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
next level ego to copy past yourself on two totaly different discutions. here we are talking about one thing (read title) still waiting for a proper reason healers should always heal that hard besides lazy dev design. in my opinion all classes should have a passive healing debuff in pvp.
I can see the bigger problem with group size. 8 is a big number. I'd personally remove summoners and rogues from existence and reduce the group size to 6 (or even 5)
when did i say i did not want roles ? and why are you talking grp size ?
Then I don't understand how to interpret your posts. Can you give me some real working examples of your vision suited to the MMORPG genre? Otherwise, I read your messages as "I hate MMORPGs and propose to make BDO 2.0"
I would merge tank into the fighter class but keep the possibility to specialize toward defense.
This way we would also get rid of the "tank" class name.
Summoners are a kind of mage, so mages could take over that role.
Rogues and bards could also overlap if absolutely needed.
But I would still keep the group size as 8.
the game play that revolves around overtuned healers is garbage. all it takes is a few of them in a closed area and no action is possible unless you get a bigger zerg. people dont realise how many of the player base is not interested in any of that static guild stuff. is it that bad that 8 solo dps can be sucessfull in the open world ?
are you better at the game because you got that premade team with a strategy ?
Who is talking about BDO 2.0, pretty much a throw away comment to try to disregard a conversation if one isn't confident about having one.
Person is not a good player, bad at positioning and all but can survive being attacked out numbered for multiple minutes. His healing strength is based on PvE encounters so he can just out heal all dmg being done to him, and PvP balance was not considered.
I'm not writing to you, pretty sure you are just an alt account tbh
its ok to feel triggered when someone changes you're mind, we all go threw it. look it up.
Lets take Daoc as an example, (the best pvp game imo) you could small man without a healer often catching other small groups with or without a healer. If the enemy has a healer you take that person out first and yes you could do that. you could also play a stealth group and if done right could take out a full group the same way by hitting the healer first with massive damage and then roll the rest.
How many healers do you need? from my experience with 8 man groups you need 2 healers and 1 secondary healer for PvP. Why so many? because you need the ability to cross heal. Again using Daoc as an example, when you where hit you could not cast a spell or it would interrupt the spell making the healer unable to keep themselves alive (in general). In PvP the damage taken is generally not on your tank or a strong melee class instead people focus on healers or soft targets like casters and other dps, meaning you could have 3 to 5 people taking serious damage at the same time and you need the extra healer to keep them alive.
PvE healing, Generally this is very different. Tanks and other high defense classes hold the agro and you don't need 2 healers, most of the time just 1 will do just fine. Often in PvE you want more tanks than healers because if you have several mobs 1 tank can only take so much damage thus often you would have secondary tanks to help split the damage or use other CC to slow the damage on your Tanks.
As for fights all looking the same, I would 100% disagree especially for pvp even if the Trinity is being used. Often group make ups follow a meta of sorts but that changes over time as people try different things and often the make up of your group depends upon what abilities you think are most important and what your tactical goals are in that session of play. For example, are you trying to hold a tower or are you running around in the open field looking for foes? I would use very different group setups for those situations.
The Trinity as a whole is a good design, lets look at Rift vs Eq. Rift allowed you to change your class in game as you needed it to a point. This made it where I almost never grouped with anyone and that removes the whole point of an MMO. Eq on the other hand made it very difficult to solo and almost everyone grouped up making the game a more fun social experience. Eq is still being played today. I don't think you could find an operating Rift server.
Creativity in classes, I love to see people do different things in mmo's that is part of the joy. Sometimes the most odd sounding class can be the most effective. For example in ESO i played a Sorc but because one of our group quit playing I changed the way I speced my sorc and made him into a Tank, changed the gear to fit my new build and was an even better tank than normal tanks.
You should need a healer. This is good game design.
You should also need a tank, and a rogue, and a summoner, and a mage, and a fighter, and a Bard, and a ranger. The ideal situation would be that a group of people would be as hesitant to go out without any one of the above as they would be of going out without a healer.
Not asking players to have some fundamental orgalization (which is what you are asking for) is not good game design for an MMO. The game really should be rewarding organization, not casting it aside.
to take DaOC's example why do we end up with 2 healers per group every single time ? because they are crazy over tuned for PvE.
this happens over and over in MMOs, both mods should be balanced separately.
i dont see a single person countering my argument after 3 pages of words, wtf ?
are you that guy that enjoy's building settups for 1 hour, fight's 1 hour. loses repeatedly to a ''better" setup and call's it good design ?
its ok if the pvp if a gank feast, we dont need that old sport mindset. i dont wwant to be an NFL coatch.
Are you the guy that doesn't build a good setup, losing to someone that has a good setup and calls it bad design?
