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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Grouping features?
Any ideas on how grouping/partying will work? Would be nice if I could bring say 5-6 friends and we all just group up together and go on a smash adventure. One thing that always annoys me in any mmo is when the group limit is only 4 when there are like 16 classes. Max groups of 8 is more of what I'm used to having.
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Yes I talked about scaling dungeons in one of my many post. This would reduce the need for Automated grouping tools and if gear is done right there is no need to make dungeons easy. Thing is we need to get away from repetitive dungeons and that means overhauling how dungeons are done in MMORPGs here in Ashes. That means no FFXIV or WOW like Dungeons.
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MMOs usually scale group content for a set number of people. If you give people a challenge for say 5 people but they just decide they will bring 10 and faceroll it, does it present a challenge anymore? As such MMOs restrict the content rewards to set group sizes, where grouping over a certain number invalidates your eligibility for rewards. An example is WoWs group to a max of 5 and convert to raid for up to 40. Raids are ineligible for rewards in content designed for 5 man groups. This ensures the content is challenging and all deserve the rewards.
[quote quote=9506]as long as there are no dungeon finder tools or group finder tools… they are a cancer on the mmo world. [/quote]
Group finder tools are good when they reduce chat spam, yet encourage players to talk with a group leader to get in. Instant queuing though is a pretty bad.
<blockquote>
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/grouping-features/#post-9506" rel="nofollow">velish wrote:</a></div>
as long as there are no dungeon finder tools or group finder tools… they are a cancer on the mmo world.
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Group finder tools are good when they reduce chat spam, yet encourage players to talk with a group leader to get in. Instant queuing though is a pretty bad.
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Agree on both parts. The only limitation I see, if they go with the tank/heal/dps model, is healer balancing. How many DPS players can a single healer keep alive? If you can only keep alive the tank you're pretty useless. If you can solo-heal 20 other players including tanks, healers are obviously over powered. I guess it's about striking that balance as healers are and should be powerful, but not immortal.
Although, to properly answer this we'd have to look at damage sources as well. Is raid-wide damage going to be common? Is most DPS-damage from mistakes?
All in all, if it's balanced properly, my personal opinion is that larger groups are better. I don't mean that everything should be epic 200vs200 world battles, but 6, 7 or 8 man dungeons open up more possibilities than 5 :)
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/grouping-features/#post-9159" rel="nofollow">leafscynet wrote:</a></div>
Any ideas on how grouping/partying will work? Would be nice if I could bring say 5-6 friends and we all just group up together and go on a smash adventure. One thing that always annoys me in any mmo is when the group limit is only 4 when there are like 16 classes. Max groups of 8 is more of what I’m used to having.
</blockquote>
MMOs usually scale group content for a set number of people. If you give people a challenge for say 5 people but they just decide they will bring 10 and faceroll it, does it present a challenge anymore? As such MMOs restrict the content rewards to set group sizes, where grouping over a certain number invalidates your eligibility for rewards. An example is WoWs group to a max of 5 and convert to raid for up to 40. Raids are ineligible for rewards in content designed for 5 man groups. This ensures the content is challenging and all deserve the rewards.
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Thing is I am trying to get away from Dungeons being used to gear up. I am looking at Dungeons as something like you do for Fun, Gold, Glamour gear and crafting mats. None of which should make dungeons something where they need to be fine tuned for a challenge. You just make the Mobs hit hard and require team work for support to manage, the same with bosses but it should be more of a dance. Not having a set number that the group has to be reduces the need for a automated dungeon finder tool and allows for more tag along players. Also with 64+ combination for classes will make it impossible to tune the dungeons anyway. Maybe 5 classes combine are so superior that unless you make the dungeon impossible for everyone else that combo will not hard for them. I say with some AI you should make the dungeons a challenge without making it whack a mole, like the need for CC, interrupts and CD. If done right there will be a challenge. I dont think instances being like Vanilla WOW was where the raids take months to learn is a good idea, you have an XP loss when you die. So it needs to be a Challenge but with high end players they are gone to blow up anything you throw at them unless you make a set of instances specifically for this type of player.