Template:Mobility

Revamped Alpha-1 Mage Fireball ability.

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. – Tradd Thompson

• The revamped combat system features split-body animations, where the character's upper body can be locked by weapon attack animations while the lower body is free to continue moving.

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. – 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.
  • Movement speed can decrease significantly depending on the type of ability.
  • Weapon weight can also affect mobility.
  • Skills with the greatest power may require the caster to remain stationary while channeling them. This is a risk vs. reward mechanic.

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. – Steven Sharif

• Ranged archetypes will have gap openers to counter gap closers from archetypes like the Fighter.

That's the cat-and-mouse of these abilities. Like we've seen with the Ranger, they have a backflip, they have their Airdrop [sic] ability. The Mage has teleportation. There are going to be abilities that are tit-for-tat; and managing the resource of those abilities and the timing of when you use them to either correlate to your opponent's use of those things, or to save them for yourself when you want to get away, that's part of what makes the engagements dynamic and different each time. – Steven Sharif

• Unreal Engine 5 has enabled improved forms of locomotion, such as crouching, tilting and mantling.
  • Crouching may or may not be in the game.

• The ability to prone is not be in the game.

• Moving backward will likely not affect block and parry.

• Player movement speed during combat is balanced for both PvE and PvP.

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. – Steven Sharif

• Melee archetypes will offer various mobility and CC counters against ranged archetypes, such as the Ranger.

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. – 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. – Steven Sharif

Skill	Icon	Primary	Description
Air Strike		Ranger	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Blink		Mage	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Blitz		Fighter	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Call of the Wild		Ranger	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Caravan Trail Speed Bonus		Caravan	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Exert		Fighter	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Form Of Celerity		Fighter	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Form Of Fluidity		Fighter	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Leap Strike		Fighter	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Lunging Assault		Fighter	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Recharging Lunging Assault		Fighter	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Shield Assault		Tank	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Speed Boost		Caravan	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Unstoppable Exert		Fighter	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Whirlwind		Fighter	Template:formatskillorupgrade
Wings of Salvation		Cleric	Template:formatskillorupgrade