Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Cheers to a Successful Community
Hello Steven, and congratulations on accomplishing such a giant feat! A well-developed game comes at the cost of a lot of willpower but also a lot of passion.
I've been an avid gamer, much to the extent of the community here, and like those other gamers, I've an opinion I hope is shared: When discussing the success of an MMORPG, for me anyway, I feel intuitively "pushed" to play a game based on feeling like a valuable member of the community. Being a valuable member (for me) is not feeling like I hold a strong role in the community due to my skills to navigate and "complete" the game, but rather, being a valuable member is feeling like I'm placed in a healthy, social environment, where everyone is absolutely CONFUSED. Now hear me out: I believe incorporating this confusion allows members of the game to feel slightly vulnerable and insecure because they don't understand how to go about completing a quest or finishing a raid or investing in the economy. This insecurity flourishes into "gaming friendships," creating a way for people to feel less-bad about being bad, not knowing what's going on. And for those that figure out how to navigate the game's structure, they may illustrate a certain degree of pride from being able to help those that are still trying to figure it out.
Example: player 1 - "hey man.. this sounds dumb but i cant find bob and the first quest giver told me i could find him at the peak of this mountain. can you help me?" player 2 - "really?! I can't find the guy either. lets group up and go look for him."
In this example, I am trying demonstrate a vulnerability - being a lack of knowledge of where "bob" is. In an almost lost effort to locate bob, player 1 seeks to locate another player in hopes of finding bob. Rather than player 2 being able to give player 1 a direct answer, player 2 has actually experienced the same difficulty and they explore the environment together. The recognition of a common vulnerability makes both players more susceptible to friendship than a friendship that buds because the lesser friend desires to acquire the skills or knowledge of that greater friend. In short, finding ways to limit *instant gratification in the game's content will work wonders and provide players with a unique experience, being rewarded for their achievements earned by themselves and with others, rather than having answers just "given" to them, whether by other players or the game itself.
Many gaming companies or organizations will conclude that a major aspect of developing a healthy community is a common goal; And while this is true, I believe it to be also important to include a common problem, outside the scope of a "new boss" or "patch/update." So, how can this be achieved?
People have a natural inclination to improve their skills, always developing, learning new ways to master their environment. With new games, it tends to feel like recognition or acknowledgement of peers for a peer's achievement is absence due to everyones' strive for "personal records" or "self-gain." Guilds/groups work well to provide a solution to directing interest in self-gain to group-gain. Your idea of nodes seems great to me, because there will be varying environments from which to master.
Ultimately, in writing this post, I want the gamers to consider (or reconsider) the idea of having a successful gaming community by virtue of making it virtually impossible for any player to "master" every environment/node. By keeping gamers out of the know to an extent, instant gratification no longer hinders relationships needed to make the game prosper. Entirely new games keep players out of the know for probably the longest time. Updates/expansions do so to a lesser extent. So how can this be achieved? How can developers keep gamers interested in existing content? I don't have the answer, but I certainly think limiting instant gratification, player isolation, and ease-of-access helps to provide an incentive for players working together. This is an opinion, so feel free to disagree or agree. The potential of this game seems very exciting.
I've been an avid gamer, much to the extent of the community here, and like those other gamers, I've an opinion I hope is shared: When discussing the success of an MMORPG, for me anyway, I feel intuitively "pushed" to play a game based on feeling like a valuable member of the community. Being a valuable member (for me) is not feeling like I hold a strong role in the community due to my skills to navigate and "complete" the game, but rather, being a valuable member is feeling like I'm placed in a healthy, social environment, where everyone is absolutely CONFUSED. Now hear me out: I believe incorporating this confusion allows members of the game to feel slightly vulnerable and insecure because they don't understand how to go about completing a quest or finishing a raid or investing in the economy. This insecurity flourishes into "gaming friendships," creating a way for people to feel less-bad about being bad, not knowing what's going on. And for those that figure out how to navigate the game's structure, they may illustrate a certain degree of pride from being able to help those that are still trying to figure it out.
Example: player 1 - "hey man.. this sounds dumb but i cant find bob and the first quest giver told me i could find him at the peak of this mountain. can you help me?" player 2 - "really?! I can't find the guy either. lets group up and go look for him."
In this example, I am trying demonstrate a vulnerability - being a lack of knowledge of where "bob" is. In an almost lost effort to locate bob, player 1 seeks to locate another player in hopes of finding bob. Rather than player 2 being able to give player 1 a direct answer, player 2 has actually experienced the same difficulty and they explore the environment together. The recognition of a common vulnerability makes both players more susceptible to friendship than a friendship that buds because the lesser friend desires to acquire the skills or knowledge of that greater friend. In short, finding ways to limit *instant gratification in the game's content will work wonders and provide players with a unique experience, being rewarded for their achievements earned by themselves and with others, rather than having answers just "given" to them, whether by other players or the game itself.
Many gaming companies or organizations will conclude that a major aspect of developing a healthy community is a common goal; And while this is true, I believe it to be also important to include a common problem, outside the scope of a "new boss" or "patch/update." So, how can this be achieved?
People have a natural inclination to improve their skills, always developing, learning new ways to master their environment. With new games, it tends to feel like recognition or acknowledgement of peers for a peer's achievement is absence due to everyones' strive for "personal records" or "self-gain." Guilds/groups work well to provide a solution to directing interest in self-gain to group-gain. Your idea of nodes seems great to me, because there will be varying environments from which to master.
Ultimately, in writing this post, I want the gamers to consider (or reconsider) the idea of having a successful gaming community by virtue of making it virtually impossible for any player to "master" every environment/node. By keeping gamers out of the know to an extent, instant gratification no longer hinders relationships needed to make the game prosper. Entirely new games keep players out of the know for probably the longest time. Updates/expansions do so to a lesser extent. So how can this be achieved? How can developers keep gamers interested in existing content? I don't have the answer, but I certainly think limiting instant gratification, player isolation, and ease-of-access helps to provide an incentive for players working together. This is an opinion, so feel free to disagree or agree. The potential of this game seems very exciting.
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