devtrackers.gg
Since it was confirmed that anyone can use items that can resurrect in the last Development Update and I usually play healing classes in MMOs, I would like to address some of the fundamental problems with this.
To start off, judging from what was revealed about the cleric archetype in the latest showcase I am assuming that nothing revolutionary is planned for the class. It maintains its basic function which is to heal and that was all. In other words, it is boring. And the likelihood of me playing that archetype significantly decreased after seeing the mage showcase. With that being said since the cleric has basically no impactful mechanics or some form of engaging playstyle it is reduced to the one that heals. Therefore, adding to the game the cleric's utility for all to use is going to negatively impact the archetype even further. I am talking about the Scrolls of Resurrection.
People will most definitely not notice this at the start. However, as a server develops and more nodes advance more and more people will have access to these items that are basically another archetype's spell. You already know that this is unbalanced so you are trying to even it out with increased XP debt. Which is fine. I guess it will work. The fact is, I don't know. But what I do know is that you will be putting the archetype in a very bad spot. You will be walking on eggshells every time you try to give other archetypes increased self-sustain in the future, because there is nothing interesting about cleric as it is right now and once the other classes start being able to do content with fewer clerics or without any they will be sure to take that opportunity as it is the dull archetype that gives you HP and that's it.
Maybe the open-world PvP is going to necessitate the presence of clerics at all times. This would mean that in 2v2 skirmishes the party with a cleric must always win against a party without one. Because if you can't sustain the damage of 2 dps where you can use both aoe and st healing what is your impact going to be in larger fights where you can rely only on aoe healing? Practically nonexistent. Not sure, but from what was shown design-wise the archetype is very unsatisfying to play.
To give you an idea of what could possibly happen with the way Ashes of Creation's class system works.
All archetypes are deprived of self-sustain or have been given the bare minimum of self-sustain except cleric. At level 25 players can choose their secondary type. What will happen when you start augmenting the base abilities of DPS classes with the cleric's utility? You will be sacrificing a currently unknown amount of potential damage increase for improved self-sustain and possibly even some party utility. But you will have access to sustain and players will be able to change their secondary archetypes. They will also be able to grab resurrection scrolls from the nearby market so basically they will have everything that a cleric can provide but slightly worse. And when they feel like it, they will be able to change their secondary archetype to something else.
Now I'd assume that you can understand why Cleric is not being treated as an actual archetype. I am all for it if this is going to be the intended gameplay because I will be playing what is most efficient. In all likelihood, it is going to be Mage and I like Mage.
Regarding the Tank & Healer & DPS Trinity
After hearing this it is reasonable to assume that Intrepid Studio is looking to enable any type of party composition and make it viable since the classes that have access to resurrection branch off cleric's archetype.
[spoiler]
Let's go over some game concepts.
What does Tank, DPS, and Support Trinity refer to?
What is the threat system for?
What does it mean when those who can heal and those who cannot fall under the same category of Support?
What is the function of damage in games?
Why is there avoidable and unavoidable damage?
How does player skill affect the damage received?
What is the function of healing in games?
What abilities and items share that function?
What roles have access to these abilities?
What is the purpose of a healer?
Free feel to pursue the answers yourself
A game that has Tank, DPS, and Support Trinity is going to require at least one class of each category to clear group content. This is the base principle for balance intended by the developers.
Both tanks and healers negate damage so what's the difference? There isn't one and that's why we have a threat system. It is created for tanks to enable them to turn their endurance into a valuable addition to their group. They are also given significant defensive stat advantage compared to other roles and are balanced around the fact that their endurance is restricted to themselves. That system is put in place to prevent healers from turning other roles into tanks so across games healers are the ones who generate the second-highest amount of aggro. Developers will make healers the squishiest because only sudden death can successfully prevent them from turning themselves into tanks.
Now, I would like to point you to the fact that in Ashes of Creation, we will have a tank that can heal.
When you put healers and non-healers in the same category as Support it will never be possible to balance them because they do completely different things. You balance them by not putting them in the same category in the first place. This is a PvX game. There is PvE content and when such is being developed, it is being taken into consideration what different aspects of the Trinity can do. Intrepid might have said that their intent is to have one of each archetype in a group but it is impossibly difficult to make it happen if it depends only on their design. How are they going to do it? They have Summoner as an archetype who gets to pick its own role. How do you create content that expects you to bring that with you as an archetype? What is it? What does it do? What are its strengths and weaknesses? It can't be everything at once. But regarding Supports, they can most certainly create content that requires healers even though it will exclude Bards from groups which brings me to the topic of damage.
