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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Intrepid just introduced their first P2W item!
Kubitz2
Member, Alpha Two
Hal mentioned that the components and buffs a caravan has, will be visible and visually change as you upgrade them. This is a real problem, if you consider, that a caravan skin will probably work like a costume for the coach. There is no way that they will make seperate component visuals for each caravan skin. Even disguising how many beasts of burdens you have, or how much cargo you transport would be an advantage.
A caravan skin will effectively be a camouflage suit, which gives you in game advantages and therefore a must have P2W item.
A caravan skin will effectively be a camouflage suit, which gives you in game advantages and therefore a must have P2W item.
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I see a big problem with the caravan skins though.
I thought about this as well, and my assumption is that the skins themselves are of a specific "tier" of caravan, and that the skin only corresponds to that said tier. And upgrades you put onto the caravan will also be viewable on said cosmetic (they might have their own visual versions of the upgrades).
I have someone who will happily ask this every month until she gets the 'Please stay tuned for more information about Caravan cosmetic items as we move closer to Alpha-2!'
Can leave it to us.
It was actually mentioned in the video by Intrepid that people can make decisions of how they might target a group of caravans based on the visible look of the components on the Caravans.
Now, skins affect not only caravans, but player armour as well as freeholds and mounts - with varying effect at that I guess. It's not unreasonable to at least raise it as a concern even if how much impact it'll have has yet to be seen.
In theory if there were in-game earnable skins then it would remove the argument of it being strictly "p2w" since it would be achievable by anyone, but just offering a counter point to go against the grain a bit. Some people here are a bit scared to criticise Intrepid but they want the feedback and it ought to be given.
I'm not really a fan of it either for similar reasons. Restricting the skins to those types of mounts would have been better in my opinion. This way a reptile cant dress up as a cat and still use reptile abilities in the genepool. Things may have changed and I hope they have. But you're right, it's their fault for marketing it that way because they got themselves into the contradictive mess.
With the way animal husbandry is designed it would've made more sense with costume allowances.
IE: snail + horse = use snail family tree and horse family tree skins
I'm personally not a fan of the mounts. Their textures and animations are interesting and good quality.
It just comes off as toy-boxish with all the costumes and mog imo
Just imagine how the racial augments for the Angel Racial Skin or the Demon Racial Skin will also affect the 64 class combinations. There are so many augments I couldn't even tell you how to identify a Hard Counter at a glance. That's why I believe Hard Counters should be removed and balance be put into place instead. You don't need to learn about the intricate builds in balanced situations, only how to counter the intricate effects. Of course, tracking the class changes will also be difficult because the balance patch notes for 64 classes with some 3200 augmental changes or more will be a nightmare.
Going off that i can definitely see it what you're getting at. I'm not a fan of dress up and illusion with pvp games to that degree. I believe in a more thematically practical approach especially for immersion.
I would not have done the FOMO marketing (especially in hindsight). I would just sold access and a build your own package.
IE:
pay for testing access
get x amount of game time
pick x amount of cosmetics
pick x amount of freehold skin
pick x amount of caravan/boat skin
pick x amount of mount skins
Then just keep everything else available for purchase as an extra during development. Give the consumer options to decide what they may want as release time comes they may not want to go down the path they did 4 years before launch.
oh well
Its not so much the 'dress up' or the fact we can use any weapon. Its the sheer amount of augments on the base skills. Augments can change a skill completely...according to the recent Q+A (Check Vaknar's answer on the Q+A thread if you want). So, how unidentifiable can you make a build after the initial decision of how to build?
I was just throwing it out there as it's relevant.
I know what you're saying lol. Illusive mystery as you cant evaluate anything by appearance until you actually see its actions. Should not be that hard to track in small group play but if you're expecting large scale battles to be balanced in a linear degree it wont be. There's a turning point for player numbers in pvp where it's just chaotic and essentially uncontrollable with outcomes. You could get steam rolled out of no where by factors like players focus firing, siege weapons etc. I've put many hours into games where you can see hundreds of people in the same area attacking each other organised and not lol.
Yeah. Stealth builds will exist. I will make a stealth build. No meta build for myself lol. Metas will be difficult to form I believe anyway. It all comes down to theory crafting, testing and practice with the skills to find the perfect build for one's play style. It will be rather epic and terrifying to face at the same time lol.
sure, stealth can play a role in it.
lay out of environment/scenario, micro/macro management etc
Yeah, my time will be spent learning about all the augment sources in A2. I imagine each Racial System will have a Metro in A2 to test the Metro - at that time i'll test Vaelune Racials
It's quite possible. I imagine for testing purposes if they didn't they would just have the augments available for each as they're implemented.
anyways
yeah very true. cant wait for the loops
Showing the components and buffs below the name tag would be a solution. Would be immersion breaking and confusing with five components and five skill slots plus buffs from other sources though. Also I think, that's not the way they want to go.
It takes only a few seconds to see how many people escort the damn thing, how fast it moves, how much dmg it takes.
You shouldnt accuse IS that they have p2w based on how challenged you feel by something as silly as this.
Nothing of value was said in the OP and I doubt anyone else will say.
Meh...how do you survive in the real world, if you're so thin skinned. It only takes a second to to gather information on your enemy. As we're talking about PvP here, every second counts. If you deny that, you clearly have never played a PvP game. That's the point, hiding info matters. You shouldn't accuse me of being challenged, while being clearly triggered by the p-word. If you think, your comment added anything of value to the thread....well....what can I say.
I know it's not the biggest deal in the world, but I do think I have given my reasoning, why I think, that if caravan skins hide the amount of cargo, the kind of components and their tier, the skills/buffs and/or the amount of horses they will give you an advantage in game. We don't know if that matters, or how big it is but it makes the skin not purely cosmetic anymore.
I am concerned about that, because I don't want any P2W in AoC and I trust Steven's word on that. It is a short and slippery slope from a caravan skin, that hides some infos to a BDO gilly suit. Purely cosmetic, right?
Just to be clear... you don't think that argument is important?
Just saving OP some time, in case they 'haven't met you yet'.
Are you comparing a caravan to a player?
TTK? Ability to fight back? It's a caravan.... relax, pvp pro.
Now imagine, he sees that default caravan, that has the big healing skill bauble dangling from his roof. Decision: Take down that coach first, before we engage the defenders.
Or he sees that that coach has the blue glowing repulse thingy, that throws melees far away. Decision: Melees distract the defenders, while range destroys the coach. Oh and range has to attack from the front, so they are thrown ahead if they get caught by the pulse.
Or he sees a default coach with all the high tier components, that make it faster. Decision: We got this battle, but that coach might get away, so kill it first.
I could go on. I'm not saying that hiding some info would change the overall outcome of the battle, but it might make the difference for that poor guy, that didn't have the money to buy that skin and the shotcaller had more info on him than on the others. He sadly died and lost all his wares, before the reinforcement could arrive.