Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Places and causes to wait around in the world
McShave
Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I was watching a video about old-style mmo dungeons and how they would have places to farm mobs in front of the entrance while you wait to find party members. My only experience with this is in Classic WoW dungeons and I would consider it a failure. This is only because the goal of WoW is to do everything as fast as possible, and waiting for any reason is "not optimal". In Ashes' open-world dungeons, I hope we will approach them with a different mindset. The goal of open-world dungeons, as far as I understand, is that people are there to kill bosses (who respawn) and gather resources, implying you can spend as much or as little time as you want.
My question is, is it reasonable to expect players to wait somewhere in the world for a chance to not even do what they are planning to do? In principle, I like the idea of areas in the world where you see lots of players hanging out (that's not in the cities, it gives a sense of a living world). However I think it is more reasonable to build a party in a city or through a third party app like discord than to expect random chance to go your way.
But what if it's not random chance to find some party members for a mid-level dungeon run? This would take some big-brain world and quest design, but would it be possible to funnel players into doing dungeons at certain level ranges so that players naturally want to do the same thing and will form groups? Do you have any experience of this working or failing in games you played?
Cheers.
My question is, is it reasonable to expect players to wait somewhere in the world for a chance to not even do what they are planning to do? In principle, I like the idea of areas in the world where you see lots of players hanging out (that's not in the cities, it gives a sense of a living world). However I think it is more reasonable to build a party in a city or through a third party app like discord than to expect random chance to go your way.
But what if it's not random chance to find some party members for a mid-level dungeon run? This would take some big-brain world and quest design, but would it be possible to funnel players into doing dungeons at certain level ranges so that players naturally want to do the same thing and will form groups? Do you have any experience of this working or failing in games you played?
Cheers.
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Comments
So no, it's not quite reasonable to expect players to wait, but they will, which is why open world dungeons will most likely have a variety of mobs boss inside and outside of it, so that people who are waiting on their mates can do smth during the downtime.
Also, we haven't heard any concrete info, but Steven is inspired by L2's open world dungeon and those weren't "all about bosses". Intrepid have claimed that they'll somehow prevent grinding, but I've yet to hear how exactly they expect to do that. Right now my assumption is that AoC's dungeons will be similar to L2's and we'll have grindable mobs, so you can kill those while you wait for bosses to spawn, but the mobs themselves are still valuable.
As for waiting for a group of whatever. We'll have to see how Ashes' community will get built, but afaik Steven wants it to be way more guild-based, which means party-based, which means that you won't be just waiting for some randoes near a dungeon - you'll be waiting for your mates to come to you. The game won't be kind to solo players (allegedly), so we'll see how it'll be played by the masses.
A few dungeons didn't have this, but rather required a full group (or near to it) to even get to the dungeon safely. In these situations, there was a solo area at the entrance to the zone the dungeon was in, which functioned in this same manner.
I don't really see much of a need for this in a game like Ashes. To me, if I am running a dungeon with friends, we will be meeting up in town and traveling together.
Let's not forget Bulletin Boards either!
I think Ashes will have a good blend of both the ease of finding players for dungeons through Bulletin Boards, or even grouping during Events, as well as finding many players in the open world to potentially join up with!
We want the world to feel alive with players, which is why many of the systems encourage being out in the world and interacting with it and the people in it!
What are your favorite examples of games in which you've met other players and joined up with them through means of gameplay?
I like to pve, a lot.
What worries me, in a game as gigantic and ever shifting as ashes is shaping out to be, is that there will be just a handful of dungeons or places to farm for 'endgame' loot.
As in, just the major places near the biggest nodes will have the best top tier loot only.
Which means, all of the smaller dungeons from lesser nodes will not have a reason to group up to go in them.
My hope, is that the crafting recipe's for the top end gear, require both materials from these big dungeons, and also lesser ones, so that I will have reason to go explore them still and have not a difficult time getting a group together to do so.
And, for me that means, I hope to have a way to see what groups are being advertised around the world, who is looking for players to do what. Not just the immediate closest thing, but things elsewhere I can go play with people.
As far as my experiences with grouping up to go in places, I have the most nostalgic good memories of waiting near dungeons, or in the town nearby spamming in shout chat. But I recognize that these experiences are heavily seen through rose tinted glasses.
The best experiences for me involves having a party finder menu system where I can advertise my groups or see what other players are advertising for and join up.
I am not a fan of automatic queuing systems except for things necessary for story progression or daily leveling requirements. This is because this is the place where player toxicity is born in my experience. Folks want to queue up, do their content as fast as possible, and anyone slowing them down turn into an annoyance.
