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What is good gameplay, tanking and threat, and balanced player options.
LuKe_NuKeS_Em
Member
I can see a few issues with this game and a few things it is promising to do very well. I have no doubt the social systems in the game to be well thought out and require players to come together to overcome difficulties in the "pseudo-factions" of sharing the same node (homebase) or guild and competing for scarce achievements in the game. What I see an issue with is the moment-to-moment gameplay where most MMOs have fallen short historically, perhaps due to the same idea of collective experience being such a big part of the game that the individual experience is secondary. I will use two examples of successful games, albeit in different genres: Baldur's Gate 3 (BG3) and League of Legends, in which I have much experience at this point to elaborate on why the threat mechanic, the holy trinity, and player option balance will be major issues for players of Ashes of Creation.
The tanking and threat mechanic is an issue for player versus non-player-controlled enemies in combat because it removes player satisfaction from the victory, player options during combat, requires managing an invisible number, and creates bad tank design. Having a threat mechanic into the enemy AI is likened to having a lenient dungeon master in tabletop roleplaying. For example, you send out the character built to take hits and the DM chooses to be nice and attack that player's character. This hurts the ability to suspend disbelief in the fantasy roleplaying game because the enemy is not acting in their best interest, but in yours. It doesn't give the players any satisfaction because the only option to beat the encounter is usually designed to use this threat system. BG3 gets around this by adding competent AI that targets the player that they have the MOST chance of hurting, not the least, and reducing the overall level of optimization required to compensate. This means that even with a low-mid optimized build the players can use creative solutions to overcome the encounters and feel like the enemies are actually acting in their best interest, thus getting satisfaction from the victory. The AI in BG3 will make positioning errors to target lesser armored or weakened characters, which the players can exploit through line of sighting much like most MMOs, but they will never target the tank simply because the tank has abilities to make them target them. For games with a threat mechanic, the player's victory is typically assured as long as they manage the invisible threat number (visible usually only with add-ons) appropriately to keep the monster targeting the tank. If these tank skills are a 1 to 1 transfer into a PvP space, they take all player autonomy away from whoever the tank uses the abilities on, and this usually requires all tank abilities to be designed once for PvE and again for PvP for them to have any viability in PvP without causing an imbalance issue. A fantasy MMO without threat would allow for the AI to feel more intelligent and tanks to use body blocking, tripping, pushing, grappling, and putting themself in harm's way to control the front line in cinematic ways, that also make sense for the character archetype. This puts more emphasis on positioning and clever teamwork on a party as a whole and allows for creative solutions rather than manipulating the same system for every encounter. This leads us to the holy trinity system itself.
The holy trinity system is an issue in most MMOs because of the differential requirement of tanks and healers and their player base. For instance, tanks are 1/3 of the trinity, yet the Tank class is 1/8 of the player options in Ashes of Creation. The cleric's numbers look the same. Doing away with the trinity, would allow players to complete content with creative strategies utilizing characters that they actually want to play. Healing is a part of Baldur's Gate 3, but not necessary, or even optimal. Finding ways to not take damage based on your positioning and tactics is much more of a successful strategy that requires forethought. Is there room for a tank and healer fantasy? Yes, there is, but engaging tank gameplay does not look like having these abilities that manage an invisible number to keep the monster mad at you by screaming. Think of any tank in League of Legends and what they do to actually protect the team. Braum jumps in front of you and holds up his shield, Alistar headbutts the enemy away; Maokai roots the enemy and punches them back. These are cinematic and exciting animations that are way more engaging for players than abilities where your character screams at the bad guy, so they keep hitting them. If the holy trinity is to be adhered to, why are the player options not presented in an equal ratio? Why don't we have 9 Classes with 3 flavors of tanks, damage dealers and healers? Intrepid is setting this MMO up to fall into the same pitfalls of others historically that bottleneck group creation around the forced trinity system where 2/3 of the required classes are not represented in that same amount in the actual player base. Finally, let's talk
about balanced builds, metagames, and PvP options.
