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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
How do you balance that sort of variety?
You don't, you just hit the 'Mid range/Mediocre' button and hope it works out. Not only on the 'freeform characters' your are talking about, but also the content they are supposed to handle.
AC had a truly free form character system. You started with X number of Skill points and you picked your skills, from First Aid to Crossbows, from Fletching to Life Magic.
A player was given the freedom to do WHATEVER they wanted. In the end, if you wanted to be a half decent character you had to reroll and get skill X, R, X, D, and F. For all its wondrous freedom, you still got whittled down to what was viable.
In a 'class' based system EVERY character is already viable and serves a valuable purpose. A player will never have to reroll because he didn't know he HAD to have the Mana Conversion skill if he wanted to be a Mage. Without Mana Conversion a Mage was CRITICALLY flawed and would never do well. So despite wanting to be a mage, creating a mage 'class', you were gimped and had to reroll.
The player tried to use his freedom to basically 'class' himself. So why not give him the class to begin with, and let him play his desired role?
#forever-fighting
OR
full healer party
you could LITERALLY heal yourselves so much that you make the dungeon boss rage quit XD
#doctor-strange XD
that is VERY nice in my opinion
we have this system in more rpg games recently
where you and your gang can finish quests or areas and etc by doing things differently mainly because you have different kind of fighters in your group
for example :
you can unlock a door if you have a rogue
but if you have a berserker or defender or .... you can break the wall
and so on ...
meaning: you can finish the content but it will be a different experience with each different composition you make your group
@akabear can you post this idea in idea archive?
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/43104/archive-of-ideas
Trinity will be always most effecitve in dungeons.
For example in Albion Online, your class depends on what items you are wearing.
At first days of game, everyone was trying some funny builds - heavy armor healers/tanks with stealth etc.
But finally it turned out that trinity is most efficient.
Damn heavy tank that hold agro, some support, glass cannon DPS + glass cannon healer.
People may try different builds but finally META will be set.
I would not plan for that
IS already stated that they will have enrage mechaniks, which will mean that full healer or full tank groups will have no chance.
But do you know who will be able to do that? A FULL BARD GROUP! :'D
As far as free form vs the trinity well free form is no form if you are going to have eight bards. So really inclined to keep the trinity around. But another importatn part of an mmo is that each class should have something to contribute to a group so as a dungeoun leader or raid leader I would try to get a diversified group if I can. One of the most important things in an MMO is teamwork, Really one of th key components so trinity would be the way to go.
The biggest set back of the trinity is that You have to tank and a healer to do dungeouns and raids. But think you have number of options available to you to increase the number of toons that can play the tank and support roles.
Really the purpose of all that I have post is If you just increase the number of people that can tank and fill the support healer role then the trinity would not fell so restrictive. This could be done by simply asking the player to level a tank or healer to level 20 and do 5 dungeouns for some reward. You do not have to level a toon to max level to figure out if they like it. Simple way of getting people to try it and some of them would most likely really like playing those roles and pursue it to max level.
In retrospec giving every class the ability to tank does not sound to good. Mage tanking or pet tanking or bard tanking seems weird. But alot can be done with creativity and innovation vs just giving every one sheilds and shield abiltities. But I would leave you with this Idea In WoW there was guild that raided with out a tank just really op healer involved pet tanking and off tanking and kiting and cc and lot of team work. Well if you were give that guild a tank they could do wonders.
Yes I said RAID not dungeouns.
And finally I played a hunter and In WoW there was a turtle that had a 50% damage reduction sheild ability for 8 seconds combined with other cooldowns and defensive traits. It could be used to soak up some damage. Then the tank would taunt it back so pet would not die. I think this is the right place for pets to tank. So pets summoner and ranger alike should be allowed to do a little OFF Tanking not really pet tanking per say.
I prefere good and well designed games.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
so you like a group full of summoners
In terms of fun, the idea of a more free form system is certainly more appealing. However it's only ever been just that, an idea. In practice PvE content suffers. Essentially team strategy goes out the window and teamwork becomes is far less important than how much damage you can do while avoiding taking damage. In a game with free form groups, things would have to be balanced to be doable by any group composition which usually takes the challenge out of the content (if its doable by a full dps group, why would you ever bring a tank or healer? If a team of heavy CC can just lock things down and ignore them why bring a class with less or no CC?). More often than not that just leads to a meta of a handful of classes, and everyone else who aren't playing those classes are left to the wayside. The trinity being a predetermined framework make people have to think more about the the teamwork involved in overcoming challenges. With that structure every class could have something that would make them valuable even if they dont have the highest dps/hps/mitigation. Without knowing more details of what is planned in terms of PvE I cant really go into more details on that thought so I'll leave it at that. That being said I can see how the freeform style could be better suited for PvP endeavors.
