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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Some feedback on the weapon talent system
Moonmanofc
Member, Alpha Two
I love that Ashes of Creation will have a weapon talent system. I think that it creates a massive opportunity for players to really distinguish their own unique playstyle and drive so many different build paths. The synergies that will exist between weapons and your abilities as well as weapons and other player's abilities is a great idea. I truly believe that this will enable an extremely high level of dynamic game play for both PvE and PvP. (burning blade from the fighter/great sword preview as an example)
The weapon talent systems are in a decent place as of right now but I do think there is opportunity to make improvements here. I'd also love if the team could do a deep dive of the weapon talent progression because I'm not fully clear on how you make your way through the weapon talents and what sort of limitation will be in place so you can't just get every weapon talent within a specific weapon talent tree.
The good:
The team has done a good job navigating the tough balance that exists by making all weapons usable by all archetypes. I can see how the different passives and procs can be applicable to various archetypes and how they can change how an player approaches their play style across the board (as well as in specific situations).
The weapon talent system seems to be doing a great job and trying to drive decision making in combat. Deciding when to finish a weapon combo, when to focus on pushing a weapon specific buff (like essence harvest), and when to weave in basic attacks vs. focusing on your ability rotation.
The not so good:
I personally think that many of the weapon talents lack depth. A lot of the upgrades you get when you progress a specific modifier (e.g. elemental attunement 1 to elemental attunement 2) feels lackluster because it keeps adding the same flat percentage bonus as you upgrade.
Along that same line of thinking, I wish the modifiers lead to another keystone talent. Something that incentivizes you to finish out a modifier portion of the weapon talent tree. If not that, maybe the leveled (wand hit extra damage 1, 2, 3) talents could unlock some sort of deeper/more special modifier when you reach the 3rd level of the talent.
I hope that the final weapon talent system drives a significant amount of weight in your decision making when speccing your weapon. What I mean by that is having limitations on your total talent points as well as forcing us as players to have to really pick and choose how we spec our weapons. I like when our choices matter and carry a lot of weight because it forces us to be intentional about our choices and enables us to have a multitude of play styles. Similarly, I hope that they make updates to the system to make the talents more interesting than static damage or static proc chance etc. Maybe more proc types or more modifiers connected to ability attack types - I'm not totally sure but I know they could do more here.
I'm also a new content creator and am focusing largely on Ashes of Creation because it's the only game I'm actually looking forward to. If you want to see all of my thoughts on the weapon talent system and a more in-depth overview, I made a video on it here:
https://youtu.be/UfBRihBtWGI
The weapon talent systems are in a decent place as of right now but I do think there is opportunity to make improvements here. I'd also love if the team could do a deep dive of the weapon talent progression because I'm not fully clear on how you make your way through the weapon talents and what sort of limitation will be in place so you can't just get every weapon talent within a specific weapon talent tree.
The good:
The team has done a good job navigating the tough balance that exists by making all weapons usable by all archetypes. I can see how the different passives and procs can be applicable to various archetypes and how they can change how an player approaches their play style across the board (as well as in specific situations).
The weapon talent system seems to be doing a great job and trying to drive decision making in combat. Deciding when to finish a weapon combo, when to focus on pushing a weapon specific buff (like essence harvest), and when to weave in basic attacks vs. focusing on your ability rotation.
The not so good:
I personally think that many of the weapon talents lack depth. A lot of the upgrades you get when you progress a specific modifier (e.g. elemental attunement 1 to elemental attunement 2) feels lackluster because it keeps adding the same flat percentage bonus as you upgrade.
Along that same line of thinking, I wish the modifiers lead to another keystone talent. Something that incentivizes you to finish out a modifier portion of the weapon talent tree. If not that, maybe the leveled (wand hit extra damage 1, 2, 3) talents could unlock some sort of deeper/more special modifier when you reach the 3rd level of the talent.
I hope that the final weapon talent system drives a significant amount of weight in your decision making when speccing your weapon. What I mean by that is having limitations on your total talent points as well as forcing us as players to have to really pick and choose how we spec our weapons. I like when our choices matter and carry a lot of weight because it forces us to be intentional about our choices and enables us to have a multitude of play styles. Similarly, I hope that they make updates to the system to make the talents more interesting than static damage or static proc chance etc. Maybe more proc types or more modifiers connected to ability attack types - I'm not totally sure but I know they could do more here.
I'm also a new content creator and am focusing largely on Ashes of Creation because it's the only game I'm actually looking forward to. If you want to see all of my thoughts on the weapon talent system and a more in-depth overview, I made a video on it here:
https://youtu.be/UfBRihBtWGI 1
Comments
What you are looking at with this system is the first draft - or at best it has had a single pass.
It should lack depth at this stage. That is a good thing - a VERY good thing.
What we do not want is for Intrepid to overshoot at the start, and have to tone effects down. If you had have stated that the lack of depth was a "yet to be resolved" situation rather than "not so good", then I wouldn't even bother here.
The fact that you are a "content creator" (the lowest form of MMO player imo) means you are the one that should be communicating this to others - not making statements suggesting that there is anything at all wrong with a game in development being, well, in development.
The above is why content creators are the lowest of MMO players - they spout their shit without any thought or knowledge.
Of course we'll see the system be developed more over time and a significant amount of that will likely come from feedback throughout the alpha 2 and beta. That does not mean we should not provide feedback prior to that.
Ideas spur more ideas after all and creatives thrive off of differing opinions.
I spent an immense amount of time researching the current system and re-watching updates before forming an opinion. I don't see anything wrong with giving feedback on the current state of the system.
What makes you think they don't know?
Right - which means your "feedback" is essentially reduced down to "this thing that isn't finished seems unfinished to me".
Great feedback, my dude.
But I wanted to mention that it's really cool seeing a whole in-depth video of your feedback on the weapon progression system.
The team is looking for more feedback on the tree and its contents, so thank you for your contribution! Keep up the awesome work!
I tend to agree with you. There's a lot of "nice to have" skills in the tree (I'm referencing https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Greatsword_skill_tree), things that will improve your greatsword damage or add some utility, with the wounds and burning status appliers being the most interesting parts because they probably enable some synergies.
I'd like to see more skills that enable unique builds, maybe instead of all passives, the tree could have a few actives that any archetype could take to make a weapon more viable. Ex. for Greatsword, maybe the tree has a simple ability called "Overhead Strike" that's a big single target nuke.
Granted, with augments maybe something like a bard wouldn't need weapon skills to make a weapon viable. Hard to say at this point.
You should be a content creator, you're also very good at spouting your shit.
he will become what he hates the most xD
I don't have enough of an ego to think my thoughts deserve video bandwidth.
Text is just fine.
1. Basic attack/combo heavy builds like we saw with the shortbow and wand channeling
2. ability focused builds that use basic attacks less or weave them in between ability combos
3. Utility like reduced cooldown or mana replenishment
That's pretty much what I want from the system, choices that benefit specific playstyles dependant on your overall character build. Basic attack heavy, Ability heavy, and utility.