Do you think you are a part of the "Target Audience"? Why or Why not?

I was going to ask this in the related thread, but I feel this question is specific enough to need a separate thread.

I'll start:

I think I am a part of the target audience. Here is why.

I value the emergent storytelling that comes from a persistent open world competitive environment as the apex of modern gaming. Games like Eve, Darkfall Online, Lineage 2, and Mortal Online have been among my favorite examples. Games where the world is not an instanced theme park, but a theater of war for real-world people to not have to role-play, but to actually be a part of a real war. To me, the drama and betrayal that comes from these environments is better than any book I can read or movie I can watch.

This is what Ashes is trying to do with the node and corruption systems. The node system turns the traditional MMORPG world into a living, breathing theater of war. No longer will zones, be static areas for developers to tell their stories, but instead they will be dynamic areas for players to live their stories.

What also appeals to me about Ashes is that, unlike the four games listed above. Ashes has what those games have, and the features of a modern MMORPG. Mounts, cosmetics, housing, and good graphics. I have always said that I love Sci-fi, but if there was a fantasy game that was like EVE with modern third-person combat. That would be the game for me. Ashes is not exactly that, but it is a close enough cousin to get me excited and accept some of the things I feel are flaws.

If you think I am not a part of the "Target Audience", based on anything I have just said. I invite you to tell me why as well.

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Yuyukoyay

I'll see when I play. It may not be. I want to be able to find people in game to play with. Since no one ever really hates me for any reason that shouldn't be hard to accomplish, but the game may not encourage players to do this. Can't know that until the game comes out though.

Dygz

JustVine wrote: »

Also if you are really interested about the wolves vs sheep thing I linked to sources about it in my original post. But I don't actually care to increase your understanding through explaining it in forum. Explaining things to you typically takes a lot of work.

I think what I mean is that I don't understand how you are relating what Steven said to wolves - in some manner that we didn't already know. You were expecting that Corruption would infect groups and guilds and now that it's confirmed that's not the case, one group that looked like wolves are now suddenly sheep?
But, if you don't want to explain that's fine.

JustVine

Dygz wrote: »

JustVine wrote: »

Also if you are really interested about the wolves vs sheep thing I linked to sources about it in my original post. But I don't actually care to increase your understanding through explaining it in forum. Explaining things to you typically takes a lot of work.

I think what I mean is that I don't understand how you are relating what Steven said to wolves - in some manner that we didn't already know. You were expecting that Corruption would infect groups and guilds and now that it's confirmed that's not the case, one group that looked like wolves are now suddenly sheep?
But, if you don't want to explain that's fine.

I don't think I could have been clearer. It has nothing to do with the group thing and everything to do with his thought process. I have no stance regarding group corruption specifically.

beaushinkle

Azherae wrote: »

Okeydoke wrote: »

Just watched the vod, I don't even know what tattoo based respec means. No idea what that's even talking about, gonna have to re listen to it. And I of course agree with Steven's thoughts about guild corruption.

But I know the split body leaning Steven said they have right now is probably a disappointment for you Azherae. It sucks that we aren't all going to be pleased with certain things. There are certain things I'm not pleased with and there will probably be more as systems get fleshed out and tweaked. But I know combat is a big one, not just some small thing.

He said that's the way they're "leaning" so technically anything's possible still. But who knows how free movement combat would ultimately turn out (if that's what's chosen), you might end up liking it in some kind of way, or maybe the way it feels on a certain class. I dunno, grasping at straws here. Just sucks. It'd suck for me if it didn't go my way, sucks for you if it doesn't go your way. So it just sucks either way in a sense.

When Intrepid gives information, it builds up 'faith', something like when a politician talks. "Design Capital", let's say. When there's a 'gaffe' or a 'slip', some of that is spent or lost. It's a combination of 'trust' and 'the veil'. Affects different people differently and because it's subjective, it's possible for a listener to misinterpret a situation.

Steven 'spent all his design capital' for ME in a few words, during that stream.

I learned that the 'combo system issue' that I saw in the test is probably a real thing with a real problem, through a set of small hints.

I learned that they're still in the pitch phase for certain things despite making a decision based on a flawed test.

I learned that they're still in the modeling phase for Node positions/simulation to the point where 'developers are offering models written in Java and these are somehow impressing people'.

I learned that the reason we didn't see things above Village wasn't necessarily because they were 'working but not stable' but because they might not be working or properly simulated yet either.

I learned that the combat system which is basically rudimentary and doesn't currently address any of the things that would cause the game to have a balanced base in my opinion is 'good and we're going forward'.

