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.
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.
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.
[Bobs' House of Ideas]
Hey there, y'all! I'm John aka Bobs, an MMO player since the dawn of 2003. I've played dozens of MMOs, from most triple A releases to shady asian MMOs. and created this thread to share, hear, discuss some of the ideas we have on what makes a great game, and integrate it with what we already know about AoC. So, without further ado, I'll begin based on some of the things I saw on videos and Q&A:
<strong>Combat</strong>
<em>Animations</em>: the game being in its early stages, it's understandable that functionality takes precedence here, but I'd like to point out the lack of fluidity we've seen from the Mage videos. The biggest reason for this, imho, is that there is no coordination between the upper and lower body of the character. We see the hands and torso of the character moving whilst casting but from the waist down, static. This leads to the combat looking a little clunky, as the animations lack the flavor they should have. TerA does an excellent job on how this should be done. Here's an example: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJwv2q5csQY"></a>. You can see how the entire body works as one when the character is casting.
<em>Combat style</em>: going with tab-targeting over full action combat is something I personally dislike, because every MMO I've played with action combat has proven to be more immersive and interesting than tab-targeting. BDO is the living proof of that, as the countless hours of dull grind became somewhat bearable thanks to the excellent combat system. Either way, I think whatever you choose to stick to, do it well. Games that allow you to 'choose' between tab-targeting and action combat (Bless/Revelation Online) generally do a poor job at both of them. For tab-targeting, it would come down to making the game as non-static as possible. Animations that root your character in place are a no-no, specially with melee classes.
<em>Classes and how they work</em>: 8 archetypes, and a second archetype as support, coming down to 56/64 possibilities! Sounds wonderful, right? Another game that had something similar and it just plain sucks is Archage. That game offers you a total of 120 classes, but due to how each archetype inherently works, and what they're geared for, you generally had no more than 10-15 classes worth mentioning, with the vast majority being niche or just plain unplayable.
I think whatever archetypes you choose, they need to interact and modify each other. So say you are a Rogue and Mage, instead of simply having the skills of both (such as in Archeage), the supporting Archetype would alter the main one. In this example, and assuming some general skillsets for such classes, the Rogue might gain an aura in stealth to slow down nearby enemies with cold magic, and add elemental attributes to their attacks. IF classes have unique mechanics (combo points, class-specific buffs that are gained and spent, etc), they should be integrated to keep the combat fluid and meaningful. Such as allowing this rogue/mage combo to insta-cast a spell from a determined roster upon reaching a certain amount of combo points.
<strong>PvE, player gearing and the meaningfulness of it</strong>
I won't deny it, I'm a PvE addict. I love dungeons, raiding, finding open world bosses and doing long but rewarding questlines. I was a raid leader for years with a group of close friends, and if there is one thing I miss are the nights were we had fun together. But it feels as if the latest games to be released just haven't done it right, when they've done it at all. I think the node system for AoC allows for some great PvE interactions, some of which were mentioned (new questlines, world bosses showing up). But I want to see PvE being meaningful not only to the world, but for the player itself. Nowadays, it seems that killing raid bosses either gives you materials to craft gear, or the base gear which then needs to be upgraded through a soul-destroying system (Asia, I'm looking at you). I think a great solution would be to have bosses drop both random gear as well as crafting mats. Crafted gear would take a while to make (but not too long. No one wants to spend 4 weeks worth of mats on a single piece of gear), and have the edge over dropped gear, perhaps by allowing you to customize its stats, and even offer minor bonuses to your skillset, in order to make sure your combination of archetypes gets stronger together.
Gear stats should be plentiful but not overwhelming, so that gear is neither 'one-size-fits-all' nor extremely niche, and might have different interactions with your character based on the classes you chose to play. So a guy playing the previous Rogue/Mage combo might have his magical damage be influenced by Dexterity or his Weapon Damage instead of the standard Int/Magic Damage.
