What’s a major system that we will be seeing a lot of in Ashes of Creation? AUGMENTS! This is the game’s main class customization feature and is more than just a dual class system. This can spiral into something that cannot be controllable if it’s not kept in check.
So, what exactly are AUGMENTS?
They may seem similar to us as to where we have seen them in similar MMO game before Ashes of Creation. However, what were getting from Ashes in Creation is going to be more complicated and refined. To explain it more thoroughly, we would have to use class examples. Let’s begin.
The Mage: each of their classes have four schools that they deal with. Fire, Frost, Lightning, and Teleportation. This means that when you take Mages as your secondary class, it allows you to augment one of your abilities with one of those aforementioned schools that also amplifies it’s effect. Each of the secondary archetypes have these four schools for each of the main classes’ primary abilities. Meaning, each class has 20 abilities resulting in 560 abilities that comes with unique effects.
Augment Balance
What is the fun in Ashes of Creations’ Augment system you ask? Everything! But what worries most of us is that even at 10 primary abilities for each class that still gives Intrepid Studios 280 unique spell effects for them to balance for each secondary archetype. Furthermore, there are certain combos like augmenting Frost with the Charge would completely be useless for all types of gameplay! Nobody wants a waste of huge potential and development time.
Though, theory has it that classes may share schools of magic with other classes like what they’ve been doing in World of Warcraft. Shadow Priests and Warlocks both use Shadow as their primary source of damage. Meaning, they share certain unique gear upgrades relating on how they deal their damage.
There may be a chance that in Ashes of Creation, we may see other classes use the schools of the Mages provide like the mentioned school of Lighting and etcetera as part of their class as well as the Mages. Intrepid did confirm that Clerics will be using death magic and therefore, have a death school to offer in their augments. Another that could provide such? The Summoner ability. They could summon different undead beings as having summoner as your primary and Cleric as your secondary will turn you into a Necromancer!
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VIDEO CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
00:32 What Are Augments?
02:36 Balance
05:16 Comparison with Other MMOs
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