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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.
The quest for supreme quality for an MMORPG
fogovivo
Member
I believe that the model of "realistic world", "coherent progression" and "verisimilitude" are fundamental to a 21st century MMORPG.
I believe the base model for Ashes of Creation needs to go beyond what ArcheAge, Black Desert, New World has already done.
Ashes of Creation needs to be Read Dead Redemption 2 with a face of 3.
If it is less than that, it will be just another MMORPG, not a game to make history.
Do you agree?
https://youtu.be/YisYNBBd3Jw
I believe the base model for Ashes of Creation needs to go beyond what ArcheAge, Black Desert, New World has already done.
Ashes of Creation needs to be Read Dead Redemption 2 with a face of 3.
If it is less than that, it will be just another MMORPG, not a game to make history.
Do you agree?
https://youtu.be/YisYNBBd3Jw 0
Comments
Ashes isnt going to make history.
It is going to be another of those MMO that 18 months after launch has a player count (western players, at least) that is in the fractions of a million.
This puts it in fairly good company, to be fair. It just means the game wont be "making history".
Good graphis are not even a parameter to measure how good a MMO is
MMO's are great due the social aspect.
But of course you need to have a higher than decent graphic range.
I think it's worth your while to research more about Red Dead Online and its 21st Century version, GTA V Online.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1404210/Red_Dead_Online/
I think it's worth you while to research more about Red Dead Online and its 21st Century version, GTA V Online.
You posted 2 videos. One about a mundane "go and find the thing" quest and another about pvp. How is that any different from any mmo out there? If you wanna prove your point, at least make good arguments for it.
And as others said, good graphics do not a good game make. Though even there we're covered, because Ashes will have UE5 working for it.
In other words, it seems that this thread was kinda pointless cause we already have what you're asking for.
Ah yes, the only measure for whether an MMO will be remembered or not is if it has ray tracing
No!
"Fundamental" - I'm not sure why that would be the case. Ultimately a game sell when it satisfies the wants of the customers to the degree that enough of them buy it so that the developer makes a profit and has an incentive to create more of that or - in case of MMOs - keep the servers online.
That assumes that there is a universal necessity for whatever RDR2 did right in gameplay and for the visual quality of RDR3 that somehow applies for either all games, seeing how we jumped genres to Ashes already, or that there is reliable evidence that anything below this cannot achieve a specific goal, of which I don't know what that would be.
Having played none of those games I can't tell if anything less than a RDR level of gameplay makes a game ordinary, but I am not sure how a single player game is an appropriate standard for a MMORPG, nor whether the idea is to "make history" with Ashes - whatever that is supposed to mean.
What I can say for sure however is that Intrepid isn't trying to please every single gamer out there by developing and publishing Ashes of Creation. The consequences of that will probably be that there is a chance for the game to not break the records of WoW, but that is not necessary for the game to be successful in its own niche.
After going through the individual points and despite my ignorance to the Red Dead Redemption games, I don't think I can agree. I get that a very positive experience in those games can inform a players hopes and expectations for other games (there was a post about hopes based on Hogwarts Legacy recently), but I don't see a reason to assume that this would make it a universal standard for any now game to become legitimate or successful.
And touching on that last point, I made a very rough calculation of what would probably make Ashes of Creation a viable MMORPG from the perspective of Intrepid and Steven.
(all numbers are rough speculation based on google data and amounts pre year)
Lets take the LinkedIn number of employees that says "51-200" and assume the company will be able to function with ~180 employees. Average game dev salary on the west coast is 103k (noice).
So we have staff costs of 18.5 M$
Rough calculation to rent office space in San Diego brings me to 8.8 M$ so let's increase that to 12M$ just to be save so we got facility management included and some extra space for the servers.
Then Steven might want at least 2,5% of his initial investment to come out of this project, 10% would make him very happy, so lets put 5 M$ investor profit on the list.
And lastly we want Intrepid to make 20% more than its yearly expenses on top of it all, so an extra 7.1M.
