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
It is my hope that your character lvl has little to no impact on the content you can enjoy and when you reach 'max lvl' just means you've developed your characters skills to what is expected to fully enjoy the game.
'Ashes of creation, we are the new story build on the old' the lore is in what was, and what is in the world, the story is in what/how we interact with/in it
The deva part in the story of the then the lore is in how the world interacts with us but even that they are giving us a hand in by use of monster coins
'you leveled a character in less than a day and never touched content'
'and at max level is where the game began'
These are symptoms of end game but not actually endgame as such, merely a slapdash vertical character progression, poorly designed in a way that is next to irrelevant for a game that has principally max level content.
A paced leveling up system can greatly emphasize lore and world development and justify the player characters place in it.
It can aid exploration and promote early game player community interactions.
Obliviously helps the player familiarize the player with skills and mechanics to be prepared for max level*
Quests/rewards when paced correctly have impact.
leveling up when paced correctly feels like an achievement.
I understand that in a social game you want to be at the same level with your friends.
But perhaps you missed an opportunity to make new friends along the way.
But if I ask myself "would I play an RPG without a leveling system?" I think my answer would be no.
I can't grok that.
But why implement systems in a game genre that do not benefit each other exponentially.
and how do you make meaningful progression without boundaries and a sense of growth/development leading to investment worth.
Ashes will be implementing levels* so I personally would prefer a meaningful leveling up experience and adventure.
If Intrepid decided to abolish levels and go more sandbox without power creep that would be fine too, they would still have to do it right however.
The reason why I mention level progression in typical linear Endgame MMOs is that Endgame has made leveling up an irrelevent burden typically bypassed with real world cash money. And all the focus is on max level Endgame usually instanced content.
The confluence of baseline stats from player level and other stats (such as node buffs) will make for some interesting nonlinear gameplay. But the math behind this will need to be rock solid because this is way more complex than other MMOs even without taking class stats and augments into account.
2nd one, your impact on the world around you
3rd and 4th ones I agree
5th I understand that but was looking at it from a different angle. I am looking at the fact of content being connected to your lvl causing content to become less meaningful once you lvl passed it
I not really trying to argue against you in that just trying to bring up another point that is related
If you are given impact at the beginning and have the same impact at the end, where is the feeling progression?
in a linear system out leveling content due to power creep has already been mentioned and discussed.
But it is possible to either scale the environment to the player accordingly, allow the environment to react to the player population, or not allow power creep to trivialize previous content.
You are basically describing the current nuance of max level content disguised as endgame by design justifying my OP
I am not sure what you mean by only being able to make an impact with feedback, but in an ever changing world where your actions have an impact that because commutative over time that is where you can find the feeling of progress, where you can say 'I helped build that' or 'my actions lead to the opening of that dungeon' etc
I view the 'end game' content as a symptom of the problem, where the problem is that content is locked/links inherently to the level of the character.
If the quest/content was less about leveling your character through a story, and more about impacting the world while telling the story of that world, and where the quests change over time because your actions and the actions of others have impacted the world. You wouldn't be looking at content thinking is this endgame? Or is this low lvl? You'd be looking at it in the sense of what kind of impact is this going to have.
More quest vs lvl of impact
Less quest vs lvl of character
And this is why this game is unique imo, because even if you have "end-game" power, you need to constantly defend/maintain it (if there are some divinity buffs that need you to pray regularly to keep/maintain them).
Not to mention nodes building or destruction, making the gameplay unique in it's own way, very hard to reach "end-game" power, and can change alot over the course of time, with node destruction/deleveling.
That shallow vertical progression would be offset by wide horizontal progression.
Which we have in Ashes via Religion, Social, Naval, etc.
In Ashes, outleveling mobs has interesting consequences.
Seems likely we will be constantly on the move to level mobs as we discover and level new nodes. Leveling and destroying nodes provides a flux in the variety of stories and events and mobs and dungeons for us to encounter.
Regardless of whether we're max level, we still have to gather the resources and complete the quests necessary to level a node. It's not all about gaining personal xp.
The current info is that You gain negative xp not lose xp. So there shouldn't be deleveling.
There is also an adventuring level cap (currently). @lexmax
Examples of meaningful leveling? Leveling through a quest that teaches you about the lore of the world? The quests you do contributes to the growth of a node as well, meaning that your actions (while leveling) affects the game world. Albeit in a relatively fixed kinda manner quests leading towards progression of the node vs single player games where your 1 choice might have dire consequences in the game world. Though one could argue that if you want to cripple node A through leveling, all you need to do is to go to the nearby node B and start leveling there to push it's progression up.
From what the developers have shared, I feel the levels are just there for progression and also there as a cap on player power through level gains. As has been mentioned, horizontal progression is what the developers are emphasizing a lot on. They also shared the different progressions and the node system etc. Since nodes rise and fall, the area you fought in when you were in level 1 might not even exist by the time you're at level 50.
So are you still concerned about the AoC not having enough content to do at level cap and/or only having instanced content @Whocando ?
Or are you looking for something slightly different when you meant meaningful leveling experience?
*sorry just woke up, haha, first post of the day (long edit
I expect we will be losing some augments based on buildings being destroyed and the impact of other players on our regions and nodes.
From what has been mentioned by Intrepid, from a nodes epicenter undergoing development the further the reach of that's nodes influence can be felt and beyond that the severity of threat perhaps increases and pushes back.
Where a players characters physical level will be felt or lack there of beyond the zones of influence.
Which means that level progression will not be entirely conformed to a linear path of level specific zones in succession.
Some of this can be orchestrated by the major boss awakenings, that metropoles may unleash.
As for the Alpha and Beta stages, I thought I read that they would be reset at intervals as well.
My only concern as mentioned previously is that a very loud vocal minority might try to hijack or defame Ashes due to not conforming or providing stereotypical content (Lack of Endgame*) of the MMO industry expectations based on bad practices as a result of profit making.
I explained meaningful leveling already. But the gist is that is enjoyable enough to not need boosting or purcha$ing max to bypass it and make all content associated moot.
If it's fun, people will try it and decide for themselves.
Show; not tell.
Ah, okay. At least so far, the developers seem to have a very strong idea about what they have planned and doesn't seem very susceptible to player influence. So I'm with you in hoping the game doesn't get hijacked or defamed but so far, it hasn't raise any concerns with me yet personally.
Thanks for re-explaining what you meant by meaningful leveling, I read too many threads and sometimes I might miss out certain arguments, haha. I guess it would mean leveling that isn't grindy. The developers have mention their desire to stay away from daily quests and instead have quests that react to events in the world and/or are reliant on the region you're in.
They also seem to be focusing a lot on non-filler type quests and instead, quests based on narrative node-based objectives. As heard during their interview with the Lazy Peon.
I expect some recycled content - especially as we rebuild destroyed nodes and buildings, but...
Each node is supposed to generate its own stories and the villages and towns will be different based on the race that founds the camp, so...
Players should have the means to alter the world and narrative in a variety of ways to avoid being stuck inextricably with recycled content.
If the released game matches the promise of the design.
Especially if the devs are able to implement DLCs on a monthly an quarterly basis - as planned.