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To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I'm not sure I understand, wouldn't it just be one more bar under the HP and MP bars?
Interestingly, FFXI did not start with the meter being visible to other players, you had to use a macro to tell them that you were nearly ready, or 'learn the rhythm of your teammates and feel out when they were close, and rely on them to tell you if they were ahead or behind'.
Anyways, 'snarky pushback' aside.
Again the only reason I'm thinking on this is... they clearly STARTED from the concept of these at some point, and they're a good path to synergies, whether they're applied as '3 stacks of X!' or 'Here's a Gauge!'
I think that balance wise, the Gauge would win out on the technical level in almost all design discussions for many reasons, so that's why my mind is at 'We're either getting Weapon Focus Gauge or we're getting simplistic Synergies'.
So it's organic based on what's going on, the stuff that goes on will score the heatmap
in fact, people don't even have to know there are heatmaps, it's not their problem
Their problem is knowing that a synergy will happen when they are doing the same thing, if they achieve a synergy maybe they could have a message on screen or an icon describing the achieved synergy
Yeap, just an icon when they achieve a synergy would suffice, when the synergy is off then the icon disapears
Doesn't this cause the issue of 'groups that know it' having annoyances to 'players that don't understand any of it' though?
Or are you not really trying to avoid that?
I personally don't like Synergies that are based on 'everyone doing the same type of thing' for balance reasons, I feel that's a dark path to go down, honestly, because people will 'look for a group that does a thing that an enemy/boss is weak to' instead of leveraging their specific build skills together.
But I suppose that IS more simplistic and simplicity is 'good?'
The synergy I proposed can become bigger if people are doing things of the same nature, people from different classes can do things of the same nature, being buffs, active or passive skills, items, consumables or spells
If some people aren't doing things of the same nature then the synergy will be slower, that's all
This is better than "everybody has to do everything correctly" thing
It could have a very slow synergy for healing, but a really fast synergy for poison attacks
Heatmaps can offer concurrent synergies based on players necessities
Well, I wouldn't like it personally, but if that's what the general populace would enjoy the most, then... I guess?
Things being intuitive IS very important for their enjoyment, and since any concerns I have about balance would just be speculation, I can't say anything particularly negative to/about it, so sure.
I do feel like it would just lead to 'parties being formed out of a bunch of players with Darkness skills' though.
Really push to the Edge. The Darkest Edge.
Not sure if I am misunderstanding you, but I hope I didn't come off as snarky.
I will say, I am detecting in myself some bias against the meter most likely because I wasn't steeped in experience in that game, and I do 100% agree from an under the hood design standpoint it's literally just an additional HP/MP bar which would make it easy.
I think I'd be pretty open to many many different ways to handle/approach this from Intrepid as the rest of the game promises to be very interesting and I might find after some playing in A2/B1&2/Launch that I actually really like a gauge/meter (if something of this design makes it to launch based on weapon focus but I believe my hesitations were all aesthetic as I think it could add depth to play but this would be a feel thing once we get our hands on it.
I will note that a lot of that branching decision making seems to stem from the fact that in FFXI most content is low movement/low mechanical effort, where I can see a simpler system working if we are getting mechanical things complicating fights such as player movement/abilities in PvP and bosses having mechanics to do (Ice Dragon fight from A1 preview as an example).
I meant myself being snarky, not you, lol.
It's actually really useful that you brought up the A1 Ice Dragon because my group did go to fight the open world one in one of the tests (just four of us at the time) and it was... frankly... boring? But we didn't get it that low.
The reason it is 'boring' is because the difficulty of it amounts to the WoW meme 'don't stand in the fire'. WE as a group didn't get to 'do anything together' because obviously, all that Weapon Proc stuff isn't in yet. But I really can't think of any that actually would make it better.
Steven tends to use examples for this which I consider very 'obvious' but also very suspicious. Bleed, for example, depends on if it is percentage or not, especially if they are high-scaling enemy health to make up for the fact that they aren't downscaling damage.
