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12/13/2025 Server Stress Test PvP felt awesome

DolyemDolyem Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
in General Discussion
Yesterdays server stress test had the best PvP I have experienced in ashes so far. With everyone in white starter gear at level 25 it had great pacing for TTK ranging anywhere from 10- 45 seconds in group fights, and I was actually able to do sustained melee combat in 8-16 vs 8-16 player fights as a fighter as opposed to having to jump in and out of big fights like a rogue trying not to get 1 shot on the main server in multi-party battles.

The Quartered health bar still feels awful though.
GJjUGHx.gif

Comments

  • SmaashleySmaashley Member, Alpha Two
    The problem with the fast TTK is the gear scaling. Now the difference between gear rarity is so high that people are mad about it. But when everyone will have legendary gear with proportional offensive and defensive stats, it will have a higher TTK and PVP will be enjoyable for everyone.
  • DolyemDolyem Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Smaashley wrote: »
    The problem with the fast TTK is the gear scaling. Now the difference between gear rarity is so high that people are mad about it. But when everyone will have legendary gear with proportional offensive and defensive stats, it will have a higher TTK and PVP will be enjoyable for everyone.

    Maybe, hard to say without everyone having maxed gear to test that.
    But as a fighter with legendaries, I can say I still get deleted in big fights. All I'm good for is jumping in, swinging a hit, and jumping out which is not good gameplay for a melee player
    GJjUGHx.gif
  • SmaashleySmaashley Member, Alpha Two
    Dolyem wrote: »
    Smaashley wrote: »
    The problem with the fast TTK is the gear scaling. Now the difference between gear rarity is so high that people are mad about it. But when everyone will have legendary gear with proportional offensive and defensive stats, it will have a higher TTK and PVP will be enjoyable for everyone.

    But as a fighter with legendaries, I can say I still get deleted in big fights. All I'm good for is jumping in, swinging a hit, and jumping out which is not good gameplay for a melee player

    You said with common gear for everyone the TTK was feeling very good. That's because the common gear is balanced for everyone. When it comes to legendary gear, I don't think that they are proportionally balanced as white gear. I don't have the stats in mind, but I'm pretty sure that offensive stats are more scaled up than defensive ones. Plus, we don't get that much HP from legendary gear compared to the damage they deal.

    It's just a thing of balancing, they'll get there someday.
  • ImnotkioImnotkio Member, Alpha Two
    Smaashley wrote: »
    The problem with the fast TTK is the gear scaling. Now the difference between gear rarity is so high that people are mad about it. But when everyone will have legendary gear with proportional offensive and defensive stats, it will have a higher TTK and PVP will be enjoyable for everyone.

    That's not true. We've seen in the past players with legendary one-shotting other players with legendary gear. Even before players found out about the legendary gear crafting scheme, TTK always decreased as we leveled up and got the higher-level gear, even if the gear disparity was small. The issue is a 2-parter:

    1. Offensive stats scale a lot more than defensive stats. So players with the same level 20 legendary full gear will have a way shorter TTK than players with the same level 10 white gear.

    2. Level scaling on gear is still crazy. A player 19 with full green gear will be one shot by a level 20 player with full green gear. This makes no sense in a game where you have emergent and open-world PVP everywhere, and really long leveling. A player will take 2~3 months to get to max level, and then they will still be one shot by players at max level with bis gear. So how long until that player gets to participate in content? Will he ever be able to catch up? What does he do before that? get slaughtered with no chance every time he tries to run a caravan? Log off for 2~3 days while his node is under war cause every time someone sees him he gets one shot without any chance of fighting? Have no chance of contesting a grind spot against a guy 1~2 levels higher than him because of the gear unlock levels?

    It's just not a healthy design for this type of game. You can have all the PVP systems and the long progression, but you have to contain the power creep to make it so players that are behind still have at least a chance of participating in these events/systems and not get obliterated in larger-scale pvp.
  • SmaashleySmaashley Member, Alpha Two
    Imnotkio wrote: »
    Smaashley wrote: »
    The problem with the fast TTK is the gear scaling. Now the difference between gear rarity is so high that people are mad about it. But when everyone will have legendary gear with proportional offensive and defensive stats, it will have a higher TTK and PVP will be enjoyable for everyone.

