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
Man the developers had a ping pong healthbar mechanic for critical hits in the begining and the combat of pre alpha is nothing compared to where we are now.
Also steven has over time become more clear about what to expect from the archetypes and what to expect from the augments to ground some people. But people can also say "well, thst turns out not to meet the standards".
And most recently in a serious responce he said in the AMA that he expects the class/weapon system to be heavily tested and iterated.
The Devs that years ago said that active blocking wouldnt work and that they'd prefer a waterfall blocl chance toggle are no longer with the studio.
The 64 class combo is ambitious and they admitted it. I am sure that they would prefer to change a system that push out something lacking in quality.
You can sit here being all ironic, but that's not feedback. It's just the default personality of the majority of the online kids.
And you know what will help with all of that? Not caring about when I might die in a random bombing and instead test an mmo that I want to live in.
It is funny to me that you're here surprisingly often, for someone who's all busy and has real life outside of these forums. And you're here often enough to remember posters, hold grudges or stubborn opinions about those posters and their povs, and also repetitively post about "it's not me, it's everyone else that doesn't know shit about this non-existent game, so Intrepid better only care about what I (and people that have the exact same opinion as me) say on these forums. Cause only us, people with irl time, should matter".
So yeah, I'm gonna be spending every hour of electricity I have in A2 and on the testing section of the forums. So if you thought that you'd somehow be in a company of people who only think like you - think again
Learn a skill to help rebuild your country when the war is over, instead of socializing online. Escapism wont help it's just copium and that's not funny in real life.
At times like these you need to get serious because it is literaly a matter of life and death.
I am not being antagonistic and you know the advice is sensere.
Also, I am the one living this life and to me it IS funny, so I'll be the one deciding what I wanna do. And I've decided that I'm gonna be posting sooooo damn much on the forums that you won't even want to go there
And I am calm. I'm simply explaining my situation to you, because you seem to think that you know better than me what to do with my life and/or my situation.
They said I need a job to help my family back home and I wanna learn X Y Z, barely speaking the language.
I know these people will work hard to get what they want from life.
To quote my self "The devs, I'm sure, have already noticed what I'm talking about." thats literally in the next post I wrote.
While my point was it isn’t broken, yet, what will Intrepid do with these “classes” beyond the augments?
They’ve got 64 somewhat cool sounding class names. What else other than augments make that class work?
Do they present some sort of swap out of the primary archetype abilities with abilities in the theme of the class?
Is it a lore based difference?
Do new options open up for your character build out when you enter your class?
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
It basically can't be the latter two, because even if there is a cost to respec, you can still do it without a huge conceptual change (so far as we've been told).
So if I can be a Shadow Disciple today and an Oracle tomorrow, any decisions I make about it have to be based on my build, playstyle, and other similar choices.
I could see a style of development where certain Social Org augments or NPC interactions are different or 'don't work' if you're not the exact right class, but even this would get gamed somewhat. I could 'respec to Oracle just to progress a quest' for example, in that scenario.
I agree 64 truly unique classes are not possible and were never promissed.
But 8 meaningfully playstyle different variations on each base archeytpes ARE possible in my opinion. IF they descope to doing just that rather then trying to do 4 times as much with their 4 augments options after picking your secondary. The selection of the secondary is enough customization in my opinion.
Basically I would rather see 1 good solid augment that radically changes playstyle, then 4 bland flavor choices which don't change playstyle and tactics. One augment which changes your kit 40% is better then 4 choices with each change it only 10%.
Basically we have the classic tradeoff dillema, their are three things, DEEP Augments, MANY Augments and GAME DELIVERED PRE 2030, Pick two. And I pick Deep and ontime while jetesoning the many. If your priorities are different then say so, but don't pretend all three are going to be delivered at the rate things are going.
I dunno how it can be that Ashes can have failed when they have a chart depicting what the Class combos are and their labels.
If I recall correctly, we had the Class Combos with no labels for several months after Kickstarter and then the labels for the combos were revealed within the first year.
So... that was clarified sooner rather than later.
Steven never said anything about "real Class".
There is plenty in the wiki for people who wish to understand Ashes gameplay.
I will agree that after 7 years, we should have some better examples of Augment Schools and Augments siginificantly changing some Active Skills than just the examples we got in 2017/2018. Especially since it seems like we won't be seeing Augments in Alpha 2 until 8 years after Kickstarter.
I dunno why you would think 64 "Sub-Classes" is not possible.
It's a significant adjustment to existing Primary Archetype Active Skills; not really a swap.
I think we should expect Classes to be represented in Ashes lore.
Depends on what you mean by new option.
Because if a Fighter applies a Mage Teleport Augment to their Rush Active Skill, they will then have the option to blink past an obstacle, like a Wall, which would otherwise impede the Rush.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "only change it 10%".
If a Mage Teleport applied to my Fighter's Rush allows me to blink past a Wall that would otherwise impede me, that significantly changes my tactics. A quantifier like 10% seems to be meaningless.
I'd definitely prefer some other Mage-like stuff to place on my other Active Skills, than a Teleport.
I dunno how a Teleport Augment is supposed to help augment my Battle Cry.
I don't know where you got that tradeoff idea; nor "DEEP" Augments.
We'll have to test it and see.
Agreed, with an emphasis for Cleric and Tank. Augments must significantly transform the base archetype or the core of the 8-man team is going to get boring.
Let that sink in.
yes this too. im working on the post have been for almost 4 hours now and im not even half done.
Your being willfully ignorant if you can't understand this.
