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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
I think perhaps Steven means grinding will not be optimal but possible. Thus, not desirable but doable. Even more so, not advised but acceptable. Further more, not welcomed but wanted.
I've often farmed dungeons and ground mobs. I still plan to farm dungeons and grind mobs. I don't see how the devs can stop us farming dungeons when contestation is the main aim. Even if I can only enter a dungeon once a week its still grindable each month.
Either way, w/o seeing at least one full cycle of a dungeon changing through all player and non-player actions we won't know how truly different it is.
I'm pretty much the same, except knowing they will have their twist on things that to makes the problem not feel as bad.
I suppose the dungeon layout can be changed when a node upgrades too. Same as the mobs. But, unless it changes each minute you know I will grind the fuck out of it between node upgrades and seasonal changes. There's just no change fast enough to prevent a determined grinder. Even if the changes come in cycles I would still grind both sides or all sides of the changes until the changes reset. lol.
In Ashes, the mobs get swapped out for different mobs based on what players are doing around the world.
And the changes are different enough that players will be pushed to adjust their gear and Augments and tactics even in the same Dungeon.
Of course, I haven't played L2, so maybe that is the same as the Ashes design.
The statement is about quests not about other kind of content, like farming NPCs in general.
And the repeating part is that the game will not make you repeat the quests over and over, in the same dungeon. Could be that some players will expect more quests than the game will offer.
Promises Promises.
The world is full of promises.
Did y'all's old RPGs seriously NEVER change the dungeon enemies or distributions, though? I know it's not common to do it, but I'm a bit surprised at the 'doesn't really have any dynamism at all'.
Not even when the weather changed?
On the contrary, the dynamic nature of the dungeons in Ashes mean the dungeons can be farmed over and over again. You won't have to leave the area if you time the events right. The grind will be real if the rewards are right.
I've been telling you, you're in a pretty small minority of people who played a well-designed game
But to answer, no, if I went to a location in L2, I was going there for very precise loot and I knew I could get it there 24/7.
Well it was releasing on mobile originally lmao
Wait... that can't be right, not entirely...
Didn't L2 have a day-night cycle at least, that affected spawns?
@Depraved @JamesSunderland did L2 have different mob spawns depending on different in-game situations? I know there was a lvl-based change on the player's side, but that's a separate thing and was a one-time change (well, unless you went down in lvls).
edit: ah, one of the epic bosses had a change depending on day/night, right
What about sleeping, differences in aggression, or patrol routes? Stuff like that? I have some reasons to believe that this might be part of the Lineage of those games, y'know? Maybe something added later?
Fair enough, y'all all have my sympathies as always, but I bet L2 had a lot more of this stuff than you noticed. It's not WoW, after all.
So, to contribute to the thread's original point...
People have changed their very idea of what it means to level, so I don't think Ashes can be that hardcore. And if the reason they can be hardcore is because the '270 hours' is 'average or above average player', then to me, it's fine however they do it.
Basically, I know we're not going back to the really hard times of my youth where an at-level enemy gave twice as much exp as an enemy ONE level below that and Quests didn't give any exp at all.
I don't care if we do or not, either. All it has to do is be rewarding/engaging for those who want to push the limits, can even be 'horizontal progression during leveling'. That way, people like me can 'waste our time' on it while all the serious players push to the end and skip all that stuff.
Ashes can appeal to both the 'I want to adventure and feel a real connection with the world' and the 'I want to clash with other players over bosses at max level' sides of the spectrum, they just gotta provide some reason that the 'immersion' players don't go play something else.
Monsters in Devil's Pass only spawned at Night, and Forest of the Dead had weaker Undead monsters spawn during the day and stronger(and more aggressive) Vampire monsters spawn during the night(Forest of the Dead Raid Boss Eilhalder von Hellmann only spawned at midnight).
Aren't we all sinners?
But I think that I simply considered FotD's changes "a rare spawn"
I remember farming there in C4 version, during the day for the Materials Quest and to spoil Dark Legion's Edge Recipe and at night grouping up to kill Von Hellmann.
Aren't we all sinners?
What @JamesSunderland said + in Blazing Swamp the Tulbin bat was passive mob at day time and aggro mob at night.
There's lot's of fun options for status conditions and effects such as metamorphic, frenzied, adjustable aggro range, special abilities etc
Sounds like WoW creep from mythic plus. Changing mobs, layout and bosses is preferred to the same mobs getting different buffs in my opinion.
yes in forest of the dead. mobs would change depending on day or night.
there were also quests.
there is a long quest line and at some point you have to go at a certain time of the day to talk to some npc, cuz they turn into vampires. and u have to kill an rb that only spawns at night.
dont remember if there are other stuff like that too
I guess?.. lol.
Sure many games have done different methods to apply status effects to mobs/npcs under specific conditions.
I was referring to more things such as:
if it's a full moon maybe there would be random werewolf spawns at night or a lunar eclipse there could be frenzied undead. Biome and Node level could affect these as well.
lots of options.
Yeah, thanks for the clarification. I can get behind such notions. I just don't like the way WoW does stuff in Mythic Plus. You can make difficulties increase without having the health, attack, defence stats increase on the same mobs over and over again. I'd rather have different animations, different ability sets and different pathing/groupings. Basically, the need to work on the fly and not just healing checks, dps checks and tanking checks (which are good but not when that's the whole shebang).
No worries.
Once you said WoW I figured what you were thinking of. Exactly my point though with the health and stat fluctuations. It doesn't have to be every mob type at once but certain mobs can be interestingly more dangerous situationally.
Everquest 1 in 1999 had day night cycle that effected spawns too. the big example here is there a reason you dont go to kithicor at night. It affected other spawns/mobs too but this zone got the brunt of it.
pretty much lore wise there was a huge battle here and all the dead come alive again when the sun goes down, it a relativly low level zone during the day like 1-20 or something but when the sun goes down it fiulled with level 35-45 undead or something
There’s no reason why MMO questing can’t be just as good as single player games. You can do questing like the Witcher or BG3. The problem is MMOs tend to make way too many quests. And put quantity over quality. It’s a design decision. I think RuneScape, Star Wars, GW2, and FF14 do questing better than most mmos however even some of these mmos I’ve listed add in unnecessary chore style quests that ruin their overall questing and leveling experience.