Adenture School to be updated
The Horizons team has posted some info on the possible changes to the Adventure School in the game.
information
05/25/2004
Findar
quote:
Adventure School Changes
Some proposed ideas for upcoming changes to adventure schools.
With some of the initial combat and ability changes out of the way, we've been discussing the broader issues with schools and abilities. We have been formulating ways to provide a more engaging combat experience with a greater emphasis on decision-making as the leading factor in whether a fight is won or lost.
One of the biggest hurdles we want to overcome is the current lack of distinction of the abilities given by schools. Most schools have a great deal of overlap with each other in the types of abilities they have, such as a snare effect, a root/stun, area of effect damage, and so on. Characters in different schools can do too many of the same types of actions, and even within the scope of a single school there are multiple abilities that functionally accomplish the same goal.
We recognize this situation as undesirable. Each school should be differentiated enough from the others that it has its own style of play. This would provide for a bigger benefit to forming diverse groups since each member would bring new capabilities that blend for maximum effect. It would also allow for more distinct customization of a character based upon the mixture of schools joined. Abilities carried over from another school would influence more significantly how a character plays, rather than the current motivations for multi-schooling such as spell access and passive abilities like Dodge. Monsters would also benefit from such changes, as it would become a different challenge to defeat a monster depending on what school(s) it is in.
Another major shortcoming we have come to recognize is the timer system. With timers being the only limiting factor, decisions are often influenced by the fact that the sooner an action is used, the sooner the timer will be complete and that action available again. This leads to a style of gameplay in which the primary focus is using each spell/ability as soon as it "lights up", sometimes referred to internally as "whack-a-mole". We have made attempts in the past to make certain actions more situational with 5 or 10-minute timers, as well as shared timers, but the effectiveness of these has been limited at best. Even with a long timer, one can still make the sound argument it is best to use the action as soon as it is available so that it can be utilized as many times as possible in a given time period.
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