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
The thing I still can't wrap my head around after watching the stream is this: if the raid boss is intended for 16 players, what's to stop me from gathering 14 Mages spec'd for as much raw damage as possible and 2 Clerics for the heals? The Mages can just roll, blink and use their Shield spell and be perfectly fine. Any damage they happen to take despite those can be kept in line by the 2 Clerics.
So what was the tank doing for me in that and what's my tradeoff? Why do I need to bring tanks if I can just kill the boss faster by bringing more damage? Not only did the Tank seem unnecessary, it seemed suboptimal, you want to kill things as fast as possible.
I appreciate your posts cause they give me more perspective on this stuff. The last time I played L2 I was in a big semi-casual guild and our "evening raids" were comprised of our GL going "how many people we got online? 80% of the guild? Great, let's go clear some world bosses that are about to respawn".
Those bosses were mainly farmed by low-mid power guilds because their drop was mid, but pretty much all of them were usually just overrun with huge numbers, while stronger guilds fought better bosses with lower numbers and only gathered up if there was harsh competition.
So what I'm trying to say with this example is that there is a place for these kinds of bosses in the game, but, w/o seeing the harder ones, we can't really know if Intrepid is planning to have the kind of gameplay I described or the kind of gameplay that most strong guilds would skip (together with the game), just as you say.
As for the reason of the showcase, I really feel like the true reason was to show off how big mobs interact with environment. They don't have AI to show off proper difficulty and I'd assume that the majority of mobs aren't that deeply developed for that precise reason. So what they're left with is a big pretty world with some light physics and this big boi who can kinda interact with them. So they slap some super basic boss design onto him and show him off.
It's just that the messaging kinda got lost on the way to us. They mentioned that there'll be a proper "boss design" dev discussion later on, so I hope you can give your full feedback there.
I'm glad that it seems to be working... sorta.
I know that I'm too critical, partially because I'm the lens for the 'critical thoughts' of multiple people. But once again I have to say to Intrepid, you're failing at messaging at least for us.
It doesn't matter if I understand 'ok this isn't supposed to be hard' it's just a Big Body test. Not everyone does, and it doesn't help my end because I have to just keep shooting down feedback people have that isn't relevant and the final result is 'oh well I don't care then, ping me when they show something for me to comment on'.
We thought 'Oh sweet maybe a little insight into the gameplay and potential complexity' and we got one of the most cheesable boss design types possible (this type of boss is never serious in this game type, you just spread out a bunch of ranged attackers and make it run between them while being damaged by the other dozen).
The fact that we ended up here is a testament to either 'me being way too invested and needing to join the ranks of people who no longer bother posting', or Intrepid needs to shift something about the way they 'sell' showcases to us, still.
Or, to quote someone I will not name:
"Is it the 'fight of the century' because once I do it I don't want to do it again in my lifetime?"
I'd probably say that you should give it your all for the upcoming boss design discussion and then just chill or maybe even completely stop posting for a while, at the very least until we get concrete news about alpha2. Cause I really doubt we'll see anything of true value until then.
Note: Ice shower looks much better, and looks like the slow lightning ball is in work since i don´t see any one cast(that´s great)
Other thing great job with the spiders taunt great idea, actually i would had some eggs and bigger female spider near them, much more aggressive then the males .
- No corruption-free zone near the WB
- Low TTK
- Mechanics are easy
- Low party (and raid) cooperation
So I assume this content is made for low lvl raid who wants to try their first WB at PvX scenario.
If so, then it is ok. Things to improve for that type of raid:
+ increase AOE attack distinctness (flashy shiny sparky mage skills are everywhere - can't see anything)
+ melee DDs deserve some love for those repeated 100m sprints
Anyway, now I'm more interested in PvP-focused Legendary Bosses and challenging PvE Instances
I thought the mechanics were solid. Somewhat unique and more than just basic. Good job. I really don't have any complaints with what I saw. Seeing the healers having to time heals for mechanics and the dps having to prioritize targets was solid raid mechanics. Didn't get much from the tank's involvement. Nothing crazy but no complaints.
