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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.
Armor types and how they function
Lash
Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
In the recent social media post and in the recent stream they brought up concepts for Light, Medium, and Heavy armor variants. If we go by what has been said about armor types in the past we are in for a very limiting and binary system for armor with it being magic/physical mitigation based on type. I believe this will lead to issues where players simply feel like they lost because they were not wearing the right armor. I think armor defense should reinforce specific playstyles instead. With each armor type having a unique defense type.
For example:
Light - antiburst focused defense with an energy shield that takes a while to recharge, gives a larger initial health pool so you can get in deal damage and get out.
Medium - reduced periodic damage (damage over time), reduces damage taken by a flat amount like -15 from every damage tick with a short cooldown. In general this would reduce damage taken from bleed or poison effects the most. It would be good for medium or longer duration fights.
Heavy - reduced sustained damage, increasing damage reduction if you have been hit recently up to a cap based on armor stats and quality. You would want this for longer duration fights like tanking a raid boss. Getting hit by a lot of people in a short time would stack this up faster. Armor shred mechanics could remove stacks.
In the examples each armor type would fill a niche without being obviously better in every scenario. They could remove armor bonus for equipping all the same armor type and instead add stats on gear that increase the effect of the defense type. Like reduced energy shield recharge time or increased max damage reduction on heavy armor. This gives you stats to play around with on gear and allows some hybrid gearing options.
I am sure they could come up with something better than just a scaling magic or physical damage reduction ratio. I feel as though trying to add in other bonuses like mobility on light or damage stats on medium would just create more balance issues without solving the core problem.
For example:
Light - antiburst focused defense with an energy shield that takes a while to recharge, gives a larger initial health pool so you can get in deal damage and get out.
Medium - reduced periodic damage (damage over time), reduces damage taken by a flat amount like -15 from every damage tick with a short cooldown. In general this would reduce damage taken from bleed or poison effects the most. It would be good for medium or longer duration fights.
Heavy - reduced sustained damage, increasing damage reduction if you have been hit recently up to a cap based on armor stats and quality. You would want this for longer duration fights like tanking a raid boss. Getting hit by a lot of people in a short time would stack this up faster. Armor shred mechanics could remove stacks.
In the examples each armor type would fill a niche without being obviously better in every scenario. They could remove armor bonus for equipping all the same armor type and instead add stats on gear that increase the effect of the defense type. Like reduced energy shield recharge time or increased max damage reduction on heavy armor. This gives you stats to play around with on gear and allows some hybrid gearing options.
I am sure they could come up with something better than just a scaling magic or physical damage reduction ratio. I feel as though trying to add in other bonuses like mobility on light or damage stats on medium would just create more balance issues without solving the core problem.
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Comments
Seems like that's to be expected.
That would very much still happen with any armor type system. However it becomes an issue if you feel like you lost because you did not follow the meta and use the "correct" armor type. For example if you are using heavy armor that mitigates mostly physical damage and you run into 8 mages, your armor choice was objectively wrong. It had nothing to do with your play style or your class really. You just take more damage because you did not predict an unpredictable scenario. This would most likely lead to everyone using the middle ground armor because it mitigates losing to a random chance encounter and it serviceable in other situations.
Armor choice should play to your own strengths instead of playing around an unknown opponent.
I disagree with OP overall, or at least the following:
If we go by what has been said about armor types in the past we are in for a very limiting and binary system for armor with it being magic/physical mitigation based on type.
I don't think that the information we have about armor types leads to this conclusion if you have played games beyond the Korean ones, i.e. if we believe that the non-Korean inspirations for this game still have any weight, this statement is making too big an assumption.
I believe this will lead to issues where players simply feel like they lost because they were not wearing the right armor.
Even if we do assume that we get a limiting system, the definition of 'lost' here is too nebulous, and I would not expect it as a trend across general functionality. Particularly in a game where the player does not have a heavy restriction on armor they can wear or swap to when out of combat. In a game with weight restrictions, this is a bigger concern.
I think armor defense should reinforce specific playstyles instead.
I think this is a bad idea and doing it correctly in a PvPvE MMORPG without simply relying on the player's options to change armor, is basically impossible. Having many different armor pieces may be an expectation in Ashes, though, so it might just be that I disagree with doing it to any meaningful degree beyond what I consider 'the obvious' (enhancing itemization)
With each armor type having a unique defense type.
Strongly opposed, I'd personally think that doing this would create the very problems it sounds like OP wants to address, within Ashes. It could be that I don't understand the goal, or misinterpret Ashes as a game (I've learned some things about ESO, for example, that could make me see how someone could conclude this), but as of now, I don't believe that unique defense types beyond Magical, Physical, Various Elemental (as examples of things beyond those, please reference the three given in the OP) would be good, as they are 'statistically variant' to a degree that inflates the difficulty of balancing.
My specific examples are something I though up in less than a minute and are probably flawed. However I strongly believe that armor type choice should be based on wanting a specific stat that is not based on opponent but based on how you intend to fight that opponent. Magical/physical damage reduction can still be a stat on gear to add however you see fit via crafting.
