Leveling is effectively a revisitable evergreen tutorial that anyone with a pulse can complete.Some people may enjoy it and while it adds variety in gameplay many many people currently and historically hate it.
The question is why do I need to participate in a 6 month mandatory tutorial?
That is not a tutorial. Leveling up is a normal phase of RPG games. When you reach max level, you usually get the best skill and gear, you kill the final boss and the game ends. Players who like this kind of progression became later the main audience for MMORPGs.
If you remove the leveling phase then the game is not an RPG but something else.
MMORPGs do not end and to keep players pay subscription or buy things from store, the game has to make the leveling phase longer or to create a game loop, when it would have normally ended.
AoC's game loop is the leveling and destroying nodes.
A game with a very long leveling phase would distribute the game content over the entire leveling phase.
Steven seems to have content only for 45 days. It is a small company.
Maybe most players will be ready to defend nodes much sooner.
But then, the problem you mention about "variety in gameplay" remains.
Variety keeps players in game. Those who will only do the content which helps them to stay competitive, sacrifice variety and gain the satisfaction of being better than others.
The good thing about AoC is that this variety will be added by leveling up the nodes too.
Intreprid Studio can add new content all the time which become available when nodes transition from a level to the next.
The deep and fun combat gameplay starts after some cap is reached. That cap is generally written in mid+ guild recruitment topics. The path from 1 to that cap is borring. I'd be happier to skip it.
Does the Ashes differ in this aspect?
This is exactly why I want them to give us all our base abilities before we get to augment them. This not only give players a better choice of "what do I want to augment" at each lvl, but would also make the long leveling feel much better, because you'll have your whole kit already and will then just add details to it, which you would learn through playing the game for longer.
This also relates to the quality of pve. L2 didn't really have any quality there, which is why it was always enough to just use a few spells (if not one). I expect Ashes to be better designed than that, though this remains to be seen in showcases.
see you are only saying that because you never leveled in l2. all those things start as soon as level 1.
it goes from people being dicks in execution grounds, to cp and guilds going to the cemetery to fight near the spawn, to people fighting over farming spots, creating wars and alliances. everything starts during the leveling process. it doesnt start after you are max level.
*cough* *cough*
I played Lineage II at the NA launch, levelled up to 27. Don't remember anyone beside my offline friends also playing. No idea what the "server social structures" were (or what they're supposed to be exactly). Never witnessed any PvP on my server, just heard my friend tells what happened when he shot at a Chinese gold farmer (the PKPKPK in the chat and the other farmers getting out of their holes to chase him).
So, experience may vary depending on the user.
well, u got your answer...level 27. but yeah experiences may vary, but people will eventually go to the same areas and the conflict will start.
But you said, as I quoted, that it started at level 1. None of these things mattered in the 2-3 months I played. Counter-example, albeit a personal anecdote, demonstrating the... maybe not falseness of the argument, but at least that it was not as universal as you made it out to have been.
NA L2 sucks then?
I was pvping from Lv1 in the human starting village gates and got pked by dark elves there that had no business or money to travel that far, if they wanted to hide the fact that they were lv10 or so.
Well, I wouldn't say "not being gank at level 1" sucked. It was definitely a plus. L2 was maybe doomed from the start in NA, I think it was way to grindy for that audience, and, beside, I think loads of people were only trying it out before EQ2 and WoW launch later that year.
45 days of very active play seems like more than enough commitment to reach cap... the rest of us will follow at our own pace which should span several months anyway.
thats not how it works. also there is automatic scaling...servers crash for a different reason
I didn't say it is how it works now, I said it is how it used to work.
And it absolutely is how it used to work.
Most games didn't have the crashing due to being in a high level zone issue, but more than one game did - I know because I crashed those games using it, and since my character was technically "in" the zone in question the server would crash again when I logged in.
ok ill correct myself. thats nt how it used to work. not saying you didnt crash the server, im saying its not because the lack of hardware (also, automatic scaling). updates to all players nearby, bandwidth, and software have more to do with the crashes.
Why do you flex you knowledge about zone hardware since it's proof of bad mmo structure, and then again irrelevant to AoC.
Secondly, L2 didnt had server shards and Steven based AoC on it.
So all that wall text does t contribute to the discussion of: content for all levels.
L2 is always the mmo I have in mind.
Ashes backend/server structure is literally nothing at all like L2's. Not even close.
I don't know a lot about how Ashes will run - but I KNOW enough about it to say that for a fact.
For a start, L2 was run on dedicated servers, where as Ashes will be run on AWS hardware. This in itself eliminates anything at all that L2 used as being even remotely viable at all in Ashes - and that is without getting in to the vastly different worlds that each game will have due to Ashes node system (which in itself determines a massive amount of the requirements for back end).
This isn't me "flexing knowledge" about anything, it is me calling your constant bullshit out.
Perhaps if you stop bullshitting, people will stop calling you out on it.
dedicated servers mean that you arent sharing the host computer with someone else (another website or game from a different owner for example). aws has dedicated servers as well...so ashes will run on dedicated servers /facepalm
Im going to explain this again a game had a budget content just doesn't appear out of thin air. The content cost money / time to make. Creating content that is not meant to go back to will take a element of budget, same with making end game content. Simple deciding you want longer levels by 3 times the amount does not mean anyone is going to be creating 3 times the content suddenly for lower levels. That budget should be going towards end game because what you are talking about is excessive leveling time for the sake of leveling.
Mag, ffs, I'm literally suggesting making less content, so that they can spread out their budget better. I'm asking Intrepid to make us go back to previous dungeons/bosses/mobs, instead of telling them "give us 500 unique and completely different encounters".
My suggestion also fits perfectly with the planned node interactions. A node has fallen and now you don't have that lvl5 node content that was meant for only higher lvls? Well now you have lvl1 node content that can still appeal to those high lvl players.
This would potentially help people not leave the game when their preferred node falls and they then have to either relocate or spend a ton of time not doing good content in their preferred location and instead go farm someone else's stuff (which would also help those people's node instead of yours).
If Steven wants Nodes to be the highest loyalty feature, it would make sense to create deeper roots in a single node rather than, after a siege, telling players "well, your node is gone so just relocate. You made friends and know npcs and locations here? Ah, get over yourself, you can do that elsewhere as well".
At this point I feel you have played a lot of korean type mmorpgs / games and not as much western ones. I feel like you want this kind of endless leveling feeling that doesn't exist in western mmorpgs as things are designed differently. End game run can be more fulfilling than leveling with gear chase and upgrades you get from it. There is a lot of people and a huge gear chase where everyone is work together, and allowing the devs to slow down the process of players fairly.
You do realize that Steven is literally inspired by 2 korean mmos, right? And Jeff is gone, and we've still gotten 0 clue about Bill's investment into the project cause they didn't even mention him on the latest stream.
Right now there is 0 indication that the game will not be similar to those korean mmos. As Dygz would tell you, after Jeff left the game became waaay closer in design to said korean mmos than how it was before. Funny how that is when Steven becomes an even bigger influence on the development than he already is.
You aren't getting it, this is most likely hard to explain since 2 much text is just not getting anywhere.
The point is spreading "budget" on lower end content is not a solution, that should stay on high end content since that should be the point where people are cycling the most there to make the best use of it.
I've already said taking lower end bosses and adjusting them can be a thing to do so there is more end game content and it is easier to make by adding more mechanics to them. (This is already done in other mmorpgs though they used instances and that won't be as strong in AoC)
It still takes time, to make this content, that land size isn't going to be magically increased either. Spending 3* the time on content is most likely not going to be a thing it will just end up as increased grind of the same content.
You can already see in the original posters message he wants no leveling and different things, this makes sense why the idea is thrown and so bad. This is peoples desperate need for "infinite" grinding so they feel they can gain power forever. I don't agree with any of these kinds of things progression needs to be capped and slowed down. Between end game gear and enchanting that should be plenty of progression.
Well away the games he played, it doesn't matter though this is still a western mmorpg and when they talk about things and how the game is, it is inline with western ideas. When I compare this game to Throne and liberty for example I can see the difference between bot the games from gameplay and the experience with the messages I've felt like I've gotten from them.
