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lets talk about the state of the game and combat
Chicago
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
firstly let me just double down on this is just my opinion and no need for the hate that im sure this post will receive but i think its time we have a real conversation about the state of the game and combat
id like to say that the combat footage we see now is far beyond what we saw in alpha 1 and the intrepid team has done a fantastic job, the spell effects although being to heavy look good for the most part, and the art team is doing a fantastic job on the weapons and animation side of things
however i have some major concerns that i would like to address and would like to get feedback as to how everyone else is feeling.
there is such a thing called recency bias so for the next month or two the mage showcase will be talked about as being great gameplay however i would guess re watching it a month or two down the line it will look quite dull, again this is not my intention to be rude or discredit anything intrepid is doing but the combat on most classes is lackluster and boring,
i think there are ways to fix this for example one being, add proc based attacks, for example, when the cleric gets a critical strike heal it makes their next aoe heal or small single heal instant cast maybe with two charges, when the mage gets two crits in a row make one of there longer cast time abilities insta cast, this promotes fast paced gameplay without the weapon speed animations going a million miles an hour and lets people make plays and swap playstyles etc,
intrepid also needs to decide on what direction the game is going, is it tab target? is it action target? is it hybrid?, we all have preferences but at this stage in development combat should not need to be still getting feedback from the community as to how it will work, pick a direction and go with it, there are so many unanswered questions, will rogue use energy, will fighter use rage?, obviously using examples from wow but you get the idea,
now i know what most of the comments will be, '' its a level 15 they dont have all their skills'', so let me put it bluntly, if the combat and game is not in a state that they cant show anything more than they have without any real non subject to change combat then dont release the live streams, develop it to an acceptable state and then release a stream, in my opinion a mage showcase should not just be showing 5 spells that are all subject to change on a level 15 that apparently does not even have close to there final toolkit, we want to see augments, we want to see how mage works fundamentally, i keep hearing 'this is only the first or second pass of combat'' but 7 years in how many more passes do we need? if everything is being worked on simultaneously how are we just doing a first pass on this 7 years into development, A2 is said to launch at the start of 2024 and i really hope we are not still testing combat to a point where it needs to be fully re worked
i understand this is an alpha and in development and these things take time but alot of these points need to be addressed yesterday and there is no reason for them not to be, i hope you guys all have a great day and please leave your thoughts below id love to read them
id like to say that the combat footage we see now is far beyond what we saw in alpha 1 and the intrepid team has done a fantastic job, the spell effects although being to heavy look good for the most part, and the art team is doing a fantastic job on the weapons and animation side of things
however i have some major concerns that i would like to address and would like to get feedback as to how everyone else is feeling.
there is such a thing called recency bias so for the next month or two the mage showcase will be talked about as being great gameplay however i would guess re watching it a month or two down the line it will look quite dull, again this is not my intention to be rude or discredit anything intrepid is doing but the combat on most classes is lackluster and boring,
i think there are ways to fix this for example one being, add proc based attacks, for example, when the cleric gets a critical strike heal it makes their next aoe heal or small single heal instant cast maybe with two charges, when the mage gets two crits in a row make one of there longer cast time abilities insta cast, this promotes fast paced gameplay without the weapon speed animations going a million miles an hour and lets people make plays and swap playstyles etc,
intrepid also needs to decide on what direction the game is going, is it tab target? is it action target? is it hybrid?, we all have preferences but at this stage in development combat should not need to be still getting feedback from the community as to how it will work, pick a direction and go with it, there are so many unanswered questions, will rogue use energy, will fighter use rage?, obviously using examples from wow but you get the idea,
now i know what most of the comments will be, '' its a level 15 they dont have all their skills'', so let me put it bluntly, if the combat and game is not in a state that they cant show anything more than they have without any real non subject to change combat then dont release the live streams, develop it to an acceptable state and then release a stream, in my opinion a mage showcase should not just be showing 5 spells that are all subject to change on a level 15 that apparently does not even have close to there final toolkit, we want to see augments, we want to see how mage works fundamentally, i keep hearing 'this is only the first or second pass of combat'' but 7 years in how many more passes do we need? if everything is being worked on simultaneously how are we just doing a first pass on this 7 years into development, A2 is said to launch at the start of 2024 and i really hope we are not still testing combat to a point where it needs to be fully re worked
i understand this is an alpha and in development and these things take time but alot of these points need to be addressed yesterday and there is no reason for them not to be, i hope you guys all have a great day and please leave your thoughts below id love to read them
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Comments
You need to realize the state of development and the purpose. They are getting feedback earlier rather than alter in development. You should not expect a preview to be a deep dive in small details of combat with procs and other special effects.
