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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Since they are the only known ones to have good group healing removing them would make a mess
They are changing bards enough to not be a 2 per raid kind of class. They are probably going to be a party class and probably have few to no raid abilities unlike in other games. Summoners are literally unknown how they are going to work, but they are meant to fill every role depending on their augment.
For bards they should look at Diablo 2's aura system and let them have at least one passive party wide buff up so that if you have multiple bards they don't overlap and can each use a different one.
Completely disagree with op on all accounts though. This sounds like an absolutely terrible idea because the unique classes are a good feature that modern mmos just don't do. At least with as much depth as I'm expecting each Archetype to have in this game. Without Bard or Summoner the classes will be so generic that I don't even think I would have considered playing the game if they weren't there.
U.S. East
Actually, in WOW, you have 6 classes that can tank, 5 classes that can heal, and just 3 classes that can only DPS, and still there's a large discrepancy in wait times due to role shortages. The point is, in other games, you can have multiple specs and roles, but in this game you have 1, which will greatly exacerbate the role ratio discrepancies.
That is mostly due to imbalance for every single expansion in the game though. If they made each class actually unique and not homogenize them so much then it would have been a little better. The class disparities are more evidence that certain classes are not fun. WoW can't be used as an example for a 1 to 1 comparison for this either though. WoW does not fuze classes like Everquest did.
U.S. East
Instead of picking a class that can do many things one of them being to heal, like a druid or a shaman or a priest, players will pick the role "healer" and potentially move into other adjacent combat roles with their secondary archetype by becoming the equivalent of a druid or a shaman or a priest.
That's not really a fair way to look at classes in WoW. With the way that game is designed, you basically need to look at the individual specs to do any sort of comparison.
Broken down that like, you have 6 tanks, 6 healers, and 24 dps. Each role has 1/6 of the total.
Since each group can only have 5 players in it, and 1 slot each is taken up by a tank and healer, you have 24 classes competing for 3 DPS slots.
AoC will have 8-player groups, which means an even split of space between all primary archetypes. If there are any situations where a particular subclass enables an archetype to viably perform a different role (i.e., if Fighter/Tank could be a viable main-tank) then things would actually be weighted away from having an overabundance of DPS.
They already said main tanks would be tank/ and something like fighter/tank might be able to off tank
As i said, you can change specs in wow, so it's not 1:1:6. Only 3 classes cannot tank or heal, and they still have a role shortage problem. You can't look at individual specs when players are not locked into those specs.
That is only true in the super dumbed down new wow. That was not true at all in vanilla.
Except i played wow since launch, you could Respec
Early on only Druids and Priests were raid healers, then pallys got in on it but each had their own value and since cross class heals stacked and same heals did not you wanted wanted 1 of each on the main tank. Druids and Pallys could not tank more than 5 mans for long time. Rogues could not for a long time. Mages and Warlocks were not tanks or healers either.
But it's not like that now, and there are still LFG/LFR wait issues due to roles.
That is because many don't like to heal or tank. Look at early wow druids were best served healing as their cat bear and caster forums were only about 85% of the main classes...but most of them want to be caster or dps or tank...they did not want to heal but many got forced into it as they were amazing healers. You can make every single class able to main heal and most people still will not want to do it.
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@Attar
The main reason I made this post is because of this:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/45454/combat-skill-animations-july-dev-update
The way they balance abilities with high dmg by locking you in animation for 2s, shows that they don't yet know how to balance abilities effectively. Only select few abilities should root/slow you. You shouldn't use animation lock as the primary way to balance a high dmg ability. You could reduce the hitbox of the ability, give it a high mana cost, give it a high cd or even make it a chargeable ability instead. There are so many ways to do it, yet they opt to use animation lock as the primary balance tool.
This shows that they still need to gain a ton of feedback on the combat system, and will most likely need to reiterate on the majority of these abilities, based on the footage that they've shown us so far. Imagine how long it would take to reiterate abilities for 64 classes as opposed to doing it for 36.
It's very much a modern thing to have players jump around and doing anything whilst they cast abilities. There's nothing to say a character can't have to be stood still to concentrate on casting an ability.
I personally think players should have to be still to cast spells. It makes the caster vulnerable, and so you'll not be chucking 'pyroblasts' at mobs and killing them far too easy.
Make players have to think about whether they can cast a spell, not just run about like a loony and still cast that huge spell. Back in EQ druids could quad-kite. Snare mobs, back off, cast and repeat. You couldn't move when you cast and it took effort. Should a mob break snare then you had to recast. Nowadays you'd just run about chucking spells.
Plus, to take a pre-alpha video and say combat is not balanced yet is pretty redundant. Of course it is not balanced yet. It's pre-alpha.
Simply being unable to move while casting a skill without canceling your cast is in no way unusual or out of the ordinary for an MMO, including MMOs that feature more action-oriented combat, and ultimately it says nothing about the "balance" of the game to point out that you cannot move while casting without canceling your cast.
Yeah, obviously the OP didn’t play original EQ, where combat was a mix between movement and stationary cast times. If you used your CC properly, or escape spells properly, you could go toe to toe with melee and not worry about “cast time” even being an issue. Mountains from mole hills.
@apmax
@nidriks
I don't want to play a mage and just stand still because all my abilities root me in place. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that most people would prefer more active/fluid combat, as opposed to something that constantly roots you in place.
If they ever removed the Bard from the game, then there would be all out war.
