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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.
Elemental "Dis-Synergy"
Goalid
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
When a target has a stack of status effects from conflicting elemental schools, the stacks should cancel each other out.
For example, I use my Frostbolt skill on a lion and apply two stacks of the "Chilled" status effect upon that lion. My goal is to get 10 stacks of Chilled on my target in order to apply the status effect "Frozen" on it, making it unable to move for a period of time. But then, my eager, fellow mage, raid member decides he want to cast Fireball onto that same lion. The fireball applies a stack of "Burning" on the lion. That stack of burning should cancel out at least one stack of my Chilled stacks, maybe even two.
Why? Because doing so forces your party members and raid members to actually follow an elemental ability plan, and not just throw out every AoE and skill on your hotbar without a second thought.
"But then Goalid, how can I roleplay as my Firemage igniting everyone to oblivion if I have to actually talk to and work with my fellow party members to do my rotation?!
"
Well, there should be cooldowns on how often you can apply status effects like "Chilled", otherwise you could stack a party full of ice elemental players and keep a mob "Frozen", aka CC locked, permanently. So, when the Frozen status effect is on cooldown, that's when you start going for your "Burning stacks" in order to apply your "Melted" status effect. And you could do that by temporarily targeting other mobs or having just a hint of elemental diversity in your skills. You would work with your team, and even your raid, to weave these status effects in between their cooldowns in order to reap the benefits of each status effect.
The goal is to make players cooperate together and reap the rewards of proper teamwork and communication. Let me know what you think.
References to the Holy Wiki:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Status_effects
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Burning
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Chilled
For example, I use my Frostbolt skill on a lion and apply two stacks of the "Chilled" status effect upon that lion. My goal is to get 10 stacks of Chilled on my target in order to apply the status effect "Frozen" on it, making it unable to move for a period of time. But then, my eager, fellow mage, raid member decides he want to cast Fireball onto that same lion. The fireball applies a stack of "Burning" on the lion. That stack of burning should cancel out at least one stack of my Chilled stacks, maybe even two.
Why? Because doing so forces your party members and raid members to actually follow an elemental ability plan, and not just throw out every AoE and skill on your hotbar without a second thought.
"But then Goalid, how can I roleplay as my Firemage igniting everyone to oblivion if I have to actually talk to and work with my fellow party members to do my rotation?!
"Well, there should be cooldowns on how often you can apply status effects like "Chilled", otherwise you could stack a party full of ice elemental players and keep a mob "Frozen", aka CC locked, permanently. So, when the Frozen status effect is on cooldown, that's when you start going for your "Burning stacks" in order to apply your "Melted" status effect. And you could do that by temporarily targeting other mobs or having just a hint of elemental diversity in your skills. You would work with your team, and even your raid, to weave these status effects in between their cooldowns in order to reap the benefits of each status effect.
The goal is to make players cooperate together and reap the rewards of proper teamwork and communication. Let me know what you think.
References to the Holy Wiki:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Status_effects
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Burning
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Chilled
2
Comments
1) Elemental Dis-Synergetic Combinations: a term I've made up because I can. But the idea would be that I use fireball and an ally uses frostbolt. Our elemental stacks cancel out, but create one stack of "moist". If you get 10 stacks of moist, then you apply the "Damp" status effect to a target. And, now an electric ability will do a special critical hit.
Similarly, if you apply stacks of "Electrified" and "Earthen" to a target, those two will cancel each other out. But, since soil CRAVES electrolytes, nature abilities will do a special critical hit. (But actually maybe has some sort of real life basis: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11769-004-0011-5).
2) Elemental Stack Wards: I know my enemy is using frost elements in order to try and freeze me and my allies. So, our bard plays "Song of Fire (and not Ice)" in order to create protective stacks of fire on us, in order to neutralize stacks of Chilled. Creates a good job for support classes.
Opposed because you don't claim your mobs in Ashes.
Which means another Mage can come negate your stacks.
I don't hate the idea that someone can do that, I dislike the amount of work needed to add something that would then just lead to a type of conflict and annoyance that the game might not need.
I love the idea of players being able to do things like 'as the servants of the Fire dragon, cast fire on it to help negate the effects of the opposing guild's Frost Mages' as a concept. I don't think I'd like the game environment we'd get from it though.
Any multiplayer game is going to have the potential for someone else to mess up your gameplay. Someone can aggro mobs into you, interrupt your hard CC, start trolling instead of playing, not do enough DPS, generate enough hate, heal you, etc.
I do agree this system would require a good degree of communication needed to make it work well. But, that's why we have microphones. If it's you and just one other player, it's easy enough to see what abilities they're visually using and the stacks currently on a mob. If it's 20 players, then you need microphones, which are accessible for any serious player.
We don't all have microphones, or rather, we can't all always be in a position to use them.
I don't want to say 'never add anything that incentivizes max realtime coordination'. But unless your stance is 'If you can't voice chat you shouldn't be playing an MMO', then I don't think my own is so easily dismissed.
If that is your stance (it IS 2023 after all) then I don't really have any counterpoint.
