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
However what happens when you throw into the mix the gigantic amount of sidegrade augments? Will intrepid really vigilant enough to not create augments for archetypes that mitigate their "rock-paper-scissors" weakness?
not to even say that best pvp builds always were these:
healers with strong defensive cooldowns for others and high amount of reactive heal throughput
dps - best combination of archetypes that grants the most cc with highest burst damage, highest mobility and highest survivability usually with good defensive cooldowns
tanks are always useless unless they are the only ones that can bring aoe crowd control - and if the tank deals damage it isnt a tank, but a dps with extremely high survivability
― Plato
I can work out the best PvP damage for character all I want... in Mass PvP, it matters none, because your DPS output is a big fat ZERO when you are dead from getting focused down by multiple people. PvP comes down to group synergy, and having a good driver or shot caller.
Also you are assuming your idea of a top end raiding scene and Intrepid's idea are one in the same. I can almost bet, they are not even close.
Analogy = Bad, like.... real bad. When we both log into AoC for the first time, our vehicles (characters) are not different... they are the same. You are asking for tools that will ultimately give your character access to better drops, which in turn helps you in the economic realm, and we get 5 HP... thanks... lmao.
Guild Leader: " Ok everyone, we have a choice to make. Do you want to take the DPS meter that will help us max out our damage and enable us to kill all of the top tier raid bosses in the world, giving us access to the best drops in the game. Ooooooor.... Do you wan to go the PvP route and get 5 extra HP that calculates to .000000000022117 extra time you have to live in Mass PvP?"
In before "The 5 HP was just an example".......... Stop giving examples if they are not even close to helpful. 5 extra HP in PvP... all I can do is laugh.
Open world PvP... that is your argument...
Ok let us go with that. What level are you when this open world PvP happens?
What level was the player you fought?
What level/grade gear did you have on?
What level/grade gear did your opponent have on?
What level/grade weapon did you have equipped?
What level/grade weapon did your opponent have equipped?
What Archetype/Class are you?
What Archetype/Class was your opponent?
What Augments were you using?
What Augments was your opponent using?
See what I am getting at? You have no way of knowing half of those answers, so a meter will not help you. It will help you against a target dummy... but not in real world PvP unless you have the answers to every question above about your opponent and before you face that specific opponent. Which will not happen unless your opponent is just a super nice person who is willing to give you all of that info before you fight.
There will be PvP players who support meters, no doubt. But what about the people who choose to play the game organically like it is being built to be played? You are literally asking all of the people who choose not to use a meter to surrender and accept that they will never be able to compete for top tier loot because of their choice to not use a meter. Like Noanni said... meters make the raid bosses harder because devs have to make them harder in order to entertain the meter using group... therefore making that content obsolete to the ones who do not use meters. Which would be like PvP players asking for a 10% damage buff in PvP and the PvE players do not get it... So we basically wipe the floor with you all day and there is nothing you can do about it, which would make PvP obsolete to the meter users.
1. You're still talking as if all PvP will be massive in nature which is a fundamentally flawed argument...PvP is far more likely to happen between small groups where your personal abilities will be significantly more impactful
2. Your top PvP players are going to be geared by their guild's PvE so helping them directly helps you
When you sit at a dummy to test damage it goes like:
* Rotation A in gear set A
* Rotation B in gear set A
* Rotation A in gear set B
* Rotation B in gear set B
* etc
Not so I can stroke myself to the meter while in combat, but so that I know I'm as prepared as I can be before even walking out of town. I don't need every single bit of information on my opponent before a fight, but I should be able to have that info on myself so that I know if I lost it was at least due to a mistake on my part or something not entirely in my control, such as a class that has an advantage or a few nasty crits. However, I can't even know that if I don't know what my character should be doing and that's literally what the meter at a dummy would be for.
It's already been explained once in this thread (By @Noaani on page 2) that meters are meant as a preparation tool.
however to balance the pvp around massive pvp battles is not healthy for the game - those battles are promoted as "peak pvp experience" and not how all of pvp will work
― Plato
From what I've seen the biggest fear around meters is being excluded b/c you don't pull high enough numbers but w/ the leveling speed and need for guilds in AoC there's no real reason to expect that to be the norm. Like...we solved Classic a long time ago so leveling wasn't that big of a barrier so people could min-max their team, in Retail w/ leveling being so fast on top of the LFG/teleporting you're picking the best tool for the job while actively working in a Lowes.
