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
I have a lot of confidence in Intrepid, but I see the risks of the project too.
We will have to see who Social Org progression and Religion progression affect the world beyond just player reputation/character progression.
The game loop is going to be very different when max level does not equal endgame.
The thing that would really draw me into this game is if the horizontal progression systems are very deep, numerous, and complex. That is what is being advertised to a good extent, so I have some hope that I will like it, but I haven't seen it yet. I want to be amazed and jaw-dropped by the horizontal progression systems. At that point, then I'm in.
I don't want to just repeat the same good MMO experience of the past. I don't want to just relive the memories. It needs to be MMORPG 2.0. Otherwise, not gonna bother. I guess I am the target audience because I keep following the game as a wait-and-seer. I think the best thing that Steven said is "if you build it, they will come".
Sounds to me like you thought the development was much further ahead than it is, so in a way it was good to get expectations readjusted I guess. That really is one of the upsides of transparent development.
Personally I don't agree with most of your points, but then again, it's clear our expectations were different
The caravan system is going to be a major part of the node system in Ashes, and the main driver of economic activity in the game. It's not a separate little gameplay loop that just helps the artisans transfer goods to the nearest market to sell their stuff. It ties into the castle system and the taxes, as well as trade routes between cities. It will be a vital part of developing and maintaining nodes. If the nodes are the body parts, the trade routes are the veins and the caravans are the blood supply. At least, that is their design intention.
If for some reason the caravan system doesn't end up being an absolutely essential part of the node system, where attacking and defending caravans aren't an important part of fighting over nodes and territory control and politics in general, I think they will have failed their design goals. In that case yeah, it'll be a separate little gameplay loop.
What we saw in A1 seemed very place-holdery. I think building up nodes past village (and especially building all the buildings in the nodes) will require a massive amount of resources (caravan sized loads), some which might not be in the region the node is in. It likely won't just be a few hundred wood and stone like in the alpha. My hope is citizens need to actively participate in caravan defense for some of the critical caravans to help develop the node they are in.
It looks like the nodes won't need materials in a direct sense to prevent node atrophy. Only in the indirect sense of rewarding players with goodies through quests that are needed to be done to prevent atrophy. In order to attract players to do those quests, the material goods might need to be nice. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens when a node is developed to the maximum possible, in terms of the amount of caravans needed to transport the goods necessary for maintenance.
Yes.
Yes it is.
The thing is, the node system could exist without the caravan system, and the caravan system could exist without the node system.
This means that neither is the primary gameplay loop, which means there is a total lack of focus here.
I'm not saying things like this shouldn't exist, I am saying there needs to be a primary loop, and all other loops should be secondary or tertiary to that primary loop.
When you try and make everything primary, nothing is.
Now, I believe the funds generated and recieved by a mayor for running a node are not useable beyond running a node. So, I do not see the incentive to vie to run for leadership nor much of a return for it.
So surely this would then influence the caravan system and all other "loops" that had player influence?
I really don't see the problem here with their intended design. I mean, caravans are secondary to the node system, because without nodes there are no caravans under the current design. You can't make the caravan system its own contained loop without redesigning the game, and then what is the point?
It would help if you could provide an actual and concrete example of how you would design a MMORPG system with a primary loop where other loops tie into it. Preferably with a caravan system as secondary loop.
Anyone can make baseless assertions. Let's see if the prediction comes true.
As I said above, caravans are not one of the four competing "aspiring primary loops" in Ashes. They are already a secondary component.
The aspiring primary loops in Ashes are PvE, sieges/castles, crafting and probably naval.
The problem is, none of these can be considered a singular primary gameplay loop in Ashes, which means they will all always be competing against each other and none of them will ever win.
Ashes isn't unique among MMO's in having this internal competition, but MMO's are unique amongst games in having it.
Point me to any other game genre that has competing primary gameplay loops.
Well given the last live stream I am decidedly on one side of the fence now with 'room to get back on it' if the farming and gathering experience is top notch.
The biggest reason for my switch in stance is related to summoner directly. It's not any one thing that made me lose faith in their ability to make a good pvp pet class. It's a congregation of poor design approaches and choices relative to it.
