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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.
Asmongold reacts (again)
Wandering Mist
Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Asmongold did a reaction to the Ashes gameplay video on his stream today, might be worth talking about as he did have some good points to make about the gameplay. It starts at 1:55:24 into the vod.
For those who can't be bothered watching it, the main takeaway is that he is interested and in fact asked for a Key to test the game out, but he has some concerns. His main concerns were as follows:
1. lack of movement in caster gameplay (lots of standing still while casting spells)
2. gameplay is rather stilted - doesn't flow as smoothly as it does in games like WoW
3. Boss designs are cool but lack mechanics for the players to react to meaning bosses can be easily zerged by lots of players
4. seeming lack of synergy in class kit - Steven using random abilities without any semblance of cohesive thought
5. current loot rules for the boss drops are a huge problem
For those who can't be bothered watching it, the main takeaway is that he is interested and in fact asked for a Key to test the game out, but he has some concerns. His main concerns were as follows:
1. lack of movement in caster gameplay (lots of standing still while casting spells)
2. gameplay is rather stilted - doesn't flow as smoothly as it does in games like WoW
3. Boss designs are cool but lack mechanics for the players to react to meaning bosses can be easily zerged by lots of players
4. seeming lack of synergy in class kit - Steven using random abilities without any semblance of cohesive thought
5. current loot rules for the boss drops are a huge problem
5
Comments
Yes, and Asmon said exactly that while watching the video. However, he also said that Alpha testing is the best time to point out this kind of thing because then it gives the developers the most time possible to fix it. Of course, the slight problem with this argument is that we don't know what things the developers consider "done" and what they are still going to work on, especially when it comes to combat and movement.
There are classes that are all about movement and positioning - Ranger and Rogue being at the top of that list.
A cast though - at least a pure caster - should be all about standing in one location and using the right spell at the right time. The decision making in a caster class should be about what you do, not where you do it.
This is one of the key means of making classes feel different. Not every class needs to be mobile, indeed not every class should be mobile - and if there is one class in an MMO that is not mobile, it should be the pure caster.
Some of his other points are perfectly valid, even if they can be put down to the early state the game is in. This point, however, is misguided in my opinion.
No matter his apearance or his targeted stream demografic, he knows what he is talking about.
And he talked about some important things, that Intrepid will have to watch out for, if they want to succeed.
Timestamp for when he actually starts talking about it: 1:55
1 - Mage looks a bit stiff, But I know every low leveled mage without good EQ is slow in every MMO
2 - Bosses need much more mechanics, or atleast skill that destroy world around them or put down some kind of pits to dodge, spawn more ads etc, poison clouds AOE skills, projectiles, non dogable mechanics that you just have to soak in, and if you cant handle it you are dead.
3 - I hope there will be lot more punishing conentent in harder zones/raids
4 - Damage numbers should be little bit more readable for players, those small numbers (not only small damage, but numbers height actually) should be a bit bigger or adjustable in game.
5 - Sometimes, I feel like developers hear ideas from people, that are not really experianced MMORPG or RPG players at all, but got acces to the game becouse they can afford it (high cost of pre alpha entrance) And they can trun game development from right tracks, becouse those rich people, are somewhat lazy and want to make some stuff in game much easier than it should be.... becouse lets be honest... MMO games are and always will be eating tons of time, and the player who dedicate more time and effort to the game should be the one who will profit more. Becouse playing only 4 hours a days should not be even close to be able to be in TOP 1-3% of players in the game.
6 - And lastly, I belive... MMORPG should punish players for they mistakes and bad decisions, and at the same way, highly reward dedicated players who plan, cooperate and determine theyr goals.
* Sorry for my bad english, its not my main language, and if Im talking about some stuff that was disqusted in other topics or are already set in stone, and I dont know about them. Im just really passionate MMO player, who is looking for a chalange, and game that i can devote all my free time to..
* becouse lets be honest... I dont have a life... my life are games .. I dont care about IRL social live, I care about my online friends and those amazing adventures much more, than if my shoes are some kind of amazing brand or just some pair of shoes from thaiwan xd
I understand he tries to explain things to them but let's be real, he brings up the negative just so he can get a reaction out of his audiences. If IS makes changes based on big creators' opinions then I'll be out the door. These changes should be made in testing by the loyal.
I don't know if our perception was skewed because we were watching the dev's with their high hp and survivability, but the bosses so far do seem to lack some mechanical flair. I know in that one post the person mentions the dragon flying into the air to summon more minions but unless I totally missed that when they did it again during the dev run I didn't see that mechanic happen. Other than that mentioned one, it seemed like the only thing to avoid was environmental lava, minion mobs, and the frontal breath which seems a little lacking for what seemed like a fairly hard dungeon boss. I might've missed some of the mechanics of course and I'm not sure what the intended difficulty of this dungeon is compared to the others, but it seemed a little too easy I guess?
As for the second dungeon they did with the Brood Queen the mechanics were still fairly similar as far as I could tell, summoning mushroom minions and a frontal line attack. But the one mechanic I really liked where those little lava/hot water things that shot out of the ground at them. They were clearly telegraphed, the window was short to dodge it, but long enough that you could move away, and their positions seemed to be randomly spawned. That's the kind of mechanic I'd expect from a dungeon boss where it's more than what a regular mob could do.
I'm all for bosses having normal moves that a regular mob could do, but way bigger and more powerful, but it's not the only thing I'd like a boss to have. I'd like to see at least one mechanic that's like "oh wow I don't know what to do here, what does this mean-aaaaggggghhhh!" kind of thing and then the next time you see it you're like "oh god his spines are glowing! make sure you're not near him! oh god now his tail is glowing! make sure you're under him!" or something.
