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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.
After the launch what do you think is most important for new players to get engaged in the game.
KeeperBrGO
Member, Alpha Two
Regardless of what happens after the launch, new players have to be introduced to the game, in your opinion what ways do you think would be most beneficial?
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This endless power and level increase is why a game like WoW had to do a huge leveling revamp in Shadowlands. I really hope that Intrepid is aware of this issue that will certainly come with time and that they plan their post launch progression well and for the long term.
New player(account) joins guild.
New player reaches milestones.
Guild receives points that can use for cold hard but sweet ingame gold. At final milestone the academy member can either join or leave the guild.
The more support the guild provides (grouping, gear, lessons/guides) the faster the pointa accumulate and the more gold the guild makes from helping new players that have fallen behind since they joined AoC many months after the release.
Many games tried the mentor system, none was meaningful.
Only gold can make ppl want to truly engage.
Has to be for new accounts to avoid cheating. If ppl are willing to make new acvounts to cheat so be it.
@George Black Yea that system doesn't sound like RMT/p2w at all. Pay $15 for a new account and get free gold. Let the developers do the developing please.
Given the attention Ashes has drawn so far, add in some marketing before launch, and you'll likely end up with a horde of new & old mmo players wanting to try Ashes.
Mind your tone son. Who said that by paying $15 you automatically get enough in game gold to buy, let's say, a great item?
Do you understand what the word MILESTONES (plural) means?
In your suspicious and ill disposed mind you quickly jumped to the conclusion that a massive amount of gold would be available within a 5 min account sign up.
Take your time and think about what people write about, before you jump in and start typing.
I never said that a massive amount of gold would be available in 5 minutes. I said that for $15 you can get gold which is the definition of RMT.
Stop getting offended when your ideas are shutdown because they’re flawed, son.
LOL calm is just a forum for a little game that hasn't been released yet
the discussion is about getting players engaged with the game, it doesn’t necessarily mean playing the game, and milestones does it artificially but reduces the impact of decisions.
It's like a college club desperately trying to recruit new students in order to get a grant from the school.
When I landed on Verra as a new player, it would be undesirable for me to receive a large number of guild solicitations.😅
The balance of the game comes from the balance of the game system, rather than gaining balance through rewards so that new players can join in. Is your idea too simple? Some invisible threats will bring disaster because of your ideas
Yes and no. I've played far too many MMO's where everything is achievable on a casual level. What's the point of playing this MMO if they turn it into another "easy access", everyone wins without actually putting in effort MMO? Like the other daily spamming, log-in once per day for your epic reward shit shows? There's a sweet spot between being easy to access and not being some spoon feeding garbage. This is a glaring issue with their idea for the combat system too, it rewards character investment, not player skill. I don't need to play well if I'm sitting at level cap and have a OHK nuke combo on my numpad. Hopefully Intrepid get it right, or it'll be another MMO sitting at the bottom of the abyss 1 year post launch.
I never said that everything should be easy or achievable on a casual level. That would go directly against Intrepid’s design goal for AoC.
I totally agree, experiences like that captivate attention very fast
"Thanks for the help!"
"Don't worry about it, have a great adventure!"
I think these exchanges alone are enough to support a newcomer.
I totally agree, hope there is no need for artificial interactions like some MMOs
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
The first - and arguably the only one that matters - is that the existing players need to make sure everyone knows how much fun they are having at the end game.
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The next, which almost touches on what was said earlier about keeping end game within reach - there needs to always be spots for freeholds available. They don't need to be optimal spots, but I saw more people not stick around in Archeage due to not getting any land than any other single reason.
If a freehold is necessary for any crafting, then there new players will need to be able to get a freehold. This shouldn't be controversal.
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From there, the next most important thing in my opinion - assuming we are talking about people joining the game several months after launch - is there actually needs to not be a reliance on grouping to level up.
Nothing is worse in an MMO that needing a group when the only groups available are those that are mentoring down to your level in order to do some daily quest or some such. The developers put them in to make sure lower level players always have others around to help them through content, but those that are mentoring down aren't interested in the player, they are only interested in the reward. More often than not, the player is told to stay put.
