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
You seem to want Intrepid to make an entirely different game, or spend time balancing a small separate facet of their massive game. Those games already exist and new ones will arise that need feedback from their community.
It’s already confirmed Arenas?
1v1, 3v3, 5v5 on there wikipage it also has a few showcases on Youtube
So, other than the fact that this thread is about E-Sports and tournaments
There is end game PvP content in this game
NW had none and died dramatically quick
Eso added it later
WoWs been running it since ‘07
Riots confirmed it
If you don’t want to take part then don't? There will always be a market for smaller scale competitive PvP and having end game content to test skills and push classes to the limits with team mates in a faster paced environment
I've seen that. It has been posted plenty enough and I fully read the posts. I'm hoping that during this time of pre-Alpha 2 combat balancing that they realize it is not viable.
I’m hoping they make an RP server for you to play on so you stop trying to restrict the game 😂
So you're suggesting that the arena PVP be restricted to having it's own system?
I think he means more when you enter arena, same way WoW / ESO / Apex / Guild Wars 2 and quite a few others has done it, your items or % of abilities/spells scales to just arena, then once you leave arena it all goes back to normal. It’s worked for the last 20 years so 🤷🏻♂️
But it doesn't need to be a full scale balance, you can still make it work with how the classes will be in the game? I don't understand why you go so full one sided about this, the game will still be relatively the same you just work with what you got in the Arena?
But hate to break this to you man, Arena has been confirmed, and for most MMOs to succeed in this day and age, a competitive PvP scale that’s based around Team play (1v1 / 3v3 / 5v5 / 20v20 sieges) has been around for a very long time. Most MMOs have had a very good patching system to make sure Arena and outside of Arena become 2 different things, you and the class you choose won’t be affected. Hope this helps brother 👌🏼
Well that doesn't seem very fair for a PVP ladder. Sure it might work for player run tournaments where guilds send their best of classes that play best in small scale battles.
I’m yet to work out how Arena only balancing affects the open world at all
It will be abilities/spells only relevant to the Arena…
You still need to play the progression of the game to get better gear and upgrades to have an advantage in Arena therefore the game is still be played through its entirety
Your argument is the equivalent of saying why do Hardcore PvErs get end game Raids?
PvE and PVP balance are extremely different. You'll be able to role-play as a PVPer with player run tournaments.
Perhaps military metropoli can be given the option to build a huge colosseum, where players can sign up to fight each other on specific days with no consequences but the usual gear damage from fighting. There could be separate days for groups of 4 and for whole groups of 8. 10 minutes prior to the designated fight time, players can choose to be teleported to the colosseum if they're within the node. If anyone's missing before the designated fight time, too bad.
It can start off as a big FFA between the groups to cut down on time, then the last remaining several groups get put into a tournament style showdown, just 1 group vs 1 group at a time. Last group standing is the winner. Prizes are distributed each week accordingly. Could be some money, could be reputation, could be non-tradeable currency for cosmetic stuff.
There could be a limit on how many groups can sign up each week - this would provide some additional drive for aspiring combatants to "develop" some more military metropoli.
Each year/season leading up to whenever you want to host your E-Sports event, you could have every military metropolis in the game be given the chance for the mayor to propose a mandate to host this year/season's Court of Conquest (fill in your own name here). Any military metropolis that wants to have a chance of hosting (think of it like hosting the Olympics) needs to take part in some PvP/PvE/PvX objectives, gold-donations, or other events exclusive to members of the node over the course of a couple weeks in order to score points against other military metropoli across all servers. Once you've won, your node is taken out of the selection pool for the next cycle.
All year/season long, all registered teams will be fighting to gain points that are awarded following your colosseum's weekly event according to your ranking. A set time before the big e-sports event, take the top (x) performing teams across all servers, and give them a temporary invite to the host-server for one day (limited to the colosseum, of course - perhaps the actual locations are always instanced once you step inside). There, the usual FFA to narrow down the groups will be skipped, and the tournament-style fights will be given more time than usual each week, ultimately determining the top three placing teams. There could also be other games, like a massive last-fighter-standing event, or an event where all teams compete against a huge beast and each other at the same time to deal the most damage before the creature dies. Perhaps these shorter events could award some lesser, event-specific awards, just as chances for participants to have a shot at winning something other than the main event.