CC stuff would either be a constant lockdown on bosses or LOSE effectiveness as the bosses built resistance.
Extra Damage is nice, after all that's a large part of what I'm talking about here, but if it is consistent enough, then you're 'asking for high mechanical skill and coordination'. Which is fine, but feels like it would be MORE 'gatekeeping' than TP synergies would, both because people would 'demand you have certain weapons' MORE often, and because of the timing requirements.
It won't bother us, but somewhere deep down I think I was expecting the Weapon Focus Gauge because I see it as the EASIEST to understand way to deliver some of the higher level Synergies to players with less mechanical skill, while still giving other players more stuff to THINK about. The only reason I am doubting it will happen is Steven saying that they don't want Skills based on Weapons, and at that point what would the Gauge even be for? But Procs are still kinda 'skills based on weapons' so who knows...
A related question to you, that will require some speculation. You would probably play Halberd Cleric or Greatsword Mage, is it? Or was that just a random example in that thread. If so... what would you want those to 'do', relative to 'Weapon Proc' or 'Weapon Skill'?
Those were two ideas I had that seemed pretty interesting to me in the other thread, and just shooting from the hip. I think it could be interesting if weapons had a suite (3-5 or whatever) of active skills (lets say in this speculative discussion there are 3 that are all tied to the same cooldown and I will use Greatsword because why not). Again disregard math/damage whatever and look more at the macro aspect of what I think could lead to "synergy between players/classes".
Greatsword:
1. AOE Cleave KD (tight AOE 2m let's say)
2. Speed buff (5 seconds of 150% speed)
3. Armor Shred - Applies 5 stacks of "shred" which reduces mitigation by 15% for the next 5 attacks (lose a stack on damage)
You could use any of these and all 3 would immediately go on a 30/45/1min cooldown. But because I am mage these skills would synergize with my own kit (lets use Prismatic beam from the mage A1 kit). In that I could stack shred and then channel beam to maximize damage because that's the "tool" for the job but you have to decide if that is what you want. If you then take this and apply it to all of the weapons it starts opening conversations for who is doing what/what is the optimal move or what does the party need etc. Since you could even say "Ahh Cleric Javelin is a very strong single target spell, let me Shred armor then you cast that because we need to down this person/mob ASAP" or "We might need cleave as there are 10 mobs on our tank and he is hurting, lets knockdown and have X/Y weapon skill from this other person work to heal the hurt Paladin or whatever".
While I guess in a sense I should probably expect these type abilities just from the classes in general, this to me seems to provide some level of personalization to weapon skills since they go hand in hand with your own class kit and if you have a group of 8 trying to plan moves like this it opens a lot of room for decision trees that could intensify fights like the dragon fight with "don't stand in fire" mechanics + these type of things.
I should also highlight that At it's root TP type abilities where it is just a big x6 blast is also perfectly viable and probably way easier than what I just described since the weapon list is rather large and it could be a scale issue and like I said previously I am sure whatever route Intrepid take as long as it is a few steps over "braindead" mechanics I will probably be ok with it.
Thank you, that clarifies a lot to me, and I can see it all. I think the intention is to have those as 'procs' which will require more mechanical skill. I'm fine with that too.
I feel like the 'rhythm' aspect of it is lessened for the Support players considerably if things are just 'on a cooldown', but lots of games use 'when you hit with this, reduce your cooldown on this other thing'. I don't much like that (again, because it is not visible, like, your teammates don't know how well you are doing status wise if the attack has to actually hit, because they can't easily tell if you missed a few attacks in a row), but it would still definitely be 'enough', perhaps without being whatever is considered 'too much'.
EDIT: @maouw I guess that reminds me of another useful aspect of it. The TP Gauge is also a quick-reference to the current accuracy of your team. If you notice someone's TP isn't rising but they're still swinging, you know that they are not hitting, and as a Support you can react accordingly. You could also just 'try to watch the chat log' but I know people for whom this is somewhat stressful to do while juggling all the other things that Support has to do.
