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
Punishment could be anything from canceling your account or a temporary ban to dissolution of the guild(s) in question and all assets, then reducing all associated characters to level 1, taking all of their stuff and putting them in Corruption Level 5. The latter is the “nicer” form of punishment.
That said “zerging” is part of the game with the biggest limiting factor being the size of the world with no fast travel. That should take care of 90% since there is Family fast travel that some could abuse, but then that makes it easier to see who’s violating family fast travel policy. So that’s a trap. Good luck with that.
To reiterate, it shouldn't be a "free win" if the gameplay is skill-based regardless of the number of players involved, meaning even larger groups should still have to leverage gameplay skill and combat tactics to overpower smaller groups, and the balance comes through the other side equalizing player numbers through their own organization, planning, and responses.
Also, again, there should still be other content which doesn't specifically revolve around that kind of gameplay, such as content available for smaller groups and individual players. Please see my first post for clarity.
Thats fair, but like I said they have content where individual action will be more important as I explained in my first post. The nature of having content available for these larger groups means that specific content will have that feeling of being a "cog in the machine" like you described. I don't think that should be a problem if players can choose what content they want to focus on and enagage with the majority of the time.
If you haven't experienced the "cog in the machine" type of design, yes, individual player action is obviously "less" impactful on the overall battle, but that doesn't mean that it is "not" impactful. As long as the gameplay is skill-based (regardless of player numbers), then you could potentially still have a noticable influence on the battle even as a "cog", just like in a game series like Battlefield where heroic actions from individual players can turn the tide of the overall battle. There is also the incentive of becoming a leader/officer to where your actions will have even more of an impact through your oversight of other players.
Have the same concerns but after being a lone wolf for most of wow, I not denying myself involvement.
I've been waiting for a game like this for over 10 years
I'll join the zerg.
Other than that I'll be finding a guild that can field a raid.
Had a lot of fun in 12 man+/- grps in ESO in AvAvA.
The problem is that two nodes close together in particular, but also further apart, are going to have more incentives to be competitive (or at least separate) than co-operative.
If they are right next door to each other only one can be level 6, the other must be level 5, and relics must be placed in one or the other. There will be a lot of inequality in the guild. I think that is going to create a lot of friction.
I think there are too many game incentives tied into node citizenship, for guild membership to take priority.
I have not followed too closely on some things so have the developers come out and mentioned that zerging will not be tolerated or even given a definition of what zerging entails?
Many games are known as large scale combat games (think Atlas) just based upon what is allowed for clan/guild size, and what is allowed for alliance size and server cap. The developers can control some of this by limiting guild size and alliance size and I am just not seeing that as a focus right now. 'If' what we have seen discussed so far plays out and we have a guild size up to 300 and 3 alliances are allowed, expect a game that is developed toward larger scale combat and 'zergs/zerging' should be expected as it is not really a small scale combat/guild game to begin with.
Well I am yet to see a "skill based" game that has zergs, and where small groups have chances.
Like this can happen if there are scaling AOE spells that deal more dmg if you hit more targets, or friendly fire or some other game design that will prevent zerg groups. But in general skill is not enough to win vs zerg.
People been posting videos of Lienage 2 where small group "fights" a zerg. Where when you watch the clip you see 20 players small group trying to do hit and run tactics. They managed to kill 10-15 players of the zerg WHILE THE ZERG WAS DOING WORLD BOSS. After the zerg secured the world boss they wiped the party for 10 seconds.
If Intrepid manage to make it so small groups have chance vs zergs - then i wont have any problem with the game design.
Thats another problem with the Zerg groups. Content that should be hard to do even for raid groups will become just TRIVIAL for the zerg to kill. Yes there is the reward splitting i know, but doesnt matter because the loot is still in the zerg while other groups get nothing. And yes ofc smaller groups will do other content, BUT the content with BEST rewards in the game will be all taken by Zergs.
99% of the times is just you thinking you are contributing A LOT for the zerg fight. In reality even if you were not there at all the result would be same.
And yes there is 1% of the fights where the fight is actually close win, and some individual actions would matter.
Already explained why i wont join zerg group, And this includes creating my own zerg group also.
If i want to lead i would lead small group.
Agreed.
