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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Here are two examples of diversity in other games that i've played:
I would like to see the flexibility to have non traditional party's to be successful in various situations and environments. Maybe have a lot of CC (Crowd Control) with mix of dps with a few healers, or have a pt with a few tanks (to share hate/aggro) and Dps without requiring a primary healer role.
Though from what I see in Ashes, giving flexibility with skill augments and archetypes, I think there will be many ways to structure a party that doesn't revolve around the traditional trinity.
I agree with this utterly and completely; hybrid classes or spec-switching can add some variety, but there needs to be a general structure of someone needs to be somewhat of a tank, someone needs to be somewhat dedicated to healing, and then some dps as well. Healers and tanks should be able to also do some damage should they have the opportunity, and some dps should be able to take a few hits or tank an add for a few seconds without being smashed into the dirt though.
Her's my pro/con list for each (will edit if I think of more).
Freeform-
Pros:
-Low wait times to find tanks and healers.
-Fun, interesting party types that will allow people to get creative.
Cons:
-No one gets REALLY good at anything because everyone tries to be DPS and will only tank or heal if they HAVE to.
-No distinct healer or tank specs means I can only sorta do the thing I like. I love healing, but trying to hybrid heal/DPS is kinda annoying and I'm often left feeling like I'm not really helping the party at all.
-Encounters tend to be less inventive and less demanding strategy-wise so that any group combination can successfully complete it.
Trinity-
Pros:
-Distinct roles allow players to really focus on what they want to do and build their gear and spec for their exact play style.
-Will force players to interact more as they try to find tanks and healers for parties.
-Give all players a sense of real contribution to any scenario.
-Encounters can be really geared toward strategy and force players to think about group composition for each dungeon.
Cons:
-Tanks and Healers will get fast groups, but DPS will be stuck waiting for a long time (assuming the breakdown becomes like nearly all MMOs with what feels like 95% of people refusing to do anything but DPS).
The bottom line is that I think the game should be trinity but have very diverse options for classes when healing or tanking. Make it appealing to tank as a bard or heal as a rogue, and the groups will still be able to be very freeform-like without sacrificing the satisfaction of mastering utility specs.
This is all, of course, in relation to dungeons/raids. For general PvE, freeform is clearly the way to go because no one wants to spend time finding a full trinity group for a regular world quest. It's all just a question of balance.
I totally agree that you should be able to do content with varied party sizes. Scaling dungeons and loot would be a perfect way to handle this. PLEASE DO THIS!
And I think this whole 'you can do everything and still be at the top' mentality sort of defeats the purpose of gaining and having a power fantasy. Specialization in role creates competition in the role and it also creates power fantasy for the role. The elder scrolls online is a class system and structure that I enjoy thoroughly but I do not see it as an MMO class system, I see it as a single player RPG class system brought into an MMO. And in many ways that game is a single player game where you can see other people play it's not an MMO specifically and specially. Just my two cents. You need both dependency and Independence in role for everyone to glue together to make an MMO which is the very definition of said experience.
I prefer group comps that have a dedicated tank (usually me), two DPS (one heavy single target and one with strong AoE capabilities), 1 dedicated healer and the fifth is usually a support of some kind (buffs, lesser healing and lesser dps with possibly some sort of CC element). The buffs and lesser DPS the support member has need to be close to having just another straight DPS. Everyone knows that killing speed is a form of survival for tanks HP and healer's mana.
Tank, single target DPS, AoE DPS, Support and healer.
I suppose the TLDR is:
Both, depending on the situation and mood of those around me. Though I wouldn't play a game designed around "free-for-all" class design for a very long time.
As @Damokles (and potentially a few others ) stated, I would think of the "ideal" setup being considered a quartet (tank, heal, dps, support). Though, with the breadth of options provided by Primary/Secondary class combos, Ashes of Creation adds a third-dimension and is likely more of a Cube.
I feel this setup is the easiest to balance: support vs support, tanks vs tanks, healers vs healers, dps vs dps (with a sub-set of single target dps vs single target dps and aoe dps vs aoe dps to balance against each other).