Steven has said that the game will have micro-Metas based on the PvE experience around your node and depending on the dungeons and raids you are facing. However, PvP is a different beast and if there is any class that can chain cc with a high time to kill, it will be sought after. The wiki says that the game will not be balanced around 1v1s. This means that there will definitely be this low time to kill with high CC builds through some avenue that are not being balanced around. Large scale PvP may be somewhat less dependent on specific player builds and more focused on coordination of the groups as a whole, but avoiding balancing 1v1 builds is a mistake. League of Legends does balance very well, most of the time. They rely on data that shows the win rates of every champion and every build, and they hone it all to be as close to 50% as they can get it. This means that you actually have to be better than your opponent at the game mechanics, and not use some cheese cc assassination build. This is why PvP games like Chess and Esports titles are known to be the best PvP games, they are balanced. I expect Intrepid to follow their word and not even try at balancing the builds and this will leave outliers that are known to dominate PvP in all of its forms. If effort is not put into balance in the beta test periods with open PvP arenas and data collected on win rates, most player builds will tend towards the same solutions that have disproportionately high win rates. This means that your player options are further constrained than having PvE be based around the holy trinity alone. It means you are just looking to build a character that fits into the PvE trinity and is unbalanced in 1v1 scenarios.
Its old design, and its bad design as far as the player options go. The social systems are what intrepid is good at and they are hiring people who are also good at that, but they really should contract with some people from Esports games (Riot Balance Team) for PvP and Co-op games (Larian Studios encounter design) for PvE to find ways to allow players to play the character they want to play instead of following meta-build guides that will inevitably produce the best results with these outdated design philosophies.
The tanking and threat mechanic is an issue for player versus non-player-controlled enemies in combat because it removes player satisfaction from the victory, player options during combat, requires managing an invisible number, and creates bad tank design. Having a threat mechanic into the enemy AI is likened to having a lenient dungeon master in tabletop roleplaying. For example, you send out the character built to take hits and the DM chooses to be nice and attack that player's character. This hurts the ability to suspend disbelief in the fantasy roleplaying game because the enemy is not acting in their best interest, but in yours. It doesn't give the players any satisfaction because the only option to beat the encounter is usually designed to use this threat system. BG3 gets around this by adding competent AI that targets the player that they have the MOST chance of hurting, not the least, and reducing the overall level of optimization required to compensate. This means that even with a low-mid optimized build the players can use creative solutions to overcome the encounters and feel like the enemies are actually acting in their best interest, thus getting satisfaction from the victory. The AI in BG3 will make positioning errors to target lesser armored or weakened characters, which the players can exploit through line of sighting much like most MMOs, but they will never target the tank simply because the tank has abilities to make them target them. For games with a threat mechanic, the player's victory is typically assured as long as they manage the invisible threat number (visible usually only with add-ons) appropriately to keep the monster targeting the tank. If these tank skills are a 1 to 1 transfer into a PvP space, they take all player autonomy away from whoever the tank uses the abilities on, and this usually requires all tank abilities to be designed once for PvE and again for PvP for them to have any viability in PvP without causing an imbalance issue. A fantasy MMO without threat would allow for the AI to feel more intelligent and tanks to use body blocking, tripping, pushing, grappling, and putting themself in harm's way to control the front line in cinematic ways, that also make sense for the character archetype. This puts more emphasis on positioning and clever teamwork on a party as a whole and allows for creative solutions rather than manipulating the same system for every encounter. This leads us to the holy trinity system itself.
