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Question about itemization and character builds
Leiloni
Member, Alpha Two
I watched the Alpha 1 preview stream and overall I was excited at what I saw and I think it's looking great so far. I did have some questions about what you plan to do for gear and stats specifically. So far it looks pretty straightforward, where tanks where heavy armor and melee weapons/shield, dps wears medium armor and melee weapons or a bow, and healers/caster dps uses a staff and cloth armor. This is how ESO does it, despite having a ton of build options, realistically due to itemization you are limited to three options. That's very boring and very disappointing, because it means a lot of players can't play the type of class they enjoy.
How do you plan to handle itemization here? Can I play a heavy armored healer with 1h/shield or 2h mace like a standard Cleric archetype - Aion's Cleric/Chanter or WoW's Holy Pally? Can someone build an effective medium armor tank? Can a physical dps wear heavy armor? Can a player make an effective battle mage?
Will itemization offer enough variety for us to do anything we want, or will it be something that changes with the acquisition of a promotion class? I know the latter is how Aion handled it - upon reaching level 10 for example, the Priest would go from cloth to Chain upon becoming either a Chanter or Cleric.
I really hope you allow true variety without gimping people because that's probably my biggest concern right now. The class system and super narrow build options in ESO really ruins it for me, but a game like WoW for example has every type available almost so people can do what they want and still feel powerful and balanced.
How do you plan to handle itemization here? Can I play a heavy armored healer with 1h/shield or 2h mace like a standard Cleric archetype - Aion's Cleric/Chanter or WoW's Holy Pally? Can someone build an effective medium armor tank? Can a physical dps wear heavy armor? Can a player make an effective battle mage?
Will itemization offer enough variety for us to do anything we want, or will it be something that changes with the acquisition of a promotion class? I know the latter is how Aion handled it - upon reaching level 10 for example, the Priest would go from cloth to Chain upon becoming either a Chanter or Cleric.
I really hope you allow true variety without gimping people because that's probably my biggest concern right now. The class system and super narrow build options in ESO really ruins it for me, but a game like WoW for example has every type available almost so people can do what they want and still feel powerful and balanced.
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How effective it will be to have a mage wearing heavy armour and swinging a 2-handed sword is another matter. The problem is that the more gameplay options you add, the harder it is to balance. ESO is a classic example of this. Yes you can theoretically make your character however you like but the majority of options available to you just aren't viable.
This is the illusion of choice. Personally I would prefer to have fewer options that are balanced better, than trying to have a thousand different options where only a handful are viable.
While this limits in the sense build variation, the whole idea how wearing what you want is kind of a dream concept as people will make pre-made builds and expect everyone to run in a certain setup before being accepted for some content.
It is in my opinion that it is better to have less gear options but more skill options. (enchanting skills)
Similarly to Albion, certain armor and weapon types do present as a better option for different classes. While this does limit your options in some cases (you would generally want to be using the equipment with the best bonus for your class), it does allow for some swapping things around for different situations.
As a mage, of sorts, I had my normal cloth set with a staff. However, I could drop the staff for a sword and shield - losing some DPS but gaining a good amount of PvP survivability. I could also drop my cloth for either leather or plate as the situation dictated - usually in the arena against specific melee or bow classes.
So, in my experience, while players may well still be limited on what their main setup will be, there may well be times when other options are viable.
But at the same time, I'd hope that weapons themselves offer more choice. So right now it seems wands and staves are only for magic and everyone else gets the massive variety of other weapons. Why not have a Cleric-Tank or Cleric-Fighter suddenly able to use and gain benefit from melee weapons on a magic class? So maybe if I'm Cleric-Tank I can heal in Chain or Plate with a mace/shield, or some 2h Mace/Sword for the Cleric-Fighter - hell maybe even turn my Staff into a melee weapon? Or the Bard-Fighter able to use a 2H and buff/heal in melee? Mage-Fighter is called Battle Mage, so I hope they live up to the name and can at the very least wield a sword. Or the Mage-Ranger is a Spellhunter - do they get to use Bows and gain magic bonuses from them?
