Saying the quiet part outloud

So this is not going to sit right with some and that's ok. I am simply attempting to give my feed back to help improve or possibly improve upon what is being created.

1. Steven should not be the one "showcasing" what ever it is that is being shown. He is more suited for a support/ environment showcase which suits the way he presents to the audience. The tank Showcase did not at all hit the mark of showing off the tank at all as Steven at times was more into Looting, looking around, or running to try and stay alive. I am not a Tank main at all by any means and this showcase would make me not interested at all in trying to look at branching off into something new. It did the opposite if I'm honest.
2. For the love of god stop making these showcase so dam long! Yes give us content but make it to the point, clear and concise. 30-45 mins should be the goal i lost interest in the video as it was getting repetitive and loopy feeling with nothing being shown that was informative, other than learning how to die.
3. The quality of the live streams has been suffering since Oct 2022 at least, imo. It seems like you are going for spit out stuff to stay relevant and on peoples mind rather than quality of what your showing. Being late is also something that should not be happening. You guys should have plenty of time to film, edit, and produce the content. If your not able to do that than maybe your going to fast.
4. Stick with actual mechanics of the game. GM cheats are fine if your showing off the world, assets etc. But for a "build" showcase you need to focus on the "tank" and show it off as its intended to be or at least intended to be at that time frame.
5. Start to think before acting. I say this just from the standpoint of the last lets say 4-5 live streams. They all seem rushed, lack content, lack quality, and are for me personally very off putting as a consumer.
6. Also going into areas that are not meant for the size of the group is also a fail as you have shed light on a possible flaw with how your building difficulty and such.

Steven can play his part for sure in live streams and be the center of the content, but there need to be a pass the touch talk/discussion had as its effecting how your product is being portrayed to the public.

You want feedback on the Tank and Looting seen but really can anyone really give you quality, insightful feedback if the stream didn't provide that the the viewer?

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Atama

novercalis wrote: »

Most of us DO NOT WANT SOLO AREAS or SOLO GAMEPLAY. Steven has touted L2 Influence which was heavily influenced by CO-OPERATIVE content. Can you solo some stuff? sure. But be fast and efficient with it? HELL NO.

I think what most of us want is something akin to an old school game like EQ. I played a great part of that game solo, because to be honest it's exhausting to have to be in a party all the time to do anything. Nobody wants that.

But for anything that represented a real challenge, if you wanted actual progression through better gear and such, you needed to group up. Anything that gave you something good was going to be hard. We've really gotten away from that in the MMORPG industry and I always thought Ashes was trying to get us back to something like that.

So I have to say that I agree with you. What you're talking about is one of the core principles of this project. I also think that there is a reason why they toss out a disclaimer for every one of these videos. This isn't done. But they are also asking for our feedback, so I'm glad we're giving it.

novercalis

agree, I too advocate EQ in this forum a lot. I should be saying what you just said.

Can you solo in EQ, after 20 years, and people figuring out the game, min/max it became possible to do so. So, can you solo in AoC? then I will say yes.

But can you solo and get gear, specifically atleast DECENT gear in EQ? Nope, you barely could. Most good gears hands down required a group or for you to be over-level for it and by the time you were over-level, that gear wasn't worth it anymore.

DeviLzFury_Gaming

Atama wrote: »

novercalis wrote: »

Most of us DO NOT WANT SOLO AREAS or SOLO GAMEPLAY. Steven has touted L2 Influence which was heavily influenced by CO-OPERATIVE content. Can you solo some stuff? sure. But be fast and efficient with it? HELL NO.

I played a great part of that game solo, because to be honest it's exhausting to have to be in a party all the time to do anything. Nobody wants that.

I think your in the wrong category of game. Solo content is not what MMO's are suppose to be based on. The purpose is to group up and be in a massive world to do content.

Solo play is RPGs. Why play an mmo to play an RPG. yes sure solo stuff is fun but that's not the point of the MMO. Plenty of people want group content where you need to be grouped up to do stuff.

Mag7spy

DeviLzFury wrote: »

novercalis wrote: »

TyranthraxusEQ wrote: »

I would hope it's just an easier area, and not indicative of the entire difficulty level. There should be a wide variety of difficulty levels at all levels of xp, so that there is challenging content for people of any gear score. More difficulty leads to better rewards, Risk/reward. I would expect heavily geared players to be able to mop up and solo area's tuned for less geared characters, while there are much more intense challenges that would take a full group of 8 well geared and skilled players to handle.

