Class Synergy Concern

If this isn't what is planned, I will join you in complaining.

In my arrogance I truly believe that Intrepid could just build and give us the entire ability list for EVERY class in this game RIGHT NOW.

People have been playing these games for years. They have clear expectations. Ashes didn't bring some incredibly complex esoteric lore. That wasn't the focus. It took the basic 8 Archetypes of character, LITERALLY called them that, gave us some borderline-obvious "Augment" concepts, and that's it.

I don't know what's 'taking so long'. I'm not saying that 'if I designed this it would be perfect', but perfect isn't their AIM yet. We're not even in Alpha-2.

In the time they've taken, the Eastern MMO market has churned out about sixteen different iterations of the same 7-9 classes. And this will keep happening because everyone knows the Archetypes they want to play.

This is relevant to what you're saying in only one way, ofc.

You could ask nearly any two players 'what synergy do you think your classes should have?' and I bet you 80-90% of the time you will get the same or similar answers from them, or at least they won't be OPPOSED to the answers the majority is giving.

Difficult to balance and design are illusions given their stated design space . I stand by that. There are simply too many other games that have done this already for this to be 'hard', and I hope they're just 'debating which things to add and which to not'.

I mean, that's pretty much what I was expecting. You have an archetype-based part of the ability and then all the other archetypes react with it with their own parts. And those different reactions would have different effects.

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

I'm on the fence.

On the one hand, I know that Intrepid probably doesn't want to just reveal a bunch of stuff. Hype and 'drip' are important, and this game has a long long LONG way to go.

On the other hand, I'm somewhat surprised that those ones are the ones we got, yes.

So I'm definitely 'worried' that they don't have enough design done, as yet, but I'm not as worried that we'd get something overly simplistic or subpar, because I can't think of a reason that would happen, given the way the rest of things go.

Intrepid isn't really beholden to ANYONE. They don't have to follow ANY of the 'rules of game design'. If they 'took a poll' to have players design their Nodes, their Classes, their preferred storylines, and then implemented all of that, there would be no one to complain that this was the way they did it because... they don't answer to anybody.

To me, this gives them ultimate power when it comes to taking feedback of all kinds. On the level of 'MineCraft Modding'.

I truly believe that if they implemented just some super basic stuff and we all told them 'no this is boring fix it' and could agree on HOW, they'd just fix it. My hope for this community is always just 'let's agree on how'.

So it's hard to answer. I'm worried, but I have to temper that reaction because I'm so arrogant about design stuff. I'd be too likely to just go 'here, do it like this, you're welcome' if I thought they were actually 'behind' or 'didn't know what to do', and that's unlikely to be productive, I expect.

I guess we can just ask for clarification about if Synergies are like that, or if they just used the simplest possible and most 'appealing' example so that the maximum number of players could understand and appreciate it. Us die-hards up in here aren't necessarily the target audience for that sort of thing. Gaming demographics are trippy.

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

I probably missed something during the stream? I thought it was just a single example of a single interaction. Did we hear that this was the only synergistic ability out there?

I might be on a relatively pessimistic side of things, but I find it hard to extrapolate any kind of future developments from what was shown in the last stream.

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

Well then yes, to Intrepid, I say:

If you were considering 'stacking effects' as your primary synergy options...

I'm sure you can do better.

If you were concerned about balance, testers will help you balance. If you were concerned about complexity, some people probably have enough years of experience with these games and helping others, making guides, etc, to help sort and filter the complexity. If you were concerned about reliability, same deal.

I'll be disappointed if things are 'This mage casts Fire, then this Summoner also uses a Fire summon to make Bigger Fire' and that's our standard synergy type.

You have the potential to do so many things because so many people with so many diverse experiences are rooting for you, so put our minds at ease and make some quick mention that there will be lots of different synergies, whether they are 'true synergies' or 'emergent' ones.

All yall damned quotings w/o removing a message with a ping keeps pinging, people!! Either just remove the pings or at the very least the @s in the message. Puhlease

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

But wouldn't it always be a "stacking" effect? Either on the target or on the first player to use a synergy ability. The game has to track the subsequence of usage somehow and the stacking is the easiest way to do it.

NiKr wrote: »

All yall damned quotings w/o removing a message with a ping keeps pinging, people!! Either just remove the pings or at the very least the @s in the message. Puhlease

Yeah my bad I forgot it does that.

Half the time it doesn't even ping me when people @ me, or it takes hours before it does, so I never even remember that the system is 'working'.

Anyway...

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

I don't feel like I want 'class or role specific effects' per se, either. I feel like that would be disappointing in some ways, I'd go so far as to say kind of LACKING in identity.

But I'm a very picky MOBA/nonFantasy MMORPG player, so my perceptions of 'role identity' are very skewed.

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

To add to you, then. For this system to be good, I think most Synergies need to be 'minimally beneficial'/'useless' 80% of the time, then very obviously meaningful the other 20% of the time, on average.

That's the 'worry' I have for what we were shown and told. We were given an obviously useful ability, it combined with another obviously useful ability, to create an 'even more useful' situation. I like that this was shown, because it was a good quick demo for those who don't easily grasp complexity, but I think it would be bad longterm because of low agency/decision making.

