Best Of

The Holidays are here! And what better way to ring in the season of giving than by complaining about misgivings!

Specifically addressing a part of the response of the last poster, in terms of literal Mis-givings, games giving out stuff they shouldn't.

Intrepid, as usual I'm gonna rant about Throne and Liberty but know that this is actually 'feedback' on why my group doesn't like your Harbinger Event.

TL's new "Abyss Territory Event" (h.r.t. referred to as just 'Starfall' for my own sanity, forgive me) is a relatively fun event with some Economic Design hiccups that if they happen in AoC will be way worse.

Problem #1 - Skill-less Random Benefit
To receive a piece of Epic Tier III gear from a Starfall, a player needs to be there early, and tag every mob they can (not first tag, just do anything to them basically). Those mobs then die, and once you have tagged 50 mobs that die, you can go open a chest that drops some fairly random loot (there might be a minimum damage contribution or something required, but I'm not 'weak enough' to experience this). Since these mobs are just stat-puffed versions of the same mobs in the dungeon, I wouldn't expect it to be too difficult to manage the tagging part.

Note that someone with the power to actually kill these mobs needs to be there, of course. Those people get the mob drops. The Tag-Alongs don't need to get any of these to get the free T3 gear piece. If you die, you start the count over. The problem here is not that everyone can get 2 Pieces of T3 gear per day with nearly no actual ability to fight, it's that mostly, what they get seems to be random, and that's bad because it's Homogenous Opportunity, on a faucet controlled by number of Attendees, with zero downward pressure. The more people show up, the easier it is for everyone to get something, the more loot is generated.

This might seem good, if more people show up, then more people 'need loot', right? But what happens when everyone needs 'something' but not 'a specific thing' is that 'everyone wants to sell what they get', leading to @drclaw's complaint . "everything drops like candy, but it's hard to actually sell it". For a group like mine, this is not an issue at all. We 'sell internally', using the Auction House to move things from one guild Member to another, perfect easy advance. For Casual players, it doesn't help. We 'ignore them'. There is no 'I don't really like Starfall in this Dungeon so I will earn money to buy drops from people who do'. There's just 'go, get stuff, if it is the right stuff for someone, make sure it gets to them, ignore other players'.

Problem #2 - Overflow Growth (sorta like Snowballing but not really)
Starfall has a purpose, and a Noble one. Revitalize dungeons that are fun but no longer relevant with temporary status of drops. My group is loving this. We go to Starfall 'late' into the hour, when fewer people are there. This means that we get First Tag on the mobs, which means we get challenge (somewhat, a coordinated effort can still Trio a small room without being in any real danger, but it's not trivial) and drops. It's fun. The drops are almost all if not entirely Tier 2. They're not entirely random. Things are great again! Wonderful even... for us.

But 'the Casuals', oh, their suffering. If I can just wait until a specific primetime window to get Tier 2 Gear pieces why do I even need to buy them from anyone 'weaker'? Yeah, they're probably broke. You'd think maybe I would need to get it from them for the long-ago-mentioned 'I don't like or can't risk this area' reason. That part is actually working a little bit. But it's the same stopgap problem. The more I get, the stronger I am, the easier it is to get. This is good. But 'the things the Casuals can get' have even less value relative to time spent. Almost unavoidable really, but the relatively high droprates are definitely contributing to this, and while this sorts itself out in TL, it will not do the same in Ashes.

Problem #3 - Power Pacing (similar to Power Creep but again not really)
Another great part of this therefore (for us) is that a lot of the Tier 3 Lithographs end up being relatively cheap now. The only relatively bad part of this is again that 'the casuals' don't think the same thing when they hear 'cheap' (but they should). The issue if anything is the removal of the Economic Drag force. Top players or players who are able to easily do what we do in Starfall rapidly outpace anyone who cannot, meaning that competition options within other content dry up for those 'Casuals' incredibly quickly.

These are not directly problems in TL as yet. Progression in that game does not require competitive capability, and while we ofc always lament the loss of PvP activities due to snowballing and 'erasure of level brackets', at least it might get solved someday, the game has the structure to make it possible.

We see no signs of that structure anywhere in Ashes of Creation yet. We see only structures that don't seem to take these issues into account the way TL does, sometimes turning what is at worst an uphill struggle and at best 'just a few months of waiting until some sort of reasonable fix', into a nearly-valid reason for even players like us to want to write off the PvP aspects of the game.

And so this rant is the usual request to address this somehow and maybe do something about it before you get too much further, because your current structure doesn't look like it would even get near an Economy that works for anyone other than the top 2% of players, if the Harbinger Event is meant to be an example of the type of thing we should expect from PvP incentive structures.

So, in case unclear:

1. Harbinger Chests are a Lottery for stronger players and a death sentence for Casuals via Snowballing
2. Corrupted Drops being able to be turned into other materials and 'grinded up to Legendary' is Economic Overflow Growth of the absolute worst kind
3. The obvious lack of real challenge other than PvP on the bosses shown so far for this event is a Power Pacing nightmare

These things work Economically in other games because of Time-Clamped Progression (TL, BDO), Stat-Clamped Competition (GW2, FF11), and/or player-goal Isolation (Neverwinter, ESO).

tl;dr Opinion - Even if it looks like you're just 'unburdening the PvP-focused players' by making it so that they don't have to care about the details of what drops they are getting/can get their dopamine hits, you're setting yourself up for a ton more work.

