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.
How AOC can hold onto the PvE'rs Large map size, population control, quest choke points and timers
lawlscaliburn
Member, Alpha Two
Much of the discussion on AOC is centered on how to keep players that mostly or only like to do PvE in a game where they can get ganked at anytime while out adventuring. I believe 4 points are key.
1. Large map size (no issue): AOC is already planned to have a large map so this issue is satisfied. I believe a large map will have a filter effect that as you get closer to a level 6 node the more random PvP / PKs will happen. (assuming level 6 nodes also spawn high level gatherables not just high level bosses.) So players that do not like PvP at all will play the game in the hinterlands far away from the metropolis nodes. While players that are okay with the occasional PvP encounter or gank will live a bit closer to the level 6 node etc.
2. Population control (Large issue): Since AOC will have limited instanced PvE content a player per square KM to content ratio has to be maintained. This will be a tricky number to balance for intrepid studios as they want the game to feel alive and have lots of players all around the map but if completion for content is to great then PvE players will call for more instances to be created to experience more content and when they are not created they will just quit.
3. Quest Choke points(Moderate issue): For both events and character progression quests (race, class, skill) there should be care taken to avoid having possibly hundreds or thousands of players funnel into a single building or gather around 1 NPC for a quest/ turn in. For example for anything below grand master level skill quest any level 4 or 5 node on the map should have an NPC to give the player the intermediate level skill quests. As long as the quests you want to do can be accessed by level appropriate node then the game is on the right track to avoid feels bad moments of getting killed running down a hallway when you're just trying to pick up/turn in a quest.
4.Respsawn timer (Large issue): I read about node sieges only being able to be conducted during server prime time and I have come to believe that all meaningful respawn timers should also follow this pattern. So all raid bosses / open world bosses / and dungeon bosses should all respawn during server prime time so that it creates an opportunity costs for guilds on the server. Hopefully this will allow people to do content they are not normally able to do as that content is controlled by major guilds usually.
With all this and maybe a dash of corruption penalty multiplier for killing the same person over and over (aka go red corrupted faster) I think this will create a game environment where even PvP averse players want to login and play.
1. Large map size (no issue): AOC is already planned to have a large map so this issue is satisfied. I believe a large map will have a filter effect that as you get closer to a level 6 node the more random PvP / PKs will happen. (assuming level 6 nodes also spawn high level gatherables not just high level bosses.) So players that do not like PvP at all will play the game in the hinterlands far away from the metropolis nodes. While players that are okay with the occasional PvP encounter or gank will live a bit closer to the level 6 node etc.
2. Population control (Large issue): Since AOC will have limited instanced PvE content a player per square KM to content ratio has to be maintained. This will be a tricky number to balance for intrepid studios as they want the game to feel alive and have lots of players all around the map but if completion for content is to great then PvE players will call for more instances to be created to experience more content and when they are not created they will just quit.
3. Quest Choke points(Moderate issue): For both events and character progression quests (race, class, skill) there should be care taken to avoid having possibly hundreds or thousands of players funnel into a single building or gather around 1 NPC for a quest/ turn in. For example for anything below grand master level skill quest any level 4 or 5 node on the map should have an NPC to give the player the intermediate level skill quests. As long as the quests you want to do can be accessed by level appropriate node then the game is on the right track to avoid feels bad moments of getting killed running down a hallway when you're just trying to pick up/turn in a quest.
4.Respsawn timer (Large issue): I read about node sieges only being able to be conducted during server prime time and I have come to believe that all meaningful respawn timers should also follow this pattern. So all raid bosses / open world bosses / and dungeon bosses should all respawn during server prime time so that it creates an opportunity costs for guilds on the server. Hopefully this will allow people to do content they are not normally able to do as that content is controlled by major guilds usually.
With all this and maybe a dash of corruption penalty multiplier for killing the same person over and over (aka go red corrupted faster) I think this will create a game environment where even PvP averse players want to login and play.
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Comments
You cannot avoid PvP. It's baked into every one of the planned gameplay loops, even crafting. The further you get from a node, the more likely 'random' PK is, as you'll be in the deep woods, or a dungeon, or otherwise away from people that might penalize someone for going red.
In Ashes, it's always the objective best choice to fight back when attacked if you have anything of value on you, and even when you don't, because it halves your penalties. If you're gonna flag up to reduce your penalties, you may as well try to kill them.
Having a set schedule window for events just leads to zerging. Variety keeps it opportunistic when you spot a WB, rather than planning around which WB you wanna fight today as if it's on a script.
PvP-avoidant players aren't going to really enjoy Ashes, but hopefully once they give it try, they'll realize PvP isn't actually that scary.
(As for quest NPCs, yeah hard agree if there's actually a way to do that. Even instancing within a social orgs' turn in area would be better than dozens of people waiting around one guy. It's just awkward)
The lack of any instanced raiding at all does kinda stink (and marks another backpeddal from Steven), cuz I enjoy the hard precise fights, but you can't really have those fine tuned mechanics with PvP going on.
You can't force grouping too much or you will lose people who aren't going into the game with a huge group of friends
You also can't enable or reward not interacting with other people or it will become a soulless queue grind like wow df
You have to organically incentivize social interaction (not just short-term relationships like grouping up) and give players a tangible, practical, positive-reinforcement reason to form longer-lasting connections to other players (again, without it becoming required for progression).
This is a tricky balance in core design but has already been done well in at least one case in the past, IMO. Just depends on whether the team is willing to learn from MMO history or not.
In the past, it wasn't unusual for some friendly PvP enthusiasts to offer no strings attached protection and hunt down those causing trouble for players trying to complete a quest without being bothered. Though times have changed and it's entirely dependent on the sort of community this game ends up being host to.
These two points are really inseperable, because it is the ratio of player to content and player to area which matters. The player to area ratio looks to be very solid right now, though I am a little concerned about player to content ratios. The content we have mostly been shown is in the form of crafted locations and the number of such locations across the map is quite low, their will be a need for lots of basic mob spawns in the wild to keep the designed locations from being over crowded. Ideally mobile mob spawns that bubble up randomly will prevent them from being monopolized.
Dungeons with multiple entry/exit points would be good and reduce the ability to camp them with a blocking party at the door. But I think most of your other speculation about being attacked while talking to NPC's is based on a false assumption that nodes are not generally safe. A system of town guards exist which will immediatly agro anyone who attacks, while not flawless this is substantially safer then outside of nodes.
Not good if your ask me, a global daily syncronized reset encourages a feeding frenzy in which elites can focus their efforts and then kick back waiting for the next reset. Players outside the few hours after reset would never get a chance. The idea of simultanious resets which force a choice of where elites should deploy their efforts is not untimatly a very very efficient way to deter monopolization because it ultimatly dose not raise the cost in manhours of play time to monopolize, it just rewards efficiently jumping on content the moment it resets.
I see your point but from my point of view the upsides of having all bosses / major PvP events tied to server prime time outweighs the down sides. Though I could see that say node sieges are always 8pm server time but all bosses instead respawn in a window from 7:30 pm to 9pm just so camping a world boss isn't 100% guaranteed and the possibility of it spawning later changes how a guild would evaluate its opportunity cost.
Which I think is a better system than having a reset timer spawn the boss on a Tuesday at 3am as it was killed on a Tuesday at 3am. As I think putting bosses on late hour spawns would be a form of content monopoly that is just frustrating rather than genuine competition. Essentially I think that having all the content spawned nearly all at the same time when most of the server is online would be better for the game.