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
My bad I seems I did not actually answer the op question, I prefer to only play with my wife. We both are pretty introverted and enjoy just playing while not having to worry about other people as most groups tend to be toxic as we usually roll tank/healer it seems most dps we are grouped w rush or in general seem to be toxic (not all are) so I guess in conclusion toxic ppl keep me from groups
On the other hand, you could just keep grouping with people until you find some you like, then keep inviting them to groups when you're on.
This is what the rest of us that group up all do - no one enjoys grouping with toxic people.
The ratio of toxic to non-toxic people in games without automated group finding systems is somewhat easier to deal with.
Again I would disagree. The discussion is about what types of group content interests you. Whether content is geared towards strict organization or casual play is really the heart of that argument.
What sorts of things stop you from joining a group or participating in group-oriented activities?
If its too easy, or if players can get what they want without interacting then generally they won't interact. On the other end of the spectrum if you can't get anything at all without a huge cumbersome group then the game becomes a chore. You have SWTOR on one side and EVE on the other.
The point I'm making is that you need to both stagger and balance the group content and events in the game to promote different stages of player interaction. You want simple group activities to bring people who don't know each other together, then you want intermediate activities so those interactions can grow with them becoming more organized, then you want challenging content to allow the ever growing group to all enjoy content together strengthening the bond on a larger scale.
I think one thing that stops people from grouping in MMO's is the fact that the content seems to always focus on Solo or Raid with no meaningful content in between. It has been mentioned that people don't join a "real" guild, well of course they don't. There is nothing built into many of these games to foster interaction at the many stages it takes to get from solo to raid.
So a lack of group content progression is something that would stop me, and I believe many others, from joining a group or participating in group-oriented activities.
That is the content that promotes initial group interaction in players that otherwise may not be interacting on a group level.
Obviously there is still group content on top of that, but that content is for people that are already grouping up with others. Really though, what more could they have to bring people in to group content to start with other than a threat to their livelihood that they need to fight back against? As time goes on in an MMO's life, there is less of a focus on group content as there is on solo or raid content.
This is to be expected though, as after a few years, the bulk of people that are happy to continuously group up with others have the ability and means to raid, and those that don't want to group up with others will still want to solo.
Most older games that currently focus more on raid content (WoW, both EQ's etc) had fairly good group level content in their early years - but there just isn't the need for it.
Since developers are able to see who uses what content, and how much it gets used, they will be using that data to decide what type of content to make as they add content to an existing game. If no one is running group content, there is no real point in continuing to make it. On the other hand, if people are running group content all the time, even Blizzard are not inept enough to not then make more of it.
noaani wrote:
"As time goes on in an MMO's life, there is less of a focus on group content as there is on solo or raid content."
I couldn't agree more with this. Its not happening on accident though. It's a choice to only make those two types of content. The result of that choice is people having fond memories of the people and events of the "early days".
noaani wrote:
"Most older games that currently focus more on raid content (WoW, both EQ's etc) had fairly good group level content in their early years - but there just isn't the need for it."
There is always a need for it. In the beginning of all these games there was a bridge between the early solo experience and the end game raids. You essentially had three types of content. When that bridge was left out of future expansions you separated your player base into just Solo and Raid. The results are all the MMOs you see today. If they do the same thing with this game they will get the same result, five years after launch we will be talking about the "good old days".
Its not just for character progressing, you must keep that bridge intact for social progression.
At release, Ashes will have group content for groups of people already wanting to play together. It will also have solo and raid content.
Almost all MMO's released this millennium have had this, so it isn't something special.
What Ashes has that only a small portion of other games has though, is a reason for players that do not usually group up with others to do so. This is the monster coin and other such events. When you also add on node sieges, I can't think of any other MMO that has nearly as much content happening in the world that would see players that do not normally group together actually wanting to do so.
Now, as the game ages, obviously Intrepid will look at the useage of various content types and develop content appropriately - as per every other MMO, and as dictated by good ongoing game development practice.
Now, you can make the claim that group content to assist players in moving from solo to raid content is needed at all levels if you want, but that is an argument for you to take up with game developers - not with someone who is just taking their time to explain things to you.
I'm not even saying I agree or disagree with you, I'm just letting you know the reason for why things are as they are.
Usually for me its due to the Questing itself not being fully engaging for all team members. I hate joining a group that just wants to speed run when I'm in it for the first time. Or vice versa. I like it when MMOs let those doing the quest for the first time are given a bonus for the entire team for helping the noob along the way. EXP Boost/ Better Item Chances/ Titles/ Cosmetics (FF14 does this in dungeon instance to an extent)
I wish more MMO's had group involved quests require specific members to get involved with there skill sets to solve environment puzzles or mob-related defeats more often. Even in terms of segregating team members only to have them in smaller teams regroup and through instance by instance gain back the original size of the group and abilities necessary to complete that specific quest challenge.
