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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Zergging world bosses.
hanoldbuddy
Member, Alpha Two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlDVZCwIeRcHere is a quick recap of this problem in other MMOs. How will this not be a problem? Thank you!
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can we stop calling "i didnt get a participation trophy a problem"
almost every single thread omg.
this isnt a problem. if a guild has enough people to beat others in pvp and take the boss in 0.5 seconds, they've earned it.
you cant get loot? try to beat them
cant beat them? farm something else and buy the boss loot or farm it when the big boys are sleeping
Why would a smaller groups lesser effort be worth as much as that, deserving participation rewards? Doesn't make sense.
It just isn't a problem that needs to have that content removed in order to fix.
In my experience, most people are more interested in participating than in getting a trophy for participating. The problem above is in the inability to participate in any real way. PvP around an encounter is participation in PvP, not in the encounter.
The remedy for this is ensuring players have enough content that they can participate in, rather than changing the above content type at all.
well thats what i keep saying. cant farm in the desert? no problem, go farm in the snowy mountains, sell the loot then buy the loot from the desert
The other of people camping bases wasn't really my point, i was just wondering about the zerging of bosses with say all green people and everyone getting the full loot. McShavfe answered this. Thank you. I saw some cooresponding media about this topic now. Thanks.
As far as the static nature of goals, Maybe I dont understand ashes PvP system enough of the problem in general.
This video talks about this problem in detail. I bet it wouldnt be a problem for the roaming cyclops for example, but other quests might be victim to this zerg player approach.
about at 5:40 it touches on this topic of static quest points.
- Mobs scale exponentially the more players are in the area where the content is designed for. If diffivulty of mobs scale higher either by more mechanics or flat numbers than an extra player's contributes then it not longer the optimal way of doing said content (Can be griefed though with players just trolling u to make the mobs stronger so bosses that use this mechanic will probaly need top flag everyone as corrupted)
- Not everyone gets loot or reduced loot dropped the more players you have to make it less efficient to grind said mobs/bosses
- Mobs with no leashes and scater chain pulling mobs throughout camp this stops people running past and clicking things like New world chest runs since mobs wont be resetting after a short time and people will get yoinked into the mass of mobs chasing and most likely instant killed which deters people just running past mobs to click on quest objectives and so on
either way generaly rule of thumb is make zerging content less efficient than doing it the way it was designed for
Yeah, basically.
The key is - if you want a type of player in your game, make sure they have the content they want.
The game obviously want people that want to fight over content, so it needs that. The question is - does thr game want any other players?
I don't think there will be "static nature of goals." I might be mistaken, but here is my interpretation of how Intrepid wants this to play out.
There won't be a rush to "end game." Ashes will be a much slower game in terms of how fast it takes your character to level up, as well as the release of story content over time. The main quest line requires the world to develop and change over time, which is not something that you can rush. There will be a lot of down time of character leveling, resource gathering, node/ freehold building, etc.
The pvp comes from conflict between groups/nodes (most likely groups from different nodes, but different groups from the same node might fight each other i guess; not recommended). Dynamic world pvp will come from fighting over the right to farm resources in a certain area. Structured pvp will exist too, in castle and node sieges, as well as guild and node wars.
Also, one thing I'm skeptical on is the ability to gather enough people to zerg things (100+ players). The world is massive and the servers can only have so much population. There are a couple scenarios I can think of, however:
- At launch when people spawn in one of the few spawning portals in the world
- when we have metropolises and population is focused around those nodes
- streamers who ruin the fun for everyone else
I wonder if they have archage climate system for biome where certain plants grow in certain climates (AA was just sped up grow time) but i think be solid to be plant A can grow only grow in arid climates or plant B only tropics or plant B only Artic climate i think it be pretty solid for freehold decisions of course we are getting regionalised resources but i hope this also applies for freeholds aswell. Not every freehold can have everything plant/animal wise
maybe they dont want other players so they shouldn't add vanilla to their chocolate cake. less people will eat the cake, not more :P
less than 2 months playing 4-6 hours a day to max level is quite fast o.o. people will try to rush for the freeholds too.
maybe what you mean is getting the best gear will take time.
zerguing wont be hard and if you can get 1000 players to come do it, then maybe you've earned getting that boss.
imo, the only reason they should add anti zerg mechanics is if it affects server performance. not for gameplay reasons. didnt get the boss? sucks to suck, try again next time.