Well, this goes back to the skill based aspect. It shouldn't be trivial, providing the combat is strategic, and that the adaptive a.i. kicks in when a large number of players is present, to at least challenge those players. Regardless, the pve aspect isn't as big of a deal as long as players have other ways to engage with the content of their choice, which is where world size, travel times, and dedicated content (like instances or arenas) come into play, so the idea of zergs mowing through easier content wouldn't be that big of a deal (and again, it should still be engaging providing the a.i. is good and the combat design requires skill).
Regarding the best rewards being taken by zergs, or the "problem" of zergs dominating specific areas and driving smaller groups away: this goes back to our first response regarding the skill of managing larger groups. The hardest content in the game should require the largest groups, and the largest group content should require the most planning, strategy, skill, and coordination. This added level of investment and engagement should be rewarded, so I think it is reasonable for those groups to have an advantage over smaller groups from both combat gameplay and territorial/resource control perspectives. Why should a smaller group doing easier content be able to get the same rewards as a larger group taking on the hardest content? Just like arena pvp probably shouldn't reward the best gear for the open world. The rewards should reflect the level of challenge and investment by the players, but that doesn't mean different playstyles can't be rewarded with rewards that are relevant to their style of play. If a large group pushes smaller players out of an areas, maybe smaller groups running smaller content in other parts of the open world can get gear that is relevant to that type of content so they can progess within that, or get gear that specializes in small group content that the harder content might not provide to the bigger groups, or is maybe a side grade to what the bigger groups can get from their better rewards (as far as that better gear's performance specifically relevant to smaller group content).
So, even if larger groups can get "better rewards", those rewards might be more relevant to that harder content, and even if its not then I think its well earned. The playstyle/gameplay choice should be the focus rather than the rewards themselves. As long as smaller groups can still have a healthy amount of content to enjoy, and a reliable way of engaging with that content, then it shouldn't matter that larger groups get better stuff and can get an advantage because of higher level of investment and complexity that comes with those efforts. Just try to avoid challenging those larger groups unless you think you can outskill them, or unless you bring more people with you.
Well I think thats a bit of a generalization, it just depends on the design and the situation/context in the game. But if you prefer to have more of an impact in battle and to lead a smaller group that should be satisfied through smaller group content (providing it is designed well) as previously discussed. I don't think that warrants thinking of this idea of larger group content as a "problem" though, its just more about coexisting alongside other types of players as long as you don't repeatedly make stupid mistakes in the game. There is give and take with anything in game design but I think it is reasonable to design different player types to live in relative harmony, at least for the most part, nothing is ever perfect. The good thing about that is that you could always change your mind and try something new, and maybe even like it a bit more once you get tired of smaller group stuff (depending on the execution obviously). Ya know, choice and all that.
Yep, well guess we should wait and see how intrepid will handle this. Just concerned that atm Guild sizes are 30 players max, And if they increase this cap toward stage 3 or something, we may not see too many zergs for intrepid to test if their systems will handle those groups and if smaller groups will have chance.
Regarding the Rewards - I dont think the way intrepid should handle this is as you described.
For me the best rewards should be focused around 40 man raid groups. Yes the content has to be hard and requires skills and so on. But i dont think that just coz 1 group can bring 1k randoms to fight the boss that they should get better loot drop, because they can kill harder boss than the 40 man.
Maybe this can be solved by giving the harder bosses spells like "Burn" where all affected targets deal dmg to themselves and everyone around them. So if the boss hit 300 ppl from the zerg group and all start burning, then they have to split from the group, but since they are that many they would die almost instantly.
So you risk wiping your whole group by a boss spell if you dont position right, or dont react to split from the group fast (starting even before the spell actually hit you). To get the reward that the boss will take A LOT more dmg per second from all those players.
Intrepid just has to have in mind that if a boss is designed to be killed for 30 min by 40 man group, A 1200 man zerg with full burst at start can kill the boss for 1 min.. (thats why a lot of games scale the boss hp with players present in the fight, since else the boss wont have time to even use his mechanics before it die, And since Intrepid wont take this approach some of the hardest boss fights will be just farm spots for zergs without any hardships to kill). And this goes the other way around, if you make the boss hp enough to survive for example 20 min from the zerg group, then a raid group will have to fight the boss for 10 hours (600 minutes) to kill.
