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
At any point in time, you should feel that there are a dozen or more things you can do to progress, and then you pick the one you want to do.
There should never be a feeling of needing to get any one item. There should always be 5 or more viable item upgrades for you to pick from (this is ESPECIALLY true while leveling), and this is just per slot. There should be hundreds of viable item upgrades that you can go for at any one point in time.
So yeah, being in a situation where you feel you need to run one dungeon in order to get one item is bad game design.
Really bad game design.
Like, the fundamentals of game design have been ignored.
Edit to add; So why wouldn't this translate to WoW?
I mean, if it were a quest thing, the two of you would only he there for a few minutes. I'm sure you would spend longer than that attempting to out farm someone in L2.
healing a mob being hit by anothe rplayer isnt hacking...if the game allows you to do so.
mob dropping, as in dropping the mob on someone else. some people call it mob training, but yeah its the same. oth terms are valid, although, training or pulling refers more to you killing them, not DROPPING agro so they attack another player. i guess different communities use different terms.
still dont get how its bad design. if we break it down, you are just fighting monsters..you can kill 10 mobs in 6 different spots each, or 60 mobs in one spot. i prefer the latter. its a flavor thing tbh more than a design thing...you could say the same about gathering. why you wana gather the same herb over and over where oyu could just gather different hebrs in different locations? also, according to steven, there will be more content than players can do. so if you wanna stay in one spot doing the same thing, you can, and if you wanna go all over verra doing different thigns, you can. you arent forced to just do 1 activity...that was literally my point, you dont have to do open seas if you dont wanna be attacked. you can do other things.
at this point, i believe you are arguing just for the sake of arguing
Since the hypothetical you are talking about is a PvE setting, and this literally isnt a thing in any PvE setting, then we need to assume it isnt a thing in your hypothetical.
If it is a thing in this PvE setting, then my previous answer of not playing a game run by shit developers holds true - having a PvE game where players can heal mobs really is shit design. There are literally no google results for your definition here, so no, it isnt valid. You cant just make up your own terms for things and use them in conversation - especially not when there are terms for the same thing that have been in use for w5 or more years.
A mob train is any collection of mobs chasing another player or group of players. The most common situation where this happens is people running through a zone. Training mobs is the act of attempting to have those mobs aggro other players.
So, if I now assume you are talking about someone trying to train mobs on to me, well, they cant. While every game is different, I've yet to see an MMO where players can train mobs on to you with nothing at all that you can do about it. It's a PvE thing to know what to do, and what not to do.
We are at the point where I am unsure what it is you do not get.
If you want to go out and kill 60 mobs in one spot, you should be able to. If someone else wants to go out and kill 10 mobs in 6 different spots, they should be able to.
Bad game design comes when you feel you* have to* go and kill 10 mobs in 6 spots when you would rather kill 60 mobs in one spot. Keep in mind two words/phrases in the above. The first is feel, the second is have to. You should never feel you have to do any one thing in an MMO.
L2 is obviously that one game I was talking about, and in a PvP setting it could work.
Note: could work.
However, again, the premise of the hypothetical is a PvE setting. Being able to heal mobs in a PvE setting is shockingly bad as an idea.
That one poster bought mob healing up three times that I know of, and each time it was stated as if it were a normal thing, not some random thing from one game that is almost 20 years old. Yet they want us to think they play both PvP and PvE...
There are between 4 and 10 'viable' gear pieces for ALMOST every slot in FFXI for any 10-level range above 17. A surprisingly large amount of it is base game. If you played the 'Hybrid' class (Red Mage), you could have a valid reason for choosing lots of it.
This is a game that has gear restrictions by class (but wide groups of classes than can use the same gear).
I'm actually constantly surprised by the utter lack of gear in other games, and due to this I have no idea how much to expect from Ashes.
I'm not really saying this is good or bad, but it definitely got at least to the level of '3-5', meaning that if you couldn't get (or didn't want to get) one, you had options. Personally I find games without it kinda boring, but admittedly it doesn't add THAT much except the exact thing you're talking about. "Don't want to bother getting X? Get Y".
Old MMOs are 'weird'.
Neither EQ game ever had singular equipment progression paths.
The outline I gave you of what a game should have was EQ2 specific - and essentially applied from day 1.
I definitely have been learning a lot about L2 from you but I had a real culture shock when that made me think 'Oh I should go see what kinds of cool gear they have/might have in TL' and found like one page of gear for the entire game (that's the way it felt, that isn't an exaggeration but I'm pretty sure I found one of those pages that has little information).
I guess they (MMO devs) realized they could get away with adding MUCH less stuff, and then just kinda did? As noted, it doesn't add THAT much to the experience, but 'I don't feel like upgrading this gear slot, I should save my money for this other one that really matters', at least, is kind of an important type of choice to have.
