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If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
If you are coming to Ashes of Creation to try to find Mythic+ raids, you have the wrong game.
forkbomb
Member
I posted this on reddit but I figured I would post it here too. I have noticed a couple people on the forums that are convinced that open world PvE dragons won't be challenging enough, and the primary solution is to have the Intrepid team start cranking out Instanced Mythic Plus pve raids for ashes of creation.
This is the wrong game for that. If the PvE in Ashes of creation is not as challenging as mythic+ raids from wow, that isn't a problem, and it does not need to be fixed. Take a look at the design pillars for ashes of creation.
instanced pve raids are not part of any of the design pillars to the game.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars#Design
instanced pve raids are not a major part of any of the games Steven draws inspiration from when creating ashes of creation.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars#Inspiration
Take a look at the games above. Instances PvE Raids aren't even mentioned as an inspiration! While some of these games may have had pve instanced raids they aren't very challenging because PvE raids were not the primary purpose of the game, and were only there as a side feature.
What do the above games have in common? A heavy focus on territory control and player guilds / factions that fight over said territory. If the PvE instanced content isn't challenging enough, that is a low priority problem because it isn't the primary focus of the game. The primary focus of the development team will probably be fleshing out the node system and game mechanics for how the player built factions can interact with each other (node building / sieges / trading / pvp ) and when they are planning out future content it will most likely be features that enhance the node system, not an endless stream of instanced pve raid 5,6,7,8,9 that has tier 13,14,15,16,17 gear in it.
At the end of the day, having the Intrepid team side track to make sure there are Mythic+ raids on release is a monumental amount of scope creep that should be avoided, as it has nothing to do with the prmiary focus of the game (the node system and player built factions / territory control)
This is the wrong game for that. If the PvE in Ashes of creation is not as challenging as mythic+ raids from wow, that isn't a problem, and it does not need to be fixed. Take a look at the design pillars for ashes of creation.
instanced pve raids are not part of any of the design pillars to the game.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars#Design
instanced pve raids are not a major part of any of the games Steven draws inspiration from when creating ashes of creation.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars#Inspiration
Eve Online with its regionalized economy and risk vs reward in transportation.[9]
ArcheAge with its building systems, transportation and naval combat.[9]
Lineage II with its risk vs reward, castle sieges, flagging, open world PvP and guild progression.[10][9]
Star Wars Galaxies with its crafting systems.[9]
Take a look at the games above. Instances PvE Raids aren't even mentioned as an inspiration! While some of these games may have had pve instanced raids they aren't very challenging because PvE raids were not the primary purpose of the game, and were only there as a side feature.
What do the above games have in common? A heavy focus on territory control and player guilds / factions that fight over said territory. If the PvE instanced content isn't challenging enough, that is a low priority problem because it isn't the primary focus of the game. The primary focus of the development team will probably be fleshing out the node system and game mechanics for how the player built factions can interact with each other (node building / sieges / trading / pvp ) and when they are planning out future content it will most likely be features that enhance the node system, not an endless stream of instanced pve raid 5,6,7,8,9 that has tier 13,14,15,16,17 gear in it.
At the end of the day, having the Intrepid team side track to make sure there are Mythic+ raids on release is a monumental amount of scope creep that should be avoided, as it has nothing to do with the prmiary focus of the game (the node system and player built factions / territory control)
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Now, if the mechanics of an encounter are intricate and also matter, that means players outside of the guild taking on the encounter will be able to easily mess those intricate mechanics up for the guild trying to kill the encounter.
Since top end loot - and the mobs that drop it - are basically a beacon to all guilds on the server to come and attempt to get said loot, and since spawn timers will be at least somewhat predicable, it is safe to assume that there will always be competition for top end encounters.
So, you either have some encounters that are not subject to interferrence, or you don't have intricate mechanics on top end raid content.
Since we know that 20% of the games content is to be instanced, and we know that the intent is to have at least some top end content with intricate, phase based mechanics, it is fairly safe to assume there will be instanced raid encounters with intricate, phase based mechanics.
No one is suggesting that PvE instanced raids should become the focus, and if that is what you think, you should read the threads in question better.
So you mean like world dragons from classic wow?
No idea.
Wow is full of bad game design, so I am more likely to say that if WoW has it, no other game should rather than if WoW had it, other games should.
That's true and there are plenty of ways to solve this problem without instancing off the content. Specifically, a screen raid to take out anyone that will mess with it. Sounds like you better get busy making alliances in this player faction focused game
That is a psuedo-instance, and has already been talked about at length here as a way to solve one of the two things that a limited amount of instanced content (read - about three encounters in total) would bring to Ashes.
The other thing it would bring is the ability for all guilds - even those always on the losing side of PvP - to know they will have something PvE based that they can kill.
