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

SongRune wrote: »

If Ranger and Fighter can outright fly, I'm going to be REALLY disappointed if I can't fly too, as a Bard.

I was honestly not expecting the airdasher style gameplay from an MMO, but you know what, I think I could maybe go for that. I'm not sure that's a good thing for Ashes, though. If anyone (or even most people) can choose to be anywhere, then it doesn't matter where anyone is.

~snip~

When everyone can move everywhere, "formations" stop mattering, and you can no longer use them to solve (or create) problems.

I'm worried about Bard. I'm supposed to get formation related buffs, right? If formations don't matter, my team will never have a good incentive to be in one that I can empower.

~snip~

But only if Bard can fly too. Is that good for the game? I'm not sure. But it's required by this design space. All I know is I'm definitely BRD/ROG now, not BRD/RNG.

This one sums up some stuff but it also touches on the point of the fact that regardless of the balance of numbers, the style of gameplay allowed for the Fighter at the moment, just barely touches on 'changing Ashes itself to be very pre-emptive'.

This is the thing we really mean when we talk about Predecessor's Khaimera (I generally won't bring up similar characters from other games precisely because Khaimera is the one that takes it too far). Khaimera is not a strategic character at all once combat starts. Not because he has no other options, but because if he got the 'jump' on you, he literally never has a reason to use anything other than what he intended to use to start with.

Super binary. If you can stop him, you stop him, if you can't, you can't, and that makes him feel bad because he's either winning or losing any given engagement really hard and almost never anything between unlesss there's an execution skill error on one side.

RNG CC doesn't add to this, it makes it worse. I hope this one doesn't come off as a preference or opinion because the thing I'm talking about isn't how effective he is, but how it feels to fight.

So, no matter what you make the cooldowns, the Bard in this situation is either 'not really supposed to help the Fighter', or 'really has to focus on stopping the enemy Fighter'. Khaimera is never really 'part of a formation'. He's just 'there'. He can be very effective in this role, but that's it.

My own (probably huge) post will go into a lot more of that, in a more positive way, though, since this isn't meant to be a criticism on Fighter at all, if you're going for that 'straightforward pre-emptive gameplay', Intrepid. Khaimera is a great character who's a little out of place in his game. Just worried that either Fighter is going to be similarly 'out of place' in yours, or that we've misunderstood what was meant by tactics and synergy, since everyone has different standards.

Having watched the stream... the exact moment at the start of the stream where the fighter uses Blitz and flies through the air, over the river and cliffs to reach their target... that is when I would close the tab, dismiss the game as unfixable and go watch something else, if I wasn't already invested in Ashes. It's not out of some outburst of anger either, just confidence the game can't make it like this. I'll explain it below.

Shall we start with the flavor side of things before actual combat? The way the Fighter moves around the battlefield reminds me strongly that these characters do not belong to this world and have nothing to do with it. It's great at making you feel powerful right off the bat, but it is such an immersion break, because of how clearly he disrespects gravity, cliffs and distance in a way that no other creature does.

You can probably fix that for me by making the mobs able to do these things as well. I'd find that fun, but you currently seem to be going more toward designing "trash" mobs that are easy for the casual player to fight, so it leaves me feeling like this difference between player characters and mobs will continue to widen. What is a mushroom or a wolf even supposed to do to be relevant and interesting by comparison? It ends up feeling like a superhero battle arena instead of an immersive MMO.

Now to combat stuff. I love Lunging Assault and I really wish it was part of bread and butter Fighter combat flow. That said, Fighter's design creates this weird impression of being both overpowered and underpowered simultaneously (that doesn't equate balanced, no). His ability to ignore and break formations on the other side has a huge impact on how the game is meant to be played, on how support classes can participate, on the structure of 8man parties and so on. How are support classes even going to be helpful here without them also getting absurd abilities?

At the same time, the existence of Fighter as he is now means people will gear for evasion, making him feel weirdly underpowered at doing what he is meant to do in MMOs usually. I want to tell you how to fix this, but I've never seen a design fail in two opposite directions simultaneously like this, before.

What I do wish you would do with Fighter is remove the giant meteor leap altogether and center his toolkit more around Lunging Assault. By removing the ending hit of Lunging Assault and making him able to cancel abilities INTO Lunging Assault, he could dance around the battlefield all cool like. Would that fix him overall? I doubt it, but he would be more fun to me.
___
On a separate note, I sincerely loved your grass/shrubbery/ground flowers. They make me want to /crouch and go exploring for things on the ground in a way that no other MMO does (so far). Hopefully I do have things to look for down in the dirt.

