Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Wand Weapon Combo system? Not to be a buzzkill when it comes to the wand effects but I've played a lot of mmorpg's over the years. And even during most of the combat that you showcased I saw you show off the wand effects but most of it was more using a lot of spell combos. The point is in a tab target game what is going to make me want to use the wand over regular spells? Is it a mechanic that has to be rotated in order to gain mana or apply buffs? Can't I just apply the buffs using the big boy spells etc? The way the wand feels is that it's more of a side thing, not a main mechanic. Maybe I don't understand the point because you don't get to see the mechanic and know what's so good about comboing a wand. It's the same with other classes too why do I care about these weapon combos is it a way to build synergy that can't be built without it? And then balance is another question as well when it comes to that system.
What are your thoughts on the night-time lighting shown during the livestream? I enjoyed the nighttime lighting a lot. I think the stream probably doesn't do it justice compared to actually playing and I can't wait to get into the game and play with some of the graphical settings for the game and see what can be done with it. I also liked how you could see the flowers and how they looked at night as well. I also noticed how well the water looked especially reflecting objects and the sky effects.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown during the Alpha Two Midnight Magic Preview? I can't wait to see how the constellation system works now with the changes to sky. But I do want to go in and also play with graphic settings and see what things can be done and tweaked excited about that.
Are there similar systems to the Wand Weapon Combo system you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain! I honestly can't remember any game that had wand combat as a main focus for damage. In most games wand is more a side thing that almost no one ends up using because why bother with a wand when you could just set up regular skills and combos unless you're out of mana but that's why you would bring potions and such. Unless its an action combat style game and your comboing off your basic wand attacks but there's no need for that synergy in a tab target game when you could just use regular skills.
Are there other games with night-time lighting that you like or dislike? If so, what are they and why? I actually got into the Pax Dei Alpha test 2 and the lighting in that game is no where near as well developed as ashes of creation. You don't see any shadows for trees or forest but everything is just really dark. Light sources didn't have good shadow placement. Water reflection didn't exist either. The overall sky is underwhelming as well and shows that they haven't really put a lot of effort into the game. I didn't see a lot of the beauty that ashes has in Pax Dei so I'm a little confused when everyone that does reviews on the game says it's all beautiful and amazing. The transition from day to night too I found annoying. I found myself not wanting to do things at night either. But there are also a bunch of other things I generally didn't like about the game such as no quest system and all.
College Lessons
I think it was the weakest demonstration this year.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Wand Weapon Combo system?
To be honest, I did not understand in the process of showing where the combo is
What are your thoughts on the night-time lighting shown during the livestream?
Everything is fine except for lighting points such as a bonfire, it looks too bright and goes white in my opinion.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown during the Alpha Two Midnight Magic Preview?
Bug with the turtle's reins, lack of footprints in the sand, the desert looks worse than during the early demonstration.
Are there similar systems to the Wand Weapon Combo system you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
No, but I don't really understand this question. In most games everyone uses staves, everyone wants to be Gandalf and not Harry Potter, a wand is something childish.
Are there other games with night-time lighting that you like or dislike? If so, what are they and why?
I don't remember paying attention to it.
As for the graphics of the desert biome, I rate it 4/10, since it gives the feeling that it is not yet finished and looks like the graphics of alpha 1, I think that this biome is still around 30 or 40% in terms of graphics to be realistic. The bonfires look static, there must be movements in the fire of the bonfire and it must be reflected. The trees and plants a little dated. They need to prioritize graphic engineers, if Steven's vision is a total change of the mmorpg genre. I expected a little more, since they are working with version 5 of unreal engine, but I am aware that it is in alpha 2.
The wand looks good, I evaluate it at 6/10, my profession is not that of a magician so I do not specialize in this archetype, but I can give suggestions for some articles that may have a better vision of what a magician should be like in a mmorpg and help developers improve their vision or approach of a wizard, sorcerer or dark wizard. And another thing, this magician archetype must specialize in a type of spell, for example, fire, only fire spells should be cast.