I learned that the risk vs reward aspect isn't actually 100%, there are ways it doesn't apply and things it doesn't apply to, that can easily be manipulated, and I lost a lot of faith in why it's that way, which leads to a lot of change in the open-world interaction. Basically that 'those who step forward' take risks, those who 'pull at their heels' risk 'less than they risk by stepping forward'.

I expected some hint or announcement of what they're doing about Jeff Bard leaving, but I guess that will come later... maybe.

Steven 'spent all his capital' for me. It's not to say Intrepid can't build up more of it, but when you've been told a lot of things that 'could go either way', and someone suddenly presents you with multiple signs that it all means the opposite of what you believed, 'philosophically', it's easy to shift.

I had faith before. I only have cautious wariness now. But it is also true to say that I didn't think I was part of the target audience for this game before, except for the faith. Now that it's gone, I don't anymore.

Hopefully, they continue to do as they always do, transparently show things, rebuild it, or don't. I like being able to know that they're still testing models for the NodeWorld simulation at this point. I just don't like the implication of it relative to the status of development and design.

Steven 'reframed the narrative' for me in little ways, as someone who has worked in similar levels of projects in a different industry, and a lot of things I saw but didn't speak on before, now have a decidedly different 'cast' to them.

But, absolutely nothing confirmable, as always, it's all speculation and bias. I just, as mentioned prior, never specifically thought I was part of the target audience, and I lost all of the 'stuff that was starting to make me believe that'.

@Azherae this was extremely well articulated. I like a lot of their vague design goals but worry about their implementations. I like that the PvE encounters will be open world. I worry that they'll be trivially easy for vets. I love the idea of open markets, but worry that their supply/demand won't be balanced properly to create enough pressure to make buying goods at one place, buying a caravan, risking getting raided, and selling them somewhere else worth the risk.

I love the idea of having crafted gear, but worry that gold sellers will have a massive impact, or that the whole game will devolve into farming your highest g/h farm for the whole time you're on so that you can convert gold into character power. Why clean my own gutters when I can write more cryptology code and buy someone's labor to clean my gutters? Why go to x-unique-spot-in-the-world to farm-y-unique-item when I can earn more gold-per-hour farming somewhere else and then just buy it? If everything is open-market, doesn't everything boil down to gold? I feel like I'm just selling carries and buying everything I want extremely quickly.

They say they're balancing the game for "group play", but what does that even mean? If someone says "the game is balanced for 1v1s", I interpret that as "if we make a matchup chart of all the characters, most of the matchups are relatively even. Does "balanced for group play" mean that "every possible combination of group has a roughly equal chance to win in pvp against every other possible combination"?

Or maybe "every combination of 2 tanks 4 dps 2 healers"? Or maybe "2 tanks, 2 melee, 2 ranged, 2 healers"? Even that last one is still an intractable number of matchups to try to balance properly. I think balance will be a total nightmare with the number of ways that players can customize their character. Balance gets harder the more dials you allow players to adjust, not easier.

If they're okay with their game not being balanced, what do they do about the folks who play the classes that aren't in favor? The proverbial ret paladins of classic wow? They can take the stance "you can choose your build, but that includes choosing to be a terrible build", but I don't know how palatable the community will find that.

I'm also worried in general about the overall combat depth. I want to be able to put 10,000 hours into a game like this. I'm wondering if there's enough depth that when I'm losing a fight in hour 8000 that it still feels like I'm barely scratching the surface and that there's something I could have done, rather than that everything is pretty much solved. That the fights are more decided on a shallow RPS level composition-wise, or based on character builds, rng, or simple flowchart play at a high level.

Did they design in appreciable yomi? Functioning and fair netcode? Is the combat interactive, or do we both just kind of wail on each other until one wins? Is figuring out which button to press difficult? Do I have to press buttons quickly enough that there's any relevant mechanical skill cap?

I'm wondering how often a 99th percentile skill team defeats a 95th percentile skill team in a mirror match. Or in a favorable matchup. Or in an unfavorable matchup. Same thing with a 99th vs a 80th or 60th.

idk, I really hope the game is great and they pull through

Dygz

JustVine wrote: »

I don't think I could have been clearer. It has nothing to do with the group thing and everything to do with his thought process. I have no stance regarding group corruption specifically.

OK. Nope. That is not clear at all to me.
The Steven quote you shared specifically refers to Corruption as related to groups/guilds/regions/religions, but now you say that group Corruption has nothing to do with what you learned about Corruption during that stream.
But, it doesn't have to be clear to me.
Thanks for the replies.

Okeydoke

I could be wrong dygz but I think he's saying he thought steven had a more hardline stance on corruption and that it'd be so harsh that essentially no one would ever risk corruption.

This is a line of thought from phase 2 of the militant pvers handbook. If you can't abolish the system, castrate/neuter it to meaninglessness.

