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
I've been saying this for ages, travel time would immensely impact things. You can make the argument if multiple spawn all around the world no one is going to get them all. But ones important to the guild they will be showing up no matter where in the worlds that is.
If i can see the guilds bringing like 50-65 of their members per guild of 70. From 1pm to 1am. there is 0 reason for anyone to believe they can't move and show up around the world if they plan to do it.
Edit
EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK
No, even in my experience it does have a limit, it's just that this limit isn't enforced by the factor most people default to.
In my tests, the thing that actually limits megaguilds is 'the ability to use organization to push forward'. The issue is that most players are outright unwilling to spend serious time engaged in things that are meant for 'maintaining a position within a dynamic system', especially when it's obvious that any serious push by the 'world at large' will immediately crush them.
Basically the game has to make everyone wish for things to stay metastable, because there is no 'top', it's only 'equilibrium that then provides content'.
MMORPGs are generally designed to be about climbing the ladder toward content, not 'maintaining an equilibrium to provide content'. Ashes is in the position to be the game that doesn't do this (things like their Event system acting as a shakeup works well in Elite, for example, in the short term, similar to what BDO does with Seasons and Events, and what EVE does by the occasional overhaul of something).
The thing TL is teaching me is that depending on the target audience the game attracts, not even this works. The 'non megaguilds' in TL are actually experiencing this as we speak on the non-Early Access servers (I'm crunchin' the data!), especially as more stuff opens up.
I'd guess this is because of the different mindsets of the Early Access players and the later players, but not enough to be conclusive.
I don't think most servers would have one guild that controls multiple Metros, but I agree with Mag7 that they would have a fairly global ability to dominate content.
I think the answer is to lean more into less rewarding content, but this leads directly to the problem that MMORPGs face quite heavily, and TL is helping (me at least) get a lot more data on.
Can the content be fun enough that most people will do it without any specific reward, without any specific chance at 'winning' at it? Or have we left that era behind?
I don't think we have yet, but I also think it would take a long time to change, because the sort of player who does 'unrewarding' content has been increasingly 'pushed out' of truer MMOs and into things like FF14.
TL is probably the first foray into the new era of 'Ok but what if we give you a LITTLE PvP? Not so much that you can't do anything in the game, but it's always around so you at least have to consider trying it out'. I hope it brings some of those avoidant players back, over time.
Basically the answer is to get people to realize 'Oh I can go into this dungeon at night and see how long I can survive before someone kills me and that's just ok'. And I specifically mean the people that can enjoy the game without ever doing that, but randomly choose to do it.
Dominion Events in TL, hopefully Caravan runs in Ashes (cross your fingers kids!), Facility Defense in Elite, etc.
"Just show up, it won't hurt that bad."
Would you say that "equilibrium that provides content" can be applied to the same thing I explained few posts ago to Lodrig, or are they different things? I'm talking about the difference between a zerg dominating several pieces of content at the same time, vs several small guilds "dominating" one piece of content at a time.
In a sense, these smaller guilds can actually provide content (PvP), as you can challenge them more easily, while you cannot challenge a large zerg that easily. So a more equilibrious state would be several smaller guilds that only have the ability to "dominate" one piece of content at a time. That obviously comes with a big assumption that those guilds can be fought against are not super powerful compared to others (like a zerg would be to regular guilds).
Then again, this is all done, BECAUSE you want to climb the ladder, and securing that content for yourself would help with that.
In this case, I don't have a problem with climbing the ladder style gameplay, as it is done for a clear purpose, which is to increase your chance of winning against those other guilds that also want the same thing as you.
The reason why I don't like that style of gameplay in T&L, is because I specifically cannot fight those zerg guilds, even if I engage in vertical progression. So I have to look for something other than vertical progression in that game, and that's why I said it doesn't offer me much of it.
I think for modern games and modern audiences, the answer is probably no.
However, having played AA Classic, I feel like there still are a lot of people that would say yes, me included.
For example, just the fact that you are fighting vs another guild for a world boss is fun in itself. It doesn't matter if you win and get to kill the boss, or if you lose and they do it - you at least had fun trying, and you had fun PvPing.
Edit: And actually to expand on this, I'd say we often went in with a group that was clearly at a disadvantage, we knew we weren't going to win, but we still went to PvP and have fun.
I think Ashes should in theory attract more of the "2nd group" (AA classic type), but it's a hyped up new MMO, and it's inevitably going to have a lot of "1st group people" (modern gamer).
