Stealth

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Rogue ability:

There will be counter-stealth mechanics for sure. That's just a natural balancing act of stealth. But additionally with regards to you know secondary classes, one of those aspects is augments represent the secondary class and some of the- one of the most fundamental aspects of a rogue is stealth whether it be actual invisibility or the ability to sneak around in the shadows or something. So you can almost certainly count on the fact that should you go a secondary class of rogue that there will be the ability to influence your action items from your primary class with the stealth modifier.[1]Steven Sharif

Rank 1
This does not render a player completely invisible. Instead, there will be indicators that can help players "feel out" where stealthed individuals may be.[2]
Rank 2
-
Rank 3
-

Stealth does not render a player completely invisible.[3]

Stealth is 100% an option in the game. It's not going to render yourself or the individual who uses the stealth completely obscured. You're still going to be able to identify- there's going to be utility skills that can reveal stealth from a PvP perspective. There's going to be perceptions that certain NPCs have that can see through stealth, like Tremor Sense or Life Sense. There are elements of mechanics that relate to stealth and how it is balanced in the game. It's not going to be similar to stealth that's been found in other games where the target is rendered completely invisible- they can make it past every enemy NPC or monster: they can use stealth at all times. These are elements that is a tit for tat. These are components of class-kits that are going to have corresponding counters as it relates to other classes as well.[4]Steven Sharif

Player movement

Revamped Alpha-1 Mage Fireball ability.[7][8]

The general approach that we're taking based on a lot of feedback and just good combat design in general. You know philosophy is that we want to give more agency in the hands of the player and the antithesis of that is locking the player down for really long amounts of time. The sort of concept behind that is like you could make an animation effects as glorious looking as possible but if it's taking away control of the player, none of that really matters. Especially the 100th or thousandth time you're using the spell you're tired of that happening you don't feel powerful: You feel the opposite of powerful. So we're trying to like give a lot of control back to the player while they're using these abilities so they can still control their movements, they can react simultaneously while they're taking actions; and we just want to get overall more of a fluid flow, I guess, of combat. And that's the general design philosophy we're using to approach the overhaul.[7]Tradd Thompson

A lot of abilities you have the capability of moving while casting. It's going to decrease your movement speed significantly or depending on the type of ability. We do reserve the cost- and that's really what it is when you tie ability usage to mobility- we do reserve the cost of requiring the character to remain stationary on some big effect type abilities.[9]Steven Sharif
  • Most abilities in Ashes of Creation are capable of being cast while moving. Some abilities may slow the caster down during the cast, but only rarely will the player be rooted in place.[9][14]
Most abilities you'll find in Ashes of Creation are capable of being cast while moving. Some of those abilities might slow your movement during the cast, but you can continue to move. Very rarely, and depending on obviously the importance of the ability or the power level of that ability, you might be rooted in place. So, for example, the AoE ability [Chains of Restraint] has a lot going on. It has damage ticking over time, it is an area of effect, it also has a status condition application; and in those instances the player character gets rooted.[14]Steven Sharif
  • Unreal Engine 5 has enabled improved forms of locomotion, such as crouching, tilting and mantling.[17][18]
    • Crouching may or may not be in the game.[19][20]
  • The ability to prone is not be in the game.[19][20]
There's a balance in the game design between your movement speed on attack and the movement speed of your opponent. When you have a game that is both PvE centric as well as PvP centric, you have to make sure that combat is blended for both approaches; and we can always run into problems where, if you're significantly hampered in your movement speed, that has an effect on how we expect player versus player engagements to interact; and we don't want to restrict a player's ability to be mobile if they're the target of an attack. And as a result of that we need to make sure that we don't restrict the movement abilities of the player who is doing the attacking as well. So we want it to be relatively free for you to stay with each other. Your opponents move around the battlefield together and if we're hampering you on the attack action, we have to then implement some type of snare, or slow, or cc effect essentially on your opposing target; and that's not the approach we want to take for for PvP.[22]Steven Sharif
If we're talking about Fighter, they're going to have a lot of heavy gap closers. They can probably be a little bit more liberal in the use of their gap closers because they have so many of them, versus let's say a Ranger that needs to choose when to use their escape abilities, because they have fewer of them. The same would be true for a melee character like a rogue. Their approach vector is going to be more stealth-driven than it would be perhaps let's say from a gap-closer perspective.[23]Steven Sharif
Q: If a ranger is super mobile, what are the melee's options in order to catch them?
A: Different class kits will provide different gap closers. They'll provide different mobility skills. They'll have lockdowns. They'll have chains to pull back. They'll have a lot of different things in the rotation. That's part of what an MMORPG experience is. You're not just restricted to three or six skills, you have a rotational suite; and depending on the type of challenges you face is going to help determine which of those rotations you spec into from your skill tree.[24]Steven Sharif
info-orange.pngThis section contains information from early testing phases. It will be updated as soon as new information is made available.
Skill Icon Base skill
Air Strike Air Strike New.png Leap a great distance forward and into the air while firing three projectiles in a line along the path, each dealing area damage and rooting targets hit for 3 seconds. Rotation control is enabled during cast.[25] The root effect is nature based.[26]
Blink Blink.png Instantly teleport a set distance in the direction you are moving.[27][28]
Call of the Wild Call of the Wild Icon.png Remove all movement impairing effects and increase movement speed by 20% for 8 seconds. Snares and Roots effects applied to the caster are ignored.[29]
Caravan Trail Speed Bonus Trail Speed Bonus.png Minor speed boost for travelling on a simple trail.[30]
Rush rush icon.png Rush toward a target; and upon reaching the target, deal an amount damage with a chance to knock the target down.[31]
Speed Boost Speed Boost.png Gives the caravan a temporary speed boost.[32]
Wings of Salvation Wings of Salvation.png Sprout phoenix-like wings and leap to target ally, then grant a small amount of temporary health to that target on arrival.[33][34] An ally is defined as any non-combatant player or non-mob NPC.[35]

