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
I mean, I never said in that post you quoted that I thought you were saying that an arena would be a part of progression - yet you assumed that is what I said.
As to your comment about most open PvP encounters being small scale ganks, I disagree.
I played Archeage for several years. In that time, I was involved in small scale PvP a handful of times (less than once a month).
I was involved in large scale PvP (10v10 up to about 500v200v150) every day I played other than a period where I was the only pirate on the server.
Ashes is very much geared towards large scale PvP in the open world, not small scale. Small scale will exist, but there will be a lot more PvP happen that is a result of caravans, guild or node wars and sieges than there will be small scale PvP.
I mean you tried to imply that I claim that pvp players will dominate servers or something. Maybe I red it poorly, happens. Not first language.
On the go part however, you promoted players who do world pvp as true pvp at expense of people who like arenas and later associated yourself with first group while expressing somewhat akin to contempt to the later. That's an ego trip gibberish. Not sure how else I should sum it up.
Not my experience with lineage II. I mean good old let the mob do the last hit :>
Later wotlk wow if someone is attacking in you in open world it either number advantage or level advantage.
Fun times too, holy pala, lets waste your time as you intend to waste mine.
Also my experience that past opening rotation people generally have no idea what to do. Hence from where my impression of world pvpers to be somewhat bad. But as I've mentioned perhaps that's just reflection of average mechanics of MMO player in general. Not that high. Neither the games focuses on it much.
So you'd be fine with removing world pvp outside of these specific set of events? Or even equalizing syncing power of the players in those events?
Hah, just being facetious here. I don't think you would.
Although I have to agree with small scale ganking. Corruption system is a simple yet brilliant idea on behalf of Steven. I would still like to see bounty hunter tracker though.
MMO's have progressed a lot since then.
PvP MMO's have had three distinct generations since L2 - not much from that game still applies.
Well, I hope so. And that's a thing both of us can agree on, I suppose. The game which favors grieving other players while providing no recourse on behalf of ones who get whacked is not sustainable on the long run, at last not on the scale of populated MMO. You do not want player vs player aggression to take root (character vs character fine).
I'm worried how strict the moderation of the game will have to be. But hopefully the preventative systems like corruption will make world pvp only viable / incentivized in your mentioned scenarios. Among other things I do see arena as a place to vent and to promote honorable conduct as players. Even if that means robotically writing /gf in dms after the encounter.
I do not care about gear thru Arena. If you read my first post very carefully it says GUILD WARS 2 MODEL
GW2 when you enter an arena/instanced pvp you are like on a test realm. You pick your gear and spec in that realm. When you leave the instanced relam you are back to whatever level gear you have
In other words, it is literally a different game packaged in the real game.
This isn't a selling point like you seem to think it is. It is literally adding an additional system to the game that requires specific support, and brings nothing at all to the game as a whole - other than pulling players out of the game proper.
It would be bad enough just instancing off an arena, that in itself makes it worth considering making this a stand alone thing rather than a part of the game. However, with what you are talking about now, even your character isn't needed in this arena suggestion of yours. This means that the actual game is superfluous to the arena, and the arena is superfluous to the actual game.
As such, there is no reason at all to package them together.
You're romanticizing a form of PvP you are biased towards...
Thats a rough example. You get absolutely stomped in WvW in that fresh gear. And in any case how is that fair to the team you play with as well? "Heres a complete noob who has no practice playing their class that just decided to jump into scaled up PvP. Good luck" That was rough in WvW pugs
Edit: I wouldn't be completely against this if there was a separating "Ranked" Arena mode where you had to use a character you have progressed to endgame and geared yourself. That way when it "Mattered" you wouldn't need to worry about getting grouped in with a freshy testing out a character.
I really hope we can't queue up and be teleported anywhere, ever. That stuff is disgusting.
You've been around here long enough to know that any bias I may have is likely to be against open PvP, not for it - or at the very least any bias I may have would be towards restrictions to open PvP in specific situations.
