What kind of character do you want to play? How can augments help?

Post by neuroguy on 2021-07-09 01:39:13

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Post by George_Black on 2021-07-09 01:51:01

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Post by Azherae on 2021-07-09 01:54:58

I believe the Grid system is the best.

I believe they can do it and I've often linked my post from somewhere in the depths of that Tank thread to explain why I have faith in it.

I have complete faith that this is not only possible, but easy, and worth it.

EDIT: Forgot to add, for my group, given the aims of this thread, all our usual limits/rules are lifted. Post away, just don't spam each other's posts with likes.

Post by George_Black on 2021-07-09 02:00:43

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Post by George_Black on 2021-07-09 02:03:51

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Post by Azherae on 2021-07-09 02:25:26

For my own, my current plan is to play Shadow Disciple with Dual Wielded Daggers, no Wand.

For now, here are my intended Augments from my expectations of:

Rogue Augments :
Misdirection - Debuffs enemy accuracy or drops hate/threat
Nimbleness - Buffs evasion or increases certain attack range
Seeking Eye - Crit bonuses, backstab damage, on-hit effect chance up, etc
Shroud of Darkness - Shadow stuff. Lots of shadow stuff. Sometimes similar to others

Castigation -> Debuff Enemy Accuracy (Black Whip)
Regeneration -> Player Evasion Up, since I expect to heal alternates with this more than Tank, and my Tank is not Evasion tank type.
Devotion -> No current plans to Augment since last I heard, Augments themselves cost Skill Points. If they are cheap or free, Seeking Eye to raise the chance of procs.
Radiant Burst -> Shroud of Darkness, to lower hate/threat on all it hits, I'll plan on this helping draw attention to me temporarily. Probably will Regen myself right then depending on enemy strength.
Divine Censure -> No Current plans to Augment, if cheap, more Enemy Accuracy Down unless I get a benefit from Seeking Eye (that'd be nice)
Judgement -> No plans to unlock this skill
Hallowed Ground -> Player Evasion Up if possible, for group content so we can hold the line better. Won't care if this buffs opposing Evasion too.
A Vigori (a suggested 'overheal' skill) -> Shroud of Darkness, to coordinate with people so they can unleash big attacks, take a hit, and had less Threat beforehand, sending the enemy back to Tank. When used outside of battle, no negative effects, and I can just not use this on Tank often.
Resurrection -> Undecided. Obviously only Shroud of Darkness and Evasion Up really matter here, but any situation where I am resurrecting someone, I am not planning to count on either of these things to help them much. Probably will just save it, doesn't seem like a Skill that a Shadow Disciple augments.
Benediction - This is another hard call, but I think I'll put Shroud of Darkness on this too and rely on my Paladin to handle getting hate back if he ends up having to be healed by it. If I find myself making new allies with Nightshields or similar I may consider Evasion Up. Bonus if it has a different Shadow effect when applied to this skill.
(Other Cleric Skills that I want or imagine are probably best left out of this for now)

Dagger or Dagger skills -> Paralytic or slowing Ice augments from some non-class source, ofc, intent to unlock Bleed related Dagger Weapon Skills for added DoT and combos with other party members.

This will be all that is required to make me happy within what I expect Ashes will do for Rogue Augments.

This does not represent my personal preference for Rogue Augments entirely, but it covers what I expect, as detailed.

Post by neuroguy on 2021-07-09 02:26:16

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Post by Aerlana on 2021-07-09 02:26:31

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Post by Azherae on 2021-07-09 02:30:29

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I'll pull it directly as a quote from the thread I put it in and see if that works, so that it's unaltered.
Here's an example of what I mean. This is not what I think the augments need to be or even should be. That can't be true because we don't know how most of the classes even work. I'm doing this from just reverse engineering the names of the classes, and using them to fill in the blanks. If a name exists, and there's no Augment that would allow that name to make sense, I made the appropriate thing. I think I hit them all (some names are not well defined in other media, obviously).

