Game Design Developer Diaries - Submit Your Question Here!

LieutenantToast

Glorious Ashes community - in preparation for upcoming episodes in our Developer Diaries series, we wanted to give YOU a chance to submit your question for future videos!

Is there a question you've always wanted answered about the game design process behind Ashes of Creation? Share your question in this thread as it relates to one of these upcoming video topics:

- Class Design
- Ability Design
- Balance Design

Please only post one question, so that we can make sure to include a variety of questions from our community. As these videos share a wider behind-the-scenes look at development, please keep in mind that broader questions are more likely to be featured than super specific ones.

Question submission will be open until Monday, July 15 at 11AM PDT. Then, keep an eye out for our upcoming Developer Diaries videos to see if your question and answer are featured!

Virh

Will you be able to steal items from shop's/NPC's an sell them?

dphantomtv

What was their favorite thing to work on. (in their respective field) and when can we expect to see it 😉

tearsofaesir

When it comes to classes and your main character, how will this work will it have a FFXIV feel where one character can play as every class and just had to switch class roles or will you have to make multiple characters for each individual class ?

captemo197

Will there be a way for players to hide their name from showing up automatically for other players?

As if someone were to play as an assassin for a guild in the guild wars, hide their name so they don't draw player aggro in towns when carrying out normal business. Or in the case that there are bounty hunters, if players were to take up their own created "assassin"/"mercenary" profession, they would be able to hide their name, and might become infamous for their "look". A way to truly give a story to and roleplay perspective of good vs. evil; a means for players to play both sides.

Herdo

How do you come up with how a class should feel to play?

E.g.: How "tanky" has a tank to feel? How magical has a mage to feel? How "rangery" has a ranger to feel?

Hjerim

Will a Archtype A with a Sub-type B feel unique and different compared to Archtype B with a Sub-type A.
For example; will it be a lot different to play a Dreadnought compared to knight?
Or will the only difference between playing the two be the delegation of primary stats?
In this example the dreadnought having more dps and the knight being tankier.

Question answered by Zitch.
And the answer is:
"Yes they will feel different.
Archetype A and B have different skills.
Sub-Archetype only gives "augments" that alters how a skill works (like D3 rune system), but the main skills are still the Main Archetype's.
Both Primary Archetype and Sub archetype decides "stat growth" of character together with Race."

j189

The Game will have many "different" classes, how do you design them to feel different ? Will each class be impactful in the Gameplay in its own way?

Zekethephoenix

I know an exorbitant amount of people who are interested in the idea of Ashes of Creation but the lack of full action combat on par with BDO is a big turn off for many(not myself I'm not picky), so how will you decide what feels *good* for the action combat side of things?

ryuuji

Will skill icon will change depending on weapon type? Because having two hand sword and having skill icon showing dagger it is odd.

aaronvienneau

To what extent will your "Risk vs. Reward" mantra carry into player choice?

For instance, will you virtually erase the risk of permanence associated with player choice by freely allowing players to change things such as class, skill-builds?

Or will you reward players who thoughtfully plan their character in advance?

snut

Is there a specific global cooldown on abilities you're planning around?

T Elf

Will you be able to swap between ranged and melee freely with the associated skills like you are able to do in EQ2?

rioordan

How are you going to balance 64 classes? There has to be something that will make sense of this balancing "nightmare."

deadmansprice

What will each abilities be like? Are 64 classes going to have unique abilities specific to them, with the base abilities of main class? Or will each classes have 64 variants of each other?

Will they be be something specific to counter each other, or will player choice be more freer in this?

ISaberI

Coming from BDO, the action combat system was extremely biased towards building lots of damage and trying to 1 combo the enemy into the ground before they could retaliate or break your CC chain. I believe this system is flawed because CC is king and there's no counter play to it. How will the development team balance the classes so that it won't end up being like BDO and having everyone build straight damage instead of incentivizing a variety of builds (i.e. Tanks/glass cannons/hybrids). Will there be a system in place to limit those extremely long CC chains?

Liten

No idea if this been asked/answered.

How many skills will each class have? Also, will all those skills be useful or will some be considered trash after leveling up and gaining new ones (if that's how it is planned)..
ie. 30 active skills, but you only use 5 of those at max level?

