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
Most login rewards are crappy because they are trying not to be a play to win situation.
Or they are amazing because they are a play to win.
My favorites have actually been where they advertise "double exp weekend" or "double crafting exp weekend" kind of events, rather than the daily rewards.
IF this game were to have log-in rewards I would rather it be a system that would be useful to a player, but not XP bonuses or a stack of health potions that only get vendored. I would also like the system somewhat obscure, as in you don't have a calendar with every single item available listed. Potentially it could be part of a questing system to where after X amount of days a new quest or questline will unlock for players to gain rewards such as cosmetics (Be it styled armor, a shinny looking weapon, a dye kit, or maybe even a Transmog token for those that change their outfits often).
As a player what draws me into the game is the grind, or more accurately what that grind will produce. Give me the option to go after a reward and I will either take it or not. I would be more enticed to log in if I see someone with [Fill in Item] and learned they got it through the log-in questlines.
If when I have to log in every single day to not be short a coin to get those Cosmetics that I really want, then we are back at a system that demands me to log in every single day.. or being left with a sour taste in my mouth.
If a game is trying to coax me into login in each day, especially when I really can't or don't want to, that's just gonna get really damn annoying.
Which games log in system did I enjoy?
The only Login System that didn't end up upsetting me at some point was the one from Warframe, you just had to reach a specific amount of days logged into your Account to get cool Loyality Rewards.
It didn't matter much, If you couldn't log in one day, you would get them eventually, If you just accumulated enough days.
What would I like to see?
I would like a system where you get coins for being subscribed, and each day you just get a new coin until your subscription ends. That way people just get their coins and they don't have to worry not being able to log in.
Probably doesn't get people to log in, but at least they are relucant to cancel their subscriptions.
I have to agree with this.
As far as I am concerned, every single thing in game that is to be traded for should be traded for gold. Regardless of whether it is with other players or with NPC's.
Having other currencies and tokens for specific things is not a good mechanic, and developers should be embarrassed if they find themselves having to implement it.
I feel that I should be booting up the game to play the game how I want and not be corralled into what the game wants me to do. I want to play the game to, you know, play the game and not have a considerable amount of my play session be dedicated to busywork for activities that I have no interest in, making a barrier between me and having a satisfying play session.
While, yes, it can be used to get players to expand their horizons and engage with other aspects of the game they're not used to, I find that my engagement with those activities is solely tied to what the dailies ask of me. My association with that activity becomes that of a boring and monotonous chore and I lose any interest I may have had in it.
I hope that the reason I would log in every day is because I am genuinely excited to get into the game and, in return, I would like the game to respect my time within it.
Thank you for your time in reading this, and I hope I didn't make this post come off as a rambling mess. I want this game to do well as much as the rest of you, but I feel like this would be to the game's detriment.
Please do not add such cheesy, handicap features and let your experience be the driving factor for your sub count. Believe in your game as you have inspired many of us to believe.
I agree with Wulfenthrad 100%.
Also having login rewards inevitabley reminds me heavily of all these low quality cashgrab gambling gacha games and for obvious reasons i dont want ashes to be or feel anyting like these...
When i login into ashes i dont want to be greeted with a big screen saying "thanks for falling for our dopamine trap, now be a obedient robot and click here".
The only viable system Steven spoke of is a token system, but it absolutely should never ever be attached to time frames or limits. To be honest it shouldn’t exist either because it encourages people to just afk.
There is no possible way to have playtime, play frequency rewards without screwing over your players or having the players exploit the system. It just plain should not exist, period.
I want to enjoy my game and be immersed in it, not have the gaming world equivalent to TV commercial breaks. (And what do you know, Cable TV subscriptions have taken quite the hit with Netflix and other streaming platforms for a reason.)
An alternative?
Lets try a monthly cosmetic reward, an armor set maybe, you unlock a piece of it every time your subscription goes through. So if you have a basic 7 piece armor system like Head, Shoulders, Chest, Back, Legs, Feet, Hands you could also offer a 6 month sub deal, and give the whole set upfront for people to use. rather than waiting a full 7 months to collect the whole set. Maybe that specific set also comes with a unique building cosmetic or a mount with a full year subscription purchase, also giving the option to choose between, the full armor set, and the building/mount option on a 6 month sub might entice more people to opt for it.
TLDR:
I hate login rewards that are shoved in my face every time I log in and I have to exit those windows so I can start to play.
Much prefer a monthly sub reward, with options to accelerate rewards via 3 month/6month/1year sub options.
Secondly, I want to point out the stress that games give me when their login reward is exactly at 24 hours. especially if it is at 24 hours since the specific player logged in. I think the daily rewards should be reset at a standard time, like 12pm EST for example. Also, instead of a 24-hour log-in system, I think it should be 22-hours ... make it a few hours under 24, this will cause less stress for people especially gamers who have bad sleep schedules.
I prefer no login rewards or daily rewards.
This is a lot less obtuse than the elemental motes proposal I had on December 23rd, but that essentially boiled down to a similar idea. However instead of by the day, my proposal was by the week, and every 15 minutes of non-idle gameplay would earn 1 coin, up to 10 each week. This way, players who can only concentrate their time into a short session here and there can have their "this is my game time" each week where they can tell family to go cook a goose while they beast out in-game for 2 and a half hours.
