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.
Nodes/Election types - Thoughts and Discussion
Fiddlez
Member
I am not entirely sure because of limited information but the recent stream seems to confirm it. Basically just thinking out loud and looking for other peoples thoughts.
Elections wont be won by individuals but by large player groups(Guilds).
Military Election : Maybe it seems obvious but initially I thought players might be able to win a Battle Royal and be the Mayor but players seem to be given free reign. Nothing stopping them in that instance to go full Hunger Games and bring sponsors or team up. Just like the Movie/Books the battle was FAR more then just the actual battle and even further then we as players see in something like PUBG.
Economic Election : is just money so there's nothing stopping a rich traders guild from pooling money and taking ownership with out any competition really.
Religion Election : want to farm favor? Well guess what there are some "religious zealots" stopping anyone from gathering Favour, they will go full Crusade and destroy any competition.
Science Election : Maybe the traders guild will own this too and just buy votes, we already see in our current world how much corrupt a democratic system can be so this sort of speaks for itself.
Either way I think its very interesting, if I am right and I certainly feel like I am. Each guild will then build what they want the most what helps them gain or keep control even against their own populace. Really starting to see the vision of what the Node system is and why its important, these features NEED to be in the game.
The one thing I am very curious about is how the Nodes Map will look and how it will play out. I don't think it will be as simple with all the different types of services with each Node. Economic and Military's might share interests as an example, don't want to downgrade the economic because we need the cash flow. Maybe the other nodes want that Node for the same reasons and you attacking it causes them problems so you become the enemy. Will the crafters lose the ability to craft if they cant access resources? What would be the incentive to destroy a science node if you are military? I can see two Military Nodes with Similar upgrades starting a war but either way.
Just seems like a million things can happen and I am really interested to see what people think will happen.
Also, Caravans should be banned but it doesnt make much sense for players to stop crafting armor and weapons etc during a siege by losing access to all Materials.
Elections wont be won by individuals but by large player groups(Guilds).
Military Election : Maybe it seems obvious but initially I thought players might be able to win a Battle Royal and be the Mayor but players seem to be given free reign. Nothing stopping them in that instance to go full Hunger Games and bring sponsors or team up. Just like the Movie/Books the battle was FAR more then just the actual battle and even further then we as players see in something like PUBG.
Economic Election : is just money so there's nothing stopping a rich traders guild from pooling money and taking ownership with out any competition really.
Religion Election : want to farm favor? Well guess what there are some "religious zealots" stopping anyone from gathering Favour, they will go full Crusade and destroy any competition.
Science Election : Maybe the traders guild will own this too and just buy votes, we already see in our current world how much corrupt a democratic system can be so this sort of speaks for itself.
Either way I think its very interesting, if I am right and I certainly feel like I am. Each guild will then build what they want the most what helps them gain or keep control even against their own populace. Really starting to see the vision of what the Node system is and why its important, these features NEED to be in the game.
The one thing I am very curious about is how the Nodes Map will look and how it will play out. I don't think it will be as simple with all the different types of services with each Node. Economic and Military's might share interests as an example, don't want to downgrade the economic because we need the cash flow. Maybe the other nodes want that Node for the same reasons and you attacking it causes them problems so you become the enemy. Will the crafters lose the ability to craft if they cant access resources? What would be the incentive to destroy a science node if you are military? I can see two Military Nodes with Similar upgrades starting a war but either way.
Just seems like a million things can happen and I am really interested to see what people think will happen.
Also, Caravans should be banned but it doesnt make much sense for players to stop crafting armor and weapons etc during a siege by losing access to all Materials.
0
Comments
The popular player will win and that works, doesnt it?
I would still like the champion system for the military node just without the champion.
Give the competitors a "champion" which we can name as our character and we can copy paste our characters appearance, give us the common level skills, weapons and armor to bypass fairness issues for those that scream "ima low lv noob but I pown you 1v1" and let the best man win the mayorship.
That way it's skill about martial prowness and not a popular vote.
I like that the divine node covers the solo needs. Whoever likes roleplaying as a scholar the most, wins.
I just expect this system to be abused to all hell during A2, so we'll see what we end up with in the end.
Maybe the candidates should choose 7 friends. Zerg lock it.
I dont think it will be solo. Remember, this is a HUGE reward to be a Guild Owner and Mayor of your node. People wont just sit back and be idle. You can kill players who dont follow the plan, seemingly real religion. Expect guilds to fight the most over this one, ironically enough these elections will probably will face the most conflict.
just a thought.
