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.
Things to keep us playing end game
Lust69
Member
I thought I’d create a thread for things to keep us playing at end game.
The first thing I thought of was a boss mob that re-spawns more difficult each time it dies continually.
We need something ground breaking in this game that everyone is excited about. I don’t know what that could be. When you have everything what would keep you playing?
Guild vendettas is something I played a game for a long time at end game because there was always this rivalry and we wanted to own the guild village. This gave us more motivation than anything we hated them but that’s what kept me playing.
What ideas do you have?
The first thing I thought of was a boss mob that re-spawns more difficult each time it dies continually.
We need something ground breaking in this game that everyone is excited about. I don’t know what that could be. When you have everything what would keep you playing?
Guild vendettas is something I played a game for a long time at end game because there was always this rivalry and we wanted to own the guild village. This gave us more motivation than anything we hated them but that’s what kept me playing.
What ideas do you have?
1
Comments
I think I'm content with what we are theoretically getting.
I don't really think it's worth trying to sort through 'what Intrepid has confirmed' vs 'the stuff I am imagining based on my own interpretation of design'.
So, basically, trade and change based on the Node system, Dynamic and randomized boss functions, group-balanced PvP, legendary items and item maintenance, and enough clear, soft roleplay options to keep the world feeling like an actual story instead of what sandbox competitives normally turn into.
To me, Intrepid already seems to have this well set to achieve their concept of 'no real endgame', the question is how many players will be willing to play after they hit 'maintenance point' due to the rivalries/soft RP, until the next 'expansion'.
Acquisition rate of the materials is most likely what @NiKr is referring to.
Certainly the strongest and wealthiest will have BiS quickly, but if BiS sword drops off a Weekly mob spawn, 'the Majority' isn't going to be geared in a month.
And if the top people are greedy enough (usually are), then those 5 pieces will put a tax on any incoming mats, because they need repair.
Yes, but again note 'the Majority'.
Some games don't limit the number of spawns, they allow players to enter instances to earn their BiS gear materials, or 'Spawn a World Boss once a day and everyone who participates has at least some chance of getting it'.
I'm talking about things like "This boss spawns once every 4 days and has a 10% chance of dropping a single one of the material needed to make this weapon'.
No matter what you do in that case, even if only a hundredth of the players on a server needs that item, they will still be 'working on it for years'.
I would like a concrete source on this.
Nothing I have read indicates this is guaranteed at all.
However, we just had the less is more or more is less thread so the old stance might change.
What do we do when our guild has full control over the nodes and maxed them. Got all the gear from the dynamic and randomised boss mobs. Pvp against your rival is old and have all the legendary items and role-played for months.
Does anyone have any new ideas for this game at what some would consider end game? I feel like there could be something new and exciting.
I'm not sure what you're referring to.
If my guild has control over Metropolis A, there's a chance that the guild controlling Metropolis B will want Metropolis A to be brought down for some reason. Maybe even just to weaken my guild.
That would result in new rivals, new bosses, new RP.
You basically defined it as 'what if every dynamic aspect of the game stopped being dynamic, what other new and exciting ideas do you have?'
Is that right?
Everything stopping being dynamic could be used as a basis to come up with new content, yes but I think the content you refer to isn’t really dynamic enough as in a constant change, activity, or progress. New rivals, new bosses and new RP is going to stop being dynamic after a few months. How many bosses will it be before it’s just another boss. How many rivals will it be until it’s just another rival and I guess RP could last a long time but even that will get old. This content is still going to be very good. But why stop there? There could be something we are missing that could make this game even better that’s what I’m trying to find.
I don't know if Ashes will live up to the standards of the games I play, sure.
My favorite one has 2278 bosses/encounters, though (that I can find, obviously these have been added over years and years).
My other one is 'a simulation of the entire milky way galaxy, the section humans are in is thousands of inhabited star systems'.
I'm easy to keep happy, so I'm probably not the best person to answer this.
If Ashes has even 300 unique and interesting encounters, even if only 30 of those are actually 'strong', I probably wouldn't get bored for YEARS.
I guess I just can't see how with dozens of nodes, hundreds of bosses, and thousands of opponents/RP partners, 'boredom' is going to be a thing in less than 'years'. So... I guess I just disagree with you, actually.
"Boss mob respawns stronger" (repetition).