So you can add that to the list. Being able to know 'oh hey my DD needs Accuracy Buff for this enemy for whatever reason' by just 'glancing at a number/meter'.
This seems quite easy mechanically, easy to explain on the spot in a pug, all while having a big potential for different effects. Especially if you have abilities that proc off each other.
Then add to this the basic "proc debuffs that show up on the mob's status effects" and you have yourself a variety of things that require player's attention and reaction speed (if the effects are short enough).
Procs could also have stages (indicated by a number on the buff icon), which would have different effects or dmg values. This would give more depth/variety for the static groups to utilize.
Attention and reaction speed, but not necessarily decision making or planning.
You know where that leads? Multiboxing scripts
And just so this thread doesn't devolve into the usual discussion of that...
This code is easy. It is functionally not detectable. It can be written from scratch so easily that you would not need to even have a common thing that Ashes' anti-cheat could look for consistently without violating your data privacy in too many ways to count.
Without some sort of decision making that goes beyond 'wait for this and react to it', games get botted. "Wait for my buff Icon to appear and react to that"? GUARANTEED.
EDIT: To expand on this, that's the point that's harder to convey here.
You'd need a slightly more sophisticated Pixel Recognition to track a TP gauge (similar to what they probably use to parse things like the Melee Combat stream) in real time with proper reactions, but it's equally bottable. The thing is, it's not the 'hey, do your thing after my thing' that matters to the TP Gauge, except for beginners and very casual players.
And that's fine. Advanced players are doing and thinking about more stuff related to the rate of CHANGE of the Gauges across the group, and controlling and strategizing based on those compared to the (invisible) Enemy Gauge. It's much harder to write a bot that makes the sort of decisions a human is capable of making by combining all the 'data streams', as compared to 'Ok this mob now has a stack of X effect which the script recognizes by its position on screen' + 'This ability in hotbar is not on cooldown, use ability as long as the following conditions are met'.
Mechanically it'd be easy enough for those semi-casuals cause it's just "look here and then react", but design-wise it could have the depth that requires proper planning ahead of time and proper reaction when needed.
I'm probably misunderstanding this Gauge mechanic, but to me it just seems like an a bit more complicated proc feature. Do you have some video that shows examples of its use or is ff11 old enough to not really have any of those kinds of guides/vods? It's difficult for me to properly understand how Gauges are different from "you do some actions which lead to an effect to which you then need to do a proper reaction at party scale", w/o visual aids.
And if the whole issue stems from these Gauges being invisible, then we're back to the issue of the game being too complex for the "normal" players. While you or I might enjoy learning everything there is to learn about a game and its mechanics, the masses would not care and would only get frustrated when the mobs are way too difficult (cause they were designed with proper use of "Gauges" in mind).
I'm sure I can find or make videos easily, but I'm not sure that would help you understand it, since I've already outlined all the important parts specifically.
The key to what makes the gauge meaningful is that the RATE of gauge build is part of the game. For Procs and Hotbar style skills, those happen 'on demand', right?
Support players 'help synchronize and control the gauge' of DD players, selectively. I don't perceive that procs are going to be like that unless this game involves way too much CC for my liking. As for the mechanical simplicity thing, I'm probably the one here not understanding. What do you perceive as the 'planning' aspect of it? I'm asking relative to your L2 experience now, mostly, since that's where we started.
EDIT: once again @maouw this reminds me of something so obvious that it should have come up before...
The 'weakest link' can just always be Skillchain Opener. If they don't understand the system and are just going to 'see that their gauge is full and use it', Support's job is to make sure that Closer always has enough Gauge to follow this, and simply not boost Opener as much to make sure of this. That way they get to be included without actually understanding what's happening at all, sometimes. But once they get to see it happen, they might want to know more about it. (Can you tell it's been a long time since I've played with anyone who doesn't already know it all?)
