Which Philosophy For Passives?

Check out the Ashes Twitter's latest question (as of this posting)!

I've already answered, but it was actually really hard because which Passives I want, or expect, depend so heavily on the philosophy of Passives they actually want to use, and I figure they are telling us that the current ones are placeholder (makes sense, stronger or cooler Passives are a little harder to code and bugtest). Hopefully if the feedback they get indicates a specific tilt in terms of which philosophy people want them to use, we'll sorta-know which way they are going, so I feel that the Twitter form of the engage was the best one. Good job as always, Community Team.

In broad strokes, you could say most Passives are going to follow one of three philosophies because when you mix them, player behavioural patterns work toward optimization and two of them get ignored.

The Skilled Player Passive/Triggered Passive
These are things like 'under this condition, get this bonus' where the condition can't be sustained or is risky to sustain, generally stuff like 'below 1/2 HP' or 'store one charge of this buff after taking damage of X amount or type'. Choosing these is much harder to push into 'meta' but people will still do it, usually to squash anything risky. Especially if the system also offers...

The Background Buff Passive
Things like 'Health Regen', 'Extra Healing'. Always active, almost always helping as long as your character is doing the 'standard thing expected of them'. People will 'meta' this pretty fast unless the bonuses from the other Passives are pretty crazy (and that's risky to balance). Expect to see a ton of 'this type vs one of the other two types' debates if they mix them. I guess if Intrepid keeps with the 'your skill points are one big pool and you have to choose between ability levels and Passives' these could be less 'meta', but they'd definitely almost always beat out the Skilled Player ones and...

The Situational Passive
Passives that only work when an enemy or ally does something to you (other than damage or healing but these can be included if one doesn't mind them being pretty 'meta', they wouldn't be as 'required' for most optimizers). If these are too narrow they get ignored too, but there's some nice stuff in the middle, often resistances to CC. Passives that work only on a specific ability you have, seem like they should be special augments given somewhere instead, so I think of these as the 'defensive' side of Ability Augments, and these ones get pretty creative, but might be hard to code and overcomplicated for people who don't know what they want their Archetype/Class to play like.

My Vote (as a Cleric)
I think Background Buff Passives are boring but that's fine. I mean, I just 'pick the obvious or best one for my group/node/general playstyle and then forget about it'. It's a Passive, it doesn't have to be engaging, that just leads to confusion for some players.

But obviously I would like if it was. I want resistances to be more dynamic a bit, too, but I won't hate Situational ones even if they are just resistances, but I'd really like the crazy stuff like 'HP below this percentage value' and 'just took 40% health in one hit'. It's just hard to know what to ask for, since the more 'logging' and checks it takes, the more code is technically being run. Still, I know how it's generally written, conditional hooks are a performance cost, but they're not 'tearing into your performance level' for the majority of them. Just throw them in whatever the system already tracks or is planned to track, for 'Situationals'.

I think the Triggered Passive wins, of course. Narrows balance to certain situations, usually can run through a check of some kind and most of the bugs are obvious OP stuff like 'you got a buff because you were blinded but then it didn't wear off properly'. Not so easy to find, a little exploitable, but won't wreck content. If everything is on this level, it's pretty anti-meta too (though I mean, players will always do it, I'm talking microcosm meta).

I feel like they also lead to better group cohesion and style building. If you know you'll usually have a specific buff from a Bard, the Triggered passive doesn't even have to be 'when you get this buff, also get X', it can work the other way. 'Because I know my Bard gives X buff, I can forego choosing that passive and pick a different one that synergizes with the buff or makes up for the buff they don't give/don't specialize in.'

Might even increase the 'need' for Summoners and Bards in an organic way without having to worry about as much min-maxing pure number tuning.

Intrepid will make their decisions based on the complexity they have in mind and 'how much work they want to devote to creating the anti-meta environment within Passives', but as always I present this to those who either might not see why they're asking, or just wanna talk about it more, since they brought it up.

~Rae

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Comments

Fairtale

I like the triggered and situational passives. Also find the background buff a bit boring, since it just adds numbers.

