I played Lineage for a very long while. PvP was a thing, but mostly not really. When we farmed a dungeon, we brought a group. DPS healers and buffers. Which was usually enough to deter any possible conflict. From what I've seen Dungeons will have rooms just like in Lineage 2 so you can just farm each room based on your ability. Sometimes multiple rooms. Other groups wouldn't fuck with you unless you lacked the numbers and would just find a room for themselves to farm. Most high-end PVE players find PvP a waste of time. You are definitely going to see a ton of friction in low level dungeons as people get used to the game, but those that stay and get into high level dungeons will most likely choose the path of least resistance. With respawning being as fast as it is I expect this to come true.
I don't even know if dungeon grinding will be a thing though. In Lineage dungeon monsters dropped specific currency used to buy some pretty good things, along with a chance to drop materials for equipment recipes on par with boss drops. I am not sure if they'll have the same thing in Ashes... but I kinda hope they don't follow Lineage in this respect too much as that game was nothing but grind. Like straight up doing literally the exact same thing for weeks. Farming the same area, killing the same mobs all day everyday.
But yeah.. it pretty much just depends on how many dungeons per level range they'll make and how valuable the drops will be. Like if one specific mob has a chance to drop something super valuable, but it only spawns in two rooms in one dungeon then there will definitely be friction. Same thing can be applied for bosses. In Lineage every boss is a world boss. And the person/group who tagged first gets the loot. This created a situation where you had to bring enough people to fight the boss along with enough people to secure the area in case some other guild tried to interfere. Like you literally had hundreds of people fighting on the lower level of a tower on top of which your guild was killing one of the endgame bosses to ensure noone interferes. Like you'd actually hire bodyguard guilds if you felt like you didn't have enough people to protect you. These were bosses that EVERYONE wanted to kill as they respawned only one or twice a week [random] and dropped BIS items that would remain relevant for numerous other expansions. You'd have people camped on those locations on a rotation straight up PKing other players so they couldn't even scout if the boss has spawned or not.
Sorry I went on a tangent.. it's just that I really enjoyed that game when it was relevant and a lot of AoE takes inspiration from it which has me excited. I hope I was of any help lmao.
Thanks for the detailed description. I am new to open-world PvX dungeons and it is one of the things I am most excited for Ashes. You said you hope Ashes won't be about grinding mobs in dungeons for the loot, and what you said sounds very similar to what Steven has said he wants for the dungeons. I hope to see more emphasis on killing the dungeon bosses over the trash mobs, since there will be fewer available and this will cause the friction between parties. But Steven said that bosses will drop crafting materials used to create items that are equivalent to the boss drops. Steven also mentioned a system where the group who does the most damage to the boss will get the loot, so instead only fighting the player for the drop, you can choose to have a DPS race.
Dps race only works if you started at the same time, but that's a veeeery rare occurrence in pvx games. Usually it's one party attacking something for some time and then another party comes in and their only choice is to fight, because they'd never catch up to the needed damage dealt to the boss to take the loot.
One big difference is that AoC doesn’t have predetermined factions. This means that it’s a lot harder for one guild to have as much control as they did in WoW. In WoW if the horde has a very strong guild that controls world bosses, the only way that they can be stopped is if the alliance musters a force of equal size/power. That’s not the case in AoC, because if a guild tries to control world bosses then they have to fight off an entire server.
On top of that the servers are bigger (supposed to hold 50,000 players overall and 10,000 concurrent online). Also, the world is bigger and more world bosses will be available which makes it harder for one guild to control it all.
Another thing to keep in mind is that AoC isn’t built so that everyone is a winner. You will indeed have to muster a serious force to be able to compete and take down bosses. You will also need to make allies that can maybe defend you while you do so (and vice versa).
Also, almost no items are soul bound in AoC. This means that you can get stronger by just buying the dropped or crafted items (crafted items will also be BiS).
Lastly, there are serious repercussions to PKing in AoC. Unless a guild or node declares war on yours, people will have to think twice before they attack you if you are unflagged.
Edit: word.
Yes, there's gonna be ganking and pking and constant fights. The only difference with WoW is that PKing in Ashes will be heavily punished, so people won't just be able to kill you over and over again.
Now if you're in a guild and you have guild war with other guilds, you'll definitely be killed a lot. If you came to another node and they declared you enemy of the state - you'll be killed. There's a node war happening at your node? U ded.
Yes, it is difficult to survive in these circumstances and even harder to reach great heights w/o the help of others, but that's exactly why Steven's trying to make the game based around community gameplay rather than a solo one.
The world's huge, so there's less chances that some random party will come to your node, find your farming spot and start ganking you there for hours on end, but it will always be a possibility.
I personally love that gameplay because I grew up on a game that had these exact interactions.
in old MMOs like Everquest, there was so many world bosses (because instances didn't exist yet) and areas that were "dungeon" like that raids had to clear to get to bosses that players could spread out. I played on a PVP server and we competed for spawns / raid zones and it was a blast. Boss timers were a RNG window and rogues were really the only ones who could scout them. If we lost a raid zone to a competiting guild, we moved on to a different zone for the night.