Regarding divine nodes - player doing most for the node (generally through quests) wins. With many quests to choose from, 24 hours in each day, and a limited number of 'enforcers' I think it would be impossible to keep a dedicated player to keep from winning, particularly if they do the quests in non-prime play times.
Regarding economic nodes - buying the office of mayor. The wealthy guild could outbid everyone to become mayor, perhaps even in multiple nodes (good point). But then they spent so much money that they may not be able to repeat, and the next most wealthy group wins next time, or the time after. Isn't this exactly how the system is supposed to work?
Military nodes: I'll stay away from those.
It's not bribes.
A guy wants to become mayor. His guild have 300 ppl. They give him gold.
A guy has a guild with 50 ppl.
A guy has no guild.
It's a bid.
Scientific is not necessarily bribes. It's a guy with a large guild who is allied with two other large guilds from that node. Maybe a guild grows big enough for it just to be the same guild under the alliance tree. Now the player who runs is well known and when people vote there is a good chance they will just pick the name they know. Combine the effect of multiple guilds and telling people to vote for him "propaganda". If they have money too can use that too.
Divine well, I will take it you haven't played much in open world PVP. They can and WILL stop players or make it extremely hard. They will have full sweaty players far more dedicated
While the person they want will certainly have support and assistance. Now will it happen everywhere? Probably not but the bigger the prize the better chance.
Economic, well they will just simply have more players. If it's a large trade guild dedicated to gold then other players/large groups won't stand a chance.
My main point is Stephen says "choose wisely". When you vote but I see plenty of opportunities for the choice to be taken away.
Which is sort of a double edged sword because it requires strategy and politics, not just personal skill. Which I kind of think is the point. So I have no issues with it at all, I think it makes things interesting and realistic.
I think New World is a fantastic example of this idea going completely wrong. Power struggle was CONSTANT and controlling the power meant everything. Mega guilds were never stopped, and that meant they would inevitably take over the entire server. Many servers were just "If you aren't Marauder, you're trolling.", and the entire server map would be Green. It would be this way because simply the way that Amazon Games organized the numbers, lead to the scale of conflicts being far far smaller than the size of player organization actually is.
It's like in highschool, or sports in general. The huge city schools always perform the best because they're literally 10x the size, therefore 10x the likelihood that they will produce exceptional athletes. So if you're part of a small school, you just admit that you suck and move on in the D Class. Although being unfair can often promote some extent of satisfaction in power struggle, that is far far too extreme for a video game. You want to feel like you matter to the world when you log in. If guilds are properly organized to the point that being larger than 300 members isn't productive/practical, then the issues of "They're just funneling money into this dude, they're just absolutely stacking this guy in the battle royale." rather than being a pain in the ass.. will involve politics, important social interactions, and a reason to think about the world as a real living place, rather than a numbers contest.
Sorry that was a lot! But sometimes my fingers just start moving and I can't stop. Hope you enjoyed.
The problem with any arena based mechanic for this is that it removes the process from the open world.
If a leader in a game like Ashes is to be decided via PvP, that PvP should absolutely be open world based and somewhat chaotic, rather than instanced off and controlled.
it didnt matter in nw because controlling a territory woldnt stop other players from progressing, nor it would give you something unique. you would get money yeah, but you would develop the town for the benefit of all 3 factions.
also, the fights for territory were very fair. you only needed 50 good players, not the whole faction to be good.
nodes in ashes will be developed for the benefit of all the citizens, regardless of your guild.
Open world pvp is basically their current plan as I understand it. It's going be a measure of who has the most friends,not who is the best player. They may as well just make it a ranked-choice vote like the scientific node because open world PVP is just a shittier election between zergs. An actual 1vs1 or 2vs2,3vs3 would determine who the best players are. Instead of it being instanced like most arenas I'd like to see the games at the top of the ladder take place within the node with spectators who can't interfere.
Put simply, if you do not have hundreds of people willing to do what ever it is you want them to do, you won't get anywhere in Ashes.
This isn't a fault, nor a feature - this is the very essence of the game.
I'm not defending this as a good thing (in fact, I have been warning people for a few years now that this is what the game is), I'm simply pointing out that this is the actual intent of the whole game.
thats not true. when conflict in ow pvp starts your guild wont be there to back you up. its gonna be you and your party, or you alone. those conflicts escalate though and after sometime there might be a guild vs guild out in the open for no reason,b ut thats quite fun.
