What are your thoughts on esports and player-run competitive events in the MMORPG genre? What type of competitive, spectator-friendly content do you think could be fitting for Ashes of Creation? Are there any tools you’d like that would make competitive events easier for players to run?
I love PvP sports so 3v3 or 4v4 Arenas would be really cool.
In arena gear should be equal in power level.
Eveyone should be able to stream the event.
Intros for Teams and players to hype the match.
Champions should be inmortalize in the game in some form.
Node seiges.
I think node seiges would be esport worthy. Especially the bigger ones.
Maybe you don’t want to host a none real node seige. Because it would kind of be out of context.
The upside would be that with more data on it the mechanic and objectives of the node sieges could be more developed.
One could imagine a node wanting to practice defending their node.
So the Mayor could host some form of training seige. Could be different goal of such a training seige. And seige vehicles and building damage could apply even if you training.
The mayor could be alowed to call it off if practice damage becomes too large. Would be a fun way to do it more often and get mechanical experience on how to defend.
Imagine having a metropolis. Would be nice to be able to practice defending. But not a no cost. And you could be attacked for real if you do it in a bad time.
What am I getting at? Node seige for Esport. To improve and develop and make the seige game more fun. Also more of it would incentivise more development on it. Adding fun quirks, secrets and so on.
Maybe weather dependent conditions like; it’s been raining so the wet ground slows you down.
During a high level node siege a class using a utility skill notice that a part of the wall is weaker. Maybe even a hole can be opened using a special seige item. Defenders could on their side maybe do some utility searching themselves and take countermeasures.
It’s summer and the sun is at its peak so everything flammable is more susceptible to catch fire. All kind of fun stuff.
And even if the conditions are there. To some extent I think it should be a little random if it is so or not.
In an esport scene some of these things don’t always would have to be present. Could be random and some form of a draft or like a Warhammer point system for things to add to your benefit.
The benefits could be chosen in a draft form.
One side begins to buy a benefit. Then the other. Then the guild who’s spent the least points would be the ones to pick next until all points are spent.
I mean this perk/point/warhammer draft system could work for arena too. Like imagine 3vs3 arena.
Overall all gear is equalised. But you get a pool of points for that arena battle to add special buffs and whatever you can imagine buying for the points.
Maybe a potion for the healer.
Maybe make someone get a temporary perk. Known or unknown to the opposing side how you spend the points.
Maybe you can pay extra for them to be hidden.
Could be different rules for different arenas. Like the card game in Final fantasy 8.
The amount of points could warry ( but should be the same for both teams obviously) Maybe available perks depend on the environment. Recent caravans. Weather. Nearby buildings. Story arcs. You could have so much fun with this.
I think randomness and orderly chaos makes esport fun to watch stuff.
Just letting the ideas flow.
Got anything to add? Comments?
In the real game. These things could be quest related. Like there is a daily quest to inspect the wall and do maintenance. If not done enough, during a seige the town could have weaknesses.
And on the other hand. Attackers could infiltrate and do quests to add weakness for a coming seige.
And then maybe there is like simple guard quests where you just patrol to spot people trying to weaken your defenses.
Low reward, something to do while idling in town. Waiting for someone so and so.
For the combat/ gladiator nodes.
A big part of the quests in the node could be to have certain perk being available for purchase for a certain time. To be bought for points in an arena match. People could scout what perks people gave available by looking at the quests they do. In a competitive RPG sense. Maybe someone scouts for them.
Maybe in a pvp tournament you could chose to activate them or not or save them for the next match. Still, in a bracket, all players should have had an equal amount at each level. Thematically, saving perks would be the idea of saving you strength for the big fight. Or to just make it one step deeper into the bracket.
Thanks for the review of content guys, you're doing this so consistently and transparently it's something I hope is the business future for gaming, I've never had more hope for a game.
ON THE TOPIC OF PVP: I’m a major fan of PvP it is the top fun for players and it's the best way to keep life in a game long term, if done properly.
Please create a ranking system, with MMR, there should be two halves to this open world pvp where player level and gear help you.
And a ranked system arena where anyone can enter and they will be able to be instantly leveled to max and can have basic gear and runes/gems applied to their gear that they can choose from chests or war wardrobe.
This allows players to have a main character that they level and a secondary character that they create and don't level but can use for pvp arena, this also doubles as a very easy way for the community to try every class in pvp at a high level and balancing will be made very easy as anyone can test it.
