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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
100% disagree, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Question Did you play DAoC George?
Bonus points for being the first one to actually read and answer to the OP's post. You made me wait until the second page of the thread.
@Schmuky
Firstly, when you say BiS, do you mean literally the best items in the game, which are supposed to be super rare legendaries which are unique on a server. I assume by BiS you rather mean the best "normal" set of gear a player can reasonably get. Also, with the current plan of Ashes you don't just get the best gear, but you also sink resources into maintaining it, and eventually break it when you greed too hard with enchanting. All these together already make it so that a player is never really "done" with their gear.
The main problem I see with your idea is that it directly clashes with the idea of "crafters make the best shit". In the link, Steven eloquently gives his perspective from the crafters side, but I want to highlight the community aspect more. When crafted gear is BiS, these are the social/economic connections that need to be in place for the end game items to exist:
- Crafter capable of making the item.
- Processor capable of making the refined materials.
- Gatherer capable of harvesting the raw materials.
- Guild capable of contesting for the rights to kill/harvest the source for the materials.
Because guilds will need the best gear for the best chance of success at step 4, this is now a self sustaining loop driven by the scarcity of materials since gear decay and enchanting failures are a thing. Players will generate their own content together!Now, for contrast, if instanced solo content gives the BiS, then the endgame item progression loop is simply:
- You farm the prereqs to get into the dungeon.
- You do the instanced dungeon.
This deals a double kill on both the crafter economy and much of the organic socialization that comes from chasing the best gear. As long as it's repeatable, no matter how rare, this would be what people would focus on with every other source of gear being secondary.The solo dungeon could maybe be made to support player connections if the prerequisites for entering it were gated by nodes and societies, and the dungeon rewards were instead crafting materials that are part of making a BiS item. Maybe this way the truly legendary stuff would need participation from all player types:
- PvP focused players to defend the infrastructure and contest materials.
- PvE focused players to take out the top dungeon bosses.
- Solo focused players to grind the hardest solo content.
- Artisans to put it together.
But I'd rather the solo players would be incentivized to join the PvE or PvP group!Alternatively, a super hard solo dungeon could instead give something other valuable (like enchant fail protection scrolls) or something to show off like cosmetics. However, if valuable, instanced content shouldn't be as efficient as group activities, because we want to encourage people to group, not fragment into their own bubbles.
Anyway, my final opinion is that I'm not convinced instanced solo content as a core part of the game is good. There should be plenty enough of non-instanced solo content in the endgame already. While I'd be happy to have hard solo content like the Palace of the Dead, it would be better as a side activity, not a core part of the game. We're playing something MMO afterall!
ps. Also, I wouldn't be concerned about balance between servers. If a server wants to win a WvW event, they should just work harder to produce better gear, just like how it is between guilds competing with eachother!
I'm not super fond of freeholds, for years I am waiting for a system just like Pax Dei where you have land plots that can be linked with other land plots and then build anything you want. Pax Dei has that amazing sand I crave for
Real progression "avenues" are expansions.
L2
Tera
Eso
Bdo
Ff14
AAU
Keep in mind - it's not like we can expect these devs to introduce new content quickly. It's, like, 3 years between Alpha 1 and Alpha 2.
We don't reach the end of the game at max Adventurer level. The focus of Ashes is about how the world changes as Metros rise and fall.
Ashes is designed to cycle content via Node progression - as well as via the Events system.
As we wait for new content.
We might get some new content quarterly via some form of Seasons/Battle Pass.
I strongly believe that someone who has played 10 years should have significant advantages over someone who has played 1 year, from a character progression perspective, in pretty much all things except raw combat power. And to reiterate, I don't mean gear or other transferable wealth. I agree with the need for new characters to catch up to the rest in vertical combat power within a reasonable timeframe, but I think it's perfectly ok if the characters aren't as good horizontally, or in breadth of scope, if that makes sense.
I won't list my MMO's since I'm almost 52, while in some aspects of "some" post level systems are useless, DAoC's was on a whole new level and really has never been duplicated. So unless you tired that particular system it's hard to just not even accept that it was good. As some have already stated it was.
In games like DAoC, I was ok with people who were say Realm Rank 5 or 10 having a few extra stat points and had the purge ability or another class ability they chose with their points. They put the time in which to years! I knew if I wanted to compete that I also had to make a effort, if you don't have a lot of time to play then it will take longer sure. It's hard to explain since Most players haven't played such a great game like that, and in today's MMO world of getting everything fast and moving on to the next game has warped players brains into thinking that's what it should be like. I think Steven knows this and I'm hoping he will elaborate on a system he has in mind the keep a form of player progression up.
