@Zastro 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
4 buttons ? Once every 30s. Hhhhmm assume much ? 1. I believe in using skills when appropriate to do so depending on envirnmental factors like what my adversary os doing and where. Not spamming skills for spamming skills sake...aka rotations. 2. I can... left click...left hold....right click ...right hold..middle click....middle hold..left tilt.....right tilt. I can also left + right click......left + center click....right + center click and add tilts too. Then I can add combo holds too. So 4 keys ? No....lots of keys with minimal finger movement. And that before we even consider comboing movements keys with the mouse keys.
As for the loads of skills are required for build variety. Letting people pick 6 out of 6 viable skills from a selection of 10 available skills wont do anything to fix FoTM issues. Everyone will still slot the same 6 skills so balance is essential. Anything that cant be balanced should not be in the game. Problem solved.
The only way to guarantee variety is to ensure ALL skills can be and are balanced. There is a massive pool of skills to pick from. The skill bar is as small as possible to maximise variety from the pool selection.
None of which removes the fact that there are many skills that are simply essential for full functionality in combat. That is what must dictate toolbar size.
so u would prefer 20 UNIQUE awesome skills over 10 UNIQUE awesome SKills ? when we talk about the amount of useable skills in a fight ... we assume all skills gonna be very special
Pretty sure in that quote i said i would be happy with any number of skills. I was just saying that i don't think the number of skills should be the focus. I didn't vote for 10, i voted for 10+ which includes 20, 30, 50, 100 and many more much higher numbers.
Intrepid have already said that they intend to have a pool of 30(ish) active skills ~ however~ how many you'll be able to place on your bar is another story. That figure is still unknown and won't be known until after lots of testing
so u would prefer 20 UNIQUE awesome skills over 10 UNIQUE awesome SKills ? when we talk about the amount of useable skills in a fight ... we assume all skills gonna be very special
Pretty sure in that quote i said i would be happy with any number of skills. I was just saying that i don't think the number of skills should be the focus. I didn't vote for 10, i voted for 10+ which includes 20, 30, 50, 100 and many more much higher numbers.
I didn't vote because @McStackerson is right xD Anything 10+ applies to all poll answers and beyond xD
My assumption towards you wasnt much more than a joke to begin with xD
The way you describe the system sounds pretty much like bdo combat. It isnt too bad imo, but bdo did a major mistake by significantly limiting the players options to remap skills. Otherwise id be fine with that system.
I never said picking 6 out of 6 skills would be a good idea, my point in basicaly every comment is to keep the aviable skills half as high as the total skills aka 3 out of 6; 6 out of 12; x out of 2x. The reason behind that is to maximize the binomial coefficient which reflects the possible choices you would have while creating your build. (over and underpowered skills would need to be subtracted from possible choices, thus low amount of skills end up with binomial coefficients of 1 aka FotM very fast. While many skills still have a high value.
If your not familar with the binomial coefficient read the wiki.. 50 over 10 has way less choices than 50 over 25. Just plain math, one cant argue against that. If theres one op skill the equation changes to 49 over 9 and 49 over 24. If theres also a very weak skill the equation further changes to 48 over 9 and 48 over 24.. Continue as you wish, the 50 over 10 will soon end up with a value of 1 while 50 over 25 still has a value of up to 3,2 billion depending of the balance between over and underpowered skills.
Ofc devs try to equalize the quality of skills, however slight mistakes (that are unavoidable) are way way way more punishing for 50 over 10. Thats equaly true for 50 over 40. Thats why games cant avoid the FotM if they design their game that way.
Edit: The only way to provide more options with 50 over 10 as with 50 over 25 is if ~15-25 skills are totaly equal and ~35-25 are completly useless.
But anyway, how do you ensure a healing skill will be totaly equal to a slow debuff as well as totaly equal to grip and a wall effect. This doesnt make sense, you cant equalize everything.
First, I was leaning towards 16, but remembering previous games I played I figured 20 would be a better number. Doesn't mean you have to use them all in every encounter. But it gives you more freedom to develop a unique playstyle if you have more options. 30+ would be an overkill, though. I want to play, not read a book's worth of skill descriptions.
@Zastro 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
@Zastro 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.
give this man a cookie! 100% agree ... just facts !
But anyway, how do you ensure a healing skill will be totaly equal to a slow debuff as well as totaly equal to grip and a wall effect. This doesnt make sense, you cant equalize everything.
