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.
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 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
Your Full of Sh-t and by this statement alone , YOU are not a creditable source of information.
Wait, is this because you think there aren't any guards in the wild?
Well talk for yourself, i've seen some of my feedback listened to and in game. (same in bg3) maybe you are doing something wrong...).
Telling me the obvious 🙃 yet there is similarities, for example combat, also that is your opinion which frankly i didnt even asked for so. One of the most popular mmos to exist not a good example!? Ok....
Just verifying, I doubt any randoms are reading the thread, but I didn't want anyone getting an incorrect impression and wasting their time searching for changes to the design Steven laid out based on something you said.
For any random readers, there is still no mechanical difference between Towns and areas outside them in terms of PvP Rules, in Ashes of Creation, as of this post.
This has also been an issue in testing, Guards have been buffed and altered multiple times, leading me to think the game design will also foster some form of protection in the end as it continues to increase the amount of protection in town.
I clearly understand what has been said, maybe these changes are just for the "testing environment" but highly doubt it, and pretty positive NPC in towns will continue to Grow in number and strength fostering a
safer environment... Not limited but to included Mayors buffing Guards.....
I have heard Steven say more than once,,,, "Subject to change".. It is in Alpha , and even when it is not it will
be consistently changing. "Steven said" or Steven Design is consistently changing. That is positive Growth IMO, change happens.. I feel Steven Said/Steven Design is a guide or a starting point subject to change
(or at least this is what History has shown us thus far).. Folks should ease up , and start treating it as such because that is the reality of things over the past phases I have tested..
If the discussion was about instanced pvp, I'd say that I've already supported that years ago and suggested a proper increase to the arena designs and the mechanics of instanced pvp encounters.
Hope you realise this is a double-edged sword. The game COULD change into an even pve-er form of itself. And once the advertisement hit - that's gonna be the only feedback Steven receives from the masses, because majority of mmo players are pvers.
So you better hope that Steven is prepared to waste unreasonable amounts of money to advertise to pvers - all to completely ignore their feedback, even though he's literally asking for it.
nah , i am having fun reading this funny thread including your dumb takes but it seemed you were getting ahead of yourself and a bit too far into your delusions so out of the kindness of my heart i had to give you a little push back to reality
honestly you should really go do some research, cuz for one siege wars are instances with limited numbers sooooo yeah, the rest i see no issue either, but again i didnt ask for your opinion you can keep it to yourself.
Butthurted much innit? 😂
I mean you achieved nothing but ok, pat on the head.
I don't know who really still needs to hear that (and would care).
PvP competitive game, big power gaps, no level scaled PvP even in lower level areas/content, stressful fights, lowish TTK, whiny teammates, mostly slight imbalances in classes with two (now kinda 3) really egregious ones.
Result, most players don't have the time to do enough meta-shifting to PvP, and yet I still see quite a bit of it. It's only dropping off now on the non 'Season' servers (they don't call them this, Marketing is doing a good job of manipulating 'the Casuals' by making them sound like Boost servers even though they kinda aren't).
The reason for the dropoff is obvious, they released the next tier of gear early to give the big shots/top players something to strive for, and that left most Casuals absolutely in the dust, but again, there's no balancing/syncing anywhere, so once those top players got geared, the rest of us mostly get destroyed even if playing roles perfectly.
Every now and then you get a bit of content where you can assume that you won't run into full groups in full Tier 3 gear and that's still pretty fun.
Amazon is suffering a bit because what First Spark tells them is/will be implemented isn't always what we actually get (I don't envy CM teams in this situation, y'all know who I'm talking about), but the stratification isn't fully happening yet.
Most people can still get a bit of PvP without playing 20h a week, and that will probably last for another month or so, I'm only now starting to get/see toxic responses at PvP events, and the thinning out/abandonment of night PvP zones (I know some safe-spots in two of them where you can get all the PvP-outcome messages but you can't leave except by teleporting so you don't have any influence on the area).
