Is 64 classes still a good idea?

After seeing the ranger update I'm very confident in IS being able to make some great classes. However, I'm starting to doubt the 64 class model and would rather have around 10-12 well designed and unique classes that is also well balanced (in a group play setting).

64 different classes would be cool, but it will take a lot of work/time and money to make all those classes feel unique, have depth in its gameplay and be a viable option for PvP or PvE. Yes, the biggest hurdle is to create a good base archetype, but making the second archetype feel important and impactful will still be a HUGE hurdle and a big time investment. I'm convinced that IS could make it happen, but I'm not sure if it's worth it?

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Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

We should be able to notice the effects of being hit in the back with an Ice Arrow without reviewing combat logs.

As has been pointed out before, logs are purely there to review what happened w/o needless arguments about the facts.

In a big pvp every person will have at least 5 things to look at/out for, so tracking all the actions of every of your mates is not really feasible. And as Azherae likes to say, quite a lot of people have an upper limit on how much info they can process at any given moment in time. And mass pvp (and especially mass pvx) puts people beyond that limit quite often, with several dmg sources, several dmg targets, several buff/debuff trackings, etc etc.

And even with the current pace of combat, noticing all potential happenings in an encounter would be almost impossible. Which is why having at least even a basic log is a good thing for people to know how to play better (party play included).

I don't necessarily agree with Azherae's group and Noaani on the detailness of that log, but that's gonna be a whole different discussion when we get to test it in A2.

Dygz

Combat Logs are there for individuals to be able to review their own tactics - should they choose to do so.
They absolutely are not there for debates or arguments because they are intended for individual review; not for party review -- especially in the Ashes design.

Combat Trackers/DPS Meters exist for groups to review. Where there are multiple perspectives and interpretations of data - expect debate and arguments to ensue.

Don't have to notice all potential happenings in an encounter. Just have to be aware enough to be successful.
And, we shouldn't need to rely on combat logs to be successful.
Especially when they are reviewed after the encounter has ended.

Anyway... enough derail for me....
This can be continued in the DPS Meters Megathread, if necessary.

Dygz

Song_Warden wrote: »

I believe it won't be substantial because Steven stated we can only move the needle closer and not get an exact match. That dictates that the transition would be less than the whole. However, we can also get powerful augments from race, religion, social orgs etc which won't move the needle closer but might make the needle bigger.

"Substantial" is subjective.
Substantial enough to provide signifcant variety in how a Primary Archetype plays their "primary" role.
Not substantial enough that they adequately replace a different Primary Archetype role.

The group can rely on the Cleric Primary Archetype to Heal with Hallowed Ground.
The Cleric/Rogue Hallowed Ground might be augmented with Poison Damage to enemies.
The Cleric/Ranger Hallowed Ground might be augmented to Root or Snare enemies.
The Ranger/Cleric Scatter Shot might be augmented with a Heal for allies.
Etc.

Xeeg

Back to the original post, I think the 64 class design can work and if implemented correctly won't cause too much development time while creating a lot of versatility for the players.

Hear me out.

It sounds like much of the content in Ashes is going to be soft/hard gated behind certain archetypes or skills/abilities. However, 8 player group content will still need a way for most competent groups of 8 to be able to beat it. If each class has 8 sub archetypes/augment trees available to them, that's a lot of ways to approach the content.

All of these options may allow us to replace a player here or there and still be able to adjust. Even if we can't get a perfect comp and there are 3 ranger mains and 2 bards, maybe we can still find a way through the augment system.

A side effect of this approach is that when we go out in the world after redoing our augments and aligning builds, we might be tailored for specific content. A specific world boss, a specific dungeon, a caravan raid, an ore farming location, etc. This creates a huge variety of "sub metas" and is a great way of resolving some of the problems with metas in games. Especially with the threat of pvp always on the radar.

However I still think the approach to augments as posted in the wiki doesn't really make sense. They can't attach "teleport" to 320 abilities.

A far more sensible way is to group abilities into categories, and then template the ability for a given category. For example on a X/Mage, the "mobility" category abilities can have teleport or illusion attached to it. "Defensive" category abilities can have a shock shield or a fire shield. Makes way more sense to me and still fits in with the original design intent.

It is much easier to design AND BALANCE a new "mobility" ability if you already know that it has to accommodate teleport, illusion, speed buff, invulnerability, and 28 other specific augments.