Obviously, damage affects only HP. When it reaches zero you lose control over your character. Since everyone likes being in control the developers use Damage as a dynamic method to set the limits of what you can and cannot do. There are other methods such as accuracy stat, invulnerability, and restricted access. Its usage in PvE is avoidable and unavoidable. Avoidable damage is a problem players can solve on their own, exclusively dependent on their skill. Unavoidable damage is something they can't do anything about. It is controlled by the developers. The purpose of it varies. You can use it to implement DPS checks. You can also use it to create a class that plays around it to make your game more diverse. It is called a healer and that's what they ultimately exist for in PvE content. They have been given the agency over heals in order to neutralize the prevalent amount of unavoidable damage. If you do not have a great deal of unavoidable damage your game does not need a healer.
We know for certain that small-group content will not have enough unavoidable damage.
This brings us to hard content. How do you define hard content? It's been said that PvE content will scale so at what point does it become hard? I assume world bosses are. I will be sure to come back to the thread after next month's development update stream after I have seen how much damage the boss deals. If they play with their GM buffs on instead of a cleric it will further solidify my assumption that they are putting very little thought behind the Cleric archetype and its place in the game.
For the sake of clarity, we can assume that hard content begins when you need a healer in your group. You would need one when the rate at which you receive unavoidable damage is too high and cannot be covered by your self-sustain and whatever defensive buffs your group might have. It is very likely that every class will have at least one ability related to sustainability. Mage has a shield on a 30-second cooldown. In other words, in PvE, unavoidable damage with a 30sec cd frequency can be self-negated by Mage players. Spells like this diminish a healer's value to a group or should I say increases the level of difficulty for content to become hard. When other roles are provided with an abundance of methods for damage neutralization, healers become increasingly useless. Potions are one of those.
With that said, extremely hard content could be the only place you would legitimately need the presence of a healer in order to clear. But what do you expect these healers to do in the other parts of Ashes of Creation? To be useless thought-out the whole game but play a Cleric character precisely to do that one aspect of it? To be a substitute for potions and player skill? No, what will happen is that the difficulty will be nerfed or the archetype overpowered to a ridiculous level so that it dominates in PvP. The alternative is to have the archetype stay awfully unpopular.
There is nothing special in playing an overpowered archetype. I have suggested a different approach. In Ashes of Creation dying and respawning is an inconvenience much like unavoidable damage is in other games. Intertwine the respawn system with Cleric's gameplay.
You can create anything you wish in this world. You can create party buffs provided by the system if you want to force players to play what they don't want to and create archetype diversity in groups. However, when you create classes that conflict with the systems put in place, you are setting up players to deal with a great deal of unfairness and frustration. After all, this is a PvP-centered game, very competitive in nature.
[/spoiler]
To start off, judging from what was revealed about the cleric archetype in the latest showcase I am assuming that nothing revolutionary is planned for the class. It maintains its basic function which is to heal and that was all. In other words, it is boring. And the likelihood of me playing that archetype significantly decreased after seeing the mage showcase. With that being said since the cleric has basically no impactful mechanics or some form of engaging playstyle it is reduced to the one that heals. Therefore, adding to the game the cleric's utility for all to use is going to negatively impact the archetype even further. I am talking about the Scrolls of Resurrection.
People will most definitely not notice this at the start. However, as a server develops and more nodes advance more and more people will have access to these items that are basically another archetype's spell. You already know that this is unbalanced so you are trying to even it out with increased XP debt. Which is fine. I guess it will work. The fact is, I don't know. But what I do know is that you will be putting the archetype in a very bad spot. You will be walking on eggshells every time you try to give other archetypes increased self-sustain in the future, because there is nothing interesting about cleric as it is right now and once the other classes start being able to do content with fewer clerics or without any they will be sure to take that opportunity as it is the dull archetype that gives you HP and that's it.
Maybe the open-world PvP is going to necessitate the presence of clerics at all times. This would mean that in 2v2 skirmishes the party with a cleric must always win against a party without one. Because if you can't sustain the damage of 2 dps where you can use both aoe and st healing what is your impact going to be in larger fights where you can rely only on aoe healing? Practically nonexistent. Not sure, but from what was shown design-wise the archetype is very unsatisfying to play.
To give you an idea of what could possibly happen with the way Ashes of Creation's class system works.
All archetypes are deprived of self-sustain or have been given the bare minimum of self-sustain except cleric. At level 25 players can choose their secondary type. What will happen when you start augmenting the base abilities of DPS classes with the cleric's utility? You will be sacrificing a currently unknown amount of potential damage increase for improved self-sustain and possibly even some party utility. But you will have access to sustain and players will be able to change their secondary archetypes. They will also be able to grab resurrection scrolls from the nearby market so basically they will have everything that a cleric can provide but slightly worse. And when they feel like it, they will be able to change their secondary archetype to something else.
Now I'd assume that you can understand why Cleric is not being treated as an actual archetype. I am all for it if this is going to be the intended gameplay because I will be playing what is most efficient. In all likelihood, it is going to be Mage and I like Mage.
