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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
That is the part that makes it unable to be balanced, because that one part is too good - too easy for good players to exploit in the face of less good players.
Ashes will have hybrid combat, not action combat.
This discussion has achieved full circle, we have returned to square 1. The conclusion from the early pages of this discussion:
Contestants, on your marks for lap 2.
The sentiment about table top turn based rpg with dices sounds correct, though.
Big part of friction is pious adherence to archaic mechanics of old games on some people. Who are unwilling to ask why they exist. As the position gets cornered either people start dismissing the questioning or double down on absurdities. Like tripping while walking is okey. Or how non rng mechanics cannot be balanced.
While @beaushinkle goes around in all corners entertaining all sorts of positions in extent. I'm pretty sure they do this for random reader who may decide to read a few posts from outside and not to convince the opposition, and uses the opposition just to bounce around corners.
I'm pretty sure I can expect in some other thread to see that population via worlds by servers is a big part of RPG design and conflation of difficulty with game simply being punishing. Oh wait, already seen that one.
At this point, I think it's a good place to ask. What would convince you that you're wrong. What's the falsifiable part in your held belief?
That's an interesting perspective. I also noticed that you joined a day ago and your first post was to call someone who has been here since kickstarter a troll, which seems ironic to me. So, maybe I'll take your observations with a grain of salt.
I think your perspective forces you into a position where these tortured questions help you feel like there's "a win."
My perspective hasn't changed: with a blanket miss% on all abilities (even 1/10000), the combination of character build (with mitigation) and player skill will still make 1:1 boxed combat have a distributed bell curve, with some outliers occurring because of RNG. All of the cc ability modifiers you listed can be adjusted mutually with miss%.
I think (and I think Rae realized this much sooner than I did), that folks like Crow, Dygz (and maybe Noaani, though they're free to correct me) see challenge as a dramatic storytelling device. Rather than seeing it as a puzzle to eventually be solved or a game to be beaten, they see it as a dynamic story waiting to be told or experienced. Failure or losing isn't 'wrong', it's just different and potentially even more interesting. Losing because a stun got resisted isn't 'bad', it's potentially an even better story than if everything worked all the time. Am I right so far?
Folks like me see the content in the game as a challenge to be overcome, and the variance in the game as something that I need to optimize around in the same way that you try to play as close to game-theory-optimal as possible when you play poker. If we fail some PvE boss because of RNG even though we played perfectly, that's not 'some great story', it's just annoying. We'll just keep repeating it until we get the right RNG and then ask for that shit to be changed.
Ultimately, it's just a different perspective, and I won't try to argue you off of it, because I don't think it's incorrect at all. It's the perspective that me and my friends use when we play pathfinder and gurps on Thursdays and Saturdays! It's just not what I want out of an MMO.
Folks like @JamesSunderland are my favorite to talk to - I feel we both grew from the conversation. I learned some new respect for RNG in rewarding players for adapting to variance, and at the same time I never felt like James was speaking from a position of dogma. Hopefully the feeling is mutual!
And this is one of the points why I brought punshing vs difficult part.
Punishing just wastes people's time.
But my impression is that some people hold idea that "hardcore" is directly correlated with time sink and not "shape up or ship out" type of approach.
This is a puzzle:
This is a puzzle:
This is a puzzle:
This is a puzzle:
I feel like we're almost ready to start the conversation. Open your perspective.
Certainly mutual, even tho the thread had some detractions caused by both RNG and Non-RNG "Purists"
i believe there was progress and a lot to be learned by both sides conflicting viewpoints.
It's important to remember that the end-goal of the thread is to have the "best combat system", and the interpretation of that varies wildly, but some middle grounds can be found along the way.
Aren't we all sinners?
CC definitely needs to be kept in check if not all classes have a CC ability. I don't see why this necessitates randomizing the ability's effectiveness rather than adjusting other properties, like cooldowns, duration, Mana cost, cast time, hotbox, range, etc. to keep it reasonably balanced. I'm curious if you think my position is foolish, and if so, could you explain why?
I don't want long CC chains. What is stopping them from adding diminishing returns to CC or adjusting any of the many things I listed instead of randomizing the effectiveness. My proposed solution actually fixes the problem, where yours appears to only randomized whether it happens or not.
I'm really struggling to understand how you and some others in the thread refuse to acknowledge how these abilities can be adjusted without the use of RNG.
- diminishing returns
- increasing cooldowns
- increasing mana costs
- increasing cast times (so you can't chain this stuff together)
- decreasing ranges
- making it so that ccs break after you take enough damage
- making it so that when you stun someone for 3 seconds, you're also stunned for 2 seconds
- making it so that when you stun someone, you take an extra x% damage while they're stunned
- making it so that building your character to be able to do the stun costs more points so you can buy less other stats
etc. Why does it specifically have to be miss%? See what we're getting at?I've stated this consistently. Also, I'd suggest stop separating this conversation into "us and them" factions, it's only going to get in the way of having a discussion. We're all part of the AoC player audience discussing how to make the game better.