Here are some examples of what I consider 'strong synergy designs' vs 'weak synergy designs'.

STRONG:
Cleric Chains of Binding + Ranger Ensnaring Roots = Negate Enemy Dodge Chance for 3s
Fighter Whirlwind + Mage Tornado = Draw In all enemies hit
Bard Flourish + Rogue SmokeBomb = Add hate to whoever is currently 2nd on mob hate lists.

WEAK
Rogue Smokebomb + Mage Tornado = Bigger smokebomb radius
Ranger Ensnaring Roots + Tank Bulwark = Knockdown Enemy (assuming this counts as a good CC)
Bard Flourish + Cleric Divine Light (targeted heal, but targeted on enemy version) = Does more damage

I'd be very wary of adding obvious empowerments with obvious EFFECTS. I feel it'd be very tempting to do this in design, but I'd bet a LOT of money on it creating a stale meta that even the meta-breakers and the 'originality chasers' would not enjoy, EVEN if they were 'more successful' and 'found stronger ones'.

I feel that in order for a Synergy based thing to work and not just be "Follow this Guide and do this when your teammate does this", you need to give effects that play off situations, that 'solve small obscure problems', and that are directly tied to the natural pacing of almost EVERY fantasy MMO's combat.

Roughly speaking, fantasy MMOs consist of:

1. The Pull/Aggro
2. The Maneuvering/Situating of Actors
3. The Dynamism Of Area/Adds/Attrition
4. The Hate Control
5. The Damage Control
6. The Big Finish (or decision to not use it)
7. The Next Pull/Next Target

Things that simplify the pacing by 'reducing the enemy capability' or 'making them dead faster while maintaining the hate list', that can be done on demand, are going to be meta. Players will play 'efficiently' and deconstruct the underlying principles of the GENRE. Every time you give them ANY ability to do so, you're taking one more step toward homogenized boring flows, and throwing in a few mobs this doesn't work on, won't help much (people will avoid them, then if they are bosses that are beneficial to kill, re-spec to counter them, do that, then go back to grinding).

The same thing will happen for PvP because PvP is also deconstructible depending on the game. Good balance can help, but only so much.

It's fun to learn for the 'first time' that "Ok my Hallowed Ground combines with the Mage's Flameburst to create Holy Fire which negates the Regen of Zombies'.

It's less fun to 'open every battle against a Zombie swarm with Holy Fire because that's just the obvious thing to do'. That sort of thing works in TableTop campaigns because 'overcoming the new and interesting encounter' IS the fun and the goal, but TableTop games don't have 'Three mob groups in a room with a safe corner for the group to stand in with no aggro, that give good exp and respawn every 2 minutes'.

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

Don't see a reason for this, really.

Sure it would probably do what you say, but it seems unnecessary and restrictive to me.

I don't perceive that it'd make anything more fun.

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

I'll file that under the usual philosophical difference then. Got it.

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

No that's way 'worse', unless I don't understand you.

Either it will be 'antisocial' because every mistake feels like a big cost, or 'even more blatant'.

Synergy effects being MECHANICALLY strong, to me, is just a negative (again, when both halves of the synergy are more or less 'on-demand' from the players involved).

This is a perspective from my card game design days, though I feel that this is one of those times where that experience absolutely applies.

The 'binary' perspective I am holding here, though, is an exaggeration. From my experience and data from my players (sample size around 10k, give or take a few thousand) they will rapidly discard anything that has less than a 'strong chance of working' EXCEPT when NOTHING has a 'strong chance of working', at which point everyone finds their own thing and the meta expands and people learn to adapt more.

The sliding scale of 'enjoyment of the game' to 'ability to predict and consistently perform in the skill contest' tends to bleed 'casual' players when you are on the 'able to predict' side and lose 'hardcore' players when on the 'game is enjoyable' side, from my limited data.

But whereas 'hardcore' players can just put in time to learn an 'expanded meta' and therefore might continue to enjoy it, putting in more time doesn't make casual players happier, it just turns them INTO 'hardcore players' and honestly doesn't actually seem to affect their overall ENJOYMENT metrics much. Those who like 'winning' stay, those who were 'trying to have fun by not losing as much' drift off anyway.

I'm still gonna give feedback from this experience though, anecdotal as it is. I mention this so you have max context for my perspective.

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

That's it... let the knowledge feeeeed you... {Open} your {Eyes On Me} to the {Darkness}, and let the {Carnage Elegy} begin...

More seriously, yes. This is one of those 'someone has solved the issue already' design considerations. I don't bring up TP Gauge out of any nostalgia based love for it.

It's the best system I know, the convergence at the end of the design-goal space.

Everything else just ends up mimicking parts of it, finding the flaw in the approach, fixing that flaw, and moving closer to it.

The essence of game design really...

As for the overall concept of Case A, the 'flaw' is that doing this is either binary ENOUGH to be simply comprehensible and ironically THEREFORE meta-defining...

Or esoteric, chaotic and cool, and frustrating to the uninitiated (what if you trigger the synergy 'by accident'?) at which point I'm back to begging 'please just give people TP Meter so they can see this sort of thing coming'.