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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Bring a bunch of x/Clerics focused on Life School augments and maximize Critical Hit rate & Health Regeneration and Mana Regeneration Passive Skills if the group is concerned about Health.
But, it's really all about the group improving the quality of how they synergize with each other - more than it is on playing an individual meta build. Gear can help with that.
If you go to actual extremes, then sure, it works - but it also causes people to not play your game. It will have this second effect long before it has the first.
So terms of all things practical, it doesn't work. All it does is see guilds go out and get better gear, which in a game like Ashes will always be available. By the time you exhaust that gear availability, you have lost your raid players anyway. This is only true in a technical sense.
I have seen many encounters that are trivial in terms of the actual encounter, but even when they are 50 levels below you will cause a wipe if you make a single mistake on the mechanics. This isn't universally true, it isn't even true half the time, but there are indeed encounters that are literally trivial in terms of damage output and such, but that have mechanics that will just kill you if you mess up.
This isn't overly relevant to the discussion, but I consider it worth pointing out. There is one main problem with this definition, as I see it.
It is that you then need to define that point in time.
If we define it as 15 minutes after the servers go live, then 0% of the population can beat the encounter. If you pick a point in time that is 9 - 12 months after the games launch, then sure, you may have that single digit percent able to kill the encounter, but then as more and more guilds gear up, that number gets higher and higher. When that number gets high enough, the statement of "There will be some in-depth raiding that has multiple stages that will be extremely difficult and... It would definitely be in the single digits of population that will be capable of defeating certain content" is just no longer true.
It was true, but then ceases to be true ass more people get better gear and kill that content. It makes that statement exactly as true as the statement that the game has content that no one can kill, as at that point in time 15 minutes after launch, no one was able to kill those top end raid encounters.
I think there's a really solid chance that we only see fights like what I'm describing. Mechanically uninteresting fights that do a lot of damage and have a lot of health in an open-world setting. Something for players to squabble over. These fights would force players to either get more gear (which takes a non-linear amount of time), get better builds, or get better at the game, all of which meet Intrepid's design goals as I understand them.
This just isn't what I want.
If you're under the impression that this wouldn't meet Intrepid's own goals, then you're probably also under the impression that this isn't likely to be what we end up with, right?
This is also relevant to the original conversation with Okeydoke - I'm saying that having this sort of content makes Okeydoke's stance reasonable because it makes it jive with Intrepid's vision, which was one of your points here:
"A considered opinion would then also need to account for Intrepids, statements that they want a raiding scene that is tiered, and that has encounters that are difficult to the point where only a single digit percentage of the population would be able to kill them"
Yeah, and presumably, you have to repeat the mechanic multiple times during the encounter - say every 60s or so? So if it takes you 630s to kill the boss, you have to successfully perform the mechanic 10 times, but if your raid does more dps, and you kill the boss in 470 seconds, you only have to perform the mechanic 7 times. Getting something correct 7 times in a row is easier than getting it correct 10 times in a row.
Getting something correct when all of your raid is at full HP, or when your tank is barely taking damage and you can focus on just the mechanic is easier than when everyone is dying and needs to be triaged. Having gear makes doing mechanics easier! You can definitely design encounters where gear doesn't matter at at all. I haven't seen them in practice. At the very worst, having better gear doesn't hurt.
Yup, over time the number of players able to defeat the content will be in flux. I don't consider this to be a "problem", though. As the general population starts to out-gear the hardest content, you introduce a new tier of raiding or bump the numbers up.
Once you hit the soft-cap for how effective your gear can be (getting 10% more DPS out of your gear might take your raid another year of farming because they're at near-BiS gear), you can still raise the health of the encounter by another 20%. That 20% has to come from somewhere, and it's not coming from gear anytime soon. Now it has to come from skill or optimizing their builds at the raid-level.
Again, this is not what I want. I just think that there's a really solid chance that this is what we'll get, and that this is, more or less, what exists in other games (bosses are huge HP sponges with few mechanics, and "harder" bosses just do more damage and have more health). The "harder" bosses are only able to be defeated by a small percentage of the player base at any point in time.
