Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Best Of
Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
My main issues with XP debit is all of you would still play and love the game if it were gone, but there are an unknown number of potential players who won’t play the game because of it.
This game needs to attract a healthy full player base, and XP offers nothing positive and only negative.
It is an objective negative for this game to implement it.
This game needs to attract a healthy full player base, and XP offers nothing positive and only negative.
It is an objective negative for this game to implement it.
RonDog98
1
Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
High risk pushes people towards better mitigation of it.
You keep dying in pugs? Find yourself a guild with a constant party.
You keep losing mats because you're trying to gather in a dangerous location? Ask people to protect/help you.
Truly dificult pve usually requires constant repetition to beat it, hence why the games that have that kind of pve just let you respawn right back at the mob and attempt it again. Ashes, so far, has not shown pve with that kind of difficulty, so, instead of spending your time on repeating the mob over and over, the penalty for potential failure comes from material loss and timer requirements for coming back to the same spot.
Also, respawning super close to the same spot would kinda destroy the pvp part of the game, because when your enemy can just endlessly respawn right where you killed them - what's the point in killing them? Even now, the respawn points are waaaaay to close to POIs imo.
Psychologically, this genre has been around long enough for those people to already be looking for their game, and we are getting these posts because Ashes is not for everyone.
Ashes' problem doesn't come from its design, it comes from the way it was 'marketed' to people so far (and perhaps an overly ambitious concept of the playerbase that will play the game as apparently intended).
Source: The Fighting Game Community (Response to Street Fighter V launch)
Removing XP Debt and changing it so that you can recover all your loot if you make it back in time doesn’t affect the core principles of this game.
RonDog98
1
Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
lukedawuke wrote: »wasting a players time? youre a tester bro lol
What a useless comment. As a tester I’m giving feedback on a core part of the game I disagree with.
That’s the literal purpose of these forums.
RonDog98
4
Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
High risk pushes people towards better mitigation of it.
You keep dying in pugs? Find yourself a guild with a constant party.
You keep losing mats because you're trying to gather in a dangerous location? Ask people to protect/help you.
Truly dificult pve usually requires constant repetition to beat it, hence why the games that have that kind of pve just let you respawn right back at the mob and attempt it again. Ashes, so far, has not shown pve with that kind of difficulty, so, instead of spending your time on repeating the mob over and over, the penalty for potential failure comes from material loss and timer requirements for coming back to the same spot.
Also, respawning super close to the same spot would kinda destroy the pvp part of the game, because when your enemy can just endlessly respawn right where you killed them - what's the point in killing them? Even now, the respawn points are waaaaay to close to POIs imo.
Again, I like the run time I think it’s necessary and fine.
I’m even saying dropping some materials is okay, but I think they should all be recoverable if you make it back in time.
XP debt is bad design and should be gone, especially given everything else in AoC meant to punish you.
RonDog98
1
Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
Let’s start with this:
Life is finite and free time is evermore finite. There is NOTHING more punishing/frustrating than wasting a players time.
I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I finally decided to make a post after watching this JoshStrifeHayes video.https://youtu.be/5H16ixwysA0?si=C0AlTVPCSIGhfdW8
Ash’s is al about risk reward and making the journey meaningful in a way that MMOs haven’t been in a while, but in attempting to do that they’ve overshot by a long ways.
Ash’s is a game with XP debt
At least 25% material loss on death
And some of the most insane travel time in any game.
First one is objectively bad game design
Second one, in my opinion, should be tweaked so that you either don’t lose materials on PVE death or make it so you can recover 100% of dropped materials.
I’m a actually a fan of long travel, but it has a compounding affect with the first two.
Again, there is NOTHING more punishing than wasting a players time.
There’s a reason challenging games have moved away from long run back times and XP Debt and have chosen to focus on enjoyable difficultly like a bosses individual mechanics.
Spending 5+ minutes to run back to a corpse or 20+ minutes to get from point A to Point B is already an obstacle in and of itself, there’s no reason to add insult or injury and give the player XP Debt and have them lose materials as well.
I do not feel having a death penalty or lack of fast travel wastes my time.
I do think we will see more emberstones but I find that may be problematic as well.
The primary issue I see with a 5 minute run back to a body is that the pvp timer for someone that looted you will be off and they will likely be gone. As loot was once not a pvp flag, perhaps they could make a death pile unlootable for the first minute or so and pvp timer extended to 3 min or so for anyone looting.