In Elite, and hopefully Ashes, when a really large organization's members act primarily in their own interests, they usually destabilize or destroy something that needed to stay stable for the group at large to be comfortable. Tragedy of the Commons and whatnot.
When they overextend, it often requires a larger commitment of the group over a longer time (in FF11 and Elite, probably also in Ashes). But it's not a commitment to the single concept of winning that is available in TL when you are focused on just climbing the ladder. In Elite, most really large organizations are actually fairly bad at maintaining positive statuses in their star systems, because they're full of players who 'show up when called to win', but slack off when asked to do things like 'go maintain this system'.
Unfortunately the reason this happens is because the same people that aren't connected to the world, to the RP, etc, are the people who join the 'megaguilds' because of their goals.
Those large guilds have an ever-rotating roster of people who have reactions like 'this guild sucks, they just RP and run dungeons and can't even win when another guild rolls in, I'm tired of losing alongside them, I need a new guild' and the megaguild leader goes 'My guild is always recruiting', and then 'Sweet hit me up in DMs' and that's it (this is a paraphrasing of a real conversation on my TL server).
I don't think that 'attempting to distribute stuff amongst smaller guilds' changes this because TL already does this to a degree, but actually, I should ask...
On your server, what's the situation with Boonstones and Riftstones? Same thing? Mine is in flux a bit at the moment (the second place guild got tired of losing and transferred servers, but the new second and third place are putting pressure on the top now).
So yeah, I did understand your point and what you were talking about. For some reason, I thought that what I was saying also did fit in into that concept, but now I do realize that it doesn't necessarily.
I'm not playing on an Early Access server, so I don't think we have all the riftstones and boonstones unlocked. I think the big zerg holds at least 7 of them at this moment.
I also saw maybe 2 or 3 guilds that hold 2 boonstones.
Though we are talking about access to bosses, and open-world dungeons (at nighttime) which is denied by the zerg.
And I didn't really have much concern about the bosses and OW Dungeons because of how TL's design overall works, but I can see how one would have a much bigger concern in Ashes, for the same things, since it has much bigger guilds and alliances, and no equivalent structure or methods for players to get a chance to 'try things out' like TL has.
We'd probably need to get more information from people who are moreso in my position than in yours or Mag7's, though. My group will stay in dungeons at night for 'no reason', and farm in the day if we actually want stuff from them, or 'go to Conflict versions of bosses just to PvP, having gotten ideas from fighting the Peace version', but until more people understand the specifics of how to push those, I expect they won't even bother going to the Peace versions.
But Ashes might still have 'Peace Versions' of things in their Instanced content, so let's hope.
Of course there's other things to do in the game, and other things to do while a world boss is going on. You can do whatever, watch a sunset in game instead. Grind mobs.
But what I meant is that the structure of the game makes it to where when a world boss comes up, there's nowhere else to be if you are the type of player that plays with any sense of efficiency.
Because almost the entire game is time gated. You got what I'd call A tier progression, which are instanced dungeons (time gated to 3 a day), and open world dungeons (time gated by abyssal tokens.) For me, I burned through all of that in a couple hours. I'm sure it varies for other people. But it's a set limit. You only get so much of each every day. These instanced dungeons and open world dungeons provide, by far, the most progression mat drops and the best chances of not only gear drops, but worthwhile gear drops.
Everything else is secondary. And the everything else is really just general open world mob grinding. Progression is far slower grinding regular open world mobs. You can throw fishing in there somewhere I guess (also time gated by bait.)
So your instanced dungeon tokens and ow dungeon tokens are where the vast majority of your progression comes from. Set amount each day. But the catch is that you can store it, up to 5 days worth of instanced dungeons, and up to 20k abyssal ow dungeon tokens. It caps out at a set amount that you can store. So as long as you're not letting your tokens hit caps and stagnate, you're not wasting anything.
So when a world boss comes up, what are you going to do, grind regular open world mobs? No. The world boss is up now, you can grind mobs after. Run instanced dungeons or ow dungeons? No. The world boss is up now, those dungeons will be there after. And you can store up to 5 days worth of them anyway. Even if you cant get to them today, you get to them tomorrow, or the next day.
The only place to be is the world boss. Plus you get the participation reward for it, which is moderately important.
The whole game is designed to drive people to p2w. Burned through your instanced dungeon tokens and ow tokens for the day? Not happy with the artificially limited amount of rng progression you're allowed for the day? Swipe. All your problems go away.
