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.
Comments
This drove me nuts also in other MMOs.
I remember BDO & SWTOR being particularly annoying with its various pop-up windows. >_<
So immersion-breaking.
Steven Sharif is my James Halliday (Anorak)
“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
-HPL
It's a little immersion breaking for me to just be rewarded for logging in. It's another reminder that it's a game you are logging into.
Probably the biggest thing though is I don't like being pressured to log in and how i feel behind if a miss logging in.
Example of cool login rewards are as follows:
/played = 365 days. A mount or a pet would be a cool reward for a player as a thank you from the devs for playing the game (obviously this shouldn't be written anywhere it would just be a nice surprise you would receive when you log in.) Mount or Pet could be a randomly generated shop item or it could be a unique mount to show prestige, up to the devs on that (I'd prefer the later, just make it something really cool and shiny)
Game launch anniversary rewards: nothing extreme, maybe an xp boost for a weekend for alts nothing that affects the economy.
Login rewards should always and I repeat ALWAYS BE USED SPARINGLY. consistent or daily rewards is a sign of a dying game or desperation on the side of the devs.
In my case, "forcing" me to log in or do diaries is the trigger in my brain to see a game I enjoy as a chore I would preffer not to do.
People allready have stated enough reasons they suck.
However, they may perhaps fulfill some roles in certain situations. ie as marketing to get encourage / benefit a player to return to the game after some absence.
An anniversary gift, to say thank you for being in game for X years.
Well-stated! Daily quests for minor rewards such as consumables? YES!
Log in and immediately get something for nothing? NO!
That said, yours truly has nothing against Veteran Rewards. In-fact, the hours-played total Lt mentioned seems even more-reasonable than the more-traditional MMO habit of rewarding just having been subscribed for so long.
Daily quests are just as bad and create meaningless time dumps in addition to making the whole experience into a Skinner box.
No dailies. No chores. Just let the world exist and have sensible tasks players can choose from to advance their characters.
Regardless of how small a minority the forum people might be in comparison to the entire customer-base, there is almost nothing that everyone agrees on. We bicker and argue and attack each other over everything. This is the first time in a long time I’ve seen a substantive opinion expressed with no objections from anyone.
Agreed. Good thread, George.
Hey Toast, I support the idea of being rewarded based on the amount of /played time on your account, but instead of a flashy notification appearing on your screen when this occurs, I'd rather just have it low-key sent to my mailbox.
I appreciated how WoW just silently sent you in-game mail without trying to grab your full attention. If I wanted to see if I had unread mail, I would look for the mail icon on the mini map UI on my own terms.
In comparison, even though I enjoy Guild Wars 2, it's flashy notification and reward systems can get annoying after a while and tend to break immersion.
If the long-term rewards are strictly cosmetic I think this would be fine. I do not agree with the notion of daily log-in rewards.
I'm not a fan of pop up windows and it's negative effect on immersion it really depends on how the rewards are implemented.
Imagine a system being built on some form of lore. Like a gift from the Gods for divine node dwellers, some form of research feedback package for scientific nodes or dividends paid for economic nodes and so on... The scope for ideas is wide and these potential rewards will be best suited being hard wired into the game mechanics and lore rather than appearing as some kind of gimmicky output.
So big NO on daily rewards, they also come off as more of a 'held prisoner' tool than a measurement of devotion. A person logging in for 1 minute on a day they didn't want to play the game would potentially get the same rewards as a person waking up eagerly to dive in 8 hours deep for the day.
Rewards based on a more detailed increment of playtime would then need to be fairly balanced between those who have 1000's of hours to play the game versus those who don't.
I feel that the reward for overall time played is already there - it's more character progress.
The other thing is time played doesn't necessarily equate to loyalty. The person who uses 5 out of their 10 spare hours a week to play is showing much more dedication than the person playing for 15 hours who has 50 free hours in a week.
Personally, from a design perspective, I don't like these kinds of rewards systems because they come off as gimmicky and are often a cheap substitution for real content rewards. If AoC goes as planned, I don't think it needs this extra stuff; I'll be happy being rewarded in the game itself.
No1 offender of too much going on.
I hate everything bdo does when it comes to UI windows.
I made this topic when I logged in bdo a few days ago.