The death penalty gives that risk vs reward feeling Steven strives for and is one of the core features of the game he is trying to build. Steven has repeatedly stated that he wants to produce a feeling of loss on failure and the death penalty certain accomplishes this. If you remove the items frustrating someone (like xp loss or running back), you are essentially reducing the risk. With that said, this is test so some deaths are going to result from things outside our control like server crashes, people exploiting bugs, overtuned corruption system that has bugs and missing mechanics, server performance issues, players training mobs ect that will produce a higher level of frustration but we are all aware of these sort of issues when signing up for an alpha test and frankly, the xp debt is pretty easy to work off.
As far as fast travel, I believe the primary reason this exists is to not only mimic the feel of some of the older style games, but to also make it more difficult for zerg groups to zerg. In fact, I am sort of concerned for family travel and the potential abuse of it when it is implemented down the road.
I think the real issue is that there are many more participation trophy players in our society now that demand games be tailored around them. People get upset when Steven states that this game might not be for everyone but in reality, the guy sunk over 50 million of his own money into it, so he has a right to build any type of game he wants. Now, if that means there will be less players than if he build around the wishes of everyone else, well, we have seen this play out with the majority of the games over the last decade and most of them crashed and burned quickly when straying from their vision and trying to please everyone else so......
I’m not saying any one of these is bad in a vacuum, I’m saying that all three together suck and will discourage a large number of players.
Also, there’s a difference between “participation trophy players” and players who don’t want their time to wasted.
XP debt is an outdated mechanic and there’s a reason that almost no games utilize it. It is not a rewarding type of difficulty and it psychologically not fun.
Also, nothing about removing XP debt goes against any of the core pillars of this game.
Hell, I think making all your materials recoverable on death also doesn’t go against it.
RonDog98
1
Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
You keep losing mats because you're trying to gather in a dangerous location? Ask people to protect/help you
I do see this point, but currently - the final version of Ashes might be an entirely different story, but we can only discuss the current state of the game - there is little reward available. To be more precise: There are lots of games that follow in a similar fashion a "risk vs. reward"-approach, e.g. run-based games such as Rogue-likes where you constantly have to decide if you continue a run, possibly gaining more rewards, or abort it to save what you've got so far. Or games with very difficult but optional boss fights and the potential of XP-loss, such as Elden Ring and such.
However, so far the stakes in Ashes are very low and the challenges themselves are not designed in a transparent fashion, nor are there any valuable rewards corresponding to the risk. What I mean by that is, that currently there are various ways to die in the game which are more 'obscure' in nature than actually 'challenging', e.g.
- You're gathering materials and a high level player feels like one-shotting you
- You're farming some lowbie mobs and another trains them on you
- You attempt a dungeon for the first time as a tank and - as you had no change to learn the mechanics yet - die
- You're AFK for a brief moment because you follow nature's call and a player kills you
None of these activities are based on 'risk vs. reward' because these scenarios don't include any reward - you're just playing the basic gameplay loop. Regarding your point, if you keep losing mats in a dangerous location - e.g. because of players killing you - it surely matters if we're talking about a lvl 5 player who just wants to find some most basic mats for his profession, or if we're talking about a designated dangerous area well-known for precious but rare mats. If the later, 'risk vs. reward' does apply: You can get some rewards worth your time, but there's a risk attached to it. If we're talking about the first however, I don't think that just playing the game as a lowbie - or simply being logged into the game and minding your own business - can be considered a 'reward' that's worth the 'risk'.
If everything is high risk - even just mining basic stuff like copper - then nothing truly is. I mean, there are reasons the first mobs in Ashes don't one-shot you. It sure would be high risk to even leave the starting building, but it wouldn't be any fun.
AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
Let’s start with this:
Life is finite and free time is evermore finite. There is NOTHING more punishing/frustrating than wasting a players time.
I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I finally decided to make a post after watching this JoshStrifeHayes video.
https://youtu.be/5H16ixwysA0?si=C0AlTVPCSIGhfdW8
Ash’s is al about risk reward and making the journey meaningful in a way that MMOs haven’t been in a while, but in attempting to do that they’ve overshot by a long ways.
Ash’s is a game with XP debt
At least 25% material loss on death
And some of the most insane travel time in any game.
First one is objectively bad game design
Second one, in my opinion, should be tweaked so that you either don’t lose materials on PVE death or make it so you can recover 100% of dropped materials.
I’m a actually a fan of long travel, but it has a compounding affect with the first two.
