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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.
10-15 SECONDS TTK
GreatPhilisopher
Member, Alpha Two
According to steven the TTK will be 10-15 seconds , are you guys ready to have fun getting 1 shot all the time , gonna be fun for a lot of the people who loved the game having a 30 sec-1m TTK
6
Comments
A certain set of recent changes to the way damage is calculated, and the information from the weapon trees, tells me this can work.
I also however absolutely support everyone who feels strongly negative about this. I'm just saying that from my perspective and the overall flow of the game, it would have been extremely hard to make the TTK they said originally, work.
EDIT: Also Rangers need to just lose Snipe as an ability straight up if they want this.
Honestly not unexpected at all, i don't know how people think attacking someone for 60 seconds as the average base line is going to fly in modern games lol (average and high end are not the same).
This depends entirely on how you 'measure' TTK, though, the positional jockeying before the actual engagement is usually not counted.
If anything, the important thing here is the dynamics of battles where a character can 'use a long cooldown ability, then not be able to use it again before everyone in their team is down or the battle is lost'. This is what Steven basically said he wants to happen though.
Yes, this is a wildly different design direction than what anyone but probably Mag7 was thinking when they visualized Ashes combat, but it's not particularly bad.
Shoutouts to Mag7spy for the good call on that and holding the line against all of us dreaming up ways to get to some sort of 'revolutionary' modern 30s TTK. Keep going, king.
You gotta be a little clearer about these things around these parts, y'know.
No one would be expecting a game where it takes 6s or more to cast a buff. I know what you mean by this (assessment + decision + positioning + cast time) but to others it will just sound like hyperbole.
I don't think the team generally wants the Bard to be the one 'dealing with' the focus fire aspect of battle, if anything, your part would be to assess based on the guaranteed demise of whoever gets focused. That's going to be an interesting skill check for bards with the cooldowns we've been seeing.
I don't see 1 second happening unless certain things were together. Group has full DPS and no heals and people are standing still. If there is a moment where the gameplay has no defensive capabilities and you can't react to anything in the game they will change it until its where they want.
Party vs Party does not automatically create low TTK scenarios, this is not true in TL, it is not true in good MOBAs, it is basically only true in weak MMORPGs (I'm sorta counting New World here too, yes) and Korean MMOs that have mistuned CC.
Now, I'm not arguing against anyone who currently sees Ashes through the lens of 'it's a Korean-like MMO with mistuned CC' because it certainly do be like that tho...
But it's kind of like 'Korean WoW' at this point in terms of design 'flair' (I can't say 'ethos' because we still don't know enough to know and will not know until Rogue releases at minimum).
I can only say that there are many reasonable designs in which TTK of 10s between two averagely balanced parties (i.e. only 1 or 2 duplicates of Primary Archetype in the party) does not lead to anyone getting actually burst down in under 5s.
The main issue would be if the target audience of Ashes have the skill to play in that design space. (based on my recent 'smurfing' in Pred, no, they probably do not, but that doesn't mean the top players need to slog).
If we get certain things, we're going full ArcheAge.
You any good players will be able to survive though is the thing. (though i guess it depends who you are fighting as well).
I'd' image it be like throne and liberty if you are having a 1v1, but the fight would last longer because of your defensive skills. (Something I feel throne and liberty lacks except for sword+shield). And the skill level of that will be what separate players from surviving longer in fights.
Im still convinced like i said before you will see the TTK around 20 seconds with proper team composition (but fluctuating based on player resources) . Like i said in my post to nikr if people are dying without being able to react as a norm. They will most likely up it to it is where they want.
Honestly i wouldn't be surprised if there is ways to spec into special cc resist for first hit cc resist based on the Q/A talk.
your defensive skills wont matter if u gonna die before u can use any of them and even if u can u would of wasted a lot of points for those defensive stuff now u are useless. they think 10-15 sec with the current state they are in with basic weapons and not much testing on what players will actually do in the game, in reality 10-15 will only get u one shots with no way to react only maybe a tank get to survive for a few seconds if he's lucky.
no one thought we'll get 1 minute of a fight unless its maybe 2 rouges trolling in invis or tanks with heals , most people or at least i thought the TTK would be between 25-45 secs maybe 15-20 secs in some situations and make it so a higher level player can kill players 20 lvls under him but would be challenged if a few ganged on him and same with a player or two 10 lvls under him so GS isnt obsolete where even at the same level a little GS differnce means u are useless.
they are even going with the AA weapons route which will basically mean 2 handed weapons are gonna be useless .
if they keep this the game will only be playable by tryhards who got macros to click 20 skills in 1 second and not even bothering cuz anyone whos isnt almost the same GS as them will die in 2 auto attacks anyway
Cause we saw in the caravan showcase that a few rangers using snipe together just wiped a dude. Snipe is a long cast, so one might say it was a non-1-second ttk, but to me I don't care what my enemy does for howeverlong before he hits me, but if I die within a 1sec of a hit - imo that's a 1s ttk.
