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
If you had any faith in your suggestion, you would have bought it up in discussion with me by now.
Yikes.
In my original conversation in page 2 with Rae, I talk about giving CCs wind-up animations and then giving defender a way to actively resist these CCs with a defensive as one approach. I talk about this a little further with JamesSunderland on page 3.
I've also consistently referenced how WoW scrapped %miss for %reduced duration for CCs. The Hardiness orc racial from 2006 used to read "Chance to resist Stun effects increased by an additional 25%.", but that was eventually changed to "Duration of Stun effects reduced by an additional 20%" in retail wow. Admittedly, this doesn't accomplish everything that RNG CC does. Namely, it lacks underdog factor. You and I talked about different ways that different games implement underdog factor at length.
You haven't engaged with any of the math that I did a few posts up about how with ~1% chance to miss CC's, and if CC's aren't suppose to be deciding matches anyway, then they're probably not producing much underdog factor in the first place, so regardless, the devs are going to have to figure out where else the underdog factor is coming from. Once they figure that out, they can just turn that knob a bit more. It's not like all of the underdog factor in the game is coming from the RNG associated to CC's.
Likewise, CC breaks are something that should simply exist as well.
Casting animations, CC breaks and counters are a given, and do not perform the same task that RNG does on CC's. I'm not sure why you would bring these up here, or why you would assume they may not be present in the game (you would have to assume they wouldn't be present in order to point to them as an alternative to RNG on CC's).
WoW still isn't a good game to bring in to this discussion - I've said that so many times and yet you keep bringing it in.
And even if we did think Blizzard developers were anything other than trash (we do not think they are anything other than trash, generally speaking), you even say that it doesn't accomplish everything.
In fact, I don't think you could list everything that an opposed roll on CC's would do for an MMO. Prove me wrong.
I haven't engaged with it because it is pointless.
It is assuming a single flat miss chance, which would be horrid game design. Why would I engage with a made up scenario that you have devised in order to attempt to prove a point that you can't prove without fabricating scenarios?
This is also my issue with the poster in question.
Aren't we all sinners?
Because it's not resolvable. People state opinions as facts, then when proven wrong, state that the other's position is just an opinion.
It comes down to there being completely opposing opinions about whether rng should be involved in hard CCs. Those opinions are not likely to change no matter how many examples or logic is thrown at it about which system is better. So it's essentially a waste of time to argue details about it.
Is this a gotcha somehow?
When two characters start fighting, the miss chance is flat, right? Like, they're not changing their build / gear mid combat. So maybe for two particular combatants, it's 1/100. Maybe for two other ones it's 1/85. Pick whatever number you think is reasonable for whatever situation you'd like to analyze for a base case and I'll run some numbers. I'm just trying to figure out what's in your head.
As for why you haven't engaged with it, that's the point of conversation, right? If you think I'm going down the wrong track and you ignore it, we don't get anywhere. But if you ask me to elaborate or ask me what I mean then I can expand and we can reach an understanding.
As for "fabricating scenarios", the game isn't finished, all we have is discussing design. You're imagining a design where players can put points in "accuracy" and "dodge" right? After those points have been allocated, there's a miss%. If one player has tons of accuracy and the other player has no dodge, the miss% will be low. If one player has no accuracy and the other player has tons of dodge, the miss% will be high. I'm following your mental model so far, right?
I'm not asking for you to commit to designing the game or anything, and I'm not trying to create a trap or criticize your numbers. I'm just trying to figure out what you're imagining when you talk about the game in your head.
We also know the TTK will be ~30-60 seconds. How many CC's do you think will be used by each player in this time? Ballpark.
Once we know miss%, TTK and how many CC's we can use in that time, we can estimate how often we expect to see CC's get resisted in fights. That should give us an indication of how impactful all of this variance is.
In Vanilla WoW the Orc Ratial Trait was overpowered in PvP which is why it was changed in Retail. The alliance racials were better suited to PvE while the Horde was better suited to PvP.
You can keep repeating that the change was a good change, it was only a good change because the WoW devs messed up the balance in the first instance. If the racials were balanced then I would always take Miss Chance over Duration deduction because being locked in any CC is not my preferred playstyle. Furthermore, I would still prefer an interrupt, a silence and a trinket so I have more control on whether I want to block a CC, accept a CC or break out of a CC.
Edit: Spelling Mistakes
Yeah it is most likely not resolvable, but i still don't think: "it's essentially a waste of time to argue details about it." because in the end, no matter what, Intrepid will ultimately have to choose between the 2 systems, unless Steven have already decided it or if they go for a mid-term with both RNG and Non-RNG Hard CCs balancing then through other variables.
This last option would either appease the majority or make the majority mad and would probably require a official poll.
Aren't we all sinners?
My position comes down to "I think that I would enjoy playing the game more if my CC's didn't have a chance to fail". Total subjective preference, and I fully respect other folks subjective preference of wanting to play with a random miss%. As long as the conversation stays there, there's not a lot to write about, actually. Certainly not enough to fill 33+ forum pages.
Where I get willing to argue is when we start talking about whether or not it's necessary to include RNG CC in order to get game balance right, in order for the game to definitionally qualify as a MMORPG (what?), or in order for worse players to have a shot at winning.
Those are all things that I think should be resolvable, so it's frustrating that it hasn't happened yet.
edit: to be clear, I think I have resolved them, and Noaani is just incredibly stubborn.