Again, there is NOTHING more punishing than wasting a players time.
There’s a reason challenging games have moved away from long run back times and XP Debt and have chosen to focus on enjoyable difficultly like a bosses individual mechanics.
Spending 5+ minutes to run back to a corpse or 20+ minutes to get from point A to Point B is already an obstacle in and of itself, there’s no reason to add insult or injury and give the player XP Debt and have them lose materials as well.
Life is finite and free time is evermore finite. There is NOTHING more punishing/frustrating than wasting a players time.
I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I finally decided to make a post after watching this JoshStrifeHayes video.
https://youtu.be/5H16ixwysA0?si=C0AlTVPCSIGhfdW8Ash’s is al about risk reward and making the journey meaningful in a way that MMOs haven’t been in a while, but in attempting to do that they’ve overshot by a long ways.
Ash’s is a game with XP debt
At least 25% material loss on death
And some of the most insane travel time in any game.
First one is objectively bad game design
Second one, in my opinion, should be tweaked so that you either don’t lose materials on PVE death or make it so you can recover 100% of dropped materials.
I’m a actually a fan of long travel, but it has a compounding affect with the first two.
Again, there is NOTHING more punishing than wasting a players time.
There’s a reason challenging games have moved away from long run back times and XP Debt and have chosen to focus on enjoyable difficultly like a bosses individual mechanics.
Spending 5+ minutes to run back to a corpse or 20+ minutes to get from point A to Point B is already an obstacle in and of itself, there’s no reason to add insult or injury and give the player XP Debt and have them lose materials as well.
RonDog98
3
Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
High risk pushes people towards better mitigation of it.
You keep dying in pugs? Find yourself a guild with a constant party.
You keep losing mats because you're trying to gather in a dangerous location? Ask people to protect/help you.
Truly dificult pve usually requires constant repetition to beat it, hence why the games that have that kind of pve just let you respawn right back at the mob and attempt it again. Ashes, so far, has not shown pve with that kind of difficulty, so, instead of spending your time on repeating the mob over and over, the penalty for potential failure comes from material loss and timer requirements for coming back to the same spot.
Also, respawning super close to the same spot would kinda destroy the pvp part of the game, because when your enemy can just endlessly respawn right where you killed them - what's the point in killing them? Even now, the respawn points are waaaaay to close to POIs imo.
You keep dying in pugs? Find yourself a guild with a constant party.
You keep losing mats because you're trying to gather in a dangerous location? Ask people to protect/help you.
Truly dificult pve usually requires constant repetition to beat it, hence why the games that have that kind of pve just let you respawn right back at the mob and attempt it again. Ashes, so far, has not shown pve with that kind of difficulty, so, instead of spending your time on repeating the mob over and over, the penalty for potential failure comes from material loss and timer requirements for coming back to the same spot.
Also, respawning super close to the same spot would kinda destroy the pvp part of the game, because when your enemy can just endlessly respawn right where you killed them - what's the point in killing them? Even now, the respawn points are waaaaay to close to POIs imo.
Ludullu
2
Re: Eliminate these reason to quit
The problem is not that there is a penalty. The problem is there are too many diff penalties upon death. Some games you have exp loss. Some games you have long run back to body...ect...ect. This game you have huge exp penalty that just keeps stacking, you have long runs, you have the fact that by time you get back to your body someone has looted half your stuff, you have the fact that you take a huge durability hit to all equipment which cost even more money and resources to repair. Not to mention the fact that it's not just normal environment that can kill you. High levels can kill you, some idiot that's mad you have their spot can train your group again ect...ect.. Too much risk vs very little reward. When you have this much setback on progress it will discourage people to continue to play.
Also, not everyone wants to group. I love to solo level in games. some people are anti social or shy or whatever. They shouldn't be punished for wanting to solo up and just level on their own.
Also, not everyone wants to group. I love to solo level in games. some people are anti social or shy or whatever. They shouldn't be punished for wanting to solo up and just level on their own.
smokedu
3
Re: AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
Well under that logic I guess all video games are out.
Not at all, we have a very large number of autobattlers, 'basically chat rooms', 'pure sandbox games without the best graphics', and single player stories with highly customizable challenge ratings to choose from, as gamers.
When the genre expanded, these types were necessary to please all the people who liked the medium but not so much the time-pressures built into the dynamics of getting good after the Arcade era.
It's fascinating historically. Anyway, nah.
Azherae
1