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
It is the quantifying you are trying to shoehorn in that simply won't work - and your notion of balance is based on that quantifying being somewhat plausible.
The way you intend on balancing requires neat and tidy 1v1 fights, not mismatched fights where one player jumps another unaware, or where the numbers are mismatched, or where any number of other things in an open world MMO could happen.
You can't simply collect all of that data and assume these things will even out, because they won't. If there is some popular post a few months after launch that says a given class is good for new players, then that class will end up having a whole lot of lower skilled players (higher skilled players generally get in to a new game in the first week or two). That in itself will throw out any data you collect on that class.
If there is one class that is considered more important on top end PvE content and so is over-represented in said content, that class will be generally better geared than other classes. This will also throw off your data.
If one server unlocks content that other servers haven't unlocked, the above could happen on just that one server.
If one class is popular with RP'ers, that will obviously throw off your data.
There are obviously far more things that could throw off data collection like you are suggesting.
The developers can't just make assumptions as to how to deal with these situations, as if they try, the data is as much a result of their assumptions as it is a result of what is happening - and at this point they may as well have just made assumptions at the start.
This isn't to say collecting data like this isn't useful to developers of a game like Ashes, it just isn't at all useful for what you are suggesting.
This is in stark contrast to the games you have listed as having played. Data collection like this works absolutely fine in every single one of them.
This is why I said earlier that you may well be over your head here- this is not the type if game you are used to playing or talking about, yet you are talking about it as if it were.
I'm not claiming that we use statistics to measure and balance the game, or that it's about neat 1v1s. You want "less good players to have a shot at beating better players".
Do you concede that on a statistical level, this happens if the better player's stun works less well, or costs more mana, or they have to give up other stuff in their build, or all of the other things I mentioned?
This can happen in 2v3s or seiges or whatever else.
Sorry for barging in, but i would like to answer this question, Hard CC is such an oppressing mechanic for some players that some of them will straight up find them unfair (Like Dreoh's Thread "Try to limit the amount of braindead and anti-fun CC that is stuns." )
RNG in Hard CC is a straight up nerf to it, as it removes its predictable infallibility bringing it's 100% impact to lower numbers, and provides a method to deal with it less often(other than possible short immunity buffs or cc breakers), Even tho messing around with Non-RNG-CC variables can certainly alter players win-rates, balancing the variables of Non-RNG-CC will never remove this predictable infallibility aspect that not only incentivates things like Stun Locks but also can create way more stale metas.
The cap %chance for a Hard CC to apply can directly affects its user win-rate without messing too much with the rest of the variables of the skill, but RNG-CC isn't free of balancing flaws as i have discussed with Beau, certain types of High Impact CC with TTK lengh or higher cooldowns that could completely flip the tables in a combat should not be a single coin flip, and works way better being RNG-less.
So basically choosing between RNG or RNG-less for a Hard-CC when it comes to balancing, depends on the other variables of the skill. The lower the TTK of a game, the more it warrants non-RNG Hard CC.
Aren't we all sinners?
In order for this luck to move the "bad players having a shot to win" dial in the way that I think Noaani is talking about, you need to either make the miss chance very high (think 1/5 not 1/1000) or you need to make the thing that this randomness is governing happen very frequently (like 10 times a fight not 3).
Strangely, the stuff that I'm advocating for removing rng from happens 2-3 times a fight and I think the rng-crowd would say that in most builds the chance that it would fail would be really low, so honestly I'm confused.
Also! The way this all plays out in my head is that we all end up just dumping stats in avoidance and accuracy, meaning that overall we just have less character building choice. After a few years it's all going to be cookie cutter builds anyway once the meta settles (as I've argued exhaustively).
You have a super reasonable take here.
I think implementing diminishing returns is a great way to deal with how oppressive hard CC can be. I definitely don't want to see hard CC locks happening for extended periods of time.
My preference is to have short durating CC with short cooldowns and a variety of stun breaks available to player's so that they can choose when it is best to dodge, block, or break a stun they receive. I think GW2 handles CC quite well and would make a great reference to base combat off of.
I'm not a fan of WoW combat pacing because abilities tend to be bloated with power and have long cooldowns. This leads to long cc chains and kill attempts once every couple of minutes in most cases. I find this to be slow and leave most of the combat time relatively pointless as you usually won't kill anyone outside of cooldowns.
We certainly could just have stuff fail randomly to prevent CC chains and other oppressive combat, but it just doesn't sound very fun to me. I'd rather win or lose a fight because someone used their abilities better.
