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.
“No Real End Game” and Progression in Ashes
Jezvin
Member
Progression is the core of the RPG in MMORPG. When you start the game, progression is the origin of gameplay. What is then strange, is you become as strong as possible and you are done with progression. This end, is the origin of ‘end game.’
When I looked at Ashes they said there was no real end game. That instantly told me to start looking at their progression system because, that’s what it actually means to have no end game. Looking at it I have a lot of concerns, but I want to talk about two things I would like to see change.
To start off, Node progression seems intuitively focused around the Node, but it should be focused around the players. Instead of the actions of the players directly building up the node, the actions of the players should build up a personalized node progression path that then affects the node when those players are residents of the node. The goal is to reward and give value to players that is then desired by the leaders of the nodes to attract players to their cities. For an economic example: A node should not progress because of the amount or quality of trade routes being run, but it would progress from having successful trade runners as residents in the node. This would not replace active growth in the node, like a quest line to upgrade the node, but it would replace any form of grind that would define node progression. This type of progress will empower players and give them a feeling of value, and it will drive player interaction and recruitment outside of just guilds.
This method makes up for a fear I have when player cities can be conquered or downgraded. It has been shown in games like Darkfall or Albion, that when players invest significant time and effort into a city they lose, guilds will collapse and players will quit the game. This is even more of an issue in Ashes because you can have third parties like a tavern keeper lose his tavern and progress if a node fails. But that shouldn’t matter, a good chef or tavern keeper is the reason it is good, not the location. A player whose city collapses should be able to move and boost the new node from his experience. If a mercenary guild that fought in castle sieges decides to pick up and move, that new node should become more militaristic even unlocking a stage upgrade quest if it’s a military node. People are the progress and they make a city so they should be where progress is saved.
Although second, the first thing that hit me was the class system. It’s one dimensional, you get one class on your character and you level that up to the max. It is the standard model for the west, so it is not surprising, but to really make it shine you need higher level account systems like ESO has with CP levels after cap. Where when you hit max level you start leveling champion points. Then any alt you make retains the champion point level and can start leveling them again at max. ESO is a good example of a game with a poor release that doubled down on progression for success.
It doesn't get much better looking at sub classes either. They mentioned quests to unlock, which is fantastic, but unless they are somewhat gated and take effort the progression reward will be lackluster. This brings me to the eastern leveling systems, like in FFXI/XIV, or Archeage where one character can be all the classes. Personally, I want one character all classes and your sub job augments reflect the level of the other classes requiring you to max out all 8 classes to get the most out of sub job switching. There are so many ways to change this, leveling the archetype combined classes independently after 25 but keeping the primary archetype. Or you could even go nuts and make it so one character can level all 64 combinations. I just want to see as much potential progression as possible packed into one character, or if it’s not possible tie as much of it into the account.
I know systems like these bring in new issues. Such as how do you deal with node deleveling and node conflict, or what about wanting to play other races in a one character all class game. But I'm concerned this game is making mistakes that many of the original MMOs did where they focus on a fantasy world and not really aware of what the game that the players are playing is. Especially due to the eastern influence, Lineage 2 and archeage, these games have a successful pay to win dependent gameplay loop. Players have constant progression and are rewarded with PvP where they get to be OP if they invest money or time into the game. The issue is these games depend upon the infinite gambling like progression that inherently unbalanced PvP. If you cut that P2W off and you cut that progression to make fair PvP the model collapses. I personally would love to hear if the whole game was reexamined at with personal player progression in mind.
When I looked at Ashes they said there was no real end game. That instantly told me to start looking at their progression system because, that’s what it actually means to have no end game. Looking at it I have a lot of concerns, but I want to talk about two things I would like to see change.
To start off, Node progression seems intuitively focused around the Node, but it should be focused around the players. Instead of the actions of the players directly building up the node, the actions of the players should build up a personalized node progression path that then affects the node when those players are residents of the node. The goal is to reward and give value to players that is then desired by the leaders of the nodes to attract players to their cities. For an economic example: A node should not progress because of the amount or quality of trade routes being run, but it would progress from having successful trade runners as residents in the node. This would not replace active growth in the node, like a quest line to upgrade the node, but it would replace any form of grind that would define node progression. This type of progress will empower players and give them a feeling of value, and it will drive player interaction and recruitment outside of just guilds.
