Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
But you're somehow saying that this grind won't be a grind at max lvl, becaaaaaause? What? I don't really get your point here.
How would this endless grind at max lvl be any different from just shifting some of it to an early stage in your leveling process? Literally have some of that grind just happen on a lower lvl. It's gonna be the same stuff, but with just a number 45 next to it instead of 50.
So as I said. Western games from 20 years ago, even though we're not 20 years in the past.
You do realize that you have just said that even if people grind for way over 2 months they might still not get BiS gear, right? How is that not "asian type mmo"?
Or do you really believe that Ashes will just let you play 1h a day and you'll be like "yeah, I'm done with my daily dose of the game and no other player who plays more will ever outpace me in progress"? Cause imo that's quite silly.
We haven't seen any indication of what the pve will be. If anything, we've seen how shitty it is right now and it's spread around in the EXACT way an eastern mmo would have it.
Several showcases so far literally had 4 people (in an 8-man group location btw) pulling several mobs at the same time and aoeing them down. I've done this in L2 back in 2006.
The boss they showed just moved around the location and slapped random targets. I've done that in L2 as well.
The volcano boss from A1 sat in one place, summoned a ton of minions and breathed fire at people. I think you can guess what I did back in 2006 that this boss encounter reminded me of
Oh, and the open seas being pvp. Isn't that literally a 1-to-1 copy of AA? Cause I do believe that is an eastern mmo as well. Pretty sure the "caravans" are just a better version of pack runs from AA as well.
Again, I see no direct resemblance to any western mmos of the last 20 years in Ashes. And eastern games from 20 years ago were pretty much the same as western ones, except for more grinding, but as I've already explained (and you seem to totally agree) - there's no indication that we won't have grind in Ashes.
And I know that we're in pre-A2 stage and that we haven't seen how the game will be on release, and that Steven has said that allegedly the game won't have a grind, but unless they literally limit people from farming mobs - that is simply an unrealistic assumption of player behavior.
p.s. I said this before, but just to reiterate what I mean when I say "grind". To me any repetitive action is grind. A mob drops a crafting material (which they will in Ashes) and that mat either has a non-100% chance to drop or I need a ton of it for crafting? I'll need to repeatedly kill the mob, which would make that process a grind.
A gatherable has several spawns on a somewhat predetermined respawn timer and I need a ton of that resource? Grind.
Bosses drop valuables and are situated around a certain big location where I can run from one to the other until I've killed them all for the day (if that have daily respawn) and I need a ton of said valuables to equip my group/guild? Grind.
There are quests that I can do to increase my rep with social orgs or node? Grind.
There are things that I have to buy with gold to progress? Money grind by killing mobs to sell certificates. Or market grind by running around all over the place to see if I can get a few beneficial trades. Also grind.
All of those things are the grind you'd have to do in the game if you want to outpace other people's progress to be the very best like no one ever was.
So, unless the only thing you can do in the game is one weekly quest and maybe a weekly boss or two and you're literally done for the entire week, but also managed to somehow get all the stuff you need to progress and no one will be able to outpace you - the game will be grindy.
Full self admiration, totally off-topic.
Like i said it depends on how they do their end game progression, the more work that needs to be put in the more content they need. You don't' shift that to progression where you only go through he game once no one has infinite budget. End game needs to be strong in order to retain players.
Enhancement is the only thing you can take from korean style games and say that is a element within aoc, you did not bring that point up though. Thankfully it is not designed with crappy p2w monetization.
PvE
This is your own issue with pve and other influences so I can't agree with you on this point in the slightest. Approaching a game with a negative mind set thinking it is bad from the start and looking for reasons to argue it is bad has 0 foresight. That is what is influencing you to make a statement like this in a incomplete game.
You are literally looking at the surface level when you make that statement, I am trying to look in the potential complexity they can add with the game.