This knowledge of there being at least something they can do will keep guilds in the game.
If you look at the two major influences in terms of games on that list, they both essentially had the same singular issue - and it is an issue almost all PvP MMO's have had.
Game goes live, players break up in to groups, one group beats the other. It is then on the developers to reward that group of players, often at the expense of the ones that lost.
This is fine, it is how it should be.
Thing is, that group that just won, they are now more likely to win next time, which will mean more rewards for them, which means they will be even more likely to win the time after.
The problem here - from a developers perspective - is that they want both groups to stay in the game, and in order to do that, they need both groups to be competitive. This is the problem with PvP heacy MMO's that is yet to be solved, and is what causes PvP games to have such drastic player atrophy from 8 - 18 months after launch.
While this is not a silver bullet approach, one of the things you can do to keep that group of players that are always on the losing end in the game (and thus paying subscriptions, and more importantly increasing the occurance of PvP for everyone else) is to give them some form of progression that is at least partially removed from PvP. Not completely removed, that would not fit in with Ashes at all, just partially removed.
That is what instanced raid content would provide - if done in the way literally everyone here is suggesting.
There are people that say this will lower the amount of PvP that happens, but those people are just stupid. All it is doing is shifting the time the enivitable PvP will happen.
If you put some food in your dogs bowl and then tell your dog to wait, the dogs food isn't going away while the dog waits. When you let the dog eat it's food, there is still that same amount of food there.
Likewise, if a raid enters a PvE instance while there was a group wanting PvP right behind them, all that group wanting PvP need to do is wait at the entrance to that instance. The PvP isn't going anywhere, there is just a slight wait on it. The raid would need to come back out that way, and if they were successful they will even have more on them to potentially lose (those of us wanting instances are even saying we want raw materials as drops, rather than finished items - that way the materials are up for grabs in PvP on the way home, and players with them are then unable to be summoned to safety). This just gives the raid more of a reason to fight back, and provides would be attackers with more potential reward for you if you kill them.
This is why I can't understand people that say instances are bad for Ashes, or that they don't fit in with Ashes. Sure, having everything instanced wouldn't work - at all. It would defeat the purpose of PvP in the game. Having a few instances though, that literally only adds more to *everyones* game play experience.
This is literally another foundational point that Steven brought up. Sorry there are unique things that you may NEVER get to experience. Its how we got participation trophy mmorpgs where everyone can get everything because we wouldn't wanna leave anyone out of anything. Its why nothing feels special because it ISNT special.
This is where your entire argument gets blow apart. It sounds like you have never spent a serious amount of time in a territory control mmorpg before. No one group ever gets to powerful no matter how much they win, all factions eventually fall. There is even visual proof of you being wrong on this specific point you are trying to make. Want to see it?
lol
I saw the guild on top beat the guilds under it. I saw the guild at the bottom break and leave the game. I saw the remaining guilds split and reform, then the guild at the bottom broke up and left the game, then the remaining guilds split and reformed, then the guild at the bottom broke up and left the game - this happened about 8 times before the first round of server mergers - at which point it all just started over again.
Some people like to say Trion's pay to win scheme killed Archeage - but the pay to win aspect of the game didn't actually get that bad until about 2 years in to the game being live. By that time, the population was about 10% of what it had been - the game was already dead by that point and the cash shop was introduced as a way to scavange what few extra coins they could off the corpse.
While those on top will always eventually fall, they are not the issue here.
The issue - the thing that developers need to work on doing - is keeping the people at the botton in the game until those at the top fall. Not just in the game, but somewhere near competitive so that when that group at the top do eventually fall, they are not so far off the pace that they are complely ineffectual.
Also, EvE isn't a particularly good example to compare territory to with Ashes, as territory isn't a strict concept in Ashes like it is in EvE.
I will say though, of all PvP focused MMO's, EvE does have the best player retention. However, it is going down - the games peak was in 2013. Other than a single outlier in 2016/2017 for a few months, the population has been decreasing at a fairly consistent rate.
A better game to compare this aspect of Ashes to - the PvP systems - would be the two games that Intrepid have said they are taking insperation for PvP from - Archeage, but mostly L2.
L2 is a mess of a game due to not giving players a reasonable path to progression. Players were left to forge their own - which in most cases meant either forging a path in a different game, or forging a path using scripts.
When you throw into that setting with antizerg mechanics to limit players to 40 players(in the case of ashes) then you either make it easy or literally unkillable, because the hours required for teaching 40 people how to play the fight is so big that you will always have someone grief their pulls.
So the bosses will just remain undefeated until the developers make them so easy that the boss dies with first few tries whenever the team can sneak those bosses during offpeak hours
― Plato
Can you link me the video you watched that talks about the open world boss mechanics, how a few of the bosses fights will play out, etc. I wasn't aware people knew how the fights/PvE were gonna go yet. It's mindblowing to me how many people know how easy it is when they haven't played the game yet or have seen zero information about the open world raid mechanics.
