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
In short, both are RPG's in a traditional sense. But in the Witcher you RP as Geralt regardless, he's got a voice and everything.
In Elder Scrolls, you get to be whatever you want. These are inherently different design decisions.
In the Witcher, you are on a ride, and you are allowed to be Geralt.
In the Skyrim, you play you. Want to be a bard? Be a bard! What to be an assassin, be one.
The pros are. Because the Witcher doesn't really make the character yours, they can craft, and fine-tune a story much more. Which is absolutely great.
Skyrim does not have that luxury, and quests and missions and stuff are presented somewhat differently.
As for what is a better game, that would depend on what you look for.
I played, and enjoyed both. Did a few playthroughs on the Witcher, the quests were much better. But I've played a LOT more Skyrim. As those characters genuinely feel like mine.
Now, I realise it's preference, but for MMO's I very much prefer the character to feel mine, to feel unique. This is quite hard to pull off, obviously. But trying to streamline things. (And I am not sure if this comes over as condescending or not, it's not my intention at least) for a possible future console port, it feels limiting.
On the one hand, having say 8 skills available out of a possible say 50 sounds alright. The chance you and I pick the same skills are small (unless cookie cutter, but that's a different discussion) and that's great. But it would limit the choices you can make. (and I do not mean from a pick your skill perspective) I mean from making your character yours. I'll draft some quick examples.
My character, Inuït "Frosty" Goldsberg (random name) spend most his entire life, in the cold, snowy, white regions of the world (pre-verra) as a result, the magic chosen is based on Fire and Frost manipulation. Fire to stay warm, and cook food, defend. And Frost manipulation, because that's all he knows. As a result, his frost and firespells are exceptionally fine tuned, frost elementals, imbued with magic, both against loneliness as well as protection.
Now, Ariatras, the Empyrean Elf. Grew up in a busy city, magical potential was apparent from birth. He studied his whole life, learning all about magic. He knows a lot of different spells, though, he doesn't master frost and fire as deeply as Inuït, nor as much spells in these schools.
But he knows more schools, he can cast basic spells from each school of magic, as well as some intermediate spells for schools for which he has a specific affinity. Whatever they may be.
So both of these characters are magi. But both are completely different. One can do with eight spells, the other cannot. Give me that freedom to choose, that's all I'm asking, even if that means Ariatras is less powerful, and has less powerful skills.
At least that's the vibe I'm getting that intrepid are going for. They could change their mind and gives us access to more active spells but so far they've been against it and I like it.
I personally think 8 skills is rather limiting but I do not agree that you should have access to 50+ skills either, from what I see this game will want you to work as a team, but if everybody has access to all their skills at any given moment then it becomes very self orientated and encourages selfishness. Not to mention the fact that all classes will be the same. A mage with access to 50+ skills instantly is no different from the other mage that's standing at the other side of the road with 50+ skills. that is boring.
What I would like to see implemented is something along the lines of 10 active skills for your archetype and X amount of active skills for your sub class. I do agree however that you can interchange these skills and have "builds" for your character but your armor / weapons would also play a factor in how well this build will perform, such as DPS, mobility or mana regeneration ect and with your characters having weight limits you will not want to carry 10 different armor sets when you go raiding.
This encourages good team work and planning to make sure you cover everything needed to get from the start to the finish of an activity. this idea to me does not sound limiting but adds more depth to combat because every archetype you meet will be a surprise because their build could vary so much.
Also as I have noticed in the videos that certain characters will have different abilities to overcome obstacles in the world. an example of this is a mage can destroy a boulder to reveal a hidden cave system, so when you find this cave system other obstacles could be lurking inside such as a canyon maybe? so lets give a cleric a skill like "team glide" or a ranger "zip line" or even an assassin "parkour" to reach that lever to overcome obstacles.
Now when you add this sort of complexity to an activity and you don't have complete access to 50+ skills this will encourage a huge amount of team work and planning to tackle the activity and when you finally do reach the end the rewards will be that much sweeter.
I hope this is readable and understandable to people and even though it will not be easy if implemented right then this can make AoC an unbelievably immersive game.
Thanks for your attention.
Skyrim is a great game. I played it for many hours and you can really customize your character how you want it. But, there was a limit to how many skill points you could use to build your character, unless you modded, and even the abilities you could use at one time were limited. You had to go into your character screen, effectively pausing the game which was a bit immersion breaking to some degree, in order to switch out your active spell(s) and weapon(s). At the end of the day, I would like Intrepid to make a good system that is fun to play, no matter how many active abilities we have at one time.