Cooldown

[realdead_man]

Please. PLEASE please get rid of the ridiculous cool-downs on the magic!
If you keep it, you might as well get rid of MANA/enegry.


I am VERY upset you put a cool down on "dreegs eye"

That SUCKS.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Did you even read my post?

Mine was apparently skipped by a few of you.

If you read my post, I addressed your points(lower damage/effect and/or increased cost due to removing cooldown of abilities) and showed what the result would be, if that was implemented.
Do you want your Pneumatic Burst to only heal 5% of your health? Or increase the cost of your Grenado by 500%? Or what about restricting your abilities, so that they require a certain factor, like the enemy burning/being knocked down, before being usable(and as such, requires an extra ability/certain items, and as such, predefines/limits your build)?


As for transmuters increasing power at the cost of CD(or the opposite), well, that is the point!
They are there to greatly change the way that the skill behave, giving you 2(or more) different ways to utilize the skill. Transmuters are not meant as an upgrade. Otherwise, they would simply have been added to the line as the other upgrades.


As I said, Time is added to these things for a reason. Otherwise, the basic model would have changed years ago.
Can you imagine any RPG without Cooldowns?

But, if you have a crystal clear view of how to do it, without breaking the game, feel free to elaborate.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Do you want your Pneumatic Burst to only heal 5% of your health? Or increase the cost of your Grenado by 500%? Or what about restricting your abilities, so that they require a certain factor, like the enemy burning/being knocked down, before being usable(and as such, requires an extra ability/certain items, and as such, predefines/limits your build)?

That was my suggestion, so one would assume that's what I'd want. Though Pneumatic Burst is a buff so in this case it would make more sense for an increased cost instead of reduced effectiveness.

I would love a no CD Grenado that had a 500% increased energy cost. Though it might need to be more than 500%, I don't have any idea what it's current cost is because the CD makes it pointless, you can "spam" it on CD and not see your energy dip.

What's worse is currently a lot of the skill CDs are like 2-3 seconds, which doesn't mean you can't use it often or as a main attack, it just means you have to spend a lot of time kiting or standing around. It honestly feels like half of the CDs in the game exist for the sole purpose of adding value to the cooldown reduction stat.

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Can you imagine any RPG without Cooldowns?

Yes, yes I can. Cool downs are a very new thing to RPGs, created around the advent of MMOs. There were no cooldowns in D&D back in the day, there are no cooldowns in most current traditional RPGs. I mean I have stacks and stacks of jRPGs and aRPGs I'm looking at right now and most of them don't have a single "cooldown" in them, many of them recently released.

Here's a completely relevant example. There are like 6 skills in all of Diablo II with a meaningful cast delay, the longest being 6 seconds, and all of them IIRC are abilities with a duration and mostly summons. I believe cast delays were also added after release, and most of them are for Druid and Assasin skills.

[Dark]

Originally posted by Dr Mcninja:

Cool downs gives diversity.

If you want to spam everything you might as well use your logic with eating food and stick with spam.

What will you say next? Get rid of DoT skills?

Lol...

This isn't just directed to you but everyone and the developers.

I started playing the Elementalist and really like this char, but running out of mana does suck and leaves this char vulnerable until mana regenerates. Now, I know you guys are talking about cool downs, but to me running out of mana and having a cool down can be one and the same.

Your comments about spamming makes me scratch my head and wonder why you would make a generalized statement like this when in fact melee combat is spammed is it not? This is how a melee chars stays alive don't they?

When a Caster runs out of their primary power that is allowing them to do combat in a similar fashion but using magic to do their fighting. is that not allowed for a caster to spam their spells but its okay for a melee combat type char to spam their melee weapons?

I'm trying to make sense of how you guys compare and generalize the two when comparing them. Because I really don't see the difference when it comes to how combat is performed when a melee char is only doing the same thing a caster wants to do to survive a battle when spamming their spells versus a melee char spamming their sword endlessly.

My impression so far, is that this toon needs a bit off a buff on their mana pool. that might help keep this char more viable.

just an observation.

[CatPerson]

Cool downs are a very new thing to RPGs, created around the advent of MMOs.

