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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.
People and Potions: A Guide to Drinking Responsibly
Vashramire
Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I was just wondering what people and the devs thought about how potions should be implemented. With what is expected to be a healthy crafting system, there are sure to be many available.
Are hp/mana pots going to be basically useless at endgame like a lot of other games? From current gameplay manager pots look to be helpful at least for leveling. If they are relevant then will they have a CD or share one with other potions that give stats? Are they for emergencies or expected to be used frequently? Is pre potting a stat potion before a pull going to be a thing because you can only use 1 pot per fight while in combat? What kind of potions/potion strength are healthy for gameplay and which aren't? How much power/advantage does someone have over someone without any potions in both PvE and PvP?
I don't think people want to farm or spend a ton on pots on top of gear repair and such just to be relevant which makes it just feel like maintenance but they should feel useful so it's a tricky balance.
Are hp/mana pots going to be basically useless at endgame like a lot of other games? From current gameplay manager pots look to be helpful at least for leveling. If they are relevant then will they have a CD or share one with other potions that give stats? Are they for emergencies or expected to be used frequently? Is pre potting a stat potion before a pull going to be a thing because you can only use 1 pot per fight while in combat? What kind of potions/potion strength are healthy for gameplay and which aren't? How much power/advantage does someone have over someone without any potions in both PvE and PvP?
I don't think people want to farm or spend a ton on pots on top of gear repair and such just to be relevant which makes it just feel like maintenance but they should feel useful so it's a tricky balance.
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Comments
How about; if you drink more than one potion, you get a debuff? Like how a Boilermaker (beer and whiskey) gives you mean hangover. 🍺
its garbage design and I hope Ashes brings something better to the table.
Limiting discussion to health and mana potions, there were two types of each. One was basically an instant effect, and the other was a HoT effect. There was one potion of each type for each level range in the game, and the next level range required the potion of the appripriate type as an ingredient in crafting.
Players could have as many potions as they liked on them of as many different types, and could hotbar as many as they liked as well.
The limitation came in each potion type having a reuse timer - and using any potion of that type would trigger that timer. This prevented you from being able to rely on them too much, but they were at least somewhat useful - at least to DPS classes with lower HP.
As a system, this meant that lower level crafting and harvesting is always relevent. Higher end players would often buy lower level potions and boost them up to higher level ones in order to make more profit (a result of that games labor system, as much as anything - but kept low level potions selling long after they were popularly used). It also meant that players that didn't want to spend too much money had the option of using lower level - and thus cheaper - potions. You could also have a stack of each potion type from two different level ranges, and if you just needed a little boost, you could use the cheaper one.
Where this kind of thing does tend to fail is in the scaling. A potion that heals a static amount of HP is always going to be more useful to a low HP DPS than it is to a mid or high HP class. Also, as players progress at the level cap, as they gain more HP, the value of those potions is constantly being deminished. Obviously, the same applies to mana potions being less useful as players gain more and more mana. A 1000 mana potion is quite useful to a player with 6000 mana, but significantly less useful to that player once they have upgraded their gear and now have 22000 mana.
This can be easily dealt with though, by adding an effect to all high HP and mana items that increase the amount healed by these potions.
That seems like a poor fix to what ever issue they thought they had.
The ability to increase your mana pool, as well as your ability to replenish it, should be fairly important factors to all caster classes in all MMO's. It is taking away an important aspect of these classes if you do this.
I can't think of any other game that has put a hard limit on mana like that, so I don't think the assumption should be that this will be the case in Ashes.
Well I'm sure alot of potions, elixirs, and other alchemical concoctions will be used for crafting other stuff too. Alchemy has tons of space to branch out into instead of being the alcoholics anonymous of crafters.
Final fantasy is an oddball for sure. They build in mana generation for most classes via different skill combinations and the mana potions are mostly there for when you get into a battle of attrition due to low dps.
Huh? What? Errrr, I could stop if I wanted to...... *runs away crying*
I'm all for those mechanics, I just don't see a cap on mana as being anything other than a limitation.
Two particular things from EQ2 come to mind in this regard.
The first was an encounter that required everyone in the raid to keep their mana between a certain percent for 80% of the fight (I think it was between 35 and 70% or something, been over a decade since I did the fight). If any player had their mana go outside of the range by even 0.1%, the raid would wipe. This meant it was a viable strategy in that fight to bulk out your mana at the expense of anything else, making it much easier to stay in the range - or you could keep your DPS gear on and spend more time babysitting your mana level (or your surviving gear if you weren't super well geared).
Putting a hard limit on mana just means there is no real decision to make here, and everything is just easier and less interesting.
Then there is the Manaburn ability that wizards could spec in to. It would use all the mana you had, and deal 5 times that amount t of damage (later reduced to 4). If you geared out for maximum mana, this ability would be the biggest hitting ability in the game - by an entire digit - but since it left you with no mana, you also needed to spec/gear out for in combat mana replenishment of some form (which, to be fair, every raiding wizard needed to do anyway).
Basically, a cap on mana like that is like saying "hey, this whole range of mechanics and systems over here, ones that add some interesting decisions to caster classes - yeah, we aren't doing that, and we don't even have a good reason".
Well, I guess there is one reason - less work for the developers as there is one less thing to balance.
Well fortunately it looks like they will be giving us a ton of freedom in stat allocation on gear. Depending on how stuff works I might be mixing light and heavy gear on my shadowmancer so I can have a decent mana pool but some physical defenses as well. I'll be the clown running after you with my great axe and summoned shadow minions. Something like this but plate chest piece and the great axe instead of the staff lol
Honestly mana in most games is just a background stat. Most will increase it as gear gets better to allow for more bursts of expensive casts for healers or a larger buffer for mistakes and that's just for casters. Physical dps and tanks often don't use mana in most cases, and if they do they don't get more mana like casters. There are pros and cons to both styles but I wouldn't count on using mana as an encounter mechanic to justify that it has to increase despite the fact that mana will still be relegated to a throughput throttle most likely 99% of the time like in most games. Yes you can use mana in an interesting way like that but is it going to be doable with how people allocate stats or how classes mechanics play out, we don't know yet.
And, this'll be me!
I highlighted the important word there.
99% of the time, it is a background stat in EQ2 as well. The games developers are just smart enough to be able to make use of it in a more pronounced way at different times.
I wasn't saying that mana should be a full variable like it is in literally every MMO ever except FFXIV because then it can be used as a mechanic in content (if that is what I was saying, I wouldn't have given two examples), I am saying that since Intrepid have a good number of those exact same developers from EQ2 on staff, I am sure they are able to make actual good use of mana as a variable stat in Ashes, just as they were in EQ2.
Perhaps more to the point, what I am saying is that if we were to make an assumption as to whether Intrepid will go the FFXIV route for mana, or the route that literally every other MMO ever has taken, we should probably assume the route that literally every other MMO has taken will be what they decide, and that is a good thing because it allows the developers to do more things that are interesting - even if mana is a background stat 99% of the time, that 1% of the time it isn't justfies it.
The idea is flat values for different tiers of potion scaling up to the highest tier and then adding in an enhancement system similar to enchanting that increases the potency of a potion at the chance of failure. This bonus can be increased multiple times and failure only loses the materials needed for the upgrade not the potion itself. Basically if someone really wanted to they could invest in a potion who's base value could full heal or full mana anyone.
Now, the balancing of this is the resources used to make it, the failure, chance increasing, and the fact that you cannot spam drink such things. With this I would give it a 3 minute cooldown.
Alright hit me with the opinions.
I dunno, I'd quite like to see what they've got planned themselves.
Shure, you can drink a ton of potions at once, but after 2 you get a health debuff and suffer some slight DoT.
That would increase with the amount of potions you drink over the limit, stacking on top of one another.
Example:
A character drinks a health potion that heals him immediately. This potion also applies a debuff on him, lets call it "Residue Accumulation". This debuff will stay for lets say 5min.
The character now drinks another potion, maybe a potion of Iron Skin to increase his defense. The buff will hold for 25min. But the debuff from the health potion has not deteriorated yet, so the character resets the debuff duration and has now 2 stacks that will only go after 5min.
He is after 3min suddenly in combat and has to take another health potion. But oh no, he suddenly has 3 stacks on his debuff and starts taking damage from it, while also resetting the duration on it.
Moral of the story:
IF I WANT TO OVERDOSE ON POTIONS THEN LET ME!
Now what am I supposed to do with this? Lol
Giving players a way to build up an amount of tolerance to the effect (and potentially also a way to increase the effect of the potion itself) could make for a really interesting system.
If both effects are tied to existing stats, it wouldn't even be overly complicated.
It can't always be about Sunshine & Rainbows, right? (Health & Mana).
How about all of the dark and dangerous concoctions that mad Alchemists make?
Poison Potions, Basilisk Vials, Liquid-Fire Tinctures... so on.
I want to throw some Grease Orbs and every other kind of terrible potion at the enemies feet as well!
Steven Sharif is my James Halliday (Anorak)
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
-HPL
I get the potential is there but I don't think such a low chance of them using it in an encounter validates that the system of mana should definitively be managed in that way. Intrepid isn't really trying to make a game like all the others anyway do I don't see that as a reason they should bend to the majority just because it's popular. FFXIV is by no means the only MMO that caps mana at a static number and works fine. It more importantly comes down to what they want mana to do for the player and how do the classes play than how that stat can be used elsewhere. It's not uncommon to have a class that has high burst that is mechanically meant to oom and build it back up. I've also seen characters oom regularly on the Dev streams with mechanic that give others mana so fluctuating mana seems to be common. That throws the entire reason to use mana as an encounter mechanic out the window because that class wouldn't be able to participate in that fight unless they gimped the party heavily. Exclusion just feels like bad game design. At the end of the day I'm saying the reason for how mana should be handled is with the classes in mind over having potential interactions with content once in a blue moon. That 1% only exists if they create it meaning it's optional. You don't balance a stat because you might use it like that one day.
