Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Consider what situation you'd be in if things were reversed, as with the DPS meters for example.
If Steven had said 'no, no Stuns, we'll make do with other things', would you have an argument capable of shifting this?
The argument here is that there is no cost to removing Stun. It is not necessary for any game function.
So why risk poor balance, add a mechanic that is unfun for many or can be rapidly pushed toward that, forces builds to lose variety, etc?
If the Word of Steven was 'Stuns don't add anything to Ashes, so Ashes isn't adding Stuns', what argument can you make that they need to be added?
If your answer to this is 'well that's not the situation, so we don't have to have an argument', then that's why we're arguing with you still. Or in my case, would be, if this sort of interaction fit the definition of 'argument'.
A game needs hard (cc). Many people like stuns. It is like saying let's not make a fireball skill, we can have a different damage spell. Many people would be bummed that the classical skill isn't there.
I wonder what kind of people's fun depends so much on the presence of stuns in the game. I usually don't even play classes that cc a lot, opting for damage wherever I can. When I am stuck in stun for a second, never have I thought to myself THIS IS BORING HOW LONG DOES THIS TAKE IT IS UNFUN.
So your argument is 'I believe games need this', 'lots of people like them', 'people would be bummed out'?
The DPS Meter arguments are stronger.
I am definitely pro-stun, but I definitely want a counterplay to that - like that movement abilities can have "cleansing" upgrade to them that removes cc or a straight up cc reduction stat on gear - or even a special effect on extremely powerful gear - like in a rocky node you can get mats and a pattern that makes some kind of epic chest that reduces all cc by x%
― Plato
In your opinion, we don't need the fireball then? If the thought of that leaves you with some uncertain feeling, you should be able to understand where I am coming from. I must still say none of the arguments against stuns seem compelling to me. Try again.
I like the idea of skill upgrades with cleansing, or maybe also just some straight cleanse spell. I do not like the idea of cc reduction. Some cc is already so short that it hardly matters, and it basically hard divides gear into PVP and PVE gear. All PVP gear would need the cc reduction stat.
But even this isn't really counterplay, it generally goes even worse.
People don't 'stop trying their CC because their opponent might have a percentage CC resistance'. They do it anyway, and then the person with the 40% resistance chest piece gets a string of rolls like 87, 64, 44, 54, 48 and gets stunned 5 times, every attempted Stun succeeds (not talking about back to back stuns even)
Some complain that the game is broken. Some go 'it is how it is', some complain in direct proportion to how much losing the fight cost them, and some go 'wait why is Stun even in here?'
Movement abilities clearing Root/Bind is a given if we're arguing that Stuns are bad. But 'wearing a 50-50 negate or reduction' and calling it 'counterplay' is submitting yourself to RNG and setting up a balance situation where anyone who doesn't have that gear is seriously hurting (or the gear wasn't worth it).
if the counterplay is either active (as a result of using an ability) or passive that gets result 100% of the time then you are not subject to rng - as i see it you are the only proposing such rng based system
― Plato
To push for gear that is good for everything is the antithesis of what ashes wants to achieve with its horizontal progression
― Plato
That's my bad, I misunderstood you, and that's sort of my point, though not related to any argument you're making.
We would probably all agree that 'just giving a percentage chance to resist CC' isn't good, right? Yet there are games built almost entirely on this.
How did those games get designed that way? It's probably because that's what someone thought of, saw somewhere else, and then just went 'that's how it works usually so let's do that'.
So, sorry for assuming that is what you meant. Something that seems like 'an obvious flawed design' to one person doesn't to another, and sometimes that means they end up being discussed and make it in.
i'd rather have the system that league uses - to have tenacity that reduces the duration of all cc except knockbacks and suppressions - which is actually great for a deep talent tree skill to have immunity for dispel/reduction
― Plato
I just dislike that theres 1 most important stats in pvp. Like in ESO you gotta get impen gear to prevent basically everybody critting you all the time, not an issue in PVE. It feels bad to have such a variety of stats to pick from for your gear and instead you have to pick x on every class in pvp or get reckt. No cc reduction stat on gear pls. Just balance the skills and counter skills/cleanses.
Ashes has PvX gear.
