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
It's not simply about how many classes a game or game genre has.
Just because a MOBA does some things similar to an MMORPG does not mean that managing those things are equally easy or difficult.
And, again, WoW is a balancing nightmare that no devs want to repeat.
First of all, /yawn
None of these makes the cleric more ''tankey'' or ''roguey'' or anything.
They're just some stat buffs.
b o r i n g
Secondly, to get to the point, none of these concepts have anything to do with balance. If the cleric/tank raises defense by 8000% and anyone who gets healed by the cleric once becomes unkillable, then it's overpowered, despite being a simplistic, boring mechanic.
At the same time, you might have a very interesting mechanic where, for example, picking cleric + tank leads to the range of your abilities being greatly reduced, almost to melee, but your healing abilities being greatly improved. So now you're always there in the front with the tanks, where the risk is higher in both pvp and pve, but its worth it because of healing increase. Guess what, this can be very balanced despite being a m a j o r change in gameplay.
Okay, want more interesting stuff? Let's say you pick cleric + tank and now your abilities, despite technically the same, suffer notable changes.
For example:
Hallowed ground now follows you around and decreases damage taken by you and nearby allies by 10%.
Judgement is now a sheild bash that deals holy damage.
Castigation now also knocks the target back stunning it for 3 seconds.
Divine Censure now decreases the damage of the target by 20% for 5 seconds.
etc
Okay so now the abilities suffered notable changes making your gameplay and theme more close to that of a tank. You stand next to allies to protect them, you use a shield to perform actions, you got a peeler ability, etc
Can still be nothing imbalanced. All this is in the context of a notable heal loss for no going cleric + cleric.
If something is balanced or not methematically depends on numbers and nothing else.
The gameplay of a class can be boring or very fun.
If the boring gameplay does the right numbers, it can be super overpowered.
If the fun gameplay does the wrong numebrs, it can be super frustrating and nobody will play that class/subclass.
Let's stop trying to justify potential developer lazyness and shortcomings with ''it might just be too hard''.
Its a very ambitious project, yes.
But it's nothing that can't be done with enough effort, time and passion.
As I said before, the class design team will have a long time to get it right because class design done right takes far less than world design done right and instance design done right and quests done right, etc
Yeah but that makes no sense, if cleric + fighter just makes you more of a cleric (better heals due to more crit) then they might as well scrap the whole system because no matter what you do, cleric + anything = still just a cleric.
This game promissed a ton of cutomization.
Besides the classic talents + gear.
You also have: secondary class, tattoos (stat redistribution), node affiliation, religious/organization affiliation, etc
If all these are for nothing (if no matter what you do, cleric + anything is just a healer and anything else you try is trash) then the game has failed strongly in this area and even if the sieges, ships, world, story, etc are all great, a lot of people will quit because of that.
Then the devs need to throw buffs or re-do the class.
What does this have to do with MOBAS having large numbers of viable characters?
The idea is that you can have 64 viable classes/sub-classes. Its been done before, many times.
Honestly, if the difference is just 10%, its not that bad because its something that can be overcome by playing better.
And truth is, your cleric/ranger and rogue/tank is probably 10+% better against other combos, it's just that not this time. You can't counter anything and everything at the same time (unless you're a mage of course).
People usually quit games not because of one factor but because of a combination of factors.
As a dev you want to have as few, if possible none, of those factors ''on the table''.
Weird way of putting it.
My point is that even if people have counters, if they also counter others as chosen, they will be okay with that.
Depends.
If they procede like you did and cleric + dps and cleric + tank and cleric + anything is just a healer at the end of the day, yeah, because you don't have 8 combos, you have 0, you just have cleric doing cleric stuff.
They do actually have a lot of pve.
Many games are won purely by PvE.
Seen a ton myself, where one team wiped the floor with the other in virtually all fights but lost the game because the enemy team pved well enough, killing all the other's team buildings, exposing their core and eventually taking it.
