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'm not suggesting full PvE at all, just enough PvE - and good enough PvE - to encourage PvE players to come to Ashes from other games.
The bulk of MMO players are PvE leaning. Note that I am not saying PvE only, centric, preferred or anything like that. Just leaning.
In order to back this up, simply look at populations of PvE centric games (WoW, ESO, FFXIV, GW2), and compare them to PvP centric games (Archeage, BDO, Albion, what ever else).
2 years after launch, all of these PvE centric games have measured their population in millions of players, whereas all PvP centric games measure in fractions of a million. Sure, some people in this games spend some time PvP'ing, and some may even argue that PvP servers in these games are popular. However, PvP servers in a PvE centric game are still PvE leaning.
Now that we have it established that the bulk of MMO players are PvE leaning, if you look at Ashes, what is there to attract a crowd that leans more towards PvE?
The simple answer to this is; nothing at all.
There are games existing with some fantastic content that Ashes needs to pull people away from. People aren't going to go to a different game if the content isnt on par with the game they are playing - or at least they wont stay long if they do jump over.
The stupid thing is, in order to attract a PvE audience, you don't need to abandon or even lower your PvP. All you need to do is up your PvE.
To PvE leaning players, PvP is a thing that is sometimes enjoyed, but sometimes only tolerated when it is unwanted. If the PvE good enough, there is more room to tolerate more unwanted PvP.
Truthfully, when PvE players are complaining about PvP in a PvX game, the complaint isnt "this game is too PvP focused", but rather "your PvE isnt good enough for us to put up with this level of unwanted PvP".
That is why thousands of PvE leaning players left Archeage before Trion even managed to nerf thunderstruck trees (them leaving is arguably the catalyst of that change).
So, leave PvP where it is (or where it falls, in the case of Ashes), but make a game with PvE that rivals WoW, FFXIV and EQ2 and you have a game with a solid core of PvE leaning players that stick around for years due to the great PvE coupled with often times enjoyable, meaningful PvP (and sometimes less enjoyable PvP, but hey), and you have a PvP crowd that has a constant massive number of players to fight, which they can spend their time doing instead of running PvE.
In terms of players, there literally isnt a loser. Everyone gets a better game out of it.
The closest thing to a "loser" is the developer, whom now has to continually push out new PvE content every month or two. This is the only reason no one has done this as yet.
Then you have the pve which is a lot harder to put on a good curve. In A1 you either nuked the foe or the foe nuked you. Granted there was little in the way of balance and the case still stands.
It is difficult to quantify what makes good pve in my opinion. We agree on the need for solid raids/dungeons. I am expecting the pve to be much improved after the feedback we've given since Cleric, Ranger, Tank and Fighter feedback.
It will be interesting to see what the devs implement to improve the pve.
This is mostly because they simply dont talk about it. If they dont have a basic understanding of what they want from PvE this far in to development, I doubt that they will ever arrive at that understanding.
None of what has been shown gives us an understanding of what they want from PvE - just as nothing of what they have shown gives us an understanding of what they want from PvP. Our understanding of what they want out of PvP comes from what they have said when talking about PvP.
Based on that, the only thing I can assume they want out of PvE is massive amounts of crickets.
The same issues revolve around the pve. I hope for a cross between Wild Star and WoW but I feel we will not get the pleasure we seek. I might love to raid in pvp but I also love to raid in pve.
The problem we have is that we haven't seen a raid since ue4 and the old class builds from A1. I'm not sure what has changed because even back then the format wasn't the best.
That is probably on of the most pessimistic takes you can have on it. One that brings me back to the question I often ask when people seem so sceptic about Intrepid's most basic ability to do anything: Why are you following this project?
There is plenty of information around what they want this game to be and in what ways they intend to build that. In fact, the Tower of Carphin Livestream is about PvE and will shed a light on some of the things they have designed so far to put these things into practice. The Tank reveal also showed us a few things regarding PvE content - a point of interest to be precise. We know that PvE is necessary to find resources, the PvE (quests, dungeons, resource gathering, world bosses, exploration etc) will contribute to Node progression and therefore lead to changes in the world for us to explore, use, fight over, fend against and so on.
Stating there is no goal behind the PvE and no understanding is a bit overly dramatic.
Unless of course you don't trust any of the words and showcases so far, which would lead us back to the question what keeps you here.
The systems are still under creation and its best if we voice our opinions now than beta or launch. I don't want a New World overhaul at the last minute.
Instead of having a corruption system, we should have a vendetta system, you would be able to run your kill rights on others by your own, by your party or open to the bounty hunters. Kill rights would let you kill others even when they are green and even within the city.
Killing vendetta targets would drop the target's gear, if you had too many kill rights on you then people would be able to kill you over and over and end up stripping you naked.
See?
Better than corruption and keeps everybody busy 24/7, this is better than letting the PK run to the woods and pick some flowers and cleanse his corruption.
Their work is absolutely top notch. Given the restrictions they have worked under in the past, I trust any game those people are involved in to be good.