A good social group is always better than solo. But unfortunately, it is hard to come by unless you have found a good guild that's active and actually likes to help. Or the game itself forces the grouping on the player.
Time is always a huge factor and Loot drops. If the loot being dropped doesn't go with a member who had been scaled down to assist in group Level wise then what's the point? Giving decent crafting material might help those more experienced players but then comes the whole grinding aspect that takes away from first-timers experience of the story.
Then there is there the whole idea of why are we actually grouping? Are we just joining to progress the story or to obtain an item/achievement or is it that the group itself has leveling agenda for a class build for a guild member? A more robust reasoning AI team building system is hard to come by. And there's nothing worse than getting into a group saying "Greetings!" only to be met with crickets. Some sort of real reward system for helping new players and grouping and a real rewards system like cosmetics that a person would actually want to wear. The mother goose outfit for assisting X amount of <LVL# in the beginning area or Saviors Staff that actually has good stats when you heal x amount of players with certain criteria met. Kill Thief punishment when stealing kills from the player more than X times causes that player to gain a specific negative buff for a certain amount of time.
This is at least my little tidbit of an opinion.
I can tell you I had to kill the baron 67 damn times to get a certain loot item to drop back in the old days of WOW...I lead over half of them and getting a party together was pretty easy, and my number 1 rule was don't rush it and we are not in a hurry unless the whole party had done the instance before and knew what they were doing. IF we had a newbie, we all took our time or I let people bow out if that wasn't their thing. It was way more enjoyable that way and I always got a thank you for the run when when it was over.
I usually look the group over and if I see some spazoid jumping around in circles yelling a bunch of mess it's a DEF NO GO for me.
I dont' know why people can't get in their head it's a group thing and go as a team...but that rarely happens these days..everyone has the attention span of a gnat....
Difficulty vs reward
Fun vs trivial content
Size of party vs required size
Player gear score requirement vs any player can join
I like my content to be challenging based on the group's collective gear score and average level. The rewards need to be worth the time investment and the content has to be fun or I'll likely not be back. In certain content I think it should lock out players that don't meet a minimum requirement in level and gear score but then have the dungeon scale its difficulty and rewards for players that come in at or above those requirements. Or even based on group size. Although I believe everything is going to be open world so I don't know how exactly they plan to curve anything. The only thing I can think of is how GW2 did their public events and scale players down or up stat wise so that they could enjoy all content but then curved the reward based on their actual level and gear score. I wouldn't mind it if they added instances to the world but called them portals to alternate dimensions or planes. I mean we are arriving to Verra via a portal so whose to say we don't stumble across some hidden ones in the world or create our own? Oooo that'd be fun. Collect rare materials in the world to create our own portals to transport us to different planes or pocket dimensions. Hell, let's go to the abyss or wherever corruption originated from.
Another 'Group content killer' is communication. Typing takes so long to get an urgent point across i.e. "Move over there!" Or my personal favourite: "Get out of the fire". Encouraging voice comms in game would not only make groups more interesting and fun, but can also spark comradery and guild creation. Please also give the ability to mute players in case they're toxic though 😂
Open world group content:
- Often to easy and can be soloed, the rewards are often not worth it.
- Open world group content these days does not require people to actually work together anymore, this is sad.
- Party finders: Yes I do not like them, while I am someone that often plays alone I prefer to look for my party in a server chat instead of using a tool that puts me with a few randoms.
Instanced based activities:
- Dungeons and raids these days are so boring and poorly designed, it does not require a group of people to actually prepare and work on a tactic. Most of the time people clear new content day 1 max 2. With this after a few runs I just do not bother anymore because it's not FUN.
- Speed runs; because dungeons and raids became so easy people tend to just rush in and think they are Rambo. This ruins the fun for me and many others.
- Toxic behavior: Since there is no need for collaboration these days, because everything is so dumb down people are toxic and rude often for a small mistake or being new to a dungeon. The excuse google the tactics is just ridiculous.
My suggestion:
- open world: Make content challenging to the point that people have to communicate and work together to complete this content. this can be done through:
----> Difficult pulls
----> mob groups have classes: Tank, healer, CC, buffer, DPS, ...
----> if indoor: traps and etc.
----> Have random spawns that spice up the challenge.
----> Scaling.