My impression has been that cool downs were often introduced because "spamming" a skill became too much of an EZ thing, prompting complaints (Diablo1 mage fireball OP'd! etc) - so you ended up with same one skill wonders. Developers used cooldown instead of the "memorize spells every night" method to encourage variety.

Because as much as one might dislike cooldowns, in an action oriented game - as opposed to a party and/or turn-based story rpg - memorizing spells would be even worse.

That all said - I personally have never minded short cooldowns (3-10 seconds). However, I do feel that GD has too many mega-long cooldowns (30-60 seconds), which often = "I'm not picking that skill to focus on/use."

[Dark]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

Cool downs are a very new thing to RPGs, created around the advent of MMOs.

My impression has been that cool downs were often introduced because "spamming" a skill became too much of an EZ thing, prompting complaints (Diablo1 mage fireball OP'd! etc) - so you ended up with same one skill wonders. Developers used cooldown instead of the "memorize spells every night" method to encourage variety.

Because as much as one might dislike cooldowns, in an action oriented game - as opposed to a party and/or turn-based story rpg - memorizing spells would be even worse.

That all said - I personally have never minded short cooldowns (3-10 seconds). However, I do feel that GD has too many mega-long cooldowns (30-60 seconds), which often = "I'm not picking that skill to focus on/use."

I do agree that cool downs are necessary. but on minor spells they are not. on a major spell that causes major damage, okay, yes. But on the minor spells that you use as a primary attack. no.

[CatPerson]

Originally posted by Dark:

I do agree that cool downs are necessary. but on minor spells they are not. on a major spell that causes major damage, okay, yes. But on the minor spells that you use as a primary attack. no.

I feel that GD does have those - Occultist has the poison eye thing (if you don't use the offshoot that puts a cooldown on it), arcanist has the missile, melee classes have their own. Not in the sense that they are supposed to be primary big-damage ... but they are the skills that you're supposed to use between cooldowns, in a skill rotation of 1-2-3-3-3-3-3-1-2-3-3-3-3 sort of thing.

What is missing is having more than one of such skills, so one doesn't feel like one always has to use the same one in every build. So if I make multiple soldier-based builds, they don't all have Cadence as the main rotation filler.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Do you want your Pneumatic Burst to only heal 5% of your health? Or increase the cost of your Grenado by 500%? Or what about restricting your abilities, so that they require a certain factor, like the enemy burning/being knocked down, before being usable(and as such, requires an extra ability/certain items, and as such, predefines/limits your build)?

That was my suggestion, so one would assume that's what I'd want. Though Pneumatic Burst is a buff so in this case it would make more sense for an increased cost instead of reduced effectiveness.

I would love a no CD Grenado that had a 500% increased energy cost. Though it might need to be more than 500%, I don't have any idea what it's current cost is because the CD makes it pointless, you can "spam" it on CD and not see your energy dip.

What's worse is currently a lot of the skill CDs are like 2-3 seconds, which doesn't mean you can't use it often or as a main attack, it just means you have to spend a lot of time kiting or standing around. It honestly feels like half of the CDs in the game exist for the sole purpose of adding value to the cooldown reduction stat.

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Can you imagine any RPG without Cooldowns?

Yes, yes I can. Cool downs are a very new thing to RPGs, created around the advent of MMOs. There were no cooldowns in D&D back in the day, there are no cooldowns in most current traditional RPGs. I mean I have stacks and stacks of jRPGs and aRPGs I'm looking at right now and most of them don't have a single "cooldown" in them, many of them recently released.

Here's a completely relevant example. There are like 6 skills in all of Diablo II with a meaningful cast delay, the longest being 6 seconds, and all of them IIRC are abilities with a duration and mostly summons. I believe cast delays were also added after release, and most of them are for Druid and Assasin skills.

- Pneumatic burst is one of the best healing abilities in the game, because it has a short cooldown and a relatively high healing %.
If you suggest that the healing stay as is, but the energy cost increases, you will be practically immortal with a rank 4 PB, if you have a high enough energy pool/regen and energy potions. Unless you want to make the cost so high, that it gimps low level characters from actually using it(or atleast restricts them to use it once every 15 seconds, which would be worse than the current cooldown).
Or what about healing abilities without an energy cost, like Menhir's Will? With no cooldown, the ability basically makes you immortal, because you will never go below 30% health, unless you get 1-hit by 10000 damage.

