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
As a casual or intermittent player with very random lengths of play time, it would be enjoyable to just jump in, join and play and avoid the toxic meta players that only permit the best players to join.
For general play in past, starting a group up and having to have one of each class before a viable group could kick off playing was always a killer for group play.
In past, enjoyed being able to jump into Neverwinter`s arena for a quick fix of pvp.
Or ESO`s pvp zone and quickly join a large force battling an equally large force.
A good range of things to do with groups would go a long way.
Would be great to see crafting and other activities be more than just collect mats together and one person craft..
Would be great to see multi-group roles to achieve activities like Tale of Two Brothers..
Future Crafting Plans: Herbalism > Alchemy & Scribe or Mining > Metalworking > Jewel cutting (Pending)
*tank is expected to know mechanics for group or raid
*loot is not worth it and only goes to one or few players the rest who also worked for it are out of luck. Tagging or most DPS gets the loot
*people who Need or able to Need when they clearly aren't that class or already have items
*time it takes to form groups and the lack of having unusual group make up
*people who rush content where you can't read, watch cut scenes, or harvest, and those who don't teach for those who are new
*people who won't talk or communicate
*time commitment and no tolerance for those who have to AFK for children, bathroom, etc.
*poor connections or lag that make grouping difficult
*rage quit after a wipe making it difficult to find more group members
*having to be on the same step in a quest
Formerly T-Elf
Redundancy stops me from participating in a group or group oriented activities.
A great example of this is a tried in true tradition in GW2. Even though i love the game, there really isnt anything special about its events system, for groups or group-oriented activities.You either attack to kill, gather an item, destroy an item, or a combination of those things.
I chose the Guild Wars Franchise as an example because GW1, created unique group activities, sometimes the tank wasnt always the tank (edit*- let me elaborate; in some dungeons,events, or zones, the assassin was the tank. The reason why this worked was because the group understood the dynamics of the enemies or boss they were facing. On a failed attempt, the mobs would attack a regular tank, for the group to find that, the enemies DPS was actually dealing damage to the group through redirecting and amplifying weakness through the tank to the party. Once the AI knew that it built up enough party weakness, it would activate a kill switch skill that wiped the whole party, leaving the tank alive. Through skill manipulation the group learned to how activate successive skills on the assasin that would drain the health of an assasin by using weakness (friendly fire) nullifying the enemies spread of weakness). Sometimes healing was the way to attack, sometimes mobs were unbeatable, which required mass group stealth. I believe an mmo should take advantage of all the methods of combat and use those systems to enforce various content metas ( or lack there of metas).
Bosses should show a range of varying responses to groups, instead of higher hit points, crits, or toughness. Ex. Bosses that changed attunements that would deflect DPS, or counter DPS.
Or how about an event system that spawns a boss that requires mining or gathering the ore off of their backs to attack them with it.
Lets start actually using the elemental system as a means to create deviations within the game.
It's mentally difficult for me to look for a group. I'll ruin everything! But my guild friends dragged me into the dungeons over and over again, and it was fun
What I want to say .... it would be great to create a tool that displays all the guilds, their specializations, localization (this is very important in this game!), And a description from the guild leader. For me, voice communication is important. If communication takes place in the chat, I will turn on only if my knowledge helps someone. So I'm looking for voice chat guilds ...
So sad that the Russian forum of the game has not yet been launched. I love to read the ambitious speeches of guilds even knowing that I will never dare to join any of them
I have been beta testing MMOs since Meridian 59, I beta tested Everquest, Ultima Online and even Word of Warcraft just to name a few... in every single MMO (unless you were running with a group of friends every time you logged in) it was difficult to find a group. Even within the confines of a large guild, it would be difficult to find players that were at the same stage of content as you. Someone would have to tag along and "help" you with what you were doing and in the process they would not get any actual direct credit for "helping." The one exception to this is World of Warcraft. The dungeon finder and battleground game finder that Blizzard implemented that were cross server, worked wonders. It put players at the same dungeon quest content or interested in the same content, together into groups. I think that model should be used... if there are going to be multiple servers make the group finder cross server. Even in WoW sitting in line waiting as a DPS player was not fun... I played a tank because tanking was in high demand and it made leveling and finding a group 1000x easier plus the wait was only a few seconds most of the time.
While Blizzards solution was far from all encompassing as you would still often times be running around in the game world completing quests solo, it was a solution and did group people together. I think building from that model and possibly adding new features is probably the best bet. It remains the most successful implementation of group finding to date in MMO's and is copied by many game producers for good reason.
1 - The content is too easy: If I can just solo it, why would I go through the trouble.
2 - Its very hard to find groups: Guilds aside, if common zones or group finders are under-developed it can be too obnoxious to bother.
