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Do not exaggerate rotation abilities
Marzzo
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Eventually a meta will form and most classes will have a basic rotation. In some games, this rotation can be a bit too much. What I mean by too much is that there are too many abilities in this rotation which can make it bothersome.
I have nothing against unique abilities, but too many generic abilities that you need to use constantly is bothersom and can be a problem. For example, if one class has 2-3 rotation abilities, and one has 9, it will be very hard to balance this. The former willl be regarded as a braindead class, while the later will be regarded as a class that requires 2x effort for same results.
Take afflicion warlocks from world of warcraft as an example. This is all the abilities they constantly need to do and reapply:
Haunt: deals damage over time (18 sec)
Unstable affliction: deals damage over time (21 sec)
Agony: Deals damage over time (18 sec)
Corruption: Deals damage over time (14 sec)
Siphon life: deals damage over time (15 sec)
Phantom singularity: Deals damage over time (14,9 sec)
Soul rot: Deals damage over time (8 sec)
Seed of corrutpiton: AOE ability
Curse of XXX: Makes the enemy weaker in some way (30 sec)
Malefic rapture: deals damage
Now lets take a look at another class, the deathknight:
Remorseless winter every 20 sec (aoe)
Frost strike: Deals damage
Obilirate: Deals damage
Howling blast: procs randomly, deals damage
Since both of these classes need to be balanced to do rougly the same amount of damage/utility during a raid its a nightmare to balance.
The affliciton warlock, who also needs to cast his abilities, will need to perform 3-4 times better to stand a chance at permoning as the dk. This also creates some problems. Following that warlock rotation, while still following the boss tactics, or Pvping, is very hard to do correctly. This will create a situation for you developers where you will run into a trap.
Based on the "difficulty" at playing the hard rotation class, many normal players will underperform, and many easy rotation classes will overperform.
What will you devs do then? Well, you will buff the warlock until the avarage player performs as the other classes, and nerf the dk until it performs as the other classes.
This will make good players who can abuse the hard rotation kit dominate high end pvp and pve. While making the deathknight completly useless in high end gameplay.
What should you do then?
You should make each class rotation vary in difficulty, but do not make them too hard to manage, or too easy to manage. Try to make each rotation interesting and deep in its own way. Offer ways to make your rotation easier/harder, but dont overdue it. Player feedback is key here.
There should be the option to use a high skillcap build or lower skillcap build, these need to perform differently so they reward the player that dedicates himself to the higher skillcap build. But it must not be exaggerated.
I have nothing against unique abilities, but too many generic abilities that you need to use constantly is bothersom and can be a problem. For example, if one class has 2-3 rotation abilities, and one has 9, it will be very hard to balance this. The former willl be regarded as a braindead class, while the later will be regarded as a class that requires 2x effort for same results.
Take afflicion warlocks from world of warcraft as an example. This is all the abilities they constantly need to do and reapply:
Haunt: deals damage over time (18 sec)
Unstable affliction: deals damage over time (21 sec)
Agony: Deals damage over time (18 sec)
Corruption: Deals damage over time (14 sec)
Siphon life: deals damage over time (15 sec)
Phantom singularity: Deals damage over time (14,9 sec)
Soul rot: Deals damage over time (8 sec)
Seed of corrutpiton: AOE ability
Curse of XXX: Makes the enemy weaker in some way (30 sec)
Malefic rapture: deals damage
Now lets take a look at another class, the deathknight:
Remorseless winter every 20 sec (aoe)
Frost strike: Deals damage
Obilirate: Deals damage
Howling blast: procs randomly, deals damage
Since both of these classes need to be balanced to do rougly the same amount of damage/utility during a raid its a nightmare to balance.
The affliciton warlock, who also needs to cast his abilities, will need to perform 3-4 times better to stand a chance at permoning as the dk. This also creates some problems. Following that warlock rotation, while still following the boss tactics, or Pvping, is very hard to do correctly. This will create a situation for you developers where you will run into a trap.
Based on the "difficulty" at playing the hard rotation class, many normal players will underperform, and many easy rotation classes will overperform.
What will you devs do then? Well, you will buff the warlock until the avarage player performs as the other classes, and nerf the dk until it performs as the other classes.
This will make good players who can abuse the hard rotation kit dominate high end pvp and pve. While making the deathknight completly useless in high end gameplay.
What should you do then?
You should make each class rotation vary in difficulty, but do not make them too hard to manage, or too easy to manage. Try to make each rotation interesting and deep in its own way. Offer ways to make your rotation easier/harder, but dont overdue it. Player feedback is key here.
There should be the option to use a high skillcap build or lower skillcap build, these need to perform differently so they reward the player that dedicates himself to the higher skillcap build. But it must not be exaggerated.
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Comments
I completely agree, Intrepid needs to be wary of mistaking difficulty and complexity for fulfilling gameplay. I should not require an addon to keep track of and micro manage all my debuffs so that I can deal more damage.
Not to mention, half the time you are basically doing 4x the work and only keeping up with other damage dealers, not surpassing them.
The goal should be to fulfill the fantasy of the archetype while keeping it from being mediocre (or overpowered) compared to other archetypes that share similar roles.
But I can also see how this can be a turn off to more casual players who are simply looking to button mash.
I can't really come up with ideas as to how they could balance this as you say, it'll be interesting to see how combat has evolved once we hit beta 2 in the future.
Well one of the simpler solutions for debuff classes and what has been asked for repeatedly for affliction warlocks is for them to simply increase the duration of the debuffs.
Classes should be balanced so that if your class is harder to play well, you get better results.