This discussion talks about the sorcerer archetype.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/a1dqh6/magic_mages_and_wizards_in_mmorpg_games/
Magic is fine, but as I said above, it must be defined for a specialization of the magician. Give the magician direction and make sure he is not an expert in all spells.
Hybrid combat doesn't make sense to me, prioritizing action combat. I understand that Steven is a tab target player, but it is a commercial game, therefore it must be at the forefront, no game is made of tab target, since it is currently obsolete, it makes everything easier, it does not impose difficulties or varieties that It is the essential thing in this genre of video games. Old school gamers, myself included, must adapt to action combat.
I just expressed my concerns. Suggest prioritizing the hiring of engineers specialized in game graphics. As steven said, we are "revolutionizing" the mmorpg genre, which is currently dying, and this means improving the vision of the classes, improving the graphics, and giving an identity to the game (archetype classes), the spell tree, etc
Despite everything, the game is incredible, it has improved a lot.
The skybox is totes amazeballs. Great job! Same for the moons! Steven, please let us go to that harbinger moon at some point!
Nighttime looks much better. Seems to be a good light/dark balance. Need to see it ingame for myself though. Videos rarely do it justice. I like the decision to go with a purple filter I think.
Good choice on the lightning ball improvement!
Wand combat effects looked really good! No detailed notes at this point, but maybe some of the lightning spells around the caster were slightly too bright for my taste. Bright effects on the target seems ok.
The wand fire beam is fucking sexy! Best skill ever visually.
I can't wait for the full move to PBR, I feel like it'll look almost like a different game.
The assets and animations in AoC always looked great, thanks to the amazing art team, but the lighting used to be straight up awful relative to them, which degraded their beauty. It's great to see that Chris and Gabe are bringing us the light we needed for so long. 🙏 Keep up the amazing work!
The skybox is beautiful, and the fact that it rotates is so important. It just doesn't get more immersive than this.
The arcane volley had a huge glow up, it looks amazing now.
The fire spells look good.
The ball of lightning also improved a lot, although I feel like it's still too intense.
The mage archetype tree looks a bit barren, I'm hoping we can see more tiles there.
The sand textures looked washed out, it looked like a consistent color more than anything else.
I didn't see any natural fluctuation with the fire lights, it looked static.
Some light sources didn't have an actual, physical source where the light was coming from, it was just there.
The "tick rate" of the beam DoT was way too fast. The damage numbers just get stuck together. Although this can be fixed from the UI front, I don't see why it needs to be this fast personally. I felt the same with the Ranger's Barrage skill, although for a different reason; its animation looked unnatural. I'm not sure what this obsession is with speed.
If there is no axal tilt then there are no seasons.
The spells were much improved. I liked everything I saw regarding them.
The environmental lighting looked decent, but also a bit static. (Light emitting from a campfire should flicker and move for example)
I was disappointed to see Minotaurs again (They look great though), especially since it was a different area. I hope we don't end up with the same dozen mob types across several hundred square KM of Verra. One way to make a big world feel very small.
Also, I think MOBs should have more telegraphed/templated combat abilities to encourage dodging, rolling, and movement rather than just tanking attacks that auto-hit you.
That said the environment is my main concern with all the footage we have seen so far. The world looks nice but also feels very empty. I am aware that this is pre-alpha footage and there are layers of gatherables, flora and fauna, POI's, etc to be added. I just worry about it. The environments haven't given me that living, breathing, magical wow factor yet. It still feels very bare bones to me and I think it will feel that way when playing at this time.
The sky is a bit too weirdly purple/pink to my taste maybe ; it has this fanciful feel to me (it's not that bad either....). I don't mind crazy stuff happening in the sky if lore justify it; it's more the aspect of it that i want to point out. The 3D model and effects around the broken moon didn't feel convincing however. The turtle pet is beautiful and poetic on the other hand.
