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.
Classes, Archetypes, Skills and Reincarnation or Class Change
Asraiel
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Suspect to change
That's the motto of Steven and since that's so big above the Development of Ashes i give it a shot on the Skill and char level side. Shure there's a Wiki up but “Suspect to change may even change what's currently in there. so with out any more time to waste let's dig inn:
As for now how the level and skill system works is not yet fixated so i suggest a system like this (for that i use numbers that are all fictional and does not state any other means than to simplify):
We have Classes and archetypes (sorry here i take classes as basement and archetype as augmentation)
Maximum Level 100
Maximum class level 50
Maximum Archetype Level 50
Now the player starts with 1 of the 8 classes and levels it up to level 50 then he can choose an Archetype to progress into the future.
That Archetype can also be leveled up to lvl 50 which does end up with a level 100 char
or
The Player starts with a class and with level 20 he can choose a archetype withs then levels along with the class level but at a slower paced since 75% of the gained xp goes into the class leveling and only 25% makes it on the archetype leveling.
Once reached Level 100 the player has 3 choices how to proceed
let the character stay as he is
do a archetype class change
or does a class reincarnation
Now Archetype class change will set his archetype class level back to 0 and he can choose now a different archetype. however all the augmentations he unlocked with the previous archetype will still be chooseble but the archetype levels points to enable skills are set back to 0 as well, by leveling up in the new archetype he can now select the augentations from the new archetype or those of the old and personalize its char even more.
For a class reincarnation the Character will be set back to level 1 losing all skill points but keeps them unlocked so if he does level up again he can now select skills of its current and previous class.
This progress is repeatable however comes with a ingame fee and maybe does have a cooldown of how often it can be used. also the price might rise the more reincarnations or class changes had been done in the past.
not to be clear it gives 8 classes and every one of those 8 classes has 8 archetype so getting all skills and augmentations unlocked will need 7 reincarnations and 63 class changes which would take some years to achieve besides the cost that rises the more reincarnations or class changes were made in the past.
Also may have a limitation in place that only allows the use of 1-5 skills of the previous class or archetype augmentations.
The game as planned brings diversity in means of class and archetype (augmentation) but why stop there and not allow the full spectrum of the diversity only with a few rules to follow.
Also would it not corrupt the holy triangle due to having limitations to off class skills and off archetype augmentations if in place. So that tanke is still needed as much as a healer but the tank may have additional magic resistance due to an archetype augmentation and a heal due to the class reincarnation he made.
In numbers, if a cleric decides to reincarnate into a tank he then can use only 1-5 of its 100 skill points of the tank class for skills related to clerics, so he could choose maybe 5 level 1 skills or 1 level 5 skill in the end.
Well i do have it visual before my inner eye but sadly ain't that good at describing it but i hope it lets the inner wheels of Steven and the devs spinn a bit.
Regards
Asraiel
That's the motto of Steven and since that's so big above the Development of Ashes i give it a shot on the Skill and char level side. Shure there's a Wiki up but “Suspect to change may even change what's currently in there. so with out any more time to waste let's dig inn:
As for now how the level and skill system works is not yet fixated so i suggest a system like this (for that i use numbers that are all fictional and does not state any other means than to simplify):
We have Classes and archetypes (sorry here i take classes as basement and archetype as augmentation)
Maximum Level 100
Maximum class level 50
Maximum Archetype Level 50
Now the player starts with 1 of the 8 classes and levels it up to level 50 then he can choose an Archetype to progress into the future.
That Archetype can also be leveled up to lvl 50 which does end up with a level 100 char
or
The Player starts with a class and with level 20 he can choose a archetype withs then levels along with the class level but at a slower paced since 75% of the gained xp goes into the class leveling and only 25% makes it on the archetype leveling.
Once reached Level 100 the player has 3 choices how to proceed
let the character stay as he is
do a archetype class change
or does a class reincarnation
Now Archetype class change will set his archetype class level back to 0 and he can choose now a different archetype. however all the augmentations he unlocked with the previous archetype will still be chooseble but the archetype levels points to enable skills are set back to 0 as well, by leveling up in the new archetype he can now select the augentations from the new archetype or those of the old and personalize its char even more.