I actually won quite a few of those myself with Zagara or Gazlow in HOTS.
Its about how many viable classes/sub-classes a game can have.
Tens? Easily?
Hundreds? Not unseen.
Evidence? MOBAS.
Utter exaggeration.
Since 2004 99% of mmo-rpgs have been doing nothing else besides cloning what WoW did in every aspect including classes.
Also, the more classes/sub-classes you got, the easier it is to balance based on the rock-paper-scrissor.
Characters which would otherwise be redundant in a game with few classes can be distinct and very useful as counters to one or several of the many other characters.
If anything not having PVE would make it harder to balance. For PVP your balancing variables against other variables, trying to tune them all to be equal'ish whereas with PVE you would be comparing variables to static environments which would give them all a benchmark to work with.
But yeah if some devs are working with 120/30+ characters like LoL, with many having multiple build gear paths... Ashes could too, not saying it's easy or anything, but it's not impossible
Is this going to end up like the matrix that shows which Pokemon types are strong or weak versus other Pokemon types? Lol
But an interesting point about siege/ships... I kind of figured those wouldn't be affected by classes as much as whether you had certain professions. Like the seafaring or ship handling one.
No but I expect it to become clearer with time and even from the start I think it will be noticeable.
I doubt AoC will stem too far from the classic mmo-rpg ''rogue and rager counter casters except mages who counter everything and anything while the other casters counter fighters and tanks and...''.
I can imagine scenarios where certain types of rangers are bad in straight-up, field-fighting, but are great when fighting from the top of a wall or from a ship.
Or where a rogue is just bad in normal group fighting but is great for sneaking on ships/in castles and assassinating people who aren't with the group but defendign points of interest for example.
Maybe even a saboteur type rogue?
If your concern is that Intrepid is not focusing enough, then just assume that the following classes will all be super cool and very thematic and practically 'premade'.
Weapon Master, Dreadnought, Trickster, High Priest, Oracle, Strider, Scout, Assassin, Predator, Minstrel, Conjurer, Necromancer, Archwizard, Warlock, Hawkeye, Duelist, Paladin, Guardian.
If you'd like them to focus on these, then just assume that they will tune the Augments to make these perfect.
That's what some people seem to believe will happen. If that's what they have the resources for, then that's still 16. You'd have to play Paladin instead of Templar, but it's entirely possible that what you think of as 'Templar' will be 'things a Paladin does', so aside from the name issue (which I sympathize with), you don't have to be disappointed overall.
I don't expect I'm going to be disappointed either as a Shadow Disciple. Out of that entire list of 64, the only place I expect even the small chance of disappointment in an otherwise good game/system would be:
Falconer, Beastmaster, Shaman, Bladecaller.
And those are all down to 'how good is Summoner/how do Summoner Augments work'. At the end of the day, if they don't have the resources/staff to do something, they don't have them. What do you want from them at that point? You could 'Petition to change the description to say "8 Classes that you can Augment with abilities from other Classes!" but I expect that would be about as successful as my totally-real-and-definitely-intended petition to change the 'Tank' name to 'Mailman'.
I really do appreciate you clarifying as much as you did, so either what follows this line leads to a better discussion, or I concede that there's no middle ground.
It's been pointed out by @Noaani in another thread related to this... 'amazing things' isn't that big a set, within anything balanced.
I always say that MMOs are convergent evolution. There just aren't enough actual things to do (as single abilities) for this to make sense to me, so I think 8 bases is ok.
Heal
Heal over Time
Close in
Shield and prevent damage
Buff (resistance)
Buff (stats and power)
Debuff (resistance)
Debuff (stats and power)
Positioning damage by flank
Positioning damage by range
Magical damage burst
Magical damage over time
Physical damage over time (effect)
Physical damage over time (sustained hitting of the thing)
Various CC that are sorta-separate from Debuffs (and for the sake of sanity would be limited anyway)
Regenerate some Resource (probably Mana)
All the pet/summon stuff
I see everything as one of these, and it's great if you get thematic representations of each of them that fits with the feeling of your class. I know you said you are working on your builds for discussion, but for now, just take out one thing, any thing from your build that doesn't fit the above categories.
