What’s next?!
MULTIPLAYER
If you've ever been playing Diablo, Path of Exile, or any of the other great ARPGs in a party with your friends, and had a thought like, this could be more fun and interesting if we actually had to help each other, perhaps a bit more like an MMO-style 5-person dungeon, like World of Warcraft's, then stick around because that was the exact goal and inspiration for Ash & Rust. If you're not sure what I mean, let me try to convince and entice you to a new experience that may capture and satisfy you like never before.
For me, the biggest problem with partying up in Diablo-like ARPGs, is that the experience always seems to devolve into a one-button zoom-fest. Generally the person with the most meta or strongest build is clearing the entire screen with one button and then zooming off to the next pack of enemies, and everyone else is chasing behind them trying to help. Sometimes, someone will get clipped by an offscreen projectile and die, or you'll all run into a god-rolled-affix enemy pack that instantly wipes your whole party, but mostly, everyone is running as fast as they can exploding the whole screen, collecting any relevant loot, and then repeating. This experience definitely has its zen-like benefits and plenty of dopamine, but for my friends and I, it usually lead us to either re-rolling new characters, changing games, or putting artificial constraints on ourselves, like "you can't directly damage any enemy" (so everyone had to build thorns or minions, etc).
So...how do we turn that experience into the slower, role-based party experience (tank/healer/dps/etc) of an MMO dungeon while still granting the combat and deep customization of a top-down ARPG?
Well, here’s how Ash & Rust is trying it:
Step 1) Rein in player damage multipliers and tune enemy defenses so that there is no one-button screen clearing. Having enemies live longer solves the majority of issues.
Step 2) Grant enemies predictable but unavoidable damage abilities. This allows strategic combat to shine. A dodge-roll can't be all a player needs to avoid every enemy attack and control the battlefield. If you've ever Ice-Blocked a critical enemy attack in World of Warcraft, or Zhonya'd the enemy Vi or Lee Sin's ultimate in League of Legends, you'll know how incredibly satisfying it is to incorporate more defensive tools into gameplay.
Step 3) Since you can’t instantly kill enemies because of Step 1), and you can’t avoid every enemy attack because of Step 2), you’ll need tools to mitigate enemy damage. So we provide an arsenal of abilities and augments that you wouldn’t generally find in an ARPG. This allows other roles to shine, such as Healers to restore your health or provide shields, Supports to crowd control and debuff enemies, and Tanks to round up and keep enemies focused on them.
Step 4) Since the game is still a class-less ARPG with deep customization, you and your friends will have complete power over how your roles are defined. For example, you could all do hybrid builds that deal damage and also have self-mitigation tools. Or you could highly specialize, with one person covering all the healing needs, while another provides full support and crowd control, etc. The gameplay and roles of your party are completely up to the players.
Step 5) Not everyone has a party of friends who love this type of game and are ready to dive in with you. So I’ve been developing a Matchmaking system that will try to find you perfect party members and potentially life-long friends! When you first fire up multiplayer, you’ll have the option to take a quiz about yourself. I’ll use those results to match you with like-minded players and hopefully help you develop great friendships.
Step 6) Along with the release of Multiplayer will come a new game mode designed for it. Instead of proceeding through the current campaign and then unlocking end-game activities, the new game mode will allow players to choose a role archetype from the start, such as Tank, Damage, Healer, etc (you’re not locked to this role, it will just start you off with a bunch of relevant starter-items and augments that allow you to fulfill that role). Then the game will generate a series of new missions, each with their own challenges and rewards, that will require you and your party to work together to conquer them. You’ll level up as you progress through the tiers of missions, which of course will allow you to expand your build and your party’s synergies. You can do these as stand-alone sessions sort of like a MOBA experience, or you can keep pushing your characters as high as possible and climb the leaderboards.
Finally, along with the multiplayer implementation, I’ll be continuing to improve the base of the game, including clearer environment navigation, better auto-targeting for Gamepad/controller, bug fixes and performance issues, more enemies, new ability vfx, new gear outfit visuals, new items and augments, and more!
If this vision sounds promising to you, please consider spreading the word and/or supporting by buying the game! Thank you to everyone who has played thus far and for all the great feedback!
-Shai