You need to go off what is the game aiming to be currently, not someone's past experience with other games because some elements from them are within the game. Steven is not the only one working on the game, i really think you guys forever there are a bunch of other designers.
I do not see things any closer to korean mmorpgs with the game, you are free to try and explain that to me where that is actually the case though. Leveling is western, questing is western (if they are doing what they plan to do), no infinite mob grinding for leveling, dungeons within the game with proper boss mechanics, style of combat.
Because you want to craft a sword using that specific iron? You aren't going there once, it's a place many people will visit multiple times whether their merchants, crafters, pkers, or even mob killers . It's different than leveling as there is no vertical power progression based around strictly on something as arbitrary as time investment locking players out of participation. If a zone is made up of 80% level 20 content and 20% level capped content, the design for that zone is going to be drastically inefficient from both a dev design (environmental layout) and from a players moment to moment gameplay.
Ok, say there's literally no levels in the game. Is there a mob difficulty difference though? Or is that also gone? Cause if there's a difficulty difference it would mean that you'll have to return to the same place over and over again until you can move onto the next place.
The "you return there to craft a sword" means that you need that sword to change the place you'll be returning to, right? And w/o that sword you can't do that, right? So how in the hell is this any different from leveling? It's literally the same thing but viewed from a different angle.
The same applies to questing as well. Quests always have a chain of sorts, so you have to do first quests in the chain before you can do the last one. I guess you have stuff like latest Zelda games where it's literally just an open world with barely any quests, but endless freedom. But I've seen quite a few people complain that games like that have no direction, so people just get choice paralysis and can't enjoy the gameplay to the fullest.
I also don't quite see how that would work in an mmo. Everyone is just at a completely same lvl of power with no verticality at all? Iirc even GW2 requires you to do a chain of quests before you can get to the horizontal plateau of power. Well, they also have the equalized arena stuff that just gives you everything immediately, but at that point I'd rather go play a proper pvp game.
Leveling has you play the leveling game from the first moment. Leveling is the antithesis of a sandbox game.
Only in games that design themselves into that corner. Steven has already said that we'll be able to start artisanry at low adventure lvl, so that is not stopped by leveling.
L2 was generally limited in the scope of its features, but pretty much all of those features were available since day one of your gameplay. Want to go to a siege as a lvl1? You can. Hell, people did exactly this in order to spy on other sieges. Want to pvp? You can and a lot did (as others have said here). Want to farm mobs? You do. Want to craft stuff? You can.
Though L2's crafting was related to your lvl (cause it was gear tier based and those were lvl gated), but Steven has already solved that issue. But you could still craft mats from the lowest lvls and then sell those to high lvl players, which was one of the best ways of making money in the game.
Yes there would be mob difference. Mobs would have tiers associated with them indicating additional mechanics, resistances, loot, etc. For example a tier 1 skeleton has only lootable bones and uses one spell that can be interrupted. Whereas as a tier 5 skeleton has the possibility to drop mid tier crafting resources and has multiple mechanics, some of which must be executed properly. Different tiers have different intended player skill levels intended to tackle them. If you're interested we can get into it more,
Players dont necessarily need the sword, but instead want to have it. The special iron gives a bleed damage increase and a desired build by player A uses bleeds. Players are incentivized and motivated to interact with the world through immersive tasks involving character building and/or social interaction. Leveling, and the associated grinding advocated for here, force an efficiency race primarily based on time invested. Whereas an exploration based system isn't completely determined by time spent killing mobs, but instead has objectives with more immersive meat on them.
Decision paralysis is definitely a problem. I'm currently playing Baulders Gate with my partner whose never played an RPG before. Its taken about 10 or so hours for them to get comfortable with the game systems, and exploring the world itself. A well designed open world game needs to keep these players in mind and help them get into the large parts of the game. This is no different than the difference between a great DM and someone whose mediocre.
Some semblance of vertical progression is inevitable. However, focusing on character build, world immersion, and social interaction as means to connotate gained power are much preferred versus simple larger numbers.
While all those features (like the crafting systems) are available at level 1 it'll be wildly inefficient to do them, unless you have a guild feeding you raw resources or escorting you as a gatherer. While catering to guilds is important, solo and small group players need to not feel like they're behind the moment they step foot in Ashes.
Leveling is effectively a revisitable evergreen tutorial that anyone with a pulse can complete.Some people may enjoy it and while it adds variety in gameplay many many people currently and historically hate it.
The question is why do I need to participate in a 6 month mandatory tutorial?
That is not a tutorial. Leveling up is a normal phase of RPG games. When you reach max level, you usually get the best skill and gear, you kill the final boss and the game ends. Players who like this kind of progression became later the main audience for MMORPGs.
If you remove the leveling phase then the game is not an RPG but something else.
MMORPGs do not end and to keep players pay subscription or buy things from store, the game has to make the leveling phase longer or to create a game loop, when it would have normally ended.
AoC's game loop is the leveling and destroying nodes.
A game with a very long leveling phase would distribute the game content over the entire leveling phase.
Steven seems to have content only for 45 days. It is a small company.
Maybe most players will be ready to defend nodes much sooner.
But then, the problem you mention about "variety in gameplay" remains.
Variety keeps players in game. Those who will only do the content which helps them to stay competitive, sacrifice variety and gain the satisfaction of being better than others.
The good thing about AoC is that this variety will be added by leveling up the nodes too.
Intreprid Studio can add new content all the time which become available when nodes transition from a level to the next.
While you are correct that this type of player was the primary person playing MMOs in 1998, you fail to realize this player type has evolved in terms of what they find interesting. EQ has an amazing world thats interesting to explore, but the leveling system itself hampers that. Designers can make mobs dangerous without that danger being tied to a rigid vertical power climb.
Leveling should introduce a player to all the important systems needed to play the game. Once a player finds the things they like, bread-crumbing them to the content they want to do will lead to higher player engagement and retention.
Leveling is effectively a revisitable evergreen tutorial that anyone with a pulse can complete.Some people may enjoy it and while it adds variety in gameplay many many people currently and historically hate it.
The question is why do I need to participate in a 6 month mandatory tutorial?
That is not a tutorial. Leveling up is a normal phase of RPG games. When you reach max level, you usually get the best skill and gear, you kill the final boss and the game ends. Players who like this kind of progression became later the main audience for MMORPGs.
If you remove the leveling phase then the game is not an RPG but something else.
MMORPGs do not end and to keep players pay subscription or buy things from store, the game has to make the leveling phase longer or to create a game loop, when it would have normally ended.
AoC's game loop is the leveling and destroying nodes.
A game with a very long leveling phase would distribute the game content over the entire leveling phase.
Steven seems to have content only for 45 days. It is a small company.
Maybe most players will be ready to defend nodes much sooner.
But then, the problem you mention about "variety in gameplay" remains.
Variety keeps players in game. Those who will only do the content which helps them to stay competitive, sacrifice variety and gain the satisfaction of being better than others.
The good thing about AoC is that this variety will be added by leveling up the nodes too.
Intreprid Studio can add new content all the time which become available when nodes transition from a level to the next.
While you are correct that this type of player was the primary person playing MMOs in 1998, you fail to realize this player type has evolved in terms of what they find interesting. EQ has an amazing world thats interesting to explore, but the leveling system itself hampers that. Designers can make mobs dangerous without that danger being tied to a rigid vertical power climb.
Leveling should introduce a player to all the important systems needed to play the game. Once a player finds the things they like, bread-crumbing them to the content they want to do will lead to higher player engagement and retention.
I don't know if "evolved" is the proper word. But players definitely changed. And they will not like a longer leveling phase. Many don't want subscription either.
While we don't know how everything will be balanced, at least for the leveling up we have this 45 days and that There will be a "comfortable" number of character slots available for alts.[1][2]
And those who want progression and story, will get it through the nodes, leveling them up:
Every stage a node develops it's unlocking narratives, storylines, it's changing the spawn population of the area around it, changing what bosses exist, it's triggering events where you may have legendary dragons attack the city. It's basically writing the story of the server based on the actions and determination of the players. So, you may experience a dungeon one month earlier and have a completely different story that relates to this location the next month, because something has changed either geopolitically or from the node standpoint.[6] – Steven Sharif
If this will introduce enough variety or not, remains to be seen.
