Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
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.
______________________
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.