Popular MMORPG Youtuber explains why Ashes of Creation might have suddenly died for him

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Youtuber and streamer Entenburg, who specializes in MMORPGs, recently published an exciting video on his secondary channel Entenburch in which he criticizes a mechanic of the genre’s great hope, Ashes of Creation, which can have an extremely negative impact on the gaming experience.

What does Entenburg criticize about AoC? The latest developer video for Ashes of Creation featured extensive gameplay from a so-called “Node War” for the first time, i.e. a war between the citizens of two nodes that are spread throughout the game world of the MMORPG.

In the mass brawls, the genre expert noticed an important detail that had already been communicated previously, but whose impact on the practical gaming experience has only now become clear. It concerns the way in which Ashes of Creation processes the damage caused to characters in PvP battles.

In PvP, the MMORPG divides the health bars into four blocks, each of which accounts for 25 percent of the total health. If you cause damage to an opponent, nothing will change in their health bar until you manage to take the full 25 percent of a block away.

At that moment, his life immediately changes from 100 to 75, from 75 to 50, from 50 to 25 or from 25 to zero percent. However, if you set your attacks at, for example, 76 percent life, your opponent’s bar will continue to show the full 100 percent.

You can watch the video of Entenburg here:

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What are the implications? In the video, Entenburg shows various gameplay scenes that illustrate the negative effects of this system:

  • Captured damage, which directly affects health bars, is an important part of visual feedback in combat.
  • Without this feedback, combat can potentially feel unsatisfying and frustrating. Classes that rely on damage-over-time effects or slow-ticking area spells in particular are likely to often feel like the fifth wheel on the wagon.
  • In addition, the foundation for making the right decisions in PvP situations is missing. Decisions like: Should the opponent be sent to the dust with a relatively weak instant attack or should it be a channeled spell again, which causes significantly more damage but carries the risk that the victim will escape or be healed?
  • As an attacker in PvP, you never know exactly how effective your skills are in combat and how far your opponent is from losing one of his health blocks after the first few attacks.
  • In Ashes of Creation, the problem is exacerbated because the MMORPG places a great deal of focus on PvP situations in the open world where many players encounter each other (node ​​wars, sieges, caravan attacks).
  • For an experienced veteran, the pure damage numbers are certainly enough in a duel to get a feeling for the opponent’s condition. However, in a group of ten, 20, 30 or more characters, you can completely forget about that.
  • Classes like the weak-armed rogue usually have only one goal in mass battles: to quickly finish off heavily injured opponents who have moved to the rear or to the weakly protected flank and then disappear again. In Ashes of Creation, this will not be possible, which makes these playstyles useless for an important part of the MMORPG’s content.

    • Up until now, Entenburg had been really looking forward to Ashes of Creation. With this system in mind, however, the YouTuber can no longer imagine being able to have long-term fun with the MMORPG’s PvP. And since PvP is an essential part of Ashes of Creation, the anticipation for the game has been significantly dampened.

    Open PvP is also omnipresent in the caravans of Ashes of Creation:

    Ashes of Creation – Caravan Gameplay

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    What do developers and advocates say?

    Is there an official reason for the system? Creative Director Steven Sharif commented on this in a livestream.

    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 – so if they are not part of those four groups, you will not have specific information about their HP level. You will have quarter-level information, and you may be able to break it down a little further, maybe sixths or eighths. But you will not have specific information about how many hit points the enemy has available.

    This level of obfuscation protects a little bit of engagement, the TTK interaction (Editor’s note: TTK stands for Time to Kill, the time it takes to kill an enemy), so you could overshoot the target if you don’t know exactly if they’re at 20 or 25 percent health. I think that’s a very healthy thing in PvP, but it’s not a normal game mechanic.

    Steven Sharif via Youtube

    How do viewers react 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 are hoping that enough feedback will be received during the alpha to overturn the system.

    But there are also many viewers who like AoC’s system and who, in their view, point out positive effects. Two points are mentioned particularly often:

  • Protection from high-level griefers who specialize in attacking low-level players during AI combat until they are almost dead so that the monster does the rest and they don’t receive a punishing corruption debuff.
  • The system brings with it an unknown that can make PvP situations more interesting and exciting.

    • The final statement from Entenburg: We had a quick chat with the MMORPG expert to get his opinion on the discussion that erupted under his video. He also sees the protection from griefers as a good point, even if the system offers a “convenient solution” that brings with it many other problems.

    According to Entenburg, the comments clearly show that many MMORPG fans who are currently looking forward to Ashes of Creation have not yet realized how much of a focus the game places on PvP. Or how far-reaching it can be when such a system works against the identities of certain classes.

    In addition, Entenburg continues, some MMORPG enthusiasts have a strong defensive reflex as soon as the game they are so excited about is criticized. It is then less about comprehensible arguments and more about protecting their own emotional investment in the project.

    How does MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz assess the criticism expressed by Entenburg? I don’t like AoC’s health system in PvP either. Maybe it’s because I almost always play nimble melee fighters in MMORPGs who can’t take much damage but also dish out a lot.

    If I imagine that the AoC system had existed in the old WoW battles at the Crossroads or between Tarren Mill and Southshore… the fun of playing with my rogue would probably have been zero.

    If this continues, many players who have chosen the wrong classes will probably bite the edge of their table in frustration after the first few PvP battles. In addition, we will soon see almost only archetypes that can unleash high burst damage in a short period of time.

    In short: Like Entenburg, I hope that the developers of Ashes of Creation will adapt 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

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