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
Not sure, that is going to happen. While I love when encounter designers use boss mechanics who require healers and DPS to help "Tank" the boss. I don't think it should or would be standard to the point that party formations change as a result.
Intrepid has been very consistent in wanting to use holy trinity design choices at this point. I would be surprised to see them change this.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
That is already a thing in FFXIV and WOW. I wish there was more of this required outside Mythic and Savage.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I have a slightly different take on it than that, but that isn't overly pertinent.
Keep in mind, I am not suggesting that Ashes should have encounters like EQ2 or Rift (or AoC the 1st, for a while), I am saying that in my opinion it can't have them.
I agree that it can't have encounters like EQ2 and Rift.
I think we both agree that real high-end content can't happen in open world dungeons. Unless your opinion here has changed in the last few months.
The open world "pseudo raid boss" prize piñatas I expect to face in Ashes are perfect for hybrid PvX combat. That, or just full action or full tabbed. It doesn't matter.
I don't know why I keep letting myself get side tracked with talks of hard raid bosses on the Ashes forums when I don't even believe the game will have them.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
The game offers options for builds, but at the same time, most Archetypes have one or two 'signature' style abilities, that no one would really expect someone who wants to play as that class, to not take. Tanks will take Ultimate Defense 90% of the time. Clerics will take Radiant Burst unless they have an AoE augment from somewhere. Mages will take Black Hole or more likely Meteor Swarm. Other Archetypes are also each likely to have something like that. And if you somehow chose not to take that? Y'know, that's alright too, you might have a specialization that helps in some other content and just be expected to tell people you don't take it.
Limiting us to Primary Archetype abilities allows them to design encounters where 'one of each' is optimal. This was somewhat directly said by Steven (at the 19:00 mark) in
but I suppose it may seem like a stretch to interpret it that way, for some.
These 'signature skills' allow them a lot of clarity in design. You can make it so that if there's no Tank with Ultimate Defense, some appropriate mechanic will make the group's life really hard. ( @Vhaeyne this part is more for @Ugoogee than for you, I'm sure you're familiar already)
Hybrid Combat is also not guaranteed to be 'everyone will accept the style of play you use', just that you will be able to play it and succeed. And hurtboxes on enemies, that move around, allow you to make it so that Tab players do what they expect to do; 'mostly stand in one place and wait for an opportunity', and Action players do what they expect to do; 'get into position and aim their attacks'. This is another reason why we were told up front that players will 'have to' take 75-25 split. You have to become familiar with things, because balance is going to involve you 'moving toward doing at least a little Action Combat', and optimization is going to involve you 'taking advantage of the speed of Tab Target' (usually for defensive stuff I'll assume).
Designers also don't have to work that hard, given the Archetypes that we have. Clerics can do damage, but not a lot of 'high sudden damage to specific hurtboxes', so you can't necessarily just bring a ton of Clerics. Tanks are also slightly limited in this, so 'All Tanks and Clerics' would might manage but it wouldn't be easy. 'Almost all Fighters' has a different problem. Even if they are built tanky, Bleed and Poison and a few other things don't care about this, only Ultimate Defense meaningfully does. And Fighters probably don't naturally get much if any strong debuffs that are likely to work well on raid or even single-group bosses. It's more likely that their 'signature move' is the gap closer, and their role is actually damage. It's unlikely you'll need to worry about Fighters finding spots, but if you fill everything with them for 'more damage', you don't have 'enough' control. They have to stay 'below the hate line' established by the Tank, but they're not helping the Tank 'avoid losing hate to keep that hate line high' in most cases.
Which brings us back to the 'Rathalos'.
Poison. Burn AoE on the ground, relatively powerful bites (it's a very 'output heavy' enemy generally). You want this blinded. Maybe you want it Paralyzed so that it sometimes fails a full strength Fireball breath. You need someone (probably just the Tank though) to put the 'damage mitigation' on it. You probably want a Bard to keep the Tanks in a specific buff state and Summoners and Rangers to help keep the enemy in a specific debuff state (don't overwork your Bards!). Rogues and Fighters bring the damage, handle Adds of either the PvP or PvE variety, and target vulnerable hurtboxes to change the fight or disable enemy mechanics.
And you need the Mages (or certain Summoners) to stop it when it flies. If you don't have a Prismatic Beam to blast at its head, or a Black Hole to pull it down, then you have to 'endure' the flight stage (or hope your Tank or Cleric is good at hitting a moving head with some Flash ability) and the 'crash down' threat or whatever else. You could treat it like the Poison Dragon in Siege, and just have everyone 'be perfect and avoid the touchdown damage', but if it's now out of reach of melee and still fireballing and similar, the Tank now has to play much more Action. They're not doing damage (probably still have a Threat ability but maybe fewer that reach) but lose threat as they take damage. Augments help Tanks when their abilities can actually hit. Ever wondered why Tank doesn't just have a 'use this, get Threat unconditionally' ability yet? I don't.
