Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five 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 five 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
Well first I love that you assume I'm Enveus and you can add that one on top of the list of takes you are wrong about today.
Second, I also love that you think that heroic+ scrolls/charms are cheap or makes that much of a difference. Wrong on both cases, again. Also if you've only been using common scrolls and charms, proves me right again that you don't know what you're talking about.
Ironic that you're the one speaking of things smart to say when you clearly do not play this game enough to understand the core fundamentals, do not understand basic math, do not understand game economy.
I've played games for a very long time and always found that games with higher TTK were the most enjoyable. I've taken a very different view to the recent changes than you have. Do I think it needs work? Of course. Is it the right direction? Absolutely!
1. Stat Fatigue & Diminished Clarity
I completely disagree. As someone who regularly min/max everything, percentages are percentages. The number doesn’t matter. Assuming that the average player base can’t see that bigger equals better isn’t the right approach. The formula Ashes is using isn’t the same as WoW so comparing the 2 games is like apples and oranges. The reason WoW did a stat squish is because their formula resulted in exponential stat increases across expansions that affected the gap between a brand new player and end game player, exponentially increased gear stats (making it harder to balance) and having excessively long numbers pop up on the screen. Having stats in the thousands in a first swing isn’t necessarily indicative of the same issue since AoC is using a different formula and has no expansions to worry about atm. Keep in mind, we’re testing this game for launch, not 5 expansions down the line.
2. Enchanting System Downgrade
Again, I completely disagree. The enchanting system wasn’t supposed to be end-all-be-all for gearing. With the original system, post P1 stat squish due to legendary gear being too strong, enchanting a piece of gear to +8 could make it hundreds of percent better. It was never supposed to scale this way. You have to keep in mind that enchanting will go to +20. A piece of gear getting 2000%+ waterfall stats is just ridiculous. The system was broken.
Now, my gear at +7 gives roughly 6-8% increased stats. This is very reasonable when we look at cap being +20. Being 20% stronger than someone who didn’t enchant their gear is very reasonable. Being 1500% stronger is not. It needed to be fixed.
3. PvP Feels Sluggish and Less Engaging
Again, I disagree. The low TTK ruined the PvP in this game. Yes, it was fast passed but it wasn’t tactical at all. Push 2 buttons and kill someone isn’t tactical. High TTK introduced actual tactics where you have to coordinate as a team, execute plays and capitalize on the other team’s mistakes. 2 rangers can coordinate and pop someone. 2 mages can coordinate and pop someone. Having PvP devolve into the 2-3 shot (sometimes 1 shot) fest it had become removed any and all tact that many PvPers enjoy. I’ve played a LOT of pvp games with longer TTKs and none of them suffered from what you are describing. Groups that aren’t accustom to working in a team experience what you’re describing. The current state of TTK requires guilds/groups to work as a team, coordinate plays and execute on them. The team that does it the best wins. People going out of position and dieing, forcing a rez and depleting the cleric’s mana isn’t a game problem…
4. PvE Combat Feels Chore-Like
This might be the experience for solo but we ran Carph last night and will do more testing today. PVE in a group setting feels a little slower but isn’t less enjoyable. You have to keep in mind that this game isn’t being built for the solo experience.
5. Loss of a Unique Gearing Experience
Again. I disagree. Gearing hasn’t been diminished, it simply changed. Crafted gear at higher rarities have a higher impact now. Legendary lvl 10 gear at +8 is roughly the same as rare lvl 20 gear in many cases now. As we progress through the game, we won’t be in the lvl 10s for long. We’ll be in the 20s for a bit longer but will spend most of our time leveling in the late 30’s and 40’s. Having lower level legendary gear +6 should never blow away the next tier of gear. For a smooth progression path, they should be about equal. For example, lvl 10 legendary gear at +8 was significantly better than lvl 20 rare at +0. That lvl 10 piece of gear can’t hold a light to a lvl 20 legendary piece of gear. Now that lvl 10 legendary +8 piece of gear is roughly the same as a blue lvl 20 (excluding stat changes ofc).
Stats being shook up was an unexpected surprise. As we go through gear, we now have the option to be more deliberate with our stats. We now have many progression paths rather than being required to use low level gear with high enchants. Gear and progression diversity is always a +, even if we have farm our gear again. We did it once, it’s np to do it again. Perhaps those that didn’t have to farm……. Nvm.