They haven't really shown us archetype augments yet. People talk about seeing all the classes but this is something i would LOVE to see. A ranger and cleric with all the secondary augments and which ones are templated and shared stream. =D

Azherae

Xeeg wrote: »

Back to the original post, I think the 64 class design can work and if implemented correctly won't cause too much development time while creating a lot of versatility for the players.

Hear me out.

It sounds like much of the content in Ashes is going to be soft/hard gated behind certain archetypes or skills/abilities. However, 8 player group content will still need a way for most competent groups of 8 to be able to beat it. If each class has 8 sub archetypes/augment trees available to them, that's a lot of ways to approach the content.

All of these options may allow us to replace a player here or there and still be able to adjust. Even if we can't get a perfect comp and there are 3 ranger mains and 2 bards, maybe we can still find a way through the augment system.

A side effect of this approach is that when we go out in the world after redoing our augments and aligning builds, we might be tailored for specific content. A specific world boss, a specific dungeon, a caravan raid, an ore farming location, etc. This creates a huge variety of "sub metas" and is a great way of resolving some of the problems with metas in games. Especially with the threat of pvp always on the radar.

However I still think the approach to augments as posted in the wiki doesn't really make sense. They can't attach "teleport" to 320 abilities.

A far more sensible way is to group abilities into categories, and then template the ability for a given category. For example on a X/Mage, the "mobility" category abilities can have teleport or illusion attached to it. "Defensive" category abilities can have a shock shield or a fire shield. Makes way more sense to me and still fits in with the original design intent.

It is much easier to design AND BALANCE a new "mobility" ability if you already know that it has to accommodate teleport, illusion, speed buff, invulnerability, and 28 other specific augments.

They haven't really shown us archetype augments yet. People talk about seeing all the classes but this is something i would LOVE to see. A ranger and cleric with all the secondary augments and which ones are templated and shared stream. =D

I think they've specifically said that not all Augment Schools can be attached to every skill, so we might be a bit more limited there.

There's also the option to simply not have the Augment do 'what you'd expect'. For example, there's a Mage skill that does a line of earth damage and then knocks up (this may no longer be current but it's a general example), and applying 'Teleport' to this, might increase the knock-up, or teleport the enemy instead.

This would lead to some situations where your augmented skill is LESS obviously useful (think 'Gift of the Magi + Teleport Augment causes the players to swap positions, which you might not always want) but you'd still have the options.

Since 'making an ability that is seldom used and isn't consistently strong' is technically 'better' than 'just not bothering to make it', I would moreso expect the 'Gift of The Magi Teleswap' to exist, but then nearly no one be expected to use it as their normal build.

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

Combat Logs are there for individuals to be able to review their own tactics - should they choose to do so.
They absolutely are not there for debates or arguments because they are intended for individual review; not for party review -- especially in the Ashes design.

No.

You may well review your logs by yourself if you wish. However, everything in an MMORPG is to be shared among friends, should a player wish to do so.

The suggestion otherwise is asinine.

Dygz

Azherae wrote: »

I think they've specifically said that not all Augment Schools can be attached to every skill, so we might be a bit more limited there.

There's also the option to simply not have the Augment do 'what you'd expect'. For example, there's a Mage skill that does a line of earth damage and then knocks up (this may no longer be current but it's a general example), and applying 'Teleport' to this, might increase the knock-up, or teleport the enemy instead.

This would lead to some situations where your augmented skill is LESS obviously useful (think 'Gift of the Magi + Teleport Augment causes the players to swap positions, which you might not always want) but you'd still have the options.

I'm not aware of a quote that says not all Augment Schools can be applied to every Active Skill.
I think it's closer to being that not every individual Augment can be applied to every Active Skill.

Seems more likely that in your example, adding that Augment from the Teleport School would still do some form of line of damage but may no longer knock up at the end. Very likely to allow that line of damage to teleport past a barrier rather than being blocked by the barrier.

And, yeah... it wouldn't really be about "what you'd expect", rather it would be about whether the Augmented Active Skill provides results you prefer.

"The Secondary Class augments should be applicable across all Active Skills. So, the 4 Schools of Augmentation provided by your Secondary Class choice... those are going to be present across all Active Skills."
--- Steven
BCG 100th Podcast Sep 29, 2021

HybridSR

Nah it's fine. Steven said only a few skills with be augmented by your 2nd class choice, so it's not that crazy.

I'm just worried about meta and having some class combos being insanely better than others.

