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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.
Combat and difficulty
Currently I have 2 major concerns.
Combat
I am a bit fearful about the combat system. I would personally prefer a free targeting action format. However I do understand that some people might not prefer it. And in addition to that with latency and all the yadda it might create issues in pvp.
However, if you go too much in the direction of tab targeting you end up, with a shin kicking contest where the winner is determined by the size of their boots.
I would be completely fine with a mix of action and tab targeting similar, to Guild wars 2.
In my opinion combat should promote skillful, positioning, strategy, movement.
I think the addition of skillshots would spice up, where users get the feeling of "I failed because I did not hit that skill"
Difficulty
current mmo's have the problem where large amounts of content is faceroll easy especially leveling. This results in a diminished feeling of adventure, where enemies die the moment you look at them at your guided quest tour.
I know that there a different player types and you cant focus exclusively on the more hardcore player types.however I am going to quote a developer from an article on gamasutra :
" However, it's reached the point where "adventuring" in an RPG rarely feels risky. Gaining experience is supposed to carry the risk of harm and failure. Without that risk, gaining power becomes a foregone conclusion.
It has reached the point where the mere act of spending time playing the game appears to give players the right to have their characters become more powerful. The obstacles that provide experience become simply an arbitrary wall to scale before more power is granted; this, in a nutshell, is the type of play that has brought us grind, where the journey is simple and boring and the destination is something to be raced to."
I don't need the difficulty to be on ridiculous levels. However in my opinion there needs to be a threat of death when traveling in the open world, where a user has to pay attention. Basically there needs to be a risk of failure.
A good example of this problem is seen in The Elder Scrolls Online, where questing difficulty is so arbitrary, that any sense of adventure is lost. The quests turn into "run there talk to that NPC, and faceroll through any enemy that you encounter". This turns quests into a boring chore, not to mention it will severely diminish the immersion for a certain group of players.
The question is how to please both groups?
Personally I would prefer just to have hard mode servers, even if it are just 1 or 2.
I would like to have an open discussion on what a possible solution for this would be.
I think this is quite a tough challenge, as if the devs make it too easy players will get bored. Make it too hard and you will scare of the casual players. And I think all players would like to see both the casual orientated players enjoy the game.
So lets discuss this and maybe we can give the developers some ideas and insights.
Combat
I am a bit fearful about the combat system. I would personally prefer a free targeting action format. However I do understand that some people might not prefer it. And in addition to that with latency and all the yadda it might create issues in pvp.
However, if you go too much in the direction of tab targeting you end up, with a shin kicking contest where the winner is determined by the size of their boots.
I would be completely fine with a mix of action and tab targeting similar, to Guild wars 2.
In my opinion combat should promote skillful, positioning, strategy, movement.
I think the addition of skillshots would spice up, where users get the feeling of "I failed because I did not hit that skill"
Difficulty
current mmo's have the problem where large amounts of content is faceroll easy especially leveling. This results in a diminished feeling of adventure, where enemies die the moment you look at them at your guided quest tour.
I know that there a different player types and you cant focus exclusively on the more hardcore player types.however I am going to quote a developer from an article on gamasutra :
" However, it's reached the point where "adventuring" in an RPG rarely feels risky. Gaining experience is supposed to carry the risk of harm and failure. Without that risk, gaining power becomes a foregone conclusion.
It has reached the point where the mere act of spending time playing the game appears to give players the right to have their characters become more powerful. The obstacles that provide experience become simply an arbitrary wall to scale before more power is granted; this, in a nutshell, is the type of play that has brought us grind, where the journey is simple and boring and the destination is something to be raced to."
I don't need the difficulty to be on ridiculous levels. However in my opinion there needs to be a threat of death when traveling in the open world, where a user has to pay attention. Basically there needs to be a risk of failure.
A good example of this problem is seen in The Elder Scrolls Online, where questing difficulty is so arbitrary, that any sense of adventure is lost. The quests turn into "run there talk to that NPC, and faceroll through any enemy that you encounter". This turns quests into a boring chore, not to mention it will severely diminish the immersion for a certain group of players.
The question is how to please both groups?
Personally I would prefer just to have hard mode servers, even if it are just 1 or 2.
I would like to have an open discussion on what a possible solution for this would be.
I think this is quite a tough challenge, as if the devs make it too easy players will get bored. Make it too hard and you will scare of the casual players. And I think all players would like to see both the casual orientated players enjoy the game.