I think you're right. Which is why I suspect very good players won't stick with the game for long. The best raiders probably aren't going to put up with Bobby Mczerg and his guild of shitters every raid night just to maybe down a boss that will be entirely mediocre by definition because it has to be designed around Bobby and his friends. They'll just go play a better game. The best PVPers aren't going to respect a game in which Bobby and his guild will be ruling over them even though they'd destroy Bobby or anybody in his guild with half their gear off in a 1vs1. Steven is designing a game that people like him will excel at. He has organizational skills but he's not a very good player. It's kind of ironic that supporters and critics of the game alike both think its going to be super hard-core. The actual hard-core won't waste their time with this game with the exception of crafters who will probably get a great game.
very good player slmao
who are better players, the guy who can beat u in a 1v1 or the guys who can beat your party 8 vs 8?
i lot of people think they are good because they can win 1v1. what they dont realize is that they might be fighting bad players, they might have an unfair class or build advantage, they have more potions, etc. then they dismiss group pvp because there is an unfair advantage in numbers (when they also take advantage of many unfair things in 1v1).
a guild with good players will beat a guild with bad players even if the bad players outnumber them. been there done that
The best player depends on the context, obviously.
If the challenge is 1v1, then the player that wins in 1v1 is obviously the best. If it is 8v8, the thr 8 that win in that 8v8 is obviously the best.
There is no singular fight that can determine if an player or group of players is actually good or not. In an 8v8, it is as viable that you have a few bad players as it is that you come up against a bad player in 1v1.
However, when talking about best players in an MMORPG context, it is almost always going to be successful top end raiders that come 9ut on top.
This is because those at the very top of raiding in an MMORPG have gone through content that weeds out individual average players - if you are just average, or even a little bit above average, raid content should have put a wall up in front of you that you simply can't pass without becoming an actual good player.
I've yet to see PvP that weeds out poor players (I don't really do arena PvP, so perhaps this does). In open world PvP, an extra person that is below average is better than not having that person.
Further to this, top end raid content requires communication and teamwork above what PvP does. While teamwork and communication are clearly needed for PvP, actual top end PvE has a much greater need for it than any PvP that I have ever seen.
So, top end raiders are the people that have proven to be actual good players, capable of both solo performance as well as slotting in to be a part of a team. There is no capacity to be able to carry even a single average player.
I don't expect any PvP oriented players to agree with this, but I also don't know any PvP oriented players that have actually participated in proper top end raid content.
This specific point here is what I've been saying for a while.
If Ashes wants to be a PvX game where both PvE and PvP are meaningful, it needs people that excel at each - knowing they will need to participate in both.
To me, the ideal is that there should be content that PvP oriented players have no hope of killing (the single digit percent content Steven has talked about), but the PvP should also be deep enough that PvP players will usually be able to beat PvE oriented players.
The problem is, in order to do this, the game needs to attract PvE oriented players. The game needs PvE content that won't make then just want to play another game.
Why do we play games? To have fun, or at least that is why I play them. I certainly can have all kinds of fun without being the most LEE7 of them all. I kinda feel sorry for players who will quit if they aren't super uber, seems like they will never have much fun in game or in life. That is between them and their therapist, I suppose, none of my business.
The people who will win 1v1 will probably win 8v8 too. And if they could clone themselves 200 times Bobby Mczergs guild would get camped all day. But there isn't going to be 200 extremely good PVPers on a server,there will be a dozen or so. Those people have no reason to play the game. There's plenty of other games on the market that aren't being controlled by Bobby and his AOE spam. Same thing for the best raiders.
being good in one game doesnt mean you are good in another game. how are they good in aoc if they didnt play aoc?
sometimes you arent good. you just fight very bad players.
there are plenty of ways to beat bad zergs, if you are good and they are bad.
also, plenty of opportunities to fight on equal numbers in aoc. so yeah you arent good until you prove it in game.
agree with the first few things.
disagree that pve players are always better than pve players.
let me ask you something. how do nba players score more points. when they are shooting alone, or when they are being guarded by the opposing players? now, apply that to games. see if you get the analogy.
