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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.
How many ACTIVE Skills would you prefer for ASHES of CrEATION ?!?
ArchivedUser
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How many ACTIVE skills are required to guarentee awesome Gameplay ?
To set up unique CLass Builds ?
What are your WISHES `?
To set up unique CLass Builds ?
What are your WISHES `?
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Comments
I can't get enough, yeah, I can't get enough.
More importantly, for each ability to have a " purpose " , not spammable, and a broad perception
(i.e. Similar to Utility Abilities, but broader )
But its even more important to keep the binomial coefficient between the total amount of skills and the aviable amount high aka 2:1 balance.
That provides highest build diversity at lowest developing cost.
I think the word active is confusing. If active means, how many skills do I need on my taskbar, then it should stay moderately complex at 10ish. If active means, how many skills can I choose from to put on my taskbar, then having choices would be nice. I'd rather these choices came from skill trees than just a menu of options though.
-tug
Cant figure out why its more attractive -forsomebody- to have LESS available skills (in a fight)
Plz explain to me .
Gap open - Gap close - Root CC to negate them.
Speed buff - Snare CC to negate it.
4x CC ...4x Self.
(I would also make these 'staged' range modifiers)
Thats 8 purely on the movement side, although you could divvy them up and make them class specific pairs and such.
They might make some automatically invoked by others.
No idea really until I see what system design they are using.
Given the choice Id rather have button spamming absolutely minimised and rationalised.
I want to be looking at the screen, not hunting 30 keyboard keys for the highly specific one I need.
Ideally I would not need to use anything other than direction/jump/prone keys and mouse.
ie. not even take my fingers off any keys.
it gets to the point where skill makes no difference anymore. ITS JUST LUCK to have the right build in the right situation. dont u think so ?
I don't see the problem. If you are built for pve farming and someone attacks you...risk vs reward. You risked the possibility of being at a disadvantage in the event of an attack in order to accomplish your objective of farming mobs. Pvp combat is always going to involve luck unless you know all the abilities the other person is using, all the gear they have equipped, how they like to fight, etc. This applies no matter how many active skills you can have. Plus, there is no guarantee you will lose. Maybe you are skilled enough to kill the pker even with just your pve farming build or the other player isn't very good.
i can show more skill with more skills!
when we talk about the amount of useable skills in a fight ... we assume all skills gonna be very special
I have played WoW that allowed me to have menu bars all other the damn place and it didn't make me a better player.
ESO on the other hand only allows 2 bars, one for each weapon. You have to make hard choices about what skills you want, how they will synergize and how well you can use them. Much more skill involved.
Imo skill build isnt the appropriate place for risk vs reward, you either play the augment switching game if its easy to change augments or you're excluded from large parts of the game because your build is useless for many activities.. both cases reflect bad game design without question.
So builds would be 'allround' builds to some degree anyway (allround in terms of effectiveness in masspvp/smallscalepvp/farming/worldbosspve/dungeons but not heal/dps/tank).
There is a pretty big set of actions all players would want, abilitys like reposition, fast dmg, slow dmg, stun, kick, stun removal, survivabilty, debuff, burst.
If you just choose 1 for each of that kind, you already filled 9 slots on your actionbar.
Means you could choose just 1 more skill for 3 categories.
Choosing one of 6 skills of each kind creates a huge balancing issue:
It is impossible! to make all skills equal useful, so theres always 1 (maybe 2) skill thats gonna be slightly better -> Here we go FotM build = no diversity at all.
You say there would be diverstiy because other stuff would be important for other circumstances, but note the following: If your going to clear a dungeon, you will use the build suited for dungeon clearing, right? Guess what build your 39 teammates will use..
Not to mention that your gonna be pushing just the 2-3 attack skills all day without even a option for diversity.
Lets assume we would be abel to use more active skills:
First of all, the greater amount of skills would allow people to specialize more into one specific part because they wouldn't loose effectivity within other parts of the game completely [Since they're still abel to assign a small amount of (probably less optimised - skill tree wise) skills that cater to the other parts].
Assuming we could choose 3 out of 6 skills that cater to the various categories:
We still pick the same 1-2 stronger skills, however we also pick one of the more equalized ones aka player choice starts to matter! Your now doing the 40 man dungeon and everyone has a slightly diffrent build (further increasing skill numbers to 5 out of 10 would increase this effect even more).
You would be abel to rotate between 6 attacks instead of 2 by default and since you're abel to truly optimize your build for reasons stated above, you could adjust this to 3-12 easily as you wish. You still have the ability to create your 3 button spam class if you like and leave the freedom to other players who wish to use more complex rotations.
And ofc its possible to predict the kind of people that look into the forums regulary: The amount of persons that dont like the game concept will be smaller than the amount of persons that like it. Why would the average person keep visiting a forum about something he doesnt like?
In addition: the combat system is a very important part within a mmo, its in many cases (ofc not all) the key point if a person will be playing the game or not.
@Rune_Relic
...so you want minimal button spamming but only use ~4 keys (since you dont want to move your fingers).. Means you want a game where you have to push the keys once every 30 seconds? Amazing idea!
But the game already exists, its called league of legends
A high amount of skills doesnt make you a better player by default.
But if one happens to be a bad player, one would clearly be worse than a good player.
Way more as it would be the case with small amount of skills.