- Instanced based activities: (raids / dungeons)
----> Do not implement a dungeon or activity finder as in Wow that with one button you get random people. Create it so that people can post the activity they want to do and people can join that way. The creator can give details and request certain things based on some options during the setup. (level, spec (tank,dps,healer) , etc)
----> make content challenging give people a goal. if content is to easy, it will also get old and boring and people will be bored which leads to them leaving the game. Make it challenging, get people to communicate and work together. = no teamwork should be punishing in the sense that things will be more difficult. So let people root, stun, fear, mobs, let the tank organize the pull make the npcs if for example humanoid attack the healer or dps first instead of the tank, the tank can grab aggro but this should difficult to maintain.
Anyway this is my opinion and input. I miss the days where I met people and got to know them because we had to work together, communicate and be a team! This how you find new friends, teammates or guilds. These days I just feel like mmo's are just one big troll fest, the bigger of a troll you are the better.
I love groups. My main thing about groups is finding them. Just the shear amount of time it takes to try to form them. A lot of game time lost there. If you have a really good (LFG system) then it makes it a lot easier. i will use Everquest as an example. Back in the day, You had no choice but to yell out LFG across the zone. The problem was, it was only heard in that zone. When the LFG tool came out, you could mark yourself as LFG and anyone across the whole game could see who was LFG, their class, level etc.. You could even add a message to yourself about what content you might be interested in. You could work on solo content while LFG. THIS was a huge game changer for the LFG process.
Thanks for listening.
1.Time constraints - if grouping takes too long to form, or the activity takes too long to complete. I don't always have hours upon hours to devote, or often when I do, I need to be able to get up and take breaks or sometimes I may not always know if I can devote hours until those hours are passed. I need flexibility, so if a dungeon is going to take 1-2 hours, I will likely skip it. Some games are good at this and have short, fast 20-30 minute dungeons, or open world content that you can easily join and leave as you please without screwing over your group and this is great.
But for example Classic WoW, which had good points, did have a problem here which is ultimately why I quit. Forming a group took too long, waiting for people to travel there took forever, doing the dungeon often took forever depending on your group's skill, experience, and knowledge. After spending 2 hours doing all of that and still not finishing a dungeon leveling my HPal alt, I had to quit because my pizza had arrived and I had to go downstairs to get the delivery. I had to leave my group mid dungeon as the healer which definitely screwed over my group but I had no choice (my bf and I had planned to eat dinner and watch a show for a few hours that night, and foolish me I thought 2 hours was enough to squeeze in a dungeon run beforehand). I quit Classic after that.
2. Sometimes I'm just in the mood to solo (and as a healer I hope I am able to effectively do so)
3. Not efficient for progression - if soloing is easier or faster I'll do it. Either because of xp/hour, loot drops, or just slow group members. The latter is also sometimes why I like soloing, because not everyone wants to play at my pace or in my style, and that's more annoying than fun.
4. Someone mentioned loot and I'm not sure this would prevent me from grouping, but I did want to mention it - personal loot is much better than rolling on group loot.
I am worried that because content available will change depending on the progress of the node, that a team that has been put together to clear hard PvE content, and whose combined schedules only allow a 2-3 hours a week to meet, won't be able to find any of the content they want to do. What if the nearest 20-man raid is 45 minutes of in-game travel through a hostile node? Or the server has no nodes powerful enough to even spawn a large rain environment? Does the raid lead have to say "Tough luck, hopefully, the nodes are better next week"
1. if there is such a small window you can field 20 you might want to either get more people or do smaller group content.
2. If you are serious about raiding and the raid is 45 minutes away with hostiles between you then you probably want to move to a location that is closer to a raid.
3. If there are no nodes at a level to support a raid then yes, you aren't going to be raiding. Probably should have defended the node that supported your raid. Maybe for raid night, you will focus on building that node back up or moving to a new one.
The best advice i could give is go into the game with an open mind. Don't expect it to play like a lot of the themepark games we have on the market atm.
This was - for a while - one of my bigger concerns with Ashes as well.
However, a few things that have been said have put my mind at ease in regards to this specific point. Since you seem to have the same concern I had, I'll go over the few points that have been made that I fell are worth pointing out.
First, Intrepid want players and guilds to be able to perform an amount of pre-planning for raids. This inherently means players/guilds will need to know there is a specific piece of content available for them to take on, as you can't make any plans until you have a target in mind.
Second, Intrepid want to have a tier/ladder system with raids. There will be content that only a single digit percentage of players will be able to kill. Some people have argued that this is due to content changing based on node layout, but the comment was made in relation to raid difficulty, and was fairly clear in saying that there will be content that is actually hard, and they will consider it successful content if few people kill it.
