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.
Comments
I do not agree that open world content that *could* be subject to PvP interference by other groups automatically = not good PvE content. That's just insane. It will be good PvE content, presumably, that *happens* to be open world. If another party decides to gank you and finish off what you were killing, oh well. That doesn't mean what you were doing would be bad if they didn't try to kill you. Same for raids. Sure it's possible to be a total ass and try to sabotage a raid but that doesn't change that the raid is going to be designed to be fun without that.
Where do you get the idea that Ashes isn't focused on having good raids? Is this because "they have open world PvP, therefor they don't care about serious PvE content"?? I don't think you're correct.
Both of those ideas sound flippin cool.
You'd have to define 'fun'. For some people fun is coordination over a long period. For others it is 'reacting on a razor's edge to a specific dangerous thing happening and then going back to the DPS check'.
"When the turret is not strong enough, add landmines."
Kind of an old design philosophy, but it does result in the experience described.
Instanced raid content is tight, that is the appeal to it. One wrong move and the encounter is over.
This is simply not possible to have in a game where other players are trying to kill you.
I have no doubt that Ashes will have raids, and I have no doubt that they will be a type of fun to kill while others are trying to kill you/it at the same time.
However, that is not the same thing as a top end raid content. The challenge is coming from a completely different thing.
They are totally different content types - and to say one can replace the other is simply not accurate. One of the key things any developer of a game will want to do if they intend on having a good raid game, is make sure there is enough content to support at least two dozen raid guilds per server - some high end, some low end, some in the middle.
In order to stay together, a raid guild really needs to be killing at least 10 - 12 raid bosses a week. Any less than that and there is simply no real point in carrying on. Some guilds are content with fewer than this, but honestly, not many. Most are after more like 20 - 25 - but I'll stick to 10.
So, if you want 10 raid bosses per guild, and you want to support 24 raid guilds, that means you need 240 raid mob spawns.
Now, Intrepid have made it fairly clear they want the action to happen in a prime time window. Even though this window has not been defined, we can assume it will be 6 hours long at the most, so those 240 raid boss spawns need to happen in that 6 hour window.
With 12 or so raid bosses existing on each server at a time (due to the node system, as per Steven), that means each of those bosses need to spawn at least twice a day during that 6 hour window in order to just make the numbers work. These encounters should be spawning once a week, just in case you are unaware.
Then you need to look at things like content blocking, which will absolutely be a thing in Ashes regardless.
All of a sudden you have a game that straight up can't support more than a small handful of guilds wanting to take on raid content. If the game can't support enough guilds participating in raid content by the games very design, why would that game attempt to focus on that raid content that it isn't capable of supporting?
What is going to happen in Ashes is exactly the same as what has happened in every other MMO with open world PvP that has had open world raid content. There are a good number of examples out there.
Rather than asking me why I think Ashes is just going to be the same as every other game that has tried this, I'd like to hear your reasoning for thinking Ashes is going to be any different to the other games that have attempted this.
(yes I read you are fine with 10, but that 20-25 raid bosses is sticking with me. Are you talking about all of the bosses within a raid or 20-25 actual raid environments?)
Total boss encounters, environment isn't that important.
This is my observation over a number of different games.
Guilds wanting 20+ are usually guilds with a population that is several times larger than the raid size, and so they need more raid encounters to keep all members in the guild content. Such guilds often settle for previous content cycle encounters for a portion of this, but that is still eventually going to be an issue that Intrepid would need to account for if they were attempting to capture the raiding crowd - or to generate a new one for Ashes.
It'd be easy to build 20-25 encounters into Ashes at launch just with what they have now. The concept is 'top end raid', which is a bit more difficult because those require more testing and tuning. You could just mostly not, though, and trust the class design. Players always find a way. As long as the bosses aren't completely broken, they usually enjoy doing it, too.