So in general i doubt that Intrepid will manage to make content that is both challenging and fun for 40 man raid groups, and in the same time zerg groups dont just oneshot the boss. But guess if they manage i will be happily surprised
Very little
The level or stats of bosses will not scale due to player levels or numbers, however boss AI is able to adapt to player numbers through the selection of mechanics and behaviors.[32][33][31][34][35]
This is true, but keep in mind that as an MMORPG player, zergs are basically what he knows.
His time in Archeage was literally just being in charge of a large guild that dominated the server due to numbers alone - that is what he sees MMORPG gameplay as consisting of.
Keep that in mind when waiting to see what they do.
I know, Thats why i try to show Intrepid that this will be big problem for regular players.
Yeah I agree for the most part, my description was more aimed at just illustrating the dynamic between larger and smaller groups. From a pve perspective there obviously has to be a general cap at what group size you are designing the encounters around, and the largest for this game is raid content I believe (if its not, and there is pve content such as world bosses or whatever, which is designed around a larger group than a raid group, then at that point, assume I am using "zergs" to talk about a group that is larger than that). This potential max specific number is a matter of preference and subjective as to what is considered a "zerg" but we can assume for this discussion its anything over what the max group size is designed for in encounters, which would be raid content. So, I don't think there should be content specifically designed around "zergs" either from a pve perspective.
My point would be more relevant to the pvp aspect where both sides can bring as many players as they want to fight each other or to contest that content, and that those larger groups should have advantages based on the skills required for managing larger groups (as we talked about in various ways, and assuming the combat is still skill based even when zergs are involved). So the "better rewards" would be through the contesting and monopolization of raid content (or world bosses or whatever the hardest content is). So I don't mean that zerging outright designed around being rewarded from a pve encounter perspective, but it should still be rewarded from a pvp perspective based on previous points about managing larger groups. The balance is that the gameplay and organizational efforts should be skillful and that other groups can do the same thing to balance out the pvp aspect. Dont challenge the group unless you can outskill or match their numbers. This is why sieges aren't "zergs" because it is designed and balanced around 500 vs 500. The pvp is designed around large groups in that case, just as the pvx/pve content can be balanced and designed in the same manner around accounting for large groups of pvp contesting each other. But again, there should always be other content for those smaller groups to partake in if they don't want to challenge those specific locations.
I also agree that the content that is normally designed around smaller groups should still provide challenge to those zergs, even though they are typically designed around relatively smaller group numbers, which is part of the pre-requisite of skillful gameplay mechanics, such as adaptive a.i., which could include the employment of aoe and such as you mentioned in response to larger groups not meant for that specific encounter. This is less of an issue though, because the point is that the challenge would come through contesting the content against other "zergs" to monopolize the best rewards, so if you really want to have a "fun and balanced raid experience" then take your 40 man group to a different raid boss location.
So I think we agree for the most part, its more about whether people are okay with very large group gameplay coexisting on the server.
But like you said, this depends a lot on execution so we will have to see how they handle it. Regarding the testing, the guild size is just temporary for this phase and that number will supposedly increase for testing in later phases.
Note, ofc, that in Ashes, these mechanics will generally need a way to damage players that are 30m or so away, which technically (usually, I will make no claims about what exactly Intrepid is doing or capable of, those who have played the Alpha and encountered certain bugs can form their own opinions) increases certain types of strain on large encounters on server.
In my experience, scaling the HP of these bosses only helps up to a certain point, and that point is reached very early, compared to what 'Zergs' are capable of.
If they implement the 'Projectile continues and can do damage even when not Tab Targeted', and those projectiles have the capacity to do damage beyond the 30m mark, this load increases.
There are absolutely very good reasons to implement many decent mechanics that make a boss more dangerous as more people interact with it, but I, for one, won't be counting on those mechanics in a performant form of Ashes of Creation.
Parts of MMO communities have a weird fetish for punishment.It#s in the Design. Players already asking for Discord so they can pretend to play "solo" while looking for a group is just the beginning. In the end everything has to go quick quick and efficient since the rewards matters the most. Not the game play
But what you are really showing them (well, Steven) is that his goal for game design is working.
Ashes isn't a game for regular players. It is a game for people with sycophantic followers. The game is designed from the perspective of people at the top with others following them, not for those people following.
