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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
With AoC, the point is to create our own factions I assume?
If one major faction (read guild) arise, and will, it is up to the players to oppose resistance.
Small groups gathering and scheming to grab territory from that major faction. Schems outside of the game, on Discord probably. Litterally politics.
Now my question is: does AoC has enough systems, choices to be made by a major faction, that would upset enough players so they want to turn against and overthrow it?
Players not liking each others may suffice, but it's light.
In a game where we don't have to worry about food and shelter, I really wonder how it will play out.
That being said, I think its relevant to remember that it is unlikely that ALL servers are being dominated like that and switching servers is a perfectly legitimate action to take for a player who is not satisfied with the community culture of that particular server. And I am 100% sure that there will be VERY different server cultures.
This guy gets it. I bet the culture is not different across the map. EVE has one server and the culture, meta and tactics vary from zone to zone as players play differently.
idk about culture and ect, But the Mentality of the players that join zerg groups is the same always. So except for cases where there is some irregular group in a server that change things, most servers should follow similar separation of the map between zergs
It comes down to how guilds fight. My group, we like pipebombing tactics, if we can make an optimal pipebomb tactic, we will use it.
Pipebombing is what some on this thread would call "noob tactics" while some others might call it a war crime, but when you have 40 ppl and have to engage 400, pipebombing is the way to go. All it needs is a bait and zergs to " go go go".
I'm pretty sure more upstanding members of the community will want their honorable 1v1 builds, but isn't a zerg composed by 40 people with 1v1 builds?
40 ppl wont win against 400 no matter what tactics you use, if there are no scaling aoe's or friendly fire.
Not sure why we talking about 1v1 builds. AOC will be group oriented game, and the Groups are composed of 8 players each. This means the general builds should be for 8v8.
Obviously you haven't played a game similar to this. I'd suggest you try Archeage if you haven't, but, well, it's dead.
Yes, many things like node sieges, world bosses, etc. will be zerg vs zerg. It's meant to be like that. It's not a bad thing, and it will be fun.
It doesn't need to be one guild vs another necessarily either.
Yes, you need numbers to beat zergs, but you can be outnumbered 2 to 1, and still win. Tactics and strategy play a huge part. A well organized group that is able to follow commands will easily dismantle a pug raid 2 or 3 times the size.
If you are afraid that zergs will just run around the map and kill anyone on their way, OUTSIDE of large events like sieges, world bosses, etc. then yes, it's a valid concern to bring up.
They should be punished for it. Now whether the punishment will be the fact that they will mostly be wasting their time, the fact that other organized groups will be able to do other stuff and become more rich/powerful, while avoiding the zerg completely, something else, OR some system, that remains to be seen.
If your only concern is that you need a zerg to beat a zerg, well, yes, and no. Like I said, if you have 50 man zerg on one side, you can beat it with 20-30 good and organized players.
No, you probably cannot beat it with a 6 man party (unless you are fighting lower level players as max level group).
You never heard of Rooks and Kings in EVE?
Does not matter if aoe is scaling. If a single player can output 100 dps even reduced in an aoe ability, and 40 people do that, that is 4000 DPS. Now if players have 8K hp, that is death within 2 seconds. All you need thrn is proper gear.
Like a mage, on heavy armor, focusing Inteligence, Constitution and Mentality, putting on a Shield and Magical damage mainhand weapon and you got yourself a Pipebomber. They even showed the Magma Field spell which has an augment that makes you a mobile magma field. It's like papa Steven knows exactly a bait and 40 mages with Molotov cocktails is the cure for zergs.
We done these things as far back as Lineage 2 , Star Wars Galaxies and Dark Age of Camelot. Even WoW has Goblin Sapper Charges. You missed that part too?
Your lack of such tactical knowledge indicates you are either really young or prey.
And as long as there's at least a few sources of similarly-powerful gear - those smaller groups will be able to get that good gear for all of their members way before zerg even comes close to the same stage of gearing.
The part where you have no experience with dealing with zergs is obvious from what you write. But even your theorycrafting needs a lot more work to make it believable. You talking about dps output as if you fighting practice dummies. Even if you kill 50 players out of the 400 with those mass spells you talk about you still have 350 players left to deal with. Or maybe you suggesting the AOE range of the spells to be bigger than the whole screen? since 400 man zergs wont fit on your screen.
