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
I struggle to think of something that makes less sense than an MMO as a medium for showing off personal skill.
If a player would win, others would say he was lucky his natural opponent was eliminated by somebody else.
Or players would complain that the game is not balanced well for 1x1 military elections.
So I understand from this wiki fragment. Or do I miss some other detail?
1v1 matchups will have a rock-paper-scissors dynamic, where one class will be superior to another.[2]
There will be match ups in 1v1s where one class will be superior to another; and that application should be a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. We want there to be counter-play between the different classes... Instead it's going to be a group focused balance, where as long as you have the diversity of classes present, that's going to be an equal level playing field. It's going to be very dependent on skill and strategy.[2] – Steven Sharif
And yet people seemed to have loved WoW arena and L2 Oly back in the day. People just like 1v1 fights cause they're more personal.
You missed that mayor election were supposed to have champion stand-ins instead of your own character. So they'd have their own balancing separate from the main game (at least that's how I assumed it would go, cause we didn't really get all that much info for the system).
The champion system really was stupid though.
It would have played out more like Pokémon than PvP. You would spend your time going around collecting different upgrades for your champion, and the player with the best equipped would be the one to win.
Since we all know those upgrades would be group or raid based, it was always going to be a case of the winner being the person with the most resources behind them.
They probably had internal discussions and found it too similar to the other nodes and also being an additional effort to implement. Finally I see a feature dropped to make Alpha 2 come sooner.
This, once again, would depend on if there was an upper limit on progress. People with groups might've gotten their champion fully leveled/geared within a week and could then do other stuff, while solo players would have to grind their ass off for longer.
Seems more than fair to me and pretty much how other mechanics in the game seem to work rn.
Either way, the group's influence would be passive, rather than active. I guess the only passive election left is economic, cause there the only interaction with your group is them giving you money. Divine remains to be seen, cause we don't know how it'll be designed.
There is more to it than just 1v1 balance. At least for me personally 10v10 would've been better - i for sure had more fun in open world PVP, and most of good memories i have of L2 are from group content. Yes, 1v1 can be fun and memorable, but i think party content is just better in an MMO like this.
Champion system is actually bad though. It's not the best idea to design systems that discredit your character progression in an RPG in any way. It's ok as an occasional side thing. It's not good as such core mechanic. I experienced similar thing in another RPG, and developers are now working on slowly removing that from the game. All they wanted was a few bosses that were more skill based and less of a gear check. Now they are replacing them with normal bosses. And it's not that purely skill based fights are bad, they just don't really fit well in an RPG, they create a disconnect - developing your character is a huge part of the game.
All of those are viable ways of progressing and all of those influence other people's experiences (or have potential to). So why not have another way to progress your character - as a military mayor. I'm sure there'll be at least a few solo players who know how to "win the market" and would be able to become economic mayors simply by playing the game in that way, so why not have the same for pvp players?
I'd prefer much more variety in the game than simply "friends do everything for you".
If anything, it should be something that reset every month. All other mayoral competitions require work throughout the month (gaining votes, earning money, earning what ever the religion one needs you to earn). It would stand to reason that if the champion system were to be used for military nodes, it should need work on it every month.
The thing is, then those people with those resources will simply block others from getting the better upgrades - so it would still be a case of needing a guild of several hundred people doing what ever you ask them to do.
If it's possible - yes, it would ultimately come back to "have your friends do it for you". Just as it most likely is the case with the divine elections. But we'll never know if this was the case in the original design (even if the chance of that is definitely high).
Neither of the examples you gave are disconnected from playing your actual character, from your goals or efforts, be they social, military economic or otherwise. Maybe i misinterpret an avatar in the context of military node? Or just failing to explain my point.
Adjacent issue was present in Lost Ark, where at some point as a f2p player you would want to run as many alts as possible. From personal experience - playing main character less that 10% of the time is not fun. I was progressing my character, but i was not playing it. For some it's not a problem, and there is absolutely an argument of "just don't do it then", which is why i decided to quit Lost Ark in the end.
Side ranked PvP with avatar characters - i'm all for it, maybe i would participate sometimes, but i don't think that should be present within core node system.
I'll try to deliver my point again in short. Two issues. Not playing actual character. Not benefiting from efforts when they should be relevant (like saying Economic node citizens can't use profits from their Freehold or political alliances for election funds).