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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
CRITICAL FEEDBACK: Intrepid Please fix PvP - TTK test video demonstration
Liniker
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I made this video to use every time I see a more casual player in green gear, or when I see devs showcasing combat on lvl 20 gear without min-maxing the stats, enchanting and rarity - and they say its not "that bad".
It is VERY BAD.
Linking a 2 minute clip that shows why:
https://youtu.be/ly3dElck-xQ
Its currently very frustrating for testers to enjoy the alpha environment when PvP is the main point of the game currently that brings longevity after we are done with progression, I think its extremely important to focus on a deep balancing pass before Phase 3.
It is VERY BAD.
Linking a 2 minute clip that shows why:
https://youtu.be/ly3dElck-xQIts currently very frustrating for testers to enjoy the alpha environment when PvP is the main point of the game currently that brings longevity after we are done with progression, I think its extremely important to focus on a deep balancing pass before Phase 3.
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Comments
Yeah, ttk has been a mess this entire time. Obviously trying to balance/tune it all doesn't ultimately matter in a test of stability/economy, but it sure is annoying as hell.
Their intended design is:
"If I were to say average TTK between same level characters and average gear score, I would say that we're probably talking anywhere from 10 to 15 seconds upwards of 30 seconds, depending on the archetype." – Steven Sharif
So while they are iterating on TTK, I still think they are sticking with their design of trying to balance it around 10~15 seconds for a same level same gear DPS duel. So while It's going to get better, the issue with it will not be solved.
Short TTK (even with equal gear) creates a very gank box environment in which whoever jumps first, unless there is a massive skill and/or gear disparity, wins. In the majority of fights, I have seen and experienced, whoever engages first wins. In the open world, It is terrible being ganked with almost no chance of fighting back and winning, and taking death penalties like XP debt and material loss.
Additionally, a lot of the combat's complexity gets made irrelevant with the current short TTK. The game has a 3 attacks basic attack combos that add procs like wounds (anti-heal) and chill that further stack turn into freeze. It has soft and hard CCs like roots and stuns. The fighter has momentum that builds over time. We have damage over time, and debuffs that decrease damage mitigation. None of that matters in fights bigger than 1v1s because players die with 2~3 skills. While you are trying to stack wound debuffs on the target, reducing their armor, and doing proc combos, the enemy is just doing damage and is going to kill you before you can take advantage of any of those mechanics. You don't even have time to properly do 1 basic attack combo to add procs to the enemy, because it is more efficient to just use all your big damage skills and kill the enemy.
Build diversity? Different playstyles? Forget it. The most important thing is getting your attack power as high as you can, and the rest is way less important. Damage over time builds? Non-existent. Everything becomes extremely streamlined and meta becomes boring as hell.
A shorter TTK design becomes even shorter when level and gear disparity are introduced. A TTK of 10~15 seconds for the same level and the same gear 1v1 means an instant kill TTK for an unbalanced encounter. A guy that has reached max level and has started working on BiS gear will instantly kill a level 40. And healers and defensive won't do anything here, a guy that can be killed by a couple of abilities from a single person will be totally destroyed in large-scale pvp regardless of healers and support from other archetypes.
How long will a new player take to reach level 40? A couple of weeks if he rushes like crazy? More likely the general audience will take a couple to a few months. So the question would be, how long before a new player can participate in PVP content with the older player base? How long til he can engage with the other pvp systems and content? Can he even catch up? Will he stick around for that long before he can enjoy that content?
Will the player base grow if no new player can participate in PVP content with the established players before putting in 200~300 hours just rushing leveling? I seriously doubt it. And this is not a game with instanced content. Node wars happen whether you like it or not and you're fighting against higher level more geared players. Guild wars are also a player-driven event and you don't choose where and who to fight. Most important of all, open-world PVP is supposed to be an important feature of the game. There is no matchmaking, there is no auto-balanced ranking system to put you in the same category as your enemies. You'll spend 90% of your time fighting ppl either stronger or weaker than you. If that power difference means you kill or die in a split second, without a chance of playing the game, no one will participate.
