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Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Active Blocking feedback for Intrepid
Liniker
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I've gathered some feedback from my community and wanted to share it a little more in-depth, hopefully, this will add to the current conversation on the feedback requested by intrepid specifically about the Active Blocking showcased recently, and others may leave their responses in the comments below.
We liked the current direction for active blocking, allowing it to be used with all the melee weapons, and not only the shield, and the intention of making the shield's active blocking better than other melee weapons.
The first piece of feedback here is: there needs to be a difference for the Tank using active blocking compared to the Cleric and other Archetypes using it, if active blocking is universal and works exactly the same for all archetypes, this is going to hurt the Tank, taking away from it and further contributing for a low Tank population in the game. There's only 1 Tank archetype, If the Tank has low damage, no healing, no buffs, what does it need to have for us, main tanks, want to play it? It needs to excel at... tanking, and active blocking can (should) help with this.
A Cleric should not be as effective using active blocking as a Tank, everyone can agree on this, but how do we make this happen?
Suggestion:
All archetypes should have access to active blocking, but for all the archetypes other than the Tank, it should only offer them a lower damage reduction number based on the melee weapon type (and maybe tier) using the daggers and the 2H Greatsword as examples:
All archetypes should have a stamina/exhaustion bar based on the weapon type that once it breaks, it should set the active blocking on a cooldown
The Tank, should follow unique rules, he should have access to a unique passive, that we will call "True Active Blocking"
True Active Blocking should make that the Tank, is the only archetype able to block 100% of the inc damage when using a Shield. An MMORPG that did this very well was Tera, it had really good visual and audio feedback when you block, with an icon popping out showing that you successfully blocked an attack, this should be exclusive for the tank
and you could explore this even further by adding a buff that increases the block chance waterfall stats for a short amount of time, and it could stack up to let's say, 5 times, when successfully using True Active block making it something like the "Conviction" mechanic for the Cleric.
There is 2 ways you could do this True Active blocking:
Tanks should also be more efficient at blocking with other melee weapons, while he should not have True Active blocking (reducing 100% of inc dmg) he should have higher damage reduction than other archetypes, twice as much, for example:
I hope you can take the time to look at this feedback. Active blocking can be great, if done right, but if done wrong, it might water down the role composition and make Tanks meaningless, hopefully Intrepid will nail it! Leave your comments below if you agree or disagree with this!
We liked the current direction for active blocking, allowing it to be used with all the melee weapons, and not only the shield, and the intention of making the shield's active blocking better than other melee weapons.
The first piece of feedback here is: there needs to be a difference for the Tank using active blocking compared to the Cleric and other Archetypes using it, if active blocking is universal and works exactly the same for all archetypes, this is going to hurt the Tank, taking away from it and further contributing for a low Tank population in the game. There's only 1 Tank archetype, If the Tank has low damage, no healing, no buffs, what does it need to have for us, main tanks, want to play it? It needs to excel at... tanking, and active blocking can (should) help with this.
A Cleric should not be as effective using active blocking as a Tank, everyone can agree on this, but how do we make this happen?
Suggestion:
All archetypes should have access to active blocking, but for all the archetypes other than the Tank, it should only offer them a lower damage reduction number based on the melee weapon type (and maybe tier) using the daggers and the 2H Greatsword as examples:
- Daggers should reduce inc damage up to 15% (or have a low flat dmg reduction number for each inc attack based on its tier)
- 2H Greatsword should reduce inc damage up to 30% (or have a larger flat dmg reduction number for each inc attack based on its tier)
All archetypes should have a stamina/exhaustion bar based on the weapon type that once it breaks, it should set the active blocking on a cooldown
The Tank, should follow unique rules, he should have access to a unique passive, that we will call "True Active Blocking"
True Active Blocking should make that the Tank, is the only archetype able to block 100% of the inc damage when using a Shield. An MMORPG that did this very well was Tera, it had really good visual and audio feedback when you block, with an icon popping out showing that you successfully blocked an attack, this should be exclusive for the tank
and you could explore this even further by adding a buff that increases the block chance waterfall stats for a short amount of time, and it could stack up to let's say, 5 times, when successfully using True Active block making it something like the "Conviction" mechanic for the Cleric.
