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
I don't understand this response for three reasons.
1) We know that the big guilds that do this will be incredibly well organized, they come in from other games where they were already well organized, with 'grunts' joining purely because of the snowball effect and the fact that the people who act as 'grunts' are specifically not very directed or guild leader types on their own.
2) Ashes' world may be big, but it is definitely not so big that you can't do it, I don't even think twice about a 20-30 minute travel time in most games if I'm doing group stuff. It would only take 5-8 'strong officer' level players to spread out over half the map or more.
3) Alpha and Beta test phases are extremely unlikely to be representative of this unless a certain type of player who normally 'eventually dominates' but doesn't start with that goal, sets that as their goal from day one. For example, in order to test Corruption, I would have to try to break the system, but the style of play that would be a proper test for the Corruption system isn't my preferred playstyle and would probably get a disproportionate response if I just went in day 1 'to break the Corruption system'.
There's a difference between going 'I assume that guy has a cold, because he's wearing a scarf and a hat when it isn't that cold', and 'I assume that guy has a cold because he has a slight fever, inflammation, runny nose, mild cough, sneezing, and was talking about being fatigued'.
Your post sounds like going 'well we'll have to wait for a bit to get a diagnosis, we can't be sure it's a cold because he's mostly been in places that said they disinfected after all the other people who might have had colds'. Nothing you said actually counters the 'symptoms' of big guild issues in MMOs because they're basically innate to MMOs, especially now that the big guilds can literally just 'make guides on how they want people to play'.
Do you understand how 'a military' works? It's like that.
I think it's more that their experience is similar to others who have played games like this. While it's possible, it doesn't happen. Some guilds gain power and create a large footprint but i wouldn't consider it dominating. What games have you seen this happen?
Most of us say wait for testing since we have seen this play out before and there isn't much to say to people's doomsday scenarios. It's hard to tell if the scenario is unrealistic or intended. In the case of intended scenarios, it's hard to say if it will play the way they fear.
There are a lot of variables so waiting to see how the game plays is the best advice to give people.
It has never happened in EVE to my knowledge and if it happened in Archeage, was it after the game died? I don't know if i consider a guild "dominating" a server of 50-100 people the same.
Since that game has a single server, the requirements are a little different. However, there absolutely have been times in that games history where a comparatively small group of players have had undue influence over the entire server - to the point where that would have equated to domination over a server in a game like Ashes. If Goonswarm at their peak decided to play Ashes, they themselves would be able to dominate a dozen Ashes servers.
In Archeage, it was that dominating effect of a number of guilds that actually saw the first wave of players leave the game (before it was heavily p2w). Most servers had an alliance of either two or three guilds that dominated the top end. If you dominate the top end, you dominate the server. Hell, on one server there was a guild of 20 people that bought one factions whole economy to it's knees on their server.
I guess i'd want to hear your definition of dominated because what people are talking about here and what you are talking about doesn't seem to be the same, which is kind of the point of what i said and why i think people should play the game before fear mongering. A guild or even a group of guilds doing better than everyone isn't what we are talking about.
What do you consider dominating and what does a guild dominating mean to everyone else on the server?
Here is an eve political map time lapse through the last 15 years. When was it dominated?
Imagine Ashes has 10 servers. Point me to a single point in that timeline where a tenth of that game isn't dominated by one alliance.
Two further points to make on that video. The first is that it starts 4 years after the game launched. The second is that many of the factions represented are actually allied.
As to what dominating in an MMO is - I would put it as being at the point where you are unchallenged in what ever you decide to do.
All I said was that 1,200 people is more than enough to dominate a server in Ashes, and to think otherwise is to ignore history (both gaming and real).
Something I don't think many people get, you don't dominate a server via open PvP, nor by sieges, guild wars or node wars. You dominate a server by stifling your opponents organizational structure, and/or their resources and economy.
You are assuming all fighting will be on your terms.
You and your strike team are of no use if you can't maintain your guild economy. You can't maintain that without protecting your caravans. You can't protect enough caravans with those 40 people.
If you show up to a fight thinking that is when the fight starts, you have already lost. If you are showing up for a fight today, I have been fighting it for weeks already.
Did you not see the part where you said Eve had been dominated? The video shows it never was "dominated," at least by your standards. The map shows that there was never a time when someone was able to do anything "unchallenged."
Guild/alliance populations have always been relative to server population. What happens at a single point in time doesn't matter, the fact that things change as time goes on is the important part.
I don't think when it starts matter if the data makes up 75% of the games time. I'd understand if it was a random one year segment, or maybe if it's old data, but we are talking about the last 15 years, so it's a long period of relevant data.
Just because you aren't in active war with other groups 24/7 doesn't mean you are allies with them.
They don't care about the caravan. They care about fighting you.
Easiest way to fight you is to cut off your supplies.
If you're building defensive walls, and they cut off your stone supply, you have no defensive walls. If they siege you while you don't have those walls, how well will you go?
If the battle is on the ocean, all they need to do is cut off your wood supply. If you can't build, repair or upgrade ships, you can't fight on the ocean.
This is what I mean by the fight having started weeks earlier.
Caravans are your weak point.
So they are going to commit players to camp the whole map 24/7. These players, are going to forgo their own progression so they can try to hunt down and kill all of your caravans. That is unrealistic and wouldn't happen.
There will always be times you can get caravans moved, even if you have to get creative. They would not be able to stop every caravan, probably be lucky to get a few if you are smart.
On top of that, large guilds are always easier to get spies into so you know where people are and when you can do things safely.
Who said anything about this?
