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.
Comments
I feel like most people who are against instanced pvp are against pvp becoming the same thing it did in wow. I know to me at least, wow pvp wasn't true MMO pvp. It used the rpg elements of wow (classes/gear) but for the most part, the pvp game mode was the same thing you would find in team fortress. The MMO world was reduced to a huge lobby you waiting in between matches. This is what we are against. We want the developers to focus on bringing pvp back into the MMO world.
One thing i'd like to point out is you that you are focused on only a few of the pvp systems, ignoring the flagging system, node/guild wars, and other open world battlegrounds. We don't have the specifics on a lot of these systems but i think it's important to note that they are here.
It's hard to explain to those who have not experience it but there is a bigger picture to all this. The political wars that nodes and guilds will use these systems as tools to fight. In a lot of modern games, your objective is told to you by the game but here it will be a little more natural. There will be systems like limited resources, land, and the node system which will natural put us, the players, against each other. We will then use these pvp systems to fight over those things.
Unlike a instanced battleground where you would be told to raid a caravan to win the match, you will likely raid (or defend) a caravan for a greater reason like weaken an enemy node/guild or strengthen your own. The action will have a higher purpose beyond simply winning a match and with that, hopefully a greater feeling of meaning.
As i said in the beginning, we have arenas but I want to convey there is more to the open pvp systems then a pvp match taking place in the open world.
And that brings us to the last point. We all want AoC to have successful and appealing OWPvP, but some of us disagree on how that can be achieved.
I like how you prefer to think of the instanced pvp with no impact on the world as the competitive pvp. By deffinition, it is the opposite.
Instanced, no risk, no reward, no effort required pvp today is competitive?
Setting up seige towns in prep for castle seige, massively organizing a war for control both politically and economically of an world area is not competitive?
Read more webster.
I'll set aside the fact that you seem to be the only one that isn't understanding the impact or importance of the caravan system. And thus disregard it as flawed based on nothing.
You are disregarding the pvp that is always availible every day with the least amount of effort (in owpvp) because it wasn't on wiki? Wtf sence does that make? Perhaps you aren't researched/educated yourself enough to have this debate friend.
I cant help but feel that what you want breaks down very simply, and this is what a lot of us dont want;
1. You want to remake your favorite part of Rift.
2. You liked said part of Rift due to the lack of effort it took on your part, and you felt that was competitive enough.
-CS
If you will only play a game that meets all your expectations, within whatever reason you decide, then by all means please play that style of game. I wish you the best of luck finding it and hope you enjoy it. Expectations on what makes a good game are subjective, within reason, and different depending on who you are. Ashes can't appeal to everyone.
Ashes is a PvX game, it appeals to PvX players. Players that enjoy both equally, or reasonable enough to consider that both PvE and PvP have their roles and one doesn't dominate the other. Ashes should not be a game that you can only PvP in, nor should you be able to play PvE the whole time without engaging in some PvP.
I am still not sure why people can't play more than one game at a time. I must have missed that gamer evolution phase. Luckily for me, I am able to play a game depending on the mood I am in and I am not stuck playing just one game until the next new one comes out. I'm sorry if you feel like just one game at a time is all you can handle.
As for escort missions those always get boring. In a perfect world and game nothing would ever be boring. At some point however most things become boring. That boring phase might not last long for some, might take longer for others to get there, and some players will be diverse enough with everything Ashes has to offer they might never get bored. My point was, doing the same thing every time you play and only doing that one thing, will likely get boring.
Siege activities. PvP preventing any potentially threatening node from leveling by hunting gratherers/miners/traders (not just caravans). PvP protecting others from doing the same to your node.
With castle sieges there is PvP to prevent current castle owners from leveling all their defenses. Sure, you can't declare a siege, but you can declare a guild war or just go to their zone and PvP anyways. Yes, there will only be 5 castles, so there should be near constant PvP in trying to own a castle. I guess some PvP guilds might say "oh well, they got the castle, I guess we won't ever have one." If that's the type of PvP guild you find yourself in, look for a more active one.
TL/DCTR: Sure, all your points make sense from your pov. As do mine from my own pov. All I was suggesting was to look at it from a more open perspective about what to expect. Or don't, I really don't care.
I do hope everyone finds enough about Ashes to love playing it.
If they don't, oh well, better luck next time
Alpha 1 is not even out, neither of us have Alpha-0 privileges, and yet you are claiming there is a flaw in a system you haven't touched.
PvX is not a niche community. It is a game that allows PvP and PvE players.
