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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.
Long winded rambling
EmpyreanIke
Member
THIS IS BADLY EDITED AND VERY STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SO ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK 
Just some thoughts on the game and relevant questions
so say a certain area of the map has had a couple wars and an early power comes on a server, basically a level 6 nodes and their zone of influence, like when the other nodes get to level 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 etc. what would incentivize players to attack the lower level nodes?
once the server has played out for a couple of months with mid/high population would a low level node siege be a node siege activity for lower leveled/progressed people or are there other incentives for players to do them?
say a high population server has reached the intial settlement apexs, maxed metropolises, all castles occupied, and a majority of vassals leveled as much as they can. if this server stays at a steady high population, how much of the ingame interactions and content will take place in the "higher node" areas?
Will this be like de-facto leveling zones?
The game seems large enough to me where it could be considered almost a "next-gen" in its scope of player interaction and implementation of player related systems.
for the average player, will they just be on the same node as the latest progression at the start, but slowly fall behind and catch up to the higher nodes later?
essentially, does the game have enough depth where you could have a group of players or guild/small society, that mainly stays at a small city or "vassal" node, a notable amount of distance from the main city (say 1h-1.5h hour or more on mount through effectient paths)
for instance it could be a small social guild of casual players or friends, maybe 30-50 in size, they are slow to max level but play relativly often. Would a majority of their playtime be spent in the lower level nodes as they reach max level, and then move to the higher level nodes as their level increases?
would a player does occasional pvp and limited pve dungeons, but does professions, or exploration, or other means that are not main ways of aquiring gear dependent on progression be essentially a lower "class" in the area of the game? like would they have reasons incentives, and ways to interact with higher level nodes if the divide is there. if they do have ways to interact, is the main way economically?
Final Thoughts
final thoughts on the project and perhaps some dumb advice but seems decent to me, although small in scale to the overall project
So I think this game is very possible technically, and a lot of the systems sound very well-thought out in their macro-sense, and a strong philosophy guides the micro level interactions of systems and progression to not get out of hand. However I can't help but wonder if there is a way to complete the game in its current scope with everything that people take for granted in AAA games, what I mean is detailed art,variance of models, achievments,animations,"small stuff", icons,flavor text, quest text, quest amount.
I think this game truly seeks to be a modern continuation of a large amount of social systems and player dynamics that made original MMOs so unique.
When this game gets released I see it as kind of the spiritual successor to early MMOs, the type of systems and things that people actually enjoy instead of RNG heavy games, or games with extremely poor end level content, because there aren't enough ways to get intrinsic rewards in the game through the ability for players to create their own unique experience
I think you should be wary of people taking ideas from the game or poaching info. If this game releases with the current planned ( and implemented) systems, and if I understand the scope and macro interactions of it, it will make a huge mark on the MMO genre and modern gaming.
Whether other companies take the good ideas from this set of good ideas, is hard to think about because many of them are so beholden to their publisher,greedy, or have bad leads that the are destitute for a combination of: player friendly mechanics, a right combination of depth, and skill in how they implement the staple MMO macro loops, pvp,leveling,gearing,making money,over all character progression.
After hearing steven talk at length and in interviews, and after reading a decent amount of the wiki, I truly believe that this is a project with a scope of that which we have not seen before.
Only word of advice I would give from a long time MMO player is something that you already know but should pay extra attention to in my mind.
Keep the philosophies of your core concepts stable, that is stay true to what you originally envision as the ebb and flow of the game. With a game of this scale combined with the the leveling time, I think this will attract a large amount of hardcore players or players who only play one game. Something crucial to keeping casual players interested and playing is simplicity in learning, but a lot of depth (obviously). I worry that the game will be so big that the amount of content and layers of systems will be too difficult for a new player to understand. The hardcore players or fans will take the time to learn it either way. I think a good UI and an intuitive way of structuring progression that requires one to do an extra “something” with little guidance. For instance if you progress in some medium or minor way and need to go train,learn,complete, or otherwise take part in an additional task to benefit from the progression. A simplified example would be needing to go train a new skill/ability or travel to a place/complete and objective that will allow you to unlock some sort of task to further progress or complete a higher static objective.
Once the game gets to an decent size there will be a lot of differing opinions on how certain small systems or progression work, sometimes there are things that the casuals are right on, to lower certain barriers of entry for more people without damaging the rewards and prestige of the top, or atleast making progression of certain tasks easier. With the level of depth to this so far, I think it is undeniable that time-to-play will be the most limiting factor to most players after they have learned to play, as well as the large amount of time it actually takes to be considered end-game in most progression areas.
I basically think that the UI and user experience of using all the systems in the game are gonna be the most important factor for new player retention assuming that the systems are implemented with their current scope, hardcore fans will learn anything they have to either way
Just some thoughts on the game and relevant questions
so say a certain area of the map has had a couple wars and an early power comes on a server, basically a level 6 nodes and their zone of influence, like when the other nodes get to level 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 etc. what would incentivize players to attack the lower level nodes?
once the server has played out for a couple of months with mid/high population would a low level node siege be a node siege activity for lower leveled/progressed people or are there other incentives for players to do them?
say a high population server has reached the intial settlement apexs, maxed metropolises, all castles occupied, and a majority of vassals leveled as much as they can. if this server stays at a steady high population, how much of the ingame interactions and content will take place in the "higher node" areas?
Will this be like de-facto leveling zones?
