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.
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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
If one person trolls your entire raid that is a reflection on your raids ability rather than the content itself, again most people will not be completing high end content.
Nothing stops the devs from actually creating high end PvE content that also requires coordination on the PvP side to protect the PvE side of the raid from PvP incursions. At this point, you're highlighting the ineptitude and/or experience of the players who just cant get it done.
There are titles where this is the case, it's not an assumption. It's been done before.
No.
Your replies make it abundantly clear that you lack experience in high-end raiding, as well as a general unpleasant demeanor resorting to personal insults toward players who do understand how such content functions.
This might be true in low level difficulty mechanics, but when you build an encounter that requires high precision, no room for error execution. (ie: the very pinnacle of end game MMO raids), a single outside player messing with a single person in the raid causes a wipe.
Also your replies are kind of passive aggressive towards players that do engage in that kind of content.
The short version of the story is:
1) Intrepid wants to design pinnacle end game content for raiders, those raids require instancing so they can make the boss an actual challenge.
2) Intrepid wants to give us low effort gear check bosses like we saw with the fire dragon, that is fine if the challenge comes from the threat of pvp during the fight.
3) We can actually have both at the same time, they arent mutually exclusive. So theres no need for personal insults here.
This guy is totaly transparent, he's practically telling us he consider PvE's to be filthy casuals that should be available for him to gank at all times or better yet be driven out of the game all together.
And Ironicaly they WILL be available to gank, the whole thread is based on his totaly erronious conflation of having locked-room chanlenges that act as gates for more crafted PvE experiences anywhere being instant degeneration of the game into a WoW themepark by some kind of slippery slope weak willed caving in on the part of Intrepid to 'the inctanced crowd'.
I've done high-end raiding, that is how I know most people are terrible at it, but thats just a statistical fact right, most people are just average. I've also raided in the open world with PVP present and still completed it, that's how I know it exists. The fact that most people are just average players isn't really a problem, the most you could argue is that most people could quite if only the best players could complete the best content. The best players completing the content is going to happen anyway.
I did not insult you, you highlighted a proficiency level within a raid, which raid gets wiped by a single person. I stand by that, if your raid gets wiped by a single person then that's on you - not the encounter. If you felt slighted by that, that's also something for you to deal with.
You'll have to settle for my indifference towards you and your perception of me, who are you to me?
Raids can be wiped by one person within the same group. That an outside party could easily wipe a group on purpose is not opinion, but a very demonstrable fact. Yes, most players end up in the middle-ground, but wanting genuinely difficult, high-precision content is not 'hiding' as you've framed it.
Most of the way you speak is derogatory toward high-end content-driven players, and I do quite frankly doubt your self-advertised expertise in the matter if you really do not understand how easily one person can trash a raid at the highest level no matter how many people your group has. Best believe one Fighter with a gap-closer could take a proxy-bomb mechanic from the boss encounter and run it into your primary tank mid-fight.
What game exactly did you play that had high precision PvE encounters while also alowing to free-access PvP within the same arena? I'm genuinely curious what VODs of those encounters look like if you're so confident about them.
I'll highlight some of the points you haven't refuted (all of them):
This game in the absence of PvP, is PvE. Only in the presence of PvP does the game become PvX, as its designed.
I have to repeat myself saying that I am against any power, being present in any instanced content. That includes PvP content, some how now its "he wants to gank lowbies".
They won't be able to gank freely, its called corruption and with the penalties being as steep as they are, no one is going to volunteer their gear. Especially when you downgrade your gear you lose your killing power.
I'm beginning to think you rather enjoy twisting things into something its not.
Unfortunately, Steven has said that if players demand a certain type of content and it becomes popular, they will create more of that content. I am paraphrasing here, but that's the jist of it.
I simply do not wish for Intrepid to veer away that is the premise of Ashes.
But go on, go ahead and keep twisting things.
Why regardless of difficulty (risk) in that setting?
Time is the ultimate risk.
Especially PvP instances.
This was all you really needed Steven is clearly making a compromise here so he can have challenging PvE experience.
If the Risk is high and the content is difficult where majority cant complete it, this is good for the game.
I believe that these raid bosses should drop items and materials, and force the materials to be transported back to town and create the spy/tracking of guilds raid nights and gank caravans. It then allows for the risk for pvp to still have its place.
I will always champion high skill ceiling for PvE and PvP both should exist in Ashes as long as the pillars for both can have proper checks and balances and don't completely dimmish the other.
They will.
Or otherwise about no one will do them. It would be a Waste of time. ESPECIALLY in a PvX(P) World where Competition against other People/Nodes will probably play a huge Role in everyone's Gameplay.
