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
Your standards are an enigma. Without class correlation you get 40 naked mages doing raids, 40 tanks doing raids, 40 hunters doing raids, a solo Paladin doing raids. These have been done with raids which *require* a combat tracker too. Granted some of the top players perform these raids but in my mind the raids are really poorly designed or the power dynamics are really poorly designed when people can deviate to such a wild degree. There is little wrong with class correlation because with class correlation you can create content for all classes, without class correlation you have the elitism and toxic parameters where some class combos are preferred over others.
Edit: Anyway, there will be class correlations for the out of combat skills at the very least.
Double Edit: The game uses a modified Holy Trinity. The class correlations should be present as the holy trinity. We don't want raids where certain skills mean you don't need a healer, don't need the buffs or don't need a tank.
They could also turn off damage numbers like in bdo?
I personally see tracker as a qol tool. I feel like its way too easy to have programs telling which party member didnt perform, how the party died. Everyone here knows that tracker is doing work. No trackers and ull be leaving more work for urself.
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
TLDR; Trackers give an advantage to every aspect of the game, so any player participating in said game has a say on whether they want trackers in or not. Trackers will be used, we know this, and other people will employ more comprehensive trackers or methods to get an advantage over other known trackers, creating a very slippery slope that will eventually lead to most players using one, just so the can compete.
It is so simple...
This game is PvX..
PvP depends on PvE content and vice versa.
When you design content that is hidden behind a tracker wall, you have effectively given immediate power to the people who use trackers to get passed that wall. Giving them access to loot, whether it be gear or crafting material, that is not as available to the rest of the server.
I get content should be hard, it should be challenging, but it should not be hidden behind the use of trackers to get to or pass. Because as soon as a tracker is added, and content is added that needs said tracker, you start the slippery slope of everyone needing a tracker to compete.
As you have stated in other threads, people quit games because of constant losing. Losing fights, losing material, losing time.. whatever it may be.. losing is the reason why most people quit games according to you... To which I agree with.
So if tracker users have an advantage of getting gear and crafting materials, they have the advantage over those who do not. Those who do not, start to lose out on PvE and PvP content because of trackers, and the next thing you know.. you have to use one to even compete. You can argue that we have access to Open World raid bosses, but we both know those will be much harder fights due to the PvP involved, while the others go to instances and get those loot items at a faster pace with their trackers. Again, giving you the advantage of gains over time compared to a PvP guild.
MMOs have always been a game of Have and Have Nots... The latter of the two usually blames an unfair advantage the first is using, and then deploy their own way to take an advantage. It becomes a gang war of who can cheat the system the best, either literally or by in game meta use.
If trackers were officially added to the game, they would not be good enough, and 3rd party ones would be made to give more info than the in game ones, again... giving players more of an advantage. This will happen anyway, in game tracker or not, and we both know this. But I refuse to jump on the bandwagon of adding them to the game so people do not FEEL they are at a disadvantage. Basically I am not going to sit here while you piss on my head and call it rain.
And combat trackers are not really going to help prep for sieges and caravan battles.
Which is also why the devs are not concerned about not supporting combat trackers.
Combat trackers are a huge aid even in PvP.
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
Also, in my experience, it's after a battle that the group/raid leader starts complaining about people with poor performance (and kick them).
If the game has a combat tracker that meets the desires of raiders, then these people have no need to put that time and effort in to developing another one.
If you want the least exposure to trackers possible, you know that my suggestion (that I have been making for about two years) is the best chance you have.
It may not work - this is absolutely true.
However, there have been many, many games that have said they don't want trackers, that have said they will ban people caught using them, who have them accepted they are just a fact of life in MMO's.
So, either Intrepid do what other MMO's have done, and end up in the same place as those other MMO's, or they try and do something different to what those other MMO's have done, and hope for a different result.
Since performing the same action and expecting a different result is clearly not smart, I don't see why anyone that is not happy with how trackers are used in games like GW2 would want Intrepid to continue down the path they are on, as that is where it leads.
You have said yourself that you know the path Intrepid are on will see combat trackers in the game, so why would you want Intrepid to stick to a path that you know won't work, when other options exist to attempt?
Yeah that's the basic premise of the side against them. Spending 2 minutes reading what your spells actually do is better than turning it into a stat war that will not actually work in this game. There will be classes that only benefit from buffing. Combat Trackers will only be a detriment to them. Other classes will be designed to not do good on them as well. Since the system they are designing makes at least like half the classes in the game a hybrid build to some degree.
That doesn't mean they'll be less effective, but combat trackers don't solve as many issues as they create. The Toxicity of booting people from your party instead of just teaching them is one example. Some use it as a basis for loot distribution too. The game this game is based on the most didn't even have them.
U.S. East
He has said he does not want trackers... so they will not be adding them to the game. That is the argument here. Some want, some don't. Feel free to read this entire thread for both reasons.
But what it basically comes down to, is some players want to play organically, and others want meters to tell them how good or bad they are.
The argument goes back and forth and nobody will win this argument. In my personal feelings, I think the game launches without trackers, and will let them in the game later in its life.
