[Feedback Request] Cyclops Combat Preview Shown in May Livestream

NiKr wrote: »

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Barely anyone got out of aoe. And those who tried were mainly ranged people who were already three kilometers away from the boss, because range of attacks was quite far. The charge barely did any dmg, so I didn't notice that many people dodging it. And all the "killings" were just dps checks.

Now I get that this kind of breaking an encounter apart can be applied to most things and make them seem super simple, but that's just how most combat goes tbh. After rewatching the fight and hearing a dev say that this was a simple boss, I'm more ok with those mechanics being super simple. Obviously Azherae isn't, but that's mainly cause her standards are WAY HIGHER than mine

My standards for a fight in general? Not really.

Again, it's really hard to explain this because of the flaw being so like... 'core'.

If you inflate 8 man content to 16-32, all you've said to me is that the game rewards numbers. Which is a fine thing, a good thing in an MMO, but it offers no draw to those who have certain experience types. It's not even that I'm antisocial when it comes to this, but if I logged in to be 'challenged' in any way and not just 'hey guys we have enough numbers to get some loot if we aren't terrible and don't randomly get outzerged', then what am I doing?

If my role in a fight as Healer is exactly the same (technically considerably less) than it is in Monster Hunter World, and I require the same coordination (actually looks like less) why am I playing Ashes instead of that (or more seriously, TL or ArcheAge if I happen to like the combat better and AA2 delivers on that whole 'guild towns' thing).

I don't know if I'm making sense with this, but at least for me, it's a real consideration. "Gathering more people to have them do the same thing I'm doing alongside me" is a spectacle, not a challenge, and that's fine. I wouldn't 'not play Ashes', but it's communicating to me 'whoever has the numbers and can basically not stand in the fire can do this'.

PvP being around will change that slightly but the PvP would be more engaging if you didn't have to 'worry' that your opponents felt 'let's bring 32 people' when you technically 'could do it with 16'. At that point, it's outright 'numbers > skill' specifically because you're fighting a big boss.

There's 'I broke this encounter apart so it's simple' and there's 'Ok so my job as the Fighter is to stand/move behind it and hit it until PvP opponents show up'. Isn't that how these are always handled? Tank to one side, DPS behind, or a slightly more complex positioning if you expect PvP but still an automatic one?

So my standards being higher doesn't apply if Intrepid doesn't want more than this for this encounter, but I just want to know why this was the showcase . I'd just ignore this, I'm not bothering to get 16+ people together for that when it's going to be killed by the first 15 Mages and 1 Tank that can group up.

I'm multiple paragraphs into this post and getting that feeling that I just shouldn't make it at all, but I'm the 'voice' so might as well...

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The thing I still can't wrap my head around after watching the stream is this: if the raid boss is intended for 16 players, what's to stop me from gathering 14 Mages spec'd for as much raw damage as possible and 2 Clerics for the heals? The Mages can just roll, blink and use their Shield spell and be perfectly fine. Any damage they happen to take despite those can be kept in line by the 2 Clerics.

So what was the tank doing for me in that and what's my tradeoff? Why do I need to bring tanks if I can just kill the boss faster by bringing more damage? Not only did the Tank seem unnecessary, it seemed suboptimal , you want to kill things as fast as possible.

Azherae wrote: »

There's 'I broke this encounter apart so it's simple' and there's 'Ok so my job as the Fighter is to stand/move behind it and hit it until PvP opponents show up'. Isn't that how these are always handled? Tank to one side, DPS behind, or a slightly more complex positioning if you expect PvP but still an automatic one?

Yep, pretty much the setup for like 95% of L2's bosses

Azherae wrote: »

So my standards being higher doesn't apply if Intrepid doesn't want more than this for this encounter, but I just want to know why this was the showcase . I'd just ignore this, I'm not bothering to get 16+ people together for that when it's going to be killed by the first '.

I'm multiple paragraphs into this post and getting that feeling that I just shouldn't make it at all, but I'm the 'voice' so might as well...

I appreciate your posts cause they give me more perspective on this stuff. The last time I played L2 I was in a big semi-casual guild and our "evening raids" were comprised of our GL going "how many people we got online? 80% of the guild? Great, let's go clear some world bosses that are about to respawn".

Those bosses were mainly farmed by low-mid power guilds because their drop was mid, but pretty much all of them were usually just overrun with huge numbers, while stronger guilds fought better bosses with lower numbers and only gathered up if there was harsh competition.

So what I'm trying to say with this example is that there is a place for these kinds of bosses in the game, but, w/o seeing the harder ones, we can't really know if Intrepid is planning to have the kind of gameplay I described or the kind of gameplay that most strong guilds would skip (together with the game), just as you say.

