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
You can think it is what ever you want to think it is.
I dont care, and that has nothing at all to do with what I am saying.
I mean, you RP in an MMO, and I am talking about why many people that RP in other genres dont RP on MMO's, so obviously your opinion is going to be different to what I am talking about.
I dont really care what you mean.
The people that I am talking about that RP in other genres but not in MMO's are not you. They are the people I am talking about (and 'they' include me).
Since I am talking about their perspective, your perspective doesn't mean shit.
Your perspective isnt going to change their perspective, or make them want to RP in a game genre that really doesn't support it from their perspective.
But, you replied to my post when you didn't understand what I meant, so any response to what I've said is meaningless.
I gave everyone my observations on why this genre has a LOT of people that play tabletop games, but has very few people that RP in the game.
Your opinion of what RP is has no bearing on that observation.
Stop thinking it is all about you.
Since I don't know where you might have posted your manifesto about MMO RP then I have just limited understanding of your perception on MMO RP.
So I'll go with non disputable facts only.
- RP in MMO has consequences only for player to player relations
- RP doesn't have gameplay consequences unless specifically coded for (usually just a dialog options that only influence the dialog that the NPC has)
- RP as a way to play believable character with suitable backstory that "could" fit into the game's lore is historically only a negative experience for other players in situations where good gameplay matters. This means that such RP is either ignored or looked upon as curiosity in places where gameplay DOESNT matter. The only time that such RP is accepted and encouraged is only with players that on some scale practice this RP themselves
― Plato
Even when just spending time around town or what ever.
One other point that a friend made to me just a few hours ago is that when playing an online game, you are often presented with people that are interesting in their own right, and talking to them as people is far more enjoyable and rewarding that trying to talk to them as characters.
This may not apply to people that don't play well with others though - I don't know. I can see the possibility that some people would prefer to hide behind a character persona and only interact with other character personas.
How is talking about your characters gear and in-game damage not RP? Just like people in real life people talk about their score number in ice hockey or their hunting equipment, people in fantasy world would 100% talk about gear and how many difficult animals and bosses they have killed.
The real life equivalent of high end raiding is doing sports on a top end level. Athletes put their heart and soul in to their sport and try and improve every day, with meters and other equipment to measure their current strength. I feel like raiders have the same mentality to raids and their performance. They want to be the best at raiding, while also improving their performance as much as they can, just like real life athletes.
So this is not a RP problem, it's a you problem. You do not like the fact that there is hard proof that someone else is much better than you, and that is fine. Some people wants to be the best in raids, someone wants to be the best pvper, and some just play the game for fun. Find your place and let others play the game how they like to play it.
Also this is not a game with 30+ skills, complex rotations won't be needed, staying alive will be a bigger focus even as a dps, ect. DPS meters cause the e-sportsification of MMORPGs and take the players attention away from the loot and fun of combat to focus on min/maxing their damage.
Over all it's best to leave DPS meters out of MMORPGs, this isn't going to be like WoW raiding, cut throat DPS will not be required it's going to be about who's alive and who's not. If you need to min/max in your MMORPG i would suggest just staying with WoW as I imagine you're quite happy with the the E-sports environment that it has created.
Combat trackers existed in MMO's before WoW was released.
Learn what you are saying before you say it.
Lol you're just making shit up, eh?
You do know there are many MMOs before WoW right? WoW is not the center of the MMO world
No, I was using combat trackers well before WoW came out.
Most of the combat trackers from back then are no longer active, but since you also said that combat trackers only exist for WoW and ESO, this in itself just proves you are full of shit.
Keep pulling shit out of your ass man. It'll get you some where. UO, Darkfall, Runescape, PW, WHO, MO1&2. Most legit MMORPGs do not have meters. Looking at logs after the fact isn't the same and not something i have a problem with if the game keeps logs that can be pulled later.
I mean I used them in lineage 2 and that game came out before World of Warcraft
My guess is that you are exWoW player that got fed up with bs changes to wow and quit and you tried a few other MMOs, but are most likely just waiting on a truly big and popular MMO
― Plato
I mean he only joined ashes today
Over all my best memories come from Darkfall, that was the highlight of my gaming experiences. I've seen the direction WoW has gone and over the years and feel bad for those who remain, but most of my anger about WoW comes from how it's trained players to think about MMORPGs. Everything gets viewed through WoW lens when there's so many other good MMOs that exist and have existed, currently I play Albion which I enjoy but I would rather something that isn't isometric.
I don't feel any need to add to this.
Thank god.
Probably quite often - since you aren't going to address how blatantly wrong you were here and yet seem to still think your opinion on a topic you clearly have no knowledge of matters.
I just don't need to add anything to it.
