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
and capping m. crit and fixed cooldowns not affected by casting speed. and fixed movement speed. they ruined my sps ugh T_T
Yeah but I'm one of those 'GameWorld RPers'.
I need my ACHIEVEMENTZ. People have to see my title and know that I put in that work and they should put some RESPECT ON MY NAME.
(more seriously it's because the only uniquely appealing part of Ashes is the GameWorld RP portion so it's just the thing I use to cling to my interest)
And yes, TL Wand/Daggers should be great, based on all the data we have from the test that was definitely public enough to talk about and their interviews, and referencing none of the data from the test that people are not allowed to talk about.
It was hella deserved haha, it took way longer for NCsoft to properly balance mages than it took to properly balance Archer/Dagger.
Aren't we all sinners?
no i hated it. elves basically lost their racial identity. im an elf and im biased ;3
And I bet none of the mages or archers or rogues were happy with all that weird stuff. It would make more sense to just adjust gear for all instead of nerfing the classes.
Nah i really don't think so, those classes had their time at the Apex and were only properly toned down to the other classes level(which were buffed instead), as they were still hella strong and very competitive even after all the nerfs Mages and Archer Party compositions were still Amazing till High Five were they got nicely buffed.
And Gear became more and more powerful on the highers tiers for all classes as time went by.
Aren't we all sinners?
I was not aware of gear enhancements!
Feels good to discover something new
I think gear enhancements should bring up to 20% additional power to a character, the same as increasing gear tier by one level.
Maybe gear enhancements should be lost faster by corrupted players.
or if you havent pvped in the last 24 hours and die ;3
Nah, wand doesn't actually heal enough for that without you gearing in a way that weakens your damage on the other weapon.
You can see it in various publicly available videos.
oh i have a dirty little secret
🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐
I'm sure there will soon be a game like that, where the numbers you think should work, are the reality.
There might even be some more specific systems to let you enhance your gear differently to suit your playstyle along with that.
But, using the original values, if gear is only 50% of character power, using the grades we know, and throwing enhancing on top of that, each level of enhancement will only add 1% of a character's total power (more like 0.4% if Ashes gear goes up to +15 or something).
But, there are ways to do that well too, such as keeping the damage values generally low and making the player rely on specific setups for skills which increase the multipliers on the values. I'm sure we will see this in 2024.
Now first of all when it comes to L2.. Gear has the mildest of impacts on a character in that game. Top factors of a strong character in L2 are Buffs, Levels and acquired skills (since a lot of them required specific items and millions of skill points to be learnt and lvled up).
Gear only mattered when over enchanted and by that I mean REALLY OVER ENCHANTED. Anything other than that was just Buffs and levels.
So basicly the gap between gear tiers in L2 was minimal.
To extend this a little bit, gear system was based in grades NG D C B A S and later on S80 S84 etc etc. A stock a grade had all the chances in the world to beat an S grade. The amount of time needed to get an A grade compared to S? Huge. The amount of people to cooperate to get a man a higher grade set of items? A lot bigger in the case of S and A and B. But an average warrior with a B amor set and B jewels set while holding an A or S grade weapon could take down a mage wearing S grades, similar level and same Buffs.
Beside epic items (unique in L2) gear in L2 mattered only when highly over enchanted. We're talking +8 armor set, +12+ weapons etc. Skills also worked the same way, u got to a point where u don't level up your skills anymore and they stopped being effective on top lvl characters, which is fair since most of skills were last upgraded at lvl 74 while end game is at 85.
All of that is due to the lack of diversity in gear in L2. There were 4 B grade sets (2 of which are complete trash) for people of lv52+. 4 A grade sets for people of lv61+ (10 levels for a whole gear tier) and initially only 1 S grade set for people of lv76+.
I'm gonna repeat that. 1 set for everybody. Naturally the diversity came from and only from over enchanting.
Now, the point in over enchanting in L2 was that involved a lot of rng. Everything from acquiring the recipes and materials, to the chance of crafting, to the extreme over enchanting failure percentages was rng. U fail craft? U lose everything u farmed/bought. U fail OE? Item breaks u get some minimal value back in the form of 1 particular material. Essentially gear acquisition for solo players was hard if one was not good at dealing with trade and grinding for endless hours in low reward places (since u got kicked out of the good spots by stronger organized equipped fully buffed groups of ppl).