I see what happens in Ashes as the natural outcome of the design of it, we'll get a few players 'desperate' for PvP but unable to find opponents because they crushed most others and the game doesn't do much to level the playing field anywhere.
1v1? No chance of anyone taking this too seriously in a game that intentionally doesn't balance for it.
GvG for farm? Kinda bland, likely to only really matter at the top levels in a way that would lead to dynamic PvP.
PvP events? Might be good. Probably rarely. Still gonna come down to 'winners crush' in this type of game.
Rewards for PvP in general that specifically avoids PvE components - honestly could be done for a while, I think, but that's a high 'mental fortitude' bar to clear for a lot of losers.
But in the end, I just watched a 6-person group open the Massacre Chest in Shadowed Crypt. Are they getting any 'good' PvP right now? I'd say the chance isn't high, but maybe.
Can I do the same by fighting them? Unlikely, despite this being a level 50 area. But another one just appeared, so I assume some PvP is happening. Ashes will probably have at least this much. If the PvP zones in Ashes right now are empty it's probably because the top players are in a different one.
I've seen plenty of people running around doing PvP activities and objectives. Genuine question, I'm honestly not trying to be a jerk: Are you hooked into multiple PvP communities and communicating with them outside of Global chat?
Those that I have seen running around with large groups didn't put out any "LFG" posts in game because that would defeat half the purpose. Imagine seeing streams of messages like "LFG for caravan hunting" or "Node War group LF 2 Mage, 2 Bard, 1 Cleric before we dec on New Aela" or "LFG to pwn these noobs in Carphin floor 3 and clear them out of here!" or "Firebrand just spawned. LFM PvP people to hide in the woods and slay the successful group to grab the dropped materials after they beat the dragon!"
How successful would that be? I suppose it depends on your definition of "success," to be fair. Want the largest scale PvP encounter possible? Potential Success! Want to be more guaranteed to win and get the highest reward from your efforts? Not so much success.
In the end, I suppose it comes down tot he fact that not all systems are in place yet. Node wars, node sieges, guild wars, caravans, crates...all of them already have rewards for winning and I'm sure they're not done with it yet.
Arenas are planned (unless things have changed without announcement) and they will have rewards (link to wiki below). With them will come achievements, leaderboards, some kind of currency to buy PvP exclusive items...who knows what else. There was passing mention at gear augmentation components and even more detailed player health bars. Insane rewards! Just takes time for them to implement.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Arenas
Hey, if you piss me off in game enough to make me want to kill you a few times, and you run off to a town thinking that will make you safe, I'm fine with that.
One thing I will say for Archeage (I don't know if it was XL or Trion), the game always gave players a means of catching up a bit before the next few tiers of gear were added.
Sure, it caused some complaints when this happened, but it caused people that were happy with the game to complain for a few weeks until that new progression dropped, as opposed to causing people unhappy with the game to leave.
Once you hit a specific Teir of gear ,, in my opinion, should be about adjusting that gear to your play style..
If PVP rewards points that you used to invest in PVP related skills , Like DAOC does. End game for PVP would be more than just chasing the next set of gear. I see no downside for this type of system for the PVP environment in Ashes. These skills rewarded via PVP points are NOT needed to be successful in end game PVE.. DAOC has held an active player base for over 20 years in a PVX game.. Nightly you see people LFGn for both PVE and PVP.. In the frontiers , ie open world PVP area.,, Both PVP and PVE take place.. Other areas are safe from PVP..(I know this is not AOC intended design).. Guess I am saying this, to point out a pvx game that is over 2 decades old, that has a PVP reward system that works..,, That could possibly fit into AOC, vs past reward systems in other games that failed or only rewarded the elite .
FOLKS get PVP points just for pvpn , win or lose.. Winners get more, but it encourages people to learn and grow in a PVP environment.
Multiple level battle field..
