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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.
Single player content (that is soloable)
ArchivedUser
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Today many MMOs are very group focused and this is great! Raids and high rated team based pvp are usually the end game content for most games. Still, something that should not be disgarded is single player content that is designed to be done solo.
Down below are some ideas that could help improve the solo experience of the game and give players something to work on while some of their friends, in the end, will go to sleep.
A soloable special questline or campaign
There should be some form of quest line that may start at low lvl, and follow you all the way to max lvl and then end a bit later with an epic 1v1 boss fight that will test your characters ability and skill. This boss should be unique for each class to tailor it for each one and thus making it a fair fight for everyone. This quest should also not require the highest end gear and should mostly focus on player skill (Postioning, kiting, interupting boss abilities, timing and tacts). Lastly, this questline should also give interesting lore to your class, all missions in this questline should naturally not only be killing missions. A reward for this could be a rare item, an estetic reward or maybe a new place to have your home in.
A role trial: Since this game will follow the trinity of tank, healer and dps (maybe support aswell?) there could be a trial for each role to complete. This trial could work as a role tutorial and start with easy challanges and ending with advanced ones (Automaticly teaching players how to play their role in a more advanced and efficient way. This could be done inside a place dedicated to each class, and these places should be spreadout around the world (Rogues in a shady place, clerics in a holy place).
A Fighter guild: This idea is greatly inspired by the world of warcraft feature "Brawlers guild" Which consist of a special location where people are standing in line to enter an arena to fight a boss one on one. This is done while the people standing in line are watching. People do this because the boss fights are fun, creative and sometimes challangeing.
This is something I would love to see here. A great problem with the wow version is that the queue times take for ever, to solve this, multiple arenas in the same place would help (wow has 1, queue time is about 10 min, so 3 arenas should be enough).
Non combat, storydriven missions
There could be some form of questlines which involves exploring, tresure hunting or solving a mystery other than murdering 5 horses for their hoves. These quests could be weekly, as in one new is released every week or there could be a set amount of them. These quests should take time and give people something to do when they dont want to murder 50 rabbits for their furs or work on proffesions.
Daily exploration missions (or something that makes you walk to places you don't normaly would)
There should be some optional missions, that rewards a decent amout of currency (since people wont do them othervise). These missions involve going back to places your character would not normaly be, like a distant node that you have no conncetion to or a low lvl zone. This would actually give people a reason to keep running around in the world even after the endgame nodes are set. This will help make the world feel alive.
What do you think should be avaible as solo content? Do you think it is needed?
Down below are some ideas that could help improve the solo experience of the game and give players something to work on while some of their friends, in the end, will go to sleep.
A soloable special questline or campaign
There should be some form of quest line that may start at low lvl, and follow you all the way to max lvl and then end a bit later with an epic 1v1 boss fight that will test your characters ability and skill. This boss should be unique for each class to tailor it for each one and thus making it a fair fight for everyone. This quest should also not require the highest end gear and should mostly focus on player skill (Postioning, kiting, interupting boss abilities, timing and tacts). Lastly, this questline should also give interesting lore to your class, all missions in this questline should naturally not only be killing missions. A reward for this could be a rare item, an estetic reward or maybe a new place to have your home in.
A role trial: Since this game will follow the trinity of tank, healer and dps (maybe support aswell?) there could be a trial for each role to complete. This trial could work as a role tutorial and start with easy challanges and ending with advanced ones (Automaticly teaching players how to play their role in a more advanced and efficient way. This could be done inside a place dedicated to each class, and these places should be spreadout around the world (Rogues in a shady place, clerics in a holy place).
A Fighter guild: This idea is greatly inspired by the world of warcraft feature "Brawlers guild" Which consist of a special location where people are standing in line to enter an arena to fight a boss one on one. This is done while the people standing in line are watching. People do this because the boss fights are fun, creative and sometimes challangeing.
This is something I would love to see here. A great problem with the wow version is that the queue times take for ever, to solve this, multiple arenas in the same place would help (wow has 1, queue time is about 10 min, so 3 arenas should be enough).
Non combat, storydriven missions
There could be some form of questlines which involves exploring, tresure hunting or solving a mystery other than murdering 5 horses for their hoves. These quests could be weekly, as in one new is released every week or there could be a set amount of them. These quests should take time and give people something to do when they dont want to murder 50 rabbits for their furs or work on proffesions.
Daily exploration missions (or something that makes you walk to places you don't normaly would)
There should be some optional missions, that rewards a decent amout of currency (since people wont do them othervise). These missions involve going back to places your character would not normaly be, like a distant node that you have no conncetion to or a low lvl zone. This would actually give people a reason to keep running around in the world even after the endgame nodes are set. This will help make the world feel alive.