Because with more skills come more options and more options mean more combinations that better suit the situation in favor to skilled players.
Your argument is invalid.
You missed the option to blend out skill bars/reduce the size/buy bigger screen in wow also.
I disagree with almost everything you said. People will have different roles within the raid/dungeon, so they will not be taking the same skills as you. Intrepid have already stated that straight dps won't always win you a fight, so people will need to focus on other things as well, such as cc, buffing/debuffing, etc. The point isn't to have one build that you use for everything. You won't be excluded from any activities because you can switch your skill build to tailor to the content you are trying to do and for what the group may need. It is your option to try and have every kind of skill on your bar, nothing says you can't, it is your choice and its a valid choice. But, you will not be great in any one area because of it, which is a consequence of your choice. Intrepid wants skills to be situational and for you to choose your skills based on the situation(s) you think you will most likely encounter at the time. If you have enough active skill slots to cover every possible situation it takes away from their vision for combat.
Having more active skills also does not do anything to solve button mashing, WOW is a perfect example of that. There is always only maybe 6 or 7 skills you will regularly use and the rest are all situational. I just don't believe that having access to skills for every situation all at the same time is conducive to Intrepid's stated vision.
You actually specialize more when there is a smaller amount of abilities you can have active. The more active abilities you can have, the less specialized you will be because the pool of abilities you don't have active is much smaller, thus increasing the likelihood you will have many of the same spells active as everyone else.
I didn't say "predict", I said "know". You said that there "will" as in it's a truth when there is no way of you knowing for certain it is true. People visit forums for things they don't like in hopes to change the thing, especially if the thing is still in a malleable state. As people keep saying, now is the time to give feedback while systems are still in development.
Calling someone else's argument invalid simply because you have a different perspective doesn't actually make it invalid. I agree with you that having more skills does give you more options, but that is because it gives you more possible builds to make and use. But again, I just don't think we should have enough active abilities to make a build that can handle any and all situations that could arise.
Yeah, but it isn't necessarily even me that has a problem with immersion, it is Steven. He has said he wants the game to be immersive and for people to focus more on the world than the UI, so making more UI that takes up the screen just seems counter-productive imo.
I think where we fundamentally disagree is on whether our builds should be included in risk vs reward game-play. You think it shouldn't, I think it should. Because I am fine with having more active abilities in games where risk vs reward isn't really a thing. Like WOW or FF14. But, risk vs reward is an important design philosophy in Ashes and I believe having less active skills would better support that part of the team's philosophy.
Due to GCD you will still be able to use only small number of skills in a time period, but you will have much more CHOICE.
This means higher skill cap, mor tactical decisions in combat. More CC, more anti CC, more movement skills, more tools (buffs, debuffs).
I prefer this type of combat much more then simplistic "few skills, skill bar" where everyone (belonging to same class combo) basically fights almost the same (because there is not much possibility for different types of combat).
And more variations means more fun combat. More fun world.
Can't say what a sweet spot is for me personally, it depends from game to game.
Ofc there are various roles within a 40 man group, you still have !at least! 5 people of the same class that fulfil the same role. And all of them take the same build, maybe one takes another debuff but thats it. If you want to discuss with people about your class skills, theres no reason to because theres a clear FotM.
You wont be abel to just switch your build as you demand, steven already denied that and hes right by doing so.
With a low amount of high situational skills, you'd end up with a) doing nothing most of the time b) spam 1 attack all day (atm probably the combo attack).
Yes you use 6-7 skills in wow on a very regular basis. You say 'only' but with your idea of 10 skills total, you'd be using just 1-3.
Its true a small skill pool to chose from would be shite, with simple math its easy to calculate the optimal active skills/skillpool balance and its 1:2. Everything diffrent from that will increase developing cost with less overall improvement.
Certain it's true, i didnt say there wont be any people who want many skills. I said it will be biased. I didnt say by how much just 'somehow' that could be 1 person less voting for 20+ skills, it could be 100. Not everyone will keep following this project for that particular reason. If i wouldnt want to follow a mmo through its whole development process, i would have stopped watching aoc news months ago.
A false statement is invalid and it clearly was. You cant just say choosing between key1,2,3,4,5 during combat is as complex as choosing key1,1,2,1,1.
Combat isnt just about putting your skills onto the action bar, its about actualy using your skills. The less you have the less complex it gets. The unskilled player would have a way easier time figuring out the best rotations/situations to use a skill, thus lowering the skill gap.
If (i didnt play that game) ESO still managed to be more complex than wow because of better synergized skills, its because they put more effort into the skills, not because they limited the skillbar. Thats not about opinions.
Having a greater skill set doesnt necessarily mean your abel to do literally anything perfect. You could still lock out effectivity in many situations by skill trees. But atleast you could do something instead of nothing, even if it still isnt very competitive.
Idk whats immersive about only beeing abel to make 10 moves, or beeing abel to kill a massive dragon but not the average troll that attacks you on your way back to town.
Imo they could hide the whole skillbar and just make player assign keys to skills. You dont need a low amount of skills for that.
Including risk vs reward into your skillbar would just further seperate pve and pvp players. Pve players would just go make a coffee if someone attacks them and pvp players wouldnt be invited to dungeon groups with the wrong abilitys.
But steven wants to create a pvx game where everyone participate in everything.