Ashes of Creation interests me but will it put RPG back in MMO

I feel like I am not alone in this but AoC looks just like every other MMO. I know this kind of thread has been asked time and time again, but I wanna know more about AoC and if it will fit me.

I for the longest of times have wanted a mmorpg that I could enjoy, not tolerate but enjoy. I might dream way to big and expect a lot but I think most companies are scared of deviating to far from what is defined as a mmorpg. I would love to see a emphasis on the RPG and not the MMO, The node systems seems to be pushing things in that direction but my hope is that thats not all for the RPG element.

I am the kind of player who hates PVP or PVE really, I dont like it. MMORPG's always turn into a hack/slash grind with fancy mechanics that get completely over looked. i'd love for a game to put RPG back into the mmo and not some lazy grind. in every mmorpg if I want to make a sword all I need are the mats and maybe numerical skill, but what if... I dunno there was more to it then just pressing a button, something to engage the players then waiting on a bar to finish.

Or skillful combat, I have seen it done and its fun if each attack can be dodged by both players and monsters. The lazy combat of WoW always annoyed me and sure one can argue their was stratagy involved... fine but I am no good at that. I would like to be able to dodge and skillfully land shots.

Oh making Taverns more like a tavern then just a social hub. This is a perfect place to add minigames something to role play with other players. Like playing darts/throwing daggers, a game of bones or random challenges, I would spend alot of time in taverns if that was the case.

Also I believe i am not the only one whos wants to say screw npc's in places where a player could operate, set rates and hell even makes sales. I would play mmorpg's if their was more rpg elements.

Games that offer: player driven market, Player based economy, Skillful crafting, alternatives to just PVE and Engaging RPG elements. These games interest me because they are some simple game. I might be asking alot from a games but I know of only one games which has perfectly capture my interest unfortunately I dont know if they will ever release anything so I am looking at other MMORPG's and someone mentions this one. But the livestreams and the videos make me feel like its just another copy, but you guys more then me. So do you think Ashes of Creation is gonna put RPG back in MMO or will this be just like the rest with extra mechanics

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Kingzookins

Sorry for my typos, I'm dyslexic and I find writing hard to do right

Greendino

I share your concerns. I think due to the focus on systems rather than just content Ashes has the potential to fulfill this need. It is much easier to get immersed in a world when you feel like that your activity has some sort of tangible effect to it, however minor. Even just purchasing materials, then making a piece of equipment, and then selling it to another player has numerous interactions and makes for a more immersive world. I would suggest watching Lazypeon's video from the summer, as he lays out many compelling reasons why this game might just be something different.

TheAccursedRat

I think it's confirmed that you can do great in this game through RPG elements exclusively. I think the wiki lists a lot of it.

Kingzookins

TheAccursedRat wrote: »

I think it's confirmed that you can do great in this game through RPG elements exclusively. I think the wiki lists a lot of it.

I'm just hoping they don't go lazy with crafting/processing and gathering. Nothing to my knowledge had been said if they have decided on something.

Though if I ever made a game myself it would be very unfun for majority because I myself like a bit of spicy RNG in character creation, but that's just me and unfortunately a RNG character creation system is unfavorable to a majority of players because they don't like being unfairly week or others being unfairly strong.

I miss CoE and I hope them coming back can give AoC a rival in the long run being CoE has a system I would love to see and that's Talent. A unique gift given to a play based on RNG or Reputation in a certain direction that can give that player a advantage in an area that no other play would have. Unfortunately its questionable if they will ever release a game but I will keep my hopes up on the one.

AoC is gonna be my safe choice more then likely even though in Roleplay possibilities on paper alone AoC loses to CoE but in application AoC probably wins since AoC has actually released footage and things of their RP systems and not just talked about them

Kingzookins

Overall my opinion has changed, I will probably play it but hoping they don't go lazy on mechanics

Greendino

Kingzookins wrote: »

Overall my opinion has changed, I will probably play it but hoping they don't go lazy on mechanics

As hopeful as I am as well, I will reserve judgement until we get more information. I am heartened to see that they are taking a different design philosophy to most MMORPGs from the past decades. I remember having long forum arguments on multiple game forums on the folly of following in WoW's footsteps. I hate that I was prove right every time.

MoGod

Well that would be the $6,000,000 question that will soon be answered for us all lets hope it does.

Blandmarrow

A game of skillfull combat as you describe would've been Tera, I truly enjoyed that game from a combat perspective when it came out, but was bogged down by so many other things sadly.

ariatras

Blandmarrow wrote: »

A game of skillfull combat as you describe would've been Tera, I truly enjoyed that game from a combat perspective when it came out, but was bogged down by so many other things sadly.