NPC perception

NPC perception is intended to have different sensory types, ranges, and angles.[37][38][39]

  • NPCs will have varying fields of view. Some will have the ability to perceive sounds.[37][38][39]
We are talking about things like unique abilities played by characters that extend the perception radius, or sounds and different types of walking that are angular from the mob's perception perspective to be unique, different types of creatures that might be of three-dimensional in space, whether it is in water or birds in the sky that have a downward cone angle type perception as well. Those are things we want to do, but we haven't yet spent the time on the AI behaviors there.[38]Steven Sharif
Q: How far away from hostile targets will be before they act aggressively towards us? More specifically, will creatures watch us murder their friends in the open world with no reaction, will they try to kill us in retaliation, or will they run away in sheer terror?
A: Obviously as MMO Gamers we're accustomed to the concept of social aggro. When I hit a target out in the field, they're going to aggro other creatures nearby. We have similar functionality. Obviously however we also have this concept of a more puzzle-oriented level design, where you have different patrollers that might be moving around the world. So that dynamic is always changing the creatures that are near each other might be something that you need to be cognizant of as you begin to navigate those areas. And there might even be certain faction types, where you may have dedicated aggro social tags between certain creature types; and that might be like goblins with their goblin dogs. They could be far away but they send off an alert to those nearby enemies when you aggro another target. And then you also have these perception radiuses; and there's a number of different perception radius types that we incorporate as part of our AI. Those things might be a forward-looking perception cone that represents sight-based perception; and then you might also have a rear perception radius that might represent kind of sound; and those perception types might even interact with unique stats. So, as a Rogue you might have a stealth ability, or as a Ranger you might have camouflage ability: Those are going to dampen those stats which are checked by those perception radiuses; and then you might even have different creature types that fly above the battlefield, or beneath the battlefield, and they may have downward cone type angles. The whole idea is that that navigating the world should be like a puzzle as you move throughout.[37]Steven Sharif
  • NPCs in certain encounters may be aware of their local environment and can seek cover behind obstacles, for example; but this will not be prevalent in general AI designs.[40]

Utility skills

Alpha-2 Ranger Camouflage skill.[41]

We have what are called utility skills and a lot of MMORPGS really only focus on active combat skills, but some of the favorite things that I've had as a gamer is tabletop RPGs like Pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons, and there are skills in those games that are relevant to either your environment or the quest line; and they're a little bit sometimes "story mode".[42]Steven Sharif

A utility skill is a typically non-combat skill that interacts with the environment and offers counters and horizontal progression against other archetype abilities.[43][44][45][46] Utility skills lend themselves toward how classes navigate and deal with hazards in the world.[47]

