Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
A bard should focus on buffing/debuffing.
A cleric should focus on the ability to heal and shift health.
A fighter should focus on the ability to stay in a fight for as long as possible, while dealing as much damage as possible.
A rogue should focus on disrupting the enemy.
A tank should focus to be a anchorpoint for his group (mitigating damage for everyone and focusing the bosses attention on himself).
A summoner should focus on the ability to overwhelm the enemy.
A mage should focus on inflicting as much damage as possible.
A ranger should focus on high mobility engagement and on forcing the enemy to engage him on his own terms.
The secondary class then changes how they do this.
Is it even possible to have variety of builds if each character of certain class can do everything its archetype suggests? And if different builds still exist but can be switched like gloves within same battle - what is the point of having them at all? Artificial inflation of how many items you have to farm? (pop on that tank armour and you are a tank, but swap to holy robe and you are a healer?)
So, in my opinion every class should be a hybrid. So at least a half hybrid, meaning a damage spec and tank or heal spec. Ideal would be both.
This would be an option. You dont have to, but having the option could just make it very helpful for groups. If you have 4 damage dealer (in a 5 man group world) and no one of them can tank or heal, one of them hast to be benched. If all could be tank or heal, or both this problem would not necessarily be the case (if no one wants to tank or heal the problem is the same).
So if you can choose Priest for the second class spec, and you can perform on a equal level for dungeons, groups, pvp and raids as other healers this would be great. Same goes for tanks.
Of course TankTank and Heal Heal should still be strong.
I am really looking forward to see how you work that out. I know, I will only play a class that can tank and/or heal. Hybrid all the way. The more options the better.
Here's my interpretation of the question(s): When I unlock my secondary class, should I be able to give up capabilities from my primary class (e.g. healing from Cleric) in order to lean harder into my secondary class/archetype?
[Please pause for a moment while I change my opinion around 6 different ways.]
Hmm, I think no, I should NOT be able to give up primary-class abilities in order to co-opt more stuff from my secondary class. In other words, the secondary class, and subsequent augment choices, should not be able to remove or change the functionality of the primary class or it's abilities. The flavor can be changed, and some minor effects can be added, but basic functionality can't be removed/replaced.
Otherwise, that's too much flexibility and choice. Games with that much flexibility always end up with really bland ability/class design, and a lot of fake, uninteresting choices (where there is only one good option, and it's not even a fun option). Btw, the plan to have 4 available augments for every skill and every secondary class (meaning that there would be 29 or more versions of every skill) is ridiculously ambitious.
If Intrepid decides that they want people to have flexibility in their roles (e.g. be able to tank/heal when there are no tanks/healers available) then they should just allow people to change their primary class, or make it easier to create and level-up alts.
Edit: Tangentially related, even healers/tanks need to have some damage capabilities, because they need something to do/something to optimize when there aren't any dangerous attacks currently happening that need to be tanked/healed. "Downtime" shouldn't mean you just sit there waiting for mana/cooldowns or waiting for the next mechanic to start.
And of course tanks/healers also need to be able to do solo content without it taking 3 times as long.
Why not have a healer with a shield so they don't instantly die when focussed by said wizard?
It's the possibility of these things that make world feel more free. Being locked to certain playstyles for your role always feels very restrictive to me. It's like a slightly less intrusive version of gender locked classes to have only your basic holy triangle classes.
Just give freedoms with tradeoffs, make people want to experiment.
A character should only be able to effectively perform one role at a time. Personally, I think players should have to pick a single role and stick with it. I would prefer to see each class only have one role it is associated with. Maybe taking a secondary class could allow the possibility to perform the role of either the primary or secondary class, but not at the same time.
However, and I want to emphasize that this is NOT what I would prefer to see, I could see changing secondary classes altering a character's role into being a hybrid of the primary and secondary classes roles. However, being purely one role should be significantly more effective at the single role than the hybrid would be at either of the roles it can perform.
So in this case a fighter/fighter would be a much more effective dps than a tank/fighter, and a tank/tank would be much more effective as a tank than a fighter/tank. The primary could decide what a character is going to be most effective doing, but the secondary could impart aspects of the secondary class. So a cleric primary could heal others and themselves a lot and a cleric secondary could only heal themselves a little, or a dps primary having high damage and a dps secondary having low damage but a dps primary/secondary would have very high damage.
I think it would enable choice and allow build variety, but reinforce the need to specialize to excel. A player being a hybrid of two roles in such a system would be a jack of all trades, master of none. While a specialist would be a master of one.
1. Your main class should define your character, your secondary class should be as support factor and less effective to your main class.
