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
Wildstar is an easy example. There I had to level in order to play with my friends in order to participate in raids, housing, PVP. The thing is, I only made it to level 20 and never got to the part of the game I wanted to play.
The literal billions of dollars spent on leveling in MMO games over the past 15ish years prove that that new-player cushion doesn't happen as a result of leveling. This reality combined with the gameplay information apparatus aka youtube guides makes leveling a pointless timesink.
Well, many argue gaming falls into the category of pointless time sink, I disagree but that is because I have a fundamentally different view on what is pointless. For you it is pointless, for many of us arguing its nice, that's really all there is to it.
Good talk, everyone
You said you had an allergy, so I addressed that.
If you now want to ignore your own analogy of allergies to treenuts, sure, we can do that.
Yes, you will be served the course. And the following course will jot be served until all are ready for it.
If you chose to not partake in any one specific course, that is on you.
However, the remaining courses will not be altered just because of your decision to not fully participate in the 10 course meal.
Keep in mind though, if we were to try and accurately transfer what you are complaining about to a 10 course meal, you would be refusing to eat 9 out of the 10 courses, not just one.
If you were to say you didnt want to participate in one aspect of the game (crafting, as an example), this would be like skipping one course.
In both cases, that's fine - there should be enough left to still satisfy a reasonable person.
However, tiu saying you want to skip everything other than being a pirate is like you saying you want to only have course number 7, and expect it to be done in a way where it satisfies you on its own.
An allergy acts as an inciting incident. You can replace the word allergy with dislike the taste, hate the smell, walnuts personally harmed me as a child; it doesn't matter. In the restaurant example for leveling, i cannot go to any other course until i eat one specific one first. Like leveling itself I am locked out of participating in what I want because I don't want to eat one course.
There were plenty of people who played Archage specifically for the boat-based content. If that's the starting point for content in Ashes, there will be plenty of engaging activities to do around that.
You can not replace it with the word dislike. If you dont want the 10 course menu at the restaurant, dont order it.
Dont order it and then complain that it isnt what you want.
That is the point.
In this example you can replace it with whatever you want. It's a story element not reality.
The MMO graveyard is littered with the corpses of those who said the same thing.
The seven or so people in this third aren't representative of anything.
Representative of a ratio of this community. Either way, all of these forums conversation are taken into account. Including this one. Not that it would've changed anything either way. The games core design includes leveling a character.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/54436/remove-leveling-up-or-make-it-harder-and-fun
Theres maybe 5k (and that's pushing it) people who visit these forums once a week. That's not representative of the million+ people who will try this game on launch. If I cared about the devs reading my posts I engage with their twitter account. A significant portion of the daily content posts get direct interaction with the community manager.
I highly doubt they'll entirely remove leveling, but they can definitely make it less painful for those of us who're looking forward to Ashes for the longterm gameplay systems. [/quote]
If there is no leveling up, then the game has to implement something to prevent players to roll fast alts.
What do you suggest?
Why must players be prevented from rolling alts? Alts provide flexibility for solo, small group, large group, and raids.
Because I do not want players to be solo players in the mmo world. I want them to depend on each-other.
AoC has as design pillar this idea where players create micro communities and cannot obtain everything alone.
Rolling an alt doesn't mean you don't need other players. People are already in their own communities carried over from other games. That cat is already out of the bag.
Rolling an alt fast with the current design would allow the player to master more professions. How do you solve this problem?
It is possible to master up to two professions within this mastered artisan class per character (subject to testing).[6][5][7][3]
I'm surprised you didnt throw Steven quote at him
"THIS GAME ISNT FOR YOU"
What he's advocating isnt gonna happen or change. It's a horse with no legs and a troll being fed.
I assume you also want people to be master crafters almost immediately right? If you're being consistent. Because that's also just a levelling system, no different than the adventurer levels in principle. Input time and effort and get a higher level. It would completely kill the economy of the game if they do that of course.
Personally I want unlimited character progression (not player progression) since this is an MMORPG based on the pen and paper RPGs like Pathfinder, and that is a major part of the character's story in those.
Never-ending levels, preferably in horizontal levelling systems, where I can level up my class, my crafting my social origanizations, my freehold, my religion, maybe some day some master level type stuff. I want all the levelling, non-stop, forever. I never want to feel like I can't progress my character anymore in some way, be it combat, social stuff, or purely lore-based, because that is a core element of what the MMORPG genre is all about.
I doubt you can simultaneously craft two things at once. Guilds, both small and large will already funnel mats to whoever they deem their crafting accounts to be. Alts actually being able to craft without having to level only helps those who only want to engage in the crafting/economic game loop.
If the game is enjoyable for the player who asks for skill to matter less than time investment then your game is gonna have a few problems with player retention.
Its a story element in the restaurant example. You seemed unable to get around the word allergy. What is the purpose of leveling? It's not teaching anyone how to play the game. It's not a requirement to facilitate character customization. The sense of power progression can come from other sources. The warm fuzzy feeling you get can be achieved in other ways.
The funny part is everyone one of those successful MMOs has made leveling faster or gotten rid of parts of it entirely. WoWs newest expansion is praised for having a quick leveling experience. This lets people play the game how they want to.
Can you reformulate please? I don't understand your position here.
For me the crafting and economic loop is very important.
You may want to have a tank, dd and healer fast without leveling.
I say you should not be able to be master gathering, processing and crafting fast. I want the artisan leveling to be very long. Is this acceptable for you? If yes, then how do you ensure that players who roll and get 3 max characters fast will not also become proficient as artisans in different classes and professions?
Leveling should never be considered a time sink as long as it's fun and interesting, and if you're a part-time player, maybe you should consider being a vassal and supplement/help the players who are investing a lot of time in the game(not sure if that's how to mechanic is supposed to work). TBH, I'm sick of games where every player is the ultimate hero of the world, however how many million of them there are. I want a more realistic world where there are all sorts of characters at different levels, and the time invested in a game could be a great way to set those levels, I don't think a weekend only player should be rewarded the same as someone who invests a lot of time in the game. Maybe for once, I'd like to play a nobody and just exist in the virtual world exploring and making friends, struggling against a difficult hostile world, until eventually my fame starts to precede me and my character becomes a hero, not because it's what everybody does, but because I earned it.
As well, you might want a fast progression so that you don't have to spend so much time, but if that applies to everyone, some people are just going to devour it whole and before too long, the whole game is ruined because there's just no where else to go, too fast? Think about every persons experience. I could imagine some guy that can only log on during the weekend, he's a combat/crafter type that's only managed to make i halfway to max level while some people are already at max, he's made some friends and is part of a small guild making potions and swords which he sells, his friends help him level and escorting his caravans. Eventually, he reaches max level... that's kinda cool on it's own, and much more memorable than every single person racing to max. If the game is good, slow down, enjoy it.
I forgot the OP.
I hope AoC will not help players stay solo. I mean if they want to struggle, then it should be possible for them to level up. But to encourage playing solo by game design no. That would be against the main concept of AoC.
Mastering crafting should take dedication, and have a progression path associated with it that makes items with higher statistics , consumes less resources, has unique stats, etc. You should be able to engage with the crafting minigame itself (most likely a combo of Vanguard's minigame system and Archeage's labor points) for 15 min segments or hours at a time depending on your time constraints. Likewise, gathering should have the same thing. In both of these systems you are actively playing the game how you want to play it and engaging with the larger world how you want to.
Guilds will have max level crafters within weeks of hitting the level cap unless its time-gated. If not the alt scenario you propose doesn't matter because the unique specialty you seek will be nullified by the abilities of guilds to brute force through it.