The reason I want this to bethe case is because I want players to have a reason to want to destroy and build different nodes. While some people will do this anyway, those players that look to an MMO as a character progression game need a character progression reason to do this (and in most MMORPG's, those that look at the games mostly about character progression make up the vast, vast majority).
So, what my hope is with dungeons is that I can take components from one dungeon and make some gear, or take components from a different dungeon and make different gear, or take components from both dungeons and make better gear.
The most interesting aspect of Ashes left to me is the possibility of players wanting components that aren't currently dropping anywhere on the server at a given point in time. Making it so some gear calls for components from dungeons in their level capped state, but where those dungeons simply can't both exist in that state at the same time - to me that is interesting.
Let me have my tryhard days, and let me have my go farm some mid loot days. Make the world not be populated ONLY at the big nodes.
This will exist in relation to raw materials, almost without a doubt.
The world won't only be populated at larger nodes, but it will mostly be.
The game kind of needs this though - what's the point in the node system if it doesn't cause population shifts - and how can populations shift if they are fairly evenly spread over the world?
For the node system itself to have the greatest impact, parts of the world need to be nearly unused at times - but if you come back a year later, there may well be a metropolis there.
Raid/Dungeon loot should be best in the metropolis areas sure, because there would be explorers in the area to discover such places.
However gatherable quality and quantity, should be worse in metropolis areas, due to the higher density of collectors. Should have to travel further from cities to get the good stuff, so gatherers would go to the smaller vassal nodes which are less populated to get the high tier gatherable loot.
Something that will keep the world populated in the smaller areas, so folks advertising for going into the small dungeons are not just shouting into the wind with no one around to hear them.
I think what you are talking about here is basically what will happen with the system the way it is now.
There is also the caveat that due to resource depletion and regeneration, that population out looking for materials is likely to be in flux, even if nodes around them are static for a long period of time. This is, imo, a good thing.
I agree about the party-based playstyle, but there are always people who need to join a party to do a dungeon.
looks like i found my answer. These bulletin boards look like they will be the optimal way to find a party. That's ok, the events look like a good way to group with others in the world.
I think this is cool in a narrative quest sense. For example, let's take the graveyard area they showed in one of the recent livestreams. Let's say the entrance to this graveyard is a solo questing area that is deep in narrative. Then there is a path to an area with harder difficulty mobs that require half a party (4ish players). Then there's a crypt after that that is a full party (8 players) dungeon. The trick is to make sure the mobs outside the dungeon aren't a big hindrance to a full party who just wants to do the dungeon.
Dungeons are open world, massive, and grow over time. This implies that dungeons in high tier nodes will be a gathering spot for many people across many levels, seeing as they grew with the node over time. This fits well since metropolis areas are going to be where most players are (most housing, highest level buildings, big zone of influence which means lots of moving between vassal nodes.
Or course, this comes down to testing in Alphas and Betas and Intrepid in terms of how well they pull this off; I expect it will be a success.
Yours truly really hopes that mid-tier dungeons will drop something akin to re-craft-able Legendary items, like a purple-lava-skinned Mace of the Gods, for covetous Clerics, such as myself; There should be a reason to run and re-run ANY dungeon, well into the progression of EVERY server.
Otherwise? Who's to say what a "shiny" really is, in running lower-level dungeons? For those of us of high-birth(i.e. What some of you MIGHT call 'incest'?)? Sometimes in-breeding causes sight-beyond-sight.... Err, wait.... Is that the right term for seeing two objects, when looking at one?
I wonder how some of this will be implemented lore-wise. Boomtowns around a resource have many real world cases to draw inspiration from, and I guess having some antagonist mobs lured to the possible spoils of more people to prey upon is easy too. But a dungeon getting bigger over time? Discovering or uncovering a new area as explanation will get old and generic pretty fast. Mobs getting stronger as a node progress? Maybe it's because humans are the apex predator of our planet, but most beasts tend to shy away from civilization and our active presence. What will attract powerful foes to a metropolis.
Mobs' causes for coming to wait in some places I guess.
My assumption is that they won't implement anything lore based like this.
Towns and cities will rise and fall, and players may make stories up about that - but they game won't.
A range of farmable spawns near (1m travel time) dungeons would be very smart. Solo/duo pull areas, 4-man pull areas too. Travel time and waiting around time are my biggest worry regarding this game's acceptance
I think that as a node levels up, certain dungeons will open, evolve or even close. Closing is ok because that same dungeon's rewards/difficulty (or just the same dungeon entirely) could be available in another node somewhere else. And presumably another dungeon opens up as part of the node leveling up.
Evolve can happen, but there's really only so often they can tell the story "The dwarves delved to deep under the mountain and awakened an ancient evil"
From what we've seen, there might be a story event/limited-time quest chain involved with each of these things (close, open, evolve), which would be something to watch out for.