No peace. No reconciliation.
I and many others went to this game BECAUSE they promised us a honest to god good bard class.
Do you know how many current games there are with good bard classes? None. No up to date game has release a good bard class in my opinion, and Intrepid seems to be close to actually giving that to us.
Im sorry but f*ck 6 classes.
WoW Classic started out with 9 classes and 3 (4 fpr druids) specs for all of them.
AION had 8 (4 main specs that then turned into 2 individual classes after lvl 10 each)
Guild Wars 1 may have had 6 classes at first (later 10), but they also combined them all with dual classes where you could pick and choose any ability from any of the two classes.
Guild Wars 2 had 8 classes as well.
There is no real reason for Intrepid to scale down their initial classes.
(I admit it freely, I am a Bard lover and could care less for the Summoner class, but there are just as many summoner class fans as there are bard players)
Edit:
In addition concerning the root animations for strong spells.
Personally I think it is about commitment.
In WoW you can cancel your cast by moving around if you mess up, which takes away a ton of responsibility because players will just try to cast it through and if it wont work then they can just cancle it.
They wont be able to do that in Ashes, which is a good thing.
Commit to strong spells by having to watch your character burn in the fight because your positioning is bad. Thats real responsibility for yourself.
It could be possible that you can reduce the damage of certain spells and increase their cast time through augments of you want a "flowing" gameplay. I myself will try to shorten my cd as much as possible while dancing around my enemies as a melee bard. Buffs galore my friends!
Sometimes you press the wrong button while in a fight. Being able to cancel that is just basic usability. Being forced to watch yourself resummon your minion for 20 seconds instead of throwing a fireball is not a tactical maneuver that backfired, it's butterfingers. Even monster hunter let's you roll out of animations when you realize you've made a mistake.
Not to mention how utterly annoying it would be to have to wait out every spell you accidentally use while simply traversing the land.
You can be, but you have to pick your moments/skills. Maybe.
We don't really know the full ins and outs yet. As I said in my earlier reply to you, the game is still very much pre-alpha. If you see a brick house in a video, assume it will be wooden by release.
Just because I said some skills mean you need to stay still, there can be others that allow you to move.
In my opinion it should come down to concentration. You can be good enough to summon a small rock and guide it at your opponent if moving, but having the concentration to summon a giant ball of fire should be beyond you. You are, after all concentrating on keeping your footing or the position of your enemies.
I believe there should be instants and conjurations, for example. Instants are little spells to do quick damage. Maybe they can stun. That stun then allows you the time to stand and concentrate on a big ball of fire.
Group action is another matter. You can be in a group free to stand back and fire off big nukes. However, in that situation, I believe mages should be limited against doing huge damage by the fear of gaining too much threat and breaking the tank's taunt.
I justw ant combat that makes you think, rather than combat where you just run with a sequence of spells. Root, fire ball, smite, fireball, smite, root, fireball, smite...etc, etc. It all gets a bit dull. I'd also like to see players have to pick and choose abilities for a situation, a la EQ. That might be more than some people are willing to accept though, and digressing a bit.
Don't worry folks. I see no need to have a spell book in front of your face.
I believe the intent of being rooted in place is a risk versus reward. I'm positive there will be different delay of casting skills, which will reflect on the amount of damage/alternate effects(CC) and things of that nature. The standing still to do a more massive amount of damage is yet another risk versus reward. You may not be able to move, but if successful it will do seriously large amounts of damage to your opponent.
I noticed you also said combat in general, and not just PvP. I don't know about you, but I DON'T want my PvE content to be a constant PvP-esque battle. Having to dodge, weave, and calculate for every single encounter of a particular type of monster isn't fun and nullifies the contrast against PvP in the first place. Leave the PvP elements for the PvP gameplay. Make PvE unique in its own way.
I'd argue WoW pvp got worse and worse over the years precisely because they wanted people to have unlimited mobility, and then you get classes like Demon Hunters coming out, and their mobility is also tied into essentially immunity frames, lol.
I don't mind instant cast spells/skills, so long as they have a long reuse cooldown depending on how impactful the spell/skill is.
As for the animation/spell cancel, I don't mind having it. Realizing you're casting the incorrect spell could be considered a "skill" in and of itself. And is rewarded in you being able to cancel and recast earlier than the oblivious person.
That means the person who knew the right spell/skil from the start will get their spell off first = most successful
The person who realizes they're doing the wrong thing midcast = semi-successful (2-3 seconds to cancel spell and recast right spell)
The person who knows nothing = Casting fail. Punished by doing little/no damage, improper timing, interrupts, etc.
Its a self-correcting scale on "skill" which is why I don't mind it. Its not catering to casual players in the same way it isn't catering to "hardcore skilled" players.
I agree on the sentiment of mobility. At first it was a novel addition to MMOs, but some MMOs make mobility a requirement, which detracts from my entertainment. Having to be constantly mobile to be successful at anything combat related in a game gets taxing and for PvE content its usually "same-y" combat approach.
Except that the abilities haven't been balanced yet. They haven't even all been implemented yet, so there's no way to tell how one ability is balanced in the context of all others.
Are you serious? You're telling me that you don't want PvE to be challenging? That's right, screw the PvE players if they want to experience difficulty, let them go to PvP. Whilst it shouldn't be on the same level as PvP, PvE encounters need sufficient PvP-esque mechanics to make it interesting, especially for dungeon, raid and world bosses.