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
The process of changing characters for either professions or changing Main as changes are made to classes within the system are vital for me to want to continue playing the game ( Biggest example of changing Mains for me is Paladins in World of Warcraft in the 1st 4 expansions. having started of as largely the worst class to play in a general sense in comparison to others in each spec. through iterations in each expansion became one of my favourite classes to play and brought me to the class after spending much time as another class
losing time releveling a new character when your guild/friends are doing "endgame" activities through storylines or activities we could possibly have done several times should be completed faster.
if my 1st character took 2 month to level i don't want to have to lose that much time to do it again.
For XP gains in terms of dungeons and raid bosses, I feel open world dungeons that have Elite Mobs are a dangerous thing to balance for XP as well being as there could be many ways for people to exploit a certain mob that gives large XP. I would keep the XP from the Elite mobs similar as to normal mobs with maybe a slight increase 1~5%. But to balance the mobs not being worth as much I would make a quest that takes you to that dungeon worth twice as much as a normal quest. Thus driving social interactions and teamwork.
For XP gains in terms of Gathering/Processing/Crafting, I would love to see a good amount of XP from it (Ex. if 500 XP is suppose to be the avg quest and mob grind for 20 minutes I would like to see maybe 1 hour of grind of gathering net around the same.
Level progression speed is vital to the long term health of the game and is near impossible to balance for the wide range of players that play the game. Pulled from the Wiki is approximately 45 days if you play roughly 4-6 hours per day. Thus around 225 hours. Unfortunately there will be players that play 14 hours a day and hit max level in just over 2 weeks. Then there will be players that only have 2 hours a day and take 4 months. At first I was going to lean on the shorter side but I feel like actually raising it a little to about 300 hours may be more beneficial to keep players interested and feel more accomplishment when reaching max level.
Also on the subject of ALT characters, I feel that the journey of hitting max level should be fun once, but afterward if you want to do it again, should not be extremely daunting. I will most likely lean more toward the non hardcore group for this subject. I feel that maybe have a piece of gear or a considerable quest chain reward be an item, a Necklace for example that would increase the players EXP gains. Not sure how much Rested XP will be? 200%? Maybe allow a skilled crafter to make several items that increase the cap of duration of rested XP? Neck, Rings, Earrings All level 1 Items with little to no stats but allow you to keep rested XP for twice as long.
Just some example thoughts in my head, would love to hear others takes!
Thanks for reading have a great day.
Late on the bandwagon, no clue of what (if anything) has been said officially about vertical vs horizontal progress etc.
I find level based systems slightly boring in general, as there is a disconnect between what you do and the reward, which breaks the immersion of the character progression. And as implemented in many other mmorpg, it also makes it hard/impossible to enjoy content together with friends of different levels and interact with other players in pvp in a meaningful way etc. No idea what the plan is for Ashes?
What should give the most xp? Whatever aspect of the game you would like to promote I assume? As long as there is a vertical progression with character power connected to level, a very large portion of the player base will rush to max level doing whatever gets them there fastest.
In regard to the progression speed - I want to be able to take part of, and have a meaningful impact on all aspects of the game from start more or less. If I have that, I prefer a progression curve with steep diminishing returns where it takes ages to complete it all. If any major content of the game is gated by max level, I want the opportunity to buy a max-level boost please...
Leveling has generally been a bore for me, but isn't that the fault of the game? The 'real' content was at 'End Game'. Playing the game should have been the content, not after you move through all the lands.
Now I do appreciate The Hero's Quest to gain power, and there certainly is an element within most MMOs regarding this. Most MMOs have the same general premise: Big Bad needs to be defeated, you have to gain power before you can vanquish it.
But since having a Big Bad Guy to whoop and save the worlds doesn't keep the players occupied, they had you kill the same Big Bad Guy over and over. What a crappy plot. How does make sense within a story arc? You have to grind the story elements of these games. For me, after the conclusion, I am done. I don't reread the last two paragraphs of a book every evening. I already know the resolution!
However I feel that AoC is fundamentally different than all MMOs that have come before.
The 'plot' of the game isn't to defeat the Ogr King and save the Princess. The 'plot' in this sandpark game is to exist in it. Stephen is making a MMO for people to 'play'.
