Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
Today 4man group in a 8 man area shows a larger issue in terms of difficulty
novercalis
Member, Founder, Kickstarter
Here is my main gripe with what was shown.
This is an area meant for 8 players. But we had 4.
Those 4 fighting 1 elite mob took about 15-20 seconds. That is perfect time to kill for a 4 man.
But thats the problem - this is an 8 man area, meaning an encounter is 6-10 seconds.
I think the area is undertuned if they had an 8 man party and an actual tank doing it's job properly.
1) Basically - the amount of struggle they had today, is what I expect and would like to see as if this was an 8 man group. I want to see an 8 man struggle in this area and not breeze through.
2) with that being said - I dont think a 4 man should be able to compete in the area. Maybe the regular elite mobs but DEFINATELY NOT on bosses. Seeing them being able to still overcome "bosses" as a 4man is disappointing.
3) I hope to see 8 man time to kill on elite mobs be on avg 20-25 seconds and bosses 40-60 seconds
overall today video shows it looks hard but when in is put in context, four level 13 doing an 8 man level 15-17 content - the difficulty setting is undertune.
This is an area meant for 8 players. But we had 4.
Those 4 fighting 1 elite mob took about 15-20 seconds. That is perfect time to kill for a 4 man.
But thats the problem - this is an 8 man area, meaning an encounter is 6-10 seconds.
I think the area is undertuned if they had an 8 man party and an actual tank doing it's job properly.
1) Basically - the amount of struggle they had today, is what I expect and would like to see as if this was an 8 man group. I want to see an 8 man struggle in this area and not breeze through.
2) with that being said - I dont think a 4 man should be able to compete in the area. Maybe the regular elite mobs but DEFINATELY NOT on bosses. Seeing them being able to still overcome "bosses" as a 4man is disappointing.
3) I hope to see 8 man time to kill on elite mobs be on avg 20-25 seconds and bosses 40-60 seconds
overall today video shows it looks hard but when in is put in context, four level 13 doing an 8 man level 15-17 content - the difficulty setting is undertune.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
2
Comments
Showing a demo two years before launch is now equal to overall game difficulty
It's not like they jump on last minute to film these and just have to get who ever is available at a moments notice to film their videos, right?
They just show areas they have progressed
we dont know if this is their standard of difficulty, so its better to give feedback now then when it's too late
Oh My God, this is unexpected!
You sure?
An 8-man group would risk pulling even more mobs, so the danger would be higher. We also have a super basic AI on these mobs, so we don't know how difficult they'd be on release. And as for def/hp/resist values on mobs - that can always be tweaked if needed.
Overall I'd say that the danger lvls are already nice. AI will push it even higher and stats will finetune it if needed.
Disagree, hard.
This was bad, specifically because it was a showcase.
If it wasn't doing a great job of showing mobs, it wasn't doing a great job of showing Tanking. If the Mobs weren't 'ready to be Tanked', then we can't learn anything about Tanking from watching them be fought.
So what are we to do other than assume that this is what we get?
My point is moreso that if you wanted to showcase Tanking for an hour you'd choose the area where the mobs have some half-decent AI and the pulls were meaningful, if that was the sort of gameplay you wanted to promote. Either they don't have such an area, or their 'technical difficulties' were related to 'wanting to do this and something bugging out'.
Looking aside from the fact that the Aegis forcefield ability is technically just silly, I'm interested in something from you specifically before I get too negative. Is this really what you expect in these games? Is this 'danger' and 'gameplay' for you? (lmk if this comes off as vitriolic, I can't tell).
Tweaking the amount of damage a group does to a mob or the HP values the mob has doesn't actually change the difficulty or the gameplay. "The Mob kills you fast" isn't 'difficulty' when you are already riding your cooldowns and spamming your CCs.
I don't think I saw Steven make a single recognizable 'choice' in that stream.
But again though, this is the base level that already has me excited. Adding proper AI, adding proper ability sets on mobs, proper mob group mentality and proper stat interactions (across all types of stats) would obviously elevate the gameplay ever higher.
Would I've loved to see all of that right now? HELL FUCKING YES. Am I ok with what was shown? Also yes. In other words, I'm doing a similar thing to what you were doing during some other showcases. I'm trying to see where this could go with future development. I might be completely wrong with my assumptions, but all of us are wrong in them until proven otherwise. Mine are just a few levels below yours, because I can be pleased by a much more simpler gameplay.
P.S. the comment could come off as vitriolic in text, but I'd like to think that I get intentions correctly most of the time, so I didn't apply any vitriolic sentiment to it.
