Greetings, glorious testers!
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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
This, this and this. Please for the love of god do not implement a "realistic" weight system where you're encumbered 90% of the time while carrying loot after gathering, mining etc. Its just annoying.
- I shouldn't be able to carry 200 logs in my backpack, that breaks my immersion
while another reads
- I shouldn't be limited to how much I can carry, that's too much
I think that the word "immersion" translates to "how much do you want this MMO to be played like a single player game" . "Grind", "boring quests", "unrealistic terrain" mentioned in the comments above are just some examples of stuff that is part of the definition of an MMORPG, while might not happen in games like "Skyrim". The problem is that there is always an audience of people that want to play their single player game while joining an MMO.
I understand "immersion" as the game keeping me actually interested in the lore of an mmo while not interfering with the game itself. The only MMORPG that ever managed to keep me interested in the lore is Guild Wars 2.
Why? It's simple:
- Cutscenes with fully voiced acting. Producing questlines that consist of 1000s of words is just a waste of time for the production team, even WoW started to include some voice acting and cutscenes into their game as simply noone cares about what do the kill/talk/fetch quests read. We are not playing a MUD afterall.
- Fully voiced acting during quests with significant characters, not forcing the player to read some text while playing the game or blocking the UI while an npc talks, GW2 does that very well, ESO sucks at it
- "Living World" being new content every X months with fully voiced acting and cutscenes explaining the story and making changes to the world + adding incentives to play the content
Lots of them are related to interactions between your character and the environment.
Holes you can't escape.
Some areas with low détails next to rich textures.
Quests you can't finish.
After some extensions, quests popping all at once so you can't get what was the original story.
- Huge level spaces with no context for its hugeness and otherwise feeling very empty, even with 10 of the same mob lounging around until they see you. When you're running and nothing happens except you're trying to avoid the same old fights on your way back to an NPC, it takes me out. From the AoC footage we've seen, the outdoors is not boring looking at all, but I'm afraid for the dungeons. The dwarven fortress looks so cool but it might just have tons of mobs and not much else? Game's not done yet, so we'll see lol.
- Inventory limitations with no in-game explanation and expansions locked behind a pay wall.
- Anything locked behind a pay wall that should logically be in-game progression.
- Ads. It doesn't matter if it's pop ups or a small button glowing like the SUN in the corner of the screen - it's annoying. If the game is good and there's a shop button, gamers will check it out.
- Everyone and their mother on endgame/purchased flying mounts filling the screen. This game is already confirmed NOT to have that, lol
- Objects like chairs, benches, tables, beds looking interactive but are not. Such a tiny thing but adds fun, even if not a roleplayer. AoC will have interactive stuff so yay!
- Realizing some systems, such as housing or collectibles, are devoid of actual meaning for gameplay. Like... hidden teddy bears across a map is fine. It's less fine when every teddy looks the same or it's just a number 4 out of 50 bears on a stat sheet, or something. Let me look at them, let them be themed or have costumes. Collectibles are best when acquiring all means a rewards - not an achievement or steam card, but a tiny stat boost or a little XP per bear. Housing. From what I've seen, housing is frequently a sign of endgame status and money, and not a place to USE or hang out in (no interactive furniture, for example). AoC appears to want to make housing meaningful, so thank goodness for that.
- Crafting system that is SO grindy and has no... interaction to it... Um. Like. Look at the crafting in Dragon Quest XI. That little forge should not be so fun but is! A little minigame, meaningful crafting, and plenty of materials in the world to gather to keep trying if you fail a craft.
Hmm... those are all ones that come to mind, and several are already being discussed. I'm so glad for that!
To get this clear, though: I'm not asking for there to be places where you can phase out of the map.
I think it would be awesome if the world designers could incorporate Easter eggs for places like this; maybe even going so far as adding a lever/door mechanism to places that's extremely hard to find. After all, if this game lasts, someone is bound to find it eventually and it will be the coolest thing in the world.
Can't wait to listen to McReary's work.
In the last livestream (2020-08-28) the thumping of the bear mount moving was spot on.
Everything that breaks the illusion is immersion breaking.
I'll turn off in-game voice chat immediately (but I'd like to see if my party is using it) I cannot stand a female/male PC speaking in a male/female voice.
Cluttered interface or any pop-up window that occludes the "real" world is bad.
I like the collapsible chat window from pre-alpha.
Tank archetype name is immersion breaking.
CLICCA QUI PER UNIRTI ALL'ORDINE
Immersion starts at max level for me. I'm willing to put up with a bunch of "collect x amount of bear flanks" quests to get there. After max level, it comes down to whether I could see myself living the day-to-day life (with all of its attendant requirements by the game) if I was in the character's shoes.
Example: Daily and weekly quests are an instant "no". I shouldn't have foreknowledge that I'm going to have to help the butcher collect meat, it should come up as prompted by an event or something.
I want to constantly have a sense of progression, from early to end game.
There is nothing else like hearing rushing water behind you and you turn to go explore it.
Visually, it looks like Ashes is gonna deliver perfectly.
I hope the audio holds up as well.
Otherwise, just always having something to do, a goal is what keeps me immersed in the world and invested in my time spent in the game world.