Why wasting your own Time aside when You are the most superior Node anyway ? I wouldn't do that.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
This is the current path Ashes design is taking, or at least intended to take.
You have to compete to actually access the dungeon/boss room first, clear an instanced PvE encounter inside with an inherent difficulty to the content itself, and then once the party leaves that room (whether because they cleared it or because they all wiped), then they're back out in the world and subject to PvP as usual, quite possibly with materials that can now be fought over.
And if the group wipes, well, personally I think it should automatically unlock access for the next group's attempt at it while the first group has to run back and get ready to fight over that loot they missed out on.
Had this conversation many times with people, some already want the ability to queue for arenas/bgs before you know it, the game ends up an instance fest where the world is gutted.
Gets real out of hand quick, for some reason people say they like bleeding edge difficulty but when being presented with a reward track that’s absent of power then the content is no longer worth doing.
The reality is that it was about power the whole time.
Lastest update Steven hinted that instanced bosses will be a thing when they want to control how many people can take on said boss. With that said, we will see upgrades in instances.
People wouldn't do high-end content that takes hours on hours of practice if there is no benefit to doing so, because that's a waste of their time and ultimately indicative of a lack of respect for the players' efforts.
You're on this dead-end doom train based entirely on a slippery slope fallacy, when only 20% of all content is instanced specifically so it can be properly designed. You've still yet to link a VOD of these open PvP, high-precision clears you've claimed you've participated in, or even give a name of one of the games, so as it stands, there's no evidence to suggest the two concepts can coexistent in a way that's done well.
Either the fight requires immense precision and thus one person stepping in to purposefully throw it off is all it takes to wipe, or the content is dumbed down and many fight mechanics simply could not exist so that PvP can take place in the area without automatically ruining a raid attempt.
Ex. Take one of ESO's trials (generally considered to be one of the easier MMOs at its high end), Maw of Lorkhaj, which has a group-splitting mechanic in one of the fights. This mechanic assigns everyone in the area one of two colors, and if you get in proximity of someone with the opposite color, you both instantly die. Easy to handle so long as you're rotating on the color changes and sticking with like-to-like.
However, this mechanic could not exist if another group was permitted to enter that instance, because one person with a gap closer could instantly obliterate multiple people via that mechanic.
Allowing other groups to interfere with what should be a finely-tuned, difficult encounter will only serve to ensure that content is dumbed down and denied what could be much more engaging, interesting mechanics.
Copy+Paste:
Should difficult PvE encounters be required to be in instances?
No. The only thing instances achieve is isolating a player group from everyone else so they can focus on the content purely.
You can achieve that same isolation by making well designed open world dungeons.
There's nothing stopping an "open world boss" to be located at the end of a cave system that takes two hours to clear minibosses and varoius mobs to get to which then has a massive arena that allows for all the complexities of instanced content to be used. The journey to the boss achieves that isolation of players.
I'd much rather that exist since then it's effectively "instanced content" but it still allows a chance for a rival group can show up.
Concerned about zergs? Intrepid has stated that boss abilities will scale based on the number of players that show up for the fight. Assuming this works as described, then zergs will have a much more difficult time staying alive. Even if they do stay alive, we know that content only drops a certain amount of rewards regardless of how many players show up. Rewarding content will likely be on either lengthy respawn timers or require a certain unlocking condition to be met in order to spawn them. It would not be worth it for a group of say 300 to zerg a boss down knowing that it will only drop at the most 3 pieces of gear and enough materials to craft 5 other pieces of gear. It's a waste of time when that group could be split into 6 other smaller groups that focus on different areas of the world.
It's important for AoC to avoid instanced content as much as possible since the basis of the game is player interaction.
They are avoiding instanced content as much as possible, hence why it's only 20% of content, but in some places you simply cannot balance an encounter without closing off the combat area. It's just not possible to do unless they dumb down the fights encounters and deny themselves the chance to use all sorts of mechanics, which is not what I want to see from them.
The challenge should come from the encounter once you've fought your way through mobs and other players to that final room in the dungeon. High-end content is there to test your teamwork and skill, not your patience for trolling from other players as the most noteworthy 'difficulty' facet.
I’m on my phone, It’s a OW PvX game, there shouldn’t be even 20% of the content.
Much hasn’t changed with the raid only crowd in the last twenty + years I’ve been playing MMOs.
At this point I don’t think I owe it to you when you talk at people, not interested in dialogue because you haven’t played an open world dungeon before. Your lack of experience doesn’t constitute anything on my part.