Verra is a 'forsaken' world. That means powerful dark and/or territorial things have crawled into the recesses and corners. The question is moreso 'can we manage to continue making interesting Hazard Zone bosses'. Can't say there, their 'adaptive content' model will be the deciding factor in that. The base requirements are easily there though. Monsters that could reasonably have more than one similar instance so that everyone doesn't have to live in the same place, and a restricted number of class abilities and core concepts to balance around directly.
Spider, Animated Armor, Turtle, Gryphon, 'Terrorbird', Golem, Golem, Dragon, Dragon, Dragon, Troll, Warbeast, Ancient, Ancient, Ancient, Lich, Brood Queen, Gorilla Thing, Flangler 'Nest', Giant Macaw (sure why not), Ent, Warlord, Giant Scorpion, Immortal Shaman, Enchanted Raptor Pack Leader, and of course Giant Enemy Crab.
And those are just the ones with obvious conversions to 'Hazard Zone', with the 'hardest' being the Gorilla (I'll look up that creature's proper name later) and Troll.
But @Cypher, the point must be taken that as of now, the data we have is...
There will be between 12 to 15 raid bosses in the world.[7]
Maybe that means 'at launch'. But it's still true to say that 'raid guilds' are unlikely to find a serious home in Ashes as raid focused guilds unless something changes.
This isn't related to the difficulty or interest of any single piece of PvE content, nor the idea that hard/engaging PvPvE encounters are hard to design (they're not, anyone can learn to do it, coding and tuning it is where professional experience matters).
But in a huge world, even with Dungeon and World bosses popping up, 12-15 Raid Bosses spread out over the world is not likely to lead to 'raiding being a thing that people jump into Ashes for and stick to doing'. So the concept of 'there will be good raids, and difficult raids' must be separated from 'there will be enough raids for a guild to function primarily as a raid guild comfortably'. And PvPvE options increase the strain on that front.
If all one cares about is 'the quality of a single combat instance', there's definitely ways to do it without working too hard, though, so there's no reason to assume it won't be done.
I’ve definitely played “high-end raids” but maybe not in the games you’re referring to.
I think, unless I missed it, you’ve also disregarded other comments about how a raid can still be closed off even if it’s not instanced which for all we know is a plan for some, to have variety. In fact the official comment is there will be an 80/20 split for open world and instanced content.
Your raid math is also flawed for two reasons. 1- you’re assuming raid bosses will only be doable once per day. I’ve read no such thing, so until then my assumption is a 1 hour respawn timer. World bosses probably longer though. 2- the prime time window is for node seiges, not raids.
Also, fun fact I just read: there will be 12-15 raids in the world. And then world bosses on top of that.
Even more fun facts:
Raids contain intricate combat mechanics.[10]
Multiple phase boss fights.
Adds.
Random oriented skill usage.
Telegraphed animations, but no obvious telegraphed templates on the ground.
Fights will require location, mobility and strategy.
That last section is more for everyone than just toward you, since we’ve been talking about wishes for intricacy in boss fights. Time will tell how deep they can take it though.
The way this topic shifted is more about the amount of bosses/encounters available at any given time that would cause limits in how many bleeding edge raiders would be interested in the game. Coming from that perspective I can definitely understand the points of view, and it almost deserves another topic to cover.
From the perspective of just the bosses/encounters themselves tho, I see no reason they can’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t make them interesting and be more complex than just tank, spank, and move to the left sometimes.
I also think it’s worth noting the lens Intrepid views the term raid boss through as well, since their version of raid encounters are more like world or node events/bosses, and I think dungeons fit the typical raid formula more where they can use their dynamic AI to adjust dungeon runs based off of various metrics like group size, since loot tables will be locked behind different aspects of the dynamic AI.
This was already seen somewhat in place in Alpha where @Keybind Gaming was soloing the ice dragon but was not seeing specific drops that were seen when it was done with a larger group. Whether that loot table was different based off of the time taken(what I assume), group size, dps check, whatever we won’t know unless they told us, but the basic frame work is there. I also am not sure if he ever got the specific loot he was talking about to drop solo so I could be misrepresenting this example.