When each class is designed to fill all the roles at once and you are balancing every class against every other class...it gets to be very very time and money consuming. Not very wise, unless your entire game is based around this, and you don't care if a single class becomes the entire meta until you can adjust the fragile game balance to bring it down and everyone else up to match perfectly.
All of that said, I think each class (at least the primary class, in the case of Ashes) should have a situation in which it excels at being "the solution" to an issue. Should a group find a way to "cheese" mechanics and bring a very creative solution in the form of a very unorthodox party composition ... I say let the good times roll!!!!
Playing a game should be all about the enjoyment of the experience. If you can make a funky combo work, so be it!! Record the antics and post it up for all to see and enjoy!
But...balancing a complete game around "free-for-all" everything means I can play literally any class, take care of myself, and join parties of others doing the same. The negative side is that development time is taken away from the creation of new content, thus removing all of my motivation to continue playing and paying. A super fun "flash in the pan" for a short time, then forgotten.
Personally this has been one of my issues for a while now i am fine with needing the
"Trinity" (3 Tank + Healer + Dps) or "Horseman" (4 Tank + Healer + Support + Dps)
BUT, those roles should not be handed to 1 class and min/maxed to 1 class in 1 spec (Pure classes)
Doing a breakdown of how the classes have been explained i feel a lack of options other then
"This combo does the most dps" and more like "This dungeon requires X combo from your class"
i also feel tank and healer should never be their own class but a role each class can opt into~!
Table showing current Roles classes have:
Further more, having this "one role for one class" will lead to player burnout not allowing player to "Spec swap"
You can swap (Augs) secondaries but that will not change the role or function of the (prime) Main class!
THIS is disappointing for many that would like to be flexible without needing multiple "ALT's"...
i would love to see the class combos effect the classes core function (Current system in Reverse)
this would allowing many classes to fill more roles needed in an MMORPG here is just an Example:
(100% devs option what combo's work to change a roles and others the change a playstyle)
And again i still think the Tank should be changed to a "Druid" and it would work fine!
#ReplaceTankwithdruid #playerchoice #pleasedontban
Should a Rogue/Cleric be able to heal as well as a Cleric/Rogue? No.
Should a Rogue/Rogue be able to heal at all? No, or maybe with severe restrictions.
I think ultimately group composition should require a certain amount of damage/healing/tanking, but how you get to that point should be up to the players.
Example
You could decide to have one Tank/Fighter as a tank, one dedicated healer (let's say Cleric/Cleric) & then two dedicated DPS (let's say Rogue/Rogue & Mage/Mage) & one support/DPS (let's say Bard/Summoner).
Your group would arrive at X amount of DPS, Y amount of HPS & Z amount of damage taken per second by tank.
Now if you switched out to instead have a dedicated tank (Tank/Tank), hybrid healer (Cleric/Summoner), one dedicated DPS (Rogue/Rogue), one hybrid DPS (Mage/Cleric) & maybe one dedicated support (Bard/Bard)... in an ideal world you'd wind up with the same DPS, HPS & damage taken per second by tank as in the above example, or close enough for it not to matter except in very competitive speed runs etc.
The more player agency you permit the more happy customers you'll have, but be careful not to trivialize content by not having content require a tank, and a healer, and enough DPS.
In the MMO I currently play (ESO) you can solo almost every veteran group dungeon (even when activating hardmodes) on a DPS character since you can do everything on one toon (heal, tank/dodge, DPS). Please don't make this mistake.
Having only 2/5 party members (tank and healer) have to actively use at least 20% of their brain during the encounters of a dungeon was acceptable 15 years ago, but it's 2019. Lets get with the times and put an end to brainless encounter design in dungeons. Elder scrolls online attempted to fix this by still making parties have to have ques for tank and healer and yet the classes were so loosely defined that no one used any brain capacity clearing content up until the end game: when tier sets and final builds made the designers confident that any loosely defined class could become far more defined. So yeah i love that you guys are defining your classes like vanilla wow yet my concern is that we don't see other classes able to have their moment to shine besides the main 2 (tank and healer respectively). I've played over 12 MMo's in my years and I'm yet to play an MMO where my Ranger/archer class has had his 15 minutes of fame in a dungeon (figure of speech). Not a single time was the fate of my party dependant on the my archer archetype.