There is 2 ways you could do this True Active blocking:
- 1 - Each shield type would have a set amount of damage that it could take, like 1000 damage for a small shield and 5000 for a large shield, and once it blows the shield would go on a cooldown, and the tank would have to rely on the block chance waterfall stats (that should be higher than all other archetypes)
- 2 - Shields would have a stamina/exhaustion bar based on the shield type, that once depleted, would also set the shield on a cooldown and the tank would have to rely on the block chance waterfall stats (that should be higher than all other archetypes)
Tanks should also be more efficient at blocking with other melee weapons, while he should not have True Active blocking (reducing 100% of inc dmg) he should have higher damage reduction than other archetypes, twice as much, for example:
- Daggers used by a Tank should reduce inc damage by up to 30%
- 2H Greatswords used by a Tank should reduce inc damage by up to 60%
I hope you can take the time to look at this feedback. Active blocking can be great, if done right, but if done wrong, it might water down the role composition and make Tanks meaningless, hopefully Intrepid will nail it! Leave your comments below if you agree or disagree with this!
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Comments
Making it meaningful to tank mains would be great!
My own group disagrees with most of this, and would heavily disprefer any difference in the AMOUNT of damage mitigated by Active Block from a single attack by weapon, and somewhat so by Archetype.
This ties into our preferences for what PvE encounters and complexity should be like, and isn't as much connected to PvP balance considerations.
Ashes offers the option for everyone to use every weapon, and while there should clearly be tradeoffs for choosing specific ones, we do not feel that 'damage mitigated when blocking correctly', should be one of them. Note this applies only to 'managing a correct block'.
As a result of that, we have no issues with 'stamina for blocking' being tied to weapon, since that relates directly to movement and range (other real defensive options), which IS directly tied to weapon.
tl;dr - don't like the idea that you can block correctly but still take big damage because you happen to like Daggers, but we are completely fine with not being able to block for as LONG at a time when using daggers.
If Stamina loss from blocking is based on the strength of the attack (this is what we are used to, so there's bias), it is also usually true that a large enough attack is the kind that can be outranged or otherwise dealt with by the characters/build types that would have 'weapons whose Blocking Stamina wouldn't even hold up to the one attack'.
Last thing we want to see is pigeonholing of Tanks into meta spec because of single hit damage-mitigation ability. If this is the design direction Intrepid desires, feedback would then be based around removing the concept of Weapon Perks as a part of Synergy, or removing them altogether. Not looking forward to the balance nightmare that is 'Well Hammer can only block 50% as much as Sword and Shield so we gave Hammer this other thing instead, but only Tanks can use it, because it becomes unbalanced when a Rogue has a Hammer, but then...'
Etc.
I understand your point of view, I would, however, have to disagree with you and say that damage mitigation should definitely be one of the trade-offs in your choice of weapon, weapons do have different playstyles associated with them, and from my point of view, both from a mechanical perspective taking PvP into consideration, and overall coherence
it doesn't sound like good game design if you can play a fast-hitting weapon like a dagger and have the same active defense capability as a slow-hitting weapon that is harder to hit,
and it just sounds silly for someone to block an attack for the same amount of mitigation when using daggers and when using a 2H large weapon,
this however is not a dealbreaker for me, I could get behind daggers, hammers, and greatswords all having the same damage mitigation when active blocking - as long as the shield is better - and as discussed in my thread, the Tanks having a unique passive that allows them to be more effective when active blocking.
It's not just about that, it's about getting out of this rng business that favors long time chore players over skilled players.
The potential of games like Lineage 2 and Archeage were massive but ended up being shit for most players due to gear entry, you simply couldn't compete with long time players acquiring significant stat boosts over you.
While I agree with you to some degree, I do think that there is something to be said about your time investment in an MMORPG, your Build should matter, and that includes your Gear with stats as well.
Otherwise we would end up with a survival game or something like New World or Mortal 2 where a naked player can kill a top geared player, and that is not what me, and I believe most MMORPG players are looking for.
