FEEDBACK: Ashran

Please use this thread to share general impressions and feedback regarding Ashran.

Greetings! A new build is coming to the beta realms soon and I want to share some insight on the changes:

Road of Glory: Capturing Points

We will be iterating on the design of the Road of Glory in the coming builds. Currently, the control point at each “node” within the RoG will despawn the higher level guards (Vanguard/Knights on Alliance and Bloodguard/Wolf Riders on Horde), while killing players and lower level guards (Marines/Grunts/Archers) will determine whether you capture that node.

This design can be a little confusing as there are two win conditions to each node, so we’re going to experiment with having the control zone completely win you the node. You won’t have to finish the reinforcement quota.

Often times we see players push further than they should and the node is lagging behind. This design will have the benefit of allowing the flow of battle to follow that of the natural combat.

Road of Glory: Mage Towers

Also new in the Road of Glory will be “mini-bosses” in the Mage towers. We’re experimenting with these being bonus objectives (with rewards). You don’t necessarily have to kill the Mage in these towers, but ignoring them will be challenging.

The design goal for these guys is to add more texture/interest/gameplay to the RoG, but also to slow down how fast a faction can progress to the main base. It should be challenging for a faction to storm the enemy base.

Note that we will be performing hotfixes to tune the Mages after the beta goes live, they’ll probably be a bit overpowered when beta goes up (I may have made them way too OP).

Road of Glory: Storming the enemy base

Our vision for the final encounter with Volrath and Tremblade is not fully implemented, but this upcoming build will get it closer to where we want it. Upon killing the faction leader you will get a juicy reward (including Conquest). You will have some time to pillage the enemy base using keys found within Ashran to open chests, and afterwards you will be put onto a Gryphon/Wyvern back to home base whereby the RoG will reset.

We also have plans on making the encounter with the faction leader more engaging. And we have not yet fully done a tuning pass on health/damage numbers.

Hidden buffs

We agree with the feedback that the buffs found in Ashran are a bit too strong. We’re going to be toning them down by duration, rarity and/or effect.

Faction Objectives

We have done some changes to the amount of Artifact Fragments each objective at the base requires. Summoning Kronus and Fangraal will require a bit more work, but we’ve reduced how many Artifact Fragments are required for the Mage Portals and Warlock Gateways.

Class Books

The Shaman book has been completely redone. We’ve added a new Druid book which is less rare than the now Legendary Flight Form book. We’ve also re-designed the Death Knight and Warlock books.

In addition, the class Books now only come from the “bosses” of Ashran found within the outskirts (Titarus, Brickhouse etc.) and within the Ring of Conquest. These encounters are designed for small groups of players from 3-5.

Zone Events

The events around the four major POIs will soon give a few minute warning before they begin. These events will reward conquest.

Other Future changes

• A pass on the abilities, health and damage is still in the works.
• Kronus and Fangraal’s abilities will be polished. They are also intended to move with the lane back and forth. Currently this is not yet fully implemented.
• The rewards from the quartermaster and honor/conquest vendors are not yet complete.
• The Mage Portal and Warlock Gateway guardians will be tuned and give a reward.
• Rescuing the prisoner NPC’s will give a reward.
• Spawning in the zone will have proper loot tables. (Saberon drop things Saberon drop elsewhere in the game etc.)

08/19/2014 05:11 AMPosted by Muuh

Still not a single check in place, which would prohibit players to wreak havoc in Stormshield/Warspear without actually setting a food into Ashran itself. As it stands, you could just swim the entire way on the Westside of Ashran (or once clockwise, though that's considerably longer), and bypass any fighting alltogether.

It's worse for Stormshield, as the area around the Inn is sea-leveled and lacks any form of protections, while the sea-leveled area of Warspear hasn't all that many points of interest (and at least some guards walking around). Though, on the other hand, you can easily backdoor into the horde ashran base (just two guards there), whereare for the alliance base you'Ve to bypass some of Stormshields Guards and the graveyard guards of the base.

