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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.
Heavy, leather, robe, jewelry. Physical defence. Magic defence. Epics? Meaningful gearing vs pokemon
George_Black
Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
If any of these words switched something in you, let's discuss and provide suggestions to IS in order for gearing up to be more about making meaningful choices and less about chance (fire water plant, what armor do you wear, what armor does the opponent wear).
In ESO they did this stupid thing, in which heavy armor takes more dmg from magic, robe takes more dmg from physical weapons and leather is in between. Same thing was happening in AAU. It was the most annoying thing to know that if you wore heavy armor you 100% would have some disadvantage vs magic.
Lazy design, lame pokemon balancing attempt. Zero player agency.
In ESO they did this stupid thing, in which heavy armor takes more dmg from magic, robe takes more dmg from physical weapons and leather is in between. Same thing was happening in AAU. It was the most annoying thing to know that if you wore heavy armor you 100% would have some disadvantage vs magic.
Lazy design, lame pokemon balancing attempt. Zero player agency.
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Comments
This is my design proposition for these items.
Heavy armor should always have the more physical defence amount. The additional stats that players should find on heavy armors should be around HP, shield defence chance rate, HP regen, resistances (except for slow/snare), rarely offensive bonuses, rarely MP related stats.
Leather armor should always have less physical defence than heavy. Players should find stats on leather armors like critical modifiers, physical ability cooldown reductions, snare/slow resistances, evasion bonus OR roll dodge cost reductions. Definitely offensive boosts, rarely MP related stats, rarely casting speed bonuses and rarely magic ability cooldown reductions.
Robe armors should always have the least amount of physical defence. The additional stats that players should find on robe armors should be around MP, mp regen, casting speed bonuses, magic ability cooldown reductions, magic attack bonuses, magic critical modifiers.
Low tier armor sets should provide 1 additional stat slot, mid tier should provide 2 and high end gear should provide 2-3 (or even 4 but it seems too much).
Would those be set in stone? Could crafters tinker with them? That's a different topic imo.
These items should be the way for characters to increase their Magic defence. I dont think that jewels should provide additional stats, but I am pretty sure that theorycrafters (what an ironic word) would like options. Anyway idc.
I think magic defence should not be tier to armors in order to avoid pokemon balance. Magic beats heavy, heavy beats medium, medium beats magic, etc etc.
I much prefer ACTIVE ABILITIES to be the player agency for victory.
What class/weapon will you play?
What abilities will you slot?
What stats will you invest in?
Wearing heavy? Facing mage? Here is a lame handicap from the get-go for no reason.
So, jewelry should be the way to increase Magic defence, just like armor increases physical defence.
Whether jewel sets should provide additional stats I dont care.
The only jewelries that I would like to see offering cool bonuses or stats should be the EPIC (legendary, what have you..) jewelry dropped from World Raid bosses. (During every expansion, the magic defence these jewels provide in addition to their unique bonuses should be increased to max the highest tier of the normal jewelry sets magic defence).
I dont like "heavy takes extra dmg from magic atks, robe takes extra dmg from physical atks"
Isolate physical defence to armors.
Let jewels provide the only should of magic defence in gear.
Define heavy armors as HP, def, resistance stat source.
Define leather armor as an aggressive playstyle stat builder
Define robe as an MP/ Magic atk booster
Mages should wear leather or heavy if their playstyle or class fits the upclose combat battlemage/summoner/priest character.
Bards may choose to wear robes if they want to focus only on supporting.
Give us real choices. Real stats. Not pokemon balance
- Lighter armor is more mobile than heavier armor.[30]
- Light armor is geared towards magical damage mitigation.[31][32]
- Heavy armor typically has more HP than lighter armor.[30]
- Heavy armor is geared towards physical damage mitigation
Note: Gear has approximately a 40-50% influence on a player's overall power in the gamehttps://ashesofcreation.wiki/Armor#Heavy_armor
Since lighter armor is geared more toward magical damage mitigation, then heavy armor = taking comparatively more magic damage. And vice versa for physical damage since heavier armor is more toward physical damage.
However, any class can use any armor type. Including any mixed combination. This means that selecting gear is equal to selecting your stats. I think this answers the player agency problem.
It works if you can create the amor you want with the stats and effects on it that you want.
The trick is to not think about it as robes, but to think about it in terms of heavy, medium and light armor.
Tanks then generally have a full set of physical armor, a full set of magic armor, and mix and match as the scenario calls for it.
