Combat System Improvements, PVP Wise By Main Mage

in general: make sure that every class have this

- Enough Crowd Control, obviously tank classes should be the king in crowd control but make sure that every other class has enough crowd control,

- At least 1 defensive skill, something that makes you invulnerable, assassins can have something like dismiss like being visible and being able to move but cant attack or recieve damage, mages ice block, tanks stone skin, archers, evade all incoming damage for a certain duration, bards/healers something like a dismiss but invisible to reposition in an orb form that only the caster is able to see, etc, a defensive/invulnerability skill something to use to reduce damage when they are not able to dodge,

- A Global Cleanse skill with decent cooldown (personal opinion " anything higher than 1 minute might aswell just dont add anything, but 35-45 secs its enough) also make it so you have like a 3 seconds immunity against cc skills, cause an example of a bad implementation of this skill its new archeage, its god damm awfull never works and you just get insta cc again,
since all classes has crowd control, you are gonna be able to hit sick combos, so you got to watch out in pvp fights to not burn your cleanse skill too early or play more safe if you do since you can get into a cc chain and get killed because of a sick combo or recieve a lot of unecessary damage, something like what aion does, in pvp everyone tries to burn their opponents cleanse skill so they can hit their big damages,

- Add IFrames, have a low cooldown skill to dodge and be invulnerable while the animation is going something that can be use as movements skill aswell so people have to decide if shorten their distance from targets or save it to dodge incoming damage, or get away from a though position, something like what tera does,

- If possible make skills to make sense with the crowd control ones so all of these make sense pvp wise,

- Example all classes should have poke skills, which are weaker and strong abilities that need to meet some kind of condition,

-For mages: move away from hard cast spells, or anything that holds you in place while casting, its an archaic mechanic and you want the combat to be as fluent as possible trust me, anything that hard lock you into place while casting should be like an ultimate AOE skill which does a lot of damage, there is no need to hard cast locking into place with weaker spells runescape style,

-Healing Classes should have like an anti cc skill to break people from cc or grants immunity for certain people

Hard Cast, Locking into place just leads to clunky feel, de-sync problems when your target moves farther than the skill range, sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt, trust me its just better if you are able to chase someone as you cast AS I SAID as long as its not an ultimate aoe skill if i would get to choose id rather Channeling, over Hard Cast, something that you channel and it starts doing damage in AOE and if you channel for a certain ammount of time, or long enough it does a different effect and does way more damage, think about it like a blizzard skill that you channel, and if you channel it for idk 5 seconds straight locked into place a big glacier comes down from the skies or something like that, Blizzard Spell In Kurtzpell its a great Representation, of what i mean,

with all these features added to combat you can't really go wrong

it adds combat so much more depth than just be sitting in a spot casting spells to each other runescape style,

also for mages get rid of the lightning spell that it bounce in between targets, add better lightning skills like a 3 charges skill that calls a lightning in a certain area and stuns players in the area, something like gods whip in archeage, but with kurtzpel animation would be sick,

i also have an idea for an spell for mages but for that i need to explained it graphically if enough people is interested i could

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Azherae

Hi, almost everything you have suggested is against most of the current discussion in the forums and, to some extent, what the developers have said so far.

I hope you find some success with discussion of your feedback, so I'll give my opinions, since this isn't the thread where I compile things mostly neutrally and I can just be direct.

Crowd Control on all classes - No, this is terrible in a game with huge group PvP even after you add diminishing returns, it's chaos and pain for all involved and tactics devolve super fast.

1 Invulnerable Defensive skill each - Lack of variety here makes this homogenous, I can't say I'd like it, I'd probably go so far as to complain about it, even as a Cleric who doesn't care much.

Global Cleanse Skill on all characters - Just make this an item that can be used while CCed for some reason. Better for the economy, less annoying.

iFrames - Have you played BDO? How much iFrames are we talking about? 20 seconds of chaining them to be untouchable? Or Monster Hunter where you get a small gap to perfectly dodge someone's attack in a server authenticated PvP instance with 40 other people?

Mage suggestions - Already in line with Dev plans and all the feedback I've seen in the last month except like ... two people.

"you really can't go wrong" - Oh you so can...

Combat is not currently even slightly about 'sitting around casting spells at each other'

There are currently two or three other Action Combat and similar discussion threads within the first two pages, not saying you need to join those, but you can check them out to see what sort of thing people are about to come into this thread to tell you.

Other posters, I'll gather anything you say here into Combat Discussion thread or Compilation if you want me to, so please have at it.