It looked good as well. Effects with a large group wasn't overwhelming. Could clearly see what was going on.
I did have a couple complaints but probably beyond the scope of the stream.
1. When the cyclops appeared to redirect his pathing he had a hiccup in his animation (before the fight)
2. The cyclops walking looked gliddy. His movement didn't seem to match his stride.
3. The were a bunch of glitchy animations during the fight. People were spazzing in and out of their animations.
Those are more polish things but figured I point them out.
It can also cause problems getting raids started if you require more than one healer per group.
Anyway just want to raise this now as ideally you would always require 1 tank/1 healer/6 dps per group in each raid. Or alternatively have classes that can switch between roles but it's not clear how viable that's going to be.
Overall a step in the right direction. I think the overall mechanics of the fight were good. A definite improvement over the two dragon bosses we have seen previously...Which I believe need some sprucing up. I love seeing some actual Trinity system based reliance on the combat side, considering the lack of such in the current MMO landscape. Being an ol' time Lineage 2 player, I can already see the contested aspect of attacking the boss, while defending one selves from potential enemies playing nicely with what was shown.
For those that think the combat is too simple, I disagree. It's almost the right amount. This isn't a instanced dungeon where you can have complicated boss mechanics with many phases in safe confines. The majority of the time you would have to look over your shoulder to make sure no competing guilds or possible enemies are coming in to snipe said boss, and wipe your group.
I will say I think the single target damage was a little too low on the side of the cyclops. Adding a bit more damage to his single target hits would be nice to give it a little more threat. The AOE slam I think was the perfect amount of damage, a definite wipe threat for those not organized, but manageable if the healers are up on the job. I would like to see one addition mechanics wise to the multi slam...The ability to mitigate some of the damage by timed jumping with the shockwave. That would add some nice immersion to the fight, but not too over the top complication wise as you would have to keep your eye out for potential enemies/guilds. Would of liked to see the boss fight be a little longer, to add more risk to the scenario, after all, risk vs reward. Bump up his HP to accommodate more of a three or four party raid. Overall it was just a bit too short time wise to allow anyone to contest....Especially for a two party raid.
- What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
All my favorite experiences came mostly from L2. The contested content side in the PvX system was just too damn good. I enjoyed my earlier levels with Queen Ant, which required more coordinated mechanics from the player side. So much so that even enemy guilds ended up taking turns trading attempts on the boss, as killing it with even one enemy or griefer messing things up was a full reset...Was brutal, but left a lasting memory. For those unfamiliar, You had the ant queen, her nurse ants, and eggs. You would hit the eggs to gather up the nurse ants that would heal the eggs, Wipe them all at once, and have a few second timer to dps the queen. If a Nurse ant would spawn, it would instantly mass heal the queen ant...So required a lot of coordination on comms to ensure no one messed up and cause a reset. The fact that these mechanics were achievable in a contested content PvX mmo was astonishing...as one person walking in and hitting the eggs could mess up the entire raid. Now I don't believe this to be 100% executable in PvX modes, but somehow L2 made it work...Was definitely the most memorable for me, along with a few outliers.
Orfen and Baium were also great. Just for the reason alone of the large alliances and contested content. But my best memories were definitely from Baium. Nothing like seeing three massive alliances in the tower of insolence with 200 or so on each side killing eachother when the boss spawned, resurrecting allies, and splitting for defending and attacking the boss for the victor. Great times.....Antharas also has deep seated nostalgia, also from L2. The main factor of all these were contested bosses. They definitely were lacking mechanics as it was mostly all just tank and spank, but with the threat of being on a timer and people attempting to take it from you, and therefore couldn't offer a lot of mechanics, with Ant Queen being the exception...But would be nice to see an evolution of this in Ashes. Offering mechanics that require focus, but not too much that doesn't allow the ability to defend on two fronts, attacking the boss, and defending your take from opposing players. I have no idea what the 20% instanced content will be, I'm guessing mostly just story progression...But if there is to be heavy mechanics based raid bosses, that would fit their nicely...With the open world raid bosses and crafted loot being the superior route...Overall I agree with the direction taken.
-Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?.
