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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
For the unfamiliar, Throne and Liberty has guilds of 70. These guilds can form an 'alliance' with 3 other guilds for a total of 280. The combat benefits from being in a guild are quite small (both the consistent ones and the activated ones, imo). Lower level players get a bit of PVP damage protection (from everyone).
Events in certain areas have stat reduction that encourages players to equalize certain aspects of their gear, just basically understand that 'P2W' is pretty much not affecting certain lower level ones (which are apparently not part of the discussion of the problem here).
It does not have 'raids' that I'm aware of and therefore does not have 'Raid Wide Buffs'. "Party Wide Buffs" are specializations and most classes have only one that is passive (many of the others are moreso 'debuffs on the enemy') and even in a group those often 'don't stack' (so two 'Meta' bow users in the same party is not as useful without good coordination).
It always sounds to me like the problem is either 'Alliances are too large', 'I only care about the same content as the other top players even though I'm not one yet', 'All the top players tend to congregate together and join the winning side', or, obv, 'all of the above'.
If Guild Size needs to be reduced to 30-45 even in TL, for it to not be a 'zerg' (resulting in a total of 120-180 players who are not subject to friendly fire or similar) that's usable data, it's somewhat 'proof' that the complaints and problems still occur at this scale.
Discussing/determining if P2W is a serious component of this problem is something I'm still working on (all items in a Server-Region show their numbers of sales, so for example in my region, the 'meta' Greatsword has 8 for sale, for about $400 each, and it reports that this item has sold 4 times. That's four times for the whole region, giving a less than 50-50 chance that anyone on my server has ever bought one, if I understand their data correctly and it is truthful).
The one problem that can't be solved because it's so inherent to MMOs and the freedom/lack of matchmaking they provide, is the last one.
'All the top players tend to congregate together and join the winning side'.
To me, this has always been the thing that really drives the problem, and the other issues are just multipliers. They should still be solved, but they will only ever reduce the problem to a certain base point.
Thanks much, really appreciate it.
So if this happened in Ashes it would be not quite 'working as intended' nor 'this is obv broken/should be fixed'. It falls right into that space that I consider to be 'core problem'.
That guild Mag is referring to is also limited to 280 in the game mechanics. They're not a thing you can limit by adding more of them unless you lower the max guild size altogether.
Similarly, if you add massive amounts more content, people will just 'decide that only X content is worth it' and complain that they are locked out of that (in my experience). People complain about being 'kept out' of even Excavator-9, which is weird (I would give an Ashes equivalent but I can't provide one that people would know about other than A1 Elder dragons maybe).
They're forced to make correct parties, they have to deal with the other limits, if they went to locations to try to gatekeep the growth of smaller guilds they would fail either because of spreading themselves too thin or simply people finally throwing money at the problem. They, in turn, can't progress much faster, like... if you are the top guild, and you are focused on getting the top gear, no one is selling that gear to you. It's organization that you're using to win more often.
I do not mention this because 'P2W is fine'. I mention it because I believe that 'thinking zero P2W will solve this issue is a pipe dream'.
A bit more, here are more free ways to get gear in TnL with peace bosses. IF bosses are as important as it is said in AoC with gear and such it will have a lot more effect on gearing.
I've not gotten a single item that is a gear upgrade from my guild but my GS is higher than most people because of instanced dungeons and ow dungeons.
I can't say how AoC will be without knowing how things are approached but I feel its fair to say ATM atleast there won't be as much unchallenged gear to go around in AoC as compared to TnL.
Alpha 2 in December (or when it starts) is going to be interesting for 5 days a week.
Say a crafted item requires 10 different materials and those materials drop from 10 different bosses that are located all over the map and also respawn at the same time.
Would this help curb the zerg power or would it simply be the case of "zerg still has more money cause they earn more, so they can just buy out the loot they missed out on"?
That's my 'stance' in this discussion, standing on the 'defending TL design' side.
This is to some extent already how TL works, and they don't have easy free trading.
The gearing system in TL is not something I will go into unnecessarily at this time, but just know that from my perspective, all the ways you solve this problem are already in TL, it's just that there's slight-to-moderate P2W on top of it.
But focusing on 'slight to moderate P2W' as a problem in an MMO in terms of how fun it is (it's an absolutely valid point for how balanced it is)
Either way, I've defined what I can, and Mag7 has helpfully not only clarified position, but also genuinely given extra info.