Mobs using multitude of abilities on and going between range and melee attacks. Increases versatility and challenge of all content in the game that can be scaled and have more of a dynamic feeling towards general and hard content. (eastern mmorpgs are brain dead with basic mobs that just run at you 0 challenge)
Boss in the game with mechanics was a great showcase, its funny that this is in development and they try to explain it but people are too busy looking for reasons to hate. Imagined you used the same energy to look for interesting ways they can approach it and gave feedback on that angle that is useful for them. Having different phases to the boss without giving immense tells that scream at the player to do this. It means following the pattern they can create even more complex bosses when the time arrives and they know their kits and having done some testing on potential player power, etc. (eastern mmropgs AoC has already gone above them since their bosses are pretty dead and lack actual mechanics, let alone having different phases)
Grinding to me (general person) is when you look at the game when you are in the open world you see a large open area with packs of mobs everywhere, and you are grinding to kill those mobs in the most lifeless and easy way possible to progress. And that is what you do most the time to progress where it isn't about challenge but just about killing mobs in quickly and effortlessly and you do that again forever.
If you are going in a dungeon and the mobs have threat and difficulty based on the level of content you are doing but you have to deal with mechanics even without being on a main boss room, that is not "grinding". The term means a certain kind of content generally related to more eastern mmorpg, though it has leaked over to other western games and just been more of a general word used to describe some games if they feel content is repetitive, etc. So saying a game won't be a "grinding game" does not mean the game won't have a grind to it. Any mmorpg will have a grind but it doesn't mean it will be one of those types of "grinding" games.
I'm looking at the current stage of development realistically. I can come up with all kinds of cool and amazing pve designs (and have done so in the past). I could write out those designs for Intrepid to see (have done this in the past as well). But none of that will matter if they don't use that or have a different vision. So why should I think that the game will somehow live up to my made up cool designs, when there hasn't been any real indication of that.
I've already given my main point of feedback to Intrepid. Bring on a pve/AI designer and literally just talk to him and Steven about their full plans for pve and their current progress on that front.
None of the pve that's been shown so far in any way indicates any real depth of mechanics. I can hope that I'm wrong all I want, but I won't know that until I am. Which is either years away or just a few months, if Intrepid decide to do what I suggested. But until then I expect the showcases to keep showing us "8-man group locations" that can be aoe farmed by 4 dudes, which only screams "this is an eastern pve design" to me.
Again, considering what's been told and shown so far - this is precisely what I expect in the game.
- We know that mobs will drop mats for crafting
- We know that crafting gives best gear
- We know that Steven likes soft friction and pvp, so availability of those mobs will most likely be low (and seas that allegedly have amazing rewards have forced-pvp)
- Low availability means that you'd need to spend more time in one location to get the full amount of resources you want
- So far we've only seen aoeable pve
- Aoeable pve + repetitive visits to the same location = eastern-type grind
Add to all of that the fact that OE could potentially destroy your gear (still unclear if it does or will), and you have yourself an endless cycle of eastern-type grind gameplay.Now, you seem to think that I dislike this or smth. I love this shit. I've played a game of this exact design for 12 years and only liked Ashes because it seemed like that exact game. Since finding out about Ashes it has only become more and more similar to that game (with corruption tuning potentially being the biggest difference). I know 100% that I'll play the game if it remains in the current state.
But I still want it to be better and hope it will be. It's just that so far I've seen no direct indication of that. We obviously have a few years till release, so I think there's still a chance that it proves me wrong, which is also the reason why I'm still on these forums following the game.
I'm just not trying to build my arguments on an imagined possibility of what the game might be. I'm simply shifting my outlook every time we get a new piece of info about the overall plan. I previously believed that some hardcore players could become mayors purely through their own skill. I no longer do so, because of the latest stream. The same will happen if we see a pve showcase where mobs are truly difficult and AI is truly great. But until then Ashes will be an eastern-type grindy game for me (which I love).
When i talk about end game I'm talking about the PvE side nothing to do with the pvp side of end game.
If within the current scope of the game with the parts they have shown you feel you could come up with a lot of gameplay ideas based on the small amount of content they have shown that is a good sign. It means that designers where it is their job will have plenty of room to come up with interesting content for players.
I'm going to point you saying "they have shown in indication" that is just a negative outlook like a slight against them for no reason. Though their content showing little tidbits and what they have spoke (including saying their world boss was a simple entry level one for a clear reason) show every indication that intersting designs will be taken into account.
