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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.
Comments
I disagree as i don't think that simple question would correctly jog their memory. I wanted to mention the other 80% so they could think about all the other people they have fought and if they really did talk to them.
I agree there are many people would not want to admit to making an error but that doesn't mean they didn't realize it and will be more conscious of it in the future. If they really did make a mistake then them understanding that is my goal. Having them admit it means nothing to me.
Yes, i asked the question because of my own observations and understanding of bias. If you are saying i'm not allowed to perceive bias, can you explain why?
I understand your disagreement.
I am not saying that you are not allowed to perceive bias. My previous post was targeted more at a subset of actions based on that perception that are helpful or not helpful to data collection.
Please let me know what aspect of that post I need to clarify, or ignore this response as if I chose not to respond to you.
Turn down the irony a notch, I can't take much more.
....shit sorry that's a bit too mature of a reply.
Stop being toxic please, thanks.
George's intentions appeared to be a simple checklist with almost no relation to the thread which is asking for a personal experience of PvE. I always challenge the broad and varied "toxic" term as it ultimately leads to less honesty and more restrictions which I don't believe is healthy discourse regardless of naturally allowing a bit too much banter in places that get a bit too far out of the game element.
I've always been open to people being themselves since I started playing online games since the early 2000's and I'm only biased towards people who demand more restrictions with very little solution context, the trend with these people when prodded a little seems to "I play games to relax" and nothing much more.
Anyway, to the topic for some construction I guess (+ to maybe cleanse myself of the bad boy/"toxic" status)...
- - - - - - -
Legend of Mir II PvE >>> Diablo-esk, fun via killing a lot of trash mobs and getting rng loot + additional properties. An extremely relaxed trinity system with no taunt skill, Bosses were quite easy, juggling agro between everyone was quite fun, created the "wall strat" to block mobs from Ranged damage dealers. Imo this relatively easy PvE led to more focus on PvP and area control, good in my book.
Lineage 2 >>> Frustratingly simple (managing hp/mana was a chore and that made it sometimes high difficulty to be optimal), gear dependant, it's borderline ok grouped when you're working together and bringing mobs to a choke point to get swept up, again like LoM, focus on area control for PvP.
Bosses required many multiple players and you all do your jobs simply, it was....very easy, L2 just focused so much on the journey through PvP contention which it nailed pretty decently and is still fondely remembered for it so.
Ultima Online >>> Low HP and stamina management put you in fear mode constantly, Magery and Necromancy from mobs always made things pretty interesting. Player skills had some interesting utility and defensive options.
Probably my most fun PvE game due to magery from players and mobs....actually being magery and not just a nuke fest + animal taming was great.
Bosses were from doing champion spawns, which required you to kill multiple pretty strong trash mobs and that really tested your limits with skills and gear options. To die on the game was brutal so to succeed felt epic but I don't think it's a great fit for your average player.
Archeage >>> The general PvE is lacking a lot, they have dashes and cc's like players but mobs and themes look so uninspired + no good looking skills to think of. They getting kited and cc'd super easy, their first script impressions make you think it's something difficult and then it turns into a joke, it's not pretty...
Archeage did have raid instances, usually 1 party sized though, they were alright and were VERY savage if you didn't know what you were doing, I enjoyed it somewhat (not my thing).
Bosses are just a spam fest, barely any thinking required, only decent ones are at sea and you will struggle....from driving the ship, repairing ship and PvP, nothing to do with the actual PvE encounter.
BDO >>> I loved it and I'm really dissapointed it got a bad rep but it was deserved.
The first 3 months from launch were fantastic, no awakened classes, so there was no "omega AoE" skills from classes wiping mob group after mob group. I played a Warrior and defensively and offensively it hit the right balance. The most noteable thing about BDO tho was that there was zero class unity or trinity system, it was an all in and use your own capabilities to weave in/out, perform miracles and such....it was... refreshing, obviously the gameplay and graphics carried it super hard though, beautiful "dmc" game xD
Bosses are all in, no strat, just perform by yourself to a top tier standard....quite interestingly though the warrior's shield bash, a hugely non meta ability, could taunt world bosses and I was proud of finding that out, really made things interesting sometimes ^^
So that's my PvE experience...to the "sofisticated PvE'r" I guess only UO and maybe the trinity system of L2 counts a litte and then the low tier instance raiding of Archeage, anyway xD
and no I can not comprehend the thrill of a WoW/EQ2/FF14 raid but I would like to get some solid perspective and some highlights on why they are fun for those involved.
