Mob/Boss Combat Interaction (plus a compromise for hybrid combat)

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

In general, during design, one should do the absolute most you can to avoid any situation where two classes are 'playing a different game' in a passive sense. Now, obviously, this doesn't mean 'make everyone entirely the same', some diversity must exist, but whenever you find yourself adding diversity for 'flavor', you run the risk of creating an imbalance you didn't think of, and upsetting some niche player for effectively no reason.

"This class has X trait, but not Y trait, this other class has Y trait, but not X."

When the trait in question is 'a modification of something around an average' it works well. When it is 'you get to take this approach and the other doesn't' it tends to need to be limited to single player games.

That is, of course, if you want people to feel free and have variety. A situation that has the chance to lead to a player going 'I could help do this in this situation but I put all my skills into Dagger and my class can't use Daggers to block' feels bad without specifically adding anything to the game.

If your goal was 'to make classes more likely to choose certain weapons', sure, but that's almost explicitly not Intrepid's goal. Consider the Rogue who, for some reason, doesn't want to even take Stealth or whatever 'roll evade' skill is available. This is possible in Ashes. If there are good enough other reasons to choose Rogue over another Archetype, this is still valid.

Actually, it's because the Archetypes are likely to be so well defined with the structure of 'you not only aren't required to take every skill, you can't' (they might mean 'can't take all to max' though), that this happens. A Rogue has reasons to be Rogue that don't necessarily fit a given thing.

So our hypothetical 'no Stealth, no secondary Active Dodge' Rogue that still wants to use Dual Wielded Daggers for some reason has lost a mechanic that is 'available to many other classes' without getting the 'thing you figured was the reason the Rogue didn't need that mechanic'.

It's the same 'danger' as making it so that you need a Shield to block. In Ashes, this isn't great. Tanks don't all want to use Shields. Now Intrepid has to design encounters that either 'require Tanks that don't want to use Shields, to use them anyway', or 'possibly make Shield Tanking overpowered relative to anything else' (so that the Halberd Tank doesn't die constantly). Which then leads to 'Shield nerfs' in the next balance pass...

When you could just let everyone block (and for various PvP reasons this is better design anyway).

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

That's more a question for @Cypher , since you two have competing design goals at the moment.

You took up the stance of 'I'll design for all shields to be strong and for all weapons and classes to block' after what I said. Cypher wants only certain classes to block and is 'arguing' that side.

Let's bring in the hypothetical 'Dual Wield Spin-to-Win Fighter'. They definitely exist, there are at least 3 of them in my data collection if not more. We'll ignore the 'Rogue that wants to use a big 2H mace' for now, since I don't know if their name and request was a joke.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Fighters can't block while using two swords. If the counterargument is 'well Fighters are a class that should be able to block' then I'll just say 'Bard' instead because I have "Dual Wield Bard" data too.

"Why can't I block?"
"Because you chose not to use a shield and classes should be different."
"But blocking is part of the base game PvP interaction. I just want to Dual Wield and block with my offhand."
"If you want to block, you should equip a shield."
"But I want to be a dual wielding Fighter and fight good in PvP and 1v1. Am I getting tons more damage because I Dual Wield, then?"
"No that would be bad for balance." OR "Sure, that's what helps make you different."
"But shields mitigate so much damage!" OR "Well that's fine shields basically don't do much anyway."
"Well, if you want that style, use a shield. Classes should be different to make the game more interesting."
"But now I'm not interested at all! You took away my ability to play the way I want to."
"Well, then this game isn't for you."

If the final answer in this chain is anything other than 'this game isn't for you', the designer has made a mistake. As long as the designer's goal is 'This is the way I want the game to be, and I have a good reason' then it's fine to tell a player 'find a different game'. I'm only concerned with when a designer doesn't realize they're doing this for no good reason.

The thing Cypher wants is subjective. As a designer I would never do it, I don't consider it important compared to 'letting people express themselves more or less however within the balance structure'. There are people who definitely want their fantasy games to have 'strongly defined identities' and that's valid too. And which of those Ashes is, is up to Intrepid.

I do, however, fear that if the game pushes toward 'more defined identity' it will also 'have no good reason for engaging Action Combat' and therefore weaken the argument.

I have to study a lot of player psychology, particularly their weakpoints and frustration reactions (I teach/coach fighting games) and that's probably why I think this way.

So for you, @Ugoogee , if blocking does that much mitigation on all attacks, it's now incompatible with Cypher's will.

If you want my input, I would tie 'how much of an attack can be blocked' directly into the data for the attack itself. You can't 'block' a Black Hole, in my mind. You can block Divine Censure better than you can block Castigation, etc. And at that point we'd be into the type of balance tuning that is probably out of the scope of a forum discussion unless you want to crunch the entire whiteboard worth of numbers.