People can zerg it up, Run in 8 man's, Roam in 3 man's,, Run solo(which is done nightly by players but is a hard life imo).. Your actions matter.. for the most part, in shaping the World via PVP..
Already seen a little if this in AOC, weeks ago when New Aela was attacking a near by town. Myself and one other at (both of us lev 16 at the time)went away from the zerg area and found a few good fights. In addition we did some type of PVE event, that we turn in tokens to a NPC to help the war effort.. 😀 AOC will get their!
Mind you this was happening when a top PVP guild was attacking our town, at Level 16 we had a chance to contribute to the fight.., Kinda cool,,
BARD LFG to roam PVP,, would still be ok.. IMO
So once again, none of that applies to this discussion.
Except they are. There is no "endgame pve" in Ashes that is not contested by pvp. The pve instances that we will get will have no endgame gear and will be one-off things, so no one will be farming them on the daily.
Everything else will always involve pvp potential (well, as long as "super cool strong powerful" pvp guilds aren't fucking pussies and "pvpers" actually flag up against each other). Hell, if all yall's complaining and Noaani's expectation of lawless zones around world bosses comes to be - literally every fucking thing will involve direct pvp.
So pure-pvp rewards will directly impact people's abiltiy to do pve. Except the "pvp" groups will exploit the system by gaining those rewards on each others' alts, while pvers wouldn't care about that shit because they got more interesting stuff to do. But then pvers will realise that they got outexploited and will be run over during their pve farm, and they'll just leave the game.
So we come back to what I've been saying from the start. If you want separate rewards - you gotta convince Steven to change his design to have separate designs. Separate gear builds, skill builds, augments, class synergies, etc - otherwise one of the sides will complain that they've been forgotten and that Intrepid no longer cares about them.
I saw this in L2 when in later updates they added pvp damage skill enhancements. PvE's quality was still basic as fuck, so no one gave 2 shits about other skill enhancements, while pvp dmg one was obviously good, cause majority of L2's pve was either pure pvx or was "locked" behind pvp (you had to wipe another guild from the room/location, if you wanted to kill the boss, just as Korela said).
And you know what happened in the updates after that? L2 got way more instanced pve. The "everyone's rewarded" kind too. So most likely the few pvers, that the game still had, complained that pvpers were being coddled and so devs tried balancing things out. And the game only went downward in quality since then.
Ashes will 100% repeat that fate if Steven goes even further with additional pvp rewards. Except I highly doubt that the instanced pve will be good, so the pvers will still inevitably leave. And even IF the pve is good - instanced pve simply means everyone in their own little room, so open world pvp doesn't exist, which would simply bring us back to the core premise of this entire discussion.
Imo it'd be much better to push the pve side towards pvx through proper corruption design and lessening of penalties than it is to reward pvpers EVEN MORE, while also opening up several exploitable holes in the design (which pure-pvp rewards 100% are).
I personally still believe Ashes can do the same or similar.
This is because that game's design forces some natural choices across all gear which tend to make pure PvP players worse at dealing PvE damage (or surviving mechanics) in PvX boss situations.
This obviously does not mean that they are ineffective, you can guard the approach points in your PvP gear and kill off players who are geared primarily for PvE, without too much trouble. It's a give-and-take that would probably work slightly better in Ashes if they were ever to implement anything that made the player numbers at bosses slightly more fair.somehow.
Basically if we're concluding that PvP rewards as a whole are 'bad', we're pretty much giving up on Intrepid in particular, so I can understand the reactions of people who don't want to do that.
(for slightly more info on that it basically comes down to the fact that there are both offensive and defensive stats that help way more against players than against mobs, but it's not always so binary that the answer is to always wear one or the other, also there is gear that is just 'PvP Evasion' but isn't consistently better than equivalent gear with just 'Evasion', so the PvP player is often 'behind' but 'not in PvP', which they seem to be fine with)
Huh? once a month? where is that stated Settlement_sieges?
