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Azherae wrote: »

That's the thing that 'should' happen in Ashes. Because a nontrivial number of people were calling out that 'villain' in world chat for their actions.

But how many of those people were in a position to do anything about it? Even if we are talking long term?

I don't know TL at all, not a game i was ever interested in. However, in Ashes, the basic design is that the strong get stronger at the expense of the not-strong.

Becoming strong enough to overthrough a group of people that get stronger as you get stronger is not really viable.

The notion of going to the castle (or node) next door usually doesn't work, as if you attack my guild today to take our castle (or node), i will attack you tomorrow to take your castle (or node). What we have now is not a situation where two guilds are fighting for in game assets, rather, we have a situation where two guilds are fighting to get the other guild to leave the game.

That is obviously not a good situation for the game to be in.

Dygz also brings up a thing I really 'fear' for Ashes, but have some faith that Steven will 'fight'.

I encounter far too many Hardcore players who (by the nature of being Hardcore, in some cases/respects), can't or don't maintain even the RP-PvP aspect of games properly.

A recent event in TL was supposed to be a cooperative-ish event. Players would hunt some 'loot Goblins' that appeared for about half an hour, in many areas, including open-world dungeons.

The person who has control of the 'Eclipse' on my server consistently activated it during this event, making the dungeons PvP zones during it. Specifically after newbies and more casual players would have spread out across the world to do this event. Just punching down, I know because my group went to one of the less-popular but not max-level ones to see if the Goblins spawned there (and the people who PvP'ed us out of the zone were def way stronger than us and we're not THAT weak).

Note that the only people who will know for certain this is going to happen are that person and probably their Guild. Their Guild controls the Castle. This is important for the main reason of this long ranty complaint...

This person is enjoying 'being the villain', in the name of 'spicing up the event', they say. Would anyone like to take bets on what will happen if a bunch of people decide to bring down the castle because of this behaviour?

That's the thing that 'should' happen in Ashes. Because a nontrivial number of people were calling out that 'villain' in world chat for their actions. My small guild, certainly, is more likely to at least try to fight on the attacking side in next Siege (we sometimes disrupt attackers instead), and there's been talk even of actually forming up in whatever small Alliance, just for the minor advantages this might give toward this.

I still want a game where these things get connected properly. Where the villain doesn't whine about how 'people take things too seriously' if they lose the castle, but instead maintain at least the same attitude as they had when they were Eclipsing the event. I want a game where "I made the lives of the peasants harder because I thought it would be more interesting" -> "The peasants didn't like it and revolted against my Liege the King/Queen" doesn't end in 'Y'all are just snowflakes I was just having fun'.

So I get story instead of just OOC disgust.

You already know the answer you're gonna get, right?

α です

I play RPGs more for the story than for the game.
And, I'm always hoping to act out the personalities of my characters and prefer everyone around me to speak as much a possible from the pov of their character rather than from the pov of the player.
I refer to myself as a player, rather than a gamer.

It's more important to me for Quests to be connected to story - hopefully a story which will change the world as Quests are completed. Ideally, progression should not feel like a grind. There should be a variety of Quests and Tasks that progression does not feel repetitive and tedious - like a chore.
Originally, "grind" referred to Hell Levels - when you're stuck beating on the same few mobs that give somewhat decent xp, but won't kill you after a couple of hits (and add way too much XP debt if you die too many times).
Around 2010 is when I began hearing, "Endgame is the real game" and I think it's then that "grind" began to beused my many to mean any Leveling before Endgame. Gamers began to view Leveling as an unnecessary obstacle to the fun part of the game, which are the Endgame loop.
Which makes some sense because we would spend maybe a month or two Leveling to Endgame and then be stuck at Endgame for 12-24 months while waiting for an Expansion. So, the majority of time would be spent in Endgame - for those who don't take a break shortly after reaching max Level.

I think most gamers are used to being able to "beat" a single-player game in about 60 hours, and I'd say progression - especially story progression - should feel like it's around the same pace.
But, MMORPGs are intended to last way longer than 60 hours - and it's a massive challenge for devs to provide sufficient content that gamers won't race through and quit after a couple months.

