Best Of
Re: Instanced Content Should Not Offer Power Gains
Power already exists in instanced PvP and as a direct result of instanced PvP. Clearly if that fundamental gameplay mechanic was a deal breaker for you, you’d already be long gone, so what’s the deal? What are you actually complaining about??
Im going to correct your ignorance on sieges only once. As of now, castle sieges are PvX, the player power comes from one of the three raid bosses (PvE). The political power of entire alliance comes from sieges, but that system isn’t even complete.
Read the wiki a little more carefully if you bothered at all.
And I’ve already voiced my preference for castles being open world way before you showed up on the forums.
Can you start by reading my posts accurately before you harp on someone not reading the wiki? You've misread posts multiple times now which make trying to discuss anything with you frustrating, to put it lightly. (Not helped by your lack of clarity, apparent misunderstanding of the systems as they're designed, along with not knowing what 'instanced' means in the context of Ashes of Creation.)
Castle seiges (which I've never even mentioned anywhere in this thread) are objective-based PvP events, which you ought to know considering you took part in one. The existence of an objective does not negate that it's a PvP event. The only time it's a PvX encounter is the first capture, an I have no doubt it's not going to be remotely considered 'top-end' bosses considering it's designed for the express purpose of being cleared out to promote player politicking.
Also, instanced content is planned there too already.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Castle_sieges
There may be instanced locations within otherwise open-world castle and node sieges, where specific groups can participate in small, short duration objective-based battles that will affect the overall outcome of the siege.[12]
It was previously stated that castle sieges may or may not be (entirely) instanced in the final game.[13]
Alpha-1 castle sieges occurred in an open-world zone that was accessible via a NPC teleporter.[14][15][13][16]
Dungeons being open but the final boss encounters being instanced to allow for more finely-tuned combat encounters falls entirely in line with how the PvP events are being handled. ' Fight all the way here but only one group/guild/whatever can take their shot at the boss.' Open world to a point, and then they can really crank up the difficulty where no zerging of a boss can happen.
The point of instancing pieces of content is so Intrepid can design around a set amount of participants. This is necessary in order to create high-end, highly demanding PvE encounters that only 1% of players will ever clear. They can't design a challenge without knowing how many people will be running around in the combat space. If the answer is "however many want to run in there" then the encounter has to be dumbed down to facilitate a clear in the face of PvP.
It's the same reason Node Seiges are set to be instanced (aka restricted participation), scheduled PvP events during which the node essentially is turned off until it's successfully defended, if it's successfully defended. Restricting non-registered players effectively means the seige happens in its own little world until the event concludes. If they don't have that common-sense restriction, then they'll find node sieges getting extremely chaotic under influence of people 'joining' just to troll objectives while there's nothing that can be done about them.
Caeryl
1
Re: Instanced Content Should Not Offer Power Gains
Instanced content can be used to unlock archetype skills and other character strengthening features, except for XP. Meaning they should be a one off, you are high enough to unlock that skill, you go with your groups help to complete a challenging raid at the end of the instanced dungeon and you are done.
You cannot hide inside instanced content and expect to Lv up.
Another reward could be certain parts needed for certain crafts. That means that players still need to face the challenges of the open world to complete 100% of the crafted items, and the economy is protected and totally unaffected.
Another idea is a mix with L2s Hero system. Here it is:
If Intrepid chooses to lift the strongest player from every class(64) to a higher status as part of a periodic competotion design, then these players, heroes champions, demigods whatever the title end up being, may be required to complete certain quests, going through challenging instanced content to unlock unique weapons, or small skill lines, or armor.
For a very small percentage of players, there is a whole new group/raid size gameplay available tied to those heroes and their supporters.
The simpliest solution is the cosmetic/title rewards that has been mentioned by many ppl, many times.
There is room for choreographed content in the form of instanced challenges, which gives the devs to create great looking areas and mechanisms (who may require appropriate non combat archetype skills, giving further depth to CERTAIN archetypes) but certain people seem hellbend on arguing about pedantic terms, numbers and "data".
And then there are those that refuse to understand that instanced character progress and item rewards hurt the open world design of player driven conflict and economy, because they are based to brainless faction wars (kill this guy because you are with faction red and he is with faction blue) and boring Vendor NPC daily content, with an AH as a garbage bin to throw your endless loot for peanuts in an effort to make some gold.
Good job forum.
You cannot hide inside instanced content and expect to Lv up.
Another reward could be certain parts needed for certain crafts. That means that players still need to face the challenges of the open world to complete 100% of the crafted items, and the economy is protected and totally unaffected.
Another idea is a mix with L2s Hero system. Here it is:
If Intrepid chooses to lift the strongest player from every class(64) to a higher status as part of a periodic competotion design, then these players, heroes champions, demigods whatever the title end up being, may be required to complete certain quests, going through challenging instanced content to unlock unique weapons, or small skill lines, or armor.
For a very small percentage of players, there is a whole new group/raid size gameplay available tied to those heroes and their supporters.
The simpliest solution is the cosmetic/title rewards that has been mentioned by many ppl, many times.
There is room for choreographed content in the form of instanced challenges, which gives the devs to create great looking areas and mechanisms (who may require appropriate non combat archetype skills, giving further depth to CERTAIN archetypes) but certain people seem hellbend on arguing about pedantic terms, numbers and "data".