Mage Augments :
Meteoric Impact - Mostly makes skills AoE or increases AoE, even healing
Dimension Slip - Movement skills, add teleport. Attack skills, increase range
Lingering Element - Burn (or whatever)! Or put up an element shield, enemy takes damage on hit
Mana Control - Draining enemy mana on attacks, transferring mana on buffs/heals

Cleric Augments :
Lifeforce Control - Attack skills, causes Castigate's effect. Def skill - Healing increased.
Holy Ward - Attack skills lower enemy attack, buffs and such raise defense
Life's Passing - Attack skills add DoT, much more special stuff like Necromancy
Linked Fate - Causes health absorb on hit for attacks, mild healing for those around for buffs

Bard Augments :
Rhythm Emotion - Increases damage of combo attacks for a period after a skill.
Enchanting Voice - Various smaller debuffs based on the ability attached
Rallying Call - Various small buffs based on the ability attached.
Tale Weaving - Weird custom stuff based on how long something is held or channeled

Rogue Augments :
Misdirection - Debuffs enemy accuracy or drops hate/threat
Nimbleness - Buffs evasion or increases certain attack range
Seeking Eye - Crit bonuses, backstab damage, on-hit effect chance up, etc
Shroud of Darkness - Shadow stuff. Lots of shadow stuff. Sometimes similar to others

Ranger Augments :
Keenest Sight - Accuracy bonuses or range extensions
Trap Master - light CC augments, usually slows, sometimes rooting
Disruption - more light CC, moreso knockback, bleed, etc
Flicker - Adds backward movement to certain skills while they are happening or similar

Summoner Augments :
Externalization - depending on class, summons a wisp/weapon or something for a bit after a skill
Copy Form - sometimes 'shadow clones', sometimes summoned weapons for damage or lingering DPS
Spirit Call - Depends on environment, still summons something short lived, might depend on area or class
Soul Cage - Obstacles and containment, causing enemies to need to leave, or things like DoT Crystals

Tank Augments :
Mitigation - Lower enemy attack or raise own defense
Threat Generation - it's on the tin
Armor Boss - CC resistance usually during the augmented skill, a few others
Repositioning - Yank or push the opponent depending on the skill

Fighter Augments :
Martial Master - Increases weapon proficiency or STR/relevant stat during skill use
Charge! - Gap closing, some knockdown, some 'charge past/through' augments
Critical Eye - Raised critrate on skills (yes this is probably the meta)
Berserker - Sacrifice HP instead of/in addition to MP to empower skill

From the programming side, I can tell you that only 8 of these, at maximum, have any obvious problems or conflicts with skills. About 12, when combined with likely or obvious skills, are unbalanced (in the sense that they're the obvious meta choice for that skill). About 40 skill-augment combinations would be considered 'useless' by the community, guessing at obvious skills (having no use in nearly any form of content).

The thing you have to ask though, is, if you're a Bard/Summoner and you have a 'performance' skill and you choose to put Spirit Call on it instead of Copy Form (duet!) what made you feel that was necessary? It's usually not that the player 'wants to do the thing that ends up happening'. Most of the time they're just 'suffering from a compulsion to be original', or they wish that the Augmented skill did something different , and if it's useless and no one cares, they can easily ask for a change to it.

In all arrogance... this is easy. I'm sure that they have these already mostly blocked out, given those Class names, and if they don't, the great Intrepid team can have anything they want from the above list for 'free'. All ideas in this post are either already, or hereby transferred by me to be, the property of Intrepid Studios in perpetuity.

Have faith. It's fine. You might have to wear some really 'interesting' gear, but most X/Tank will find different ways to 'tank'.

As for the 'my group' thing, I have 8 other players in my group who could post in threads, but we don't want to just create an echo chamber, so normally we restrict ourselves to only one of us posting in a thread.

Except when someone asks something that relates very directly to classes or stuff like this where 'getting the feedback of all 9' actually has a benefit to the poster, like this thread.

Post by neuroguy on 2021-07-09 02:31:09

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Post by SpaceWolf on 2021-07-09 02:31:47

I intend to play a Spellsword (Fighter/Mage), and look forward to doing so; I want the movement abilities Steven implies in this quote:

"What we want the Fighter warrior to do is to be able to cut through enemy lines, get to the support area of a raid perhaps and take out healers with some quick DPS burst damage. We want them to be masters of different weapons. We want them to be able to be versatile in whether or not they want to be a ranged fighter or melee one. It's going to be up to the player."