That buff is a huge boost to atk/critD/critR and has a long cd. It's now shown in the video itself cause the pov is not of the main attacker, but when my guilds did this "trick" we'd only cast that buff when the main attacker got a trigger from this buff (iirc it's 30 or 40% critD)
That trigger was usually achieved by someone hitting the main attacker (cause the boss was agroed onto a tank).
The better and deeper version of this mechanic would be proc buffs with stages and different requirements or triggers.
Daggers could require several crits to the back of the target, but would also drastically increase generated agro (or trigger that invisible mob Gauge that could just make the mob do one hit against the dagger wielder) and decrease crit rate. And, say, at stage one of the proc buff some archetype could have an ability that targets the dagger wielder and makes him do a powerful undodgeable strike. Or alternatively another ability could be used on the boss to increase crit rate of dagger attacks. Any casual parties that had a dagger wielder could just use that powerful attack ability w/o endangering the wielder itself, while more coordinated parties would push for higher stages because they knew they could control the agro correctly (or counteract the gauge somehow).
The planning would mainly come from knowing all of your synergistic abilities and knowing your opponent. Maybe the boss has some huge strike ability that only triggers when he changes agro, so you'd either have to protect your dagger wielder with some shield ability once he procs stage one or you just agree to immediately use the attack ability on him, in case you just needed a dps check.
At stage two of the proc buff the first same ability from the same archetype could completely remove dagger's generated agro (or put a detargeting buff on him for some seconds). While the second same ability could increase atk speed (each hit still generating a ton of agro or mob's gauge).
And stage three could be a "cloud the target's mind, remove its targeting for few secs and clean its agro completely" and "do huge dmg and transfer your critR and atkS buffs to your partymates, but also agro (retarget) all enemies in a range to you for several seconds" respectively.
All of that is just a super rudimentary example of just one proc from one weapon type reacting with just one archetype. I'd imagine Intrepid could design/balance it much better. But it's just what I had in mind. Any pug could still make use of such a trigger for small reward, but any more skillful group could risk that player dying but would get a much bigger reward for doing so.
And all those stages could still be used in pvp, while potentially being countered through incoming critR decrease buffs (a bit like the one from the picture, but maybe way more temporary) or through direct debuffs to atk spd or accuracy or critR of the dagger wielder, or by obviously just turning towards the attacker cause the proc only works against the back.
All of this seems like a "thing that requires proper party coordination", while also just being "look at a buff and react accordingly". Am I wrong in that assumption?
As for this part...
Nope, it looks right, it just seems to be the sort of thing that could be botted easily, to me, which was my only concern.
And unless Gauges have the same effect of "stages" where you can do smth in the middle of the Gauge and achieve an effect, I don't see how bots couldn't just track the very last pixel of the Gauge rather than the whole progress. Though even if it does have stages, then I'd assume it's possible to track when the Gauge hits those points. Especially if Intrepid stick to their UI customization goals and any potential botters could just make the Gauge bar super contrasting to everything else so that it's easier for the bot to track the pixels.
But if I'm wrong on all that, then I definitely need a better explanation about the importance of the Gauge in the hands of a pro player, cause I don't think I've gotten that through text.
To clarify about that, it's related to 'one person playing two accounts, with a script set up to make sure that the second account does the right thing at the right time in response to something'.
I was only reacting to the first example, sorry. The extended example does sound complex, but to be clear 'complex' in terms of that, isn't really what I am 'thinking of' or 'going for'. I would absolutely take it, my point was that there are a lot of layers of experiences that I would consider to be made WORSE for less experienced/skilled players without the TP Gauge even if I'd enjoy them more.
The scenario you explained is relatively complex AND 'sudden death' quite literally if you choose to push it, isn't it? Your point was 'a pro group could use this for better results', but the requirement is actually much higher in the moments of DOING it, and the consequences of failure seem to me, to be much worse, if I understood correctly.
