Unfeedback

This post turned out to be unhelpful feedback since it doesn't align with Ashes' design or the expectations of currently-engaged forumers (so, no point in discussing it).

Those who are concerned for any reason that I removed it, the original text is quoted further down, I'm changing this one to be clearer about the fact that I'm no longer committed to discussing or refining it since it's so out-of-alignment.

Also fine with the post just being deleted by mods.

Thanks to everyone who helped me.

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Garrtok

Why you don't post that in the feedback thread?

Ludullu

I'd probably take a page from Foxhole's book, in a way. The war should require a long prep and that prep includes "respawns". And those respawns will be distributed throughout the entire war.

The respawns could be smth like "2 pieces of leather, a set of weapon materials, some food, some glint" and all of this will be used per death during the war's events. The defending node would be able to buy discounted respawns at the start of the war by combining node storage items and tax money. And mayor commissions should include at least one "war prep" tasks at all times, and it'd be on the mayor to decide how high the chances of a war happening soon are.

The "at-discretion" thing is nice imo, so I'd definitely like to see that as well. And I think that my suggestion would add a more strategic outlook on this mechanic. Do you risk losing more respawns or do you give up a fight in the war to save more respawns for later.

We could even have specialized respawn mats, where dpses could die more often than tanks, or vice versa.

Depraved

Azherae wrote: »

Trying to make this one more helpful but my thoughts are gonna be a mess so figured I'd clean them up/have others shred them here where I can get it cleared up instead of just posting straight away (my group doesn't care enough about the Node Wars as shown so...)

(Vaknar just merge this in the way you normally do for threads that should count directly as the feedback if it's either clear enough ... somehow... or gets no traction and I can't therefore improve it anyway)

What do you believe the perfect balance to be between PvE and PvP objectives?
30-70 PvE to PvP. This part feels singular/obvious to me right now, but I might add more stuff here based on any response. For now all I've got is... well this is the ratio that works?

What are your ideal expectations when it comes to mass-player battles, and objectives oriented or best fit for small teams?
So, the main thing that makes most tactical combat games work, possibly all tactical combat games work... the thing that forces a large force to be something other than a 'zerg', is simple enough, to me. Some sort of forced 'uniqueness' or 'resource' that is more than just your character.

MMOs usually used the Trinity, at least for a while. Squad games use combinations of 'hard limits' and 'available combat positions'. Arena shooters with non-miserable Deathmatch modes use things like 'limited guns or ammo' and/or 'character selection'. MOBAs use combinations of 'roles', the map, and the laning phase (used to force people to optimize for a specific thing, for a certain amount of time, before they feel freer).

I don't mind any combination of these, but large scale events in MMOs run into the problem of not having any actual way to enforce any of it. Everyone comes to the table with their character. You can't give or take something most of the time, you can't force the specialization most of the time, and the terrain usually isn't helpful enough. Basically, you can't 'make it so there's only one high power longbow available and you have to choose who gets it'. You can't even make it so there are only four to spread amongst 40 players, that sort of thing.

Yet, this is the only thing that ever seems to affect how players approach objective-based PvP toward tactics. Nearly every time I see it happen, it's because some aspect of the game accidentally or very temporarily created this situation, but with enough people involved, it's not enough.

My ideal expectation is to find a way to apply this, though, preferably as 'organic' as possible. The issue with this is the current class design, the Trinity grouping doesn't exactly work 'against' this, but the types of tradeoff people use in design to get the 'binary' effect, go against it. If Rangers have good mobility and good DPS, then it's hard to make an organic situation in PvP specifically where they hit a limit.

Squad Games: Can only have one sniper on the team, or the lines of sight would make choosing all snipers easy to counter.
Arena Shooters: Not enough sniper rifle ammo on the map for all the snipers or something like that.
MOBAs: Laning Phase and the low mobility of most 'Carry' characters means even if you do choose 'all Carry' for max DPS, enemy can take advantage much harder.