A lot of folks would think it would be really cool to fight over these sorts of bosses, or grind money to buy better equipment to move up the ladder to contest "harder" bosses. Winning the contest gets you boss mats to sell/forge equipment to do it again. Are the bosses mechanically interesting? No. Are few players able to defeat them? Yes. Are the bosses tiered? Yes. Is this what I want? No no no.
I understand thinking that this is what we will end up with in Ashes. However, I don't think it is what we will end up with.
My reasons for that are twofold.
First, a number of the people that developed what I consider some of the best encounters I have ever participated in now work at Intrepid. That is the #1 reason I am even paying any attention to this game.
Second, Steven has seen that kind of content first hand in Archeage, and seen what a total letdown it is to the entire community.
When you take these two things in to consideration together, I see no excuses for that being what Ashes ends up with. They know it isn't good content (even if a few people that have not participated in it think it "would be fun"), and they have the development experience and talent to do far better.
I am left with no imaginable excuses as to why that could be what Ashes ends up with,
for example, if a metropolis has, lets say, a 80% max character level populating it. a world boss (nearly impossible to defend against) would show up to attack structures and work stations. but not only for that metropolis but local communities as well. making you responsible for your neighbors and in not doing so can tarnish your reputation with them and create new conflicts. replenishing the PVP content in a more natural fashion.
cause then you can raid enemy territories for their resources and rebuild your communities. or if you only fix your own metropolis and dont help your neighbors, they can choose to raid you with the help of your enemies you previously raided.
Nuttie
Sweet, sounds like we're more or less on the same page. Unpacking a little bit - do you believe that you can believe someone is "wrong" while simultaneously believe that their position is "reasonable"? As in, you might have different priors or information than they do (maybe you know more than them), and once you understand the information they're working with, you understand how they came to the conclusion that they came to.
You might still think that they came to the wrong conclusion (because they lack some crucial info), but you understand how they got there, and how they got there makes sense.
Here, I think that info is your lived experience with your favorite raid encounters, the knowledge of who designed those encounters, the knowledge that those folks now work at Intrepid, the knowledge that Steven experienced lackluster encounters like what I described above in Archeage (I didn't know this is how Archeage played out), etc.
If Okeydoke lacked that information and their position was along the lines of "I don't think we need mechanically complex encounters in Ashes, and I also don't think it's likely that we'll get them", I totally see how, with the info you have, you think they're totally wrong. Do you see how that position is, on the other hand, reasonable?
Maybe after you divulge that information and they don't update their position (plenty of stubborn folks on the internet), then it would no longer be reasonable.
I never had an issue with the position held - I don't know how I could have an issue with it, as I have no idea what position it was that was actually held. I had (and still have) an issue with the lack of willingness to discuss it.
As it stands now, I still have no idea what their actual position is, other than not wanting instanced content which was never even being debated.
There is no point in me talking abou9t everything leading to my position in order to understand a differing position, or to try and reach common ground. As I had no idea what their actual position was, I had no idea at all what single piece of information could have caused them to have the opinion they have.
Perhaps after some discussion, that piece of information that we differed on would have become apparent (as was the case in the economic discussion recently).
Again, this is why I was trying to engage that person in discussion. It may have been that I had a piece of information they didn't, or that they had a piece of information I didn't. Until we actually discussed things - specifically how it is that we have come to the opinions that we each have - there is literally no way to even know which of us is missing a piece of information, let alone what that information could be.
The problem with this is that it isn't really end game content.
An MMO - any MMO - needs to appeal to players of other MMOs. You attract PvP players to your MMO, as an example, by making a game that people that want to PvP in an MMO would enjoy playing. You don;t make a PvP MMO in order to attract people that enjoy 4x games, nor do you make a crafting system in an MMO based on attracting PvP only players.
I hope this is a logical and obvious fact.
As such, if you are making an MMO with end game content, you want that content to be attractive to players that play end game content in MMO's. This is exactly the same thing as making PvP to attract PvP players.
One of the key things that MMO players that participate in top end content want from top end content in an MMO, is the ability for things to be organized.
I want to be able to tell my guild that we are participating in content on the same three nights a week, and on those three nights we will absolutely have something enjoyable to do that requires all of us to be there.
That way, my guild members can plan other aspects of their life (study, family, sports, what ever), and know that they won't be missing out on anything in game.
Now, having content in a game like what you are talking about is great. In fact, it is something that Ashes is already going to have.
