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.
Comments
Well then I finally have a question.
Do games like Elder Scrolls where your character COULD theoretically do without 'real levels' but still need to do things like 'Speechcraft to level 100' also cause a negative response?
Games of this type tend to have SOME form of progression, would you say that you're opposed to the 'power gap' part of it?
For example, I play one where you start with a 'basic generic' Martial Arts kit, and you still have to 'level' by finding opponents to face who know other moves, but you could theoretically win fights with just the base kit, it's not 'weaker', it just possibly isn't 'what you prefer', and even that might not be true.
Basically, is it 'having to kill mobs to raise a number' only or is 'having to work toward your customizations because you disprefer the default kit' also an offender in this?
Not true. Muscle memory is created by doing the same things again and again. Leveling is just a mechanic associated with this which mmorpg players need as reward because they like it. First time at least. But some players hate it so they play shooters.
Do other games not have the concept of muscle memory? Really!?
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Mentor_program As Ashes will have an action combat aspect in its design, you do in fact get to "skip" quite a bit of the game. Your innate knowledge will let you win pvp more often all throughout your way to higher lvls, because, as you said, most people will be around 50th% of player skill, while you're in a higher one.
And all the people who don't just lvl up their characters to max immediately will be even more likely to be weaker at pvp, so you'll probably win even more. And Ashes will encourage them to not immediately lvl up, as have been stated in this thread a hundred times already. All that gear would most likely be gated by difficulty of content. And as a lot of gear in Ashes will come from bosses that would require 8-40 people, you'd need to know how to play with other people in order to acquire it. Learning how to play with people would take time. Lvls are just a representation of you spending that time in the game, nothing more.
Though no, that's not true. There is more to lvls. They're also the representation of your character's progress. And in RPGs you're playing the character and not yourself, so your pure irl skill doesn't matter as much. The lvls show how "old" and experienced your character is. By doing quests, fighting mobs and bosses, exploring the world and all the other stuff your character will grow which will be shown through your lvl# So you started at 3k and then were doing activities that led to you getting up to 6k? It's as if you'll start at lvl1 in Ashes, do activities in the game, and by a miraculous happenstance get to lvl50. And surprisingly enough people around you will most likely be of the roughly the same lvl, just as they were in dota.
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!
You'll be doing similar activities at all lvls, because Intrepid's aiming at making the leveling process fun from lvl1. So you're not in fact gated at any point. You're just moving upwards in the difficulty of the content, just as you are in dota when moving up the ladder. And just like with dota's different game modes, you'll be able to do a ton of other content in Ashes w/o needing to vertically level up.
The Elder Scrolls (I assume you mean Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind etc) are single player games. The leveling aspect is part of the pacing for both design and story. Part of the fun for those games is beating them naked, or under leveled, or over leveled, or with specific classes, or with no heals, etc.
The Elder Scrolls also got rid of leveling in the general sense or made things like speech craft unnecessary outside of a specific dialogue tree responses in the later releases. I don't remember if Skyrim had any particular quests locked behind 100 speech or not, it's been awhile since I played it. Obviously, there's mods to change that, but the majority of players don't use mods.
you are still not answering the question. if you have a character with 30 skills, plus all the combinations you can get from using 8 different subclasses and augments, plus racial and religious augments, how do you plan to introduce that without levels to the player so it doesn't become overwhelming?
This is also true for MMORPGs though, or at least, in some better ones it can be.
I'm trying to figure out if you have a design issue with leveling itself, or with 'a thing that comes along with it, which a game could simply choose not to do' (I am not claiming that Ashes has chosen not to do that something, so this probably isn't actually important).
So, to repeat the part that might be relevant.
I can play certain games where I need to put in time to get through the game's 'gates' to progress, such as 'gathering materials to make better gear' or 'encountering a situation in battle enough times for my character to unlock a related skill', but there are no gates based on initial level, and you could theoretically do all content without doing basically any of that through raw skill.
Is this fine? Because it's hard to tell where you draw the line here. "I like this Augment but I have to grind through this Social Organization's Questlines which I don't find appealing, I should just be able to have the Augment now because it would be more fun for me" would be a way someone could uncharitably interpret your position.
