It's NOT that simple in Ashes of Creation
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- What will Steven and Intrepid do to combat meta mentality?
#ashesofcreation #ashesofcreationmmorpg #gaming #gamingvideos #newworld #copium #meta
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Ashes of Creation is an open world MMORPG set in a fantasy environment where you can choose different classes and races to adventure through with your friends. Intrepid Studios is the developer behind the game. They’re technically an indie studio, but their creative director Steven Sharif has a clear vision for his video game: Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game. He wants to put the massive back in MMO. Exploring dungeons, griding for gear, crafting armor/weapons, learning new spells, and competing in large scale PvP battles. High end PvE such as raids will mainly occur in the open world. Bosses will spawn and roam through the land. Are YOU ready to enter the world of Verra?
![[ TEASER ] เงาะป่า - วงL.กฮ. | TMG RECORD](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/M4ObdFfcPww/mqdefault.jpg)
I legit did not know that Meta meant "most effective tactics available". That is awesome.
Haha I aim to please.
Me neither wtf
*There will be a Meta for a particular encounter, but not an overall Meta.*
*Ashes is about party Synergy, not Class equality.*
Well, he even said that there won't be a meta group composition for every encounter. My guess is they're going to go ham on the mobs, giving them varying resistances, armor, evasion, types of moves, ect. It's gonna be spectacular.
😁Great video! We have chatted about the Meta builds as well and how Ashes may or may not go about combatting this. We have ultimately come to the conclusion that if there is one, its player created/defined.
I actually didn't even know what Meta stood for, so thank you for sharing haha.
-- ChibiBree
I really enjoyed that conversation you guys had on the meta! Haha glad you enjoyed the video.
Had that Starcraft book too, man. Such nostalgia! And I totally agree-Ashes of Creation seems designed to avoid rigid metas. With their real-time data monitoring and the 8x8 class combinations, it feels like they'll be able to keep the gameplay dynamic and fresh.
As a fellow left handed pitcher, can't wait for Ashes.
Hopefully the paper scissors rock counters system helps reduce the meta aswell. Another good video, keep them coming.
True. That’ll be interesting for them to balance too.
I think you're underestimating people. We are nerds and are very good at lowering the amount of possible good combinations through trial and error and just value judgements, given enough players or time we will eventually have "solved" the meta.
Also, all it takes is for people to have the perception that the game has been solved for it to be "solved" whether it actually is or not doesn't matter.
I agree though, skill will 90% of the time trump what's "meta". Even the most off meta builds have use cases.
Yeah who knows how long it’ll take a “meta” to form. You make a good point that it’ll probably be sooner than people realize.
Yeah exactly, a lot of people get bandwagon mentality with build stuff. In my experience, the people who rode the bandwagon the hardest were just insecure.
The PvP aspect of ashes my upend the meta builds narrative, In shadowbane we had a flavor of the month where a guild would use a spec group to good effect then other guilds would copy the spec better guilds would make a new speck group to counter the last speck group. after a few rounds most players had characters that fit 4 or more different specks. so you would scout out the enemy and switch to the speck that beat there's. then if there was time left they would switch to speck that beat yours. unless you switched ahead of time it kind of added a TCG aspect to the tactics of each battel
I see what you’re saying and that makes total sense. Moves and countermoves will keep changing the meta.
Love the channel! Very easy to follow doc (My girls a DO and I was a Devil Doc - Corpsman).
I'm still kinda confused on the augments if you don't mind prescribing some clarification. I'll use the Mages Lightning Bolt as an example. So we have the ability, then our secondary class provides 4 augments to change it? Aka, as an Archmage, it may add fire to the attack, and it becomes a fire lightning attack? It also has 3 other options? So it may be able to be a frost lightning attack as well? I thought he meant we can augment 4 of our 18-20 skills class.
Then, for race, social, and religious augments... Steven said we may have an additional from them. So, maybe a divine healing religion can increase a healing skill to be AoE or something? I guess we'll have to pick and choose. I do not love how in ESO everyone runs around with certain moves like Rally from the fighters guild.
As a Meta, I would assume popping as many skills as possible into the hardest hitting ability, augmenting the %#@$ out of it, then using the rest of your skills on passives and escapes will be pretty powerful. I want to zap people like Zeus!
There'll be reasons to go deeper into the skill trees of individual skills otherwise yeah everyone would want to have their skill bar full of the 18-20 active skills. More medical peeps! What class you gonna roll? We always joked that doctors/medics are clerics/priests.
Yeah my guess is the augment will change the damage type. Not sure how that'll work still and it might be a while before we actually get to see the augment system in effect.
Glad you've been enjoying the channel!
Meta is a problem because guild may require them to raid. Forces players to play the class the way the guild requires which may not be fun for the player or not really a good build when soloing.
The pressure for buffs and nurfs will be driven by pvp. Some players blame the class for their poor play or expect to be able to defeat other players who play as teams and coordinate their skills when pvping. The old "I'm nerfed while they're OP!"
Great video! It got me thinking.