Those who don't care about story, and have no patience for alts, will just move between high level nodes, doing the high level content and trying to have a freehold all the time.
If the character leveling up would be increased to 120 days, then metropolises would start to appear also after 100...120 days. That would reduce the dynamic of node sieges and the stories would not be transmitted the way Steven wants. Would become longer.
I think 45 days is a good choice and I hope there will be enough things to do after that too.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
The difference is that for us that IS the game. As people here have been saying. Leveling has you PLAY the game from step 1. Well, good games do, that is. I'm sure there's been a ton of mmos that make you slog through dumb mechanics and/or boring quests that you don't care about, until you hit max lvl and "finally start the game".
Sandboxy games just give you a general direction and let you enjoy the path in your own way. Leveling just makes that path easier to notice and follow.
RPGs are supposed to have leveling and quests. Typically quests will provide the best paths to bulk xp and story...both of which help you progress along the Hero's Journey.
Sandboxy MMOs tend to be lacking in story.
Themepark MMORPGs are going to be very much like a bundle of D&D modules/adventures.
Themebox would probably be ideal - but... the tech has to get us to a place where we aren't stuck at endgame... the end of the curated module/adventure, waiting years for new content.
Storybricks and Nodes are good solutions - if they can ever be implemented.
Some of us have been waiting 10 years for that.
Social Org progression, Religion progression, Racial progression and Artisan progression will also help.
"Rushing" to max Adventurer level should not be an issue for Ashes.
The difference is that for us that IS the game. As people here have been saying. Leveling has you PLAY the game from step 1. Well, good games do, that is. I'm sure there's been a ton of mmos that make you slog through dumb mechanics and/or boring quests that you don't care about, until you hit max lvl and "finally start the game".
Sandboxy games just give you a general direction and let you enjoy the path in your own way. Leveling just makes that path easier to notice and follow.
RPGs are supposed to have leveling and quests. Typically quests will provide the best paths to bulk xp and story...both of which help you progress along the Hero's Journey.
Sandboxy MMOs tend to be lacking in story.
Themepark MMORPGs are going to be very much like a bundle of D&D modules/adventures.
Themebox would probably be ideal - but... the tech has to get us to a place where we aren't stuck at endgame... the end of the curated module/adventure, waiting years for new content.
Storybricks and Nodes are good solutions - if they can ever be implemented.
Some of us have been waiting 10 years for that.
Social Org progression, Religion progression, Racial progression and Artisan progression will also help.
"Rushing" to max Adventurer level should not be an issue for Ashes.
While single player RPGs are about the main characters journey, I'd argue MMOs are not about any one individual person. It's a shared experience where the story is about the players, the world, and how they interact with each other.
Leveling (especially timesink leveling) doesn't necessarily bring these social interactions to the forefront and I'd advocate that it only hinders them.
It still takes time, to make this content, that land size isn't going to be magically increased either. Spending 3* the time on content is most likely not going to be a thing it will just end up as increased grind of the same content.
You can already see in the original posters message he wants no leveling and different things, this makes sense why the idea is thrown and so bad. This is peoples desperate need for "infinite" grinding so they feel they can gain power forever. I don't agree with any of these kinds of things progression needs to be capped and slowed down. Between end game gear and enchanting that should be plenty of progression.
Let's say nothing changes and it takes 45 days to get to max lvl for a hardcore player. And let's say it then takes them 2 months to get full BiS. Give or take a week and we have ourselves 4 months of content.
3 months of that content will most likely be super repeatable actions that will feel like a grind, because you'll be doing the same shit over and over and over again to hopefully get the loot you need. This would be in now way different from having all that repeatable content spread over all the levels instead of being backloaded.
But even outside of that. Do you expect hardcore players to just stop playing the game at that point? Cause I somehow doubt that Intrepid will manage to put out huge 4-months long varied content patches every 1/3 of a year.
In other words, either we have some fun enough grind in the game or we lose majority of hardcore players, simply because they won't have anything to do in the game.
I do not see things any closer to korean mmorpgs with the game, you are free to try and explain that to me where that is actually the case though. Leveling is western, questing is western (if they are doing what they plan to do), no infinite mob grinding for leveling, dungeons within the game with proper boss mechanics, style of combat.
Open world content, open world pvp, longer leveling (even right now), no separation in gear between pvp and pve, party-based content and balance instead of "I'm the hero of the world and can do everything alone", now we even have forced pvp locations, the general plan for "massiveness".
All of those just SCREAM "eastern mmo" to me. Mostly because western mmos have just been trying to copy WoW for the past 15 years. Even the most eastern (japanese) mmo literally took huge inspiration from WoW and just refined its formula.
The only reason I'm on these forums at all is because back in 2020 I saw "new lineage 2" in Ashes and not a "new WoW". If anything, I'm not exactly sure what kind of western mmos you are even talking about when you say that Ashes is gonna be a "western mmo". Like, yes, it's gonna be made by a western studio, but the design is barely western imo (well, maybe it would've been 20 years ago, but we're kinda 20 years past that point). Amazon is making "western" mmos and you can see that in the changes they made to NW and are now trying to add to TL.
Yes there would be mob difference. Mobs would have tiers associated with them indicating additional mechanics, resistances, loot, etc. For example a tier 1 skeleton has only lootable bones and uses one spell that can be interrupted. Whereas as a tier 5 skeleton has the possibility to drop mid tier crafting resources and has multiple mechanics, some of which must be executed properly. Different tiers have different intended player skill levels intended to tackle them. If you're interested we can get into it more
So there would still be vertical power differences that players would have to overcome by doing weaker-powered content first. Definitely seems kinda levelingly to me
Players dont necessarily need the sword, but instead want to have it. The special iron gives a bleed damage increase and a desired build by player A uses bleeds.
We'll have this in crafting, supposedly since the very start. So far I don't remember any indicators that some features or gear types will be strictly locked behind leveling. If I forgot something do point it out.
Players are incentivized and motivated to interact with the world through immersive tasks involving character building and/or social interaction. Leveling, and the associated grinding advocated for here, force an efficiency race primarily based on time invested. Whereas an exploration based system isn't completely determined by time spent killing mobs, but instead has objectives with more immersive meat on them.
Except that "immersion" would come in the form of majority of players just looking up a guide for the most OP build and then just following it. Which would be effectively the same thing as looking up a leveling guide.
Some semblance of vertical progression is inevitable. However, focusing on character build, world immersion, and social interaction as means to connotate gained power are much preferred versus simple larger numbers.
Those large numbers are simply a visual indicator of the very things you mention here.
Immersion will always be subjective. To me it's way more immersive to come across a mob that's way more powerful than I am who then oneshots me and moves on. I'll want to become stronger and come back to kick his ass. I literally did this with a unicorn back when I first started playing L2.
Coming back to that unicorn when I was 20 levels about it to oneshot it back was one of the best experiences in the game at that point for me. W/o an easily recognizable distinction in power that feeling wouldn't have been as strong.
Btw, I found that unicorn at a way lower lvl because I was out exploring for a better spot to farm. And after getting my ass beat by said unicorn I had to explore in the other direction, which lead me to underground ruins with skeletons and ghosts (which also had rewarding quests associated with them). And that dungeon was a popular leveling spot, so there was a ton of people there. I made some friends by trying to fight stronger mobs deeper in the dungeon and we then continued leveling together, because it made the process more fun and easier.
Literally all the things you mentioned were present, even though it all stemmed from me just trying to lvl.
While all those features (like the crafting systems) are available at level 1 it'll be wildly inefficient to do them, unless you have a guild feeding you raw resources or escorting you as a gatherer. While catering to guilds is important, solo and small group players need to not feel like they're behind the moment they step foot in Ashes.
And this also has literally 0 argument against lvling. If you're a solo player, even if the game has no lvls - you'll still be fucked when it comes to big scale crafting. And if you're talking about small scale stuff, then how exactly is leveling in any way preventing you from doing that?
dedicated servers mean that you arent sharing the host computer with someone else (another website or game from a different owner for example). aws has dedicated servers as well...so ashes will run on dedicated servers /facepalm
Two points with this.
First, you are factually incorrect. The hardware Intrepid uses is dedicated hardware from Amazons perspective - it is hardware with the sole purpose of leasing to customers.