It's also possible they just have not tuned the difficulty, or even have it tuned down for their streaming purposes. Making their deaths even more amusing.

Beofre they entered - they were fighting minos which took then 5-8 seconds to kill. Those were also level 15 regular mobs. Then they began fighting the elite level 15-17 mobs.

Most of us DO NOT WANT SOLO AREAS or SOLO GAMEPLAY. Steven has touted L2 Influence which was heavily influenced by CO-OPERATIVE content. Can you solo some stuff? sure. But be fast and efficient with it? HELL NO.

Is it possible they just have not tuned it? I HOPE SO and we are trying to raise the flag to make sure that is the case and that they will tune it higher. Nothing wrong with that. We as players - in this genre that we call MMO have already lost hope in the genre. Steven has reignited it with his words 6-7 years ago. We are skeptical gamers after all the years of crap we have had. So we need to hold Intrepid Studio accountable and call out stuff that are potential red flags. Better now than when it's too late or falls on deaf ears.

This right here is saying it best. We as a community need to hold their feet to the fire when there are some red flags, its part of this open Dev process in the end. They need the feedback to improve.

They also need to get further in development to improve...

! Closer to final balancing on weapons
2. Closer to final balancing on mobs
3. enemy mob types and abilities
4. balancing on class kits
5. balancing on special effects, damage types, cc, etc
6. missing class kits

You are talking about red flags and needing to burn dev's feet to the fire, yet you need to realize this is pre alpha 2. The balancing you are talking about isn't going to be fully there by any means.

Only thing i will say is they shouldn't talk about party sizes of content simply just show some group play, etc and say balancing is not worked on and to not expect it. As great as getting feedback is there is too much, consumers won't understand and will not care at all about certain issues or points of development they only care what they see.

As good and amazing as certain things being shown and as exciting as it is, it is just better to hold off because nothing is worse people jumping on a hate train over things that are not nearly as important, and it is taking away from more positive and constructive feedback.

daveywavey

He spends 5mins or so before every video saying "THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS", and then when the video loads, he says it again........

...and still, people just aren't getting it.

It's irrelevant right now that a 4-player team of suped-up GMs beat content that will eventually be aimed at 8-player teams. They haven't balanced the combat values yet. We haven't had the Alpha-2 testing of combat yet. They haven't even made all of the archetypes yet. The combat system itself, and the damage values included in it, haven't been fleshed out, completed, tested, refined, re-tested, re-refined, etc. Why let yourself get caught up on tiny details like that, when you can just enjoy watching it come together piece by piece?

novercalis

and in the video, he states the intention of things.

He stated they are ok making content that can be done with few numbers, who will have an EAISER time then they did cause of Pots and other supplies / gear.

WIP or not - THAT IS A RED FLAG when you state an intention.

Songcaller

Sounds like a duo will be the perfect group.

Mag7spy

novercalis wrote: »

and in the video, he states the intention of things.

He stated they are ok making content that can be done with few numbers, who will have an EAISER time then they did cause of Pots and other supplies / gear.

WIP or not - THAT IS A RED FLAG when you state an intention.

Not a red flag that is literarily every mmorpg.... using other items will be a benefit for you it is open world dungeons it doesn't mean you need exactly 8 people every time. Doesn't mean that some content will be easier than others with the different dungeons and challenges out there.

Stop trying to look for peak end game raiding they are lvl 15....nor was that advertised in what they were showing.

Uboon

I would have agreed with you but recently changed my perspective. The streams are not marketing or even demos, they are an informal play through of some features Steven is excited about. I now think of these streams like when a friend invites me to look at the game they are playing. They mess about, show off their favourite bits and are not trying to impress me in any way. But after, they will ask, whatdyafink?

When Alpha2 is finished and marketing begins, I would expect something of much higher production quality that is more succinct and sensible. Something to entice everyone but us pre alpha testers.

Ludullu

daveywavey wrote: »

It's irrelevant right now that a 4-player team of suped-up GMs beat content that will eventually be aimed at 8-player teams. They haven't balanced the combat values yet. We haven't had the Alpha-2 testing of combat yet. They haven't even made all of the archetypes yet. The combat system itself, and the damage values included in it, haven't been fleshed out, completed, tested, refined, re-tested, re-refined, etc. Why let yourself get caught up on tiny details like that, when you can just enjoy watching it come together piece by piece?

My main issue is them saying "this is an 8-man location, but we're 4". Why state that? Why incept our minds with thoughts of "ah, this game will be pisseasy for a normal group of people"?

