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How to make Ashes of Creation great (for me)
Marzzo
Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Below is what I would like to see. Is there something you do or do not agree with? Is there something missing? I am interested to see what you think!
Do not have a group finder
Instead, have specific locations where players can find others to play with, alternativ recruiting boards. Group finders promote the "afk-gameplay" and kills open the open world feel.
Make leveling impactful and fun
Leveling should be meaningful and fun. To do this you need serious story and content even during leveling. A great way to make leveling amazing is to offer different choices and paths during leveling. Both in the form of different ways to level up but also different story paths and zones you get to choose from. Also, challenging content Before max level is not bad, it is very important and good.
Make crafting truly meaningful
The best weapons and armors should not always be dropped from a boss directly. Instead, make the fang of a dragon craftable into a powerful sword instead. This sword, should always be as powerful or more powerful than a directly looted weapon. Note that a boss that is directly using a piece of gear could and should drop that specific gear too which makes a lot more sense then a random yeti dropping a pair of pants. Crafting with the use of "boss material" should be considered endgame for crafters. Crafting also needs to always be relevant. This will make crafters vital to the game and make them feel important.
Do not make flying mounts the norm
This was one of the main pillars that destroyed World of Warcraft. This feature kills world pvp, a ton of content and makes the world feel dead.
Make travel feel right
Do not go overdo it with portals and instant teleportation fast travel. Make use of pay-to-use caravan transport, wagons, boats or anything. This makes the world feel grand and living. It may also create a market for player driven taxi service which is amazing. Teleports can be a thing, just make it special and keep it at a minimum.
Class uniqueness is more important than total balance
Balance has never been achived in any game where there is some form of player choice. Striving for balance only leads to all classes having almost identical toolkits and playstyles. This is horrible for a game that is meant to last. No matter how hard you try, you will never be able to balance a ranger, warrior and mage. It just will not work based on math. Instead, focus on making classes more unique and focused on specific types of gameplay. Supportive, AOE focused, burst focused, survivial focused, utility focused are a few examples. Make classes a bit more Rock-paper-schissors instead of do-it-alls.
Do not make PVE/PVP all about stats
Doing this will make people tunnel the tank with the highest defences and the dps/healers with the highest numbers. Instead, design bosses in ways that forces groups to use different kinds of characters. Some bosses may need distruptive builds, some supportive builds, some mobility based builds.
Stay away from too much forced time-gating
Forcing players to wait certain time frames to progress is not necessary. Instead, make a true Learning curve and gear progression curve. Offer a true journery, where the hardest bosses on the hardest difficulties truly are unbeliebly hard. Also grinding is honestly a lot more preferable than time-gating.
Stay away from too much RNG
Please, do not do like WOW have been doing the last expantions where gear you loot/craft has random upgrades. Make us work for it instead. Make us upgrade, refine, enchant and gem our gear until it become powerful instead of making it completly random. Make hard work feel rewarding.
Do not fall down the reward trap hole
Giving direct rewards from activities is sometimes necessary and good. But do it too much and you will have a game where nobody lifts a finger if there is no direct reward involved. And this also leads to people completly abandoning said content/activity when the rewards have been hoarded. Instead, try to make content naturaly repetable. A overarching reputation system is a good idea for this. This reputation system should be relevant for both PVE/PVP.
Do not have a group finder
Instead, have specific locations where players can find others to play with, alternativ recruiting boards. Group finders promote the "afk-gameplay" and kills open the open world feel.
Make leveling impactful and fun
Leveling should be meaningful and fun. To do this you need serious story and content even during leveling. A great way to make leveling amazing is to offer different choices and paths during leveling. Both in the form of different ways to level up but also different story paths and zones you get to choose from. Also, challenging content Before max level is not bad, it is very important and good.
Make crafting truly meaningful
The best weapons and armors should not always be dropped from a boss directly. Instead, make the fang of a dragon craftable into a powerful sword instead. This sword, should always be as powerful or more powerful than a directly looted weapon. Note that a boss that is directly using a piece of gear could and should drop that specific gear too which makes a lot more sense then a random yeti dropping a pair of pants. Crafting with the use of "boss material" should be considered endgame for crafters. Crafting also needs to always be relevant. This will make crafters vital to the game and make them feel important.
Do not make flying mounts the norm
This was one of the main pillars that destroyed World of Warcraft. This feature kills world pvp, a ton of content and makes the world feel dead.
Make travel feel right
Do not go overdo it with portals and instant teleportation fast travel. Make use of pay-to-use caravan transport, wagons, boats or anything. This makes the world feel grand and living. It may also create a market for player driven taxi service which is amazing. Teleports can be a thing, just make it special and keep it at a minimum.
Class uniqueness is more important than total balance
Balance has never been achived in any game where there is some form of player choice. Striving for balance only leads to all classes having almost identical toolkits and playstyles. This is horrible for a game that is meant to last. No matter how hard you try, you will never be able to balance a ranger, warrior and mage. It just will not work based on math. Instead, focus on making classes more unique and focused on specific types of gameplay. Supportive, AOE focused, burst focused, survivial focused, utility focused are a few examples. Make classes a bit more Rock-paper-schissors instead of do-it-alls.
