So a lot of the inputs we get are 'what' related. What can we do? What things can we see in Ashes and so on. However, if I think back to any of my favorite MMOs, which also are still active after many years, I think of the 'why' I liked them not the 'what' I was able to do there. The 'why' that justified, why I was grinding, working hard, competing with others...
So I read a lot about, gear, gold, professions, dungeons in ashes ... and now I think about the why. Why do I need gold? To buy a certificate to siege a city? Why would I do that? To open up new content? Why would I be interested in content? For gear? What do I need more gear for? More content? Some might think now, well you can always ask why and never get to an answer. But I think in the games that stick in memory did find a why at some point.
So what was the 'why' in other games? Disclaimer: The following focuses a lot on prestige. And not everyone cares about that. Some might even think its silly. Or compensation for something. But this is just an example. Other players have other things they want to experience in games. So don't get hung up about this being an aspect that isn't appealing to you. This post is more about how things interact and how a feature becomes more than just another feature.Tibia
So Tibia is a very odd and old MMO, some of you might heard rumor about or even ... well experienced. It is a very grindy game. Its base setting has basically no quest other than some tasks which give access to certain areas or are one time treasures. It has close to no quest pointer to those few quests and you actually have to talk in chat with NPCs to accept/ turn in Q. With that, the player is basically left with nothing but slaying monster/ discovering all day. There is no level cap to achieve and no real story line to follow. So why would one sink countless hours into the game?
Prestige (there are more reasons I just want to focus on a certain aspect)
In Tibia there are treasures of varying rarity. Some items were only given out a few times our could only be found for a very limited amount of time. So by today in this 23yr old game there are some unique items. Some of them are worth several thousand US$ considering there is a currency in the game which can be bought with real money. However, having rare items alone in a game doesn't make them worth several thousand dollar. Because the question remains... why? Why are they so good? Are they powerful? Short answer no. They are trash. Some of them are even deco only. However, Tibia has a very interesting housing system, which are the key to their value. Houses are similar to Ashes out in the world as actual spaces in the world. So far Ashes and Tibia are at equal footing. However due to Tibias TopDown perspective, you dont need to enter a house to be able to see inside. You pass through the city and automatically see inside peoples houses. Also you can display ANY item just by dropping it on the floor. Now we are talking! Your personal advertisement space, which you can rent, in the world for everyone to see. Owning an item in your backpack for yourself to see has nothing against displaying it for the whole server to see.
This might not look like much, but this would pay most peoples rent for probably well over a year or even more.
Of course there are also in game available rares. And they have a similar effect (so this isnt about "a game needs items that you need to buy for huge amounts of real money" XD). If you are the guy with the coolest house in your group, you can be sure, when you login some of your buddies will already hang out outside your house, because they wanted to show, that they know such a "cool" guy (why people would just hang out in town randomly is another story, but they were). So long story short, having a nicely decorated house in a good neighborhood was the best feeling in the world. And that is the why. Being admired by people and being the central meet up point of your friends group feels amazing. So you need a house in a good location (which costs a lot of gold) and nice rares to attract people > you want to lvl up to get stronger to get gold faster and be able to kill bosses that drop rarer loot > you want to kill monsters to get levels > you want to do a stupid repetitive tasks for hours. There we go a 'why' of Tibia is uncovered. And now we also see, why Ashes Housing might not fulfill the same purpose. First of the need to walk into a house to explore it, versus passively seeing it just by walking from your hunting ground to the depot, is a huge factor. People wont explore 20 houses to find one cool one by chance. Also while a specific way of decoration might be incredibly artistically pleasing, if anyone can obtain the same set of deco just like that, its just not that special. Also while you were offline, your avatar would lay in bed in your house, so everyone would also see that it was your house quite easily. Next: if the process of getting cool decoration isn't tied to what players are supposed to be motivated to do such as craving for power (i.e. fighting other player, fighting stronger monsters...), searching for rare bosses or grinding for that super rare drop, then all these things will be pointless. (ofc there are more systems that can add value to grinding not just housing XD, but there must be something, that creates a great feeling for at least one part of the players).