'We are leaning towards split body combat.' Sure that's fine on it's own. There are definitely ways to make a pet class work with that. But the ai has to be fairly intelligent compared to other games when PvP is involved. Is this being factored? Are they targeting the pet class audience when they make such statements?
If they choose to 'make the ai even SMARTER' to make up for the opponents ability to move in ways that trick the summon into bad positions/being slow with it's attacks and ability useage well now you've gotten to why I am so uncertain.
The ai in the alpha was so rudimentary it led me to question what kind of ai developers they have on staff. Think about the dragons. The dragons I would have spent a decent amount of time and resources to show case exactly what I want my mmo to feel like? Their ai was rudimentary. Different design priorities than me I guess. We would have FELT the presences of an ai dev during alpha. There would have been no reason to have held back on a better ai or large changes to the ai for the dragons if they had the developer skill on staff I am talking about.
There is a lot of trials and difficulty in game dev. Sometimes things you don't want to get cut, that were im your original plan, get cut. People panic when timelines get tight. Allegedly there was plans for how summoner is supposed to work. They just made a big decision that would be very unreasonable to assume they had made three years ago when making those summoner design decisions (otherwise why the a b testing and humming and hawing up to this point?)
Therefore, because it increases the difficulty in making summoner. Split body with no ai developer threatens the development of summoner itself. I really doubt Intrepid will release without summoner. But what if they did, or simplified it to the point of unplayability until a later patch. What am I supposed to do with my 9 months of paid subscription? Such things have happened in many other games. It is an unfortunately common occurrence.
I want to play with my friends day 1.
Again 'split body pet class in a PvP setting' is do able. With good enough ai, server latency, ability activation delay veing optimal etc... But it's definitely harder. It puts a lot more on the stack than if they had chosen root motion.
Which lead me to a consideration not explicitly mentioned in stream.
'We don't plan on balancing for 1v1'. Sure that's fine, but Summoner by nature of not being able to establish what exact role they are playing at any given time due to the flexibility of their pets, is the hardest to balance period. If it takes longer to make due to split body, it means balance is going to come later in the schedule. Now again think time tables. If you were Intrepid and there was a risk that Summoner could steam roll content or pvx content and timelines are getting tight. I know I would cut summoner or at least hamstring it. Because summoner being missing or bad is a much smaller pr nightmare than content feeling meaningless or pointless to people on day 1 due to whack class balance.
That all leads to a culmination to this last nugget from the stream.
'We don't want corruption to be too strong of a deterrent because if it does too good a job it stops being a moderating force to the option.'
On paper corruption felt like it supported a wolf vs wolf design. Make people who actually want to fight rewarded for doing so, and have a reasonable detterent for assholes picking on crafters. A wolf vs wolf centric design if you will. I was into this idea at first, but it SOUNDS like the devs are more into the whole 'wolves vs sheep' scenario given the way Steven phrased it. The tonal shift indicates to me that they will see 'large suppression of PvP against greens (sheep)' as a /bad/ thing and will tune the penalties in favor of the wolves
But now that I am less sure my class will be day 1 ready due to these design priorities and choices. I am less certain I will have a reason to fight back in the beginning. Fighting back just feeds the wolves. We have TWENTY YEARS OF STUDY to show why wolf vs sheep design didn't tend to work out. Are they targeting the crafting audiences when they make such statements? It sounds a lot more like they are 'reassuring the wolves' with such statements. Am I going to get to be a wolf? If not, their design leanings make me less sure I will have much to do at all day 1. I'm interested in crafting and pvp. Not a total gank box.
Tl;dr I feel they have made two distinctions of who their target audience is. They have showed that pet classes was NOT their priority target audience by their lack of accounting for the various design problems such a class requires to solve to make a GOOD pet class in the systems they are choosing. They have made it clear they are going for a wolf vs sheep dichotomy which I guess, I count as 'a sheep' given both their combat design relative to pet classes and over all attitude towards how they will go forward with balancing and fine tuning corruption down the road (ie balancing in FAVOR of the wolves.)
The current timeline seems to be the game will release when it's ready.
And, yeah, we been known that pet classes are not a priority since they aren't in Alpha One. Same as Orcs.
That Corruption quote is taken waaaay out of context.
Groups won't gain Corruption. Who ever thought that groups would gain Corruption?
As ever with Corruption... we will have to play to know if it works satisfactorily.
