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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.
Feedback for the skill tree method
George_Black
Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
Do not make active abilities lockable due to choices.
Active abilities abilities offer the most satisfaction in gaming combat and we should have access to our classes unique moveset all the time by:
Always being able to unlock them with enough experience
Having a large hotbar
The restrictions to balance and customization should be foune in:
Weapon/armor equipment choices
Ability mp cost, cooldown timers and situational usage choice. Not being missing out due to the choices offered on a skill tree.
I think passive abilities and the notion of "customization" should be detached from active abilities. Passives are mechanics under the hood. They are not as exciting. Due to the good work the Devs did in making them a bit more than just "3% crit rate", "500 armor penetration", "5% CD reduction" and the rest of lame choices every single-player video game (that tries to mimic mmos) conjure these days, sure, keep the system of speccing. But keep active abilities separate.
Active abilities abilities offer the most satisfaction in gaming combat and we should have access to our classes unique moveset all the time by:
Always being able to unlock them with enough experience
Having a large hotbar
The restrictions to balance and customization should be foune in:
Weapon/armor equipment choices
Ability mp cost, cooldown timers and situational usage choice. Not being missing out due to the choices offered on a skill tree.
I think passive abilities and the notion of "customization" should be detached from active abilities. Passives are mechanics under the hood. They are not as exciting. Due to the good work the Devs did in making them a bit more than just "3% crit rate", "500 armor penetration", "5% CD reduction" and the rest of lame choices every single-player video game (that tries to mimic mmos) conjure these days, sure, keep the system of speccing. But keep active abilities separate.
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Comments
i liked ragnarok more than l2 in that regards.
But if the player logs out for 3 months or does not constantly use them because plays on an alt too much, he should forget half of them.
Learning them again 2nd time should be faster, like half the effort initially spent.
I don't want to see players having many alts in top shape prepared months ago, ready to be used instantly, without any active effort to maintain them.
well the effort would be in acquiring gear for those alts?
Gear is a different objective. I still don't have a clear feeling how much stronger the next tier is when we talk. Could be that gear will come too as the skills are unlocked slower and slower. Some will call that grind, others progression... but players who like to have only one character will have their satisfaction too.
Yep... block archetype skills which is the identity of the gameplay, but provide access to all armors weapons and universal skills. Liniker logic.
you are still not going to use all armors and weapons. i doubt ill ever see a tank or a warrior fighting wearing a robe or a ranger using a sword lol
and if you take into consideration that weapons will have procs, not every proc will be useful for your build.
if you select some skills and build around them, other skills that yo u didnt pick wont be too useful to you, since you built around the skills that you picked and you will be too busy using the skills that you picked.
for example, in ro, enchant deadly poison is probably the best assassin cross skill, but if you play a soul breaker build, then you arent going to pick edp (you might pick it because you have extra points, but you will never use it) since it doesnt boost your sbk damage. also, you are probably not going to pick venom splasher, even though both builds use the same weapons, because its a completely different playstyle than sbk. you would be too busy running away from mobs and hitting them from afar to use vs.
everything indicates that ashes is going for a similar approach. so each archetype will have a few builds that can be played instead of just one with everything and dont use half of your skills 90% of the tme.
I dont buy in this insanity.
People wanting no restrictions in having access about everything outside their archetype toolkit, are being ok with having to go through the respec process about the gameplay options housed inside the archetype namely abilities.
Just like you are not going to use all the armors and weapons simultaniously, same thing happens with the active abilities.
You cant use them all, due to CD MP cost, reaction times, enemy type or situational circumstances.
But they should all be available to you to use them strategically against the various encounters.
There is 0 reasons to lock them out.
"Every build will be the same". 0 logic. As if everybody will play fighters with the same weapon armors. As if every rogue will be dual daggers. As if their arent class combos to add flavour, ye, if all active abilities are ready to be slotted everybody will be the same.
This isnt assasains creed valhala or diablo. It's an mmo. The archetypes' active abilities are the core of combat.
well, you could always have all abilities unlocked, but you cant put everything in your hotbars. its the same, except you can change them on the fly instead of going back to town.
theres nothing inherently in mmo that dictates that you should have all your abilities unlocked. instead of offering subclasses and locking you out of other subs if you pick one, you have all your skills available and then you make a build and you can respec and change that build without having to make a different ccharacter.
also, balance reasons.
Lets say that the targeted active ability at max level is 20. Lets create 30-35 active abilities in the pool. Think about WoW specs i.e. the Mage - you have Fire, Arcane and Frost. Each has its own unique spells, and within that there might be spells one mage has which another doesn't.
I think WoW's design has gone downhill a bit, but I think that choice and variety prevents the homogenisation of classes. I understand that you said gear/passives can accomplish this, but there's no reason to just rule out actives entirely.
The class tree should have actives and passives, while limiting the total you can achieve. Similarly, the weapon tree is all passives, but should also limit the max you can have. Build diversity is fun as it allows you to play around with different builds and stops classes feeling too samey even within your own respective Class/Dual class setup.
The real balance is how much diversity do you allow. The more you do, the harder to balance. So there does need to be a sweet spot.
its not my logic, its Intrepid's logic, archeage logic, and was always planned lol
The build should be related to how you geared up on that day
Lets not have a ''same thing every time all the time'' class design.
WoW Classic did it right. Have some builds be a thing of their own, with certain (not many but a few) active abilities unlocked via talent point allocation.
The only thing I did not like was the talent tree being so small. Hope the final one will be far larger with a ton of possible builds.
Agreed, the same set of meta abilities would be used by everyone in the end and we'd have no variety at all.