Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Again, the point I'm trying to make is that their key differences are cultural. The identity of a Ren'kai is centered around honor, power, and tranquility. These are cultural ideals, not physical traits. That I know of, there's no reason Kaelar Kevin couldn't live among the Ren'kai and adopt ideals of honor, power, and tranquility. If a Ren'kai's racial abilities/augments were centered around honor, power, and tranquility, which I think they should be if they exist, then it stands to reason that Kaelar Kevin would be able to learn these racials too, given sufficient effort.
I'm not saying they couldn't make racials based on physical attributes, just that racials based on culture would be a solution that would allow "racials" to not be race-locked.
Guess my definition of "Racial ability" and yours dont match...
For you racial ability is something like a body builder. You just go to the gym and get big.
For me racial ability is something that you are born with. Something that is distinctive among the race. Something that defines the race. Not something that you get by some hard work.
Body builder would be a pretty boring racial but I guess that's like what I'm arguing. To make my side more clear, let's use Ren'kai again.
Say they had the racial "Battle Meditation," an ability where they channel for 3 seconds and then gain +10% damage for 12 seconds. This is thematic because the Ren'kai believe that through tranquility they gain power. This is a cultural belief, not a physical one. Presumably, meditation would be taught to Ren'kai children as a cultural imperative, so Ren'kai start with it, but there's no reason Kaelar Kevin couldn't learn it if he immersed himself in Ren'kai culture and someone was willing to teach him. Mechanically, this would be as a quest chain at a Ren'kai node.
Makes something like an Orc Bard stand out in the sea of OCD min/max’er meta-bots. 🤣
It’s just a matter of dev vision and design preference.
I agree, I was just saying if I was making an argument for which I would personally prefer to those devs, thats how I would reason it.
When Classic WoW launched, I created a night elf warrior. Anyone well-versed in classic WoW can already see where this is going. I had no idea that warrior was top dog in DPS at the time, and I especially had no idea that human warrior was top dog because they had a sword and mace specialization racial. That innocuous-seeming racial just gave +5 weapon skill for swords and maces. Weapon skill determined your chance to hit the target, I don't know the exact formula, but it worked by comparing your weapon skill to the target's defense skill. Normal weapon skill cap at level 60 was 300, defense for level 60 mobs was 300, so you hit without issue. But raid bosses were level 63, with a defense of 315 (I think), so you wouldn't hit as well against raid bosses.
So my guild was kind of... Well, it was a dad guild, as they're called, but I liked the people so I stayed. We were having trouble pushing the final raid and we needed to push the DPS numbers. Up until this point, I hadn't really cared, I chose Night Elf as an aesthetic choice because I think they looked cool, but for Fury Warrior, that 5 weapon skill mattered. The DPS ceiling of a human warrior was always going to be higher, and that felt shitty. It felt like I'd made a mistake a year+ earlier without even knowing and it was just now catching up with me.
You may be thinking for Ashes they can just balance such that there isn't such a clear best choice. Yeah, maybe, but balance is a fickle, complex thing, it's easier said than done, especially in the tangled web of weapon skills, augments, primary skills, etc. And the end result might just be that they're unimpactful. The need to balance them heavily could be completely avoided by making them learnable by other races, and I think the quests to learn them could be interesting and loreful additions, an opportunity to learn, for example, what makes a Ren'kai a Ren'kai.
Really, you should not be choosing a Race/Class combo just so it can be top dog in the "final Raid" - especially not in Ashes, since it is not a static game and there is no such thing, by design, as a "final Raid".
If your concern is truly valid - the designs for Ashes will have woefully failed in any case.
I think it tells something that pretty much 20 years later... I remember only these two points when it came to batteling the Horde in WoW PvP. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Were they overpowered? May~be.
Could they be countered? Thankfully, yes.
You just stunned someone who wasn't an Orc, from which there was someone there in pretty much 10 out of 10 cases on every battleground.
And the Tauren interrupt by stamp had an okay cooldown.
Same as the Human's spy ability.
I do hope that different races in Ashes will have such small stuff that is not a total gamechanger but very throughly gives them character.
Example I've heard this "Middle Eastern" looking Humans have Djin heritage or something, which sounds cooooooool as hell. Prince of Persia babey!!
Dunno how deep this will go with them but this already sounds super cool.
Sounds like it might give them some kind of gimmick with Magic or something.
I think it tells something that pretty much 20 years later... I remember only these two points when it came to batteling the Horde in WoW PvP. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Were they overpowered? May~be.
Could they be countered? Thankfully, yes.
You just stunned someone who wasn't an Orc, from which there was someone there in pretty much 10 out of 10 cases on every battleground.
And the Tauren interrupt by stamp had an okay cooldown.
Same as the Human's spy ability.
I do hope that different races in Ashes will have such small stuff that is not a total gamechanger but very throughly gives them character.
Example I've heard this "Middle Eastern" looking Humans have Djin heritage or something, which sounds cooooooool as hell. Prince of Persia babey!!
Dunno how deep this will go with them but this already sounds super cool.
Sounds like it might give them some kind of gimmick with Magic or something.[/quote]
the art of talking and say nothing at all.
I played a draeni frost DK in legion. Not only was draeni not the meta race, but neither was frost spec. I was still top 30 DKs in RBGs in NA, and that was while teaching friends how to target call in low rated RBGs which dropped my rating exponentially constantly. If min/maxing is the only thing that makes you better than the rest, you're doing it wrong. You can play the meta, but it's not what makes you the best player. Just a boost.