The game seems large enough to me where it could be considered almost a "next-gen" in its scope of player interaction and implementation of player related systems.
for the average player, will they just be on the same node as the latest progression at the start, but slowly fall behind and catch up to the higher nodes later?
essentially, does the game have enough depth where you could have a group of players or guild/small society, that mainly stays at a small city or "vassal" node, a notable amount of distance from the main city (say 1h-1.5h hour or more on mount through effectient paths)
for instance it could be a small social guild of casual players or friends, maybe 30-50 in size, they are slow to max level but play relativly often. Would a majority of their playtime be spent in the lower level nodes as they reach max level, and then move to the higher level nodes as their level increases?
would a player does occasional pvp and limited pve dungeons, but does professions, or exploration, or other means that are not main ways of aquiring gear dependent on progression be essentially a lower "class" in the area of the game? like would they have reasons incentives, and ways to interact with higher level nodes if the divide is there. if they do have ways to interact, is the main way economically?
Final Thoughts
final thoughts on the project and perhaps some dumb advice but seems decent to me, although small in scale to the overall project
So I think this game is very possible technically, and a lot of the systems sound very well-thought out in their macro-sense, and a strong philosophy guides the micro level interactions of systems and progression to not get out of hand. However I can't help but wonder if there is a way to complete the game in its current scope with everything that people take for granted in AAA games, what I mean is detailed art,variance of models, achievments,animations,"small stuff", icons,flavor text, quest text, quest amount.
I think this game truly seeks to be a modern continuation of a large amount of social systems and player dynamics that made original MMOs so unique.
When this game gets released I see it as kind of the spiritual successor to early MMOs, the type of systems and things that people actually enjoy instead of RNG heavy games, or games with extremely poor end level content, because there aren't enough ways to get intrinsic rewards in the game through the ability for players to create their own unique experience
I think you should be wary of people taking ideas from the game or poaching info. If this game releases with the current planned ( and implemented) systems, and if I understand the scope and macro interactions of it, it will make a huge mark on the MMO genre and modern gaming.
Whether other companies take the good ideas from this set of good ideas, is hard to think about because many of them are so beholden to their publisher,greedy, or have bad leads that the are destitute for a combination of: player friendly mechanics, a right combination of depth, and skill in how they implement the staple MMO macro loops, pvp,leveling,gearing,making money,over all character progression.
After hearing steven talk at length and in interviews, and after reading a decent amount of the wiki, I truly believe that this is a project with a scope of that which we have not seen before.
Only word of advice I would give from a long time MMO player is something that you already know but should pay extra attention to in my mind.
Keep the philosophies of your core concepts stable, that is stay true to what you originally envision as the ebb and flow of the game. With a game of this scale combined with the the leveling time, I think this will attract a large amount of hardcore players or players who only play one game. Something crucial to keeping casual players interested and playing is simplicity in learning, but a lot of depth (obviously). I worry that the game will be so big that the amount of content and layers of systems will be too difficult for a new player to understand. The hardcore players or fans will take the time to learn it either way. I think a good UI and an intuitive way of structuring progression that requires one to do an extra “something” with little guidance. For instance if you progress in some medium or minor way and need to go train,learn,complete, or otherwise take part in an additional task to benefit from the progression. A simplified example would be needing to go train a new skill/ability or travel to a place/complete and objective that will allow you to unlock some sort of task to further progress or complete a higher static objective.
Once the game gets to an decent size there will be a lot of differing opinions on how certain small systems or progression work, sometimes there are things that the casuals are right on, to lower certain barriers of entry for more people without damaging the rewards and prestige of the top, or atleast making progression of certain tasks easier. With the level of depth to this so far, I think it is undeniable that time-to-play will be the most limiting factor to most players after they have learned to play, as well as the large amount of time it actually takes to be considered end-game in most progression areas.
I basically think that the UI and user experience of using all the systems in the game are gonna be the most important factor for new player retention assuming that the systems are implemented with their current scope, hardcore fans will learn anything they have to either way
0
Comments
There are a few reasons you may want to siege a lower level node.
The first is the rewards. While we don't know too much about them right now, as nodes continue to exist unmolested, they have what essentially amounts to a reward to who ever successfully sieges them increase all the time. The longer a node goes undefeated in a siege, the more valuable it will be for someone to successfully siege it.
There is also the possibility of players wanting to delevel a node that is keeping a metropolis strong in one way or another. If you are not stong enough to take on the metropolis yourself, you may be able to slowly chip away at it in different ways, and sieging a vassal node of your rival metropolis may be one way of doing this.
This is a hard question to answer, but the game is being designed in a way where there are reasons for players to need to spread out around the world.
Things like how resource harvests are always going to shift - players will want to shift around some just to have access to raw materials.
Also, even once everything has reached it's apex, due to the rewards on successfully sieging a node, those nodes will eventually fall, and so things will eventually move around again.
I'm not sure what you mean here.
Players have no reason to stick to one node, and in fact wouldn't really be able to even if they tried.
Im re-thinking over some of my other questions and it just seems to early to really understand how much of their planned systems will actually funcition
The game absolutely is complex though, and most of the systems in there interact with other systems in ways that other games are too scared to do. So yeah, we can kind of get an idea of how the intention is for how it will all work, but until we see it, we (and probably they) don't know for sure that it will work that way.
No, not entirely.
Take a dungeon for example:
Level 3 village node may have a dungeon unlocked that peaks at level 20 monsters.
Level 5 city node may have a dungeon that peaks at level 40 monsters.
The new players are able to head to the city node and join the dungeon's higher floors that would be equivalent to the level 3 village node.
We have quotes of Steven saying that dungeon difficulty and mob levels increase the lower you go!