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.
New class or race
FBI
Member, Alpha Two
Don't you guys think it would be nice if we have a Dragonborn race or Dragon class? I always wonder nice will it be. I love the lore and its culture. For someone who is obsessed with dragons, it will great if they implement it in the game. Or make one of the archetypes have dragon abilities or something.
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These are the races game is planning to have at launch https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Races
Im sure you can rp with with one of those beast looking races lol
I guess the biggest hurdles are: The lore as Steven has written it (I am not aware whether or not that material excludes this race) and the actual mechanics. Because it seems to me that a dragonborn doesn't exactly has much new mechanics that make them a class/archetype. The have a breath attack in DnD - yeay. Take a mage augment and you dont spit fire or ice but imbue it into your skills. So the question would really be: Why would it be worth touching the class system?
So to race: Maybe. Some day.
To class: Highly unlikely.
True, but that is really the weakest argument of the ones that I made and at that not even one that was trying to reject the proposal but that it was probably stuff for a future expansion rather than the base game.
So feel free to address the other points as well.
In time they probably will add more classes. I mean, I would be genuinely surprised if Druid doesnt make it as an archetype eventually.
But if they go the WoW route and start adding random races that doesnt make sense (like the vulpera or the April's joke pandas) then I am going to say "no thanks."
Roll as a lizard Tulnar, and use a Gliding Mount. You'll feel just like a dragon.
I would guess that the most likely thing to happen is that we would see new augmentation options being added and maybe more horizontal progression, rather than an overhaul of the class system by adding a new archetype as that would be a huge shift in the class balance system.
New races will have to somehow refer back to the lore; so for example whatever happened in the Void with the Ancients and the Others might have caused a race capable of such a feat to get further away from the Void, leading to their arrival on Verra; or some of the people actually didn't return to Verra during the time we left and things over their have changed them e.g. due to the exodus of us players to the point that they are following now. It doesn't seem very likely that any new race will be added as a cookie cutter generic fantasy races version, but always with a twist (like Ren'Kai Orcs in Verra having potentially an Asian look to them and following the principles of Power, Honor and Tranquility)
In regards to the Druid/Shapeshifter: This is the one I am most optimistic about coming in the future, slotting into the "support/filler" archetype without causing too much of a balance shift in the class table.
Lorewise a Shapeshifter could be a group of unfortunate people who got all mixed and locked up into one new body during an expedition in the astral plain or something like that.
As a basic class they could be able to transform into some (maybe 3-5) basic entities like a generic looking humanoids like a knight (increasing tank capabilities), an archer, a mage, rouge and cleric, which would changes something like 5 active abilties while the rest remain the same - which would be magic type meele skills with low mobility and a mix of damage and short range support abilities (e.g. [1] swapping places with an ally standing close by and receiving a short buff to defense on arrival at the new location; [2] destabilizing the mass of a target [magical DoT + stat debuff]).
When you reach lv 25 you get a questline to finally accept that you are no longer these individuals merged together but an entity that due to its nature is able to shapeshift into basically anything. And with that, you can go about augmenting.
Taking anything but the Shapeshifter would reduce the amount of forms to 2, but you can change those by absorbing Essence from entities. Taking a form will grant 6 new abilties, if none form is taken, these slots remain empty. Basic skills of the archetype will be augmented as usual.
Bard = you get to transform into mystical beings (Dryards, Satyr, Fairy, Siren, etc). New abilties gained focus on improved strategic improvement (Mana management, mobility, passive stats) or ability enhancement (cooldown, casting speeds, a spell that allows a player to trigger an ability twice on activation).
Cleric = you get to transform into symbols of holy life or death (angels, ghost form, zombie form, reaper, etc). New abilities gained focus on granting life to others or stealing it from targets.
Fighter = The Druid (her it is!), you get to transform into a predator animal (bear, tiger, raptor, big crab). New abilities focus on mobility & crits or DoTs and mobility debuffs.
Mage = You get to transform into elemental forms of your basic form or an elemental. New abilities are basically ranged skills primarily focusing on damage or or status effects (associated with one of the elements).
Ranger = You get to transform into plant creatures and "spitter" type creatures (help I have no ideas for a theme here XD). New abilities are ranged physical damage and mobility debuffs or ranged DoTs and various status effects.
Rouge = You get to transform into humanoid sneaky entities (like goblins, halflings, kobolds, pixies) and predatory animals. New skills grant stealth and status effects or DoTs primarily associated with physical damage (bleed, poison).
Summoner = You get a "Split-Form" where you divide into 2 of your basic forms gaining 3 preselected skills of each. You look like a half-half humanoid of the same race (determined by the basic race you chose in the beginning) with a clear line running vertically through the middle of your body and everything being slightly colored depending on the forms chosen (knight = red; cleric = white; rouge = black; mage = blue). The second form is that of "Amalgam" which grants you 6 absorb skills, all of which do weapon damage but debuff an attribute of the target. When 10 stacks of stats have been stolen, the Amalgam sheds a portion of itself off and creates a temporary combat pet that fights for you.
Tank = You get to transform into living statues, constructs and golems. New abilities focus on self defense and threat generation or damage distribution and boost of defense for the group.
Shapeshifter = Refusing to give up their "humanity", the Shapeshifter focuses on increasing its ability to push the instability of matter outwards, granting them greater abilities in regards to defense reduction/penetration, DoTs and make up for their weakness in mobility by deforming the ground (which could leave small DoT/slowing fields behind). The 6 skills that the shapeshifter would usually gain from transforming would be filled with more abilties of the kind it already had.
