Best Of

Been gaming most my whole life, so many guilds I have been in that didn't work because I was a kid due to myself or the guild not wanting a kid in. The guild I got into as a teenager and I have been with since found me in PVP matches for SWTOR. We happened to face each other in multiple matches and I made an impression so they sent me a guild invite. We got to talking soon enough hanging out in vent/discord.

For Ashes one can always look for a guild via guild postings, but the guilds will come naturally when you play the game whether Alpha or live. Just play and they will find you

Paqu wrote: »

Has anyone received emails for early access alpha 2 testing yet? I have put so much money in this game and played alpha 1 extensively and haven't received my invite... getting nervous...

As i was never part of the Alpha 1 Testers,


Please tell me Paqu - did You get your Invite back then around the "Date" of when the Alpha 1 was supposed to start ?
Did you get it before or after the Date of when Alpha 1 was supposed to have started ?


It could also very well be,
that we might get Invites send to us any Moment or Day now - > but those Invites are still of no Use to use to us, as long as Alpha 2 hasn't started. Right ?

Right ?



I personally am WAAAAY more curious about the Character Creator/Feature.

I mean, it is supposed to come before the Alpha Two, right ? Shouldn't this be the earliest, new thing to look out for, in terms of release/appearing for a Download or so ? 🤨🤔

We seem to have moved into a phase of this conversation where I feel like bringing up the following might not be a waste of time, so here goes:

In a game with 16 gear slots and new potential items for those slots every 5-8 levels, even if you do what I like and have the very conservative 'player does something for 60 minutes and gets 1 reward', you still 'need' to give out twice as many gear pieces as you give out levels, to keep pace. If this seems irrelevant, gimme a moment.

What people have mentioned wanting is a natural progression, not skipping swaths of gear, etc. But for this to make sense, the gear would have to be a meaningful upgrade, probably not quite 'on pace' with the leveling. Modern games don't do this because the leveling is too fast, but many have less gear slots, etc.

We also want crafting to matter, so 'just handing people gear' might not be as good as 'handing them money to buy gear'. This isn't an issue for crafters if the game makes sense, because what is likely to happen is that a weaponsmith will do 2 hours of work and make 3-4 weapons, use one, give away one, sell the remaining and buy something from someone else who did the same. Good enough.

The absolute lowest levels can skip some accessories. This is good design, in fact, I won't go into why, I doubt it's necessary.

So the game already has a pretty simple, low-level-thought way of measuring 'how many rewards it can give out without it just being a shower of them', and it could theoretically make the upgrades important enough that you could afford to skip, say, 3 out of every 8, just ballparking. That would mean that every level or so, the game will somehow 'give' you 1-2 gearpieces. This is, again, going by the wish to have gearing up and 'the journey' matter. Assume I'm mostly talking about mid levels.

If each gearpiece takes around an hour of play to earn by whatever means, even considering the skipped ones and the way it changes nearer to endgame, that's still about 25 levels like this. Probably 4-5 'gear tiers' and therefore 80 gearworth and probably 100 hours.

Games that don't care about getting people into the concepts of builds or stuff before endgame can provide the basics and focus on learning mechanics. Games with deeper interaction between builds and mechanics should probably do the above.

Slow games can still feel good when they take long even for less 'grind oriented' players and avoid invalidating the economy/gear/interaction when they 'know' that when they finish a session of whatever, they will be 'one gearpiece stronger'.

Want a faster-to-level game? Reduce either the build complexity options or number of gear slots, or both, and then just proceed from there. Another option that we see used a lot more is to push things to endgame and hope players stick with it, and make the leveling very fast because the economy isn't as relevant, or to make much fewer rungs on the gear ladder before endgame.

When considering games, looking at which of these things they did, will tell you why it works for them even if you personally don't like it. Because many people don't like 'logging on and not achieving anything' too often.

Getting a single gear piece or level every other day when you play for 90m a day is around the point where people have told me it starts to bother them, but they're perfectly content otherwise. At maximum stretch you can do about 80 sessions of 'hey here's your earnings' and another 30-40 of 'rejoice, you got a level' and maybe 30-50 'some other cool thing happened'. If they came to Ashes for what Ashes is, I figure this much will work even if they don't care about artisanship at all.

So 160-ish sessions of play leading to achievement. If you stretch that to 90 minutes per, you get 240 hours. And everyone 'does what they came to an MMO to do'. Those who want to gather more gear take longer, those who want to skip gear, maybe they make it through based on the skills of their group.

All this is to say, we kinda already know how to please 'everyone' that would be interested in this type of game, and there's no need to upset anyone unnecessarily by shortening or extending this. Even the people who love to feel superior to others because they are better at the game overall, can just 'play better' by either 'being able to skip gearing up certain slots' or the opposite, by having the skill/connections to gear up every slot. Everyone feels rewarded if they put in the work, and you can just not worry about the people who 'want it to be faster just because they don't consider lower levels to have real meaning'. Those people were warned.

EDIT: Schema colors, because who doesn't like schema colors?

I think what is being missed here is the cosmetic shop is more than just making cash for intrepid someone has to be paid to make these cosmetics which cost the company money! By having a cosmetic shop we generate income so they can create items for the game not just for the item shop.

So the next time you see some weirdo riding around on a my little pony unicorn with a rainbow mane and tail who paid 50 USD for it don't shun them, stop and thank them because they are doing more to help the progress of the game then you probably are! As far as immersion goes if you don't like his pony you can kill him and it but make sure you still express your gratitude you don't want to look like you are rude.

Syblitrh wrote: »

From what i seen all ranged type mobs have homing projectiles, correct me if i am wrong. That's why i made the comparison with the Ball lightning, which is a spell projectile, but without homing.

Yes, all of them so far.

This topic would be a great question for the monthly q&a. Do Intrepid plan on adding ranged mobs that will have action abilities?

Jamesson wrote: »

It is ok to disagree, but I am apparently not the only one that thinks this, and it in my opinion needs to be addressed.

There are others, yes, that share your opinion … that’s why those other discussion threads exist.

But, it’s not the opinion of the majority of players. Nor is Intrepid likely to change the payment model.

The cash shop in modern MMOs is a concept that won’t be going away anytime soon. We can be thankful that there’s no P2W.