Are classes being limited by "hyper focusing" on their roles and its effects on the world
PenguinPaladin
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
The bards kit has 27 skills so far. According to the ashes wiki.
Around 16 of these skills are strickly aoe/party wide buff/debuff auras of some type. Around 50% of activated skills.
Cleric has 20 skills on the wiki so far and 0 of them are party wide buffs or debuffs.
I know the bards is the party buffing class, but is half of their kit being only buffs/debuffs too much? Will augments effect these 16 skills in different ways, or will each and every aoe/party buff that gains the life augment also have a healing tic effect stuck to it?
If a bard augment gives say a slight party buff effect, say a tank/bard, uses a defense buff skill and his bard augment makes it apply 5% of the skills effect to the party or something along those lines. Will the entire feel of the game shift upon reaching second classes?
You go from only bards buff at all to, every single person could be buffing the whole party?
I guess my main thought is are single classes overly focused on their roles, and will gaining a second class and augments feel jarring. With the transition from one Archetype to a full class be overwhelming both for the player, and for the world.
Perhaps you could pick your second class at level 5 instead of 20, and unlock your augments progressively?
Around 16 of these skills are strickly aoe/party wide buff/debuff auras of some type. Around 50% of activated skills.
Cleric has 20 skills on the wiki so far and 0 of them are party wide buffs or debuffs.
I know the bards is the party buffing class, but is half of their kit being only buffs/debuffs too much? Will augments effect these 16 skills in different ways, or will each and every aoe/party buff that gains the life augment also have a healing tic effect stuck to it?
If a bard augment gives say a slight party buff effect, say a tank/bard, uses a defense buff skill and his bard augment makes it apply 5% of the skills effect to the party or something along those lines. Will the entire feel of the game shift upon reaching second classes?
You go from only bards buff at all to, every single person could be buffing the whole party?
I guess my main thought is are single classes overly focused on their roles, and will gaining a second class and augments feel jarring. With the transition from one Archetype to a full class be overwhelming both for the player, and for the world.
Perhaps you could pick your second class at level 5 instead of 20, and unlock your augments progressively?
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Class augments will, supposedly, let people adjust their role if the party requires it (or if the solo player prefers a slight shift towards a different archetypical role). The extent of that adjustment remains to be seen, or even heard of, so it's difficult to theorize about its impact on the gameplay. And even Intrepid themselves barely know how it'll impact the game, cause they want to implement some of that stuff first and then see how it works out.
I'm definitely against giving classes that early though, cause it'll be overwhelming. You'll have to learn your base role together with any potential change to it. So you won't even know what your role really IS, before trying to adjust it. Imo that's a bad approach.
I think lvl25 is a good spot for class augments, cause by that point people should have a fairly good idea of how their archetypical party role functions, and they'll be able to figure out how they wanna change it (if they do).
My personal prefence would be for us to have all our archetype abilities at lvl25, so that it's only augments from then onward, but even that might be a bit too steep of a learning curve for people, especially if all the archetypes go as deep as I hope they will.
So no matter the learning curves intoduction point, or depth, or how steep it is. Withholding augments until later is just removing tools from those below the threshold. Its like there are 2 worlds, overlapped. 2 different sets of rules to live by.
How smart you think the average player of your game is, and how long it actually takes to level to 25.
I don't think there's a solid answer, therefore.
FFXI's subjob quest is available at level 18, but subjobs are half level of main, so your subjob is at best level 9, and you must actually go play that job to level it up, so you have to have some experience with it.
Onigiri's specialized weapons (where you can diversify) start at level 15-ish, but you could also just keep using the same ones and not explore that at all if you don't understand, and they make sure you are effective enough if you just play simply.
Throne and Liberty's Augments system starts at level 25, but only lets you augment 3-4 immediately and then you have to level to get more 'Augment Points'. Again a game where if you don't know what you're doing, the defaults probably match whatever you chose (though in their case we could argue that you get to choose your 'secondary' as soon as you can use your second weapon).
ArcheAge specializations are their own beast, but they're relatively early. That said, they're still tuned so that the player doesn't really need to understand, in order to do main stuff.
If 1-25 in Ashes is only 15-20 hours because of progressive increases in exp-per-level requirement, then players will already spend their time making choices within base skilltree (as far as we understand the design right now).
Bards need to be able to choose to be 'nearly 100% partywide buff/debuff' or 'much less than that', according to what Intrepid has told us so far. Choice is supposed to matter because you mostly can't take all skills and even have to level them up using skill points if you want them to be 'stronger' and not just 'have more'.