So unless we're counting Mag7 as a P2W juiced Zerg Monarch, all you really have to do is imagine being on Mag's server. I don't think any 'smaller guilds' would be standing up to Mag's guild if Epherium wasn't there, y'know?
The way in which I consider that an answer to you, NiKr, is simple. You know how Mag does things, and how you do things. I would believe that if you were a TL Guild Leader of Mag7's 'tier', then no one would stand up to your guild on your server either. Especially since you'd be on a non Early Access Server, which are, for multiple reasons, significantly less influenced by any use of real money (there is no way to know for certain because they are also allowed to be ahead in Milestones, basically just think of it as them getting a head start so their Towns and the related PoI are up when regular servers are only at Village, so I can't compare their Auction Houses, but know that I do have access to one EA account for studying this). You would just 'help your guild members to organize properly', 'send the suitable parties to control or farm areas that would get them ahead', and that alone would probably bring you to top 3.
One of the biggest things people from older MMOs need to be careful about when considering this, is that many of y'all kept playing your games long after the Great Filter stage, where many of the players around you were of similar focus/skill. Comparing new MMOs to that does not teach anything, I think.
Before lst month's stream I would have said 'zerg doesn't earn more' However, because there are still trash drops that can be sold to vendors they do in fact.
without trash drops and infinite vendor bank accounts, the glint system requires that zergers run caravans. Which they can do easily enough, but it's another hurdle towards their 'we have more money' when glint is split round robbin style and cant be traded.
- Rewards are fixed, not participation based. If you have even 120 people to do content designed for 40 then you have to clear that content three times to break even for your group size.
- There is no fast travel, which makes mustering harder and causes more chances for people to get lost as the group moves.
This isn't even factoring in things like enemy AI doing things specifically to counter large groups (Firebrand's fire breath hitting the maximum number of players possible) that will make life for these groups more difficult than it would be for groups not doing this.
Founder and Guild Leader of -Providence-
Indeed, that's what started the problem, zerg guilds which focused on quantity over quality were a response to a problem that preceeded them but is now largely ignored. The Wehrmacht came first and then the Red Army countered it.
People complain about zerg because by their nature zerg guilds produce LARGE amounts of mass propaganda and visibility for the average player, while elite guilds did not. And more importantly the zerg can camp/monopolize far more content then the elites ever would or could, indeed elite players would value their time too highly to do most of the passive camping activities that zerg do. Lastly average players aspire to be elite and generally grudgingly accept the wins of the elites, while zergs are 'no better fighters then me, so why should they win', which is partly a result of many people broad rejection of organization, leadership and displine as legitimate areas of merit (in videogames as well as life in general).
Personally I think the conflict between quality and quantity in pvp is healthy, we should want to see a balance between these two dicotomies in any pvp encounter be it small or a castle siege. A zerg guild or alliance of them is a good thing if it means 'anyone' could potentially partispate in such an event.
We don't need to eliminate the ability to HAVE a zerg, and infact a 'spontanious flash mob' can be a narrativly epic event 'last alliance of elves and men' kind of thing if it means giving an elite group a run for their money. It's the longer term negatives of sustained groups both the small elite guild and the zerg which need to be countered.
Elite 'Spartan' like guilds have two main negative effects. Making the top tier of PvP 'king of the hill' type content uncompetetive and dull, and second the monopolization of the top tier open world content. A zerg guild dose BOTH of thouse things AND threatens the monopolization of mid and low tier content as well. So if we can adress three issues then our problems are solved.
- Make outcomes of top pvp events more dynamic and unpredictable
- Prevent top most openworld pve from being monopolized
- Prevent mid/low tier openworld pve from being monopolized
Zergs are going to zerg either way, especially in a game like TL where that's really all there is to do. But the p2w doesn't help the situation.
Take a guild like Epherium. They've been transferring from server to server, expressing their dominance. Their minimum gear score is 2900, as of several days ago. That's the minimum you have to have just to apply to join. I didn't have that. Outside of the p2wers in my guild, and maybe some f2pers who had good rng with their daily NCsoft allowed progression, the average gear score in my guild was less than 2900. Not insanely less probably, but somewhat significantly.