You could get actual IRL money involved, I don't really care either way. I think it would be cool if it was just limited to in-game stuff, but I know these events can be ways to bring in revenue to the developer. Either way, some in-game rewards could be a mount that lasts for one year/season exclusively owned by members of the 1st place team (flying?) then maybe an exclusive gliding mount for members of the 2nd place team, and a regular land mount for members of the 3rd place team. All entrants get a diminishing gold or non-tradeable currency reward based on final placement. Gear cosmetics are always fun, that could be a permanent reward. A special trophy to put in freeholds / in-node housing.
Perhaps the host node gets the chance to make a load of money by getting people from all across the server to flock there and pay the node a nominal fee to watch the event live from the colosseum bleachers. Not sure if there's a way to have the pit of the colosseum be constant for everyone, and have the bleachers, specifically, be layered, so that anyone on the server who wants to buy a ticket can "fit inside". But having actual live attendance by players in-game traveling to one node on the server to buy a ticket and watch would be pretty awesome. Perhaps during the time all this is happening, the node that wins the ability to host becomes immune to sieges, just to keep things safe. Decorations could phase in all over the city over the course of a few days in anticipation.
SLIME HOCKEY!
Basically you give the players a speed buff in an arena, give them sticks and custom animations based on their class as they whack a stick at a slime and try to kick it into the opponent's goal.
...You could make a custom arena-based flying mount that can only fly within it (Like a magnetic based hover set up, but with magical arrays) and everyone plays a variant of quidditch. You'd just have to make your own twist on it. This would also allow players to get a grip on how you fly within the game: without being a legendary player. That way if they do in the future, they do with flying colors and don't look like an idiot.
This.
This.
E Sports - I think that how far an MMO can go with E-Sports does actually stem on how successful the PvP scene is; which is why the state of in-game pvp is important. But additionally for E Sports to work at a base level it needs to be enjoyable to watch. There's a bunch of elements that need to be considered but i'll try and whip up the main ones that come to mind:
- Balanced combat. For the experience to not become stale, there needs to be a suitable number of competitive builds and suitable counterplay. Some examples could be builds that focus on attrition, burst, disruption, kiting, anti-caster, anti-melee; I think the more competitive builds exist, the more exciting the competitive scene is.
- Well-designed arenas/battlegrounds - to use WoW as an example, pillars for Line of Sight, some verticality. Battlegrounds are a larger scale version of this but should incorporate things like chokepoints and different routes i.e perhaps there's a river, a bridge or an open area which all offer different options. WoW always had lumbermill which allowed you to slowfall for Blacksmith for some creative rotations. Or you could give your members water-walking to move from Blacksmith to Stables quite quickly.
- Intuitive and "easy to read" spell effects. This is a big one for general gameplay but especially for e-sports. Spells and effects need to have distinct visuals which are not over the top but make it clear what's happening. Each Archetype's "big cooldown" needs to be clear, ideally debuffs could have a distinct visual either on cast, application or an ongoing visual on the target. I.e. maybe a root has a visual of roots in an area, the target is visibly slowed and might have thorns around their feet to represent the slow. And using the recent showcase as an example, if you have a large group, if you have 5+ shiny orbs cascading around the battlefield will it negatively impact the visual landscape of the combat?
- Time to kill. This will always vary but you need to find the sweet spot. If respawns are limited or it's a deathmatch, then time to kill can't be too small. This is important for general pvp, but if you don't find the sweet spot, then you'll either end up with too much of a burst meta, or sponges that just drag out fights with less opportunities for outplays.
- Resources. I think that a good way of naturally capping the duration of fights are by capping off resources. Hypothetically if every class used mana, then you could balance how effective attrition is by both balancing the resource, but also allowing people to specialise in optimising towards outliving their opponent (mana regen/recovery) - over more damage/healing/burst. This should be a choice that players can build towards and while it is considered competitively a boring tactic; it should also be balanced so that they are more vulnerable to being bursted down - serving it as being one of hopefully many counter comps.
