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
I appreciate you posting this. I've found more useful information than from reading 6 different threads over the past week.
Some of the class names they chose are good, some are honestly trash. They should go back and change ones that have the same name in them over and over, like "spell", "sword", and "night".
Especially Spellmancer, because the suffix "mancer" means they specialize in something. So you specialize in "spells", really?
They can use ArcheAge, DAoC, etc to get ideas, but yea, some of those need to change. And Tank is obviously massive cringe but that goes without saying.
So not only are you feeling no need to read a wiki with some element of information, you also don't really understand the system, ontop of everyone in general not knowing all details of the systems as they have not gone into a great deal into it.
Hence you are trying to fill in holes and making things up, you have absolutely no clue on how things are going to be approached. If you don't understand what they are doing you can't say you are going to be able to fix it.
Also if you can't be bothered to read a wiki based on the topic we are talking about and feel that is too much work. And you need exact points sited around a topic that is more concept with various quotes around and not a direct path to make things clear. Honestly you need to get out of the conversation, as you aren't here to understand the elements around it, but just to yell for something you want and not actually being backed by the design concept they are going for.
Every single person here is a student, the game is complex not a single person here is going to remember every detail on this game perfect right now. If you don't want to learn, what are you even doing here arguing. the truth is you are wasting all of our time if anything.
Yea tha's the type of arrogance I expected given your prior post, I've already read everything I could find on Augments. But I specifically did not say that in my last reply just to see if you would ignore everything I did say and instead double down and accuse me of not reading. Congratulations your as bad as I suspected, now go waste someone else time with your snide condesensions.
How is bringing up the proof of the failure of "play as you want mmos" (like eso and aa), which is an actual explenation of what awaits the 64 class system, the same thing as a guy dismissing the topic of concern saying ironically "might as well make another wow"?
"I saw what you did there"
I dont think you understand much in what people mean when they say certain things.
I have no clue what you mean by "A single Augment is going to come in the form of a tree of nodes."
I have no clue what has caused you to imagine they will be Passives or how the concept of Passives is intended to relate to Augments.
I have no clue what causes you to imagine an "over-arching Passive" related to Augments.
Why would you be in the habit of calling an Augment a tree??
An Augment is a single ability that is applied onto an Active Skill.
The term "School" implies there will be multiple Augments within the Cleric Life School.
Even going along with your terminology, one would not apply an Augment "tree" to an Active Skill.
Rather one would chose one of the Augments from an Augment School to apply to an Active Skill.
So, it would be "A" Cleric Life Augment; not "The" Cleric Life Augment.
The term "School" also implies an Augment School will not really be branching nodes.
I don't think the disconnect is quite mere semantics.
Next time try saying you read it instead of wasting another post. Also i expect when they start showing off augments it isn't going to be 4 different augment options for each skill per class. Though there is still going to be a lot of customization options.
If your issue is with time for them to make everything, I'm sure their scope oft heir project will be fine. Assets you make between effects and such can be shared between things, balance in mmorpgs is always rough i wouldn't expect god tier balance.
If you think things need to be very unique per class, you need to scale your expectations back tot he examples given based on the wiki. Two warriors will feel different but will still be warrior sharing the same skills. But how the effect combat will vary from each other.
Whole point is you have your 8 archetypes and from customization you adjust them towards your desired play style / class fantasy. Its not that they have 64 unique classes, any expectations of that is not understanding their messaging which as been pretty clear. It is more so that when you have your class your kit will be more complete in branching away from the main archetype that you are ie rogue, warrior, cleric, etc. And gaining more effects to your tools based on the class you cross into.
You can do what you want. I will respond the way I respond, but...
I try to stay out of threads that are just about wishes and fantasies, like the "What are your 'class fantasies' for the 64 classes" thread, since that's not a discussion about changing the current design.
But, you should expect to get quite a bit of pushback in a thread where you are pushing for changes in the Ashes game design for features that have not yet been tested.
Especially when you start a topic proclaiming to fix a feature that is not yet broken.
If you are going to start suggesting "fixes", you should at least be able to post accurate representations of the known game design.
To clarify I think an augmention school will be structured as a tree because we have seen Intrepid use that pattern in base archetyes and weapons skills so it stands to reason they will keep doing that. Designers generally want to reuse concepts the player is already familar with so it's good design.
