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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.
Weapons seem redundant beyond combat style
Songcaller
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Long story short. I've watched melee classes and ranged classes. I have seen the combat iterations and I've seen the class changes.
Weapons are redundant because you do not need a good weapon. You can currently max stats dye to the amount of armour slots and accessory slots. Weapon skill trees are lacklustre and the basic attack is a pittance. Not sure how the situation has occurred but I noticed the trend after the devs said stats will have soft caps.
Therefore, I do not see the need to min max a weapon. It is similar to paladin in bg3. You can have the crappest weapons but Divine smite doesn't increase off weapon, it increases off level.
Right now, I do not even believe the combat team understands combat. Every iteration is an improvement which shows the lack of cohesive application.
It is even debatable whether armour needs to be levelled and enchanted. Though as I said before the armour and accessory slots would be ample to min max.
I haven't touched sfx on the weapons and armour though. I have focussed on the general application I have seen since 2017.
Any thoughts to add?
Weapons are redundant because you do not need a good weapon. You can currently max stats dye to the amount of armour slots and accessory slots. Weapon skill trees are lacklustre and the basic attack is a pittance. Not sure how the situation has occurred but I noticed the trend after the devs said stats will have soft caps.
Therefore, I do not see the need to min max a weapon. It is similar to paladin in bg3. You can have the crappest weapons but Divine smite doesn't increase off weapon, it increases off level.
Right now, I do not even believe the combat team understands combat. Every iteration is an improvement which shows the lack of cohesive application.
It is even debatable whether armour needs to be levelled and enchanted. Though as I said before the armour and accessory slots would be ample to min max.
I haven't touched sfx on the weapons and armour though. I have focussed on the general application I have seen since 2017.
Any thoughts to add?
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Comments
I also haven't been able to distinguish from the streams what percentage of the damage comes from base attacks versus abilities.
And perhaps the biggest point: Even if base attack damage does constitute a relatively low percentage of total damage output (something I personally prefer for most class balance questions):
How can you tell from just watching how much of the *ability* damage is improved from equipment stats - or could be, if the player was wearing stronger equipment?
The weapon doesn't necessarily have to be a massive amount of your damage output in a order to be worthwhile item to work for.
And if your complaint is specifically that the choice between sword and hammer or even wand won't make a big enough impact on your damage output: People will still prefer the weapon that works best for their playstyle, even if the change in damage output from the weapon type itself is only few percent. And if there's a Warrior maining a legendary wand because it gives him the biggest stat boosts, more power to him, that sounds hilarious as a rare edge case.
It's definitely a worthwhile point to bring up though, and Alpha testers should test rare equipment sets versus average ones and give feedback on whether the rare stuff feels sufficiently impactful to justify the effort of looting/crafting it.
And do you specifically dislike the concept that perhaps your weapon might be the last part of your build that you put effort into, in a min-max sense?
If anything, I could see this being a good thing, since, if most of your power is spread over multiple gear pieces that must be upgraded, it keeps the power gaps much narrower in some ways, as opposed to the 'I just leveled my weapon because all I really need is DPS, right?' that we have seen in some other games before.
I would remove soft caps and instead create hard caps. Much akin to DCUO and all of the enhancements available there. When I first saw the inventory slots I thought 'the toons will be very powerful at max level and fully geared like l2' then the combat iterations changed. I think you should min max all attributes to be max power and not simply put on 4 identical rings.
Ok but none of that stuff would be ready yet, right?
We don't even know which of the methods they intend to use for the damage scalars/power growth on weapons, because the weapon skilltrees aren't those types of thing.
I know that you've seen this done at least a dozen different ways in all the games you've played, I'm trying to figure out which one you were expecting from Ashes. As example:
Obviously with my bias I originally thought they were going to use the 'Weapon has a known base damage value and then an additional damage range based on some build aspects'. Then when the Weapon Focus Gauge got scrapped(?) I figured they would go the 'Base Damage with Multipliers for skills' style, and now I'm seeing the MOBA type 'weapon damage is distinct but weapon skilltree options have multipliers' occasionally.
To me, none of these options make weapons 'redundant', not even the last one, it just depends on what stats the weapon itself grants. We can't know how 'enhancements' work because they're not that far in yet.
There does not seem to be a multiplier on basic damage, only on critical damage. The base stat here could be weapon damage, however, let's say 80 was max strength and the basic sword is 8, then it would be easier to get to 80 through the other slots than try to get a legendary weapon to +15 enchantment to reach 80 alone. The reason is manifold because you could max 3, 4 or 5 stats without touching the level 1 sword.
Can you elaborate on these calculations and your sources? Have we seen the stats of a level 50 wearing legendary tier gear?
Right but there are systems to handle even that. I think I've explained before that the FFXI weapon damage calculation has a specific clamp where the weapon itself has a value that caps how much your STR/Power can 'feed into' it actually doing extra damage.