Node + castle sieges, node improvement gathering and thus transporting of materials, Caravans, Freehold gameplay, GVG, NodeVNode, CastleVCastle, (Basically just various politics) acquiring artifacts for nodes and attempting to get artifact level materials through raiding and then crafting.
That being said I am not a fan of gear scores in general they are just dumb in every way.
The key on how to fix progression past max lvl is in my opinion to not have everybody have legendary gear at lvl 50.
The rarities in Ashes will probably be : poor, common, uncommon, rare, heroic, epic, legendary , artifact(artifact is somewhat special as it will be like 1 per server items and thus not part of the casual character progression in my opinion)
The casual player that progresses just normally with questing etc should have around rare gear when hitting max lvl in my opinion. Maybe full rare with 2 Heroics or something. It should not be the norm to have full epic gear when reaching lvl 50 as a casual player. Ofc it's hard to say an exact rarity because a hardcore raider for example that progresses to 50 by raiding difficult dungeons with his guild will have better gear than the average casual upon reaching lvl 50. A master armor smith that progressed to lvl 50 with mainly crafting could have an epic chest plate for example but the rest that he can't craft himself is still uncommon and rare because he didn't have time to farm all the gear because he spent his time doing artisan stuff etc. A hardcore pvp player that leveled to 50 on pvp only could maybe have some epic sword or some special skill augments that you can only get from pvp or something but essentially when your lvl progression is done your gear progression and skill/augment progression should be about halfway towards having your best in slots that u want on your final build.
This way you would still have a lot of gear and augment progression to do after max lvl before you reach your maximum potential.
The progression after lvl 50 would then be to do slowly more and more difficult content/ higher lvl artistry/ bigger pvp like sieges or claiming castles/ progressing in the bigger more difficult religious activities to progress your gear from around rare to full epic gear. And gaining more and more of the more difficult to get skill augments that u want on your final build(for example from high religious devotion to a certain deity etc) as well as enchantments and potions/poisons etc.
There will not be an endgame like we know it from other mmos but for lack of a better word true endgame will start when u have full epic gear and all of the augments you could get up to this point. Endgame progression would then consist of getting your last rly difficult to get augments and working one by one to replace your epics with legendaries. Getting one legendary should be like a 1-month time investment, and you should feel a change in your power for every legendary that you equip until you're after a lot of investment eventually full legendary. To be clear here I don't expect this to be everyone. The casual that plays 3 hours a week likely won't reach that stage in first couple years after launch which is a good and necessary thing. This is supposed to take a lot of time and investment. I'm thinking about maybe the top 1-5% of players will get to this stage in the first 2 years after launch. If you're an absolute no lifer and have a lot of luck as well you can then start your final journey to maybe just maybe get an artifact grade item. Since these are one per server type items it's in no way guaranteed that u get one. It should be a special reward for extremely dedicated ppl. I'm talking about the 0.01% of players here like it's not part of normal gear progression. Getting an artifact should be a mix of absolute nolifing and being lucky that no one else nolifed for the same artifact before you and gets it sooner than you in which case you couldn't get it anymore and have to either go for another artifact or somehow get it from the guy who got it before you. (For example through a pvp duel for the weapon or buying it for money, having more devotion than the guy etc. This would highly depend on the specific artifact and how you get it in the first place like top devotee gets an artifact cape or top pvp player of the server gets an artifact weapon or guild leader of the top guild gets an artifact etc)
To me this is way better than artificial gear scores that are rly unimmersive. The reason you should not be able to get epic gear before is because you are too weak to complete the content that needs to be completed to get this gear not because "your gear score is too low, so you can't get better items"
I think you missunderstand. If there is an alliance that trys to gatekeep a dungeon then ppl will go to another node / not help the alliance to progress the node so they cant acces that content themselfs and in the end fall behind compared to other more friendly alliances because they cockblock themselfs by being dickheads. This puts pressure on alliances to not be dickheads if they want to progress themselfs. This rly just sounds like victim mentality. Why not make an alliance yourself and make the dickheads live miserable untill they stop the bullying ? Or migrate to another node with cooler ppl and watch as the dickheads are stuck in their lvl 2 node because nobody helps them while you and your new node are lvl 4 and become stronger then the dickheads themselfs so now u can beat their butt as revanche for gatekeeping shit while you was weaker then them.
This is absolutly wild speculation based on nothing. Most likely a single player wont have enough economic power to run a successfull node alone.
or they can move to your node after you develop it to 5. or they can farm the dungeon without being a citizen of the node...