During my discussion on this thread that was more the perspective I was looking at it through as well, but after taking a step back I can definitely see why just looking at what they consider “raids”, it would not fit with the usual bleeding edge raid guild frame of mind.
Which brings us back to 'mechanics', particularly 'Hybrid Combat'.
If I give you a giant Queen Spider to deal with, as a Mage, you have certain Action Combat related tasks and certain Tab Target related ones.
Action Combat use of Fireball to burn your allies out of webbing traps or remove them. Ground Target use of Black Hole and/or Meteor Swarm to gather up Adds or pull the Queen Spider down if she starts to climb a wall or just lift herself on silk. Run around to Prismatic Beam her face for one reason or another. Use your combos or just running with your preferred weapon on her feet as you pass, cleaving through any adds that are in your way for a little extra damage.
When the 'time trigger' for 'needing to do one of those things' isn't up, you can Tab Target through adds and blast them, or you can do Action styled attacks on them. There isn't a requirement for much here, you'd have to clarify what more you want. Spiders can probably leap, they can 'shoot' webbing at you. You could dodge the first, sometimes get lucky or be very attentive and dodge the second too.
But for bosses or raids to work, the idea would be that you can't 'expect your Action Combat evasion skills to save you from most of what is happening'.
The more that people talk about the matter, though, the more I suspect that the general populace doesn't care about this part, and just either want to be able to move at all, or just like 'being able to aim with a reticle or to attack in front of them'. If you make the expectation 'most people will take damage', add Intrepid's concept of 'only a small percentage of players can do certain content', and finally add the 'you will be expected to do some Action and some Tab', there's no problem.
Optimally I feel you should assume that people won't care about if Action stuff is added, as long as the game isn't tuned to the levels of damage that challenging Action Combat games normally have. And if people aren't likely to care about it, Intrepid has no reason not to follow through on their Hybrid Combat.
I really like the design ideas in your spider queen example.
I'm not sure if there's anyone currently still 'opposing Action Combat elements because of the movement requirements or design type', but if there are, it's probably important when talking to people, to clarify that. 'Action Combat' has a specific implication in lots of people's minds of 'dashing around madly and dodging most things' just as Tab Target has the implication of 'standing there doing your rotation'.
For any Hybrid to get past the obstacle of people's initial perceptions, at least in the planning stage, we'd have to move beyond 'talking about those aspects of it' as quickly as possible.
This thread seems to be past it now, though, so we can talk about things like blocking and hurtboxes.
One thing Monster Hunter does with its hurtboxes that I don't see any indication that Vindictus does, is the concept of 'weakpoint damage'. Example, slashing damage does more to a creature's tail, blunt damage normally does more damage to horns, head, or sometimes legs/claws. We know Ashes intends to have these damage types, so we can hope that they'll be applied to hurtboxes or specific adds.
I can't necessarily extrapolate from Vindictus' skills, if this is a thing in that game or not. Does it matter there?
Most games I have played that have single group bosses have them respawn every 4 or so hours, with sub-boss encounters at the group level being set to hourly respawns (the kind of "group" sub-boss that is killed by an individual player).
What reasoning or experience has led you to assume a 1 hour respawn for a raid level boss that is likely to take several hours to kill?
Honestly, this assumption intrigues me, as it goes against every game I have ever played - or indeed heard others talk about - that has open world raid content.
With those encounters, my assumption is going to be weekly spawn timers (hopefully with enough variation as to make it competitive).
That means if my guild kills 6 of them a week, and your guild kills six of them a week (which is not really enough for either of our guilds), then there are none left for Cypher and his guild, or for any other guilds that may want to raid.
Not only that, but now your guild and my guild have better equipment, which means next week when those mobs spawn, if Cyphers guild or any other guilds want to try and contest those encounters, they will have a harder time, because we already know what to do to kill them, and we have better gear than they have. So, we are likely to win again, and again, and again.