--
Onto the actual E-Sports representation of things, the way I see e-sports is going to be intrepid-managed high-level PvP. What I would expect to see in terms of implementation:
- Different brackets (as already discussed, we could see 2v2/3v3/5v5/8v8).
- Suitable spectator modes and overlays. I think the spectator mode would be great in game and could carry over into a higher production quality for the e-sports scene. Perhaps limit communication to within a "lobby" to prevent any foul play (i.e. giving away any comms to a participant) - but i've always loved the idea of being able to spectate games.
On the overlays - minimal in the sense that you get rid of things like ability clutter, but in place make the essential info. visible such as health/resources easy to read. In fact, if you've done a good enough job with spells looking intuitive, then you don't actually need a whole lot more.
- Seasons. Duh. Frequent enough to not get stale. Local server tourneys could have weekly leaderboards with rewards. Actual competitive Intrepid-run tournaments could be monthly, or you could spread it out but have larger knockout style tournaments - and put a bit more production value into.
- Production value - the goal has to be a varied bunch of casters and commentators with a deep understanding of the game and a connection with the community.
- Community. I think Intrepid has shown that they value the feedback of their community - it's so important that you take the criticism on the nose and build on it.
I follow Rocket League and I think it's such an enjoyable game to watch - the viewability speaks for itself. They recently changed hands (Epic taking over) - and we watched them gut a lot of the popular casters and essentially shrink the talent pool. Passionate people. I think once you have to do this, you have probably failed yourself and your community.
I think that MMOs have a limited amount of success you can have with esports - WoW did pretty well but it's also a standout case given its individual success and fan base. But if Rocket League with its relatively small audience for the age of the game can still be pretty exciting, then if you decide to lead with the intent of having exciting to watch competitive pvp and back it up with some of your profits and invest into it; then maybe it can work out.
-- Sorry no TL;DR. Bit of rambling but i'd be really interested to see how you handle it because I think it'll be a big challenge.
So what your saying is its actually you that wants them to make a completely different game ?
I hope they don't do this. In my opinion, the arena doesn't need balance as it's only a niche game mode. I hope they balance the game around group play but allow arenas as they are necessary for a good MMO. If 1v1 arena gets dominated by 5 out of the 64 classes, that's absolutely fine. If you want this to be your main gameplay loop, then play one of the classes that shines in 1v1.
I hope we don't get any extra buffs or debuffs for arena. I don't like when you feel a significant difference between being in the arena or not. A really negative example for me is ESO's Cyrodiil nerfs. Essentially, damage, healing, and everything is halved, so you are half as strong in Cyrodiil as you are in the rest of the game, which kinda just feels bad.
The reason is PvE bosses have too much HP, so sets need to have so much damage that it is unbalanced for PvP, so they nerf them in PvP. It would be much better to have players do the same damage everywhere and just make the bosses less spongy and more mechanically challenging.
I feel like if the amount of damage and HP in the game is generally balanced, you don't need extra balancing for PvP.
So wouldn’t balancing be better for a smaller more detailed game mode?
They already announced in last years Dev Stream in regards to the Arena that they don’t plan on balancing anything to do with the 1v1
So wouldn’t 3v3 and 5v5 be much more intricate information in regards to balancing compared to watching massive zerg wars?
Having PvP gear or different stats/skill adjustments just for a particular game mode is terrible, changing the way we play sucks, we already know and accept this game is not balanced for 1v1, that is not a problem and does NOT need to be addressed in order to have successful arenas and events going on.
The only arena type that I would want to see equalised gear is for Custom arenas which may be used for community events in order to make those more accessible and easy to occur, not having to check players individually in tournaments, and that's only because theres no in-game rewards with custom arenas.
I mean, balancing it around 8 vs 8 basically. Make every archetype have a role in that 8v8 group, even if that means 1v1 is unbalanced. For example, healers are super important; they keep the group alive. This makes them the prime target for every DPS from the opponent. That's why they have to position correctly and stand in the backline. In a 1v1 with nobody to keep DPS away from them, they lose.