1. I want to keep an opponent in place
2. I want to prevent an opponent from taking an offensive action
3. I want to prevent an opponent from taking a defensive action
4. I want to move an opponent away from me
5. I want to move an opponent to me
6. I want an opponent to do what I tell them to do
7. I want to be able to attack an opponent without them attacking me
8. I want to cause a player to lose some ability to effectively impact me (debuff)
I can then start combining these actions to build a catalogue of cc. Starting with @Noaani's list:
Clearly there are a number of combinations, and not even thinking about duration, types of residual debuffs (e.g. slowed 2s after root), distance of knockbacks/pulls, etc.
There are also constraints to think of as well cast time, diminishing return, cool downs, etc.
Seems like if you really want gear that resists CC, you find an Artisan who can craft CC resist gear.
And, again, we might be able to get a Passive to help with that as well.
I only hope Daze doesn't get into the game since that debuff is a huge **** in WoW. Like literally kills the fun when you get dazed. And also that shitty rogue ability that works like stun but has no counters
Hm... I'd rather have gear augments that would reduce cc instead of the gear itself. And those anti-cc augments would come with the trade-off of not having augments buffing offensive / defensive capabilities. I'd also pay attention to the co-efficient of those anti-cc augments to make them some benefit without becoming a defacto must for the meta flavor of the month (probably will happen anyway).
This will become a de facto utility calculation for nearly every content type, and it will usually be an easy calculation.
I am not supporting or opposing this, but I can tell you that it's something that people like me just calculate immediately and then worse yet, figure out 'what hole this is trying to fill'.
What I mean is, every time a game releases gear that helps resist something other than damage, and people seem happy about it, it's usually a sign that either one should stop building for that effect type (if the gear is common) or definitely start building for that effect type (if the gear is rare, so you can steamroll anyone who doesn't have it).
Shoutouts to all my 'fighting game patch notes readers'.
Jeff (i'm missing him from the monthly q&a): "Crafters will be able to 'rejigger' stat blocks; and there will be a couple of other ways to move things around to create both the look and the stat block that you're looking for. It's not always going to be easy. There will be a lot of challenges involved with that. But the goal is to give you guys the option to customize your gear the way you want them to be."
This automatically creates 2 ways of gearing - defensively for pvp and aggressively for pve - because in pve you can quite heavily rely on the trinity to work reliably, but in smaller scale pvp it isnt the case - mostly because large scale pvp kinda devolves into aoe competition that is won by the side that can aoe the other side more effectively
To spew PvX at anything without an active thought process behind it is quite frankly stupid move. You don't fight against a player that is partially npc or vice versa npc that is partly a player. The extent of what you can do is do pvp and pve at the same time.
― Plato
I believe that resistances should be based on food buffs, actually, so that's a different thing altogether in my mind.
Unfortunately, in the end, MMOs can't be balanced by shooting from the hip. Anyone with the design skill will simply 'attempt the design themselves, see where the devs made the error, and exploit it'. I don't say this because I like it, though I 'should', since I'm usually in the category for it.
MMO balance is just not a 'creative endeavour', it's a very precise number crunching game, anyone who GMs even tabletop games that aren't entirely premade can probably give you tons of examples.
tl;dr gear tuning for CC resist in any form is just a signal to exploiters. It might be a confusing signal, it might not be 'definitely this is the #1 meta all the time', but it is definitely 'giving advantage to the highly intelligent over the average player', and I don't think that's good.
Sure, you can have Artisans create a set that you use for PvE and a set that you use for PvP.
I dunno why you wouldn't care about Stuns from, say, Scalerunners in PvE but you would care about Stuns in PvP. I'm not thinking about Trinity when I'm fighting Scalerunners.
Either a Stun is fun or it's not. I would think.
In Ashes we'll be creating the gear stats we want, so shouldn't really matter particularly what gear the game provides.
Going back to this then, discarding my bias temporarily (up to you if to believe that, ofc).
Which CCs mean what, depend on what options the game gives.
Stun - Works in all systems, becomes more powerful in robust systems.