And we don't know what kind of limits will be present for Inns (if any), so it's difficult to say how fast a newbie would be able to get a citizenship. And w/o a citizenship, any kind of node war wouldn't concern the lowbie.
We have our eight base archetypes; and the trinity is a pretty strong influence with regards to the eight base classes. However the area in which we actually begin to play with that line between the trinity is in the secondary classes that you can pick. That's where we begin to blend those spaces and allow people a little bit of influence over their role and whether or not they fit perfectly within a particular category within the trinity.[7] – Steven Sharif
Transitioning from archtype to class status may cause a problem for some just because there are 8 choices but at least the class part can be changed if the player wants too.
I see the change in how the game feels as a negative. Its not "balancing" or "pvp" being unfair that is my concern. Its simply ashes aiming for a slower level progression, if your first 20 levels is a month of game time, and then completely changes, would i not feel like i was being held back for a month? Would making a new character not feel extreamly restricted until the secondary class is accessable?
Just seems jarring.
But those things are part of the design principles of Ashes, giving you a long time to 'settle' into the game and all the things it requires of players.
There are, and will be, other MMOs that will be less 'jarring' because they don't have the same pacing for those focuses, even if they have many of the same features.
Basically, let's just be thankful that we're getting one that works like this, and assume that anyone who thinks of this as a dealbreaker will play one of the others.
Also, we've got 0 clue what kind of impact the augments will have. Steven has already flipflopped on their value, and he's done so before even knowing what they'll be, so I see no reason why he couldn't just flipflop back and say "augments will just make small changes to the ability".
Also, even if augments do make huge changes, your argument doesn't work, because at some point in your character's progression you'd get to a point where new augments introduce big changes that make your character feel like something different.
And the main point is simple - augments don't change your core role in the party. If you picked a tank - you'll be a tank and no party will take you instead of a dps archetype if they need a dps for their party. Same is true for the healer, bard, etc. Even if augments are impactful, the role will still remain the same because all your abilities only represent your archetype and not your class.
Im not trying to have an argument, im trying to have a discussion.
I like the concept of augments.
I like slower progression.
I like the core Archetypes having their major roles.
I also like character progression.
If there is no way to introduce augments smoothly, and you just have all of them dumped on you at level 25, then so be it.
But talk about learning curve when at level 24 you had 8 classes to worry about, and at 25 you have 64 to try and figure out on the fly, mid open world pvp anywhere experience.
The progression system for augments is very similar to the class progression system.[13]
So, no, it won't be "all of them dumped on you". Also, it's not 64, it's 8, which is also only 7, because one of those simply continues you on the same path you've had for the past 25 lvls.
Your assumptions are false.
Ive also been to the wiki, yes.
The only info i can find that limits how many augments you can equip on hitting lvl 25 is "one per skill" and "similar to class progression system"
Take this into acount with the world. Its not one guy changing one skill im worried about.
Pre level 25, when a tank shield bashed me i got stunned. Cool. At level 25. There are 32 augment schools, which i have never had an interaction with up until this point he could potentially use on said shield bash.
I even if its a class im familiar with, this tank now could have one of 4 different shield bash effects. Based on his secondary classes augments.
If thats not jarring, idk what it is. And thats one guy. Im talking the whole world goes from a skill doing 1 thing, to having 32 or more different tag on effects.
You're right, just introduce them all at lvl 25.
At lvl50 we'll have freeholds, which will be a huge system. That's hundreds of hours into the game. Majority of pvp activities will also be happening way later in the game, cause at first everyone will be busy grinding pve, so you wouldn't even know what exactly other classes are capable of.
And this applies even if augments were at lvl1. How would you know what 64 classes can do? And how would you know what exactly any given opponent can do, when you don't know their gear, don't know their class (before fighting them for the first time), don't know their ability build and don't know their augments.
If your worry is "at lvl25 everyone will suddenly be spooky cause there's too many variables" - placing all that variability right at lvl1 would simply scare people away, because instead of being eased into it, they'd be bombarded with requirements of knowledge that they simply don't have.
Saying this means you see "all that variability" and see that it would be overwhelming.
And instead of introducing it over time, you just want to take it from lvl 1, and put it at lvl 25.
And call that fixed?
And with augment points progressing the same way adventure lvls do - people at lvl25 won't have a ton of augments, so it'd be even easier to know what's possible in a build.
Doing all of that shit right at the start, when people are just trying to learn what their skills do, would simply overwhelm a ton of players. I don't want Ashes to be another PoE, cause it already has a ton of complexity that brings it close to that, so why have even more of that shit.
At the moment it seems more like your first 25 levels are intended to be a tutorial, that heavily restricts your character to me.
