Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
In World of Warcraft (the most notable mmo-rpg out there) the demand was high.
People want gameplay diversity and theme diversity.
People will want to be a healer with a twist, the twist being that the healer can mitigate damage well for some time (I mean dug, PvP, here we go), obviously not as well or for as long as a dedicated tank would, but still.
People will want to be a dps with a twist, the twist being that the dps can also heal to some limited extent (obviously far from a dedicated healer).
People will want to be a dps with a twist, the twist being that the dps can mitigate damage really well for some limited amounts of time (obvioysly far from what a dedicated tank could do).
Then comes the Roleplay aspect.
You will have people who really want to play Templars or Paladins or Shamans or Argent (Captain shouting ''orders'' as someone put it) and stuff like that.
These are by nature, by their theme, hybrids.
Its an mmo-rpg, I doubt this is surprising.
I'm a future dps cleric player so yeah, there you go.
One reasoning given in another thread is simply that the Devs 'aren't good enough' to balance blends.
It's good to be cautious, and it's good to know one's/one's team's limitations. @Ironhope @SirChancelot11 if Dygz is right and Ashes' team doesn't have the skill to do this, and therefore that's the reason that this path was chosen, then no amount of 'please do this differently' is going to change anything. They will commit to doing what they are able to do well, instead of aiming too high.
And the thing is, they gave the explanation. Sure, "naming the classes' things that evoke concepts" won't go over terribly well, but if the only result of 'putting pressure on them' will be "alright, we're sorry, we'll remove the indicator of 64 classes" then there's still no real way to get anything you'd want.
So no matter how 'tragic' it might be, that 'tragedy' comes from 'imagining that something could be done better' (according to your preference). Blizzard suffers from this limitation all the time, but you don't get the benefit of them knowing it, apparently. Even the most recent patch of WoW. Their developers or designers or psychologists are apparently just not quite up to the task of doing what the playerbase would prefer. From everything I've seen, it seems their way of thinking doesn't match up with it.
Transparent development will let you know that as soon as Alpha-2 rolls out, and neither of you seems to have spent any money on the pack, so you would have lost only 'your preferred monthly cosmetics'.
So consider what your feelings are really. You just want some MMO to do this. I'd assume 'as soon as possible', leading to the wish that 'it is Ashes that does this'. No one wants to wait another 6 years for some company to 'see Ashes do well, but decide to do the classes part differently', but in the end, that strong wish you have is an indicator that if a company with a mindset that suited the task, were to try, they could do it and there is some set of people that will throw money at them.
For example, Amazon could decide to launch two MMOs instead of 1, and 'capture' two different segments of the market', if they had the style (I simply cannot find the english word for what I'm trying to say here, so 'style' it is - and no, it's not finesse either)
The world has honestly offered western MMO fans a really unique opportunity right now. The ability to split the three camps fairly cleanly (fourth camp is covered by Eastern MMOs, if only they can stop doing... that thing... you know... the thing). New World, Ashes of Creation, and 'the third one'. The thing is, 'the third one' exists no matter what Ashes does, as long as Ashes is good. If it goes one way, one set of people is happy, and 'the third one' exists because of those who aren't. Same if it goes the other way.
I'd be really surprised if the buzz around the little 'genre revival' we are having, plus all the easily available data from both New World and Ashes, doesn't cause some company to go 'oh wait I see a thing we can make', because I can 'see a thing they can make' and I'm 'just a programmer with a GM-ing hobby' (and also probably the best game designer in the world obviously).
But they have to wait for Ashes' Alpha-2, in order to know what to make. If Ashes' augments turn out to be good enough for 'people who like to create their own class out of pieces', they would have to make the semi-rigid system (New World being effectively classless). Similarly, if not, they can try to make that if they can find a designer capable of it.
Game design moves fast enough that something will probably happen. I'm not saying not to give feedback, I'm saying that maybe 'arguing semantics with the other camp' doesn't do anything once your wishes are known.
If my girlfriend has secretly switched from mage/mage to mage/ranger and I don't recognize it, then something has gone wrong.
At this time it is based on nothing but I think/hope the point he was trying to make was that if the choices we make in game are not as "impressive" as they are in that example, it would be a huge miss on Intrepids part.
As a fighter I can charge the enemy getting to them in 1 second. As a fighter mage, I could now blink directly to them and save one second. Same scenario, as a fighter I now hit them with my 2 handed hammer with a chance to stun. Now as a fighter mage I hit them with my 2 handed hammer and deal fire damage also. If this is the case, this would be a shit class system.
