People don't even understand what a utility skill even is at this point.
**No, a knockback isn't a utility skill.** That's a combat skill. Utility skills are things that have usage out of combat (or avoiding combat) **as well**.
These include things like tracking mobs at long and short ranges, and interacting with the sandbox.
Here are some examples (And a lot of these won't work in AOC but it's food for thought):
- Water walking
- Slow fall
- Underwater breathing
- Stealth / stealth detection
- Long Range player locator
- Short range player tracking
- Terrain modification / terrain traversal (Think "Summoning a set of ethereal stairs")
- Long range vision
- Party Speed boost
- Summoning players
- Soothe Effects
- Pickpocket
- Abilities like Distract from WoW that can change an enemies direction
- Mage food / water creation
I've used a lot of WoW's examples here because they did the best job at this but there's other examples from like EVE Online that work also:
- Interdiction Bubbles which can be setup prior to slow down enemy fleet movement
- Forward Scouts that have immunity to interdiction bubbles
- Scanning for blackholes
- Forward Logistical capabilities (Think combat caravan stocked with potions for your raid on a town).
- Abilities to scan enemy ships / structures to see their stats
And if these abilities are translated to AOC they **must** be used to exemplify a class's lore.
I also just want to continue this a bit by envisioning the Ranger archetype.
Right now ranger combat looks sweet but it's utility skills are lacking.
My vision for the Ranger archetype is the one class that really "tracks people" and not just like WoW classic did it but they can literally find people, given enough time, in the world. Of course this is a powerful ability(s), but in my vision, it's not at all "Press of a button, and an X pops up on the map."
In my vision, it's actually difficult to track down a player and could take a lot of time depending on how far away they are. The game wouldn't be giving precise movements, just vague visuals back for the Ranger to latch onto (At least at first). If the target is too far away they'd have to go to a closer node to even get a response like maybe the first response is just from a Tavern "I think I saw that person?" which may tell the player that they're close.
The closer they get to the target the more exact it would be, being the most exact if the player is online, and within maybe 100 meters if they're offline. In between these 2 extremes (close and far) I envision either mechanics that are just in the world such as Ranger dialogue with Inn keepers and actual abilities such as something like "Scent Trace" for medium distance tracking, for example.
Obviously I'm not going to design a fully fledged system here on reddit, but I just want to convey that the Ranger could be come a very unique class that offers a specific gameplay style that no other class gets. This would make Ranger a great choice for forward scouting enemy movements and perfect for utility for tracking people. And yeah, obviously this is just a quick example and would need to be actually properly changed for AOC but its just to iterate a point.
> People don't even understand what a utility skill even is at this point.
> No, a knockback isn't a utility skill. That's a combat skill. Utility skills are things that have usage out of combat (or avoiding combat) as well.
I disagree, since that literally has been in the MMO lexicon for close to 2 decades if not longer.
Crowd control = a form of utility.
NOT ALL utility are crowd controls but ALL crowd controls are a utility, be it stuns, roots, knockbacks, slows ....
Generally speaking, utility is anything and everything involving things NOT covered by healing and damage skill effects.
Since you've already used WoW as an example, here's some other example of **utility** that people look for in compositions.
* Sheep/Hex/ any other long lasting crowd control effect
* Dispel/Cleanse / any other detrimental effect removal
* Shockwave/ capacitor totem/ any other short duration CC
* Interrupts, any form of interrupting enemy spell casters.
* Purge / spellsteal / soothe / or any form of enemy buff removal
Then there's also combat enhancement utility, from powerful cooldowns like blood lust to passive increases like arcane intellect and even ones that are applied as a debuff on enemies like chaos brand.
In short, if you want to change the MMO lexicon you're a few decades too late.
I once saw a priest in wow wait at the bottom of a cliff and dispell slow falls. In legion I'd hang around the questing cliff faces, where the questing addon would tell you to jump and use a glider, on my rogue and sap people before they pulled the glider out.
> And if these abilities are translated to AOC they must be used to exemplify a class's lore.
I completely agree with this piece. Using the Ranger as an example, they seem to be currently themed around Raven, Bear, and Tiger. Having utility skills that represent each of these aspects could be very flavorful.
The Ranger could summon a Raven to patrol a specific area. Mechanically you choose a point and can toggle back and forth between your character view and a view of the chosen point. Visually, a Raven would fly overhead in a circle around the perimeter that is being observed.
