Number of Questions Asked in the Livestream Forum Post by Month

SkylarckTheBotanist

Hi All,

As of late I have been feeling as if there has been less and less activity on the forums, specifically around the Monthly Livestream. But feelings lie and should not be taken as fact, as such I did a quick and surficial analysis of each month's livestream forum post and counted the number of questions asked*. Note that there are blanks which are associated with months where questions were not solicited (for reasons such as Reddit AMA)

*I did not count replies as questions (such as community members answering another community members question)
*I did not count questions asked after the question period was closed.



Since last July the number of community questions has been decreasing. This could be for a variety of reasons such as:

• the forums have became less welcoming for people to ask question,
• interests in Ashes has slowed down,
• the quality of the livestreams have diminished,

I wanted to know if anyone else has noticed this tread and have any hypothesis as to why.

As well as potential ideas for Intrepid to potentially reverse this trend.



-Skylarck The Botanist

Arya_Yeshe

I noticed, just like I noticed there's more information in the wiki, youtube and reddit too.

Now I will tell the inputs I received from other people from Guild Wars 2 and EVE, when commented about AoC, their replies where mostly like this:

• yeah, I saw this game, it didn't catch my attention
• it will never be realeased
• this won't be good

Pay good attention now on this paragraph:

I said Guild Wars 2, that is mostly a PvE RPG MMO and EVE that is mostly a PvP sandbox... both games are very opposite to each other, I play both games, nearly all people who I talked to about AoC they already visited the project in the past and all of them didn't care

Even when I brought stuff to them, telling the systems, how dynamic the world is, most of them did not seemed interested at all, they don't see the appeal... only a couple heavy gankers said instantly the game will bad. Very few people got curious about it

So that's what I got to report you, I was the last to hear about AoC, nearly all of them already knew it and were uninterested and sometimes they gave me their reasons why they didn't care about the game

Ludullu

People have probably figured out that alpha2 is ways off (as was confirmed in the last stream) and they have no reason to stick around on a forum of a non-existent game. And super oldschool players might be running out of unanswered questions or have learned that their super specific/hardball question just won't get answered until waaaay later.

All of those things would lead to a decrease in the amount of questions. And obviously interest in the game has gone down since the huge 2020 wave so there'd be just fewer people visiting the forums to even know when to ask their questions.

Arya_Yeshe

@SkylarckTheBotanist maybe there's other sources of insight, like the game's wiki visitor count along the years, how Narc's channel has 90% of it's views from subscribers only (that's very highly unusual), and so on

Xnate13X

Because we're trying to forget about the game as much as possible so time can feel like it's going by quicker.. Yet we find ourselves visiting the forums every now and then in hopes of really good news.. Yet are disappointed every time since there is none, haha. Once Diablo 4 comes out, that'll keep me distracted for hopefully until A2 since it has some mmo elements. (:

Azherae

Generally I expect that most people lost interest. But for the non-anecdotal data, everyone I know did.

There were also some changes that I would have expected to drastically reduce interest in the game from certain demographics. That's totally speculation, though.

I'll say that regardless of the specific reason, I'm not surprised that this has been diminishing. Some other forms of engagement in the regular forum have diminished too, certain types of questions aren't asked much anymore.

One thing I can add is that I do watch a Throne and Liberty Content Creator who occasionally does comparisons or mentions Ashes, and the general trend in those comments is also one that I'd think indicates less interest in Ashes relative to TL, and not just because TL is likely to be soon, it's moreso the same sort of thing that causes my interest to tilt that way sometimes.

There's probably some confirmation bias there though, so just another anecdote for the pile.

Nerror

NiKr wrote: »

And super oldschool players might be running out of unanswered questions or have learned that their super specific/hardball question just won't get answered until waaaay later.

Yeah I have stopped asking questions. I tried to ask for specific clarifications on a topic a few times, but so far all I've gotten are short replies with a link to the wiki, that don't answer my questions.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

One thing I can add is that I do watch a Throne and Liberty Content Creator who occasionally does comparisons or mentions Ashes, and the general trend in those comments is also one that I'd think indicates less interest in Ashes relative to TL, and not just because TL is likely to be soon, it's moreso the same sort of thing that causes my interest to tilt that way sometimes.

