Concern Regarding Dodge As A Mobility Tool

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I believe Ashes' community needs all kinds of players for the benefit of Intrepid having a good idea of how things they do will be perceived by a person with their goalset and mental profile.

Fortunately, Mag7's indicates a high level of Faith and devotion of specific types to causes he believes in, so it seems unlikely there will be any 'loss' there. No matter what Intrepid does (from the point of development we've seen so far) it is likely to just be accepted as 'what was required all along'.

I take this as a really positive sign for the game, that 'those who don't wish to understand all the underlying parts' may also have a fairly strong stance of faith in Intrepid and a good resistance to any 'doubt' based on the current state of development.

If anything, it should be a good buffer against any rough times ahead for Intrepid, as long as we, as a community, don't try to tear that down. So that's my request, I guess. Mag will keep the faith if we don't try to tear it down. As those in my local gaming circle joke:

"Frame Data is a social construct anyway."

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Good, now we're back to something we can discuss.

I'm a cleric that is going to be aiming to do that.

If you have less movement skills than me (because I will gladly 'waste' some movement skills that should otherwise do damage on just getting away long enough to heal or reach my allies), then you can't catch me and I don't have to fight you.

If we both only have the dodge, then you will not catch me.

If I, the cleric, don't GET the dodge but you get the dodge and the movement attack skill, what will happen is that you use the movement attack and then back off, then if I attack you, you'll dodge.

If you whiff your movement attack, I'll attack you and then dodge away. You know what happens here. I KNOW you know what happens here, because it's the reason your leaping slash gets whiff punished 3 out of 4 times here:



Case in point above.

Maybe if other posters use your own direct experience to make their point, you'll get it.

Imagine that, but without being able to run. That's what we're talking about

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Maybe so, but please bear in mind that if Mag is incapable of understanding it, Mag cannot come to any conclusion OTHER than that 'the issue does not exist'.

This is the general endpoint of these types of conversation.

I'm not even suggesting that you stop, but please bear it in mind, it is possible to go in circles with this poster for multiple pages in this way.

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Usually when Mag is the only person opposing your perspective, it's best to leave it be and wait for others.

Most of the 'locals' are sufficiently used to this person that you do not need to expect any derails.

I think what happened is that most people just agree with you and don't have anything to say, but I'll see about it from my end.

For clarity my team is 100% supportive of your perspective here, but feels that we need to wait to see what was up with that Fighter Dash a bit more before making any suggestions or giving general feedback.

Other showcases have implied that this game might be moving more to High Mobility, but there could also be mana costs and cooldowns that have been hidden from us in showcases because they are not tuned and they are not yet taking feedback on it.

This is a very interesting topic given what we know of some of the fighters moves during the fighter showcase. Some of their evasive motions were VERY fast relative to the amount of ground it cleared for a 3d style game where PvP is intended.

I personally agree with OP's concern to some degree. However, I also think some of the concerns would become so obvious during the Alpha that people will make it very clear to Intrepid very quickly if it is concerning in the way OP finds to be troublesome.

A lot of the discussion here seems to be in a PvP context. As someone who plays melee characters when I cannot play summoner I can see why you might have focused on this angle. But as someone who will play summoner if they do not screw up summoner let me add a missing piece.

No matter how you slice it in games with unlimited dodge, and dodge as a movement tool, mobs end up being super easy. Heck even bosses can become trivial. Even if you DO tie it to a stamina resource. If this weren't true something like Bloodhound's Step wouldn't be considered strong or even op depending on what patch you want to discuss.

Now take it from a puppet character's point of view. Summons tend to have the same capacity as a mob and as a result they are generally slower movement speed wise. Even if this is improved there is alway some delay positioning wise in a summons ability to pursue a target. Now give everyone a universal far moving dodge. Even if it doesn't have iframes or damage reduction, there is very little the summon or the summoner can do about someone spamming a free faster than movement speed dodge. This makes it easy for melee classes to easily close in on the summoner itself ignoring half the summoners class kit in the proccess and possibly either right up in the summoners face with little recourse. Or worse the melee opponent constantly running away from the summon avoiding all consequences for otherwise harssing and pressure the summoners positional spacing, never allowing the summoner to get a good ability off.

Even if you feel such a thing isn't a problem in a solo game or one with mainly 1-3 v 1-3 pvp like Elden Ring, a game with a class like Summoner with PvP at it's core is going to need a lot more limitations on the universal dodge mechanic if they want any chance for the summons and mobs to actually matter in PvP and PvEvP combat.

What's worse though, is the summoner is given tools to solve this otherwise poor design paradigm if they 'try to make a clearly flawed class viable given their universal mechanics'. They could make the summoner just as crunchy as the fighter, maybe give them some decent cc to make it so that they are always in a position to force the opponent to have to deal with the summon and the summoner if the melee opponent wants to close in on them. Trust me. You don't want that. The game will become straight up 3d pokemon but with fantasy mobs and I know how much that would torture certain people. There are many other 'solutions' but all of them generally lead to the summoner becoming op.

I leave any arguments with Mag to Azherae, but I was asked to note my perspective here, since the thread is thoroughly lacking in other points of discourse.

I would like to add onto something that another person said about dodging as a movement tool making defense to strong, though. In my experience with other games that have some similar form of universal mechanics in a PvP setting, it is more so that it makes people with good gap closing too STICKY and therefore OFFENSE is the bigger problem. It does cause the 'people running away from you ez pz' problem as well, yes, but explosive classes like Rogue types or Bruiser types end up becoming unbearable because they can get in for free and keep sticking to you with their gap closer, where as in a game with more limited dodge the gap closing would have to be used for engagement or you would have to have more skillfully gotten up into their grill. It's just braindead hackery that leads to a lack of nuance both offensively and defensively.

Over all though I hope for the sake of Summoner being a good class they get the balance right. I prefer damage reduction rather than iframes personally but either way I certainly hope there is a lot of thought given on the speed of movement of the dodge.

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I believe that their intentions for I-frames were related to the fact that they have skills that are ground-target and Tab Target in ways that might otherwise feel unbalanced.

By adding a few movements with some iFrames (for example, the startup of a Fighter's leaping gap closer) they could deal with some of the more annoying and obvious ranged character counterplays without needing to weaken ranged skills.

I'd definitely prefer if the DODGE had none, but due to the way gap closers and certain very committed abilities work, I'd prefer for them to have some. If you 'use your Grand Crash' just to iFrame an attack I think it's fine. I'd particularly WANT Fighters to be able to do this, like if they get surrounded and body-blocked in, somehow, and want to get OUT of that space instead of using Whirlwind.

Which fits perfectly with Blindside's concern.

For me, iFrames at the startup of big committed gap-closers are fine. For Rangers I'd be fine with some being on the startup of a big back-moving attack as long as that attack has a high mana cost and cooldown and so on.

For various reasons as a Cleric I would also take 'iFrames that don't move me' on the startup of AoE heal, because it helps to even out TTK and prevent 'group healing' from being something that has to always be perfectly planned in a clash so that it 'can't be sniped'.

Generally I support having a bit of them on anything that a solo player has to set up so much that it is obvious they're going to do it, but I don't believe in having those related to movement, so the OP point still stands. Being able to stun/kill people out of 'things they have to put effort into telegraphing' just feels bad because players just stop using them as they get better, or those moves are made even MORE powerful.

I'd rather they just have the few iFrames.