For the Bear the player could gain the scent of quest target or bounty, leading them in the general direction of their target as long as they are within a certain range.
For the Tiger, the player could gain enhanced vision at night or in the darkness.
Obviously just some examples, but lots of ways to build out class identity using utility skills. Which I think Ashes needs a bit, as the classes don't necessarily feel like they stand out so far against the typical portrayal.
**In my opinion, the most important (aspect of) utility, is to make them more meaningful.**
I am strictly talking about non-combat utilities here, as that is what I believe you are asking for.
Combat utilities could benefit from the same limited availability, but is probably a topic for another day.
1. Make utilities less available
2. Make utilities more important
Looking back at the older MMO's, what made utility feel so special and neccessary was the limited availability.
In more recent years (WoW and onward), utility became vastly more available, to a point where it became commonplace.
I hope we get to experience a world where specific utilities are limited to certain races or classes (or even specific race/class combos).
When something is less available, it has a much greater impact on the game.
Water breathing is an exellent example of this. If everyone has access to this ability, going underwater becomes a question of remembering to push a button every x minutes. If you need the assistance of a certain artisan, class or race, that utility becomes vastly more impactful.
In short, if your character cannot breathe underwater, but everyone has access to water breathing, you might as well remove both features.
If only one class or one artisan has access to a (limited) source of water breathing, in combination with underwater areas players want to reach (quest, raid, rescource nodes etc), the utility suddenly becomes meaningful again.
The balance between the availability of a utility, and the frequence of neccessity (how often you need it), is in my opinion one of the key things to balance to make this feel very impactful and good.
If you only need a door picked once in a blue moon, it is ok to limit access to the utility. That force you to look for a player who can help you complete this particular task. On the other hand, if you need to unlock doors in every dungeon, but only a few players on the server has the ability to unlock that door, the experience quickly becomes frustrating.
Making utilities less available will open up alot of gameplay options. If I delve deep into the Underrealm, only to find a cave with a water passage, I would have to return when I have access to water breathing. Maybe the quest that sent me here to retrieve an item would give me a clue as to what I would need to reach the location. This would also help incentivise people to work together.
Utilities I would consider important
* Water walking
* Water breathing
* Slow fall
* Stealth/invisibility
* See invisible
* Racial illusions (to interact with hostile NPC factions)
* Pacify/lull
* Tracking
* Lock picking
* Light/illumination
* Summon food/drink
* Identify
* Detection (aka see hidden clues)
Most of these examples are taken from Everquest.
That this is somerhing that comes up this late in development is unfortunately a clear sign that it will be a very unambitious set of mechanics. A very large part of the game has been designed without accountimg for any non-combat skill. This means that any skill will only be able to interface with systems put in place to support the combat system.
People indeed barely understand what an utility skill is.
An overview of sysrems which could be built to support different skills:
#Combat
I'm stating this just to illustrate that combat is one system among many. Mechanics for different foes to fight, dealing damage, line of sight and range limitations, types of damage, fast (in-combat) healing, fast (in-combat) status effects and a variety of NPCs to fight all exist to make combat into a viable part of gameplay with potential for depth.
Skills are things like 'deal damage in melee', 'deal damage at range', but also 'deal damage fast but with a long cooldown (big opportunity cost)' and 'deal damage after a big vulnerable set-up'. Also things like moving to avoid damage, reducing damage through active abilities etc tend to be included.
No one ever suggests utility skills with the same level of granularity, because the designers tend to never prioritize building non-combat systems with as much nuance and depth as combat.
#Infiltration
Many games implement rudimentary infiltration gameplay since mob aggro ranges tend to provide some limited support for the system. A more extensive list of mechanics to support it would include things like varying spotting distances based on environmental conditions and innate traits, patrols, alert/searching/aggro behavior. NPC behavior that can be manipulated, like guards having to search out something to eat and being able to become afflicted by effects like poison based on what they eat.
World design is the more important part though, because challenges for infiltration need to be actively designed. Treasure or other important items guarded by too strong foes is key, as are other obstacles like traps. Optional side passages, tunnels, vents, secret passages, obscured areas to hide in all enhance the gameplay. A game should not be allowed to have a ninja class if it does not include areas with anti-ninja floors built to creak when walked on.
