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.
Let's TheoryRaid #6: The Twin Monsters, Perspective And Comms
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Since I didn't see any Feedback Thread and we got some interesting looks at a 'raid design' in the last LiveStream, I'm poking at something for a certain subset of people. They know who they are. Below is a raid style event in AoC itself, shown largely from the perspective of a raid leader.
Raids differ in many ways across games but today I only wanna talk about the two titular things, perspective, and comms.
I would call that encounter 'easy'. It's easy at its core, and it helps really illustrate the gap between high-end PvE groups and PUGs, sometimes even what PUGs are capable of being.
90% of what the raid leader here says or does is fluff to a super optimized PvE group. Plz hold your comments about streamers and their resultant communities until refreshments are served.
If you remove the 'anchoring commands', the reps, and the auto-praise (I am not saying that any of these are bad to have, this method of doing this is effective and has minimal downsides), you will notice that he only gives 3-6 real, adaptive instructions for the whole thing. And this is in the first encounter with these bosses, and the bosses having the fluidity available to them considering who is controlling them live.
Perspective
Watching the stream chat, we got to see the split in perspectives in real-time. Not too much of it, but enough to confirm everything I know about the demographics involved. The spectrum of 'this guy is rude, just barking orders' to 'this is how you do it, nubs'.
From the perspective of someone who is used to average-to-bad groups and PUGs, there's also a spectrum of responses. This could either be 'I could do that if I was allowed in these big guilds, I can follow orders too', all the way to 'wow that looked amazing I wish most people could do that'. I think most people in that category would at least want to try.
I'm not sure most of the people in that grouping would recognize these bosses as 'being controlled by devs' or understand why this was moreso spectacle than substance for the tier of players that took it on. I'm basing this on people I know and have met over years, though. The bosses themselves are very good spectacle bosses with good ability sets for the spectacle presented (perfect showcase of the Monster Coin system, guys, seriously, can't praise this one enough, I loved this LiveStream).
This seems to carry across to all such games, with a weird inverted(?) bell curve of players who want way more challenge than this, to players who genuinely think this is hard (and probably experience it that way too). It's probably that those are just the vocal ends of the spectrum, but I'll also note that I haven't actually met a lot of people in the middle for some reason. Maybe they're playing other genres.
Comms
Going back to the spectrum of responses to Comms, it ties into why that gap in 'game-lived experience' exists.
Most people don't know how to actually take on a role, in a role-playing game (I am purposely going to avoid any references to real-life military strategy, but feel free to bring it up). Those people benefit from a shotcaller much more than people who know their role.
I don't mean the class you play, I don't mean the Trinity position, I don't mean the obvious requirements for clearing a difficult fight like 'Bards, keep that mana up'. I'm talking about knowing that when you enter a room with 3 enemies that all look the same and you're trying to blitz through a dungeon you have never been in before, knowing which DPS goes left and which goes right (for example) without anyone having to say anything.
PUGs could work this out, but usually they don't. And usually it makes no difference for something as simple as that, but complex content absolutely brings it up, and that brings us back to Comms.
The group in the video had generally clear comms. In a similar group that is even more attuned, comms for that fight could be silent. Not that it would be in a 'harder' fight or that it would be necessary, but it theoretically could be, and it would still have been cleared (I feel like some of that was just putting on a show, but there's also the likelihood that some of that was part-PUG).
When you are at the level where comms for the encounter shown would be silent, you have a lot of room to strategize and call out observations in a more complex fight. This means that to hold that level of group back, you need to give them something that they have to choose a way to adapt to, a reason to 'overload comms'. The more attuned the group, the more experienced, the less possible this is, and bosses become a gear check (I have no objections to bosses that are gear-checks). Alternately some designers pad out the encounter with 'gotcha' mechanics.
This also happens in PvP.
The Encounter Itself
From my perspective, there isn't much to say about the encounter itself, but I'm really glad that Intrepid found a way to make this showcase have a brilliant context. Being able to understand that this is GMs doing their stuff, to see that the bosses have abilities on Timers and therefore they can be random, or their scripting can be dynamic, as promised... perfect.
It makes it relatively easy to imagine a form of these Twins that is interesting. Seeing 'the Twins' again legit got me nostalgic (and maybe even teary-eyed? It could be allergies). The ambience, arena, 'intro'... it all made me imagine the original Twins (new followers of this game can find them here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_hsJPB8y7k ).
And I think I would love to fight them in this same space.
This stream was so great because it gave me the opportunity to compare Ashes of Creation Raid content to itself, but when thinking about how to write that up, I realized I'd be preaching to the choir somewhat. Everyone who understands 'the difference', who understands 'why the original Twins were so great', doesn't need the comparison. They need 'the Original Twins, in that arena' (maybe give them the Adds, the shield, and all the standard Twinrage mechanics ofc). Real Raid Content.
But there are a lot of people out there who also need what we got, and it made me realize that AoC is sitting on an incredible opportunity with the Monster Coin System that only Eternal Tombs is currently trying to get anywhere near.
They can make true difficult encounters (relative to an owPvP game) with 'Original Twins' tier bosses, and also have things of this tier for low-stakes, low-reward player-events (and maybe Story Arcs, depending).
But as usual, this post is long so I'm probably not gonna go into all the reasons why fighting the Original Twins in that area (it's even fitting for their names plzzz Intrepid I neeeed it) would be awesome and starting to show off what AoC PvE content can be.