And then there are those that refuse to understand that instanced character progress and item rewards hurt the open world design of player driven conflict and economy, because they are based to brainless faction wars (kill this guy because you are with faction red and he is with faction blue) and boring Vendor NPC daily content, with an AH as a garbage bin to throw your endless loot for peanuts in an effort to make some gold.
Good job forum.
Re: Steven's response to secondary archetypes
"Class fantasy" has always been in the design for Secondary Archetypes.I think the class fantasy concept development is even more likely to be useful to them now.
We know some of the differences for Necromancer and Shaman.
We don't know the "class fantasy" differences for Templar and Highsword - but Steven and the devs do.
Dygz
1
Re: Monthly Live Stream Recap
@SkylarckTheBotanist "• Content Creator Program is still open but will be closing in the near future." I have applied for it but have not heard any response. Its been months.
Unfortunately that is all the information we have, Margaret said that they are waiting to hire the “Content Creator Community Manager” position before moving on to the next steps of the Content Creator Program, which may be after the launch of Phase 1 of A2
Re: Loot System Changes
Players can also to be kicked out from the group before the looting starts.
That is not a good thing
A guild need to fill to manage a raid.
They invite a couple of players, just to kick them before loot starts to ensure the guild gets the loot.
Or any raidleader really who want to make sure his competition is gone before the loot, so he kicks everyone who might need on the same drops.
don't group with that guild then ;3
Thank you for demonstrating the point. These sort of loot systems discourage players from assisting each other because the game enables very easy, unpunished ways for the group lead to screw people over.
you are only thinking about the immediate consequences, not future ones. A system like that promotes good behavior. this isn't a game where you will be running instances 24/7 and using cross server queues to go into them and never see the same person again (or be stuck with them). you can literally choose who you play with. play wit the good people. your actions have consequences. ruin your reputation in a server and you are doomed.
I’m thinking of the overall social atmosphere the game will create if these sort of loot systems are the norm. It’s not about immediate consequences, it’s about how players will not be encouraged or want to cooperate with others because the systems at play are designed to not reward them.
You are vastly overestimating how much influence a reputation will have when the large guilds most likely to abuse these systems are already set up to have immense influence over castles/nodes/etc. Most of the community will just shrug and tell slighted players the same thing: ‘well, that’s on you for not picking a group better’ as if it were their fault some people decided to be an ass.
As for the other portion of your post, if 1000 people show up to nuke a lvl25 dragon, I would first expect the dragon to scale up significantly so it doesn’t just fall over like a sack of flour.
Secondly, many games use some kind of metric to grant looting rights in the event of zerging like that. Whether that’s a fixed amount of damage done, time engaged with the boss, average threat held, healing done, damage mitigated, buffs contributed etc, would be up to the devs, but contributors to a fight should all be rewarded in some way even if it’s only crafting materials they’ll then have to take to a node and craftsperson to turn into something actually useful.
again, different game. the game promotes not doing shitty things like that to other people because of the social consequences. it promotes good behaviour. you do that to most people who play ow pvx games and you get perma camped out in the open world, for example. cant do that when you are in instance queues 24/7.
2nd point. raid wont scale depending amount of players., confirmed by steven. all contributors shouldn't be rewarded. as you said, other games do that, not ashes. not everybody is a winner here ;3
Social consequences should exist in addition to gameplay mechanics that minimize abuse potential rather that enable it. They are not a replacement for mindful reward systems, if they even work at all, which they're definitely not going to when that big toxic guild owns a castle or node. Good luck blacklisting the Patron Guild of the economic node.
Also, link the source for that change in raid approach, because it would be, in no uncertain terms, extremely idiotic to not have a scale-up mechanic on open world bosses.
Not a single person here is after an easy street farming experience, but everyone deserves to be rewards for taking on and defeating challenging content at risk of their time, gear degradation, PvP and PvE death penalties. I'm in full favor of instituting merit requirements to get looting rights as I said before, but that should be handled by the game, not by other players.
Players have proven many a time that they cannot responsibly handle those player-controlled loot systems.
Caeryl
4
Re: Menacing Melody is WAY too over-powered
10% of 10 is 1.10% is 10%
10% of 1000 is 100.
Since the cost of running the melody is the same, the actual value of it is based on how much damage you are already doing. However, the thing to keep in mind is that even this isn't necessarily true - if you are against an encounter that you already have enough DPS present to defeat, all that melody does is save a little bit of time - and it will be less time saved than the run speed boost.
Again, there are indeed times when that 10% damage boost will be clutch. There are also, however, many times when it won't be.
Also everything have a counter. We just don't know what that is. All the base classes have not even dropped. I also think clerics and Bards will be the first targets in every encounter.
Re: Menacing Melody is WAY too over-powered
10% of 10 is 1.10% is 10%
10% of 1000 is 100.
Since the cost of running the melody is the same, the actual value of it is based on how much damage you are already doing. However, the thing to keep in mind is that even this isn't necessarily true - if you are against an encounter that you already have enough DPS present to defeat, all that melody does is save a little bit of time - and it will be less time saved than the run speed boost.
Again, there are indeed times when that 10% damage boost will be clutch. There are also, however, many times when it won't be.
Noaani
1
Re: Boneworking
I agree. We need more gothic items. Drink from a skull like Conan did
I knew You would like his Comment. .
This is the right Time to ask for something like this and make Suggestions. Alpha Two is drawing closer and we should mention it while it is still early in the Day/Year.
Aszkalon
2
Re: Menacing Melody is WAY too over-powered
This is what will be balanced in A2. I'm sure all sorts of things will be adjusted.