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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.
Comments
Listen to how Jeff explains the cosmic beam ability
Yeah I've seen it. If you don't like those rooted-in-place abilities, that's totally fine; use other abilities. But that's just an example of your preference, not an example of imbalance.
Look at the gameplay. They're constantly casting fireballs and using other abilities that lock them in place. I'm not in the minority when it comes to wanting fluid combat that doesn't constantly root you in place. Look at WoW, sure some classes have some skills that root them in place, but almost none of them lock you in animation for 2s where you can do absolutely nothing for that duration. Another example would be GW2.
FF14 is a great example for the opposite reason as well. PvP doesn't exist in FF14 simply because the combat is so static. Even if there were PvP game modes, not many would play it.
I said I didn't want PvE to be consistently mimicking a PvP battle. I don't mind if Raids and Dungeons have interesting fights that require skill or knowledge, I just don't want random mob#14245 to be yet another "engaging" battle of pseudo-PvP. That's why I said PvE should be unique in its own way. I also plan to be a PvE player.
You could actually argue that you are in "a" minority, in the sense that - WoW's player base is nowhere near what it once was, and the game it used to be actually had less emphasis on instant casts, and insane mobility. Now of course the declining player base likely isn't entirely due to that factor - or even mostly, but it did I would say make the game significantly less fun. Along with homogenization of classes, "quality of life changes" that destroy social fabric, etc. Those are things this game/the developers have either said they want to avoid directly, or seemingly indirectly.
Being locked into an animation is significantly more skill requisitive(should be a word if it is not lol), than being able to have all your mobility while doing everything you want to do at every given moment. Telegraphed mechanics and dodge rolls aren't inherently more skill based than knowing when you can and can't afford to spend two seconds in one place. You could make an argument for either - or both, it's also significantly more important that people who want to fight effectively have to remain stationary to give more emphasis to skill shots(which it seems as though they plan on including). If someone else can just mindlessly run around spamming instant cast spells while a class tries to hit them with narrow hitbox skill shots, that'd be asinine.
Fluid is not a feeling in my view that comes from mobility, animations can be "fluid", that's precisely what fighting games are, they flow, but they all have animation locks, and in some limited cases animation canceling. Smash for instance has some of those most skill based gameplay of any fighter, and it has animation locks - it has to, so you can punish players who make mistakes and open themselves up to your own animation based abilities. I believe it was "Raiderz" that game had fluid combat, and it was very animation heavy, as did blade and soul. PVP in WoW is just punishing people who cast the wrong spell at the wrong moment, in most cases - a healer, and interrupting it, combined with burst windows, and this is heavily aided by mods, which all but play the game for you, I wasn't even particularly great, but I've hit gladiator once - and hit 2200 in BFA. Having played pvp with an insane emphasis on locking people out of their ability to use commands for as long as possible to achieve a victory(all WoW pvp is at the end of the day), I'd rather try something where you lock players INTO their abilities, and by virtue of that - mistakes made end in defeat. Personal opinion.
Edit: Or you know, give people a class with high mobility - that has relatively weak abilities so it balances out. I'm always a fan of diverse playstyle within the common archetypes - examples would be like Mystics(eq2?) which instead of healing damage, would simply help tanks avoid instances of damage with timed spells? if I recall, or perhaps Saboteur/demolitionist whatever from Rift, that did essentially no damage for 5+ seconds, while placing charges - then would detonate them for 5+ seconds worth of damage all at once, Tacticians from Asherons Call 2 that could place walls, and turrets, and were kind of specifically designed for world pvp. Lot of possibilities, really just depends on execution(this is an afterthought/unrelated to my general rant).
FF14 is the way that it is - because one, it's Final Fantasy - and two, it's cross platform. The GCD in that game is nearly double what any PC exclusive mmorpg has, so that console players can keep up with the pacing of the combat, it wasn't so much a genius design - as, it had to be that way. Just like cross platform shooters have to give console players aim assist. The fights were far less twitchy in raids, but I wouldn't have found it much different pvping on my Summoner there than pveing.
