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 find it hard to believe you still don't get it, you are reaching so hard on this one for no reason, and you are a ally in this matter.
Effectively you are saying "Since they are competing with Fortnite, they need to have gameplay for fortnite players, they are competing with Fifa, so they need to have gameplay for fifa players, they are competing with WoW so they need to cater for WoW players.
That is the logic you are using right now.
I seriously can't believe i need to explain this you are being stubborn right now. No AoC needs to make AoC in the best way they can, for the player base they are targeting. Not cater to gamers that don't care about playing mmorpgs.
cant please everyone...you focus your product on a segment of the market, although you can always discovr more segments
also, what if a small amount of players spend more money in cosmetics etc than the rest, or the casuals? its always a small amount of people spending most of the money...pareto distribution.
I shouldn't have involved myself in this discussion. I knew it was pointless but was still dumb enough to join. I support Noaani on this particular argument.
As a perspective, this is fair enough.
The problem is, I dont see there being 100k layers out there for Ashes.
I see 50k max.
Now, I'm sure you will say something along the lines of "as long ad there are enough players to keep the servers online". Again, this is fair enough.
Problem is, what if there isnt?
Unlike some here, I'm not really willing to predict how many paying subscribers Intrepid need to keep the game alive. All I am willing to say is that there is indeed a real risk that it may have less subscribers than how ever any that turns out to be
So, while you would rather have 100k players all engaged in the PvP aspects of the game than 1,000k players where some of them are less engaged in those aspects, the real question should be would you rather have the game with some people not as engaged in PvP as you would like, or no game at all?
Because to me, they are the options.
Since that is not the cass, you have CLEARLY Mag'd here again and completely misunderstood what is being said
You need to know the audience, again that doesn't hold up lol. If you are the type to choose between genshin impact or star rail mobile level and gotcha games. That is not the target audience of AoC with what people are looking for.
Further more the ones i brought up are games that are not in the same realm as AoC, even mroe so games like fortnite, apex legends and other games that are not mmorpgs. Even GTA doesn't fall int he same realm to most people, (though maybe if you were talking about a new GTA releasing around the same time it could hold up better).
You have some desire that is pushing you that the game needs to be further catered to casuals else it will die, and are letting he narrative get to you. That is the narrative we are trying to get away from reducing a game to cater to different types of player are not really interested in this type of mmorpg. The worse part of the thing you are sticking with is the idea of trying to cater to people that don't care about mmorpgs as a whole.
Again why is this a argument, i know you understand this, this is why people are hopeful for the game, because it is trying to stand on its own feet as a good mmorpg, and not be ruined to try to capture every kind of audience from every different genre.
The game will capture people by being a good game overall.
You don't know what you are talking about and just making random things to try to push your agenda. You remove nuance and try to create pages worth of debates for no reason.
No person that is into mmorpgs is playing fortnite over a mmorpg even if that mmorpg is bad. Stop trying to use bad examples, I'm not going to write a page to answer you. You just have been trying to push dooms day post and insults. Enough with the manipulative logic, saying people have hobbies and things they enjoy does not mean AoC will lose time even if it was a average mmo, people will still play it and drop other things.
You like Soul Caliber and BDO, right? BDO has tree cutting and fishing. Do you want those features added to SC? Just a yes or no question here.
No i don't want any life skilling in Soul calibur, that is not why I play the game. Even if that existed or questing (they have a story mode) I didn't do the story mode i don't care about that in soul calibur, just care about fighting people and winning
Here it is: if you do not want a particular feature from one of the games you like in another game you like OTHER PEOPLE MIGHT BE THE SAME AS YOU!!
So no, I don't want gacha mechanics in Ashes and fifa players would not want football in Ashes as well. But we both would want a good mmo with a ton of cool features available to us both.
You are missing my point groups that players a certain type of game will have 0 interest in another game or be indifferent. (Yes that won't awlays be the case people cross play multiple types of games). But if some peopel just paly battle royals or shooters they might never care about playing mmorpgs on average. So trying to cater to people that don't play the game is silly.
