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
Whenever anybody plays an MMORPG the underlying goal is to power up your character and get stronger. While there are certainly people who aren't as driven to do this, it is the main goal for the vast majority of players and is what the entire genre is centered around. However, when making a game you can only have players get so powerful and you can only have so many levels. This means that an "End Game" of some sort is unavoidable. As long as all the content isn't reserved for that End Game though, it doesn't pose a problem.
Where MMORPG's run into problems is when the dev's focus all their time and effort on either the End Game or the leveling process. If you play a game that has awesome End Game content but a horrible leveling experience (see World of Warcraft) then you have a game that is very unfriendly and boring for new players and will start to stagnate as time goes on. If you have a game that has an awesome leveling experience but no End Game content you will get players who will quit because they are bored and feel like they have already "beat" the game. This becomes even more problematic with MMO's that use a subscription model as there needs to be a constant stream of new content in order to justify the subscription costs.
With the way that Ashes is approaching their payment model, I'd say that their best bet to provide a quality game is to focus heavily on the leveling process and then have a shift towards End Game content after the community is established and continue on with that content as time goes on.
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Conventional PvE and PvP segregated carrot on a treadmill systems will not be the primary drive. But will be content accessible by player gating and not script gating.
Rather than linear scripted paths with and end* objective.
We will hopefully feel compelled to play* due to an world with expansion and retraction.
Risk and reward.
I don't feel PvX really conveys the intricacy, it is important to make that clear distinction though.
JEFFREY: Endgame is a bad word to me. I have strong feelings that the whole game should be fun. It shouldn't be this race to an endgame where the fun actually starts.
So, we've got a lot of focus on making a lot of the stuff extensible throughout the entire play session.
That being said, we are going to have raids. We are going to have raids at every level. There's going to be a strong focus on epic content that takes a lot of people to overcome. And it's not going to be just one event that one guild gets to experience, but that multiple people can experience.
STEVEN: Right. And I think the most important reason as to why endgame is a bad term for us is because the way that Ashes of Creation is structured as a game is that so there's constantly content that's being revealed to you based on the decisions of the community on the server.
JEFFREY: Right. it's more about the evolution of the server than just hitting max level and then going off to the raid system and never touching the rest of the game. So we want to try to retain revelancy throughout the entire world so that, you know, the first zone you start in -hopefully, you'll be seeing it over and over and over again- it's not going to be just something you play for 10 minutes and then you go off to greener pastures. There's always going to be a reason to explore and adventure everywhere.
And that includes raiding and that includes dungeoneering and that includes a lot of the big world bosses that we have planned.
So, there's going to be a wide breadth of things to do. We don't want people to get bored. We want there to be different things for people to do every day. because, you know, what you want to do every day changes.
My energy to game development ratio is extremely inefficient. If I put years worth of energy into game development I'd probably end up with some gif based adventure.
That's why I appreciate game developers. Heh.
Speaking of wasted energy, I've been re-watching live streams to pick up on stuff/info that I might have missed out on. Especially with the many posts starving for any form of info/confirmation/hints from the Dev's.
Heh heh.
It seems like once companies realized they could generate money by simply moving a goal post further away and allowing power creep to make previously "end game" content to be meaningless; many decided innovation isn't worth the risk. Very similar to what many developers are doing now by releasing F2P mobile games with ridiculous cash shop schemes.
I don't mind the concept of having some content gated behind levels / time investment. But I do believe much like GW2's approach, the same content you have at the beginning should be very similar to what you'll be doing as you reach the higher levels. I don't like the idea that suddenly the whole game style is supposed to be very different.
All that does is alienate players that enjoyed the journey through the game from what they're left to do and makes players that might enjoy the later content not be bothered to sit through and grind just to reach it.