For a class reincarnation the Character will be set back to level 1 losing all skill points but keeps them unlocked so if he does level up again he can now select skills of its current and previous class.
This progress is repeatable however comes with a ingame fee and maybe does have a cooldown of how often it can be used. also the price might rise the more reincarnations or class changes had been done in the past.
not to be clear it gives 8 classes and every one of those 8 classes has 8 archetype so getting all skills and augmentations unlocked will need 7 reincarnations and 63 class changes which would take some years to achieve besides the cost that rises the more reincarnations or class changes were made in the past.
Also may have a limitation in place that only allows the use of 1-5 skills of the previous class or archetype augmentations.
The game as planned brings diversity in means of class and archetype (augmentation) but why stop there and not allow the full spectrum of the diversity only with a few rules to follow.
Also would it not corrupt the holy triangle due to having limitations to off class skills and off archetype augmentations if in place. So that tanke is still needed as much as a healer but the tank may have additional magic resistance due to an archetype augmentation and a heal due to the class reincarnation he made.
In numbers, if a cleric decides to reincarnate into a tank he then can use only 1-5 of its 100 skill points of the tank class for skills related to clerics, so he could choose maybe 5 level 1 skills or 1 level 5 skill in the end.
Well i do have it visual before my inner eye but sadly ain't that good at describing it but i hope it lets the inner wheels of Steven and the devs spinn a bit.
Regards
Asraiel
1
Comments
There has to be something to truly diverge from, even if just a comparison to each other.
I've never seen this work in a way that I personally like but I've seen quite a few games do it, so there must be some set of people out there for whom this is appealing.
If not I am going to parrot Crow3. What problem are you working to solve?
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/46179/no-alts/p1
The proposal comes from him.
The base system does not.
Ain't that enough reason? /s
The Value is high since there is currently no system only an idea for a system.
(edit)I see a game that yet didnt release and yet didint enter alpha two where most things would tell what the game will be. All i see sofar it a Wiki that list a concept of ideas to create a game out of it. So nothing is in place yet nothing is current atm all is Suspect to change. An there i add my thouths and give my input. I dont drive to make it my game but i also have played over 20 year many many games and seen stuff that was good and stuff that was bad. and the idea here doesnt drive to the issue that was a quit moment in conan where you open the skilltree and were flooded with informations and possebilitys. i like that it is class based but give a option to later once maex the char and dig in the game go over and try to optimize even more without giving those without a RL an advantage in power over more casualy playing peoples that are happy with their char as it is once they maxed it.(end edit)
older games with fixed character systems shure gave everyone the same standpoint you play this class so every onle knew you have exactly those skill on the hand and their value is fixed like dmg castime cd. in competitive pvp thats good but you then often ended up seeing players with a army of chars up their sleve depending on what they wanted to do in the game. and cause of time. The old system isnt bad, its just old and used out, kinda like a puzzle that becomes sigificanly less interessing afer solving it for the frist time. adding a system where you can solve the puzzle diffrently and maybe change some of the pieces and still solve it does make it deeper, and it becomes costumizeble even more, finding the perfect skillsets and gear combo for specific situations or going with a more general setting. dont have much time dont need to go that extra mile once on max your chars is good and very usefull, going that extra mile and ajust the character more to you personal preffered gamesplay style is also ok.
with or without that extra mile the chars doesnt get stronger
would even go deeper than the initial post so that (some random numbres added):
if a maxed char has 50 skills
these skills are in the skilltree in 5 diffrent level categories: 1-5 ( with maybe stepnames like: Apprentis or Master,..)
some skills start maybe at categorie 1 and go up with new more powerfull skills in the upper categories but in order to unlock them one need the previouse skills learned so that it uses skillpoints.