SunScript wrote: »

Shall we start with the flavor side of things before actual combat? The way the Fighter moves around the battlefield reminds me strongly that these characters do not belong to this world and have nothing to do with it. It's great at making you feel powerful right off the bat, but it is such an immersion break, because of how clearly he disrespects gravity, cliffs and distance in a way that no other creature does.

Just noting that this is a general feeling from my group, but most of us just go 'yeah that's what they're making, it's WoW++, whereas Sun actually has played WoW long enough to gain a dislike for that direction, I think.

SunScript wrote: »

You can probably fix that for me by making the mobs able to do these things as well. I'd find that fun, but you currently seem to be going more toward designing "trash" mobs that are easy for the casual player to fight, so it leaves me feeling like this difference between player characters and mobs will continue to widen. What is a mushroom or a wolf even supposed to do to be relevant and interesting by comparison? It ends up feeling like a superhero battle arena instead of an immersive MMO.

Since I think some feedback relative to this was outright requested...

Your mobs and mob flow suck, Intrepid. What even is this halfassed BDO? Is this what modern WoW-clones are actually like? (I'm not actually calling Ashes one in this case, just wondering where the drive for this comes from). Fighters have so much relative AoE that it makes me think so, and I remember seeing a lot of it in FFXIV stuff too. But it's fine if you have enough content where that's not the main thing we need to be.

The rest of Sun's post, I've covered relative to others, but the fact that he reached the 'you failed in both ways at once, impressive' conclusion does speak to a general issue we are still having with Ashes... "What are you actually trying to make here?"

I guess we could still be in either the 'see what sticks' phase or the 'We believe we can please a large swath' phase. It's just confusing from the feedback perspective, because anything that is 'sorta set in stone' or 'widely preferred by your target audience', we feel like we should tailor feedback to the 'here is how you can make this work for me at least a bit' type, instead of the 'this is dumb and I hate it' type.

How do you feel about the Fighter Archetype Preview?
Absolutely ecstatic, as soon as I imagine Blitz and Leap being shorter...

Until you start fighting mobs in which case it swings immediately to 'soul-crushingly depressed'.

What excites you about playing and interacting with the Fighter Archetype?
As it is now, nothing. It's just a Khaimera, it's just 'there'. If it's unbalanced in one direction or the other it will feel bad, but as for 'will it be interesting or fun to interact with', that's not really the point of the baseline Fighter Archetype in the first place, is it? It's there for those people who like to grab a big weapon and hit things. And just in case it isn't clear, I have nothing against that whatsoever, I just don't think that Fighters are supposed to be 'exciting' to people who aren't Fighters.

If you add some more skills and really build on that base, something exciting might come of it, more on that later.

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Fighter Archetype Preview?
See above.

Are there similar Archetypes you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
See previous posts. I love Fighters. I love all the different ways you can approach the style, to the point where I am always surprised that Ashes only has the 'one' Fighter class, but I can see how both simplicity, and your current design, could manage to only need one. I see it ending up more like TL though, where Fighters are distinguished by their weapon. You'll notice this post is very long. That's what most of it is.

What are your thoughts on the Fighter's abilities, mechanics, and combos?
I don't like these combos or 'rotations', particularly not the simplistic ones shown, but individually, I thought every single ability was spot on, curated and collected, or convergently evolved, from the greatness of Fighters across many combat games. Thus I'll focus on anything that isn't just basically 'A skill from WoW, TL, or Predecessor adapted to Ashes'.

o Battle Cry 30 Mana 0.7s Use
Unleash a resounding war bellow, applying the Riled effect to the caster and all nearby party members and Shaken to all nearby enemies. Gain 5 Combat Momentum for each target that was Riled.
Riled targets have increases stability and have increase chance of tripping Shaken enemies.

I don't like this one, because it feeds into the 'lots of CC' aspect of Ashes I dislike. It's certainly an interesting rendition of Warcry/Empower/Rallying, but it just sounds like it will be a pain-point for me right out of the gate on both ends.

o Form of Fluidity 10 Mana 0.7s Use
While in this form, the caster receives +4% Disable Resistance Chance per 10 Combat Momentum, up to a maximum of +40%.
Shifting from costs 20% of current Combat Momentum and triggers cooldown for all Combat Forms.