I really like the idea of using movement abilities to close in, and then doing burst damage to take out enemies quickly, so per that description, Fighter main is pretty much a given. However, I ALSO want the ability to add AoE elemental damage to single-target abilities, and to couple lunging abilities with teleportation. Azherae conceptualized some Augments for various archetypes in another thread that I really liked, so I'll put them here:

"Mage Augments:
Meteoric Impact - Mostly makes skills AoE or increases AoE, even healing
Dimension Slip - Movement skills, add teleport. Attack skills, increase range
Lingering Element - Burn (or whatever)! Or put up an element shield, enemy takes damage on hit
Mana Control - Draining enemy mana on attacks, transferring mana on buffs/heals"


I like the idea of all of these, since to me the function of Mage in the Fighter/Mage combo should be burning extra MP to increase your damage, to improve your mobility, or to drain MP/health on weapon swings. Basically, I want the ability to get close quick and compensate for relatively low defense by dropping things quickly if I need to.

Everything else I want, I'm simply trusting that weapon specializations can take care of eventually. For example, "stun the target by bashing them with a pommel/shield", stuff like that. I really like the proposed Grid system because I greatly favor versatility; it seems likely that individual styles from one Spellsword to another (let alone other classes) can potentially very widely, since a lot of this is going to come down to personal choices we make in our progression, rather than following a set path.

I've long been a fan of Elder Scrolls games, which have no class-dependent gear restrictions whatsoever, and I'm really looking forward to seeing a more fleshed-out, balanced approach to that systemic in Ashes :)

Post by GrilledCheeseMojito on 2021-07-09 02:34:17

I always want to play whatever ends up at that combination of "Tank with the ability to heal other members of the party", especially if there's strong threat management involved that means I can get a significant amount of threat generation by way of healing the rest. Even if the healing isn't significant, topping people off after a big AoE so that the healers can focus on me, or alternately to heal myself so that the healers have lower costs until the fight rhythm goes south, both work.

Ashes makes figuring out how to go from that concept to an actual action really easy and ideal with the grid system, because I can just pick the two base archetypes that compose this (Tank and Cleric, so Templar), and I'm already there. I remember the first time I read the wiki page on classes it took me all of 45 seconds to figure out which class I would want, and I feel that a lot of people who have a clear concept of what they want out of the game would also have a similar experience. In terms of being able to choose weapons, that's also easy to read into as well, especially with all the nice sword and shield cosmetics to choose from. Maces work too, and I've quite liked how they have turned out so far.

From the Augment side this works as well even with the ones we have. Linked Fate would let me boost my allies right after the big AoE attack so that the healers don't have to spread out too much, and Lifeforce Control would let me help the mage backline keep their rhythm going by having one additional layer of Castigate mana rejuvenation. Personally I really like the way Castigate is integrated in this game and it's a new feeling to me, to grant mana rejuvenation to the party, so I think having that specific ability or something similar to it as part of the Cleric Augments would be not only fun but also kind of predictable, if you think of Augments as "versions of the base class ability filtered through as a bonus".

Post by Azherae on 2021-07-09 02:39:33

In FFXI, the other game that makes me beileve in this because they did more than Ashes is even offering as of now, I play either Ninja with a sub of White Mage, or White Mage with a sub of Ninja.

My role in that game is to lower the enemy's accuracy enough to help protect the rest of the group, and the rest of my group tends to be 'middling survivability' instead of 'massive DPS' and 'strong specialization'. This means that everyone can take a hit, but no one can take many, except our Paladin.

I then work to control the enemy as a whole, since threat is lost whenever those players take a hit, but they only take one or two and I just rotate Regen. The enemy is controlled by my misdirections combined with the Paladin's overt efforts, and Ninja in that game allows the player a lot of self-protection (though honestly I don't need it for that as much as I need it for certain guaranteed debuffs). I am primarily a healer. When I need to, I can build up all my defenses, and suddenly heal in a massive burst to draw the enemy to me and hold them for a while, particularly magical ones where I have much larger Damage Mitigation than even the Paladin does, long term.

So my role is 'misdirection, debuff, healing, regeneration', in support of a group whose offensive potential is spread out over multiple people, with decent defenses which are empowered by my flows. Our effectiveness in more dangerous content is not up to me, but up to our Bard, who most likely won't get around to posting in this thread until tomorrow. Her intention at the moment is Bard/Rogue to double down on this group-plan, but may switch to Bard/Fighter if it turns out to be overkill, or possibly Bard/Cleric if Bards don't get weak Regen skills naturally, but I don't think she'd prefer to do the latter.

