To Steven: Please stop using godmode during showcases

Combat reveal was great, love the direction, loved everything about it from the camera effects to animations, the sound, the "weight" on the weapons everything looks 100 times better, amazing talented team.

However, what I just can't understand is why this far into development with so many eyes on the project Steven keeps playing around godmode when showcasing combat... this makes absolutely no sense

I love Steven, dude is an amazing game director but you can't be playing around like that misrepresenting the combat during such a big reveal... the reason why we had all this fuss with people thinking this is an action game is because One - people are stupid, Two - Steven had no cooldown on his skills like that dash and kept spamming it and was pulling 10 mobs to AoE in BDO style... and we know this is not how it will work, pulling 2/3 mobs should already give him a hard time if he is solo...

Please Steven, the next time you showcase combat do it with actual gameplay, have one or two devs with you healing you and tanking so people can have the Actual correct expectation about the overall gameplay and combat

I know it was just to show weapon attacks but clearly, the dash and AoE mob pulling got over the way and made a showcase that could have been a 10/10 for your amazing talented work... a 6/10 due to the misrepresentation

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Theplague4u

Having a pocket healer on the side would be great. I'm all for the end of god mode.

Enigmatic Sage

I'm waiting for the random test footage where Steven signs into the play test as a giant NPC mob and starts terrorising the testers!

Maybe some crazy weather or environment effect occurs and the players are all like " wtf? " then Steven starts rampaging diabolically

McMackMuck

IMO using God mode is absolutely fine.
(I think) We see hits being dealt to Steven's character as red numbers floating on the screen.
(I think) We see his character's actions interrupted by being hit.
If his character were to die then the demo video would be broken up by re-spawns potentially a few minutes travel away from the demo area, making the time spent less efficient at giving a combat demo.
It makes Steven's task a lot easier if he doesn't have to focus on not dying whilst giving a fluid running commentary for the video.
IMO the point at which to introduce player hit points and status effects would be A2 testing, where Intrepid can gather feedback from the testers.

Liniker

McMackMuck wrote: »

IMO using God mode is absolutely fine.
(I think) We see hits being dealt to Steven's character as red numbers floating on the screen.
(I think) We see his character's actions interrupted by being hit.
If his character were to die then the demo video would be broken up by re-spawns potentially a few minutes travel away from the demo area, making the time spent less efficient at giving a combat demo.
It makes Steven's task a lot easier if he doesn't have to focus on not dying whilst giving a fluid running commentary for the video.
IMO the point at which to introduce player hit points and status effects would be A2 testing, where Intrepid can gather feedback from the testers.

oh it's definitely not fine at all... I mean he can just ask someone to play a healer if the issue is dying as I suggested or he can use a training dummy there's just no reason to use godmode when you are doing a Big reveal which is supposed to be actual gameplay to showcase your game thousands of people

same happened with the flying mounts, they stoped using it in every video as it was also misleading people since those are going to be such a rare achievement

and now they know it's not fine due to the huge amount of people misled thinking AoC is going for BDO combat since steven was using no cooldown dashes and pulling 10 mobs with his godmode on, they had to make multiple posts across social media explaining to people this was not the case - all because of non-representative gameplay

Steven is just a gamer and likes to have fun in his own game, I get it, but they absolutely should not be doing those things during big showcases of the game

Dygz

I mean... the purpose of the demo is to showcase the attacks... especially the attack animations.
Healing is irrelevant.

Who said that the devs agree with you that using flying mounts in their demos leads people to think that they are common rather than rare??

People had lots of misconceptions about the demo - the primary one being that they had abandoned Tab Target combat. And that had nothing to do with godmode.

Can't please all of the people all of the time people.
People will find something to whine about.
Welcome to the internet.

AidanKD

@Dygz I agree that it's probably impossible to try and target all of the potential pitfalls that the interwebs will throw at you especially with the MMO community as a whole. That said, I would say that I don't think it would be a bad idea to have whatever foresight you can and minimise whatever may detract from the point you are trying to make.

Like you said, the action/tab thing was definitely one of the bigger things generating a thread that actually closely rivalled the main feedback thread! Steven actually responded in discord a few hours after clearing it up, and I and some others tried to spread awareness of this, but a few days later Vaknar made the sticky and I guess it's all cleared up now but I mean perhaps the game needs a little excitement when updates can be few and far between

I would probably use Guild War 2's recent developer updates as a decent example of what might be a good solution. They put out a bunch of balance updates, and while it was overall perceived positively, the 2nd update got a huge backlash. A day or two later the devs responded and went over some points, some they could change and explained their thought, some they couldn't change but explained why, this calmed the storm.

This happened with Vaknar's post I guess, but I think that if you have enough heat, where initially Steven posted on the discord, it might have been better to make a post which hits all the main talking areas i.e. at the least -Forums, just so any essential memos get put across and conversation can stay on track again.

I agree can't have a perfect world, but we can definitely learn.

hleV

You're essentially saying "don't showcase just what you want to showcase, but more".
The showcase wasn't for taking damage (except for floating numbers).
You don't make sense.