Actually, it isnt just tanks, it's most classes.
What I do want to see in this specific regard is for classes to have worthwhile buffs to boost various defensive stats like this, so that the specific classes you have in your group may change up what armor you are best using.
For a truly blended experience, you might need a system similar to Monster Hunter:
This is why people rarely have the same gear in Monster Hunter - it's very mix-and-match.
This isnt a bad idea - the issue (if you want to call it that) is that since gear in Ashes is crafted rather than found, you kind of need to assume people will have gear crafted that has the passives they want.
RNG in crafting needs to be thrown in a dumpster fire where it belongs imo. Give the crafters the tools and materials required to make exactly what they want. That in combination with the repairs needing materials will do well.
I'm all for that in general as well.
The only problem I have (that absolutely can be worked around) is that if all gear us able to be crafted with no RNG, then all players will have the same gear.
Well, what they could do is add elemental resistances, and have it changes the tint of your armor color (before cosmetics are involved) according to said resistances. You could do the same for weapons and elemental damage types.
It's hard to say how resistances would work though as it doesn't seem like there are any classes that will be focusing on specific damage types outside of the obviously martial/physical classes.
I'm more thinking the same items, not the same look.
In terms of look, cosmetics should provide enough variety - but if the gear meta is as simple as pointing to the best items and then having them made, honestly the entire game is kind of boring.
ah gotcha. In that case, i have two ideas that would be added on. One, stats on armor are determined by the type of armor (heavy, medium, light), the amount of stat points available (determined by level), and the specific modifier materials mixed in (Materials that can be added to *choose* the stats an item gains.) The second idea would be to have durability be the RNG factor on items. So the higher the skill of a crafter and with good luck the durability could be really good. If you craft without modifiers then you get random stat allocations, and I think that's pretty fair.
Ill try to put together an example below crafting the same base item:
Helmet A crafted without a modifier and a bad roll on durability:
Heavy Armor: (prioritizes str, con, dex rolls when there is no modifier added)
52 max durability
100 armor
10str
5 con
5 dex
(Lvl10 item = 20 stat points)
Helmet B crafted with a modifier and a good roll on durability:
Heavy Armor:(prioritizes str, con, dex rolls when there is no modifier added)
90 max durability
100 armor
15 str ( lesser Str Modifier added x3)
5 con ( lesser Con Modifier added x1)
(Lvl10 item = 20 stat points)
With this you can choose what stats a gear gets, but the underlying special effects would stay the same. Like if you got a red dragonscale helmet it might have a natural resistance to fire. Additionally as you can see on Helmet B, the modifiers could have multiple types, and depending on how many you use and the quality of them, you gain stats toward the craft. You could even add in a system to have a piece of armor lose level requirement if the stat points on an item arent completely used up.
I don't want RNG to be a factor in determining stats on gear. What are your thoughts on a mitigatable chance to fail or impact to quality?
And... knowing the last thread involving RNG lasted like 9 days across 500 responses. We can take it elsewhere and not hijack @George Black 's topic. I'm just curious.
Meaningful choices means Ill pick a heavy armor set with shield defence and status resistances, or Ill pick a heavy armor set with HP and HP regen bonuses to add to my playstyle.
Meaningful choices means Ill pick up a leather armor for my ranger with snare/root resistances, or Ill pick up a leather with critical modifiers and cd reductions.
Non meaningful choices means that the game designs a heavy armor with random stats bonuses but a predetermined magic attack weakness.
Non meaningful choices means that the game designs a robe armor with random stats but with a predetermined strong magic resistance and melee weakness.
Being forced to choose between bad physical defence or bad magic defence is... bad design.
Armors should provide the best physical defence you can get, jewels should provide the best magoc defence you csn get. So of you ste faced with a melee class or a magic class its up to you to win or lose, not up to the fact of weather you wear heavy or leather.
I guess I am confused by your question. My suggestion was to add in resources that grant target modifiers (stats) when crafted with an item. So if you decided to craft without these modifiers or only some of them, the "free" stat points would choose stats at random. With an increased chance of specific stats depending on if it was heavy, medium, or light armor. Then if you chose to craft with enough modifier materials, you could choose exactly how many and what stats go into an item.
I then wondered if adding in a bit of RNG for the maximum durability would be a good idea, increased by the crafter's skill or talent choices.
Does this clear things up?
What trade offs?
Is this good balancing?
Why does wearing metal instead of leather makes you take more dmg from magic.
