Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
So, it is not 100% active dodge.
For instance, GW2 has Distortion and Blur which increases evade.
The player-initiated dodge/evade is 100%, with a cd. The stats built in to the different classes are otherwise. I do believe that's an important distinction, as opposed to lumping them all together.
I said that it can't be 100% active dodge and block - an RPG is going to include ways for a character to increase their ability to dodge/evade and block attacks rather than rely on player skill 100%.
Not that I'm disagreeing with your earlier points on whether or not we should have more active or passive block or what the balance should be, just pointing out that GW2 is 100% active damage avoidance, if I had to coin a term.
Edit: Posting my own thoughts, forgot to include earlier. Derp.
I want there to be some forms of active avoidance in the game. Playing a game where you can choose when to block or dodge adds so much depth that today, there's little excuse to not have at least some active avoidance. It doesn't have to be over the top, but it should be there to a minimum extent.
That being said, I'm fine with or without passive damage mitigation in the game. By mitigation, I mean that if it's passive, it should stop a percentage, not all, of the damage. I am against passive avoidance where you'd avoid 100% of the damage. How I envision this would work is that there could be maybe 2-3 stats for damage mitigation, and your character would pull from whichever stat was highest. For example, rogues could have increased evasion or a parry if statted for it. Someone with a shield might have blocking or parrying be their highest stat. A mage might have low everything but still benefits a tad from some random evasion they have. That sort of thing.
Of course, there could be skills to increase this chance as well, as that adds more of a skill element to passive mitigation. The mage could have a blur skill where they cast illusion magic to obscure themselves from view. The bard could sing a song to have allies ignore their wounds, lowering damage taken, etc. I'm more than fine with these, as well.
Basically, I'm only really against having something like passive evades or block that would have a very significant impact without any modifying input from the player. This is especially because this is a PvE but also PvP game, that has PvP as a large focus, and PvP and PvE are agnostic skill and gear wise. Imagine surviving a raid mechanic just because you happened to evade that one super strong attack. Okay, cool, you may laugh and tell your friends about it. But now imagine if you're playing PvP and you cast your ultimate ability, something that should take down a full half of an enemy's health, and *poof*, you get blocked because the tank's shield happened to proc. That would be so infuriating, and rightly so. Now, if the shield procced and your attack only did about a third of their health in damage, you might be annoyed, but it's not 100% wasted. Instead, its effectiveness was reduced by 30-40%. Still a large number, I know, but it gets the point across.
I don't know what 100% avoidance means.
RNG proc should be proc for other skills besides just block.
Games of chance are games of chance.
RPGs typically include some form of RNG - I don't know that they must include RNG.
But, an RPG must include some way to increase damage avoidance as you build your character rather than relying 100% on player skills.
Note that in most games, mitigation and avoidance are separate methods of defense. Rng avoidance is frustrating for attackers and does nothing to reward skillful play for defenders. It's also a fairly outdated system. Active avoidance is more entertaining, more immersive, and skill based. You can still increase the effectiveness of your avoidance methods with stats, and you can still increase your damage mitigation with stats.
Stop RNG when fighting : if you have anticipated your control because it was just the right moment to use this skill, it's a shame that RNG ruin all your strategy. If you are using a CC when your opponent is actively in defensive stance, it's a bad timing, so YOU failed.
The absolute minimum for me would be having skills in place for dodging and blocking. As long as success is 100% determined by player skill. So something similar to GW2, I am totally fine with that.
Moving defenses to passives which trigger on %, moves the character power dependency towards gear and stats instead of player skill. And I don't think anyone wants to end up in a situation were combat is largely determined by the gear and stats that a character has. Sure gear and stats should have impact to a certain degree, as these elements are important in character building.
However a skilled player should always have a chance to beat a player with better gear/stats.
Basically :
"he blocked 9/10 hits because he has X gear with Y % block chance, I need to get gear Z" - No thank you
"I baited him into blocking and wasting his resources, but I made the mistake by rolling into his AOE. I need get better at dodging that AOE, and maybe I should get some resistances or HP to not get 1-shot by that AOE" - Yes please