Shapeshifter as an augment = Taking Shapeshifter as a secondary Archetype would allow for augmentations with (1) penetration effects, (2) magic based DoTs, (3) single target support skills and (4) concealment (this is not stealth, but just the dipiction of something "false" e.g. a Fireball cast with a concealment augment might look like an arrow being shot)
Lore wise, an augmentation with shapeshift abilities is possible because people can be "touched by instability" or simply by magic users analyzing, understanding and using the process behind it to their advantage.
I'd like to apologize for... whatever that thing is that I have just created XD
I'm going off topic a little here, but, if they only had 3 servers then the whole different story arc aspect of game play would be limited to just the 3 outcomes (from the 3 servers) and pretty much would be a "who cares?"
The reason for the 3 servers is to make sure you play with friends on the same Server, I don't think it has something to do with people having the same outcome. Ashes of Creation is the World of possibilities with unlimited story quests fresh new content, open world. If the server can handle PN NA, PC EU, XboX NA XBOX EU, Play Station NA, Play Station EU, and Asian servers that will be amazing. The disadvantage of having 5 to 10 servers at once, servers tend to die fast. Players tend to go to populated servers. Look at Elder Scrolls Online, for example, they have 2 servers NA AND EU.
Thank you for the insight.
Agreed, they have to focus on the classes they already have planned instead of scope creeping into more.
My guess is that the Bard will be the last class to be revealed as it builds on the other classes. Worst case imo is the Bard being implemented post Alpha 2 launch during a reset. (Then again I don't think it's very likely that A2 will launch before the Bard is largely finished)
I did, but I don't like WOW myself after 10 years of playing it. I don't want to get into details. I like the ideology Ashes Of Creation have and the direction of the MMO they're taking.
New race would be allot of new models, animations and armor that would need to be added. It really is a big ask for where this game is, in its development cycle.
We also need to consider that compared to most MMOs, Ashes has a very large selection of classes and races and we have yet to see all the options in a playable state.
Math is right for number of combinations
But as they have said before they aren't wholely unique classes.
So they would be building 1 class, working out how to add the 8 existing flavors to it and how to apply that class to the eight existing archetypes...
Honestly their system sounds cool, but feels like it will be a balancing nightmare...
It would be 32 flavors as picking one archetype grants access to 4 schools of augmentation.
And it would also mean 4 schools of aufmentation for 8 archetype skillsets.
The thing about balancing is that Intrepid is not primarily concerned with all classes being equally strong. It was stated that the game will be balanced primarily from an 8-people-group perspective. So there is a chance that a Fighter-(Ice)Mage being stronger 1v1 than a Rouge+Fighter will never be adressed unless there are mechanics not fully applying (primarily the Rock-paper-scissors system not working properly). With that being said - if I remember correctly the whole topic of "balancing" will be only really come into focus during the Beta.
I don't know about that. If they made a new ninth archetype they would need 4 new augment flavors, sure. But the same 4 schools will be applied across the 8 existing archetypes. And then the new archetype would have combination with the existing 8. That's 17 new class combinations.
I don't know if different schools of augments are going to give a class that different of a feel. I don't see fighter/mage with ice focus and fighter/mage with fire focus having enough of a difference to think they are two different classes.
And yes I know there will be rock paper scissors match ups. What I meant by saying balancing nightmare is more geared towards player desirability. We already know that most people just will choose the most dmg or "best" at what they're going for. Some people will go for what is coolest or most fun looking/feeling to play.
It's all great in theory, but if there is a school that is subpar compared to the others and literally nobody chooses it... Then why is it even there? Intrepid is going to have a hard time making every archetype into secondary into 4 different augment schools each feel worthwhile to someone so they don't just get outright ignored. I should have been more clear there, sorry.
The "feel" doesn't matter because whether it feels different or not doesn't change the fact that they have to design that augmented skillset. The scope of programming work stays the same. And depending on the schools of augmentation a Druid or Shapeshifter would give us access to, the augmentation might result in mechanical differences rather than just sfx and damage type as with the mentioned ice / fire augment.
Do we? How? I didn't know that. Especially since from all I have read so far on Intrepids design work, there is no overall "best", the thing seems to be that different augments will be superior in different situations. e.g. The Tank-Tank class would exceed when they have to tank a lot of physical damage, the Tank-Mage would perform best against a lot of magic damage and so on. Same goes for the damage classes. Assassins might be able to apply tons of physical damage and bleed effects but that doesn't matter much in a dungeon full of Golems who do not bleed and only small organic adds.
So I haven't heard anything about there being universal best in slot classes.
Yep, but that's not an issue.
And here it comes down to peoples trust in Intrepids skills. If without having played the game you would (not saying you are) already have the firm belief that Intrepid is incapable of realizing that some of the classes are simply lacking, then another question worth asking is: Is following a game made by these incapable developers actually a reasonable way to spend your time?
Effectively you have been describing the Meta and I get your point, even though I do not share the concern given the things I have seen from Intrepid. There are multiple dimensions that will constantly break what could become a meta and if Intrepid has been paying close attention to their design process this will lead to classes constantly becoming more and less favorable depending on the current state of the world.
If I had to make a guess why there are so many classes and why they all will be viable I would say this:
Classes will be more viable depeding on the following criteria:
- PvE or PvP
- solo, small or large group (which influences chances of class synergy)
- enemy type
- enemy numbers (there might be "monster tide" like story archs and others where a lot of single "champion" kind of mobs are spawning)
- environment / objectives (seasons; in a swamp a Ranger might to better than a fighter; if objectives include locating hidden things Mage & Rouge become more important)
- The economy (If a certain armor type is not readily available to counter certain damage types that causes shifts in the Rock-Paper-Scissors System)
So there are a lot of criteria that in sum look to me like the question will be more whether we can find the place at which our class can currently shine the most at, rather than "is this class even viable?".