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
-No role playing.
-Neon armour and weapons lit up like Christmas trees.
-Glittery cartoony mounts, and flaming corgi's.
The only role playing games I stuck with were Everquest 2 and Star Wars Galaxies... But they became far too dated.
DAoC - Dwindling population coupled with NF removing the flavor of the realms
WoW - I played vanilla but quit when I discovered that every expansion would increase the max level = gear grind every expansion. I hate constantly re-gearing.
WO - Wizardry Online was a small but very harsh game which I loved. I quit because they made free players clearly inferior to paying players (and it was costly to pay)
CoH - Lack of end game content. Great game and I loved the leveling but once I got to max lvl there was nothing to do but reroll.
WAR - A broken dream. I loved the concept, the races/classes and what was promised but they released half baked and the poor game mechanics showed and continued to get worse. That and so many broken promises. When I found the way they were going to introduce Skaven, that was it.
SB - Shadowbane was another great idea that released half baked. That and it suffered from crippling bugs/performance issues, an empty world and zero end game. I ran across the world once and I spent hours trundling over near featureless/empty terrain. Last straw was having our city raised and then PKed until my armor literally fell off.
ESO - Only recently took an extended break because all I was doing is logging in to play the mail/craftwrit/resource hunt game more than the actual game due to time. Plus the way they treated the Argonians was appalling compared with other races. I may still return since I have to do something until at least CU come out.
I think in the end it's the balance of fun and the chores/disappointments you have in a game. Also I play a lot with 2 close friends, it tends to be a sort of compromise decisions on what each of us is looking for or getting fed up with. We have gone back to games we left and if we don't find a new good one we probably keep drifting around and going back to some only to get disappointed again.
Elder Scrolls Online
+ Was really fun to play as group and I like the story
- Overall feeling of them breaking promises to their community and getting more and more greedy
- Constant changes to the classes and gear
Guild Wars 2
+ Interesting group play and lot's of option for skills & weapons
+ Gear don't get outdated
- Dungeon still buggy and no longer improved since focus shifted to fractals
- They made a change to fractals and decided to re-set your progress
- Story is not always that gripping
Final Fantasy
+ Preset of the story seems interesting and a nice looking world
+ Interesting crafting system
- Endless fetch quests marked as the main quest line
- Quite static feeling combat
Star Wars: The Old Republic
+ Interesting story
- The combat doesn't really feel very fun
Black Desert Online (oh dear..)
+ Very beautiful world and characters
+ Frequent content updates
+ Big world, interesting exploration
- Endless grind
- The whole no personal trading + controlled market prices
- The RNG on your RNG.
- The pay to win elements and pay for convenience. The way the game went to great lengths in inconveniencing you so you would buy the convenience items.
- This is perhaps the most difficult to word out, but I felt as if the game failed at creating a world for PvP + Crafting +PvE to co-exist, which I feel created a lot of toxic behavior in game as well as the forums.
Thanks, I forgot how emotional I was when i wrote that, normally my health issues just make me laugh, got to see the funny side of confusing the word mushroom with sausage... it always makes me giggle when I can't touch the top of my nose with my finger and poke myself in my eye or shove it into a nostril.....
But yeah, it doesn't make it easy for getting to get involved with groups in a game.
I've played a couple of the games you have and, yeah, that's a terribly accurate analyses of them
How to get a chance to meet your wonderful self in the game
After a while, though, it became a lot like a job. My determination to earn as many achievement points as I could became tiring. We were in a large content drought, as well. There was little reason to login anymore. One of the biggest reasons I left was the devs decision to completely neuter the profitability of dungeons. I hear that even now there is almost no reason to do them anymore. That part of the game has been completely abandoned.
On the plus side, the core members of my guild have all stayed friends. We've become a community of gamers that play and hang out together all the time. I hope that someday I might be able to lead them again in AoC. Perhaps we'll regain the prestige we had in GW2.
What drove me away from other MMORPGS was:
I felt that adding in all the LFG/LFR stuff was a good idea in the sense that those that didn't want to be social could just pop on and join a group... but since you didn't even have to ever talk to anyone it was a really anti social experience... no one in guild ever asked for help or were looking for more because all they had to due was click a button and boom full group.. and because gear scores existed everyone was automatically able to clear the dungeon without any risk...
Crafting became a joke because anything you could make was crap compared to anything you could find in a LFR run...
You never found anyone just exploring the world since you didn't even need to be in the world to level.. just use LFG/LFR and you're good.. hell.. it was faster than questing at some points...
I could go on and on but basically wow is the only MMO I left because I had gotten sick of it.
Pay-to-win made it worse. Sony's parting shot was to introduce AA potions available for real money to automatically raise your AA to 320. You had to buy these potions if you wanted to win at the rare PvP that remained. Shortly afterwards Sony was gone.
However, the final straw was the mercs you could obtain that allow a solo toon to kill everything in a zone. They eliminate any challenge.
So, you cannot PvP, it is rather pointless to craft, and it is almost impossible to die below max level unless you are soloing heroic content 7 to 10 levels higher than your toon. You just go through the motions of mindlessly completing quests, largely letting your merc kill everything for you maybe while you look around for anything to harvest or collect. It is so dull it has even made me lose interest, and I probably stuck around longer than 97% of the one-time PvPers.
