Concerns about balancing classes around groups of 8

Let's say I am a mage, and my class in the rock paper scissor system will be beaten by rogue, but can kite out warriors. If I run into a Rogue in PvP, the only motivation I have to fight back is that I lose less XP if I hit him. So, I just hit him once, then stand still because he beats my class.

That is the most boring game I can even think about, please let skilled players win against their class counters, one of the most satisfying feelings is when you beat an opponent by 10 health. Why even fight if you have no chance to win? do not let rock paper scissors be absolute, make it difficult to win against your counter, but achievable, and don't let group balance ruin 1v1 fights, which is probably some of the most fun types of PvP, I absolutely love to walk to the gates of towns and see the best players dueling there, it's awesome and you start to recognize the names of the best players.

I am just mainly afraid that if the game is balanced for group content, this specifically leaves certain classes vulnerable and others just straight up better at dueling. My main concerns are healers, as I have yet to find any MMO balance healers properly for PvP, they either outheal damage, or they do not, I would love to see healers able to defend themselves, but not be invulnerable to damage.

Additionally, tanks in PvP have always been in a really bad place, unless they offer CC and other utility, why even bring one? they are generally either invulnerable but have no kill potential, or outclassed by DPS entirely.

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CaptnChuck

That's why you have secondary classes, diff armor types and sets, gear stats, and passives.

Why not take tank or fighter as your secondary to give you some defense to counteract rogue's burst dmg? You could even take cleric and focus on healing back your lost hp.

You could also wear heavy or medium armor, instead of light or cloth armor. Heavy armor is strong against physical damage and gives you more hp. This further reduces the burst potential of a rogue. (No info on medium armor yet)

You have 16 gear slots, use them wisely. There might be set bonuses that give you defensive/pseudo defensive effects.

Crafters that craft gear for you can determine the stats for that gear. Why not sacrifice some magic damage for some extra evasion/resistances?

And finally, we also have passive skills. You can invest skill points that you gain from leveling up into the following passive skills: Block, cloth armor, elemental, heavy armor, light armor, mana pool, medium armor and ranged passive. Why not invest some points into block and heavy armor/medium armor passives (depending on which one you choose to wear) to further mitigate burst damage?

You have ample of opportunities for counterplay. It just depends on how you build your character.

You can find more info here:

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Skills#Passive_skills

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Armor

Daedrik45

You don’t like the idea of an mmorpg balancing classes around group content. So balance it around the 5% of people who will be dueling outside of a metropolis? Why are people already trying to force there solo mentality on a MMORPG?? The game you want is a single player online role playing game.

Aardvark

Daedrik45 wrote: »

You don’t like the idea of an mmorpg balancing classes around group content. So balance it around the 5% of people who will be dueling outside of a metropolis? Why are people already trying to force there solo mentality on a MMORPG?? The game you want is a single player online role playing game.

I would be very suprised if only 5% participated in the open world pvp.

BlackBrony

Rock paper scissors is blurred a bit with Secondary Class.
What many fail to understand if that PvP it NOT optional.
PvP will happen all the time.
Everything is a reason to PvP. Resources, mobs spawns, areas where the XP/hour is better compared to others.
If you go Mage/Mage full glass cannon and all your gear is +Damage, you DESERVE to lose against a full Rogue.

It's all about choices, Risk vs Reward. Did you chose to forgo all types of resistances/hp/survivability? Then don't complain that you get one shot

darthaden

Just because a class has a natural advantage over another class doesn't mean you cant win the fight if you have better gear, more skilled, or possibly just get a lucky couple of crits

Lazyactor

I dont think anyone should have an advantage over someone else because of the very first thing they did in the MMO. Choose a class to play. What an un fun anti competitiveness mindset would that make. How boring would it be to know I can win a fight against that dude as long as I am semi competent at my own class because it counters him....The system should never be what determines if you win or lose. That should be decided by you and your opponents.

That being said builds that sacrifice some advantages to perform well for a purpose seem fine to me. Like being a melee stacking every mobility debuff and gap closer they can find so they can pin mages and other ranged characters down is fine. A ranged character stacking every mobility buff and movement skill they can find to prevent such a scenario is fine. But in no way should a fight be decided because tank beats rogue or other such nonsense.

Every class should be able to build in such a way as to give themselves advantages over other archetypes but not so much that its basically a game of rock paper scissors. Who in their right minds would want a contests decided by luck. Boring as hell.