The problem with a skill based system. (Where skills are player skills not character skills like a fireball for example.) Is latency. I even recall a video on Tera's combat a while back that explored that very thing. Resulting in less dps even with "autoattacks" only.

Let's take shooters for example. Which are very skillbased for the most part. Those games, especially at the higher level rely on insane monitor refresh rates and low latency. Which, as you can imagine is fine for most shooter games. However, for an MMO you must make certain concessions.

Blandmarrow

ariatras wrote: »

Blandmarrow wrote: »

A game of skillfull combat as you describe would've been Tera, I truly enjoyed that game from a combat perspective when it came out, but was bogged down by so many other things sadly.

The problem with a skill based system. (Where skills are player skills not character skills like a fireball for example.) Is latency. I even recall a video on Tera's combat a while back that explored that very thing. Resulting in less dps even with "autoattacks" only.

Let's take shooters for example. Which are very skillbased for the most part. Those games, especially at the higher level rely on insane monitor refresh rates and low latency. Which, as you can imagine is fine for most shooter games. However, for an MMO you must make certain concessions.

I rarely had issues with latency from what I remember back when I played. But I do remember I had to pick a server that had 60-80 ping or less for the experience to be enjoyable.

ariatras

Blandmarrow wrote: »

ariatras wrote: »

Blandmarrow wrote: »

A game of skillfull combat as you describe would've been Tera, I truly enjoyed that game from a combat perspective when it came out, but was bogged down by so many other things sadly.

The problem with a skill based system. (Where skills are player skills not character skills like a fireball for example.) Is latency. I even recall a video on Tera's combat a while back that explored that very thing. Resulting in less dps even with "autoattacks" only.

Let's take shooters for example. Which are very skillbased for the most part. Those games, especially at the higher level rely on insane monitor refresh rates and low latency. Which, as you can imagine is fine for most shooter games. However, for an MMO you must make certain concessions.

I rarely had issues with latency from what I remember back when I played. But I do remember I had to pick a server that had 60-80 ping or less for the experience to be enjoyable.

Yes, but that's just allegory. Even though connectivity around the globe is getting better and better. There are still plenty of people with problematic bandwidth. Not to mention inherent advantage based soley on geographical location. For example. In the Netherlands, where I live. I live quite close to the most often used servers. They tend to be in Amsterdam/Paris/London.

So you want to try and design a skill based system. But you want it to be somewhat forgiving. I couldn't tell you how to do that though. But I suspect that's one of the reasons why things like a GCD exist.

Blandmarrow

ariatras wrote: »

Blandmarrow wrote: »

ariatras wrote: »

Blandmarrow wrote: »

A game of skillfull combat as you describe would've been Tera, I truly enjoyed that game from a combat perspective when it came out, but was bogged down by so many other things sadly.

The problem with a skill based system. (Where skills are player skills not character skills like a fireball for example.) Is latency. I even recall a video on Tera's combat a while back that explored that very thing. Resulting in less dps even with "autoattacks" only.

Let's take shooters for example. Which are very skillbased for the most part. Those games, especially at the higher level rely on insane monitor refresh rates and low latency. Which, as you can imagine is fine for most shooter games. However, for an MMO you must make certain concessions.

I rarely had issues with latency from what I remember back when I played. But I do remember I had to pick a server that had 60-80 ping or less for the experience to be enjoyable.

Yes, but that's just allegory. Even though connectivity around the globe is getting better and better. There are still plenty of people with problematic bandwidth. Not to mention inherent advantage based soley on geographical location. For example. In the Netherlands, where I live. I live quite close to the most often used servers. They tend to be in Amsterdam/Paris/London.

So you want to try and design a skill based system. But you want it to be somewhat forgiving. I couldn't tell you how to do that though. But I suspect that's one of the reasons why things like a GCD exist.

Well, you're not wrong. From what I remember when I read about WoWs development from The WoW Diary by John Staats, I believe he mentioned that the game was tailored with latency in mind.

Still, I'd prefer a system to Teras combat over the traditional WoW one even if you will be forced to choose a server mostly based on ping.

Hopefully Starlink will remove issues such as ping in the near future.

Noaani

Blandmarrow wrote: »

ariatras wrote: »

Blandmarrow wrote: »

ariatras wrote: »

Blandmarrow wrote: »

A game of skillfull combat as you describe would've been Tera, I truly enjoyed that game from a combat perspective when it came out, but was bogged down by so many other things sadly.

The problem with a skill based system. (Where skills are player skills not character skills like a fireball for example.) Is latency. I even recall a video on Tera's combat a while back that explored that very thing. Resulting in less dps even with "autoattacks" only.

Let's take shooters for example. Which are very skillbased for the most part. Those games, especially at the higher level rely on insane monitor refresh rates and low latency. Which, as you can imagine is fine for most shooter games. However, for an MMO you must make certain concessions.