Lighting Ball desapear too brutally (literrally despawn) and is still too big (maybe electrecity arcs could just "grasp" ennemies who are in the range of the ball without it being that big itself?)
I liked the incandescent wand effect depending the active element used by it.
Arcane volley is very cool to watch
Magnus Field is rely not pleasant to look at in that state: i would hope something that just affect the terrain directly and not necessarly see a little volcano erruption spawn in. The local ground itself could become hot (almost in a vitrified state) local cracks, local hot air distorsion effect, little vapor smoke clouds, and if some line of magma get out of it maybe the footprints of ennemies who walk in it could be incandescent (randoms suggestion sorry). The fusion matter jumping off the ground is too clutter and "noisy" for the eyes i feel...
Some frame of the spells like Lightning Strike are glowing to the point it feel too invasive on the screen and not really astheticaly satisfying (especially when it involve a colorful mess of multiple elemental magics)
Here below i selected some frames where the same spell glowing feels ok. I would just say the particules and the cracks are too much spread by a factor 2 or 3
The preview was nice. I liked the new desert biome and the armor set looked cool.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Wand Weapon Combo system?
The wand looked fast and fun to play with. I liked very much that the spell effects had been improved a lot!
I would like to see how wand differs from staff. Will staffs be more useful for AOE skills and will they be slower but bit more powerful than wands?
What are your thoughts on the night-time lighting shown during the livestream?
The lighting looked mostly good but there was one thing that wasn't appealing for my eyes.
When I looked the campfires I noticed that the flames looked good but the lighting that the flames created wasn't "alive". The shadows didn't move on the edge of the lighting area wich looked odd in my opinion. It was like the lighting was coming from somekind of lamp.
Also I liked the crafting preview's night time more because night looked little bit darker than in this preview.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown during the Alpha Two Midnight Magic Preview?
I was mostly excited what we saw in this preview. Only a couple of little thing that I mentioned earlier was bothering me but I'm sure that they will be fixed.
I have also an idea.
I would like to suggest that auroras could be seen in the most northern and southern regions of Verra during night time. They would look magical.
Are there other games with night-time lighting that you like or dislike? If so, what are they and why?
I have to say that I liked WoW's night time. When there was night it was dark and music and sounds could change in some areas. It was also fun to play at night time because in real life there was also night time. I hope in AoC day and night time cycle would sync with real life's day and night time cycle. 🤩
Huge improvement! I feel the darkness level is a good mix between being able to see and also creates a good atmosphere for a night time setting. Night time should definitely be this dark, but not any lighter or else it loses the sense of night.
The desert biome looks fantastic! Very excited to see more of Verra. I do hope that the minotaur's are placeholders in that region since we've seen them so much. I don't mind if there are there for lore reasons or because of story arcs, but hopefully we have more mob diversity (Yes, I understand its all WIP).
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Wand Weapon Combo system?
Like with all the other weapon skills you've shown so far, being able to weave in combos is the best part. It will keep the moment to moment gameplay interesting instead of just auto attacking all the time.
What are your thoughts on the night-time lighting shown during the livestream?
Perfect balance, I wouldn't change it anymore personally in terms of darkness.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown during the Alpha Two Midnight Magic Preview?
I am excited about the overall direction. To me the world is a character/story on its own. If the world is as beautiful and exciting as you've shown so far, its going to be a true adventure. I do hope that there are unique areas in all the zones we haven't seen and maybe some that are more "magical".
Are there similar systems to the Wand Weapon Combo system you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
Not a huge wand player so I don't have much input.
Are there other games with night-time lighting that you like or dislike? If so, what are they and why?
None really.
Super dark mount shading: 03:21
Another visual that I think should be addressed is the extreme brightness of the charging of the Lightning Strike spell. The lightning visual effect looks good, however when it appears above the character it is almost flashbang level bright, and distracts your attention from anything else going on. While it may resemble an actual lightning bolt, this is not a good gameplay visual to have centered on your screen.
