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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.
[Closed] Casual Gameplay
AutumnEmbers
Member
Ashes of Creation seems like a great game, but it also seems to be a hardcore game that requires you to play at least a few hours every week to really get the most out of everything. I tend to take many multi-month breaks from MMORPGs, and I think that this will significantly impact the game for me. It seems like, if I take breaks, I will:
1. Lose my house due to either the node being overrun or lack of maintenance
2. Lose my mount because they have timers
3. Lose my armor/gear because of the degradation system
4. Lose my village/town/city because of node wars
And whatever else might be easily lost within a month or so.
It probably won't be a problem for most players. Subscription players tend to play a lot every month, consistently. But I wanted to put this out there. Will the game be enjoyable for players like me, who tend to take multi-month breaks? It seems like I'll forever be a wandering, naked, and companionless sad adventurer.
1. Lose my house due to either the node being overrun or lack of maintenance
2. Lose my mount because they have timers
3. Lose my armor/gear because of the degradation system
4. Lose my village/town/city because of node wars
And whatever else might be easily lost within a month or so.
It probably won't be a problem for most players. Subscription players tend to play a lot every month, consistently. But I wanted to put this out there. Will the game be enjoyable for players like me, who tend to take multi-month breaks? It seems like I'll forever be a wandering, naked, and companionless sad adventurer.
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Comments
"2. Lose my mount because they have timers" What is the purpose of a timer on mounts?
"3. Lose my armor/gear because of the degradation system" This sounds like a CONSTANT stupid grind.
Then this game would be a deal breaker for me...
In ESO, the more damage you take, your gear will become broken overtime and you will need to repair it for X amount of gold. But you will never lose your gear.
Most mounts do not have timers. If you are casual, you probably won't have many mounts that have timers.
Item decay occurs with death; not passage of time.
But is there anything else that I will lose if I take long breaks?
And node destruction is a big risk even for no life people playing 12h a day, 365 days a year. So don't consider this as risk if you do breaks, just you won't be active in defense, while some of the potential attackers might be also in break.
Freehold (which is little different that house) can be destroy after its node was destroyed. else, you have 2 weeks to do quests to make it in another node influence (so long break + node lose = sure to lose also your freehold)
For other thing to lose... i don't see
1. If the Node is destroyed or hasn't been maintained you can lose your house, however the blueprints to rebuild it and have all your furniture and what not are sent to your mail upon loss so you can rebuild in a new home. It's less an outright loss and more of a debt.
2. As of right now the only mounts w/ timers are the very limited flying ones. Your normal mounts are just mounts like in any other game.
3. Your armor/gear does have durability and rather than just gold it'll take crafting materials to repair it. Having your gear looted by others only happens if you're extremely Corrupted.
4. Yep, that's the eternal risk of AoC. It's what's supposed to motivate you to participate in Sieges and Caravans to not lose the place you call home.
Taking a multi-month break from AoC will be no different than taking a break in any other MMO, it'll continue to move on and grow w/o you. The difference w/ AoC is that it's the players that determine that growth, not the devs.
You'll be able to avoid all/most of those things just by logging in an hour per week.
I don't expect a game to be put on pause while I take a break. That's ridiculous.
What I'm asking is if I will lose things that I own while offline, thus cutting my enjoyability with my personal kind of gameplay. All answers so far have been similar. The only personal thing that I might lose is my house, and even that may not be such a problem. This is fine.
You only actually asked one question, which I specifically answered in my reply.
"Will the game be enjoyable for players like me, who tend to take multi-month breaks?"
So, yeah. It kinda did...
As I said you don't technically "lose" anything besides the physical space your house was in and any standing w/ your Node. (Corruption not counted) Majority of your personal belongings travel w/ you as do blueprints for your house so most "losses" are closer to being a debt than anything else.
Yeah this seems awful to me. Having to lose your gear you've worked hard for and having to re-grind it if you lose it. I mean, if you are doing raids/PvP, you will take quite a lot of damage on your gear. So am i going to have to farm materials every day i log in then? That seems boring and very time consuming to me.
I think we don't have enough design info to whine about that yet.
If you die often enough during a raid that your armor breaks, you will have to repair it.
Dying has consequences. Just be glad permadeath is not one of those consequences.
1. Yes, it is possible you will lose your house if you take extended breaks due to your Node being destroyed as well as you not paying your tax on your house causing you to lose it.
2. The only mounts you lose due to timers are flying mounts, and if you're only playing a few hours a week you most likely will never get one anyway so you don't have to worry about that.
3. Your armour and gear does not degrade because you are logged off. Your armour and gear degrades like in any other MMORPG. However, in Ashes you are required to pay both gold and materials in order to repair your gear, not just gold. So if you have a steel sword, you'll need to pay both (for example) 50 gold and 3 steel ingots to repair it instead of most other games where you just pay 50 gold.
4. Yes, this can happen.
Having a game where there is full on gear degradation so that all gear is destroyed eventually would result in that game not having the same level of gear grind as other games, but you would just need to perform that grind more often.
Creating a game with gear destruction yet with the same gear acquisition rate of games without it would be like trying to put WoW style raiding in a game with permanent character death. It just wouldn't happen so isn't worth thinking about.
A game that is in the middle will obviously fall in the middle of that - this is where Ashes is likely to sit.
It isn't as if the game is going to require you to go and spend all of your time on working towards gear maintenance, as that would clearly be bad game design, just as perma-death in a game with WoW style raiding would be bad game design.
There are no Death Penalties applied to events like Caravans and Sieges b/c the focus is on the objective. Most of your durability loss will be from regular PvE and spontaneous PvP. You also don't necessarily have to grind the mats. Nothing's stopping you from spending gold to purchase someone else's mats or paying a little extra to get a crafter to use theirs.
Repairing gear in Ashes need not be any more complicated than handing an appropriate crafter some coin - as opposed to handing an NPC some coin.