I rarely had issues with latency from what I remember back when I played. But I do remember I had to pick a server that had 60-80 ping or less for the experience to be enjoyable.

Yes, but that's just allegory. Even though connectivity around the globe is getting better and better. There are still plenty of people with problematic bandwidth. Not to mention inherent advantage based soley on geographical location. For example. In the Netherlands, where I live. I live quite close to the most often used servers. They tend to be in Amsterdam/Paris/London.

So you want to try and design a skill based system. But you want it to be somewhat forgiving. I couldn't tell you how to do that though. But I suspect that's one of the reasons why things like a GCD exist.

Well, you're not wrong. From what I remember when I read about WoWs development from The WoW Diary by John Staats, I believe he mentioned that the game was tailored with latency in mind.

It was because all online games of that era were, as were all online games from before, as well as all online games now. Blizzard saying they specifically made the game to account for latency is about as disingenuous as them saying they support the use of a mouse - of course they did, everyone does, that is nothing special, it is a basic aspect of what you need to do to create an online game.

In terms of a tab target based MMO, that is what a GCD and skill queue are for. It is no coincidence that games have slowly lowered the GCD they allow players to run with since then.

Vhaeyne

Kingzookins wrote: »

I am the kind of player who hates PVP or PVE really, I dont like it.

What you are looking for is VR Chat...

All jokes aside, we clearly want some of the same things for AOC.
-Crafting to not just be a click of a button.
-Player driven economy.
-Dodging and Aiming in combat.
-Minimal NPCs.
I think we will get all of the above.

Where we differ is that I don't care about Role Play in MMOs, and I love a good grind.
We don't have a clear answer to how hard the grind will be. Intrepid has zero control over how hard people will role play in their game. They can give us the tools to RP, but that don't mean people will use them.

Do I think AOC is for you? Based on you original post it is a hard maybe. If you can get into the our node vs there node mindset, and allow yourself to feel like a countryman of your home node. You may get some real RP satisfaction out of that type of conflict, that will drive you to grind harder to make your self and your node better.

If you want to hang around in town RPing with people mostly. You may find yourself unable to maintain a competitive gear set, and find both PVP and PVE overwhelming.

Marcet

If you like it, play it.

If no, don't.

I hope you have enough info to decide.

The RealMalkie

Finally made my account because the original post in this thread utterly confuses me thanks to this:

Kingzookins wrote: »

I am the kind of player who hates PVP or PVE really, I dont like it.

I don't understand why you are interested in an mmo if this is the case. You're saying you don't like 99.9% of typical content. Every system in ashes is designed to incentivise PvP conflict, whether its people fighting over resources, nodes, castles/prestige, guild conflicts or people hiring merc players to destroy your business or whatever. If you don't like PvE or PvP then mmo is the wrong genre for you, nevermind an mmo that specifically aims to base its longevity on PvP relationships and rivalries that develop naturally as the server ages.

As for putting the RPG back in MMORPG, that to me would suggest more in depth character building as, at least systemically, that's the basis of an RPG. Intrepid seem to be doing really, really well on that front as far as I can tell, I mean as much as I would like even more freedom to customise my build, what they have is already bordering on insanity when it comes to balancing. Though it helps that there won't be damage meters or addons as that'll make it more difficult to develop cookie cutter builds.

Vhaeyne wrote: »

All jokes aside, we clearly want some of the same things for AOC.
-Crafting to not just be a click of a button.
-Player driven economy.
-Dodging and Aiming in combat.
-Minimal NPCs.
I think we will get all of the above.

Crafting not just a click of a button...…. No.... Just no.

Having varied recipe complexity and hopefully the potential for the customisation of recipes (adding extra mats of top of base recipes or something) is great, I love the idea of making an item specifically suited for my character. However, crafting not just being a button click would mean its button combos or combos with mouse movements etc to make crafting into a mini game, which is a terrible idea for several reasons. Crafting skills are something you level up meaning they are based on your character's stats/abilities/profession trees etc. sticking a mini game on top of this would basically be adding an extra barrier to making things. This creates one of 2 scenarios:
- Players invest massive effort and time to max crafting, but can't actually craft because the mini game is too hard for them at the peak of the skill (a challenging mini game).
- Players max the skill and get annoyed at the time wasting of the mini game. (the mini game is easy enough so that almost anyone can do it, this is usually what happens with crafting mini games).

Gating crafting skills with mini games can also lead to some skills being far more difficult than others, or worse affected by a little lag, which creates problems when crafting skills are reliant on other crafting skills as skills with difficult or annoying mini games will be massively under-utilised by the community which potentially messes with the economy. For example a processing skill with a bad mini game would leave certain craft skills too short on materials to be an effective choice. If you want to have crafting failure and the potential to lose materials, these things become even greater issues.