Once I run out of goals, or it becomes too much of a pain to make a goal for myself, that is when I lose focus / immersion / "buy in" to what I am playing.
I heard a bird ♫
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For me it's that no matter what you do the same monster and the same problems exist in the world even after you "fixed" them. This is why Ashes is so exciting; that the world will change depending on your actions.
The more emotes the better; especially passive ones; these add so much to play.
Those small details like a cat that crawls up on a bed to sleep, or animals and flora acting, behaving in ways that you can relate to seeing that charm you.
Being able to interact with furniture is huge, to sit, lay down, etc.
Formerly T-Elf
Totally agree with this. Ive always thought that the highest tier gear should be available from both formats but possibly differ in secondary stats, or some other variation that I'm not smart enough to think of in 30 seconds
- Not being able to accomplish/do things that by the lore of the class or race you should be able to: For example, Mages who can make large amounts of ice thanks to their spells but cannot freeze water to walk. Rogues without acrobatic skills, etc.
- Doing the same things as the others or being/feeling the same as the other players all the time (not only as a class but in the story). For example being the hero/savior of the story.
- Fast travel.
- Not being able to get lost.
- Zones looking similar or boring, without any kind of surprising environments or (natural) structures, rare mountains, waterfalls, caves, etc.
Other things to look at:
- The type of combat and how it feels. For example being cooldown based and "bar looking" dependant.
- The quests being so basic.
- The number of different things to do.
What kills it is too much UI, getting stuck, not being able to interact with furniture, Teleporting/flying everywhere, instant gratification, auto anything. If you're so busy you want to set auto this or that and walk away from the game, just don't play or play when you can. Auto systems turn games into nothing more than interactive movies. Setting auto and being able to hit the max or even just get some levels without putting in the work is bs. If you want something on auto just go watch a movie.
► #1 Mob Level Matching - This has drained my joy of leveling in games
One thing I really enjoyed about playing older games is that the developers weren't afraid to put a random level 15 [Possibly elite] mob in a level 5-10 area. You look at it, try to fight it once to see what its power was and then realized that you now have an NPC rival that you must come back and get your revenge on.
That mob made you realize that he is the boss of this area, its his territory and the other NPC's give him his space, you should have respected that. That time of risk vs reward being in that area was great.
Going from zone to zone and being like "Oh crap, this just got a lot harder" instead of fighting the same level of mobs. You lose your sense of power gain/progression when things level match you. It makes the zones less memorable because the mobs might be graphically cool but the difficulty of the mob itself is lost meaning the exploration/experience of the world is lost
► #2 Flying mounts - This ruined PvP opportunities, which is something I greatly enjoy
Getting rid of the worlds topography from meaning anything takes me away from so much. in a Large 2-d map, you lose social interactions because of its size. Adding a 3rd dimension makes it even larger and less social and less need to group up. I felt like flying mounts really ruined the immersion of dangerous worlds, dangerous mobs, dangerous pvp, beautiful world and running through/around beautiful cities or accidentally running into a friend you leveled with 2 weeks ago and see they are struggling so you stop and help out.
► #3 Group finders - 50/50 on this impacting my play.
Group finder has a great benefit in allow you to experience content faster and more efficiently for most places. However you lose the need to actually talk with people and meet people to make friends (or find out they are enemies). A one and done experience because group finder removes the necessity to have them. You could get them again next time or different people. Didn't matter. Those players just became "warm bodies" for your intent to complete a task. A "lite" group finder might not be bad, but i don't like it removing social aspects of games.
► #4 Lack of importance or NPC power creep - Slightly negative experience
In some games, you are part of grand and magical/epic quests. You complete them and you get your minute of fame, but then all of a sudden you are forgotten as a character. I just banished an ancient god that was 10 minutes away from enslaving all the minds on the planet. I get my quest reward, some fireworks. Then 1 month later new content comes out and some [Insert new important character story] dude talks down to me like I'm an ant and I let him. I didn't see this almighty powerful person who thinks i'm worthless in that fight with me. If he is so much more important/powerful than me, why didn't he go solo this ancient God?
► #5 Re-use of tile sets or repeated content across zones/levels - Greatly impacted experience to the point of not wanting to pay/continue to pay
Recently Played New World Beta. I appreciated their concept that each "Mob type" contained specific architecture to them and when you saw it, you knew that around the corner was x-mob. That was cool. However, when I went from Zone 1, to Zone 2, to Zone 3, to Zone 4 and I saw that same exact temple. Not just the architecture styling, but the exact temple, with the exact stair case in the same spot. Chest in the same spot, mobs in the same spots, Same actual mob but 5-10 levels higher with the same exact mechanics with the same graphical/coloring schemes that made them actually no different except their hit point or damage numbers.
At that point i'm not longer really exploring a world. I just feel like I've been tricked in taking 4-lefts and expected to see new and better things. Conceptually giving NPC's 'homes' is cool - but copy and paste was not enjoyable
► #6 Mob responsiveness - Slightly negative
This is a bit multi-faceted. When going through hostile mobs, their likelihood to attack you. Some games the "aggro" is awkward. You can walk next to a mob and it doesn't aggro you until you are past it, and not on your way to it. Or if you are in a pack, you might aggro the farthest mob and then the closer mobs don't aggro you until they are hit with a "community aggro" algorithm.
