Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I feel like this just rewards people who have more time and are able to grind grind grind more than everyone else or if your apart of a big guild on the server, you will then have an unfair advantage in a competitive scene?
If going by what your saying it’s “purely gear from open world used only”, what if a soft cap or even possibly a Max gear cap or even % scaling in the Arena to at-least level the playing field between people no-lifing 24/7 gear and people who work full time jobs. I feel this atleast shows true to a person of skill rather then a person of gear.
Yep, I'd definitely expect some kind of cap on gear progress in the arena.
L2 had an enchantment limit. Depending on how gear power is designed in Ashes, I'd expect something similar. Potentially some alternative to "gear score", but hopefully not a dumb lvl of "if you're at 990 and he's at 1k - he'll always win".
Arenas should be an instanced, ranked system where you enter and become max level with all available game buffs to choose from. You should be able to save and create loadouts for gear/secondary archetype/buffs, so you can quickly pick a loadout to suit the arena match.
Systems like Ranked Arenas only work if everyone is entering on an equal playing field. If people have better gear or better characters then it isn't a test of skill, it's a test of in game character progression. That's what the world pvp is for. Arenas are for pvp skill and build competitions, not character progress competitions.
Another side benefit (apart from 100% fair pvp), is that players can use arenas to test builds that they can work towards with their main characters in the world. This allows the arenas to serve multiple functions for the player base, while keeping the world of Verra somewhat separate from the instanced Arenas.
IS need to be really careful about offering 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3 in a game balanced around 8-mans
Small team sizes are going to be terrible for non-healing support specs (bards, summoners and maybe tanks). IMO IS should start on the high side of group sizes. Perhaps 8-man premades for BGs and 4-man Arenas.
Honestly, I don't see a lot of people being as interested in Arenas until the game has matured a bit because of: "Arena points that can be used to buy gear is not currently in the design." Arenas are popular in many games because of "free" gear.
it wasnt a slight upgrade XD on top of that you had hero skills...
it didnt really bother me too much tho. lets say 8 out of 10k people will have those..or lets say 64 (1 per class) thats fine. however, the more heroes you had, the more you could control the map
well you would still need to grind the arena, dont you? its the same thing.
also, what if the gear can be acquired without being in a large guild? problem solved. farm something, sell it, buy mats and craft it. that will get you your items if you cant directly farm the items you need.
Same applies to instanced pve, which is exactly why I'm against any gear stuff in any instanced content.
If you want endgame level stuff, then you need to play endgame level content, meaning if you want gear relevant to high end pvx content (like highly contested boss areas, combatant flagged content, and any other type of content that is more emergent in nature with the most amount of overlapping systems, complexity, and risk), then you should have to play that stuff to get those relevant rewards.
Not everyone wants to do that stuff though and theres nothing wrong with that because being able to play the way you want is part of agency and mmos, but that just means those people dont get the best stuff for the hardest type of content. You should be able to progress within whatever type of content you enjoy through playing it, and your rewards should be relevant to that type of content or content equal in difficulty/risk.
Pvp players should be able to progress in arenas, and get arena related rewards, and pve only players (players who only do corruption enabled areas/instanced pve) should be able to progress in that type of content with rewards relevant to it. I think this is also a good argument for adding more specialized session-based/instanced content as well, because you can provide specific content and progression paths to all sorts of player niches and tight communities, because you are still incentivizing players to improve, grow, and take more risks in the open world and higher-end content, but without forcing them to do so and pushing them away from the game through instead providing them a space to play the way they want to play until they are ready to try new types of content.
Well the idea here would be that there are no rewards from the arena content.
I think that there are a few advantages to this system:
As for the separation of players concept, I share your concern. However, I think that if the main world is fun and interesting enough, the instanced max level arena serves more a complementary function rather than a total replacement. After all, why waste time in arenas that aren't increasing your power level when you could be out levelling up, running that caravan, or preparing a node seige? I'd imagine that node wars changing the world of Verra are going to be much more rewarding and fun than an easy to access arena battle. Personally, I see myself using it as a utility and to play with friends who aren't the same level. My main playtime would still be around the actual game.
Maybe in order to make this work you would ahve to remove the ranking concept. As soon as there are ranks, teams will be incentivized to chase ranks in arenas and then they may not care as much about node seiges and the regular game.
I doubt a lot of pvpers would even care about what's happening in the open world if they immediately got max lvl and best gear/buffs in the arena. Why do anything when you already have everything.
And this point would only be driven further once those pvpers do in fact try participating in open world stuff, but then get fucked by some pvers that got much better gear and simply stomped the pvpers.
Agree completely. I edited my post to say we might have to remove the competitive ranking system to arenas to make it work. If it's "unranked" it loses the showoff appeal.
I will say however, I disagree with not having some form of competitive ranked play that’s a high skill cap, having these smaller scale game modes (such as 3v3 or 5v5) is essential and shows a better indication of skill, in bigger masses a lot of people just hide to do the bare minimum but receive the same rewards. It also encourages players to push their classes to the limit and improve their own skills in the game also giving them motivation to improve and this can be done through smaller scale instanced PvP with no outside influence, as quick decisions, high intensity situations occur. It also gives players something to aim for trying to climb a ladder in ranked mode can do this and keep the game interesting and competitive.