You create equal and opposite skills. Like equal an opposite forces in physics. Or are we trying to say there is no such thing as the laws of physics....theyre a lie and the formulae dont work? Like... snare vs speed anchor vs pull/push root vs gap open / gap close damage vs heal penetration vs mitigation Which can have static default and dynamic modifiers
Who said trying to balance completely different skills ever could ? Which is why i said....anything that cant be balanced should not be in the game. Anything that does not have an equal and opposite effect should not be in game. Anything that does not have a counter...does not belong in multiplayer gameplay.
I like the idea of having a crazy number of skills, but since "active skills" really hasn't been defined, I assume it to mean "How many buttons must we press to be optimal in combat?"
That being said, I'm hoping that Ashes of Creation moves farther forward on the uniqueness and utility of each class being brought to the table, rather than combat button mashing.
For example: I want to be a Rogue. If I was given "traps" as a skill, I would hope that I have many different types of traps: Lock traps - Poisons, Darts, Gasses, Breaking equipment inside, and more. Foot traps - Snares (movement speed or immobility), Pits, Spikes, Darts, Poisons, and others. Symbol traps - Perhaps magic based (If Rogue/Mage) to create Sleep Symbols, Amber Prisons, Teleportation Traps, etc.
...All of that alone could be incredibly useful, but by itself would require a large number of skills (and probably supplies/reagents.)
@Rune_Relic All the things we've been talking about can have a potential counter, what wouldnt have a counter in your opinion? A skill doesnt become op because he has no counter however. It becomes op if the numbers arnt balanced. Aka the slow debuff lasts for too long, the dmg ability is too strong, the reposition can skip too much area etc. It isnt enough to just provide a counter, even if its a big step in the right direction. Pvp wise, there should be a possibility to negate everything with counters, even if its very hard to design/prepare and kinda dull during gameplay with low amount of skills out of a big skill pool. In pve on the other hand.. if your abel to choose between 3 root abilitys, how do you design them in a way that theyre diffrent but all of them are still viable in a way that if you do this particular dungeon noone is forced to pick root nr 1. And further be abel to implement the base idea you come up with to all other possible kinds of skills for all clases. Personaly id have some ideas to solve step 1, but its worth nothing if it doesnt solve the overall problem in step 2 without insane developing cost and game design limitations. The main idea would be to create reasons to give each of the root abilitys a significant advantage in a certain situation. Like giving the single target root a place to be used within the dungeon and the mass root aswell. Then equalize the penalty of not having one of these skills. Aka dmg the one big mob cant deal cuz hes out of range==dmg the mass mobs cant do bec they cannot move.. The 3. mass root would maybe cover a greater area but for a shorter period of time and then follow the same rule... It would be necessary to find something similar for hundreds of skills and situations (basicaly everywhere) which just isnt reasonable. And its not always that simple as rooting melee mobs...
I'll be blunt. I really don't see the need for more than 10-15 skills on a skillbar, if even that many. Each skill needs to play a role and not just another skill you can spam to make yourself feel like the combat is "active" but it's not expediting the fight. If you have a skill to fill each role (damage, healing, crowd control, buffs/debuffs, and escapes) then the others are not necessarily necessary (say that fives time fast). I think a good middle ground would be two skills to fulfill each skill role to have a backup during cooldowns, and then the weapon skill, but as already stated not every class will have a skill for every role as they'll be specialized so the skills being used will only fulfill a couple of those roles for maximum efficiency of the class role.
This is based on my own experience with multiple renditions of skillbars. I end up never using half my skills for larger skillbar games because their just unnecessary. Yet the combat feels plenty active to me. I'm satisfied with IS's design choices.
I think 20+ is a good amount. They should limit how many hotkeys you have, forcing you to carefully pick which actives and making them matter more. I like the idea of 30 but too much of anything can be very bad.
@Caelron Till now it looks like that you'd be abel to choose one of all these traps and use it eternaly (or atleast for weeks until your abel to afford a skill redo)..
active skills means how many skills you can place on your action bar to potentialy use them on demand. You could theoreticaly be effective in various aspects of the game without using every single one.
