Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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
Is it them just roaming around locations in search of contest over content?
Is it a certain reward structure for pvp events, kinda as people are asking for in this thread?
Is it something else?
My L2 bias of "you have your own constant party and you're always PvX" makes me completely blind to what would be the push for pvp lfg activities. I could maybe see them for faction-based stuff/games, but iirc TL is not faction-based, unless you're speaking about lfg within guild chats?
Mk sure.
Different Dungeons have different setups of incentives, three of them are 'Treasure Chests' (each working in different ways), two of them are 'Chokepoint Control relative to a boss that you often need to kill for a contract/mission', and the last ones are basically 'access to more optimal gathering'.
Bear in mind that there is minimal Resurrection outside of Guild type, in game, so every clash is basically 'winner take all'. This is doubly true for the Treasure Chest ones obv.
If we're talking Nebula Island, it's the basic thing you're used to. Farm is important, for the drops you get there. The rewards are random, and players only need to clash during overcrowding, but it still happens (I'm not saying that the PvP specifically happens), if you wanted a situation where PvP was rewarding you'd do one of the Treasure Chest dungeons or the Gathering ones.
Obviously Throne and Liberty 'knows better' than to reward open world people for direct kills. If you want PvP, you go to where a challenging/even opponent is, if you just pick on people, they don't return and you get PvE.
Dominion Events work like Dominion Bosses, you go to the area, fight others in PvX (either protecting your PvE teammates or just PvX-ing yourself), and try to target your opponent team's PvE-first players IF everyone is just trying to avoid each other and farm faster.
If you wanted bigger GvG you'd focus on the Dominion Bosses, which notably reward everyone with some small thing as long as they stay until the end, in fact, 'doing Dominion Boss' is exactly the same as 'doing Peace Boss' if you weren't going to rank high in the Peace boss, all you achieve by going to Peace is saving time (boss dies faster).
Sometimes you get absolutely squashed because of matchmaking, enemy team tactics being better, or people on your side just giving up, but if not lopsided, it's more PvX. If your team leader is good (remember that TL is a skirmishing game so shotcalling isn't 'necessary' and therefore you can throw 3 parties of randoms together and they will adapt), it's a good back and forth, I had one today where we were losing the whole time and the Tank basically went "Nah this is winnable ngl" and we tried the third tactic option and won at the end.
If you knew you were going into that, and you didn't want to leave it up to the matchmaking (because properly formed parties, tactically, are obv better), you would LFG with your requirements even before you go in, especially since it parallels to 'forming a PvP party in your Settlement before setting out', in Ashes (cross-server matchmaking means that forming your party before the boss instance assures you know the people from your own server since it maintains groups)
The rest, you know already, all the Guild stuff, but I understood your question to be about 'non-Guild' PvP LFG.
Another place it happens often is when people DO want to register for a Peace version boss, but it's one of the ones that spawns in a Dungeon, and the Eclipse Holder activates that, turning the Dungeon PvP. That's Objective Based in a way, the goal is to get as many people to the registration point for the boss as possible, but only the leader can reg, so you have to figure out who you can get through the enemy chokepoint, and you might need to quickly call for a tank or healer if you didn't have one, to ensure that a leader can get through.
As for all the other points, I'm either misunderstanding or just too dense, but to me all of those just sounds like pvx situations where you'd be gathering a pvx party (which is simply a pve party that's gonna fight back). But I guess this is just my L2 bias, and due to influence of all the other mmos, anything that's pvx is considered pvp.
Cause to me "lfg pvp" only means "we're about to go out and ONLY pvp. Literally not even touching any mobs". This would usually only happen in guild chats during guild wars, where people just wanted to do some random shit and going to dunk on some wardecced bois was the move.
And so when "lfg pvp" is used in the context of "we want bigger/better rewards for pvp", to me that sounds exactly like this Except w/o the "knowing better" part.
But for clarity, night-time Sauro Island PvP Chests just spawn on their own, you kill everyone else and take them when they spawn.
Shadowed Crypt chests spawn when someone dies in PvP specifically, you can't even get anything if PvP is not happening.
There are areas where there would be no mobs and you could just wait for challengers and PvP them there and then go get the reward for winning.
Similarly, certain Events work much better if the PvP part of the group just protects one PvE player's farming position and never actually does any PvE themselves, so for those events, the absolute expectation is that 80% of the people joining and forming the party intend to only PvP, because you could win even without touching the 'enemy' PvE player as long as yours was faster and you could defend them/claim the good spot.
And for that, you need a proper group composition.
