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Believing a game can be "made for everyone" is quite delusional.

In theory those nodes are supposed to have more lowbie mobs in their ZOIs. Also, there might still be POIs in them that get lvled by the parent's node ZOI, but are located in the low lvl node's ZOI, so the low lvl node will get foot traffic and xp from people going to that POI.

And in general they are there simply as the potential replacement for any fallen node, cause, I'd imagine, lvl3 nodes will be the most sieged ones, cause that's the cheapest possible node siege in the game and will still impact the overall node cluster structure, which ties back to POI positioning and overall amounts of xp going to the top lvl node in the cluster.

Elohim_Venture wrote: »

Just as the title says, only 1 free month of membership when the game officially launches doesn’t seem like a proper “thank you” for those players who took a chance on this project from the start.
6 months would be a more reasonable gesture

I think I bought in at 250 or something. I would have bought in during Kickstarter but I didn't know of it, life was busy, those guys won't have a sub, awesome for them. Even so buying into a game that isn't release comes with the risk that the worst case the game will NEVER release (I fully believe Ashes will release btw). For me it was a 250 dollar gamble in a way, but I look at it as supporting the game and the genre as a whole. If the game is successful, even if I don't like it, it's a win to me.

If I want anything extra from Intrepid beside a great game. I want to be able to extract my character's model from the game to print it. Also mobs and bosses too, that'd be great lol.

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

So let’s keep this conversation going:
What’s one feature or system you think could help bridge the gap between hardcore and casual players without compromising the game’s vision?

They say that pvpers are a niche in the mmorpg genre. I'd say that's true, but not nearly as niche as the average carebear makes it out to be. But you know what's REALLY niche amongst the likely pool of some amount of millions of pvp players open to a new mmo that caters to them? Being in a mega guild. The vast majority of players who want to pvp in an mmo do not want to be in a mega guild. We are talking a tiny, tiny percentage of that pool of millions that actually wants to be in a mega guild. In fact, the average pvper looks at mega guilds as a net negative for pvp mmos, and the entire mmo genre in general. Certainly in the case of more pvp focused mmos, mega guilds are viewed as one of the major contributing factors of why some games fail or are not as fun as they could be.

I believe the same goes for pvers. The vast majority of them probably don't want to be just a number in a mega guild either. Why? Well I'll be prickly and straight up about it. Because mega guilds are fkn lame. There are many multiple and varied reasons why people don't want to be in mega guilds. Most of the reasons are common sense.

But almost everything in your game is catered to mega guilds. Caravans, crafting, general pvp, node sieges and node politics, leveling itself. Speaking of the leveling, ya know...the whole "we want leveling to mean something" line. Yeah that's great. I think most would agree with that. We're certainly over the 1-60 levels in a day mmos. But that doesn't mean we want a system where mega guilders breeze through leveling, in what, I dunno, I haven't played Ashes in months, but what, like 2-3 days? Is that the time the average mega guilder breezes to max level? Whereas everyone else that doesn't have access to dozens of potential group mates is faced with a long, trudging unbelievably slow grind.

Or take gathering, and I believe this has recently been changed. But just the thought process behind it...is out there. When the gathering nodes were static, as in you could predict that a single tree was going to produce legendary logs before it was harvested...the reasoning behind that, which I believe was stated by Steven or a dev, was essentially that they wanted full set piece mega guild battles over....a single tree. Throw away all the good and normal things about a gathering system (organic luck, searching, exploration, just keeping at it), let's pigeon hole it into timed, scheduled zerg battles over singular trees.

Now "open world battlegrounds." A new idea, just popped out of nowhere. Maybe it'll be good, maybe not. But I'd bet a lot of money it's going to be a timed, scheduled type thing, that yep, you guessed it, benefits mega guilds.

The corruption system being so ridiculously harsh, while it might seem counterintuitive, absolutely benefits mega guilders. Caravans being nothing but a zerg activity - mega guilds. Anything and everything really to do with nodes - mega guilds. Crafting - mega guilds. "We want getting to a high level of crafting to mean something!" Translation - the high level crafters will be players who had mats funneled to them by a mega guild. There's nothing special about that. There's nothing cool about that. No one's going to look up to them for that, or even give a flying fk.

So what does this all mean? Sounds like you need to completely change your game from the ground up eh. Well no not really. Just take your boots off the necks of the average players. There's no reason why my little group of 5 dudes should be making moves that determine whether a node is sieged or not. That's mega guild/mega alliance territory. No reason my group of 5 should feel as safe running a caravan as a mega guild does. Everyone fully expects that mega guilds will be able to do things and accomplish things that typical players cant. And I think many players are open to working with larger groups of players to accomplish certain things.

But this is the part you guys gotta figure out. Somehow you have to figure out how to make the game fun for the 95%+ of people who absolutely will refuse to be in a mega guild.

Edit a day later: How could I forget? Freeholds - mega guilds. Ya know I remember a couple years ago, the open ocean showcase, Steven revealed that the ocean would be lawless. RAWRRR. YES. Of course, it always had to be. Common sense design principles, beautiful. Precedent was set in Archeage, it worked beautifully there. And of course it has to be lawless, we're talking big ship battles, people are going to die in mass, shits gonna be wild. Like duh, has to be lawless.

Then like the next month Stevens like yeah gear drop chance starts with the first noncombatant kill. What. Ok you just killed organic open world pvp. You just killed the bounty hunting system. You just killed risk/reward in the open world. Ok.

Then like the next month, oh btw freeholds are pretty much just going to be for mega guilds now. Ok you just killed the interest of potentially hundreds of thousands of players that would have played for that unique feature alone. Not many mmos have an Archeage style housing/farming system. And many people will play just for that. But nah, lets give it to mega guilds. Ok.

And it's just like wtf man. The freehold change isolated to itself, I was kinda neutral on. I understood the reasoning of not wanting urban sprawl. Though I think there are other ways to mitigate that potentially. But while being neutral on it, at the same time I was just like...fuck, well there goes a lot of potential players. But I'm sure the mega guilders love it.

And it's just like god damn what is happening. I watched a Zybak video a month or two ago and apparently ESO style animation cancelling might have somehow slipped its way into the game. I think that's what he indicated, not 100% on it. And then I watched a couple of his pvp videos and he's bunny hopping and launching himself around during pvp. Yeah all that shit has to go. Casuals and average players will quit your game en masse with that stuff left in.

And for the love of god, ya gotta stop listening solely to people like DA of Enveus. I believe that problem, in the case of DA, has solved itself now. But others like him, yeah take their feedback. But my god, when so much of the game's design seems to benefit people like him, it begs the question are you even listening to the feedback of anyone else?

You've gone super hardcore into just straight pve/crafting grind. And super softcore on pvp other than the pvp that benefits mega guilds. Like the opposite of the direction you should be going in my opinion. Where's the fun and excitement in that? Here come stand in one spot and grind these mobs for hundreds of hours so one day you can maybe be strong enough to get absolutely slam dunked by a zerg mega guild in our sanctioned pvp. You're fuckin up imo. I could be wrong, we'll see.

I'm not trying to be too harsh, just spouting. I realize there are so many unfinished and unimplemented mechanics and systems in the game that it's really hard to fully judge anything.