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
This is actually the first valid point that I have seen. It does make sense especially if word gets out on what specifically would arise from allowing another node to grow. My only problem with this is we all are here for the longevity of the game, and eventually a meta will be found on which zones offer the best quest/dungeons. Once it is found out that even makes the zones harder to take as people who like the dungeon and quest in that area, because they are so rewarding, will do all they can to keep it that way. Imagine a zone is discovered that levels people beyond imagine. Nobody is gonna wanna lose that node, and while the devs can constantly tweak things of that nature, we have all seen games that struggle to keep up with tweaks in comparison to the methods players find to level/get loot.
Is that not the point of the thread?
Big guilds are just a collection of individual players.
What if a mega guild moves into a server from another game. A Goon Squad or some such and they bring 8000 players and take up a large portion of the servers population. Then what?
Even if they remove guilds all together and they are all just single players co-operating for a common cause the result would be the same would it not?
What if it is a collection of smaller guilds that have a loose banding together no real alliances. Would this not also have the same effect?
Firstly, nobody ever said stop guilds, or make them less people. Secondly, nobody in there right mind could argue that a "Goon Squad" the size of 8000 people is good for any game especially in a PvP game. How do you pvp someone that large? Third by the time people get to that point are they even a guild? Guilds were put into place to organize the ideas and thoughts of players with like minds, and to compete in mmo's at the highest level, When you throw 8000 people into a group there is zero organization and so this argument is pointless. The whole point of this thread it to propose ideas in which limit people from making these massive groups that can completely determine the outcome of a server. Saying this does not limit people from associating themselves with others etc. Nobody is going to miss the other 7,999 people I can assure you.
I think you are trying to fight nature it's self. As you said " Guilds were put into place to organize the ideas and thoughts of players with like minds, and to compete in mmo's at the highest level" and you are correct. The 8000 player group is trying to work together the same as an 8 man group just on a larger scale.
People tend to gather with like minded people for common goals. Attempting to stop it is like yelling at the sky because it is windy and you don't like the wind. Nothing we can do about it. Work with the wind to your advantage, or get out of it's way. Either way attempting to fight nature has never worked out well in the long term for people.
How to fight it. Deception and chaos come to mind. With espionage being a thing. Join their group and start some "He said, she said" quarrels in the organization and watch the house burn down.Sometimes the fight is best fought behind the scenes and not face to face.
Or
Read and learn to become a leader that can hold together a large guild that CAN compete.
"There is no test a smart man can not pass." Joseph Sisko
You're presenting this as a problem. However, this sounds like it *should* be a viable tactic.
From my experience such alliances can't last long. Between server-giant guild fractures, single-leader-dependency, lack of well-defined guild themes/direction, and just plain ol' MMO-player drama, yours truly can't imagine being concerned about 5 guild-collectives working cohesively enough to ever completely dominate a server for any longer than a few short months.
Also, if alliances are made more-restrictive and more-limiting, how will we band together enough to defend our own Metropolises? Such an achievement as Level 6 Node-rank is intended to require players working together to hold that achievement together - and you're likely already talking about probably 3+ different guilds having to work together; Even with just a few guilds, it's only a matter of time before pettiness and player-drama make working together hard or impossible.
Defending what your community built together is a great direction to collectively possess - but what's the rallying cry for other Metropolises' guild-communities to band together to enforce/maintain a monopoly over Nodes built by otherwise un-related players?
Here's another positive.
Some servers will inevitably develop different characteristics and control-arrangements. Maybe not enter the game with the mentality of sticking eternally with your original launch-choice of Server, as to free you to move around after the initial settling-in? (This is not intended to sound snotty - I just can't figure out how to word it any differently to NOT sound snotty!)
The initiating player of a Node Siege does not limit the participation of the Siege to only their guilds and allies; All players can participate - so long as there is enough room in the battle-zone's player limits (currently quoted to be 250 vs 250).
In addition, a Node can take enough damage from a Siege to simply de-level, as opposed to being completely wiped off the map; "Winning" a Siege won't always feel like victory, to the defenders. As you touched upon, this certainly opens up possibilities for smaller guilds to band together and perhaps do specific damage to an opposing Node, instead of seeking a much-harder outright destruction.
