Tab vs Action Combat Philosphy

TIL people want Ashes to take lessons from Wizards 101's fizzle mechanic because they think it 'makes it feel like a dangerous place'

The things that make Ashes interesting and unique are its player to player interaction centeric systems. It's nodes, caravans, economic systems, open world pvp. All emphasis is put on the player to player interaction in the things that aren't generic.

I find the concept of 'my ability just fails sonetimes because magic is dangerous and unpredictable' antithetical to this atmosphere. I want the danger in the game to come from these player to player struggle. Not the system giving me a random full fail.

Yeah there is skill in adapting to failure, but when the system decides I fail and not my skill I feel APATHY and disconnected from the world. Not thrill.

You want rng to matter? Loot drops are a great use of rng. Fizzle mechanics on abilities rather than duration/effect limiting? No thanks. It's ugly design.

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

The ironic thing about this one is actually that people will accept 'removal of RNG' from a bunch of other things that should have equal or higher chances of happening, but I am not saying that it is necessarily any of the people here, so it'd be pointless to bring up.

@beaushinkle - If it wasn't clear yet, you are wasting your time. This is a philosophical discussion with posters who have argued against this for literally hundreds of posts in other threads, and their point is not wrong. As you noted yourself, they don't want to play the same type of game that you do.

The question is whether or not Intrepid wants to design the type of game that they want to play, or the type of game that you want to play, and they have correctly pointed out to you that based on what has been said so far and what we see in the game, it favors what they want to play.

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

This is probably my main problem with designing in this way, for this era.

Memetic propagation. A 'good build', a 'proper way of playing', these things are now 'a way content creators sell their character building ability/pattern matching ability for internet points'. I don't like doing it because I feel it ruins the games, but when the designer gives you an easy mark, a puzzle-obfuscation that isn't about 'building well' but 'figuring out which things they expected to be the most effective or naturally biased toward', then that's it.

Someone online gets famous by making guides, players follow the guides and that's it. This isn't new. It's been the way things worked since the first gaming magazine, except that YouTube now means 'everyone's a publisher' and they're all literally racing to get their guide/build out first.

It also means that 'character building skill' is in itself negated. An army of carbon-copied clones appears and it goes back to being about twitch skills. I've explained this (somewhat) to these same posters before as well. It does not seem relevant to them. They either assume it won't happen, assume it won't bother them, or assume 'it won't be that bad and won't really affect the game'.

I can't tell you what to do, but if you continue, expect to exhaust yourself for no benefit. Wait 5 hours, watch the Livestream, and depending on what's in it, decide if you want to 'fight on this hill' anymore yourself.

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

Hence the suggestion. People are definitely waiting for clarity on Combat Iteration #2... (#1?).

I'll be surprised if there isn't some new information in 4 hours. Maybe they're just listening and running all the same simulations based on all the forum feedback and arguments. Maybe they're not. Maybe they'll let us know, maybe they won't.

No matter what happens, the chances that the current basis upon which discussion is happening is about to change is at least...

A dice roll.

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

And if it is what the developers decide after hearing well reasoned arguements to shift their current design in that direction? What will you do?