For some random MMORPG, what if there wasn't a leveling system or a specific chosen class system and players could respec attack/skills at any time, so players can just plan fights and keep changing the meta due to current trends, like what you did?
Players would unlock new abilities by completing quests and defeating certain monsters. They can set active attacks and passive attacks to unlock. All players can unlock all of them since there is no classes as they play the game. You can unlock all, but only set a certain amount of active and passive.
But they would be free to put on any equipment, and the equipment was the thing that applied skill based buffs. Where some rare passive or active buffs, lose that power when traded. So players have to find, craft, and experience their own character story to hit max in a specific build, even if they know how it is made, they still have to go out of their way to get those items.
But players can also choose one item at a time, like a sword, or staff, which is soul bounded to them. Here they can unlock skill trees (or skill line if a small studio). And while they can put this special item into a bank, if they choose a new item to soul bind, they start from scratch again and the prior item will no longer have those skills.
These wouldn't be skills that would apply to all skills like attacks or defense, but rather skills that only work for specific moves or instances, like attack A does more attack when enemy has ice element armor, or spell B will do more damage if enemy has increased speed.
So people would be incentivized to stick to something and have an archetype to keep these extra bonuses, but if they are meta chasers, they can still respec and change their loadout at any time, but will most likely want a generic soul bounded item that can apply to more things, but aren't as powerful as specific builds that people are commited to roleplaying with, that may happen to be their undoing.
Lastly, the option to change their outfit mid fight with a long cooldown. Where during the changing sequence, you are more vulnerable. This could be something like a 30 second change out, with a 10-20 minute cool down. Players could have up to 2-3 insta loadouts set. So you might try your unspecialized secondary loudout, or keep your main as your second to throw an enemy off. It will make players think twice before PVPing a stranger in plain clothing.
Lmk.
Interesting thought dude! I’d love the exploration part of that. Do you know of any games that have tried something like this?
If possible You should try to use same aspect ratios for most of the shots..
Yeah agreed. Sometimes the source footage is off.
Best breakdown ever =-) It was kinda a mata augment video =-D
"Playing off meta is like being a left handed pitcher". First person I've heard that knows this. The true meta is the off meta(as long as the meta isn't dead OP), because everyone else is playing the meta and knows all the counters cause they know what everyone else(also playing the meta) is doing. Well they're taken by surprise when someone comes in still heavy hitting, but in a way that completely throws them for a loop.
I've played at tournament levels in Paladins, I know this to be true, not in just in theory, in practice. It's innumerably more fun than than playing the meta too, cause it's always built on my depth of knowledge in the game and it feels very unique and personal.
Yes! More personal feels like it’s yours and you own it!
Great video!
Thanks bro!
So is Meta being managed through player decisions in archetypes/schools/trees and religions or is the Meta being managed through world chaos(Node Progress, seasons, corruption, astral alignments, world events?)
Will a frost mage be stronger in the winter. will my plate wearer just be colder and slower during the winter? Will the resistances make it so I will want to change my class to tackle the specific dungeon that is available on my server, with my current node available? WIll the season/astral alignment, specific node type created in that zone change how that dungeon works and what resistances are in effect in that dungeon?
It seems like if the character sheet is where the meta is buffed/nerfed then it's just a big balancing game. BUT if the world dynamically changes and my character is stronger or weaker based on that change then I am constantly trying to catch up with the universe which is trivial. and honestly the right direction. I may as well just play what I want unless I am an insane min maxxer.
First great videos ive listened to almost all of your videos today.
Second you mentioned the game needs to be complex enough to support multiple meta specs. Thats the opposite of what typically needs to happen to create a more level playing field to create multiple meta specs. A complex system inevitably creates greater disparity and imbalance between classes. Its inevitably harder to balance too of course.
I'm of the opinion to keep the complexity and fun combat no matter what. If Intrepid cant balance it well then so be it. Watered down builds and combat for balances sake isnt worth it.
Thanks! Yeah I agree that the classes shouldn’t be watered down for balance. Make em all exciting and fun.
Of course there is always a breaking point. If the intrepid balance team is simply not very good at their job then more simple systems may be needed. That's all subjective though.
I really enjoyed the video, especially by including your personal examples from your childhood and from your past games.
Meta builds are a direct outcome of the lack of diverse content. A dungeon grind for a magic user should be just as rewarding as a different dungeon designed for a melee chsracter. So you can play the style you want without too much penality.
Totally agree. There should be a multitude of ways to tackle a dungeon and have it be rewarding.
Thanks! I hesitate to bring up too much stuff from the past and other games, but good to hear you like that part.
The bowl cut meta was rough..
Waiting for the bald man to react to this, yo Asmon stop with that tight ass fuckin man bun it’s making you lose more follicles let it free flow baby
Haha that’s nice of you but there’s no way he’d react to this. I can relate with losing hair follicles.
Hot take: I don't think MMORPGs need to be balanced between the classes.
Complex interactions between classes/individual players should define how the group combat works.