And once again
Well, as I noted in my first 'contribution' to this thread, I don't have any problems with rewarding PvP-only players with gear for PvP if it is earned and tied to Settlements.
I consider that close enough to 'making everyone's experience approximately the same'.
The issue I have with the PvP stuff is always that some players just 'don't have to care' and that makes their playstyles troublesome. I feel the same about PvE players who 'don't have to care' and cause trouble with their playstyles.
It also becomes difficult to balance or to push back on players who have the reaction 'well the game lets me do this so it must be okay'.
If the game only let you use your Government-approved PvP loadout for the 'good of the Settlement', then the incentives line up better.
I'm honestly not sure anyone is trying to suppress your hope/opinions based on rejecting this concept.
It's moreso that when things change, in Ashes, they don't always change in a 'good' way (viewing from the outside), so we're used to seeing changes that are technically the correct changes to make but still end up making things worse because they are only half of the requirement.
Adding more PvP rewards to AoC to make it more like DAoC would work if they made a lot of other things about AoC more like DAoC, but without them, it is more likely to fall flat and possibly make the game worse.
You mentioned it yourself in another thread, I think. If they make PvP rewards but don't make most things Bind on Pickup, and then probably figure out some forms of catch-up mechanics, and even then still give 'people who aim to master whatever PvE is available' some 'advantage' against PvP players that interrupt that PvE, it's not going to be much fun for most people.
So it's not 'no, Intrepid will never change this', it is 'can Intrepid change this without ruining the gameplay?'
More like adding the OPTION for pvpers to get gear/weapons/trinkets (even siege weapons) via pvp (with points/currency)
This shit has already gotten 6 pages of discussion on the topic. In no way is this "suppression".
Also, I keep forgetting it, but is DAOC a faction game? Cause if yes - no fucking shit it has pvp lfg, because you can just go farm the opposite faction. Ashes doesn't have factions, so it'd be much harder to implement designs that would allow for "pvp lfg" outside of guilds/alliances.
Everyone keeps suggesting shit from and comparing Ashes to faction-based games, while that pvp design is different at its core. There's literally always an enemy in that design, while true open world pvp has to create natural enemies through proper tools.
Obviously Steven went with the laziest approach of lawless zones, cause he couldn't be assed to make his quasi-factions work or make pvx good enough to naturally create soft friction, but at that point lawless zones will create "pvp lfg" just through their sheer existence, because if you're making a pug to farm in that kind of location - you're inviting people to pvp.
Players do not shape the world in DAoC. There is no way of creating or destroying a town, no way of influencing mob spawn points, nothing.
If you are going to state that my comment of towns in Ashes being no safer than the rest of the world makes me Then your statement that players shape the world in DAoC puts you in an even worse position.
Or we could both agree that what you mean is that players actions do indeed impact the gameplay experience of others, and my statement that you are no safer in towns means that it is indeed intended that you can be attacked in town.
Edit to add; your notion of PvP points, win or lose, will simply see players teaming up to maximize the earning of these points as much as is possible. Swapping PvP wins in a secluded location, or what ever. With your suggestion, there is a net gain to both players regardless of the outcome, so people will just cheese it.
Hell, if this were in game, I would be trading wins on my own accounts, farming the shit out of this whole system.
In a game where players are supposed to build, anything players get via points goes counter to the core of the game.
This is a widly inaccurate statement."
Nope your wrong again,,,, do your research..
and your statement was
"not safer in towns than in the wild" not just " not safer in towns" that you are trying to represent in your following comments..... You applied specifics ... It is ok to be wrong, but trying to hide, just make you look like a shithead..
Again, miss informing, people on the forums... Because of . "what you think"... Seek first to understand than be understood..
"your notion of PvP points, win or lose, will simply see players teaming up to maximize the earning of these points as much as is possible. Swapping PvP wins in a secluded location, or what ever. With your suggestion, there is a net gain to both players regardless of the outcome, so people will just cheese it."
And again, proven PVX game with a player base for over 20 years,,,, It has worked...