Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
I mean, since the point I was making is that you cant addin any skill to counter a mageball in this manner, pointing out the 30 second thing as being technically untrue if we continue to ignore balance is pointless.
The 30 second duration was based on a 50/50 split of damage. Obviously.
My point is it cant be balanced. You aren't even attempting to suggest otherwise.
Mages would get hella kited by their greatest counters Archers that out-run and out-range them in open zones
Mages would get destroyed by Warriors in closed places and at close range as their durability far outclassed that of mages, also Dreadnought's AoEs had powerful stuns that could completely disable clusters of mages even before getting close to them due to their unique medium range AoE Stun.
(Warrior/Dreadnought balls also weren't a thing other than in closed places where they couldn't be kited).
So they would usually position themselves a bit spread out at their max range kiting warriors or bursting down archers in places they are unable to be out-range kited.
Even with all that, mages were still considered the best class in big fights as their DPS was the highest in the game and their adaptability in any scenario, even if not being God Kiters like Archers nor Gods at close combat AoE like Warriors but being quite good in both types of combat.
Aren't we all sinners?
True. I just remember Flash-spam near the castle or fortress objectives. No range for archers to kite and constant target-cancel on melees
Aura Flash even tho strong just wasn't enough for the strategy as it is present in other games especially in the early versions that had character collision, it's range limited its functionality mainly to very closed places in very crowded fights, where melee classes already had the advantage.
For those that don't know this L2 Skill, its a very fast cast, small cooldown, elementless small damage, small AoE that removes targets.
On Hellbound version it became more effective as there was the possibility to enchant the Aura Flash to Stun amazingly improving its potential, but at that point Mages/archers were already getting obliterated by Kamaels.
Aren't we all sinners?
Aren't we all sinners?
oh so it would be better if players designed and balanced the game?
my point is, there are many solutions to one problem. just because YOU cant find how to balance it, doesn't mean it cant be balanced and that's why I said lets leave it to the devs, you know, the people who learned how to do all those things.
its like going to the doctor and telling them that you have an illness and cant be cured, when in fact, it can be
We are talking about a real world situation that actual game developers tried to balance and failed to do so for 18 months. The eventual balance was to lower the AoE effectiveness of the class, which necessitated adding back some single target effectiveness.
Basically, they tried and failed to have an AoE focused mage, which is what was suggested in this thread.
you are still missing the point. there is more than 1 solution for a problem.
what you mentioned. are you talking about the first iteration of the mage in aoc or a different game?
A different game.
As I said earlier in this thread, this was an issue for 18 months or so in Archeage.
While it is easy to say "that is a different game, with different mechanics", the point to consider here is that the developers had basically free reign to do whatever they could to deal with the issue, they could make any alterations to any ability of any class, they had the same basic tools that will be available to Intrepid (code), and after a year and a half, their resolution was to tone back the AoE potential of the class.
This is why I am not talking in hypotheticals at all as you are. I am talking about what has happened in the past, and the only resolution they found to a class that was too heavy in AoE damage.
In essence, the ONLY difference between Archeage and Ashes in this regard is that Ashes will have player collision, reducing the number of players that is viable to have in a mageball. However, there will still be enough players present to make it a viable strategy if they create a mage class that is AoE focused.
By far the best way to prevent this being viable in Ashes is to limit the AoE potential of any given class so that any group of 24 of them (the limit I would imagine to be viable in Ashes with collision) is not able to maintain a full perimeter. This amount of AoE potential is not going to be enough to consider the class to be an AoE specialist, and so will still need a good amount of single target damage.
Do that, and literally all the rest of this discussion is moot
Simply saying the someone else facing a similar problem to us 'could have' tried the ideas we now have but chose not to doesn't prove anything unless we ascribe infinite foresight to the other party. If the game was already live, I would be very doubtful of any design team doing much other than taking the nerf bat to the problem class as it's too late to design a complex sets of checks and balances by that point. And the fact they released with a lack of balance speaks to these designers having a lack of foresight, not an infinite amount.
A number of the suggestions in this thread made it as far as the test server (Korean test server, to be clear), some of them were discounted before even making it that far, and some of them were never considered (such as an attempt at making a class immune enough to AoE).
To be fair, it took them a good 6 months before they tried anything, but once they got started, they were putting more effort in to it (at least on test) than any other issue I personally saw in that game.
On test, they attempted to give some classes the ability to mitigate magical damage enough to get through the exclusion zone, they attempted to give a class the ability to teleport in close, they attempted to give a class a longer range. The game already had an ability to reflect as much magical damage as the developers considered balanced, so they didn't do that. They also didn't bother making stealth either immune to damage, or not be broken from damage, as that would have caused stealth to be far too powerful.
They played with the idea of trying to AoE a mageball, but that effectively resulted in the only valid tactic against a mageball being another mageball. They also considered the idea of making mana a limiting factor, but that meant they would need to design all future PvE encounters around this new mana paradigm. The thinking there was that they couldn't just make AoE spells cost more mana in relation to single target spells as this would render the class useless, meaning the only way to make mana the limit here was to limit the ability to regenerate during combat. Even then though, an attempt to get through mageball by trying to run it out of mana would see hundreds of people having to literally throw themselves in to it.