Same as above.

Everything else is just standard fare. I'm a little concerned about your combat flow relative to the cooldowns, because you're still in that state of 'let's give long cooldowns but make the abilities powerful', which is functionally the opposite of what I hope for.

Worse is the implication that Cooldown Reduction is going to be a big part of how you solve this. To be clear, it's not that I dislike long cooldowns which are then reduced by stuff, it's that making the abilities powerful to 'balance' this, then doing literally anything else to pull that back (or, equally, not doing anything) turns battle into a linear Mash-fest, but if Fighter is generally the most or at least 'among the most' mobile you intend to have... nah, not for me. Make everything more usable and less individually impactful like it used to be, is my desire, if for some reason we're still in the space of 'changing combat direction in this way'.

This is even 'worse' based on the idea that one might not just take all these abilities, based on what I know now .

Do you have opinions on the great sword animations, Fighter VFX, and unlockable procs? If so, please share them!
Oh boy do I! Should have its own post, but here we go anyway.

So I keep mentioning Khaimera, let's talk in terms of Khaimera .

I'm sure that weapon procs, augments, and so on, will at least get up to the level of MOBA complexity, so for now, I want to focus on weapon procs viewed through the lens of Fighter, since committing to the weapon procs concept makes me really think a lot about Fighters using something other than Greatsword.

So I'm going to try to talk about a few Khaimera builds and what I feel 'ended up being lacking from the showcase due to you only showing off one weapon' (I just assume the other skill trees aren't ready or are in flux). I guess this will technically count as suggestions too.

Dual Sword Fighter
Equivalent Khaimera build: Brutallax , Kingsbane , Bonesaw , Overlord
This is the one that, in Ashes, would focus on Form of Fluidity, Blood Fusion, and Crippling Blow, just regenerating without stopping for as long as they're hitting, and shrugging off CC. You can't run away from them, you can't stop them, they don't even care about Form of Celerity, they're probably parrying you. Stoppable only by someone else getting involved and body blocking or (ugh...) lucky CC. To avoid the 'unkillable Khaimera' problem here, please don't give them any additional Regen when not hitting. Just let the mage blast them down please. They can focus on building health instead of mana. Maybe their procs can be about raising their attack speed when they take damage, that way it (Sword/dual sword) can work on Tank and Rogue fairly too, probably, while still discouraging most non-melee enjoyers from picking up a Sword just for random soloing procs. Or triggering 'parry' states since that's a good spot between 'passive random chance to parry' and 'oh, I missed my parry timing on my long cooldown parry skill, RIP.

Hammer/Mace Fighter
Equivalent Khaimera build: Nex , Basilisk , Citadel , Demolisher
That person you send when you know the backline is going to escape, you just want the tank to move for fall back, or you want to steal a Boss kill. The Tank Breaker. Mace/hammer procs make sense to lower physical armor, right? Percentage based probably balances it out too. Lowering enemy evasion and having some better chances of crits would help with this role, and let them focus on doing big attacks right after proc hits, but also faking out an opponent who thinks to CC them on a rhythm. Form of Ferocity and Whirlwind users. Plus, lots of people would probably at least consider Mace Tanks too, and this still wouldn't overall cause an issue for most groups for the type of content. A Mace Fighter doesn't expect to be fighting the same person as their Tank.

Also, do y'all still have that 'feature' of how weapon combos work from A1, such that if you do Hit 1, Hit 2, Lunging Assault, then the next basic attack will be hit 3 and get the proc? That would be great in all cases ofc, but it would be phenomenal here, because you've implied that heavier weapons might slow down movement, but they might also build more Combat Momentum per swing. It's unclear though.