I also like things like "increases/reduces the duration of this spell/effect"
And sometimes I like things that bring an advantage at the cost of a disadvantage. Like increasing dodge at the cost of armor.

I am not a twitter user so my opinion will have to stay in the forum.

SpaceWolf

In my opinion, "background buff" passives are by far the least interesting type; "regenerate X% more MP" is the sort of thing that literally every Mage will benefit from, and it has no real effect on one's playstyle except "I can do things faster, ring-a-ding-ding". On the other hand, something like "regenerate MP faster and do more damage when below 50% health" has a quantifiable set of advantages and drawbacks that can drastically change an archetype and class from one player to the next.

Something like that carries a risk to maintain, but is ultimately more rewarding if you play skillfully. The situational aspect of the ability also makes unlocking it more of an opportunity cost than a background buff, which allows the devs to make the positive effects stronger and potentially more interesting. I think that if background passives exist at all, they should function like Job Traits in FFXI, which are abilities like - for example - "+10 Attack Bonus" that get unlocked automatically when you hit certain levels.

If an ability literally does nothing except make your stats regen faster, or makes your damage numbers bigger, or makes the damage you take smaller, then is making it a manually unlockable ability really a compelling choice? Of course, the improvement to one's stats is welcome, but I have found that in games such as Skyrim, the passive "do 10% more damage with this weapon type" abilities are by FAR the least interesting ones to unlock; I look forward to level-up choices that open up more dynamism and options in my play.

Aerlana

any passiv can be interesting while it is included in gameplay.

A good example would be talrasha set in d3, you get a stackable buff each time you use a spell from a different element, so you will rotate between one arcane spell, one fire spell, one ice spell and one lightning spell.

GrandSerpent

Aerlana wrote: »

any passiv can be interesting while it is included in gameplay.

A good example would be talrasha set in d3, you get a stackable buff each time you use a spell from a different element, so you will rotate between one arcane spell, one fire spell, one ice spell and one lightning spell.

I agree, passives that foster gameplay decisions are definitely more interesting. I mentioned this on Twitter, but to elaborate a bit, I think that passive abilities can really encourage players to use more unconventional playstyles, when they have conditional effects, or when they involve a tradeoff between attributes.

The example I used was a tank ability which would add a damage and accuracy bonus when the player was below 1/3rd HP, to incentivize a riskier high-commitment playstyle. Another example might be increasing the activation time of an attack, in exchange for greater ultimate damage. This would make the attack harder to use in twitch situations, but reward good timing and awareness.

McShave

I will refer to the concept of K.I.S.S. here. When you start adding triggered, conditional, and situational passives, it gets more complicated to balance. If they keep the passives as simple, like the background buffs, then it's generally even across the battlefield. It gives me a headache when I try to decide which talent I take when they are all conditional. Like, for example, "if you get the chilled effect, have a 33% chance to drop the debuff". Things like this are too specific and flavor-of-the-monthy. I would much prefer a 10% to drop any slow effect.

Azherae

McShave wrote: »

I will refer to the concept of K.I.S.S. here. When you start adding triggered, conditional, and situational passives, it gets more complicated to balance. If they keep the passives as simple, like the background buffs, then it's generally even across the battlefield. It gives me a headache when I try to decide which talent I take when they are all conditional. Like, for example, "if you get the chilled effect, have a 33% chance to drop the debuff". Things like this are too specific and flavor-of-the-monthy. I would much prefer a 10% to drop any slow effect.

Would you accept being slightly suboptimal in exchange for simplicity?

You're really getting at the heart of the problem here, obviously. Some people like it complex and some don't, but given how hard it is to balance conditional ones (except in a horizontal progression or specialization heavy game), they end up being discarded and often even strongly negative toward non-meta players.

Since the conditional ones can't be strong everywhere, would you accept 'having a few obvious ones that work everywhere' while others can choose specialized ones that make them meaningfully (5-10%) better at a certain enemy type?

If so, Intrepid could mix and match without as many problems, though I expect it would continue to be a point of community contention...

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