Overall just excited for contested content. After the disaster that was Throne and Liberty reveal...which hurt my very soul, I believe Steven as well =P.
There were a few concerns though regarding the Cyclops. Obviously the footsteps not leaving a trail, but that was mentioned by Steven being first pass. I do hope this will be applied to all npc's/mobs though, and allow players to choose if they want this off or on based on the power of their PC. I know most of what we saw was first iteration, and lacked polish...But the movement pathing was just odd for him. He would stop and turn to readjust his pathing in a very unnatural way that was jarring. Probably just a first pass factor, but hope that gets resolved on the AI front. Also the dust kick up from his slams and charges were desert/natural colored, and not snow colored considering the environment around him. Hoping this is all just iterative, cause it did break immersion a bit. Hoping it gets tied to the seasons, since you've built such an impressive system, would be a shame and missed opportunity not to utilize it.
Hoping for a spruce up on the multi-slam shockwave effect...Literally looked like just a circular template that was expanding rapidly. Would be nice to get some volumetric fog/debris kick up based on the color of terrain, in this scenario being white for snow...Think object/missile impact shockwave...coupled with a jump to offer damage mitigation as I mentioned previously.
Overall a good showing. My only concerns are around animations and visual effects as a whole. This was definitely an improvement over the dragons, don't get me wrong. But I feel the game has a weakness in this department so far. Overall it would be bad ass to see Eastern MMO levels of animation/visual effect quality...They are just on a different level imo for some of their titles, but probably reaching too high asking for it.
The knocked down animation was a bit weird. For example when a player gets knocked down, then gets up...it's very rapid and doesn't have weight or transitional elements to them...Looks very stiff. Kind of like looney toons flattening when run over by a vehicle. Would be nice to have a knocked back animation with a little verticality off the feet, and a more natural rise to said feet...Even if it's slower, that's fine, as adding another second of a knocked down state wouldn't hinder much from what I saw. Not sure how much of an impact this would have in your CC designs...But even just polishing up the animation/transition would go miles.
But overall, a definite improvement compared to the earlier boss demos. The spider in a defensive stance just didn't look right in my honest opinion. I love the idea overall, but the animation was just a bit unnatural looking. Mostly when shifting from defensive posture to standard and back once more. A slower transition time, and maybe three or so animations on a rotational rng pull up, with some transition smoothing in engine would be more digestible...A good idea though, I like it, just a tad bit of work on execution.
Thumbs up though! Looking forward to some contested goodness down the road in A2 ^_^.
Cyclops combat feedback looks good
Fighting the Cyclops Feedback Watch this you will understand:
Bosses that heal themselves is a large NO NO in any MMO, seen fights ruined by it due to players or lack of players. Wouldn't care if players could heal themselves in the game but due to classes that is a no go. Its not much different from healers in other mmos who can heal themselves (far to much) in PVP & it was basically god mode heal - holy you dead. Overall is a slacking way to prolong a fight, even worse than bosses who are invulnerable for animations due to phase changes.
- Shield mechanics & Def Up ones Sure! Heals NO or very VERY limited in use & effect.
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
BDO open world bosses were fun but that was more due to combat & Scale. I don't see ashes matching that no matter how hard you try with current combat & dodges.
Same deal for Blade & Soul some nice fights but the combat difference... Can't even remember the dragon or Pirates name.
FFXIV general dungeon bosses were good, some raid ones too like phoenix, also "normal sized" primal ones in general like Titan, Irfit, Garuda, Maybe Moogles. But I am talking from a perspective of ones I see being mostly decent in a open world setting rather than there instanced one.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
There is to much safe zone in the fight for ranged players vs melee, Which to be fair is fine to a degree it focuses healing where needed, also to much area damage for ranged is RIP fight never again. To much long scale AOE is Overkill but this needs a more use of those skills I saw (stomp wave & tree wave).
Because it is a open world boss ideally I'd like to see less charges, but that removes part of the damage to ranged as mentioned above, SO reset his aggro after charge so players need to be aware of mechanics.
Other Feedback
I like the "no aggro" approach to some mobs like the spiders in the video. As they are non aggro they don't need icons to show it.
