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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.
League of Legends
consultant
Member
At this point I would recommend to the devs to play this game just for educational purposes learning about how the abilities and other game mechanics work. I have only played 21 champions some of them only ounce have 44 of them that being the case my knowledge of the game is limited cause they have almost 150 champions and I only played 21 of them. Spend most of the time palying faovorites.
I already posted a lot about it but lets take it from a different angle
League of Legends Version of
Implosion would be an area effect charge ability 2 seconds does damage over time right away when charge is complete then implosion takes place pulling target to center. So player could avoid most of the damage but mage would have to stop holding down the button right before the opposing player
left the area of effect. So mage has to pay attention.
Chain lightning would be area of effect with eight charges oveer 8 seconds If you change target or target dies then have chance to change target for more damage. Or could be done by number of times you push the button key binded to chain lightning
Wall of Force get to pick location of Wall of force near or far away from the caster. Actually may already be that way but does not look like it in the videos.
Now let me mention two other abiltities Mecha Zion Zero transforms into a train and then charges for 8 seconds but you have to guide the train or hits walls or obstacles prematurely. Stops when it hits other toons or can be stopped manually by pressing ability button again. In Ashes of creation game it could be a very fast guided delayed blast fire ball. Also same champion has shield that explodes and causes damage if not used. Champion Looks like different version of Optimus Prime.
Still have over 100 Champoins i have not even played.
Skill shots are pretty cool but the problem with skill shots is they can be avioded every time if good enough So in LoL some abilties have cast times but you can actually change the direction of or place of area of effect during cast time. Matter of fact one ability is like a guided laser that you move around with mouse.
But there are other things to mention like facing values. but think be better if you guys studied this game a bit instead. It is unreal to me what Riot does with ailities. Hopefully at leason one person at IS plays this game.
I already posted a lot about it but lets take it from a different angle
League of Legends Version of
Implosion would be an area effect charge ability 2 seconds does damage over time right away when charge is complete then implosion takes place pulling target to center. So player could avoid most of the damage but mage would have to stop holding down the button right before the opposing player
left the area of effect. So mage has to pay attention.
Chain lightning would be area of effect with eight charges oveer 8 seconds If you change target or target dies then have chance to change target for more damage. Or could be done by number of times you push the button key binded to chain lightning
Wall of Force get to pick location of Wall of force near or far away from the caster. Actually may already be that way but does not look like it in the videos.
Now let me mention two other abiltities Mecha Zion Zero transforms into a train and then charges for 8 seconds but you have to guide the train or hits walls or obstacles prematurely. Stops when it hits other toons or can be stopped manually by pressing ability button again. In Ashes of creation game it could be a very fast guided delayed blast fire ball. Also same champion has shield that explodes and causes damage if not used. Champion Looks like different version of Optimus Prime.
Still have over 100 Champoins i have not even played.
Skill shots are pretty cool but the problem with skill shots is they can be avioded every time if good enough So in LoL some abilties have cast times but you can actually change the direction of or place of area of effect during cast time. Matter of fact one ability is like a guided laser that you move around with mouse.
But there are other things to mention like facing values. but think be better if you guys studied this game a bit instead. It is unreal to me what Riot does with ailities. Hopefully at leason one person at IS plays this game.
3
Comments
I'm going to be difficult and disagree cause why not. League has a large variety of ability mechanics and synergies. Yes, you wouldn't want to copy the abilities 100% but i'd argue there are ideas or at least things that can be used as inspiration for class abilities in an MMO.
I'm going to be difficult and disagree cause why not.
Intrepid is staffed with professional game developers with many years of experience each (let alone combined) in MMO's.
They would have already looked at LoL in their own time, looked at the game design choices, and factored those things in to their thinking in terms of MMO design before Ashes of Creation development even started.
It wasn't really disagreeing per se, but still...
That said, there are some design elements that I think all games can learn from LoL, centering around balance. LoL follows a cyclical balancing structure where everything has a counter. Champion B is strong against Champion A, Champion C is strong against Champion B but weak to Champion A. Unfortunately this balancing structure fails purely because there are so many variables to take into account. It is physically impossible to balance 140+ champions, not to mention the huge number of items and rune choices you can pick.
