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
Meaningful progression is in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't greenlight standing on the necks of players who are new or up and coming, scaling power at appropriate levels gives people a chance to fight back.
Even though New World didn't do it in the right way, it did allow people to fight back until they nerfed the dogshit out of it. Too many invalids getting their ass handed to them on a silver platter because they didn't know which end of their sword was QQd on the forums.
I've never seen an MMO where there is no room for player growth.
As I've said in this thread, I expect it to take players about 3 years to master any given class in EQ2 - that is a shitload of room for player growth.
I also find it odd that someone so against combat trackers (essentially a tool for assisting in measuring player growth) would also claim to be so pro player growth.
While i hope that this will be acomplished, i fear modern player mentality is going to make that goal hard to achieve. Lets face it, most players had years of conveniance, and even without that, voice coms, discord, google en youtube will allow people to communicate, look up theorycraft and play way differently then in L2 and archage's glory years.
Speedruns, ratings, ladders, content creators, will all attribute that the average player will feel pressured to perform, instead of to have fun. Its a different kind of gaming then back then (wich doesn't mean that either form is bad or better)
I think they're going to go maybe down the path of many random events to happen in the node area that you'll casually bump into like GW2, so basically to not put node progression on a set path or ideal lvling strategy.
Then dungeons/caves with elite mobs you need groups for, it's just a matter of going down there and collecting whatever resources or how many you can kill, which people would of naturally done anyway regardless of the games systems (go to the harder areas, group up and grind efficiently).
Maybe, but maybe not as much as you fear. Just by the fact that each servers will evolve differently will make direct comparisons more difficult. There will probably be many parallels between them, but, at the same time, they won't be exact copies or instances of the same world: nodes development will play a bigger part on what's even possible to do on a server.
Maybe in pve boss mechanics it will be less, but because of that i think that the displayed theorycrafting of builds will be even more prevelant. People that consume content of their favorite game are going to watch something thats relevant to them. With ever changing worlds that relevance won't be bossfights, but will gravitate towards pvp, and towards builds. This will result in a portion of those players wanting to play that way as well, or believing that that way of playing is the best way..
I've seen it in some mmo's that early (wrong) theorycrafting, causes a stigma of how to play a class, that resonates so deeply that even the developers are influenced, and are changing the gameplay to match the perceived way to play that class.
When content creator "celebrities" proclaim something good or bad, their fan base will take that as gospel, and this will affect a lot of players even those that are not a fan of that celebrity.
(Fictional example) Asmongold says that Bard/Tank sucks, because that bard type focusses on strengthening defensive builds, and he plays a pure offensive character. This is then considered true, so fewer people play that combination, and those that see one are asking why they play such a bad combination. What you get then is that because its played so much less, it will get the reputation of beeing bad, wich results in even less people playing it. While in reality that combination would outperform other bard combinations in most party / raid situations
Stuff like this makes it ideal for deciding who is worth friending or who the bad eggs are in a guild.
I love methods of finding out who the chumps are but you need to calm down a little, the skill augment system is flexible and you can swap your secondary class whenever you like IF you've felt the game has let you down and not made that class combo quite well enough to handle certain things.
Just fyi, the fact that your last sentence over valued tank as a secondary for being "superior" in most party/raid situations has provided me with a negative impression of you that as an officer/big cheese type most of the time in a guild I would use to vote against you + the whinging about how "gamer zombies" are heavily influenced their favourite streamers, gamer zombies are the cattle of the server, make sure you're in one of the top guilds with adults and forget about them
Your opinion of classes should remain impartial, it's Intrepid's fault if people are leaning heavily to certain class combos and more.
It was a FICTIONAL example of how a content creator could bias a community against a class combination. We know nothing of the bard nor the augment system, so no game interaction would be derived. However, in my experiance, the average player group, benefits more of a build that allows them to iive longer than do more dps, hence the example.
No no, everyone wants to tailor the game to be in a certain way and then that who wins knows the best way to be played
People go out of their way to gatekeep others, destroy the gate hinges and it'll fall on their heads. Then indulge in a little bit of schadenfreude as their karmic value come backs to haunt them.
YES. lol
I know, that's why I said this:
Huge power gaps are a problem in their own right. P2w amplifies it. Either way, if you have as big and as achievable of power gaps (p2w or not) as I saw in early Archeage, you're going to have problems with pvp competitiveness in your game, not to mention just basic ideals of "sportsmanship."
I mean the whole reason so many people hate p2w, particularly in regards to pvp, is precisely because it helps to create large power gaps between players. This is not going to be an issue in Ashes because there's no p2w. But Ashes could still have a problem with power gaps if they go overboard with their gear balancing between tiers.
And to say the gear gaps in Archeage WEREN'T insane, is insane. That was their whole business model lol. Implement p2w, incentivize it with ridiculous gear gaps. People weren't paying 5000 dollars for a 10% increase in damage/mitigation. They paid that kind of money and more to go around absolutely dunking people. And that's what happened. I saw it. Lived it. And I quit over it. So did thousands of other players.
Edit: So basically my point is...I will play games with some p2w. I intend to play T&L, it will probably have some. Huge power gaps are the deal breaker for me, not exactly the p2w itself. And I view those huge Archeage style power gaps as a problem whether the game is p2w or not.