Will There be Challenging PvE While Leveling?

So far it seems like the answer is 'no.' I realize it's very early in development, but a final game grows from early development, and I've rarely seen games get harder as time goes by. Instead devs cater to the whims of the loudest minority. Independently funded games are no exception, no matter how hard they proclaim otherwise during development.

Please don't take the following as a useless whine; if I didn't think this game had great potential I wouldn't bother posting. I'm excited about 8 man groups, PvP, the graphics, and the character system, among other things. I'm hoping people can show me where I'm wrong, or perhaps get enough talking about it that the devs notice.

From the April 30th video, PvE seems to consists of rounding up lots of mobs and AEing them down, with no need for CC or efficient healing. Just spam heal abilities because mana is apparently infinite. Mages were pulling with AEs, accidentally agroing packs of mobs... and rarely does anyone die. When someone does die, it doesn't seem like a big deal, group just keeps AEing and the dead person reappears and begins AEing again. And it was only a 5 man group, out of a max size of 8.
This is the kind of thing that causes people to wander off from a game before they even hit max level.

A video from March 27th showed some interesting open world game play, but then they went up against what they said was supposed to be a 40 man raid boss. The trio of people held their own for almost 5 minutes, and apparently only lost because the healer's chat voted to let the tank die. 5 minutes of spamming heals and still not OOM? How could this possibly be a challenge for 8 people, much less 40?

The most recent video ("Pre-alpha 4k GM...") has me even more worried. Out of a 1:45:21 video there is only a few minutes of actual group action. They wander aimlessly and chat, go to the underdark and chat, decide its lame, wander aimlessly and chat, go to a dungeon and chat, decide its lame, and then spend an hour dicking around in a town while chatting. There are a bunch of other people just dicking around in town, chatting, in spite of dragons being right outside the town gate. No one seems to care, they just dick around in town, chatting. Then everyone zerg rushes the 40 man raid boss, with GMs turning on 100k hp mode so they can't die.

Dicking around in town and dicking around chatting is what you do shortly before you quit a game. If group pve content is so boring that even those paid to play (devs) think it's lame and would rather dick around chatting, what will those of us who pay to play the game think of it?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

unknown

This content has been removed.

Undead Canuck

I guess you didn't actually listen to the dialogue when watching. They said multiple times that they used their GM powers to do things that normally aren't possible just to show us.

Saying that the game is horrible from some pre-Alpha non-optimized showoff videos is the same as rage quitting your job because someone didn't clean the microwave in the kitchen.
If you feel that little of the game, you might want to move on to some other development. Oh wait, they would also be 'lame' because they are in development.

Jahlon

So you are judging the game based on Developer sneak peaks and behind the scenes stuff. Don't do this.

Stevens' entire 4k video was done on the fly due to a response to his internet flaking out on him and he couldn't stream (which was his original plan)

You generally don't see amazing "group play" stuff until Content Creators and other streamers jump in and start show casing what they say.

Jamation

Jignutz wrote: »

Then everyone zerg rushes the 40 man raid boss, with GMs turning on 100k hp mode so they can't die.

Well they can't make a video showing things if they're dead and not in the group battle...

And for a lot of other points a similar thing can be said. A lot of the videos they put out are to show the development of the game, surroundings, skill effects, or anything they think might be cool to show off. As others mentioned, they used their admin abilities in order to bypass usual barriers, such as death, in order to make content for the people to watch. If they constantly kept getting themselves killed or attacked things based on actual status levels they'd never be able to show off anything worthwhile in a short duration of time.

Think less about how the videos are showing how a normal player would play this game and think of it more as a marketing way to discuss and show off how their creation is growing and unfolding since -it is still in development-

Ryufu

If it takes over a month to get to max level, I think that time sink alone could be called a challenge. Also, depends what kind of class you are leveling. Some classes might be easier to level than others. There's a lot to account for when doing something simple as just leveling.

I think you also need to account for the questing and how it impacts your relationship with NPCs and other guilds.

Wandering Mist

Ryufu wrote: »

If it takes over a month to get to max level, I think that time sink alone could be called a challenge. Also, depends what kind of class you are leveling. Some classes might be easier to level than others. There's a lot to account for when doing something simple as just leveling.

I think you also need to account for the questing and how it impacts your relationship with NPCs and other guilds.