Post by Zeshio on 2021-07-09 03:12:37

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Post by George_Black on 2021-07-09 03:20:00

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Post by Azherae on 2021-07-09 03:27:47

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We're talking about FFXI. A 20 year old game, at this point, and not only was it done, it did more than what we're talking about.

Post by George_Black on 2021-07-09 03:53:51

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Post by McShave on 2021-07-09 05:08:22

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Post by GrandSerpent on 2021-07-09 07:32:34

What I'm interested in playing

The archetype of character I'm most interested in playing is something like an Arcane Berserker - a heavy-hitting powerhouse who can boost their single-target damage, and who has the mobility to get back out of range after inevitably pulling hate. This seems to match up pretty well with Spellsword (Fighter/Mage), at least within the concept of Mage augments @Azherae predicts Intrepid will use.

I'd apply Lingering Element to whatever Fighter's big single-hit ability ends up being called, to boost my damage higher and enable me to quickly take out enemies that aggro, or land finishing blows on bosses.

Mana Control would also suit my preferred playstyle well, as when applied to a more frequently-used DPS ability, this would give me better sustain in longer fights. I also like the implied lore concept of being able to absorb my enemy's life-force as I damage them.

Dimension Slip would increase both my potential engagement range and my capacity to get back out of trouble, so it would allow for things like teleporting behind enemy lines to assassinate a target, then getting away safely before I get boxed in.

In general my view is that the augment system, at least within the parameters discussed so far, gives players a lot of freedom to enhance the aspects of a class's playstyle that they personally enjoy, and gain capabilities which wouldn't otherwise be possible. So, it can result in a lot of diversity between classes, and a lot of room for specialization.

How feasible is the augment system to develop?

From the game development side, I think that the augment system would be pretty manageable to implement. Modifying the parameters of existing abilities, or creating variants of things like particle systems (e.g. tinting the slash effect that plays when a sword swings crimson, if something like Lingering Element is applied) probably results in less development work than creating outright new abilities.

I coded a similar system in a personal project, in which certain passive abilities could alter the parameters of other attacks, or grant conditional secondary effects, and while the code was a bit awkward in places (a lot of getter functions and event handling), the logic itself was fairly manageable.

The largest time-cost for content creation would probably be modifications to the visuals of abilities, based on which augments were applied to them. If Intrepid wanted to add completely new visual effects for certain combinations (e.g. if Summoner's Shadow Clones augment applied to movement ability left a shimmering ghost-copy of yourself at your starting position, or if Rogue's Shroud of Darkness replaced a melee attack's effect with a wave of seething shadows), it obviously requires more dev time and more resources. However, my view is that for such a crucial system in an MMO, this would probably be a reasonable investment.

I'm therefore hopeful the final system will be similar in scope to what @Azherae discussed, and I have confidence that this is something Intrepid can execute.

Post by Dygz on 2021-07-09 15:59:48

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Post by SongRune on 2021-07-09 16:11:15

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She always heals in our group, and only plays THF/WHM when she is playing solo. Even in games where you don't generally think of it that way she's the healer most of the time. As for myself, I'm also in the work crunch, but as you can guess from my name, I'm the Bard in this case, and I have a lot more riding on how exactly Ashes does Augments, which I will get to later.

Post by Dygz on 2021-07-09 17:32:41

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Post by neuroguy on 2021-07-14 18:53:21

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Post by Azherae on 2021-07-14 19:01:20

Did they promise 64 though? It specifically has been said that we shouldn't think of it as 64.

There's a difference between 'this isn't what they seem to be doing' and 'this can't be done'.

I understand the feeling, but, if Intrepid is so open to feedback, and we say 'we want the Mage Augments to be this way, not that way', what happens?

My point is that the concept of Augments is possible and can work well. I make assumptions because of the same reason I always do.

"Why make the game less functional unnecessarily?"

The thing they're talking about isn't hard. It's not particularly hard to design, to implement, or even to balance. So why not do it?

I can't really be concerned about things like that, because the only result of that path is going 'well Intrepid had ways to do things well, within their own vision and chose not to'.

As I always say, I just have more faith than that.

Post by neuroguy on 2021-07-14 19:24:01

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Post by Azherae on 2021-07-14 19:41:52

I really find myself struggling for words a little here, so bear with me, since I don't want to be insulting in any way.

You say things like 'doing it in a curated way might be better' or 'having the freedom of less augment options per skill will allow them to make each more impactful'.