I could also perhaps make it my forum signature - and since I turn signatures off on all forums as soon as I can, I'd probably soon forget it was even there.
In the mean time...
Thank god.
Are you expecting me to be ashamed of it? You're reaching REALLY hard to justify what you want to be true. You're full of shit and promoting some ass backwards website that no one uses, probably just want the community to use your bullshit for ashes. Go shill some where else.
Also, ACT isn't mine, I have no affiliation with it, I use their icon as my forum sig for reasons.
You know that add ons have negative effects on the health of an MMORPG, yet you're still promoting them. Keep shilling dude, how much you getting paid?
At it's core, RP is just playing the game from the character perspectives (in character chat) as much as possible and keeping discussion of the meta and real world topics to a minimum.
Sure, lots of RPers go farther and craft background stories for their characters and "The RP Community" may try to GM their own stories. But, basic RP is just staying in character rather than discussing things from a player perspective.
A lot of gamers have not played RPGs before, so they don't even think about keeping player perspective to a minimum. They just talk about whatever they want to talk about. And when you mention RP to them, they will say things like, "Oh. I don't know how to do that." Or "Oh. I'm not very good at that." Especially if they think RP means they're supposed to talk in Elizabethan English - which was a very common misconception in the early days of EQ.
Not implementing combat trackers brings the game closer to RP because instead of focusing on what Steven calls "mechanical bullshit", combat analysis can focus more on what abilities and augments to use.
Also, MMORPGs were not designed with characters to have flaws as well as perks. Many table-top RPGs do have flaws as well as perks. So, most players in table-top games learn how to compensate for flaws. Gamers in MMORPGs strive to be uber-powerful and uber-efficient - that whole speed run for loot phenomenon.
The original idea of MMORPGs was that players would be forever questing. Hence, the name Everquest.
Leveling via questing was intended to last until the next expansion. But, gamers focused on "beating the game" as quickly as possible. So, it wasn't too long before it became common to hit max level in 8 weeks or less, rather than the dev expectation of 9 months - 1 year. I think by 2005, most gamers were speeding through expansions in about 3 weeks.
So...what do you do to keep players paying for subscriptions after they speed through quests? You make the dungeons and raids difficult enough that it keeps the people who play them playing for 9 months to 2 years while the devs create new content. And, especially as gamers create add-ons to help them speed through content even more quickly, easily and efficiently, the devs provide their own combat trackers.
By 2013, most gamers considered any leveling prior to max level to be a grind designed to keep them from end-game. Because "endgame is the real game". Which is all kinds of wrong, but makes sense when you spend 4/5 of your time or more in the end-game.
I get it...why focus on character immersion when that's not going to help you clear content as quickly and efficiently as possible?
But, you can just look at what Steven's quotes to see what his philosophy is:
STEVEN: First of all, on the add-on front, we're not allowing add-ons.
Which means he wants players to play the game the devs designed rather than finding ways to make it easier to speed through the content.
STEVEN: Back in the day, when MMOs were great, you had to win your encounters through trial and error. You didn't have a DPS meter telling you, "Oh! We need to get up to 67.7% damage in order to achieve the whatever!" It wasn't some mechanical bullshit experience where you got to look at a graph or chart and say, "Oh! We need to do exactly this." Instead, you actually had to be present, you had to watch what was happening, you had to help your fellow guild members learn how to play the game and you had to excel as a group.
Back in the day, we used trial and error. Which is not as quick and efficient as relying on the mechanical bullshit of combat trackers, but brings us closer to an RP experience.
That's also why he's trying to get away from using numbers to indicate the health of combat targets in UI and instead display health decay as nameplate decay.
Focusing on discussing the characters' perspectives of what abilities were used - describing what the abilities that were seen or the abilities that could be used, rather than discussing DPS, brings us closer to RP.
STEVEN: From a roleplay perspective, we want people to be in-depth with their characters.
I don't think Steven is talking about this in RP in the form of making up your own dialogues with NPCs.
I had no idea what that ACT meant in your avatar, and I saw that it showed up on the link you shared: https://advancedcombattracker.com/
For the sake of transparency with the rest of the of people on the forum, and to better grasp where you're coming from: do you have an added layer of interest in Ashes having a combat tracker?
Not saying that that would be an issue. I think it would be a fair thing to do, but so we all are on the same page as to the reasons why.
So, this is a conversation I have had numerous times on these forums.
First of all, I am not asking for an add on. I am asking for a combat tracker - preferably one built in to the game.
Second, not all add ons are bad. It is bad if the game opens up the API like WoW did, but that isn't going to happen in any other game.
Third, I am not shilling anything. If I were shilling something, it would probably not be a piece of software that is free to use.
Here is a post from a few days ago in one of the other threads.
Hope that clears things up.
Thanks for the info brother!