Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Sitting around watching global for the "Lvl 17 Mage LFG Seph" to pop up is really dumb. If you push everything to chat's then they're going to be (and is) spam scroll. And you never know who you're going to get, it could be someone from a Guild your KOS with... I don't see this taking away from the social aspect at all. I'm not socializing when I'm looking for a group, i socialize when I get in the group and join a new discord or someone new joins ours. This would be a big QoL improvement, but they have biggest issues atm.
And world design should support this. POI surroundings should have soloable mobs that drop similar things to the ones in the POI, but at a lower rate, so that people can still drop something good (and matching their goals), while waiting for a full group to build up.
And the POI itself should have layers of difficulty, with content on the outside being for smaller groups and deeper content being for bigger groups. This way unfinished groups would also still have stuff to do while they try to build up more members.
This is literally how nearly all locations in L2 worked and group building (both in and outside of guilds) went great.
If it's an autogroup feature, you don't socialise about your interaction. You let the game do the socialisation for you, and then complain to each other if it did a bad job.
You and I didn't really significantly disagree in this thread before anyways, I think we just disagree on the specifics here, of what it means for a guild to have more efficient grouping than players who don't group with their guild for PvE much. And we haven't even defined how much more efficient it should be, so I'm not sure we disagree at all.
My game loop in MMOs has always been: Have 2-4 people to plan regular activities with, and if they're unavailable or we need a larger group, talk to strangers while farming to form the group for my activity. That always felt like it allowed for a good mix of in-group coordination, and larger community interaction.
My guild is the centre of my purposeful gameplay, not my character progression or personal economic progression. These people meet to PvP, defend their node or attack others, sell mercenary activities to outside players, socialise, talk ingame politics. Guild chat is about being busy PvPing, they don't have enough freely available members and time to coordinate also taking care of Jimmy's dungeon run; that's Jimmy's problem.
Being relegated to consulting primarily your guild for activities feels like a kindergarten group, it's crazy to me that someone would promote a system that essentially requires this behaviour. Like I said, I'm completely fine with the average PvE-focused guild that does everything together being more efficient and consistent in their average daily progress, but that shouldn't make it tedious for other players.
Just to reiterate for anyone else, just because I think grouping should be realistically possible for players outside of guilds does not mean I support an automated LFG tool.
I wouldn't support any automated LFG/M tool. But a tool for finding groups/members beyond global chat is desperately needed. I don't support a dungeon finder or any type of auto grouping or fast travelling to dungeons, or level capping/matching. If the tools in the game aren't good people will use discords and lfg functions in those anyways. If the in game tools are good people will use it. A half heart effort will only be wasted.
When I was running my guild in Archeage, we had a policy of allowing guild members to have the guild as a whole assist in an activity. We set aside time for specific guild activities (Kraken and such), and then also set specific nights for these other activities.
If you needed to run a dungeon for a quest, we would usually wait until we had 4 or more people that needed to run that dungeon, but we would then make it something that we did as a guild. The item upgrades obtained from finishing the quests meant guild members were stronger, meaning the guild was stronger. It was a no-brainer to do that as a guild activity.
Same with running trade packs (equivlent of caravans in Ashes). If someone had enough packs to make a run as a guild worthwhile, we would do the run. We would give our members a few days to get a few packs organized for themselves if we knew we had some ship space free, and then we would all go over in one large flotilla.
This is how a guild should operate.
If Jimmys dungeon run means Jimmy will gain item upgrades and thus be better at PvP when the guild is in a PvP setting, then that dungeon run benefits the guild, and so the guild will make sure it is done - though we will try to be efficient about it. It is in the nature of MMORPG content that if Jimmy has a reson to run a given dungeon, others in the guild also will, meaning that one dungeon run could be a significant boost to the guild.
It is realisticaly possible for players to group outside of their guild. It happens often.
Keep in mind with that though, Ashes is a game where a player could invite someone to a group, take them to an unpoopulated area, remove them from the group and kill them. I'm not saying this sort of thing would ever be common, but the fact that it is possible gives players a very good reason to not want to group with people they do not know.
This is even more true in alpha than in the live game.
More so, the more your guild has a purpose that connects players whose PvE progression goals are less similar than they would be for a PvE-progression-optimised guild. (Listed above.)
Frankly, your assessment of what makes a good guild is just obviously biased by your preference for a focus on gameplay with certain priorities that happen to align with this style of guild. You think it's the best way to play because you like playing this way.
I mean, if you want to convince me to advocate against all grouping tools, go ahead. I don't personally need them, I just think guilds aren't the primary reason to advocate against them.
It's just that you were agreeing with the justification for a low-automation grouping tool at the beginning of this thread, so I don't really understand what you're arguing for when you bring up how essential guilds are.
If you agree with me that players who don't have a guild that prioritises PvE should still be able to effectively find groups to get their PvE progression done, then you agree that guilds aren't the *primary* grouping solution from the game design side; you can still think they're the *best* solution from the player side.