It's just that, as a person who has had no experience with the TP Gauge, the "look at buff and react" seems just as a much lower skill floor, while still having some high ceiling potential. And then it'd be on each group to decide how far the want to take their gameplay, or at least how far the content pushes them.
My suggestion mainly depended on how complex the PvE would be, but, as it seems to me, those 3 stages didn't really provide anything insanely powerful to the group. They were definitely strong tools, but nothing that would require a super difficulty pve encounter to demand the use of any given stage. But you can correct me there, cause you got better pve experience.
I was just trying to find the golden zone between the ease of use of the system against the potential requirements for that system from the pve itself. A balance that could still allow weaker groups to beat semi-hard content w/o always relying on high stages of procs, but which would also not make that semi-hard content super easy for those groups that can get to top stages easily through coordination. I dunno if I achieved that with my example (though again, it was a super plain one) and I dunno if it can even be achieved at all.
Vinushika - Paladin (Closes Skillchain with White Mage using Savage Blade)
Myrajia - Dark Knight (closes Skillchain with Bard, using Keen Edge)
Mikarara - Summoner
Jesra - Bard (Opens Skillchain for Dark Knight with Evisceration)
Risae - White Mage (Opens Skillchain for Paladin using Hexa Strike)
The Health/Mana/TP section has been considerably enlarged because it's literally the only important thing in these for the conversation. The changing number with no bar is the TP value. When it turns blue, the Weapon Skill can be used. The objective, therefore, is to have both people in the pair arrive at 'blue' at around the same time, and whoever is 'ahead', do their other useful stuff.
The two videos are the contrast of 'not trying to explicitly optimize' and 'optimizing'. Bearing in mind that the only thing I'm trying to explain here with these is 'gauge flow', so everything will be focused on that.
In the video above, the Bard chooses mostly to buff others and remove buffs from the target rather than striking, despite the Dark Knight already having enough TP for the Skillchain. This is suboptimal for multiple reasons in our group setup:
In this second video, the flow is better, (we started with TP from another fight, though), but the group isn't staggered correctly because both pairs end up reaching at the same time. In order to ensure that the Bard reaches 'Blue Gauge' faster, Haste is applied. So this one is 'better' because:
So if I'm correct in my understanding, my suggestion of "daggers gotta hit from behind, but that increases mob agro so the mob will turn to them more often" is roughly within the same function, because there's a situational requirement for the proc to work and the group has to control that situation to their advantage.
So if we say that a bard had a reactive ability to daggers that required a proc from certain weapons (say, a blunt one) and we tie that proc to a similar situation (maybe every third hit from the side with a blunt weapon is a definite crit, but increases the chance of the mob using a self buff or just an ability), we'll have ourselves a situation where the mob has to be facing in a certain direction while 2 characters have to be in particular places around him. Dagger's procs heighten the chance of the mob turning around, blunt's procs heighten the possibility that it raises its defense or attack or maybe uses a sweeping attack that not only turns him but damages everyone around.
Those things can be mitigated by the obvious agro holding from the tank, by any kind of turn lock CC (could be very useful in PvP too, so I'd hope Ashes has smth like this), by double agroing with a healer right behind the tank (if Intrepid keep the "tank has a defensive stance that protects everyone behind him" mechanic) so there's a higher chance to keep the same direction, by any kinds of interrupts for mob casts, by mana burns (though would probably only work on mobs and not bosses), by Gauge reducing spells (if we go with an invisible mob Gauge on top of agro mechanics).
So even with that simple example we have several party members working in tandem, having several tools at their disposal to work towards higher stages, and depending on the mob difficulty the actions themselves could range from just "stand in the same spots and whale on the mob" to "you gotta dodge the mechanics, control the mob abilities, keep your positioning, use additional abilities and probably utilize other formations". To me that seems like a low floor and a high ceiling.
