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.
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.
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
As a tank, in the pax demo, you did not need to know the exact dimensions of the breaths hitbox to dodge attack. The breath was obviously a frontal cone attack and could be dodged by standing on the side. When i played i was only hit by it because i focused on the combo meter and not looking at the boss.
Easy enough in a pure tab-target game, I suppose.
I could be more focused on watching the boss while still attacking adds via tab-target.
In action games, where you need to aim at your targets, we need red circle telegraphs so we can rely on peripheral vision to be ready to jump from the boss while focused on aiming at adds.
Again - same reason why we have health bars.
Because are range of senses in a video game are not adequate.
We need meters and mini-maps and other visual telegraphs in video games to compensate for the lack of adequate sensory cues.
So target boss and keep target on it to pay attention to what it casts while aiming at the adds and shooting them.
And we will not be able to use tab target system to actually attack an enemy that we are not aiming at.
Compare that to Wildstar raid bosses, where you have trouble dealing with mechanics even when everything is telegraphed, because the telegraph lets them design intricate fights, and the intentionality of the telegraphs lets them use truly deadly attacks. That same breath attack in Wildstar would be a one shot, and it would either follow the tank (orb on zombie Mordechai) or move in a predetermined way (Obliteration Beams on Avatus), because the tank would know the boundary without risking the damage.
We don't have to aim all of our abilities. And not all of our abilities will be tab-target.
Players will be able to choose which path on the skill tree they wish to concentrate on.
If we always had to aim to target, tabbing would be a pointless mechanic.
Nah, not pointless.
Tera doesnt have unwanted ambiguity in boss actions either.
If its not clear where the attack is going the developers that are responsible for combat animations did a bad job. And for that alone it doesnt matter if its indicated by red squares or actual immersive animations.
Good animations beeing the superior choice is a no brainer, just as photos of real world objects are superior to rectangular paint drawings in one flashy color.
Ofc it isnt too bad to use telegraphs if theres really no reasonable way to display a animation that fits the setting and designing such setting would be too expensive.
Since ashes is still in pre alpha, its uncertain attacks are forgivable ofc, theres no need to pick on/laugh about placeholders.
Its not like i-frames in tera let you survive everything without moving. I-frames usualy last for about 0.1 seconds and have significant cooldowns. For many attacks i-frames dont even work and you have to use the dodging/positioning skills to move out of danger in addition to walking because you wouldnt be fast enough with walking alone and mostly dont get far enough with skills alone.
You'd need to craft a efficient skill set in mostly any game, but to stick with the two games, its easier to simply pick dps skills and dont care for dodging skills instead of considering to leave out some dps bonus to increase the chance to survive.
If its better or worse to have a especialy challenging game everyone must know themselves.
Personaly i prefer the hardest games, even if it would be literaly impossible to beat something/many things id be totaly fine with it. I dont need to be the absolute over hero in every game i play to have fun. Its ridiculous how characters get thrown into game worlds to basicaly roll over everything at some point, especialy in mmo's. But thats just my personal opinion ofc.
My pleasure posting this! I'm glad this post does resonates with some people and creates a discussion around the subject. Again I really hope Ashes is looking into this, this would make me even more excited!
U sum it up pretty nicely as well. Tanks will absolutely not be uselees. They will be more relevent then ever. Placing the correct walls, damage sharing from allies. AGRO management. There will have to be better communication and teamwork to beat the boss.
The AI Will not be "overpowered". As said before, the mind can be pre-build in alpha and beta. So everyone fights the same boss. It is still bound by its Damage output, HP, armor, resistence etc.. so overpowerd is not in the picture.
But this won't be an easy task. learning to walk takes 1000 iterations alone probably. And perhaps they should build "player" AI's first. Some tanks, healers, DPS'ers .. so they can use those to train the boss AI's o_o.
@Dolphin We sure should be able to trick the AI. Healers / dps'ers could be bait