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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
I would expect it to turn out more like in sandbox mmo (such as eve), where communities have local agency and content is widely distributed and not easy to access due to travel times.
Well if 1 of the zergs out there manages to keep their players in good positions all the time without people breaking the ranks(which will cause instant wipe from a mass spell) and still keep people in approximately close range since else they will be fighting 10% of the zerg vs other group. Then i would say this zerg deserves to exist. But i am pretty sure that 99% of the zergs wont manage to do anything
If the idea is to get rid of low skill play, then it isn't ever going to work. if the idea isn't to get rid of low skill play, then it is pointless to implement.
No it just punishes large groups of players that arent coordinated. Think of it as a "zerg tax". Should numerical superiority be a valid strategy? Of course. Should you have to be wary of things that can counterract it? Yes. That's the point of anti-zerg, ant-deathball type mechanics like having a handful of scaling AoE damage abilities (or like ive suggested, items like mines, grenades, bombs, etc).
This doesn't mean EVERY skill is like this, it just means that the tools for this should exist somewhere. If they dont, then there is no scenario where zergs aren't at a potential risk to their zerging.
Good, that should be the case. If a zerg doesnt work to coordinate its mass numbers, then they should be punished by players who utilize anti-zerg mechanics like mentioned in the video.
Its similar to how it works in real warfare: If you overconcetrate and overcommit your forces, you risk losing them all at once. That should absolutely be a consideration for people commanding large groups of players.
You will also have alliances in Ashes, but if every guild decides to join the mega guild, than that's a community issue, not a game mechanics issue. More than likely, due to the size of the world in Ashes, you won't have one guild ruling the entire server. It's never going to happen.
EDIT: Eve Online is a wonderful example of this. While Eve Online does in fact have factions, it's not designed in a way that factions prevent a corporation from occupying or owning sections of space from another.
OH so you just want everyone dropping BIG DUMB AOES with NO SKILLL?>>>??? /s
Ashes will have body collision, so it'll be physically impossible to fit more than a set number of people into an aoe (unless it's a persistent effect on the ground), and I'd imagine that number would be at most ~2 parties worth of people, which is nowhere near to being a large group.
But if aoes scale so much that they can nearly oneshot 1-2 parties - day-to-day pvp will devolve into aoe flinging, rather than good strategic fights.
And if you're ok with parties being wiped out by singular aoes - how do you expect siegers to breach gates/holes in walls/corridors? If a single aoe can stop a gathering of even just 15 people in one place, how do you expect 500v500 sieges to progress, when the attacking side gets wiped out as soon as they approach the walls?
Nikr the contrarian strikes again!
Not gonna rehash this argument from months ago because you're just jumping to extreme conclusions again, ironically exactly what our posts above pointed out predicted.
" oneshot 1-2 parties"
"devolve into aoe flinging" (lmao I posted a satirical version of this argument/response like 2 comments up, saw it coming)
When none of this is what we are advocating for.
Its simple: if you want to take advantage of greater numbers, then you have to do the work to coordinate them to prevent getting skull-fucked by a enemy that is prepared to leverage certain mechanics that punish overconcentration of forces
BDO had bodyblocking, and you still had deathball zergs. Ashes has bodyblocking, and without a handful of anti-zerg tools, will also have deathball zergs. Real simple.
None of that actually happens in G v G. It's a race to control the most important nodes and use them to out-gear your opposition. I wish what you described would happen but it just doesn't. People these days won't give MMOs time or a chance. They will sooner jump ship to another MMO than try to play the politics game.
NW was a guild vs guild game. If your guild didn't control the center of the map, Everfall, you didn't get all the tax revenue which was used to upgrade everything to max. It was a massive unfair advantage in PvP and everyone wanted to be in your guild to get the benefits it brought.
Trying to reinvent the wheel and hoping by some miracle it works out is just pure gambling. Where is the proof of concept?
Baselessly reinventing the wheel just to stake out an arbitrary contrarian opinion is Nikr's specialty 😂
Welcome to the Ashes forums sir
1. There's nothing wrong with using what works and has been successful.
2. How do you know it's fun? What are you even basing that off of?
3. Being able to tell enemies and friends apart with ease is just good UI design.
4. Those players probably shouldn't be playing a "PvP" MMO.
Reason death balls exist is because in almost every single game AoE have a target cap usually 5 players which are chosen at random, Lack of good AoE option leave to boring gameplay which tend to be zerg balling it up since u cant be focused down alot of the cases.
Some games that didnt realy have the deathballs ive played was Darkfall and that was due to friendly fire and relativly decent AoE skill that were not target capped. Crowfall was another one that for a single seige/war before zerg guild cried and it got nerf. With that one there was a statue u could build in a guild city and during seige time it make every player zap anyone within 5m of them for a considerable amount of dmg every 3 seconds friend of foe, whioch force people to spread was actualy my best seige in that game but devs removed it when the zerg guild cried on the forums about it -.-
TLDR: AoE need to be effective at clumps but less effective against single targets so like single target spell does 60% more dmg than an aoe skill so to get your value u need to hit 3 targets at a time kinda deal.
For an MMO launch there is a very small window to retain players before they get bored and move on to the next game. If the MMO is made for the top 5% of guilds than it's already dead after everyone realizes they're not going to be able to catch up. Why try to fix a huge problem after launch when you can prevent it from even happening to begin with?
Scaling is very important, hopefully they have included it in their design but I'm not holding my breath until I see it.
100% agreed and hence mine, @NyceGaming and other's suggestions regarding aoe abilities, scaling AoEs, etc
Goonswarm Federation is a pretty good example of a single guild gatekeeping.
I’d rather (and have already) invest in Intrepid’s intentional core design then a game swayed by this month’s prevaling winds (cough NW).
They can just put 1 skill like the living bomb of fire mage in wow. That hits 1 target, the target explodes hitting all nearby targets and putting the living bomb on all that were hit. Then all explode and they ignite new bombs on every new target. With mega zergs till the players split all will be with bombs.
But in wow had some limitations that the second targets with the bomb cant transfer it. and also till bomb explode was too long time, like 5 seconds. There need to be no limitations, and bomb explode every 1 sec
Like in order for this to be not that OP even in smaller groups, THe first bomb can explode after 5 seconds (but is uncleansable). does little dmg. but every next explosion deals bit more dmg than previous. So even if 8 players dont react on the bomb and all end up with it. it will still deal them like 10% of the hp per bomb, which when the targets split each player will take 10% of his hp dmg. And if a mage blink + put bomb in some of the inner players in a zerg, they cant do a sh*t with the collision restrictions
You may even put some WALLS from the tank class. to make sure the zerg cant split
Tho hacks/cheats are right there.
Also depends on AoE function too for example u could debuff a target and then they shock anyone near them every 2 seconds so it causes people to scatter or take heavy dmg.
also an aoe version that puts a ring around everyone that after 3 seconds if there within x distance of somone else effected by the ring from the same spell cast they will detonate doing decent dmg.
The mechanics are simple enough to avoid so you can have them do more dmg than normal AoE skills because they are easier to avoid and u can also have other classes synergise well with this for example you can have other classes might have an aoe root that u can time up to maximise the dmg output or say a tank able to knock people back to try and push people together. i just wouldnt give the same class the same spell so u cant do the combo alone. Like imagine the ring one and then being a tank in the situation where u can pull somone too you. You could charge somone with the bomb debuff and laso another one with the debuff into them to blow it up i think this makes good gameplay.
im all for devistating aoe combos aslong as the devastating combo cant be performed by the same player.