Thematic design and balance design can be kept separate for quite a long time in game design before you have to start thinking about how best to combine them. Summoners are a particularly good example of this.
"I want a moving pet that debuffs when it attacks."
"Ok what debuff do you want?"
"Some kind of sickness or slow."
"Ok that sounds like a Zombie, you can play Necromancer, I'll make sure that the moving pet with sickness debuff looks like a Zombie."
"Wait I don't want a Zombie, I want a slime."
"Ok you can play Conjurer and you can have a Slime that does that, I'll still make sure the Zombie does it in case you change your mind. I'll even make the Slime heal itself a little when you do it."
"Wait no I like the Necromancer thing but I still want the Slime."
"Uhh... ok lemme think about that one a bit... ok I'll give you a ring for Zombies and a Ring for Slime and you can choose which one to wear."
"But I want the Zombies and the Slimes to have different stats."
"That's fine, I'll tie that to the Ring. We good?"
"Yeah, now let's talk about my REALLY important idea... EXPLODING TOTEMS."
"You SURE you don't wanna just be a Conjurer?"
etc etc.
You're defining the fail condition, then drawing a direct line from 'what they said' to your defined fail condition. The way you fixate on specific things implies to me that I should make shorter posts, so I'll do that from now on.
Seem a bit like one funny build for Monk in GW1
U could buff on a friend player that would last indefitly but would reduce your mana regen bar by 1 (U had 4) but u had to stay in close range to that allie.
It was really cool combo u could do. I kinda cheated in a PvP Map buffing the final door guar so nobody could kill the boss while staying out of range of spells
I've considered this possibility as well.
Sure, it's possible that a 2h plate oracle for example, or a shadow disciple, will do a better job at what objectively should be a templar, than the templar subclass itself.
That wouldn't be an excuse for messing up Templar however.
If they keep to the current concept and make the exact same mistake wow classic did with its hybrids, virtually all classes that aren't x/x, y/y, z/z, etc will be disappoitments
As I said before, I could take this as a valid argument if we were discussing world design or ships or sieges or stuff like that but not when it comes to class design which is arguably the easiest project of all those at hand.
I think that would be infinitely more fair than what they're doing now.
I would also accept a ''8 classes each with 8 specs''.
There's a lot of roles to be had.
For example, I think we all have a clear image of what a rogue (assassin is supposed to be) but you can split it off based on ''specs'' to have a:
- anti-caster assassin
- anti-heavy armor assassin
- saboteur (stealth spec which sneaks on ships, castle walls, node walls, etc and cripples/destroys defenses)
- cc focused assassin
- high mobility combat ''warrior''-style assassin
- super-stealth assassin
etc
I really don't mind this as an attack on anyone, but if someone can't find enough stuff to make a class/subclass, it's because of his/hers personal lack of imagination.
Not sure what you mean with this request.
Can you please clarify/
Listening doesn't mean agreeing.
No because its ''tankyness'' will still depend on his sustained heals.
By that logic a High Priest with plate and a shield will be very tanky.
The second archetype should offer gameplay changes that synergize with the selected theme, not be redundant.
It is not. People are not minmaxing your world, and not even your ships nearly as much as individual class decisions. It takes a lot more design effort to get the classes right, even if it will take a lot less art and programming effort than that needed for world, sieges, etc.
She was talking about the archetype bases. Yes, all of those are specs that end up with their own flavor, but which of your specs do an ability that is outside of the range that Azherae specified?
You don't need to keep up as much sustained healing if your base defense is higher. An Apostle that has this augment wearing the same gear as your theoretical High Priest will still be "more Tanky" and able to survive burst damage better if the defense buff math has any effort put into it. That's synergy of the "cleric" and "tank" concepts to get something unique.
