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
1. AoC is not Lineage version 2.0
2. AoC is not WoW version 2.0
3. AoC IS PvX, not PvP only.
4. I am not asking AoC to "cater" to WoW players. WoW players are playing WoW.
5. I am not against open world PvE, but not having instanced raids straight out removes casual players access to PvE.
6. Not everyone would be interested in mandatory PvP just to access PvE, which makes no sense, IMO.
7. There are many instance/opportunities for PvP already present in the game - Node siege, castle siege and other battlegrounds. Leave PvE out of this.
8. What kind of argument is that, this wasnt present in L2 so it should not be present here? I thought the games name was AoC, not Lineage 2.
9. If L2 is so OP, why are you here? Shouldnt L2 players just play L2?
Fact: WoW is leading in MMO so they must be doing something right, right? Where is L2 on the MMO map exactly at the moment?
I am neither a WoW fanboy nor a L2 hater. I am not here to "compare" games. I am here to state why something should be implemented. "Why" being the keyword here. Not WoW. Why. I am not sorry if this confuses you.
FYI, I dont play WoW. It has its own shortcomings which is why I am here. Again why are you not in L2?
Lastly, "Ashes of creation is not for everyone" goes both ways.
I see what you are saying as well. I suppose if they had to add instanced boss encounters I would prefer your way. At least that gives a chance for the player driven stuff that we were talking about.
However I personally don't see it being a problem that guilds can't plan everything they do. I can see your point and why they might want to add a few instanced things, but isn't it already confirmed that its something like an 80/20 split for open world vs instanced?
If your raid group can't kill any bosses that night take your 40 players and go start a fight in an enemy controlled zone. Break it down into 5 groups and grind dungeons. Run BGs, it's an MMO there's (hopefully) a million things to do. Take the down time to plan how you could get more boss kills, maybe that involves allying yourself to a better guild. I could see this affecting guilds that are trying to be raiding only guilds but that won't work in this game. It's a true PvX game where you are gonna need to PvP other players to PvE down an important boss. Can they not add a complex curated encounter for an open world boss? Genuinely asking.
@Noaani
If all content is contested, that means that every server will have a few guilds that get most of the content, and a few guilds that never get the content. As that continues, the guilds that get the content get better gear, making it easier for them to always get the content.
And if that happens those few guilds recognize the problem, band together to form an alliance to compete and go to war with the massive zerg. I think this game will be similiar to eve where the sands are always shifting and alliances and guilds rise and fall over the years.
No, they go to another game.
Players that are in a guild attempting to be top end PvE players don't want to be a part of a zerg. They would rather run PvE content somewhere else. Most of them have a hundred times more loyalty to their guild than to any one game they are playing.
But I don't think the game should cater to PvE players, so this doesn't bother me personally. I hope it works so that If you want to kill bosses in ashes you better be ready to kill other players.
It shouldn't cater to players that only want to PvE, but it should cater to players that mostly want to PvE.
Just as it shouldn't cater to players that only want to PvP, but it should cater to players that mostly want to PvP.
With the scenario of having instances in raid dungeons, guilds will also still need to fight their way back out. Since they will be doing so with crafting materials, there is a chance that they could lose them if killed - so this risk is still there.
Like I said, if they HAD to add instanced raids I would prefer it done your way so that the area can be controlled. That way I can park my guild at the enemy territory boss entrance and charge their citizens/raiders money if they want to kill bosses on that night.
I don't know, maybe I am wrong but in every mmo I played so far world bosses felt like big trash mobs that took long to kill.
From my experience having a challenging boss is mutually exclusive with it being in the open world.
I don't think most WoW-players from a PvP server are confused with any of that.
Back when I played it, we also contested grind spots to farm gold or crafting materials.
Brawling with the enemy faction on a world quest or boss is also something that's not a surprise to happen.
The major difference is that WoW's system is faction based while in most PvX games basically everyone can attack you, also it doesn't happen as frequently since the focus is elsewhere.
And I am not making that comparison out of ignorance.
I also played several other mmos, in Archeage I was leading raids doing World bosses, castle sieges (attacking and defending), Halcyona or whatever the hell was up.
Because character collision is a thing, you could have a boss that restricts the number of players that can actually fight it by having limited space where players can be safe from environmental hazards or boss AoE attacks.
If it gets too difficult to make compelling boss fights with the open world format they have put so much time into, and the alpha testing has them rethink that aspect of the system, they could simply lock out entry to the boss room for non-raid-affiliated characters during an encounter. It doesn't even have to be a system-level thing, you could just redesign boss rooms to make it difficult to access the boss platform once the encounter has started. If too many people manage to enter, or even periodically throughout the boss fight, you could have the boss throw everybody not part of the raid with the largest damage contribution out of the arena or into an environmental hazard.
Could you explain to me why AoC could not have challenging world bosses unlike other games you have played. I agree with that sentiment that most world bosses in other games I've seen are not difficult. Why can't AoC have solid world bosses with complex mechanics that start when it gets pulled? This would cut down on the chance of it just being zerged down by an unorganized mass drastically. I'm not a programmer I am genuinely asking here.
The devs have already stated that it would be an 80/20 open world/instanced split. That sounds pretty fair to me. This thread is arguing for more instances than that for PvE and my argument is that it's not an instanced raiding game. More instances will kill the player driven interactions, and politics of "your guild killed my boss" and all kinds of fun interactions that could happen with the current system. I feel it's fair to compared the game to Lineage 2 in many instances because the devs have explicitly stated that they drew a lot of inspiration from that game.
If you want to kill a raid boss, wipe the enemy guild that is challenging you for it. The devs have said it would take a long time to get around the world because there is limited fast travel options. Once you clear the area you are safe to kill the boss.