Aardvark

BlackBrony wrote: »

Rock paper scissors is blurred a bit with Secondary Class.
What many fail to understand if that PvP it NOT optional.
PvP will happen all the time.
Everything is a reason to PvP. Resources, mobs spawns, areas where the XP/hour is better compared to others.
If you go Mage/Mage full glass cannon and all your gear is +Damage, you DESERVE to lose against a full Rogue.

It's all about choices, Risk vs Reward. Did you chose to forgo all types of resistances/hp/survivability? Then don't complain that you get one shot

what alot are looking for is player skill being more important than which class you are fighting. The hard counters they say we will have is confusing as they say no participation trophies but hard counters and rewards based on group dps are pretty much the defination of mmo participation trophies.

darthaden

The point is its impossible to balance a game 100% for both pvp and pve and still keep class identity. Look at WOW, that games been around for how many years and and still hasn't managed to do it

BlackBrony

Aardvark wrote: »

BlackBrony wrote: »

Rock paper scissors is blurred a bit with Secondary Class.
What many fail to understand if that PvP it NOT optional.
PvP will happen all the time.
Everything is a reason to PvP. Resources, mobs spawns, areas where the XP/hour is better compared to others.
If you go Mage/Mage full glass cannon and all your gear is +Damage, you DESERVE to lose against a full Rogue.

It's all about choices, Risk vs Reward. Did you chose to forgo all types of resistances/hp/survivability? Then don't complain that you get one shot

what alot are looking for is player skill being more important than which class you are fighting. The hard counters they say we will have is confusing as they say no participation trophies but hard counters and rewards based on group dps are pretty much the defination of mmo participation trophies.

If you blur the hard counter with secondary class, your skill will matter, but you will fight at a disadvantage. I have no problem with this.
MMOs are group games, and balance you should be done around groups, not individual classes.

You already know this. Want to succeed at arenas? Then play something that works for there. Again, your choice MATTERS.

ogre

I think having a rock/paper/scissors type of system is a fine design choice. If every class was homogenized into "Melee DPS", and "Ranged DPS" with *perfect* balance it would be much less interesting. I think a rogue should be able to absolutely destroy mages/rangers/summoners if they catch them alone unless they either outgear them by a signinificant margin or there is a large disparity in skill between the two players. No single class should be good against every other class. There should absolutely be classes that you fear fighting alone and other classes that you're much more confident facing.

Also consider what @CaptnChuck said in his post. You may end up running into a suprisingly tanky caster class or a damage oriented tank if they have their class or equipment set up to be more durable or do more DPS.

CaptnChuck

ogre wrote: »

I think having a rock/paper/scissors type of system is a fine design choice. If every class was homogenized into "Melee DPS", and "Ranged DPS" with *perfect* blanance it would be much less interesting. I think a rogue should be able to absolutely destroy mages/rangers/summoners if they catch them alone unless they either outgear them by a signinificant margin or there is a large disparity in skill between the two players. No single class should be good against every other class. There should absolutely be classes that you fear fighting alone and other classes that you're much more confident facing.

Also consider what @CaptnChuck said in his post. You may end up running into a suprisingly tanky caster class or a damage oriented tank if they have their class or equipment set up to be more durable or do more DPS.

Thankyou. At least someone read what I said lol.

Topcatrs88

I think It's important to note that this is an MMORPG that is trying to put back the MMO in MMO's. Encouraging you to play with other as much as possible. Now does that mean you might not be with someone at all time? Sure. You might be alone from time to time, but that doesn't mean you might not be able to win against a sneaking rogue. They have already stated that invisibility will not be fully invisible. So you will have a chance to see one sneaking up on you. Also I don't think the devs would balance around a 8 man and not take 1v1's into account as well.

Another thing to take into account is an experience of a bad situation might bring about more content.
Lets say that you are attacked out of no where by a rogue player and you die to him. Now you have a vendetta against that player and another goal in the game to work tword. Maybe now you go to your guild and put a reward out on that player to your guild mates, and they go out kill him. Then he goes and does the same thing. Next thing you know you have a full blown guild war on your hands. That player's actions just prompted a hell lot more content for you and everyone else.

I also think it's important to note that we don't know everything about all the skills, gear, and tools you will have available to you. The system isn't fully built yet, and for all we know combat might not even be anything like we think. I think it's easy to look at a game like WoW and then compare every mmo to it, because it's been a popular one that's been around for so long, but for all we know the rogue archetype in this game might not even be nukey like in other mmos, Also like the others have stated your secondary archetype will play a big roll into a lot of these 1v1's making it a far different game than what we are used to, so I think it might be a little too early to go saying that balancing around group content might be a bad idea until we see the combat system start to come to fruition.