For AoC there's not only the lack of LFG, there's going to be a lack of people w/ multiple geared alts, and the distance that it takes to travel limits the number of people you have to select from, and how integral guilds will be for progression will limit things...like...so long as you don't actively drool on your shirt chances are you're going to be able to participate w/o being booted b/c some DPS is usually better than none. The meters aren't going to really effect that at all and if the compromise was to put them at a training station then they really won't have much of an effect for those not interested in them.
Sigh.... me and Noanni have had this convo. Seems that you both are cut from the same cloth so I will exit this convo before I have to listen to the same exact argument over and over again...
I say... I do not want them in game because of reasons A or B.
You say, I do not understand how they work and deny that reasons A or B even exist.
Got ya... lol, good luck in game I guess.
Rarely will you see two opposing groups trying to out damage each other on a raid boss. The real scenario involves PvP where the winner decides to keep fighting the raid boss, or to run away and consider that just stopping the other group from getting the kill a victory.
Again.. DPS in mass PvP amounts to nothing if you are dead. In Lineage 2 it was easy to focus players because it was a simple button push to target your leaders target and attack.. It sometimes gets to the point you are pressing your target button as much if not more than your attack button because people are dying so fast.
Before you completely leave the conversation what do you say to my comment above yours?
Most arguments against meters is based on a fear of being excluded and I just don't foresee that being as big of a problem simply due to the game naturally limiting your ability to build a "perfect" team.
You assuming that your biggest threat on looting rights will be guilds that can pvp you , it won't be. It will be guilds that are "friendly" part of the same citizenship as your guild. As many raid bosses will be open world there will always be a dps race for them.
Second point , it really depends on the game , in ESO you have lay down some serious damage on just one player in mass pvp because builds can get pretty op in that game. The pvp that will a matter the most will be the last fight around the siege objective , if the attackers cant break the defenders turtle and out damage their healing , the attackers are not going to win that fight.
I don't think I need to point out how badly that will go for you.
Now, if you have your teamwork all sorted, you have that person calling shots, you are all so much better off if those people responding to those target calls have spent some serious time with a combat tracker to get as good as they can in a number of different situations.
There is some fallacy that people using a combat tracker will only ever maximize one thing. Anyone even remotely familiar with combat trackers should be able to see how wrong this is as an assumption.
A combat tracker tells you what ever it is you want to find out. If you want to find out what the best mage build with high mobility is, it will help you find that. If you want to know what the mage build with high mobility that gets the most damage done per point of mana used, a combat tracker will help you find that. If you want to know what mage build with high mobility and a set number of specific CC abilities will do the most burst damage while moving, and then leave you with the best damage per point of mana, a combat tracker will help you find it.
Hell, if you want to track your harvests over a period of time, to see if that buff you got that says it will increase the quality of harvests is actually working, a combat tracker will help with that.
To say they are of no use in PvP is to be totally ignorant of what a combat tracker is able to do in the hands of a person that knows how they work.
L2 had the same mechanic.. and there were a number of times the relic was taken out from under the clan that had agreement to be the occupying clan. With multiple guilds and sometimes even alliances working together for a common goal, pre-agreements were broken frequently..
1) Throne room so crowded with storms of enemy coming in, and a momentary need to turn focus to the incoming enemy and some opportunist from ally clan takes it out.
2)A pincer pvp group, small but effective unexpectedly clears the floor against the masses, where skill and coordination trumped mass power.
3) Ally guild decides not to defend at a strategic moment so that the team that was agreed to take the relic are left dead on the floor with nobody willing to rez them.
4) similar to 1 except and enemy was not spotted with the masses in the room
I`m hoping for a little the same! Careful who you ally with!
Killing the opposition still does not mean that the faction who does the most damage will always be the faction that wins.
That's why Steven keeps saying that you do not gain abilities from your Secondary Archetype.