My distrust of NCsoft still makes me think that any potential hype for TL comes purely from the fact that we barely know anything about the game. Maybe I just haven't gone deep enough into my research on that game (even though I followed "Lineage 3/Eternal" for pretty much the last decade), but I feel like I know more about Ashes than I do about TL. And not knowing things lets us come up with all the cool ways that the little info we do have could be used or designed in.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

One thing I can add is that I do watch a Throne and Liberty Content Creator who occasionally does comparisons or mentions Ashes, and the general trend in those comments is also one that I'd think indicates less interest in Ashes relative to TL, and not just because TL is likely to be soon, it's moreso the same sort of thing that causes my interest to tilt that way sometimes.

My distrust of NCsoft still makes me think that any potential hype for TL comes purely from the fact that we barely know anything about the game. Maybe I just haven't gone deep enough into my research on that game (even though I followed "Lineage 3/Eternal" for pretty much the last decade), but I feel like I know more about Ashes than I do about TL. And not knowing things lets us come up with all the cool ways that the little info we do have could be used or designed in.

This is part of the problem from my perspective.

A casual partaker of content knows more about TL than about Ashes if you remove everything that is 'speculation by an Ashes-heavy content creator'.

TL Content is normally analysis of things we have been explicitly told and shown, with some speculation, most of which is quickly confirmed whenever NCSoft releases new data, so the loop for TL is 'analysis' -> 'speculation (usually positive)' -> 'confirmation'.

The loop for Ashes is 'speculation' -> 'disruption' -> 'analysis of the reason for the disruption (which fails)' -> 'new speculation (half and half positive/negative'.

I think Intrepid knows this and that's why Steven is doing another Q&A. It's a good way to disseminate lots of information about stuff that is 'closer to confirmed but less people are asking about' because us 'regulars' have 'learned not to ask' except in the 'analysis of disruption' phase.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

This is part of the problem from my perspective.

A casual partaker of content knows more about TL than about Ashes if you remove everything that is 'speculation by an Ashes-heavy content creator'.

I think Intrepid knows this and that's why Steven is doing another Q&A. It's a good way to disseminate lots of information about stuff that is 'closer to confirmed but less people are asking about' because us 'regulars' have 'learned not to ask' except in the 'analysis of disruption' phase.

Yeah, I guess pretty much all info about Ashes is just promises of what's potentially to come and any extrapolations from those promises, while TL's info is more concrete even if there's seemingly way less of it.

Though I found it kinda funny that TL sent out an email to the amazon workers about the internal "alpha testing", while the game is supposed to come out in 2023 (iirc even the first half). And we have Ashes with more than a year before alpha2 and years more before release. As much as I consider Steven's constant reiterations of "this is a developmental alpha which is why the game is far from done" almost a marketing defense tool against any potential haters, the use of "alpha" by other dev companies definitely reinforces the belief that there's no real differentiation when it comes to testing phase naming schemes these days.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

This is part of the problem from my perspective.

A casual partaker of content knows more about TL than about Ashes if you remove everything that is 'speculation by an Ashes-heavy content creator'.

I think Intrepid knows this and that's why Steven is doing another Q&A. It's a good way to disseminate lots of information about stuff that is 'closer to confirmed but less people are asking about' because us 'regulars' have 'learned not to ask' except in the 'analysis of disruption' phase.

Yeah, I guess pretty much all info about Ashes is just promises of what's potentially to come and any extrapolations from those promises, while TL's info is more concrete even if there's seemingly way less of it.

Though I found it kinda funny that TL sent out an email to the amazon workers about the internal "alpha testing", while the game is supposed to come out in 2023 (iirc even the first half). And we have Ashes with more than a year before alpha2 and years more before release. As much as I consider Steven's constant reiterations of "this is a developmental alpha which is why the game is far from done" almost a marketing defense tool against any potential haters, the use of "alpha" by other dev companies definitely reinforces the belief that there's no real differentiation when it comes to testing phase naming schemes these days.