3 - Hard to find classes: If people don't enjoy playing tanks or healers in a game, it becomes hard to find a good group composition.
4 - Group content is too long: Guilds and Raids aside, if you are finding a PUG and the dungeon is extremely long then it gets hard to find a group. When you do it can be hard to get the entire group to stay til the end.
5 - The rewards are terrible or not applicable: The name says it all, if the rewards don't match the work I put in, why bother?
I enjoyed WOW and EQ2 dungeons for their simplicity and rewards, I really enjoyed the open world group content in Guilds Wars 2 and Rift (Its fun to stumble on an event and have those nearby join you to handle it)
Maybe that means there should be a very limited amount of regional content so that everyone in an area has to focus on the same stuff. Maybe dungeons and events need to be open to characters of all levels/gear strength. Maybe group content needs to be time-limited and announced ahead of time, to force more players to look for groups at the same time. Maybe there needs to be ways to form groups across the world, just to expand the pool of available players. (And then of course, all the extra effort put towards planning/travelling for a long-distance party needs to be factored in to the rewards for group content.)
I'm worried that the game's content will be too diverse, spread out, and poorly coordinated, and that most groups will have to be made outside the game, with real life friends, on third-party group finders, or on Discord.
I've never used a group finder, and never had issues finding a group. They are not needed, and nothing is needed in their place.
If you are good at what you do, and are not a dick, people in MMO's will seek you out to group with.
That sometimes means you are asked to do content others want to do that you may not, but that also means that sometimes they will do content you want to do that they may not.
This is not a bad thing, it's a simple compromise.
The issues come in games when players stop accepting these compromises.
People like to point to dps meters for unwarranted kicks from the party, but my experience is, people are sheep and will do it with whatever reason they just thought up. If someone initiates a kick because you died there is usually nothing you can do, two more usually just follow. If you are the tank and healing up just now to give your healer time to recover that precious mana and someone decides too pull the next group which leads to a wipe, more often than not it leads to the tank being kicked because he didn't do his job or is too slow.
Knowing that someone is such a kind of person helps avoid them and find better groups. Identity is important.
I usually love to group up randomly, but in games like that I started to avoid it as much as possible and now only very rarely do it.
2nd biggest contributor are people that aren't prepared. It is the highest level difficulty and you should be prepared. If you don't bring your flasks, potions, enhancements, ammunition, repaired gear etc. and are unwilling too change that, you are out or I walk away. There is a reason they exist and are ranging from being a necessity to you should have them.
Famous example are people who won't equip a key for a vaultrun in Warframe. "it won't be my key that comes up anyway". Equip your damned key you cheapskate it's a group commitment. Everyone should do their best and be prepared.
Other than that there are several other factors that will prevent me from grouping up. Examples would be Dimishing returns (big exp penalties), useless activities, lack luster rewards bad communication tools (for random groups, if I can't quickly communicate what to cc and what to attack I rather not bother at all and wait for friends to hop onto ts/discord or whatever) and so on.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
I want to agree with you. But the problem is that AoC will be a much bigger and diverse world. In most MMOs there's only a few dungeons or raids that are relevant at one time. So everyone is generally on the same page, doing the same content. We don't know that that will be the case is Ashes. All I'm saying is that, if the devs aren't careful, every node could have it's own dungeon, and maybe no one wants to travel to another node for group content, so there's ends up just not being enough people to make a group with unless you are in the largest nodes of the server.
The biggest nodes already have plenty of advantages just from being more advanced, and players will already be heavily incentivized to gather in the most populated areas for economic reasons. I don't want the availability of teammates to be yet another reason for people to never leave their metropolis. There has to be something (I don't know what) that draws people out of the populated areas and gets them to explore group activities around the world. Otherwise there's no reason for there to be a huge game world and 100 different nodes. Intrepid may as well just put everything in 5 nodes and let the community develop those nodes in a dozen different ways.
Don't get confused between nodes and zones of influence. They are very different things. Just because a raid or a dungeon is in a particular node's zone of influence doesn't mean it is closest to that particular node.
Also regarding your worries about players staying in the biggest nodes all the time, from what I understand clusters of gathering resources can appear anywhere on the map so if players want to gather those resources they may have to travel quite far away from the metros to find them.
With 103 nodes (excluding castle nodes), several versions of each dungeon needed per node, and a targeted release date of sometime in our lifetime, the numbers just don't work out to have a dungeon in every node.
My guess is that there would be one dungeon between every 5 - 7 nodes.
One thing is for sure though, Intrepid are going out of their way to make sure players don't stay put, if players aren't willing to leave their own node for group content, those players are unlikely to stay in the game long.
You described a "random group" problems. If you play with friends or collective of ppl that are tolerant and play it for the reason you do ( Not hardcore raiding etc), then the problem is non-existent or considerably smaller.
