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
Well from MY end you already hit my 'hard line, no sell' point as of 'instanced equalized granted gear'.
I will accept 'instanced' grudgingly. I will accept 'equalized' easily (hence the level 40 suggestion). I won't accept 'granted gear'. I MIGHT accept 'able to test classes you don't play' but I consider that pointless without the gear being granted.
There is no scenario in which 'game grants equalized gear and ability to play other classes to remove the barrier to entry to the arena' that I'm okay with.
Personally, I don't want the arenas themselves to be an entirely separate client removed from the MMO portion of the game. But I want the ability to test out weapons, abilities and their upgrades and archetype combinations against both practice dummies and in a PvP setting (eg. inviting friends to a private training arena) before investing time and effort into something I may not like later down the road.
So, I'm fine if the arenas rely on the gear and levels you acquire in the MMO portion of the world. But how do you feel about a training area that can be entered easily (eg. a menu or at character select) and scales your character(s) up to max as long as you're inside with training dummies and the ability to join or invite (a) friend(s)?
- What if the death penalty was reserved for PvP combat only? PvE mobs could simply reset when you teleport out.
- You can decline the que pop, but you would be penalized with a dishonor system that prevents you from quing again for a scaling amount of time for every offense.' (Starts at 1 min, then increases exponentially(?) from there if you repeatedly decline ques within (eg. 1-3) days from your last offense)
I stated in my response to Azherae that I don't want the arenas themselves to be an entirely separate client removed from the MMO portion of the game either. But I want the ability to test out weapons, abilities and their upgrades and archetype combinations against both practice dummies and in a PvP setting (eg. inviting friends to a private training arena) before investing time and effort into something I may not like later down the road.So, I'm fine if the arenas rely on the gear and levels you acquire in the MMO portion of the world. But how do you feel about a training area that can be entered easily (eg. a menu or at character select) and scales your character(s) up to max as long as you're inside with training dummies and the ability to join or invite (a) friend(s)?
Ambivalent.
The issue with 'invite a friend' is that it quickly turns into 'form a community of duelists on one big friends list and lock that down'.
However, if those players need to at least earn their gear, it's probably fine.
I don't quite see the POINT of 'max level character with no equivalent gear' but it would honestly seem so 'pointless' to me that I'd have to spend much more time analyzing what the likeliest 'negative use case' is.
I believe Intrepid has implied that there will be SOME sort of 'testing ground' though, so perhaps they've already done that 'deep dive'.
As for why this matters to me so much, server caps.
Ashes has a very specific server cap and a very specific number of players required for the game to feel 'alive' and 'engaging' for the AVERAGE player.
Every player who is 'registered toward the server cap of Server A' who is actually 'in the Arena dueling, not interactable with the rest of the world', makes Server A feel a little more empty. I'm glad that you would definitely interact with the world. I certainly will.
And I know a lot of people whose response to any instanced Arena would be:
"Damn I need to find someone to PL me so I can get to playing the real game."
"I should get myself a crafting alt to afk-farm stuff to make money for my gear."
"Finally, got through all that pointless MMO stuff, who wants matches?"
"Yeah man I found a Node for quick exp, everyone should head there so we can level faster so we can have some proper arena matches." (then basically never support the Node again)
I would prefer those people don't look at Ashes Arena and go 'yeah I should get into this game, too bad I have to deal with all this MMO gearing up crap, but so it is'.
But that's going to happen as long as there is ANY arena, and then the question just becomes 'how good are players at turning your training mode into an Arena?'
Yes, the community of duelists is likely to happen.
Well, the actual arenas will be the ones with the rewards and ranking system. The (potential cross-server) arenas themselves are instanced, so they will pull players out of the open world anyways, but that seems like it is intended.
So, if someone decides to spend all of their time in the training area and not progressing their character, they won't be able to compete anyways. Which, would defeat the purpose of them spending all of that time practicing. I'm sure there's a balance to be had there.
In this case, how do you feel if the training areas were a separate entity that did not count towards any server caps? They could be player-hosted and have time tokens purchasable with both in-game and IRL currency. That would incentivize players to play the actual game for more training days and/or spend real money for more time, whilst not impacting the experience of players on the live servers.
