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
If a thread about DPS meters is made and Noaani does not reply. Did the thread even really exist?
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Notice? Yes.
Care? Maybe not
This is clearly a hypothetical situation, but I do think the answer has to be no.
So many things to answer here..
Difficulty and complexity... If you take away the tracker, your complexity lies in figuring out builds by using COMMUNICATION with other players on how you will build your characters and attack said raid boss...
Difficulty of the raid boss would then be based on how well you built your team.
As far as me being in the top single digit of raiders... No I will not, and neither will you if you follow the rules
How can I prove this? You need it so bad to be good, you are literally begging for a tracker, and if you do not get one, you will use it anyway... this makes me laugh at how dependent you are in them... This is where you say.. "No, it is because it is fun for us" and then I answer "I dont care"...
Edit: Top end raiders do not make the game. Some how, past MMOs you have played, have imprinted this idea that raiding is the be all end all to a MMO. Just like people who PvP get upset when an MMO does not have Open World PvP... the game still lives on without it, just as this will live on without top end raiders if they do not want to play this game.
Howdy,
I am not pro or anti tracker in general. I think if Intrepid does their diligence they can prevent all, but the most extreme users from using trackers. I truly think Intrepid is going to have a very hard time completely preventing trackers. It is a cat and mouse game that ends with Noaani having a second computer with a cam pointed at his monitor doing real time image detection and text classification. The Nvidia Jeson Nano is perfect at this... If he wants a DPS meter as hard as he argues for it. He will have it.
Assuming that he did make a tracker with this physical hardware. It would be nothing to have a preconfigured set up on GitHub. Not saying it is right or wrong. Just saying if pushed to that extreme I don't think there is anything Intrepid could do to detect trackers. They have already stated that multi-boxing is allowed because it is to hard to enforce multi-boxing not being allowed. I am just skeptical that this is a battle that can be completely won.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I 100% agree, I know people will have them in game. My issue is, his line of thinking is, if people are going to use them anyway, you might as well just let everyone use them by adding them to the game. As for winning the argument, I am not here to win it, I am here to let anyone of importance who may read this know, that there are people against it. If this was a thread that was nothing but people for it, the argument would have more ground to stand on.. Im just here to minimize that ground the best I can... and Just like him, I will not stop posting till the game launches
If he uses one of his own creation or from someone else, that is his deal. Every accomplishment he brags about will have a * next to it my book.
I have never once seen an encounter in which a specific build of a character was needed and not blatantly obvious.
Not once. In any game.
There are encounters that require specific builds from one, some or many people on the raid, but this is always blatantly obvious after a single pull.
Honestly, this comment just comes across as someone that thinks they know what raiding is about, but really have no first hand experience at it at all - as this is literally never a situation. So, why are you weighing in on a topic that literally only impacts those in that group? I agree with this statement.
However, Steven has said that he wants content in the game that only a small fraction of the population will kill (less than 10%). He wants that in the game because that gives everyone else something to strive for - meaning that even the content put in for that small fraction of the game is really there for the larger population.
However, in order to have that small fraction of the population able to take on something that the rest aren't, you need a small percentage of the population that are "better" (in quotes because better in terms of raiding is multi-faceted, and doesn'tonly mean better in the way many think it does) than the bulk of the population.
In other words, the stated aim for Ashes to have that small amount of content that only a small percentage of the population are able to kill does indeed require top end raiders.
That is not my line of thinking.
My line of thinking is - combat trackers will be in the game, either first, second or third party.
The best thing for all people involved is if Intrepid have control over combat trackers. In order for Intrepid to have control over combat trackers, they need to implement a combat tracker that provides no less than the minimum people like myself consider necessary.
If Intrepid offer this, then developing second or third party combat trackers simply isn't worth the time, meaning they won't exist.
From there, my line of thinking goes on to detail exactly what the minimum required is - a combat tracker that is available to top end guilds, and can track a full raid and it's target encounter with every action being recorded.
Based on this, my suggestion is and has always been that a combat tracker be added to the game as a guild perk option that is available at the same point as many other valuable things to other types of guilds, so that only the few guilds that really value a combat tracker would consider taking it. When selected, this combat tracker is available to which ever ranks the guilds leadership assigns access to (only leaders, all officers, all full members, all members, what ever works for the guild in question). Further, this combat tracker only tracks the combat of members of that specific guild. If you have a raid made up of two guilds that both have this perk selected, each guild has it's own readout that only shows the members of that guild. Rather than being an always-on UI element, this combat tracker will be a part of the guild window, and those with access can look up encounters from the past 6 hours (if that player was present for the pull). Additionally, the guild can opt to save specific pulls of encounters so they remain able to be viewed longer than 6 hours, and can be viewed by whom ever has access to that guilds combat tracker.
This has been my point for several years. Find an issue with it.
Multi-boxing is easier to detect than a combat tracker. If multi-boxing is too hard for them, then combat trackers are far too hard for them.
Maybe if those of us wanting a tracker all paid Intrepid an additional $15 a month they would suddenly consider them too hard to enforce as well.