Do not make PVE/PVP all about stats
Doing this will make people tunnel the tank with the highest defences and the dps/healers with the highest numbers. Instead, design bosses in ways that forces groups to use different kinds of characters. Some bosses may need distruptive builds, some supportive builds, some mobility based builds.
Stay away from too much forced time-gating
Forcing players to wait certain time frames to progress is not necessary. Instead, make a true Learning curve and gear progression curve. Offer a true journery, where the hardest bosses on the hardest difficulties truly are unbeliebly hard. Also grinding is honestly a lot more preferable than time-gating.
Stay away from too much RNG
Please, do not do like WOW have been doing the last expantions where gear you loot/craft has random upgrades. Make us work for it instead. Make us upgrade, refine, enchant and gem our gear until it become powerful instead of making it completly random. Make hard work feel rewarding.
Do not fall down the reward trap hole
Giving direct rewards from activities is sometimes necessary and good. But do it too much and you will have a game where nobody lifts a finger if there is no direct reward involved. And this also leads to people completly abandoning said content/activity when the rewards have been hoarded. Instead, try to make content naturaly repetable. A overarching reputation system is a good idea for this. This reputation system should be relevant for both PVE/PVP.
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Comments
Especially when it comes to non-humanoid bosses (i.e. monsters) I agree that their parts should be used to craft high end gear. Even humanoids should drop items that can be crafted (e.g. magic jewels that can be made into jewelry). I personally even think the balance should be tipped towards bosses dropping crafting components more so than items. But these boss crafting items should operate kind of like the tier tokens in WoW. So your fang sword example, the same fang should be able to be crafted into a spear, or a dagger instead if that's preferred. Or you can change the weight of the stats so that the one you have has more str than agi than somebody else's (same stats total, just distribution is different) by changing one of the crafting components out for another. This would make looting more flexible for different players, it would motivate high level gatherers to take part in or have strong relationships with raiders (to extract said items) and finally, require that raiders have strong ties to master craftspeople to produce their gear and fully take advantage of their boss killing feats. This would also act as a nice natural time gate and extends the "oh boy oh boy" feeling you get after you win some loot to include the time when you are putting together your item "oh boy oh boy oh boy" (notice the third "oh boy").
I'm not really sure how I feel about this, but would it be cool if we had some control over the caravan system? Like what routes are available in the node etc? It feels like the politics would be important, maybe the mayor has some control over what fast travel routes are available (out of some number within a vicinity). Otherwise, I'm not really sure how IS plans to handle what routes are available. It would kinda be lame if every city or higher lvl node was available from every other one via caravan. Not to mention it would defeat the purpose of the scientific node metro a bit.
I personally don't think a story-driven experience would suit the type of game that Intrepid are aiming for. How can you have a linear storyline when each node will be levelling up at different speeds based on how many players are in that area? You could have a linear side-story for each individual primary class, but that is about it I reckon.
Oh and your point about balance shouldn't theoretically happen in Ashes as they plan on following a "rock, paper, scissors" philosophy which leads itself to a cyclical balance. This is a lot easier to manage than games like WoW where all the classes are meant to be completely equal.
The "various chapters" of the story-driven experience will be presented in a different order on each server.
Those "chapters" will drop as the associated content is unveiled with each Node's progression.
It's going to be closer to a choose-your-own-adventure book than a linear novel, though.
Intrepid is not doing most of what you have listed, so the game will be great for you.
Imo opinion, and in my head alone I can see story driven work on MMOs. As long as it shouldn't be one person to decide the fate of the world, or to decide if a village should be attacked by the wolfs or you should gather soldiers to defend it, if you plan to make a raid to a town or not, if you want to secure the seas or if you want to be a pirate. I mean the story shouldn't be all written by the devs, but by the players too, depending on what they do on the server while they are playing and in most cases when you select a branch of the story to follow (the ones written by the devs), it should be decided by a group (if necessary a large group) of players and not an individual alone, it must have consequences, that have to affect other players and those who had the power to make the decision, for good or for bad...
Totally agree there, even tho sometimes from what I can remember in vanilla wow it sometimes took hours to find a healer or a tank. But at the same time, without a group finder you promote the fact that people won't be leaving so easily and rep status should become a really important factor above all other. Something that died in wow long time ago.
Great post btw, agree with all you said.
I think to some extent SWTOR did this relatively well. The class storyline's choices were mainly for flavor, and the consequences for the choices were only felt within your own story (and that only in small ways); it didn't affect the larger world. But, there WERE some branches here and there based on choices and while the story may have ultimately converged at the end of each chapter, you still got to choose how you got there, whether you were noble or villainous, etc. Then again, you might argue that SWTOR is a single player rpg with mmo elements, and that would be fair.
I have a "special" relationship with Lady Luck. She smiles on me often...Usually, with derision.
I always have ambivalent feeling about it. From one side it is more immersive to gather the team in a specific place, but it is extremely boring to sitting in a place and waiting for a special party member. Especially if you have only 1 hours to play that day.
To be in a guild is always help in this, but it has side effect as well. I read many times in the guild chat. 'Please, log in with your healer and come with us to that dungeon.' But lot of people do not accept 'no' for that, they continue asking, bribing, slight blackmailing etc.
Intrepid planning to make the game exactly the way you described regarding the group finder. So I says let's try it and see how it will work, but I hope they will change it if it does not work in the practice.