Regarding the Tank & Healer & DPS Trinity
After hearing this it is reasonable to assume that Intrepid Studio is looking to enable any type of party composition and make it viable since the classes that have access to resurrection branch off cleric's archetype.
[spoiler]
Let's go over some game concepts.
What does Tank, DPS, and Support Trinity refer to?
What is the threat system for?
What does it mean when those who can heal and those who cannot fall under the same category of Support?
What is the function of damage in games?
Why is there avoidable and unavoidable damage?
How does player skill affect the damage received?
What is the function of healing in games?
What abilities and items share that function?
What roles have access to these abilities?
What is the purpose of a healer?
Free feel to pursue the answers yourself
A game that has Tank, DPS, and Support Trinity is going to require at least one class of each category to clear group content. This is the base principle for balance intended by the developers.
Both tanks and healers negate damage so what's the difference? There isn't one and that's why we have a threat system. It is created for tanks to enable them to turn their endurance into a valuable addition to their group. They are also given significant defensive stat advantage compared to other roles and are balanced around the fact that their endurance is restricted to themselves. That system is put in place to prevent healers from turning other roles into tanks so across games healers are the ones who generate the second-highest amount of aggro. Developers will make healers the squishiest because only sudden death can successfully prevent them from turning themselves into tanks.
Now, I would like to point you to the fact that in Ashes of Creation, we will have a tank that can heal.
When you put healers and non-healers in the same category as Support it will never be possible to balance them because they do completely different things. You balance them by not putting them in the same category in the first place. This is a PvX game. There is PvE content and when such is being developed, it is being taken into consideration what different aspects of the Trinity can do. Intrepid might have said that their intent is to have one of each archetype in a group but it is impossibly difficult to make it happen if it depends only on their design. How are they going to do it? They have Summoner as an archetype who gets to pick its own role. How do you create content that expects you to bring that with you as an archetype? What is it? What does it do? What are its strengths and weaknesses? It can't be everything at once. But regarding Supports, they can most certainly create content that requires healers even though it will exclude Bards from groups which brings me to the topic of damage.
Obviously, damage affects only HP. When it reaches zero you lose control over your character. Since everyone likes being in control the developers use Damage as a dynamic method to set the limits of what you can and cannot do. There are other methods such as accuracy stat, invulnerability, and restricted access. Its usage in PvE is avoidable and unavoidable. Avoidable damage is a problem players can solve on their own, exclusively dependent on their skill. Unavoidable damage is something they can't do anything about. It is controlled by the developers. The purpose of it varies. You can use it to implement DPS checks. You can also use it to create a class that plays around it to make your game more diverse. It is called a healer and that's what they ultimately exist for in PvE content. They have been given the agency over heals in order to neutralize the prevalent amount of unavoidable damage. If you do not have a great deal of unavoidable damage your game does not need a healer.
We know for certain that small-group content will not have enough unavoidable damage.
This brings us to hard content. How do you define hard content? It's been said that PvE content will scale so at what point does it become hard? I assume world bosses are. I will be sure to come back to the thread after next month's development update stream after I have seen how much damage the boss deals. If they play with their GM buffs on instead of a cleric it will further solidify my assumption that they are putting very little thought behind the Cleric archetype and its place in the game.
For the sake of clarity, we can assume that hard content begins when you need a healer in your group. You would need one when the rate at which you receive unavoidable damage is too high and cannot be covered by your self-sustain and whatever defensive buffs your group might have. It is very likely that every class will have at least one ability related to sustainability. Mage has a shield on a 30-second cooldown. In other words, in PvE, unavoidable damage with a 30sec cd frequency can be self-negated by Mage players. Spells like this diminish a healer's value to a group or should I say increases the level of difficulty for content to become hard. When other roles are provided with an abundance of methods for damage neutralization, healers become increasingly useless. Potions are one of those.
With that said, extremely hard content could be the only place you would legitimately need the presence of a healer in order to clear. But what do you expect these healers to do in the other parts of Ashes of Creation? To be useless thought-out the whole game but play a Cleric character precisely to do that one aspect of it? To be a substitute for potions and player skill? No, what will happen is that the difficulty will be nerfed or the archetype overpowered to a ridiculous level so that it dominates in PvP. The alternative is to have the archetype stay awfully unpopular.
There is nothing special in playing an overpowered archetype. I have suggested a different approach. In Ashes of Creation dying and respawning is an inconvenience much like unavoidable damage is in other games. Intertwine the respawn system with Cleric's gameplay.
You can create anything you wish in this world. You can create party buffs provided by the system if you want to force players to play what they don't want to and create archetype diversity in groups. However, when you create classes that conflict with the systems put in place, you are setting up players to deal with a great deal of unfairness and frustration. After all, this is a PvP-centered game, very competitive in nature.
[/spoiler]