Extreme brightness of charging Lightning Strike spell: 08:30
The last comment I have is related to combat and the damage numbers. As has been mentioned, the combat is designed to be highly experimental, as in players are encouraged to try a multitude of builds and weapon combos and skills. This I think is good, and moves the players away from a meta and sticking to certain skills to the exclusion of all others. However, I strongly believe there should be a better way to test your experimenting in game. As far as I've found, the only way to check your damage numbers is to read through a combat log, or testing TTK on a single enemy over and over. This is not intuitive or I think a fun gameplay mechanic. One way to address this would be to introduce cumulative damage totals for each unique type of damage. So for example, if an enemy takes 7 ticks of DOT damage from a single source, it would add them to a single damage popup instead of throwing 7 ticks of damage. This way you can see how much DOT damage you are doing from a source. The different damage types can also be differentiated from each other, so making DOT damage types a different color, or a smaller font.
I counted something around 15+ damage number popups in a span of 1 second: 14:33
Ideally, some sort of in game damage metric can be added that is ONLY USABLE ON TRAINING dummies. I understand the extreme apprehension against damage metrics used in Dungeons and the like, and how they are used as gate keeping from participation. Limiting a damage metric to only be used on Training Dummies would mitigate this risk and allow players to experiment with their builds in a more fun and intuitive way.
Night time lighting looked good for a mostly full moon. If there are moon phases I would expect the no moon phase to be darker. As well as when heavy clouds block it. But overall looks good
Lightning ball looks much better but still slightly too bright. New design is great
Can't wait for node wars
How do you feel about the Alpha Two Midnight Magic Preview?
First off, I’d never noticed the previous sky and its behavior. However seeing the newly implemented Sky Box blew my mind. The slow dynamic, the skies drifting by and the colors were so amazing! Really really good job to the team work on this part!
Other than that it was shorter than I’d hoped for since so much new stuff would come to the table, but it worked out well! Would have loved to see other enemies than the minotaurs.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Wand Weapon Combo system?
I see a lot of interesting applications, with long weapon combos releasing the beam were looking really good. Fit into the true fantasy of effectively using your wand as a mage! The use of weapon combo is making it clear that the weapon combo is more for a lot of the main source of damage, and your abilities as fillers and debuffs stacks, however I’m interested to see if it could be turned around so the abilities is more the center of the kit with wands as filler. I understood some of these would be shown in the future, which I’m looking forward to.
What are your thoughts on the night-time lighting shown during the livestream?
Overall the Devs did a really good job here. The addition of was it ‘holywood-blue’? into the surrounding were giving it a better view still making it clear it was night time. I think the light coming from light poles were very sharp in the area, with a quick fade off which from a distance made it look less convincing. You’d imagine a longer blend of light looking at it from distance. Not some clear areas of light. Atleast is what I imagine.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown during the Alpha Two Midnight Magic Preview?
The mage in general makes me slightly concerned. I’ve been all time mage player, really looking forward for the pyrotechnic coming to display, however there were multiple things that bugged me.
- I thought the skyboxes and atmospheric effects in the sky were great!
- The amount of darkness and lighting effects looked like a better balance than previous showcases.
- The ball lightning effect looks better than before
What I would like to improve:
- a lot of the spell effects at night look FLAT, because there isn't enough light being cast/reflected from the actual spells ( see images I mocked up below to show current vs illuminated surfaces from spell lighting).
light being cast and reflecting off environmental surfaces and casting shadows is what gives the effects some needed dimension so they don't look as flat. This is more apparent at night when illumination effects are more noticeable.
Pros on livestream:
* I think the thing I liked best about the live stream was the preface Steven had prior to the video. He went on for like 5 minutes about how him and his team look for all sources of feedback on the game, and while that is impressive enough, the fact that the video showed several instances of said feedback being iterated upon, just shows why I and so excited about this game and it's potential. It really says something about a company when the leader and the team are so passionate about what they do as it normally reflects in the product they're producing, and as they say, the proof is in the pudding.