I've played in a number of games where myself and my guild has dominated the server. I'm fully aware of what is and is not needed. 24/7 camping is not needed.
I do not need to stop every caravan. I do not even need to stop half of them.
Also, it isn't stifling my guilds progress to take your caravans - because we get to keep (some of) your stuff when we do that.
Taking others caravans IS progression.
While a larger guild is easy to get says in, it is harder for those spys to get any information.
You said "Caravans are your weak point." which means you plan on attacking them through their caravans. To do this, you need to catch there caravans which means you need to find them.
What games have you played where your guild dominated the server?
In your post, you were talking about caravans being there weak point and now you say you don't need to stop them. What was the point of that comment then?
I never said stopping a caravan is stopping progress, wasting time looking for them is, which is what you would have to do if you plan on stopping a lot of them.
No, it's easier to get information in large guilds. Since the guild is so large, not everyone knows each other as well so it's easy blend in. Even smart guild leadership can only limit the information they give out so much. Even if they are only telling people where they need to be, it's easy to guess what they are doing and position yourself to react.
If this is what they want, they are going about it all wrong.
The smaller guild is dictating everything. The smaller guild is choosing when the caravan travels, it's start and end point, and with personal caravans, even the path the caravan takes. The smaller guild can pre-arrange their maximum attention and force to the right place at the right time, while the mega-guild has to spread out considerable resources over a huge area just to be aware of the caravans existence, and then hope they have enough players within range to successfully strike at the key moment. Unless there is a choke-point that all caravans must pass through that the mega-guild can camp, the smaller guild has a lot of advantages.
This is to say nothing of the many other options Ashes potentially opens up. Decoy caravans. Hiring another party to handle the transport of resources. Collaborating with other guilds to accommodate more caravan runs with greater protection. Attacking the mega-guilds caravans so that they devote more resources to protecting their own territory, or just hiring a third party to do it for you (and then running your caravans at the same time the mega-guild is distracted by their attacks).
And these are just the potential options open to a single guild - no doubt a mega-guild with an eye to "dominating" will have made multiple enemies across the entire map, all individually employing whatever options are available to them to harass and distract the mega-guild at every opportunity. Plus, as EVE Online has demonstrated time and time again, if a single mega-guild does get to big for their boots, sooner or later the masses will unite against their common enemy and find a way to take them down a peg (or politics will break them down from the inside).
My definitions:
'heavily influence' = Have a strong effect on the economy, nodes in power, and therefore what 'gear/structures' are present and in what quantity of them are generally available.
'dominate' = Can do activities with no opposition, or requires an equally sized alliance to oppose server affecting activities.
'server affecting activities' = 'impacts the entire shape of the relevant economic centers' or 'strongly influences what nodes are in power and therefore what content is available' and 'able to control what actions other players can take without strong opposition from the mega guild'
'mega guild' = 'guilds that have a meta alliance that meet or exceed the in game caps'
I think what happens in Eve definitely fits that. Domination is not zero sum directly, it's more about who controls the terms for engagement and what people have to consider when making politically impacting gameplay.
I said caravans are the weak spot of smaller guilds.
You then questioned whether a larger guild would dedicate resources 24/7 to taking out those caravans.
I pointed out that you don't need to take them all out, you don't even need to take out half of them.
You then came in with the above.
Now, it is clear based on this summary here that I never said you don't need to attack caravans. You need to stop reading more in to what I am saying than the words I am using.
Yes, caravans are the weak point for ALL guilds. No, you do not need to take very caravan in order to cripple a guild. In fact, depending on the situation, I would wager you could completely cripple a guild - or indeed a node - by taking out as little as 10% of their caravans, but only if you get the right 10%.
Ok, i get you and if this was the case then i'm sorry for misunderstanding but that doesn't make since.
How are you getting that number?
Why are all the valuables in a limited number of caravans instead of being spread out?
Even if you are using a spy, how do you know the significant caravans since they have no reason to tell you what's being ran. Only thing they should be telling you is where and when. Each time you use the spy to hit the caravan, you are also risking their cover.
Imagine I am wanting to starve your guild of a specific resource in a specific node - say, wood in a node near the ocean.
What I need to do is work out where the nearest wood supply is (they move, so this isn't difficult but does need to be done). Then, I figure out who among those gathering wood there is doing so for your guild, either directly or indirectly. Then I follow them to where they are dropping it off.
I now know the origin point of your wood caravan.
All of a sudden, the resources I need to spend in order to know when you are going to run that wood to the shipyard is drastically reduced - and this is before I even get in to the notion of having a spy in your guild.
Now sure, the smaller guild is still able to dictate the time they run that caravan, but only kind of. Without going in to too much detail, there are things a larger guild can do to make people hesitate in running caravans, and things they can do to put some emergency in to people to run those same caravans.
If I am able to cut your supply of basic wood in half, you have no chance against me on the water, and probably no chance of declaring a siege.
If I do the same with stone, you have no hope of defending in a siege.
Valuables are to make individual players wealthy, while commodity resources are power.
Ignoring the ways around this plan, assuming this plan worked and a guild could never get a resource to an area, the guild can buy the resources from other players instead of moving it themselves. Are you going to do this to every player on the server and make sure no one ever gets wood to the node the guilds need it?
Looking at the scenario itself, I have no clue how this would "cripple" a guild. Even if this worked and you were able to keep this going, the guild's player power does not have a significant tie to this. Yes, they need the boat to do sea content but i don't think delaying that is "crippling" them. Even if you were able to prevent them from ever moving anything, which we discussed is unrealistic, they could always find ways to buy what they need. They could even buy the ship from another guild if they needed.