JustVine

Okeydoke wrote: »

I could be wrong dygz but I think he's saying he thought steven had a more hardline stance on corruption and that it'd be so harsh that essentially no one would ever risk corruption.

This is a line of thought from phase 2 of the militant pvers handbook. If you can't abolish the system, castrate/neuter it to meaninglessness.

Cute made up othering nick name. It goes really well with your fantasy warfare delusion.

I fully support open world PvP. But corruption is designed to keep the game from dying and drying up like every other open world PvP system. The reason that happens is because casuals and people who like crafting tend to need some level of confidence their gathering isn't for nothing every time they go out. Yes there should be risk. But too much risk suffocates.

Crafters and casuals are a large population base and create a healthy economy both in game and for the studio. Corruption is a good system. If you balance it to be too soft you lose a big audience. Just like every other open world pvp game. If you balance in favor of the crafters, the population stays and the hunters are more likely to hunt other hunters. The gatherers still get hunted by it's more dynamic. That's a good system. That's what Corruption looks like on paper.

However, Steven worrying about the wolves shows he didn't understand that principle and is likely to sign off on ratios in favor of something that will lower the games population. Which is needlessly destructive to the games ecosystem and potential growth. That's all I meant by that one piece of my much broader criticism.

bloodprophet

The corruption system is only there to protect the sheep. Many of the wolves have called for it to be removed or lessened so they can hunt at will.
Why you think the hunters(wolves) want to be punished for hunting?

George_Black

The corruption system works fine since 2003.
There wont be guild/group corruption bs.
Move along.

Songcaller

bloodprophet wrote: »

The corruption system is only there to protect the sheep. Many of the wolves have called for it to be removed or lessened so they can hunt at will.
Why you think the hunters(wolves) want to be punished for hunting?

I made a joke over a year ago about the removal of the corruption system. It turned into a 4 or 5 hour debate with Noanni lol.

Okeydoke

I agree with a lot of what you said Just vine. Sorry phone spell check. Steven is not worrying about wolves with what he said. All he literally said is that we're not going to make the system so harsh that no one uses it. You're reading into his statement like its some full blown surrender to wolves.

It remains to be seen how harsh the corruption system will be. Based on his statement, we can deduce that it will not be so harsh that murderers do not exist. We've known that for some time now, common sense alone let's you know that. Whats the point of creating a system thats not used.

bloodprophet

The collectivist idea of punishing the group for the actions of individuals I find appalling. Why should those not involved in a negative activity be punished simply by virtue of association?

But this thread got derailed let's go back to the original question.

Yes. I seem to be the target audience, provided they don't listen to the community to much and stick to the game design that was laid out that caused me to get my wallet out for kickstarter. I want them to stick as close to the original intent as possible. Will things change and not go as planned, absolutely. Plans never survive first contact with reality. Some things will be technical challenges and can be over come some can't. Some things will look and sound good in planning then in practice will be realized not so much. Like the quick time event way back when. Sounded good but was taking focus from the combat to play a mini game and they removed it and the project is better for it. But the main core philosophies need to stay true. Details can change as long as the main focus stays the same.

Fozzik

I've been in so many of these communities over the years. Followed closely so many games in development, listened intently and over-analyzed every buzzword and claim that came from the developers year after year. I've built the most amazing worlds in my mind that I would one day get to inhabit, only to be repeatedly and jarringly disappointed on almost every occasion by games that really never had any hope of being what the devs and I collectively pretended they would be.

The whole cooperative development idea I think is WAY overblown. Most communities don't have a clue what they want, and if a developer is honestly listening to everything and "giving players what they want", they are going to end up with a horrible, incoherent mess. Any community involvement has to be tempered with a very strong vision for the game overall and a super tight scope and schedule. In short, players have way less influence over making "the game they want to play" than the marketing would have you believe.

I've been fairly impressed with this game and its developers so far. They are avoiding many of the typical red flags and pitfalls, and seem to be aware of and working on most of the elements and hitting the milestones that normally clue me in to whether a game might make it to release and be worth playing. That probably doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement at all, but compared to the last 5+ years in the genre, that's actually damn good. Most games don't make it to release, and of those that do, those that actually get to compete for my time and money, even fewer survive the quickest review of their basic design.

With all that said, my take on this question is... you can't know. The game we all build in our heads during development is very unlikely to be the game we end up playing when and if it reaches launch. Right now you are hearing all the marketing and filling in all the gaps with your imagination, whether you realize it or not. No game is as perfect or as tailored to you personally as the one you build in your mind before launch day.