The holy trinity system is an issue in most MMOs because of the differential requirement of tanks and healers and their player base. For instance, tanks are 1/3 of the trinity, yet the Tank class is 1/8 of the player options in Ashes of Creation. The cleric's numbers look the same. Doing away with the trinity, would allow players to complete content with creative strategies utilizing characters that they actually want to play. Healing is a part of Baldur's Gate 3, but not necessary, or even optimal. Finding ways to not take damage based on your positioning and tactics is much more of a successful strategy that requires forethought. Is there room for a tank and healer fantasy? Yes, there is, but engaging tank gameplay does not look like having these abilities that manage an invisible number to keep the monster mad at you by screaming. Think of any tank in League of Legends and what they do to actually protect the team. Braum jumps in front of you and holds up his shield, Alistar headbutts the enemy away; Maokai roots the enemy and punches them back. These are cinematic and exciting animations that are way more engaging for players than abilities where your character screams at the bad guy, so they keep hitting them. If the holy trinity is to be adhered to, why are the player options not presented in an equal ratio? Why don't we have 9 Classes with 3 flavors of tanks, damage dealers and healers? Intrepid is setting this MMO up to fall into the same pitfalls of others historically that bottleneck group creation around the forced trinity system where 2/3 of the required classes are not represented in that same amount in the actual player base. Finally, let's talk
about balanced builds, metagames, and PvP options.
Steven has said that the game will have micro-Metas based on the PvE experience around your node and depending on the dungeons and raids you are facing. However, PvP is a different beast and if there is any class that can chain cc with a high time to kill, it will be sought after. The wiki says that the game will not be balanced around 1v1s. This means that there will definitely be this low time to kill with high CC builds through some avenue that are not being balanced around. Large scale PvP may be somewhat less dependent on specific player builds and more focused on coordination of the groups as a whole, but avoiding balancing 1v1 builds is a mistake. League of Legends does balance very well, most of the time. They rely on data that shows the win rates of every champion and every build, and they hone it all to be as close to 50% as they can get it. This means that you actually have to be better than your opponent at the game mechanics, and not use some cheese cc assassination build. This is why PvP games like Chess and Esports titles are known to be the best PvP games, they are balanced. I expect Intrepid to follow their word and not even try at balancing the builds and this will leave outliers that are known to dominate PvP in all of its forms. If effort is not put into balance in the beta test periods with open PvP arenas and data collected on win rates, most player builds will tend towards the same solutions that have disproportionately high win rates. This means that your player options are further constrained than having PvE be based around the holy trinity alone. It means you are just looking to build a character that fits into the PvE trinity and is unbalanced in 1v1 scenarios.
Its old design, and its bad design as far as the player options go. The social systems are what intrepid is good at and they are hiring people who are also good at that, but they really should contract with some people from Esports games (Riot Balance Team) for PvP and Co-op games (Larian Studios encounter design) for PvE to find ways to allow players to play the character they want to play instead of following meta-build guides that will inevitably produce the best results with these outdated design philosophies.
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ok so basically you like the social aspects of the game and how the game is built around group play, but then you say group play is bad because of tanks and healers?
also, no one cares about bg3. different game. some games have taunts, some dont. just because bg3 doesnt, its irrelevant for this game (and other games). now i wonder if i can abuse bg3 ai since you said they attack the weakest players..so i can put a weak player at the back on purpose and my strong, beefy units at the front and they will go ignored while wreaking havoc into the enemies, then the enmies gonna be like nope, not running or focusing the warrior at the front, we gotta attack the dude at the back with light armor and half hp.
also, since you mention league..there are taunts in league. shen comes to mind. there are also taunts in dota. axe comes to mind. these are abilities that exist and there isnt anythingwrong with adding them to a game.
there isnt an issue with the holy trinity. it goes in the direction of ashes, since ashes ib uilt around group play and relying on others. this isnt a solo mmorpg. so only you and those who want a solo mmorpg have an issue. its like saying coke has issues but i only say that because i like pepsi, or vanilla cake is horrible i prefer chocolate cake. just different preferences and different games for different people. steering away from the trinity system would be going in the opposite direction ashes is going, which is group play and depending on your allies to beat your enemies.