Closing Thoughts
TM, you’re thinking very short term and too close to the ground. We’re testing a game for launch. At launch the lvl cap is expected to be 50. If things stayed the same then at lvl 50 the game would 100% be a 1 shot fest. Nobody wants that. Changes needed to be made to TTK, which requires redoing gear/stat/system balancing. This first swing was in the right direction to do what’s best for the game as a whole. Does it need work? Obviously, but Intrepid has made it abundantly clear that there will be several passes. From my point of view, there were several positive things to come out of this change. We thrive on competition and leverage our teamwork to compete. These changes force things to slow down and shine a light on who the best TEAMS are, not just who has the most people that can 1 shot people.
https://medal.tv/games/ashes-of-creation/clips/k3Z4IxYuhTXtHvWWr?invite=cr-MSxraXIsMjg4MzYzODY3
It's crazy how you tell people they're not thinking long term when you clearly are not.
So, to recap that last paragraph you think its a good, engaging, fun gameplay that gear crafters are going to be meaningless until they hit level grandmaster? Just to recap what you are saying. Because this is what you are saying, I hope you realize it.
That is so funny, the guy has 17 scrims from yesterday there. 90% of them lasted ~60 seconds, with the longer ones taking around 2 minutes from their lack of coordination
And the OP is just here knowing all that and lying about fights being never-ending and requiring healers to run out of mana.
Crazy. If anything, I still think players might be dying too quick on those scrims
Please elaborate. If we're spending most of our time in high 30's and 40s then how does it make sense that lvl 10 gear blows everything out of the water. The current system would make legendary lvl 10 gear better than lvl 30 gear and we would be wearing the same gear from lvl 10 to.... lvl 40+? That's a broken system.
You're looking at the changes as the root cause of an issue, instead of a symptom of another issue. How do you make crafted gear relevant? The answer isn't to make all gear trash except for lvl 10 crafted gear. Also, many of our crafters were at Master/GM 2 months in. The bottle neck to crafting gear isn't the levels, it's the progress of the nodes (which we haven't tested yet because T4/5 nodes didn't come out at the beginning of a phase.) They'll have to work on this potential issue at some point before launch too. Who knows, maybe T5 node can be achieved in the first few months of launch as people get to lvl 50.
Please remind me—how long did it actually take, on a PvP server, if you're playing on Lyneth that's not representative of reality of this game, to build all the apprentice crafting stations? And how long after that for the Journeyman ones? The answer is: several weeks, months for certain nodes. And we're lucky that all the player base was focusing in the same zone, imagine when we have a whole world with 80 nodes and everyone spreads out to build in their own corner. And We're not even close to levels 30, 40, or finally 50. Node level isn’t going to magically fix that time sink. It just doesn’t matter. People still has to do those buy orders and build those stations.
Now, I would love to see your grandmaster weaponsmith. Send me a picture. If it’s real and not Photoshopped, I’ll give you all my gold, gear, and even my rabbit mount. But I'm pretty sure you won’t—because you don’t have one. The “crafters” you’re talking about are probably just gatherers. Not actual crafters.
Six months in, and no grandmaster crafters in your guild. Only Journeyman stations. Great.
How long did it take you to reach level 25? It took us 48 hours. But let’s be generous and say the average active player hits 25 in two weeks. That would mean level 50 in about two months of active play. Yet even two months in, nobody can craft level 30 gear. Maybe—maybe—they’ve got Journeyman stations up. But only if people focused on those buy orders instead of just grinding levels. Which, let’s be real, most won't. You’d be lucky if anyone even has all the apprentice stations up.
So tell me: who’s buying a level 10 legendary crafted sword when an uncommon 50 drop from a mob or boss is 10x better? Nobody.
Nobody is buying a level 20 crafted sword either—even if it's legendary. Your average uncommon blade from PvE is still better.
Same goes for level 30. Maybe, just maybe, at level 40, you can finally craft a legendary blade that outclasses a rare enchanted one. That by then, the PvE player already has, but press X for doubt.
So several months in, huge amount of gold, materials sinked to reach level 40 weaponssmith with the station, can barely craft anything better than a drop from a mob that's been in the game for months.
So how is this good for server economy? How is this fun or engaging for the weaponsmith?
Simple answer: It’s not.
And now people were complaining that, a level 10 legendary sword enchanted +8 that required several people to level up professions, huge amount of mats and gold, was better than that uncommon blade level 20 from that mob you drop by grinding carphin a lot? And by a lot I mean 3 hours? How does that make sense?
This is the Lineage 2 power progression philosophy: The Higher you go into levels and tiers, the harder it is to get that, and the smaller the percentual upgrade. By the time you were chasing power cap, you were grinding literally hundreds of hours for one small weapon upgrade. That design philosophy worked for the entire game.
