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
Once you understand the combat approach for:
- melee weapon attacks
- physical ranged attacks
- casting ranged attacks
- direct casted heals
- melee conal aoe
- casted aoe
- multi target heals
Then you can fan out to specialized attacks and unique animations, with some potential refactoring as you discover more.
This is backward.
Combat is first, classes are emergent.
If you try to make Combat emergent from classes your PvE will be terrible and your balance will be spotty.
So you think they should do generic move suites, then specialize later. This is what I am afraid of. My prime example of this turning out poorly is Gazillion's Marvel Heroes. Every time they came out with a unique/specialized attack or animation, they goosed the power up or down and had to rebalance pretty much every time. This is not a 1:1 comparison as this rebalance would happen before launch hopefully. However, it's extra development time that could be avoided if the specializations are known before the combat is baked in.
Again, I am not demanding details. I am asking. Because it's been a long time since they have talked about at all.
With that said, archetypes and classes are not at all being neglected by our teams. They're actively being worked on and we are so excited to show them off once they're ready!
What archetypes and classes are you all excited to see and play?
(I already have 4 X/Bard alts planned.)
I'm also very scared for it being messy in a mass player setting IE with more than 1 thing summoned out, I'd prefer there to be a focus on 1 pet at a time but unlike Lineage 2 I'd like there to be fast summoning, like if the summoner is connected to another plane of existance calling magical beasts out one at a time to perform certain tasks or until its death.
I'm curious about the summoner... But I'm mostly excited for the idea of secondary archetype and playing around with blending classes to set how far I can shift them.
I am trying to figure out if I want to main Nightspell, Shadow lord, or Shadow Caster, but I am leaning towards rogue being my main archetype
Yeah but if we examine MMORPGs or RPGs more widely there is always a fighter, mage, ranger and rogue, for example. Thus, compared to those bards and summoners can be considered less generic but yeah fair point that it can be subjective and depends also players' experiences.
Well implemented Bards are few and far between, because it takes some sophisticated mechanics / systems for the Bard's strengths to shine. I would love to see this happen with Ashes.
But seriously those glossed up entertainers need to keep their distance from us wilderfolk.
Thanks for the reply, fam. I have to reserve which archetypes and classes I am excited to play for when we get more info on the combinations. What I am most excited for is debuff classes. Crowd control stacking, healing debuffs, weakening, etc. I enjoy joining a team that was struggling with content and helping them win through non-direct means.
**Edited to make clear that I dont need to do ALL of those things with one character, but those are examples of things I like***
For all the crap I give 14, at least it made bard cooler imo.
Like the heroic legend of Arslan anime, I mean, I would want a Bard like that, that is also a component and intelligent fighter, I simply don't believe in some forever tooting instrument player buffing players like Pied the Piper calmly going along his business while characters with six packs, wielding 2h axes and magic getting slung around every which direction.
Stuff like that is far too traditional for my liking.
Personally, I've wanted to main a Bladedancer in Ashes of Creation long before I started working here and that hasn't changed! Bard seems so cool to me because I've only played one other game with them (and I thought they were fun. It was LoTRO 😉)