So lets discuss this and maybe we can give the developers some ideas and insights.
0
Comments
Personally I would prefer just to have hard mode servers, even if it are just 1 or 2.
1-2 man
2-4 man
4-8 man
8-16 man
16-32 man
You want it super hard you minimal man the content.
You want it standard you maximal man the content.
You want it between, you go somewhere between min and max players.
The range is 1x to 2x difficulty....but if you want more than that, you can do bigger group content if there is no class requirements that lock you out.
Alas, openworld means you cant have any such restrictions on factors such as group size. So I cam up with the concept of paths of destiny. Where you have criss crossing path for group size content.
Where they cross you have open world content.
Where they dont cross you have instanced group size content.
In the no mans islands between you put harder and harder group scaled content where the grinders can keep out of the way of the questers.
Basically the further off the beaten path you go, the bigger the group size content you face. Because at the edge of the map.....here be monsters
Honestly there isn't many ways to satisfy both hardcore and easy going players, IS did say that they plan to make the world of AoC dangerous and make exploration a big part of it, even erasing the mini map would be enough to make the game more 'adventurous'
I have seen this suggestion being given on different forums and games. However while it will work to a certain degree, it has huge issues.
1. you remove the whole gearing and character building, which is a huge part of an RPG.
2. running around without armor might ruin the immersion for certain players
3. a self imposed is not really a challenge. a user is gimping himself to make things more challenging. I think most player who desire challenge prefer that the game itself challenges them.
@Rune_Relic
interesting idea!, however unfortunately I do not think the visions of AoC will fit that
at least I don't think the devs would go for something like that.
@Fyziks
I agree with you, I have the most pleasant player interactions because I could not beat a certain mob or boss.
And don't get me wrong I would love it if they made everything as challenging as possible. However you cannot deny that casual player make up for a majority. So balance is important to keep both parties happy.
had to do it
Tab-targeting and action combat options will be available for all classes so players can spec to the ones their prefer.
Personally, I disagree. If you executed your own job well and still fail because somebody else messed up, you did not fail because it was "difficult". You failed because the system punished you for other people's mistakes, instead of allowing you to attempt to make up for them by playing better.
I hope that boss battles in this game are not going to revolve around one-shot mechanics like that. Just because player 1 made a mistake, players 2-8 or 2-16 and so on should not be doomed to failure without any chance to recover.
Some encounters are a challenge of the group as a whole - which almost always ends up being little more than a DPS check.
Some encounters challenge specific members of the group - encounters that require crowd control are an example.
Some encounters challenge every member of the group individually - these are the encounters you are talking about.
They all have their place.
Group content stands or falls on a 'groups' performance.
Difficulty is subjective in other ways too.
If contents is tailor made to classes but is random and dynamic, then the players must adapt on the fly and know their skills inside out and to survive must act in concert with their team mates.
If content is scripted, all thats required is a video, practice and a good memory. This isnt really a skill challenge.....its a memory challenge (Peter says ...do this ...now). Granted that memory challenge can be difficult if the script to follow is complex.
Typically all modern MMOs adopt option 2. It only remains difficult for as long as it remains unknown. Then it becomes a boring walk in the park when you know it like the back of your hand. That show you have seen in the theme park gets mind numbingly tedious after the 100th time. More so if you have to do it 100s of times to gather required goods.
Option 1 ensures the difficulty never gets easier nor predictable and boring. It also demands you know your class. It also demands your team know each others strengths and weaknesses which will require long time exposure to gel properly in this game with the class variety potential.
Hah sorry, Its kind of second nature by now to react with that, the moment someone mentions "hurr durr take of your gear" :P.
@namai, @Rune_Relic
I agree with you, I have seen a lot of scripted content in dungeons and raids. And its basically a dance, once you know the steps becomes easier and easier. Personally I am not really a fan of "mechanics" in dungeons because like you said it turns into a game of simon says.
I would be all up for dynamic challenges, but how would you see that being incorporated? different ads spawn? rotation of boss attacks are randomized?
IS has stated that the game will include Adaptive AI, I am hoping that enemies will be a bit more reactive to player actions.
@Azathoth
Yes challenge is subjective, however we can use other games as rough benchmarks.
So I do not think anyone wants the level of challenge like in WOW/ESO, where everything in the open world melts within seconds.
However I also do not think it would be a good idea to make it Dark Souls hard, where on bad dodge or badly times block means death.
Of course the difficulty level would need to be adjusted through multiple iterations in the alpha phase. However a rough guideline can be provided, as to where difficulty/challenge should be.