From Intrepids perspective, it will not be dedicated. Some of the hardware used in the first few months of the games life will not be used again by the game. It will still be used by Amazon for leasing out to it's customers (that hardwares actual dedicated purpose), it will just be to a different enterprise.
Even if we ignore this, if we assume Intrepid are simply leasing static hardware from Amazon, at best you are arguing against berevity here. You understand the point I am making, and you understand that I am correct - you are just picking holes in the fact that I opted to get the message across in a few words rather than many.
This exact situation is why I seldom opt to do this - so any walls of text from me are as much your doing as mine.
thats not how it works. also there is automatic scaling...servers crash for a different reason
I didn't say it is how it works now, I said it is how it used to work.
And it absolutely is how it used to work.
Most games didn't have the crashing due to being in a high level zone issue, but more than one game did - I know because I crashed those games using it, and since my character was technically "in" the zone in question the server would crash again when I logged in.
ok ill correct myself. thats nt how it used to work. not saying you didnt crash the server, im saying its not because the lack of hardware (also, automatic scaling). updates to all players nearby, bandwidth, and software have more to do with the crashes.
Most games didn't have automatic scaling if you go back to the early 2000's.
Sure, more popular games did - but I didn't say I was talking about popular games.
Yes, overloading the servers by performing an action that requires an update to many clients is indeed a way to crash most servers, but that isn't what I was talking about.
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FantmxMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I agree with this but I also think character leveling in the traditional sense is outdated and no longer needed. I would also prefer a skills based progression system rather than an overall leveling one. It makes more sense that because I cast fireball 100 times or crafted a dagger 100 times I would increase my skill in those areas and not general spell casting or weaponcrafting.
1a) If leveling (which is tied to not only to character "progression", but also as a benchmark for gear strength and price value, mapping out the mmos world into dangerous/grouping hunting zones and more relaxing zones, simple and DIRECT measure, as a single number, of who can pull their weight in your group [instead of asking them what Lv is you X Y Z A B C D E D ability]), is outdated, in other words if Level, this simple and understandable number that appears SO MANY TIMES on so many tabs and windows, is outdated and no longer needed....
1b) what does that make of the passive skill trees of 0.05 crit dmg, 120 armor pen, 2% chance to apply burn status, +10 mp, +25% mp regen, -10 mp cost per cast, 0.2% chance on hit to restore mp and all the other bullshit passive, invisible combat factors as opposed to Active Abilities (not to be confused with action combat)?
2a) How did we ended up talking about the "Lv" not being needed any more in mmos, when every shitty singleplayer open world rpg has introduced levels on the protagonist of the story (assassins creed assasins need levels to become better at killing... the witcher sudenly needs levels to do his thing)
2b) You want the devs to code leveling based on how many times you casted fireball which has 5s cooldown? What about fireshit, that has 20s cooldown? Should they factor the higher CD and put an xp modifier on it? Code for that, just so we can move on from "outdated character levels"?
Does it really make more sense to you, to do all that?
Should we limit active skillbars to 5 skills just because everybody should level up their skills now and that is meta?
Should you be forced to swap out skills? "On monday I will play with fireball, on tuesday I will play with fireshit and the rest of the days I will level up my iceturds, and I will have levelled up all my 'good abilities' equally.
Why re-invent the wheel on things that nobody cares?
"Lv" is a means of communication. Leave it at that.
Lastly, back to topic, in mmos there used to be official servers, in which rates for xp/gold/drops were low, and there were private servers in which levelling/wealth was a mater of days or hours.
Same mmo, different servers with ONLY the level/loot speed changed.
Which ones do you thing had 10,000 people and which ones do you think had 150?
Player levels are the carrot on your stick. That's why they exist. It is an easy goal to set and make players think it is important so they keep playing. Fundamentally in nearly all mmorpgs character levels have zero purpose other than to level gate and try to slow content churn. Most gear level increases that are meaningful occur after the player has already reached max character level.
I get that there will likely never be a developer to try a no character level model. I also get why it seems alien to most people.
WoW is a great example. They could get rid of all of the character level increases each expansion and instead:
1) Have players work through the story line picking up skill increases and weapon increases as they progress so that once the storytelling ends they are ready for the real character progression.
dedicated servers mean that you arent sharing the host computer with someone else (another website or game from a different owner for example). aws has dedicated servers as well...so ashes will run on dedicated servers /facepalm
Two points with this.
First, you are factually incorrect. The hardware Intrepid uses is dedicated hardware from Amazons perspective - it is hardware with the sole purpose of leasing to customers.
From Intrepids perspective, it will not be dedicated. Some of the hardware used in the first few months of the games life will not be used again by the game. It will still be used by Amazon for leasing out to it's customers (that hardwares actual dedicated purpose), it will just be to a different enterprise.
Even if we ignore this, if we assume Intrepid are simply leasing static hardware from Amazon, at best you are arguing against berevity here. You understand the point I am making, and you understand that I am correct - you are just picking holes in the fact that I opted to get the message across in a few words rather than many.
This exact situation is why I seldom opt to do this - so any walls of text from me are as much your doing as mine.
no i didnt understand your point. dedicated means you are the only owner of that hardware while you are using it. if you rent me 3 computers and 3 months later i tell you i only need 2 and you rent the 3rd one to someone else, i had 3 dedicated computers, and now i have 2 and someone else has 1.
I agree with this but I also think character leveling in the traditional sense is outdated and no longer needed. I would also prefer a skills based progression system rather than an overall leveling one. It makes more sense that because I cast fireball 100 times or crafted a dagger 100 times I would increase my skill in those areas and not general spell casting or weaponcrafting.
1a) If leveling (which is tied to not only to character "progression", but also as a benchmark for gear strength and price value, mapping out the mmos world into dangerous/grouping hunting zones and more relaxing zones, simple and DIRECT measure, as a single number, of who can pull their weight in your group [instead of asking them what Lv is you X Y Z A B C D E D ability]), is outdated, in other words if Level, this simple and understandable number that appears SO MANY TIMES on so many tabs and windows, is outdated and no longer needed....
1b) what does that make of the passive skill trees of 0.05 crit dmg, 120 armor pen, 2% chance to apply burn status, +10 mp, +25% mp regen, -10 mp cost per cast, 0.2% chance on hit to restore mp and all the other bullshit passive, invisible combat factors as opposed to Active Abilities (not to be confused with action combat)?
2a) How did we ended up talking about the "Lv" not being needed any more in mmos, when every shitty singleplayer open world rpg has introduced levels on the protagonist of the story (assassins creed assasins need levels to become better at killing... the witcher sudenly needs levels to do his thing)
2b) You want the devs to code leveling based on how many times you casted fireball which has 5s cooldown? What about fireshit, that has 20s cooldown? Should they factor the higher CD and put an xp modifier on it? Code for that, just so we can move on from "outdated character levels"?
Does it really make more sense to you, to do all that?
Should we limit active skillbars to 5 skills just because everybody should level up their skills now and that is meta?
Should you be forced to swap out skills? "On monday I will play with fireball, on tuesday I will play with fireshit and the rest of the days I will level up my iceturds, and I will have levelled up all my 'good abilities' equally.
Why re-invent the wheel on things that nobody cares?
"Lv" is a means of communication. Leave it at that.
Lastly, back to topic, in mmos there used to be official servers, in which rates for xp/gold/drops were low, and there were private servers in which levelling/wealth was a mater of days or hours.
Same mmo, different servers with ONLY the level/loot speed changed.
Which ones do you thing had 10,000 people and which ones do you think had 150?
WoW is a great example. They could get rid of all of the character level increases each expansion and instead:
1) Have players work through the story line picking up skill increases and weapon increases as they progress so that once the storytelling ends they are ready for the real character progression.
but isnt that a way to slow down players too? whats the purpose other than to slow down progression?
dedicated servers mean that you arent sharing the host computer with someone else (another website or game from a different owner for example). aws has dedicated servers as well...so ashes will run on dedicated servers /facepalm
Two points with this.
First, you are factually incorrect. The hardware Intrepid uses is dedicated hardware from Amazons perspective - it is hardware with the sole purpose of leasing to customers.
