Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
ON WE GO. No group finder. No addons. Node citizenship. Node loyalty and sense of community. Presumably extensive crafting system. No global chat (presumably). Local culture/customs, places you just don't go and places where people are very friendly. Naval combat. Underwater content. Commerce (caravans) travelling to and fro across the land.
All of these things and so much more are immersion creating. Some of it exists to varying degrees in other games. But taken as a whole, Ashes is going to be one hell of an immersive experience.
If you don't see how all of that adds up to actually feeling like you're part of a living, breathing, changing world, and the immersion that will create then I dunno. There's always WoW and standing in town waiting for BG queues or groupfinder matches.
Do you think the PvX mindset (where pvp and pve are mutal) will catch on, or that it will become a niche market largely ignored by PvE audiences?
"Multiple playstyles should be relevant and viable. Additionally, you have a spread between casual players and hard-core players; and most of us exist somewhere on that spectrum. The progression path in a society or religion is more conducive to the time we have to play. Whereas, someone else may be playing several hours a day, and they have a better opportunity for the raid/level progression that might require some more dedication. So we want to have these different progression paths available to accommodate the different times in our lives that we have to play the game. And all of those types of progressions will make us relevant in some way shape or form to the general world."
--- Steven
"The idea is not to be a game where somebody can essentially no life for a week and be max level. The idea is to incorporate some significant chunk of time but still respect the casual player, because you know the way we respect the casual player is not everything is driven in our game through the adventuring progression line. Not everything is driven through your class level per-se. There's a lot of different progression paths that are available and make you relevant within certain systems and mechanics within the game; and some of those paths are more casual friendly and some of those paths are more hardcore friendly. So with regards to the adventuring class, the idea is to make sure that investment needs to be pretty significant and that the reward then is respective of that investment."
--- Steven
No offence but the first few sentences was probably the dumbest thing you could've said to me but that is your perspective. The rest of what you wrote doesn't get much better from there unfortunately.
Imagine gaming communities playing with their favourite streamers and/or against them?
There are more reasons than not wanting to leave a collection or stick around for players to try new games.
Sure, many do stick to what they know, that doesn't mean all of them or some made up ~80% number.
Maybe some are stuck playing those games waiting for something new.
WoW hasn't been doing well for many expansions, some players are just realising that now especially with recent events but that is the reality of how it goes.
Unfortunately from a lot of the things I have read, there seems to be many who want to have taverns and what not, they'll play the game as they please but that doesn't mean they'll leave if they lose their node/freehold.
There are going to be guilds and nodes with different preferences.
Sure, some nodes and their guilds may be more PvE focused, PvP focused. Nodes are going to come and go, that's the game.
those PvE nodes will have to PvP at some point either in gated events like node sieges, caravans, maybe they'll just go out and run as a raid pvping on their own terms.
It's not different than those PvP focused nodes/guilds will have to participate in PvE one way or another, how much? who knows its up to them and how the game plays out for them.
I think it will be niche.
IMO, people will almost always have one that they prefer.
Perhaps more to the point, people generally want separation between the two. They want PvE when they are PvE'ing, and PvP when they are PvP'ing. As you know, I love some good PvE. Thing is, I also love some good PvP, when I am out for PvP.
I don't much enjoy PvP while I am PvE'ing, nor having to PvE while I am PvP'ing. Having occasional events that are both is great (Archeage did this fairly well), but having an entire game based on this would be tiresome.
Obviously this is not everyone, but it is as I see it.
Streamers are essentially a company. They exist to make content, on which they make money.
They don't make money if you are playing with them in game, they make money if you are watching their content.
In order to have enough people watching their content to make a living, streamers need to have enjoyable content. This is literally all large streamers care about - being able to make content that makes them money- as that is their literal job.
Streamers in Ashes aren't going to have overly interesting content if they are trying to do PvE and need 500 people present, or if they are trying to do PvE and have 500 people attack them. The most we will see of the larger streamers from WoW/FFXIV is the occasional video of them doing something different - they are not going to make Ashes their main MMO - they would not make enough money if they tried.
None of the above applies to small streamers, but no one cares about small streamers, that is why they are small.
You seem quite ignorant and arrogant. I'm not trying to convince you or have a keyboard warrior debate with you. If that's how you feel, then that's your perspective
Other than the similarities to what Jahlon said in his videos and to what you're "regurgitating" on thread, it's not really worth continuing this conversation. Jahlon makes some good points, but that doesn't mean I agree with him a majority of the time. I don't think he's right or necessarily wrong. There are so many variables involved.
I'm not saying you're correct or that I am correct, there is no definitive answer in this situation. I'm aware you are familiar with him especially since he gave a shout-out to you in his stream about doing certain things in the community like he has his hand in your ass like a puppet
The game will probably cater to many different genres
One would imagine many will play the game for different reasons. How long they stick around and for what reasons of doing so is up to them at the end of the day.
Should definitely be interesting seeing how the game turns out at launch. I plan on keeping an eye on it during development, that is for sure.
I have not watched the video in question, and so I am not "regurgitating" anything. Maybe I should, but I rarely watch content on MMO's I am actively following - I tend to form my own opinions on them.
You are correct in that there are many variables involved, and when that is the case we look to previous examples. Those examples would have to be Archeage and BDO, as they are the most similar games to Ashes. Neither of these games had big name streamers, despite both having initial populations large enough.
I mean, it's great if you disagree with me, that is how discussion and debate works. What I can't see is any reason as to why you think those streamers would stream a game like Ashes as their primary MMO, and how you think they would make interesting enough content from it to make a living.
I have no idea if your serious or being sarcastic, lol.