You misunderstand where I'm coming from. I vehemently despise the idea of a meta. I was playing with a guild who frankly were not very good at the game, I played with them because I liked the people in it. We had a lot of people who were nearly dead weight and also a lot of people who really wanted to clear the raid, it was a horrible combination. That +5 weapon skill mattered a lot, enough that a few boss attempts that ended in failure would have been successes if I had chosen human.
I want to make the aesthetic choice, that matters more to me. But I also do not want a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that maybe I made the wrong choice every time I fall just short.
Yea my point is that you think the meta is limiting you from doing that when it isnt
I experience racial differences in games in two ways that I find interesting/realistic. Resistances, and 'as a way to influence build variety'.
In FFXI/Neverwinter (particularly FF) there is a distinction in stat growth by racial choice, and then you can get gear setups to 'make up for it while still getting a benefit'. I somewhat like this, because it encodes my character's identity as 'The most Agile one' or 'the most sturdy one' into whatever they do, even when they don't need to be that for the content.
There is even a very specific gear type 'Race Specific Equipment' (RSE) that ties directly into this. A Galka gets some gear that is implied to be like 'what Galkan Mages wear'. Those people are rare, so their culture could have outright created 'gear to compensate'.
Racial difference allows people to min-max though, which feels bad for many meta situations. If your game is low on gear variety and isn't likely to have a lot of variation in tactics, I would prefer racial differences to be Resistances only. RSE works because you can't min-max in the same way, you literally can't wear Mithra RSE 'shoes' as any other race, so the high MP and MND stats on them don't matter. Are they basically BIS for Mithra? Yes, but that's a form of 'separate meta' in itself. I have never bothered to decide how I actually feel about that. It works well enough. Galka Warriors don't need their RSE, unlike their Mages, so they just never pursue it, for example.
Maybe that's interesting diversity, maybe it's an oversimplistic approach that wouldn't work in a meta-heavy PvP game.
But overall, if Ashes has a robust crafting/gearing system, I don't mind small racial stat differences, they are slightly interesting at early levels before min-maxing and proper gearing happens, and they 'fade out' as you get to high level except for the most dedicated min-maxers (and if your crafting is good enough, even for them). Augments are later so the balance might be harder, but it's still a gearing question.
If Ashes' gear/crafting system is average, I would also prefer not to have racial differences, and this applies to augments for me.
Agreed. Dwarf paladins are another example, particularly for pvp since Stoneform could remove rogue/warrior bleeds. I think these differences are great as it forces players to make real choices and fosters replayability.
To each their own. To me this sort of choice actually serves to remove player agency. It forces a choice between performance and aesthetics. If they value performance over aesthetics, then they might be stuck with a race they don't prefer. If they value aesthetics over performance, they might perform more poorly.
Valuing aesthetics and valuing performance aren't mutually exclusive, as some people might imply. If I want to be maximally useful to my guild as a priest and I want to be a human, in the WoW classic example, there's no case where I'm happy with my choice.
I hate furries, but if tulnar get BiS pvp racials I'll play them. No sacrifice, no victory. The world won't end due to me choosing optimization over aesthetics, or vice versa. But at least the choice still carries weight.
AOC will have many different builds for every class. Which will consist of class, sub class. weapon choice, weapon talent tree choice, Items (plate/leather/cloth), augments from religion and probably more that we still dont know about. So if the racials are generic enough you should be able to find suitable usability for the class you want to play without sacrificing anything (including aesthetics)
The character creator from Mass Effect was the best bar none. If you could draw some inspiration from that, and let your background story add tags to your character that NPC's could tap into during dialoge options?
But then you are choosing a race for a certain thing, no? If you are a human, your best off playing your warrior this way, if dwarf, this. Thats exactly what I/he is arguing against. To like your char the most, you wanna be able to play a warrior the way you want, while still being the race you want. I too feel, that is important.
This argument sounds like this: "I want to play my mage as a warrior, so class spells should not be class bound and every class should have option to get same spells. else i am locked and have to choose"
Making choice is the exact reason for having different classes. If you didnt have to make any choices than there would be no reason to have races
This has nothing to do with playing 2 classes at the same time. You musta misread that on purpose?
Its about playing your class, as the race you want. So if your orc race gives 10 str, and humans gives minus 10 str, and str means alot for a warrior, then orc warrior will always be favored over human. You see the concept now?
First: all racials will have benefits for any class. You wont have racials that buff half the classes.
Second: my example for the class choice is to show you that without having choice to make, will make both racials and classes meaningless to have. I didnt misheard you - this is intentional because the concept is the same.
And yes - meta will form where class X is best with racial Y. This doesnt mean that you cant play this class with some other racial. And meta will form for everything - for weapon choice, for armor type, for secondary class. This doesnt mean you have to play the meta. And meta changes constantly.
Ashes is designed to not have a META.
There will always be some gamers who claim they have found the META.
And that would be awesome, thats exactly what I/some were wanting.
On your "first"... How do you know? I havent read, that racials change per class?
You are trying to hard to "win" the argument. This is an opinion based discussion, there is no winning it. Classes and races are not the same concept. Classes will have tons more abilities, evolve and so on, a racial bonus probably will not.
There is be alot of choices to make, in making and playing a chosen path. My argument is simply. If you make a "best" warrior, because of racials, you cant really make the character you want. You are kind of forced into not gimping yourself. By having the racial not mean much, you can build the charater you imagined.
I've been very curious about this also, interested to see how the devs tackle this.