Ie if someone had a choice between a new mmorpg and playing a shooter thats been out for years, and they pick the shooter. They most likely are not that big into mmorpgs (or are not anymore). So trying to cater and adding guns and a fps mode would not go well for the game.
Long story short know your target audience, if a target audience mostly players a certain type of game that isn't in relation to what you are making, catering to them makes no sense. Fortnite /fps, etc isn't their competition. Now if you bring up games like Chrono, Throne and liberty, WoW, archage 2, etc. Atleast those are mmorpgs and it open up the discussion to another direction.
Most of those people are 25+ with jobs, families, deep hobbies. Quite a lot of them were hardcore mmo players at one point or another (usually just when they were younger).
Barely any of them play new mmos because they see the absolute shit state of the genre (though obviously some have gone to ff14), so instead they play new shooters, new BRs, new fucking animal crossing. Do you consider all of those people as someone who would be completely uninterested in a good mmo?
Cause I'm in the same group as them. I haven't played an mmo for over 5 years now. Am I not the TA for Ashes too? Cause holy fuck would these past 3 years have been an absolute waste of my time.
And you do in fact not consider any of those people as a potential TA, then who in the hell would even be the TA? Definitely not the kids-teens, because they all player fortnite and apex. Definitely not yearly 20s dudes cause they play fifa/madden/cod. And obviously none of the ex-mmo players who would love a new cool mmo where they can still feel like they're worth smth by just playing for a bit every evening.
So who exactly are we left with then? Older people like Dygz? Obviously not cause they don't have the snap reflexes of the potentially actiony fast-paced combat. Deadbeats like me, who play a ton of other games but not mmos? Also obviously not. Any of the too-invested-in-literally-any-other-mmo people? Yeah, they might try it for a few days, see that they can't lvl to 10 in 2h and leave because they got "better mmos" to play.
We've got no one left, if we judge people's potential for being AoC's TA by your standards. I guess we have a few hardcore guilds like Liniker's, though I'd almost bet that if you ask his guild what games they're playing on the regular - mmos would probably not be one of them. Guess they don't match your criteria as well.
So on this note of "no TA" I'm gonna go to bed.
It would be people interested in mmorpgs simply lol. Not all younger people just play BA, older people that are looking for a new mmorpg, people that have quit mmorpgs because there hasn't been one worth playing to them.
Creating a good mmorpg is the best foundation to go on, if the game is good people will play it. Than you will get those indifferent to find out there friends are playing it and to give it a try themselves, or introducing this kind of mmorpg to new audiences do to hearing good things about it and it being unique.
The moment you walk away from the people wanting a mmorpg to focus on gamers that are more interested in other genres nothing good will come of it. You are giving away you TA audience (which is plenty seeing current mmorpg released in the last few years) for people that might find out they don't like the game that much to begin with and want things changed (to be more casual / easier).
Growing the genre is important, getting more fans / customers of course should be the goal, but doing that through making a good game. And why I don't see the point on their competition is suddenly these other types of older non mmorpg games.
Easy example to give was the Ashes battle royal a lot of people gave them harsh feedback for. You could say that was the ultimate catering to that market. It aliened some of their current customers, while not really reaching a new fanbase. You would get the compete other response when they release a mmorpg, a lot of people are going to be into it, the forum and the reddit is such a small part of the player base we are almost insignificant. The issues people think there will be etc, won't matter. What will matter is when people play the game and if they have fun. They can't lose as long as it is a good mmorpg that had good combat and content.
But they know who they are targeting and why they say the game won't be for everyone. Just because they say that doesn't mean they aren't trying to get a massive amount of people playing. They just aren't going to cater to a battle royal player that wants to get end game fast or have little to no vertical progression, etc.
