What might 'actually' be AoC's biggest problem

Liniker

It's not the open-world pvp - it's not the group-focused design or the lack of fast travel/convenience as some like to say.

I believe Ashes of Creation's biggest problem is going to be the loud voices that will increasingly try to change this game to cater to a different targeted audience. The PvE carebears, the solo-players, the PvP-arena-only players, those, that make a big portion of the MMORPG playerbase, are the real risk to the project. Every time I see @StevenSharif saying "Ashes won't be for everyone, and that's ok" this refills my confidence fuel tank in this project.

But I hope Steven and the team are ready for this, because it might only get worse as the game gets more traction, people will continue to give feedback and make content asking for changes that would end up hurting AoC, because a large portion of the mmorpg player base are under the assumption that if an MMO doesn't appeal to as many people as possible - the game will fail.

This is something we see everywhere, and it's also something Asmongold, a streamer that Steven really likes, says all the time, using New World (a bad example) as an example that people nowadays don't want a social experience like they use to back in the days, that changing the design adding teleports, removing open world PVP and making a casual, solo-friendly game is the way to go. They keep saying the MMORPG genre is "dying" but they want Ashes to be just like the other games in the genre.

I'd like to hereby voice my, and my community's support for Steven's vision, that ever since it was announced remained true to the PvX risk vs reward philosophy - I hope we, players that have no MMORPG to call home for the last decade, that came from Lineage, Archeage, SWG, Everquest, Eve, CoH, Ultima, and so many others - can get to experience AoC as it was promised - no matter how long it takes to release. If this game delivers, and it's good, we will be here, and we will buy every cosmetic in the cash shop or new t-shirt you release to make sure this game is successful.

Noaani

Liniker wrote: »

I believe Ashes of Creation's biggest problem is going to be the loud voices that will increasingly try to change this game to cater to a different targeted audience.

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you here.

To me, the different voices all trying to change the game in their direction are a symptom of the actual biggest problem the game has, they are not the problem itself.

The problem is a lack of focus for the game, and specifically messaging about the game to the community.

Ashes is claiming to be a PvX game, yet everything we hear about it is expanding the PvP aspects of the game more and more.

The game is set to be for seasoned MMO players that are up for being subject to loss on a continual basis, having to work to get anything and often having the greats of that work stripped away - and yet it wants to appeal to people so casual they cant have 10 minutes of travel time and so need a family summons.

The REASON Ashes has so many different voices trying to get the game to go in a specific direction is because the game has made claims at different times of heading in different directions.

This is Ashes biggest issue - it seems to not quite know what it wants to be. It wants to be a PvX game, but seems to only be focusing on PvP.

This was also New Worlds biggest issue. If the game knew what it wanted to be, all those people with all those voices wouldn't have bothered. When you see a game that is set on being PvP and makes no concession at all to PvE, people dont sit there complaining that the game isn't PvE enough. They only do this if they have reason for thinking the game is going to somewhat suit their play preferences.

When you have a game that has developers that make statements that appeal both to players like Dygz and George (two people that probably won't ever find a home in the same game), you have a game that at the very least, doesn't have it's messaging down.

Now, A lot of people are going to disagree with me on this, and that's fine. As a point of proof though, I want to present two games - one that is released, and one that is in development.

The game that has been released in Crowfall. There were never any serious voices telling the developers they need to make the game more PvE friendly. The game was very clear from it's announcement that it was a PvP game. The game released as a PvP game (for better or worse).

The second game is Pantheon. This is a game that is blatant about being a PvE game. You don't see a whole lot of people saying they need to make the game more PvP friendly.

Both of these games have their messaging down, and had that from the very start. As such, the communities each game built were full of the correct players - players that were actually a part of the games target demographic.

New World never really had that. It tried to appeal to too many groups of players, and as a result it appealed to none. Some people like to blame the players that were complaining about how the game was for this, and that is somewhat understandable. However, if the developers knew what their game was, and had faith in what their game was, their messaging from the very beginning would have made sure that the community was only made up of the players that were the games target.

Ashes very clearly has too wide a community right now. It is heading in to a New World situation (though I don't see Intrepid making such vast changes to the game). This isn't the fault of the people in the community, it is the fault of the messaging that drew people in to the community.

As a final point as to how bad Ashes messaging is, can anyone say for certain whether this game will see more of a focus on player skill in PvP or in PvE?

Obviously people are going to have opinions on this question, but I doubt anyone (including Steven) can actually answer this question today.