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
Few people attacked me.
That doesn't mean I didn't attack many.
As I said, I used to come second place (of three) in a faction based PvP contest, while being the only person in my faction.
Also, Auroria housing didn't have remote areas, and if you wanted to farm the trees and braziers as I said I was doing, that meant actively going out, on a slow vehicle, looking for scarce resources that many others were also looking for. The basics of this are all very easy to look up, and for someone claiming to understand PvP, it should be fairly easy to follow along.
It seems you are not even as well versed in PvP as I would like to think, let alone PvE.
If you have indeed played EQ, that game in itself should tell you the value of instancing. Unless, of course, you were not active in top end content.
Since you claim to have played it, and are against instancing so much, please explain to me how you think instancing in EQ is bad.
You were the only person in your faction, in a 3 faction game? What does that even look like from a game or server population stand point. This seems very confusing to me.
From what you're describing it sounds like there was very little actual pvp in general? 2nd place doesn't mean much if 3rd place didn't participate, this would mean any number greater than 0 or negative would be > 3rd place.
Anyway it's ok if you want to keep telling yourself you're a PvP player this response more or less proves you're not outside of necessity.
I agree in a game like EQ instancing was important, however this is not EQ so the parallels between the games have no relevance and just because it was important in some games it's not going to be important in all games.
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
MM was always well represented from every faction.
What guild I was in is pointless when I was the only player in my faction - clearly I was also the only player in my guild while a pirate.
Why would I record videos of gameplay? The very notion of that seems foreign to me.
If I was someone that avoided PvP where possible, I wouldn't have opted to leave my faction, consisting of around 65% of players on the server, to literally be my own faction. I did that to invite PvP, the fact that others learned that attacking me was a bad idea is not my fault - well, maybe it is.
As to your point about EQ,at least now we have agreed that instancing is not always bad - this is progress. The fact that EQ maintained a more vibrant world than most modern MMO's for many years after introducing instancing is something you should perhaps keep in mind.
Now, here is a question for you. Do you believe that specifically in Ashes, where all items and materials will be generated via PvE, and then be subject to loss/unwilling reassignment via PvP, that the more vibrant in general the games PvE scene, the more vibrant in general the PvP scene will be?
This is very much a yes/no question. While I am sure you will want to expand on your answer, rest assured your answer will be reduced down to one of those two words, and a follow up question will be asked where you can expand all you like.
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 did say I spent 5 years playing Archeage, and 18 months of it was as the only pirate in the game.
I didn't say what the other 3 and a half years were doing.
As to knowing how PvP is going to work in this game, I know about as much as you do. You have made some assumptions that go directly against what Steven has said in the past, because you assumed it would be the way it was in L2 - forgetting that Archeage is actually the bigger influence for Ashes.
Also, you didn't answer the question.
well Corruption system is core pvp system of the game, and its literal copy paste lineage 2 sysytem. which i think is great
I barely played L2 and have made no direct reference to it here or in other threads so you're getting me confused with someone else it seems?
If you want to know why I didn't play Archeage it's because it came out 3-4 years after I gave up on the MMO genre - based on your riveting account of PvP in the game i'm fairly happy with the fact I missed it.
To answer your previous question. 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
Similar to Arenas, I think PvE instances should not have gear with maybe a few exceptions and instead focus on other kinds of rewards like the different kinds of gear enhancement items.
well to be honest archage was quite fun, but p2w and some other stupid choices killed it
Two posts in a row that I complete agree with you on.
The driving force for PVP in ashes will be Node/Castle sieges. While I understand there may be NPC loot worth fighting over it will absolutely not be the driving force from a PvP perspective in the game.
As an example, it's more probable that guilds will travel across the map in force for sieges than for NPC spawns. Even in the rare 1 week spawns, it's more likely that these will be substantially less contested than a sieges.
Keep in mind, just because someone loots it - especially if it's a crafting recipe the item is not lost to the rest of the server, all it does is make which ever crafter applies it it now creates a market for which ever item it produces. You understand this right? Every guild in the game does not need to control these items. If a guild wants to focus on crafting or try and limit/control the market sure, but I would probably invest my time elsewhere if I can buy the items. If I can't buy the items because some guild is monopolizing it - then the PvE may drive PvP due to that fact however it would likely be short lived once more of the items become available.
P.S. Not trying to knock AA except it's clear that pvp experience is anything but a reason to play 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
Instances in EQ were a hardware issue, not because of design. Every Zone was an instance, there was no seamless open world, like we have today. And there weren't any dedicated zones, all players shared the instances (zones). Ever hear the phrase; "Train to zone!"? This was a warning to other players, who were at the zone entrance, after a wipe or bad pull.
So, please don't use EQ for your dedicated isolated instance anology.
I believe WoW instituted dedicated instances. More player friendly (no trains, no player interference), which you are advocating. Is that what you want, AoC becoming another WoW clone?