Freeholds. Nodes. Mayors. Community focus. Sieges. Player driven economy. Player resource production and processing systems.
A dedicated Trader/Crafter/Farmer should be able to reach max level pursuing their trade. Max level should be another tier.
I would prefer function max level be 5-10 below max level.
So in summary players can do their normal slow and steady leveling via grinding/crafting/questing/exploring/whatever but they occasional have chances for bigger xp that sneakily pull them deeper into the game.
Obviously people is gonna find the faster way and spam it, and that's okay, but for me I would take both.
I also loved the original idea that leveling should take time and maximum level should be a feat. It always bothered me getting into a new mmo and seeing players at max level on the second or third day of release, it almost makes being max level mean a bit less.
That will limit the bridge between a player who play 4h a day and one who play 12h a day. Instead of gaining 3 time the xp of the first player, he will only gain double.
That does not mean you can't do activities outside the 4h scope, just make it gain something else than xp or an equal or lower rate paste that point.
And i'm not a fan of gaining xp for your fighting class with gathering, or activities not related to fight. I mean, how do you explain that your warrior character will be stronger with a training where he spend his days picking flowers ? This kind of activities should only impact Artisan classes not adventuring class.
And yes please, make the leveling long and difficult, especially the last part. Max level should be a feat, not a pre-game that can be deal with in few days.
If you have a large variance between progress speed, from my past experience ppl will likely just gravitate towards the most efficient content (e.g. FF14 fate train, GW2 event train, wow quest / dungeon grind) and~ it might get boring.
Haha! OMG - I am stealing this example and using it from now on, for lame game quests.
This is why it pays to read entire threads; You never know when you're going to happen upon a gem like this.
PS - I know you've been seeing the wait times for New World. No doubt in my mind AOC will have double the issues if not addressed BEFORE launch.
Although, I do think the levelling system will have to use larger amounts of xp per level for this to work properly over time.
When taking quests I am usually more concerned with the material rewards rather than the experience rewards. As long as the quest reward (combination of material, reputation, and exp) is respectful of the time and effort the player puts is to completing the quest, everything should be fine. I don't want to deliver lunch to the gate guard and jump half a level, and I don't want to trek half way across the world for two shilling and a headpat.
I think it would be better if grinding is slightly faster than questing, maybe 10%-15%. This can help offset the likelihood that the grinder will be an easy target for gankers since they are staying in the same area for long periods of time and will frequently be at low health. Though, I would recommend that the mobs with the highest exp/time to kill ratio not be quest mobs. This will help prevent questers and grinder from getting in each other's ways, especially in the first couple of weeks when the entire player base is in the early areas.
The more ways to level up, the better. It adds more content to the game and pleases more people than not.
Regarding speed, I think that questing should be more efficient exp/h most of the time, on the other hand mob grinding should give better gold/h. It would be cool if hidden/secret quests could have some unusual rewards, incentivizing people to find them. There could also be a mix of quick quests with consistent exp rewards and also long chain quests with very big exp rewards only at the end. I would also like to see decent exp drops for discovering new areas on your map. Other than that, maybe running dungeons and grinding bosses/elites could also be a slow but viable training method.
So yeah, I don't see a problem with some speed variance in leveling, as long as there are always pros and cons to your choices.
This is a difficult question because it depends on what's locked by level progression. Generally speaking, it would be nice if all primary archetypes were fun and useful in combat early on, unlocking important skills (not necessarily the best/main skills of that class) in less than 2 hours of playtime, whatever that translates to level progression. So, for example, if you generally need 2 hours to reach level 10, it would be nice if every archetype felt good to be played by then.
I once watched a video that said something along the lines of "if you need to invest 100 hours to have fun in an MMORPG, people who only have 10 hours a week to play will not wait 10 weeks to start having fun", and it's the absolute truth. The sooner you have fun and understands how that primary archetype feels like, the better.
After the initial hours of the leveling phase, when the real grind begins, if progression revolves around gear and skill unlocks, for example every 10 levels a new gear set and every 5 levels a new skill, I think that's a good indication of how progression speed should work. If the level cap will be generally reached within 270 hours, Intrepid needs to think about how many hours will be needed for players to unlock their next advancement, without breaking the 270 hours "cap". In any case, I enjoy games where the exp needed x level function is quasi-exponential, as in it's faster to get from level 1 to 40 than 40 to 50, like in OSRS where level 92 is halfway to level 99, I like that.