Tired of getting obliterated by juiced up p2wers pressing one or two buttons in the aoe moshpit that is a world boss conflict? Swipe. You might last a couple seconds longer.
Wanna be able to reliably compete in arenas? Swipe baby swipe.
Play 30 hours a day, but still are a second tier player because p2w'ers have such better gear? Swipe.
Almost the whole pvp game is designed to remove player agency, encourage zergs, drastically cut back on how much player skill matters, and focus success heavily on gear. That's why the world boss circle is so small. You jump in that circle, there's not much positioning, there's no big plays to make, you're gettin fkn bombed. Why have it to where great players can make great plays with subpar gear through sheer skill (admittedly there is still SOME room for this, but it is purposefully reduced) when you can just condense everything into a gear check and compel a statistically higher amount of people to
SWIPE
NCsoft is good man. I don't like it but I guess I respect it. Complete with the dopamine inducing, slot machine casino like visual and sound effects. They know what they're doing.
It's like capitalism in reverse. Pretty unique to gaming I think. You purposefully make a more shit product because it actually makes you more money. It doesn't work like that in most industries. If someone makes a better Coca Cola, Coke might be in trouble. But you can take a game like TL, make purposeful decisions to make it more dog shit than it needs to be. Decisions that could easily be fixed, reversed, and the game would be better for all. But instead you put in these shit designs because it makes more money.
Why does it work? Because it fulfills a power fantasy for nerds. The ability to buy character power and dunk people. TL got a third of the concurrent players New World got on their respective launch days. New World was 40 bucks. TL is free. But the whales, the nerds with power trip fantasies...such a lucrative market. Until everyone quits. I quit Saturday lol. But I actually think TL will have a bit more staying power than the typical ridiculously p2w game. Because of the desperation in the mmo playerbase and a well done job by NCsoft of polishing a turd. We'll see.
It's just that instead of 'Swipe' it becomes 'pay off or join a powerful guild who controls something'.
So from my perspective, it can't be 'the design itself' that is shit, nor that they could be 'reversed'. Because what would reverse them?
What can you do in Ashes to solve this problem that TL is failing to offer or could be done differently while still giving 'casuals' any chance whatsoever?
That's my only point really, I'm always afraid of people getting the idea that these problems are 'solvable' in games like this and latching onto that. I guess I shouldn't care, but I really really want Intrepid to succeed, and I don't think 'boiling the experiences down to the game just being P2W' and ragging on the game is going to help.
Also, remember that we don't know the actual CCU of TL because unlike New World, TL released on Consoles and I can assure you that there are at least 3x as many Console players as PC players. This is moreso just a standard 'reminder' of a thing where it's possible to get caught up in dooming something because it leaves a sour taste for you, but ending up dismissing stuff.
Playing MMOs on Console (and specifically, Console only servers with no crossplay) is for many of us, just better because one knows that the process of setting up easy 'bots for doing things on characters that otherwise are played normally' is harder. Been that way since 2002, after all.
But could just be my bias.
Yeah but in my view it's still an apples to apples comparison because the steam chart numbers measure the same thing for both games at identical points in their life cycle. Pc player interest at launch. TL launched on console and NW didn't so point taken, the numbers for TL are higher than just steam charts. But apples to apples, NW blew TL away. Not that NW was a good game. It probably had better marketing. And it wasn't p2w so that helps.
Anyway yeah I veered off topic and ranted about p2w.
My short answer is, there's some things you can do, but the problem will always remain to some extent. What kind of casuals are we talking about first off. The casual that demands to be catered to, everything equalized, or rage central. Or the casual who would rather stand on his own two feet in a game like Ashes than have his bottom powdered every day by mommy devs in a game like WoW. The first guy I don't know if there's any helping in a game like Ashes. Maybe, I just don't know. The second guy I think you can accomodate.
There are a lot of the first guy. There's also a lot of the second guy. The second guy knows he's going to be somewhat perpetually behind, he's been there before, it's ok, he just doesn't have as much time. In his mind at least the game is merit based, mostly. And he's just here for the epicness of it all, to be in that number, to have his triumphant moments in spite of his character's shortcomings, rather than be coddled with his drawings put up on the refrigerator.
