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
Top players? Players who needed assistance to get there... Top Players? Really?
We have covered this many of times.. We both know this to be the case..Why do you constantly post it as if it were new information? Why do you constantly argue to have these put in game, when they wont (at launch)?
Just use the ones you keep talking about, pass them along to all your friends, rush to end game content, call your guild the best ever on the internet, bask in the glow from all the statistics flashing on your screen, act as though you did all yourself and then quit the game because you have nothing to do.... That way the rest of us can play and have fun.
He's been semi-following AoC and when I told him there was no trackers he said he wouldn't ever play the game seriously like he does WoW. He sees this type if tool as too critical to not have as it helps him help others. Sad thing is if he did decide to go big in this game he would probably bring a hundred or so people from the guild with him too (who are also generally good players and mostly non-toxic).
That's the type or people this decision alienates... top notch leaders.
Look at real world business... ALL of the good leaders use data to help make decisions. It's the poor leaders that just go with their gut only. From this angle I think it's crazy to not want combat trackers. The excuses against it seem to be to protect/hide bad players who don't want to go past casual level and want to get carried by others... I don't see any top end competitive gamers not wanting meters... do we want good players in this game or not?
Work had play hard my friend
Having ingame leaderboards for dungeons and raids basically means that the content is near infinite, because players have an incentive to speedrun themselves for better placings and higher placing on a server wide leaderboard automatically gives a server wide prestige for the guild
Your "rushing" argument makes literally zero sense, because from design standpoint ashes strives to be player created content driven game
Your post shows that you think ashes is going to be themepark game where "playing too much" means that you run out of content. So please go to ashes wiki and read what game systems ashes aims to have and then rejoin the discussion
― Plato
Business world... Fantasy Video Game... I see your logic.................................................................................
Combat trackers tell you what’s happened in the past. They don’t tell you what is the best build/rotation is most effective unless you’ve... wait for it.. “did it yourself” already.
If you don’t want combat trackers then you can’t claim to have competitiv PvE in my opinion.
Sigh.... Most of the player content driven mechanics will have PvP involved. Sure, leaderboards in dungeons.. had no clue, do not care. Why? Because I cannot compete with people using tools to get better. Which is a point sorely missed on the whole lot of you. You effectively cut out most of the competition with the use of a tracker. Congrats on your leet, top player status.
This makes no sense...
If you do it all yourself, what is the tracker for? It must do something for you, right?
If trackers are not used how do you compete? Practice? Communication between players? I do not know.. how did people compete before trackers were involved?
He thinks it's critical for other games. That doesn't mean he will find it to be critical for Ashes gameplay.
I don't know that Ashes claims to have competitive PvE as any kind of focus.
However much competitive PvE Ashes might have, the devs feel you will be able to accomplish that to the degree they want without the inclusion of combat trackers.
If you can be good only in environment where it is impossible to figure out how well are you doing then I am truly sorry for you, because Ashes is never going to be a game for you since people will write and follow guides and guides too are a tool. Word of mouth of what works for players is a tool as well, because you used your human mouth or fingers that in itself are tools that you were born with to share that information with others.
You just can't bring the early 2000's and the extreme scarcity of information available, the only way is to use time machine to go back in time
And please do not even try to write that ingame trackers do for personal performance more than using a guide on the internet
― Plato
No one at the bottom of the meter will ever spam it into chat. it's not kept private, to inform the player only, it's used as a stick to beat other people with we all know this, just like we all know that not every class will be balanced with every other class.
Dps meters dont take into account what gear someone has. it doesn't show that someone stopped dpsing because they saw an environmental hazard and moved to a different location.Sometimes they can when used correctly to identify why 2 of the same class (for EG) perform differently but the average dps meter user will only use them to brag and belittle others.
anyone crying they had to 'carry' someone because that someone did not do as much damage as they could, needs to ask themselves why they peaked in high school. Encounters are never balanced for a perfect team, the same way games companies never make games that will only run on the highest spec PC - they would be putting themselves out of business.
I play video games for enjoyment. if YOU get enjoyment by doing as much damage as you possibly can, then good for you! just remember that now you have created a two tier community: the 'pro (lmao) players vs the people that actually like the lore and want to be social and just play without something feeling like a second job, y'know like us oldies did back in 1999 in Asheron's Call.
