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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.
Will pvp and pve be balanced differently?
Marzzo
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
All MMOs that offer both PVE and PVP suffer from balancing problems. The reason for this is that if you tune a class/spec to be competitve in PVE it usually breaks something in PVP. This is becuase classes have different tools that work differently in PVE and PVP.
PVP and PVE is so different that a simple 5% damage increase to a class to make it more balanced in PVE may break the whole game in pvp.
There are a few ways to solve this. There needs to be seperate balancing for PVP when it comes to abiltiies or stats. The most effective way historicly is to have different specializations, auguments, runes etc for PVE and PVP. Sometimes even spells that are unique to PVP.
An example of the balancing problem can be taken from WOW again. Mages in WOW can specialize in three ways, frost, fire and arcane. Arcena focused on single target dps, fire on AOE dps and frost on control. Frost had great utility and control but lacked in pure dps. Still, thanks to their control, utility and survivabilty they were amazing in PVP. When blizzard decided to buff the frost mage damage to be almost on par with fire/arcane the frost mage got completly broken.
Blizzard solved this 10 years later by making many of the utility and survivability abilities PVP only. They also had special ways to deal damage that only really worked in PVE.
How will AoC tackle this problem? How would you like it to be? Personaly I want AoC to have PVP ability augumentations that are seperated from other normal ones. These auguments will not work in PVE. In this way, PVP and PVE can live in harmony. Otherwise, it never will.
PVP and PVE is so different that a simple 5% damage increase to a class to make it more balanced in PVE may break the whole game in pvp.
There are a few ways to solve this. There needs to be seperate balancing for PVP when it comes to abiltiies or stats. The most effective way historicly is to have different specializations, auguments, runes etc for PVE and PVP. Sometimes even spells that are unique to PVP.
An example of the balancing problem can be taken from WOW again. Mages in WOW can specialize in three ways, frost, fire and arcane. Arcena focused on single target dps, fire on AOE dps and frost on control. Frost had great utility and control but lacked in pure dps. Still, thanks to their control, utility and survivabilty they were amazing in PVP. When blizzard decided to buff the frost mage damage to be almost on par with fire/arcane the frost mage got completly broken.
Blizzard solved this 10 years later by making many of the utility and survivability abilities PVP only. They also had special ways to deal damage that only really worked in PVE.
How will AoC tackle this problem? How would you like it to be? Personaly I want AoC to have PVP ability augumentations that are seperated from other normal ones. These auguments will not work in PVE. In this way, PVP and PVE can live in harmony. Otherwise, it never will.
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Ashes is not going to separate abilities or equipment between the two.
Players in general, all players, will likely have to play Ashes different than other games they have played. That Will be a good thing.
Of course all of this is an opinion.
I see what you mean but this can be the other way around. What if a class needs to be insanely buffed to be able to compete in pve, thus making it broken in pve affect us. This issue is important since at least 30% of Ashes wants to play PVP. The unending cat and mouse of balancing PVE and PVP is dangerous for the health of the game. Killing classes and specs will be the norm.
I suppose AoC will never be balanced then. Could you give me one isngle reason why seperate balancing is bad? Also, do you have any sources?
If your numbers are correct, balancing the game so 30% of the players have separate mechanics (abilities, gear, skills, whatever) so they can more effectively attack the other 70% of the players seems cheap.
Why should there be separate mechanics so PvP players are more effective at PvP against PvE players.
This thread has occured a few times, the results are always the same. Both sides just disagree.
Luckily it is a mute point since Ashes won't have separate thinga for PvP and PvE as mentioned above.
But you are aware having different augments for PVP and PVE does not affect anyone negativly? It literally only has positive effects and actually opens up the game to be balanced. YOU dont need to agree. TBH this will never affect you at all. It will only make the game healthier. The whole poin of this is to avoid balancing issues. Nobody loses on it and its a win win for both PVE only and PVP only players.
They will have rated 1v1, 3v3 and 5v5 that needs to be balanced. They also need to balance for 40 man raids, and 8 man groups. They also need to balance single player pve and pvp. They also need to balance different scenarios like castle sieges. Good luck doing this by standarsdizing pve and pvp. Show me one historical example of this working without specific PVP auguments.
I just pointed out there have been other threads and IS has said they won't do this.
I don't really feel like looking up all the references, browse to your hearts content. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Game_balance
This has been stated several times the balance will not be aimed at 1v1. It has been stated several times that classes will have counters to each other the effect of which can be lessened by the secondary class you choose.
Honestly, it is going to be interesting to see just how this unfolds but as of now, this is their plan.
Now iam hoping IF there are differences; that it will be % modifiers and not change the skill entirely. How GW2 does it is alrdy to much for my liking. When switching between Pve/PvP/WvW there almost every skill has slightly different cooldown times, attack range or even miss freeze or stun effect.