Keeping it in the context of TL, zero or at least limited cuck mechanics. And inasmuch as they do exist, somewhat to completely reversible. There's so many ways you can screw yourself over in that game. The gearing and upgrades. The weapons you choose. Several things you should be doing every day, daily limits on things you can buy that you should be stockpiling. A million menus, a million currencies. Not much of it is explained very well. Some of it is not at all easily reversible. Easy to waste mats inefficiently. All kinds of little auction house and other mechanic "tricks" that vets do to get even more ahead than they already are. All of this should be dealt with better. Doesn't mean dumb down the game, but do a better job explaining important things to players. I can't imagine how demoralizing it is as a player who already knows he's a casual and is always going to be a little behind, to find out he's been cucking himself the entire time. No reason for it. "Aww bruh you haven't been flim flamming the kumquat every day? awwwwwww bruh, it's so easy you just go up and press F on this thing in the corner here." Yeah just get rid of that shit or make it apparent to your players. In TL it's of course all by design, so you pay money to fix most of it. But non p2w games are just as capable of cucking their players.
A lot of what needs to be done, Ashes is already apparently doing. Big world, limited fast travel, randomness to events and bosses. These are all very important for this model to work. You don't want to perpetually funnel your casuals into a pvp meat grinder. They should be out in the world adventuring, and things just happen. A boss pops up, a payload of valuable gatherables, etc. A casual guild might have the opportunity to get it without being interfered with sometimes. If they do this enough, and they do it in the right places, at the right times, it will happen. Sometimes it wont work out that well though, sometimes they get dunked. That's the game. But at least they're adventuring. They had a shot, it didn't work out today, tomorrow it might. That's fun. They can learn to fight like this. Or learn tactics and deception, and how to get shit done without necessarily being the best pvpers on the field. This is all in contrast to being funneled into a meat grinder boss who spawns at a set time and there's 150 mega guilders just sitting there waiting. There is ROOM for even that type of content too. But you gotta give casuals, and everyone really, the opportunity for random adventure. Where a juiced up mega guild isn't just sitting there ready to steamroll you on a timed schedule.
Other things...they can lower the guild/alliance limits as much as they want as far as I'm concerned. The lower the better. There are workarounds, it doesn't actually fix the issue necessarily. But it does make a difference. I can tell that just from things that have happened with guilds, including my own in TL.
Sane gear/power gaps. We all know casuals wont keep up with hardcores gearwise. Make the gaps meaningful, but sane. Create a baseline, where if a casual puts in X (reasonable) amount of time, that casual should achieve a gear level that at least makes them "competitive." How competitive is up for debate, but no longer just steamrollable. You have to take them at least baseline serious, they COULD kill you, like it's not some super longshot, it could happen. Revise that (reasonable) amount of time to not only time, but effort too. If you're not learning, if you're not accomplishing ANYTHING, might just not be the game for you. But after a certain reasonable amount of time and effort, you should no longer just be cannon fodder to pvp elites. These elites already have the advantage in skill and knowledge, and they're going to have the advantage in gear, you can't limit their knowledge and skill, you can at least somewhat limit their gear advantage though.
Or can you limit their knowledge and skill? Well not really, but you can lower the skill ceiling. Effectively dumb down the game. Not something I'm generally in favor of, but every game dev does it while making games, we just don't know about it. Take ESO's animation cancelling. A bug that became a feature. Finger gymnastics I called it. Greatly increased the "skill ceiling" of ESO combat, though that's certainly not any kind of "skill" I care about. But the entire time I played it was just this thing that wasn't supposed to be there...but was there. And vets used it to huge effect to obliterate casuals who didn't even know it was a thing. And the devs never even bothered to announce it as a thing while I was playing. Most casuals didn't even know why they were getting blown the fk up so fast, just got blown the fk up on repeat. I didn't use it, ever. Refused. But it's gimicky shit like that that is really detrimental to casuals. There should be no hidden bullshit. If you're going to have a mechanic, make it a mechanic apparent to all.
But on that subject, when you lower the skill ceiling....are you actually lowering the skill ceiling, or are you just changing which player skills take precedence. Say you make a game with all of these incredible zerg ball synergy skills. So many layered synergies of synergies overlapping on synergies, swimming in synergies. Ok so now, not only does the organized zerg ball demolish the equal numbered, but less organized group of casuals, they SUPER demolish them. They're just taking advantage of so many layered effects that the not as organized group aren't. Now take it all away and replay the fight. Same group probably wins, but it's more competitive. And the skill used by the opposing groups, not character abilities, but just the general player skills used...shifts. Instead of the methodical setup to the fight by the more organized group, with prefight abilities going off and synergies on top of synergies, it ends up being more of just... a fight. And a fight that still takes plenty of skill, just less organizational and more individualistic I guess you'd say. Ashes is an mmo, we all know it's going to have abilities galore, and more akin to the first fight in this example than the second. But there is a balance there. The more you favor and grant synergy to the organized, the more the organized are going to roll the less the organized. And they're going to roll the less organized either way is my point. So find a good balance. I'm not advocating for Runescape combat. It is important, especially when you drop the idea of worrying about casuals, it's important that skilled group vs skilled group combat is still complex and interesting. But there is a balance. You can definitely go too far in a way that benefits the organized a bit too much and leaves the less organized in the dust.