An option could be to take combat footage from the game, analyze it and say for example : "the player took these and these actions, and he should have died because of those, he didn't so the difficulty needs tweaking"
But I don't know if the pve and combat is developed enough to warrant such an approach.
I'm way more interested in the world-building aspects.
Hopefully, the Religion and Thieves Guild and Scholar Academy quests and tasks won't be heavily focused on killing stuff.
Additionally I do not think anyone in here would devalue other activities such as crafting and building.
However combat will still be a big part of the game so yeah.
But, adventure needs to be more than just combat.
Combat should just be one type of adventure challenge... among many types.
and what do you classify as an adventure? Because I'm sure there will be some non combat activities + quests. However combat will always be present, probably even when just traveling from 1 place to another + don't forget PvP.
And trading and crafting are still big parts, why don't they classify as an adventure?
getting a shipment of much needed goods to a settlement doesn't count as an adventure?
Adventurer skills aren't all about combat. And Adventurer challenges shouldn't always be about combat or people dying.
There should be adventurer skills that help people avoid combat while traveling... even PvP combat.
And PvP shouldn't always be about combat and people dying, either.
Plenty of people took the carebear challenge of leveling without killing anything in WoW.
But, in Ashes we should be able to have adventures that are focused on our utility skills - like removing corruption and diseases from areas or deciphering codes, disarming traps and detecting hidden areas.
Since Summoners will be able to pool their skills to group summon a giant golem - we should also have challenges that require us to pool our utility skills.
Trading and crafting are trading and crafting; not adventuring.
Escorting trade goods will be an adventure, but trade skills and crafting skills won't be used for that. Adventuring skills will be used for that.
I mean sure if you want to play that way, I don't see the problem.
I don't know what other plans the devs have for non combat activities. I would be interested in hearing that. I don't want to go further off topic, but a non combat activities thread might definitely yield a useful discussion.
additionally down time activities can be an significant factor in increasing immersion.
I'm just making the point the measure of difficulty and challenge for Adventurers should not just be how quickly or whether people die.
And it is not a point of "how quickly or whether people die", it's about providing a satisfying experience where the risk of failure is present. And that risk of failure should naturally be present in most major activities be it combat or non-combat.
So I do not really see the problem here.
I don't think I said there was a problem. Rather I pointed out that, in Ashes, difficulty for Adventurers in the open world shouldn't just be about combat and dying.
Which you seem to agree with. So, I don't know why act as though there is some debate.
I think you might have read over that, but that quote still states that its specifically about the combat in the open world
back on topic :
Another thing, that came up to me was the aspect of Death penalties. Personally in my experience the death penalty should hurt the player in a certain, so that dying just isn't a minor inconvenience of a corpse run.
However with the addition of open world pvp, this might create issues. As a player is highly more likely to die in a pvp scenario.
I would advocate for a gold loss/repair cost penalty upon death (pretty standard method, I am wondering though if there are more interesting way to deal with it?), and splitting death penalties, between pvp and pve.
that is great to hear!, thank you for the info.
Is there any direct quotes from the devs concerning the pve difficulty in the open world as well somewhere? I would be interested on what their vision on that is.
"As you progress through the world, leveling up your node base, building your alliance numbers and completing the different quests allocated to you at the time, you will begin to unlock new events and reveal dark mysteries unique to that zone and node. But be careful, some things are better left alone and untouched. Unlike other mmorpgs, the monster spawn rate and location change as you level up your node[5], increasing the difficulty, amount, variety and level. This will come into play as rare monsters and world bosses are introduced and fought over[6]. Rare monster and world boss kills will yield precious items and gear that will be vital to gearing up and showing off."
http://aocwiki.net/The_World
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Mobs
Ok this is very interesting, info thank you.
I am wondering though, do mobs increase from general node leveling? or from specific PvE node leveling (killing mobs)?
Because would be interesting to see that trade focused nodes would have a less threatening environment, while other nodes and areas would be highly difficult. That is if it works that way?
I dunno why Economic nodes should have less threatening environments than, say, Military nodes. You can't trade your way out of a earthquake or volcanic eruption and a Corrupt Sladeborne is probably not going to be willing to trade instead of rampage.
But, yeah, mob levels will increase as nodes level. And nodes will level partially from killing mobs.
We've got sieges and caravans and monster coin events - there should be plenty of difficult combat fighting other players if that's what people wish to focus on.