I think these days, we're very close to that being solved because we're now getting Seasonal content drops rather than waiting 12-18-24 months for new content drops.
MMORPGs no longer need Nodes as a solution of static content. We'll have to see how Seasonal content stacks up against the Ashes design of long level grind along with Nodes and Sieges driving dynamic change.

With regard to bridging Casual players with Hardcore players:
Ashes isn't made for everyone. Especially not Casual players.
Ashes is designed for Hardcore gamers who love high challenge and high Risk.

Both Steven and Margaret believe that the most rewarding memories come from successfully overcoming high Risk. I don't think Casual players have that same gameplay philosophy.

The thing that sometimes makes the conversation difficult (no sign of it this time) is the following sequence:

"I hate grinding, it's so boring."
"That's because the average player chooses the easiest, lowest challenge grindspot so that they don't have to worry about weak teammates or friction, just go somewhere else."
"There's no 'somewhere else, it's all the same'."

The third line has three possible explanations to me.

1. Game they played really only has braindead progression-PvE
2. Player has never explored enough to know that there is other progression-PvE
3. Devs made it so there's no real benefit to taking on challenge

The games I play are usually #3. FF11 forces the issue for certain level stretches, which then become the 'hell-levels' for people who aren't very good, to me AA is a bit of #2 and a bit of #3, Throne and Liberty is 'a bit of all 3' for exp gains. BDO is a long debate, Guild Wars 2 is... well... let's not discuss GW2 and 'challenge' for this context. TERA is also a long debate but I'd say it was closer to TL.

So sometimes people are saying "I just want to progress as fast as possible and therefore I must do the most boring thing", and sometimes they are saying "I only play games where there's absolutely only boring repeated situations" and occasionally they are saying "I judge games while only following the strategy guides which are always written by someone in one of the first two groups".

But I hate that in these sorts of situations because obviously if you are putting Questing up against the experiences of those types of people, Questing is better.

Comparing low-quality 'grinding' to 'Questing' is an auto-win for Questing, but that doesn't mean Questing is 'better' or often even 'good.

.double input due to catching hands from the spam filter

"When you become a citizen you enter in at a certain citizenship due structure; and citizens pay taxes to their node in the form of both property taxes based on what type housing as well as citizenship dues, which are necessary. And as you enter later into the stage of a node's development, you will pay a higher value on the citizenship dues or vice-versa: if you own a property later, you will be entered into a property tax that is higher based on where you enter that property ownership within the node's history. So those help to form a soft cap. Now, if payers are willing to pay more to be a citizen of a particular node, they have that option, but at some point it becomes restrictive"
- Steven Sharif 2018
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsPR_a2n5SM&t=2508s
- https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Citizenship

That's the thing though, a lot of (not all) regular mobs in Ashes have to be somewhat non-complex. But then you introduce some complexity here and there, in certain areas (open-world dungeons?), farming spots, etc. Or just certain group of mobs that have a certain kind of mechanic. Like you said, it will never match up to instanced encounters, that are simply way more complex, but you can get somewhat close in deeper levels of dungeons, probably. I'm fairly sure there was a conversation about this already.

I do understand what you're saying though, now that you have mentioned an example.

Honestly, I don't even know if such thing existed back then in Allods, maybe some particular mobs, or elites had something similar. I wouldn't remember, as I played the game 10 years ago.

So the complexity comes from combat encounters that introduce some more mechanics, that make you think, reposition, dodge, block/avoid certain abilities, rather than simple "do damage, heal if necessary" combat. Or rather, there's an actual sense of danger from even regular mobs, if you don't pay attention.
I'm guessing the "fun" part comes from being engaged while playing and killing mobs, rather than turning your brain off and just mindlessly grinding away?

In any case, I do see it as a preference, where some might prefer to just turn their brain off, put some music on, and just mindlessly kill hundreds of mobs, without putting in much effort.
Others might prefer actually being engaged in what they're doing, putting in slightly more effort.

Btw. Archeage definitely had that sort of complexity, now that I think of it. I vividly remember a mob in Auroria that would shoot a bubble ability at you, that would lift you into the air for a couple of seconds, and would do some decent damage. You need to pay attention to it, and avoid it.

Since you seem to have some gameplay questions that have already been answered, your best go to is always the wiki to find out what Intrepid developers have stated as to their plans in the past.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Faster_travel