An unreasonable way that I would agree here is that if after using a stun, the player doesn't have enough mana left to kill the player they stunned. If the attacker still has enough mana to kill the target, then it obviously doesn't matter how much mana it cost to use.
Since the better player is usually the hunter, rather than the hunted, they can just wait for the stun to be off it's cooldown before attacking - it's not like there is a time limit. This makes a cooldown near worthless as a balancing point for a stun. Although again, there is the unreasonable case of having that cooldown be an hour or more.
Cooldowns are generally only a balancing tool for within a given encounter - and stuns are generally assumed to only be able to be cast once per fight anyway.
Part of the reason RNG with opposed rolling works well is because in order to have a half decent stun to be able to use, you have to give up not just points in your build, as well as perhaps taking a specific augment, but you also need to select gear that increases the stat associated, meaning you miss out on something else. So, while this one works, your suggestion actually lowers what can be required for a player to have a good stun, rather than increase it.
So if you go all the way back to page 2 or whatever where this conversation started with Azherae, we were talking about other ways to just fully circumvent the problem. Rather than making it so that hard-cc auto worked or randomly failed, (or was even a tab-target ability in the first place), we were talking about ways to give players active counterplay like some sort of brace mechanic. You can also make it so that the hard-cc abilities are action-based instead of tab-based, so that players can dodge them through player skill instead of character stats.
But! If we'e stuck with a high-impact cc whose small chance of failure can potentially decide a fight between equally skilled players, I would rather get rid of that variance and then "give worse players a chance against better players" using other mechanics.
That's kind of a weird assumption, can you elaborate?
Aren't we all sinners?
Why are you assuming the better player is usually the Hunter? "Hunting" is just a type of tactics that a player of any skill level can employ.
Why are you assuming stuns can only be used once a fight? Why can't they be short duration, short cooldowns? These are literally parameters Beau is arguing can be adjusted for balance. If you lock these dials at an unbalanced level, of course it is going to be difficult to balance.
Those technical mechanics that you can add - they all take an amount of player skill to get right. Now, I am not advocating removing player skill from the game at all - I am advocating flattening it a little so that there is a larger pool of players that are competitive with each other.
If there is an infallible stun in the game that only has those specific means to overcome it, it means anyone below the skill level of being able to make full use of those mechanics is basically not welcome in Ashes.
However, I have never said they can't or shouldn't also exist beside a resistance factor - in the same way there is likely to be both active and passive defense against melee attacks in the game.
The reason an opposed roll works well in terms of balance though, is that it is up to players to balance it ourselves. If you are not landing as many CC's as you would like, get gear to do a better job with CC. We already have this with dealing, taking and healing damage, so this isn't exactly some new concept.
I have a super difficult time with this position. Can you elaborate on how nerfing the effectiveness of one character's ability (via mana cost, cooldown, cc duration, cast time, etc) but not nerfing the effectiveness of another character's ability, even if these two characters are part of a team or in the open world, or were mismatched in the first place, does not change the relative winrate? Even from something like 72.112312% to win vs 71.982115% to win.
I'll go back and read that part of the discussion. Maybe i misspoke here, but I'm pretty sure we want similar things.
Or between "generally" and "only"?
What's your deal? Almost every time you quote me I am having to correct you. Are you doing it on purpose to try and piss me off (unlikely to work), or is it a genuine accident that you aren't reading properly?
I understand your personal preference, the thing is, those methods of dealing with CC doesn't elimitate the other nor elimitate the possible RNG aspect they can have and can work by each other side to have deeper combat depth.
I'm also not xD, i believe Huge power high impact abilities should be very limited like a single one per class like some sort of "ultimate skill" to escape from such monotonous CD waiting and very long dragged out fights.
I understand it, it is a reasonable personal preference.
Aren't we all sinners?
It isn't that I think it would be balanced if using a stun left players without enough mana to kill that stunned player, it is that if this were the case, players wouldn't take the stun.
I mistakenly thought I was giving that away by talking about unreasonable alterations to the ability - my bad if it wasn't clear enough.
It's truely an accident and you must not have seen my edit before you responded.
That being said, it doesn't change the essence of my questions. You're making claims that have no rational basis. They are just wild assumptions that don't exist in reality. I would love to see you actually answer my question instead of freak out about my small mistake in word choice.