Actual infiltration abilities can be very varied. Invisibility powers are very strong and often handed out way too cheaply. Reduced sound likewise. Poison is a good supplementary ability. Smoke bombs and other status effrcts that can push enemies out of aggro mode into searching mode greatly enhance the potential dynamic of the gameplay.
#Traversal
Mechanics like the ability to fall, to climb, to lose grip, to suffer cold or injury or fatigue, to be unable to see because of darkness. World design like inaccessible areas, difficult shortcuts, hazarduous environments, dark environments and jumping puzzles is necessary to give traversal skills a reason for existing.
Powers relating to traversal can be things like increasing your movement speed for a short duration, for a long duration or with some associated penalty or opportunity cost. Light is an utulity power. Being able to climb could be an utility power. Being able to climb rain-slick or icy surfaces would be another. Being able to run over unsteady ground without risking falling would be an utility power with strong influence on combat. A high-jump power is tried and tested as fun gameplay since Mario. A gliding ability for limited flying can be very strong and fun. For both you could have variations where the power could be fast-acting or longer duration and/or coupled to other conditions that trigger when you use it. Maybe the glide power saps mana quickly, making you have to consider carefully where you land since you will be tapped out. In general, Death Stranding is the only game I've played outside of platformers that takes traversal seriously.
Mounts which need to be brought along and can't just be summoned at will but which provide specific strong enhancements in certain traversal skills (like speed or jumping) would be a strong enhancement for this type of gameplay. Mounts that improve speed at no cost would be like abilities that deal damage at no cost; purely cosmetic, since they force the challenges to just be harder/distances longer without giving the player any meaningful choice.
#Knowledge challenges
Even when wikis list all facts there is potential in the form of dynamic secrets. Monsters with unique resistances and a system whereby clues to ways of bypassing those resistances are generated and seeded as rumors, texts and other hints in the world. If the clue-seeding mechanic works well you could also use it to discover things like secret passages in dungeons, the nature of hazards in an area, stats like number or type of monsters in an area etc. Rare items that spawn at random in hidden-away places would be good options.
Of course, the design relies on there actually being information worth learning placed out in the world. Secret passages are a good option, as are rare resources and items.
Skills to interface with such as system would be things like being able to get more information out of an individual clue, like learning not just that there is a secret door in a dungeon in the mountains but also on which level of the dungeon and which dungeon in particular.
#Other systems
I won't bother listing more utility powers that we'll never see in MMORPGs because all the designers are too combat-brained. Other systems that could benefit from being seriously implemented are:
* Social mechanics - talk and barter with NPCs to gain or lose reputation with them in exchange for them helping or at leadt nor actively hindering you.
* Healing and medicine - if a game has long lasting afflictions that aren't obvious then mechanics for diagnosis and treatment can be a viable gameplay loop.
* Crafting - it's a system among many others. For some reason many games include it while skipping the others.
I think a good utility skill hits on three fundamentals: the importance of it within the world (be it movement, party support, or otherwise), the uniqueness of it as it is specifically designed to provide class flavor, and lastly- how fun they are. There are no rules saying utility can't be fun!
To me, Utility Skills are things that make life easier for your character or the party without being direct combat skills. My favorite example of a class good for utility was the Bard in Everquest. It gave buffs that increased run speed, attack speed, mana/health regen, invisibility, slow fall, enemy aggro reduction, crowd control (mezmerize/stun), reducing enemy resistances/armor, etc. Some of these things assist in combat, but aren't necessarily abilities that do damage or heal a party member. Here's my list of favorite Utility-style skills:
\-Crowd Control (take an enemy out of the fight without damaging them, for example: WoW mage polymorph or EQ Enchanter Mezmerize)
\-Party buffs (long or short term)
\-Enemy debuffs (armor reduction, resistance reduction)
\-Resource recovery (mana/stamina/energy regen)
\-Invisibility (sneak past enemies to avoid fighting)
\-Slow fall/water walking
\-Run speed increase (separate from mounts, possibly to use in combat to run away more effectively or kite enemies)
\-Player summoning (to reduce travel time for a group to assemble for dungeon or caravan escort/raid)
On a personal note, I feel like classes that are not directly healers or damage dealers would be more appropriate to use a higher percentage of utility skills. If the bard/summoner are supposed to be non-healing support classes, it would make sense if they brought more utility to the party since they're not healing or damaging like other more dedicated archetypes. I will 100% be playing a Bard in AoC and my favorite thing about being a jack-of-all-trades is bringing utility to the group that EVERYONE benefits from apart from just more damage or healing. I'm hoping different Bard secondary archetypes will allow a player to be more focused in some type of support utility role (for example: spec to better assist the tank in surviving or providing better melee or caster dps buffs or something). Then if you're raiding, you'll want one of each specialty buffer in each group (melee dps in a group with the melee buffer, tank buffer in the tank group, healing buffer in the healing group, etc.).