But I would like to see some mobs aggroing off sound & sight, by sight I 90deg/180d 270D, with sound being 360deg & a icon applied over head to signify this.
I think the cyclopes needs to be just a little bit bigger, not much just a little bit. I can see why you didn't - Path/knocking down trees. But still would like it a little larger.
Can we get this world boss please.
On a positive side i loved the visuals and even if they wernt hard or even fun the mechanics did look good from a visual sense
What do you actually want though? What are these basic design choices they need to make to make it an interesting open world raid boss? Please be specific. Are there any examples from other games you can point to, where you think: "This is an amazing open world boss!"?
From the video, Intrepid's stated plan for this boss is an introductory mid-level raid boss for 2-4 groups, focusing on the roles of the trinity (tank, heal, dps). It's a roaming boss, so any mechanics have to be area agnostic, so to speak.
We get different phases with AOE damage, unavoidable damage, adds that need to be off tanked or kited, CC on players, and priority targets like the healing caps and that totem that needs to die quickly in one phase. The damage numbers and how hard the adds are and how big the area of the AOE damage is and how hard the CC hits, is all tweakable. I assume you aren't talking about that. I would hope all those numbers are able to be dynamically increased based on the number of players in the area too.
So what mechanics would you change to make this an interesting boss for you? Specifically.
I am asking not because I think they nailed the boss mechanics, but because I genuinely don't understand what it is you actually want? You only really state that you don't want something that isn't just an upscaled version of something an 8-man group can do. But then I think to myself, what raid boss mechanics exist today in any game, that can't be scaled down to 8 man group size?
Edit: I just saw your Theory Raid #2 post after I wrote this. You answer some of my questions there, and I like the ideas.
Personally, I like them showing off content like this, essentially because it reassures me that the game won't be Final Fantasy scripted challenges meets BDO flashy combat or whatever. They won't be trying to make everything look epic and difficult at the cost of the player's sense of control.
Huh? You make it a 32 man fight so that enough players have to congregate that taking down the boss is a social challenge. A political one, an objective-control one. All the things that would be wasted on micro-encounters like an 8 person group battle.
Sometimes that can go hand-in-hand with an extremely challenging set of behaviours and skill-checks (both for in-combat behaviour, and for class optimisation, and giving every player a unique, critical role.) But it doesn't have to do that every time to be worth designing the encounter and making it part of the gameplay.
And frankly, I think it's more worth it to make more manageable bosses first, and work your way up towards more demanding challenges, as your community becomes better at playing the game and controlling its classes. Not something you take to the limits of player & guild coordination skill in Alpha. Perhaps not even before release at all.
Fwiw, I thought the battle looked very dynamic, I saw a good amount of mechanics that reward knowing what you're doing, and the damage values I saw taken by the semi-inexperienced party felt decently punishing; especially since their characters were buffed to counteract their raid size. Some of the boss's abilities might need to be made more impactful, but nothing unreasonable.
Perhaps there would be potential for requirements of a bit more specific effects or damage types you have to skill/prioritise to deal with the tree club or something. But while that might be a vital improvement for some commenters here - that's pre-battle preparation that you would not really have been able to *see* in the visuals of the fight itself anyway.
This sentiment seems to originate from the concept that every game genre needs to be continuously becoming better and more engaging, in order to be worthwhile to observe, discuss, and play. The Muse song "Unsustainable" has a few lines to say about that ideology.
We got to see different phases with AOE damage, charges, unavoidable damage, adds that needed to be off tanked or kited, CC on players, and priority targets like the healing caps and that totem that needs to die quickly in one phase. Nothing too complex for people who have played MMORPGs before, but still complex enough that I think it's a challenge and a good learning experience for newer players.
I really like that trees are knocked down. That's cool. I still think a tree falling on a player should do damage though. Damage from the environment would add to the fight IMO.
All the damage numbers and size of the AOE and such can be tweaked as A2 progresses, so I am not worried about that.
