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
Thats the concept most modern day mmo players don't understand. back in the Lineage days you didnt have PVE or PVP guilds, they were just guilds. As you cant succeed in one, without other. So mix of both, was part of the game. Hope AOC brings that back.
Yes, I don't think a lot of these people have seen this type of game before. There's gonna be a lot of surprised people in the few weeks after launch when guilds start claiming dungeons as their own and PKing anybody who comes close to them.
Ugh, cant wait to see all those carebear tears
@Mojottv
Exactly!
Today you have discord servers and you will have there semi-automated tools for cooperating cross guild collusion and hostage holding for rare resources. If there are going to be rare open world resources then you will have mafia for each of them (or one mafie controlling more resources). They will even hold open world dungeons spots on respawn.
I personally don't see any healthy gameplay if the game allows griefing without any consequence. Hopefully we have corruption system that is focused entirely on this aspect - this will relieve pressure from ganking and wiping another groups. So I can just laugh at people intending to do PK in order to try and hold a dungeon hostage (in other words preventing the dungeon from being cleared), because most likely it will become a meta to do no damage to anyone who is ganking you so that they might gain corruption and all the disadvantages that come with that system.
Personally I have nothing against ganking someone from time to time, but if it becomes your goal to ruin someone elses whole game session by griefing him then I want severe punishment by the game systems.
Additionally what I disagree with is the idea that the most important(most rewarding) PvE raiding should be a reward for holding PvP position during the duration of the raid.
You guys are looking at the difficulty in raiding that comes from organization, figuring out the right strategy on the fly and holding entrances with PvP.
What most others are looking at is the difficulty of executing the said strategy. That is the focus point that everyone is worried about. Because if you do not have this difficulty nailed down then the game is going to be just about PvP domination with speedrunning the raids.
If classic wow didn't have instanced dungeons and raids I would call that game as pure PvP open world. The PvE content in that game is so laughably easy that the only difficulty is in clearing it the fastest on server and having prestige from that. This will happen to Ashes if they don't get the difficulty of actually executing strategy right then it will be just a zergfest of PvP guilds clearing free loot that spawned in the world and they will dominate every server with no PvE progression path for the majority of playerbase
― Plato
L2 died because of servers infested with bots.
L2 died because of Devs trying to copy/paste the meta of instanced gameplay.
L2 died because of pay to win.
Overall poor management and vision direction. Private servers have more players than retail by a huge margin.
L2 had different tier of Bosses, they were called normal Raid bosses and Epic bosses.
Most open world bosses on the map were raid bosses, except Orfen which was an epic boss but on open map. Any guild who had character camera at its spawn would kill it fast because competition might come.
Epic bosses were mostly dungeon based such as Valakas, Antharas, Baium, Core, Frintezza but slightly different.
They all had a boss room where a quest item was required to enter, except Queen Ant and Zaken. if someone hit the boss inside the other people from outside couldn't enter.
I don't think bosses that drop the rarest loot needs to be scaled by number of players. Just make them really hard, so it requires at least 40-50 very good geared characters to kill it.
on wiki you can find
Also the intended raid size is 40 players and so I think that all tuning is focused on this amount of players only
Also I did not play L2 nor any true oldschool mmorpg, but from what I hear about it is that everyone cherishes the memories of zerging down world bosses with massive amounts of players. These events are awesome and I'll gladly join them in Ashes, however this is not a PvE progression path and without it many including me will just leave the game after launch "fresh" hype.
Zerging world bosses is not an endgame to me - it is an event. However I might find a different type of endgame who knows - I might stop being a raider and stay with the game for different reasons
― Plato
I understand. Well if this game will be based off L2 open world, you will see zergs maybe 200vs200vs150 players for a boss with very rare loot.
L2 never had an endgame, the end game was pvp for best items and castles, or pvp for best xp spots to advance.
well back then you didn't have 300 people guilds and having 40 man raid was a zerg. as i probablyt mentioned somewhere else, then there was no sutch thing as PVE progression, or PVP progresion, it was PVX progresion and that's it. there was no "safe space" to just go and grind mobs, kill bosses, without any worries. Also then there was no such thing as endgame as there was raid bosses, castles, etc and epic equipment that only handful of people could achieve. Some people couldnt even reach max lvl, so the game was about struggle and trying to achieve as much as you can, with always having more to achieve.
