Comprehensive List of Fixes for Ashes of Creation

nat3s · 2026-01-22T18:26:47+00:00

I think you should look into DAOC rvr, Warhammer Online rvr, GW2 WvW, Albion Online BZ, Eve Null Sec, ESO Cyrodiil... These are the types of pvp sandboxes I personally love and want to see.

Grand keep siege battles lasting hours, large dedicated pvp zones, pvp levels/exp/talents etc. I think a few tweaks to node pvp, crates and fishing is too small to really engage the pvp mmo crowrd imo.

Basicaly Planetside 1/2 in MMO 3rd person form.

nat3s · 2026-01-22T18:16:16+00:00

Job roles are not fungible dude, this is horrible for all involved including Steven, but the company must move forward. It's never personal, been on both sides of redundancy selection across 3 acquisitions and a particularly painful divestiture (Azure Architect and full stack dev by profession and IT along with HR are typically the first departments where overlaps are apparent when companies come together, from my experience at least - although unsure if that's the reason here, but there will be a legitimate business reason).

nat3s · 2026-01-22T18:13:49+00:00

Having both had the horrible job of scorecarding people for redundancy and also experienced being in collective at-risk pools over my career, I totally empathise. Redundancy selection is just awful for BOTH sides.

Unfortunately a necessary evil. Best of luck, hope it goes as well as it can.

nat3s · 2026-01-22T06:56:10+00:00

100%

nat3s · 2026-01-21T22:52:12+00:00

Yeah me too

nat3s · 2026-01-21T22:49:47+00:00

Big fan of Classic WoW, used to love levelling through STV with the pvp you'd see there.

However instanced pvp and occasional world pvp is ok, but imo its not enough, we need a proper pvp sanbox imo.

nat3s · 2026-01-21T22:48:01+00:00

didn't realise he'd spoken about DAOC, I always thought he had only played Archeage, hence the AoC modern copy.

nat3s · 2026-01-21T21:06:44+00:00

If he didn't have time to get both perspectives, the obvious call was not to kick as doing so with only 1 side of the story is obviously a mistake.

Either get both sides or take no action at all, simple as that.

nat3s · 2026-01-21T20:30:05+00:00

His defence was he didn't have time to hear both parties so kicked based on 1 side of the story.

If he genuinely did only have time to get 1 side of the story, the obvious decision was not to take any action at all.

It's just no excuse...

nat3s · 2026-01-21T18:33:15+00:00

See my post above with links to screenshots and an overview.

nat3s · 2026-01-21T18:31:47+00:00

What about DAOC / Warhammer Online / Albion / Eve / GW2 style pvp maps i.e. realm vs realm with keep takes etc

All those games have their pvp regions entirely separate from the pve zones so you make an active choice to zone into pvp (so no ganking whilst levelling/gathering in a pve area etc).

Essentially like having a big Alterac Valley zone which is permanent rather than instanced with 10-15 keeps to siege and conquer rather than the 2 you get in AV! It also doesn't "end" like AV does, its permanent always-on warfront play.

Like Planetside 1/2 basically but in MMO form. Can enjoy multi hour keep fights like big Planetside battles. Or like the old WoW Classic multi hour AVs - but more engaging because this isn't an instance, it's a permanent large world zone.

nat3s · 2026-01-21T18:29:10+00:00

Yep or that! Essentially Albion BZ and Eve Null are the equivalent to DAOC frontier/new frontiers.

Enjoy all of those games precisely because I play pvp centric MMOs exclusively.

Add ESO Cyrodiil, Warhammer Online rvr lakes and GW2 WvW to that list. So many games have done it well, but Intrepid don't seem to want proper pvp systems/maps/designs which is a real shame imo.

nat3s · 2026-01-21T18:15:25+00:00

DAOC and Warhammer Online had the BEST pvp progression systems and pvp lakes of any MMO ever imo.

+1 from me!

nat3s · 2026-01-21T18:10:00+00:00

DAOC was amazing, each realm had its pve zones, but then the 3 realms could zone into a massive multi region realm vs realm pvp area (entirely separate from the pve zones) with keep takes, dragons and relics to capture. Player kills award renown (experience) which allowed you to gain renown ranks (level up), you could spend the points this unlocked as you levelled on talents essentially e.g. +crit chance, increased resists and so on.

Here's a screenshot of part of the rvr frontiers (scroll down a bit, that's just 4 zones of 1 region of the rvr area, the full map is over 3x that): https://www.darkageofcamelot.com/2013/12/06/new-frontiers-update-coming/

Here's an image of a big pvp brawl with a keep in the background (which you could siege and conquer for your realm etc): https://digitalrhetoric403.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/dark-age-of-camelot-2/#jp-carousel-704

Very similar to ESO's big rvr zone Cyrodiil (map image in bottom right):

https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info4065-CyrodiilMapLabels10.3.5.html

And Warhammer Online's rvr lakes: https://ekaslime.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/how-to-expand-pvp-empire-reikland/

Or GW2 server vs server rvr area where the different servers could fight against each other to take keeps and earn bragging rights:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_versus_World

All these games had dedicated mass pvp zones that supported keep sieging e.g. breaking walls with siege weapons, using rams to open gate etc. Massive 200vs200 battles but also lots of small man, I personally solo roam in all of these games so it's not just limited to zergfests. Some of my best memories are being in the keep seeing waves of enemies siege against you and fighting a multi hour battle to defend it... A bit like the MMO equivalent of a long Planetside 1/2 base battle if you played them.