Yep, this is exactly what Steven said he was considering implementing. That many people throwing CCs at one person wouldn't be stopped by rng on CCs.
I know you've attempted to explains this a few times but I fail to see where you have sufficiently proven your point.
I'm not saying you can't balance using RNG. I'm saying RNG is not required to balance skills and abilities. There are other options which I have listed exhaustively and given examples of how specific problems with CC chains can be fixed by implementing any number of the items I've listed.
If I've contributed to any us vs them faction forming, I appoligze. That is not my intent. Anything thing that appeared that way was probably an attempt to address several people at once but I meant no ill will. I'll be more thoughtful moving forward.
I guess we agree then.
We don't need RNG to solve this problem. Diminishing returns would work great. I imagine other balancing issues that come up in the future can be remedied similarly with other non-RNG methods. Perhaps in some cases they will use RNG. I don't know what they will decide, I just want to make it clear that we don't HAVE to use RNG to solve any of these issues. It's just one tool among many available.
I'm not attempting to prove a point. I provided my perspective on how I would like entropy to remain a small, but essential aspect of RPGs.
...and I never stated that RNG was required to balance skills and abilities. I simply said that there is always a non-zero chance for something to miss, applied uniformly across all combat skills. That is fundamentally balanced, and works mutually with all other mechanical dimensions of an ability or its effects (e.g. duration, cast time, diminishing returns, etc.)
Cool cool. I think we have some common ground here. I also think that RNG plays an important role in certain aspects of RPGs. I think where we differ is which aspects, the magnitude and frequency of which the RNG is present.
I think from here we can agree to disagree on this front but I'm down to discuss other interesting topics.
The run got a little scuffed I'll be honest, but I think it was still an interesting run
Hm... unexpected. Ok.
@beaushinkle You are free too. I would say you got close but not a 100% run given we still never got anyone to actually explain why RNG % balance is 'better' for balancing hard CC than other technical based mechanics as a comeback mechanic given:
I don't blame you for not wanting the full 100% run though lol. GGs
Time! 9d4h33m
I believe you might have missed my comment in page 17.
BTW it isn't always "better".
Aren't we all sinners?
I did, thank you.
It's a reasonable response. I disagree with your conclusion. But it's reasonable.
Your most valid observation was irt the ttk. I think that's a fairly fair statement you made. The reason I don't come to the same conclusion as a result of it is because you view 'stale metas' as bad and preventable. Where as I generally have observed hard cc to be the main source of meta staleing in a majority of the games I have played with it in a variety of genres.
So when you go 'in high ttk games rng works better to balance skill gap while still preventing a stale meta' I go 'but the meta is going to get stale anyway. Why not just take the more technical stun route or since its so problematic to meta staleing and didn't entirely solve the skill gap problem, get rid of stun as a mechanic entirely and settle for softer hard ccs like root, silence, and sleep as the comeback and 'escape' mechanics.'
If I had any faith in 'it not making meta stale.' I think your argument would have convinced me entirely. But I don't.
I think I would therefore be better off asking you what your definitions of high and low ttk are and if you think a hybrid system works better for one or the other prefferably explaining why.
You don't need to though. I'm not 100% committed to continuing the conversation. But that's the most reasonable direction for us to continue if you feel like it.
Yes, you are correct even tho RNG can mitigate meta staleness it is unable to entirely prevent it, the sad thing about metas is that they get figured out extremely fast nowadays unless it is made to be ultra complicated or to have modifications quite frequently, even more frequently in Non-RNG games(other than FPS).
And i believe completely getting rid of Hard-CC would harm the combat depth.
Sure, there is no problem if you're unwilling to continuing the conversation.
Here are my definitions regarding TTK duration, they would be something like:
Low average TTK: Anything bellow 14 seconds
Medium average TTK: 15 to 30 seconds
High average TTK: Anything over 31 seconds
As you can see Ashes has a High average TTK in my opinion.
I Believe RNG CC isn't fitting for Low TTK. Because taking in consideration the duration of the hard CCs in comparison to TTK, missing or applying even a single hard CC CAN define the combat result instantly
Example: 2 seconds duration stun in a 12 sec TTK is like 16% of total TTK.
I believe RNG CC works better for High TTK.
Because taking in consideration the duration of the hard CCs in comparison to TTK, missing or applying a single hard CC CANNOT define the combat result instantly.
Example: 2 seconds duration stun in a 30-60 sec TTK is like 6%-3% of total TTK.
I believe a hybrid system works better on medium to High TTK.
Because it opens up the possibility to implement very powerful High-impact Hard-CCs that wouldn't be reasonable to be bound to RNG even in a High TTK setting.
Edit: Explanations done.
Aren't we all sinners?