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
Shroud and any fps pro players are talented yes, they have put many hours into the game, but their training and successes only improved themselves as players. Which is in contrast to MMO's, because you get direct rewards that make your character do better even though you as a player might not have changed at all.
What I am saing is - getting better in csgo or any competitive fps is only with the player himself - game is the same constant
getting better in MMO's is both getting better as a player and getting better gear. Where the improvement from getting better gear is often times much higher and impactful than the improvement as a player.
You can't compare getting better in those two game types. One is the ultimate skill proving ground while the other is about commitment first and foremost with skill being a secondary factor.
If the game requires you to farm up any currency to break through to the top in such vast amounts that it becomes logistically impossible for players with real life responsibilities (even if those are only 40hours of work per week) then botting is the only legitimate way. It is totally wrong and is destroying any game, however I can see a world where the requirement can become so high that it is the only way for players to keep playing.
― Plato
You are being ignorant, that isn't up for debate. I'm just assuming it is on purpose.
However, I'll humor you for now.
PvE content has a three step process to a raid being able to kill it.
The first step is gathering data. The raid will pull the mob anywhere from a few times to a few dozen times (occasionally a few hundred times), in order to gather data about what the encounter does.
The second step is consider that data, and decide on a strategy to take down the encounter - or at least decide on a strategy to attempt to take down the encounter.
The third step, and this is the one that provides the challenge, is to execute that strategy. Since an individual player messing up even once can often wipe the entire raid, and since these encounters usually take around 15 - 20 minutes, that means you need a full raid of players effectively playing the game to perfecting for a third of an hour. Some encounters have mechanics to them where literally one player making a single actual mis-step will wipe the raid (I am only talking about marquee encounters here - not all raid content), so this perfection isn't just in using your abilities, but is also in maintaining your focus on multiple things at once.
If this execution aspect of the encounter is easy to pull off, then the encounter is easy.
Some games (read; WoW) essentially skip over the first two aspects of this. Players know the strategy for the encounter before the encounter is even on the live servers. This is why I don't consider WoW raiding to be actual raiding.
well you call me ignorant yet i quoted what you wrote and asked to explain yourself as your statements contradict each other...ok, whatever.
So steps 1 and 2 will be available for everyone to know in any mmo after majority of players have access to raid. So figuring out strategy is hard just for the first few parties that access the raid, and you cant argue that its just like this in any game.
Now coordinating and executing strategy might sound hard for you, but i consider it easy. Yes, one mistake might cost wipe to entire raid, still, you know what to do and what not to do, so all you need to do, is follow the instructions. How hard can this be? Even bringing this from other thread on DPS meters, if you have this kind information, then you will even know the numbers that everyone in the raid to have, to be succesfull at the raid, even before engaging. So i really don't see anything hard about any of this.
You have instructions on what to do + you know what scores every player has to have. ezy pezy...
I think a good part of the PvE challenge is gearing yourself and your people to be strong enough to beat the content. Not everything is knowing the mechanics and *puff* you did it, as some people try to say.
The sheer stats and strenght of a boss/dungeon should be hard to overcome. Maybe your tank can't take the hits, your healer can't heal enough, your DPS's are too weak. Maybe you need to loot lower content that you can actually do or craft better gear and enchant it much more, making your party stronger.
Mobs should stat-check you hard, so you can't even clear 3 rooms of that dungeon till you have better equipment. That forces your guild to take the time to gear up, step by step defeating the content you can so slowly you become stronger. It cringes me when people say "Once you know the mechanics it's done".
So you consider hard PVE content is having people with lives to log in at the same time and work as a team to kill a raid? If everyone knows the strategy on killing the raid, they will know what are the multiple stages of the fight and will know what to do, hence its not hard.
I'm really dont want to argue about this any more. Cheating is not the answer, ever.
not for having a different opinion, but for being carebear and wanting stuff to be easy and handed over on a silver platter. and for being afraid of some big bad griefer who might ruin their game play experience
Again, you are in total misunderstanding here. If everyone knows the strategy on killing the raid then they only figured out how to attempt to kill the boss - not to actually do it. You actually sound like a person who never raided seriously in any raid, because you would for SURE know that having a raid that is focused and doesnt do any mistakes is a rare thing to have - especially if the raider count is 40.