In this situation, if we assume Cyphers guild wants to raid, how long would it be before they either disband, change the focus of the guild, or simply go to a different game? I mean, you can't hold together a guild wanting to raid without killing some raid encounters.
Would you still develop encounters for those bleeding edge raiders?
On the other hand, if the game is going to have bleeding edge raid content, it should target bleeding edge raiders.
You can't really have one without the other.
You don't release a boss like Kil’Jaeden (either release of it) without fostering bleeding edge raiding in your game. This content isn't appealing to top end raiders in the context of Ashes, and I have doubts it will even work.
If you have an open dungeon full of raid level encounters, how are you going to dynamically alter any aspect of any specific encounter based on how any specific raid that may be in the dungeon has done, and expect to get it right? If you do get it right, how does that work when two raids start taking on one raid encounter?
This is a system that could only ever work with instanced content. It is a system that is reliant on control of the environment, and that simply isn't possible in open world content.
Altering loot tables on how well a raid has done seems utterly pointless in a game without a combat tracker.
All of these systems seem somewhat superfluous to the type of game Ashes is trying to be - it's like they tried to think of buzz words that would appeal to raiders somewhat. Doing better on an encounter and getting better rewards is appealing, encounters that have the potential to be slightly different each pull is appealing - but these are things that need to be paired with fully supporting raiding as a whole.
Without actually supporting raiding, there is no point in these superfluous additions to raiding - even if they actually work.
That part depends on if one doesn't consider precursor PvP to be part of the raid, or in some cases 'the entire raid'.
An open world PvP game solves this easily by having a designated spawn point for a 'raid boss' but no 'random spawn'. You do something to craft or gather an item that is capable of spawning the boss. The location where the boss would spawn becomes 'camped' by representatives from other guilds or groups... and you just fight and kill them. They are part of the encounter. One designated 'Corrupted Player' to finish them off is sufficient at that point, and this was going to happen anyway. Someone's got to 'camp' the Boss' location to 'see if it spawned' if it isn't popped by some item.
Gate the 'raid boss' behind 'how easily you can gather the spawn trigger item' instead of 'this boss pops this often', and additional content exists. Especially if it is not, in itself, top content, and something lower levels can do. You'll spawn guild wars over just the 'farm location' for the spawn trigger item or its materials instead of 'a constant war over the boss itself at its spawn location'.
But for various reasons there will also always be that. Fixable too. As long as the boss spawn is fairly far from a respawn point, then you've now created a 'winnable' PvP zone with all the intrigue or whatever you need. I won't claim to be able to guess how they intend to prevent people from throwing themselves at the winning group over and over, but once a team has control of the situation, they no longer need to be flagged as combatants generally, so there's some trickery to be done there too.
As for boss difficulty, as soon as you add 'fairly large bosses' and 'hitbox/hurtbox interactions', and probably Active Blocking, it's actually automatically more difficult to make 'easy' content than it is to make moderately difficult content. Ashes' Archetypes play into this. If your spawnpoint is far from the boss, you basically can't have your Clerics fall because you flatly don't have sufficient healing or resurrection otherwise (outside of items). If you have to hit the thing in the face, and all the damage comes from the face, or the face is only within your Tab Target range for a certain amount of time, the encounter difficulty goes up relatively without adding a single other mechanic.
Once again, all these things are already put in place. If they're doing this by accident, then they've won the design lottery and we just have to watch them 'spend the winnings'.
As a matter of fact, Vindictus does have this. It's definitely not as obvious as some other games make it, such as "there's a big orange glowing spot on the monsters belly, which indicates you do more damage there". But it's still a thing. Additionally, indirectly (or directly) related to hurtboxes, there are also breakoffs you can do. Great example would be something like Elchulus (a dragon) where you can break the tail, leg spines, wings and horns off of him by doing enough damage to those parts.
Never done the raids you're speaking of from any of those classic tab games, though I'm sure I probably have looked at gameplay from some.
