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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.
Comments
I know he is a PR guy. He is on these forums taking people thoughts and opinions back to Steven.
Thus, I shared with him my thoughts and opinions.
Corruption is also likely to be irrelevant to casual PvEers. They just won't play the game.
But... we shall see what we see...
Yeah I agree with such a stance. Steven is driving those people away, including the life skillers. Thus, the tamer aspect of the game might not be so tame
My dude, when you out the effort in, you do manage to ask some good questions.
This is another of those posts of yours (second in two days) that I will give a full reply to when I am able to give it the time it deserves.
So, I'll come back to this soon.
Stealing my line.
T_T
First of all, to all the casual people out there reading this, I appologies that as a decidedly non-casual player I am attempting to define what casual is in an MMO. However, it is what it is, disagree with me if you like.
So, on with it;
There is no singular definition of a casual player - just as there is no single definition of a hardcore player.
What we need to do is break player behavior down in to a few catagories.
We have people that have an aboundance of time.
We have people that are well organized.
We have people that work well with others.
We have people that are knowledgeable.
We have people that are determined to be the best they can be.
There are other things you could add to the breakdown, but I'm going to just use these for now.
A hardcore player is one that is four or five of the above. You can be hardcore if you don't have a whole lot of time, but if you don't have a whole lot of time and aren't well organized, you really aren't.
You may not be knowledgeable about the game, but if you have the time, the organization, work well with others and want to be the best, then your lack of knowledge isn't an issue.
On the other hand, a casual player has two of the above at the most, many only have on (or none). You could be knowledgeable and organized, but if you don't have the time, can't work well with others and are not determined to be the best you can, then you are fairly squarely in the "casual" bracket.
What this means is that you can have casual players that play the game 60+ hours a week. I've known a number of these - just as I have known some fairly hardcore players that play less than 10 hours a week.
While stating the above, I feel it is important to reiterate something that many of us have said a few times. By and large, casual players are not expecting the same things top end players have.
A if a casual player has a mob to kill and can get some gear from it, the fact that I have a bigger mob to kill and better gear to get from it isn't really an issue.
If I have a firey horse mount with a super fast running speed, as long as they have a mount with a fast running speed, that's all good. If I have a glider that can boost every 30 seconds to gain altitude, as long as they have a glider, thats all good.
If I have a big farm where I can put crops and animals and a sawmill thats all good, as long as they have a smaller farm.
@Depraved my honest and earnest hope is that this post helps you understand a little.
I see 4 types of players:
hardcore time/hardcore challenge
hardcore time/casual challenge (that's me)
casual time/hardcore challenge
casual time/casual challenge.
Most MMORPG players are some form of casual player - primarily because so many players have jobs and families that prevent them from investing hardcore time like they could before graduating from high school and/or college.
PvP is more of a hardcore challenge than a casual challenge - compared to PvE.
I'd say casual challenge players tend not to be very interested in the adrenaline rush of high risk.
I'd say casual challenge players tend not to place much value in the ego of owning the Freehold that has remained standing the longest on the server vs PvP attacks.
I'd say casual challenge players tend not to be as competitive as hardcore players.
And casual challenge players tend not to be interested in pwning other players.
If I'm playing an MMORPG, I'd prefer to play on a server that has little to no occurences of PvP while I am questing, gathering or participating in an event. Also, I'm not particularly keen on playing on the same servers as gamers who enjoy trash-talking, pwining other players and/or the ego of owning the Freehold that has remained standing the longest on the server vs PvP attacks.
But, Ashes is a game designed for hardcore challenge PvPers. It's not designed to make casual PvErs feel comfortable playing the game.
Ashes is proudly as game that is not designed for everyone.
As such - there should be no concern that Steven is going to cave in on his vision and promise by catering to demands from entitled casual PvEers.
to me, casual has always been someone who plays a little and hardcore someone who plays a lot.
for example, i am a casual diablo player. i play every now and then, but im organized, im a team player, I'm knowledgeable (i always try to learn as much as i can when i play a game, especially if it's multiplayer), I love a good challenge and i try to be the best i can be. ill progress slower for sure since i play casually as in occasionally.
on the other hand, im a hardcore mmorpg player since i tend to play 8-15 hours a day lmao.
Lunch? Who said you were getting lunch?
Maybe not initially.
Eh, I think PvX will be the new standard for MMOs eventually. PvE centered MMOs just keep growing more and more stale and PvP players will move to PvX for it's more meaningful PvP.
PvE players will get bored, finally put up with a little PvP, stop acting like a cat in water, and join PvX games because PvP makes PvE more interesting.
PvP and PvE were meant for each other, they just take some seriously hard work to blend.
The one good thing is that all of those different types of casual player have one thing in common - and it is the thing we are actually talking about. They all just want to be able to play the game.