Sleep - Works in all systems, contingent on what damage or healing types wake the player. Become weaker in robust systems but can be tuned
Silence - Works in systems where channeled spells are important, doesn't change much here, a bit unbalancedly strong depending on your class
Blind - Works in most systems, highly variable depending on if it is an accuracy down effect or more than that, usually balancedly strong across classes that you'd bother to apply it to for the noted purpose
Root/Bind - Works in a few systems, variable depending on if damage types or movement abilities break it, unbalanced strong if they don't, depending on class
Snare - Almost always unbalanced by class, works in most systems, but weak enough that some don't care enough to complain about it until it starts stacking constantly, at which point there's usually a cap to how slowed you can get
Knockdown - Works in most systems, tends to be unbalanced if it can't be resisted or if it stops abilities, can be tuned for balance in games with defensive stances that you can take (i.e. still block with shield or weapon or any other defensive concept)
Interrupt - Works in systems with telegraphed abilities and high performance latency better than others, sometimes almost the same as stuns, but tuneable to be similar to knockdown
Impale - Works in all systems (whether or not it's useful isn't really the issue, unlike Blind for example where you could use an AoE ground ability and ignore its goal), same issue as Roots/Snare
Mesmerize - too complex per implementation to say
How much agency (assuming relative balance) do you want the game to have, is a big question. Games with low general player agency don't suffer as much with lots of CCs or really strong ones.
CC stopping a player from doing what they want to do, is frustrating, but in a system where you could never do much to begin with, you don't have that feeling of 'I could have dealt with this situation if I wasn't CC'ed'. It's usually more of a 'CC is part of my opponent's class' kit for interacting with my basic options'.
Also, agree with @Azherae on snares, they are often too available and are debilitating for melee v. ranged (including casters) without a reliable charge or other mobility mechanic.
Yep this sums up your pve knowledge - which is solo leveling
holy trinity in pve delegates eating most cc with the tank role where dps are trying to avoid being focused by the npcs and same supports with healers. The trinity works in pvp as well - however not to that scale, because you can't just press "taunt" on a player to secure it focuses you so it becomes more nuanced and dps, support and healing classes need to have their own protective stats
I never said it is black and white that you never care about defensives in pve, but you sure value stats differently in pure pvp and in pure pve and for sure differently in pve where you expect pvp to happen
you can say that this is "toxic" minmax, but some players want to equip their characters in the best way for the content they are going to do
― Plato
To me (bias back on) the ideal is that when CC hits you, you grumble and go 'fine! I'll do this instead', or 'damn, my counter to that was used for something else!' as you realize you have been 'outplayed'.
But I can agree that in a game where you have only 'use abilities and swing weapon', pretty much any CC doesn't have a 'fine, I'll do this instead' reaction to go with it except whatever item you use to cleanse CC. And since I am not familiar, people would have to tell me if those normally work through Stuns and Interrupts.
One thing I do have a 'problem' with, Mathematically, is that if standard '1v1'-ish TTK is 30-60 seconds, and a 1 second stun is allowed, in a game where that math relies on defensive skills or healing, it will be a problem.
Because 2v1 and 3v1 change the TTK to 10-20 seconds, and for at least some classes, even getting to that long means they had to use a defensive ability, usually on reaction. If you Stun, Interrupt, or Silence the defensive ability, then TTK should drop to 6-12 seconds, and the less time teammates have to figure out how to save you if you get focused down (after all this could be a 3v3 but something goes wrong), the faster balance gets torn up. Of course, fully accept that you could balance this by having the other side just 'stun someone' to prevent the death.
If this is acceptable to people as an enjoyable experience, then that's fine. It works pretty well in the favor of my group and other skilled players in Sieges.
I'm just still opposed to mechanics that rapidly accelerate the process of 'average players getting deleted', because opponents who can't fight back are boring, and because I'm a carebear.
The complaint appears to be that Stun is boring because it completely takes away player agency.
I'm trying to understand how PvE or Trinity changes any of that... And I don't think you have answered that.
Tank can't completely prevent someone from being Stunned. There should be more than just one mob in a group battle...at some point.
I also don't know how you ensure that you don't encounter PvP when you are geared for PvE.
I only hope Daze doesn't get into the game since that debuff is a huge asshole in WoW. Like literally kills the fun when you get dazed. And also that shitty rogue ability that works like stun but has no counters. Oh yeah Sap! That piece of shit lol
You literally disagree here with me that ashes will have specialised gear for what you want and that was my previous reaction to a post that said that pvp stats are boring
Like of course when you talk about a subject you drift to subjects that are closely related to that to go through different viewpoints of the original subject
And you are talking about absolutes that you cannot create pure pve gear set, because there is a possibility of pvp - which is a total nonsense
― Plato