More often than not, mini game crafting, even in single player games, serves no purpose other than bloating completion time and mildly annoying a generous portion of players after their first few times doing it. As much as I've loved some crafting mini games, I have never encountered one that didn't result in me getting annoyed at it because it became repetitive and boring and just made me want to have a skip button. Professions in mmos are something people will spend many many hours doing on repeat, no mini game will ever remain fun after that much time. Also given the number of professions in AoC, having a mini game for each is a tall order.

I would far rather have robust and flexible professions with some risk than some silly mini game that will eventually turn any profession into an irritating chore.

TLDR: Click to craft is far, far superior to any mini game crafting in an mmo, this isn't even a debate due to the issues that arise from mmos being distributed systems, nevermind for AoC where mini game crafting has the potential to negatively impact the effectiveness of profession interdependency and by extension, the player driven economy.

Noaani

The RealMalkie wrote: »

Crafting skills are something you level up meaning they are based on your character's stats/abilities/profession trees etc. sticking a mini game on top of this would basically be adding an extra barrier to making things.

By requiring at least 25% of your chosen skills in combat to be each action and tab abilities, the above is exactly what Intrepid are doing with combat. There are people I have played MMO's with that simply do not have the physical ability to use action based abilities, and as such they will be unable to function 100% with any class in Ashes.

If it is ok for them to create this skill gap (even if the skill cap is very low for an able bodies person), then it is perfectly fine for there to be a skill gap in crafting.

daveywavey

Kingzookins wrote: »

I am the kind of player who hates PVP or PVE really, I dont like it.

Why don't you try The Sims instead?

The RealMalkie

Noaani wrote: »

By requiring at least 25% of your chosen skills in combat to be each action and tab abilities, the above is exactly what Intrepid are doing with combat. There are people I have played MMO's with that simply do not have the physical ability to use action based abilities, and ass such they will be unable to function 100% with any class in Ashes.

If it is ok for them to create this skill gap (even if the skill cap is very low for an able bodies person), then it is perfectly fine for there to be a skill gap in crafting.

Combat and crafting are two very different beasts with different requirements and goals. The two activities are completely different, saying that because something exists in one system it should exist in the other is just wrong. Whether or not that thing should exist in both systems depends on whether or not it is appropriate for that system. For example, if I was baking a cake I wouldn't add a gear lever just because my car has one.

Ashes is an mmo aiming to be driven by player action. The interdependency of game systems is central to that design philosophy, processors need gatherers, crafters need processors, community development costs and requirements dictate the demand for crafters. The mere existence of mini games for each profession adds unnecessary potential to throw off that complex web of interdependencies.

Its not about there being potential for skill expression in everything in the game, its about systems and gameplay that not only facilitate, but also promote communal behaviour, that is the entire design philosophy behind the world. Whether you want profession mini games or not, their inclusion would be contrary that design philosophy and I 100% guarantee that undermining that philosophy can only provide a net negative for the game. I know many mmo enthusiasts that would view mini games on crafting professions as a serious mistake as far as design decisions go. It will please a few players at the cost of annoying the majority (it will definitely annoy every single hardcore player I know and most of the casual players I know because it starts out interesting then gets real old, real quick when your doing it on repeat) and providing potential problems for certain interactions as well as bloating development time for something that would at the very best provide a minor benefit, and would far more likely providing a constant minor annoyance.

You either make an equally compelling, equally latency-dependant mini game for each profession or it is a bad idea pure and simple and there is no way you can legitimately argue against that if you've invested a significant amount of time in any mmo before because it unbalances professions at their baseline, before recipes and material requirements even come into it. Besides, as I said before, given the number of professions in AoC, a good mini game for each would be a very, very tall order.

Noaani

The RealMalkie wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

By requiring at least 25% of your chosen skills in combat to be each action and tab abilities, the above is exactly what Intrepid are doing with combat. There are people I have played MMO's with that simply do not have the physical ability to use action based abilities, and ass such they will be unable to function 100% with any class in Ashes.

If it is ok for them to create this skill gap (even if the skill cap is very low for an able bodies person), then it is perfectly fine for there to be a skill gap in crafting.

Combat and crafting are two very different beasts with different requirements and goals. The two activities are completely different, saying that because something exists in one system it should exist in the other is just wrong. Whether or not that thing should exist in both systems depends on whether or not it is appropriate for that system. For example, if I was baking a cake I wouldn't add a gear lever just because my car has one.

Well this is blatantly untrue.

Ashes is one game. It is it's own whole.

If the intention is to increase the skill level of the game, it is 100% appropriate and proper to increase the skill level of the whole game.

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