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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
I'm glad I went back and read through older stuff, because I missed this edit before.
For me personally, I find fun through three main avenues listed in order of importance: self-improvement, hanging out with friends, and winning. I've written a little about this in the abstract in http://beaushinkle.xyz/posts/intrinsic-fun
I'm probably a little abnormal for MMO players in that I don't especially care about artificial rewards (the game giving me gear, titles, prestige, etc), but those typically come with being really good at stuff, which naturally follows from heavily focusing on self improvement and winning, and having a crew of likeminded and similarly dedicated friends.
You may be horrified to learn that I skipped all of the dialogue and cutscenes in my ffxiv playthrough so I could get to the savage/extreme content asap. I had only a vague idea of what was going on with the plot, and then caught myself up on the lore/story by reading the wiki and watching the cutscenes in 2x speed on youtube. Efficiency, baby.
I don't expect for the genre to cater to me, and in fact, I think MMO's are in a really unenviable place where they have to cater to a bunch of people who want to play them in a whole bunch of different ways, which dilutes the focus.
To your question: Why do players like beau dislike it when high-impact stuns are resisted? It dillutes the self-improvement. Did I make the right play, but lost because I got unlucky? Did I make the wrong play but won because I got lucky? It puts a layer of random separation between cause and effect. Now I can't just tell that I played better than the other player by nature of me winning, I have to go back and check how relatively lucky we each got.
It hurts my ability to win. Since I'm generally the better player, I'm going to be the one getting hurt by variance. In a RNG-less environment, I'm typically winning, so my opponent only stands to gain by adding in luck. If they get bad luck, who cares! They were going to lose anyway. If they get good luck, now they just might win.
I doubt I would advocate for removing the no hands rule for soccer because that would have giant implications for how the entire game is played.
There is even a world where I enjoy the game of soccer more with the rule than without it, despite winning less.
Is the claim here that the no touching the ball with your hands in soccer rule is equivalent to making it so that high impact crowd control abilities are reduced in duration instead of resisted?
We’ve sort of been through this.
I’ll be honest - it’s a little disappointing that that’s what you got out of what I wrote.
I'm glad you saw that edit, and that you followed up with your thoughts. Simply put, you want to play chess in a genre based on dice. This goes back to our conversation on how you and I approach uncertainty: you want it removed, I embrace it as part of the genre.
Chess is a fine game; I prefer poker.
You keep saying this, but there are plenty of MMOs that don’t have miss% for their high impact CC abilities. Idk what to tell you. It’s not a genre thing, man.
But I’m saying that we can keep dice in the game on the whole, but remove the roll from this one tiny part. That the genre already did that.
Look no further than LFG for proof of this.
Adding RNG (to an extent) on CC means players can not rely 100% on CC.
This in itself has to be a good thing for the genre - all other perspectives aside.
Not everything the genre has done has been good, but claiming that non-Rng cc is out-of-genre is nonsense.
In an RPG, this is good.
That is the difference here.
So no, RPGs aren’t special. High impact ccs in particular don’t need to be the variance point. We can create underdog potential elsewhere.
Perhaps I should be more specific.
Yes. There is randomness in all other genres. Most of them don't have much - it is enough to make each match/game slightly different, but not enough to have any meaningful impact on who will win a given encounter.
This is because in most of those games, that match against that other player IS the game.
In an MMO, PvP is not the game. Even in a PvP MMO, 1v1 PvP is not the game.
I'm not sure if this is how AoC would implement RNG based CC if they were to finalize it, but I would be highly concerned if this were the case...
I also think the word "Resistance" seen in RPGs means to lessen the negative effects of an attack or ability. So when it comes to CC it doesn't mean that the effect can/can't happen by chance, but the effect of it gets reduced in amplitude and power.
If there is a CC ability that said "Stun the player for 5 seconds", the player affected by this who builds Resistance to CC could possibly lower the duration of the stun to 2 seconds. If there is a CC ability that said "Slow the player for 50% of their movement speed for 5 seconds", the player affected by this who builds Resistance to CC could possibly lower the slow to 25% and duration to 2 seconds.
Of course if players want to make builds that increase effectiveness of their CC then the same Stun ability could increase the duration to 8 seconds but the same player affected with the Resistance Build would bring it back down to 5 seconds. The slow ability scenario would be back down to 50% and 5 seconds.
These rough personal examples allow CC effects to happen all of the time but also allows player agency and builds to determine how to deal with the outcomes in a fair way. If CC is RNG based then it doesn't really matter what the effect is or how long it lasts, what matters is: did the CC work or not?
In Ashes, I think it's Disable Chance v Disable Defense.
