Best Of
Re: Is there a problem for solo players
Ludullu_(NiKr) wrote: »I know this sounds elitist as fuck
What's "elitist" about having a coherent line of thinking? If people want bigger rewards and challenges, then handing out equal rewards to those who do less is not the way to go. Yes, casuals and solos are going to miss out on parts of the content.
But so will those who prefer PvP or PvE over the other.
Just like those who focus on artisan or caravan game play.
Just like those who focus on Naval/pirate game play.
Just like those who focus on node occupation in specific region/biome.
Just like those who run around with their small guild as a mercenary force helping out bigger guilds in their objectives.
Any big MMO will have tons of content (and the associated rewards) you will miss out on when you decide to play the game a certain way. And its meant to be that way because not every player is interested in all aspects of the game.
The notable detail IMO is that Ashes' content will be even more restricted by being temporarily and conditionally available as well as far apart (no fast travel etc), making the total sum of rewards also more or less restricted.
One can call that unfair or elistist but these are necessary conditions to create a ladder of challenges. If time, gear or skill requirements are deemed "not fun"/"bad" for tiers of rewards to chase after, then I honestly wonder in what way one would want to reward a player for putting in more effort than another - and this effort includes organising with other players.
Kilion
2
Re: [Feedback Request] Alpha Two Citadel of the Steel Bloom & Firebrand Preview | August Livestream
When the dragon breaths fire the trees and ground should be put on fire.
The dragon looks very brown and boring, would be nice with some effects on the dragon.
Also in todays mmorpgs enemies should have blodied effects the lower health they have, like Monster Hunter.
also the water should splash from attacks and movement, water isnt affected by any movement.
Theres fire in the water.
Ground is still very flat and foliage is still very 2D and flat if you look at it from the side.
Stones on ground just looks painted onto a flat ground.
All plants move exactly the same making it unnatural.
plants are not affected by players moving through them.
The fire in braziers are to fast and they all burn exactly the same making it unnatural.
playing Wukong with its great enviromental graphics makes AoC look very outdated and flat.
also some spelleffects sound is way to loud.
The dragon looks very brown and boring, would be nice with some effects on the dragon.
Also in todays mmorpgs enemies should have blodied effects the lower health they have, like Monster Hunter.
also the water should splash from attacks and movement, water isnt affected by any movement.
Theres fire in the water.
Ground is still very flat and foliage is still very 2D and flat if you look at it from the side.
Stones on ground just looks painted onto a flat ground.
All plants move exactly the same making it unnatural.
plants are not affected by players moving through them.
The fire in braziers are to fast and they all burn exactly the same making it unnatural.
playing Wukong with its great enviromental graphics makes AoC look very outdated and flat.
also some spelleffects sound is way to loud.
Selo
1
Re: Is there a problem for solo players
Don't have the time in what way? Where are you running that you're out of time?And you cannot afford to work 5x as hard if you are a casual player, remember, you don't have the time.
I think this is the issue with casual players. They think that they should still be competitive even though they do not invest competitive time into the activity.
Should a random dude who knows how to swim be able to compete in the olympics, just cause he KNOWS how to swim?
I know this sounds elitist as fuck and all that, but I do not understand this entitlement of "well, I can only spend 1h a day on the game but I should be able to do all the things as well as someone who can spend 10h on the game daily". No. No you should not, because that would be an absolutely unreasonable thing to ask for irl either.
Casual players that will just be minding their own business will rarely get attacked, because their small guilds (if they even have one) won't be wardecced (as long as wardec balancing is good, and I'm 100% giving feedback towards that goal), and corruption will dissuade any dudes from just PKing people left and right.
Intrepid simply need to distribute their mobs in a well-thoughtout way, and I believe that they're already on the right track with the star system. Even that farm we saw in the bard showcase would work well for this. Casuals and solos would be the people on the outskirts of the farm, killing 0* mobs at their own pace, while partied or hardcore solos will be closer to the center farming 2-3* mobs and fighting over them.