And so far from what i saw in AOC the mass spells wont hit even 5% of the zerg. maybe the mage spell that is cast around him may hit half the zerg, but you need to be in the middle of the zerg to do this since the spells is casted around you. (now you will say: 40 mages blink in the middle of the zerg and use hte mass spell and gg
Also 2 seconds is more than enough for a player to react and use some defensive cds, And when you include that the zerg will have a lot healers, you should make it at least 4 seconds needed to kill particular area of the zerg with mass spells. And for 4 seconds is enough for the zerg to kill you all.
Not to mention that the zerg group will have rogues scouting the area around them. So your little surprise attack would fail before it even begin.
Even just a single another group on the other side would chip away at that zerg overtime. A few more groups on either side (still nowhere near the 170 members of the enemy side) would increase the chances of winning even higher.
And this was in a game with TPs to this location (as shown right at the start of the video). Ashes won't have TPs, so a proper baiting group can dismantle a zerg with time.
And L2's aoes didn't even have proper long range, so this was mostly a single target picking off situation (with a few ground-placed big cd aoes). If Ashes has even just a few longer range or longer duration ground-placed aoes - it would make the situation even easier for the small group.
What will happen is 50 people get melted instantly, then 100 more "go go go " zerglings fall in and die cause half thrir hp melts and they panic, and that is when the rest fall in, and at that point you have CC in place to make thrm panic even more. By the time strugglers are left stsnding they just run away. It's called pipebombing cause it's a terror tactic irl.
You lack the patience for tactics. You just want a brawl and like all prey you HATE being prey. But do not call pipebombing theorycrafting, it's a well known tactic. Look it up on youtube.
Zergs will be farmed. And in order for we pipebombers to shine, large megs alliances need to exist.
The small group killed like 20 players total. Which is nothing for the zerg group. ANd you talking about "winning"
My man knows what's up with Spellhowlers.
You are watching unorganized zerg that few players chasing while the rest "listens to commands to wait probably", and those that dont listen get themselves killed. In the end the zerg didnt lose almost anything. few deaths is nothing for the zerg. Also imagine now if there were 40 rogues in the zerg group which move behind you and the moment you try to escape they just slow/stun and even kill half your group just from the rogues. And give the chance for the zerg to catch up to you
From the look of it - the zerg group wasnt even interested in killing your small group. In the end they decided to kill you, but before this the group as a whole was not chasing you.
And that as not even a big Zerg group, It says 170 players but there werent even 100 there. Imagine a 300 man guild + 2 alliances x 300 players for total of 900 players zerg.
Btw, that tactic on the video, you did not even realise the leader was calling names for prime target and when they had none, they primed left to right, furthest to closest. Germans are very serious about their war tactics - ask France.
It is a good doctrine. It takes experience and good players to use it - not zerglings.
I like that guilds have risen and fallen like empires in those games with no factions, creating unique and dynamic histories per server. Yes, some servers experienced being dominated by one mega-guild, but it's very rare that these guilds survive for too long before collapsing into several smaller ones. Even so, some game mechanics could limit the effects of such dominance without needing an artificial system of factions. Why not let every server in AoC have its fluid history that represents this kind of organic change?
If implemented correctly, a system without fixed factions can work just fine. The challenge goes beyond simply having factions or not; it lies in deeper game design elements that encourage balanced and engaging gameplay.
Well didnt heard the callinf from the music probably
Just make each group of 8 players to have "friendly fire" to any other group even if they are in same guild. This wont apply if the players are Non combatants, but if they want to pvp they become combatants and can hit each other. And this wont apply for guild/node wars and sieges, Simple and effective solution.
They delayed them and had a good fight in a 1vX. I would not expect a zergling to know the thrill of 1vX.
Well, with this i agree, Even tho the zerg was not even paying them any attention, There was part of the zerg that got delayed. And yes - they put good fight. But wasnt the conversation about beating a zerg? coz if it was about delaying a zerg then i would agree that its possible.
This was a 1:10 fight (if we go with your disbelief of the numbers presented in the video) and the "1" side managed to kill "2" of the "10".
And all of this was happening to hold back the zerg from farming an important boss, which would be even more effective in Ashes, because regrouping of the zerg would've taken way longer than the simple TP of L2.
Again, extrapolate the tactic to what Ashes will have, rather than just nitpick the example. The potential 400-500 zergs of Ashes would be fighting groups of ~100, and if those 100 will use these kinds of tactics - the zerg will fall quite quickly.