Secondary stats could have thresholds wherein they gain meaningful bonuses, but which shouldn't be easy to reach. Say, having having an X amount of haste might unlock 15% faster casting speed/GCD reduction, but one wouldn't manage to get said amount unless they heavily invest in haste, thus missing a lot of crit/whatever else you have in mind. Such stat system interacts to either complement or compensate your chosen archetypes - a rogue/mage focusing on haste might then become an extremely fast magic assassin, where one focusing on crit might have a more nuker-oriented playstyle.
That is it for now! I will come back later to add more as I see fit, but would love to hear of you guys what you have in mind!
<strong>Combat</strong>
<em>Animations</em>: the game being in its early stages, it's understandable that functionality takes precedence here, but I'd like to point out the lack of fluidity we've seen from the Mage videos. The biggest reason for this, imho, is that there is no coordination between the upper and lower body of the character. We see the hands and torso of the character moving whilst casting but from the waist down, static. This leads to the combat looking a little clunky, as the animations lack the flavor they should have. TerA does an excellent job on how this should be done. Here's an example: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJwv2q5csQY"></a>. You can see how the entire body works as one when the character is casting.
<em>Combat style</em>: going with tab-targeting over full action combat is something I personally dislike, because every MMO I've played with action combat has proven to be more immersive and interesting than tab-targeting. BDO is the living proof of that, as the countless hours of dull grind became somewhat bearable thanks to the excellent combat system. Either way, I think whatever you choose to stick to, do it well. Games that allow you to 'choose' between tab-targeting and action combat (Bless/Revelation Online) generally do a poor job at both of them. For tab-targeting, it would come down to making the game as non-static as possible. Animations that root your character in place are a no-no, specially with melee classes.
<em>Classes and how they work</em>: 8 archetypes, and a second archetype as support, coming down to 56/64 possibilities! Sounds wonderful, right? Another game that had something similar and it just plain sucks is Archage. That game offers you a total of 120 classes, but due to how each archetype inherently works, and what they're geared for, you generally had no more than 10-15 classes worth mentioning, with the vast majority being niche or just plain unplayable.
I think whatever archetypes you choose, they need to interact and modify each other. So say you are a Rogue and Mage, instead of simply having the skills of both (such as in Archeage), the supporting Archetype would alter the main one. In this example, and assuming some general skillsets for such classes, the Rogue might gain an aura in stealth to slow down nearby enemies with cold magic, and add elemental attributes to their attacks. IF classes have unique mechanics (combo points, class-specific buffs that are gained and spent, etc), they should be integrated to keep the combat fluid and meaningful. Such as allowing this rogue/mage combo to insta-cast a spell from a determined roster upon reaching a certain amount of combo points.
<strong>PvE, player gearing and the meaningfulness of it</strong>
I won't deny it, I'm a PvE addict. I love dungeons, raiding, finding open world bosses and doing long but rewarding questlines. I was a raid leader for years with a group of close friends, and if there is one thing I miss are the nights were we had fun together. But it feels as if the latest games to be released just haven't done it right, when they've done it at all. I think the node system for AoC allows for some great PvE interactions, some of which were mentioned (new questlines, world bosses showing up). But I want to see PvE being meaningful not only to the world, but for the player itself. Nowadays, it seems that killing raid bosses either gives you materials to craft gear, or the base gear which then needs to be upgraded through a soul-destroying system (Asia, I'm looking at you). I think a great solution would be to have bosses drop both random gear as well as crafting mats. Crafted gear would take a while to make (but not too long. No one wants to spend 4 weeks worth of mats on a single piece of gear), and have the edge over dropped gear, perhaps by allowing you to customize its stats, and even offer minor bonuses to your skillset, in order to make sure your combination of archetypes gets stronger together.