Rather than discussing things based on what I want in the game, I am discussing them based on what I see laid out in front of me.
Thats fair enough, but to say one type is the super hardcore and one isnt nearly so, thats a bias. I have played in both types and love them each for different reasons, and both are difficult for differing reasons. They also have a great crossover because arena teaches more class specific fights and abilities which carry over to large scale fighting and timing abilities, while large scale puts more emphasis on communication and synergy
I'm not saying this isn't true, I am saying that an arena akin to what is being talked about here is not overly fitting for this game.
If you look at the most recent suggestion, having to even be logged in to the game on your account is a formality. There is no need to use your character you've created and leveled.
The suggestion is literally for a stand alone fighting game using Ashes combat system.
Yea I argued against that and would rather have arenas where you have to use your character and the gear made/earned through the game
- On one side having an instanced pvp where everything is available is nice and balanced for people that don't want to play 20+ hours a week. Gives casuals access and fairer competition.
- On the other side this is an MMORPG not a lobby game, perhaps MOBAs would be better for the casual crowd. You want to invest time in getting good armour etc so you can be stronger in PvP
I think I go more towards the 2nd opinion personally as I don't see it being an E-sports kind of game but more MMORPG and it then feels like your investments are worth it. However I would try to keep the gaps between the levels of gear small.
Castle sieges may be quite similar.
Arena's could potentially be more hard instanced with queues.
Open world PvP is open world PvP.
You will have to sign up for gated events like node sieges, castle sieges etc. They will have a time and date that they will occur at giving the teams times to prepare.
There will be a gated system post fight preventing nodes from being continuously attacked.
IE: cant be attacked or declaration for attack for X amount of days. Maybe wont be able to attack for X amount of days depending on design goals.
Creating places / settings / environments for people to hang out in their in game avatars is huge part of MMOs. That's what gives the sense of world being alive. Folk dueling at the gates of the city, folk meming in the central square.
For grindfest to be a viable sustaining model you need hard server reboots which wipes character progression clean. Good example is PoE. If that's not an option, when the game must provide venues for people to hang out to justify them sticking around.
And to instill sense of belonging making those sieges feel like they have stakes. Ultimately MMO is about as good as the social interactions it manages to facilitate. And there are obviously more than way to do that, however, the grind loop runs out. Either of content of people's patience.
Having those places is the opposite of it being a lobby game if that's what you mean....Lobby gamne means queing and playing
You aren't adding to the game worlds sense of being alive if you are off hiding in an instance.
It is also worth noting that any argument for instanced PvP existing in any meaningful way is also an argument for instanced PvE existing in that same meaningful way.
a very worthy and correct offer!
Not being rude at all. When I say you are an open book I mean it quite literally. You have over 6,500 posts on this forum. If I wanted to know your opinion of pineapple on pizza I could probably find it in your post history.
Nobody is preventing someone as prolific as you from writing your opinion down except for you, but I’ll indulge you anyways. I think you believe that instanced PvP will detract from the core game in some meaningful way. Whether that is you believe people will avoid open world PvP in favor of instanced PvP, or you believe that the mere existence of it will have some measurable impact on the amount of open world PvP available to you. I believe this is your argument because there is literally no other sensible argument to made and I think you are a sensible person. See that? A compliment.
At the end of the day neither of us will have any empirical evidence to support our claims, we will agree to disagree, and this argument will happen again and again until the end of MMOs.
So argueing for such a thing to be included in AoC, whose designers have stated that want a continues world instead of fragmented gameplay options, is wrongto begin with.
This is just not that game. One day it could be, months/years after launch. If the gameplay loop gets stale and the devs have trouble keeping it fresh while at the same time keeping to their original vision (open world, non instanced, effort is rewarded, no free ride etc). Then maybe they might start trying alternative forms of content, like instanced pvp. That's a big if though. And it's not happening at launch.