When we're talking about the burden of melee vs range, advantages/disadvantages, games like WoW started off with a heavy advantage to ranged classes that could start off at range in a fight, mages/hunters - now a mage can just permanently root you and hit you with instant cast spells from just outside your melee range and has enough barriers to ignore your damage in general. Hunters had a dead zone and a lot of incentives to stick to range, and use their limited escape/control abilities - to stay at range, that also went by the wayside. I think they made these changes as part of their homogenization push, let the hunter or mage be just as effective at five yards as they are at fourty, basically(I prefer varying strengths and weaknesses).
More players back during that original period for WoW, less players now - maybe unrelated, maybe not. Blizzard is definitely in a downward spiral though, I don't think even hardcore WoW fans enjoyed BFA, they're just playing it because - what else is there. Blizzard realizing some of their errors is trying to shift back towards systems like this game will offer, more permanence in choice, but I think they'll likely end up listening to the vocal minority who want everything their way all the time and to change their spec for every fight, every pull, to be able to tweak any talent on the fly - and remove any permanence of choice from their covenant system. I'm fully expecting shadowlands to be garbage and not even tide me over until this game releases, and at the end of the day - this game may not deliver either, but I at least hear "all the right things" from the developer, which is more than I can say for most companies.
At the end of the day, just an opinion. :P If the "majority" wants WoW, I don't want a game suited to the majority, if I did, I'd just go play WoW. I preferred UO, and Everquest personally, and I'd rather see a throwback to that with updated graphics. Hell all spells in UO had cast times, and if you got hit during it - it could fizzle lol, and that had some of the most intense PVP I've had in any game, although your gear was on the line too, so that added to it.
I don't have a problem with number of classes, i have a problem with how many can fill required roles.
Even if WoW's playerbase has reduced over time, it still is the MOST popular MMO right now.
You don't have to make WoW. Steven is copying the best systems from other games. So why not look at the best features of WoW and GW2 as well? For WoW, that would be its fluidity and for GW2 it would be the overall combat system.
I don't agree with your definition of fluid - as it seems to be subjective and related to your psychological perception of what things -should- be, locking/fixed animations can be executed in a fluid manner, if I initiate an attack that lasts for two seconds, and as soon as it finishes I can execute another attack that lasts for five seconds - that is "fluid", one ability flows to the next. Your perception of fluid is strictly relegated to mobility, more so than how systems interact. I'm not seeing a meaningful counter to my fighting game comparison, all animation locks - all fluid.
To you, I would gather that fluidity means being able to run circles around someone spamming sinister strike - which in WoW - a game with maybe one or two total projectile abilities(and only within the last two or so expansions), is pretty arbitrary, but would be awful in a game that wants to rely on them, any tactical shooter requires you to sit still while aiming/firing, I would imagine if they aim to have those mechanics(which it seems they do), this would follow suit.
I'd rather have CS:GO/PUBG, and not quake/fortnite, as far as analogies go.
As far as I recall Guild Wars 2 had even more mobile combat, and completely gave up the trinity in favor of twitch gameplay. I also remember getting to level cap in less than three days(thanks cooking) and never playing the game again after that when it first came out. If I were to cite anything that game did well, it would have been world building, zone complexity/depth, hidden stuff, etc.
Honestly I think the word you're looking for is frenetic
Surely mobility is mobility. You either move or you don't.
Didn't WoW classic have abilities that relied on you standing still? To be fair, even though I played WoW classic last year I can't recall exactly. I'm pretty sure I remember my character having to cast spells before a mob got to him.
Why exactly are you so against not being able to move for casting some spells? Why do you have to be able to run about like a madman whilst casting? If there are abilities that provide CC then surely having to be careful promotes interesting combat?
I clearly said that I have no problem with it if its at a moderate amount. I just don't want to be animation locked for the entirety of combat just because I chose to play a ranged class. I want there to be moderate high dmg/cc, animation lock abilities. But I also want there to be abilities that can be cast while moving.
Like 70% abilities should be castable while moving with some that slow you, while the remaining 30% can be abilities with 2s cast times that root you in place.
Yeah most high impact - high damage/healing abilities all required cast times, and generally lengthy ones. The average mage kill of a monster would be 3(3.5 without talents) if I recall correctly - cast time fireball, you'd generally cast 3 of those maybe with the range talent as well 41 yards or so, and then maybe fireblast, frost nova, or throw out one more fireball. Rinse/repeat 3-4 times, and then drink. That's in regards to PVE. They also had a 6 second nuke - pyroblast, pretty much relegated to opening up the fight with it, in most cases.
