Best Of

Azherae wrote: »

I'm not even going to bother specifically claiming anything, I'm not interested in even doing the math for this particular probability obfuscation, especially since everything is subject to change. it's barely even worth having the conversation but I can at least let Intrepid know that I bet the consensus response from my group members will be [insert string of banworthy vitriol] when they see that chart.

Even I, who loves burning gear through OEing and L2's approach to the design, and who's real fucking bad at math/approximations/extrapolations, think that the chart looks like absolute shit.

Even though, supposedly, it's much "better" for the player, cause even at +9 the chance of item actually going away is only 3%, as opposed to L2's "at +4 your shit can go poof 1/3 of the time" (and even worse chances later on).

Sure hope we hear about some changes to this soon, though its ironic that the last change related to enchanting was mostly about the power scaling itself (at least iirc), so either changing the backend code for this shit is too cumbersome or changing it at all is nowhere near the upcoming plans for the development.

Maybe for the future when they expand even more the map...

Atacama by Núria Vilà, no Flickr
Atacama 102 by Geert Van Canegem, no Flickr
Salar de Uyuni 9 by Mono Andes, no Flickr
Day 3: Rugged landscape below Inatye by Northern Adventures, no Flickr
Day 3: Rugged landscape below Inatye by Northern Adventures, no Flickr
Day 3: Views from Inatye peak by Northern Adventures, no Flickr
Day 4: Rural life around Tsyon by Northern Adventures, no Flickr
Old Dongola by Shaun Matthew Yeo, no Flickr
Sem título by Johan Assarsson, no Flickr
QWZ03223 by Nikolai Vassiliev, no Flickr
ethiopia - afar, danakil and tigray by retlaw snellac, no Flickr
Sem título by Johan Assarsson, no Flickr
Sem título by Johan Assarsson, no Flickr
Petra by Johan Assarsson, no Flickr
Petra by Johan Assarsson, no Flickr
Petra by Johan Assarsson, no Flickr
Mikael Timba church by Rita Willaert, no Flickr
Sem título by Johan Assarsson, no Flickr
Cooco´s Den & Café, Lahore by Johan Assarsson, no Flickr
Façades of Old Sana'a by Dan, no Flickr
Buildings of Old Sana'a by Dan, no Flickr
Tower-House in the Walled City of Sana'a (صنعاء القديمة) by Dan, no Flickr
benin by retlaw snellac, no Flickr
benin by retlaw snellac, no Flickr
india - rajasthan by retlaw snellac, no Flickr
Pangong Tso Lake in Ladakh, India by Chandravir Singh, no Flickr
Mathura, Uttar Pradesh. India. by Raúl Barrero fotografía, no Flickr
Iskanderkul afternoon by Monique van der Lint, no Flickr
Drying food in a traditional village, Ethiopia by Eric Lafforgue, no Flickr
Big Almaty Lake by Joy Vannelia Hughes, no Flickr
Karakul Lake *
« *
Kyrgyz Felt Yurt Karakul Lake Muztagh Ata Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China by In Memoriam Ngaire Hart, no Flickr
Kumtag Desert 庫姆塔格沙漠 by MelindaChan ^..^, no Flickr
118 Pyramid dune by Julian Fletcher, no Flickr
Sossusvlei, Namibia
Mui Ne White Sand Dunes
The famous Mui Ne sand dunes by Claire and Chris, no Flickr
KNA_2840 by Koorosh Nozad Tehrani, no Flickr
Hormuz
Madeira_Seixal Beach-1 by _futurelandscapes_, no Flickr
16 camels by Wandiyali Images, no Flickr
view from the dune.jpg by jane calthorpe, no Flickr
Purple Sand Verbena by John Frisch, no Flickr
Nothing But Dunes Alkali Flat by Cheryl Hamblin, no Flickr
White Sands, New Mexico by DrewGaines, no Flickr
Socotra-116 by jandcbarnes, no Flickr
Sand dune on the mountain - Qalansiya, Socotra, Yemen by mastahanky, no Flickr
Lagoon on Socotra Island, Yemen [1600 x 1200] by jeff peters, no Flickr
Yemen e socotra island by Mohammed Al Alie, no Flickr
Wadi, Socotra Island by Global Panorama, no Flickr
Mehrangarh by Dariela Romero, no Flickr
Mehrangarh by Dinesh Valke, no Flickr
White Hallway in Mehrangarh Fort by Jim Royal, no Flickr
Amer Fort by Raffaele Nicolussi, no Flickr
Udaipur City Palace by mahesh.kondwilkar, no Flickr
City Palace Udaipur by Vishnu Nath, no Flickr
Stone huts by Andreja Sever, no Flickr
Sindhi Women by Syed Irfan Ali Shah, no Flickr
India / Rajasthan * « * * « *
CHARYN RIVER (Чарын река) by mauro gambini, no Flickr
te silk road by retlaw snellac, no Flickr
Ushu River, Swat
Beautiful Pakistan by Rizwan_Saeed, no Flickr
[Group 0]-Termesos (1 of 45)_untitled (9 of 45)-66 images - Copy by geoffrey radcliffe, no Flickr
North Ossetia-Alania by Kvasov Vadim, no Flickr
North Ossetia-Alania by Kvasov Vadim, no Flickr
North Ossetia Alania. High in the mountains. Near the small Zeigalan waterfall. by Roman Churiloff, no Flickr
Mountains of North Ossetia Alania. Midagrabin waterfalls. by Roman Churiloff, no Flickr
Abandoned tower in Truso Valley, militarized border of Georgia / South Ossetia by Florent S., no Flickr
The drama about Hasankeyf by Richard, no Flickr
Derawar Fort by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Byblos Old Souq by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Bosra Roman Theater by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Shali Fortress by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Terra Nostra by Richard, no Flickr
Tash Rabat by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Tash Rabat by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Baltit Fort by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Goegap Natural Reserve, Northern Cape by peace-on-earth.org, no Flickr
Goegap Natural Reserve, Northern Cape by peace-on-earth.org, no Flickr
Guelta d'Archei by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Ntegdei by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Lake Katam by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Sem título by Nicole Daniliuk, no Flickr
Hampi, Elephant Stables by Arian Zwegers, no Flickr
Ala-Archa National Park by hanming_huang, no Flickr
Kerkini lake by Alkis Anastopoulos, no Flickr
Tuareg by gay biddlecombe Amberlight1, no Flickr
morocco by retlaw snellac, no Flickr
Overview Of A Village Merging With The Mountain And Terrace Cultivation, Hababa, Yemen by Eric Lafforgue, no Flickr
Atacama by Mariano Mantel, no Flickr
Botanical Garden, Furnas, São Miguel, Azores


Fanal Forest, also known as Laurel Forest of Madeira


Riad Dar El Malaika - Morocco
2022 Windows Spotlight_216 Hutt Lagoon-Pink Lake-Kalbarri, Western Australia by Brian Jakovina, no Flickr
181023091858_A7r2 by photochoi, no Flickr
181023091506_A7r2 by photochoi, no Flickr
181023091539_A7r2 by photochoi, no Flickr

Guelta Archei
Pano_Mousse fluo_Maelifellsandur_DSCF8457 - DSCF8460 by Ghuldur Islandis, no Flickr

Unless I missed a recent update there won't be any SA server(s) before launch. If SA gets any server(s) at all, is supposed to be based on traffic:

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Regions

Saabynator wrote: »

Its like making a good dish, you take a bunch of good food and put it together.

The issue here is that in both cases, with food and with game design, it still takes knowledge and experience to get this right on a large scale.

You could take all the best foods you like and put them in to one dish, but if you dont know how food works, there is no guarantee it will work.

I like taleggio cheese, and i like salmon. There is no world in which these two foods should ever be on the same plate. Ideally, there is no world where these two foods should even be in concurrent courses in a multi-course meal.

On the other hand, white chocolate and caviar go together incredibly well, if executed by someone that can get the balance perfect.

Same with game design, different aspects that are great in some games wont all necessarily fit together in one game and result in a good game.

Placing limitations on crafters being able to get to the top end of crafting that only organized guilds are likely to be able to achieve can be a good mechanic. Making the vast majority of items in your game be player crafted can be a good thing. Putting these two things together, however, isn't necessarily a good thing.

Ashes is full of contradictions like this.