When we think about utilities, some of the examples of those utilities might be a Rogue has invisibility. How do you address invisibility? Well, a Ranger might have a utility ability that spawns a Hound that trails invisible targets within an AoE radius of the Ranger and you get that location. Whereas, a Mage might have an Arcane Eye that actually reveals them to the party of the raid. Those are the types of utility skills that we want to create. They offer counters and horizontal progression against the other archetype abilities.[43]Steven Sharif
  • Classes will have different utility abilities, such as detecting traps and other hazards.[44][45][47] For example: The Mage's detection spell casts light and reveals magical explosive hazards.[48]
    • Certain classes are able to climb/parkour in certain areas.[49][50] This is not a free-form ability. It will likely be restricted to certain quests, locations or objects.[51][52]
    • Certain classes (such as Rogues) will have stealth abilities.[53]
Q: What kind and how many special or unique activities can we expect classes to perform outside of combat, such as rogue's opening locks, tracking enemies as a ranger, or removing corruption from the ground as a cleric?
A: Just thirty minutes ago I was talking about those utility abilities like finding tracks, or cleansing poisons, arcane eye to reveal secret passages. The idea is how do we blend the traditional tabletop RPG role of utility and/or skill checks into the setting of a graphical MMORPG; and I think that it's both a complement of the skill kit that's available and how it interacts with the world for those curated or special designs within these locations. So to answer that question: that is intended- we've shown a little bit of that in the past and it is something that we want to make feel compelling and rewarding and viable as a use-case scenario in many different settings that you might find yourself in within the world.[44]Steven Sharif
  • All classes will have maneuverability/traversal utility abilities.[54]
  • Utility skills exist that can help players discover hidden paths and entrances and may lead to discovering hidden quests while exploring.[45]
  • Certain objects exist in the world (such as ladders and slides) that aid player mobility.[55]
We don't just have the approach of your class being reflected in your combat abilities but also there are utility abilities that certain classes have that other classes don't have.[56]Steven Sharif
info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.
  • There will be a grappling hook utility skill or item.[57]
  • Rogues may also have a spyglass utility skill.[47]

See also

References

  1. Livestream, July 26, 2019 (1:08:16).
  2. 2.0 2.1 Livestream, May 3, 2017 (49:39).
  3. Livestream, January 28, 2022 (1:12:27).
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 Livestream, January 28, 2022 (1:11:40).
  5. 5.0 5.1 Livestream, July 26, 2019 (1:08:16).
  6. Livestream, February 9, 2018 (18:45).
  7. 7.0 7.1 Livestream, February 26, 2021 (27:41).
  8. Video, February 26, 2021 (6:17).
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Livestream, July 28, 2023 (1:02:23).
  10. 10.0 10.1 Livestream, June 30, 2022 (46:30).
  11. Livestream, July 30, 2021 (31:22).
  12. Interview, June 13, 2021 (4:12).
  13. Livestream, May 28, 2021 (1:13:05).
  14. 14.0 14.1 14.2 Livestream, December 2, 2022 (59:47).
  15. Livestream, April 30, 2020 (1:17:13).
  16. Livestream, May 8, 2017 (43:30).
  17. Livestream, December 23, 2021 (55:32).
  18. Video, December 23, 2021 (23:53).
  19. 19.0 19.1 Livestream, October 14, 2022 (48:45).
  20. 20.0 20.1 stevenclarification.png
  21. Livestream, June 26, 2020 (1:30:40).
  22. 22.0 22.1 Livestream, June 30, 2022 (49:42).
  23. 23.0 23.1 Livestream, December 19, 2023 (1:16:19).
  24. 24.0 24.1 Livestream, September 30, 2022 (51:28).
  25. Air Strike New Description.png
  26. Video, September 30, 2022 (15:28).
  27. Video, April 28, 2023 (4:40).
  28. Call of the Wild Description.png
  29. Trail Speed Bonus Description.png
  30. progression.png
  31. Speed Boost Description New.png
  32. Video, July 28, 2023 (24:03).
  33. Wings of Salvation Info Panel.png
  34. Video, July 28, 2023 (24:16).
  35. Livestream, March 26, 2021 (54:26).
  36. 37.0 37.1 37.2 37.3 37.4 Livestream, February 29, 2024 (3:12).
  37. 38.0 38.1 38.2 Livestream, November 30, 2023 (1:36:32).
  38. 39.0 39.1 Livestream, June 4, 2018 (29:28).
  39. Livestream, February 25, 2022 (1:03:32).
  40. Video, January 31, 2024 (4:48).
  41. Livestream, July 25, 2020 (42:49).
  42. 43.0 43.1 Livestream, December 19, 2023 (1:11:17).
  43. 44.0 44.1 44.2 Livestream, February 24, 2023 (1:13:19).
  44. 45.0 45.1 45.2 Livestream, February 24, 2023 (6:51).
  45. Livestream, June 30, 2017 (30:34).
  46. 47.0 47.1 47.2 Livestream, May 12, 2017 (33:10).
  47. class utilities.png
  48. Livestream, May 15, 2017 (15:10).
  49. utility skills.jpg
  50. Livestream, January 18, 2018 (34:56).
  51. Livestream, June 28, 2019 (1:21:46).
  52. class stealth.png
  53. class mobility.png
  54. Livestream, October 29, 2021 (1:07:11).
  55. Livestream, May 24, 2017 (57:41).
  56. Livestream, May 12, 2017 (18:00).