This method makes up for a fear I have when player cities can be conquered or downgraded. It has been shown in games like Darkfall or Albion, that when players invest significant time and effort into a city they lose, guilds will collapse and players will quit the game. This is even more of an issue in Ashes because you can have third parties like a tavern keeper lose his tavern and progress if a node fails. But that shouldn’t matter, a good chef or tavern keeper is the reason it is good, not the location. A player whose city collapses should be able to move and boost the new node from his experience. If a mercenary guild that fought in castle sieges decides to pick up and move, that new node should become more militaristic even unlocking a stage upgrade quest if it’s a military node. People are the progress and they make a city so they should be where progress is saved.
Although second, the first thing that hit me was the class system. It’s one dimensional, you get one class on your character and you level that up to the max. It is the standard model for the west, so it is not surprising, but to really make it shine you need higher level account systems like ESO has with CP levels after cap. Where when you hit max level you start leveling champion points. Then any alt you make retains the champion point level and can start leveling them again at max. ESO is a good example of a game with a poor release that doubled down on progression for success.
It doesn't get much better looking at sub classes either. They mentioned quests to unlock, which is fantastic, but unless they are somewhat gated and take effort the progression reward will be lackluster. This brings me to the eastern leveling systems, like in FFXI/XIV, or Archeage where one character can be all the classes. Personally, I want one character all classes and your sub job augments reflect the level of the other classes requiring you to max out all 8 classes to get the most out of sub job switching. There are so many ways to change this, leveling the archetype combined classes independently after 25 but keeping the primary archetype. Or you could even go nuts and make it so one character can level all 64 combinations. I just want to see as much potential progression as possible packed into one character, or if it’s not possible tie as much of it into the account.
I know systems like these bring in new issues. Such as how do you deal with node deleveling and node conflict, or what about wanting to play other races in a one character all class game. But I'm concerned this game is making mistakes that many of the original MMOs did where they focus on a fantasy world and not really aware of what the game that the players are playing is. Especially due to the eastern influence, Lineage 2 and archeage, these games have a successful pay to win dependent gameplay loop. Players have constant progression and are rewarded with PvP where they get to be OP if they invest money or time into the game. The issue is these games depend upon the infinite gambling like progression that inherently unbalanced PvP. If you cut that P2W off and you cut that progression to make fair PvP the model collapses. I personally would love to hear if the whole game was reexamined at with personal player progression in mind.
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Ashes has about $40 Million the last time I heard. I was worried at the scope of the project with such a limited capital. What you are suggesting will add too much scope for the limited budget. It isn't beyond hope that these things will be added through expansions but it is important to get the main game built first.
I do foresee issues of player retention but the NDA is still in place. My fears could be unfounded.
Edit: It is true there isn't really an End Game in Ashes, you kind of just repair and get richer. You kind of just PvE to PvP and PvP to PvP. You kind of just see what's occuring and have more things to do than time. It doesn't need an end game for the style of game it aims to be, but, the gameplay does need to be engaging.
If the player matters more than the node, why should players care about a node? If I can just open a Tavern anywhere, why does my current tavern matters?
The fact that a node can be destroyed should scared you, that's the point. If you have a Trade Business in your current node, you should be fighting, or in case you can't, providing weapons, mats, blueprints to the Mayor to protect your city! This creates affiliation, which makes you care. You're no longer a 1 man army/ 1 Man auction house, you need other people and a node's influence to make your business prosper.
Should you lose your node, then you have to get to another node, become citizen and start from zero.
And all classes being everything erases risk vs reward. If you can be all, why have classes at all
It adds nothing to the scope of the game, it would work primarily off the current system, actions that would progress the node instead progress the character's node path and then the node is progressed. You don't need new models and graphics, you need UI and to shift where node progress is stored. It's more of a design issue. The current design has flaws and we have seen them in MMOs of the past that have failed.