Granted, leveling by yourself should be acceptable. Sometimes you're just not feeling it or don't have much time to play. But, I feel that it would benefit the game if social interaction was encouraged, especially early on.
Alas, I'm not exactly sure what format this would take. Maybe there are tough high level mobs that drop loads of exp but need multiple people to take down. Or maybe crafters, in the same party, earn bonus when taking their raw resources all the way to finished goods.
However it's done, I feel player interaction being emphasized at every stage of a player's journey would make the world feel more alive then everyone playing solo till they hit cap.
- Nuttie
That system allows you to be whatever kind of character you like. You open up new abilities on various trees with experience. Say for healing you get level 1 spells this time or perhaps bandage making ability opened up? You can specialize as a fire mage or an ice mage and become top level someday at one but not both as you are limited to say no more than 5 skills types past level 10 in the tree and 3 past level 19 in the tree, 2 past level 29 in the tree and 1 past level 39 in the tree. You can do everything up to level 10 in every tree. So, as you progress you can work hard on one thing while doing many other things. You can become a journeyman at many things, an apprentice at a few, a master at a couple and truly elite at only one. There is no end game. There are things you will never be able to do alone without levelling some weapon past a certain point. You can never gather or craft a thing past early stages and kill very little past certain stages if killing isn't your thing.
As for quests. In the beginning to help you get an idea of things you get some quests that introduce you to different weapons, to making basic items and potions, to hunting, cooking leatherworking, metalcrafting, etc. Do at least one basic thing in every weapon class, crafting class, gathering class, healing, etc. That is in a large learning zone. Once you are as ready as you want to be then leave the area never to return again and join that whole world of adventure waiting out there for you and do whatever it is you choose to do. Have quests around and dungeons etc. for a variety of things to do but you still level skills and not an overall rating. Do dungeons non-stop if that turns you on. Fish and fish and fish if that is what you like. Or, do some of everything. Get some titles to choose from including something like "Elite ___" for what you skills you get to level 30 and "Elite" for what you get to level 40 and Supreme Leatherworker or Swordsman, or whatever for reaching max level. Something catchy that shows who has truly mastered whatever. There isn't going to be even 10% of top level that are top level at the same thing. Top level fighting classes will be wanted for different things and top level people of any class will know they can only get the best gear, potions, tools, etc. from the appropriate people. Most will become very good at a few things and good at a lot of things. Very few will be the great ones in any skill and truly valued for that specialty. Different skills can have different quests to give story and reward with items for that skill. In order to do those you will need to use that skill and thus gain experience in it.
It takes a long time to become elite. If you want alts then after completing the initial learning area you can go through that as fast as you like on more characters.
I like having a choice (I'd say "SURPRISE" but you really don't have that in MMOs nowadays).
If a quest is gonna give me 1000000000000exp and a ledendary item (because you usually get the good stuff from questing and not from mobs), and killing mobs only gives me 100exp per mob, then you already took that choice away from people.
I think every content that can be used to level up, should obviously be worth it and not force me into "choosing" one.
I love slow level progression because I love leveling but I also understand that people (myself included) don't have the time for such a slow progress especially in a game where there's so much to do.
Coming from Ragnarok Online, Leveling was practically your main content to a certain point and there was not that much else to do except for endgame content. What made the slow level progression not as tedious was the way leveling up FELT. Every class had a fairly big skilltree and you felt every single skillpoint you put into a skill which made you really look forward to every level.
I think with how Ashes is designed, the time it takes to hit max level is fine as it is. As long as you have enough things to do in endgame.
I once asked a content creator this question, giving as an example runescape characters known as "skillers": people with level 1 combat stats but high non-combat skill levels (crafting, woodcutting, fishing, etc). This content creator told me you will not be able to be a skiller in Ashes, you'll have to level up your "combat level" to be able to progress further down certain artisan trees.
I cannot confirm if this is true, I'm just letting you know what I know since I was also curious. I guess it's a way to combat bots, I don't know.