This isn't often true in coding. I have been trying to avoid 'credential dropping' on this forum for a long time, since it's never received well, but I feel like you might be a person who understands it, so.

I've run game communities before, and I've worked as the Technical Director for a large data aggregation company that builds enterprise level corporate search engines. This means I have to be able to see very large trends in data, aggregates, and systems, and at the time, I was in charge of over 50% of the development team (around 40 people total).

It's common for customers to have concerns that are based on their gut feelings, which don't reflect a reality, especially when it comes to things like big data. It's easy to presume 'this thing seems like it will be hard' or 'that sounds impossible' for tasks that I could personally complete for a client in two days with no direct assistance other than QA.

So when I 'look at what Intrepid is doing', 'what they say', 'what they plan', I'm seeing it from a possible 'mirror to the inside'. You might see 'something that requires lots of effort and limits freedom', whereas I see 'oh good we can use a few standard configuration files and distribute those and make this easier to patch using the version control system'.

I have faith because they have some of the best in the industry, and they use terms that are extremely recognizable to me as indicators of various things. I work with others in my group on game projects literally for fun that are structurally more complex than this specific system.

Honestly, I figure Intrepid chose the Augment system because it's much easier to balance, curate, and test, while still giving them easy options to offer specialized stuff.

MMORPG design is very much a numbers game, and it's pretty constrained, too. I can break down 'why games are going to fail or change something about their systems' very far in advance usually, and I'm right often enough to make myself sad.

It's not that I specifically want this system. just like I don't want the precise Augments I predict, just like I don't specifically want certain changes to combat personally, but I want Ashes to succeed, and I want others to enjoy it, and if Intrepid has a vision that can lead to that more cleanly than all the other things we've been seeing, then I want them to follow through on it as much as possible.

The last thing I want to see is another studio, another game, that ignores the pitfalls of the ways this can go wrong, because they don't have the internal cohesion to foresee their own problems. But that's not what I see right now. So I have faith.

And I'll continue to have faith until that sinking feeling of 'oh no... they can't see it' starts to creep back into my data.

Post by Percimes on 2021-07-14 20:04:42

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Post by neuroguy on 2021-07-14 20:12:36

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Post by neuroguy on 2021-07-14 20:15:49

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Post by Azherae on 2021-07-14 20:28:56

Ok, after rereading your other stuff along with this one, I can see the difference in context here.

I agree that we don't have a lot of information. I obviously am in no position to say why that is. If it's that Intrepid wanted suggestions, well, great. I am absolutely bursting full to the brim of suggestions.

I believe that part of the idea, though, would be that everyone who wants just a specific flavor archetype will be able to just pick one of something closer to 16. So to me, it's '16 strong designs', '14 other complicated niche designs', '12 similar to others designs that don't need to exist but don't hurt anything', and 24 'let's see what we can make work here, for the people who want to really push the limits'.

I wouldn't expect anyone who wanted to play a strong, easily identifiable or understandable class, to have any problems choosing from the grid, just as GrilledCheeseMojito doesn't.

And that's great. We can expect a lot more of those 16 than any others. But the ability to make things like what I want, viable, is also good. Because only the most freedom-loving games ever bother to give me what I want, and yet, in all those games, it's a blast to play it.

If you want to play something with a strong identity that people can easily understand, do that. If you find it isn't working out for you, you can change secondary Archetype, and experiment with the other in your spare time.

But Cleric/Mage won't be fulfilling for me, and neither will Cleric/Cleric.

I want to do what I do in all the other games I enjoy playing, and I'm not going to ask Intrepid to build me a class that I can't even accurately describe to most people, which will be played by like 1% of all players, when they can 'just' slap some Augments on my skills and let me build it myself.

And this is coming from a person who has designed a system in which there actually are functionally 64 classes (or more than that, technically, our Tabletop game is... complicated).

If your concern is that Intrepid is not focusing enough, then just assume that the following classes will all be super cool and very thematic and practically 'premade'.

Weapon Master, Dreadnought, Trickster, High Priest, Oracle, Strider, Scout, Assassin, Predator, Minstrel, Conjurer, Necromancer, Archwizard, Warlock, Hawkeye, Duelist, Paladin, Guardian.

If you'd like them to focus on these, then just assume that they will tune the Augments to make these perfect.

But don't take my 'confusing stealth blinding misdirection battle control healer' away from me, and don't ask Intrepid to design one that fits me precisely either. If they give me the tools, I can do it myself.