BDO is the ultimate offender I was thinking of when replying to this post too.
Lets say there is Guy A who only can play 2 hours each day.
Then there is Guy B that can play 8 Hours each day.
Both spend the maximum amount of time at the game showing their loyalty.
But Guy B would get more rewards if its based on time played.
If its based on daily login then Guy C who only can play 2 times a week for 7 hours each will not get the rewards.
In the end, no matter how small the rewards will always be something you have to keep up with the top.
Even if its cosmetic then people would feel like they have thrown money out by not login in every day.
So please just leave them be.
Give us enough to do without daily login rewards. You are already on the right track for that.
Remember, the whole purpose of a "login reward" is not to reward players that already play consistently, it is a strong psychological manipulation technique to make people log in even when they don't want to play, by creating a strong need to get the reward or else missing out. It's there to synthetically inflate player numbers, and to make you continue to spend more money on cosmetics/sub/whatever.
Ashes is all about "making MMOs great again". "Again" implies that some aspects of MMOs used to be better. Know what? A central aspect of MMOs in the past was that to get a reward, you actually have to put in some work.
Lastly, even from a business standpoint, these types of schemes makes much less sense in a subscription based, sandbox MMO, compared to a F2P themepark.
P.S. Regarding Toast's comment, the only type of "loyalty reward" I don't think is utter trash are the type of anniversary rewards that some people have mentioned already. Like, OK, it's 1 year since you created your first character, here's a freebie.
And drawing from my own experience, when I was really into an MMO, I logged in almost everyday anyway - the gaming experience itself was the login reward (wow & ff14).
And when I felt like taking a long break from the game, login rewards would usually keep me logging in -> logging out immediately for a while, and then eventually I would still stop logging in as that felt more & more like a chore.
BDO has a fairly decent login reward system:
- a main login reward which runs for a month, with rewards getting better the more days you log in
- timed login rewards (get login rewards after being logged in for X minutes in a day)
- milestone rewards (get rewarded for being online for X amount of hours in total)
Having such rewards is certainly a positive counter to any potential P2W accusations if you get a possibility to earn certain Pay for Convenience items through milestones.
It is certainly not needed to have any login rewards or milestones, but players surely appreciate free stuff.
Eternal Guild
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Quick task that can be completed in less than 20 minutes.
The rewards are basically cosmetics.
And it resets after 30 tasks have been completed rather than resetting if you skip a day.
Easy to ignore if you want to.
How would you like to see a log-in rewards/participation system implemented, if at all?
@Settra32 posted another thread with an idea that, so far, is my absolute favorite -
I would like to see an ongoing rewards system that offers collector's items once in a while, along with the consideration of offering extra crafting reagents or even item upgrade utilities as weekly/bonus rewards throughout the month.
An idea I offered during the live stream was introducing quests every so often that would re-present themselves throughout the month, so players have multiple opportunities to log-in and complete criteria involving the month's unique/seasonal goals, with a later reintroduction of some rewards to provide newer players with an opportunity to acquire some previously-released rewards.
But not a fan because if you do miss a day, its like you're being penalised.
@Behague While that is the intention for the avid gamer, sometimes things do come up that can derail us for a day or two each month. While I think it would be unrealistic to expect daily attendance (and consequentially, have a poor impact on player morale when a day does get missed), a system that would require a certain amount of effort each day that can be made up if a day is missed as long as a certain amount of criteria is met each week may work well.
I vote for weekly participation criteria, where each week's accomplishment contributes to a final monthly reward.
If cosmetics/collector's items are offered by this system, unique-to-month and returning (perhaps with slight differentiation each year) rewards would be cool so players have an opportunity to gain a highly-prized collector's item later on if they are unable to obtain the item during its release month.
I would also like to see weekly boosts, like crafting reagents/gear enhancers (perhaps upon completion of weekly criteria) as part of the implementation of this concept.
Gamer participation/loyalty is definitely important for developers and fellow players alike to promote. An achievement for logging in each day for a month straight would be cool for sure, perhaps for a piece of furniture.
As far as a wide-held expectation of attendance goes, I would definitely move towards highlighting weekly participation and/or various criteria for the month that would be required for a greater reward.
Logging in and afk'ing for a few hours should not reward players a damn thing.