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
looks at WoW
Ha! I mentioned something similar in our recent Dev Discussion thread - I'm of the personal opinion that these kinds of quests should be nuked from orbit
Seems like there's a common theme in this thread and throughout our community in general that "hand-holding" is no fun - you'd rather be thrown in the deep end of an adventure, with all its challenges! This often means collaboration amongst the community is necessary to accomplish tasks, and I saw a few people bring up the fact that a "dungeon finder" or "LFG" tool can be a bit on the hand-holdy side. Thoughts?
You did a pretty good summarization in my opinion.
There is one saying that i heard in a youtube video about this theme that fit pretty good: "Developers should not form the game around the players, the players should adapt to the game. If you are not good enough, then train and get good at the game. What made Dark Souls so famous? It was hard, and it didnt compromise."
Convenience is ok but only in moderation. Certain mmorpgs give players too much convenience that it takes away from the world. FFXIV for example takes fast travel to the extreme, allowing the player to teleport pretty much anywhere you want practically for free (gold is so plentiful in that game). On top of that you have ferries, airships and chocobo rides so the only time you need to actually walk anywhere is to go kill some mobs. I spend more time fast travelling around the world than I do walking, which is rather sad in a way.
Same with things like group finder. Yes it's very convenient to have the system match you up with people automatically, but at the same time it takes away the social aspect of the community. Not only that but in my experience players who are matched with a group finder tool are more likely to be toxic to their teammates or leave as soon as things go wrong. Back in WoW before the group finder and cross-realm functions existed, players were restricted to grouping with people on their individual realm. This meant that if you were constantly toxic in groups it would get noticed, and you would be blacklisted and not invited to any groups at all. It gave players accountability that is rare to find on the internet these days.
To a certain extent yes. One of the reasons why the Dark Souls games were (and still are) so popular is because they are fair. The game sets out the rules of the combat very clearly right at the start, and is consistent with them throughout the entire game. Extra Credits did a wonderful episode explaining this way back in 2013:
Speaking of the Dark Souls games, one thing that I have a love-hate relationship with in games is the minimap. You'll notice that the Dark Souls games never have a map for you to follow. This encourages the player to explore and learn the routes without constantly referring to a map. In doing so not only does the player become more competent at navigating the world, but is more likely to appreciate the world and the scenery as they go. Often times when I'm travelling through the world I am so focused on following the minimap that I don't actually see much of the world I am in.
What is your opinion on maps and minimaps?
Dark Souls could handle a non-minimap policy, because even though the zones where pretty large, they were not as large as, say, a MMORPG zone. Players had to also traverse these zones in huge quantities, and then they had the fast travel system.
I think we should have a minimap in AoC, but it should not be too detailed, give it a smaller radius eventually and let it interact with certain abilities, like the hunter and tank special use ability (the one where they see enemies around them).
Fair enough. What about permanent access to a large scale map of the entire world? Is that something you would still want as well as a minimap?
It would be cool if everyone got a rough scetching of the areas etc, and then scribes could make better maps. Make it more interactable with the players, like personalized waypoints etc.
It would also be pretty selfexplanatory why it is that way: We came back back after a few eons right? Well a ton can change in a few eons. We are the pioneers in this situation, it would be dumb to have perfect maps of this region ;D
I would like that a lot.
I don't mind repeatable quests if they make sense. Gathering stuff for the node, makes sense, craft stuff that will in a very minimum value increase city defense/attack. For example gathering water, and if an attacks come, that water will help extinguish fire (or more gamey, mitigate damage from fire in X%)
2- Minimap. I know it's a necessity but I'd prefer a scaled back minimap. It helps a lot, and I swear I get lost a lot, but it helps immersion. Paying attention to landmarks and figuring out a way.
3- LFG/LFR. No. Not again. But find a way to advertise your group without everyone spamming "LF2M Healer and Tank". Also, not sure how, but figure out a way to even the DPS/Healer/Tank ratios, so being a tank/healer is not so rare.
Why? In my experience, if you approach someone advertising, even though you don't have best gear ever, they will ask a couple of questions and take you in. It all falls back on how you interact with the players and if you had a good experience, next time they will call you again, add you to FL and eventually be recommended to raids.
In Rift this is how I always found people to raid with, through dungeons, showing I was willing to learn and improve myself if required.
4- Make tanking/healing characters experience fun. Many MMOs almost punish you for going Healer/DPS, having really hard time leveling.
5- Respawn resources/animals. Make resources matter. Maybe people mined too much iron, puf, it's gone. Now a new quest it's required to find new mines and set them up.
They could easily fix the Tank/Healer/DD ratio, if they make off tanks or healer viable in lower level dungeons^^ (Offtanks like Sirens(Bard/Tank), or Dreadnaughts(Fighter/Tank) and Off healers like Soubow(Bard/Cleric) and Paladin(Tank/Healer) They dont have to be as good as Tank/Tanks or Cleric/Cleric, but just able to tank/heal lower dungeons with the right gear.
Man I haven't thought of LOTRO in years. Is it still going? I only played for a couple of years but I still have my lifetime subscription.
OMG i agree with this so much
Be careful what you wish for. Just as too much convenience can take away from the immersion, so can too much "realism" take away from the fun. Red Dead Redemption 2 had horse care like you are describing and it turned that part of the game into a chore.
It's one of those things that sounds fun on paper, but when you actually have to do it regularly it becomes very annoying.
Non-consensual PvP combat.
This seems unlikely on both counts
2) This might be an odd one. I love story, I hate how MMOs don't ever have a story/ single player version of instanced dungeons and raids. I don't want loot, achievs, or anything for free, but I would love to see a version of content that I could hop into during an off time or maybe my guild isn't at a certain raid yet and I can pop in and see the story of whatever it is just to say I've seen it even if it is with different mechanics so I can't go in and figure out the mechanics single player and still have to learn the real raid/dungeon.
