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Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

You can't, because there will always be people who play 5h a week and people who play 55 hours a week and the game supposedly has to somehow be actual fun for both those groups.

That's what the OP was trying to address, right?

You say you can remove all NPCs (I assume you mean mobs too) from the game, but I'm moreso asking why you would do that? Mobs have known power levels and players don't. Less invested players can always find a mob to hit that is a reasonable challenge for them.

PvP doesn't work that way.

I'm pointing out that if people want the game to be meaningful, what truly matters are specifically the systems built around player interaction because they are like the the cow's tits we can milk content from everyday. We’ll never be able to milk enough lasting content from quests and game lore alone you see

MORE SPECIFICALLY, systems for:

1. resource gathering, processing and consumption
2. banding up together and throwing ourselves into danger, sharing the risk
3. killing, dying and losing something (resources, items, status, losing access to things and places)
4. as a group fixing yourselves, fixing your stuff, alliance systems that patch up their people and items. Sharing the costs for repairs, sharing the ability to put ourselves in our own feet again. The bros helping bros vibe, this is the moment we forge alliances that last
5. repeat

There is a difference between meaningful and convoluted or tedious. I have played complex crafting games that were fun and intuitive. Ashes has done that with their combat system very well.

Crafting for instance low level gear, potions and the rest of it should be easy to figure out and within an hour of playing have something meaningful to progress your char for the next few levels.

The next round of crafting should add the next level of complexity and build on what you have already learned. Should take a little more effort. These systems should be fun as well. When you design to be complex first, you miss what gaming is about, fun first. Once you have designed something fun, ask how you can add depth and complexity.

This type of process should be applied to all areas of the game. I am 100% sure when they designed combat, that's the process they followed.

Ludullu wrote: »

JustVine wrote: »

Hi Ace. I was mulling something related to Throne and Liberty design issues recently and then in another thread something Ludullu and Arya_Yeshe said really stuck out to me relative to this.

My preferrence for "content" would just be a part of quests, cause I just wanna better mobs across the board. And with better mobs, quests can build on that through lore/mechanics/interactions.

Hell, my main pve-related desire is for mobs to be able to lose their corruption and become interactible npcs with quests. If that ain't immersive rp potential - I dunno what is.

I think everyone wants good combat and good mob design/ai are a huge core part of that. So I agree. It is part of why I like certain areas of Throne and Liberty so very much. At least pre-Talandre there was a lot of good spots where you could really master fighting the mob in a meaningful and deep way. I think Talandre has less of this and it is less diverse but just the other day I was duoing the open world dungeon, what is generally designed for full parties, and there was some stuff to teach them they had never thought about before because they are used to the group play kind of papering over some of the unique challenges that come with the level design. Idk if THEY found it interesting, but that is certainly a big deal for me in my gameplay. Having quests that involve challenging mobs I'm not naturally going to steam roll is a big deal for me personally.

Ace1234 wrote: »

@MargaretKrohn

MargaretKrohn wrote: »

The phrase “not for everyone” has definitely sparked a range of perspectives, and that’s a good thing.

It’s clear many of you care deeply about how things are framed—not just in vision, but in communication and community culture. While we remain committed to the core pillars of Ashes of Creation—like meaningful risk, no pay-to-win, and a player-driven world—we also recognize how important it is to leave the door open to new voices and evolving dialogue.

At times, it’s important to communicate expectations clearly—even when the message may be difficult for some to hear. Our goal is to ensure that players understand Ashes of Creation is being built upon a distinct set of design pillars, and it may not align with the preferences of those seeking a different type of gameplay experience.

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?

Thanks again for being here and sharing your thoughts—we’ll be watching this thread and others like it with interest (and possibly snacks). 😄

If you want a deep dive into answering this, I recommend parsing through this thread:

https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/67736/splinter-topic-narrative-design-hell-is-other-people#latest


In this thread (especially later in it) we go in-depth trying to answer the question on how to bridge the gap between different player types, including pve, pvp, and pvx (pve+pvp intergated) enjoyers, as well as the balance of power/content segregation between large and small player groups, as well as talking about where Ashes should sit in the pvx spectrum, to allow for different player types to coexist, what the ideal target audience might look like, and how to satisfy these distinct audience subsets, for a sustainable player base.

Hi Ace. I was mulling something related to Throne and Liberty design issues recently and then in another thread something @Ludullu and Arya_Yeshe said really stuck out to me relative to this. It is very much in the 'design hell is other people' frustration I have with modern gamERS that I think also targets the 'not for everyone' concept.

So to give you a little background as to where my mind is: Currently at this time Throne and Liberty is running into a problem both in Korea and Global versions (but more so Global) where they have a lot of what I will call 'hard content' and by hard i don't mean difficult I mean 'mechanically involved in the systems design intended for CORE progression of a character'. This content in TL's case is world bosses, instanced dungeons, raids, and various PvX and PvP battlegrounds. You could even argue that the open world dungeons also falls into this category but I might get that later into our conversation if it goes that direction. Notably in TL if you have good mechanical skill at the game you get noticeably statistically stronger by doing this content more quickly, consistently, and efficiently than anyone else. There is also a 'hard content' related system with guild progression that heavily rewards the people who are successful at this content. By putting such a heavy emphasis on this, a lot of the less skilled players both 'feel they need to do cutting edge content' but also do a lot of the 'questing' and open world interactions when they can't manage it. This has lead to a social disconnect between the 'strong' and the 'weak' that is rapidly eating away at the overall player base.