- So a 150+ energy cost per grenado(rank 1, no upgrades) seems balanced? Im sure your level 10 character can really use that ability alot, right?

- No. A 2-3 second cooldown means that you need to pace yourself in combat and play tactically, instead of rolfmao you keyboard/hold down 1 button to win.

- CDs have existed for a LOOOONG time. Or should I say "casting restrictions". Back in DnD, you had stuff like casting time(could take several turns), which made you quite vulnerable to certain effects/conditions. You could not spam ability after ability in every turn.
And you had limits to how often you could cast a spell per day. The reason for this system?
1) It allows to produce stronger effects/abilities, because there are certain drawbacks(can be countered by various interruption effects/the caster dying before casting, and a limited amount of casts per day, so you would have to choose wisely when to use it)-
2) It gives you the ability to counter enemy casters, since they are vulnerable while casting.
3) It adds a different flow to the combat.
There was also the "exhausted" status which basically was a cooldown after using some big spell.

Cooldown does the same, although slightly reversed.
1) It allows you to produce stronger effects, because there is a drawback(cant cast constantly). But instead of delaying the effect of the ability, like casting time would, it simply adds a "recharge" mechanic, like if you needed to reload your gun or recharge a battery, or something.
2) It gives you the ability to counter enemy casters. Dodge/negate the big badas-s spell, and your enemy would not be able to cast it again for a certain period of time. You then have time to smash the puny mage's face repeatedly with a chair, your fist, or a great battle axe(what ever is available).
3) It adds flow, instead of "hold button to win" or "roflmao keyboard".

- Skyrim, one of the most popular RPGs for the last 2 years, have CDs(Dragon shouts). Why? Because it is a non-resource system, which would otherwise be too powerful.
In many jRPGs, you have stuff like summon cooldown, special ability cooldown etc. There are also a lot of "once per battle" effects.
Also, the resource system(mana/sp) in many of these games works differently, as they either have a fixed amount which regenerates over time(like 100/100) or does not regenerate at all.
If there was a specific game you were refering to, that has similar setup as GD, please name it, and I will look into how it works.

- And while Diablo 2 does only have a few Cooldown based abilities, they were still there. (example. the sorceress had her frozen orb spam changed in LoD, compared to vanilla, so instead a rapid firing, it fired much slower, but dealt much more damage.).
Also, the game was very simplistic in terms of combat. As much fun as it was, there was no pacing, except for the early game(due to mana restrictions).
It simply became "hold right MB down, until everything is dead". Adding to that was the fact that mana was rarely a problem at that point, because ability costs didnt really scale that well, and it was easy enough to rely on gear or potions to counteract that(spending 30 mana per second? Doesnt matter, if you get 30 in return for every kill, and you on average kill 2 per second).

And on a slightly different, but very relevant note. Diablo 2 did not have a lot of(if any) powerful passive abilities that could instantly heal you to almost full health(heals in general was rather limited), or suddenly spike your damage for a limited time.
They were mostly straight stat buffs or simple things like "dodge" and "crit chance" which these days are incorporated into the base statistics of most ARPGs.
All other buffs were active, which meant that they could either be interupted or denied(stunned/frozen).

If the powerful proc-passives of GD was meant to be "always on", then they would have been made so.

Btw, you have yet to name me an RPG with no CDs or similar time restrictions.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by Dark:

Originally posted by Dr Mcninja:

Cool downs gives diversity.

If you want to spam everything you might as well use your logic with eating food and stick with spam.

What will you say next? Get rid of DoT skills?

Lol...

When a Caster runs out of their primary power that is allowing them to do combat in a similar fashion but using magic to do their fighting. is that not allowed for a caster to spam their spells but its okay for a melee combat type char to spam their melee weapons?

I'm trying to make sense of how you guys compare and generalize the two when comparing them. Because I really don't see the difference when it comes to how combat is performed when a melee char is only doing the same thing a caster wants to do to survive a battle when spamming their spells versus a melee char spamming their sword endlessly.

My impression so far, is that this toon needs a bit off a buff on their mana pool. that might help keep this char more viable.

just an observation.

