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 didn't know you had talked to "most people". Sorry, "most ppl".
Based on the fact that more than 90% of my posts are replies to people replying to the remaining 10% (or replies to replies), I feel that enough people read them. If any more people started reading them and thus replying, there would be too many replies for me to keep up with.
I quite clearly said that I'm not interested in it...
Look, they have said things like the tavern would be able to give you a buff for a while if you visit them. So I would want there to be a tavern for me to visit before I head off to whatever I want to do... Therefore I want someone to be interested it manning a tavern and working towards the buff it gives being the best around. I don't want to run a tavern, I have no interest... But I want the people who would enjoy running one to be able to do that... so I can benefit from it.
Hence my saying locking it behind being a no-lifer isn't a good idea.
I'll even explain it from your point of view, you want to go be high end raidy'boi... And PvP anyone who gets in your way. Do you want to log in every day, run to your freehold, and manage crops? Or make sure the inventory for your shop is managed? Do you want to play ashes as a farming simulator?
I'm going to assume (dangerous I know...) here that this isn't the gameplay loop you're interested in. So why lock it to where the people who would enjoy that gameplay loop can't get to it?
And until I do that I'm gonna be working around my node and if I get lucky enough I'll try getting a FH. And I'm sure there's other nolifers who don't care too much about pve/pvp fights. Hell, we literally have Dygz as the biggest example of that. Someone who can play the game for ~8h a day and is not interested in that kind of content (at top difficulty that is). So I'm sure there's at least a few nolifers who're interested in doing crops or running a tavern.
And if I was a GL of a strong guild, I'd find those nolifers and entice them to join my guild, because we'd both benefit from working together.
lol you are doing a good job wasting your time for 4 years,
AoC isn't a game made by committee they won't change their design pillars no matter how much you spam the same arguments over in every thread, if anything,
they made small changes that went completely against what you consider "better" and what we, the actual target audience enjoy - PvP centric - exclusivity - not made for solo
But both are better than reddit.
The majority of gamers are casuals, the vast majority. They're also more often than not the people who have jobs to afford those cosmetic packs.
Casuals however are usually the people complaining about how long things take or the amount of effort. Understandably, they don't have a ton of spare time and they work so they don't want to do more work when they're playing a game.
I wish casuals looked at this game more as a longer journey, as something with monumental achievements that will take them years, and that it's okay because they're just going to join a group and take as long as they need to. But I feel like casuals often look at things through the lens of a sweatlord, always looking at that endgame, the destination and not the journey.
Which is weird, they look at things like some hardcore player, but complain as if Intrepid is taking them(the casual) into account enough. Is that Intrepids problem, shoulddd that be Intrepids problem? As far as I see it, either the game is fun or it's not, and how long it takes me to get something isn't the question.
Maybe instead of focusing on how fast you get something in the game you should ask "am I going to be having fun on my way to get it?".
And people also underestimate some of the smaller guilds, I'll(a hardcore player) be attacking larger zerg guilds like a white blood cell attacking cancer, so you might have unexpected allies. Alliances will form and crumble, nodes will be built and be destroyed, freeholds will open up left and right, guilds will be created and disbanded, some zones will be super important one month and not the other. I'd say it's very unlikely that casuals never get an opportunity to own or co-own a freehold.
The casuals who make a habit in playing regularly probably like achievements, even monumental achievements, but not the ones which can be erased one month later and become just a memory.
He also says that Ashes will have content designed for solo play.
"For those Solo players who don't really care about finding a community to play with but they want to have one when they need it, there's going to be a lot of opportunities from a dialogue perspective, in-game chat options; you can join as part of citizenships: there's a lot of pseudo factions there- social organizations that give you an in to other players without the strong bonds that typically come with guild-oriented organizations; and I think that that's a comfortable medium between the two."
---Steven
"The game is built for both the solo player as well as guild oriented players, both large and small guilds.
Solo players are afterall, still a member of the larger server community."
---Steven
That's an entirely different can of worms. You could have it longer than a month, I guess it depends on the types of relationships you make, how much you plan and save up and just a whole bunch of factors. Maybe you form an alliance with a larger guild of sweatlords who come to your aid.
There's also the factor of if you got your freehold after a siege it could be anywhere from 30 to 60 days until it can be sieged again.
Lots going on with this game, but it certainly is possible you lose your freehold in less than a month. Not sure what I can say other than having something that is at risk of getting lost makes it more valuable. I play hardcore in ARPGs and I can say for absolute certain it makes everything you do it the game tremendously better, gear means more, talent points mean more, currency means more, every bit you progress means more.
This is a little different because your loss could be way outside your control, but the effect is still mostly the same I'm sure.
Overall this is just a part of Ashes of Creation and it's what I strongly believe will be what gives it more longevity than any MMO that has ever existed.
These things are baked down into the core foundation of the game too, there's no amount of feedback that is going to keep you from losing a freehold.
So when theres a feature that is more exclusive to hard working group players its an affront to solo players and they should just never play the game?
