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.
Comments
I *think* only world event bosses can be player controlled and then only if a player has and spends the proper monster coin?
I *think* only world event bosses can be player controlled and then only if a player has and spends the proper monster coin?
Rarerer is how I pronounced it when I first read it...I'm stealing it for every day speech now. hehe
I def get your view on it, and I'm not opposed to a system like that either. I don't rightly remember if there's been an updated answer...but I last heard that they are "leaning yes" to the inclusion of a transmog system of some sorts. My mindset on it is a preference for "all or nothing." Either make it so we can only equip appearances from cash shop and other vanity-specific stuff, or I'd want to be able to completely tweak everything about a character to look like anything I'd collected during any of my game time.
I DOOOOO, however, really like your idea of limiting appearance transmog to items that character would legally be allowed to wear. Got a lvl 47 axe that fits your dwarf perfectly? Better level up to 47 if you wanna wear it... Wouldn't be any lvl 3 peoples walking around in pimped-out ancient legendary dragon bone underoos
I'm hoping the 2.5 years Steven quoted as max will be enough time to get it done. There is a lot of work to do, so it does seem like a short time. 3.27 million dollars to spend on staff over 2.5 years though...that's about $109,000 they can spend on staff each month, using just the kickstarter money alone. If they dive in deep and throw all the kickstarter money at more employees, that can be quite the powerhouse of production. That would boost Intrepid Studios up to an employee count to just about rival a AAA studio project, even if Steven didn't devote more of his money into new employees.
If they've been working on it for 17 months so far, and promised to release before another 30 months, that's basically 4 years of development time. Considering they are not building their own engine, by simply re-purposing Unreal Engine, that saves them a ton of time. Many places site 4-5 years as the typical dev time for a new MMO, which lines up with this timeframe. Might be very possible, as long as development goes smoothly.
While they did work on the game already for over a year, it was with a small team. They seem to have gotten a fair amount of landscape and architecture done already, but we have no idea how much of the core coding they have in place, especially with regards to the ambitious node system. We also don't know how quickly Steven will ramp his team up to his target of 40 members.
It might take a while to assemble the MMO Avengers, and I won't get my hopes up. If the game officially releases before 2020, I'd be pleasantly surprised.
IE: Monster tokens that allow players to control monsters. Lets say its limited to begin with and players desire more unpredictability in raids and dungeons. MAYBE the tweak to the system is to open up a social skill line where a player can start becoming the monster in the dungeons. As a monster person they build up statistic over time that determine the difficulty of the dungeon. They can push this Monster Toking idea a little further and a player can possibly be a Dungeon Master controlling a dungeon in different aspects with a team of other players to make the dungeon even more unpredictable. --- Point is this little idea can get bigger and grow with the player base.
As far as end game its hard to predict. Since the content is dynamic to begin with the PLAYERS have the opportunity to control the end game beyond 1 node. Form alliances, start a 2nd and 3rd node. MAYBE it gets boring after 3 nodes. Then players can attempt to overthrow their own node and put in their own leadership in 3rd node and rebel against 1st and 2nd node.
The only thing i think might be really stifling or really inspiring is the 3 million stretch goal where players are heavily invested in outcomes with in-game currency. This currency can either make players adverse to taking risks and protecting their investment or it might put some HUGE motivations to overthrow stuff and change things. It all depends on how powerful monopolies and alliances can become.
But yea this end game might include secret meetings, politics, and conspiracies. As my imagination runs wild I picture Dune by Frank Herbert.
“Listen carefully, Feyd,” the Baron said. “Observe the plans within plans within plans.
Go back to original WoW PVP where everyone had 1 type of CC, maximum 2. So PVP was not a stunlock CC fest and you used your CC wisely. Each class had their own specific flavour of CC. Hunter only had traps where as paladin had a full stun. It made combat more interesting then when everyone could do everything. Also made it less chaotic.
You had to vote for your city mayor in Star Wars Galaxies. The politician class even had it's own skill tree. So it probably won't be the first game with politics.
Totally agree with the OP on all points. Putting aside the semantic conversation with regards to endgame/eldergame/max level content, I really think that so far AoC has been advertised as a game that will offer a vast amount of content for different styles of play at max level. In addition to what everyone has already said I am hoping that there might be an XP death penalty added in the game as these help to encourage players to truly learn their class in order to progress in the game toward higher levels. The idea of not having a maximum level but a maximum level soft cap would really work for this game in my opinion.
One thing raised that I truly hope for is that the developers do not include a trasmog system in the game and that item appearances can not be shared between characters on the same account. For me I believe that items should be a symbol of progression on the character that earned them. Even as someone that often plays many alts in MMOs, I would much prefer to have to earn uber epic sword on each character with which I plan to display it. I do recall that Steven mentioned once the word transmog in one of the Q+As but would very much appreciate them reconsidering this feature.