The thing still is tho, in L2 a stock A grade set was slightly less strong than an S grade. A stock B grade than an A. Yet there were people wearing lv40 stuff (something that is considered trash in L2) could practically assassinate, not kill, ASSASSINATE a player wearing gear that took MONTHS to aquire. Hell, I've seen a man CRY right in front of me shedding tears for dropping one piece of equipment, he didn't go to work for 2 fucking days because of that. And yet, that piece of equipment as hard as it was to get, couldn't protect him from an angry troll with some "starting lvl" trash who could kill him in seconds. Buffs skills and overenchantment is the essence of L2. Gear as it is meant nothing.
Now THIS is what George and others like him are trying to say. Why the fck should I spend 3 months of my life to get a set that has minimal value? I played day and night, deserted real life In many ways, for 3 whole months and I finally got it, I feel great I feel like a king, I wanna smash people test my new self and someone is gonna tell me what? It shouldn't count? FU xD
When u spend 3 months of 12 hours per day grinding, fighting off people off your spot, trading, doing quests, going to war, dying, waiting hours at bosses, organising with tens of other players, u got the right to come and tell me that gear shouldn't count. Gear should be fucking massive if it is so hard to get.
So instead of crying that you can't fight people playing longer and being more serious about the game than you, you should put your brain to work and find a way around it, in my always honest and humble peasant opinion. In the end it's all about the effort u invest in the game. There will be people playing 12-16 hours a day. People that can't do that shouldn't wanna compare to them. That's like me complaining about Mike Tyson. It's unfair that I can't beat the shit out of him just cuz he devoted his entire daytime to boxing.
Many factors that change the classes performance. Take all that out and you ended up with archers and mages being complete 0s in Olympiad. Unfair nerfs and that's coming from a gladiator that pretty much stopped playing L2 when my class become OP.
Gear should matter, nice and simple.
Since Caravan events auto flag everyone so there is no corruption risk, I think everyone will bring their top gear to these pvp events.
It could be totally possible one side has unsurmountable advantage over the other due to gear. I don't see any issue with that either.
Random Open world pvping, I will use the example I saw earlier on this page of 20-25% difference per tier. With closely matched in skill players, that 20% is a huge margin. If it is just 1v1 ganking and someone jumps me and I while I am trying to get away I notice this gigantic gear differential of 20% (we cant inspect gear remember? So its logical to always default to run first until more information is gained), I am literally going to flag up and kill the guy, might win, might lose, but with a 20% difference anyone should feel confident enough to fight back. I will kill the ganker and he/she can enjoy the death penalty, however many times they want to come back.
In the Xv1 situation, I am just going to run, its not about gear anymore. I might feel confident enough to initiate a fight against 2 or more enemies sometimes, but if ganked I just assume theyve been watching me awhile and probably have a sense of how strong I am. Time to leave.
I don't see the issue in general, with PKers deciding to wear lower gear and go out ganking. Losing gear in a game like this where they can just buy replacement gear from other players is not much of a punishment anyway, we just have to rely on Intrepids balancing of corruption and all the other penalties that go along with it. I mean sure near launch it will be a deterrent to lose gearsets, however months, years down the road, the care level goes down as our finances and economic efficiency keep going up.
I forgot to ask this before, even though this is really important for the entire argument. How often do you see yourself using this PK maneuver of "PK some people for a goal; clear that goal yourself; profit; remove PK count; repeat"?
Is it few times a day? Daily? Few times a week? Once a week? Even rarer?
Cause to me, if this is just ~once a week for only the most important of goals - I don't see this as a problem at all. And if it's smth like twice a day, then I'd have issues with the PK count removal methods and pace.
Also, with majority of higher rated servers relying on OEd gear as "base" gear, you'd need to spends those same weeks grinding 12h a day to even come close to base lvl of pvpable strength. So I'm no stranger to love grinding for my gear as well.
This is the difference in our approach. I'm a neet who can play the game for 24/7 for as long as my health allows it. But instead of "dunking on casual newbs" it would be waaaay more fun for me if said newbs could still stand up to me and give me a good fight.