While the game should have some classes that can be considered brainless, as there are many out there that don't want to need to activate more than three abilities, there should also be viable builds with 15+ abilities that take a lot more ability to play well,but give better results.
But I know a few games where you don't have to follow a rotation and can still participate in high end raiding, it'll just be a lot harder and you might have to attempt it more times, but in general I find that players typically find the "hard vs soft" rotations pretty quickly.
Then there is WoW where you can have all your skills or spells. It can get cluttered for some classes (shaman and their totems...).
The experience we talk about with affliction warlocks is not what you think. this is not a complaint that everyone cant do it or whatever. Its not fun, its headache and near impossible to do well without an addon telling you how to play it. The worst part is that its not even the best spec, its behind 2 brainless specs.
It is a clunky mess and I believe the op, and myself, are fine with complicated specs but the affliction spec is an example of when it goes too far.
The TL;DR
Avoid making complex rotations that are a clunky mess to play. Damage is not everything, build a fluid rotation.
Still sounds to me like the issue is the easier classes.
A class should be hard to play to its fullest, but players that do should be rewarded with unmatched output.
The problem here seems to me to be the easier classes being both easier and just as good.
Also, since players are selecting what skills they want, as well as what augments they want on those skills, it is very unlikely that Ashes will have classes that are as curated as classes in a game like WoW.
Every class will have the option of going deep in to just a few key abilities, giving them only a handful of abilities to use in combat.
However, since there is the option to take more abilities (likely up to 20), Ashes should - of all games - reward players that play well with a more complex build, as that individual player opted to use that complex build and master it over using a simpler build.
I agree with Noaani and Kevin if a class is harder to play it should get better results. Sounds like the devs messed over there with the lock but that is what happens when you strive to make the through put the same for all classes.
Yes, its the most complicated dps spec in the game by a large margin, one goof up and you fall to the bottom of the barrel. Yet its not even the best one. Its not fun, nor is it as rewarding as you would hope.
This is from week 2 and shows where all the dps are atm.
top is better. sorry for the confusion.
This is exactly why I prefer FFXIV's class balance to WOW's. It's not one 100% on point all the time, but for the most part the more difficult the class is the better it parses on average. The top class in the game is normally black mage because they have to deal with long cast times, and perfect positioning to deal good damage.
Another thing FFXIV factors in is utility. Take the three ranged specs. Dancer and Bard can buff the rest of the party, so they do less damage than Machinist. Machinist has almost zero raid utility so its moves hit harder on average. All three of these classes are at the bottom of the DPS rankings because they can move and attack from a distance.
WOW on the other hand is like, the devs throw random abilities at the classes every expansion and hope nothing brakes too bad. Then they nerf and buff classes nearly weekly until some sort of balance happens.
What is most crazy about all of this to me is that FFXIV does a better job with internal beta testers than WOW does with the whole internet yelling about things being broken before a patch even goes live.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
yeah what im trying to say is that even though affliction is much much harder to do its not even the top spec, its behind two button smashing ez mode rotations.
Im fine with complicated gameplay but the current affliction is an example of over-complicated rotations that don't even reward you as the best. Now the difference is miniscule but the real issue is that affliction is just not fun at all, and requires addons to even play at that level.
So in summary, I hope intrepid keeps the complicated rotations from becoming a clunky unfun mess.
Probably because that sounds boring as hell.
Yeah this ones not fun either lol they are basically two extremes that hardly anyone would enjoy.
BC was the primetime for pvp in many peoples minds. I thoroughly enjoyed it even though I was garbage.
To me, that is the absolute minimum a class needs to be considered a finished class.
I can see the class is just straight up badly designed (any class that reliant on DoT's is badly designed), but it is not too complicated a rotation.
Literally nobody knows what Aphelios is doing except the person who is playing him, so enemies flip a coin and either faceroll him, or die before they even know what happened.
I wouldnt say 10 abilites is extreme either for a fleshed out class. But that is just the damaging abilities they listed, no cooldowns were listed, movement, quality of life, etc. 8 abilities that roughly do the same thing sounds like bloat to me. I dont follow current WoW, but if Warlock really has 8 of 10 damaging abilites that all do the same thing (DoT that is placed on mobs and ticks) and they dont interact with each other. That would be ability bloat. If some of these damage abilties were used less often in a rotation, and its not just keep 8 DoTs up for 100% uptime, then it would be different.
In other words, you are saying you agree with the rest of what I said, that you removed from the quote.
The class in question has too many DoT's.
Scary thing is unholy dk and balanace druid are basically on autoplay lol and they are the best. Autoattack from unholy dk pets deal top dmg for them
With this being true and I believe it is, why do people think the game has best class balance? Shouldn't the face rolling classes be lower on the graph then those harder to play? (I am assuming players are good at the class and getting good performance out of them)
The need for both easy to play and challenging to play is important.
I get not wanting classes that are so super difficult to play you need add ons and/or long macros to be effective and I agree.
One big problem blizzard is facing is that class difficulty has ZERO correlation with difficulty. Balance druid, deathknight and hunter are all super easy to play, literally no knowledge or skill required. While a few classes require insane skill while performing horribly.
I couldn't disagree more. There should be no "hard" or "easy" classes, all classes should reward more skilled play, and "penalize" (with less dps, healing through put, etc.) poor situational use or timing of abilities.
"Hard" classes that perform better just lead to a boring META that everyone will use.
"I couldn't disagree more. There should be no "hard" or "easy" classes, all classes should reward more skilled play, and "penalize" (with less dps, healing through put, etc.) poor situational use or timing of abilities."
Should all classes have the same abilities? Should there be no difference in the classes at all? Kind of like COD or many of the other FPS games where everyone has the exact same weapons and armor?