Hopefully the system will neither favor absolute power in either direction, but will be ever changing; without needing frequent revolutions or civil wars. I'm not 100% sure, but too many major disruptions might be off putting to players who are just trying to focus on day to day survival and progression. I think it was discussed before, but maybe nodes need some kind of charter or constitution to help avoid too much chaos?
Ragetastic, thanks for your post, I largely agree with what you have said and I share your position of having played MMO's for a long time at varying levels of "hardcoreness".
If anything was missing from that list for me, it was Lore. I agree wholeheartedly with lexmax -- the lore is key for me to get hooked on an MMO.
I started out in Asheron's Call, and every month for years they released new content with new story to go with it, and I eagerly awaited that each patch.
Many games have used faction vs faction to achieve the "sense of responsibility". In other games, it was the forces of evil or shadow or darkness (AC, LotRO, ...).
The city battles planned for AOC sound fun, but they also sound like it could get repetitive. The intriguing part, where lore can help, is the mysterious forces that can be unearthed by the growing of the cities. I wonder if that is enough to make that pattern not feel too repetitive... thoughts?
Personally I think that the more layers of PvE, political interplay, guild interpay and PvP the better, because it is fairly easy for PvE to become stale without continuously adding new assets.
Different types of cities with different types of defenses available and different governments making different choice on which buildings are targets and which defenses are available... Different populations of player characters and NPcs. Different mobs as allies or enemies.
I don't really see how it can get boring compared to endgame raiding...but...OK.
I'm an Explorer, so it should always be interesting to me to travel and discover new towns and villages and what people are doing there. As well as seeing how they've grown or decayed.
I'm also a multiverse fan, so exploring how the servers evolve differently should also be entertaining for me.
Actually, I'm an Explorer/Socializer:
(Explorer 87%; Socializer 73% ; Achiever 47%; Killer 0%)
So, just thinking about making youtube vids reporting on the changing statuses of the various cities on each server - that could be endless entertainment.
No need to trip, though. My comment was comparing Ashes to endgame raiding in other MMORPGs.
This so much! I played in other MMOs with housing and it sucks! I work so hard to buy a house but nobody hangs out around the city/housing so it becomes so lonely and can't show off that shiny house you bought.
Because I tend to RP, I really want my character(s) to have homes that they can decorate and grow and shape and and and ... but yeah, I absolutely do not want them to be "do everything here and never go into town." I'm easily the type of player who'll happily have a home everywhere, if possible. Just cuz, ya know, each of my army of alts needs somewhere that's just hers! But even in games I've played that had fully moddable and customizable housing, I still spent less time in them than I did in the game world. Additionally? These homes are nice little havens for RP, hosting events, so on and so forth. Also, as I understand the Freeholds, if I want, I can make my Freehold(s) homes, or businesses, or farms ... wow. Just so much potential!
If we're building a city together, that means I'm likely going to know what time you play. The people who play at the same time of the day and/or week will bond just from the familiarity of seeing the same faces.
And will take pride in how the village/town as changed. Especially, once we establish homes. Decorating the initial homes and then marveling at how the homes have grown as the node moves from village to town to city.
We'll also be taking some part in the government - discussing what types of buildings we'd we'd prefer, etc.
Defending the node from sieges and monster events will also bond us as a local community.
Much as we do with NPCs in traditional MMORPGs, we'll know where to find each other. We will know who lives ing the mansions and when they are likely to be home.
We will know each other's progression paths as well.
And, instead being bored by everyone completing the same quests, we will be excited to hear the adventures other players have experienced.
Another example that leads me to think you don't know much about the Ashes game design.
And, they also cover housing and apartment in several of their livestream videos.
Most of your suggestions have been covered by the devs.
I'm not starting a witch hunt. I'm just telling you you should do some research.
I myself cannot stand to "watch" much of anything. @Possum, my husband, does most of the "watching" for me as pinning me down to a couch to watch anything is damned near impossible. So what I know, I hear from what he's shared me or places he's said "here, go here, read this." He acts as my filter.
I'm fortunate to have him, and well I know it; I would not nearly be so well-informed if left to my own devices; mainly because I'd rather read anything than have to watch anything.
At the town stage and above, your node's politicians will have the option to open up instanced apartments. These are internal-only spaces which can be decorated to your desire. Different price points will offer different-sized apartments and apartment rentals will also offer citizenship. They won't have external spaces to build out and they aren't quite as prestigious as in-node housing, but they'll still offer some housing functionality to those who really want to be a citizen of a specific node.