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.
Daily/Weekly Activities and Systems
VmanGman
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Daily and weekly activities and systems are implemented for two reasons:
1. To time gate content so that players do not blow through it and thus continue playing the game for longer periods of time.
2. To keep a more equal playing field between players with lots of free time and players with little free time.
That being said, daily and weekly activities absolutely drain the joy out of MMORPGs. What started as an adventure and a world to explore ends up devolving into checklists and tasks that NEED to be completed for your character to progress. For example, take World of Warcraft and its newest Torghast system. It’s a roguelike dungeon that you need to complete on a weekly basis to upgrade your legendary items. Knowing that when you log in you cannot just go about your favorite activity, but instead you need to do your Torghast for the week to keep up, is a horrible feeling. That is just one example of such a system in modern WoW.
Please do not force us to partake in daily/weekly activities that we might not enjoy and that are required for progression. The point is that it does not feel good to want to play the game only to then remember that I have to do some random activity before I can do the things that I want to do.
Edit: I am aware that WoW and AoC have vastly different design philosophies and that therefore a system like Torghast would not fit well in AoC. However, I think that daily/weekly activities and systems could still creep into the game and have the same detrimental effects on the player's experience.
1. To time gate content so that players do not blow through it and thus continue playing the game for longer periods of time.
2. To keep a more equal playing field between players with lots of free time and players with little free time.
That being said, daily and weekly activities absolutely drain the joy out of MMORPGs. What started as an adventure and a world to explore ends up devolving into checklists and tasks that NEED to be completed for your character to progress. For example, take World of Warcraft and its newest Torghast system. It’s a roguelike dungeon that you need to complete on a weekly basis to upgrade your legendary items. Knowing that when you log in you cannot just go about your favorite activity, but instead you need to do your Torghast for the week to keep up, is a horrible feeling. That is just one example of such a system in modern WoW.
Please do not force us to partake in daily/weekly activities that we might not enjoy and that are required for progression. The point is that it does not feel good to want to play the game only to then remember that I have to do some random activity before I can do the things that I want to do.
Edit: I am aware that WoW and AoC have vastly different design philosophies and that therefore a system like Torghast would not fit well in AoC. However, I think that daily/weekly activities and systems could still creep into the game and have the same detrimental effects on the player's experience.
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Comments
I want to log in and have no chores I need to do before I just do whatever the hell I want.
In that system, you get to do a random Lvl 80 dungeon, or a Lvl X Trial, or a 24 Raid etc. (Your level syncs with the dungeon in question)
For each of these, once per day you get a number of Tomestones, a type of currency you spend for armor sets. There is a weekly cap, and a max cap.
This works in a system where all dungeons and raids are instanced, as it forces lower level dungeons to still be completable by newer players, with the help of more experienced ones. It also allows for some kind of content between patches for players who don't do gathering, side quests etc.
With that being said, I don't this would ever be applicable to AoC with its heavy reliance on Open World content and non static parties (no 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 2 DPs formations or whatever applies here) as it might be up to the party in question to decide what roles to bring.
The only dailies I might see working would be gathering or processing quests where one would have to supply their main Node with x amounts of materials. Not everyone would do them but it might allow for a faster development of better gear and perks for the citizens of that Node.
From the Wiki:
Daily quests will not be the same as past experiences.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Quests#Daily_quests
However, I am now going to state what I think it is you are saying.
I think you are saying that you do not want to see intermediate content that is forced on players in order to progress, that uses time gating in order to stretch it out.
This is something I totally agree with,.
However, I do see a place for content that is only able to be completed daily and weekly. This content should never be in the form of "tasks" that players feel they have to do before they go off and do the things they want to do, but rather should be the things players want to do.
An example of this would be an instanced raid. Ashes will have some of these - not many, but some. It is perfectly acceptable to me for these to have one week (or 5 day, would be better) timers on them. Assuming this content is designed for people that want to raid and enjoy raiding, that would mean that this content isn't going to be a thing that players ever consider to be a "task" to do before going off to do the things they want to do. Ratherm this raid is the thing they want to do.
This could apply equally to what ever instanced single group content the game has as well - though perhaps with a day rather than a week. Again though, this should always be the thing that players want to do, rather than the thing players feel they need to do before they go off to do the thing they want to do.
I don't like it when a game try's to tell me what to do.
I don't like it when a game incentivizes me to do what the game wants me to do.
It is my job to determine what makes the most sense for me to be doing.
As always... I don't even want quests in any MMO...
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Please just let me be a sweaty nerd if I get some time off and want to grind for a literal week and please just let me casually experience the game without pressure to do chores each time I log in just to keep up with everyone else.
Being behind other players should be an ok thing to experience because that means you still have a lot of content to explore and enjoy.
Let’s be honest here. 99% of those who complain about weekly locks « forcing » them to do a dungeon after resets are the same who would spam said dungeon until fully geared without the locks.