The tank's job is to shield the healers and ranged DPS from projectiles and hinder frontline DPS like warriors from getting to the backline. But in a 1v1, they get kited and lose to ranged DPS, and they don't have the damage to kill a healer that's self-healing.
To stop the tank from protecting the healers and cockblocking your frontline DPS, you have the backline DPS, rangers, and mages. They can stand behind the safety of their tank while attacking the enemy frontline like tanks and warriors. Rangers are more focused on physical damage, and mages are more focused on magical damage. They are squishy, though, so in a 1v1 where nobody keeps the frontline DPS away from them, they might loose.
The warrior's goal is to get into the backline to unleash damage. Since they are not sneaky, they can easily be focused by the enemy backline DPS if the tank CCs them, etc., so they need some way of sustain that depends on them doing damage. So in a 1v1 against a CC ranged class, they lose because they can't get to the enemy to do their damage, which means they don't have their damage dependable sustain. In a group, they might be forced to fight front to back and kill the tank first because they can't get into the backline otherwise. Since they don't do maximum damage against tanks, their sustain isn't at a max in this phase, so they need a healer to keep them alive in that phase.
Rogues have the same goal, but they are sneaky and don't have damage dependable sustain. This means they have to use their sneakiness and mobility to move around the tank or enter the backline unnoticed. If the tank/warrior catches them while trying to do that , they lack the sustain to survive the incoming damage from the warrior r the ranged dps. They lose in 1v1 to warriors that can use their damage against them to sustain.
Bards are support, and support is always more complex than tank/DD/healer, but what they can do is either enable your group plays or deny the enemy group plays. For example, if the rogue managed to sneak around the tank and is about to one-shot your healer, the bard uses the skill we saw in that bard meme to push the rogue back out of your backline and thus save your squishies. Alternatively, he could push back the enemy tank to allow a window where the enemy backline is open. Maybe he can also do stuff like pull an overextended squishy back into the safe backline before he gets killed without the tank's protection.
Let's wait for the summoner showcase before speculating about his role in a group here, but the principle is, in an 8v8 group, there is a job everyone has to do and a way for the enemy to deny him from doing that job but also ways to deny the enemy from denying you. So it becomes about group coordination and knowing your job and role in the group, and basically, the group that's organized better wins. It doesn't matter if one group has 4 archers more if their tank sucks at protecting them or they are overextending to where your DPS can focus them from the safety of your backline; they just die and have little impact. Of course, if two groups have the same skill and same gear, then the group with 4 players more will win, but that's just normal. In ESO, for example, you can easily 1vX against people if they don't know what they are doing, but it's almost impossible to even win a 1v2 against people that are on your level gear and skill-wise. This is a good dynamic, I think. (ESO is too extreme, though, because 1vX only works because every class has self-heal, tankiness, and DPS; in Ashes terms, let's say an organized group of 8 should be able to beat an unorganized group with worse gear and skill of 20 or more.)
This will lead to some specific matchups like rogue vs. cleric, for example, to be heavily in favor of certain classes like the rogue in a 1v1. Even in a 3v3 scenario, 2 warriors and a rogue might be heavily in favor against two tanks and a cleric, but to me, that's fine as long as the 8v8 is balanced.
Skill and game knowledge will always beat matchup favor though. The best example is LoL where clear favoring matchups exist, but if for example, a great cleric plays against a bad rogue, he can still win. Just not against another great rogue.
But after reflecting and reading the post of the community, I came up with an idea that I would like to share with you:
For me, the main challenge for an MMO is to create an attractive competitive environment for the community without introducing elements that divide them into PvP or PvE players or introducing separate game modes, balance implementations, and systems that disrupt the game's immersion and make it feel like there are two separate games within it. However, you need a competitive environment that is attractive to create the e-sport show that you want everyone to be involved in, right?
Well, my idea comes from turning around the sequence. Usually, a game with an attractive competitive environment is created, people get involved because they like it, someone interested creates the show, and finally, we get the e-sport. But what if we let the thrill of the show create the competitive environment? Let me explain:
As we already know, AoC is an MMO with a strong social approach between players and communities. If we use these relations to encourage people to get involved in the PvP competitive mode, maybe we can get a larger number of people (not only PvPers) interested in it.
