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
no, its the way the devs want you to play. They want conflict, and if instanced dungeons have the same gear, it wont be logical to go to open world dungeons
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
I played mmos for years, and I can tell you that I spent only a fraction of my time in the instance raiding. The rest of the time I was out in the world farming or doing faction/daily quests, or even some *gasp* pvp.
If they build the reward system properly, raid bosses won’t actually drop gear, they will drop materials needed to craft gear. Those mats can come from a variety of challenging sources of different types, not just raids, and it’s relatively easy to make it so that those materials must be augmented with open world materials to craft the gear you want using the services of master craftsmen. It is still completely interconnected the way you want it to be, it’s just that those who want their premium mats can get them from the progression path they enjoy and prefer.
1. Literally anyone can enter and exit it, and no matter how hard the content is, it will never be as hard as having to compete for it in an open world, to some it will take more time to kill it, to some less time, but eventually everyone who wants to kill it - will kill it, for free, with no outside interaction.
2. Infaltion of loot - an instanced content produces loot per raid, an open world boss produces loot per kill. One allows monopoly, drama, constant interest and will to have that item. The other makes the item obsinely cheap to buy after a set amount of time since its just gonna overflow the market, dropping the value of the item and eventually not making anyone "uniquely" more powerful than others.
There can be instanced content, it can be as hard as people want it to be, but it cannot drop best in slot gear in a game such as Ashes, it kills the whole concept of player-driven-conflict.
There was a great suggestion to make an instanced version of the open world bosses with addition of extremely hard mechanics, and as a reward give unique titles, cosmetics, and other goodies that do not affect the character powerlevel but provide him with brag-rights and something unique that most of the people wont have. And even make those instances scheduled contests, with the "lowest time to kill" graph for example, that rewards the best raid.
But the people that were loudly advocating for instanced pve didnt want that, they wanted the best loot specifically to be dropped out of instances.
Also it is pretty fair to compair ashes to L2, or to Archeage, since those are the games that Steven took inspiration and foundation from, those were his "golden mmorpg times", thats what he loved and thats how he sees and wants to make Ashes.
Ah, now we actually get to it. Your underlying assumption here is that PvE content is less challenging than PvP content and therefore those do do it are less deserving of progression. Aside from being arrogant and condescending, statistics of equivalent accomplishments from games that support both kinds of play show that assertion to be untrue.
that is partially because in PVP you might lose stuff while PVE monsters arent going to loot you
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
I would strongly challenge the assertion that “anyone who wants to kill it will kill it”. Taking WoW as an example of instanced content, only a small fraction of guilds killed the Lich King during WotLK despite it being “uncontested”. An almost vanishingly small percentage of players managed to kill yoga Saron with 0 keepers up.
Likewise, in the same game, the number of people who achieved 2500 ranking in arena was only a tiny fraction of the player base.
Unfortunately this is exactly the kind of pvp/pve arrogance that I see all over the place. People who play one way and assume that people who play the other way are somehow inferior or playing easy-mode or whatever.
As to Steven’s intent, I think his overriding intent is to create a game that will be enjoyed by as many people as possible for as long as possible.
It requires more PvP than instanced content yea, but that's not exactly compareable.
PvP definitely adds another dimension to world bosses but that does not make them nesseccarily harder.
That's just a guess but I also don't really know if every world boss will be even seriously contestet to begin with.
As far as I am aware they want distance to matter so chances are guilds will stick to certain areas.
Making it more likely that there is one big guild around which will just kill the world bosses without too much other people barging in.
I mean there is no real reason to join a small guild which may be able to contest bosses at some point if there is another guild that already can.
I didnt say it "cant be hard", i said that the content will be harder in a contest situation no matter what, if everyone can enter and challenge a boss, that already in it self equalizes players when it shouldnt, not in what Ashes is trying to be. I am carebearing my self for the past few years, so i was on both ends of the spectrum, but the only reason i was carebearing for that given time is because no game was actually offering me what i was looking for. Right now that game is Ashes, it takes everything i loved back in the days in MMO's and tries to make it right.
In my Lineage 2 server in the very early days a massive alliance took control of the entrance to the dungeon that had a world boss at the end and just a generally important area and sat outside for weeks day and night charging people money to go inside. Eventually the server got sick of it and alliances were formed and war declarations were sent. Guilds fell apart and new ones rose from the dust.
If you start putting things behind instances this takes away from what the game has to offer. The vision of the devs (To my understanding) is an Open world player driven game. Putting gear behind instances takes away from that, it takes away from 2 guilds who have never seen each other before coming to an area to try and kill a boss, seeing each other, and saying "Oh wow what do we do here". Do you PM the leader and try and cut a deal to split the loot? Do you flag up first and start killing people to try and get a big chunk of them dead before they can react quick enough?
I don't believe it's wise to start taking ways for these interactions to happen out of the game.
This is another problem I’m concerned with at the moment. At the moment, I see an enormous amount of pressure on guilds to be as large as possible. What good is a guild with 50 people in it when the guild that does the most damage to a world boss gets the loot and there are other guilds with 400 people in them? There are similar pressures being exerted through the mechanisms I’ve seen in pvp content.