I'm fine with this, and it makes for a way better system than rng CCs imo. I would also prefer abilities as well that give stun armor, which can either replace the trinkets or be used along with them.
Just because it's easy to fabricate scenarios you won't like doesn't mean you won't be OK with actual system.
RNG are an integral part of RPGs. That's why Ashes combat will always have RNG.
Because Steven wants to put the RPG back into MMORPG.
Doesn't matter whether you want to try to change the fundamental rules of RPG design simply because you prefer player twitch skills over RNG. Or because you think player twitch skills should win over character builds for hard ccs.
There's nothing to argue.
You wish things were different... but they aren't.
Say that one day Steven decides on a whim to take miss% out of CC's. Does ashes cease to be a MMORPG? You might be tempted to say "they won't", but just humor me.
If you want to claim, like Crow eventually did, that MMORPGs without RNG on CC's are subjectively worse RPGs (but still RPGs), in exactly the same way that baseball leagues with designated hitters are subjectively worse baseball leagues but still baseball leagues, then I won't even touch that. I think that's a perfectly reasonable stance!
If you want to claim otherwise, I'd love to hear about it.
I'm still technically waiting on your opinion irt a proposed 'meet in the middle' btw. It got buried in the meanwhile so I'll just repaste it here.
Sorry, i might have not paid attention to it because it was a reply to Crow and not me.
It seems like a viable middle of the road possibility, even tho i've never seem implementation of such system i believe the first "partial fail" design mentioned would certainly work and be a viable option, removing the RNG of deciding a total fail or total success but deciding the possible duration of the CC.
Btw do you believe the partial fail duration reduction should be static or have a range?
(Example: minimun duration 20%-25% of the total CC time, maximun duration 80%-75% of the total CC time and the numbers in between).
I'm less favorable of the second "partial fail" design as it seems less logical and kind of a counter intuitive mechanic that would require:
I can understand the logic of a root CC becoming a slow CC because of a buff explicitly saying it,
but a stun becoming a root? A stun becoming a Silence/disarm? What would a knockdown/knockback become? What would a Sleep become? Just doesn't make a lot of sense for me.
Aren't we all sinners?
😩😩😩😩 I'm not trying to ''wiggle out with that quote''.... I knew some forum people had difficulties understanding but damn..That was Steven's direct reply to my question ''why do some abilities in alpha feel like hard CCs despite being tab targeted''. They are there purely for testing purposes. CCs are not finalized by any means.
What you wrote is that the Alpha One did not have hard CCs. It did.
Steven's quote doesn't change that. Steven's quote just says why there were hard CCs in Alpha One.
That's it.
Both buffs and debuffs to hit chance or miss chance seem to me to be perfectly valid things to add to a game to increase depth.
Which, incidentally, is the same reason chance to hit and reduction to duration can both exist at the same time.
Yeah, I hear that. Buf if he did, would it stop being a MMORPG?
Sure. In the absence of those complicating factors, what sort of numbers are you envisioning for the bullet points I laid out?
Anywhere from 10% hit rate to 100% hit rate.
I'm not willing to put numbers like that on anything because there are also factors like how easy it is to get CC breaks, how much reduction is possible to CC's via various means, how long CC's are in general, what kind of system is in place to prevent CC locking, etc.
None of these factors are really able to be discussed or considered in isolation, and so I am not willing to consider them in isolation.
Static vs range is a question of complexity and how much you want to tune things. They are both valid, but the range would shift a lot more people towards using a build guide because the more things seem less straightforward the more less confident or intelligent people are going to feel like doing the work themselves. On the flip side it'd let you allow for more chaos and unpredictability.
As for your point about softening it sounds more abstract and less sensible when you don't have a more concrete and thematic example to work with. E.g. A thunderspark based stun could easily soften to a paralysis and feel natural. A large swinging overhead that knocks you into the ground literally planting you into it can naturally soften into a root if animated a certain way. A heavy blow to the head causing your skull to rattle is a little more abstract to convert to silence or ability lock but not /that/ farfetched. A knockdown could easily shift into a tumbling knockback (I don't really consider knockbacks hard cc as you have control over your characters abilities and direction usually otherwise its a stun by another name.) Sleep is already a pretty soft hard cc so shortening it directly is the only necessary thing there. I guess a knockback or sleep could soften into blind if the move involves sand in your face. It's really dependent on thematics and animation, but the concepts could be pretty easily steered that way if they designed moves with it in mind.
To your tooltip point.... Yeah? That's pretty normal in MMOs isn't it? You would need to include the softening concept in some form of tutorial though yes.
I would certainly favor Range over Static, because it would be an extra balancing tool, but mostly just as matter of preference for more chaos and unpredictability.
Amazing explanation about the second "partial fail" design! Even tho i would still favor the first "partial fail" design, now it makes much more sense for me on how it would work! And yeah it would certainly require it's own tutorial to expose the system out for players due to how original and different from other games it is.
Now this was definitely an evolution to the thread in general as those 2 "partial fail" design gives blurring lines and are an addition of possibilities to the binary RNG vs Non-RNG Hard-CC conflict.
Aren't we all sinners?
But we did not, and I sense a level of stubbornness that renders further discussion here pointless.
Therefore, here's something else to talk about. There are two aspects of this discussion that I think are worth considering: