[Feedback Request] Alpha Two Fighter Archetype Preview Shown in March Livestream

I have a lot of concerns about localized PvP when I see this. If you pick Dreadnought, who exactly can stop you from mowing someone gathering resources down unless they are also a Dreadnought? The ability set on Fighter, added to other heavy movement classes, looks like it would make it nearly impossible for you to run away as a noncombatant even without CC hitting you, as the tab target chasers make it very difficult to do so. The ability to essentially airdash at will to a tab target, or leap and *then* airdash and *then* do another chasing ability allows you to far outstrip even someone that's actively aware of your position and trying to disengage.

And then for PvP in corruption or a consensual setting, who can stop the lockdown from Dreadnought? You stack this CC on top of Tank CC and the opponent character can't do anything...unless they are also Dreadnought and have the CC reduction, leading to 1v1 PvP being focused on dreadnought. I really dislike the kind of combat dynamics that this creates for the small scale, even if it washes out for PvE or large scale PvP.

Apart from that, the large amount of drops from basically every mob feels very silly, like they're all piñatas spewing out loot. This detracts from immersion significantly and it doesn't feel good to get such a high drop rate in a game that aims to be grounded like Ashes. If the economy of the game requires this kind of thing, it seems to me like the economy needs help.

Finally, I want to end with props to the audio design which is doing great, I love the goblin and wolf sound effects, and overall once again the animations look fantastic. On the art front, you all are doing amazing. I just hope that the gameplay design can match it in time.

There are three classes I'm interested in playing and this was third on my list. From the stand point of a player who would want to play the class I think you all have something that could be really good here. But... well let's get to the but last as is appropriate.

Biggest Point of Praise:

1. Holy carp those effects look cool af. You really outdid yourself. The effects look rad. The combat animations look amazing too.

2. You really sold the hit on this feeling like a high fantasy class using magic to be a melee specialist without breaking the 'melee specialist' part.

3. The weapons and armor look great.

4. Renkaiiiiiiii. (Plz give us red and blue oni colors the green looks way more generic than your initial options.)

5. The roar was a brilliant addition. I want that to have a higher threat generation value so fighter can play a role in taking control of adds.

7. Great sound design. THUNK.

8. The weapon specialty system is going to be a really big deal for me. It offers so much complexity to the combat system. I hope combat is more than just me spamming my abilities in rotation and it sounds like you all are with me on that. I just worry about how much difficulty that might cause your combat to balance.

But.... Well I list more indepth criticism below. But I will say that overall this seems like a good enjoyable direction. It just also looks really easy to make too powerful OR too underpowered. I'm specifically really concerned about how far all these mobility actions let you go across the board and I feel like it'll be hard to tweak downward when testing because players want to feel as much power and 'agency' as possible. That's why it's easier to make them 'undertuned' for testing than it is to make them 'overtuned'. I also feel like your enemy ai for PvE is going to have a lot of issues with all the mobility but none of this is fighter specific. It just 'really shows' in the fighters kit.

Biggest Point of Criticism:

1. The fighter seems to be really reliant on hitting their enemy to keep going. This is a good thing for RPS balance, but I fear what this might mean about the game balance. It might mean that this obviously outclassing all in 1v1 class is going to be faced with people 'meta' avoiding the fighter by putting on a ton of evasion gear. That being an option is a good thing but I fear how hard you might cap evasion in the future per level as a result of wanting the fighter to feel really effect in the long term. So 'be careful with that'. It could make the whole game feel like a slog if you don't give the fighter agency in this.

2. With this much mobility I was noting that the mobs feel really complacent and stagnant. This wouldn't be a worry in a game like BDO. But in a game with a summoner player class I do in fact worry about what this means for summoner's summons. This will really make or break a lot of your combat design for my most desired class to play, summoner. With this much mobility in player classes and PvP being so important, I worry how much summons will just get utterly demolished by all of this, and how vulnerable/underpowered the summoner will be as a result of you just 'easily getting around the summon' or ignoring them in your risk calculation in combat.

3. Sooooooo. I'm a fighting gamer. All of this looks great to me. Animation cancels, i-frame manipulation, combo theory, high twitch timing, there is a lot of gap closing and maneuverability. But I do wonder just how much a fighter is gonna be able to actually need to worry about distance. Right now it doesn't look very skill full in the part where skill should matter most (correctly using different distance options in combat at the right timing to gain positional advantage) where as the part that should involve the least amount of skill to make things less frustrating for people (the damage output and combo theory) seems to be wildly more skill based than I could have possibly imagined. As a fighting game player I'm not worried about it, but people are kidding themselves if they think they are going to do well with this system if they don't like or do poorly in fighting games. You even made fighter the fighting game character Sol Badguy for the most part. Haha. It'd be in the games best interest to flip where the difficulty/skill is in combat for the sake of long term retention even if you want the game to be harder than most.