From Intrepids perspective, it will not be dedicated. Some of the hardware used in the first few months of the games life will not be used again by the game. It will still be used by Amazon for leasing out to it's customers (that hardwares actual dedicated purpose), it will just be to a different enterprise.
Even if we ignore this, if we assume Intrepid are simply leasing static hardware from Amazon, at best you are arguing against berevity here. You understand the point I am making, and you understand that I am correct - you are just picking holes in the fact that I opted to get the message across in a few words rather than many.
This exact situation is why I seldom opt to do this - so any walls of text from me are as much your doing as mine.
no i didnt understand your point. dedicated means you are the only owner of that hardware while you are using it
If that is how you want to define dedicated hardware (you can define it like this if you wish), Ashes will not be run on dedicated hardware.
However, the meaning I was clearly going for was hardware purchased for the specific and sole task task - something that Ashes is also not going to be doing - but L2 was.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Leveling (especially timesink leveling) doesn't necessarily bring these social interactions to the forefront and I'd advocate that it only hinders them.
I dunno what leveling has to do with being social.
I think what you mean is that a purely "themepark" story in a static game, where everyone hops on the exact same rides pretty much in the exact same order, means no one has to speak to other players because we all have the same experiences and can find out anything we want to know online.
But, leveling is not the issue. Static gameplay is the issue.
I'm not going to have more social interactions in a sandbox game.
It still takes time, to make this content, that land size isn't going to be magically increased either. Spending 3* the time on content is most likely not going to be a thing it will just end up as increased grind of the same content.
You can already see in the original posters message he wants no leveling and different things, this makes sense why the idea is thrown and so bad. This is peoples desperate need for "infinite" grinding so they feel they can gain power forever. I don't agree with any of these kinds of things progression needs to be capped and slowed down. Between end game gear and enchanting that should be plenty of progression.
Let's say nothing changes and it takes 45 days to get to max lvl for a hardcore player. And let's say it then takes them 2 months to get full BiS. Give or take a week and we have ourselves 4 months of content.
3 months of that content will most likely be super repeatable actions that will feel like a grind, because you'll be doing the same shit over and over and over again to hopefully get the loot you need. This would be in now way different from having all that repeatable content spread over all the levels instead of being backloaded.
But even outside of that. Do you expect hardcore players to just stop playing the game at that point? Cause I somehow doubt that Intrepid will manage to put out huge 4-months long varied content patches every 1/3 of a year.
In other words, either we have some fun enough grind in the game or we lose majority of hardcore players, simply because they won't have anything to do in the game.
I do not see things any closer to korean mmorpgs with the game, you are free to try and explain that to me where that is actually the case though. Leveling is western, questing is western (if they are doing what they plan to do), no infinite mob grinding for leveling, dungeons within the game with proper boss mechanics, style of combat.
Open world content, open world pvp, longer leveling (even right now), no separation in gear between pvp and pve, party-based content and balance instead of "I'm the hero of the world and can do everything alone", now we even have forced pvp locations, the general plan for "massiveness".
All of those just SCREAM "eastern mmo" to me. Mostly because western mmos have just been trying to copy WoW for the past 15 years. Even the most eastern (japanese) mmo literally took huge inspiration from WoW and just refined its formula.
The only reason I'm on these forums at all is because back in 2020 I saw "new lineage 2" in Ashes and not a "new WoW". If anything, I'm not exactly sure what kind of western mmos you are even talking about when you say that Ashes is gonna be a "western mmo". Like, yes, it's gonna be made by a western studio, but the design is barely western imo (well, maybe it would've been 20 years ago, but we're kinda 20 years past that point). Amazon is making "western" mmos and you can see that in the changes they made to NW and are now trying to add to TL.
First off I don't see you are getting BiS gear in 2 months for the fact the content should be hard with different levels, enhancement (depending on how aids they could make it, it could be unrealistic to think you will never have bis), people needing multiple gear sets to be effective in different situations and the pvp conflicts that will naturally slow players down.
I feel you are trying to cop out that they have the best gear in that time frame, which again it means they need to spend more time to ensure the gameplay cycle at that point than working on a leveling experience that eventually ends. There is no way around that, an increased time leveling does not lead to a better game cause when you run through the content it is done. It doesn't matter if you try to say they can reuse parts of it, new world literarily did that for everything. It is all about the cycle you make, and since it is a western style levels are going to have a impact that is just a fact.
Open world conte,t open world pvp, longer leveling does not scream eastern in the slightest. What it is is more old school mmorpg design back to the older days. In the newer age those don't exist as much and the same can be said of actual new mmorpgs being made since the era was stalling with new games.
All of that i remember literarily from everquest lmao. Eatern is when you have a open world with brain dead content and its just grinding , crappy monetization, and pvp isn't even in the picture that is only some certain games. Back in the older days i played some crappy mmorpgs like fflyf and some other random asian type mmorpgs and perfect world. The lack of actual good content was terrigle and why western mmorpgs were always better. You can try to make a point though they have some of those bad elements still they managed to improve some things.
I feel you are looking at linage and trying to think AoC is just going to be a copy of it because it has some of the system in the game. I'm looking at what is the content you are doing in the game and level of quality and the vibe of it. The vibe being more old school and western with the quest you will be doing as well and such and story that would be around it. Not a lifeless grinding mmorpg no challenge, no interesting content, everything feeling kind of the same, terrible monetization, lack of interesting design, mobs places in large packs and all around areas thoughtless meant just for grinding. You can see the differences between the vibes of a western mmorpg and a korean one it is so clear as day it is blinding.
the backend still needs to be different than other games, simply because ashes has different software requirements. its irrelevant if they will use a dedicated host or not, thats nto what will define the backend code.
also, pretty sure you can pay money for a dedicated host and avoid sharing resources with other companies (ive had dedicated hosts before). im sure aoc will run on a dedicated host in aws.
the backend still needs to be different than other games, simply because ashes has different software requirements. its irrelevant if they will use a dedicated host or not, thats nto what will define the backend code.
You'll note that I said the hardware requirement will be one thing that requires different back end, I also mentioned the node system would require a totally different setup, but made no suggestion that this would be an exhaustive list of reasons as to why Intrepid are not compying L2's back end (as George uninformidly claimed).
Ashes using AWS rather than their own servers is something that is fairly well known. The reason I used it as the main example of the point I was making is beucase a setup like that simply wasn't possible when L2 was in development, thus there was no way they could even consider setting up their back end the way Intrepid needs to set it up for Ashes.
I'm at a point where I am not sure what you are even arguing. You seem to be in your default mode of just arguing against anything I say - even though you now seem to understand and agree with what I said. At least, I think you understand it now.
So, what is your argument here?
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FantmxMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I agree with this but I also think character leveling in the traditional sense is outdated and no longer needed. I would also prefer a skills based progression system rather than an overall leveling one. It makes more sense that because I cast fireball 100 times or crafted a dagger 100 times I would increase my skill in those areas and not general spell casting or weaponcrafting.
1a) If leveling (which is tied to not only to character "progression", but also as a benchmark for gear strength and price value, mapping out the mmos world into dangerous/grouping hunting zones and more relaxing zones, simple and DIRECT measure, as a single number, of who can pull their weight in your group [instead of asking them what Lv is you X Y Z A B C D E D ability]), is outdated, in other words if Level, this simple and understandable number that appears SO MANY TIMES on so many tabs and windows, is outdated and no longer needed....
1b) what does that make of the passive skill trees of 0.05 crit dmg, 120 armor pen, 2% chance to apply burn status, +10 mp, +25% mp regen, -10 mp cost per cast, 0.2% chance on hit to restore mp and all the other bullshit passive, invisible combat factors as opposed to Active Abilities (not to be confused with action combat)?
2a) How did we ended up talking about the "Lv" not being needed any more in mmos, when every shitty singleplayer open world rpg has introduced levels on the protagonist of the story (assassins creed assasins need levels to become better at killing... the witcher sudenly needs levels to do his thing)
2b) You want the devs to code leveling based on how many times you casted fireball which has 5s cooldown? What about fireshit, that has 20s cooldown? Should they factor the higher CD and put an xp modifier on it? Code for that, just so we can move on from "outdated character levels"?
Does it really make more sense to you, to do all that?
