Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
And a lot will depend on how important any given member is. If the whole party loses its pve potential completely from just losing one member - yeah, it'll be a bad time. But this would also be a bad party design imo. Yes, let them lose some power but not all. L2's bards had that kind of power void and as much as I liked them in L2, I definitely hope the same doesn't happen in Ashes.
30 yards probably best max range. Can be used in combat and tactics for wonky good stuff especially with people being physical barriers.
50% increased Range when Family, may be balanced.
12 second summon with 12 second CD I guess. Tactical Use.
Extra summoners may Increase base range by 33% each up to 100% [60 yd], then 66% each up to a total of 300% [120 yd]. Can 7 Summoners fit around the circle?
Blood of Individual Required.
Bloodied Weapon useable but summoning multiple people just does damage instead and bits of blood and stuff geysers up with damage distributed evenly [not overpowered just wanted to say and see that lol]. If you have the blood of someone in your inventory then you can separate that out; hence no Friendly Fire. Assuming Friendly Fire is part of the game. . .
Requires 'Identification' though which adds to setup.
Family fulfills this 'blood' requirement since differentiating is ez and there's a bond.
High setup Summon with reagents might take 1 minute to setup then 2 minutes to cast; and use up all of one's Mana (or require extra mana when summoning) or whatever the Resource is.
High Setup Summon would be max 300 yards, up to 1200 yards given 6 other Summoners if target is Naked and Afraid.
Fam would make that 1800 yards and that's just a Summoner Family lol.
Extreme mana requirements can help balance everything in general. I like the idea of Mana being singular digits and there being Exhaustion from generating it quickly, storing it, and from using spells. . . but no one else did lol even though it helps balance and mechanical elaboration quite a bit.
Kicking someone out of Family should take 1 week and 1 week for someone to join a Family. Or something. Maybe longer lol. Choose wisely. 2 weeks/ 2 weeks is pretty good I guess.
This was never possible in the first place. Only the family leader can summon (and presumably it's not easy to switch that around or they wouldn't have bothered with the limitation), so it was only ever one-way.
I went to reverify my sources, and... I couldn't find anything. I can therefore agree it's a matter of concern.
They are two separate types of teleportation. Family is restricted to well, your family members and science node teleportation is restricted to their vassal nodes, which from the wiki states could be across the sea or on islands.
Hurts the RPG and Progression.
Can we get a poll going to see where people are at?
Family Summon is for Family Members, not the Summoner Archetype.
With a enough limitations, I don't think it would be a problem and thus worth deleting.
Pot of Greed got banned because there was no reason for any player to not include it in their deck.
Delete it, or nerf it into being a novelty spell that costs a level to cast obvious sarcasm.
Not everyone has 8 friends who also play their exact same video games. I don't think it's really an unreasonable convenience due to that factor. It needs sensible and extensive limitations, yeah. I don't think anyone is arguing against that.
Design the family system to not be abusable by pick up groups or guilds. Make it very difficult to swap in 'new' family after the initial has formed. Limit range of the teleportation by some reasonable amount that doesn't limit convenience. Only let two assigned members of the family have the ability to do the actual calling. Have significant cool downs. Don't let people carry anything in inventory other than their gear. These are some basic limitations nearly any conversation that discusses the family summon system have brought up, basically every time.
I feel like the design parameters and possible flaws for basic alpha 2 testing are so well known and talked about at this point that it can be expected that IS has a very clear set of things to watch out for and tweak. And hey A2 is a testing phase. If it breaks a part of the game, patch it, and if it can't get 'patched' then delete it. But not testing is just hamstringing what could be a very reasonable compromise that would helps make the game competitive and attractive to casuals. That means more money for IS and more content for hardcore players in the long run.
Much like corruption, I'd find it weird to give up on certain untested systems without actually doing extensive testing. Hard to go 'yeah this has a negative impact on this situation' without background testing data to compare to first.
im all for testing features, but logically I just dont see this not being used like everything else is in video games these days. Just because you dont have 7 friends who want to join the game to play doesn't mean you can't make more friends in the game or see guilds assign guild members to different families.
Again, test all you want, I will always leave open the door to being wrong. I'm just not seeing it myself.
You making more friends just to optimize the family summon system would be a 'win' wouldn't it? Being able to make new friends is one of the joys of gaming for me personally.
With the 'obvious' restrictions in place to make it less exploitable for pick up groups, what it is really doing is... making it easier to go to content together with your closest in game friends. If you don't have friends you want to do content with regularly, you are not really 'losing out in effectiveness'. You not having regular party members is the real 'loss of your effectiveness' here.
There are arguments why this is bad. I agree with some of those arguments. I just also think they are pretty resolvable with yet more design consideration and limitations than it is via complete removal.
I'm glad your willing to leave the door open for testing. I think that's as reasonable of a reaction as your hesitance about it being exploitable. It is definitely exploitable if done incorrectly and not thought about on a wider scale of the impact on content.
So what's to stop me from make a second account with 5 extra characters in my family so I summon myself around the world map? 15 dollars a month? Many players will spend more on cosmetics..
30min cool down is too short. Made it 8 to 12 hours. My reasoning, is according to Steven (see the quote). Summoning is for the more casual players, it's not for us who are on this form. We're obviously excited and have the free time to read/post here, if your not hard core you're hard core at heart! Causal players only play a few hours a day, one summon a day should be enough. Allowing one every 30 minutes will lead to abuse, with the world being what it is and travel being an important factor, making a mechanic to by pass it is just foolish.
Ah.. did not know that.. all the more cooler!