The way you are bringing up 7 years I'd have to again ask you the first questions. They aren't working on one class for 7 years, there is planning, pre-production, prototyping, testing, getting the engine to work how they need and fixing more issues along the way, you aren't in full production capacity that doesn't happen till later.
You seem to throw the buzz word of years and truly don't understand the task at hand to create it. At the end of the day any game can take as long as they want that is why it is in a alpha state and when its ready they will be ready, it is their development with challenges they will face and time lines. Not really for a consumer to be its been years so i want to see more now.
7 years can only matter when you're a preestablished dev company with years of experience working together and with the engine working perfectly for your needs. None of those things are true when it comes to Intrepid, so imo "7 years" don't mean shit, even if we all want it to.
On the topic of "come back to months-old videos and find them dull" - I haven't run into that issue as of yet. I've come back to melee showcase and to ranger showcase several times and they still look good to me.
As for "which combat is it", the mage showed 9 action and 6 tab abilities. Even if we remove the unshown ones, it's still a 6/5 ratio. That seems like a hybrid combat design to me, so Intrepid are still moving towards that, considering that this was a second pass showcase.
As for all the "wants and needs" of "us". The only thing I want is for them to keep moving in their direction. The only thing I need is for them to keep showing progress on streams. So far they've been doing quite well on both of those fronts.
Really, the mobs don't even need a block or dodge for the most part. The combat for Cleric still looks dull but I thought it was dull to begin with.
Ranger still looks dope, fighter needs a phase 2 without yellow hammer and tank also looks good. The key issue revolves around the methods of showcase and the team only wanting to show selective things.
The selection process makes the game look duller than it is underneath in my opinion. Still want cleric revamped for phase 2 to be more like a1.
Wow I hate this post already! (this is a joke/exaggeration)
Already planned, sounds great, good job Steven and Jeff and whoever was the combat conceptualizer then for their forward thinking to look at the crop of games with good combat and incorporate all those things into the plan for the game back in 2017.
It's that last one, and we basically know by now what it will be like, there's just a lot of people who want it to be more action-y. Steven uses words that can't be misconstrued negatively quite often, the result is that people who want to believe there will be more Action elements often expect more than there are.
I'm on the fence but mostly agreed with you here, it's been really hard to give proper feedback on stuff. I choose to harshly believe that Steven has never experienced modern game combat and therefore simply always spoke as if the thing in his mind from the past, with relatively easy iterations and a specific type of balance, was 'combat'. So when they showed us stuff, Steven thought he was showing something that modern gamers consider 'combat'.
If you want to show me 'combat', show me a damage formula and a frame data spreadsheet. Other people may need to actually see the animations and distances, some people need to have it in their hands. My point is moreso that if the damage formula and frame data spreadsheet don't exist yet, you don't have 'combat' yet.
Somewhat agreed, but to be fair on this part, even considering my response to the other part above, 'subject to change' doesn't usually mean 'will change'.
I agree that Intrepid could do a better job of showing the direction of things. There are enough games out there that they could parallel to. I personally don't think that keeping stuff close to the chest is even worth it, and I don't know why they do, other than trying to deal with a specific type of person that just says things like 'this will just be a ripoff of something else'.
I don't think this is worth avoiding. It's 2023, and unless the entire target audience of Ashes is 'MMO players who haven't played another MMO or dived into a decent MOBA since Lineage', they're not going to be creating something new and amazing that will impress their audience enough that they need to keep it secret. I hope they don't think they are (but to be fair to them, there are definitely situations where that's the part of the audience they get feedback from and one could end up feeling quite good about it).
I can't judge whether it would be better to show more so that people who doubt them can see that their work will be on the level of GW2, Neverwinter, Predecessor, etc, or if it's better not to do that. This is assuming they have it ready to show in the first place.
