I think folks often argue themselves into indefensible positions and double down anyway. Or that they're willing to say things they don't really believe in order to progress an argument. Happens more often than I like
If they do, that's still going into any Dev considerations and reports as a true point of feedback.
In a way, if you wanted to be effective while sharing your feedback, you have to avoid causing that reaction from others. The integration of such feedback if it was based on that outcome, would then be avoidable.
i.e. if things were left alone and those players accepted whatever came out of the studio, it would be 'better' than if you 'push to the point where you attract a pile of people who end up sounding like they would rather failing use of healing potions' and cause it to actually end up under discussion for 4 hours in a Dev roundtable.
It doesn't have to go into the dev report as a true point of feedback! Now that suggestion or feedback point can be written off as "troll" or "ridiculous" or w/e
It doesn't have to go into the dev report as a true point of feedback! Now that suggestion or feedback point can be written off as "troll" or "ridiculous" or w/e
And if there are developers on staff willing to pitch some variation of that as a real thing and argue for it?
If I accidentally created the darkest timeline where ashes becomes a game where you can accidentally trip while you're moving or fall of your horse or randomly fail quests, then I sincerely apologize. I think the probability that I did that is exceedingly low.
If I accidentally created the darkest timeline where ashes becomes a game where you can accidentally trip while you're moving or fall of your horse or randomly fail quests, then I sincerely apologize. I think the probability that I did that is exceedingly low.
I have been in the dark high places. I have seen the world's twist and the change happen.
I have literally just heard something from Steven himself that made me think 'wait... that was the conclusion from that data?'
It's mostly about how many times you can use the ability during a normal engagement, and how much the play centers around that ability.
To use a WoW example, when you play against Mage teams in WoW, you play around the cooldown of their Dragon's Breath ability. They can blink into melee range of someone, and then land a dragon's breath which is a short-range non-targetted cone. That person will be disoriented for long enough for the mage to guarantee a polymorph on them, meaning that their teammate will have to stop the mage somehow. To make the set-up better, whoever is capable of interrupting the mage should also be stunned at the same time by the mage's teammate. This means that the defending team, knowing this is all about to go down need to make it as hard as possible for them to execute this flawlessly, or know who needs to use their CC-breaker to interrupt the chain (because if they both use it, they're wasting defensives). The mage team can set this up every ~30-45 seconds.
I would call the Dragon's Breath high-impact. If the mage team set this all up and then the dragon's breath got resisted and they lost, it would feel super dumb.
Nice example, now i can have a slightly better understanding of what power level a skill requires for you to consider it a High impact CC, CD being the main factor(even tho missing other variables of the skill),
30-45 sec would basically fall inside the target TTK of Ashes, I believe a CC skill with such long CD that would be able to be used only once or twice in a match should not by any means be RNG based and should always apply.
Aren't we all sinners?
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
It is binary. Your character does not play itself. When you play melee and your hands are off the keyboard and a monster 30 yards away shoots you, your character does not run up to start doing battle, like a zergling would in starcraft. It will continue to shoot you until you die or choose to play.
I don't understand why you keep saying that your character does not play itself.
We agree. The character does not play itself. That is irrelevant.
I don't understand why you keep saying that your character does not play itself.
We agree. The character does not play itself. That is irrelevant.
If the character does not play itself, then play matters, because the outcome is based on how you are playing (and whether or not you are playing). It's relevant because it's a direct counter point to the following claim:
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited August 2021
Who said play doesn't matter?
Player skill matters, but in an RPG character skill/build should trump player twitch skill - push comes to shove.
If it's a match between an inexperienced player with a Level 20 character v an experienced player with a Level 3 character, player skill and experience may not help the Level 3 character survive, regardless of that player's skill.
Rolling a one is supposed to make you feel disappointed and frustrated.
That is a key aspect of RPGs.
If being competitive means that much to you, play a MOBA or an MMOFPS.
I don't need or want to play certain games competitively, but I'm factoring in the competitive aspects being implemented into AoC. One of AoC's biggest contributing gameplay experiences are from large scale Siege Wars which is a competitive PvP experience that can determine the outcome of a Node System's level progression.
A world changing game event that causes the player to lose their house, farm, raids/dungeon locations etc. all happened because someone randomly couldn't perform/resist a game winning CC even though they had a 95% chance to do so.
You don't have to/need to be competitive in AoC to understand that RNG, especially from CC, can have major consequences to the game. It may create a fun and dramatic story for the journey, but I don't think it would be a fair and desirable one.