    That's not true. We've seen in the past players with legendary one-shotting other players with legendary gear. Even before players found out about the legendary gear crafting scheme, TTK always decreased as we leveled up and got the higher-level gear, even if the gear disparity was small. The issue is a 2-parter:

    1. Offensive stats scale a lot more than defensive stats. So players with the same level 20 legendary full gear will have a way shorter TTK than players with the same level 10 white gear.

    2. Level scaling on gear is still crazy. A player 19 with full green gear will be one shot by a level 20 player with full green gear. This makes no sense in a game where you have emergent and open-world PVP everywhere, and really long leveling. A player will take 2~3 months to get to max level, and then they will still be one shot by players at max level with bis gear. So how long until that player gets to participate in content? Will he ever be able to catch up? What does he do before that? get slaughtered with no chance every time he tries to run a caravan? Log off for 2~3 days while his node is under war cause every time someone sees him he gets one shot without any chance of fighting? Have no chance of contesting a grind spot against a guy 1~2 levels higher than him because of the gear unlock levels?

    It's just not a healthy design for this type of game. You can have all the PVP systems and the long progression, but you have to contain the power creep to make it so players that are behind still have at least a chance of participating in these events/systems and not get obliterated in larger-scale pvp.

    This is exactly what I meant. Offensive stats scale wayy to much compared to defensive stats.
  • MindsEyeMindsEye Member, Alpha Two
    edited December 16
    Do rangers have ANY defense, let alone in plate armor. It appears the classes that I did try, were glass cannon design, and rangers are still the ultimate mana vampires it’s like each one requires 3 bards to restore mana properly. I had no issue as a mage with mana. Why does a ranger have to sit and eat to restore mana when a mage does not 🤷
  • AzheraeAzherae Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    It's possible that Ranger and Mage were designed by two people with different ideas of direction.

    The Director of the game has a lot to do right now, so he probably didn't have time to consolidate the chosen direction for the two Archetypes yet, and they basically told us that wouldn't be happening in Phase 1.
    ♪ One Gummy Fish, two Gummy Fish, Red Gummy Fish, Blue Gummy Fish ♪
  • VeeshanVeeshan Member, Alpha Two
    edited December 16
    MindsEye wrote: »
    Do rangers have ANY defense, let alone in plate armor. It appears the classes that I did try, were glass cannon design, and rangers are still the ultimate mana vampires it’s like each one requires 3 bards to restore mana properly. I had no issue as a mage with mana. Why does a ranger have to sit and eat to restore mana when a mage does not 🤷

    ranger only defence is a HP regen buff that is like 3 hp a second at lvl 25 :p it has a smidge more mobility (slightly lower CD than mage blink but blink i think is actualy a bit further range) but it neglectable considering range is pretty much the same across the range classes and fighters have enough gap closers to counteract the ranger mobility skill and they have the same CD so it kinda get canceled out.

    Rangers need a little bit of a tweak/revamp tbh though the kit doesnt synergies/combo well with eachother compared to other classes and the one thing it has going for it the mobility but that kinda countered by range having same range and fighters getting more gap closers than rangers gap creators so that gets mitigated agaist the one melee class (tanks can just shoot them with a long bow while walking at them and will usualy always win the trade)
  • SylverwolfSylverwolf Member, Alpha Two
    I'm a casual player now and so far, my PvP experiences in the game has been all about who shoots first because I don't have the gear that most other PvP players do. If I'm not one-shotted, I'm already at a severe disadvantage, so if I don't initiate, I will lose.

    A long time ago, I played PvP in a lot of MMOs and like Ashes, it was gear dependent. A lower skilled player having great gear, could easily kill a highly skilled player with low gear. For those MMOs before, I had to continue to grind and stay up on my gear, and when I didn't then I rarely had a chance, but when I did, I did very well. Back then, I had the time to play a lot to keep up on the gear, but I don't anymore.

    For the new test server they setup, it was great. It was fun to PvP this time around with everyone having common gear. The matches lasted a lot longer, which makes it fun for me, win or lose.

    I'm not sure what can be done though. It's hard to balance gear for PvE and PvP in the same game, so unless they make gear provide a lot less benefit (which is unlikely), I don't see the PvP experience changing from previous PvP MMOs.

    Though, the developers in this game are best that I've seen, so perhaps they will come up with a balanced medium.
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