2. You choose a main class and in detail specialize in curtain secondary abilities making your character unique.
I agree with statements that each class should stand out from each other, but I can also see adding specialized abilities to compliment your main class. Taking from ESO I see curtain abilities, curtain spells, or moves from other classes I would like to combine with the class I am playing.
Secondary minor roles like Mana Battery, Buff, Debuff, and CC (plus many others) could be taken to a whole new level and elevated into proper roles, instead of being relegated to some specific minor flavor a DPS brings with them.
Once you fully define some increased roles, it really open you up to make the various classes fill a good portion, but not all of, these roles. Each class a different combination of roles they can perform.
Maybe a Cleric could be a Healer, Tank, and Buffer. Maybe a Fighter could choose between Tank, DPS, and Debuff. A Bard could be a Buff, Debuff, and CC... while say, a Summoner could be a DPS, Mana Battery, and CC. etc etc etc
Make it more than 3 roles. And divvy which of those roles someone can perform up into the various classes. Thus when choosing a class you're choosing a set of playstyle options all in one, but which you perform in actuality would be based on how you specialize/train/equip/etc your character.
I wouldn't use ESO as a basis for combining classes, they are already all the same. Every class in that game can tank/heal/dps. The only thing that changes is the color. Dragonknight=reddish orange, sorcerer=light purple/blue, templar=yellow, nightblade=red/dark purple, warden=green/bluish green. Idk about necromancer because I stopped playing that game about a year ago.
After they started their "combat audit" of homogenization even the game's skills are all the same. Every direct damage, damage over time, aoe, or single target ability in that game does the same damage for the same cost as any other ability of the same type. Literally in most cases, especially if class passives aren't factored in. The only thing that changes values or isn't shared between classes are the passives and a couple gimmick abilities like Sorcerer's teleport, Nightblades invisibility cloak, and probably that overpowered Necromancer colossus ult unless it got nerfed too.
In short, Yes. The player should have the ability to access skills, items, etc as they progress towards any/all roles in their archetype. But the player should have agency to make decisions on their character progression that rewards and limits their possible capabilities/outcomes. An example provided earlier as a cleric. A character can be focused solely on either healing or tanking but if they mix skills, stats, or items that character would end up being more versatile at the expense of the min/max towards the archetype's extremes.
My hope is that the world will be diverse in class and the 64 options is not the limit due to player decisions.
What is the definition of an “archetype” for Ashes of Creation? The eight primary archetypes are Mage, Summoner, Cleric, Bard, Fighter, Tank, Ranger, and Rogue.
Are they asking if a Cleric should be able to perform all duties and services expected of a healer, including some healing buffs, (and Tanks using defensive buffs) or if all passive buffs should only be able to be experienced by having a Bard in the group?
One of the attractions of Ashes of Creation is the potential to create very interesting hybrids of a primary and a secondary class. The primary class will not be able to be changed. If you don’t like how your secondary class has married into your play style, then apparently you’ll be able to change it. Since there will be a secondary class, then there is going to be some overlap of abilities. Abilities of those who have that class as their Primary class. How much overlap should there be?
Considering the Secondary class, it should come with certain governors to prevent being able to utilize all that class would have to offer, had it been selected as the Primary. The Secondary class skill trees should be truncated, with fewer branches, and/or smaller gains per skill point.
Remember going to college/university and being offered the option of a minor to complement your major? Something of that ilk. Nobody post-grad is likely hiring you based upon your minor, but your minor may help to fill a special niche wherever you intend to work on a regular basis.
How powerful should the Secondary class make you? There should be some instances in which that Secondary class can handle minor issues in a pinch, but when you know there’s going to be a shitstorm coming, that’s not going to be good enough, and you are going to need that specialist whose Primary class fills all the needs of the class at a magnitude that someone with the desired class as a Secondary specialty cannot fully muster.
I think it could make for some interesting grouping dynamics. What tends to bore me about dungeons after a while is how procedurally formulated they can be. If there is more variability in the requirements to complete them, this could alleviate that repetitive dungeon burn-out. There may be instances in which high burst damage is not ideal but steady survivability is what is needed, so you may want people in the party with an unconventional Secondary class that aids in this.
Aside: What about different types of magic (holy, nature, dark)? Will there be that element included within Mages and Summoners as well?
I actually agree with this more than most being said, minus healers being tanks. Cleric is the ONLY primary class allowed to heal so it should focus more on healing, buffing, and self CCs. As in if you take a hit from something it has a chance to be CCd. This makes it possible to manage random aggros to an extent without making cleric turn into a tank.