If someone isn't on point, danger increases rapidly, and that gets 'worse' if the party comp isn't right. Or maybe not quite 'worse', because you could just, again, balance it. Fighters might just 'not care as much' about what is happening when it is flying, but they still lose some effectiveness. The fight takes longer, the group uses more mana to reach the same point as a more balanced group, etc. You can make do with any 'Trinity' combination, but you have a reason to at least seek out one of each, and even if that one doesn't have every ability you expect, they probably have something.
This isn't just 'a Rathalos thing'. This is a formula, it's why Monster Hunter works. I can do this for basically any enemy because Ashes is built for it.
Seems like you want more "reaction-based" encounters. I think Ashes is very likely to lean more in that direction than the heavy "script-based" combat of WOW/FFXIV.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
That depends on your definition of 'hard'. But the HP Pinata really isn't a necessary baseline, even in a PvPvE game. That's also a design relic.
Most games design open world bosses as a literal Tank. It takes a lot of punishment, swivels around its turret, and fires big shots or sometimes AoE shots. The 'correct' way is to make the boss into a moving Hazard Zone. When fighting in one group, your goal is to mitigate the Hazard. When PvP breaks out, your goal is to pull and knock the enemy INTO the hazard while staying out of it/not dying yourself.
And they already design things like this. The Ice Dragon (Father of Tundra) in the Alpha is basically only a threat in terms of it being a big 'hazard zone'. And sure, it has a lot of health, but not 'this is my only method of standing against you all'.
So if PvP happens, it's a scramble to reorient relative to the hazard space.
It's moreso that I'm saying 'that's how they already designed it'. I'm a Cleric so, to me everything is already a 'reaction based encounter', or maybe, again, it's just that FFXI and FFXIV are so different that I consistently overestimate the state of MMOs these days.
I've heard that WoW is heavily scripted like that and as a result never touched it. I've seen indications that FFXIV is so too (which is what spawned the Rathalos discussion to begin with, I'm still amazed at how lame the FFXIV side of that crossover is).
But I'm just not used to it. Endgame FFXI is at least 80% 'crazy reactive nonsense' and I play Monster Hunter because it is just the 'Action Combat evolution of that'. Dial some of that back and you get to where Ashes design is targeted.
If it doesn't turn out that way, complain, I'll be right with you.
Or another, far more arrogant way to put it... based on what you've seen would you play what I design? If you remove 'Intrepid' or 'Ashes' from the equation and it's me in Steven's place telling you 'this is how I want to build something, gimme Kickstarter money' (with the current 8 class thing), what, if anything, would make you 'stick to' the reaction of 'not expecting things to be interesting or hard'. What 'part would you be skeptical, that I couldn't do'?
Forgive me if I have not read all of your past posts and am not super familiar with you. Have you not played FFXIV or WOW? Are you a FFXI and Monster Hunter player mainly? I am a little confused.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
You could say that I am 'mainly' that player type. I don't play FFXIV or WoW. My friend who got into FFXIV after we stopped playing FFXI for a while told me not to bother, it was casual. I followed the debacle that came before the Realm Reborn, and just never bothered after that because they continued to tell me 'nah don't bother.
If you mean my posts outside of this thread, they're not required for the question. I only mean the ones in here, and even those just 'the ones after Rathalos is mentioned'.
Monster Hunter, FFXI, Elite Dangerous - AA+ games
Skyforge, Onigiri, Paladins, Paragon, SMITE - if they matter.
EDIT: Actually if you don't read my posts generally it's an irrelevant question and you can consider it retracted so as not to waste your time, you asked about reaction based encounters so I assumed you had. Shouldn't assume so much.
I am just trying to better understand you. I have played most of the games you have been talking about.
Which is why it was super confusing to hear you talk about the Rathalos fight in FFXIV as being disappointing. The fight was pretty much on par for it's expected difficulty tier in the game.
To answer your question though. I have no real problem with the content you discribed. Seems to work well for PvX. Always thought Monster Hunter would be better if it was 4v4 while fighting for Monster...
I do think that you should give the "scripted" raids a chance though. The difficulty is much harder than it sounds. Especially week one of a raid tier.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I actually don't have a problem with the difficulty, I just can't get into either game enough to get all the way there, and obv there's only so much time to play MMOs. That's kind of my point actually. 'Difficult' doesn't often mean 'interesting' to me. I should have separated it. My friend told me early on that the game was pretty casual and easy (again, before RR), then later on told me 'yeah it's better now but you still probably shouldn't bother'. I guess because they know my expectations.