However, it is not end game content.
kinda confusing train of thought but i think im picking up what your putting down.
but i think your overly fixated on the PvP aspect of my post. the topic was for end-game PvE content, this event was specifically for maxed nodes with a majority of capped players residing in that node. say the node was by the sea and if this event was triggered a hydra spawned from the ocean. and after so much damage a head would fall off but it wouldnt die, just continue to wreak havoc at a faster pace (because there are more heads) among your node and nearby nodes. gatherers can harvest the head for crafting materials sell it to those with processing expertise then sold to the craftsmen who make the top tier gear. everyone involved from the PvE players to the craftsmen would need to be in that end game stage to achieve favorable results.
i just put the PvP in there to show that even tho this is a PvE event it can still be relevant to the PvP gamer.
as for your comment on having your guildmates participating. this wouldn't be something that sporadically happens. in the ocean node i mentioned above, you can have subtle hints by certain npcs. for example 24 hours before the event the fishermen could complain about the fish disappearing, 12 hours in says something like "the waters are awfully calm" then an hour before the event it changes again to "i got a bad feeling."
the first couple of times nobody will expect a thing and the event will be a complete surprise. but over time the people will become more aware and can coordinate better. and with every node having its own end-game PvE event like this. with different specifically unique resource to collect from each node, more types of end-game items can be crafted. the end-game content can be its own adventure all together.
If you are making PvP content in a game, you design it to appeal to a PvP audience.
if you are making top end content in a game, you design it to appeal to a top end audience. One of the key aspects of this is that there needs to be some organization - to pend guilds run content on a schedule.
You can't have an effective 40 person raid if you don't know well before hand when that raid will be needed. If you do not know when it will be needed, you take just who ever you have along with you.
Again, this is fine as content in general, but it is not top end content.
You don't ask 40 people in your guild to schedule their life around NPC fishermen (which Ashes will not have) complaining about fish disappearing. I am not going to ask my guilds tank to tell his wife that he can't go to her sisters birthday because there is some unscheduled content about to happen in a game. Nor am I going to ask my top healer that she can't pick her child up from sports practice for that same reason.
People have lives, and a games content should be able to fit around those lives - not the other way around.
If top end content can not happen on players schedule (at least in terms of PvE content), then the game will not appeal to a top end PvE audience.
If by timed content you mean mechanics similar to WoW's rage timers, I totally agree.
correct me if im wrong but isnt that how siege events work? when an enemy initiates a siege it starts the next day or somthing, so people have a chance to be part of it?
the node system in ashes really doesn't allow for typical "end-game" content especially with PvE. because dungeons are unlocked as nodes level up. and as they level up they lock neighboring nodes from leveling. you need to bring down high level nodes in order to unlock other dungeons. if the end-game content was limited to specific territories then it would polarize players to keep those specific nodes maxed and kill the entire node system. where as an event like this would not only weaken high level nodes encouraging a siege, it would give people who are more interested in the gathering/processing/crafting a sense of calling. and you would have more caravan events, reopened lower level dungeons that could be helpful to other players in that node. as neighboring nodes get locked at level 3, and the main metropolis proceeds to 6. some players can find themselves in an awkward place being to high for the level 3 node and to low to level up in the level 6 metropolis.
it doesnt need to be as specific as an npc warning about the fish going missing. an npc that appears deranged can directly warn the mayor of impending doom to their node.. there's a lot of ways the system can warn about an attack.
and ashes dungeons arn't instanced so you can have 40 people or 400 people raid. also i wouldn't ever suggest that games are more important then real life.. if you don't have time to join the raid then your shyt outta luck. you wait for the next event to happen. this would apply the same to sieges.
also also >.> once people understand the trigger they can better organize for the event and intentionally set it in motion. would be more predictable then a siege, that's for sure. although hopefully not at first. i personally wouldnt mind a surprise like this. it may not be the greatest feeling to be set back but in the long run, i think it would do more for the community then to just have yet another PvE dungeon that is unlocked at a level 6 node.
"You don't ask 40 people in your guild to schedule their life around NPC fishermen (which Ashes will not have) complaining about fish disappearing." what a joke of a comment XD
I'm unsure why you would think this is the case.
The node system will mean the content itself will change, but that is about it. That is a good thing.