Just reposting because it seems like you are able to discuss semantics with @beaushinkle atm...
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I don't need or want to play certain games competitively, but I'm factoring in the competitive aspects being implemented into AoC. One of AoC's biggest contributing gameplay experiences are from large scale Siege Wars which is a competitive PvP experience that can determine the outcome of a Node System's level progression.
A world changing game event that causes the player to lose their house, farm, raids/dungeon locations etc. all happened because someone randomly couldn't perform/resist a game winning CC even though they had a 95% chance to do so.
You don't have to/need to be competitive in AoC to understand that RNG, especially from CC, can have major consequences to the game. It may create a fun and dramatic story for the journey, but I don't think it would be a fair and desirable one.
Reductio ad absurdum fallacy
That's a bunch of hyperbole that is not really a thing.
A Siege is not going to be lost because one person couldn't resist a "winning CC".
And, seems like that will teach that player to focus more on building their character to resist CCs.
Crap, sorry @Ugoogee, I've ignored a handful of your posts.
I fully agree that ashes is intended to feel at least feel competitive. They want players to have agency, and they want for player interaction to have stakes. When you gank or get ganked by someone in the wild, you risk karma, xp debt, and raw materials. When you participate in a siege, you risk your home.
Yes, they could resolve these things more-or-less randomly, or with a lot of spectacle, but that doesn't feel in line with the rest of their designs to me. It feels like they want for player agency to be key, and since that won't really be a thing with builds (because meta build information will be available extremely quickly), agency will most likely be in the form of player skill.
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
In the scenario he provided you, player skill won't matter much, if at all.
Unless one of the players is literally blind or disabled in some other fashion that critically impedes their actions.
Crap, sorry @Ugoogee, I've ignored a handful of your posts.
I fully agree that ashes is intended to feel at least feel competitive. They want players to have agency, and they want for player interaction to have stakes. When you gank or get ganked by someone in the wild, you risk karma, xp debt, and raw materials. When you participate in a siege, you risk your home.
Yes, they could resolve these things more-or-less randomly, or with a lot of spectacle, but that doesn't feel in line with the rest of their designs to me. It feels like they want for player agency to be key, and since that won't really be a thing with builds (because meta build information will be available extremely quickly), agency will most likely be in the form of player skill.
The thing here is that the 'rest of their designs' actually don't indicate that. They're often nonspecific. We see what we want to see, and for a while, we were allowed to continue doing that.
But this Studio stands on its core principle. Integrity, Transparency, and letting you know what you're in for. We have now been given a much more focused lens through which to interpret those things. The coin is no longer in the air.
This has more to do with tilting to one side of two equally valid concepts of player agency and builds in an MMO, and now due to that commitment, we have an answer. The thing that you indicated that you consider to be competitive is not the thing that Ashes considers to be competitive.
And that's totally in line with what we knew before, too. What we knew about the plans, origins, Steven's perspective on games, and the available methodologies they are pushing from. That's the great part about that transparency. To look at things clearly and be able to go 'oh, wait this looks great/off', and then make any decisions from there.
In the scenario he provided you, player skill won't matter much, if at all.
Unless one of the players is literally blind or disabled in some other fashion that critically impedes their actions.
Note how the claim "player skill won't matter much in particular situations" is very different than the claim "in an RPG only your character's skill matters".
At any rate, I think we agree, so I think we can drop it.
This has more to do with tilting to one side of two equally valid concepts of player agency and builds in an MMO, and now due to that commitment, we have an answer. The thing that you indicated that you consider to be competitive is not the thing that Ashes considers to be competitive.
And that's totally in line with what we knew before, too. What we knew about the plans, origins, Steven's perspective on games, and the available methodologies they are pushing from. That's the great part about that transparency. To look at things clearly and be able to go 'oh, wait this looks great/off', and then make any decisions from there.
Wait, sorry - what specifically are you referring to? Which perspective on games and available methodologies? Where did they write / speak about what Ashes considers to be competitive?
This has more to do with tilting to one side of two equally valid concepts of player agency and builds in an MMO, and now due to that commitment, we have an answer. The thing that you indicated that you consider to be competitive is not the thing that Ashes considers to be competitive.
And that's totally in line with what we knew before, too. What we knew about the plans, origins, Steven's perspective on games, and the available methodologies they are pushing from. That's the great part about that transparency. To look at things clearly and be able to go 'oh, wait this looks great/off', and then make any decisions from there.
Wait, sorry - what specifically are you referring to? Which perspective on games and available methodologies? Where did they write / speak about what Ashes considers to be competitive?