It seems that you have indeed been limited in this, and based on just the games you have listed, the PvE is an accessory to the PvP at best, and you value the freedom of not needing static tactics or roles so that everyone is playing at full capacity in the same overall way.
I think that having some reference point for this that is closer to the other side would basically be a requirement in order to 'convince' in any way, because it sounds like you haven't even played any games where the developers put real effort into the AI or even potential.
BDO in particular is super bad at this because even their new explicitly solo 'Rift Boss' enemies, they have a rating system for what they consider 'challenging' vs not, and the only 'good' boss that actually responds to your movement and positions, in the whole set, and actually uses its own movement properly, they felt necessary to re-class as 'very hard'.
If your PvE experience has been this... let's say 'lacking', it makes sense that you don't consider PvE as a possible main draw for content, so let's not even consider 'Bosses' per se.
What would it take for you to think of PvE as 'not a damage sponge script'? It sounds like you may just not like the style of GAME that leads to PvE being good, which may unfortunately have some implications about whether you will actually enjoy Ashes as it is currently being designed (going only by what we experienced in Alpha-1)
We can try starting from the base of BDO since we both have some understanding there. What would it take for BDO to not feel like that? Since you played very early, I believe the only bosses I can be 'sure' that you experienced in any sort of 'group' are Dastard Bheg and Red Nose? Lmk if we can go 'up' to Nouver.
I can't wait to hear what more PvE experiences you all have to share c:
If it’s novel, definitely. If it’s the 43rd time, it would depend on what I’m focusing on at that time. Could be a fruitful distraction, could just be a distraction. I’d also want to scout the location before engaging. If I saw the message it’s likely other players saw it too.
I’d rely on my experience to guide me. If the majority of those events prove to be fruitful, then I’d investigate. If most of those events tend to be repetitive (say like 90% of FF14’s events) then I’d leave it be.
[/quote]does Dynamism pull you back to old haunts or does the wish for Novelty push you out to new vistas, on AVERAGE, which wins out? (or if you can give a ratio, please do).[/quote]
I don’t see these as mutually exclusive. So to err on the bright side, I’ll say it’s a well-rounded ‘yes.’
I think it would be clear from the first few groups whether the kill :: respawn ratio is doable for that group. Neverwinter has very quick respawn timers, but the mobs aren’t that challenging. BDO, FF14, and WoW fall into that bucket as well.
In WoW the above concern in open world was when there used to be non-instances areas filled with elites. I can’t think of a pve game that a group was defeated regularly in open world content.
That said, I would really like to see this. 😉
Hopefully, we can still aquire decent enough rewards even without killing the boss.
I'd like to see entire teams of Mages and entire teams of Rogues.
An 8-person group with a mix of Mage/X and X/Mage. Or...
An 8-person group with a mix of Cleric/X and X/Cleric.
An 8-person group with a mix of Rogue/X and X/Rogue.
That latter group might all be able to Stealth back out, and sneak past those respawns. We might also be able to acquire Stealth from the Thieves" Guild, even if we don't have a Rogue Archetype equipped.
You may go in to a dungeon with a specific goal in mind, but that goal doesnt always need to be killing the end boss - and indeed if the dungeon is designed well, different people may have different opinions of what the end boss even is.
The definition of 'regularly' matters a lot, as players will obviously shy away from any situation in which they have the potential for this, so we can only discuss it from the perspective of if the designers intended for it to be possible.
That said I had the (mis?)fortune of dying with my group in FFXI like... yesterday.
And it was within our expectation. So, some information for you.
There is a mage enemy called a Poroggo, basically a magic casting frog.
We fought one, then moved to another with the same intention. Here's what we have to look out for:
1. Large AoE attack spells, our Dark Knight is supposed to Stun these.
2. Large CC AoE status spells, same deal.
3. AoE damage and Silence 'TP ability'
4. Single target 'Charm and transform into Frog' TP ability.
5. Self-target 'increase enemy's own magic damage' ability (Tank is supposed to dispel this).
Short version, Single target charm was used on the Tank, who is also the one who dispels effects, just as the Tank used an ability that results in magic being evaded. Now neither I nor the Dark Knight can put the Tank to sleep until the charm wears off. No big deal, in frog form she doesn't do much damage, but now we have no tank, and it falls to the Dark Knight.
