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.
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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.
I hope this game takes notes from past games like Silkroad Online
IICamII
Member
This game seems much of the same as Silkroad Online. I really hope it involves some kind of trade system with Thieves, Traders and Hunters too. I also loved the grindyness of SRO. Offered enough quests to give ya a break, but made ya work for your levels. Specialty weapons that can be dropped would be cool too like Seal of Sun, Seal of Moon and Seal of Star.
0
Comments
The leveling process was already bad enough when level cap was 60 and 70, but after 80 it became ridiculous and basically made spending money and botting mandatory (you wouldn't get banned if you had Premium) even after reaching max level, because grinding was also the only way to drop SoX items. If you think that either the leveling experience in SRO or the SoX system was good, i.e. kill dozens of millions of mobs to reach max level, farm SP and farm SoX items, I'm sorry to tell you but you're either drunk on nostalgia or high on copium. At least that's my opinion from being a max level 7:1 Spear in Xian from late 2004 until 2006 or 2007, killed Uniques constantly, spent more money than I should have and thieved a lot before people realized that trading was pointless and botting was more profitable. Too bad FW was only introduced after I quit.
I expect Ashes' leveling experience to be somewhat similar to vanilla/classic WoW: it takes a long time and it's grindy, but it's a lot better than SRO's and most Asian games from that time (read more).
Now regarding the trading system and the triangular conflict from Silkroad, they will have almost no similarities with the caravan system from Ashes. In official SRO, trading was fun but very straight forward and not very interesting: buy useless items from an NPC in city A, move it to city B, sell those useless items to an NPC in city B and make a profit. If you were unlucky a thief could come up, kill you and steal your goods. That's it.
In Ashes, caravans will be used to move items and resources you wouldn't otherwise be able to and/or more effective than carrying it yourself, and make profit as a consequence. You'll be able to either help protect or attack caravans, as far as we know there's no such thing as specific trader/hunter/thief professions, which is good (read more).
Last but not least, good item drops such as SoX from shitty regular mobs is a great way to attract bots, like Silkroad and many other games did. I believe that in Ashes "shit mobs" won't drop gear, only materials. The only way to drop completed gear is from bosses/dungeons, and even that's going to be rare (read more).
Cheers my fellow SRO enjoyer
In SRO everybody stopped running serious trades when botting became a wide-spread thing.
To be honest you were kind of forced to use a bot, because the leveling experience was soul crushing. The quests were ridiculous, like kill 500-1000 mobs, that's it. Nobody has time for that nowadays, sadly we are not 14 years old anymore.
In Ashes you can be a thief without actually having a profession for it. You can still attack caravans, or protect a caravan in exchange of some gold.
The bots really. Also the lack of updates. WeMade really let the game go and starting making it a pay to sign in game against bots.
Appreciate the well thought out reply. I also enjoyed the game from about 05 until about 2010. Was max Level Glaive Str Build on Sparta. Killed the Lord many times.
The thing I loved tho was the mindless grinding, yes I know it can mean bots but maybe if the exp to level ratio is done right it can be a good resource for leveling. Questing gets so boring and the stories become meaningless anyway. I also liked finally hitting that one mob and it dropping something super awesome that ya had to go meet up with your community/guild to show it off.
That brings me back to the armor/weapons. While I disagree with the drops being only limited to badass mobs, I can understand maybe super badass drops being limited to them too. I mean you say we dont have time to level, but how is anyone supposed to compete then if the items are super limited to only those capable of destroying top tier mobs. I think maybe we limit said top tier special weaps and armor to not being able to be repair so they are used sparingly. I mean those rushes of finding badass gear is what keeps people engaged.
The trading system was great in the pvp sense. I do agree the items and what not had no meaning or value really which is an aspect that WeMade failed on.
I do hope they look to these great games for inspiration and also to how they fell. The main thing this game should have is bot prevention. They ruin every game. Also they need a system of game managers similar to how Acclaim use to do theirs. Community promoted managers who were paid with ingame gold as VGM (Vice Game Managers) and GMs (Game Manager) actually paid irl. Its helps to keep a general sense that someones always there in case we need something.
Also, Dekaron's (2Moons) their DeadFront system was top tier and held alot of player engagement for many years. I would look at that for inspiration as well.