Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Best Of
Re: Longbow vs. Shortbow [PVE] - My thoughts. Your thoughts?
i think short bow gets held back atm due to the shorter range, the real power in shortbow comes from barrage with arrow storm up (effectivly doubling barrage dmg) however it gets held back (in pvp cause the 5m less range in current meta is devastating).
shortbows definetly feel weaker than the 2 but i think it can work with a specific gear build path which im trying issue is getting said gear is not easy.
shortbows definetly feel weaker than the 2 but i think it can work with a specific gear build path which im trying issue is getting said gear is not easy.
Veeshan
1
Re: Why The Game Needs Fast Travel
Maybe there could be an oxcart kind of thing, where it just goes from city to city, and you can be safely afk the whole way. So people with limited time can make dinner or whatever, if they are going from one city to the next. It could be a building a city choose to build or not, maybe. Then it takes a bit of time, and you can do whatever you need to do in the mean time, RL. But its slow enough, that people who are at the computer wont use it.
Re: Why The Game Needs Fast Travel
Anyone down for barrels in rivers and rapids for fast travel like The Hobbit?
Tank Siege Feedback
Feedback for tank in sieges
Best skills in the kit:
Intimidating Aura: AoE Stagger into Ground Pound peak frontline control.
Ground Pound: AoE stun is peak frontline control.
Rush of Courage: it's 100 free courage.
The Wall: Denial Tool with many applications, mostly used for lane denial and setting up kills. Always a must have.
Charge: Best in-lane mobility skill in the game (for those who dont realize the maps in Ashes are lanes), just over all one of the best design skills in the game.
Tomahawk: This skill is really damn good even though it just doesn't always make sense with a tank kit, but its great for catching high mobility archetypes.
Iron Aura: Free damage reduction is always good and it costs nothing.
Tremoring Strike/Bellow: Adding to the frontline control of the tank. Used this a lot to snare a lot for control.
New Vengeance: When played right, that little stun is potent.
Reflect: By itself, it's a great ability.
Needs Work/Improvement:
Grit: The new grit change is decent, but no ones going remember to press that every ten second and try to control a front line. Two, roll supernatural grit into grit and not require tanks to have to force a point somewhere when they already melt against magic to begin with.
Sustain: Indomitable Spirit & Shake It Off: These skills aren't inherently bad, I want to address the fact there are non tank classes with better ways to mitigate than a tank (heal throughput) and have better sustainability and survivability.
Shake It Off: Shake It Off: This skill, for lack of a better term, feels inconsistent or design strangely. Maybe up the tick rate per half a second and change the requirements?
Between Needs Work/Reworked:
Grapple/Chains sets the tone for most engagements, however I think there are much better implementations of skills out there that would do a better job than how weird grapple behaves. So I'm going to say remove grapple from the game and replace this engagement tool with a force taunt.
From Athena in Smite: 2. Confound – Emits a shockwave that taunts enemies in a cone, forcing them to attack Athena while reducing their attack speed.
Needs Reworked/Removed:
Slam: Not worth a point/better options.
Inciting Strikes: Not worth a point/better options.
Taunt: Not worth a point/better options.
Relentless Vengeance: Not worth a point/better options.
Aegis: Not worth a point.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I'm going to skip a lot of the skills since they’re not bad, but the Tank currently feels unstructured and incohesive.
It's a protector class, it can do that through frontline control and mitigation. But a lot of the buttons feel like bloat and can be more streamlined.
Absorption Field/Protect/Intercept: Can be merged into one skill and it already exists in other games.
"Ultimate: Eagle's Rally Bellona plants a Roman flag at a target location, dealing damage and stunning enemies directly under it. Allies within the flag's radius receive increased protections and physical power for the duration."
See banners in GW2 Warrior Kit, as well.
a clean, visible rally point for a group is a huge plus in the game, it creates the line of contention, pivot point, and the gathering point for all players to be at during siege.
Reflect/Aegis: Aegis always struggled and had tons of potential, here's a skill that can serve that function.
"2. Barrier Formation – Creates a barrier that blocks ranged basic attacks and repels nearby enemies. Reactivating collapses the barrier, dealing damage."
I think merging Reflect and Aegis into one super skill would better serve it, having a conal denial from the tank and making the new ability the real "Stand Behind Me, I'll Protect You" skill and it adds to the class fantasy.
---_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tank Fantasy:
It's got the buttons, needs streamlined and more cohesion. It's almost there. But it doesn't feel like a Frontline Protector yet. But it's hard to say because these skills needs to be brought a lot more inline with each other so it's the true "Stand Behind Me" class.
Best skills in the kit:
Intimidating Aura: AoE Stagger into Ground Pound peak frontline control.
Ground Pound: AoE stun is peak frontline control.
Rush of Courage: it's 100 free courage.