It was melee classes that had the more mobile centric gameplay, because they had to close the distance, but there weren't really abilities that rooted melee characters to the ground as they used them. As the expansions went on - mage gameplay shifted to things like instants, and high mobility. Frost mages could rely on ice lance with fingers of frost procs/multiple frost novas etc, and hard casting was more rare. I would say what WoW did well(to a degree) was give melee classes the same treatment that Everquest gave caster classes(at least early on in classic). Although I still enjoyed the melee classes in EQ, caster classes had astronomically more spells/abilities. I think EQ2 did a great job with classes across the board, I even was fond of a lot of their PVP style elements, including things like disorients/blinds/etc that actually did blind you, similar to a counter-strike flashbang if I recall and movement manipulation stuff for some classes.
I think slam was one of the only abilities that ever had a cast time for a melee class early on, and it didn't lock you in place, but then they normalized weapon speeds(insanely boring change), because they weren't competent enough to balance things(or were too lazy). I think what PVP turned into in WoW was degenerative, not evolution, but that's my personal opinion. I think the other gentleman on the flipside was fond of what it became, I had fun playing classic (recently when it released), leveling was a blast, back to being even moderately challenging/immersive, but sadly the raid content didn't hold up, because player skill had increased too much, so that's closer to when I started losing interest in classic.
Edit: At the end of the day, this particular "debate" boils down to the type of combat system they're aiming for over all, if a game is going WoW's route - with essentially no skill shots, where even projectile(travel time spells) always hit their mark, because you target someone - and then cast a spell, or shoot a shot so to speak, then you can have more mobility in combat, because - everything hits, always, unless a spell is canceled or interrupted. If you want actual aiming in the game(skill shots), where you have a risk of missing, and a reward for hitting - something that in my view makes casters/ranged classes significantly more interesting, it'd mandate not having insane mobility across the board for classes. There would have to be windows to land these shots on players who might otherwise avoid them, either via crowd control, or their desire to utilize an ability of theirs - that also locks them into a stationary position for the duration, so you have windows of success/failure.
I'll certainly look forward to alpha 2(whenever that rolls around), so I can see what the combat is like, and have an actual informed opinion, instead of just theory crafting. I think this is another scenario where sort of off on it's own - I really liked UO, because you would prepare a cast, then target it separately. So you could move around with a prepared spell, as long as you didn't get interrupted while you were in the middle of the initial cast. That's actually not a bad compromise to still allow a bit of mobility in gameplay - by allowing premeditation/preparedness to counter high mobility. It was a good way to handle casters as a group in general.
You say "I don't want to play a mage and just stand still" but that's literally how casting a spell works. I'm sure you could build for a decent amount of instant cast spells, or you could just play a class that doesn't have a lot of cast times instead of asking that a mage not be a mage because you don't like how mages work.
IN MODERATION. I'm so tired of saying this over and over again. I would prefer if only something like 30/40% of abilities rooted you in place.
Also, guess what? It wasn't just mages. Even the tank that Steven was playing had 2s cast abilities. So there's no way to say that it won't make it into other classes as well.
You can't have a huge damage ability on a 2 second cast timer. There's no disincentive not to cast it over and over. Huge damage abilities need to have downsides to use, and long cooldowns should not be the only ones.
Take a duel between two warriors. A is a quick and agile awarrior with light armour and two long knives. B is a behmoth of a man with a giant 2H axe. B has this huge attack that will literally tear A to shreds, but it requires timing to use and leaves him vulnerable to a quick attack from A with his two knives. B therfore has to use smaller attacks to get A off guard and enable him to jump in with his huge swing. B is essentially rooted for the time it takes to line up his big swing.
I'm suggesting the same thing for in game abilities. A mage has a huge firey ball he can fling at enemies, but he needs to concentrate for 5 seconds to cast it. To give himself time he flings a Gust spell at the enemy, pushing him back. This is a quick cast with low damage, and he can move whilst casting. The mage then flings a magical stone that can stun the enemy. This stun, combined with the Gust spell, gives the mage time to cast his huge Firey Ball and do big damage.
For me, that is more interesting than running up and down casting big nukes.