This is getting way too long so to wrap it up. The idea Steven mentioned in a stream one time of basically "tiers" of content. Weight classes essentially. Elite players will focus more on the top tier, more contested content. With less contested tiers below for more casual players. Sounded like something that he thinks will just happen naturally. I agree, we'll see though.
But the general economy also. It's important to have a vibrant, layered economy where the content that is more available to casuals MATTERS. The resources and the loot that comes from it matters. It won't be top tier, but it still matters greatly in the economy. It's worthwhile and you can make a living in game doing it. And it's FUN. And when you practice that content enough, and if you care more about getting better at the game than whining about everything, you will one day be ready to graduate and try your hand at the next tier up. Gear gaps tie in here. You can't have it to where there's no upwards mobility, where the group who's been focusing on the tier below content is auto steamrolled because the gear from the tier above is just that much better. Keep it competitive. Keep it fun.
Anyway, how to deal with zergs. Phew, yeah I dunno. Epherium is going to roll everyone. I'm jk, I think there's a lot Intrepid is doing that will help mitigate it. But it won't be perfect. And I just hope Steven is willing to respond to and attempt to fix the issue if it becomes too much of a problem. I think there is that threshold where Steven would be like ok somethings gotta be done this is ridiculous, this is destroying my game. But I also think to a certain extent it's going to be on the players, if you're getting zerged, zerg back. Diplomacy, team up, find allies etc.
not everybody does all content. you can have content for everyone and still have winners and losers. you win at some stuff and lose at others. this isn't the type of game where everyone wins all the time, and that's fine.
I'll give you an example. I played Salem, a wild little indy game from the creators of Haven & Hearth (which was itself a wild full pvp permadeath game which used consumption of crafted items to do character progression). Well Salem very quickly ended up with a Single absolutly UNRIVALED uber guild composed of all the elite players from Haven & Hearth, I'm talking absolutly top pvp skills no chance of anyone challenging them or even wining a small skirmish. But Salem had a map size about equal to north America and you spawned in randomly with 1 safe trading zone (Boston) that anyone could teleport to and from. So the game world was IMPOSSIBLE to monopolize by shere size alone, and thus the uber guild hardly mattered, everyone could keep playing their own little pioner survival/craft game, you could even go meet or trade with your neighor if you were willing to walk for 15 minutes to their homestead.
Now obviously were not going to have that low a density of players on the map, but the point stands that density is KING and their is no zerg guild so organized or efficient that density can't contain it and allow other players outside said guild to still play the game.
Regarding the dynamic events it would be better for some or more of them to appear on the local map rather than being broadcast to the whole server. It’s nice to see a boss or mini boss on your map and have time to DM your guild or friends to come do it before a Zerg rolls up on it. Although I definitely think the limited amount of fast travel will be a huge benefit for AOC spreading content out.
Limiting the alliance size or cutting it down by at least 25% or 50%. Also having a limited amount of servers then adding more servers on demand avoids having to merge servers, and should force competitive guilds to all join the same server. I think that’s why Albion Online did so well with ZvZ competitiveness because it’s all just one server for a region west or east.
However that all depends on if the competitive guilds actually challenge each other and bring other guilds into their alliance. I know it sounds contradictory but the best will fight the second best, the third best will fight the second and fourth best so on. As long as the map is big enough and spread out then having the strong guilds fighting between themselves might be a good thing for other areas of the game. Then again it could all just end up a shit show and the server gets monopolized and everything goes to shit with one dominating force. There has to be a split between the power distribution across a larger area. Regardless if a guild is really committed they might just all pay for server swaps so who knows.
What splits up power distribution and projection or reach for guilds and alliances.