I'm still going to play something completely off-meta and rare, otherwise I feel disgusted with myself.

SirChancelot

Song_Warden wrote: »

SirChancelot wrote: »

Song_Warden wrote: »

It is 8 classes with 8 flavours each. I still think its a convoluted approach. There are so many games that could have influenced the class system, instead we get a half baked class system that's not DnD, not AA and not L2. It's a kind of halfway house and a half assed attempt at variety. We can't actually build how we want and we can't actually break from the base archetypes either.

We don't actually know how much the secondaries will be able to push our effect the primaries. I'm hoping it's enough to make this system with while.

I believe it won't be substantial because Steven stated we can only move the needle closer and not get an exact match. That dictates that the transition would be less than the whole. However, we can also get powerful augments from race, religion, social orgs etc which won't move the needle closer but might make the needle bigger.

I can go find it if you want, but I did a full collection of secondaries and augments quotes a while back, and there were a few that were more open-ended. Completely changing an abilities function was not off the table. The framework is there for them to make the changes as big or small as they want. Either way someone will complain though...

I feel like the more powerful augments that cause those big changes will come from secondaries not those other categories. My understanding is they want the races to have distinct flavors, but don't want to make one 'autopick' for a class.

SirChancelot

Noaani wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Combat Logs are there for individuals to be able to review their own tactics - should they choose to do so.
They absolutely are not there for debates or arguments because they are intended for individual review; not for party review -- especially in the Ashes design.

No.

You may well review your logs by yourself if you wish. However, everything in an MMORPG is to be shared among friends, should a player wish to do so.

The suggestion otherwise is asinine.

I actually think that could be a good middle ground... Recorded logs and numbers for me, but not visible to you. That would be a solution to the argument that logs cause toxic interactions.

rikardp98

SirChancelot wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Combat Logs are there for individuals to be able to review their own tactics - should they choose to do so.
They absolutely are not there for debates or arguments because they are intended for individual review; not for party review -- especially in the Ashes design.

No.

You may well review your logs by yourself if you wish. However, everything in an MMORPG is to be shared among friends, should a player wish to do so.

The suggestion otherwise is asinine.

I actually think that could be a good middle ground... Recorded logs and numbers for me, but not visible to you. That would be a solution to the argument that logs cause toxic interactions.

Logs do not cause toxic interactions. Toxic people cause toxic interactions.

Logs are the most neutral and based in facts compared to anything else. What people do with those facts are up to the individual player.

Noaani

SirChancelot wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Combat Logs are there for individuals to be able to review their own tactics - should they choose to do so.
They absolutely are not there for debates or arguments because they are intended for individual review; not for party review -- especially in the Ashes design.

No.

You may well review your logs by yourself if you wish. However, everything in an MMORPG is to be shared among friends, should a player wish to do so.

The suggestion otherwise is asinine.

I actually think that could be a good middle ground... Recorded logs and numbers for me, but not visible to you. That would be a solution to the argument that logs cause toxic interactions.

Sure, some games do this.

The point I was making is that reviewing logs is still a valid group activity.

It is also worth pointing out that a number of trackers have a function to collate multiple sources - they can take data from every in the raid if they have individual logs, and produce a combined raid parse.

Dygz

SirChancelot wrote: »

I can go find it if you want, but I did a full collection of secondaries and augments quotes a while back, and there were a few that were more open-ended. Completely changing an abilities function was not off the table. The framework is there for them to make the changes as big or small as they want. Either way someone will complain though...

I'm quite sure there is no quote that has a context of "compeletely" changing an Active Skill's function.
So if you do find a quote that says "completely" please share it.
I think the quotes you will find will say "fundamentally" change. There may be very significant changes, but the Active Skill will still perform its primary function.

SirChancelot wrote: »

I feel like the more powerful augments that cause those big changes will come from secondaries not those other categories. My understanding is they want the races to have distinct flavors, but don't want to make one 'autopick' for a class.

All Augments have the potential to signifcantly change an Active Skill... as far as I know.
The same Augment will not change every Active Skill its attached to to the same degree.
A Racial Augment fundamentally changing an Active Skill does not mean it will be an auto-pick for a Class.
Augments are not really about power - rather they are about how individual players choose to play the same Class differently - especially how to use an Active Skill differently from others while still providing the same primary results that a group relies on from that Primary Archetype.

Yenn0war

Yes.

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