Weapon Based Cooperative Synergies and Meters

So, I always am the first to admit that a large part of why I was so interested in Ashes is that I saw a lot of parallels to my favorite game, with the addition of elements from what I understood to be among the best PvP MMOs of the same era. Sounds like a perfect situation, right?

But recently there's less information, and while we know that there will be some weapon skill style things, we still haven't seen any sign of the 'Weapon Focus' meter or anything similar. I always talk about how 'Tactical Point' Gauge is one of the best and most important systems in all MMO design for group play, particularly for PvE, to keep things actually... not stale, but I don't know if we're gonna get it anymore, and I want to talk about it because I don't know if anyone other than old FFXI-heads even like the concept.

So let's talk Skillchains, but more importantly, what leads up to Skillchains... TP Management.

I'll give a really basic scenario of a single fight against a relatively normal mob at FFXI endgame, 'first pull' in an area. Just one enemy. No one has any 'TP Gauge' yet.

Our Bard chooses buffs before we begin based on enemy type, as is normal, but the question for the buffs is also 'what do we need for building TP?'

This is because Skillchains are around 30% of the damage in a fight, if not more. Our Paladin can't afford to wear both Accuracy boosting gear and Defense boosting gear at the same time, so we get a 'default to Defense' and let the Bard boost Accuracy, probably for everyone.

The main thing to consider though, is that the Bard is watching the TP gauges of everyone else, and in fact trying to hit themselves, since they are Skillchain Opener for the Paladin.

The DDs (let's assume Thief and Dark Knight) are just hitting as much as they can, but we might not have had a good reason to have ANYONE get any Attack buff song. The Paladin will hold hate better if the Dark Knight isn't pumping out a lot of damage per swing at this point.

As soon as those two get close to the required value for their Weapon Skills, the Bard changes one song (probably the Haste song) to Attack Up, to maximize the damage from those Weapon Skills. The Dark Knight stands opposite the Paladin, then unleashes, which will almost always get hate instantly. The Thief uses Sneak Attack, Trick Attack, from behind the Paladin, and closes the Skillchain for massive damage and drops all the hate on the Paladin. There's no need to change the song back to Accuracy now, though.

Depending on WHAT the skillchain was and how much health the enemy has, and what type of enemy it is, the rhythm changes now. The Bard has gone back to striking. The Paladin probably took some time (most likely having more TP than the Bard due to the Bard performing the song/buff) to apply buffs and maybe heal the Dark Knight if they did get hit during that short period that they had hate. The Bard 'needs' to get enough TP to open the next Skillchain which the Paladin will close and hopefully this will be enough to finish the fight.

By contrast, other games to me are so... bland in terms of their interconnection, both between players, and between the players and the enemy. You kinda just point your skills at the target and hope nothing weird happens. There's no 'dynamic thing you're adapting to within your own group'.

I haven't touched on things like 'using the Magic Burst effect from the Skillchain to break through the elemental/status resistance of a mob so that you can apply a status that it won't normally be affected by', or 'setting up other abilities so that you can quickly be ready to Skillchain with a second person due to a multi-attack effect or spell (for example the Dark Knight using Absorb TP at the right time to drain some from the enemy in order to skillchain with the Paladin themselves because the Bard had to deal with something else).

But now I think it's implied we aren't even going to get 'Weapon Based Abilities' of an 'Active' kind, far less something as complex as "Skillchains" or a gauge that has to build up to use effects. Sure, I could wave around a big 'flag' going 'Hey Intrepid this was great do this too!' but even assuming it COULD fit the game... it would gain no traction if it turns out that I (and my friends) are the only ones who even like this sort of thing.

So, for my data... is this interesting to you at all? I'm not trying to say 'this is way better than any other game's system' or anything like that, I probably just haven't PLAYED anything else dynamic enough other than like, Onigiri... but recent discussions about things like group synergy and particularly 'Class/Weapon combinations' got me thinking about it again. I don't think I'll feel much of anything toward what main weapon I'm using if all I can do with my weapon skill tree is 'raise accuracy, raise attack, or activate the same debuff on the enemy that every other user of the weapon has'.

That's about enough of that. Yay, nay, tl;dr, anything helps. Grati.

Haven't played anything near to that kind of gameplay, but as we've discussed before - I'm all for any kinds of synergistic abilities, between partymates, raidmates, guildmates and between players and mobs which would also let players "control" mob behavior. I want it all and I want it now.

I forgot to mention the part of this that I am really expecting the least, it's quite simple though.

A Skillchain has a specific 'property' that a DPS mage can use to 'Magic Burst' to multiply the spell damage and get past resistances, as hinted.

