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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.
ARPG LEVEL COMPLEXITY
Godawful
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
What does the community think about bringing in the ARPG style of skill complexity to a MMO like AOC? Not only for Skils but for Weapons as well. Any master min/max(ers) out there?
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That depends are we talking about D4 or PoE? Cause i don't see many games being more complex than PoE
Some examples help, too.
He means a skill tree like Path of Exile. Hard to explain if you're not familiar, but its probably 100 times more complex than any MMO.
Hard pass for me, I want be able to relax at least a little bit when playing an MMO.
I love POE, but in doses. I wouldn't want that translated to ashes.
EQ2 is, by a mile.
PoE's skill tree can be daunting, but it isn't really complex. The games combat system is also far more simple than the average PvE MMORPG, with far, far fewer mechanics at play at any one point in time.
An argument could be made that PoE's crafting is more complex than any MMORPG that I have ever seen, however.
I dont know man, i played eq2 for years. It doesn't come close to poe. EQ2 didn't have anywhere near the variables that poe covers. Also the classes were linear, you got very specific things as you leveled.
In poe you can literally do anything with any character in any combination you like. They don't all work out the same, but the level of complexity and options isn't approached by any multiplayer game ive ever seen or heard of.
We're talking about like, POE and its 'hey we're basically giving you near-developer level control over every skill you have' approach, right?
I doubt it would be particularly more popular than what they are working on now.
are we talking about building your character or actually using it?
and depending on how secondary archetypes work and what we're given for modifiers on gear there could be a lot of customization options for ashes
Building your character skills and itemization. With all the different seasons and ways it adds to gearing and such as well.
As far as playing it won't be as complex as any kind of mmo even if you make a try hard build where you use more skills (which most likely won't be as effective but you can do it still).
Ashes would be months instead of hours. Respecs would have to be readily available or people would quit the game.
That reminds me of shadowbane lol
For real. I only lasted a couple months on that game. Nice idea and all, but it's a perfect example of "hardcore" gone way too far.
You mean something like POE's level of skill complexity?
Among the ARPGs POE truly stands out in this aspect and that would be far beyond what i would expect Ashes could or should reach.
Aren't we all sinners?
If I were to guess, based on this observation of the game, I would say you last played in 2007. The reason I say this is because that is the last time classes were linear like you say here.
Logging on to my wizard now, I have 13 different skill trees to put points in. Not a tree with 13 branches - 13 different trees, each with multiple branches. There may even be more with expansions I don't own - I don't know. I just know I have access to 13 different trees right now. That is only one of the games 26 classes.
To say PoE's single skill matrix and selection of skill gems is more complex than 26 classes each with their own spell list and 13 skill trees is, well, incorrect.
Sorry.
Doesn't really matter to say which one is more complex anyway as both them are very in-depth with a lot of years of growth on both games. And AoC won't be going anywhere near either of them at launch atleast.
That being said what we have seen from a lower level skill tree so far and having multiple looks like there will be some good build variation. Something recent mmorpgs have been lacking. Be ie poe or EQ 2 there are both good references, I can see them leaning more towards EQ in making their skill tree like it.
Perhaps put another way, in order to demonstrate the relative complexity of each game - look at ability slots and hkey binds.
PoE gives players 8 ability slots, and 13 key binds (it may be 18 key binds - but I don't know of any build that uses more than 5). With secondary weapons you can almost double this - but very few builds make use of secondary weapon slots.
EQ2 gives players 120 ability slots, each able to have it's own key bind.
You are right in that it doesn't really matter - the only reason I bought it up was because it was stated above that MMORPG's don't have the level of complexity that PoE does, and as you know I will not leave an incorrect statement unchallenged.
The reason people think of PoE as complex is because you literally have every class in the game laid out for you, where as in other games people are used to looking at one class at a time.
I don't really look at poe based on skill used but the level of complexity of builds you make as there is like 1300 nodes, items, seasons that can add skill trees to weapons(meaning every weapon could have a unique skill trees so you can get the infinite number idea there) , additional skill trees with other special effects to characters, etc.
You are free to say EQ have a lot of complexity to it but i doubt you are going to make that statement for most mmorpgs. A few outliers is fine, most mmorpgs don't match poe anywhere close.
To create a build (as opposed to using someone elses), all you have to do is pick the keystones you want to be using, and then work out what path you want to take to get them, paying attention to notable passives along the way.
It is really quite simple once you get over the fact that you are looking at every class in the game at once, as opposed to one class at a time. This part is true - I have long said EQ2 (not EQ) has the most complex combat and class system of any MMORPG on the market.
But that was my point - the statement was that MMORPG's don't get that complex - not that most don't, or that Ashes won't.
Either way, if Ashes wanted to approach that level of complexity they would have to be very careful how they approached it.
Something like that can be a huge barrier to entry. And they would need pretty robust systems built into the UI, to get players throught it. POE has that issue right now.
Again though, he comment was simply that MMORPG combat doesn't reach that level of complexity - which was untrue even if i can only cite one example.
No worries, it actually got me to download EQ2 today lol. Kinda felt nice to have a look around.
It won't last forever, but it was a bit of a homecoming. Star Wars Galaxies, Eve Online and EQ2 were the first MMOs I ever played, all around the same time.
Unsure who is talking about combat, and if you were talking to me or him. But its really about character building with what was being talked about for me atleast.