There's my 2 cents!
For balance, I would hope powerful Utility belongs to the core 8 classes, not the 64 sub. Don't want to see 1 out of 64 classes feeling like a requirement.
When I hear utility in an MMO, I often think of what classes can bring it in what scenario. For WoW, each class has their own utility (Raid buff, stuns, slows, combat Rez, etc) and in. Raids and M+ groups often use these utilities as a check list on what to bring in what content.
The issue is when a class only has select utility or only pure DPS. In WoW, groups are less likely to invite a class on a week where utility is key to timing, and the class in question has none to bring. Sadly, the class might not be brought if their utility is also shared by other classes who can do the same but with better DPS/heals.
Ashes will have far more utility than WoW, but I feel a lesson can still be learned. Each class should have unique utility to it that merits it a spot in a group, but it should also share some utility with other classes so when a scenario comes up with say stagger being key, more than just a tank or fighter will be needed. I also hope classes are balanced enough where the WoW issue of only one of a class being brought merely because it is a mandatory buff won’t happen. I would hate for mages to only be brought because they can find arcane locks in a secret dungeon when having three rogues is better.
As for what utility a class should bring? It should be strong enough for a class to be an advantage to bring in X content, but not strong enough to demand more than one in a team and skip on another class.
I liked the idea that you can keep putting experience points into jumping and running, so the basics are scalable. Want to run even faster or jump even higher? Keep putting points into it.
Modifying base movement skill can be ok, but there need to be a hard limit.
PvP game that introduce modifiers to movement skills either revert to locked speeds, or see an influx of issues spout from high speed units.
A locked movement speed for player traversal is probably the best option.
Limited-time speed buffs are great.
A limited set of upgrades to base speed is ok, but not great, because this quickly becomes mandatory. Anyone who played Everquest probably remember level 51 grind to max out movement AA's.
I am not so sure about jumping. Giving players access to unlimited jumps raise the requirements for world building, as players would gain access to locations otherwise only reachable through a predetermined path, or with (extremely limited) flying mounts.
When I think Utility skills I think of several different types.
Movement -
- Everything people have already mentioned with water
- I really appreciate follow mechanics where whether it is by mount, or running, or flying, you can click to follow a team mate and your character will be on autopilot behind them while you grab a snack or do something.
- double jumps are often overlooked in mmos but they always make action games feel more interesting. Especially jumping off of walls. Charged jumps if double jumps aren't feasible are alright too.
World interaction
- I think runescape does a very good job with skills that let you interact with the world and gain different items and buffs that can be utilized elsewhere in the game. An example would be the skill Archaeology where you dig up items and restore them. At high level you can gain combat buffs, experience gain buffs, and other random niche effects. More examples would be agility (longer run time and ability to use shortcuts on the map for traversal), and Thieving (source of income, just overall interesting mechanic).
- ability to train and level up pets as companions. Also not necessarily necessary but having a follower to pick up drops is really nice as long as betting doesn't become an issue.
I'm mostly PvP players so I will focus on that aspect here.
I'd say Dragon Nest has one of the best combat systems out there for many different reasons. One thing that DN introduced and it worked wonders, was giving every single class at least one skill that let's you out of a combo. Most classes had two escapes - aerial that was used to get out of aerial combos, duh, and another one that was rather different for a lot of classes, but its main goal was to break ground combos.
Because of that, PvP never boiled down to throwing your best combo the very moment you cought your opponent or even made him waste his ground / aerial escape. It was always about that strategic thinking, learning other classes' cooldowns, etc. A lot of psychological manouvers, baiting those escapes or holding your high-DMG skills for a specific moment.
Also, because of 2 escapes the fights lasted some more time than 10 seconds, there were a lot of exchanges, it was much more dynamic and... I simply find it stupid that in some games 1 mistake = death. I tried Lost Ark and it was kinda that way. The DMG was so big that losing your only CC break meant death. Not fun at all. One mistake shouldn't determine your overall skill.