Like, this would literally not be an issue did Steven not say that this was meant to be a location for more people. Alternatively this could've been a "proper difficulty" that would pretty much be the same on release, but then this would not be an 8-man location. If content is this easy then any full group will just go to places with better drops, even if they're supposed to be harder.

At this point Steven's kinda infamous for saying a ton of unneeded stuff. Be it on purpose or not. And I consider that particular statement to be quite unnecessary, exactly because of the context of "10 fucking prefaces of THIS IS AN ALPHA!! NOT DONE YET!!" Just don't address the difficulty at all and you'll have no problems with people assuming what that difficulty would be on release.

Atama

DeviLzFury wrote: »

Atama wrote: »

novercalis wrote: »

Most of us DO NOT WANT SOLO AREAS or SOLO GAMEPLAY. Steven has touted L2 Influence which was heavily influenced by CO-OPERATIVE content. Can you solo some stuff? sure. But be fast and efficient with it? HELL NO.

I played a great part of that game solo, because to be honest it's exhausting to have to be in a party all the time to do anything. Nobody wants that.

I think your in the wrong category of game. Solo content is not what MMO's are suppose to be based on. The purpose is to group up and be in a massive world to do content.

Solo play is RPGs. Why play an mmo to play an RPG. yes sure solo stuff is fun but that's not the point of the MMO. Plenty of people want group content where you need to be grouped up to do stuff.

Just know you're addressing someone who has played MMORPGs literally since the beginning. I played MUDs prior to the first MMORPGs becoming available. I know quite well how they work and who they're for. Nobody has more experience with the games than I do, because I have played them for their entire existence.

No MMORPG has ever required 100% group play. That has never existed. The games that require the most group play are ones that require you to be in a group for any kind of meaningful progression. That's what I am hoping for in Ashes of Creation.

Let me be honest... If you're saying you want a game that requires you to be in a group to do anything, I frankly don't believe you. Or you don't know what you're actually asking. I think you're making a badly-formed or disingenuous argument.

An MMORPG with absolutely zero solo content will fail. Period. It's the reason why you've never heard of one. You'd have to be pretty stupid to try. Making all of the challenging content require a group, that's a different story.

Let's consider WoW. Most people would agree it's a very solo-friendly game. Yet that game does have raids and dungeons you just can't do unless you are so overpowered that you're not going to get anything meaningful out of them. (I've soloed dungeons and raids in WoW just to get achievements and gear cosmetics.)

So just scale outward from there. Add difficult enemies in the open world that require a group to take down. Add quests that require a group. Put in many events that require a group. Rather than limiting people to always being in a group, instead put the majority of things a person would want to do in a situation where you need to be in a group.

That's where I see Ashes going. With sieges, caravans, node wars, monster token events, rather than eliminating all solo content they are just putting in a TON of group-required content.

My expectation is that you can try to play solo but you'll miss out on most of the game and your progression will be very slow. You also won't be able to get the best gear, titles, achievements, cosmetics, mounts, and so on.

And that's the way to do it. If there's a day where you just want to log in and be by yourself for a bit, maybe just go gather some materials and work on crafting, maybe do a few easy quests or grind a bit, you can. But that wouldn't be the majority of your play experience or you'd find the game to be very shallow and unsatisfying.

DeviLzFury_Gaming

Atama wrote: »

DeviLzFury wrote: »

Atama wrote: »

novercalis wrote: »

Most of us DO NOT WANT SOLO AREAS or SOLO GAMEPLAY. Steven has touted L2 Influence which was heavily influenced by CO-OPERATIVE content. Can you solo some stuff? sure. But be fast and efficient with it? HELL NO.

I played a great part of that game solo, because to be honest it's exhausting to have to be in a party all the time to do anything. Nobody wants that.

I think your in the wrong category of game. Solo content is not what MMO's are suppose to be based on. The purpose is to group up and be in a massive world to do content.

Solo play is RPGs. Why play an mmo to play an RPG. yes sure solo stuff is fun but that's not the point of the MMO. Plenty of people want group content where you need to be grouped up to do stuff.

Just know you're addressing someone who has played MMORPGs literally since the beginning. I played MUDs prior to the first MMORPGs becoming available. I know quite well how they work and who they're for. Nobody has more experience with the games than I do, because I have played them for their entire existence.

No MMORPG has ever required 100% group play. That has never existed. The games that require the most group play are ones that require you to be in a group for any kind of meaningful progression. That's what I am hoping for in Ashes of Creation.

