Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I'm honestly really glad to see you specifically, say this, because if you liked TL PvP I'd probably be concerned.
But since your opinion (I'm assuming non-hyperbole) is this strong, I'm relieved.
I agree that Intrepid should take notes, no sarc. TL is best played as a skirmisher game, and it drastically diminishes shotcalling as an overall success metric due to many aspects of its balance, even in smaller scale fights.
Ashes is the opposite, and the divergence is important for the success of both. Don't listen to skirmishers complaining about your combat, Intrepid, when A2 drops. They will come. They will complain. And they should leave. If you give ground to them, I would bet on ruining your own systems for the people most likely to truly enjoy it.
That said, the visibility thing brought up in the videos isn't particularly true, for me, and obviously I have opinions on why. TL video is of a Tank specifically pushing into enemy forces with the 'orbital' camera view and enemy effects lessened.
The comparison videos are ... BDO smaller scale on a supermobile class, and AA Archer... And ofc the Glorious Node War preview which truly is one of the best shotcaller-combat demos of this decade. Either way I figure Steven himself can explain that stuff better than me if he has the time to.
The good thing is, it shouldn't matter. Me, or someone like me, going 'nuh UH, TL is fine!' comes from preference. We have TL, make yo' game.
I haven't experienced everything the game has to offer, especially not the guild mass PvP stuff, because I'm not a part of a hardcore guild, but I don't feel like I'm missing out on much with this game.
It has become stale already.
Doing same contracts every day, farming open-world dungeon every day, doing the same few dungeons. It just becomes boring and repetitive, REALLY quick. And besides that, there's really not much else to do for me in the game.
It might be that we simply lack a lot of content at this moment. Or maybe, we are just meant to grind the same ow dungeons every day, to farm mats, or hoping for that rare drop.
I can see enough potential with this game, with some adjustments, and more content, it can be something I'm able to play for a longer period of time. But at this moment, I already feel like I'm "done" with the game.
I haven't played TL ir seen much on it yet, could you elaborate in the 2 groups of players you are referring to as shotcallers and skirmishers, and the mechanical differences in the combat between the 2 games so I have a better understanding on the design differences between TL and Ashes?
Very simply, a 'shotcaller' style game is what most of the 'classic' old MMOs are. Some leader marks or calls out a single enemy target in a group, and everyone bursts them down (there's obviously more to it than that, but the goal is to do primarily that, and to counter anyone trying to do that.
These games involve long range engagement tools, huge gap closers, and relatively larger guarantees on one's ability to get the kill.
'Skirmisher' style games are more often 'what the PvP in primarily PvE MMOs turns out to be like', with less skill distances, less guarantees, and in many, diminishing returns from focusing your attacks or energy on one opponent, even if they actually do die. There are often many more tools to avoid dying when focused down. You are often put in a situation where you are taken out of the fight for a while, but not by dying. Healing is often less powerful, has long cooldowns, or very dependent on HoTs (or all of those at once).
The max range of the majority of non-augmented skills in TL is 14-19m (this is important because the game's base design did not include the Augments, so any effects that those Augments are having on the overall gameplay wasn't necessarily in the original design).
The max range of the majority of skills we've been shown in Ashes (post Alpha-1) is somewhere between 30 and 50m. TL also contains powerful methods of mitigation and damage avoidance, and those become more powerful at shorter ranges because you can more accurately predict when a coordinated burst is going to happen based on enemy movements.
Thanks,
Im not sure if you are saying the skill aspects are just shifted into other aspects between both styles, or if you are trying to say that the lack of bursting enemies down is objectively a lower skill ceiling for TL. Thats a bit confusing when put into context of your earlier ststements of TL being more skillful/resembling a fighting game more.
That depends on one's definition of skill, and that depends on the person.
They are two different skill types, and you will find people that speak negatively about either. Skirmishers often 'complain' that shotcaller games are all about 'just being bursted down by a group who are just following the orders of someone else who's really playing the game'. Shotcallers often 'complain' that skirmisher games are about just 'dashing in and mashing buttons and hoping something works'.
You know what I'm talking about. The eternal argument between zoners and rushdown players about how the other's playstyle is cheap and unfun and doesn't require real skill.
I subscribe to neither notion, but I believe it is generally true that if you made a fighting game that was 'zoners only', people might have some specific reactions to it. Large scale PvP in shotcaller games is quite often similar to 'zoners only' (and to balance this, it's often necessary to make ranged characters quite weak in smaller group stuff).
So 'just shifted into other aspects' is my answer, with all that extra clarification hopefully helpful.