In my suggestion, there is a balance both for players skill and strategy, for example when your Active Blocking blows out, you are left to your Block Chance stats and that falls on some RNG, I think that is good, because it makes you need to use your brain, and think when to block, it's not just about your reflexes and player skill, that is what I want to see in Ashes, a good balance between using your brain, your reflexes as a player, and valuing your time investment on your gear and all that
Not everything needs to be realistic in different amounts of mitigation, nor does everything need a block unless it is design intended (which is fine).
You simply have certain weapons have a stronger stamina bar than others. Daggers (small weapons) might be able to block 1 move where a 2 handed sword might be able to block 2. And a sword and shield able to block 3. And based on your weapon perks you can adjust things like dagger for example its almost pointless to get to block to skills but you try to get more recovering so you can block more often. Or have perks where if you block a move within one second you get even faster recovery so it's more akin to parrying.
When you get into the realm of blocking still makes you take 85% of the damage, effecting you are just trying to make something so bad no one uses it which becomes a waste of time to even add that into the game.
I like active block, there should be stat block as well, and there are ways to get them both to work together.
Sure, that's not the hill I would want to die on, I'd be OK in different ways to do blocking for the other melee weapons in general, mine was just one of the possible ways to do it, but I would be ok if they did it with different stamina levels or did something in the lines of what you said
my main concern here is in regards to making the the shield and Tank archetype specifically more effective when active blocking, instead of just having universal rules that would make a Mage with a Shield just as good as a Tank with a shield (in regards to the damage mitigation of the shield when blocking)
But only a shield can truly brace, effectively.
Active block and brace are the way to go, but tertiary stats and/or waterfall stats can account for glancing blows without breaking the immersion Intrepid may or may not be going for.
I absolutely love when a game delivers options so we can be creative and make our playstyle
But if active blocking is the main damage mitigation method for tanks in PvE, I find it horrific. Imo, it makes tanking slow, repetitive and extremely boring.
So, from this perspective, I truly hope that active blocking will be the least efficient option for tanks compared to other damage mitigation methods available to them.
Could it be more efficient or effective for tanks compared to other classes?
Sure, as long as it remains the last damage mitigation method a tank would choose to use.
This could still be a think since tanks will most likely have more passive blocks, armour, evasion, and/or active block bonuses. Making them more effective while other people having blocks they can use that work but while not being able to rely on it as much as a full tank.
Its why i kind of went with the active blocks good enough to stop 1-5 hits, based on weapon type and how you might allocate your skill tree. That why its something that is used rather than always holding up block that some people dislike. Though it also matters on amount of skills in the game, their damage and how often they can use and chain skills together.
Bracing depends on stance. I would like to state that a staff can block and brace more effectively than a shield - if the staff is held in two hands.
Ideally the direction of hits would also be important and shield would obviously have a huge angle of defense, while smaller weapons could only protect from a very narrow angle of attack. Though this kind of design would greatly depend on how Intrepid builds their overall combat system, so I dunno if it would fit with what's planned.
I think bracing should be left for the Tank archetype, but we'll see.
Either way, I think it is good to give the tank more block than other archetypes. I can imagine myself as the healer preparing to handle the tank when the shield falls or they need to take more damage. All in all, just excited to get in and play haha
That's off the top of my head.
A) my thoughts
I absolutely love it as base mechanic for everyone. I actually hope they take this to the next level and add a "perfect parry" mechanic, being a higher risk version of the active block (either upon initiation of the block or during release of the block) where if you time your block right there is a higher payoff, such as having no loss of stamina and/or freezing the enemy long enough to give you a chance to counterattack.
-I notice some people have the perception that active block isnt fun because "you are standing there doing nothing". This would only be true if it is optimal to just stand in one spot while holding block indefinitely (which I will address).
This should not be the case, so the whole point of having an active block is just that, it should be "active" so that you are having to make a choice to block or not. Thats where the fun is, so even though you are "just holding a button down" there should be a lot more to it than that, and it is certainly better than not having that choice at all, which would be even less fun
B- How active block fits into combat design and balance
Active block also allows for a more defensive/survivability style of play. I think this is another aspect of fun that it adds, by having an engaging mechanic that also adds another style of combat. This can add a strategic layer to the combat, and also help establish the class advantages through having another mechanic to leverage (such as the tank being better at active blocking)
C) Balance concerns
Really the only concern is when make defensive play so overly powerful that combat can never really progress when played optimally, because players will be encouraged to just avoid combat altogether, becoming too "passive" which makes for boring slow-paced combat. Active block (and any form of defense) should be viable, and should have a purpose. But from a combat perspective "engaging" the enemy should alway be rewarded more than dis-engaging (I am referring to the overall combat design and grand scheme of things, not neccesarily niche situations where it may be beneficial to stop attacking and reposition).