In Ashes, those people are essentially incidental. That is by design, not by oversight.
rather than HP buffs for world bosses give player groups attuned/buffs as they progress with the boss/dungeon/raid.
without the attunement any other group will have some major disadvantage/debuff when trying to 'steal' an objective.
And lets say the boss is at 10% and another guild/group wants to kill steal, perhaps put a shroud/bubble/wall that can be bypassed with effort/resources but is enough of a hindrance/deterrent to allow the main group an ample period to down the boss as long as they have the prerequisite buff/attunments gained along the way...
For eg Tumok the big ogre...phase 2 mushrooms...destroying mushrooms releases spore/cloud. spores on player allows boss to keep receiving damage, players without spores will take more damage from boss...until either boss is defeated or resets... for exsample
Either fight em or join em
I am not certain I understand your comment about discord and playing solo, help me with the reference please.
This is not true, and ill give you a few reasons:
1. Pillars of design: Risk vs Reward - Zergs break this as they are a zero risk, yet are rewarding.
2. Pillars of design: Player Agency - As zergs are totally destructive, they are the antithesis to player agency.
3. Game System: Guilds have less perks as they grow to reward smaller guilds.
4. Game Systems: Nodes increase rent the bigger they grow to reward smaller nodes.
5. Game Systems: Nodes will face negative effects if they over-farm and may become corrupt.
There is no game mechanic that rewards large zergs of over a Raid group, and there are plenty that penalize it, including the corruption system, making indiscriminate AOE potentially very costly to everyone in a raid.
It is silly to suggest that Steven somehow secretly wants to promote something that is the antithesis of his "Pillars of Design" and that there are mechanics in place that (if necessary) could be balanced to make zerging an act of madness.
So you're saying that in a social sandbox MMO, the devs should implement systems that restrict, penalize, or disincentivize organized group play? Isn't that taking player agency away?
Not all organized group play. Like groups of 2-40 man are all good and dont need any penalties.
But yes - for me any group more than 40 man should have penalties applied. And the bigger the group is the bigger the penalty should be.
And NO, AOC is not a Sandbox MMO.
I don't think its going to play out the same way here as in other games. The smaller guilds that own a node will have their own zergs in the form of all of the citizens that can freely defend from any aggression as well with no risk of corruption and actual incentive to stay and fight.
And it will be trivial to do that, just set some realms to have DOUBLE the guild size, both at initial creation and with each member size perk in the system, just double it's effect. This is like 1 days work in coding and setting a single global variable for that realm. You can even do Tripple or quadouple size if you want.
Now you have a system where some realms are clearly going to attract the zerg guilds and zerg players and they will all be VERY happy about the larger guild size while also being on a level playing field with other comperable size guilds on said realm.
And you have realms which are going to be largely free of them for people who hate zergs and want small guilds. And thouse small guild realms will be largely immune to the phenomena of zerg guilds 'jumping' to their servers en-mass because they won't want to deal with the fragmentation problem.
1.) Reducing the penalty for dying when attacked by more than 3 players. (no loot on death)
2.) increasing EXP gains for nodes that are far away from maxed out nodes.
3.) A stacking max HP reduction for parties 3+ - capping at 35% reduction. You've already got synergies in terms of healing/mp regen/CC/damage - reducing the maximum HP would make it so that roaming in raids would not be effected significantly in PvE farming, but would make it significantly more likely to have player deaths in engagement of PVP.
But all in all - capping the total amount of people who can benefit from a single node would cause guilds to have to spread out and think about who they actually invite. Mega alliances might still be a problem, but those servers would get boring and cannibalize itself by turning into a PvE server.
PvE focused: WoW / FFXIV / Lineage II
Sandbox: Ultima Online / Darkfall / Mortal Online
Big Influence: SNES Fighting games / Starcraft / Diablo II / Smite
A dragon, which is a flying creature, decide to fly off if the odds are really not in its favour. Its AI/script makes it leave if player numbers are over set parameters or if it's getting pwned too quickly.
Cheap, sure, but quite a logical choice of action for a supposedly intelligent foe.
Lift the draw bridges, destroyed the normal ones, collapse the tunnels. Take the treasure and run through a secret passage, offering the zerg an empty room... Sound tactics for any thinking creatures. Live to fight another day.
Or mobs could stay big pinatas waiting to spill the candies within their loot tables.