A challenge in endurance, nothing more. This is going off topic a bit but I don't understand this attitude some players have that it should take months and months to reach max level, and that games that allow you to level faster are "easier". Just because something takes longer to do doesn't mean it is harder. If I tell you to go paint a wall, having you do it with a toothbrush compared to a roller isn't going to make the task harder, nor is it going to make you a better painter by using the toothbrush. It just makes the task long and tedious.

Anyway, going back to the OP topic, pretty much just to repeat what others have said. It's Alpha, which, unlike in WoW, means that there is very little actually implemented yet. What we've seen so far is maybe a quarter of the stuff that is planned for the game. Things like raid boss mechanics are usually left until much later once the core gameplay has been figured out. Then of course there is the general tuning of the numbers which usually happens during beta testing. There's absolutely no point in judging the difficulty of the game at this early stage. Come back in a years time when the combat is fleshed out before making an opinion on it.

grisu

There isn't really anything more to say than:
They pointed out that they used their gm powers to do pretty much all of it.
If you missed that statement again and again I doubt you watched the videos. Just brushed over a minute skipping through. Context my friend is important.

Aside from that I think your perspective and expectations are off. They haven't even finalized the combat, let alone fleshed out the classes. How the heck would they have the intended balance already setup between skills classes groups and enemies?

Caeryl

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Ryufu wrote: »

If it takes over a month to get to max level, I think that time sink alone could be called a challenge. Also, depends what kind of class you are leveling. Some classes might be easier to level than others. There's a lot to account for when doing something simple as just leveling.

I think you also need to account for the questing and how it impacts your relationship with NPCs and other guilds.

A challenge in endurance, nothing more. This is going off topic a bit but I don't understand this attitude some players have that it should take months and months to reach max level, and that games that allow you to level faster are "easier". Just because something takes longer to do doesn't mean it is harder. If I tell you to go paint a wall, having you do it with a toothbrush compared to a roller isn't going to make the task harder, nor is it going to make you a better painter by using the toothbrush. It just makes the task long and tedious.

If you have nothing of worth until max level, then sure, but Ashes isn’t being designed with any sort of “Max level or useless” philosophy in mind. The leveling process is going to be long because the world will grow with the players, meaning you won’t even see max level encounters for, minimum, weeks after launch (See the wiki on time to level nodes) and obviously the devs don’t want players at level50 when the world is still averaging level30 mobs.

This idea that the game doesn’t start til max level needs to die out.

Atama

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Just because something takes longer to do doesn't mean it is harder. If I tell you to go paint a wall, having you do it with a toothbrush compared to a roller isn't going to make the task harder, nor is it going to make you a better painter by using the toothbrush. It just makes the task long and tedious.

I have to disagree with you there. A roller makes it very easy to make smooth, flat, even strokes that blend uniformly. If you use a toothbrush, you won’t get the same effect from a small brush head that has bristles perpendicular to the painted surface; it will look mottled and uneven. You have chosen hardcore mode with the toothbrush.

volsh

If the devs developed content that was easy and boring they would be unindated with requests for additional content at an early stage which doesnt make sense to me, give this time and let the finished article be the judge

Jignutz

Everything devs say should be taken with a pound of salt, as it is mostly marketing and wishful thinking. After having watched many games develop, I've noticed that what actually gets implemented is often far from the pipe dreams and catch phrases of development. Actual gameplay is a far more worthy barometer of what a game will be like. And the actual gameplay is the same kind of EZMode games have been giving us for years. Games that quickly failed.

Warning signs to look out for: PvP gets more carebear, leveling gets easier, and less emphasis on content that only a small % will be able to access. Games always start out talking tough on these issues, then cave when they see tester complaints and start doing monetary calculations.

Caeryl

Devs who have to answer to money-hungry shareholders are forced to change their game. A privately funded one at least has a chance to retain its core philosophies.

Noaani

Jignutz wrote: »

Actual gameplay is a far more worthy barometer of what a game will be like.

I agree with you here, but we haven't seen any actual gameplay as it will be in the released game.

An alpha (an actual alpha) shouldn't be seen by the public, as it never represents anything to do with the finished game.

I can't think of any other MMO where we have seen as much as early as we have seen about Ashes. Most MMO's are at about the point Ashes is at now when they first announce the game.

voidshadow

Undead Canuck wrote: »

I guess you didn't actually listen to the dialogue when watching. They said multiple times that they used their GM powers to do things that normally aren't possible just to show us.

