Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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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
So the answer is easy mode so everyone can get a trophy?
Homogenization is super boring. It is the main reason I hate GW2.
I do find the idea that everyone should get everything with zero challenges an interesting one.
Why should that be a thing. There are several ""MMO'S"" out there already that cater to those that want that.
Why should everything be catered to the lowest common denominator vs expecting people to work to improve and rise to the challenge.
As Hidetaka Miyazaki of Fromsoftware said "But when asked if he’d ever consider lowering the difficulty of these titles, Miyazaki firmly believes otherwise. According to him, reducing the difficulty would not only diminish the sense of achievement but “break the game itself.” This is rooted in his philosophy about how challenge and failure are essential to the experience."
https://fandomwire.com/hidetaka-miyazakis-personal-philosophy-on-elden-ring-that-he-wont-ever-compromise-on-that-would-break-the-game-itself/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elden_Ring
It sold over 28 million copies, also making it one of the best-selling games of all time.
So the idea that a challenging came cannot be successful seems really short sighted.
I see your point of view, but we still not have seen secondary archetypes. I potentially can add enough variety to the archetypes to not bore people too fast. And i would be personnally happy, if warrior can offtank/tank in group(not raid) context with the good secondary archetype/spec.
1. Splitting 1 class into two does not make a second class.
2. Replacing the word Class with Archetype dosen't make it different.
3. 9 classes each of which had 3 distinct fighting styles. This game does not and will not have that.
4. Your second point undermines your first point.
Why does your first point undermine you second point? I'm so glad you asked. Because archetypes are more generic then classes, they are a type of super-class. WoW Warriors, had three distinct builds, one of which was a Tank spec that is very similar to the tank class in this game. So even in your example the "Archtypes" don't behave like Archetypes they behave like classes. How do classes behave in RPG? Well they define your role, one of the archtypes is literally called tank, and they determine your primary skill set. Exactly what these archtypes do, they define your role and give you a skill set.
Classes are the foundation of the game. They determine how you interact with every system in the game, they determine your motivations, where you farm, what you farm, how you interact with other people, what mats you go after. Everything you do in the game is done through the lens of your class and what it can and can't do, and what it does and doesn't need.
The class system is the most important system of any RPG. And having a wide selection, either through customization, or wide class selection is extremely important, espically now since so many people have played the basic classes.
Who are you talking to?
No one said anything about things not being challenging. Instancing things prevents griefing and other bad behaviors. Instanced dungeons can still be challenging its not even hard to do. Watch this.
When you enter dungeons all passive regen is turned off. See not hard.
Oh, and probably not best to point at a single player soft core ARPG as a comparison to a Hardcore MMORPG. They are about as far apart as you can get.
Imagine thinking instanced stuff = easy. Someone never played M+ in WoW lol. People lack vision so much it kinda hurts!
You replied to a comment saying that instanced content has a purpose, and Ashes is currently lacking as a game in the areas in which instanced content solves.
Your reply was "why can't we have a game based around group content and player interaction".
My reply was that you can have a game based around group content and player interaction, and have it be mostly instanced - because instancing doesn't prevent group content or player interaction.
I am unsure what your post that I am replying to here is. It's almost as if you are saying I need permission to post my opinion.
Challenge and instancing are not incompatible ideals.
Challenge from PvE has been proven to sell well.
Challenge from PvP selling well in an MMORPG is completely unproven.
For the record, Elden Ring is not that challenging. It's mid tier at best.
Edit; also, Ashes will not have challenging PvE at all. The entire challenge aspect of Ashes is from PvP, meaning if there is no one there to challenge you, there is literally zero challenge.
Now he gets data about how players interact while he still adds features.
He is learning something from this.
If population drops a lot during Alpha 2, he cannot ignore it. He has to make the game interesting enough before the full release, otherwise the entire open development concept will turn out to be a bad idea.
I love your confidence in Intrepid, but lots of features that drive people away are stuff they put in because of an outdated and dangerous philosophy they cling to pretty hard. It rly boils down to "the game has to be "hardcore" while catering to PvP enjoyers only". They wish to make the game to be a newer take on old mmos, but fail to graps that the very reason we have moved on from outdate features like XP penalty on death, no fast-travel, open-world only PvE is because the majority of mmo players don't want that kind of systems anymore. We have moved on because we realized there are better ways to do things. We can actually make games that cater as much to PvP focused players as PvE players, while retaining challenge and fostering a sense of accomplishment by using different methods. They forgot that QoL =/= easy and they are gonna pay dearly for their mistakes when the game launches. Any serious mmo veteran who's seen the games come and go since the early 2000's will tell you the cracks in AoC's fondation are already substantial and it's getting difficult to see how this project can work out on the long term.
