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
@xQuinnx It's been a long time since I read something so wrong. "80%" of the target audience is not PvE WoW players just because Asmongold reacted to it on stream. WoW did PvP fucking terribly and has never balanced PvP and PvE content well. They literally removed the PvP servers and replaced them with garbage opt-in PvP systems.
You also fail to realise how many MMO players want a good, PvX MMORPG that is not P2W. Look at ArcheAge's launch. At launch, it had so many fucking players, then they added P2W and you could just see the playerbase drop off a cliff.
People like you seem to think MMORPGs should only have PvE content and PvP players should be segregated into instanced arenas/battlegrounds/optional world PvP. You have literally any big Western MMORPG to pick from if you want PvE, let players who want some meaningful PvP have a game for once.
It won't happen if Intrepid is consistently upfront and clear that those things will never be in the game. Setting those expectations in stone now will help keep the game design on track, and the community's expectations on track.
Like I said early, only a handful of people are still arguing for DPS meters, but even that topic has been quite for months now. This is because intrepid put down the expectation that we will never see DPS meters.
As a community all we can really do is try to fight these bad ideas as they appear. To make it known that we want to keep the features you listed out of the game.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I could totally be over-interpreting, but conventionally a "PVP Zone" is used for games where PVP is elsewhere punished or restricted, like the corruption system in AoC. And such PVP Zone is an area with a much looser PVP restriction so that people can attack each other more freely.
So to put the concept in the context of AoC, a PVP zone will not just be an area where PVP is allowed under the corruption system, as it breaks the premise I mentioned if the level of restriction is the same, but instead, for example, an area that automatically flags all players who step inside as combatants so they can kill each other freely.
I feel like Steven claims that AoC encourages a high risk high reward mindset and if that is the case, why shouldn't this zone exist as well let's say in the middle between all four divine nodes(starting points or however they are called)?
This area will have a slightly higher concentration of the highest level of materials/mobs.
If you want it? Get ready for PVP.
If you are afraid? Go around the zone. Spend 10 more minutes to run to a further node with the same level of materials. Call your friends. Or simply don't go inside?
There could still be rules to prevent the zone from being abused, e.g. corrupted players are not allowed so they get what they deserve and can't escape into it; only non-combatants can enter and you can't leave within 30s of killing a player etc.
inb4 someone say big guilds will dominate the area, well it is not specific to this PVP zone is it? it happens to any big scale content with good rewards. This zone can even encourage a lot more friction between those guilds, while keeping the rest of Verra "normal", let alone the fact that the same level of materials also exist somewhere else, simply a bit further and less convenient to get to, with a slightly lower concentration.
Now, this, is truly high risk high reward.
AoC wants to be a MMORPG with a seamless open world that is full of adventure. A random PvP zone like what you’re describing would be adding an artificial aspect to the world that is just simply not needed.
The system that they currently have in place sounds great and will create a lively world.
But whether it will attract a lot of PVP attention away really depends on the rule they set on the zone right?
Just throwing in ideas:
1. If even combatants has a % of losing 1 piece of gear in the zone upon death, which is different than somewhere else, it would already discourage a portion of PVPers imo because not everyone is like me who is used to losing everything in my inventory upon death coming from the full loot Albion Online.
2. If you set the rewards potential of this zone to be between normal nodes and the caravan system, then the only time PVPers go to the zone is when there is no caravan events so it won't disrupt the open world events or seamless experience as well?
It could still sound out of place, but if intrepid do decide to implement something like this, they would probably connect it to other contents in some way instead of having a random zone in the middle like you said.
It turns the most mundane, dull, monotonous, repetitive PvE tasks into exciting, unpredictable gameplay when there is always the potential for another player to randomly turn up with the intent to ruin your day or steal your hard earned loot/resources. The simple task of delivering your goods becomes a thrilling adventure of potential ambush around every corner.
This danger inspires players to form real communities, actively band together, depend on one another and look out for one another out of a shared need for safety. It transforms the world from a simple game into a shared life experience. If 80% of the target audience don't want to PvP, I suspect a large portion of them will at least learn to love the challenge of trying to evade it.
Absolutely true. But you will inflame all of the hardcore PvPers who want to be able to gank folks at will who are pushing against any attempts to allow non-PvP players to ignore them, refuse to engage without penalty, etc. It will essentially be like Archage, and will fail just as hard for the exact same reasons.
That is not what killed them. It is instead cheapness, greed, corporate focus on phone games, sloppiness, lack of imagination, and lack of good programming/engines. Honestly, if Sony would just take the original EQ, and update it to 2021 tech, it would crush everything else, including WoW. Hell, the original game, which I began playing on Win98, STILL puts out expansions, etc, and has a huge playerbase (although nothing like it once was). In fact, EQ plat was THE most traded currency IN THE WORLD for a while. Look it up
@Spookk Hahaha just how Albion Online, a much more hardcore PvP game, has failed, right? WoW and FF14 are that way.
Absolutely false. I can only assume that you are arguing from a prospective where you think PvP and PvE must be separate things. Maybe you have been ganked too many times in your life to see the value of PvX. I don't know, I am not going to ask you to show me on the doll where the big bad red name touched you. ArcheAge did not fail because of open world PvP, it failed because of its aggressive cash shop.