Steven said in a recent interview that: "intrinsically those two philosophies are tied to one another. The shorter TTK and the how do you solve the Zerg problem.". While that is not entirely false, it is not true either. The reason smaller groups have a chance against Zergs on shorter TTK is that smaller groups have a chance to kill a big part of the Zerg by engaging first. But that is also true for the Zergs. If Zergs engage first, they win, regardless of the skill of the smallest group. In short TTK, smaller groups have a better chance against Zergs because of the initiation advantage, and not skill. In fact, short TTK requires less group coordination and skill, as the only thing groups need to do is focus damage (which is incredibly easy since we have marks on the target and target of defensive target key binds).
The good news is that you can also give small groups advantages against big groups with long TTK. The better news is the advantage of small groups over big groups in long TTK actually has to do with skill, team play, and coordination. Having to coordinate the use of all those complex mechanics that you already designed into the game (damage mitigation reduction, anti-healing, CCs, procs, and combos) to effectively eliminate your enemies is a huge advantage for small groups.
In long TTK, a small coordinated group can kill a target in 5~10 seconds, while a big uncoordinated group can kill the same target in a minute. That's a big skill gap, and in the time the Zerg killed one target, the small coordinated group killed 10~20 targets (the same goes for AoE scenarios). In short TTK, a small coordinated group can kill a target in 2 seconds and a big uncoordinated group can kill the same target in what? 5 seconds? the room for improvement is not there.
Longer TTK also gives players the chance to react and fight back against ganks, giving them a better chance of winning and not giving the players that feeling of unfairness in the encounter.
Finally, long TTK means players with power disparity can actually survive long enough to use CCs, apply procs, and participate in damage and healing dealt in PvP content. They won't of course be on parity with geared higher-level players, but they can contribute without being one-shotted.
People argue that in group pvp the TTK is going to be longer than in 1v1 pvp. While that is true for small groups (8v8), it becomes the contrary when the numbers keep increasing. In Ashes and in any game, DPSs are ~4x more prevalent than tank/healers. A party is consisted of 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 bard, let's say for shits and giggles 1 summoner which is not a DPS, and 4 DPSs. So in a 40v40, you will have 5 tanks, 5 healers, 5 bards, 5 summoners, and 20 DPS and it only gets worse from there. Damage will severely out-scale defensives. A 10~15sec TTK will mean an instant fight in large-scale content. If you're under-leveled or under geared, forget even trying to participate in content, you're just gonna die over and over without doing anything.
So the cope that group pvp is going to have increased TTK is not exactly true, especially as you go above raid vs raid sizes. And one of the main appeals of this game, a true MMOrpg, is the open world with no limitation on sizes. Node wars, guild wars, nodes and castle sieges, world bosses, open world PVP, and caravans are the main PvP content in the game and they are more often than not bigger than 40v40s. Designing the game with a TTK that completely destroys any skill, coordination, and strategy on large-scale is a terrible
People also argue that in long TTK design, fights are never ending and it only ends when a cleric runs out of mana. That's also not true. Even for small-scale pvp, The most consistent duel times are in high TTK games and they generally don't go over the designed TTK. The reverse is actually true, when you have a low TTK design, you need to overtune healing and defensives to make support classes playable, and it creates those 45 minute duels that never due to mandatory overtuning in a low TTK environment. In high TTK design, healing is properly tuned and you have anti-healing debuffs and CCs as tools to deal with healers, creating a fight that usually stays inside a reasonable duration.
People also say a fight lasting an entire minute is too long. I think that's crazy. Maybe people haven't played a game with 60 sec fights or misremember it, but 60 seconds is not a long fight at all, especially with your skewed perception of time when you are playing and the adrenaline of PVP kicks and you're having fun. This is a 45 second duel:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CdM1rBr0dNc&t=3s
Regardless of how you feel about the combat in the video, that 45 second fight is far from too long. When you're playing and having fun and enticed, those 45 seconds fly by. 60 second fights are completely fine.
I'm not talking here about completely destroying the feeling of progression or even giving a level 40 a chance to win in a 1v1 duel against a level 50 player. I want players to be able to play, press their buttons, and feel like they have a chance to escape or contribute to the fight before dying. You can still have fun participating in large battles and group pvp if you have a chance to use your abilities and contribute to the fight, even if you are contributing way less than the other more progressed players. This can't happen if the TTK is 10 seconds for a balanced 1v1.
If you increase TTK back to the original design of 30~60 seconds, when you introduce gear and level unbalances an under-geared and under-leveled player can still survive long enough to play, have fun in the fight, press their buttons, and feel like they're a part of the conflict.