There's no benefit for a group to go and mow down 0* mobs, because they have an entire group to feed and 0* will never be enough. Then you add any potential wars and stuff and those parties will be so preoccupied with other enemies that they HAVE to kill, that random casual/solo in the vicinty will not matter, and instead would be a waste of time and resources to even attempt to kill.
As for caravans and housing - you can do both as a solo player. You can join any caravan on any side and see how it goes. You may definitely fail, but that's no different from a group of players failing cause there was another group of players on the other side. We will also supposedly have solo caravans, but I dunno about that entire part of the system and whether it'll even remain in the game, so it's hard to discuss it either way.
And freeholds are meant to be the peak form of housing, just as instanced pve is considered peak pve. And neither are meant to be done alone. Build social connections, find friends that have FHs and they'll give you family access to them. I'm 100% sure there'll even be sellable FH access, so if you're super determined to level up your processing and do big boi stuff - you can work towards that, but obviously at a slower pace.
In other words, casuals should not have the same progress pace as hardcore players. And solos cannot have the same pace as partied up people. And unguilded parties cannot have the same pace as guilded ones. There's gotta be a hierarchy to these things because Steven wants to push people to socialize in a more meaningful way than just "I'm a solo, but I find a completely random pug every day to do content", because that is not socializing - that's single playing with other single players, and that kind of design has already led some games to the point of completely replacing other players in the party with bots.
If casuals and solos could easily keep up the pace with partied people (let alone gain same kinds of rewards) - why in the everflyingfuck would anyone party up? Why be social when you can clear the game w/o being social? Sure some default social butterflies will always find others to hang out with, but it won't be because the game told them to do it.
I personally want a social mmo where people are made to group up, because I know from my own experience (and that of my friends and guildmates throughout the years) that this kind of design leads to a much better social structure in the game. Steven seems to think along those lines as well.
Ludullu
5
Re: Is there a problem for solo players
AirborneBerserker wrote: »Where to begin...ah, yes.
First, we need to look at the psychological effect of being happy or just plain having fun while doing something difficult. There is a direct relationship between how much fun a person is having and how likely they will complete a task. That means the happier people are the more likely they are to finish a task, no matter how distasteful. This means that of all the things that are important having fun is the most important.
Now, let's talk about systems. Systems are important, but some systems are more important then others. For example my circulatory system has a higher priority then the electrical system in my house. We are going to take that same concept and apply it to the game.
Okay, So there are systems in the game one of them is the most important system. That system is the class system, this is because of all the systems in the game this one system is the medium by which all interactions occur between the player and the game. So we want the classes to create the most fun/happiness/enjoyment/satisfaction/all the good emotions.
Let's see...Ah, I don't think I am going out on a limb saying that the AoC community wants this game to be difficult. I agree, It helps with...it helps create a sense of...pride and accomplishment. There is no joy in dunking on kindergarteners, however there is a certain satisfaction when they're assholes.
What conclusions can we draw without even knowing anything specific about the game? Given we want the game to be very difficult, having fun is important, and the Class system is the most interacted with by players. We can then conclude that the best thing to do is make sure the Classes are 100% satisfying or as close to that as humanly possible, and do this as early as possible.
Now what conclusions can we draw from the previous conclusion? Any aspect of the class system that either delays, or removes ANY satisfaction, fun, excitement, role, playstyle or any other positive emotion is a poor design decision choice due to needing as much happiness due to the projected difficulty of the game. Now this does not mean that doing something like that is necessarily wrong, unless we establish that all the other systems are creating pressure , then it would be a huge mistake. Now we look at how people interact and the systems surrounding them. (think of pressure as a obstacle, some avoidable, some unavoidable, and some you choose which is more of an accepted challenge then an obstacle)
So, let's start with the guild system, this obviously relives pressure from players. There's no doubt about that. Not every player, solo and casual players wont receive any benefits from guild perks. On top of that some of the pressure shifts rather then disappearing, the pressure comes from other players, falls squarely on solo and casual players.
