About surprises but wordy.

ArchivedUser

Bless will be coming out soon. It is a failed mmo already. Granted, people are still going to buy it. New gear, new maps, new mobs. They will see all the surprises to experience and then dump it....like they did the last 5 -8 mmos they have tried already. The reason it will fail is that there is no hook. There is no one thing to seriously set the game apart that other games are not already doing and once the surprises are done the game is over.

What is AoC's hook? City nodes that grow. Ok. But what else? The growing cities sound cools but it also sounds like watching paint dry. Without a good hook an mmo is a fail before it even hits the shelves. Sure people will buy it to be surprised by new things but then it is spent. What can AoC offer?  PVP, dungeons, weather, houses, costumes, raids...none of that is new. Not a single one is inspiring.

Now on to a quick story that will show you what I mean. Once while playing Skyrim I encountered a demon on a mountain guarding chest. I did not know he was even up there and I engaged him. The fight was epic,  taking forever and I was slowly losing the fight...but I had hope. Then, out of no where I heard a dragon roar and I knew shiz was going to go sideways quickly so I gulped one of my last potions and started running away. Luckily, the dragon had landed and I was clear of his breath and as the demon's fireballs exploded around me I ran down the hill. The dragon rose into the air. I slipped on the steep slope and when I landed I had to quickly hit up my last potion. Turning quickly I could see the dragon banking around the mountain towards me. Another fireball enveloped me as I ran across a ledge into a forest that clung to the mountain and over the next rise I ran....into a giant. I turned quickly and ran/walked...my stamina was low as I heard the footsteps booming behind me, closer and closer they came. Then, out of no where, I was 9 ironed off the mountain and I flew for what seemed forever and died. Good story. I could tell you the boring one about aggro'ing too many mammoths in wow, or falling off a bridge in some other mmo or how I went into a dungeon that was ten levels higher than myself....but those are boring, not stories at all but dumb moments. Dumb moments in an mmo.

When my son got home I told him the story, told my girl later and a couple other people later that week. Today i am telling you. It was pulse pounding, lethal and random. It also made for a good story. It will never be recreated because it was random. It was fun because it was surprising and it made for a great story because it just was.

Imagine that you join a caravan and right as you are about to leave you see on the chat that the bridge you were going to have to cross is out and you now have to go through the dead swamp. You are with guildies in a raid and right when you are about to tackle the last boss a god appears from no where and smotes the boss in one smack....your chat is quiet for 6 seconds for no one knows what to say and then the chat explodes as everyone is talking at once. You are picking berries and you come across a sleeping dragon so you hit up some buddies to hurry their asses there to kill it before someone else finds it. You are headed to point B and find that the stream you always cross is now a raging river with a very thin rope strung across it and you have to use the rope to get across, you fall and are swept down the river., fast and hard, your camera view is spinning and you have no idea wtf is happening.  Maybe the road you take has bandits on it or not, witches or not. Maybe the the deer you farm have some local orcs guarding them now.  Maybe that ledge you were planning to use during a siege collapses. It is raining and the cave you are in starts filling up with blood. A random portal sucks you into a different dimension and you have to kill 20 headless chickens before it will let you leave. You love going into the woods and into the world because you just never know what is going to be in there. Never know what is around the corner. never know what story will spring up. Where entering a dungeon or just taking a stroll is a toss up. 

You see, the one hook that no other mmo has, that I know of, is a world that gives you good stories to tell. Totally dynamic. Yeah, I had stories when I first started playing, but now...well...not so much. Every mmo is the same and I am certain that the next 3 mmos I try will just be different skins on the same crap. Sure there might be psuedo random events, rifts, portals, etc....but they are not random, not really. So to fill the need for pulse pounding action we have raids, which is very artificial. We have PVP, not as artificial but certainly not surprising. We have over the top streamers on youtube acting as if killing 5 bears is the most exciting thing ever and that raid they have been in 50x before is just as fun as the last 49x. But none of it really is. We have done it before.

So, I guess what I am trying to impress on you Intrepid, is this. The ultimate hook that you can sink into someone is a game to where whenever you go into the woods, or cross a river or go over a hill you are genuinely unsure what is on the other side or what will happen. Surprises. It is why they will buy Bless and drop it, it is why they will buy the next 5 mmos after that and then drop them as well. But if you can offer surprises all the time? Well, you will of finally achieved what the others could not.

TY for reading...or not.

ArchivedUser

Hard to implement random occurrances i would imagine but you are right about the nodes being the "hook" here. The thing with nodes is that it just isn't about the city. As a node changes so does mobs or surrounding environment. World bosses or random events like a horde of zombies can occur within the world because of nodes. To me i find caravans and free holds very interesting as well but others may not and i understand that. While Intrepid can't do everything, they promised a dynamic game that changes due to player actions and a lot of things you mentioned have a high possibility of appearing in game, just not everything you want. 

