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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
This is also extremely important, yes.
I personally shouldn't bring it up because I have way too many opinions/expectations/speculations and it creeps into my already-extensive ramblings, but it's definitely true that if the customizations/augments are 'weak', some people might not feel like 20-40 skills is enough just because they won't feel unique enough in groups.
Less skills also makes it more 'required' to take meta versions of some imo because it means you can't build as strong an 'internal synergy' for your own build/gear.
If they can pull that off, I think fewer skills are both necessary and needed. I am honestly fine with just 10 active skills if we can customize with augments, passive bonuses and tweaks and we get synergies with other skills from other players. I would much rather have that than 30 active skills, where some of them are super niche and situational, and perhaps just derivatives of other very similar skills, and without the synergies.
I think this would incentivize group play even more, instead of every player being a swiss army knife by themselves.
You did mean to type '10' here, right?
Can you give any examples of games where 'after about 10 skills the rest just feel like bloat'?
In games with 20-30 skills I arrange them and have my 10 skills that I use in rotation and the rest get fitted on my bars and mostly forgotten.
Being entirely honest, I think a lot of the "controller dumbs things down" crowd is more a knee jerk reaction to "sub-menu" and R2>Square>D-Pad up type navigation to get to skills etc. I have next to no experience with controllers but I definitely felt like an Ape trying to use one years ago. Definitely put it down after about 10 minutes and went "Yep, not for me".
And as a endcap for me opinions on this discussion as I think you are correct that we are hoping they continue on course and that I have no doubt you could make controller work regardless of what this loud anti-controller faction says.
So beyond say 10 active abilities, what gets actual use? I can imagine some conditional cleanses, or long cooldown nukes. But what skills have a meaningful place in a rotation with interesting interaction or self synergies (resulting in optimal and suboptimal play) and which skills are simply redundant? Or you just use the cooldown because you have it, but it doesnt add visually or thematically to your character fantasy.
Given my hope is augments will be meaningful and build synergy altering choices. I think I would lean towards a tightly designed number of base abilities, multiplied by impactful points of difference via augmentation.
15 or so active abilities augmented 2 to 3 alternate ways with subclass, and then skills points allocated to enable or alter mechanics or simply buff numbers. This strikes me as a lot of build choice, without bloat.
All contigent on whether Intrepid can make so many abilities and augments valuable to party balance, and not redundant due to lack of power / utility.
Well, I will (finally) answer in what detail I can and also pad the answer with additional information relative to the undercurrent topic of this thread. tl;dr - I get 23-25 useful.
You can ignore the keybinds data (it's technically for someone else) and focus only on the skills themselves. Not all will be named correctly because I frankly can't be bothered for BDO. Note that this is moreso agreeing with you, than not agreeing.
BDO Kunoichi Succession
Slashes. Repeats up to 3 hits before restarting. Animation cancelable
Throwing Kick - Neutral Sp
Kicks. Repeats up to 3 hits before restarting, Animation cancelable.
Floor Sweeping - S + Sp
Sweepkick. Might CC.
Kunai Throw - Neutral Se/ A+Se / D + Se
Throws a Kunai, side versions 'spin sideways' while doing it. Can't remember if you can cancel side versions cause I don't do that
Shadow Slash - A + P or D + P
Slashes while spinning sideways. I personally think of this as 'the same' as Slash, though the game doesn't.
Crescent Slash - S + P
I never use this. I think it's supposed to be good now but idc, it launches and I don't need that.
Ankle Cutter - Neutral MA + P
Cuts ankles. Reduces Def a bit. Cancelable.
Ghost Greeting - W + MA + P
Rushing slash. Pretty short, but meaningfully faster than running speed, so a small gap closer.
Shadow Stomp - S + MB
Slow startup 'gap closer' that hits everything in the way and you go through them.
Shadow Explosion - MA + Sp I THINK?
Linear energy wave in front, doesn't move you, multihit. Can't remember the keybind for sure because I just do stuff intuitively after awhile and I'm not turning BDO on for this.
Brace - MA + R (roll/jump)
Small self healing.
Fox Claw - MA + Se
AoE slash around you with slight pushback.
Shadow Clone - S + Se
Backflip with frontal energy wave in a cone.