Spear/Halberd Fighter
Equivalent Khaimera Build: Eviscerator , Terminus , Ashbringer , Tainted Rounds ,
The finesser. At least I kinda hope so. The only reason I'm going on like this is because a team member pointed out to me that they don't really see why Fighter specifically would care too much what weapon they were using if they had all those abilities. Spears are good when you figure the person is going to try to get away and you want to make that as punishing as possible, so, probably for fighting Rangers where you just want to stay on top of them if you can. Since just 'giving Combat momentum' doesn't make sense as a proc, I figure it has to be either movement speed, cooldown reduction, or the proc-attack itself just lunges a bit. If they use Form of Celerity, Rupture, etc, and use the longer range Maim, then this is the one that can retreat and drag enemies into bad situations while still fighting, or pursue anyone they can manage to stick to or trip. Probably nothing that boosts Lethal Blow?
Just the general thought that this would give an option for spears as a 'safe standard' melee weapon for other Archetypes. Rogues would be less stealthy, Tanks would be probably giving up their heavier shield but getting more ability to just outrange or reposition out of attacks, and more Cooldown stuff... Clerics could afford to take some frontline damage if they're just gonna heal faster anyway... can focus on Mana over Health.

GreatAxe Fighter
Equivalent Khaimera Build: Ortus , Vanquisher , Mutilator , SkySplitter ,
The executioner. Overpower build with Lethal Blow that handles adds, belongs in a group where they either are the puller (in crowded spaces) or where the puller is gone before the mob is even dead, to get the next one. EXP Chain #7 plz. And I mean like, old days EXP Chain #7 IT+. I personally 'worry' about how you're going to balance Form of Ferocity with procs in the first place in PvE, but this is definitely not the place I'm worried about it. Since this weapon is most likely to be 'thematically tied to fighter' I guess, it might not be so bad to tailor the proc to them fairly heavily? Temp Health could do well here, since that'd save you from putting it on any gear and throwing your whole balance into the washer. I know GrandSerpent would enjoy 'being able to power through and shrug off DoT because she's just laying waste to everything in front of her, while still leaving it open for the people who still want some CC resistance in their build instead of somehow benefitting from or multiplying that temp health. Please make it cap though, i.e. https://omeda.city/items/Terminus .

Axe/Shield or Dual Axe Fighter
Equivalent Khaimera Build: Liberator , Boneseeker , Draconum , SkySplitter ,
This is as Khai as you get. Just hit more. Just 'more', and don't stop. Heal faster, receive more healing, just be relentless, borderline tanky. Probably balanced enough on Axe for most Tanks because soaking up more healer MP isn't usually the top option, but unlike Blood Fusion, maybe this is less damage dependent. Letting Axe users ramp up damage the more they hit something would at least give Tanks a meaningful tradeoff (let's be real, they'll just find something squishy, but that's okay, right? Axe Tank vs spiders or something makes more sense anyway). Maybe they can reduce enemy crit rate, or mana, or... anything that helps them bring damage down by keeping their own hitting up. Plus, I wanna see Axe Clerics. Not be. Just see.

Dagger/Shield or Dual Dagger Fighter
Equivalent Khaimera Build: Pacifier , Infernum , SkySplitter , Tainted Blade
I don't think anyone would take this too seriously as a mainline Khaimera build, because of exactly when you build it, namely, when you expect to have to consistently duel one of the other Khaimera builds. The anti-healer, the one that just sticks to you and shreds you with the expectation that they will win out before you can, and they just have to stack way too many wounds and bleeds and other things on you, but most importantly, the one that wins if you keep trying to 'catch your breath', because unlike others, they just stop and 'catch their breath' too, knowing that you're eventually gonna die from the stacks, and they can stack much faster than you.
Obviously I have a gigantic bias here because this is also what I want dual daggers for, but since Ashes is taking inspiration from other MMOs... (don't let anyone tell you that you have to be very original, guys, we didn't come here to not play the classics)
I sorta assume Dagger procs are going to just be bleeds and similar, which is slightly sad, especially if you run into that old WoW problem of 'capped statuses', but at least it's a cap on stacks and not on 'number of statuses' so people could adapt.

Anyway I should really stop, this was just the most efficient way I could think of to 'discuss all the cool concepts of Fighter that I know with clear examples all stemming from a single base'. Sorry, Wand Fighter fans.

Final Unrelated Feedback (Mobs Density and Challenge in Oakenbane)
I wouldn't even go there if this was what it was like. The last time you showed off something like this area was in the Tank showcase, you could barely have got me to go there in a trio, I think. Four could be good. Eight would be a snoozefest.

Your combat doesn't make me look forward to healing, but this post is long enough. Bear in mind that I REALLY like the Cleric design, I just expect to never actually need to use much of it, except if pushing absolutely at the max of the level range, and then I expect it to turn into Neverwinter.