Gear stats should be plentiful but not overwhelming, so that gear is neither 'one-size-fits-all' nor extremely niche, and might have different interactions with your character based on the classes you chose to play. So a guy playing the previous Rogue/Mage combo might have his magical damage be influenced by Dexterity or his Weapon Damage instead of the standard Int/Magic Damage.
Secondary stats could have thresholds wherein they gain meaningful bonuses, but which shouldn't be easy to reach. Say, having having an X amount of haste might unlock 15% faster casting speed/GCD reduction, but one wouldn't manage to get said amount unless they heavily invest in haste, thus missing a lot of crit/whatever else you have in mind. Such stat system interacts to either complement or compensate your chosen archetypes - a rogue/mage focusing on haste might then become an extremely fast magic assassin, where one focusing on crit might have a more nuker-oriented playstyle.
That is it for now! I will come back later to add more as I see fit, but would love to hear of you guys what you have in mind!
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Comments
I won't deny it, I'm a PvE addict. I love dungeons, raiding, finding open world bosses and doing long but rewarding questlines. I was a raid leader for years with a group of close friends, and if there is one thing I miss are the nights were we had fun together. But it feels as if the latest games to be released just haven't done it right, when they've done it at all. I think the node system for AoC allows for some great PvE interactions, some of which were mentioned (new questlines, world bosses showing up). But I want to see PvE being meaningful not only to the world, but for the player itself. Nowadays, it seems that killing raid bosses either gives you materials to craft gear, or the base gear which then needs to be upgraded through a soul-destroying system (Asia, I'm looking at you). I think a great solution would be to have bosses drop both random gear as well as crafting mats. Crafted gear would take a while to make (but not too long. No one wants to spend 4 weeks worth of mats on a single piece of gear), and have the edge over dropped gear, perhaps by allowing you to customize its stats, and even offer minor bonuses to your skillset, in order to make sure your combination of archetypes gets stronger together.
Gear stats should be plentiful but not overwhelming, so that gear is neither 'one-size-fits-all' nor extremely niche, and might have different interactions with your character based on the classes you chose to play. So a guy playing the previous Rogue/Mage combo might have his magical damage be influenced by Dexterity or his Weapon Damage instead of the standard Int/Magic Damage.
Secondary stats could have thresholds wherein they gain meaningful bonuses, but which shouldn't be easy to reach. Say, having having an X amount of haste might unlock 15% faster casting speed/GCD reduction, but one wouldn't manage to get said amount unless they heavily invest in haste, thus missing a lot of crit/whatever else you have in mind. Such stat system interacts to either complement or compensate your chosen archetypes - a rogue/mage focusing on haste might then become an extremely fast magic assassin, where one focusing on crit might have a more nuker-oriented playstyle.
That is it for now! I will come back later to add more as I see fit, but would love to hear of you guys what you have in mind!
I saw a video of a warrior as well and, though the graphics are great, the combat appeared to lack impact mechanics. Meaning that when he was swinging his sword it didn't "feel" like it was impactful to his targets.
Of course, still very early in pre-alpha. So plenty of time to round out aesthetic items like that.
Not much to say about animations, I simply agree that it has a disconnection and will probably be adressed with time.
Repeating myselfe, the opposite of tab-targeting is free aiming. It doesn't include or exludes action combat.
Look at wow, it is tab-targeting but it has different playstyles with it's classes, even inside classes if you look at the later states.
You got rather immobile mages that stand still most of the time to cast, but you had specs where you could run nearly nonstop while casting.
You had hunters that later on >>never<< needed to stay still for anything except 1-2 skills in one of the 3 specs which you have in free-aim action combat too.
I never felt much difference there to Tera for example. The only difference i found was the active block and the seperate skill of dodging that was universal to all classes. That's the only thing WoW never had as it's own thing, each class had it's own skills for that.
That'S really what sets actioncombat apart from "tabtargeting style games"?
There are other examples like ArcheAge that were terrible, but it only shows that it is not tab-targeting that is the problem imo.