I am not talking that gathering data and figuring out the right strategy is not supposed to be in the game. Even when you have strategy ready you might make tweaks to it depending on the raid composition on the fly.
All I am saying that figuring out the general strategy is possible only in MMO's that have small populations so the influx of the info on internet is extremely small.
The only difficulty that stays the same is actually just the gameplay one and that is the difficulty I am worried about. If you want encounters to be hard only by the difficulty of gathering information about the encounter then I am truly sorry about that. The lack of knowledge doesn't increase or decrease any difficulty - all it does is provide binary actions do or do not do.
And on contrary you are the only one bringing meter discussion in here - i do not want to discuss that in here.
― Plato
Let's try this again. If content is easy once you know the strategy, the content is easy.
Knowing the strategy doesn't make the content easy, it simply means you know the strategy.
The challenge to content comes in executing the strategy. You can know the strategy, but that doesn't mean executing it is easy. Possible, but not overly likely.
Due to the inherent nature of Ashes being competitive, guilds will likely have a strict hold on letting others in on raid strategies. This wouldn't be the first game I have played that have a competitive raid scene that prevent people from spilling strategies.
Coming from someone that doesn't even know what a challenging raid encounter looks like.
Literally.
You can't just follow instructions, because unless you are playing WoW, there are no instructions to follow. Top end raid encounters require you to know what your role in the encounter is, know what is expected of you, but also know what the role of others around you is so that you can fill in should something happen that requires you to do so.
Top end raiding in most games requires people to be able to think for themselves, not just follow instructions.
What is clear is that you have not experienced the content type we are talking about. That is fine, it is content that only 4 - 5% of players experience.
Do you realise that you contradict yourself inside 3 sentences?
Challenging is watching your own characters feet to see if fire has spawned under you and to run away under 3 seconds, because every second it ticks for 40% of your max hp. While you have the responsibility to not make any mistakes in your dps rotation on the boss and switch quickly enough to the spawned adds and watching the threat that you do, because if you crit and didnt make sure the tank has enough threat then you just wiped the raid. Meanwhile it is your job to keep your debuffs on the boss, because the raid needs them. Not to say you need be agile enough to use defensive cooldowns before the boss finishes his cast of fireball on you, because it will oneshot you if you don't use them.
Challenging PvE fight is about handling many dangerous situations at once and not loosing focus, being positioned properly and actively preplanning your next steps with your resource management.
― Plato
What ever.
Lets see, if there are other people who want continue original discussion, without personal attacks.
All I've written here directed towards you is about trying to show you that I want difficult raids even when there is everything about them known. Not that there shouldn't exist the information gathering phase. Even though I don't believe it is possible to have that phase being extremely important, unless there will be so few top-end guilds where withholding information about tactics is actually useful.
― Plato
Guilds in Ashes are unlikely going to want to provide the strategy to an encounter directly to a rival guild.
The only thing that is going to change from node to node is the type of damage that the raid is going to need to make and being resistant towards. Like ice-cream flavors.
Also I definitely think that the nodes might be similar across multiple servers, especially if ashes is going to be successful. So you might see strategies for all types of encounters with different spins depending on the type of node you are going to be in.
― Plato
Exactly how it will go is not really possible to guess accurately right now.
Games where strategies are freely shared are all games without any competition for content, and where the bulk of the player base are not in competition with each other.
As soon as you add in those two elements, the dynamics of things like this change.
Of course if Ashes will have only one "full" server per region than I can definitely see how the rivalries will make guilds safeguard their strategies.
― Plato
Let me understand this, you're all still crying for 40 man instance raids? How come none of you can figure out how this can be accomplished in an open world? How come each time you write your understanding of the scenario it involves you showing up to the "location" and anyone else who gets there simply interrupts you? You all have these grand illusions that it's your group of 40 and that's it.
Do you not believe that the 40 man dungeon raid is supposed to be a guild event where the whole guild shows up to defend it, to stake claim to slaying the dragon, while 40 members may do the PvE fight the rest of the guild defends them while it occurs?
