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.
Hit stat, expertise stat discussion (to reduce miss chance)
VekoKrava
Member
So, in vanilla WoW we used to have hit, expertise stats and weapon skill (you leveled weapon skills by using weapon), we also had some items that gave +bonus weapon skill, to explain how it works I will put video of a guy explaining this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yanQgO0wg64
There is also something called as glancing, which reduces your dmg. If target is higher level the more chance glancing to happen. It is impacted by expertise and weapon skill. https://vanilla-wow-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Glancing_blow - Glancing topic site.
Why this was important in vanilla? Because of unique itemization. Sometimes if gear had lower agility/strength/crit chance was better then gear that had more of these stats only because it had +weapon skill or hit or expertise. So it gave us this vibe of sandbox design when even item 47 lvl was BiS until phase 4 (1 year later patch that was released), this item for example was BiS for warriors and it was rare drop from some mobs - 47lvl. It costed around 4k gold on auction, so it was very important piece of gear to have - because it gave a lot of weapon skill bonus and some hit - without any basic stats such as strength / stamina (which increased HP pool) or agility. It was even better then any piece of gear from raids until patch 4 (1 year later).
This can improve our sense of itemization and it will give us many options to choose gear and how are we going to design our class / min max via stats / gear.
What do you think, will Ashes of Creation team make something similar, and how will they do it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yanQgO0wg64There is also something called as glancing, which reduces your dmg. If target is higher level the more chance glancing to happen. It is impacted by expertise and weapon skill. https://vanilla-wow-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Glancing_blow - Glancing topic site.
Why this was important in vanilla? Because of unique itemization. Sometimes if gear had lower agility/strength/crit chance was better then gear that had more of these stats only because it had +weapon skill or hit or expertise. So it gave us this vibe of sandbox design when even item 47 lvl was BiS until phase 4 (1 year later patch that was released), this item for example was BiS for warriors and it was rare drop from some mobs - 47lvl. It costed around 4k gold on auction, so it was very important piece of gear to have - because it gave a lot of weapon skill bonus and some hit - without any basic stats such as strength / stamina (which increased HP pool) or agility. It was even better then any piece of gear from raids until patch 4 (1 year later).
This can improve our sense of itemization and it will give us many options to choose gear and how are we going to design our class / min max via stats / gear.
What do you think, will Ashes of Creation team make something similar, and how will they do it?
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Comments
I'd prefer people to not miss higher lvl players as much as in other games, mainly so that owpvp would seem more welcoming to newbies. Personally I think that lvl25 should be able to hit lvl50 w/o any problems.
The power of that hit would be determined by the gear itself and any dodge/mitigation mechanics would come into play through augments and skillful play.
Imo items should be rare by default and BiS stuff should be super rare (no matter the tier). And their value would come from that rarity and from their specialized stats, which in turn would come from crafters' dials.
PvX
We like to really refer to ourselves as a PvX game, because in those systems of PvP, PvE, crafting they're all intertwined: They're interdependent on each other... Our system of development really requires some interdependence there between those things. You're going to need a crafter to give you the best items. You're going to need PvPers to secure cities and castles. You're gonna need PvErs to take down those world bosses for those materials to craft.[88] – Steven Sharif
Ashes is a comprehensive game. It is not a PvP focused or a PvE focused, it is a comprehensive PvX game and as a result these systems are all interconnected and have to coexist with one another with certain types of mechanisms that can provide that give and take, that push and shove.[89] – Steven Sharif
Ashes of Creation is a PvX game. Players will naturally encounter both PvP and PvE elements.[89][90][91] It is unlikely that a player could purely focus on just PvP or just PvE.[91]
There is a balance between PvP and PvE in Ashes of Creation.[91]
All stats relate to a player's combat effectiveness in PvX.[92]
There won't be separate PvE and PvP servers but some servers may be more PvP focused than others.[90][93]
There will not be different PvP and PvE gear types.[94]
Progression in the game might require PvE elements.[91]
We're very clear with our objective and philosophy on the game and we understand that they may not appeal to everybody. But you know it is an important reciprocal relationship between the content that's related to PvE and the content that's related to PvP and they feed off of each other. They're catalysts for change: Their progression, their development. It's things that people can value when they see something earned and they see something lost. That elicits an emotional response from the player: That they've invested time in to either succeed or fail; and PvP allows for that element to be introduced into gameplay. And we're very clear that is our objective: That risk versus reward relationship, that achievement-based mentality. Not everybody's going to be a winner and that's okay.[95] – Steven Sharif
There is some dev interview about darkest dungeon 2 and how they tweaked the combat from darkest dungeon 1. One of, if not the biggest change they made was removing the prominence of 'missing' in their combat and they explain why it's not good game design to let players miss. I'm too lazy to go find it though sorry.
Any accuracy stat, imo, should be used for countering dodges, not reducing your 'miss chance'. Also, pretty sure Steven explicitly has said in at least 1 interview that he wants players to be able to try and take on content much higher lvl than themselves and how having them artificially not be able to, e.g. misses, is not conducive to that.