Energy is somewhat a mix of stamina, ki and lifeforce. Some soldier abilities, though clearly not magical, uses energy and have cooldowns. From a lore point of view, it takes effort and focus to use such abilities, and it is why CDs exist for certain effects(lore wise).
You try to dash across 20 meters, slamming into a group of people, and then right after, run the other way again and do it to another group of people, all while wearing 100 pound of equipment(atleast). I will bet you, that is exhausting and you will need a small breather in between.

And about Cadence, well, in it's description, it is mentioned as a calculated combination attack, and not just some random blows. As such, they are far less taxing on the body.
And that is from a lore perspective. There is also a gameplay perspective, which seeks to create diversity and valid options between the different skills and different masteries.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

Originally posted by Dark:

I do agree that cool downs are necessary. but on minor spells they are not. on a major spell that causes major damage, okay, yes. But on the minor spells that you use as a primary attack. no.

I feel that GD does have those - Occultist has the poison eye thing (if you don't use the offshoot that puts a cooldown on it), arcanist has the missile, melee classes have their own. Not in the sense that they are supposed to be primary big-damage ... but they are the skills that you're supposed to use between cooldowns, in a skill rotation of 1-2-3-3-3-3-3-1-2-3-3-3-3 sort of thing.

What is missing is having more than one of such skills, so one doesn't feel like one always has to use the same one in every build. So if I make multiple soldier-based builds, they don't all have Cadence as the main rotation filler.

If you make a soldier focused build, you can use Cadence in a lot of different ways, depending on where you put points into it.
You can make it a heavy Bleed auto attack, or a high single target damage hit, or increase the AoE of the ability. Or a mix.
Same with the other "auto attack" abilities.
And if you want to, Soldier has 2 other "no cooldown" abilities, namely Forcewave(when transmuted) and Blade Arc.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

-snip-

You are still missing the point. Cast times and charges are not cooldowns, they are not "the same thing," they limit how often you can use a skill in a given period of time, but do so in a way that doesn't make you feel like you are standing around waiting. Obviously the power of certain skills needs to be limited in some way, especially if it's really strong. I already said that, and I said cooldowns are only one of many ways of doing so and only gave examples of a few other ways. The issue is cooldowns are the most boring and unnatural way of limiting a skill's use. Instead of coming up with something clever or fun, like building up a certain number of charges, filling up some sort of bar, fufilling some other requirement and being rewarded with the chance of using a fun and powerful skill, it's just stand there for 10-20 seconds and you can use it again.

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Btw, you have yet to name me an RPG with no CDs

Disgaea series, Agarest War series, Mugen Souls, most of the Atelier games, Dark Cloud, most of the Final Fantasy games, D&D 1-2 (I don't know enough about the more recent versions to say). I could go on, most of those are just in view of where I'm sitting right now. I'm going to ignore your "time restrictions" comment because it's not relvant, but most of those games don't have any of those either.

[CatPerson]

If you make a soldier focused build, you can use Cadence in a lot of different ways, depending on where you put points into it.

Yeah, I know. Just like poison eye and missile....the point tho is that it's still the same skill. While I didn't love everything about Diablo2 skilltrees (far from it) I did like that there was more than one and that I could have, say, a Lightning/Fire sorc. Not a Fireball that also does a lot of Lightning. Personal preference is all I suppose. I like a bit more separation.

And don't get me wrong ... I love Grim Dawn. Just in convo's like these I may express what my ultimate preferences are. :)

And if you want to, Soldier has 2 other "no cooldown" abilities, namely Forcewave(when transmuted) and Blade Arc.

I haven't played with the transmuted skills yet. Most of them I haven't liked the sound of, on paper, so I left my builds alone. I'll get around to it at some point.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

-snip-

You are still missing the point. Cast times and charges are not cooldowns, they are not "the same thing," they limit how often you can use a skill in a given period of time, but do so in a way that doesn't make you feel like you are standing around waiting. Obviously the power of certain skills needs to be limited in some way, especially if it's really strong. I already said that, and I said cooldowns are only one of many ways of doing so and only gave examples of a few other ways. The issue is cooldowns are the most boring and unnatural way of limiting a skill's use. Instead of coming up with something clever or fun, like building up a certain number of charges, filling up some sort of bar, fufilling some other requirement and being rewarded with the chance of using a fun and powerful skill, it's just stand there for 10-20 seconds and you can use it again.

