Best Of

There is no endgame atm. Caravan's aren't endgame content. Everything in the game is placeholder sandbox or old school monotonous stand in one place for hours upon end bored grind.

AoC isn't a game yet. Every stage falls flat and is under developed and lacks appeal.

One problem they have atm is not only arw things under cooked they're also convoluted and/or hidden which won't draw the masses.

A large % of players will require a guide to provide content for them by dragging tgem around the map to experience things found only by mining 3rd party websites like Ashes Codex. There will be large falloff from the more casual and small groups and solo players who lack a guide via a guild leader etc.

The sandbox element coyld work but only if there are numerous fun and interesting and rewarding paths players can take to embark into the world with (gathering, crafting, adventuring, exploration, economic, etc.)

Atm gathering is faulty and overly difficult to obtain low level mats of certain types so it is a non-starter path to play the game.

Processing/gathering needs a lot more dev time but also is non-functional from a game loop standpoint to engage with.

Solo players can do very little past level 10 as an adventurer. Can't kill much of anything at your level solo as you advance towards level 20. There is no solo content and many classes go OOM after two rotations through their kit so playing solo is non-viable. By the time you're strong enough to pull packs of mobs to solo grind them you hit the 10+ level block preventing drops from being awarded making that non-viable even for glint.

Exploration is do-able but with how fast mobs are compared to our characters you're pretty much dead as a low level if you go into any dense mob areas solo at low level while traversing the world.

To your point on early game the only thing players can do functionally is group farm mobs gor hours. Everything else is non-functional or barebones leaving a poor player experience

It still feels to me like we are testing primarily their server stability performance while they slowly develop the bones of a game that are vacant.

Caww wrote: »

I sense a pattern forming....

The pattern that all the 2028 or above-Sayers might be right ?

We must only keep One thing firmly in mind.
The " START " - of any MMO - is extremely important.

Ashes of Creation should absolutely NOT BE ALLOWED - to have a messed up, messy Start.

It can - AND WILL - damage the Game forever in the long Run.
This is why even if there is still more Delays than we have Fingers on both Hands -> it is more important that Sir Steven and his mighty Crew have all the Time they ever need -> to make it a decent to epic Game when it is supposed to launch.

🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡 . 🫡

Ludullu wrote: »

Steven has already said "yeah, we'll have some grind".

After butchering and butchering a felt " MILLION " of Goblins ... ...

... ... ... my Weapon slowly starts to look beautiful in ANOTHER way than before ... ... ...

*raises hand*

I'm counting down the days until I can lost into the world of Ashes of Creation—exploring Verra, chasing epic moments, and embracing the adventure at every turn. Who’s coming with me?

Saabynator wrote: »

I mean, open development/no NDA... How many does that?

And no one else will, exactly because Intrepid's approach has fully proven that you SHOULD NEVER tell players about the development process.

Your response to Noaani about "hype around release..." would've worked if people didn't know what the game was about. See Chrono Odyssey for example. People were really hyped for it until they realized that it's just a NW clone. And they only realized that because CO released a beta test.

Ashes is holding a near-permanent ALPHA test, where nothing is done and everything that's being done is moving at a snail's pace. And that is game development for a newer team under an unexperienced leader. But the fact that everyone who's interested in the game can just come and see that the game is barely moving, the design is all over the place and the direction can often contradict itself - none of that will support the release hype of the game.

Every damn scam game that overpromised the world and underdelivered a piece of shit had more hype than what Ashes will have by the time release comes along.

And I would love to be wrong, because I myself believed that we're barely even 1% of the people that will be there on release, so the majority will get hyped for the game, as you say. But the more time passes, the more I feel like my initial assumption was the wrong one.

Saabynator wrote: »

You might say, that they are easy to implement in other games, but they havent does it though.

We already gave examples of the games where these systems were present. And Ashes doesn't even compare to the space games, cause its supposed depth doesn't even reach "you can build your own stuff and other players can interact with it".

I tested an Alpha for a new EVE game and that shit had space buildings that could function as trading posts, as turrets, as stores and had the potential to be coded by the players themselves to be near-anything players wanted. Ashes is nowhere near that kind of freedom.

So yes, it is that easy to add this stuff into a game. Other studios don't do it because it's too much work for too little payoff, when you only care about that payoff. And yes, it's cool that Steven can kinda disregard the amount of work his ideas require, but it's a double-edged sword, which, in the context of "open development", hits the studio more than it benefits it.

Saabynator wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Caww wrote: »

As with many things in life - there is no never-ending well of money - at some point reality rears its ugly head...

While this is indeed true, it puts Intrepid in a bit of a position.

There are already large segments of the MMORPG community that will never be interested in Ashes. Steven's comments on combat trackers (not his decision, his obvious lack of understanding as to their function) has made it so every raiding community that i know of is no longer interested. That is quite literally millions of dedicated MMORPG players that will never again look at this game.

Noaani wrote: »

Saabynator wrote: »

Its like making a good dish, you take a bunch of good food and put it together.

The issue here is that in both cases, with food and with game design, it still takes knowledge and experience to get this right on a large scale.

You could take all the best foods you like and put them in to one dish, but if you dont know how food works, there is no guarantee it will work.

I like taleggio cheese, and i like salmon. There is no world in which these two foods should ever be on the same plate. Ideally, there is no world where these two foods should even be in concurrent courses in a multi-course meal.

On the other hand, white chocolate and caviar go together incredibly well, if executed by someone that can get the balance perfect.

Same with game design, different aspects that are great in some games wont all necessarily fit together in one game and result in a good game.

Placing limitations on crafters being able to get to the top end of crafting that only organized guilds are likely to be able to achieve can be a good mechanic. Making the vast majority of items in your game be player crafted can be a good thing. Putting these two things together, however, isn't necessarily a good thing.

Ashes is full of contradictions like this.

But, Steven is just opening the restaurant, he is not making the food. He just bought the place, made a so and so menu, and now he hired a bunch of chefs, to fuck around and find out. The menu will not be the same on day 1, as it will on opening day. He has a vision ofcource, but the food will change, when the chefs chimes in, and the people taste the appetizers

but steven is the one who get to say what dish stays and what dosent , if steven likes spicy lobster and a 100 people came and ate it , 90 of them said they dont like the way its done or just hate it all together and the chefs tell steven 90 people out of a 100 didnt like it so we have to change the way its done or to something else in a way where most people like it but steven refuses to because he likes it done that way even when most people dont.

Have you had a bad experience with intel?

Intel is just no where near AMD and GeForce level. No one beats green team for drivers. Intel's results are all over the place. They are a few years away from competing.

Aszkalon wrote: »

How exactly can it be a drain on dev time if it was done and programmed already Years ago ?

Each time a LOD (level of detail) is increased, the texture graphic required has to be created and tested, including what screen resolution it will be used in, and how all the higher textures fit together to avoid gaps, artifacts and things I know nothing about, so it can be time intensive. Planning for better graphics to be used sometime "in the future" doesn't work because newer graphic features become available as the GPU cards/DirectX and Unreal Engine progress their feature list that players will want, so what may have once looked desirable is now out of favor. If AoC does another engine upgrade then bumping everything up to current standards would justify all the texture rework. The other downside to providing extremely high graphics is the average player will want to max out but discover they can't run with a decent framerate which causes people to complain.