Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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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
There are explicit plans for Console release, which has the potential to be useful/popular in specific ways due to the additional complexities of botting and similar activities on Console.
People may find it to be more 'fair', in certain ways, but I doubt that will cause the Console population to be particularly robust if they design the game in their usual way.
That is one of the big things where its going to be releasing worldwide on consoles and pcs, which also means action combat. But im wondering how the depth of the game will be.
It's interesting that you came to that conclusion. It really goes to show how much the tab vs action dichotomy is largely an illusion. Add 'z-target'(the targeting system in Legend of Zelda games) to an action combat game, and many people have difficulty seeing the difference.
Their design intent was action combat from what I remember. I think Azherae has explained this part of the design notes from NCSoft to you before, so I'll just remind you that a lot of their design intent was for 1v1's to have more mobility and for bosses and large scale combat to have less. I found part of the footage interesting where there was just two people standing next to each other fighting since that did not match the design intent they were explaining earlier. Azherae pointed out to me that those were probably tanks given the greatsword and large shield. The fact that the mage was able to stand behind the tank because things were under control is within my expectations for good multiplayer action combat PvP.
Watching it ya one of my guild members raised the red flag to me, hoping there is more movement than that
I hope I'm wrong and am just misjudging the video, but this being NCsoft makes me super skeptical.
You don't even need to move as much as BDO, bdo is too crazy at times, but having some mobility and outplay is good and fun. I am int he same mind set of i need to see them advertise the combat and not the scale of the combat for player size.
In first trailer it looked more action focused where here everyone was using click to move which was a little bit weird and confusing.
I'm really surprised at this perspective, actually.
Aren't you one of the people who has played Blade and Soul?
BDO's combat is unnecessarily mobile in many cases.
Now, that's not to say I dislike it. Hell, I'm still waiting for the fucking LineageW to come out in the west, just so I have smth to kill time with. And that shit's a pure Lineage 1 continuation.
No classes, 2 weapons that give you skills, console game, most of the world are safezones and opt in pvp events, P2W - the game is literally selling as "a game made for everyone"
is that AoC 2.0 ?
Analysis is looking good so far, yes.
Should be easy to get a ton of data, for Intrepid.
Those are just the ones that I noticed from the video and remember right now. And most of those are something that's rare outside of a few korean mmos. And some of those will have very similar alternatives in AoC, so if we see that a huge majority of people are dissatisfied by some of those mechanics - we'll know the potential response to them in AoC.
To be fair, you're not supposed to be 'impressed' until at least this time tomorrow, if you were gonna be.
The most you could be now is 'hopeful'.
But I suppose it's useful for Margaret to know that you aren't impressed by their marketing so far, too.
So if when it comes out it does have action combat - that's gonna be my feedback. Make your ad videos as true to your design as possible. Obviously AoC will have all the alpha/beta footage from all holes of the internet, but I'm sure that Intrepid will try making ad vids here and there.
I watched the reveal, nothing moves me. The combat? It's not special. PvE zones everywhere, no thanks. The classless weapon system thing? I don't really care about that either.
I mean Margarets marketing has nothing to do with the reveal, I'm just not impressed.
Looks like an Eastern MMO #2348363245
I gave you the New World example, they had local economy, and changed it when people didn't like it - now, is that an indicator that local economy in AoC is a bad ideia? no, because other components of NW's game design are different and gave us different results in a "similar" system
you can apply that to everything else, you need the whole game design to contribute to those systems, otherwise that feedback is useless,
I will elaborate with the things you said,
hybrid combat in TL has Absolutely Nothing to do with AoC, there are no classes, it's all weapons, the design is completely different
Open World dungeons in TL have Opt in PVP, so this already changes everything in comparison to AoC,
they are fundamentally different games, made for different target audiences, and because of that - if people hate open world dungeons or weather changes in TL - I wouldn't be worried at all and I wouldn't assume that will reflect in AoC.
It's the same concept, though.
That's what I meant before, and also what I was saying to Solvryn. If you watch and do the analysis on the other stuff they show, where they're not trying to just show it off to the sort of person who 'just wants a new MMO', you can see all of the useful stuff. So until the analysts and translators and Frame Data readers have all picked apart the data, you won't really know if to be impressed or not.
Alright, well, my analysis is done, at least.
Stuff we know now that we didn't know before:
Guild Wars around the Stones are going to be related to resources and raw materials.
There is at least some Auto-Attack option (but not necessarily autobattle OR autorun, I'd expect the weak versions of them though)
Defensive mechanics other than shield block are split-frame timed with about a 12f window (not to react, it seems to be the active frames for the mechanic, which is pretty nice and 'lenient', around what I'd expect).
Many Open Fields are Safe Zones (no clarity on whether this is also true at night or if that PK thing at night is even still in)
Weapon Swaps appear to be 22f of vulnerability with no apparent ability to move, but the latter could be wrong.
Stuff we got a serious expansion of information on:
Combat system targeting has at least a softlock and you probably have an Accuracy stat.
Cooldowns are ranging between 5 and 15 seconds.
