Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
No one said anything about not wanting Level 50+ mobs in Castles.
What was said is that Castle content should start at Level 35-42 and increase over time to be Level 50+.
Because Ashes is supposed to be a dynamic game with content that changes over time - rather than a static game where the mobs you find in specific locations always remain the same difficulty level.
Everyone agrees Ashes should have Level 50+ mobs.
Even in Castles.
Oh, I missed the part where they said dynamic mob level scaling was going to be a thing. I thought specifically they said they wouldn't do that.
Well whatever, I don't want to argue about this anymore. It doesn't bother me so no need to comment further.
Cheers,
Just for the record. Dygz, you have poor reading comprehension.
Literally the first sentence in the thread dude. ROFLMAO
Like I said already, more than one thing can be true at the same time. New servers would have lvl35 mobs in castles before their first siege, but older servers would get lvl50 mobs during sieges, because the game progressed to that point.
Sure, but none of that was said in the post. So Dygz trying to insult me based on reading comprehension is just idiotic. As far as I'm concerned the dood is just an ass. Fuck him.
No, they will not. Because it's very easy to imagine 'where level 50 mobs in Ashes should be', and if they are put there, no one will need to complain about it.
This is a particularly oddly shaped strawman.
If leveling would take 6 months, I would add some similar events to the castle sieges, when players would be 4 months in the leveling process. So for a level cap 50, these mini castle sieges would happen at level 33-34.
But how would you prevent level 50 players interfering with the content reserved for level 33 players?
And how would you integrate the result of those events into the open world, to have a political impact?
The discussion in this thread is about only one specific period of the game that has the potential to be balanced better, and anything related to 'castle sieges' as a whole is distractive.
If leveling took 6 months, then Nodes would probably progress fast enough to have catacombs or castle-like PoI. The target of this discussion has nothing to do with the experience of the castle siege content itself, which is probably where the mismatch is coming from.
There is no 'level 50 players interfering with the level 33 player content' in that case.
If Castle Village Nodes owned by NPCs had level 38 NPCs, once those NPCs are defeated, most servers would literally never see those NPCs again.
But ideally content would be properly designed to accommodate both lowbies and highbies at the same time. That would be my ideal preference.
Good answer. Is like having level brackets.
And the 2nd question? I need an answer to that too.
but there is risk reward in everything...even if the motivation isn't the reward, it exists. I've played tabletop dnd and there is risk and reward...
there could be alternate rooms and dungeons, you risk dying and having to restart the campaign, but you can get rewards such as having fun, loot, levels, etc. but I get it, its just the PVP...
and level gating...again why is it an issue? the entry barrier could simply be stats, as I mentioned earlier. what if you hit max level in a day but yo need to spend 2 months unlocking skills, gearing up etc. same thing. you are still gated.
also, you are gated in dnd by levels. you cant just start at level 1 and do everything. you progress, get stronger, etc.
also, steven haven't said you need 50 to do sieges. the mobs are just level 50. he has said lower level players can still contribute in a meaningful way in sieges (maybe manning siege weapons, etc) plus you have to siege nodes near a castle the weeks before the siege, they could participate on those and then man the weapons during the castle siege while level 50 players fight the mobs.
also, I'm in favor of a hard entry barrier for these things, otherwise people could just make level 1 alts, register for the siege and boycott your team (remember you cant excluded anyone). you could do it with a level 50 alt but it would take much longer, and time they are leveling an alt for that, is time they arent progressing on their main in one way or another).
And in my experience good strong guilds find some weak guilds that they can protect for a while and then have them as additional fighters in the future, who also have a higher level of loyalty to you.
To me all of those interactions (across time) are the politics of the game. The should be some game-based incentives for strong guilds to interact with lowbies, just so the interaction itself can start with something beneficial for both sides, and people can then choose whether they want to grow that interaction into a long relationship or not.
you don't know if you will be able to take the castle as soon as you hit 50..what if the mobs are too strong and you need to spend some time gearing up?
players who have been 50 for a while can fight the mobs, and fresh 50 or lower levels can do other things that can be done in a siege. as steven said, lower level players will be able to contribute as well.
anyways, just because you get a castle, doesn't mean you can opress others and prevent them from progressing...
That quote states that it's new info that Castles are gated as Level 50 gameplay, rather than becoming available at lower levels.
Again, the Kickstarter interviews stated that Ashes is a dynamic game - where the difficulty of the mobs in specific locations increase (and sometimes decrease) with the rise and fall of Nodes.