As for the reason of the showcase, I really feel like the true reason was to show off how big mobs interact with environment. They don't have AI to show off proper difficulty and I'd assume that the majority of mobs aren't that deeply developed for that precise reason. So what they're left with is a big pretty world with some light physics and this big boi who can kinda interact with them. So they slap some super basic boss design onto him and show him off.

It's just that the messaging kinda got lost on the way to us. They mentioned that there'll be a proper "boss design" dev discussion later on, so I hope you can give your full feedback there.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

There's 'I broke this encounter apart so it's simple' and there's 'Ok so my job as the Fighter is to stand/move behind it and hit it until PvP opponents show up'. Isn't that how these are always handled? Tank to one side, DPS behind, or a slightly more complex positioning if you expect PvP but still an automatic one?

Yep, pretty much the setup for like 95% of L2's bosses

Azherae wrote: »

So my standards being higher doesn't apply if Intrepid doesn't want more than this for this encounter, but I just want to know why this was the showcase . I'd just ignore this, I'm not bothering to get 16+ people together for that when it's going to be killed by the first '.

I'm multiple paragraphs into this post and getting that feeling that I just shouldn't make it at all, but I'm the 'voice' so might as well...

I appreciate your posts cause they give me more perspective on this stuff. The last time I played L2 I was in a big semi-casual guild and our "evening raids" were comprised of our GL going "how many people we got online? 80% of the guild? Great, let's go clear some world bosses that are about to respawn".

Those bosses were mainly farmed by low-mid power guilds because their drop was mid, but pretty much all of them were usually just overrun with huge numbers, while stronger guilds fought better bosses with lower numbers and only gathered up if there was harsh competition.

So what I'm trying to say with this example is that there is a place for these kinds of bosses in the game, but, w/o seeing the harder ones, we can't really know if Intrepid is planning to have the kind of gameplay I described or the kind of gameplay that most strong guilds would skip (together with the game), just as you say.

As for the reason of the showcase, I really feel like the true reason was to show off how big mobs interact with environment. They don't have AI to show off proper difficulty and I'd assume that the majority of mobs aren't that deeply developed for that precise reason. So what they're left with is a big pretty world with some light physics and this big boi who can kinda interact with them. So they slap some super basic boss design onto him and show him off.

It's just that the messaging kinda got lost on the way to us. They mentioned that there'll be a proper "boss design" dev discussion later on, so I hope you can give your full feedback there.

I'm glad that it seems to be working... sorta.

I know that I'm too critical, partially because I'm the lens for the 'critical thoughts' of multiple people. But once again I have to say to Intrepid, you're failing at messaging at least for us.

It doesn't matter if I understand 'ok this isn't supposed to be hard' it's just a Big Body test. Not everyone does, and it doesn't help my end because I have to just keep shooting down feedback people have that isn't relevant and the final result is 'oh well I don't care then, ping me when they show something for me to comment on'.

We thought 'Oh sweet maybe a little insight into the gameplay and potential complexity' and we got one of the most cheesable boss design types possible (this type of boss is never serious in this game type, you just spread out a bunch of ranged attackers and make it run between them while being damaged by the other dozen).

The fact that we ended up here is a testament to either 'me being way too invested and needing to join the ranks of people who no longer bother posting', or Intrepid needs to shift something about the way they 'sell' showcases to us, still.

Or, to quote someone I will not name:

"Is it the 'fight of the century' because once I do it I don't want to do it again in my lifetime?"

Azherae wrote: »

The fact that we ended up here is a testament to either 'me being way too invested and needing to join the ranks of people who no longer bother posting', or Intrepid needs to shift something about the way they 'sell' showcases to us, still.

I do have a bit of hope for them figuring out the messaging, mainly because they figured out the showcase structure based on the previous feedback. I'm not a complete doomer just yet, even though I've been on the edge a few times at this point.

I'd probably say that you should give it your all for the upcoming boss design discussion and then just chill or maybe even completely stop posting for a while, at the very least until we get concrete news about alpha2. Cause I really doubt we'll see anything of true value until then.

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In general, my perspective is that if you have not added some situation in let's say a 16 man content where each Archetype from each group has a slightly different role to play, you have not made proper use of your multi-group content.

I believe that these slightly different roles can be enhanced and built upon while still accounting for PvP, because the roles and approaches can be different but neither 'absolutely critical'. It could even be a matter of 'rotating' based on cooldowns into position and out of position.

If the content doesn't achieve at least that, then the answer is almost always 'find a Tank and some healers and bring enough of your strongest/safest DPS'. Adding counter-mechanics on the Boss just changes which DPS that is.