1. The raid lead has to know the mechanics, it is encuraged for the rest of the raid to know the mechanics. Raid lead =/= tanks (most of the time). Most of the mechanics will be explained before the boss pull.
2. If the loot is not worth it, then why would anyone raid? It is the leaders responsibility to see to it, that each member gets at least one item in two raids. Who gets the loot depends on what the fkn item is, not on who is what role. There are more dps classes then tank classes, so the possibility is higher for there to drop a dps item.
3. Thats what master looter is for. Let the raid lead decide on who can roll.
4. PUGs do take some considerate time, thats why you join a guild or a raid team after all?
5. There are always people who are willing to teach (like myself), but the people who need that information dont ask. I had to check people during raids on their mechanical knowledgr and whisper them the information...
6. That is mainly a PUG thing, and that is sadly normal. They are all strangers and dont know each other. It is YOUR responsibility to break the ice so to speak.
7. PUG problem once again, raids understand such problems and are able to structure the timing of puses so that people with young children can care for them. This is not often a problem, because the kids should be asleep at the time that the raid begins tbh.
8. Time commitment is a thing yes, and if you want to do the high ranking stuff, then you will have to commit to it like everybody else.
9. Thats more like a you thing though?
10. PUG problems.
11. ?
So, it seems to me that you had a hard time in pugs? Find a solid group of friends ingame, join a guild and do stuff with them!
I don't understand the idea of wanting to play an MMO at the group or raid level and not wanting to form a network of players that have similar schedules to you, similar playstyles and are fun to chat with.
A guild is one way of doing this, but I've done the same successfully (in Archeage, of all games) using just a friends list.
People really do need to get back to thinking about group content in MMO's as activities to do with friends rather than as activities to do because you have to do them.
The thing is a lot of mmorpg players haven't experienced what it's like to be in a "true" guild. They've joined these massive cesspool guilds with hundreds of players in them that act more like a secondary trade chat than a guild. If this has been your only experience of guilds then it's easy to see why you'd develop the mindset of hating group content.
* If war guild gathers a group and in our guild it's not allowed to play with them
* If same reward can be obtained solo with same time and effort
* If ppl always fail the encounter (like some dynamic events in GW2 which usually fail)
Completely agree - this is why I've always preferred games with guild membership caps in the double digits rather than triple.
The focus of an MMO from a players perspective shouldn't be the content or the gear, it should be other players.
In order to do that, a game needs to promote players actually playing well with each other.
One of the first things that would need to happen for that is for automated group forming systems to not be present - as if there is an automated system, players suffer no consequences for bad behaviour in groups.
Ashes has that, so it's all good. The other thing that is needed though, Ashes doesnt necessarily have.
In order for a game to have a solid grouping scene, groups need to know they have content to take on that is worth taking on.
Most games do this by offering groups instances to run - where they have a known amount of time they need to spend, a known number of bosses to take on, that offer a known challenge and reward. Thus groups can form up knowing what they are going to spend their tine on, and what the potential rewards will be.
As much as I like open PvE content, it completely takes that known aspect away. Geoups will have to form up for content not knowing which boss mobs they will take on, or even of theg will be able to take any on at all.
This is why I am still hoping Ashes has a reasonable amount of instanced contwnt at the geoup and raid level.
Invite more people.
Problem solved.
I agree with you there, although it should be noted that the guild membership cap of 300 makes sense for Ashes since the cap applies to individual characters. So if you have 3 of your characters in the same guild, that's 3 out of the available 300 memberships available. We'll be doing 40-man raids which means chances are your guild will have at least 50 players in the guild. If each player has 3 characters (not unreasonable for a raiding guild) you're already up to 150 characters in the guild, out of an available 300.
I'd be happy with an 80 character limit.
Every raid guild I've been in has had an alt guild.
While it is best to seek out a guild or raid group that you get along well with, those guilds and raids all started as PUGs. You want to promote content that encourages people to group on the fly, that is one of the main ways you meet and interact with people in an MMO.
If you simply make content one of two extremes (either solo or organized group only) then people always just run around doing their own thing and when they do group it's always only with those few people they know.
As a consequence, when they get bored of soloing the world and/or when their limited group of friends dissipates as people move on or take breaks they will usually end up leaving the game. You see this all the time in MMOs today.
You have to provide some benefit to grouping up on the fly with people you DON'T know or your population will begin to dwindle.
This is where content like monster coin events and such come in to play, and is also supplied in a PvP sense via node sieges.
If your node is under attack, whether PvE or PvP, you will want to group up with whoever is around to defend it.
There are plenty of things in Ashes where people that otherwise don't group up often in other games will find themselves wanting to group up in Ashes, but that isn't really what we are talking about here.