Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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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
The instances can be done every week, every other week or every month. Guilds will have the instances on farm after the mechanics are known. Already, resources are pushing the limit because you can easily turtle inside the instances and arm a whole raid group on the sly. The other saving grace with no contestation in a PvX game is the fact that other guilds will be around the instances and contestation can happen at that point. There must be risk/reward.
Would you prefer to do them repeatedly each time the boss dies? Just walk out, reset and let the farm continue? Every week, every other week or every month is a standard for the hardest raids. I don't particularly care about the frequency, if we can rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rince, repeat the hardest content without contestation then we will dominate faster.
Instanced pve challenges should be the hardest challenge (in a pure pve sense, where its only the boss and extra adds with no other players), that can only be completed reasonably by a very small percentage of players.
This means, even after the mechanics are known, STILL only a small percentage of the playerbase can complete. Maybe only 1% can participate in the prog and mechanic discovery, but 5-10% is capable of clearing even after mechanics are known.
To me, challenge like this means the best, or equivalent to the best loot drops from here, as well as cosmetics or unique titles only available to those that cleared and cannot be sold.
Should equivalent power gear be available elsewhere? Sure why not, but it needs a proper challenge or barrier to achieving that powerful gear just like the instanced pve is a challenge only a few can do.
Best gear isnt for everyone, its for the best. Best at pve, or best at pvp, or best at xyz, the best goes to the best.
Well, I only care about the clears. I think random respawn times would be good which is what I stated in the dev thread but there should be clears only infrequently. Especially if there are multiple bosses which there might be. Its not uncommon for raids to reset each week even if 1 boss remains to be defeated though. I'm not even sure the raids will exist because Chancelot couldn't quote the single digit instances earlier.
So, crafted gear is BiS alongside Unique Legendaries. You want to remove crafted gear now? Because anyone with the gold can buy crafted gear with enough time and patience.
that isnt really a standard. that depends on the game. that is a standard in wow clones though.
and yes i would prefer doing them repeatedly over and over as i mentioned earlier. dungeons are fun ;3
you also have to consider the amount of mats for gear you can get from freeholds.. imagine if you can only get in an instance 1% of the mats you can get from a fh per week, people would never gear up until a new expansion hits, unless you get fully geared in one run or something.
I'm not sure I understand. Freeholds don't produce resources (except farms), only process resources from Gatherers. The Gatherers will be in the dungeons to Gather the resources. Unless you mean the ratio of raw resources to processed resources is 1% which means no one will be able to repair gear anyway.
Pve Wow players are heeeerrre, based on his other comments not surprised by his take, pro rve, dps meter, etc
Where did I say remove crafted gear? Dont speak for me.
Whatever constitutes the BEST crafted gear, needs to have a big barrier to get it. Time, money, hard as heck resources to get, limited access to crafting stations. Its not something a crafter should be able to just churn out easily. And that means the cost to buy said best crafted gear needs to be astronomical.
The barrier to get the pve instanced gear needs to be, you belong to the top percentage of players capable of completing said challenge. Just being in a big guild doesnt mean you can get it, you actually have to be good too.
Best should be best, no matter how you get it.
I can't speak for the economy. I have no clue how much crafters or processors or gatherers will charge either. All I know is, resources from Instanced Content that can create BiS Gear is the epitome of the situation. It requires no barriers except the risk/reward of extraction from the instances and then those players will build the stuff for free. Because, guilds will have gatherers, processors and crafters. Thus, you're ideation on barriers is rather mute because in a competitive game there must be balance and guilds should not be able to obtain BiS without risk/reward because those guilds are already very capable players and should not be allowed to steamroll everyone else without risks taken first.
Furthermore, those guilds who are capable (Mine included) will have access to the enchantment scrolls and other things I can't disclose so the BiS Crafted Gear suddenly becomes Over Enchanted up the wazoo without contestation if you just allow people to walk without risk back to the nodes with BiS resources.
well, the amount of resources needed to craft something can be balanced, but what i mean is to make the best gear you will need to gather mats, then process those mats, then get mats that can only drop in a dungeon.
we already have a wall on how many mats can be processed per day or per week in a server, then now you have another wall on how many mats from dungeons can be obtained per week, and only 10% of players or less will be able to obtain them.