As for the skills themselves, one thing to keep in mind is that LoL uses a fixed camera angle that you would very rarely see in an mmorpg. This inherently changes the way a lot of skills work, particularly skills that involve jumping over walls. Traditional line of sight doesn't really play a part in LoL and instead comes from the fog of war and the bushes.
For those of us that are not professional game developers, it could be an interesting discussion. Having not played LoL myself, nor any other MOBA's, it would be a discussion I'd personally find somewhat interesting.
For a non-professional to think to point to a very popular product out to a professional in that same general field though - that's kind of like walking in to high school science class and suggesting to your teacher that he should teach some of Isaac Newton's stuff.
As a professional myself, I occasionally have people point out things that are rudimentary and ask me to consider them - much as happened in the OP of this thread. This has happened in both fields that I've worked in at a professional level - and I no longer have an issue with telling these people to eff off.
League is a good example of condensing skills in thematically fulfilling and meaningful ways.
For example, Bard can ult offensively or defensively (or to troll), he has a heal that’s also a speed boost that can be used immediately for a quick save or to get your ally into the fight fasted, or place many to charge as fall-back health when facing an enemy that has poke damage that has to be mitigated.
There’s also the fairly basic ones like Morgana with her ground AoE cooldown reduction whenever she hits an enemy with the AoE, her root, or her ult.
As far as combat as a whole, League doesn’t have much to offer an MMO since they just play so differently.
Why? What happened?
dawn of 3 flopped and almost killed the studio
To me anything ground based is lazy development and can be done in a million different ways that adds flexibility. What use is the ability to cast on the move if you just leave behind everything you can cast?
To start off, I enjoy the charge abilities like vi's charge, sion's axe drop, zerif's charged ability and pantheon's spear throw. I just like the feeling of holding down the ability and letting it loose. It's nice to have the option to let it go earlier for a lesser effect. We sometimes get these kinds of abilities for casters but rarely for melee. I'd love to see a warriors having an option to augment there charge so they charge it up like vi before boosting forward. I could see all classes having abilities, wither it's with magic or a weapon, where they charge up and get a benefit the longer they charge. Tank could maybe augment there hook/lasso ability so they can charge it up to throw it farther similar to pyke.
This is similar to the other and maybe should just be a charge ability but abilities with a decent wind up like darius's ax spin, mord's hammer drop and sett's punch. I just find darius's ax spin very satisfying to use and could see it having a place on a figher class with a slower playstyle.
There has been a few games that have done this but i could see rogue/summoner getting something similar to zed's shadow clones. Being able to summon a clone and switch spots with it kind of like the rifter ability. Clone could also mimic certain abilities. Also could be something like wukong or neeko where you turn stealth and leave a clone behind.
Similar to kayle, you could have a buff that turns your melee attacks to range attacks temporarily. A fighter/mage might be able to temporarily throw flaming bolts with their sword.
I could see summoner related classes doing things similar to xayah or talon where after throwing an ability, it comes back either automatically (talon) or with an ability (xayah).
These are just some of the abilities i can think of, not saying none of these have ever shown up but I haven't seen a lot of them. I also think it would be fun to explore some of the ability synergies like how diana, kai'sa, and irelia's dash works, which i guess we kind of have with the drifter. We can get augments from social organization so even if an ability theme doesn't fit a class combo, it could fit one of them.
I think you might have gone into the wrong thread but catfall boots aren't in the MMO to my knowledge, they are a BR thing. It might be an ability a class has but everyone can't get catfall boots.
Here are a few examples to illustrate my thoughts : Olaf is some sort of viking berserker with two axes, his Q consists of throwing one axe to a place (which deals dmgs obviously) if you retrieve it up by running onto it, it reduces the cooldown of his Q by 4 or 5s something like this.
His E deals true damages (damages that bypass any sort of defense) against a portion of Olaf's health , but what interests us is the fact that if you kill your target, the HP cost is nullified, also hitting with your auto-attacks reduces the cooldown of the E by 1s.