Yup, I'm looking forward to this nuance. It will necessitate appropriate planning. Like grouping with multiple independent strangers. It will also incentivise hiring mercenaries from trusted guilds. More so the more important the objective you're going after is, of course.
You are quite misinformed here.
Archeage had many areas for players to go off an explore. Much of this in Ashes is actually directly from Archeage. Glint and the system around it is a modification of coin purses, caravans are trade packs, sieges and naval content are, well, sieges and naval content. Freeholds are worse versions of Archeages farms. Ashes crafting is a poor attempt at achieving what XL achieved with Archeages crafting. Even the notion of prime time windows is taken directly from Archeage.
While some of these systems are present in other games, Archeage is where Steven was first exposed to them, and so is where the insperation for the Ashes version of them is from.
In my guild - the one that I talked about above - we had people that were all about purses. If they focused on them, that meant their profit in game came from just mass killing mobs. They enjoyed that, and so they did that. Others enjoyed crafting items or consumables, some enjoyed running packs, and some just loved naval content. I was all about farming archeum and regrade crystals.
These activities generally didn't need assistence, but when they did, the guild was there to help. That was the point I was making (and I thought I made fairly clear).
I am unsure how you came to this conclusion.
My assessment of a good guild is one that is there for it's members. My idea of a bad guild is one that is not there for it's members.
You seem to think differently, as you are defending the notion of a guild that is not there for it's members.
No, my point stands.
I have not said anything to suggest that "a" tool is a bad idea, I have said in reply to you that guilds are indeed the primary solution.
And we can find a simple solution without losing social interaction.
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Finally, there would still be a conversation between the group leader and those who are in that area looking for a group.
Agreed.
I dont see why the act of spamming "LFG" in general chat is considered "social". If anything it is anti-social. It disrupts conversations people are having in general chat.
Not only that, but when looking for group, you are sitting spamming general chat, and looking at the general chat box scanning for replies. How is this fun? How is this "social"?
To me the social part starts AFTER u form the group. Then you can chat with teamates, talk about what you want to fight etc.
The current PUG formation is terrible and frustrating. They are trying to funnel people to either join guilds or play a diff game, not a smart decision matrix for player retention.
So old school method was never playing with new players? Never playing with whoever happened to be online at the time and was willing to group? Doesnt sound very social.
Kind of.
The old school method was understanding there was a difference between a group where you wanted to get shit done, and a group where you weren't trying to get something specific done.
If you were trying to get something done, you took people you knew. If you weren't trying to get something done, you could mess around - and this is often when you would meet new people.
There are multiple reasons why this old school approach simply wouldn't work with Ashes design - including but not limited to the fact that the game doesn't facilitate people just messing around.
Well sure, but all that being said doesnt take away from the fact that this game has enough obstacles steering you towards teams, the least they could do is help facilitate the grouping process better.
Spamming global is really not an effective nor fun way to find other players looking to group. Part of the reason is because you are sitting there staring at the chat spam rather than "playing" the game. The "parse chat and spam ad" game gets old pretty fast, and sucks compared to the "beat groups of monsters/players with our group!" game. Most people looking for groups would prefer to be doing the latter.
There are alot of ideas out there on how this should or shouldn't be done, but at any rate, they need to answer the fundamental question "how can we help our players do the things they like more effectively?". There are already lots of obstacles that are in the game to slow us down. They want us to group. Well, make some crazy good ui to help us achieve that! The "grouping process" shouldnt be the hard/cumbersome part.
Expand the friends list (make it work), add an enemies list, add level/class filters, area filters, visibility settings for who can see you listed, friendly guild settings, etc.
Oh, for sure.
Keep in mind, while I'm explaining what the old school method was, I also specifically pointed out that it won't work in Ashes.
This means Ashes needs something to facilitate this - the question is - "what?".
If global chat isn't working, then the issue isn't one of visibility. That means that trying to add a system to make players looking for a group more visible to those wanting to fill out a group is likely not that much of a solution. It could help, but it needs an actual fix to the issue before it can be overly useful. More visibility for players looking for a group when there aren't groups looking for players helps no one.
Well part of it could be. Like even if its going to take 20-30m to form a group, it could be nice to be gathering or glint farming or doing things and not needing to focus on the chat spam all the time or camping at the location waiting around.
Plus, I dont always want to advertise to EVERYONE in the game where I am going to be grinding. If there was some kind of UI where I could mark myself invisible in the LFG to people from some guilds or by player name, level, etc.
- lvl window: 10-13
- time: 6-8pm est
- location: this or neighboring nodes
- current signed up members: bard, tank, cleric, ranger
Anyone singing up to that post should be added to an alternative "friend list", which functions as a separate chat window (which could be added to the main chat UI part) and would ideally be available in the phone app as well, so that people could plan their partying throughout the day.And just as friend lists, there should be in-game notifications (or even just a UI element of greyed out dots that can turn green) for when people come online. And those notifications can be enable on the phone as well.