However, from a visual experience kind of stand-point, I wish the last phase where he is pissed off about losing his totem trunk was more visually impressive. He seems way more visually intimidating in the beginning of the fight where he is swinging that huge tree trunk around. I don't have an obvious solution, but maybe make him slightly bigger or add some corruption aura to him. Something visually more intimidating than he currently is.
I like the ground slams in the last phase, but perhaps add some more hard CC when he slams the ground. Like an avoidable area knockdown. Especially when he does that jump and lands I think it's ok to add an unavoidable hard CC. Or very hard to avoid at least.
Considering we are still in an early test phase I felt like it was pretty good especially for an early world boss. I would imagine that you aren't going to make every raid boss mechanically easy and there should be more complicated encounters in the future like ones which require damage soaking mechanics or buff related mechanics ect.
Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
I'm hoping that we see much harder mechanics in the future that there's ones that require thinking or require a higher level of teamwork requirement. I hate to be that guy that uses Wow as an example but when it came to complicated raid boss mechanics that's really one of the main ones that actually required some thought process. Also final fantasy 14 does as well but. A good example of complicated bosses was the fallen avatar one of the bosses that was known for wiping the raid quite often. It had a lot of RNG mechanics like the dark mark which required players to soak around 3 randomly chosen players and the players in a 8 yard period would take damage split between them then it would shoot those 3 players along with the players stacked up into the air though if it was placed on two healers it could cause an instant wipe. When I used to code monster AI for a game I tried to do similar make mechanics that people had to really think about. Like when I made a headless horseman for Halloween. For Ragnarok Online the boss would hit the tank with holy enchant armor to make the tank weak to undead attacks so people not wearing undead armor would take increased damage. If he was healed since heal was considered holy damage as well he would cast an aoe silence and when he hit below the 30% marker he would cast evil land which would start to aoe heal him and do a massive aoe. But the point I'm mostly making is we've seen enough games that provide boss mechanics that make you just stand around smashing buttons so I really hope ashes can make encounters that give us back the feeling that world bosses and raid bosses are impactful story driven and immersive.
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? When it comes to world bosses only two games really captured that world of warcraft and Ragnarok Online though Ragnarok really didn't label them the same way since bosses where MVP's and you would hunt them down in an open world fashion most other games I've played didn't really have memorable encounters. Raid boss wise Wow again comes on pretty strong but when Tera Online came out with KN20 raid which was the first 20 man raid to the game it was a lot of fun as well as a lot of wiping some of it caused by lag of the poor client but it was a pretty complicated and fun raid to do and my guild took time teaching a lot of people how to do the fight since we where one of the few static groups on the server. Wow now is pretty much trash they stopped putting effort into the game. But if ashes keeps putting effort in then we still have hope that we will have a real mmorpg once again that not only provides a good raiding experience but also just generally more fun. Cause FF14 might have good raids but the quest system is "Final Fanstasy Sleepy Time" you either pay money to skip it or use it as a way to get your naps in.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
Only thing I will say is there wasn't much in the way of tells that the boss was going to do an AOE a particular way you do see the boss go running through the players but you really don't know how large the hit box is to get out of that ability which could be a good or bad thing. There's also hearing impaired individuals you find that play games as well so the sound of the boss getting ready to charge as well as knowing to get out of the pathing might not be as clear to them. So it might not hurt to provide some indication even if it was as much as the snow on the ground being moved in the pathing of the hit box to indicate the pathing that the mob is taking that would be acceptable even if the development team doesn't want radicals for boss attacks.
Only other comment i'll say is when I think about world bosses I usually think about a larger scale party going after a world boss. Not just a group of 10 or 20 people. It's usually a different feeling from a raid boss in which you get 10 or 20 of your guildies to go clear. So I was expecting that it would have been a bit more difficult and include the requirement for at least 40 people I mean more wouldn't really be bad either in my opinion but the fact these world bosses are roaming the world they should be more difficult. When I think of world boss I think of a boss scary enough to cause natural calamity across the land which you guys did since he can destroy objects and resources in the world.
College Lessons
Check this out: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Classes
The roaming aspect and general environmental destruction was cool to see. You should make it so the trees etc that he knocks down can be harvested for a short time after or something like that.