Which problem is it? If players can choose an augment at lvl10 - that's still 64 classes with 4 variations each multiplied by however many skills we'll have at lvl10, so nothing changes. But from the pov of a single player - trying to decide which class you want at lvl10, where you haven't even experienced your archetype properly, would simply lead to a ton of people complaining that they picked the wrong class and then had to spend time/resources to change it.
Which is exactly my point and what I prefer for the game. First 25 levels will let you know what your abilities do and how they interact with other players. Which then lets you better understand what direction you'd want to take those abilities in.
At lvl10 you neither know your abilities, nor how they'll interact with others. Hell, you don't even know what kind of abilities you'll have in the future. And this is exactly why I said that I'd prefer to have all our abilities at lvl25. Cause you'd have your tutorial, learn what your archetype does and then decide what else you want it to do.
Both.
Its overwhelming for the player, and overwhelming in the world.
However, i do see the tutorial point of view a bit. I dont expect people to need a 40 hour tutorial, but after seeing some of the people in the forums, maybe its needed.
And the equipment is a good point too for later introduction of augments.
Mmos are already one of the most complex genres of games, and Ashes is a particulary complex mmo. Trying to learn all of that while also trying to figure out what kind of class you want would be A LOT for a ton of people.
IF the Augments let you truly flesh out and get specific and stylistically distinct. And a this is why I feel that Augments have to be PLAYSTYLE based not FLAVOR based.
For example the mage augments we have been told of Ice, Fire, Electric are all Flavor based and not PlayStyle. No one who plays a pure Mage envisions themselves defined by elemental damage type, they think of the playstyle, Big AoE's, Single target Nukes, Area control, or Jack of All, which is still all within what we would consider a pure glass cannon Mage/Mage. Thouse are the revelent playstyles of Mage that people really care about. So a Mage/Mage augment set needs to give us the diversity of Mage types not just slapping some elemental flavor ontop of skills.
This is why I do not think it's going to be viable to have the same 4 augments vailable to every Base archetypes which picks a specific secondary. They will need to be customized, not nessarily 4 unique augments per class to produce 64x4 (512) augments. Many augments will like 'work' (in the sense of being a good Stylistic extension of the base archetype across many classes maybe dropping the total to100 different augment, still a big increase from 4 augments x 8 which gives only 32 total augments. Ultimatly the same number of skill/augment combinations need to be designed and tested.
Steven has always tried to convey that its not "just flavor", like changes in color, and also not as impactful as a new Active Skill.
X/Clerics will be able to use Life School Augments to do some Healing on top of their Primary Archetype Active Skills, but that Healing will not negate the need for a Cleric/X in an 8-person group.
I think you may be talking about Archetype role vs video game combat role.
When I play a Mage, I not only define myself based on Elemental Damage, I define myself as Ice Mage vs Fire Mage. And, if I'm an Ice Mage - I'm not going to use a Fire ACtive Skill just because it's an AoE or a Single Target Nuke. If I'm an Ice Mage, I'm not going to use Fire Active Skills. And I will expect there to be plenty of AoEs and Single Target Nukes that I can with my Ice Skills.
Flavor-based is more like the choice of Flute/Lute/ Drum in the Bard Skill Tree for the graphics of how the Bard intitiates their Skill FX. Difference in appearance but does not change what the Active Skill does.
Some Augments can change whether an Active Skill is an AoE or Single Target.
Some Augments can change the Damage Type.
Some Augments can attach additional effects, like adding a self-heal to a personal Shield.
The primary example of using a Mage Teleport/Blink to a Fighter's Rush is that without the Augment a Wall would block the Rush, though with Blink attached, the Fighter would be able to Rush past the Wall.
That's a significant change that I would not call "flavor". It significantly changes what the Fighter can and cannot do.
We have no clue whether the devs will be able to accomplish Steven's vision - since we haven't seen Augments yet even 7 years into development.
One of the big ones to me is aesthetics. For example, suppose there's someone who wants to play a Resto Shaman because they want to be a healer and like nature magic. So they start with Cleric...but have to play a month as a Holy Priest before suddenly being a Resto Shaman once they hit level 25.
There may be a not insignificant amount of players that this sort of thing applies to. Someone wants to be a doomcloud Dreadnight...but can't be until level 25. Someone wants to be a righteous holy Paladin...but can't be until level 25.
The only case that feels like natural progression are the pures (e.g. Cleric/Cleric going from Cleric to High Priest), whereas the other variations will feel jarring due to going from being class fantasy to a completely different class fantasy that you want to be, but having to play for days/weeks/months before getting to play the actual fantasy you want to play.
I'm not sure that's good for the game or player experience.