It's pretty obvious we haven't seen it yet though.
Here's a perfect example... Steven said that a Fighter/Mage can turn a charge into a teleport. That lets you get past obstacles. Based on my Alpha gameplay I call BS, because I played a Mage and when you use Blink (which this "teleport charge" would resemble) it stops at any obstacle... A tree, a small rock, heck it won't even let you teleport up a slope. But then again, that is Alpha and I'm absolutely certain what I've seen there isn't what we're going to see at release. So it's really hard to judge.
But I could see that Fighter/Mage completely changing the way the ability is used. Let's say a charge can only work in a straight line and is stopped by obstacles. You can't charge to a person up on a wall, you can't charge someone behind a tree, you can't charge someone with a magically-summoned wall (which we have been told Tanks will have as an archetype-specific ability). That charge skill changes from a simple gap-closer to get you quickly into melee range into a powerful infiltration ability. It fundamentally changes the way the skill works, while at the same time preserving the core part of what the skill does. And if you do that sort of thing for every skill you have, I could see the class feeling totally different even if it still fulfills the same basic role that it is meant to.
But again this is all speculation until we actually see it in place.
You can even recognize the difference between the gameplay of a Dünir Mage/Mage and a Py'Rai Mage/Mage via Racial augments.
I generally agree with your post, reason for the upvote, but I disagree with this.
I explicitly said that the tragic scenario would be one in which their whole sub-class system comes down to a couple of cosmetic changes and some stat buffs, in general.
Their explanations are vague to say the least and they got A LOT of work to do with this game even in the most optimistic scenario.
The fear that they might just go for the most simplistic route when it comes to sub-class developing (another very ambitious aspect of the game that they went for, and a very vague one, probably the most vague) is a legitimate one.
And we need to point out from early on that we expect names like Warlock, Beastmaster, Templar, Broodwarden, Necromancer, Paladin, etc to be honoured.
If we just shut up, then by all means we have no right to complain when they take a less than decent path.
I've noted that, thanks for your take on it.
Yeah, exactly, as of now, from the vague explanations and very limited gameplay, things legitimately look very underwhelming.
The moment you choose your second class should be a memorable one.
Like dinging 6 in Warcraft 3 or gaining your higher-level spec talents in World of Warcraft Classic.
If all you get is ''well, your sword attack now has a linghtning effect and deals 8% more damage and lightning damage'' you might just feel like you were cheated.
I'd absolutely love to have bigger, in depth discussions about the topic in question, and while we don't agree on whether or not it is a good idea, I'd like to think I'm certainly closer to your perspective in terms of what is expected, than might be obvious.
The thing is, I tend to 'overdo it', and I'm realizing that doing so just ends up in a possibly negative atmosphere for the Devs when arguments with people like Dygz happen (honestly, really just Dygz).
Let me put that another way. If my only goal was to help you achieve yours, in this thread, what 'should I do'? It may not be what you're asking from me, surely, but you can think of it as a thought experiment. Would you explicitly rather make every argument yourself? Do you want 'more people to voice their support of the position'? Are you trying to start a discussion on how it can be done better? Or trying to convince the Devs to do something else that you need to discuss with others to define?
There are definitely people who would be happy to have this discussion in as many forms as it takes, if they didn't expect it to devolve into 'Dygz vs the world'.
But it isn't even actually that. It's usually just 'yep, here's what many agree we want, that was productive, hope Intrepid does it instead of going the simple route', just as you want. It's Saturday, I for one will gladly talk 'potential builds', 'balance', and 'expectations for Augments' all day.
Also if you didn't know, if you go to someone's profile and put them on 'Ignore' using the little persony icon on the right, you can still click in the topbar of their posts (that shows you that they posted in the sequence) if you wanted to read it for some reason. Usually, if no one has quoted the post, you can just assume it wasn't worth reading, and maybe reframe your brain's perception of the current state of discussion. Try it, might surprise you?
Voice your opinon on how the best design, that would please most people, would look.
Thats the sort of stuff the devs are looking for.
There are definitely people who would be happy to have this discussion in as many forms as it takes, if they didn't expect it to devolve into 'Dygz vs the world'.
I'll work on a Templar, maybe even a warlock or necromancer suggestion build in the days/weeks to come.