NOW make sure if you do this that players must reach a certain mid level before they can obtain access to the Arena PvP to ensure cheaters/scripters or such aren't able to instantly join after buying the game again.
GuildWars2 did something similar to this and I've yet to see a better system for PvP in both formats, please consider this and again this is just my opinion after 17years of MMORPG Gaming.
Don’t think AoC heading that way
It will be your character that enters the arena, even says on there wiki page that characters can enter at a required level but yet to see anything on gear requirements
I assume they are doing this so all aspects of the game is experienced before doing the climb on the ladder,
It’s also confirmed an ELO system with 6 monthly seasons, on there page under the Arena tab
Once again I think people are miss understanding that E-Sports is a once a year special event show casing the best players in teams against each other lasting only a few weeks
Just a small idea, what if we could cast spells and attacks by speaking to the microphone. Just imagine being able to cast a spell by saying "frost bite" our "Shalam" and a ball of fire just spits out from your characters hand... It would also bee good for the player that can't push that many buttons, this would grow the community and make able people with some disabilities to play way better.
P.S. please let me play with a samurai sword and make a sand ninja with cool loking gear.
NO thank you
It does not fit the mmorpg genre
Many mmorpgs, including GW2, tried to do it and it failed badly.
Even in the biggest game WoW they tried doing it with arenas, but it failed badly.
It also makes games prone to fall into the "battle royale" trap (Fortnite was first a tower defence game the developers promised the kickstarter and backers they wouldnt neglect for the BR part they added later)
Mmorpgs are not the venue for esports and never will be.
If you want esports, go play an FPS, Strategy or Beat em Up game.
I would love to have an in-game arena where I could sit and watch actual players competing against each other. They could be in a walled-off instance mechanically, but it would feel like being there.
Regarding the type of competition, I'd love to see groups of players battle it out in some kind of tournament setting. I'm flexible about the tournament format.
Regarding the type of competition, I'd love to see groups of players battle it out in some kind of tournament setting. I'm flexible about the tournament format.
3v3 Arena death match no respawns just raw skill, done
Im sad for those players that consider Arena type PvP good.
They havent lived long enough or played anything apart from WoW to have experianced real good PvP.
I like the idea of a max gear/lvl arena, where you enter and get to select your loadout with stats, gear, etc.
You still have your main character, leveling and getting stuff, doing open world things etc. But if you ever want to do arenas, you can hop in with a maxed out char and see how it performs.
This allows for lots of creativity and experimentation, while pvping on an equal playing field.
Open world pvp, events, node seiges, etc. should remain with regular players. That is the core of the game.
I think that IS should implement the tools for player or organization run events, then step back. But as for broader ideas:
Don't launch with this. Focus on the player experience in open world first, then once you've caught your breath from launch add this in.
Same-server fights only to start. Why? Rewards. If you have a cross-server tournament that costs 100g to enter and winner takes all, you just implemented cross-server gold trading.
Allowing spectating should be optional, because coaching becomes a thing, then soon becomes spying for advantage.
Follow the risk vs rewards approach to these fights. IE, rewards should be fronted by the players as opposed to the "free epics" path take by Blizz
Much further down the road, I'd like to see cross server competitions run by IS. Example: Every guild on the server that owns a keep on tournament day gets to field a team.
Don't offer an arena size that you don't want to balance around. IMO 4v4 should be the smallest size, considering that the group size is 8. It would by a good idea if you stuck with 8v8 to start, as that would help promote group play.
Launch with good objective based maps (AKA BGs for the WoW crowd) as well as kill-each-other maps.
Consider a Battle Royale format as an option. It's popular right now and also very inclusive for the beginners. As opposed to getting rotfl-stomped immediately in a TDM arena because you don't know which pillar to hide behind.
The bigger sticking point is going to be rewards from instanced-PvP:
If there are no rewards it will be a ghost town.
If there are cosmetic-only rewards, arena-specific consumables/gear and leader boards then a number of PvP lovers will flock to it. But not as many as you'd think.
If you can grind your way to open world gear or rewards that have gold value, then we get into risk vs reward
Arena is a great natural starting point for any type of esports discussion. I think that AoC could immediately have an esports community solely built off of the planned arena modes. In a esports setting, all players/classes could be preset with very specific stats to have a consistent and balanced playing field. Of course, this would have to be a special setting as gear differentials is absolutely a must have for an immersive mmo arena experience
MOBA
As long as AoC is centered around PvP and having classes with a "rock, paper, scissor" design, I think the combat system would be perfect for a strategy based genre like a MOBA.
