I implore the devs to work on archetypes and classes before it's too late.

You guys are doing cool shit here, but there seems to be a lack of urgency or transparency on how classes are coming along. As the 64 classes was the exact issue that garnered my interest, I am becoming increasingly alarmed at the lack of info. I am worried that you will come up with a cool game world, but not be able to fit the class system into the core game systems well because it is an after-thought.

You can say that you are working on this, but you need to check out the arguments happening around projected classes. We arent tearing the community apart or anything, but people are solidifying what they think a class will be in their minds. If you let someone have a solidified concept of something, but then your vision doesnt line up with theirs, you will be left with a disaffected customer who may just leave because of an avoidable misunderstanding.

If you dont believe me, just take a look at the aftermath of CDPR's Cyberpunk. Most of their player's vitriol was because of unmanaged expectations.

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Ferryman

NishUK wrote: »

Ferryman wrote: »

This is a good example and I bet that WoW's specs are changing the class way more than what we will see with augments in Ashes. 100%.

WoW given waaaaay too much credit, go and play it

Well you are the one who have not played it so perhaps you should try and then you know what we are talking about. 😉

Marcet

Hailee wrote: »

Marcet wrote: »

Intrepid... your move.

Will you work on the classes before its too late???? Or will the game be destroyed at birth?!!?!?!?

What even is this statement. We know they're working on combat right now, we can't have classes without a combat system

yeah im just fkin around, lol

trying to add suspense to this whole thing

NishUK

Ferryman wrote: »

Well you are the one who have not played it so perhaps you should try and then you know what we are talking about. 😉

WoW is just about an obsession with gear and raiding, I'm after way more player interaction.

StewBad

I think we can all sit here and argue that the chicken should come before the egg or vice versa, but that isn't helping from either perspective.

If you do not have a world in which the "classes" can properly function and interact with the environment, then there is no point in working out the details of the classes, right? Sure, they probably have a list of skills and their basic functionalities laid out on a whiteboard somewhere; but if the base of the game (the world) isn't ready for the integration of all the class skillsets, what's the point of sharing information that will more than likely change several times, if not more, before you're ready?

NiKr wrote: »

We have yet to see any real augments. The "rush TP" is cute and all...

I mean maybe the "rush TP" is cute, at this point, because we have no context on how it will/could interact with the environment. *Maybe* there will be a siege mechanic that requires teleport to traverse some obstacle during a siege, to hit a lever and drop a draw bridge for example, and giving Archetypes the ability to do so if they chose Mage as their secondary unlocks a whole new strategy for sieging. Who knows, maybe there will be other instances in the game that could make a situation easier if that skillset is present.

These are the types of things I think they are working on, undoubtedly more intricate and well thought out, that delays the release of details of class information.

Dygz

NishUK wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

What???
Like starting with 8 Primary Archetypes

....like simple ways of starting it, like starting off as a super basic fighter or a super basic caster.

Um. That's what I said.

Ludullu

StewBad wrote: »

I mean maybe the "rush TP" is cute, at this point, because we have no context on how it will/could interact with the environment.

I meant it more as a "that's the only fucking example we have so far, outside of the obvious plain "you can add elements to your abilities"".

Dygz

We also have the example of adding a Fire augment or a Lightning augment to Charge...adding elemental damage. And we know that we can also add augments for group heals as well as self-heals.

Murdach

Hailee wrote: »

What even is this statement. We know they're working on combat right now, we can't have classes without a combat system

I would actually say working on combat is less effective if you dont know what classes there are. Working on swinging a weapon or waving a hand is ok, but do they need to add animations for Sleep? Stagger? Stun? Are you going to make every sword swing part of a generic "sword" suite? Or will a different archetypes have different sword swing animations? Will Augments affect sword swing animation?

You cant answer these without knowing what the class system is bringing to the table.

SirChancelot

NiKr wrote: »

SirChancelot wrote: »

All tanks are still tanks, different secondary just changes the flavor? But they are all still the same class, and can't change an archetypes role.

We have yet to see any real augments. The "rush TP" is cute and all, but we have no clue what kind of impact all the other augment schools will/can have. What if a whole party has tank secondaries? Would one dude with healer secondary be enough to keep them healed up because they already have defensive augments?

