How do you feel about the Mage Archetype so far?
Strongly positive.
How do you feel about being able to move while casting spells? Do you like the agency given to you, or does it feel unnatural?
No general concerns, given the current speed of movement while doing it. For example, the Ball Lightning, I'd actually have assumed you could move while charging that, perhaps even at closer to normal speed, given how it works. I'd suggest that, personally.
How do you feel about the transitions between spells? Does this feel natural to you?
Transitions seem natural at the moment, it's moreso difficult to say, a question I would have for example is if Mages can use the Action Camera to blink into the air and then activate Chain Lightning or Blizzard and not fall. I don't have a specific preference here (as this is a balance thing overall) but it's not entirely clear if transitions of this type happen.
How do you feel about the general or rotational complexity of the Mage Archetype? Does it feel too simple, too hard, or just right?
This is entirely dependent on the PvE experience, PvP does not often involve the same 'types' of 'rotation', though I would not have any problem with these in PvP.
The PvE enemies tested/shown don't do a great job of clarifying how much complexity would exist, since it really comes down to 'what is there that enemies can do to make completing a basic rotation a risk?' I dislike games where the enemies give basically minimal or only very rare reasons to not just 'repeat rotation'.
In a related point, the effects are spot on, utterly glorious now. I continue to advocate for the damage numbers remaining in the ranges shown, though I understand that with no intention of any level scaling, it would be very difficult to retain this type of thing.
Only other concern is the range of Blink being way too much which then in turn makes the 'rotations' easy. I dislike this concept and would prefer the following:
"Blink has half the current range, but can be instantly activated again within 1s to Blink again."
What excites you about playing as, with, or against the Mage Archetype?
Not likely to ever play as a Mage. Not particularly excited about playing against if they are grounded and can't attack from the air after a blink, since it is generally true that in order for the Mage to not feel weak, there wouldn't be many active things the 'defending player' could do against their relatively straightforward abilities. I'm likely to have much more feedback.
The ability to have a group of mages set up a wall of fire, ice, lightning, etc, seems interesting, but with many abilities tied to stacking elements, I would expect or fear 'Manaburn'. This is another balance question, though, so I know it is not time for feedback on that.
What are your favorite Mage archetypes in other games? Please provide examples when applicable.
I generally do not like Mage archetypes in other MMOs because they are generally 'turrets', and Ashes of Creation is the only game I've really 'liked' that implied any actual caring about elements and their effects, enough to pay attention to them. This is particularly true for Tab Targeted games, though this isn't a problem, I don't mind this type of gameplay at all, I just don't personally think about it much.
From Predecessor, the 'Mages' are quite fun:
Gadget: AoE master, Denial and 'Sticky Bomb' style effects that coordinates attacks with the expected or forced positions of the opponent, but lacking CC and escapes.
Gideon: The Standard. Blink, drop Meteors, throw Comets, big AoE (Black Hole type).
Howitzer: If this character used flames and explosions instead of rockets and grenades they'd fit right into a standard MMO.
The Fey: DoT and Area Control, pushing and pulling targets and stacking damage that way.
From Onigiri (Mage is attained by equipping related weapons):
Good AoE and targeted elemental attacks, lots of reasons to think about which attack to use against specific enemies.
From FFXI, the Mages (Black Mage, Red Mage mostly) are very comprehensive:
As a Tab Targeted game, FFXI Mage gameplay is far more focused on the PvE target experience, as mentioned above. Ashes is not 'there yet' from just the showcase available, but I have no doubt that the plan is to surpass it.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited, or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Mage Archetype?
Excitement: The ability to speculate that elemental weaknesses will actually matter, and the flows within the group will have real meaning. I call this excitement, but this is closer to 'please give me at least one other game to play where I have to care about this'.
Concerns: The Blink, and the likely outcome of 'Multiple Mages in one party' with the current Synergies, I feel just as a 'random gut feeling' that it would be far too easy to just discard non-Mages other than the healer and Tank role.
Even in FFXI which explicitly tried to resolve this by making the Skillchain system and making sure that Black Mages have no real ability to build super defensively, this was still an obvious choice for many situations. They needed to repeatedly explicitly avoid the concept of Mages synergizing with each other, and even with all that, it was still just as easy to 'ignore other classes'. This would also be a large concern for PvP balance, but again, not the time yet.
It's still solved primarily by PvE difficulty and design, but my obvious bias is that FFXI does quite well here, and it's still a problem, so please pay attention to it later on in design (but obviously by then I'll be in Alpha-2 testing and complaining about it).
This response covers my group's primary positive responses, you'll probably get the 'more negative'/'emotionally focused' responses from them, but generally, assume that anything that didn't get called out/quoted and disagreed with directly is a shared response.
Other than that:
Stream was
absolutely perfect
.
Cows were great. Sheep were great. The Godsing set (I might have misheard the name of this) was
THE BEST AND I WANT IT NOW
.
The showcase was
exactly
what I wanted, I felt that it enabled me to give the maximum amount of helpful feedback, while also letting me focus the feedback correctly. I look forward to more of these, I really hope that others didn't find this odd or boring because it hit every note for me, I can't be more thankful for it.