Draxido

@Azherae

-Crowd Control on all classes - No, this is terrible in a game with huge group PvP even after you add diminishing returns, it's chaos and pain for all involved and tactics devolve super fast.

i didnt say it has to be a crowd control fiesta, it just need to have enough so 1 v 1 are also meaningfull,
you just add diminishing returns done right and thats it there are ways to make it work, a lot of games make it worked in the past

-1 Invulnerable Defensive skill each - Lack of variety here makes this homogenous, I can't say I'd like it, I'd probably go so far as to complain about it, even as a Cleric who doesn't care much.

it just make sense to being able to have a second chance if you position yourself badly in a fight or 20 people is focusing you cause you are a good player, sometimes big raids would just mark an specific player so people just focuses you, this is a great way to get around that, so you are able to cait while your team or other classes with less mobility catches up or help you

-Global Cleanse Skill on all characters - Just make this an item that can be used while CCed for some reason. Better for the economy, less annoying.

hell no you cant really stop RMT this leads to pay to win this also makes so wealthy people has more chances in pvp which goes against aoc objective to make the game skill based

-iFrames - Have you played BDO? How much iFrames are we talking about? 20 seconds of chaining them to be untouchable? Or Monster Hunter where you get a small gap to perfectly dodge someone's attack in a server authenticated PvP instance with 40 other people?

same answer as the crowd control thing, iframes done right could add up a lot to the games skill ceiling BDO is a good example of iframes done terribly wrong, tera is a way better example of iframes done right,

" Combat is not currently even slightly about 'sitting around casting spells at each other' "

idk man mages kind of have more hard cast skills than i would like, or stock in animation skills

as for the " almost everything you have suggested is against most of the current discussion in the forums "

i dont really care this is my opinion from a pvp player, we all have the same goal of seeing the game succed and different ideas should work out for the devs to do the best they can for the community and combat is probably the most important feature of an mmo, so far im not pleased with the combat system, and mechanically is not solid i know is not the final product im just throwing things to consider, i do know that there is gonna be people which disagree just bring solid arguments next time,

Azherae

Then I believe you are...

Waiting for the combat revamp. Note that the game isn't apparently being balanced around 1v1 though.

Mages in particular may never quite match your wish, for a bunch of reasons I won't get into, as I am currently unable to make a solid argument about it without an essay.

Your requests don't have specifics, at the moment. They're mostly 'it can be done right' and 'I don't like how it is now' (except the Global Cleanse). Which is fine. They plan to revamp combat soon and you can take a pass at it then. I believe we can expect some implementation of your concepts in the upcoming changes.

Enjoy.

Draxido

i am aware that they are doing a combat revamp thats the reason of the post, if anything helps with the current game structure can be use if something would never work because of how specific mechanics works in boss fights or pve etc, etc, it can be discarted, im as i said i just giving my opinion so people can take whatever that works

at the same time i am aware about this
" Mages in particular may never quite match your wish, for a bunch of reasons I won't get into "

ive being playing mmos for 20 years plus and i main mage a there are certain type of mages that i like and certain type of mages that i dont, thats another reason why i give feedback about things i would like to see

Azherae

I'll give you whatever I can based on what I see when I play in Alpha test with my group. If you do not mind, if you have played BDO, do you 'main' a Witch/Wizard in that game too? Have you played it much? Or do you prefer a different class there?

Draxido

i did liked the witch tbh what i didnt like was the awakening it didnt felt like a mage anymore maybe because the use and animation of lightning and earth spells just didnt feel like a mage anymore, i did love Succession tho , i didnt get to play much cause couldnt stand the gear progression rng, tho i do have friends who still playing nowadays, and some times i watch them play and they try to explain me time to time what have they changed in the game and complain about it lol

Azherae

Yeah don't even try, Witch and Wizard got nerfed even more recently.

Thanks for the data. Succ Witch preference tells me a massive amount and will make it easier to keep you updated whenever we test the Combat Revamp.

Draxido

awesome thanks a lot

Selo

NO iframes
NO weaving
NO animation canceling

Noaani

Draxido wrote: »

hell no you cant really stop RMT this leads to pay to win this also makes so wealthy people has more chances in pvp which goes against aoc objective to make the game skill based

I don't know if it's a great idea to post a bunch of stuff you want to see that goes against the general direction of the game, and when someone suggests a way they would rather see something done (that does fit in with the way the game is envisioned), coming out and saying the above.

The above was said in response to the idea of making a global cleanse a crafted item. This is a good idea.

Will it give people that have more in game coin an advantage? yes.

Should people with more in game coin have an advantage in an MMO? Yes.

This is the point of a persistent world with an economic focus. If there is no advantage to be gained by having coin, why should the game have an economy?

maouw

I love the idea of cleanse potions being a staple consumable for fights.

but yeah, to re-iterate what Azherae said, Ashes is aiming for scissors-paper-rock when it comes to 1v1 - your class will have a hard counter. Initial idea was to balance around 8v8.

tautau

I prefer having each class quite different from all the others. In other words, very little overlap in skills and ability effect.

So the 'tank' is by far best at tanking, though a small number of other classes might do a somewhat decent job at it.