They didn't, not in so many words. If you haven't watched the Q&A section of the latest Livestream, go do that and hear from them directly.
That might not be enough information without a context, or perhaps without my bias. Either way, consider what I said the 'biased advice' of someone who has played the Alpha.
I'll go back and re-listen, but nothing stuck out at me. Sec!
The first question was about biggest takeaways, and Steven mentioned that "the direction of combat and the fluid nature we want to have between tab and action is we're heading in the right direction and we need to add further polish and bells and whistles and continue down the path of that freeform melee combat" (mildly paraphrased).
Someone asked about action vs tab, and if they were going to go fully one way or they other, and Steven said no, they would continue to flesh out the current system.
I don't think either of those really speak enough to their competitive vision to be conclusive
I'll go back and re-listen, but nothing stuck out at me. Sec!
If nothing stuck out to you, then just assume it's my bias. I'm always trying to be very cognizant of when that's a thing causing this response, but biases, particularly those one builds up from the way one perceives a block of data, are very hard to shake, because one can't just shake off the data or experience.
It was one of those answers that could be interpreted in a million ways. What specifically needs polish, and what's the right path? Is the RNG on cc's part the part that needs polish, or is that the part's that's on the right path? etc.
"I will take randomly losing control of my character and falling on my face when I'm running through the wild if it's required to preserve RNG". I honestly don't actually believe it, and think talk is cheap.
Wow. 3 conference calls, and this thread accelerated across another page of responses (so catching up). I've played I don't know how many games in the rain. You slip you fall you miss a shot, you get up and keep playing - this isn't foreign to competition. Now in a gaming environment, the examples you provided are your examples, and hyperbolic in order to try and force a logical incongruence. I'd rather have a sense of not-100% certainty in everything, then 100% sense of certainty just on these things.
Practically speaking it's relatively moot. RNG has been explicitly included as part of combat interaction, and not part of say mounting a horse. So we both win, you're hyperbolic examples won't come to fruition, and RNG persists in some non-zero state within Ashes.
A follow up note to whoever brought up (I think it was @Ugoogee) the table-tennis example. It's a good example, but it underscores my point. Switching sides in table-tennis (and most field sports) isn't about eliminating random field / weather factors, it's about spreading the probability of those random events evenly across the teams. Those are still factors in the game, but they impact both teams equally (in theory) at some point in the match.
Reductio ad absurdum fallacy
That's a bunch of hyperbole that is not really a thing.
A Siege is not going to be lost because one person couldn't resist a "winning CC".
And, seems like that will teach that player to focus more on building their character to resist CCs.
Sure it may be an over exaggerated example, but if we're focusing on the topic of RNG, especially applied to CC, then my over exaggerated example still has a CHANCE of happening BECAUSE of certain inherent RNG implementations. When introducing RNG to CC inherently to a game's mechanics the chance of my over exaggerated example happening in a game is never zero, even when countering with a build like how I said in my previous post.
@CROW3 was able to ask a me reasonable question regarding RNG scenarios that determine an outcome which I answered. If you also have any thoughts on that then let us know
I'm going to challenge this a bit - if the last move before a node is lost is that a CC failed to hit, there were a number of other failures based on non-RNG dynamics that led up to that node being lost. If it were my freehold lost, I'm not going to blame a missed CC for the node being taken.
True but the whole battle's outcome is also created from other small RNG based game mechanics and scenarios that could snowball into entirely different small outcomes if one particular small event did/didn't happen by chance.
You could possibly have the same exact sequence of battles and events, but if you tweaked just one number in any one of those sequences/battles, it could change the entire outcome of the war.[/quote]
RNG has been explicitly included as part of combat interaction, and not part of say mounting a horse. So we both win, you're hyperbolic examples won't come to fruition, and RNG persists in some non-zero state within Ashes.
I think the thought experiment is totally valid. You claimed that because I accept uncertainty, then I should accept uncertainty for all abilities (which I think is silly). As a counter point, I claim that if I must accept uncertainty for all abilities, then you must accept uncertainty for everything.
I know, for instance, that I would have more fun if my character wasn't randomly falling over from time to time as I moved normally through the world, or occasionally getting indigestion when eating normal meals. I don't want my gear to have random tiny chances to become unbuckled or my boots to randomly become untied. I'd just rather the game not make me deal with that nonsense. I'd expect you'd feel the same.