Flash Slash - MA + Bl
AoE multislash, meant as a big cool attack. I seldom use it, but 'seldom' is 'once every 10m or so if relevant'
Smokescreen - R cancel from Throwing Kick or Ankle Cutter
Ground smokebomb, press R again to dash behind opponent, but you have to turn yourself around manually.
Suicide Fall - Literally forgot how to do this, but not because I don't use it. It's easy though, like a 1 button... Probably 'Neutral MB'.
Grab, if you're familiar with the 'Izuna Drop' ninja technique concept, this is it.
Tendon Cutter - W + Bl
Can't move while blocking anyway, right? Multi hitting direction-changeable big gap closer, three rushes.
Danse Macabre - W + T
Single big gap closer with some weird cancels
Fatal Aim (or something) - P + Se
Strong very close range stab, not really cancelable, recovery long (for BDO). Hold buttons longer to do Heart Aiming which is just another stab of the same.
Shackles - MA + T
AoE Slow + damage.
Ghost Step - A + MA or D + MA
Sideways evasion.
Block Jump - MA + Bl
Ninja log decoy technique. Flick a direction to end up there, including 'behind current target'.
Black Moonlight - Sp + DPad Down -> (calls up Ring menu) R-Stick Up
Rain of Kunai/Shuriken around AoE. I hope they change this one day to T+R, but it doesn't need to be fast really.
Heart Snatch - Sp + DPad Down -> R-Stick Down-Left
Single hit vanish + large retreat that I wish was on S+T since you can't control the direction anyway.
Sinew Cut (?) - Sp + DPad Down -> R-Stick Down
Large retreat that leaves an AoE slashing 'zone' behind like a trap for enemies to stand in/walk into. Would prefer nearly any S+MA+basic for this, you're already 'pressing S' the moment you think of using it. Most sensibly would be S+MA+Se so that it's like 'retreating Fox Claw', but there's valid reasons why 'S+MA' might not be 'allowed' to do anything, such as 'being Evasion'.
Commencement Dance (I forget the real name of this, it's just a buff) - DPad Up (also just a ring menu) R-Stick Down
Longish animation, long cooldown, long duration buff to lots of small things. Can stay in a Ring Menu.
If we don't count 'Slash, Shadow Slash, Crescent Slash, or Ghost Step', and treat this as the equivalent of a Fighter/Rogue or Fighter/Ranger, then I would say only 2-3 of these are actually redundant. And for me they're not, because [Long List Of Balance Reasons].
There's also about 3 more of them that I don't remember because I don't use them, one that can be activated with just buttons and two more that get put into Ring Menus. Honestly, I could use about five more, and this isn't because of cooldowns preventing the use of the ones I have. Consider a Fighter/Ranger Speculative Build for Ashes (I'll just use the stuff my Spellsword wants).
"Somersault Strike" - A backflip that hits in front, goes highish backward, then slams back down and hits in a small cone in front. Edge of cone is just far enough that this is a two hit combo on someone directly in front of them at the time it is done. This is for repositioning and dealing with people behind them.
"Push Beyond" - Sacrifice HP to increase attack. Doesn't matter if this is a oneshot or a per-swing or a 'give up this much health for this length of buff' but the latter two work better with Augments.
"Flying Dropkick" - Frontal attack, single target, sends opponent flying away a relatively good distance. Maybe extra damage if they collide with something behind them.
"Man At Arms" - Increases any stat modifiers on your next Weapon Skill and/or increases the chance of procs from your Weapon Perks(?)
"Trail Run" - Basically just a free armored sprint forward, maybe can do other moves from it (does this count as an Animation Cancel?). Causes the Fighter to Vault over certain small obstacles?
"Weapon Stance" - Does different things depending on the equipped main weapon, usually increases Counter or Parry chance or something.
None of these are explicitly covered by the list. There's stuff you could 'fold in' for simplicity, but 'something to activate a stance based on weapon', 'frontal knockback', 'a backflip that doesn't actually retreat much but hits instead' would, at minimum, replace things, and could be meaningfully helpful if added as separate things.
None of that even touches 'stuff that's just there to activate effects like Bleed'.
