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SmileGurney wrote: »

Dear Intrepid,
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I like pvp sandbox MMORPGs, but this is heading straight towards the niche of a hamster wheel stat grinder, where "get gud" means insane gear grind time investment, not actually "getting good" and enjoying the game content built around player competition.

You are designing Ashes into a game which core content is built around player competition, that is fine, but that by itself is already a niche. You allow for player time investment to rig the outcome of that competition to the point that too many players willing to play a competitive MMORPG are going to simply walk away after few months, due to the stat race.
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I am worried about their implementation choices on a genre and a niche inside it, with such low pop already, repeating some mistakes that eventually led to the downfall of many games:

1. Long leveling and progression: That's great. That's one of the things people enjoy about the more old-school games. Even the more sweaty players will have some progression to achieve long after the game launches, and the lull between progression and expansion is going to be low.

2. Big power creep and power gap: Here, we start seeing the problems. Alongside long leveling in progression, you create big power spikes, creating a big disparity between players that play hardcore (12~16h) and players that play like 4~6 hours a day (which is more than most casuals). It's good that progression is meaningful and gear matters, that's the old-school philosophy.

But when gear is the main thing that matters, even between players who started at the same time and play a little less than the other, it creates a huge problem. With a big power gap, and long leveling, how long til a new player, a guy that started 3 months late, will be able to participate in content with older players? How many new players will the game acquire and hold throughout its lifetime, and how does that not lead to a death spiral in more players quitting than joining?

3. Open-world pvp and "forced" pvp events: Again, another great design choice. The game should be always on pvp. Node wars, node sieges, PVP events, competing for gatherables and grind spots, and caravans. It's all unavoidable PvP, and it's PVP without any rank matchmaking or balance. Max level players will be fighting with players that just started the game. How will a guy who is 3 months in the game feel when he still has no chance to contribute to a defense in his node against a siege, or when he is getting killed over and over without any chance, solely because he started late, and gear is a huge part of why he is losing? Will he stick around when he keeps losing caravans to way more geared players without a chance to fight back?

4. Low TTK: In here, all the problems above get hyper-boosted. You are late to the progression, the power gap is big, and because of that, you are literally being one-shotted out of the game. You go to join a siege, you don't even have a chance of landing a spell before a random attack hits you, and you die. You don't get to press buttons in PVP until you are max level with good gear. Other than that, you die in 1 second. Will players stick around when they are unable to play the game for 3+ months before getting good gear and not dying in an instant?

Groups don't fix this. Doesn't matter how much shield or healing you throw, the guy is way weaker and he will be deleted anyway.

5. Death penalties, lost node stash, destroyed ships and caravans: So we established that the guy is weaker compared to the more try-hard players, or even started late and is tryharding, but it's still a long time before catching up. He is being deleted in 1 second because of the power differences. Every time he dies, he either gets exp debt, he loses the materials he was gathering, his caravan, or in worst-case scenarios, loses every material on his node stash. He never had the chance to win in any of these scenarios, but worst of all, he didn't even get to play. A random guy showed up and deleted him before he could react. Now he has to walk back 10~30 minutes just to get back on where he was, and maybe risk dying again in 1 second without a chance to fight.

So the guy keeps getting bodied everywhere he goes, doesn't get to participate in any of the PVP content in the game, and every time he dies without even a chance of running or fighting or playing the game, he suffers a loss. Don't worry, 3 months of this and (hopefully) that changes, and you get to be the one doing the bodying.

How many players will take that deal? Will the players who started on launch but play more casually endure this situation? For how long? How many new players will the game attract, knowing they have 3+ months of pure grinding before getting to the good parts of the game? Enough to substitute everyone who is quitting and keep the game from entering a death spiral? I don't know.


Don't get me wrong, I enjoy most of those design decisions. The long leveling and progression, the open world PVP, the losses tied to death, even the part where gear matters. I just think putting them all together in the direction that is going is not gonna be healthy for the game.

Suggestions:

1. Properly saturated power curve: The power growth should be proportional to the time spent getting there. Power can really spike in the first week or two of the game, as it is a low time investment required to reach there. But after that, we need significant reductions in power growth per time spent. Every time we get deeper into the game, you should get less for the time you invest. By the time we are end game, players should be investing hundreds of hours for 0.01% power growth. That way, players can easily, in the first month reach, let's say, 90% power cap, and have enough power to at least participate in PVP content against the players that are 6 months ahead and grinding to reach 99% power. This is how old-school games have made long progression work without breaking the balance of the game and maintaining a healthy player base and new player acquisition.

2. Naturally gated progression: We already have the foundation for this. Node progression naturally gates progression by being behind the player's level. We have level 25 players using and investing in level 10 gear because level 20 enchanting was not unlocked, so level 10 was better.

With the increase in level cap and mobs dropping gear in a future launch, this won't be the case anymore. Players will completely bypass early-level crafting, rushing to max level by acquiring the gear they need to keep grinding stronger mobs. No systems in the game will matter before max level, no one will run a caravan, and no one will care about gathering low-tier mats unless it is to progress their profession. Players probably won't fight for it. This destroys the early game professions economy, increases power disparity between sweaties and casuals, and makes every single system in the game irrelevant until players reach endgame.