If a rival has a better setup than you have, they should be more likely to beat you. You may want to say some shit like "the better player should win", and I agree with that statement.
However, having the right setup is a massive part of being a good player. If you have a really bad setup, you have no place claiming to be a good player, and should lose most of the time.
meta slaves make me yawn, i give 0 fck about being the better player. i want people to leave town and have fun.
i want incentives to takes the 3 closest allies around you and test ur luck on a battle field. not some silly tryhard discord preparation.
If you run in to some people that are prepared, then consider that bad luck. You are likely to hit a long run of bad luck if this is how you play the game, however.
In any game, from any genre, if you are able to pick the people you play with and then go up against other people that are able to pick who they play with, preperation and organization is going to determine who wins 75% of the time. In a game with a persistent world, that figure only goes up.
You can say you don't want to prepare properly all you like - you can't stop others from doing so.
If you are so worried about groups with healers being unbeatable unless you also have a healer, and if you just want to grab some friends and run out and have a reasonable chance at success - roll a healer.
best case senario you find that oposing premade and hope to cross path. most likely senario people will zerg to get you.
then congratz the whole map feels empty.
This is the post where you ceased to have any argument left, and so just posted random stuff.
What you are saying here is that if healers are considered valuable in PvP, groups that are organized and prepared before they head out will be zerged on an empty map.
That literally makes no sense - you are jump rambling due to a lack of maintaining a valid point.
Agree in the sense that players should be viable in any combat with any classes given appropriate tactics. 8 rogues in a raid or 8 tanks in pvp should be options because that points to true balance and allows players to play what they want.
The problem is, the only way to achieve this from a game development perspective is for the classes to all be both simple and bland.
If you look at any game with this kind of hyer balance, simple, bland classes is how they do it.
Look at how many abilities a given character in any game with this kind of balance has, and compare that to the fact that the current game design will see each of the 8 primary classes in Ashes have access to at least 2,520 ability variants - and this is before factoring in additional augments from the likes of religion and social organizations.
That is over 20k ability variants in the game.
These abilities that you can get from those available to your class aren't set in stone either, players are free to pick and chose which they want and which they don't want, within a framework.
This game isn't intended to be about the kind of hyper balance you are talking about above. It straigth up isn't possible in a game like Ashes. That is the realm of lobby based esports titles where simple and bland is desired.
In a game like Ashes, if you run with 8 rogues or 8 tanks, you should expect to get steamrolled by a balanced group of 4 players.
Wrong. That is just lazy thinking. You have obviously never run a game for a group of bards before. If you lack the creativity to create lock and key solutions for single classed raid groups, then you have no place to be talking about game design.
Why would give your player 8 options when only 3 of them are correct? You don't want a trinity system; you want an octagon system.
You know what is not fun? Having to wait to fill roles or fill the role yourself when you want to play a different character, that is not fun.
That’s what Summoner is for.
did u play revelations online? :O
But there are a whole lot of unknowns too. We've seen some GTAE/ PBAE damage, heal and CC abilities to go along with the usual single target stuff (and pulls, etc). That suggests that bomb groups may work. AE stun->bomb
It's just way to early to tell. It may be that the holy trinity gets a bit watered down, along with 8-man boss damage, and tank's tankiness. It's not unreasonable for a tank to take half the damage that fighter would take...rather than being able to laugh off blows that 100->0 the fighter.
It reads to me like you are talking about designing an encounter for a group of bards in a tabletop gaming setting, and having it be a viable challenge.
If this is indeed what you are suggesting, then the suggestion that this is even remotely comparible to building an encounter that is expected to be taken on by quite literally any number of players between 8 and 1000, of any class combination with any combination of abilities from that potential 20k that the game will have, and having it be a viable challenge for any given set of variables above is even remotely comparible to creating an encounter for a tabletop setting where you know the party, their class, their power level, their gear, their exact abilities and the personalities of the players involved is even remotely the same thing, then you are in no position to talk.
Not talk about game design - talk in general. If you equate these two things as being the same, then you have nothing of value to say.
Small brain says can not balance must not work give up. Very good reasoning.
I mean, sort of, yeah.
It isn't a case of "Intrepid have all of these things in place, and so now they must give up any notion of hyper-balance like you seem to want".
Rather, it's more a case of "Intrepid aren't after the type of hyper-blance that you seem to want, and as a result are able to put in place the class system they have".
Ashes isn't a game to spoon feed you correct "decisions". There absolutely are ways you can screw up, and that is literally by both intention and design. This is good, as it isn't a meaningful decision if there isn't an option that is objectively wrong.
What you are asking for is literally what Ashes is being designed to specifically not offer.