Imagine a big event, just like the Olympic Games that happens 1-3 times a year on the server and 1 time cross-server. The number of spots for that event is given to different guilds based on how many points they get in a seasonal ladder through different PvP activities in which their players have participated. I would also allocate some spots to the winners of previous events and to the guilds that have some players at the top of some PvP ladder, so even the smaller guilds have the opportunity to participate. Guilds decide who the chosen players for the event are, so it could even lead to internal tournaments to decide and implement different strategies. The winners of the server games can play the cross-server and final ones. It would take around 7 days and 3 rounds to complete:
Round 1 "Battle Royale" (3 days): I know, many people dislike this mode because it's too random, people only run, etc. But with the correct twist, I think it can suit the format very well, especially in an MMO like this because in the first round, there would be a lot of players from different guilds, so many people get to play this big event, and it will reduce the number of players quite a bit for the second round. The goal would be to collect ashes (or some proof) of a determined number of players (maybe 7?) by killing and looting them. To do so, you would navigate to a big island in a 3-hour event where you will most likely be in a world PvP scenario; landing is random, and you would be able to associate with players of your own guild or even other guilds, but no matter what, you need to gather the required number of ashes from players. You can use gear, profession items, and all the stuff you need. Additionally, you would need to return to the ship to exit alive. If you don't accomplish this on the first day, there's another 3-hour event on a smaller island on day 2 to achieve the goal. If there are still spots for winners remaining at the end of the second day, then the same process occurs on day 3. Also, if all the spots for round 2 are taken by the second day, there will not be a day 3, so players have to avoid the "running away" strategy. Certainly, I would make the first island big enough so that there will definitely be a day 2. Also, note that I would not include power-up elements on the islands, maybe include some dangers or strategic zones that give advantages to an ambush, but what determines your PvP power should be your strategy, preparation, adaptation, and skill, not some random stuff you found on the island.
The guilds would be given points from the players that succeed and extra points for those who do it faster than the rest.
Round 2 "Kill the King" (2 days): For this mode, the organization would create two semi-random teams from the players that survived round 1, taking into consideration the roles (even number of healers/tanks/DPS), the guild (close to an even number of players from the same guild in each team), and the position in which they completed round 1 (making the two teams have players from both the top and bottom classifications). Perhaps from this mode on, it can take place in a real-life event.
Each team will have one day to prepare, think about a strategy, and select one player to be the king. On the second day, a battleground with two fortresses will take place. The aim for this round is to kill the player who was selected as the king by his team. The first team to take him down and take his crown wins and advances to the final round.
The enemy team will have no visual clue of who got the crown at the start. Once they kill the king, the crown will appear, and a friendly teammate can pick it up, but it will shine to show who has it. There is no way to pass the crown apart from dying. If an enemy takes your crown, the game ends. There is respawn in this mode, and your map doesn't give you the updated information of where your team or the enemy team is. Also, voice chat is not available; you only have the proximity chat voice, so you must search for information.
Round 3 "Tournament": Well, the title explains itself. The winners of round 2 get to play the final arena-based tournament. There are many ways to do it, but I came up with three principal ones. This would certainly be in a real-life event.
- Individual Tournament: With the survivors, specific rules would be established to support non-DPS roles, but I believe it's not entirely viable. The purpose of this would be that the further participants progress in the tournament, the more points they accrue for their guild. This system would give healers and tanks a chance against DPS players who aren't expected to win all the duels. Perhaps they can advance a bit further to earn extra points. This approach would also aim to prevent guild compositions from being overly stacked with tanks or healers.
- Team Tournament with Improvised Teams: In this scenario, the survivors would have to form teams among themselves for the most popular arena mode (let's assume it's 3v3). While this is an intriguing option, it might prove challenging to implement due to a lack of sufficient roles to balance the compositions. One potential solution could be to allow healers to compete in all teams, similar to WoW's solo shuffle mode.