Saying that the game is horrible from some pre-Alpha non-optimized showoff videos is the same as rage quitting your job because someone didn't clean the microwave in the kitchen.
If you feel that little of the game, you might want to move on to some other development. Oh wait, they would also be 'lame' because they are in development.

For the record, rage quitting your job because someone didn't clean the microwave is a very valid reason to quit your job.

CLEAN YOUR DAMN MESS JANICE FROM ACCOUNTING!

Talents

Depends what you mean by challenging. I don't think I've played a single MMO where I thought the levelling was challenging.

George_Black

Talents wrote: »

Depends what you mean by challenging. I don't think I've played a single MMO where I thought the levelling was challenging.

What was the mmo max character lv? How fast did you reach that lv since you created a char?

Back in 2003 I started playing Line][Age and I finished around 2010 (on a private server x3 xp for those who know. For those who don't this info means nothing).

Since it was my first time, lv 1-20 took me about a week. The quest at lv 20 to choose class took 1-2 hours depending on the class. At lv 20 I could equip D grade gear until lv 40.
20-40 took me 2 or 3 weeks. At lv 40 I spend 1 week or less in order to get C grade gear. Then I did a 3 part quest to choose the specilization of my class (class ID= role + weapon/armor playstyle). That quest took me a day or two.

During all these first weeks of playing my first mmorpg together with 5 friends which ended up being around 10 (inrl from the city), the game did not force me to do any dailies, or go to specific points of interest. I was free to explore new beautiful locations and cities filled with players buying and selling and sorting out their inventories and warehouses. Not stupid NPC and npc noise.
If I was alone I was lving up around plains, forests, deserts. If I was with 2-3 friends we'd go inside ancient giants' towers, underground caves, haunted execution grounds. Open world PvP, if some1 killed me I'd go looking for him/her to kill them back. If as a group we came across other players we'd either lv up near them and chat a bit with them, or fight them.

At lv 40, once we had all geared up and chosen our roles/playstyles for our classes, we looked back at 4 weeks of exciting gameplay on a free world. We had been to places where we got slaughtered and dropped gear, we crafted it again. We travelled to many places seeking materials for our crafts or to sell them and make gold. We LOVED our classes. We absolutely loved how they felt so different from each other and the themes behind them. When in groups for more dangerous zones, it was always a challenge not to pull too many mobs and die, or waste too much time PvPing and lose xp at death or simple not gain xp since we were fighting other real people. Guess what? WE LOVED PvP. The sense of the team victory, or the amazing skill that some of us had in staying cool and execute smart abilitties without panicking and making mistakes.

By that time we had come across people with icons next to their character names, and titles above them. These people belong in guilds and we had seen them on some Sundays gather at towns to siege the nearby ruling castle. Massive amounts of people were fighting. Some guilds were allies, others were 1 guild against all. Some guilds hated another guild or alliance so much they'd always pk them on sigh due to the War System that allowed players to kill enemy guilds without getting Corrupted.

Lv 40-52 took us 2-3 weeks. During those lvs solo lving up was extremely slow, so we'd always at least duo adventure. We also wised up. We crafted weapons for DPS and armors for healers/tanks and supports, in order to avoid spending too much time farming and crafting and more time in xping.
Since around 10 of us irl friends played the game we started raiding. Out in the Open World. With people trying to steal our raidboss.
If it was a guild, we were fvcked. If it was another small group we'd PvP them and then kill the raid or die.

Around lv 60 or so we wanted to create a guild. We failed at doing content we wanted like sieging or epic world bosses. We joined other guilds. Some of us stuck to 1 guild, others met other people online and join other guilds, but we'd always find time to play together.
In order to get into guilds we were expected to wear full B grade gear. So (as seen in my forum pic) I got dressed in full B grade gear, looking amazing along with my friends. It took us around a month. And there we are in the middle of guild wars and sieges, fighting to control towns and gain profits, organizing epic raids, more epic than you can ever imagine thanks to PvP.

We discovered new locations that required a full group to explore without dying. Several months pasted before we reached 70 or so, and in the process unlocking more fantastic abilities for our cool classes. Never have I enjoyed an mmorpg since then, and I have played Tera (which has the best combat ever), AA, FFXIV, ESO, BDO. We'd make cool 1v1 videos in the arenas against each other, or other players. And by arenas I don't mean battleground instances. The who's who of the PvP community would be there seeking to prove their skill in 1v1 or group fights. We'd make youtube videos of arena duels, open world PvP, sieging.