Back then, Steven also commented about how they would love it if Ashes were able to take on WoW for top end raid content.
Now, to be fair, I am not sceptical about Intrepids ability to do anything. I am sceptical about their ability (and willingness) to implement top quality PvE content along side the PvP systems they have been talking about for years.
The two streams you are talking about did t tell us anything at all about PvE content. It partially showed us what some PvE assets may look like, but that doesnt tell us a damn thing about how they intend it to play.
Look at the information we have on just the corruption system in Ashes. Point me to any one PvE system in Ashes that we have that much information on.
I'll wait.
I think Noaani is talking more about the details and deeper designs rather than surface lvl "you'll need pve cause it has loot". How will bosses work? What will be the mechanics? How will you address pvxness of it all through those mechanics? What are your designs in relation to the plan of "content that can only be cleared by <10% of the playerbase"? What about solo/group content? What's gonna be the difficulty? That tank showcase was pisseasy even though you were supposedly in an 8-man location as a 4-man group.
Stuff like that, though even this is kinda surface-lvl, considering Noaani's standards.
In other words, we haven't heard any in-depth talks about the planned design. I'd even say that the only really deep knowledge we have is about the corruption system, because we've gotten a ton of small details about it somewhat recently. And the only final detail we gotta figure out there is the minute balancing of values, but that's done through testing so it makes sense that we don't know it now.
But everything else could be discussed as a design plan, even w/o showing a single thing. Intrepid should already have their designs written down and fully set. Hell, iirc they said they had that years ago. And the only two reasons I could see for why we haven't heard shit are: they didn't have anything to begin with or they had to throw all of that out the window due to whatever reasons.
If it's the latter - that's bad. And the fact that we haven't heard about the "throwing away of plans" in a supposed open development is also bad. And if it's the former - it's fucking atrocious and bordering on, not necessarily scam behavior, but the late classic style of "we gonna promise you the world and then try to somehow build it w/o a single idea how to do that". There's a word for that, but I forget it. Negligence maybe? I dunno.
And for my answer of "why are you even here if you don't believe" - I'm here for the owpvp aspect. I believe that I still have the chance to help them balance the corruption values in a way that doesn't kill off that owpvp. I have that belief because Steven comes from L2 and willingly decided to take its flagging system with him. Outside of that, I don't really care for much, cause my standards are almost on the floor.
Although I liked at least 80% of the proposed systems in AoC, there are a few that raised significant concerns for me, I am very vocal on those which mostly relate to corruption, bounty hunting and wars.
In addition, although the open development process is commendable and the community actively engages in discussions, we are uncertain about the final direction of development. This is due to the absence of a board comprising employees and community members, or a spokesperson for each system, everything is Stephen based and he has tons of work for sure, he is probably overwhelmed.
AoC has been developed since December 2015, fundamental changes in core concepts will not happen.
From a PvP players perspective, this probably sounds good.
The problem is, the long term retention of players in almost all MMORPG's is proportional to the quality of its PvE.
The only actual outlier I can find to this is EVE.
Now we are getting closer to it. You want a full 100% walkthrough. If that is the standard for what you consider the only proper explanation, sit tight and wait for Alpha 2. Or don't, suit yourself. But the constant "ThIs GaMe WiLl NeVeR aMoUnT tO aNyThInG" is getting old.
And I am not saying this because I am against criticism or anything - I am not. I don't see the purpose of digging up old points again and again which Intrepid has already addressed. There will be sneak peeks into the systems they are building and have built, they will try to not show more than they feel they have to so that as much as possible is up for players to discover.
And isn't there a world boss livestream announced for this year which aims at showing what these things will look like? Why not wait for that, prepare your lists of questions for that and THEN start looking into that?
"I'll wait" - EXACTLY. Wait.
Two things here: It would be helpful for sure, but (1) the matter of "should" I don't know how knowledgeable your are about game design so I can't even know whether this is just a customer opinion or of someone who knows anything about game design. (2) Who said they don't have the primary design plan figured out? I'm not an expert in game design but I was involved in designing power plants. The first plan, the primary guideline (the alpha stage) you make is also not something that contains every detail. It is a red line around which you lay out more detailed plans build the different systems. So I don't know what plan you heard about being finished but if my experience in power plant design are worth a damn in this field, you might have to dial down what that actually meant.
Or, like they stated, that they don't really see too much merit in talking about systems as they are best explained by experiencing them.
I honestly at this point get the impression that you guys burned yourself out over this. Not saying that it is a bad thing you are passionate about this, but a lot of your concerns probably won't be addressed until Steven and the team either see them developed to the point where they decide to give us a short look into these systems or until we are able to play this (again) in Alpha 2. Maybe kick back and relax a bit until then.