So it's a split second decision of 'should we let the Dark Knight continue to take hits from both the transformed Tank and the enemy', which may interrupt spellcasting, or 'should we waste some of our potential DPS to transfer the enemy to someone else' (since the Dark Knight has to hold back their power to let the enemy target someone else).
We made the wrong call. In order to do this well, the Dark Knight must empower themselves with some abilities and magic, and at the moment she started to cast a longer one, the enemy went for large AoE fire spell. And I was in the middle of healing. So no defensive spell to reduce fire damage, and currently no 'HP Shield' on myself since if it starts to attack me I want it to do damage so it gets OFF me as soon as possible so that it doesn't Charm ME.
So down I go.
The worst part is, that if I'd survived the spell, it would only have had to use the Silence ability right after and everyone would still be low. Not unsurvivable, but the adaptation would need to happen instantly, and I'd have to Ult probably (CC Cleanse and full heal), if that was on cooldown, we'd be likely to die (the Dark Knight might survive with her Ult if the enemy didn't adapt).
Players don't fight these enemies for XP, they have other more predictable and defensive options, and death is common ENOUGH that 'prioritizing avoiding death and EXP loss' when grinding for XP is more important for many people than being challenged (but if you can avoid dying, you could conceivably kill the less defensive enemies faster).
This is also why I am wondering if Ashes will retain the current XP system which is the one I am used to. If I kill a level 11 Crab at level 6 I get 400+ exp instead of the 100 I get for a level 6 crab. Non-static exp values are a thing I generally 'assume games will have' but I realize that I have no basis for that either, I just happen to play only games where that's the case (other than BDO which I just play for contrast).
I believe and obviously hope that Ashes is planning to kill us with some Poroggo or whatever, and so far that's the experience I had in Alpha-1. If I go for something 6+ levels over, even in group, if it's not defensive, and someone goes afk, someone can fall. If someone makes the wrong decision or misses a cue to do something, someone can fall. At best your exp is meaningfully slowed while you recover from whatever.
This... doesn't seem to be the base experience (get it?) of others?
Hopefully not to derail too much but I have a related question based on something I thought about for PvX.
In the situation I am used to, I would not expect PvP in dungeons or at 'farming spots' for standard mobs very often except in the case of serious overcrowding. Here's the reason.
If my group kills enemy A with a good pull, it allows us to safely move to enemy B without worrying about A behind us, we might even fight B in the spot where A was. We defeat B as well and quickly run away from A's respawn because it will respawn SOON but not as quickly as we can engage enemy C.
While we are fighting C, A will respawn. This puts a barrier between us and a secondary group AND offers them a target to kill. If we keep moving, then B and C will also create the same 'barrier/target'.
This would reduce points of friction considerably. My question therefore is... does this actually happen in L2 as well? You've implied that the mobs can at least take long to kill even if they aren't dangerous. Which I would expect to trigger the same thing, and people would clash only when they are 'in a room that they consider safe' and 'someone else tries to use the same room'.
I wouldn't expect that a roaming group who intends to delve far INTO a dungeon has a good reason to off the group in front of them other than 'wanting to get to the boss first', but my only equivalent experiences in BDO are 'figuring out a rotation that doesn't overlap with anyone in the same area'. The concept is the same overall but the feeling of doing it is definitely not.
This interpretation is an unexpected but also totally valid one relative to what I was saying, so I'll ask about this too.
Is that also not the norm? Are the enemies in a dungeon usually tuned to be 'if you can defeat these you are definitely also ready to take on the boss'? My experience is the opposite. People there 'to farm exp or sometimes items' absolutely do not want to go NEAR the boss or the Elites in the same area because they aren't strong enough for that.
I'm used to a form of cooperation where people will literally go:
"[TO Server Chat or to Friend with known strong guild]: Yo, $BOSS is up, there are three parties here, we'll keep the random enemies off you if you protect us from having to worry about it."
I believe I've experienced in NeverWinter just the 'the Dungeon is a single adventure' but that's not really open world in the same way so I don't count that. Should I be counting it? And regardless of all that, would you PREFER that if you can clear the dungeon mobs you can probably take on the Boss?