Sometimes low mobs get overly aggressive. In life, animals don't like to attack things that could threaten their likelihood of survival, but some games mob's just don't care. "Red = Dead". Having some respect of power of level difference or gear difference is nice as it gives you the feeling that NPC's respect your strength.
Player Movement
You could have the most immersive world, but if my character moves in completely inhuman ways, I'm not sure how immersed I could get. It's the same reason people call it 'RP-Walking' in WoW... Most of the gameplay involves dash dancing, spinning 180 degrees almost instantly, and instantlychanging momentum after landing a running jump.
I totally understand the need for responsive character movements, but I think there is some kind of happy medium between Black Desert and WoW for character movement. (This also creates a vast amount of depth in combat. Another reason to maybe consider it...)
Horizon Time
Basically boils down to having decent access to sweeping landscapes. Climbing towers, galloping through vast cropfields, and switch-backing up a mountain to gaze upon the whole region at the peak.
Finding a stunning view is as much reward as I need for exploration in many cases.
City Structure
From what I understand, the expectation for your procedural city generation will allow them to exist on hillsides, and up in the mountains. This is VERY important to establish the tone of every city you discover.
Color Filters
This one is a bit smaller but it is something I've come to be a huge fan of in Black Desert Online. You're actually able to change the color palette of the whole world by scrolling through various presets (Oldstyle, Cyan, and Vibrant are just some of them).
Depending on how I am feeling, I can decide the tone to my gameplay, and this gives yet another axis of customization to get fully engrained in the world.
'A Pleasure as Always'
- Senaesul [Gray Sentinels]
But NPCs standing in front of a bookshelf 24/7 just doesn't feel right.
This. But also more than this! It's chopping the trees, mining the ore, seeing the grass move around you as you walk or crouch through it, setting the grass on fire if you try to set it on fire and that fire subsequently spreading further. Wind blowing in the trees, natural weather occurrences (rain, sun, wind, storms, snow) and interacting with the environment in other ways, for example contributing towards building a bridge over a canyon so everyone can access a new unexplored area and that bridge later being destroyed by an event to be rebuilt again by new players
For example: If I join a Guild, I want it to affect my whole account. Otherwise, it becomes a matter of: Oh, my Guild wants to do something so I need to log on my Guild character.
As a side benefit, it makes it easier to keep toxic people out of your Guild because they can't just come back with a new toon once you've banned them.
To add a few: not having the choice of a play loop within the world. For exemple if you’re a naturist/shaman and you don’t have any quest design on the way you want to play.
You have design clothing for a specific play loop ie: winter theme trapping and survival from the harsh elements but do not allow the player to do so in a meaningful manner.
Side quest should not be 2 dimensional and unrelated to your character or journey. If you decided to take some specific themed quest and then you are giving one that is completely unrelated and realistic. For exemple a player that never created a potion during his lifetime now is ask to make some for no reason. It should be curated to what you’re doing.
The last one is gear grind, if at any point in the game it is all you have left to do to feel like you’re advancing it’s not good.
Also the disparity between gear stats should not be so high that you feel that to be competitive somewhat in a pvp world that you have to put in 200 hours to get access to a fairly high stats one where you ll get some survivability.
Thanks
Immersion is an extremely important aspect of an MMORPG - It's immersion that makes the player in love with the world around him and it's what makes time fly by while exploring this world. The world of Verra looks like an amazing place filled with history that will 100% captivate peoples minds. I would like to see a variety of monsters, crafting reagents, recipes and blueprints to keep the player engaged and interested in the world
It would be amazing to have NPCs that aren't grid locked to one location. Even better if they could be as flexible as the Node system with NPCs reacting differently based on surroundings.
I'm a Senior Software Dev. Love Video Games.
MMO preferences: PvP, PvE, Questing, Crafting (ALL)
First, Immersion is a big deal for me. As Steven stated I want a game to make me go into no life mode. I want it to be so immersive I dont want to log out.
1. Walking into a city/town and seeing the Npc's just sitting there still as a rock not moving. Have them pathing around their shop, dust off an item of theirs, path back, look off into the distance, dust off their own clothes. Something besides just standing their doing absolutely nothing.
2. Fighting my way down to the boss and he/she/it is just sitting there, again doing nothing. As I said before its like they're a mannequin and I have to run up put a quarter in their slot to start the fun. It's not like they dont hear 16+ people killing their henchman in the next room. This can also be said for regular mobs as well. Make them do something!
3. Resounding @MapleFox 's first comment, real world items in a fantasy world. As in seeing a toon in a Sailor Moon outfit out in the wild killing mobs is a DEF immersion breaker for me, or any silly stuff like that, a surfer dude in the knee length shorts, bare chested and its out killing mobs, or a friggin chopper ripping down the streets.
4. Quests that have no meaning and are just there because it is needed to give the player something to do.
5. Daily quests and new mobs just reskinned as a new mob.
I hope Ashes doesn't have any of the above.