I think a class-based MOBA, without any character designs, would be an interesting twist to the genre. Teams would have different class combinations. Players would have their niche or meta takes on their class choices.
I know it's a pretty silly sounding idea, but I feel like if pulled off, an MMO that has its mechanics shared with a MOBA would be an insanely cool concept that would attract a lot of attention.
Elaborating
The main features of a MOBA to keep are gold, shop, minions, towers, jungle, boss monsters, and three lanes.
Completely forget everything else: unique characters, items passives/actives, fog of war, and anything else that isn't already included in the mmo.
Keeping the design as 1:1 as possible to the MMO is very important. This includes class abilities, levels 1 thru 50, gear, weapon skills. The shop itself could just include the gear already in the mmo. The most important aspect of customization would be the existing skill trees. The level of complexity there is enough to satisfy the player. Shopping for gear could be so simple: Having a lvl 5 helmet with a little strength and stamina could get upgraded to the lvl 10 version of that same helmet. Including unique gear sets from the mmo is an option and could keep the gameplay fresh.
We are talking about an entirely separate game from AoC almost. So I know how goofy it sounds. I consider keeping a lot of the class, gear, and leveling systems to be the same partly because of development time, but also because I geniunely think it would be fun to engage the PvP system with a objective based game mode and a smaller team (8v8 or 5v5).
Comments
I love PvP sports so 3v3 or 4v4 Arenas would be really cool.
In arena gear should be equal in power level.
Eveyone should be able to stream the event.
Intros for Teams and players to hype the match.
Champions should be inmortalize in the game in some form.
I think node seiges would be esport worthy. Especially the bigger ones.
Maybe you don’t want to host a none real node seige. Because it would kind of be out of context.
The upside would be that with more data on it the mechanic and objectives of the node sieges could be more developed.
One could imagine a node wanting to practice defending their node.
So the Mayor could host some form of training seige. Could be different goal of such a training seige. And seige vehicles and building damage could apply even if you training.
The mayor could be alowed to call it off if practice damage becomes too large. Would be a fun way to do it more often and get mechanical experience on how to defend.
Imagine having a metropolis. Would be nice to be able to practice defending. But not a no cost. And you could be attacked for real if you do it in a bad time.
What am I getting at? Node seige for Esport. To improve and develop and make the seige game more fun. Also more of it would incentivise more development on it. Adding fun quirks, secrets and so on.
Maybe weather dependent conditions like; it’s been raining so the wet ground slows you down.
During a high level node siege a class using a utility skill notice that a part of the wall is weaker. Maybe even a hole can be opened using a special seige item. Defenders could on their side maybe do some utility searching themselves and take countermeasures.
It’s summer and the sun is at its peak so everything flammable is more susceptible to catch fire. All kind of fun stuff.
And even if the conditions are there. To some extent I think it should be a little random if it is so or not.
In an esport scene some of these things don’t always would have to be present. Could be random and some form of a draft or like a Warhammer point system for things to add to your benefit.
The benefits could be chosen in a draft form.
One side begins to buy a benefit. Then the other. Then the guild who’s spent the least points would be the ones to pick next until all points are spent.
I mean this perk/point/warhammer draft system could work for arena too. Like imagine 3vs3 arena.
Overall all gear is equalised. But you get a pool of points for that arena battle to add special buffs and whatever you can imagine buying for the points.
Maybe a potion for the healer.
Maybe make someone get a temporary perk. Known or unknown to the opposing side how you spend the points.
Maybe you can pay extra for them to be hidden.
Could be different rules for different arenas. Like the card game in Final fantasy 8.
The amount of points could warry ( but should be the same for both teams obviously) Maybe available perks depend on the environment. Recent caravans. Weather. Nearby buildings. Story arcs. You could have so much fun with this.
I think randomness and orderly chaos makes esport fun to watch stuff.
Just letting the ideas flow.
Got anything to add? Comments?
Thanks for reading
And on the other hand. Attackers could infiltrate and do quests to add weakness for a coming seige.
And then maybe there is like simple guard quests where you just patrol to spot people trying to weaken your defenses.
Low reward, something to do while idling in town. Waiting for someone so and so.
It’s a city dynamic in itself.
If someone pay to hide a perk. If you get too anxious maybe you can pay more then they payed to hide it to have it revealed.
You could have negative perks to
buy to add to an opponent if that class or player is a big threat to your comp.
All perks from our history of RPG could be explored in this format and potentially be added to other parts of the game.