Again, my experience.
With instanced dungeons, people usually only attempt them if they feel they can take on the boss.
There is often little to no point in running an instanced dungeon without taking on the boss, as the loot is significantly worse, and the experience from instances is significantly lower than from open dungeons.
In Lineage 2 the situation you gave as example were the groups Monster Kill Time is slow and the respawn is fast enough for neither groups having to wait for respawns, friction would be quite unlikely unless both groups had some hatred for each other or were from enemy clans, this type of situation would most likely generate comradery for both groups to keep their room against a possible stronger group with a faster MTK wanting to take over the whole room.
The main sources of conflict for dungeon rooms other than the dungeons being overcrowded is most likely going to be:
Rooms with better monster density for better expgold per hour
Rooms with specific monsters that might have very lucrative loot tables
Rooms that literally have Clan enemies
Aren't we all sinners?
Albion has dungeons designed for solo, small groups and larger groups. Some dungeons and camps around them can offer content for all kind of players but it is getting progressively harder deeper you go. I personally like this design approach because it does not exclude players out but can still offer something for everyone.
Open world dungeons can offer good and bad experiences also depending what you are looking for. In open world dungeons the experience is also about interaction with other players and groups. The fact that dungeons are more or less cleared just needs to be approved, however, if this happens too frequently it starts to frustrate players as well. Typically this is the case with nearest dungeons or the ones which offer best XP, currency and loot. If there is enough variations available it will ofc help with this issue.
Open world will also add PvP possibility or at least threath of the PvP action. Because of the corruption system we could presume that most of the times groups just by passes each other but sometimes PvP encounters will happen for sure. The worst experiences can be when groups are just stomped by another one because larger numbers or surprise attacks in the middle of the boss fight, for example. Of course the experience can be different if you are on that ganking side. Anyhow, those fights which turn out to be more even are interesting because the outcome can go either way. The dungeon level design has also role here and if there are several hallways and choke points that will add more strategy to the encounter situations.
Here's 2 examples of maps. One is a huge dungeon with an Epic Boss at the end (Steven has mentioned it on streams before) and the other is an event-based Catacomb w/o a boss (iirc). Depending on how good your gear is, your whole party could be taking one small room and refreshing your buffs/mana in-between respawns, or you could do this type of shit
And if you were that kind of overboosted, it'd usually mean that your guild has some enemies and your ass might get got at any moment (though I dunno the situation with the person in this particular video).
But I'd say this is a good example of tight gear scaling with an OE system. People have t4-5 in the video and manage to kill each other pretty much equally. While some OE on a strong character (a ton of dvp's strength came from Epic Jewelry that gave a ton of great stats, so that's a huge factor too) allows you to have the upper hand. Also, this video obviously shows the successful attacks, so it's not like his OE gear literally always won.
Is this a matter of being overleveled or just overgeared?
In the system I'm familiar with, that Ashes seems to use currently, IF this was 'overleveled', then the exp would drop to around 15xp per kill, THEN spread across the whole party. Whereas going to a strong zone and fighting one (or 3+ I guess if we're considering Lineage style) and barely surviving would grant anywhere from 300-400 xp per kill.
The information I can find indicates that Lineage works the same, so I would assume overgeared, but I will await your clarification.
On top of that, the mobs are only x5 hp, so they're not as fat as some of the higher lvled ones can be (x8 is the biggest multiplier iirc) and this person's class is designed for aoe CCing, so most of the mobs are stunned, which greatly decreases their dmg output. And the farmer's buffs are all top lvl, so it's also a case of overbuffed too, which is a huuuge factor in L2.
It's noted, and I'm thankful, I really wouldn't have thought it was possible to do that level of increase in power from OE due to the further trivialization of PvE that would result from it. For my personal tastes, I'll hope that's not how it works in Ashes, but good to know overall.
Would there be any incentive to taking on stronger enemies with the overgeared form instead, in terms of farm speed? BDO is the only game I have kept playing where the economy is based on 'Trash Loot' or 'standard Gold per hour' as the actual purpose of the farming time, and as you know, the most efficient farm in that game is 'kill whatever you can basically one-two shot as fast as possible because killing harder stuff is slower but rewards around the same $$'.
Plus there's the option of preferred loot. They might've been going for some specific thing they wanted to drop and this was the best place to do it at that level.
