Post by Azherae on 2024-08-31 15:29:47
Ok I believe that of the threads that popped up based on this 'issue' recently, this is the one most appropriate for what I have to say now based on the last Livestream.
The YouTube spotlight question chosen by the team for this stream was another iteration of the 'hey what about Secondaries/augments?'.
It wasn't exactly that, but it was basically that:
"How much will a subclass affect the mechanics of your abilities vs the visual (and audio?) flavor?"
And Steven's response, verbatim:
"Yeah, it's a bit of a spectrum there, right? Because some of the ideas we have with regards to Augmentation is that they could be, kind of, very rudimentary mechanics that get adjusted, such as like, damage values, cooldowns, mana costs, distance and range, some targeting changes, but they could also be very fundamental changes which would include visuals and audio and flavor, for a particular ability, and we've given some examples in the past about augments, we're not quite at the augment stage yet, right? We're still fleshing out the remainder of the classes, being Rogue and Summoner, that are remaining for Alpha-2, we've talked about that earlier when we laid out the roadmap for the A2 testing, and once we get into kind of playing around with these augments we're going to be taking a lot of feedback from the community but the idea is that some of these augments will radically and fundamentally change an ability and that could include all of those things listed."
tl;dr I'm taking this as that subtle call-for-help, even if Steven somehow doesn't know how far along his team is with their design framework. This doesn't sound like a thing where he's seen design docs and just isn't sharing any bits from them. He talks differently in those cases.
He goes into a bit more about stuff from the recent NDA 5-day test and the feedback, and so on, as well, giving me a pretty clear idea of what it is that they want people to feel, and their perspective that this is being achieved.
But I hope it's not too radical/biased/pretentious to say that they do need help if they want to get this done 'soon'. Even if you don't agree with the 'concerned posters' or George's stance that they should do it differently altogether, we can highlight this part:
"we've given some examples in the past about augments, we're not quite at the augment stage yet, right? We're still fleshing out the remainder of the classes, being Rogue and Summoner, that are remaining for Alpha-2"
I'm honestly surprised at the lack of progress here. I don't care why it is and I am not here to prophesy doom or even massive delay or question their overall ability to understand or take the feedback. But I am switching my mode of interacting with this 'problem' to 'giving way too many suggestions and lecturing'. I am taking this as a yeah we basically haven't locked in much of this and might need some inspiration based on what I know of their rudimentary balance framework/ability design schema.
I avoided this before because I don't like the interactions it causes, but I also want to enjoy this game before 2028 (as an A1-and-onwards backer this has nothing to do with launch date opinions). So, I'm gonna push a bit, from now, and hope that Intrepid's response to that 'pushing' is positive. I ask others to also push. Push your ideas, push back those of others as respectfully and detailedly as possible, etc.
Because even without every Archetype done, even with the 'assumption that a lot of this is going to be obvious when the time comes and we could leave it to the devs', if we're all thinking about it anyway, the 'worst' that could happen from giving way too much 'unfounded pre-reveal feedback' is that a lot of it gets discarded. I can't imagine 'discarding things that don't make sense' could take enough time to strain the devs on this, certainly not a net negative if they manage to pick up anything good.
We're with you, Intrepid, just point us at the thing.
The YouTube spotlight question chosen by the team for this stream was another iteration of the 'hey what about Secondaries/augments?'.
It wasn't exactly that, but it was basically that:
"How much will a subclass affect the mechanics of your abilities vs the visual (and audio?) flavor?"
And Steven's response, verbatim:
"Yeah, it's a bit of a spectrum there, right? Because some of the ideas we have with regards to Augmentation is that they could be, kind of, very rudimentary mechanics that get adjusted, such as like, damage values, cooldowns, mana costs, distance and range, some targeting changes, but they could also be very fundamental changes which would include visuals and audio and flavor, for a particular ability, and we've given some examples in the past about augments, we're not quite at the augment stage yet, right? We're still fleshing out the remainder of the classes, being Rogue and Summoner, that are remaining for Alpha-2, we've talked about that earlier when we laid out the roadmap for the A2 testing, and once we get into kind of playing around with these augments we're going to be taking a lot of feedback from the community but the idea is that some of these augments will radically and fundamentally change an ability and that could include all of those things listed."
tl;dr I'm taking this as that subtle call-for-help, even if Steven somehow doesn't know how far along his team is with their design framework. This doesn't sound like a thing where he's seen design docs and just isn't sharing any bits from them. He talks differently in those cases.
He goes into a bit more about stuff from the recent NDA 5-day test and the feedback, and so on, as well, giving me a pretty clear idea of what it is that they want people to feel, and their perspective that this is being achieved.
But I hope it's not too radical/biased/pretentious to say that they do need help if they want to get this done 'soon'. Even if you don't agree with the 'concerned posters' or George's stance that they should do it differently altogether, we can highlight this part:
"we've given some examples in the past about augments, we're not quite at the augment stage yet, right? We're still fleshing out the remainder of the classes, being Rogue and Summoner, that are remaining for Alpha-2"
I'm honestly surprised at the lack of progress here. I don't care why it is and I am not here to prophesy doom or even massive delay or question their overall ability to understand or take the feedback. But I am switching my mode of interacting with this 'problem' to 'giving way too many suggestions and lecturing'. I am taking this as a yeah we basically haven't locked in much of this and might need some inspiration based on what I know of their rudimentary balance framework/ability design schema.
I avoided this before because I don't like the interactions it causes, but I also want to enjoy this game before 2028 (as an A1-and-onwards backer this has nothing to do with launch date opinions). So, I'm gonna push a bit, from now, and hope that Intrepid's response to that 'pushing' is positive. I ask others to also push. Push your ideas, push back those of others as respectfully and detailedly as possible, etc.
Because even without every Archetype done, even with the 'assumption that a lot of this is going to be obvious when the time comes and we could leave it to the devs', if we're all thinking about it anyway, the 'worst' that could happen from giving way too much 'unfounded pre-reveal feedback' is that a lot of it gets discarded. I can't imagine 'discarding things that don't make sense' could take enough time to strain the devs on this, certainly not a net negative if they manage to pick up anything good.
We're with you, Intrepid, just point us at the thing.