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Hm, looks like this thread is turning into one of those highly philosophical ones. I'm already losing track of everyone's ideas, not sure I can add much to this melting pot

I'll just say any player is a good addition to any server, being a solo or community oriented person

Yeah, audience retention makes multiplayer one of the hardest genres in that regard. Marketing budgets and effective cm are basically a must for those games and that requires a significant amount of capital. I think there is a middle road though. There is a difference between 'investors or larger firms agreeing to set amount of growth' and a public company request unlimited maximal growth. You can have a midsized company and almost never require they type of 'unlimited growth on investment' style funding and have the marketing budget required to get that type of exposure and retention.

I definitely think there is a lot of nuance and mileage when it comes to deciding what type of monetization is acceptable and to what extent. At the end of the day though you are kind of right to bring up that example. It's a good example of 'the niche' having too high of a demand for resources compared to it's natural population. There is definitely such a thing as too niche. But I don't think you have to go as broad as many hyper solo players tend to push things either.

In other words, solo players didn't save mmos. They made them into single player games. The mmo genre is "dead" (mostly means a few dozen thousand players in several different proper mmos). All these current big "mmos" are just single player games with interactible (barely btw) npcs running around and spamming some bs in chat.

Ludullu wrote: »

And in this day and age of shareholders and money - the majority's opinion is the only valid one. That's the true devhell for current mmo devs.

One thing I take particular to heart in these dark times is just how often I've seen the 'disillusionment of shareholder based game dev and game media' lead to leaner teams with a feasible economic model that is dependent on the fans that feel their efforts are more genuine and worth paying attention to .

I think the 2010's was largely big companies buying up smaller ones because 1. getting rich or in many cases staying solvent was desirable 2. there was some level of belief that big companies valued the smaller ones culture that led to a dedicated fanbase and quality games.

Some of the earlier types of these smaller companies have lasted multiple years now and so far it mostly looks like it'll continue to be a healthy sustainable trend. Capitalism works, but not every business needs shareholder funding to work out economically.

That's why I personally am looking forward to smaller mmos like Eternal Tombs at the moment. Same vibe for the same reasons. The majority can get bent, niche content is were it's at. There will always be a game for 'the wider audience' but that doesn't need to be every game. I'm not 100% sure if a smaller mmo can work out with this model, but I sure hope the explosion I've been seeing the past few years for solo and even multiplayer games helps soak up some of the wayward people who don't REALLY want an mmo and can find fun in this new old frontier.

Sorta, but they can and do just go 'screw it, we still want to build a proper MMO'. Intrepid has done it, Throne and Liberty has done it, Elite Dangerous and EVE (sorta) never stopped doing it.

And therefore obviously, all those games have less players, but there are still so many things they can bring back, do better, etc.

I'm chilin' with the former 'King' of my TL server (yes, they did lose the castle because of that idiot 'Chancellor') in the village I consider 'home' now. Maybe my minimal RP is 'cringe' (he's neither responded nor walked away yet) but that's what you get when you play an MMO. People who acknowledge your effect on their world, and affect yours, and you can decide if to engage with that or not.

But I get something out of this, watching him in summer vacation style running around. And that's a thing that right now, both that player and I are 'each experiencing solo'.

In Ashes, I'd be able to encounter and complain to the equivalent person (Mayor of node probably) about the criminal lack of cooking facilities around the village, and in Ashes, there's a chance he would do something about it.

How cool is that?

I don't believe there has been much balancing done for any of the archetypes and I guess that is to be expected so early in development

I play primarily Mage and if we were to compare this to a Rock, Paper, Scissors game Mage would be Pencil which loses to all three. Almost all other Archetypes have some form of Sustainability except for Mage, it's either Run away or get Killed, or show up with other people and hope you don't get targeted, and that Mage Barrier thing doesn't seem to do much for actual protection

From my perspective it seems like development follows a sort of Gatcha game process where whenever a new class is released it immediately is the strongest class until all the stats are dumbed down to make it into a limp noodle class like all the others and that is to be expected with the release of Summoner, it will be released being overpowered and then downscaled to 40% of its strength.

