Stat requirements for weapons/armor & potential consequences for removing them

Hey everyone, I was just watching the mage showcase again and can't help but get hung up on the segment where they show off the greatsword mage gameplay. Before I go any further, I want to clarify that I definitely like the idea of having room in the combat system for battle mages, and the thought of playing one sounds really fun to me, but I think there need to be some guidelines set or sacrifices in other power areas required in order to get there.

TL;DR Battle-mage sounds fun, but how do you logically justify allowing someone to have the strength and the knowledge to wield a greatsword and still be just as magically powerful as someone who only studies magic? How do you prevent everyone from picking metal armor if there are no sacrifices required in order to use it? Where does the risk/reward that Steven talks so much about come into this free-reign system? Should weapons and armor have some stat requirements to reward players for taking risks with stat allocation in order to achieve greatness with a unique class identity?

Back to the video. Watching that scrawny little mage in cloth robes swing a humongous greatsword around looked really bizarre to me. Sure, maybe in a realistic setting, the mage using a greatsword would've had some magic-related stats crafted into a set of plate armor or something similar rather than wearing robes, and visually it would then look less strange. But just that image alone really got me thinking - if you're a mage, and you have the choice between just studying magic, or doing the physical training required to wield two-handed weapons effectively and engage in combat while wearing metal armor, studying physical combat itself, and studying magic, how much weaker should your magic realistically be if you choose to divide your time like that? In-game, this would translate into player-chosen gear stat priority and skill-point spending.

Should certain weapons in Ashes like wands/magic-staves, bows, or two-handed-axes/swords/maces require a minimum amount of their related stat in order to be used effectively? Perhaps the system could still let you equip the weapon and try to use it, but if you haven't invested enough points into strength, you'll do jack all with your giant greatsword, if you aren't very agile, then you won't hit many marks with your bow and arrows, and if you aren't very intelligent, then your wand is just going to make pretty sparks.

With all the emphasis on risk vs reward in Ashes, and having to make tough choices by sacrificing power in some areas to advance in others, it seems odd to me that this area of player choice still seems to be totally free-reign with no risk vs reward element tied to weapon or armor choice compared to archetype / class.

From an immersion perspective, I think it would feel really bizarre as a player to spend my entire career with a mage character using wands, then after several months of playing, suddenly pick up a greatsword and just be totally cool lobbing around a giant piece of steel as if I haven't just spend the last several in-game years wielding a toothpick for a weapon.

This also ties into gear being freely equippable by any class as well. The wiki states that "All gear will be able to be assigned any stat." If this is the case, and there are no speed / dexterity / intellect debuffs applied while wearing plate armor like there are in some other games, or instead, simply a minimum strength stat requirement, then what reason would anyone have to not wear plate armor? It has the highest armor rating, and you can get whatever stats you want on it. How will other gear types remain relevant?

Should plate armor slow you down if you don't meet a strength requirement (same for chain and leather to a progressively lesser extent)? Should two-handed weapons have a minimum strength requirement to do any meaningful amount of damage (same for bows and arrows w/ dexterity, and wands / magic staves w/ intellect)? If not, how do you prevent everyone from choosing plate armor? How do you prevent metas forming around certain weapon types if no class has to sacrifice power in any other area to utilize any specific weapon?

To add another potential issue with this free-reign system - if mages aren't required to sacrifice any ranged power in order to also deal decent melee damage in conjunction with their applied status effects, how is that fair if pure melee classes don't get that same level of attack range diversity through weapon swapping alone? For a mage, you can attack at range at peak efficiency, then also come in here and there for big melee damage if you time it with your status effects. For a warrior, you can attack up close at peak efficiency, but when would you ever realistically get to pop back out of range to a distance similar to a mage and get to dish out big ranged damage in conjunction with melee-applied status effects that wouldn't simply be more effective up close as a plate armor / potentially shield user? I just have a hard time imagining how the benefits of this system will be applied even remotely evenly if there are no guidelines to armor or weapon usage.

What are your thoughts?

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Songcaller

Also, why would anyone not wear the heaviest armour when you can transmog and use cosmetics to get the desired look?

Sengarden

Neurath wrote: »

Also, why would anyone not wear the heaviest armour when you can transmog and use cosmetics to get the desired look?