That's different. Internal Alpha of this type is Localization related, and possibly a methodology for testing balance based on a different monetization.

Obviously I am not 'speaking from Amazon's perspective' here, but I can say from some experience that one does still run a 'Language Test Alpha', because the build can sometimes be significantly different due to certain aspects of dialogue trees, chat, and moderation code.

Certain database optimizations (very few, perhaps none by now, it's 2023) may also be involved.

I feel like Ashes is doing a bit 'worse' because we started from a lot of mostly concrete stuff back in 2021, even if it was subject to change, there was considerable clarity on systems. Since then there have been 6 'major' disruptions and 11 'minor', and now we have much less clarity.

We could ask for more, but I, for one, wouldn't expect to get it unless the staff are able to talk on forums more.

Hopefully skotty's recent appearance will be the beginning of a trend. Those posts were closer to 'confirmation', or at least 'responses quick and clear enough that analysis was not a long phase, and there was minimal disruption anyway'.

The way this was handled previously puts my Marketer in a bad mood, whereas skotty making just two posts basically made her go 'finally, that's better'.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

We could ask for more, but I, for one, wouldn't expect to get it unless the staff are able to talk on forums more.

Hopefully skotty's recent appearance will be the beginning of a trend. Those posts were closer to 'confirmation', or at least 'responses quick and clear enough that analysis was not a long phase, and there was minimal disruption anyway'.

The way this was handled previously puts my Marketer in a bad mood, whereas skotty making just two posts basically made her go 'finally, that's better'.

Yeah, I also hope this is a start of a trend cause it was highly appreciated. Maybe this was an indicator that they're far along the development of this particular system that they thought it'd be fine to reveal more details? That would be a good sign too, even if alpha2 is more than a year's time away.

Dygz

Not a ton of info to be shared.
Alpha 2 is not around the corner.
Several other games to play while we wait for Alpha 2.

This is also the longest gap where there has been no Ashes content to play.

daveywavey

The quality of the questions has increased, however. As someone who often does the replies you mentioned (not this month, as it happens :P), I've found that I need to reply less and less, simply because the same age-old questions aren't being asked time after time any more.

I'd much rather have a shorter list of better questions that haven't already been answered, than the old WILL DERE BE SORDZ, WILL I DY IN DIS GAYME, WEN IS ALFFA TOO, DE GRAFFICS LUK LYK DERE NOT FINNISHT YET, etc nonsense that we've had previously.

George_Black

The forums are becoming like the discord channels of AoC. More about social pleasentries and less about discussions (based on Stevens visions) that interest videogamers.

Then there are posters (even on this thread) that make threads faster than Disney makes Marvel shows, but with ideas very detached from anything this open world PvE, non-faction PvP mmo is aspiring to be. Either pk hobos or pve carebears (it doesnt matter), they are suggesting or opposing designs completely outlandish and selfcentered.
Unless you are bored, it's not worth responding to them.

And most people are bored with the content of these posts. Yet somehow manage to exchange likes for a few pages.
They remind youtube echochambers.

People hear about AoC. They want a new mmo environment to make a new character. Do you know what they say? "Make this like wow. Make this like eso. Make this like ff14. Make this like fortnite. Make this like rust". Use a descriptive word about them that covers the essence and you will get banned, rightfuly so, but... you'd be 100% spot on on the description).

There are posters here that act like schoolchildren that just got enrolled in an IT course. Talking about stuff that are not interesting to gamers, nor are of value to accomplished, professional, videogame designers. How many people will read the self patting on the back walltexts? Not many.

Feedback/critisism vs "it'S STilL in AlPhA...".
The usual suspects are too quick to dismiss valid concerns, which dont go outside of the open world pve, non-faction PvP philosophy.. It's silly rly... there is nothing else to do that discuss concerns before it's too late as Steven said.


QnA... I laugh when I rdy the QnA thread before the monthly update. "Pick my name!! Pick my name!!"
Some of the questions are total fluff. Luckily we get a good variety of answers when Steven goes off-script, even if the chosen question happened to be lame.
Anyway... my fav part of last months show was "Ashes is pvx. It's not for everyone. There are other games if you want the usual braindead mmo experience of the last 15 years."