I'm down for that, I like doing that, but it is lots of speculation and I prefer to only do it to verify other people's perspectives. So let's verify Cypher's. If the final answer is 'well this game isn't for you, classes should have identity', that's an 'ender'. There's no way to agree and it's best to drop that part of the discussion. If Cypher shifts then you can discuss other aspects of blocking.

Well in the meantime, I figured out how to use a non-theoretical version of the 'whiteboard' for calibration. I'll put the relevant portion of it in text form since I don't figure most people want to look at an actual (or rather, Figma) whiteboard.

As of now the intended TTK in Ashes is between 30 and 60 seconds.
Abilities have cooldowns between 8 and 18 seconds.
Therefore most abilities can be used twice in a fight before someone dies. (we'll ignore the fact that healing is 'too strong' for now).
If a player has 5 damage dealing abilities, and enough mana to use them all in one fight (likely, this is an 'input' from another part of the whiteboard), the opponent must be able to survive 5 damage dealing abilities through either defensive skills, consumables, buffs, evasion, or blocking. (this branches off into another part, if normal melee is possible, you have to be able to survive even being targeted by all 5 or no one will care about melee weapons anyway and we will have a pure shield meta).

Most people won't be satisfied if their Abilities do damage similar or less than their melee, regardless of Split Body, AC vs TT, anything. Abilities should be satisfying. If we assume any class that cannot block for any reason, abilities should do 15% of their health, and melee about 3-5%. These numbers can go up with either Evasion abilities, Evasion Stat, Damage mitigation, or Blocking stuff.

Now here's where we get to the problem.

The more you raise those numbers, the more you constrain the meta. If we give Shields a 50% damage mitigation, then Shield just 'makes you die 50% slower'. But your opponent still used their abilities. And their Mana. They now have to wait for cooldowns. It's your 'turn to attack'.

But they block with their shield too. Now the game is 'guessing when to block and waiting on cooldowns'. The unfortunate soul who didn't bring a shield against the Shield carrying Ranger better be really good at dodging compared to that Ranger's accuracy. And maybe that's intended...

This branches off into what I am tentatively calling 'Cypher's whiteboard'. Where 'classes that don't have blocking in certain cases get other defensive stuff'.

Except... they can still equip shields if they want to. And then the whole thing collapses.

If a Dual Wield Sword Rogue has enough natural Evasion to make up for not having a Shield, then they are broken as soon as they pick up a Shield, unless you 'restrict them from being good with shields' or 'only raised their Evasion when they were Dual Wielding' (also fine, as long as it suits your model, I only dislike these because making things complex for average players is dangerous for longevity).

You put a focus group in the room or give them the two different builds, let them feel it out, and see what they say. I don't know what they'd say. I find focus groups extremely hard to predict even when it's for something that seems obvious. I can count the times a focus group did not surprise me on one hand so now I just expect that there will be someone who is opposed to literally anything anyone says.

But that's the method I'm used to. Draw up one middle whiteboard, branch off into the two side ones, ask people which one gives the experience they want, and see what you can merge back into the middle one. You can just crunch numbers yourself with that, though. You can assume the TTK is unchanging and tweak the defensive stats, or 'tweak the stats to what you think is cool and just watch what it does to TTK'. It's all data, so it's all useful.

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

I'm saying that if you want PvP to be interesting in every matchup (regardless of exact balance), all classes must be able to Active Block with all weapons. The specifics of how much that Active Block helps, can be tweaked by class or weapon, but you have to avoid 'people playing a different game' under that condition.

If one doesn't care about every PvP matchup being interesting, and perceive that the game benefits from 'things that you can do/design because you chose not to give everyone Active Block', then great. I personally dislike it, but that's a decision that could be made quite reasonably. It's not to enable balance though. Because the more similar everyone is, the more balanced things are.

I feel that making any given interaction less interesting is suboptimal. I design card games with this in mind so I have a bias. Some card games are about 'building your deck to be perfect at what it does'. It crushes the opponent if their deck is weak to it. The interesting part of the game is 'building'. Some are about 'decks having constraints that make them similar, and you must therefore react and know what you are doing in every game. The interesting part of the game is 'playing'.

What happens in card games is what I fear. When you have a game where 'the interesting part is building', a meta evolves around the most successful build. Then everyone who likes other builds, leaves. Then the players who like, or are willing to play the strong build, claim 'see, the interesting part of the game is playing'. Because the now decks are similar again.

I prefer when the underlying mechanics are similar without all the meta pigeonholing. More people are happier.

We have not received permission from CROW3 to share the quoted post.

So... tempting.

But then we'd have to worry about 'group management', and all the drama from 'vandalism of the whiteboard' and 'people feeling excluded', and if not those 'who is in charge of updating the whiteboard' and 'clique bias'... ugh...