There is simple provable correlation between decreasing difficulty and increased player numbers for the encounter. For the most part it is not about if the players are actually fighting between each other, but what if they join hands and a boss that was created as a challenge for 40people is easily defeated by 80 or even 60? How do you recognize players that want to wipe the players or players that want to help them to make it much easier?
To make the argument that we don't know what the raids will look like when we have decades of raid content from other games is totally irrelevant.
It is just the worst practice to expect that Intrepid will invent a new way of doing things before they actually invent it.
― Plato
Instanced dungeons will be mainly used for story content. They will not be used for hard mode (mythic+) content. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Instancing
OP is right. If you are looking for mythic+ level dungeons with no PvP interference then this is the wrong game for you.
With the majority of gear and progression coming from PvE and crafting the game is absolutely PvX.
I think that some of you don’t understand what PvX means.
You seem to think that PvX means that PvE players can fully enjoy their PvE in peace and PvP players can go out there and just brawl it out without having to worry about PvE (or with as little overlap as possible).
What PvX actually means is that when you go out into the world and progress your character you will have to engage in all types of content (PvE AND PvP).
PvX in AoC doesn’t meant that every player will have their little portion of the world where they can do their content. It means that all content is mixed and integrated with each other. That’s why Intrepid has the design goal of majority open world dungeons and very few instances.
You need to stop looking for ways to remove the PvP from the PvE. That is not Ashes of Creation’s design goal. The dungeons in this game will not be mythic+ level, but Intrepid seems to understand the issues that MMOs have so I am sure that they are aware that tank and spank content is not fun. The dungeons will have some difficulty from a PvE standpoint, but also a big balancing factor will be the PvP. Please stop trying to separate the two. If you don’t like the PvX nature of the game then the game might not be for you.
If the only source of gear progression is pve, the game has meaningful pve. You cannot purely pvp and succeed. You cannot purely pve without the possibility of pvp. So PvX is a perfectly acceptable term. The subjective argument currently occurring isn't about pve content being meaningful, or present, It's about how it's perceived difficulty is being compared to other titles.
And Intrepid has never stated nor indicated that is their goal. If you look at the quotes used in this thread, you see they are much more focused on making the PvE encounters non repetitive, and the raid themselves varied and changing. Difficulty is a subjective meter that they can't possibly build around. They will try to make it engaging, and do their best to have the largest amount of people possible believe it is fun and had a measure of difficulty to it.
In the end you have to keep in mind that this game is announced with a subscription model. Think about it before you discuss for what kind of people the game will be. The more people the better, if you like it or not.
I know we're all dying to play and consume more information but I believe all that could be said has been said on this particular topic... somewhere in the hundreds of pages across like 5 threads.
If you buy AoC do it because AoC is what you expect, don't try to change it.
One thing that scares me is Intrepid Studios hearing cryes in the next months/years and changing some ideas of the game...
The game should stay how it is...
Just see how World of Warcraft Classic has changed along the years... World of Warcraft Battle For Azeroth is not an MMORPG anymore, its an MORPG, the massive scale has been lost across the years...
the first step was including a queue system for partys, then creating the gathering system personal, then creating warmode on/off, then making world bosses useless...
I hope that Ashes of Creation never changes those ideas just to take more people to the game..
Anyway, there are no mythic + raids, but if you kill a boss faster than it should be, the next one increases the difficulty, with more dmg/hp and mechanics, also more drop... so its similar
I understand what you are saying and I like having both meaningful pvp and meaningful pve but from what we have heard we are mainly going to have meaningful pvp . Some people in these forums are even trying to take away rewards from arena to force more open world pvp.
I never said that crafting is PvE. I said that “with the majority of gear and progression coming from PvE AND crafting the game is absolutely PvX.” See how I’m differentiating between the two?
No one said that the PvE will be joke easy... Steven addressed this when he said that PvE content will have anti zerg mechanics.
You are equating ‘meaning‘ to ‘difficulty level’. They are not interchangeable. PvE content can be very meaningful and rewarding even if it’s not mythic+ level.
PvE will be very important for gearing and it’s very clear that Intrepid are wanting to design interesting dungeons and bosses. However, some of the PvE difficulty will come from PvP interacting with the PvE (PvX).
You just simply have a false understanding of what PvX means. You think that PvX means that all types of players will have access to their favorite type of content in a vacuum. I’m sorry man... but that’s just not the case.
You’re saying these things because you want to do very difficult PvE content and be unhindered by PvP. You don’t see PvP players here complaining that the PvE is getting in the way of their PvP by wiping their battle or by hindering their gear progression. And I believe that this comes from the carebear nature of PvE players who don’t want anything to do with PvP, while PvP players are willing to interact with all types of content.