its also good that there are more dps than tanks/spuports. it snot really 1/3. most people play dps. bad thing would be when you need more supports / tanks in a party than you need dps, because of player choices to play dps.
also, nothing wrong with metas. there are emta sin league, in dota, in bg3, in dnd, etc.
edit: oh also league doesnt do balancing very well. idk if you remember the old deathfire graps era..or 1 shot everything ww, and those are just 2 examples xDD
Highest win % is 53% and lowest is 45% across all character, all levels of play, over the last 30 days in league. Is that as balanced as chess? Yea it is basically according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess. That is why it is an Esport or one of the best PvP games. It is less about some cheesy opening or build and more about you as the player overall.
I think you missed the point about taunts. The fact is you cannot have the abilities 1-1 from PvE to PvP which is just more design work and you end up with the tank class functioning in two different ways, one that interacts with the threat mechanic and one that doesn't. 700,000 people cared about BG3 at launch, and if Ashes wants 1 million, they are going to have to do better than holy trinity and threat mechanics. They are not fun, they handwave AI, immersion, good combat design, player choice, suspension of disbelief, etc. You can have group play without forcing people to play roles they don't want to play. It is small, uncreative thinking, from the history of bad MMOs and Ashes isn't doing any innovating here, they are just copying bad gameplay which is why the MMO genre has been bad for generations. Moment to moment gameplay in WoW and Everquest is bad, and everyone seems to think that because they got popular that it is something to copy.
I'm not saying you don't need roles in a sense of strengths and weaknesses to your character, but that disregarding the threat system allows you to open the door to creative solutions to work around those things with other players. For instance, if you have no frontline, you can use terrain, mobility, evasion, traps, etc. If you have a frontline your options widen, but the content is not locked out for you entirely because your party doesn't represent 1/8th of the available classes.
league is historically one of the worst balanced games. again, deathfire grasp and 1 shot unavoidable ww are 2 examples. or riot nerfing olaf cuz voyboy 1v3 once in a tourney while he was farmed. 99% of players cant do that xDDD. or some champs being completely unuseable past certain rank. forget about the win rates.
maybe you cant have abilities from pve to pvp 1:1 as you said, but guess what? this game wasnt made with pve and pvp sepparated. this game was thought, designed and made with pve and pvp combined together. you arent just killing mobs, or players, you are doing both at the same time, so abilities are designed with that in mind.
also some stuff from other rpg are dumb...but hey we r playing games. it isnt real life. like tell me how tripping is realistic or better than yelling / taunt? really, there is a dude with a sword right next to you, and you are just going to ignore him and run straight at the mage at the back because he has light armor, ignoring the fact that the dude can cut you in half with his sword and on top of that, the dude decides that his best option to protect his mage is to put his foot forward and trip you, like if you guys were in a high school cafeteria? how is the ai acting on its best interests lmao. imagine a war, you have a bunch of archers shooting arrows and then a bunch of dudes with swords at the front. then the enemies decide to completely run past the dudes with swords to go for the archers because the archers are bad at melee combat, and then the dudes with swords are just gonna wonder why they are being ignored lol. how is that more immersive? but hey video games =/= real life and mechanics > meta rp.
bg is a turn based tactics rpg..different game. if you gonna base it in numbers at launch, how about e copy from nw? nw had more player st launch. mario 1 has sold more than bg3, lets copy from mario 1. lets copy from call of duty. maybe we should make every1 aim their weapons and spells with a crosshair.
no one is forcing you to play anything. you play whatever you want and group with people who play whatever they want. some parties might be more effective than others, sure, but that is also true in bg3 and league. so whats the problem? if i wanna play a rogue, ill play a rogue, i just wont party with 7 other rogues. wont even party with 3 other rogues in bg3. ill find a cleric, a bard, a tank, etc. no problem. only you think there is a problem.
holy trinity is a good system for games where players rely on others, and it isnt bad. plenty of successful games use this system. if you dont wanna rely on others, maybe this game isnt for you. you probably also want everybody to be able to gather, process and craft everything.
big attacker of a game you havent bought or played yet.
theres a thread every week saying "aoc MUST do this or copy this game or else it will fail"
before bg3 it was elden ring. so are we copying elden ring or bg3? which one? i wonder what aoc must copy next year.
the same way it would be silly to say that a solo game needs group play or it will fail. imagine saying bdo will fail because there isnt a dedicated healer class.