The PVX progression you are talking about is more or less just sandbox pursuit of a handful of bis items in the world and many people not actually knowing what is bis.
If PvE on occasion meets PvP then it is extremely healthy for the game for the players to mingle and do things outside their comfort zone. However if their PvE progression path is dependant on their PvP path then it can be extremely frustrating and offputting for many players which will lead to the decrease in difficulty of the PvE raids that kinda require PvP to be able to do them. Which leads to braindead zergfests that is rewarding opportunity and human coordination to get people together rather than to kill difficult enemies.
― Plato
Guild/Ally drama - I miss it.
Looks like you're bringing DPS meters in this discussion.... in any case, that is exactly the thing, if you know what you're doing, have a good party that can clear difficult mobs and defend best hunting spots, you will lvl maybe not 20 times faster but a lot faster.
and again, this is not wow, or any other grind till max lvl, then go to arena for pvp kind of game, at least i hop it wont turn into one. there is no such thing in these type of games as PVP or PVE progresion paths... if you're skilled enough you will have, better eq, you will have access to better hunting ground and you will exp faster, if not, well, not everyone can be winner. you will have to satisfy with lesser stuff.
They call it 40 man raids most likely because that's what it will be balanced around similar to world bosses in other games.
If what you are really asking is why they allow people to zerg down a 40 man raid with 300 people it's more a byproduct of having the raid in the open world. Yes, the dungeon is a pve challenge but the resources available in it can also be a pvp objective. Since there is only one dungeon in the open world instead of unlimited instances, there is a limit on who can get the resources. The limited amount of resources is one of the ways they plan on creating conflict.
On the other side, a reason you probably won't take 300 (besides it being hard to muster that many people) to a dungeon is the limited amount of resources. You aren't going to be getting more just because you brought 300 so most of those players aren't going to be getting anything out of it. It's hard to tell how possible it will be but there is a decent chance that it will be better to do the opposite and bring less than 40 so there is more loot to go around. There is also an increased chance of a spy the more people you bring.
Pure open world content like that in L2 is more of an event, a PvPvE thing. Its not PvE. Whilst PvPvE itself maybe challenging, the actual PvE content in it isn't really that difficult. In fact, almost all of it is face-roll.
That's what should change. Regardless of the player contention, the content itself should maintain a certain level of difficulty. And Intrepid are already working on mechanics to ascertain that.
I'm in no way advocating for instancing. Some instancing makes it a lot easier to control the difficulty of PvE bosses easily. That's it. Its an easy solution. The harder path to take is to make challenging open world content, and for a game that's trying to be the best, sometimes you should take a harder path. So if Ashes can create challenging open world PvE content, then I'm sure that no-one, and I repeat no-one, will have any problem with it whatsoever. Its just that previous games have tried and failed, hence the skepticism.
Devs copy/paste attempt was because it was what players demanded.
Pay to win was an attempt to give players that were constantly on the losing end of PvP (and as a result, the losing end of everything) a chance to gain the upper hand - as they couldn't gain that upper hand in game as they were too far behind - even with all the bots.
It doesn't seem to me to be a smart idea to attempt to copy these mistakes. In fact, it seems to me that the smart thing to do is to take the fixes that other games have applied that fixed the root cause of these issues and implement that in to the very heart of the game.
I'm not going to give you any clues as to what that fix was - I think you can figure it out.
Oh my god the lengths you people go to avoid PvP is absurd. Just unreal mental gymnastics here.
However, you are totally mistaken.
Most of us are not at all against PvP - and your continued insistance that this debate is about avoiding PvP is actually absurd.
If I wanted to avoid PvP, I wouldn't be asking for single encounter instances in the middle of contested dungeons - which is exactly what I want to see. That doesn't avoid PvP, the absolute best argument that can be made against it is that it would move PvP from occuring while also trying to fight the encounter in question, to instead taking place most likely just outside the entrance to that instance.
If I was trying to avoid PvP, I would be asking for instanced dungeons, rather than instanced encounters. I would also be asking for these dungeons to only drop finished items so that we could use the family summons to exit and not be subjected to the PvP that is probably waiting for us outside.
