Best Of
Re: Is there a problem for solo players
At this rate I'm getting tempted to make a thread asking for a Dislike button
Caeryl
16
Re: Instanced Content Should Not Offer Power Gains
Posting a comment to sign my approval of Solvryn's stance here. I'm just going to copy and paste the summation of my argument (which is only really focusing on one point) that I gathered from a long argument in Discord.
Copy+Paste:
Should difficult PvE encounters be required to be in instances?
No. The only thing instances achieve is isolating a player group from everyone else so they can focus on the content purely.
You can achieve that same isolation by making well designed open world dungeons.
There's nothing stopping an "open world boss" to be located at the end of a cave system that takes two hours to clear minibosses and varoius mobs to get to which then has a massive arena that allows for all the complexities of instanced content to be used. The journey to the boss achieves that isolation of players.
I'd much rather that exist since then it's effectively "instanced content" but it still allows a chance for a rival group can show up.
Concerned about zergs? Intrepid has stated that boss abilities will scale based on the number of players that show up for the fight. Assuming this works as described, then zergs will have a much more difficult time staying alive. Even if they do stay alive, we know that content only drops a certain amount of rewards regardless of how many players show up. Rewarding content will likely be on either lengthy respawn timers or require a certain unlocking condition to be met in order to spawn them. It would not be worth it for a group of say 300 to zerg a boss down knowing that it will only drop at the most 3 pieces of gear and enough materials to craft 5 other pieces of gear. It's a waste of time when that group could be split into 6 other smaller groups that focus on different areas of the world.
It's important for AoC to avoid instanced content as much as possible since the basis of the game is player interaction.
Copy+Paste:
Should difficult PvE encounters be required to be in instances?
No. The only thing instances achieve is isolating a player group from everyone else so they can focus on the content purely.
You can achieve that same isolation by making well designed open world dungeons.
There's nothing stopping an "open world boss" to be located at the end of a cave system that takes two hours to clear minibosses and varoius mobs to get to which then has a massive arena that allows for all the complexities of instanced content to be used. The journey to the boss achieves that isolation of players.
I'd much rather that exist since then it's effectively "instanced content" but it still allows a chance for a rival group can show up.
Concerned about zergs? Intrepid has stated that boss abilities will scale based on the number of players that show up for the fight. Assuming this works as described, then zergs will have a much more difficult time staying alive. Even if they do stay alive, we know that content only drops a certain amount of rewards regardless of how many players show up. Rewarding content will likely be on either lengthy respawn timers or require a certain unlocking condition to be met in order to spawn them. It would not be worth it for a group of say 300 to zerg a boss down knowing that it will only drop at the most 3 pieces of gear and enough materials to craft 5 other pieces of gear. It's a waste of time when that group could be split into 6 other smaller groups that focus on different areas of the world.
It's important for AoC to avoid instanced content as much as possible since the basis of the game is player interaction.
Re: Consternation surrounding the 8x8 Class system and how to move forward.
Yep. That's why when my co-hosts on the Ashen Forge were saying that A2 is going to be on track for Q3, I was saying... "I mean, they can definitely open A2 in Q3, but what would be in it. Because one of my measures for Alpha 2 being ready is that we see an Augment showcase."I'm honestly surprised at the lack of progress here. I don't care why it is and I am not here to prophesy doom or even massive delay or question their overall ability to understand or take the feedback. But I am switching my mode of interacting with this 'problem' to 'giving way too many suggestions and lecturing'. I am taking this as a yeah we basically haven't locked in much of this and might need some inspiration based on what I know of their rudimentary balance framework/ability design schema.
I find it also concerning that we've seen Tank, Cleric and Mage showcased three times before we've seen Rogue and Summoner.
But... it is what it is.
(I don't think they need help with inspiration for Augments. Rather, they haven't even locked down the Active Skills yet.)
Dygz
1
Re: Instanced Content Should Not Offer Power Gains
Claiming that a open world boss can be just as demanding as an instanced one makes me wonder if you have ever experienced top pve content in AAA MMOs (wow, or better FF14, the ultimates are just better designed)
Its not even debatable, as far as encounter challenge goes when designing a boss, a pure pve instanced encounter can be tuned to be drastically more complex, and its meant for a different purpose and audience than the pvx game.