Standard 'controller language' is used for Console and possibly for all Gamepad play, with ability build settings seemingly reduced to 8 at a time (but this could be wrong, since for most games this is offscreen in normal situations anyway)
Animation is around Neverwinter Online speed, but mobility is limited (possibly outright rooted for non-ability attacking)
Defensive skills are per "WeaponClass" as mentioned in another recent thread.
Stuff I'm using Analytic Intuition for:
CC stuff looks like it is based on either a defensive counterskill or applies only on the final active Frames of a related ability, with about 20-30f of CC active, enough time to switch weapon and instantly START another skill.
No options for a single player therefore to OFFENSIVELY CC and then use a bigger skill than they could get away with before, leading to players needing to synergize those.
Minimal limitations on actual gearing, which makes sense given the above.
Regional Contests may be part of the 'leveling up' methodology, as it would create a pyramidal/ranked PvP-ish game system, meaning that technically players may need to PvP in order to advance characters in some ways, depending on the Contest requirements you may not need to do the fighting part yourself.
I think I saw some evidence of a 'hotbar swap' which would imply that the actual ability number is 16, but it's hard to tell if that was what was actually happening.
Therefore, we are still at 'similarity minimal'.
If the Stones are in any way similar to Nodes for the holding Guild, maybe it'll be a TINY bit similar. If Dungeons are 'standard' PvP rules, the similarity increases.
Damage scaling does not seem to apply, but damage numbers are within the 'easy to grasp' range. Food, Drink, and 'potions' are all plentiful looking, but their power is unknown (I've separately seen data on 'Potions' being decently strong at the highest points relative to the HP/Mana values, but the cooldown is never shown, though I suspect it's like 30s)
That's all I've got. Given our lack of full understanding of Ashes' combat, there's not much to compare, but it definitely looks like it will fill the niche as Ashes' Mirror.
If you're in that camp of people that 'constantly finds yourself wishing Ashes was a little different', looks like the flipside may be here on time.
The trailer was a bit of hype killer for me. Still too many unknowns though. Going to depend on how compelling the reasons to pvp are and how available or rare pvp is.
I think Ashes will definitely suit you better from what I understand of the philosophies of the two games.
But as for the PvP part, I'm extrapolating from previous data and some translations here, but:
It seems that there are 'quests' that require you to get certain ranks in the Field PvP contests to gain something. Not clear what, but NCSoft is NOT known for having poor incentive systems in their games. After all, how would they get all that sweet P2W whale money if they had bad incentives?
Open fields being Safe Zones was kind of 'always implied', the big question was always if Dungeons were going to be. The use of the word that got translated to 'fields' specifically implies that Dungeons and areas around Possession Stones and Guild Objectives other than those, are NOT safe.
So no one's gonna kill you because you decided to stand on a rock and enjoy the view, but you're still gonna get stabbed if you try to wander into a hole in the desert.
The implication therefore is actually that PvP will be quite common, the design goal being that you know 'where your risk begins'. Similarly, a lot of their 'Hard PvE content' seems to be story related. I won't go into my expectations of the Memorial system as it is mostly for PvE players and there are not as many of those here.
The main thing I noted was that a lot of the areas where you see players fighting and no implication of it being a specific Contest zone, are basically 'Points of Interest', so it could be that when they say 'Fields' they mean ACTUALLY the 'big open field areas' so that you can travel safely but are immediately in danger near chokepoints. Which would make some sense, as you'd 'be able to wait somewhere safely for your teammates' to help you cross the gank-able area.
This suits someone like ME, who prefers PvP to be common, encouraged, but also generally fair with a tendency to not occur in situations where one side is unprepared.
For all the posters who prefer the 'constant feeling of danger' or 'the ability to gank others at random' it would probably be a negative. It DOES imply though, that areas that are worth contesting in some way will not be safe zones, which is good enough for 'improved PvP experience'.
I disagree but it's weird to, because I wouldn't have disagreed a year or two ago, and I am not disagreeing based on anything I actually understand now.
I just know that hanging around these forums have taught me that there are some aspects of difference between these games that some other people consider very important, even if I can't always grasp why from my limited and biased worldview.
I, for example, would like low level players to be able to 'watch a big battle around a Possession Stone' from up on a hill or somewhere nearby within a 'Field' without them having to run away, or worry about the player next to them killing them or trying to start a fight.
For others, this seems to be a negative for their experience which I don't 'get', but I have data on enough people with that perspective that I do NOT think they'll be satisfied.
One useful thing about what you noted though, is simple. 'Fields' are often large and 'empty' or relatively 'desolate' and flat, which means that they are about as useful for resource production as you'd expect, so you don't have to worry about bots.
Whereas it's possible that things like 'Farms' or 'Lumber Yards' or such, if they exist, will have Possession Stones attached to them. I can live with this implementation if that's what they go for. Can you tell me why you think that the players who want Always On Open World PvP would 'settle for' this, though?
Yeah, it's hard to know what was lost in translation with words like "fields" that they were using. The game could definitely reel me back in though if it has enough meaningful and frequent pvp content.