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
in the end i gave up on this. My opinion comes also from a large mmo adventure. I just hope they do what they wanted to do and are fine with it. If it works, everybody can enjoy it, and if not, yea then... im not sad but...
...but if not, i will come back here and shout out loud "I TOLD YA GUYS, I DID" xD
But seriously, the more i read on this topic there more i want to see what this Dev crew brings up...
Cheers
What do you mean? I saw the threads today and I decided to give my own opinion on it. I also wanted to divert some of the toxicity away, as a lot of people here seem to be taking this way too seriously. The devs are not going to read any part of your discussion if its just full of toxicity and no real discussion.
As for unchallenging PvE, I made a reply above this. I'll quote it.
Speak for yourself I had plenty of fun in L2 killing world bosses.
But did that fun/difficulty come from the actual PvE content itself, or the PvP? Most likely the latter.
Well in fairness to the team developing this game, I'm not sure any of them are from the teams that designed those other games - drawing fundamental concept design has nothing to do with programing NPCs. Lastly they can balance the NPCs for gameplay with zero outside interference, and if that happens it does that will be part of the risk.
This is what none of you reaching for this instance game play seem to be able to explain, why can you not contend with the risk associated with an open world even on the boss fight, every other aspect of the game you're OK with it but if the boss fight gets interrupted the game is ruined for you? How does this even make sense. You're OK dying on the way there, dying on the way out, dying every time you fight in non-instance content, but in these rare boss fights, that ruins it for you? Literally the smallest margin of PvP especially in the scenario of 1 spawn per day or 3 spawns per week - you would risk dying more often in every other aspect of the game but you need instances.
Got it.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
The fact taht virtually all resources come from PvE is why this game needs to ensure it has a solid PvE playerbase, as well as a PvP player base.
If all the people that want to primarily PvE leave the game, all the people wanting to primarily PvP will have nothing left to fight over.
Yes, that absolutely does mean the PvE crowd needs to be catered to at least to a degree - and the games design as it stands right now does very little of that.
In the end, this is Steven's game. I would like to think if someone contributes something useful/insightful and within the bounds of his vision, that, could be included, at Steven's discretion of course.
So what you are saying is "don't discuss things, but feel free to discuss things".
ok.
LOL this keeps getting better.
Hold on boys if all the PvE players leave the game we'll never figure out how to kill those NPCs and get the loot. Lets give them what they want, it's over they called our bluff.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
If I wasn't willing to repeat myself, I would have left these forums about 2 years ago - back when they were the old forums.
Even with this influx of new people recently, there hasn't been any actual new topics since that point.
Uhm I'm planning to PvE too, get this, with the risk of being killed from other players while I do it. (GASP).
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
I'm not saying you aren't.
I'm saying the more primarily PvE players the game has, the more PvP it can support.
This isn't about you specifically (even if I did use the would "you"), this is about the game. If you want a game where PvE generates rewards and PvP distributes them, then the primary thing you need in the game is healthy PvE.
Get that right, and the PvP will follow.
I'll take that bet. My experience of PvP players attempting to get in to serious PvE is of them getting frustrated and quitting out of embarassment.
PvP players lack the inherent willingness to cooperate that is key to most top end PvE. Too many of them think that all they need to do is top the combat tracker for what ever it is they bring to the raid, and when asked to perform a task the encounter requires someone perform, they act out like a child, not understanding that they have just been asked to perform the single most important role in the encounter.
I've dealt with this same situation a few dozen times.
While I'm absolutely sure there would be exceptions to this rule, I've yet to see even one.
Having more PvE players doesn't = more PvP. It may in a game with no corruption, but this game model isn't based on that.
The only true statement here would be having more players in the game world, the more PvP. I find it less likely that most PvP in this game model will be driven by PvE content. Of course people will PvP around high end content but the amount of high end loot content versus sieges, caravans, arena play, guild wars etc? Such a small percentage yet again.
The risk to go corrupt so every non-combatant in the game can attack you without flagging is what will prevent a lot of PvE players from dying to PvP it's not an instance that is saving you.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
Killing top end players results in a chance of those materials dropping.
This is how PvP players gain access to top end gear. If you suspect a player or group have just been taking on top end content, then it absolutely will be worth attacking them in an attempt to gain those rewards.
Remember, corruption and it's penalties will need to be tuned so that there will always be times when players will consider the risk of corruption to be worth it. The developers are building in many levers to make sure they can easily adjust things to this end (amount of corruption per kill, amount of corruption needed before items start dropping, amount of additional corruption gained for lower elvel kills, amount of corruption gained (if any) from group members killing non-combatants, speed at which corruption can be wroked off, to name just a few).
If there were ever to be a time when attacking a player was worth the corruption risk, that time would be when the player is suspected of carrying materials used in creating top end items.
If it is not worth attacking a player at all in this situation, then it is never worth attacking a player in open PvP, and open PvP may as well be removed from the game (not a suggestion I am making).
So no, your statement here is incorrect by necessity. If it turns out to be true that it is not worth gaining corruption when there is the chance of obtaining top end gear from that PvP, the game would have failed as a PvP game anyway.
So you couldn't figure out a way to make a pve encounter difficult in the open world?
Just games have had open world pve content doesn't mean they tried to make to challenging. Lets also not forget that there have been plenty of games with instanced content that was not challenging. To assume instance = challenge is lazy correlation = causation logic.