I'll just note that the difference between knowing your role and not would make the 'new Twins' long/tedious for the latter, but the Original Twins, I'd absolutely expect to actually wipe PUGs somewhat consistently, and also serve as a decent starter content for an attuned group (but watch out for those snipers!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVTUCjyTnIkRaids differ in many ways across games but today I only wanna talk about the two titular things, perspective, and comms.
I would call that encounter 'easy'. It's easy at its core, and it helps really illustrate the gap between high-end PvE groups and PUGs, sometimes even what PUGs are capable of being.
90% of what the raid leader here says or does is fluff to a super optimized PvE group. Plz hold your comments about streamers and their resultant communities until refreshments are served.
If you remove the 'anchoring commands', the reps, and the auto-praise (I am not saying that any of these are bad to have, this method of doing this is effective and has minimal downsides), you will notice that he only gives 3-6 real, adaptive instructions for the whole thing. And this is in the first encounter with these bosses, and the bosses having the fluidity available to them considering who is controlling them live.
Perspective
Watching the stream chat, we got to see the split in perspectives in real-time. Not too much of it, but enough to confirm everything I know about the demographics involved. The spectrum of 'this guy is rude, just barking orders' to 'this is how you do it, nubs'.
From the perspective of someone who is used to average-to-bad groups and PUGs, there's also a spectrum of responses. This could either be 'I could do that if I was allowed in these big guilds, I can follow orders too', all the way to 'wow that looked amazing I wish most people could do that'. I think most people in that category would at least want to try.
I'm not sure most of the people in that grouping would recognize these bosses as 'being controlled by devs' or understand why this was moreso spectacle than substance for the tier of players that took it on. I'm basing this on people I know and have met over years, though. The bosses themselves are very good spectacle bosses with good ability sets for the spectacle presented (perfect showcase of the Monster Coin system, guys, seriously, can't praise this one enough, I loved this LiveStream).
This seems to carry across to all such games, with a weird inverted(?) bell curve of players who want way more challenge than this, to players who genuinely think this is hard (and probably experience it that way too). It's probably that those are just the vocal ends of the spectrum, but I'll also note that I haven't actually met a lot of people in the middle for some reason. Maybe they're playing other genres.
Comms
Going back to the spectrum of responses to Comms, it ties into why that gap in 'game-lived experience' exists.
Most people don't know how to actually take on a role, in a role-playing game (I am purposely going to avoid any references to real-life military strategy, but feel free to bring it up). Those people benefit from a shotcaller much more than people who know their role.
I don't mean the class you play, I don't mean the Trinity position, I don't mean the obvious requirements for clearing a difficult fight like 'Bards, keep that mana up'. I'm talking about knowing that when you enter a room with 3 enemies that all look the same and you're trying to blitz through a dungeon you have never been in before, knowing which DPS goes left and which goes right (for example) without anyone having to say anything.
PUGs could work this out, but usually they don't. And usually it makes no difference for something as simple as that, but complex content absolutely brings it up, and that brings us back to Comms.
The group in the video had generally clear comms. In a similar group that is even more attuned, comms for that fight could be silent. Not that it would be in a 'harder' fight or that it would be necessary, but it theoretically could be, and it would still have been cleared (I feel like some of that was just putting on a show, but there's also the likelihood that some of that was part-PUG).
When you are at the level where comms for the encounter shown would be silent, you have a lot of room to strategize and call out observations in a more complex fight. This means that to hold that level of group back, you need to give them something that they have to choose a way to adapt to, a reason to 'overload comms'. The more attuned the group, the more experienced, the less possible this is, and bosses become a gear check (I have no objections to bosses that are gear-checks). Alternately some designers pad out the encounter with 'gotcha' mechanics.
This also happens in PvP.
The Encounter Itself
From my perspective, there isn't much to say about the encounter itself, but I'm really glad that Intrepid found a way to make this showcase have a brilliant context. Being able to understand that this is GMs doing their stuff, to see that the bosses have abilities on Timers and therefore they can be random, or their scripting can be dynamic, as promised... perfect.
It makes it relatively easy to imagine a form of these Twins that is interesting. Seeing 'the Twins' again legit got me nostalgic (and maybe even teary-eyed? It could be allergies). The ambience, arena, 'intro'... it all made me imagine the original Twins (new followers of this game can find them here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_hsJPB8y7k ).And I think I would love to fight them in this same space.
This stream was so great because it gave me the opportunity to compare Ashes of Creation Raid content to itself, but when thinking about how to write that up, I realized I'd be preaching to the choir somewhat. Everyone who understands 'the difference', who understands 'why the original Twins were so great', doesn't need the comparison. They need 'the Original Twins, in that arena' (maybe give them the Adds, the shield, and all the standard Twinrage mechanics ofc). Real Raid Content.
But there are a lot of people out there who also need what we got, and it made me realize that AoC is sitting on an incredible opportunity with the Monster Coin System that only Eternal Tombs is currently trying to get anywhere near.
They can make true difficult encounters (relative to an owPvP game) with 'Original Twins' tier bosses, and also have things of this tier for low-stakes, low-reward player-events (and maybe Story Arcs, depending).
But as usual, this post is long so I'm probably not gonna go into all the reasons why fighting the Original Twins in that area (it's even fitting for their names plzzz Intrepid I neeeed it) would be awesome and starting to show off what AoC PvE content can be.
I'll just note that the difference between knowing your role and not would make the 'new Twins' long/tedious for the latter, but the Original Twins, I'd absolutely expect to actually wipe PUGs somewhat consistently, and also serve as a decent starter content for an attuned group (but watch out for those snipers!).
♪ One Gummy Fish, two Gummy Fish, Red Gummy Fish, Blue Gummy Fish ♪
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