A pvx encounter requires all mechanics to be simple. Step out of the fire style mechanics (same thing showed in the update this week). Only when mechanics are so simplified can a team respond to both the boss and a pvp ambush.
We already saw instanced boss in the alpha1 dungeon, we know 20% of content will be instanced. That means the rest will be open world, contestable by pvp
If that destroys the game for some people, well, ashes isnt for everyone.
Its not even debatable, as far as encounter challenge goes when designing a boss, a pure pve instanced encounter can be tuned to be drastically more complex, and its meant for a different purpose and audience than the pvx game.
A pvx encounter requires all mechanics to be simple. Step out of the fire style mechanics (same thing showed in the update this week). Only when mechanics are so simplified can a team respond to both the boss and a pvp ambush.
We already saw instanced boss in the alpha1 dungeon, we know 20% of content will be instanced. That means the rest will be open world, contestable by pvp
If that destroys the game for some people, well, ashes isnt for everyone.
Taerrik
1
Re: Instanced Content Should Not Offer Power Gains
I believe the issue is people don't perceive the risk the same.
If the Risk is high and the content is difficult where majority cant complete it, this is good for the game.
I believe that these raid bosses should drop items and materials, and force the materials to be transported back to town and create the spy/tracking of guilds raid nights and gank caravans. It then allows for the risk for pvp to still have its place.
I will always champion high skill ceiling for PvE and PvP both should exist in Ashes as long as the pillars for both can have proper checks and balances and don't completely dimmish the other.
If the Risk is high and the content is difficult where majority cant complete it, this is good for the game.
I believe that these raid bosses should drop items and materials, and force the materials to be transported back to town and create the spy/tracking of guilds raid nights and gank caravans. It then allows for the risk for pvp to still have its place.
I will always champion high skill ceiling for PvE and PvP both should exist in Ashes as long as the pillars for both can have proper checks and balances and don't completely dimmish the other.
Gundel
1
Re: Are mining/nodes usable by all characters on the map like in gw2, or is it like wow with 1 player?
During a dev update video, I heard them say there will be a mix of sources for resources. Some sources will disappear after being harvested by a player (like in WoW). Other sources will stick around for a while and attract multiple players.
"Other resources will exist as a cluster (also called vein gatherables). These will last until the full resource is depleted."
There must be some mechanic in place to prevent the first person to find the vein from getting a ridiculous amount of resources, but I don't know what's planned.
"Other resources will exist as a cluster (also called vein gatherables). These will last until the full resource is depleted."
There must be some mechanic in place to prevent the first person to find the vein from getting a ridiculous amount of resources, but I don't know what's planned.
Craiken
1
Re: Instanced Content Should Not Offer Power Gains
EQ2.Still waiting on your demonstration, I have a feeling it'll never come.
Best gear is from instanced raids, and has been since day 1.
Instanced PvP was added in around 2009, and the rewards from it are mid, and always have been.
The fact that there are some games thst don't do this does not mean all games don't do this. In order to demonstrate that your assumption that it is an inevitability that it will happen is false, all I need to do is demonstrate one situation where it didn't happen - which I just did.
I wouldn't say it was demonstrably false if I didn't have a specific demonstration in mind - you should know this.
Another example would be Archeage, if you want it from a game that is more PvP focused.
Steven made the comment in 2018 that while he doesn't think they could, he would like to compete with WoW in terms of raiding.Instanced content was originally for the story
Without then, Ashes will fail.Seems like Raiders have plenty of content in the market where they can safely raid to their hearts content. It's just not Ashes of Creation.
Not may fail, not may be less successful than it could. Will fail.
With the game's basic design goal, for every PvP focused player, the game also needs one PvE focused player.
I have said many times over the years that the success of a game like Ashes is more reliant on it attracting PvE players than PvP, because PvP players coming along are a given, and as long as those PvP players keep winning more PvP than they are losing, they will stay.
However in order for those PvP players to win more than they lose, those losses need to fall to a different group, which has to be PvE players.
If the game doesn't attract those PvE players, PvP players will peel off from the bottom.
Noaani
3
Re: Instanced Content Should Not Offer Power Gains
George_Black wrote: »Agreed.
Instances will dilute the open world experience and all that's interlinked to it
Especially PvP instances.
Had this conversation many times with people, some already want the ability to queue for arenas/bgs before you know it, the game ends up an instance fest where the world is gutted.
