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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.
Gear size as well as the way the gear is held should make sense in the context of race.
Ironhope
Member
While I think the tank abilities which were recently revealed are well designed and a good base to build the tank classes on, there was something which I found to be quite goofy.
that hammer just looks so out of place, so unnatural
I really love the idea of AOC to adapt all gear to make sense in the racial-cultural context of the player but what we just saw was the complete opposite
the way such a large and heavy hammer was held effortlessly by a human who used it with lightning speed was just so out of place
if it were a dwarf, an orc or a bestial tulnar holding is so effortlessly and swinging it around so fast it would make sense
but not a human
for a human the weapon should have been adapted to be far smaller, something reasonable
and the attack speed should absolutely be adapted to fit the size and weight of the weapon
A rapier or dagger should absolutely look effortless to carry and should attack very fast when in the hands of a human
A warhammer, especially if on the heavy side, carried by a human? It should have a slugish attack and its value should come from the potency of each hit, even if said hits are rarer.
And some might just ask ''mate, why asking for so much realism in a high fantasy game full of dragons and wraiths and orcs and wizards and stuff?''.
Because there's a difference between having fantasy elements as part of the premise of your world and your world just being a clowfest.
Games like The Witcher series are a good example and I strongly believe that's the model AOC should follow.
So this is my advice.
Design the weapons and gear of elves to be smaller, lighter, to truly fit their racial and cultural characteristics.
You can give shockingly large gear to races like orcs, tulnar or dwarves, races known for their resilience and strength.
And, I mean, when everybody has huge weapons, nobody has huge weapons.
If humans and elves have weapons fit for human and elves, then the tulnar, orc and dwarven ones can at least shine from this point of view.
Just my couple of cents, hope this helps.
that hammer just looks so out of place, so unnatural
I really love the idea of AOC to adapt all gear to make sense in the racial-cultural context of the player but what we just saw was the complete opposite
the way such a large and heavy hammer was held effortlessly by a human who used it with lightning speed was just so out of place
if it were a dwarf, an orc or a bestial tulnar holding is so effortlessly and swinging it around so fast it would make sense
but not a human
for a human the weapon should have been adapted to be far smaller, something reasonable
and the attack speed should absolutely be adapted to fit the size and weight of the weapon
A rapier or dagger should absolutely look effortless to carry and should attack very fast when in the hands of a human
A warhammer, especially if on the heavy side, carried by a human? It should have a slugish attack and its value should come from the potency of each hit, even if said hits are rarer.
And some might just ask ''mate, why asking for so much realism in a high fantasy game full of dragons and wraiths and orcs and wizards and stuff?''.
Because there's a difference between having fantasy elements as part of the premise of your world and your world just being a clowfest.
Games like The Witcher series are a good example and I strongly believe that's the model AOC should follow.
So this is my advice.
Design the weapons and gear of elves to be smaller, lighter, to truly fit their racial and cultural characteristics.
You can give shockingly large gear to races like orcs, tulnar or dwarves, races known for their resilience and strength.
And, I mean, when everybody has huge weapons, nobody has huge weapons.
If humans and elves have weapons fit for human and elves, then the tulnar, orc and dwarven ones can at least shine from this point of view.
Just my couple of cents, hope this helps.
2
Comments
I'd personally prefer an in-lore explanation for why everyone can swing a hugeass hammer w/o much trouble, than having a meta-driven game where you feel bad for your choice of race and archetype combination.
Honestly, you could have a lore explanation for why everybody wears clown suits, catgirl outfits and plate-bikini but at the end of the day, it would be an explanation for why it looks bad, not it not looking bad.
I don't see what visuals have to do with stats.
You can have the same item with the same states with two different models.
A small one with human imperial designs for a human.
And a two meter one with skulls and blood runes for an orc.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Racial_weapons_and_armor
They already said they're doing it with the rest of the gear, why not with the weapon?
Fine, don't want different models for weapons?
I can respect that.
But altering the size is something very easy to do.
So I really hope they do that.
Otherwise we will just end up with a lot of out-of-place and just silly looking stuff.
Would it though? I'm not so sure about that. I may be wrong, but in my mind Animations and SFX are the big resource sinks when it comes to dev time.
As a designer who uses Blender and other 3D programs to make 3D assets for a range of different architectural and game projects, making racial variations for different assets really wouldn't take much development time. Providing the assets stay strictly within their hitbox so that no animation tweaking is necessary.
Also this is Verra not Earth, minerals don't need to have the same weight, in fact I would be quite sad if the top tier metal in Verra was carbon steel or even something like Tungsten.
I personally loathe massive weapons as well, but the hammer while on the large side is within the realm of realism that IS has applied to the rest of their game.
I would like to add that perhaps 1H weaponry should have a more obviously slowed attack when using large weaponry to help with the overall logic.
Yeah, I'm probably wrong and as the link above points out, they had already planned to resize the weapons.