Even if dps meters really are just so people can practice their rotation and ONLY be able to record their own dps and NEVER see anyone elses people will demand everyone pastes their own parse after each fight, it's how people are these days.
go into world of warcraft - sit down and read the chat. the toxicity is amazing - Looking for 2 rdps for xyz MUST HAVE blah blah gearscore, link achievement (so you can prove you have done it before (we dont want anyone who has never done it before they might make a mistake- gasp!) then a number - the damage output they are looking for; because these pro players want an easy ride.
they want to pull the ladder up behind them and make everyone else who has a job or commitments to look up to them and their top tier pixels as a badge of honour because thats all they have.
I don't understand this. If you want something so complex that you need a Combat Tracker for it, then is not that complex, you're just assisting yourself.
It's like asking for drugs in sports because players want to push themselves to new extremes, I don't get the logic.
Clearly combat trackers are used to make content easy because in a few pulls you have an overall feeling of the encounter.
@Helikeon The last paragraph is pure gem with the sea of salt for being a bad player
I get it - you get angry when people want to be rewarded for what they've accomplished in a game. Which means that you get less participation awards, because you can't invest a lot of time to the game since you are actually contributing to society with an actual work!!
― Plato
I'm baffled by the fact you think like this. Do you really think all the people that use combat trackers think like this? I've been raiding at the top end of WoW for a long time and everytime we invite new players that don't have enough gear or haven't seen the fights, we understand it's a given that their damage won't be optimal, that they'll make mistakes, it's part of the learning curve. If a new player dies during a fight and he doesn't know what killed him, having a combat tracker makes is so much easier for the player to improve if the veterans can tell him exactly what happened and how to avoid it next time. Also, if I'm in a raid and someone of the same class as me is doing 30% more damage and has the same gear as me, I want to know what he's doing that i'm not so that i can become a better player.
Been playing WoW since vanilla and I cannot remember the last time I pugged a dungeon and this happened. Nor would I care if they did and I was bottom dps.
You make it sound black and white. Your view seems to be everyone who's better than me is a try-harding elitist. There is a class of player that do enjoy the social aspect but still want to clear the hardest content a game has to offer, the 2 tier you mentioned aren't mutually exclusive.
No they won't, nobody cares about the dps meter when the boss dies.
That is just blatantly false, top end players want MORE top end players so that they can find groups faster, find new guildmates so that when people leave or move on from the game they can get replaced seamlessly.
No need to feel sorry for me, I don't. As for this game being for me or not.. Obviously it is for me because the developers do not want trackers. I am on board with that, take your logic and apply it to yourself and obviously this game is not for you.
Steven is making this game to resemble games from the early 2000's (Lineage 2)... So I can use your argument and say do not bring your new age tools and try to cheat the feeling the developers are trying to create.
As far as youtube and guides.... Thank you for providing an alternative to using a tracker, as you can see by your logic, you do not need one as you provided another way to get info.
If you think I am going to leave a post like that unchallenged, you are just outright wrong.
If you don't know what a combat tracker does, and how it does and does not help people, why are you discussing them?
I'll say it again for you though, if you are using a combat tracker, there should be NOTHING on your screen in relation to said combat tracker during combat. No statistics flashing, nothing at all.
And combat trackers most certainly do not help you with a build. A build calculator does far more in that regard than a combat tracker, and a build calculator does about 10% of what the average games forum does in getting people sorted for their build.
Literally all a combat tracker does in terms of builds is give you objective data on the build you are using. It does not offer any suggestions on a potential build - but if you are smart you may be able to take the information a combat tracker tells you and work out for yourself how to improve it.
Now, based on that, the more data we have with combat in Ashes, the more complex encounters the developers are able to make for us.
Now, the developers of an MMO are able to make content difficult enough for it to be impossible to kill - even with trackers. Based on this, the notion of actual difficulty is a pointless discussion in relation to trackers.
However, what is worth discussing is how much more enjoyable a complex encounter is to take on than a simple encounter - and again, data is key to solving complexity.
So, combat trackers = more complex encounters = more fun.
Sure, sometimes we do talk about difficulty, but complexity is what we )or at least I) actually mean. The two do go somewhat hand in hand, however, Complex encounters will be harder than simple encounters, all other factors being the same. The reason calling them complex rather than difficult is more accurate is because all other factors need not be the same. However, it is that complexity that makes encounters fun, not raw difficulty.
You could have an encounter that requires 100% perfect DPS and healing, but if that is all there is to it, you have a hard, simple, boring encounter.
