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.
The complacent structure of the genre
Did I get your attention with the headline? Good. Now that you're here I'll explain, every MMORPG does the same thing, even though it might not always look like it, even Ashes of Creation is falling into this pitfall. I'm talking about the Level Up and Class mechanics. Every MMORPG, that I am aware of, uses levels and classes/jobs for character archetypes. I don't think there is anything wrong with races, for the most part, I like seeing diversity. That said, the races of Elf and Dwarf are a bit overused in that there are is little to no variation in them when compared to other fantasy races. More often than not you'll see forest dwelling elves all over the places in the Fantasy genre and almost every fantasy dwarf society is structured the exact same way, a subterranean dwelling race of short folk with burly builds that prize themselves on mining, stone crafting, and smithing.
But for the purposes of the argument I'm going to focus on the fact that just like every other MMORPG before it, AoC uses a Level Up and Class system structure. It is my opinion that levels in RPGs are stupid, they encourage a potentially toxic mindset and relegate experience points to being a tracking gauge which means they are next to pointless. So my question here, and it should be taken into consideration very carefully, why does AoC even require a Leveling system?
The Class and Level mechanics are staples of the MMORPG genre, even though probably don't really need to be, but it just makes them all come across as trying to imitate classic D&D. D&D is TTRPG and the oldest known RPG in the world. But it's not the only tabletop RPG out there, there are a plethora of tabletop RPGs out there now, and not all of them use classes and/or levels. One of my favorite tabletop RPGs is World of Darkness, and its spinoff games, and that game series doesn't use classes or levels. World of Darkness uses a Point Buy system for character advancement, which means you use the experience points you earn in the game to advance your character. So, why doesn't AoC utilize a system that makes levels obsolete?
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for OP:
Quick answer is balance and ability diversity.
In a lot of skill based systems, the biggest problem is you want to balance all skills. Not only is this hard but not necessarily a good thing as it can lead to all skills being similar. In a class system, they are allowed to make some skills more powerful then others in the class's kit as it's unique to that class. Another plus is by limiting abilities to certain classes, it's easier to avoid potentially op ability combos.
The short of it is, in a class system they are allowed to make a more diverse array of abilities because they don't have to worry about them being compared to all other abilities as well as them being used with all other abilities. We still have a skill point system so abilities will still need to be balanced within their class, at least to some degree, but it's not as bad as having to balance them to all other abilities available in the game.
Levels are intuitive goals that provide a good tutorial system to help players to get acclimated to the game and their characters. Not the only way to do it but most players are familiar with them and how they work.
In a purly skill based game, there is no need for levels, becuase you want every one to have the same same stats so skill is the determining factor. Think "PUBG" or "Sea of Thieves". You will notice these games aren't played in the same durations as a mmorpg that keeps you going for years.