I'm not the expert so I cant say what should be done, but I wander if maybe upscaling all the classes is the answer rather then dumbing everyone down. Maybe when we see that Bard is overpowered but Fun, maybe the answer isn't make Bard not Fun but instead make all the other classes Fun

Even that still isn't quite useful to any dev tho, in the end.

An MMORPG is basically a world where other players affect something about the experience you have when you log in on any given day, and maybe you can extend it to 'you can talk to or negotiate with them about it'.

The 'Massively' part is related to things like persistence of game states in the world and the capacity for others to change the composition of areas, otherwise Monster Hunter World would count as an MMORPG and so would nearly any other game that has a multiplayer component, yes, but...

Even in the older days those games weren't really built for having too many players in one place affecting the same thing. Sure, some of them were, i.e. the ones Ashes 'draws its DNA from' but those ones hit the only probably 'real' issue in this thread, i.e. that a lot of players don't want other people to affect the world they are in and many of them are 'solo players' so conflation happens.

If you want that 'other people's actions influence my world' to happen, you're an MMORPG player even if you play the game itself completely alone. There's almost no separation here.

If you hate grouping with others but like the idea that someone else defeating a boss/miniboss in the open world changes your goals and gameplay, you choose to play an MMORPG because that's the genre that experience-type comes from.

The only thing Devs 'lost' over years was the ability to make players care about this possibility through something other than 'frustration that someone else got the thing they wanted before they did', and therefore the only thing that makes Ashes 'not the same as any other good MMORPG' is Freeholds (and likely the lack of good RP that will genuinely affect player motivations but nearly no Dev can do anything about that).

We're at the point where this is all about 'optics' for those outside the main space of communities, honestly this is why I'm so glad Throne and Liberty didn't delay any longer and just started as soon as the base was ready, because now it gets a multi-year head start on a lot of similar games.

Halfassed content creators can still just throw out underthought takes about any game, but MMOs are particularly susceptible because they take time to get into no matter what you do, but positive coverage of most of them is just a 'yeah this game is good and a lot of people play it'.

What else could Ashes even add to make solo players more comfortable?

Farming? Solo gathering? Solo instanced boss challenges? Fishing? Sailing? Minigames? Group events? Player made music? Solo player economy niches? Faster leveling? More storyline than the entire Legacy of Kain series with all the spinoffs, combined? Beautiful vistas from the tops of mountains where you can look out over the landscape and see a rainbow? A world full of tiny cool things to find in nearly every spot you explore? Multiple Dungeons/PoIs with progressions that allow low-time players to move at their own pace?

A Dynamic content system that locks certain content behind a weekly serverwide progression point so that there's less incentive for the player who can't play as often to feel like they're in a race with the top players? Content capped to prevent the advantage of those players so that everyone can participate more evenly? Housing and decoration? More cosmetics? The ability to somehow earn cosmetics through ingame activity? A robust system that allows more invested players to support casual players within guilds?

A large variety of playstyles with a focus on slow, measured progression that is just at the point where you can feel advancement but also don't constantly feel the need to chase down every last stat point? A sense of community within a location in the game world and ties to in-universe organizations/characters to offer roleplay opportunities and bring players of similar minds/interests together?

Which of these things, in its intended design, does Ashes not already have?

And which of them is so 'solo player' friendly that we are at the point of bringing up 'solo players' as if these aren't things that are enjoyable to most MMO players, guild or solo?

The video (and to some extent the post) just goes 'I hope games are full of cool stuff that should be in an MMO' and then somehow implies that 'the people who like this cool stuff are mostly soloers'.

I'd say this is the opposite of what Ludullu said actually. The MMO genre didn't die because it was never very strong. Why? Because tons of people just want to imagine the concepts of this type of game but then either play it occasionally but don't say much (leading to what automatically looks like low numbers) or just watch/read fantasy content that can deliver things 'faster and with minimal friction'.

I guess 'How MMO players saved MMOs from going extinct' isn't a sensible grab, right?

I think most of the community agrees that the Ranger's main issues are the following:

- Lack of class fantasy.
- Lack of range advantage over other classes (related to the above)
- Better mobility
- Lack of defensive abilities
- Slow cast times
- Greater differences between longbow and shortbow use
- Lack of melee abilities.

Rather than providing similar feedback, I've been updating the class for a while to try to address some of the issues most frequently requested by the community.