They ask for feedback and iterate on it or are clearly working on it. I don't see how you are coming up with this negative twist, what is backing you up on this that they don't improve on things or have not been trying to create the experience they say they are? Please don't tell me its because you aren't talking to someone on their team because you want to hear what they have to say. Steven have said their plans, they have worked on things, it will get there when the game is ready hearing someone else talk won't change anything if you don't trust in the current project based on the growth they show...
That being said they might in the future when they are ready to do that and have more things to show around that if they deem it beneficial. They have content to make, classes to finish, arguments to figure out, plenty of work before hand so players have an idea what they are working with before they can better understand these more complex methods and interesting designs and how to tackle them.
This isn't a grand point to hold against them as far as i see it, it holds no weight unless to give you a reason to convince yourself personally because of not wanting to give them the benefit of doubt even with what the have been showing so far being positive. If this was a game in beta I'd agree with you a lot more but this is alpha in development so I understand their direction and focus and how it needs to be looked at.
I've explained the eastern vrs western mmo thing but I don't feel you are getting it. Most basic way i can say Eastern = lack of good pve - terrible mob design and placement, little - no mechanics - grinding easy mobs
Western = amazing pve - epic encounters - good mob placement and interest in the world - heavy mechanics
And those slides is exactly what I'm asking Intrepid to do for their pve stream. Literally just get an AI/pve dev, get a powerpoint presentation going and discuss the tools those devs have for building cool fights and what in their opinion ARE the cool fights.
This would do so damn much for my confidence in the pve's future. And it requires next to no in-game visuals. I just think that Steven is afraid of producing that kind of stream, because he thinks that people will start complaining that the game is fake and that nothing is done (I know that me saying this rn is kidna hypocritical).
But the latest two showcases having some powerpoint stuff gives me hope that we might see exactly what I'm talking about. I wish we had gotten that before the end of A2 sales, so that I could spend my $250 with full confidence, but alas that will not be the case.
They will get there when they get there, the vibe I'm getting is you are wanting to rush to the finish line but they have all the elements of their game they are flushing out. At one stream a month you get to see a fraction of things they are doing.
I'd rather you making this arguments about augments and all full class reveals before PvE, it would make more sense atleast. They need to make the tools that can solve the problems before creating the problems. It doesn't mean some of those problems are not being designed but when the time is right to do a proper showcase they most likely will do that.
Though i don't feel you are going to get a straight up PvE showcase, it is most likely going to be bits and pieces you will have to look at other showcases and see / predict their direction as everything comes together. Though some might be more leaning towards pve than others, and from those you have to dissect the small details.
Which why it is important to know the player kit is because you can use those tools to create the content and know the strength of players and add complexity with. The more tools the player has gives you an idea of the difficulty they can add to the content. If gameplay looked simple it would mean the harder pve fights would also be more simple.
At the end of the day be it they earn your trust or not it can simply be something you wait till the end product. I won't say any in development thing can fully earn trust, but they have shown to improve things and actually care about the feedback and act on it. I don't support games early normally ever nor even a large sum of money, but I give credit where it is due. I can see the direction and I know ill be playing the game as everyone else by the end.
It's like you deciding to buy a hammer, because hammer is a cool tool, but then your pipe bursts and ya ain't fixing that shit with a hammer.
People want to see classes and augments because they already want to start dreaming about their builds and shit. I want to know about AI design, because I want to sleep peacefully knowing that the game will be good.
Regardless if you think it is backwards or not it doesn't matter. You can't design these problems without the tools to do them, the more intricate the tool the more potential problems create for players to solve. Once they know the upper limits on the tools player having and making sure that experience is fun they can make the more difficult content around that.
If you are doing things the way you want you are limiting what players can do in a box, as if you walk out the box the content can become easy as you have tools not taken account for that can make something more dead easy. Knowing the extremes allows you to dial in what you want and create interesting things around what you are prepared for. You aren't being like ok players can do this now, so we need to go over all these bosses since we have them an extra tool, or they just allow the encounter to be easy and not worry about extra work.
*This doesn't mean it still can't happen either way but reduces the effect.
If we look at new world as a easy bad example how they rebalanced everything to fit around their new more pve focused design with instanced dungeons etc. Healing was so busted because it was buffed and forced to fit in a new mold, making the PvP in game unwinnable unless you could stagger lock since killing people was not possible under healing. This is pretty much done in a way where dungeon ai first than worry about characters after, though of course they had rushed design that made the issue worse but still.