Let me be honest... If you're saying you want a game that requires you to be in a group to do anything, I frankly don't believe you. Or you don't know what you're actually asking. I think you're making a badly-formed or disingenuous argument.

An MMORPG with absolutely zero solo content will fail. Period. It's the reason why you've never heard of one. You'd have to be pretty stupid to try. Making all of the challenging content require a group, that's a different story.

Let's consider WoW. Most people would agree it's a very solo-friendly game. Yet that game does have raids and dungeons you just can't do unless you are so overpowered that you're not going to get anything meaningful out of them. (I've soloed dungeons and raids in WoW just to get achievements and gear cosmetics.)

So just scale outward from there. Add difficult enemies in the open world that require a group to take down. Add quests that require a group. Put in many events that require a group. Rather than limiting people to always being in a group, instead put the majority of things a person would want to do in a situation where you need to be in a group.

That's where I see Ashes going. With sieges, caravans, node wars, monster token events, rather than eliminating all solo content they are just putting in a TON of group-required content.

My expectation is that you can try to play solo but you'll miss out on most of the game and your progression will be very slow. You also won't be able to get the best gear, titles, achievements, cosmetics, mounts, and so on.

And that's the way to do it. If there's a day where you just want to log in and be by yourself for a bit, maybe just go gather some materials and work on crafting, maybe do a few easy quests or grind a bit, you can. But that wouldn't be the majority of your play experience or you'd find the game to be very shallow and unsatisfying.

No i understand where your coming from and can agree with this more than before.

I was assuming you were advocating for the reverse of what you stated above, basically an easy solo game.

I can see we are very close on a few things in common.

Thanks for the follow up

novercalis

Mag7spy wrote: »

novercalis wrote: »

and in the video, he states the intention of things.

He stated they are ok making content that can be done with few numbers, who will have an EAISER time then they did cause of Pots and other supplies / gear.

WIP or not - THAT IS A RED FLAG when you state an intention.

Not a red flag that is literarily every mmorpg.... using other items will be a benefit for you it is open world dungeons it doesn't mean you need exactly 8 people every time. Doesn't mean that some content will be easier than others with the different dungeons and challenges out there.

Stop trying to look for peak end game raiding they are lvl 15....nor was that advertised in what they were showing.

sorry, I dont play shit mmo that provides my little pony ease content.

Instead of players trying to rush to end game for "peak end game raiding" - the entire game should be hard. Why do we gotta wait till end game to experience "peakness" when you make everything as equal to end game.

and YES he did say that and advertised - feel free to re-watch that YT video.

If you are designing a 8 man content, it needs to be a 8 man content. He shouldnt have said, it is doable with less and it will be easier for players to do the content because of other supplies and pots. that just showcase content is gonna be a joke and it shouldn't be.

novercalis

NiKr wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

It's irrelevant right now that a 4-player team of suped-up GMs beat content that will eventually be aimed at 8-player teams. They haven't balanced the combat values yet. We haven't had the Alpha-2 testing of combat yet. They haven't even made all of the archetypes yet. The combat system itself, and the damage values included in it, haven't been fleshed out, completed, tested, refined, re-tested, re-refined, etc. Why let yourself get caught up on tiny details like that, when you can just enjoy watching it come together piece by piece?

My main issue is them saying "this is an 8-man location, but we're 4". Why state that? Why incept our minds with thoughts of "ah, this game will be pisseasy for a normal group of people"?

Like, this would literally not be an issue did Steven not say that this was meant to be a location for more people. Alternatively this could've been a "proper difficulty" that would pretty much be the same on release, but then this would not be an 8-man location. If content is this easy then any full group will just go to places with better drops, even if they're supposed to be harder.

At this point Steven's kinda infamous for saying a ton of unneeded stuff. Be it on purpose or not. And I consider that particular statement to be quite unnecessary, exactly because of the context of "10 fucking prefaces of THIS IS AN ALPHA!! NOT DONE YET!!" Just don't address the difficulty at all and you'll have no problems with people assuming what that difficulty would be on release.

This - I havent really given out my opinions on the actual TANK related stuff that was discuss. I would have still made a comment calling out the difficult but not as hard as I have been going at it. More like, raising my hand and voicing a concern, a yellow flag maybe, knowing it may not be tune or intended.

but Steven actually opened his mouth and said things that ended up having me to raise a red flag and fight anyone on the forum over it.

novercalis

dbl post - delete.

WeGbored

@Atama it's so sad how many gamers these days have never even heard of MUDs.