I have nothing against huge guilds. But often you can have a better experience of community in a smaller guild where you know the other members better. I wouldn’t want it to be impractical for smaller guilds to flourish in the game.
The loot is not divided by "guilds dps", its divided by "raid dps", which consists out of 5 groups of 8 people each, if the huge guild brings 400 people, but your squad simply does more damage than any of their separate squads, you will loot it. Thats where the 400 come in handy, as they will most likely simply will wipe the 40 to prevent that contest.
"Small guilds" have the rights to live, but those "small guilds" shouldnt have the rights to contest the highest level of open world content... I am not talking about 40 man guilds, as those are somewhat fine, i am talking about 10-20 man guilds trend that rose in the past years to an absurd amount.
Also one more thing that came to mind that you can add to the "Inflation" part of the instanced content, that every group that can clear that content will create as many alts as possible to re-clear it as many times as possible, multiplying the loot and inflating the economy even more.
There is the guild buff system in place right now to help smaller guilds. Large guilds will have to spend their guild upgrade points on bigger rosters while small guilds can spend them on buffs and such.
Additionally, it's looking very promising that a smaller group who runs very synergized builds will be able to AoE/CC down large less organized groups.
How are you skipping them out?
If you get ganked on the way home from the raid you can still loose items.
Why would people not camp at the entrance of the instance if they want to grief someone?
Happens in WoW all the time as well and you cannot even loot hunting certificates from players there.
Everyone would have the option to do it so it cannot be one sided or "selfish" by default.
At least if it is not so hard that "PvP-guys" aren't able to do it.
But if that is the case we already would have a justification why there should be good loot since it has a skill requirement.
I think it is kind of disingenuous to advocate that everything should be a PvP thing and they should also get the best loot in the game for free, how is that not purely selfish?
Also if you get the best loot in the game from world bosses without the guarantee that it is contested 24/7 how can you ensure that nobody just farms it while most people don't play?
How is that a good system to begin with?
Put some mounts or other stuff into the lootpool but a worldboss dropping good items is always a joke.
I would urge anyone who is considering this issue to take a look at the excellent video Lazy Peon made about New World and pay attention to what he has to say about endgame progression in that uninstanced environment and how damaging it is to the motivation players have to be involved long-term in that world.
Nobody wants to turn this into WoW, nobody wants to make the open world less compelling. Having instanced raid content in addition to some world bosses won’t do that, no matter what the doomsayers suggest in their drive to force everyone to play exactly the way they do.
My understanding is that the only thing you will drop in PvP unless you are corrupt is gathering materials. I don't think world boss materials would count as "Gathering Materials" since I envision wood and herbs and things like that, but I suppose they could. Everything is a PvP thing because it's a PvP-centric player-driven game that requires guilds to fight over things like this. Adding instanced raids kills the premise of the game. Everything isn't easy mode for PvP players. PvPers will need to be able to kill bosses and PvE in order to get good gear so they can PvP better. PvErs will need to be able to PvP in order to get good gear so they can PvE better. I'm failing to see the problem.
What on earth were you playing where maintenances would skew the respawn timers of bosses? Also having instanced content does not regulate the market in any way, since its accessible as many times as it is possible to clear it in a set amount of times, while a world boss is accessible once during his life time until next respawn.
If i can clear an instance with the best loot, i will just make more characters with the same prof, pass my gear from character A to B and clear that instance 8 times in a week instead of 1 possible for a world boss, and that will multiply per group. Tell me again how that will not inflate exactly?
The whole story of "200 hours to lvl up to max" is barelly applied after the first character has been leveled, geared and established, and more in-game experience was made by the player, the next character leveling can take as much as a quarter of the initial time, i will have my alts ready in less than 2 weeks while clearing more and more with every alt that is ready.
It's funny you bring New World up. I'm not 100% sure how the story goes but to my understanding that game started as an open world survivalish PvP game that focused on constant sieges and towns trading hands, and full loot PvP. PvErs complained after the first test and they changed the creative director, completely butchered the mechanics of the game and you have the steamer you saw in Beta of where there's now NOTHING to do. Nothing open world nor instanced. I REALLY hope AoC does not take that same route.
It doesn't change things.
At times I was running the guild that was always missing out on these kills, and at times I was running the guild that was always getting them.
All this kind of spawner does is see guilds set up call lists and spotters, so that when the mob spawned, the guild was called up and those able to make it would log in and take it out. THen they changed it so the encounters only spawned in the "prime time" window for each server, which meant we weren't being called up at 3am on a tuesday to kill an encounter - but still left the kills in the hands of the same guilds.
Again, this is a great way to have some raid content - early morning calls and all. It is not a great way to have all raid content.
Fortunately, EQ2 also had regular instanced raid content so that the guild was able to still remain together during the times we weren't getting the kills.
That's the nature of an open world game, sometimes a better guild can get it. Needing scouts to scout for bosses that are up sounds like an interesting aspect to me. Fortunately, AoC is planned to have 20% instanced content that you can do if you aren't killing open world bosses.