And as for high OE impacting things this much. This is the exact reason why I pushed so hard for OE being very rare and expensive and, ideally, with a chance of failure. But L2's official servers are the greatest examples of horrid p2w shop features, so that whole discussion, that we've had multiple times by now, doesn't really apply here. But overall, yes, I do hope OE won't influence things as much, even though this kind of boost was fairly rare on the older version of the game where you didn't have all the "+20% to chance of success" scrolls and "safe enchant scroll that doesn't destroy your weapon" was suuuper expensive so only the chosen few on the server would go this far, which is why I believe that proper acquisition balancing would work just fine.
In this video its definitely not a matter of overlevel due to the color of the monsters name which are mostly white and some yellow(they are most likely 1-5 level above the player) but a matter of both overgear(mainly the weapon) and overbuff(atleast 3 other classes are providing the best buffs avaliable for the grind, one of the buffers is atleast lv 76 due to the one of the buffs in the character's buff bar)(None of the buffers including the lvl 76 buffer aren't on his party, otherwise it would destroy the exp as he is lvl 64 and L2 has penalty for big level disparities of party members)
There is also some other factors that makes this grind possible, the monsters he is fighting use close range stuns but his Armor Set provides stun resistance, the monsters he is fighting have a tendency to not spam long range attacks/skills, but to fight at close-range, he is positioning himself between a small 90° angle geodata slot to allow his spear swings to hit the most monsters possible and keeping them stunned frequently due to those monsters not being resistent to stuns.
This is for sure a modern optimal farm strategy for his setup.
For a clarification on overlevel, yes, overlevel advantage over monsters would dramatically nerf exp, and also drop rate, exp level diff table changed a bit along the game updates but i can give this one as an example:
Aren't we all sinners?
Have you been able to enjoy games where this isn't the case? I would expect that any owPvP game where high level players rapidly mow down low level enemies for decent benefit is asking for big trouble...
And this is definitely the biggest reason why I hope that artisanal professions can be balanced in such a way that low lvl players can stay low lvl and still be super useful because their artisanry works in those places where high lvl artisanry doesn't.
My biggest example for that is the Spoiler class from L2. It was pretty much a specified class for gathering cause it let you get more resources from a dead mob. And there'd be a few low lvl locations that provided you with a ton of great resources at a low time/power investment. In L2 those places were usually filled by alts of high lvl dudes, but that's exactly because the system wasn't balanced too well around not having a constant inflow of newbies. Intrepid could account for that in their design.
But the point is, low lvl players could earn some good money by farming those lucrative locations w/o really fearing that some high lvl dude would just come there and kill them w/o a problem. Now obviously, the fact that most of them were alts, usually it went like this: I'm farming a location and see another Spoiler running to it; I fight with him and win out just barely, because our power lvl is similar; he says "oh, f u, I'm gonna bring my main and kill you; he brings his main and it's a dude from a warring guild; I bring my own main and we fight. Usually it would go 2 ways from there: one side either completely overpowered the other with their main, or we'd fight for a pretty long while sometimes even asking our guildmates to help
One of the problems I could see with this kind of setup is more pvp for the casuals who decided to stay at low lvls. Either from alt chars or just from guild-supported newbies in better gear. Though at that point I'd personally just look for a guild to get the same kind of support, but obviously that's cause I'm fine with fighting in that kind of situation, while someone like Dygz might be out of his "pvp allotted time" for that day and might just give some corruption to the attacker until they leave. But that would require at least a few kills, because the attacker themselves is at the same lvl and will be getting lower amounts of corruption than if it was a high lvl dude.
But either way, all of that will be tested during the alpha2, so we'll see.
No problem, i bring L2 designs and examples not only because it is the game i'm most knowledgeable of, but because its expected to be one of the main sources of inspiration for Ashes therefore they are probably relevant when dicussing many topics.
Not at all, never had and probably wouldn't, this looks like terrible game design.
Aren't we all sinners?
What PvE do I enjoy? Exploration, crafting, building, collecting(sometimes), and maybe a few raids? Raiding was always a bit of a hassle for me because of the amount of time it takes but I did enjoy hanging out with friends and figuring out big bosses, and it was the best loot so I needed that for PvP; not crazy about doing them for loot but I have to respect the grind and it balances things out.