The procs themselves could come a bit later in the character progression, purely to lessen the learning load on the players, cause if Intrepid somehow manages to have weapon abilities for all weapons on all archetypes (doubt it), then it would definitely overwhelm a ton of people.
edit: oh, and the flow would come from proper staggering of attacks and movements, the dagger might not have enough crit rate to proc often enough or the bard wouldn't have enough atk speed to keep up with a dagger who does have enough critR. Both are also addressed by the same buffs that ff11 used and the same could then apply to different archetypes and weapons.
But isn't it reaching MOBA combat at that point? My data indicates that at least 50% of the potential playerbase does not want that.
I mention the gauge because, strictly speaking, the gauge is easier. It is also a simple way to get classes that are 'easy' and classes/builds that are 'hard' without a lot of consideration. I'm pretty committed to the concept that TP Gauge causes the 'easy version' of what you're talking about, so let me know if we don't agree there.
But I can see that especially for PvP, the sort of thing you're suggesting would be effective because you 'don't have to build up a lot of TP' just to do your synergistic attack on, like, a single enemy Player who isn't going to stand still for it anyway.
I honestly figured Ashes would just do the 'simple thing' and make it so that you could do different abilities or guarantee certain procs with much LESS Weapon Focus Gauge. So for example 'Apply Shred' might cost only 20 Gauge but 'Big Overhead Megaslash' would take 100 Gauge.
This way, groups that get thrown together randomly (let's say in a Siege) wouldn't need to try to coordinate Synergy on short notice, just fall back on their damage or 'internal build synergy'.
Part of this came up because of someone asking me about Support synergy (they know who they are), though, so it's really a question of what would be most interesting for Support players, and why I brought up the gauge. I don't mind the twitchy 'MOBA' combat that comes from 'just having cooldowns and no gauge'.
Predecessor Early Access Dec 1st!
See my Sevarog in Solo Lane.
Dunno how AA did it, so there might already be a "better" way to design it? Yeah, after understanding it better it does seem somewhat easier than the stuff I had in mind
I agree that Intrepid would probably go with smth like this if they decide to have this mechanic.
Yeah, I can expand:
High Level Players are thinking closer to the code
1. As I understand you, you very quickly see through high-abstraction design layers and get a feel for the mechanics at a game-engine level ("the details"). This is the mindset of all top performing players/engineers. The TP gauge system is very engaging for people operating near this level of play. This is good.
People on the learning curve are not in Flow State
2. Most other players do not experience flow state at that level of play, because we need to push past the uncomfortable rationalizing stage of gaining hands-on experience with these kinds of systems - which for you doesn't seem to be very long compared to what the average person needs, usually gaining familiarity by grouping up in pugs (and low-key hoping to stumble across their place in a stable community, with whom they'll have stronger trust bonds to support the arduous training) Hence my particular concern for pugs, since this is where players are often not in flow-state on the learning curve.
Comfortable learning is High to Low Abstraction
3. Players like to approach deep systems starting from a level of high abstraction, with staggered layers that ease them into the good stuff. Final Fantasy is notoriously poor at doing this: "so white mage is like a cleric, but other mages can heal too? What's the difference between a red mage and a blue mage? Do the colours mean something? You mean some mages share spells? Oh so this mage is totally different because of this mechanic - is that the main difference? So how do I choose which mage I should play?" On the other hand MonsterHunter does a decent job: "Oh, I can chop off the tail." "Oh, I can break the horns" "Oh, my weapon bounces off the legs" - this almost visceral feedback is a HIGH ABSTRACTION of the systems under the hood and staggers the learning curve prompting the player's curiosity to understand weakpoints, sharpness, blunt weapons, and eventually affinity, etc. one nugget at a time. That's what I mean by the problem being a UX/SFX/VFX issue, there's nothing wrong under the hood. Just imagine if all the body parts had their own meters on display, and new players had to infer what the heck was going on.
