then grind another one with fury/follow through, to regen stamina, and flip flop like that all day, with bandaids here and there, potions here and there.. so long as I can race a monster to the finish, my hp loss would be non-issue. I'm never in time out sitting. This is awesome, but starts feeling less like an old school mmo and more like an ARPG.

 

[RazorBrains]

Well first off, the bandage approach is not necessarily this huge time saver. First, bandages can take time to activate, like 5-10 secs. I have seen games where bandages are not 100% guaranteed to work, and they work in varying amounts. Especially if you move or are interrupted. I think the key here is giving people something to actively do to speed up the "feeling of downtime", so they don't just sit there and wait for health to come back.

If you increase the regen rate, you are still sitting there bored, but just for less time. I think its better if the player has something they can actively do. Its no different than casting heal on yourself over and over, it just feels better than just standing there twiddling your thumbs.

Don't get me wrong, I really like group centered games. I want ways to encourage grouping and I think all effort should be in that. However that doesn't mean solo has to be boring and tedious.

There are different types of people out there, some solo 95% vs others solo 30%. I doubt there are very many people that group 100% period. So people are going to solo, no reason to make them completely revolted by the experience.

The way it is now, people have to think about downtime before tackling tough mobs. So they end up grinding very low level mobs which is extremely tedious strictly due to downtime. Where is the challenge in that.

 

[RazorBrains]

If recovery becomes so fast that a group of all strikers (or sprinkle in one tank for a little more durability) just bouncing aggro around is now viable, because they can just burst encounters down, bandaid and repeat, or even drop combat stance and bandaid mid fight/potion.. it could be bad, it could be interesting as well, and make the game more dynamically viable, I dont know.. just something to think about.

I don't see this as a bad thing, first off that's grouping right there. If they are doing that, its probably because they cant find a healer. So it gives options. I have seen games were bandaging is a thing for non spellcasting healers. That's tactics and it makes the game fun. So dropping combat bandaging up, yeah sounds like fun and interesting play right there. I have even played games where healers use bandages on self or players so they don't waste there mana. Again fun tactics to me.

 

[Blyte Plays]

I'd say have the bandaid only return 1/4, 1/3, or 1/2 of your max hp (depending on quality), pretty fast, and not interfering with getting you into the non-combat regen sweet spot. Or have it give a bolstered regen stacking effect, like you are sitting at an ember ring, as far as HP gain. Working it like it could be a 2nd potion in combat, could border on devaluing a support, for grind groups not pushing progress.

There are already these regen potions in game, that when coupled with potent food, could get you back to full HP fast as well. I think they could break the Provisioner into 2 trades personally, the food/tools/field medicine, and the apothecary/alchemist. Its honestly got a lot rolled into it.

That's kinda another concern. How much do you want the provisioner to have? They already have so much.. maybe give tools to the weapon smith and shields to the armorer, if provisioner gets bandaids

 

[Blyte Plays]

One more concern would be, if you have the hp gain out of combat so fast, that now stamina recovery becomes more the issue.. need to keep it in a sweet spot, so there is balance there.

 

[Blyte Plays]

Darn double post

 

[Cedrych Skye]

If slow health regen/stam regen makes solo miserable at any level, the game won't thrive. Solo must have an equitable rate of leveling or else people just won't stick around.