Do you not think that it's possible to take turns fighting the best mobs in the dungeon? That guilds and people can have open dialog about taking turns or not engaging each other simply because the option is available to them? Do you not believe there would be some quorum regarding not killing each other during this?
You're all so caught up in this illusion that unless you can zone into a new place to have this fight there is no chance it could be done. Do you really need 100% of the engagements to go exactly as you expect? You want an experience, but you don't for a second consider how much cooler the experience would become if your entire guild gets to take part in it instead of just the lucky 40 who get to slay this epic monster. None of you have had to negotiate an alliance or talk an enemy down from attacking you because someone in your group, guild or yourself did something stupid. Open your eyes it's time to grow up, take responsibility and learn to play in a game world that doesn't protect you - figure out how to do it on your own.
I will concede this point. If it's true that all of you want just some 40 man boss raid for nothing more than the experience of killing an NPC w/out interference from PvP during the "raid" then I will support it IF and ONLY IF you concede the following. 1) There can be zero loot drop or EXP gain for killing the elite mob inside of the instance. 2) After killing the monster each character gets an item that can not be dropped or destroyed preventing summon(s) until you reach the nearest level 3+ node. 3) You can't enter the instance if in combat or corrupt.
If the three of you want to agree to my points above I'll start fighting for your epic mob instance(one) which they can update to your hearts content)). Otherwise I really think you three need to take a break from the argument because if you can't agree to this then it's simply you want safety fighting while epic loot and exp are available.
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
go look at this
but ya get instanced content out of your head because its not going to happen. It's not one of the design pillars and it literally works against all the other systems in place. 20% instanced for more storytelling/narrative parts but the end game content is open world.
Yeah that reddit thread sums it all up. Thanks for sharing.
You can of course negotiate these things and it might work for a limited time. However the moment that one guild sees a way to get the goods with cutting off the second guild without massive repercussions then they do it. I've been part in a guild where such negotiations went. It is always a matter of time before it turns into bloodbath of betrayal and bad blood. Any guild alliances over world boss loot turns bad sooner or later and the only solution is to bring more players. Interesting demands. I understand, the only thing in the game should start and end with open world PvP. I have nothing against pure PvP MMO games, but I don't play them and many players do not either. And afaik Ashes is not supposed to be pure PvP game.
― Plato
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 read it whole and?
I am not against open world raids I am against easy raids that are facerolled if PvP doesnt happen
The designs are fresh, exciting and very promising - stop spinning this into something that this thread is not about
― Plato
Alright great, sounds like we all agree that we want cool content that we need to wait and see what the content actually looks like. The devs might be innovating some amazing groundbreaking stuff.
You are so caught up in this that you didn't even read my post. I didn't said anything about instanced PvE or wanting 40 man dungeons.
You literally atack me for no reason because you are too emotional about this argument to talk with respect. Im sorry brother go outside and breathe fresh air, it's not good to get so mad at other people in the internet without even reading what they have to say.
Very defeatist attitude and not true. It's possible in many games for smaller groups of players to kill larger groups of players.
That's the nature of an open world game. This is a feature not a problem. Ensure that your guild is able to have and maintain a fair alliance/partnership.
Betrayal and bad blood?! Wow sounds like some exciting open world content. Again, larger zerg guilds have been beaten in many games before.
All you have been talking about is epic PvPvE battle where your guild is fighting off other guild and killing the boss at the same time.
If the content is truly tuned only for 40 people that any individuals stealthing to the boss room mean insta wipes otherwise the boss is tuned for PvP in mind which makes it super easy to kill without PvP present. Also I do not think that 1individual should wield the power to waste time for 40+ people.
And those 3little points basically mean you don't want instanced PvE to give any meaningful rewards so it makes no sense for anyone to do them.
― Plato
Why not? That should 100% be allowed to happen in an open world game. It all circles back to wanting safe PvE doesn't it?
how about you try the PVE before saying its too easy? if you dont like it, then dont play it. we will be having open world fighting, and that is a good thing.
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