We haven't added actual guards to the hubs yet. They will be in an upcoming build.

08/19/2014 09:58 AMPosted by Tarraks

The Priest NPCs are ridiculous. They do about 30k damage per hit and are unkillable due to the fact they can self-heal themselves or each other every few seconds.

We'll be toning them down significantly.

08/25/2014 09:50 PMPosted by Cynister

I think it would be nice that if the mobs that were intended for PVP not cause durability loss when they kill you.

I've actually spent thousands of gold repairing in Ashran in this beta and made zero back from mobs I've killed. I get you guys like economic gold sinks but PVPers are usually the poor players and this place is absurdly expensive to play in.

I assume you're talking about the Road of Glory? That's interesting feedback. We'll look into it.

08/23/2014 11:01 AMPosted by Dakrus

Had several deaths in Ashran at the result of 'not path available' for my heroic leap. Even straight, descending paths. Normally I'd not bring it up, but it's the only place in WoD that I've truly had this issue.

Edit: Book of Spell Reflect from Ashran does not work in Gladiator stance.

It would be helpful if you could point out which areas you feel you should of been able to heroic leap through. That said, we are doing a sweep of the level to clean up doodads which would cause pathing issues.

And we'll look into the Gladiator stance issue, thanks!

09/08/2014 01:43 AMPosted by Impossabrew

An evolvution from timeless? allow a small quest chain to introduce people to what is happening and how to participate. I have been playing in ashran for over a week and am still confused by how bosses are summoned, or how one even creates that artifact. When asking in general, people either "lol noob" or dont answer. I dont like walking into a zone and having to be sherlock holmes.

I'm skeptical creating an "informative quest" or block of gossip text from an NPC for players to read will be effective. We've been making efforts to make things more clear. For example, when the events become active they now have a clickable link in chat which you can read to see what the events do and what the rewards are. Similar to when you see a player cast a spell and you can click the spell tooltip in your combat log to see what exactly it does. We feel this is good design for "learn as you play." We'd love to hear any suggestions in this regard for helping newer players discover how Ashran works.

09/19/2014 02:54 PMPosted by Megas

My impressions of Ashran, after a few more days of play:

2 zergs standing 40 yards from each other, masses of pet zergs being exchanged, very few people dying until OP NPCS glitch in, insta root you, and one shot you. Repeat 24/7.

There are too many captains spawning at too quick of a rate in the current build. In a future build we'll be capping the number of captains and/or reducing how quickly they spawn. We'll also be tuning their health down.

Also there are a number of pathing and creature AI bugs in the road currently (where they constantly are leashing and moving in and out of combat). Fixes to that will be in an upcoming build.

09/17/2014 12:13 PMPosted by Megas

09/09/2014 07:49 PMPosted by Phalanx

I'm skeptical creating an "informative quest" or block of gossip text from an NPC for players to read will be effective. We've been making efforts to make things more clear. For example, when the events become active they now have a clickable link in chat which you can read to see what the events do and what the rewards are. Similar to when you see a player cast a spell and you can click the spell tooltip in your combat log to see what exactly it does. We feel this is good design for "learn as you play." We'd love to hear any suggestions in this regard for helping newer players discover how Ashran works.

Well, you certainly have your work cut out for you lol. I've lost count of the number of matches I've been in, and been telling people to not pull the boss down the hill because he's going to reset.....every...freaking...time, it happens. Doesn't matter if you post it in a /rw, /yell, in general chat, or raid chat. So trying to teach people what's going on via in game tips etc....yah....good luck with that.

Let's also keep in mind that 10 years into AV, horde for the most part still doesn't understand what's happening to them on that map. I really applaud your efforts to bring some interesting and fun sequence of events mechanics into these BGs, but it's pearls before swine in a lot of cases lol.

Volrath and Tremblade should not be constantly leashing like that. It should be fixed in the next/upcoming build. We just don't want them to be dragged out into the road outside the main base, but it's okay if they are pulled down towards the base exit.

Thanks for the feedback!