Alpha 2 will take at least 2 years.
You think they'll reach full release if they get no feedback anymore because nobody plays?
All those questions are useless if they ignore the answers.
And here is the real problem. The things we are pointing out aren't balance problems that can be solved by data. They are conceptual problems, which means all the data in the world wont help with solving them.
Here are some examples.
People dragging trains of mobs into groups in dungeons, this is not a problem that can be solved by more data. The only way to solve this is to mercilessly ban everyone that does it, or separate the dungeon from the open world. The latter is called instancing which they have already said there not doing, and the former has 3 problems first it will catch people that did nothing wrong just accidently wandered into the wrong area, second it doesn't actually prevent anything, and third prevention may not be enough, because we have Twitch and YouTube now and this behavior is monetizable which means even if you do perma ban entire accounts (or IPs) on the first offence no matter what, people still might do it because the 60-90 dollars it costs them is worth the 1k the video will make them over the next 3 months.
The corruption system has a huge loop hole which is your friends can kill you after you go corrupt and give you all your shit back. This system can't be fixed, it's a logical impossibility. I can go over why it wont work if you want.
Arenas are planned (1v1s - 5v5s), the balancing plan is to balance to a full group. These two things don't coexist for a reason. Having arenas means you need to balance the classes to each other not at the group level. The reason being that certain classes will outshine every other class and end up dominating so hard that everyone rerolls that class, then the fights become stale and boring.
The game is filled with problems like this. These aren't data issues they are concept issues.
Maybe these examples can be solved.
The scarcity could solve the corruption system loop hole by increasing gear durability loss and increase materials needed to repair if the corrupted player is killed fast after becoming corrupted.
The one I cannot solve is how to make the game feel good to people who hate losing progress in a game where resources are supposed to be scarce.
But my statement you quoted still stands: Steven needs to see what happens before acting.
It is up to Steven to decide.
The worst thing to happen is Steven to lose passion and to try to make a game he doesn't like for players he don't understand.
At the same time, if Intrepid persists in pushing systems that they themselves enjoy, but the player base does not, they will lose the player base and the whole thing will crumble. They need to make their vision of the game in symbiosis with what the player base expects from an mmo. You can't always do what you want to. Sometimes you have to compromise.
They have stated they will have challenging raid level pve in instances.
Do you think they can't or won't do this?
I never played elden ring. Not really my play style. But I do remember the vast amount of whimpering about how they need an easy story mode, that was my only point on that.
Maybe it's because I am old but I remember when looking at a significant challenge and working to overcome it was seen as a virtue. Now everything needs to be oversimplified or made so everyone can do it.
M+ was a good time for a bit but could be expanded further.
Same for the mythic raids in WOW. Fun to figure out the safety dance and hoping the rest of your team can sync to the proper dance moves.
Seeking to understand.
Is your concern here that they haven't added instance content yet.
As far as your training mobs concern. When they fix the aggro so they don't randomly jump ship and either stay on the person pulling them till death and rest or reach their max leash and reset most of that will go away.
The same is, of course, true about his criticisms of mob training. There are many alternative solutions; some complex, some simple. Better mob aggro when leashing. Reduced corruption penalties in train-heavy areas to encourage PvP. A fixed corruption system that permits modest amounts of PvP. Airborne is just defeatist and refuses to engage in good faith discussion. He spouts the same few things and doesn’t acknowledge opposing points. For an example, see: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/495491
How do you determine what piece of gear they lose? Is it random or is it fixed? If it's random be ready for a shit storm because people will bitch wildly that it's unfair, and they will be right by the way. That would be unfair. Okay make it fixed then what well now they know what piece of gear they lose and just remove that piece of gear, Okay then we make it so that if they don't have that gear on it goes to a different one. Well then they put a shitty pair of boots on that costs 2 silver, and now they lose almost nothing. Okay well we will make it random, but keep it...do you know where this ends? It ends with the devs tracking the item in question, which is were you lose because then I trade it to someone for gold or a different item have my friend kill me to remove the corruption and the top tier ultra mega boots that I just sold to somebody else disappears. And I walk away with the gold I need to buy they piece of gear I just sold from my guildie that will charge me half of what I charged the other guy.
I don't have a problem with a good faith argument, but I wont waste my time with someone that has blind faith.