First, there are the skill changes, and then I'll discuss the reasons for the changes.



SKILLS BASE:

The range of all abilities has become relative to the range of the equipped secondary weapon. Some abilities have cast distance modifiers. [To clarify: If a skill's range is not mentioned, its range will be that of the equipped secondary weapon.]

The mana cost of all abilities should be reduced to 50%.

- Hunt of the Raven ---> Rework:
- Hunt pasive buffs keep the same (When you throw the mark you lose the hunt temporarily).
- Appeased Spirits buffs ---> To earn the buff you need to perform a weapon finisher on the marked enemy. You can obtain it again by performing additional weapon finishers during the duration of the mark.
- The hunts will be separated in 3 groups (Like other multi-select skills from other classes):

+ Agresive (Bird)
- Raven -> 10% Accuracy (Pasive) / -25% Evasion (Debuf) / 20% Accuracy (Temporal buff)
- Eagle -> 10% Critical Chance / -25% Critical Avoidance / 20% Critical Chance
- Falcon -> 10% Penetration / -15% Mitigation / 20% Penetration

+ Defensive (Bear)
- Grizzly -> 5% Mitigation/ -25% Physical Attack Speed / 10% Mitigation
- Polar -> 10% Critical Avoidance/ -20% Critical Chance / 20% Critical Avoidance
- Panda -> 5% Evasion/ -25% Accuracy / 10% Evasion

+ Movility (Feline)
- Tiger -> 10% Resistance to Movenment speed reduction / -20% Resistance to Movement speed Reduction / 20% Resistance to Movenment speed reduction (The Movement Resistance speed reduction also applies to self-slowing abilities when cast).
- Lion -> 5% Stamina regeneration / -10% Stamina regeneration / 15% Stamina regeneration.
- Cougar -> 25% Dodge distance/ -25% Dodge distance / 40% Dodge distance.

- Mark Prey [Range increase +5m relative of the equipped secondary weapon] ---> Improved: Rewritten to update previous changes.

- Salvo ---> Improved: Apply one stack of the Enchance Armament per arrow instead just the first.

- Focus ---> No Changes.

- LvL3 Camouflage ---> No Changes: Just fix bugs and improve reliability.

- LvL6 Thorns ---> Improved: Damage Increase (at least scaling). Aditionally when hit by critical hit consume 1 stack of bledding and that target become Hemorraging.

- LvL8 Strider ---> Improved: Additionally provides 10% increased movement speed that decreases over 10 seconds and reduces the cooldown to 30 seconds (But it can only be thrown at one target at a time.).

- LvL10 Regeneration ---> Replace with: Campfire (channeling skill). Can only be used outside of combat. Provides health and mana regeneration to all allies around the Campfire. [Upgrade: could provide faster regeneration or stats boosts.]


TIER 1:

- Scatter Shot [Range decrease -10m relative of the equipped secondary weapon] ---> No Changes: Just improved functionality on rough terrain.

- Disengage ---> No Changes: Just bug fixes.

- Headshot ---> No Changes.

- Enhance Armament: Weight ---> Improved: Snared and Chilled not share immunity.

- Power Shot [Range increase +5m relative of the equipped secondary weapon] ---> No Changes.

- [NEW] Unbalancing Impact (Melee): Hit the leg of your enemy, dealing (100%) physical damage and become Snared. If the target was Snared, become Off Balance (Cannot move or rotate for 2s).


TIER 2:

- Enhance Armament: Barbs ---> No Changes.

- Barrage ---> Improved: If your secondary weapon its a shortbow, while casting this ability perform a 15m dash in you imput direccion. If your secondary weapon is a longbow, increase the damage multiplier by (5%).

- Hunt of the Tiger ---> Reworked: Moved to Tier 3 [Check the Hunt of the Raven ability for changes].

- Snipe [Range increase +5m relative of the equipped secondary weapon] ---> No Changes.

- Bear Trap ---> No Changes.

- Vine Field ---> Nerfed: Now dont root in the first hit, instead enemies in the field acquire 1 stack of Snared per second (Like the old upgrade). The bleed and hemorrhage portion remains unchanged. The new upgrade provides: When a enemy in the field receives 3 or more stacks of Snared become Rooted and all Snared stacks are removed.