Them allowing multi-boxing is not about the money. It is just because any methods of proving you don't have another account are too intrusive, and if you are a family that uses the same bank information/address you would not be able to make multiple accounts to play together. They can't do anything to determine if you are one guy with two accounts or a dad and his son.
I know you know that. I just don't know if everyone reading your reply will understand that. I have not seen the multi-box arguments in months. I don't want to be the guy to raise them from the dead.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Indeed.
And honestly, I only said it because I was expecting this reply. Though I am sure that is something you either suspected, or outright knew.
Is there a specific reason for this?
I am of the opinion that every tool or utility that players would be expected to use should be built in to the game itself (which is a part of why I find recent suggestions that I may be affiliated with/profiting from ACT to be amusing).
These bosses are completely fine and good fun when you are either laughing with your friends on discord or watching netflix, because these bosses are literally killable by 100% of the playerbase - you just need to show up with max level character
Encounter design is critical skill that devs need to have in order to truly create raids that only less than 10% of the playerbase is capable of killing. If this was mispoken and that this is just the expected playerbase kill participation, because of entry requirements that often time will only come from the game PvP system then all is good - but as far as I know this isnt the case with the available information
And btw for bosses to have a gimmick that requires the raid to have specific archetype-archetype combo is just lazy design. It has never been a good gameplay to bring a certain player only because his class choice allows the boss to be killable
― Plato
I tend to disagree with this statement, it's the same as saying that a big portion of the "Pro Tracker" Community is too stupid to figure things out themselves. (which is also not true)
No matter how hard the content is, it is designed for you the player to defeat a boss with a group of X size. This implies that you do not require an addon or tracker, what you do need is a team, communication, and trust in the people you are playing with.
Not having a tracker doesn't mean that content will be easier, that it will be less interesting or fun. It will or at least it can make it so that it will take longer for YOU as the player to beat certain content. This making content more relevant.
MMO's require players and these players have to be kept engaged. Creating new content is not easy, especially at the current speed we absorb it on some games. One way of keeping content relevant is by making it hard, giving players tools to make it easier because like it or not Trackers do make it easier (indirectly through being able to optimize your char. faster) can lead to content being absorbed a lot faster which would mean that X% of players will give up their subscription faster.
There are always people that will stop playing out of frustration but as proven several times. The majority of people will continue until they defeat X. It's a drug for many players.
If I can ask, in its current state there are not trackers/meters and let's assume that there is no 3rd party tool either. Would you play this game? Maybe this is a make-or-break-it thing for you. (just curious)
no tracker doesnt effect me that much, because I just create sims for characters that i main in mmos
so as long as we can learn the game mechanics and skill values/scaling then i'm all set
― Plato
I get ya, not sure if you played Gw2. But the World bosses are fun but are just a zerg fest at best.
The world should be "dangerous" in the sense that bosses should be designed that without PVP you can wipe. The PvP element should be considered an extra, or at least be only a fraction of the scaling process.
Lmao.. this makes sense.
Prolific flamers - every game forum has them.
I heard that and exactly this reason is why I never even thought of trying the game out
There are just not that many game options where you can play with a lot of people with the shared goal of beating really hard challenges as 1 team
I personally was really tempted to play FFXIV, but that weeb style just is somewhat repulsive for me
I'm just glad that I can chill in classic wow - and in tbc before all these new mmos come out
― Plato
Let's be honest WoW will not go anywhere for a long time
FF14 isn't a bad game but I do not like the style, ESO I find the combat boring, maybe we all became to picky
Hopefully you will have a great time in TBC, not sure if New World or Elyon is your style of game but these are two other MMO's coming out in the next few months that may could spark your interest
My current plan is to focus on tbc that comes out not even in a month and to finally fulfill my childhood dream of killing Kil'Jaeden in the last raid and that should at least take the whole year. So after that time I am kinda sure that I'll be keeping a close eye on Ashes and the riot mmo.
I tried ESO and quite enjoyed it, but idk it just didn't hook me into it with anything - like don't get me wrong it is a good game, but for me it is easily forgettable game
― Plato
What turned me off was the free form combat when I was used to wow and macros, etc.
The ability to switch in and out of the two types of combat in AOC is the best decision they could have made.
FF14 and BDO likewise didnt appeal because of the weeb design.
In between waiting for testing windows, Im going to have fun ganking old guildies in TBC and probably have a decent crack at a D2R season when it finally comes out.
You say this kind of thing often. I'd really like to hear how you think the developers are able to detect an application that is not running on any computer they have access to.
They can hire an army of private detectives with hacking skills that will make regular checks on a certain top percentage of players and make sure they dont have tracker setup on different pc
― Plato
Are they making house calls now?
― Plato
Indeed.
It just isn't feasible.
I mean how hard it is to create a software that checks player input from the same ip for being replicated by multiboxing software
plus you can even create a software that flags accounts for possible multiboxing and run the input recognition on those just in case that the multiboxer uses different vpn for every account he uses
I mean if they consider this being too hard then how on earth are they going to stop 3rd party data export?
Not to say that I am legit extremely concerned about the anticheat
― Plato