I would like to see a contrast between this boss shown and something from End Game level to see if the complexity scales up alot and where the general difficulty level is intended to sit once everyone has out grown the basics.
Does Ashes intend to compete with some of the MMO's with competitive race for world first type mechanics or will it be more story driven and casual at end game? Alot of your average type gamers now have very sweaty mentalities when it comes to stuff like this and hopefully this boss is only a starting point in terms of difficulty levels.
Yeah that would mostly solve it, I guess we'll see.
If a tank could change secondary classes so you could do more dps at the expense of tanking ability (but maybe you could still off tank if needed), that would be a good solution.
Yep, as @tautau alluded to, my hope is that there isn't a static healer-tank count for every raid.
Roles for each raid should be different depending on the boss mechanics and raid composition (including class).
See, the problem here is WoWs LFR system.
In a game where a raid consists of 24 players, needing just one tank, an organized raiding guild will have 4 tanks. They will only take one, if one is needed but the guild will have 4.
In WoW, rather than raids being centered around the guild unit where players are working towards improving the guild, most raids were made up of individuals all out for themselves. You would want a spot in a raid for your class and your role, and that was basically the end of it.
Raid content *should* be the domain of the guild. You *should* need to be organized to have any real shot at it. Due to its ope world nature, this is going to be even more true in Ashes than it is in early 2000's non-WoW games.
Rather than looking at content and complaining that you cant see enough for your role to do, find a guild of players you enjoy playing with, tell them you enjoy tanking, but are happy to do what ever - and then ask them what they need.
All of a sudden, every potential issue you bought up here just floats away as if it never existed.
In general, my perspective is that if you have not added some situation in let's say a 16 man content where each Archetype from each group has a slightly different role to play, you have not made proper use of your multi-group content.
I believe that these slightly different roles can be enhanced and built upon while still accounting for PvP, because the roles and approaches can be different but neither 'absolutely critical'. It could even be a matter of 'rotating' based on cooldowns into position and out of position.
If the content doesn't achieve at least that, then the answer is almost always 'find a Tank and some healers and bring enough of your strongest/safest DPS'. Adding counter-mechanics on the Boss just changes which DPS that is.
There are things that are a matter of tuning that were done to make things sensible (e.g. they were probably buffed in ways that the Bard would normally provide) and then there are things that show through to a spoiled FFXI player like myself as 'you did this wrong'.
But, again, it's meant to be simple. Referencing the thread briefly then:
1. Add Bloodseeker Spiders and you should now need more Tanks, possibly in different positions. These Tanks then need Healers with a different concept or even loadout, a different 'job' to do in the fight (this is assuming that the Spiders could manage to bring down a Tank that was also being attacked by Tumok)
2. Add any 'grapple' effect and you should now need either the Ranger or a second Tank to CC Tumok or someone will suffer terribly. You could definitely get away with this with only one Ranger, admittedly, but it would be spec dependent.
3. In other games the Raid would actually be split so that the Melee are in one party and the Ranged in another and they get one Bard each with different plans, positioning, and buff intentions
4. Depending on the function of Rogues (hate manipulation) you almost always end up needing two of them as soon as you need two Tanks for proper flow (actually they often end up being a massive part of the raid if you can get enough of them, and Tumok would need AoE spores to counter that aspect.
5. More adds more often with a different attack priority means it's worth your time to bring Fighters to quickly respond to this without your Tanks being removed, and each Fighter can have a different priority altogether if the game has any synergies. One to trigger Synergies on Tumok, one to help with adds.
6. Even if it's only one enemy, having one Mage to help with the Adds and one that focuses on stacks and Synergies would be good but who are we kidding when was the last time a Raid brought only a few Mages on anything that didn't explicitly counter them (and I'm not saying Tumok should at ALL other than positioning stuff)
7. Summoners obviously should fill in, but at the same time having SOMETHING to counter them rather than just 'Ok we'll stand over here and you can beat on our summons instead of us' seems important. I can't speak to this because in FFXI Summoners are EXTREMELY complex and vital members of the team and relatively individualized. I can hope for the same in Ashes but I wouldn't be able to say what exactly they should do, and therefore I can't judge if these mechanics would have any impact in the sense of making you want 'two separate Summoners'.