You can see, first weapon upgrade gave you a whopping 33% upgrade in power, while the last weapon upgrade gave you incredible 5% upgrades
This was how enchantment worked: You had fixed values for enchantment gains (like we do now). Every enchantment got progressively harder but gave less and less percentual gains while increasing effort.
The only time you got a percentual increase in the curve was when you went past the over-enchanting level. After that tho, we wen't back to reducing percentual gains and exponential increase in effort.
By the time you had the strongest weapon, the first enchant would give you a 1.7% power upgrade. Fourth enchantment would give you a 3.2% power upgrade, and a +10 enchant would give you a 2.6% power upgrade while requiring 10x more attempts.
Not to mention Ashes has more gear pieces to enchant, increasing even further the power gap possible for enchanting.
What's even the point behind making false claims to try and hinder the games development? You muddy the water by saying that pvp wasn't worth engaging in when you clearly, never engaged in it. Your claim isn't even remotely close to being true.
Its extremely frustrating seeing you and other people in this thread, give extremely uninformed takes about the changes.
This ttk is horrible. I see a lot of comments about how combat is more skill based now but that is just isn't true at all. There is no tactics, or unique strategy's now. You don't get high value from pulling off risky plays. Combat now is just calling targets to focus down 1 by 1. Any competent opponent will destroy you if you do otherwise.
This isn't a game like WoW were you can chain cc's and interrupts together alongside your cooldowns to setup kills. The combat just isn't that dynamic. Longer ttk doesn't force you to create opportunities to kill people. It just forces you to out dps the healing a player is receiving (which if your target is dodge rolling, this is impossible).
Obviously the old ttk had issues as well, but this patch is far worse. The game feels like they turned the difficulty to tutorial or something. Firebrands biggest hit is like 1.5k damage while geared players are running around with 5k+ health. There isn't really a conversation to be had here. The game is far too slow now.
Also, it is objectively true that the gearing meta with the changes is to kill enemies to get the gear they drop, and then your done gearing. There is no need to touch artisans or caravans. There will be 0 economy. Players will run one caravan to cover their repairs and never worry about gearing or making money again. The game currently has a good economy and enchanting provides a good return for your time spent. If nothing changes, the endgame content of gearing is almost completely dead.
No idea what terrible source you're using for Lineage 2 but here's the official codex with data that actually means something, stop trippin' with wikipedia and google AI. Can't even pull the right source and you gonna pretend like you're OG? Please x)
lol I ain't talking about a 2010s version of the game. That looks like a system designed for P2W monetization lol. I'm talking about the original game. The one that was popular, that probably released when you were in diapers.
But good to know they fucked up their power progression in future versions, proves my point that ridiculous power progression = less popular pvp game
It isn't enough, I agree with you. But it went from pressing W and smashing your head on the keyboard to coordinating damage to a target. It's definitely better than it was before, and it's a good direction.
We need more. Stronger defensives, increased base survivability for DPSs, interrupts, and higher TTK. When they do that, you will care to use the proper debuff system, you'll see that coordination helps in killing the other party faster, and the difference is not between killing players in 2 seconds or 1.5 seconds, it's the difference between killing them in 10 or in 3 seconds. That means you are more rewarded for coordinating.
LMAO you gonna hit me with "This aint the right patch!" cope. Wanna go there, okay fine, 2003 source material;
Still scale with level enchant, what are you gonna use for coping now Mr.OG?
LMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAO you are dumb as rocks mate
That is literally what I posted. Notice that that is an S tier weapon. It gets +5 atk per enchant and after +4 enchanting it starts going up +10. That value is not +, its the atk.power of the weapon. Just like my initial image showed
The only difference is the % chance, which is probably an older patch. But even then, if your source is not just plain wrong, you still get less and less % gain power per enchant every time, while becoming more difficult to achieve
I cant believe you thought that was a zinger
So yeah, it's the same thing overall. And yes, using the same info to say "hah, your same info is wrong lul" is real silly.
And for Intrepid's side of my post! THIS SOUNDS FUCKING INCREDIBLE! It's literally what I wanted/expected from Ashes when I first heard about it!
Please keep moving in this direction.
Also, if this is true HOLY SHIT! YOU DID IT, INTREPID! It's literally "gear is 50% of your power".
Keep moving in this direction! You're delivering on your promises and this is amazing!
This is also the exact kind of pvp I want and hoped for. Amazing work, Intrepid! And you can refine it further by small touches on healers, counterhealing effects, etc.
Incredible job so far and please keep doing what you've done so far.
Ya I wouldn't call this skill we walked at them as a ball and
Huh how are you gonna previously say in your post that were unqualified lmao then link a clip of "POLAR" playing "ME" shot calling and call it proof. You don't understand any of the context to that clip you have no idea how many healers the other team has or what we were testing. Smh.