* The Mage effects keep getting better and better. Very beautiful WITHOUT being overwhelming, which is a tough line to balance on. As I mentioned, I played FF:XIV for many years, and my roommate still plays it as their main game, and while watching single player leveling and abilities looks awesome and flashy, when you're in even a small group of 4, it's like watching those 4th of July videos where the big city fireworks malfunction and they all go off at once instead of over 30 minutes. AoC looks to strike a great balance already between being flashy and not overwhelming. Also the lightning ball always bothered me from the first time I saw it during the event showcase I believe, and it looks considerably better now.
* Not directly on the livestream itself, but the fact Steven and Margaret will be providing additional smaller updates throughout the month IMO is awesome because compared to the previous few updates that were absolute bangers, this one was much smaller and while good, was tough to follow the over an hour long Fighter video from March, so having smaller and more periodic updates is a good move.
Cons on livestream:
* Overall short and less exciting than the previous months, but still good in the ways mentioned above. I think I would have been disappointed if this was the only stream and we didn't have the Live Q&A with Steven and the multiple minor updates also coming later this month.
I would prefer that nighttime be a bit darker. I like the atmosphere that darkness brings when you actually need a source of light to have a better view on things. I think the moon with a clear sky could light up the area as well as it does in the showcase, but I would also think it would be really cool to have a cloudy or stormy sky make it so dark that you need a torch to get around. You could have lightning strikes in the sky light up the world for a moment so you see where everything else before it goes dark again.
If torches taking up a hand is a concern, you could have torches or lanterns on the hip as a source of light that could take up it's own equipment slot, or just be a default character toggle.
Pitch black dark caves would be awesome. If you've played dragon's dogma 2, you know what i'm talking about. You can't see your hand in front of your face unless you have your lantern on and the surprise of running into a monster in the pitch black is really fun. You could have spells that light the way or be able to throw a light source, like a glowing ore.
Dragon's Dogma 2's darkness is my ideal level of lighting, if you want to check out a video to understand what I'm trying to convey. It really creates another level of immersion.
It finally went close to pair with ranger abilities. I liked EVERY single thing showed.
The darkness, the environment, the all in one feel. The beam...is awesome. Creating a more zig-zag beam will feel way cooler than the straight line one. The fireballs are finally good looking and they are a so fun to watch.
Heck, even the the lightning ball was pretty cool but i would still remove it. The ball doesnt look that it should have a place in this game. It is slow, and i think it has no real benefit for example in PVP, its easily avoidable.
Instead, why not make a pushback abillity or something like a small storm with thunder/lightning/wind passing through the front of the character and rooting the character / or knocking him back ?
Mages need more snare/knockback/root spells cuz everything takes ages to cast.
P.S. Slunder should perhaps get a whole re-design as it looks boring
Cant wait to try this game...
Looks like you left comments when the post went up before the livestream
I think it would be awesome to have a lighting be a real dynamic in underground, but I think you guys absolutely NAILED it on the surface.
Also I want the turtle. Gib Turtle.
In this case the point of the wand combo is the beam attack on the 4th swing for massive damage. If you have to stop wand swings to get in a teleport or something else, you don't get the beam attack and your DPS suffers.
The weapon combos are designed as an incentive for the player to hold back on their abilities in order to do more damage (or proc something) with the weapon. The "optimal" time to use an ability will be after the weapon combo swing hits.
Overall positive. Skybox feels more moody, I think it only feels mildly darker. I think even darker is creates really compelling emotional experiences. i.e. I am hoping that in the middle of a forest at night that it's really difficult to see with all the shading that the trees provide. This creates a heightened state of vigilance in the player and actually can create more compelling experiences because of that natural fear of being able to see less of the dangers. Don't really care about the wand, I hope mages get staffs, but never really been interested in the mage class.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Wand Weapon Combo system?