Also in your example you used, the mage was beating an opponent by 10 health. How much better are you going to feel beating him now knowing he has an advantage against you in a 1v1, in a game that isn't balanced around a 1v1's?

Aardvark

Topcatrs88 wrote: »

I think It's important to note that this is an MMORPG that is trying to put back the MMO in MMO's. Encouraging you to play with other as much as possible. Now does that mean you might not be with someone at all time? Sure. You might be alone from time to time, but that doesn't mean you might not be able to win against a sneaking rogue. They have already stated that invisibility will not be fully invisible. So you will have a chance to see one sneaking up on you. Also I don't think the devs would balance around a 8 man and not take 1v1's into account as well.

Another thing to take into account is an experience of a bad situation might bring about more content.
Lets say that you are attacked out of no where by a rogue player and you die to him. Now you have a vendetta against that player and another goal in the game to work tword. Maybe now you go to your guild and put a reward out on that player to your guild mates, and they go out kill him. Then he goes and does the same thing. Next thing you know you have a full blown guild war on your hands. That player's actions just prompted a hell lot more content for you and everyone else.

I also think it's important to note that we don't know everything about all the skills, gear, and tools you will have available to you. The system isn't fully built yet, and for all we know combat might not even be anything like we think. I think it's easy to look at a game like WoW and then compare every mmo to it, because it's been a popular one that's been around for so long, but for all we know the rogue archetype in this game might not even be nukey like in other mmos, Also like the others have stated your secondary archetype will play a big roll into a lot of these 1v1's making it a far different game than what we are used to, so I think it might be a little too early to go saying that balancing around group content might be a bad idea until we see the combat system start to come to fruition.

Also in your example you used, the mage was beating an opponent by 10 health. How much better are you going to feel beating him now knowing he has an advantage against you in a 1v1, in a game that isn't balanced around a 1v1's?

You aren't going to feel better at all when your hard counter class kills you despite only being decent because hes the hard counter and you just dropped the legendary crafting matt you had spent a month getting on death not because of skill but just because he was your hard counter class.

Daedrik45

Daedrik45 wrote: »
You don’t like the idea of an mmorpg balancing classes around group content. So balance it around the 5% of people who will be dueling outside of a metropolis? Why are people already trying to force there solo mentality on a MMORPG?? The game you want is a single player online role playing game.

I would be very suprised if only 5% participated in the open world pvp.

I said the people out front dueling in front of a metropolis like people dueling out front of orgrimar for example... not wpvp

Rodya

You've never seen a healer class do well in a pvp/dueling situation?

Play a druid in classic wow - spec swiftmend/fc or HOTW and duel away.

The ideal MMORPG would have all classes as creative and thematic as the classic wow druid. But that's unrealistic. Ultimately its tough to tell this early in the game how hard class counters will be in duels... need to wait for people to get better at the game.

Yuyukoyay

I'm happy with the current party size. It's going to encourage diversity in parties. Aside from a tank and cleric you are not going to be overly concerned about what classes your allies happen to be. Which in a game with 64 class choices is pretty important.

Naxxaz

Lfmr wrote: »

...I am just mainly afraid that if the game is balanced for group content, this specifically leaves certain classes vulnerable and others just straight up better at dueling. My main concerns are healers, as I have yet to find any MMO balance healers properly for PvP, they either outheal damage, or they do not, I would love to see healers able to defend themselves, but not be invulnerable to damage.

As many have said, the game is entirely made around groups of 8.

While we don't know what abilities all the classes will have, expect bards to be almost useless in 1v1 and rogues to be the dominant world-pvp gankers.
And hardcounter does not equal a loss, it just means the fight will be harder, it's not a death sentence for a mage in most games to be against a rogue... Unless it's vanilla wow.

Yuyukoyay

Actually based on what I gathered about Bards is they will probably be more useful in combat than you would expect from every other game. They aren't topping any charts but a lot of their buffs are attacks right now.

BlackBrony

Yuyukoyay wrote: »

Actually based on what I gathered about Bards is they will probably be more useful in combat than you would expect from every other game. They aren't topping any charts but a lot of their buffs are attacks right now.

I bet tanks and clerics will have the harder time, as they always do.
But if that's the case, then they will become more important due to how difficult they're to level.

Beekeeper

Keep in mind that, if you are a mage who's weak against back-stabbing, you have a real incentive to plan around that weakness, creating some real tactics. Play with a friend to watch each other's back in a dangerous area, or avoid heavy foliage, or do other risk-minimizing stuff.

If you run around, on your OWN, and get stabbed in the woods so you drop the crown jewels, I think there were some decisions that lead to that point that could've been made with more wisdom.

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