- Lightning Reload ---> No Changes.

- Thundering Shot ---> Improved: Base cast time adjusted to (0.8 - 1.2s).

- [NEW] Blow to the Liver (Melee): Hit the liver of your target dealing (125%) physical damage and apply Weakened for 3s.


TIER 3:

- Enhance Armament: Concussion ---> No Changes.

- Party Stride ---> Improved: Additionally provides 10% increased movement speed that decreases over 10 seconds.

- Hunt of the Bear ---> Reworked: Moved to Tier 2 [Check the Hunt of the Raven ability for changes].

- Call of the Wild ---> No Changes.

- Raining Death [Range decrease -5m relative of the equipped secondary weapon] ---> Improved: Add one more volley for a total of 3.

- Air Strike ---> Improved: Adds an extra projectile that allows you to travel further and increases the area of the projectiles by 25%.

- [New] Explosive Shot (Cast time 0,8s - Cooldown 45s): Fires a shot what explodes on contact dealing (200%) physical damage to the target. If the target are Burning, apply Conflagrating. Both upgrades are exclusive, you can only choose one.
- Upgrade 1 - Heavy Load: The explosive trigger a second time (1s) dealing (75%) physical damage extra. If the target its Weakened also applies Deafened for 2s.
- Upgrade 2 - Fragmentation explosive: The arrow now explodes in a area arround the target dealing (50%) physical damage to every enemy target in a 15m area around the main target. It also applies a stack of your Enhanced Armament to enemies in the impact area.

---

Explanations (I'm only going to write about the relevant changes):

---

SKILLS BASE:

The range of all abilities has become relative to the range of the equipped secondary weapon. This allows for a better differentiation of range between the longbow and shortbow, avoiding unpleasant situations where you had auto-attack range but not skill range, and vice versa. Some abilities have range modifiers, primarily static abilities (increasing their range) and area-based abilities (reducing their range).

The mana cost of all abilities should be reduced to 50%. Currently, the Ranger's ability intensive use time is about 2/2:30 minutes. This seems extremely limited to me (which is only slightly reduced in other classes), as it forces us to use Refreshing Followthrough on our weapon if we want to extend our battles even slightly. While the Bard, with his Pensive Melody song, provides mana regeneration, it's not enough. I think DPS should at least be able to use their abilities without outside help for 5 minutes, both to allow for longer fights and to reduce downtime between moob pulls.


- Hunt of the Raven ---> Rework: The latest changes improved the situation with Hunts and Marks, but they weren't enough. Waiting for the marked target to die or for the debuff to expire isn't adequate. Allowing the buff upgrade to be obtained through weapon finishers gives the player control and incentivizes the use of one of the game's signature mechanics. This also allows the buff upgrade to be available more time if the player correctly times their weapon finishers, allowing for greater skill expression.

Currently, the three available hunts are offensive, meaning the player only selects one that fits their build and forgets about the rest. In my approach, this allows the player to select (if they wish to spend all three skill points) hunts for different combat situations, allowing them to have an offensive, defensive, or mobility. The player is still limited to one mark every 30 seconds, making the decision important, but at the same time they can change hunts at any time and receive the "minor" buff.


- LvL6 Thorns ---> Improved: Currently, Thorns aren't particularly relevant, especially at higher levels. Improving their scaling and adding the ability to apply Hemorraging upon critical strikes makes them a more useful tool for bleed-based builds and as a way to partially discourage enemies from focusing the ally receiving the Thorns.

- LvL8 Strider ---> Improved: It's a useful ability right now, but it's something you can cast and forget. I think adding a temporary additional speed buff upon casting allows for more interesting uses of the ability in combat, whether on yourself or on an ally to try to escape from a bad position. Additionally, the cooldown has been reduced to 35 seconds to allow for this new use, but at the same time, it's limited to only one player having the buff at a time.

- LvL10 Regeneration ---> Replace with: Campfire (channeling skill). The regeneration ability has minimal impact and doesn't seem to fit the class fantasy. But at the same time, the fantasy of a Ranger is that of someone with great resilience and survival skills in the wild. With this ability, I think both needs are met. It provides sustain between pulls and a fun roleplaying experience for the Ranger around the campfire for their class fantasy.


