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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.
Hide the health of a non-grouped player is fine, hide his level is better
Ravno
Member
From the wiki : "Players that are not in the same party, raid, alliance, or guild will not be able to see other player's health percentages or exact health bar values"
"A player's name plate will deteriorate to give an indication of how much damage they have take"
I think that's a great idea, but it's incomplete.
There should be an option on the player side that prevent other player to see the exact level, class and prevent deep inventory inspection. That way, when you encounter another player with combattant status, you don't know immediately what you are up to. You can deduce it from the skin of his gear, from the way he deals with monsters, but that's it.
Same if you are prone to corruption and going to gank a green low level, who know, you could face an high level player on disguise who is actually fishing you ?
The risk & reward system is flawed if you can deduce beforehand, from the level of your opponent, that you will win your fight.
It would be much more interesting if you have to deduce yourself the strength of people you meet instead of having the game giving you an abstract number without any plausible reason.
"A player's name plate will deteriorate to give an indication of how much damage they have take"
I think that's a great idea, but it's incomplete.
There should be an option on the player side that prevent other player to see the exact level, class and prevent deep inventory inspection. That way, when you encounter another player with combattant status, you don't know immediately what you are up to. You can deduce it from the skin of his gear, from the way he deals with monsters, but that's it.
Same if you are prone to corruption and going to gank a green low level, who know, you could face an high level player on disguise who is actually fishing you ?
The risk & reward system is flawed if you can deduce beforehand, from the level of your opponent, that you will win your fight.
It would be much more interesting if you have to deduce yourself the strength of people you meet instead of having the game giving you an abstract number without any plausible reason.
1
Comments
All of what you are talking about is planned.
The main issue is that you can not deduce anything at all from the appearance of the items the player is wearing, as they could be using any cosmetic at all, and there is no way to turn off cosmetics.
What this all means in conjunction is that when you see another player out in the world, you have no real idea of their class, gear or level.
I think showing character combat level and what type of gear they are wearing under the costume is almost necessary. I don't know if the UI will show you what class they are, but it is still up to the player to know what abilities the other person has and how the weapon plays a part of their build. I don't think engaging in PvP will be a simple thing, even as the game is planned now.
I didn't know about the whole transmog stuff.
The fun fact is that i would actually pay for an option to disable cosmetic
But the transmog system in this game is not so bad, from the wiki :
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Appearance_slots
Also :
I think that's a mistake and having the ability to hide your level (like an option "show level" ON/OFF) would lead to much more interesting encounters. The gear icon who show the type/quality of gear seems enough to me while leaving the door open to disguise yourself.
From a roleplay standpoint, there is no reason to assess the threat of a character outside of his gear and behavior with the system who feed you with an arbitrary level number.
If you walk by two man, wearing the same gear and standing still, how can you tell at first sight than one is level 30 and the other one level 50 ? That make no sense.
And btw, you could even make this treat assassement a class specific perk.
Maybe mage can have the ability to assess the mana pool of a target, or an assassin a ability like an instinct to roughly assess threat for exemple.
You wanna talk what makes no sense? Wearing the same shirt as someone else and 'not being able to 'tell'' what kind of shirt it is. More rediculous is you are wearing the same shirt but they have bought cosmetics so you now 'cant tell' and claiming that money has not bought you some power in the form of limiting information. Not the most egregious p2w, but you stop being able to say 'absolutely no effect on game play' at that point.
In FFXI you could check someone's full gear and augments. I am unaware of what 'unwanted' effects they might be referring to here, but I don't think it was a huge problem. If they are referring to 'bullying someone for not wearing meta' thats simply fixed by, you know, not having dps meters and having a properly balanced set of gear pieces with few if any noob traps in the first place.
Why
I hate it when I'm in the middle of a busy city, and I can't see anything cos all my display shows is a massive string of player names/info. I like the mystery of not knowing who or what the person next to me is, how strong they are, and what they're likely to be packing. And, if someone's going to try their luck with me, I want them to be as clueless as I am as to which one of us has the upper hand with regards to level/gear/etc.
As Ravno said:
Are you ok with a check function rather than being automatically handed data?
A combat system is flawed if gear and level are the sole factors of risk in a fight. Also the check function I mentioned early should have a limited range equal to max targetable range. All that time spent manually entering the check function and looking at their gear is time your opponent has to either run or come up to you to smack you in the face. A risk and reward of its own. With that in mind is such a mental check function acceptable to you?
Knowing the primary class of a target shouldn't be enough information to know if you are going to win or not.
Knowing the level of your target is something that should be a given, since corruption penalty is tied to level, and it would no doubt be possible to one shot low level players. it just seems to me to be bad game design to have a very large penalty associated with unknown information.
Absolutely, but consider:
- You're a Level 35, hiding outside a city gate.
Two players leave the gate, both heading in a different direction. One is a full-health Level 50 called "Playya" in full end-game raid gear. The other is a poisoned mid-health Level 15 called "Playaa" in a mismatch of starter gear.
- You're a Level 35, hiding outside a city gate.
Two players leave the gate, both heading in a different direction. One is called "Playya" and the other is called "Playaa".
Which better fits in with the Risk vs Reward theme? Personally, I believe it's the second one.
If there is much diversity in gear, this will really help create a better world, visually. The highlight-for-info option makes the most sense to me. You can take a really quick assessment of someone in a crown at a glance but it takes a moment (highlight/target) to gather solid info. e.g., Looking at a sea of people, I may see that they all seem to be of a middle/upper class, but noticing one guy with work boots and a glove in his pocket, I can start to guess he was working outside/ isn't related to these people etc etc...
If there is not a lot of diversity in gear then.. groups will looks kinda stupid.
An added gameplay element would be NPC's in the wild could have varying AI's so you wouldn't know right away if they're even a player. If they're not soldiers you're aligned against, you would still gain corruption (maybe less than if they were a player) cause you're just killing people all the same, player or AI, and it would help expose gankers and give them something to do at the same time.
Now I have mixed feelings. I dont see the harm in hidding levels. Let's see who has the blzz to fight.
I hate all that floaty stuff.
Play Skyrim for a few minutes and you really appreciate their minimal UI.
Depends how big of the community the initial backers are. This actually seems like a bad idea if the people on the forums or backed the project initially are a minority.
U.S. East
Hiding level is bad because of the cash shop cosmetics and transmog would make it impossible to have a clue what level someone is, which I think reduces skill in determining if you should be able to 1vX enemies.
Sell this for the price of your cheapist cosmetic. Make it on a timer (so you have to buy more)
The healthbar of non grouped players will be hidden. It has been said so by the devs.
Suspicious players can be reported and the GMs will deal with them.
This isnt the first mmorpg that hides players healthbars. I prefer it as well. It prevents players from switching to the enemy with the lower HP and deleting him.
It also prevents players from hitting another player that fights a mob, until that players hp reaches near zero, dying from the mob thus bypassing the corruption system.
If you want to hit another player, do it at your own risk. The first hit may be the last and then you have corruption points.
you are evil
AHAHAHAHA
I don't know. I'm a little worried about the increasing prevalence of cheating in online games. If there's some opaque system where you can't tell if your attacks are being received, it'll be almost impossible to tell if you lost due to cheating or not.
I've quit a good number of games due to cheating, and what's more important to me is being able to have assurance that the opponent isn't using a trainer. I'm not sure how seriously Intrepid is going to take this.