I'll only note that when designing, I create the problems first.
I have tried the other way, with less success. Other designers I'm in contact with generally agree (I'd say about 4 out of 5 agree).
My class designs are still not entlrey complete because building encounters around class design without an incredibly clear idea of the gameplay experience those encounters are intended to evoke is just too prone to failure.
This is even more true once PvP options (or a game design where the 'monsters' have the same ability sets as players' come into play, for me). So NiKr speaks for my group in this topic in general. The only addition I have personally from my group is that the number sounds perfect to us. Enough that a player who decides to take a week or two off and binge the game can catch up to their friends, or where someone can bring up an alt to 'basically functional addition to groups that aren't at max'.
Longer leveling would have to be very top heavy for this to still be true with the proposed value, so I don't like it (in general, I don't like very top-heavy leveling experiences, always makes it feel like you could just not have had any leveling at all).
I'm also used to games with Level Sync and Level Capped content though, both of which are intended to bring people together. This works out well since players with less time to play, only need enough of this content type to 'fill out their social time'. Basically you only need 10 or so 'level 30 capped fights' because the level 30 player who isn't catching up, doesn't have time for more than one or two of these per day... and it's likely that by the time you've cleared them all, they'll be past it (and it doesn't matter since they get capped to 30 also if they go up to 33 for example, but almost all their gear is still relevant so it's fine).
The developers estimate that players will reach level cap before a quarter of nodes reach Village (stage 3).[15]
I somehow feel like this creates a very different game than the one I was envisioning, and therefore I'm reconsidering at least the general response I had, to probably be more in line with George's perspective, because I can't figure out why the above should be the case, even after listening to the source.
But I'd say that if we get a choice, I would prefer that the Nodes level faster, not that the leveling itself be slower.
Interesting!
That means players having all the skills will enjoy the content level 3 nodes bring, then the dungeons and stories from next levels. And they'll have to focus on leveling nodes instead of selfishly only their characters.
Hm, no, it doesn't really mean that.
Just because only 1/4 of the nodes get to Village doesn't mean that we won't get some Towns and Cities within it.
In fact, based on what happens in other similar games, I'd expect we would get 3 cities and maybe 7 Towns, with the remaining 10 being still at Village, because that would be the point where nothing is likely to be 'blocking' the advancement to Village or beyond.
So I definitely expect that players will have access to 'City Content' by the time a decent number of them are at level cap.
This only works if you only have one person creating that content (or very few, at least).
If you have many people all making that content, then it gets messy real fast.
I'm sure you've heard me say before that the best top end content in an MMO always comes 2 to 3 years after the game launches - a big part of that is because this is when players have had a full understanding of their classes for long enough that developers can develop to full player character potential.
Additionally, if you are creating an encounter and you want players to be able to do "a thing" that the class kits provided to them doesn't allow for, then you just create that ability and give it to players for that encounter.
What players to work together to play a song to shoothe the big bad, but the game doesn't have a music system? Cool, just add quests to the game that reward players with a bell of a given note, (A, B, C, D, E, F and G, giving players the full C major scale), and then have the encounter ask them to play a piece of music one note at a time.
And then, when they started to shift towards pve, they had to create problems for the limited amount of tools they had. And it all fucking crumbled and the whole system went to shit.
So making problems after you already have the tools didn't work out for them.
I think what Steven meant there is that hardcore players will always be able to outpace the "intended" lvling speed. And Intrepid don't intend to utterly limit leveling, so some hardcore players will be able to reach lvl50 before most nodes even provide the content for that.
Though I do agree that getting to lvl50 on, supposedly, lvl30 content is silly and I definitely hope they rebalance some stuff so it's a smoother process.
But isn't this exactly what I'm talking about?
You've already created a design problem of "we need them to do some music shit, but they can't" and then you create the solution tool of "we'll give them a quest that allows them do music shit".
Maybe this is a complete misunderstanding on my part of both Mag's and yours points?
@Mag7spy were you talking about the fully finished in-game mechanic or the tool/solution part of the designing process? Cause I was talking about the designing process. But it seems that both you and Noaani are talking about the in-game final part.
