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.
Progression (Grind)
consultant
Member
There was a game called Battlestar Galactica Online and it was a pay to win game. Some peope would spend the money to get everything or mostly everything. And what would happen the grind part of the game would cease and oddly enough the game would become really boring to them and then would stop playing after about 30 days. The reason I know this is because before quitting they would tell every one in trade chat not to do that and quit playing that game.
Now that game was a PvP game still considered an MMO but mostly PvP. Thing is there is not a progressive nature in the PvP then it kind of loses something. I have noticed that while PvE in an MMO can be very rewarding like mounts and gold and achievements (lot more pve achievements) and so on. While PvP games are rewarded mainly by increased rating.
Now one way to kind of make PvP more progressive is by keeping track of lets say number of kills and assists and whatever else you contribute to the game. Now most games already do this in some way but it mainly happens in the backround Kills automatically get added to total kills not really important umless you know what the number of kills was before the game.
Now in a game called Warcraft II rts game at the end of the scenerio it would tally up your score by keeping track all the things you did thought it was pretty cool. Cool thing about that is that you saw the number increase as the game tallied up your score. Now in League of Legends this is called Eteranals at the end of the game it tells you how many more kills structures and other things you got for that game. Kind of cool but since it is not compared to lets say average kills or personal best kind of not to meaning full. So lets say you have ten more kills that cool and all but you do not see that number added to your running total. Plus do not know how close ten kills is to your personal best or average.
In one word a scoreboard at the and of a game which could be PvP or PvE. Think something like this would add to the progressive nature of the game.
Now that game was a PvP game still considered an MMO but mostly PvP. Thing is there is not a progressive nature in the PvP then it kind of loses something. I have noticed that while PvE in an MMO can be very rewarding like mounts and gold and achievements (lot more pve achievements) and so on. While PvP games are rewarded mainly by increased rating.
Now one way to kind of make PvP more progressive is by keeping track of lets say number of kills and assists and whatever else you contribute to the game. Now most games already do this in some way but it mainly happens in the backround Kills automatically get added to total kills not really important umless you know what the number of kills was before the game.
Now in a game called Warcraft II rts game at the end of the scenerio it would tally up your score by keeping track all the things you did thought it was pretty cool. Cool thing about that is that you saw the number increase as the game tallied up your score. Now in League of Legends this is called Eteranals at the end of the game it tells you how many more kills structures and other things you got for that game. Kind of cool but since it is not compared to lets say average kills or personal best kind of not to meaning full. So lets say you have ten more kills that cool and all but you do not see that number added to your running total. Plus do not know how close ten kills is to your personal best or average.
In one word a scoreboard at the and of a game which could be PvP or PvE. Think something like this would add to the progressive nature of the game.
1
Comments
Btw, why bring in a p2w game example here? There is no p2w elements to draw a parallel on.
My reward is my guild/alliance holding a castle for as long as possible.
My reward is my guild capturing an enemy guilds castle.
My reward is the items or skills that I can unlock for being the best Paladin or necro or rogue after a month of 1v1 nights Olympiad.(if such a system was in place. We will see what the military node will end up being).
My reward is killing the fools who jumped my group as we were xpining out in the open world.
My reward is finally finishing my gear set, which will make me competitive for the next 2 months.
Titles, kill counts, mount skins...
They are the boring rewards you are used to getting from BGs and Dungeons on your boring instanced content mmorpg.
From what I see in Ashes Ill be very happy with:
Crafting gear being top
Open world/limited instances
Corruption safeguard
Siege/guild war
Functional house that can be looted or defended
Lootable caravans and hopefully naval battles
I just hope the class/weapon system works out.
PS. The massive difference I see in mmorpg games is the sense of fulfilment.
People used to open world mmorpgs get satisfaction from large scale guild content, be it wars out in the open, naval battles or sieges.
The others are used to dungeons/bg "co-op/stage" gaming. Sterilized and following the script, and so they need "no death" achievements and titles and mount skins in order to keep doing the same content.
Why should developers spend time trying to satisfy EVERY kind of gamer, instead building their vision for a different mmo?
Open world raid bosses are the best an MMO can be, in my opinion.
You and your friends killing an encoutner that is guaranteed to drop an item that will be the best item the player that gets it will have until a level increase - all while several other guilds wanting to get the kill themselves are standing by watching, essentially helpless.
I also completely agree that things along the lines of "no death" achievements are pathetic excuses for ways to add content, but so are equally pathetic achievements related to open world PvP.
You seem to have placed all cooperative gameplay in to one group in your post - which is kind of what I have come to expect from you - but that is a complete misrepresentation. In the same way that PvP has it's closed, instanced content and it's open content, top end PvE is the same.
P2w gamers didnt felt rewarded in Bstar galactica, PvP can reward ppl with ladderboards and kill counts in aoc.
Notthing about PvE here.
Intrepid is aware that this happens in pvp and the solution they have come up for military nodes is for people to have champions that they outfit fight in the arena so there is an even playing field, and it comes down the every chest thumpers much vaunted "skill." While this won't fix the problem completely, it will allow a random pvper who is better than the other guy to win vs some artificial kill count that can be easily manipulated.
If they do add pvp achievements or leaderboards to the game that give bragging rights and rewards, they should look to removing the human vs human control factor from it also.
Usually solution for this is more content but companies can only put out content so fast cause of testing phases and quality control.
But let me give another example at the end of a game of pinball what usually happens is your score is calculated in a really cool way with really cool sounds seeing all our bonuses and see if you got a high score.
Think such a thing could be added to dungeouns and raids to make them more fun to do. Not just doing them for the gear then go on to more content.
Not quite sure how to avoid cheating with all the technology now days like bots. Even in random environments people can pay some one to play (bots) their toon for them for rewards. Plus rewards could be personal rewards the type that other players are not aware of.
Besides rewards do not have to be huge rewards, small rewards are fine Players are just looking for recognition. But just to give one example of this is a Company called Namco that made a game called Tekken and in that game the number of bouts (best out fo 3 defualt) that you won was actually is represented by fruit icons at the bottom of the screen. Which is really cool to get all those fruit icons at the bottom of your screen. Now in the home playstation one version you had the choice to just have a numerical value or the fruit icons. I switched to numerical to know how many wins in a row I actually had and discovered that that fruits icons were more impactful than just numerical values. So somehting really simple like that can have a huge impact on the game.
Now what I just mentioned is not something you can cheat at but still would be really rewarding to have in a pvp environment. Not fruits per say but some other system.
Apples and oranges, people.
AoC is not a fps PvP arena game. Therefore no K/D/R, no leader boards, etc. Those features are left in the Arena's.
Yes, the will be Arena's. You can have all your Leader & kdr boards and achievements, in your arenas. The open world does not need these features.
I know this is foreign to most PvPers, because they (you) never played outside of an arena. This is a MMORPG.
And there are also other things that apply to raids like Flags or banners. But lets say there was a flag that you could display for completing all the 40 man raids or or them or whatever that is something to shoot for.
People in the open world that walked by could see it and this comes out to player recognition and a progresswive value.