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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.
Comments
Yes, thank you for saying that.
In L2 it would take alliances to raid (and fight off enemies in pvp) an epic boss and loot the epic drop. An alliance had 4-5 clans, each clan had 80-100 members. Do you know how much negotiation took for who gets to equip the epic drop from the entire alliance?
And now you guys talking about some random solo dude grouping up with a guild, just to walk away with the flying mount egg?
Why do people like to be lied to?
Bruh I didn't say that, the other guy is the one who said something that I didn't even mention.
Sighhh.
That would depend entirely on what loot rules are being used. That "random solo dude" can absolutely walk away with the mount if it is left to the regular "need, greed, pass" system. And if they use master loot then the "random dude" will know so beforehand and can decide not to participate if it does not suit them.
If the scenario of L2 would be true - and it would require multiple Guild alliances to bring down a boss - then I know I'd prefer the NGP system to avoid ninja looting between guilds; especially if I do not know the other Guild well. (And that is as someone who has been GM and officer in several guilds, some server competative).
I mean, I have given away very rare loot to random pugs back in the day, when they won the raid rolls. They contributed and get the same chance as everybody else.
Are the chances slim af? You bet. And situational af on top of that. But regarding flying in particular, it is about the same as it would be for a "regular" Guild player and the topic was regarding group players vs solo players. In short, flying is not going to be a thing for the vast majority of players.
Looting happens within a given party - which as I posted earlier in this thread can be a solo player, a group or a raid. This party unit is the unit that is awarded loot rights, based on damage dealt.
If you have an alliance of 4 or 5 guilds, each bringing 100+ people, there is still only going to be one raid of 40 players that are given loot rights. As such, if that raid is set to need or greed system, only 40 out of the 400 - 500 players present in the alliance are given the option to need, greed or pass.
In content like this, on a scale like this, an agreement between all parties in the alliance is literally the only possibility.
Really though, on world bosses, it doesn't matter what loot systems are in place. These mobs will be taken out by guilds and/or alliances. A random solo player has no place with this content.
World events though, that is a different story.
A solo player would probably only ask to join if it was to either take part in it just so he could see the fight as content he can't do alone, or if there are any cinematic or story progressions bits tied to it...
But if there isn't anything like that, AND no random loot chance they would get anything out of it, they probably won't bother being a part of it anyways as there isn't anything for them to gain.
Right. First of all, no. I have never played PvX games that require more than 300 players while enabling PvP (only PvE loot pinata bosses)... Not sure if that sounds like an amazing amount of fun or like an impossible terror fiesta.
If you are correct and those are the numbers required for world bosses then sure, I forfeit my case (although, I'd imagine pugging would be a thing with those numbers - but I dare not confidently say that guilds would be willing to roll out flying mounts to said pugs). Is there any confirmation on that those are the numbers for world bosses though? I'd imagine it might be the case for the "legendary world bosses", but for the regular ones?
Speaking of which - wiki has one quote that says flying mount might drop from legendary world bosses, and another saying that eggs might be acquired from "world bosses" - so I am not sure whenever both quotes are true (egg from regular world bosses, ready mounts from legendary world bosses).
Either way, before I drop the flying topic completely, I am going to repeat my point from the post you quoted:
When it comes to group play vs solo play (which is what this topic is about) flying isn't really something worth discussing. A regular level group player and a regular level solo player are both likely to never experience flying in AoC as it is reserved to much less than 1% of the server population. Even among the hardcore communities it is going to be rare af. Realistically, regular to "good" players will probably have gliding mounts at best (which is 100% fine by me - I prefer it that way). I mean, the flying mounts even comes with tons of restrictions like only being able to fly if mounted from the royal stables and only being able to fly 20-30 minutes at the time. ... ... And being killable (though they can obviously respawn like any other mount). : ] https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Royal_mounts
Which is why in WoW basically all top percentile raids were prescreened players and most of the time used DKP on top of that so that the "new guy" to the raid couldn't just take something via "need" on the first time they are in (unless nobody else in the group wanted the item)
When Steven says mounts will drop from legendary world bosses and mount eggs will drop from world bosses, it is safe to assume that is the same thing but in different context. Agreed.