Yes, Steven is the creative director who is steering the ship but the one design the content is Jeff and his design team. I did not play EQ2 but from what i have read, players like the content he delivered. That said, even if you don't didn't like his content, him making it instanced wouldn't suddenly make it challenging.
This is an effective reply. Glad to see you're taking my advice. 😉
EQ2 had open world content that was on par with the most challenging content in any MMORPG.
Problem is, that content was not subject to PvP.
This is the real issue. Since top end content acts as a beacon to top end players, you have to assume that there will be multiple guilds ready to take the content on as soon as it spawns (spawn timers are usually worked out fairly easily). Since there will be multiple guilds, there will be PvP over these encounters. Since the developers do want the encounters to be killed, they will be able to be killed while there is PvP happening - which means they are not as much of a PvE challenge as many players would like.
All of this doesn't mean that this content shouldn't exist - it absolutely should in a game like Ashes. Arguably, it should be the most prolific type of top end content.
However, since this type of content is only able to provide one challenge type, there is also scope to also have content that is removed from PvP and other types of interference, so that the content can be designed around offering a complete challenge to players without the need for external factors.
This is, however, only one of three issues I have seen with a game that only offers content akin to L2 or Archeage - but it is a real issue. If other players are able to interfere with content, the content will be either unkillable, or a loot pinata.
Do I agree with you? I want to, I really do. Then you say one thing, that drives me off a cliff (in each post).
I gotta hand it to you. You've kept the forums alive (my threads die.). Even if we don't agree with you. But, that's what it's about. The discussion. We just have to keep it civil, folks. 😁
Not to derail, just talking aloud: I wonder how Intrepid is going to deal with the forums, when the "real" pvp arrives. lol
Why do you assume they want the encounters to be killed? Who said that? I'm pretty sure they are fine with not allowing it to be killed if no one can hold the area long enough to do it.
What do you mean by one type of challenge? We know that content is designed to scale up and get harder as certain criteria is met. This scaling includes changes in the bosses moves, not just health scaling.
I think you are assuming the worst days on the most competitive servers but we will see. With the risk and time commitment, I don't think it's going to be as common, at least on every server. There is also supposed to be a decent amount of content spread around the world. Not saying people won't try but without fast travel, it's hard for me to imagine a lot of people trying to do everything all around the world but we will have to see how localized people really are.
Yes you finally did it. You went and proved my point all by yourself.
So in your own words the only PvE worth fighting over will be will be this end game "top end items". So if you go and put this shit inside of an instance dun dun dun.... right??? I mean RIGHT? lol.
See how putting the only PvE worth fighting over inside of an instance RUINS the pvp aspect of the game regarding resource control around PVE content, do you see it now? I mean you actually said it you must right?
I'll leave you with this since I think you're there now. If you go back to the "well let us fight the epic mob without pvp argument" whats the point if it's just going to get you looted on exiting the instance? What's going to prevent the group from looting and then logging off from within the instance? Is everything that drops from these mobs not equip able? Can nothing be learned on the spot, say by a master crafter or other profession by simply using the recipe from within the instance? Who knows you don't and I don't. But if the instance doesn't exist then none of that matters.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
Riiight? positive intelligent well-informed posts seems to drop off the list but these weird controversial hot topic care bear s*** things get all the clicks.
Don't confuse quantity for quality.
Naval combat in Ashes will likely provide a challenge, but that will be vastly different to a siege - even if they are both challenging.
The only possible way there will not be guilds ready and waiting for top end content as it spawns will be if the randomization of those spawns is too unpredictable - and even then, it is not guaranteed.
I've seen games where players camp 11 different spawn locations 24 hours a day waiting for top end content spawns in an effort to be the first guild there.
If the content is top end, players will be there.
I never once said that the only gear fighting over will be top end gear. I said if any gear is worth fighting over, top end gear will be - that specifically doesn't exclude other gear from being worth fighting over, and I was very specific in not implying that.
Also, I think you missed the point entierly.
If you leave that content in the open world, then you get to fight over it once a week (or so). That is all it is able to be killed, that is a limited about of that PvP over top end items that can happen before the materials are taken off and made in to items.
Put a few (literally just a few) encounters in instances and they may well be killed 10 or more times a week, which means more of those top end items for players to fight over - but not so many as to decrease the value of those items. I have been saying since I started on this discussion that instanced encounters should not drop anything that can be used without further processing - all rewards should be materials that are then subject to being lost in PvP.
This is a really easy thing for Intrepid to implement, and so isn't an argument against instances, but ratehr a discussion about how instanced rewards should be structured (one that I think you and I would likely agree on).
I think it's pretty silly to assume that people will forever fight over the content and no one will ever take it. I don't there will be an eternal war over this stuff. People will drift away and find more productive things to do.
I did miss-read it but please explain what you mean by types of content because with the context of the conversation, I assume you are saying all pve content is pvp content or something which is once again, silly. Pve content is pve content and there will be different kinds. Yes, at times there may be pvp encounters during pve content but the pve content will still be pve content and if you want to do some quieter content, you should be able to find it with the size of the map.
Yes, there will be players who play like that but one thing they usually have fast travel which makes it easy to respond. Fast travel won't be as prevalent in ashes so it would take longer to get your numbers their. If you don't have a good way to respond to encounters all around the world then there is less incentive to keep your eyes on it in the first place. As you pointed out, there are also other ways to make it hard to keep your eyes on this kind of content.
There is also the ally and/or merc option. It might be smart to either pay some people or offer some of the loot in exchange for them helping to keep outside guilds away.