Any class can wear plate and shield...that doesn't necessarily make them significantly more tanky. That could make them more clericy or more fightery or more orcy.
Secondary Archetype will create themes - which is how a Summoner/Cleric becomes Necromancer while a Cleric/Summoner becomes a Shaman. And the associated augments will synergize with those themes.
There is no evidence that Templar has been messed up.
As I said before I'm not an expert in game design, far from it.
This being said, making a couple of animations and ability effect triggers is nothing compared to making an instance or world or even quest chain.
90% of the work in terms of making a class is mental work, something that you could theorethically do in one day.
Maybe I misunderstood (case in which I aplogise and wait for correction) but what did Azherae mean?
No but your character's survival still depends on your healing, which is the ''same old'' thing you were already doing.
If you go High Priests your healers will be stronger and you will also need to heal less frequently.
I mean, you got a point about surviving burst damage, but I said earlier, it's a pretty non-distinct (boring) and unthemed change.
And I'm giving advice so it won't.
Either way, if they intend for him to be a melee support or a 5/10 heal 5/10 damage like wow classic's ret paladin (seems this will be the case) it is ruined. Because that's not what Templar means (templars were clerics specialized in killing, so the theme is killing not healing) and because nobody will want to suck at two things rather than be good at one.
So let's craft.
According to my Expectation of Fighter Augments, you get to choose the following for your Cleric skills.
"Crit Rate Up"
"Damage Formula Bonus"
"Use HP To Empower Attack/Skill"
"Close-In ability"
These are just predictions, this has nothing to do with what I would choose. For example, I wouldn't actually make 'Closing In' a Fighter Augment, I'd make it much more complicated than that, but things I build are usually too complex and need to be curated with people who like simpler things. Just usual disclaimer.
If you told me 'Build a Templar' in Ashes out of what we have for Cleric now, with that, I would:
"Equip a mace, because they have good animation timing for casting between swings and might have CC weapon skills/perks"
"Wear a balance of offense and defense gear which will sometimes cause me to take more damage than a very tanky player, unless the enemy is very strong."
"Focus a lot of points into Weapon Skills and CC Resistances."
Then do:
Judgement (raise to higher level) - Augment with Close-In ability, it already lowers enemy damage
Regeneration (leave at lower level) - Augment with Crit Rate Up (my experience was that individual ticks of Regen can crit)
Castigation - Augment with HP Empower (since you're going to get the HP back anyway)
Main Heal skill - Augment with Crit Rate Up
Secondary Heal Skill (the delayed one, Devotion) - Augment with Crit Rate Up
Divine Censure - Augment with HP Empower to do more damage
Hallowed Ground - Augment with Crit Rate Up or Close-In if Close-In caused it to center on me
Radiant Burst - Might skip this, seems moreso a Cleric/Tank thing, but depends on content generally done
There are obviously more Cleric Skills, and any damage ones would get more similar augments.
Now, bearing in mind that even a basic search for 'Templar MMO' returns a response for a lot of people who want to be able to do all three options of the 'Trinity' (tanking, healing, and DPS), I would consider the overall theme of Templar to be 'muddier' than some others, in terms of mechanics.
So now you have a class that increases their damage, spends a lot of Skill Points on 'methods of hitting the opponent hard and disregarding any hits they take by just healing it away, and can decide if they want to have hate on them or not in most situations by focusing on Regen crit-heals'.
Specialists are more effective in simplistic situations, but they're generally only 'equally effective' otherwise. In a game full of potential sudden PvP even when doing normal content, this Templar is by far more 'scary' than a High Priest.
