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Ace1234 wrote: »

I think it comes down to establishing who you want to appeal to, then making sure you create a space for those players, and enough quality content to satisfy them. I don't think you have to try to make sure every piece of content in the game appeals to the lowest common denominator, watering down the quality from each player-type's perspective. I see this as a resources problem to solve rather than a design problem. A kind of bad example (that hopefully won't derail the topic) would be how we talked in the past about corruption and how theoretically you can have a space for more pve focused players (protected by corruption), a space for pvp focused players (arenas), and a space for pvx focused players (lawless areas and areas where the rewards make it worth going corrupt). These concepts are basically seperate games in my mind that will attract different player types. It is less about "how can we make pvp players, pve players, and pvx players satisfied through a unified design" and more about "can we make enough content for each type of player". That being said, if this conflict in player desire was a real concern to Intrepid, I think it is possible to have areas like "The Weeping Hollow" even if that means not all areas are designed in this same exact way. Its just a matter of who Intrepid wants to create content for and how thin they can spread themeselves to satisfy the diverse playerbase. I would think that with a "Reactive world", "Immersive and Engaging Story", and "Player agency" being core design pillars, that the types of players who like this type of content would be a priority, but alas that is just my subjective interpretation of those ideas.

Lawless zones definitely 'changed the entire genre of the game' for me so I don't think I really disagree with you.

Settite wrote: »

One thing that I enjoyed from my time playing the chrono odyssey beta was the random encounters that would occur when traveling. For example a cart would be getting attacked by a group of bandits or wolves. It's simple but it helps to make traveling a bit less monotonous. It also makes me think about the encounters in the dragons dogma remake. There was a gray feeling from being attacked in the middle of the night while in a cart by a cyclops and or a griffin. Kept the blood pumping. I believe expanding a decent bit on these ideas within ashes would help with the lull of traveling great distances.

I'll just hope that Ashes and other games work out how to make these more procedural/truly random.

Curated versions of this content always seem to show up in the 'early stages' of these games and then drop off as the game ages, even though they should technically be easy content to add. But ofc, who has time to complain about 'the mildly lower percentage of cool random OW stuff?' (me, I have time, I'll complain)

@Ace1234 - I think the simplest thing I can say about my data/concern is that I worry about this sort of content being subject to 'data-driven development'.

On the topic of design hell, I have a very deep seated hatred of average MMO players and while I try to keep these to myself, I think for once it might be useful to articulate WHY, particularly because to me most of them are average, arrogant as that might sound.

Players ask for things, and then proceed to completely skip them. Which causes a pain for devs who truly love their work (Tico from TL talks about this a bit in an interview) and is a detriment to the very same players. There's no point in asking for content to consume if you're bad at consuming. That's the core of my problem with players.

I will provide a few examples, see if you can find yourselves reflected in any of them. Because if you do, it means you have, hopefully unintentionally, contributed to the design hell.

1) While some players hide their problems by just having maxed gear, late night Dimensional Circle runs in TL (instanced dungeon run with boss at the end) often involve less geared players, which will result in the following: players skip literally all non-mandatory mob fights on the route to the boss like usual, then someone messes up some execution element and the angry swarm of mobs catches up and kills someone. Then people get mad at each other and someone leaves, and we have to search for new members. I've had this process take literally 3 times the time it would've taken to just clear the dungeon once, the normal way

2) I once had a Dimensional Circle run in the orc region and in order to unlock the boss area, we had to defeat a few orcs on a narrow bridge. One of the orcs got pushed by a player ability on the rocks under the bridge, making it impossible to advance. In order to resolve this, I climbed down to beat it. For various level design reasons, climbing back up takes a bit even if trying to kill oneself and respawn. As thanks, my party started without me, and I got locked out of getting any rewards. Please take a moment to process what this means on the design side. Are we expecting devs to design every single square meter of their content with the base assumption their playerbase is made of scummy weasels? Do we even pay them enough for that?

3) In a separate run, I've had a player complain the entire time that the party was being weird or weak (we were about 10-15% slower than usual peak hour tryhard comp) and focused on dropping really unpleasant comments instead of working on the teamwork. When I finally had enough and asked them to stop so I wouldn't block them, their reaction was along the lines of "lol I don't know you, what are you going to do about it?". This might be hard to see at first, but in order to minimize these kinds of reaction, devs need to work really hard on making sure those gaps are not large or frequent for most of the playerbase. Can you do that? I'd quit before I started.

4) I recently had a new member join our guild. They were a returning TL player who had the same standard experience of their party members skipping everything and taking the most direct routes to the boss. When our guild proceeded to full clear the dungeon run, they discovered new and interesting parts about dungeons they'd already done many times before. How's that for asking for content you won't consume?


So here's my tl;dr: from all of my gaming experience, the kind of people that devs need to design around the most is like that toxic rival party in isekai animes. When we watch those shows we root for their downfall, when we play MMOs we become them. How do you design for that?