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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.
Comments
Generally I'm fine with no restrictions but i don't use my own preference in my points. I look at both sides issues and concerns and have an idea based on that.
Personally the spam issues that is talked about I don't see an issue with that at all. People can slow down chat and read at their own pace or ignore it. Not everyone will be talking in one chat for the entire server let alone at the same time.
But I always feel it is better to balance things out so it isn't just what I want and I can make comprises. Granted most people on the forums can't do that it is their exact way and with 0 changes ever.
We obey The Sandal God.
Hell, even the proper global chat in L2 was quite often spammed by literally just a few people, because they didn't have any restrictions on their COMMUNICATION.
And if your solution to this is simply "turn it off" then what is even the damn point? You claim to want global communication, but the only way it can work is if everyone is either super limited in their ability to properly communicate with each other or those who might've even wanted to use global chat would have to sift through hundreds of messages before finding the reply they expected from their dialogue partner (any twitch chat with even just a few dozen active chatters is proof for this).
Again You have per area you can select, with the default being your current area. I'm not really here to entertain a argument of the random outlier wasting their time switching between very chat and spamming in each one that isn't realistic.
If you are in one part of the world and want to see what is going on in another it is easy to communicate, connect and see what is going on.
The reason why i bring up that you can just ignore it is for the few people that are anti social or just hate global chat for their own preferences.
also what you just said makes no sense. why not? because you would be ok with some regional / area chat or 1/5 chats. those chats can have thousands of people on them, so if they are all typing, dont you think you would have the same issues you described above?
a regional chat in ashes will have more people than any of 99% of l2 servers
Kingdom/metro/regional chats would still be those communities just at a larger scale. My preference is still that of a smaller scale of chats, but I'd be fine with those because they still support separation of people.
The spam issue is simply my main argument against the globality or big scale of chats.
My being fine with a kingdom chat is a compromise to meet people like Mag half way. Because even if I personally dislike them, I'd be fine checking in on them from time to time to "feel the pulse" of my chosen "faction", just as I will do with religion/social org chats.
But I know that arriving at a compromise is an alien thought to quite a few people on these forums (me quite often included), so I understand how those 2 seemingly opposite opinions can come off as an illogical statement.
Have you been on a server with no collision system and have the server population talk in speech bubbles to lag the whole server?
how will different communities talk to each other? what if they wanna form an alliance vs a stronger one or negotiate, or more importantly, flame each other ;3
global chat makes it easier ;3
You really don't want to have Alliance Discussions in Global Chat. However, Global Chat can help you determine who you might wish to approach in a private manner. I wouldn't even flame in global chat these days. I'm far less tempestuous than I was in my younger years.
And I'm against making it easier
what do you mean no collision system? any mmorpg with pve and / or pvp will have them.
also, server doesnt even know chat bubbles exist. it doesnt even know what anything looks like. thats just a style thing on the client, and it could lag the client yeah. all the server does is send the text. i suppose if you have tons of people typing at the exact same time, that can cause an issue, and i mean at the same time, really at the same time, down to the milliseconds.
you can also separate the chat server from the game server, they can even be in different computers without affecting each other
Yeah, you can do all that with macros. It was simple to do back in the day. Hell, at one point we could use all our abilities available to us at the exact same time during the CU upgrades in SWG. The devs at SoE let us get away with murder during those days. Of course, you'd need macros which are banned in Ashes. You answered my main point for me, the chat functions can be regulated by a third system and rulesets can be applied to prevent the spam. I don't agree with the rest of Mag's suggestions but the DDOS attack really did show the server weakness in A1. The systems were restored though so no worries.
I don't remember talking about DDos attacks o.O
No it wasn't you who mentioned it, it was me earlier in the thread. I referred to your notions of cash shop items to talk, energy to spend to talk and universal chat channels. Not that I think you wanted them for ashes but I disagree with them.