- Team Tournament with Pre-established Teams: Each survivor would have the opportunity to revive two partners who had previously participated in the tournament and form a team to compete. This option appears to be the most viable and allows one player to emerge as the hero of their guild.
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As I said, the further you get into the tournament the more points you get to your guild. I would give the 1,2,3rd place a big amount of points so reaching that position most like ensure you will be at the top 3, but would let the rest of the points earned from all your guild to make the difference into the top places so the better players give their guilds the glory to be in the first positions but the guild efford make the players win the championship. Also you can give extra points to the player who killed more people trhougth the event, healed more, tanked more, etc... Even points for the play of the tournament selected by the spectator so you get the audience involved.IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!
This event I came up with is just an idea of how it could be. You can replace the three rounds with other game modes that would make it more interesting to get involved playing, supporting, or watching. (I came up with these ideas from the Twitch Squid Games event, which I believe was so much fun to play and watch and was very successful). But my whole point here is rebuilding the e-sport scenario from a reduced game mode with solid possibilities to a big show where a lot of stuff happens previously and during it.
Certainly, this type of event will not always lead the best player to victory, but remember, the guilds are the ones competing and the best guilds with a lot of good players will have a decent chance. In exchange for that, you are involving a high amount of factors rather than just class knowledge and skill. Artisans from the guild who don't even participate, farming the traps that their players will need in round 3, communication skills, leadership, social skills in round 2, political stuff during the event like alliances or betrayal from guilds, etc...
If MMORPGs are not a good match for the actual e-sports format, create an attractive show that fosters a bigger competitive environment that suits the genre more and enriches the world. If it's really fun and thrilling, the community will respond, or at least I think so.
When trying to step into esports territory I believe you should be ready to develop a whole other game within the game, a side piece like an average arena/battleground will stay very niche.[
I would love to see more or less a 5v5 depending on map size and objectives.
I dont know much about the lore of the game but implementing that aspect would be great too.
This game mode would very much need to take out a lot of the players progression (like some level or gear differences) during competitive match with some abilities locked our or rescaled. However, for public match it could be very different, with all abilities open, your current gear and become your average battleground with MOBA elements. The moba style game mode that could easily be experienced with low level (also possibly added as a way to level up a bit ).
Elements could include MOBA like item progression (could be in the form of blesings or armament) that powers you up throughout the battle on top of a progression that boosts your stats (like a second level parameter for the game).
Arena style gameplay is cool and easily implemented but often hard to follow from an outsider perspective on top of going quickly. A bigger and more varied objective other than kill count would be more enjoyable.
Designing and developing a full MOBA that doesn't feel out of space for AoC is a lot of work, but that is what you guys signed up for when making this MMO anyway, so maybe you can make this dream come true.
if it garners enough interest maybe it could be playable without even having an AoC character later down the line.
Pretty sure arena players will still have to level and experience the game. As long as you can't boost to max from an in-game shop we are golden.
Skill should also factor in. Anyways, as you said, if it's instanced then this won't matter.
2) If Intreped is going to run competitive events anyway,* then they should also run non-combat competitions. You could have things like scavenger hunts and crafting competitions. You could have a competition between guilds or nodes and it could be "Who can make the most money this month" or craft the most (gather/refine/craft)
You could add kill the most mobs or whatever, which is combat, but isn't PvP. You could have a competition for most successful caravan raids, maybe separated on land and on water.
And imagine you could divide that by character race or class, anything imaginable. Of course we won't have even distribution of those (nor of nodes) but still it could be amusing.
3) I hate the idea of mixing e-Sport into MMORPGs. I like "regular" sports and I think e-sports is totally legit, I just don't think it makes sense for MMORPGs, let alone whether or not it affects the game directly or indirectly--choices that are made by the developers which have to support all channels of development, immersion, attracting a different type of hyper-competitive player base to a game that is an RPG. Etc.
3a) MOBAs and shooters et. al already exist; there's already an outlet for this.
* As currently constructed they are required to code them for military node "elections."
Point across it would be like not having the Superbowl cause some people don’t like the NFL 🏈