Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
We are in the Alpha Two Phase II testing which will take place 5+ days each week.
Alpha Two testing is scheduled to happen daily until January 13, 2025 at 10PM PT. We will have periods of downtime for hotfixes and daily restarts happening at 2 AM PT for NA realms, and 2 CET for EU realms.
Starting next week, Alpha Two realms are scheduled to be online for 5+ days a week from Thursdays at 10 AM PT to Mondays at 10 PM PT. Alpha Two realms are planned to be down on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and for daily restarts. Alpha Two realms will also be brought down as updates and fixes are ready.
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.
We are in the Alpha Two Phase II testing which will take place 5+ days each week.
Alpha Two testing is scheduled to happen daily until January 13, 2025 at 10PM PT. We will have periods of downtime for hotfixes and daily restarts happening at 2 AM PT for NA realms, and 2 CET for EU realms.
Starting next week, Alpha Two realms are scheduled to be online for 5+ days a week from Thursdays at 10 AM PT to Mondays at 10 PM PT. Alpha Two realms are planned to be down on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and for daily restarts. Alpha Two realms will also be brought down as updates and fixes are ready.
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.
Comments
Of course, being in a guild with decent people and hanging out with them helps a lot. As soon as a member of your group spots a griefer or a red, they call it out and the group deals with them.
AoC has other promising built in mechanics, such as the Bounty Hunter profession. As the BH levels up, it gets the ability to see the PKer on their map to more easily hunt them down. So Ithryn, while PKers might be a problem, they are a problem that can be dealt with. AoC looks great.
I thought it was 20% of the dungeon content was instanced not 20% of the total content. 20% of the total content is a good amount.
Map size being 480sqKM plus 100sqKM under realm and then roughly 20% as much in instanced content is a fair amount of ground to cover.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/World_size
At 1:40:00 they head into a portal where there is a dragon. The portal is in a dungeon. I am assuming the dragons room is instanced and only so many people can enter. Time and testing will tell unless someone from Intrepid would clarify for us. Maybe the next Q&A.
I tried looking up the world size vs instance zone sizes for Vanilla WoW to get an idea of comparison. World size was roughly 80sqM(128sqKM). but I could not find info on how much more space was used for instances. Looking at maps and so forth I would guess 30%? Maybe unless someone has a better answer?
It could still only be 20% of instanced content. That sounds more consistent with what they have been saying. A 20% of all content interpretation may have just been bad wording.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Worth asking in the q&a. My bet is 20% of instanced content.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I think the wiki might not be fully correct on the 20% of dungeons are instanced. He definitely says content. It just isn’t clear enough
For me that was promising. It’s either (some) bosses are instanced, or it’s a teleporter and the bosses can be isolated by something like the portal disappearing once the fight starts. Either way I like it.
I'm betting all of the "instances" related to bosses will be teleporters/room lockout mechanics and multi day cooldowns. The wiki says there will be 12-15 raids in the world. I'm guesstimating all of them except 1 to 3 will be fully open world with the other remaining being these pseudo "instances" that are subject to PvP interruption for periods of time before the crystal/teleporter locks. This type of instancing doesn't bother me at all if used in extremely small amounts like it was in L2.
I would be incredibly shocked if there was a single WoW styled raid/dungeon in this game or any guaranteed boss loot people can do weekly like some people think.
inb4 "But how will casuals and new players catch up with gear without guaranteed boss gear every week"
By making it so that world boss gear isn't significantly better than the crafted sets that come from materials from the open world. Boss gear should be good enough so that people want it and strive towards it, but not good enough to the point where someone with boss gear is 10x more powerful than someone without it and 1 shotting them.
People can work towards their "crafted sets" by being in the open world and participating in the game, and still be able to compete with people with boss gear who have been playing longer.
While I agree it would be good to get an answer to it, but I also wouldn't want to see a question asked that would pigeon hole the developers if they attempted to actually answer it.
It kinda reminded me of the L2 way of handling certain world bosses using limited time teleporters to their arenas aswell, i wonder if they will go for that method of if they will have a different approach.
Aren't we all sinners?
In most games, I am happy considering the content it self to be the reward, and the loot as nothing more than a tool that allows you access to that content.
That won't work in Ashes, as the content it self is not going to be interesting enough to consider it a reward.
This, the loot is the reward.