So where do meters come into this?
Meters are Low Abstraction in games, despite their information efficiency
4. Meters expose information that is too close to "engine-level" mechanics, thus are percieved as throwing the player in the deep end - which pulls them out of flow-state. Yes, we have HP and MP bars, but these two are so ubiquitous that players can generally transfer familiarity between games regardless - which makes HP/MP exceptions.
4b. With TP gauge specifically, there's a significant difference with feedback timing. Feedback from HP and MP bars is near immediate - if you die (HP) or you can't use your skills (MP): "oh, I went too ham". With TP-gauge there's mixed feedback happening: "Successful skill-chain, nice! But was it appropriate for the context?" the bar doesn't give you clues. Point is, a TP gauge has long-term (non-immediate) implications that are harder to read - thus they have much steeper learning curves that are not transferrable from, say, familiarity with rage meters.
TL;DR players want to reach flow-state faster, thus need the game to hide low-level data to create a staggered learning curve that is approachable. TP gauge is the opposite of this, it starts at a very granular level and expects you to infer highly abstracted information.
Does that help? Are there things you disagree about?
In essence, the TP gauge is good because it's a mechanic with real gameplay substance, it's just an issue of implementation.
Also, because I've come this far I NEED to offload an analogy, however innacurate it may be:
The audience does not appreciate the magician explaining the trick before performing it, they want to be enthralled by the illusion first, and then seek the explanation afterward.
(But as we all know, a good magician never reveals his secrets)
Video games are magic.
I want to respond to your other posts too, but I've been playing pokemon nonstop and need to sleep. (So I can continue bingeing it tomorrow while it interests me)
Thank you, yes, that helps a lot. I'll think about it.
I'm always caught in this when it comes to design. Depth must exist, but players are uncomfortable with that depth before they are ready, so it's always a challenging balancing act.
If Ashes chooses to solve it by reduction in depth and complexity, that's a loss for me, but a gain for MMOs possibly (hard to say because people seem to leave 'shallow' games even when they themselves reach the 'top' of them).
The only note I have about things like Monster Hunter is, it touches on the 'hard vs easy class' thing.
Monster Hunter is REALLY complicated by comparison... if your main weapon is Insect Glaive. This isn't really a direct correlation, only to point out that since Ashes is already going to make us go through 25 levels before even getting a secondary, there may be some Archetypes that are in that 'tier' long before that.
Really, no way to know. We'll all float to whichever of the new 'big three' reaches our Complexity preference assuming the Eastern Market's 'new' Battle Pass style policies actually come through.
But it's 100% party based, right? That's a tiny downside, maybe it doesn't matter
^^^ I feel this - an engaging high complexity system is required to keep players engaged even after they reach the top.
Then the challenge is: how do we create paths to get there that suit the learning pace of different players?
Options like the Insect Glaive are good for creating complexity choices, but cooperatively this isn't good because inexperienced players will not understand what the Insect Glaive player is doing (not that this really matters in MH). This is where skill-based progression makes so much sense - it allows you to:
But let's get back on topic.
Yeah, personally I want more depth in cooperative play.
I just want it to be:
I think Intrepid's dynamic boss difficulty automatically handles that third point - bosses adjusting quickly to the performance of a party means we can have tighter, less forgiving fights that are still accessible to low-skill players on the learning curve - coz the boss should give them more wiggle room.
TP: A resource that requires attacks to be acquired and is required for the use of weapon skills that can be used in skillchains.
Skillchain: A multiplayer combo system that requires the combinated use of weapon skills from different players in proper order and timing to apply bonus damage at the end of the chain and enable a more efficient use of Magic Bursts.
Very interesting combat combo system layer, Lineage 2 did not had anything like skillchains or a specific meter for weapon skills like TP, FFXI is a game i've never touched and honestly just learned about through your comments in the forum.