ArchivedUser

Totally did not read this but I praise your enthusiasm

ArchivedUser

AutumnLeaf said:

It was awesome. The best read I had all day and I 100% agree with you.

ArchivedUser

VoidShadow said:

Hard to implement random occurrances i would imagine but you are right about the nodes being the "hook" here. The thing with nodes is that it just isn't about the city. As a node changes so does mobs or surrounding environment. World bosses or random events like a horde of zombies can occur within the world because of nodes. To me i find caravans and free holds very interesting as well but others may not and i understand that. While Intrepid can't do everything, they promised a dynamic game that changes due to player actions and a lot of things you mentioned have a high possibility of appearing in game, just not everything you want. 

I get that things  change as the node changes. It is cool but predictability is the problem in MMOs. So if x mobs change at stage 4 then as most MMOs go the next stage 4 transition would see the same mobs change, same forest gone, etc..... That is awesome but this is really no different then rifts popping in....er...rift. The pre xpac events in WOW or the mobs that appear in GW2. If we know that mobs attack the city but how many times will it happen before it is a common thing to expect.

Now I am not saying that random things need to happen everyday....some of them can such as random trees blocking paths and RNG based random mob generators scattered around the map. But AoC needs to not only think outside the box but recreate it if they are going to be more than the flavor of the month, next dead mmo.  Housing and teddy bear mounts, yeah, they only go so far.

We know that Bless is going to bomb and I think within a year of release WOW is going to drop back down to the year after release sub count we have all come to expect from Blizz. Unless Blizz or FF14 aim a patch at AoCs release, Intrepid could really be sitting pretty sub count wise. But holding those subs is going to be the challenge.

3 months in and people need to have things occur that make them say "whoa, that was different, cool, but different." A guy running an LFR on a different game with a streamer jabbering in the background needs to whip his head around, accidentally running his toon off a bridge on a boss fight because  a panicked streamers starts yelling and laughing because a bar fight broke out in a tavern and one of the patrons just body slammed his character and people are throwing bottles at each other or the streamer is talking about his caravan run when all of a sudden 10 flying monkeys appear randomly grabbing players and dropping them into trees. This is what I am talking about.....the game needs to be so awesome that someone playing wow or GW2 or Teso looks at his other monitor at a streamer have a genuine good time and then looks at the LFR, portal event or battleground that they have run  10x that week already and think "I should be playing that game".

Again. Weather changes, costumes, housing, farming, pvp, dungeons, quests, holiday events, raids, etc.....done into the ground. Dynamic world is what is going to sell.

ArchivedUser

Would I be right in thinking the TL:DR is as follows: dynamic content please.

ArchivedUser

tl.dr?

I readed to halfway and you was talking about some story like thing, but I had to disappoint you, only a few palyers cares aobut stories like that. The masses want to brainlessly fight. Be it instance or battleground, they just want to join in, smash the buttons brainleslly and have "fun".
Story, graphic, dynamic filler content, node system, houseing whatever doesn't really matters. It's good for advertisment, but it ain't got keep the players here...

ArchivedUser

If AoC keeps that no p2w policy I think it has all it needs to be a huge succes. 
Housing, Node system, Caravans, Sieges, dungeons, raids, relevant crafting, ship battles, complex class combos and I`m probably missing some things. 

I would like some random encounters like crossing an elite mob that drops something special but you have to play your cards well to beat it. And who knows, maybe those boss that appear as a node developes will appear in your face while you are gathering potatoes.

If it has good pvp/pve, housing, and a sea like in archeage(with those battleships), Im all in for a while. 

ArchivedUser

Mobrechael said:

VoidShadow said:

Hard to implement random occurrances i would imagine but you are right about the nodes being the "hook" here. The thing with nodes is that it just isn't about the city. As a node changes so does mobs or surrounding environment. World bosses or random events like a horde of zombies can occur within the world because of nodes. To me i find caravans and free holds very interesting as well but others may not and i understand that. While Intrepid can't do everything, they promised a dynamic game that changes due to player actions and a lot of things you mentioned have a high possibility of appearing in game, just not everything you want. 

I get that things  change as the node changes. It is cool but predictability is the problem in MMOs. So if x mobs change at stage 4 then as most MMOs go the next stage 4 transition would see the same mobs change, same forest gone, etc..... That is awesome but this is really no different then rifts popping in....er...rift. The pre xpac events in WOW or the mobs that appear in GW2. If we know that mobs attack the city but how many times will it happen before it is a common thing to expect.

Now I am not saying that random things need to happen everyday....some of them can such as random trees blocking paths and RNG based random mob generators scattered around the map. But AoC needs to not only think outside the box but recreate it if they are going to be more than the flavor of the month, next dead mmo.  Housing and teddy bear mounts, yeah, they only go so far.

