Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
AoC Promotes Anti-Casual Gameplay?
I've only recently found out about AoC and have loved every bit of it!
However I am a little worried about the long term health of the servers...
<strong>What content is currently available in the server will depend on what cities are formed</strong>
Before long, there will be an AoC Wiki page that holds all of the different "formulae" for spawning different dungeons and bosses.
i.e. Town A needs to be lv5 with the two nearby towns B and C both being lv3, then completing the nearby dungeon 3 times will force the world boss to spawn at "City McCityFace"
Does that not mean that in the end, you will have a large number of people (presumably a few guilds merged together) on each server completely controlling the flow of the world so that they can get to what they want?
I feel that this will severely impact smaller, more casual groups of players who might be trying to create their own town when the huge war band comes marching through and wipes out your small town so that they can all get access to a particular dungeon for a day.
<strong>TL;DR - Unless you're a hardcore gamer part of a large guild, you're going to get trampled over for the sake of achievements.</strong>
However I am a little worried about the long term health of the servers...
<strong>What content is currently available in the server will depend on what cities are formed</strong>
Before long, there will be an AoC Wiki page that holds all of the different "formulae" for spawning different dungeons and bosses.
i.e. Town A needs to be lv5 with the two nearby towns B and C both being lv3, then completing the nearby dungeon 3 times will force the world boss to spawn at "City McCityFace"
Does that not mean that in the end, you will have a large number of people (presumably a few guilds merged together) on each server completely controlling the flow of the world so that they can get to what they want?
I feel that this will severely impact smaller, more casual groups of players who might be trying to create their own town when the huge war band comes marching through and wipes out your small town so that they can all get access to a particular dungeon for a day.
<strong>TL;DR - Unless you're a hardcore gamer part of a large guild, you're going to get trampled over for the sake of achievements.</strong>
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Comments
I also assume that should a guild roll up and try to take the node, that would involve PvP, so unless the small group flags, they'd be PK'd and that would bring all the de-buffs associated with that on to the attacking guild. I wonder if there will be a mechanic to stop larger guilds declaring war on significantly smaller guilds.
I'd like to think it would be easier in the long run for the Guild to either offer incentives to the small group to "move along" this could be money, equipment, guild membership or a continuing "active" roll on how the node is formed.
The next event depends on the accumulated history of the previous events across the server.
So you could repeat day 1 events quite easily.
The only way to replicate day 700.....is to go through that whole 700 days of previous events 1 by 1.
That wont happen.
Or have every node in exactly the same state with the same quest completed at exactly the same time.
That wont happen.
The narrative branches. Unless you an recreate that identical rats nest of branch history, it simply wont happen.
Now that is not to say we will not be able to figure some more simple task like in order to get a certain type of boss to spawn we need to level this particular node to this level. But also remember that leveling a node is not an easy task and degrading a node will be twice as hard. Based on some of the current conversations from the Devs you could be looking at 3-4months to see a node eliminated and that is if a siege is successful, if they fail tack on a couple more months.
There will be plenty of casual play to be had during these times.
Maddstone
Just keep in mind a single guild or even small group of stronger guilds might not have ideals aligned with a large amount of smaller guilds. If they do siege your town you could even hire other players as mercs while also having defender bonuses and town guards backing you I believe. I'm confident the devs can drop this with a decent middle zone that prevents those filthy zerg and over controlling guilds from getting everything.
And you porbably can't just destroy any opposition either, but honestly its too early to say. Give it the first few alphas and we will see
Unless you are going to start from scratch and reproduce every fork in the same sequence you have no guarantee to get the same result.
Spawn tables are conditional. And those conditions are a nested hierarchy with many paths.
2. Good luck getting everyone who participated on the server to perform their action in the same sequence in the right order with everyone else.
In other words you may be able to repeat day 1 or maybe day 2 events...but the further and further you go, the lower the chance of achieving reproduction. Even then you couldnt stop new people working different nodes and messing everything up.
I would think, there may be some who would try this if another server would have found "the legendary sword of XXX" somewhere, but to get enough people with them and to try to force it would require a lot of resources and a big military. And since they may not know all the parts of the "recipe" for the triggering the event or dungeon this could always be a failure even if they succeed in changing the world in some way.
I also think a lot of player would be quite settled and have fixed goals unrelated to trying to copy another server. I mean when these things would be "revealed" in the forums I would think the game to be already in quite far state, towns would have been build, maybe even cities. In this state a lot of player would be having their home towns to defend, they would have already put in a lot of resources in building these towns and probably would not like too much if their town would be on the list of things to change. And one thing I really like about the concept of this game is that the town would probably have quite a big variety in the type of players who call it home, since it's beneficial to have strong military, a lot of commerce, good crafters and a lot of overall activity in the same place. In another way, if you and your (more peaceful-type player) friends are able to start building a settlement, it's succession would depend weather other people would find that place to be attractive place for a settlement and then a budding commercial hub would probably also attract more warrior-type players who would benefit from the overall activity and would set up their post there as well.
In fact I don't think the huge guilds dominating a server is necessarily how this game is going to play out in general. I think there is so much to do and so many places you would want to be expanding your influence in the game that it also means that each individual goals to be a bit different from each other. I would think in this type of setting really huge guilds or alliances of guilds dominating a server would only live for a fairly short period of time until the members of this guild/guild group would realize that their goals are not served by the way things are and the huge guild/alliance would start to fraction leaving space for competition to arise.
Anyway back to the topic at hand.. Just as a last remark, you have totally not considered the anti-force to the problem you described.... the "LORE HUNGRY", that would do anything in they power to reveal all the secrets in the game. More different the path of each server is going to be the more overall story behind the game will be revealed. I'm not saying I would be one of those people, no way. I'm not saying I would want to see the whole world burn just to know what would happen, no way. At least not unless I had some extra torches somewhere...