As for mob training, nothing about what you said will stop it from occurring, it will reduce it, but the only way to prevent training is to instance the dungeons. At the end of the day you have to remember that people in dungeons are attacking large groups of mobs some, if not most of them, will be using AoE abilities. Which means it will be harder to do but not impossible, and probably not even difficult.
Do you always try to understand people by putting words in their mouth?
I'm concerned that the game is putting systems in the game that were out dated 20 years ago, and pretending that they can fix the problems, in a different way that has already been proven to work, will be a massive waste of time and money.
I'm concerned that the game is focusing on hyper-niche communities inside of a niche genre which will cause a population collapse almost immediately after launch, not a small one either.
I'm concerned that some of the marketing for this game is, at the very least, borderline false advertising.
I'm concerned that the people that should be putting pressure on this game about valid criticisms, are instead responding with things like "this is Steven's vision" or "there gonna fix it" which is equivalent to "the lord works in mysterious ways".
Then people wont participate in the system, because their not going to risk their chest piece that took them 2 weeks to get for maybe 3 gold of mats, or they will hand all their shit to their friend and then have them kill them.
And if you make it weighted they will figure out what to wear in what combination to make it predictable.
Edit: Do everyone a favor. After you think of a solution instead of declaring victory and shutting your brain off try to figure out how someone might circumvent that solution.
Interesting.
What words did I put into your mouth?
Serious question.
New doesn't mean better.
Look up Chesterton's fence.
So far Intrepid's only marketing I have seen is word of mouth. If you have seen ads or something please share
This last paragraph is amusing. Would you clarify please. Cause you know asking questions is putting words in peoples mouths and I don't want to do that.
I think instancing has a time and place and does add value when used properly but should not be the catch all because people might be people.
Guild Wars was mostly instances out side of the towns. That was 20 years ago and I would agree that is a dated system. Open world interactions is much better then limited interactions.
I played on Burning Blade in WOW a long time ago (PVP server). Was great fun even back then. Trolling and being trolled. Running out and taking Ally towns or pushing them out of Tarren Mill.
I do understand what weighted means but you don't understand what I give my shit to someone else so I don't lose anything means.
But, lets assume for a second you make a system that is lock tight in it ability to punish people.
Now what do we do about people that accidently flag, or get tricked into flagging red?
Player to player trading, interacting with vendors or NPCs, unequipping gear, and the ability to access storage is disabled for corrupted players. This will be implemented during or after Alpha-2 phase-2.[39][40][9][41]
Previously it was stated that corrupted players could not store items in public warehouses but could utilize private storage within their freehold.[9][41]
Corrupted players will still be able to enter and leave their freehold buildings but may not deposit or withdraw items from storage.[40]
And nobody will go "accidentally" corrupt.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_flagging
Combatant (purple)
Players are flagged as combatants if they attack another (non-corrupted) player when carrying out a forced attack. If the attacked player fights back, they are also flagged as combatants, otherwise the attacked player will remain flagged as a non-combatant.[20][22][11]
This also applies to attacks made by combat pets, summons, or any other player-controlled entities.[7][23]
Non-combatants entering an open world battleground (PvP event) are automatically flagged as combatants and remain flagged for a period of time after leaving that battleground.[10]
Non-combatants who heal, buff, or otherwise interact with combatants or corrupted players will be flagged as combatants.[24][25][26][27]
Players can kill combatants without repercussions, and are encouraged to do so, since dying while a combatant has reduced death penalties.[11]
Players are not able to manually set their flagging status to combatant.[22]
Players remain flagged for a period of 90 seconds following their most recent attack on a non-combatant or another combatant.[28]
Player nameplate will blink to give warning that the combatant status is about to be removed. This is targeted for sometime in Alpha-2 phase-2.[29][30]
Repeating what I said in the post is not moving the goal post. And you shouldn't bother responding to this.
People already have.
And not being able to trade wont last. It prevents a person from getting the reward that they are supposed to get for the risk they took.
Ah, perhaps you’re right. It might be closer to special pleading than a traditional moving the goalposts. There’s a good strawman mixed in there, too, in the part where you repeatedly misconstrue opposing arguments and then make concessions on the other side’s behalf that they themselves would not make.
The issue with this take is that Elden Ring are the most accessible fromsoftware game to date.
Elden Ring has so many ways that you can play it that absolutely break the difficulty. If you want, it can be the easiest game in their whole catalog.
Also, At this point in their career they’ve also removed a lot of the more annoying mechanics that AoC want to reintroduce.
Long run back, XP debt (demon souls) etc.
If Elden ring is the gold standard for a difficult game, AoC is going backwards.