Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Any grinding for items?
I hate grind i dont want to see in such a game grind but in black desert online and blade and soul you have to grind to upgrade your items in this game will we grind to get better items or it will be teamwork of raiding a dungeon or completing a story(i read all Q&A s from what i read developers dont think about grind but thet say items will be obtained by raiding dungeons it confused me a little)
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You cannot expect to create a character, gather 2 flowers, NPC them and buy end game gear with the profit.
I did not play either of the games mentioned in the original post, looked at both games and decided they were not for me, plus why jump to a new game when I was happily playing a game anyway, don't tend to be a game hopper just because its the new shiny.
I'm old sometimes grumpy and I do remember what MMO's were and I hope ashes can recapture some of what has been lost, and it will not be to every one's taste and people will just need to accept that myself included on some points.
There must be grinding parts in a game if you want to play with the big guys XD "No pain, no gain"
There is meaningless timesinks, aka grind, the type of thing that involves systems that make you have to wait on purpose just to make it seem like things take time, as well as RNG elements that might make you waste even more time.
Then you have meaningful timesinks, like having to gather all the materials required to craft the gear you want.
That's how I see it at least oO
Game will be with a little bit grind, but more than grind it will be a player skill based, non repeating itself game, also zerging wont make you more advantageous am i correct?
And yes, they plan to make mechanics that makes Zerging impossible/hard.
I doubt spells will directly affect each other, its more likely that players that run into the spell animations get hit by said spell aswell (maybe even allies, so zergs would be super suboptimal). Or some wall spells cause los elements.
Player collision alone isnt that much of a restriction in mmo's, since the world is designed to be played in third person which automaticaly means that most places will be huge just for the camera beeing able to move enough. It just really annoys people while walking through dense citys with lots of afk players. But it couldn't prevent zergs at all.
Back to the main topic: plain xp for mob kills, repeatable quests, repetitive quests, random loot tables and chance based upgrades cause grind. As i know there wont be repeatable quests, so the game has 4/5 grind potential.
You also get XP from crafting, gathering etc
Conclusion: Not Grind, takes time is all
There won't be repeatable "Quests", there will be Tasks if anything.
Conclusion: Not Grind, you can do other things if you want as they are optional
RNG loot tablets.. *gasp* You can't get everything straight away? And rare materials you need are harder to get?! The shame!!
Conclusion: Not Grind, takes time is all
Chance based upgrades... There will be no RNG in crafting
They have mentioned that there might be a Overenchanting system that has some RNG, but that is a Risk vs Reward
Conclusion: Not Grind, takes time is all
Also, repetitive and repeatable are synonyms in this context so... 4 points, not 5 oO
*Just to be sure we talk about the same thing: for me grind means to progress through repetition of something time consuming.*
Grind isnt necessarily a bad thing, it all depends on how much they depend on grind elements compared to non grind elements.
Mobs that give xp do enable grind as you could kill them over and over again and eventually reach high lv by doing that alone.
I never said i would want anything right away. Its a fact that random loot tables will cause some unlucky people do the same content over and over again. There are other ways of preventing people to get stuff right away. One of many examples: content that is actualy difficult.
And again i didnt say grind is generaly bad. But if you !have to! do the same dungeon 20+ times it is bad. Note that repeating sucessful went through pve content over and over again to proceed couldn't even happen in other genres. Grind is a method to provide content without creating extra content. It can enrich the game if done correctly. If there is tons of diffrent stuff to progress and at the same time you could repeat your most favorite activitys over and over again to progress aswell its heaven.
But depending on grind elements just to get all the money without new development efforts is a no go.