The issue/danger is that all the hate from that big blast goes onto them normally, forcing even more synergy if it doesn't bring the mob near to dead. The Paladin might already have enough hate to not matter, but if not, they would need to do things like activate more powerful abilities (which would normally not be needed), rely on the Mage to have defensive spells up (a use for /Tank!) or have the Mage in a position to Cover and block damage on them if the enemy was a certain type.

All this also needed to be timed so that there was minimal chance of the Skillchain being interrupted by the mob's CC, which, depending on the mob, could mean having VERY strict timing windows for landing the extra damage.

That should be all now, I think.

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

Well the game definitely had its periods like that.

I even for a while thought that the reason Ashes had that restriction on the way Ranger damage worked was because Jeffrey Bard lived through the 'Ranger Fantasy XI' period and knew not to let it happen again, but now I'm not sure and even if that was the reason, he's no longer there.

It does definitely result in what is being discussed, though. I really ended up thinking 'well obviously Ashes will do this, there's no other real way to get this sort of thing working', but then... I haven't heard anything about 'Weapon Focus Meter' in... I think literally years at this point.

I would never have thought to myself 'this is too complicated for people to like' because I apparently play complicated games... but when you've never 'played anything less', you don't really think of it as complicated.

So recently I've been learning about many games with much less synergistic/complex systems and wondering if they were successful BECAUSE they didn't add this complexity, or if they just 'happened to not be'.

Even FFXIV took them out though, (part of why I don't play it, they kept the TP thing, they tried a simplistic thing to replace them and then apparently ditched them altogether) so I wondered if they just 'focus tested poorly' or something.

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

Well, that's generally how you experience it.

In fact, I find that OTHER games that have synergy mechanics tie the two together TOO closely.

In FFXI, you're usually just slower, unless you're fighting something REALLY strong.

Even as I type this I'm doing a La Vaule Run where 'If we get CCed or prevented from Skillchain, we can't push through the enemy lines'

But since this is just playing for fun (talking about this always makes me wanna play), it doesn't matter as much.

EDIT: I will say that perhaps I'm too elitist or shortsighted relative to design, but I don't see how you can have a mechanic that is at the same time:

• Meaningful
• Effective
• NonCritical to success
• Ignorable when the weak-link player fails

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

The thing is, I'd be fine with simplistic synergies, in fact those are what I expect. I just have two problems.

1. If they're just 'hey I did mine, you do yours', it doesn't actually feel dynamic to me at all. The thing that makes the Meter work is that you have to be watching, building up, trying, preparing... you can't just 'do whatever you like as soon as both are off cooldown'. In fact, a LOT of the challenge of this comes from 'having to actually control how fast the meter is rising, as there's no point in getting to like 1400 on certain skills, so you 'might as well' do something else as soon as you hit 1000 if your partner isn't there yet.
2. I don't find that people are any more forgiving or understanding if the combos are simpler to GRASP, it just gives them more opportunity to rag on people who miss them occasionally. SkillChains are pretty simple in that you just tell the person 'after I do this, you do that'. They're already actually ABOUT as simple as Synergy gets in terms of 'actually doing the synergistic thing' and not the 'optimizing it' aspect.

So while 'Hey, you should do Arrow Rain after I do Black Hole' is also a synergy, it's also not really engaging to me in anywhere NEAR the same way, and this is particularly true I think for Support classes who just don't have to care at ALL.

Having to choose between "getting the last two hits to earn the TP I need to open Skillchain" and "Healing the Paladin because his health is looking a bit ragged" is the part where I start to feel something because I can go 'well my teammate might notice that I will have TP soon and that's why I'm not healing, so they will heal the Paladin' (or in FFXI he'll heal himself but you get the idea).

Similarly as @Nova_terra points out, while this WOULD get a bit more interesting with people using different weapons, for example, without the meter won't it just be 'ok hit this a few times to trigger the hit-proc' and then everyone just go back to doing the same sorts of things?

Onigiri works a lot like that, and I feel the difference a lot. Our Bard feels it much more.

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

Yeah that's basically what I'm asking.

I'm aware that I'm definitely very hardcore/elitist at games in general, but as noted, I can't always tell what people actually find challenging vs not, because in all arrogance, it's MOSTLY all the same to me.

Which is why I make the post. If I 'shouldn't expect anything beyond FF14' then so be it.

And honestly, yeah, I probably wouldn't pick up the game with any seriousness if it doesn't manage on this point, not because I never play such games, but because Ashes is 'ambitious' in specific ways that make it 'challenge games I already play for the time slots', and interestingly, in no OTHER ways.