Ace1234 wrote: »

@Azherae

But the point is moreso that Intrepid is in a bad spot when it comes to that aspect. Small, 'less experienced' studio without the ability to pull on the resources of a big MMORPG producer. Most MMOs have a similar enough basis that if you wanted to add all this stuff Ashes talks about, it would be easy.

New games don't 'not add' things Ashes is offering 'because they can't'. They don't add them because they don't think people are going to want them/they think it isn't worth it.

If Amazon Games thought those things would work in , they'd have added them to New World instead of 'taking them away'. Which also means that if Intrepid 'proves' that people want to play a game with variable Nodes, we'll see more modern MMOs adding them.

This is why people end up focused on all the things that 'make Ashes unpleasant', because they 'know' they only have to wait a bit longer (possibly less long than even for AoC) for a game that does the same things but less unpleasant.

As a bystander to this convo, I think it would be beneficial for the point you are making (less for me, maybe moreso for others), to provide some specifics to illustrate that "exposition", since I myself see a few different ways of interpreting that.

I could see someone reading that and thinking "Azherae just doesn't have faith in Intrepid's vision and capabilties, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the potential audience demand/reception, and Riot could pull it off if they wanted to, so why not Intrepid, you're just a doubter"


So I think it would be in your best interest and help avoid potential misunderstandings for you to clarify-

Are you highlighting moreso the potential inability to execute financially, or even content quantity wise because of the smaller team?

Or is the point moreso about the lack of cohesion in the design? (Bringing various micro experiences/audience subsets together)

Or is it that the design is actually cohesive (the macro experience), to appeal to a certain player type, but the concern is the size of that subset?

Etc.

Hm, ok, I see that (I fell into the trap of thinking 'I'm always ranting about that, surely no one wants to hear it more', but there's always the 'first time reader').

Therefore as an example, Ashes of Creation has talked about:

8x8 combinations of Archetypes to make unique classes.
FF11 is 20x20. Throne and Liberty is about to be 9x9 (I'll spare people the combinatorics, just assume that there are two styles of every combination even if they don't distinguish the combinations themselves). TL already contains more Augments than I even expect to see in Ashes, and technically more than Ashes has indicated or promised.

Social Organizations and related perks/relationships
Elite Dangerous is entirely made of this, and Throne and Liberty would implement this faster than Ashes would (a currently stronger base scaffolding), and the form of PvP/PvE separation that many players prefer, while also using the implementations that keep it 'safer' from bad actors. So while it 'doesn't exist now', if somehow something 'proves' that people really want this, it will probably appear.

Nodes
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/elite-dangerous-trailblazers-update-3-now-live.636973/
or
https://wiki.albiononline.com/wiki/Cities

The amount of work required to make sure that Nodes are fun and not some of the most 'degenerate' gameplay possible in all of gaming will be monumental (and I am here cheering all the way, Intrepid). And Ashes is still not actually poised to be the primary/optimal deliverer of this content type precisely because Albion Online would do it better with minimal relative effort. That's practically guaranteed.

Dynamic World, Weather, Mob Spawns
I don't think most people who follow MMOs think that Ashes is going to revolutionize this aspect, it's old, and fairly common now Therefore any benefit would come from 'how it affects gameplay, either combat or one of the other three above' (let's just count Archetypes and such under Combat actually). But, again, this is already a thing in modern PvP/PvE MMORPGs, and the influences of weather and a dynamic world on PvX isn't 'redefined' by slightly more focus on that PvX-ness. If it rains at Frenzied Queen Bellandir, the experience isn't vastly different than Ashes would provide relative to this aspect. If anything, TL is more 'interesting' because we do have something that is a 'stand-in' for 'social orgs' and that is that the most active person on the server can control the rain once per day.

So, Albion could flesh out Nodes and Weather. Throne and Liberty could flesh out Boonstones to make Node-like relationships similar to the old FF11 ones or an improved version of the BDO ones. Both games already have established combat depth that Ashes is still muddling through.

If this becomes a 'race' to 'the endpoint that Ashes promised', Albion will win, TL will finish right after, and Ashes of Creation will pass the finish line 2 years later imo. We'd be banking on Naval Combat and then it's a race against Archeage 2 even considering that game's pivot.