The majority of players would like to see a balanced, or perhaps homogenized leveling experience in which there isn’t a ‘best’ way or a way that can be exploited.
If the overall experience gain from any activities are about the same, I feel like players will just do what they enjoy the most in the game, how they feel like playing on that evening etc., which bring me to the next point;
Quite a few players would like to level via their preference. Specifically, many players would like to efficiently level via questing, gathering, exploring, grinding, PvP, or crafting.
If there's only one way to efficiently level up, I think alot of player will use this method, instead of what they prefer doing.
Many players are ok with the leveling experience taking a considerable amount of time - sharing the sentiment that ‘the journey comes before the destination.’
I think this is one of the best moment of a new MMORPG. Getting to learn, explore the game as you level up. As long as we can make use of the many system the game as to offer (Nodes, Pvp, Dungeons, etc) while leveling, it wont feel like a chore.
Some players shared their desire for questing, especially main story quests, to be impactful and meaningful with experience, while side quests encourage exploration or yield unique rewards.
I love following Main story quest, mostly when they get you to learn the game in general and the lore. For Side Quest, I think that some solo quest and mini chain are fun to do, they can be used to explore a bit more of the world and also give a mean to the player that love questing for leveling.
There are some who would enjoy the main form of leveling to be grouping with players and grinding mobs or completing group-based PvE content.
For me, Group-based content is fun, unless is it to mindlessly grind mobs. Grinding mobs in group should not be the best leveling option, but a decent one. Player that like that method of leveling should be able to do so, without it being either the best or the worst.
I just read through your post, and then Sargaruis's quote …. The Shawl trade skill epic quest was and still is the best quest I have seen. The idea that you build and improve an item over your characters growth through the game was and is amazing.
Hissy
I would rather be able to choose between something that has either higher risk and higher reward, say on my weekends. Or choose the lower risk route with modest returns, say during my work week.
Absolutely understand why people would wish for homogenised levelling because it minimises inequality or min/maxing.
Generally in most games, levelling or progression seems to have the least amount of thought placed on it. At least from my own end user perspective, it’s arguably one of the most important parts of an MMO. And It’s good to see some thought inspiring comments in this thread.
I absolutely love the idea of progressing a node. Or having a rare chance of owning a flying mount. I also believe there is a place for boring progression (work).
Toon 1 “How’d you get that sweet looking flying mount?”
Toon 2 “I had to collect 1000 goblin foreskins”
Toon 1 “Sounds… terrifying”
Ashes is different in regards to the Node system but even still you need to be able to pump out content for PVE players as well keeping them actively searching for the next big boss and content release.
If it takes 4 weeks for the average player to burn through the game to max level and it takes around a month to fully transition a NODE to max and acquire most of the content then you have to have a next update ready in that amount of time.
On the other hand if say it takes the average player a month just to get to max level and a month to upgrade a node fully and another month to acquire most of the things for the content. That gives you guys 3 months to start working on some kind of content release that is gonna push players towards the next great thing. I ran a game server for 13 years. What I find is you want content to take longer for players to burn through so it gives you more time as a development company to create new content and then have it tested and ready for release .
Quest wise if you want to be memorable and not just be a copy of any game that ever existed add things that haven't been done before quests that have good storylines or quests that have puzzles and mini games. If you really don't care about that then just make every quest "go pick 10 flowers" or "go kill 10 x monster" like every game has ever done.
Quests that offer some kind of lore similar to world of warcraft are always a good option throwing in those cut scene's and getting the player immersed in the world is a great way to do a quest.
Borrowing from older RPG games such as quests which have secrets that are unlocked such as puzzle type ones are always a good option. One quest I've done before in a game was they had to explore the area and find parts to a puzzle written on stone pillars and then had to put the codes correctly the right way in stone hedge pillar in order to spawn a boss that dropped unique items and to get the quest completed to get a set of ice dragon wings after fighting a ice dragon. The dungeon area was also filled with difficult monsters so they couldn't just walk through and gather anything. And it was more or less optional as a side quest they didn't have to do it but it was there as an option. It was also a side story they found a letter left behind by an explorer telling them to check out a fountain and the quest would pull people into the fountain to a secret dungeon.
