What I feel is a serious problem with AOCs class system and how to, at least partially fix it.

We have not received permission from Ironhope to share the quoted post.

I see. A lot of the people in this thread are responding to you as if you are asking for mechanical changes or early access to class abilities. I don't have as much of a problem with this personally, but I expect many people will say it's relatively pointless from a dev effort perspective.

The more legitimate argument is that it will be confusing to new players who think that "this is all there is to secondary archetypes", particularly when they are told explicitly that they will never grant new abilities. In this way, granting your request is dangerous to the health of the game. Not because it should be, but because there will be new players who get confused, then go tell all their friends about how bad the game is. As a sacrifice to keep the game in good health, you may need to keep the RP aspects of your secondary archetype as pure RP until you do gain access to the mechanical ones. (And other people have explained why it's important to carefully pace how quickly players gain access to new mechanics.)

As an aside, as far as I understand, we have no reason to believe that ability names will change at all when secondary archetypes get involved, only their effects. I think that this is the right choice. If you are talking about a Cleric ability "Castigation", but refer to it by the Shadow Disciple version of the name (say something like "Soulrender"), it will be harder for a High Priest or Templar to discuss things with you, much less a Minstrel or Warlock, even though you are all talking about the same ability. The alternative that will arise if names don't change would be along the lines of "Shadow Disciple's Castigation" when they're talking about the (let's say) Bleed DoT added by /Rogue, specifically. In this context, it's much easier for players to learn and talk about their guild members various abilities, without hearing "Shadow Strike" and going "wait, which one was that again..?", or getting confused by similar abilities they don't think about every day.

We have not received permission from Falkath to share the quoted post.

I feel like you're moreso defining the problem Ironhope has, than offering anything 'useful'.

I too, hope that when I play games, I don't have to spend too long in some form or role that I don't like as much.

Usually this means EITHER 'the game lets me play what I want to play from the start and if it has dual systems they start earlyish' OR 'the game's dual systems are VERY weak and therefore the main stuff is fleshed out so I can decide that way'.

@Ironhope I still disagree with you for a simple enough reason. Skills aren't locked, and you are ignoring the fact that the only way this works in the first place is that there would have to be a build of 'Cleric that intends to be a High Priest' and 'Cleric that intends to be something else'.

The abilities themselves could easily work in a lot of that. This gives the player even more and better options, they could just choose the abilities that fit their class fantasy instead, to solve the problem. Nothing makes you take a single healing spell in Alpha-1, I don't think.

We have not received permission from Falkath to share the quoted post.

No disagreement with your content, but you should probably take note that "Archetypes" are "Mage", "Tank", etc. It's the "Secondary Archetype" that changes the feeling of your "Primary Archetype". The combination of the two is a "Class".

What you were saying was clear to me, but might trip up some newbies who have just gotten started on their Ashes journey.

We have not received permission from Karthos to share the quoted post.

Based on the precise thing Ironhope is suggesting, it's not very valid to say that FFXI uses this system for most classes.

Theirs isn't GREAT either, and got similar complaints, but it doesn't line up except for Beastmaster and Summoner, basically.

Sure people would MOCK you for 'solving the problem with your subjob instead of just leveling up' because of how the system worked, but you could do it. And people complained about that too.

@Ironhope it is from that experience which I largely speak. Ashes does not share the flaws of FFXI in this matter other than 'late access' at this time, and 'level 30 Advanced Job unlock' isn't the same because 'subjob' happens earlier (at the 10% point of exp rather than what is PROBABLY the 25% point, but we don't know).

We have not received permission from Karthos to share the quoted post.

I'm moreso butting in because I have a pretty good idea 'how OP views this and argues', so just heading off a particular unproductive line as soon as possible.

This isn't a person you wanna get bogged down in that TYPE of details with, and even if you planned to only say that and then disengage, the rest of the thread might take a turn for the 'worse'...

But (I'm not implying you're saying this) if you prefer me to stay out of it, I will.

tl;dr Ironhope didn't say that because 'giving examples' would actually change anything, moreso likely to lead to more doubling down.

We have not received permission from deliriumstatus to share the quoted post.

Ah yes, the No True Scotsman argument. Let me counter with the equivalent.

No False Scotsman plays Ashes of Creation.

We have not received permission from Iskiab to share the quoted post.

Yeah. I've been wondering about that occasionally myself. They talk a lot about working to require one of each archetype in a party. I don't know what their solution is, but there's never gonna be the same number of Bards and Rogues.

SongRune wrote: »

Yeah. I've been wondering about that occasionally myself. They talk a lot about working to require one of each archetype in a party. I don't know what their solution is, but there's never gonna be the same number of Bards and Rogues.

They've also said that secondary archetypes can allow you to fill a role w/o completely replacing someone with that role as the main archetype. So if your party doesn't have a summoner, you might want to pick up someone who has it as their secondary.

Now there's a question of any potential synergistic abilities between main archetypes, but we've got 0 clue about anything like that so it's hard to say either way.

We have not received permission from Ironhope to share the quoted post.

I'm saying that it probably already does this.

If you're happy with that, that's fine.

Your issue was noted as 'wanting to be a heavy armor DPS Cleric' right? Just do that. Take Cleric skills that match up with that, use passives that match that, equip weapons that match that.

Note that I still agree with you that level 25 is 'too long to wait'. But if you are at level 15 and you chose 8 skills that 'Are good for a DPS Cleric' then you already got what you wanted.

If Warlocks are moreso Summoners in most games they exist in, complain that Intrepid should change the name. Etc.

I don't think playing Fighter would even make you end up as a Ret Paladin, compared to playing Templar.