I bring up Rangers/Snipers/Carries but it applies to Healers even moreso. Tanks slightly less but that depends on AoE healing options. More Healers means more mana pools for healing means bigger effective health pools. Normally this 'loses out' in MMOs only because damage is endless given enough time and MP for healing isn't.

It's like asking the question of 'why doesn't everyone in a MOBA just pile into one lane and kill the opposition there and then move on. Well, that's what they used to do. And then there was a lot of tuning to make sure this had a downside. That tuning isn't there to 'force you not to do it' or to 'ensure fairness and fun for all'. It's there to make people have to care about the laning phase and therefore specialize. You absolutely can refuse to do that, if you feel the risk is worth the reward. Like how football(soccer) teams have different numbers of defenders, midfielders, or strikers, based on their options, but even more than that.

Those teams have a hard limit. Only 11 players on the field at a time each. There's probably some rule you could make up that would 'allow them to field 13+, but still create limits'. "This defender type can't move past midfield", or "This player may only dribble and shoot, no intentional passing". That sort of thing.

So, lots of rambling that I need to rework, from this summary concept:
You have to make objectives tied to some limited ABILITY which must be assigned/taken on by some subset of participants. Like, properly limited. Not 'on a timer' limited. Maybe economically limited could work, but I'd worry about even that. That part has to be 'fair', or at least 'predictably unfair'. After that, being outnumbered is still an entirely valid way to lose, but at least you have to put some actual tactics into it instead of just 'let's split up, gang!'

What would be the ideal frequency for events like Node Wars in your opinion? What kind of impact do you want events like these to have on a larger war?
I guess this question must mean the 'Node War Event' shown on the stream, not the overarching Node War where everyone's PvP flagged.
I'd say three times a day, but split up in a really specific way. Once that looks like what was on the stream, only during server primetime. Once at the discretion of Side A, once at the discretion of Side B.
As for overall impact, this also 'resolves' my issue with a specific aspect of the 'now we get all the rewards/exp from this area/thing', and opens up some risk/reward play. If you can fight for control of Node Exp or Gathering Bonuses or PvE boss Access or something, but your control only lasts until the other side activates their daily 'event trigger', I feel like we'd see more proper scheming happen.
e.g. if someone knows that the stronger members of Node A are currently attacking a boss or engaged in another fight over something else, they could trigger their At-Discretion daily event (with a timer, ofc, like 30m to start) to force a response, or maybe even to get some people to risk coming straight to the war zone with their materials still in their inventory, or to misdirect from a Caravan run, or something.

What event rewards do you think would be cool?
I don't like the idea of 'cool' rewards for Node War events other than Node Currency/reputation. I feel this isn't really a system where 'cool' should be factored very much. Direct rewards of any kind as large scale PvP incentives, even those that have to be shared out after the fact, just don't strike me as 'good'.

Maybe something like 'Invade the Carphin Mythril Mines' as an event option where the rewards are tied to the location naturally, but only in the case where it's either disrupting the 'current control' or both sides are trying to get away with a certain amount of predetermined loot and the battle outcome only determines the distribution thereof, like everything else. I'm not sure that's much of a 'Node War' when everyone's PvP flagged already, but if you can't declare Node War in order to go 'kill miners and take their stuff without corruption'(because they don't drop their stuff due to being flagged as a PvP event ... 'participant'?), then maybe the event could change that temporarily, so that you drop your stuff.

But it sounded like you already can just do that? I don't feel like making another thread about it so I hope that gets discussed a little bit here too.

Anyway I just don't like tying reward incentives to conflict events, even in a game as heavily PvP focused as Ashes. Sure it's a pain to 'have to defend something just for maintenance', but all the more interesting political/intrigue stuff seems to stop pretty fast when people have some reward they want, and then when they have it, the incentive fades anyway.

