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Azherae wrote: »

SmileGurney wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

SmileGurney wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

What I'm reading is that everybody wants a bigger nerf to Enchanting?

Enchanting power scaling issues is just a symptom of the wider problem. Intrepid hasn't done sufficient work around power balancing and it has been showing since Phase1.

What I want is a game which advertises itself as a sandbox experience with a lot of pvx content, which is accessible to everyone who plays it, and not just 1% of the rejects who will literally live and breathe it, are interested in pvp and are willing to accept the mindless pve grind required to enjoy the pvp content.

Too many of my past sandbox MMOs with open and semi-open pvp have failed because the game studios behind them disregarded concerns about pvp balance and grind, and few moths up to a year after the launch lost majority of their playerbase.

PvP balance and grind/farming satisfaction are almost directly opposed, though. It's incredibly difficult to get away from that fact and have it still feel like an MMO at all.

I say this only because sometimes it isn't 'disregarding', it might be 'choosing their poison' or even just 'giving up after a long battle with it'.

Intrepid's philosophy is basically 'fail faster but never the same way twice' (paraphrasing) so, if you had to give up most of one or the other, which is it?

You can maintain a sense of progression without basing it solely on stat advantage. This has been successfully done, Intrepid isn't even reinventing the wheel here, they are literally repeating the mistakes made by multiple MMORPGs in the past.

Why do you think multiple MMORPGs made these mistakes?

Are the entire game industry generally idiots? No. It's simply that whatever you feel best playing seems like the correct answer to you.

So if 300 people leave a game because 'farming regular enemies doesn't feel good and the game feels like it doesn't respect their time', and the remaining players respond with any equivalent of 'their problem'/'players too soft'/'game isn't about that', then the devs have chosen their poison. Will it kill their game? Depends on if they know the correct combination of poisons to drink.

Right now, Ashes feels bad to me and Throne and Liberty felt good, but I know that TL needs to cater to less invested/immersed casual players soon (or technically, already has done so for this update) and will feel worse to me.

Not because 'the game is worse', but because it stops doing the thing I like in order to do something someone else likes.

A sandbox PvP MMORPG is a buffet of 'poisons'. You can't tell the devs 'just make the food good'.

Anyway, I guess I'll assume you 'prefer that progression feels bad to most people' until you clarify otherwise. I too, 'prefer that progression feels worse but Devs focus on enjoyability of the game whole' (ArcheAge) over 'progression feels good but the MMO part falters' (Black Desert).

Ashes is currently on the BDO side, and so far, it seems intentional. I'm just gonna pray that TL works a bit harder and falls on the other side.

"Making common mistakes while innovating/combining things is not a matter of laziness in design."

Interesting take, Azherae. I appreciate your perspective, and I think you're right about one thing, MMOs are full of trade-offs, and every design decision caters to a different player type. But I don’t think Ashes is 'repeating mistakes' so much as it’s making intentional choices for the kind of game it wants to be.

🔹 Ashes isn’t trying to appeal to everyone—on purpose.

Intrepid has been pretty transparent from day one: Ashes of Creation is not meant to be a fast-paced, convenience first themepark MMO. It’s a long-term, high-investment sandbox, where risk vs reward and player agency define the core gameplay. That means sometimes progression feels slower or more demandin, but that’s exactly the point.

🔹 Progression isn’t only about stats.

Yes, gear and power progression exist, but Ashes aims to create meaningful progression through exploration, social interaction, politics, and territory control. It’s not just about numbers, it’s about how your place in the world evolves over time. That’s something a lot of modern MMOs don’t even try to offer anymore.

🔹 On 'mistakes' from past MMOs:

Sometimes what feels like a mistake to one playerbase is actually a deliberate shift in direction. Games like Black Desert or Throne & Liberty cater to different priorities. Ashes is going for depth over instant gratification, and naturally, that’s going to alienate some players who prefer a different style of progression.

At the end of the day, it’s okay that not every game is for everyone. The important thing is that Intrepid stays consistent with their vision, and from what we’ve seen, they’re doing just that. Whether that vision succeeds will depend not on avoiding all “mistakes,” but on attracting the right audience that shares the same values in gameplay.

daveywavey wrote: »

Did that read like an AI answer to anybody else?

Rehoc's? Oh yeah, I've been thinking they're using some form of AI for all of their responses. Now I hope it's just a person, who doesn't know english too well and just uses AI as a crutch, and not a bot, but these days I wouldn't be surprised.

Good post.

Flying in Sieges=not bad/interesting gameplay that allows players to focus on leading the groups around to objectives

Flying literally anywhere else is garbage for the game. It allows for massive advantages in Open World PVP, and even huge advantages for getting around to different resources to gather quickly.

Gliding down from elevation can be fine within reason.

SmileGurney wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

What I'm reading is that everybody wants a bigger nerf to Enchanting?

Enchanting power scaling issues is just a symptom of the wider problem. Intrepid hasn't done sufficient work around power balancing and it has been showing since Phase1.

What I want is a game which advertises itself as a sandbox experience with a lot of pvx content, which is accessible to everyone who plays it, and not just 1% of the rejects who will literally live and breathe it, are interested in pvp and are willing to accept the mindless pve grind required to enjoy the pvp content.

Too many of my past sandbox MMOs with open and semi-open pvp have failed because the game studios behind them disregarded concerns about pvp balance and grind, and few moths up to a year after the launch lost majority of their playerbase.

PvP balance and grind/farming satisfaction are almost directly opposed, though. It's incredibly difficult to get away from that fact and have it still feel like an MMO at all.

I say this only because sometimes it isn't 'disregarding', it might be 'choosing their poison' or even just 'giving up after a long battle with it'.

Intrepid's philosophy is basically 'fail faster but never the same way twice' (paraphrasing) so, if you had to give up most of one or the other, which is it?