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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
Same I found this very early as well. I would also like to see way more on the archetypes but I also understand their reluctance to show stuff to early.
Most people lack the ability to think for themselves sit back and go "Oh this is a early version of this, I am sure it will improve over next couple of years."
Just look at the Dwarf threads as an example.
They showed them and stated very clearly this is an early version and we are not happy with them and they will be changing.
The stream wasn't even over and there were several threads about how the Dwarves looked bad.
Imagine how much worse it would be to give details like that regarding an archetype and God forbid they change something after. The videos and forums would be lit up with all kinds of craziness.
However, all of this class choice was taken up in the games first 20 levels. At level 20, you only had very basic spells - you had nothing at all that was class defining. These all came later - in many cases you got your class defining ability when you hit the games initial level cap of 50.
I don't see too much scope for transferring how EQ2 did classes to how Intrepid is planning on doing them.
Yeah so? You can watch videos also for entertainment you know.
Why would they leave after seeing 'only' 8 classes? It's not like new players can play them all at once. In fact, I think they'd be happier because there is less decision fatigue of which class to play. Imagine trying to choose between 64 classes in a game you hardly know anything about.
This may be something you have an issue with, but most players that would be attracted to a game due to the number of classes simply see it as 64 characters, and the only decision is which to play first.
You don't choose right from the beginning, a game with a class system of 20 or more is meant to branch you cleverly at certain points of the levelling phase and that turns into an exciting time when you make a decision of what you want to specialize in.
Like starting with 8 Primary Archetypes and branching by choosing a Secondary Archetype at Level 25?
....like simple ways of starting it, like starting off as a super basic fighter or a super basic caster.
Why?
What does the secondary archtype do? It augments the spells of the main class depending on what the second archtype represents.
But there are only 8 possible choices here. Then why am I saying innumerable?
Because each secondary archtype will have 4 schools of augments i.e. 4 versions of a spell depending on what a player wants. As far as I know, we can pick and choose different school of augments for different spells. This by itself creates hundreds of playstyles but then we have augments from different aspects of the game as well, such as religion, social org, etc. Hence, innumerable.
Meaning of the word "Class" cannot be changed just because Steven wants to do so. This is a word relevant throughout the MMO community and it represents something. If Steven said "Rogues" meant a class which heals and "Priest" are the people who go bump in the night, I would call it non-sense. Same applies to class.
Lets take WoW for example. Paladin have 3 talent trees or playstyles - dps, tank, heal. We still count count paladin as 1 class and not 3. Similarly Druids have 4 playstyles - rdps, mdps, tank, heal. Again, 1 class and not 4. I dont have experience with other MMOs but I am sure same is true there as well.
Steven is free to coin a new term if he wants to convey something different, which he did with "archtype" BUT class means what it means and there arent 64 classes in Ashes.
A necromancer and a summoner ought to feel different BUT a necromancer and a necromancer can feel different too depending on what augments have been chosen by their players. Does that make those necromancers represent 2 different class? At the end of the day, necromancer and summoner, both of them are going to summon to get stuff done.
In Korean mmo's this is not true, the west have lazily simplified where korean's have organised it and by doing so have unlocked a decently cool milestone achievement + the pride of specialization.
I don't play WoW, the skill tree's I assume on Paladin, 1 is aggressive, 1 is defensive and other is supportive or something like that, I could be wrong but doesn't matter. So how do you distinguish those 3, "Raging Paladin" "Light Paladin" "Green Power Ranger", when you're looking for a Paladin are all 3 types acceptable? If they are named differently (in the most tacky way in WoW...) and serve different purposes then they are each their own class, regardless of if you throw gold at it to simply change it.
If 3 different types of "man worships church, comes out with armor" aren't that different, then we've got a pretty simple game on our hands but WoW didn't have any proper online competition in the market at the time so that's fine...
This is a good example and I bet that WoW's specs are changing the class way more than what we will see with augments in Ashes. 100%.
WoW given waaaaay too much credit, go and play it
Will you work on the classes before its too late???? Or will the game be destroyed at birth?!!?!?!?
Why?
Because we are looking for the raid buffs that paladin class provides. If we are looking to fulfill a particular role then whether that role is fulfilled by paladin or not is a different matter.
Ex: New raid, any paladin player will get accepted. Last slot, no paladin in raid and we need a tank THEN only tank paladin will be accepted because we need tank and paladin as well.
One more characteristic of class I would like to elaborate here.
In WoW, Talent trees can be changed by giving gold to NPC who would then reset it.
Secondary archtype can be reset by doing a quest line in AoC, afaik.
Class is something intrinsic and not something that can be changed. You can be tankier rogue or magical rogue or nin-nin rogue. How you play your rogue doesnt make your rogue a new class of rogue. Its just your playstyle for the class "Rogue".
Rogues can find hidden stuff in dungeons. Rogues - not nin-nin rogue or magical girl rogue - ANY Rogue.
A mage no matter the augment wont beat someone with a staff to death.
A ranger no matter the augment will fight from a distance.
A tank no matter the augment wont deal overwhelming damage from a range.
A summoner no matter the augment will summon something.
And so on and so forth.
Didn't have any competition?
Didn't lineage 2 come out a year or two before wow?
Anyways
What you really got my attention with was "If 3 different types of "man worships church, comes out with armor" aren't that different, then we've got a pretty simple game on our hands"
Isn't that what some people are describing secondaries as?
All tanks are still tanks, different secondary just changes the flavor? But they are all still the same class, and can't change an archetypes role.
Where as in wow those different specs can be used to change their role in a party? This would make a spec in wow more impactful than a secondary in ashes.
By your statement wouldn't that make ashes more simple than wow?
Which I feel like was the opposite of what you were trying to say?
I guess I didn't follow...
Would a fighter/tank be enough to tank content if the whole party has bard secondaries that can decrease dmg output of their targets?
There's a ton of possible combos that might lead to classes having the same impact as they did in wow. We can only wait till they release more info about them.
Well you are the one who have not played it so perhaps you should try and then you know what we are talking about. 😉
yeah im just fkin around, lol
trying to add suspense to this whole thing
WoW is just about an obsession with gear and raiding, I'm after way more player interaction.
If you do not have a world in which the "classes" can properly function and interact with the environment, then there is no point in working out the details of the classes, right? Sure, they probably have a list of skills and their basic functionalities laid out on a whiteboard somewhere; but if the base of the game (the world) isn't ready for the integration of all the class skillsets, what's the point of sharing information that will more than likely change several times, if not more, before you're ready?
I mean maybe the "rush TP" is cute, at this point, because we have no context on how it will/could interact with the environment. *Maybe* there will be a siege mechanic that requires teleport to traverse some obstacle during a siege, to hit a lever and drop a draw bridge for example, and giving Archetypes the ability to do so if they chose Mage as their secondary unlocks a whole new strategy for sieging. Who knows, maybe there will be other instances in the game that could make a situation easier if that skillset is present.
These are the types of things I think they are working on, undoubtedly more intricate and well thought out, that delays the release of details of class information.
I would actually say working on combat is less effective if you dont know what classes there are. Working on swinging a weapon or waving a hand is ok, but do they need to add animations for Sleep? Stagger? Stun? Are you going to make every sword swing part of a generic "sword" suite? Or will a different archetypes have different sword swing animations? Will Augments affect sword swing animation?
You cant answer these without knowing what the class system is bringing to the table.
Yeah
That's basically what I ended up with after the last time I started that thread
It's up to intrepid and how much augments can push the envelope for an archetype, and at this point we just don't know enough yet.
Personal vote, I hope you can build characters in a way to where you can shift their roles in a group... But that's just my opinion.