So if you pick up a level 1 Sword in that game, the 'amount of your STR stat that is actually being converted to damage' is less. The same thing (indirectly) happens in MOBA style itemization. So I don't think there's any grounds to assume it.
In fact, I think I know more games that do it in some roundabout 'clamping' way than games that don't. So while I can see the possibility of Ashes being the latter, I don't think even the screenshot you just gave actually implies that.
However I definitely concede that the information in that screenshot is hella weird...
In my experience the enchantment's purpose is to provide some other roundabout way of gaining power relative to your goals, rather than raw damage aspects, it's just that the power types are those that a player could associate with 'weapon' instead of, as you said, something like 'Rings'. For people who are used to BDO or something, it would be normal for Rings to somehow raise Attack, but for others, they wouldn't be expecting anything that meaningfully raises damage (directly) from Jewelry.
I don't know what to expect yet, it's a wide world of MMORPG designs, I'm just saying that I've seen so many ways of handling this, that I wouldn't think of it as representing what you said.
However, now that I've looked through stuff again, with your screenshot in mind, I think I tentatively agree with you, so you can assume I'm 'speculatively' on your 'side' now, for whatever that's worth. Even if enchanting your weapon is the last thing one does, or even if it's not worth too much effort to do it, the current system seems like a stretch.
It could all just be placeholder though. And even if it isn't, bringing it up at this point, especially since most people aren't tracking it as closely as you are, probably won't lead to much...
Search came up empty. What am I searching for? I'd like to be caught up on this topic
Edit: it is a long 28 page thread. I think I found it though:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/56343/the-case-for-gear-to-provide-more-than-40-50-of-a-characters-power/p27
Horizontal progression enriches the game by providing a variety of viable options for players to explore, creating a more dynamic and engaging experience. This approach also enhances the late-game content, as players can experiment with different builds and strategies instead of just focusing on chasing the highest stats. The current state of weapon importance might need re-evaluation to ensure that weapons play a meaningful role in combat, not just as stat sticks but as integral parts of a player’s identity and strategy.
The combat team could explore ways to make weapons and armor more impactful in a horizontal sense, perhaps by tying specific abilities, passives, or unique effects to certain weapons or armor pieces. This could encourage players to choose their gear based not only on stats but also on the unique advantages they provide, thus enhancing both the depth and the fun of the game.
A perfect example of this is a passive from wands. They have built in combinations that work off the target being burned, shocked, or conflagrated. They can also apply some of these effects. I also believe that classes will also be able to apply these effects. Namely the mage, but i expect anything taking mage as a subclass, summoners, and maybe even clerics will have some ways to also apply these effects.
So here you can apply burning with the wand, then set up combust causing the target to conflagrate which seems to be an enhanced damage over time debuff.
This sounds like a great way to quickly get conflagrate rolling on a target without spending mana on other spells to apply burning.
You also could do this instead.
If you bring the electrifying one instead of the burning one, you can more easily apply shock.
I expect there will be more combinations and more interesting choices down the line, but the utility of the weapons are definitely being made and already there.
Now they may not be directly calculated heavily into all aspects of your character, but I expect they will carry a large amount of useful stats required for you to do your role properly. I dont expect there will be skills that directly scale with the damage per swing or damage number of the actual weapon. I could be wrong but we shall see.
A perfect example comes from Rogue in bg3. My weapons only do 1-9 damage offhand and 1 - 11 damage main hand but stealth attack and stealthed ranged attack does 20-40 damage plus crit.
I see. they will most likely lean into weapon procs that are not tied to the weapon type but applied or native to specific weapons. This is guessing though, since the weapons have increased proc rate effects on them.
If this is the case, you will have reasons to choose different weapons aside from weapon type. How major this is remains to be seen.
The weapon design that AoC chose to go with looks like a skilltree from AC valhala, bg3, spellforce3. Skill trees full of passives which you dont get to visually enjoy.
And you get the class active abilities compromised in quality and refinement in order to accomodate the "play as you want, slot any weapon you like, robe wearing bow wielding tank" performing Disarming Strike ability/animation.
Well, you saw the complaints with the fighter and the giant magic yellow hammer which they fixed, and the complaints about the spellbook Bard.
Personally I prefer weapons to be essential for active abilities, either in the form that ESO did (althought they fvck up the balance and as I have said ESO is a bad mmo example) or like L2.
Certain class abilities should require certain weapons.
Weapons are for action. Not procs. Not passives. Weapons reprecent classes. They should not be passives to "customize your build".
Oh well.
I can't really see where the data is coming from to back this all up aside from all weapons being ablento be used by all classes, but I do agree with what seems to be a common opinion here, where weapons should synergize with specific abilities or even be required to use specific abilities for each class.