So the 'healer' is by far the best at healing, though a small number of other classes might be able to heal a bit.

....and so on. Each class should have some minor abilities that no other class can do, like Rogues climbing walls, Rangers having a long range archer skill and Summoners having undead creatures at their command.

I think that this type of setup would make class choice both important and significantly more fun.

Draxido

@Noaani " Should people with more in game coin have an advantage in an MMO? Yes. "

yes they should have an advantage but in large scale type of things like having the resources to move certain things politically, when it comes to small scale pvp money shouldn't be a factor in my opinion for this to work the game has to be supplies base like tibia, and as i said that leads to pay to win something that wants to be avoided by the company.

@maouw " Ashes is aiming for scissors-paper-rock when it comes to 1v1 - your class will have a hard counter. Initial idea was to balance around 8v8. "

balance between classes are incredibly hard to achieve as we have seen earlier in past games this normally leads to meta builds where a few conbinations are used and the rest are pretty much useless, now if im proven wrong and the aoc team manage to bring well balanced classes ofc is an amazing and admirable achievement and it is very much welcome,

i dont like the idea of classes having a hard counter tho, they said there is gonna be 60+ combinations so people can play the way they like and be relevant, if the idea is to have hard counters it would be easier to just go with the old system of having few classes, tank, healer, melee dps, and ranged dps. the less classes you have the easier it is to balance.

@tautau " Each class should have some minor abilities that no other class can do, like Rogues climbing walls, Rangers having a long range archer skill and Summoners having undead creatures at their command "

i like this this is what should differentiate classes like exploration or support kinda of skills like the ability to see secret passages, or the ability to use some kind of telekinesis skill to move objects, or maybe there could be like a negative effect in the deepest levels of the open world dungeons where you recieve more damage, or a bleeding or poison effect that only a certain healer class magic barrier can protect you from, stuff like that

Noaani

Draxido wrote: »

Noaani " Should people with more in game coin have an advantage in an MMO? Yes. "

yes they should have an advantage but in large scale type of things like having the resources to move certain things politically, when it comes to small scale pvp money shouldn't be a factor in my opinion for this to work the game has to be supplies base like tibia, and as i said that leads to pay to win something that wants to be avoided by the company.

If this is the case, that means the economy is pointless for 95% of the playerbase.

When it comes to small scale PvP, everything you have ever done in game should be a factor - the is the entire poin t of persistent world MMO's - it is what separates them from BR's, MOBA's and most FPS games. To take things like the games economy out of the equation is basically to change the genre of the game.

Further, since literally all gear in Ashes can be bought and sold with gold, the notion that there shouldn't be consumables that are useful because RMT kind of falls flat.

Intrepid don't want the game to be pay to win - but they do want the game to have a good economy. You seem to be getting these two things confused - assuming that an economy automatically means RMT.

arsnn

So contrary to most of the others i do share the general direction of @Draxido .
I dont share the opinion that his suggestions are contrary to Intrepid´s vision and here is why:

Firstly Steven shared his generall vision for ashes combat and compared it to other games.One of the comparisons he made was arche age "similar skill synergy and pace of combat of ArcheAge".
I for myself interpret this as a similar character kit set up and arche age was known for high player agency when it comes down to the broadness of utility of the class kits, similar to how @Draxido described it.

Secondly it seems like ashes is of those games where you can build your character ability kit from a plethora of choices. Let´s assume that the player get´s the choice to from a pool of 30 abilities to chose 10 , since we both know the skill bar will be limited and we have plenty of sources to get our abilities from.
Under this assumption i think it would be highly unlikely that that you dont have a decent selection of utility abilities (maybe 5 out of 30), such as cleanse, mobility and crowd controll. Now does that mean everyone will go for this kind of broad selection of utility ? I dont think so. Ashes will need to make non utility specs excell at other areas like increased damage output with abilities that have incremental scaling synergies with other abilities.

Thirdly one of the aspects that is supposed to define ashes combat is a long time to kill.
I´ll use arche age again for this as an analogy, where time to kill was about around 15 seconds and in Ashes its supposed to be around 30 seconds.
The reason why fights in this game were relatively long (in even matched fights) was not only because the generall damage output was low.
It was also due to the fact that most class kits had "answers" to circumstances your opponent put you into. The defining point in most fights was either how good you utilized your answers (like dashing away from an enemy charge) or how good you time managed those answers in order to not run out of them.
If you would not have this kind of class kit setup fights just devolve into 30 seconds slugfests that are mostly determined beforehand by which classes clash each other, without the option to escape, stall and so on.
Every fight is just plain 30 seconds of exchanging spells( Hyperbole alert)
Before i get flamed that class x just bursts class z in arche age... yes i know there is a lot of disparity.
I just try to conveig the point, that if classes have broader utility to a certain extent fights can be more engaging and drawn out.