If you (not you specifically, just 'most average people told to design something', which MIGHT include you) make a specific 'Templar' class, the ability types you 'end up' giving it are going to be mostly:
"Do Damage + CC" (could be a weaponskill, and you would have 'saved' enough Skill Points to get a lot of them)
"Do Damage that causes me to be healed" - Castigation
"Increase my attack" - Gear handles this
"Sustain my attack rhythm" - Regen, particularly with crits, does this, a 'Moving' Hallowed Ground does too, without being a real downside to a Templar due to their other flows
"Raise CC resistance" - Gear and passives handle this for the build above
But in order to make the 'I wanna heal as a Templar' people happy and the 'I wanna sorta Tank as a Templar or at least have a good PvP kit' people happy, you have to add more things to 'dilute' it.
I don't think your intention was to 'lay claim to Templar as a Damage Dealer primarily', even outside of the realm of Ashes' augment system. That is, even if they switched to 16 curated classes, you'd end up arguing with 'that person that wished Templar was more of a healer' over the differences in 'vision'.
This post is too long again, but at least most of it is directly design.
You'd have to give an example of something a 'Templar' class would have, that couldn't be covered between 'Weapon Stuff' and 'Build Choices'.
They told us that not every class might use every weapon equally effectively, and that might be thematic too. Maces add damage, not Magical Crit Chance like Staff does, for example. A 'standard' High Priest would do better with a Staff because it enhances their build choices. A 'standard' Templar would do better with the Mace. I don't think that would be too unfair to ask of a player to accept. "This weapon type, thematically, does this". So maybe Templars who want to do physical DPS will be 'expected' to use Maces.
So, once you are 'A mace wielding, physical accuracy build, CC resistant, weapon-skills-flying-everywhere, 'I can charge at you and hit you with my divine Hammer and slow you so I get to keep hitting you in PvP while you can't escape my DPS aura (Hallowed Ground)' Cleric'...
What do you still want?
"Templar" means a lot of things. The original Knights Templar started as a Catholic military order that later mostly became a financial institution. At the height of its power, around the time of the Crusades, most of the Templars were involved in what was an early form of banking. So technically you could make a non-combat class that was heavily involved with a Financial node and you'd be extremely faithful to the name.
I've played many games that used the term in different ways. In the Dark Sun post-apocalyptic AD&D campaign world, a Templar is a bureaucratic priest who gains holy spells granted by the Sorcerer-King that they serve. In the MMO Path of Exile, a Templar is a hybrid melee warrior and spellcaster. Basically, a Templar is whatever the game designers want it to be in their game world.
If Intrepid's vision of a Templar doesn't conform to your personal preference as to what you think a Templar is, then they haven't ruined anything. It means you had unreasonable expectations. They have no obligation to your headcanon.
Will two Templar get the fusion-ha and turn into an archon
https://mmos.com/news/see-crowfalls-templar-in-action-in-new-video
(not actually a video, just a list of abilities).
The Knights Templar were (at least rumored to be) pretty secretive which was a big reason for their downfall. Remember, this was ostensibly an organization that served the Church in Europe from the 12th through 14th centuries. This was a time period where organized religion had a lot of political power and wasn't particularly forgiving. The Templars were rumored to have a highly secretive initiation ritual, and were accused of things that were serious crimes in those days, such as engaging in homosexuality and worshipping idols. Also, King Phillip IV of France was in heavy debt to the Templars (as they ran many businesses in Europe) and having an excuse to go after them served his personal interests. Also, they were heavily involved in the Crusades which failed to take control of the Holy Land away from the Ottoman Empire so public opinion was against them. Torture was used to extract confessions from leaders which was all the evidence needed to justify destroying the order.
Many people over the centuries have taken those rumors of secretive dealings to heart, and believe that the Templars survived the 14th century purge and went into hiding. After all they were one of the most economically powerful groups of their time and so the speculation is that they continued that power but in secret. There is little to no evidence to prove any of that (as is standard for conspiracy theories) so generally the same people who believe that the Illuminati are pulling strings also give credence to the Templars doing the same thing.
And, letting the debs know that if the game goes P2W, players will be upset.
I agree with everything you said regarding the economic dimension of the Templars and have actually said it a couple of times myself on this forum.