I have faith that Intrepid will be able to balance skills appropriately, so that having 10 active skills, for example, will not have you only using 3 regularly. Steven and the team seem to have a very good understanding of the pitfalls of the industry and are determined to avoid them. I disagree that having less actives = less complexity. Having to decide which skills to put on your bar out of a plethora of choices adds complexity simply because of the amount of potential combinations. Having more buttons to press doesn't make for more enticing gameplay in my opinion. Pressing buttons more often doesn't even make for more enticing gameplay. Its deciding when to press the buttons that makes combat fun. Overcoming disadvantages because you didn't slot a specific ability shows more skill and ingenuity than having the ability active when you need it. And when I was talking about changing builds, I was talking about when you are out of combat you will be able to change abilities out on your bar. As far as we know, we will be able to switch abilities between fights, so you won't be stuck with one set of abilities the entire dungeon run.
People of the same class will not necessarily have the same skills slotted for the same role because of differing secondary classes, weapons, religious augments, etc. I imagine their will be more than 10 abilites for dps for each dps class and because I believe Intrepid will find the right balance the abilities should all be viable to use for dps. Of course min/maxers will have the same builds because they are more worried about numbers than actual gameplay, so they will take the abilities that do .01% more damage per second, but for the rest of the people who don't care about that it won't be the case. Intrpeid has stated that skills will be useful in both pve and pvp, so the skills are designed for pvx. So, even a build built more for pve should still do at least moderatly well in a pvp scenario because npcs and players will be affected in the same ways by an ability.
I would like to have WASD movent with skills on 1-5+ mouse4/5 buttons Q/E used to change skills from spellbook that could be activated on right mouse click, R to interact, F cancel action.
Also all buff types skill automaticly casted as auras because in reality those skills add nothing to gameplay.
Personally I think 10 active skills will be enough, provided that the augment system allows you to diversify your skill set enough to play in the style you personally choose. With 8 archetypes the 10 active skills will make it so that each must be reliant upon the other to know their role. Over complicating the skill bar with very situational dependent skills is not something I am a fan of. This is just my opinion, but increasing the amount of active skills does not necessarily mean an increase in combat complexity.
@PlagueMonk 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'm sorry but just because YOU say my argument is invalid doesn't make it so. My point of view is just that, MINE. You are free to disagree with it but your opinion doesn't automatically invalidate mine.
In fact you have done nothing to prove your case. I shouldn't have to be a master at navigating menus, pushing 200 button combos or owning a special controller that has 30 skills mapped to it. I have no desire for any of that and would much rather be good at playing the game itself. This means having active dodging and movement with a reasonable amount of buttons that most can deal with. Having too many buttons means that only the button masters will be the best at the game and last time I looked this was not all about being a twitch master. If you want that type of gameplay maybe you should be looking at a FPS instead.
Now I'm not saying there shouldn't be a certain amount of twitch skill but it shouldn't be ALL about it.
And I didn't "miss" anything in WoW and still don't.
i dont see the need of 30+ Skills if a fight btween Dps Classes takes like 30s-1min. for me honestly it comes down to how fast paced the whole combat is. and i prefer fast fights. not those 5 minuts till some1 maybe dies. and Quantity is not automaticly Quality.
i dont see the need of 30+ Skills if a fight btween Dps Classes takes like 30s-1min. for me honestly it comes down to how fast paced the whole combat is. and i prefer fast fights. not those 5 minuts till some1 maybe dies. and Quantity is not automaticly Quality.
so what would u prefer ? 20+ ? 16+? i just hope they implement more than 20 active available skills ... with just 10-12 active skills there is no challenge to learn other classes. buff -attack - cc ( stun what ever ) dmg dmg - blink/dodge/evasion .. long cds ? 2min / 5min / 10 min? u have to live with just 1 dmg combo ! thats getting boring very fast
ONE BIG QUESTION : Is it possible to dodge TAB targeting SKills`?
You know better than to ask awkward questions like that Every skill should have a counter..and dodge may be a valid option. But....we dont know until they release details.
I was watching an interesting youtube video the other day. Guy who reviews all the games and asks if they failed or not. One of them he did for was honor ..did it fail... and why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUmJzvus4lQ
He compared it to wow combat and games like street fighter to identify where it went wrong and made an astute observation. The arcade style games like tekken and such rely on giving you many counters to a specific attack. Wow only really gave you one response to a specific attack...scripted combat was the term used. As a specific attack led to a specific response that led to a specific response that led to a specific response. Thus becoming nothing more than going through the motions of an automated chain of actions.
I think those thoughts were apt for this thread. There is no predictability in the arcade style as its impossible to determine how each player is going to respond. Although every player would have 'preferred' methods of play. Thus the variety of responses become an expression of individuality. A game of chess where you need to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of every player. Indeed, for honor does have more than one response and the expert players do generate personal/unique styles of play.