I also have the game start issue on the second click to play.

spec:
Ubuntu 24.04
GPU: Radeon RX 7900 XT
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
Proton Version: GE 10-26/10.0-3/Experimental/Hotfix

I have been barking up this tree for years now with no official answer.

At best I can say they have improved year over year.

There have been some improvements even from last phase to early access or over the last three to four months.

On the worst day it looks like Concorde western studio garbage or just flat-out meth heads roaming verra.

Just keep the facts in mind.

It was way worst. It has gotten better. There is a lot of room to improve. I don't think they want to force everyone to play ugly characters like Concord did. No one is going to keep buying cosmetics to dress up ugly or overweight characters.

Capitalism works or the game fails.

IMO, using different key binds for Tab Target(TT) mode and Action Combat(AC) should not be required if possible. Currently, you cannot bind the same key to Guard for TT and AC. I would like the guard key bind for both modes to be on the right mouse button. I think that many other people would as well.

In TT, the right mouse button is used to have your character move in the direction that you are pressing (WASD). This function could be assigned to the left mouse button, but that button is used to free look around without moving your character. Neither of the mouse button functions in TT can be assigned to other keys.

If players could choose to rebind all of the above options freely, then block could be allowed on the same key in both TT and AC. If I had this option, I would set the left mouse button to allow me to guide my character in TT (the function that is currently permanently on the right mouse button in TT); and, set holding the middle mouse button down as the way to freelook (the same function that is currently on the left mouse button in TT).

A possibly slightly easier way to program the above (I am not a developer and I'm guessing at this) could be to set the freelook option as a key bind, provide a checkbox to move the function for the right mouse button to the left button in TT, and allow both guard modes to use the same key.

Hello there o/

So i've been playing MMORPGs for a very long time now, and i just tried the alpha II for Ashes and there are some thoughts that i'd like to discuss with people. Maybe i am just the weird one here so, i'll try and get some feedback from you guys on this.

DISCLAIMER: English isn't my first language (Hello from Germany o/) and also, i tend to write looooong texts. Be prepared.

I get the feeling that the World is pretty dead. And i don't mean, its empty. As more players join and more nodes get activated and expanded, the, admittedly, very open and currently empty feeling maps, will fill out, plus it's alpha II and who knows what Steven and his crew are cooking backstage. I mean, the World feels as if there is no life happening there outside of the players.

Remember, this World is supposed to have multiple societys. Societies are not sustained by adventurers and mercenaries like us. They exist because of the labour of farmers, miners, administrators, governments and so on and so on. Races build cultures, lore, legacy, traditions, cuisine and so on and so on. Yet it feels like the races have no real identity in AoC so far.

I made a dwarf, i choose the traditionalist faction. I don't know anything about the dwarfs outside the text blurb, which basicly tells me nothing usefull, and that there are two factions, that seem to be entirely irrelevant as of today. They don't get brought back up again ever. I made it to Bonfire, there are barely any named NPCs, they don't react to you outside of a single text bubble with three words in it and most of them are, currently, identical looking.

I hate bringing this up as a comparison but remember how even the most insignificant NPC in WoW had a little voice line when you interacted with them? Sure the classic peon sounds were a side thing and the NPC was most likely useless but it felt like he belonged there and had some sort of cultural identity and purpose for being there. The npcs in Bonfire could have been replaced with dialog dispensers and the camp would essential feel the same. It felt like live in ashenvale would continue even when you were no longer present. I don't get that feeling from AoC so far.

Imo, the World needs to live, even when no player interacts with it. There is life happening around you, even though you don't have an active part in it. This is currently missing entirely from the game and i'm wondering if the focus on having everything player run is a problem here. A part of the old MMO's was always also some random NPCs that had some funny quest, some random voice line or some part in some story to play that made them memorable. Aiming for a world that is by majority run by the players, i feel, is going to rob us of these moments.

So what is the solution here? Imo, the factions and cultures of the world, need to interact with the world and the nodes in it outside of what the players do. Maybe some nodes can ally themselves with, say the dwarfs, and thereby increase their influence on the world. This is turn, to borrow a mechanic from FFXI, would allow npc traders in the dwarfen main city to trade specialty items from the zone the node is in, for as long as the noce or the wider area is controlled by a dwarfen allied guild / mayor, whatever.

Maybe small bands of diplomats from the factions roam the land, traveling from node to node to trade, bring limited quests with them, maybe offer rare wares or something.

Imagine some drunk wondering dwarf bard that just walks around in the world stumbeling from tavern to tavern to sing and tell tales and maybe, if you are a bard of sufficient renown, teaches you something, some Bard only emote for example. Or if he likes you, he can give you some rare crafting part for a really good bard weapon, thereby pushing you to have a reasson to gather up other materials and seek a skill craftsman who can finish your bardic super lute.

The lack of these kinds of non-player interactions makes the world feel dead, in turn harming the need for immersion. The aim is supposed to be role playing as an inhabitant of a setting or world. If the world feels dead, it becomes a glorified lobby for combat encounters instead of a places you would want to live in, fill a role and participate in the world and its fate.

tldr; Imo the World feels not alive enough because of lack of world building and establishing npcs and live outside of player interaction. idk if this is just an alpha II thing but it feels like the design structure or design vision of AoC will limit this aspect severly and i fear that this will, in the long run, severly hurt immersion and the feeling of "home" a MMO requires in ordner to maintain long term engagement for players.

What do you guys think about this? Do you think i worry to much or feel this is not neccesary? If so, why not?