If I'm able to backstab someone with a spellbook as a rogue, that's just silly.
hey now, let people live out their death note fantasy rp.
So if we compare something like these 2
You can obviously see that having the epic weapon would be way more beneficial.
And this
Vertical enchantments are a power progression for a crafted item. More damage or mitigations, added effects or bonuses.[3]
Especially with the fuller context from the video reference (1:38:50)
Says that vertically enchanting your shittier item would bring it closer, in those added effects/bonuses, to the rarer item.
In other words, from what I see rn, there's more than enough reason to try and go for better weapons AND enchant them even further after.
And considering the supposed rng nature of enchantments, there's a chance that you'll need to vertically enchant your weapons multiple times until you catch the boosted effect you want, while, obviously, crafting a better item could give you those benefits manually.
And I'd imagine that weapon and armor/jewels enchantments will yield different kinds of effects, so it's not like having a shitty weapon will be completely compensated by having OEd armor. Though this particular statement is pure speculation, so I might be wrong there.
Basic weapon attacks VS skills usage require balancing, but balancing can only really occur once all components that need to be balanced are present. So expecting this to be done before all the classes, weapon types and weapon skill trees are implemented would be putting the cart before the horse.
Same goes for the stats. Soft caps may be reached currently with armor gear only, but that system is also not yet finished, seeing with all the other systems that have yet to be implemented I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they pushed development of the stats system only to the point where it could feed all the necessary data into the system that need to be built in the coming months of the Alpha. IMO it would be surprising to learn that the stats/attributes system is more than just bare bones.
Weapon skill trees. Not sure how anyone outside the current tests should be able to really evaluate that, but that's quite subjective anyways. To me the choices for the wand for example already looked like a pretty decent collection of options to contribute to an overall adjustment of playstyle. Not sure what you were expecting for example in regards to the skill trees though.
This feels a bit like a rant over things that are visibly far from finished.
Weapon skills use mana much akin to spells except basic attack right now. Q spam was prevalent before and seems to be prevalent again. The main issue remains the hidden calculations and the shown calculations.
What is rating? How does 8 + 375 * k only equal 40 odd? What base is referenced? What does k represent? What tier weapon was used to make the calculation? Why does the mace in nikr's screenshot seem to be rubbish for physical use and rubbish for magical use? Do some spells require physical accuracy on top of magical accuracy?
Right now, I'd take the basic mace for 75 gold because the npc merchant seems much more capable of a unified stat suite than the crafter who made the epic mace.
I don't think it's that people don't grasp the thread, it's much more likely that they simply don't care as much as you do.
Just in case it helps though, yes, if you were to give someone a dagger with the same underlying stats as the Mace, a build heavily focused on backlining would consider the two interchangeable.
Similarly the feeling of 'stat bloat' required to make higher tier gear feel worth it, in this type of system, is something some players care about, but not others. It's just a style thing. I for one sorta 'don't care' but I'm not sure if it would grate on me eventually since Ashes is the only game I pay serious attention to, that takes this 'worst of all worlds' (exaggeration) approach to it.
If one focuses only on how it will probably feel to play, it comes down to what stats you can't get on what weapons. Basically, assuming BludgeonBane isn't actually the standard, there's not much reason for most people to care.
If you want weapons that aren't just stat sticks in Ashes even for 'backline', you're putting a massive load on the itemization team. If you don't like the fact that everyone can use every weapon and they're slightly 'cosmetic', you're not getting that changed, this is a core tenet. If we assume that Steven knew what he was getting when he chose the weapon/gear-agnostic route, then this is basically intended design.
It'll probably just work like L2/TL but without the weapon limitation. That is, the reason to level your weapon is, at least, based on the stat gains in the secondary stats, and BludgeonBane will get more different stat gains than the Dull Greatmace.
There are many people who will be happy with that.
The point of talking about skills and mana is that player damage can come from different sources like:
If mana runs out by only relying on skills, that means player will inevitably be required to use weapon attacks and passives. Weapon attacks only require 2 things: The target being in range and the time to attack. Players do not need mana to perform weapon attacks. A mage can apply their elemental stacks with weapon attacks rather than spending mana on abilities that build it up, which ensures more mana for big combo spells - this makes weapon attacks a viable choice especially in longer battles against elite mobs or drawn out battles with little resting time like a siege.
Does that mean weapons need sufficient damage stats to hit harder with increased quality? Yes.
Is that already the case? Dunno, I would guess to some rudimental degree it is.
Is it a system already done? Most likely not.
"I still don't see the point in boosting a weapon."
Simple: Higher weapon damage and additional stats.
Again the current soft cap is a lot of things, but not balanced. For now that may mean that stat boosts on weapons are pointless, but they wont remain that way.
How any of that makes the combat design team not understand combat at all really is beyond me.