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
I'm not saying its the best solution. Far from it, i just believe its the most you'd ever get here.
Also serious and dedicated PvErs will gladly hop onto the chance to be the best. Exclusive Cosmetics, that show what you have achieved are always a huge driving factor.
So we are on the same page after all. I didn't intend it to be a central cornerstone of the endgame content, but something fun but limited that's right up their alley and drives them into the open world content
This isn't anything but a piece of side content, the same an instanced or cross-server Arena would be. These arenas do the exact same thing, just for competitive PVP players.
I disagree. I think having challenging, instanced, PvE content is going to be extremely beneficial to the game. Yes it does take a way from the social aspect of the MMO, but the idea that I suggested does mitigate that to a certain extent.
Ultimately, I think that Intrepid should be willing to adapt. So far, most of the player opinions have aligned with their design philosophies for the game. But there might come a time when it won't, and I hope that when that time comes, Intrepid will be willing to change/adapt rather than remaining adamant.
I'd like to question this assumption. Let's look at MMORPG popularity. I think we can all agree that it is a shell of its former self. I think this is the result of developers refusing to break the mold, and the reason for not breaking the mold is due to the exact argument that you are making. "We don't need to innovate, because in the past, the largest populations for this genre has come from PvE content. Therefore we will get more players if we stick to PvE content." But is this assumption true? I personally, do not think so.
Look at the number of people who play games in general. This population is much larger than us who play MMORPGs. There is a huge market outside of WoW-style PvE content that isn't even being tapped into yet. There could be a huge number of people who are tired of the typical static PvE instanced dungeon content, and would prefer more of a PvX experience, but most developers only half-heartedly commit to taking this risk or do not have the funds or shareholder patience to fully flesh-out their vision. I think AoC is actually trying to accomplish this vision with a fully-fleshed out PvX experience, which could bring in a wider audience than just those who are already playing games like WoW or FFXIV. After all, look at all the successful MOBAs, shooters, fighters, etc... They are PvP games. Even casual platform games like Fall Guys are extremely successful with PvP. This could very well be a trend, and could exponentially increase the population of MMORPGs beyond the static PvE WoW crowd if MMORPG developers can break out of the mold. Even though we don't have the data to say that PvX or PvP could be more successful than PvE, it doesn't mean that it's true. It's really the same argument against innovation and for why people doubted that electric car companies would ever be successful. Just because everyone is driving gas-powered cars doesn't mean that it's impossible for electric cars to be better and thus do well.
Yea of course. But its healthy for the game to have large populations of all types of players. Since AoC is trying to be a PvX game, it needs to have good PvE, PvP, and Crafting content in order to bring in a large population of these different types of players. It can't only be PvP and Crafting content.
I think that Ashes will not go as far to make raids super easy and be just a reward for controlling that PvP area. We should just wait to see the ways for opening raids, but I understand the skepticism behind making the PvE part tied to PvP
― Plato
This has very little correlation to the health of a game. Look at FFVIX for example, that game has basically a non-existent PvP population, yet the health of the game is quite good.
PvX players are PvX players, not PvP or PvE players. I agree that with PvX, you need good PvE content, but it shouldn't be a requirement to have a lot of instanced PvE content, and I would argue that's actually detrimental to a PvX open world.
FF14 is not a PvX game. Its a PvE game.
You said "It's healthy for a game to have large populations of all types of players".
My bad. I was just referring to AoC.
And you miss that any pve raids in open world pvp will be joke easy as you have to fight off the pvpers. Pve in the middle of pvp will always be a joke from the pve part. Some people expect a game calling itself pvx to have meaning full pve also and not just a boss tossed out there meant to cause more pvp and some dev going look pve like we said
No problem. That may very well be true. I'm not sure though, I think it will be hard to keep strictly PvE happy with the goals of a PvX open world game.
The issue is more would it really be pvx if there is 0 meaningful pve ... if it’s just going to be pvp with sprinkles get me 20 arenas and 10 siege types and call it done. If it’s going to be pvx put in a couple high in progression instanced raids
I think AoC might need to come up with some innovative dungeon designs to make PvE content deep. Or possibly have enough dungeons that the number of PvP encounters during PvE are fairly uncommon.
Now this is an interesting idea as well. Kinda like a maze you mean?
I didn't think about mazes specifically, but yeah that could be a great idea.
I think dungeon difficulty will be too low if you have to deal with other people on top of that.
If they want to camp you at the entrace it's fine, but I want instanced PvE dungeons, with no preocupation of another guild stealing of cleaning you up. I don't want to share the dungeon with other people than my group/raid.
The world is going to be big enough so we won't have the playing on top of other players is my opinion. Sure there will be some, but not to the detriment of the game. I wouldn't separate the two at all, that creates unnecessary friction you dont need in the game.
I'll repeat what I wrote earlier in this thread. Open world raids in Ashes can be good only if they created without any thought on PvP. Securing the time and freedom to raid should be up to the players to secure. I completely reject your presumption that raids should be tuned to have in mind ongoing PvP inside the raid. If players are doing PvP in raids then clearing the raid should be straight up impossible. This at least leads to the guilds trying to forge alliances and many guilds might be just a group of PvP mercenaries that are hired for caravan or raid protection.
― Plato