As long as offense has a way to engage a passive player and "force them to play the game" and interact, then the combat pacing will be more engaging and fun
D) Potential solutions
In the context of Ashes, I don't know enough about how active block works to say for sure what a solution would be, but in a situation where active block is 100% damage mitigation with no counterplay (which would be fine because I want defense to be a viable playstyle)- then with that being the case, really the only way to prevent that combat-avoidant strategy would be to limit its usage.
If the design team chose to take the approach that active block can be directly countered by a specific type of offense/blindspot/or if it isn't 100% damage mitigation- then there really is no need to limit active block's usage at that point (in terms of preventing combat avoidance), since using the tactic of relying on block to permanently avoid fighting would result in taking damage over time and eventually lose the battle, so you wouldn't want to further handicap block through a usage limit.
I wouldn't like this approach myself since it would turn the offense/defense relationship into a more luck based system, rather than a more skillful, fun, overall management of tools and resources that would be fostered through allowing defense to have 100% success rate but tied to a resource to limit its usage. Because of this, having a direct counter to block could also potentially lead to an imbalance between offense and defensive styles, while also making shorter range weapons worse since they rely on defense to close the gap.
Assuming the current approach is 100% survivability during active block- I think a good way to do this is to have "diminishing returns" on all forms of the "active" forms of combat survivability- such as retreating/evasion/shielding. This will allow for survivability/defense to be viable and have a purpose when you are the target of an attack, but punishes someone who uses it as a crutch to avoid combat, which allows for more of that back and forth between offense and defense to occur for more fun and engaging combat.
Diminishing returns could be handled in different ways, but along with a lot of the others on this thread I do hope that Interpid adds some form of it to shielding, and that it isn't tied to the same resource as your movement/evasive actions. I think this would be bad because you generally use movement and evasion a lot more, so you would either never have access to shield, after moving and evading- or have too much access to shield if you havent moved or evaded in a while. I think a good option could be to have the active block tied to stamina, but then have a "staleness" system for running and evasion (similar to how Super Smash Brothers Ultimate has "staleness" for spotdodging/dodge rolls/airdodges) where they gradually lose effectiveness in their speed and/or invincibility frames after continuous usage. This would allow for shield to be taken out or used in bursts, which would support its more situational purpose- while still allowing you to run to reposition and to evade attacks frequently, like you should be able to do, but avoiding the boring overly passive combat avoidant strategies where playing just run away and spam dodge rolls.
I see what you and your community are communicating here. The team at Intrepid is still working on active blocking as it is not finished yet. We hope to show off the mechanic in more depth in a future livestream
I would love to see more posts like this giving feedback and suggestions on other topics in addition to this one!
If certain classes with weapons are only going to block 15-30% of the damage taken, why bother giving it to them at all? Nobody will use it. Anything less than 50% for timing an active block is absurd. I'd rather see the smaller weapons take higher stamina penalties for blocking, I think that's much more reasonable.
People used their free hand to grab the other guy's sword for a couple seconds and then kill him using your sword in your main hand
Theres:
- Mastery 1 - Concussive Blow, Battle Awareness, Batter, Armor Handling
- Mastery 4 - Adrenaline, Rally, Quick Recovery, Shield Smash
- Mastery 10 - Resilience, Focus, Shield Charge
- Mastery 16 - Inspiration, Rend Armor, Disable
- Mastery 24 - Defensive Reaction, Iron Will, Disruption
- Mastery 32 - Defiance, Colossus Form, Pulverize
- Mastery 40 - Perfect Block, Unyielding Phalanx
https://titanquest.fandom.com/wiki/Defense_MasteryPerfect Block: “Raise your shield to become temporarily invulnerable and stun any enemy attacking you in melee.”
