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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
If you want the item, you go to bottom, if you pass you keep your position for next item. If you REALLY wanted something you just held your position until your drop came.
Meanwhile you gave all other items to other players.
I mean, it made sense and it was easy book keeping and no luck was involved or money.
The other system are bound by luck, extreme wealth or extreme trust.
If I'm in Raid 1, and the loot that would have progressed me is given to someone else, then when I play with Raid 1, it'll still help out. But, when I play with Raid 2, it does absolutely nothing for us whatsoever. If I get that loot, then Raid 1 is still improved, and Raid 2 is also improved.
Have you guys only ever played with one set of raiders?
Also if there is gear ratings, than when doing a NEED roll you would get a +(Unknown Number) to your roll based on your gear (ex. Helmet or Sword) compared to the other people that are rolling.
THIS IS A SIMPLIFIED EXPLANATION
Ex. all 3 NEED on a lvl 10 (EPIC) SWORD
Player 1: has a lvl 10 (Green) Uncommon
Player 2: has a lvl 10 (Blue) Rare
Player 3: has a lvl 10 (Purple) Epic
Now Player 1 NEEDS it the MOST. So it will give him +50 to his roll of d100
For Player 2 it's an Upgrade but he doesn't NEED it as badly as player 1 so he gets a +25 to his d100 roll.
Now Player 3 is the player type WE ALL HATE. He has an EPIC SWORD and is rolling NEED on another EPIC sword of the same level. Here is where the Systems Anti NINJA LOOT AI steps in an says "SORRY YOU CAN'T ROLL NEED" because it has detected that that person doesn't NEED the item. If the Anti NINJA LOOT AI can't be implemented then give them give them -25 to their d100 roll.
What if Player 3 has a sub-standard level 10 (Purple) Epic that doesn't give them the stat boosts they need for their build to work effectively, or it's part of the wrong armour set? They'll still need it. You'll just end up with players running around with basic gear knowing that they're more likely to get the drop.
Nice name Vecna!
I also want zero part in your proposed system. I have a few reasons.
Number one there is no way to asses how much each player is pulling their own weight. Sometimes in group content, you get the luck of the draw with who is online when you are online. You just need to pug things to get what you want done. You can get stuck with some real pieces of work. You might make it through the content, but that docent mean green gear Andy gets to be a bad player, and be rewarded extra for having crap gear.
Number two, the system is easily gamed. I could get to a gear level capable of completing the content, and never put the gear on. In fact under your system I would not, it would be too much of a money making buff to start in green or gray gear all day. Remember very very little in AOC binds to your character. If you tell people that they get a penalty for wearing gear to their loot roll, everyone will be running around in grays all the time. trying to undercut the loot roll.
Lastly it goes against the spirit of competitive gaming. The fairness is in that everyone has equality of opportunity. Your idea boarders on equally of outcome thinking, which is not something I am for in a brutal fantasy world.
I get it that sometimes people get unlucky. I have been there myself many times. I have also been full BiS many times. What gets you there is dedication. Eventually you will get the drops, and it feels so much better when you do. Especially when you have been loosing rolls consecutively for weeks to months.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
That explains a lot
In most games, raid content is designed around the notion that people will form guilds and run the same content together several times a week.
For people wanting to run content with different people all the time, these games usually provide group content.
Edit to add; this doesn't mean people are not welcome to run raid content in pick up raids. All it means is that raids have a specific design intention, and players using that content for a different purpose need to do so with the knowledge that they are indeed using that content for a different purpose.
The reward structure for raids is set up so that it rewards guilds that put the effort in to work well as a single unit, and as with literally anything else in MMO's, should not be altered to better suit people that are using the content in situations other than it's designed intention.
Noaani belongs to serious guild, that just doesn't happen unlesss someone dies or you had a huge accident. From all I gather he's a really serious raider, so the chances of that happening are slim.
but what's the problem here?
Those 2 people can gladly join, but in cases like these it's important to talk through loot distribution beforehand.
Master Loot just ensures, that the previously discussed loot distribution is adhered to. No Ninja Loot Shenanigans.
If people are too socially inept, to figure out the loot distribution beforehand, then that's completely unrelated to the looting rights/system.
