Thoughts on the new Pre-alpha footage?

Hey everyone,

First and foremost - What a lovely display!
I think you really have nailed down a lot of the communities desires and wishes already.

The gameplay itself already looks engaging and the sense of exploration is real.

Link to the video, in case you missed it
Pre-Alpha 4K GM Gameplay

Visuals:
The improvement in quality is starting to get ahead of some of the big MMO's that are out there right now, and that is nice to see. In the beginning of the video it was clear to see intricate details and how the light bounced of the different materials - I was immediately impressed!
The characters themself still look like something out of ESO in my opinion, but I know this has not been one of your priorities to work on until recently, so that is understandable (also with that in mind that you are in pre-alpha/alpha 1?)

Combat:
The combat is in my opinion one of the strong points at the moment. The abilities already looks interesting and impactful (especially that AoE heal and the Black Hole ability). I know you talked about scaling down on the visuals of these abilities, but I hope you leave some of the "bigger" abilities as they are - they look great.

Wishes for the near future:

I miss the music when you are playing. I would really love hear what you guys have been able to do with Bear McCreary unless you haven't gotten the opportunity yet.
Night and day cycles would also be something that I would love to see an early iteration of soon so we can get a feeling of how dark the nights actually become (Here is hoping for pitch black so that lanterns or something similar is required)

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Comments

unknownsystemerror

I would like to see the citation on that. The only mention of changing how the game will look concerning spell effects or avatars is about siege instances. Changing how spell effects are seen by you from other players is not planned. The whole point of some of them is to blind, or provide cover. (black hole for one). This has been proposed by players before looking to gain some workaround to cosmetics or spells. The handy trick of playing on low graphics to remove terrain clutter to see people more easily also doesn't work (Tey tried this in first test, it just makes the stuff more blurry, doesn't remove). I will admit that there may be a quote out there that I might have missed in the hundreds of hours of livestreams we have now, so if you have a citation, then link it.

Hjerim

@unknownsystemerror was pretty certain they said this around when they played the siege trailer with real people back in march 2019. I have looked through a couple of hours of tape and I give up now...

Thanks for pointing it out - I think you might be right.

Tam Hawkins

darthaden wrote: »

voidshadow wrote: »

Combat effects could be toned down a little in my opinion and i thought characters seemed a little off too. But these are just polish complaints that i'm confident will be fixed in due time

They could just go the route BDO took and allow players to turn off other players spell effects so you don't get overwhelmed when there's a bunch of people on the screen.

FF14 also had such a system where you could choose to either see all effects, only the effects of your group or only your effects.
And it was necessary. Some of the spells (especialy the lvl 50 Whitemage spell) were outrigth blinding.

That said, I would find it extremly negative and a sign of bad effect design if something like that were necessary (as long as the number of players in a certain area is under a certain limit).
I want to see what happens in the world and not seeing anything anymore just because one character of a certain class is present would be rather disapointing.
Does anyone know how hard it is to change the intesity of effects?Because that sounds (for me) like the better option. So instead of just choosing to see or not to see you could choose to see all but the brightness/flashiness is turned down to a degree were (50%, 20%,..) you are able to see.

Ventharien

Really loved what they showed, and glad to see the new iterations. I hope they change up the cast animations though. The floating high jump pirouette every time you throw a fire ball definitely put me off.

sirston

feeling better about the game, was a little worried for a bit

Moseph

Were those Starship Troopers references from Steven?

unknown

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Nagash

Tsukasa wrote: »

Tab target is brainless and garbage. Stop copying Archeage! Remove this garbage. In BDO you can win 1v3 with pure skill.

lucky its a combination of tab and action combat ^^

unknown

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Noaani

Tsukasa wrote: »

And what's the point? One guaranteed CC tab target skill, makes action focused builds for DDs completely useless. Action is all about "Don't get CC'd, or you die. Never stop moving, time your iframes and super armor with the right counter-skills to stay standing" "Hit without getting hit".

Sounds like Street Fighter to me.

I'd rather a game that is about using the right ability at the right time, but where there are dozens of factors to take in to account to know which ability is the right one to use.

Basically, I'm going to pit my brain up against your twitch ability.

