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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Cyclops encounter itself:
Mechanics seemed pretty simple to understand and execute. If we look this as an isolated PVE encounter, I feel like you could jump in blind with a random group and manage the encounter pretty comfortably, even as relatively inexperienced player. So that means that the encounter as it was shown, was maybe a bit too easy, but that's at least partly just a balance issue, which probably shouldn't be focused on yet, but I'll comment on it nevertheless.
I think the Cyclops' attacks should be more punishing, especially the avoidable ones. And in general if you mess up a mechanic, it should be more punishing. In the showcase non-tanks face tanked the Cyclops' avoidable attacks without much of an issue; with just a slight dent on their HP bars. The consequences of messing up should be more significant than what was shown on the showcase. Again, this is partly just a balance issue which will surely be focused on later, but also an encounter design issue, which is something that I'm not really qualified to comment on. There are other more qualified community members that have already shared some great ideas on that issue.
What introductive encounter like this should include:
You should early on introduce players to the main mechanics that are relevant in these kind of encounters. This should include mechanics relevant to the trinity (which was already done pretty well on a surface level), core combat components whatever they end up to be, like active block, dodge or other movement abilities, interrupts, cleanses or whatever. (Doug the tank said that he had to active block some attacks that otherwise would have been devastating. On the other hand players face tanked some attacks without an issue that could have been avoided with movement abilities, again make it more punishing). Also include mechanics relevant to roles, archetypes, PvX elements, etc.
I think it was Doug who said that the Cyclops was designed very early on, when the archetype and combat designs were on very early phases, so I can imagine that this could have some kind of an effect when designing the encounter. So when archetype and combat designs are in better shape, I think we can expect this Cyclops and other encounters to be in better shape as well.
World bosses in general:
I think it's very important to have world bosses like this that have more randomized spawn locations and times. This creates progression paths for guilds and players who can't compete with the top guilds and players who control the prime resource spots and locations. For some it could be the most effective way for progression to travel the lands and look for these world bosses and it would also reward exploring and enhance the traveling. So yeah, I'm all for some very randomized world boss spawns, that could spawn anywhere inside a certain node, biome or even across multiple biomes. Of course rewards need to be balanced accordingly, and the most rewarding encounters should probably be less random and more controllable.
I am also a huge fan of fights that are more controlled, not necessarily just DPS races. I feel like there is a time and a place for DPS races, but so many boss fights in games are just to beat them as fast as possible. Multiple phase fights that require more coordination feel better beating than just muscling though it.
Two specific raid boss encounters that I absolutely love are Thaurlach in The Rift of Nurz Ghashu and Saruman in Orthanc in Lord of the Rings Online.
Thaurlach was a very long multi-phase fight that you needed to close side rooms, shut of wheels that controlled corrupted water, fight a sub-boss while the main boss was active, unlock the room and go fight the main boss who still had %health phases. Oh, and you need to keep an NPC alive while all of this going on. Super fun and rewarding.
Saruman had multiple phases as well and and if you failed a phase you would roll back to the previous phase and even if you beat the encounter, if you weren't paying attention, you could get knocked off the tower!
I really like the direction the group content is taking so far and look forward to seeing more!
Well said, "X is shit" is the most useless statement.
Games are much more entertaining when they are challenging and satisfying when you are able to overcome those challenges. This should be a core design philosophy of Ashes if it isn't already. Dumbing down your game to pander to wider audiences/unskilled players just hurts everyone in the end. The success of Elden Ring proved to me that players of all skill levels are still willing to take on that challenge and struggle.
Effects of the raid boss need to be more defined so players can clearly see the area effect of it's abilities. This can be done by improving the current ground effects, dust clouds, Shockwaves, etc. Player abilities looked blurry and out of place such as the barrage of blue projectiles and bouncing/descending rays of light. It looked like they were low quality compared to the character models and environment.
I think for an introductory world boss this Cyclops looks nice. I saw another person ask about harvesting the wood from the cyclops tree weapon. I like that idea, or if a player is an adept Lumberjack they can chop at the tree weapon while its in the "planted in the ground" phase to harvest wooden resources and deal damage at the same time.
- Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
I'm not a big fan of the Cyclops knocking down trees as it walks. Let me elaborate. I like the idea of the Cyclops knocking down trees but I would like said trees to grow back much quicker than if a player chopped down a tree. My thought process is that once this game is released, or Alpha two starts, everyone will be chopping down every tree in sight to get their hands on some wood. The Cyclops is an early game world boss and should be spawned during this initial wave of new players needing to chop every last tree. So can you imagine that a world boss goes unnoticed for a couple hours, or longer because its tough to put a raid party together sometimes, and all these trees that were trying to regrow get knocked down again, only to reset the growth timers. I think in a perfectly balanced Land Management System players would manage how much they take from the land and allow trees to grow; but that's not what's going to happen. You tell thousands of players to wait a couple days to chop down the remaining trees so more can grow and they'll tell you to buzz off as they can't wait even 5 minutes with their limited play time for more trees to grow if there is one staring at them. And why would they wait, how can they trust thousands of other players to NOT cut down the remaining trees in hopes of getting a good Land Management Score. Basically all I'm thinking is have the trees the Cyclops knocks over regrow much faster than a player chopped down tree.*A side note from this Livestream. The player footprints in the snow did not line up with the player direction. I'm sure this will be fixed but just worth mentioning.