Wand doesn't interest me for some reason.
What are your thoughts on the night-time lighting shown during the livestream?
Would love to see it more dynamic. i.e. Clouds passing over causing increased darkness / shading below. The fires and lighting sources looked static, i.e. the fire would be crackling, but the surrounding light was static. Would love to see that more dynamic. This creates more variance in the experience of night and would make it more immersive IMO. Not sure if cloud coverage could be considered a weather effect, but tying this into the weather system so certain nights with lots of clouds made it even darker would be interesting. I don't think it's always bad to bump into mobs because of low lightning in certain conditions. Again, compelling risk / gameplay.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown during the Alpha Two Midnight Magic Preview?
The sky definitely feels more alive, but the ground lightning felt too static. Mentioned before but clouds / weather could make it darker or lighter (within certain controlled bounds) to create variance in one's experience of a zone / biome.
Are there similar systems to the Wand Weapon Combo system you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
N/A
Are there other games with night-time lighting that you like or dislike? If so, what are they and why?
Everquest. They were not afraid to play with really dark zones. And oh where they so memorable. Stepping into the Neriak woods / Nektolus Forest @ night was pure fear at lower levels. Created really compelling emotional experiences. tl;dr don't be afraid of going darker when it enhances the emotional state you are trying to create for players and don't be afraid of dynamic conditions where it might be darker bc of cloud cover / storms etc. Torches, spells of illumination, or classes that can help parties see more I think are interesting gameplay.
Other Random
Wasn't a fan of the animation of when the fire bolt landed. i.e. the flames kind of spewed outwards from the player. Would love to see the landing animation more physics based, where if I throw fire at you there is going to be some envelopment + some of the fire blowing backwards (i.e. in same direction that it was cast), not so much outwards.
The lightning spell was blinding. IMO sb tuned down.
Would be nice to see ball lightning have a fizzle out / shrinking / fading away phase so folks know when its about to disappear.
A lot of the spell effects still look overstated IMO. I think they look ok with solo play, but break down / look overdone with larger parties casting.
Fireball and Pyroblast has always been that long casting spell that crit the most out of all mage spells. I don't know what were they thinking splitting it into 3 missiles.
Lightning spells always used to be fastest casting spells in not just MMO, but RPG in general. In every game, lightning spells relied on spell haste. Hell, in some games lightning generated spell haste and sometimes a mini-stun in a form of a debuff that is usually called Shock.
As far as that fire eruption spell goes, they could go instant cast route, but burst from the ground is delayed. Like Eruption or Lava Flow from Guild Wars 2.
Also, I would kill for something like Presence of Mind from WoW in AoC.
They said in a stream that they will add it at later time.
That would work well within structures and underground.
About the wand weapon combo. I still wish I could dual-wield wands and zap targets left and right. Wandslinger! Oh well, one will do. The beams do look cool.
On the mage spell vfx. I'm not completely sold on the fire AoE. I don't know... too much rock, not enough lava?
But overall, great dev update.
Even the mob attacks are targeted, no way to counterplay. I feel suffocated just looking at it, from how restrictive the combat is.
(P.S The realistic water splash is refreshing to see, though. Make use of that beautiful UE5 graphics and give us water magic! instead of copying dead games.)
Another major problem is HP/MP recovery. The fact that you need to pause and sit down after every 2-3 mobs is crazy. Pausing should never be part of the gameplay. Imagine sitting down in the middle of a war as a Cleric, meditating as your teammates are dying. Ridiculous.
Can't mage heal via life/nature/water/time/spirit magic? Or combine fire & earth to create life/plant magic. Ashes of Creation has one of the weakest mage fantasies I have ever seen. Mage in my opinion should be the "jack of all trade, master of none" class, the king of utility. Not just an Elementalist.