Nami is a mermaid with a magic stick, what's interesting is her passive ability interacting with allies and her W.
Her passive grants bonus movement speed to allies when they get touched by all of her abilities.
Her Q is a bubble that stuns enemies for a short duration. While it is obviously used to apply a CC, sometimes your target is out of range while fleeing the fight, but an ally is almost close enough to kill the target. So instead of chasing forever you hit your ally with the bubble to grant him the movespeed he needs to catch up to the target.
Her W is a wave that can be used on both allies to heal and enemies to damage them, the wave can bounce up to 2 times after the 1st use if target is in range. It means you can decide to start the spell on an ally to heal, then bounce to an enemy, then bounce back to an ally to heal two of them while damaging one. But you can do it the other way by choosing to hit an enemy 1st, to maximise your damages.
I won't detail the last two abilities, check it out if you are curious, and want to see the whole picture.
There is a lot of interactions in the champion's kit that adds depth and gives unique gameplay to a champion in LOL. I think that the way these abilities works are wonderful and could have a meaningful impact on the depth of the mechanics a MMO can offer.
Let's imagine that the tank can use a shield bash to stun an enemy which is it's regular use, but if the tank applied some sort of debuff by using his auto-attacks in a certain way or some skills, whatever it is from. It adds 1s to the stun, or reduces the armor of the target. You can invent anything...
Now in case of a Mage using an ice ability that froze a target dealing a bit of damage. By standing next to the frozen target, let's say he can change his fire bolt into an ice bolt giving different effects. Or maybe using a buff with an ice augment on it that grants a CD reduction on other skills or gives additional stats.
The mage is supposed to be ranged, here he can either play from afar, or take risks for more rewards.
Just by adding these kind of interactions between spells you add a whole level of new mechanics to a class and give it a unique gameplay. My ideas are pretty rough but I think they give you a good example.
It would be nice if a mage does more than nuking a target after a well timed cc rotation or that a tank use a specific timing with his shield's attacks to get more benefits from it instead of absorbing damage and applying crowd control.
That is how LOL does a good job at making a champion with a lot of depth and "uniqueness" in my eyes with 4 only abilities.
This is my humble vision, what do you guys think ?
But instead I'll just rant about the one I think is most universally applicable: visual clarity. Anyone who's tried to play League knows that there's just a fuckton to figure out, and a fuckton that you need to be able to recognize at a moment's notice: 140+ champions, 600+ abilities, an average of 4 skins per champion, dozens of items, and 60 runes. Not to mention the map and all the things going on with that.
Thankfully, League does a good job of making all these elements visually distinct and informative. Champions (and their skins) are designed to be easily recognizable, even at a glance because their silhouettes are distinct. Abilities are bright and catch the eye, and the FX team manages to make them all look cool and different. But they don't linger for longer than they need to, and their flashiness matches their power level, so they don't drown the screen in chaos (unless it's a big teamfight). Animations are appropriately snappy or impactful depending on the action. Many abilities have clear indicators of where they will hit before they go off, and AoEs have clear but unobtrusive outlines that help determine the exact hitbox (and whether it is allied or hostile). All abilities have pre-cast indicators to show the size of the ability (and the indicator is actually a few pixels short because they know players like to overestimate their range). The color of the environment in the background is less saturated so that characters and abilities stand out against it.
The HUD also has all kinds of considerations to make important information easily accessible. Over-head HP bars clearly indicate current and max HP, and how much damage each hit does. CC is indicated next to HP bars, as well as mana and sometimes special character mechanics (like ammo or character portraits to indicate the target of certain abilities). Ability icons display all the pertinent info for the ability. The tooltips have color coded info, and good formatting to separate different parts.
Not to mention the kit design (gameplay clarity) which tries to make it clear how to use abilities/rotations correctly. They tend to not have fiddly, nitpicky differences which would make it hard for new players to tell if they're doing things right. They don't want people to have to do a bunch of mathematical optimization to play their character half decently. In other words, there are clear success and failure cases; clear thresholds between full-effect vs. glancing-blows (not just physical hitbox thresholds, but HP or timing thresholds, too). For any single system or ability, there are intentionally just a few decision points, which are more chunky and impactful. The less clear, more difficult decisions come into play once you start looking at the bigger picture with all the systems and other players interacting.