Oh Nagash, you poor summer skelleton...
He deffinitely meant a group full of bards!
What about Summoner hard ^^
A smart group.
Smart = Summard (a summoner/bard)
Perfect
I doubt it will happen, Ashes already has a clear trinity and if you want to talk about preferences you can only talk about your experiences. Tera was (when I played back years and years ago) a great trinity styled game. WoW was a great trinity styled game.
GW2 was an absolutly horridly broken messs of an illusionary "everything goes". At least for the first 2-3 years, can't say how it is now.
Do I like trinity styled games more now? No, while not mmo Warframe shows that everything goes, just different approaches, can hold your fun for hundreds of hours even tho we all know that the content itself is the epitome of repetitiveness. It's just at the core a well designed fun game (yes it has it's flaws too) and that is what matters, just do it well and a group of people will love it to death. It just feels unecessery to ask, if it's done well, either way, it will be enjoyable in Ashes.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
Think it would be pretty cool if we had ten man dungeouns, Think most people that play mmos would have to stop what they are doing and play Ashes of Creation just to do ten man dungeouns.
I"m all for the traditional trinity or a more open system... as long as there are many viable options so it's easier to find people, and play with the build I want (as long as I can do my job, it should be good). There will always be a "meta" but as long as it's still fun with other hodge podge healers / tanks / dps, I'll have fun.
I think the triad should work, but I think there need to be other combinations of classes that work effectively, so that problems of always being short on tanks and healers for progressing through content makes the dps subset of players wait in line to find those fixed roles. I think we need creative solutions.
Should rogues find traps and turn them on their enemies? Should they find shortcuts?
Should Rangers, coax beasts with food away from treasures, should they shoot down enemies before they're aware without drawing aggro?
Should Bards, charm and inspire lowly minions to join their side and strive to forsake their oaths for gold and eternal glory?
Should Summoners draw forth powers long lost from near by relics and summon forth energies or long dead foes, or spirits to their whims?
I see several ways to make the myriad of classes useful to a party and for any one to provide a necessary utility to progress through dungeons and other content, that shouldn't just cater to one subset of a group makeup.
And if there was an extral chance to get tank gear and healer gear then having a healer or tank as alt would be more easy. Or any other way to make tank gear and healing gear more acessable.
Brings back D&D memories
So if you were just willing to do this on simple thing (cough ) then this would solve all your composition problems.
But realized that I really have not answered your question, Well in LoL the is a support role. But they are different types of support. There is the healer dps, the cc knock other toon out of postition role, then their is the cc/shield (same as healing) dps role.
In other words they have very specific roles and play styles. So as far as compostiion goes roles ought to be unique to a certain extent. For example if mages wee allowed to have a shpere of force and dome of force to protect tank and party members that would make them a dps support role. Since they would the only ones that could to that then their role would be real specific. Plus if they were giving a buff or debuff or spell like itching powder. Then they could fell like they are play support role and dpsing not just dpsing.
Right now there are only eight classes so each one should feel special and unique, which includes their role.
Another thing that could be done is to get people out of the I only play my favorite class or one toon mentallity no ideas come to mind. But as already mentioned one of things that prevent this is raid prep times. Think would rather have people playing alts then having to do four hours of prep time a week.
If encounters don't 'require' trinity skills to some extent, they're usually designed to:
1) require some specific combination of skills that ends up being more restrictive on group composition
2) be a boring dps race (like bosses in BDO)
3) require universal skills like moderate damage output and movement, which can be fun but not every single encounter should follow this template
But, I also prefer encounters are not so tightly tuned to the specific trinity roles that hybrids become dismissed, which many classes in AoC kind of are.
That said id be the last person against hybrids, i like the idea of approaching fights using what you have in the group, coming from rift my mage has 20+ different roles 6 tank and healer spec, so can use whats needed. if the heals is weak run a healing tank to help out. i like the idea of all classes having some ability to do all things. And who wants to fight the same boss each week the same way. the other good thing about all classes having some ability to do all thing is that person that wants to try tanking or healing but no time to get an alt up and running can give it a go, if they like it they then may even start a tank up giving more in game.
Hard to say how AoC is going to deal with this we know that a tank mage, will be able to tank but still unclear how the mage tank will go if indeed it will be able to tank at all. What ive got off the live streams depending on which one you look at is the 2nd class will add Augments to incorporate the identity of the secondary class, in the last stream a different concept was talked about. ( in this case i think they were getting carried away)
But still would be nice to know what will be able to to what.
So in summery I prefer trinity groups over free-for-all groups and it should be easier to balance anyway.
PVE Dungeons - Perfection required. Trinity required. Skill Required. Gear required.
PvP - Whatever the hell you want - just be coordinated. All tank? -Why not!