Being a niche game is fine. EQ has always been a niche game yet you praise it. EQ sold only 3million copies from 1999 to 2004. That is niche. It never had 3 million concurrent users. It was an important game for the industry, yes. To imagine it would be a WOW killer if they updated the engine is a outright delusion. You have nostalgia goggles distorting your vision. Clearly you enjoyed EQ, but that don't mean Ashes is trying to be the second coming of EQ. This game might be more what you are looking for: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/
I joke a lot about how Ashes is a PvP game, but if you take a step back and look at the systems as a whole. Everything is in place to encourage everyone to do everything. I have said a number of times on here that the optimal play style for Ashes will be someone who participates in all of the content. Crafing, PvE, and PvP. I have even called it the real holy trinity. If you don't like one of those you are free to avoid it, but you really are not getting the most of the game. You should not be catered to for not liking one area of the game. That is a you problem.
I am not trying to be harsh here. I am just pointing out that you wanting the game to be more PvE friendly is a drastic change to the game. Risk vs Reward is not a friendly ideology. In both PvE and PvP.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
You obviously have no clue what you're talking about if you think that ArcheAge failed because of the PvP.
Indeed.
There are a number of reasons I have heard why people think Archeage failed (it failed before it was heavily P2W imo - so that was a symptom of the game failing, not the cause).
However, I've never heard anyone say PvP was the reason.
Ye, the reason why arche age failed is simply because it lacked content after 1 month of playing.
There was both not enough sandbox tools for emerging content and not enough themepark stuff on the long run.
That´s why they had to gate their progression behind those mindless daily activities and grinds to stretch out their existing content, and even the publisher gamigo had to monetise that grind at some point since the player base was diminishing to a point where it was not financial viable to publish the game without pay2win.
1. The P2W aspects
2. The fact that the queues at launch were staggering because there were no real anti-afk mechanics so there were queues which were like 30+ hours long unless you owned one of the Alpha/Beta packs which let you skip past everyone in queue (which then lengthened the queues for anyone without a pack whenever pack owners went to log in). People thought the WoW Classic queues were big, but they were nothing compared to AA launch queues.
3. Because of the added P2W, the developers/publishers ended up heavily nerfing the in-game ways of earning items so people would be more forced to pay money in the cash shop.
4. Dailies weren't the main focus of the game at launch, then they spammed the games with pretty much mandatory dailies/weeklies which if you didn't do you fell massively behind.
5. A large reason for all the terrible decisions by the developers (Trion, the publishers, also made terrible decisions) was because Jake Song, the main guy behind ArcheAge left once the game had launched so he could go work on Civilization Online which meant he was no longer the one making decisions. He then came back, saw everything on fire, and obviously just said "Alright, this is fucked" and started work on ArcheAge 2 instead.
There's more, but these are in my opinion a lot of the large reasons.
I really relate with this one, me and many friends left the game on release because of insane queues, i had the luck to play in closed beta and really loved the game but that release queue during weeks killed for me and many others
Looking at the Spookz guys' post history, every single one of his posts is either complaining about PvP or saying that the game should be more like EQ1.
@Aaxy
that they don't fit a game like Ashes, the same way it wouldn't work for a game like Eve Online or Archeage.
Yea it really seems that @Spookk wants to do his best to avoid PvP... He even tried to suggest that non-combatants having a higher death penalty is bad and that they should instead be receiving lesser penalties, which clearly shows that he does not understand the fact that the game is trying to incentivize PvP.
Spookk my guy, it seems that AoC is not the game for you. Please stop trying to change it into a PvE friendly game where you can go about killing critters and picking flowers. There will be PvP. To what extent we don't know yet because we haven't played the game, but you will be faced with PvP situations in AoC. You have to get used to it or move on.
1 and 3 had nothing to do with the game failing, it had failed by that time. If anything, these two points are the only reason the servers are still up today.
2 is a maybe. However, this is an issue Ashes is likely to have as well. Trion knew they couldn't easily merge servers early on in the game, and so opted to start fewer servers with longer queues so that they didn't have to merge. While I am not sure what solution Intrepid will take with this issue, the exact same problem is one they will face.
4, this is one of the reasons I fully agree with.
5 is partially true, the worst part was the XL used Archeage as a test bed for ideas they had for Civ Online - rather than it being a lack of oversight of the game.
The main reason I have seen, and the reason my enter guild left the game (I stayed) was the simple fact that there was no actual content.
A game that claims to be PvX (or PvEvP, or what ever) can't survive on PvP alone. It needs to have PvE that is comparable to games that claim to be PvE, and PvP alone the lines of games that claim to be PvP.
Archeages PvP was almost there - I would say it was close enough. It's PvE though, was utter rubbish.
I would like to see an RP server with the same PvP rule sets. Its nice to have like minded people on the same server. I also find people like me who like to RP, often get non-RP people ticked off when I RP for a min or two. I do agree, a non-PvP server seems like you would lose most of the content this game is designed for.
Im in a RP guild so thats good to hear =-)
while that is a nice idea the likelihood of it working is incredible low.
Not really, lots of MMOs have unofficial RP servers and RP flock to such servers. Non-RPers tend to get used to it or leave the sever making the server even more RP dedicated.
If you can have RP clans in Rust you can every where , and believe me must of the times, many pvp players respect and don´t raid them, last time i played they had in a pvp server an Uber company and no one attack them, and when someone try, pvp clans that use the service, defend them.
I think RP/Neutral people can have a big role in pvp/pvx mmorpg, for example providing services in a different way to other player's , you can have a transport in the game, but i would pay more to be transported by someone that talk with me and tell me some storys about what happen today in world of verra
Im reading your post the best I can. I think you are saying RP and PvP dont mix. I assure you, if I am RPing and you decide to attack me, I will be happy to kick your butt from here to there and back. My guild is a PvE/RP guild. I am sure every member feels the same way. Pls give us an official RP server with all the same PvP rule sets IS. Pls?!?!?!?!?