Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
Please stop trying to sound smart to protect yourself. It is nauseating.
I'd relish if all your bots got banned within the first day of setting them up though. Too bad I probably won't know either way. Get a new "job".
I'm not trying to "sound smart". If anything, I am dumbing things down to suit the audience.
Dont blame me if that results in you thinking I'm trying to sound smart.
Personally, I hope literally every bot gets detected and banned on the first day, that would be fantastic.
Your confusion between combat trackers and bots is still amusing though.
In any game, i have fun retro-engeneering it, trying to understand how all is working,
I have no fun to have a "feeling that my build is good" ... i want to have a factual accurate answer. I have no problem to say "yeah, my build is clearly average, i would have better result if i played this build"... I play what i prefer to play and don't care what the meta is saying... but also i have no fun if i don't know where i am... it frustrate me (in bad way) and most often, i lose most interest on my character.
Also you speak about immersion, but... this is subjectiv. I have no immersion in a game i have to rely on feelings to consider if my builds are good or bad. I do what i like on games. You seems to consider i do this because i feel i am forced to do it but ... no. I am here to play, have fun, enjoy time spent.
There is not one way to enjoy video game, but a lot.
Does it feel like playing a puzzle game too?
I'll chain a few questions fast.
How do bots work? Are those created by hackers? Do they change the game client to extract information or intercept network packages?
I'll assume yes.
In that case, they will be able to use data which might not be present in the client side, if IS would try to implement a combat tracker and would help them too.
If IS will implement a combat tracker, wouldn't players still use external combat trackers because might be better than the ones implemented in the game?
I think having a combat tracker in game will make it harder to detect those which use the external ones because the difference in play style would be small. Is it so? But anyway, if that would be the case, probably it would not matter anymore.
So at this point I think the conflict is between players, how the game is supposed to be played. And on which side is Steven. Mixing those different styles is not possible and each side reduces the fun of the other side.
Immersion. The world being 'real'; hence information having to be gained from the World. Learning from the World about it.
So technically you are wrong that it is Subjective; unless we're counting Pennies and not Pounds.
And assuming that you have to metagame to be better at the game:
This idea of "build" is not good. This is standard MMO practice and is a result of lack of Immersion.
If everything in the game is mostly simplistique and arbitrary, not rewarding common sense it lacks Immersion.
The game should not be so static, simplistique, and transparent that people can create a guide of "what quest giver to go to for some gear to be able to clear this 1 dungeon for the good drop".
Such WoW type/ Simplistic MMO design is not Good.
And with power scaling not being so dramatic, the skill of the person is more important. A level 40 beating a level 50 due to Skill should exist. Or even a level 33 beating a level 50.
So Make the game Dynamic and 'Mysterious' as one Thread Poster requested. Keep the ##s not Transparent. Change precise Values. Tune content. Have a lot of interaction between variables besides 1 dimensional like Physical Damage <-> Armor while keeping it very very Intuitive and basically 'Organic'
.
Thus a 'Guide' would have to be about "Strategy & Tactics" rather than 'Build'.
I guess you dumbed it down so much you sounded dumb and dishonest
such as you characterizing a confusion between trackers and bots; clearly anything facilitating trackers would assist botting
And you do not seem to understand what trivializes the usefulness of trackers, coming from someone who seems to rely on them heavily and has some kind of 'faith' in their usefulness.
You don't want a game where you simply play the game and become Leader of #1 Guild on the Server?
Doing the Impossible? From simply playing and learning through the game?
Why let Trackers exist. They need to be eliminated and the game designed to eliminate their usefulness and popularity and eliminate their ability to be created in the first place.
I’m no expert but this does sound like a baseless assumption. Could you go into detail on that one?
This is blatantly untrue.
The two are entirely unconnected. Why?
Sure, some people don't like them. Cool, we all get this.
However, some people do like them.
Additionally, as has been explained here and also stated by Intrepid CS staff, players having trackers can be useful. Sure, you've attempted to debate this point, but the fact still stands that experienced CS staff see value in players having access to objective data.
So, when you look at the above, you have people that do not like them, people that do like them, and the fact that they can have a tangible benefit.
Based on this, the actual appropriate thing to do is to implement trackers in a way that minimizes exposure to those that do not like them, allows those that do like them to use them, and keeps them in the hands of people that can make good use of them in regards to bug finding and such.
This is the obviously logical thing to at least attempt to do.
The tangible benefit can exist by having a PTR with different values on things and a Tracker; and hiring Playtesters. Playtesters can be brought in once the game has made a profit. There should be enough feedback at that point.
A game is not for pure engineer benefit and trivializing content or "preference" that amounts to cheating even if that makes for cheap fun is not part of a good game.
