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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.
Comments
Also we need skillshots and not auto homing projectiles/cc
Something like
Fireball
LvL 1: (TAB Projectile) Cast a Fireball to target and deal dot dmg for x seconds
LvL 2: (Skillshot Projectile) Increased Fireball dmg /and dot duration
LvL 3: (Skillshot Projectile) Fireball explodes dealing dmg and applying dot to enemies around the area
Counterspell
LvL 1: (Instant Tab Ability) Interrupts your targets current spell
LvL 2: (Hitscan Skillshot) Silence your target for X seconds making them unable to cast
LvL 3: (Hitscan Skillshot) Increase Silence duration
Frostbolt
LvL 1: (TAB Projectile) Cast a Frostbolt to target Slowing them by x amount
LvL 2: (Skillshot Projectile) Frostbolt now Roots the target, making them unable to move
LvL 3: (Skillshot Projectile) Frostbolt now Freezes the target, stunning them for X seconds
Dunno if the Z action cam switch is gonna stay but would be interesting if we had abilities like that and action mode gave +1 point to abilities as passive. Idk how i feel about the hybrid system
maybe theorycrafting what you say logically makes sense but it just wont ever play out like that. You are never gona be able to get disable modifiers so high compared to people offensive disable modifiers that you wont need cc breaks and can put skills elsewhere.
your point about the armour, if you can craft your own stats on armour within certain parameters would still play out the same as being able to able to craft 20 different armours of pre-determined stats which cover all the same stats as the customizable ones. I doubt they are going to just let you have whatever you want to you just go all in one stats for example. Otherwise that seems like a horrible system to me
you are correct I don't understand can you please explain. From what you said above your problem is still with there being any hard CC in the game will be a boring meta/builds which I stated before still seems to be about whether hard CC is in the game.
It may be that you would rather have abilities other than CC breaks, or perhaps you are expecting to only really ever be in PvP combat while out with your guild, where you may have others that will cleanse CC's off you. This would mean that CC breaks may just not be worth taking in your build, but you may still want some degree of protection against them - even if RNG based - for if those players are not available. Why would it be a horrible system to allow players customization of their stats?
If the game were the kind of game where you only wanted one or two stats - such as WoW or ESO - then yeah, it would be pointless.
On the other hand, if the game gave all players a real benefit from all stats, why would it be a bad thing to allow players to decide what they want?
Quite honestly, you seem to be wanting everything just broken down in to it's simplest form.
I'm just realistic. You can go further than other MMORPGs is some aspects but you can't do whatever you like without creating massive imbalances in the game. i.e. just putting all your stats and becoming a literal one shot glass cannon. It's not what I'm saying is simplest form , I would say you want whatever possible customisations you want whilst the game having good balance, good feeling gameplay, just isn't possible.
Also with CC counter plays like dodging, blinking, ally CC breaks, shielding, healing I dont see why you need to add RnG CC. As I stated before why RnG a spell effect? If it's for hard CC why it not for other spell effects? doesn't make much sense to put in.
RNG is going to be in everything, not just hard CC.
Stacking one stat is not a hard thing to balance. One fairly easy way to do it is with some tinkering with diminishing returns. It isn't the only way, but it is easily understood by most MMO players.
Most games have resistance stats against various types of magic.
These resistances in some games just reduce the damage that the type of magic in question does, but in some games it also offers a change to outright resist the spell. Some games even have different stats for these two effects, with one functioning as a spell version of physical damages mitigation/armor, and the other acting as an avoidance analogue.
Every single ability in a game should be subject to some form of RNG, and every form of RNG should be able to have it's outcome affected by player choice.
I assume you are also staunchly against the concept of avoidance.
like evasion? It can be ok, but probably better to not but I don't think it's as bad as going for a CC move and it not having any effect. keeping the RnG more to damage/healing/incoming damage makes more sense to me.
The way I see it you want RnG within a certain range otherwise it becomes too much luck based and feels bad. However some RnG and luck can be good so the small guy occasionally takes down the bigger foe but just super pot luck isn't great.
So, you're fine with things you are not relying on being resisted.