for the agumentation and reincarnations aplying the rule that only 10 skill unlocking points can used from a previouse class or archetype with also a limitation to 2-4 points pere category level with or without the accsess to the skills in categories 4 and 5 so these are reseved only for the actual class.
shure this doesnt change chars to much from the class they are atm and the archetype in use but so they could do a bit more personlateing their char that changes it a bit forward to their personal playstyle.
i have seen game where some classes were found in every raid some clases rare shown up, while some classes were good in groups but where hell to play solo, while others where in both groupe and solo with ease. but giving this option it divers the chars a bit but only let them drive away around 20% away from their actual class if the player did spend the time to go that extra mile.
one other thing that came into my mind while giving it some more thouths was crafteble skill scrolls as part of drops where every char could have like selected 1-3 of these non bound skills that cant be acuired by thru the classes itself that bring skills or augmentations that are unique to these skrolls that ether can be a craft blue print drop or quest reward where scroll can be upcrafted thou the skill categories 1-5 but where the scroll disapears if used and unlocks a hidden skill that can be enabled by spending these extra skill points that can only be use for those and depending on the skill effect and its categorie level it may cost more points to unlock, so e few extra skills could be added to the game that doesnt need to be in the class skill system at start. and due to no data on those skills its a treshurehunt to obtain a rare and good skill.
Well since the skill system isnt yet developed and only a vague description is written in the wiki and with the reminder to Stevens pefered words "suspect to change" i wanted to share my thougth and give inputs to the devs.
Regards and Keep up the good Work
Asraiel
Apparently, you want the game to release in 2030.
not at all but as far i can tell theres currently no system finalized so changes can be made.
for the release date, i refere to what was said during the streams
the game will release when Steven is satisfyed with it not before that. So depending on skill of the team and the ressurce useage it depends on how fast its been developed. and some stuff might be in for later expansions doesnt need to be all in at release, also can it be that whatever i mentioned in this topic will never be in the game at all. i simply share my view and give my input here.
i will stop with shareing and giveing inputs if the devs or steaven himself tells me to stop otherwise i see it as a allowence do do so.
depending on how the structure of the system is it can be easy or hard to implement such a system from the start or as a later expansion. all depending on the codeing and the code structure.
but if you @Dygz seek my expertese on the final release year i would say 2024/2025
with Alpha Two starting somewhere in winter 2023/2024
Regards
Asraiel
I prefer that class and role have meaning and be distinct.
Tank should tank not heal because he now has a staff vs a sword. Having skills tied to weapons is bad design. Glad they aren't doing that.
Sounds like a thief's underpants.
I think you're misunderstanding how FFXIV does this.
When you're a Warrior (Tank) and change your weapon to a Staff, you don't suddenly become a Tank that can heal. You become a White mage, with its own gear types, abilities and skills and questlines.
It basically just means you can play all classes on one character. Not that one class can do everything. You still have to level up every class individually. You're just free to say: ok, today I want to play as a Bard (ranged DPS) for a couple hours, before I go raiding with my friends as the Paladin (tank).
Does it make alts useless? To some extent. But I also don't see why that would be an issue.
I am OK with how intrepid has chosen to do this, because there is no prominent main story to play through, so you're not having to replay the same story five times to try five different classes. But starting over every time, can still be tedious. Hopefully the starting areas will be diverse enough to not be mind-numbingly boring for new alts.
You reiterated exactly how I understood it and I thank you.
Read through the thread I posted above as that is what that thread was all about. I personally don't like the idea.
There is supposed to be an overarching story but as the world changes in theory at this point, playing today and six months from now the experience should be different as hopefully the world has changed. Time will tell.
Why not just create another character with the class desired?
I think this would just become a balancing nightmare since eventually you'd be able to cherry pick the most over powered skills from every class. It would significantly reduce the viability of individual classes.
I can understand, rewarding players for longer time investment but I think in fairness of PvP there should be a plateau of some kind that players should reach for a fair playing field when fighting each other.
Otherwise, PvP will always be predetermined by who has been playing the game the longest. It's less likely for upsets.