4. I feel like the risk vs reward is really off with the stance change. I love the system and it definitely pushes this class to 2nd instead of 3rd choice for me. I think you need way more risk between stance changes. The fighter feels like it has every tool imaginable which honestly, feels more like summoner style design than it is fighter.

GrilledCheeseMojito wrote: »

I have a lot of concerns about localized PvP when I see this. If you pick Dreadnought, who exactly can stop you from mowing someone gathering resources down unless they are also a Dreadnought? The ability set on Fighter, added to other heavy movement classes, looks like it would make it nearly impossible for you to run away as a noncombatant even without CC hitting you, as the tab target chasers make it very difficult to do so. The ability to essentially airdash at will to a tab target, or leap and *then* airdash and *then* do another chasing ability allows you to far outstrip even someone that's actively aware of your position and trying to disengage.

And then for PvP in corruption or a consensual setting, who can stop the lockdown from Dreadnought? You stack this CC on top of Tank CC and the opponent character can't do anything...unless they are also Dreadnought and have the CC reduction, leading to 1v1 PvP being focused on dreadnought. I really dislike the kind of combat dynamics that this creates for the small scale, even if it washes out for PvE or large scale PvP.

Apart from that, the large amount of drops from basically every mob feels very silly, like they're all piñatas spewing out loot. This detracts from immersion significantly and it doesn't feel good to get such a high drop rate in a game that aims to be grounded like Ashes. If the economy of the game requires this kind of thing, it seems to me like the economy needs help.

Finally, I want to end with props to the audio design which is doing great, I love the goblin and wolf sound effects, and overall once again the animations look fantastic. On the art front, you all are doing amazing. I just hope that the gameplay design can match it in time.

Expanding here then:
From our position outside it looks like you've painted yourselves into a corner again, Intrepid. With the range available on these gap closers and movespeed increases, are we just not getting any Mobility augments after all?

Our Paladin cares about the 'ability to escape' part of this for semi-obvious reasons. In any tactical situation, a person under pressure needs to reach him unless we're going 'anime airdasher' gameplay. But that's possible, since it could move us closer to ArcheAge.

But then, the abilities are slow, and Tab target... which means... Evasion Stat is going to matter. And now we've got a Fighter who is 'counting on their backline targets having low enough evasion to actually be hit'.

It feels like you designed things somewhere between WoW and a MOBA, but want to keep all the d20 style elements. I'd say 'don't do that', but if you think you can make that be fun, keep going I guess. BDO style play is actually incompatible with what you've otherwise said though. Like, you can break down the numbers as to why, it's raw statistics at that point.

For context, I generally play Fighter or another equivalent hard-hitting melee-focused archetype in most games, so I have a lot of personal investment in this one. Based on what I saw in the showcase, I'm cautiously optimistic about Fighter in Ashes, but have some reservations.

Overall, the ability I liked the look of the most was the heavy overhead attack that launched a grounded projectile (I think this was an optional upgrade of Maim ?). This looks fun to use, and seemed like it would give the class some ranged punish options.

The Combat Momentum meter is also something I like the idea of, but I would prefer to have more options for spending this meter on abilities, which I think would create interesting tradeoffs (is it worth sacrificing some of your attack buffs for a movement ability, for instance?)

I have a few different comparisons I want to make to melee archetypes I enjoy in other games, to highlight what I think works well about the current design of AoC Fighter's, and where I see gaps in its ability set.

1) Monster Hunter Greatsword

I love Monster Hunter's Greatsword. The heavy, highly-committed slashes are satisfying to land, and being able to build up towards a Truecharge Slash with repeated attacks feels like a reward for thorough understanding of the gaps in a monster's moveset.

A few AoC Fighter abilities seem to be similar - big overhead slashes with a windup and high damage - but I'd optimally like the option of holding a button to charge these attacks longer, for a bigger ultimate payoff. I think this would allow for more of the high risk/high reward playstyle I enjoy.

In general I have apprehensions about the high movement speed and quick cooldown of abilities in current AoC combat, when compared to games with the deliberate and committed movement of something like Monster Hunter or Dark Souls.

2) FFXI's Dark Knight

In FFXI, Dark Knight isn't a pure melee class (it has a focus on debuffing, and has some secondary elemental magic), but I think it's still close enough to be a valid point of comparison.

The class has a focus on both draining HP from enemies, and spending your own HP to enhance its damage output, making for an interesting back-and-forth where you can half-kill yourself dealing spike damage, then time your drain ability to recover. This allows for a sort of "Berserker" playstyle that I also really enjoy.