I was going off PSO2 and BDO to make my assumption. I can't recall details behind any other "raid" content I've done in other games, besides Vindictus but that doesn't count here.
In BDO, world bosses typically spawned daily, but at semi random times. And in PSO2 there were daily (possibly more than once per day, but can't remember) emergencies (raids) that would require completion of prerequisite battles and then the actual raid would open up and at the very highest difficulty would take maybe 1 hour in total between the pre-reqs and the actual raid.
Important note: I'm also partially just throwing out my assumption based on what I'd like to see and what would be most logical. I think it would be silly to have a dozen bosses that can each only be done once per week. Even a once-per-day spawn would be sort of obnoxious considering how massive the world is. A guild or a party of friends potentially spending hours travelling across the world going to each spawn point and missing each one, thus wasting their entire evening, sound like bad game design. The time in the fight doesn't matter to me too much as long as it's reasonable, like 30 minutes to 2 hours min/max.
Yeah this is an excellent point. Take what I just said above about needing more frequent timers, and add to it that I think this is why we should also have a good amount of raids and dungeons that are instanced. Right now they say 80/20 split, I think a 50/50 split would be much better. Ultimately my group will make due with whatever but I think faster spawn timers and/or a better open world / instanced split would make for a much better guild experience.
Perhaps if they want it to be limited just make it so each character can only complete it once per day or once per week. So every guild has a chance to do it together. And if you have alts you can run the same one again on your alts. Sounds perfect to me.
That sounds super cool. This might sound silly but I instantly thought of the deadly game of "keep away" the Avengers were playing with the Infinity Gauntlet during the final battle of Endgame. It would be super cool to have a sort of "key" that spawns somewhere and whoever has possession of the key is able to unlock the entrance to reach the boss. These certainly could be far enough apart to where travelling from the initial "key" spawn point to the "door" would involve risk, as others could find and kill you along the way. Once opened, either the key-bearers party/guild can enter for a set amount of time, or just anyone who makes it inside within like 1 minute gets in, then it closes.
Fireball Spell in Tab Target would be homing and be about 10% slower in projectile speed while in Action Mode it would lose it's homing property but have normal projectile speed.
Prismatic Beam (The purple Kamehameha) in Tab Target would track the enemy with a reduced rotation speed of about 20%, player can move at about 70% reduced movement speed during the duration and the target of the spell takes 100% damage while enemies in the middle of the spell take about 40% of the damage. During Action Combat it would keep it's current damage and properties seen during the Alpha.
Bows, Wand, Books etc. would function like the Fireball Spell but have adjusted projectile speeds while in Tab Target.
Active dodging/rolling causes all attacks to completely miss during it's I-Frames and homing properties of projectiles will be paused during the duration. This causes players that correctly time dodges to the side of incoming projectiles to be safe from them while players who dodged backwards/away from the projectile to have a higher chance of being hit. Players Tab Targeting an active dodging player cannot use spells or abilities during the duration of the dodge animation but will remained Tab Targeting afterwards.
Going a bit more of how blocking could work in AoC, every weapon can actively block but will mitigate damage differently. Evasion and Accuracy stats will function the same.
Players blocking while using a shield will mitigate 100% damage from the front but take about 80% pre-mitigated damage from the back.
Blocking while using a 2H great sword or 2H battle axe will take about 80% pre-mitigated damage from the front and about 60% from the back.
Blocking while using a sword or staff will take about 65% pre-mitigated damage from the front and back.
Blocking while using daggers, bows, wands and books will take about 45% pre-mitigated damage from the front and back.
This is everything that I can think of without going too overboard but let me know your thoughts on this...
As for blocking, I don't think every weapon should have active blocking. I think Shields, two-handed swords, maybe even staves should have active blocking (which to clarify would be used by holding RMB or whatever you bind it to). This way weapons have more distinct uses. You take a two-handed sword because even though it swings slower, it can hit harder and can block. If the single-handed sword can also block, it's only a speed/damage difference and there's less distinct weapon personality.