"Oh, nay, nay" I hear you say, hold your horses. It mostly comes from the always on PvP, this in and of itself isn't a problem, however when you kill people in the open world they drop stuff, and if they're corrupted they drop gear. Now, we need to do a thought experiment. I want you to imagine you're playing AoC and come to a clearing, there's one person in a guild, a Group of four, and one person not in a guild, you have to kill one, who do you choose? I'm going to assume everyone was intellectually honest and picked the one person not in a guild because it is the lowest risk thing, this is because of a psychological human trait called risk aversion which people have. If your saying "I need more information what level are they blah blah blah", that's called dodging the question, but please post that so I know you aren't intellectually honest.
(I'm breaking here because this is going to be a theme moving forward, almost every system in this game either does nothing, adds pressure, or shifts pressure onto solo and casual players, while doing the opposite for Guilds, and if you think that isn't a problem, Solo and casual players account for 50-70% of MMO players.)
Yes, guilds do create pressure for people in the guild, but that is chosen. Plus if you don't like that pressure it is /gquit <--that far away from not being your problem. You can go and join a different guild, maybe a more ambitious one, maybe less ambitious, up to you. There is no option for solo and (most) casual players for that.
What about professions, surely those don't add any pressure. Remember when I said you drop stuff? Well materials and gatherables are both dropped. Okay, but how much? 20-30% so if a person had farmed for an hour you would get between 15-20 mins worth of framing mats for 10 seconds(?) of combat. So yes, especially when you realize that the thought experiment factors into this, people are more likely to target a person they think will have little to no recourse. So even more pressure for solo and casual players.
"No, no, no" I can hear you saying, but yes because professions add another reason why you would want to kill a person that you would otherwise leave alone. They have incentivized hunting other players, and solo and casual players will be the first on the list. This gets worse the higher level you are given the crafting materials will get rarer.
What conclusions can we draw from what we know now? Well, we know people drop things and we know solo players will be targeted more often then not, but what about other mitigating factors like level. Let's start at the beginning move forward, everyone will be level 1, everyone will start with the same knowledge base(for the most part), and there will be not many grievances to consider. Groups get between a 30 and 40% experience boost while grouped based on the number of people in the group (the experience of the killed mob is divided between group members and then multiplied). This means that people that group will level faster, and the people who can group more easily more often will level even faster. Which just so happens to be one of the benefits of being in a guild.
The corruption system has many parts, we are interested in the interaction between groups and solo players, and the removal of corruption. Yes, there are other parts and while they do have some interesting interactions there aren't any that really peak my interest. Especially when we are talking creating pressure and who is affected by that pressure.
Solo and group interactions is first. Namely the fact that a group of people can still grief solo players but the other way around is not possible. This is strait forward and simple all they need to do is swap out people that kill the solo player, if the solo player fights back no corruption is gained and everyone can help if they don't they die and get a debuff making them weaker. Why can they do this? Because they're grouped up and as a result gain more levels which means they are all a higher level, to add to that they almost certainly have higher quality gear due to having access to more forms of content.
Corruption removal can occur in one of two ways either you die, or you grind experience until it falls off. As I understand it griding experience slowly removes the debuff over time. Wait. didn't we just talk about groups getting more experience, so grouping not only gets you more experience, it helps you get rid of corruption faster, ensures you're safer against ganks, and opens up other forms of content.
That brings me to the ownership system.
As we can see the ownership system is not non-existent, rather it is based on the ever popular ancient Greek idea of "the strong do what they can, the weak endure what they must". Just so we're clear ownership whether sanctioned or not, is based on one groups ability to prevent other groups from accessing the thing being possessed. And what is the smallest group? That's right one, so solo players get it again a lot more pressure here given this applies to the entire world even the "solo focused areas", and high level crafting materials which you need to have even decent gear.