Noaani

arsnn wrote: »

Firstly Steven shared his generall vision for ashes combat and compared it to other games.One of the comparisons he made was arche age "similar skill synergy and pace of combat of ArcheAge".
I for myself interpret this as a similar character kit set up and arche age was known for high player agency when it comes down to the broadness of utility of the class kits, similar to how Draxido described it.

I think that is a fairly poor take away from what Steven said.

When he said specifically that he wants Ashes to have the combat pace and skill synergy of Archeage, I didn't take it to mean Ashes would have the same general class kit setup, but rather, I took it to mean that Steven wants Ashes to have the same combat pace and skill synergy of Archeage.

If Steven wanted to have a similar class kit setup to Archeage, as well as a similar pace and skill synergy, I would have thought he would have said that he wants Ashes to have a similar pace of combat, skill synergy and class kit to Archeage.

However, since there was no mention of class kit setup, I think it is a very poor take to assume that he means anything at all about class kits.

To further why I think this is a poor take on that comment, Archeage is well known for being a game where any player can be any build, any role.

When you have a game where every character can be every thing, it isn't a problem to give every player the ability to have every ability - because literally every player can take literally any ability that the game has to offer.

That is not Stevens intent for Ashes. He wants characters to have fairly well defined roles. This is in direct contrast to the way Archeage sets up it's class kits - so again, that is a bad take.

Azherae

In a 2v2, all characters have one Global Cleanse each.

But both sides have at least two CC abilities each, with separate Global Cooldowns since they are different characters.

The more CC available across classes, the more you have to twist your balance to prevent the rapid defeat of any single character because there is more CC on one side than there are responses on the other.

Adding 'more situations to put the opponent into' to all classes in a GvG game forces you to add more 'answers' to those situations to individual characters.

The point is that Intrepid has indicated that if they have to choose between balancing for GvG and 1v1 they will probably do the thing that is better in GvG.

Whether any specific philosophy said by you or OP is actually against GvG balance, I won't argue on.

Jamation

While I'm not opposed to some of the ideas OP suggested, I wouldn't go so far as to have each one for every class.
If the general idea of a skill (ex: invulnerability) holds true for every class and just the flavor text is different, it's basically the same skill. I'd much rather see class uniqueness. It's always a bummer when class identities start to bleed into one another for fear of not making them perfectly balanced.

As for hard casting I didn't play mage, but I liked the development they had in place for cleric skills as well. While certain skills might have made you stand in place as you leveled them you could then cast them while running and choose different positions for those skills. I think hard casting would be fine as the default setting for some skills with the ability to choose to spec into being able to cast it while moving or whatever (like the mage has grown to understand their spells and magic better so they can cast a certain spell differently)

I'm also not opposed to Intrepid including their own unique skills. Not everything needs to stun-lock a person to death. That doesn't make for fun combat either.

Dygz

Draxido wrote: »

balance between classes are incredibly hard to achieve as we have seen earlier in past games this normally leads to meta builds where a few conbinations are used and the rest are pretty much useless, now if im proven wrong and the aoc team manage to bring well balanced classes ofc is an amazing and admirable achievement and it is very much welcome,

i dont like the idea of classes having a hard counter tho, they said there is gonna be 60+ combinations so people can play the way they like and be relevant, if the idea is to have hard counters it would be easier to just go with the old system of having few classes, tank, healer, melee dps, and ranged dps. the less classes you have the easier it is to balance.

The devs are balancing 8 Archetypes; not 64 classes.
And that is 8 Primary Archetypes for an 8-person group, rather than balancing the Primary Archetypes for 1v1 combat.

Also, keep in mind that the focus of Ashes PvP combat, by design, is objective-based PvP combat; not merely direct group v group.

Conrad

Dygz wrote: »

Draxido wrote: »

balance between classes are incredibly hard to achieve as we have seen earlier in past games this normally leads to meta builds where a few conbinations are used and the rest are pretty much useless, now if im proven wrong and the aoc team manage to bring well balanced classes ofc is an amazing and admirable achievement and it is very much welcome,

i dont like the idea of classes having a hard counter tho, they said there is gonna be 60+ combinations so people can play the way they like and be relevant, if the idea is to have hard counters it would be easier to just go with the old system of having few classes, tank, healer, melee dps, and ranged dps. the less classes you have the easier it is to balance.

The devs are balancing 8 Archetypes; not 64 classes.
And that is 8 Primary Archetypes for an 8-person group, rather than balancing the Primary Archetypes for 1v1 combat.

Also, keep in mind that the focus of Ashes PvP combat, by design, is objective-based PvP combat; not merely direct group v group.

I have high doubts it will be like that. If balancing was simple then yeah, they would just have to balance the archetypes, but it's classes that are the main source of abilities not just the archetypes.

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