Most mmos in the past 2 decades have become an ez, quick dash to end game. That is what people need reasons to keep playing once max leveling and exploration has been achieved (so quickly). They need a repetitive content.
a) I would suggest we go back to basics. It's the journey that matters, not the destination. Steven said that with intense gaming it would take 45 days to reach max lv. One and a half months. I would like to see max lv being achieved, with intense gaming, at around 3-5 months.
b) Also, the world should be challenging to traverse and mounts are counter productive to that. There need to be restrictions on mount summoning AND unsummoning.
c) I also hope that IS will stick to its guns and protect the economy system as well as the social aspect of the game. Achieving gear should be hard. And the cries for solo friendly content are harmful to meaningful mmos.
1) organize with group to get the mats for the crafts
2) one character should profit from only one profession. Socialize to cover your needs.
d) Progress should be hard. Then there are people that want to experience different playstles, but their journey will be slower since they will want to raise more than 1 chars. Personally I only like having one character. What I liked about Line][Age was that with the same character (and after a nearly endless journey) you could add a second class and switch to it and level it up, then add third class and level it up and experience even more playstyles AFTER you reached max lv, max gear, finished a TOUGH epic quest. You could always switch between the classes of your character and also the additional classes gave you some minor passive bonuses to your original class that gave you some edge in combat over other players that didn't reach that far.
As you can see, good mmos are endless. They dont need reasons to keep you playing it, after you reached an end.
But people want instant gratification and we can't have nice things.
I assume these games you have been playing are a joke unless you’re referring to real life haha I agree with you to a certain extent this games systems are dynamic more than any other mmorpg we have played apart from the one with 2278 bosses and the one with thousands of inhabited star systems although that would be difficult because most planets aren’t in the goldilocks area of their solar system. I guess I’m saying it starts of dynamic then stops being so. My main object of this discussion is to discuss more exciting content there could be more. As it stands I’m also happy with the current content it would last longer than most mmorpg we know of but what else can we come up with.
Well, if we're just brainstorming and we've already got 'dynamic characterization', 'dynamic bosses', 'dynamic locations and dungeons', and 'political intrigue'...
Ashes already has the 'monster events' and 'monster sieges' and 'monster coins' and will also have Naval content...
Infinite progression is impossible... I guess they could add more 'level restricted' content to expand the flow, and make a bigger deal out of the social organization stuff like letting players create them in specific curated ways.
I just don't know what one adds when the game already has plans to have 'everything' that it can have within its own scope (Magic Fantasy MMO).
Are you asking for something so exciting that it doesn't exist in ANY game yet?
you need wires touching your body
Would that even have any effect though? That's just an interface back to the same stuff.
I know I'm an abstractor, but within the realm of what OP is 'talking about', I doubt that counts either. That's why I'm drawing a blank.
If RP would get boring, literally no amount of NPCs or game story could possibly change that...
If at least 64x combat opponent 'characters' would get boring, no amount of changing the game itself will alter that too much.
If hundreds of bosses isn't enough, there's definitely no functional PvE that will ever scratch the itch of the person who wants more.
I guess Ashes could add a Legend of Mana level Crafting System, just bump some stuff around from their already-planned SWG-style, so that we could craft gear 'forever', but even that would still have limits and only a subset of people would care.
You're just too easy to make happy too, NiKr, I think.
However, nodes out on the fringes, near the mountains, on islands, in remote areas...they will remain small to middling in size. Rarely, however, some servers will end up with a metro in a remote area thus allowing us to experience their different 'high' content. Word will spread that on server Balderdash that the node at 'Land's End' leveled up and they saw previously unique bosses and new weapons and content! All these dozens of remote nodes that have never been levelled up...now people will try to level them up for their 'high' content!
How many YEARS will it take for a single server to turn every single node into a metropolis to experience the 'high' level content available? It may never happen. Even if it does happen, how few (if any!) players on that server will experience all of the 'high' content of every single node and castle? Nobody might ever achieve that. Ever.
No End Game.
But as I said, OP is a heroin addict who somehow thinks there's something better out there, when there's not. SAO would add the only missing "dynamism" to the equation - the full immersion. A monitor and a kbm/controller can only take you so far. I mean, I guess there's the literal infinity of thought but some people can't access that freely, so D&D-type stuff doesn't apply.
For me a non-SAO peak mmo would be a game where you can create your own spells. I had an idea of an elemental particles-based system, where you start with pretty much a pixel of a single element and go as far as "combination of all elements into "a something" that draws upon the mana of everyone in a 500m radius around your character".
And as you pointed out, this kind of freedom of choice could be applied to other kinds of content in the game, but I can't even begin to imagine how difficult this type of game would be to design/develop, let alone balance.