If that's the case, then there are some things that you would rather be governed by randomness and some things that you would not. I have an extremely hard time believing that this isn't the case. Given that you believe some things should be random and some things should not, then the only difference is which things we believe should be governed by randomness.
You claimed that because I accept uncertainty, then I should accept uncertainty for all abilities (which I think is silly). As a counter point, I claim that if I must accept uncertainty for all abilities, then you must accept uncertainty for everything.
Not exactly. I didn't state that you should do anything. I simply stated that I accept that uncertainty is part of life. It's part of competition. It's an abstract, but essential part of RPGs. Nothing in life is certain, so I don't expect a game (especially an RPG) to bake 100% certainty to the experience.
If that's the case, then there are some things that you would rather be governed by randomness and some things that you would not. I have an extremely hard time believing that this isn't the case. Given that you believe some things should be random and some things should not, then the only difference is which things we believe should be governed by randomness.
I would say the practical approach to Ashes is that there will be a non-zero factor of RNG to some things. That might be a productive way to constrain the discussion (cause we can go existential very quickly). To which, I would say spread a mitigatable non-zero change to miss across all active combat/healing abilities.
They are always obtuse. It's required to be so when one is as deeply committed to ranger as possible as they are. If you aren't obtuse you can't make your point(arrow) go long and far. Just part of getting used to CROW3
Comments
If they do, that's still going into any Dev considerations and reports as a true point of feedback.
In a way, if you wanted to be effective while sharing your feedback, you have to avoid causing that reaction from others. The integration of such feedback if it was based on that outcome, would then be avoidable.
i.e. if things were left alone and those players accepted whatever came out of the studio, it would be 'better' than if you 'push to the point where you attract a pile of people who end up sounding like they would rather failing use of healing potions' and cause it to actually end up under discussion for 4 hours in a Dev roundtable.
And if there are developers on staff willing to pitch some variation of that as a real thing and argue for it?
I have been in the dark high places. I have seen the world's twist and the change happen.
I have literally just heard something from Steven himself that made me think 'wait... that was the conclusion from that data?'
Never. Underestimate. Human. Diversity.
Nice example, now i can have a slightly better understanding of what power level a skill requires for you to consider it a High impact CC, CD being the main factor(even tho missing other variables of the skill),
30-45 sec would basically fall inside the target TTK of Ashes, I believe a CC skill with such long CD that would be able to be used only once or twice in a match should not by any means be RNG based and should always apply.
Aren't we all sinners?
We agree. The character does not play itself. That is irrelevant.
If the character does not play itself, then play matters, because the outcome is based on how you are playing (and whether or not you are playing). It's relevant because it's a direct counter point to the following claim:
Not only your character's skill matters. Your play matters too. In a binary sense. Objectively.
Player skill matters, but in an RPG character skill/build should trump player twitch skill - push comes to shove.
If it's a match between an inexperienced player with a Level 20 character v an experienced player with a Level 3 character, player skill and experience may not help the Level 3 character survive, regardless of that player's skill.
Just reposting because it seems like you are able to discuss semantics with @beaushinkle atm...
That's a bunch of hyperbole that is not really a thing.
A Siege is not going to be lost because one person couldn't resist a "winning CC".
And, seems like that will teach that player to focus more on building their character to resist CCs.
I fully agree that ashes is intended to feel at least feel competitive. They want players to have agency, and they want for player interaction to have stakes. When you gank or get ganked by someone in the wild, you risk karma, xp debt, and raw materials. When you participate in a siege, you risk your home.
Yes, they could resolve these things more-or-less randomly, or with a lot of spectacle, but that doesn't feel in line with the rest of their designs to me. It feels like they want for player agency to be key, and since that won't really be a thing with builds (because meta build information will be available extremely quickly), agency will most likely be in the form of player skill.
Literally, CROW3 did in the quoted reply which you pressed the "like" button on.
Unless one of the players is literally blind or disabled in some other fashion that critically impedes their actions.
The thing here is that the 'rest of their designs' actually don't indicate that. They're often nonspecific. We see what we want to see, and for a while, we were allowed to continue doing that.
But this Studio stands on its core principle. Integrity, Transparency, and letting you know what you're in for. We have now been given a much more focused lens through which to interpret those things. The coin is no longer in the air.
This has more to do with tilting to one side of two equally valid concepts of player agency and builds in an MMO, and now due to that commitment, we have an answer. The thing that you indicated that you consider to be competitive is not the thing that Ashes considers to be competitive.
And that's totally in line with what we knew before, too. What we knew about the plans, origins, Steven's perspective on games, and the available methodologies they are pushing from. That's the great part about that transparency. To look at things clearly and be able to go 'oh, wait this looks great/off', and then make any decisions from there.