I guess I'd like to see more positional stuff where you have to move and you can't just pick a safe spot and spam skills until it dies.
But hey, it's only alpha 1 so they've got plenty of time to add in stuff or change stuff or do whatever the hell they like so I'm not too worried about it yet.
If that were true then why bother bringing in players in the first place? The thing about developers is they very rarely have the same mindset that the players do, which is why public testing is so valuable. Of course, what I think would help is for Intrepid to say what specific elements they are looking for feedback on. That way we won't be wasting both their and our time pointing out flaws that they are already planning on fixing.
With regards to the bosses, so far we've only seen open raid bosses designed for lots of players. Generally speaking the more players you add in, the less complicated you need to make the fight. I'd expect a high level instanced dungeon boss to be a lot more complex than a world boss or 40-man raid boss, so I will hold off on judgement until we see that.
What I will say though is that so far the basic mobs are your typical run-of-the-mill mmorpg mobs. I am sick of playing games where all the mobs act and fight the same. An animal should act and fight differently to a human, which should act and fight differently to a monster. Dark Souls manages this extremely well, where even the basic humanoid mobs fight very differently depending on what weapon they are using. They don't just look different, they ARE different.
I am sure that studios also know to what extent they can be used.
Nothing more nothing less.
Points 3 and 5 are good, but the other ones are much more needed as a base to play the game.
Oh I wasn't aware that they were going to make instanced raid type dungeons, I thought it was mainly for questline stuff. Good stuff.
But I don't understand what you mean by "the more players the less complicated" shouldn't it be the opposite? Like if you add in more players and the fight is too easy isn't that just a bunch of people wailing on a high HP mob with no real threat?
I mean if that was the case you could just bring more and more people until the fight became practically meaningless, which (according to the summary point) was one of the issues asmon had. I don't think there needs to be a ton of mechanics for these fights, especially if it's starting content, but there should at least be 1 or 2 mechanics that give some level of threat/area awareness.
Like if that Brood Queen fight is a lower level raid then that hot water gyser thing would satisfy me because it requires people to be aware of their feet and move at certain times while also making sure not to move in front of it.
With open content, you have to account for all players that want to join in. These players may have no idea how to play their class, let alone how to behave in a large encounter. There also needs to be the understanding from developers that no one is actually in charge of the players attacking the encounter.
As such, the encounter needs to be designed with the understanding that there is no coordination between the players attacking it. Any mechanic that require coordination needs to be completely removed from it.
Further, since any player can come along, and this includes people with lesser gear than would be expected to do well against a similarly scoped opponent taken on by an organised outfit, the attacks the encounter performs - specifically AoE attacks - need to be somewhat less effective so as to not just outright kill lesser geared players.
As a final point about these encounters in a game like Ashes, there also needs to be the assumption that there will be players attempting to attack the other players rather than the encounter, and so the encounter needs to be able to be killed if the attacking force is also dealing with a PvP situation at the same time.
I remember one of the biggest things I disliked about my first 3 months in Rift were some of the actual rifts (open content that is free for all to join) that required all players stop attacking at a particular point. There was always someone present that didn't understand (or was trolling), and I never saw even one of these rifts be defeated.
I also remember playing Archeage and taking on the Red Dragon in a group of 3 raids of 50 players, up against two other factions of a similar size. We spent almost three hours trying, failling and then eventually killing that Dragon. We had killed it 3 weeks prior with 20 people in less than 15 minutes with no deaths - the entire challenge of that encounter (the pinnacle of non-naval encounters in that game at the time -Leviathan was live but not yet killed iirc) was the fact that other players could attack you. Without them, it was a breeze.
I think I'll have a different opinion once I actually see more fights in their entirety. I know some of the testers were talking about mechanics I didn't see so it might just be my lack of information from what I've been able to see so far.
I'm behind this to a point. Like I don't expect only best in slot to be able to fight these things (hell not even like great tier slot), but there should be a relative cut off point where if you go into these with gear or level that's too low for the content what happens to you is on you. I want people to participate, but they also gotta realize if you're wearing level 5 gear in a level 30 open dungeon you can't really complain about getting one shot.
This is about the open dungeon bosses by the way. World bosses are a different story. I don't have much experience with those so I can't make any educated comments on them, so I won't.
I never even considered this. So yeah that's a huge thing to think about. Excellent point. Thank you.
I think that they have to inplement a scaling factor into the bosses. Design them all to fight a 40-man raid, but give them proportionally increasing hp and mana for every player over that.
Not all, by any means (Archeage's didn't, but all rifts in Rift did), but most.
That had me laughing so hard. Glad Steven was having fun with him.
I agree with everything Asmongold said. He is a really smart guy that understands what people enjoy and what keeps them coming back to a game. While he doesn't know everything people enjoy, I appreciate his perspective.
I do find the pacing slow with the combat not having a lot of interplay between the classes. I'm sure this will be added as they flesh out the classes and add the missing ones. Specifically the more support oriented classes.
While this is true, remember that we are essentially only seeing the first few levels of these classes.
None of the abilities that have been used (as far as I know) have had augments on them at all. That is where the actual flavor of combat in Ashes will come from - so to complain about the lack of that now is kind of meaningless.
It's about on par with complaining about the lack of player made items in testing so far - in both situations, there are entire game systems still be to added to the alpha server, but that have been talked about at length and that exist solely to address the specific issue.