Hopefully they find a balance between those two styles as I think you’re referring to as zoners and skirmishers. A happy place where AOE and CC is still useful from a Shotcaller perspective but as a player even while playing a role you still feel like you’re playing the game and participating in the fight. It’s that right mix between macro and micro combat playstyle. Though there is also a big difference between Zerging and Brawling so I don’t know if there will be a way to find that balance and still make it work as it also depends on the scale of the fight.
It's the overall format of it that I don't like. The quantity and quality of it. Everything is timed, everything is scheduled, most everything is confined to a small area. Very little of it is organic. The conflict world bosses in particular are the worst pvp I think I've ever seen. 300-400 people in a very small circle around the boss. Zerg blob aoe spam, because that's the only play.
Very little "adventure" in any of it. You show up for a scheduled, timed event. Your guild already has 12 pins on the ground before the fight starts, all feet away from each other covering the perimeter of the circle. Because that's how small the fighting area is. Those pins are used for the callouts. Rally at 9. Aoe zerg blob push them at 3.
I dream of Ashes. Bring adventure back to mmos. Spontaneity. Organicness. A party of 20 can set out in the world, grind some mobs, knock out some quests, do some random events, little gathering, down a mini boss without interfence, get the jump on another group, steal their mini boss. And then have the script flipped on them, wiped at a mini boss by a guild passing by. All in one outing, just made all that up off the cuff, but you get the drift.
In TL it's like, conflict world boss at 7pm. Insta port there, zerg blob aoe. Conflict world boss at 9pm. Insta port there, zerg blob aoe. 400 people in a circle that 3 or 4 mobility spells can travel the circumference of. I don't know how this made it out of testing lol. I don't know how anyone can find it fun long term. We win sometimes and sometimes we lose. But win, lose or draw, it's mostly agreed on, this is dogass pvp.
Aside from that, you got arenas filled with juiced up p2wers. Open world dungeon pvp at night for 30 mins, only every 2 hours, largely pointless, but probably the best pvp in the game. And then riftstone wars for 30 minutes once a week or something.
Hopefully they just add a mixture of dynamic events to ashes with some that aren’t always on a daily schedule and rather more at random. I think having notifications or some awareness of events is good but for some maybe mixing it up and not knowing hours before if it’s in the open world at least.
The only good thing is there won’t be any fast travel so will make it harder for zergs to form as quickly or get to a location. I’ve always found having events appear on your local map to be a better system than everyone knowing where or when they are at least for mini bosses. I still think there will be lots of zergs contesting bosses and it will be based on whoever does the most damage or health percentage though.
However yeah it would be kind of nice to be just adventuring roaming around with your group and stumble into those things rather than being preplanned. It’s also good map awareness to be on the lookout for possible events or things happening in the vicinity. There are pro’s plus cons to scheduling though like sieges, castles and node war declarations definitely need to be on a somewhat of a scheduled timer.
That's a great point as well that I forgot to mention, and was one of my main gripes with Lost Ark.
Everything is scheduled, time-gated, everything happens at a certain time, so you have to play around the game like it's a job.
Nothing just happens out there in the world, there's nothing dynamic, you know where everything is, at exact time. It's exactly the reason why I already feel bored, as I feel I discovered and experienced 95% of the game.
This is why I feel T&L and Ashes are just not comparable. Maybe some systems look similar on the surface, but the way those systems will play out, is completely different.
Ok I figured that's what you meant, just wanted to confirm. To add to this topic: taking your analogy of zoners vs rushdown, I view these as simply playstyle preferences that manifest as win conditions of skillful play (all else equal, whether the rushdown player "gets to rush down" or the zoner "gets to zone" is a result of who is more skilled). I just view the playstyle options as having balanced variety in the game. Thus, whether or not these playstyles are included (like shotcalling and skirmishing styles) is just a matter of whether you want to appeal to those different types of players and have that variety, or to focus on a specific playstyle (which then certain player's would complain about a lack of variety), which is probably the point you were getting at.
My personal preference is that I don't see why you can't have a healthy mix of both, even in a "shotcaller game" which could still have a certain ratio of importance placed on "skirmishing" (just like a fighting game can have characters that focus on rushdown style, zoning style, and a combination of them), as long as things are well balanced (easier said than done, which may also be your point). This could be kind of like pre-battle strategy vs actual combat skill, vs gear, etc., and how each can have a certain weight of importance in determining the end result. I would like shotcallers to be able to shotcall and then have to skirmish as a part of that execution, but like the analogy earlier about win conditions/skill factor, if you don't have the skill to shotcall then the skirmisher style might trimuph, and vice versa.