Not sure what you mean tho.
Discuss in the link you posted? Sure can do that there too, just not very soon.
If anything, I'd ask you to put it in this one instead so I can add you to my data compilation, and it might just make more sense to discuss your Templar stuff there.
There's another one of those for Mages somewhere, etc.
The first thread I linked was just to show that there was already a similar discussion on the concept, so the Devs at least have a few people's perspectives on what they want out of a system (and it has the quickest access to the 'predicted Augments' thing).
Here, there, Cleric Compilation... whatever works for you, I just feel it's a shame to keep going as you are, since I feel like I still don't even know what you personally would want from a Cleric/Fighter, and discussing specifics is likely to be much better.
I am pretty sure we all want distinct classes. I mean, obviously? Or why have them at all?
I am sure we can all find different opinions on the level or degree of distinctiveness we want/expect though.
What your OP said was this though:
And that is honestly completely unrealistic to expect. I wouldn't even believe it if they actually promised it (which they didn't), for several reasons. Time, money and just the simple fact that four people might very well expect four different things from the Templar class for example.
MMORPGs with many classes don't have them all unique either. Dark Age of Camelot had 45 different classes, and many were distinct, but certainly not unique except for a handful perhaps. Some weren't even all that distinct either tbh., at least according to my standards.
I regret using the word unique there. I wish I just stuck to distinct (which is the sense I wished to reinforce).
Obviously classes can't be unique because a necromancer is by definition a summoner and so is a warlock and a beastmaster. A templar is by definition a cleric and so is an oracle and so is an apostle.
If you read the rest of my OP you get the idea tho.
From the vague
They did the moment they refered to them as classes, which wouldn't be the case if they go for the shortest cut.
Class design and balance is far less resource demanding than other aspects like world building or instance making.
I disagree because anyone familiar with what a templar is, is going to expect one thing.
A killer (damager) using miracles (obviously since its a cleric in a fantasy setting), fighting from close range, as a dps-healer hybrid, wearing plate.
You can ask 1000 people who will take Templar as their ''heart-class'', ''go-to-class'' and this is what they will come with.
It's always best to make sure that each studio uses their terms as you expect because it's not uncommon for some terms be different.
Also, terms are not as important as the concepts. And the devs have been clear about the concepts ever since the Kickstarter:
At some point during your adventuring, you’ll be able to augment your primary class with a secondary class, chosen again from the eight archetypes. Do you want your fighter to channel the elemental energies of a mage? Or would you rather your rogue be able to summon a helping hand? Maybe your ranger wants to supplement his healing abilities, or perhaps your bard wants to off-tank? You further specialize your character by choosing this secondary class, augmenting and changing what your core class can do.
Steven is a gamer delving into Lead Game Designer and Head of Studio with no prior game dev experience.
Game Dev PR is not his strong suit.
So there should be no surprise that he was not precise about terms in the early days. But, he was very upfront about concepts.
Could you please link where they you think the devs made this "promise"??
Balance for 64 classes would be a constant, gargantuan nightmare.
The simplest and most objective evidence is them referring to them ''classes'' in the interviews and on their own site.
If it isn't distinct, it's not a class.
WoW has like what, 40 distinct classes/subclasses (specs).
MOBAS has like hundreds of classes with different builds that they manage.
So no, while ambitious, it's not that hard or exceptional.
Again, it's on you to do adequate enough research to gain accurate understanding rather than just assuming you understand the way a term is being used.
Yes. And they are abysmal at balancing them.
A MOBA is not an MMORPG.
I already refered to the source, their own site.
As to ''explaining what they mean by 64 classes'' they never, ever, really did that.
Based on the extremely vague explanations and examples they could do anything and everything.
So what you're asking me makes no sense.
Utterly subjective personal opinion.
A MOBA is not an MMORPG.[/quote]
No but it first my example well because each has hundreds of ''classes'' (each with ''specs'') usually and they do a good job at keeping them viable.
I would say MOBA games have the same problems MMOs have with balancing.
For example sustain fighter that heal themselves by dealing damage. These characters/specs often bounce back and forth from over to under tuned. Or opponents have to specifically build into countering you...
My point is that mobas each have a huge number of balanced ''classes'' and ''subclasses''.
So it can be done.
But the question isn't 'can it be done' so much as it is 'Can Intrepid do it?'