So, AoE, range, reflect, teleport, mana and stealth were all deemed unacceptable at dealing with a mageball.
I feel as if they had a few other things they considered but deemed not even worth testing, but in terms of actually testing on the test server, there were just the four or five from memory.
they couldn't balance it in one game, however, reflect was balanced in other games. moot point.
also, you haven't considered that characters had different set of skills in archeage. maybe reflect could have been balanced if other classes had also their skills reworked. you cant simply look at one skill in isolation, you have to look at all the skills.
Show me the game that used reflect to get rid of mageballs. The only viable way to make this happen is to make reflect naturally more powerful against AoE abilities, making that AoE class useless.
Again, the developers at XL had free reign to make what ever changes were needed. They could code in any ability they could think of and give it to any class they wanted to give it to. As I said before, they had the same tools at their disposal (code) as Intrepid have.
I'm the first person to argue that things are usually possible in theory - but even I draw the line when professionals tried their hand at a problem and "failed".
Unless you can show me where a developer has used reflect to deal with mageball, we simply have to assume that since there is an example of professionals not being able to do exactly that despite trying, that it can't be done.
Could Intrepid come up with something to make it happen? Maybe, but we can't just assume they can.
You can't come up with a way to do it, I can't come up with a way to do it, XL couldn't come up with a way to do it, this leaves you and I in literally no position to assume it can be done.
you still don't get it. if one ability doesn't work because how it interacts with other abilities, it stands to reason to just change that ability or class instead of changing the entire game for that one ability. its possible to make it work, but you have to take a look at the other classes as well..
example, you have an ability that gives you enough defense to reduce any damage by 95% for 30 seconds. seems op right? how would you balance that? reduce the DR%?, reduce the duration? rework it?
how about this, what if everybody else had a buff that allows them to pierce enough armor so that the damage reduced by the opponent is 0% instead of 95% and it lasts for 30 seconds. now the first ability doesn't seem that op, right?
so its possible that reflect didn't work because of all the other aspects of that game, all other classes, etc. and that's my point in AOC. we don't know the full extent of all abilities and augments, only IS do. they could make a magic reflect work, or not,t he same way they could make any other ability work, or not.
~sympathy intensifies~
Developers always have this much power.
Developers usually fail at balance. What do you even mean by 'could make it work'?
Do you really think all those devs out there who choose not to implement things just don't do it because they 'didn't think hard enough about the problem' or 'didn't try enough things'?
I'm probably taking this too 'personally' but seriously...
The point is to make a counter to the MageBall while not making Mages terrible/super limited. That's the thing they can't do, that's why it's called 'balance'. You have two competing functions/situations and you try to make them both work. If you can't, you give up and delete one of them.
(Tradd I'm so sorry)
should we let players balance the game then? you still didn't answer that
The thing is, what doesnt work is the notion of having an AoE focused class.
Instead of trying to change everything around making that work, you just opt to not give any one class that much AoE.
Problem solved.
why there are games where almost every class is an aoe class? or games where you can build mages as single target or aoe, and they work? better designers? maybe who knows
Games where you can build mages as AoE or single target are obviously not focused on AoE. Making it so players have a choice of AoE or single target makes it possible to limit the amount of AoE they have access to without making the class useless as a whole.
As I said, this is what XL eventually did in Archeage.
As to games where almost every class is an AoE class, well, then you dont have the issue of one class being an AoE specialist, do you?
if you have the choice to do ST, AOE or a mix, then you can either focus or become a hybrid. so I'm not sure what you mean by not being specialists. do you mean aoe only? but if there's no other char that can aoe as well as you if you build for aoe, then that makes u the aoe specialist (who can also build single target).
but you would still have reflect issues, wouldn't u? unless it was done properly. i guess AA devs arent godlike.
meh arguing over this is kinda pointless. i just think you (and most ppl arguing about this) haven't played many games . i believe you said 5 only? or maybe its a lack of creativity issue. i don't know.
but saying that something works or doesn't work based off on one other game, plus not having all the info on this game is like interviewing one person about something and then using that as statistics or sample.
ill excuse myself from this thread and cme back if it gets interesting or after alpha starts ;3
Also making Mages just massive AoE monkeys is a bad idea.
No, being able to do something slightly better than any other class in the game doesn't make you a specialist at that thing, it just makes you slightly better at it than others.
Keep in mind, the argument you are now making is exactly what I said was done to fix it in Archeage - they lowered the AoE potential of the class and increased the single target potential to compensate. If you want to say "they can just not make you as strong with AoE but still the strongest class in the game", then sure, that is what I have been saying.
Doesn't make then a specialist though.
solid concerns, specially considering how versatile and strong the mage looked compared to the "tank at home" showed previously