I dont want forced pokemon balancing. I want balance to make sense.
You should lose to a mage because your class/weapon doesnt have the ACTIVE abilities to beat a mage.
You should beat a rogue because you have the active abilities to defend against his blows.
Active abilities. Not heavy takes 10% more dmg from magic atks.
Put focus on meaningful gameplay, not forced numbers that make no sense.
Btw only eso (in the last year) and AA forced heavy to take extra dmg from magic, robe to take extra dmg from melee and leather to have nothing and everything.
What trade offs are you talking about?
How is it NOT having the status resistances of heavy when you choose to wear leather "NO tradeoffs"?
Right but it's unclear to me what 'meaningful choices' means to you. A choice is meaningful when there isn't a singular optimal answer. Games usually do this by not giving you access to every possible good stat for your class, tl giving people different styles and capabilities within their chosen classes and abilities.
However I don't want to make the assumption you are asking to have no weaknesses. Because such a gear system usually leads to homogeneous gear and very simplified cookie cutter builds and I know you dislike such homogenization.
But you /seem/ to be asking for a gear system in which you don't 'have' to have a trade off for your specific play style. You /appear/ to want to wear both physical and magical defense. But it's less apparent to me what you 'wont have'.
Therefore I ask you more directly, what weakness are you ok with having in this proposed system. It sounds a lot like 'none I think kit should matter more' but that usually leads to homogeneous gear. I want to make sure I am not misreading your claim. You giving me an example of something you are comfortable with not having stat wise on your physical attacker style builds would help quickly clarify a lot of my possible misunderstandings about your proposal.
No need for forced weaknesses.
Only build choices.
If you add to your heavy armor HP shield defence and stun resist, you miss out on HP regen, bleed resist, cd reduction etc etc etc.
You also miss on all the agressive options of Leather armor.
You also miss on all the magic options related to robe.
Why is it so hard ro understand that forced pokemon balance is not necessary for equipment?
I put a whole section saying that armor should give physical defence, jewels should give magic defence, and we are still trying to find out what the drawbacks should be?
They should NOT BE messing around with random chance who your opponent is.
Oh I didn't think those would be important stats in the game (bleed and hp regen) but yeah I could see a game made by Intrepid where a big chunk of damage could come from bleed and therefore need a bunch of hp regen.
But I think it's a bad design to give artificial drawbacks.
In eso a heavy armor set could give you tons of agressive stats, which was wrong.
It is also wrong that heavy armors take more dmg from magic attacks.
A heavy armor should be defensive with less avenues for damage. It most certainly should not be instagimped vs mages. What for?
Same thing for robes in eso. They had the weakest defences and on top of that they took EXTRA dmg from physical attacks. What for?
With this paradigm, what is to stop all players just using heavy armor?
The idea of the game is that all classes can use all gear, which means you should be able to get heavy armor with caster stats and effects.
If I can get the same - or close to the same - stats and effects on heavy armor as a caster, why would I use anything else?
If you start to limit what armor types can have each passive you are suggesting, all that is doing is pigeonholing each class in to specific gear choices.
While I understand the apprehension if you haven't seen the system at work (in the exact same way someone that hasn't seen the corruption system at work may be apprehensive about it), take it from someone that spent years in the gear system in question; if the goal is to diversify valid gear choice, the system Intrepid are looking at using works exceptionally well.
And that is coming from someone that is happy to take any opportunity to rip in to Intrepid right now.
Wtf?
Who told you that heavy armpr should give you casting speed, magic cd reduction max MP critical magic etc etc?
Read the posts.
You are right that if leather armor gave crit modifiers, cd reductions, mp regen or a bonus to damage, no one other than tanks would use heavy armor.
That is the problem.
Intrepid want all gear to be an option for all classes. Maybe not the first choice option for all situations - but an option that is situationally beneficial.
If you put all of those bonuses on leather armor, then non-leather armor becomes a non-option for a good many classes - and that is not what Intrepid want.
What is most important to me is that crafted gear has value. The idea that you could use crafting to make specific gear for custom character builds is my jam. From what I have been led to believe, the crafting and character build system is expected to have enough depth to allow for some crazy niche builds. When you can come up with an off the wall build and actually gear it up. That is good. A lot of games have good customization and no gear to make some builds useable. I am hoping Ashes don't have this problem.
This is what I want.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
For the longest time, I was playing a half plate, half cloth wearing caster with a sword and shield, as that was the best gear to suit my build.
It worked damn fine too.