The simple fact that I am not asking for these things should tell anyone actually thinking about the arguments from a different perspective than their own that we are not asking for anything to avoid PvP.
Rather, what we are saying is that we want some of those instances that are absolutely going to exist to contain content types that can only exist inside of instances. We still want the encounters where others can attack you while you are fighting - that kind of thing is great. However, we also want encounters where the actual encounter itself is a real, proper challenge - and that can not exist if PvP is also possible.
This is not me saying it can't exist - this is the fact that in the several hundred or so MMO's that have existed, none of them have managed to put a proper raid encounter in a PvP setting - the best that has been achieved is a pinata where the only challenge is in fighting off other players for long enough.
Again, this is great content, we want that - but we also want content where the challenge is the encounter itself, and that can only come from (and has only ever come from) instanced PvE.
Yes I understand that you feel as if your opinion is fact. However if you truly believe that the devs of L2 added a cash shop to "Help players in PvP" or whatever you said and not because they are a bunch of greedy people who saw dollar signs you are naive.
It is a fact that no MMO has ever put an encounter in a PvP setting that provides any challenge if there is no PvP present. This isn't an opinion, this is a fact. A new one for you - it is conjecture that this is simply not possible, based on all available evidence.
It is an opinion that I want there to be some encounters that are a challenge based on PvP, and also some others that are a challenge based on PvE.
Back to facts - it is a fact that these two challenge types are vastly different to each other, and it is also a fact that no singular piece of content in MMO history has provided both of these challenges to players at the same time.
Essentially, you are saying that you only want players to have access to one of these forms of challenge. That is your entire argument - regardless of how you attempt to dress it up.
I am saying I want people to have both.
Could you source all these "facts"? I'm guessing you pulled that information out of the big book of MMORPG facts. I have found plenty of enjoyment in open world PvE games before, I'm sorry you haven't.
Why don't we wait and see what the open world content looks like before we start calling for more instancing than 20%. The crux of my entire argument no matter how much you try and claim otherwise.
I noticed you conveniently ignored what I said about the L2 cash shop, which is what I have been talking about during our back and forth.
Your answers are so lengthy and convoluted, that its quite hard to respond properly. You write a lot of word but say very little. Ant queen is one example of hard boss in pvp setting. Was hard to kill without pvp due tue its mechanics, not to mention deffending it if enemies show up.
And yeh, bots and cash shop is for people to catch up ?
Dont expect everything to be easy and dont say the games were built so that there was no way to compete unless boting or buying shit for real money
I am simply saying how I would like a portion of that 20% to be used.
The problem with waiting is that actual good content in an MMO takes many, many months to make. If the plan is to launch the game, wait for people to get to the level cap and then see how the content is holding up, we would be talking 18 months or more after launch before such content actually makes it to the game.
It makes far more sense to launch the game with good amounts of both types of content, and then if it turns out that the purely open world content is more enjoyed, make more of it.
20% is higher than what I would like as well but I won't be complaining about it because that's what the devs see fit to appeal to a wider audience.
In lazypeons video he specifically states he fact checked everything and he also said that the game has instanced dungeons and raids. I'm just gonna wait and see and I have a feeling there will be instanced PvE content in the game that isn't just story missions. As I have stated before I would be shocked if that instanced content offered better gear over open world content.
That is not a hard encounter.
Mechanically speaking, it is about as hard as a mid range PvE encounter - of single group content. It is a great encounter when PvP is involved, but it is not a hard encounter at all without PvP.
If that encounter - with the exact same mechanics - were in a raid instance, it would be considered base population and wouldn't even warrant having a unique name, let alone a loot table. It would be what a skilled raid take on while they are all talking shit to each other - not what they stop to focus on. It is so mechanically unsophisticated that people would happily take a bio break without even letting the raid leader know - and the raid leader wouoldn't even care.
I mean, without PvP the encounter took less than 4 minutes. It is even more of a joke than the red dragon from Archeage which is the encounter I always point to when explaining the difference between encounters designed as PvE encounters, and encounters designed as PvP McGuffins.
Now, I don't know you as a poster well enough to really know (nor do I overly care to), but it is possible that you were being sarcastic with this.
If so, cool, great joke.
If not, all I can say is that you have absolutely no idea at all what PvE content is about. The only reason people needed bots to get to the top is because the game didn't give them any other path to get there.