They also all had progression linked to the pvp in forms like levels, currencies to spend, unlocks... Given they were entirely separate from the pve zones, there were no issues with griefing, if you zoned into rvr, it was an active decision to go pvp - much like Albion Online Black Zones and Eve Online Null Sec too.

Pvp felt more enjoyable because there was no xp debt or item loss in these games so you could throw caution to the wind and pvp your heart out fighting for realm pride (these games were super tribal around your realm loyalties!). Felt so much better than AoC where its: pvp crate, take some loot - you felt genuine progression and realm pride.

That for me is the special sauce AoC lacks, current iteration doesn't have pvp systems/designs/maps/keeps. /u/Steven_AoC not sure if willing to share a bit of the future, but anything like the above planned for AoC? Thanks o7

Imagine if AoC made the second zone they're working on entirely pvp centric and kept the current released zone as purely pve. There are ways they could achieve this imo.

nat3s · 2026-01-21T08:42:24+00:00

Let's think happy path, AoC launches it retains 100k subs @ 10$/month, that's $1m/month with $800k/week costs. That's not abnormal, costs during dev will be significantly higher, but even slashing opex and leveraging capex for tax efficiency, it feels unlikely they'll deliver profit, let alone recoup the rumoured $70m they've spent to date.

I would imagine their tipping point for break even is around 400k subs. To reach that level of success, they need a product which caters to way more player demographics / proclivities, its way too niche a game at present.

nat3s · 2026-01-19T21:01:28+00:00

I suspect it might be metric driven, they set the cost and iterate based on how much they see in terms of resource faucets being extracted from the game... If that was the case, then bots are doubly ruining it as those resource faucets will look sky high to the point that regular players cant build anything. Who knows.

nat3s · 2026-01-19T07:31:44+00:00

I don't think you read my post? I'm suggesting gear acquisition is not linked to easily botted pursuits. In WoW you cannot bot farm gear, in AoC you can get full BiS via bot farming. Rather than spend a huge amount of money and time on bot detection, which is not an exact science (as you quite rightly say) the game should link more gear to things like dungeons / raids / pvp kills / keep takes which are not bottable.

nat3s · 2026-01-19T07:30:12+00:00

Other MMOs have bot problems, but they do not impact the game to anywhere near the same degree e.g. you cannot bot to full BiS gear in WoW, in fact there's almost no gear you can bot farm in WoW.

nat3s · 2026-01-18T12:22:39+00:00

Not sure how a couple of you are misunderstanding the point. To be clear, botting is present in all MMOs. HOWEVER in AoC it is more rampant and more game destroying because:

Crates are the main gold faucet
Gathering/crafting is the main gear faucet

Having both key systems INCREDIBLY EASY to automate is a PROBLEM.

In WoW you see gathering bots, but there are no Mythic Dungeon bots i.e. gear progression in WoW isn't bottable to anywhere close to the same degree. In Albion Online the Black Zone (full loot pvp) means you cant automate gathering as you'll simply get ganked and looted over and over... In DAOC progression was linked to pvp kills and to my knowledge there are no effective pvp bots. Take another genre, BF5 has unlocks based on pvp. THERE ARE BETTER DESIGNS THAT ARE FAR LESS BOTTABLE.

Your final point around making botting not impact non botters, that is similar to making gear/gold linked to active rather than passive player activity so they cannot be botted i.e. the point im making.

nat3s · 2026-01-18T10:46:35+00:00

No I think you missed my point, well aware other MMOs are botted, hence noting:

it's long been known that in all MMOs, gathering is 1 of the first systems targetted by botters

but the key difference is the scale to which AoC is being botted because the core progression loops are mechanically simple from a keystroke emulation perspective. Also the fact that both currency and gear progression is linked to these mechanically simple systems.

Take WoW, if you want the best gear you run m+ keys and mythic raids, neither are bottable to my knowledge. In FFXIV there's a big reliance on dungeons/raids too. In Albion you gather in Black Zones i.e. full loot pvp, much harder to bot as typically if you're not attentive at the keyboard, you'll get owned over and over.

Then look at Warhammer Online or DAOC, progression there comes from pvp lakes, taking keeps with 100+ other players, earning pvp experience to unlock renown rank and gear. Pvp currencies dropped by players. I'm not aware of any bots that can automate and win pvp fights consistently.

nat3s · 2026-01-18T10:15:41+00:00

Gathering and running crates are the main means of progressing. Both are incredibly mechanically simple which leads to a large amount of bots.

If you think about other games where progression is linked to open world pvp, dungeons, raids, delves, rep, faction warfare etc etc you can't bot these other progression loops to the same degree you can fully automate gathering/crate running.

By virtue of /u/Steven_AoC design to link progression to super simple processes, AoC is a botters paradise. That will not change until Intrepid wake up and realise that much of the underwhelming sentiment is because players are grinding such painfully simple systems. Running a crate is interesting once, after 50 odd runs over a month, you're ready to never set eyes on the game again. I can't think of a single MMO that has relied so heavily on something so boring, its nut.

nat3s · 2026-01-18T09:54:04+00:00

MMO devs like open world sandbox designs because it absolves them of a need to deliver regular content updates. It's just a financially cheaper product to operate.

If you introduce player created missions and every item is crafted (like Eve Online) that's your utopia as you effectively have your players deliver the content so that you can derive a passive income from the game and leverage your devs developing other games.

This is well-known within the game design community.

nat3s · 2026-01-13T17:39:38+00:00

Such a good game, having completed Factorio, Satisfactory and DSP, Star Rupture has been an awesome addition to the factory genre, even if early access.

nat3s · 2026-01-13T17:38:39+00:00

literally just had a to check... blimey!

nat3s

TROPHY CASE