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
I forgot what the game that did let you come up with your own stuff (freedom limited ofc) is called, but I hear it was quite fun. Humans will kick the fun out of that game style pretty quick though, if it is a competitive game.
I hope Ashes gets close to whatever it was though, since honestly, Augments are only one step down from that.
What say you, @Lust69, is either 'a crafting system so deep that it takes people years to make the optimal recipe for a single personalized weapon' or 'a magic system so deep that you wouldn't even bother asking a Modder to do anything' exciting enough?
Hi, did someone call me?
For pve, new pve. New bosses, dungeons, mob types, important items to harvest from the world. Invasions. Plagues or things that otherwise cause "darkness" to descend on the land, that must be fought back. Keep churning out new pve content with new ways to fight it itself and new reasons to fight over it with other players.
Ok I agree there is a lot of content I’m not saying there isn’t. Yes the idea was to come up with something that doesn’t exist in any game yet. That’s all. It actually sounds quite exciting after it was made into a summary. Who do you guys think I am Wolverine?
No worries, I was honestly just verifying.
There's a big difference to me, between talking about 'how could the game do something better or add something that is not normally in this type of game', and 'anyone have any ideas that the Game Industry itself has never actually successfully done before?'
So, no, I don't have any revolutionary ideas outside the scope of contemporary game design, at the moment. I'm just here for the ride hoping against hope that we get what they promised to begin with.
There are 9 races and only 5 Metros, so.... there will always be some people striving to destroy a Metro and raise a replacement with their preferred Racial population.
After a player reaches max Adventurer progression, there is still Artisan, Religion, Racial, Guild, Social Org, Node and Naval progression. Expect Seasons and Events to also impact changes to the game wrold that players will want to explore.
I also expect lots of Ashes players to be having fun pirating the Open Seas when they are max level.
But, I'm also progressing the other 3 major Factions/Social Orgs. I'm doing Fishing dailies. I'm participating in Dragon races. I sometimes participate in monster Hunts. The last Mountain Climbing quest I has seemed to be bugged, so I need to try that again after today's patch and see if that's been fixed.
I still need to work on my Crafting/Alchemy progression - when I have the time.
And... I think due to Level Scaling, there's still a ton of side quests I need to complete.
I have plenty to do while ignoring dungeons and raids.
I think we may be reaching a point in MMORPG development where we can finally ever quest.
For example, make the fight harder in terms of needed skill. Not just boosting hp bars out to space. Thus you're rewarded for playing the game and not just zerg rushing things.
Not everyone is a winner in Ashes, so if you dislike games where you can't just get what you want when you want it - you might dislike Ashes too.
You can buy the mats. Find a path towards wealth.
Time gating is a horrible mechanic, and to be sure we're on the same page as what the definition of time gating is, here is my definition: to restrict the access based on when something is available.
Which means whatever I want that is time gated is dependent on me fitting a schedule around it. I've played plenty of time gated mmos, and there's nothing worse than having to set my day to log in at a specific time only to get crushed by some rng drop rate at that time gated event.
I did not say that we should just be able to get what we wanted and not have time gated events. Instead it should be gated by the amount of effort in obtaining whatever we're after. Having a skill gated event is better in a boss encounter, because you can attempt the fight whenever you have time to play, but also it is difficult enough that you have to actively improve your play in order to succeed at the boss encounter.
And now you have several guilds fighting over a very difficult boss, so no one gets the loot. And while, yes, this doesn't quite fall under the direct definition of "timegate", it does however move the time of someone successfully acquiring the loot ever further, so in a way it's even worse than a timegate.
So yes, I agree with you that it just delays progression even more.
And again, the open world boss mechanic is another discussion, I see that you keep bringing my arguments back to what is currently being done in ashes, that it is an open world boss and making it also skill gated wouldn't be beneficial.
But I am just arguing only that time gated encounters are a bad mechanic in general. Skill should be rewarded, and for the sake of this argument, I would say putting an instanced boss encounter that is more skill demanding would be better than an open world time gated encounter. But I know that people are going to cry about instanced dungeons and things not being as fun as open world, but this is just an example for the argument, I am not saying instanced encounters are better than open world.
Only that skill gates and better than time gates
Variety, difficulty, progression, economic evolution, content patches, new play models (new pvp mode, new dungeon style, new housing concept, new crafting classes, etc.), and finally, the ability to feel relevant in the game compared to the time I play! (should be proportionnal and not exponential, leaving casuals in the dust and eliminating them eventually).
What doesnt keep me playing: new classes (instead, rework/evolve current classes or add declinations), MOAR LEVELS,
There's a tiny chance that Steven somehow does a 180 and goes directly against the "risk/reward" design of open world bosses, but so far he's only doubled down on owpvp, so I somehow doubt that he'll go for instances. And that is why I said that you might dislike this game, considering that you've already said that you disliked ow bosses in other game. And especially considering that you've already player AA and disliked them there too.
I don't care if it's on ow or instanced, and I am not trying to talk about it on ashes specifically, I am stating in general, that skill > time gate content
please stop trying to tell me if it would be better on ashes or not, the thread's about what would keep you playing, so I'm saying what would keep me playing lol
thanks for thinking if i'll like the game or not, i think i'll make my own judgement on it
I guess I just approached this from the wrong angle. If harder content would keep you playing, would you be ok with it not giving you BiS gear? Cause if that's the case then I'd assume Intrepid will keep using instanced bosses for their story content and there's a chance that later expansions will make those bosses harder.
not everyone got raid gear. Hell not everyone gets specific loots from a random ass dungeon. Drops were rare and camped.
Original Journeyman Boots in Everquest can take you 76 hours camping the same mob, killing it every 20 min for it to potentially drop. So unless your gonna no sleep grind for 3 days straight (LITERALLY HAD TO DO THIS WHEN I WAS 16) - players created a waiting list. If you're not there waiting, or not online and respond - you lose your spot in the line. It took weeks for many ppl to get their boots.
Let's not even talk about epic quests for their epic weapon/armor - months to complete, raid content required - which once again NOT EVERYONE GOT TO SEE cause that is gated by the top guilds. You rarely get to see those items sold, cause it took roughly a year to gear a guild out.
What keeps people playing a game is inherently unique to that person.
I'm sure there was some focus group or gaming university thesis that has the stats on this topic as a bell curve with survey responses and such...I'm hopeful the devs have someone who has in-depth knowledge of this.
For me at least what keeps me playing is community, dynamic events and exploration.
I can play a game for a long time for exploration alone (No Man's Sky) but it lacked the community...
If there's just the community but things are static and stagnant...then it becomes a glorified virtual chat room and there's less of a pull with no/few/shitty dynamic changes.
So I feel like as long as they don't kill the server community (*cough* WoW), they have dynamic events in an ever changing world, and things to explore (areas, mobs, world events, pvp etc) then I'll have no reason to quit.
I actually was not thinking to that but to generate pleasure in a way or another.
If new classes makes us play longer, I think they should release the game initially with only 6 of them and add the rest later.
Progression can be made longer by making leveling slower, like 2 years instead of 2 months.
Higher end gear should take boss kills + resources from muiltipul locations
And honostly would like to see the return of the old Everquest epic weapon quests that takes months if not years to complete :P
gear needs some kind of decay rate that will eventually be trashed so there always a demand/market for the gear to maintain a market aswell, harder to obtan gear should last longer or be able to repair the durability via sacraficing completed crafted items into it of same tier (This is to maintain the demand for crafted equipment once everyone gets past it)
We can expect a variety of different types of max level gear - that we swap out for a variety of scenarios - like weather and Seasons.
Now we all know who not to mess with in-game