And if they tell you up front 'No, this is probably going to be more than we can do', the question becomes 'do you want to play a game with high variety enough to accept periods of poor balance?' Or rather, it would be, if there was an indication that they intended to take feedback on that specific matter.
"Hey we figured out how to balance everything so we're increasing variety" would be unequivocally great news that I can't imagine anyone having a complaint about (other than doubting the truth of it), but part of their commitment is to be transparent and up-front about things they may not be able to do.
Fair point, they went for a very ambitious game, but this being said, class design is going to have a team of its own and class design (although I'm not an expert in mmo-rpg design) is realistically going to take far less time to get right than nodes or sieges or caravans or even raids and dungeons.
Depends.
If my dps melee cleric works out yeah sure, if not... well, its probably going to be 2025 and I won't have much/any time for an mmo-rpg anyway so yeah, there's that.
How would you define balance Azherae?
I associate it with viability and I define viability as each class/subclass giving the players enough performance in the role they chose to keep them satisfied and the rest of players respectful of said class/subclass.
While I doubt they can reach ''mathematical fairness'' I'm pretty confident they could make sure each/the vast majority of classes respect their theme gameplay-wise and that they give each class/subclass enough distinct and powerful tools to keep the player satisfied/the other players respectful of said class.
Oh, I agree that is equally difficult. I'm just pointing out that they struggle with balancing too. They also have champions that go through phases of being nerfed out of use. By this comparison logic there's bound to be a couple of classes out of the 64 that are not going to see much use because they aren't super effective at what their "role" should be...
This is why I thought their claim that they have no expectation to balance the 64 classes is kind of weird. If they don't get some semblance of balance you're going to definitely have various metas pop up. I get that they want to balance it as far as 8 on 8 or group combat not individual matchups, but if A/b is just better than x/y at doing whatever job you're going to see a lot more A/b than X/Y is running around.
But again I feel like this comes back to augments how many there will be and how much they can change abilities. Because I feel like the only way to avoid a meta at that point would be similar to the guild wars 1 approach of just have 1000+ different abilities so there isn't just one best combo, there are just good mixes for synergy.
I understand what you're getting at ironhope, but I also feel like it's just too early and we don't know enough to dig too hard at the topic besides voicing a concern.
You want heavy hitter names to fall in line with your previous understanding of those names. First in the ashes world of Vera they might have slightly different meanings so anything and everything could be subject to change from what you normally see what they did with dwarves is a good example of that. I've never seen beachy dwarves before.
Second for classes to still have some sort of distinct meaning from each other some of the weird classes you've never heard before like a soul bowl also have to have just as much identity as something you've heard a thousand times like a necromancer.
Rather than wasting your time arguing with certain people on here, just wait until Alpha 2 and try out all the mix and matches you want and give feedback on how they feel.
I actually do define balance in a game like Ashes as mathematical fairness.
I am a number-cruncher, an 'amateur' game designer, and a fighting game player. I know min-maxers who explicitly want games to take their extra power away, and I probably fit into that same classification.
I don't mind the idea that one can fall short of 'perfect mathematical equity' and still have people enjoy their play and be effective, but to me, you have to get within 7-10%, for reasons I've said earlier in at least one of these threads.
Distinct and powerful tools work well in lobby games, casual games, small group games, in my opinion. When a player can just go 'this is fun, I'll do this today'.
Everything about Ashes is the opposite of that. Your success at certain things (assuming you care about the gameplay of the class in groups in the first place) relies on variance in performance, relies on synergy with your group, has a longstanding effect, and isn't easy to change. It's explicitly meant to not be easy to 'test' (performance meters).
Yet the game is (as far as I've heard) about building community with people in an ingame geographical area, not 'getting 5 or 6 friends together at the same time every day' like I can.
And in the end, without a high level of mathematical fairness, even groups like mine just slowly lose over time or dominate too much (depending on whether the game is either biased away from our playstyles, or full of 'noob traps' that we don't 'fall for').
Balance is there to keep people happy.
Balance is subjective.
If everyone can do amazing stuff in his own field of choice, people will be happy even if the balance problem will be well over 10% mathematically.
And of course there's the fact that no matter what game we talk about Mage will be overpowered no matter what.
Not really. What variance of performance will a healer have? He will heal all the time.
Sure, if we're talking about a hybrid I kind of agree.
Well yeah that';s what mobas are all about.
Depends what you mean balance.