3) As others have said: Saying you won't have P2W items, then having them.
4) Mobs taking like 50 kills to drop that 1 fracking item you need for a "gather x" type quest. Not every mob has to drop it, but the majority should.
5) Saying you have exploration and yet having nothing really interesting to explore outside an achievement. I've seen so many empty/boring areas I had to visit to "explore" an area, at least give me an interesting vista.
6) I don't think this one can ever really be solved, because its partly based on the perspective of the player builds, but having the "This build of X class is the only viable build, if you aren't built like X respec or stop playing." With so many class variants you have planned its going to be important that each class/subclass can be effective, not the best, but just effective throughout the game. There will always be best builds that will change with patches, but there should be plenty of variety in good builds to play for each roll.
One of the reasons why I quit raiding in GW2 was because I got sick of being told by the community "you need this exact set up in order to beat the boss" even though there were plenty of examples of groups who had beaten the bosses with non-meta set ups.
Second, in WoW players would only take classes that were used during the Mythic Dungeon International tournament. Nothing else was considered viable.
I am 100% on board with the lack of hand holding. One of things I LOVED soooooooo much about vanilla WoW was the difficulty of killings mobs. It made me want to go seek out other players to complete a task or quest. The most cherished memories of my MMO history was from the random groups that were picked up out in the wild due to a mutual goal of killing an elite or completing a quest faster. Just being like "Oh, hi there you are doing X quest also want to group up and help each other out?". It gives you that warm fuzzy feeling that the community is not lifeless zombies (besides Nagash) and the world is just empty.
One thing I HATE in any MMO is the endless hacking of a simple MOB like a freaking bunny rabbit! If I am going to be fighting something for more than 3 mins it better be something important.
I do like limited fast travel like how EQ2 did the fast travel and map. You had the wall of gray on your map and you had to explore the region to clear it. As you clear it you would discover griffin towers that were the hub of the fast travel system. You could only fast travel to the towers you had discovered. This made it so you had to explore the region on foot first but once you had done so you could fast travel. IMO it was the right amount of convenience. As you would progress in level and move farther and farther out into the world it could get tedious trying to get around without fast travel. I don't feel the need to run across 4 zones to get back to my home city (Qeynos) so I can craft and put things up for sale and then run back across the same 4 zones to get back to the area I'm adventuring in. I can remember going with people who hadn't explored some areas yet and we'd spend 20-30 minutes just running across the world to get to our quest area.
I think part of the problem is that a LFG thing, isn't in game texture thing. If you want to find a group for a dungeon, having a meeting place for that to take place makes the game. I don't want any teleporting in that process.
Instead of needing to go out of your way and park yourself out in the boonies at the entrance of the dungeon, I feel if you grouped in town for that same dungeon, or were queued, and then had to meet up at the tavern, you would 100% not care about a queuing system.
LFR is literally toxic though, not only does it remove any incentive for you to go out of your way and meet someone, it basically anonymizing whom you're playing with. You're going to forget the past garbage group that collapses and go on to the next, essentially forgetting everyone in the last group, because the process was so streamlined you essentially go brain dead, and only do the most basic rout strategies to get things done. You aren't going to go through the process of fixing a bad group, you're just going to queue again after failing and blocking the last team so you don't get them again, or the few problem players again, in your queue.
In my experience most of the time, this turns in like this:
Player 1 joins, P2, p3, etc... kill boss, do dungeon, kill boss. Not even a single word unless you find issues.
It's not always like that, but it feels like taking the bus. You don't engage with strangers. Meanwhile you might talk to your uber driver, somehow there's some sort of rapport.
Also LFG doesn't help newbies either. The functionality is there, you use it, you're a new tank who never tanked, but the game let's you tank. So now you have 3-5 people teaching you to tank or raging at you.
I've seen this happen, and many people using LFG might want to do something fast.
Finally, I understand wanting to play solo, but we're coming back to "cater to every time of gameplay" and in my opinion this is what makes a game lose its identity.
If Dark Souls would have an easy mode, it's not DS anymore. If the game HELPS you isolate yourself and lets you do all content without any other players, it's losing its massive identity as well.
Just because we want some soloable content doesn't mean that we want to be able to complete all content solo without having to talk to anyone. Not all content has to require a group to complete.
The leveling process should be largely soloable, though it could be faster and more efficient if you had a group of friends to quest with, throw in the some dungeon and group quests here and there to get people to work together. Once we reach level cap I think most content should require some level of cooperation but there should still be a handful of smaller items that can be soloable.
If dark souls was an MMO it would not be the DS you know now. DS is a single player game and people are purchasing it understanding that there is a set guide line. With ZERO chance of missing out on content since only you the single player can progress the game. On top of that from a business point of view the developers put out a game and whatever happens happens after the game is published. There is no continues large development and loss of resources once it is out there.
Success requires to cater to multiple play styles and you can still obtain the identity of the game. Being a solo player especially in AoC you are already going to miss out on a lot of content. So why make it harder? If AoC is not even remotely casual friendly content wise it will fail. It is a common trend with games that aren't casual friendly. There is FAR more casual players than hardcore players.
It might be a trial through fire...but this is a video game. I've long since lost my patience to deal with annoying people, whom expect the world of you, but won't put in the effort to teach you.
If they don't spend any effort in grouping or in communicating about skill levels or anything they're going to not care about your feelings either and just ditch you after running you through a gutter.
Ya you learn, or you learn that, the game doesn't mean enough to you, to have to put yourself through the grinder of nasty people.