Your comparison to Diablo doesn't quite work due to Diablo not being an MMORPG. The cooperation aspect of a game like Diablo is significantly less than in an MMORPG, yet the time aspect of it is significantly more important.
You can't really be a hardcore Diablo player without spending that time in the game, yet you can be a hardcore Diablo player without working with others at all.
Aww fuck, I'm not
If you play a lot, and are trying to be a good player you are hardcore it is that simple. Now if you are good or not, and able to use your time well, that is a different matter.
Noaani's post is just a bias in how he is trying to judge if a player is good or not he is very black and white in the worse way possible. Like if you took the soul out of a conversation and were robots it be like that.
So I used to have a lot of time, back in Archeage days, which was 10 years ago almost. Nowadays, not so much.
Kind of organized (mid tier).
Preferred to do my own thing, but also liked doing group content (so mid tier again).
Knowledgeable, because I really liked to do research on stuff, using wiki, theorycrafting, etc.
Not really determined to be the best, but I do want to be above majority and be good. (mid tier again?)
Overall, I often placed myself as someone who's semi-hardcore, but now that I have less and less time available, I'm not sure anymore (Though I guess playing for 3-4h a day, with more time on weekends still is a lot more than some people can afford).
You can't really be hardcore without a great time investment, but you can easily be casual if you only invest time and not anything else.
I'm not really interested in high risk, because the payoff/reward just doesn't seem that high to me, while the loss would be very high (I'm talking about myself, and how it feels to me).
I would say I'm not as competitive, but again, I'm more in the middle.
And yes, usually I'm not interested in pwning other players. Sure I would enjoy defeating someone in an intense battle, but it's not the same as just going around showing off how strong you are, by killing everyone that's much weaker than you. I genuinely think that people who get off on that are psychopaths (mainly because they don't have empathy).
With that being said, I'm not against there being open-world PvP, in fact I love it. But I think that humans are trash sometimes.
I also agree with most of the bolded part. Though I enjoy having open-world PvP as an option, I wouldn't really enjoy if it was there from lvl 1, during all of my questing, at all times. Also I expect PvP to happen in certain high level areas, with high level gatherables, or at high level events, and I have no problem with that, because I'd prepare myself for it (Auroria in Archeage for example at least in the early days of release, Kraken, etc.).
I disagree that Ashes is for hardcore challenge PvPers.. They keep saying it's a PvX game, and they are putting certain systems in place to limit the extent of PvP. It might not be enough to stop the aforementioned psychopaths who just enjoy making others suffer though, but I don't think the game should change because those people exist, or because some players want a completely PvE experience without any PvP.
Still, it's a mixed bag, and pushing it too far towards PvP wouldn't be amazing.
So in that sense, it seems like I'm a semi-casual.
What truly matters is whether there is PvE-Only server or some mechanic that allows people who don't enjoy PvP much to turn PvP off (like New World).
PvEers don't get so bored that they put up with PvP. If PvEers get bored, they stop playing and wait for new PvE content to be added.
I like PvP sometimes, but I always move from PvP-optional servers to PvE-Only servers.
PvP does not make PvE more interesting.
by pvp do you mean killing other players or competing against other players?
These are anecdotal and all your statements are bias. Which is fine, but have no real weight.
I'm pretty close to 70/30 when it comes to PvE / PvP.
100% hands down find PvE more rewarding with PvP risk. See how it doesn't matter?
I'm always confused by your treading water responses, as if you didn't read what this game was about when you signed up.
The game could be PvE if sieges would be made by NPCs
If PvE players vastly outnumber PvP players why would the game function as a PvP game?
Imagine playing on the server with the most popular streamer.
The game can be PvE too if u just assume all players are just smart AI NPC's :P soooo i just treat PK players smart bandit mobs :P lol
if PvE players ever unite and fight back agaist PvP players they can win just by pure numbers but they dont they just complain and hope somone else fixes there problem instead of dealing with it
But then, I don't consider that to be PvE at all. I don't consider it to even be content.
It is filler.
Any game developer that points to it and says it is content for players should look for a new career, imo.
When you get to what *I* consider PvE content, yeah, PvP has no place.
Steven predicted and wanted the casual players to be in control. Maybe he wants more PvP now than 2 years ago. I am looking forward to the interview with The Ashen Forge to find out if the game direction changed.
But I will buy Alpha 2 access anyway.
PvE encounters have access to anything developers can come up with.
Well In theory they can participate in sieges. Under the assumption that they are uncapped in terms of players. Any guild would have to be crazy to allow a casual cleric to have a siege spot over their fully kitted cleric who participated in guild activities consistently for 8 months. I don't think most guilds would allow casuals a spot over hardcore players. We saw the same thing happen in other games.