Gets real out of hand quick, for some reason people say they like bleeding edge difficulty but when being presented with a reward track that’s absent of power then the content is no longer worth doing.
The reality is that it was about power the whole time.
People wouldn't do high-end content that takes hours on hours of practice if there is no benefit to doing so, because that's a waste of their time and ultimately indicative of a lack of respect for the players' efforts.
You're on this dead-end doom train based entirely on a slippery slope fallacy, when only 20% of all content is instanced specifically so it can be properly designed. You've still yet to link a VOD of these open PvP, high-precision clears you've claimed you've participated in, or even give a name of one of the games, so as it stands, there's no evidence to suggest the two concepts can coexistent in a way that's done well.
Either the fight requires immense precision and thus one person stepping in to purposefully throw it off is all it takes to wipe, or the content is dumbed down and many fight mechanics simply could not exist so that PvP can take place in the area without automatically ruining a raid attempt.
Ex. Take one of ESO's trials (generally considered to be one of the easier MMOs at its high end), Maw of Lorkhaj, which has a group-splitting mechanic in one of the fights. This mechanic assigns everyone in the area one of two colors, and if you get in proximity of someone with the opposite color, you both instantly die. Easy to handle so long as you're rotating on the color changes and sticking with like-to-like.
However, this mechanic could not exist if another group was permitted to enter that instance, because one person with a gap closer could instantly obliterate multiple people via that mechanic.
Allowing other groups to interfere with what should be a finely-tuned, difficult encounter will only serve to ensure that content is dumbed down and denied what could be much more engaging, interesting mechanics.
Caeryl
4
Re: [Feedback Request] Alpha Two Citadel of the Steel Bloom & Firebrand Preview | August Livestream
I'm confused. What exactly was this showcase? Was it a Raid? Was it a Story Arc Quest? Story Arc Narrative Event? World Boss? Because all of that language was used in the showcase to describe what we were seeing. Without the context of exactly what was showcased, it's hard to give targeted feedback.
Anyway, based on what I saw:
Anyway, based on what I saw:
- Events leading to boss are too easy (for on-level content) - Steven said it was gonna be hard, they were probably gonna wipe...turns out the party was completely fine with Steven being mentally afk, pulling mobs ahead of the Tank, and manually clicking his skills/targets. They only needed 1 healer, even then it wasn't scary.
- "Wave" Event needs work (or get rid of it) - Was less of a wave event and more of a wait-out-the-spawner situation. Was a slog to watch 1 or 2 mobs trickling in at a time, no timer, no end in sight. Wave events need to be scary, come to a climax, feel like you're being overwhelmed.
- 8-man Party Event turns into 40-man Raid? - What even is this? If this is a proper raid, the player count requirement needs to be static throughout the encounter. Not, okay we only need 8 people start the raid, but we're gonna need 40 to finish it. If this was just an event that procs a World Boss then it's slightly more acceptable. Could make for a decent guild event I guess. Still weird.
- NO GOD MODE - Let the party wipe. Let the raid wipe. Let people die. We need to see game without training wheels to be able to give proper feedback.
- No Steven PoV please - You guys did great last month with the Bard showcase, keeping Bucky in the driver seat. Dev only PoV for showcases please. Steven clicking his abilities/targets manually and chasing butterflies gives zero context to the capability of a class. It's hard to give feedback on combat when this is what we're working with.
- Dragon breath (aerial and grounded) looks great - Stoked to see what they look like with polish. Hopefully they actually do damage/are scary abilities.
- Dragon legs and tail are stubby - Claw and tail swipes were cool, but the stubby limbs didn't sell me.
- Dragon physical abilities need more weight - Similar to issues I have with the Fighter showcase, physical abilities need more inertia. More stretch/lean/body movement. Physical stuff looks rigid.
Re: Vassal resentment
My gameplay style is "I want to live in THIS EXACT NODE, and I want it to be the best it can be". I don't want to relocate. I don't want to give up my citizenship. I want to have a chance to rise up against someone who "won" a random fight of "well, people just gathered here first, so you're fucked now".First you will try that against other node chains and if that is your game-play style, you might relocate to undermine them from inside.
I don't want that chance to be high or methods easy. I want it to be hard, expensive and most likely require help from outside of your node. But I want that chance to be there. Right now it's not there.
NiKr
5