The YouTuber and streamer Entenburg, specializing in MMORPGs, recently published an exciting video on his second channel Entenburch, in which he criticizes a mechanic of the great genre hope Ashes of Creation that could have a very negative impact on the player experience.
What does Entenburg criticize about AoC? In the latest developer video of Ashes of Creation, extensive gameplay from a so-called “Node War” was shown for the first time, meaning a war between the citizens of two nodes scattered throughout the MMORPG’s game world.
In the mass skirmishes, the genre expert noticed an important detail that had already been communicated before, but whose effects on the practical player experience have only now become clear. It’s about the way Ashes of Creation processes the damage dealt to characters in PvP battles.
In PvP, the MMORPG divides health bars into four blocks, each representing 25 percent of total health. Damage done to an opponent only affects their health bar when you manage to take away a full 25 percent of a block.
At that moment, their life shifts instantly from 100 to 75, from 75 to 50, from 50 to 25, or from 25 to zero percent. If you stop attacking at, for example, 76 percent health, your opponent’s bar will continue to show the full 100 percent.
Here you can watch the video by Entenburg:
What are the implications? In the video, Entenburg shows various gameplay scenes that illustrate the negative consequences this system brings:
- Caught damage that directly affects the health bars is an important part of visual feedback in combat.
- Without this feedback, fights can potentially feel unsatisfying and frustrating. Especially classes that rely on over-time damage effects or slowly ticking area spells may often feel like the fifth wheel.
- Additionally, the foundation needed to make the right decisions in PvP situations is missing. Choices such as: Can a relatively weak instant attack take down the opponent, or does it need to be a channelled spell that deals significantly more damage, but carries the risk of the victim escaping or healing?
- As an attacker in PvP, one never knows exactly how effective their abilities are in combat and how far the opponent is from losing one of their health blocks after the initial attacks.
- In Ashes of Creation, the problem is even worse, as the MMORPG places a strong focus on PvP situations in the open world, where many players encounter each other (Node Wars, sieges, caravan attacks).
- An experienced veteran may only need the raw damage numbers in duels to get a sense of the opponent’s condition. However, in a crowd of ten, twenty, thirty, or more characters, that is completely forgotten.
- Classes like the fragile rogue usually have only one goal in mass battles: to quickly finish off heavily injured opponents who have retreated to a weakly protected flank and then disappear again. This will not be possible in Ashes of Creation, making these playstyles useless for a significant part of the MMORPG’s content.
Until now, Entenburg had been very excited about Ashes of Creation. However, with this system in mind, the YouTuber can no longer imagine having lasting fun with the MMORPG’s PvP. And since PvP is an essential part of Ashes of Creation, the anticipation for the game has taken a significant hit.
Open-PvP is also omnipresent in the caravans of Ashes of Creation:
What do developers and supporters say?
Is there an official reason for the system? In a livestream, Creative Director Steven Sharif addressed this issue.
If you target another player and that player is not a member of your guild, alliance, raid, or party – those are the four affiliation factors – if they are not part of those four groups, you will have no specific information about their HP level. You will have quarter-accurate information on the level, and you might be able to break it down a little further, maybe to sixths or eighths. However, you will not have exact information on how many hit points the opponent has available.
This degree of obscurity protects engagement a bit, the TTK interaction (Note from the editorial team: TTK stands for time to kill, so the time it takes to take down an opponent). You could potentially overshoot if you don’t know whether they have only 20 or 25 percent hit points left. I think that’s a very healthy thing in PvP, but it’s not a normal game mechanic.
Steven Sharif via Youtube
How are viewers reacting to the criticism? This point divides the community. Many MMORPG fans under the YouTube video or on Entenburg’s Discord channel share the criticism and hope that enough feedback will accumulate throughout the alpha to overturn the system.
However, there are also many viewers who like AoC’s system and highlight the positive effects from their perspective. Two points are particularly often mentioned:
- The protection against high-level griefers who specialize in attacking low-level players struggling with AI opponents until they are almost dead, allowing the monster to finish them off so they don’t receive a punishing corruption debuff.
- The system introduces an unknown factor that can make PvP situations more interesting and exciting.
Entenburg’s final statement: We had a short exchange with the MMORPG expert to get his assessment of the discussion sparked under his video. He sees the protection against griefers as a good point, even though the system offers a “comfortable solution” that brings many other problems with it.
The comments, according to Entenburg, beautifully show that many MMORPG fans who are currently excited about Ashes of Creation have not yet realized how much focus the game places on PvP. Or how far-reaching it can be when such a system works against the identities of certain classes.
Furthermore, Entenburg adds, some MMORPG enthusiasts have a strong defensive reflex whenever the game they are greatly looking forward to is criticized. It’s less about understandable arguments and more about protecting their emotional investment in the project.
How does MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz evaluate the criticism raised by Entenburg? I also do not like AoC’s health system in PvP. Maybe it’s because I almost always play agile melee fighters in MMORPGs, who can take little damage but deal a lot.
If I imagine that the AoC system had been in the old WoW battles at the crossroads or between Tarren Mill and Southshore … the fun of playing my rogue would probably have been zero.
If this remains the case, many players who have chosen the wrong classes are likely to bite into the edge of the table in frustration after the first PvP battles. Moreover, we are likely to quickly see almost only archetypes that can unleash high burst damage in a short period.
In short: Like Entenburg, I also hope that the developers of Ashes of Creation will adjust this system. What do you think? More information about the MMORPG from Intrepid Studios: Everything about the new MMORPG Ashes of Creation – release, classes, gameplay, and nodes