Well yes but for better or worse you're much less charitable than me in these types of conversations. Whether that's a strength or weakness comes down to whether or not the other person is conversing in good faith, but as you've pointed out, I can't tell if that's true either.
Hence 'taking five pages to even ask any questions'.
There IS a perspective in which this works, because there are games where 'you are at full strength right out of the gate and could theoretically do all content', but time must be spent to do the customization, often you have to even earn that customization.
There are even MMOs that approach this quite quickly, by moving the 'other advancement' to non-character systems, which Ashes theoretically could do. I personally don't like this for various reasons, but I still prefer to know what @KingDDD actually has to say about it.
But afaik all of those games have some form of grind after you've reached "max lvl", which is why I've been saying that lvls are just a visual and have nothing to do with the underlying design of the game. The devs either backload all the content (pretty much any mmo that's older than a year) or they provide all the content in the game to all the vertical lvls (ff14).
Out of all of those options I'd probably go with ff14's one if it was somehow designed in a better way than just "you're deleveled, your gear doesn't count, most of your abilities are gone". Though I'd assume it's really difficult to design that in a different matter while also making it a viable piece of content, WHILE not making it super OP to farm for all the high lvls.
Not quite. I would (if being charitable) assume that the issue here is 'I don't have my base kit options' which is a problem I DO somewhat have with Ashes personally.
The main thing being that in games with heavy customization, a serious player has this problem depending on what the devs think is important for an Archetype vs otherwise. The only reason I don't complain about it is that I'm too reasonable and other people complain much harder anyway.
So if a game has 'At level 25 you get your preferred tools, before that you're Generic and must go kill 10,000 mobs with your Generic Kit', I can see the problem.
Similarly for games where 'all your cool stuff is near max level' whether that be via gear or not.
I think GW2 does count, therefore. Games with very short leveling KINDA count, but my only real experience with that is BDO (I am familiar with games that let you basically SKIP leveling through resources granted by friends, or that allow you to use skill to leapfrog content massively, but aside from BDO's 'level to 56 in 4 hours' runs, nothing from the High Speed Leveling department, not my preference in games).
You do that also to play on a musical instrument in real life. Or to unlock your phone. It is everywhere. In an fps the player itself improves. In an mmorpg, developers move the improvement onto the character. When I level up I say "I am stronger" and has the same emotional as if I got stronger
KingDDD has an emotional reaction (burn out) to the trick that developers move this leveling onto the character. Some players can learn faster than others and once they achieve that, they move to another game. But they cannot do that in mmorpgs because developers give that reward, the illusion of being good, after you do all the quests and visit all POIs.
I do not like players who want to experience the end content a bit and then move away from AoC fast to other games. KingDDD will not play this game much and I am not worried that there are many like him.
From a basic Google Search around 5% of the people playing on a F2P account for GI complete the content. Sounds pretty beneficial to pay, no?
In DMC 5 Dante has 4 unique weapons with 4 unique styles with 4 unique guns. Nero has a completely different playstyle with his own unique mechanics; same for V. The combined inputs between them is significantly larger than the proposed button inputs per class in Ashes. As for learning other classes, how does leveling my class teach me anything about your class? I can watch a mage cast X but do I actually learn anything from that? There isn't any teaching in this.
Ashes planning to have a mentor system doesn't have anything to do with leveling being a positive experience. Most mentor systems I've seen across the MMO sphere are widely under utilized.
Player ability in that situation has nothing to do with the math behind winning due to level differences. Player knowledge is not garnered from leveling. How "old" my character is is not synonymous with game knowledge. Can you give an example of a game where players go through the leveling process and have the necessary knowledge to play the game? In a game like Ashes my progress will be represented by the evolution of the world. Which nodes progress and why. The world is the story, not my individual character.
Learning how to play with people takes time yes, but I guarantee a significant amount of the playerbase will not need 45 days worth of time to learn that. Again you argue for player skill to matter less. That's not the selling point you think it is.
No i started Dota at >1k. The average player gets around 3-4 in a two year time frame. I was able to achieve better results because I played better. There were people around my MMR because of match making. Ashes won't have server based match making.