Intrepid claims to be very open and acting on feedback, but the majority of feedback I've seen on TTK both here and in-game is that people prefer longer TTK. Examples: (based on the number of likes and comments supporting high TTK)
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/63918/current-pvp-ttk-design-is-bad-for-the-game/p1
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/66616/i-dont-see-myself-subscribing-if-the-current-trend-of-grind-and-character-power-continues
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/66307/adressing-the-combat-system-ttk-and-comparison-with-tera
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/66307/adressing-the-combat-system-ttk-and-comparison-with-tera
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/66422/a-simple-fix-for-the-ttk-time-to-kill-problem
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/59292/reasons-to-have-high-ttk
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/64434/gear-adjustements-are-much-better-now-but-still-not-enough/p1
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/59422/10-15-seconds-ttk/p1
And much more. We had short TTK (beginning and middle of phases), and we had super short TTK (now). The community rejected both. None of those make sense with the overall game design and conflict with your own combat features like basic attack combos and debuff procs. So why are we sticking with it if its failed a few times now, it is disliked by the community and intrepid hears our feedback? It's not like TTK is a core philosophy of the game like risk vs reward.
My last argument for long TTK over short TTK (more subjective and personal): IT IS NOT FUN. Fights that don't last long enough for you to play your class, use your abilities multiple times, and perform your role properly ARE UNFUN
Examples of games with Long TTK for devs to take a look at and grab inspiration: Tibia, Lineage 2 (at least classic version), TERA (debatable? Just heard it was long), Warhammer Online, Perfect World, and most recently Ravendawn (Highly recommend as they have some great ideas for combat and power progression). Feel free to mention others I don't know about.
I beg you intrepid, do not design the power curve and TTK in the game like you would for a game with instanced matchmaking ranked battles. Don't make the same mistake as all modern pvp MMOs that end up failing miserably.
AI summary:
In longer TTK, small groups can leverage complex game mechanics like damage mitigation, anti-healing, and combos to outperform larger groups.
My main concern is that most players (especially the younger ones) have never experienced a proper long PvP TTK MMO before and the general audience will stop giving feedback about it when TTK is less bad and not when it's good, and since Intrepid is set on a short TTK design, we will be stuck with a mediocre TTK and the game will fall short of what it could be. With a mediocre TTK we will end up with the same old same old large-scale pvp formula of following the blob and jumping in and simply doing damage when the shot caller says so. We're going to end up along other modern mmos that alienated the more casual player and failed to entice the general audience to this type of content, inevitably cannibalizing its own player base and ending up in a death spiral.
At least give us one proper iteration of the game with a long TTK for the player base to decide which they like the best.
It is VERY BAD.
Linking a 2-minute clip that shows why:
Its currently very frustrating for testers to enjoy the alpha environment when PvP is the main point of the game currently that brings longevity after we are done with progression. I think its extremely important to focus on a deep balancing pass before Phase 3. [/quote]
You dont understand they will not listen; you must be a big YouTuber or streamer, then maybe they will look at it. And 99% of the community will say for you, uninstall the game; it`s not for you. They make games for 100 PVP suckers who don't want casual players in the game, so they will die very fast with a low population, which does not work for MMO type games. Now they have some people because of the hype, and this is Alpha, but then they realease the game; they will die fast, and then they won't get money back to hold server infrastructure.
Blown past falling sands…
My entire understanding is that Intrepid/Steven actually felt that lower TTK is the solution to the power gap issue, especially in terms of durability vs offense power. Did I totally misunderstand that?
I know it's a pretty unfair ask but does anyone even have any quotes from Steven other than the 'ancient one' where this isn't the conclusion? We have lots of quotes that indicate (to me) that they're going toward BDO and away from TERA as a design goal, not as a 'oh, well random bad things are happening in the combat'.
