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
No, most people definitely don't take time off. Most people probably play more than their usual. Many of the most enthusiastic may take a day off. The first week-end following a launch are bound to be crazy.
But people who are weird enough to post on a forum of an unreleased game are not the norm.
You could be surprised how many people take time off
How many streaming services are people paying money to?
How many streamers are people watching?
How many different games do people cycle through every day, and for that matter, how many mmos do people have active accounts in?
Peoples time is not relevant to this topic. The discussion should be about the amount of time it should take for our characters to reach max lv.
Dont go into time details. Talk about whether you want meaningless fast progress to satisfy your instant gratification needs, as opposed to enjoying a good mmo.
I'd rather see the developers focus their time to make sure the leveling experience is smooth and enjoyable throughout and that endgame content is ready with a coat of polish when players get there.
It has become far to common to speed through leveling in a new MMO to only realize the end game is incomplete and anything beyond the first few leveling zones is a disorganized mess. Are you really having fun grinding mobs or resource nodes for 10-12 hours a day to hit max level to only realize that nothing is really working yet? I have done this too many times now. What I really hope for Ashes is that they will take their time and have a feature complete game for launch.
― Plato
Ashes has classes, and from 25 onwards a lot of expeimentation to be had.
The rush mechanics will be ever prevelant. If you set a cap at some point people will rush to that cap, then start farming the best of the best stuff they can get and then even rush faster to the next cap. putting up steps is just prolonging the time it takes to next level it doesn't at all adress the underlying problem.
the thing that will make ashes slow down is already present. Its node system. While individual players can rush levels, the nodes themselves also require xp. and only by leveling up the node harder ontent is unlocked. If a few players rush forwards, the node system already reigns that in by not having higer level content. So the rushing will slow down.
The 45 days of 4-6 hours is also an average estimate of the people who already fully understand its sytems, and where and how to get the xp the fastest.
NW and Classic wow both suffered severely for "lack of endgame content" for the hardcore player, but thats because NW has been in beta for the majority for way to long, and Classic has been out for 15 years Its gameplay loops, and its staticbest builds best leveling routes and ways were all already fleshed out and known way in advanced.
So how can Ashes prevent that?
1) don't open everything for testing to the public. Keep it to the alpha and beta packagage purchase only
2) Keep the testing island and the real game different. We have alpha island. There is no reason for us to set foot in the real world. Just let us keep playing At alpha / beta island. Sure you can try out the best leveling routes then, but those would be obsolete in the real game.
3) LImit Alpha and beta testing to a set level. The you won't need to know how to get to max level, if lvl 28 or 30 will suffice to test all of the different class and augments. When you don't have full builds to test, you'll have to either theory craft, or trial and error how things work. This will further slow down the leveling.
4) The world levels as also the average player level. This means that it will probably scale up to the average level of people, with exception of some world bosses. Lower levels of dungeons will be need to be unlocked by node progression, and beeing a level 45+ while most mobs are only lvl 20 will slow down your leveling extremely.
Also remember, those who visit and reply on the forums are not the average players. We are already the "hardcore" players in whatever we want to get out of the game. If they enjoy powerlevelilng let them power level. If they love crafting let them. Cause remember everything that you do in ashes can be destroyed.. If you and your community dedicat to power leveling, than that node will power level. Making it a juicy target for sieges, and with it comes the risk of getting your stuff destroyed.
Last remember that for the average player gatekeeping is no fun. An average player might like to spend lots of time crafting. If you gatekeep that activity then the game becomes less fun for them. Systems should be meaningfull and fulfilling. EG comming back to NW making thousands of linnen gloves shouldn't get your crafing to max level.
NW is a cash grab, its server capablities are ludicrous inadequate, and its in gameplay is just sufficiently enough to get press accounts and content creators excited pre launch. 1-20 experiance is exciting and exilirating, and full of promise, but afterwards the game play loop gets discovered and you realize that you are stuck with an empty shell of a game. and by the time you get to mid level, you just want to rush to max level to get your money worth out of it, just to realize at max level, that its a bad game.
Ps do i agree with roughly 200-250 hours of gameplay to max level? Yes because in that time i'll be participating in world exploring, pvp, rp, and crafting. So my total playing time next to it will be far above 200 hours before i reach max level. I predict with my playstyle i'll be playing on average 500-600 hours to reach max level. Additionally i want to specialize on the bard. Not just a Bard/Bard, but a Bard/all other achtypes and All other archetypes/Bard. that would leave me a potential of 15 classes to test, or up to 7500 hours of gameplay before community and end level gameplay come into account
Point number 2... It might be naive, BUT the guys at Intrepid are gamers. I'm sure that with their 45 day example number they account for people who don't sleep.
Point number 3... We don't know how exp, quest rewards, exp rewards from mobs and such scale with leveling. If you think you can grind out to max level in any game in 2 weeks - good luck doing that in Lineage 2.
― Plato
Exactly that s the point, no one would be racing to reach lvl 50, and would be enjoying all the features , every single piece of gear they get every lvl even the lowest gear would be important, learn the mechanics, instead of making a pointless leveling system that you reach in one week and was just an irrelevant part of the game....