Choices should matter. If you decide to be a tank, then you should be tank. Not have the possibility to be whatever the fuck you want whenever you need it.
Don't get me wrong I love the idea of role flexibility within an archetype by using secondaries... But I can't get behind anything that would essentially show you to swap your primary archetype.
if as mentioned in my second post only up to 20% of skills could be used from previous class or archtype you remain the class and archetype you currently play at a minimum of 80% you also could not use skills from the previous class or archetype and be 100% the class and archetype you currently play.
shure the system would allow to turn slightly away from the chosen class and archetype but staying 4/5 or 80% at the class is still somuch that you cant say your something else.
in addition i also mentioned that skills beeing in categories from 1-5 while you can look at them from level prospective. your skills may get stronger the higher your level is but some end at a level point and dont get stronger. with a limiter in as well that tells the player he can spend 20% of its skillpoints for skills of previous classes or archetypes he only can use it for skills on category 1-3 or 1-4 so that the powerfull massive skills aint part, shure it could also be simplefyed by giveing skills requirement or presettings that certain skills are only aveible if you currently play this class and archetype. This would prevent that characters become overpowerd cause skills that are to strong are disabled.
also useing skillpoints on weaker skills of other classes could also reduce your might in some occations.
well openworld pvp is never equal, arena maybe and most players of the genres are more pve players. i see that the game will be pvx and i also played pvx but if the community of your server sucks it only ends up in ganking. shure thats also pvp but if you allredy have the upperhand before the fight the fight itself hardly pvp.
my guess after relese the game will mostly be pve except for raids. maybe if i go high in numbres then there will be 5% of the server population more into pvp than pve.
but thats only my opinion as a mostly pve player exept for shooter games that is.
Thaks for the corrections, sadly english isnt my native language its infact my 4th. but my mothertunge is only spoken by rufly 1 million peoples in total
Even doe i never worked for a game developer, i can tell the theres a scrips and other systems in place that were used to create a game. cuase it shares knowlegde with other indutrys.
however the furder away from the finishing point the easyer it is to make changes. and since it seens that there sill a big chunk of work ahead, its still possible without delay the progress much. i dont say it will not have an effect on the time needed, but the earlyer the less addional time is needed.
bugfixing will take the longest in the end.
for me i played mmo-rpgs with 12 classes where the holy triangle did matter, and while some classes were need to do dungeons they often laked in open wolrd stuff or pvp. and whith the thing that you can only have 1 char per server. you need to be head on with the class choise you do or you end up trashing all your achived stuff and hours or hundred of hours gameplay to do it all over again. or you choose your archetype but aint happy with that choise and now you have to restart with a new char. finding the class you moste happy with is hard.
in one game i started as gladiator then with only level 40 of 55 i switched to cleric cause i wasnt finding any groupes for dungeons and there was a great need for clerics. after that i played cleric never had a problem finding a groupe for whetever thing to do. but playing the reversed game sucks in the long term, while everones game it to make the hp bar of the enemy go to 0 yours was to keep the hp bar up. and in solo you couldnt die but had very long to kill something. so makeing a mage one of the dps monsters of the game was fun how fast enemys died but laked the heals and against melee was the worst so another switch to summoner. long story short in the end i had all 12 classes on max with high pve and pvp gear and juwelry and was even in the top 500 pvp of the server with 2 chars.
haveing to restart a new at a new game after investing a lot of time and with global fixed names sucks big time i can tell its one of the worst quitmoments. haveing however a option to later do a class or archetype change is like the light in the darkness your wealth and goods that you grinded aint lost shure you need a bit more time and if you may even benefit from undergoing that additional progress wy not. it also helps partly to keep the low level quests populated even do the game will not have the suffer of starter zones that are deserted dueto its questing and construction. but finding lads in you level is rare specialy for game that exist longer.
So giving diversety, a chance to get another class/Archetype and repopulate low level stuff. and as reward you can slightly/small/Tiny chnage your class skills to a point where you feel the diffrence but doesnt effect the overall class you chosen.
and that in a game where every class can wear every weapon and gear existing.