Why shouldn't a game that advertises to have PvE content not cater to PvE players on a fair level?
I don't understand why there should be no content catering for PvE players if they are actively promoting it as part of the game.
If I gate PvE content behind PvP content in an absolute fashion it is not really PvE content, is it?
Not being able to plan something as a guild can be a huge issue.
In particular smaller guilds have the risk of simply not having enough members available at each and every moment.
Also it makes the game substantially worse for people who cannot be online 24/7.
For example depending on boss respawn timers it would be possible that some world bosses simply aren't alive in the time frame that your guild mates are online in reasonable numbers.
20% should be instanced.
BUT they also stated they want them instanced for the "greater narrative appeal" which means they will probably not nesseccarily focus on making them challenging but interesting from a lore perspective.
I understand your point but hear me out
It DOES have PvE content, you would just need to face the possibility that there's a CHANCE you will have to PvP to secure it for your guild. If a small guild is unhappy with their situation in the game they need to have a recruitment drive or ally themselves with a larger guild to improve their situation. All of these situations are just things that can happen in a player driven world, isn't that what the devs want? Haven't the devs said the game isn't going to be easy, fair, or for everybody and players will need to band together? I like the appeal of players fighting over limited resources.
Bosses are usually challenging because they are tuned pretty closely around the "power level" the players fighting it are capable of.
If you don't have any mechanic that enforces a certain number of players (or instancing),
it gets really hard to guess how the player-raid will perform as a whole.
Therefore you cannot properly tune the boss.
Think of it like that:
You have a boss that is balanced for 40 players to be barely killable in 5 minutes, maybe you have a soft enrage mechanic after 4 minutes und 30 seconds making the last 30 seconds really intense.
Now, since it is open world, you simply bring 45 players, resulting in a performance increases by over 12,5%.
Now the soft enrage mechanic balanced for 40 players becomes irrelevant since there are 45 player and you can kill the boss in under 4 minutes.
Also every mechanic that for example requires adds to be killed becomes a lot easier since you have more damage to kill them faster.
Of course you could argue that you "just" need mechanics to prevent bringing more than 40,
but the only foolproof way to do that is having something that will more or less play out like instancing.
Exactly. This is also why I am worried about open world dungeons and raids.
I see. Like I said I am no game dev or coder, I can only hope they can create a way to keep them in the world and prevent what you are saying. I heavily believe the player driven world would be hurt by taking out an important limited "resource" like world bosses that players could control and fight over. They could use collision or an area small enough to only fit X people to fight the boss or something along those lines hopefully. I am fully confident they could find a way.
Well explained as well. I really do hope that Intrepid aren't completely focused on just the social aspect of the game. Some things are worth more than social interaction. I think that instanced, challenging, PvE content is one of them.
You fail to understand the point.
The discussion is not about the existence of PvE content but its quality.
The theory at hand is that providing some quality instanced content for PvE players increases the overall interest in AoC without destroying the open world.
I don't think anyone has stated that the whole game or a major part of it must be PvE since this is of course contradicting with what the game is designed to be.
If you for example watch Lazy peon's review for New World recently he basically said that he would love to grind / farm really good in gear in games like Black Desert or New World.
The point why he is eventually not doing it is that he doesn't feel like there would be anything waiting to put that gear to test at the end.
Right now AoC looks like it has a similar issue since the endgame looks like it is only PvP with node/castle sieges.
This is fine for a pure PvP game but not nesseccarily for the majority of the PvE playerbase.
I suppose we will have to wait and find out what 20% instanced content means.
There will be more than enough exclusively PvP content for those who want to focus on PvP. We already know that from what we’ve been shown. It’s hard to believe that there are those so selfish that they demand that ALL content in the game should cater to their preferences all the time.
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
Thats why i think that there should be two different types of dungeons/raids.
Instanced dungeons/raids should give gear while Open world dungeons/raids should give enchants/augments/materials that lower enchant risk.
This way you can have both, challenging PvE content, and the social interaction between players.
Why? Are you suggesting that it’s easier to kill bosses in an instance than in the open world? That’s usually not true, since open world bosses can be zerged and instance bosses cannot be. If you’re relying on the presence of pvp to make the open world bosses hard, then the problem is that the presence of pvp contestation is erratic and if the boss is tuned to be beatable while contested, it will be trivial when it isn’t.
no, as open world inspires PVP more often, it will require higher skills and more contest than instancing. The game revolves on the open world, so instancing shouldn't give drops that are as good as open world
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
It takes the fun out of an open world game if you can safely get good gear in an instanced scripted event against AI. PvErs would never go out into the world and try and fight for resources for their guild, and if the drops weren't as good as open world drops they would sit on the forums and talk about how the unfair the game is to them. I hope it's so that If you want to PvE in ashes, you better be ready to PvP at any time. Minimal instancing or a system that allows guilds to control the entrance to the instance. PvPers are gonna have to PvE and craft to get the best gear in the game. It's an interconnected system.
What I want is to be able to be challenged in pve to the extent that I need to gear up to be able to beat it. Not bring more people to Zerg it, or find a time at 3am that it isn’t contested so that my undergeared group can beat it.
Without a pve progression path, AoC will share the fate of countless pvp-based mmo’s that have come and gone over the years. Very few mmos can claim to still have vibrant communities five or more years after they launch. The few that can cater to more than just pvp and zerging of open world content.
go into instances to get good gear. Get your gear through pvp if that’s the progression you want. But basically you’re saying that other people aren’t entitled to have the content and challenge that they want because it’s not the way you want to play. That’s extraordinarily selfish.
I don't believe people should be able to skip out on the dangers of getting ganked and all the politics and player driven interactions in an open world game that comes with fighting over limited resources like raid bosses. I think it's selfish of them to want to do that while all the big boy groups are slugging it out in open world.