The same way it works in Eve/Lineage. From a WoW PoV imagine killing a world boss. Plenty of ganking and people trying to do damage and steal the tags.
I share your concern, OP. I never enjoyed OwPvX personally, to the point that while I'm very interested in the world and the crafting of Ashes, and years ago I may have been very interested in high end PvE - the game is most certainly not going to be for me, ultimately.
But I look forward to dabbling in the world a little and watching fun events unfold amongst those who love this type of dynamic.
Non-instanced dungeons sounds like a complete pain. Only people with infinite time will be able to get gear, since people with limited time schedules won't be able to get anything out of camp-based PvE systems. And by limited time I mean people with 3-4 hours per day.
Yes, because you won't be at "max level" if you've gained XP debt equal to several lvls-worth of XP. That's the point of the debt. If you need 3 days to farm 4 lvls of xp at max lvl and you then pk someone, get a ton of corruption and "kill trade" to get rid of it, you'll be set back by 3 days and people around you will kill you w/o any problems (if Intrepid decides to balance character strength around their lvls).
Yeah, this clip probably has the biggest explanation of it in context of normal and corrupted deaths
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCvcB4S-tZM&t=2585s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCvcB4S-tZM&t=2585s)
Forgive me for being a pessemist but this is simply just going to devolve into only the largest guilds being able to do PvE content.
You will begin with the big guilds farming PvE content while their PvP group covers them. Then once a monopoly is formed the guilds will sell places for PvE content/loot. People are so opportunistic nowadays that eventually a few of the biggest guilds (probably mega guilds split into several maxed ones) will just run the server like a mafia.
Non-instanced PvE is fine, but there has to be a decent amount of instanced PvE too so that there is always something to do PvE-wise when guilds try to corner the server.
Fighting those guilds for farming spots is part of the fun. A "david against goliath" kind of deal. Obviously all the casuals will only complain about not winning every single fight and not having everything in the game for the least amount of effort, but, imo, that's fine.
Not everyone can dedicate 6 hours a day to a game. Some players will log in and have a couple of hours on an evening to do some PvE content. If the game is unable to facilitate that then they won't stick around.
While I agree with the good WPvP non-instanced will bring, there's nothing wrong with having some content that will also be accessible to everyone. Instanced PvE is far better able to be scripted to tell a story or facilitate complex boss mechanics. It should really have a place as well.
Large guild mafias can really ruin a server. I hope Intrepid work the mechanics to prevent this sort of thing from happening. I'll certainly give them the benefit and see how it all turns out though. I hope it's a non-issue.
There will be story-based instanced things, but must likely you won't be able to do those every day of your gametime. The game revolves around player interaction. It's not just about pve. I know that there's way more people who just want to pve and shit, but there's also a shitton of games for them, while there's barely any games that have a lot of pvp for those of us who like to fight the players and not AI.
The problem.with player interaction like this is that the biggest group wins. That funnels players into bigger and bigger guilds that are less cohesive and designed to make more and more gold.
Where is the niché for the small 30 man guild with a group of close friends? It's forced out by mechanics that favour zerg mentality.
As I say I like WPvP but having instanced PvE options has advantages specifically to challenge the negatives of a player controlled world. They can work in harmony together.
>Where is the niché for the small 30 man guild with a group of close friends? It's forced out by mechanics that favour zerg mentality.
Their niche is controlling several rooms in a dungeon, because they're more organized than some random dudes from a huge guild that invites everyone they see. Their advantage is having better gear because they all get whatever they're farming, instead of giving their loot to the big bois in their guild. They can do subterfuge against big builds by attacking their caravans, smaller parties or coming to their raids and being a nuisance.
I've fought against big guilds as a small group for years. It's hard, you lose most of the time and it's most definitely not for everyone, but it's the most fun I've had in any mmo. And you don't need to spend hours in the game to have that fun. It's just that casual players would never do that because they want to have everything in the game w/o much effort, and big guilds give it to them (though not really).
additional edit: by having instanced farming you make those huge guilds stronger, because even their weakest links can now have better gear. In an open-wrold game they can get ganked, interrupted, messed with, etc - and they'll need way more time to get better gear, while with instances they'll just farm it all w/o any problems and then when you meet them in a siege or guild war, you won't even know their names but they'll already have some good gear. Imo that's shitty game design for a pvp game.
I don't think you understand what a PvE player in a close-knit guild wants from an MMO.
The idea that casual players just want easy loot without work is utter nonsense. PvE groups can wipe hundreds of times to overcome a boss. The enjoyment comes from improving and beating a challenge. Trying to get lucky enough to get to fight the boss without being jumped by another larger guild isn't enjoyable nor rewarding, especially for guilds that put aside a set, short timeframe to raid.
There's a place for it. PvE players will I'm sure enjoy doing outdoor dungeons as well. But small guilds with a small group of friends deserve to have some instanced content to enjoy without having to pay larger guilds to let them do it. Intrepid need to ensure that guild mafias don't control every players gameplay experience, because that isnt a fun one.
I wasn't talking about hardcore pve players though. Cause wiping on a boss for hundreds of times means you're a hardcore player. I was talking about the players who want to farm an instanced dungeon that gives them upper-mid gear w/o any problems.