There are things that are a matter of tuning that were done to make things sensible (e.g. they were probably buffed in ways that the Bard would normally provide) and then there are things that show through to a spoiled FFXI player like myself as 'you did this wrong'.

But, again, it's meant to be simple. Referencing the thread briefly then:

1. Add Bloodseeker Spiders and you should now need more Tanks, possibly in different positions. These Tanks then need Healers with a different concept or even loadout, a different 'job' to do in the fight (this is assuming that the Spiders could manage to bring down a Tank that was also being attacked by Tumok)
2. Add any 'grapple' effect and you should now need either the Ranger or a second Tank to CC Tumok or someone will suffer terribly. You could definitely get away with this with only one Ranger, admittedly, but it would be spec dependent.
3. In other games the Raid would actually be split so that the Melee are in one party and the Ranged in another and they get one Bard each with different plans, positioning, and buff intentions
4. Depending on the function of Rogues (hate manipulation) you almost always end up needing two of them as soon as you need two Tanks for proper flow (actually they often end up being a massive part of the raid if you can get enough of them, and Tumok would need AoE spores to counter that aspect.
5. More adds more often with a different attack priority means it's worth your time to bring Fighters to quickly respond to this without your Tanks being removed, and each Fighter can have a different priority altogether if the game has any synergies. One to trigger Synergies on Tumok, one to help with adds.
6. Even if it's only one enemy, having one Mage to help with the Adds and one that focuses on stacks and Synergies would be good but who are we kidding when was the last time a Raid brought only a few Mages on anything that didn't explicitly counter them (and I'm not saying Tumok should at ALL other than positioning stuff)
7. Summoners obviously should fill in, but at the same time having SOMETHING to counter them rather than just 'Ok we'll stand over here and you can beat on our summons instead of us' seems important. I can't speak to this because in FFXI Summoners are EXTREMELY complex and vital members of the team and relatively individualized. I can hope for the same in Ashes but I wouldn't be able to say what exactly they should do, and therefore I can't judge if these mechanics would have any impact in the sense of making you want 'two separate Summoners'.

So hm... I want what Ashes hinted at (I won't say promised). I want that when people form a party of one of each Archetype and make their meaningful choices and form their guild out of multiple of these, that even the basic 16-man content doesn't get the 'Ok but we need you to sit this out because we only need one Tank and it's probably better to replace some of the Fighters with more Mages'.

I can probably go into even more detail but based on the YouTube video's response, this is mostly enough for people and I doubt most people would enjoy the sort of specific targeted 'This is 16 man content therefore it should explicitly leverage that' that I'm interested in.

So as long as the general populace is happy.

I can explain more, or I can let my group members explain more based on any specific response you have to all that above.

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Yeah, probably right. It looks like people are mostly happy with it, and in the gaming business, that's mostly what matters.

I'm a little sad about it, but I definitely know that I run with a bunch of 'elitists' who have different wishes and preferences.

I do hope for a game where they can somewhat improve the current standard without losing that 'readability/simplicity' that makes it accessible to people, but I definitely still don't have a good measuring stick for what that is, so you can consider my responses to just be those of 'a voice of some people who really want more than a zerg rush even for the basics'.

And that could be an entirely flawed premise because players like us could either entirely skip this content or stick to more suitable games.

The only thing I will take issue with is the 'more engaging'.

No, that's definitely not what I'm feeling. I feel like genres have been consistently becoming considerably less engaging and I was hoping Ashes could fill the Fantasy MMO slot for getting some of it back, for me. And I don't know that it won't, I only know that I don't have a lot of visible reasons to be confident, and I don't understand the purposes of some of their content/feedback requests, which, aside from the 'inflated 8 man' thing, is my only remotely valid point.

For today, I was supposed to give feedback, and it didn't seem to have much direction so...

It was either "This looks boring and sucks even for its level", or 'nothing', from us. Maybe that's the way it should be, but as long as Steven keeps asking for the feedback, we'll keep giving it, the game doesn't need to change in any way for it.

Again, I'm just being a voice here, for people who want Intrepid to know 'yeah this isn't anywhere near what I am hoping for' but don't want to just be flat negative about it. At this rate they're gonna be saying more though, so I guess I don't need to handle it as much this time.

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Yeah, that's fine. I only care because of what Steven originally said, but it was my interpretation of those words that caused the disconnect, and that's on me.

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Yeah, looking at it all this was entirely 'me getting too excited about something that didn't have the purpose I thought it did' and then 'getting caught up in discussing it when it wasn't necessary to'.

Definitely a case of overhype/copium, so I'll see y'all next month maybe.