Intrepid isn't going through all this work of creating a massive open world, risk vs reward, node system with city sieges, contesting of resources, contesting of dungeons, just to water it down with instanced content. They have specifically said they are not doing that. It's literally one of their main selling points. Not only are they not doing it, they openly talk about how they think it's bad game design and is what's wrong with mmos today.
Instanced arenas (and I think castle sieges, for obvious reasons) are the one form of instanced pvp they've said they'll do. And they might be cross server. I would expect that the gear you have is the gear you will use in them. They have directly stated they want effort and work in the game to be rewarded.
My primary argument against arena PvP in Ashes depends on the way in which a person is asking for it to be implemented.
There is a suggestion of an arena in which you enter, select your class and build and then just get a gear pack and fight.
This kind of arena is better suited to being a stand alone game, rather than a part of an MMORPG. Such a system will need specific balancing that is unique to it in order for it to function as desired - meaning either the developers need to alter the game proper to accommodate this (unacceptable), or they need to run a specific ruleset for this arena type.
With this latter option, there then becomes absolutely no reason to have this exist as a part of an MMO. You are not using your character, your gear, or the games combat system - so it should only ever exist as a stand alone product.
Then you have the people wanting an in game arena in a game with open world PvP. My argument to these people is that any such arena is inevitably going to be sub-par (as was the case in Archeage).
In a game like Ashes, there will always be PvP around. You don't need to go anywhere to get your fix, as your fix will come and get you.
As such, people don't really use the arena to just PvP.
Since the core of the suggestion necessitates that the arena not directly offer any rewards, people won't use it for that end.
This leaves two types of people that use the arena - those that care about the ladder (there were about 12 such players in Archeage when I left - across all servers), and those that run the arena because it has daily quest rewards.
We have already essentially voted daily tasks out of Ashes, so that group of people shouldn't exist - and even if it did that is a fairly weak basis for including a specific feature (add this feature so that you can add daily quests so that people will use this feature - wtf?).
This leaves the arena only really for those people that want an arena with a ladder to climb. That is an incredibly minority audience, and if that arena is not to their liking they absolutely will go to another game - one that is made specifically for people to fight each other in order to climb a ladder system.
But sure, open book, not wanting it because it will detract people from the core game, whatever...
I forgot to mention that military nodes should have more arenas / colosseums than other types of nodes. They would probably be used a lot in military nodes, so it would be better to have multiple of them. Maybe even allow neighboring nodes under its zone of influence to build more of them which also encourages people to visit these nodes, and not only the metropolis.
This actually just made me think of something! What if instance PvP was unlockable through military nodes? That way the only reason it would be around is if there was a community active enough for it to be viable? Hence its relevancy would be justified. Otherwise if there isn't that many players focused on it, it won't even be implemented by that servers community. It would likely require some form of progression or reward to make it at least somewhat enticing, maybe titles and aesthetics?
This is how I think an arena should be implemented in Ashes - I also think it should only be available to citizens of the node, it's vassals and parent, or by specific invitation to your character.
If we are talking about an arena that players build, that cost time and resources to build, that allows for a ladder system with rules that can be set for each arena, where you use your character and all of it's progression and that has no rewards outside of that ladder system, I'm down.
This would work over a standard arena because of two things.
One, players that built it will use it - this is basic human psychology. The more something costs you, the more you value it.
And two, these arenas will be temporary - there will be times when a given player has no access to an arena, and there will even be times when a given server may not have an arena at all.
The notion of this arena type not being instanced also adds to the novelty of getting your turn for a fight in it, increasing it's usage.
(new guy here) Have they said anything regarding power creep in pvp with max geared wrecking noobs or will it be templated off or will it be a mixture of both to where they use a scaling system to keep it reasonably fair?
It is not a way to permanently increase arena usage by itself. The plan is for gear to be less of a factor than it is in other games.
It's highly unlikely that instanced arenas will be helping gear progression.
Also seems unlikely that it will be possible for max geared people to be wrecking noobs in instanced PvP.