I don't know either of these proves me wrong and seem beside the point. Dygz said that people who want perfect balance, want it because they don't like rpg elements. I disagreed with that saying that people could want perfect balance because they want to be able to pick a class off without worrying about combat performance. I also postulated that a person who didn't care about RPG elements wouldn't care about the class they play so they should be fine with picking the class the performs the best. I don't think saying they want it for selfish reasons proves what i said wrong.
I didn't say that gamers don't like RPG elements, I said they don't care about the RPG elements, what they primarily care about are the competitive player elements - more like an FPS than the cooperative interactions of the strengths and weaknesses of the various roles of each character in group combat.
RPGs are balanced so that each class/role in a group as strengths and weaknesses that the other classes don't have - so that each individual character has to rely on the other characters in the group to succeed - rather than being balanced so that any individual player can fairly commonly beat any other player 1v1 - especially if one of the players is a better player than the other.
A gamer might still prefer to play one class more than the other, but a gamer who wants the classes to be balanced evenly for 1v1 combat doesn't care about the group combat roles those classes are designed for in an RPG.
If classes are evenly balanced, I don't understand how it's possible for one class to perform the best.
You can assume motive all you like and say they have all the bad intentions in the world but I don't think it's weird or malicious for someone to want to be able to pick a class without worrying about who it's strong and weak against.
I never said that gamers who want the classes to be evenly balanced for 1v1 combat have bad intentions or that it's weird or malicious. It's just counter to roleplay -
Specifically, role each class was designed to play within a group.
It's kind of like wanting everyone in soccer to be able to control the ball with their hands, instead of leaving that feature something only the goal keeper can do.
Would it make you feel better if i said i wasn't for perfect balance and support rock, paper,scissors balance? I'm really just pointing out an issue i see with dygz's logic.
I'm not sure if rock, paper, scissors is core to an RPG but if it is, does it really mean that a person can only enjoy an rpg if they enjoy that aspect of it? Can't people enjoy rpg class systems without enjoying rock, paper, scissors combat? I don't think it's that weird for a person who enjoys the aesthetic and lore of the wizard class to also not like auto losing to the warrior class that counters them. I don't think that person hates all RPG aspects because they want the game balanced so they stand a chance in that fight.
Especially in MMORPGs, players can enjoy playing all kinds of ways.
Even though MMORPGS are designed for characters to level almost exclusively through killing stuff, some players still find ways to level to max with no kills or to level to max with no deaths. Players can spend all of their time soloing or all of their time crafting.
But, what we're really talking about here is the dev philosophy. It's no different than asking for separate PvE or RP servers. If the devs want to support that, great. That's the way they've chosen to design their game.
If the devs have chosen not to support that, we just have to wait to see if they're able to grab the numbers of players they're hoping to attract.
If the devs have chosen to return to a more traditional RPG class balance -"rock, paper, scissors"- then, we have to wait to see if they can attract the numbers of players they're hoping to attract.
It's interesting, though, how I say that gamers don't really care about the RPG elements of MMORPGs and you mirror back that I said they "don't like the RPG elements" and then escalate that to they "hate all RPG elements".
I'm not advocating for "perfect balance" as I said. I'm just against the idea the all people who want it are against rpgs. I agree with classes having different strengths and weaknesses.
Except... you are the only person who has said, "all people who want it are against rpgs".
I'm not aware of anyone else here stating that as a point of discussion.
Assuming we are talking about the 8 base archetypes, we kind of have the option for both with how open the class system is as well as the other progression systems you can advance in. Not saying we have perfect 1v1 balance but we know that you can use the different forms of horizontal progression to either try to cover up your weaknesses or double down on your strengths. Once again, won't be perfect balance but there are a lot of options, A lot more then people are used to.
The dev philosophy is to balance in order to promote a rock, paper, scissors relationship for the primary archetypes. Augments aren't really going to change those relationships significantly.
Sorry, I'm not going to break this up as beautifully as you did.
1.Sorry, I used like and care interchangeably, my bad if this caused confusion.
You say that people who want perfect 1v1 balance, don't care for tradition RPG group roles. You are saying they still care for RPG elements, just not class roles. I think this was your original point that I misinterpreted and then ran with because others disagreed with the premise.
I'm going to be difficult and still disagree. I think it's more important in RPG groups for the classes to have roles, not necessarily strengths and weakness. Naturally, you will have some strengths and weaknesses as the roles differ but I don't think they need to be emphasized. I think classes could still server different roles in groups, bring unique utilities and the developers still have some goal of balancing them for the 1v1. Won't ever have perfect balance but I think you could still try without sacrificing RPG group mechanics.
Just because someone wants it balanced for the 1v1 fight doesn't mean they don't care about groups. Even in group pvp fights, you should still be working with and relying on your group to succeed. A 5v5 shouldn't become 5 1v1s because the game is balanced for 1v1s. You should be working with your group to defend your team members and focusing down targets.
Once again, i'm not advocating for 1v1 balancing. I'm just questioning if 1. people who want it don't care for RPG group mechanics 2. How much does 1v1 balancing really take away from RPG group mechanics?
2. The bad intentions comment was not directed at you. I quoted others in my post.
3. I agree with everything you said here but it is not really what I was arguing. Once again, I was not arguing for a specific balance, I was arguing that people who want "perfect balance" do also care for RPG elements.
4. If I said that then my mistake and sorry if it's caused confusion. I hope I clarified the reason for my comments. can you point out where I said this so I can cross it out?
5. We will have to see. I agree with how they are balancing but I have heard steven say players should have the option to use different forms of horizontal progression to cover up a classes weakness. Doing so obviously means you give up maximizing your strengths.
I don't know either of these proves me wrong and seem beside the point. Dygz said that people who want perfect balance, want it because they don't like rpg elements. I disagreed with that saying that people could want perfect balance because they want to be able to pick a class off without worrying about combat performance. I also postulated that a person who didn't care about RPG elements wouldn't care about the class they play so they should be fine with picking the class the performs the best. I don't think saying they want it for selfish reasons proves what i said wrong.
I didn't say that gamers don't like RPG elements, I said they don't care about the RPG elements, what they primarily care about are the competitive player elements - more like an FPS than the cooperative interactions of the strengths and weaknesses of the various roles of each character in group combat.
RPGs are balanced so that each class/role in a group as strengths and weaknesses that the other classes don't have - so that each individual character has to rely on the other characters in the group to succeed - rather than being balanced so that any individual player can fairly commonly beat any other player 1v1 - especially if one of the players is a better player than the other.
A gamer might still prefer to play one class more than the other, but a gamer who wants the classes to be balanced evenly for 1v1 combat doesn't care about the group combat roles those classes are designed for in an RPG.
If classes are evenly balanced, I don't understand how it's possible for one class to perform the best.
You can assume motive all you like and say they have all the bad intentions in the world but I don't think it's weird or malicious for someone to want to be able to pick a class without worrying about who it's strong and weak against.
I never said that gamers who want the classes to be evenly balanced for 1v1 combat have bad intentions or that it's weird or malicious. It's just counter to roleplay -
Specifically, role each class was designed to play within a group.
It's kind of like wanting everyone in soccer to be able to control the ball with their hands, instead of leaving that feature something only the goal keeper can do.
Would it make you feel better if i said i wasn't for perfect balance and support rock, paper,scissors balance? I'm really just pointing out an issue i see with dygz's logic.
I'm not sure if rock, paper, scissors is core to an RPG but if it is, does it really mean that a person can only enjoy an rpg if they enjoy that aspect of it? Can't people enjoy rpg class systems without enjoying rock, paper, scissors combat? I don't think it's that weird for a person who enjoys the aesthetic and lore of the wizard class to also not like auto losing to the warrior class that counters them. I don't think that person hates all RPG aspects because they want the game balanced so they stand a chance in that fight.
Especially in MMORPGs, players can enjoy playing all kinds of ways.
Even though MMORPGS are designed for characters to level almost exclusively through killing stuff, some players still find ways to level to max with no kills or to level to max with no deaths. Players can spend all of their time soloing or all of their time crafting.
But, what we're really talking about here is the dev philosophy. It's no different than asking for separate PvE or RP servers. If the devs want to support that, great. That's the way they've chosen to design their game.
If the devs have chosen not to support that, we just have to wait to see if they're able to grab the numbers of players they're hoping to attract.
If the devs have chosen to return to a more traditional RPG class balance -"rock, paper, scissors"- then, we have to wait to see if they can attract the numbers of players they're hoping to attract.
It's interesting, though, how I say that gamers don't really care about the RPG elements of MMORPGs and you mirror back that I said they "don't like the RPG elements" and then escalate that to they "hate all RPG elements".
I'm not advocating for "perfect balance" as I said. I'm just against the idea the all people who want it are against rpgs. I agree with classes having different strengths and weaknesses.
Except... you are the only person who has said, "all people who want it are against rpgs".
I'm not aware of anyone else here stating that as a point of discussion.
Assuming we are talking about the 8 base archetypes, we kind of have the option for both with how open the class system is as well as the other progression systems you can advance in. Not saying we have perfect 1v1 balance but we know that you can use the different forms of horizontal progression to either try to cover up your weaknesses or double down on your strengths. Once again, won't be perfect balance but there are a lot of options, A lot more then people are used to.
The dev philosophy is to balance in order to promote a rock, paper, scissors relationship for the primary archetypes. Augments aren't really going to change those relationships significantly.
Sorry, I'm not going to break this up as beautifully as you did.
1.Sorry, I used like and care interchangeably, my bad if this caused confusion.
You say that people who want perfect 1v1 balance, don't care for tradition RPG group roles. You are saying they still care for RPG elements, just not class roles. I think this was your original point that I misinterpreted and then ran with because others disagreed with the premise.
I'm going to be difficult and still disagree. I think it's more important in RPG groups for the classes to have roles, not necessarily strengths and weakness. Naturally, you will have some strengths and weaknesses as the roles differ but I don't think they need to be emphasized. I think classes could still server different roles in groups, bring unique utilities and the developers still have some goal of balancing them for the 1v1. Won't ever have perfect balance but I think you could still try without sacrificing RPG group mechanics.
Just because someone wants it balanced for the 1v1 fight doesn't mean they don't care about groups. Even in group pvp fights, you should still be working with and relying on your group to succeed. A 5v5 shouldn't become 5 1v1s because the game is balanced for 1v1s. You should be working with your group to defend your team members and focusing down targets.
Once again, i'm not advocating for 1v1 balancing. I'm just questioning if 1. people who want it don't care for RPG group mechanics 2. How much does 1v1 balancing really take away from RPG group mechanics?