He just went off-script. Not a professional move, but a damn good, gamer, move.
One of us.

Rym

I never even saw where I can ask questions that would be answered in the live stream.

Azherae

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

@SkylarckTheBotanist maybe there's other sources of insight, like the game's wiki visitor count along the years, how Narc's channel has 90% of it's views from subscribers only (that's very highly unusual), and so on

This made me think of a related thing, along with Arya's claim that most EVE players in their circle don't care.

I don't want to say 'old FFXI players don't care' because I can't say that with certainty but there are three extrapolations you can make based on the responses of all the ones I know and have observed passing through the forums over the years.

1. Steven promises a lot of things and treats them as revolutionary when that specific subset of MMO players often has those same things as their foundational experience of the genre, and a lot of forum and Content Creators do the same.
2. As a result of #1, many of those people have up to a decade of experience with the period before that game fixed the pain points and irritations, so they eyeroll whenever they see the same things 'unfixed' in Ashes design for no reason.
3. Related to #3, a majority of 'serious' Ashes Content Creators are hostile to people who like Eastern MMOs in any form and the forums are now tilting that way too (a lot of interplay with the way the more invested players treat the few non-hostile Content Creators, too).

There's a bunch of stuff that actively pushes away a specific demographic of MMO player, but unfortunately it's at least somewhat the style of player this game might need.

tl;dr hot take this is a game for EVE-lover, L2-lovers and FFXI-philes on paper and it's currently slowly irritating all three those groups unnecessarily.

Every old FFXI player that has come onto the forum recently has been met with hostility (you can tell some of them because they have specific verbal 'tics' that exist because of that game's Auto-Translate function, it has preset phrases that people then start to think in and use sorta like emojis).

The EVE players get similar treatment.

Is it a problem? Maybe not. But most of the time the response to this sort of thing falls squarely in the field of 'Wait so y'all just don't want us in your game at all... oh, that's ok then."

It's a little suspicious to me at least that there aren't more players 'like me', from that perspective, but if you think about how it looks and feels it could make sense. Why would you take an MMO Community seriously when they treat stuff you consider 'basic old hat' as 'revolutionary' and go so far as to claim it's 'never been done'? (this isn't some general truth, but it's the sort of snap judgement a less involved person can easily make)

And since Steven (correctly) technically doesn't specify who Ashes is 'for', only repeats 'it's not for everyone', it gets close to being {Ashes} {Looking for Party} {No thanks.}.

Arya_Yeshe

@Azherae I carefully read it all and thought about it, this is something I was thingking today hours ago. There's many thing ins AoC that exist in other games, which is fine, they are proven formulas.

I couldn't find players in Guild Wars 2 interested too, even tough GW2 is a carebear game, I play hundreds of PvP arena there and the world itself is amazing, GW2 is a reference for many good systems... some systems are shit but no game is perfect

GW2 is a mega carebear game, there is no owpvp, people share all loot equally, if you kill a boss you get a chess, if you bring 130 people they will all get the same chest, nobody can ninja loot nobody since everybody has rights on the loot, the loot is instanced for each player

EVE is a brutal sandbox pvp, I play both games, they are extremely different, they are in the opposite sides of the player spectrum... I can't find in them people interested in AoC

Every person who I ask and wait for their answer, they will just have no interest in answering at all...that's how much they don't care.... it's not that they don't care with a passion, they do not want to take the effort of knowing the game... they see no initia appeal and then they don't try to know more

I came to AoC, not because the game, I came here because I saw a short video on youtube in which Steven said that what makes games fun it's their systems, that's why I became curious about it

Arya_Yeshe

@Azherae nobody knows what is AoC, not even the devs know, but I think I figured it out based on dev's decisions giving away the answer, they are unaware for sure

AoC is not a pve or pvp or pvx game, it is a highly dynamic MMO RPG which people live adventures in a high fantasy dynamic world called Verra. The PvE is there to develop Verra, the PvP is there for the peril

Intrepid tends to prioritize Verra over PvP in clashes between the two. PvP is only chosen by Intrepid when it does not conflict with Verra's sense of peril, meaning that even when PvP is selected over Verra, it is ultimately in service of Verra's interest since Verra needs peril...when PvP is too much it will be scaled down, then PvP is too little then PvP will be increased.