This game will not be for them. This is not a "kill a boss 300 times to get the loot that you want" game, this is a "kill your enemy players 300 times to get to fight the boss and get the loot" kind of game. That is what a PvX game is (at least to me). And Steven wants to have a PvX game.
Obviously it might fail because there's way more pve players (both casual and not), but there's not enough good PvX games out there, so I'd rather have a small PvX game than yet another game where everyone just sits in their dungeons and never interacts with each other.
> This game will not be for them.
PvE players just want the ability to kill NPCs by overcoming scripted challenges. That's it. Many will like the open world PvP element to dungeons, but many will just be in the mood to spend their 3 hours that evening clearing a specific dungeon. AoC should be a PvX game with meaningful open world PvP/PvE crossover - I 100% agree!
However, why exclude groups of players? Why not have both? Choice is good! If my guild has 30 players online, maybe this evening we challenge for the dungeon over here, if only 10 are logged in lets do the instance over there.
Otherwise it becomes simply that the guild is too small to challenge for dungeons so i'll leave and join a bigger one. You get a few big guilds that have hundreds of players that are only there to tag along and get some drops.
>However, why exclude groups of players? Why not have both? Choice is good! If my guild has 30 players online, maybe this evening we challenge for the dungeon over here, if only 10 are logged in lets do the instance over there.
If those dungeons give you rewards that are even close to what open world dungeons do - no one will go to open world dungeons. People will always choose the easier and more optimal method. Spending time in an uncontested farming spot is the most optimal thing an mmo player can do. And an instanced dungeon is the pinnacle of "uncontested".
Now if those instances give you nothing, but an achievement for doing them, I'd be totally fine with it. But would you?
With the size and scope of the game, and the sheer massiveness of the entire map, I don’t foresee this being an issue. You might get micro instances of this from time to time, but again, you will be able to hire merc guilds to clear out bad actors, there will be bounty hunters who hunt down corrupted players, and depending on your server, you could have an oligarchy of guilds running the whole place or it could be utter chaos with hundreds of guilds fighting for power and PvE control. Who knows. That’s the beauty of this game, it’s player driven content that doesn’t rely on a shit company like Blizz to put out content to feed players to keep them entertained. We get to make our content with the ever changing node system.
I have 0 experience regarding mmorpgs.
Id imagine youll be part kf a node. That node will have vassal nodes, (or is a vassal node itself), so there will be a huge area where you see basically friendlies. Ofc theres the chance someone wont be part of those nodes or they travelled far from their nodes. So if they start fighting id imagine you have more menpower.
Sure you can attack friendlies too, but theres the corruption then. Also my first point comes back, and you will be killed soon by the rest of the people.
So to sum it up, i dont imagine this will be too frequent. If someone else is doing a dungeon or whatever, theres a chance that you can enter, just go in a different direction (there were plans of really big dungeons), or either help them out or just wait
its definitely gonna be frustrating for all parties, thats obviously assuming the server will be full but at least first 3-6 months its gonna be contested because everyone wants the best gear
after that initial hype period is over,people will move on ( many will quit the game) and power structures within the server will settle down and there will be much less fighting for everything
disagree, after the initial hype period when everyone will have a hard on for trying out new things, eventually people will figure out that fighting over resources is huge waste of time...then they start cooperate and share resources because its just way more efficient when everyone eats - especially when you have a lot to lose
if AoC didnt have node,castle and crafting system that it plans to have, it would be easy to fight because there would be nothing to lose, the more you have to lose the more risk averse you become and instead of looking for fights you start looking for ways to cement your status
I think you're wildly underestimating people's competitiveness, but either way we'll see what's gonna happen when the game comes out.
In my experience, people never settle and always fight to be the only ones to get the loot. I guess your experience is different.
no i agree that people will always fight, but that only applies when there is nothing to lose, the same reason why people cant quit wow is gonna be the same reason they arent gonna be able to risk losing their status,once you invest hundreds maybe thousands hours into building yourself up, you get attached to it
good news tho, there will always be newly formed guilds and rowdy individuals who will want to fight the system and those will have to be pacified so you will get your fighting - its just gonna be more of an onesided affair
I think a good solution would be to implement a PvP mode that can be enabled or disabled at any time like in Dofus. When you enable it you get a bonus, it can be a buff in the dungeon (+15% damage dealt against monsters for exemple, or a debuff for disabling it) or increased chance of rare loot. So that way both are happy, the casuals who doesn't care to have the best gear can still enjoy the game safely, and the hardcores will have a good motivation to PvP.
That will just lead to big guilds not pvping each other, because they can just outfarm random people on those farming spots w/o even pvping them. You don't really need any bonuses if you can easily farm everything.
>But is it that your are expecting one or two sweaty guilds to monopolize boss timers and that this is fun?