15.6 Second(s) Recharge
1.1 Second Duration
100% Damage Absorption
-100% Attack Speed
-100% Casting Speed
1 ~ 2 Stun Retaliation
Shield Charge: A running attack that slams into your enemy with your shield, causing bonus damage and stunning them.
30 Energy Cost
10 ~ 15 Damage
1 Second(s) of Stun
+300% Movement
Battle Awareness: Enter a state of heightened awareness that allows you and your nearby allies to perceive and respond to attacks more effectively.
etc
Somewhat similar idea but not tied to mana. I'd prefer we had a different bar for that, call it stamina, endurance, whatever. It would serve for all special defensive moves: block, dodge/roll, sprint, and even jump.
Shield could grant a reduced cost for blocking. Some archetypes could have reduce cost for some moves: a tank using block could cost a little less stamina; a rogue dodging could cost a little less stamina. It open the door for some augments or buffs to reduce the cost: fighter with better sprint, wizard with utility levitate spell affecting jumps cost, ... Support classes could have buffs or spells to help stamina regen speed, etc. Some mount commands could also drain your own stamina.
Basic cost in stamina should be high, but it should regen relatively fast even during combat. So no ninjas flipping or rolling all over, no one able to just keep blocking, even a tank with a choir of bards.
1. I don't agree when you block you have 360 degrees protecion. It should be like 180 degrees in front of you.
2. Every class should have active blocking
3. Active blocking should deacrease incoming dmg in 60% if you use shield and 40% with all others weapons ( not 100%)
4. Tank should have skills to improve active blockig if he use shield of course. For example:
- deacrease incoming dmg to 80%
- deacrease stamina cost after hit in active blocking ( stamina cost should be depend of how many dmg you get)
5. Tank should have skills to give him 360 degree temporary more protection. and these skills should have longer cooldown
6. Tank should have oportunity to be more dps if he use 2h weapon and build or true tanky if use shield and 1h weapon and build for tank
Of course, in Ashes, that Platemail-wearing, Great Sword-wielding Rogue could be a Ren-Kai with high Str.
well, for context, even in full-action games like BDO (with iframes, active block, dodges and all that) you can play a warrior (great sword) and go for an evasion build, since the game also has waterfall stats, so I don't think this would be an issue or a weird thing in AoC at all, a rogue + great sword wearing plate and going for dex sounds like just a different build to try, and I like games with many (viable) build possibilities
That said, if active block is added then it should not be universal. A tank, whose sole job is to take damage has more reason to hold block than other classes. If they end up holding block for 95% of all encounters while waiting on cooldowns then that is bad game design. NW and Eso has that type of active block tanking and it's boring and unrewarding. Their encounters are designed in a way that if players try to do anything but hold block while waiting on cooldowns they risk getting one-shotted.
Tanks in AoC would need more than active block to help mitigate damage to do their job well. They also need to be able to attack yet constantly holding out a shield won't allow for basic attacking, especially if damage is required to hold aggro.
Also using a baseline stamina system that does both blocking and dodging is also not good as those are two different sets of skills. Tanks, again, block a lot more than your average dps and the few times they need to dodge leaves them with almost no blocking. Gw2 does this better than most by only have dodge tied to a "stamina" resource and using skills for blocking.
There is a reason why many modern mmo players feel that tank is an outdated class in modern mmo design (i.e action combat MMOs)-- it's because they are not designed with them in mind when designers use universal systems for all classes. Active block works well with dps classes (who barely use it), and dps players love active block, but active block for tanks can be frustrating.
If a universal stamina system goes into effect, my biggest fear is that tanking will be less "fun" than dps, unrewarding, and therefore have less players wanting to play the archetype, which is not what any of us want.
The main reason I wouldn't want it tied to mana is that not all classes are, at least typically, reliant on mana to the same degree. Melee dps without mana still have their basic attacks, and their stats boost these. Casters without mana are basically doomed, even if they can still feebly wack someone with their staff, or wand I guess. I thought of putting basics attacks in my list of move costing stamina/endurance, but I considered it a bit too much. I don't know how people would feel about basic attacks costing mana.