You can do stuff like this by adding passives for gaining your secondary class. Make it so every secondary class gives armor/weapon passives that make sense and add armor to the game that has appropriate bonuses already (this is what other games do already, so you might have magic oriented chain or plate or leather in some games along with physical oriented chain/plate/leather, and that's a good thing).
We have 64 classes and they should all be unique. If all the weapon/armor choices are the same, you have an ESO on your hands which is a massive failure of class design. In the words of Peter Pilone, "You don't make 64 classes for four to be played" and that's exactly what you'd be doing if you don't add this sort of variety to those 64 classes. But without really fleshing that out, all you have is 4 classes in this game - tank, healer, physical dps, magic dps. A few differences in the abilities I put on my bar doesn't make me wildly different from the other guy who slings magic if we're both in cloth and using a staff. Even WoW understands that and you can be a magic using dps or magic using healer in almost every armor/weapon combo.
There's a joke that goes around the ESO community when someone asks about build options, people tell them the hard truth - you have 3 options - Stamina, Magica, and Health. If that's what Ashes is going for, then I'm out. I hope they change course, because with 64 classes they're presenting themselves with an amazing opportunity to provide real variety and choice for players.
All we know is that, for now, they intend to let every class have access to every weapon and every armor type.
Most gear players will use will be player crafted. It may use items from dungeons or raids, but it may not - it will, however, almost all be player crafted.
When crafting an item in Ashes, players will have a certain amount of agency over the stats the item has. You will be able to sacrifice an amount of one stat for an amount of a different stat - this applies to defense as well, sacrificing some physical protection for some magical protection.
We don't know exactly to what extent this will happen, but due to the simple fact that players have at least some control over the stats on their gear, it means players won't be able to be pigeon holed due to the gear options available - which is where most games had this type of issue.
Now, some abilities will require a specific item type be equipped, but because we will have access to more abilities than we are able to chose at any one time, it is reasonable to think a player could come up with a feasible build that has no restrictions on gear at all.
I read that on the Wiki and watched the video it came from and they didn't really explain what they meant by that. I mean what stats would people be able to change and how viable would that be? I was initially hopeful that would mean players can use the gear they want and actually be viable with it, but posters are making me think otherwise since everyone seems in agreement that you won't have a viable build and gear will essentially be cookie cutter. But something makes me think Intrepid does have plans for those 64 classes to be unique - otherwise why offer them? They'd just stick with the primary 8 like other games if they wanted bland vanilla class choices.
But that's also why I put it out there that passives would help. For example picking up the secondary class could give you passives that make it so you get extra attack damage and resource regen, etc. from wearing the armor type or using the weapon type the secondary class uses. I dunno but either way if you're right in that the crafting system would do this that would be great. Unfortunately the resources I can find don't really go into depth on their intentions with the systems.
Oh making every class unique is easy. The hard part is making every class viable. It's not just about giving players access to whatever stats they want either. Again that is relatively easy to do, but doesn't guarantee balanced gameplay.
Most abilities in mmorpgs have a scaling modifier to them. For example let's take 2 random abilities from 2 different classes:
Mage - Fireball
Damage - 40 (base) + 20% of character's Intellect
Ranger - Fire Arrow
Damage - 40 (base) + 50% of character's Intellect
No matter what happens the Fire Arrow spell will always do more damage than the Fireball spell because of the modifier. Because of this, it doesn't matter if the Ranger and the Mage both have access to the same stats on their gear, the Ranger will do more damage than the Mage. Now let's say that you want both the Ranger and the Mage to have roughly the same dps output but feel different to play. In order to do that you would need to give the Fire Arrow spell a lightly longer recharge time. That sounds relatively simple but bare in mind we are only talking about 3 different variables here (base damage, damage modifier and recharge time). Of course, most RPGs and MMORPGs have a lot more variables to account for such as:
spell penetration
spell resistance
cast time
range
buffs
debuffs
Each new variable needs to be calculated making it harder and harder to work out how much damage a character should be doing. And of course on top of that you have to balance out other things like CC effects, Healing, Movement, etc.
Your idea with passive abilities from secondary classes only makes balancing harder because it adds another set of numbers and modifiers that need to be factored in.
TLDR it's all very well saying "I want to be unique and create my own style" but there is a limit to how much you can add before balance is thrown out the window.