So hm... I want what Ashes hinted at (I won't say promised). I want that when people form a party of one of each Archetype and make their meaningful choices and form their guild out of multiple of these, that even the basic 16-man content doesn't get the 'Ok but we need you to sit this out because we only need one Tank and it's probably better to replace some of the Fighters with more Mages'.
I can probably go into even more detail but based on the YouTube video's response, this is mostly enough for people and I doubt most people would enjoy the sort of specific targeted 'This is 16 man content therefore it should explicitly leverage that' that I'm interested in.
So as long as the general populace is happy.
I can explain more, or I can let my group members explain more based on any specific response you have to all that above.
Yeah, probably right. It looks like people are mostly happy with it, and in the gaming business, that's mostly what matters.
I'm a little sad about it, but I definitely know that I run with a bunch of 'elitists' who have different wishes and preferences.
I do hope for a game where they can somewhat improve the current standard without losing that 'readability/simplicity' that makes it accessible to people, but I definitely still don't have a good measuring stick for what that is, so you can consider my responses to just be those of 'a voice of some people who really want more than a zerg rush even for the basics'.
And that could be an entirely flawed premise because players like us could either entirely skip this content or stick to more suitable games.
The only thing I will take issue with is the 'more engaging'.
No, that's definitely not what I'm feeling. I feel like genres have been consistently becoming considerably less engaging and I was hoping Ashes could fill the Fantasy MMO slot for getting some of it back, for me. And I don't know that it won't, I only know that I don't have a lot of visible reasons to be confident, and I don't understand the purposes of some of their content/feedback requests, which, aside from the 'inflated 8 man' thing, is my only remotely valid point.
For today, I was supposed to give feedback, and it didn't seem to have much direction so...
It was either "This looks boring and sucks even for its level", or 'nothing', from us. Maybe that's the way it should be, but as long as Steven keeps asking for the feedback, we'll keep giving it, the game doesn't need to change in any way for it.
Again, I'm just being a voice here, for people who want Intrepid to know 'yeah this isn't anywhere near what I am hoping for' but don't want to just be flat negative about it. At this rate they're gonna be saying more though, so I guess I don't need to handle it as much this time.
Overall I liked it, but it does still feel super, super early. (I do wonder if AoC might benefit from having a large WIP watermark on their footage, too many people just can't seem to grasp that this is still Alpha dev)
I thought that the spell and ability effects were good, I think you have hit the nail on the head in regards to how flashy to make the abilities (I hope you guys have an assembly line for abilities because you're gonna have to start pumping those bad boys out en masse).
Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
I thought Tumok's mechanics were ok, but would like to have seen more that involved the entire party having to move and make decisions. (The Dragons with their jumpable shock waves, poison spit balls etc were on the right track regarding that IMO).
Loved the roaming, broken trees, character model, animations and his little backstory. Just more, better-telegraphed abilities. Or ways to tackle him that require significant coordination, like having to bind his legs so he falls over, or having to blind him during a short period of vulnerability. Interesting and thematic ways to down bosses so that they don't just all become big HP sacks that only require DPS to down.
The wolves also felt a little off thematically, when he smashed the big tree trunk into the ground, it could blow out a bunch of mushroom spores and mobs (which would only attack healers and supports as they are drawn to magical energy) meaning that melee DPS would have to move away from Tumok and help defend the supports.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
I do have some concerns. Whilst I understand we are in Alpha and Steven mentioned optimization coming later down the pipe, I don't really understand why there are such significant frame rate issues. Particularly when it comes to FPS on mobs, flora and fauna.
At the beginning of the video, the spiders were not far away and their animations were super jittery. (loved their pea-cocking though!) This has been a problem in AoC for years now. Why is this? With Unreal Engine 5 and what I assume is a local, private server with minimal people on it. What is causing this and what can/will be done to address it? I also think it might be interesting to hear more on how characters are being optimized from Character Creator to the in-game model... because... there is a significant difference in fidelity occurring.