People need to understand when there is an Arena involved as stated previously on here, you do not just spend 100% of your time queing arena, you only que arena when your teams on (can’t say much about this 1v1 mode). You spend your time participating in other aspects of the game weather it be PvE, Sieges, Dungeons, Raids until your main Arena team has logged on to then que, even then you have things such as ladder inflation and other things to then push higher rating on the leaderboard
At the moment zero gear is earned through the Arena, so this encourages players to go out and get gear through the other aspects of the game
(Receiving only cosmetic rewards is something i don’t agree with, however it is a compromise) to get this whole ideology of Arena demons just spamming 24/7 out of there heads and they’re still in fact taking part in the rest of the game to make there characters stronger, to counter the hardcore PvE’rs with a gear advantage is to simply add a gear cap in the Arena which has been done in other mmo’s that offer the Arena system
Bump
Spoken like a true player who’s never seen any rewards from Arena/BGs ever in his lifetime
However, @Voeltz, spot on mate that sounds exactly like the direction AOC needs to go to survive in an ever changing industry.
Yet to also see a bad reason for rewarding players who achieve something in the Arena with rewards, even suggested an absolute minimum reward, other than just cosmetics?
Also, Arena isn’t only popular because it gave gear. It was fun, fast paced, intense and quick decision made combat in an environment with no outside influence. It’s also popular already in a lot of other genre games, there’s ranked 3v3 Arena & ranked Trio even in FPS’s too because it’s fun. It kept me playing WoW for years because in an MMO there’s really nothing else that gave that competitive edge and even bonds a team closer then an Arena type scenario, there were times where it was legit heart throbbing when you had to clutch win it for you team
Meant for smaller scale combat
Instances cause problem for open world content because they are more convenient. Human beings tend towards the path of least resistance. If Intrepid wants people to fight over resources in the open world, build up nodes/freeholds to process/craft them, and risk moving them around in caravans, the reward they offer can't be something a person could have earned in an hour or 2 of grinding an instanced bg while afking in town.
There will be rewards for instanced content but they shouldn't compete with the rewards from the world, at least all the rewards. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Arenas
Yeah that I understand and agree with you on, that's why I said they should take a similar approach and "Then the dials can be adjusted depending on how much engagement Intrepid wants with each system". Completely fine if that's predominantly Open World activities. The game I used as an example (Warhammer Online) had Instanced PvP that you could queue for anywhere which also tied into their RvR system (Open World PvP), so It made more sense in that game. The point I'm making is there's no reason for excluding rewards from PvP in a PvX game. The point of playing a game is to have fun. If the game forces you to do a bunch of boring shit for the sake of progression, people will quit and play something they can have fun with. PvP is always more challenging than PvE content, yet PvP is not rewarded the same. They love to coin the phrase Risk vs. Reward but risk could easily be replaced with challenge. Like I said, if the goal is to make another grindy PvE MMO, go ahead and restrict the best/all rewards to PvE only. If the goal is to capture wider audiences and retain them, there needs to be viable pathways for progression through a variety of play-styles whether that's PvE, PvP, Crafting, or Trading. That could mean gold, XP, gear, materials, skins, titles, recipes, or a mix of everything.
You can’t be anymore wrong, a leaderboard has been confirmed it’s all on there wiki, seasons will last 6 months. I don’t see how this will be achieved in 2 hours. Also don’t see how it affects anything else, being a bit melodramatic are we?
You also twisted the words, it’s for players who actually climbed on the leaderboard not just afk qued into a battleground which has nothing to do with the Arena
It was lackluster in my opinion because in my experience from L2 it was barely ever used. The 1v1 arenas were much more popular there and since it was balanced also for group and mass pvp then most fights were happening 9v9 in the open world for farming spots (as in max party size.)
Hate to break it to you but….
WoW: Ranked 3v3 (only way to get max arena rewards in PvP: Gladiator)
Apex: Ranked 3s / Ranked Arena 3s
Call of Duty: Ranked Trios Warzone and Resurgence
League of Legends: Twisted Treeline Ranked 3s
Flex Que is either 3s or 5s Ques
Elder Scrolls Online: Ranked 3s Que in Arena
NBA 2K: Ranked 3v3 Matches
Lost Ark: Ranked 3s for PvP
Rainbow 6: Ranked 5s ques, and their Tournaments were 3v3 Matches
PubG: Ranked Quads + Trios
Rocket League: Ranked 3v3 Matches
I can keep going but I assume you seeing the trend that the rest of the world sees.
1v1 would be extremely unbalanced as it would come to class and 8v8 would be a cluster of people just running around aimlessly or hiding.
Again, there’s more out there but I’ve listed a fairly decent list here and as you can see these are Ranked matches not your silly causal normals with 0 reward gains. There is a reason most ques are designed around the 3/4/5 brackets (esp 3v3).