Some mobs could get the same CC diminishing return mechanic as players will have and some (or same) mobs could have proper resistances to the abilities whose CDs you'd be riding.
But I'd definitely like to hear what else I'm missing in term of difficulty. Cause to me, the danger of every hit is the difficulty. If I die - I have failed. If I've failed - the difficulty was higher than what I could manage. Steven said that they're not working towards pure iframes on dodges, so that already boosts the potential danger of each mob hit. And one- or two-shots from mobs seem quite dangerous to me, if I can't just endlessly dodge them w/o taking a single hit.
It's also Steven though. He's juggling a top of "showcase" stuff, while also not being the peak lvl player. Though yes, this was definitely a pretty basic showcase, but they've addressed that part in the stream. And as much as I'd like them to be finished with all the detailed development already - they're not, so I'm judging exactly what I'm seeing.
He said he used admin commands to assist the party, which IMO is even worse because that's just one more reason we can't take this showcase seriously to form an opinion on how the tank plays... because honestly we did NOT get a genuine showcase of the tank.
The more I talk about it, the more I'm utterly disgusted with this months Livestream.
Alright, got it, thank you.
I believe that the starters of the actual Feedback Topic work well as an indicator of what they want to know, so there's that.
I'm tempering my expectations here precisely because I know that I came into this game when 'the person whose influence makes me want to play it' was still involved, and that has since changed. If L2's stuff is similar to this, then the chance that this is Steven's actual expectation/idea of gameplay is at least decent.
Because yes, I'm also extrapolating based on what they showed, and it seems like you and I do actually have a fairly similar perspective/opinion of what the gameplay will be like. That's 'my concern'.
Basically you're my 'litmus test' for if this is likely to be 'hey they're not done' vs 'This is what they are trying to make'. So I thank you, and I'll relay it to the others.
So take anything I say with a hugeass rock of salt. I dearly hope that Steven listens to his other devs and implements all the stuff I mentioned and more on top that I don't even know, but, as you pointed out, w/o Jeff we've got no idea if that'll ever happen.
Mainly I'd say, wait at least until their AI showcase and if you, with much better experience, see that it might not go in any direction that you like - you might as well be assured that the game will not overcome Steven's preferences in mmos.
The old school single mob dense area isn't interesting and makes getting in and out a grind. It's fine for demo purposes but single mob fighting as a group ad nauseum with high ttk is boring. Basically every mob becomes a boss and you have to slowly turtle forward and hear the complaining between tank vs dps waiting for the tank to build up threat generation before playing as any other role. This is an outdated gaming experience.
I'd rather see modern mmo's move away from the sneak group play to avoid over pulling (its not interesting or added value to be a core tenant of a game imo). Also I'd prefer tanks to have much improved taunting ability especially vs non boss mobs to make it so the constant complaining of tanks was put to rest. It's a bad mechanic. Making other players take no action and be statues while the tank plays isn't interesting or fun. I don't know why game developers adhere to such a dated method. Just make the tanks taunt better vs all non boss mobs and let the other players take action without so much down time. The mobs being instant aggro'd to residual DoT heals from a healer was evident in this demo too and Steven had to try and get the aggro back. Just buff the taunt capabilities of tanks. Why is it important to make the tanks job a struggle bus? It adds no value to games and injects toxic frustration by groups amongst themselves. Get rid of the nonsense, it's all preventable.
Let the ranger and bruiser do damage and give the tank easy, repeatable, and strong ways to take all aggro in an area. It's not fun to sit on your thumbs.
I hope they have mana/energy flasks so groups can keep up the pace faster. The sitting down kumbaya is a waste of limited play time that people have to play. The tedious one by one combat with high ttk makes me want to run as a group past all of the mobs and skip them all. If the mobs were much lower ttk and in groups that rushed you, you'd blow them up and keep going fast. High ttk with density and single target makes players want to skip it all to avoid the tedium.
To make it more difficult if groups are farming the area players would gather groups of mobs to farm them with aoe abilities which would increase the difficulty. There's no need to take fights the New World direction and make all of the pve a boring grind with every mob having high ttk via being a damage sponge imo.
that is the beauty of it tho. idk about NW and let's not ever talk about that trash but it was those tedious moments that made the immersion of a fantasy world alive in EQ and vanilla WoW, as it appeared to be in L2 as well.
Pacing and Slowing things down IS A GOOD THING. It creates players having to be synch with each other. I'm here for social co-operation gameplay. We gotta move slow, gotta respect each player to make sure they are ready for the next pull or we all die. I not only need to worry for myself, but for my teammate.