Another feature, where other games have found a 'why' but Ashes might still have to prove they also have a 'why' is gear. Gear can be used to gain power. And power can be necessary for other "whys". However, one direct way to justify gear is to show off with it and I feel like the more direct the why can be answered the better. To me WoW is a great example of a game that had the why for gear and then destroyed it. Originally, gear was a direct indicator of what you reached in game. Basically, you were your personal advertisement space. A full set of an armor set showed others, you clear a certain content regularly. This was further boosted by the fact, that the style of that gear was beyond anything the average player had.
YOU STOOD OUT! Also the content was hard enough, that it was considered a feat to have it. The peak of this effect (to me) was the 3rd tier set of Naxxramas. Back in the days (and I dont expect it to play out like that in modern Vanilla WoW but thats a different discussion) only VERY VERY few had the last tier set of Vanilla WoW. And on top it looked so super impressive.
Player would literally follow fully geared characters around in awe.
With the introduction of Transmog (the ability to make your worn gear look like other items) the decline of gears importance as a matter of prestige began. Now everyone could just switch into their most cool looking sets and didn't have to look like they just started the game a few days ago compared to players that actually wore the most exclusive gear. On top of that eventually different difficulties of each content were introduced in an effort to make the content available for any player no matter how unskilled. Player received gear, that literally couldn't even quite figure out where the boss was at. And that gear used the same models as the hardcore settings only in different colors. And quite honestly, the average player didn't even realize which color meant which difficulty stage anyway. So suddenly people wouldn't even notice what the gear one wore stood for. Thus, people also cared having it for that purpose. -> Will Ashes cosmetics have a similar effect?
Another thing is exploration. Why would I want to go out in the world? Again Tibia comes to mind. Tibia was one giant world. It had nothing like level based areas. One hunted some skeletons at lvl 10 not knowing anything about the world and suddenly a raid of lvl 200+ would zoom through the same cave one was minding his own business in on their path down into the depth of the cave, where hidden past several secrets the literal Pits of Inferno were located at. Every spot in this world was magical. You never knew what waited for you. 1. Reason to explore the world was safety. When in trouble it was good to know where safe zones were waiting for you. 2. Finding a lucrative hunting ground. Again due to lack of quests and no indicator such as level based zones, there was literally no game mechanic telling you, what a good hunting location was for you. Striving for lucrative hunts meant to explore and try out other areas. Even if that comes at the cost of sometimes ending up in a room with a giant spider with no way out and certain death awaiting. (Note: the death toll in Tibia is quite grave and was even worse in the past. It is totally possible and sometimes guaranteed to cost you equipped gear and inventory as well as level and skill progress on death, even without being a pvp outlaw). 3. exploration felt meaningful due to the limited forms of travel. Technically you have to walk everywhere and walk speed is mostly tied to a characters level. Thus, the average player takes ages to get anywhere. 4. Uncovering the world map (completionists why). The world map was entirely blacked out, besides a small radius around anywhere the player has been to. (Experienced Tibia players know, it is possible to replace the game files with uncovered once but lets assume that isnt possible). Uncovering the world map also meant the luxury of aimed auto walk, by clicking on the destination on the map.
Compared to WoW: 1. As long as I stay in zones for my level (easily recognized by monsters being my lvl or lower), Im usually safe. 2. Quests point me to the next best hunting ground and in later parts of the game I also know exactly which zones have exactly what I need (certain plants, ore, consumables). Most player have no reason to go to any other zone then the few zones they farm items at. 3. One can easily fly or even teleport very close to any point of interest. Also ANY point of interest comes with a quest guiding the player to it. Thus, exploring holds very little value. There just isn't anything to discover no one else will ever find. (With the exception of finding abandoned/ never completed areas such as caves or islands for the purpose of having ones own little spot/ RP area. :P 4. Most parts of the map can be discovered by riding on the main roads of a zone or even flying over it on the gryphon taxi system (or in later patches flying on ones personal mount at a height one can barely even see the map at.
Much discovery, such WoW!
Okay I guess I might have made my point about 4 paragraphs ago...
So what will the 'why's be like in Ashes? Is there a feature in ashes that really excites you? What do you think is the why behind it? Would you wish for more focus on what the Devs/ Designer think, why player will engage in the games features? Or do you maybe disagree and a game just needs features? What were your favorite "Why"s in other games?