Necessary number of players by subscription fee alone (at 15$ per month / 180$ a year): 236'666 active players. Compare that number to other popular games
So about 2.5 times the latest number of Alpha 2 key sales (around 100k source). Assuming that the game will become much more interesting by the time a release date is finally announced, I would think there is a pretty good chance that this games will be economically viable.
100 is a fraction lol.
1
However, when measuring something, you usually measure in the most appropriate unit of measurement - unless there is a need for more accuracy.
An example of this is that in America, road signs only measure to the mile, not to the inch. However, if you are measuring the cross section of a piece of lumber, you use inches.
A game that is measuring its population in fractions of a million is inherently saying that the fraction of a million they are measuring in is the significant unit of measurement.
For a game that would be profitable at 300k players, it seems that "thousands of players" would be in the significant unit of measurement.
Indeed. And a thousand players just happens to be 1/100 of a million players.
Regardless, I assume you get my point that PvP focused MMO's have significantly smaller western populations than PvE focused MMO's. In fact, all major PvP focused MMO's combined have a smaller western population than just one of the top three PvE focused MMO's.
And if you haven't played ArcheAge or Read Dead Redemption Online yet, your opinion about the future of Ashes of Creation lacks an experimental basis.
Here's the invitation, play ArcheAge and play Read Dead Redemption Online before giving any opinion about it.
Play free https://archeage.playkakaogames.com/download
Buy and play RDR2 full or just Online version https://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption2/
Ashes might take a lot of inspiration from ArcheAge, but is by no means aiming to be a clone of it.
Nor does is everyone interested in ArcheAge's story & world.
And giving these factors - there is no simple "this is better and this is worse" as, from all I have read people say now about ArcheAge, the games aim at different (not completely but notably) different players.
That is a nice attempt at dismissing possible criticism, but it doesn't stick very well, because ArcheAge or RDR aren't the only credible standards. Even if someone hasn't played these games, they still are able to have valid opinions and perspectives on Ashes. Saying otherwise would be as ridiculous as me stating "Anyone without a degree in economics has no proper basis to evaluate Ashes."
Devs should deliver everything we need for a community workshop, then the best addons/creations should be bought by the company.
If this ever happen someday, it will bring the best MMO in history.
Forget CrowdFunded MMOs, bring on the CrowdSourced MMOs, eh?
Yes, for projects that are ongoing already, all the extra stuff could be done by the public. If a company handles the patterns to be followed for code, assets, server jobs, which standards to follow, etc, there would be a lot of people doing stuff. Then if the community likes something and the company approves it, just incorporate in the game, everybody signs the contract and both parties have their rights secure.
In the present times, it is common to come across developers who are unable to deliver games that meet satisfactory standards. As a result, the community takes charge of developing and launching add-ons that not only fix the issues but also introduce functionalities that should have been included in the game from the beginning.
Have you ever played goblin wars in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?
Goblin Wars is even in Oblivion's manual, if you decompile the game the funcion calls are there, but the functions bodies are empty! What kind of trickery is that? Then modders had to fully develop the functions as game mods as they see fit and it is pretty damn good.
This has nothing to do with crowdsourcing, it's just news about Fable's dev
Collaborative Knowledge is : ) Crowdsourcing.
The video is just one example of what the public (the crowd) demands and what the market is doing.
I don't think Fable is the case, people were hired, people are in the office, this is just another project
The crowd is not programming, not modelling, not running debugs, etc... not offering tools, not anything, not participating in any significant way.
I will give one example of what is significant, game mods take hundreds to thousands of hours making addons and game mods... there's mods that should even be part of the game... but the companies prefer not to do so.
Companies just thank the community by stuffing more money into their pockets, modders and devs making community addons are just like voluntary slaves. Very frequently game mods and the addons are better than the game's core systems.
So, that's it, companies profit bilions altogether, but community devs work for free... they work "for the community" while making the game more enjoyable and bringing more people spending money in the game
Would be nice seeing a company officialy seeking community devs and paying them for mods and addons, or at least giving tiny shares in the product... profit shares... sales shares... or even if the game is sold for bilions of dollars in the future