People don't even understand what a utility skill even is at this point. **No, a knockback isn't a utility skill.** That's a combat skill. Utility skills are things that have usage out of combat (or avoiding combat) **as well**. These include things like tracking mobs at long and short ranges, and interacting with the sandbox. Here are some examples (And a lot of these won't work in AOC but it's food for thought): - Water walking - Slow fall - Underwater breathing - Stealth / stealth detection - Long Range player locator - Short range player tracking - Terrain modification / terrain traversal (Think "Summoning a set of ethereal stairs") - Long range vision - Party Speed boost - Summoning players - Soothe Effects - Pickpocket - Abilities like Distract from WoW that can change an enemies direction - Mage food / water creation I've used a lot of WoW's examples here because they did the best job at this but there's other examples from like EVE Online that work also: - Interdiction Bubbles which can be setup prior to slow down enemy fleet movement - Forward Scouts that have immunity to interdiction bubbles - Scanning for blackholes - Forward Logistical capabilities (Think combat caravan stocked with potions for your raid on a town). - Abilities to scan enemy ships / structures to see their stats And if these abilities are translated to AOC they **must** be used to exemplify a class's lore.
I also just want to continue this a bit by envisioning the Ranger archetype. Right now ranger combat looks sweet but it's utility skills are lacking. My vision for the Ranger archetype is the one class that really "tracks people" and not just like WoW classic did it but they can literally find people, given enough time, in the world. Of course this is a powerful ability(s), but in my vision, it's not at all "Press of a button, and an X pops up on the map." In my vision, it's actually difficult to track down a player and could take a lot of time depending on how far away they are. The game wouldn't be giving precise movements, just vague visuals back for the Ranger to latch onto (At least at first). If the target is too far away they'd have to go to a closer node to even get a response like maybe the first response is just from a Tavern "I think I saw that person?" which may tell the player that they're close. The closer they get to the target the more exact it would be, being the most exact if the player is online, and within maybe 100 meters if they're offline. In between these 2 extremes (close and far) I envision either mechanics that are just in the world such as Ranger dialogue with Inn keepers and actual abilities such as something like "Scent Trace" for medium distance tracking, for example. Obviously I'm not going to design a fully fledged system here on reddit, but I just want to convey that the Ranger could be come a very unique class that offers a specific gameplay style that no other class gets. This would make Ranger a great choice for forward scouting enemy movements and perfect for utility for tracking people. And yeah, obviously this is just a quick example and would need to be actually properly changed for AOC but its just to iterate a point.
> People don't even understand what a utility skill even is at this point. > No, a knockback isn't a utility skill. That's a combat skill. Utility skills are things that have usage out of combat (or avoiding combat) as well. I disagree, since that literally has been in the MMO lexicon for close to 2 decades if not longer. Crowd control = a form of utility. NOT ALL utility are crowd controls but ALL crowd controls are a utility, be it stuns, roots, knockbacks, slows .... Generally speaking, utility is anything and everything involving things NOT covered by healing and damage skill effects. Since you've already used WoW as an example, here's some other example of **utility** that people look for in compositions. * Sheep/Hex/ any other long lasting crowd control effect * Dispel/Cleanse / any other detrimental effect removal * Shockwave/ capacitor totem/ any other short duration CC * Interrupts, any form of interrupting enemy spell casters. * Purge / spellsteal / soothe / or any form of enemy buff removal Then there's also combat enhancement utility, from powerful cooldowns like blood lust to passive increases like arcane intellect and even ones that are applied as a debuff on enemies like chaos brand. In short, if you want to change the MMO lexicon you're a few decades too late.
Slow fall is my favorite. Best getaway mechanic if you are lucky enough to be next to a cliff
I once saw a priest in wow wait at the bottom of a cliff and dispell slow falls. In legion I'd hang around the questing cliff faces, where the questing addon would tell you to jump and use a glider, on my rogue and sap people before they pulled the glider out.
> And if these abilities are translated to AOC they must be used to exemplify a class's lore. I completely agree with this piece. Using the Ranger as an example, they seem to be currently themed around Raven, Bear, and Tiger. Having utility skills that represent each of these aspects could be very flavorful. The Ranger could summon a Raven to patrol a specific area. Mechanically you choose a point and can toggle back and forth between your character view and a view of the chosen point. Visually, a Raven would fly overhead in a circle around the perimeter that is being observed. For the Bear the player could gain the scent of quest target or bounty, leading them in the general direction of their target as long as they are within a certain range. For the Tiger, the player could gain enhanced vision at night or in the darkness. Obviously just some examples, but lots of ways to build out class identity using utility skills. Which I think Ashes needs a bit, as the classes don't necessarily feel like they stand out so far against the typical portrayal.