Loving the livestreams, loving the direction of the game, loving the community, hearts out to the entire Intrepid team.
-Garren
How do you feel about the combat preview featuring the Cyclops? Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
I think for a lvl 30 boss this is perfect. No other game I played in the open world required 15+ players to group for a kill at this low of a level. To me this is what an MMO is about. Showing the player base about how a world boss looks. We don't need to see everything at lvl 30, but a glimpse of what to expect as we level in the world. Also as a player, I want the discovery piece to be alive. I would hope that we do not see more world bosses because discovering mechanics and making strats for fights is one of the most intriguing parts of the pve world.
What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
Since this is lower level, this reminds me of the first time fighting Hogger in WoW. Needed a group to take down and even though the other gnolls in camps weren't "part" of the fight, they still played a factor. I liked the progression in WoW. Going from something simple like Hogger to max level world Dragon bosses with a lot of unique mechanics.
Part of the difficulty with these bosses will be OPEN WORLD. Imagine having a group of 20-30 players attempting to take this down when another group of similar size moves in to pick off your players. This is where the difficulty comes into play and becomes exciting.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
Super pleased and looking forward to testing the game in A2!
As some have stated, I worry about the lack of hybrid combat displayed. I know this is something player driven to switch into, but why is no dev using that style? All PoV (even if it was brief) were not using a hybrid model. It was all tab. If tab is easier/superior why have action combat included? Also having the cleric (healer) PoV just be targeting/clicking raid frames tends to be less engaging.
As for the cyclops, I think there’s some room to push the mechanics a bit while still staying true to the encounter design and the desire to be the first world boss point for newer players. Most of my suggestions focus on expanding the mushroom mechanic as I think that could be a very memorable, and easy to understand, part of the encounter. A few ideas:
Finally, as I mentioned, the wolves could use some love. I don't really have any ideas besides the generic ones -- increase the amount, make them spawn earlier, etc. -- and those all depend on other factors. I would recommend working on the other parts of the fight first, and then taking another look at the role the wolf adds are supposed to fulfill.
Thanks for listening and the fun stream. Best of luck with the encounter!
I also have a question preface.
(Asks)
Since this boss is open world and roaming I assume this could be a PVP Heavy encounter?
Pros:
+ Good mechanic variety. (I would love to see another one where he punts a random nearby person)
+ He felt big and intimidating, Screen shake was great. (More Audio queues?)
NItpicks list:
- Sliding Feet (On player too)
- His model was very contrast to the wintery landscape and was jarring, He should have some alterations for the cold times.
- Tank Buster Slam Needs a bigger Queue, maybe a yell or louder slam or screen shake, and dirt/snow Flying into the air. (Him feeling disconnected from the environment seems to be a reoccurring theme)
- What the heck was up with the player models at 10:50 they are all polygony.
He just felt a little disconnected. Great boss though.
I'm interested in the wording of raid boss though. Are the open world bosses going to be called raid bosses and the open world dungeons going to be intrepid's take on a multi boss encounter and play the role of what most people think of when they think of raids AND dungeons? It would be awesome if there were multi boss encounters in the open world as well. For instance, Tumok was baby cyclops, then mom cyclops come out of the forest, followed by dad cyclops after mom is beat.
Since the bosses don't have scaling, I'm worried that the lower-level bosses won't be able to be beat by lower-level people if max level groups have an incentive to try to farm them. I love world bosses having ultra rare drops to try to farm for but if low level bosses are a viable thing to farm at max level, I feel like the boss will insta explode and lower-level players will also explode to high level players AOE's. It would almost make it to where having a low-level boss redundant, because it will be getting farmed by max level groups, to the detriment of low-level players.
Just some thoughts and you guys might already have answered some of these things and I'm just unaware. Either way a great starter boss and very promising for the future of open world bosses.
But if this way is easier for yalls to report feedback to devs, I guess that's fine.
I liked that the fight was not confined to a predetermined stage on the round. I liked how the fight moved around. I liked that you might have to worry about adds, and might have to clear the surrounding area first.
It reminded me of old school raids with lots of characters.
If I'm not mistaken you tooned down the animation by a lot and from my side this is very welcome, now I don't have the JAP game feeling so much anymore.