Please forgive 'our' (i.e. the forum community members who end up responding to you) reactions.
Because this type of topic has been discussed quite a few times before, in specific ways, there tends to be some 'resistance' to posts that seem to rehash the concerns, and you're more likely to get responses from those who disagree strongly or 'have more tendency to be on the opposite side of the discussion than you are'.
It's just 'easier' to do that, than to have the whole conversation again.
I believe that Ashes forum is not against 'necroing threads' if you have something relevant to say on the matter, so finding one of the many 'Tanking in PvP' or related threads, especially the official feedback ones, and bringing up your argument against whatever the 'last ideas you feel weren't addressed' in one of those, might get a 'better' result.
he would still get the same response in those threads. again, its all about the ideas, not the person.
its funny because bg3 uses a very old design, older than mmorpg T_T
i like how people talk about "outdated design" when they cant even name 1 design pattern and the same ideas have been in use for the past 30 years..what changes is the flavor lmao
I completely agree that OP would get the same responses from you in those threads.
My point was about 'responses in general'.
Those threads also discuss things in greater depth. One thing I ask you to remember is that people don't all have the time to absorb all the data on games. Right now, there are MMOs out there where game journalists are putting out entire 'new articles' that only contain information that is months old to anyone 'hardcore'.
An old thread is a good place to get access to a lot of data/discussion quickly.
thats understandable. but also, since people dont have all the data, they shouldnt be saying things like "if this game doesnt do this, it will fail, period". thats not even good feedback...thats not even feedback. and this is my problem.
i dont knwo why it is so hard to say something like " i wish to see this x thing in the game" and leave it at that. thats great.
To be fair, with the size of the OP you have here, and the fairly horrible formatting, you could well have said that and no one bothered reading it.
Care to share your thoughts in a more succinct format? Long form posts are sometimes needed when deep in a discussion, but starting a discussion on a forum should be from a fairly short post, if you want people to engage.
NPCs can be killed without tanks too but is harder because each player will have to try to allow only a few hits and then run. Healers (clerics or less skilled healers) will have to observe each player and predict things. CCs and potions will be used more often.
Because tank class is 1/8 of the player options you will have the chance to exercise creative strategies when tank and/or cleric is not around. You will enjoy both cases, when you have success without them and when you have easier time farming.
Variation is important rather than 1/3 of classes to be tanks or all classes to be able to do everything.
In games where the holly trinity is removed and each class can reconfigure itself relatively fast, the tanking and healing is still taken over by maximizing tanking or healing on some builds. And those configurations are achievable only if you invest time to get the gear or skills.
It is like logging into an alt which you also had to level up.
This one is simple to answer the sole focus on the threat mechanic existing is ignoring more than 50% of the actual tank gameplay & abilities. A quick look into the tank showcase or the Wiki already rveals that of the skils shown, more of them are CCs rather than "just threat generation". If threat does anything in Ashes based on what we know of the Tank it is the expression of the enemy getting annoyed with the CC machine they can't get past. Is design without it possible? Yes, but as a secondary mechanic it is fine IMO
Balance PvP
CC is only useful when it hits and that is what the whole idea behind the Rock-Paper-Scissors system which you can read about in the Wiki.
Tanks might be the strongest CC archetype out there but a mage that simply melts them from a afar doesn't give a damn about a short range stun, he won't be close enough to be affected and blinks away when the Tank tries to close the gap. And if the Tank turns up in magic resistant cloth, a Ranger will pick him off from a distance. Since you mentioned League - Galio can stack MR as much as he wants, ADCs like Caitlyn or Ez kill him nontheless.