Cause I guess I could see this kinda like an instanced pvp thing (cause no proper pve around), so I'd be fine with it, but there's gotta some limitations on it, otherwise ain't no way people are not just stratosphering themselves with whatever the rewards are.
It doesn't. The Chest doesn't spawn where you got the kill, it spawns 'somewhere'.
You could presumably line up a bunch of human sacrifices to get Progression Currency (mostly what those ones drop).
But that's entirely in line/vibe with the area, so... overall it just works out?
Mainly it's just that if you do this, though, you can't guarantee you're the one getting the benefit. Beyond that, it's just 'time', like most things.
But if you want to start a guild that is a blood/death cult that sacrifices its members in the Crypt in order to gain favors from some dark deity, you can do that.
Would you be satisfied with smth like this, or were you looking for something more tangible and impactful?
I don't think 'every kill spawns a chest'. It might increase the reward in the Chest...
But TL doesn't have Free player trade, and I haven't seen anything other than non-Tradeable currency in the Crypt Chests (my group doesn't like just murdering others enough for me to get a lot of these, I normally steal them from people who are fighting, while they hunt for me).
You absolutely can use this for advancement, but you can get equal or more of that Currency by doing a PvE thing. It's just like the Dominion Bosses, it is 'making sure that PvP players as a whole aren't falling behind directly because they choose to PvP'.
If the rewards are tuned so that they aren't just 'The PvE rewards, but less because someone else is taking some of them', it works out in all the games I play that have PvP options.
I used to get Exp and Gil in FF11 Ballista matches too, in fact I think I had a period where that's basically all I did for progression (it's very slow, but it isn't nothing). It's certainly not worse than a bad exp party, especially if one wins (because as I've mentioned, FF11 doesn't have a lot of currency faucets, and in Ballista the Winning Team gets a split of the Registration Fees paid by everyone, which again, isn't much, but it's almost exactly the low end Econ outcome - winners of a match are basically guaranteed about 12,000 gil at 'max level' which is the amount you make in an hour for most other activities).
TL is similar now. Some days I log in, poke a few things, PvP at an event, then night falls, PvP in a Dungeon, then a boss spawns, PvP at the boss, etc.
Tell that to the whole Groups of Players which guard their One or Two corrupted Buddies.
I wish i could say i understood this, but i would be lying.
True.
Tell that to the whole Groups of Players which guard their One or Two corrupted Buddies.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
I am in the guildless Guild so to say, lol. But i won't give up. I will find my fitting Guild "one Day".
Who would PvP who? The only solid faction is your Guild. So get your guild to run a caravan and you've got a mobile PvP arena.
Future should bring Settlement and Religion reasons to PvP. I don't think PvP is intended to be just like PvE. PvE is just going out to burn down mobs for now, and you need a group. If you were to do that now for PvP who would you fight? And why? Go kill gatherers, or another Settlement? But the lines between settlements are very blurry so so those gathers you kill could be from your settlement (or religion in the future), or from a friendly settlement.
I don't know PvP just feels bad right now because so much missing. Whatever you ask for now, might conflict with something planned for later. And how it's planned to be later is still a mystery to us. Which is frustrating, but it's the nature of development.
Well open tags used to be a thing in wvw (gw2), someone tagging up to lead a group of randoms/pugs, there used to be the guild raids but a lot of times also someone tagging up to lead randoms (whoever wanted to join), experienced people and less experienced people in a whole together, ofc like that you cant expect a great organization going on, but still it worked pretty well many times, i mean open tags was a big thing in wvw, at least in EU.
Ye advertising for a caravan run not only who wanna join will see it, as also who wants to attack them, so i dont exactly know how they would do that.
I haven't been on production in a few weeks, maybe a month now. But last I was on the LFG channel was just spam, but global also had trade and lfg in it. There really needs to be a LFG menu/window so you can join up with people from your settlement, religion, social. You could mark yourself LFG or LFM. See peoples (supposed allies) level and class that were also seeking LFG or LFM. And you could flag your LFG/M as PvP or PvE. I think limiting the visability of the players you can see to your chosen pseudo factions is best, but they could aslo open it to see people in your current area/zone. Hm, or both. Just copy pantheons, it was solid. Improve from there.
That'd help get groups of all kinds going a little better. Then you could do something else as you wait for a group to form and not have to eye ball chat spam..
Still doesn't solve the PvP rewards, but I'm not convinced that's a problem that doesn't already have a solution that just isn't out yet.
And because Steven supports the idea of temporary goal-based GWs - we have what we have. A shitty useless design where guilds can't even war each other well.