I thought it was 4 months. It should be, at least. Will test in Alpha 2. Rushing for the first freeholds will happen, but there will be more opportunities as more nodes level up. The rest I agree (1000 is a lot tho).
Possible, but that seems like a really bad idea for an MMORPG that wants 10k concurrent player servers, az well as regional servers.
Such a game isn't just a single cake, it can't be. A game like thus has to be a whole damn dessert restaurant.
Sure, have chocolate cake for those that want it, make it the best damn chocolate cake in the world. But then also make a Black Forrest cake and a Red Velvet cake for those that like their chocolate cakes a little different. Then also have a plain vanilla cake, and a vanilla raspberry cake, and an angel food cake, and pies, and creme brulee, and mousse, and tiramisu, and trifle. As long as you can add in these other desserts without negatively.impacting on the quality of your chocolate cake, chocolate cake lovers have literally no reason to complain - and in fact should be overjoyed that more people are able to enjoy that same dessert restaurant, even if they just don't like chocolate. Hell, it means they can bring their friends along that only like pie, but they can still have that fantastic chocolate cake.
Put another way, saying the game should only have the content you want to play and should just reject the money from all other potential players is a sure fire way to have a very short lived game.
then thats how u segregate your customers and we will have another wow, eso, gw2. not the direction aoc is going.
other customers can still benefit from the game, even if its not targeted to them.
following your logic, lets say we add equalized arenas with instant max level / max build for those who enjoy that. remember the other thread where we both opposed to it and you explained how people would not be out in the world, they would be in the instance etc? well now you are contradicting yourself. same logic against options for pure pvp players can be applied to options for pure pve players
if we start adding more types of cakes, then people will be eating those cakes and not the chocolate cake, since they wont be eating more than one cake at a time.
adding equalized arenas would be the same as adding content for pure pve players and it will subtract from the core of the game. same logic.
content in aoc should be for pvx players, not pure pvp or pure pve players. cant make a game for everyone or you end up making a game for no one, unless you make more than 1 game into one (and thats not really one game anymore), which is basically the case of wow and g2, but it isnt the direction aoc is going
So there is no point in participating in this event if the reward is low if there are many players participating. The reward system is what keeps this genre of video games (mmorpg) alive apart from other elements. Intrepid should improve the reward system, it is not possible for you to participate in a fairly "fun" event, give us a reward such as a piece of wood, it makes no sense and the event will fail.
But it is too early to conclude about this system, since all the systems like lvl, combat, rewards, pvp, etc. They are optimized over time. But it is important that Intrepid is connected to the demands of the players in the forums, and contributes new ideas.
It is still early in development and we don't know everything, as you say. But the point I'm saying is that if you see 20+ people doing a small protect-the-caravan even like the one they showed, maybe you can skip it. I compare it somewhat to rift events, where there's a new event every 5 minutes or so. So just go about your business and a new event will happen while you are playing. We will see what it's like during Alpha testing tho.
The problem is - there aren't enough people that only want chocolate cake to keep the lights on.
Or, at least, not enough to maintain the kind of post-release development schedule Steven has talked about. You say you are following my logic, and then imediately cease to follow my logic.
My logic is that "if you want players in your game that want to play arena content, have an arena". No where in that am I saying anything about equalized arenas.
If you have a game with solid combat, good customer experience in general and a company with an ok reputation in general, just having a basic arena will capture 90%+ of all players that any arena would capture. You don't need to go in to the specifics of them any deeper than that.