Obviously could be tied to discord as well, but that's more about whether Intrepid would want their app to be tied to other 3rd party stuff or not.
I think this would keep things as social as possible, while also keeping the process localized to nodes/POIs, because the boards themselves are localized. And it would push people towards gameplay planning instead of just "logging on and thinking that you can get any content you want at any point".
None of this would stop people from spamming chats with LFGs, but it would help smarter players group up way faster and easier.
To your second point, there is no viable way around d this.
If there is value in what you are talking about, people will have non-guild alts for this purpose, or just pay others for information. The only way you have a chance of keeping this kind of thing from happening is if any LFG system were made with a white list system as opposed to a black list system - however, this then becomes little more than a friend's list.
That said, you have touched on a major aspect of why none of this will work in regards to Ashes as it is now - that being that the risk is just too high.
This part doesn't matter much unless you mean them 'banning' it.
The pipeline from 'a thing that can be visually seen on a screen by a player' to 'basically any other site or utility' is 3-6 days of 'work' at best, someone will do it just for community purposes.
Exactly how it gets used will depend on game/server culture, but unless Intrepid tries to 'ban' it (and there's almost no way to) adding this is basically adding party finder (relative to what most non-instanced party finders do).
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Sure there is. It could be as simple as the current marketplace set up (only available from everywhere, which is the whole point)
You can have your LFG advertisement with visibility settings, so that people from certain guilds, certain flagged characters, node/area location or outside the level range/class list cant see the listing.
Now yes, someone could have an alt that could see the listings, but there are still more hoops to jump through vs the current method. Sometimes the best you can do is make it very convenient to do the thing we want to do and very inconvenient to disrupt the thing.
I hope there is actually a server in AoC where this would work out, culturally, but I don't see it happening, as of now.
LFG tools vs Global Chat vs Auto-Matchmaking is normally a server culture thing, in my experience, but Ashes will 'always' have that problem where the 'calmer' servers can be disrupted rapidly by the 'hostile' player subgroup, because Intrepid intentionally doesn't give us any tools to deal with that.
And sometimes, the basic nature of the game goes against it. I think this is one of those times.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Now, obviously this was on a relatively small scale, compared to what we might get on release, but I still think that the game does let us address this issue. And will only give us more tools once pvp systems are implemented correctly.
Yeah, I was there, but that didn't last, and merging servers into the size required for the game to function...
It's just speculation/bias based on past (and I guess recent) experiences.
My group's TL server got worse and worse relative to our preferences, and after the merge and realizing that they weren't going to get 'balanced out' (it got worse technically), we transferred to another and it's Night and Day, as they say.
But in Ashes, server transfers aren't that simple, and if they were even temporarily, you'd get some effects that I think are worse.
That said, P1 was pretty 'not representative of Ashes', we didn't even know about static respawns then, and there were no "Marketplaces" so you could lock out unwanted players.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean that the people who just group with their guild and never spam LFG dont want the tools to help them PUG? Well I'm not talking about catering to those people. I'm talking about catering to normal people who PUG because it suits their timetable. I dont see why helping people play the game could be a bad thing for player retention or picking up new players, which should be the metric we are measuring against.
I was referring to this part:
"You can have your LFG advertisement with visibility settings, so that people from certain guilds, certain flagged characters, node/area location or outside the level range/class list cant see the listing."
I've played on servers/know about server subsections (in Elite, since it big) where this wouldn't work because the 'social norm' would be to share this information just to be disruptive.
"It's a PvP game you can't whine about us using every method available to make sure you non-PvP players have to PvP us! If we're not getting banned for it, it's your fault for not thinking about us using this system this way, git gud."
Basically that people will 'join parties, to set them up for being ganked later, not even just 'lure people out', like literally 'I joined a party, they seem pretty good, guys, I'm gonna fake a d/c, come kill them when I give the signal' type of thing.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
The hoops you jump through to create an alt are essentially non-existent. People would generally use one alt for many things. They wouldn't create an alt for this, they would simply add it to the list of things they do on that alt - should there be value in that information.
Further, offering people a small reward for information on you or your guilds whereabouts would be dead easy.
Again, there is no way to prevent a rival guild getting this information. You could add those hoops to it, but you are putting more time and effort in to setting those hoops up for your rivals than they need to go through to jump through them.
As something of a profession hoop jumper in MMO's (both hoops set up by other players, and by developers) I'm just telling you that this is a waste of time - Intrepids and yours. You are free to not believe me.
It's fine. I have a new strategy. Start conversations in global chat so that LFG and trade spammers get blocked out.
On top of that, we'll supposedly have this https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Mentor_program which should help any newbies to be part of those twink groups.