EDIT: And I know you technically "can" block with daggers in real life but I'd rather see those have the fastest attack speed, lowest damage, but have the ability to either deal backstab damage or be able to throw it with RMB, something interesting besides everything having a block.
As for how actively blocking should work from my understanding and personal preference, players only block for the duration that they are holding the block key and may also have reduced movement speed (different speeds for different weapons). Players also cannot attack or use spells and abilities while blocking or after being in block stun (If block stun is implemented in AoC). Blocking attacks does not consume stamina, also being the reason why I chose each weapon to only reduce damage and not completely mitigate it.
I added rough damage mitigation percentages to blocking to open up playstyles and builds. For example If a player wants to be a Tank while wielding daggers then they should be allowed to block with them but will be slightly squishier while doing so.
As for dealing extra backstab damage and being throwable for daggers I think these may be Weapon Skills that players can unlock or be inherent to the weapon, all in tandem with weapons universally able to block. The backstabbing ability/property can still work but it would just be described as "while also ignoring pre-mitigation from blocking, deal X bonus damage when behind an enemy"
If there is a Rogue class with daggers that rely on dodging/rolling to avoid damage then they should also have the choice to slightly reduce incoming damage while blocking if they ever run out of stamina. Blocking would also reduce stamina/mana recovery speed during the duration of it being held.
What do you think?
This works in other games but will not work well in Ashes. "Blocking Ability" or 'the amount of damage reduced when blocking' can be weapon dependent only if weapons are actually more homogenous, which we probably don't want.
Basically, daggers don't offer enough to a player as of now (and don't seem likely to) for 'loss of blocking capacity' in terms of either ability to do it at all, or damage mitigation when blocking, to matter in itself.
One option is to make it so that knockback is less when using heavy weapons, this way their slower attacks aren't as limiting. You don't skid as far, assuming you skid at all from bigger attacks, and therefore can worry less about your slower weapon counterattack. Shields are a specific form of balance where you are giving up either 'whatever benefit a 2H weapon gives' or 'an offhand weapon' for the defensive option.
So in that sense 'choosing to dual wield daggers' would be a meaningful 'loss in defensive ability' over 'putting a Shield in the offhand', but it has to be 'defined' moreso as 'how good a shield is at it's task' than 'you chose daggers so you can't do this'.
There are multiple reasons why you don't want to give Rogues too many positional evasion abilities in a game like Ashes.
To make this clean, instead of using a ton of quotes I'm gonna number your ideas so that I can number my answers to them, I hope that's cool with you =D
1- I completely and totally agree with all of section 1.
2- I think a better way to do this would be non-tank classes can only use active-block if using a shield, two-handed sword, or staff (subject to change). But a tank class has an active-block no matter what weapons they wield, and as you said would have various levels of effectiveness with each. Curious what you and the others think of this?
3- You're right they do seem pretty weapon-skilly. But based on my answer to 2, I still don't think block should be possible on daggers unless your class is tank.
3.5- I think Rogue should get bonuses related to their dodging, and they'll also be able to cloak. No need to also allow them to block. They must be nimble and strategic to avoid damage, not outright block it. PERHAPS either as a Rogue skill or a dagger skill, instead of a dodge they get "counter" which if timed correctly mitigates damage similarly to a block, and throws some of the damage back at the enemy. This would of course require timing instead of being able to hold it down like you could with blocking, so it still has it's own personality in design.
4- I think Intrepid should hire us both for this task. XD
2- I think non-tank classes while using a shield would be about 85% front and 75% back pre-mitigation so that squishier classes won't be doing as good of a job as the actual Tank class. I can agree with the rest of your thoughts.
3 and 3.5- I can agree and actually think the possible counter function for daggers is a really cool idea and reminds me of timed blocking for the Orochi in For Honor.
2- I'm fine with this idea.
We agree on all points