A year later or so a new expansion came out. New gear from lv 61-76 called A grade. Looked boss as fvck even tho I liked my B grade better. No skins back then. A few new skills and class balance adjustments. New territories new cities new systems.

Tired of playing the same class for the past year? Do this 2 month long quest requiring a lot of team work and guild work and there you go, your character now has 2 classes and you have the Nobility title.
Are you a Noble? Fight in the monthly 1v1 instanced battleground. At the end of the month, the strongest player of each of all the classes (they were more than 12 from memory, all of them viable, all of them cool, all of the requested by all guilds) would become a hero, with unique weapons for the month, unique skills, unique glow and true global shout (so good for trading and bantering).

A year later new expansion. More zones. New gear at lv 76. New max lv at 78. So hard to farm for and craft, involving quests with raid bosses.
New extremely difficult class progress quest, to unlock a few more skills. Months of gameplay required.

Next year. New expansion, new zones, new skills, new race and so on and so on, until the mmorpg market and profitability models changed. And guess what? The game became shiet.

So yeah.

In reply to the above post, I have experienced challenging and FUN lving up in an mmorpg. I would have never been like this if I was forced to quest all over the map for at Points of Interest, or run dungeon runs to pick up gear, as opposed to open world adventure, pvp, farming and crafting.
I'd reach max lv in a week and then spend my endgame doing the same old dailies and instanced dungeon runs again and again and again. What for? To win instanced BGs matchs? To decorate a useless house as opposed to guild class and guild castles? What would my endgame be? Farming armor skins and flying mount skins?

A bit off topic: This the first game development and testing that I participate in because this game promises to give me what games like L2 use to give + so much more, with updated graphics and combat. This will be the first game to do so without p2w since 2003.
I am so confused with people that (off topic I know..) open discussions, complaining about "why isn't ashes copying the ideas I proposed from all the other crap mmorpgs out there:
1)ez story mode questing-> reach max lv in a week, marry an npc and start your end game.
2)Endgame: run the same dungeons again and again and again until you get the gear you need. Then run them for the dailies that give you 1 key a day to unlock some other crap
3)PvP in instanced BG matches. Bore your self instead of playing an FPS or MOBA. Be surprised at how bad you are at combat now that you face people instead of NPCs. Start calling PvPrs stupid and only play PvE.
4)Decorate your house and invite other people to look at it. Nobody will come. Join an RP guild and pretend to explore those ancient ruins. Every mob dies with 1 hit. Equip lv1 gear to make the adventure more challenging.
5)Fashion show

Atama

Pre-Kunark EQ was extremely challenging while leveling.

Also dull. Challenging doesn’t necessarily mean fun. Grinding the same things over and over in a group for a sliver of XP each time, risking a wipe if you just let one mob run away and bring another group over... Even risking death is tedious when done repetitively.

palabana

Jignutz wrote: »

Warning signs to look out for: PvP gets more carebear, leveling gets easier, and less emphasis on content that only a small % will be able to access. Games always start out talking tough on these issues, then cave when they see tester complaints and start doing monetary calculations.

You are right about taking what they said with a grain of salt. Fortunately, we have tons of carebears posting about how they don't want to be involved in any form of PvP at all and Intrepid never responded to their demands.

Atama

palabana wrote: »

Jignutz wrote: »

Warning signs to look out for: PvP gets more carebear, leveling gets easier, and less emphasis on content that only a small % will be able to access. Games always start out talking tough on these issues, then cave when they see tester complaints and start doing monetary calculations.

You are right about taking what they said with a grain of salt. Fortunately, we have tons of carebears posting about how they don't want to be involved in any form of PvP at all and Intrepid never responded to their demands.

That’s not entirely true. Steven typically responds to those demands, but by saying “sorry but that’s core to the game”.

Wandering Mist

Atama wrote: »

Pre-Kunark EQ was extremely challenging while leveling.

Also dull. Challenging doesn’t necessarily mean fun. Grinding the same things over and over in a group for a sliver of XP each time, risking a wipe if you just let one mob run away and bring another group over... Even risking death is tedious when done repetitively.

Agreed.

Child Item