Ashes is designed with a balance for an 8-person group with one of each Primary Archetype.
You might be losing because you don't have great Passive Skills.
You might be losing because you don't synergize well with your groupmates.
You might be losing because the Augments pllied are not good choices for your Active Skills.
You might be losing because your Weapon Skills aren't great for your build.
You might be losing because you gear is sub-par - regardless of the gear system.
Yes, I understand that my answer is insufficient, but a full explanation would take pages and pages. Sorry that I just basically ended up going 'nope, don't like that' and didn't elaborate, but explaining my reasonings in detail just takes way too much.
If for some reason you care a lot about gathering a massive amount of data on your own, there should be some resources on the Internet from the period where the original game that was adapted into Predecessor, 'Paragon', had alternate itemization schemes. You'd be looking for the one with the 'cards' and the 'leveling to get slots for the cards' one.
That's probably not much help without a ton of context, so I suggest just ignoring it for now. I'm also not saying that your overall concept is bad, I'm just 'overcomplicating it' relative to your goals, I think.
In short, a game that used three itemizations, found that two of them failed hard and one was only okay. Since that time, a new developer applied another itemization to basically the same game. I believe that by comparing the reasons that the two failures, actually failed, one can draw certain conclusions about Ashes of Creation relative to your topic.
Maybe play-style is too nebulous of a thing for people and people simply want "I am a mage so I use cloth" and the fact that it mitigates more magic damage is just a bonus. It is mostly medium armor that is in an awkward place of being slightly good at everything but never the best.
I don't believe this is the problem.
Otherwise the solution would be to do what BDO does and have the same armor have a cloth design when on a mage, but a heavy design when on a Warrior.
I believe that even when this is done, people still look for the actual stats and stuff that help their builds.
I'm not sure I understand a specific difference you're proposing. If I have a Light Armor set so that I can avoid magic Damage, it'd be because I planned to take on something that did magic damage.
Similarly, if I have a light armor set so that I can tank big bursts of damage, it's because I planned to take on something that did burst damage.
What is the difference in how a player perceives this, exactly? Is it that somehow in the latter case I 'know' that I will be aiming to avoid sustain damage, but in the first case I couldn't 'know' that I was aiming to avoid physical damage?
The light armor suggestion I proposed would be an energy shield that is in addition to your normal life bar. It recovers over time while not being hit. So if you have 3k life and 2k energy shield you can take a large burst of damage due to your extended life pool. Say you are playing a mage, you might want this because your goal as a mage is to run in, pop aoe cooldowns then blink away. Sustained damage reduction that builds up over time would be bad for this playstyle. If you are playing a tank you might want this as an offtank, Where your goal is to tank damage at specific intervals for a short period of time. The armor type you have would change how you play your character in order to mitigate the most damage possible. It is very obvious in function and removes those scenarios where you feel like something happened outside your control.
Basically yes to your last point, I feel like mitigating that feeling of the unknown variable is valuable to armor type choice. Right now the main way to do that is simply pick medium so you get a bit of both but that is kind of a non-choice to me.
To be fair, we are yet to know how the Arena system will work; There might be an arrangement wherein we know ahead of time that it will be Mage vs Mage, Fighter vs Fighter, etc. In those such cases, we'd know what to stack, ahead of time.
Yours truly will seek to have both the extreme protections against magic AND physical damage available, but will prob quest and wander the world mostly in the "middle" armor. There will no doubt be areas wherein we'll know/be able to guess ahead of time what to expect the greater of, but the average-against-each option seems like the best choice to just be travelling around in.
So, just for my final clarity, you don't perceive that the same thing happens when you have armor that 'helps you against a burst character but not a sustain character'?
If it helps, I'm mentally comparing:
https://omeda.city/items/Dread
vs
https://omeda.city/items/CrystallineCuirass
In MY mind, 'not knowing which of these to choose because I'm not sure which enemy I will encounter' is the same as what we're talking about because the game these come from allow certain characters to focus on either the burst damage or sustain damage parts of their build.
So I'm not seeing as much of a difference as you possibly are.
Ok, then I think we're all clear. I agree with you right up until the last part.
I don't think the current design should be described as that, but I agree that if the current design actually was definitely that, we'd want to avoid it.
For reference, Intrepid, here are the other items that go into that 'slot', if we're discussing just Magical Defense:
https://omeda.city/items/Leviathan (this is actually called Tainted Bastion now, but webdev is hard I guess)
That's the one for 'I just want to take less damage in general' and therefore it was the one that got the 'affects opponent' effect, since 'Opponent heals less' is a factor-function of 'I take less damage overall'.
https://omeda.city/items/FluxMatrix
This is the one for 'My playstyle is about actively stopping you from hurting me using my own skills but accept that it can't work every time'
https://omeda.city/items/Spellbreaker
And this is the 'I scoff at your single hit burst damage' one.