Just because Castles start with Level 35 mobs does not mean they can never be occupied by Level 50 or Level 60 mobs once Nodes reach Stage 6.
oh so after a while they mobs will become 50 (or just castle content) and will reach endgame?XDD
so you are ok if the content reaches end game eventually, just not at the beginning?
that would make sense for nodes, since nodes start at level 1 and they have a low pop (the first wave of adventurers who came back to verra), but the castles were already occupied for a long time and developed by the anicents who lived there. they didn't have time to develop their stuff before we came back to verra? of course they did!
I'm done.
We'll try again on some other topic, maybe.
That is the case for the lvl 50 npc's too which defend the castle sieges. Once defeated they do not seem to come back. Even though we never asked what happens if the guild which owns them is disbanded and nobody wants to take castle ownership, when the server is mostly empty.
We know caravans with taxes leave every weekend toward those castles but if there are no players in those deserted nodes, all these events make no sense. The caravans would drop no loot anyway because there would be no payed taxes.
It makes more sense to let the castles get those NPCs back, though NPC invasions, if players leave half of the map empty.
If players fail to address these corrupted areas, the frequency of NPC events against their node will increase. These can lead to node buildings and services being disabled, increasing the node's vulnerability to node sieges.[11]
If at release players want to fight and defeat some NPCs in those castles at lower levels too, then the main castle has 3 adjacent castle nodes. Those can also have lover level NPCs.
Once all were defeated, the weekly caravans start and the 4th week we will see the first castle siege if there is a contender.
And the owner guild, to defend it, according to wiki:
It will be possible, but very difficult for a single guild to fully develop these nodes. They will likely need assistance from the broader community.[31]
So with an average leveling time of 45 days, I still oppose making the very first castle sieges accessible at lower level. The vast majority of players can still refuse supporting those guilds to build up defenses by attacking and looting the caravans.
no I got it, it just the PVP part
I don't care much about lowbies who join the game or social relationship but about a reason to have alts at lower level for impact onto the map. The high level castles take taxes through caravans. What would the low level castles do?
There will be a Q&A interview in a couple of days. I hope nobody asks anything about castles being gated at lvl 50
The inability of a player to safe the stuff they have at home in a node when their node gets destroyed is just a horrible announcement I cannot recover from.
And now this unacceptability is just always in my mind, no matter what topic I read.
I hope there is some kind of place/dimension/safe that only I or my guild have access to, which cannot get raided or destroyed or whatever.
Imagine "Sea of Thieves" but unlike stealing just treasure which as not yet sold in... you can rob a players gold coins directly.
Ahh ahh no I am for some reason fearing everything right now.
Everything that could bring Ashes down.
There is no way Lord Steven's and Intrepits "Vision" will be this elitist will it?
Caravans begin at Stage 3 Village.
Not all who want a freehold have to power level
So what we do there is we spread out the availability of freeholds to different playstyles and different focuses so the player that might rush to level 50- they might have an advantage when bidding on gold-based freeholds, but they may not have the advantage of the Favor player or the Honor player, who is going to be progressing within those playstyles.[19] – Steven Sharif
don't hoard bro, use your mats xD
I was talking with NiKr what some hypothetical low level castles would do on the world map.
Because he gave a possibility where that lower level content could be available only for those specific player levels 33-34.
You say those would collect taxes from lower level nodes only and the caravans could also be for these intermediate level players?
I'm saying that most likely Level 33-34 Guilds would only occupy Castles for a few months - until higher Level Guilds appear on the server. They would be collecting from whatever Nodes are in their ZOI.
It's most likely that Level 33-34 Guilds would only occupy Castles before there are any Stage 6 Metros on the server. By the time there are Stage 6 Metros on the server, the Guilds occupying Castles will very likely be Level 50 or close to it. And, they would also be taxing the Nodes in their ZOI.
They'd be smaller in scale, they'd have sieges more frequently (and cheaper), there'd be a variety of them (going up to max lvl), they'd have pve in them that doesn't give XP but drops special items, and those items could be used by anyone to trade for some resource/mats/augments/etc/whatever.
Max lvl sources for those things would still be more beneficial (to decrease the amount of people that create alts for these fortresses), but the general demand for the items would be high enough that lowbies who do participate in fortress sieges could either sell them or keep them for their own max lvl usage.
But, again, I completely do not expect anything of this sort in the game (at the very least nowhere in the first 4-6 years) and, as Azherae said, further discussions of these levels of separation from the main topic would be fruitless.
I've went over this before and I'm sure in the zerg thread as well. Hardcore guilds will both be friends and enemies, politics are important. Based on the vassal system you will have a sweaty guild that will be your parent and defending nodes in their area. It shouldn't be viewed just as you vrs all other nodes but your kingdom vrs the other kingdoms on the map.
What is important is have different tiers of content so people are that not as skilled / geared can fight against others closer to their own skill level.