This being said, a purely ''economic'' class is highly unrealistic if you ask me.
I do think certain ''economic'' passives would make sense tho.
I never said anything against the Templar being a melee-caster hybrid.
Clerics are by definition spellcasters in fantasy games.
A warrior cleric will obviously be a warrior spellcaster.
Sure the dev can do anything with it but if it what they did just doesn't match the objectively quantifiable theme/spirit (the name) then they've messed up in that regards and will disappoint the legitimate expectations of numerous people.
I've made this point regarding many classes. Necromancer, Warlock, Shaman, Beastmaster, etc
I think the Templar is among the more simplistic themes with less to expect legitimately besides a melee cleric focused on damage.
With necromancer, beastmaster, warlock, etc I think there is more room for the point you've made here to be true, so I might agree to a notable extent with the point you've made but in regards to other classes.
As I said, there is an objective, legitimate expectation that they can or can't break.
It's not me individually or anything like that.
You ask 1000 of the people who will pick templar on the first day, what they expect, and it will range from ''retribution paladin'' to ''dps melee cleric'' to ''hybrid healer-melee dps''.
There are tons of P2W methods, some very subtle some very obvious.
There would be a lot to talk on this topic too without being redundant in the least.
Thing is, the devs already said they're not going to do anything of the sorts and they were pretty vehement about this so nobody bothers so far.
We're going well out of the fantasy theme into sci-fi so legitimate expectations regarding a fantasy game lose their legitimacy in a sci-fi context.
How does this go against what I said?
Looks like a melee dps focused hybrid healer which is what I said would be a legitimate expectation.
You don't have to apologise for anything, I enjoy you're feedback and the way you question the points I've made, it's a gameplay related discussion and it's good.
Sounds pretty fair so far.
Yeah same.
I think a Templar is a pretty easy combo to get.
A more interesting discussion is how people wanting a Death Knight will do with their melee-plate necromancer/warlock.
Because you can be sure there will be thousands of people wanting that un-named but gameplay-synergized Death Knight that they will try to create either using, most likely, a necromancer.
I did this and couldn't find anyone wanting a templar tank or templar healer.
The thing is, we can't compare Ashes of Creation where you get a class for each role with other MMO's where you don't get this system, instead relying on the spec system.
I mean, it depends.
If we're talking about pvp between large groups, a team made completely out of specialists (only dedicated dps + dedicated healer + dedicated tank + dedicated buffer), history has shown them to be the prefered path, with jacks-of-all-trade being left out and shunned.
In smaller, 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 maybe 5v5 scenarios, yes what you said has been shown to sometimes be the case.
Sometimes.
Do you expect such people to be in the game in the context of being able to simply put heavy armor and a 2h on a high priest?
I could get why such people would appear if you only had a High Priest who could only wear cloth and use a staff, and a Templar who could only wear plate and use a 2h melee weapon.
This being said, I do not expect such people to appear here and in the context of the name-templar and mmo-history (most notably, retribution ''templar's verdict'' paladin, which, despite being able to do some limited healing, indeed sometimes life-saving, is dps focused).
I'd expect such people to exist if Apostle didn't exist in the game.
I'm under the impression that you believe the important matter here is the name. Is that the case?
The case is not the problem. I'm out about gameplay and theme (spirit) - gameplay (role and performance) syndegy.
Templar is just one example, we could discuss many cases, the most interesting ones being non-templar related.
As I said, the person imagining the Templar as more of a healer would have no justification in terminology or mmo-rpg history.
Not in the context of AoC at least.
I'm currently working not only on Templar design but also on Apostle, Oracle, Protector and even Shadow Disciple.
Been busy this period so they're pretty late and probably won't post them for a while now anyway but yeah.
Can't complain about anything you just said as long as the numbers are right.
A purely economic class would be an interesting choice. I've seen it in some games before. Heavy into Charisma, bonuses for selling and buying stuff. If you're not a fighter you're a crafter it might not be a bad idea.