Enabling multiple 'valid' choices....enables diversity and eliminates boredom. Without resorting to RNG. ______________________
There was also another interesting programme on sky about the Danes attack on the jutes on a British historical battlefield. The jutes werent trained and had far inferior armour and weaponry but fought to the death anyway. But that wasnt the interesting part.
They analysed all the skeletons on the battlefield and found most of the leg bones had deep repeated lacerations and many lower legs and feet were hacked clean off. It was a clearly defined battle strategy employed by the Danes. People with damaged legs dont move around the battlefield very well and movement is a critical aspect of combat.
What if you could make leg/trunk/head hit skills and the legs impacted movement skills while the head impacted CC skills. What if you needed low/middle/high counters for such attacks that could build resilience if successfully blocked. Feedback can be obvious with the animations, variety is enhanced, options are amplified. But they remain simple..natural... and make sense to everyone.
He's moving too fast too easily...derrr...hit his legs.
Diversity will be created via how individuals apply their augments to their primary abilities.
The 1 key has the potential to cycle through at least 5 weapon abilities, so... Moving through 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5 on the hot-bar could be on par with moving through 1, 1, 1, 2, 1 on the hot-bar. Each of those patterns could result in 5 different abilities being triggered.
The 10-ability hot-bar in Ashes has the potential to trigger around 23 abilities, possibly more (depending on the max abilities a weapon can hold).
Diversity will be created via how individuals apply their augments to their primary abilities.
The 1 key has the potential to cycle through at least 5 weapon abilities, so... Moving through 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5 on the hot-bar could be on par with moving through 1, 1, 1, 2, 1 on the hot-bar. Each of those patterns could result in 5 different abilities being triggered.
The 10-ability hot-bar in Ashes has the potential to trigger around 23 abilities, possibly more (depending on the max abilities a weapon can hold).
I thought just the "auto attack" 1 can trigger another skill if u hit the combo bar .. why do u think hot-bar skills have the potential to trigger other abilities ?
The 1 key triggers all of your weapon abilities. If you successfully hit the "sweet spot" each time you hit the 1 key, you will trigger the next weapon ability in the combo chain.
When you reach level 30, you unlock the capability of adding augments from your secondary archetype to your primary abilities. Dunno if we have to wait that long to add racial, religious or social augments to our primary abilities, but... Once we can add augments, that gives us the potential to augment abilities 2-10 - so 18 non-weapon abilities. Plus, 5 weapon abilities.
Something between 10 to 16 is enough and maybe 12 would be optimal. There is no need to have the whole ability arsenal in use at once. Its nice to have different build variations.
Something between 10 to 16 is enough and maybe 12 would be optimal. There is no need to have the whole ability arsenal in use at once. Its nice to have different build variations.
dont u have more different build variations with more useable skills >?
Nope. You basically move closer to the same build the more useable skills you have available. It's just a matter of which skill you activate.
but isnt it better to have ...- like ~ 100 unique build variations with , lets say ~ 20 useable skills than 400 mäh build variations with just 10 useable skills ?
"Better" depends on how unique an individual wishes to be.
Also, again, in Ashes - the 10 key limit on the hot-bar actually gives us access to around 23 abilities... 5 from the weapon abilities and 18 from the rest of the hot-bar once augments are added.
Comments
1. I believe in using skills when appropriate to do so depending on envirnmental factors like what my adversary os doing and where.
Not spamming skills for spamming skills sake...aka rotations.
2. I can...
left click...left hold....right click ...right hold..middle click....middle hold..left tilt.....right tilt.
I can also
left + right click......left + center click....right + center click and add tilts too.
Then I can add combo holds too.
So 4 keys ? No....lots of keys with minimal finger movement. And that before we even consider comboing movements keys with the mouse keys.
As for the loads of skills are required for build variety.
Letting people pick 6 out of 6 viable skills from a selection of 10 available skills wont do anything to fix FoTM issues.
Everyone will still slot the same 6 skills so balance is essential.
Anything that cant be balanced should not be in the game.
Problem solved.
The only way to guarantee variety is to ensure ALL skills can be and are balanced. There is a massive pool of skills to pick from. The skill bar is as small as possible to maximise variety from the pool selection.
None of which removes the fact that there are many skills that are simply essential for full functionality in combat. That is what must dictate toolbar size.
In addition
I didn't vote because @McStackerson is right xD Anything 10+ applies to all poll answers and beyond xD
Edit: The only way to provide more options with 50 over 10 as with 50 over 25 is if ~15-25 skills are totaly equal and ~35-25 are completly useless.