The premise that some instanced content takes away from the open world is just absurd.
What's next?
Shouldn't we be able to craft items in cities because I cannot get ganked doing it there?
An obligatory duel with your workbench before you can use it, to make crafting qualify as PvP content?
I don't see why there is a need to degrade the meaning and value of any challenging PvE content down to the level of a gimmick just because it is instanced.
I literally cannot imagine how that would work.
Even Archeage had them, they weren't good but it didn't felt like it impacted world pvp or world bosses in any negative way.
How exactly should instanced raiding break the game?????
They have said 20% of content will be instanced... I'm sure that includes at least one raid. That is completely fair for an open world based game. We don't know yet what the mechanics for world bosses will be. They could be completely different from anything you have ever seen when it comes to open world bosses. Give it time.
The inspiration for AoC is Archeage and L2, not WoW... not other PvE focused games. You all have plenty of games focused on that aspect of the game. Let's see where the Devs vision for AoC takes the game before you all start whining about there not being enough content for how you want to play MMOs.
All dungeons instanced, thats what I want.
You probably won't like this game. Already confirmed 80% of content is open world because this is an open world game.
Adding to what you said:
a large part of the instanced 20% will be story type content. (Which could be Group/Raid Sized Content for all we know).
The good news for him is that there are plenty of mmorpgs that already exist that have exactly what he wants.
Yeah I really worry about this. I personally love instanced raids with complicated bosses and cool mechanics (I haven't really seen such things exist in open world yet). Unfortunately, at this point I'm gonna play AoC regardless of the state of the PvE content, how creative it is/isn't etc because I have just not been excited about another MMO for many years now.
Challenging and somewhat predictable PvE (in terms of scheduling and availability) feels like a fundamentally important part of an MMO. Especially with such long cool downs on node/castle sieges, the big PvP events are transient although I'm sure grand large world bosses may also be transient but then you need some stable and smaller PvE content just like the stable and smaller PvP content. If the stable PvE content is too easy/trivial or too deeply mired in PvP I worry about retention.
But I mean ultimately this is why we have alphas and betas so hopefully they strike gold and figure it out. Personally, I think instanced boss rooms (even with only 1 instance running at a time) feels like a good way to do it with depleting/decaying loot tables. So getting to the boss room will be fraught with open world PvP because the loot table will have limited number of drops of certain items/mats or decaying drop probabilities that resets on some schedule but the actual boss encounter can be more controlled and therefore more creative/complex. Of course you'd need some way to require the entry into the instance to be full group (you shouldn't allow raids to slowly trickle into the instanced boss room. I don't know, just spitballing here haha.
Edit: I don't think all dungeons/raids should operate this way though, this was more of a suggestion so that if during alphas/betas the majority of the feedback is the bosses are too easy/not creative/not complex, we can still have risk-reward and PvP conflict surrounding PvE content.
There is the possibility of 40 man bosses in these very same dungeons. Assuming nobody forms a raid to kill the dragon, and nobody engages in PVP, the loot will be distributed to the group who dose the highest dps to the boss. Loot will have a finite numerical quantity. So it may behoove 40 players of independent parties to work together instead of pvping over the boss anything past that amount well, there's PVP and/or DPS race tactics.
The hardest encounter for about half of the content cycles in that game was an open world encounter. The way it worked in that game though, was as soon as a raid tagged the encounter, the encounter was locked to that raid. This meant that others weren't able to interfere, and also that only one raid could attack the encounter.
Because these encounters were hard, guilds usually took a few pills to kill them, even if they have done the encounter a half dozen times. This means that if your guild does wipe while fighting the encounter, another guild may pull it. You are then essentially left hoping that they wipe so you can have another shot.
Also, since these encounters are only available once per 7 - 10 days for the whole server (as opposed to once per guild that opens up an instance), the rewards from these encounters is even better than the difficulty would suggest.
In EQ2, almost every item dropped from these encounters was the best of its type in the game - and due to their rarity even players in guilds with a monopoly on them couldn't guarantee the items they want will actually drop (which went some way to that game never having a single best build meta).
It is an enjoyable content type, but the developers need to have the balls to tell their players to accept that sometime they won't get to kill the hardest encounter in the game.
To me, this is fine as one type of raid content, but simply not acceptable as the only type.
The Raid Tier Bosses should:
be just as hard as you'd expect an instanced Mythic WoW/ Savage FFXIV Raid Boss to be. A Level of difficulty where you need a dedicated group of PvErs to kill it.
should have clear and very effective "Fuck you Zergs" mechanics, that inhibit all ways of zerging him down.
have a long run up/narrow passage leading up to the boss, that allow the "support aka PVP Raid" to defend the boss attempt of your PVE Raid from other factions trying to interfere.
This
Which seems to be exactly what they are going for judging from the dungeon design they have shown with the dragon dungeon. There is a portal you have to take to get to the final boss room, which essentially makes the kill attempt "defend-able".
Definitely looking forward to how the devs will address this rising concern in the community.