In the economic system were going to focus on two things item degradation and auction houses. Yes, there lots of other parts to the system but they are all bog standard things that you would expect for an MMO made in 2024, and have no real impact on the game as a whole beyond exactly what you would expect.
Auction houses are not global. They can be linked but this only helps a little and as I understand it only 3 can be linked at most. this by no means is a huge deal, but it does mean solo players are either forced to pay more or run to a wholly different part of the world to pay less money. And people will do this. Because players will optimize the fun out of games. Guilds on the other hand can send groups of 4 or 8 to pick up what is needed for the guild massively reducing the amount of time they need to travel for this kind of thing and being much safer in the process.
Item degradation in most games saddle you with a simple repair bill which allows you to just press a button, pay gold and be done. It's a gold sink in every sense of the word. Ashes of Creation is instead a materials sink you need to have some of the materials so that you can actually repair the item when it gets damaged. The two ways you incur a repair cost is by either over enchanting an item destroying it, or dying, either from PvE or PvP(with exceptions). This means that you can have top of the line gear. Why can't you repair them well there's a guild farming the nodes where you would get the materials and they horde them for themselves and only trickle a little out at a time to keep them hyper expensive. Why are they hording them? Because they have to since there is no way for them to know when they will get another chance to farm them again, because
Player housing. The thing about player housing is it's stupid. If I wanted to play the sims I would play the sims. It takes up a massive amount of development time and effort, and should never be part of a game, but the game itself. That being said the community seems to be overjoyed that it's happening and it benefits everyone fairly equally so no pressure.
Opt-in objective-based battlegrounds better known as sanctioned PvP events. These are open world battle grounds which include sieges, caravans, guild wars and naval PvP and are guaranteed to be totally balanced in every way and never be totally one sided with sixty people attacking a caravan being guarded by twenty people, and if you didn't pick up on the sarcasm you should get out more. This system as it stands is bad for everyone, It favors uber guilds more then others, but it ultimately guarantees you will almost never have any kind of fifteen versus fifteen balanced team conflict and will likely only ever have waves of people washing over a much smaller group. But let's tackle this in detail.
Naval combat seems fine. The big problem is the lack of set transportation, but as far as I can tell that should be easy to implement and test, so while technically solo players could be prevented from traveling from one continent to the other the fix will be so quick and easy I'm not really worried about it.
Caravans!!! Everyone's favorite system, unfortunately can't be used by solo players at all, even if you're a particularly high functioning adult and think you can wait till 3 am and then send the caravan since caravan events are a thing which prevent you from doing even that, but as far as I can tell it does not directly incentivize people to kill solo players people so that's good. While technically it could benefit solo players it would require you to hang out in the area where the caravans spawn like some jaded wife waiting for lifetime alimony, then shadow it in the hopes that some other larger group shows up. Even then that doesn't guarantee any spoils, or that they wont kill you right after. Uber guilds that can take advantage of the system get a huge pressure release because they can multiply any of their earnings by 5 ensuring their entire guild is stupid rich all the time, and anything they need they can just buy.
Castle and Node sieges are a thing. I don't see a problem with Castle sieges, if toddlers want to spend 3 hours fighting over a sand castle that's their prerogative. Node sieges on the other hand are another story. Mainly because they upend everything anyone was trying to do and force you to deal with that, or leave, rather then do what you want. So your choices are forced content, which solo players are likely to lose, or move to a new area, and learn that area from scratch. This is another system that favors guilds, the bigger they are the better off they are again. This is probably the biggest slap in the face you can do to people. This does not make me feel like a player in a game, it makes me feel like I'm content for someone else's game. And while you can do that in a game you never want it to feel like that is what's happening, and no matter what you do, how fun and engaging you make these systems to participate in you will ultimately still be in a situation where you are the monkey being forced to dance for other peoples entertainment.