I think this issue happens in many games, but in Throne and Liberty they have it much worse and I'll tell you why. Many of the 'strong' and a few of the devs on staff have at least PRIORITIZED development in a way that would make 'quests are not content' ring true to this cohort.

Part of an rpg is roleplay for many people. Quests in particular give rpers and life skillers a framework that leads to higher satisfaction, better stepping stones to making their own content, and generally a down time activity that let's you stay immersed in the world without leaving it. I will call this knock on effect 'soft content' because it's not really the quest itself that makes it content (although you can make very engaging dynamic repeatable quests into a whole SYSTEM e.g. Assault from FFXI in the Tales of Aht Urgahn expansion) but the head space and interactivity this creates for the more casual, rp, and life skill involved person.

The 'design hell' for me is that often games feel a need to cater a lot more to 'hard content' in the way that Arya proposes in that thread, but so many other mmos have this underlying fall back of this 'soft content' that keeps the 'weaker' or 'less time available' people to keep progressing and positively contributing to the game. This happens to also be why I originally thought Ashes COULD be really successful as they had originally prioritized that type of 'soft content' and that community in the Alpha 1 era development.

When I think of Arya like people and I think about what makes a game sustainable in the long term, I think that some games without 'hard content' only style design are 'not for everyone' in a more fundamental way than games with a mix of soft and hard content. Design hell for me, therefore is the people who are 'the strong' that 'thrive easily with only hard content systems' the 'sweat lords who excel at the game in both skill and time' that ALSO then demand that the game be very SOCIAL and codependent on PvP rather than PvE serving as a fundamental force that unites the player base. They constantly stomp on and undervalue the 'soft content' and this leads to the developers feeling uneasy about adding it at all even though it in terms of collective man hours adds WAY more. This is a fundamental issue I see with TL's raid system in particular. It took a lot of resources to create this system, but ultimately with the same amount of dev time they could have made thousands of hours more if they had focused on 'soft system' content that helped amplify and enhance their existing building blocks.

It is funny, in a way I feel like AoC and TL are in somewhat similar places right now with their fan base but Ashes is doing all the stuff that would really 'attract the TL type top enders' and TL is doing all the sort of stuff that would really 'attract the AoC type top enders'.

As a person who thrives off of making 'soft content' challenging through various self limitations to help me improve my core fundamental skills for the 'hard content' I find myself constantly in the presence of design hell when people turn around and tell me the content I am clearly spending dozens of hours on is somehow not content. I'm doing it and it is leading to tangible interactive skilled gameplay am I not? In a way I find it a 'skill issue' but in another I recognize that 'the game I want is not for everyone and vice versa'. But it sure is design hell. How do you keep people like me and people like Arya happy? Well I thought AoC had the answer originally but they went in a direction that seems no longer to involve my audience demographic type.

You can't, because there will always be people who play 5h a week and people who play 55 hours a week and the game supposedly has to somehow be actual fun for both those groups.

That's what the OP was trying to address, right?

You say you can remove all NPCs (I assume you mean mobs too) from the game, but I'm moreso asking why you would do that? Mobs have known power levels and players don't. Less invested players can always find a mob to hit that is a reasonable challenge for them.

PvP doesn't work that way.

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

I think it's fine like this.

What do people even mean with "meaningful"?
Almost never any dev made any PvE meaningful, except for EVE Online where we shaped the galaxy according to what we did in battle, example: The Triglavian Invasion and the Drifter Crisis

PvE impact is so strong in EVE that it has chapters LOL and we could never fix the galaxy ever again, what is broken is broken

Tbf tho, you aren't exactly the sort of person who has a lot of tolerance for the sort of player who isn't good at mid-level PvE, so it follows that you wouldn't have a high opinion of the PvE itself.

Would you have the same reaction to a fantasy MMO where losing in PvE could change the world for a month, and you could technically just keep losing if you didn't organize/gain skill?

Because those exist, but I guess if not even that counts as meaningful, then I get your point.

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

I think it's fine like this.

What do people even mean with "meaningful"?
Almost never any dev made any PvE meaningful, except for EVE Online where we shaped the galaxy according to what we did in battle, example: The Triglavian Invasion and the Drifter Crisis

As a once-upon-a-time top end PvE player, I'll tell you what meaningful PvE is to PvE players.

Meaningful PvE is new shared experiences.

Those experiences don't need to change the game world, for the most part we don't care about that. What they need to do is put me and my friends in a new situation with a new challenge that we can work on and overcome together.

Ludullu wrote: »

1970merlin wrote: »

I.E. QUESTS!!!

Not everyone views quests as content.

I definitely do not see quests as content