Now I’m not a fan of weeklies myself but I can get behind the reasons of this system.
- Playtime balance : Not everybody can spend X hours a day gaming. Weekly locks help those with less playtime keep up with others
- Economy : If an endgame dungeon was spammable, dropped items would rapidly become worthless. Another economy related reason are selling groups who would thrive without weekly locks
- Early carry groups : Especially in Guilds. Players will be able to gear up Guild mates who wouldn’t be able to do it by themselves otherwise.
- PvP balance : In games where there aren’t dedicated PvP gear sets (AoC might be one of those) fully geared players/guilds will have an huge advantage
- Selling runs : Not economy related. Here I’m talking about those selling for real money. They will always exist but I’m pretty certain all of them are in favor of removing weeklies for obvious reasons
I imagine other systems to keep balance exist in some MMOs but those I played all had weeklies
I am perfectly fine with dailies for reputation grinds on factions for cosmetics and stuff like that. Final Fantasy 14 does a great job with this as you are not pressured at all to go complete these side-rep dailies to keep up in the game. They are there to give you a time sink that unlocks fun and interesting cosmetics, pets, mounts etc.
Us to guildie:- "Hey, we're about to do that raid you wanted!"
Guildie:- "Nah, I have to do my dailies, first
I fall into this category, however dailies in any form are in most scenarios chores, things you have to plan to do at a certain pace dictated by the game and not you. When I have to login and do things in the game at the pace the game is setting up for me, then it is not longer a game, it's a chore, a job, something I HAVE to do.
Playtime balance: Fixing progression to a pace set by the game for balance reasons is a bad solution because of the problems it introduces, aka it's no longer a game, it's a chore/job. People should be okay with not being at the same stage of progression as well, imagine if they locked levels on launch to lvl 10 and then each consecutive week they increased it by 5 just to make it balanced/fair, players would quit the game so fast.
Economy: I'm not read up on Ashes well enough to know, but if the gear degraded over time and were eventually unfixable you would have fixed the first issue. Personally, I'd prefer it this way because it's a great gold and time sink.
Boosters will most likely fall into the category of gold sellers, which will actively be enforced by Entrepid. Even if they don't, boosters will always exist in some form.
Early carry groups: Not sure about this, from what I understand they will design encounters in such a way that you have to complete them either in a certain way or time which dictates your loot. That makes it much harder to carry people because they can't guarantee the new player won't fuck up their run. Especially if they make it so that if you get hit by X or Y abilities you won't get the desired loot.
PvP Balance: Yeah, people who put in more time should have a advantage, that's how it works in real life as well. The more time you put in the more money you make, I don't see a issue here.
Selling runs: Falls under gold sellers most likely, so Entrepid will hopefully be on top of these types of people.
How would that be managable ? Let's say you need 5 pieces of gear from a certain dungeon. You get the 4 oof them but are unlucky on the last one. After X clears, you're still unlucky, your 4 pieces break and you can start all over again. You could be less geared than a guy who just cleared it for the first time and got his first loot.
Comparing a game design to real life isn't really relevant :
"Welcome to Verra. Our algorythm has determined that your character is born disabled. You can't use dual wield and your movement speed has been decreased by 30 points. Also Magic doesn't exist. To bad you chose the Mage class. We hope you enjoy the realism ! Your IS team"
Now seriously, of course those who spend more time should be rewarded for it. But I don't find it shocking to put an artificial barrier (for example weekly drop limits on endgame content) to give those with less playtime the opportunity to compete. If you play 24/7 you will still max level faster and have a few weeks of drops already before others even hit 50 so where is the problem ?
And if you really want to compare it to real life, look at it as a 130km/h limit on a highway. Technically every car can reach that speed so nobody is discriminated but if your car has faster acceleration or/and if you choose to push that gas pedal lower than other drivers you will still be ahead of other drivers.
Using your highway analogy, for the cars in front who had put their foot down or had faster acceleration, you're wanting them to have to stop at the side of the road to wait for everyone else to catch up. Does that happen in real life?
My understanding is that most gear will be crafted, not dropped. So players gathering end-game materials don't need to rely on a piece of loot dropping, just getting the materials for it and someone to craft it.
Well, you took my real life argument a bit further than I did but okay. It wasn't about realism but things being fair.
The game probably is healthier with some kind of artificial barrier to even things out, but time gating is not the solution.
It is a foreign concept to many who have not played the games inspirations.
From the WIKI:
Inspiration
Ashes of Creation has taken inspiration from various other MMORPG titles.[6]
Eve Online with its regionalized economy and risk vs reward in transportation.[6]
ArcheAge with its building systems, transportation and naval combat.[6]
Lineage II with its risk vs reward, castle sieges, flagging, open world PvP and guild progression.[7][6]
Star Wars Galaxies with its crafting systems.[6]
That is why one of my first questions on this forum was about soul-shots. Lineage 2's main gold sink.