I never said all you want is PvP, I was explaining how I see PvX. As in, a game that is not 100% PvP nor 100% PvE. I wasn't implying about your life... that time.
As for peeps that want to invest all their gaming time and resources into one game, they can do that. Expecting one game to nail everything they want to be perfect so they don't ever have to go play another game for years and years, imo, is an unfair expectation.
Just because I want a certain type of game, and Ashes is close enough that with some tweaks it could be really close to my perfect game, doesn't mean I am going to come here and say Ashes is flawed. Everything is flawed, nothing is perfect.
If you want to express your input on what would make a game, that you haven't played, better then I am going to respond on why the same game (which I haven't played) is already good.
That's the point of the forums, civil discussion and dissenting opinions.
Alpha 1 may not be out yet, but I have already started thinking about the potential flaws in the system that I want to test. As such, I am looking at the game features as they are described in the wiki and various media and thinking about how they would actually play out in a populated game world. In particular, I am looking for potential problems.
Caravans jumped out as one of the more blatant of the potential problems. I've spent a bit of time ruminating on how players could adapt their play and band together to mitigate the inherent problems. I've come up with quite a few promising possibilities, mostly centered on the timing of the caravans and ways to ensure PvP players have a more personal reason to accompany the caravans.
I have issue with this because Rift tried that approach in one of its later expansions: forcing PvP players to run dungeons and raids in order to attain top end PvP gear at a decent rate. PvE players were similarly forced to PvP in order to maximize their gear gains.
It was disastrous, and left everybody unhappy.
I don't disagree with most of what you said. Imo a PvX should require a little bit of both, otherwise it should be an MMO with PvP servers and PvE servers and I don't want that for Ashes.
I never played Rift, but part of the issue could have been an existing game with certain rules suddenly changed. From what I have read on the forums change is not something everybody can just jump on board with. I have been in the middle of a few games when things have changed and it has made me wish I wasn't invested, even though in the end the changes weren't horrible.
Either way, once i get into the Alpha and test combat and as more content opens to test I will happily debate more strongly on what I think should stay, change, or go.
Also, hello
I see structured battlegrounds in a similar vein to instanced arenas as having a definite use for those that want a bit of mindless PvP outside of the usual WPvP that we'll see.
I don't think it's going to go well if PvP ends up being far too situational and doesn't give PvP-leaning players an outlet to scratch that PvP itch.
Searching for Caravans and learning routes is meant to be somewhat more difficult as those shipping their goods choose routes/times they think are the safest.
PvE is different, PvE is almost immediate upon entering the game.
I see this as a legitimate concern of the PvP crowd. I also think that Ashes has never been marketed as a PvP only game and I am glad it's not a game where PvP's can just log in and immediately start attacking people without some thought.
Instanced battlegrounds are against the game vision, but isn't that exactly what the instanced arenas are? Sure, AFAIK battlegrounds in regards to AoC are basically any open world pvp areas, but whats the difference between those other than one being anywhere and the other being specifically instanced?
Then there's also possibly going to be crossserver arenas, which may include matchmaking. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Arenas#Server_vs_server .
Not saying one is better but personally i prefer open world because the fights and scenery generally as well as it feels more immersive and part of the world. You can get also involved in other random encounters while traveling across the world to different battlegrounds which can mix up play.
The video that you provided is mainly talking about Node Sieges not Castle where Steven talks about Castle Sieges is talking about Siege equipment. Either way we will find out all about these systems in A1 testing.
Here is the Steven talking about Specifically Castle Sieges: around 16min mark.
I think World of Warcraft in vanilla had the right balance when it came to the Battlegrounds/Arena system when it first launched, if you wanted to do the Warsong Gulch Battleground for example you'd physically have to travel to Ashenvale Forest where the Battleground was based and you'd be able to enter the portal to the instanced battleground, a similar system could work very well.
Since we already have the typical deathmatch arena that will be getting added it would be fantastic to see other popular rulesets and arena types like Capture the Flag (Warsong Gulch) and King of the Hill (Arathi Basin).
Just like players won't be able to raid dungeons constantly they won't be able to raid cities, castles and caravans constantly either so having an option other than mindlessly ganking players in the open world is going to have to be available if you're going to want to keep the interests of PvP oriented players.
The open-world PvP for the most part is going to be the PvP equivalent to raids, it's going to be the the more 'end-game' style that will take planning and preparation to pull off successfully and just like PvE will have plenty of combat in the open world outside of raids, this equivalent behaviour is obviously discouraged for PvP (Corruption) so having an alternative that will be undoubtedly popular for players can only mean good things.