Best Of

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

The stream format improved before this one when a wider group of players entered testing in A2 and Devs were placed more front and center to swat questions and explain issues.

Too many prior streams with just Steven and Margaret often resembled a commercial for the game with Margaret lobbing up soft questions for Steven and lot of repetition of design principles. That was fun to a point, but even as an optimistic aficionado of all things Ashes thus far, it was wearing a bit thin. We needed to move from promises of what they could do, to what they are doing now and how are they fixing issues.

The trend needs to continue. Streamwatchers have already bought in to the possibility of what this game could be. No hard sell tactics needed. So when the Devs speak, let them dive deep and let them finish. Don't interrupt.