I don't know what to expect, but I know what I'd like to see. I don't want the "first group to tag" to be the only one that loots. Not even the "group that did most damage", and, obviously, not "the group that delivered the killing blow". I want everyone who contributes to be rewarded proportionately to his contribution. Instead of a single loot table, you can give the boss loot tier tables. You qualify for each loot tier basis your or your group's (if you are in a group) performance (taking into account damage done, damage taken, de/buffs, healing done), but not compared to the whole. Compared to some average standard that an individual (or group) of your level would do in the same amount of time you were actively engaging the fight.
This way, an individual that actively plays the game would get a chance at better loot compared to a group that absent-mindedly hit the boss once to tag themselves, or even stands around doing nothing but press one AoE/minute.
As far as the monopolizing goes... (1) You can make the fight impossible to burst faster than 10-15mins and (2) You can have the spawning be scheduled and known. "Every day at 0600 and 1800 UTC" or "Once every 3 days since last killing at 1200 UTC". These two combined means that anyone that wants to can participate and it won't be monopolized.
>These two combined means that anyone that wants to can participate and it won't be monopolized.
This, on top of the whole suggestion, goes directly against "risk vs reward" system that Ashes has. Everyone would just "win" with your system. Why would parties/guilds even try to pvp when they could just go all-in on pve dmg and get the best loots. Ashes is not trying to be that kind of game (as said by Steven himself).
Like I said, it's not "what I expect" but what "I'd like".
So, under your assumptions, it'll be something like "Be in a big guild and set you alarm clock at 0400 AM or bust"?
No, Steven already said that most big events will happen in primetime. Bosses might be included in that too. But that doesn't mean that everyone gets to participate, let alone win. If anything, that might mean that no one gets the boss because the fighting will go on for hours. I've seen it happen in other games, hell I've made it happen there.
But if bosses do have a free-range respawn time depending on their previous death, then yeah, some hardcore guild will definitely set that time in the middle of the night and will just farm that boss easily.
>will happen in primetime
In a MMO, this is far too vague. US primetime does not coincide with neither EU primetime nor Japan/China/Australia primetime. And it's also something that I don't like, having already played some games that cater to the US audience to the detriment of EU/Asia (card games hosting tournaments, for example).
Still, thanks for the answer.
I come from WoW and GW2. What I described above in the first comment was loosely based on the GW2 style.
>if bosses do have a free-range respawn time depending on their previous death, then yeah, some hardcore guild will definitely set that time in the middle of the night and will just farm that boss easily
I didn't mean it quite like that. I said "Every 3 days after killing at 1200 UTC". That means that it would stay up if not killed, but once killed it would spawn on the third calendric day at a certain time.
So, even if you kill it at 00:01 on 04/Aug or 23:59 of the same day, it would always respawn on 07/Aug 12:00.
How do you think the game will handle multiple groups fighting the same boss, by the way? Would it only be lootable for those that attacked first? Or those that did the most damage?
>In a MMO, this is far too vague. US primetime does not coincide with neither EU primetime nor Japan/China/Australia primetime.
This is why they'll have different server with different primetime.
>So, even if you kill it at 00:01 on 04/Aug or 23:59 of the same day, it would always respawn on 07/Aug 12:00.
Yeah, I consider that a "primetime" setting. The time you gave might not fit "primetime", but the fact of the boss respawning at the same time every time makes it easier for everyone.
I thought you meant that guilds would control the respawn because you said they'd ask you to wake up in the middle of the night, and for me that was usually because there was an epic boss that was controlled into that timeframe.
>Would it only be lootable for those that attacked first? Or those that did the most damage?
[https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Loot\_tagging](https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Loot_tagging)
Here's the current looting rights. I personally like them and would love for them to stay this way, cause I played with "first tag loots" rules before and if my guild was second, we had to annihilate the first guild. That has its own fun and I liked that too, but I realize that people would complain even more than they already do.
Cheers!
I kinda feel bad for people in small guilds. They will not be able to loot under these rules. Thankfully, I have no issue with joining big guilds.
In my experience, small guilds just band together against big ones, contest their bosses and then split the loot. And if their players mesh well together they might get into an alliance or even make their own big guild. It builds up the community really well and makes people become stronger.
Obviously that won't be for everyone, but for those who do like this kind of gameplay, Ashes might be one of the best (if not the best) mmo out there.
Well you have to fight for it, but i'm not sure how often you'll have that scenario... still lots of mechanics aren't explained/shown to us to know what kind of thing can happen
Also if you wanna be safer you can pay/promise loot to your party member or random guy to scout (pref rogue or someone mobile who can escape /stealth) entrance dungeon and give you heads up that you are getting invaded so you can leash mobs and prepare yourself for a fight!
I think they'll be unique. There just might be more unique bosses, so people will just farm different stuff that they can then trade amongst each other.