So on that note to Intrepid (and I'm going to lean really hard into this if this thread keeps going, to the point of being aggressive about it today):
People are telling you your combat sucks because your combat hasn't shown that it doesn't suck, and people have expectations, incredibly 'common' ones, that you haven't been showing. I'm not saying you should be working on showing it if it's not ready, or even if it is ready. Only that if someone is thinking 'this is good and will gather useful feedback if we only show this much', the target audience that will be impressed enough to give feedback you can use is quite small.
Someone grab Steven and make him go play Predecessor with the combat team. He plays Sevarog, too, he'll be fine.
You don't refine gameplay until you have all the elements in place for that gameplay.
If Intrepid were to do as you suggest - not show anything until it is all ready to be shown, we would see literally nothing at all until 6 months prior to release.
Intrepid are relying on people understanding where the game is in development, and setting their expectations accordingly.
You seem to not be able to do that - which is literally the only issue at play here.
Sus.
We haven't seen hybrid to the full effect, if there is any.
They look like kits from older games because they are, there's only so many ways to design a class, it's not infinite. Mage might be one of those classes where it's class fantasy has reached its end and it's finally spent.
Just like Cleric, there's only so many ways to spin a Catholic Priest, Knights Templar, Teutonic Knight, Arthurian Legend. It has limits.
This will not fix the themes, because by themselves certain classes themes are spent.
It's supposed to be a hybrid, even though a lot of what we have seen so far from the class kits have been done already from titles prior to the rise of action combat entirely. We have to wait and see if they're going to incorporate elements of action combat into the hybrid system.
The thing is, the community is entirely divided on combat. We will continue to see passes, if you like more individualistic styled combat just raise your voice. If people like to zerg, they'll raise their voice.
Raise your voice with what you want in combat and if you feel anyone tries to invalidate your opinion write their name down and add em to a kos list. Take it oldschool and make people pay up.
Alphas the place to voice your concerns.
This is a bad way to think about it that makes Intrepid out to be disingenuous idiots.
At least don't insult them.
If they say they want feedback and it's important, and they get feedback from whoever the small percentage are that can give it, why would they not take it? They might as well stop asking so often and so readily and just keep building the game.
They really don't have to ask for feedback quite as often as they do. They could just make specific types of hype/fluff videos and go from there. We've been told that the Devs 'argue' about this stuff as much as we do and our feedback is a thing that different sides of the argument use for 'reference'.
If you want specific combat things, do what most people do and outline them and wait for the implementation.
The only way this game is going to release with 'bad' combat is if Intrepid is refusing to listen in the first place, in which case you don't have any reason to care or even post here.
"Making plays" is such a vastly superficially conceived concept in tab-target MMOs. Knowing your kit and optimising your procs should be a little min-maxing minigame you play on the side, next to the real big decisions you make. Not the primary key to victory that "makes it interesting". That idea is insane to me. Why would the interesting part of online RPG combat (whether it's PvP or PvE) hinge on single-player rotation optimisation?
The more a game gets designed around these things as the deciding factors in who makes a "play," or whose reflexes are the fastest, the worse the quality of the general strategic aspect of the game becomes. Without fail.
Let abilities be simple. Let people's decisions about what to skill, and how to use those skills, matter in its own right, by filling up people's skill bars with lots of powerful options, and letting it matter which ones they use to match the enemy class/party they are facing (and the abilities the enemies cast), instead of letting success or failure hinge primarily on the micromanagement of procs, combos, and crit chance management of their predecided rotations that have nothing to do with their opponent.
I actually like the pacing. The timing and speed of the abilities seemed great. They do need more impact though. The health bars were not moving down anywhere near fast enough for all the work the Mage seemed to be doing. It felt bad because of that.
Either it needs to be faster with more off GCD abilities with the same damage as shown, or it needs to be far heavier hitting with the pacing shown on the live stream (my preference).
I can't speak for the devs but slower paced, more deliberate combat seems to be the direction they are intending to go.
This right here, wish more people understood.
That was a Cleric Update.
It gave us some new information, so it was valid to call it an Update. They asked for the bare minimum of 'hey did you see anything you want to comment on?'