2. The bad intentions comment was not directed at you. I quoted others in my post.
3. I agree with everything you said here but it is not really what I was arguing. Once again, I was not arguing for a specific balance, I was arguing that people who want "perfect balance" do also care for RPG elements.
4. If I said that then my mistake and sorry if it's caused confusion. I hope I clarified the reason for my comments. can you point out where I said this so I can cross it out?
5. We will have to see. I agree with how they are balancing but I have heard steven say players should have the option to use different forms of horizontal progression to cover up a classes weakness. Doing so obviously means you give up maximizing your strengths.
It removes the importance of class choice. That is why it goes against the heart of an RPG.
For the same reason Ashes will have interactions with character race that will allow only a particular character race access to certain quests, they should have classes that function differently and should not allow a class to cover all of its own weaknesses while retaining all of its strengths.
Despite I am OK with group vs group balance, what you wrote is not true. The same relative strength does not mean your class do not have strengths and weakness. The different game-style define the classes.
example:
mage vs rouge:
rouge can hide, can silent the mage, etc if use his skills properly the rouge can win.
mage can use detect invisiblity, can freeze the rouge, can teleport if use his skill properly the mage can win.
mage vs cleric:
cleric can heal himself, can use curses, can remove harmful spells etc if use his skills properly the cleric can win.
mage can use dispell HoT spells, can remove curse, etc if use his skills properly the mage can win
mage vs warrior:
warrior can jump, can knock down, can make bleed damage, can use shield, etc, if use his skills the warrior can win
mage can burn, can freeze, can teleport if use his skill properly the mage can win.
As you can see they are balanced, but all classes are different. They can have much other non combat or group/support skills, the play-style is different so you can't say your class choice has no impact or it reduce the RPG part. Not even that we do not have any classes.
See this is faulty thinking. In this “balance” there are no strengths, because the strengths can be disabled by any matchup and even in these example it would be a “first to attack wins” scenario with two offense classes, or in the case of cleric/mage, a complete standoff where no one gets anywhere.
That is not how it should really play out. A rogue’s slippery nature should fair much differently against a tank than another rogue. A rogue’s chance against a tank should be low, their chance against another rogue should be fairly even, and their chance against a cleric or mage should be high assuming each case involves players of equal skill.
Likewise, a mage’s fight against a tank should fair well with their ability to kite, cc, and whittle away at HP bars. A fight against a cleric or another mage should go fairly even. And their chance against a rogue should be low.
This isn’t a punishment for choosing a class, it’s simply another part of an RPG system. If your priest can challenge an assassin with comfortable odds of winning, if a tank can stand toe to toe and have good odds to kill a mage, then class evidently doesnt have much difference besides the color of effects you see.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited August 2019
I said that gamers who want perfect 1v1 balance, don't care about RPG group roles.
I did not say they don't care for group roles. The phrase "does not care for" implies a dislike. "Does not care about" describes disinterest.
I also did not say that such people do not care groups - they don't care about group roles. What they care about is being able to defeat any class 1v1.
You may think that the strengths and weaknesses of each class is not important, but that is counter to RPG design. What you're really saying is that it can be fun to enjoy games that deviate from RPG design but have some RPG elements.
Some people might think that the rule for how many steps a player can take without dribbling the ball is basketball is not as important shooting the ball through the hoop. You might think that the rule for how many steps you can take after you've stopped running with the ball is not important. But, horse is a different game than basketball - despite sharing some of the same elements.
You're saying that there won't ever be perfect balance and I'm saying the concepts of the classes were never intended to be balanced for 1v1 combat. A Fighter in plate mail is intended to be stronger and soak more physical damage in melee than a Mage in robes which is designed to be physically weak but deal excessive amounts of ranged damage in quick bursts.
The concepts for these classes were designed specifically to support each other in group combat rather than being designed to fight each other 1v1 in single combat. Because RPG combat is intended to be focused primarily on the synergies of the classes in group combat -as a military unit- rather than being focused on player-v-player combat.
Gamers like to focus on player-v-player competition rather than on the cooperation of characters v content.
RPGs are designed for the latter - with direct PvP combat as an option. Not necessarily always the best option, but it's still an option players can take.
Most of the PvP combat in Ashes is still focused on group content, rather than 1v1 duels. Ashes is not going to be balanced for 1v1 PvP duels. Because once classes are balanced primarily for 1v1 duels - that's really becoming some other game type - like horse is different than basketball and like soccer and football are different than rugby.
If the classes are balanced for 1v1 duels rather than balanced for the combat roles for group content - well that is inherently moving away from being a role-playing game and moving closer to being a dueling fighter game.
And, at the end of the day, it's up to the devs to determine where they want their game to fit on the spectrum.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
See this is faulty thinking. In this “balance” there are no strengths, because the strengths can be disabled by any matchup and even in these example it would be a “first to attack wins” scenario with two offense classes, or in the case of cleric/mage, a complete standoff where no one gets anywhere.
That is not how it should really play out. A rogue’s slippery nature should fair much differently against a tank than another rogue. A rogue’s chance against a tank should be low, their chance against another rogue should be fairly even, and their chance against a cleric or mage should be high assuming each case involves players of equal skill.
Likewise, a mage’s fight against a tank should fair well with their ability to kite, cc, and whittle away at HP bars. A fight against a cleric or another mage should go fairly even. And their chance against a rogue should be low.
This isn’t a punishment for choosing a class, it’s simply another part of an RPG system. If your priest can challenge an assassin with comfortable odds of winning, if a tank can stand toe to toe and have good odds to kill a mage, then class evidently doesn't have much difference besides the color of effects you see.
Right. These classes were designed such that a Rogue is able to sneak up on an opponent to backstab that is being distracted by the "taunts" of melee ally. The classes are not really designed for a Rogue to be able to backstab an individual opponent. A Rogue is supposed to be able to do highest damage only when flanked with an ally.
It's set up this way so that the players can be thinking about how to aid and support the other classes in their party, rather than just focusing on their own abilities and individual battles. Instead of just expecting the Fighter to hold her own and the Rogue to hold his own - they are each supposed to be thinking about how their actions benefit the actions of their teammates - the Fighter needs to try to keep the opponent(s) focused on her so that the Rogue can move behind for the backstab. The Rogue needs to make sure that they stealth into position quickly enough that the Fighter doesn't take too much damage. They both need to try to keep the opponent(s) far enough away from the Mage that Mage isn't broken by a stray attack because Mages are designed to be glass cannons - particularly vulnerable in melee battles.
If both Fighter and Mage are evenly balanced for melee and for ranged combat - there aren't really any group combat roles other than healer and fighter.
if a tank can stand toe to toe and have good odds to kill a mage, then class evidently doesnt have much difference besides the color of effects you see.
Earlier, you mentioned if we have balance 1v1, we do not have classes, now, you say that a rouge and a mage is same, but different effect only because both of them has same chance to win.
We have fire mage, earth mage and ice mage. Each of them has bolt spell only. Fire mage do 50% more damage against earth mage, earth mage do 50% more damage against ice mage and ice mage do 50% more damage against fire mage.
Do you really think that in this perfect paper, rock, scissor balance situation we have real classes and it is not just the color effect of the spell?!
If we go back to 'my model'. It does not really have classes, it is only just different colored skill, but if we nerf the 'detect invisibility' skill of the mage to make it less effective against the rouge and we buff his freeze spell to make more powerful against the tank, then we created classes and solved the only color difference skill problem, just with the power of a skill?
I do not think so.
Regarding the strengths: mage can do good burst damage, but he can sacrifice this strength for better chance against rouge, because use different skills, but in a group where a tanklike party-member defense him the mage go back to his powerful damage-dealing strength. If the tank do a mistake and the enemy can attack the mage, the weakness is also revealed, the mage can die quickly.
Than is why I do not think that the balance type has any connection to classes or RPG feeling.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited August 2019
What Caeryl actually said is that if Rogue and Mage are evenly balanced for 1v1, there really isn't much difference between the classes.
In Ashes, the primary archetypes will be balanced for groups; not 1v1 PvP duels.
Mages will be balanced to be roughly equal with all other Mages, so... Fire Mage, Earth Mage and Ice Mage will be balanced to be equally effective in their roles, while likely being vulnerable to Tanks and Fighters in melee battles.
It makes no sense for a Mage's Detect Invisibility "skill" to be nerfed when used against a Rogue since that "skill" is really a magic spell. Nerfing that spell really would be ruining the Mage class and treating that class as if it was a Ranger attempting to track a Rogue that is hiding.
What is so special about Tanks that they should be more vulnerable to Ice spells?? That doesn't make any sense either. Might make sense for plate armor to be more vulnerable to Ice spells than leather armor or cloth robes...maybe.
What you are asking for, here, is not even for the balance to change for PvP v PvE.
Here you are asking for the balance to change dynamically for solo v group.
The devs are not going to do that... it's actually quite an absurd suggestion.
The devs are going to balance for PvX - with a focus on each archetype supporting the other 7 archetypes in a group. And, the roles will have a rock, paper, scissors synergy that works well for group combat strategies, but may not be optimal for 1v1 duels.
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mcstackersonMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I don't know either of these proves me wrong and seem beside the point. Dygz said that people who want perfect balance, want it because they don't like rpg elements. I disagreed with that saying that people could want perfect balance because they want to be able to pick a class off without worrying about combat performance. I also postulated that a person who didn't care about RPG elements wouldn't care about the class they play so they should be fine with picking the class the performs the best. I don't think saying they want it for selfish reasons proves what i said wrong.
I didn't say that gamers don't like RPG elements, I said they don't care about the RPG elements, what they primarily care about are the competitive player elements - more like an FPS than the cooperative interactions of the strengths and weaknesses of the various roles of each character in group combat.
RPGs are balanced so that each class/role in a group as strengths and weaknesses that the other classes don't have - so that each individual character has to rely on the other characters in the group to succeed - rather than being balanced so that any individual player can fairly commonly beat any other player 1v1 - especially if one of the players is a better player than the other.
A gamer might still prefer to play one class more than the other, but a gamer who wants the classes to be balanced evenly for 1v1 combat doesn't care about the group combat roles those classes are designed for in an RPG.
If classes are evenly balanced, I don't understand how it's possible for one class to perform the best.
You can assume motive all you like and say they have all the bad intentions in the world but I don't think it's weird or malicious for someone to want to be able to pick a class without worrying about who it's strong and weak against.
I never said that gamers who want the classes to be evenly balanced for 1v1 combat have bad intentions or that it's weird or malicious. It's just counter to roleplay -
Specifically, role each class was designed to play within a group.
It's kind of like wanting everyone in soccer to be able to control the ball with their hands, instead of leaving that feature something only the goal keeper can do.