Eventually, you are left with a system where abilities are pruned from the game, and every class plays the same way with as the 4 listed above, with the only variable being the animations used to describe their spreadsheet. The attempt to achieve hyper-balance is a futile one that ends up watering down your game and making it shit. Nobody will ever be happy and balance cannot be achieved without eliminating difference.
The smartest thing you can do is this:
1) Make grinding a character to max power level so time consuming that rerolling/alting is not viable for the overwhelming population
2) Make re-distributing talent points costly, time consuming, and inefficient
3) Disallow access to the combat log in every form possible
The 3 things above means that people will experiment early then settle on their class, respeccing to the latest theorycraft is unviable, and players will maintain their own identity.
The overwhelming majority of guilds and players will not use a stopwatch; surely you must admit that the number of people who will use a built in data-parse like a damage meter, or external website to spoon feed them the proper "spec", is drastically higher than people who are going to use a stopwatch.
Ultimately, you're also deciding what kind of player base you want. In a game based on civilizations, you need to cast a wide net to create a healthy population for the world to come alive. Enabling a culture who prioritizes hyper efficiency and active performance measuring will only create burn out in your player base, cause resentment, and eventually dwindle your population.
A guild that knows what they are capable of in terms of damage output and applying it in pve and pvp will always steamroll a guild that is less prepared.
Dygz, take a step back and look at what it is you are arguing.
We are saying that, generally speaking, the side that is best prepared for PvP will win. We are saying that along with developing teamwork, a good part of that preparedness is working with a combat tracker to develop individual players within their various different builds, and to develop synergies between players.
That is a solid, sound statement.
You are arguing against that.
Why?
But I don't think that should be framed as a compromise for dps meters. I think its mostly a pretty distinct issue. The people who think this is a compromise are generally people who don't really discern between a lot of the numerical information existing in the game ... they see it all as a subset of the same issue (sometimes pinning it as a cause of elitism... which seems a bit odd to generalize it all under that blanket considering decades of mmo's using it in various forms)
You have to understand though that's definitely not how proponents of dps meters see it. Things like damage numbers, equipment tooltips, and training dummies are in their (mostly) own realms of use. DPS meters are mostly about setting mid-raid goals for yourself between attempts and identifying strategies to communicate to your team... and also testing specs ooc. You might as well be saying 'hey we are taking away dps meters, but don't worry, we'll still allow you to see the damage numbers that pop up above an enemy's head'.(just as an example) You've got to understand that many people aren't going to see that as a consolation prize, they will see it as just an unrelated gameplay mechanic.
Again though, its actually a fine idea imo. Just don't expect it to bridge the dps meter divide (that is pretty polarized atm)
I agree, in a game that's supposedly doesn't cater to "care bears" and where the winning condition for many of the events is literally who does the most DPS it's kinda crazy to have people request having numbers on our tooltips.
I still say the better compromise is damage meters at a testing ground in Villages and higher.
Perspective is a funny thing. See, from my perspective damage meters are a form of carebear hand holding where you are receiving artificial feedback from a script about how your performance is. To me, it’s more hardcore to go out and figure it out through trial and error.
Ashes will have the highest stakes pvp wise in any mmorpg I have played , you stand to lose a lot. Do you really want to risk trail and error when comes to losing your node to a siege or having some guild swoop in and out damage your own guild for looting rights to a raid boss and lose the good drops from it? I would prefer knowing what my guild members are capable of doing then not knowing.
I do not have a "fear" of meters, I just do not think they belong. Exclusion due to DPS is the least of my worries, I am either good enough, or I am not. If I am not, I will work on those issues through practice and time, not some outside program to tell me exactly what the issue is and speeding up my progress.
If an MMO is a world that your character supposedly lives in, where do spreadsheets exist? I have yet to see an MMO with a spreadsheet drop table... Basically I believe in playing with what the game gives you and not using addons from another developer or dedicated player who is just looking for a quick fix.
Maybe it is age on my part.. I lived at a time when things were not always instant, where as todays generation is used to having all the answers given to them at the push of a button. Do not get me wrong, I love technology and what it has given us, but there are times when doing things the hard way make the experience more joyful, It gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment.
@Noaani Not going to respond to your post as you have missed the target again by a long shot. Anyway, good luck to you as well in game.