What's the plan? Sorry if I've missed this, please link me to an answer if there is one already. =D

Ozelotl

Will there be a stealth mechanic usable for all classes or will stealth be limited to rogues? If it will be limited to just rogues, how will non rogues counter it?

Davlos

What's the driving philosophy behind balancing the classes? Do you intend to make different abilities or classes have their turn at being OP to keep the meta fresh, or do you intend to make everything as normalized (or some may even accuse it as bland) as possible?

ShadowVen

How will ability design be implemented within the crafting professions?

Rather than just clicking a particular action like "process" or "deconstruct" or "combine" for a set of mats for recipes, will there be abilities? For example, ability that would increase % chance of Creating high quality for a set time, increase % chance of success rate, or higher quantity of items retrieved from deconstruction items, etc ...

Thank you I.S., as always, for including the community in this great project!

Greypelt

How frequently will balance be updated? (Multiple times a week, scheduled for major patches, only if something goes wrong, etc.)

CareFreeCactus

Hello!
I am interested in what can be summoned by the summoner. Can we summon Weapons(unequipable), a single summon, many small summons, structures, maybe utility pets like a scouting bird, etc.?

I would also like to know if abilities will differ if I am using a book over an orb?

Thank you,

gnarCia

Knowing there are going to be a bunch of classes, what’s the estimate of amount of spells we’re probably gonna see? Thank yall for all the hard work!!! Can’t wait to play the game xoxo

Azryil

From a theory crafting perspective how much information about skill values will we be provided?
No information(Spell Fireball: launches a ball of fire at your target)
Simple info(Spell Fireball: launches a ball of fire at your target dealing 100 (base) damage)
Basic damage formula(Spell Fireball: launches a ball of fire at your target dealing 100 * 1.02 spell damage)
More?

vikiridi

I have 2 questions
1- how does a recent graduate with CS degree go about becoming a game developer in the industry? what tips would you give in starting a career in game development? Most game dev companies only hire people with several years of experience.
2- what is the process of changing an implemented mechanic that received a lot of negative feedback?

Plateau

What are you doing with healers to make them interesting? I'm not picky, but I'm looking for something challenging or engaging, whether it's complex mechanics, or diverse utility powers, or deep interactions between enemies, allies, and/or environment. Healers don't necessarily have to do crazy things or encroach on the DPS role to be fun, but the basic job of keeping people alive needs to be interesting. Otherwise... well, I'll be sad.

nerdifiedgeek

This question kind of relates to all three video topics and could be asked in any of them..

There's a broad range on the number of character abilities out there between MMORPGs. I've played games that have as few as 6 abilities that your character can use during battle to as many as 100. Personally, I like a larger amount of abilities as I feel it makes the game more dynamic and gives you more reason to play and learn your abilities better to master your class. I have heard that Ashes abilities will likely be limited to one hot bar of 10 or so abilities at a given time. Is that still currently the plan, if that was even accurate?

Thanks

reckless

How many abilities will a single character have to manage? (if it varies with classes what’s the range? **Including weapon abilities**) will there be a built in macro system?

dagaan

Ever since I got my degree in Geography, I've wondered if the video game industry, specifically MMOs, utilized or employed geographers at all for consulting and analytics. Do you have a small team of geographical information systems (GIS) technicians analyzing anomalies, such as player deaths, on the map? Maybe a point is placed on the map each time a player is killed at that location and some data is collected such as player level and class, and what mob killed them. After an accumulation of points in a particular area, it is analysed to see what is going on. Maybe that mob is deemed unbalanced to a certain class if most corpses are of a certain class. Other I could see how other geographer input could be beneficial, especially in Ashes of Creation, a game built around urban developments.

So are Geographers or GIS Technicians desired on an MMO Development team?

Caeryl

We know the aesthetics are a mix of high-fantasy and semi-realism. How will vfx for abilities fit into this aesthetic? Will most be subtle? Do you think they will all be distinct enough to tell apart from other classes’ abilities?

Greed94

Will stealth mechanics completely hide a character similar to World of Warcrafts invisibility?

Will the same ability be different in appearance to another class combination. Class A+B casting fireball having a different color than Class A+C?