But anyway, how do you ensure a healing skill will be totaly equal to a slow debuff as well as totaly equal to grip and a wall effect. This doesnt make sense, you cant equalize everything.
Or are we trying to say there is no such thing as the laws of physics....theyre a lie and the formulae dont work?
Like...
snare vs speed
anchor vs pull/push
root vs gap open / gap close
damage vs heal
penetration vs mitigation
Which can have static default and dynamic modifiers
Who said trying to balance completely different skills ever could ?
Which is why i said....anything that cant be balanced should not be in the game.
Anything that does not have an equal and opposite effect should not be in game.
Anything that does not have a counter...does not belong in multiplayer gameplay.
That being said, I'm hoping that Ashes of Creation moves farther forward on the uniqueness and utility of each class being brought to the table, rather than combat button mashing.
For example:
I want to be a Rogue.
If I was given "traps" as a skill, I would hope that I have many different types of traps:
Lock traps - Poisons, Darts, Gasses, Breaking equipment inside, and more.
Foot traps - Snares (movement speed or immobility), Pits, Spikes, Darts, Poisons, and others.
Symbol traps - Perhaps magic based (If Rogue/Mage) to create Sleep Symbols, Amber Prisons, Teleportation Traps, etc.
...All of that alone could be incredibly useful, but by itself would require a large number of skills (and probably supplies/reagents.)
All the things we've been talking about can have a potential counter, what wouldnt have a counter in your opinion?
A skill doesnt become op because he has no counter however. It becomes op if the numbers arnt balanced.
Aka the slow debuff lasts for too long, the dmg ability is too strong, the reposition can skip too much area etc. It isnt enough to just provide a counter, even if its a big step in the right direction. Pvp wise, there should be a possibility to negate everything with counters, even if its very hard to design/prepare and kinda dull during gameplay with low amount of skills out of a big skill pool.
In pve on the other hand.. if your abel to choose between 3 root abilitys, how do you design them in a way that theyre diffrent but all of them are still viable in a way that if you do this particular dungeon noone is forced to pick root nr 1. And further be abel to implement the base idea you come up with to all other possible kinds of skills for all clases.
Personaly id have some ideas to solve step 1, but its worth nothing if it doesnt solve the overall problem in step 2 without insane developing cost and game design limitations.
The main idea would be to create reasons to give each of the root abilitys a significant advantage in a certain situation. Like giving the single target root a place to be used within the dungeon and the mass root aswell. Then equalize the penalty of not having one of these skills. Aka dmg the one big mob cant deal cuz hes out of range==dmg the mass mobs cant do bec they cannot move.. The 3. mass root would maybe cover a greater area but for a shorter period of time and then follow the same rule...
It would be necessary to find something similar for hundreds of skills and situations (basicaly everywhere) which just isnt reasonable. And its not always that simple as rooting melee mobs...
This is based on my own experience with multiple renditions of skillbars. I end up never using half my skills for larger skillbar games because their just unnecessary. Yet the combat feels plenty active to me. I'm satisfied with IS's design choices.
Till now it looks like that you'd be abel to choose one of all these traps and use it eternaly (or atleast for weeks until your abel to afford a skill redo)..
active skills means how many skills you can place on your action bar to potentialy use them on demand. You could theoreticaly be effective in various aspects of the game without using every single one.
I disagree that having less actives = less complexity. Having to decide which skills to put on your bar out of a plethora of choices adds complexity simply because of the amount of potential combinations. Having more buttons to press doesn't make for more enticing gameplay in my opinion. Pressing buttons more often doesn't even make for more enticing gameplay. Its deciding when to press the buttons that makes combat fun. Overcoming disadvantages because you didn't slot a specific ability shows more skill and ingenuity than having the ability active when you need it. And when I was talking about changing builds, I was talking about when you are out of combat you will be able to change abilities out on your bar. As far as we know, we will be able to switch abilities between fights, so you won't be stuck with one set of abilities the entire dungeon run.
People of the same class will not necessarily have the same skills slotted for the same role because of differing secondary classes, weapons, religious augments, etc. I imagine their will be more than 10 abilites for dps for each dps class and because I believe Intrepid will find the right balance the abilities should all be viable to use for dps. Of course min/maxers will have the same builds because they are more worried about numbers than actual gameplay, so they will take the abilities that do .01% more damage per second, but for the rest of the people who don't care about that it won't be the case.