Anyone who trains hard in a game where other people can 'train harder by spending more money' will see this as Pay To Win. (note that I am NOT a very strong anti-p2w player, if it is treated similar to subscription models, you'd have to take that up with others)
So to clarify something... I wouldn't even put an instanced, easily accessible Arena in a game like Ashes to begin with, if it were up to me. Thankfully for all arena enjoyers (and the success of the game) it is not.
I don't think it fits with Ashes' design philosophy and would make things worse as a whole except as a venue for properly prepared 'tournaments' in the true gameworld sense. Note that Ashes is not 'sharded'. If I choose to play on Server A, I am a registered member of Server A on that character and ALWAYS count toward that server's total cap (but that one is much higher so possibly ignorable).
There are quite a few things about Ashes I have this opinion on, because Ashes is still, even now, in a state where many people are not quite sure what the actual limits of the design and the underlying structure of the goals actually are.
One teammate often tells me "Steven is a salesman, not a designer", particularly regarding things said more than a few years in the past. Ashes' list of features is just a laundry list of 'stuff Steven enjoys in MMOs' + 'stuff Steven thinks other people want in MMOs' + 'Steven's pet peeves in MMOs, subverted'.
She often points out further that this is exactly the sort of game development you'd expect from a salesman. Offer everything, keep talking until you figure out what the potential customer actually wants, sell them that. I've got ZERO problems with this, mind you, I just don't know if I'm actually a customer yet or not (past what I've already paid for).
Similarly, there's no way to know if you are, or not. What seems unlikely at this time, however, is that we both would be SATISFIED customers of this product.
I'd also add that having "testing modes" would be negative due to drastically reducing the time it would take to find metas. Games which take longer to discover metas tend to be more fun, perhaps at the cost of competitiveness. It is inevitable that metas will be found, but delaying that inevitability is a plus in my eyes.
This is a whole other kettle of fish that we should probably open in a different thread if at all.
You're RIGHT, but it's kinda unrelated.
Meta-conformity is a thing I have a LOT of experience with, though, so that's a discussion I can probably speak with some authority on.
Spending in-game currency or real life money (if the prices are reasonably and comparably set) to purchase time tokens in a private arena doesn't come across to me as P2W. I do not play P2W games and dislike being able to buy advantages you cannot earn reasonably by playing.
If a system like this was in place, I would go out of my way to farm more in-game currency (so I'd be playing the actual game) and/or pool it with currency my friends have earned so that we could purchase a private training area and more time in it as needed.
Also, I'd assume the arena would only be accessible through an npc in a node above some stage (probably 3+), cause if it's accessible through some UI window from anywhere in the world - there'd be countless ways to abuse that mechanic. And considering that there's no fast travel, most players would probably just stand around the npc and not do anything at all (speaking from experience here). So in a way they'd be just emulating a "separate client game" within the mmo itself. Except in this case they'd be taking up server slots, as pointed out by Azherae and Noaani.
This is why Noaani kept saying that it'd be better to just have a separate client for it. And that separate client would also allow for any kinds of balancing to classes and gear and whatever else. Yes, open world arenas and friends could allow you to do that. But if you want a full testing ground where you can try every single archetype/class/gear setup, and potentially in a group setting - I, yet again, would want that in a separate client or at least a completely separate game mode in the launcher, with no rewards no ties to the main game and no influence on it. Ideally I wouldn't want that to exist at all, because I don't want the game to be "solved" within the first week of release (or even in alpha/beta if this mode would be available then).
Right, but you are even softer anti-P2W than me.
No matter what your personal definition of 'reasonably' is, you are to the 'left' of most of the anti-p2w sentiment you will encounter here, and Steven has to somewhat live up to his promise.
People consistently argue that being able to wear store-bought-cosmetics that hide your exact gear in PvP is P2W.
You will certainly gain no support for this style of thing from those people, nor will Intrepid's reputation do well if implemented.
The training area would be removed from the live servers, no rewards would be provided inside. It would simply be an area that allow players to experiment, test things out, and duel their friends in an equalized setting that has no influence on the main game.
Imo there's no reason to separate this kind of gameplay from the game. Well, in the context of it being within the game's rules rather than "get anything and everything you want and test it".