This is all 'as it stands now' ofc. Goblins... Flat, just there so the Fighter could AoE. Mushrooms? Ranger food. Wolves? They do damage. I hit anti-damage button. The one that had the shield? That has nothing to do with me at all, that's damage dealer synergy work. Even if you give me something to help, it's likely to just be some basic CC->damage synergy which I just have to 'not mess up'.

The pacing looks mind-numbing, and that's saying a lot. Not quite BDO tier mind-numbing, but not considerably better. It looks more like having a skill at 'looking around' and maybe 'assessing next target', unless you're the Tank or Fighter in which case you check if your AoE is up, and if it is worth using/the right one.

But the difference between that and what I actually like, seems very subtle.

Are we getting Active Blocking back on non-Tanks? Mob trios that work together? Anything that has as much repositioning as a Fighter and a good AI for using it? I'll go to wherever that stuff is.

Okay first of all, dang. I really like this class! As somebody who tentatively plans on going Mage/Fighter, I find that a lot of Fighter's abilities are a great foundation for how I like to play games in general!

The momentum system as an additional resource seems like a great idea. Forcing Fighters to sustain close-to-mid combat - essentially to sustain a 'fair fight' with their target in order to use their best stuff - seems like a great balancing factor. At first I was concerned by the lack of sustain options, but then you started to show those off.

I'm especially partial to Consuming Lethal Blow and Blood Fusion - from my perspective as a probable subclass Fighter, Blood Fusion seems like the least replacable part of the kit. Both abilities provide a form of health and mana recursion in exchange for engaging with the target, which is one of my favorite things to do in a wide variety of games (MOBAs, TCGs, single player RPGs, etc), so I'm really happy it exists here.

Some suggestions:

The Form system is really cool - I love Samurai's stance system in FFXI and have always wanted to use stances more than just casually (I was just trying the class recreationally), and making the Forms strike a balance between passive buffs and active Momentum consumption, rather than just being straight buffs, is great. HOWEVER, I noted that there's currently no visual feedback (sans an icon) for what stance you're in, which is a stark contrast to how crunchy and immersive the rest of the animations feel.

Different idle/movement animations for your weapon type, depending on what Form is active, would go a long LONG way towards making the system feel more immersive for me, and also it would diegetically convey what stance you're in, both for your own benefit (no need to check an icon) and for the benefit of other players. I recognize that this could fractalize into a lot of animation work due to the amount of weapon types to cover, but I think it'd be well worth it.

I like the concept of Exert, but rather than toning down the raw numbers too much, perhaps add an HP drain-over-time effect as a tradeoff while it's active? It'd mean you gotta think more carefully about when to deploy it; using it at low health becomes fairly risky instead of a potential Get Out Of Bad Situation Free card, and it has the potential for interesting interactions with Blood Fusion, and any future abilities that have added effects when your HP is low. I rather like Dark Knight in FFXI, which has abilities that do indeed trade HP or defense for power, so I'm a bit biased here, but I think Exert is an appropriate place to apply that philosophy.

Some questions:

I'm a BIT concerned about Shaken's balance in party situations. What I mean is that... let's say you have two or three Fighters in a group. Let's assume that Shaken has a 5% chance to trip enemies no matter WHO is hitting the target. Therefore, it seems likely that a sufficiently high amount of attacks per second (such as with Whirlwind), by multiple Fighters alternating use of their Shaken effects, can potentially cause an enemy to get Trip-locked rather easily.

Perhaps a cooldown on Trip, i.e. "a target can only be tripped once every 10 seconds", would be a good idea? Otherwise a group of decently-coordinated Fighters could plausibly mow down just about anything, as I currently understand it.

Also, will Lunging Assault function if you're Snared or whatnot? I assume not, and that instead, it simply prevents those effects from being APPLIED while active, but does not IGNORE the ones that are on you currently. I'm assuming this because Unstoppable Exert specifically says it's usable through CCs and Lunging Assault doesn't, but figured I'd check.

Overall, I like this class a lot! I'm a bit disappointed that Blitz requires a target to utilize, but at the same time, I understand that's probably important for balancing it - I'm fine with Lunging Assault as an alternative (I love repositioning in short lunges), with Momentum being the opportunity costs for the effect. Prevening excessive spamming of lunge-evasion by forcing you to maintain engagement seems a pretty cool idea.


Thanks for the showcase!