Perhaps having at least 1 or 2 encounters in each dungeon that requires a unique utility not available to tanks and healers would be the solution I propose. This way every class will have some utility that makes them at least somewhat desirable in dungeons. This is only necessary because of tab targeting. Tab targeting shifts the focus from player skill to gear and class DPS. It's not fair for some classes because even geared they can't out dps others. This makes players exclude certain classes from dungeons/raids. Sort of like how shamans and druids were treated in vanilla wow late raiding. As you include a tab targeting system I suspect this same pattern could potentially emerge in the social dynamics of Ashes, however I hope some system is incorporated to always reward action combat with enough DPS so that all serious raiders need to play with action combat to be considered as serious candidates for top guilds/most difficult raids.
Active use of utility abilities would be nice or at least a testing phase in each dungeon where players are forced to play through every combat encounter with only their left hand. If your casual content can be cleared with your left hand than your designing your combat encounters primarily for people who don't even want to enjoy your combat or game but just want to farm with as little work as possible.People wonder why wow had such a strong and reasonably priced gold farming/exp farming community. I believe part of the reason was how easy it was to farm on 3 accounts at once by running dungeons.
I tested this last December by running WC on three separate accounts at once. Before i did this experiment I actually did WC on all three characters twice and averaged the time it took our party to clear it each time.
So when i did it on all three at once i was surprised to find i only slowed the party down in 1/3 characters and it was only by 10 minutes from the average because the other DPS were all low level and the healer had absolutely horrible gear (bad group).
I think to make other classes vital for late tier raiding ect: it's vital that each class aside from tank and healer have 1 utility spell/ability that still functions in the same way mechanics wise regardless of how it is augmented.
This way every class can have their 15 minutes of fame and every member of the party (or most of them anyhow) have to get in the habit of using their brain during dungeons (firstly by having to use both hands). This ensures that players can't trade bitcoin, cook, give English lessons, or practise right hand para-diddles ect: while they repeat the same 1,5,6,7 rotation that somehow managed to survive a period of time where even small pox was eradicated.
So I like the trinity for traditional things like dungeons and raids. At least in doing so we know where to place blame when choosing to restructure parties or just filling in roles. We all know that joe1234 is not the best dps but he knows the mechanics as for jane345 has high dps but spends most of the fights dead bc they like face tanking as a dps.
PS: do the same content everytime you wanna play a new class its okay to dungeons or bosses, but re-do the same quests everytime you wanna play a new class its like hell after the third alt ( and for those that come saying " urhdu, you can always chose not to do and just level some other way like killin' mobs u know? , i and many players i have come across along the years have a compulsive disorder when we see a quest yet not done, if you don't, be glad, you have not played so many games yet and may be able to quit all and get a girl-fiend to marry
Formerly T-Elf
I really like the idea off-heals or off-tanks being viable. I quite like how games like Overwatch or Paladins addressed healers and tanks. As healers or tank you still can do damage which makes it fun to play healers or tanks but they are also not super-essential so you can make up for them playing bad as a DPS.
I really don't like how WoW PvP was handled, Healers were healing only and were super-essential (your healer dies, entire team dies quickly after). Tanks were mostly pointless and were only tank with no damage. I really think WoW's approach is the wrong approach to go for Ashes.
But, like some have said already in this thread, I like the system when there is a support role as well. This normally takes some of the stress off the healer allowing them to do their job easier. Which is very helpful for the harder raids. Support normally covers everything that helps combat go smoothly that doesn't involve health/resource management. I really think the support role needs more variety. They mostly get stuck as the buffer/debuffer but their role could be so much more.
I would love to see content that is designed for unusual party configurations. This could allow the support role to shine. Content showcasing the unique abilities of the role could make things interesting. Having content that can be done with non-traditional party configurations could allow groups to do something while they wait for a healer and/or a tank to become available.
But here are some options. As far as number of tanks goes.
1)Tanks, warriors, cleric tanks, and pet tanking could be allowed for dungeouns which opens up tanking to six classes. Mage in my opinion should be pure dps class with cc abilities and buffs and debuffs which helps tanking sometimes. And bard would be purely support and dps. As far as pet tanking goes well a ranger and summoner could share tanking duties. Just seems kind of odd seeing a mage tank. or bard tanking (musician) This would increase the number of tanks.