I want a proper pvp game where any person I see could be a potential enemy that's willing to give it their all in a fight against me. I don't want a fucking stomping ground, where I play whack-a-mole simply because I can afford to play longer. That's boring as shit.
i completely agree with you, however...that depends a lot on the current patch. try wearing over enchanted A grade vs +0s grade with 300 element. you get 1-2 shotted.
try fighting a chimera for example, fully buffed and naked, see what happens.
most people used A grade because the effects of S grade were shit for most people (maybe except IC) and ofc it was easier to get and oe, but that changed when element was added. also, for whatever reason, A grade was easier to get than B grade lol.
gear gave you the majority of your power (and mostly because of your character passives) and buffs were basically a necessity. example might level 3 gives you 15% patk and empower level 3 gives you 77% magic attack. do you think those buffs are relevant when you take your weapon off and you have 10 attack or magic attack? do you think acumen is going to do anything if you dont have gear on, or even the right gear? nope.
while buffs are basically mandatory in l2, we shouldn't consider them in this conversation. if you are playing with a full party, you will have buffs. buffs are also more accessible than gear. its easier for someone to get buffed than to get a +16 s grade weapon. and when everybody has the same buffs, then other aspects, such as gear matter more. buffs are also part of character power.
we should also not consider passives and actives. that is part of character power. even if upgrading them to +30+15 has a huge difference between someone with +0, at least for this conversation.
so the issue here is between gear tiers. without going to deep into an explanation, expensive gear should have a big difference against cheap gear.
- not planned, where a player will become PKer spontaneously. He might have good gear and reason to believe he has a lot to gain from the opponent. Or might kill him by accident, the last hit being a critical.
- planned, with a bit lower tier gear, where the PKer will not always win, and if it does, his opponents might not drop valuable stuff
None if these cases will happen often if penalties are balanced to gradually increase.
For sure some will complain that it happens to often or not often enough.
They all might be right, if there are too many PKers on server: some players will be killed often while each PKer might not get enough kills.
Anyway, the deep sea will help balancing player behavior too.
@NiKr there are games like that. CS2 is a good example.
See, these two statements are kind of at odds with each other.
You like MMO's because that is where the character you put time in to is - and that time is represented with progression.
You want newer players to still have a shot against you, but those newer players also want their MMO to be where they have a character that they put time in to - they just happen to be at the start of that journey.
You kind of can't have both. Either putting time in to your character is a thing, or new players having a shot against long standing players is a thing - both can't be.
This is totally ignoring the player skill component as well. If player skill is a factor, those new players are going to have even less of a chance at killing you than if it is just gear.
Skills in FPS games are somewhat transferable between different games in the genre, but only to an extent - there is always something new to pick up when you move to a new FPS game.
MMO's have even less transferable skill between games. Even basic tactics that work in one game may not work in a different game.
As such, that new player you are wanting to have a chance against you is at every disadvantage, and simply isn't going win.
If anything, if the newbie tries to attack a vet and sees that he's doing 0 damage, even after playing for a few months - I'd imagine he'll just think of quitting the game. And with how mmos usually work, that newbie would never be able to catch up to me, because I'd be getting ever further even throughout his few months of gameplay.
Nah, I'm a shit player, so skill got nothing to do with me. Obviously there'll be skilled people who'll be both on the newbier side and on the vet side. And both of those would easily kill me, no matter the power difference (well, maybe outside of 20lvl difference or smth).
Only if that vet is attacking the new player.
If the new player attacks the vet and realizes they have no chance, that is just a lesson learned, and also shows them just how much progression they have to look forward to.
This is how we come to George's claim of "mmos should have new servers each year", except that's the shit that ruins games, because all the vets who're failing currently will just move to new servers and the old ones will die. Rinse repeat.
The alternative is your preference of the game pretty much resetting everyone's progress each big expansion, which imo would destroy the very feeling progress you claim to like.
So out of these three evils I prefer mine
Open world mmos introducing new content is something that everyone looks forward.
You will pretty much say anything to prove yourself right. Im starting to think that you will play a mage and that's why you did the test.
You finally admitted the problem and found a solution to curb archers.
But then I changed to a mage, because I knew that it would make your own damn point better. And I came out of that with a compromise.
George, you're missing your own wins when they're staring at you directly. Smh my head.
They, right after the healer, will drop like flies. The rest will lose the fight without firepower.
You think there is a win and lose here because you care about the chatter. I dont.
I brought to the Devs an issue.