One reward for pvp could be to get a buff, potion or whatever you could buy for the point to be used for a limited time and uses outside the arena.
A big part of the quests in the node could be to have certain perk being available for purchase for a certain time. To be bought for points in an arena match. People could scout what perks people gave available by looking at the quests they do. In a competitive RPG sense. Maybe someone scouts for them.
Maybe in a pvp tournament you could chose to activate them or not or save them for the next match. Still, in a bracket, all players should have had an equal amount at each level. Thematically, saving perks would be the idea of saving you strength for the big fight. Or to just make it one step deeper into the bracket.
ON THE TOPIC OF PVP: I’m a major fan of PvP it is the top fun for players and it's the best way to keep life in a game long term, if done properly.
Please create a ranking system, with MMR, there should be two halves to this open world pvp where player level and gear help you.
And a ranked system arena where anyone can enter and they will be able to be instantly leveled to max and can have basic gear and runes/gems applied to their gear that they can choose from chests or war wardrobe.
This allows players to have a main character that they level and a secondary character that they create and don't level but can use for pvp arena, this also doubles as a very easy way for the community to try every class in pvp at a high level and balancing will be made very easy as anyone can test it.
NOW make sure if you do this that players must reach a certain mid level before they can obtain access to the Arena PvP to ensure cheaters/scripters or such aren't able to instantly join after buying the game again.
GuildWars2 did something similar to this and I've yet to see a better system for PvP in both formats, please consider this and again this is just my opinion after 17years of MMORPG Gaming.
It will be your character that enters the arena, even says on there wiki page that characters can enter at a required level but yet to see anything on gear requirements
I assume they are doing this so all aspects of the game is experienced before doing the climb on the ladder,
It’s also confirmed an ELO system with 6 monthly seasons, on there page under the Arena tab
Once again I think people are miss understanding that E-Sports is a once a year special event show casing the best players in teams against each other lasting only a few weeks
If IS could have a stall of commentators it would be something that not many games have.
Waiting list would be long of course.
Much love
It does not fit the mmorpg genre
Many mmorpgs, including GW2, tried to do it and it failed badly.
Even in the biggest game WoW they tried doing it with arenas, but it failed badly.
It also makes games prone to fall into the "battle royale" trap (Fortnite was first a tower defence game the developers promised the kickstarter and backers they wouldnt neglect for the BR part they added later)
Mmorpgs are not the venue for esports and never will be.
If you want esports, go play an FPS, Strategy or Beat em Up game.
0dbea148-8cb8-4711-ba90-eb0864e93b5f
Something like this
They havent lived long enough or played anything apart from WoW to have experianced real good PvP.
0dbea148-8cb8-4711-ba90-eb0864e93b5f
You still have your main character, leveling and getting stuff, doing open world things etc. But if you ever want to do arenas, you can hop in with a maxed out char and see how it performs.
This allows for lots of creativity and experimentation, while pvping on an equal playing field.
Open world pvp, events, node seiges, etc. should remain with regular players. That is the core of the game.
The bigger sticking point is going to be rewards from instanced-PvP:
As long as AoC is centered around PvP and having classes with a "rock, paper, scissor" design, I think the combat system would be perfect for a strategy based genre like a MOBA.
I think a class-based MOBA, without any character designs, would be an interesting twist to the genre. Teams would have different class combinations. Players would have their niche or meta takes on their class choices.
I know it's a pretty silly sounding idea, but I feel like if pulled off, an MMO that has its mechanics shared with a MOBA would be an insanely cool concept that would attract a lot of attention.
The main features of a MOBA to keep are gold, shop, minions, towers, jungle, boss monsters, and three lanes.
Completely forget everything else: unique characters, items passives/actives, fog of war, and anything else that isn't already included in the mmo.
Keeping the design as 1:1 as possible to the MMO is very important. This includes class abilities, levels 1 thru 50, gear, weapon skills. The shop itself could just include the gear already in the mmo. The most important aspect of customization would be the existing skill trees. The level of complexity there is enough to satisfy the player. Shopping for gear could be so simple: Having a lvl 5 helmet with a little strength and stamina could get upgraded to the lvl 10 version of that same helmet. Including unique gear sets from the mmo is an option and could keep the gameplay fresh.
We are talking about an entirely separate game from AoC almost. So I know how goofy it sounds. I consider keeping a lot of the class, gear, and leveling systems to be the same partly because of development time, but also because I geniunely think it would be fun to engage the PvP system with a objective based game mode and a smaller team (8v8 or 5v5).