Should we limit active skillbars to 5 skills just because everybody should level up their skills now and that is meta?
Should you be forced to swap out skills? "On monday I will play with fireball, on tuesday I will play with fireshit and the rest of the days I will level up my iceturds, and I will have levelled up all my 'good abilities' equally.
Why re-invent the wheel on things that nobody cares?
"Lv" is a means of communication. Leave it at that.
Lastly, back to topic, in mmos there used to be official servers, in which rates for xp/gold/drops were low, and there were private servers in which levelling/wealth was a mater of days or hours.
Same mmo, different servers with ONLY the level/loot speed changed.
Which ones do you thing had 10,000 people and which ones do you think had 150?
WoW is a great example. They could get rid of all of the character level increases each expansion and instead:
1) Have players work through the story line picking up skill increases and weapon increases as they progress so that once the storytelling ends they are ready for the real character progression.
but isnt that a way to slow down players too? whats the purpose other than to slow down progression?
If you want it to. You could also get rid of the filler kill 10 rats quests and just tell a story in a much shorter time frame.
the backend still needs to be different than other games, simply because ashes has different software requirements. its irrelevant if they will use a dedicated host or not, thats nto what will define the backend code.
You'll note that I said the hardware requirement will be one thing that requires different back end, I also mentioned the node system would require a totally different setup, but made no suggestion that this would be an exhaustive list of reasons as to why Intrepid are not compying L2's back end (as George uninformidly claimed).
Ashes using AWS rather than their own servers is something that is fairly well known. The reason I used it as the main example of the point I was making is beucase a setup like that simply wasn't possible when L2 was in development, thus there was no way they could even consider setting up their back end the way Intrepid needs to set it up for Ashes.
I'm at a point where I am not sure what you are even arguing. You seem to be in your default mode of just arguing against anything I say - even though you now seem to understand and agree with what I said. At least, I think you understand it now.
So, what is your argument here?
i didnt say i disagree with everything. i was only clarifying that aoc will be using dedicated servers. that is separate than how you build the backend, aws or not. aws also has dedicated hosting
I agree with this but I also think character leveling in the traditional sense is outdated and no longer needed. I would also prefer a skills based progression system rather than an overall leveling one. It makes more sense that because I cast fireball 100 times or crafted a dagger 100 times I would increase my skill in those areas and not general spell casting or weaponcrafting.
1a) If leveling (which is tied to not only to character "progression", but also as a benchmark for gear strength and price value, mapping out the mmos world into dangerous/grouping hunting zones and more relaxing zones, simple and DIRECT measure, as a single number, of who can pull their weight in your group [instead of asking them what Lv is you X Y Z A B C D E D ability]), is outdated, in other words if Level, this simple and understandable number that appears SO MANY TIMES on so many tabs and windows, is outdated and no longer needed....
1b) what does that make of the passive skill trees of 0.05 crit dmg, 120 armor pen, 2% chance to apply burn status, +10 mp, +25% mp regen, -10 mp cost per cast, 0.2% chance on hit to restore mp and all the other bullshit passive, invisible combat factors as opposed to Active Abilities (not to be confused with action combat)?
2a) How did we ended up talking about the "Lv" not being needed any more in mmos, when every shitty singleplayer open world rpg has introduced levels on the protagonist of the story (assassins creed assasins need levels to become better at killing... the witcher sudenly needs levels to do his thing)
2b) You want the devs to code leveling based on how many times you casted fireball which has 5s cooldown? What about fireshit, that has 20s cooldown? Should they factor the higher CD and put an xp modifier on it? Code for that, just so we can move on from "outdated character levels"?
Does it really make more sense to you, to do all that?
Should we limit active skillbars to 5 skills just because everybody should level up their skills now and that is meta?
Should you be forced to swap out skills? "On monday I will play with fireball, on tuesday I will play with fireshit and the rest of the days I will level up my iceturds, and I will have levelled up all my 'good abilities' equally.
Why re-invent the wheel on things that nobody cares?
"Lv" is a means of communication. Leave it at that.
Lastly, back to topic, in mmos there used to be official servers, in which rates for xp/gold/drops were low, and there were private servers in which levelling/wealth was a mater of days or hours.
Same mmo, different servers with ONLY the level/loot speed changed.
Which ones do you thing had 10,000 people and which ones do you think had 150?
WoW is a great example. They could get rid of all of the character level increases each expansion and instead:
1) Have players work through the story line picking up skill increases and weapon increases as they progress so that once the storytelling ends they are ready for the real character progression.
but isnt that a way to slow down players too? whats the purpose other than to slow down progression?
If you want it to. You could also get rid of the filler kill 10 rats quests and just tell a story in a much shorter time frame.
yeah sure, but he said "once the storytelling ends they are ready for the real character progression" which means the quests are also a filler until you reach the real character progression.
so questing and killing mobs are both fillers then? but you cant say that one is better than the other. some people enjoy questing and reading dialogues and some people like combat and not playing running simulators.
the backend still needs to be different than other games, simply because ashes has different software requirements. its irrelevant if they will use a dedicated host or not, thats nto what will define the backend code.
You'll note that I said the hardware requirement will be one thing that requires different back end, I also mentioned the node system would require a totally different setup, but made no suggestion that this would be an exhaustive list of reasons as to why Intrepid are not compying L2's back end (as George uninformidly claimed).
Ashes using AWS rather than their own servers is something that is fairly well known. The reason I used it as the main example of the point I was making is beucase a setup like that simply wasn't possible when L2 was in development, thus there was no way they could even consider setting up their back end the way Intrepid needs to set it up for Ashes.
I'm at a point where I am not sure what you are even arguing. You seem to be in your default mode of just arguing against anything I say - even though you now seem to understand and agree with what I said. At least, I think you understand it now.
So, what is your argument here?
i didnt say i disagree with everything. i was only clarifying that aoc will be using dedicated servers. that is separate than how you build the backend, aws or not. aws also has dedicated hosting
If you have an issue with the way I corrected someone vomiting blatantly incorrect information, perhaps go back to that blatantly incorrect post and correct that with what ever information you wish to add to the discussion.
Look at what George said where I was correcting him -
Secondly, L2 didnt had server shards and Steven based AoC on it.
10 words and two acronyms - yet the amount of incorrect contained within is actually astonishing.
Yet rather than go back to that post and attempt to correct it, you took issue with my simplified correction to it.
Do you wonder why I just work on the assumption that a few posters here will just argue with anything at all that I post?
As to Ashes using dedicated servers - the reason Intrepid are going with AWS is scalability. If the game was only running on dedicated servers, that scalability would be prohibitively expensive. If Ashes launches with 10 servers and suddenly finds a need to be running on 25 instead, AWS will make that happen very quickly because they already have the hardware in place - it just isn't dedicated to Ashes.
In the above scenario, the original 10 servers "may" be dedicated to Ashes (we don't know, and it doesn't matter to this discussion at all), but any additional resources needed likely won't be dedicated. Even if those servers aren't needed, the software needs to be built in a manner where it can scale, and likely also with distributed compute built in to some degree.
Again though, my point is that Ashes back end is not based on L2's back end. If that is a point you agree with, then I expect you to take your issue up with George, not me.
Comments
That is not a tutorial. Leveling up is a normal phase of RPG games. When you reach max level, you usually get the best skill and gear, you kill the final boss and the game ends. Players who like this kind of progression became later the main audience for MMORPGs.
If you remove the leveling phase then the game is not an RPG but something else.
MMORPGs do not end and to keep players pay subscription or buy things from store, the game has to make the leveling phase longer or to create a game loop, when it would have normally ended.
AoC's game loop is the leveling and destroying nodes.
A game with a very long leveling phase would distribute the game content over the entire leveling phase.
Steven seems to have content only for 45 days. It is a small company.
Maybe most players will be ready to defend nodes much sooner.
But then, the problem you mention about "variety in gameplay" remains.
Variety keeps players in game. Those who will only do the content which helps them to stay competitive, sacrifice variety and gain the satisfaction of being better than others.
The good thing about AoC is that this variety will be added by leveling up the nodes too.
Intreprid Studio can add new content all the time which become available when nodes transition from a level to the next.