The reason for mentioning the Rathalos was on the 'Hybrid Combat' front. Rathalos is disappointing in FFXIV not because it's necessarily easy (and since I have no idea what that is in FFXIV to a sufficient level, I wouldn't be able to tell), it's because a really dynamic monster got reduced to 'a big turret', based on every video of it I've seen. The 'Extreme' version did the opposite and tried to make the conditions of the battle 'exactly like Monster Hunter' but didn't change the monster (and apparently didn't understand that they needed to keep a specific part of the hate mechanics, or maybe none of the videos has anyone who understands 'hate' in Monster Hunter).
If WoW mastered the 'cool scripted raid' then we can hope that Ashes masters the 'Hazard Zone Free For All'.
Oh most definitely, but isn't that a great tradeoff? An action combat player in the Archer role might have a much easier time in PvE but then a much more difficult time in PvP (or at least have to change up their playstyle to compensate for this different type of target. Not everyone can be a master of everything and that's a good thing. It's also one of the fundamental principles of Ashes.
I will point to Vindictus. Literally the entire game is dungeons and raids. There are raids in every single area of the game, and each new set of raids that comes out brings new or varied mechanics to the table. There are mechanics such as what I described in my previous post, as well as shooting down an aerial target with a ballista, grappling a horn with a chain hook, pulling the correct lever to control which set of tracks this death train stays on, staying inside the radius of a reverse black hole until it flips and starts trying to pull you in, doing a jumping puzzle to get above the boss and knock something off onto it to take its shield down, etc etc etc.
You just haven't played any good raids in an action game, and that's not your fault. None of the good action combat games have good raids except Vindictus in my opinion (and honestly that might be objectively true as well).
I love when you have to practice a raid to beat it. If you can just win on your first try, that seems like bad raid design. It's cool when a raid takes a long time for anyone to figure out how to beat it too.
I agree with your first sentence, even though I'm also very open to a hybrid compromise. But what really perplexes me is your final sentence. Could you explain please? BDO was PvP focused and had no dungeon or raid content and that, in my opinion, is why it lost a lot of it's audience fairly fast. I for one made it through 1 year in the game and realized "holy crap this game has no point to it besides staying relevant in PvP".
It's probably a good idea to keep sharing your desire to have them. I also want very difficult raids as I stated above. We need more people asking for these features. I swear I remember a live stream where they talked about raid bosses and that they would be unique and challenging but maybe I'm mistaken.
This means that any PvE worth a damn is open world.
In Ashes, that means it is subject to PvP.
So, any PvE encounter in the game has to be designed where you can take it on while also taking on other players in PvP.
Any raid encounter that can be killed while you are also engaged in PvP is by necessity fairly boring if you are able to take it on without that PvP.
Basically, in an open world PvP game, the challenge with PvE mobs is the PvP around them.
The only way to add in PvE mobs that are good as PvE mobs is to remove that PvP element, which is not likely to be something Ashes does.
It will be akin to content from Archeage (one of Stevens biggest influences for this game). I spent many hours taking on a specific red dragon in that game, at times with hundred of players from each faction around, and often with everyone leaving without anyone having killed said dragon.
I've also killed it in a few minutes with a handful of players simply because there was no opposition.
The difference is, Vhaeyne and I are able to keep each other on track if we see the need.
When I've attempted to do the same with you in the past, you would claim that I am "losing" the discussion and try and go even further off track.
Have the boss lock the raid group in the room by growing some vines over the entrances or something so no one can get in after the raid is started. The raid group still has to fight their way out probably but it leaves them room to do interesting mechanics that might not be possible with enemy players attacking you too.
Have a pvpve raid where the boss phases out a raid party that has more alive members or some other metric. The phased out raid party has to do some sort of puzzle or kill something in the plane they get phased in order to get back. During the time the others are phased out or if there’s no other raid parties it does more complex mechanics.
Idk I just think there’s options to make pvpve dungeons and raids interesting in a variety of situations, if they are willing to get creative with it.
While this may indeed be possible, the question to ask then is - why would they?
Any game being released now has two options with raid content - either use your raid content to try and take raiders from other games, or don't.
Ashes is very clearly not trying to do that. I wish they were, and so do many thousands of raiders across various games that want something new.
In order to attempt to take that market share, a new game would need to have instanced raiding - this is a basic foundation of the content type needed to draw people away from other games.
We know Ashes won't have enough instanced raid content to be considered a progression system, so they won't be pulling raiders from other games.
This then leaves the obvious question - what is raid content even in Ashes for?
The answer to this is obvious - at least to me. Raid content in any game is an extension of the rest of the games content. The idea is that you take what you have been doing, add in more people, and carry on doing the same thing. In Ashes, rather than instanced dungeons being the thing people do, it has open dungeons. The idea here is that the content and layout of the dungeon are there to create flashpoints where players meet other groups, often resulting in PvP.