Would it make you feel better if i said i wasn't for perfect balance and support rock, paper,scissors balance? I'm really just pointing out an issue i see with dygz's logic.
I'm not sure if rock, paper, scissors is core to an RPG but if it is, does it really mean that a person can only enjoy an rpg if they enjoy that aspect of it? Can't people enjoy rpg class systems without enjoying rock, paper, scissors combat? I don't think it's that weird for a person who enjoys the aesthetic and lore of the wizard class to also not like auto losing to the warrior class that counters them. I don't think that person hates all RPG aspects because they want the game balanced so they stand a chance in that fight.
Especially in MMORPGs, players can enjoy playing all kinds of ways.
Even though MMORPGS are designed for characters to level almost exclusively through killing stuff, some players still find ways to level to max with no kills or to level to max with no deaths. Players can spend all of their time soloing or all of their time crafting.
But, what we're really talking about here is the dev philosophy. It's no different than asking for separate PvE or RP servers. If the devs want to support that, great. That's the way they've chosen to design their game.
If the devs have chosen not to support that, we just have to wait to see if they're able to grab the numbers of players they're hoping to attract.
If the devs have chosen to return to a more traditional RPG class balance -"rock, paper, scissors"- then, we have to wait to see if they can attract the numbers of players they're hoping to attract.
It's interesting, though, how I say that gamers don't really care about the RPG elements of MMORPGs and you mirror back that I said they "don't like the RPG elements" and then escalate that to they "hate all RPG elements".
I'm not advocating for "perfect balance" as I said. I'm just against the idea the all people who want it are against rpgs. I agree with classes having different strengths and weaknesses.
Except... you are the only person who has said, "all people who want it are against rpgs".
I'm not aware of anyone else here stating that as a point of discussion.
Assuming we are talking about the 8 base archetypes, we kind of have the option for both with how open the class system is as well as the other progression systems you can advance in. Not saying we have perfect 1v1 balance but we know that you can use the different forms of horizontal progression to either try to cover up your weaknesses or double down on your strengths. Once again, won't be perfect balance but there are a lot of options, A lot more then people are used to.
The dev philosophy is to balance in order to promote a rock, paper, scissors relationship for the primary archetypes. Augments aren't really going to change those relationships significantly.
Sorry, I'm not going to break this up as beautifully as you did.
1.Sorry, I used like and care interchangeably, my bad if this caused confusion.
You say that people who want perfect 1v1 balance, don't care for tradition RPG group roles. You are saying they still care for RPG elements, just not class roles. I think this was your original point that I misinterpreted and then ran with because others disagreed with the premise.
I'm going to be difficult and still disagree. I think it's more important in RPG groups for the classes to have roles, not necessarily strengths and weakness. Naturally, you will have some strengths and weaknesses as the roles differ but I don't think they need to be emphasized. I think classes could still server different roles in groups, bring unique utilities and the developers still have some goal of balancing them for the 1v1. Won't ever have perfect balance but I think you could still try without sacrificing RPG group mechanics.
Just because someone wants it balanced for the 1v1 fight doesn't mean they don't care about groups. Even in group pvp fights, you should still be working with and relying on your group to succeed. A 5v5 shouldn't become 5 1v1s because the game is balanced for 1v1s. You should be working with your group to defend your team members and focusing down targets.
Once again, i'm not advocating for 1v1 balancing. I'm just questioning if 1. people who want it don't care for RPG group mechanics 2. How much does 1v1 balancing really take away from RPG group mechanics?
2. The bad intentions comment was not directed at you. I quoted others in my post.
3. I agree with everything you said here but it is not really what I was arguing. Once again, I was not arguing for a specific balance, I was arguing that people who want "perfect balance" do also care for RPG elements.
4. If I said that then my mistake and sorry if it's caused confusion. I hope I clarified the reason for my comments. can you point out where I said this so I can cross it out?
5. We will have to see. I agree with how they are balancing but I have heard steven say players should have the option to use different forms of horizontal progression to cover up a classes weakness. Doing so obviously means you give up maximizing your strengths.
It removes the importance of class choice. That is why it goes against the heart of an RPG.
For the same reason Ashes will have interactions with character race that will allow only a particular character race access to certain quests, they should have classes that function differently and should not allow a class to cover all of its own weaknesses while retaining all of its strengths.
Just because you balance for the 1v1 doesn't mean classes don't have strengths and weaknesses. You still allow classes to have there weaknesses, just give them tools that allow them to compete against other classes. The warrior class still can be kited by the glass cannon mage but if the mage isn't careful and shoots a spell into the warriors spell reflect, the warrior might be able to catch up to them, exploit the mages low defense, and pummel them.
I'm also not sure if I buy what you say. If you removed the "importance of class choice" I don't think that is at the heart of RPGs. I'd agree the class system is but not the arbitrary weaknesses and strengths associated with those classes. Playing a wizard is about play a class that uses magic to assist his allies and smite his foes. I don't think it's defined as being a glass cannon dps class. It is a glass cannon dps class but i don't think it's defined by that and giving it tools to work around it's weaknesses doesn't necessarily mean it loses those weaknesses.
I said that gamers who want perfect 1v1 balance, don't care about RPG group roles.
I did not say they don't care for group roles. The phrase "does not care for" implies a dislike. "Does not care about" describes disinterest.
I also did not say that such people do not care groups - they don't care about group roles. What they care about is being able to defeat any class 1v1.
You may think that the strengths and weaknesses of each class is not important, but that is counter to RPG design. What you're really saying is that it can be fun to enjoy games that deviate from RPG design but have some RPG elements.
Some people might think that the rule for how many steps a player can take without dribbling the ball is basketball is not as important shooting the ball through the hoop. You might think that the rule for how many steps you can take after you've stopped running with the ball is not important. But, horse is a different game than basketball - despite sharing some of the same elements.
You're saying that there won't ever be perfect balance and I'm saying the concepts of the classes were never intended to be balanced for 1v1 combat. A Fighter in plate mail is intended to be stronger and soak more physical damage in melee than a Mage in robes which is designed to be physically weak but deal excessive amounts of ranged damage in quick bursts.
The concepts for these classes were designed specifically to support each other in group combat rather than being designed to fight each other 1v1 in single combat. Because RPG combat is intended to be focused primarily on the synergies of the classes in group combat -as a military unit- rather than being focused on player-v-player combat.
Gamers like to focus on player-v-player competition rather than on the cooperation of characters v content.
RPGs are designed for the latter - with direct PvP combat as an option. Not necessarily always the best option, but it's still an option players can take.
Most of the PvP combat in Ashes is still focused on group content, rather than 1v1 duels. Ashes is not going to be balanced for 1v1 PvP duels. Because once classes are balanced primarily for 1v1 duels - that's really becoming some other game type - like horse is different than basketball and like soccer and football are different than rugby.
If the classes are balanced for 1v1 duels rather than balanced for the combat roles for group content - well that is inherently moving away from being a role-playing game and moving closer to being a dueling fighter game.
And, at the end of the day, it's up to the devs to determine where they want their game to fit on the spectrum.
I believe people can care about both the group and 1v1 play.
Please show me the RPG design doc that says classes have to have strengths and weaknesses. If that is how you define/like your RPGs then cool but it sounds like you are saying that if an RPG isn't designed the way you like then it's not really an RPG.
The brunt of my argument is that I disagree with how core strengths and weaknesses are to RPGs but I also disagree that you can't have strengths and weaknesses in a system where you try to balance for the 1v1. You can still have the tanky kiteable warrior and the glass cannon bursty mage. You can give them different abilities that can help them deal with the other player classes and still have them being reliant on each other in a group, especially a group pve environment. Just because warriors have a spell reflect and charge ability that helps them fight mage players who try to kite them doesn't change the fact the warrior needs healers and dps when doing a group encounter. In PVE, these abilities don't suddenly make the warrior completely self-reliant and capable of soloing all content. They still need heals and other player dealing damage to their target.
I agree that ashes is going to be balanced for group content and I support that. As I said, my disagreement is more about your assertion of what an RPG is.
You totally misunderstand me. First of all, I am totally OK with group vs group balance, I do not promote 1v1 balance. I am just against the illogical thing that if there are 1v1 balance we do not have classes and do not have strength/weakness and especially the skill difference is just color of the skills.
In the 3 mages situation there are no other classes. This is just a very basic example that the paper, rock, skissor balance does not mean we have real different classes. In this example there are everything what was Caeryl brought up against the 1v1 balance. (no real classes, only color difference in skills, strong weakness against other class) And evidently everything what was brought up is included, but it is P,R,S system.
When I talked about nerfing/buffing skills I did not talk about against specific classes only. I talked about them as general nerf/buff. But as theses skills have major role against the mentioned classes, it means that the result is unbalanced 1v1, but we changed almost nothing. The original example was perfect 1v1 balance, but it was accused that there are no real classes, only skill color difference. So I said we make minor changes in some skills. After that, we have a more P,R,S like system. So I raised the question: Only these minor changes created real classes and created 'non-color difference' skill?
"What is so special about Tanks that they should be more vulnerable to Ice spells?"
I did not said anything about tanks. I did not even say vulnerability. The buff can be: less cooldown, more damage, more range, shorter cast time, longer effect period, stronger effect, trigger combo and maybe there are other things as well, what did not came to my mind at this moment.
"What you are asking for, here, is not even for the balance to change for PvP v PvE."
No I do not ask for anything, these examples are just presentations to reveal logical fails.
"It makes no sense for a Mage's Detect Invisibility "skill" to be nerfed when used against a Rogue since that "skill" is really a magic spell. Nerfing that spell really would be ruining the Mage class and treating that class as if it was a Ranger attempting to track a Rogue that is hiding."
Not only against rouge only, but if we increase the cooldown to be able to use only once in a fight, the rouge can be revealed only once in a fight. In a group other classes can have other skills for same purpose so there still can be synergy so we do not ruin anything. We also can play with the range of the spell, or the effecting period.
Im also excited for rock, paper, scissors balance just because current state of WoW feels so horrible.
It makes no sense that 1v1 balance would be less rng as the core elements of classes in combat are skill range, direct effect, over time effect, offensive/defensive cooldowns etc.
Perfect balance is all about relations between uptimes, ranges and other core mechanics.
Its just as rpg as group type, eventough I personally dislike the concept.
Why cant u argue for the topic instead? As that is actually a problematic situation.
Will the devs balance the game for r p s PvP and what effect would that have on PvE? How will cc work in PvE, and what would be a good way to implement cc heavy classes into PvP and PvE?
"You're seeking for perfection, but your disillusions are leading to destruction.
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
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.
This can't really happen in a Castle Siege - especially not spawn-killing.
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.
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.
In most games with open world PvP, there is very little in terms of interaction between various classes.
That won't be the case in Ashes.
First of all, there will be classes with CC and classes that deal a lot of damage - the two won't mix that much. No game with open world PvP has had CC centric classes - and so none of us can claim we know how it will work. Without both CC and high AE damage, the mage-ball tactic you're talking about simply doesn't work.
At the very least, you now need a high AE DPS class and a high AE CC class - and we don't even know if AE CC will even exist yet.
However, if you take a AE CC/DPS group out, you'll probably lose to an AE CC/DPS+buffer group. The buffer could well do things like increase duration of CC - or more importantly increase the range.
All of a sudden, your one class mage-ball is a minimum of three classes.
However, if you take out that high AE CC/DPS+buffer-ball, it has one serious weakness - it's all AE damage. A group of summoners working together to summon their group summons is all it would take, you will now find your high AE focused PvP group in a situation where they are up against a very strong single target PvP target (ie, one target as strong as 8 PvP'ers). I'm not sure what your experiences in MMO's are, but when you take a AE centric group up against a strong single target, the strong single target usually wins.
So now a single group of 8 summoners can probably take out your full AE CC/DPS+buffer-ball raid - at the very least they can weaken it to the point where it is easy pickings for anyone left in the area. However, that single group of summoners are effectively stationary and very vulnerable. What you could do is summon a group summons yourself with your own group of summoners, use that to distract the group summons from that summoner group, and send in a few melee (with a few melee buffers) to take out the otherwise distracted summoners that are controlling the group summons.
All of a sudden, instead of a single class mage-ball, you are now running all 8 archetypes.
There's your rock paper scissors balance in a nutshell.
In the end, it's a dumb balance strategy anyway. Give a class the ability to stealth, it immediately obtains a massive tactical advantage and strategic advantage. It can choose when and where to hit, from what direction, and even whether or not it hits to begin with.
Classes should be made so that they counter each other effectively based on circumstance. A rogue has a huge advantage with stealth, however any class should be able to defeat the rogue if they react to detecting the rogue quickly enough. A mage should be well balanced between offense and defense, they should be hard to take out in a stand up fight, but vulnerable to an ambush (like from a rogue), and tanks should be resilient, able to withstand spell effects better than others, but susceptible to certain situations (DoTs for example).
Basically, any class should be able to specialize in rock, paper, or scissors, while still capable of throwing the other two to some degree. Making one class rock, another scissors, and another paper, means that for your entire time playing a class, you are limited to a one trick horse. And that's just not fun for anyone.
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mcstackersonMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
World of Roguecraft, what a classic.
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AzathothMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I always imagined the rock, paper, scissors strategy was a base level comparison. I am sure the game will allow customization of classes so they don't feel like one trick ponies. I can only hope that IS allows for all the classes to be spec'd in multiple ways based on augments.
I think its a great challenge what Intrepid have decided to take on.
I applaud them for it and its why Im a backer.
They need to balance 64 classes, in a world that has PVP imbedded into the PVE world , with dynamic zones and towns and ships and you name it!
They wont have seperate gear per se, but im sure players will have their favourite PVP sets and their favourite PVE sets.
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AzathothMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
There are only 8 classes that need to be balanced.
The secondaries only grant augmentations. However, if you consider those need to be balance, it's more than 64. There are also Racial and Religious augments planned.
There should be a lot of customization,with most of the 64 options feeling different (even if not unique) and the additional augments adding flair.
+1 Skull & Crown metal coin
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HumblePuffinMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I do feel that a lot of the time you do need to have some separate PvP and PvE balancing, but I like that being done with the spells we have through added/removed effects, not with PvP and PvE only abilities, and separate/different skill trees.
I enjoyed that in SWtOR certain tank abilities taunted NPCs, but in PvP they also reduced enemy damage output if they weren’t attacking you. Or a stun may last for 5 seconds against an NPC, but only 2 for player characters.
Things like that I feel are absolutely necessary. It makes sure I have no dead abilities on my skill bar just because I’m PvPing, as well as it condenses the amount of skills you need to have. Instead of having that 10 second stun that only works on NPCs, and a 2 second stun that works on anything including PCs, it’s just one spell that checks to see if the target is a PC/NPC before it applies the effect.
What if the stun was only 2s in both pvp and pve? @HumblePuffin
"You're seeking for perfection, but your disillusions are leading to destruction.
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
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HumblePuffinMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
What if the stun was only 2s in both pvp and pve? @HumblePuffin
I’m fine with that as well, and to be clear I’m fine with PvX balancing as well. The issue arises when they start power creeping PvE stuff, and they start buffing abilities to deal with that and suddenly the PvP side becomes broken.
I just tend to not trust companies to balance PvX, and just opt to push for same abilities, with some added/removed effects. This way when those darn PvE players start power creeping, PvP can keep some semblance of balance.
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Wandering MistModerator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
There's your rock paper scissors balance in a nutshell.
In the end, it's a dumb balance strategy anyway. Give a class the ability to stealth, it immediately obtains a massive tactical advantage and strategic advantage. It can choose when and where to hit, from what direction, and even whether or not it hits to begin with.
Classes should be made so that they counter each other effectively based on circumstance. A rogue has a huge advantage with stealth, however any class should be able to defeat the rogue if they react to detecting the rogue quickly enough. A mage should be well balanced between offense and defense, they should be hard to take out in a stand up fight, but vulnerable to an ambush (like from a rogue), and tanks should be resilient, able to withstand spell effects better than others, but susceptible to certain situations (DoTs for example).
Basically, any class should be able to specialize in rock, paper, or scissors, while still capable of throwing the other two to some degree. Making one class rock, another scissors, and another paper, means that for your entire time playing a class, you are limited to a one trick horse. And that's just not fun for anyone.
Stealth is always a very tough thing to balance in any game. We can use WoW as the example of this. Imagine if Rogues didn't have stealth at all. They have no gap closers and are squishy melee fighters, meaning without stealth any ranged opponent can kite them and kill them before the Rogue ever gets into melee range. So you give Rogues a stealth mechanic in order to allow them to reach their target without dying instantly. But now the Rogues are too strong in 1v1 because their only weakness has been taken away thanks to stealth.
At this point you have 2 options. Either you put in a counter-measure for the stealth system (i.e. a way to detect stealthed players), or give Rogues another weakness to balance out the strength of the stealth mechanic.
Oh and as for that video, I'm pretty sure WoW has never aimed for a cyclical balance in their class gameplay at all. If you want an example of cyclical balance you'd be better off looking at League of Legends, where every champion has a counter (either an item or another champion) to offset its strengths.
There's your rock paper scissors balance in a nutshell.
In the end, it's a dumb balance strategy anyway. Give a class the ability to stealth, it immediately obtains a massive tactical advantage and strategic advantage. It can choose when and where to hit, from what direction, and even whether or not it hits to begin with.
Classes should be made so that they counter each other effectively based on circumstance. A rogue has a huge advantage with stealth, however any class should be able to defeat the rogue if they react to detecting the rogue quickly enough. A mage should be well balanced between offense and defense, they should be hard to take out in a stand up fight, but vulnerable to an ambush (like from a rogue), and tanks should be resilient, able to withstand spell effects better than others, but susceptible to certain situations (DoTs for example).
Basically, any class should be able to specialize in rock, paper, or scissors, while still capable of throwing the other two to some degree. Making one class rock, another scissors, and another paper, means that for your entire time playing a class, you are limited to a one trick horse. And that's just not fun for anyone.
Stealth is always a very tough thing to balance in any game. We can use WoW as the example of this. Imagine if Rogues didn't have stealth at all. They have no gap closers and are squishy melee fighters, meaning without stealth any ranged opponent can kite them and kill them before the Rogue ever gets into melee range. So you give Rogues a stealth mechanic in order to allow them to reach their target without dying instantly. But now the Rogues are too strong in 1v1 because their only weakness has been taken away thanks to stealth.
At this point you have 2 options. Either you put in a counter-measure for the stealth system (i.e. a way to detect stealthed players), or give Rogues another weakness to balance out the strength of the stealth mechanic.
Oh and as for that video, I'm pretty sure WoW has never aimed for a cyclical balance in their class gameplay at all. If you want an example of cyclical balance you'd be better off looking at League of Legends, where every champion has a counter (either an item or another champion) to offset its strengths.
I actually don't think the rogue needs to be balanced out to make up for it's advantage. The problem with WoW rogues was they had insane sustained DPS on top of insane burst DPS. Meaning they can kill you instantly AND within a short period of time, it made them highly competitive in sustained combat (the kind of combat you typically have to engage in for grinding and such), but also gave them the ability to end a target quickly.They were also surprisingly scrappy and difficult to kill themselves.
And yeah I do believe WoW was meant to use a cyclic balance system. Hunters had a number of tricks geared specifically for hunting and exposing rogues. It just didn't work super well because you had to know approximately where the rogue was before exposing them, which is a typical flaw for anti-stealth mechanics in other games.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
You totally misunderstand me. First of all, I am totally OK with group vs group balance, I do not promote 1v1 balance. I am just against the illogical thing that if there are 1v1 balance we do not have classes and do not have strength/weakness and especially the skill difference is just color of the skills.
If I misunderstand you, it's because what you are saying is nonsensical.
1v1 balance inherently means that the RPG strengths and weaknesses of the classes are essentially non-existent.
In the 3 mages situation there are no other classes. This is just a very basic example that the paper, rock, skissor balance does not mean we have real different classes. In this example there are everything what was Caeryl brought up against the 1v1 balance. (no real classes, only color difference in skills, strong weakness against other class) And evidently everything what was brought up is included, but it is P,R,S system.
Again this is nonsensical because the 3 mages example is an example of three types of one class, rather than three different classes. No one said that rock, paper, scissors inherently can only be achieved via having three different classes or that it's not possible to have a game that has rock, paper, scissors with just one class.
When I talked about nerfing/buffing skills I did not talk about against specific classes only. I talked about them as general nerf/buff. But as theses skills have major role against the mentioned classes, it means that the result is unbalanced 1v1, but we changed almost nothing. The original example was perfect 1v1 balance, but it was accused that there are no real classes, only skill color difference. So I said we make minor changes in some skills. After that, we have a more P,R,S like system. So I raised the question: Only these minor changes created real classes and created 'non-color difference' skill?
Lost in translation. I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
"What is so special about Tanks that they should be more vulnerable to Ice spells?"
I did not said anything about tanks. I did not even say vulnerability. The buff can be: less cooldown, more damage, more range, shorter cast time, longer effect period, stronger effect, trigger combo and maybe there are other things as well, what did not came to my mind at this moment.
Um. This your quote:
"If we go back to 'my model'. It does not really have classes, it is only just different colored skill, but if we nerf the 'detect invisibility' skill of the mage to make it less effective against the rouge and we buff his freeze spell to make more powerful against the tank, then we created classes and solved the only color difference skill problem."
You very clearly mention tanks. And you suggest that the Freeze spell should be more powerful against tanks.
Which inherently means that tanks should be more vulnerable to Freeze/Ice spells. Hence, my question.
I see no purpose for the rest of what you suggest above.
"What you are asking for, here, is not even for the balance to change for PvP v PvE."
No I do not ask for anything, these examples are just presentations to reveal logical fails.
The examples just point out the failures in your own logic.
There's your rock paper scissors balance in a nutshell.
In the end, it's a dumb balance strategy anyway. Give a class the ability to stealth, it immediately obtains a massive tactical advantage and strategic advantage. It can choose when and where to hit, from what direction, and even whether or not it hits to begin with.
Classes should be made so that they counter each other effectively based on circumstance. A rogue has a huge advantage with stealth, however any class should be able to defeat the rogue if they react to detecting the rogue quickly enough. A mage should be well balanced between offense and defense, they should be hard to take out in a stand up fight, but vulnerable to an ambush (like from a rogue), and tanks should be resilient, able to withstand spell effects better than others, but susceptible to certain situations (DoTs for example).
Basically, any class should be able to specialize in rock, paper, or scissors, while still capable of throwing the other two to some degree. Making one class rock, another scissors, and another paper, means that for your entire time playing a class, you are limited to a one trick horse. And that's just not fun for anyone.
Stealth is always a very tough thing to balance in any game. We can use WoW as the example of this. Imagine if Rogues didn't have stealth at all. They have no gap closers and are squishy melee fighters, meaning without stealth any ranged opponent can kite them and kill them before the Rogue ever gets into melee range. So you give Rogues a stealth mechanic in order to allow them to reach their target without dying instantly. But now the Rogues are too strong in 1v1 because their only weakness has been taken away thanks to stealth.
At this point you have 2 options. Either you put in a counter-measure for the stealth system (i.e. a way to detect stealthed players), or give Rogues another weakness to balance out the strength of the stealth mechanic.
Oh and as for that video, I'm pretty sure WoW has never aimed for a cyclical balance in their class gameplay at all. If you want an example of cyclical balance you'd be better off looking at League of Legends, where every champion has a counter (either an item or another champion) to offset its strengths.
I actually don't think the rogue needs to be balanced out to make up for it's advantage. The problem with WoW rogues was they had insane sustained DPS on top of insane burst DPS. Meaning they can kill you instantly AND within a short period of time, it made them highly competitive in sustained combat (the kind of combat you typically have to engage in for grinding and such), but also gave them the ability to end a target quickly.They were also surprisingly scrappy and difficult to kill themselves.
And yeah I do believe WoW was meant to use a cyclic balance system. Hunters had a number of tricks geared specifically for hunting and exposing rogues. It just didn't work super well because you had to know approximately where the rogue was before exposing them, which is a typical flaw for anti-stealth mechanics in other games.
We know that Tanks in Ashes will most likely have a skill to see invisible enemies, so they should be the ultimate counters to rogues: high armour, high hp, stealth detection and cc.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Please show me the RPG design doc that says classes have to have strengths and weaknesses. If that is how you define/like your RPGs then cool but it sounds like you are saying that if an RPG isn't designed the way you like then it's not really an RPG.
You can lead a horse to water...
I've been playing RPGs for 40 years. I've studied game design in college and I worked at Activision for 10+ years.
I'm sharing my knowledge with you, but you don't have to be convinced by what I say.
If you want to study game design, you can find a way to do so.
The brunt of my argument is that I disagree with how core strengths and weaknesses are to RPGs but I also disagree that you can't have strengths and weaknesses in a system where you try to balance for the 1v1.
You can still have the tanky kiteable warrior and the glass cannon bursty mage.
Tanky warrior and glass cannon mage means that the warrior is gonna easily break the mage in melee combat. I dunno why a player tank would allow themselves to be kited in a 1v1 battle with a mage. 1v1 balance would mean that both are equally capable at melee and ranged. Because if the mage can easily kite the tank, the mage is probably going to win that battle.
You can give them different abilities that can help them deal with the other player classes and still have them being reliant on each other in a group, especially a group pve environment. Just because warriors have a spell reflect and charge ability that helps them fight mage players who try to kite them doesn't change the fact the warrior needs healers and dps when doing a group encounter. In PVE, these abilities don't suddenly make the warrior completely self-reliant and capable of soloing all content. They still need heals and other player dealing damage to their target.
If one class can hold their own against any other class, there isn't much of a reason to rely on other combat roles during group combat. If the mage can hold their own against any class, that means they don't need tanks to melee the opponents and make sure they take the brunt of the damage.
No one has suggested that balancing classes for 1v1 combat means that each class can solo all content.
Needing heals doesn't necessarily equate with needing a healer. Needing other players to deal damage to a target says nothing about combat roles.
When I talked about nerfing/buffing skills I did not talk about against specific classes only. I talked about them as general nerf/buff. But as theses skills have major role against the mentioned classes, it means that the result is unbalanced 1v1, but we changed almost nothing. The original example was perfect 1v1 balance, but it was accused that there are no real classes, only skill color difference. So I said we make minor changes in some skills. After that, we have a more P,R,S like system. So I raised the question: Only these minor changes created real classes and created 'non-color difference' skill?
Lost in translation. I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
It would be better if you could tell me which part you do not understand. But let's make another try:
Original situation: perfect 1v1 balance, with properly chosen skill you have 50% chance to win against each classes. (More details in an older comment.)
Accused: no real classes, not real RPG, skill difference is just color Modified situation: Almost the same as the previous one, just we have higher cooldown on 'detect invisibilty' skill and increased slow movement effect time in 'freeze spell'.
The result: Mage has only 30% chance to win against the rouge, but has 70% chance against the warrior/tank. Still 50% against the cleric.
In this modified situation did we create classes with this small changes? Is it more RPG like? Now we have real skills?
"What is so special about Tanks that they should be more vulnerable to Ice spells?"
I did not said anything about tanks. I did not even say vulnerability. The buff can be: less cooldown, more damage, more range, shorter cast time, longer effect period, stronger effect, trigger combo and maybe there are other things as well, what did not came to my mind at this moment.
Um. This your quote:
"If we go back to 'my model'. It does not really have classes, it is only just different colored skill, but if we nerf the 'detect invisibility' skill of the mage to make it less effective against the rouge and we buff his freeze spell to make more powerful against the tank, then we created classes and solved the only color difference skill problem."
You very clearly mention tanks. And you suggest that the Freeze spell should be more powerful against tanks.
Which inherently means that tanks should be more vulnerable to Freeze/Ice spells. Hence, my question.
I see no purpose for the rest of what you suggest above.
Sorry, there were a typo. The sentence should have been: "I did not said anything about tanks only."
"And you suggest that the Freeze spell should be more powerful against tanks."
Definitely NO. I suggest to buff the freeze spell to make the MAGE (not the skill) more powerful against the tank.
In PvP the mage use freeze spell against tank only, because the mage have more useful skill against other classes. If we buff the freeze spell, the mage will be more powerful against the tank. Of course the skill will more powerful against the other classes as well, but as the mage do not use against the other classes, this buff make the mage more powerful only against the tank. (If the player found an exotic build, it can be good against anybody else, but we should not over-complicate a basic model.)
1v1 balance inherently means that the RPG strengths and weaknesses of the classes are essentially non-existent.
No, what is non-existent is the unavoidable/irresolvable weakness. You can't accept the fact that if you able to sacrifice your strength to cover your weakness, it does not mean you do not have strength and weakness.
The examples just point out the failures in your own logic.
It is funny, you say that, because I had 2 (and a half) examples. You just wrote that you do not understand one of them. I do not know if you intentionally misunderstand me or you do not have capability to reduce a problem to model level, but the result is same: You do not understand what I try to say with the other example.
(It is also possible that you are right and I have logic failures, but you did not proved that.)
Well Steven said that balance was going to be around group balance but in an earlier in video did say it was going to be around 3v3 bracket just no one remembers Go look up the video yourselves.Not responsible for your bad memories.
Thing is at the 100 vs 100 game inbalance is not too apparent. cause if you have a mage that is a little overpowered then well other side most likely have a mage that is slightly overpowered. But in the 1vs1 bracket pvp imbalance will be more apparent thinking one class is going to dominate, but might do very poorly in the 3v3 bracket.
But really the proof is in the pudding so all they have do is put a 5v5 and 3v3 and 1v1 in APOC on Steam and take it from their. Some thing super easy.
I am skeptical that pvx game balance will work So now I am saying great show me the pvx game balance in the 5v5 bracket and 3v3 bracket and 1v1 bracke and 100v100 bracket in Apoc. Steven Sharrif also said the the game was going to be very balanced.
By the way just want to mention that pvp only games which is one system have issues with pvp game balance and come out with patches to fix things on a regular bases and Ashes of Creation is doing PvX
One thing for sure though for those people that like pvp(like the 100 million people that play league of legends every month.) Yeah those guys will know right away if Ashes Of Creation has PvP game balance or not.
Really even someone with low IQ could or average IQ or 75% or popualtion or 75 million people in this case will know very easily if pvp is balanced or not.
Saying well we have PvX game balance which is game balance across the board is not going to smooth things over when players lose to same classs over and over again. Or lose to playes wearing the same gear over and over again. PvPers play differnent classes in 2v2 and3v3 and 5v5 and 100v100 to be more effective hence all pvpers know that pvp game balance is diferent for 3v3 bracket then lets say 100 vs 100 bracket or 8v8(not actaul bracket) as suggested.. Pretty sure 75 million people already know this but......Since almost every class is represented on both sides in 100 brakcet then toon could choose whatever class they want without to much difference.
Steven said he was going to do PvX game balance so lets see it. Pretty sure we are going to see deffirent classes excelling differently in the various brackets really interested on how pvx game balance is going to work then. But just to be fair to Ashes of Creation we have to give them the oppurtunity to implement PvX game balance and PvX Gear and have it work in every bracket. Actually he said group and 3v3 in earlier video.
One way to do PvX game balance is Make the pvp gear and pvp classes first and put them in APOC and then and if it works out just base your pve game on your pvp game so really it would all be pvp gear and classes.