A node gets up to metropolis level, and some specific content is made available. We run that content, get as much out of it as we feel we can, and then start thinking about sieging a node in order to alter the content. From my perspective, this is the single biggest reason to organize a siege on a metropolis.
The entire concept of levels and level dungeons is a non-starter, as the surrounding nodes will all have level appropriate content for all.
Gatherers and crafters already have a purpose. Almost all gear in the game will be player made, ships, furniture, buildings etc. There is no lacking in purpose for these people.
I am aware it doesn't need to be a specific NPC, and the NPC is not the part I have an issue with. I thought I was very, VERY clear when I said that the content type you are talking about will be in the game, and that is great, but it is not top end content.
Top end content requires guilds be able to plan. We need to know that we have content this week, but we also need to be able to fairly safely assume that we will have three nights worth of content 6 months from now, and that content should be available to us on the nights we want it.
No matter how you spin it, your suggestion is simply not something that can be planned ahead for. I can't tell my guild members to keep Thursday every week free because this mob of yours is going to spawn every week - because we don't know it will spawn every week.
Even Archeage, for all it's many, many PvE failings, knew it's top end content was something that players needed to be able to plan around, and that this was a non-negatable fact.
It is interesting you mention sieges here, as well. There are two types of sieges that a top end guild will care about, metropolis, and castle.
Castle sieges will happen at the exact same time every week. The first three weeks the siege will be against a supporting node, and the fourth will be against the castle. These times are set by Intrepid, so any top end guild wanting to own a castle can just make sure that the castle siege time is one of the time slots they set aside for players to be online.
A metropolis siege is a little different. While the time slot is going to be fairly strongly set in place, the day of the week will not be. However, a metropolis siege has a 5 day declaration period, so me and my guild will know when a siege is going to happen 5 days ahead of time, giving everyone enough time to plan what they need to, or let us know they won't be available.
And this is a PvP event, not PvE content. As such, it is a given that you won't have full control over exactly when these things will happen. However, with PvE content, especially content involving many people, those people should have 100% control over when they take on content.
Raids I'm kinda against any of those being instanced. Since fighting over them is a natural evolution of MMO design especially in this kind of game. Especially if they make them Big labyrinths that are hard to gank kill in.
The instanced dungeons are just to have some end game pvm content that is completely removed from the pvp, but at that cost is the hardest content in the game. Made to mimick those super hard D&D challenge campaign maps. Small scale numbers wise, but made to stretch possibility.
Raids generally are probably going to be hard enough so you can't do them with a party wailing on you at least. Which I'd be against them being open world if the raids/dungeons weren't so damn big. Them being huge though adds some strategy to it. Which I'm fine with, but I'd still like a player limit inside the dungeon so you can't zerg down whoever is trying to complete it. Doesn't gotta be even, but I think the attackers should be at a disadvantage to those who started it first. To offset the ridiculous advantage it is to walk in on someone doing a boss. There's got to be a way to win as the defenders otherwise it's not going to be fun.
It's not very good design if it's an auto lose if you are caught doing a boss after all. Forcing the attackers to be a smaller number makes it more fun for both sides though. Since now you have to dictate champions to represent larger guild alliances and such. Not just run down the entire dungeon and be boring like every other mmo that has this kind of thing does.
It rewards skill this way. Giving the defenders a chance versus obviously way bigger armies in this way would discourage sending entire armies to a raid to begin with. Puts more people on the world map to do other things. Which is more interesting than rewarding zerging. xD Puts the armies back on the world map to do more seiges.
I just wanted to recite those points cuz they are kind of important. They basically decide if this system even works or not. Also removes completely unfair situations from the game and turns them into plusses for the game. I don't really care what anyone says they aren't going to want to spend 1 to 8 hours doing a huge dungeon. Just to get run over by a hardcore neckbeard army with absolutely no chance of winning whatsoever. During a pvp situation that you will most likely not even be ready for the pvp to even happen to begin with. More interesting if the attackers have to send multiple waves to take down a good defender raid.
Probably proposed this idea somewhere else before too. xD However, it's just too good not to consider. You can lose in the game to some unfair things and it can be fine. However, when they are so unfair they compromise the integrity of the game is what I have a problem with.
Also no dailies and no timed content.