At that point I don't care anymore except for the uncontrollable effects on the economy whenever a new 'big tournament' comes up if the ingame currency for the Training Area is a gold-sink.
Where does the gold go?
EDIT: s/Arena/Training Area/g
I believe my needs would be satisfied with a separated, scaling training area that offers no reward and has no influence on the rest of the game. I don't want to spend hundreds of hours leveling and gearing a character to find out I actually enjoy another archetype more down the road that I would have rather spent my time on instead.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=JtG9mB2bREI&t=1753s
Maybe in a future Q&A, somebody will get a more recent statement.
What if the arena time tokens were craftable by players? There would be an exchange of value there. I think it would be interesting if one of the materials required was only obtainable by killing other players. Thus, it also gives PvPers an additional source of income from farming this material as well as a crafting route.
Otherwise, would it be bad as a gold-sink?
Craftable how? You'll end up in the weeds on this one quite quickly, and there is no actual current understanding of the economy of Ashes at this time.
It is my opinion as that type of player that it would be bad as a Gold Sink, but 'anything can be worked around'.
I know that I wouldn't play a game like this (either Crafted by players or Bought in a goldsink way)
Please note that as I said, I'm not anti-p2w enough to care about this, it's not me you'd need to satisfy with the 'method of creating the token' if it were Real World Currency available.
Similarly, I can't even tell if you're trying to make it a deterrent for players so that they don't overuse the Training Area, or not. I also disagree with the concept that training with parameters that you have complete control over won't help you in the real game, because that's literally what I design and build.
You won't find any agreement from ME there under basically any circumstance, I think. My entire 'thing' is 'using training mode options to make people much stronger than they might otherwise be in short periods of time' in Fighting games.
But I'm the one who'll accept the RMT/P2W.
Yes, my suggestion of having training areas require purchasable time tokens would act as a dampener on the access players have to it. Unless I am misunderstanding your concerns with training areas, I thought your issues with them were:
I don't care about purchasing of Tokens with Real Life currency. For that you'd have to talk to someone else. I can talk to my team to see if any of them care enough, but they generally leave design economics to me, so it may not be worth it today.
Maybe Dolyem has an opinion that would be relevant.
The situation here relative to ME is that I generally consider this entire flow to be a negative for what Ashes is based on the games I've designed and the way their communities played out. If it were up to me, I would simply have cut you off awhile back and offered nothing whatsoever, again, based on prior experience. I would be unwilling to take the risk of repeating the same sorts of experiences I've had before, particularly in a genre that is much more sensitive to it.
I've spent far too much time in the past 'trying to get players to actually engage with the community instead of just training against each other in hopes of becoming unbeatable' to not view 'Training Area in an MMO where you can test stuff freely' as a big red flag.
EDIT: Realized that you might have been using the 'general you' here in point #2, so clarifying differently.
I 'speak for' 7 people currently relative to feedback for this game in non-official threads that become serious discussion (they are generally requested to give their own feedback in those), and none of those people generally participate in those threads. Anyone else who happens to agree with me should still be addressed entirely separately. Sometimes I'll give aggregate data from my archives/parses, but that's just trends to inform what might come up if you continue, it generally isn't related to anyone I 'represent'.
If you join an esport, you don't join to play an MMO.
Ashes having a sideshow arena in the MMO is fine. Having an esport arena is a totally different thing though. Your insistence that these two things be included on the same game client is the actual issue with your hypothetical requirements for an esport.
Further, if you want your esport to be within your MMO, you don't normalize gear. You make playing the MMO a requirement of said esport. This may mean it isn't viable for any for profit teams to participate, but that isn't a bad thing.
I am quite happy for you to take what I said to mean malicious intent. However, that still doesn't mean a DDoS attack.
If you want to take what I said as a threat (probably should be a warning more than a threat, as someone in an MMO would absolutely do it, even if not me), that still doesn't mean a DDoS attack. I've seen people and guilds crash servers for things as trivial as stopping rivals kill bosses, crashing a server to send a message that it is not ok to use MMO player slots to fill esport competitions is damn near reasonable in comparison. It's an actual valid protest.
No sponsor would be interested in sponsoring a competition (or a team in a competition) that can be taken down so easily. It just isn't viable to have an esport tied to an MMO in this manner - not unless that esport is directly a part of the MMO.
