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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Why Modern MMORPG's SUCK! (and how to fix them)
Strykerz
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Thought this was a good video and wanted to share. I agree with the creators arguments in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juR8h1htw5k
Thoughts?
TLDR: - Too much convenience removes adventure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juR8h1htw5kThoughts?
TLDR: - Too much convenience removes adventure
5
Comments
Thanks for sharing this video.
Anyway, yes convenience removes adventure.
Excessive amounts of bag space and immediate fast travel back to any major city mean that you never need to plan and prepare for what you are doing. Haven't fully stocked up on consumables? Who cares? Haven't fully repaired your gear? Doesn't matter.
Think of the Lord of the Rings films, when the hobbits arrive in Rivendale and there is the huge sense of relief that they have reached a safe haven where they can relax and prepare for what is ahead. Now imagine if they could teleport back to the Shire whenever they want to - it would completely ruin that sense of relief as well as the sense of danger when they go into the Moria mines.
I have enjoyed gaming for almost a quarter of a century, but I have yet to play an MMORPG.
I have only recently become interested in MMO's and have been collecting information on various games, but I have not been able to find a game that I "like".
What I'm looking for in a MMORPG is to give me the same excitement that I had when I explored the forest with my friends as a child.
While wading through knee-deep grass, I was surprised to see the biggest centipede I've ever seen, or fascinated by the beauty of a cicada hatching from its chrysalis.
Or frantically building a secret base that looks a bit dumb with small tools.
When I was about the age of a high school student, I remember thinking, "That's it!" when I learned that Wizardry had a system where you couldn't even tell what effect an item had until you appraised it.
I realized that overcoming difficulties and traveling to unknown places is what "adventure" is all about.
(The difficulties don't necessarily have to be world-destroying evil.)
And now I'm here because I'm hoping that Ashes is the game that can come closest to that expectation
That was the most boring vid I've ever tried to watch.
Really depends on why you play MMORPGs and especially whether your playstyle is hardcore challenge or casual challenge.
And, these days, whether you have hardcore time or casual time.
I dont agree on the whole Hardcore or Casual type of gamer that matters. WoW sucks now because of the years upon years of "casualization" (if thats even a word). LFG, LFR, Making loot incredibly easy to get such as in Cata, and th one that pissed me off was all the complaining from the DPS community that Tanks need more threat and should beable to hold big groups so then they can be killed by a cleave group. If you have ever played on TBC private servers, or even TBC back in retail, you will see an veryone asking for a Paladin Tank because they can hold big Aoe groups whereas the Druid and Warrior werent as good. Then Blizz caved to the DPS community about this and made all tanks capable of big aoe tanking and there was no longer any skill invovled in tanking or dpsing/cc. It made Wow boring.
As for how this video might relate to Ashes...
I know a lot of people are upset about their recent realization that the upkeep on gear might be lightly more brutal than they are used to. People hear Steven say risk vs reward literally every time he appears publicly, and don't understand that the reality of a game that focuses on risk vs reward is that it is both inconvenient and brutal.
If you are not thinking about the amount of time and money you might lose in a failed attack against someone or something, than the game is not about risk vs reward. The loses have to hurt. The expenses have to add up. Eventually you might have to put on a worst set of gear to farm resources to get your good gear repaired. This is a old school concept. It gets to one of that youtubers points though. He want's things to be harder and more rewarding.
I think AOC might be a better game than WOW for that youtuber, but I honestly think Pantheon would be more that guys speed.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Their systems naturally encourage the players to build roads, shipping routes, etc. to bring ores back to the player's settlement. This is both time-consuming and potentially boring on first glance, but because the world is so engaging and beautiful to look at, as well as having really strong core repetitive gameplay loops (chopping down trees in that game never ceases to be satisfying), you get a lot of fun encounters and emergent gameplay.
If your boat gets sunk off the coast and you have heaps of ore in there, it sinks to the bottom of the sea. The ore is too heavy for your character to carry, so you have to rely on and RISK doing something more dangerous, even though you know there are goddamn sea monsters.
So long as Ashes manages to nail their repetitive gameplay elements (the mining, gathering, fighting, etc.), then there should be no need at all for convenience. Force us out into the world with each other.
EDIT: Convenience is another way of saying I've designed something that isn't fun, so here's a way to sidestep and avoid it. The question developers should be asking instead is: "how can I make that thing fun?"
We still have to defend (and progress) our homes...and we can't do that alone.
On the one hand the family summon is pretty limited, so I don't see it being all that impactful on the game. On the other hand, I don't think it has any place in this game. It is in stark contrast to the core values of the game to include it, and I don't get why Steven thinks we need it at all.
He thinks it is needed for the reason discussed in the video: convenience. While being in different locations than your friends is inconvenient, this encourages communication and planning to meet up if there's no easy teleport button. Also, it encourages a feeling of community by deciding to have homes not too far from each other, maybe in the same node, and makes it more likely that your group would plan expeditions together if one of your group needs to go to the other side of the map. The family summon system undermines all of this.
LOL, I tried to make some points about how the sentiment in the video might relate to AOC.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
It's easier to do gifs.
The game can be designed to encourage grouping, but the responsibility to make connections with other strangers in game falls on the player.