Just another example of Steven trying to copy L2's designs w/o understanding why it worked in the first place, so it doesn't work in Ashes.
It'd actually feel impactful and significant. I know it's early and things are still getting fleshed but even if the wars are fleshed out, they're still short session based wars just seem trivial to me. What will I gain from them that I can't get another means?
100% Wrong >> PvX is the promise. Stop trying to lean it one direction. Only PvE-players want imbalance on what the game should look like. PvPers understand the importance of both. I feel like I'm arguing Left vs Right politics! PvE base has a one tract mind. Get with the bigger picture and stop focusing on "identity" PvE and name calling! All I see is PvEers being toxic, not PvPers. It's PVX!! Period!
AI Overview
Wikipedia and the game's own materials classify Ashes of Creation as a PvX game, a mix of Player versus Environment (PvE) and Player versus Player (PvP) content. The game is built on the principle that PvE activities build the world, while PvP changes it.
Both. We understand it's Alpha and still growing, but the attention to PvP player is underwhelming and your losing player base. I do not want to see this and want Ashes to succeed. Looking forward to what Harbinger has to offer.
PvX means nothing.
By any valid definition, WoW is a PvX game, as it contains both PvE and PvP elements - even on PvE servers.
Take note though, your AI overview even talks about the "PvE to build the game world" that i talked about. The game world is literally being built via PvE - PvP only exists as an agent of change.
PvP players need to stop whining.
The Question is ... ... ... " which " PvP'ers are the ones whining ?
People with an actual Fighter-Mindset ?
Or is it just Gankers ? But that would surprise me. Because Gankers usually do not whine. At least not much. They sooner or later always arrive at the Point where they don't care and just gank just for the sake of it. (lol)
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
I am in the guildless Guild so to say, lol. But i won't give up. I will find my fitting Guild "one Day".
And they keep whining that they can't just go around murdering people.
Maybe i am exaggerating when i say this - but this sounds surprisingly hilarious there for a Sec' and i couldn't help but to grin for a Moment
People will need to make up their Mind, should 1.0./Release EVER draw closer in the first place.
Either they form "Ganking-Groups" (lol) - or they will be doomed to powerless watch how they can not kill even a single Person.
This would of Course make the Game better technically for PvE-Players. But it will probably take Player Numbers away of People who want Verra to be more dangerous and then the Game will end with a possibly mostly mediocre Player Number - like every other MMO out there which will never be a truly big Name.
I must think back on Sea of Thieves - despite Sea of Thieves not being an MMO.
When where the Player Numbers high ?
During the Shores of Gold Tall Tales. During the Heart of Fire Tall Tales. During the Curse of the Caribbean Cross-Over with the Five Tall Tales "A Pirate's Life".
It was always the sublime PvE-Expansions of the Game. It was NEVER the PvP.
Today ?
The Player Numbers are told/said to shrink a little bit with each Update. Dear Pace22 said himself that "The Game had it's Time in the Sun" and now it's old already, but i think he misses the Point a little bit.
" Other than Ashes ",
Sea of Thieves has COMPLETELY FREE PvP everywhere. You can be ganked and fxxxed over for "HOURS" and nothing and nobody will ever come to try and save you.
But that leads to Players staying away from the Game. At least Players like me -> who unlocked pretty much EVERYTHING the Game has to offer PvE-wise - except from Time-gated Stuff.
The Result ?
Player-Numbers are at a relative all time Low.
Well done RARE.
It is S~OOOOOOOOOOOO important - for RARE to not give Players what those want -> that they prefer to go the way and Route which many Games go. "Safely going down and sink with flying Colors".
Actually,
RARE/Sea of Thieves is the best Example for the Corruption System in Ashes of Creation.
If you don't have that,
NO MATTER how much - "or less" - PvE-Content is there to play - > You will have toxic Gankers run around EVERYWHERE and try to constantly "farm/kill/terrorize" other Players in a pathetic attempt to give their own, empty Lifes more meaning.
The Game is like a constantly reanimated Body which's Pulse has stopped on an Operation Table - and People refuse to call it dead or a Corpse.
But it won't come back to Life without the juicy PvE-Updates - no matter how much stupid Stuff RARE programs into the Game.
Thanks God Ashes will be bigger.
THANKS GOD there will not be a Player-Limit of Sixteen to Twenty Players each Server.
THANKS GOD Piracy will be bigger in the Game whenever People want it.
Thanks God the World of Verra is huge. No Idea if this will prevent the World from being a Gankbox, though.
I sigh and think of what Sea of Thieves "could" be.