I probably agree with most things that don't directly oppose my points. Thus why I generally don't reply to them. I like them sometimes though. xD
U.S. East
Why is it a natural evolution of this type of MMO that all raid content be fought over, but not all group content?
Raids should be 8-20 players with Normal/Hard/Elite modes that of course would only change cosmetic features of the items acquired. So when you see that 1 guy rolling up on you from over the hill you know exactly what they've achieved.
I really like what you said about needing to "do" something in order to engage the difficulty levels and I agree, interacting with a dialogue box to choose is boring. I also don't think it should be as easy as "light those 4 suspiciously burned out torches around the sacrifice altar" with a click of your mouse. Figuring out a puzzle is fun. There was a traveling goods vendor back in the swamp that sells "suspicious tinder" to kick off the hard mode fight which adds a kited skeleton mob or/and abilities to the boss fight etc.
As an OG WoW player the problem with WoW, all the raids are beaten in pre-patch and have guides made for everyone to use. So I'm really looking for that discovery aspect, and I think many people would love that. Since there could potentially be any number of variables with the node system, there could be any number of changes to raids. Easy to say that, knowing how much more work/effort would need to be allocated for such feats.
If you play a game by a good developer (such as SoE in years gone by - I pass no judgement on them now), then you always had content.
I spent 10 years or so playing EQ2 at the highest level. In that time, there were only ever periods of a few weeks at a time between the first kill of the last mob of a piece of content, and the next piece of content being released that was above it.
Quite often, the next tier of content was released before anyone had even killed the previous tier.
I totally agree with you in the notion that playing a game with tiered content is a poor experience if you are able to finish one tier before the next tier is ready - which is the experience most players have of tiered raiding content. I just disagree with you in pointing to tiered content as being at fault here - as I consider it the fault of the developer of games that does not have new content ready at a reasonable pace.
It honestly makes me wonder - EQ2 and WoW released within a month of each other. There is no doubt at all that WoW had more people playing it - yet EQ2 had more content developed for it.
I just don't get why WoW players would put up with that.
Yeah, that is another thing I don't understand WoW players putting up with.
They waited two or three times as long for content, and then when it arrived, it was not as good as the content in a game that is getting far more content, with far fewer players.
Thanks for pointing out that I missed this specific fact.
The only way you could consider WoW raids to be the best are if they are the only real raids you have been on. Anyone that has played either EQ, Rift or Age of Conan (and by what I have heard, FFXIV - though I have not played that game personally, and the raid size is too small imo), you would be left with the opinion that WoW raids are - at best - average. There are some good encounters, some not so good encounters, and basically every other game has good and not so good encounters as well, and WoW's raids in general simply do not stand out.
On the other hand, if your experience is WoW, ESO, either GW game, LotRO, DDO, EVE, Runescape, Aion, Secret World, Archeage, Tera, Wildstar etc, then yeah, among those games, WoW raids really stand out.
Games with an "endgame" tend to be the end of my playing once I get there. Once you get to the endgame, as in WoW, you see folks standing around all the time showing how fancy their costume is whenever they get tired of doing the same few dungeons over and over or kill the final boss. I end up getting a character of each race and skill to top level and often never even do those final dungeons as they are boring to me. Once I have levelled every class and every race to max on at least one character each, then I quit and go to another game. Endgame is just a total waste of time to me and lacks fun.
So, what do I like (and AoC seems to be delivering)? More like life. You have an evolving world you live in as a fighter, a crafter, a gatherer, a healer, a tradesman, an innkeeper. Whatever your level do what you can to succeed in that world with whatever type of character you are. Want to change your life a bunch? You can start a new totally different character and try a different life. You always were a tank fighting all the time? Try being an inn keeper and successfully running that business and getting along with whomever comes to control your node at the moment. Try being the best gatherer of exotic materials there is in the game. Or, simply keep your character but leave your guild and go to a new area to you and try settling into that. Whenever bored, change your life and try something new. There is no end that way and I and many others won't leave as soon as we hit endgame. Endgame really is the end of the game for many players.
Long ago I just started scrolling through watching for anything that had nothing to do with two names. Sure made the trip a lot quicker and more interesting. Your comment is the best I have seen in this thread in many pages.
This notion of ene game you have here is fairly exclusive to WoW.
It isn't really representative of the end game of all MMO's.