You keep going back to the argument that IS should add them because they will be there anyway... You have to know that is a horrible and lazy argument.. right? Please tell me you understand that is a horrible way of thinking.
As far as GW2 goes, the game launched with no content that needed trackers... NONE... seriously.. NONE. And that lasted at least for 2 to 3 years if not more. I quit after 2ish years, so not sure when some stuff was added. It uses trackers now as they have added tons of content which include raids and some other stuff I have not played as I quit the game awhile ago.. The game is basically on it's last leg... doing ok.. but barely a top 10 MMO if at all right now (depend on the list you look at). So if they start opening up what is allowable .. It is probably just to attract more players as their population slowly dwindles.
Which seems to be the case with most games that launch without one.. they let them in later after the game starts to slowly die off. When profits start dropping, companies will do whatever they need to try and keep them up, even if that does go against core beliefs, because share holders want profits, and it is cheaper to ignore addons than it is to look out for them. Letting players use a meter over paying for a program to stop it.. obviously we know what they will choose.
This is the case with most games that have publishers and share holders, profit overrides core beliefs. This is why games die, this is why they allow things they were against at first. You act as though the tracker community just ran over those games and they submitted because you were too powerful... not the case.. its profits, not your will.
Your plan to make it a Guild perk.. I was all for at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I did not think it fit. Mainly because you said things like you would still use one if the game did not provide it. So basically even if it was a guild perk, you could skip the perk, take the Guild Damage perk, and use your addon and get both advantages. See the issue here?
Maybe you should start your own kickstarter and come up with your own game that is tracker friendly and run with it. You never know, if there are that many tracker lovers out there and you design the end all game to use one... Maybe we will see you in a mansion doing streams about your game.
Rather fumble around in the dark and enjoy the game. Like how people originally experienced these kinds of games.
U.S. East
What I care about is devising strategies that allow the group to rely on the character builds each player has chosen and eventually defeat the challenge.
I don't care about how a Necromancer plays in comparison to a Wild Blade. What I care about is figuring out how to synergize the Necromancer's chosen abilities and augments with the abilities and augments the rest of the group use.
And...because this is an RPG... I accept there might be times when we need to carry the Necromancer because a specific challenge has immunities to Necromancy. We'll figure out a way to deal with that.
Just like the JL might have to carry Superman when fighting another Kryptonian or confronting a challenge that involves Kryptonite or red sun energy.
What I don't want is people saying stuff like, "Hey, Superman! Your DPS was too low!! Bye!"
This is why the suggestion I have been making for years now would leave those jot wanting combat trackers in a position where that is possible. Assuming people join guilds of like-minded people, those that want trackers will have them, and those that dont wont have them and wont be able to have others use them to gauge their combat.
Essentially, it is the only way I can see as actually viable for people that dont want trackers to be able to play a game knowing that random people in their group are not using trackers to assess them.
As far as I can see, based on around 90 pages of discussion on this topic on these forums, that is the major desire of people that dont want trackers.
It isnt the only one, it is the major one.
The only way that will happen is if Intrepid are in full control of trackers, and the only way they will have that control is if they provide raiders with trackers for raiding.
You claim it is a lazy argument, but it is a basic principle of design. You should always design a product based on how you know people will use it, not on how you want them to use it (this is Apples moto, and Apple are, in my opinion, the singular most evil company on the planet - and I use that word for its proper, dictionary definition).
If Intrepid know that players will use combat trackers with Ashes, it is lazy of them to not try and work with that knowledge to make the game better for all. It is not lazy to point that fact out to them.
I can go in to a longer version of this if you wanted, but the short version is - if the other options to pick are thi gs that assist members of the guild with running group or solo content, or offer up occasional bonus harvests while out gathering, a raid guild simply wouldn't be interested in these things at all, and *ABSOLUTELY* wouldn't consider the effort needed to be worth it for something like that.
However, a guild that is all about crafting would probably quite like bonus harvests as one of their guild perks, and a guild that runs group content all the time may well enjoy a buff in that content.
Edited to add; I would agree completely with your point above as being a valid criticism of the suggestion, but it relays 100% on there being a perk available instead of a combat tracker that a top end raid guild would consider to be worth the time and effort needed to get a second or third party tracker up and running.
Since this is a point that can be dealt with by simply designing the system correctly (not putting anything that is of any use to a raider here), the point you are making becomes something to keep in mind during implementation , as opposed to a reason to not implement.
Which of these perks helps with the best materials and or gear drops? My guess would be raiding..
I mean... obviously fishing and gathering plants has to be right up there with raid boss drops... right?
While I can see there being crafting guilds, or smaller guilds who just party together.. none of them would benefit from their perk like you do. While you are out there getting legendary drops, whether material wise or gear wise.. they would be getting extra carrots on a harvest? Or maybe even double the iron from a vein they found in a mine? Obviously there will be top tier gathering nodes in the world, but you have to get to it first, and with random spawn points... it is not as easy as it sounds. While you get instanced runs where no one can steal your boss, you know exactly where it is and what time it will be there.. Again.. your guild has the short and long term advantage here.