The issue with parsers remains the widespread use for anything and everything. I don't particularly want to be in an 8 Man Group content with some radical spamming a Parser for the lols. I don't want bland raids where a parser dictates the actions. I want an invigorated raid where actions matter and choices matter. Namely, the choices made when you build the raid. I don't want raid blocks on who I can and can't accept based of DPS Numbers or some other limiting factor brought about by parsers.
The truth remains the boss fights we are seeing are still lacklustre and rather bland anyway, a parser isn't even needed for the current boss fights. The saving grace becomes the fact that PvP can occur at these boss fights (or so I believe). I do not agree with the mindset that Good PvE requires a parser and bad PvE doesn't need a parser. I want Good PvE without a Parser but the contestation means most Boss Encounters will be rather bland until PvP fights happen around the Boss Encounter. Its a difficult balance to achieve and I don't envy IS the task. I also appreciate IS' stance on no parsers too.
Yes, but a combat tracker means an encounter can have more such abilities, each with different conditions, while the developers still have confidence that the appropriate raid is able to identify them all and then work out a strategy to defeat them.
Also, the notion of needing a specific ability to deal with a specific mechanic is an overly simple encounter design - that is not adding complexity. The current boss fights are all placeholder.
It is far too early for Intrepid to be able to design top end encounters - they need to have the combat system nailed before they can do that.
Even then, MMO's don't release with overly good raid encounters. It takes the players a year or two to work out how to best use the games combat system (even with a combat tracker), and it is only then that developers can begin to design really good encounters.
One need only compare the encounter design (not nostalgia) of WoW's vanilla raids to those in WotLK to see this - almost all MMO's get their best raid content 3 - 5 years after release.
I will give you the fact you had a right to challenge it, not that it makes you correct
I know what they do, they said they did it themselves... which if they used a tracker, the tracker did most of the work, they just read it and then tweaked things. You are not doing it yourself if there is a tracker involved.
So you agree combat tracker are not needed for launch. Awesome!
In reading this, you basically want content that is only able to be completed by people who use trackers. What kind of crap is this? How would you feel if the devs made content that one shot anyone using a tracker? Doubt you would be excited by the fact that you would be held out of some of the content available to other players.
Ashes design isn't really about having top end raids at an endgame for the purpose of captivating players while they wait 1-2 years for the next expansion.
Turn a player "red" so the next player that kills them and/or the next time they fall, their stuff drops and the nearest player gets the bounty, then ban.
Raids are fun once in a while, but solo or group pvp, and in game politics trump the complexity any raid can dish out.
Hope that the monster coin events gives a good range of challenge both sides.
You guys are just addicted to combat trackers from past games, and that's all.
I have to agree. The argument is they want tougher content... turn off your tracker and you got it
I think groups should retreat more often than most gamers are willing to accept.
Should be OK to retreat, regroup and re-strategize. And should be OK to sometimes not clear the entire dungeon/raid. Partial success can be OK, too.
If you put that post in to context of the entire conversation, I am quite obviously only talking about the small amount of raid content that is aimed at the less than ten percent.
This is a very small amount of content - maybe 3 or 4 encounters in a server at a time. It has been stated very bluntly that there will be raid content for the masses - that is not content I am interested in.
It is perfectly acceptable for the content I am talking about to be designed assuming players will use combat trackers. Raider, in general, are accepting of the fact that raid content at launch is not as good as it will be, so instead we judge the game early on based on its supporting systems and mechanics.
Not having a key system in place (any key system) will just see these players walk right past the game and not look back.
Support for or inclusion of a combat tracker is a key system for raiding.
As such, while I agree that a combat tracker is likely not needed for content at launch, its presence or absence is an indicator of Intrepids intentions for a serious raid game.
You are not paying attention Difficulty and complexity are not the same thing.
We want complex encounters, complex encounters are fun. The complexity of encounter that we are used to having (that Intrepid need to match to bring these players in) does need a combat tracker.
Now, Intrepid absolutely could make hard encounters without that complexity, but as I said earlier That isnt the kind of thing that is going to attract top end raiders to the game.
Now, here is a question specifically for you, @Recluse74
You are not going to be in that top single digit of raiders in Ashes. I think we can both agree on that.
With that in mind, why are you getting involved in a discussion that literally only involves the players that will fit in to that category?
While I am more than happy to throw in my opinion on many topics, you wont see me actively arguing my case in regards to content I know I will not participate in, especially if the suggestions being made have no effect outside of that content.