Having the orange armor allows you to switch out the 3 mod pieces like in the video. So if you found a set you liked you could mix and match the stat blocks as you wished. For example: My Sith Inquisitor was using armor from the first instance(Black Talon) but had the mods needed for healing from the highest raid when I stopped playing.
I do agree 100% that stats should matter and being able to mix and match what you want is important. The math should matter so an evasion tank plays different then a mitigation tank or perhaps a caster will want more dynamic mana regeneration over straight up power.
How much of this will the crafters and base materials provide? Don't think we can answer this just yet. However I hope a lot is the correct answer. Hopefully we get some good answers in A2.
As for Intrepid as the Orcs like to say "Where there's a whip there's a way."
Edit.
Another thing SWTOR did was have crafting stations that were important stationed on each planet (zone) that you need to be at to change this stuff. They later nerfed it so you could do it anywhere. Hopefully Intrepid doesn't whimp out on their crafting stations being important.
But they didnt.
They formed a foundation that could then have had good itemization put on top of it, but then just didnt add enough items to the game to actually give players choice.
Good itemization requires players having a choice. In WoW, if you knew what raid mobs a guild was killing, you knew what gear everyone in their raid was using. That is a sign of incomplete itemization.
But why though? Missing based level or gear is really just a content gate for lower level characters and an exploit mechanic for higher level players in pvp.
If you separate it out from pvp, you are asking the devs to account for that forever when balancing combat. You have also walled off your content to a large number of players. And for what benefit?
Ashes had some of that built into Passive Skills for Alpha One.
I do expect gear to add some bonuses to Passve Skills.
the weapon skill : just a boring thing, that slowed leveling when you found a clearly better weapon than the current one (and weapon is a great part of your damages for physical damages class) BUT was a different kind, or even one you never used before... and so time to grind it you can't go back to leveling.
Interesting mechanic ? GOD NO...
So "weapon skill" : out, not again, bad.
Remains what survived vanilla on items and for a long time : accuracy (to avoid "miss") and expertise (to avoid dodge and even pary) first being opposed to defense and parry/avoid stats.
Those are not deeply bad. This is a frequent RPG system, stat A vs stat B to know if you hit. But in video game even more with dynamic gameplay, it could be often a useless frustration...
But more than that, for PvE... it end up to have a brainless spam of those stats until the value you know you have to reach. we knew how many % hit we needed on world bosses, we also knew their avoid chance (for DD) and parry chance (for tank) so knew what to reach.
So comes this variety of way to stuff yourself for PvE : you know you have to reach value X and Y on those stats, so you will try to adjust your stuff to have it exactly, no more no less, and then add other stats... You just lost a % of the choices you could have to a mandatory one.
If you want a sandbox where you create the character of your dream, avoid the "mandatory stats" everyone will use. just focus on others, as attack speed, attack power, critical chance, length of debuff/buff (yep could do a stat for this) and other
I didn't like weapon skill stat as it was way too important for weapon attack based characters, and as @Aerlana mentioned, grinding up the stat when you got a new weapon was not fun (speaking as a warrior main, yikes!).
When putting these stats into AoC context, how do you split the difference between the 2 modes of combat. If you land an action-style attack, it should hit 100% of the time, but a tab-style attack should have a chance to miss? I'm not too sure about that.
Things like weapon skills can teach you much more then some convenient design, and that is problem with this modern era, everyone wants everything instantly, we are getting more and more comfort that when something ''hard'' happens, we break easily. I am not going to be like that, I did break during 2019 vanilla launch, but I did find something worth finding out and that is change, yes, I embraced change and I started thinking more spiritually, I realized I do not want easy way out in gaming, in life I would argue that easy way out is the best path you can take because suffering is downgrading your inner being, but in games.... I find convenience so disturbing, that it makes me impatient and ignorant, I would rather level weapon skill and chill while doing it, then being impatient and angry about it and wanting everything quick.
This is why vanilla itemization was good, it gave sandbox vibe, I said why... I don't like games where you can replace every piece of gear from quests etc... with each level, I despise that design, it does not feel like progression and I feel like a robot that is designed to play how they want you to play, like far leftist ideology that is going on in social medias and so on, very disturbing when you find out that left is not tolerant anymore and only those that did not identify are true to their inner being. Same thing is happening in MMORPGs (design wise) you are programmed to play how they want you to play.
All of those indicate, at the very least, AOEs being super effective as a farming tool.
I bought skyrim and even though I liked every bit of it, I did not play more then 10 hours.. Something is not right for me to play and progress via virtual world, I don't see the point anymore, and about story... I would rather watch a movie then do numb tasks every here and there to follow main story, because not every quest is really interesting one, especially in MMOs and the way quests are designed. I don't feel the way I felt when I was younger, I feel like I am missing something while I am doing kill x quests or fetch x quests... Even gw2 main story stinks to me now, not because it is full of narrative and story, but because I must do dumb tasks every here and there...
And also for final fantasy, people say it has good story, but I would rather pay to netflix or some other site for 15 dollars then playing video game for story, I don't feel the same anymore... Maybe that will change, but I am utterly bored of any MMO atm...