Here Steven accidentally used the Magma Field on himself while backpedaling, judging by how the tab-target skills icons turned gray, he might have walked out of range while casting, if not mouse misplacement.
Therefore, there needs to be distance meter next to the target's nameplate, like this.
The meter is especially essential for the Ranger class to maintain the maximum distance from the target.
I believe damage over time ground skills like Magma Field and Ball Lightning should be instant-cast, and not stay for too long & cause visual clutter, otherwise at least the Ball Lightning needs to be gone for good, since combat in Ashes is planned to be balanced around group PVP.
I watched the video multiple times, both skills are difficult to fully utilize, and this is even more true in PVP, making them insta-cast seems to be the balanced solution.
(May 31 edit, fixed image link, sorry about that)
While staring at the skill tree, I realized that every element is separated into its own tree, does that mean in the future when there are more skills and new trees available, players can choose 1-3 elements/role/playstyle to specialize in?
If that's the case, then I hope instead of forcing us to unlock the previous skill, it becomes based on how many points are invested into the element and the total invested points, that way we have more freedom to customize our builds when the tree gets bigger. Perhaps new trees can be unlocked when a player invests 10 points in two elements, like Fire & Frost = Water/Mist/Illusion magic. | Earth & Lightning = Storm/Wind magic. | Fire & Earth = Life/Plant/Wood magic.
Just throwing in random ideas. Sorry I wrote so much >_<"
Thank you for reading.
If you haven't, be sure to check out the wand weapon combos, and share your thoughts on this system!
Here is a timestamp (Minute 9:50) to Brian, a key designer behind this system and Steven chatting about the weapon progression tree and how it works!
Ok, had some time to mildly wrangle more feedback out of team members on this, so might as well.
Basically, no one seems to really like any of the Wand Procs or skilltree right now other than the passive elemental one.
Since Wand doesn't have the options for 'additional range' or 'extra cleave radius' on attacks, that seems to be the reason why we just didn't have anything to add before. The weapon itself seemed to have an obvious 'limitation' on how interesting you can make it. Turns out, after some thought, that's not quite true, for us.
So, this post is a combination of 'stuff we'd find interesting' and 'references to Predecessor related to it'. Our ranged user there plays Midlane https://omeda.city/heroes/Wraith and https://omeda.city/heroes/Fey. The Wand proc ideas are loosely related. Sometimes.
The idea of the 'Echo' proc is fine, but doesn't really feel like it incentivizes people to use the Wand more outside of Mage stuff. The beams are just 'more damage' and some guarantees, they look nice, but abstractly, it's kinda... meh (possibly short for meta!)
We'd prefer some things like:
Bubble Proc
Where the attack sends out a homing bubble that moves at a medium speed, and can be body-blocked, or maybe even has an upgrade where it does damage to things it passes through instead of being directly blockable. Elemental empowerment of this could not only look interesting, but also help with visual effects. This would also help Wand to deal with the whole 'accuracy' thing, without having a requirement to squash all Accuracy stats or make Wand basics themselves rely on magic Accuracy. It's a 'mini-spell', it can either 'not be a thing you can evade at all' or 'use magic accuracy'. This opens up more options for players to use Wand in situations where they need it, even against highly evasive targets.
'Puddle' Proc
Where the attack (bubble or not) causes a small ground AoE, barely enough to fit 3 people super closely together into its radius, and too small to get more than one of most larger mobs. This then does similar things, it gets away from the 'must have accuracy', adds a simple Ground AoE that can use all the standard Ground AoE code, and also benefits from either Elemental Empowerment or any other augments/effects innate to the wand like poison or HP siphons. In PvP, an opponent could simply move out of the way, but when they don't or can't, the player then has more options about when or if to ready their spell, rather than having to do all their wand attacks and then end up being somewhat more predictable about when they do it (though that isn't really a forced thing, just something we'd expect most people to autopilot if they're applying elemental status stacks)
'Splash' Proc
Basically just Ingenious Cleave from https://omeda.city/items/Mindrazor. If you were worried about AoEing something you didn't want to AoE, I'd figure the player has some way to control the combo proc to not worry about it. Can also consider the Chain Zap type from https://omeda.city/items/StormBreaker, but can see how this would get more messy. These would obviously be rarer choices to take if you're not the type to care about AoE (or to care because you're trying to avoid it), but it'd be somewhat good for those who normally use melee but 'when forced to backline for some reason' end up wanting the AoE.