I also LOVE the idea in games of a support skill being the possibility of helping other classes regain mana, such as switching mana with them but forcing you to give up health to fill your mana quickly to be able to help fill another classes mana.
Stick with the secondary archetype giving flavors to your main roll. please do not cross roles.
I say this as a Full Support Healer that despises being forced into dpsing. Please don't make me dps I rather buff/debuff in between healing instead.
Look at eso. "We want you to be able to tank with a rogue class. We want you to be able to heal with a tank class."
They completelly ruined the identities of the classes, by changing core abilities to suit healing or tanking, making them a jack of all trades, and in the end there is only one prefered tank, one prefered healer and all the dps MUST use twin swords with bow.
Dont give in to unreasonable requests IS.
Off-tanks and off-supports for some easy content, or some small mechanic is ok, and some classes should have features that enable them to off-tank and off-support, but not effectivelly go ahead and fill the actual role.
A ranger may be better at dps and it would be better to have 3 rangers in your group than warriors or assassins.
But what if warriors are better at PvP, and some other players attack your group out in the open. How good would it be if you had at least a warrior for dps, instead of 3 rangers?
Rogues might be better at discovering hidden treasures, summoners might ve better at taming mounts, one tank class might be better for fast lv up group, another might be a good solo player tank, a third might be a good raiding tank.
If you make assassins tanks and warriors healers, well... you just end up with tanks healers dps but 0 classes.
Clear demarcation of the innate classes but there needs to be a form of customization that surpasses the skill tree to help players chase their individuality, possibly in gear as the game boasts a significant amount of weapon types but it all become moot if the skills remain the same when using different weapons and is merely a faster or slower numbers game. If you look at ArcheAge, weapon types were extremely pointless as they were essentially the same weapons with different skins and .05% gameplay difference between them. It didn't matter if you held an Axe, Katana, Spear or Sword as they provided the same thing once your stats were high enough. Here there could be a higher form of difference in gear usage, make players WANT to lean towards certain gear or the other to determine their individuality, whereas the class itself is just the base of their chosen play style.
I.E. You have a basic fighter melee skill that has a slight charge and damages in an area in front of you.
With a sword it could be a cone hitbox in front of you..
With a spear it could be a farther reaching but narrower hitbox .
With an axe it could be less reaching but does damage in a complete 360 around you as a spinning move.
So yes keep demarcation of the categories but have more forms of customization than the numbers game as when everyone is fighting to be the best in their field and all it comes down to is the numbers it becomes very stale.
No
I'm of the mind that it only matters that a game is fun. Place in the hands of the players as few choices as possible because the human brain in wired to look for the easiest path.
If a "thief" character is the only role that can "steal" or form/join a thieves guild it gives role a massive challenge to overcome in terms of group play. This is why D&D designed different classes that had unique skills to force choices. By giving every character the same options your forcing players to build a meta that takes choice and freedom away.
I played a lot of Darkfall back in 2009 that let every character max every skill and it became a mad grind to build yourself into a hybrid mage cookie. It was fun until it wasn't and you will probably want players to make many characters to play different paths because it could feel like a brand new game every time.
I think the answer is between "you can play anything any time, it doesn't matter" to "you have to play a specific class for every specific situation".
It's probably "something in between". Tl:dr at the bottom.
If you can play anything at any point without any consequences then there's no point in having classes, they all perform the same.
But constantly not being able to complete such and such dungeon unless you pick this one specific class is also too restrictive.
Say, you're a healer and this one boss is just a stat check from your perspective all you need is to put out the most healing. It would be reasonable that cleric/cleric would perform this job the best out of any class, but it doesn't mean that picking cleric/bard automatically makes you wipe no matter what.
Say, this other boss has a lot of ground AOE and it constantly makes people move, maybe in this situation you are not forced to go cleric/cleric because people just have to dodge the ground circles, so instead you go cleric/ranger because that gives you a speed buff on one of your AOEs, which will make it easier for people to dodge damage. But of course the AOEs shouldn't come out so fast that nobody can dodge them without the speed boost.
Or say, you're against a boss that in one of the phases can come close to one shotting your tank with a magic combo and relying on timing of heals from cleric/cleric is risky? In that case you go cleric/mage because that would provide an extra magic resist bonus on one of your abilities which would make your tank survive with more HP on the magical burst combo. But you're not forced into it, your tank doesn't actually get one shot, it just makes it safer.
Etc, etc.
This way you're catering to both types of players that want to stick to their class and to those that want to min-max.
It avoids the problem of your choice not mattering but also doesn't force you to always go for the best possible option because your favorite class can't compete / can't complete something.