If a game is going to have solo, group and raid content, there needs to be a step up in the rewards for each tier. In many games, this is done via making the content for each step up significantly more interesting, which means the content is a better reward at each tier.
Since the content isn't going to be a reward in Ashes, that means the loot needs to be a significant step up.
If the loot at a raid level is only slightly better than what a player can buy that is made from open world materials, then what is the point of even having single group content?
If Intrepid decide they want content for small groups of maybe 4 players, full groups of 8 players, small raids of 16 - 24 players and full raids of 40 players, each of these content tiers needs to have rewards that are a step up from the tier below.
This puts 40 player raid loot at needing to be 4 full stages of noticable gear improvement over what can be obtained via open world harvests alone.
I think what we are most likely to see is exactly what you think we won't see - a good amount of early raid content (and group content) instanced so that players can gear up - even if they are late to start the game.
Since this is an MMO, not a MOBA, BR or FPS, the notion that someone that started the game recently and worked solo on a crafted set of gear being able to compete with someone that has been in the game longer and has raid boss loot is not super appropriate.
You have the wrong game genre there.
That new player does need an avenue to gear up, for sure, but someone in solo obtainable gear should never be able to compete with someone wearing gear that takes a full raid (or more) to get.
That is kind of the PvE equivlent of rewarding the loser in PvP and not the winner. The PvE situation you suggested defeats the point of running content with other players (which is kind of the point of difference an MMO has over other game genres), and the PvP situation I outlined defeats the point of winning in PvP.
Both situations are not applying a reward structure that encourages people to participate in the game in the desired manner.
Iirc without looking it up Steven said guild sizes will at most be like 400ish?
Edit: It's actually 300 according to the Wiki
And that's ONLY if you select guild size perks instead of other guild perks.
I'm so tired of arguing with you in this thread Noaani lol. But I have to.
This is from the wiki.
Crafted items will be on par with best in slot items.[87]
Highest tier items will be a combo of both crafted and boss dropped.[88]
Crafters will be able to assign different skills/abilities and stats on gear.[33][34]
Master crafters will be able to influence several (but not all) stats on their crafted items.[33][35]
The rarity of the items will be commensurate with the effort required to gather, process and craft the items.[87]
And this is where you and I are just going to disagree. I don't think all the best gear should come from dungeons/raids. I think it should be pretty much exactly how the wiki describes. People shouldn't be forced to run the same god damn raids 100 times to gear out their character in the best gear. They shouldn't have to run raids at ALL, to at least be competitive with crafted armor.
The high tier crafted gear will probably require high level mats, some of which might come from dungeons and raids and that's fine. Dungeons/raids themselves SHOULD have things that players need and want. But there should be alternate paths to gearing that are at least competitive.
It works fine. It's basically how L2 worked with their armor grades. D->C was a 5% stat increase or whatever, C->B was a 5% increase or whatever, B->A 5%, A->S 5% so on and so forth. Low level/geared players knew they couldn't mess with the higher geared/leveled players. However people close to their tier could still compete.
It worked out perfectly fine and it would be the same with World Crafted Set -> 8 Man gear -> 16 man gear -> 40 man gear with very small increases between the tiers.
Solos can get gear anyway. Nothing is BOP. I outright purchased my entire set in Archeage by standing in front of an auction house for hours and buying low and selling high. If there's a will there's a way. It would be extremely time consuming for a solo player to farm the mats/gold by themselves if done correctly to encourage them to join a guild. If a solo plays 25 hours a day to farm that good for them.
We know that mobs will drop materials moreso than finished items - this means almost everything in the game will be crafted.
If you go out and harvest materials in the open world, you can turn that in to some gear.
If you kill a group boss, that boss will drop an item that allows you to make an item that is better than if you just used materials from the open world.
If you go out and kill a raid boss, that boss will drop an item that allows you to make an item that is better than if you used a group boss material.
This really is meaningless though @Dreoh
Many of these guilds are highly organized and they can easily break themselves down into 2 guilds, 3 guilds, 4, skys the limit truly. They could make dozens of 50 man guilds for full guild buffs for all their members. Would the disjointed guild chat matter at all with discord? Nahhh. Larger guilds could possibly make alt guilds and claim multiple castles.
300 per guild with 4 total guilds per alliance. Multiple alliances can easily be made as well.
It's going to have to come down to the players of the server honestly.
It is taking some aspects from that game, and is attempting to improve on literally everything else.