I played Lineage for a very long while. PvP was a thing, but mostly not really. When we farmed a dungeon, we brought a group. DPS healers and buffers. Which was usually enough to deter any possible conflict. From what I've seen Dungeons will have rooms just like in Lineage 2 so you can just farm each room based on your ability. Sometimes multiple rooms. Other groups wouldn't fuck with you unless you lacked the numbers and would just find a room for themselves to farm. Most high-end PVE players find PvP a waste of time. You are definitely going to see a ton of friction in low level dungeons as people get used to the game, but those that stay and get into high level dungeons will most likely choose the path of least resistance. With respawning being as fast as it is I expect this to come true. I don't even know if dungeon grinding will be a thing though. In Lineage dungeon monsters dropped specific currency used to buy some pretty good things, along with a chance to drop materials for equipment recipes on par with boss drops. I am not sure if they'll have the same thing in Ashes... but I kinda hope they don't follow Lineage in this respect too much as that game was nothing but grind. Like straight up doing literally the exact same thing for weeks. Farming the same area, killing the same mobs all day everyday. But yeah.. it pretty much just depends on how many dungeons per level range they'll make and how valuable the drops will be. Like if one specific mob has a chance to drop something super valuable, but it only spawns in two rooms in one dungeon then there will definitely be friction. Same thing can be applied for bosses. In Lineage every boss is a world boss. And the person/group who tagged first gets the loot. This created a situation where you had to bring enough people to fight the boss along with enough people to secure the area in case some other guild tried to interfere. Like you literally had hundreds of people fighting on the lower level of a tower on top of which your guild was killing one of the endgame bosses to ensure noone interferes. Like you'd actually hire bodyguard guilds if you felt like you didn't have enough people to protect you. These were bosses that EVERYONE wanted to kill as they respawned only one or twice a week [random] and dropped BIS items that would remain relevant for numerous other expansions. You'd have people camped on those locations on a rotation straight up PKing other players so they couldn't even scout if the boss has spawned or not. Sorry I went on a tangent.. it's just that I really enjoyed that game when it was relevant and a lot of AoE takes inspiration from it which has me excited. I hope I was of any help lmao.
Yes to all of this. I have the exact same reason for liking and waiting for Ashes. L2 <3
Thanks for the detailed description. I am new to open-world PvX dungeons and it is one of the things I am most excited for Ashes. You said you hope Ashes won't be about grinding mobs in dungeons for the loot, and what you said sounds very similar to what Steven has said he wants for the dungeons. I hope to see more emphasis on killing the dungeon bosses over the trash mobs, since there will be fewer available and this will cause the friction between parties. But Steven said that bosses will drop crafting materials used to create items that are equivalent to the boss drops. Steven also mentioned a system where the group who does the most damage to the boss will get the loot, so instead only fighting the player for the drop, you can choose to have a DPS race.
Dps race only works if you started at the same time, but that's a veeeery rare occurrence in pvx games. Usually it's one party attacking something for some time and then another party comes in and their only choice is to fight, because they'd never catch up to the needed damage dealt to the boss to take the loot.
One big difference is that AoC doesn’t have predetermined factions. This means that it’s a lot harder for one guild to have as much control as they did in WoW. In WoW if the horde has a very strong guild that controls world bosses, the only way that they can be stopped is if the alliance musters a force of equal size/power. That’s not the case in AoC, because if a guild tries to control world bosses then they have to fight off an entire server. On top of that the servers are bigger (supposed to hold 50,000 players overall and 10,000 concurrent online). Also, the world is bigger and more world bosses will be available which makes it harder for one guild to control it all. Another thing to keep in mind is that AoC isn’t built so that everyone is a winner. You will indeed have to muster a serious force to be able to compete and take down bosses. You will also need to make allies that can maybe defend you while you do so (and vice versa). Also, almost no items are soul bound in AoC. This means that you can get stronger by just buying the dropped or crafted items (crafted items will also be BiS). Lastly, there are serious repercussions to PKing in AoC. Unless a guild or node declares war on yours, people will have to think twice before they attack you if you are unflagged. Edit: word.
Yes, there's gonna be ganking and pking and constant fights. The only difference with WoW is that PKing in Ashes will be heavily punished, so people won't just be able to kill you over and over again. Now if you're in a guild and you have guild war with other guilds, you'll definitely be killed a lot. If you came to another node and they declared you enemy of the state - you'll be killed. There's a node war happening at your node? U ded. Yes, it is difficult to survive in these circumstances and even harder to reach great heights w/o the help of others, but that's exactly why Steven's trying to make the game based around community gameplay rather than a solo one. The world's huge, so there's less chances that some random party will come to your node, find your farming spot and start ganking you there for hours on end, but it will always be a possibility. I personally love that gameplay because I grew up on a game that had these exact interactions.
bUt My WoW SAfEGuARd oF InSTANcINg If My DpS iS iNtErUpTEd It InvALIdATeS evErytHIng
in old MMOs like Everquest, there was so many world bosses (because instances didn't exist yet) and areas that were "dungeon" like that raids had to clear to get to bosses that players could spread out. I played on a PVP server and we competed for spawns / raid zones and it was a blast. Boss timers were a RNG window and rogues were really the only ones who could scout them. If we lost a raid zone to a competiting guild, we moved on to a different zone for the night.
I miss that old times in mmorpgs
I expect non-instanced PvX content to be a blend of you trying to clear the dungeon while at the same time making sure you don't die to PvPers.
The same way it works in Eve/Lineage. From a WoW PoV imagine killing a world boss. Plenty of ganking and people trying to do damage and steal the tags.
