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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
The straw man is what you've put up. I never said the OP was arguing against PvP or to have spaceships. those were examples of a couple of the plethora of things that may cause people to turn away from this game because it doesn't fit their specific preference.
And while it's not unreasonable to ask and argue for a play style to be available, it is unreasonable to demand it. My point stands, not every preference is going to be met by this game, and the developers shouldn't try to do that. (And fortunately they have shown no signs that they will.)
But thanks for building a straw man and claiming it was mine.
The feelings mutual.
What!? I'm out.
You chose three classes two DPS and a healer. The Templar is a Cleric first and foremost. All of their abilities will be Cleric abilities and then get augmented later as you choose.
Rogues traditionally are melee and work close range. Mages are ranged and have skills that keeps them there. Neither have healing outside of potions or some other gear. We don't know yet what adding Cleric to these two will add as an augment. Many suspect a self heal of some sort and they could very well be right.
Point is The cleric will do damage and heals while the mage and rouge are specialized in DPS. (uni-dimensional) That is what I meant and thought you meant with hybrid classes. Trying to make the Cleric do the same DPS as either I think will be a big mistake.
I do agree that if a class is not fun to play or severly under performs then they will get a lot of hate over it and people will leave. I don't think it will be anywhere near as hard to "balance" as people think.
8 archetypes they have to make and make them work together in a group and not chasing the white rabbit trying to balance 1v1 will be important here. If they can make all 8 archetypes perform the roles they are supposed to , be fun and add value to the group such that people want to bring them they did good.
Then making the augments and looking for places that are obvious OP loop holes or just don't work as thought then tweaking as needed.
This was my biggest concern when they released the classes list. People would look at one and think adding Fighter to Cleric would make the Cleric no longer a Cleric. That's just not true. It will still be a Cleric(healer) It will just do the job in a slightly different way.
And you skipped my last question.
"Lastly where did the idea the Templar is being marketed as a hybrid class and not a Cleric come from? "
I won't play because they allow Atama in the game.
"I would never join a club that would have someone like me as a member."
Imho, that shaman was the best enhancement I ever played
yeah.... shamans were fun in vanilla, when they could off tank... still fun as dps in BC - then WOTLK was an aoe-fest. Everything went to shit between wrath and BFA. SL made them fun again for a bit.
Ok, but with out seeing the augments in action we have no idea how much they will 'shift' the primary abilities towards the secondary archetype
Are they all going to be simple cookie cutter add-ons like "with a mage as a secondary you can add fire damage"? (Which there isn't anything wrong with this example, but if every X/mage just had an add fire damage to an ability augment for every ability over and over.... That's low quality work)
Or will some augments change the whole essence of an ability?
Mage/tank
Prismatic Beam shifts to Prismatic Shell
Now instead of a beam of damage, the ability activates a mirror that reflects X% damage back for the next Y second.
It's still the same flavor, same school, but a totally different function in a fight.
We have less than a dozen examples of how these change work, when there will be literally hundreds of combinations...
So again I'll say
We have to wait and see...
Are you trying to talk about classes that have multiple roles (pally, drood, monk) as in can be tank heals or DPS?
Because if that's what you're getting at there are many people who don't think that will be an option at all in this game. Tanks will be tanks clerics well be healers, and their 8 variants will just be different styles of tanks or healers... I personally hope that isn't too accurate, but primary archetype may lock you into always being that role.
Now if you mean hybrid as someone who damages and heals at the same time that's just a sustain fighter... A disc priest or blood DK... That's just a lifesteal or spellvamp kind of build (personal favorite)
But... Wouldn't really call those a hybrid class myself.
I was talking about cleric-equivalents in rpgs in general and in general they can also fit dps roles.
Also, hasn't the Ashes of Creation cleric been anounced to be a master of life power and death power and to have a death (dps) school?
Templar will be a cleric (which can itself be built on dps) plus a dps (fighter) so obviously it will be a dps orientated hybrid, just like paladin will be a tanking orientated hybrid.