- Bigger Map & Game World
- No fast travel
- Dynamic events spread out or rotating randomly
- Not scheduling or broadcasting all events
- Larger amount of nodes
- Larger amount of castles
- Limiting guild or alliance numbers
- Having some node sieges share the same timer (Can’t be in all places at once)
- Having some castle sieges share the same timer
- Potentially having some similar events across the map share the same timer UTC
Your number of alts needs to be very limited in a game with no restrictions on trading, easy account purchases, and no fast travel, because it incentivizes, and massively pays off, to gear up alts who log out at the target location and log in when needed.
This creates the inverse of the TL situation, where if the 'smaller guild' group or similar wants to challenge something, they now can't have proper expectations of what they are up against in the first place. and Smaller guilds are less likely to take this approach, and it's harder to coordinate your mini-alliances due to less organization.
So the big guild can just go, in Discord 'Hey X team FireBrand is up and we got people coming in, swap to your Dragonslayer1569 alt and group up' and be there in 4-6m max.
It stops being 'organic' at all very fast. I'm not saying that this will do nothing in combination with a large relevant] content pool. I also still think it will help. Just know that it doesn't help a lot for the situation that iccer has clarified is the focus.
World Bosses and Caravans are the prime content for someone's multiboxed alt that they paid to have powerleveled (an incredibly difficult form of RMT to catch). Things like what modern games do are their chosen solutions to the decades long battle against weird approaches to RMT/P2W. Some change their content, some give up and reduce CCU/leveling time, some instance everything, some give up and become like WoW.
All we have from Intrepid is 'we're going to try'. I want them to succeed too, I'm not even saying 'no don't try you will fail'. But they also gave themselves a bigger hurdle to clear, by design.
That's an absolutely valid point to bring up.
I don't think this will be as big of a problem in Ashes though.
Reason 1: It will take a while to level up.
Reason 2: This game has vertical progression as well on top of that, and it will take some time to gear up.
Most people just won't have an alt leveled to an appropriate level, both in terms of actual levels, and in terms of gear.
Also, again, I don't think there will be enough people with these alts (whether they leveled them, or paid someone to do so) that they can impact content in this way. I don't think they will be strong enough to challenge others, who are playing on their mains, either.
So, while I do think it's a valid concern, and that it will happen, I don't think it will happen that much, and I prefer this option, as it's a lesser of two evils, I guess.
Except....
As the game goes on, it definitely becomes more and more of an issue. The fact that it takes a while to level up, only makes this not a problem in the first few months after the game goes live. But, you still have to progress your character even after max level, which would require you to level up your main, and alt in terms of power.
Also, Intrepid should do their best to limit the ability for one person to have and to play on 2 different accounts. Having an alt on the same account is fine, because it means they have to level it up and gear it up. Obviously you cannot eliminate it completely.
As with everything, the goal is to make it as hard and as inconvenient as possible for people to do it.
I do realize why this is a problem, because I played Archeage. Economy in that game was amazing, but the problem was multiboxing, so many alts, so many bots... So not only does it impact the content itself, but Economy, which is an even bigger issue.
This is more so because the devs didn't care as much about it though.
But note that what I'm saying for Ashes is, it's not really about the player leveling up, like it is in other games. They don't have to 'go through all the hoops' of getting good gear if they are in the sort of megaguild that wants this sort of thing to happen.
Honestly, this is going to come down to the tuning of the Gear Durability system moreso than anything else. And there are definite scenarios in which that, too, is a matter of Guild Dominance. Having to maintain the gear is a multiplier on effort but it applies to everyone, so it's not a drag on Megaguilds. Someone can just walk out there with new gear for the alt, trade to re-equip them and go back.
The ability to do that is good, it's pretty cool, but content-centric aspects of the game tend to suffer.
On a related note I am conserned that the 'summon family' feature will also allow rapid and strategic rallying of forces. It's a really interesting concept for letting small groups of friends jump into content together, avoid travel times etc. But like everything it's likely to be used ruthlessly by guilds because you can be in both a family and a guild.
It might be best to put some limits on the ability, maybe a distance cap, a cooldown etc. Maybe make a Family share a respawn point or home base so if they are killed they can not disperse to the 4 corners of the world and then selectivly teleport members around.
Cap group size and restrict AoE buffs to group-only (single-targeted buffs remaining as-is).
Don't allow the same buff or HoT to stack multiple times on the same player, only apply the highest value (or override last cast).
Don't allow the same debuff or DoT to stack multiple times in the same player, only apply the highest value (or override last cast).