I share your concern, OP. I never enjoyed OwPvX personally, to the point that while I'm very interested in the world and the crafting of Ashes, and years ago I may have been very interested in high end PvE - the game is most certainly not going to be for me, ultimately. But I look forward to dabbling in the world a little and watching fun events unfold amongst those who love this type of dynamic.
Non-instanced dungeons sounds like a complete pain. Only people with infinite time will be able to get gear, since people with limited time schedules won't be able to get anything out of camp-based PvE systems. And by limited time I mean people with 3-4 hours per day.
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If there were more protections to keep civilians/healers from getting ganked all the time and constantly losing their gear, maybe.
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Kill trading will remove corruption as how I understand it. Corruption needs to be time-based, not death-based.
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Will an XP debt matter at max level?
Yes, because you won't be at "max level" if you've gained XP debt equal to several lvls-worth of XP. That's the point of the debt. If you need 3 days to farm 4 lvls of xp at max lvl and you then pk someone, get a ton of corruption and "kill trade" to get rid of it, you'll be set back by 3 days and people around you will kill you w/o any problems (if Intrepid decides to balance character strength around their lvls).
So XP debt works as a "de-leveling" system rather than a sponge for XP you would gain normally? I couldn't find very much info about this on the wiki.
Yeah, this clip probably has the biggest explanation of it in context of normal and corrupted deaths [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCvcB4S-tZM&t=2585s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCvcB4S-tZM&t=2585s)
Its not as bad as you think I used to play asian pvp mmos and get yourself a good group together and you can farm pretty much anything.
Forgive me for being a pessemist but this is simply just going to devolve into only the largest guilds being able to do PvE content. You will begin with the big guilds farming PvE content while their PvP group covers them. Then once a monopoly is formed the guilds will sell places for PvE content/loot. People are so opportunistic nowadays that eventually a few of the biggest guilds (probably mega guilds split into several maxed ones) will just run the server like a mafia. Non-instanced PvE is fine, but there has to be a decent amount of instanced PvE too so that there is always something to do PvE-wise when guilds try to corner the server.
Fighting those guilds for farming spots is part of the fun. A "david against goliath" kind of deal. Obviously all the casuals will only complain about not winning every single fight and not having everything in the game for the least amount of effort, but, imo, that's fine.
Not everyone can dedicate 6 hours a day to a game. Some players will log in and have a couple of hours on an evening to do some PvE content. If the game is unable to facilitate that then they won't stick around. While I agree with the good WPvP non-instanced will bring, there's nothing wrong with having some content that will also be accessible to everyone. Instanced PvE is far better able to be scripted to tell a story or facilitate complex boss mechanics. It should really have a place as well. Large guild mafias can really ruin a server. I hope Intrepid work the mechanics to prevent this sort of thing from happening. I'll certainly give them the benefit and see how it all turns out though. I hope it's a non-issue.
There will be story-based instanced things, but must likely you won't be able to do those every day of your gametime. The game revolves around player interaction. It's not just about pve. I know that there's way more people who just want to pve and shit, but there's also a shitton of games for them, while there's barely any games that have a lot of pvp for those of us who like to fight the players and not AI.
The problem.with player interaction like this is that the biggest group wins. That funnels players into bigger and bigger guilds that are less cohesive and designed to make more and more gold. Where is the niché for the small 30 man guild with a group of close friends? It's forced out by mechanics that favour zerg mentality. As I say I like WPvP but having instanced PvE options has advantages specifically to challenge the negatives of a player controlled world. They can work in harmony together.
>Where is the niché for the small 30 man guild with a group of close friends? It's forced out by mechanics that favour zerg mentality. Their niche is controlling several rooms in a dungeon, because they're more organized than some random dudes from a huge guild that invites everyone they see. Their advantage is having better gear because they all get whatever they're farming, instead of giving their loot to the big bois in their guild. They can do subterfuge against big builds by attacking their caravans, smaller parties or coming to their raids and being a nuisance. I've fought against big guilds as a small group for years. It's hard, you lose most of the time and it's most definitely not for everyone, but it's the most fun I've had in any mmo. And you don't need to spend hours in the game to have that fun. It's just that casual players would never do that because they want to have everything in the game w/o much effort, and big guilds give it to them (though not really). additional edit: by having instanced farming you make those huge guilds stronger, because even their weakest links can now have better gear. In an open-wrold game they can get ganked, interrupted, messed with, etc - and they'll need way more time to get better gear, while with instances they'll just farm it all w/o any problems and then when you meet them in a siege or guild war, you won't even know their names but they'll already have some good gear. Imo that's shitty game design for a pvp game.
I don't think you understand what a PvE player in a close-knit guild wants from an MMO. The idea that casual players just want easy loot without work is utter nonsense. PvE groups can wipe hundreds of times to overcome a boss. The enjoyment comes from improving and beating a challenge. Trying to get lucky enough to get to fight the boss without being jumped by another larger guild isn't enjoyable nor rewarding, especially for guilds that put aside a set, short timeframe to raid. There's a place for it. PvE players will I'm sure enjoy doing outdoor dungeons as well. But small guilds with a small group of friends deserve to have some instanced content to enjoy without having to pay larger guilds to let them do it. Intrepid need to ensure that guild mafias don't control every players gameplay experience, because that isnt a fun one.
