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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
To clarify why this is something that I would care about relative to Ashes, then.
Ashes is supposed to be competitive. It has the potential to be quite acutely so, ESPECIALLY for builds.
The point being made is simple. If 2-5% of the total playerbase is using trackers, and 10% of the playerbase is what we would call 'competitively viable', that's between 1/5th and one half of the 'competitive' playerbase that have a speed-of-development advantage over the remaining.
What happens when the 'average' player knows that a competitive opponent has an advantage of this type? I can see that you would be fine 'just losing repeatedly because your opponents use their trackers and you prefer to do it the hard way', but we are not talking about you. We're talking about all the people who 'don't have time or the will to keep being at a disadvantage, but would still like to compete'.
You consider this connected to PvE, but MOBAs have parsers. Fighting games sometimes have parsers. Some even have 'parsers' built into the game by the developers because they know players will do related things.
I think I get what you and Mag are saying, that you don't care enough about the higher levels of competition to care if they exist or not, and believe that others don't either. That's fine, I think I just 'prefer that Ashes isn't ruled by those who are willing to have them' on average, and I expect that those who are not willing to have them, but are also not willing to just keep losing, have hard decisions to make.
I have no intention of using a tracker in Ashes. I am internally debating whether I expect to be competitive enough to even need a parser. Please do not project your perceptions on me as a defense mechanism against the logic being presented, because you are once again, defeating your own goal here.
You could be extreme lenient and give them the extreme benefit of the doubt and say there is 5 million people of unique users that downloaded it.
BDO boost having 40m players and that is not a big mmorpg. If you think of FF being closer to WoW as the top current mmorpg to player and think of their unique users being like over 100M it becomes a small drop of 5m users. Even if you have the full unrealistic benefit of 18 it still would be less than 20% . But this gets into making things up than actual substantial information.
Talking about download numbers is absolutely pointless, even more so on people that download it and would prefer no trackers but use them would make that umber a even small amount. But arguing made up things just leads to a mess so its not a point worth bringing up. And why i keep saying they will reach as deep in their pocket for anything because a support for trackers in the sense of reading everyone's information is no what people would want or think about.
You are the same person that doubted that FF14 even had 24 million unique users back when we were arguing about Action Combat vs Tab.
Which of these realities should I be assuming you are in? Or will it just change by your mood at the time?
You support Noaani point so I'm bringing it up simply.
So, just to be clear...
"Anyone who supports Noaani in this thread is toxic, doesn't care what Ashes TOS says, and live by the 'we will do what we want' attitude."
Correct?
I'll only ask you this. If all that is true. If Noaani's goal is to just 'get to do whatever and use trackers anyway', and anyone who agrees with Noaani perceives the same thing, willing to just ignore all the rules and do whatever and not care...
Why is it that the 'Noaani side' is even talking? 'We' don't need to do anything. It's in 'our' best interest to let you believe whatever you like and use our 'toxic, rulebreaking elitism' to win.
Is there even the slightest chance that you can comprehend that maybe... this isn't about that?
All of those things might (and definitely will) push away people who can't handle repetitive defeat. Hardcore players with trackers would just be at the top of that huge pile of potential "casual abuse". But then we could look at Noaani's example of him using trackers in AA, while barely anyone else did. He figured out a more powerful build and was demolishing everyone else around. And iirc some people even avoided fighting him because of that. I've seen the exact same thing happening with powerful players in L2. Except they were more powerful just because they were in a better guild or spent more time powering themselves up. Yes, some people avoided fighting them purely because their reputation preceded them.
But when you look at the overall population of the game there'll always be a pyramid of power. And if the current generation of gamers can't deal with that kind of situation - well, I guess Ashes is doomed. But what else is new. This fact was known literally the moment Steven decided to go with owpvp design, because he himself played game where this pyramid was shining the brightest.
In other words, I really doubt that trackers will impact other players' attitude towards dying in pvp anywhere near as strongly as smth like gear tier or class RPS, or guild size/perks, or pure mechanical skill, or any other factor that I'm forgetting rn. And this is why I consider trackers to be a purely pve thing. Because their influence is seen the most there. Especially if the difference in rewards for clearing dungeons faster will be very tangible.
Because its easier to have in game then worry about TOS potential issues, People that can share things that might get them banned, etc. So its arguing to make their life a little easier, else they will attempt to find a way that might take more time but eventually try to normalize it if the company has no way to stop them or gauge how strong the companies response will be.