Hjerim

noaani wrote: »

Tsukasa wrote: »

And what's the point? One guaranteed CC tab target skill, makes action focused builds for DDs completely useless. Action is all about "Don't get CC'd, or you die. Never stop moving, time your iframes and super armor with the right counter-skills to stay standing" "Hit without getting hit".

Sounds like Street Fighter to me.

And it kind of feel like it too! A brawler within an MMO - not everyones cup of tea, but for me BDO is without a doubt the best combat in any MMO to this date.

Plateau

Hjerim

as long as they are not full tab-target - I am in. My preference would be Action Combat, but I can settle for "less".

Noaani

leonerdo wrote: »

You'll notice that most good action-combat games tend be lacking in other areas, and for good reason.

This is a point I have been making here for years.

BDO has an ok combat system (it's not great, honestly). Thing is, that combat system simply wouldn't work on a real end game PvE encounter - and BDO has no such content. A pure action combat system is great in a PvP setting though.

On the other hand, you have a game like WoW. The combat system is as bland and boring as it is possible to make, yet some of the content makes the game at least interesting, even if not challenging. PvP in a game like this is literally pitting a bland combat system up against a bland opponent. The results are, unsurprisingly, bland.

There is a point in between where the combat system itself is interesting and enjoyable, yet still allows for the content to add even more to that. This is what I am hoping Ashes strives for.

I think we will find that when the game has matured 9 - 12 months post launch, almost all PvP players will be running an action combat build, and almost all PvE players will be running a tab target build - as these are the combat systems that are better suited to each content type - both in terms of effectiveness and enjoyment.

Plateau

George_Black

Tera had the best combat in any mmorpg I have played. I dont think there will be a better combat than that again. Both PvE and PvP.
Not over the top visual effects like bdo or ffxiv.

No boring rotations like eso, but rather a true action/reaction combat, with a good number of great abilities to be used against appropriate enemies.

However the game soon became an eyesore and I am glad I quit due to time issues before I saw any of the new crap.

Atama

Tsukasa wrote: »

Tab target is brainless and garbage. Stop copying Archeage! Remove this garbage. In BDO you can win 1v3 with pure skill.

Oh this again.

BDO combat sucks. AoC will not have it, thank all that is holy.

Damokles

The only class in BDO that I actually liked was the Brawler tbh. The class had a near flawless combo system, that i truly enjoyed.
The problem is, that all classes are designed for mobbing in some extend, which does not correlate with most PvE combat.

Noaani

leonerdo wrote: »

I agree that the combat system is more important when it comes to determining how good PvP is, because like you said, PvP just pits two versions of the general combat system against each other, with minimal extra mechanics.

Agreed.

To me, this is why PvE is more interesting.

In PvP, players are generally only going to do what is logical with their classes tool set. With PvE though, content designers can decide what they want the encounter to do, and then give them a toolset to achieve that.

While each encounter may be the same (or generally the same) every time you take it on, there are far more logical possibilities of PvE encounters in general than there are logical possibilities for PvP encounters. But that is a whole different discussion.

Following that, I agree that a combat system is only half of what makes for good PvE - you need to also have good content and that is an ongoing, perpetual thing for developers to maintain (players need an average of one encounter every 2 weeks to maintain interest, from what I have seen).

Wandering Mist

BDO has an ok combat system (it's not great, honestly). Thing is, that combat system simply wouldn't work on a real end game PvE encounter - and BDO has no such content. A pure action combat system is great in a PvP setting though.

I believe a pure action system could work in high end game PvE content, but it would require genuine innovation instead of just blindly copying games like WoW and FFXIV that are designed around tab target combat. This was the mistake GW2 made with its raids. The core gameplay and combat was never designed for WoW-style raids, but they ham-fisted them in anyway and it turned into a complete mess.

For me, the biggest problem I have with games like BDO and TERA isn't the combat itself, but the enemies we face. The mobs you fight are so bland and boring and die in 2 hits that it isn't worth using any of the combos on.

One of the reasons why Dark Souls games are remembered so fondly is because the enemies are so interesting to fight. Each type of mob acts and fights differently, which keeps the gameplay engaging for the player. In most mmorpgs you have 2 types of mobs - melee and ranged. Nothing more.

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