The only thing Ashes offers ME that I don't get elsewhere would be 'the combination of multiple things I like at once'. And that's perfectly fine with me, to the point where 'if most people didn't want any Meter-based Synergies' I'd just accept that and go back to playing what I play already.

I'm aware that MMOs are probably not my target genre, but Ashes could be pretty close, I just wouldn't want it to alienate a bunch of other people who would enjoy it.

It's really hard for me to tell because of how games get made these days though. I don't even find myself 'assuming that new MMOs will have elemental damage/weaknesses' anymore.

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

The main thing to understand is that FFXI is a VERY VERY group focused game for anything serious. You can certainly do it alone, but that's just a challenge you're taking on for the sake of it, most of the time. Or no one you like is online.

Another thing it helps with is 'enemy scaling' with that in mind.

Let's say that you were to start the game now with one friend (or your brother) and you choose Red Mage to start and they choose Monk to start and use the standard weapons.

By around level 16 you would have a single, obvious Skillchain, but Red Mages don't do a TON of physical damage, so when you fight alone, you hit the thing 6-10 times (depending on how much it is hitting you) and then you do a strike that does about 5x your usual damage. Then you start over.

If the other person is with you, they also have an ability that does about 6x usual damage.

COMBINED though, you start, they end, you do your 5x, they do 6x, and then the 'Chain' grants another 2-3x of their damage. Then you cast a matching spell, that spell does 20% more damage and isn't resisted as easily.

So, again, (EDIT) 15-30% of damage. Now, as for why all that is important relative to the meter and grouping.

if this was not required, if there were no meter at all, for example, the game has to grant a set of 'on demand' abilities, right? So you'd go into a battle, front-load all the damage you can, so would they, kill the thing, then rest if you needed for MP. You could still have synergistic abilities, but the 'obvious answer' would always be to just 'start with the best one'.

In FFXI the TP meter's FLOW is part of the battle structure when fighting enemies one after another. Deciding 'should we save this for the next mob so that we start with a lot of damage' vs 'should we use it to finish this one off quickly before it gets into some defensive state', is also part of tactics and group synergy. Furthermore, working out 'who opens and who closes' (the hate goes to the closer) is important (I'm skimming over a lot of elemental specifics that are probably unnecessary complexity in FFXI).

But it's not uncommon to think 'Ok we should pull that Crawler because Crawlers are only annoying defensively when they are desperate (low on health) so we could save the TP for the next pull to shave a lot of health off the Funguar because Funguar have a chance of using a Breath Attack (HP based, more damage done higher their remaining HP is)'.

So if you 'ended Fight A with no TP because your Skillchain happened to kill it', the group has a moment of 'should we risk this other enemy knowing that they will take longer to kill since we don't have TP?'

Much simpler enemy abilities also start to have bigger impacts. Aside from 'Being CC'ed', being Blinded or Slowed lowering your accuracy/attack speed and therefore TP gain is a thing to respond to even moreso, to 'keep people in sync'. Enemies using Evasion Boosts at the 'wrong time' extends their survivability even more, etc.

Being able to just go 'ok the best opener against this enemy is X' leads to basic rotations, or long cooldowns, in order to achieve this, but even in the 'long cooldowns' case, it isn't really 'adaptability' in the same way. Yet this doesn't lead to 'failure' most of the time, just 'slow kills' if you don't perfect it.

One of my main jobs as healer is in fact that I get the single target Haste buff later on, and 'Recognizing that I need to Haste the Bard because this fight requires a lot of switching songs/debuffs on the enemy so she has less time to strike which will slow down the Skillchain' is important. Similarly 'if I Haste myself in the current rhythm since I don't have to heal as much against this enemy type, we can get extra skillchains and the Paladin will hold hate better due to being able to close them'.

I think I spend more time thinking about TP than nearly anything else, because it is the framework upon which all other decisions are weighed. Without it (because there are some times where you just ignore it due to the low chance of Skillchain or some other factor) it's just 'do your rotation to do damage or keep someone alive and repeat.

Imagine that, but without the enemy having TP moves either for variety, and you have FFXIV, as it was explained to me by the friend who suggested I just not bother.

It definitely isn't that you should 'not have damaging abilities that don't rely on it', but certainly 'having a lot of them' causes the system to need to be built differently, either 'people will just hit rotations', the cooldowns on certain things are long so that they can't do that, or they have to overwhelm you with many enemies so that you can't just do them.