Boling this down, they just need to make a good mmorpg and it will be very susccesful at this point without new good mmorpgs on the market let alone a pvp ones. Fortnite, apex, LoL, etc is not something they need to worry about. Its a flawed point to bring those up. Now if you are suggesting any mmorpg will fail unless you get more players, that is a different argument at that point if the current genre doesn't have enough pull.
You seem to think that when I said "competing against" I meant that they had to have the same gameplay.
Clearly that is not the case. Intrepid is not going to have teh same gameplay as someone sitting down watching Netflix, or as someone going out ten pin bowling.
What I said was Intrepid are competing against these other games and activities in order to attract peoples time.
Yes, that means Intrepid need to make Ashes the best MMO they can. That is literally what I said.
However, what that means is if Ashes isn't the best MMO for someone (say, they are unable to get in to a large guild, have no freehold, are blocked out of any worthwhile content etc), then Ashes to that person is not going to be better than the other options that person has.
The reason there are so many non-MMO options is because if I said they just wouldn't play, the easy response would be "well there aren't any better MMO's to play, so they will stick around". I included a wide (yet still fairly brief) selection of activities in order to illustrate that a player isn't limited to just MMO's in their leasure time.
Would you say, based on where you are standing, that less competitive/casual players are a necessary component of AoC's target audience? Or do you firmly believe that the game can survive completely without them?
Because that might actually be the real point of contention in the discussion I've read here.
Be it someone being casual or competitive has nothing to do with them being target audience. Nor have I said a game doesn't need them, that isn't the point of any of my response.
There is 0 indication they are locked out of so much content in terms of a casual player. The important part is the leveling experience and if they have fun with that as well as questing and exploring.
It isn't completing if they are looking for a certain type of experience the options are limited. They will play it as long as they want and are having fun, if they stop at a point (new game release) if they were enjoying the mmo a lot they will come back. That gets into a whole disccusion i don't' feel like writing a page about though as why they stop, why they come back (combat being important for that also).
If a game is that bad than yes people will quit it isn't about competing for time, its simply people stopped playing because it was bad.
The top lvl and more profitable kinds of freeholds would be the super expensive (and/or bid-based) ones, while houses and farms would be way more available. And I do hope Steven didn't vague his ass out of proper husbandry and farming gameplay in nodes with that one comment from the discord.
In other words, we just want Intrepid to do better and rn they seem to be doing not as well (at least imo). Hope Bill can bring some good change.
Freeholds isn't going to make or break casuals players, when the rush of them come what will be important is leveling, questing, exploring and social elements, combat, gameplay loops.
The whole concept of a village freehold already exist, that i the node you live at with the housing within the node between non-instanced and instanced housing. Which they can take that gameplay loop however they want when they get to explaining it.
I agree farming and animal husbandry should be able to done as was spoke about without needing a freehold. Else than content is even more gated for all players. But im not going to assume that unless it is said otherwise atm.
Freeholds are fine as they are at the moment, as long as it is t4-5 and there is enough availability on the market to meet demand. If demand is so little and no one trades anything than they need to increase availability with whatever methods they choose.
well we dont really know how many people will play. the reason im playing ashes its because its basically l2. the selling point for me is the open world pvp and castle sieges. if other people pvp or not i dont care unless there are no sieges because no one wants to try.
if the game doesnt have at least open world pvp i wouldnt play, so no game at all for me
but hey if nw is still alive...ashes can make it xD
Now it's more like
"This game is only for people who join large guilds"
You are salty and spreading false information. You are the type that doesn't want progression and want to be able to kill a high level players and have everyone on the same power level.
If you think so, it ain't my problem.
Based on the notion that open world PvP and sieges are the draw card for you, wouldnt it be safe to assume that making the game slightly more appealing to casual players - as long as it doesnt alter sieges or open world PvP - would make the game better for you?
Because neither of these two aspects of the game are what is going to prevent more casual players from playing this game. Obviously it will keep PvP adverse people away, but that isnt the same group as casual players.