Don't rely so heavily on your CC, problem solved.
ofc lets not rely on our spells and effects lets just autohit each other and hope I crit more. Your logic makes no sense...
What you are suggesting is not my logic, so of course it makes no sense.
If you rely on any one spell or ability, expect to lose. it doesn't matter if that spell or ability is a backstab, a nuke, a heal or a CC.
You can rely on your entire build - if you build it well. But that is only because if you create a good build, you are not reliant on any one ability - not even a CC.
Saying not relying on using your abilities is just the most nonsense statement I have ever heard. It doesn't matter about if it's 1 ability or 10, if you cast it you expect it to cast. Imagine RnGing if heals get cast, even you would admit that's ridiculous. Same applies. I'm out of this pointless discussion.
I said don't rely on a single ability.
I mean, you are CLEARLY not willing to play the game in front of you. If the game in front of you has RNG aspects, play those RNG aspects. Don't play the game as if it doesn't have them.
Playing the game in a way where you are reliant on an individual ability always landing is not how you play a game with RNG aspects.
It really is that simple.
In Ragnarok Online, there is a status system for your character, everytime you level up you gain status points you can assign to one of 6 stats; Strength, Intelligence, Vitality, Dexterity, Agility and Luk.
When you level up any of those stats you gain different things, for example; Increasing your agility you gain Attack Speed, Flee rate and other stuff, the same for the other 5 stats, and between those benefits you also earn CC resistances. Leveling up your Vitality to 100 gives stun inmunity, leveling your Luk to 100 gives you Freeze inmunity and so. Depending the amount of one stat you has, you get a % resistance for the CC linked to that stat, but the good thing about this, is that you didn't only gain % resistance alone, because along to this percent you also reduce the time of the CC applying to you, so let's say you has 99 VIT, you has a 1% chance of getting stuned, but even if you get stuned, the duration of that stun was so little that you didn't even notice. Of course you can't get all the stats maxed, and that's the interesting part, you can make your build so unique that you can even choose the resistances to different CCs in chance AND time, anyways that's for other topic.
What i wanted to tell with this large explanation is that making the CC resistance % directly proportional with the amount of time you got CCed is great, because if you don't, there is always the posiility of getting 99% resistance to a stun and being stunned for 3 seconds anyways, this only makes you say: "Oh f***ng game how am i so unlucky?" and rage.
So i think that probabilities on CCs are good as long as you can manipulate them in form of time and chance in your builld.
My pvp roots come from Neverwinter nights pvp servers, and I had an absolute blast in that game. But wait, wasn't NWN an RNG nightmare? Why am I against RNG now if it was so fun? Let me give a brief rundown on the game:
In summary, Neverwinter nights emulated DnD 3.0 ruleset, so nearly all actions and thus most forms of CC had at minimum a fail chance of 5% and at maximum a success chance of 95%. The reason the game was incredibly fun was how flexibly you could build and itemize your character to fine tune your character to get an edge over the "meta".
For example, Storm of Vengeance is a huge persistent AoE that stuns everyone in it who fail a reflex saving throw every 6 seconds for... 12 seconds. Basically, if somebody brought a cleric who could cast a high difficulty class SoV, you had three options:
- You give up something else to have enough reflex save to reliably make the checks.
- You rely on your mechanical skill to stay outside of the spell and keep up immunities with scrolls and potions while fighting in it.
- You make a build that is completely immune to the stun altogether via some combination of classes.
All of these were fun, except option 1 has a problem with it. The word reliably. You could do everything right: You could have enough reflex save to only fail 5% of the time, while also keeping up stun immunity through clarity potions. Still, countless of times, even the best players would get dispelled just before a saving throw is made and they'd roll a 1. Happy 12 seconds of standing still, you've truly earned it.On the attacking side, there is no worse feeling than having Captain Negative Saves charge at you while no-selling multiple 95% stun spells that his build is supposed to be weak to. And even when you luck out and CC someone who should have been safe, the victory doesn't feel earned.
In retrospect, Neverwinter nights would have been just as fun with just as many build options if CC's with over 30% chance of success would have been guaranteed, and anything below would have always failed. Instead of building for chance, people would have built around breakpoints to counter specific spells and builds. Engagements would have played just about the same, with vulnerable people playing safe and high saves people relying on their stats.