Would a fighter/tank be enough to tank content if the whole party has bard secondaries that can decrease dmg output of their targets?

There's a ton of possible combos that might lead to classes having the same impact as they did in wow. We can only wait till they release more info about them.

Yeah
That's basically what I ended up with after the last time I started that thread
It's up to intrepid and how much augments can push the envelope for an archetype, and at this point we just don't know enough yet.

Personal vote, I hope you can build characters in a way to where you can shift their roles in a group... But that's just my opinion.

CROW3

I think you could start with basic attack animations without having to know all of the animations for every class.

Once you understand the combat approach for:
- melee weapon attacks
- physical ranged attacks
- casting ranged attacks
- direct casted heals
- melee conal aoe
- casted aoe
- multi target heals

Then you can fan out to specialized attacks and unique animations, with some potential refactoring as you discover more.

Azherae

Murdach wrote: »

Hailee wrote: »

What even is this statement. We know they're working on combat right now, we can't have classes without a combat system

I would actually say working on combat is less effective if you dont know what classes there are. Working on swinging a weapon or waving a hand is ok, but do they need to add animations for Sleep? Stagger? Stun? Are you going to make every sword swing part of a generic "sword" suite? Or will a different archetypes have different sword swing animations? Will Augments affect sword swing animation?

You cant answer these without knowing what the class system is bringing to the table.

This is backward.

Combat is first, classes are emergent.

If you try to make Combat emergent from classes your PvE will be terrible and your balance will be spotty.

Dygz

Murdach wrote: »

I would actually say working on combat is less effective if you dont know what classes there are. Working on swinging a weapon or waving a hand is ok, but do they need to add animations for Sleep? Stagger? Stun? Are you going to make every sword swing part of a generic "sword" suite? Or will a different archetypes have different sword swing animations? Will Augments affect sword swing animation?

You cant answer these without knowing what the class system is bringing to the table.

Just because we don't know the details of Ashes classes does not mean the devs don't know those details.

Ferryman

Combat system and classes are developed at the same time because those are bound to each other. It is not like either one is done first.

Murdach

Once you understand the combat approach for:
- melee weapon attacks
- physical ranged attacks
- casting ranged attacks
- direct casted heals
- melee conal aoe
- casted aoe
- multi target heals

Then you can fan out to specialized attacks and unique animations, with some potential refactoring as you discover more.

So you think they should do generic move suites, then specialize later. This is what I am afraid of. My prime example of this turning out poorly is Gazillion's Marvel Heroes. Every time they came out with a unique/specialized attack or animation, they goosed the power up or down and had to rebalance pretty much every time. This is not a 1:1 comparison as this rebalance would happen before launch hopefully. However, it's extra development time that could be avoided if the specializations are known before the combat is baked in.

Again, I am not demanding details. I am asking. Because it's been a long time since they have talked about at all.

Vaknar

We know our players are excited to see the archetypes and classes in action. Ashes of creation is a monumentally sized project and we want it to be perfect. That means that it will take time. We don't want to rush this game but would rather take the time necessary to make it exactly as Steven has envisioned!

With that said, archetypes and classes are not at all being neglected by our teams. They're actively being worked on and we are so excited to show them off once they're ready!

What archetypes and classes are you all excited to see and play?

Dygz

All the ones we haven't seen yet!!
(I already have 4 X/Bard alts planned.)

NishUK

@Vaknar Summoners are the massive highlight for me and what niche is this class/archetype going to provide.

I'm also very scared for it being messy in a mass player setting IE with more than 1 thing summoned out, I'd prefer there to be a focus on 1 pet at a time but unlike Lineage 2 I'd like there to be fast summoning, like if the summoner is connected to another plane of existance calling magical beasts out one at a time to perform certain tasks or until its death.

unknown

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SirChancelot

Vaknar wrote: »

We know our players are excited to see the archetypes and classes in action. Ashes of creation is a monumentally sized project and we want it to be perfect. That means that it will take time. We don't want to rush this game but would rather take the time necessary to make it exactly as Steven has envisioned!

With that said, archetypes and classes are not at all being neglected by our teams. They're actively being worked on and we are so excited to show them off once they're ready!

What archetypes and classes are you all excited to see and play?

I'm curious about the summoner... But I'm mostly excited for the idea of secondary archetype and playing around with blending classes to set how far I can shift them.

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