Many games attempt to focus in on one type of content as their "cash cow" so to speak, causing all of the other areas of the game to lose potential and ultimately become bland or outright garbage. Ashes is doing the opposite in my opinion and that is it's best quality. The act of adding all these systems in without skimping on their design/depth creates a fuller world for players to explore and "live" in. I think this is where the true heart of MMOs lies, and ashes is attempting to capture that heart where so many have failed.
The two things that really turned me on to Ashes however are the nodes and the cosmetic only cash shop. The more I explore the wiki and learn about the nuances of the node systems, politics, religion, and guild activities the more hyped I become about this game. The idea of a constantly changing world, fighting tooth and nail to defend a node when losing can potentially mean losing my house, and being a major player in the rise and fall of guilds across my server excites me to no end.
People hoping to just PvE mindlessly without any risk of PvP will find that impossible to do.
Inversely I think some PvP hounds who are hoping for a purely PvP experience might also get bored once they realise they must PvE at times.
I feel like this game might be catering to the old Everquest crowd from Zek servers, Ultima Online before the PvE/PvP split and ArcheAge. AcheAge is legit a very good game, if you remove the p2w elements and if it had servers in OCE.
Just finished watching the video by @Jahlon. I think it is a critically important question that I really want Intrepid to answer more precisely.
Ashes may be attracting players who are not in the "target audience". Which is fine, so long as they do not attract too many of the players outside the target audience. My fear being that the "target audience" may be
lost when these players ask for change that go against design principles that brought in the original target audience.
This was my reply to his video for "Who is the target audience?":
I would like to think I am a member of the target audience. Three of my favorite MMORPGs of all times are listed in that quote.
I did not pull those games out of my ass. I pulled it from here:
A major factor in my decision to support Ashes was Steven. You get a feel for his MMORPG likes and dislikes every time he talks. The love for Lineage 2 comes out every time he opens his mouth. I have made a drinking game out of it and got tore up. It's easy, every time Steven says Lineage 2 in an interview, you drink. Have fun.
While I think I am a part of the target audience and I worry about Ashes attracting too wide of an audience. I am not worried that Ashes will fail if it is a very niche game. Niche games like MO1, DDO, EQ1, EQ2, UO, and GW2 are all alive with new content updates and active player bases. Even FFXI had an update not too long ago. I don't think Ashes needs to worry about expanding the target audience. Especially now, when the game has not been given the chance to fail yet.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Surprise! They are now!
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Well they are really old, I mean GW2 is still large in the MMO sphere I certainly wouldn't call it niche. I watched one of those statistic videos that gives number of searches for games and GW2 was in the top 10 for a while because it's box cost only it has a fairly large audience.
Was in the top 10 on a statistics video...
For a game that is in a niche genre...
You like GW2. I get it.
Much love to the GW2 crowd.
Do you have anything to say about my actual post?
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
In regards to your post seems fine, I don't per se categorise players by what games they have played previously, I don't personally see that as a good way of seeing the whole potential target audience which I think is much bigger than that but it does show flavours of those games obviously transfers over to ashes.
So you want to derail the thread with a conversation about how GW2 is not a niche game in your estimation...
Okay, link the video.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
also FFXIV isn't on there much and thats seen at a large MMORPG pop wise also
I could watch these great videos for hours. Good link.
GW2 had some interest for a few months and fell off the charts years ago.
Today the game is alive and well with a relatively small, but dedicated fanbase.
Seems niche AF to me. That is not a bad thing. Many of my favorite games are niche AF. Touhou for example.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I'm also somewhat concerned that the game may attempt to too many players that are not in it's actual market, but for a slightly different reason.
I am going to assume that Steven will not listen to people when they ask him for change that goes against what the game is. I admit there is no real reason to assume this right now, as all evidence points towards game altering changes being made at the first sign of potential disinterest.
However, I am making the assumption above and sticking with it.
What that means, however, is the game is going to attract a whole lot of players to it that are not the target audience, and who will not see the game bend to be more suited to them.
So, what that means is that this game is going to have a large number of people leave the game fairly early on.
That is going to lead to two situations that will feed off of each other.
The first is that players in the game will notice the population decline.
The second is that the game will have a lot of players talking about how shit the game is.
Now, even if you enjoy the game, sticking around after a massive drop in population on a PvP game is a tall order.
If you are considering the game post launch, you'll hear all the negative word of mouth, and if you opt to try it out anyway you will see the empty servers which will confirm that negative word of mouth as far as you are concerned.
I wouldn't want to predict what would happen after that, but the above is what I see happening if Intrepid don't start being more specific in their target audience.
I agree with this as a worry. It's why I don't want to see them spool up too many servers at launch.
Just as we seen in that video @truely just linked. Games can have a massive spike in players in the first month and then a rapid decline.
In the case of Wildstar that decline was not manageable, but for GW2 it was. Which is why one of those games is still with us.
I have called serveral times for Intrepid to be more explicit about who the target audience is. I think if they were more upfront with this the initial spike in population would be more manageable. Open world games with PvP can not handle rapid player loss as you said.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I'm not implying dramatic spike in a certain demographic per se, but there is a good chance for some nodes to be trading orientated, crafting, supporting each other as most alliances do.
As long as the participants are ok with the risk vs reward system, they could support each other regardless if one loses a node in the vassal chain.
I picture the game as more than just a 1 node vs 1 node as there is potential for multiple nodes to team up. From the different types of nodes ie military, scientific, divine, economic etc. it creates a good range to support multiple demographics within the broader demographic of PvX Node vs Node.
It's an evolved version of GvG.