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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.
Grinding Spots
HiddenDaggerInn
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Greetings Citizens, The current state of AoC when it comes to grinding locations like RoS, Steelbloom, Carphin and many more usually go like this. Your group finds a spot, and start farming. Another group tries to love in and ensues a DPS and Tag battle for dominance.
Now if the outcome doesn't please the losing group they for now( Soon to be fixed per Steven) resort to leashing mobs and trying to kill the other party.
The only other option is to flagged up, and show you would like to fight for the spot, however the current system dictates others will often not fight back in the hopes you go red and then attack.
I find this very annoying, and takes the fun out of what is supposed to be conflict. Going red is not the answer.
Do you believe these hot spot grinding areas should be flagged when you enter them allowing groups to fight for their spots or are you happy with the current system?
I know most would worry if part of these grind spots were flagged, then large guilds would enter and try to take over, this is a very real possibility and one I really don't have a solution for.
another possible solution would be to have a scribe create a scroll that would flag a area in a certain radius for a short period of time, anyone who came in that area to try and contest the grind spot would receive a warning that this spot is under contestation and will be flagged if they stay.
Just shooting idea's out here, but let me hear your thoughts about the current system, do you like it? if not how would you like to see it?
Thanks for reading!
Now if the outcome doesn't please the losing group they for now( Soon to be fixed per Steven) resort to leashing mobs and trying to kill the other party.
The only other option is to flagged up, and show you would like to fight for the spot, however the current system dictates others will often not fight back in the hopes you go red and then attack.
I find this very annoying, and takes the fun out of what is supposed to be conflict. Going red is not the answer.
Do you believe these hot spot grinding areas should be flagged when you enter them allowing groups to fight for their spots or are you happy with the current system?
I know most would worry if part of these grind spots were flagged, then large guilds would enter and try to take over, this is a very real possibility and one I really don't have a solution for.
another possible solution would be to have a scribe create a scroll that would flag a area in a certain radius for a short period of time, anyone who came in that area to try and contest the grind spot would receive a warning that this spot is under contestation and will be flagged if they stay.
Just shooting idea's out here, but let me hear your thoughts about the current system, do you like it? if not how would you like to see it?
Thanks for reading!
2
Comments
I think this issue should be addressed with wars, better corruption balancing, better respawn locations and implementation of BHs. If corruption can be cleared relatively quickly (depending on your PK count) - more people would be willing to risk it deep in a dungeon. If a deep dungeon is known to have a higher chance of PKers - BHs can patrol there in hopes of getting something juicy. If players know that getting PKed doesn't always mean "I get to come there and punish them big time" - they'd either have to give up the location or fight for it.
For anything else - wars. I know Steven doesn't like the "war = just killing the other side until we're tired", but that design fits his supposed desire for player friction, so a middle ground has to be found. Also, wars would mean that neither side gains proper death penalties, so people would have to fight if they want to keep their farming spot.
Ideally, we should also have abilities that lets us control mobs (to an extent), so that we can create proper PvX situaitons in farming locations. Summoner would probably be the perfect candidate for those kinds of abilities, but that's months away, so for now I think wars is the fastest way to address this.
It would be fair splitting the xp among both groups, if group A did 70% dmg on the mob then give them 70% of the xp and group A would have a 70% chance of owning the loot. The end, thank you, sent the dollars to my bank accout for my great visiion.
That way the stronger group will push passed the lower content freeing that up for others, and also giving the other groups a chance to farm that content til they themselves can then progress forward and so on
At the moment it’s not in, could be coming later down the track in the Alpha, but level 3 carph is all the exact same loot and the curator boss spawns every hour and it’s just down to which ever group grips him. I meant more of a track style instead of big open area where everyone picks a spot to afk farm at. Just an idea anyway
Ashes is not really that kind of game. Though we will have instances that will tell the game's story and will most likely have a proper one-time progression through them.
Having a "you need to progress through this dungeon every time you wanna farm it" design w/o instancing would simply lead to camping, especially if the reward is only good at the very end (which this kind of design always implies). And then people will complain that they spend a ton of time going through a dungeon, but they always get killed at the last boss.
Not at all hinting at WoW, more like Forge actually (the only one OP didn’t mention), but didn’t know if that’s a different style raid. Forge in Ashes where you keep moving forward to different areas. Bit unfair to assume was at all about WoW. The only thing i want taken from that stupid sell out of a game is 3v3 and 5v5 ranked arena. Everything else that game destroyed can stay with it
And I said WoW because that's the usual go-to for any "you clear this dungeon by progressing through it" examples. Pretty much any other game with that design is really similar to wow, so it's just an easier game to point to.
Fair enough, but i meant why couldn’t the tower of carph be similar instead of just standing in the same spot for hours if that makes sense? Anyways, like I said earlier was just an idea. If you go into the tower of carph there’s so much good detail and mobs in there, but they all get skipped to just go to farming spots
Say there's 10 groups that want to clear the dungeon all at the same time.
Do you want 9 of them to wait outside, while 1 is clearing the entire tower behind close doors?
Do you think the remaining 9 groups won't just run right to the end and wait for the juciest drops w/o any effort, if the doors are not closed?
Also, if you have a closed door after each encounter until it's beaten - how exactly would those 10 groups clear it w/o either killing each other or, at the very least, messing up each other's farm all throughout the dungeon?
Not a single one of those groups will get to experience a full walkthrough of the dungeon. They might be present while some other group clears it, but they themselves will not clear all the points along the way.
I actually really like that idea.
If that fix is good, then it should either be a DPS race or a PvP fight. Right now it's just not working as intended (I think, I'm not sure what's intended... does anyone? Does Steven?!?). I will say FFA PvP sucks, and sucks even more with exp loss. It's so fn confusing... I'm pugging with citizens of other Nodes who want to go to war with the Node I'm a citizen of, who get in a pissing match with a group of people who are citizens of my Node. It sucks as it is. Avoid being a citizen, the Node time sink sucks, Avoid pvp the exp loss sucks, go grind mobs (yay) get mob trained (..yay...), go grind materials get ganked (...ya..y..).. The problems is much bigger than just the grind areas.
I would like PiSo to ask Steven in his interview how will Steven make this game fun for all players populating 85 nodes on (maybe) more servers.
In my opinion, in a PvP game, players should compete for resources, not for XP.
And there should be ways to steal resources too or find them without direct confrontation but sneaking into enemy territory and looting or hunting / harvesting there.
If I would have to make a change, I would let players to mark one character as the "main" and that one to have max level from the very beginning, to let them start fighting for whatever we are supposed to fight for.
Deleting and creating a new main character should have a 30 day cool down.
After all this game is supposed to have no "end game". That means it should be fun also when starting with a max level character.
Then leveling alts could be an alternative activity.
Sadly there is no reason in AoC to have characters frozen at certain intermediate levels.
Decide the wrong balance, players leave the zone.. Get it right players stay or come!