Aye - a lot of players call it 'decay', but the correct term for the Wiki is 'Node Atrophy':
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Node_atrophy
They could pvp each other, they could dungeon together, and they could raid together. Leaving absolutely no room for any small group of any kind to oppose it at all.
Anyone seen outside of this guild kingdom is killed on sight and no one would be there to punish them with the corruption system. That could potentially happen on every single server in the game with how big communities in other MMO's have built up over the years. This would completely destroy the game as it was designed to play.
Currently there is nothing in the game to incentivize people to not do that. So you can just assume that is a potential problem that can happen. This kind of thing can happen right at day 1 release too. You will be able to tell it's happening if there are huge groups of people killing you and disregarding the corruption system entirely. The problem is that it can get so out of control that it can lock the entire server down in every single zone in the entire game right from release.
While technically they are playing the game, but would any of you like to play in a game world that was ransacked that extremely. You wouldn't be able to just integrate in with them. Their entire chain of command would be set in stone and unchanging. You'd probably have to try multiple times just to chat with them because they would just kill you on sight with no reasoning.
Other games have similar problems to this. It never got so extreme that it took an entire server at launch, but the game so far is planned to do absolutely nothing to limit this from happening. It has happened to entire servers in many big MMOs already. Ever go to servers in WoW that were completely empty? Not even a single player logged in? That's what it looks like when this happens to a server and they all stop playing the game.
Retail WoW isn't a good game though. So I can't say they'll just up and leave in a game as potentially good as Ashes.
Player agency is one thing, but this isn't player agency. That stopped when the corruption system was rendered useless.
What do you do when you have a completely closed community that runs every single system in the game in a way not intended by the designers of the game? What if they did it and used the server to do stuff illegal on the TOS that ruined the balance on every other server? The penalty cost couldn't possibly be equivalent to the potential monetary gain from doing that.
This is how the game can become pay to win even if there is nothing in the actual game that has systems to promote that.
Thus I would at least like it to be looked into so that people can play the game as it was intended to be an actual game. xD
U.S. East
Player agency is one thing, but this isn't player agency. That stopped when the corruption system was rendered useless.
I understand your concerns. But would anyone be able to stop it? Make it a single player game? What if everyone involved never joined a guild in game but all stayed "solo" and formed up in Discord? How can you stop people from what comes naturally to them. Finding someone with a common interest and going "Me too!" is the start of simple friendship and these lead to larger groups sometimes.
In any game that allows players to group this will happen. Doesn't mean it will or won't.
I keep asking the question how can anyone stop players from grouping in a game that promotes group play?
I keep answering the same question with a different answer every time you ask. I just gave you an example of how you can do so in the post right before this one
I keep answering the same question with a different answer every time you ask. I just gave you an example of how you can do so in the post right before this one
If players want to ally and form massive Alliances controlling most of the server, it is their prerogative and they should deal with their own particular challenges that will appear before them for it.
However here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Large scale PVP like sieges, is capped when it comes to players participating.
- There are different skill paths for Guilds.
- Raid, dungeon and resource availability, will be dependent on Node development level and placement.
- Proper Alliances (as the game mechanic) is possible only between 4 guilds.
Tried to make it as readable as possible with what the forums allow, hope it's not too bad.
So the things you just mentioned are indeed hindering player to an extent. Do you agree with those? If so then you do indeed agree with some form of limitation, and while I am very much in favor of all the things you listed there are still work arounds and that's without the knowledge we will have upon launch. For example sure you can only ally with 4 other guilds officially but what about sister alliance etc. etc. To sum up what I'm saying, the things implemented into the game thus far help but I don't think they are enough and if you can agree with the things listed above then you have to understand, at least to an extent, where others are coming from by offering up ideas to lessen the possibility of massive groups of players overtaking the game based off sheer number and size.
I think there is a balance between player agency, and player choice.
You are free to make a certain choice. But that choice has meaning, consequences, advantages, and limitations.
I agree with all the thing I listed because it's a game that incentivizes that player choice, and has a certain set of rules (because it must as a man made product, as most everything outside the game is for that matter).