It's also why we end up with such different expectations from PvE and PvP, as already demonstrated.
Can't be griefed while trying to collect Iron for a helmet when you can just say 'screw it this isn't worth it I'll settle for the Headband with one less Defense and just look for a more chill group/make up for it with my skill'.
Similarly one wouldn't have a real reason to mess with your own node-mates when they're the ones who make your armor (or collect stuff so you can make theirs).
Oh, no, in this case I actually meant Lineage.
For TL I have nothing at all. They're keeping everything super quiet.
Garbage as usual.
Four gear sets with minimal effect, 8 weapons no one cares about (Green Grade)
Two gear sets with hidden effects, 3 weapons few people care about (Blue Grade)
Two (now four) gear sets BiS with a few set effects, 1 BiS weapon, one not quite as good supposedly, some other half-useful ones they added later.
Accessories are about the same. Makes sense this many years in, in a game that only actually has like 6 stats total.
No actual gear crafting to speak of, you 'assign that stuff to workers' and wait an hour, but they only make the Green Grade stuff basically so... yeah.
At this point, no matter what someone tells me an MMO does, or is, I'll believe them, given that game. I'll believe people play it. "You make most of your money crafting by selling to NPCs". Sure. "We have made it easier to sell to NPCs because people were complaining that they couldn't sell to NPCs ENOUGH". Yeah alright. You get the idea. However you naturally imagine what I just described, it's worse than that.
just go play something else of you don't like the design, Steven ain't going to make PvE servers or remove PK from the game.
Amen. When you carebares whan to crab with literally zero risk or any exciting encounter then move on to FF14.
theres more than one game where you can do it. just because you havent played those games, it doesnt mean they exist.
and how can you say something is bad design where you dont even know whats the player experience the devs want you to feel? the resulting implementation of the player experience is what you see as the game and its parts. just because you dont understand the why, doesnt mean its bad design, since it holds true to the player experience. you can say its not fun for you, but im sure its fun for someone else. for instance, some people like doing daily activites in mmorpg (daily quests) and i dont. i cant say its bad design since there are other components to that, you have to see the system as a whole, and also what is the player experience (which gamers dont really know btw)
ive been using the term mob dropping for years...and lots of people i know also use it as well. and i will keep using it. sucks to be you if you cant find anything about it.
And while I agree that healing mobs in L2 kept your whole raid at full alert cause even a single enemy healer could fuck you up, what is the case with mob healing in the other games you implied? Are those games also pvp or are they purely pve?
In Archeage there were factions but they were meaningless because everyone would turn on each other at any given opportunity regardless. There was no sense of community whatsoever, it was basically a free for all which highly favored large guilds or zergs as there were no disadvantages to doing so. There was actually a streamer guild on my server that had over 800 active players and ruled the server. They controlled and dominated everything from trade, farm spots, world bosses, to the open seas and housing just with sheer numbers. They would kill anyone that got in their way. When you have numbers like that, a corruption system no longer matters, especially when people are fighting back. Since you have armies nobody can touch you, even if they wanted to. Another issue with the proposed system and ones like it is any player/group that attacks first most often wins the fight because they get to combo you and get their damage off before you have a chance to strike back but by then it's too late. I don't think the change to CC on non combatants really addresses the issue as it just allows people who refuse to fight to run away easier and will allow more people to escape.
As it stands I don't think the corruption system is enough on it's own which will reward griefers and penalizes those that even try to defend themselves. Don't get me wrong I am all about PvP and enjoy It, I just don't want to see this game devolve into a FFA or battle royale zergfest like Archeage did. If it were up to me I would change it so non combatants are not flagged as combatants for defending themselves, and remove the reduced death penalties for combatants. Having them only encourages a FFA kill on sight mentality since there are virtually no downsides to being a combatant. On top of that, I would add a corruption meter which builds up with each kill participation on non-combatants like the one described in the video and counterbalance the system by reducing the rate corruption is generated and some of the penalties. Additionally, I'm hoping to see an in depth node reputation system that goes up with positive contribution to your node within its Zone of Influence and down when you kill citizens or allies of that particular node. That way you could have separate reputations depending on where you are in the world that have their own benefits or drawbacks depending on your standing with them.
lets say you are minding your own business, farming using your pve build, then 1 or 2 guys gank and kill you. you come back with your pvp build and kill them. are your proposed solutions fair to you since you attacked first when you came back to the spot? if they dont flag while attacking you for defending themselves, you cant use all your cc on them. how is that fair? you would also lose reputation. and in this scenario, you are not the "bad guy".
what if someone is trying to mob drop you then you stun him and the mobs kill him. is it fair that your corruption meter goes up? again, you are not the bad guy. or you just gonna let the guy mob drop and kill you?
what if you are with your friends and you see a known party of pkers/griefers and you know they will attack you. since you spotted them first, you will try to kill one or 2 of them while they are aoeing mobs. is it fair that your whole party gets corruption if you kill 2 of them while they are fighting mobs, when only one of you landed the last hit?