The term schools dose imply sub componts but is agnostic as to how they are organized so a tree is by no means ruled out by that language.
Everyone has been very casually throwing around the singular when using augment as in "Charge with Teleportaion augment on it" or "their are four augments available for each secondary archetyp" rather then saying "Charge with an augment from the Teleportiona school on it" or "Their are four augment schools available for each secondary archetype", part of that is from ambiguity/change in how Augments have been presented over time when it seemed like a token you slotted into a skill like Diablo and that you would have four tokens choices to slot in to all your skills.
Given that singular usage when I tried to express that I think it won't be monolithic I said "Augments will be a tree" I could have said "Augment schools will be trees of nodes", I'll try to use that terminology from now on as it is more specific.
Also because we have been told many many times that Augmention will not addd active skills to your character, by definition everything augmentation related is a passive, a modification to an active skill is a passive. The current primary archetype skill trees have lots of passives which modify the active skills and the Fighter showcase explicity describes these passives as using the same code structure that augments will use and that they interact with active skills in a way similar to what is intended for augmentation.
Because of this clue and because of the unweildy number of possible combinations I do not belive the player will actually do any many-to-many 'slotting' aka picking an augment and then picking an active skill to put it on. Rather each augment will be programmed for a specific active skill and the player will just activate/unlock it to get that modification. Out of all of the augments in the school their will likely be at least one augment able to modify each active skill, maybe multiple ones. The picking of which augments to activate will be the means to customize.
Lastly I speculated that Rippley's concept of a "singular defining passive per class" might exist within an augmentation schools tree, probably near the base as an entry point. In other words a passive which is not directly modifying an active skill/s but instead modify a broader concept like the generation of archetypes special resources would be possible but I think they would be rare and not on every class.
Typically, designers will choose terms for specific reasons.
I dunno why you would try to change the terms the devs use.
Okay…???
🤔
Passive Skills are a different category than Augments. Just as Weapon Skills are a different category than Augments:
Passive Skills
Active Skills
Weapon Skills
Augments
Those are all unique categories.
Augments are called augments because they augment Active Skills. They aren't any more passive than Active Skills are, they just are not as powerful as Active Skills are. Active Skills are skills that are activated by hitting a key. Passive Skills (which also use Skill Points) do not have to be activated with a key.
I don't know what you think you mean by Passives having the same code structure as Augments because Passive Skills are not applied to Active Skills in the same manner as Augments, and Augments do not require Skill points.
Indeed many if not most Passive Skills really have nothing to do with Active Skills.
(More in a bit. Gotta run off to dance class!)
For one thing, there are tons of other Augments from other categories. In addition to Secondary Archetype Augments, players can also acquire Racial, Social Org, Religion and Node Augments.
I’m pretty sure it’s not just going to be one Augment per category.
The entire premise of Augments is that players will be picking an Augment and then picking an Active Skill to apply it to.
But, you are just making that up in your own head. And that is practically the polar opposite of how the devs have said Augments will work.
By design, each Augment will work differently when applied to a different Active Skill. It’s possible there will be a few specific Augments that are locked to specific Active Skills.
I mean…we’ll have to see how many Augments are in a School. Maybe there’s only 3 or 4 Augments in each School.
Obviously, by design, choosing which Augments from all available categories will be applied to your various Active Skills is intended to be a vibrant means to customize your character(s).
How can you have an Augment that does not augment an Active Skill??
Perhaps what you’re trying to say is that maybe Secondary Archetypes will also provide some Passive Skills?
That has not been ruled out yet.
The devs have said Secondary Archetypes do not provide new Active Skills.
They have not said Secondary Archetypes will not provide any new Passive Skills. As far as I recall.
This way the augments can be more transformative and the 4 different "trees" are the flavoring. It also sovles the problem of developing all the augmentations at once.
more here if you feel like reading:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/56170/a-take-on-the-augment-class-systems#latest
If you are implying that every Active Skill might have an Augment variant… that’s already not a thing the devs are intending in the game design as far as we know.
If you want to place an Augment on all 35 Ranger Active Skills, that will probably be possible. For all we know, each Secondary Archetype might only have a total of 16 Augments (4 Augments from each School).
Seems likely that we will be able to simultaneously place the same Augment on multiple Active Skills, but…
Even if we can’t do that, we can acquire Augments from other categories besides just Secondary Archetypes: Races; Social Orgs; Religions; Nodes.