The bulk of your argument is “it’s impossible for devs to make great PvE content in the presence of PvP”.
You just haven’t seen it, that’s your problem.
Best gear is from instanced raids, and has been since day 1.
Instanced PvP was added in around 2009, and the rewards from it are mid, and always have been.
The fact that there are some games thst don't do this does not mean all games don't do this. In order to demonstrate that your assumption that it is an inevitability that it will happen is false, all I need to do is demonstrate one situation where it didn't happen - which I just did.
I wouldn't say it was demonstrably false if I didn't have a specific demonstration in mind - you should know this.
Another example would be Archeage, if you want it from a game that is more PvP focused. Steven made the comment in 2018 that while he doesn't think they could, he would like to compete with WoW in terms of raiding.
Without then, Ashes will fail.
Not may fail, not may be less successful than it could. Will fail.
With the game's basic design goal, for every PvP focused player, the game also needs one PvE focused player.
I have said many times over the years that the success of a game like Ashes is more reliant on it attracting PvE players than PvP, because PvP players coming along are a given, and as long as those PvP players keep winning more PvP than they are losing, they will stay.
However in order for those PvP players to win more than they lose, those losses need to fall to a different group, which has to be PvE players.
If the game doesn't attract those PvE players, PvP players will peel off from the bottom.
No, I've said that it's not possible to design a high-precision raid if you have to account for other players actively attempting to sabotage it. I even gave you an example of how it happens in the face of punishing mechanics, more than one in fact but you haven't actually addressed any of it.
I've asked you to share these games that you claim have successfully blended extremely difficult boss encounters with an open PvP area, and you've declined to provide even one example. I'd be happy to engage in dialogue if you actually provided some evidence to back up your claim, as it goes against common sense and many people's direct experience with mixed PvX combat encounters.
Its not even debatable, as far as encounter challenge goes when designing a boss, a pure pve instanced encounter can be tuned to be drastically more complex, and its meant for a different purpose and audience than the pvx game.
A pvx encounter requires all mechanics to be simple. Step out of the fire style mechanics (same thing showed in the update this week). Only when mechanics are so simplified can a team respond to both the boss and a pvp ambush.
We already saw instanced boss in the alpha1 dungeon, we know 20% of content will be instanced. That means the rest will be open world, contestable by pvp
If that destroys the game for some people, well, ashes isnt for everyone.
I wanted to post yesterday that this is true.
Now I see this statement:
If the PvP-ers at the bottom can defeat PvE players, will those PvE players stay in the game?
I have the feeling somebody will leave anyway, is just that they leave from two bottoms.
Then after a while IS will have to create content for the top PvPers and top PvEers who still play the game.
Caeryl I agree with your pushback on this nonsense thread, but I think your actually missing a far more pertinent point by getting dragged down his PvP disruption rabbithole.
Even if their is no threat of PvP ATALL, an open world PvE challenge can never be designed under a player count ceiling because their is nothing to bar players from pouring unlimited 'zerg' at such a challenge.
This is why Intrepid is going to great lengths to make open world challenges scalable with player count but they acknowlege that has limits and that many PvE players will want to do fights OTHER then as part of a horde. THAT, far more then the threat of PvP disruption to the fight is the reason for instancing, it's a as player count cap. Which is not to say that Intrepid will need or want everyone 'in' fight to be friendly.
I could see a senario where a dungeon has multiple entrances across the world and you have to enter as an 8 man party then two parties get randomly paired and have to fight the boss in the locked room againt each other at the same time to see who gets the most damage on the boss which makes wiping the other group a valid strategy. Without instancing this just becomes a cake walk for 16 folks to work together or even 40 to just swarm the boss.
PvE players are ruthless optimizers and that can mean learning and obeying extremely disipline timing and coreography, but they are not fools that tie one hand behind their back. If more bodies is an effective way to beat the content they will do that, even if the extra men are for nothing more then replacing losses it profoundly changes the difficulty.
These are all also true points, and it bundles into the overall point of not being able to have the top-end content without putting some kind of lock-down on it.
Now, the scenario you presented is a weird one, mostly because you'd have to actually time it with another group to be paired up at all, otherwise it's just a 8-man team cruising through a boss designed around an 8v8 PvP match.
Other the other hand, it would be interesting to see an encounter race where one group completing a mechanic or placing an item/add would trigger something for the other group to handle, and visa versa. Off the top of my head for theme: some big lich making us fight for his entertainment or what have you, then whoever successfully clears that encounter gets to go on to fight the lich itself for phase 2.