With subscription model, they have enough money to add a new complete and grind free game into AoC every few months. If that doesnt happen, they're milking the playerbase. If all they do is adding grind depending elements every now and then, they're robbing the playerbase. (Note all the if)
repeatable quest= be able to do the exact same quest multiple times.
repetitive quests= be able to do similar quests multiple times aka quest A: kill 10 yellow boars; quest B: kill 10 red boars next to the yellow boars. //
Actualy quest A alone would already be repetitive, the non repetitive version would look like: kill all the 10 <named> boars that are currently attacking the farm. And every boar would have a slightly diffrent attack patern or would be encountered in another situation.
And same counts here, repetitive stuff is necessary to save developing time and money but one cant just deny that it is repetitive/grind.
If you call it task or quest really doesnt matter. I do remember steven said there wont be repeatable quests, so i guess there will be slightly changing 'tasks' every time you lvl up your sieged node again? But maybe he was just refering to quests that could be done on day by day basis.
And to appease you; i said potential so its still completly unknown how much actual grind there will be or how bad/good it is.
I agree on that regard, but its easier to talk about the two as not grind and grind tbh, less confusing for most ppl.
If you keep failing to get the drop, you can always purchase it tho.
And you do not have to, its your choice if you want that material and dont want to buy it.
I also disagree, grind is meaningless timeconsuming content. Like having to do a raid for a certain Raid Token that you need 100 of to buy a gear piece. That, is meaningless grind. Being unlucky is just being unlucky, it is not meaningless grind imo.
For me, for it to be considered "milking" content, it would have to be content behind meaningless grind. Aka stuff designed to be time consuming just to be time consuming. Taking a long time to do, and difficult to do, is not meaningless in itself.
Like RNG loot tables, that is not meaningless grind, that is luck. Rare materials will be rare, meaning they will be harder to get.
There won't be repetitive quests, there will be "Tasks".
And yes, there will be similar tasks, if you want to make all Tasks unique, you end up with a very low number of them.
Even "Fetch" and "Deliver" quests are, after all, similar in nature, run somewhere.
And you do not need to do them as they are not important to the narrative.
I fail to see a significant diffrence between
'go into the dungeon 100 times to get 100 tokens to get a sword'
and
'go into the dungeon to get the sword with a 1% drop chance'
that chance would require players to do the dungeon 100 times on average as well.
So its just as unnecessary.
Thats exactly what repetitive quests mean..
Not really sure what you mean with meaningful grind, but for me all variations of grind have a meaning: they save developing money. If the money goes into something else within the game it can be good, if it doesnt its definitely bad.
The exact kind of grind doesnt matter for that conclusion. It just changes possibilities to make something good out of it.
To pick up one of your earlier posts; grinding raw materials through gathering, is ofc much more likely a grind that can be good, then never changing daily quests or ID time locked weekly dungeons that need to be done xx times.
Well, all paraphrasing issues aside we seem to share about the same opinion i guess.
Also again, Tokens can usually not be traded, gear and materials can.
Aka designed to take a long time on purpose with no other options.
Designed to make you feel like you're doing something with your time in game (imo)
You dress, eat, drink water etc every day too. You cannot avoid repetitive content unless you want almost no content in game.
The type of grind matters a lot.
Meaningful grind is things that are simply time consuming to do.
Meaningless grind is things that are designed to waste time, and take a lot of time, on purpose, to make it seem like there's more to the content that there actually is.
Aka
Grinding for a rare mob drop / resource drop for resource node - Meaningful
Grinding Raid Tokens / Daily Quests - Meaningless
A simple way would be to say
"If you can do something without pause, it's meaningful content as all it requires is effort, time and luck." Tho that is simplifying it a lot.
And yeah, almost the same opinion :P
I'm not quite happy with your explanation here,
its true tokens couldnt be traded, but the sword that didn't drop yet by chance couldnt be traded either. After acquiring the sword with both systems, you could trade it equaly.
Its not like you have a option to be lucky and get the sword immediately, thats not how chance works
1% really means people will go into the dungeon 100 times on average. Some will need 'just' 50 attempts some 500. Devs would just have to change the % by one number to 0,1% and people will need to go there 1000 times on average.