How exactly is that "not devolving into a FFA"? You're not stopping the people who would've killed others either way. Hell, you're now encouraging them because the penalties are now lower. And the people who would have maybe made a few hits against an opponent in hopes of removing them from a location (but not going through with it in fear of becoming Red) will now be scared to do so because they'll know that they'll always become red, no matter what the target does.
I find it hard to see how this system is better than the current one.
Then you're able to kill them free of penalties because they are corrupted from killing a Non-Combatant. If you read my entire post you would see that I am against the change they made to not being able to CC Non-Combatants, so it wouldn't exist.
Then you move out of the way and let the mobs continue to lower their health or you just walk out of agro range and let everything reset.
You're assuming they will give you corruption even after stating they are known Pkers/Griefers. If that were true, it would be far more likely that they are already combatants, corrupted, declared enemies of the node, or have negative node reputation, all would result in little to no penalties.
You are because they gained corruption and negative reputation for it. If they continue to do so, they will accrue greater penalties that are already established within the current system. Let's be honest, nobody that is trying to get rid of a player from an area just hits them a few times. Come on now. If you really want to go down that road, you can make it so the amount of corruption/negative rep is decided by how much you contributed to their death just like it is killing mobs with other players
1- they cleansed the corruption before you came back to the same spot and now they are green again.
2- ok you move out of the way, the mobs reset and they do it again, now you cant farm until you deal with the issue.
3- they were green when you found them.
remember the game is based on risk vs reward. so modifications must follow this principle. cant have little or no risk while keeping all the rewards.
And I'd hit the original farmer of the location to see (and let them know) how hard I'm hitting him. If I hit him for 10-20% of his hp - he'll either run away to save on travel time (in the context of this happening deep in a dungeon) or he'll let me hit him until the mobs or I kill him. Depending on the mobs in that location, more often than not it'd be the mobs killing him and I'd get no corruption. There'll be 85 nodes. Even if 10-20 of those are your "allies" and/or have some goods that are useful to you and you want to trade with them, there'd still be 60 nodes that you can do whatever you want in and not care about the reputation.
If we're talking solo PKing, you'd already get the maximum of corruption, so no change there. If it's party PKing, they'd most likely just have a designated killer and at most a healer who'd help him out once in a while. With lessened penalties those parties would give even fewer shits about the corruption than they would right now. Especially considering that no matter who they attack or what their target does - they'll always become corrupted, because there's no combatant state in your suggestion (well, on the victim's side that is), so the group would always know what they're doing and what the result will be when attacking others.
Not many people actually enjoy them, but a few do. As such, having them in a game isnt inQq
However, there are also things that are objective. In all of your examples that you have given, times you have taken PvP situations and asked how players would deal with these situations without PvP, what you are actually doing is giving examples of bad game design.
It is bad because you are taking a situation where the game offers you a means of dealing with it (PvP), removing that means of dealing with it, and then not giving players another means to deal with it. As a design paradigm, it may well work in a PvP setting - but thatis because of that PvP. If you take something from a PvP setting thatvrelies on that PvP, but you then remove that PvP and fail to replace it with something else, you are left with bad game design by default.
If we flip the scenario around first a minute here what would you do if you were playing a PvP game, but the developers made all content instanced like DDO or PoE? How are you going to PvP then? Obviously you wont. Obviously this would be bad game design, as you are taking out a thing that is required for aspects of the game to function.
That is the kind of scenario you keep presenting.
I mean, mob drop is a term in MMO's. It has had a meaning for even longer than mob trains. It's just objectively wrong to use a term that has a meaning in place of another term that has the meaning you are wanting to ascribe to the first term.
The fact you didnt know about the two meanings is excusable, absolutely. However, you now know the terms, you know the term you are using has an actual and different meaning than what you are using it for, that the meaning you want to use that term for actually has a long standing term attributed to it.
At this point, you not using it in discussion is no longer excusable. You are literally making improper use of language, using your own words in place of existing, established words. Using the term you and your friends use due to not knowing the largely accepted term is perfectly fine within that friend group - I am not suggesting you change that, it would be rude of me to even make that suggestion. All I am saying is that in wider discussions, when you know the widely accepted term, you use it.
To better illustrate my thoughts on this, I'll quote something for you... Now, while you may not understand the above quote, all I have done is used my own words in place of the commonly accepted word that had the meaning attributed to it that we all understand.
Since you seem to think that doing this is perfectly fine, I have to assume you fully understood the above.
I'd like to know if you agree or disagree with the above quote.