Talk about passion and the opposite of devs driven by Financials.

MUDs taught me how to type 150 wpm,
how to code in C++, and that given a position of power, humans are infinitely fallible.

Sitting around talking with friends on OOC about how one day we'd be playing a graphical version of the game.

Those were really the days.

Mag7spy

novercalis wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

novercalis wrote: »

and in the video, he states the intention of things.

He stated they are ok making content that can be done with few numbers, who will have an EAISER time then they did cause of Pots and other supplies / gear.

WIP or not - THAT IS A RED FLAG when you state an intention.

Not a red flag that is literarily every mmorpg.... using other items will be a benefit for you it is open world dungeons it doesn't mean you need exactly 8 people every time. Doesn't mean that some content will be easier than others with the different dungeons and challenges out there.

Stop trying to look for peak end game raiding they are lvl 15....nor was that advertised in what they were showing.

sorry, I dont play shit mmo that provides my little pony ease content.

Instead of players trying to rush to end game for "peak end game raiding" - the entire game should be hard. Why do we gotta wait till end game to experience "peakness" when you make everything as equal to end game.

and YES he did say that and advertised - feel free to re-watch that YT video.

If you are designing a 8 man content, it needs to be a 8 man content. He shouldnt have said, it is doable with less and it will be easier for players to do the content because of other supplies and pots. that just showcase content is gonna be a joke and it shouldn't be.

This take is so bad, this is a ALPHA this is not the final game why are you looking at it as the final game with this kind of view point.

Based on your view point if you are level 1 you need to be struggling with the game out of the gate to meet your requirement of it being hard for you. The take is so bad its insane, you don't know the learning curve they are setting nor the actual difficulty of the game.

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE hand crafted elements of end game tier content at the start when you don't even have access to your whole kit. You need to realize it takes time to develop content, if it is that easy to make end game raid content there would be a lot more of it in all games.

You are looking through things as a consumer without realizing this is an alpha or how game development goes and the time it takes to make content.

Effectively what you are saying again is all the game should be end game content without even thinking the time it takes to make that..

Honestly if you can't handle the disclaimers of this is alpha balancing is not final, not all skills are in the game and working, not all mobs are doing what they could be doing, etc just chill and wait for alpha 2 to release before trying to rant about the game. I don't think your heart can handle an actual development process.

Post like this take away from giving more informative information, you could have literally made a post talking about mechanics and stuff you want to see... instead you are ranting an unfinished alpha is not doing what you want...

Tyranthraxus

1) We're very fortunate to have such transparent development, let alone direct access to the Creative Director.

2) I'd happily watch a 2-3 hour development update, every month. Am very glad for the insights that we receive.

3) We got both weapons-combat updates and the Tank preview, since October. These are not just "spit out" elements; They took some time to tune and form.

4) He's making a display of the gameplay. Were they supposed to do it 10 times and choose the best take, or something?

5) These are real, live people - not actors.

6) These are pre-launch, to-be Alpha areas; They may not even be areas in the live game. Even if they are? We'll have fine-tined these areas and their difficulty via extensive testing.

TheWolfofGar

Tyranthraxus wrote: »

2) I'd happily watch a 2-3 hour development update, every month. Am very glad for the insights that we receive.

I wouldn't, I'd rather watch a concise to the point 30-45 minute update of quality than a rambled 2-3 hr dev update.

Tyranthraxus wrote: »

4) He's making a display of the gameplay. Were they supposed to do it 10 times and choose the best take, or something?

They don't need to do it 10 times, a basic story board, rough run through to ensure they know what to expect in the fights then a run full run through so they aren't caught off guard. ideally not recorded day of so Margaret and the Comm team have time to watch the video an check for any comments that were said off the cuff that are mistaken or misleading. and to add in some relevant media in post.

Tyranthraxus wrote: »

5) These are real, live people - not actors.

you're point?

WHIT3ROS3

TheWolfofGar wrote: »

Tyranthraxus wrote: »

2) I'd happily watch a 2-3 hour development update, every month. Am very glad for the insights that we receive.

I wouldn't, I'd rather watch a concise to the point 30-45 minute update of quality than a rambled 2-3 hr dev update.

Given the scope of the project, they could easily spend as much time as they wanted on the dev updates. Of course, nobody wants to watch a rambled mess, whether it's 30 mins or 3 hours. There are so many potential topics. I'd really like to see a little more structure to the Character and Environment Art sections. Perhaps each month (for the next 9 months) do a little section on each of the Character races.

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