I really wish transmog was limited to armor of the same type and weapons of the same general type (melee 1H, melee 2H, ranged 1H, ranged 2H). Intrepid is really leaning on this gear quality icon above the player's head to indicate the quality of armor they're wearing, but that tells us nothing about what type of armor and how much actual armor stat they have. If they try and cram too much information into a silly over-the-head icon, I worry it'll just be distracting to look at and end up being immersion-breaking. I usually turn player-nameplates off in MMOs if I can. If an opponent has big chunky armor and a sword, I know they're beefy and will fight me at melee. If they're wearing robes and wielding a wand and an offhand trinket, I know they're going to fight me at range and deal magic damage. With a fully open transmog system, your available methods of predicting that information practically go down the toilet unless you want to interpret multiple points of shoe-horned visual aid above every player's head that you engage in combat with.

Same issue applies to my original post regardless of transmog. If any mage can switch from using a wand to a 2H sword without sacrificing any magic potency or spell-availability, how am I ever supposed to have any sense of what their combat style will be until our fight is nearly over? The element of surprise is cool, sure, but what's more fun - learning to make fairly accurate predictions about someone's combat style based on what they roll into battle wearing and feeling accomplished when you were right in your predictions and out-maneuvered them based on that info? Or having to dance on your tippy toes every second you're in battle without any confidence that your predictions about their combat style are accurate until the battle is over because they have the ability to weapon swap as many times to whatever weapon types they want without sacrificing any other power or ability types?

Songcaller

I'm not sure what the stat library will become. I'm not even sure a mage with a two hand will have the sane power as a fighter with a 2 hand.

I think you would have to build the toon to each specification rather than weapon swapping on the fly. Certainly, I have theory crafted magic damage builds and physical damage builds. Of course, we can also horizontally enchant gear to switch the damage type too so a mage might still do magic damage with physical weapon.

Sengarden

Neurath wrote: »

I'm not sure what the stat library will become. I'm not even sure a mage with a two hand will have the sane power as a fighter with a 2 hand.

I think you would have to build the toon to each specification rather than weapon swapping on the fly. Certainly, I have theory crafted magic damage builds and physical damage builds. Of course, we can also horizontally enchant gear to switch the damage type too so a mage might still do magic damage with physical weapon.

Yeah, one of the combat devs mentioned something towards the end of the 2H sword mage gameplay. To summarize, he essentially said that the sword itself wasn't particularly powerful, and that its ability to do burst damage was instead predicated on the frozen status effect applied by the mage's earlier frost spell attacks. So the idea is that you deal a bunch of frost damage, then move in and do some burst melee AoE, then go back into ranged.

I'm not sure if the warrior/tank/rogue might have some special passive buffs to melee damage, if the weapons don't do much for them either, or if melee weapon damage is already based on strength. If it's actually the latter, then perhaps what we saw in the mage showcase was an example of a mage making use of the sword they normally can't use due to low strength by first applying the frozen debuff. A bit ambiguous I suppose.

Unfortunately, I don't think we can come to any solid conclusions until we get to an A2 environment after the team has already spent a good deal more time fleshing out these systems the way they originally imagined them. Sometimes, if an issue is going to arise, you can't really fix it until you commit to building the rest of the system so that you have something to base your fixes off of.

RazThemun

A meta will always be established down the road. Streamers will find what works for them and their followers will follow suit. Intrepid can make the decision of adding racial abilities, stat priority, etc to help lead a class down a particular path so they use those weapons.
With all the discussion though of player agency I hope they keep it reasonable on selection. If I can use a two handed sword ...than why not axes, maces, etc? I do think that weapons should be in relation to stat priority. To wield melee weapons you need these stats to make them as efficient as possible... while using magical weapons such as a wand or staff there should be a different stat preference/need.
Primary archetypes I hope will start you with a high percentage stat in relation to that classes theme of weapons. The second archetype I hope is more flexible. If one wishes to run a wand as their primary weapon and then a two handed sword as their secondary weapon... I think it should be acceptable granted they chose an archetype to go down that path and fits the theme. Again providing the player base with options and not just a cookie cutter this class uses these weapons, these spells, and use these potions, the end.
If I choose to go fighter/fighter I would likely not choose a wand as a weapon. I also hope it is not an option or not a strong option. I would like to be stronger in using weapons common to a fighter. Again though if I choose fighter and mage I should not be limited on the choice of using swords and wands....

Taleof2Cities

In a vacuum, a fighter-mage, mage-mage, and rogue-mage should all have the same combat power, @Sengarden … even though they could have very different skills and weapons.

That’s what the Intrepid Combat Team is tasked with at least.