I understand what you are saying but you are missing my point with new world. The main issue to me is the limited player kit, you had rapier builds that spammed 2 buttons and that was the extent of the combat with a good team to throw damage out quickly and mash. The player kits were so dull it reduces the complexity you can have in dungeons and the combat overall. If the kits were more complex there would have been more potential difficulty added to dungeons. Your movement is limited with the heavy rooted feeling of attacks, and your skills and complexity was also limited. So pretty much it reduces the kind of interesting content you can make for that pve overall. Do to the design they had to over adjust on healing so it worked for pve based on the system of having a limited amount of skills and customization.
Overall it made the game not fun to play and boring in most cases (the fun in the game was the social element). From the root of the game you need to make it to be fun to play. That doesn't mean nothing on pve starts as far as making some encounters. But if you are encounters and the game is not fun to play you are having issues. And large adjustments can greatly effect encounters you made or cause a large potion of them and work to be scrapped.
I'm not talking about fully finished mechanics in game, though you need to know what you are working with if you are going to be making end game content so you can match it tot he right amount of challenge you want.
Yes you can always add more tools after the fact for players but things can feel tacky where you get the new mechanics and its clear you need to use it like it was just kind of thrown on. It is better when it is all part of the original package to begin with and making sure that is strong in terms of being fun to play with good complexity.
Quick random example, if active block did not exist in the game then later on was added to the game. Though it made a lot of content easier and reduced fun compacity in the pve elements, even though the trade off is it made PvP combat a lot more interesting. And caused a lot of work to try to bring it in line with pve now between nerfs and adjustments to it , gear, stats, etc. Where as if the game was designed with active guard in mind it would flow a lot better with the core of the gameplay and mechanics of bosses around it.
*it does not mean every single thing needs to be fully fleshed and planned out but you need to have a good frame work a lot of elements and knowing what tools the player has and can do. And why I feel showing that over this pve stuff (which as i said pve will be shown over time and you need to look at the tiny details to understand what they can do with it as far as difficulty + the kits of the classes).
Your active block example only works if the game was finished and then devs were like "oh shit, you know what would be cool? active block! Why we didn't think of this before? Who knows! Maybe we're just bad".
Yes, you can't think of absolutely everything right off the bat. And as Noaani said, quite a lot of games usually come into their own a few years down the line. But that's exactly why expansions and updates exist. You make a game as well as you think you can, you then learn what people prefer/like/want and then adjust the game in an expansion/update.
The "what people want" is the "problem" in this context. So you adding new stuff is the solution, be it purely new player tools or a full reimagining of pve/pvp/etc. But my point is that the problem will always come first, because you wouldn't know what to fix if you didn't know you even had a problem.
My understanding of what you are saying is that they should design encounters first, and then player classes to take those encounters on with.
If you do this on a small scale, a handful of developers, it can work, and perhaps could be better.
If you attempt to do it on a larger scale, with many developers working on both content and class kits, then you aren't going to end up with a coherent system. Different content developers will start making different demands on what class kits need to have, and it is absolutely possible that these developers could quite easily end up requiring mutually exclusive things from a class system (ie, one encounter needing to limit player access to AoE avoid abilities to no more than 2 per minute, but another encounter requiring players have access to no less than 4 per minute - this is a very simple example and can be extended to basically every ability type in a game).
On the other hand, if you develop class kits, developers will then know that players have easy access to 3 AoE avoid abilities, and with a decent cost to performance bring that up to 5. Thus, content can be developed based around those numbers.
Adding things like the music component I talked about above (taken from EQ2) is used for if you want a specific flavor to the encounter (Djinn in EQ2 and their affinity to music in that game), or if you want to add a specific mechanic for just one fight. The point is that these things don't impact the rest of the game.
It would be fairly stupid, imo, if a game had an in combat class ability that allowed players to ring a bell in one note, but that ability was only used in one place. On the other hand, tie that ability to an item and it's all good.
So pve devs come up with encounters. Then player skills devs (if those are completely different groups of people) come up with stuff that would fit those encounters. Then the Director sees if he's satisfied with that approach and checks if player skills apply to pvp in a good manner as well. If there's a problem on that front, the player skills devs go back to the first step and try to come up with tools that would apply to both pve and pvp in the best way. Rinse repeat until the design has a full singular vision.