That is what raid content in Ashes is, it is there as a flashpoint. It is a thing to be fought over. It would go against what Ashes is to create a raid encounter that is not designed to be fought over.
As with many design decisions in a large game like Ashes, it isn't a case of what can be done, but what should be done to fit the game.
Obviously yes there will be less involved ones but to just assume all dungeons/raids will be super basic, minimal mechanics, stuff to account for the possibility of PvP, therefore becoming super boring encounters when there isn’t PvP is rather pessimistic.
I definitely agree that this might not be good enough to pull some higher end progression raiders, just because of the lack of tier gear to work towards, but I sure hope that doesn’t mean Intrepid says “screw it, we aren’t get high end raiders so our dungeons and raids have to all be boring, basic bosses without PvP occurring in them.” I just don’t feel like they would do that.
When I posted my previous post, I thought this may have been the response I got, as I saw that I didn't do an overly good job of explaining a specific point.
While Intrepid could have a shuttered off piece of content, and we have discussed it many times in the past (and I have been in favor of it in the past, as well), the question then becomes - why?
If Intrepid are not aiming the game at PvE raiders, people that appreciate and enjoy solid, well scripted PvE encounters, then why would they add such an encounter to the game?
It isn't necessarily a case of whether they could or not, or whether or not it fits in to the game, it is more a case of whether it fits in to what the bulk of Ashes players want.
If there is the desire in the Ashes population for well scripted PvE encounters, then they would have to add them to the game properly. If there is no desire for them, then they shouldn't add them at all as it will just be a frustration to those that are not fond of that content type, yet then would find themselves having to take it on.
Since Ashes is not focused on that market, I don't see there being the desire at all.
I don't mind it.
These conversations give me something to do on downtime during a 12-hour shift.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Just seems like a waste to me, and I hope they go a more interesting route than what you expect. They are already talking about bosses changing dynamically based on various aspects of your groups play throughout the dungeon. It definitely sounds like they want to make interesting experiences to me, and I don’t see why that experience can’t include boss room mechanics that let them stretch what interesting/difficult/thoughtful boss mechanics they can include in a world of PvPvE content.
I certainly can understand your “but why would they” mindset, but I hope you are wrong.
A game can't just have open world content and then throw in a closed off top end encounter on par with games that have full instanced progression. Encounters like that need progression in working up to them - and developers need practice at making encounters for the game to be able to make one as specific and detailed as a top end encounter (this is why MMO content often gets better as games progress - developers get better at making it).
At best, they could add an early-to-mid-tier encounter to that situation - which is about all they would want to add anyway in a game without top end raiders.
It'll probably be boring for the competitive instanced progression raider to some extent. But who knows, Intrepid could surprise us with the quality of a dungeon or two by launch.
If the game takes off after launch and money keeps rolling in, pve content, as well as all content quality should get better over time.
Also, what do you guys think can and can't work in an MMO/AoC based on the video?
Oh, for sure. PvP will be a thing, and will be where the interest and challenge of the game is.
That's the point though. PvP will be where the interest and challenge of the game is.
If the game takes off and does well, they will make more of the same. If the game is doing well on content where the interest and challenge comes from PvP, the new content they add will have the interest and challenge come from PvP.
It would be really weird for a game that is doing well on content where the interest and challenge of the game is from PvP to then go and make content where the interest and challenge of the game is from PvE. At the absolute most, that content will be a sub-standard example of the content type that is a side-show to the actual game - much as PvP in WoW is a sideshow.
As far as the cannons and such I could see them using ballistas, which already exist, to target it’s head that could have a different hit box that deals more damage or leads to a stun. Or maybe crystals that a mage can cast its prismatic beam through for increased damage.
Could have the boss leave the ground and need to damage it with ballistas to bring it back down to the ground so it’s not a skippable mechanic.
Pvpve interactions could be something causes mobs to spawn that attack the ballista/beam users, so it requires you to have the raid group split up. One party stays on the groups, the other parties split off. If there’s another raid in the area maybe the mobs don’t spawn as much or at all.
Causes a situation where if you know you’re the only group really farming the area you bring more tanks to off tank the adds attacking the ballista areas, or maybe it’s a hotly contested dungeon/raid so you bring more healers/disrupters. Could need to lighten up the ballista guards to help bottleneck the entrance to prevent players from coming in.
I’m not sure if I missed any other mechanics, I did skip around the video, but all of the regular boss mechanics I saw certainly seemed more than doable, with some already existing on the dragons in alpha in some sense.
What can't work in AoC based on the video is what is in the video.
You can't have content like that when other players can attack you. An encounter like that would never be killed - and an encounter like that is still not even close in terms of the communication and teamwork needed for a top end MMO raid encounter.