AoC's Fighter has Blood Fusion , which I like mechanically and in terms of flavor, but I don't see any equivalent of the interplay between spending and recovering HP being possible with the current ability set.

Alternatively, something similar could be achieved through adding more ways to spend Combat Momentum.

3) DNF Duel Inquisitor

Is a fighting game too different from an MMO for this to be a useful comparison? I'm not sure, let me know in the replies !

In DNF Duel, Inquisitor fights with an impractically large axe which has a high range but a somewhat slow moveset. Being effective with the character is therefore all about knowing your ranges. Using dashes, jumps, and other movement options to get into the right positions to launch your attacks is important, as is preventing the enemy from getting into ranges where the slow startups of your moves will leave you unable to effectively counter them.

I like games where your positioning is a large factor, and where it's possible to bait out attacks and whiff punish opponents. This sometimes relies on being able to rapidly move short distances (with a dash or dodge roll move).

While AoC Fighter has Lunging Assault , which is somewhat similar, this currently has a built-in followup attack, making it predictable, and limiting the ways in which it could be used to either evade or whiff-punish. I would optimally like to see a way to spend meter for a shorter dash with a controllable direction, without a built-in followup attack.

Other Thoughts

I have very mixed opinions about this, because while I have a generally positive opinion of the Fighter moveset itself, it's underscored some of my concerns about the extremely high mobility/low commitment attack style in Ashes' combat at the moment.

GrandSerpent wrote: »

The Combat Momentum meter is also something I like the idea of, but I would prefer to have more options for spending this meter on abilities, which I think would create interesting tradeoffs (is it worth sacrificing some of your attack buffs for a movement ability, for instance?)

Oh wow I think you accidentally solved my issue with the stance change problem. Stance change costing you meaningful amounts of momentum meter along with the cool down fixes a lot of my potential hesitations with it. Would be even cooler if you could spend it all on an high stakes version of the stances with a big weakness but a big reward to encourage more creative uses and instances of the meter rather than just 'always saving up to go for Exert/execute.' It's really the lack of a defining trade off that I felt the stance system was missing and the lack of combat momentum uses can definitely be 'solved at the same time by fixing that'.

JustVine wrote: »

1. The fighter seems to be really reliant on hitting their enemy to keep going. This is a good thing for RPS balance, but I fear what this might mean about the game balance. It might mean that this obviously outclassing all in 1v1 class is going to be faced with people 'meta' avoiding the fighter by putting on a ton of evasion gear.

I'll go further. If you are thinking about 'making the base stats of Archetypes matter a lot to their evasion ability', plzdonot . But if you don't, then what? Since so many things are built into either Primary Archetype or Passives, it feels like you'll be constantly fighting with the battle balance as players find new and amazing ways to make what currently looks good, feel bad.

JustVine wrote: »

2. With this much mobility I was noting that the mobs feel really complacent and stagnant. This wouldn't be a worry in a game like BDO. But in a game with a summoner player class I do in fact worry about what this means for summoner's summons.

I've got no 'buffer' here. Adding a Summoner to this design type is either the most gutsy thing I've ever seen any developer attempt, seriously... or a colossal mistake. Who is supposed to have any fun like that, as the summoner?

Like, there should absolutely be ways to bypass a Summoner's summons to attack them if you want to. But you should at least have to take a few hits , even as a Fighter. Unless you're making something closer to that Gravity Gauntlets class from Skyforge or something?

To be clear here, the issue isn't about 'can you gap close on the summoner', it's about whether or not the Summon can find or catch up with the Fighter . This probably applies to all characters to some extent, but part of the 'class fantasy' of Summoner is explicitly to 'be able to send forward a different entity to engage first if needed'.

I fear the power creep.

JustVine wrote: »

3. Sooooooo. I'm a fighting gamer. All of this looks great to me. Animation cancels, i-frame manipulation, combo theory, high twitch timing, there is a lot of gap closing and maneuverability. But I do wonder just how much a fighter is gonna be able to actually need to worry about distance. Right now it doesn't look very skill full in the part where skill should matter most (correctly using different distance options in combat at the right timing to gain positional advantage) where as the part that should involve the least amount of skill to make things less frustrating for people (the damage output and combo theory) seems to be wildly more skill based than I could have possibly imagined. As a fighting game player I'm not worried about it, but people are kidding themselves if they think they are going to do well with this system if they don't like or do poorly in fighting games. You even made fighter the fighting game character Sol Badguy for the most part. Haha. It'd be in the games best interest to flip where the difficulty/skill is in combat for the sake of long term retention even if you want the game to be harder than most.