Have burst AoE scale up in damage based on players hit by it. I'm talking immense scaling, 200% of base damage at 20 people hit kind of scaling and growing even higher after that. This goes for both player and NPC damage. (This could even be a perk for smaller guilds to opt into)
The lack of scheduled spawn timers is a good start, as is the variety of meaningful content that can be done when other groups are focused on some dungeon or WB way across the other side of the node, and the lack of fast travel keeps things slightly localized, but the power of Discord and out-of-game tools is going to make zerging a huge thing to keep an eye on. If PvP isn't competitive to engage with because all that matters is numbers rather than skill or strategy, that's the major selling point of the game lost.
Doesn't work.
In T&L groups are limited to 6 people. There are no 40 man raids, it's all about 6 person groups.
The issue is still there, you have a few dozen 6 ppl groups from the same guild, aka a zerg.\
I actually think these are even better organized, as each party will look to have a healer, and maybe a tank. So all groups are pretty balanced, and can do well on their own.
I do agree with the rest though.
Good points I would also add..
- Roving mob spawns in the wild - hard to monopolize fish swimming in the ocean vs sitting in barrels, early MMO's had mobs basically everywhere and forced movement to find more. If a 'spawn point' must exist atleast make it a roving band of mobs that has to be found each time you want to farm it.
- Fragmenting spawns into more and smaller groups more spacially dispersed in response to heavy farming - both a logical response for 'endangered' mobs but also reduces monopolization potential.
- Mob spawns auto level up in difficulty to match party - all that 'newb' content is viable farming late game for XP even if the drops are the same quality they can go up in quantity to be worth the time. This worked well in DarkFall NewDawn to disperse players from the few 'elite' spawn locations.
- Dungeons and points of interest have multiple entrences/exits - less chokepoints to hold that efficiently secure the content behind them, can extend all the way to the boss chamber if any.
- Short term group stealth options for a moving a party - more chance to go to/from content and search for it without being engaged in pvp by larger groups, particularly moving past chokepoints and campers. A group your at war will can see through this though.
- False 'wild goose chase' world boss sightings/encounters, either player generated (make a Dragon illusion to bait others) or naturally occouring (Dragon flies away after just 20% health loss regardless of player actions). Raises cost to respond to every sighthing.
- Atunement to Biomes - encourage players to say in a biome semi long term and thus not be as easily summoned to distant events or to defend monopolized content. Dose for lower tier content what World Boss atunement dose for them.
- Consumption of materials/resources over time in dungeons - Squads of players just camping entrences to content are not just not collecting any resources, they are a consuming them. Possibly ramp up consumption when immobilite/not fighting mobs to really punish camping.
Note that much of this is going to make content 'less convenient', this is partly the POINT. Their is no way that open world content can be convenient and NOT also be monopolizable. The rise of dominant mega guilds is in large part tied to the relentless convenience in modern games which was absent before. It's not JUST the out of game convenience of organizatinal tools like Dicord, wiki's etc, in game conveience is an even greater factor.
That's so wild to me that there isn't friendly fire mechanics that would make that kind of thing untenable. How does it handle buff/DoT stacking? Is it permitted from what you've experienced of the game?
I only looked at it long enough to see all the reviews pointing out how P2W and zergy it is, which turned me right off downloading it.
There are a lot of avenues we can take this down to combating Zergs even if it’s combat mechanics or general game design. In regards to multi-boxing the best you can do is limit characters on a server for that account, increase leveling time and just make it harder for people to power level or selling accounts. Having a cool-down on logging in or out of accounts into different characters and having certain areas where you can’t log out in. Being forced to log out in certain areas combined with the limited fast travel would combat the use of alts or multi-boxing. This way people can’t spawn camp an objective as they’d have to go back to a different location to log out or log back into the game like a node or safe zone. Also if you log out in a none safe zone or disconnect you’d just get automatically moved to the nearest safe zone or die and have to respawn at a resurrection point.
That doesn't make zerging less effective, it makes chokepoints less effective, and these two things are not the same.
Same for adding friendly fire. That works in old games with poor terrain options (and even many of the old games normally have good enough terrain considerations to make this unnecessary) but in proper games it just does the opposite and makes breaking through chokepoints stupid without it devolving into Artillery combat.
As for other stuff, TL guilds that succeed, quite frankly, are not even zergs they're just 'higher numbers'. Most of those people have been doing this for years and know what they are doing and properly arrange themselves into the equivalent of military units because they know they have to do that.
If you go to a Dominion event, with players literally all Anon, and you get thrown onto a random team, players still organize themselves, automatically with no time to even discuss it (this is not how it was before they implemented the 'organizing random anons into 3 different faction-teams'.