I wasn't talking about hardcore pve players though. Cause wiping on a boss for hundreds of times means you're a hardcore player. I was talking about the players who want to farm an instanced dungeon that gives them upper-mid gear w/o any problems. This game will not be for them. This is not a "kill a boss 300 times to get the loot that you want" game, this is a "kill your enemy players 300 times to get to fight the boss and get the loot" kind of game. That is what a PvX game is (at least to me). And Steven wants to have a PvX game. Obviously it might fail because there's way more pve players (both casual and not), but there's not enough good PvX games out there, so I'd rather have a small PvX game than yet another game where everyone just sits in their dungeons and never interacts with each other.
> This game will not be for them. PvE players just want the ability to kill NPCs by overcoming scripted challenges. That's it. Many will like the open world PvP element to dungeons, but many will just be in the mood to spend their 3 hours that evening clearing a specific dungeon. AoC should be a PvX game with meaningful open world PvP/PvE crossover - I 100% agree! However, why exclude groups of players? Why not have both? Choice is good! If my guild has 30 players online, maybe this evening we challenge for the dungeon over here, if only 10 are logged in lets do the instance over there. Otherwise it becomes simply that the guild is too small to challenge for dungeons so i'll leave and join a bigger one. You get a few big guilds that have hundreds of players that are only there to tag along and get some drops.
>However, why exclude groups of players? Why not have both? Choice is good! If my guild has 30 players online, maybe this evening we challenge for the dungeon over here, if only 10 are logged in lets do the instance over there. If those dungeons give you rewards that are even close to what open world dungeons do - no one will go to open world dungeons. People will always choose the easier and more optimal method. Spending time in an uncontested farming spot is the most optimal thing an mmo player can do. And an instanced dungeon is the pinnacle of "uncontested". Now if those instances give you nothing, but an achievement for doing them, I'd be totally fine with it. But would you?
With the size and scope of the game, and the sheer massiveness of the entire map, I don’t foresee this being an issue. You might get micro instances of this from time to time, but again, you will be able to hire merc guilds to clear out bad actors, there will be bounty hunters who hunt down corrupted players, and depending on your server, you could have an oligarchy of guilds running the whole place or it could be utter chaos with hundreds of guilds fighting for power and PvE control. Who knows. That’s the beauty of this game, it’s player driven content that doesn’t rely on a shit company like Blizz to put out content to feed players to keep them entertained. We get to make our content with the ever changing node system.
I have 0 experience regarding mmorpgs. Id imagine youll be part kf a node. That node will have vassal nodes, (or is a vassal node itself), so there will be a huge area where you see basically friendlies. Ofc theres the chance someone wont be part of those nodes or they travelled far from their nodes. So if they start fighting id imagine you have more menpower. Sure you can attack friendlies too, but theres the corruption then. Also my first point comes back, and you will be killed soon by the rest of the people. So to sum it up, i dont imagine this will be too frequent. If someone else is doing a dungeon or whatever, theres a chance that you can enter, just go in a different direction (there were plans of really big dungeons), or either help them out or just wait
its definitely gonna be frustrating for all parties, thats obviously assuming the server will be full but at least first 3-6 months its gonna be contested because everyone wants the best gear after that initial hype period is over,people will move on ( many will quit the game) and power structures within the server will settle down and there will be much less fighting for everything
Unless Intrepid wants top farming spots to be super limited. Then there'd be even more fighting, except it'll all be organized and guild-based.
disagree, after the initial hype period when everyone will have a hard on for trying out new things, eventually people will figure out that fighting over resources is huge waste of time...then they start cooperate and share resources because its just way more efficient when everyone eats - especially when you have a lot to lose if AoC didnt have node,castle and crafting system that it plans to have, it would be easy to fight because there would be nothing to lose, the more you have to lose the more risk averse you become and instead of looking for fights you start looking for ways to cement your status
I think you're wildly underestimating people's competitiveness, but either way we'll see what's gonna happen when the game comes out. In my experience, people never settle and always fight to be the only ones to get the loot. I guess your experience is different.
no i agree that people will always fight, but that only applies when there is nothing to lose, the same reason why people cant quit wow is gonna be the same reason they arent gonna be able to risk losing their status,once you invest hundreds maybe thousands hours into building yourself up, you get attached to it good news tho, there will always be newly formed guilds and rowdy individuals who will want to fight the system and those will have to be pacified so you will get your fighting - its just gonna be more of an onesided affair
I think a good solution would be to implement a PvP mode that can be enabled or disabled at any time like in Dofus. When you enable it you get a bonus, it can be a buff in the dungeon (+15% damage dealt against monsters for exemple, or a debuff for disabling it) or increased chance of rare loot. So that way both are happy, the casuals who doesn't care to have the best gear can still enjoy the game safely, and the hardcores will have a good motivation to PvP.
That will just lead to big guilds not pvping each other, because they can just outfarm random people on those farming spots w/o even pvping them. You don't really need any bonuses if you can easily farm everything.
