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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.
Ashes Of Creation moving forward.
What are Ashes Of Creations long term goals in endgame? Well so many games have came out over the years in the MMORPG genre almost all if not all have failed to ever live for more than a few years. If Ashes wants to rise above all this wouldn't it need a very stable end game fulled with content of both PVE and PVP?
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As long as the game has levels, a leveling will only every be a temporary stage. Regardless if you level a week, a month, or 3 months... When leveling is over, you spend rest of the years playing at max level.
So as much as developers (or players) dislike the term "endgame", as long as there are levels, leveling is temporary phase that eventually ends, and game de facto becomes "endgame".
Endgame, imo, is more about games steering players to experience games in a linear fashion, by gating content behind levels/gear, and prerequisites. Example: In order to enter Mold Hollow Ruins, to defeat Uber Troll, you have to be level 20 and have the key to the ruins, which could only have been acquired by defeating Uber Troll's weaker brother, Slappy Troll, in an earlier lvl 10 dungeon. So on, and so forth. Same thing goes for most PvE quests.
In Ashes, their attempting to break away from that by not gating content behind having to complete previous content, as stated above. Granted, certain high level content/events will be "locked" behind node progression, but once the content in available, anybody can participate. Whether one is strong enough to survive the ordeal, is another story, however.
So, instead of players running in a straight line from A (the beginning), to Z (the "endgame"), there will be freedom to run all around in any direction you choose, to your hearts content, regardless of level/gear. No "endgame". Just "game". Or, at least that's my understanding of it.
If you must evolve power wise....then endgame is not achieved until you have reached max power through levelling (power multiplier). If you do not evolve power wise then levelling is not necessary as no power multiplier is required. The type of grind required to reach peak power is semantics. The end of that process is endgame. Where everyone around you is ironically and theoretically on a level playing field as everyone has reached the same level cap....until the devs increase that level cap anyway.
Ashes has stated there is a level cap..50 at the moment. vis-a-vis....there is a distant endgame and a treadmill to get there. Will gear get more and more powerful beyond that, without gated content with an access key. No. And gear can become more tuned rather than more powerful which fits the theme of risk vs reward. You dont get something for nothing. You can be best DD OR Tank OR Healer rather than best DD AND tank AND Healer. Which is the way many game are headed.
I think it would be better to differentiate between vertical and horizontal endgame. Vertical 'day-X' endgame require levelling to reach a cap which should be a level playing filed. Horizontal 'day-1' endgame enables more and more variety and requires no cap, where progression is endless rather than level capped stages.
In MMO's I always thought it was more along the lines of only being able to start PvP when you make it to the part of the world that is max-level locked, only being able to make a freehold or build a ship at max level, etc.
Map/Node control starts at any level a player chooses to get involved. Just because higher level players are doing it doesn't mean lower level players can't get in on it.
There might be a few dungeons for max level players in Ashes. If there are not, that is a game flaw as there should be difficult tiered content for all levels. Unless necessary gear/items are locked behind that content I am really not seeing 'endgame' as an actual thing. Even in this case dungeon crawling isn't locked content, just a particular dungeon.
The world should still be evolving in which case you will still have the option to benefit nodes, start a siege, etc., you know, the stuff any player will be able to do at any level.
Sorry, TL/DR;
It seems like most 'endgame' talk in Ashes is "when I am maxed level" not "now that I am max-leveled I can start doing 10% of the game I couldn't before."
For example, you can try to form a level 10 guild and go siege a castle, but you will just get slaughtered.
You can also form a level 10 raid, and go attack a monster that's attacking the node. Unless no one else is helping out, you will get slaughtered.
You CAN do many things, but can you be effective at them, or even succeed, that is another story.
Can you escort a caravan as lvl 10 group? Yeah. Will you survive if anyone attacks you? Likely not.
Thus this all is "endgame" content.
Also, I understand that my earlier example of endgame gameplay mechanics was extremely simplified, so it didn't capture all the nuances. Was trying to keep my wall of text from growing. Personally speaking, another aspect of a traditional endgame system, was any previous content that was cleared became essentially meaningless. The only reason a player would continue to do old content was for grinding achievements/tokens/mats/items.
That's why the node system is so important, because it's essential in keeping this game from becoming a typical "endgame" type of mmo. ALL content...big, small, old, new, near, or far, will be essential in advancing/maintaining nodes, and all content connected to them.
I think the type of endgame that Ashes is trying to eliminate is the "meaninglessness" of content, after reaching a certain height of player progression. Horizontal, vertical, or otherwise.
Are you really assuming only people of high levels will raid caravans, own castles, etc.?
Maybe, I guess all that content will be under-utilized until someone reaches max level.
I want AoC to be a much more free-form, immersive, emergent gameplay-driven experience. That doesn't mean I don't want story, progression, and all that good stuff, but I don't want to suffer through another artificial world that only exists to push me along a linear path. I want to live a life in a virtual world.
If you cant play with your peers as you are no match for the content (as you are underleveled)....then playing with your peers takes on more of an importance than the content you have to play through to get there.
You are basically forcing the player to choose between loving the content and abandoning their peers or loving their peers and abandoning the content by simply grinding it as fast as possible to be able to play with them and the content they are using.
It it literally becomes a stairway to godhood. Ever more power as you climb the steps. Each step a level cap on the way. Each step an ever greater gap between new players and old that simply has to be ground out to be where everyone else is.