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.
Just an quick idea about GM's
Dolyem
Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I was watching some old videos of WoW where GM's would interact with players in the game and it really threw me into a bit of nostalgia. But it also made me have an appreciation for that time in gaming. Call it rose tinted glasses or whatever but having a team of GM's at the publics disposal was some next level customer service imo.
That being said, how awesome would it be to have GM's in ashes? Its definitely a lot to ask of a company to supply for any game, but it would be incredible to have that service again. And some other ideas occurred to me when playing a certain new MMO release that shall not be named. Just going to list some ideas I had in regards to GM's being implemented into an MMO and the benefits theyd have.
- First and foremost. You could have GM's almost exclusively hunt down bots quickly and efficiently. It would be so easy to have a person assess a group of "kjhgadslfgal" named characters all spamming a resource despite it not being there or a obvious multiboxxer, or just a gold seller spamming in chat. It would be able to be dealt with relatively quickly.
-relatively immediate reviews of automated reporting. So if an entire guild spam reports a player out of spite, a GM would be able to catch this and properly assess the situation and unban/punish anyone as needed and accordingly.
-Exploits could be monitored more efficiently and GM's themselves could either advise players against doing them or just act as deterrents or damage control. Hell I would personally rather have an area be closed with a temporary instant kill effect than leave it accessible for a few days for some exploit to level faster or get a ton of resources quickly. Plus it would be kind of cool to see the GM's Being the ones doing it.
-I am fully aware of the responsibility it takes to become a GM and know that they are only human, and thus capable of abusing their role, so I figure why not have a log for each GM's actions and communications. That way there is always an ability to check their decisions if need be.
-it could also be viable (although admittedly extremely risky) to allow players to volunteer their time to play as GM's after proper training and evaluation. Sounds a bit far-fetched but its just an idea. It would have to have plenty of checks and balances to prevent the wrong people from attaining this ability. And that would likely be too much for the company to keep track of unless they treated it like a legitimate job position. But still, its just a thought.
-Gm's provide opportunities for great player interactions directly with the studio, which can range anywhere from helping players stuck in a bugged area to just a random appearance to psyche some players out.
All in all this is just me rambling at my computer while im feeling under the weather and thinking that GM's in MMO's all in all make the games way better than just an automated system that takes days to deal with as an individual player and it gets abused since it can not think or assess as a GM would.
Would you all want to see GM's in Ashes?
That being said, how awesome would it be to have GM's in ashes? Its definitely a lot to ask of a company to supply for any game, but it would be incredible to have that service again. And some other ideas occurred to me when playing a certain new MMO release that shall not be named. Just going to list some ideas I had in regards to GM's being implemented into an MMO and the benefits theyd have.
- First and foremost. You could have GM's almost exclusively hunt down bots quickly and efficiently. It would be so easy to have a person assess a group of "kjhgadslfgal" named characters all spamming a resource despite it not being there or a obvious multiboxxer, or just a gold seller spamming in chat. It would be able to be dealt with relatively quickly.
-relatively immediate reviews of automated reporting. So if an entire guild spam reports a player out of spite, a GM would be able to catch this and properly assess the situation and unban/punish anyone as needed and accordingly.
-Exploits could be monitored more efficiently and GM's themselves could either advise players against doing them or just act as deterrents or damage control. Hell I would personally rather have an area be closed with a temporary instant kill effect than leave it accessible for a few days for some exploit to level faster or get a ton of resources quickly. Plus it would be kind of cool to see the GM's Being the ones doing it.
-I am fully aware of the responsibility it takes to become a GM and know that they are only human, and thus capable of abusing their role, so I figure why not have a log for each GM's actions and communications. That way there is always an ability to check their decisions if need be.
-it could also be viable (although admittedly extremely risky) to allow players to volunteer their time to play as GM's after proper training and evaluation. Sounds a bit far-fetched but its just an idea. It would have to have plenty of checks and balances to prevent the wrong people from attaining this ability. And that would likely be too much for the company to keep track of unless they treated it like a legitimate job position. But still, its just a thought.