And what the problem with that gap? I can´t play that much when i was a kid but, what many times keep my motivation in an mmorpg is to reach that op player even if is unreachable, if i get at the point that everyone have the same lvl , same endgame gear in 2 weeks, that s much worst then gap between players...
If you almost every content unlocked since the start lvl doesn't matter , if you activities where you can help high lvl players, lvl doens t matter , that mentality that everyone should reach last lvl easy to start the adventure just killed mmorpg....
You could be surprised what "mostly" imply in a scenario with only two possible options... It means more than 50%.
But hey, I've never said it was rare or even uncommon, only that it was not the majority of people who could/would do it. If you include the players who wish they could, maybe then, but that doesn't count. On launch day you may get the feeling that most people have taken time off their job, but that's because you can't count those who didn't and aren't there. Those who clog the login servers to create their character, run with everyone else for a hour or two and then log off. Those who will wait for friday night, or the week-end. Once you're in the business hours for your server location, those who are at work aren't logged in, so you don't interact with them. It gives the appearances that many more players did take time off, because you see them.
Hours of sleep (and productivity the next day) will be sacrificed for low level XPs and the peculiar feeling of craziness on the servers on a fresh launch.
I really like the idea of the artisan system and the combat system to be inversely related to each other.
My goal is to become a Master Gatherer for my server, as such if that means I take a penalty to my combat ability I think that is the risk vs reward for deep diving into a profession. And I think same goes the other way, if someone is an amazing combatant and puts all their skill points there then their gathering ability should be low and thus require community and relationship to fulfill that side of the game.
For most time-casuals, 45 days of 4-6 hours easily translates into half a year before they are 50. Maybe even longer if they focus on artisan professions. I don't think it's healthy for the game to increase that for much longer. However, maybe Intrepid can tweak the rested XP system in a way that it benefits those casuals enough to make it a decent catch up mechanic to the more time-hardcore players.
I know we all want to think Ashes is going to come out and be perfect from level 1 to max level. But let's take off the copium for a second. Bugs happen. Exploits happen. And the period before launch is going to be Stress-City at Intrepid. Having that delay in players getting to endgame is going to be helpful.
I saw the node argument a lot. And not only i think its a false argument, its a backwards one. Nodes being low dosent mean "people will not reach max", it means "people will reach max and have nothing to do, because content is locked". And that's worse. Having to wait around for everyone else to get xp while you are done is going to suck.
And I also think everyone underestimates a bit 1)how many people will no life it and 2) how that is going to effect the servers.
Lets say 100 players get together and how a ultra hardcore PvP no life guild. They are 1% of the population. But because they are 100 and play day and night what is going to happen?
-They will reach max level before anyone else
-Their node will be bigger that any other node
-As soon as they reach max and see that they have some content in their node, but nothing else anywhere else, they will do 1 of 2 things: either leave until players catch up or (and more likely) they will have their fun on the server, killing whoever they want and making a mess of the server
Let me make something clear as well: they are not the problem in this scenario. They play the game how they want. The problem lies in the game system that let this happen.
Now, how often would this happen? Considering the 10k players per server, i would say even once is too much. And i know guilds that play MMOs that aren't 100, but they are 200, 300,500 I even know of one that is 1000 players. Imagine that situation, but its 10% of a server.
Will an xp nerf fix this? Fuck no, a lot of system need to come into play.
But an xp nerf for the first 30 days will ensure a few things (beyond what i said above):
-give the players on the server a bit of time to find out who is on their server and also if there are any big guilds
-give them a chance to organize and figure out the best way to compete. I personally love going against those mammoth guilds, but if there isn't a bit of time to find allies, its close to impossible.
-and it also helps them. Being a guild like that there is pressure to level up and only do that. With an xp nerf, its not going to be the main focus, crafting will be
I would this of the first month as a "Set up month". Players that haven't kept up to date with the game or that are hearing of it for the first time have a chance to get ready, familiarize themselves with the game before all hell breaks loose.
And it also helps Intrepid be sure that servers work, weapons work etc etc. So that when we want to start proper competitive play, there aren't any "technical difficulties"
It doesn’t matter if the investment takes 45 days or 1 year, there will always be people who nolife rush to cap for no other reason than to say they did. The gap is exponentially more wide than it would be otherwise, so wide it would be prohibitively difficult for normal players to attempt to catch up. It creates a sense of pointlessness. Instead of losing to a player and then thinking, once they leave I’ll get some more levels here or better gear and next time I’ll smash them. If it takes a week+ to gain a level (and see any progress of power) instead of 4-6 hours, then they just have to hope for a week+ that the area is not under contention from higher level players. It’s not a healthy gameplay design
Not to mention that 45 days of consistent play isn’t “a the start” of their experience in any sense of the word. That is a major time investment
I don't think anyone that levels from crafting should be competent in combat, at all. If that is the case, we'll have it where people smith simple gauntlets for XP, boosting both their combat and smithing prowess. Horrible.
This guy would disagree with you. He practices three hours a day.....
I'll eat up a mountain of story quests and enjoy the slow character advancement, but I'll groan if I have to run the same dungeon twice. For me, often end game is the end of the game.
