Essay on downtime in games

Yes, I hope there's downtime in Ashes. Especially if they really want people to always be in a group and like that kind of gameplay. Talking about random shit with my mates while we waited for mobs to respawn or mana to regen was a huge part of why playing L2 was super fun.

I think Ashes is in the unique position to give players a choice in what type of downtime they prefer in combat.

You could take a lot of skills that all 'add up to' approximately the same effectiveness, and then have short periods where you run out of mana so you stop using them even though technically they're off cooldown.

You could alternately take a lot of skills with big impact and big cooldowns and then have short periods where you have enough mana, but no 'appropriate skill off cooldown' to use it on.

The problem with this is usually that if you give a class this option, but allow them to front-load the damage one, they'll just find 'whatever dies quickest to the damage' (preferably instantly) and fight those to make sure they are in no danger, but often, this isn't so bad, as long as it is tuned right (doesn't kill PvP opponents instantly at-level, doesn't 'stack' easily with other players doing the same thing).

So it's a trickier design, but they're already aiming high, so perhaps we'll see it. We might even see it through Secondary Archetype, adding the 'expectation' part to it so that players could group with the Classes that usually have the playstyle they prefer.

Longer downtimes are usually a matter of mob density and strength, since that's the only way to get some types of hyper-efficient players to slow down at all. I have lots of opinions on that, but they're unpopular enough, I THINK, to derail your thread, so.

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I hate it, but I want the game to make me do it, because I believe that socializing is better for the game. And I know that if people aren't forced to do it - they won't do it. And considering that gamers are usually the more introverted/shy/asocial bunch - a loooot of people wouldn't socialize at all. As has been shown by pretty much most games that went down the path of autogrouping and casualization of content to support said autogrouping.

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Unfortunately I think the only answer might be 'you shouldn't'.

It's likely that even with an attempt to please both sides, the game will definitely displease and lose some players either way.

You might be one of them. So instead I'll ask something else.

You've played this sort of game in situations where you have a class in your group that does Mana Management and therefore you don't have to rest as much (if at all) when that player is doing their job, right? Is it also a dealbreaker for you, to have to rest when you don't have that class with you?

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I was forced to socialize in L2 through it's requirement to have other people help you. I couldn't solo 90% of the content and the 10% that I could would've taken me weeks and months to progress even a bit. L2 didn't have autopartying (in earlier updates), so I had to go talk to people and make friends. And because I was forced to choose who I talk to (out of several guilds and then out of several parties within the chosen guild), I had a much higher chance to find people who I'd jell with nicely. Which then led to years-long friendships.

When I tried playing FF14, I could solo pretty much any open world content and then had an autofinder for dungeons, in which I had no reason to socialize, because the content was super easy and most people just ran through it w/o saying a single word.

This is what I mean by "the game should force me to socialize". I can definitely concede the point of "sit around and talk" as that is not a necessity for socializing, but the content itself should push people to be more sociable, because otherwise they won't be. Of course some will be extraverted enough to just talk with whomever, but in my experience those are a rare breed in mmos.

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It's a nightmare if you're trying to do this with complete strangers. I explained why I didn't see it as a nightmare in the response above.

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If the content is difficult enough and constant enough - you have no time to just talk. You'll be listening to or giving out commands on what to do and where to go. Pauses in the content allow for simple discussions to happen and such discussions then lead to a much better feeling of comradery, because you get to know people you're playing with.