Also, while there were certain places where the RNG was functional (knockdown, though some might disagree) or a balancing factor (dev crit, implosion, though many would disagree), these cases could have been replaced by some other deterministic mechanism without ruining the rest of the game.
Basically, after trying out GW2 pvp, I see no reason for a modern game to rely on RNG as a crutch to diversify outcomes. Status resistance (I sort of like what @Kyonsupp said about building stats against specific CC types), stun breaks, evasion skills and avoidance by positioning all give the player more agency over the outcome. Leaving outcomes up to chance is useful for dramatic moments in poker or DnD, but can feel like stubbing your toe in a fast paced game.
Thanks for reading, I hope I could convey my experiences properly.
I see no reason to miss an attack (especially with action combat) unless a dodge or a blind of sorts was used.
Interesting. I see the % damage as being more of a glancing blow. I think it's a good and complex mechanic to implement, but it's different than a miss. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for an attack to miss (and tying to to the OP, for a CC to miss as well), that's just the nature of combat. Even those very good with a sword don't land all of their attacks. RNG abstractly accounts for all of the environmental factors that aren't going to be represented directly as a calculation.
All of that said, I think there should be ways to mitigate that RNG (never to 0% btw) on both sides of the line (i.e. the attacker has 'to hit' / the defender has 'evasion').
Miss chances and stuff make more sense in games like pokemon or a text based roguelike/MUD, where you are telling your character (or your enslaved animal) to do an action. If there was no chance involved, the game loses the suspense of "oh will Mr. Burnsley hit the flame breath attack!?" and everything just feels like a cold calculation. In this case the rng is sort of needed to simulate a real fight happening under the command you gave.
In a more fluid game that offers more freedom on just not what I want my character to do, but also how they do it, miss chances feel a lot less like a simulation but more like just being cheated. If I'm at the right range to land a blow and I do it at the right time, and I don't hit because the game says so, it's not a good feeling for me. Imagine Link just randomly missing when fighting Ganondorf, or Simon's whip missing a skeleton in Castlevania 4. These games give you so much control that the character's struggle is your struggle, and there is no need for additional simulation.
You could argue that tab targetting is far enough away from full control that miss chance is fitting there, but in my personal experience missing a kill shot when you played everything right just feels awful. And especially when it comes to action combat, I feel like my character should hit when I hit something, not vice versa.
Good thoughts in any case, my dude.
If the dodge, parry or absorb are just chance based passive attributes, they fall into the "being cheated out of a hit" category in my opinion.
Fighting games are entirely PvP from the ground up and have been optimized over the lifetime of the genre to have as fair and engaging PvP as possible.
To ever have an argument about what's fair in PvP, you literally have to look no further than the genre that has already hashed out and tried and tested these arguments.
All successful fighters have as little RNG as they can possibly get away with. The ONLY exceptions are things like Faust's random item mechanic where there is ample time to react or things that have a chance to harm the user instead.
If you're arguing FOR RNG, you're actively arguing against good, balanced and fair PvP, which is fine if you have other reasons like "immersion" or something, but don't claim "RNG makes PvP better because of adaptability" or anything. The Smash Melee community a decade ago banned items because the "adaptability" argument is just ridiculous.
You know what fighting game had RNG and is notorious for being bad because of it?
Smash Bros Brawl.
Your character could randomly trip.
Imagine making an amazing comeback, and as you are about to win against all odds, you suddenly roll the dice badly and your character decides to fall on the ground, and you get killed because of it.
That is in no way good PvP.
Imagine arguing that your ability you fired and committed an action to should have a chance to not have any effect and thinking that's a good argument.
That shit would never fly in the fighting game community.
Valid, so let's just take that perspective as correct. However, this isn't a fighting game, and we (the AoC community) are not that community. There may be folks from that community in this game, but there is still a context change. This is pvp within the context of a MMORPG.
Hence the conversation.
I agree with this in the absence of any means for players to increase their hit chance.
When players do have that means though, this "being cheated" then becomes simply a need for better gear, or a change of build to increase your chance to hit.