Only problem with this As a pvper I Know that AWESOME gear and abilities upset pvp game balance so we will not be having any of that unless you wnat to upset pvp game balance.
So every peice of gear and ability will have limit on what they can do cause of pvp game balance.
By the way my impression of PvX game balance is Every peice of gear is allowed in pvp and pve and Every ability works the same in pvp and pve. But lest say that after testing some gear is to op for pvp and some ability is to op for pvp and they cannot behave the same in pvp and pve. No big deal it is just one piece of gear or one ability. Thing is it never stops so same thing as having two seperate systems. Same thing as having pvp gear and pve gear and pvp abilities and and pve abilities.
If Steven is going to balance it out around a group or 8v8(same thing) (not sure how many a group is)that is a bracket that does not even exist well that is setting up all the other brackets for failure. It is just the nature of PvP nothing can be done about it. Has to do with game mechanics not points of veiws or ideas. So soundsmore to me that he is going to do PvX balance around dungeouns which would be a huge design mistake in my opinion.
But the proof is in the pudding so would really like to see just as 3v3 or even an 8v8 bracket just for testing in APOC very very very very easy to do.
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mcstackersonMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Yea, one other thing I don't see brought up in this conversation is weapon and armor choice.
Please show me the RPG design doc that says classes have to have strengths and weaknesses. If that is how you define/like your RPGs then cool but it sounds like you are saying that if an RPG isn't designed the way you like then it's not really an RPG.
You can lead a horse to water...
I've been playing RPGs for 40 years. I've studied game design in college and I worked at Activision for 10+ years.
I'm sharing my knowledge with you, but you don't have to be convinced by what I say.
If you want to study game design, you can find a way to do so.
The brunt of my argument is that I disagree with how core strengths and weaknesses are to RPGs but I also disagree that you can't have strengths and weaknesses in a system where you try to balance for the 1v1.
You can still have the tanky kiteable warrior and the glass cannon bursty mage.
Tanky warrior and glass cannon mage means that the warrior is gonna easily break the mage in melee combat. I dunno why a player tank would allow themselves to be kited in a 1v1 battle with a mage. 1v1 balance would mean that both are equally capable at melee and ranged. Because if the mage can easily kite the tank, the mage is probably going to win that battle.
You can give them different abilities that can help them deal with the other player classes and still have them being reliant on each other in a group, especially a group pve environment. Just because warriors have a spell reflect and charge ability that helps them fight mage players who try to kite them doesn't change the fact the warrior needs healers and dps when doing a group encounter. In PVE, these abilities don't suddenly make the warrior completely self-reliant and capable of soloing all content. They still need heals and other player dealing damage to their target.
If one class can hold their own against any other class, there isn't much of a reason to rely on other combat roles during group combat. If the mage can hold their own against any class, that means they don't need tanks to melee the opponents and make sure they take the brunt of the damage.
No one has suggested that balancing classes for 1v1 combat means that each class can solo all content.
Needing heals doesn't necessarily equate with needing a healer. Needing other players to deal damage to a target says nothing about combat roles.
I could be wrong but i don't think those arguing for 1v1 balancing are arguing for classes to be equal in all regards and instead want classes to have an equal chance to win against the other classes. Classes still have their own playstyle, with the strengths and weaknesses that come with that playstyle, but in a 1v1 fight, they have a decent chance of winning against one another.
In a group environment, classes still have their different strengths and it's optimal for a group to utilize those strengths. It's a waste if you have classes performing a role they are not the best at. The tank is still going to be better at tanking damage then the mage. The mage might be able to keep itself away from 1 enemy but it gets a lot harder when there are more.
Yes, if you need heals, you need a healer and i don't think anyone that wants 1v1 balance think you should be able to be your own healer...unless you are a healer class, in which case you will probably want a tank.
Please go on to define what you consider combat roles and how classes can't be competitive against one another while maintaining those roles? Why can't you have the tanky tank and the glass cannon mage serve different roles in a group but still be competitive against one another? The tank can take a lot of damage but not deal much and the mage can deal alot of damage but not take a lot. You can have the mage deal twice the damage of the tank and the tank be able to take twice the damage of the mage and you would have an even fight while still giving them each a strength. This a really simple way of looking at it but it at least prove a concept.
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AzathothMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I would be okay with them designing a game that was balanced for PvP first, and then mobs balanced to those classes second. If the class is effective in PvP I don't see any reason why monsters/npcs/bosses/etc. can't be balance around that. That way all builds would be equally* effective in PvP and PvE.
As opposed to building all the PvE classes, balancing all the creatures and what not around those, and then trying to balance PvP by adding rule sets for gear/stats/abilities/etc.
*by equally I do not mean all classes are equal, just that they are all balanced in relation to each other and the paper-rock-scissors theme IS is shooting for.
+1 Skull & Crown metal coin
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Wandering MistModerator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I would be okay with them designing a game that was balanced for PvP first, and then mobs balanced to those classes second. If the class is effective in PvP I don't see any reason why monsters/npcs/bosses/etc. can't be balance around that. That way all builds would be equally* effective in PvP and PvE.
As opposed to building all the PvE classes, balancing all the creatures and what not around those, and then trying to balance PvP by adding rule sets for gear/stats/abilities/etc.
*by equally I do not mean all classes are equal, just that they are all balanced in relation to each other and the paper-rock-scissors theme IS is shooting for.
The thing is that it's almost impossible to design AI to act the way a human does, especially in a game. The best you can do is give the mobs a set of "if, then" statements in their code that give the illusion of intelligence. Because of this there will always be builds that are more effective in PvP than PvE, regardless of how Intrepid balance it.
Comments
Sorry, I'm not going to break this up as beautifully as you did.
1.Sorry, I used like and care interchangeably, my bad if this caused confusion.
You say that people who want perfect 1v1 balance, don't care for tradition RPG group roles. You are saying they still care for RPG elements, just not class roles. I think this was your original point that I misinterpreted and then ran with because others disagreed with the premise.
I'm going to be difficult and still disagree. I think it's more important in RPG groups for the classes to have roles, not necessarily strengths and weakness. Naturally, you will have some strengths and weaknesses as the roles differ but I don't think they need to be emphasized. I think classes could still server different roles in groups, bring unique utilities and the developers still have some goal of balancing them for the 1v1. Won't ever have perfect balance but I think you could still try without sacrificing RPG group mechanics.
Just because someone wants it balanced for the 1v1 fight doesn't mean they don't care about groups. Even in group pvp fights, you should still be working with and relying on your group to succeed. A 5v5 shouldn't become 5 1v1s because the game is balanced for 1v1s. You should be working with your group to defend your team members and focusing down targets.
Once again, i'm not advocating for 1v1 balancing. I'm just questioning if 1. people who want it don't care for RPG group mechanics 2. How much does 1v1 balancing really take away from RPG group mechanics?
2. The bad intentions comment was not directed at you. I quoted others in my post.
3. I agree with everything you said here but it is not really what I was arguing. Once again, I was not arguing for a specific balance, I was arguing that people who want "perfect balance" do also care for RPG elements.
4. If I said that then my mistake and sorry if it's caused confusion. I hope I clarified the reason for my comments. can you point out where I said this so I can cross it out?
5. We will have to see. I agree with how they are balancing but I have heard steven say players should have the option to use different forms of horizontal progression to cover up a classes weakness. Doing so obviously means you give up maximizing your strengths.
It removes the importance of class choice. That is why it goes against the heart of an RPG.
For the same reason Ashes will have interactions with character race that will allow only a particular character race access to certain quests, they should have classes that function differently and should not allow a class to cover all of its own weaknesses while retaining all of its strengths.
See this is faulty thinking. In this “balance” there are no strengths, because the strengths can be disabled by any matchup and even in these example it would be a “first to attack wins” scenario with two offense classes, or in the case of cleric/mage, a complete standoff where no one gets anywhere.
That is not how it should really play out. A rogue’s slippery nature should fair much differently against a tank than another rogue. A rogue’s chance against a tank should be low, their chance against another rogue should be fairly even, and their chance against a cleric or mage should be high assuming each case involves players of equal skill.
Likewise, a mage’s fight against a tank should fair well with their ability to kite, cc, and whittle away at HP bars. A fight against a cleric or another mage should go fairly even. And their chance against a rogue should be low.
This isn’t a punishment for choosing a class, it’s simply another part of an RPG system. If your priest can challenge an assassin with comfortable odds of winning, if a tank can stand toe to toe and have good odds to kill a mage, then class evidently doesnt have much difference besides the color of effects you see.
I did not say they don't care for group roles. The phrase "does not care for" implies a dislike. "Does not care about" describes disinterest.
I also did not say that such people do not care groups - they don't care about group roles. What they care about is being able to defeat any class 1v1.
You may think that the strengths and weaknesses of each class is not important, but that is counter to RPG design. What you're really saying is that it can be fun to enjoy games that deviate from RPG design but have some RPG elements.
Some people might think that the rule for how many steps a player can take without dribbling the ball is basketball is not as important shooting the ball through the hoop. You might think that the rule for how many steps you can take after you've stopped running with the ball is not important. But, horse is a different game than basketball - despite sharing some of the same elements.
You're saying that there won't ever be perfect balance and I'm saying the concepts of the classes were never intended to be balanced for 1v1 combat. A Fighter in plate mail is intended to be stronger and soak more physical damage in melee than a Mage in robes which is designed to be physically weak but deal excessive amounts of ranged damage in quick bursts.
The concepts for these classes were designed specifically to support each other in group combat rather than being designed to fight each other 1v1 in single combat. Because RPG combat is intended to be focused primarily on the synergies of the classes in group combat -as a military unit- rather than being focused on player-v-player combat.
Gamers like to focus on player-v-player competition rather than on the cooperation of characters v content.
RPGs are designed for the latter - with direct PvP combat as an option. Not necessarily always the best option, but it's still an option players can take.
Most of the PvP combat in Ashes is still focused on group content, rather than 1v1 duels. Ashes is not going to be balanced for 1v1 PvP duels. Because once classes are balanced primarily for 1v1 duels - that's really becoming some other game type - like horse is different than basketball and like soccer and football are different than rugby.
If the classes are balanced for 1v1 duels rather than balanced for the combat roles for group content - well that is inherently moving away from being a role-playing game and moving closer to being a dueling fighter game.
And, at the end of the day, it's up to the devs to determine where they want their game to fit on the spectrum.
Right. These classes were designed such that a Rogue is able to sneak up on an opponent to backstab that is being distracted by the "taunts" of melee ally. The classes are not really designed for a Rogue to be able to backstab an individual opponent. A Rogue is supposed to be able to do highest damage only when flanked with an ally.