Since L2 is not at all PvE focused, and Ashes is intended to be at least 50% focused on PvE, it is safe to say that Intrepid have no real intention of using L2 as insperation for their PvE content.
Asking what games they have in mind for insperation for their PvE content would be a good Q&A question imo.
I'm fairly sure I could name 1.
And yes, loot systems are a part of PvE, just as they are a part of PvP.
Haha sure champ.
If that is what you think this game is trying to do, I was right a long time ago when I said this may not be the game for you.
They are taking some aspects of that game, for sure. But they are quite open about wanting Ashes to be mroe PvE focused in L2 ever was, as well as more cooperative and more economically focused, among other things.
Exactly. The harvested materials will probably be easier and cheaper to acquire than raid gear itself. And there could even be ways to acquire those mats outside of dungeons, such as low level drop rate on normal mobs. We don't know yet. I'd argue there should be, just at a much lower rate than dungeons. Either way, the mats are going to be for sale by players much cheaper than actual boss loot.
All of that said though, even the crafted gear that is made from the highest level open world mats should at least be competitive with anything sourced from dungeons. I'm just not a big believer in huge gear gaps in pvp games.
Edit: By competitive I don't mean equal. Just competitive, which is subjective, but somewhere in the range of 10-20% probably.
There shouldn't be a huge gear gap, but there should be a noticable one.
The thing with that raid content - it is there for anyone that wants it.
What ever loot takes the longest to get, is the rarest and takes the most people should clearly be the best gear available.
Also, drops from dungeons should not drop in the open world. If they are dropping in dungeons and you want one, go to a dungeon. That is how you get people in to dungeons.
Idk man, I think Ashes is very close to a modern take on L2 with a few systems tweaks. I have thought that since last year. When I first found Ashes. Which is why my first question on the forums was about soul shots. They basically updated that same mechanic to just use resources directly to create constant econmic pressure. If you have played L2 ashes looks very similar from a systems prospective. Almost like someone who loved L2 spent a lot of time thinking of ways to make L2 better, and used some concepts from AA. AA also has L2s developers in its DNA. Ashes is definitely closer to L2 than any other MMORPG.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Right, so this is exactly what I just said.
Open world "Starter" Materials -> 8 man content materials -> 16 man content materials -> 40 man content materials.
Very small performance increases between each tier, Very similar to how L2 armor/weapon grades would have worked but those were through levels and the insane exp grind. Open world set being 20% worse than 40 man set probably isn't game breaking.
Feels like we are on the same page here.
I agree with some of that. Dungeon gear drops shouldn't drop in the real world obviously. But there's nothing I've seen yet saying that the highest level crafting materials will only come from raids and that's it, nowhere else. Many games have made the highest level crafting materials drop in higher concentrations and frequency in raids/dungeons, while making them available in other parts of the world at lower drop rates.
It's not make or break either way. We'll see what they do.
Whist people, including myself, cite L2 as a pvp orientated game. Sure there was plenty of pvp, but considering the daily crafting for shots, buying, selling, and never ending grind to gain a few percent, pvp was really only 2-5% of game play time. Especially when 1 death resulted in 30-120hrs of pve time to get back and a few pks took similar of pve timeout to burn off.
I think that is why the pvp during sieges was great as I believe it did not incur xp loss (happy to be corrected it was a long time ago)..I see the non-xp loss pvp activities gaining equivalent popularity for same reasons.
This is the part I am talking about.
Specifically the word "very".
If you go from open world materials to full gear from 8 player group content, you should notice a decent difference. Since gearing up via that content is likely to take weeks (if not months), it should be worth your time to do it.
The rest of the game doesn't.
The highest level gear components will come from 40 man raids
So let's say the "Shield of Dreams" is the best shield in the game.
The boss would have like a 5% chance or something to drop the actual shield, and the other times it would drop either the recipe to craft the shield for a high level crafter to utilize, and/or "Shield of Dreams fragments" or something along those lines.
L2 was MK1, Ashes will likely be about MK5 comparitively.
If Ashes is going to be 50/50 PvE and PvP as has been stated, the PvE needs to be a goal in and of itself.
Not the only goals, obviously. There need to be PvP goals as well - but if Intrepid make Ashes the game they say they want it to be, the game needs to have actual end-goals for players that are PvE focused. PvP can (and will) still be a part of that, but those goals still need to be there.
Oh ok yeah I gotcha, that's cool. As long as the best crafted gear from the world is competitive.