To archtypes:
That's what we get, you choose your mainclass for your skillset and choose a 2ndary one to enhance those skills with augments. We don't seem to mix and match skills from different classes, we augment the existing ones, so no worries there.
I hope that the PvE content will be relevant, I like the idea of bosses or specificly hard/rare mobs dropping (special)mats for crafting.
We were teased that crafting will be it's own huge metagame and there will be plenty of ways to make yourself stick out as crafter. I think it was hinted that you can adjust stats to a great extend during the crafting process, so we will see when we get a first good look at what Intrepid envisions there.
I agree with what you said about tab target. As time goes on i'm starting to feel more and more strongly about this. Combat needs to feel good. Giving players the freedom to use there abilities wherever they want and giving players that extra sense of control improves the player experience in a combat environment. You avoid that dissonance a player feels when they can't use an ability because there target is out of range, not in line of sight, or accidentally selected the wrong target. When you aim, you know where your ability is going and should instantly understand why you missed. This also gives more depth to a character's complexity as a player learns to aim different abilities, giving them a stronger sense of mastery then they would if all they needed to do is press a button.
Free aim opens up design, giving more options for abilities like different projectile types. It breaks the need to limit range abilities to ~30 meters which opens up more gameplay options, some of which can enhance sieges. You can vary abilities and make some easier to use for players who aren't used to the system by giving them an aoe component(exploding fireball/arrow). In the event that active defensive abilities are added, aiming gives players the freedom to shoot an arrow to where a enemy is dodging to or shooting an aoe fireball behind a person blocking instead of being forced to shoot at the face and accept the inevitable result of it doing nothing.
Look outside of MMORPGs, how many games use tab targeting? i'd question how many people who play tab target games are playing for other features in the game and not necessarily because it's tab target. Overwatch has already sold more copies then wow ever has and is very limited in gameplay but people play it because of how the characters feel. This game should already not try to compete with wow. It will have the same monthly cost but wow has 16 more years of development behind it and that much more content. Creating a combat system that allows a player to become a long archer, allows armies to engage each other at long range from across a battlefield, or lets raiders shoot a dragon from the sky as it flies around would be something many haven't seen before in an mmo.
The way you think archetypes should be is the way they are designing them. Your secondary archtype gives you ability augmentation options for your primary. They have given the example that a fighter that chooses mage as there secondary would be able to augment there charge ability to blink at the target instead of run.
Here's a little visualisation exercise for you all. Think of a game with great lore. Where the story alone is enough reason for you to take up the controller and play it. Now, listen to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=unstoppable+es+posthumus">this</a> and try to mentally produce a sort of trailer for it. You'll see that it's quite easy, 'cause that's what this kind of music exists for.
If you are used to this kind of thing, even doing it for Ashes - a game with very little lore so far - is quite easy. It's easy to imagine us players coming down into this wild jungle with a planet, untouched by civilization for ears, and hiding (or not?) a corrupted core. Imagine new kings and lords fightning over land, cities coming together and falling to the might of other cities and even monsters.
That is the lore in a broad spectrum for this game, from what I've seen. Part of it will be driven by players thus making each server unique (and I'm very fond of the idea of creating a new server every year or so, to allow veteran and new players alike to reshape history and do it all over again in a different way), part of it, set by the devs.
But I want to get down to the mud, to the dirty magic-rogue-assassin-thingy I intend to create. What are <em>his</em> motivations? And that of all other players and the society as a whole? Why are we entering this abandoned planet? Do we not know that it has been abandoned, or why? And if we do, what would make facing all the dangers it imposes worth it? From Hiddleston's recent participation in Kong: "An uncharted island? Let me list all the ways you're gonna die: rain, heat, disease-carrying flies, and I haven't even started on the things that want to eat you alive". And that's for a normal earth island. Let's not even mention the alien threat that we are sure to face.
That is what I want to know from the devs for now. Because as much as a player-drive lore game sounds fucking amazing, we still need a reason to start it all.