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Post by SongRune on 2022-10-01 22:31:10
As a Bard, this is the main purpose of a Combat Tracker (mostly nobody in this thread cares about "DPS Meters" that only show one's DPS, that's just malicious naming by Steven). It helps you determine how effective your support actions are, how they affect the states and effectiveness of your group, and where your group might be struggling in somewhat less obvious ways, so you can see whether your group might do better if you went for a buff type instead, as well as helping you identify what went wrong four or five steps back that later resulted ...
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-01 23:59:30
[I misread the quoted post]
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-02 01:20:12
Ah, the true BDO solution. "We couldn't be bothered to balance our classes, so we'll just add a damage multiplier to individual PvP matchups."
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-02 03:19:14
What if it's not for profit? What if it's literally just to fund more development and subsidize poor people's sub fees?
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-02 12:33:48
You might as well just display the other player's stat block and ability level distributions. It'd be easier to read. A basic attack with bleed proc chance on the weapon would probably cause the following to all flash on screen at the same time (every 0.5-1.5 seconds or so): - Accuracy vs Evasion - Attack vs Defense - Crit Rate vs Incoming Crit Rate Reduction - Crit Damage vs Crit Damage Protection - Bleed Proc Rate vs Bleed Proc Reduction blended with Status Proc Reduction If the opponent is dual wielding you get two of these lists alternating every ...
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-02 16:59:56
Resource scarcity in Alpha 1 was based on scarcity of harvesting points. You'd generally get the same amount from a given harvest (from my vague memory, perhaps sometimes you'd get 2?). I never got zero items from a harvest. It was a technical Alpha, however, and they have stated several times that the gathering system was entirely a placeholder.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-02 17:02:58
Rejoice! Steven frequently explains that in-game achievable items will look as cool or cooler than the cash shop ones, as well as allowing you to equip pieces individually (cash shop sets are all-or-nothing).
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-02 17:10:49
Lag. If your account is on a North America server, you're not gonna get the Brazil prices. Possibly Language. If you play the Brazil edition of the game, odds are it won't be in English. But the most realistic answer to the original question is: These packages include Alpha keys. They are specifically intended to be expensive and limited, and are priced with that goal in mind. You want a limited number of players in an alpha. Expanding access, while it might make some financial sense, is contrary to that goal.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-02 17:13:58
I disagree that "cheat mode" is an issue in this type of demo. They are specifically not demoing "gameplay". They are demoing "ranger abilities". While turning off cheats and focusing on real gameplay experiences would be good for gameplay demo, it's inefficient for an initial class/ability design demonstration. "Cheat mode" keeps the class/ability demonstration focused.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-02 23:09:14
How does DBZ Tenkaichi do it? What does this look like in practice?
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-03 04:33:04
That sounds similar to the standard system of opposed stat comparisons that's common in video games in general. (Attack (based on STR) opposed by Defense (based on CON), Accuracy (based on DEX) opposed by Evasion (based on AGI), and the like). The indirectly opposed "speed" stat makes sense as well, though I'm less accustomed to that sort of thing being racial. My question was about the visual indications for these clashes, which you asked for in your original post. How was this displayed beyond the standard "Damage", "Hit/Miss", "This person attacks faster"? What is it (more concretely) that you ...
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-03 12:47:46
Then there would be trackers/parsers that use streams/videos, and can't be stopped. It's just "What if they ban trackers?", but applied to servers instead of universally. External trackers will be written and used, instead of the game's provided tracker. You don't get the benefit of "tracker players will move to a different server" because no-one is going to start over from level 1 just because their server changed it's mind eventually. They'll just write the ACT (not Ashes Client) plugin, and start parsing their combat video (on their other PC, if need be). Remember that the goal of the ...
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-03 12:58:51
Ah yes, the "we don't need to pay sysadmins, devops, network engineers, GMs or user support staff" cost model. A server will cost many tens of thousands of dollars per month to manage and support even if it costs far less to physically run.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-03 13:34:07
Alpha-1 allowed you to make characters on as many servers as you wanted. I had Resna, Norlan, Lyneth, ??? (probably Tenok), and they only mentioned those four in the server status announcements. (No idea why the wiki's screenshoter had more options.) That does seem to imply I could've played in both US-East and EU-West if I wanted to, though.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-03 14:54:36
That's a much more reasonable cost model for operating a MMORPG server. There's obviously less margin in practice due to needing to fund the organization as a whole, but that does seem like a good starting estimate for the server itself.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-03 21:28:42
The problem is... if you give players information, then trackers also have that same information. The days when there were things that are easy for humans to read and properly hard for computers to read are long past. And this doesn't apply only to text.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-04 14:26:15
When a caravan is destroyed by attackers, some of the materials are lost, and some of the materials are dropped to attackers. You might want to review the Caravans page on the wiki. There's no reason your friend couldn't send a very lightly loaded caravan in front of yours, but if you defend it, you're risking attackers going for yours instead (while all your friends are defending the decoy, or after defeating those friends), and if you don't defend it, you risk them knocking it over, seeing it's empty and then coming for yours like they originally were going ...