On the other hand, some of this stuff really makes more sense on a board...

I don't think we'll reach any agreement, but that's not necessary. We fundamentally disagree on 'what makes things interesting' at a point where there's not likely to be any middle ground, but that's no issue, we can have two 'whiteboards'.

If I thought you were 'wrong' I would try to convince you, but I believe your position is just 'different' and I disprefer it, which makes it a decision for Intrepid. In short, the numbers don't work to create an experience I would expect to enjoy, but that's me.

I believe all weapons should be able to block. I believe all classes should be able to block. I don't personally see a need to make that ability be part of diversity, as I don't see the benefit of it. And by that I mean, I can see there is a thing it does, and I disagree that the thing it does, is a benefit.

From what I've seen on forums there are definitely some people who believe that higher distinguishing between classes is good, so you should continue to represent those people.

EDIT: I almost forgot the main part, now you and @Ugoogee can move to discussing 'how much mitigation a Shield is'.

On 'my' whiteboard it is only 20-25%, and 'my' whiteboard is the one with the RNG evasion chance and all that stuff, so you can ignore it.

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

Sure, you know I'm always down for that, but bear in mind that it may take quite a while due to the 'distance' we are from each other. So let's give it a try.

Unfortunately since everything is still in the air, I'll have to reference some of my other compilations, but you shouldn't need to read them generally, it's just for context to show you where my data is coming from. Here's the Tank one . The abilities are all speculation, but they are also all things people requested, which is why they're in the concept..

So I'd say that Tanks would bring to the table 'A circle of defense bonus for everyone', 'a small shield against damage other than Ultimate Defense', 'Ultimate Defense itself', and 'the ability to block attacks on people standing behind them, for a duration'.

Now, if a Tank is able to raise defenses or block for anyone behind them in small group PvP, they hit the requirement of a lot of players who want to play Tank. Many of them 'want to be able to do something else in PvP'. In fact, their biggest ask was to 'make it so that threat generation had some equivalent'. They don't seem to see the value in 'being able to block' if they can be ignored.

Here's the part where we will take a while to agree, I feel. I think this is enough. For the Tank players I know personally, this would be enough. For the entire design of some absolutely not MMORPG games I play, it's more than enough.

I also need to add one thing about the way I perceive balance in the 'Rock Paper Scissors' thing that Intrepid mentions. Others have tried to figure out 'which classes are the Rock, Paper, and Scissors', looking for the counters. I don't know where I mentioned it, but I don't see it this way.

What I see is 'Mitigation beats Cooldown based damage, Cooldown based damage beats Attrition, and Attrition beats Mitigation'. This is relevant because I perceive that weapons are going to skew the more balanced classes like Bard toward one of these three.

Basically, I don't understand your stance yet . I don't have any data that implies that people 'won't play Tank because everyone else can block'. If they don't want to play Tank because they think other classes 'get more than them', I don't perceive 'subtracting blocking from everyone else' to be the solution. If they don't want to play Tank because 'I could just play another Class and block', that's almost saying that Tank in itself is useless outside of the ability to block.

And after all that, I still feel like the numbers don't work well, nor do I 'want' the 'Evasion Rogue dash-fest' that it would almost have to turn into.

If blocking mitigates considerable damage, and you choose not to block, you either need 'some amount of evasion to reach the same mitigation (and Tanks will still have Ultimate Defense and probably more HP than you), or 'so much more damage that you can overwhelm that mitigation offered by blocking on Average', which then empowers you to defeat certain other classes much faster. In which case then Tanks take that weapon, use Ultimate Defense and don't bother to block, they already have mitigation, and because they have it they can afford to build for big damage and just pop Ult.Defense when they're low (not to mention how many plan to just play Paladin).

That's cool with some people. I personally don't like it. Balance starts to fray at the edges really fast in that case, and the meta becomes very rigid. It also causes stress on the capacity to design fair weapons, and increases the chances something bad will slip through. And once it's through, if you don't catch it fast, as a designer you get a lot of flak for 'nerfing the new Greatsword that people spent so much time getting'. Very negative.

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

Forgot to respond to this one, so...

I actually find this quite common. Rogues, particularly Dual Wield Rogues, tend to put out a lot of damage and armor penetration. I was reminded whilst watching an ESO video (I make no claims about the overall quality of ESO) that once a Rogue has enough damage output, they might still want Stealth, but they don't care about the Evasion skills as much in a game with a higher TTK.

I played Rogue in Neverwinter and didn't care about Evasion in PvP. I play Thief sometimes in FFXI and I don't care about Evasion in their PvP (noting again that it's very limited PvP). I play Kunoichi in BDO and Evasion build makes you explicitly less successful in their PvP (I'm not high enough Gear Score nor good enough at BDO for this to count, I think, but 'friendly duels' always make me take off my Evasion gear).