For example, you gather 1000 iron ore in a day, but you can only process 100 and make 10 iron ingots per day. then you have to go do a dungeon that you can only do once per week to get 10 corrupted iron ore and then process them into an iron ingot. so how many iron ingots and corrupted iron ingots do you need to craft an iron sword?
so out of 10,000 players, a server is only getting 1,000 corrupted iron ingots per week from dungeons, and 70,000 iron ingots per week from processing. so even if every player gathered all the iron ore that they needed for their full set of gear in one day, they are still limited by the amount of iron ingots that can be made per week, and on top of that, an even bigger limit from the amount of corrupted iron ingots that can be obtained per week from dungeons. so the gearing process for the whole population slows down. you have to wait until 10% of the population gets their gear and starts selling the rest of the corrupted iron ingots if they decide to keep running the dungeons.
if you need 10 dungeon runs to gear up your character, that means 10% of the server is getting the gear, so the raiders would need to do 100 runs (100 weeks or 2 years) so that there are enough materials to gear up the entire server. now the freehold system loses value because the wall was the fh system but now, the real wall is the limited instanced dungeons. doesn't matter if you can produce 70 iron ingots from processing per week since you can only use 10, and then you sell the rest but no one will buy them because people have already got theirs while waiting for their corrupted iron ingots (unless you need all 70 iron ingots per week, or basically a full week of processing). basically, processing loses value if you need less than a week of processing to do whatever you need to do since the actual wall is the weekly dungeon. i hope im explaining this right, im sleepy T_T
this problem is even bigger when the gear you get is pvx. in wow and clones, if you have the 2nd best gear but you cant clear the hardest dungeon and get the 1st best gear, that doesnt affect you in arenas or battlegrounds, because you use pvp gear for pvp, and pve gear for pve. same way if you cant get all the arena gear, you can still clear raids because you need the pve gear, nto the pvp gear (maybe aside from a few exceptions here and there where mixing a couple of pieces or your trinkets can give you a lil bit of extra power, depending on your class and patch). in ashes, the same gear you use to clear the dungeons is th egear you use to pvp, do caravans, castle sieges, etc, etc, etc. you could beat geared people with numbers, dependingon how the game is made, but what happens when you are doing castle sieges and you have equal numbers? or arena and bg with equal numbers?
imagine if you had to wait 2 years to be on equal grounds in arena against someone who got carried in the dungeon the first couple of months, or got their stuff given by a raider from the same guild. im not opposed to players who clear first to be stronger or helping their guild, but waiting 1-2 years to catch up seems too much...
so you can't randomly say well, the dungeons need to be weeklies, or dailies, or monthly, or say they should drop gear, or mats, or cosmetics, because one system affects the rest, unlike wow and wow clones where everything is separated.
so you can either run the dungeons multiple times, or you can get your gear in a rate faster than 1 piece per week because you get more than 1 corrupted iron ingot for example, or you just slow down the game considerably. it's up to Intrepid and what they want to do with their game.
I dont think just belonging to a guild means you are good enough to complete a challenging pve challenge. At some point, the instanced content needs to require the individual player skill to be there, and not the raid caller skill.
I do think the bis gear being able to come from a raid should be a valid path to gearing.
I also think getting it crafted or buying it should be valid.
is one 'easier' than the other? Yes, because you can just put in the time and buy it, but the better players capable of clearing get it faster, and cheaper. Nothing wrong with that either.
There should also be other ways to achieve the gearing goals, so long as there is a cost or barrier to doing it and its not free, seems fair to me.
As far as my view of barrier being invalid because there is no risk/reward? There is a huge cost involved in raid prog, and tons of dying and wiping and the cost associated with that. As well as the pvp of people trying to stop you from reaching the instance on your raid night. There is always a risk, pve isnt free.
To make it more clear on my personal view, I would like instanced pve content, because I think they can make it the hardest pve content in the game, and I enjoy the challenges, I would do it purely for cosmetics,mounts or titles even.
I've explained previously that 50,000 people will need to repair their armour. 50,000 people will need to craft their armour. 50,000 people will need to use their armour. Just because 10,000 people can log in at once doesn't mean only 10,000 people need stuff crafted and the rest is gold sink. The repairs take resources too. You cannot put arbitrary rules on the resource systems only on the acquisition methods. This is not WoW. It is not a WoW clone either. It is a PvX Competitive MMO where every decision counts.