Of course alliances can be made outside of the in game system for it (player agency), but it will have certain limitations and downsides (impactful choices and their consequences). I don't see how more than 1.200 people will get along without guild-breaking drama, or without other issues, but if people believe there is a possibility for it to succeed, then let them try. If they indeed do succeed, that is honestly impressing and shouldn't be punished by those who couldn't or won't (myself included).
As for the "then you have to understand, at least to an extent, where others are coming from by offering up ideas to lessen the possibility of massive groups of players overtaking the game based off sheer number and size."
Of course I understand concerns. However I haven't really seen anyone list out these mechanics and tools that the game offers (as is promised at this point in time) that might prevent or somewhat lessen the impact of Zergs. People are talking about as if there is nothing to stop tise from happening, when there clearly is some modicum of it.
Now, with the new information (for some) in hand, we can discuss how to expand them or adapt them to better prevent game ruining scenarios. But, preventing players from doing what the game allows them to, because it may instill fear of the future without it having come to pass, I disagree with.
Never dealt with large mega guilds only heard about them.
How big is to big? 8, 16 , 40? If they set max guild size to 50 and remove alliances. Do you think these large groups would not find another way. You think they won't use discord, twiter, reddit to form and communicate.
How big of a group can be done in a conference call on a cell phone?
They can and will find away to organize. Instead of trying to find creative ways to punish people for succeeding at organizing a large group. Why don't look at ways to work past them?
That'll be my goal upon launch, as the game is 2 years out it's our job to help developers in the meantime in anyway we can, such as ideas to help in preventing things that they are obviously already trying to prevent. We know this because they already have limitations on the amount of people that can ally
They just need to give us tools to dismantle a Tyrant, and there are many tools available already.
Give the tyrant an opportunity to expand an empire, so we have the opportunity to take him down.
Otherwise we'll never have a tyrant. And it's just another every-man-for-himself MMO.
We need to move away from this line of thought that, "the devs need to fix community issues" and more towards letting the community run itself with the freedom for empires to rise and fall.
How will a guild ensure that they maintain control of a Castle for an entire year?
How will it be decided who gets to be the monarch if the siege is successfully won?
How do you ensure that the guild you wanted to win the siege actually wins?
Then how do you ensure that the current monarch and their guild run things exactly how you want them to?
There will be too many conflicts of interest just within the mega-guilds.
But, also, there will be all the other players outside of the guilds to contend with.
How do you ensure that only a player within the guild will complete the most Religion service tasks to qualify to be mayor of the Divine Metro month after month after month? How do you ensure that it's someone within the mega-guild who is voted in as mayor in a Scientific Metro month after month after month?
Yea nobody ever said otherwise
Looks at title
"Preventing Guild Alliances"
are you sure?
^ this!
I don’t really see a problem with this. I saw this happen a lot in my years with L2 where one side is having all the raid bosses, castles and majority of control over the game. After a while the game gets so freaking boring that someone will switch sides and backstab the controlling side. Which will cause lots of drama and that’s awesome! It will be pretty much up to the players to deal with it, and isn't that exactly what we want to see?
Indeed. Players will make ashes of creation interesting and that what I love about the game it gives players the freedom to change the world of Verra.
Agreed. Every zerg's decline I have ever witnessed or heard/read of, comes down to people "rebelling" against them or social engineering their way into collapsing them from the inside. In other cases, they have even used the dumb power of "force in numbers" of their Zerg oppressors to their favor, letting them clear a path for their misdeeds and quests.
Ultimately, most downfalls come when some asshat officer in X guild got fed up with their DKP and ninja looted the Guild Bank and quit the guild with all the loot. Sure he got ganked into oblivion, but you best bet that that guild soon after began dwindling, as they found themselves deprived of resources and gear.
I will also just refer back to my first post in this thread as for balancing larger guilds vs other progressions/buffs in the Guild upgrade system (among other mechanics).
I see you wrote alliance in that, only saw guild first time around. Yea I'm cool with guilds holding down their territory, even with an alliance, my problem is mass alliances, not everything can be explained in the title