What do you think should be avaible as solo content? Do you think it is needed?
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Comments
And that can be driven by tasks generated from the Thieves Guild or Scholars Academy or whatever.
All gear will be the same. There won't be separate PvP gear. There won't be separate solo gear.
So... Legendary solo gear doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of stats.
Actually, though, Legendary Solo skins might be fun. Similar to what we get for participating in monster coin events.
Although, I expect solo players will also be participating in monster coin events.
But, maybe, soloers will have more pride in displaying their Legendary Solo Skins.
Solo players are not going to just run off when Spider Demons attack their home city.
They may not join a party in order to defeat the monster, but they will still participate in defeating that threat.
Same for participating in caravan runs and sieges.
And, soloers still have to rely on Artisans for gear, etc.
Solo content just means there will be tasks that adventurers can complete alone.
In addition to plenty of content that can't be completed alone.
Having solo content in no way threatens group content.
Hardcore Killer/Achievers don't want to be in a group with casual Explorer/Socializers in any case.
MMORPGs are about masses of players role playing with each other; not about grouping.
On that aspect I hope to see some very hidden quests that you might even want to keep to yourself for a while. Like they said, They have a lot of stuff to find out for "the first to be" and others to follow in those footsteps.
Roletrial is already a thing isn't it? A pvp one mind you. They are doing an olympiad system were you can face off against other players of the same class, it's a lot more dynamic and really teaches you to react to a lot more situations and uses of your abilities.
I find more than that rather unnecessery.
I assume this Brawler thing is like the GW2 crownhall arena, sounds the same and I have to say, na. Some classes will always have an advantage in there, something will always be easier or not doable at all if it'S supposed to be challenging.
I disagree with having explorationquests. Exploration should be your own drive, you shouldn't be guided into an unexplored area to find hidden stuff. It should be your own will to go out and find all those secrets. Once you find something, there can be as many quests as you can stomache to further the exploration you started.
You came across a ruin in some half collapsed tunnel and a relic is behind some strange door you can't open, "popup" 'better go deeper and look what you can find out about it'.
Half the fun of finding the jumpin puzzles in GW2 was actually finding a jumping puzzle.
Well by exploration quests it might not be finding hidden stuff, it could just be a small errand quest that coincedently leads you by a nice scenic view
most new mmos if not all are meant o reach level cap alone if you want. Remember games like lineage 2 that are 100% group based
black desert... you can solo most game, elder scrolls online you can level up solo and almost every other game i have played.
By that you end up not knowning anyone in your server, there is no social aspect if an mmorpg meant to let you lvl up solo
if someone wants solo then mmorpg is not for him. A good mmorpg must not just encourage players to play together, it must force them. Bosses, dungeons, grind. everything must require party. if you want solo then you probably dont go far...
at least that is my oppinion
You just have to remember that those where other times, the general population of games can only use so much time on them. So it will be hard to do group levelling compared to solo levelling. Either you need your friends to be there or you have to spend time queing up etc.
An easier way to balance it out would probably be adding some proximity exp bonus for groups (like BDO?). That way if you go as a group you get an advantage, but it is also possible to go alone.
Exploration on the other hand, can give the player some ease when he just don't want to group up. Find new areas, new nodes, new creatures.. maybe even a very special rune noone knows about.
I would never again ask for dailies, to me that ain't content. (playing Archeage atm)
MMOs are about community endeavour with a common cause or purpose.
Who is to say a 1 man group is any better then a 4 man mutiplayer group.
Neither of them are the whole server, they are just a tiny fraction of it.
Neither of them are the community, they are just a tiny fraction of it.
Most modern MMOs are the themepark variety where you have mnay small groups doing there own thing. That not a community. Thats lots of small groups. More often than not those groups compete with each other rather than cooperate.
Players working against each other isnt a community, thats adversarial.
Thats before we even get into the fact that other members are rarely able to do the content you want if they have the time. So 9/10 times you end up having to solo stuff anyway.
uhhh .... I wouldn't go there. Long-Story short, SWTOR is a tragedy - could've been a whole lot more. Specifically, it's mostly Solo-ing nearly everything.
Such people socialize while they're forced to camp or wait for a raid to form. Casual Explorer/Socializers will socialize even when not in a group because they like to socialize.
That doesn't mean they want to be stuck in a group. Especially if that group is just going to be camping in one spot for 30+ minutes.
Explorers are going to want to explore; not camp.
There are all kinds of opportunities to socialize in games that have houses too decorate and outfits for costume parties and pet collections to show off. You know... roleplaying instead of killing everything in sight. We don't need bosses and dungeons and grind to encourage players to socialize.