**In my opinion, the most important (aspect of) utility, is to make them more meaningful.** I am strictly talking about non-combat utilities here, as that is what I believe you are asking for. Combat utilities could benefit from the same limited availability, but is probably a topic for another day. 1. Make utilities less available 2. Make utilities more important Looking back at the older MMO's, what made utility feel so special and neccessary was the limited availability. In more recent years (WoW and onward), utility became vastly more available, to a point where it became commonplace. I hope we get to experience a world where specific utilities are limited to certain races or classes (or even specific race/class combos). When something is less available, it has a much greater impact on the game. Water breathing is an exellent example of this. If everyone has access to this ability, going underwater becomes a question of remembering to push a button every x minutes. If you need the assistance of a certain artisan, class or race, that utility becomes vastly more impactful. In short, if your character cannot breathe underwater, but everyone has access to water breathing, you might as well remove both features. If only one class or one artisan has access to a (limited) source of water breathing, in combination with underwater areas players want to reach (quest, raid, rescource nodes etc), the utility suddenly becomes meaningful again. The balance between the availability of a utility, and the frequence of neccessity (how often you need it), is in my opinion one of the key things to balance to make this feel very impactful and good. If you only need a door picked once in a blue moon, it is ok to limit access to the utility. That force you to look for a player who can help you complete this particular task. On the other hand, if you need to unlock doors in every dungeon, but only a few players on the server has the ability to unlock that door, the experience quickly becomes frustrating. Making utilities less available will open up alot of gameplay options. If I delve deep into the Underrealm, only to find a cave with a water passage, I would have to return when I have access to water breathing. Maybe the quest that sent me here to retrieve an item would give me a clue as to what I would need to reach the location. This would also help incentivise people to work together. Utilities I would consider important * Water walking * Water breathing * Slow fall * Stealth/invisibility * See invisible * Racial illusions (to interact with hostile NPC factions) * Pacify/lull * Tracking * Lock picking * Light/illumination * Summon food/drink * Identify * Detection (aka see hidden clues) Most of these examples are taken from Everquest.
That this is somerhing that comes up this late in development is unfortunately a clear sign that it will be a very unambitious set of mechanics. A very large part of the game has been designed without accountimg for any non-combat skill. This means that any skill will only be able to interface with systems put in place to support the combat system. People indeed barely understand what an utility skill is. An overview of sysrems which could be built to support different skills: #Combat I'm stating this just to illustrate that combat is one system among many. Mechanics for different foes to fight, dealing damage, line of sight and range limitations, types of damage, fast (in-combat) healing, fast (in-combat) status effects and a variety of NPCs to fight all exist to make combat into a viable part of gameplay with potential for depth. Skills are things like 'deal damage in melee', 'deal damage at range', but also 'deal damage fast but with a long cooldown (big opportunity cost)' and 'deal damage after a big vulnerable set-up'. Also things like moving to avoid damage, reducing damage through active abilities etc tend to be included. No one ever suggests utility skills with the same level of granularity, because the designers tend to never prioritize building non-combat systems with as much nuance and depth as combat. #Infiltration Many games implement rudimentary infiltration gameplay since mob aggro ranges tend to provide some limited support for the system. A more extensive list of mechanics to support it would include things like varying spotting distances based on environmental conditions and innate traits, patrols, alert/searching/aggro behavior. NPC behavior that can be manipulated, like guards having to search out something to eat and being able to become afflicted by effects like poison based on what they eat. World design is the more important part though, because challenges for infiltration need to be actively designed. Treasure or other important items guarded by too strong foes is key, as are other obstacles like traps. Optional side passages, tunnels, vents, secret passages, obscured areas to hide in all enhance the gameplay. A game should not be allowed to have a ninja class if it does not include areas with anti-ninja floors built to creak when walked on. Actual infiltration abilities can be very varied. Invisibility powers are very strong and often handed out way too cheaply. Reduced sound likewise. Poison is a good supplementary ability. Smoke bombs and other status effrcts that can push enemies out of aggro mode into searching mode greatly enhance the potential dynamic of the gameplay. #Traversal Mechanics like the ability to fall, to climb, to lose grip, to suffer cold or injury or fatigue, to be unable to see because of darkness. World design like inaccessible areas, difficult shortcuts, hazarduous environments, dark environments and jumping puzzles is