Any sign of a “meta” during Alpha-2 will hopefully be adjusted.

For threat assessment, you’re not going to get an enemy player’s full stat sheet for your consumption … nor are you going to have time before combat starts.

Set real expectations for yourself (on threat assessment) before getting fully invested in the game.

Spif

Plenty of games allow for things like all classes being able to wear whatever armor they want. There are just different advantages for each set, rather than the class being balances around the level of armor it can wear.

One example out of many: Cloth armor allows for bonus mana regen, more spell resistance, less physical resistance and less knockdown resistance when compared to Plate armor.

AoC will figure out a balance for the pros and cons of each type of armor.

Weapons will be the same way, only less so. On the mage stream they talked about how Greatsword was an AE weapon, and the only reason it did decent damage was because of the proc damage from electrified stacks. The physical strength-stat based damage was much smaller than a Fighter would get.

I think GS is going to be a "gimmick weapon" for a lot of classes to get some extra AE from auto-attacks. Spreading poison or other status effects. The same thing probably won't apply to daggers, swords, axes or bows. But...I could be wrong

Sengarden

RazThemun wrote: »

A meta will always be established down the road. Streamers will find what works for them and their followers will follow suit. Intrepid can make the decision of adding racial abilities, stat priority, etc to help lead a class down a particular path so they use those weapons.
With all the discussion though of player agency I hope they keep it reasonable on selection. If I can use a two handed sword ...than why not axes, maces, etc? I do think that weapons should be in relation to stat priority. To wield melee weapons you need these stats to make them as efficient as possible... while using magical weapons such as a wand or staff there should be a different stat preference/need.
Primary archetypes I hope will start you with a high percentage stat in relation to that classes theme of weapons. The second archetype I hope is more flexible. If one wishes to run a wand as their primary weapon and then a two handed sword as their secondary weapon... I think it should be acceptable granted they chose an archetype to go down that path and fits the theme. Again providing the player base with options and not just a cookie cutter this class uses these weapons, these spells, and use these potions, the end.
If I choose to go fighter/fighter I would likely not choose a wand as a weapon. I also hope it is not an option or not a strong option. I would like to be stronger in using weapons common to a fighter. Again though if I choose fighter and mage I should not be limited on the choice of using swords and wands....

I was thinking something similar about archetypes being given enough of their main combat stat to effectively use relevant weapon / armor types, then when you pick your secondary, that opens up options for new weapons and perhaps armor proficiencies as well. I think having some restrictions on how effective these different types of gear can be based on stats helps create class identity, and makes it feel good when you unlock that secondary archetype.

Imagine being a mage and occasionally fooling around with a sword to get a little extra AoE off your frozen effects, then when you pick fighter as your secondary archetype, you get some extra strength to add power to your offhand attacks, and suddenly you’re walloping those guys. It makes you feel like using the sword more often and forming your mage/fighter focus towards a more even balance between sword and magic, where before that didn’t make sense, cause you were only a mage and had little strength or martial training.

Setting some boundaries and restrictions where they make sense makes accomplishing things despite your weaknesses and owning your unique strengths feel much more rewarding and personal imo

Sengarden

Spif wrote: »

Plenty of games allow for things like all classes being able to wear whatever armor they want. There are just different advantages for each set, rather than the class being balances around the level of armor it can wear.

One example out of many: Cloth armor allows for bonus mana regen, more spell resistance, less physical resistance and less knockdown resistance when compared to Plate armor.

AoC will figure out a balance for the pros and cons of each type of armor.

Weapons will be the same way, only less so. On the mage stream they talked about how Greatsword was an AE weapon, and the only reason it did decent damage was because of the proc damage from electrified stacks. The physical strength-stat based damage was much smaller than a Fighter would get.

I think GS is going to be a "gimmick weapon" for a lot of classes to get some extra AE from auto-attacks. Spreading poison or other status effects. The same thing probably won't apply to daggers, swords, axes or bows. But...I could be wrong

I’m aware, and I’ve played those games (and enjoyed them). I remember RuneScape limiting the effectiveness of magic attacks when you wore most pieces of plate armor, I remember swords of certain calibers needing a certain amount of martial skill (melee attack level) to wield, or certain weapons like magic staves requiring a combo of both magic and attack skill. Wearing heavier armor made your run stamina drain faster. They set restrictions on the gear to give lore reasons why everyone doesn’t go running around in plate armor all the time. Still, there were moments where doing so despite a non-melee attack style made sense, and it was cool to have the attainment of any stat level and its related gear sets as an option.