These mentoring systems were put in place to solve the issue of lower level players not having a large pool of similar level players to group up with in order to take on the content the developers expected players to level up on. There has to be a better solution to this problem than giving people a reason to sideline the player that we are trying to help.
New players will be left behind very quickly.
Personally I wouldn't play an open world PvP mmo if I missed the opening by 1 year, unless there was a plan for new servers. And then I would wait for them.
There are many paths a game can take when it comes to appealing to new players. Some go with the route of making all content easy, reaching the current cap within 2 weeks or less.
XP pots/scrolls, vitality systems and random buff pack drops. Straight up "seasons" with global boost to XP.
Other games try the mentor system. Returning to ffxiv I found how meaningless it was. There is no real insentive for gamers to go out of their way and help strangers.
L2 did a good job in 2005 with C5 when they introduced the academy, with a newbie armor for new members and guild points for the leader. It didn't last long.
There were easier ways to get guild points than helping new players.
We can always go with the direction of ESO, making all content accessible to everybody that just logged in and groups of players from lv 810 to 550 to 12 all together in the same raid.
So what's next? We demand that no new gear is introduced, no new abilities, no new areas so that ppl can say "AoC is new player friendly! Come see how much fun we have with the same lv 50 builds 2 years now.
You either come up with solutions or stay at wishful thinking.
I am not offended by opposite views. I am annoyed. That's the word. Annoyed that people start screaming p2w in the event that somebody would waste $15, waste 2 months to raise a new char and tick off all the milestones so that the guild leader can earn enough gold to buy a mid lv, top tier pair of gloves.
What's next? No trade between players so that we avoid gold sellers?
Ye. Annoyed is the word. Not much more to add. I will leave some of you to skim through posts just so that you can quickly type your pretedermined response.
For sure LOL.
If so, I apologize.
It seems that my understanding of the premise was not clear enough.
If that's the case, then I hope there's some sort of benefit to players at lower levels!
The first part of your post sounds like they're intending to drop some Fortnite-esque seasonal content. If that's the case, I'm out. That's absolute shit. I do agree that FFXIV feels meaningless, I felt that way myself, it's an odd one. But other than that the rest of your post is an odd rambling of your personal concerns, if worded differently, I may agree with some of them. I must point this out, because I really don't understand the wasted $15 comment, I'm guessing it's about gear score/gear strength (?). I'm personally more for player growth over gear score growth.
I see guilds having a large part to play in helping new players settle in and contribute, although other social networks (for example, regular attendees at a tavern, which happen to share a discord channel) may also fulfill this role.
It is in every servers' best interest to retain an active population otherwise the nodes will atrophy and there will be less content, ultimately leading to a dead server and enforced migration / mergers. I've got a feeling that some unlucky players will see Sanctus for a second or third time over the next ten years!
If the rewards are good enough for the veteran to want to engage in the system, then as soon as they are finished with one new player, they will simply move on to another new player. If they can't find a new player - and if the rewards are good enough - they absolutely will create accounts to participate in this system.
These systems are not a good means to get people to help players that they otherwise wouldn't care about - because there is no reason for them to care about that player when they have made use of them in regards to these systems.
Mentor systems only work to retain new players when the player in question is someone that already knows people in the game, and those veteran players specifically care about the player and want to assist them in getting to the same point in the game as the veterans are at.
As such, these systems need not offer any reward at all to the veteran player. The only "reward" needed for such a system is an increased leveling speed for the new player, as leveling that new player is the purpose of everyone involved in the system.
Mentor systems are good, and if implemented under the understanding that they only work when all parties know each other prior to initiating the system, they are absolutely worth having.
However, they are of no real use to the bulk of potential new players that may look at a game a year or two after launch, and believe it or not, there are more MMO players that are not interested in being around for game launches than there are MMO players that want to be there for them.
I think a simple "thank you" is a much more valuable reward than a reward for the game system.