Players can obtain Node Augments, so they will advance alongside the Node, there will be augments from Race, Religion and Guilds too. Maybe other area for augments. This is the character progression. Houses improve and Freeholds can be built. I don't really understand what other kinds of character progression you would aim for in terms of Character Node Progression?
I think the game is very simplistic in some respects. The game relies on Sieges to delevel what has been levelled which is fine, but if sieges aren't frequent then Mayors will have nothing to do but mess around with Taxes. Some Nodes might not be touched at all (Who would want to destroy the Economic Auction Houses?). If we add something like Champion Points would you expect rewards? I thought Champion Points were ridiculous when I played ESO - I didn't like the fact I had to go into the opposing Realms to progress.
There will be no factions in Ashes and I'm not sure if there will be methods to acquire extra progression beyond max level or completionist styled achievements. I assume there will be achievements but I wouldn't want extra levels on top of max levels, levelling in expansions will be draining enough. I prefer horizontal progression.
Exactly this.
OP hasn't forgotten this at all, in fact it's their intention - they've never engaged with and invested in a single, constant community over a long period of time, instead wanting to continue to be able to just look after number-1 by being able to pick up and leave with their (node) progression as the winds change.
I think with religions, npc guilds, enchants, augments, skill points etc that we have a great deal of class freedom here, that isnt just linked to end game, just my personal take.
One thing I'd like to point out though, it isnt going to be the normal easy road to get good gear in this game, I really think people arent grasping just how much competition for top spawns, raids, dungeons etc there will be. Its going to be a long road, with a bunch of different side activities on top. And while this might not be full sandbox, the systems in place will also encourage the players to be the content themselves. Loot isnt going to be falling from the sky like normal mmo's you wont be getting a piece of loot every time you kill a boss etc.
On the topic of your class points, there is already a thread about swapping classes/one char does all, maybe check it out but your opinion seems to be the minority here.
The reward is your character brings value to a node, your time and effort is still yours. MMOs thrive off of character progression in almost any way, if that progression brings more value to the world then it feels far more significant and rewarding. The current system your actions in a node reward the leadership of the guilds running the nodes. I want to ask if you did go to opposing realms to progress in ESO?
I quit ESO when my MMO Partner's Missus sold my MMO Partner's Playstation. I haven't been back since.
There is a fundamental difference to our expectations. In DAOC I worked for the faction, lived for the faction and died for the faction. In Ashes I'd work for the Node, live for the Node and die for the Node. It is also true I'd work for the Guild, live for the Guild and die for the Guild. The aim would be to strengthen the Node and Guild, protect the Node and Guild and build the Node and Guild. I would obviously work alongside other Citizens and my Guildies to obtain the best gear I could get but the goal wouldn't be to max out my character it would be to better assist the Node and the Guild. As I've stated there aren't factions, there are only Guilds and Nodes.
Progression is more important than Risk vs Reward for an MMO. In the current system the only place you want to set up your tavern is in the city with the biggest baddest dude on the server to minimize your risk. This is what will happen everyone will minimize their risk and stop conflict to produce more progression and money. It's designed to be a playground for the top to stomp out competition. The way they are designing against this is just distance and time, all that will do is let people invest more an more effort that will eventually be crushed out of existence.
Just because you feel that way - would want to attach yourself to the biggest and baddest for an easy and free ride, doesn't mean the entire playerbase will.
I want to strike out on my own, either with some like-minded friends or join a guild to help build from scratch, carve out our own piece of the world while making a name for ourselves, instead of living under someone elses shadow for protection.
So yes there will be bad zergs like Albion Online, which you can never truly get rid of in a game where people can and naturally will join together alot for, for safety, but that won't be all there is.
In Albion Online and Eve Online there are plenty of smaller corps and guilds doing their own thing - it's on you for having the zerg mentality and restricting your gameplay as such because of it.
P.S The best part about this game is the wide world, lack of fast travel and node based gameplay (which is probably intentional for this reason) so the zergs and other dangerous places or whatever are restricted to their particular node and the surrounding areas.
