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
For people who are against -- it would be interesting to hear which specific MMOs they played which had stat allocation and where they did not enjoy it, and why.
I do get a feeling that maybe the difference of opinions comes more from personal experiences -- older MMO players experienced old MMOs with stats, and newer players only experienced ones without, and people like what they are used to. However if I am wrong and there are specific grievances that people have with stat systems in games they otherwise enjoyed (rather than theoretical grievances they never actually experienced in a game, or grievances about a game they disliked overall) -- we could think together how these could be alleviated while still keeping this versatile tool of character customization available.
Unfortunately it seems that Ashes are already firmly on the way of not allowing stats distribution by a player, so these are likely to be idle musings.
Uniqueness of character builds in general doesn't seem to be the goal of Ashes (even skills and second archetype can be reset, yesterday's pure damage ArchWizard is tomorrow's buff-slave Acolyte), which is fair enough, but certainly robs some older MMORPG players of some enjoyments they came to associate with MMORPGs.
Cheers from a 70+ Luck Priest of Ragnarok Online.
I wish, but no. No dice there.
I generally don't like stat systems because of the whole illusion of choice thing as well as they cage you into a playstyle.
In most of them, you are just dumping your stats into 1 maybe 2 stats with little too no thought put into it. I like the idea of growing my characters attributes, making them stronger or smarter but in most of the system i've played, i think it looks silly as these numbers get bigger and the discrepancies between my stats get larger.
I didn't play a lot of RO but i did take a second to watch a video on it and from what i saw, i liked at least how i perceived it working. The important thing to me isn't as much the attributes but how they effect your performance and how things start getting capped/diminishing returns. I think that is almost where the system needs to start, find interesting stats for attributes to impact. If my strength only effects my melee damage, then i'm bored.
Yea, Ragnarok Online did it so well. Luck Priests for Turn Undead. I was a ME Priest, so mostly Dex. I also had a full support priest. The build variety was actually incredible. It was such a shock to me, when I went from RO to WoW to see that when my Undead Mage levelled up it just gave me stats.
I've also never seen Elemental attacks/types/weaknesses etc done so well as they did in RO, it's too bad the later content was designed with having a buff and heal slave open on another account, and more often than not Endow slave too
Steven has stated AoC balance mechanisms did not have 1v1 combat in mind but group combat so breaking simple 1v1 rock-paper-scissors rotation is something they might care less about unless this becomes so unbalanced that one Arch type build can clear entire groups of other class combinations.
Also, if attributes are not impactful as some have mentioned why track these at all in game?
I believe it was in Shadowbane I was able to make a TANK with high CON/DEX going shield/leather/fast atk speed weapon leveraging dodge/parry/block to mitigate DMG. This also gave me an increase to resistances as your standard plate tank was a lighting rod for mages to target.
It would also be similar to sticky melee in Asherons Call with a shield and fist weapon wearing a med armor that you buffed with item enchantment to help against physical damage to help in PvE vs Lugians.
I do not think that allowing this will create some mind bending new character types nor do I think this will create the most uber class ever but it will give folks more choices and leave it to them to deal with the decisions they made.