Well I'm not for spending real money on anything. Though I'm fine with forms of a cost in game if it is an actual concern. But generally i don't care how much people talk, talk is a good thing and adds to the feel of the world being a mmo.
I think paying real money to talk in a universal chat channel is P4C and against Steven's philosophy. So, I feel we're pretty okay with the current plans and set ups requested.
This is something that resonated with me when Wow classic was rereleased. If people have to wait then they will. I remember the journey to DM taking an age if you were in an awkward part of the world and on CD.
I got dismounted from the Gryphon at one point traveling just past BRD. It took me 30 minutes to get from there to DM. This is on the excessive side, but I favour avoiding adding summoning stones to the game. And as someone who played a lock from Vanilla Wow, please do not give us a class that can summon. This just promotes lazy sods. Having travel time makes people talk to each other. There is always one gobby player in the group.
the only summoning of players I am aware of is:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Family_summon
I'm not really in favour of it as if players are organised you can literally summon a lot of players around the world. But that will need to be hashed out in testing especially if you can leap frog summon to bypass the cool down. Players could essentially create their own fast travel system.
EDIT:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Summoner
Siege summons
Group summons are activated by a party leader with that ability in their class kit along with additive components from other classes that are part of the group.[24]
Up to eight players of the same primary archetype can band together to create monumental effects during a siege.[25]
The classes will need to be in the same group or raid.[25]
These are the types of systems that we want to put in place where groups of a single primary archetype can come together to summon these types of effects that play off of what the identity of that archetype is.[25] – Steven Sharif
we have LFG functions. The community boards are the LFG functions.
They'll see the awesome players testing Alpha 2 and will want to be like them once the game is released.
Dungeons had been the exception, not the norm. It took time and dedication to organize a good group.
Therefore dungeons didn't really get 'old' or if they did it took much longer than in later patches.
Having to form your own group also incentivized players to form friendships or at the very least people that could call on each other when group help was needed in-dungeon or in-world.
Rare items, collectables, quest items, set pieces. All these things were kept as an important part of progression that took some effort and patience to get.
Another thing having to form your own group did was give some sense of importance to the tanks and healers which the overwhelming majority of players weren't interested in playing. It was the healers and tanks which formed the groups because having one or the other dramatically increased the likelihood you would find a group.
By nature the sort of person who will play the tank or healer is likely going to have good social and organizational skills so they were often perfect for forming a group that will succeed. Most tanks and healers had a laundry list of other people/roles for when they were forming a group.
When the LFG system was added everything went out the window. Dungeons were no longer important. People were just queuing endlessly until they had what they needed. Difficulty plummeted. Very little to no socialization. The community driven aspect of adding and inviting people you knew to work with and form bonds with vanished. No items from said dungeon were unique in any way.
The LFG system was one of the key decisions in wow that started it in to a death spiral leading to one decision after another that made the game easier and more accessible to new players but decimated everything the game stood for to the existing players up to that point.
Do you mean, the queuing up thing where you didn't have to form your group. The 'group finder' did indeed kill all socialization in the game, and was the point I thought the game took a turn towards generalized toxicity.
A LFG system can still be real time, and not automatic. We just don't know how the Board will be implemented in a way that will be easy for players to find each other.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Bulletin_boards
There will not be a generalized group finder in Ashes of Creation, instead Bulletin boards are used to encourage localized grouping.[2]
What would be NICE and CONVINIENT is a UI element I can open from anywhere to see what is being advertised, and sort it by region to see if anything is nearby myself, and I could /tell the writer of the board post when I see it. If I want to make my own post I can go to the nearest tavern to create a post.
What is likely and unfortunate, is that it wont be real time, and we might have to spend several play sessions trying to get people together just to go somewhere. Because it will likely be limited to just posting something, and waiting on a notification of a reply (or worse, having to go back and check your own posting later to see if there was a reply)
Bulletin boards are available within nodes[2] and player taverns.[3]