Take (as always) EVE Online for inspiration. There are sooo many fleet setups one could build, soo many factors are going into whether they are useful or bad, and some really surprising setups are possible, simply because there are so many different things - high range weapons, short range weapons, different tanking mechanisms, heal support, offensive support, electronic warfare, countermeasures, counter-countermeasures, stealth bombers, drones, carriers, dreadnoughts that kill carriers, supercarriers, titans that kill supercarriers but are exposed to smaller shaps, fast/nimble ships, slow/bulky ships, damage types, even the economic side, some ships cost a lot of one resource that might be extremely expensive or extremely cheap and an alliance might have to redo their entire layout simply because of availability/price fluctuations AND SO ON
Is it balanced? Hell, no.
Is it fun? Hell, yes.
love the take!
Bowl-cut gang represent!
Yesssssss!
The meta is ruining the game tbh, if the devs dont fix this the game is dead
Nice content! Keep it up!
Thanks Emanuel, will do!
This is the problem with a pvp centric game. If people find something that works it will quickly become ubiquitous and a high % of people at the top end will show up almost exactly the same. Everyone will know what the best archetypes are in the first month of the game and because of it being pvp focused you have to conform to the meta or you’ll lose outright to people who do.
It’ll be interesting to see what steps intrepid takes to balance things during Alpha 2 and the betas.
The solution of "add more options" is a false solution to the problem of Metas. Metas happen because there are specific needs to be met, and those needs value some types of solutions over others. The Meta in any game is just the combination of things which best meets the needs as the players understand them. A Meta happens when enough of a population shares a set of needs, and a portion of that population specializes to fill those needs most effectively. All solutions that will break the concept of a meta must somehow break the relationship between needs and specialization, if they don't then you'll still have a meta. Personally I don't think that having a Meta is a bad thing; what's bad is when one particular solution to a set of needs is so much better than all other solutions that you do not have room for experimental or expressive variance. I would say that meta-games which do not allow for expressional and experimental variance are unhealthy, and those allow for these things are typically healthy.
So how does "add more options" interact with the health of a meta-game? Past a certain point it doesn't. There are two aspects to a meta, the needs, and the tools to meet those needs. If you need to add more damage to your character or group, all abilities which do not interact with damage in some way will be irrelevant. Of the abilities which do interact with damage anything that is obviously less helpful that something else is also irrelevant; no one runs a 10% damage buff when there is one that does 20%; that may have been obvious but less obvious to many is that even the 10% damage buff that also comes with a 20% self heal will be ignored if the need is strictly for damage. If you're spending resources on meeting a need that doesn't exist, you're irrelevant. No matter how many hundreds of thousands of combinations of abilities exist, the number of meta-relevant options is still capped based upon the needs present in the meta. The way that a game can create a diverse and expressive environment for play is by diversifying the needs to be met enough that there are multiple combinations that can meet those needs as effectively or nearly as effectively as each-other.
Another thing to be keen on is that Speed of anything is everything. Metas will always revolve around speed. If progression or economics are involved there will always be an x/per-hour measurement. If dungeons can be run multiple times, then it will be about farming the dungeons as fast as possible. If they can only be done once every so often, then the speed will still be important because the group will care about moving between dungeons to farm a set of dungeons as fast as possible. Farming iron nodes; iron per hour. Fixed node locations; movement speed. Random node locations; scanning/finding speed. If a thing can be done at all, it will eventually be about maximizing the speed at which its done. Minimizing time spent doing a thing maximizes the number of things you can do, and minimizes the time doing the task that someone or something else can mess with you. The reason why you don't run 5 dps in dungeons is because they can't dps fast enough to avoid damage, but if they could then there would be no healers or tanks, only DPS because they would have to slow down to add a healer or tank. People engaging in a Meta will always push for speed, all you can do is push around what lets you go the fastest.
I do see an issue with build diversity though: in a war you don't want diverse soldiers, you want soldiers with predictable performance so that as a commander you can effectively predict outcomes and strategize. To strategize you have to have an understanding of what tools you have available to you. If all of your warriors have taunt, battlecry, and cleave, then you can form a strategy around leveraging those powers. When you have too much troop diversity to plan effectively, the best solution becomes to Zerg things.
What Ashes needs to do is focus on creating diverse needs in combat, so that any combination of classes can fulfil at least a few of those needs. For that to work those needs also need to be readable when they're present. Another reason for Zerging is that past a certain point all of the effects on the battlefield become too much for an individual to properly track. Its hard to heal a raid if you can't see everyone's HP all at once, and similarly its hard to know when to blow your cooldowns if you cant find the information you need on the field to determine that. For diversity to work everyone needs a moment where they can shine, and they need to be able to tell when that moment is.
The legend is back at it, great video as always. my like has been earned once again! keep up the great work.
Thanks Sodyo!
For as Long as meta builds aren't the only way to play I don't care. If I can outskill/outsmart a meta gamer then it's ok.
RAID SHODOW LEGENDS 😂😂😂 can't explain how many those I've (and I'm sure most of us) have seen while watching gaming vids online ...
Fantastic work as always, Sir!
Thank you!