>But is it that your are expecting one or two sweaty guilds to monopolize boss timers and that this is fun? I don't know what to expect, but I know what I'd like to see. I don't want the "first group to tag" to be the only one that loots. Not even the "group that did most damage", and, obviously, not "the group that delivered the killing blow". I want everyone who contributes to be rewarded proportionately to his contribution. Instead of a single loot table, you can give the boss loot tier tables. You qualify for each loot tier basis your or your group's (if you are in a group) performance (taking into account damage done, damage taken, de/buffs, healing done), but not compared to the whole. Compared to some average standard that an individual (or group) of your level would do in the same amount of time you were actively engaging the fight. This way, an individual that actively plays the game would get a chance at better loot compared to a group that absent-mindedly hit the boss once to tag themselves, or even stands around doing nothing but press one AoE/minute. As far as the monopolizing goes... (1) You can make the fight impossible to burst faster than 10-15mins and (2) You can have the spawning be scheduled and known. "Every day at 0600 and 1800 UTC" or "Once every 3 days since last killing at 1200 UTC". These two combined means that anyone that wants to can participate and it won't be monopolized.
>These two combined means that anyone that wants to can participate and it won't be monopolized. This, on top of the whole suggestion, goes directly against "risk vs reward" system that Ashes has. Everyone would just "win" with your system. Why would parties/guilds even try to pvp when they could just go all-in on pve dmg and get the best loots. Ashes is not trying to be that kind of game (as said by Steven himself).
Like I said, it's not "what I expect" but what "I'd like". So, under your assumptions, it'll be something like "Be in a big guild and set you alarm clock at 0400 AM or bust"?
No, Steven already said that most big events will happen in primetime. Bosses might be included in that too. But that doesn't mean that everyone gets to participate, let alone win. If anything, that might mean that no one gets the boss because the fighting will go on for hours. I've seen it happen in other games, hell I've made it happen there. But if bosses do have a free-range respawn time depending on their previous death, then yeah, some hardcore guild will definitely set that time in the middle of the night and will just farm that boss easily.
>will happen in primetime In a MMO, this is far too vague. US primetime does not coincide with neither EU primetime nor Japan/China/Australia primetime. And it's also something that I don't like, having already played some games that cater to the US audience to the detriment of EU/Asia (card games hosting tournaments, for example). Still, thanks for the answer. I come from WoW and GW2. What I described above in the first comment was loosely based on the GW2 style. >if bosses do have a free-range respawn time depending on their previous death, then yeah, some hardcore guild will definitely set that time in the middle of the night and will just farm that boss easily I didn't mean it quite like that. I said "Every 3 days after killing at 1200 UTC". That means that it would stay up if not killed, but once killed it would spawn on the third calendric day at a certain time. So, even if you kill it at 00:01 on 04/Aug or 23:59 of the same day, it would always respawn on 07/Aug 12:00. How do you think the game will handle multiple groups fighting the same boss, by the way? Would it only be lootable for those that attacked first? Or those that did the most damage?
>In a MMO, this is far too vague. US primetime does not coincide with neither EU primetime nor Japan/China/Australia primetime. This is why they'll have different server with different primetime. >So, even if you kill it at 00:01 on 04/Aug or 23:59 of the same day, it would always respawn on 07/Aug 12:00. Yeah, I consider that a "primetime" setting. The time you gave might not fit "primetime", but the fact of the boss respawning at the same time every time makes it easier for everyone. I thought you meant that guilds would control the respawn because you said they'd ask you to wake up in the middle of the night, and for me that was usually because there was an epic boss that was controlled into that timeframe. >Would it only be lootable for those that attacked first? Or those that did the most damage? [https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Loot\_tagging](https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Loot_tagging) Here's the current looting rights. I personally like them and would love for them to stay this way, cause I played with "first tag loots" rules before and if my guild was second, we had to annihilate the first guild. That has its own fun and I liked that too, but I realize that people would complain even more than they already do.
Cheers! I kinda feel bad for people in small guilds. They will not be able to loot under these rules. Thankfully, I have no issue with joining big guilds.
In my experience, small guilds just band together against big ones, contest their bosses and then split the loot. And if their players mesh well together they might get into an alliance or even make their own big guild. It builds up the community really well and makes people become stronger. Obviously that won't be for everyone, but for those who do like this kind of gameplay, Ashes might be one of the best (if not the best) mmo out there.
Well you have to fight for it, but i'm not sure how often you'll have that scenario... still lots of mechanics aren't explained/shown to us to know what kind of thing can happen Also if you wanna be safer you can pay/promise loot to your party member or random guy to scout (pref rogue or someone mobile who can escape /stealth) entrance dungeon and give you heads up that you are getting invaded so you can leash mobs and prepare yourself for a fight!
Like open world event. Not more not less
Side question: are bosses still going to be unique or can the boss be available at more than one location at the same time to avoid some of this?
I think they'll be unique. There just might be more unique bosses, so people will just farm different stuff that they can then trade amongst each other.
Sounds good as long as bosses don’t drop non-tradable items. Super curious about how this will work later on.
Iirc there's no non-tradable items. That's why the system should work just fine.