The main 'unique' thing Ashes 'allows people to do' that other games are almost desperately trying to limit/solve, is zerg.

And a nontrivial chunk of Ashes' original, fairly invested/dedicated audience is opposed to this 'feature'.

Xeeg wrote: »

ryujinjakka74 wrote: »

Simple and short...Is this game PvP enabled all the time as in you can get ganked out in the world just minding your own business or inside of a dungeon? We would like to know before we plop down $100 each to join the alpha.

The way it is set up right now, this rarely happens. If you choose not to fight back, they cant kill you without going red. If they go red, a mark appears on the map and everyone can see that someone is red. If they die red, they drop 3 items. Dropping 3 items can be losing dozens of hours of work and is almost never worth whatever you might be killing people for.

So technically you can be killed in the open world randomly, but practically it never happens outside designated open PVP regions.

Best response, take my like. I’d like to add something: just like in Archeage, when players turned into pirates and entered cities, everyone would join forces to kill them. I think something similar will happen here if someone kills you in a spot and goes red-flagged.

Ludullu wrote: »

Saabynator wrote: »

Caravan system. The sieges. Nodes. Player run citys with political systems. World that changes by what citys are big. There is actually a ton of new stuff. Not all of it is brand spanking, but it has not put together like this. AoC is very creative with the lego.

As Azherae implied, pretty much all of that stuff has already been done in other games (mostly space ones), but even outside of the space stuff:

• Caravans were in AA and in Silk Road (afaik)
• Sieges were in L2
• Nodes, as I said, we got no damn clue how exactly they'll end up being design by release
• I guess player-led cities might be somewhat unique in fantasy, but I coulda sworn I've heard about something very similar before.
• Node-lvl-related changes remain to be seen too. I hope it's as deep and intricate as was promised before

A somewhat rudimentary combo of those 2 last points was in L2 with the Manor system. Castle owners could add different items to mob loot tables in their region, which was both a political tool that attracted players (somewhat akin to node buildings in Ashes) and was related to the state of the region, cause if the castle was unowned - that loot would not be present and gameplay related to it would not exist in that region.

L2 also had a religious system that opened up dungeons based on player activity, so, in a way, that is another similar system.

And that's just examples from almost a single 20y.o. game. I'm sure I'm missing several fantasy mmos that had either very similar systems or literally the same ones. And, as was said above, space games literally have the exact same systems.

You are thinking of Albion online player cities I think. The mayorship system itself is unique as far as I know, but player built cities are still a thing even in other fantasy mmo's. I think this gets to the heart of Ashes current predicament. You can go on and on about how the game isn't for everyone, but Ashes has kind of always talked about itself as a 'special' and 'unique' thing that made that 'not for everyone' really mean something. Being an exclusive niche focused thing has no value unless that niche is offering something actually unique that you cannot find elsewhere.

In reality to me this game is just a spiritual successor to Dark Ages of Camelot, maybe L2 if they manage to shape things up further. That's not a bad thing, but this game is so people centric that it needs people. It is a social game with systems that only make sense at a certain player count. It needs to recapture that feeling of 'specialness' going forward and play to its strengths. All I see right now is a game that has under invested in everything that would make it great and over invested in all of the things that would make it 'not for everyone'. It is a real shame too because I keep seeing mmo's that are starting to deliver on the promises AoC made 6-8 years ago. Clearly the market wanted some of the stuff AoC was preaching and I definitely credit them at least in small part for the mmo renaissance of the past few years.

Yes AoC is not for everyone. But if it doesn't do something better or distinct from the games from which the audience comes from that AoC is meant to cater to, it isn't going to have an audience. They are going to keep playing on private servers or some of these new high quality mmos.

Hello! Ashes of Creation is taking a very different path. Intrepid is doing something rare: full transparency, real community engagement, and building systems that are meant to last, not just impress at launch. The development is slow, yes, but it’s deliberate and deep.

This isn’t a copy-paste MMO. It’s a project that’s actually listening and iterating during testing. That alone already puts it ahead of where Crowfall was.

We're still in Alpha, but every test brings visible progress. I’d rather wait longer for something truly groundbreaking than rush into another shallow experience.

We’re in good hands. Let’s keep the faith.