In a heavy PvP game, sure, but again...
"Stronger Guild'.
"Gear Tier".
"Mechanical Skill".
The first two of those are directly influenced by PvE, that's literally the point of Ashes. The third... well, as I said, fighting games have trackers. Street Fighter's measures literally down to 'Percentage Accuracy using your crouching Medium Kick'. Literally every attack a character has, you can look back at 'how many times you have successfully hit with it in a match', which in turn can lead to 'finding obscure ways to improve or understanding that goes beyond what others have'.
I don't think I will manage to convince you, here, of the levels of technical functionality that people go to, or use... but I've lived through this 'argument' before on the FGC side. At that time it was about 'frame data', then it was about 'visibility/ability to check hitboxes'.
I guess I just don't understand your point, in the end, but I will clarify mine.
"If Intrepid doesn't want people using Trackers to win, they must reduce the effect of knowledge/builds on the outcomes of contests and amount of gear that flows towards players who will inevitably use them."
I care about winning being decided by skill, and I would prefer it to not be 'programming skill'. I don't mind if you don't care about winning. I would still, given that, prefer that the game is both complex enough that I care, and yet not unbalanced toward people who can write Perl parsers or C++ Image Detection code (I use these moreso as my marker for how far back you can go, this does not require modern languages or powerful processing at all).
I only know one way to achieve this.
Assume I never play. I literally just want to WATCH it unfold. I still have the same concern. I 'know' that the one 'winning' most likely is winning because they have the better programmer. Pushing trackers underground guarantees this more because now 'downloads' are not a thing.
I understand that there's a concern that the game environment as a whole, the 'other 80%' will be affected negatively by the existence of the tracker. I believe this doesn't have to be true, that's the only argument being made in the end. To me, I'd be trading a possibly 'fake' benefit (lower toxicity) for a 'real' one (ingame skill mattering most to anyone who aims high).
So one more time for me, is it that you don't think it will have this effect, or that you just don't care what the 'top 10% outcomes' are based on?
I suppose you could also assume that PvP isn't decided by these sorts of things... and that will be the balancer I don't know any games where that's true at the MOMENT, but I don't feel like I could convince you anyway.
Though it has hybrid combat in it most people use tab, one of my friends did gw2 and pvp in it. Pretty much the brief of what I know of it as i didn't get as deep into that game. I played it when it released but its depth didn't really do it for me. Felt like I was playing the same thing from lvl 20 to max character skill wise.
This is incorrect.
I know that Mag NEEDS it to be true. But it is not true.
Smite. Parser.
Street Fighter. Built in Parser.
Paladins (Arena shooter). End of match parser, built in parser.
Monster Hunter, a game that could easily HAVE PvP with minor tweaks, and where fighting the monster is VERY similar to fighting players at the higher ones. Parser.
Parsers are not here to make your mechanical skill better, they are for 'ironing out the glitches in your perception by presenting you with objective data to reference your perceptions against'.
You could end up 'winning' this argument in the stupidest possible way, in fact. "Managing to convince people that instead of looking for a combat log parser, they should be building a frame-data meter and hitbox scanner" because the game favors that more.
I think you missed the point.
There are two possibilities. Either trackers exist exactly as they do in other games, or Intrepid implement one in to the game client.
I am not talking about the perspective of one person, I am talking about the overal, actual reality.
Someone not caring and so not looking to see if trackers are a thing for the game or not does not in any way alter the reality that one of the two situations above will exist. All it means is that they have no idea which of the two it is that actually exists. They will still exist in one of the two possible situations s even if that person does not know about them.
This is the difference between objective reality and subjective reality. Objectively, one of the two situations I talked about will exist. Subjectively, people may not be aware of this, but that is only a product of their lack of knowledge (keep in mind, if you played an MMO and did t think trackers were being used, you were simply existing in this subjective reality).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5u87jw/gw2act_an_arcdps_log_parser_plugin_for_advanced/
Let's be clear here, Pearl Abyss said they have had 40,000,000 accounts.
In the same way someone may have downloaded a parser plugin multiple times, people often have multiple accounts in an MMO.
BDO actually has game functions that encourage people to have multiple accounts. That 40,000,000 also includes any accounts made while the game had free weekends on Steam. Everyone that made a free account like this is counted in that number.