And by 'contrast', from the man himself:

Depending on what your class skill choice has been those are going to have synergy effects with the weapon skill tree. So my skill called spin-to-win might do 30 additional damage on a staggered target. So I see when my proc occurs with the stagger effect on my first swing, like for me as a player I might be only interested in landing that first swing, so every now and then I'm gonna swing once and then I'm gonna use a skill and then I'm gonna come back and swing again because that'll play my first swing montage, because it's been interrupted. So I won't move to the second one because I'm really just wanna hit that stagger effect. So that's going to be how my rotation lines up. However I might have some skill that on a stun target it might be an immediate cast and it's like some power you push or power hit; and that does- it knocks back a stun target. So if the target's stunned when this skill plays, it has an added effect of knock down and now they're gonna get knocked down for an additional two seconds. Now I might spec into that and as a result I want to finish through: swing, swing, and then knock down. So I get my chance at stunning that target with that weapon skill. [109] – Steven Sharif

This does allow for players to sync with each other if one has the 'stagger hit' and the other has the 'skill that does more damage', but to me this actually seems both 'harder for the uninitiated' and 'more likely to be repetitive'.

So imo the TP Gauge might be BETTER at this than 'Ok hit it with bleed so I can do my skill'.

(Edited a number, I'm used to the 30% thing because Skillchain Multipliers get stronger as you level up)

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

My problem with this is that building high synergy builds WITHOUT the Meter means you have less synergy with others unless they change their builds, to some extent. And Re-spec won't be that easy, so it's hard to say.

I would think that was 'worse' than 'being able to coordinate with others in dynamic ways'.

For this month's Q&A I WOULD ask if they had ditched the Weapon Focus meter in design yet or not, but I still have no indication that they are far enough into combat/Archetype/Weapon design that it's even worth asking this question yet.

I don't necessarily have any OTHER questions though, so might as well. I could also 'guess at something Cleric related'.

Definitely glad that you can clearly say 'no, I don't want the Meter', but any additional information as to why from either you or @maouw would be helpful, since if the reason is 'likely to be common', I'll have a better idea of what to expect.

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

More random stuff since you asked for other effects the TP Gauge has (not all are Synergy related):

1. Limiting CC without making it too hard to actually do it.
Having some CC skills like stuns and knockdowns be based on the Gauge means you make a real tradeoff, and you have to consider flow again. This is true for abilities in general, ofc, and I do think it should be just some of them, but for Tab Target players, as example, being able to 'soft guarantee' a CC because you need meter instead of a skillshot could make auto-spam of CC less effective, while still having the moment of 'deciding if you should CC or go for bigger damage/synergy'.

2. PvP 'Surprise' situations and so on
FFXI actually DOES have two PvP modes and it enhances those too, it's quite difficult to Skillchain on other players obviously, but more importantly, it changes combat a LOT. If you can't just 'bob and weave until your cooldowns are ready' for everything, and some of your damage is locked behind actually engaging opponents , things shift. I really was imagining things like 'deciding if to use your TP Attack on the Castle Gate or saving it up to quickly hit someone who jumps you because you're just standing there attacking a gate'.

3. PvP 'No Surprise' situations and so on
The reverse of the above, could happen in Ashes. You can definitely build TP on just weak mobs around, but in many situations this would change the threat 'type' of open world PvP more toward fairness. If I am exploring a dungeon with one friend and we are just about able to handle the mobs there, a random solo player can definitely try to kill us both with some big attack when they see us use long CD abilities on a mob. But if they needed to build their own TP for a chunk of their damage on us, and the mobs are a real threat to them, we're 'safer'. They have much more trouble beating mobs while explicitly NOT using their TP, or may not be able to do it at all. At minimum, if they build it when closer to us, we notice someone fighting instead of just sneaking up.

Ashes could also 'force fairer fights' by zeroing the Gauge when you flag up. That's not 'fair' to Corrupt players, but a lot of stuff already isn't 'fair' to them so it wouldn't be that strange.

Note again that this is all still my 'dream' but it's also true to say that we haven't had a 'we aren't using this gauge anymore' announcement yet either, so I'm 'stuck hoping'.

Another thing this CAN help with if one factors it (or completely ruin if you don't factor it) is evasive builds. They can 'be made squishier' if gauge is a meaningful part of damage, and building the gauge in ways other than just actually hitting physically is also important.

Now I wanna go play FFXI again... guess I'll just do that.

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Wow. I REALLY would not expect people to think THIS was less complex/annoying than 'hit this thing 8 times and then do this thing after that thing'.

The TP gauge 'causes all this' automatically as soon as you know your teammate's build, so I'd actually think the heatmap would make things harder and less approachable, not more acceptable?

You really think it would work? Obviously I like complex things so I don't really know how to judge that at all.

Intrepid also wishes for every Archetype to have a role in a group, so that would also be a factor for it, it would help to realize 'oh we need a Fighter but THIS Fighter doesn't make our heatmap look right, they would need to respec or maybe we'll have to pass on having them join us'.