I do not want you to have extra tools to meta game. And I want to PvP. A better game is tangible benefit. Testing can go elsewhere with different values ##; including for Playtesters.
Bots can play the game on PTR or on Private, and logs be automagically analyzed for expected vs resulting Damage et cetera.
Obviously logical you want something that amounts to an exploit.
As soon as you start talking about things outside the game, it ceases to be true.
As an example, there are guides for much of WoW's raid content. These guides make the content easier for people that have not done them before. However, these guides do not make it any easier or harder for botters to bot that content.
Before you start trying to say that this isn't an appropriate example - I will point out that it is exactly appropriate. Both guides and combat trackers are giving you information, and nothing more.
As to your comments that Intrepid can just use paid testers to find bugs - literally no software company in history has every been able to rely on in paid testers to find all bugs. All software has bugs of some sort when it is released, and the more people dig in to that software (aka, top end players), the more bugs they will find.
I mean, if a company like Google can't rely on paid testers, what makes you think Intrepid would be able to do so? You have not managed to explain how not having trackers would make the game better. All you have done is explain that YOU would like to not be involved with trackers.
My suggestion in this thread is actually the only viable path for you to achieve that - I hope you understand.
Immersion : deep mental involvement in something.
you have you way to be immerse in a game, i have mine.
Some people explained that a proxy vocal chat would help their immersion, other said that it would break their immersion. Who was right ? Both.
Duty finder breaks immersion for me. People love this tool
You want a backpack to have the game closer to some survival game. But too much realism end up breaking immersion for some people. Again, you are true saying it is better for immersion, and people saying "no" are also true. Each human is different, and have different thing to get immerse.
For a recent topic where "immersion" was a try of argument : skin of armor. "if there are people with cleavage it will break the game immersion" and people answered "if i can't have my character aesthetic the way i want it to be, i won't get immerse"... One relied on other armor, while second only care about its own outfit and don't care about others. Both speaking for their own immersion.
Also you say build is against immersion ? i am a roleplayer... far before i discovered MMORPG... all my pen and paper character got built with specific feats, skills, ability. Why ? because this is how i have fun, and how i manage to be even more immerse in the game sessions. It helps me to be far more involved in "pure RP part" of the activity. And it is also true for neverwinter nights 2 server, where my character are totally build, designed before i play them, and often just before creating them (and so, sending the background to DM for validation) i do again some minor adjustment.
If roleplay activity is not about immersion ,what it is ?
You try to define what is positiv to immersion and what is not, with your own taste. but you are not the truth, what is true for you is only true for you. And clearly, the way you want me to play will make, for me, the game boring, and uninteresting, relying on feelings to create the character is not the way i like to do it.
Now, i will end with one thing : you think transparency on rules makes the game worse. it has to get hidden statistics, etc etc. And because you say all you say is quite objectiv, you can claim that Pathfinder : kingmaker and Pathfinder : WotR are bad game... total transparency of statistics, needs to do some builds, (and even minmaxing if you rise the difficulty) And rules existed before those video game were an idea.
I don't play puzzle game. or not a lot. Not sure what you think when asking it so.
I love online game for the social dimension (which disappeared) i prefer long term investment and evolution of character (for this, even if i like a lot PoE... there is far of a "top game" for me... my character is now able to do pinnacle, all i have to do is doing this season challenge and... "end of the game" ... sad)
And because there is this long term live of my charcters, i love to have them detailed either on RP side and technical side. As roleplayer, the build and the RP, is, for me, totally linked to each other. each choice or "group of choices" in the build is to fit some element of RP.
I love to do it as part of the game. if it is only "doing build for doing it" without playing the game, with one of those... i don't do. I finished pathfinder : WotR... never tried to do other builds, not interested by doing another run...
Guides helps Bots if they are good Guides. What are you even talking about lmao.
Game would has plenty of areas to bug test not just expected vs actual dmg/heal which you can just log and have a program analyze like I mentioned.
It's like you have no clue what you're talking about or are just a botter trying to get their way.
No they dont.
For a start, if you are setting up a bot, you are going to be farming base population almost without exception. There is no information on base population that players would be interested in (and thus be worth putting in to a guide) that a better would have interest in.
The only way a guide would be useful to someone running a bot is if the guide was about how to set up a bot - and even then it wouldn't be a good idea to follow.
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Honestly, even if I were someone that would bot in a game I am interested in playing, Ashes wouldn't be it. In order to bot (without using AI) you need fairly static content. You need to know the spawn time and ttk of everything that is within range of your character.
In Ashes, content will change too frequently for this to be viable. By the time you find a spot to bot in, ensure there are no undesired variables in the spawn locations and times, ensures you are somewhat away from anywhere players are likely to frequent and made sure the target mobs aren't something that players would desire enough to fight you over, the content would have changed and those mobs wont be there any more.
