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
The first is top end open world content that is PvP enabled (or even PvP encouraged). In this content, the primary challenge is the other players - a small number of them are able to completely stop a full raid from killing the encounter for as long as those players want to keep it up.
A second type of content is top end open world content where PvP (and other forms of interferrence) are not enabled. This means that the primary challenge is the encounter, but you also have a limit on how much time you have with the encounter, as with each raid wipe, a different guild will be able to pull - and potentially kill - the encounter. Once killed, obviously the content is gone.
A third type of challenge is content that is specific to your guild, you can pull it as often as you like, knowing that if you wipe, the encounter will still be there for you to try again on.
Each of these types of content offer up a different type of challenge, and all of them have their place in a game like Ashes. They all offer something that the other types here don't and can't offer
I want to point out again that I am not asking or suggesting that the game shouldn't have any of the above, I think it should have all three.
There are two basic ways this could go.
The first is that the content is actually quite hard. If this is the case, a guild that is attempting this content only needs a small number of rival players preventing it from happening - and they will be able to keep this up until the rest of their guild gets there (which, since they were expecting the encounter to spawn, shouldn't take that long).
The second is that the content is easy enough that a full raid is able to take the conten down even with a group or so of rivals attempting to prevent them. If this is how things play out, then the content is easy.
Again, I am not saying that these things are reasons to not have this type of content - they are reasons specifically TO have it, but they are also reasons as to why some of the other types outlined above are important to have as well.
Feels like you are arbitrarily drawing your content lines.
I guess i disagree with your types of content. Your first type can easily be the same as the second type if no one shows up or you have players outside the raid positioned to defend. For your third kind, I agree there should be content for you to do as a guild but I don't think it needs to be the same thing.
Even if a raid is so challenging it can be interrupted by a small number of players, that doesn't mean the presence of a small number of players will interrupt the raid. It shouldn't take more then a few moments for a raid to dispatch a few players. In order for a small number of players to interrupt a difficult raid, they usually need to attack specific targets to either interrupt a mechanic or stop a key role. Them randomly attacking a dps who is on the boss will probably not interrupt the raid. Since you know your vulnerabilities during a raid, you can position yourself to counter anyone who would try to interrupt you. There is also the fact you can use players outside your raid to defend yourself from others.
I think you are oversimplifying things and also ignoring some of the social aspects of the game. You are supposed to work with players. If one hostile person can cause so much damage to your raid, I don't think it's weird to get an ally or some mercs to keep them away. On the other side, it's hard to tell atm how often this will be an issue.
Another thing to consider is what we learned about difficulty and how it scales. If you are in a raid and know you will probably have some resistance that day and you have no backup, you might consider going for an easier difficulty. On the other side, if you are having a quiet day and/or backup, you can ramp up the difficulty as you know you are safer.
They don't care they are some sort of Care Bear political hacktivist, and will not relent and even when you agree with them they'll just pick apart something that you say to disagree with on purpose.
Archeage had open world content that was subject to PvP. I've seen several hundred players fight over the red dragon in that game for hours, and I have seen a group of 15 players kill it in less than 10 minutes while the zone as not subject to PvP (they altered the way the zone enters PvP after that).
Obviously, we all know what instanced content is about.
I mean, you can argue that it is an arbitrary line drawn between content types, but it is not my line. Again, I am not saying all of this shouldn't exist.
In fact, I am saying it should.
Imagine you are in a guild that only decided to start raiding 9 months in to Ashes being live. Where are you going to start?
You are not going to be able to compete with the guilds that have been raiding since launch, nor are you going to be able to afford mercs. You likely won't get any allies until you are able to prove yourself, but you also have no content on which to work on learning to raid together. Steven has said he expects servers to have 15 raid encoutners at the most - which is enough to keep one guild busy for a night. If there are 3 guilds on your server wanting to raid, you don't stand a chance of getting any attempts in, let alone kills.
This game NEEDS some instanced raid content. Not a lot, and not full instanced dungeons. But it does NEED instanced raid content.
Good news! They've already stated that there will indeed be a 20% of the content will in fact be instanced!
If you pay attention, you will have seen that I have suggested the game needs precisely 3 instanced raid encounters. With the stated intention of Intrepid for there to be 15 raid encounters per server, all I am saying the game needs is that 20% of those raid encounters to be instanced.
Basically, I am saying the game needs what Intrepid have said the game will have (based on one interpretation)
So, assuming you are standing by this statement of yours here, you are basically saying that either the game should have what I have been saying it should have, or that Intrepid are making a mistake when their game.
Which is it?
I love how you cherry pick what you're going to respond to.
So far what I've learned about you is that you literally have zero sense of humor, think that brevity is a bad thing, and for some reason think that not everyone who wants to be a Navy SEAL but can't is a bad argument. Nevermind failing at the MiB test. So uh I guess good luck with your activism? 🤷
See, they are all assumptions.
I have a sense of humor, but don't find you funny.
Brevity is good, in situations where it is called for. Expressing complex thoughts and opinions is not a situation in which it is called for.
The argument about seals was a poor argument because you can find an analogy to support any point if you search far enough, and don't look deep enough.
You don't have the chops to be able to analyze people based on forum posting, so don't try.
So if anything is having its deciding factor in PvP then it is a PvP content. If the deciding factor is PvE then it is PvE content.
All we want is content that is decided by its PvE difficulty aspect - that is all
― Plato
False.
not only 20% of content is confirmed to be instanced
but you disagree without any reasoning
― Plato
I responded to a baseless assumption with a baseless assumption. Seems fair to me.
Intrepid has said that the 20% refers to dungeons. If raids are exclusively world boss dungeons, then no raids are said to be instanced. They have said that scarce resources are going to be contested, and instancing will be for tutorial and story-related quests, not for anything very relevant. Noaani is arguing for relevant instanced raid content.