Also can we get a Mayoral 'ceasefire' style decree/option thing that similarly has a buy-in, maybe on both sides, that removes the autoflagging part for the Citizenry for, idk, 2 ingame days or something? I expect Node Wars to last for 3-5 days (whether directly 'Best of 5' or not) and probably happen twice a month or so, but any system for 'protection' so that less combat-focused citizens of the Node can log in and do stuff 'more safely' will get abused, so I feel a 'full ceasefire for a period' is the only option.

Lots of edits to come... I hope. We'll see.

1- I think your first question is flawed. the 30-70 split seems to me like you would separate objectives between "do this pve only activity" and "kill each other". the whole war and events are pvp. even if you separated the warring groups and made them kill the mobs for blood and gather the flowers and deliver them to the base without the interference of the enemies, it would still be a PVP event, since the win condition isn't to kill mobs or gather flowers, it is to do so before your enemies. also, considering what we saw during the showcase, you will be doing these things while fighting enemies. fundamentally, there wont be any pve activity during the node war.

maybe what you mean is some separation where you either kill mobs or chop trees, or you kill players. but again, even then, you are still competing against other players.

2- for your second question, I don't care about a small group having a chance to shine in a fight vs another small group for an objective during a node war. node wars are meant for large scale battles. the only reason something for a small group would be implemented is to force a certain type of player to have a small scale fight.

you can still have small scale fights. is all about player strategy. if there is one big zerg in the map, you can split your forces and kill mobs at different spots or gather the flowers. the big zerg cant be everywhere at once. you could also send a couple of parties away from the zerg to get objectives at a different spot in the map. i like that currently these things arent forced. being in the zerg or away from it is more about players strategy, which is a great thing IMO.

3- once every 4-8 weeks or something. node wars require preparation, but we will also have castle sieges, bosses and other things to do in the game that will also require preparation. if the wars are too frequent, this can get annoying. now you will have to spend all your time trying to prepare for the war instead of doing the other things you want to do in the game. the wars also last several days

also, destroying a node is a huge thing, it shouldn't happen too often.

id like something along the lines of 1 week (or maybe just a few days) of war without the events (so you can kill each other without corruption). then about a week (or a few days) of the events. then a couple of weeks where the declaration scroll cant be farmed. then, after that, the system opens up a way to farm the declaration scroll, which make take a couple of more weeks to be farmed.

4- don't care about the rewards. just something that isn't 100% necessary for progression

CROW3

Node Wars don’t destroy a node, those are Node Sieges (just had to reread this myself on the wiki).

I agree with @Depraved on the first point, it’s almost moot to create a proportion of PvE/PvP tasks. The scope of a Node War is entirely pvp. All collection and kill x robber tasks are in service to pvp objectives to achieve a pvp goal.

If we’re talking Node Sieges, where PvX is much more emphasized, I have a totally different perspective.

Node Wars remind me of ‘Hell Let Loose’ (worth some time playing) which has large scale team objective play.

To your point about limiting firepower on the field, you could employ more powerful weapons (longbow +10) or multipliers (oil of impact aka grenades) in limited quantities that can be crafted using finite material harvested during the war or found on the field. Meaning you could allocate resources to respawns (using your idea) or more powerful weapons - some blend of the two - as a strategy.

I still think it would be best to add two other elements - terrain advantages/disadvantages, and player roles that can buff their team when alive and debuff their team when killed. Those two things would create richer battle strategies.

Also, for all that is good and right in Verra please add a capture the flag mode for Node Wars.

Depraved

damn i forgot to comment on the limiting firepower thing. i also don't want this enforced. players can organize themselves and create their party compositions for the node wars.

for example, you can say ok we need 2 archer parties, 2 mage parties and 1 melee party. or maybe 3 archers, 1 mage 1 melee. maybe we just want rogues on the melee party, or maybe just warriors, etc.

players who want to organize should be able to do so, and players who don't, shouldn't be forced or excluded because they don't have a character that meets some weapon or build reqs.

