Ranged vs Melee Balance
samsaint
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
from an experienced MMO player and basing this game being similar to lineage 2 what ideas have people got to balance Range with Melee as Ranged chars always seem to have an advantage in almost every situation.
I remember the mage and archers in lineage 2 destroying in the sieges as melee just had to take damage whilst knocking down the front door.
As i agree ranged should have a slight advantage i do hope its not to noticeable that puts players off playing melee classes.
Ideas for balancing which may have been mentioned somewhere all ready but i haven't read everything.
Resistances for magic and ranged damage is the obvious solution but the advantage is they need the gear to make things fair. They should do the same for ranged maybe they miss shots/spells more often depending on distance of the player? Their gear could have increased hit/anti resistance so they can counter a geared melee with high resistances but will end up being at an advantage again. So hard to balance these.
What is the current situation or is this something AoC developers want to tackle later and more focused on design right now,.
thanks for reading, i cannot wait for this game.
Samsaint
I remember the mage and archers in lineage 2 destroying in the sieges as melee just had to take damage whilst knocking down the front door.
As i agree ranged should have a slight advantage i do hope its not to noticeable that puts players off playing melee classes.
Ideas for balancing which may have been mentioned somewhere all ready but i haven't read everything.
Resistances for magic and ranged damage is the obvious solution but the advantage is they need the gear to make things fair. They should do the same for ranged maybe they miss shots/spells more often depending on distance of the player? Their gear could have increased hit/anti resistance so they can counter a geared melee with high resistances but will end up being at an advantage again. So hard to balance these.
What is the current situation or is this something AoC developers want to tackle later and more focused on design right now,.
thanks for reading, i cannot wait for this game.
Samsaint
2
Comments
This is defiantly one of my big concerns. I'm expecting ranged to dominate as it is so much easier to focus fire targets down than melee. Also only 2/5 DPS is melee so there will probably be more ranged damage floating around.
So far all we know is fighter will have a gap closer that will CC.
Rogues stealth will not be good enough to sneak into the back lines.
I also want to melee and figure tank should be able to handle focus fire the best out of all the melee classes. So far Ii'm pleased with the utility it might offer. A shield wall has been teased that will be very useful to counter ranged attacks and an ability that pulls targets towards the tank. At that point a fighter and rogue should be safe to unload. Weather or not I can get close enough to pull before I get focus fired down. Wont know till testing. Also wont know what end game is like will defenses scale = with offences? usually in MMO's offence scales way better than defense. They have stated a 30-60 second TTK i'm guessing that is 1v1 maybe 60 seconds late game and 30 seconds end game?
Castles were most apparent with spell casters and archers sitting on the tower hammering the melee at the door and they dropped like flys so some sort of shield wall or even a Tank skill where they can bubble preventing damage coming into the area for so long etc. Although this could make things silly and give defenders no chance of winning.
Attackers should always have a slight advantage though as you want the castles to be able to change hands.
Interesting end game will be very different in this game as the leveling is going to take so long it will take months for everyone to hit max. From my experience in Lineage 2 where the leveling was similar you had famous names you would see that were no lifers with 10 to 15 additional levels ahead of most the server which would be one shotting players making it impossible to beat but i like that mechanic it should be like that if its somewhat balanced 4 or 5 people should be able to kill 1 guy who's 10 levels ahead not like some MMO's where they cant even do damage because of the way the stats work out.
There is a lot of things they need to take into account that so many games completely ignore.
U.S. East
Things like this should depend on the players skill, but Steven also already said that certain classes WILL counter others in a rock-paper-scissors kind of way.
How I would see it:
Tank>Rogue (too high physical resistances)
Rogue> Mage (bursts down too fast)
Mage>Cleric (Out damages healing)
Cleric>Ranger (Outheals damage)
Ranger>Fighter (Kites fighter if done right)
Fighter>Summoner (Cuts down summons)
Summoner>Bard (Overwhelms Bard)
Bard>Tank (Debuffs would soften up tank enough I think)
U.S. East
I believe we have 4 Armour Types, thus, 2 Classes will each use one type of Armour.
Just on this speculation alone I would say this:
Tank and Fighter Hard Counters Bard and Cleric.
Bard and Cleric Hard Counters Ranger and Rogue.
Ranger and Rogue Hard Counters Summoner and Mage.
Mage and Summoner Hard Counters Tank and Fighter.
U.S. East
Edit: Except we can't change our Primary Archetypes and the Primary Archetypes dictate the Armour Passive. So Risk/Reward would make sense in terms of Armour selection.
In pvp melee stamina players have an overwhelming advantage in CC mechanics and damage and in sets. With ranged being almost negligible due to how easy it is to gap close and how often fights have to take place in melee range regardless of your spec. Then almost all the magic classes arent even ranged but melee based but because they use magic, they are not given the same capablities and damage as melee stamina players.
Ultimately the balance should be done given to what degree range is actually range and how easy melee gap closing is, and take into consideration what sort of CC mechanics will be in place. As well as the difference (if any) are in place that segregate magic and stamina in Ashes
We won't really know until more of the game is released and we are able to give direct feedback on abilities and stuff. But I'm pretty sure Steven has already blatantly said not to expect balancing to be around 1v1 but around group battles.
This does worry me to some degree because while I do enjoy large scale battles, there are plenty of times when I (and many other players) like to test ourselves against one another. After all sometimes the best fighting method in a conflict can be determined how well you eliminate priority targets. I do not like the thought of being heavily outclassed by another player simply because their class is far more powerful, or at least I hope Stevens team has at least considered this and wont make the differences so jaring that only one or two classes will be viable for settling 1v1 disputes.
