Massive pictures (also Path of Exile thread)

[Aklyon]

Not really sure where this topic will end up, but I mostly just wanted to point out this picture, which is somehow 16k x 15k px and yet it still loaded for me the first time in firefox.

[zespri]

This is a cool pic, I like it! I've seen something like this done before for a different game, but can't remember which.

[keith.lamothe]

This is a cool pic, I like it! I've seen something like this done before for a different game, but can't remember which.

Final Fantasy 10?

[Hearteater]

That reminds me of the article about Straightening Out Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid.

[LaughingThesaurus]

That reminds me of the article about Straightening Out Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid.

Whoa what.
This is entirely not what I expected it to be like. I remember it not being that linear.

[Aklyon]

Its not just a pic, you know. Theres a version of it on their website based off the current version (that picture technically is of the next version of the game's skilldrasil) that you can poke around with, though currently its impossible to actually reach high enough level to use all of the points you can on there.


(Also, I have a extra key sitting around if anyone wants to try out some stuff before theres a wipe and open beta happens )

[LaughingThesaurus]

I actually have heard of Path of Exile and its monstrous skill tree before as well. I like the idea of it, but the problem with something quite that massive is how easy it must be to screw up your build... and then where do you end up? I figure PoE sits firmly in no-respec junction, so you're kind of out of luck there.

Edit: After looking at the website, it's only in kinda-respec boulevard, so it might be worth a not being too concerned about.

[Lancefighter]

yeah respecs arent too hard to come by.

My main problem with poe is that an animation cant be cancelled. See 'kiting' in traditional mobas.. simply not possible in poe. Also, spells felt kinda bland.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I think spells are bland because of how you can add gem effects to each spell to make them un-bland later on.
...and animations can't be canceled? That bugs me the most about Torchlight 2. I have all these sweet spells but they lock me in place. Being a glass cannon, that's REALLY bad. Then again, maybe there's something for that way later down the line, like an increased cast speed sort of thing. Who knows? All I know is it's irritating and makes you so extremely vulnerable.

[Aklyon]

Its not a moba though. At all. The only way you'd get this and a moba confused is if people dropped the term and combined them into the ARTS genre.
Besides that, you'e got basically all of your ARTS stuff you'd expect, except for gold:  loot, (many) monsters, bosses, rare monsters, magic loot, rare loot, quest items, uniques, randomly appearing (in caves or other indoor dungeon areas) giant chests, and you have a map. (theres also a minimap available in options)

I've had plenty of luck dodging attacks, but then again, I haven't been trying melee classes. I've been playing summoner witch, other kinds of more direct witch, and rangers. Except for the irritating flickerstrike wielding monsters, I can shoot (or in Firestorm's case, rain down fire), run away, and continue fighting, or I stay behind the zombies, summon skeletons, and throw firestorm from behind them, though more because I like the spell than because it does the best damage. Kiting is sorta kinda important for high-level rangers, most of the ranger youtube videos involve it.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I'm not worried about it as a MOBA, more of as an ARPG in general. In my experience, you die fairly quickly in ARPGs no matter what you are, especially later on. So, anything that stops your movement is actually potentially disastrous. However, if the entire game in general is slower paced, then you being slow paced works. My example of Torchlight 2 assumes that the game is fast paced.

But fact of the matter is, I haven't played as it, so I can't tell you how it really works out in practice. If kiting things around as a ranged class still works regardless, then it's fine. It also depends on how fragile you actually end up being, but as long as your witch isn't actually made of cardboard, then it should be fine.
...also, the extent melee characters typically "kite" involves retreating when health is low, and avoiding getting completely surrounded by hordes of enemies. It's kinda subtle but extremely important. That probably applies in MOBAs as well, but I wouldn't really know.

[Aklyon]

Well, I can give you an example of how kiting doesn't work: Hardcore Turbo leagues. Turbo speeds everything the hell up, and generally makes it, as far as I've heard, exceeedingly hectic, though right now its not available as a normal league, since its sorta experimental.

GGG makes a series of 'build of the week' videos where they choose one of the builds particularily interesting that someone submitted, show it off (sometimes not as well as the player due to the dev playing as them on a local copy version of the character), and generally show some high-end stuff. It probably explains the fighting better than me blabbing about it here.

(If your witch has slightly less health than its powerful zombie summons, but much more health than the plentiful skeleton summons and an aura that gives a huge mana regen boost at the cost of a large mana reservation out of total mana, does that count as made of cardboard?)

[LaughingThesaurus]

I'd say that doesn't count as being made of cardboard.
Allow me to explain how my Torchlight 2 character works. In major act boss fights, the fight will end one way or another in about 10 or 20 seconds. From full health, I can lose a quarter to half of my health in one shot. Diving into groups of enemies is suicide. This is on normal difficulty. However, when I use all of my fire spells, enemies melt in seconds flat.

And I may check out those videos. That's a really cool idea.

[Aklyon]

Minor note about the videos: THeres been 2 or 3 major changes to the skilldrasil since they started making them, so not all of them will work as exactly as they did then. (especially #9 I think, the one that they showed off partly because of how absurdly powerful it was and giving him the dubious honor of first build to merit a noticeable nerf based on itself since Avatar of Fire was removed)

[Lancefighter]

melee classes are the worst. They cant deal optimal dps AND move at the same time.. AT ALL.

Anyway, the only reason I compare it to a moba is that I find mobas typically are closer to rpg games than strategy games. Sure, dota has a lot of unit control tacked in, but calling it an action rts, when it plays more like diablo, seems kinda silly.

Granted, animation cancelling is something, that if I am not mistaken, was considered a bug in the wc3 engine. Yet.. it is something more fundamental to any game of this type than almost anything else, I believe. I will grant you, that it does not quite even have to allow me to cancel animations - I just wish for the animations not to take up the entire length of time between attacks/spells.

For instance, in dota, a base attack time of 1.7 or so is average. So if I issued an attack command, every 1.7 seconds I would begin an attack. However, the attack's animation does not take 1.7 seconds. In an arbitrary case, lets look at Zeus. He has a 1 second long attack anim - He 'frontswings' for .633 seconds, releases a projectile, then 'backswings' for .366 seconds. However, given all of this, I still have .7 seconds to move around and do things. As attackspeed increases, overall everything gets compressed - the frontswing is shorter, the backswing is shorter, and the 'spare time' is shorter.. but it is still there. This means that there is a non-trivial amount of time between each animation where I can move, cast a spell, etc, while still maintaining optimal damage.
I'm actually not sure if it is 1.7 seconds after the projectile is released, or 1.7 seconds after the start of the frontswing.. hm I should test that.
the wc3 engine allowed you to cancel the animation as soon as the projectile was released (or, whenever you want). If I decide this attack isnt what I want to be doing, I can cancel it whenever I want and walk away, without my 'attack' going on cooldown (unless the projectile was released)
(I kinda wish the lol wiki had the same info - I would be very interested to see the attack times of each champion. Then again, most of them are <.2s, making 'kiting' in league a lot easier. Then again, for comparison - drow's max rank slow is 60%. Ashe's is 35%)

In PoE, my attack was like 1.2? attacks per second. Thats .833 seconds per attack. However, I am completely stationary for the entire .833 seconds. And immediately after that animation finishes, I can start an attack. I can never cancel an attack, I can never move between attacks optimally.

Now, why I've written such a long explaination for why I dislike playing PoE, I am not really sure. It has a really good skill system and the 'gem' system is pretty nice. the difference in armors is kinda cool, particularly how they made the difference between armor/energyshield/evasion (str, int, agi respectively)