So far, we’ve heard zip on that. In fact, as I stated, all we’ve heard is that any stat can be applied to any piece of armor, that any class can wield any weapon, etc. I would’ve assumed the team would’ve brought up logical restrictions by now if they had any in mind. But we’ll have to wait and see.

And yes, I mentioned the difference in greatsword damage between a fighter and a mage. But they didn’t exactly clarify whether the warrior would deal more base weapon damage than a mage, or if they just have more melee based skills to use that fill out their attack rotation.

I just don’t think everyone in the game should be able to make use of gigantic two-handed weapons with absolutely no strength requirement. Even if they’re just barely lifting them off the ground and dropping them on the enemy’s toes to get some AoE damage out of their status effects. Makes no sense.

Depraved

im pretty sure weapons will either do physical or magic damage. in the case of the sword, I'm fairly certain it will do physical damage and it will be affected by strength. the mage can use that elemental imbuing skill thou and make it do magic damage I guess, probably affected by int

Kilion

Sengarden wrote: »

Battle-mage sounds fun, but
how do you logically justify allowing someone to have the strength and the knowledge to wield a greatsword and still be just as magically powerful as someone who only studies magic?

It doesn't. But how is it logical that people can cast fireballs or conjur up cones that absorb wounds from allies?

Sengarden wrote: »

How do you prevent everyone from picking metal armor if there are no sacrifices required in order to use it?

From the Wiki about Armor - Chapter "Armor characteristics":
Light armor (also referred to as Robes and Cloth armor), is more mobile than heavier armor, is geared towards magical damage mitigation.

Medium armor (also referred to as Leather armor) can incorporate robe, chainmail, and plate, influences.
May provide some benefits from light armor or heavy armor. May also include benefits that aren't purely related to damage mitigation, such as improved critical chance

Heavy armor is predominantly plate metal, but may incorporate other influences, such as leather, typically has more HP than lighter armor, is geared towards physical damage mitigation.

The risk is clearly that choosing one type of armor will lead to missing stats of another type of armor. There is no "OP" build by making an iron-cladded Mage. A magical assassin will be having the upper hand against them. If they pick up robes, the classical physical damage assassin will pop them, if they pick up leather anyone with some means of dmg mitigation will survive long enough to turn them into ash.

Also without strength, the damage output on a physical weapon will be lower than when a high-strength character would pick up the weapon. On has to specifically adapt to make this weapon choice work, if one is hesitant to go into the thick of the battle the AoE application of elemental empowerment will not trigger which is the reason why one would pick up the great sword as melee weapon in the first place.

So the assumption that there is no sacrifice being made doesn't apply. So no worries on that.

Sengarden wrote: »

Where does the risk/reward that Steven talks so much about come into this free-reign system?

It applies to everyone, no choice is perfect and adaptation is possible for all players. You might have found the perfect build to resist tons of magical creatures and a bunch of magical assassins, but that build will leave you open to all sorts of physical damaga threats. Adapting will in turn increase the threat of magic again. The risk is that one either invests the time and effort in improving one specialised game style or spreads that same time in creating an array of sets and skills to deal with different types of threats.

Steven mentioned this somewhere that there will be no one-size-fits-all gear or skill kit to take care of everyone. And the risk is always that someone develops deep knowledge of the solution you have developed and exploits its weaknesses to their advantage.

Sengarden wrote: »

Should weapons and armor have some stat requirements to reward players for taking risks with stat allocation in order to achieve greatness with a unique class identity?

No. The system and world Intrepid tries to create depends on change to create a compelling play case. Locking customization options behind extra hurdles would only promote the establishment of a universal "meta" which would reduce the dynamic of the game massively.

To conclude: I agree that the mage with a great sword is an option I also have to get used to, but I don't think it is bad. It is an option that exists to support the underlying core mechanic of the game and therefore to me, it is an acceptable change to the classic fantasy classes. But I realize that this might not be up everyones ailse.

Dezemi

I am kinda concerned about what they said regarding weapon swapping from your inventory while in combat. I am just not really a fan of that mechanic.

I hope they go for multiple weapon equipment slots instead - similar to GW2 or most CRPGs... Perhaps some classes - like fighter - could have more weapon slots than other classes.

Caww

hybrid toons always have to compromise between melee & magic use, AoC will not be any different we just don't know all the details/trade-offs yet

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