It's set up this way so that the players can be thinking about how to aid and support the other classes in their party, rather than just focusing on their own abilities and individual battles. Instead of just expecting the Fighter to hold her own and the Rogue to hold his own - they are each supposed to be thinking about how their actions benefit the actions of their teammates - the Fighter needs to try to keep the opponent(s) focused on her so that the Rogue can move behind for the backstab. The Rogue needs to make sure that they stealth into position quickly enough that the Fighter doesn't take too much damage. They both need to try to keep the opponent(s) far enough away from the Mage that Mage isn't broken by a stray attack because Mages are designed to be glass cannons - particularly vulnerable in melee battles.
If both Fighter and Mage are evenly balanced for melee and for ranged combat - there aren't really any group combat roles other than healer and fighter.
Earlier, you mentioned if we have balance 1v1, we do not have classes, now, you say that a rouge and a mage is same, but different effect only because both of them has same chance to win.
We have fire mage, earth mage and ice mage. Each of them has bolt spell only. Fire mage do 50% more damage against earth mage, earth mage do 50% more damage against ice mage and ice mage do 50% more damage against fire mage.
Do you really think that in this perfect paper, rock, scissor balance situation we have real classes and it is not just the color effect of the spell?!
If we go back to 'my model'. It does not really have classes, it is only just different colored skill, but if we nerf the 'detect invisibility' skill of the mage to make it less effective against the rouge and we buff his freeze spell to make more powerful against the tank, then we created classes and solved the only color difference skill problem, just with the power of a skill?
I do not think so.
Regarding the strengths: mage can do good burst damage, but he can sacrifice this strength for better chance against rouge, because use different skills, but in a group where a tanklike party-member defense him the mage go back to his powerful damage-dealing strength. If the tank do a mistake and the enemy can attack the mage, the weakness is also revealed, the mage can die quickly.
Than is why I do not think that the balance type has any connection to classes or RPG feeling.
In Ashes, the primary archetypes will be balanced for groups; not 1v1 PvP duels.
Mages will be balanced to be roughly equal with all other Mages, so... Fire Mage, Earth Mage and Ice Mage will be balanced to be equally effective in their roles, while likely being vulnerable to Tanks and Fighters in melee battles.
It makes no sense for a Mage's Detect Invisibility "skill" to be nerfed when used against a Rogue since that "skill" is really a magic spell. Nerfing that spell really would be ruining the Mage class and treating that class as if it was a Ranger attempting to track a Rogue that is hiding.
What is so special about Tanks that they should be more vulnerable to Ice spells?? That doesn't make any sense either. Might make sense for plate armor to be more vulnerable to Ice spells than leather armor or cloth robes...maybe.
What you are asking for, here, is not even for the balance to change for PvP v PvE.
Here you are asking for the balance to change dynamically for solo v group.
The devs are not going to do that... it's actually quite an absurd suggestion.
The devs are going to balance for PvX - with a focus on each archetype supporting the other 7 archetypes in a group. And, the roles will have a rock, paper, scissors synergy that works well for group combat strategies, but may not be optimal for 1v1 duels.
Just because you balance for the 1v1 doesn't mean classes don't have strengths and weaknesses. You still allow classes to have there weaknesses, just give them tools that allow them to compete against other classes. The warrior class still can be kited by the glass cannon mage but if the mage isn't careful and shoots a spell into the warriors spell reflect, the warrior might be able to catch up to them, exploit the mages low defense, and pummel them.
I'm also not sure if I buy what you say. If you removed the "importance of class choice" I don't think that is at the heart of RPGs. I'd agree the class system is but not the arbitrary weaknesses and strengths associated with those classes. Playing a wizard is about play a class that uses magic to assist his allies and smite his foes. I don't think it's defined as being a glass cannon dps class. It is a glass cannon dps class but i don't think it's defined by that and giving it tools to work around it's weaknesses doesn't necessarily mean it loses those weaknesses.
I believe people can care about both the group and 1v1 play.
Please show me the RPG design doc that says classes have to have strengths and weaknesses. If that is how you define/like your RPGs then cool but it sounds like you are saying that if an RPG isn't designed the way you like then it's not really an RPG.
The brunt of my argument is that I disagree with how core strengths and weaknesses are to RPGs but I also disagree that you can't have strengths and weaknesses in a system where you try to balance for the 1v1. You can still have the tanky kiteable warrior and the glass cannon bursty mage. You can give them different abilities that can help them deal with the other player classes and still have them being reliant on each other in a group, especially a group pve environment. Just because warriors have a spell reflect and charge ability that helps them fight mage players who try to kite them doesn't change the fact the warrior needs healers and dps when doing a group encounter. In PVE, these abilities don't suddenly make the warrior completely self-reliant and capable of soloing all content. They still need heals and other player dealing damage to their target.
I agree that ashes is going to be balanced for group content and I support that. As I said, my disagreement is more about your assertion of what an RPG is.
You totally misunderstand me. First of all, I am totally OK with group vs group balance, I do not promote 1v1 balance. I am just against the illogical thing that if there are 1v1 balance we do not have classes and do not have strength/weakness and especially the skill difference is just color of the skills.
In the 3 mages situation there are no other classes. This is just a very basic example that the paper, rock, skissor balance does not mean we have real different classes. In this example there are everything what was Caeryl brought up against the 1v1 balance. (no real classes, only color difference in skills, strong weakness against other class) And evidently everything what was brought up is included, but it is P,R,S system.
When I talked about nerfing/buffing skills I did not talk about against specific classes only. I talked about them as general nerf/buff. But as theses skills have major role against the mentioned classes, it means that the result is unbalanced 1v1, but we changed almost nothing. The original example was perfect 1v1 balance, but it was accused that there are no real classes, only skill color difference. So I said we make minor changes in some skills. After that, we have a more P,R,S like system. So I raised the question: Only these minor changes created real classes and created 'non-color difference' skill?
"What is so special about Tanks that they should be more vulnerable to Ice spells?"
I did not said anything about tanks. I did not even say vulnerability. The buff can be: less cooldown, more damage, more range, shorter cast time, longer effect period, stronger effect, trigger combo and maybe there are other things as well, what did not came to my mind at this moment.
"What you are asking for, here, is not even for the balance to change for PvP v PvE."
No I do not ask for anything, these examples are just presentations to reveal logical fails.
"It makes no sense for a Mage's Detect Invisibility "skill" to be nerfed when used against a Rogue since that "skill" is really a magic spell. Nerfing that spell really would be ruining the Mage class and treating that class as if it was a Ranger attempting to track a Rogue that is hiding."
Not only against rouge only, but if we increase the cooldown to be able to use only once in a fight, the rouge can be revealed only once in a fight. In a group other classes can have other skills for same purpose so there still can be synergy so we do not ruin anything. We also can play with the range of the spell, or the effecting period.
It makes no sense that 1v1 balance would be less rng as the core elements of classes in combat are skill range, direct effect, over time effect, offensive/defensive cooldowns etc.
Perfect balance is all about relations between uptimes, ranges and other core mechanics.
Its just as rpg as group type, eventough I personally dislike the concept.
Why cant u argue for the topic instead? As that is actually a problematic situation.
Will the devs balance the game for r p s PvP and what effect would that have on PvE? How will cc work in PvE, and what would be a good way to implement cc heavy classes into PvP and PvE?
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
That won't be the case in Ashes.
First of all, there will be classes with CC and classes that deal a lot of damage - the two won't mix that much. No game with open world PvP has had CC centric classes - and so none of us can claim we know how it will work. Without both CC and high AE damage, the mage-ball tactic you're talking about simply doesn't work.
At the very least, you now need a high AE DPS class and a high AE CC class - and we don't even know if AE CC will even exist yet.
However, if you take a AE CC/DPS group out, you'll probably lose to an AE CC/DPS+buffer group. The buffer could well do things like increase duration of CC - or more importantly increase the range.
All of a sudden, your one class mage-ball is a minimum of three classes.
However, if you take out that high AE CC/DPS+buffer-ball, it has one serious weakness - it's all AE damage. A group of summoners working together to summon their group summons is all it would take, you will now find your high AE focused PvP group in a situation where they are up against a very strong single target PvP target (ie, one target as strong as 8 PvP'ers). I'm not sure what your experiences in MMO's are, but when you take a AE centric group up against a strong single target, the strong single target usually wins.
So now a single group of 8 summoners can probably take out your full AE CC/DPS+buffer-ball raid - at the very least they can weaken it to the point where it is easy pickings for anyone left in the area. However, that single group of summoners are effectively stationary and very vulnerable. What you could do is summon a group summons yourself with your own group of summoners, use that to distract the group summons from that summoner group, and send in a few melee (with a few melee buffers) to take out the otherwise distracted summoners that are controlling the group summons.
All of a sudden, instead of a single class mage-ball, you are now running all 8 archetypes.
There's your rock paper scissors balance in a nutshell.
In the end, it's a dumb balance strategy anyway. Give a class the ability to stealth, it immediately obtains a massive tactical advantage and strategic advantage. It can choose when and where to hit, from what direction, and even whether or not it hits to begin with.
Classes should be made so that they counter each other effectively based on circumstance. A rogue has a huge advantage with stealth, however any class should be able to defeat the rogue if they react to detecting the rogue quickly enough. A mage should be well balanced between offense and defense, they should be hard to take out in a stand up fight, but vulnerable to an ambush (like from a rogue), and tanks should be resilient, able to withstand spell effects better than others, but susceptible to certain situations (DoTs for example).
Basically, any class should be able to specialize in rock, paper, or scissors, while still capable of throwing the other two to some degree. Making one class rock, another scissors, and another paper, means that for your entire time playing a class, you are limited to a one trick horse. And that's just not fun for anyone.
I applaud them for it and its why Im a backer.
They need to balance 64 classes, in a world that has PVP imbedded into the PVE world , with dynamic zones and towns and ships and you name it!
They wont have seperate gear per se, but im sure players will have their favourite PVP sets and their favourite PVE sets.
The secondaries only grant augmentations. However, if you consider those need to be balance, it's more than 64. There are also Racial and Religious augments planned.
There should be a lot of customization,with most of the 64 options feeling different (even if not unique) and the additional augments adding flair.
I enjoyed that in SWtOR certain tank abilities taunted NPCs, but in PvP they also reduced enemy damage output if they weren’t attacking you. Or a stun may last for 5 seconds against an NPC, but only 2 for player characters.
Things like that I feel are absolutely necessary. It makes sure I have no dead abilities on my skill bar just because I’m PvPing, as well as it condenses the amount of skills you need to have. Instead of having that 10 second stun that only works on NPCs, and a 2 second stun that works on anything including PCs, it’s just one spell that checks to see if the target is a PC/NPC before it applies the effect.