So, as Lashing says, if we're 'only getting Tainted Bastion' on Cloth armor generally, and relegating everything else in these Items to augments/skills/whatever, then I agree that the armor 'options' are doing nothing for playstyle.
but that's the same thing...you could lose because you weren't wearing the correct armor.
light armor might not always give more mdef than pdef. it could simply be less of both armors and just more movement for example..
every time you replace one effect with another, you can run into the same scenario that you want to try to avoid...you lost because you weren't wearing the correct armor.
Keep in mind rock, paper, scissors will be a core aspect of the pvpeeps.
By design, Ashes is balanced for an 8-person group with one of each Primary Archetype. And it’s a PvX game.
So, expect the average player to gear according to who they are attempting to match in Rock/Paper/Scissors.
If the Mage is planning to focus on attacking Tanks, expect them to have some gear that mitigates Physical Damage.
If the Mage is plannning to focus on attacking Bards, expect them to have some gear that mitigates Magical Damage.
Of course, in Ashes, Tanks also wield magic.
Which is another reason most players will wear a mix of Physical Armor and Magical Armor.
That said, I don't really see the issue.
I would perhaps understand some general distaste of the current protection scheme if people were assuming all light armor had caster stats and all heavy armor had tank stats - but this isn't the case
This is not the issue, It is where the player agency is placed. I prefer it to be placed on my own choices, not random encounter chance. The core stat of each armor type is currently based on mitigating specific damage types. I believe that specific damage type mitigation should be based on secondary stats not core stats. Meaning the core stats can now change HOW they mitigate damage instead of only mitigating a ton of one thing and nearly nothing of another. Massive damage swings are very hard to balance.
If the paradigm is physical damage or magic damage, and you enter a fight with the wrong one equipped, you are at a disadvantage.
If the paradigm is burst damage vs sustained damage and you enter a fight with the wrong one equipped, you are still at that same disadvantage.
If you are just walking about the world with full physical mitigation and no magic defense at all, if a mage comes up and kills you in two shots, that is 100% on you. You should have geared yourself for better protection than that.
If you are in doubt, wear medium armor.
Once again being countered is not the issue. It is that your gear choice had nothing to do with your own play style. Armor choice should depend on how YOU want to play, not based on who you randomly encounter.
That is simply bad game design.
Your gear choice has everything to do with how you play.
Keep in mind, all of the secondary effects on armor are not restricted by the type of armor in question. If you want caster stats on heavy armor, have it made.
Secondary effects not being restricted means the core stats are the most important part of picking what type of armor to use. Right now the core stats are simply variable physical and/or magical damage reduction. These core stats are not something you pick based on playstyle, you pick them because you are assuming you will run into more magic damage dealers or physical damage dealers. You have to guess essentially.
I think the core stats on gear should enhance the way you want to play, AKA you wear gear that lets you survive burst damage because your goal playstyle is to run in and deal burst damage then get out. Regardless of the damage type of what you are facing your playstyle choice will not change.
If it is how you say it - then it will mean everyone wears Leather armor. Yes yes i know this sounds funny
But if for example you have leather armor that gives 100 armor and 100 mr and you put full set of 10 such items you end up with 1000 armor and 1000 mr
So now if you put 5 Plate with 150 armor and 50 mr + 5 cloth with 50 armor and 150 mr you end up with 1000 armor and 1000 mr.
In the end you will have everyone have exactly the same stats. So you should be forced to wear only cloth or only plate or only leather. Or of course put some other distinguishing effects as the OP said so there is actually some effect in the different types of armor
I think there should be 1 defense stat that include both mr and armor in it. So plate gives most defense stat so reduce all kind of dmg, while leather gives medium armor and cloth gives least armor.
And the idea here is that the less armor you have - the more dmg you deal. So you want to be full dps - build cloth, you want to have both dmg and defense - leather, you want to tank - plate
You will be able to adapt your playstyle accordingly - if you want to be more of a support (for example fighter that stacks bleed to reduce healing) you run plate, so you dont die easily. So even sacrificing some dmg, you can accomplish your goal.
And then you wear whatever combo you prefer.
We don't know what stats a set will have.
A set could be a mix of Physical Armor and Magical Armor. Again, because each Class has a mix of Physical Damage Active Skills and Magical Damage Active Skills.
You should really wait until you play and understand the design rather than offer critiques based on expectations from previous games.
Since each class has a mix of Physical Damage and Magical Damage and the game is balanced for a group of 8 with one of each Primary Archetype, you build for the enemy Primary Archetype you most want to defend against or attack.
And then change your armor if you need to against known Mobs/NPCs. Or Weather or Biomes.
Your tactics should adjust to deal with the specific challenge.
Guess we just found out the real problem here... You think people write comments here to make critiques.
And in reality - people make comments to offer ideas that IS can take even small part of those ideas if it will help them make the game better.
Might as well not post on the forums at all if that is the case. Armor type choice as a meta discussion is a topic worth bringing up regardless of their current design.