The game will have a lot of PvP that will be fueled by the PvE... Intrepid described this from the very beginning in their Kickstarter video.
Again, if you don’t like that then AoC might not be the game for you. I hope that you become more willing to adapt and see the game for what it is trying to build.
Then you haven't check the Wiki so much
Since the majority of the PVE its not instanced it gets more importancy in the game than instanced content, because you are making everyone wanting to fight for this PVE, so it increases the competitiveness for this content.
You will have to make your raid / guild stronger to get in the PVE raid and be successfull or maybe take part with another guild that defends you, and other day you defend them.
It makes this game more social and interactive, not like the World of Warcraft BFA MEME where you can be a solo player and you don't even care to interact with others.
So YES, not being instanced content gives it more and more relevancy in the game.
If you want to avoid PVP in this game then you should play only the instanced content (its 20% of the game dungeons) or just don't play it, but don't try to change the game, its being sold from kickstarter with this idea.
If you don't like just move to the next carebear game... or to Shadowlands
WIKI CONTENT
Dungeons in Ashes of Creation will range in size and will be mostly open-world.[5][6]
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]
There are going to be smaller, simpler, linear dungeons. There's going to be bigger, more complex, nonlinear dungeons. So, It's a little bit of both. We want the environment to be a character. In order for the environment to be a character, these places need to be interesting and there needs to be a dynamicism to them.[5] – Jeffrey Bard
Half the problem won't just be solving the dungeon, it will be solving other players too.[7] – Jeffrey Bard
Dungeon difficulty will increase the further a player ventures into the dungeon.[10]
Mobs and mob mechanics will become more difficult.[10]
Terrain and environmental dangers will increase.[10]
Deeper darker types of interactions will be found deeper in the dungeon.[10] – Steven Sharif
Another example is playing a game like monopoly or sports game just for fun while other people play to win and are overly competative.
So you have let say a casual gamer that logs in for 2 or three hours does some dungeouns and has fun. Well that person may actually get more out of the game than the Mythic raider that takes game to serious.
Yes I know both can be fun but As game designers they have to diecide what type of content they want in their game. Think it would be really easy to have both.
It is very easy for a game company to turn up the nobs in their game and make the game harder so if 40 mans are not challenging enough then Intrepid Studios could just make it harder almost over night if there is a huge demand for more challenging content.
Think 40 man raids are going to be extremely challenging so challenge should be there if you want it. May not be the Mythic Raiding that you are looking for, but not every MMO can be the same. Really glad this game is not a clone of WoW cause well companies also clone all their mistakes without even knowing it.
Think it would be better to designate challenging content as such content. That way people know that content is for people that are looking for that type of difficuty and play.
Again. If you need to PvE, either against trash mobs to clear up crafting, or against heavier elite or boss mobs in raids/ dungeons/ strikes whatever, it is meaningful. By your definition every encounter ever met in any game is not meaningful if i consider it easy. Whether or not it is widely considered so or not. Stop using anecdotal evidence or trying to twist terms, it makes for a shit argument point.
Absolutely delusional. You can pretend this game wont be heavily focused on territory control wars all you want. But the inspiration says otherwise.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars#Inspiration
Also you need to stop assuming everyone who is breaking apart your fantasy that this will be a Instanced Mythic+ MMO is secretly one person creating alts. Im not bricktop lmao.
https://www.reddit.com/user/forkbomb25/
Nobody is talking about bringing mythic+ dungeons to AoC. I suggest you re-read the threads in question very carefully.
People are talking about ways to make open world content challenging, plain and simple. They don't want it to be faceroll when there is no player contention. That's it. God, is it really that hard to understand?
I made a post discussing this. And yes, I prefer partial instancing, but that doesn't mean that that is the only way to do it. The other solutions all discuss about other ways to solve the problem without having to create instancing. Just because I prefer something, doesn't mean that that something is right.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/46505/possible-solutions-for-pve-difficulty
I suggest you read the post very carefully. I explained everything in as much detail as possible.
Except that's not a real problem. World of warcraft solved that problem 15 years ago with world dragons in vanilla wow.
It is incredibly EASY to create difficult mechanics that take into account people trying to zerg down a boss. Watch I'll make some up right now.
The problem is people are posing a fake argument of 'its impossible to make open world pve hard so we need instanced content.' Or the slightly different ' open world dragons wont be able to be as hard as instanced dragons due to pvp so we need instanced content'
The majority of people complaining about the PvE content are actually complaining about the PvP content. They want another game that follows the WoW model where you can hide in instances and avoid PvP. This game will have a healthy mix of PvE and PvP and therefore will keep the majority of people happy. The outliers, the ones who want to change the entire vision of the game, can take a hike.