Node sieges are not opt in. You have two choices "Flee or Die"(IYKYK), there is no opt out. I know I'm going to get push back on this, but for something to be opt in you need to be able to opt out. Fleeing is not opting out because you never asked to be in the situation in the first place. Your are being forced to choose not being asked if you would like a choice. The other tack some might take is the by entering the game you are opting in, and okay fair enough nodes are ubiquitous so maybe that is a valid argument. Let's list the other sanctioned "battlegrounds" them Guild Wars, Castle Sieges, Naval PvP, Caravans, and Node Wars. The first 4 of those are actually opt in, arguably doubly so, first opt in to the guild system, then opt into the content. Node Wars is a pseudo-opt in system. You technically opt in because you vote for a mayor, problem is people can lie, (insert suitably insulting comment about politicians here). So while there are some that might say that people can opt in, I cannot agree with that. Node Sieges are even further from opt in because there is no way to avoid them unless you bypass the citizenship process all together, and even if you do, you still face the consequences of some one sieging the node you call home.
But what about peoples first interaction with the Node Siege system? Why don't we look at what the first experience of a node siege will be like, and tackle losing a node siege after. The first thing we need to know is when will the first sieges start to occur. How do we figure out that? well we have a number 200 to 300 hours to maximum level. At 28 to 42 hours per week that's 4.5 to 11 weeks as per the wiki. So what level can sieges be initiated? Well we know that 21 days after a node advances to a new stage, a siege can't be declared, and we also know village is the first stage that can be sieged. We know it will take a few days which usually means 3 or more, and many tends to mean 5 to 8 on the lower scale, which means on average it should take 3-4 days to get a node from Wilderness stage to the Village stage. There will be nothing average about the launch of the game so you will probably see Villages on launch day this means that the very first sieges CAN occur on day 22. Okay so we have a minimum point at which to start. Now when will people start doing node sieges, probably around max level given it is end game content.
(If you're wondering why were doing this, it's because the initial experience determines your baseline emotional state while participating in that experience. In other words how likely people will be in a negative emotional state when they engage with the second most important system in the game and constitutes a major source of content, and can't be avoided.)
Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/HOURS-PER-WEEK-SPENT-ON-GAMING-BY-MMORPG-PLAYERS-AND-NON-MMORPG-PLAYERS-IN-PERCENTAGE_tbl1_7802995#:~:text=When asked how many hours,, as expected. ...
Leveling rates according to above numbers:
18 to 27 weeks @ 10 hours per week
9 to 14 weeks @ 20 hours per week
6 to 9 weeks @ 30 hours per week
5 to 7 weeks @ 40 hours per week
I'm not going to show the math you have the numbers I'm using, you can do it yourself. So we know around 3 weeks after the launch of the game people can start launching sieges. and at about 9 weeks about 45% of the population will be max level. now we need to factor in the experience bonus groups get and the fact that being in a guild means that, on average, you will get in a group faster, be able to group for longer, have access to more content, have increased efficiency, and access to more information. There is no real way to accurately predict that right now due to all the variables. So we will only take the 30% increase and leave it at that even though the rate will probably be higher.
Solo players leveling rates:
18 to 27 weeks @ 10 hours per week
9 to 14 weeks @ 20 hours per week
6 to 9 weeks @ 30 hours per week
5 to 7 weeks @ 40 hours per week
Guild Players leveling rates:
12 to 18 weeks @ 10 hours per week
6 to 9 weeks @ 20 hours per week
4 to 6 weeks @ 30 hours per week
3 to 5 weeks @ 40 hours per week
Node Wars are basically the same as Node sieges no recourse for the node having war declared on them, but there are some interesting points that we definitely need to cover. First you know how people say this game is a gank box? This system is why people say that. It effectively turns off the corruption system, and lets anyone from the declaring node kill anyone from the declared with out restriction, and vice versa. So if you want to kill the same person 30 times in a row. Your allowed to do that. If you want to camp the spawn points so people can't even play the game and simply die the moment they respawn, you can do that. There are no limits except maybe only 1 Node War at a time, but they haven't even said that, or given a time limit for that matter.
Now we apply a principle we applied at the very beginning and were going to do so with another thought experiment. Your a guild leader and you have 3 neighboring nodes to attack, one has another guild about the same size as yours plus a number of other citizens, one has a dad guild with about 50 people and another 50 solo players, another has 100 solo players and no guild to speak of. Which do you choose to attack. Now I am again relying on the honor system again, but I believe in you guys, you can do it. Did you pick 100 solo players? I know I would it's a much softer target, guilds will literally have no experience (or very little) sieging nodes, and a quick easy win will give them some confidence. Now that we have all the information there's only one thing left to do.
Time to put it all together. First they will come in groups of 4 and they will focus on killing solo players, this has 3 advantages. It lets them test how resilient the people of the node are, lowers the node-to-node reputation so they can declare war, and makes getting a count on the number of people doing it very very difficult. Then they will declare war on the node. People will flood in from the other node and start killing people, it will be indiscriminate, and they will start to corral people as much as they can, if they can camp spawn points they will. This is because the kind of person that will do this will understand that war is not about killing the other person its about breaking their morale. And even if they don't understand that, they still might be thinking 50 people that leave the node to not deal with this, is 50 less people in the siege. That will last a couple days at most(again no time limit). Then the siege will begin, and for lack of a better word it will be pathetic. It will be very short, and very brutal. And when people realize they couldn't last 10 minutes in what should have been an hour long event, some will quit the game, but others will start to ask questions. And when they get the answers to those questions they will realize they were never meant to win, the game itself was designed to make sure they lost. The same way some one would kill a random mob in the open world.
So you lost a node siege what's the big deal?
Now I realize that some people are going to give me push back on this. If you plan on saying I made an assumption about X you should probably assume I didn't assume and just cut out two paragraphs of this already horrifically long post. And if you come to the conclusion I did just assume something assume I went with either the average or the best possible outcome. depending oh which was more favorable to the game. So, yes I assumed the max number of people on the server and I did that because it's literally the best case scenario. Now for the people who are going to try and say, "I'm not that mean" or "people aren't going to act like that" I first need to thank you my internet interlocuter for allowing me to quote one of my favorite songs, and respond with this:
"Credulous at best, your desire to believe in
Angels in the hearts of men
Pull your head on out your hippy haze and give a listen
Shouldn't have to say it all again
The universe is hostile, so impersonal
Devour to survive, so it is, so it's always been"
-Tool, Vicarious
What this basically means is don't fucking assume people will be nice just because you are. Assholes exist, they will play this game, they will grief people, they will be merciless, because this is a war simulator, and that's how war gets. Not to mention all the incentives the game has given players to do these things, and since you're more vulnerable while you are attacking someone else because your resources are being spent elsewhere you want to end the war as quickly as possible. This will take 5% of the population and increase it to either 60% or whatever the maximum percentage can do it which ever is less.
The class system this is the final system and I thought this would be where I point out all the problems I have above and make my case for why having as much choice at the start of the game would be the most important. That is no longer the case. I now think that no matter how good they make the class system it still wont prevent 50-70% of people that start playing this game to drop it in the first 6 months. So here is the order I will cover this in, abilities, role diversity then some counter points.
Now according to some people we are going to get 64 unique classes and simply have to pick them, or build them, as time dictates. Why not just make 14 base classes, they apparently already exist and could be slotted in and be done. make 2 or 3 subclasses that are mostly aesthetic with some noticeable differences for each class, and then slot in the rest when time permits. And if you think class identity is important there should be concern with the fact that the base classes only have 35-40 abilities which means best case scenario you're looking at somewhat samey combat with other subclasses.
End game systems for Solo players. There are none. There aren't even plans for them.
There are other problems but I've already been working on this too long.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Solo_players
The final conclusion, this game heavily favors guilds in what I can only describe as the most blatant bias and total disregard I have ever seen in an MMO. There is not a single system that works in favor of solo/single/casual players. In fact any system that is meant to punish people punishes solo players more. Systems that solo players could take advantage of have road blocks put in to prevent them from using them ala the caravan system. Other systems which have inherent advantages in the game are given further advantages like giving groups an experience bonus. The end game systems are geared purely towards guilds and groups giving them many ways to meaningfully interact with the end game. solo players have no way to meaningfully interact with the end game, and there are no plans to create anything for solo players. The fact that design pillars are routinely broken in favor of guilds is symptomatic of the entire game. The worst part is if they do add something at the end game for solo players it will undoubtedly be flooded with people in guilds with the best gear meaning it will end up being a shit show for solo players who are permanently going to be locked out of getting the best gear because they wont be able to access the materials due to guilds hording as much as they can while they can, and dungeons which they will never be able to do. New players after the game launches will be mostly solo players, and they will have to contend with fully geared highly experienced players when they hit max level. They will have to do this with almost no experience because there is no way for them to learn about PvP except by doing open world PvP.
This will ultimately end up being some mutated version of the Stanford prison experiment where the prisoners pay for the privilege, but can leave at any time, and the guards aren't allowed full power directly, but can still achieve total power through work arounds and in built systems.
tldr;
brendhan
1
Re: World boss and greater loot drop idea/discussion
Credit to [Amnesty] Chialde for putting this idea up in discord.
"When a raid defeats a Raid or world boss, they collect the boss loot. Afterwards their gatherers are able to extract resources from both the boss itself (Chopping the boss into pieces) and materials found across the boss arena (These only spawn once the boss has been defeated) . The resources gathered from the bosses remains are too large for players to transport back to town via their inventory. however they can be placed into large crates, making a guild wishing to fully benefit from the boss bring a caravan for material transportation. Once back at town players can use refining station to extract additional resources from the boss (if the boss was red dragon players could extract extra scales/meat/alchemy agent etc), these are not unique materials, they are the same materials the boss dropped, just in larger quantity.
I like the idea as it keeps master gather's relevant!
Re: [Feedback Request] Alpha Two Citadel of the Steel Bloom & Firebrand Preview | August Livestream
Another missed opportunity to show Tank PoV mass group gameplay. This was my critique of the Node Wars stream too.
Please remember to include a tank amongst those whose footage you are gathering for the next time you present one of these raid events.
That said I guess Alpha 2 is right around the corner and so we'll have lots of streams and videos then.
Please remember to include a tank amongst those whose footage you are gathering for the next time you present one of these raid events.
That said I guess Alpha 2 is right around the corner and so we'll have lots of streams and videos then.
Re: Is there a problem for solo players
As a mostly solo player and an Old school gamer(I have been in guilds and ran them too) I'd like to point out a few things after reading all this.
People saying that this game is guild only is ridiculous and the argument that they are giving a bonus xp to grouping is the reason why is laughable because welcome to just about every MMO! Now is there content you will need a group for of course again welcome to every MMO but I highly doubt that everyone in ashes is going to wait in a safe area until they can put together an eight man to go adventure. Especially us old guys who only have a couple hours to play after work and don't want to spend 30 mins waiting to get one going.
I have mainly soloed every game I played that's not to say that i didn't find pick up grps or other soloers when needed. Ultima Online ,DAoC (the original 8man and zerg game) ,SWG ,WoW and New World. I had fun never had a problem.
Now I figure this game is actually more solo friendly than a lot of other games i have played for one reason, top gear made by players and world events are made so anyone can join! So all I have to do to be competitive is make gold. Remember this about end game and it doesn't matter solo or grp, casual or hard core everyone will have pretty much access to similiar gear potential. So it will just come down to who's killin who and who's taking who's stuff!