The context was specifically in relation to guilds mostly, if one has a large group of players gaining a lot of corruption, are there any penalties in relation to that for the guild as a whole.
As in, if you are a guild of PK'ers, is there a guild wide penalty for that.
The answer was a resounding no.
Personally, I think there should be. It shouldn't be (as Steven suggested) some count up towards some arbitrary number and then you get hit with a penalty of some sort (that is a stupid game mechanic, and him thinking of that as a game designer is just laughable).
What it could be (should be) is that if you have more than a certain number of players online (20ish), and 75% or more of those players have corruption at any one point in time (you basically need to try to make this happen), then your whole guild sheds corruption at a much slower rate. You lose less corruption when you are killed, and you need to gain more experience to work off the same amount.
This way, the guild is only punished if basically everyone is gaining corruption, and even then only the people that gained corruption are punished - but the guild likely had to co-ordinate getting that corruption in the first place.
This could also be staggered with a 25% and 50% effect.
STEVEN: No. There are not group dynamics or mechanics that revolve around mass-murdering people in the world. The Corruption system is intended to deter mass-murdering; not to provide incentives by which players can't go out and gain Corruption. So, that would be a little bit anti...
MAGGIE: I think they're wondering if there will be large scale consequences so, for instance, I think the question is more along the lines of...
If my guild has no one Corrupted and your guild is 80% always killing people and always Corrupted, will your guild have repercussions because they're Corrupted vs my guild?
STEVEN: No. I don't think so. And the reason why is because we want to deter it, but we don't want to make the mechanic meaningless because if the deterrent becomes too heavy-handed, then it's a system without a purpose. I think the intent behind the Corruption is that during a rise of passion and anger and whatever, you want to make this decision and do something, you'll suffer the repercussions later. But, if those repercussions are just overwhelmingly bad and even anti-social in the sense that, like, "Hey, man! You went Corrupted and that gives Corruption points on the guild. You're out of here!" Then people just aren't going to choose to use it. At which point you might as well just take it out.
So, I think there's a healthy balance between the type of deterrent used as keeping players from not performing this Corrupt activity very often and...
MAGGIE: Yeah, people would just group up and not be in a guild, basically... there would be a way around it.
Yeah, that's what I just said.
Steven got the wrong idea of the question to start, was corrected, and then went in to bullshit about a guild-wide corruption tally with corruption points for the guild - total amateur stuff in terms of design for a game system.
My main thoughts on it is it adds another dimension in regards to raiding. It makes the decision one guild may make attacking another guild a lot more consequential than just normal corruption, and also gives the guild being attacked a deeper decision to make in regards to whether or not they fight back - or force the attacking guild to gain corruption.
If done right, it shouldn't ever even come in to play outside of situations like this.
Their approach appears to be to /me/ the on looking investor to be one I would have been less likely to have invested in. The most charitable interpretation when making decisions about combat systems was 'the most complex combat class to balance and implement in a way that doesn't feel bad for the end user can come later. It will probably be fine. We can do it!'
People who have that attitide to development are ones that find themselves making cuts or bad end user product in my experience, so it makes me less confident in them.
Good ai coders don't apparate out of thin air. If they have such a person, why didn't I feel their presence during alpha in my dragon example? Or even something as simple as 'more complex basic ai place holders.' Good ai coders have habits. I saw beginner level habits. If I recall correctly the peeps who made the dragon ai were part of the combat team not ai specialists (though please do correct me if I am wrong.) Were the good ai coders at the table when it comes to combat systems? I don't know. But it's the sort of thing that leads to a sinking feeling. Without having the officer visibly on staff most important to making a combat pet class in split body work out or tell them the limitations it makes me less able to have confidence in them.
In either case Steven made no mention of the challenges such a decision would face. Because it was not his priority to do so. Because it was not at the top of his mind. Is it because it didn't come up in a meeting, complete confidence or he hasn't recognized the difficulties yet. Hard to say. But it makes me less confident their approach won't lead to cuts down the line.
'It's not a priority' but their development approach makes it feels like it isn't even at the table when making design decisions. Again I am not expecting miracles. I'm well aware of where they are in the development proccess. This was about design approach.
So is Starcitizen's.