If low-tier mob drops are removed (rare and below), players will have no choice but to engage with the economy and make crafters relevant for gear. They will be soft-locked into progression, temporarily reducing the power gap between try-hard players and casual players. The incentive to rush to max level is reduced, because now you are in lower level gear, grinding inefficiently to reach a level that is meaningless because you won't be that much stronger than a guy that is just grinding 2 hours a day and the rest of the time engaging with all the other systems and enjoying the content. Players will have to gather, fight for resources, and run caravans even at early levels to get gear. You still have progression avenues like enchanting, increased rarity upgrades, gems, and all that in lower-tier gear, and sweaties won't run out of things to do. You retain some of that dopamine hit by substituting gear drops with valuable material drops that are used for crafting gear, and you still maintain that dopamine of dropping high rarity gear (heroic and above) without being reliable enough not to engage with the rest of the game.

3. High TTK: This one I have fought for over and over again, and won't write everything I've said previously on it. I'll just say this. In high TTK games (45~90s), even the more weaker players, new players that are behind, get to at least have a chance to run, or fight, and they actively play the game before dying. No more one-shots. You drastically remove that feeling of unfairness that players get when they die without a chance to play their character.

4. Player agency on some of the biggest losses:
I'll give the example of node sieges. Once your node is successfully sieged, citizens lose their material inventory. This will generate a feeling for the majority of players of losing their stuff without any chance to do anything about it. You are not a guild or alliance leader, you're not a mayor, you don't have control over a large number of players. All you do is be an ant in the big battle, and it's out of your control if you win or lose.

We can improve this, not by removing the losses, but by giving a player a say in what and how they lose it. You can do it through a few possibilities:

1. A special vault: Most games with big losses do this nowadays. You get a small vault that you get to keep when your base (node in this case) is destroyed. You have a choice in what you really don't want to lose, and while it keeps the losses, you remove the player's feelings of unfairness and lack of control.

2. Once a siege is declared, allow players to move their resources out through caravans. See that this is not a bailout for players. Once a siege is declared, and enemies know the citizens will be looking to move material caravans out of the node, players will totally scout for it. The risk of losing your mats is still there, and to be honest, the risk of losing your mats in the caravan might be greater than losing them in a node siege. But it gives players a choice: Do you want to bet on a siege defense, which is not in your control, or do you want to risk it on a caravan run, which could possibly be riskier but at least you have some control over the outcome.

By allowing players to choose, even though they are still likely to lose and the risk remains, they are going to feel much better about taking that L when eventually it happens.

This has been an issue I've kinda just dealt with and try not let bother me as I've been playing. The issue is, while in action mode the game has a hard time acquiring new targets and the mouse needs to be moving or in my case (not sure what other people do) use tab to get my target when it's something right in front of me which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole action cam.

This has been a nuisance until recently now that rouges are are a thing. A part of being a good player and knowing your kit and not having to look at your keyboard and hotbars when taking action. This being said when a Rouge stealths and unstealths in front of me, I loose my target. With my crosshairs right on target and I go to use my skills nothing happens because of this and sense I'm focused on my target in front of me I'm having to train my brain to do extra steps like having to look up to make sure my target is what I want to be and having to hit tab every time something breaks target.

even the delay of having to require your target like this is enough to give people a slight advantage by loosing fractions of a second from your attacks. If a player isn't ready for this; and is depending on the action cam to do what is intended, they loose seconds instead of fractions of a second which is basically a death sentence vs an aggressive player who knows what they're doing.

Improvements def needed (hopefully before beta) 🙏
Hard Lock Hold Option (Not override other keybinds so i can bind this and weapon attack to LMB)
Remove Soft Lock in Action Cam option (or whatever makes skills lock you to a target)
🙏

Short and simple, these stats looks atrocious. I hope this is just testing so that they can look at whole numbers rather than decimals. if not.... i want this forum out there for people who just want to voice that these numbers should be a permanent solution. The stats before looked better. Numbers in the single and double digits are nice, not tripe digits.

I like this idea Their goal with classes and archetypes has always been to blur the lines and keep it completely flexible to the player, so I believe a solution to the problem would lie in a new addition that compliments the sandbox system, but favor players that create an entire build around one waterfall archetype. People will forever yearn to be just an Ice-Mage or Dance-Bard, so they should find a special gameplay loop somewhere.

Enchantments with ability modifiers & buffs to those waterfall stats (i.e. lightning) could enhance the specializing experience without restricting parts of the class to players. I would look forward to seeing this kind of integration after secondary archetypes are added and balanced, since their goal is to blur the lines of class even further, its expected that they won't mess with specific classes outside of broken mechanics until everything is added.

I "think" some sort of specialisation system is coming. I believe we will be able to spend multiple points into the same skill to empower it. This might bring some sort of specialisation and actual build diversity in classes. At the moment, there is none.