All that is doing is taking the unique feeling a player could get via changing their gear setup and instead tying it to their overall class. It is essentially saying the only differential between different players is in the class they chose to play, when in fact the difference should be their class, augments and gear. Each of these three elements should play a part.
The variety on how things could play will still be there, it just won't *all* be tied to class choice.
Main class + secondary class augment + equipped weapon augment. That's a big undertaking. That's like 64 * X * Y. X being the number of skills for that class combination and Y representing the number of weapon types available. I think there is only 23 weapon types listed so far on the wiki.
I'd love it but I'm sure the devs would want to commit sudoku having to balance those abilities and design different animations for each of them.
8 Primary Classes - yay
6-8 Secondary Archetypes per class - I personally doubt that Intrepid will manage to make every class combination unique and balanced, but maybe.
Probably 10-20ish primary skills, each with a choice of 4+ augments (from various sources) - We don't yet know how skills, skill points, and how augments are assigned/chosen. There will be tons of options no matter what. However, most of the augments will not be realistic choices. Instead, you probably choose a general build to aim for, and then for each skill there will only be 1 or 2 options that fit well with the build.
3 armor types - Theoretically you could mix-and-match, and have a choice between the 3 types for each of the 8 armor slots. But realistically, there's only about 6 options (full set of one type, or half-and-half of two types).
About 22 weapon choices - However, usually your weapon will depend on your skill choices and archetype, because some skills require a certain category of weapon. So I estimate most builds will only have 4-5 weapon options, while some builds will have more freedom.
(?) specific gear pieces - Obviously there will be thousands of gear pieces, and potentially crafters will be able to tweak the gear they make, for near infinite variations. But when you look at a particular level, gear slot, and armor type, there will probably only be a few primary choices. (That's still a lot of choices considering there are 16 item slots, and you will change out your gear more often than anything else.) I don't think gear will have abilities/passives tied to them (aside from legendaries) so the choice will be based mostly on the stat profile you are trying to acquire and the cost of the item.
Now, if you multiply all these options together, you would find that there are literally billions (or more) possible combinations. However, the vast majority of options will only make a tiny difference, and builds will generally fall into categories, such that all builds within a given category will look mostly the same. Still, there will probably be dozens (maybe hundreds) of viable build categories. And you're still free to mess around with all the tiny details and experiment as you like.
So I think, overall, people will have more options than they know what to do with. Even if you restrict it to "viable" or "meta" builds only.
a fellow Khaldorian? (it's "seppuku"
Imagination is the highest kite you can fly.
The short answer here is "yes". The options you speak of will certainly exist.
You'll see people use "TANK" on the forum. That is because the Tank class does not necessarily perform the tank role. All classes can fill all roles. One class will indeed probably outshine the others in a given role, for a given content type. However, the augments and the skill system will allow you freedom to tweak your character within the constraints of class.
Keep in mind furthermore, that different types of content will necessitate different builds. World content won't be trivial like in WoW. Because the number of distinct and challenging combat scenarios a character could face is increased, the statistical likelihood of any given build being either good or bad for all of them is diminished.
Consider this as well. Sieges will be 250v250 minimum. At that point, literally nobody can afford to care if your build is optimal. If you nitpick that much, you'll never get a group together! Even in a 40 player dungeon, choosing optimal over merely functional will make constructing a group impossible. Coordinating that many schedules is hard enough. Playing an off-meta build is fine as long as people still take you in groups: which they will have to.
Imagination is the highest kite you can fly.
The mage now wins (62 vs 60). And since most games use Intellect for mages, the mages will increase their damage quicker. But I get your point.
I don't want to create my own style. I want to be able to play the same classes other games have. I mentioned several games that have these classes already, and they're DnD staples, so I'm not making anything up. Further, Intrepid has already given these 64 classes names that you can find on any DnD site - Mage/Fighter is Battlemage - in DnD they use melee weapons, typically a sword - would that class do that here? Here, Cleric/Fighter is Templar - in DnD they wear heavy armor and can use numerous weapons - would they do so here, or be best suited to Staff/Cloth like the Cleric and other magic users? That's my question. Intrepid put it out there, so I'm asking what it means.