I think beau is going to take issue with "chance".
What beau wants is the hard CC to always work - but have Duration mitigation that is never 0 Duration.
Honestly, feels a bit narcissistic.
"When I Bash you, you WILL be Stunned...it's just a matter of how long."
I think what beau (and I) wants is the hard CC to always work - but have Duration mitigation that could be 0 duration.
I could always get Bashed by other players, but I could make a Resistance Build that could result in Player A's Bash last for 3 seconds and make Player B's Bash last for 0 seconds. The reason for different durations with the same Resistance Build is because Player A built more towards CC effectiveness while Player B did not
Building Resistance is what he's been arguing against. "Hard CCs should have no chance to fail" and 0 Duration is effectively a fail. Basically the same thing as 100% Resistance.
When you Bash someone, that Bash will not always result in a Stun. Opponents will be able to resist being Stunned.
That's the way combat works.
Rpg is a wide genre that includes games like Dark Souls, so I disagree with any of these generalizations.
Excuse me for assuming @beaushinkle 's thoughts but I think that CC should be able to fail, but not as a result of randomness. It can be zero with my definition of how I think Resistance works in RPGs.
If Player A's Bash says "Stun target for 5 seconds" and Player B's Resistance Build reduces 5 seconds off from all CC, then Player B is simply not affected by the stun because 5 seconds is subtracted from Player A's Bash effect
I understand what you wrote. That's not how combat works.
In combat, a Bash does not always Stun. Some people will be able to Resist the Stun.
And, sometimes the attacker will attempt the Bash and fail to Stun due to their own mishap - not due to the opponent's Resistance.
Again - especially in a world with a God of Fate.
I can understand and agree if the Stun effect in the Bash ability or other forms of CC are sometimes calculated with the Accuracy and or Luck stats for flavor, which requires RNG to work. However I do not agree with the Stun effect and other forms of CC requiring their own entirely new form of RNG calculation systems to work, especially working in tandem with Accuracy and Luck stats.
EDIT: My comment self contradicts itself and only creates further balancing issues. Thanks @JamesSunderland
That's kinda counter intuitive, would kinda accomplish the same and would possible be a design flaw, as evasion/accuracy would basically become a OP Double Function ultra stats(I would predict Dex being a insanely popular stat) that not only calculates if damage will apply but also if CC will apply. Its usually better to have evasion/accuracy and %chance to resist/%chance to apply separately so missing the CC doesn't mean you miss its possible damage, and missing the damage doesn't mean you miss the possible CC to evade balancing issues.
Aren't we all sinners?
Stun always hits feels like a Fighter mechanic to me.
Also has me thinking of WWE rather than boxing.
Yes, no one is infallible. That's why in games where you have to aim an ability, you sometimes miss. Modern action combat already has this "roll a 1" baked into the combat system. It no longer needs to be abstracted like when games were played on paper.
Because RPGs are more about character builds than player twitch skills.
The character has mishaps; not just the player... especially characters with low stats.
The character also has miracles; not just the player...especially characters with high stats.
And, then, there is also Fate/Luck of the character, in a world with a God of Fate.
In Mario Kart, You get random items out of item crates. They have a huge impact. You get better random items if you're losing. In fortnite, your gun shoots randomly using a mechanic they call bloom.
In super smash bros (a fighting game), the stages transform randomly, hazards will pop out of nowhere, and random players will be targeted. Items will spawn giving the closer player big advantages. When Nintendo hosts tournaments, they force the players to play with this stuff enabled, even though the community turns it all off.
There are games in each genre that target a high degree of competition, and some that target a high degree of variance. Chess, in the board game genre, has a high degree of competition, while chutes&ladders has a high degree of variance. That doesn't mean that the board-game genre itself relies on randomness - chess and GO prove that.
Likewise, Ashes is going to want to design around the better player winning some percentage of the time. The higher percentage that is, the more competitive it will be, like chess or tennis. The lower percentage of the time that is, the less competitive it will be, like chutes&ladders. This is a perfectly fine design goal, and I also don't believe that MMO's should be competitively pure like chess. Far from it!
Adding randomness is just one way to make the better player win less often. Making abilities not work every time is just one way to add randomness. We can accomplish the overall goal of making sure that the underdog has a fighting chance without making it so that specifically high-impact ccs have a chance to miss.
I don't mind at all if someone is able to create a character build that lets them be immune to particular forms of cc. I just don't want whether or not a high-impact crowd control abilities fails to be random.
Do you, or do you not believe that the game would be better if there was a non-zero chance that a character should trip and fall under normal circumstances while walking or running?
Given that there's a God of Fate, of course.