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-04 14:33:40
Pinned topics are always on top. If you sort by number of responses, number of dev responses, most viewed, or old to new, you're going to have to wade through hundreds (up to two thousand I believe we're at these days) pages of years-old threads before you see anything current. This will also result in overall chaos as people necro those old threads, making it even more difficult to consistently engage with current discussions.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-04 14:39:59
The purpose of having mobs respawn at a particular rate in a given area is to prevent player movement through that area unless they are capable of killing mobs at a particular speed so they can continue to move forward faster than the previous mobs respawn. The correct respawn rate for an area is defined based on how easily you want the area to be passable to players of a given level. Higher level players will mow through and cross the zone without issue. At-level players will find it challenging and need to play well. Lower level players have ...
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-04 16:45:15
Very persuasive.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-04 16:54:37
It's not likely that Mag prefers Action Combat because of fighting games. In my experience, more serious fighting game players prefer something closer to Tab or Hybrid. He probably prefers it as a result of his personality and personal preferences, moreso than any fighting game parallel.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-04 20:38:42
Alpha-1 had full keybind customization.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-04 22:14:52
I don't believe we know the cost of launching a caravan yet. I can't say where the risk/reward is for attackers. Steven's take is that it will hurt your reputation with other players (not a game mechanic) and failing attacks will make it harder to progress on the "Bandit" quest paths. Even death penalties (other than gear decay) are disabled for caravans ref , but that decay is normal and would apply to defenders too. In his own words, from June 2022: (at 1:14:52) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sUTuUAgavE&t=4492s
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-05 14:23:54
No attempt at all will be made to combat them. If they can keep their interests aligned, avoid politics, avoid 'power hungry' disruptions, and avoid internal conflicts over decisions relating to nodes, gear and resources, they will be allowed to exist and operate. (ref: Guilds )
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-05 17:04:14
Hell no. Keep product placement out of my fantasy world. There is no such thing as an immersive advertisement for real world products in a fantasy MMO. The key thing that you see in your Unity "immersive advertisement" video is that these are all realistic environments where advertisements naturally exist, and that's the only reason they work. There are none of those spaces in high fantasy.
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-05 19:01:37
Learning that building an MMORPG is a massive time investment, and that it's very hard to hire for critical roles like Senior Economy Designer, Senior Quest Designer, and Senior Systems Designer, all of which are still open. (And COVID, but obviously that's after 2018.)
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-06 01:12:48
I do not believe it is a good idea to allow individual players (even mayors) to change the core risk/reward balance for the game. I do not believe that node mayors should be allowed to change the game's target audience for specific portions of the map. Allowing this will cause rifts in the community as different groups with literally different 'games they want to play' all wish for Ashes to become more like their own personal preference, as well as disenfranchisement when 51% of a node changes the literal type of game that you are playing when you are ...
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-06 16:53:21
I mean, he's explained in the past that the only way to make trackers not be an advantage at the raid or group level is to make the enemies too simplistic or easy for the data to be useful. Perhaps you missed that? I don't recall exactly when you joined the thread. It's not strange for a high-end PvE player to ignore games with simplistic combat. Trackers are useful for all complex or tactically difficult games. He's not saying "Trackers are useless, so I won't play." He's saying "The only way trackers can be useless is as a RESULT ...
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-07 14:51:23
You may wish to review Voice Acting on the wiki. I personally hope they do not add narration to quest lines or NPC dialog. The voiced NPC greetings is enough to give me a feel for a character's voice, which then carries over into their text dialog. There are a lot of reasons I feel that this is a bad idea, but most boil down to the fact that getting it right is really hard, getting it wrong is really easy, and on an MMORPG scale, consistency at that level is beyond expensive, while simultaneously increasing the barrier to ...
Post by SongRune on 2022-10-07 15:01:56
These make great stories, and work well in single-player games but when you come down to the practical matter of it, they can quickly become un-fun things one has to grind for peak performance, particularly if the effects are strong. I don't want to hear from a raid group "Okay, everyone grind your poison resistance by next Saturday. We're taking on the poison dragon next."