I would say that it's also not unreasonable to have SOME content be class gated for SOME time. Say a new expansion came out and there's a new dungeon, since nobody has yet completed the new boss to get the new gear, it would make sense that not all the classes would be able to progress right off the bat if they are not min-maxing the fight with their class selection. It's OK for some fights to be intentionally that hard. The one-tricks will have to wait to get gear upgrades from the market or they will just have to swap because they are trying to push new content ASAP.
So tl:dr
In my ideal world there's a reason to actually pick a specific class in a specific situation, but that you're also not constantly forced into these swaps.
Imperium Discord
An example of this is FFXI's blue mage. Before the Abyssea expansions it was good but was a bit of a niche job. Then they gave it very strong damage and defense buffs making it a very good solo class. Now it is the main mage class played.
Here is kind of what I am hoping each primary class will focus on:
Tank - Drawing damage away from allies
Summoner - Damage/Support
Rouge - Damage
Ranger - Damage
Mage - Damage/Support
Fighter - Damage
Cleric - Healing/support
Bard - Damage/support
However, I think that with secondary classes and augments players should be able to vastly change how they play their role. In too many MMO's each class has only 1 particular flavor and it makes it really boring. For example tanks use sword/shield, mages only use staffs and stay at a range, summoner's don't have any support summons, etc...
Let's use Tank/Mage as an example of what I would like to see as far as customization. For this example we will assume two players, player A and player B have chosen Tank/Mage.
Player A decided to go a more traditional route and stick with a sword and shield. Since, they are up close with the mobs they decide to make their play style around augmenting the block ability. They can now cast a buff that puts a sigil on their shield. While blocking their shield also creates a ward that reduces magic damage of a particular type (water, fire, frost, etc...) for the tank and players in cone behind the tank. Furthermore, while blocking their is a chance to apply a debuff based on the sigil used (lightning can stun target).
Player B decides they want to focus a little more on the mage aspect that their secondary class offers. They decide that they want to use a tome instead of a typical sword and shield. This requires a more heavy focus on magic abilities for damage evasion and mitigation. For example, they can create an illusion that spawns with 1/4 the player's health and temporarily has all hate transferred to it. This allows the tank to create the illusion then run out of range of severely damaging abilities.
This type of customization is something I think games like Path of Exile have been really successful at with their in depth passive trees and is something I am really hoping for with Ashes of Creation's augment system.
I would expect a Cleric/Tank to be able to off-tank. I expect they would be capable of holding main boss aggro for a small amount of time, or holding aggro on minibosses for a moderate amount of time. I would expect a Tank/Cleric to be able to hold main boss aggro for a moderate amount of time, and I'd expect them to be able to hold miniboss aggro as long as they need.
Gear swapping and changing out skills would be the primary system of altering your role to be more effective in some way, but a Cleric/Tank shouldn't have as much raw healing potential as a Cleric/Cleric, nor should it be able to tank even slightly as much as a Tank/Tank.
Basically, your Primary class should be 2/3 of your role potential, and your secondary should be the other 1/3 of your role potential.
Whatever role you didn't spec into as a secondary or primary, your effectiveness should be extremely minor.
To build of someone else's ESO comment. My healer, in full healing gear, spec'd into regen and ally buffing, did between 15-20k dps. The dps required to clear one of the older veteran trials is 20k dps on 9 dps characters. The most powerful class right now is Templar, who has incredible self and ally healing, on top of incredibly high dps. These two things exist as part of the same ability rotation.
The biggest reason for this imbalance?
Spellpower equates to more potent healing.
This is an issue in a few games I know of, so I would really, really encourage IS to focus on higher varieties of stats. Healing Done should be different than Spellpower. Armor should be different than Magic Resistance. Strength should be different than Precision.
Yes it might be daunting to keep track of more stats, but the overreaching application of certain stats can cause issues with split-roles being more useful than pure-roles, because really, if a full spelldamage spec'd mage/cleric has as much healing as healer primary class, why would you take the healer primary class when you know they won't do as much damage?
My thoughts...
With 8 classes per archetype, there needs to be some classes that can excel at different aspects of what roles they have been assigned.
Using the cleric being a healer and/or tank as the example here, I think that it is only fair that when you pair cleric with a tank it is able to be a tank more than a healer (perhaps all direct heals only working on themself). However, when you are a cleric² you would expect to be a much better healer, and completely unable to tank.
A if the idea of a cleric is to fit within those two roles (not saying they should, it's just an example) you could then look at making the cleric/fighter a little bit less of a tank, but with slightly better heals, and maybe the cleric/bard is a healer first, but one that is perhaps able to tank easier content.
To me, the main issue here is if you given an archetype two primary roles, then there needs to be a class within that archetype that can do that role as well as any other class - unless there is a specification that this is not the case.