Now, in order to implement a tiered raid system, the content needs to be somewhat static. The encounters themselves can (and likely will) change slightly, but the general specifics of the encounter (basic script, adds etc) will remain. Intrepid would not be able to set up tiered content if all content were 100% dependent on node layout.
The third thing, and perhaps the most important, is that Intrepid have recently said they are expecting a 80/20 split between open world and instanced content.
From what I understand, the idea will be that each dungeon will be open, but will have instances (several) within it that contain the bosses of that instance. So your group or raid will go to the dungeon and fight their way down, potentially killing mini-bosses and such on the way. Then when you get to the boss, you enter an instance to take it on.
This may exist with just group dungeons containing both group and raid instanced, but it may (probably will) mean that there are open group dungeons with group instances in it, and open raid dungeons with raid instances in it.
There may also be instanced content (group or raid) that is not based in a dungeon, but that is yet to be seen.
As for travel time, as long as you and your friends are based in a node that is within the ZoI of a metropolis (most nodes will be, but moving to one won't be hard), you will likely have raid content somewhat nearby.
Most players won't be hostile to others in general, as people really won't want to gain corruption. Unless your node or guild is openly hostile to another node or guild, people aren't going to attack a group or players moving peacefully about the world - unless they have a caravan of course.
The above is my expectation for how it will turn out based on what Intrepid have said over the years, and if they stick to that notion, and if they manage to pull it off, access to an appropriate amount of group and raid content is not something I consider a potential issue with Ashes any longer.
I hope that helps.
Having a list of guilds, but no way to search, sort, differentiate them is pointless.
I would love to see a way to have a proper recruitment process for guilds.
Examples include:
website hyperlinks to find their webpage, discord, teamspeak ect.
A in game questionnaire to fill out as part of an application, where guilds could type in their own questions, perhaps some pregen questions.
Metrics for the guild # of players, # of average concurrent players, average level of players, average weekly hours per player.
Tons of things would make finding guilds better, I want like minded individuals, i dont care where from in the world, but i want to know they speak my language, are happy with 25 yr+ members -no chat filter& minor adult discussion (18+ no longer means this i find... sigh) I would like to know they play nearly as often as i do, and are progressing through the game, not 10 people at max level 100 noobs who played for 2 days and never logged back in filling the roster.
I would like to see some for of guild reduction happen.
This sounds cruel to some, but if your guild has only 15 members in it while the cap is 300 your wasting the name someone else might want in order to have a fancy "friends list" - OH and put in some sort of friends list to avoid this use.
Please lock making a guild behind roughly a months worth of play to avoid this also, this reduces the needed culling, and players getting the in game message "your guild has become too small, produce new members, or pay a fee to keep the guild alive or 7 days from now the guild will disband"
IDK exactly what perameters makes a guild not a real guild, but in general there should be pushes like the above to get guilds to grow, or join another larger guild. This creates more social interaction, while 15 people playing together isnt a bad thing, there is no reason those 15 cannot be part of 300 people, and those 15 play together while sometimes particiapting in large scale content as well.
But those 15 being isolated segments your community, too many guilds swallowing the playersbase stops other guilds who need memebers from finding them, thus hurting the community as less guilds have enough members to participate in the BIG content, thus less competition, thus more dominance of those who are getting practiced while others still struggle to get guilds big enough to compete.
Other social desires should be considered... in what ways can social activities occur... marriage of 2 character? can I place metrics on a player that i have "met" such as " Relegrade the bad" write a note next to his name or stat block ect in my Known players menu "This player is untrustworthy, i witnessed a duel they scammed a noob out of 100k" a small note to myself about players helps when there are so many names running about, i could meet the same person 10 times before knowing they are not some faceless person and assigning them some meaning.
looking for group mechanics... sometimes are good but most often they actually cause less social interaction as players dont need to even talk to get into a group and mindlessly run content.
Social interaction with languages, i dont mean english and french.. i have contemplated in game languages being used in text chat. such as a person speaking X language cannot understand a person speaking Y language, unless they spend time, money or xp 'a cost of some sort' to learn the Y language this would allow for a Job outside of the game providing a profession, they could become a translator or emissary because they have skills a guild leader needs to contact other guilds, theres no in game job translator, but its needed to discuss contracts and peace treaties ect. wouldnt that be neat.