I don't need the adhd dopamine drip every 5 seconds. I don't want to rush to high lvl in 1 week or 1 month or 3 months. Enjoy the details. There won't be any complaining when that is the standard, people will then relax, talk until everyone is rdy then continue fighting. you know, being a sociable human being.
everyone is trying to move fast, run fast. Slow and Steady wins the race. Less is more. Savor your food, enjoy the food instead of gulfing it down in an instant. Pacing matters in a mmo.
Still, for the area they were fighting in, it definitely didn't look like a spot for a full group. It felt more appropriate for a group of 3-5. Why? Mobs and pull difficulty. Places truly requiring a full group should feel like it's not possible to pull only 1 or 2 mobs at the same time. These places should scare small groups to get overwhelmed.
Aside from the minor inconvenience of getting more people, I guess the main reason is that, so far, they've only presented 5 of the archetypes. Mage, cleric, fighter, ranger and now tank. We have yet to see anything from the bard, rogue and summoner. Until they're ready to show these, I think it's wise for them to limit the showcases to as few redundant archetypes as possible. Redundant archetypes will be interesting/pertinent when they will want to demonstrated the variations brought by the second archetypes.
You sound passionate about Tanks. Is that your usual class?
Agreed.
Zerg waves can be fun but they lack depth and turn into a bore.
Perhaps at higher levels with more experience and more utility synergy, maybe scrape by? No, I don't like that either. Just should never happen. That needs to be reworked.
Way too easy! I could see this get boring if its all at face value, i.e. mob difficulty was done and no cheats going on.
I did not understand your sentence, I am assuming you are trying to say - the showcase was about the tank and not the content???
What we learned from the showcase is more than just tank.
Improved UI, Map Artstyle, Mob Leash range, Tanky weird janky walking animation, Loot setting, Loot UI, Loot vote mechanic, Mob Damage output, Mob animation, aggro body pull range. Map location, Node location, setting, theme.
These are values that have been set. Wether they are the final settings is unknown to us. I'd rather highlight these issues now then when it's too late. I highly highly doubt they will be doing a showcase on leash, dmg, difficulty, mob animations stuff.
I have never felt any content feedback has been taken. Even in a1 they said it wasn't a content test but an overall test. A1 had some harder mobs but not many. A0 had far harder mobs which seemed to have been tamed/reduced.
I do not know when the true pve will be shown or if the true pve will ever be up to par. We are only ever shown up to level 15 and even then with a fraction of actual skills. Some call Ashes a hardcore pvp game so I guess sub par pve is the standard there.
I get A1 gameplay didnt reflect that but there is no hard criticizing this now. I can only assume, the devs in charge of characters (both PC and NPC) are working on the strength and weakness, deciding the HP pool, the mechanics, the abilities, the amount of experience point, damage output, etc.. therefor they are also the same people who decides the difficulty of it.
Thus I feel it should be brought up. They should always tune it hard and scale down, instead of start weak then tune up.
no-one likes easy, too hard and we can tone it down notch by notch.
Lots of people like easy.
The majority of people like easy, flashy, and power-fantasy.
Nothing about the overall leveling time implies the content will actually be hard, there are games that still 'don't do this'. EXP debt will apply to all the people of below average skill for whom what you call 'easy' is a nice challenge', the people that Steven is 'trying to appeal to with his Showman Persona'.
Those people can fall, just as Steven and the Devs can fall, against that content.
L2 and AA have hard content? Like, relative to the type of thing we are talking about here. I thought they had 'will delete you if you pull too many or go to an area too far over recommended level' content. I'm willing to accept that as 'hard', though.
Hence why I still think the basic premise of the pve is still flawed. Elite mobs should call for aid - all bosses should call for aid. Thus, a skilled player would have to use counter play instead of dying or face planting. The ranger showcase showed the best outcome with the ranger 'dying' a lot to the ranged damage. However, the simple addition of a call for aid would turn the 4 man team into 8 because fighting lone elite mobs would be very rare.
Can you imagine the coolness of not being able to kill the magey one outside because when you attack it, Lord Oakenbane sends 3-4 grunts out of the fallen keep to help and you have to manage it before they arrive?
Or if you decided 'ok let's skip that guy and go straight for the big boss' and then Lord Oakenbane 'wails' and the other starts to move in so it arrives when Oakenbane is at like half health and now you have to deal with the mage too?
Nostalgic.
And intelligent mobs should also learn to retreat and trigger aggro from other nearby allies.
Edit: actually ALL 90% of the MOBS should retreat. Even a wolf knows it's in danger when it's about to die. I can see Undeads not retreating but most beasts, humanoid, monstrosity knows to retreat for their life & call for back up.