I play the Rogue-like characters in Paladins and for a bit when I played Overwatch and I don't care about Evasion then either. I don't use Genji's/Androxus' attack reflect for the protection, I use it because it hurts the enemy, and if I'm already close, there's no need for it. Cut through.

'Evasion' skills on Rogue are 'how to flank my opponent' to me, if I have to actually use them for Evading things, things are going poorly, so the better I get at a game, the less I want them and the more I want damage.

In a higher TTK game, if I do 40% of your health in one attack, and then another 10-15% with bleeds or similar, then the optimal strategy is almost never 'and now I dodge around, moving myself away from the person I want to keep stabbing, for a while'. The optimal strategy is to stab repeatedly until dead. And the times this doesn't work, it's because the Rogue is so squishy that somehow they can make up this 40% deficit. In Ashes, with a Dual Wielding Dagger Rogue (because if Daggers don't offer some level of armor penetration or debilitation what's the point of them relative to other weapons?), who has 'a bonus to damage because they didn't choose to carry a shield', I would never expect the optimal DW Rogue strat to involve 'actually dodging things' unless Rogues sucked in general.

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

I should probably clarify, that I have absolutely no problem working on, and supporting, only your concept, @Cypher . Just because I don't like it doesn't mean I feel like it's a good idea to compete with it, if most others also want/like it. This isn't 'a game built for me' after all.

However I don't have any experience building a balanced enough concept, from it, so I may not be as much help. As always, I'll compile whatever people suggest, but I can't help convince them. I've tried to get it working based on what we know, and the numbers never line up on my side for something that doesn't have a constricted meta.

But I think that if Intrepid were to start with yours, it'd be better. If they 'started with everyone able to block', people might not be able to figure out 'what they feel is wrong with the game or the combat in an articulable way', and it might slip through and just be 'average' instead of great.

Whereas 'Blocking isn't for everyone', if it turns out that somehow Intrepid also can't get the numbers to work, the players will let them know, since that would imply balance issues that other number-cruncher types would see. At that point all you would need to watch out for or worry about is the people who 'ruin the card games'. The people who go 'well obviously you're supposed to build this way, other builds aren't even intended by the Devs, git gud'.

So it's a chance to make something that people like, with a risk, whereas what I suggest is bland and average by comparison, for less risk. Plus, this way, if I make a mistake in calculations, you'd have more people who could do the same calculations and see the truth.

This way also results in me continuing to try to get the numbers to work, instead of just going 'nah I can't see it and don't care so let's move on'.

Which brings us back to 'how much mitigation is blocking?' if you're willing to accept this instead, for now.

Ok. I'll give the least charitable counterpoint, since I am 'trying to break it'.

2H Axe Fighter against Tank, 2H Axe Fighter against Dual Wield Fighter. 2H Axe Fighter against Stave Bard.

2H Axe Fighter uses 'Leaping Smash' or whatever. Tank blocks with shield.

Instead of doing 20% health damage it does 2%. On a 60 second TTK, melee generally does 3% damage (I think we all just accept this? Let me know if not). 2H Axe Fighter now needs to hit Tank with 6 melee attacks more than before. TTK extended by around 12s.

On the DW Fighter, they had to use some counter or evasion ability. IF they succeed, they get probably 0% damage at the cost of some mana. Maybe even did damage. TTK extended by 12s.

The Stave Bard also blocks, instead of 20% damage it does 16%. TTK extended by only around 2s. In order for this to not result in a state where the 2H Axe Fighter always wins, the Bard has to do their kill damage 10s faster than the Tank needs to. So they need to have around 20% more damage than the Tank does. (any considerations that Tanks should be more capable than Bards in general are handled by Ultimate Defense and likely much higher HP).

We can't go 'well Bards have DoT that can cover that 20% damage in the 50 seconds'. They have that if they equip shield. It has to be resultant from the Staff. There must be something about using Staff, that, by itself, raises the Bard's damage by 20%.

Therefore Staves must be offensively more powerful for Bards (and technically for everyone else, if you want people to actually feel like they have the option to use every weapon) than 2 Handed Axes. In the case of that comparison, it's 0.6 (block mitigation) x 0.2 (percentage damage would have been taken) to give us a TTK extension difference of 6 seconds. Decent. For 'balance' all you have to do is make it so that Staves result in being able to kill the opponent 10% faster than 2H Axes.

Assuming of course that you only block the one ability. For multiple abilities, just roughly multiply with a diminishing return. Average fight 5 abilities blocked for what would be a total of 50% damage, unblocked, 2H Axe reduces this to 20%. Staff reduces it to 40%.

Make Staves 20% stronger damage than 2H Axes and balance is restored.