In later expansions pve devs come up with new mechanics and skills devs see if they can just make changes to the existing skills or create new ones, or, like in your example, just add encounter-specific abilities.
If that assumption is incorrect and instead it's just a whole damn mess of "no one fucking knows what the other group of devs is making" then my bad, I was of a better opinion of the game development industry.
Again, on larger productions where 5 or 6 major iteration stages can be expected, this works just fine. This is the method you would want to use if there is no real in-development communication between class and content teams.
PvE content is always going to be at it's best when it is designed from the ground up with all player class kits in mind. Even moving an ability from one spot on a class skill tree to a different spot could actually ruin the balance of resources developers assumed players would have for the encounter, and thus make it either much easier or much harder than intended.
The key thing is, you don't just develop encounters and then develop class kits to fit them - unless you are a three person team (or there abouts).
But for some reason, majority of pvp games tend to have shit pve. I wonder why that is.
Editing to add the reason for this;
If content was pushing class kits, that has reprocussions all the way down the playerbase. It means that your class kit for a level 15 player is still based on what is needed for top end raiding. It means people not wanting to raid still have class kits based on top end raiding - but top end raiding requires different things from players (as a general rule, top end raiding requires players to hyper focus on one thing, group PvE requires players to be a little more self sufficient, solo requires players to be fully self sufficient).
Thus, trying to create class kits that are built off of content, but then have them able to fulfil all of the above and fulfil all requirements of all content types is just not viable.
On the other hand, building class kits to be viable in the above scenarios and then building content off of that is much more viable. The kind of player attracted to a PvP game doesn't want the kind of PvE in a PvE game, generally speaking.
Isn't much more to it than that, honestly.
This is why Ashes pushing itself as PvX, and Steven talking about how he would like to compete with WoW on raid content, left many people assuming it wouldn't be the same old PvP game with the same lack of quality PvE experiences.
It is a fundmental storytelling tool - especially common in Fantasy stories. Novels, TV shows, Films and Video Games. That's why they exist.
I dunno why you say "fundamentally in MMORPGs". It's fundamental in RPGs.
Which is why, if you are removing levels, you're really starting to drift into some other type of game genre than RPG.
Amount of xp per level is a way to try to gate and slow content churn - especially when the main thing to do is combat.
WoW: Draginflight already has quite a lot of horizontal progression and new story after reaching max level.
What is "real character progression"?
I assumed players will distribute themselves on the entire map when the servers are launched, hoping to level their own node.
If they get clumped into a few higher level nodes, maybe they level those nodes too, faster. And leave 75% of nodes at lvl 1 and 2.
But then I bet Steven will change something, already in Alpha phase.
Players will try to progress Nodes that fit the criteria they desire - region, biome, Node Type, racial, etc.
And then... each server can only have a max of 5 Metros.
But... there are 108 Nodes to start with. Vast majority of those will become Vassal Nodes.
And, there will be a decent amount of variance as Towns, Cities and Metros are destroyed in Sieges.
With that being said, the levels in this game are similar to a tutorial. I have seen the chess anology being made, so I will use that. I am teaching my daughter chess. I didn't just start out with all the pieces. It was one piece at a time. Here is the king.It does this. If it dies, the game is over. Then we added pawns...
Once you get to the end of leveling, the tutorial is over. You have basic gear and now you have a million other things to do. You cant max crafting until you max your adventure level. You cant have a freehold until you are max level. You cant do, insert all the things. AoC is a sandbox game, and people will create their own purpose. There could be quests to give some purpose. Node Progression, life skills, becoming a mayor, watching the world burn all give a purpose. Lower level characters will always have a purpose in the bigger picture. In sandbox games, we all need to realize there will always be a bigger fish. Someone with "better" gear, or more people, or greater resources. Interpid seems to be doing a good job of balancing all of this. The only question that none of us can currently answer is "Can the underdog win with better tactics?" If the answer is sometimes, then awesome. That is good game design.
TL:DR The leveling system is getting character to a place where they can do whatever. The real game starts at max level. You won't have the best gear or even be the best at everything because you will have to put time into those things as well. There is an investment so people can't just start out at doing whatever. That is the initial leveling experience. You will have to earn your place.