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
However this is not the fault of meters or combat logs that found out precisely how overpowered fire mage is, but the instant teleport system and ease of finding any individual across servers to join.
If you do not allow instant travel and force players to work with players that are near them than from this necessity you will see the exclusion happen much less frequently. It is almost stupid to not take literally only the best people into dungeons if you can instantinuously teleport them there and you can choose from dozens of applicants after listing the group in any automated finding system.
The whole idea of not allowing dps meters is based on emotional personal experience without listing any facts that might indicate the causality of dps meters on the exclusion of players. Exclusion happens if you can choose between enormous amount of applicants and even then the exclussion is based on meta builds not on the actual performance in dps meter (for example shaman in the last wow expansion was bad on launch but they are not invited into groups even now when they can easily destroy the meters). Community perception of meta is not based in facts, dps meters is actually the only force to steer the meta toward builds that are factually good.
I have no problem with looking at meters as on a driving license. You want cars to be driven by people knowledgeable to operate them. The same can be said for dps meters if you let some dumbass dictate group rules even though if he does not understand what are the responsibilities of certain classes in there then you should take away meters from that guy.
People die in car accidents, but we do not stop driving, we make sure that people driving are responsible. That same should be done with meters, to make sure that people that have access to them are educated enough to use them properly.
― Plato
The system that is going to see more people kicked from groups in this game than anything will be the family summons. It would be foolish and naive to think that there won't be many cases of people starting groups before their friend gets on, and then when said friend logs in, kicking someone from the group and summoning the friend to join. This is no reason to not have that system in the gmae if it can be added in a good way, but it would be foolish to assume this isn't going to happen often.
The part about this that I am going to find most amusing is that - since third party trackers absolutely will be a thing in Ashes - people are still going to blame combat trackers when this happens.
Steven probably will too.
People in guilds will have an alt parked in their node centre and reloging to summon anyone for either gold or guildies for convenience.
Edit:
The only way to not encourage this behavior is to give portals and instant travel to anyone
― Plato
If your running a third party tracker, you better keep said information to yourself. I dont want a game that has everything exposed within the first month. If you do expose the fact that you have a tracker i hope you get your IP banned. You would be taking the fun out of the game for people who want to experience the game fully, for the first time. Damage meters are still a tool. I've seen many posts about how bosses are lame and tactics too easy, prolly wouldn't be the case if your entire raid wasn't mashing on the I WIN buttons.
I think the game will have more meaning w/o meters. Like its a game , sure you want to be the best, but cheesing the game doesn't equate you to being good at the game.
Do you honestly believe that with public alpha and beta you will not have best meta builds for endgame on day 1? Your argument has literally no ground, of course people that do not use website guides will not know that, but your presumption that not having the meters will not create an instant meta is totally wrong.
If you really want this then you should be advocating for cancelling the open alpha and open beta and to have launch without any public testing.
― Plato
And people that are going to create the meta using tools to be banned from the game?
― Plato
― Plato
― Plato
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― Plato
No meters. they are a tool. they make the game easier if you want easy go play an easy game DO NOT take the challenge out of a new game. I want to see this game last. Your only try to hasten how fast you get there.
No meters
You are asking for difficult content, but want to blind players to find what they should improve on?
Plus unlike you I don't want to see the most difficult scaling in the raid to be beaten by anyone at some point.
― Plato
I want to preserve the game for what it is. If your having trouble in your guild not my problem. I already know and have accepted the game for what it is. Why cant you?
I would be mad if I didn't call this behavior toxic
― Plato
meters lead to toxic behavior
Meters are a tool. Simplifying the game content.
Beating a world boss/dungeon boss should not be easy
AoC is not a game for everyone.
Toxic people are able to use any tool in the game to express their toxicity. Tell me how you want to stop their toxicity with disabling meters.
― Plato
If meters are makign content too easy, Intrepid need to hire better content designers.
AoC is indeed not a game for everyone - but who is it a game for?
The core of the game - the ability to lose everything you have in an instant due to caravans, sieges and the death penalty mean it is not a game for those that are poor on time. Most people that are poor on time will end up moving to a game where their in game progress can't be taken from them so easily.
The fact that there is direct obfuscation of information in combat means it is not a game for most people that are willing to put serious time in to the game. Most people with the time to spend will play a game where that time can be put to effective use.
So who is left?
Sounds like "If he disagrees with me, he should find someone who does agree with me"
Not at all.
If you watch the videos where they talk about combat trackers, you can see others are physically uncomfortable at what is being said.
If you look at the work history of these people, and understand the games they have worked on, you would know why.
I am hoping you are going to reply to some of the points I mentioned in the last post I addressed to you, as you seem to be in this discussion from a perspective of somewhat incorrect facts in regards to what a combat tracker can do, and also in regard to what is being asked for here.
you don't win anything by just declaring yourself winner.
you have a perspective, I have a perspective
I want a long lasting game to play for years. For all i know, you want to move on to the next shiney object down the road after achieving your "hard earned" boss kill and say "oh that was a piece of cake".
NO. i want a game that lasts.. because legendary gear actually should take a legendary group of players. Not a bunch of random joes toting add-ons and dps meters.
MMO's should not wham bam and done.
I want the same thing, I just don't view information gathering as trivializing factor. The content should 100% be hard, but if it becomes trivial once you figure out the trick then it was never hard to begin with.
― Plato
why do you need to hasten the process?
No, that is the nature of poorly designed content.
Well designed content is still very much a challenge, even if you have all the objective data on it that you could ever want.
In games where the developers don't give players detailed strategies on encounters during beta (a combat tracker does not give you a strategy), raids will have to spend time just pulling the encounter to see what it does.
This process lasts until the raid knows what to expect from the encounter, and then they work in coming up with a strategy for killing it. Then, they have to work on executing that strategy.
A combat tracker assists guilds with that first part - the part virtually no one enjoys. Most of the raid are just punching bags during this stage, with the entire point of each pull being to gather information.
This seems to be the part that Steven wants to extend - literally the least enjoyable aspect of raiding. On the other hand, if you allow the collection of objective data to be easier, but make the encounter require a more difficult execution to he able to kill, you move the time spent working on raids from the part no one enjoys, over to the part most people enjoy.
This seems to be a good idea to me. The notion that raid success should be based upon guesswork though - Intrepids stated plan for making raids hard - seems somewhat ludicrous an unenjoyable to me.
Don't get me wrong, I want raids in Ashes to be enjoyable for everyone involved. Having to guess how to kill encounter though - that isn't fun.
As far as I am concerned - that isn't even raiding.
Knowing what to do is never the same as actually doing it. To swim across the atlantic is quite simple, but incredibly hard. To know that you need juggle main tanks on the boss while healers need to rotate their healing targets, because on that fight every heal they make reduces the next heal from them to the same target is quite a simple strategy, but requires a quite a big coordination.
"the trick" to every possible iteration of a boss will be known on the internet before your average player steps foot into any raid
― Plato