You cant say that plugin downloads are not a valid indication of how many people are using a tracker, to only then use total accounts as an indication of how many people play a given MMO.
If you want to say that BDO has had 40,000,000 players over its life, then you also have to say that FFXIV has 18,000,000 active players using that one combat tracker.
Honestly, its your call which way you go here.
This is honestly a completely valid response given your level of understanding of these, so I won't challenge it at all. I just want to ask one thing therefore.
Do you believe that it is difficult to make and distribute a parser that wouldn't be detectable enough to result in a ban? Once again, bearing in mind that you're talking about 'me' or 'Noaani' doing it, in this case. Not the average person. I agree that there could be a reduction in 'people with trackers or parsers' if the TOS was against it and the game did not provide it.
But that would be 'us arguing so that other people could have parsers', not 'us'. 'We' could have them anyway. Unless you believe that there is any chance whatsoever of 'actually being banned' from the sort of people here making the argument based on actual detection of a parser/tracker being used.
Sorry if I mangled the question.
"Do you believe that custom trackers are detectable enough that a programmer will have to worry about running one?"
It SEEMS that you just think it would slow or prevent distribution, which would be a positive effect in your perception, and I can't argue with that at all. You see it as positive and I see it as negative, and I think it's probably subjective at that point.
If the game is designed in such a way that there's a single build that can demolish anyone and everyone in pvp - Intrepid would've failed in their development, no matter if the build requires you to spend 10k hours reading a parser or just 10k hours of bashing your head against other people and seeing what works or doesn't. I mainly don't care where those outcomes come from. To me it is literally the same, because both things are just people spending time on the game, with one person spending more of it or having a different approach.
I, as a person who never used trackers, wouldn't know how easy it is to "properly" use a tracker. Could a completely casual person just look at a tracker and go "oh yeah, I need to do this instead of this and this point in the fight"? Because if it's not as obvious as that - I see no point in having them in the game. They wouldn't all of a sudden level out the playing field. The casuals would still need help from other people to understand the trackers, which would be the same as just them coming to a better player and asking that player to teach them how to play better (I've done this in L2 several times).
And if it is that dumb-easy to understand what is the best possible build and course of actions in any given situation - then where's the "skill" then? Is it purely mechanical at that point? Cause if it is - we're back to the "there's always someone who's better so nothing will help you just suddenly win against them" situation. No matter how much info the tracker gives you, if the person can't execute all the stuff that info says you gotta execute - the info is pointless imo (to said person).
And as Noaani likes to say, even if there isn't a tracker for the game - there will be a tracker for the game. So anyone who does understand how to get the maximum benefit out of them can just go and get themselves that tracker. And to me, their very little "difficulty" of "I need to go to a 3rd party site instead of just the game" would be equal to my bigger difficulty of "I'll just bash my head against the combat logs until I understand what I need to do". And both of those actions would make us stronger than a casual pvper who just doesn't care about any of that shit at all. And when that pvper dies to either of us, it'll be on them to decide whether they can keep dying until they understand what to do better, whether they need to find help to understand how to win, or whether they just want to leave the game because a better player killed them.
Ah, well, I can understand that. I feel like it's a less common perspective, but I don't really know that at all.
I won't bore you with 'the effectiveness level of a tracker or a hitbox scanner'. Your perspective is definitely in a realm that I personally would not have expected someone to want to see in Ashes, but I definitely believe you genuinely hold it and don't misunderstand anything.
You're more or less right, after all, I think that the real difference is, in 'my world' (Fighting Games specifically), you are 'the casual', and I wasn't thinking of it that way before. Definitely don't take that as a slight, it just is what it is and I couldn't 'see it' that way before.
Nice reach, you must have not played BDO. As usual you make up things trying to convince yourself it is right when you are clearly in the wrong. To say BDO encourages multiple accounts is the biggest joke I've ever. seen. You are wrong about all your points as usual
Most people in Archeage didnt really care about long term success or anything like that - simply because they didnt expect to be around long enough to see the benefits from it.
If we assume people playing Ashes will be expecting to spend 3 or more years in the game, expect FFXIV levels of tracker use.
Keep in mind, FFXIV has 38 million accounts. That means there are only slightly more than 2 accounts per plugin download (and note there are at least three plugins for FFXIV - that 18 million is only one tracker).