And then you're thrown into an aoe moshpit with these people. lol. There's no or very limited outsmarting them, outmanuevering, outplaying. We were usually outnumbered too, against them and especially against the other alliance we more routinely fought. But even at even numbers, it's just a numbers game. They do more damage and take less damage than us. And this is the key - the only play is head on zerg blob vs zerg blob warfare.
And so with a game like TL, the combat format, and the combat itself is extremely simple. Zerg blob aoe. The p2w reinforces that. If you p2w, you get significantly stronger. And there's very little room in the game's design for p2wers to be outplayed by lesser geared people through skill or smarts. Because again, if you could realistically do that, NCsoft wouldn't make as much money.
It's not about how many boss weapons have been sold. The p2w started way earlier than that. It's the traits. Fully traited out blues are better than minimally traited out purples. And so you p2w to deck yourself out. And then you use that deckedoutness to win boss weapons at both peace and conflict world bosses. And then you continue to p2w anyway, buying boss gear, buying anything, whatever is an upgrade or a trait infusion. And you just keep zerging, you can't be outplayed by peasants or even knights with slightly rusty armor. It's just not part of the game's design to realistically or routinely allow that to happen. And when you are decked out, especially with certain boss gear, some of these gear pieces allow you to use tactics and strategies that you couldn't before. The snowball is in full effect.
Now, a guild like Epherium, and others, they don't need p2w to have success. With a mandated minimum 2900 gear score several days ago, they are most certainly utilizing p2w in TL. But they don't need it. That's why I talk so much about gear gaps in regards to Ashes. Ashes won't have p2w, great. But if the potential gear gaps are just as big as they are in some games, especially p2w games, the end results will be similar. Because Epherium is getting fully decked out either way. And Enveus, and many other competent guilds. But at least there will be ways to pvp against guilds like this in Ashes that isn't solely restricted to zerg blob vs zerg blob. Smaller scale stuff, pvp that by design spreads people out. The world itself naturally stringing these mega guilds out some.
And they will, at times, be embarassed by the results. I guarantee it. Because we were already doing it to them through the very limited ways a pos, p2w, zergball game like TL allows.
@Azherae Hey Azherae. I know I've responded to you in a couple threads a few times recently. And I reply to you on something sometimes and hit you like blam 12 paragraphs lol. It's just my opinions. I actually pissed off one of my friends because I was bad mouthing TL, fairly imo, but bad mouthing. I know you like the game. So does he, so do at least hundreds of thousands of other people, maybe into the low millions. The truth is I really like several things about TL too. But the things I don't like, I really don't like. And I blab about it. I can definitely be pretty pointed. Just don't want you to feel like I'm hammering you with stuff. I'm just blabbin. It's a p2w game. As disappointing as that fact is to me, there's a market for it. It's a game that heavily focuses, imo almost entirely on scheduled, GvG zerg warfare. There's a market for that. And so the two things I don't like the most about the game, they're valid designs.
Anyway just didn't want you to feel like I'm purposefully hammering you, trying to pick a fight or get under your skin. I still remember that time you told me to self censor and then I called you a communist or something. LOL
I definitely agree with this, though I might not have realized it at first, when I made the post (or rather didn't think about that aspect).
It's not necessary that problem itself that needs solving though. They should always be on top, after all, if they're the most organized, have big numbers, and have good players with best gear, it's kind of expected.
Problem is if they can easily deny content, so that others cannot participate or compete in it. This is of course, inevitable to some extent.
I'm talking about a larger scale though. Not just about them showing up to a world boss, dominating, denying others, and getting loot for themselves. - I mean, that's the whole point of PvP, and this game.
I'm talking about them having the ability to show to every world boss, or every piece of content in general, and dominating all of that. - Because that's what I experienced in T&L on Starfall server.
That's why more content is one of the solutions, and not just more content, but also more content happening at the same time, at different places on the map, as well as different kinds of content. So you have to make a choice of what to go to, just like the mega guild has to make a choice on which boss or which piece of content they might contest.
People are free to decide "only X content is worth it", however, that might not necessarily be true. It might be true that it's "the most optimal", but by how much?
After all, hardcore massive guilds will obviously pick that content, however, the rest of the content that might not be as optimal is there for everyone else in that case. Mega hardcore guilds can compete with other similar guilds, while smaller less hardcore guilds can compete with guilds similar to them.