Ludullu

I guess Dygz and Noaani have been correct all along. Ashes is a pvp game rather than a pvx. Cause if "doing pve is pvp, as long as the final goal is to win against another player" is the argument people are using, then the game overall is most definitely just pvp. Any pve in the game serves the goal of winning against other players.

Rip Steven's dream of having a pvx game

Depraved

NiKr wrote: »

I guess Dygz and Noaani have been correct all along. Ashes is a pvp game rather than a pvx. Cause if "doing pve is pvp, as long as the final goal is to win against another player" is the argument people are using, then the game overall is most definitely just pvp. Any pve in the game serves the goal of winning against other players.

Rip Steven's dream of having a pvx game

pvx is different. you can still have some activities that ar eonly pvp or only pve. but a node war is literally a PVP activity, because the win condition is to beat other players, even if you are just killing mobs or chopping trees to do so.

when steven says pvx he refers to doing things like fighting mobs and fighting players. you could be fighting mobs (which is a pve activity on its own, without adding a win condition that requires you to beat other players). your goal is to level up or farm an item and to do this you have to beat the CPU/AI. then another player comes and can fight you, now you entered pvp mode.

your condition to level up isn't to beat the other player, its to kill mobs. you are temporarily competing to kill said mobs with another player. the enemy player is a temporary obstacle. note the word temporary here. this is why the game is pvx. you don't queue up for an instance or a battleground / arena to do pve or pvp. they can both happen at any time and you are entering and leaving pvp or pve mode constantly (I'm using pvp and pve in this sentence to describe fighting mobs where your objective is to fight mobs or to fight players where your objective is to fight players).

CROW3

According to the wiki the peak outcome of a node war is rep between the nodes, that may be kinda pvx, but seems pretty pvp to me.

Node sieges are PvX without question.

Mag7spy

NiKr wrote: »

I guess Dygz and Noaani have been correct all along. Ashes is a pvp game rather than a pvx. Cause if "doing pve is pvp, as long as the final goal is to win against another player" is the argument people are using, then the game overall is most definitely just pvp. Any pve in the game serves the goal of winning against other players.

Rip Steven's dream of having a pvx game

I'm confused you are having this take. In a PvX game end goal is to beat another player yes lol. The PvX means there is PvE included as well and not just players. He has been very clear on this, doing the objectives will get you plenty of points, and if no players show up you will get even more points based on objectives.

Ludullu

Depraved wrote: »

your condition to level up isn't to beat the other player, its to kill mobs.

You have now changed how you determine the type of the activity. The goal of killing mobs is to be better at killing people, so killing mobs is pvp. Otherwise, killing mobs or breaking rubies during the node wars is not a pvp activity.

If your farming can be stopped by a player - it's a pvx activity, no matter your goal. And if an event uses pvx activities as its content - that's a pvx event. Just as Ashes is a pvx game because majority of its content is pvx.

Ludullu

Mag7spy wrote: »

The PvX means there is PvE included as well and not just players.

Which means that the node war is a pvx event and should include different content from both sides, yet Depraved and Crow seem to be trying to say that it's a pvp event so pve shouldn't matter.

CROW3

It would be awesome if the outcome of a node war was more PvX heavy. For instance, a new story arc is unlocked to advance the node or discover some clue to an ancient relic deep beneath the mountains over the horizon. But as I’m reading it now - node rep - seems much more PvP oriented.

Ludullu

CROW3 wrote: »

It would be awesome if the outcome of a node war was more PvX heavy. For instance, a new story arc is unlocked to advance the node or discover some clue to an ancient relic deep beneath the mountains over the horizon. But as I’m reading it now - node rep - seems much more PvP oriented.

Didn't Steven say one of the objective results could be the access to a location/boss? Also, gaining "luck" for winning an objective gives us higher drop rates, which is directly pve imo (and pve is inherently pvx, cause it's open world).