Balance will not be 1vs1 (Not that vanilla wow had 1vs1 balance lol). It will be group vs group or large vs large (something wow didn't have either). Thus, individual power will not be so important as group power. It is in a group's interest to ensure personal power increases, hence the need to raid. Now, when only 9% or less can access the top raids in the game, it is not prudent from a design perspective to allow the whole instance to be reset by players at will. It has to be randomised, timed or attuned for.
What if those players will keep paying subscription and play only in those dungeons?
Got no qualms with the pve players having instanced content so long as pvp players can kill the pve players when the pve players come out. However, I've known PvE Guilds who turtle inside instanced raids before and they appeared several months later and wiped the floor with everyone. That's what happens in a PvX game.
BIS from instanced content
We have these conversations every few months. More will come from WoW too. A2 will be the old guard vs the new guard. Who knows where we'll end up.
It should be simple by know to identify what goes against the very essense of the development, and give it a rest.
the numbers were an example. but following yours, lets say my party does the dungeon and gets the gear because im in that top 10% raiders. your party cant complete the dungeon. if you are in the open world fighting for a spot, 8 vs 8,my party is most likely going to win because i have the gear and you dont. so its not really about 1v1, because you dont solo the dungeons...you have multiple players gearing up at the same time.
if you put a big wall on how many mats you can get per week by doing dungeons, that can invalidate the freeholds, and will also slow things down even more. but if thats what intrepid wants, thats what we will get.
i like doing instanced dungeons and get gear by killing bosses, not by pressing E on a mining node then E again on a crafting station, but i really dont want to see that in ashes, since i prefer the fun of open world and the open world competition for gear and resources.
@Neurath just because more players flock over from wow doesn't mean they're looking for the game to be like wow. In the event they are... they may be in for quite the surprise.
You won't get BiS drops. For a start, how will you build you class with primary, secondary, weapon choice? The devs don't know so how can they code thousands of gear pieces. Its best to let the crafters build the gear pieces and make the BiS gear.
well, then that will ruin other systems that require players to be out in the open doing things. you can stay in your dungeon all you want, but then who is going to go out and mine stuff, chop trees, process things, kill the world bosses, get the castles, do the caravans, do the events, upgrade nodes, etc.
what if you have a server where everybody is hiding in their instances? if you have everybody 24/7 in their instances, other systems will not be used and won't progress.
also, how are you going to keep the players doing instances? maybe you will need infinite scaling dungeons like diablo or something xD
yes, but you need the unique mats that drop inside the dungeons only .-. so in order to craft the BiS gear, you need to do the dungeons that only 10% of players can do once a week, so you have to wait until they sell the mats, if they decide to keep running the dungeons after they get their mats.
and you dont even need thousands of gear pieces o.o
The resources drop from contested bosses, world bosses (contested) and possibly the instanced bosses (Not contested and thus not sole resource benefits). Thus, everyone will have access if they can kill the bosses.
Giving the top 9% of each server the BiS gear and have everyone else not have access would be the worst decision. We want the BiS gear to matter but not so only 9% or less can ever obtain and maintain the gear. There should be decisions when to use the bis gear and when not to, to keep the maintenance and repairs low. The point is to have a functional economy, a functional competition and a functional resource sink. The gold and resource sinks will slow production down but we also don't want production to be choked dry.
@NiKr I can't find the quote either but at least myself and Noaani understood our conversation about it.Found the quote after all. @Noaani it turns out the quote isn't about instances. Its about World Legendary Bosses with waves of enemies like a horde mode in the open world. Not sure if you can contest these raids or not. Thus, our conversation about instances can be ignored lol.
Here is the quote from 5 years ago:
A single digit percentage of the population will be capable of defeating certain content.[8]
There will be some in-depth raiding that has multiple stages that will be extremely difficult and... It would definitely be in the single digits of population that will be capable of defeating certain content... It doesn't mean that there won't be content available for the larger percentages as well... There should be a tiered level of content that players can constantly strive to accomplish. If there is no ladder of progression and everything is flat and all content can be experienced, then there is no drive to excel.[8] – Steven Sharif