We know that Bless is going to bomb and I think within a year of release WOW is going to drop back down to the year after release sub count we have all come to expect from Blizz. Unless Blizz or FF14 aim a patch at AoCs release, Intrepid could really be sitting pretty sub count wise. But holding those subs is going to be the challenge.

3 months in and people need to have things occur that make them say "whoa, that was different, cool, but different." A guy running an LFR on a different game with a streamer jabbering in the background needs to whip his head around, accidentally running his toon off a bridge on a boss fight because  a panicked streamers starts yelling and laughing because a bar fight broke out in a tavern and one of the patrons just body slammed his character and people are throwing bottles at each other or the streamer is talking about his caravan run when all of a sudden 10 flying monkeys appear randomly grabbing players and dropping them into trees. This is what I am talking about.....the game needs to be so awesome that someone playing wow or GW2 or Teso looks at his other monitor at a streamer have a genuine good time and then looks at the LFR, portal event or battleground that they have run  10x that week already and think "I should be playing that game".

Again. Weather changes, costumes, housing, farming, pvp, dungeons, quests, holiday events, raids, etc.....done into the ground. Dynamic world is what is going to sell.

All depends on what you use as the trigger.
If its simply if zone is node X do this....then yes its pretty simplistic and predictably obvious.
If its ....if node level is A, if time of day is B, if time of Year is C, If weather is D or E of F, If terrain is G or H.....then the predictability of the system becomes ever more obscure and the apparent randomness ever greater.

ArchivedUser

I expect AoC to hold subs for a while since the first metropolis shouldn't appear for months. The world is supposed to be dynamic so guess it comes down to how the devs make it and how predictable the changes are to hold the subs.

ArchivedUser

I'm not here to discredit your thoughts or anything of the sort, I rather somewhat agree with the "what would be nice to have". That said what I disagree with:

"It is nothing new"
Skyrim isn't new either, what it offers isn't new either. It has dragons, typical rpg elements, typical story, typical everything. The thing is, the way it is presented MAY lead to such awesome stories like the one you described.

I heard about this one rider that may randomly turn up and if you follow him leads you to a cave blablabla.
Long story short there are 3 typical experiences I heard about this particular "event".
1. People never heard of it
2. People experienced it and where thrilled they took the chance to follow that rider.
3. People found that cave already beforehand and it was a total let down for them.

That's what you get from a game like skyrim, a maybe, because you have the option. If you just go through the main story with some occasional trip down another side quest you will most likely not get that and there are a lot of people out there that do it like that. You went off on your own and didn't follow the game really.

Gothix anyone? Follow the game not knowing what's going on, join the army because that's just what you do apparently and keep going through whatever comes up next... or venture off find the monastry become a mage all of a sudden because that's apparently an option too or wait there is more? I could join this rough bunch of bandits if I don't feel like a stuck up army guy?
Anyway I get where you are coming from and this was my major draw to the now dead Everquest: Next.
This, maybe-feel, this maybe, who knows what I get to experience if I just go off into the wild and offer my help somewhere, maybe it will change the whole outcome of an ongoing conflict because I have a choice.

I feel like Ashes tries to recapture this feeling in it's own form, saying it will or won't have it just leads nowhere, we simply don't know.

It's an mmo somewhat theme park, somewhat sandbox. You start to do stuff somewhere and out of that stuff grows a city and an experience. A city with new challenges, pve as well as pvp related.
The resulting metropolis awakens a 5000 year old dragon threatening to destroy what you might have been working on for over half a year. Sounds epic, might not be because according to your statement the outcome is binary which makes it not fun. Either it is destroyed, or it will destroy the landscape into a wasteland.

I mean, how can we agree or disagree that this won't lead to epic stories, just because we know beforehand that SOMETHING will happen?

Just because a city will emerge makes everything that has lead to it or will happen through it boring and uninspiring because cities are nothing new?

Random content or better said in Skyrims case overlapping content can be amazing, but it can also be never experienced, a let down or downright frustrating. Getting close to the finish line barely with a breath left just so the world drops a mountain in front of you? Not everyone is up for that.

(following that made up dragon example) Maybe it won't be epic, maybe it will just be another grind feast/ tank and spank event with the same dragon every single time in a different colour.
Concerns are right to be had, I for one share the concern that it might all just turn out stale, but saying it won't lead to epic stories because it's not skyrimesque/ nothing "new", is silly. Skyrim isn't new or as random as you seem to think, usually there are a lot of systems working to make them likely to happen.
Was Witcher 3 a bad and stale game because it didn't have random creatures intercepting your encounters?

It's all about presentation and intention, it's all about making a good game.  <<-- that's the tl:dr.