This is the major flaw in all PvP games, one group gets the upper hand, and as long as that group stays together, they will always have that upper hand. The more PvP there is, and the higher the consequences there are for losing in PvP, the bigger that upper hand they have will be.
The cash shop was added to L2 based on players asking for it.
When you are at the point where you can't do anything, you either find a way to game the system, or you leave the game.
So sure, you are absolutely right that bots were there for people to cheat their way to the top, but they were only there and only so rampant because there was no other way for these people to get to the top legitimately.
As to the cash shop, people were sick of always being on the bottom, and so basically begged NCSoft to allow them with a way to make up lost ground. NCSoft thought that adding it may cut back on some of the bots in the game, but I think most of us now know that wouldn't happen.
Basically, people looked at the cash shop as a legitimate way to make up for that upper hand that others had over them, and bots as the illegitimate way to make up for it.
So, I mean, you aren't wrong. People used the cash shop and bots to try and get to the top - but you are missing the point that they only resorted to those things because the game offered them no other path to get there.
I don't expect there to be too much of a difference, assuming the developers make appropriate instanced content, but I do expect open world rewards to be marginally better than instanced.
Ok, so ant queen was lvl 40 raid. Yes its easy when you have 1 lvl 40 party hitting the raid and then lvl 75 party dealing with minions, yes it could be considered easy in that way, also it has become easy once everyone knew the strategy of how to beat it, so unless devs change mechanics of raids every time they respawn, every encounter will become easy. I dont get what is so hard in following set tactic to defeat the mob? Advanced AI? We're long way till its a thing in games.
Using bots and cash shop because there's no other way? Give me a break...so i should use aimbot at csgo just because i'm not as good as shroud, and i dont have any chance of beating him?
I have never met any lineage player who said that p2w cash shop is good, ever. No one was asking for it, but a lot of people used it, because it gives unfair advantage over people who dont use cash shop. So spare me with ur bs. Bots and p2w shop is about unfair advantage over others, nothing more. Someone who invest 4000 hours should be on top of someone with 400 hours..
You cant twist my words any way you want, but its clear that you want things to be easy for you.
If encounter becomes easy by figuring out the strategy then it was never hard to begin with. That is not an opinion it is a hard fact, it would mean that chopping firewood is difficult until you find that the best strategy is to use axe.
If you truly want for encounters to be about finding the right strategy then you need severely cut down the amount of people dealing with such encounters. Which could be almost impossible if this game is extremely popular and has millions of players concurrently which would automatically give you gigantic top-end raider pool.
You completely twist his point, that is extremely shameful imho. In csgo killing someone with a precise shot doesnt increase your chances to get the same shot again, because the only variance in there is your game sense and accuracy skill with tracking/clicking. Unlike MMO's where success is rewarded with better gear that makes succeeding again easier.
I want to say that you twist his words without effort to understand what he means with them. All he tried to tell you with l2 is that people that got to the top could deny others getting to the top and the only avenue left for getting to the top is botting/cashshop
If top players can block progression of other players then the top players are just players who invested most in the start. Doesn't mean they are "good" in any capacity other than being fast and dedicated
― Plato
Ok, so what do you consider a hard PVE encounter then?
And no, its actually quite the same, look at hours Shroud have in cs:go and effort he put in to getting good at the game. Talent gives you bit of advantage, but don't take away from his success by not acknowledging work he put in. So if i dont want to put in the work and hours into getting good, then i should use aim bot? Same with MMO's more hours and effort you put in, the higher lvl you are and better gear you have, so its a lot easier to fight people who put in less hours and effort.
And your last paragraph is complete bullshit. Noone can actually prevent you to lvling up or trading to earn money, they can make it harder for you, but if thats the case, it would be impossible to lvl up using bots. If im still missing the point explain me how people in the top can deny others getting in the top and how botting/ cash shop solves that?
That is the definition of easy content.
Content that you can kill without a strategy is called base population - it is content filler rather than content itself.
The challenge from PvE content doesn't come from knowing the strategy, it comes from executing it.
So you confused me right up... so what is challenging PVE content again? Executing a strategy to kill a raid? But if you know the strategy you need to execute, that makes the content easy as that's definition of easy content?