Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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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
I agree with you, what the first guy said @Ralms and anyone who is against many animation locks. Fluidity of combat for me does involve more movement and animation locking only for powerful exceptions. Personally I like to play/control my character not watch him cast.
If the previewed skill change drastically enough with leveling in said direction I think the current combat is actually good thing. if combat is slow and a bit static at first for lower levels it might help new players ease into the combat. Additionally it will feel great to upgrade skills if with higher level they become more fluid fast and movement oriented.
Totally agree with the comments on the aesthetics here above^. I think at this point actual gameplay is more important, with respect to this I have two main points :
1. Some of these skills feel a bit strong for a level 1-10, if you want to have a sense of "growing in power as you level" I think skills like Black Hole, Meteor Storm, Lava Storm, and Prismatic Beam should be saved for later levels... e.g 17+
2. Maybe give us an idea about which of these have a cast time, I mean its hard to distinguish between animations and casting times in this video.
In Ashes We Hope.
Dan
Too much floating. Fireball is way too over the top.
Animations should be more like the lightning one.
I don't understand why all the fuss. Spells traditionally required 3 components, one being a somatic element, verbal, and/or spell componet(focus).
Compared to casters rooted w/ glowy hands... come on now.
Love em loved the cleric's too.
Please no, for the love of god stuns are the worst system in gaming.
Edit: To clarify, players being stunned is the worst common mechanic in gaming, stunning AI is fine, whoever originally thought "let's remove this persons interactivity from this interactive medium" made a huge mistake.
I'm sorry mate, but you are overreacting a fair bit.
We barely have any content done, it's an alpha, things change a lot.
The best thing you can do in hopes of getting the development path a bit closure to your liking, is to provide good and constructive feedback.
Don't just say something sucks, instead say why it sucks and how would you do it better!
We are all humans here, including the dev team, that regardless of what some might think of them, they have a really challenging task in front of them and they are trying.
They will not get it right the first time, or the second and maybe not even the third, but eventually with our feedback they will get it dialed for all of us to enjoy.
Again, it's really early stages of the game, have a little more faith, this is not Star Citizen where you spend 100$ and never get a game back.
I'm not even sure what you mean by "too much high fantasy"
If you're talking about all the over-exaggerated animations and effects, that's a pretty common sentiment around here.
It's like when someone has a shiny new tool and they get overly excited about the things it can do so they go beyond what is required and keep adding things that seem "cool" or "flashy" because they're so excited about what they can do
It's understandable because the game itself is almost a passion project for everyone involved so everyone gets passionate about making things as "amazing" as possible. Eventually they'll hopefully realize all these flashy additions are taking away from the immersion/aesthetic.
- Fireball looks nice, but the floating animation for a little Fireball is to much, make it simple! If it was a big a** Magmaball with an even longer animation ok, i get it.
- Lightning Bolt looks cool.
- Black Hole again no need for the floating animation maybe some kind of shaping a sphere hand animation is maybe better?
- Drain Essence the beam direction is toward the opponent, maybe the other way around from the opponent to the caster looks more logical?
- Blink looks amazing, just to much smoke for me.
- Lava Storm yeah i like it.
- Meteor Storm overall nice. I think it's just a skill for a higher level.
- Prismatic Beam love it.
With best regards
Animations don't affect gameplay at all to begin with, other than immersion and maybe visibility/recognition.
Can you define the "combat loophole", I genuinely don't know what you're referring to there
You are spot on.
+1
I could not have said it better.
Watching the animations i did wonder if we play mages or Martial artists in some of the animations.
From my perspective the animation for this casting makes some sense if the intent of the Fireball is "Fire Support". The mage is elevating to be at a higher elevation than the front line troops and then releases the fireball at the target - firing over the heads of friendly forces. Now I agree jumping up and down repeatedly, while chain-firing Fireball's, does appear unnecessary, however, in the animation test we only see one Fireball being fired before the viewpoint changes; perhaps the animation allows the mage to remain elevated as long as their manna pool holds out if they are repeatedly firing Fireball. However, if the mage attempts to cast any other spell then they should drop to the ground beforehand - even if the next spell is also a spell that uses elevation (i.e. Black Hole) - this drop to the ground represents the mages change of focus.
In defense of the Black Hole
Defending this animation for much the same reason as Fireball. The jump to elevation allows the mage to place the Black Hole with a clear line of view. This is especially useful when used strategically to separate the
enemy forces or to disrupt their ranks - by placing it near the back or middle of the enemy force.
In defense of Drain Essence
The initial ray hitting the target is forming the link necessary to drain the essence from the target - an ethereal straw for sucking the essence out. I think it would be nice if inside the ray we saw a reverse flow, representing the essence being drawn back to the mage. The puff at the end represents the cutting of the drain, essence that was in the process of being drawn but was not absorbed in to the mage.
In Defense of Blink
This is a combat maneuver. The mage is ripping a hole between two points and stepping through that hole before it closes. The "smoke" is not really smoke it is the raw essence nature being rent open at the entrance and exit points. When you rip a hole in a living thing it is not going to close immediately.