The other part of the proposal was being able to buy monthly skin components piecemeal, like 5 coins for weapon skins, 10 for armor skins, 5 for accessory skins, 5 for a pet skin, 5 for a mount skin, 5 for a building skin.
Collections aren't cool, assembling a good collection is cool.
You look at literally anything that can be collection - coins, stamps, sports cards, figurs, cars, bottles, whatever. It is always the rare versions of items that people collect.
Giving away an item for logging in means it is not rare, and as such is not something to collect. It is something to have, something to take up space.
Something to delete.
If you want to do something for casual players, make them some casual content - as even the most casual of players logs in to the game primarily to *DO* stuff.
Where instead of counting the days you loged in succsecion, or per month, they counted they days you loged in total. So you got small or insegnificant loot for most days with rare drops on occations like your 10th or 25th day you loged in. But on major mile stones like 100 or 200 days you got special cosmetics for the game.
So that you started counting the days you playd your self, and got excytet whenever you hit a special date.
(as i havent played warframe for some time now, i am unsure if anything has changed regarding loginrewards, but in case it changed significantly, i would still find a "total day count" absolutly amazing!) (^^)/
You don't need to reward players with some kind of daily coin/veteran system, a good game is the best gift you can give players.
There's already so many systems and features where you can implement (if not already planned to) those cosmetic rewards, from challenges/achievements, boss loot, mentor reward, node progression / contribution.... anything from a blacksmith's apron, a admiral's hat, mayor's to rugged adventurer's outfits...
Not to forget ingame seasonal events with cosmetic rewards... AND most important of all MTX store which the business will rely on.
I prefer the subscription based route FFXIV took for a while where you received veteran rewards for having a total subscription of X days.
Like that you don't "miss out" on rewards because you didn't log in you may just receive them later because you refreshed your subscription later than others because you didn't have time to play.
A complete NO-GO was Blade&Soul's daily log in system. Where you get different rewards every log in and work yourself up to "decent" items. So if you missed out on a day you had no way to get the item at the end of that line.
If daily log in rewards are implemented, keep it strictly to 1 item only.
The following things might hopefully add something to his post and the discussion. While reading this, please keep in mind that english is not my first language.
Maybe a few words about the group of people i was talking with. We are all between 29 and 48 years old and most of us played MMOs since Ultima Online. We have seen a lot of MMOs and our preferences for MMOs are not the same. Since we all have jobs and some even have kids time has become very precious and our guilds fell apart when the last members of the group finished university. We somethimes still meet in real life (before covid hit) and all agree that it would be great to have a game we could enjoy together again. We tried a lot of games for this purpuse (also the ones we were playing together in the past) over the last years. So many that we came up with test plans and who has to approve a game first before the rest is even having a look so the others don't have to waste their time. We haven't found one yet...
The number 1 problem is to find a game that does not have daily chores. We already have enough responsibilities already at work and gaming should be fun not work. The problem here is not a lack of dedication but that we cannot have the game decide when we have time on a daily base. A login reward leading to a cosmetic item that cannot be earned otherwise and would count as daily chore for us.
But aside from that you also have to consider that you have to come up with these items on a monthly base. While in our opinion this time would be better spend on items you have to achieve through actually playing the game. Maybe even for items that are really hard to get and need dedication over a long periode of time. We believe these easy to get reward items are bad for you as a developer and for us as gamers. It's just work for both sides and does not add to your revenue or our fun (the value we trying to get from a game).
Just give some kind of currency passively to the player's account each time you log in (making those who feel that a daily reward would break immersion happy) And let people use those coins to buy cosmetics from the cash shop when they have enough.
It should be possible to find a good balance that would allow people to get some cosmetics while not cutting down your profit.
Sounds like a coin system would work okay, I haven't seen it before. I'd put it closer to 25 coins a month, or 5 a week max just to give people a bit of breathing room.
I hate the idea of daily quests / world quests. aka, chores that I have to do before i can enjoy playing whatever aspect of the game i really like. So, make it an auto-collect thing. I hate doing the same world quests every day and the same weekly quests.
i think, if its a daily login token, and once saved up, you can buy something that would be cool. but, for the people who can't log in everyday, don't make their tokens expire. So, maybe some hard core person collects 30 tokens in one month and buys that months cosmetic thing. great. But also, a casual player should be able to collect 30 tokens over 3-6 months and trade them in for something in the month when they finally have 30 total tokens.
WHO are you talking to?? EVERYONE LOVES cosmetics... No one wants to look the same as everyone else who has the same gear... and everyone wants a pet they think is cute following them around. and everyone wants that totally cool looking mount that no one else has...
I think it would be better to restrict it to a game-week. As long as you login within that week, you can claim all the rewards up to the day you are on. Yes, you would want to login on, say Saturday to claim the full week's rewards.
Of course, you could login on Saturdays nab the rewards and logout, but what does that really gain you if you're not playing? Nothing.
You could login on Friday if you had something going on Saturday and just miss out on one reward day.
If you forgot to login on Friday or Saturday but did on Thursday, you got the rewards up to Thursday.
I think this system would be more player-friendly and less restrictive than a daily rewards system. But you do you.