This post has no connection to combat trackers at all. Whether it was your intention or not, it is a straight up anti- top end rant.
Literally every point you mention is a point to be discussed with or without combat trackers, and combat trackers do not in any way alter that discussion.
If this is a discussion you want to have (raiders are out there getting legendary drops, while harvesters are picking carrots), by all means start a thread on it.
However, it has no connection to combat trackers.
Man... I must have pushed your buttons so hard you forgot you were the one to mention harvesting and group perks. All I did did was expand why that would not work... and then you come back with a "Start a new thread, your post is irrelevant" mumbo jumbo? Get a grip bro... seriously.
A tracker perk trumps all other perks because it affords you better and faster gains. It is that simple...
If a guild is dedicated to harvesting, a combat tracker that only works in raid content isnt of much use to them. On the other hand, an ability that adds an additional regular harvest 10% of the time you harvest (as an example), would be a fantastic boon to people that sell regular harvests as their main source of income.
While I am not doing any more than giving examples of what other perks could be, the general idea is that they are boons to the specific playstyle or preferred content type of different guilds.
That is why your post is not applicable to a discussion on combat trackers. You are basically saying that one playstyle is better or worse than another, as your points all apply with or without combat trackers - or indeed with or without perks.
I think you are arguing just to argue now, your points get weaker and weaker the more you talk.. and you just do not stop talking.
If a guild is dedicated to harvesting only? Of course they exist... but this is your argument now? You are literally now compartmentalizing every guild into only one type of play to make your point. You assume every guild will have one and only one purpose in game. This has got to be a joke...
What happens if the crafting guild wants to go on a raid? How are they to going to beat this impossible boss the Development team has made for you and your elite raiding guild? Are they supposed to craft something and amaze this beast so much it stuns him while they kill it?
You see.. there are people that enjoy every aspect of the game. Your perk system is asking them to choose one aspect to be good at, and suffer on the rest. How does this even remotely sound like a solid plan to you?
The idea of these perks is that they would appeal to different play styles, and most guilds tend to form based around a specific play style.
I am not being any more specific than giving general examples because I am not a part of the community that these other perks would be aimed at, so why should I dictate what they should or should not be? If a crafting guild wants to go out and raid, that is absolutely fantastic.
They can then go and run all the raid content that is specifically not designed to only be killed by that single digit percent of players. Remember, I have pointed out several times just to you (and dozens of times in genera), that we are only talking about maybe three encounters on a server that need a combat tracker, and those encounters will be killed by a very small percentage of the population.
It is perfectly reasonable to assume that any group of players wishing to excel in any one content type (PvP, PvE, crafting, what ever) would need to have guild perks specific to that content type - and this suggestion is just a part of that. Indeed there are, and I should congratulate you for this being the only point in this post that we have not gone over (though I have gone over it with many other people).
The interesting thing with this is that guilds that want to do everything would pick perks that facilitate that - whereas guilds that want to excel at one type of content will pick perks that facilitate their objective.
Are you suggesting choices are bad? Because choice and consequences of that choice are kind of a key theme of this game...
Conversation is not over my head lol. Just because you try to dumb it down by being general does not mean there are not real questions to be answered here. As a matter of fact, you being general in your explanation is just going to bring more questions. So do not fault me because you cannot explain your fix it all system in a way that does not bring questions.
So in following your request to the devs to make content specifically to your liking.. I would like to ask them for a guild perk in your system, that gives PvP players 20% higher PvP stats against people who have participated in a raid in the last hour. I know sounds silly.. but thought I'd join the fun.
Steven most certainly believes that one playstyle is better and the other is worse - which is why Steven uses words like toxic and mechanical bullshit when referring to dps meters. Steven does not want players relying on (group) combat trackers during dungeons and raids. As far as we know, he's not going to support dps meters by including them as a guild perk - he's not going to support them at all.
Anyone can think it's wiser for Steven to support combat trackers - but that has no bearing on reality.
Anyone can be confident that Steven will eventually cave and end up implementing combat trackers because so many players are using add-ons...
At that point...we just wait to see who ends up being right: Those are confident Steven will cave or Those who think Steven will stick to his guns.
That level of boost to group content would be fine, however.
This is why I think this topic is over your head. You claim to be keeping up, but we talk about a thing, then move on to something else and you make a point that is completely forgetting the thing we had just talked about.
I mean, we just finished saying that I am not going to dictate what the perks should be, other than that they need to be of little value to a raid guild, and you come up with 20% stat buff in PvP, in a game where raid guilds will need to be taking on other players while also taking on raid content (at literally the same time).
That says nothing to me either than that you are not connecting things to form a larger picture - you are not following along.
The other perhaps amusing thing is, in making a suggestion like this, you are saying that you are perfectly fine with the idea of the system, it is just a case of what perks other playstyles get. As I have said a few times, I am not interested in that discussion, my only input in to it would be whether a given perk would see me and my guild opt for a third party tracker (and the issues that come with it) so that we could take the suggested perk.