2)The role of a tank(not tank class should ) should be needed. So that being the case you could in fact have the party decide who is going to fill the tank role(not neccesarilay tank class). So lets say I am a ranger and decide to tank then since I would be playing the tank role in a dungeoun that would give be certain buffs like damage reduction and maybe extra ability like taunt and defensive cooldown. This would require tank gear.
Gear with tanking stats like dodge and parry and block and defense and maybe even armour set that gave defensive bonuses and even a shield. For rangers could go with bow shield or use one handed cross bow and sheild. (might be little different for each class like magical shield for mages allowing them to cast at same time.)
Problem here is you guys already have a tank class so game is already designed for holy trinity. You guys should of went with tank role not tank class. So Insert post about really strong tanks here. Plus one healer class one support class and five dps classes also setup for holy trinity.
Only solution I see now is having two tanks (sharing tanking responsibilties)with no tank class present. and no healer present. One tank if a healer is present. If tank class and healer are present then one or both the healer and the tank could spec out for an all dps build. So that is 2 people playing tank role with out tank class or healer class. And One person playing tank role with healer present. And with Tank class and healer present they could both spec out for dps builds.
Now for raids You would need a dedicated tank and healer. Which presents another problem not enough people to fill those roles. Do not really know what say on that one. Cause again you guys went with a class dedicated to tanking instead of classes that could fill the role of tanking and if you per say give warriors the ability to fill that role that makes the tank class redundant. Unless of course you go with the above paragraph for raids also. But again that what would be the point of being a tank if you are not needed.
From the looks of it your classes are not designed for to play multiple roles so kind of stuck with holy trintiy.
As far as number of healers and support well you have bards and clerics that should be enough.
But if you want to go with holy trinity then warriors and tanks would be the tanks with bards and clerics support and four dps class some of which could off tank.
But one design flaw I see is that the tank class is just that a tank could be set up to do more damage but still essentially a tank it is a one role class. Now if you design them to also do decent dps well that is not even possible because you guys went with PvX game balance. (tanky classes that do decent dps are op in pvp)
So that PvX policy has your hands tied unless tanks are going perform differently in pve and pvp which would be the same thing as having two seperate systems. Yes it is a paradox really interested how PvX is going to work.
Just want to add that in WoW protection pallies filled in as healers in 3v3 bracket even in tournaments. So there were viable as healers in 3v3 bracket. Meaning Tanks with right buffs and debuffs and heals and stuns could play support role. But WoW specializes in making dynamic classes something they do very well.
Another design mistake that some games make is well tanks fell like glorified punching bags. So they should at least have one or two abilties that have a little bit of burst to them to make tanks fell like they are doing some dps. And some other utulity abilty.
A tank should be needed just to keep the group together if that does not happen then people will just go in dungeouns and do their own thing.
Most players will play DPS and the healers and tank will be very sought after. Therefore it will be very hard for DPS, who have no guilds, to find a group. That's the main problem in most MMOs.
Try having dungeons or raids that require 2 tanks 2 healers and 6 DPS or 1 tank 3 healers 6 DPS, 1 tank 1 healer 8 DPS etc.
P.S.
I would like to see a game that maintaining aggro is a hard job and some areas where making mistakes is unforgivable. No one wants another casual MMO. Requiring tactics for some fights and making them hard would be awesome!
Let me throw out a scenario for what I mean. Imagine you're grouping up for a dungeon and you need a healer, it would be nice of instead of needing someone with the cleric prime class for the dungeon, you could have a bard/cleric or maybe even a mage/cleric. Sure they wont be as good as having someone with the cleric as their base class but it wouldn't demolish the group without one or hamper them from even trying the content if they cant find a cleric. Every class could dabble in every facet of the trinity, but while they might not all the the best it wouldn't keep people from playing a single role from choosing a prime class.
In regards to bards Just design bards so that they can create their own songs for the group. If the group is more melee based, then they can design their song to increase melee damage/attack speed. If they're more caster based, reduced mana cost for spells and increased damage. Out of combat, create run speed songs or health/mana regen.