My point is, that this dps path shouldn't be a lie, it shouldn't be a trap, it shouldn't be a source of disappointment and time waste for thousands upon thousands of players (as hybrids were in wow vanilla for 3 years for example).
Cleric?
Which Cleric?
Because there is going to be a big difference between a cleric+cleric with a support talent build, with support gear, support religion/organization and node buffs
AND
A cleric+dps, with dps talent build, with dps gear, dps religion/organization and node buffs.
Yes, cleric+anything will be a hybrid, absolutely.
But it should be a hybrid that works, not a waste of time (like hybrids in wow were for 3 years before TBC came to the solution I suggested).
We can agree that they shouldn't have 100% same dps as a ''dedicated dps''.
But 75/80% I find reasonable AS LONG as the performance of their healing, buffing and shielding is 20/25% better than the perfromance of the ''dedicated dps'' stealth/cc/etc.
Yeah, I agree, team-focused balance with a rock-paper-scrissor system is good. Its' what their doing.
Exactly.
If the game offers a cleric-tank path or a cleric-dps path, it should honour that promise.
Yeah I'd hate that too.
I basically expect the retribution paladin of wow or the cleric-dps from dark souls, so yeah, I don't expect or want clerics to not be clerics anymore.
I'm just hoping the devs will honour their promises about highly customizable character paths.
He is the combination of a cleric (do we even know that cleric wont be able to be built as a dps caster if wanted?) + a dps class (fighter is a dps class right?), so he should be a support (?)-dps hybrid.
I would be very surprised if that were the case.
The game advertises you can customize your character based on an unusually high number of factor.
Base class + augment class, gear, talents, religion/organization, node, etc
I personally would be highly surprised, for example, if a cleric + tank, with tanking gear, tanking orientated talents, religion/organization and node buffs, etc wouldn't be able to tank well.
I can actually imagine a scenario where you would need something like that, for example against a pve instance where the tank/small groups of random players get sepparated randomly and need to survive alone/on their own for a notable amount of time before being able to get back to their crew.
Or in PvP if you want someone to hold a point of interest alone against several enemies for a notable amount of time.
By hybrid I rather meant classes that from the start (As a base) have the ability to fill two or three or more roles and can take paths to specialize in any of these roles.
So a feral druid would be a better example.
From early on it has the ability to attack, heal and tank.
With time you can specialize to do any of these. Of course, you will not lose the ability to do some basic healing/attacking/tanking even if you specialized in only one.
Sure you should still have those heal spells or effects, but if you're a DPS spec character (skills, gear, augments) you should not be able to be a healer or tank anymore...
And yeah some people on here are convinced that only tank/x will be able to main tank content. That any x/tank combinations would be able to off tank at best. Meaning your primary archetype will lock your role.
By their logic all clerics will be healers, so your crusader a melee healer... Enjoy!
Cleric + anything is still a Cleric.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Archetypes
At the start of the game players may choose from eight Archetypes, which essentially defines a character's role.[2][3]
We're fairly similar to the holy trinity of class identity. I think that the way our primary archetypes and secondary archetypes, the combination of that creating these 64 different classes, it is a goal to kind of blur the line between those identities, that standard Trinity that's present. I think additionally the way that we're developing classes is to be that rock-paper-scissors type of interaction, especially balance them around group vs. group kind of dynamics or group dynamics; and... by utilizing the augment system allows for players to kind of take skills outside of just the realm of their identity and into a different area.[4] – Steven Sharif
Now with the augments we don't have enough information as of yet on how far we can blur the line. With all the available augments it might be possible to go more towards dps with a huge sacrifice in your ability to heal. As was said in another thread and by Steven in the last live stream regarding tattoo's adding +damage and minus heals could very well be a thing. If you stacked enough of these types of things we could very well see a Cleric/anything move away from healing and into a more DPS/survival role. With a big loss in their healing ability. Sacrificing healing for damage could be interesting. But a Cleric should never be able to keep all the healing ability and gain damage on top of it.