You just have to balance it correctly, so that there's enough of a difference between perceived "worth" of content, but not too much so that doing anything else other than the most meta piece of content becomes a waste of time.
Again in T&L, on that specific server, my experience was, every conflict world boss, and dungeons during night were being camped by one guild, and nobody could do anything about it. They had the players, they had the gear, they had everything. There wasn't a similar guild there on the server.
It's not that they're denying loot, or progression here (because, again, you can do peace bosses). It's that they're denying PvP open-world content.
I have to say I have transferred servers since, and I''ve already had much more fun doing PvP events (and now my main gripe with it is p2w, and players who just paid money to already have full trait BIS weapons).
In Ashes, this problem becomes worse, because you don't have "peace boss" option, and your open-world dungeons aren't disabled for PvP during the day. In Ashes, there's always going to be conflict, and if a guild can dominate this way, they can just deny any progression for others.
On the other hand, it gets better, because it's probably better designed. (assuming) Larger map, more stuff to do, more content, so that one massive guild cannot just gatekeep progression, as there's always going to be enough content for others to share and fight between each other.
Thank you for caring about how much time I spent on this.
Have they solved it though? Because I did pull up some examples on their attempts to solve it, and I pointed out how they might not be enough, due to my experience with other game(s).
Again, this is a thread where we can discuss this stuff. Whether you agree, disagree, have different opinion on something. It's a discussion where people can learn a lot (like I have, from some of the replies made by other people).
If you don't want to be involved in this discussion, then simply ignore the post and move on. You've spent your time typing out the most unnecessary and useless comment in this thread that contributes nothing to the discussion.
People don't care about this and its already been talked about, they will just clear more content or spilt their zerg to hit multiple points and role as many areas as possible. Loot is always a issue for guilds but large guilds that have ben around for ages draw people to them for more than just loot. Not to mention if they are strong they are getting a ton of loot regardless.
That remains to be seen with ai and that is kind of irrelevant anyway, a zerg being there can be used to kill all the players with the main ball. And the DPs group focusing on the boss meaning the ai will be reacting to the set number.
This is normal stuff in PvX btw with a dps group lol.
I feel you aren't getting it when you have a guild that is SHOWING UP at every fight FROM 1PM - 1AM THEY HAVE 0 ISSUE. getting around the world. People need to start playing on competitive pvp servers in mmorpgs that are current and have a better understanding of the current landscape with guilds.
LIKE my guild was FIGHTING THEM and being destroyed like every other guild on multiple servers (NOT JUST ONE SERVER). People are going to be even more hardcore on AOC and take months off work and other zerg guilds will be showing up.
This si why i say picking the right server is important lmao.
What if we had Bond Plague? People that are in an alliance cannot gather in one general spot, with over 40 people present, w/o getting a growing debuff/dot on them.
In other words, zergs would either have to stay away from their own allies and travel around in raid groups or would need to stay in different guilds that are not allied with each other, which makes friendly fire a much bigger problemm.
Lore wise we could explain this through overload of essence within a region, cause people who have properly allied themselves with each other have an essence resonance effect and if that resonance gets to strong (i.e. more than 40 allied characters in a location) - it has negative effects on those people.
What do yall think?
Bro cooked covid in my MMORPG 🗣️🔥🔥🔥
Gotta disagree with this.
You shifting the PVP skill that should be the deciding factor of which group wins. To organization management that has nothing to do with pvp skill.
Also the numeric for the zerg members count seems ridiculous
So anything more than 100 players should be considered Zerg.
Not bad suggestion, but i would go a bit further.
Make it so that you cant make any group more than 40 players, And Any group of players has friendly fire to any other group, even if the other group is from the same guild.
Ofc this wont apply for sieges and node wars.
But when discussing the concept of zerg itself, you could have 200 highly skills players that barely work in a group and also have a shitty leader who gives out shitty commands, which inevitably leads to poor fights. Or you can have those same players but under the command of a great strategist and tactician and they'll win every damn fight.
You're forgetting that AoC's guilds can go up to 300 members and alliances of 4 of those guilds would have 1200 people. So my number of 600-800 is not even a full alliance of players.
You're simply used to small scale games which is why to you 100 seems big. I'm used to 100 being a fairly normal guild, with anything less being "lean" and anything more going towards zerginess.
And Ashes is aiming at even bigger numbers than what I'm used to.