They did this in vanguard and they were awesome. The songs took X amount of mana per second depending on how many damage increases you had, so you had to play a balance game and put rests in there so you didn't drain yourself of mana. If the fight was a burst one though you could throw caution to the wind and not worry about your mana though.
I'd like to see a combination of both. Let a group based on the Trinity, group 1,be satisfactory at some dungeons, poor at others, and brilliant at the rest.
The dungeons that group 1 are poor at are going to force hard choices on a leader, do they maybe boot the tank, causing a problem between the two of them or try and find a very unconventional way through, that others may not be down with.
A non Trinity group, group 2, may meet with early success at a certain dungeon and repeat it into the ground or go places they aren't meant to be looking for similar dungeons or go conventional and give their former teammates an ax to grind.
Maybe these 2 groups encounter each other, hijinks ensue, and in the end a pack of feral bards kill all the survivors.
The introduction of chaos is never a bad thing.
One possible solution is making the tank class a knight class instead. And letting knights and warriors fill the tank role. And also having bards and clerics fill the healer support role at equal levels of effectiveness.. This Effectively doubles accessibilty to dungeouns and raids.
Now if you also have it so that dungeouns (not raids) be done with a tank and off tank(dps class in off tank role) and Healer plus dps in tank role. Then you could do a dungeoun without a tank or healer then that would also double acessability for dungeouns.
So you would have two tank classes and two support healer classes. Plus be able to dungeouns with either just a healer or tank or healer and tank.
Having one tank clasas and one healer class makes it hard for trinity. I also makes it hard for lor letting every one tank cause not you have every calss overlapping with tank class role.
Think having one tank class and one healer class is a huge design mistake. Just makes tanks and healers scarce not good for trinity. Even if 1/8 of popualtios were tanks and another 1/8 heallers, well this guys are not there just to fun dungeouns and raid plus have to be logged in at some time as other players reas nightmare if you ask me. But there are many things that can be done to change that.
I was thinking about giving summoners the ability to tank by transforming into a demon with wings and could use wings as shields and claws as weapons but with creativity you coul possibly give any class wings in some way and have them used as sheild nad have them tank.( double shields in fact) Looks really cool in a game called Tekken.
I do believe there should be some flexibility in terms of it, so not only tanks should be able to tank but also classes that have specced into a particular tree heavily e.g. a Rogue evasion tanking. But this should be a big decision and not be something that can be changed at the drop of a hat.
I second this idea. Having multiple classes that can do the same role is very important. Even better if the knights and warriors tank differently. Same for the bards and clerics with healing. The type of healer I want to create I am uncertain if it is possible in the current class hierarchy. I am looking to make the less supported type, the Damage Mitigation healer. They work to prevent damage instead of healing it after the fact. They have heals just normally they aren't as strong or as abundant as the more traditional healers. They have mostly shields and other damage reduction abilities. I could see such a healer coming from the bard healing. I see the cleric being more of the traditional type healer.
I'm not in favor of giving every class access to every role. That normally leads to weak class roles as everyone is a jack of all trades. Variety in the classes is fine, it leads to stronger characters. I guess I could see a summoner working as an Off Tank by using their summons to distract the enemy. It just wouldn't work nearly as well as a knight or a warrior would. It might work for easier content though.
Still, I can definitely get behind more variety in the class roles.
Instead of having three roles in a group that generally need to be filled (and lets be honest, no game has ever gone past the roles generally needing to be filled), make a game where there are five roles that generally need to be filled.
Take the traditional tank and healer from the trinity in every other game, but break the DPS in to physical and magical based DPS (each of which can have close and long range variants), and add in utility as a generally needed class as well, and you have a functioning quintinity.
You could even go for a hexinity by making CC a required role in groups separate from general utility, but I wouldn't suggest requiring 6 specific roles for content unless that content were able to take 10 players - as having a reasonable number of spots in your group that do not need to be filed by a specific role is very important.
The trinity in MMO's is a great baseline, but I believe the interesting part is what MMO's decide to add on top of these traditional roles. That's where I think new MMO's should try to tinker with, while simultaneously keeping the traditional play style relevant.