Liniker

hleV wrote: »

You're essentially saying "don't showcase just what you want to showcase, but more".
The showcase wasn't for taking damage (except for floating numbers).
You don't make sense.

??? tf you mean I'm saying I wanna see "more" ?? I'm literally saying show "less" with stop using dashes and skills with no cooldown...

Dygz wrote: »

People will find something to whine about.
Welcome to the internet.

You my friend, need to stop white knighting around these forums in every opportunity you can.

I only mentioned the use of healers IF the reason Steven is using godmode is so he doesn't die when recording - but no need to use with healers if they don't want to and that's not the point anyways, just pull 1 mob at a time, boost your level prior to the recording, use a training dummy, basically anything that will not mislead people and make the mods spend the rest of the month reminding people around social media that the gameplay shown doesn't represent what combat is like.

Why in the hell would you record a video knowing streamers and hundreds of thousands of people that do Not follow your game will be watching and be dashing around with no CD in BDO style, using flying mounts all the time, swapping individual cosmetic pieces that are supposed to be full-body cosmetics, and the list goes on

There's just no reason at all to show stuff like just because Steven wants to have some fun when recording.. any guild leader/content creator with a big enough community knows how many times we need to explain to people these small things that are absolutely not necessary to show and easily avoidable. This is 100% valid constructive criticism.

Mag7spy

This is a common practice when you are trying to dev things as the game is still in development. Not all skills are done and certain things can be broken or not working well in the build. They aren't at a stage where they are really focusing on balance no matter what is shown it isn't going to be what combat will be by the end as they are still in development.

If they could have everything working and a team it be great and all, but that isn't the case. And if things go wrong they have to record their video again and Steven I'm sure it stretched thin enough being the creative director. I'm sure they put enough time into these demos for us.

Liniker

Mag7spy wrote: »

Not all skills are done and certain things can be broken or not working well in the build. They aren't at a stage where they are really focusing on balance no matter what is shown it isn't going to be what combat will be by the end as they are still in development..

In regards to the no-cooldown on your spells even if that was the case, this is literally a matter of just Not using the spell, this was a weapon melee combat video update... or at least only using it once in a while, there's no reason to spam it as in this particular case with the dashes it definitely sends out an idea of a hypermobile fast-paced BDO style gameplay that is not representative of the game.

StevenSharif

Thanks for the feedback.

Generally I try to keep an eye on this, but if I do sprinkle in some God mode, I think a bit of mystery/theory-crafting is acceptable and not disruptive for the community.

As the demonstrations grow closer to a fully comprehensive showcase of combat/gameplay you will begin to see less God mode utilized. (Except for insane health, need to keep the camera man alive).

Mag7spy

Its a development build we can't assume everything is working perfectly as intended. How do you know cooldowns aren't broken at the moment as they are trying different codings for different elements with the game like on kill skill reset? Or something else is just broken do to some other bug? Best thing to go off is if they say they are showing a certain element that should be the main focus on feedback. Yet i hear people talking about skills and mobs when that wasn't the focus of the presentation. They were being nice trying to tease it a bit, but were also clear the point of the demo was only for basic weapon attacks and the numbers. Which them mentioning it multiple times is what they did on their end, and we as consumers have to do our part and not nit pick on content that they were not fully trying to get feedback on as they are most likely still working out the details on things.

Like you are mentioning the skills, and wanting a healer, and no god mod, etc. There are a lot of features included in that and we can't assume everything is working fine without bugs. If there are more bugs that would pop up and make them have to explain the situation for every detail that would take away from the point of their stream.

As for the speed of combat we don't know and they need to develop the skills and other elements to see everything in a full picture.

Dygz

Liniker wrote: »

You my friend, need to stop white knighting around these forums in every opportunity you can.

You, my friend, need to stop QQing.

B_B_Z

I agree Liniker, if youre showcasing combat then show us actual player combat not GM combat. I had no idea when watching that it was being misrepresented. I get it from the devs perspective they didnt want down time so they could show case what the combat would LOOK like not what its realistically going to be. So they could do 100 attacks instead of just 10 with down time. I get both perspectives and think when they do a show case they need to clarify that.

JustVine

@StevenSharif god mode PvP

Anonymous332

Whats wrong with godmode during showcasing mechanics? you want him to repeatedly die and we see nothing?

CROW3

Pretty common to demonstrate a narrowly focused scope with a higher access account to reduce the chances of something going sideways during the demonstration.

The scope in this case was the direction for basic melee attacks, not the final pass of those attacks or combat per se, and certainly not general “gameplay.”

Taleof2Cities

Liniker wrote: »

Sometimes even veteran Ashes forum-goers forget the game is still in Alpha.

Caww

Steven needs to show us his moves and demonstrate he can lead this fight to victory!!!

Dolyem

You're asking for a genuine representation of a game that hasn't finished developing all of its classes/balancing them. Be patient. It was a specific showcase, its not a full representation of the game and Steven gave SEVERAL disclaimers prior to the video.

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