While there may well be ways to get around the above, right now my assumption is that botting in Ashes will be far too hard to be worth it.
So, even if I were inclined to run a bot, I wouldn't be looking to do it in Ashes.
Immersion is like being immersed in Water. Using the physical analogue, going outside of the Water is unimmersed.
Proxy voice chat has issues because you get people memeing and breaking the "fourth wall" so to speak; but a lack of voice chat is also immersion breaking and detracts from the sense of 'space' and 'world' so it's a Lose Lose in a lot of regards. The game has PvP at least lol.
"Duty finder" is not Immersive because it has nothing to do with the world and is simply a tool. Again, Immersion has a real definition and physical analogue. If the physical analogue doesn't apply then you have it twisted.
I agree that having a Class is immersive because realistically one can't be randomly great at multiple things; people require a certain Mind and Direction to make progress in real life and thus become good at highly intertwined things that are basically "in proximity" on their Path of Growth.
As such, Cherry Picking across Classes is not Immersive. So I agree with you there.
Ya can't have Smite & Berserk because they're completely different attitudes and Paths. The Berserker can have their Cross but they aren't casting Smite.
8x8x4 Archetypes/sub-archetypes/specializations is something that was a Red Flag for me since making everything unique is not at all easy; and not realistic; for Sharif to manage. So yes we agree that classes should be distinct.
Armor bikinis are trolls trying to induldge their smut urges. There's no reason to take them seriously lol.
Nothing immersive about making a mockery of the game and ignoring what would be the REAL motivations, realities, values, and 'urges' of those in the world (such as Survival, Purpose, Understanding, et cetera).
It's like letting people Clown in chat. No reason to take them seriously.
If you strive to improve/win then you can and will. Build not required.
You say you want immersion and to RP yet like Builds? Really?
'Builds' shouldn't be a meaningful word even. Like saying "Class"; because Gear progression shouldn't be the Be-All, End-All of Winning.
"Guide" makes more sense.
As I said: Strategy & Tactics; Application of your Character, Adaptation, Reaction, Teamwork, et cetera should determine whether you win or not.
Nothing Goofy.
It should be an Organic sort of thing rather than Arbitrary.
Sure there might be that one guy with the great item. There will be people with different quality of gear.
But the world of Ashes of Creation is mostly player-crafted and isn't a WoW Clone. There's nothing very immersive about a game being 'solved' because it's so damn static;
and there's nothing very immersive about random quest givers providing you a randomly great sword for giving Fizzlebunk a Book from the Cogwhizz Factory, nor is there anything immersive about everything being level-locked despite being practically the same weapon but with different stats/dmg for some reason, nor is there anything immersive about a lack of weapon/tool maintenance or much else in the feature-poor and feature-mismatched MMOs.
Of course Plate Armor should be great but what's the difference between 1 good set of Plate and a great set of Plate? And why does gear & level overwhelmingly decide whether you win or lose; why not skill & tactics? Strategy? Adaptation? Teamwork? Enemy AI should be intelligent and simplistique encyclopedic "Builds" shouldn't exist as "Guides".
Most MMOs are rigid; but adapting and intelligent MMOs would be great.
That's all I was saying.
No one knows how dynamic AoC will be. Dungeons could have much of the same mobs in it. Dungeons in WoW get farmed over and over again all the time.
As somewhat of a tangent: Botting can be easier or more difficult; and the botter could make a shit ton of money if they can bot something difficult to bot. If it's too difficult to bot though then no one will.
Sometimes just 'scripting' for a while is enough and that is its own battle lol. If you can clear the same content many times in the same way, it is basically guaranteed it will be botted/ scripted. Hopefully AoC can "Sniff Out" botting and scripting; and design a game extremely difficult to Bot/ Script/ Auto-pilot by nature of its design.
Either way we don't know for sure what AoC will be like and I don't want a tracker to make botting easier, and make it easier for people to metagame it.
Is adictive
Did anyone brought new ideas since you are here?
If not, you can make a list with the main ideas with the discussion outcome and each time somebody posts, add him to the list. Then the discussion dies.
I was thinking on this.
I came to the conclusion that data could be agregated on server side to prevent hackers to get data with or wthout reverse engineering the tracker.
But that would put additional strain onto servers. So it might not be practical.
But NPCs already have to do that to compute how to react against players so maybe the information is already kind if prepared.
If you look through the dates of posts in the thread, you will see that it has had many several month long periods of no posts at all. It isn't me that brings it back up, either.
I'm not overly concerned about keeping this thread alive - why would I be? I will have a combat tracker to use in Ashes that will not break the ToS.
I just reply to other posters, generally either answering questions or correcting false assumptions.