In Ashes, we will be playing together because we have to do so in order to build the cities. And we will play together as we defend our cities from attacks - even if we aren't in a "group" when we do so.
Bosses and dungeons and grind is not going to get hardcore Killer/Achievers to group with casual Explorer/Socializers. In dungeons, the casual Explorers want to take the time to explore every nook and cranny and don't care about killing stuff while the hardcore Killer/Achievers want to quickly kill everything in the dungeon and move on to the next challenge (or repeat the same challenge so someone else in the party can get an epic drop).
Instanced solo dungeons can be designed to feed back into the overall narrative when our individual actions actually dynamically change the world, rather than everything being static. Just as we saw in the Art of War video, where the Predator stealths in to retrieve that artifact powering the shields around the city, thereby allowing the raid outside the city gates to launch their catapults.
Having a couple of solo instanced dungeon isn't going to allow soloers to not depend on other players. Soloers can't build a city by themselves. Nor can they build a Thieves Guild or a Trading Company by themselves. They can't defend their city by themselves.
Again... Solo doesn't mean that the player never socializes or plays with other players. It means not grouping while adventuring.
And that's not the same thing as being able to do everything solo.
Ashes should have content for duos and trios - where it takes multiple Rogues to disarm a trap or multiple mages to open an arcane lock or multiple Clerics to end a plague. In addition to objectives players can solo.
It's very easy to solo and still know people on your server. That's what social media is for. Twitch, twitter, discord... you can socialize with a lot of people on the server and not be anywhere near them. Having friends on the server is incentive enough to play with them from time to time.
That play time might be visiting their freeholds for parties rather than grouping to kill bosses - casual roleplay rather than hardcore gameplay - but that's still socializing. In a way that is imposible to do in single -player games.
Which is why soloers play MMORPGs rather than single-player games.
Where individuals can play the roles they wish to play without elitist hardcore gamers demanding that they play differently...requiring them to have BiS gear and a specific class spec and to focus on killing mobs rather than focusing on exploring dungeons.
Casual challenge people want to pursue casual challenge content. Intrepid will accommodate that.
Hardcore challenge people want to pursue hardcore challenge content. Intrepid will accommodate that, too.
Part of being in a massively multiplayer game entails accepting that the devs need to design for more than just one playstyle. That's what truly bonds community.
I dunnno Hoody that sounds crazy id much rather play a single player rpg. Hoody your dumb you make no sense.. go away.
I know many people that play solo. Some people don't have the capability of reading chat, typing, and playing at the same time -- my mother is one of them. She loves MMO's, but she never interacts with other people because she types so slow. So she just does solo content, or runs quests with me if I'm on.
I also know people that choose to do solo content because they are so busy in life, that they can't commit to being online at certain times in order to run group content. Planning is impossible with their schedules.
Should solo content players be rewarded equally as those who are able to group up? No. I believe group activity should be rewarded at a higher level.
Is it okay to play solo and not want to interact with other players?
Absolutely.
Seriously, in 1 year of gametime, do you think your guild and friends will always be online 24/7? People need singleplayer content, an mmo needs it, to fill up downtime.
The full quote states that the mother duos when her son is on, so she does interact with people.
Also, not chatting isn't quite the same thing as not interacting.
In Ashes, everything we do affects nearby nodes, so even if she only ever played alone, her actions would still be impacting the world and other players.
Solo content doesn't mean there is no challenge. Rather it means there is casual challenge. How much depends on the playerbase.
And these days, more of the MMORPG playerbase is some form of casual.
Because the most of the gamers who had time to be hardcore challenge/ hardcore time 20 years ago, no longer have the time to commit to playing games that they did when they were kids and single - instead of parents and married with careers.
Most of the MMORPG playerbase is going to either be:
hardcore challenge/ casual time or
casual challenge/ hardcore time or
casual challenge/ casual time
So, yes, MMORPGs will need to accommodate casual gameplay.
Which is, indeed, what most MMORPGs have done for the past 15 years.
We don;t need to return to the old days, we just need a revolutionary game design...
Like EQNext and Ashes.
Ashes will have fast travel.
The xp debt is unlikely to be hefty.
The pillar is meaningful conflict; not meaningful PvP combat.
No need to drop random people in a dungeon. Especially since monsters will be raiding our cities in addition to player characters raiding dungeons.
No one wants the entire game to be catered to casual players.
No one has asked for that.
Cheers! And let's be good to one another!
I don't see a contradiction in this statement. I could be wrong though?
Hoody said: Yeah you are ranting. There's little room to argue with you. The foundation of your statements don't make sense to me. I don't know what you mean by "integrity of the game." I also don't understand how playing solo automatically means that people "don't want a challenge." If anything, playing solo is harder because monsters die quicker in groups, right?