Right now all we have is 64 classes that all feel like 4 based on the idea of using the same armor/weapon types for all of them. For example every healer and magic user right now people are saying would ideally have cloth and use a staff - that's nearly 40% of the class choices, which I find hard to believe is really the intention. I'm asking if certain class combos will be able to wear something different - for example taking a fighter or tank would make sense that you'd be able to use their armor and weapons, right? Otherwise all you have is cloth healer #8 that has slightly different skills than the other 7 but for all intents and purposes, is mostly the same Cleric as the rest, and ESO and FFXIV have already showed us what that looks like.
It makes a massive difference in gameplay. A healer in chain/plate armor can take more hits and thus stay alive longer, keep their team alive longer, turtle or decide to play more offensively, and all these things change what skills they can decide to put on their bar. If that healer decides to stick with a staff, they're deciding to be a primarily ranged player equipping ranged heals, ranged cc, ranged damage, GtAoEs. If they equip 1h or 2h weapons, they're saying they can spend time in melee either as melee/healer support helping the melee players or also getting in there and using melee damage abilities - so they can afford to equip something like a melee range single target or AoE stun, PbAoE heals that may not have a massive range, melee damage, etc. Further if they equip a shield, they can be even tankier and decide to put a ton of survivability focused skills on their bar to be the healer that never dies which is invaluable in PvP.
Similarly, a dps in leather or cloth vs a dps in chain/plate is a massive difference in gameplay. In leather a physical dps needs to be more mobile to avoid taking too much damage, and may favor things like stealth or dodges and quick casting melee attacks with fast weapons. A mage in cloth might prefer more CC, teleports, and ranged damage. But a physical dps in chain/plate can suddenly take more damage, and maybe they decide to take more melee range AoE and use a slow weapon like a 2h Axe/Sword and fulfill their gladiator fantasies, or a mage in chain/plate is suddenly looking like a melee user who uses spells and has lots of instant casts and less need for teleports and CC and long casts.
Gameplay implications are gigantic for gear/weapon choices, absolutely. It's the difference between a traditional Cleric vs Priest, or an Assassin vs Gladiator, Death Knight vs Warlock. (Edit: I think Shaman vs Mage is a better example here since I don't think this game has death magic that I've seen yet, but Shaman vs Mage is melee elemental magic user vs ranged).
Why not just play those games?
I don't want copies of other games classes in Ashes, I want classes that feel unique to each game.
Ashes has 64 classes. I want to be able to play those classes, not 8 versions of the same mage and same cleric because right now that's what we're looking at.
In a lot of games that's not the case, nor is it really fantasy/DnD tradition. The idea that only cloth gives enough healing power is something more modern MMO's came up with (and even then, only a few modern MMO's even follow that - many have chain, plate, and even some with leather healers that are quite powerful), and it's exactly what I'm trying to push against. There's no reason for that to be the case.
In fact, the healer in this game is a Cleric, not a Priest. Clerics traditionally wear chain armor, and use a mace/shield or 2h mace. That's primarily why I've asked because that's the expectation when you see Cleric, but in the livestream she was essentially a Priest - cloth armor and staff. In fact if you hop into two of the most traditional, "stick-to-the-rules-that-created-the-genre" MMO's, DDO and Neverwinter, they have chain or plate wearing Clerics as the primary healer class.
The whole point of giving healing classes cloth armour is a matter of balance. You sacrifice survivability in favour of magical strength (either healing or dps). What you are essentially asking for is to have both high survivability AND magical strength, unless of course the different armour types are purely cosmetic for RP value alone.
I think of the four types they are trying to balance a few stats: attributes (HP/mana/etc), armor (physical/magic), mobility (raw movement speed?) and dps % bonuses. I'm going to asssume that each slot piece will have a predetermined item value or total allocated point system that will dictate what that item will come with. Where the armor amount on a heavy chest will be more that the armor amount on a heavy helm but the helm will have more HP for instance. Having varying degrees of stats like this could lead to mix and match uses or possibly force everyone to use that same types of items for reach slot for meta reasons. There just isn't enough information yet to start worrying about itemization yet.