Mini-games are another great method of providing something fun for games to keep players entertained. There's many examples of this via old RPG's such as:
ff7 chocobo racing
Blitzball - Final Fantasy X
Cooking Contest - Suikoden II
Resident evil- escape rooms
Mortal Kombat- Armageddon
Warframe- Fishing mini game spear fishing
Twilight Princess- Fishing
zelda majora's mask- Gorgon race
I could go on and on about minigames that are fun in different games. Even adding like a card game system in game where people can kill monsters collect cards then use them to battle each other is a great option. Or having a casino type system that uses the game's currency to win rewards or more money. Or just little quest mini games honestly I always enjoyed making those types of systems when I'd be doing my quest writing. I had a NPC that would play rock paper scissors and was a gambling based system players would pay a large fee and be able to have a chance to win cosmetics in game based on winning 5 games in a row at rock paper scissors if they lost 3 games in a row the NPC had a chance to shoot them and make them die losing experience. If they had some other combination of like 1 win / 2 wins /3 wins or /4 wins it would give them other prizes that where considered somewhat lesser maybe other cosmetics or weapons and items. The other mini game I created was a mining based one a NPC would request people go mining in specific area and they had to play a mini game based on searching for a spot that contained something rare. they would get points and rewards based on what they brought back to the NPC and awarded accordingly.
Lastly made NPC's using a system called defpattern
http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/
https://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorial.html
Which had some pretty unique functions which could be used in questing. Was able to create a system that NPC's could listen to what a player was saying and execute functions accordingly. I used this type of system with a NPC listening channel the player could type privately to the NPC and hold a conversation and the NPC would talk directly to the player which would avoid spamming text windows. Used it in some puzzles quests which had to do with asking the right question and gathering more information from the NPC in order to get ranked quest completion based on how well you did asking the right questions. Though never run into that type of use in any games so couldn't really tell if it places stress on the server when used on player populations over 5,000. I know 5,000 and under it didn't add any noticeable stress on the server though also talking about a game that was built in 2000. But one of the most funny uses of this type of skill was creating a NPC which looked completely liked another player and using a x y z movement pattern so the NPC would walk around town and was actually talking out loud. So many players would follow her around asking hey are you new? did you just join the game? and with a really detailed programmed AI she could respond it took them awhile to run through all of the things she said till they would get her quest but added a lot of mystery. People would tell me the friend system was broke cause they tried to add her to friends and it didn't work. And id have to tell people she's only a NPC and they thought I was trolling them o.o'
Programming and what we could come up with has changed over the years especially AI systems so I'm sure even more amazing things could be created now. Its just a matter of someone using creative mind to come up with stories and quests that others find interesting. I always used to get so excited coming up with quests I thought player base would find fun. Cause not every player likes a I win button some still like to use brain and enjoy fun questing.
College Lessons
Grinding mobs as an option to levelling is fine. I never want to see it being a requirement for levelling, nor much faster than any other primary method.
All the artisan activities should give some adventurer XP as well I think, but it's fine if it's significantly slower than questing or grinding mobs.
Yours truly did enjoy seeing LazyPeon's video about the Alpha 1 - in part because it confirmed that there will be some "exploration" quests; He had to visit 10 waypoints across a Node to complete the quest he was on.
Haha - and a mix of combat/looting/crafting is pretty welcome. I have no objection about running around and collecting 50 kobold foreskins - so long as it's for a quest to learn how to make a really unique(I didn't say 'cool') cloak....
It would also be nice to get some sort of milestone from reaching levels such as hitting 10, 20, 30 etc. Such as a passive skill or a new feature such as fishing or woodcarving or even a new item like a ring or weapon. Something to congratulate you on making it that far. Maybe also tie it into reputation for the area like what you have done to make the village you in grow and you get a skill based off what kind of camp/village/town it is.
Another idea is that there are 2 things in a quest if you just skip through the quest you will receive a quest marker about the objective but if you take the time to read the quest line the NPC will provide hints such as speak with so and so to get a buff to increase gather rate or learn where they spawn that the quest marker does not show. This can slow down questing and also increase it as well. But it will also immerse the players more in the world by not skipping through all the quests and give players an incentive to take the time to actually read the quests.