The difficulty going up eventually isn't fun. I most definitely won't be able to do whatever activity I want, because the content will be mathematically impossible for me to do.
I played Overwatch for the first time a few weeks ago, my first rank was Gold. I completely skipped the first 50% of the "levels" within a few hours of playing the game. The analogy you use isn't equivalent.
GW2 has indeed a lot of grind too. But PvP is accessible fast enough and you can level up while doing PvP.
If we like what we do, is not a "grind". MMORPGs are not for impatient players who want the end content only.
And personally I feel like "we want leveling to be long, but not boring, so we're gonna make it fun from the low lvls" would fit my preferences. There's obviously a question of whether Intrepid will succeed in that, but that's a whole other discussion.
But OP's comments come off as if they want access to any/all content in the game right from the start w/o any time investment. And I'm definitely against that. That's the point though. It's not a trick, it's the damn genre of the game. You're playing a role of your character. You have an avatar that fights for you, so instead of using your irl skills you're growing the avatar. And this is why we've been suggesting other genres of games in this thread, cause it definitely seems like the OP doesn't like how rpgs work.
I've heard the pacing for level boosted characters in WoW during the WoD expansion was well done but its hard to find any quick info about that time. As of now the boosts starts you with everything instantly unlocked which is less than ideal for a new player. Within 5-10 hours I'd like to see players have: their core rotational abilities, the core utilities necessary to play the class, 1-3 world utility skills. The customized aspects of the augment system should be long term investments.
If this is what you are okay with, what's the concern?
What MMOs do we even have where this doesn't happen? Are there seriously still games where you don't have core abilities 10 hours in?
The grind is nearly never about core abilities or core utilities these days, aside from the occasional 'hey this lategame skill turns out to be class-defining, whoops'.
All you have to 'want' here is that Ashes doesn't put strong core abilities after level 20ish.
Ashes story isn't about you, its about the world and how players on a server build it. When you are grinding an augment you're interacting with the world a specific way that intentionally builds the server in a specific manner. Ideally, this will cause social interaction and structures that are unique on a per server basis. In this scenario, I chose to engage with the world and the associated rewards/problems that come with it. Forced grinding through leveling does not allow for this choice. I must engage with the leveling process first before I can interact how and where I want.
Where have I done this?
But this is an assumption you are making.
Basically, you don't know that. I don't even know why you think it. Based on my time in Alpha-1, I never felt like this at all. Do you just not like fighting mobs? Even that, you could get around outside of quests. I don't get it.
Assume that I'm COMPLETELY in agreement with you on the basic idea, but I don't agree that what you are saying is even likely to happen in Ashes just because the game contains levels. Maybe then you can explain it to me, if you care?
I think you could get to level 10 in Alpha-1 without fighting a single non-quest mob.
I fought mobs because I like doing that and I didn't like certain quests. Other people did quests and didn't fight mobs. Maybe you don't want to do quests OR fight early mobs?
Or maybe you're not as familiar with the style of EXP gain that certain games use? In Ashes Alpha, if you could manage to kill something 5 levels above you, you would get 4x the exp that you get for killing something at your own level.
I didn't bother doing it, but I feel like I could have hit level 10 in 2h, and that was with at least 30 minutes of it just 'wandering all the way to the Node I was helping test' every time.
What is it that you're imagining is locked behind leveling that ALSO won't have a 'lower level version' to engage with?
Also, you're only a small cog in a huge Node machine, so the world changing around you will not depend purely on your singular actions. This is not a single player game where everything depends purely on you, so while your character will have its own story, it'll be a small speck in the world's overall history. The only way to increase your influence is to become a GL of a huge guild, but that would take even more time than maxing out your lvl. To you it isn't. To most RPG players out there - it is. You don't need matchmaking to match people of roughly the same lvl. You just put content of that level in the same location, so people of that lvl will come to that location to do content there. That will depend on how far into tab Intrepid will go with their design of mob combat. And on how tight the gear balancing will be. And on how easy/difficult it'll be to get that gear. In other words, it will depend on stuff that we don't currently know, so we don't know how skill-dependent the game will be. Though I'm fairly sure that you'll need to reach certain lvls to fight against enemies of certain higher lvls, just cause that's how rpgs work. Again, there's a chance that you'll be able to beat lvl 30 mobs after just a few hours of lvling, if you're skilled enough and if the mobs' attacks depend more on action targeting that purely on tab. It would be a much bigger test of your skills than fighting mobs of your own lvl, but if you're such a pro gamer I'm sure you'll handle it.
Or do you, in fact, just want all the content given to you within the first few hours of the game?
The entire game is based around Vera. Its a new world where the players build up the social infrastructure via the node system. Converse that with WoW where you are the Champion, or Hero, or some other meaningless title that slays the big monster every expansion. Will there be important players who have their own story and are impactful? Absolutely, there will be players like the Mittani, but the story is about how the world evolves around them not the other way around.
They can change whatever they want. The experience required to level is a variable in the code. Alpha 1 was really just a tech demo with a wrapper around it to make it more interesting than a graybox and as a marketing vessel to illustrate a proof of concept. The xp system you mention were there to illustrate that the knob to do it exists in the code, but doesn't necessitate that it'll be there at launch.
There's nothing wrong with the game containing levels. They act as a tutorial for basic gameplay, like movement, vendoring, opening bags, skill training, etc. Once I've learned these things, I should be released into the world to choose my own adventure relative to what I want to do and how I want to exist within the world. Leveling only serves as a means to hinder my ability to do just that based on an arbitrary timesink that doesn't teach you how to play.
Unique play spaces, combat/noncombat play styles, social activities with people I want to interact all come secondary to leveling. Unless, I want to be wildly less efficient at them to the point where its an even larger time sink to not level first.
Ok, I don't think you would find too many people who disagree with that feedback.
There are multiple reasons in MMOs to have levels, but none of them have to do with players at your skill level, and mostly, I feel like the game's goal should be to get it out of your way as much as is reasonable, while allowing it to function for others who need it.
Simple hot take:
Levels are a psychological crutch that are used to keep certain tiers of player skill/investment stratified properly, and to give players who don't do well a good 'excuse' why, because they're often casual enough to never go check 'what other people are doing'.
What you want is for Leveling to not hinder you in Ashes. Sure. What I want is for leveling to be at worst a mild inconvenience for you, and a nice huge emotional cushion for those players who get frustrated easily at failing.
I really don't know what game you played where levels meaningfully hinder your ability to follow your chosen path on a macro-level, but I hope you found something better.
Grati pur data.
I apologize I misread the 5% stat. As someone who never played GI i didn't understand what I was looking at it terms of wishes stars etc.
Combat in an MMO isn't nearly as complex as DMC. It takes a fraction of the time to understand and takes exponentially more time to get to the point where you can meaningfully engage with it due to leveling. I've played a lot of MMOs, and none of them took 45 days to understand. CC chains, anti-heals, taunting, dps rotations, rotating survivability cooldowns, etc aren't rocket science.
What other MMO exists where my knowledge of the game increases with directly proportionly to the time investment from leveling? Counter examples have been presented, and you still have not given me the name of a game.
Yes I can effect the world if I CHOOSE to become a guild leader and I CHOOSE to invest my time. I have agency in this scenario, leveling takes that away.
Yes we will be matched by level, but we will not be matched by skill level. As a result, either the content is faceroll meaning it's boring or people have to be carried through it. Again this does not result in a positive experience for either party involved.
You should suggest the tagline "player skill doesn't matter" to the marketing team. I'm sure millions will flock to the game as a result.
Action combat resulting in the ability to defeat higher level mobs results in the combat itself feel significantly more spammy with higher player counts. The issues that arise from that are significantly worse than leveling itself. So why not just get rid of leveling?
Finding the perfect wood that has x% increase to move speed for a boat in shallow water, or gives y% increase to my cannons that hit the starboard side of a ship is great. It adds customization to how I want to build my ship, and more realistically how I customize my order to a player who engages in crafting. Obviously, if everyone only wants one specific material, its a bad system. But number tunning is relatively easy vs system creation and implementation. Again, the difference is that I have the agency to choose how I want my boat to be and what materials I gather for said boat. Leveling does not have that agency.