I've been gaming MMORPGs since around 2003/4 started with the typical "korean grind" MMOs, Runescape, Asherons Call, which then lead to WoW, LotrO, Warhammer Online, SW:ToR, GW, GW2, ESO, BDO, and a bunch of smaller or short lived MMOs that ive dabbled in.
I love to get invested into the worlds I game in, I like to learn about the lore and so on, go on dungeon crawls and kill giant dragons and loot their corpses, but if there is one thing that I love more than any other aspect of MMORPG gaming, its PvP. Some games have been an amazing experience, others an absolute nightmare.
Which brings me to this mage preview video. Lets start with the Pros.
-Graphically Stunning. The Lava storm actually looks HOT. So many games make "fire" but fail to capture the feeling behind it. HEAT. Looking at Lava Storm gave me the feeling that, it could actually be hot.
-Fluid Animations. The importance of this is so understated in gaming, and so many companies cheap out on animations by giving them that sort of "anime" style where they can blur some lines make it really quick and it feels effortless.
-Support Spells. Black Hole and Drain Essence will become invaluable tools in both PvE and PvP prolonged fights, im glad to see its not just a fireball spam and finisher type of game.
and the Cons. I'll attach some questions with these since I havent played any alpha myself so I don't know exactly if these are cons or not, so i'm on the side of caution as to not get my hopes to high up.
-Animation and Graphical bloat. The jumping animation of fireball seems over dramatized, while i like it for Black Hole, because it gives the opportunity to counter a hard CC, for fireball it seems a little much. Unless fireball is a BIG damage spell in which it would be favorable to have a long cast. Blinks graphical bloat with the extra cloud animation on entry and exit to what looks like a portal seems a bit overboard for a simple magical spell. Unless there is some underlying effects on blink entrance and exit done to enemies or yourself through an empowered version of the spell and that's what we saw?
-Animation Size/Length. It was Mentioned that Meteor Storm and Lava Storm were both AoE castable spells, but I didnt get a good indication of their relative size in the video, seemed like meteor should have been a much wider AoE compared to Lava storm based on animation sizes? Also there is no clear defined end point to the animation, whether or not damage will bleed out a little bit passed its animation?
-Beam Spells. A Pro and a Con, it looks great, it looks powerful, i dont want to be on the recieving end of it. The downside to these is, are you animation locked while casting? Meaning, can you rotate your character to aim the beam mid cast?
And just as a little ending note on personal preference. Animation Canceling, your game is shaping up to have big elaborate spells, and enourmous effects. It would be sad to see animation cancel PvP take over as "meta" for AoC. The rolling/dodging animation cancel style PvP is so wrong and cheap feeling that it turn myself and many other gamers off. I understand that a main staple in an action combat style MMO is the dodge roll mechanic, but when it starts to become animation cancelling PvP is when I check out. I like to be immersed in the world, not have insta-cast spells and giant men in full plate rolling back and forth while trying to cancel their swing animations on eachother.
As an additional note specific to the black hole which I thought of might be kind of cool even though probably a pain to program: If multiple black holes would increase in size and pull strength if they overlap. So for examples two wizards are casting tier 1 black holes that a part of them overlap with the other. They somehow merge together, getting slightly bigger in the process and possess the pull strength and AOE of a t2 black hole. Now this could be further enhanced with another t1 black hole by another wizard merging to a t3. Now to not make this abuseable it would stop increasing in size and pull strength afterwards.
Now what would happen if someone casts a t1 black hole onto an t3 black hole or the reverse? Or a t2 black hole onto another t2 black hole? Another neat effect could happen: It might get unstable due to magic overflow or whatever reason you can think of and explode, dealing explosive area damage of t3 or even a little bit higher.
PS: English is not my main language so there might be some weird wording here and there but I hope it's mostly understandable.
Lava Burst - I agree with previous poster that this should be a strike to the ground and the lava bursting up. Perhaps a shorter jump up to gather power then strike to the ground.
Blink - What is the expected use? If to break targeting, it should be instant shift of position, followed by stagger as mage recovers. If to escape, then it should be more subtle in effects as the current effects just scream "mage is now here!".
I too left feed back in the youtube comments.
I agree with the vast majority of Ralms' feed back.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP31ixSBO7GHKLBefWVcJaA
I think blink is to escape. I think it should telegraph where the mage went.
Furthermore, if the company wants to expand the mage gameplay later on by allowing spellcasting on the move, yeah, good luck with the "animu" animations where the mage flies about while casting.
Thank you! Us warrior mages appreciate it.
most people would agree with you. You can find everyone else's comments here:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/47792/blazing-the-way-mage-alpha-one-preview
All the more reason to voice criticism early, before things start getting cemented.
Nah, that wouldn't be productive. The original posters comments are true and Intrepid will reflect on the feedback (especially since this viewpoint is overwhelmingly consistent). Just because we are in Alpha 1, doesn't mean our feedback should be silenced.
I'm not saying we shouldn't voice our opinions.
I am saying that it's too early to have a meaningful discussion of animations that are a long way (maybe years) from being polished ... especially when Steven has pre-empted game footage clips by noting animations are placeholders not in their final form.