TIER 1:

- Scatter Shot ---> No Changes: The range adjustment is made to be similar to the current range with the short bow and 5m greater with the long bow.

- Enhance Armament: Weight ---> Improved: Snared and Chilled sharing immunity is a big problem. Chill is a very important debuff for the mage rotation, so if a Ranger (or another class) uses immunity on Snared, you'll have all the mages and the party leader angry at that person.

- Power Shot ---> No Changes. The range has been adjusted to be the same as the current one with the shortbow (35m) and (40m) with the longbow. Single-target and long-cast abilities have a greater range than the other abilities to compensate for the disadvantage of being immobile (or slow-hit) for a long time.

- [NEW] Unbalancing Impact (Melee) (20s colddown): This new melee ability provides Rangers with a new tool when the enemy is on top of them. Previously, Vine Field was used for this, but it's no longer possible because its new mechanic requires prior setup. Making it impossible for the enemy to rotate is very useful for shortbow users, as they can attack from behind the enemy.

TIER 2:

- Barrage ---> Improved: This ability had been left in an awkward position after the mini-rework. It now allows for more diverse uses across bow types. Shortbow users have a damage-dealing ability that allows them to reposition themselves on the battlefield. Longbow users have a higher-damage, but more static, ability.

- Hunt of the Tiger ---> Reworked (Check Hunt of the Raven). In this case, this group of Hunts is moved to Tier 3, since the mobility bonus seems to me to be the most powerful buffs.

- Snipe ---> No Changes. The range has been adjusted to be the same as the current one with the shortbow (35m) and (40m) with the longbow. Single-target and long-cast abilities have a greater range than the other abilities to compensate for the disadvantage of being immobile (or slow-hit) for a long time. While it's a skill that grounds you and is extremely slow to cast, the extra range should make it more comfortable to use (especially for longbow users).

- Vine Field ---> Nerfed: This may be one of the most controversial changes. It's currently the Ranger's best ability, and there are both positive and negative aspects to this one. I think to make the class more interesting, it's necessary to give it more power in other abilities and reduce it in this one. The functionality really remains very similar, the main difference being that you'll now need to apply 3 (or more) stacks of Snared for Vine Field to root (if you've unlocked the upgrade) when cast on an enemy. If the enemy doesn't have the charges and stays in the area long enough, they'll also end up rooted.

- Thundering Shot ---> Improved: I think the arrow's slow flight time to target is fine as it allows for some counterplay. But that already slows down the skill enough to make it a slow cast on top of that. So by reducing the cast time a bit, the Ranger has access to another fast-casting skill in his arsenal.

- [NEW] Blow to the Liver (Melee): Enhance Armament: Concussion offers us a great tool for slowing down attacks from magical enemies, but the Ranger has nothing to slow physical attacks. This new melee ability gives us the ability to apply Weakened to an enemy and reduce the burst of damage they can inflict on us while we try to get away from them.


TIER 3:

- Raining Death ---> Improved: This ability feels disappointing (as does the entire Ranger tier 3). You see that you do similar damage as with Double ScatterShot, but with a 45-second cooldown. Increasing it to 3 volleys, I think, is a good compromise; you get more damage, but you're a few tenths of a second more grounded.

- Air Strike ---> Improved: The vertical mobility of this ability is great, but the horizontal mobility is insufficient; a jump+dodge travels a similar distance but faster. Increasing the distance by firing an additional projectile and increasing the impact area would allow for better use both for repositioning and for offensive purposes.

- [New] Explosive Shot (Cast time 0,8s): The Ranger requires a single-target ability for its tier 3. This ability provides a new, fast-casting single-target shot and interaction with other classes that apply burning. Upgrades allow you to specialize the ability to deal more damage to the target or add an AoE explosion to conflagrate more enemies.



If you've made it this far, thanks for reading.

What are your thoughts on these ideas? Do you expect to see any of these changes in Alpha 3?

Nerror wrote: »

Welcome @Mepps

Do you remember which server you played on in DAoC? And which side?

I think I was playing on Percival, and I played all three. Started as a thane over on the Norse side because that was where my friends were headed, but ultimately played all three archer classes for quite a while. My lasting favorite memory there was playing a highlander archer, running north out of Camelot into the hills where that somewhat lonely flute song would start up.