Combat tracker use really is quite high. While you can argue the ratio of unique downloads to total downloads, but what you cant do is claim that tracker use is a small minority.
If we assume that tracker use is equal across all three tracker, that means there are more downloads of trackers than there have ever been accounts in FFXIV.
Edit to add; since I have talked about account numbers in two MMOs in my last few posts, I feel it's worth pointing out that while BDO counts 40 million accounts, and FFXIV counts 38 million, BDO only sees about 50k users log in a day across all platforms, while FFXIV sees about 3.5 million.
I just consider this worth pointing out, even though I am not a particular fan of either game.
To the uninitiated (I believe people do still read this thread when we manage to keep things short):
BDO allows you to make money while AFK. It's not the best, but it's something. Despite not having a trade system between players, it allows a guild to use the 'free slots' in the Guild for additional accounts, which can then be used to do Guild Missions for Guild Funds, with their higher Processing or Cooking skills which are built up via this afk activity.
BDO also rewards the player for simply being online by granting you materials which are gathered by 'workers' who have only small upkeep requirements. "Passive Income" they like to call it. The more accounts you have, the more Workers you have, the more materials, the more Guild Funds and Guild EXP.
Noaani is correct.
No one is doing that with time involved needed, nor does it benefit their main account when they can be simply cooking on their main and not wasting time. This statement doesn't make sense and isn't representative of making actual money. If you are hard core life skilling and that is what you are playing BDO for you aren't using multiple accounts. It isn't incentivized.
He and you are not correct.
Some of us have second computers, or in my case, second Consoles. Second accounts here refers to multiboxing.
I effectively did the thing I just said TODAY. That's why it was the first example that came to mind. It's not even the meaningful or good example.
So, one more time...
Just because you don't do something doesn't mean other people don't do it.
I respect your Lawful Evil ways, but remember that Chaotic Neutral exists.
Anyways, as always I am glad that you have given me a random chance to educate people through your own insistence on these claims.
BDO also has an 'Energy' system, which, for certain guild missions, lifeskills, etc, actually causes the Energy stat to run out. Most lifeskills that actually require this stat are more profitable by extension (who would burn Energy to make the same or less money?).
Energy recharges over time. When you run out, switch to new character on same account. When you run out the energy on ALL the characters on that account? (Remember, we're Hardcore here, you can run it down in an hour just doing the average stuff)
Use the other account.
Today was 'gather 3000 Milk'. Each cow costs 10 energy to milk once for 20-40. SafeZone with lots of cows. No danger at all. 50,000,000 Guild funds.41 minutes. Easy.
Please continue to give me opportunities to gripe about how bad BDO is, or anything at all really. I will practice 'discrediting your claims' with less words as we go. I get the feeling I'm going to need the skill at quite a high level as things progress.
When I played in about 2016 or 2017, I knew people that had 8 accounts. People as in plural - I never worked out why 8 was the most, I knew a good number that had 8, but none that had any more.
While it may well be different now (dont know, dont care), since the 40 million number was total accounts over the life of the game (including free accounts), those people that had 8 accounts each counted as 8 accounts.
Knowing someone that is being ineffective with 8 accounts and saying there is a reason on BDO for multiple accounts are two different things. The game does not support multiple accounts as there is no way to support your main account effectively as there is no player trading....You always know weird extremes, i don't know if you have realized but weird extremes are not normal.
The only point in BDO where top end guilds with select people made multiple accounts was for an exploit, and people were banned and had silver removed from their accounts. So no you are incorrect BDO does not give incentive for multiple accounts.
@Azherae 50m silver is literarily pennies even more so when you are splitting it between your guild members you are effectively wasting your time on those accounts and managing them. People can make 1 billion silver a hour with agris. Though you can make some money with life skilling that content was far out weighed by grinding ages ago. You don't need alt accounts to do that you need alt characters and your limited on missions so simply having members and doing together is well and fine. Still not something you are going to do to make money....You are only discrediting yourself trying to push this point you shouldn't try to be defending someone making bad points it isn't going to help you. Anyone would laugh at you if someone said yu need to make multiple accounts with multiple characters and you need to use them all to make money for our guild so we can give ourselves a tiny payouts for all your work.
Your example is bad and doesn't make sense.
I believe at this point you have 'won'. I am, in fact, unwilling to go more than 3 'lies' deep with you. I will put no further strain on your reality, I think you're two levels of dissonance deep as it is.