(Ashes of Creation, as an MMO, especially in solo scenarios, will have to find a somewhat different way to balance clear gameplay vs. interesting and plentiful decisions. Class kit's will be far more complicated than in LoL, but hopefully they still provide clear paths to optimization.)
But uh, that's enough rambling for now. Like I said, I think you can learn a lot from League, because they have put a lot of thought into various design principles over the years. Visual/gameplay clarity is just one (two?) of them. Unfortunately, it's one of the last parts of game design to be polished (for good reasons), like painting clear lines onto a clay model only after it's been molded and hardened. Which makes me realize now that I probably wrote this comment too early for it to be relevant, whoops.
To the contrary, I would say it's the perfect place to learn from. MOBAs are kinda like MMOs without the time investment. League might be the BEST place to draw inspiration, Some abilites come to mind, they could implament an ability like Garens Spin2win or Trundles Q that saps attack power from the target while you gain a flat amount of attack power yourself. Hell there are several abilites that could work in an MMO.
Hence they're probably making one themselves
I would say the ideas for some of the skills can be transferred to an mmorpg setting as well as some of the synergies, but not the implementation of them. Remember that MOBAs like LoL come from an RTS background which plays very differently to an mmo.
But It is more about very specific game mechanics like already mentioned Sions charge ability Decimating Strike. Easy to avoid so better to use it when toon is slowed or stunned or rooted. But also you can start casting in an area a player is going into like when being chased. So if you cast ability in front of toon on low health making it nearly impossible to run away so toon dies. The very nature of the ability gives the toon some strategy to learn. Real simple in fact. Real simple is lot better than no strategy.
Another thing would like to mention is there are some narrow places in the jungle so if some one is chasing you start casting it and they have no were to go but away from you.
Thing is I am talking about ONE ability I cannot post about every ability. Think it would have some value playing and studying the game from design point of view.
Paragon tried to make a 5v5 moba and they flopped. And that was Epic games triple AAA studio. So not recommending cloning. But worth taking a look at.
I think there’s a good reason you don’t see that much in MMOs. It sucks.
(I hate that I leveled up a Berserker so high thinking it would eventually get better but it didn’t, such a waste of time.)
Abilities like Sion's Q work because of how the map is designed and how the fog of war works. As you noted, out in the open Sion's Q is ridiculously easy to dodge unless you are already cc'ed by another ability. What makes it threatening is being faced with it in a narrow corridor or Sion using it in bushes where you can't see him casting it.
The same applies to things like Fiddlesticks ultimate. I really can't imagine these types of charge up abilities working in an mmorpg where you can clearly see everything that is going on.
A lot of the gameplay of League of Legends is based around the fog of war which won't be a factor in an mmorpg.
This kind of thing could work well in an MMO if concealment were a thing. While fog of war is not a good fit, concealment (whether in foliage, shadows or similar) could work.
Not that I'm saying this is something that should happen in Ashes, as I'd somewhat assume a system like this would need to be a part of the original design of the game in order to work.
I'll just focus on one of hundreds of possibilities to explain my thought, since it would be endless. Let's imagine ourselves in the laning phase, in early game between 2 to 6 mins of game. Champions are between level 1~5. Enemy top laner got no boots, doran's blade or shield w/e.
As the meta says, you need to last hit creeps to gain money in order to build your champion. What's my enemy goal beside killing me and taking turret later on ? Killing creeps of course. With a proper placement you can hit a charged Q of 1s, not a fully charged one, if it goes bad you can cancel the charge to do far less, but at least hit your target for minimal damages.
Now putting this mechanic into what I imagine would be AOC, it would be quite situational to effectively use this kind of ability, but there could be situations and/or abilities that make it usable. If you pvp in a group fight, you can efficiently use it if your target is busy fighting someone else or being locked down.