Whilst the choice to have it in winter was cool, (I like me some snow) I couldn't help but feel that it was done purely to mask how empty the world still is. Again, I understand that there are lots of things being worked on and developed currently such as active resource spawners NPC's etc, but I can only comment on what I see and I haven't really seen much evolution in the environment since the Seasons Reveal over a year ago. The environment looks good, but it also feels "flat". Would really like to hear more regularly from the environment team. A 1200 square km world... I do have concerns that it will feel big... and empty.
All in all, it was a good update. Things are definitely going in the right direction. I'm just left wanting to see more, but also with a slight growing concern, that not only do I want to see more, but I think we are going to have to see a lot more if a launch is going to be achieved.
I love how the boss interacts with things in the environment. And I especially love how the boss has a coherent theme, how it's mechanics and attacks fit in with what a large, forest dwelling cyclops "would do." Instead of getting outlandish.
The wolf spawns could have had more of an impact. They felt kind of just tacked on. But maybe you feel the pressure from them more when you're actually playing. There could have been more CC. There could have been more area denial. Neither of those are necessary, just depends on your desired intent for difficulty level of that boss. We don't even have all the classes yet so it's hard for me to give full, definitive opinions on the ins and outs of any individual encounter.
But overall I'd say it probably looked a little easier than I was expecting. Hard to tell without playing it myself. You're absolutely heading in the right direction though. Mechanics, audio, visuals, everything is looking good. Throw in some wolf howls when the wolves spawn.
I like reading through your posts, although I must admit that there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between what you are looking for and what Ashes is going for IMO. What you are listing (whilst a lot is applicable) seems to be more geared toward instanced content found in theme park MMOs. AoC is fundamentally a Sandbox. If people want to get 20 Mages together to take down a Boss then that is completely up to them. Part of the fun is trying out all kinds of weird and different combinations. Not "We need an exact shopping list of ABC to counter XYZ and if you aren't wearing exactly that then GTFO". Type of scene. (Not saying that won't be in the game at all but this is clearly not that kind of content)
Yeah, that's fine. I only care because of what Steven originally said, but it was my interpretation of those words that caused the disconnect, and that's on me.
Yeah, looking at it all this was entirely 'me getting too excited about something that didn't have the purpose I thought it did' and then 'getting caught up in discussing it when it wasn't necessary to'.
Definitely a case of overhype/copium, so I'll see y'all next month maybe.
Except if the guild only needs 1 tank for a raid, and they have 4... then they won't take you. They'll take the tank that's mates with the guild master. I get what you're saying that you can do other content but I just don't feel like half the tanks should be locked out of raid content because the group ratios are different for larger raid sizes.
A massive part of raiding is organization. Part of organization is making sure you have the right mix of classes for the content at hand.
If a game has 20 raid spots, I will have no more than 24 guild members. Yet, with that, I will still have 4 tanks, 12 healers, 12 support (in games that have valid support classes) and about 30 DPS. Yes, still with 24 players.
If you come to me as a tank, only wanting to tank, I have no space for you. If you come to me as a DPS, only wanting to DPS, I have no space for you.
If you come to me and say "I really enjoy tanking, but I also have a DPS and a healer that I am happy to raid on", then I will happily give you a shot at joining the guild.
I do not recruit classes or roles, I recruit players.
If you come to me as a player, and provide me with those options, if you prove to be of value it is in my and the guilds best interest to make sure you get some raid time in the role you most enjoy - for you that would be as a tank. Since the content in question is only asking for one tank, that would mean you get time as *the* tank, as opposed to *a* tank.
The reason I am happy to do this is because even if you aren't going to become the guilds main tank, I still need several backups for if that main tank is out for what ever reason. These backups (multiple backups) all need to know the content from the perspective of the tank, and all need to have well equipped tank characters. As the raid leader, it is on me to make sure my backup tanks have this. The only way to get this is to have those players run raids on their tank on occasion - but again, these backup tanks are players that have proven themselves of value to the guild as players.
Perhaps an easier way of putting it is - raids generally need one tank. If you want to be that tank, you need to earn it, not demand it.