This has been the discussion in many threads over the last couple years. A lot of people think that anything/Tank should be able to tank the highest level of things to fight. Problem is you might have the Gear and augments to fill the role in an abstract sense but you will not have the skills and abilities a Tank will have. Aggro management, self defense abilities and so on.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Classes
A player may choose a secondary archetype when they reach level 25.[3] The combination of primary and secondary archetypes is referred to as a class.[3][1][4]
The secondary archetype does not provide additional skills.[10]
Secondary archetypes may be changed, but not "on-the-fly".[8][11]
The player can then augment their primary skills with effects from their secondary archetype.[3][7]
Each skill in the primary tree will have several augment options from the secondary tree. This is an example of horizontal progression.[7]
Augments to primary skills can fundamentally change the way the ability works - adapting what the ability once did to incorporate the identity of the secondary archetype/class.[12]
If a Fighter were to choose Mage as a secondary archetype, the fighter would become a Spellsword. This combination opens up augments that can be applied to skills in their primary skill tree. Fighters have a Rush skill that allows them to rush towards a target; and upon reaching the target, deal an amount damage with a chance to knock the target down. A Mage's escape augment could be applied to the rush skill, which would now teleport the player to the target; thus eliminating the charge time on the skill.[7]
I am looking forward to when these things come live in the future so we can play with them and get a better understanding of just what is possible.
Yeah I've heard all that before, but I can still very much hope that's not the case... Because then the problem is probably going to be something like this... For specifically the tank
Augments won't have a huge effect on skills which means that X/tanks won't be able to tank, but if their effects are that minor I don't see any of the 8 tank/X combos being any different from the others... Which will lead to stale gameplay really fast...
Or they could have augments change abilities more in depth which means they wouldn't need "new abilities" or the primary tank abilities
The tank augment could shift the primary ability into a tank ability... See my mage/tank example above
But the bottom line is we just don't know enough yet...
I think they will go more the way of Rift where the different tanks will have different strengths and weaknesses.
Tank/Tank will have super high defense and damage mitigation.
Tank/Mage have more magical defense and lose physical defense
Tank/Rogue be more evasion style
So on and so forth giving them all a place to be.
If only tanks have taunt and skills that build aggro the other classes won't get these. Could they just straight up hold aggro through dps maybe.
I foresee anything/tank being good for dungeons and off tank or perhaps with right gear and augments you could fill in the main tank roll in a pinch if someone disconnects.
But I really agree with we need more information to have a truly productive conversation about builds.
You misunderstood
I mean that if augments only change the spells a little bit then all 8 forms of the tank will effectively be the same thing. Same pulls (charge or javelin), same 2-3 main DMG abilities, same damage reduction cooldowns.
Sure if you have a tank/tank vs tank/mage vs tank/rogue you can change the abilities... But calling a charge vs charge teleport vs a charge shadowstep... They're all still the same playstyle... Charge, stab, CD when in danger...
That's what I mean by it will get dull fast
UNLESS augments can do some wild changes to abilities switching them up a lot... And if that's the case the some X/tank mixes should be able to get some of their primary archetype damage or support abilities tuned into tank abilities... And therefore fill the tank role...
ESO started with 4 classes, and allowed each class skill to be upgraded one of two ways. I played it for years.
Ashes is going to have 8 archetypes, and each skill can be upgraded via secondary archetype (among other ways), and within that, I believe there will be around 4 different choices. That's 32 different ways to upgrade each individual skill. You're not getting new skills when you pick your secondary, you're just upgrading your primary skills. A Tank will always be a Tank. There are just 32 different ways to play that Tank's skills. Is that not enough for you?
I think the Devs have given the base parameters through the 8 base classes. I would not expect therefore, that the scope will be much bigger because the set parameters are pre-defined. It is true that similarities will exist, but, the base skills relate to each individual role. We do not want a cookie-cutter class at all. There must be some overlap or the basic abilities will not be fit to perform.
The worst situation will relate to the issues around whether everyone expects a tank to play Tank/Tank. It is enough to hope that all 8 Tank classes are viable without the request to make 16 viable tanks. The same could be said of all 64 planned outcomes but I've focussed on Tanks because you mentioned tanks.
Isn't it pretty clear this cleric dps path is offered by the game, with the cleric having a death (dps) school and being able to be combined with other dps classes which will obviously offer dps increases?