Defensive buffs would presumably get counterbalanced by offensive ones, unless Intrepid go out of their way to add long-lasting strong def buffs that MAKE the ttk last longer.
In any other case, a well-prepped group with a rogue that has full stealth can wipe an enemy cleric in under a second. I'll be glad if I'm wrong, but right now I'm not seeing a way where I could be wrong tbh.
If you are getting one shot that isn't 10-15 ttk. Also defensive skills can be as strong as the devs want it to be. Do to this TTK they need to be stronger for the skill ceiling to make sense.
The sweet spot imo is when you aren't just trying to throw everything out in rotation but you are actually thinking about the combat and when to use moves. Else they could be dodged, guarded, reflected, etc. Which slows down combat a bit.
Though i need to actually test it, and that being said no one is going to have full kits and game wont be balanced. Though the feeling is what is important, does it feel good, can i react, etc.
It's admittedly difficult to explain, but note that I, at least, and I expect Mag, are not saying 'what they have right now will fit what they say they want'.
If anything I'd say their demos have been explicitly terrible for showing off anything TTK related, as much as some people find the whole ranger burstdown appealing or funny.
All I'm saying is that there are multiple designs which can exist where anyone reasonably expecting any PvP, should have abilities/gear that prevents the majority of sub-4s TTK situations. The 'issue' is, again, the execution skill level required to play in those designs, because they are Fighting Game tier (technically higher than most modern ones, but not all).
Also, we still have to factor the most meaningful effect on TTK, Accuracy Vs Evasion. No matter what you do, statistically, JUST the fact that Fighter's Maim skill could theoretically just nat1 the enemy Cleric, means that TTK can go up.
If 10s is what happens between two full-assault DPS, it's almost certainly because both built as much Acc as they need to kill the average player, and nearly no meaningful Evasion.
Evasion builds in BDO can reach 27s TTK (more like time to finally die).
BDO.
Technically neither of these is good, in my opinion.
But it's also a moot point, there's no way for Steven to give a reasonable answer regarding their interaction targets in something like an AMA, that would take multiple videos just to get even the start of understanding.
Probably because it's a Berserker doing it. First 2 minutes.
Just imagine this, but on me as Cleric, and some of the CC parts are working so I can't necessarily get heals off until enough CC DR builds up.
But still not dying super fast.
The gaming world is truly full of all sorts of design ideals.
Also, as Mag has told you many times before, BDO is not particularly 'Action', you mostly can just 'point in the general conal direction of your enemy and the right thing will probably happen.
It's honestly more generous than some parts of TL at the higher levels of play, so the Evasion stat is there to make up for that and bring it closer to what Mag has described and what players like Dygz would want if they were 'Action Combat' fans.
Anyways, the point there is, you need a lot of experience, understanding, examples, etc, and most importantly game context, to know what '10-30s TTK' means.
If you watch this whole clip and then had to tell someone TL's TTK, you'd have to say '4-40 seconds' or something equally unhelpful. This is why I care so much more about the details of what they show, than the number given.
But, again, I agree that what they've shown doesn't look good yet. It's just not simple enough to take as a whole if you have faith like Mag does.
In an RPG, it should be possible to build a character with better aim than the player's aim.
That's really the entire point of an RPG.
RPGs with Action Combat allow more player skill imput but should still have plenty of character build determing results.
(I do prefer hybrid, like NWO. Though BDO sucks - feels hack n slash - and Classes feel like a generic fighting game rather than like a true RPG Class.)
I'll never forget when i quit and came back and had a bit of gear and was attacking an evasion build and he left to go afk and i couldn't deal dmg to him. Only to bring my friend that hadn't quit that was really geared and watch him do 0 dmg on his class back when evasion was op.