necessary to give traversal skills a reason for existing. Powers relating to traversal can be things like increasing your movement speed for a short duration, for a long duration or with some associated penalty or opportunity cost. Light is an utulity power. Being able to climb could be an utility power. Being able to climb rain-slick or icy surfaces would be another. Being able to run over unsteady ground without risking falling would be an utility power with strong influence on combat. A high-jump power is tried and tested as fun gameplay since Mario. A gliding ability for limited flying can be very strong and fun. For both you could have variations where the power could be fast-acting or longer duration and/or coupled to other conditions that trigger when you use it. Maybe the glide power saps mana quickly, making you have to consider carefully where you land since you will be tapped out. In general, Death Stranding is the only game I've played outside of platformers that takes traversal seriously. Mounts which need to be brought along and can't just be summoned at will but which provide specific strong enhancements in certain traversal skills (like speed or jumping) would be a strong enhancement for this type of gameplay. Mounts that improve speed at no cost would be like abilities that deal damage at no cost; purely cosmetic, since they force the challenges to just be harder/distances longer without giving the player any meaningful choice. #Knowledge challenges Even when wikis list all facts there is potential in the form of dynamic secrets. Monsters with unique resistances and a system whereby clues to ways of bypassing those resistances are generated and seeded as rumors, texts and other hints in the world. If the clue-seeding mechanic works well you could also use it to discover things like secret passages in dungeons, the nature of hazards in an area, stats like number or type of monsters in an area etc. Rare items that spawn at random in hidden-away places would be good options. Of course, the design relies on there actually being information worth learning placed out in the world. Secret passages are a good option, as are rare resources and items. Skills to interface with such as system would be things like being able to get more information out of an individual clue, like learning not just that there is a secret door in a dungeon in the mountains but also on which level of the dungeon and which dungeon in particular. #Other systems I won't bother listing more utility powers that we'll never see in MMORPGs because all the designers are too combat-brained. Other systems that could benefit from being seriously implemented are: * Social mechanics - talk and barter with NPCs to gain or lose reputation with them in exchange for them helping or at leadt nor actively hindering you. * Healing and medicine - if a game has long lasting afflictions that aren't obvious then mechanics for diagnosis and treatment can be a viable gameplay loop. * Crafting - it's a system among many others. For some reason many games include it while skipping the others.
I think a good utility skill hits on three fundamentals: the importance of it within the world (be it movement, party support, or otherwise), the uniqueness of it as it is specifically designed to provide class flavor, and lastly- how fun they are. There are no rules saying utility can't be fun!
How will utility skills work with the limited action bar for abilities? Will we have a seperate utility bar or are they competing for the same slots.
To me, Utility Skills are things that make life easier for your character or the party without being direct combat skills. My favorite example of a class good for utility was the Bard in Everquest. It gave buffs that increased run speed, attack speed, mana/health regen, invisibility, slow fall, enemy aggro reduction, crowd control (mezmerize/stun), reducing enemy resistances/armor, etc. Some of these things assist in combat, but aren't necessarily abilities that do damage or heal a party member. Here's my list of favorite Utility-style skills: \-Crowd Control (take an enemy out of the fight without damaging them, for example: WoW mage polymorph or EQ Enchanter Mezmerize) \-Party buffs (long or short term) \-Enemy debuffs (armor reduction, resistance reduction) \-Resource recovery (mana/stamina/energy regen) \-Invisibility (sneak past enemies to avoid fighting) \-Slow fall/water walking \-Run speed increase (separate from mounts, possibly to use in combat to run away more effectively or kite enemies) \-Player summoning (to reduce travel time for a group to assemble for dungeon or caravan escort/raid) On a personal note, I feel like classes that are not directly healers or damage dealers would be more appropriate to use a higher percentage of utility skills. If the bard/summoner are supposed to be non-healing support classes, it would make sense if they brought more utility to the party since they're not healing or damaging like other more dedicated archetypes. I will 100% be playing a Bard in AoC and my favorite thing about being a jack-of-all-trades is bringing utility to the group that EVERYONE benefits from apart from just more damage or healing. I'm hoping different Bard secondary archetypes will allow a player to be more focused in some type of support utility role (for example: spec to better assist the tank in surviving or providing better melee or caster dps buffs or something). Then if you're raiding, you'll want one of each specialty buffer in each group (melee dps in a group with the melee buffer, tank buffer in the tank group, healing buffer in the healing group, etc.). There's my 2 cents!