This might be a good question to ask on QnA even though the answer is to be expected 'every class has its counter' but how do they really want to tackle these balance issues right from the alpha phases?
Could entirely be wrong tho. But seems like every time they are asked this in Q&A's it always comes back to 8v8 / rock , paper scissors / hard counter. Perhaps I missed something. I late and I'll look this weekend unless someone has a link.
Games that isolate PvP end up with balance problems.
In an open world mmorpg people love their classes and fulfill their roles both in war and adventure.
Open world mmorpgs are so full of meaning that players dont have time to keep checking if "is my class doing 1k dps less than the other classes" or "can my class kill every single opponent"
It all comes down to how many hours you devote to improve your character and how much effort you put in learning your character. The world is vast.
Not some stupid instance, dungeon or arena.
There are things to do instead of feeling victimized all the time.
What does balancing within effect zone mean?
Just wait until your precious guilds castle gets overrun by 200 "Fire mages" one-shotting everyone with endless aoe with no counterplay and spawnkilling you all til 500+ hours of work are razed to the ground. If only, if only, that AOE stun effect only worked in pve.
Never came across that.
Thank you.
The system that historically worked best is that abilties "change" just a small bit when entering PVP combat. For example, an AOE that normally stuns all targets for 3 seconds only stund for 1 second in PVP. Or, an ability that doesl 300% dmg in PVE doesl 150% dmg in PVP.
This does not affect anyone negativly, it only makes it possible to balanace pve and pvp without ruining the other.
Seems unlikely that an alliance of 200 Mages would fair well in a Castle Siege since the objectives for Castle Sieges will probably require a more balanced spread of archetypes.
That's one of the ways that specific scenario will be avoided.
Castle Siege isn't just about bringing a horde of attackers.
Also, it takes a month to prepare for a Castle Siege.
Even if those 200 Fire Mages were able to one-shot everyone during the first two weeks of Castle-node sieges, the devs would likely step in and put an end to those shenanigans, since it seems more like an exploit than intended gameplay.
Also... that is what testing is for.
I understand it like this. Your primary archetype say has the ability fireball. They are balancing damage and aoe from that ability and how it interacts with other archetypes counters. Once they start branching out into the 1000s of various augments from secondary class combinations is where they will have to be on the lookout for "gamebreaking" combinations. For example, that fireball now has a DoT effect due to some social, racial, or other effect. Does the DoT effect break what they plan for damage from how often that ability can be cast? And on and on for permutations. Are they going to drop the ball initially? Sure, but that is why we have the testing phases planned incoming and just because the game releases won't mean that balance attempts will ever stop.
Trust me, sieges will never have a balanced spread of archtypes. Class stacking is bound to happen. Some classes will always be mathematicly better than other. You as an individual dont need to care ofc. But some guilds will want to maximize power, and class stacking is always key.
Anyways. From experience I know that you will love AoC.
If that is not the case, and PvE players can just wipe any PvP focused player because of a build, then IS has done something wrong (imo).
Ideally an avid PvP focused player that challenges a PvE focused player, with similar skill/gear/level, should feel as though the victory was earned (or the loss was close).
Knowing the rock-paper-scissor hierarchy will be advantageous. If Rangers are designed to trump Rogues and Rogues are designed to trump Tanks, then the Ranger should have the advantage against the Rogue. This means the Tank shouldn't start PvP against an equally skilled Rogue, because the deck would be somewhat stacked against them.
It's all about learning the balance and then using that balance (even if it is janky) to accommodate your play style. I don't think IS should be responsible in 'leveling the playing field' for us. [Assuming they hit some level of r/p/s balancing]
The balance system in question is directly related to this.
There's no need to adjust the amount of damage done in PvP vs PvE if all players had a static amount of health and relied more on armor/defensive ability to prevent damage, regardless of "level". I believe it's been said that AoC will have a horizontal advancement system which, imo, suggests that this is the case.
Players will not see massive increases in power as going from 10 to 10,000 damage as they level up, likewise they won't see themselves go from 500 to 500,000 health. Instead, leveling up means gaining access to more skills/potential combinations/augmentations/etc.
Horizontal systems require little adjustment from PvP to PvE, as it essentially treats all entities in the world more or less the same. A monster may be tough because it has 100 HP like any player, but has insanely effective armor and defensive ability. A particularly massive monster may be balanced by having insane HP, but be slower and easier to hit (like a dragon).
The same applies to CC abilities. The standard reduction to CC times is usually because CC generally sucks and few players have fun getting smashed while stunned, however if CC is balanced against PvP and PvE targets the same, some players/monsters may have similar levels of natural resistance to it (tanks, for example, likely have serious resistances to CC) which would make them natural predators to CC based players.
As for "balance zones", it's my opinion that this sounds much like the rock paper scissors system already mentioned.