I've been playing mmos for a long time too, and was playing an mmo that was all about "training" mobs, but even when I played with english-speaking players I don't think I've ever heard "training" being used to indicate "leaving mobs onto another player with the goal of kill that player". Or even if I did hear it, it was used rarely enough for me to not put that into my long term memory. What I do associate "training mobs" with is just "pulling a ton of mobs a bringing them to the party's dps".
With that being said, "mob dropping" was a way more obvious phrase to indicate that you "dropped mobs onto someone" than the "training" phrase.
Also, you didn't give the example for what "mob dropping" means to you.
I think CC should be allowed and the game should also provide ways to make the CC unlikely to land.
It should not be possible to have every kind of defense. If players wants to defend against CC more than against damage, then it is their choice how to balance it.
Google "MMO mob drop".
That is what it means to basically every MMO player. I would wager that is what it means to you, as well.
If you want to save a Google search, "mob" is shorthand for mobile object, and refers to any computer controlled mobile entity (technically speaking).
In an MMO, a drop is any item obtained from the environment.
As such, a mob drop (keep in mind, mob drop was the original phrasing) is an item obtained from defeating a mobile object, or mob.
There is more nuance to it than that, but that has been the basics for 25 or so years.
The reason I am not letting (and will not let) it go is because it is the basics of language and communication.
The quote inposted in my above post is literally the same thing. I took words and attributed other words in their place. I know what I was saying in that quote, and I know who the quote is from. The fact that others dont is purely because I opted to not use the commonly accepted words that have a meaning we all agree on and understand.
Words and phrases having agreed upon meanings is literally the foundation of civilization. Imagine - just for a moment - if that system fell down.
https://www.insider.com/words-spelled-same-different-meanings-2019-1#lead-6
A list of words that have different meanings when used as different parts of speech, namely noun and verb.
Depraved used the phrase "mob drop" as an indicator of an action, which makes those two words have a verb meaning. I knew what he meant. You knew what he meant. There was no confusion, just you being particularly agro against him in that particular regard.
English is quite a contextual language and imo if people understand what you're saying in the context you're saying it - you've gotten your point across.
To me the archetype and class nomenclature is not interchangeable because they're two different things. You wouldn't interchange chrysalis with butterfly, even though one turns into the other and they are functionally the same entity.
But if I say chrysalis, it could mean a butterfly or a moth or any other insect that has this stage of development in their lifecycle. And if I say butterfly, you'd immediately know which creature I'm talking about.
To me, the same applies to the terms of archetype and class. If I hear "archetype" in the context of Ashes, I think about general player roles, 8 potential paths of progress and <25lvl characters. If I hear "class", I'd suppose that the speaker's going to talk about a very specific character. That is someone at >25lvl with a precise dual (or even singular) role.
But even though this separation is important to me, I don't go around correcting every single person on their improper use of those terms exactly because contextually I can differentiate what that person is talking about.
I didn't know what he meant.
I waited until the third time I saw him use the phrase before I asked. Even in context, I wasnt sure what he was talking about.
The first time I saw it, I just assumed it was a typo or auto correct thing. These happen, and I've been known to not always bother fixing them - but when it was used two more times, I came to the conclusion that it was perhaps not a mistake.
While it is indeed true that some words have different meanings, they are all "agreed upon". That is why we are able to have lists of them.
As I said, using a phrase that you and your friends make up when you dont know the correct term is fine. Continuing to use that term among those friends when you learn the correct term is also fine. However, not using the correct term in wider discussion when you are aware of said correct term is not fine.
I going to reiterate my challenge to you from above. Imagine a world where people do not agree on the meaning of any words at all.
Again, to me, you using "mob training someone" as a negative thing would make no sense, because that phrase was always used in a positive light in my experience. I would've probably understood you if you used it in the same way Depraved used "mob drop" (and I did when you did so), but the phrase itself would still just remain as a positive concept in my head.
We all have different experiences and have used different saying to explain the same things. The fact that americanized side of english-speaking internet decided to use "training" in a particular fashion doesn't really give them the rights to monopolize how the concept behind that phrase should be called.
It also seems to stem from pve gamers vs pvp gamers (especially those who played korean grinders). From a quick google of "mmo training mob" it seems that the term was mostly used in WoW and EQ circles. I'd suppose that was the case because dumping mobs on someone was the best way to grief that player in a non-pvp environment. While in something like L2 (or other korean games that let you aoe shitton of mobs), while we did also have mob dumps, the predominant way of farming was to gather up as many mobs as you could and then kill them all together. And obviously any kind of griefing was mainly done through just attacking people, so there wasn't much use in trying to agro mobs onto them and it only became useful if you were trying to kill a high lvl player on a low lvl char (though it required some skill to execute so definitely wasn't widespread).
But maybe this is yet another niche thing that is only true in my experience. @JamesSunderland @George_Black @tautau when you hear "training mobs" what's the first association that comes to your mind?