As I said, I suggest a ''just give everyone some crazy, amazing stuff in the field they chose and they will be happy'' type of moba balance.
I don't see how they're going to do that unless the sub-classes are utterly underwhelming in terms of changes received by taking a second archetype.
If thats the case, everyone will play x/x, z/z/ ,y/y, etc instead of x/z, y/x, z/y, etc anyway and they might as well have anounced only 8 classes with 0 subclasses from the start.
Ye its very early and its the most right time to tell the devs that we expect distinct subclasses and that we expect at least the ''heavy named'' ones to be good at what they're supposed to be good based on their fantasy role (theme).
As I said before.
The mmo-rpg community had a pretty objective expectation of what these should mean.
Warlock? Summing demons, using fire/shadow attacks, curses, etc
Templar? Solid melee damage, healing, divine shields, etc
Beasmaster? Well.... you got it.
So its on them if they don't respect these legitimate expectations.
I wouldnt' call them ''weird classes''.... I just look at them as ''classes that if not good won't disappoint that many people''.
Meanwhile if you mess up warlock, templar, paladin, beasmaster, shaman, etc a lot more people will cry.
Me included (ps: working on my Templar suggestions right now, will post them in Az's topic soon).
If I, as a Cleric/Tank, have an Augment on my heal that raises the Defense or Damage Mitigation of my Tank, I am more effective by 'whatever percentage defense up they got' (assuming mitigation tank, not evasion tank).
If I, as a Cleric/Cleric, simply have stronger heals due to an augment, that raises my healing itself by whatever percentage bonus.
If I, as a Cleric/Rogue, have an Augment on a heal that raises the Evasion of my Tank, I am again, to some extent, 'more effective by whatever percentage evasion up they got' (assume any decently evading tank).
The list goes on.
But if I, as a Cleric/Fighter, don't get some sort of 'Higher chance of crit heal' or 'change in healing stat formula' or something from my Fighter Augment on my heal, then now I'm worse than the other three at 'healing and mitigation'.
So to me, 'balance' would be 'make sure Cleric/Fighter has Augments that help when applied to their heals', instead of 'treat Cleric/Fighter as DPS', so that they are mathetatically similar, not particularly hybrid, etc.
A good example would be that I see no current benefit to Cleric/Ranger with respect to 'amount of healing they can do in a normal situation'. Now, I don't consider that difficult to resolve, but let's assume things were to release without this being addressed, in this hypothetical world where the above are all true.
Now Cleric/Ranger is 'weaker' than all the others at healing. If it is fun, great. If you 'are a Cleric Ranger who wants to help defend your node from a Siege or Boss', though, now you have to find a way to make up that % healing loss with something else about your Secondary Archetype. If you are 'unfortunate' enough that whatever Cleric/Ranger offers you is not easily useful in those types of battle, then... well, you know the rest, you're the one who made the Hybrid Classes potential problems thread.
As for your point about MOBAs, maybe I only played the weird ones?
My experience is 'get into match, choose according to map and expected enemies, if you get build choices then you adapt those as well according to the situation, coordinate with others for positions if the opponent builds a specific way'.
And obviously if it doesn't work and you lose, you can just 'not do that again', or you can 'do it again and refine your skill at doing it'. But all you lost was a match, not your Node, Freehold, Caravan, resources. You didn't become 'less able to play the game the way you want', you only maybe lost some ELO.
"Losing half my gatherables because my teammate and I were playing Cleric/Ranger and Rogue/Tank and got facerolled because those two classes are 10% less effective than others in most 2v2 situations" is the outcome I'm looking at here. Will it frustrate people enough to 'conform to the meta' or 'quit the game'? I doubt it. Usually the response is just grumbling until negativity kicks in across some critical number of players.
So "We're not balancing for 1v1" (and by extension 2v2, lemme know if I need to explain the numbers) is a valid warning. You know what you're getting into with just base Archetypes, before we even get into 'potentially underpowered secondaries'. So, a little grumbling, people tell you 'well that's what you signed up for', and most people don't 'sign off'.
"Waiting 7 months for the Devs to decide exactly which nerfs they want to apply to OPClass11" in a game where the intent is to balance PvP and PvE more or less the same, though, would be rough.
Your first point, I didn't get. It sounded like you were saying 'Clerics will be happy if they can do great things even if they could never beat a Ranger in a fight'. That sounds like what they're making, you're back to just being disappointed at the number of Archetypes then, am I understanding correctly?