Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
some people need more engagement from leadership then others. It happens not a big deal just have to adjust accordingly.
Yes, those people that feel they need more engagement from leadership do indeed need to adjust accordingly, and it is not a big deal.
Yeah some of them will need to. Others won't. But it would be best to let them know every so often they are listening.
That is what patch notes are for - when there is something worth talking about.
There is literally no point in talking if you don't have something to say.
It wasn't the title. It was the wall of text that stood behind it. So long, I didn't read a single word of it...
I do not mind walls of text, I just need to feel it is worth the time to start reading....
Running and defending a caravan should have some tangible risk, just not to the point where players are discouraged due to tyrant pvp guilds. BUT you can't stop the aggressor from attacking caravans. That's part of the fun; if it's red it's dead. Solutions?
I have seen suggestions to give defenders the ability to surrender to attackers, and that way the caravan is saved and only the cargo is lost. Or just gold if a ransom is paid. But the entire PvE cargo is still lost to PvP griefers.
But the attackers gain nothing! I have 2 suggestions, a simple one and a complicated one:
1. Simple -> Create caravan-specific PvP rewards, and let defender keep his PvE crates. They just lose the caravan + Launch Fee, and feed rewards to attackers over and over until they arrive at destination. So maybe add diminishing returns somewhere, and/or offer similar PvP rewards to attract caravan defenders.
Also: caravans should be unattackable by citizens of the same departure and arrival nodes. If a PuG group is composed of citizens from various nodes, then having even 1 co-citizen in the group will cause the caravan to turn Friendly
2. Complicated -> My suggestion would be to give defenders the option to buy Crate Insurance (lol) from the node. This would either replace/iterate/compliment the "Launch Fee" by a variable pricing formula. .
If a player pays for crate insurance and their caravan gets griefed they only lose the caravan, and attackers get rewarded with a PvP currency equivalent to Glint which can be used to purchase PvP-oriented rewards such as mounts, cosmetic items, or even contribute to their ranking in a weekly caravan-slaying PvP ladder. (not gold, for economic reasons. We need to limit gold creation to control inflation over time). Gankers should get PvP rewards that contribute to their node or their character. Defenders should just lose time and manageable amounts of gold. And the amount of crate insurance bought by caravan runners will determine the amount of PvP rewards obtainable by the attackers. Thus caravan cargo farmed via PvE, cannot be lost via PvP events. The loss from a PvP event should not affect items/cargo obtained via PvE, and vice versa.
Players will never lose their insured crates, and they can be marked with a green text like "stolen" items are marked in red text. Green text remains until the caravan arrives at destination and Objective Complete! The insurance must be paid in gold by the player running the caravan. It is paid to an unaffiliated NPC located in the node, maybe standing next to the caravan master...? Or just replace/redesign the launch fee? And this method also helps remove gold from the economy. This not only acts as a way to reduce a server's money supply and inflation, but also prevents corruption by the players.
The price of insurance should be fixed by the server, and not by the players. We don't want to see uninsurable nodes, or corrupted guilds ganking their own caravans just to increase price of insurance...
The price could just be linked to the route and it's potential profit, and/or also be based on the caravan player's level, their PvP rank, their gearscore, etc...
That's how players can always find a route somewhere on the map to make money with caravans, while PvPers can enjoy hunting and killing caravans non-stop. Or defend 24/7 if defenders can also get caravan-specific PvP rewards!
That's cute. you called that a wall of text.
Also not solo friendly is an issue
To be fair, this is an intended feature a number of us are looking forward to. The world is big, and it feels big because fast travel and flying mounts don’t diminish its scale.
And -
the scale of the world is what allows solo players to explore, find less populated nodes, and grow at their own pace away from the major population centers.
An issue they don't care about.
Which makes no difference, all that will happen is some guild will see that you have created something they want and you WILL be forced to render under Caesar, or else.
What an ignorant thing to say lol the developers acknowledging an issue tends to put people at ease, even if the issue isn't actually fixed immediately. It shows that the developers are aware and paying attention to their userbase, and will generally lead to some level of trust from said userbase.
One of the absolute worst things you can do is not communicate with your users, and ignoring widespread and/or serious issues that have been reported is a very quick way to alienate your userbase and lose trust and confidence.