The loot distribution being the two who joined, who allowed you to complete that raid, leave with nothing? Yeah that is the entire problem here. When loot distribution is set up to leave people who assist empty handed, and that’s considered normal, you have now disincentivized people from assisting anyone but their own raid groups.
Why would I ever come to a raid to fil when I know they likely won’t compensate me in any way? It would be more beneficial for both me and my guild to gather our own raiding party and go clear that raid you wanted to go after.
You take away incentive to cooperate rather than compete.
No, 8 players isn't a raid, it is a group.
I have not played a game where a raid is considered less than 20 players, and guilds organize themselves so they will always have enough players online when they have a raid scheduled.
If there are not enough players in the guild on a given day to raid, we wouldn't raid. We would do group content, or something else. However, if we were only 2 players short, we would just run the content with two empty spots.
why wouldn't you give them anything? Sounds like you being a dick is a bigger problem than the loot rukes in this scenario.
Because they went out of their way to assist you in completing content you otherwise wouldn't be able to clear without them. It's both laughable and incredibly selfish of to you believe you're entitled to people's time while offering them nothing in return.
Edit: Pointed out I misread it. I would reward them in every case. But with Master Loot and artificially scarce rewards, unless you’re paying them gold outright, how could you reward them? And that still does not solve the issue of the game being the system that should encourage participating in a raid. You cannot and should not depend on players to be the primary reward sources.
He asked why you wouldn't, not why you would.
Also, I have never seen a raid in a situation where they need pickups to complete the content, where they are unable to complete the content without the pickups, and yet are able to complete the content with those pickups. It just isn't a situation that has ever come up.
In WoW, strategy on encounters is the same across all guilds. In most other games with raid content, it is not. In these games, it would often take you several raiding sessions just to show these pick up players what they need to actually do on any given encounter that poses even a remote challenge. Since most of these encounters that pose a challenge have mechanics whereby any one member of the raid making a mistake would wipe the whole raid, taking along pick up players just isn't a great idea, generally speaking.
The notion that a guild raid would NEED to take along two pick up players in order to be able to complete the content is so foreign to me - in almost 20 years of raiding I have never once come across it. I've run raids where we had empty raid spots, sometimes as many as a third of the raid (raiding around the holidays), but I've still never even considered taking pick up players along on a guild raid.
FFXIV a raid is Exactly 8 players, and the game is much better for it. You lose out on some of the flexibility with party composition, because the game expects you to have 2 healers, 2 tanks, and 4 DPS, but it makes for some extremely compelling raid bosses.
When I was younger, I thought that bigger raids = bigger awesome, but what I learned is that in practice bigger = raids means more people can be carried. In a 8 to 10 man raid, no one should be getting carried. In every game I have played smaller raids have been more difficult. There is less room for error and more people have to do mechanics. FFXIV is actually pretty good with this because the encounters are designed in a way so that in savage everyone has to do some sort of coordinated mechanic every 20-30 seconds at a minimum.
All kinda off topic stuff.
Another thing you and your guild may want to look into is having a B-team to rotate players into if you are missing people from the A-team. You can also have people from the A-team help with the B-team if they are stuck on prog. Easier with smaller group content, but it can be done with 40 man raids, you just need 80 people... lol. It keeps people in the B-team and A-team trying to keep or gain a their spots in the better raid group.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Everything that can be done in 8 player "raid" content can be done in the 8 player group content that Ashes will have.
What having more players than this in a raid allows for is straight up more flexibility in regards to encounter design. You could have an encounter that requires the raid of 40 to break itself up in to 5 "groups" of 8 (still formed in a single raid), and each of these groups is then given a different coordernated mechanic that they need to not only coordernate within their own small group, but coordernate that mechanic with the other 4 groups that are all doing a different mechanic.
While it may well suit some guilds to have two raid teams, a top end raid guild would have no real need for this. If a guild does find themselves short often though, this would be a good solution.
The first main downside to it though, are that if you need to pull players from your second raid to your main raid, you would still need to have enough players online to allow that second raid to actually run raids. Since top end guilds would likely run with 48 - 52 players in the guild in a game with 40 player raids, if you are wanting to run a guild with 2 40 player raids, you would probably find that you need 110 - 120 players.