So we're clearly looking at a WoW situation.
The game offers you hybrid paths explicitly.
I just hope we won't have a vanilla wow situation where these paths are offered but they lead only to a waste of time.
The devs really gained a lot of credit in the eyes of the mmo-rpg community by offering so much cutomization.
If at the end of the day we end up with a game with 500 class/talent/tatoo/affiliation/gear/etc combos but with only 15-25 cookie-cutter viable one, the game might just go belly up instead of growing with time.
As I said, I don't expect all hundreds of combos to be viable.
But if most, including fantasy classics like a dps cleric, aren't working, it will be very bad yeah.
What do you mean with this?
If the cleric's healing is at a very basic level because all his talents, gear, tatoos, affiliations, class combo, etc are dps orientated, I see no problem with him keeping his abilities per se.
The problem would appear when such a cleric would have high healing and high damage.
If however, the hybrid cleric has decent healing and high damage, I don't see why that would be a problem.
Very vague explanations.
If you change an ability enough, even tho its the same ability (skill), it can be so radically different in the eyes of everybody it will be something new.
If the necromancer class for example changes the ressurection so that it loses its cooldown at the cost of increased mana and from then onward it raises players and npcs are ghouls and other monsters, its technically still the same skill.
It still does the same thing, it ressurescts.
But is it really the same thing?
Its radically different from what it used to be.
If the templar class for example changes the castigation so it no longer has a range but deals notably increased damage, while appearing as a sword of light now as opposed to a whip of light, its technically the same skill, it does damage.
But is it really the same thing?
Its basically completely different now de facto.
And we can go on with examples.
Based on the vague explanations given so far the devs could do anything.
I just hope they put the effort and time into giving their fans actual necromancers, templars, warlocks, brood wardens, paladins, etc as distinct classes, with distinct gameplay fitting their theme and which are viable.
Yeah I totally agree, never said otherwise.
What I said is that the feral (the dps spec) should actually do damage instead of being unviable. I said that the game shouldn't offer you a development path that doesn't work.
This is why I said earlier "the punchline is we don't know enough yet".
But I hope it's more inline with what you say than what she others think. It would do worlds for this game to have more options be viable for roles.
But I can't agree with
Because that becomes a balancing nightmare in every multiplayer game for starters. Unless there are abilities out there we haven't seen that prevent healing received or something. (Ie grevious wounds to take a a lifesteal champ in LoL)
Imagine generic balancing as you have three slide scales for healing, damage dealing, and toughness and then 12 points to distribute on each 10-point scale. Sure you could 6/10 for both healing and damage. But if you think you should get an 8 or 9 / 10 and do just as much damage and healing as someone who spec'ed into damage or healing.... You're literally asking for your cake and to eat it too.
It wouldn't be a balancing problem at all.
(Okay so I've already given this example 10 times...)
Let's say you have the assassin class. In terms of performance it's a 9/10. Out of that 9 out of ten 7 out of ten is purely because of his damage. The other 2 points out of ten come from his stealth, from his mobility and from his crowd control abilities.
Then let's say you have a templar. In terms of performance its a 9/10 also. Out of that 9 out of ten, 6 out of ten is purely because of his damage. The other 3 points come from his healing and damage mitigation.
They're both a 9/10.
They both deal good damage.
The templar (hybrid) can heal.
The assassin can't.
However their performance is overall the same.
Because the assassin's stealth, mobility, crowd control, poisons, etc compensate for his lack of healing.
Meanwhile yeah the hybrid templar does have healing abilities and some damage mitigation but he doesn't have the assassin's stelath, his mobility, crowd control or poisons.
The fact is, Blizzard fel for this ''ohh but they also got healing/dmg mitigation we can't give them proper damage too'' trap with Vanilla.
Their hybrid classes were dead.
You couldn't have fun with them playing normally.
Then they changed them in the sense I just pointed out.
Its history, its what happened, its not up for debate.
Hybrids should be allowed to be good at what they chose and the rest of their performance should come from their hybrid abilities while dedicated-classes should be good at theri dedicated role with the rest of their performance coming from their class-theme-kit.