Instanced group content felt so optional... like a Co-op mode which became boring after the 3rd run. No valuable rewards.
Isolated PvP (world map areas for PvP only, BGs) was so underwhelming.
I want an mmorpg in which the story of the server is the adventures of Fellowships, groups of players overcoming PvE and hostile players in an open world. Not quest chains that offer xp and a gear set which will be replaced within 2 levels.
I want an mmorpg in which I face a danger in every step, not mobs that die in half a hit or that stop chasing me after 10s.
I want Raidbosses out in the open, or deep inside an area, ruin, castle, cave, forest, mountain, lair so that I can fight other players for them, and loot great rewards.
I want epic raid bosses in which for the first 2 years the whole server comes to a truce in order to take them down and later I wanna see massive alliances raging war over them, and the priceless rewards that the bosses will offer.
I want as soon as I step outside of city walls to feel like everybody might be dangerous.
I want players to gain PvP experience by countless encounters from hostile people, and not by copying a meta build and skill rotation.
I want wars to be about towns, castles, guild halls, Raid Boss.
Not for a ladderboard.
I want an open world mmorpg (with modern combat and graphics)
And of course the gameplay design of grind, grind grind: chasing the eternal carrot. The experience is diluted...all that matters is the shiny prize at the end. It's not about having fun; it's about the potential to have fun later on.
Since then I have played several games that have tried to replicate the "spirit" of pre-trammel Ultima Online, but they never fully succeeded for a variety of reasons (e.g. Darkfall Online and Mortal Online). These games became too PVP focused and struggled to introduce bug fixes and sandbox content quickly enough.
1. Grind. My thoughts here echoes many others. My mother taught me early no pain no gain so I dont mind the grind, but when the grind is monotonous, too long, repetitive, RNG... I start getting burned out really fast. My personal pet peve is when it feels like I am grinding for nothing or just the ability to grind more/faster.
2. F2P. Younger me loved FP2 and hated subscriptions but as I have grown older it has reversed. When I play f2p games, I constantly feel like its trying to drain me off money some do this better than others where you might feel you want to reward them I find it still annoying.
One example of this I have when game wanted me to grind enough F2P money in order for me to be able to do activities and I had to do the grind for each activity every single month.
3. Bad devs (Bad Balancing). Harm resulting from this can be almost anything but since I am not creative I am going to give just one example. For example bad devs can badly balance the game forcing you to grind every update for that favor of month gear while shitting all over your favorite stuff. Maybe the build you had for years suddenly got made unplayable? Too bad.
4. No banter/Bad rules/Madman Ban Hammering. I am not nun at convent I like to throw some spicy banter every once and while to lighten everyone's day and ability to not do so starts affecting enjoyment doubly so if you have to watch your every word.
You know what sucks more than not being able to speak? Getting banned for no reason or should I say for poor reasons. This can take many forms but most common I seen personally is devs mistakenly accusing people of being bots, banning them and not listening to appeals.
5. Politicization. Seen this done only once but listing it here anyways because it really sucks. Now take note I am not talking about "subtly" underlying some political themes or tackling them in good manner but when I come to game and it feels like its preaching to me like political activist its time to stop.
6. PVE/PVP unbalance. This is highly personal but I myself enjoy good mix of PVE/PVP and when that mix feels off I dont enjoy the game as much as I should.
7. Lack of involvement. I highly enjoy being involved in the game, feeling like I changed something (or helped to) and I mean by this for example taking part of guild vs guild battle where the winner takes certain territory. It doesn't have to be anything huge or grandiose like this but when the feeling is not there I look for greener pastures.
Luckily for me Ashes nodes system is looking good.
8. Bad dungeons. Dungeons are bread and butter of many games, place to get that that unique clear and make memories! So when they suck you really feel it, unique twists and hard bosses are always appreciated.
9. No "End game" Just this I just mean I want to have something to do when I am max level. It can be things I have already been doing and doesn't need to be "End game" content in traditional sense of the word. Just dont make me feel like damn this game has nothing for me anymore.
(Felt like nobody understands what I mean by this but decided to include it if someone does.)
10. Bad community. Be it the players themselves making community toxic or most likely game being built in such way thats its mechanics dis encourage socialization. Interacting with players is most important factor in MMORPG and its mechanics needs to sustain it.
Thanks all folks. Thanks for reading through that big text that I wrote horribly, but if you did so you are my MVP!
Ashes pls get it right, I have no seconds.
Example: BnS.
Also PvP ballance was an issue. It is not realy fun when some class can shot you for 70% of life because you did nothing wrong. lul
People always say "game starts at X level"
But I always burn out before that, because i am bored out of my mind.
I am hoping the world in Ashes will be dangerous I want to group with people go on adventures, be a mage for hire to help traders ve through damgerous areas with vicious monsters.
Or P2W I just got bored of always doing the same thing
Remember when you saw someone that that one special weapon or armor piece, and you were like.. 'Wow this person has that thing?!" BUT now a days run a dungeon enough time, have the RNG on your side, and you too can have said piece of equipment.. Result, everyone has the exact same gear.. If you are a fighter you have these '10' items, a wizard, these '10', ect.. Cookie cutters.
This is a multi-tiered issue: