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
This right here is honestly a massive reason why having level progression is huge for MMORPGs. Bottlenecking the bots.
What a concept. Who would've thought that the person playing for a year would be better than the one who started 1 day ago. And lets not even start on the concept of a RPG where you start as someone who is clueless and has to learn everything and progress as a character over time.
Again which RPGs sold well and what were the characteristics of said games?
Are you arguing a phone game, created around timeshinks and negating that with real world currency as your example game? Different strokes for different folks I guess. What percentage of NW players stuck around after launch? I have a feeling their retention rate was less than ideal.
Leveling is not skill honing. Again how many people in 2005 WoW hit level cap and could play their character to any degree. What were the wipe rates in solo/group/raid content as compared to Classic in 2020? Is there an MMO that teaches leveling in an efficient and fun manner without being a timesink?
As for sea of thieves you are not at a 50/50 winrate with experienced players. But a 20/80 has a significantly different feeling and general outcome compared to 0/100.
And again, thats because it took a single ability spammed over and over again to progress, so that's what people did and thus never learned, you can't compare yourself to garbage unless you want to your average to be garbage as well Regardless of "yes or no" why shouldn't there be?
What makes those players and I have the same skill levels? If player a is terrible, player b and c will have a negative time playing with them. Forced interaction in this scenario won't make any of us have a positive experience. Guilds are the way around this, but unfortunately, they are all high level and I cannot play with them.
In your words, questing/exploration is to be accomplished.
If you still don’t enjoy the leveling process doing questing/exploration in an MMORPG, then you’ll have to make the tough decision on whether Ashes is the right game for you.
If I asked for everything, I'd advocate for a vendor with every crafting material and a teleport to wherever I want to go.
Insults are fun and all, but it doesn't really add anything to the conversation.
Well if your having a bad time playing with bad players then you just need to change your mentality or change who your playing with. Personally I play every single game I can competitively, and every single team I have ever played with, every friend I have ever made, I have always made it clear that I would rather play with someone that has a good attitude and shiet mechanics than a mechanical genius with a shiet attitude.
So if you aren't having fun because you are a different skill level than your buds, teach them, get new buds, or go join a game without skill, but your absolutely wrong that player B and C won't have a good time, player KingDDD won't have a good time, but many of us probably will.
There will be bots in this game if its profitable to have them. Leveling won't do anything about it. A subscription won't do anything about it. Its just the nature of the playing an online game.
Better because a player has more statistics is not the same as better because a player is physically/mentally better at the game. Any 6k DOTA player can smurf and stomp some 3ks, the game starts with both having (in theory) a 50/50 win chance.
What separates player B and C from A when you take away levels? You'll still have that even if player A, B, and C all get what you're advocating for.
So why do I need to level IN ADDITION to that? It appears to me to be a timesink.
Because its a needless timesink. Again is there any example you have?
You shouldn't make it easier for them. Ban a max level bot, thats 2 months of leveling that they need to invest into making another.
So are you also advocating for having zero gear and the stats they come with? Those gear stats and the time it took to acquire it all are bad according to your logic. There should be no progression systems as that would take away from being able to immediately jump into the game and completely rely upon skill.
You're advocating for a matchmaking MMORPG with zero progression all because you think the content is a time sink.
So how do you propose I find these new players? Will they be recruiting a level 20 when they're already level cap? I already can't play with the people I know who share my skill level, and mentality. Leveling doesn't help facilitate my ability to find like-minded players. Who you choose to play with is great and you should be allowed to play with whoever you want. However, I'd ask that you extend the same courtesy to me.
Well you go to global chat or node chat and type "New player looking for guild, still leveling but plan to do hardcore endgame content. PM me"
and until you get someone's interest, you continue your MMORPG journey of leveling and experiencing the world of Vera
I love the fundamentals. Nodes are awesome, augemnts are great, open world sounds amazing, a variety of classes and unique customization should be great, graphics look astounding, and the lead dev has actually played an MMO in the past decade as a player with a team that has experience playing MMOs with a variety of skill levels versus someone who's been a lead developer in the industry for 20+ years beholden to turning a profit for shareholders.
Awesome, heres another question. Will character levels stop you from playing the game?
I've saved 1000s of villages across a multitude of universes from pestilence, werewolves, mad-kings, and goblins. It just isn't interesting to do it for the 1001st time. Again why do I need to have some arbitrary bar fill to enjoy the exploration aspect? It only serves to limit my ability to explore.
And there should be some level of content that scratches that same itch with its own rewards and progression paths. The issue is that I have to do it and I have to do it as my first major experience in the game.
Though as have been stated before, Ashes will have a ton of content not related to your vertical progression. Except it way closer to 0/100 than 20/80. That 20 would only be true if you're a pro fps player, though even then, you'd need 4 of such players to win against 4 top lvl SoT players and even then your win is nowhere near assured, because the top players will know way more tricks and mechanics to outplay you even if you have the fps skill. But that fps skill still required you to play literal thousands of hours of fps games to get, and if you somehow could represent that invested time with a lvl value - you'd be super high lvl (pretty much the ladder system in most current fps games). Except there's countless guilds that accept low lvl players and help them level up or don't even care about their lvls. And as a direct example of that, I'll make a guild like that in AoC. So you're totally fine with spending hundreds of hours getting gear, but not fine with doing THE LITERALLY SAME THING but with a number that also goes up at the same time? And how much time did that 6k rank take that player btw? Could it be that this 6k number IS THE PLAYER'S LVL?!!?!? What a twist! As Dolyem already said, you... socialize in a social game. There'll always be people willing to play with low lvl people, especially in AoC where you vertical lvl won't mean as much as it does in other mmos.
Depends on how it takes for it to be fun. If I'm playing a tank and my abilities and role are locked behind a timewall, it'll probably be pretty boring unless the starting zone has something to keep my interest. And that doesn't refer to saving a village from a graphically beautiful dragon. I've done that before and don't particularly care to do it again.
its a cliché at this point but it needs to be said. This game may not be for you my dude.
Because that's part of any RPG genre ... Ashes included.
Don't like it?
No problem.
There are other posts in your thread, here, that suggest other games that better suit your interests.
Genshin Impact is P2W, but again if you like games designed around that have at it.
NW was a buggy poorly designed mess because they added levels to it. They spent 1-2 years of development time making content that isn't fun, only to neglect what could be the fun part of the game. People bought New World because it's a new MMO and this genre is saturated with people looking for a new game. Leveling didn't help with the retention rate, and I doubt a significant number of people bought new world for the lore.
So if WoW is a bad example, what is a game that is a good example? How long does it take and why is that relevant. DMC is 10 hours long and has a significantly more complex combat system than any MMO is going to have. Why must less complex game have a significantly inflated learning time?
That's great that you say you'll make a guild. However, saying something and doing it for a significant amount of time are two very different things. As someone whos tried playing a few MMOs in the past few months, its difficult to find a guild in a game due to verticle progression.
Your SoT perspective is just conjecture and requires brand new bob with 0 gaming experience vs Chad the pro. In reality there will be more people around the 50 percentile of player skill and you will run into those players more often. So my invested time in other MMOs means i get to skip levels? Cool, where do I apply that to my account and do I have to verify my top 1 percentile ranking in other games?
Grinding gear is different than grinding levels as long as gear customization increases the ability to customize my character to the desired playstyle I want. It also means I'm not restricted in what gear I can grind because nothing is off limits to me because of an arbitrary mechanic like my level.
Hitting 6k took me roughly two years of playtime. The difference between that and leveling is there was nothing stopping me from achieving that besides my own abilities and understanding. Dota didn't gate me at 3k because other people who played for that same amount of time were there.
Are there people always willing to play? Is it a positive experience for both the new player and the veteran to play together? In my experience, the answer to that is no.
It's not just about learning how abilities work, but developing muscle memory for those skills. The last thing you want in the middle of an intense battle is to have to stop and remember which key your CC ability is on. By the time you reach max level you should have all your abilities committed to muscle memory, which is only possible if you use those abilities regularly while levelling.