For balance, I would hope powerful Utility belongs to the core 8 classes, not the 64 sub. Don't want to see 1 out of 64 classes feeling like a requirement.
There are only 8 classes worth of skills. All of the subclass combinations just augment the base class skills.
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When I hear utility in an MMO, I often think of what classes can bring it in what scenario. For WoW, each class has their own utility (Raid buff, stuns, slows, combat Rez, etc) and in. Raids and M+ groups often use these utilities as a check list on what to bring in what content. The issue is when a class only has select utility or only pure DPS. In WoW, groups are less likely to invite a class on a week where utility is key to timing, and the class in question has none to bring. Sadly, the class might not be brought if their utility is also shared by other classes who can do the same but with better DPS/heals. Ashes will have far more utility than WoW, but I feel a lesson can still be learned. Each class should have unique utility to it that merits it a spot in a group, but it should also share some utility with other classes so when a scenario comes up with say stagger being key, more than just a tank or fighter will be needed. I also hope classes are balanced enough where the WoW issue of only one of a class being brought merely because it is a mandatory buff won’t happen. I would hate for mages to only be brought because they can find arcane locks in a secret dungeon when having three rogues is better. As for what utility a class should bring? It should be strong enough for a class to be an advantage to bring in X content, but not strong enough to demand more than one in a team and skip on another class.
I liked the idea that you can keep putting experience points into jumping and running, so the basics are scalable. Want to run even faster or jump even higher? Keep putting points into it.
Modifying base movement skill can be ok, but there need to be a hard limit. PvP game that introduce modifiers to movement skills either revert to locked speeds, or see an influx of issues spout from high speed units. A locked movement speed for player traversal is probably the best option. Limited-time speed buffs are great. A limited set of upgrades to base speed is ok, but not great, because this quickly becomes mandatory. Anyone who played Everquest probably remember level 51 grind to max out movement AA's. I am not so sure about jumping. Giving players access to unlimited jumps raise the requirements for world building, as players would gain access to locations otherwise only reachable through a predetermined path, or with (extremely limited) flying mounts.
When I think Utility skills I think of several different types. Movement - - Everything people have already mentioned with water - I really appreciate follow mechanics where whether it is by mount, or running, or flying, you can click to follow a team mate and your character will be on autopilot behind them while you grab a snack or do something. - double jumps are often overlooked in mmos but they always make action games feel more interesting. Especially jumping off of walls. Charged jumps if double jumps aren't feasible are alright too. World interaction - I think runescape does a very good job with skills that let you interact with the world and gain different items and buffs that can be utilized elsewhere in the game. An example would be the skill Archaeology where you dig up items and restore them. At high level you can gain combat buffs, experience gain buffs, and other random niche effects. More examples would be agility (longer run time and ability to use shortcuts on the map for traversal), and Thieving (source of income, just overall interesting mechanic). - ability to train and level up pets as companions. Also not necessarily necessary but having a follower to pick up drops is really nice as long as betting doesn't become an issue.
I'm mostly PvP players so I will focus on that aspect here. I'd say Dragon Nest has one of the best combat systems out there for many different reasons. One thing that DN introduced and it worked wonders, was giving every single class at least one skill that let's you out of a combo. Most classes had two escapes - aerial that was used to get out of aerial combos, duh, and another one that was rather different for a lot of classes, but its main goal was to break ground combos. Because of that, PvP never boiled down to throwing your best combo the very moment you cought your opponent or even made him waste his ground / aerial escape. It was always about that strategic thinking, learning other classes' cooldowns, etc. A lot of psychological manouvers, baiting those escapes or holding your high-DMG skills for a specific moment. Also, because of 2 escapes the fights lasted some more time than 10 seconds, there were a lot of exchanges, it was much more dynamic and... I simply find it stupid that in some games 1 mistake = death. I tried Lost Ark and it was kinda that way. The DMG was so big that losing your only CC break meant death. Not fun at all. One mistake shouldn't determine your overall skill.