I don’t know what you mean by “small Augmentation”. You seem to mean be restricted to only small number of Augmented Active Skills.
The Ashes design is already expecting players to only be using around 20 Active Skills during battle. I think Steven’s ideal vision is that players would only be using 10 Active Skills per battle, but… we’ll see.
I think it will be quite rare that players choose to only have 4 Augmented Active Skills available during combat.
To add new Classes in an expansion, you just need to add one new Primary Archetype.
That basically drops in 9 new Classes and maybe 16 new Secondary Archetype Augments. (We’ll have to see how many Augments are in one School.)
Customization comes from the Augments; not the Active Skills. That is what Augments do: modify/customize Active Skills.
Primary Archetype determines the primary combat role in an 8-person Group.
But, there are many, many ways to customize a Primary Archetype via Augments.
That’s the entire point.
Each Primary Archetype already has some specializations in the Active Skills tree.
Yes.
If the devs have a major problem implementing Steven’s Archetype system, Ashes is basically doomed. Same as if they have a major problem implementing Steven’s Nodes system.
“Yeah, we hyped that there would be 64 Classes, but we couldn’t get the Secondary Archetypes to work, so all we can give you is just the 8 Primary Archetypes. Sorry.”
🙄
Making note of someone’s gap in logic is hardly white knighting.
So you don't agree with point number 1? I would assume that means you think that all the sub classes are in fact fully fleshed out classes. Which means the classes already exist and all they need to do is apply the appropriate aesthetics to said classes and could be used as base classes.
Then create new augments for those classes which would be insanely easy, compared to creating new base classes.
And if you think class identity is important aren't you concerned with the fact that the base classes only have 35-40 abilities which means best case scenario your looking at somewhat samey combat with other subclasses.
Well, we don't know exactly where they are but if we want more base classes then we need to say some thing now and not wait.
why do you think that your solution will fix anything? you don't have all the info about the game. you don't have the info the devs have. classes arent fully fleshed out yet. we don't have the sub system yet. how can you solve the problem when you don't even know what the problem is?
hell, you already started wrong with changing the names. an archetype is a perfectly valid word for what we are getting. classes are instances (or types) of those archetypes.
I think that ship has entirely sailed on new base archetypes.
I said from the start I did not think much of anything your proposing would be possible or good, but that it did come from a legitimate place of concern that Classes would be bland derivatives that fail to alter the base archetype game play enough to be interesting for players.
Most recent commentary by Steven looks more promissing that they intend for atleast a few augments to be transformational to skills and this is a an excellent sign that they will truly alter gameplay. Differential level of impact from augments is absolutly what you would need to do for that, where as a small inconsequential change to every skill would be indicative of a bad design.
Sure archetype is by definition, a perfectly serviceable word. But were not talking about definitions were talking about the colloquial use of language with in a group of people. In particular the RPG genre, even more particular the MMORPG genre. Now we can look at either of those groups and your going to get the same result for the word "class" and what it means. Fighter and Mage are different classes. Not different instances of fighter or different instances of Mage, and given all the different risks this game is taking with various systems, it seems to me, maybe, possibly, like it would be imprudent to take such a risk.
And given that it would cost nothing, increase the development time by not at all, and only prevent review bombing by people that think class has a meaning (that it kind of does). Seems like a no brainer to me.
So you think that the word class and skill set mean the same thing?
You aren't actually talking about language.
If you note, your OP specifically calls for Ashes to be dropped from a game with an 8x8 class building system that is what literally everyone that has ever bought in to the game bought in to, and instead replace it with something that has far fewer combinations of classes.
You are literally talking about altering something that everyone here knew about when coming in to the game.
Very first thing i suggest in the post...
1.) Change the language to first class picked as being the base class, and make it clear this will be your playstyle. The second class could be either archtype or secondary class, though secondary class would be more clear. Call the result of those two decisions the Sub-Class. (I will be using this terminology from here on out)
Very first thing under Pros section...
1.) More possible sub-classes means more design space.
Do you think that means I want more subclasses, or less?
I'm more interested in class combos that make something interesting and unique. Like what does a Shaman Rouge class look like, or how would Paladin and Mage interact.
I invite those intrerested in your future AoC characters, which is obvious since you started your own threads on a topic that for years didnt get a serious attention from the community, to join this proposal.