If the skill gap was close enough that a lucky stun is enough to change the out come then so is technical mechanic based stun. Make them miss their aim, break out, fail a set up due to a required skill getting baited. If the skill gap was high enough that these technical mechanics are unable to satisfy the design goal of 'making sure less strong players have a chance. Then a strong player missing their stun is probably inconsequential to the out come anyway.
The only thing random miss actually helps is 'a random chance to run away.' A noble effort but there are better ways to design around that too without rng.
This would be like me asking for you to prove that there are no two pairs of numbers such that x + y = 10 and x * y = 21, and then you said "well, if x = 6 and y = 4, then they add up to 10, but don't multiply to 21."
Like yeah, you gave an example of it not working, but you didn't show that it can't ever work.
If your stance is "such and such idea is impossible", then all anyone has to do is provide a single counterexample whereas to prove your position you must disprove all counterexamples.
As such, it is rational to assume that the better player is usually the hunter (this obviously only applies when a player is hunted, not to all PvP situations).
Your disbelief in that statement tells me that you think it is rational for players that are bad, that know they are bad, to go out trying to pick a fight they likely know they are going to lose.
Stuns can generally only be used once per fight because in most games, the cooldown is longer than the TTK. This obviously doesn't apply to large scale PvP, but it does apply quite well as a generalization - which is why I stated it as such.
We are not trying to balance two abilities to have the same up or down time, which is what you are suggesting here.
As I said a while back, it is the very fact that it is unremittable that makes it valuable to a good player.
15 second cooldown, 100 mana, 2 second duration - cool, indispensable for a good player.
20 second cooldown, 150 mana, 1.5 second duration - not quite as good, but still indispensable for a good player.
300 second cooldown, 200 mana, 0.5 second duration - not nearly as good, but still indispensable for a good player.
We are not here to try and get numbers to equate.
You're making the assumption that bad player's know they are bad. This is a very weak stance for several reasons. Some people will want to fight everyone they see because it's fun or they are looking to improve. Some people suffer from dunning Kruger effect. I can go on here but I think you get my point.
There are plenty of games were stuns can be used much more frequently than once per fight. GW2 is one example. I can give more of you like. This can all be adjusted by Adjusting cooldowns time.
It is totally unreasonable to generalize these things when there are plenty of examples to the contrary. You consistently take indefinsible stances and attempt to discredit me and others by projecting your own logical fallacies on them.
When two different players have different abilities and you nerf an ability that only one of those players has, that player starts losing more. Do you agree with this part?
You are making the assumption that no bad players think they are bad. Statistically, this is needed in order for my statement to be false, so it must be what you are arguing.
It is perfectly reasonable to generalize things things, it is unreasonable to state some of them as absolutes - which is why I didn't.
If your character build AND player twitch skills beat my character build and player twitch skills, if you hit me with a Stun, I will be Stunned 99.9% of the time.
If our character builds are even but your player twitch skills are better than my player twitch skills, if you hit me with a Stun, I will be Stunned 99.x% of the time.
If my character build beats your character build but your player twitch skills are better than my player twitch skills, if you hit me with a Stun, that Stun will fail significantly more often. Because my character build is better than your character build.
And this is an RPG.
And:
"RNG is always going to play a role in Ashes of Creation whether that be in PvP or PvE, but one way to mitigate that is through the action system. The action system is going to be far less sort of dependent on those you know dice rolls and there'll be far more in your own hands. They won't ever completely eliminate that but it's a way for us to sort of reward skilled play versus sort of tactical strategies type play."
---Jeffrey
If my opening involves my stun, you can nerf the cooldown all you want and it will make no difference to me. I'll open with it, and won't initiate an attack on another player until it is back up.
Same with mana cost.
Much in the same way that RNG doesn't have to play a role in determining whether or not you trip when you move 10 feet forward. Speaking of which...
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?
What about the other cases where it would be useful to use the stun multiple times in an extended combat, and now you're winning less because now you can't stun at a critical moment in some imbalanced 3v4 when previously you would have been able to. What about where the stun has a longer cast time, allowing the defender to potentially get more defensive buffs on themselves before you open, or do more damage? What about where the stun costs more mana and so now you have to use some sort of mana recovery global earlier in the fight, messing up the momentum? What about making it so that though you stun them for 3 seconds, you're stunned for 2 of those yourself? What about making the stun cost more build points so that anyone who wants it will have less offensive stats than someone who opts for a different build?
Again, you have to be able to show that in every possible counter example, the bar does not move. Is this something you can do? Or do you think "impossible" probably the wrong position?