This also relates to the quality of pve. L2 didn't really have any quality there, which is why it was always enough to just use a few spells (if not one). I expect Ashes to be better designed than that, though this remains to be seen in showcases.
But you said, as I quoted, that it started at level 1. None of these things mattered in the 2-3 months I played. Counter-example, albeit a personal anecdote, demonstrating the... maybe not falseness of the argument, but at least that it was not as universal as you made it out to have been.
Well, I wouldn't say "not being gank at level 1" sucked. It was definitely a plus. L2 was maybe doomed from the start in NA, I think it was way to grindy for that audience, and, beside, I think loads of people were only trying it out before EQ2 and WoW launch later that year.
Sacred, eh? So... you're from the Vatican!
ok ill correct myself. thats nt how it used to work. not saying you didnt crash the server, im saying its not because the lack of hardware (also, automatic scaling). updates to all players nearby, bandwidth, and software have more to do with the crashes.
dedicated servers mean that you arent sharing the host computer with someone else (another website or game from a different owner for example). aws has dedicated servers as well...so ashes will run on dedicated servers /facepalm
You aren't getting it, this is most likely hard to explain since 2 much text is just not getting anywhere.
The point is spreading "budget" on lower end content is not a solution, that should stay on high end content since that should be the point where people are cycling the most there to make the best use of it.
I've already said taking lower end bosses and adjusting them can be a thing to do so there is more end game content and it is easier to make by adding more mechanics to them. (This is already done in other mmorpgs though they used instances and that won't be as strong in AoC)
It still takes time, to make this content, that land size isn't going to be magically increased either. Spending 3* the time on content is most likely not going to be a thing it will just end up as increased grind of the same content.
You can already see in the original posters message he wants no leveling and different things, this makes sense why the idea is thrown and so bad. This is peoples desperate need for "infinite" grinding so they feel they can gain power forever. I don't agree with any of these kinds of things progression needs to be capped and slowed down. Between end game gear and enchanting that should be plenty of progression.
Well away the games he played, it doesn't matter though this is still a western mmorpg and when they talk about things and how the game is, it is inline with western ideas. When I compare this game to Throne and liberty for example I can see the difference between bot the games from gameplay and the experience with the messages I've felt like I've gotten from them.
You need to go off what is the game aiming to be currently, not someone's past experience with other games because some elements from them are within the game. Steven is not the only one working on the game, i really think you guys forever there are a bunch of other designers.
I do not see things any closer to korean mmorpgs with the game, you are free to try and explain that to me where that is actually the case though. Leveling is western, questing is western (if they are doing what they plan to do), no infinite mob grinding for leveling, dungeons within the game with proper boss mechanics, style of combat.
Yes there would be mob difference. Mobs would have tiers associated with them indicating additional mechanics, resistances, loot, etc. For example a tier 1 skeleton has only lootable bones and uses one spell that can be interrupted. Whereas as a tier 5 skeleton has the possibility to drop mid tier crafting resources and has multiple mechanics, some of which must be executed properly. Different tiers have different intended player skill levels intended to tackle them. If you're interested we can get into it more,
Players dont necessarily need the sword, but instead want to have it. The special iron gives a bleed damage increase and a desired build by player A uses bleeds. Players are incentivized and motivated to interact with the world through immersive tasks involving character building and/or social interaction. Leveling, and the associated grinding advocated for here, force an efficiency race primarily based on time invested. Whereas an exploration based system isn't completely determined by time spent killing mobs, but instead has objectives with more immersive meat on them.
Decision paralysis is definitely a problem. I'm currently playing Baulders Gate with my partner whose never played an RPG before. Its taken about 10 or so hours for them to get comfortable with the game systems, and exploring the world itself. A well designed open world game needs to keep these players in mind and help them get into the large parts of the game. This is no different than the difference between a great DM and someone whose mediocre.
Some semblance of vertical progression is inevitable. However, focusing on character build, world immersion, and social interaction as means to connotate gained power are much preferred versus simple larger numbers.
While all those features (like the crafting systems) are available at level 1 it'll be wildly inefficient to do them, unless you have a guild feeding you raw resources or escorting you as a gatherer. While catering to guilds is important, solo and small group players need to not feel like they're behind the moment they step foot in Ashes.
While you are correct that this type of player was the primary person playing MMOs in 1998, you fail to realize this player type has evolved in terms of what they find interesting. EQ has an amazing world thats interesting to explore, but the leveling system itself hampers that. Designers can make mobs dangerous without that danger being tied to a rigid vertical power climb.
Leveling should introduce a player to all the important systems needed to play the game. Once a player finds the things they like, bread-crumbing them to the content they want to do will lead to higher player engagement and retention.
I don't know if "evolved" is the proper word. But players definitely changed. And they will not like a longer leveling phase. Many don't want subscription either.
While we don't know how everything will be balanced, at least for the leveling up we have this 45 days and that
There will be a "comfortable" number of character slots available for alts.[1][2]
And those who want progression and story, will get it through the nodes, leveling them up:
Every stage a node develops it's unlocking narratives, storylines, it's changing the spawn population of the area around it, changing what bosses exist, it's triggering events where you may have legendary dragons attack the city. It's basically writing the story of the server based on the actions and determination of the players. So, you may experience a dungeon one month earlier and have a completely different story that relates to this location the next month, because something has changed either geopolitically or from the node standpoint.[6] – Steven Sharif
If this will introduce enough variety or not, remains to be seen.
Those who don't care about story, and have no patience for alts, will just move between high level nodes, doing the high level content and trying to have a freehold all the time.
If the character leveling up would be increased to 120 days, then metropolises would start to appear also after 100...120 days. That would reduce the dynamic of node sieges and the stories would not be transmitted the way Steven wants. Would become longer.
I think 45 days is a good choice and I hope there will be enough things to do after that too.
Sandboxy MMOs tend to be lacking in story.
Themepark MMORPGs are going to be very much like a bundle of D&D modules/adventures.
Themebox would probably be ideal - but... the tech has to get us to a place where we aren't stuck at endgame... the end of the curated module/adventure, waiting years for new content.
Storybricks and Nodes are good solutions - if they can ever be implemented.
Some of us have been waiting 10 years for that.
Social Org progression, Religion progression, Racial progression and Artisan progression will also help.
"Rushing" to max Adventurer level should not be an issue for Ashes.
While single player RPGs are about the main characters journey, I'd argue MMOs are not about any one individual person. It's a shared experience where the story is about the players, the world, and how they interact with each other.
Leveling (especially timesink leveling) doesn't necessarily bring these social interactions to the forefront and I'd advocate that it only hinders them.
3 months of that content will most likely be super repeatable actions that will feel like a grind, because you'll be doing the same shit over and over and over again to hopefully get the loot you need. This would be in now way different from having all that repeatable content spread over all the levels instead of being backloaded.
But even outside of that. Do you expect hardcore players to just stop playing the game at that point? Cause I somehow doubt that Intrepid will manage to put out huge 4-months long varied content patches every 1/3 of a year.
In other words, either we have some fun enough grind in the game or we lose majority of hardcore players, simply because they won't have anything to do in the game.
Open world content, open world pvp, longer leveling (even right now), no separation in gear between pvp and pve, party-based content and balance instead of "I'm the hero of the world and can do everything alone", now we even have forced pvp locations, the general plan for "massiveness".
All of those just SCREAM "eastern mmo" to me. Mostly because western mmos have just been trying to copy WoW for the past 15 years. Even the most eastern (japanese) mmo literally took huge inspiration from WoW and just refined its formula.
The only reason I'm on these forums at all is because back in 2020 I saw "new lineage 2" in Ashes and not a "new WoW". If anything, I'm not exactly sure what kind of western mmos you are even talking about when you say that Ashes is gonna be a "western mmo". Like, yes, it's gonna be made by a western studio, but the design is barely western imo (well, maybe it would've been 20 years ago, but we're kinda 20 years past that point). Amazon is making "western" mmos and you can see that in the changes they made to NW and are now trying to add to TL.
So there would still be vertical power differences that players would have to overcome by doing weaker-powered content first. Definitely seems kinda levelingly to me
We'll have this in crafting, supposedly since the very start. So far I don't remember any indicators that some features or gear types will be strictly locked behind leveling. If I forgot something do point it out.