I believe that nowadays there could be "more advanced mechanics" to do than the classical "dodge this/move there". I dunno the AoC lore (yet) but assuming Cyclops are giants here as well, so he, in fact, could benefit from giants' racial known traits. I'd like this fight to be more creative and reactive, not just the boss mechanics and suddenly he dies... It's so boring to learn mechanics online step by step just to execute, I mean I know this is probably inevitable for raids where there will be competition between people, but don't put these things on timer or debuffs here, make it crazier with these wildling bosses.
This one could for example randomly pick people near him with less than 25% hp and eat them to renew his own health so melee cares more, healers passively focus on healing melee more, etc. If you make this intense, trust me this will be challenging and more exciting than executing a tutorial from a website.
You also clearly have mechanics for him to interact with the environment, why don't you make him rip up a tree from the ground and use it as a weapon, or rip a piece of a nearby mountain and throw it your way, so the place or weather players decided to attack this creature actually matters as well and unlocks some abilities he wouldn't have elsewhere...
things like that you know, gimme something nowadays tech worthwhile, something new, exciting and dynamic, because that is what a world boss should look like. At least in my mind they do.
EDIT: and give me a rogue gameplay already!
It's hard to even tell what the boss is doing half the time. The tree-swing-root-cone-thing took me a while to understand. Could you outrange it or dash behind him? Most of the players didn't bother to do that, and it's hard to tell the AoE size. I couldn't even tell where the damage was coming from until I saw the tiny roots that mostly got hidden within the player models.
Besides that, and the charge attacks, most of the damage in the fight seems unavoidable (and therefore uninteractive). And people weren't really threatened by the avoidable damage anyways. The adds didn't seem to have any threat or urgency to them, either.
So it came across as just a big tank-and-spank. The only way to fail the fight seemed to be if the overall DPS of the raid was too low in the last phase, since he did more ground-pound waves each time.
Considering that it's a low-level fight I guess I shouldn't expect more gameplay to it. The ice dragon from Alpha 1 was cool, so I know Intrepid is capable of putting together an interesting fight. So I have to assume this one was made more for spectacle than for depth. As always, the graphics looked pretty and the environmental interactions were neat, so at least Intrepid is still nailing that part.
Tech has improved, graphics too, but please reserve some unique characteristics and/or trait in just a select few bosses to replicate that experience. Not literally same but just something unique
(reminded by the comment found earlier of suggesting the boss could on occasion pick up a player and hold/throw them)
1. walking through bushes without them moving.
2. the creatures/mobs didn't leave footprints.
3. during the fights i would have his dashes actually throw the players back and up into the air. after he loses his main/primary weapon have him grab like the nearby trees and the destructed environment and throw pieces at people. let him grab the person and throw them or like a backhand hit.
4. the wolves that i saw dashing around didn't seem to need much focus on them.
5. you could have him like reach out and give the trees a push as he walks.
6. the spiders looked like they floated a little while they warned instead of staying on the ground.
Well here is one person who has not watched any of the development for this game and is merely butthurt that it is becoming an amazing game on its own without parroting off of others. @Guazey Check this dude out lol has no idea this game is still in systems/network development while saying classes need to be more complex which has no hold on what is currently being tested. When Alpha-2 comes out I bet they will also think its a flushed beta and except to be playing a game instead of testing
Looked promisingb) Do you like the mechanics, multi-group gameplay, and boss phases?
c) What are your favorite open-world raid bosses, or world bosses? Please provide examples when applicable.
d) Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Cyclops Combat Preview?
Arena was carefully chosen obviosly. Hope AI handles uneven terrain well.
I had to look that clip twice to even notice wolves. Making them separate stage(s) or introducing new mechanics like wolves dragging random players away (stun basicaly) would make it more interesting. Imagine your main tank dragged away for a few seconds. More CC on boss side to break player ranks.
To spark social interaction make boss corpse last long enough for people to tell others about that victory so that others have minor resource loot off that boss once. Makes gatherers hunt on corpses and solo player a bit more viable.
That vomit could create area of denial effect tha lasts long enough to have random players wander in and see that something happened here. Also ground slam craters and player spell marks etc.
Basicaly DecalsLifeTime = 75% of BossRespawnTime
If cyclops could move away from original arena spot a bit further (along his travel path or anywhere) that could introduce rng element like party running into spider nest or into water etc. Maybe even mount-chase him across the land. A bit of randomness V-Rising style.
More environmental interactions. Cyclops hurling stones and trees, players hiding behind rocks to avoid aoe etc. I can see players fighting fire dragon breast deep in the water or grouping on solid rocks so that twisted dryad could not get them with spiky roots or something.
Combat felt pretty static. Spam click basically. Move only to get in range. Player speed compared to combat intensity makes positioning irrelevant.
Also that horn and a barrel on belt could be random mechanics that do not show every fight. Like story arcs within boss foght. Because we need more randomness and control over everything. Predictable 3 phase boss is not so fun.
I agree with this. I would rather the world bosses drop jewellry too. Jewellry can last a long time and can be very valuable.