You say you are talking about what Intrepid would need to do to create a hypothetical esport, you are totally forgetting that the first thing they would need to do is make sure it is not involving the same servers as the MMO.
It is an asbolute requirement of a hypothetical esport in this case.
Esports are a type of competition in video games. An MMO can have esports as evident by World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 1 and 2, and others in the past. Just because YOU do not join MMOs for their esports does not mean others do not. You are projecting.
I have competed in large, sponsored tournaments for major games that were subject to DDoS attacks or other forms of malicious interference. None of the sponsors pulled out of any of them. It would reflect poorly on them if they did, and they sponsored future ones as well. The separation requirement you obsess over does not exist.
GW1 is not something I am familiar with in terms of esport.
You seem to be forgetting, I am not actually against esport in general, just the proposed way to implement it in to Ashes.
Cool story bro.
The thing is, as I said earlier, sponsors are shying away from putting money in to esport. They are also wary of any esport that doesn't at least attempt to prevent this sort of interruption - and have been for many years.
I mean, esport is prone to attacks on the client side. That is bad enough, Sponsors are not likely to be willing to put money in to an esport (remember, sponsors are shying away from this in general) that is actually actively ADDING a client side vulnerability as well.
I mean, if you were a sponsor, would you put money in to a game that needlessly added an additional attack vector in to what is already a massive issue for esport? Or would you put your money in to a game that is doing all it can to prevent this sort of thing?
There is literally no reason at all for an esport like you are talking about to be a part of the MMO servers. The only reason for an esport to be a part of an MMO server is if it is required that people play the MMO in order to compete in the esport (ie, having to play the MMO to get gear). Remove the need for people to play the MMO in order to play the esport, and you are removing the need for the esport to be a part of the MMO. As such, you should be removing the esport from the MMO in order to prevent that attack vector.
This is all basic stuff. With what you claim your job is, you should have seen this a mile off. There is literally no reason at all to have your suggestion tied to the MMO directly, and tying it will absolutely cause issues for both the MMO and the esport. Removing that connection resolves those issues - thus, remove that connection.
In the context of mmo esports, I'd assume that any given high end pvping would require thousands of hours of investment into the game (be it just pvp or the game as a whole). Ashes would just require that investment to always be into the whole game rather than just the arena gameplay. GW is a horizontal progress game so its arena-to-mmo content balancing might be somewhat easy (though its esport failing kinda points to it not being so). And afaik raid gear in WoW is better than the stuff that you can get through the arena, though I'm not sure if you can use raid gear there, but if you can then even WoW requires you to participate in other forms of content if you want to be truly the best. And if that's the case then I think that making people play the game to get their training gear would be fine (especially considering that most gear will be non-BoP/E).
The balancing in GW2 was easy, but the rate at which they released balance patches, and the size of the balancing patches themselves were too slow and too small respectively. There was a very stale bunker meta that persisted for far too long, which contributed heavily to the esports failing. The end result was unfortunate, but avoidable.
Being able to test non-augmented abilities is better than not being able to test at all. I would still prefer the full range of course.
Having an in client training arena that is accessible while queuing for the server, where players can play any class, potentially at any level, would actually be a fairly good idea - I assume that is what you are thinking here.
I can think of a few technical issues with it (combat resolution for it would need to happen client side rather than server side being the main one), but I can see it being possible.
Has nothing directly to do with the topic at hand, but a good idea is a good idea.
If my super basic surface lvl knowledge of how mmos work is correct, this kind of thing wouldn't have to put big strain on the main game servers. And the non-castle part could in fact be purely client-side so no strain at all.
I saw this as the best way to prevent people from just leaving the game open for hours while they're waiting in queue and a way for them to try out top lvl gameplay of an archetype w/o knowing anything about its potential augments or builds or whatever (well, if they haven't watch youtube of course). And while this system would be accessible by default when you're in queue, Intrepid could obviously just let people enter this "training" place whenever they want. Yeah, discussion went into the weeds quite a bit there, which is why I didn't explain the idea completely.
But you can't simply change your archetype, which is why I think that providing a way to see how an archetype plays on higher lvls would be completely fine.