The balance aspect that I either disagree with or possibly don't understand due to a (potential) lack of overlap from fighting game concepts to theoretical mmo balance, is that I don't see why this would automatically have to negatively affect a specific playstyle in small scale combat (such as I think you said about this causing the ranger to be worse in 1v1 or something like that). Assuming non rock paper scissors balancing just for simple comparison sake, the very nature of increasing player count can make "focus down" strategies more powerful (such as 1v2 in fighting game), so I don't see why the idea of leaning towards "skirmishing" style (thus nerfing shotcalling importance) would automatically deem rangers to be less powerful in small scale for balance reasons. For example, zoners and rushdown can still be balanced for 1v1 while still having a significant advantage when "focusing down" with multiple characters against 1 character. I don't see why nerfing "focus down" strategies would cause the above statement to be untrue unless starting from a state of complete imbalance to where any changes made to make "focus down" less effective would cause the 1v1 balance to be intrinsically affected in that balancing relationship.
A lot of room for misinterpretation and nuance here so don't feel obligated to get into it unless you want to, I won't assume that you agree or don't have a response or anything like that, just wanted to point that out.
In any case, we're only a few months away from massive amounts of glorious data and discussion from many perspectives, and I'm sure they'll prove me wrong then.
Gotchya my bad, either way the idea I was attempting to communicate was more about the relationship between small scale vs large scale, rather than the specific number of 1v1, so if it helps to put that post into the context of 4v4, it would still apply.
Yeah, we will find out a lot here soon. I think we might have the best idea once phase 3 rolls out, when stuff gets more fleshed out and more features get implemented and tuned.
In TnL big alliances controls whole servers and as soon as there is a PvP event noone else can do them besides those big alliances.
Those events also gives the most loot.
They also control all the riftstones and boonestones that gives bonuses.
Whole guilds are hoping servers to avoid those zerg alliances but its happening on all servers.
I can see the same thing happening in AoC.
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huge difference between the 2 games in regard to open world pvp content is world size when zergs can portal anywhere on demand it makes it very easy for them to control points like in T&L
In AoC tester have said its 40-45 minute mount ride from one side of the riverlands to the other so that right there will make it very hard for zergs to group up on short notice
i also wouldnt say T&L is a open world pvp game either to be honost it barely any pvp at all imo since it all restricted to a couple zones 30 minutes in a 2 hour period.
Darkfall is a little more akin to AoC with lack of fast travel and somewhat larger map although its tiny in comparison to AoC whole map and u only realy got huge zergs when it was a planned seige. outside of that it was 5-10 players at most at a time in the world sometimes 20.
The large scale pvp was meant to play this way and it's working perfectly. The game is actually functioning flawlessly for it's design. It hosts 280vs280 seamlessly with prob another 100 on outskirts rat pvping. It was meant to be a big guild vs big guild game so I think it's hit it's intended goals
There is an argument I have to being locked out of progression. You're not. The bosses have piece variants so you can always attend those. AND your small guild can easily run that boss and have bound loot from it drop and only people in your guild can get it. Even if you aren't doing those you can still buy it from ah at a more overpriced value but nothing too outrageous if you're playing a fair amount. It's very well put together system for your average player.
I hear this complaint alot but it's just blatantly not true. I find people don't put in the modicum of effort to achieve the desired gear/goal they want. The second it has any obstacle they just crumble
Obviously I can confirm all this, but the issue relative to the thread is that it doesn't apply to Ashes, and we should probably compare the parts of the two games that will be similar.
There are minimal, if any 'Peace' versions of content in Ashes. And it's possible that iccer was referring to the PvP itself as the content, in which case the problem is not being locked out of the rewards, but being unable to have the desired experience.
This sort of thing is why PvP gamers 'switched' to MOBAs and so on. MMOs sometimes just go much too far away from fun PvP experiences, if their players are allowed to.
In Ashes, my small group can't easily get top drops off Peace bosses by focusing on teamwork and skill expression, and benefit from organization. Nor should we be able to, except as a small unit part of a big operation
Optimally though, there should be some chance for that big operation to form up without being auto-crushed by a larger operation, otherwise the problem remains. No access to fun PvP content.
Large scale PvP might work how it's intended, but that doesn't mean it's good.
Being limited to a small area around the boss, where people can respawn and just enter in and out of the fight constantly on the edge, is just not great. - Ashes solves that.
However, what Ashes doesn't solve, and T&L does, is the fact that you can still get loot. You have peace bosses, so you still have a chance to make a group and go at it.
In Ashes, there's always going to be direct competition with PvP, and if a big enough group comes in, you won't have a chance for loot, nor for PvP content - as you will just get obliterated by a zerg.
Also like @Azherae mentioned, (Open-world) PvP itself is also content, and being locked out from it is not good - why I also made an entire post about it on the forums as well.