Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
UE5, no pay2win, good combat? Every MMO player will give it a shot. Because there is nothing like that on the market. There hasn't been for a long time.
Thats why I am keeping up with Ashes, I have a feeling that if the devs manage to deliver and not get "lost" along the way, Its going to shake the MMO genre.
Classes? Don't matter, if the combat is good. Content? Even if it is content light at launch, if the foundation is good, people will see it and stay for the content to come.
And I am going to make a prediction. 5 years from now, these are going to be 3 top MMOs. FFXIV (thats not going to fall anytime soon, and tbh, it shouldn't), AoC and whatever Riot is cooking up with their MMO.
Make combat good in A2, nothing is as important as being able to say " we are not doing P2W, we have a bleeding edge engine and our combat is good". Do that, and Ashes is going to be a success.
I am definitely excited for farming in freeholds, don't you worry!
PvP and housing are my go-tos for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuU1txumPQ5PqdU1D9cPhIg
https://twitch.tv/trusivraj
In order to be hype about anything farming related, I would have to be convinced it's not going to be some knock off mobile game that's mandatory for anyone wanting to make passive gold since its no risk and as far as I currently know, intended to be do able from your phone and therefore low reward for people like me who are serious about it. I'm not convinced the current concept of crop rotations will make for fun game play just yet either.
It'd be like asking me why I am not hype for summoner. Too little info and too many signs pointing towards flawed supporting systems design.
I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, it could be as good as or better than bdo's farming, but said lack of information explaining all the questionable design questions in a less questionable fuller context means there is no tangible reason to be hype at this time.
Guild Wars 2 is finally adding fishing. Now that is hype news for a life skilling mmo player.
+1 Combat (both PvP and PvE )
+1 Classes
+1 Nodes
+1 Caravans
Many a true word spoken in jest!
If seasons are "the correct length" (thanks @Nerror, great post) then crops will have abundance and scarcity at different times. This encourages both 1) stockpiling in storage and 2) caravans to make a profit from scarcity in other locations. So when I think of crop rotations I see genuine motivation to siege nodes and caravan PvP. Something mundane in farming sim games takes on a whole new exploitative angle.
I am glad you can be hype on that level. I cannot be given too many weird choices. What you stated was a core reason I was initially hype, before, well... A lot of weird little things and lack of information that made no sense to not provide:
1. They have made some questionable economic decisions that might make it irrelevant in terms of 'this is my primary crafting gameplay loop' that I am not sure how they will reconcile.
2. The farming gameplay itself should be engaging enough without this external incentive or people who like it will just continue to play bdo or similar. Everything about their homestead design and the mobile app has told me only enough to think 'wait they might not just be copy pasting bdo's solved formula and adding the node system... what on earth are they even swinging at here?'
Over all seasonal rotation effecting desirable nodes is definitely something I want to matter (and even cooler if some nodes are in optimal temp for certain crops mostly year round making those nodea a big deal.) But I am not sold that their economic design will make it all that meaningful just yet, nor the gameplay inside farming with crop rotations fun yet, nor am I sold that farming will be a specialized activity on a meta level given current design decisions and lack of details on other ones.
I'm hoping the economist consultant that they used will have a positive impact on the game, but that also remains to be proven.
I believe that Steven sets extremely high standards for himself. As a result I don't think he will release Ashes until it has a high level of polish in most, if not all, areas. If a gameplay loop isn't good enough for him then Ashes won't release until it is. If you can accept this belief as true, then the only question becomes, are your expectations higher than Steven's in each individual aspect of the game?
Which gives the class its name
So far, our expectations are higher than certain other people have claimed Steven's are.
This is separate from 'what Steven's actual expectations are' which is often unclear in our discussions and that's where we get to the 'benefit of the doubt' situation.
While there's no objective best way to do anything, always remember that what a developer or team thinks is a good idea of implementation might just be a whole New World.