The people who are the best enjoy being the best. That's what is fun to them. If the content they find fun is being gate-kept by 200 AOE spamming mouthbreathers,they are better off with every other game on the market. Especially when most of those people already have a sunk-cost in those games. Intrepid could attract and maintain those players but Steven would apparently rather have a niche game that people like Bobby Mczerg,the 5-star discord general will play and inevitably run off a majority of the players who actually populate the game on launch.
r u a wow player?
you know there are games that give players the tools to deal with 200 people spamming aoe in one spot. wow isnt one of them.
so the issue isnt a zerg, the issue is a game not having said tools, or opposing players not using them properly.
Oh, as a statement in and of itself, I disagree with this as well. All of the worst players in MMO's as PvE players - just not top end.
The reason I say top end players are generally found in PvE is because PvE weeds out individual players, PvP doesn't. Every top end PvP guild carries at least some players that aren't good enough to be there on their own merit - that simply can't happen in a top end PvE guild because that one player not being good enough will wipe the whole raid every time on top end content.
I'm not sure I understand the point you are making here.
Obviously a players ability to play can only be measured by their performance while playing. You don't look at someone's freethrow ability and attempt to work out how good they will be in game while being guarded.
What I assume you are then wanting to say is that PvP is like having someone guarding you and PvE is like freethrow attempts - but that is only true of shit tier PvE (ie, L2, Archeage, BDO etc).
If PvP is like having Steven Adams blocking you, top tier PvE is like having a 30 foot tall Steven Adams blocking you.
Though as I said, bottom tier PvE is like having freethrows all by yourself - in some cases with an 8 foot high, 8 foot wide basket. This is what the above games are - sure there is blocking and such, but the basket is so big and so low that the game itself loses all meaning.
This is why Rhythmz was correct in that Ashes isn't likely to attract those top end players. Someone capable of taking on that 30 foot tall Steven Adams and still score at least a few baskets simply isn't going to be content with playing that game with the 8 foot high, 8 foot wide basket - even if the rest of the people playing that game don't even realize that is what they are playing.
have you seen a team of professional players, lets say in lol, where 4 are top tier players and the 5th one is a bronze noob and gets carried in a tournament against 5 pros?
you didnt ge tthe basketball analogy. pve has a difficulty limit. i mentioned this in another thread. the pve encounter is designed in such a way that can be beaten. doesnt matter if it is by the top 3 guilds or by the top 90 guilds. if the encounter was unbeatable, it wouldn't be in the game, or no one would play it (unless its some infinite "practice mode" or an endless runner). so basically, when the goal of the game is to beat the encounter, there is a ceiling set by the developer (which is beating the encounter) and the only obstacle to reaching that ceiling is you and your own ability.some people will reach the ceiling and some wont. sometimes the ncounter isnt that hard, but people arent just that good. but no matter what, there is a limit that more than 1 person (or guild) can reach with enough effort and patience.
beating it faster, using less potions, less res, etc doesnt matter too much since you already reached the winning condition. competing for leaderboard position is a different ceiling than beating the encounter and its a bit more related to competing against other players.
in pvp, the ceiling (and the goal) is the best player and the obstacles are yourself PLUS other players, and this ceiling can be unreachable by the majority of players (literally everyone except the best player). the encounter isnt designed to be beaten (if you win, someone else loses). so no matter what you do, you wont become the best player, and if you do, then you are the new ceiling and everybody else will never be able to reach it, until someone does and then becomes the new ceiling, etc. point is, there is no absolute limit set by the developer, unlike pve.
you can play basketball until your goal of scoring 10/10 free throws is met (pve) and you can reach this, however, you can try and play basketball until you become the best player in the world, lets say better than michael jordan (pvp), but you most likely wont ever reach that goal.
also, mixing pvp and pve is harder than pve or pvp alone
The idea is that they add in an encounter that isn't able to be beaten, and tune it down until it is on the point of just being possible.
The thing is, sometimes us players come along and kill it in its original state - where developers thought it to literally not be in a killable state.
Across a number of games, I have killed 6 encounters in states developers assumed to not be killable - and they are just the encounters I have been directly told that this was the case.
You say PvE is designed in a way to be beaten (which isn't true), and yet seem to not be considering the fact that literally more than 50% of people engaging in PvP encounters win. This is a higher rate than top end PvE (though not PvE over all, of course). The only way to obtain challenge in PvP is to tip the odds against you - taking on twice your number or what ever. The thing is, this is a thing PvE players do as well.
I kind of did get it - the problem is it is an analogy of your experiences of what PvE is, rather than of what top end PvE actually is.