The world in EQ was completely open at launch. The notion of a zone is not the same as the notion of an instance. A zone is always open, even if no one is in it. Timers and mechanics still count down even if the zone is empty. An instance is created when players enter it, and everything starts from zero.
So, castles as a driving force don't work, as only 10% of players will be interested in castles at all. To 90% of players, castles are a thing that they may join in on a siege of on occasion, by it is very much a side act to the rest of the game.
An argument could be made that castles are a driving factor for that 10% of players, but that 10% of players are not going to drive the whole game.
Nodes are kind of similar, sort of. There will be a lot more people interested in defending their node than attacking an opposition node. Also, citizens of a metropolis are unlikely to care at all about sieges of anything other than a metropolis.
This means that the bulk of players will only care about metropolis sieges. Since a metropolis can only be sieged once every 55 days, this is not going to make for a particularly great driving force for the entire game either.
Now, you may want to say that sieges will spur PvP via caravans and such, and in a small way, sure. Again though, this isn't enough to drive the entire game.
The vast majority of players are going to log in and do their own thing. They are not going to be thinking that a rival node may be able to declare a siege on their node in another 26 days, so they had better go off and find a caravan to attempt to slow them down (hint; most caravans will be players moving their own personal belongings, not materials specifically dedicated to a siege).
So, the idea that sieges will drive PvP in Ashes only holds out for a very small percentage of players. It is absolutely not enough to sustain the game long term.
What will sustain the game long term are those players that are just logging in to do their own thing - what ever they are able to do to progress their character, their guild or their node. Players that are just looking at today, and maybe tomorrow - but absolutely not the month after next. You are making an assumption here that recipes will be the gate to top end items. This is almost guaranteed to not be the case.
The most likely situation is that encounters will drop materials, and the materials will be the gate to top end items.
If recipes were teh gate to specific items, as soon as one recipe is found on a server, there is the potential for infinate numbers of that item. If the encounters drop raw materials that are the gate for top end items, there is only as many top end items per kill as the developers allow the encounter to drop.
So, the material will be the gate to getting the top end item - at best the recipe will dictate exactly what the item is (to start), or exactly who you can get to make the item you want (after an amount of time).
As such, guilds absolutely will monopolize top end encounters, as doing so means monopolizing top end equipment, which means the guild will always be better equipped than their rivals.
Sure, you may want to siege nodes and castles and stuff, but you also want to always have the upper hand in terms of gear, and the only way to do that in Ashes is to monopolize encounter spawns.
Assuming I am right here, your post suggests that you then think that PvE will drive PvP in Ashes - which is exactly the opinion I have had of this game since the day Steven said "PvE will drive PvP in Ashes" (not that I believe him, he has said too many inconsistent things for me to do that).
So, if we now assume that PvE is the driving factor (or main driving factor) behing PvP in Ashes, the logical thing then is to make sure the game has vibrant PvE, so that it also has vibrant PvP.
Now, I have said many, many times that I agree that over use of instances would be bad. It may make for good PvE, but if a part of the point of PvE in your game is to drive PvP, then instancing it all off means it isn't going to perform that specific role very well. Again, this is a point I agree with.
However, that does not meansthat there should not be instanced content at any given difficulty range in Ashes, including top end raid content. It means instancing should be used only enough to enhance the PvE aspect of the game, so that the PvE aspect of the game can better drive teh PvP aspect of the game.
Caravans, Guild wars, Arenas and sieges of all kinds will be the primary PvP in the game, I mean they're literally building systems around these mechanics for PvP, the only "system" around the entire PVE you're so concerned about is just the fact it's open world allowing player freedom to determine outcomes.
Just to elaborate on why I'm saying the sieges are the primary PvP in the game is because it's what will be driven by Caravan PvP, Guild wars Etc. To think of it in terms you'll understand, sieges will be the "End game boss mobs" for the PvPers.
I'm not going to bother reading your posts anymore - good luck.
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
You are assuming that the bulk of players will participate in sieges by choice.
They won't.
Most players will participate in sieges only if it is their node being sieged.
Most players are not interested in putting in that level of commitment. They don't want to spend today working towards an event that is literally two months away - they want to go off and run some content with their friends.
You may place sieges as your most important activity - it may well drive how you play the game. This is the same as how top end PvE content drives how I play most games (Archeage being a notible exception). Thing is, neither of us are the majority - I know perfectly well that less than 10% of players will be able to take on top end PvE content, and I am sure you are aware that less than 10% of people care about sieges.
The exception to both is if that thing that peopel generally avoid start directly affecting them. People will defend their node from a siege, and from a world boss - but that doesn't make it content that drives the game.
What drives the game is the thing the bulk of people log in to the game to do every day. In Ashes, as with 98% of all MMO's ever, that will be single group content.
That is the content that will drive Ashes, and will be what the bulk of PvP is over, in one way or another.
Sieges are very similar to top end raid encounters, as you pointed out. They exist so that the bulk of players have something to look up to, or to look forward to. As soon as that content becomes something that 20% or more of people do, the developers need to start working on something to replace it from a player asperation perspective.
But Steven has said that dungeouns are going to be 8 man dungeouns and 16 man 40 man raids have been confirmed. So he would have to be talking about instance dungeouns and raids. Not sure why people on this thread think there are not going to be any instanced dungeouns unless it got announced recently.
20 percent might not seem like a lot but in WoW the current max level dungouns is about 6 or 7 so if they have that many dungeouns would be same amount of dungeouns that you get in WoW.
Read Posts about open wourld raids and bosses being attacked by different groups. Actually scalling works pretty well cause if you add more to people lets say 100 more people to a group of 100 Well at this point the raid boss could heal for certain amount and use a defensive ability like takes 25 percent less damage.
If a monster lets say has 50 percetent damage reduction that effectively gives them twice the hit points. But that would be pretty obvious. Some games just have percentage points of hit points and rather then the actual hit points vary according to size. Not a fan of this system cause kind makes me loose the immersion part of the game. Pretty obvios computer is changing hit points in the back round.
Now it would be kind of strange for a monsters hit points all of the sudden to double which in effect this is what you want to happen but this could be masked by some things already mentioned but also maybe the raid boss could summon adds or henchmen or put a a debuff on the party. Really do not want to make big long post about game mechanics but just want say that the solutions for a open world content and diffeent sizs groups are there. Just a matter of picking a good that fits this MMO
Open world dungeons will be populated to facilitate multiple groups within the dungeon.[7]
80% of dungeons will be open world.[8][9]
Instanced dungeons will also be present and will cater for solo and group questlines.[7]
20% of dungeons will be instanced.[8][9]
Just went and copy and pasted this from the ]Ashes of creation WiKi. So 20 percent of dungeouns will be instanced.
https://es.ashesofcreation.wiki/Dungeons
scaling on raids is just bad, because if it is supposed to be hard then you find out what the best amount of people is best for that fight and bring those
and on top of that we have confirmed that raids are not going to scale at all and will be tuned for 40 people
― Plato
Plus refering to open world content in general (not specifically raids) open wourld content usually but not neccesarily scale one way to do it with out scaling.....lets say open world boss is a huge health pool with boss not necessarily cause to much damage. So boss could be designed to take like 30 min to 125 people to kill well if 250 people show up then it will take 15 min or half the time. Guessing more than 250 people could show up but how often does that happen.
Not perfect does have a draw back if to many people show up. ut then there was some mention of lockouts.
Another method they could use is well some times in other games bosses have three health bars first the green one the yellow then red stacked rigth on top of each other. So green goes first and then yellow
So lets say you have world boss designed for 100 people and 100 people show up and while right in the middle of the green bar 100 more people show up then when the green bar turns yellow the hit points would be adjusted for 200 plus the amount of time that was spent as a 100 people boss but being attacked by 200
Problem with this one is 100 people could leave in middle of fight yes could be adjusted next bar of health but could be problematic. Think there are decent systems alreay out there but not neccesarily a perfect system.
So guess you could cherry pick cons which is good cause maybe they could do something about it.
Even the illustrious World of Warcraft has had issues with their open world bosses.
Both of these games have fast travel and/or teleportation gimmicks though. So, it'll be interesting to see what happens in ashes of creation.
This approach still means that the DPS aspect of an encounter is not something that guilds need to work on. All they need to do is bring in more players until they hit that cap.
A part of the stated design intention behind top end raid content is to provide content that requires players to excel - from a DPS perspective (potentially 75% of the raid), that can only be achieved if the HP of the encounter scales infinately with the number of players present (which causes far more issues, and has been stated as undesireable), or if the number of participants is limited.
If there is no limit on participation numbers, and there is no scaling, then there is also no reason for the bulk of the raid to attempt to excel.
The game would have to take the amount of active characters doing damage and scale them down to the 30 count. However this is heavy scaling complication that is not supposed to be in Ashes
― Plato
I don't consider scaling the encounter materially different to scaling the players taking on the encounter, so I'm not a fan of this approach.
I still think the best option is to have open world PvP focused boss encounters as one type of content, and instanced/psuedo-instanced PvE content where the encounter is the focus as a totally different type of content.
The fewer people you bring, the more profitable the encounter is.
You don't get more loot for bringing more people so the fewer people you bring, the fewer people it's being split among.
If the cap is something players care about reaching it can incentivize players to improve their dps as runs can become more profitable if you can hit dps cap with fewer players.
Also, dps doesn't have to be the primary factor of what determines success so just because you hit the cap with more players doesn't mean you are able to win the encounter.
If content is actually hard, and takes many attempts to actually figure out and then kill, then this point isn't really relevant.
well one guy figures it out, posts on internet, then everyone knows and not much to figure out then. You just come prepared.
Difficulty from missing information is not the only difficulty in existence. Bosses can be hard even when you know everything about them and to your disappointment Steven agrees that missing information about a boss is not the driving difficulty for raids - otherwise he wouldn't say that raids are clearable only by fraction of the community
― Plato