How do you guys feel about "ultimate" skills?

Settite

As per the wiki:

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.
Ultimate skills are very powerful skills that can be used when enough focus has been accumulated from using the Weapon combo system.[1]

Do you guys want ultimate skills? Do you hate them, love them or are indifferent?

Would like to know the general feelings on them. The beam attack that was in Alpha 1 looks very much like an ultimate to me, however we haven't seen it on the mage archetype yet so I'm wondering if they scrapped the idea.

Personally I come from eso so I'm partial to ultimates. It feels good to have climactic ability that can alter the flow of battle or help securing the kill.

Thoughts?

Ludullu

Weapon combo system seems to have changed quite a bit since 2017 (the date of that quote), so I kinda doubt ultimates are still in.

I feel like procs kinda took their place and instead of just huge abilities that can swing the battle somewhat drastically (but maybe unreliably), we now have a system that lets players have a much wider choice of options as to what they want the "ultimate move" to be. Is it a skill refresh that will allow them to do a strong ability twice in quicker succession? Is it a huge dmg boost on the next ability, so that you can keep your big cds for the proc? Is it an elemental application that enables some big party synergy, which can then turn the battle on its own?

This kind of choice seems more enticing to me than just "hit a dude a few times and then you'll be able to do a big pre-determined move, that might not even matter in your current situation".

Nerror

I am fairly indifferent to ultis. As always, the implementation matters, but they are not something I need in my combat at the end of the day.

CROW3

I like finishers - e.g. kill shot when tgt is below x%. Not a fan of chained ultimate skills ala mortal kombat.

blat

CROW3 wrote: »

I like finishers - e.g. kill shot when tgt is below x%. Not a fan of chained ultimate skills ala mortal kombat.

Same. I want skills which can be combined together in creative ways and adapted to situations, rather than contrived combos (which basically = rotations)

Voeltz

I liked how it was done in Warhammer Online. You had a morale resource bar that would fill up only in combat. The longer you were fighting, the more morale you could build to use the stronger abilities. There were morale 1-4 abilities which you could slot from several choices. Using any morale ability would put the rest on cooldown so you couldn't just spam the lower level ones.

In Ashes case, they basically have Ultimates already - stronger abilities with longer cooldowns. I believe Airstrike is one for the Ranger and another could be Leap Strike for the Fighter.

Dripyula

Hahahahaha, o' I would like something like this as a mage for sure.

" HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! "

Then again I wonder if ultimates could become visually a cut above the rest?
If we end up in a big battle with lots of players, to power up an ultimate skill should probably take 2 minutes each and upon dying, the progress gets reset.
In a way another hand up for healers as they allow people to live long enough to unleash dangerous stuff.

Leonerdo

They would be kinda stupid to not include any ultimate abilities or big finishers. There are way too many games/players that lean into that playstyle of building up a meter or combo or something to get a super big attack. And I have to agree that it's very satisfying. I'd say it's basically a staple in action-oriented RPGs and for good reason.

The real question is how they want to implement them. Just long-cooldowns or some other requirements? Probably depends on the class.

Of course those kinds of abilities are usually saved for high-/max-level capstone abilities. So we might not see any at the start of Alpha 2 (only up to level 30 will be available).

Settite

Leonerdo wrote: »

They would be kinda stupid to not include any ultimate abilities or big finishers. There are way too many games/players that lean into that playstyle of building up a meter or combo or something to get a super big attack. And I have to agree that it's very satisfying. I'd say it's basically a staple in action-oriented RPGs and for good reason.

The real question is how they want to implement them. Just long-cooldowns or some other requirements? Probably depends on the class.

Of course those kinds of abilities are usually saved for high-/max-level capstone abilities. So we might not see any at the start of Alpha 2 (only up to level 30 will be available).

I like how eso does it. You naturally build up a meter as you fight. Each ultimate has a unique amount of "meter" needed to use the ultimate. That way we could get weaker ones at lower levels and stronger ones at Higher Levels. I also liked that you could get them from certain questlines or guilds in the world. Example: (if memory serves correctly) joining the mages guild and locating all of the tomes in the world would give you access to the ice comet ultimate where you would literally drop an ice comet from the Sky. It was also on the pricier side for meter cost. I believe it would also add another layer of complexity to pvp since there could be a wide variety of ultimates available in game if implemented in a similar way.

Spif

I don't think every class has a mechanic that lends itself to an ult (Fighter's does, and I guess cleric too?), and I don't like the idea of adding another bar to fill up just to get ults into the game.

I did like ESO's ultimate implementation. There was a variety of choices that did not depend on class. Just one fix: ult should decay out of combat.

Vissox

I'd be more willing to discuss it when we see it.

KingDDD

Ultimates are bad, charging ults from damage even worse.

The whole point of ultimates in MOBAs is to limit character power and force a lane stage. In MMOs it just doesn't work.

Individuated Soul

Ultimate abilities do work. My preference for implementation:

1) Long CD (5 mins like in Lost Ark felt good but wouldn't mind 10-15 mins since engage times are probably much higher making the CD up more often at 5 mins)(Charge based is wack IMO)
2) Skill Shot to some or high degree
3) Based on Primary Class and Weapon used
4) Damage not so absurd to make any encounter impossible if its missed (PVE perspective).
5) Damage is limited to 20-30% average max in PvP (if practical, since eHP matters)

Jam21

Chinese games (most popular & known in the West: NARAKA: Bladepoint) , are known for having OVERBEARING ultimates. Basically you fight only off your ultimate... without it don';t even try. And this form of game design has recently crawled into the West as well...

So if the ultimates like this - no, I don't like it.

But if we talk about more classic ultimates - like, skills with 15 or 30 min CD, that are not super-duper-op, but just somehow powerful. More traditional ones. This kind of thing are good.

Noaani

I have a general dislike for "ultimate" abilities being a core combat system. If every class has them, then every class plays the same. You build what ever resource, then use the ultimate ability and just repeat.

Having it as potential systems to create a build around is all good, but it needs to be an optional way to create a build, as opposed to an optimal way to create a build.