Regards Asraiel
PS: dont need to be in the game at relase but if thoughts are made around and the devs may pick up the idea they could in the development allredy make arangements for a later implementations. to eas the later implementation.
If they made these fundamental changes to class design, they would pretty much need to do another Alpha 1 test.
Also, due to what what was described in the Kickstarter... this change to Archetypes would be as drastic as New World's last minute changes to add more PvE systems. Which is not so much about the time factor as it is about the negative effect on the core player base who will be expecting Archeytypes to have the attributes they've supported for 5+ years.
Well it wouldnt go without testing but didnt steven mention that the alpha and beta test server will be used as test server after the relase.
NW i didnt follow the progress heard storys and so but as beta was it still had many flaws shown and only 2-3 weeks time to fix and they were forced by a company to release even doe they knew it wasnt ready.
i find it hard that something that seem so easy to me should be so hard to programm. i meam skills and augmentations are programmed named added grafic and so and after that they are given to certain classes and archetypes. to apear in the skilltree and so on. and adding in the programm that the skill might be useble if certain things are ether "true" or "falls" doesnt seem hard to programm shure i never used C++ or other programming other that html, xhtml, css and database. but my guess is that programming today isnt as it was in the last millenium where you wrote a text downt that in the end did something, more like there are tools now that simplefy the progress, shure from time to time someone skilled have to look into the written code directly but most is araged with tools (personal guess).
sadly how it does look on the programming sadly isnt shown from intrepid like footage of the emplyees at work with sneekpeeks of their monitors with open surcecodeing and not only desktop screensavers.
Problem with new world was that its beta and earlier betas basically high lighted all the problems now idk if the developers didn't have time or ignored all the reports but almost all of the major problems persisted till launch and even when they did add there ptr it was a mess because it wasn't being utilized or even using the feedback for along time.
The game even if its bad needed at least 1/2 years before it should have been launched.
back on topic: i wanna see more about augments and subclass changes on the mainclass
what i forgot here to add was that maybe each level gives the player points to enable skills so that he cant have all skills enabled of its class alone.
and for the skill firebolt he would need 1 of those points for each category to enable, so that the cat3egory level 1 cost 1 point, to enable category 2 he need 2 points since he needs to have category 1 enabled (1+1=2) for categorie 3 to enable he may have to spend 4 points cause category 3 cost 2 points alone (1+1+2=4) and so on so the higher the skill in category level is the more points nedded to enable it and all levels beforehand. some skills may even start with a higher numbre of points needed to enable and since only 20% of all such points to enable skills can be used for skills and augmentations of previous classes/Archetypes, it hardy depends on the player to go full its class and may suffer in certain actions but beeing overall better due to groupemembers better know what hes capeble and where he needs help, but it also can help to ajust a little to the playstyle and may adds odds where the players would have died if 100% on class or where a pvp attacker did misscalc its oponent and didnt gather enouth information about its target befor attacking.
and with the limitation of category levels able to enable rangeing from 1-3 or 1-4 not all skills can be enabled or get to the maximum. so that sticking to the current class brings benefits adding in some skills from a previous class might help a little but aint gamechangers.
This was 'changed' a bit once Passives came up. Mentioning it only because I don't know if you were able to play for that period. You still couldn't unlock skills until 'a certain number of SP were spent in total', but you could 'reach the requirement' using just one unlock from prior tier and then spending SP on passives, as I remember it.
Good system I think, locked 'more powerful skills' at the 'expected levels' approximately while still not forcing you to 'waste' points on Skills you didn't want as much.
if adapting the idea to that system would be easy cause then the SP are allredy in place only needs Special SPs as well which could be spend for skills of previous classes/archetypes so instead a unwanted skill from your mainclass you could then use it for a skill of previous class that might suits you better. many thoughts still missing here but could be a possebility.
and dont let us forget players aslo gets passive or skills from church, player guild, beeing myor to a node, and many other systems.