People saying that this game is guild only is ridiculous and the argument that they are giving a bonus xp to grouping is the reason why is laughable because welcome to just about every MMO! Now is there content you will need a group for of course again welcome to every MMO but I highly doubt that everyone in ashes is going to wait in a safe area until they can put together an eight man to go adventure. Especially us old guys who only have a couple hours to play after work and don't want to spend 30 mins waiting to get one going.
I have mainly soloed every game I played that's not to say that i didn't find pick up grps or other soloers when needed. Ultima Online ,DAoC (the original 8man and zerg game) ,SWG ,WoW and New World. I had fun never had a problem.
Now I figure this game is actually more solo friendly than a lot of other games i have played for one reason, top gear made by players and world events are made so anyone can join! So all I have to do to be competitive is make gold. Remember this about end game and it doesn't matter solo or grp, casual or hard core everyone will have pretty much access to similiar gear potential. So it will just come down to who's killin who and who's taking who's stuff!
Zehlan
1
Re: 📝 Dev Discussion #67 - AoE Form and Function 💣
Love AoE mob train farming with a proper group composition. Downside is some classes are left out due to incompatability. Solution? Give those classes tools for better mob grinding in small group. 1 by 1 killing.
AoE in PvP is a terrible design. Reduce impact of AoE skills on players. Dont listen to any advice that says AoE is the enemy of the zergs. The zergs are always stronger with aoe tools. High mp, high CD, low dmg, cone only preferably.
Bring back skill to pvp.
AoE indicators. I like natural looking abilities. I hate red circles green circles and all that visual polution.
Flames on the floor? Dont walk there.
Blessed area on the floor? That's your friendly aoe.
A reminder to tone down colour explosions of every ability in the game for better understanding of what's going on the battlefield.
AoE in PvP is a terrible design. Reduce impact of AoE skills on players. Dont listen to any advice that says AoE is the enemy of the zergs. The zergs are always stronger with aoe tools. High mp, high CD, low dmg, cone only preferably.
Bring back skill to pvp.
AoE indicators. I like natural looking abilities. I hate red circles green circles and all that visual polution.
Flames on the floor? Dont walk there.
Blessed area on the floor? That's your friendly aoe.
A reminder to tone down colour explosions of every ability in the game for better understanding of what's going on the battlefield.
Re: Proposal for Class mini Dev series on 8 points.
George_Black wrote: »I see long back and forth of petty arguments between a handfull of forum users and I am not sure if we are giving any usefull feedback around anything.
That one is pretty easy to answer isn't it? No, we are not. What we are doing cant even be described as feedback, because there is hardly anything to feed BACK to them as there is not much given. We have indicators, we can theorycraft around these indicators and Intrepid doesn't want to talk about anything unless they have "something to show for it", presumably because theoretic discussions in the past has gotten them into the spot where people gave 'em grief a la "If YoU tAlK sO mUcH aBoUt It, WhY wOnT yOu ShOw Us ThEsE aMaZiNg SyStEm, F***** sCaMmErS."
Whichever way they decide to handle this, they get a lashback but they have already changed direction once about this, changing again means reducing themselves into a state of being bullied to run back and forth between presenting concepts in development ("hOw Is ThIs A SHOWcAsT wHeN yOu HaVe NoThInG tO sHoW?!") and being tight lipped until they can present something more tangible ("Why don't we get any information on whats going on until after the fact when feedback feels too late to make change?")
And honestly: I think there is no real solution to this, because there is no effective way to distinguish feedback given between comments that are constructive and which aren't. Heck, in creative processes sometime we don't know what is and what isn't until the comment is made.
Lastly, I don't think that people are disinterested in the class system, they are. Just like they are interested in the Naval system(s). I am more inclined to believe that they realized that this is not a stage at which Intrepid is willing to share the information, their previous pushing and prodding did not lead to anything so they are waiting now until that time comes.
Kilion
1