When you are on Green Team and you die in that, if your previous mini-group had two Tanks (and you were the second Tank), you run in a different direction to find a mini-group that doesn't have a tank yet. Whichever team organizes properly the fastest, wins.
Even getting your buffs to be party-wide in TL requires specialization, and true debuffing (not CC) takes longer than any focus-down. The 'problem' goes deeper than such things, as @iccer says.
Instancing would solve it. If all go into the same area, the area could be instanced and allow only a low number of players to see each-other. This could work in a PvE game.
But if "having content for everyone is important" and if PvP is the content what can you do as a game designer?
The only thing is to give rewards to those who split away from zergs.
But if they care only about winning and not the game rewards, then they will stay and win together.
So zergs should not win.
That can be done by detecting if multiple small groups act in a friendly/neutral manner to each-other or they fight.
Small groups engaging in fights against equally sized groups should do more or less damage depending on how many other friendly groups are nearby. The game can be designed so that small groups can always reduce the number of many small opponent groups to their size, if the others are within visibility range.
Then the final battle will be decided by skill rather than numbers.
- there are no participation rewards. Rewards are fixed to the content. If 1200 people are completing content resigned for 40, those rewards will go to the heads of the core central groups of players first. This means that zerg players individually are falling behind most other players who aren't in zerg groups.
Whether or not this offsets the numbers advantage of being able to clear content quickly remains to be seen, but it is likely that zerg players won't be able to keep up with death penalties and wear and tear on gear if they are not getting full rewards for their time.
- there is no fast travel. Zerg guilds will need to make more conscious attention to muster than they do in other games, and it's harder to catch up if you 'miss the boat' and the zerg has left without you. It will also be harder to rejoin the zerg if you get take out due to having lower quality gear (see the first point).
I think zergs will largely peter out if they try to rush harder content with no real strategy than 'more numbers more good'.
You are in for a rude awakening. Way to many people are underestimating guilds that pull zerg level numbers....This is also why i bring up global chat needs to be a thing in some form. You pile on the wrong or missing things together and servers can end up dead is all im saying.
Though node system is a form of protection atleast imo.
People know that there's no fast travel in BDO, right? And that most content you can fight at/compete over in open world doesn't actually have strict spawn/respawn times?
Similarly, are we only counting it as a zerg if it's disorganized? Or just if it's outnumbering? Because I doubt Mag7's guild is disorganized, but it's also, by his own admission, basically full sized and able to compete. That 'full size' is game-mandated to be 280 (Mag, you can let us know if you actually have spillover that makes it even bigger, which I think works on Conflict bosses regardless, right, but it does sorta trigger 'friendly fire'?)
If they're powerful, organized, and 'at the alliance cap', on what is basically an open field with the ability to approach from all directions, technically including 'above', is it 'a zerg'?
To me, zergs start from ~200 members. And it's more of a definition of "this group is big". And then qualitative additions would be something like "organazied zerg" or "dumb zerg" or "poorly-led zerg".
With the size of AoC's fights (at least the hopeful ones) I'd probably even shift my definition of zerg closer to 600-800 members. And anything above that would be smth like a megazerg.
And as I've said before, if a zerg is led well enough for members not to complain about little loot rewards and also be coordinated and skillful - that's just a zerg that deserves whatever it can get.
Peak wise (before we moved servers) it was 280 (doesn't mean every single person is online it was more so between 45-60) per guild.
Power and organizing allowed us to kill bosses and move to the next one and kill them as well. Though Another large guild was also allied so it was mostly us fighting each other. Some guilds were able to rat other bosses in that time (which id expect in AoC that would happen more often to an extent)
The main thing is to gauge the power and how much you actually need to bring, if 2 guilds of people is enough you would split up so you can get more loot for your guild overall. The stronger the force the less likely other competition will really challenge you in a guild vrs guild situation, or free for all open world pvp.
Personally I had other guilds on top of that but it was more growth guilds so they were not really there in any kind of organized way of pvp.
Obviously EPH came 2 guilds were enough to push conflicts there way and people stopped contesting as much including my 4 guild alliance and another. When they brought three they auto won everything on our server. On top of the fact they are also on other servers not just our own.
The more strength you gain from snow balling zerg wise the less you need to beat other guilds allowing to split up and get more loot (granted TnL also has that p2w issue)
I don't feel anyone makes a argument a zerg is going to control the entire world, but they can be where they need to be without issue. And also split up to hit multiple places at once.