But that would requiere a Non-Lazy Developer Team. And RARE got laaaaazy around Season 9/Nine.
- Players will NEVER have enough Gold to get everything they want, in Ashes.
- But Players have NO. CHANCE. to ever get rid' of the insane Amounts of Gold they have, in Sea of Thieves.
But Players do not want to buy the many-colored Trash for the own Ship or for their Pirates' Outfit, with the several Millions to several HUNDREDS of Millions of Gold-Coins.
They want Stuff like the whailing Barnacle Ship-Skin Set.
They want Stuff like the Festival of the Damned Face Tattoo.
They want " SOMETHING " ... ... ...
Just not the stupid, over-the-top toxic Gankbox that the Higher Seas are, since several Years.
Welp.
I already know that Ashes will be smarter.
I am only concerned because i don't know "how much smarter", actually. You can pretty much see on Sea of Thieves what happens when People don't give the Players what they want.
* Sighs in Ghost- and Skeleton-Curse and the fact that i will never return to Sea of Thieves *
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
I am in the guildless Guild so to say, lol. But i won't give up. I will find my fitting Guild "one Day".
Its always the same people saying pve is the savior of games, yet not much of a savior after all in the end as you like so much to claim, since they all end up dead innit.
NW sucked for PvE content. That's why it died. PvP was broken too, it didn't work. NW failed on both sides for PvE players and PvP players. All games end up dead, NW world was a example of PvE failing, NW failed on so many aspects. Simple game play, boring loops, broken systems, exploits, the list goes on and on. Probably had so many issues because it design change from survival to mmo or something. It didn't know what it wanted to be.
That identity issue you could apply to Ashes, which is my concern, is Ashes doesn't know what it wants to be, or how to be it. Sure they have an idea of a PvX game that's successful, but as I dig into the details surrounding the mechanics that support the PvX systems, its planned endstate is murky. And that's scary because when you're building something you need a good idea of what you're building if not they're going to be coding in circles and could end working themselves into a corner on some critical features. Just speculation and natural tendency to assume the worst, only IS knows what's going on behind those doors.
or start a separate pvp server.
then add some rewards for pvp.
edit: actually i think the way it's set up right now has more potential but you have to make going red (and staying red) a viable playstyle, and combat-competitive. snare, loss of dmg & dmg mitigation? no. & then full-loot for the pvpers, but not the pve'ers? not without alternate progression paths for pvp. loot drop on death, after all that pve-work to gear up? it's a slap in the face.
but a lot of potential there for crime and punishment, some sort of criminal justice system, a sense of law and order, etc. you can 'criminalize' pvp but you have to make it viable, and you can't disincentivize it beyond recognition.
The game got closed right now because Amazon is a shitty company that's going full-AI and think it'll save them. NW coulda turned itself around, but wasn't given enough time to do it. Though obviously it had plenty of time before, so they were just late in general and screwed up too much at the start, so there's that too of course.
Idk if you have studied New World much, but unfortunately for me, I have...
New World would absolutely have failed if it released as a PvP game with their original intent.
The PvP in it never really got 'good' by most standards either (not terrible, just... boilerplate? Anyone can find PvP videos for New World)
Therefore it switched to the one demographic it could. 'Seasonal Content players'.
It ran out of seasons, so the Development stopping makes sense.
So after years of attempts to finally make a different game from a game that was already different from what it set out to be - they kinda finally managed that, but it was simply too late, especially in the context of b2p (+expansions) monetization.
But my point being, pvp would've never saved that game even if it was good, because there's always losers in pvp and sooner or later they'll get tired of losing.
That's exactly what I'm talking about though?
One of the things that I personally have learned in development is that when you do really well with something, it's probably because you hit a really good point, but that usually isn't repeatable.
With Seasons this is even more true than otherwise. You finally 'hit the thing that people really enjoy', but then what? You can't just 'do it again, exactly the same' (for multiple reasons).
So why not go out on a high note, rather than throwing money at the issue when everyone sitting around the table is basically just going 'yeah this is it, we're out of ideas actually'. They're not shutting the game down, they're basically just saying 'yeah this is our best, so we're not gonna try to top it, enjoy the game guys'.
But as observers we won't know for a while if that would last because seasonal players and 'consistent' players are pretty different.
Oohh !!! A positive Surprise and Development ?? :-O
ARG! x') Do i feel the tiny, tiny sting of hope there inside of me ? lol
I must not get soft again yet, though.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
I am in the guildless Guild so to say, lol. But i won't give up. I will find my fitting Guild "one Day".