To me, in this discussion, a "flying mount" is essentially analogous for any highly desired, rare item dropped from world bosses. As such, it could be a weapon, shield, accessory or piece of armor we are talking about here, and the above stands true.
As to how good content is when there are 300 people or more in an alliance to kill it - honestly as an encounter to kill it's kind of boring. None of the bosses in Archeage (or L2 from all I have been told) would stand up as even being in the top 50 bosses in EQ2.
As a PvP experience though, it's essentially unparalleled.
doesn't matter if its 300 or 50 for a boss. they gonna kill all solo players and take the loot
I was just memeing tbh. Though it is true if he solo's a boss he will get al the loot. Not that anyone will really be doing that with how the game most likely will be designed.
As for playing solo, if you want go for it. To be honest no matter the mechanics of this game alot of people are going to start from that perspective. However i do concur that its been clearly stated it is not a game meant to be played alone. It is going to be difficult for you alone to achieve what you are probably used to achieving alone in other mmo’s.
you wont drop if the mount if you are killed .-.
also, if you gonna get gangbanged, just fly away and laugh at them
You bring up some interesting discussion points!
As a reminder, while flight-capable royal mounts can drop from World bosses as eggs, royal mounts are capable of true flight when utilized by Mayors of metropolis nodes or Kings and Queens of Guild castles.
@Vaknar
For the sake of clarification - as the above can be taken different ways - does the above mean royal mounts ridden by someone other than Metropolis mayors and kings/queens do not have true flight?
If so, should we assume that these mounts function as gliders?
That's news.
What you wrote means that only current metro mayors and castle owning guild leaders can ever fly.
Not to act all smug here but from this thread on April, 26th:
And I think I've read this the first time at least 8 months ago. At least in my mind this has been a long established fact - or as close to a fact as it can be during an Alpha stage project. Steven has been on record saying that the game is primarily balanced for groups and I think it is reasonable to assume that this is something that cannot be simply outdone by "risk vs reward" because at some point it is more about the limitations of skills one character on their own has compared to a group. And giving people the tools to overcome challenges alone means that they would probably take that route rather than dealing with the social hurdles which - imo - seems to be what Intrepid wants to encourage players again to do by making social gameplay basically a core mechanic. Does this happen "at the expense" of solo players? Sure, they will not be able to experience this game fully, but like Steven said in the recent Q&A: The core mechanics of the world are not up for debate. And I see strong indicators that group gameplay is such a core mechanic, which means solo gameplay is a secondary playstyle at most.
The problem here is one of chronology.
The comment being quoted - both above and in other places in this thread - is from 2017. Back then, being king, queen or mayor of a metropolis was the only way to get a royal mount.
Then came mention of royal mount eggs being dropped from raid bosses. At the time, that was new information.
When we were given details about raid dropped royal mounts, we were told that they would be rare, they would require some work to hatch, and they would then only last 2 to 4 weeks.
We were also told they would be flying mounts.
Since this information was newer than the above quote, the assumption literally everyone made at the time was that this new information about flying mounts superceded the old information we had (the above quote).
If we are to now assume the above quote - the older information - is still true, then we have conflicting information on this matter. This is why I asked @Vaknar for clarification in my post above. Is the old information about only mayors and monarchs being able to fly (originally only true due to them being the only ones with access to flying mounts), or is the new information about flying mounts being dropped true?
Just for reference, from the wiki
I feel the same way too, like in ESO they don't have flying mounts. I am not a fan of how they make only the guild leader, town hall, or royal have flying mounts, it makes players not play solo and everyone wants to be Mayer because they want to get their first flying mount. I wonder if people can still use flying mount once they drop their status as Mayer, guild master, or king. And this will create a way for players who want to cheat or using 3rd party script code to make game codes recognize as part of it. Instead, they should make everyone use flying mounts or no mounts at all. Make away solo players can earn flying mounts, not only guild leaders, Mayers, or kings of the metropolis.
I would suggest that AoC does a clean-up of the wiki and other known topics of confusion, and announce this next month.
They would probably want to give players a few months to come up with as much conflicting information as we can find though. We would need to find all areas on the wiki where that conflicting information is present, otherwise Lex would have a hell of a time updating it all.