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

Btw, you have yet to name me an RPG with no CDs

Disgaea series, Agarest War series, Mugen Souls, most of the Atelier games, Dark Cloud, most of the Final Fantasy games, D&D 1-2 (I don't know enough about the more recent versions to say). I could go on, most of those are just in view of where I'm sitting right now. I'm going to ignore your "time restrictions" comment because it's not relvant, but most of those games don't have any of those either.

Indeed, those mechanics exists. But you have to see WHERE they are used. None of the games you mentioned use the same mechanics as GD. You are basically asking Crate to complete reinvent their classes and the pacing of the entire game.

In many of the games mentioned, you either have cast time, charge time, limit breaks(FF) etc, all of which restricts the power of different abilities.
But the games also plays completely different to GD(most of those are TB btw).


If you insist that GD should change the "easy to use and understand" CD system, then come up with something specific, an example, that shows how it can be done better. For instance, retrofit the half the soldier mastery with mechanics different to CDs.

And sure, they could add a bunch of interesting mechanics, like charging up stuff or what not, but in the end, it would result in the same thing(reducing how often you can use an ability).
And having several different "restrictive" mechanics(like context sensitive and charge mechanics) with different variations(different amount of charges, different ways to charge up) makes it a lot harder for the player to keep track on their character and it's abilities.
It would make it very hard to keep up with when you can use what.
(just imagine having to use the last 6 FF-games different skill and charge mechanics, in one game).

Which is why Cooldown is smart. It is easy to manage(everyone has a feeling of time), and is visually easy to represent without clotting up the UI. It might be "boring", but as I said, there is a reason why it has been heavily used for the past 15 years when it comes to diversify abilities(longer, if you count some of the other stuff).


Also, if an ability takes more than 20 seconds to reuse, it is because it is not meant to be used more than once in normal fights. It's concept and power should reflect that(if you think it does not, then maybe it needs to be balanced, but that is a comepletely different topic).
If an ability takes more than a minute to be ready again, then there is a reason for that too.

Claiming that certain mechanics are boring and unimaginative, but not being able to provide a good, functioning alternative(without changing absolute everything), does not make for a good argument.

So my question is, "Do you even want to play GD?". Because it sounds more like you want to play either Diablo 2 or a TB RPG.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

And sure, they could add a bunch of interesting mechanics, like charging up stuff or what not, but in the end, it would result in the same thing(reducing how often you can use an ability).

You still don't get it, but basically just agreed with my point. Interesting mechanics are not the same as boring cooldowns, but at least you admit they would be interesting and wouldn't change the game balance. That's all I'm saying.

[realdead_man]

You all make great arguments.

I am not 100% against cool downs, just against cool down on the primary attack spell.
Once again, I did not read carefully when I added the skill point.
I am not against cool down for healing spell/ potions
I am not against cool down for WMD spells.

I am not a "click till everything is dead player", but it is easy to do in games like this. (if you want to)

I am against a cooldown on the best, all a round med. damage spell

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Fendelphi:

And sure, they could add a bunch of interesting mechanics, like charging up stuff or what not, but in the end, it would result in the same thing(reducing how often you can use an ability).

You still don't get it, but basically just agreed with my point. Interesting mechanics are not the same as boring cooldowns, but at least you admit they would be interesting and wouldn't change the game balance. That's all I'm saying.

I think you just read what you wanted to read, and cut it out of context... -_-

As I said, they "could" do that(as in the mechanics exist and it would be possible to add them), but it would be a totally different game then, and it would be overly complicated too. It will break much more than it would fix.
As such, it would not help the game in any way. Just because you "can" substitute one thing with another, doesnt mean that it is beneficial.
For instance, we could remove the reload function from shooter games, because hey, who wants to spend time reloading, when you can shoot at stuff instead.
Instead, your ammo automatically refils if you make headshots.
That is more or less what you suggest, if transtlated to a shooter game.

Anyway...
If you dont want to give a reasonable example of how it could be done, fine.
But dont say that I am agreeing with you, because we apparently want 2 very different games.