There would be no reason to build the base of the combat this way if they wanted the type of skill where TTK matters, to be important.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Blown past falling sands…
thats still terrible , 30-60 seconds is what they should of stayed with , dunno why they kept making decisions that changed the game to worse during the last year
they gotta fix the gathering to fix the legendary equipment problem and the enchanting too many levels too straight forward where it just stacks too much stats in a dumb way it should add % to secondary stats instead but they also gotta fix the broken damage of weapons and making the defense stats better. not just make the stats keep going up until they reach a ridiculous degree like many other games.
i think a way to do it is by nerfing the phys/mgc dmg on weapons to like half of what it is if not more then having the tiers damage be 1.2x,1.4x...until legendary where its 2x phys/mgc dmg of a common weapon(which still seems too much tbh so maybe make it even lower depends on how hard it is to get legendary gear or how good defense stats are to mitigate the damage) then having each weapon focus on a secondary stat from the main ones, say a wand gives magic casting speed % , a spear gives physical penetration % ,so people will pick different weapons for different builds instead of everyone and their extended family using a bow.
maybe with higher tier crafting/enchanting weapons can add a second secondary stat that is lower % obviously and be able to change the type of stat in a limited way, in the end getting higher level weapons and upgrading their rarity will make the secondary stat bigger (not to a crazy degree obviously) than the basic flat magical/physical damage which still gets bigger but to an unreasonable degree that make the TTK a one shot parade like it is now but actually more build,match ups and skill dependent.
that will make it so someone with higher level and better gear have the advantage obviously but let a lower level player with not as good gear still have the chance to kill higher levels if they skilled enough and not too many levels apart but will also give the chance to a group of lower level players with a decent level deisparity able to kill higher level players too.
of course they will have to nerf the mobs reasonably too and maybe make them engaging and diffcult by mechanics not op stats in fact.
on another note the weapons skillsets are so bad, other than the small difference between magical and physical weapon passives there is literally almost no difference between the weapons , they give too much points , too much that are just tiny stat or % dump, they should make the skill points less so people have to choose , lessen the amount of passives and make them more impactful,more unique and different depending on the weapon and maybe add an active skill or ultimate skill for each weapon to differentiate them even more for different play-styles
Jokes aside yeah TTK is aids right now
If that's true that would be insane. It's like "If everyone dies in 1~2 hits then power gap is meaningless" and while that's true, that would make for an awful combat system. It's basically "If we remove everything that makes fighting fun we can soften the blow of gear progression". It's using a nuke to kill a cockroach. It might do the job but turn everything else into a wasteland in the process.
Meanwhile, we have the tried and true methods of old-school design. Long TTK coupled with a saturated power curve can create a good feeling of progression while simultaneously curbing that feeling of unfairness in unbalanced fights with gear and level disparities.
Most of us started following ashes because it was a promise of going back to what worked in older games with a necessary modernization on the things that were limited by tech back in the day. We had for the longest time the intended design of 30~60 seconds TTK, which was even a little short for some older game standards, but definitely a lot longer than modern MMOs.
Now this design has changed and we're being promised a jousting combat system that destroys any semblance of strategy, teamplay, and coordination in modern MMOs. It appeals to the modern philosophy of simplification and dumbification of systems.
I can only assume that this change was brought on by devs who never experienced older MMOs designs and are basing their combat philosophy on these modern MMOs which manage to alienate casuals and sweaties alike when it comes to pvp.
I'd argue it's exactly the opposite. They have long cast times and channels, they have long cooldowns, and they have a weapon basic attack combo that adds procs. They have this incredible debuff system where you need to proc one debuff based on another debuff previously applied. You have relatively weak defensive abilities.
To me, this all spells out a combat system designed for longer fights rather than quick duels. I have the feeling that they were well in the way of designing a combat system around long TTK, and for some reason, they decided last minute to dramatically shorten it by reducing the HP/damage ratio and buffing healing.
I wonder why that was. Did they fail to account for all the mobility they introduced in the game and it caused a weird situation? Did they struggle with creating a system that appealed to both PvP and PvE encounters? Was it a lack of skill on the dev team and internal testers to effectively use the combat system they developed? Are devs TikTok and shorts generation that think 60-second fights are long?
I'm not trying to be mean or offensive to the dev team. I am genuinely stumped and wondering what happened for this change to exist. It has really made me concerned about the development direction.
The only explanation we got back when it was changed from Steven is that it 'felt better', but at the time none of the non-PI testers were able to give any feedback on it so I assume it was that PI and whoever else was able to play, prefers this gameplay type.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
And so, if PIs tested the same situation of everyone wearing the same lvl of power - of course their supposed ttk of 10-15s would feel ok. And considering what we've seen from those very PI testers in terms of general behavior - I think they saw that short ttk means that they can dominate weaker players with just a bit of effort, so of course they'd want exactly that. And now we've got what we've got.