Sure, some of us took it to be more than that or to extrapolate from it, but that's not on the designers nor on the Community Team.
"Hey here's us playing the current version of Cleric we have and some information, let us know your thoughts on what you see."
The Weapons Demo ended up in the same feedback section. Complaining about this is like complaining that you didn't get to see Spears.
What is it you expect, exactly?
Intrepid showed off the cleric as it was at the time becaus people asked them to. They knew they didnt have all that much to show, but they showed what they had.
What they had wasnt really enough for players to form any sort of *VALID* opinion on the class - yet obviously some people have formed an opinion anyway.
Due to Intrwpid knowing they didnt have enough done on the cleric for people to have much of an opinion on it, they didnt bother asking many questions about it and instead asked about other aspects they they showed for the first time with that live stream (it isnt all just about class development).
Seriously, Whitmore do you want? Literally the only thing they could realistically do differently is not show the cleric. If that is what you would have preferred them do, then all I can say is that clearly this is a you problem, and since many others appreciated seeing the early stages of clerics, perhaps if you dont want to see partially finished classes you should just not watch them.
Intrepid showed off a class, they aren't wanting or expecting any feedback on gameplay.
When Intrepid show off gameplay, they want and expect feedback.
Now, if you want to say something like "by the time they ask for feedback on gameplay it is too late" then I have just one thing to tell you. If you honestly, earnestly believe that to be the case, then you have to believe that Intrepid do not value our feedback. If Intrepid value our feedback, they will ask for it at a time when it makes sense for them to do so for each aspect of the game.
Thus, if you are assuming we need to get in feedback about gameplay now or we will never have the chance to, then by extension you believe that Intrepid do not care about our feedback. As such, feedback about gameplay at *ANY* point in development is pointless.
So, either you believe our feedback is valued by Intrepid and so should give feedback on what they ask, when they ask us - or you believe our feedback is not valued by Intrepid at all.
They didn't show a kit, they showed a few animations.
We have yet to see a single ability from any class that is in a state it will be when the game goes live.
A ranged caster that can attack their enemy with a whip made from holy energy, healing mana and HP to themselves and their nearby allies?
Doesn't sound like any ranged caster class that I know of...
I agree that a main heal and a main damage ability on the same skill is bad design. I tried to turn it into a lance which would improve the dynamics a hundred fold.
I didn't say it was a new concept, I said it "Doesn't sound like any ranged caster class that I know of..."
I know that is what I said, because I copy/pasted it in to this post.
Fun fact, in an MMO, there are only two effects. You can deal damage to an enemy, or you can prevent damage from an enemy.
Healing is preventing damage after the fact (taking damage only matters when HP gets to 0). CC is preventing damage. Debuffs to offensive stats are dealing damage. Even movement abilities fall in to this - you are either moving in to a location where you can deal damage, or you are moving in to a location where you are avoiding damage.
If you want to say that an attack where a character can attack their enemy with a whip made from holy energy, healing mana and HP to themselves and their nearby allies is just more of the same, then feel free to come up with something that isn't simply dealing damage to enemies and preventing damage on allies.
I'm starting to wonder why you are watching the live streams tbh. Same as Chicago, it seems you want all the answers, which is fine but full answers will only be there when you play the full game. Which is not a thing we have yet.
We know there are set principles Steven will not make subject to change. We know that even though we get to see parts of the development process, we will at no stage see 100% of the finished product, nor will we receive in depth full explanations as it was clearly stated that Intrepid intends to show only as much as necessary from their perspective for people interested in the project to get an idea of what remains to be discovered. For anyone wanting more, there will be Alpha & Beta access with which the game can be tested to the extent it is finished in those stages.
To bring this back to your comment directly: You SHOULD wonder what the full skill kit would look like, you SHOULD speculate about augmentation and talents. If these questions are negatives in your opinion I think these sneak peeks really might not be a good resource for you to look at. Especially when you feel less certain about the games quality after watching the livestreams, heck, it might just be that these are the red flags that tell you that this is not what you were looking for. There is no shame in that.
To conclude: I think most people agree with me - based on the feedback that I read - that the mage livestream was actually pretty eye opening of what to expect.