Caravans money printers, the state of resource management systems, gatherable resource scarcity for some resources, and static resource spawn locations and resource respawn timers really undermine any idea we are supposed to be testing the game's economy in Phase2.
Lack of features like guild bank, items literally disappearing from storage (soon also as a result of lost node wars), state of UI and UX when interacting with inventory, processing/crafting stations and the marketplace...just the final nails to the coffin of "economy testing" from my perspective.
Blown past falling sands…
Yes we are testing those things, but printing money is the most obvious failure. This would never work in any scenario. You are injecting gold into the game every day which means constant inflation. It's a TERRIBLE idea to begin with. At least with resources you don't have the gold to back them, and if there are enough sinks with node progression and professions it balances out.
The argument wasn't that it doesn't put people at ease.
The argument was that if you have an issue that is resolved by it being acknowledged, you have no issue.
Since that is what my point was and is, it would seem that it is your comment that is ignorant - unless you think acknowledging an issue is in and of itself a fix to said issue.
Well that's almost certainly true, but let the members of The Cult of Steven's Vision catch you saying that. This game is doing all kinds of new never before seen mechanics according to them.
People forgot that MMO's are by the very idea a group based game. Look at the overload of single player shared world experiences being labeled as MMO's.
Why are we not allowed to have one game that centers on player interaction and grouping?
People also forget that in most MMORPG's, instances are inherently group or raid content.
The notion that a game based around player interaction and group can not have instances - or even be mostly instances - is just flat out incorrect.
I'm not saying you should be wanting Ashes to have more instanced content, but if you want an open world MMORPG, have a real argument for it or don't bother arguing.
Oh but the studio sure has every right to develop a game based entirely on open-world content catered to guilds if they wish so. It's theirs and their investors money. They can't just pretend to be surprised when the game loses 80% of it's subs after 2 months and enters maintenance mode after just a year only to close shortly after. This isn't 2004 anymore. The market is oversaturated and you can't realistically have such designs in an mmo and have real hopes of it surviving. Especially a game of that proportion and cost. It's vital for an mmo in this era to have a balance between catering to hard-core players and casuals at the same time. Failing to do so is a grave mistake.
First of all, a shared world does not necessarily mean shared content.
Second of all none of what he said prevents group content. Nor does it address what he is talking about.
He's saying these are all problems we had before and they were solved.
How exactly? They aren't going to instance the dungeons they already made that clear. Which by the way is the only way to solve this problem.
Any other solution wont prevent anything, it might punish people for doing it, but then that's not a solution to the problem. It's a deterrent, which means people will still do it.
And a deterrent won't work because there are factors now that didn't exist 26 years ago which complicate the issue. Like the fact that people can monetize this behavior. So even charging 60 dollars for every time a person is banned won't stop them because thier making 1000 dollars per video and they can get 4 or 5 videos of content before being banned. So pay 60 dollars for 5 grand? Yeah I would take that deal any day of the week, even if it comes with a few hours of editing.
Who said there couldn't be instances? Ashes is slated to have roughly 20% instanced content.
Last line sounds like you might need a hug. Hit up Dygz for that.
I'd be surprised if the game made it a whole year. It encourages the worst kind of toxic behavior, and punishes people that try to create any sense of community, it's actively hostile to new players, introduces levels of complications with no reward, the combat is extremely pedestrian, the classes are generic, they only have 7 classes which is insanely low (EQ had 14 on launch). There's only 1 tank, named Tank (which is symptomatic of the lack of imagination this game suffers from), one healer, again lack of imagination, I could keep going but I made my point.
And to the people that will say, "uh, its like alpha bro there gonna fix all that" or "omg bro trust Steven's vision" everything I mentioned is planned.
Steven and people like you. Instancing the boss fights means nothing. The bosses will get farmed and anyone that can't farm the entire dungeon won't bother.
2. Wow had 9 classes to play (8 per faction) at launch.
Not sure the number the classes mean anything by itself.
For now, I'd rather Intrepid work on giving the game a stronger foundation than making more classes/archetypes. It's fine the way it is now, but other archetypes should be able to tank and heal. Having only one archetype for these roles isn't nearly enough. Warrior could easily have a set of talents that let them tank and bard could have a pure healing build. Some people like playing mmos while only doing a single role all the time and they will get bored pretty quickly if they only have a single archetype to enjoy.