This is also why I said that 40 people is nothing in Ashes, and that fights will be "huge vs ginormous" rather than "1 group is fighting 2-3". One of the slogans of Ashes was "bringing massive back to mmos". That's its draw to its target audience.
p.s. I still hold the position that heals and buffs must only be party-based, rather than raid-wide (let alone guild/alliance), so simple zergs would be even weaker. And if a zerg can get proper parties, which can then play in good coordination - they simply deserve what they get, because they are no longer a "zerg", they are just a big group of skilled players.
Also, there already is friendly fire, as long as the zerg is trying to be more effective and splits its numbers into a ton of subguilds rather than have them all in one guild. And if they DO have them all in one guild - each individual character is weaker for it, which plays into the stuff I said before (smaller groups being better geared and stronger than the zerg, and all that).
EVE has friendly fire. Let me break down my earlier fire mage aoe example.
You get fire resistance enchantments and potions. I did mention an Int/Con/Mnt build. Mentality is the magic resistance stat. Most zergs just have people with STR/DEX builds, if I can judge by L2, the closest game in stats to Ashes.
The enemy does not expect a pipebombing, so they lack fire resistance.
Best part, mages have 3 different spells already that work for pipebombing. And people cannot prepare for every single pipebombing scenario.
You really don't get it. We 1vX people LIVE for farming zergs. You see a zerg, you whine, we see a zerg and get a boner. There is no amount of friendly fire that will stop it.
The thing is that in the video the zerg was paying no attention to the 9 players. They were ignoring them while doing the boss. And only small part of the zerg splitted to chase the 9 players, and thats why they managed to make some kills. In the end the zerg killed the boss and just ran over the group.
And you call it a "fight", but in reality the zerg got the boss, and the small group got nothing.
100 vs 400 cant use these tactics coz
first: the zerg group wont ignore the 100
Second: you cant organize the 100 the same way you organize the 9, You will lose 50 players from the start coz they wont retreat on time or will go too deep and ect
But yes, I don't expect singular groups to "win" against full zergs. I think the lowest ration should be ~1:3, so if the zerg is ~450, then ~150 should be the number that can beat it with better skill and tactics.
Which 3 spells you talking about? Coz non will hit more than 3% of the zerg players with single cast
You have:
* orb that has slow travel time and easy to be racted to
* the frost aoe that is cast in front of the mage, Which you need to go almost melee range to the zerg to use
* the aoe that is cast in 360 degrees around you, which will require you to be in the middle of the zerg to use
In the context of Ashes, the boss would have anti-zerg mechanics that prevents the zerg from simply one-shotting it (well, hopefully it does of course). And quite likely even just a single group from the enemy can disturb the farm.
But that part is definitely most debatable, cause we haven't seen any proper pve yet.
If the side with 100 people can't control them - that's on them and they deserve to lose. If I, as a fairly shitty tactician and leader, could control 200 people during a siege and lead their movements in a coordinated manner - any better leader would (and I know for sure that some HAVE) control their group to a much greater extent.
100 people is only 12 parties. Again, that's is barely even a big group. Anyone who hasn't played stuff like L2, where "zerg" began at 200++, wouldn't understand what it takes to control several groups that are playing in unison.
And if you have experienced those scales, yet you are still saying that 100 people can't be coordinated - I can only feel sorry for your experience, because you haven't ever met a good leader.
Earthquake, Blizzard, Meteor , Magma Field
It takes 2 tanks to throw a pair of bolas and the it's game over.
You guys want friendly fire, like that will deter zergs or pipebombers. 🤷♂️
Exaaaactly.
And who says that there won't be " Factions " in the Game ? I bet every single Deity might have it's own Religion, Followers, Cults, Sects, whatever you name them.
There might be Race-Factions as well. And HOPEFULLY - > also Factions who act and exist as Villains. Admiring and praying to the dark Gods known as "The Others" - and to the Ancients.
WoW had the Twilight Hammer Cult, right ?
Eldenring(lol) had the "Let Chaos take the World"-Folks.
Who says every single Individual on the World of Verra will be a good Atta-Person ? And not a naughty Boy ? (lol) searching to gain corrupt Powers beyond Measurement and trying to stir up some crazy Era of Darkness and Violence ?
And then there are the Ancients themselves. I would be shocked if they don't count as a Faction of Sorts.
Even if we Players will have our Hands completely full with our Nodes and Alliances with (other) Guilds already : who says there will not be Factions around who have nothing to do with them ?
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)