It's nice that you bring up Albion which throughout the majority of it's life they designed the town plots in the open world to be nearly impossible to capture to curb attrition. In Albion there are a lot of smaller guilds that bend the knee to larger ones to get their hideout or they live out of the cities that cannot be captured or taken. I'm not too familiar with EvE but from what I know most would live in high/low sec or wormhole space leaving the 0.0 to large guilds and empires. Also conflict will only be for those that don't bend, or for those who are too weak to fight back. It's not the fire and brimstone I'm afraid of it's the boring hand holding.
You've said a lot, and while I like your idea of trade routes in your original post a bit, I'm not on your side of the fence.
You seem to want to have all the reward and none of the risk? Tell me if I am wrong though.
You mentioned taverns so ill touch on that briefly. The way I currently understand the artisan system is that you level it up like any other skill. So if you are cooking in a tavern you own in a village and it gets burned to the ground you should keep that xp you gained cooking, but you lose your tavern. You make it seem like you believe that you lose all the xp you gained in cooking for x amount of weeks.
Lastly about what I quoted you above in. You are 100% that a tavern owner would want to be in the city with the baddest dude on the server protecting it. But how many taverns can be in a city? Not that many i'd imagine. Not game breaking at least. So the richest players who want to have a tavern will be able to do that. But the rest of the player base will have tavern's in another nodes. So it wont mean "everyone".
Also, you can put a tavern on a freehold and if you do that you can remain safe if they do not destroy your freehold. You have 2 hours (I think) after a siege where a freehold can be destroyed. If it is not you are safe. You have 1 week to find a new node to give progress towards (Not sure if it has to be a village or not, still unclear).
I think this is where you might be incorrect. I look at this node system just like eve online's current system. I think almost every node will have one main guild running it. Obviously it will be slightly difficult based on how mayor positions in the nodes are given. The military nodes, and divine nodes are probably the only nodes where we won't see as many guilds in charge imo.
Ofcourse I'm a minority, most people here are living off the nostalgia of old MMOs and are too blind to see why they failed. Even your point about getting loot every time you kill a boss doesn't happen in WoW, FFXIV or almost any successful MMO.
Character progression is the most important thing for an MMO, and the core systems of a game should involve character progression to drive gameplay. That is the core of what I am saying with this.
Progression can be good and bad. We want progression but we don't want bad progression. Ashes has planned expansions with more progression, we don't want all the progression to be in the base game. We want the base game to be good and all content to be relevant.
I agree that character progression is important, but ashes is going to focus on both the node and the player. This way, you have something to do no matter what. Also, with open world PVP, the best gear will be hard to get as the dungeons will be contested no matter what, and will get harder when there is better loot drops.
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
AoC has character progression, but your statement that it is the most important thing for an mmo is solely your opinion and not a fact. Especially for an mmo, many would argue that advancing social structures like guilds and nodes are even more important to creating an extremely successful mmo. The social structures players create and help build keep people coming back. And the node system is greater than all social structures we've seen in the past.
He has a good point though. As a pvx
Game there should be endgame content for both pvp and pve and there is a very strong vibe right now that not only will there be no pve endgame that pve is only there to be another source of pvp. It is very much sounding like a pvp game with crafting instead of a pvx game
I understand it's hard to get out of this mentality when you all you've seen and known is themepark mmos, but a sandbox community based mmo has no place for that.
Try standing out by earning it from more than just playing the game, it's more admirable and respectable that way - maybe by going above and beyond in things such as:
Community participation
Node work and general dedication
PvP skills
PvE skills
Team participation and leading for PvX
Node attack/defence
You're trying to fit your well-doctrinated only-looking-out-for-number-1 themepark mentality into the sandbox mmo and if you keep doing so you'll only set yourself up for disappointment.
It might be a culture shock but if you find the right node, the right place with the right people you might just find you end up enjoying the commitment and community aspects of it, even if you aren't treated as a special snowflake by default.
Yeah the tavern thing is probably pretty bad but I was watching a lot of hells kitchen so it kinda just was in my head. Also it was more of an intuitive example rather than an actual look at what the current systems are literally designed to.