All calculations in an MMO are performed on the server. A general rule for developing any kind of online game (or online anything, really) is to never trust anything that happens on the client.
It is true that we don't know how dynamic content in Ashes will be, but we do know that it will be somewhat dynamic.
As such, if my plan was to bot, I would move on to a game that didn't have that dynamic content, as that absolutely will cause some issues for bots. This is all very true. However, the other thing to keep in mind is that in Ashes, players can just kill your bots. If you are farming content that is actually viable for players to farm, don't expect your bots to get many kills. Hell, if I came across a bot working on content that I wanted, I'd just sit there and out-DPS the bot, meaning I collect the rewards. Basically, I would turn the bot that someone else has set up in to my pet/bitch. Combat trackers do not assist in setting up bots.
To be fair, they used to be used in conjunction - a bot farmer would set a tracker running so that they could see what had gone on if anything went wrong. Now though, they just record the session and go back through it if there were any issues.
This is for me totally immersion breaking.
Remove trolls and similar problem, it would still be immersion breaking for me.
As you say, immersion like "immerse in water", what is immersive is what make us feel totally in the water tank. and this is why it is subjectiv. because what each of us need for it may vary.
but because you do assumption, and consider your view as the rightfull view, you can't understand that... the simple fact you speak about bikini armor prove you are just in your own world, with your own conclucion... where did i speak about bikini armor ? never
and you end to deny that building a character can be linked to immersion and RP... ... ... Did you play pathfinder or dd3.5 (pathfinder being an evolution of 3.5). And then you say "instead of build, guide is better" but ... you don't even know what we are speaking about in fact.
guide could allow people to understand class (but... it makes thing worse... people follow guide, and don't try to understand them, so ... they apply the guide, and do the exact build guide is saying.)
A build is a build... this is the addition of all choices to do a character.
For AoC, i already began to mind my build : Summoner-Summoner. probably Pyrai, else empyrean. Weapon will be orb, spellbook, sceptre, staff or wand (probably one of the first 2) and can't say anything about augment due to lack of information on summoner skills, summoner augment, race augment. Choice are done due to the background of the character i already began to do also. and other things
But all those element will define my build in the end...
and because i build my character, i am able to be more immerse in the game. you can say "you are false" i would say "ok, so you know better than me how i feel when i play video game?"
And because i love to optimise my character as i ever did in more than 20 years of pen&paper RPG, i want to do it in ashes, and i can't do it with "feelings" but i need factual datas... to compare from one build to another. And datas needs to be collected before...
And sure, stuff stats is included in the build... and this is for me the least important part for my immersion... i don't care my build being more efficient with more critic or more speed or more whatelse. But this is also where the most test is needed (for me) to do choices and have my optimised character. So need datas, so need ot have them collected before again.
This is how i enjoyed video game, even solo video game (and also how i enjoy pen&paper RPG... ) And i doubt to suddenly, have a change of taste, after more than 20 years this way...
and you mistake, it is not 8x8x4 different kind of builds. Because each character can use each weapon, but also armor, each weapon getting its own weapon skills
[number of archetype] x [number of archetype] x [number of weapons type] x [number of armor type]
Augments are not in there ? because you can vary the augment used... taking the fire one for the charge, and the ice one for other skill... and the augment from your race for a third skill ! (you forgot them, the race augment... this is also because race will mostly be impactfull choice thru augment i didnt count them before)
A light armor with orb conjurer won't be the same thing that heavy armor sword conjurer... the first being range second being melee... 2 different build so.
And you prefer guide to build... but there is a big problem with guide ... People simply follow it, blindly. Rare are guide that are just giving explanation how things work, because this is not what people want from guide, but simply... they want to know how to play, an already made character setup (a build so) they can copy. then, they return to the guide to know if this pauldron with critical is better for them than this with speed... and don't try to understand why the guide say "better this than this". they don't care, they obey. They follow the saint holy meta (may all be blessed by holy meta)...
But this post confirm what i said : you try to force your view on this forum... without even any try to understand why people are here. You try to define what is immersive and what is not. What is fun and not fun. But it remains only your view and taste
Why do i say that ? simply this part :
real motivations, realities, valyes and urges in those world such as survival.
Question : where is survival part of Ashes of Creation ? Because when you say survival, i consider it as survival game, like the forest, or so many of those zombi apocalypse game... This won't be a thing at all in ashes.
Understanding : what about people who don't care about lore ? And for understanding of game mechanics, i know lot of MMORPG players from various kind of mmorpg that don't care about it also and still enjoy their game.
Immersion is a question of feeling, and it may vary from one player to another what makes him feel immerse or not in a game. When i say that a thing is for me an immersion breaking, you don't have to deny it, except if you pretend to know me better than myself...
@Noaani
you're both trolls