Confirmation bias and sunk cost cause a very strong tendency to rationalize that the game is going to fit you just right in all the deepest detail, almost like it was designed especially for you. In short, you definitely are the "target audience" for the game you are imagining. It's just not likely that the game you are imagining will be exactly like Ashes of Creation when it launches. The cognitive dissonance that we experience when those two worlds collide shortly after launch day is often what makes people quit these games after only a few days or weeks. Players often feel lied to...without realizing they were lying to themselves.

Even for those who play early versions of a game in development, if you are a fan, you are very likely viewing things through that confirmation bias lens, filling in the gaps and ignoring the faults with benefit of the doubt and generous imagination...and shortly after launch a reckoning will arrive where you'll realize that the game isn't what it seemed.

That doesn't mean the game will be bad, necessarily. There's a chance it will be great. It doesn't mean that some folks won't indeed be the "target audience". Of course some will (I hope, the devs better be thinking in those terms) I just don't think any of us can truly know until they finish making it, we play it for a bit, and see how the real thing works for us.

At this point in the genre, with the massive, thirsty desert in between decent games and the lack of serious development going on...I'm totally willing to buy almost any game that meets basic criteria and survives until launch day. I'll try it, and then make up my mind if it's made for me.

Okeydoke

One of the best posts I've read on this forum fozzik.

Omynn

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I was going to ask this in the related thread, but I feel this question is specific enough to need a separate thread.

I think I am not.

I love the idea of AoC. That's why I'm here.
But I'm casual these days. I am looking forward to a multi-layered, rich, dynamic world to hang out in, but I will never again be able to invest time like it's a job (I am perfectly ok with not having "elite" items since I don't have the time to invest...I hate ptw).

I can't find my account info on the webpage anymore. I don't even know if I will have access to any testing phase (I paid 300+ dollars at one point...so I think I might? ) but because of my time limitations I know I may not be able to contribute much to testing, so again, I don't think I'm their target audience.

I'm ok with all that though.

Vhaeyne

Great post @Fozzik!

Actually on topic too. I have worried myself that I am filling in the gaps with my own bias. What normally makes me feel like I am on the right track with my speculation of what Ashes will be is my understanding of the game Steven never shuts up about, Lineage 2. To be very clear L2 is not my favorite mmo. I like it and have spent a lot of time with it. If I was filling in the gaps with my personal desires we would see a very different game. I am sure of that.

I try to understand Ashes in the context of what I know worked for the games Steven has said are the inspiration for Ashes: L2, EVE, ArcheAge, and star wars galaxies. I have spent a good deal of time with each of these titles with the exception of AA. I have always tried to use stated inspirations to fill in the gaps not what I want.

I love hardcore instanced raiding, but I don't think Ashes will have that. I am fine with Ashes not having something that I want because I understand it is not good for a game focused around open world risk vs reward. I feel that my interpretation of Ashes is better tempered than most of the ones I see because I try to use the inspirations and Steven's vision as he defines it as a guide. I don't see a lot of that in the community.

Which is part of the reason for this thread. I wanted to hear people speak about why they think Ashes is for them. I wanted to hear these interpretations of the game in people's own words. To better understand what people think Ashes is.

Fozzik

I also try to allow for the fact that I don't necessarily know for sure what I want. I have lots of detailed ideas, and lots of prior examples...but the whole idea of a new game is that in some ways, maybe in a lot of ways, it's going to be new and different from anything we've played before.

Maybe from the way the devs describe a particular system, it sounds all wrong to us and we spend years arguing with them to change it...then it releases and we realize we love it. The devs might be great at design and terrible at describing what they are doing.

I guess the way I would put it is that I hope I'm part of the target audience. I hope it's a game I enjoy, no matter what it turns out to be. There aren't a whole lot of options these days...so far this one looks promising.

Noaani

Neurath wrote: »

bloodprophet wrote: »

The corruption system is only there to protect the sheep. Many of the wolves have called for it to be removed or lessened so they can hunt at will.
Why you think the hunters(wolves) want to be punished for hunting?

I made a joke over a year ago about the removal of the corruption system. It turned into a 4 or 5 hour debate with Noanni lol.

You spelt my name wrong.

George_Black

I bet you can fill 5 pages with multiparagraph long post of whether he spelled your name wrong or not.
In the end he may choose to identify as a correct name speller, just like many people desperatly want to identify as target audience, as if it matters.

Noaani

George Black wrote: »

The corruption system works fine since 2003.
There wont be guild/group corruption bs.
Move along.

The downside to this line of thought is that the MMO community is significant different to what it was back then.

We are more informed, better organized and have much, much better communication.

This means any weakness in any system would be 10 times worse now than back then. Just because it worked back then, doesnt mean the same system will work now.

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