Otherwise the only result will be dead calsses, loss of player base and eventually the mentioned solution being implemented.
I mean, either way a hybrid won't even heal or tank properly if he went for dps talents, gear, tattoes, affiliations, etc
I hope it isn't this way here's why. Wow has 6 tanks, they all play differently. FFXIV has 4 official tanks and then viable builds and non-tank classes that can all tank. SWTOR came out and had three different tank routes. GW2 had two official tanks and two unofficial tanks on launch. Hell, wildstar had 3 tanks at launch (and one of them was a ranged tank that used pets)
All of these play differently, so yeah people want variations so there is choice and gameplay doesn't get static.
So you saying ESO had 4 classes (and I'm guessing one could tank?) just solidifies that I didn't miss anything by skipping that one...
Now we have two options here in ashes, either augments can change the way abilities work a lot or they will only do minor changes to abilities.
If they can do major changes to abilities and overhaul the ability into something else then there is no reason that X/tank's wouldn't be a part of that tank line up. Which would be awesome.
However, if augments only do minor changes to abilities they won't really feel different. I see this as more of flavor changes. I added fire, lightening, or ice damage to my charge or the charge became a teleport, with all of these the ability didn't change it's the same thing. Now I'm not saying this isn't useful if there are certain monsters that are weak to fire yeah it would be nice to add some fire to all of my abilities, but this isn't changing my gameplay any. If this is the case the 8 tank/X combos with 4 augment trees to choose from will NOT feel anything close to 32 options.
It would feel like we could've have up to 15 and ended up with 1 with options.
Also should you be able to play the tank as the role of a damage dealer? This would give you the idea that certain augments make it to where you fill the role of tank, and if that's true wouldn't the secondary augments give the option of filling the role of tank?
But again we I've only seen three classes and zero secondary augments in action in game so we have no idea the scale of change that they can apply... So it's just too soon to even have this discussion...
I whole heatedly agree with this part,
I understand that all primary archetypes will have overlaps and shared core abilities but I'm hoping secondary augments have a large effect... A summoner for example will probably have spells that summon, heal, and use activated abilities of pets. But a summoner/cleric could go the healer route and have healy ghost pets. Or a summoner tank have a lineup of pets that lets them tank. They're all still summoners, all still work similarly. But three very distinct roles.
Again I agree with you. But it is that spirit of preventing any mandatory meta from existing that makes me advocate for this. Every party is going to need a primary archetype tank and this will probably lead to something like the early days of wow and a tank shortage... So even 8 tank/x options might not help. But if they put a little work in on 15 tank/x and x/tank possibilities it would open up a whole bunch of options for group composition.
Plus you can still see huge differences in playstyle between mirrored archetypes
Tank/summoner could play exactly like a tank but able to summon floaty Shields to help.
Summoner/tank would play like a summoner but have the pets to tank through...
Having said that, I hope that even though the game will be balanced towards group PvP, smaller scale PvP will not be completely unbalanced and/or completely forgotten.
The fact is that for a big part of the leveling phase, 1v1s will happen a lot. After leveling, 1v1s will probably be a thing when people are solo grinding some specific items as well.
I believe Steven will make sure that a general rock-paper-scissors system is in place for 1v1 combat, which will hopefully help make every class viable and possibly more fun.
For instance, a generally weak support class might have a specific skill that does well only against a generally strong DPS class, giving them a chance of winning (it's just an example). Mechanics like that can make combat more interesting and also helps create counters, which can be used as a tool when balancing PvP in general.
Again, I understand balancing will be focused on group PvP instead of 1v1s and I'm not against that, but they aren't mutually exclusive. Focusing on group balancing doesn't mean 1v1s can't also be somewhat balanced or that group PvP balancing can't take advantage of 1v1 balancing.
One thing is for sure: making the game balanced, i.e. fun, is not easy and takes a lot of time, so hopefully Intrepid will have the skill and time to do it.
I agreed with you until you mentioned the rock paper system. A predefined weakness to a class because of such system is not fun.