And your example is emblematic of lazy thinking. You have to postulate a SPECIFC enemy countermeasure produced by 1 opposing archetype for limited time under which a teleport augmented Blitz would seemingly play ANY different then the base Blitz. To call this reaching is an understatement.
No player worth their salt would call that a meaningful change to tactics let alone playstyle because once you think about it for more then a second you remember the barrier is still present and your now trapped and cut off from team mates so in even in your hypothetical 90% of the time you ain't gonna teleport through said wall because you have no escape path. Your still a Fighter with a gap closer which is gonna feel exactly the same as every other fighter, that's what 10% change is, something you don't even need to relearn or alter your play around.
But Fighter already has two gap closers, one that explicitly goes over obstacles and one that lunges forward.
If those are also 'tactically the same thing', then there's really not much more than can happen. You'd just end up going back to super simplistic gameplay if you stop taking the nuances like 'goes over walls and ground hazards' into account.
I'm no fan of that example from Steven either, but if we just discount the difference between two skills that both gap close but differently, then we might as well just downgrade all expectations of all the combat.
See, this is some kind of logic that I cant dress as deserved because then peoples feelings can get hurt.
Here you have people telling you that the promised "play as you want" wont provide meaningful variety, and that the meta will be narrow and they want to discuss new ways forward.
Your response is "leave it as it is and dont discount it even though it looks that way. And dont discuss things that are not tested yet. It's not valid feedbackEven. Though. It looks. That way."
Why let the system fail and then lead to delays?
Fuck it bro it's just money.
I can no longer take anything you say seriously. Mr. Pot.
(Obviously, if you can blink past Walls and other obstacles, you have several escape paths.)
Someone forgot that Blitz only goes towards enemies, and it has a cooldown. See why I call this lazy thinking.
No what I think is that people are underestimating the impact the (currently expected) augments will make despite being seemingly small. I am quite aware that the Role is not the same as the playstyle. The Core function of augmented skills will remain the same, Steven said as much, but he also said that augments are meant to "blur the lines a bit" between the Archetypes to allow for some adjustments regarding the Rock-Paper-Scissor System (A Mage can account for their weakness against Rangers and Rogues by augmenting their skills with Tank aspects), this allows for situational, new options during fights, but at that core the Mage is still that: A mage.
I'm just saying what I think will be Intrepids approach to augments and its effects. And correct me if I am wrong: We have nothing PROVING neither me nor you wrong. It's an open question and I don't share the worry that augments will be little more than cosmetics.
So I don't think we are talking past each other, we simply don't agree on what we will get because information is not conclusive on the matter. Which is why I think that there is no "fixing the class system" when nobody can really know whether there is something to fix to begin with.
Fair enough, but this is over at your thread and I was primarily concerend with OPs prompt here to "fix" something that we don't even know the workings of. Additionally, I don't think we need short descriptions for every class, which is while I will not grace/taint your thread either.
I'd like to hear what ideas you have on them in the 'Class Fantay' thread. If your going Ranger do you have a particular secondary in mind and what it could/should do?
I find Cleric is easier to think of varients on because sustainment (a more expansive goal then just heal) is already normally done in so many ways in game (HoT, AoE Heal, single target heal etc) which can then be emphasized and synergized with other activities. Take an existing Cleric kit and just narrow it and your mostly done.
Tank on ther other hand is harder to figure out because they are more dependent on the tight interaction of Taunting, CC and Damage mitigation in order to achive their goal of enemy aggression control. Dodge tanks and Mesmerize tanks are obvious paths that even Intrepid described, but other types get weird. Likewise a Tank secondary can't just be "I have more HP" as, one skills don't give you base stats like that, two it would be super bland, three it would not be tanking as you would exert no control over enemy aggression.
I think we first need to set what actually makes an ability different enough from one another.
At its core, teleport and charge are both movement skills that displace your character, and move it to another location. How they do it is very important, and also what's very important are the visuals and sound effects.
You are just downplaying the importance of both things here.
How they do it is important, because something that makes you appear at another location almost instantly, has different implications than something that takes time to reach the target. One can be used to traverse terrain faster, to engage easier and avoid cc, to disengage, etc. allowing you more freedom of movement, because it doesn't require a target necessarily, while the other thing does it slower, maybe requires a target, probably deals damage to the target, etc.
Visuals and sound effects are a huge part of what make the ability feel different and separate from one another, and this is the key part that people seem to downplay when talking about augments. It's more important that the visual and sound effects change, than anything else. This is what will easily distinguish your class from everyone else, and make it unique.
I'm really not sure what you expect, and how do you want to make the ability even more different?
If you expect that augments will change your charge ability, into something completely different, unrelated to the base skill, which offers mobility and displaces your character, then you just have to manage your expectations better, because that's not the aim with this system.
Both abilities are the same at its core, but how they achieve their purpose and how they look and sound is what separates them, just like every other ability in the game.
Tell me, what separates Mage's Blizzard ability, and Fighter's Whirlwind? Both are channeled AoEs that deal damage around your character. By your logic, there is not enough difference between the two.
In reality, visuals are different, Blizzard basically rains down projectiles, while Whirlwind allows you to move while channeling it, damage type and status effects they apply are different, etc..
I think having a smaller pool of augmentable skills is more manageable. That way you can actually make the augments much more impactful and interesting and make tuning more manageable.
If its just going to be a dash of flavor on everything, meh. I'm fine with it either way as long as base class builds are diverse enough through skill trees, weapon and gear builds.
So... the suggestion that using a Teleport Augment on Blitz or Rush would leave the Fighter without an escape path is the epitome of absurd, paranoid, delusional, lazy thinking.
Especially since there will also be Racial, Social Org, Religion and Node Augments that might also provide alternative paths of escape.