As dumb as it sounds, I want to see a potion that sets me on fire and damages everything around me. Friend and foe cuz fire has no friends. Useless to most? Yes. Helpful trade off for AOE tanking? Also yes.
Sign me up.
I really like this idea. They should make more of such potion types tbh.
Burn yourself and everything around you (Fire). Slow yourself and everyone around you (Earth). Heal yourself and everything around you (Water). Speed yourself up and everything around you (Air).
I'm not sure why you would think that having mana be affected by other stats, or be a stat in it's own right, would mean you can't have classes based around the idea of massive mana use for high spike damage, followed by going oom or close to it.
All making mana a stat does to a class based on this is give them an option for how to gear up. They can gear up by trying to increase the damage of each spell, as per normal, or they can gear up to increase their mana pool so that their spike damage is able to last for a longer period of time. Its straight up more options.
More options are good.
As to classes not being able to participate in an encounter that uses mana as a mechanic like the one I mentioned, keep in mind that I am not talking hypotheticals - I am talking about an actual mechanic from an actual encounter from an actual game that many of Intrepids staff worked on.
It isn't a mechanic that prevents some classes from being able to participate, and the only statement I need to back that up with is that we never sat anyone for the encounter in question.
If it is done poorly, then you may have a point. However, the fault then lies with the poor execution, not with using mana as a mechanic. Any negatives you can find either with variable mana, mana based attacks (as per manaburn that I siacussed earlier), or mana based encounter mechanics are all negatives with a specific execution, not with the design idea as a whole.
Sure, some players may well find that their class isn't as effective on that encounter as it is on others, but good game design of top end content should strive to highlight aspects of different classes, which means there is a necessity to also make other classes less effective in comparison.
If an encounter like this also had a required minimum DPS, then again, you'd have a point, and I point to poor execution. Encou ters like this are not DPS races, they are specifically there to make sure your DPS are able to function in a way other than just maximum output.
If we were talking about a system that prevented players from having some options but opened up different ones, then that would be fine, it would just be an opinion thing. Problem is, there are no options being opened up by capping mana like this, which is why I think it is a poor game design decision. It isn't a matter of execution here, it is a matter of design.
I never said static or adjustable management pools couldn't pull off an oom play style. Both have existed, wow had arcane mages where you wanted mana and FFXIV had black mages that cycle with static mana. It was meant as an example that makes the encounter example you had impossible for them to do which was the point.
I'm not saying what you propose isn't unexecuteable if they so choose. It just seems that you are determined for them to build the mana stat to recreate something from another game rather than build the classes first and then encounters based on what is possible from that. As I said earlier there is a skill that gifts mana from you to another player. About a third of a bar. That seems to me that going oom is expected relatively often because they wouldn't make a useless skill. I also don't think they would let you make that skill useless by letting you stack mana.
Things are iterative though. We may have classes with different mana pools by large amounts. A rogue could have a mana pool of 5k and filler skills cost 2k, a nuke that's 3k and a skill on a CD that restores 2.5k on top of passive regen. With their mana going everywhere during a normal rotation, going through that fight would just be boring. Hit 1 key then auto even if you stack mana. Fights that require stuff like that are just a gear swap fight and add no options like you claim to want. Same with games that required elemental resistances so you swapped to that gear for that fight. It's still a background stat regardless. That doesn't mean they should or shouldn't have a static mana pool. That should be based off of how the classes play and feel. If it suites classes to be able to have more mana as a stat then that's fine but it should never be because you want to enable a one off fight or mechanic. How mana was designed like in EQ2 facilitated it's use in that fight not the other way around. You don't go "I really want to do this mechanic on this 1 boss/ability so I should make this 1 stat overly important and overvalued for this niche thing". That is poor class design and balance that hurts the rest of the game. Class functionality comes first as a building block for the rest of the game and you build off that.
I am not saying that mechanic would fit in to Ashes. I wouldn't want Intrepid to even attempt to implement it until the game is a few years old (it is a tough mechanic to pull off, players and developers need to understand the game).
What I am saying -for about the tenth time - is if you put a hard cap on mana pools, you take options away from both players and developers.
I asked you this in my previous post, and I will ask it again. Name one thing that is possible in a game with set mana pools that is not also possible in games with variable mana pools. If you can't name something, then it is obviously a bad design decision as all it does is remove options from players and developers.