I'm curious to see how the game focuses on group content, because that is what will keep me playing.
If you use Standard deviation, youd see that 70% of those would fall within that margin of 180-270 hours, 15% above it, and 15% below it.
Assuming that we don't have the perfect leveling routes, beause each server will be different, due to nodes, and every replay will be different due to nodes, you can expect up to 30% reduction in time for people who rush, or 7 days of /played.
Those mere 3 days between to powerlevelers and average levelers, only gives them a marginalbit of extra time to gather, craft and do what they want to do to "take advantage" The End game content needs to catch up, in both node level, and playerbase thats able to do that content, before end game gear and the end game gap can start to happen.
And since we won't know the tactics of the respective bosses were going to have, since each node configuration is going to level different dungeons/ raids / worldbosses, and each group needs to thus start from scratch with getting tactics down for such content, the main difference is the amount of crafting gear they can make in that time. A thing that other ommunities can compete with if they don't focus on leveling, but do crafting at the same time.
Will there be players with an advantage? Yes, Time, skill, and research of what to do / craft etc will give people advantage. But the advantage will not matter if the game lets you level in 5 days played 10 days played or 45 days played.
Ashes is a new game, a lot of people will try out different classes, and builds to suit their playstyle.
The average MMO player plays 3 hours per day, it can take such a player already up to 3 months per character to get to max level. do you really want to force the average player to spend more then 2 years before getting each archtype to max level, just to appease a minority that BY THEIR OWN CHOICE decides to rush forwards and potentially have a content drought?
Because that what it comes down to,. Rushers, rush BY THEIR OWN CHOICE
If they burn out because of it, thats a concequence of their choice
If they have no good endgame experiance till the rest catches up thats by their choice.
Currently you'll have on average 4 hours per level to go. This will most likely be on a curve where the first few levels go faster then the last few. Popular grinding spots will be contested, mob certificates of heavy farmed area's will start to diminish in value, You'll need to go to different area's to gather materials for the better gear. And if you kill players that continuesly farm a certain area (alone or with a group) they drop the resources they farmed there. There are already many systems in play to level the playing field for those players that rush. Especially if they do that alone.
Eg every guild can buy a node siege scroll. if your community is the first to get a node to stage 3. There will be a lot of players that want to attack it, just to see how it goes. Beeing the first is not always going to be the best in ashes.
So: Let players make their own choices. I'm not going to tell you how to enjoy your game(s) please don't tell me how to enjoy mine
Because the game is designed in several ways to ensure this happens.
The high lv and low lv players in the same area wont have the same objectives, so whoever said that high lv will bully low lv was talking nonsense.
But yes... HiGH Lv wiLL be NeaR Lv
Says who?
Yeah, If I can one shot level 20 mobs at level 50 for their drops and my profit per hour for doing so is higher than anything else I could be doing. I would absolutely be out there doing that.
It really just depends on what choices I have.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
The only solution is to nerf time, of course this does not serve well with the players who can play 16 hours a day 7 days a week.
So im sorry it is what it is, you can not dictate to the amount of time a player can play.
Make the levelling process fairly quick.
I don't know if it's possible to implement a xp reduction on the hours you play.
Say when your 5 levels away from hitting max level, after 5 hours of play you get 80% then after 8 hours you get 70% xp ....etc
At the end of the day like every mmo out there, the game begins at max level, the more time you have to play the more progression you will make.
Very little
― Plato
Gear progression is usually how it's done.
Or.... make leveling take longer to reach cap instead of looking for filler content
I am talking about the start of the game, not its end game content.
And for the 3rd time, the xp nerf i am talking about would ONLY LAST FOR 30 DAYS. Not more. And because it is at the very start, it helps out with with fixing problems that aren't found by QA.
I'll be honest, this idea came after playing New World. It was made by Amazon with a ton of money and i have never seen such a garbage fire in my life. It was insane.
But this proved one thing. MMOs have 1 launch. Thats it. Servers are persistent, so any problems with the economy, with the nodes, with crafting, anything is going to leave a lasting mark on the game. We need to realize that Ashes is in the same storm. The game won't be perfect. It can't be. There is a massive difference between a team of QA and the mass of players. Bugs will be found, exploits, ways to abuse the systems or just the balance can be out of whack.
Any of those can ruin the experience for everyone for months. Imagine an item dupe exploit at level 50 vs level 25. It sucks that it happens at 25, but its way better than it happening at 50.
And players can play however they want, sure. I don't know why people took this post so personally tbh. I am not attacking anyone's play style, just pointing the ways in which certain play styles can negatively affect the launch.
Personally, in NW, i got 260 hours in game in about 2 weeks. Sure, maybe 40 of them were in queue, but i would still reach max level in Ashes before the 3 weeks mark, easy. And a lot of players will.
An xp nerf will not negatively impact the game (as long as there is stuff to do). If you think "ah, i won't play until the nerf is lifted", tbh, who do you think you are fooling? You are on the forums of a game that is (maybe) 2 years away from release and engaging with its community. You will play. And I explained the benefits in the original post for playing from the start. It also acts as a catch up mechanic for those that start a bit later