-Gm's provide opportunities for great player interactions directly with the studio, which can range anywhere from helping players stuck in a bugged area to just a random appearance to psyche some players out.
All in all this is just me rambling at my computer while im feeling under the weather and thinking that GM's in MMO's all in all make the games way better than just an automated system that takes days to deal with as an individual player and it gets abused since it can not think or assess as a GM would.
Would you all want to see GM's in Ashes?
3
Comments
REALLY!? If you could link the Q&A I would be forever grateful!
"Game masters (GMs) will be present and active on Ashes of Creation servers.[1]" I've heard it in a stream but i have no clue in which, but wiki says the same ^^.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Game_masters
Man that puts a smile on my face. I am sick of seeing bots just out in the open in MMO's where simply having a GM would get rid of most of them on the spot
thank you my dude
Yep, also they will be monitoring if somebody (buys or sell gold) etc, so any suspicious act will be investigated and punished. Sounds god damm good
I would volunteer 8 hours out of my week to do that for free. No bias or anything, just making sure the exploiters, hackers, bots, and gold sellers stay the hell out of the game or are the very least punished properly.
Open world adventuring
Character progression, major part of which is participating in the economy. Finding, crafting and selling items.
Ban the buyers as well. Find out which character received. Has that sum stayed on that character? Ban it. Make them lose that gold. Is there a connection to another account for the PURPOSE OF GIVING/RECEIVING THE ILLEGAL GOLD? Ban. Let them lose all progress.
I dont care too much for GM interraction, other than seeing them around. Their job should be to deal with bots and ban cheaters.
Other types of reports can be dealt by customer service.
Hell I think there should be specific divisions of GM's focusing on spevific game problems, that way its more organized and theres always GM's working on every type of problem we can think of. Have an anti gold seller division, a bot division, harassment division, etc. It is a lot to ask for since that requires a lot of people working at all times but it would be a massively positive service to the game. It would also be way better than some "Community Council" -cough cough- blizzard - cough cough- middlemanning all of the communities problems to the suits.
@George Black
That's amusing, when I suggested exactly this in the other thread, you were arguing against it.
“No I don’t.”
You were questioning why people were even replying to me.
Are you now saying you agree with what I was saying in that thread? Perhaps you were wondering why people were replying to me because what I was saying was so correct that there was nothing to add to it?
HAHAHA good one.
But, let's keep the discussion of whether or not to ban or ignore cheaters (aka gold-buyers) in that other thread.
On topic, yes, we have been promised a live GM team, and I sure hope it isn't just going to be one or two over-worked GMs managing hundreds of thousands of people. We need several live GMs on every damn server, especially in the beginning, to help people experiencing serious game-breaking bugs, and to crack down hard on all who break the TOS in any way.
Yep, me too. One evening a week spent killing bots and saving people who get stuck in the scenery.
Yeah, I agree. But I'd still be willing to do it!
I don't see why there couldn't be a volunteer "counsellor" force with very limited powers to help deal with the more mundane things like players getting stuck and other various things. They could escalate what they're not equipped to deal with up to GM's. And the paid GM's would have more time to handle the heavier stuff.
I dunno on second thought if a counsellor had teleport powers he could conceivably use his ability to port around to give intel to his friends. Just sucks you can't trust people for shit. You just cant.
I also remember being a guide in EQ 2 for a while too.
As long as there is good communication even if you don't agree with what they are saying I would rather been informed.
It seems they are hands on ATM.
Yea it is definitely a huge risk but it doesnt have to be as simple as clicking a button and attaining powers. It could be treated as a job without requiring compensation if people are willing to go through the training and agree to the terms of taking on the responsibility as well as the consequences for abusing it. It would be lovely to have everyone doing it get paid but I have no idea how realistic it would be to have an army of GMs that are being paid.
Allowing a GM to have frequent (non ticket-related) interaction with players (or worse, have players volunteer as GM) might lead to the GM forming a bias and favoring his/her "friends" - As it has happened multiple times in some eastern mmorpgs that were run poorly.
I mean, here in Asia we've seen scandals about a game's GM going rogue and roflstomped other guilds/players with his friends