In other words, the war still has pvx rewards.

CROW3

I don’t remember hearing the boss deal, so yes that would be great. Did he mention whether the luck buff extends to resource collection?

Ludullu

CROW3 wrote: »

I don’t remember hearing the boss deal, so yes that would be great. Did he mention whether the luck buff extends to resource collection?

They just said "loot drops", so I dunno if that includes anything you can loot or just mobs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJZVi3F513s
1:04:50 about phase rewards
1:14:15 war rewards, with final one being "enabling pve content"

CROW3

Ah thanks, NiKr. I realized I skipped over the last few mins of the demo - it just looked like Steven was giving a victory speech - and dinner had to be made. 😆

A new boss is a start, but I’m hoping for a lot more PvE-ish impact. We’ll see. I’m ok with large scale pvp battles for the sake of pvp battles too. 👍

Azherae

Garrtok wrote: »

Why you don't post that in the feedback thread?

It's not worthwhile feedback yet.

Might never be.

Azherae

@Depraved - Thanks, but tackling your addition one bit at a time...

The golden words are Intrepid's not mine, so I might not interpret them right. So for this one:

What do you believe the perfect balance to be between PvE and PvP objectives?

I'm not the one defining 'PvE' here, and I did make some assumptions, yes. Is it that you think the 'correct' answer is 0-100, because all Node War events are (or should be) PvP?

Depraved

Azherae wrote: »

@Depraved - Thanks, but tackling your addition one bit at a time...

The golden words are Intrepid's not mine, so I might not interpret them right. So for this one:

What do you believe the perfect balance to be between PvE and PvP objectives?

I'm not the one defining 'PvE' here, and I did make some assumptions, yes. Is it that you think the 'correct' answer is 0-100, because all Node War events are (or should be) PvP?

I just checked vaknar's node thread, and you are right. those are his words, not yours. in that case, I believe vaknar's question is flawed (or incorrectly phrased?). node wars are pvp by default, since the win condition is to beat other players and other players are also an obstacle.

the way he Is asking seems that he is trying to say that there will be some separation of activities where the players have to fight other players or fight the cpu/ai without playing interference. but even then, you are fighting the cpu/ai to win the war vs players, not to win the war vs the cpu/ai.

if we are just talking about activities with or without the potential player interference, id prefer player interference 100% of the time. then I can strategize and decide to fight the players or be sneaky and gather those rubies, etc.

Xeeg

Depraved wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

@Depraved - Thanks, but tackling your addition one bit at a time...

The golden words are Intrepid's not mine, so I might not interpret them right. So for this one:

What do you believe the perfect balance to be between PvE and PvP objectives?

I'm not the one defining 'PvE' here, and I did make some assumptions, yes. Is it that you think the 'correct' answer is 0-100, because all Node War events are (or should be) PvP?

I just checked vaknar's node thread, and you are right. those are his words, not yours. in that case, I believe vaknar's question is flawed (or incorrectly phrased?). node wars are pvp by default, since the win condition is to beat other players and other players are also an obstacle.

the way he Is asking seems that he is trying to say that there will be some separation of activities where the players have to fight other players or fight the cpu/ai without playing interference. but even then, you are fighting the cpu/ai to win the war vs players, not to win the war vs the cpu/ai.

if we are just talking about activities with or without the potential player interference, id prefer player interference 100% of the time. then I can strategize and decide to fight the players or be sneaky and gather those rubies, etc.

I think they mean things like a pack level 52 elite mobs that is designed for a party of 8 level 50s to defeat, defending a capture point or something.

As opposed to just a blank capture point that is only contested by the enemy team and not NPCs.

Personally, as per my other post, I think all the objectives should have PVE Mob packs designed for a specific group level/size and can only be attacked by Objective Parties who will be the "PVE" groups in this case. All extra players will be PVPing as a way to assist the Objective Party, but can't agro the mobs or do the Objectives.

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