Around the same time, we had the Node War stream, which, if you don't do a bunch of deep analytics on it, does look fairly okay.
I don't remember if I only discussed the analytics I did within my own group or if I posted them somewhere, I guess I'll check the parser archives, but I do know that I didn't bother too much since the sentiment at the time was 'oh, this is what they want, ok'.
I think the response at the time to @GrilledCheeseMojito's criticism of the emerging system was generally met with the usual 'you don't know that it won't be good/what you're talking about, it'll still be strategic'.
And to be fair, that could have been the responses from the exact sorts of people who are having fun and supportive of the current concept, meaning that there are definitely people out there enjoying this for what it is.
But that's always true for nearly any aspect of a game in isolation.
There was a lot to unpack in that Node War stream though, if you really looked.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Not to mention, how many PIs and devs participated in these tests? The biggest we saw was the godspike event showcase and they didn't even have a 40v40. TTK exponentially decreases as the number goes up in larger scale pvp. Also, these were PUG groups, they weren't guilds that spent weeks to months practicing and playing the game together, and they didn't have time to figure out the meta or improve on their teamplay.
You can't make an average TTK for a 1v1 be smaller than 30 seconds, or eventually, either through numbers or through gear disparities or through meta evolving, we will always end up in this same scenario, with instant fast kills through very little skill and teamplay.
"ShotCaller style in a game with obfuscated health bars, obfuscated gear, evasion stat, and huge build freedom, is just RNG."
And fast TTK on the Shotcall lessens the effect of the RNG (and they've already built a gearing system that seems to be trying to limit it).
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
And that's volleys under the assumption of roughly same gear. But then, if gear does represent only 50% of player power, then imo a fully outgeared party should be able to kill that same player in just under a full volley (maybe cleric didn't do a hit or summoner's create didn't catch up, whatever).
And then under that kind of balancing, any 1v1 becomes a prolonged contest of skill, gear, luck and game knowledge. And I know that all the zoomers out there would hate this kind of balance, because "omg, spending your full mana in a single fight is hoooorrrible! And I need to even sit down after it?!?!!? OH THE HUMAAANITY!!112"
Equipment should greatly affect the TTK since a person puts a lot of time and effort into it.
I agree that now it is quite easy to get epic or legendary gear.
It is enough to fix the extraction of resources where you have epic equipment, it will really be something EPIC and legendary gear should be just a dream.
But you are trying to promote the idea that a person in top gear should be on par with guys in green. This is nonsense.
A person who spent 200 hours in two weeks on pumping and dressing his character should destroy another player who spent 20 hours in two weeks. Otherwise, there is no point in dressing up and leveling up at all. You can just run and have fun and get all the content without putting in any effort.
MMORPG is a genre about competition where every hour in the game should benefit your development.
And if your development in 200 hours is the same as a person's in 20 hours, then this is no longer an MMORPG.
I think those who dreamed of this project as a classic old MMO will simply lose hope and leave because this will be another project like TL, etc.
(it's not just me, right? It's a tl;dr style rebuttal?)
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Think nearly everyone is in agreement that they need to look at TTK. It's not making PvP encounters fun or skillful by any means and it's just a bit frustrating. How they do that I'm not sure, some good discussions here by people who know a lot more than me.
I do think it's interesting looking at the power gap/creep that's occured in the gear they've shown. In the firebrand showcase the Cinderslinger stat was 210, now the lowest stat roll on that bow is 336. I know it might have been a placeholder for that piece but that looks like quite a hefty jump in power, which probably isn't helping with TTK.
Second of all, if you are talking to me, where exactly did I say this?
It makes perfect sense!
I believe that for a healthy PvP, a TTK between 10-20 would be ideal for DPS, support and healer classes.
A TTK of 30s would be too high, it makes more sense for tank classes.
But it's really frustrating when the fight comes down to who hits first.
I've always liked playing the classic warrior more. I was really excited about playing Fighter, but playing PvP is really frustrating. You literally get deleted by pressing 2 buttons.
Well... I hope that the necessary measures are taken to make the necessary adjustments before wave 3.