People that dont want the item wouldnt visit the dungeon 100 times so it isnt likely to find on the market to buy.
So the only diffrence between tokens and chance is:
tokens show progress to work forward to and
chance adds gambling to your time.
Gambling alone isnt anything better on its own, especialy if the currency is lifetime.
Id personaly have no problems with both systems if they're placed into the right part of the game, like:
tokens for quest rewards; with rewards that require about 1-8 tokens max. So you might have to do some varying tasks for that npc until he gives you some reward, without requirement to follow a themepark quest chain.
chance drop for random open world drops; these chances could be slim like 5%-0,01% since you wouldn't especialy farm for these but instead get it randomly/buy it from someone. That works because many people kill mobs in the open world and dont need all the drops.
Both systems arn't really appropriate for dungeons; If i kill a boss who utilizes some sword, i expect to be abel to take his sword. There shouldn't be a chance of it disappearing to 99% and make me go through that same scenario over and over again.
Dungeons should rely on crafting; aka you get the sword of said boss (after a hard and successful fight) immediately, but its broken/cursed/w\e and you have to do further crafting in the open world with open world mats or mats dropped from other bosses etc, until you're abel to equip it. Bosses that drop multiple items that dont even make sense for the boss to have in the first place shouldn't be in the game so it isn't too much work to create a crafting path for each boss dropped item.
But ofc devs tend to cross that line since as i said earlier, its just a change of one number and increases content to go through by a 100 times. It's tempting.
Yea im aware of that.
Note my earlier post:
Your differentiation between meaningful and meaningless grind makes sense if you exclude the gambling out of dungeons for meaningful content, id like it.
For me, chance is acceptable, that way you can at least get it without having to waste time. And I don't want everything handed to me either, that would be too easy.
Tokens as quest reward makes more snes than mobs dropping tokens tho. That becomes more like "How much service you've provided".
I like that idea tbh
Hmm... What if there where some kind of mechanics in place that increased the drop chance of certain things?
Like using Disarm on a boss makes it more likely for the weapon to drop. Armor break makes the armor more likely. Poison attacks on mobs do not damage the skin so more likely to drop usable skin.
I think the concept is interesting, but it would be hard to pull off :P
Not really sure whats the point here, i was refering to you saying
"Tokens can usually not be traded, gear and materials can."
cuz you can't sell stuff you dont have, thus tokens and chance drop are equal in that regard.
See, i tried to get the blades from illidan in wow for about 4 years once every week. I didnt get them. So tell me i didnt waste my time with that chance system.
I also spend years stuying math and there really is no significant diffrence between tokens and chance regarding the grind aspect for boss loot, so i cannot understand ur reasoning here. Just because 10-20 lucky people get the item after one try doesnt mean its not a horrible boring grind for the 20000 other players who in fact have to repeat the content over and over again.
I also wouldnt want to get all the same loot for every player that clears the dungeon, but slim chances isnt the way to go. Actualy i dont even like to just loot corpses in dungeons.
Wouldn't it be better, that after killing the boss he might drop one item with 40-90% chance, and somewhere very good hidden in the dungeon 4-5 further crafting items spawn in a random but predefined set of positions. Like innocent looking stones that become interactable and gives a piece of loot if found. Or even more indepth puzzle like systems that open a treasure, its just important that these riddles couldn't be repetitive so people dont just write a guide like: go into xy corner to pick up item yz after killing the boss.
That way many people dont find the loot and the diversity remains.
Also it makes leaving the dungeon way more interesting since you still have to look for stuff instead of just heading straight to the exit after killing everything in there.
+ who doesnt like easter egg hunt events
Exactly.
That would be pretty realistic, but too expensive to code in comparison to its provided fun/immersion. A chance system would be by far enough as i said previously.
Stuff like skin, hair, other body parts or mob type specific belongings could ofc have greater chances to drop.