The Wall: Denial Tool with many applications, mostly used for lane denial and setting up kills. Always a must have.
Charge: Best in-lane mobility skill in the game (for those who dont realize the maps in Ashes are lanes), just over all one of the best design skills in the game.
Tomahawk: This skill is really damn good even though it just doesn't always make sense with a tank kit, but its great for catching high mobility archetypes.
Iron Aura: Free damage reduction is always good and it costs nothing.
Tremoring Strike/Bellow: Adding to the frontline control of the tank. Used this a lot to snare a lot for control.
New Vengeance: When played right, that little stun is potent.
Reflect: By itself, it's a great ability.
Needs Work/Improvement:
Grit: The new grit change is decent, but no ones going remember to press that every ten second and try to control a front line. Two, roll supernatural grit into grit and not require tanks to have to force a point somewhere when they already melt against magic to begin with.
Sustain: Indomitable Spirit & Shake It Off: These skills aren't inherently bad, I want to address the fact there are non tank classes with better ways to mitigate than a tank (heal throughput) and have better sustainability and survivability.
Shake It Off: Shake It Off: This skill, for lack of a better term, feels inconsistent or design strangely. Maybe up the tick rate per half a second and change the requirements?
Between Needs Work/Reworked:
Grapple/Chains sets the tone for most engagements, however I think there are much better implementations of skills out there that would do a better job than how weird grapple behaves. So I'm going to say remove grapple from the game and replace this engagement tool with a force taunt.
From Athena in Smite: 2. Confound – Emits a shockwave that taunts enemies in a cone, forcing them to attack Athena while reducing their attack speed.
Needs Reworked/Removed:
Slam: Not worth a point/better options.
Inciting Strikes: Not worth a point/better options.
Taunt: Not worth a point/better options.
Relentless Vengeance: Not worth a point/better options.
Aegis: Not worth a point.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I'm going to skip a lot of the skills since they’re not bad, but the Tank currently feels unstructured and incohesive.
It's a protector class, it can do that through frontline control and mitigation. But a lot of the buttons feel like bloat and can be more streamlined.
Absorption Field/Protect/Intercept: Can be merged into one skill and it already exists in other games.
"Ultimate: Eagle's Rally Bellona plants a Roman flag at a target location, dealing damage and stunning enemies directly under it. Allies within the flag's radius receive increased protections and physical power for the duration."
See banners in GW2 Warrior Kit, as well.
a clean, visible rally point for a group is a huge plus in the game, it creates the line of contention, pivot point, and the gathering point for all players to be at during siege.
Reflect/Aegis: Aegis always struggled and had tons of potential, here's a skill that can serve that function.
"2. Barrier Formation – Creates a barrier that blocks ranged basic attacks and repels nearby enemies. Reactivating collapses the barrier, dealing damage."
I think merging Reflect and Aegis into one super skill would better serve it, having a conal denial from the tank and making the new ability the real "Stand Behind Me, I'll Protect You" skill and it adds to the class fantasy.
---_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tank Fantasy:
It's got the buttons, needs streamlined and more cohesion. It's almost there. But it doesn't feel like a Frontline Protector yet. But it's hard to say because these skills needs to be brought a lot more inline with each other so it's the true "Stand Behind Me" class.
Solvryn
1
Re: Why The Game Needs Fast Travel
I haven't truly played EVE, so I'm not sure if I'm right here, but isn't it pretty much the biggest mmo world and has no fast travel?
Even the alpha testing that I did for an upcoming EVE project had a way smaller world, but it still had no fast travel and going to the other side of the map was a wholeass adventure, with dangerous mobs camping gates, people controlling systems and killing anyone who's not with them, proper planning of jumps cause you had to control fuel expenditure (and stations for refueling weren't present in each system) and in a later update you even needed an item that would jump you through unconnected systems, which had its own radius so you'd need to plan for that as well.
And I fucking loved that part of the game
Even the alpha testing that I did for an upcoming EVE project had a way smaller world, but it still had no fast travel and going to the other side of the map was a wholeass adventure, with dangerous mobs camping gates, people controlling systems and killing anyone who's not with them, proper planning of jumps cause you had to control fuel expenditure (and stations for refueling weren't present in each system) and in a later update you even needed an item that would jump you through unconnected systems, which had its own radius so you'd need to plan for that as well.
And I fucking loved that part of the game
Ludullu
1
Re: Why The Game Needs Fast Travel
Thank you. That post was more productive than you know. 😉
Re: Why The Game Needs Fast Travel
Songcaller wrote: »Steven used to say grinding would be doable but not efficient. TTK is a shambles. Enchanting is a shambles. Im not talking about fleshed out systems. Im taking about the foundation system design choices. Its not even about placeholders. 🤔
You're contradicting yourself from my point of view. Grinding is currently doable, and not 'efficient', it's only 'efficient' because there's nothing else to do yet.
TTK is a shambles, sure, but 1) some people prefer it as it is and 2) Steven has walked back a lot of his prior concepts of content difficulty as he has presumably learned more about difficult MMO content, so his concept didn't change from the L2/AA style, he just learned to communicate it better.
Enchanting is literally a placeholder, '+1 to every stat', I don't think any game actually does it that way, they have growth formulae for gear, we can't judge Enchanting until they install theirs.
I'm sure that you actually know it's not as simple as 'go big, add Fast Travel' and are just saving keystrokes at this point, but at least criticize the actual problems.
Azherae
1
Re: Why The Game Needs Fast Travel
The game world is empty relative to the goals not 'poorly designed' (at least not definitively so).
It's like complaining that BDO has long pointless roads to ride, because the world team didn't have time to place enough gatherables and PvP is locked pre-50, or that Throne and Liberty's Pre-Talandre overland areas are boring/mob-overcrowded, when they started from an Auto-battler/Astral Hunting grind game with no meaningful gathering/artisanship.
The difference is that Ashes has 'told us what its DNA is supposed to be', and we can explicitly go 'this thing that you have said you will add, is missing, so we have X problem right now'.
I could easily claim 'Ashes needs Fast Travel because its Fishing->Cooking pipeline isn't good' and I'd be very meaninglessly correct. Would it be easier to add Fast Travel than to fix/balance Fishing? Yes. Should they do it? Probably not.
It's like complaining that BDO has long pointless roads to ride, because the world team didn't have time to place enough gatherables and PvP is locked pre-50, or that Throne and Liberty's Pre-Talandre overland areas are boring/mob-overcrowded, when they started from an Auto-battler/Astral Hunting grind game with no meaningful gathering/artisanship.
The difference is that Ashes has 'told us what its DNA is supposed to be', and we can explicitly go 'this thing that you have said you will add, is missing, so we have X problem right now'.
I could easily claim 'Ashes needs Fast Travel because its Fishing->Cooking pipeline isn't good' and I'd be very meaninglessly correct. Would it be easier to add Fast Travel than to fix/balance Fishing? Yes. Should they do it? Probably not.
Azherae
1
Re: Why The Game Needs Fast Travel
Songcaller wrote: »With no fast travel, should there be a destination, say a dungeon for discussion sake, that takes a good hour or so to get to the depths, and one party member disconnects and the remaining party no longer has the ability to fight their way out to safety again, what then for the party that remains and what then for that member that is able to re-connect later but finds they are alone in the dungeon and unable to leave solo?
It's called holes in the grand design. Unfortunately, disconnected millionnaires who run groups and are never alone, have little experience with the issues in the base design which has the opposite trigger than the one desired.
This... is totally separate from the real 'problem', though, even if you dismiss/diminish what akabear is getting at (because yeah, I get it, losing one member shouldn't really make basic backtracking impossible even in big dungeons, but that's a Dungeon Design question)
The problem is the 'gap', not 'traveling'. You know this from BDO. So the 'issue' in the base design is that they want to have both 'the feeling that you live in X place' and 'a way to resolve grouping'.
But your 'disconnected millionaire' thing has no connection to that. A solo player who isn't an explorer/wanderer will probably live somewhere and go to the dungeon with other locals and visitors. The 'fast travel' needed here is only because their Dungeon Design is still in infancy (you could make an argument that the PvE is too trivial and it leads to exp-pump metas, but that's still not a fast travel problem).
Everyone can have that experience if the world is designed well enough. People didn't ride from Kamasylve to Arehaza because someone shouted in world chat that they were forming a party there. If they wanted to party they would form one in Kamasylve (using BDO as the example because it's basically the only game with no Fast Travel, but other games with limited waypoints to teleport out to (and in FF11's case, only one or two options for return target) would often see the same thing happen.
If the POI/Dungeon is more than 6 minutes travel from your home location, just don't go. When the game reaches the point where 'just don't go' is a valid way of playing, or they work out some form of 'one way' teleport to go out to a specific spot or join a group, that should be enough for this game type.
I know that I definitely notice and can simulate 'what TL feels like if I can't teleport more than once or twice a day' and while I won't claim it's 'better' (for me, probably), it recreates that feeling that BDO gives of 'I live here, and this other place counts as a faraway place that I have to plan a trip to visit'.
This comes down to the problem of having dungeons/main exp spots that people have to plan trips to visit because they don't have similar ones nearby, combined with a lack of progress if you don't visit them.
We can list a bunch of things that are causing the problem of feeling that we need fast travel, but we don't have:
Catacombs, Taxi-Caravans, Family Summons, Home-Spring Return Scrolls/Magic, Social Org Trigger Missions, Mini-Arcs, Quest Schemas, most Wandering Bosses, and probably 50% or more of potential Pocket Dungeons.
Azherae
1