And how is "they didn't showed us the PvE system in depth" helping with better open world PvP design? I understand that PvE is connected to PvP in this game but at this stage, it seems to me much more productive to either open a threat about that based on XYZ expectations overall, you would hope to see ABC to 123 degree in the showcases or to simply wait for the information to come out whenever Intrepid decides to release it (in showcases or by making Alpha 2 accessible to us). The way especially Noaani did it here but how a lot of people do it in the forum it unnecessarily degrades to yelling at clouds. And it wastes energy on these occasions that would probably have more and better impact on others.
A boss showcase doesn't tell us at all what Intrepid want from PvE in Ashes.
My main problem is with the absence of deep design meat in the showcases. Yes, I'm not a designer, but I'd assume that your experience with power plants design tells you that one does not build up a whole damn building w/o knowing what's gonna be inside.
We're the customers who'll be directly influenced by that plant and its success, in turn, is kinda dependent on us. So if we visit the construction site and ask "how are things going? You've got a pretty building there, hope everything's great on the inside too". And the building company says "oh, yeah, we'll definitely have great insides. It's gonna be great. We can't tell you how many people the plant can serve, cause we don't wanna tell you how many turbines (or whatever is used in the plant) will be installed".
Would that be a good practice for a power plant building process? Its customers not knowing the important information several years into the process and a fair bit of money that came in from the customers to support the company.
Cause obviously I dunno the intricacies of game dev, but it somehow feels bad when we don't get information about the important parts of the game this deep into the development. I get that NW's "alpha" was probably just for show, but the fact that they changed one of the biggest parts of the game not too long from the release (and the resulting quality of the game) shows quite well that not having a strict design direction is bad for the game. Of course you can always adjust a few things here and there, or balance a few details, but making a 180 in design is probably bad.
And so far we've seen a "pretty building", but barely anything in terms of what's gonna be inside that building.
Building a community beforehand helps a lot in launching the game with a healthy player base and maybe even a large player base.
Plus, the feedbacks are important.
There are two major issues with this thought right here.
First, a walkthrough of an encounter wont tell us what Intrepid want from PvE any more than a walkthrough of a 1v1 PvP encounter tells us what Intrepid want from PvP.
In Ashes, we know intrepid want PvP to be meaningful. We know they want players to fight over resources. We know they want some players to be hunted and others to hunt them. We know they want to encourage objective based PvP.
With PvE, we know they want it to exist.
The second thing wrong is the suggestion of waiting for alpha to see what PvE will be like. A game doesnt get fully in to its PvE stride until about 3 or 4 years after the game launches, so we will still have literally no idea what Intrepid intend for PvE during alpha.
most pvp players don't mind doing pve if its tied to pvp. only a small minority complain that they need to farm gear. also pvp driven players can be good at making money, and with the economy and all that. that's not mutually exclusive to pve players.
regarding the games you mentioned, they don't have more players because the PVP isn't as good or they are too p2w (and pvpers don't like p2w, some do but most don't), or both.
as an example, back then, lineage 1 was the most popular mmorpg in Korea, and was even more popular than wow in that region. and at some point l2 had more players than early wow (not even including the huge private server community) and l2 was so hardcore back then that you could lose your weapon, armor and jewels by dying to mobs, and you didn't even have to be red. people even used to farm gear by stunning players and letting the mobs kill them lmao (then we got that again on classic smh). i think wow became more popular over time because the PVP was a bit more complex and the game was less hardcore (plus the dungeons were fun ngl). pvp games started to get too p2w/bot/rmt.
easier games tend to attract more players too. also "solo" mmorpg games tend to attract lots of players too since most of us gamers are antisocial lol
Yeah, for sure. I wasn't suggesting otherwise.
There is one sentence in the post you quoted that probably lead to this post, this one I wasn't going to put this last statement in, and in fact only added it in with an edit. The reason I wasn't going to add it in is because I knew it would lead to someone assuming I meant this - and I added it back in with the understanding that if someone did I would need to clarify.
The reason for the above statement is to point out that in a game like Ashes, if there is top end PvE akin to WoW (even instanced PvE, which Ashes should have), players wanting to be more PvP focused don't actually need to participate in it at all. People will only need to participate in the content they want to participate in, because there should be more than enough to be able to do that.
As an example, if there is an instanced raid that drops raw materials that can be turned in to top tier equipment, some PvP players absolutely wouldn't want to run that. However, all Intrepid need to do is make the transport of those raw materials back to a node a PvP event (make it so it needs to be transported via caravan, as just one example) and you have added back in that PvP content, while giving PvE players the PvE they want.
It's that "everyone wins" thing, where the only people that don't win are those that *ONLY* want to PvP others while they are taking on top end raid encounters - and such people are probably not desirable to have in the community anyway.
At somewhat random times, nodes of a certain level will spawn an NPC caravan that travels to another node. Players can sign up to attack or defend, but there will be a limited number of NPC attackers and defenders to keep things from being too easy with low turnout. Possibly NPCs scaling down as more players join. Sort of a moving public PvP event. The winning side splits the rewards evenly, to discourage all players from picking the same side. Level of the rewards and NPCs scaled to the node
I'd be very surprised if not. We already saw some of these being sorta-tested in Alpha-1.