Except that "immersion" would come in the form of majority of players just looking up a guide for the most OP build and then just following it. Which would be effectively the same thing as looking up a leveling guide.
Those large numbers are simply a visual indicator of the very things you mention here.
Immersion will always be subjective. To me it's way more immersive to come across a mob that's way more powerful than I am who then oneshots me and moves on. I'll want to become stronger and come back to kick his ass. I literally did this with a unicorn back when I first started playing L2.
Coming back to that unicorn when I was 20 levels about it to oneshot it back was one of the best experiences in the game at that point for me. W/o an easily recognizable distinction in power that feeling wouldn't have been as strong.
Btw, I found that unicorn at a way lower lvl because I was out exploring for a better spot to farm. And after getting my ass beat by said unicorn I had to explore in the other direction, which lead me to underground ruins with skeletons and ghosts (which also had rewarding quests associated with them). And that dungeon was a popular leveling spot, so there was a ton of people there. I made some friends by trying to fight stronger mobs deeper in the dungeon and we then continued leveling together, because it made the process more fun and easier.
Literally all the things you mentioned were present, even though it all stemmed from me just trying to lvl.
And this also has literally 0 argument against lvling. If you're a solo player, even if the game has no lvls - you'll still be fucked when it comes to big scale crafting. And if you're talking about small scale stuff, then how exactly is leveling in any way preventing you from doing that?
Two points with this.
First, you are factually incorrect. The hardware Intrepid uses is dedicated hardware from Amazons perspective - it is hardware with the sole purpose of leasing to customers.
From Intrepids perspective, it will not be dedicated. Some of the hardware used in the first few months of the games life will not be used again by the game. It will still be used by Amazon for leasing out to it's customers (that hardwares actual dedicated purpose), it will just be to a different enterprise.
Even if we ignore this, if we assume Intrepid are simply leasing static hardware from Amazon, at best you are arguing against berevity here. You understand the point I am making, and you understand that I am correct - you are just picking holes in the fact that I opted to get the message across in a few words rather than many.
This exact situation is why I seldom opt to do this - so any walls of text from me are as much your doing as mine.
Most games didn't have automatic scaling if you go back to the early 2000's.
Sure, more popular games did - but I didn't say I was talking about popular games.
Yes, overloading the servers by performing an action that requires an update to many clients is indeed a way to crash most servers, but that isn't what I was talking about.
Player levels are the carrot on your stick. That's why they exist. It is an easy goal to set and make players think it is important so they keep playing. Fundamentally in nearly all mmorpgs character levels have zero purpose other than to level gate and try to slow content churn. Most gear level increases that are meaningful occur after the player has already reached max character level.
I get that there will likely never be a developer to try a no character level model. I also get why it seems alien to most people.
WoW is a great example. They could get rid of all of the character level increases each expansion and instead:
1) Have players work through the story line picking up skill increases and weapon increases as they progress so that once the storytelling ends they are ready for the real character progression.
no i didnt understand your point. dedicated means you are the only owner of that hardware while you are using it. if you rent me 3 computers and 3 months later i tell you i only need 2 and you rent the 3rd one to someone else, i had 3 dedicated computers, and now i have 2 and someone else has 1.
but isnt that a way to slow down players too? whats the purpose other than to slow down progression?
If that is how you want to define dedicated hardware (you can define it like this if you wish), Ashes will not be run on dedicated hardware.
However, the meaning I was clearly going for was hardware purchased for the specific and sole task task - something that Ashes is also not going to be doing - but L2 was.
I think what you mean is that a purely "themepark" story in a static game, where everyone hops on the exact same rides pretty much in the exact same order, means no one has to speak to other players because we all have the same experiences and can find out anything we want to know online.
But, leveling is not the issue. Static gameplay is the issue.
I'm not going to have more social interactions in a sandbox game.
First off I don't see you are getting BiS gear in 2 months for the fact the content should be hard with different levels, enhancement (depending on how aids they could make it, it could be unrealistic to think you will never have bis), people needing multiple gear sets to be effective in different situations and the pvp conflicts that will naturally slow players down.
I feel you are trying to cop out that they have the best gear in that time frame, which again it means they need to spend more time to ensure the gameplay cycle at that point than working on a leveling experience that eventually ends. There is no way around that, an increased time leveling does not lead to a better game cause when you run through the content it is done. It doesn't matter if you try to say they can reuse parts of it, new world literarily did that for everything. It is all about the cycle you make, and since it is a western style levels are going to have a impact that is just a fact.
Open world conte,t open world pvp, longer leveling does not scream eastern in the slightest. What it is is more old school mmorpg design back to the older days. In the newer age those don't exist as much and the same can be said of actual new mmorpgs being made since the era was stalling with new games.
All of that i remember literarily from everquest lmao. Eatern is when you have a open world with brain dead content and its just grinding , crappy monetization, and pvp isn't even in the picture that is only some certain games. Back in the older days i played some crappy mmorpgs like fflyf and some other random asian type mmorpgs and perfect world. The lack of actual good content was terrigle and why western mmorpgs were always better. You can try to make a point though they have some of those bad elements still they managed to improve some things.
I feel you are looking at linage and trying to think AoC is just going to be a copy of it because it has some of the system in the game. I'm looking at what is the content you are doing in the game and level of quality and the vibe of it. The vibe being more old school and western with the quest you will be doing as well and such and story that would be around it. Not a lifeless grinding mmorpg no challenge, no interesting content, everything feeling kind of the same, terrible monetization, lack of interesting design, mobs places in large packs and all around areas thoughtless meant just for grinding. You can see the differences between the vibes of a western mmorpg and a korean one it is so clear as day it is blinding.
In some cases, yes.
Essentially, Intrepid lease compute power from AWS - not necessarily actual server hardware.
That is why the back end needs to be completely different to games like L2 - ignoring all other aspects that require it to be vastly different.
also, pretty sure you can pay money for a dedicated host and avoid sharing resources with other companies (ive had dedicated hosts before). im sure aoc will run on a dedicated host in aws.
Ashes using AWS rather than their own servers is something that is fairly well known. The reason I used it as the main example of the point I was making is beucase a setup like that simply wasn't possible when L2 was in development, thus there was no way they could even consider setting up their back end the way Intrepid needs to set it up for Ashes.
I'm at a point where I am not sure what you are even arguing. You seem to be in your default mode of just arguing against anything I say - even though you now seem to understand and agree with what I said. At least, I think you understand it now.
So, what is your argument here?
If you want it to. You could also get rid of the filler kill 10 rats quests and just tell a story in a much shorter time frame.
i didnt say i disagree with everything. i was only clarifying that aoc will be using dedicated servers. that is separate than how you build the backend, aws or not. aws also has dedicated hosting
yeah sure, but he said "once the storytelling ends they are ready for the real character progression" which means the quests are also a filler until you reach the real character progression.
so questing and killing mobs are both fillers then? but you cant say that one is better than the other. some people enjoy questing and reading dialogues and some people like combat and not playing running simulators.
you can also have a combination of both.
If you have an issue with the way I corrected someone vomiting blatantly incorrect information, perhaps go back to that blatantly incorrect post and correct that with what ever information you wish to add to the discussion.
Look at what George said where I was correcting him - 10 words and two acronyms - yet the amount of incorrect contained within is actually astonishing.
Yet rather than go back to that post and attempt to correct it, you took issue with my simplified correction to it.
Do you wonder why I just work on the assumption that a few posters here will just argue with anything at all that I post?
As to Ashes using dedicated servers - the reason Intrepid are going with AWS is scalability. If the game was only running on dedicated servers, that scalability would be prohibitively expensive. If Ashes launches with 10 servers and suddenly finds a need to be running on 25 instead, AWS will make that happen very quickly because they already have the hardware in place - it just isn't dedicated to Ashes.
In the above scenario, the original 10 servers "may" be dedicated to Ashes (we don't know, and it doesn't matter to this discussion at all), but any additional resources needed likely won't be dedicated. Even if those servers aren't needed, the software needs to be built in a manner where it can scale, and likely also with distributed compute built in to some degree.
Again though, my point is that Ashes back end is not based on L2's back end. If that is a point you agree with, then I expect you to take your issue up with George, not me.