Fair to say 3 years in to a genre that takes long to develop. They are what 5 years in? The general consensus here has been about 3 more years. That means they are more than half way through the expectation. They just made a decision that will increase dev time for the most complex combat class and increased the likelyhood of getting it wrong because it's now more difficult. Those words you just said start becoming famous last words to a project at a certain point.
The fact they are 5 years in to development and don't have the most basic of equations for node interactions is very 'interesting' relative to their overall capacity and speed.
Either way my /faith/ in them is lower. And to me their /targeting/ of me as a pet class audience member is lacking a lot. 3 years in claiming you have plans for how summoner will work but don't want to go into detail is 'justifiable'. 5 years in with not even a hint and a major change that without a doubt probably effects those plans if not scrap them entirely, starts to show priorities.
The context didn't matter to me.
The attitude and reasoning behind it did. It makes me more confident they are leaning towards a certain set of design priorities. Certain target audiences. They said to me quite loudly 'our target audience is wolves. Don't worry wolves we got your back! If you feel suppressed we will tune it more in your favor than the opposite.' What type of 'healthy balance' are you aiming for when you think you are the wolf?'
Charitably it was probably just bad phrasing by Steven. But that type of slip up from the leader of the company is well, morale lowering. Rightfully so. I am a pro-wolf v wolf pvp dichotomy gamer. Not a wolf v sheep gamer. It sounds like Steven is ok with the latter and not prioritizing the former based on his tone, concerns, and framing of the opposing view as Noaani noted in that segment.
My reason for thinking it is a good idea is because the decision to gain corruption as a group (or guild) is far less consequential than gaining it on your own.
if you are a guild that all gains corruption by attacking a raid or some such, and then you all go and work it off together, your chances of being attacked while doing this (and thus taking on the actual, real penalty of corruption) is near zero.
Adding a penalty on the guild scale balances that, and I consider that a good enough reason.
A guild wide corruption penalty has some pros to it but it definitely has some cons too. Im typing this on my phone, not about to try to type out what I think those cons are.
It appears the decision is already made though. I think its an idea they should think about again maybe if they can't tweak it right with just an individual penalty.
Totally agree.
I don't see them being able to balance the risks associated with gaining corruption as an individual with the risks of gaining corruption as a group, but hey, maybe that isn't the goal.
All Steven said is that if you make it so that individual Corruption also gives Corruption to groups/guilds/regions/religions... Corrupted individuals will be kicked from groups/guilds/regions/religions for having Corruption, thus it will be exceedingly rare for people to choose to gain Corruption - which, at that point, there's no point in having Corruption.
So, we have to find a balance between some reasonable frequency of Corruption and too much Corruption.
I don't understand what that says about "wolves" that we didn't already know.
MMORPGs typically take 5 years or more.
I would not be surprised if Ashes takes as long as Star Citizen to launch.
I'm certainly not expecting Ashes to release before 2023.
Rather than a guild wide corruption count, as Steven inexplicably suggested, you simply have a guild wide penalty if a large enough portion of the guild is corrupt at any point in time.
As such, you are not in a position to ever punish a single player, and in order to get enough players in your guild to trigger that penalty, it would have to have been (in all reasonable cases) a guild based decision.
Dude how on earth did they approve you as a content creator partner. Wow. Well. Just be careful to not say that Starcitizen opinion on your content I guess? That'd be a very poor look for them.
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.
Can`t see it happening as not necessary.
In past experience, if a clan member stepped out of line they were advised of such. if they continued to do so they were warned and if serious dropped and if really serious then other clans were advised and ally clans did not pick them up either.
Surely that is the MMO part of the game and a mechanic is not needed for that.
Only part I would agree with though is some stats for perhaps the clan leader only to see and/or different tiers of rank to see.
It would affect a decision that the guild makes as a whole, and that's about it.
I loved Lineage 2, liked Archeages early days. I liked the persistent world of L2 and the stories that came from the things that happened on my server. Alliances rising and falling, castles swapping hands, huge fights breaking out in random sections of the map. Fighting over world bosses/grinding spots. I liked roaming/sailing around ganking trade packs with the boys in Archeage.
That's what we're most likely going to spend a lot of time in Ashes doing, just looking for your caravans. Here's to hoping they will be much more frequent then Archeages trade packs due to the regionalized economies.