In a 1v1, it could only work by preparing a situation where its use is favorable, like some CCs or making the enemy use all of its movement based abilities. Depending on the CC duration you could use your fully charged ability.
But it's obvious to say that a charged based ability have little to no chances to work if you aim for it's maximum damage output.
I could see this kind of ability being in AOC, but alone in a class's kit. As it would be a pain to successfully use it (being like sion's Q). I think it should be obtainable through a 2nd class augment...
I think it's pretty much guaranteed that there will be stealth-type mechanics in Ashes, but what is your opinion on abilities that can grant stealth to allies? I've only seen a couple of games that do this and given how strong group stealth is, these abilities are usually very limited and so become very niche in their application.
Think ability like this could be put in Ashes of Creation even if they have to change the game mechanics on it like shorter charge time larger area of effect the idea is what is important not necessarily this exact ability in in this exact evvironment.1
Lets take the rogue class and its derivatives:
Base Rogue - Talon (lunging attacks, stacking bleed, combo system with an ultimate attack that turns you invis)
Duelist - Yasuo (high mobility with dashes, expert 1v1, high skillcealing)
Shadow Guardian - Jax (disabling of opponents, defensive capabilities through dodging)
Assassin - Nocturne/Kha'Zix (high damage isolation damage, with high burst potential through opener)
Predator - Rengar/Nidalee (high situational mobility with ranged augments, example: a backstab can be executed with bow and arrow at range)
Nightspell - Kassadin (magical teleportation, anti-mage, with silencing or disruptive abilities)
Shadow Lord - Zed (summoning weapons to enhance damage, stacking those summoned weapons to ramp up damage over time, example: summoning shadow daggers that repeat your abilities which you can stack ontop of each other)
Cultist - Pyke (healing over time, sacrificing hp to cast abilities, support oriented)
Charlatan - Shaco (high mobility, psychological warfar, illusions, debuffing enemies)
Stealth yes, but not concealment. I would consider these to be similar though distinct things.
In an MMO, stealth is an ability that rogue types have. Concealment - to me - would be a mechanic whereby anyone could conceal themselves under or behind cover and not be seen.
EQ2 had group stealth abilities. It is useful for getting places your group otherwise couldn't, but with PvP being a somewhat prevalent factor in Ashes I'd personally consider the ability to stealth your whole group (even if only for a short time) to be too powerful.
1) It only works at a distance; if any member of the group gets within a certain range (let’s say close enough for a medium range attack or charging attack/leap) of an enemy, then stealth is broken.
2) An attack from anyone in the group breaks everyone’s stealth.
3) Everyone in the group has to stay within a certain distance of the person providing stealth, and anyone who gets too far away breaks stealth (but everyone else stays stealthy).
In that case it could be useful for carefully crossing a battlefield to position people, or set up for a barrage of sniping, but doesn’t allow you to deliver a whole group to surround an unaware enemy or do a mass Zerg ambush.
Two out of those three restrictions applied in EQ2's group stealth.
Stealth was able to be seen through if you got close to another player - and if that player had the ability to see through stealth (and it was turned on), then they could see you all fairly clearly.
The other two were both present, and did make attempting to group stealth past an enemy (the only real use for it in a PvE game) somewhat entertaining.
I still personally think it's a little too powerful in a PvP heavy game where there are actual consequences in PvP. I mean, 5 players with this ability could stealth an entire raid of 40 players.
I don't want to be the person that drives a caravan in to that.
Also it is free to play but company does not seem to use greedy tactics just normal free to play cash shop. Couple that with this guys make an enormous effort to make game better plus quality of life issues and find myself more apt to financial support this game. Playing a game that you know exploits there own player base takes away from the fun especially when it is never ending.
I was watching a video were Riot came out with and App that lets players play around with the graphics of the weapons used in the game. Do not know to much about it but great way for community to get involved in the game.
Actually was doing some testing and found out that I cannot change target area during cast time. Just targeting pointer repears at mouse curser location if you press ability agian but will not recast. Went back and striked through original statement. Sorry about innaccuracy