Yeah, this part is all just 'our preference', and even fighting games lately have been moving away from that. If anyone ever needed a clear explanation of why I like TL combat and MOBAs more than Ashes, though, it'd be this.

There's a set of people who likes to feel cool by constantly hitting the next button and playing Rock Paper Scissors with long periods of hoping your opponent messes up, inbetween (I mention this so it's clear that this isn't a matter of having the cooldowns turned down).

We are just not that set of people, and we have far too much exposure to the hell of waiting for someone to figure out how to balance the first game type to reward positional skill at all. If they don't, your Anti-Cheat designer's going to have their hands more than full.

JustVine wrote: »

4. I feel like the risk vs reward is really off with the stance change. I love the system and it definitely pushes this class to 2nd instead of 3rd choice for me. I think you need way more risk between stance changes. The fighter feels like it has every tool imaginable which honestly, feels more like summoner style design than it is fighter.

A general issue with MMOs honestly. People often talk about how class homogenization and all that is a problem, but it's moreso that there's a reason why all these technical 'good feeling' games only have a few abilities.

You can have a lot of abilities (or augmentable abilities on low cooldowns), and a lot of complex positioning, or a few abilities and a lot of understanding of timing and counterplay... but 'not both'.

In order to have even a chance of 'stopping' six fighters from crashing your backline, the range gap between the two fighting forces will have to be even bigger . This is the thing I feared when I saw the range on the Ranger and Wands. Because of COURSE the Fighter gap closers have to be 'I just left Core but I'm just gonna jump straight to inner mid tower' tier.

Just in case I don't get to it later, it's not 'the gap closer distance' that's really bugging me here, it's that in order to stop or prep for this properly (I can understand why you might not want people to be ABLE to stop it, but then, multiple fighters...) you have to be able to reach them.

GrandSerpent wrote: »

1) Monster Hunter Greatsword A few AoC Fighter abilities seem to be similar - big overhead slashes with a windup and high damage - but I'd optimally like the option of holding a button to charge these attacks longer, for a bigger ultimate payoff. I think this would allow for more of the high risk/high reward playstyle I enjoy.

In general I have apprehensions about the high movement speed and quick cooldown of abilities in current AoC combat, when compared to games with the deliberate and committed movement of something like Monster Hunter or Dark Souls.

While some of this may seem like a misjudgement based on the cooldowns being set low, it's actually probably an entirely different misjudgement, if one at all.

This is related to how 'powerful and impactful' it seems the team thinks they should make abilities to have them 'feel good'. Right now, it looks like your Fighter overdoes everything, and therefore when you start balancing it either it will lose a lot of these feelings anyway (because for some of us, fun is actually pretty precise and granular, tiny differences in frames make huge differences, right?), or it will just have to get more CC resistance.

The overall design still seems to be very much in the MMO camp of 'RNG CC' instead of something like Predecessor's 'Tenacity'. So, when a Fighter soars into the air to reach a backline target... and that target attempts their high-speed CC skill or even Snipe... what happens exactly?

GrandSerpent wrote: »

2) FFXI's Dark Knight

The class has a focus on both draining HP from enemies, and spending your own HP to enhance its damage output, making for an interesting back-and-forth where you can half-kill yourself dealing spike damage, then time your drain ability to recover. This allows for a sort of "Berserker" playstyle that I also really enjoy.

AoC's Fighter has Blood Fusion , which I like mechanically and in terms of flavor, but I don't see any equivalent of the interplay between spending and recovering HP being possible with the current ability set.

Probably fine overall, your 'Lifesteal' and 'Heal on Hit' is partially going to come down to number tuning, but then we're back to positioning stuff.

In similar games, the Fighter can 'know that they are out of position and therefore their lifesteal will not be enough'. In MMOs, sort of, but we're back to the problem of the absurd ranges on everything. You need to be able to know 'this person is too far away to kill me in the time it takes me to pull this off'.

As of now, this seems to border on never really being true . The number of places in just that area alone where I believe you could 'see no one', and then have a Fighter land on your head a second later', is at least 14.
They don't even let me do this much on Kunoichi in BDO, and she's actually squishy.

GrandSerpent wrote: »

3) DNF Duel Inquisitor

While AoC Fighter has Lunging Assault , which is somewhat similar, this currently has a built-in followup attack, making it predictable, and limiting the ways in which it could be used to either evade or whiff-punish. I would optimally like to see a way to spend meter for a shorter dash with a controllable direction, without a built-in followup attack.

But of course, be careful here because currently, the design has the 'hole' of almost definitely creating the PvP and PvE fighter problem, unless of course your mobs are Nargacuga tier, in which case, please bring it on, Intrepid.