If clerics are intended to be tanks as well as healers, then there needs to be a cleric option that is able to tank any content that a tank² can tank - if the cleric is unable to do this, don't list tank as a primary role for clerics.
Same can be said of other archetype. If a wizard is a ranged DPS class and a CC class as their primary roles, for example, the expectation would be that a wizard² is fully ranged DPS, but a wizard/bard or wizard/summoner should be as good at CC as a bard² or summoner² (or what ever class you make the main CC class).
Again, if this isn't the case, you shouldn't list this as a primary role the archetype can fulfill.
I would rather see archetypes listed with how good they are at each role rather than listing what roles they can and can not do.
Instead of outright saying a cleric can tank and heal, say that clerics are 10 at healing, 8 at tanking, 3 at DPS, 5 at CC, 4 at support, 3 at debuffs (or what ever). Then people can't complain if they can't tank as a cleric as well as a tank can, which would be a valid argument to make if tanking is listed as a role that clerics can do without more information than that.
Within each archetype though, there absolutely should be the option to take one class to go for more of a secondary role, and there should be an option for maximizing out that primary role.
Must be a way to master one role.
Some MMO's basically have it so something like a Paladin can be a Healer and Tank at the same time. Others like WoW have it locked to different specializations. I would love to be able to kind of focus on certain things more like in Diablo 2. Do I want some really powerful passive buffs or do I want to wield my holy power directly to smite my enemies? The feeling of actual choice makes me feel so much closer to my character.
Necromancy is when you raise the dead. Necrophilia is when the dead raise you.
I dont disagree with you to much. But I dont agree here.
I would like all classes to have at least 1 tank augment each. But they should not be able to do it as good as the main Tank spec or the main support class. The Tank class should ofc be the best tank I would like to see the other tank augment be able to tank.
I would like to see more then just the cleric be able to heal a group, or only the tank would be the only tank in the game, the augment system would just lose a lot of meaning to me. I would for example like to see the Tank - Cleric = Paladin have the option to be healer in a group. Or a Mage - Cleric = Acolyte that is a very religious person, more like a priest would also be able to heal.
Summoner - Bard = Enchanter could be a support class that would summon spirits (Angles, fairy) to aid the buff or heal their group. Ranger - Cleric = Soulbow could be some sort of support. Could do something with a soul, bring back a teammate. There are so many possibilities.
Steven already said how it would be and I think he is right. If augments could do different roles, it makes it so small and medium groups can change around a bit. I also like that not everyone can just choose and become all classes.There will always be alts, but then again people need to use a lot of time leveling them up.
Alts may give players a litle bit of an advantage in the long run, if it would be as they say that it will take months to get to lvl 50 then the people leveling alts up should get something back for doing so.
Me and my group, would at least like to see more then one class be able to tank and heal.
For me it would be a huge mistake to lock tank and support classes behind only 1 class.
Cleric = Paladin have the option to be healer in a group. Mage - Cleric = Acolyte that is a very religious person, more like a priest would also be able to heal.
Summoner - Bard = Enchanter could be a support class that would summon spirits (Angles, fairy) to aid the buff or heal their group. Ranger - Cleric = Soulbow could be some sort of support. Could do something with a soul, bring back a teammate maybe. There are so many possibilities. Make the augments count for something.
The game core classes should be chosen depending on the role each player prefers to be, some like to DPS, others to heal, others to tank, some to sneak and ambush and some like to aim and have a high-risk high reward game style.
Flexibility is important but the Main Tank should ALWAYS be better overall tank than a healer or a fighter but should not have the DPS of the fighter or the same amount of sustain and the healing abilities has the healer.
Although it would be important for the tank role to deal acceptable amounts of dmg for PVP and PvE.
In my opinion:
-the main class should define your role in a party
-The secondary class should define the play style
Example:
if I pick tank has my main class when I select my second class I should think: do I want to be a tank with a decent DPS?(rogue, fighter) or have some healing abilities for my allies should I give buff auras when am nearby? (bard,cleric). This way even though in both decisions I am still playing has a "tank" but the way I play will still be different because I will have different abilities and stats according to my favorite playstyle.
This away every class will have an identity as well as role and depending on the party composition or situation having better synergy.
This also enables to have some sort of ability to customize your class with the 64 different combinations making the most of the potential of this style of class system.
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A Tank should be more powerful in tanking but the tank should have also possibilities to heal and Deal damage.
A damage dealer main strength should lay in dealing damage but he/she should also have some skills to heal or to tank.
P.s.:
Sorry for my bad english but it is not my first language.