Using your cake analogy, PvP is chocolate cake, arena PvP is chocolate cake with a hint of coffee, equalized arena PvP is chocolate cake with a hint of a specific brand of coffee. Just providing a few chocolate cakes, including that chocolate cake with a hint of coffee is probably enough - but then you also need to offer up the other desserts.
If we were to look at that from a PvE perspective, where PvP is your chocolate cake, PvE is an apple pie. From there, arena PvP is one step deeper (or chocolate cake with a hint of coffee). PvE raiding is this next step, being apple pie with whipped cream.
As a third step, PvP arenas have equalized arenas (or arena modes, you could argue that equalized arenas are a fourth step in, not a third step in).
As far as I am aware, PvE simply doesn't have this third or fourth step in. I've not come across it at all.
i said equalized arena because it separates the pve and the pvp. the pve equivalent would be a progression path where you can pve, do dungeons, raids, etc without pvp, which is what you want, right? if we add that, then the same critic that you posted in another trhead of why aoc shouldnt have equalized arenas (and i agree with you in that thread) applies to why aoc cant have a pve progression path separated from pvp.
unless you are willing to say that what you want isnt a pve progression path with top end pve separated from pvp. then what is it that you want?
you dont know that
so the key thing isnt to make a cake for everyone, or different cakes for different people. the key thing is to make the best cake for those who enjoy the type of cake aoc is offering and players will eat that cake and want more.
"equalized" does not mean that all participants will have same gear?
Anyway, there will be arenas
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Arenas
And players who do not want to PvE can level up via PvP only too, theoretically, if the "diminishing" property is erased after you wait for a while.
Experience will be awarded for participating in objective-based PvP on a diminishing returns basis.[6]
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Experience
Cooperative-casual players like to play mmos too. They don't necessarily love the competitive players.
If they cannot play because competitive players lock them out from game content, they stop playing the subscription.
True, but there is a very clear difference between
'locked out' and 'competing at the top level'
So long as casuals can join the content and play against other casuals, there shouldn't be an issue.
thats why there are cooperative only mmorpg and competitive players are excluded from cooperative mmorpg. why dont we change that and include competitive players?
you know, if i dont get my fill of competitive gampley and pvp and all that, ill stop paying final fantasy subscription. this is basically the same thing. so why not tell ff devs to add content for competitive players?
im not saying we must exclude them. im saying this game is targetted to cooperative-competitive players and its going into that direction. it should aim to be the best mmorpg for cooperative-competitive players. so why add things for cooperative only players? thats going into the opposite direction the game is going...
again, we go back to adding vanilla to a chocolate cake so that vanilla lovers dont feel excluded. chocolate isnt the cake for them. they should eat a vanilla cake and is should just aim to make the best chocolate cake.
they would still be competing though.
nope. look at lost ark for example. arenas are equalized but every class hs different stats. it just basically means you skip the farm. but they arent fair, thats a lie :P
also, yes, there will be arenas in aoc, and if you read the wiki it says you cant buy gear from doing arenas. you can only buy enhancement by doing arenas and other pvp content such as caravans. so it stands to reason that you still need to pvx in the open world to get the gear for arenas.
maybe they will give u some basic gear doing arenas or battlegrounds, but im sure it wont be the top gear as this gear will be crafted. arenas will probs be like lineage 2 olympiads, so you need to go out there and farm then use that gear in arenas.
also, where does it say arenas will give experience? it clearly says you will need a minimum level to participate, so you will need to level up using another method until you reach that level. they could probably give experience but it wont be a main method to level up. the experience from objective based pvp is experience you get from doing caravans, castle sieges, open seas, etc. basically open world pvp events :P
If Ashes is sticking true to its direction, arenas shouldn't offer a way to level up to max level or offer gear by completely avoiding pve, same way you shouldn't be able to level up to max level and get geared up by doing pve only and avoiding pvp
I will admit, the only places I think equalized gear should be allowed to exist is specifically in arenas, but even then I am not a fan of it. Folks work hard on their gear, time invested or game money spent should have consequences in power difference. Not unbeatable difference, but it should still exist (theres another thread for that)