Having no Global chat, while it seems like a good thing... i think it hurts social activity, rapid pacing of chat scrolling by, tons of it being pointless garbage, i think Local chats are the way to go, and Guild chats, private messages, party chat
Economy can drive social experience... ive seen too many games where players "make shops" which mean they sit AFK on 10 accounts running shops in town AFK.... bad mojo.. players driving an economy is great, but how they interact matters actually selling and finding buyers creates spam bots in towns BAD, player shops create AFKs, its a rough question... alot matter what items players might be trading anyway. But consider it carefully.
I would even consider some system creating incentives to use parties and guilds with greater permanence... such as instead of joining a party and leaving right after a dungeon - while possible not the best way - Such as if you and your friends all make accounts, add eachother to a party, then doing activities, you level the party up boosting your range or rate of shared EXP, and perhaps dmg (as you learn to fight synchronizing strikes and coordinating countermoves For any questions of how that would make sense in a realism question of why dmg would scale up)
Incentives for playing with the same group would get people to not silently run dungeons with randoms, and instead maybe you know.... actually talk wouldnt that be great for a party to do in a social game.
So Sorry for the wall of text but i could go on for pages really... so many choices ahead and they matter so much. Social aspects of MMOs make or break them... as lacking the MM of MMORPG kills it.
Asking things in a dire tone like Who did this and Who did that.
I know what you are thinking what can Ashes do about something like that? Well first of all you could help people get into right guild by making guide and how ti find guild for you. Maybe toon likes serious environment. But just like in a movie how the first five minutes of it set the tone for the rest of the movie Ashes of Creation set the tone for this game. by making videos.
The Five Different Types of Trolls (WoW Machinima) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com › watch
Now this video makes fun of the types of trolls and League of legends oddly enough made one recently about the same subject. But similar video could be made about raid ettiquette.
You know all the strange and sometimes funny things that happen in raids.
You went to an area, saw other people fighting the mobs you needed to fight and you asked if you could join.
Grouping was more rewarding and it made the fights easier.
Post-WoW its way to easy to kill 100 monsters at a time while soloing so theres no need to group up.
Also, the post-wow era of players are quite toxic.
Language barrier is also a big factor, its probably best if you have servers for EU players for German, French, English and Russian seperatly.
0dbea148-8cb8-4711-ba90-eb0864e93b5f
1. A sense of real group engagement and immersion generated by a good story.
2. Group interaction and decision-making with the NPC's as opposed to a bunch of solo cut-scenes. SWTOR did this with their group voting system. It felt like we were actually influencing and engaging with the STORY as a group too.
In an ideal world it 'd be Witcher level story interactions and npc acting with a real group decisioning and interaction system with the npc's. I don't think this exists at the moment.
So in a nutshell what tends to stop me (or rather makes me get bored with the group play real quick) is a lack of:
1. Meaningful individual contribution to the quest and outcome
2. A healthy and interesting variety of activities, tasks and challenges within a group quest (more variety here helps 1)
3. Good storylines and npc representation/acting - good drama makes the action more meaningful and the 'wins' more satisfying
4. Group decisioning, shared cut scenes and npc interaction - (maybe influenced more by characters with higher charisma - which gives this trait more meaning if it exists). Not everyone will be happy with the decision all the time but hey, that's just like real life!
5. Making some stuff hard and failable - so I feel a real sense of achievement with my friends when we succeed by actually having to think and work well together.
No need to rush either - you don't go to a concert to listen to the last note - enjoy the whole experience.
1. Activity is the exact same way every time.
2. Rewards are not worth the time.
3. Activity is to random to engage.
But does it really? After playing FFXIV for years (where you can max every class/job/profession on a single character) didn't really improve the community. At least not something noticeably better then other MMORPG's where you have to play alts to experience an different class.
And in other said MMO's people will just use some sort of "family name" so people can recognize each other.
Can i ask what you base your assumption on that alts disconnect communities?
1) The content is easy enough solo, grouping trivializes it even further
2) The quests don't benefit from being in a group
3) Lack of synergy when grouping
4) Burnout on stagnant group content
5) Time commitment expected & likeliness of "leavers"
6) Spawn rate doesn't support group size
7) Exp tax for grouping (sharing vs being rewarded)
8) Strict metas can discourage grouping
9) Bad mob scaling with group size. (WoW raids have weird mechanics that scale disproportionate to raid size)
10) Language barriers can be challenging at times. I don't approve of people that prejudice against servers from difference regions but, without sufficient tools in the game to communicate fight strategy, it does add complexity. (minor)
11) Content that requires voice. I use Discord / voice-chat 23/7 but there's an hour a day where I want to chill without it. (minor)
12) Feeling safe. If there is lots of PvP in the area, I am far more likely to group. If I haven't seen an enemy in days, I'm more inclined to solo
13) Being out of sync in quest chains