Note how the claim "player skill won't matter much in particular situations" is very different than the claim "in an RPG only your character's skill matters".
At any rate, I think we agree, so I think we can drop it.
Wait, sorry - what specifically are you referring to? Which perspective on games and available methodologies? Where did they write / speak about what Ashes considers to be competitive?
They didn't, not in so many words. If you haven't watched the Q&A section of the latest Livestream, go do that and hear from them directly.
That might not be enough information without a context, or perhaps without my bias. Either way, consider what I said the 'biased advice' of someone who has played the Alpha.
The first question was about biggest takeaways, and Steven mentioned that "the direction of combat and the fluid nature we want to have between tab and action is we're heading in the right direction and we need to add further polish and bells and whistles and continue down the path of that freeform melee combat" (mildly paraphrased).
Someone asked about action vs tab, and if they were going to go fully one way or they other, and Steven said no, they would continue to flesh out the current system.
I don't think either of those really speak enough to their competitive vision to be conclusive
If nothing stuck out to you, then just assume it's my bias. I'm always trying to be very cognizant of when that's a thing causing this response, but biases, particularly those one builds up from the way one perceives a block of data, are very hard to shake, because one can't just shake off the data or experience.
Wow. 3 conference calls, and this thread accelerated across another page of responses (so catching up). I've played I don't know how many games in the rain. You slip you fall you miss a shot, you get up and keep playing - this isn't foreign to competition. Now in a gaming environment, the examples you provided are your examples, and hyperbolic in order to try and force a logical incongruence. I'd rather have a sense of not-100% certainty in everything, then 100% sense of certainty just on these things.
Practically speaking it's relatively moot. RNG has been explicitly included as part of combat interaction, and not part of say mounting a horse. So we both win, you're hyperbolic examples won't come to fruition, and RNG persists in some non-zero state within Ashes.
A follow up note to whoever brought up (I think it was @Ugoogee) the table-tennis example. It's a good example, but it underscores my point. Switching sides in table-tennis (and most field sports) isn't about eliminating random field / weather factors, it's about spreading the probability of those random events evenly across the teams. Those are still factors in the game, but they impact both teams equally (in theory) at some point in the match.
Actually, can I have this feature implemented in real life, please?
Sure it may be an over exaggerated example, but if we're focusing on the topic of RNG, especially applied to CC, then my over exaggerated example still has a CHANCE of happening BECAUSE of certain inherent RNG implementations. When introducing RNG to CC inherently to a game's mechanics the chance of my over exaggerated example happening in a game is never zero, even when countering with a build like how I said in my previous post.
@CROW3 was able to ask a me reasonable question regarding RNG scenarios that determine an outcome which I answered. If you also have any thoughts on that then let us know
True but the whole battle's outcome is also created from other small RNG based game mechanics and scenarios that could snowball into entirely different small outcomes if one particular small event did/didn't happen by chance.
You could possibly have the same exact sequence of battles and events, but if you tweaked just one number in any one of those sequences/battles, it could change the entire outcome of the war.[/quote]
I think the thought experiment is totally valid. You claimed that because I accept uncertainty, then I should accept uncertainty for all abilities (which I think is silly). As a counter point, I claim that if I must accept uncertainty for all abilities, then you must accept uncertainty for everything.
I know, for instance, that I would have more fun if my character wasn't randomly falling over from time to time as I moved normally through the world, or occasionally getting indigestion when eating normal meals. I don't want my gear to have random tiny chances to become unbuckled or my boots to randomly become untied. I'd just rather the game not make me deal with that nonsense. I'd expect you'd feel the same.
If that's the case, then there are some things that you would rather be governed by randomness and some things that you would not. I have an extremely hard time believing that this isn't the case. Given that you believe some things should be random and some things should not, then the only difference is which things we believe should be governed by randomness.
I'll see if I can get it in the next patch
Yep - and like I said earlier good back and forth.
Not exactly. I didn't state that you should do anything. I simply stated that I accept that uncertainty is part of life. It's part of competition. It's an abstract, but essential part of RPGs. Nothing in life is certain, so I don't expect a game (especially an RPG) to bake 100% certainty to the experience.
I would say the practical approach to Ashes is that there will be a non-zero factor of RNG to some things. That might be a productive way to constrain the discussion (cause we can go existential very quickly). To which, I would say spread a mitigatable non-zero change to miss across all active combat/healing abilities.
Had to...