Holy Trinity
1) The game is still in its Alpha phase where even core systems can be subject to change.
2) I have yet to see this general rejection of games that use the trinity system. From what I've seen in the feedback to Ashes' people seem quite satisfied that archetypes offer distinct class mechanics.
3) "Balance" doesn't mean "everything has to be available at the same quantity" it is mainly about the equality of impact
Why not 9 classes with 3 tank archetypes? Because there will be 8 tank classes thanks to augments and there is the possibilty to build Off-Tank classes by augmenting another archetype with Tank abilities, too. More on that in the Wiki. LoL is not a good comparison here for multiple tanks because that game has champions cap at 4-5 abilities leaving much more room to have multiple tanks with different abilities. In Ashes this is not the case by any stretch, yet still there will still be vastly different tanks solely because you can only take around half of the possible active abilities into your hotbar, so the choice of skills greatly influences the gameplay of a tank.
A PvP Tank will naturally take more hard CC and more higher ranged DD than a Tank diving into PvE content. For more on that read it here in the Wiki.
CONCLUSION
Tbh this strikes me as either as a list of worries or badly researched criticism - I would hope it is the first, because Intrepid and Lex are putting in a lot of work to provide as much confirmed information for us as possible and ignoring all of that just sets back the discussions to points it wouldn't have to go back to by doing bit of easy research.
i dont mind the trinity to easily balance a ton of PvE activities , i just dont want my open world PvP to become a PvE raid?
so don't play ashes of creation, this is a game that follows a classic trinity system, I am a PvP player, ever since DaoC, through WoW, Warhammer online, Revelation, Archeage, Tera, and now AoC, what I love the most about PvP in MMOs is comp formation and tactics with tanks doing the engage front line and CCing, healers and buffers on the back being protected and DPS melting down enemies with AoE and flank groups going for the enemy healers,
this is what MMORPG PvP should be and I'm glad that ashes is following that same path, if you don't like it, and want a 1v1 fighting game like BDO where everyone is just a different flavor of assassin, this is not the game
That trigger's me on so many levels, why do you get an automatic advantage for life because you ended up with the extravert / social genes? fck off.
Big 'Kent Honda' energy.
It's an advantage in MMOs. Being antisocial is an advantage in other parts of life, so it's balanced until the next patch.
I also like having defined roles with advantages and disadvantages in my high fantasy medieval role-playing combats. The problem is that filling out those roles is a bottleneck. You shouldn't be able to use the same tactics if you're missing roles like frontline, medic, or artillery, but it shouldn't gate your ability to progress using different tactics. A good game gives the players a choice of tools and challenges and says how are you going to use your tools to overcome this? or this? and allows for the creative solutions. The holy trinity is the opposite of creative solutions, it is the solution. Manage threat and win. You shouldn't have a "rotation" of abilities, because that removes decision making. They should be situational and have risk vs reward in positioning and the AI should take advantage of that like they are acting in their best interest to prepare players for other players doing the same in PvP and aiding in the suspension of disbelief because the bad guys don't act like mobs in an MMO, they act like monsters or people that want to win and survive.
You knew this before you made the post. Your message is that you would like it to be otherwise.
Yesterday I was watching some Q&A videos from March and April. Apparently Steven is listening to feedback as long as it is not against the design pillars. Could be that his objective to make the game like this is a gamble. We will see once it is alive.
Other MMOs come too and for the MMO market is a gain to have different mechanics, including Steven's.
Even though AoC is advertised as trying to bring players together, I think soloers will have some success too.
And the simplistic battle style where the tank brings everything onto him might prove boring fast enough during Alpha 2. We will give feedback. Now I suddenly see the Alpha 2 as a big advantage AoC has over other MMOs. In the videos I watched yesterday Steven talked also about the Alpha 2 and it seems it will really be meant to test and gather data rather than playing.