I was delighted to learn that a maintaining your gear is AOCs gold sink.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Correct, probably. The very best gear is likely to be gated behind raids though. Yeah, it might be materials and recipes that drop in those raids, that a crafter needs to put together, but in the end it's just raid gear with extra steps.
I hope gatherers can go out solo or in small groups and gather materials required for epic level gear, so it's only the legendary stuff that is really gated behind raids.
Yes but not like you wrote it. When you drive you always have a destination. You don't drive forward indefinitely. IG your destination would be clearing the endgame dungeon. So everytime you drive to that destination you'll see more and more cars driving the same route. The big difference is since you started earlier you'll know the road better and your car would have higher mileage (which would be a positive thing IG).
Most likely recipes or alike, which means they can just help the rest out by the time they get to max level by selling them gear.
I too hope that you can gather pretty much everything you need as solo in open world given enough time instead of gate keeping resources to raids only for the best loot. I seriously do not want to commit to 4h raid nights weekly anymore, one of the reasons I quit WoW, again.
So yes there will be Boss drops for gear as well.
The way Steven explained it on stream it sounded like it was going to be like Lineage 2.
Where yes the bosses have a very small chance to drop full loot, but you can only expect the crafting parts to make the same items.
I would not expect to be gearing from one dungeon to face the next dungeon.
The idea is to get as many items in the economy as possible.
That is why nearly nothing is soul-bound.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Yeah, quoting from the wiki is all you can do.
It's a shame you haven't spent years listening to interviews, podcasts and livestreams to get more information, much as people like Vhaeyne have done.
And yet so far my uneducated comments in this post brought more to the conversation than yours.
Sorry all ! I didn't know we had to have a degree in AoC-ology before commenting here. As I didn't know quoting the wiki whose source has a Discord screenshot of Steven saying exactly what I quoted has less value than something written by a member who spent years listening to interviews, podcasts and livestreams.
This is correct, but it is also true that of these two drops, the crafted item is likely to be better. Actually, if you read that Discord quote, Steven is talking about where the best items in the game will come from. He said the best items in the game will be a combination of crafted and boss dropped - in other words, bosses will drop components (either directly or via the addition of gathering professions), and those materials will then be turned in to the best items in the game.
Also, if you paid attention to the other source from the small portion of the wiki you quoted, and actually listened to the video that it is from, you would have heard Jeff and Steven talking about the while thing for a few minutes.
But no, you pulled a wiki quote that had context that you don't understand, didn't bother doing any other research in to what you were saying, and decided to run with it without doing base level checking as to whether you understand things properly or not.
Then when it was somewhat politely pointed out to you that you may have missed something by someone that has spent a lot more time on the subject matter than you, you dismissed it without thought or care.
Good job!
That is why I came in as I did. You clearly aren't going to listen to politeness, so I didn't bother with it.
Point is, Steven has said many times that while there will be a *small* amount of completed items that bosses will drop, they will be rare, and they will not be as good as the items made from the crafting materials that bosses drop, generally speaking. It has been said that the finished items that drop are as intended to be something for players to break down as they are as something for players to use.
The reason for this is that raw materials are subject to potentially being lost if you are killed in PvP, whereas finished items only have a chance of being dropped if you have corruption. The idea is that if you have one or two boss dropped raw materials on you, you are far more likely to fight back in PvP as if you lose, fighting back means you are half as likely to lose those items.
This also adds the dynamic to raids where a guild can be successful, but until the raw materials are back home safely, there is a chance that a rival may be able to take some of the guilds hard earned loot.
I would like to point out that I have a pretty large bias when I hear Steven mention anything about Lineage 2. There is a part of my brain I have to try and keep in check that thinks AOC is going to be Lineage 3.
It is a constant battle.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Daily chore lists are disgusting in games.
Weekly chore lists are usually disgusting also. Just let people take quests off a notice board and that’s it.
I agree pointless debates are pointless. However, correcting people when they post either untrue or misleading comments about this game is not pointless.
The reason most gamers feel let down with games is because they have a skewed perspective of what that game is before buying it. This is usually because people share incorrect information, and all too often no one bothers to correct it, leading people to think that the incorrect information is in fact correct.
You shared something that was misleading, not that I assume you did it intentionally. Someone else corrected you, pointing out that what you said isn't strictly accurate. Your reply to that post left it in the air to anyone that may come along and read this as to whether you were right or not. All I did was clear that up for them.
You are welcome, by the way.
My thoughts exactly. I used the weekly barrier example because it’s the most common way in MMOs to slow down item level progression. AoC could use a far more interesting method. Since our action have consequences on the environment I would find it awesome if a dungeon/raid isn’t spammable to begin with. Like, if a group manages to kill a boss this dungeon will have a CD before we can enter it again. Although this would probably require more endgame content to give enough players the opportunity to raid. Just an idea