Leveling the playing field in instanced PvP

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You can test augments whenever you want because you can change classes of your character. Same with any type of gear. You'd just have to work for it, just as any other player would.

But you can't simply change your archetype, which is why I think that providing a way to see how an archetype plays on higher lvls would be completely fine.

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You can transfer resources on ships and a lot of Ashes' design relies on resource transfers being contested. So naval combat is a requirement.

Right now we don't know what the arena ladder rewards will be, but unless those rewards will be one of a kind and only acquirable through arenas - removal of arenas wouldn't influence anything in the game. While removing the whole damn ocean and/or rivers would impact the entire world of the game and several potential content designs.

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from SirChancelot to share the quoted post.

You can transfer resources on ships and a lot of Ashes' design relies on resource transfers being contested. So naval combat is a requirement.

Right now we don't know what the arena ladder rewards will be, but unless those rewards will be one of a kind and only acquirable through arenas - removal of arenas wouldn't influence anything in the game. While removing the whole damn ocean and/or rivers would impact the entire world of the game and several potential content designs.

At the same time, SirChancelot is right (and so are you, which is the 'issue'). Naval combat was always a stretch goal that they happened to hit.

If it had been up to me, I would have cut the concept of an Arena Ladder from the start.

Because I suspect it goes against Ashes' systems/goals/long term success. But it's just a suspicion.

It's true that there's lots of things Ashes doesn't NEED, but when I say that, I say it only toward the understanding of the game as given thus far.

I didn't mention that whole 'Steven is a salesman' anecdote lightly. That possibility shifts so much of the context of what we discuss on this forum, that there end up being some topics where we can't even give proper feedback because we don't know whether it's appropriate or how 'far to go'.

Does Steven like Arenas, or just think other people like Arenas and hasn't developed any irritations toward them?

Azherae wrote: »

I didn't mention that whole 'Steven is a salesman' anecdote lightly. That possibility shifts so much of the context of what we discuss on this forum, that there end up being some topics where we can't even give proper feedback because we don't know whether it's appropriate or how 'far to go'.

Does Steven like Arenas, or just think other people like Arenas and hasn't developed any irritations toward them?

Yeah, Steven's broad strokes of design can definitely be an issue for the game in the long run. There's a chance that Steven liked arenas from L2 and AA and, while I don't know what AA arenas had for rewards, L2's arenas gave veeeery strong rewards, which was both a justification of their design and an issue of what those rewards resulted in.

So I think that AoC arenas' value and reason for existing will mainly depend on what they'll provide to the players. And imo they can be designed in such a way where they're not a detriment to the overall mmo experience, but as you said it's very difficult to propose any kinds of changes or give any kind of feedback due to the absolute lack of information on 90% of the game's systems.