Intrpeid has stated that skills will be useful in both pve and pvp, so the skills are designed for pvx. So, even a build built more for pve should still do at least moderatly well in a pvp scenario because npcs and players will be affected in the same ways by an ability.
Also all buff types skill automaticly casted as auras because in reality those skills add nothing to gameplay.
In fact you have done nothing to prove your case. I shouldn't have to be a master at navigating menus, pushing 200 button combos or owning a special controller that has 30 skills mapped to it. I have no desire for any of that and would much rather be good at playing the game itself. This means having active dodging and movement with a reasonable amount of buttons that most can deal with. Having too many buttons means that only the button masters will be the best at the game and last time I looked this was not all about being a twitch master. If you want that type of gameplay maybe you should be looking at a FPS instead.
Now I'm not saying there shouldn't be a certain amount of twitch skill but it shouldn't be ALL about it.
And I didn't "miss" anything in WoW and still don't.
for me honestly it comes down to how fast paced the whole combat is. and i prefer fast fights.
not those 5 minuts till some1 maybe dies.
and Quantity is not automaticly Quality.
i just hope they implement more than 20 active available skills ...
with just 10-12 active skills there is no challenge to learn other classes.
buff -attack - cc ( stun what ever ) dmg dmg - blink/dodge/evasion .. long cds ? 2min / 5min / 10 min?
u have to live with just 1 dmg combo ! thats getting boring very fast
Is it possible to dodge TAB targeting SKills`?
You know better than to ask awkward questions like that
Every skill should have a counter..and dodge may be a valid option.
But....we dont know until they release details.
Guy who reviews all the games and asks if they failed or not.
One of them he did for was honor ..did it fail... and why.
He compared it to wow combat and games like street fighter to identify where it went wrong and made an astute observation.
The arcade style games like tekken and such rely on giving you many counters to a specific attack.
Wow only really gave you one response to a specific attack...scripted combat was the term used.
As a specific attack led to a specific response that led to a specific response that led to a specific response. Thus becoming nothing more than going through the motions of an automated chain of actions.
I think those thoughts were apt for this thread. There is no predictability in the arcade style as its impossible to determine how each player is going to respond. Although every player would have 'preferred' methods of play. Thus the variety of responses become an expression of individuality. A game of chess where you need to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of every player. Indeed, for honor does have more than one response and the expert players do generate personal/unique styles of play.
Enabling multiple 'valid' choices....enables diversity and eliminates boredom.
Without resorting to RNG.
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There was also another interesting programme on sky about the Danes attack on the jutes on a British historical battlefield. The jutes werent trained and had far inferior armour and weaponry but fought to the death anyway. But that wasnt the interesting part.
They analysed all the skeletons on the battlefield and found most of the leg bones had deep repeated lacerations and many lower legs and feet were hacked clean off. It was a clearly defined battle strategy employed by the Danes. People with damaged legs dont move around the battlefield very well and movement is a critical aspect of combat.
What if you could make leg/trunk/head hit skills and the legs impacted movement skills while the head impacted CC skills. What if you needed low/middle/high counters for such attacks that could build resilience if successfully blocked. Feedback can be obvious with the animations, variety is enhanced, options are amplified. But they remain simple..natural... and make sense to everyone.
He's moving too fast too easily...derrr...hit his legs.
The 1 key has the potential to cycle through at least 5 weapon abilities, so...
Moving through 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5 on the hot-bar could be on par with moving through
1, 1, 1, 2, 1 on the hot-bar.
Each of those patterns could result in 5 different abilities being triggered.
The 10-ability hot-bar in Ashes has the potential to trigger around 23 abilities, possibly more (depending on the max abilities a weapon can hold).
why do u think hot-bar skills have the potential to trigger other abilities ?
The 1 key triggers all of your weapon abilities. If you successfully hit the "sweet spot" each time you hit the 1 key, you will trigger the next weapon ability in the combo chain.
When you reach level 30, you unlock the capability of adding augments from your secondary archetype to your primary abilities.
Dunno if we have to wait that long to add racial, religious or social augments to our primary abilities, but...
Once we can add augments, that gives us the potential to augment abilities 2-10 - so 18 non-weapon abilities. Plus, 5 weapon abilities.
Also, again, in Ashes - the 10 key limit on the hot-bar actually gives us access to around 23 abilities... 5 from the weapon abilities and 18 from the rest of the hot-bar once augments are added.