I read this sentiment a bunch on these forums. Sometimes it makes sense. Here I don't get it. The amount of work we're talking about it is minimal here in the scope of the game. We can't just reject everything because it might delay combat development by a day or two total and isn't exclusively positive (because nothing is.)
Goalid wasn't really *dismissing* your argument, but you shouldn't forget that we're not talking about making an Archetype/effect unplayable without coordination, just slightly less optimal, so that really shouldn't lead to a "conflict and annoyance" of any more than it leads to a sort of skill expression that trancends a single player's control. And if it *does* lead to that extent of conflict, that's really more of an issue with the community, and they'd find something else to fight about if this wasn't it.
I don't have the same development experiences you do.
For me, if I wanted to add that sort of thing to the game and balance it and prevent unintended behaviours, in the design schemas I've had experience with, it would be quite difficult. If it's easy, then ok, np. I'll probably learn to do it the easy way someday.
As for the second point, I'm only talking about the situation in which a different player is challenging and causing disruption, not just 'can you synchronize'.
I don't agree in general that 'introducing a pain-point to a community and them reacting to it negatively is a fault in the community'. In this specific instance I would personally feel that the community would be justified in complaint, but this is coming from games where "Everything Is Happening So Much", and it might work in a more simplistic game.
With a focus on Synergies and timing, having someone else just be able to randomly disrupt them in this specific way feels like a valid pain-point for me.
And yes, I have zero development experience, but I don't really feel guilty making logical inferences/assumptions about this.
Disrupt =|= Disable. You can just pay attention to any interferences and adapt by adding more stacks before popping them. (Especially if the asynergy only removes a comparatively minor/limited portion of the stacks, as has been suggested.) Demanding that type of awareness from the player is honestly the least I'd expect of a synergy mechanic before I can consider it a skill check, rather than just amounting to the same mindless rotation spam as the same system without "synergies".
And again, it's not like your spells are worthless when your synergies are unoptimal sometimes.
But then again, the more we talk about it, the more I'm willing to throw the towel. Because if someone reasonable like you feels this strongly about the potential frustration in this, you're probably right that the average player will, too.
For clarity, I don't feel all that strongly about it, I'd like to see the mechanic (but I can ask the team to weigh in with their individual perspectives). It's just where I happen to draw the line in my own designs.
Some games let you heal mobs other people are fighting. I find this to be outside of what I'd be okay with both design and preference wise.
Some games don't let you heal them but you CAN buff them. I think this is worse than the healing.
In the example given it would depend. "Stopping your debuffs from working by canceling them out" is fine with me as an experience, but not as a design. It's offering a way for a green player to disrupt a fight without putting themselves at significant risk nor offering anything of value to the other group in terms of dealing with the mob (I'm excluding the concept of Moist stacks here).
So you have a player that you can't CC without flagging, disrupting one of your team members and probably not being at particular risk (it would probably be unbalanced to make it so that the Fire mage gets extra hate for causing the Ice Mage's effect to fail and vice versa).
For Intrepid's data, I do actually also have this reaction to Tank being able to Javelin Pull someone else's mob away from them, but I don't expect a whole effort to prevent that one, or any other repositions.
"Stacks" rankles me because those often require a time window challenge, not an instant one.
Can we acknowledge that the fool who's spending their time "trolling" people by intentionally "sabotaging" their boss fights by dealing damage in a way that reduces the effectiveness of the hunting party's damage/effects onto the boss...would have to be pitied substantially more than the party being "trolled"? That's satirical levels of silly; the type you'd see in a kids' show where the villain's evil plots are so pathetically absurd that they end up helping the city's residents.
Even if synergies are a big deal, you're ultimately still spending your time casting damage for the hunting party without getting any reward for it. You can't really expect that to be a significant disruption to their efforts.
Again, this depends on the simplicity of the game.
In the game I come from, this would be an absolutely valid strategy.
If Frost Mages were good against the Fire Dragon because it was weak to ice, but Fire mages barely did any damage to it. Then they would be 'negating Chilled while doing minimal damage'. Perhaps a tier of damage that was barely even messing with the Dragon's regeneration, or similar.
I generally can't afford to think in terms of 'pity' in those situations. This type of player... their reward, their gameplay, is disrupting others. Are they pathetic? That is a point to argue with the ones on this forum. But from the design perspective, it generally doesn't enter my assessments.
It is unrealistic to ask a raid to only use fire OR ice status effects, for example - setting aside the potential for abuse as above.
However, make it an ability that clerics (or mages, or bards) can get, where they cast it on a target and then ice and fire status effects, and lightning and ground effects start cancelling each other out.
K guys we have to all coordinate our farts now or else we lose a raid. It's about as ridiculous as that. While not all ideas of this fashion may be bad it would require a lot more thought than this idea had.
It will also force mages to use 1 type of build all of the time because it will force 1 element as a default to bypass making mistakes in every other aspect of the game. I'm not against stacking specific mages to make elemental effects stronger, but not to cancel or weaken other effects. They should only be used by boss mechanics to screw over parties and raids.
U.S. East