The combat is designed so that there is no balance in 1v1 fights.
The nodes highly encourage interaction and grouping with other citizens to help support and defend them as solo players cannot do so.
The entire processing and crafting side of artisanry requires you to engage with other players to craft and level them.
Even gathering has land management where you need to work with others in your node if you want to keep the land quality high.
Caravans and ships HIGHLY encourage group gameplay.
There's probably more that I can't think of right now, but you should get my point by now. This game probably will allow for a decent solo player experience, assuming you make friends, join a guild, and engage with other players. You're straight up delusional if you think the game will allow a solo player to run around without being a citizen to a node, with no friends, no guild, and somehow perform at the same efficiency and quality as coordinated groups.
Can you play as a solo player? Absolutely, but every system in this game is practically begging you to do it as a group instead. Playing without other players is the anti-thesis to what Steven is creating, and it's a shame that you are still trying so hard to water down these group-based mechanics just so some loner clowns can feel happy about rping by themselves in the corner of their own freehold tavern. That no one would ever go to, because if everyone could plop down a freehold the inns and taverns would be basically worthless.
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx6ENXkzhuCDz7-vF_vD34wiYmhNsj1Slu
"MMOs are Not built for Solo Players even tho they have solo things to do"
- Steven Sharif
ahah true, I can't argue against that
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx6ENXkzhuCDz7-vF_vD34wiYmhNsj1Slu
"MMOs are Not built for Solo Players even tho they have solo things to do"
- Steven Sharif[/quote]
Except "MMOs" is general. While "The game (Ashes)" is specific.
Depends how you define solo. In an mmo can be seen as a collaboration with other players who randomly join to help each-other achieving a common goal. But they break team as soon as the goal was achieved. They never speak to each-other and forget each-other a few minutes later.
In its simplest form it is describing a world that is able to have 1000s of simultaneous connections of players that could interact with each other.
Group focused mmos would not be built for solo players, not mmos in general.
Come one Dygz, this was in your own interview.. Steven was replying to your question of why Bill was a good pick for intrepid, I will just quote the whole thing:
Steven:
"(...) there is obviously alignment with Bill on the more kind of old-school approach that I think modern MMOs have deviated from over the course of the last decade or so. There's a lot of alignment and shared thoughts there with Bill that that gave me a great confidence in his role at the studio now.
Dygz:
"Like what? Like what? Name some of those old school ideas."
Steven:
"Yeah, I think I think the idea of putting massive back in massively multiplayer, right. I think the idea of not being delegated and stuck to a railroaded experience that you don't really have a participative aspect in the story that's being told. The social connection, MMOs are not built for solo players, even though they have solo things to do (...) "
These are clearly alignments of Bill and Steven, they both agree that MMOs are not built for solo players - so of course that includes the game they are working on... thats the whole point.
Whereas he has said of Ashes specifically, "The game is built for both the solo player as well as guild oriented players, both large and small guilds.
Solo players are afterall, still a member of the larger server community."
I think I'll wait for Bill to tell us what he thinks, rather than rely on Steven's interpretation of what Bill thinks.
(Especially since what Steven thinks tends to be inconsistent.)
Yet he also pours cold water onto their heads.
Ye, I can see you going Jahlons way.
Fact is many people like you two are in denial about what AoC is all about.
"Mmos are not group games"
What a gem....
You can keep going about "terms" and "definitions" and just do mental gymnastics to hide the fact that you (wrongly) feel cheated by Steven.
You gonna ask Bill or Jeff or Tim or Tom and Harry what they think mmo is, while their boss is Steven?
Mmo is a game in which players freely interact him each other, and that means they will kick you out of a grinding spot.
Within reason, you will be considered as someone that on purpose derails topics in this forum, spreading your personal narrative about "what was on kick starter and how they changed things".
You dont add anything to the topic as you try to discredit the games owner.
He does not get to designate what MMO's are.
MMOs are not built for solo players.
Are you?
i beg to differ.
i recently saw a post, cant remember by who, which had nice bullet points and spoilers you could click on to see a more detailed explanation. Thought that was nice. it was easy to read and understand, but if you were curious you could click in and see a longer more detailed explanation. good work to that unnamed person.
For what it's worth half my time in EQ was soloing. Quad kiting with a druid was a learned skill that payed off dearly. I also did a lot of PLing other characters of mine on a second machine. Now not every class could solo and the rest of my time were in groups and raids but EQ was as old school as they come and I was pretty self sufficient.
Was I raiding Plane of Time? Hell no, but I was having a good time nonetheless.
You can also play tabletop D&D solo, to a limited extent, but is the game built for that? that's the thing,
now, I'm not saying there shouldn't be any tabletop RPGs designed for solo - with MMORPGs there are plenty of games that are made that way, and that's great for people that like that - but the point is Ashes isn't, which is awesome for players that enjoy group-based games, and not so awesome for players that want to solo
It's all about the approach to the game and to your place in it.