There's a difference between having fantasy elements as part of the premise of your world and your world just being a clowfest and honestly, having people effortlessly wield huge weapons just looks clownish.
I feel like the ''it's a magical world'' is rather a justification for why something looks out of place, not a solution to the thing looking out of place.
I know we're on pretty subjective grounds but then this is the case with almost everything one could discuss on this forum, so yeah.
At the end of the day you're going to have people who don't like this level of cartoonish look/sillyness/over-the-top-ness and you're going to have people who like it.
At the least the devs should reach a middle ground and the hammer we just saw just isn't it (it's way too over the top).
The solution is simple. Just have its size automatically reduced based on the race using it.
Also, heavier weapons should have slower attack speeds and humans/elves should have animations reflecting that they're having a harder time wielding said weapons, while orc/dwarf/tulnar animations should indeed show the usage of the heavier weapons as effortless.
I don't think these are complicated or unreasonable requests.
Well, we agree at least partially.
The attack speed we saw in the recet reveal was insanely fast with the heavy weapons the devs were geared with.
The link says it but they clearly didn't do it (properly), in regards to the racial context, in the preview we just saw and I wanted to signal this.
Please read my reply to Voxtrium where I also answer your point.
I agree with this, but they actually are making racial version of all the gear, so they'll probably do that to. I think it's safe to say that this is a pretty early showcase.
One of the things that disappointed me with the recent update to New World was that they had pretty grounded and proportional items and then they add the great sword and it and it's practically the size of the player. It just looked outright cartoony.
Well yes, it is. It's literally a different world with different laws of nature and abilities available to that world's creatures. That's the whole point of a fantasy - it has things that seem unnatural in our world. Otherwise it's literally just our world.
Hell, if we had magic (or even exoskeletons), I'm sure we'd go for bigger tools too. Or at least our current bigger tools would be swung way faster and would appear way lighter because of that.
I dislike it for objective reasons as previously explained, and changing it as suggested would be a good move by the devs.
The whole point of the fantasy is making a good story out of premises which were indeed altered to differ from the real ones.
In the context of a game, a good story involved a good imagery and a good imagery isn't goofy.
What we just saw was goofy.
I liked it, which makes your dislike not objective
You like something which looks goofy = which won't look good in the eyes of most.
I'm okay with leveling to max taking several months for an average player.... that does not mean thats the objectively right move for the devs.
Unnaturally, unreasonably large weaponry looks cartoonish, it looks goofy, that is an objective fact.
I agree 100% with this. People need to stop trying to push Earths realism into high fantasy games like this. When it comes to Equipment, races, environmental biomes, etc.
Thats not an excuse to have things look bad.
And honestly, when you have everything be fantastic, nothing is fantastic.
And stuff shouldn't be fantastic, unusual, for the sake of being fantastic, for the sake of being unusual.
Stuff should be fantastic when it leads to a better story.
The goofy looking hammer doesn't lead to a better story (one which looks better in this case), it leads to one which looks silly (bad).
Also all im really trying to point out is that size doesn't need to equal weight, just need to use some creative logic. I actually disliked the look of the 2H great sword, unless it was the largest sword in the game then its fine, but if there is larger than personally the weapons look far too large for my liking. Still gonna play the shit out of the game though.
I agree about dwarves which is something I said explicitly (I said that if it was an orc, dwarf or tulnar holding a huge hammer effortlessly and attacking with is so fast and with ease, as if it was made of wood, it would make snese).
Can I get a source about elves being so strong?
https://www.quora.com/Are-elves-in-LOTR-stronger-than-men
My impression (confirmed by the people in this forum) is that elves were more competent (more in control of their bodies due to experience, training and discipline, not available to mortal men) not stronger.
No but this is the general rule and we're working with general stuff here not particular stuff.
I agree that if it was an epic quest drop and the story made it clear it's a magical hahmmer or something then yeah it would be fine...
but it was a random 15 level item
A rare item of "Koryn" who might've been some kind of magical dude or it might've been a magical place. We don't know the lore deeply enough to say one way or the other. But if you're fine with magical items being bigger, then I find this whole discussion quiiiiiiite silly
You're going to have tons of ''rare'' items at low levels and thousands upon thousands of people coming across them.
It, namely sillyness, wouldn't be an exception, it would be a rule.
As I said if it was a higher lvl quest explicitly stating this is the case, as part of a story arch, maybe I'd be included to agree.
As things stand now? No way.
Also take this in the context of the other question I made about low lvl gear, to which you already answered (thank you for your participation by the way).
The fact that this item "dropped" during the showcase means nothing, because it was placed into that mob for this showcase.
And like I said, we have no info on how this item is obtained normally. You might need a ton of magical materials to craft it. Or you might have to take a quest from a magical dude to get those mats. Or any other number of magical reasonings in a magical world of magic.
And we haven't seen how this hammer would look on other races, as I've said before. It might be even bigger in the hands of a dwarf or an orc.