Afaik raids are already limited at 40 people. I don't remember if Intrepid ever said we'd be able to get hundreds of people into one "group".
And if you want guilds to be limited to only 40 people and alliances to not even exist, then we simply disagree on that. I'm all for making it difficult to use the full numbers of a huge guild, but I do want to give people the opportunity to be in that huge guild.
I mean guilds can still have total 1200 players with alliances. Just if you put more than 1 group of 40 players at 1 place, they will be counted as enemies
Considering that its Node > Guild in node wars, sieges, and as a whole. It kinda make sense the guild membership to not put you as Friendly target in the open world if you are not in 1 group.
I mean there will be enough contents where you will have big group vs big group. I just dont like the idea of Zerg in the open world. And the reason is that i dont like the Amount of players you bring in your group to be 1 of the determining factors.
If you want group vs group. Put 250 vs 250 for example. Win condition should not be bringing more players, but choosing which player to bring (skill wise).
I don't think there's any guaranteed way to stop it from happening in an Open World game either but there are plenty of ways to make it harder for them like I mentioned before. I really do think a world with plenty of simultaneous activity is one of the best answers because it would force the zerglings to spread out into smaller groups to reap the rewards and as smaller groups they are more vulnerable and easier to overcome by other smaller groups. They could still of course zerg bomb one spot for a guaranteed win but would be gaining the same rewards as smaller groups in other locations and those rewards would be spread thin across hundreds and hundreds of players. I think that would make a lot of people involved very unhappy. Best case scenario zergs are common but can be bested by smaller groups that are more organized and skillful.
This is, I think, the key distinction. A Zerg guild prepares for battle, by opening recruiting to anyone that can fog a mirror and regimenting them to obey simple commands in battle. An elite guild prepares for battle by closing recruitment to avoid spies, and doing sparing practice to bring their skilss to razor edge.
They are two diametrically opposed philosophies but the sizes of groups on both sides have been rising steadily as technology has progressed, both because you can IN-game have bigger battles then before (Btw Steven DID recently confirm that he is confident of 500v500 battles) and OUT-of-game networking like Discord making organization easier for everyone. So it's more about HOW each side uses it's organizational capacity to make themselves stronger.
And what i want to say/ what i wish from AOC - is that It shouldnt matter what approach you choose in making your guild bigger. In the battlefield the number of people should not be what makes you win or lose.
Your going to need to put some qualifiers on that statement, surely you don't expect even the best 8 man party to beat a group of 500. This aint EvEOnline where one guy can fly a Titan ship which can swat away litterally hundreds of smaller ships. Fantasy games have always had a tight range in individual character power and level caps which most active pvp players will be at. That makes numbers inevitably a major factor, what I think you mean to say it that it should not be the sole deciding factor.
So it all comes down to how any player cap is being interacted with. If their is no cap or it is so high that no one is realistically able to reach it then zerg tactics never reach a point of exhastion, so long as you can bring the bodies you can field them. If its a cap low enough that zergs alone will hit it then the zerg side needs to pivot back to quality and inteligently selecting their best to go into a fight. If its a cap so low that even quality oriented elite guilds fill the body count then were likely to see them be advantaged as they field an army which is equal in manpower but higher in quality.
Ultimatly what I think we want for any given battle is an equal balance of three factors at 3 distinct scales.
The average fighting effectivness of individual characters
The tactical foresight and cunning of commanders in the heat of battle
The strategic alliance building and mass recruiting by leaders before battle
If these three factors are balanced in important and the winner of 2 out of 3 factors will win the overall battle then I am satisfied, a zerg which brings more bodies to a fight can win but they need atleast one additional factor to go in their favor such as tactical command.
friendly fire should do the job. As i wrote above - just make it so just coz you are in same guild, this doesnt make you friendly targets. In the open world only your party is not treated as your enemy. Anything outside the 40 man in your party is enemy. And ofc there are a lot other things that can be taken against zergs as a whole.
There isnt going to be friendly fire in a mmo like this...
This raises the serious question of if any 'target marking' or 'Target of my friendly Target' options are going to work when the 'Friendly Target' is stealthed.
Now that, is a cool and pretty hardcore function for Rogues in this type of game, especially if you can do it for Raid members and you're not just limited to the way it works in TL.
Where do i find people that dont do anything but be on TnL 24/7 for my guild lmao. I cant even get a even fight.