You disagreeing with it does not mean it is baseless.
I'm talking about raids being open world and having them difficult from PvE view so only tiny percentage of players is capable to kill.
Usually people with such contradicting goals make sacrifices for both goals in order to make them happen at least partially.
I would love to see both goals come to full fruition without sacrifices along the way, but we don't have information on how IS want to see that happen. Having goals is amazing, but the reality cannot lag behind otherwise the goals become empty promises
― Plato
The thing is, you are only seeing it from your perspective. People who are obsessed with instanced PvE will think that AoC "needs" it to be more relevant. The game itself does not "need" it just because a small minority of players (for whom the game isn't designed for in the first place) say they "need" it, just in the same way that FF14 doesn't need PvP to be successful. You have no proof that AoC needs it in order to be successful.
Another thing is that Ashes needs to have well designed rules and rewards for PvP in order to make the open world work. However in my opinion to make a PvP centric MMO succesful is straight up delusional. So I am glad that Ashes is aiming to be PvX - as meaning to have both with good rules to avoid unnecessary frustration
― Plato
Sigh. I never said PvP is the majority. Please stop mischaracterizing my arguments. In every poll I've seen, people who consider themselves PvX players outnumber PvE and PvP players combined in this community. I'm glad Ashes is PvX too.
Where did I say that I want this game to be PvP-centric? I would like challenging and plentiful PvE. The thing I've been arguing against this whole time is instanced PvE. You guys are making way too many assumptions about what is or isn't possible based on a dying game.
Can you explain these first two paragraphs in more detail the way this reads to me is that open world content would be killed once per week, where as instanced content could be killed 10x per week (Is this because it's easier to kill NPCs inside of instances after all?).
Lastly yes I'm sure instances would be easy to implement, my rewards for instanced content would be ZERO. I do not understand why you should reward anyone for zoning into la la land to kill an NPC just so they can claim the rewards without interruption. I'll never understand why this should be rewarded even if it takes a guild or server 100 attempts to defeat that NPC.
I would also like you to answer this @Noaani . If everything that is dropped inside of the instance can be looted - why is this any different to you if you die before/while fighting the NPC than after you zone out of the instance? You seem to claim you're doing the PvPers a service by killing the NPC zoning out so they can then kill/loot you. If that is the case why are you in favor of it? See this is the confusing part to me, if your argument is "well we would just get killed after zoning out anyway" then you're essentially agreeing to kill the NPC for no rewards right now.
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 most common explanation of PvX I have seen is to have in the game both PvP and PvE activities while at the same time having good rules to avoid unnecessary frustration that makes people quit the game.
Also I do not understand people that are trying to say that PvPvE activities (which are world bosses in many MMO's) are PvE activities. I need to stress out that if you allow PvP in any activity you then transform that said activity into a PvP activity
― Plato
Because there are many new age MMO gamers like you who never played any of the old school games before it was all broken down into PvP and PvE and you just did both and didn't whine about it. This IS a PvX game you have been explained over and over and over again what the game's PvX will entail. I'm sorry you are having trouble wrapping your brain around it.
World Bosses are absolutely PvE activities no matter if you introduce a PvP element to it. There's still a boss, with boss mechanics that you need to kill.
I don't get it... why not the other way around, if you have pve in pvp activity why it doesn't transform into pve activity?
You would be stressing the wrong thing of course, all that is being done is that players are being given the freedom to choose between the consequence of PvP and the reward of it. If the PvE activity is worth the reward, you would be choosing to assume this risk and just because the risk is present does not mean that PvE no longer exists, since you would still get the PvE reward if successful no?
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
This is straight up delusional. PvP is in its core nature transformative activity - anything that you want to do in addition is just a flavor to the PvP nature of it.
The only PvE content that has allowed PvP is one its loot is completely irrelevant
― Plato
I can already tell you that if you don't like those old school MMORPGs you are absolutely not going to like this game. You are being absurd by suggesting PvE encounters aren't PvE anymore if you have to PvP over them. That's gonna be the entire game bub.
Amazing so right now you just confirmed that you think Ashes is pure PvP-centric game. How fabulous
― Plato
I have said time and time again this is a PvP centric game there's no secret there. Nodes are centered around PvP. Resource movement is centered around PvP through caravans. Dungeons and raids are tied to nodes, which is determined by PvP as we said. Dungeons and raids are open world, which is determined by PvP. Dungeons and raids can be camped and made unavailable through PvP. Castles are determined through PvP.
I mean how much more obvious can they make it to you before you grasp that you are gonna need to PvP very often in this game. When will you see the writing on the wall?
Just look at the four games they took inspiration from. Eve, Archeage, Lineage 2, and Star Wars Galaxies. All of these are PvX styled MMOs, with 3 of them being "Old School" (Which you hate) and all of them have an asburd amount of PvP in them. Steven has said himself that he never really played WoW, and they aren't taking inspiration from WoW. There will be no easy PvE instances for you to get top end gear in. This completely goes against the entire vision of the game.
However Steven never said what you are telling me now. So until he does I just assume that what you are telling me is just one part of the game and I am content to wait for additional info about PvE so that we can know what it will be about.
― Plato
Hey you never know, maybe that 20% instancing will be satisfactory.
Dude, again PVX means player against everything, so means pve and pvp are eaqualy important parts, no pvp without pve and no pve without pvp. So if youre looking game for just pve content its not for you. But i would suggest giving it a try, you might like it, as no modern mmo has thys sistem
If everything in the game is a subject to PvP then it is a hard pass for a lot of people - myself included. If all that Ashes aims to be is a PvP playground for PvP monopoly treadmill with few thousand players then all power to you.
― Plato