And for that person who wanted the data on 'which are unused' (they know who they are):
Neutral MA + MB (already use this on a different class, but generally I'm avoiding any mentions of MB, some games might require one more button, Tab Games in particular might need a 'confirm/unconfirm/cycle target button and this Modifier would be set up around those functions (e.g. MB + P/Se/R/Sp with the last being for when you need both Analog sticks still despite currently tab targeting)
W + MA + MB (but THIS class already has enough gap closers and this would be one by default to avoid weird misfires/crosswires)
Bl + T - (would expect/want a counter or parry here)
Bl + R - (You can't block and jump/roll at the same time, I'd manage to not hit this without meaning to)
S + Bl + T ( even if I could move while blocking like on Nova, this would still be good and not misfire)
S + Bl + R ( same as above )
Neutral Se -> Sp ( modifiers to secondary attacks doesn't seem like it would be uncommon nor weird )
Neutral T + R (Already mentioned I'd want this for an surround AoE, since you don't need RStick for targeting, and Neutral T doesn't do anything)
W + Se - (Pretty sure this class doesn't use this for anything, but others do)
I think directionals don't work as well for inexperienced WASD people because they use 2 fingers to move diagonally to begin with until they learn the nuances of mouse camera control and even after this, for a while.
GW1 had 8 active skills, and it was already plenty to manage on the micro-play side. It also meant that each team had to precisely craft their team builds because each class had a skill pool of 50+ possible skills (and more, from memory) and you needed to maximize synergies to make the team comp work.
20-30 Seems to be a fine balance between too much and not enough. What will matter a lot also, is cooldowns. You only need more active skills when your other ones are on cooldown. Like why have 10 different kinds of fireballs, or 5 different spells that CC if you're not a frost mage? Obviously, powerful skills will have long cooldowns and general skills will have low cooldowns, but whats the point of having skills that you can only use once an hour in pvp or pve? I dont see any, personally.
Also, think of the micro perspective, How are you supposed to manage more than 30 skills from your keyboard and mouse considering you also have to use your weapon? I am talking about maximize character efficiency, dps rotation, etc. Is it going to force players to buy next-gen ergonomic keyboards to be able to spam better? Food for thought...Conclusion, 20-30 seems plenty to me!
Wow is a great example. There were maybe 6 real skills, and a bunch of trinkets, long cooldown abilities, or very situational abilities.
The game seemed like they wanted to keep adding skills as a reward for leveling, and the result was a bloated mess on your hotbars.
Some newer MMOs have gone with 10 or so active skills that you pick and choose out of a larger set of skills. It's a much better design.
Tab target games though, skill use is the key factor in player skill. A skilled player knows what skills to use where a less skilled player may not.
10 active abilities means there will never be more than one appropriate skill to use at any given time, so there is no player skill involved at all.
This is vanilla WoW in a nutshell. Few skills, no ability to differentiate players based on player skill.
I'm playing New World as healer and is kinda frustrating that in some moments all my skills are on CD and I can't do much.
But i used to play FFXIV and I just did not use half the skills available.
I am not sure this works this way. In New World for example, you only ever have 6 and it seems very low level thought is required as you just kind of it whatever is off cooldown. I like the idea of having 40-50~ choices via your class that you can distill down to 20-30 to make the character you want or have the skill set you want and give you flexibility to use different skills and having more than a rotation of 5 skills with 1-2 defensive cooldowns etc.
Add to that possibly these abilities too: basic weapon attack, charged weapon attack, active block/parry, dodge roll, gear-based abilities (trinkets/enchant kind of things)
I don't really want 30+ different abilities. That is useless bloat. It also makes a lot of rotations into a DoT-fest, since they always have the highest damage-per-cast.
I find it hard to say because my experience with a lot of games is that there's a certain subset of abilities that exist 'just to prevent the basic weapon attack from being a significant portion of your damage'.
Which lets them make that basic weapon attack quite weak and 'something you only do as filler, if even that'. Those games tend to have a lot more 'padded out' stuff.
Games with elemental damage tend to need to give their mages a lot more stuff, but I'd also expect Mages to have build specializations and still be comfortable. Maybe some sort of 'basic attack' that isn't an 'attack' at all, just a 'small empower of next spell' sort of thing, like from Orbs.
So while I prefer 16-20, this is only when the game isn't devoting 5-8 of those to 'You hit, but harder!'
Not that I mind that type of skill at all, even if it doesn't actually add any special added effect, just that when you have 16 skills and half of them are just 'hit the person in front of you with slightly different damage', it feels a little dry and I'd want more skills total, then.