The idea of Echo seems like it might be better served altogether if the Proc was just... doubleshot. Flourish Proc. The wand sends out two projectiles, or it treats the beam as a direct multi-hit. This improves on-hit effects of all kinds, including helping our beloved Wand Fighters build more Combat Momentum. Mages would get more elemental empowerment stacks and similar. If the goal is to improve the overall damage, we feel that just 'hitting twice', while a bit harder to balance sometimes, would offer more synergy options, particularly if it has to be a choice between this and anything offered above.
As for the 'cooldown reduction of next ability' or anything similar, that brings us back to Wraith's combination skill. (removing some of the full description of these, to focus on the ones that might have some interesting impact for Ashes):
Peekaboo! - Launch a piercing Nanite Grenade that deals 40/60/80/100/120 (+60%)(+35%) physical damage to all Units hit (which combines with...)
Fire a long-range sniper shot that pierces Terrain and deals 95/120/145/170/195 (+120%)(+75%) physical damage to the first Enemy Unit hit. Damage is increased by 40% against Enemy Minions. If Knock, Knock! Kills, or Damages a Marked Unit, 100% of the Mana Cost is refunded and its Cooldown is decreased to 1s.
The precise ideal of how this would work is important in a really subtle way. Reducing the cooldown of 'the next ability used' or anything similar has the 'problem' that certain buffs and defensive mechanics now become available as options, and in games like this, that's a big difference. Limiting the proc to 'an effect placed on the target that lowers the cooldown of the next (single target?) ability that hits from the same user, we'd consider 'safer', even if it did have the potential to vastly improve DPS.
It's not that it's entirely bad or even 'automatically assumed to be troublesome' this way, but some limitations might go a long way to not having to worry about some crazy interactions later. Wand Fighter as super-chase-unit is sort of interesting to think about, but at least if you are doing the leap on someone you have a Magical Mark of some kind, on, there's a bit of counterplay there, whereas there might be some situations where 'reset or drastically lower cooldown' on something like a Cleanse or Heal would become meta quite fast...
The various elemental passives are ok, hopefully there's some use for them even in basic situations for people who aren't in party, but if Weapon skill points are, as one would expect, per weapon as in FFXI and TL, no issues there. Basically, our wand-potential-users have minimal reason to take these, as of now, but could change.
The empowerment one that parallels to World Breaker's Fiend effect has the obvious same 'problem' that World Breaker itself has, though the subtle difference between boosting magical power and boosting magical damage must be considered... no specific strong suggestions here, it just seems very 'mage-only' in comparison to what we were expecting.
Only somewhat relatedly, someone brought up the idea of an Augment that causes elemental empowerment to cause the enemy to be illuminated under some condition (probably when using lightning or fire) so that it can help with anti-stealth and detargeting options. Not really wand-specific, but it came up as part of it, so figured would mention.
And finally, Fey's Ultimate attack is a 'draw in', and there was a little talk of 'maybe having a draw-in effect as a wand proc', sorta like a 'lasso' option to pull targets back into AoE effects, or things like that, but it suffers from that same issue of 'being a Proc that is really situational and might be a thing you want, but not often enough', leading the Wand user to not finish their combos. And of course, a big open question about how much 'pull' would be good and how it might look on large bosses, and so on. So, essentially, just more ramblings.
Good luck, Brian, even though we basically didn't like anything from this pass, we're rooting for you and all your work to perfect it, whether our input is helpful or not.