The second downside - though this one is specific to Ashes - is that recruiting all of those people mean your guild has to give something else up. We don't know what it is, but we know it is something.
I have in the past completed the raid and then the next night joined the other raid team knowing full well I would get nothing except a repair bill for my efforts the next night. I did it to help the guild. For the social credit in the guild so when I needed to do stuff later those same people would in turn help me.
In this game gear is gear there will be no PvP gear and PvE gear just gear. Helping your guildies get gear will in turn make your whole team get better. It will help you defend your nodes and caravans or take them from others depending on where your team ends up. It will also make it so your team can run dungeons and raids better so the next time you get stuff. I have run progression raids and gotten nothing one run cause others beat me on the rolls then the next week cleaned house cause they had the stuff already. It comes full circle.
the first main downside can be slightly alleviated if officers level multiple characters (and they should, they are dedicated enough to be an officer in a guild they should be dedicated enough to have a backup character to pick up slack in one area or the other)
the second problem "though this one isn't specific to Ashes" there we go, fixed. but in all seriousness, there's always some sort of trade off that comes with forming a large guild.
Yeah, some guilds have C-teams. I actually understand that some of the world first race teams do it the way I was suggesting. I agree that Ashes will be different. Securing the boss might be a challenge. You might need a few PvP teams to keep people from getting near the raid team in a dungeon.
I think 40+ man content could be tuned to be very hard, I just have never seen it. I always feel like I am on vacation raiding with more people. More reses, more interrupts, more everything that is helpful. The action economy is lower in smaller groups so if something gets messed up the mistake has more weight. I am used to content where if a single person makes a mistake. The raid wipes.
I might try EQ2 sometime before AOC comes out. Just to see it for myself.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I've not played any game where the size of your guild has an inverse function on an individual players combat efficacy. That is the situation in Ashes.
I can't think of any game with 40 player raids other than Archeage and early WoW, and neither of them had overly difficult raids.
From a design perspective, the more players you design an encounter for, the more options you have as a designer. The issue with designing it for larger numbers is in the organization the guilds need.
So am I, I am just used to that in a setting with 23 other players as opposed to 7 other players.
While not every raid encounter in games like EQ2 had such mechanics, all of the encounters that were worth remembering did.
If you do give EQ2 a go, I strongly suggest doing so on a fresh start server - if they release another round of them.
It would take you until Ashes releases to get to a point where you would be able to raid at the top end in that game if you started on a regular server today - although there is an expansion launching in the next few hours I believe, the games 16th full expansion.
Oh I thought you were referring to the social infighting and potential factionalism, that isn't unique to any MMO. As far as combat efficacy is concerned, sometimes an efficient strike team is more effective than an unruly mob. Look at Planetside 2 as an example. now of course they can be grouped inside a large guild of course, but... eventually someone in the strike team is gonna be like "why the fuck are we wasting our time with these fools?" and they will break off. It happens all the time.
In Ashes, guilds essentially have "talents" that they can spend on various things. Some of those things are combat boosters (likely to be in the form of passives), and some are in the form of max guild size increases.
Every time you take a guild size increase, you are forefeiting a passive ability for your guild.
Master Loot isn't the only "social" loot type. Last game I played, before we started a raid, we'd talk to each other and assess each player's loot goals. If a certain player said they were there for a particular drop, and that drop came up, whoever was assigned that loot drop would give it to them. If a drop came up that no-one had wanted, then the player that was assigned it kept it.
Just cos you're not running Master Loot doesn't mean that you can't figure out loot distribution beforehand, or that you're socially inept. Grow up.
While this is true, master looter makes this whole process smoother, easier and faster.
Again, master looter isn't suitable for groups unless everyone present trusts everyone else, but it is by far the fastest and easiest way to do loot if that is the case.
when you form a party, or a new member is added to the party your dkp resets to 0 and your whole party gets points the more mobs they kill as a group (so the healer will get the same points as the dps). And anyone can pick the loot. At some point all the loot picked gets listed and a allow people to bid for items using those dkp.
With this system there wont be the problem of rich players outbidding everybody since all will have the same amount of points to bid so everybody will be able to push for something if they really want it.