Not sure how people feel about playing a game that has very few of those (particularly for melee) though, in terms of long-term engagement.
Pretty much every single one of these have their own function (at least secondary) and only 2 slots are "same", because one is the ability itself and another one is a macros to use that ability on my own character with a press of one button. The bottom 2 rows would be used in 90% of pvps and all three rows would be used in 70-80%.
I'd like to have around the same amount of tools, even if I need to swap between several bars to access them.
So, how many abilities will you really have?
Since there are no "weapon skills", I'm not sure we will have swappable bars. Rather, if you're a ranger and you cast a skill that requires a bow (snipe) you will pull out the bow and snipe. If you use a ranger melee skill, it will animate with your equipped melee weapons or fists. Will there be a small animation delay for switching weapons? Likely.
I'm a fan of having a limited set of the class skills available on the bar (or usable via skill point allocation) at any one time, as a kind of "loadout/build" that you can change when you are out of combat. This helps keep variety, even within the same class
There will be an option to include multiple hotbars.[2][4]
imo 7-10 skils with less than 30 second CD is fine and then maybe 1-5 long CD skills.
When u have like 20+ buttons to press you start playing the UI not the game itself
Is say more so when it's at 30+. You can have smart button combinations that can handle 20-30 as long as they are flexible in multi key commands.
1. Choose which ones you will spec into
2. Choose when and how to use them in combat
Just because there are more options, doesn't mean there is less thought required, because you still have to use them in a better way than your opponent. Clicking a random skill wouldn't be any more rewarding than having no skill available at all, if it is used incorrectly or worse than the opponent is able to manage their skills.
Just like you have to "think harder about how to best use a small handful of skills", you have to do that same thing with a larger amount of skills. The amount of tactics doesn't decrease just because you have more options available. You still have to manage those skills and use them properly and make better decisions than the opponent. Except that having more skills actually enhances the tactics and thought required, because you actually have buttons to click, rather than automatically knowing what to do at all times because you have such a small amount of options or everything else is on cooldown.
Basically, the more skills there are to manage in your build and during combat, the more room for error there is and possible mistakes you can make vs the opponent. Its actually "More is More" when it comes to adding strategic depth.
Obviously it has the potential to become too much for the average person to be able to handle, so you would want to figure out the physical and mental limitations of your targeted gamer demographic, to figure out a sweet spot amount of skills they can reasonably handle, to keep them in that flow state. You want it to be possible to manage the skills while having the brain capacity to do the other neccesary things combat requires, such as maintaining situational awareness, being able to make decisions in a timely way, having time to execute properly, etc. So you would want the amount of skills to harmonize with these aspects instead of impede them, for the average player you are trying to appeal too.
I also don't think pressing lots of keys/buttons make the game engaging. The mechanics of the fights are what matter. Look how popular games like Darksouls are, or most recently Elden Ring. I know those are extreme examples but its all about timing. It is hands down one of the most engaging type of games you could ever play. With that said I obviously don't want that type of combat in Ashes.
Anyway I have basically played every MMO with controller albeit built in support or my own custom mapping. Controllers can do it all. Its up to the devs or yourself to do it in a way that feels natural. Some games do it terribly, some do it great. In my opinion the best game with native controller support is ESO. This has been the foundation for all the games I have played past an present in my custom mapping since it released.
Example of skills for those that may not have played it. Skill slots reuse the same buttons X, B, Y, LB, RB, and LB+RB for an ultimate ability. A press of the D-Pad to the left rotates it to a new set of slotted skills using those same buttons. That is already 12 skills and or buffs. Right D-Pad did nothing but could of added another 6 skills. All of this with presses not holding activators which can cause fatigue like other games.
Example of consumables. Holding up on the D-Pad brings up a wheel which you can slot any consumable into this wheel could have any number of slots programmed in. Moving the thumbstick to the desired slot would slot it in the active position then simply tapping up would consume it.
The menus flow effortlessly from left to right which most MMOs with controller support get so wrong. It also completely changes the UI when a controller is detected so the use of a mouse is not needed. Or emulating the mouse with a thumbstick. I wish I could help every developer add controller support. I have so much time custom mapping games its crazy. But the game at its core needs to be built around it for it to work perfectly. If its an after thought or an add on its going to feel that way, which stinks.
From what I have seen/played so far of Ashes I think it could easily have native controller support.