Verra is the focus of everything in this game and everything is at the service of Verra

The high fantasy dynamic reactive living world of Verra is above everything, everything is in service of it

It is not sandbox or themebox, it is 90% a theme park and maybe 10% sandbox, the theme park of Verra is like a Disneyland in peril

Tyranthraxus

It certainly feels like some parts of the *week* are slower, than others; Some days I'm surprised to see ALL of the threads having activity on the present day, whereas some days I'll see threads that have gone un-touched for 3 days.

Yours truly has also tried telling a few people about AoC - and usually get the same response, in-part largely because there's no release date. Maybe a lot of players aren't excited for what's not already out? It's the Node-mechanics that really got me interested; SS and IS are taking a step in the direction that MMORPG's *should* have been going: New, interesting - and, if possible, unique - game-mechanics.

Yours truly logs to the forums here almost every day, though; I'm genuinely excited, and the monthly dev updates keep that excitement well-fueled!

Songcaller

A lot of my usual crowd are put off by the package fees. The best I've gotten state 'I'll review at launch, don't bother me until then.'

Fantmx

There is a natural ebb and flow for interactions and always has been. You can see this on google trends as well.

I don't think there is anything to be worried about. Once A2 is announced it will pick back up again. And then we will have a lull waiting on closed beta. Attention spans wax and wane, new games are announced, some live streams are better than others, etc.

daveywavey

Rym wrote: »

I never even saw where I can ask questions that would be answered in the live stream.

https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/categories/aoc-announcements

Usually, a week before the livestream, they put up a thread titled something like "Next Livestream and Q&A" where you can post a single, short question.

A
single
short
question.

Don't do what others do and spam the thread with 11 different questions of four paragraphs each. Those questions just don't get asked in the livestream.

A single, short question.

Depraved

most people who are going to play arent active in the forums.

edited: I meant to say arent, not are. oops

daveywavey

Depraved wrote: »

most people who are going to play are active in the forums

Of my current guild, of which there are a LARGE number going to be playing, I think I'm the only one who uses the forum.

Ludullu

daveywavey wrote: »

Of my current guild, of which there are a LARGE number going to be playing, I think I'm the only one who uses the forum.

Same. I have friends who're even ready to pay for alpha2 access, but they got no interest in the forum. And everyone else is just waiting when/if the game comes out.

Terrifying_Truth

if i know where i post a question i will do it

Azherae

Terrifying_Truth wrote: »

if i know where i post a question i will do it

I'll set up a thing to ping you the next time the thread becomes available.

Noaani

Depraved wrote: »

most people who are going to play are active in the forums

This game has 10k alpha 2 players that have paid up and are ready to go.

The forum has a few dozen posters.

SirChancelot

NiKr wrote: »

People have probably figured out that alpha2 is ways off (as was confirmed in the last stream) and they have no reason to stick around on a forum of a non-existent game. And super oldschool players might be running out of unanswered questions or have learned that their super specific/hardball question just won't get answered until waaaay later.

All of those things would lead to a decrease in the amount of questions. And obviously interest in the game has gone down since the huge 2020 wave so there'd be just fewer people visiting the forums to even know when to ask their questions.

That pretty much sums it up for me.

And this coming from my question actually being chosen to be answered on the last live stream. I'm kinda bummed even though it's completely understandable that the answer was "we're still trying to figure that one out"


Don't get me wrong, I'm still interested in the game. But I've come to the position that there needs to be more meat on the bones that they keep showing us for this game to really gain traction.

Depraved

daveywavey wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

most people who are going to play are active in the forums

Of my current guild, of which there are a LARGE number going to be playing, I think I'm the only one who uses the forum.

I meant to say arent. oops