@HumblePuffin
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
I’m fine with that as well, and to be clear I’m fine with PvX balancing as well. The issue arises when they start power creeping PvE stuff, and they start buffing abilities to deal with that and suddenly the PvP side becomes broken.
I just tend to not trust companies to balance PvX, and just opt to push for same abilities, with some added/removed effects. This way when those darn PvE players start power creeping, PvP can keep some semblance of balance.
Stealth is always a very tough thing to balance in any game. We can use WoW as the example of this. Imagine if Rogues didn't have stealth at all. They have no gap closers and are squishy melee fighters, meaning without stealth any ranged opponent can kite them and kill them before the Rogue ever gets into melee range. So you give Rogues a stealth mechanic in order to allow them to reach their target without dying instantly. But now the Rogues are too strong in 1v1 because their only weakness has been taken away thanks to stealth.
At this point you have 2 options. Either you put in a counter-measure for the stealth system (i.e. a way to detect stealthed players), or give Rogues another weakness to balance out the strength of the stealth mechanic.
Oh and as for that video, I'm pretty sure WoW has never aimed for a cyclical balance in their class gameplay at all. If you want an example of cyclical balance you'd be better off looking at League of Legends, where every champion has a counter (either an item or another champion) to offset its strengths.
I actually don't think the rogue needs to be balanced out to make up for it's advantage. The problem with WoW rogues was they had insane sustained DPS on top of insane burst DPS. Meaning they can kill you instantly AND within a short period of time, it made them highly competitive in sustained combat (the kind of combat you typically have to engage in for grinding and such), but also gave them the ability to end a target quickly.They were also surprisingly scrappy and difficult to kill themselves.
And yeah I do believe WoW was meant to use a cyclic balance system. Hunters had a number of tricks geared specifically for hunting and exposing rogues. It just didn't work super well because you had to know approximately where the rogue was before exposing them, which is a typical flaw for anti-stealth mechanics in other games.
1v1 balance inherently means that the RPG strengths and weaknesses of the classes are essentially non-existent.
Again this is nonsensical because the 3 mages example is an example of three types of one class, rather than three different classes. No one said that rock, paper, scissors inherently can only be achieved via having three different classes or that it's not possible to have a game that has rock, paper, scissors with just one class.
Lost in translation. I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
Um. This your quote:
"If we go back to 'my model'. It does not really have classes, it is only just different colored skill, but if we nerf the 'detect invisibility' skill of the mage to make it less effective against the rouge and we buff his freeze spell to make more powerful against the tank, then we created classes and solved the only color difference skill problem."
You very clearly mention tanks. And you suggest that the Freeze spell should be more powerful against tanks.
Which inherently means that tanks should be more vulnerable to Freeze/Ice spells. Hence, my question.
I see no purpose for the rest of what you suggest above.
The examples just point out the failures in your own logic.
We know that Tanks in Ashes will most likely have a skill to see invisible enemies, so they should be the ultimate counters to rogues: high armour, high hp, stealth detection and cc.
I've been playing RPGs for 40 years. I've studied game design in college and I worked at Activision for 10+ years.
I'm sharing my knowledge with you, but you don't have to be convinced by what I say.
If you want to study game design, you can find a way to do so.
OK.
Tanky warrior and glass cannon mage means that the warrior is gonna easily break the mage in melee combat. I dunno why a player tank would allow themselves to be kited in a 1v1 battle with a mage. 1v1 balance would mean that both are equally capable at melee and ranged. Because if the mage can easily kite the tank, the mage is probably going to win that battle.
If one class can hold their own against any other class, there isn't much of a reason to rely on other combat roles during group combat. If the mage can hold their own against any class, that means they don't need tanks to melee the opponents and make sure they take the brunt of the damage.
No one has suggested that balancing classes for 1v1 combat means that each class can solo all content.
Needing heals doesn't necessarily equate with needing a healer. Needing other players to deal damage to a target says nothing about combat roles.
It would be better if you could tell me which part you do not understand. But let's make another try:
Original situation: perfect 1v1 balance, with properly chosen skill you have 50% chance to win against each classes. (More details in an older comment.)
Accused: no real classes, not real RPG, skill difference is just color
Modified situation: Almost the same as the previous one, just we have higher cooldown on 'detect invisibilty' skill and increased slow movement effect time in 'freeze spell'.
The result: Mage has only 30% chance to win against the rouge, but has 70% chance against the warrior/tank. Still 50% against the cleric.
In this modified situation did we create classes with this small changes? Is it more RPG like? Now we have real skills?
Sorry, there were a typo. The sentence should have been: "I did not said anything about tanks only."
"And you suggest that the Freeze spell should be more powerful against tanks."
Definitely NO. I suggest to buff the freeze spell to make the MAGE (not the skill) more powerful against the tank.
In PvP the mage use freeze spell against tank only, because the mage have more useful skill against other classes. If we buff the freeze spell, the mage will be more powerful against the tank. Of course the skill will more powerful against the other classes as well, but as the mage do not use against the other classes, this buff make the mage more powerful only against the tank. (If the player found an exotic build, it can be good against anybody else, but we should not over-complicate a basic model.)
No, what is non-existent is the unavoidable/irresolvable weakness. You can't accept the fact that if you able to sacrifice your strength to cover your weakness, it does not mean you do not have strength and weakness.
It is funny, you say that, because I had 2 (and a half) examples. You just wrote that you do not understand one of them. I do not know if you intentionally misunderstand me or you do not have capability to reduce a problem to model level, but the result is same: You do not understand what I try to say with the other example.
(It is also possible that you are right and I have logic failures, but you did not proved that.)
I hope that before they pulled all their ****
Thing is at the 100 vs 100 game inbalance is not too apparent. cause if you have a mage that is a little overpowered then well other side most likely have a mage that is slightly overpowered. But in the 1vs1 bracket pvp imbalance will be more apparent thinking one class is going to dominate, but might do very poorly in the 3v3 bracket.
But really the proof is in the pudding so all they have do is put a 5v5 and 3v3 and 1v1 in APOC on Steam and take it from their. Some thing super easy.
I am skeptical that pvx game balance will work So now I am saying great show me the pvx game balance in the 5v5 bracket and 3v3 bracket and 1v1 bracke and 100v100 bracket in Apoc. Steven Sharrif also said the the game was going to be very balanced.
By the way just want to mention that pvp only games which is one system have issues with pvp game balance and come out with patches to fix things on a regular bases and Ashes of Creation is doing PvX
One thing for sure though for those people that like pvp(like the 100 million people that play league of legends every month.) Yeah those guys will know right away if Ashes Of Creation has PvP game balance or not.
Really even someone with low IQ could or average IQ or 75% or popualtion or 75 million people in this case will know very easily if pvp is balanced or not.
Saying well we have PvX game balance which is game balance across the board is not going to smooth things over when players lose to same classs over and over again. Or lose to playes wearing the same gear over and over again. PvPers play differnent classes in 2v2 and3v3 and 5v5 and 100v100 to be more effective hence all pvpers know that pvp game balance is diferent for 3v3 bracket then lets say 100 vs 100 bracket or 8v8(not actaul bracket) as suggested.. Pretty sure 75 million people already know this but......Since almost every class is represented on both sides in 100 brakcet then toon could choose whatever class they want without to much difference.
Steven said he was going to do PvX game balance so lets see it. Pretty sure we are going to see deffirent classes excelling differently in the various brackets really interested on how pvx game balance is going to work then. But just to be fair to Ashes of Creation we have to give them the oppurtunity to implement PvX game balance and PvX Gear and have it work in every bracket. Actually he said group and 3v3 in earlier video.
One way to do PvX game balance is Make the pvp gear and pvp classes first and put them in APOC and then and if it works out just base your pve game on your pvp game so really it would all be pvp gear and classes.
Only problem with this As a pvper I Know that AWESOME gear and abilities upset pvp game balance so we will not be having any of that unless you wnat to upset pvp game balance.
So every peice of gear and ability will have limit on what they can do cause of pvp game balance.
By the way my impression of PvX game balance is Every peice of gear is allowed in pvp and pve and Every ability works the same in pvp and pve. But lest say that after testing some gear is to op for pvp and some ability is to op for pvp and they cannot behave the same in pvp and pve. No big deal it is just one piece of gear or one ability. Thing is it never stops so same thing as having two seperate systems. Same thing as having pvp gear and pve gear and pvp abilities and and pve abilities.
If Steven is going to balance it out around a group or 8v8(same thing) (not sure how many a group is)that is a bracket that does not even exist well that is setting up all the other brackets for failure. It is just the nature of PvP nothing can be done about it. Has to do with game mechanics not points of veiws or ideas. So soundsmore to me that he is going to do PvX balance around dungeouns which would be a huge design mistake in my opinion.
But the proof is in the pudding so would really like to see just as 3v3 or even an 8v8 bracket just for testing in APOC very very very very easy to do.
I could be wrong but i don't think those arguing for 1v1 balancing are arguing for classes to be equal in all regards and instead want classes to have an equal chance to win against the other classes. Classes still have their own playstyle, with the strengths and weaknesses that come with that playstyle, but in a 1v1 fight, they have a decent chance of winning against one another.
In a group environment, classes still have their different strengths and it's optimal for a group to utilize those strengths. It's a waste if you have classes performing a role they are not the best at. The tank is still going to be better at tanking damage then the mage. The mage might be able to keep itself away from 1 enemy but it gets a lot harder when there are more.
Yes, if you need heals, you need a healer and i don't think anyone that wants 1v1 balance think you should be able to be your own healer...unless you are a healer class, in which case you will probably want a tank.
Please go on to define what you consider combat roles and how classes can't be competitive against one another while maintaining those roles? Why can't you have the tanky tank and the glass cannon mage serve different roles in a group but still be competitive against one another? The tank can take a lot of damage but not deal much and the mage can deal alot of damage but not take a lot. You can have the mage deal twice the damage of the tank and the tank be able to take twice the damage of the mage and you would have an even fight while still giving them each a strength. This a really simple way of looking at it but it at least prove a concept.
As opposed to building all the PvE classes, balancing all the creatures and what not around those, and then trying to balance PvP by adding rule sets for gear/stats/abilities/etc.
*by equally I do not mean all classes are equal, just that they are all balanced in relation to each other and the paper-rock-scissors theme IS is shooting for.
The thing is that it's almost impossible to design AI to act the way a human does, especially in a game. The best you can do is give the mobs a set of "if, then" statements in their code that give the illusion of intelligence. Because of this there will always be builds that are more effective in PvP than PvE, regardless of how Intrepid balance it.