U.S. East
Let's remember these are archetypes, not classes. And also classes/archetypes are not gear locked. So, I'm guessing a Spellshield (Tank X Mage) could benefit wearing Medium or even Light gear over Heavy. I think the original quote by @Damokles was more accurate to the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" analogy.
U.S. East
Having an archtype with sub archtype that changes the way skills work may help mitigate some of the concerns I have.
Looking forward to what they have in store for us.
There’s already plans for diminishing returns on CC so hopefully melee can’t be kited easily forever, and if tanks have effective back line protection capabilities then there should be options for melee dps to get in close with relatively good defense.
My biggest concern, however, is not regarding ranged being stronger than melee and vice-versa, instead I worry if the developers' main focus is balancing group PvP, forgetting about individual class vs class balancing.
I believe that focusing on balancing class vs class combinations often means the overall combat will also be balanced. Since AoC will use the trinity concept, although there are 64 classes, I believe that focusing on the 8 main archetypes' (Mage, Summoner, Cleric, Bard, Fighter, Tank, Ranger and Rogue) balance would be a lot of work, but it would not go to waste. I don't understand yet how damage, damage mitigation, stats, armor, etc will work, but let's try to assume the following:
Mages, Clerics and Bards deal only magical damage. Fighters, Tanks, Ranger and Rogues deal only physical damage. That can obviously change when you choose your secondary class, but we're focusing on the 8 main archetypes. The balance that makes the most sense to me is:
Like Steven answered recently, (player) skill should play a role in 1v1 combat, but at the same time your class, armor and weapon of choice must impact your performance against other players. If I face someone who's the quintessential counter of my class, I must fight flawlessly to win. I believe that these concepts can be the foundation to group PvP, then you'll "only" need to balance specific things such as class mobility, CC capability, healing prowess, etc.
U.S. East
Mainly because they tied the entire CC break to only stamina resources as well as with block, roll dodge and break free. This obviously creates a problem because while its true magic uses a different resource for damage and healing, it created a massive neccessity for magic players to heavily invest in a resource not tied to its damage and healing source, or heavily into tankiness since if it runs out of stamina you die. While stamina doesnt need magic and heavily has investments into stamina return and cheap costs. Basically any cc and magic players quickly get eliminated by higher damage stamina across the board.
This is what I'm afraid AoC will do in regards to stamina/magic players. And it is the largest reason of imbalance, as the classes aren't too extreme in differences. Its the magic/stamina side of them thats hugely imbalanced along with "proc" sets.
ding ding ding, winner winner chicken dinner.
The biggest problem I have with MMOs as time goes on is the ridiculous amount of CC, stuns, slows, and snares that gets thrown into games. Instead of actually addressing xyz problem lets just add another abilities in an expansion and kick the can down the road.
I think that’s the key. Balance damage output to defense (in other words the harder you hit the squishier you are) but don’t just make melee classes tougher as a trade off for having to get close to enemies. Just make up the difference with gap closers.
Armor types are seperate from classes. All classes can wear any armor. Mages can wear plate, tanks could wear cloth.
― Plato
You never know, one thought and one line of coding can make a game world of a difference in a mechanical structuring. And the earlier the discussions on there for review the less chance we may have an issue with it later.
Combat is the one thing AoC has to get refined for players on release (at least to a reasonable level) to feel good if the game wants to have a smooth launch.
That being said, several AAA games had terrible launches for several different reasons and still fixed themselves later so I'm not to concerned because the mmo industry in gaming has proven that being a large company doesnt actually mean anything for quality content or quality assurances. And definitely not on release.
I would just like to see ashes avoid those problems since those big companies usually have safety nets because they are big that give them large margins of error. I dont know if thats a good thing though because it seems (to me) the reason why the mmo genre seems to suck so bad lately is because they have so many margins of error that they have gotten lazy and dont listen to feedback for it.
They shouldn't balance class to class in 1v1 scenario. It is dumb and will only create oportunity for only few of the classes to be present in the mass-scale pvp. For example, if bards do good dmg but dont have much utility they would not be called for a castle siege. But if bard is lets say hard counter to rogues that you sure as hell are going to see alot of bards in castle sieges. Being a hard counter to any of the other classes creates a demand for that class.
From what i have seen so far seems like mages could be hard counters to fighters. That why i will be playing a mage (im commin for you sword-bois).
I dont think it is a bad thing to try balancing the classes to be less jarring in 1v1
After all, since there are going to be key functions in the game like Mayor disputes for military nodes that are determined by a free for all deathmatch, you can't have just one or two class archtypes be supreme.
I also don't mind there being a sort of rock,paper, scissors type balance. Just as long as its not a automatic "I win" you know? There should be a degree of an advantage but not so much that the greater skilled player cant overcome the advantage.
I remember all melee classes just played with ranged weapons in sieges and switched only when the situation allowed. But melee classes could shoot only at 600 unit ranges, while ranged classes had 900 at base and in some cases more.
In guild wars 2 for example, it turned out that the most powerful group(back when it released), was a melee group of 20-25 people. I still remember killing blobs of hundreds(not an exaggeration) in a group of 25 people. Red Guard was one of the guilds who was known for this melee strategy.
I too wonder how the balance will be in AoC, will it be ranged or melee dominated? or maybe balanced?(i don't believe they can achieve that, i hope they can prove me wrong)