The pvp with low ttk feels boring underwhelming and extremely basic. The game currently has the rotation for most DPS classes of MMOs from 2004 where if you had key binds you were a god. The lack of defensives interrupts and almost no skill expression has made the combat feel muddy at best. When the ttk was quick -> positioning, timing, and decision making felt way more Impactful. A well combo or blitz could let one player take out three, now you need the entire team to target one player to kill them. Its extremely one dimensional, walk at the other team as a ball and target the other team one by one. This isn't skillful its boring and zerg meta.
PvP where everyone's mana isn't being fully spent, because everyone just drops like flies, is shit.
2. when a level 20 weapon costs 5 gold and a level 0 weapon +12 costs hundreds, 12% isn't gonna cut it
Bro are you slow? Or is math that hard for you? Or you haven't test the new system at all because you're too busy talking trash to know what you're talking about.
My WHOLE point here is, +1 gave you +4PWR, +10 gave you +10 PWR, . the enchanting SCALES, it doesn't scale HARD but it SCALES. here we get a +1% flat whether its guaranteed +1 or impossible +15. And it's not a +1% based of the new enchanting stats, its based from the initial no enchant stats. This is BAD. There's absolutely no difference stats gain from getting a +0 o +1 than from getting a +9 to +10.
Also, you're so damn focused on looking only at the raw numbers cause you slow that you don't even pay attention the the % of success here! an S Tier weapon +15 has 70% chance to succeed, Ashes reduced the odds exponentially starting +1 so hitting that +15 is barely 1%. How does that even compare mathematically? Are you Crazy?
Or maybe "math is hard, hurpdurrrr i just follow the online guide all day and got no clue whats going on" thinking seems HARD buddy life must be rough,
And here you debating the current system is the same thing and thats how people did it back then! LMAO you weren't even there!
This is the first step towards "TTK balance" wherever Intrepid decides to take this further. I still believe my best pvp experience was with max 300 power gear, partially because the time to kill back then, and partially because there was no massive power gaps between players.
When it comes to enchanting...I despise RNG and casino gameplay mechanics in games, so I cannot make a constructive comment on that system. Oh wait I can. Remove the simplistic power gain +1 to +20 mechanic from enchanting all together. Remove RNG and chance to fail etc. Instead make enchanting about gear customisation. Allow stat swaps on gear for example: allow players to replace INT with other base stats like WIS or CON, or if the slot is occupied by other stat boosts, allow players to replace Mana Regen with Phys Power, Magical Power, Life-Leech, Block Chance, Parry, Evasion or whatever else.
If you want reliable gold sinks to balance the economy, gear has to permanently break after multiple repairs. This is the only solution to have resources being fed into the economy and actually consumed.
Apply soft caps on ALL STATS, so people cannot just dump all into power or CON and call it a day.
Blown past falling sands…
Also I chuckled at the "hard work" comment.
Blown past falling sands…
Now that gear customization is out of the picture, they should do class differences next because nothing says MMORPG like having everyone play as identical featureless grey blobs.
Why stop at 99% playability when we can hit 300%? Investors are gonna love it.
Blown past falling sands…
Blown past falling sands…
...which is why they made STR/INT even stronger by slapping 2 extra waterfall stats on them.
And on top of stacking INT you can now get a cheeky 1000 magic power from a single accessory. Truly some galaxy minds at work.
0.8.0 made it easier to stack power on a budget so casuals are still getting dumpstered, the only difference is that nolifers don't even need to spend thousands of gold on JM scrolls anymore.
Also if it is easier to stack power on a budget, and you don't need 1000s of gold to increase it, then that means its easier for "casuals" to close the power gap against "nolifers". Sounds good to me.
I'm sure soon enough we will know how broken the new base stat system is, and if can be as easily abused as pre-patch P1 and P2 era. So take a breath, and enjoy the incoming P3 for what it is.
Blown past falling sands…
I was soloing 3 stars same lvl on rogue prepatched to be fair and wasnt fully geared either
I think at most all mob dropped gear should be white and some quest provides some greens from time to time anything else should be crafted except a few rare long or hard quests might give higher quality
There won't be a need for P3 unless they revert this abomination of a patch. I have seen the active development excuse countless times but this time they made all the wrong changes at once, surely it's not because P3 is right around the corner
I think it a step in the right direction to a degree appart from number bloat but that can be changed with a decimal point shift.
Enchanting needs to be cheaper i think though now that it working correctlynow that it now rounding up 1str to +2 by rounding up the 1% increase to nearest whole number lol