But if I take a closer look at risk vs reward, I want the risk to be taken more by those running the node than by the majority of the people in the node. So things like a quest to expand parts of it that requires donations, or the election types they have mentioned, Conflict with other nodes would be another investment. But for almost third party players who settle in a node and do content in the area that progress to an active node. It should be retained by them because it is now who they are. Think of it like an extremely good hunter goes to a new node to live and he is so knowledgeable he finds new spawns that were previously hidden. It gives a path of progression to players and probably most important of all it now gives a drive for Node leader to try and recruit people to come to their node, if you actually need people with certain levels of experience vs just making the people that you have go out and farm content to try and push the node.
You even mention you see nodes having main guilds run them, this goal is to make it so nodes are not only one main guild running them and have reasons for unaffiliated players to live there without as much of a risk from poor choices made by the guilds in charge.
I do think more needs to be discussed about what happens after max level but there is PLENTY of time left to do that.
But at the end of the day doesn't everything roll back to pvp? Maybe ive played the wrong MMOs but EVE, Archeage, Runescape, and Guild Wars. Didn't it all come back to pvp? You do the late game bosses and/or raids to get better gear to pvp with.
Can I get some better examples of pve end game so I can think on it more haha.
This is my point, progression has to end in the current WoW and FFXIV to make sense. That is end game. The end game became a successful business model and progression was kicked to the curb(resets every tier and expansion) in favor of the expansion cycle to push a fresh end game repeatedly. If you want to get back to the older style of gameplay you need to double down on progression. But, you don't need to make it one dimensional though, you don't need 1 super long leveling track if you have 10 medium length leveling tracks. But the core of it is progression, if you aren't constantly progressing in some way then you need something to occupy the players and that becomes the end game content.
Don't worry, Aardvark, I had the same issues when I heard there was 'No End Game'. I figured I would try Ashes of Creation and see if I could make my own End Game, after all, we would all choose our own paths anyway. What one would consider End Game, some may not, and what some would find excellent, others would not. We can't find consensus between PvP or PvE people in any other game and I doubt we will in Ashes.
If Ashes offers high end and challenging Raids, the PvE Players should be happy. If Ashes offers decent Sieges and meaningful PvP, the PvP Players should be happy. We'll know more when the NDA lifts.
I agree with you in theory, but, in practice in terms of Progression, when I reach max Progression I tend to leave the game. There must be more than simply Progression, there must be a reason to Progress. WoW gambled on Mythic Raids and Mythic Raids do the job. WoW is more PvE than PvP though. In terms of PvX then there must be a new direction. I can't decide at present whether Ashes is genius or a flop waiting to happen. Of course, I'm an investor in terms of packages but overall we can't change massive directions, we can only give feedback when the directions are apparent.
First, great show!
I still think the majority of the risk will be taken on by the people governing the node (although losing a auction house linked to all others would be a huge loss). They are using resources and coin to build buildings that can be destroyed. I betcha it would take several weeks or months of owning a village node to pay itself off in the end. A game that is similar to this concept is Puzzle Pirates granted its broken.
Onto the hunting... So lets say I am hunting (don't think thats a profession). I am building xp towards node progression as the node progresses I get better hunting spots, but I also level myself up to be able to hunt bigger and rarer game. If the node collapses those hunting spots obviously get reset to their base level. I however would still get to keep my xp I personally gained from hunting and all the attributes/skills involved. So what do I lose? I lose the convenience of knowing all the spots but life goes on I still got my skills. So I move to a new node and progress faster than before when I originally started. Maybe I even have a group of friends ask me to come to their node because they need good hunters (recruited as you).
I think we are saying the same thing and maybe I am misinformed. But I am under the belief that your artisan skills progress with you. So if you leave the node you keep those skills. I think it would be ridiculous if that were not the case.
But would it hurt if that value you have brought to the node is partially saved in your character and could influence other nodes if you ever moved? I think it won't hurt, you can have all of what you want along with opening up far more motivations that are most importantly a driving force behind gameplay in the genre.
There potentially being a distinct lack of end game is fine.
(even though there is going to be some level in the form of raids, as well as dungeons that the deeper you go the harder they apparently get, and the highest/rarest mats for the best gear and their areas out in the world.)
Again the perfect cases in point - Albion Online and Eve Online.
You're trying to force more of your themepark mentality into a sandbox - it's like trying to force a triangle into a square hole.