Even tho we are expecting proc effects(and no weapon specific active skills) from various weapon attacks to combo along skills of many classes, i don't think i'm expecting a similar resource like TP or 'Weapon Focus' meter related to those procs in Ashes, but what i'm expecting is possible a harsh mana management system similar to the one present in Lineage 2(but probably more lenient), a game without mana potions and steep mana costs where mana just isn't an disregarded stat and even has 2 essential classes for any party(to have atleast 1) specially dedicated to the management of that resource for the whole party through -%MP. cost buffs and direct MP recharging skills.
You might be asking, what makes me believe Ashes will have a "harsher than average mana management system", it isn't just because of Lineage 2's influence in the game but also a clue we got considering Alpha 1 mages had a specific mana recharging skill which makes me believe Mages will not only be a DPS class but will also play the role of the "Party Mana Manager".
Regarding FFXI, i have a question for you @Azherae ,
Does FFXI have a class that can recover party members TP meter?
If it doesn't,, what would you think about a class that does?
Aren't we all sinners?
There was no such class truly for a long time, because of something specific to the rest of the combat system layer.
The enemy Gauge is where enemy mobs get their own ability to do TP moves. Classes that can do damage without increasing this gauge significantly are able to avoid many of the most devastating attacks (this is intended and built around, for the most part, it has some flaws that come up in 'Desired Party Composition' though, basically some people insisting that if you don't do enough damage 'per hit' you shouldn't be allowed to hit at all, but this was also remedied).
The main reason no such class is allowed to do this, is the above. There are items to bring you up to 'Blue Gauge', and ONE class (which can then be added as subclass to any other) has the ability to raise their own without attacking anything, on a 3 minute timer.
Some items and some VERY rare situational gear allow it to recharge over time. The class that COULD do it, would only give about 1% of the requirement every 3 seconds, which was meaningful but seldom used with the intention of 'avoiding having to strike anything'.
Of course that class was literally a Gambler DiceRoll class so it had the potential to 'Bust' on the Dice Roll and cause the group to slowly lose TP Gauge instead (literal dice rolls, follow the link if you care). On the other side, if you got lucky and rolled an 11, you got 4% every 3 seconds which was pretty amazing.
Literally 'good luck' forming a strategy for a hard battle around this, though.
They were fun to have around if you enjoyed Gambling and/or adapting to such things in real time.
Do you happen to have any thoughts regarding harsh mana management systems?
Aren't we all sinners?
I've got no concerns about them specifically, but I think that might be even harder on the average player than the Weapon Focus Gauge precisely because I know quite a few Fighter or Warrior players that don't even like dealing with 'having Mana at all' far less 'being unable to use their skills because it ran out'. And since those Archetypes don't usually have any abilities based around regaining it, that would be a double issue.
The people in my group would probably be fine since I think both of my Fighters would be Spellswords, but that's 'based on my expectations for Augments' again, which might not be good for balance if Mana management in battle was actually a big deal.
Overall I'm quite used to mana/power/meter management of all kinds across many games and welcome it, personally. I just don't like it as MUCH because the gameplay tends to lead to 'long rests after battles to regain it all', encouraging players to fight more like BDO due to it being the least difficult. You have to raise the exp rewards for 'going for tough stuff' pretty high in a 'heavy mana management' game before the average player I've encountered doesn't just go 'let's find stuff we can just smack down with melee so we don't have to rest, that'll be faster'.
Adding a Mana regain class makes that class mandatory and still only elevates that mindset to 'let's find stuff we can beat with melee and the amount of mana we regain per fight'.
That was an unpleasant-ish period in FFXI, I wouldn't expect much different in Ashes if they changed away from the 'you will generally have just enough mana in battles if things aren't going wrong' that I experienced and understood from something Jeff said a while back.
I also slightly dislike this if the Mana Potion cooldown is short, but I believe you are talking about a theoretical 'there are no Mana potions' game. (FFXI is a 'mana potions/drinks that regenerate mana are for Serious Content' game)