Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Questions when talking with Steven
OlympusBurns
Member
We're very fortunate to be following a game's development which has a person like Steven at the helm. The fact that he's dropping in on all of these podcasts and shows is unprecedented in our genre. I don't fault people for not maximizing their time with Steven because this is such a unique circumstance.
For content creators who get to meet with Steven, my recommendations would be:
-Don't ask questions about balance until we're able to test in Alpha 2
-Don't ask for new systems or big changes to existing ones
-Don't ask questions which have already been beaten to death (like DPS meters)
-Don't ask about dates, you won't get an answer
-Ask questions which encourage Steven to expound on systems
-Ask questions that the community would like answered
-Ask new questions. This is hard because it requires a level of knowledge with the game. If Steven let's you know that he'll be on your channel, maybe run your questions by someone knowledgeable on Ashes.
I'm not taking a shot at anyone. In fact, I hope these recommendations help creators gain more followers by having better interviews.
Any other recs you guys can think of for creators who are fortunate enough to interview Steven in the future?
For content creators who get to meet with Steven, my recommendations would be:
-Don't ask questions about balance until we're able to test in Alpha 2
-Don't ask for new systems or big changes to existing ones
-Don't ask questions which have already been beaten to death (like DPS meters)
-Don't ask about dates, you won't get an answer
-Ask questions which encourage Steven to expound on systems
-Ask questions that the community would like answered
-Ask new questions. This is hard because it requires a level of knowledge with the game. If Steven let's you know that he'll be on your channel, maybe run your questions by someone knowledgeable on Ashes.
I'm not taking a shot at anyone. In fact, I hope these recommendations help creators gain more followers by having better interviews.
Any other recs you guys can think of for creators who are fortunate enough to interview Steven in the future?
7
Comments
I enjoy "soft friction"
Everything seems to start with "I may", "I would like".
The same: "I as a guild leader would blah blah blah"
Expansions. Most people are afraid of expansions due to how shitty wow and eso expansions are, due to the lack of owpvp and guild conflict gameplay.
In such mmos expansions mean: play with the npcs in this new map, run 2 new dungeons, be bored of them but keep farming that crit chance dagger.
Yet there are mmos like L2 that did not release content frequently, to give time, value and gravity to older activities.
Due to owpvp, caravans and guild conflict, yearly (or every two years) AoC expansions with new areas, lv cap, few new skills and gear would introduce a new adventure to bring all the owpvp drama into it.
Or let's talk again about "how to make augments for 64 classes", "spoil more lore", "dps meters", "casual/solo", "too many/too few heals", "summoner" "bard", "nodes".
On the other hand, considering the changing world of AoC, as is due to the design, expansions can be considered unecessary. Is that however based on SOME bad experiences from a couple mmos only?
Or does it merit discussion about what would be good down the track and what should be included?
No need for promises, but we have Steven share his thoughts on the same things over and over.
Which streamer/youtuber wants fresh input?
Hahaha yeah exactly dude.
You are going to be so upset when both ESO and WoW maintain populations that are easily 10 times Ashes when this game launches.
It is hopefully going to show you that what those games offer is closer to what most people want than what Ashes is.
As a note - I play neither of those games, so I am not saying "the thing I want is the thing everyone wants". Rather, I am saying literally what I said above - ESO and WoW offer closer to what most people want than what Ashes will offer.
Ok so you said: eso and wow offer what most ppl want.
Now what do you want me to do with this fact? It's not relevant.
You said it. It's still not relevant or of any use.
Most ppl want reality shows, tiktok, youtube social media etc.
No, let me go on: most ppl eat mcdonalds, most ppl havent stepped outside their city, most people are unfit, most people work in meaningless jobs.
Most rich people invest instead of making their dream videogame.
Most of your commends are without a point.
Now what?
Some times, comments just exist on their own. They don't always need discussion. If the statement made in the comment was complete and left no room for discussion (even if just not at that time), then there is nothing to discuss.
I simply wanted to point out to you something that you already knew. I have pointed that out, there is no need to discuss it further.
Yeah, with what is likely a limited amount of time with the top dog to get as many answers as they can, why would they waste time on the same old questions and "ALFA TOO?!!!?!" nonsense.
Completely agree with you here.
Here's one question i had for Steven in regards to reduced death penalty for flagged players:
"I am worried that during pvp encounters one of the participants (most likely unwilling) would flag back with no intention to fight, but just to reduce the death penalty - which can create hallow PvP experience. Or rather i am worried about that scenario being too common, to the point of it being the likely outcome. Reason being - it's the lower risk + no effort solution for the player. Isn't an opportunity to win and take no penalty at all enough of a motivator to fight back? Was such motivation - the goal of flagging penalty change? What if some of those, who would actually fight back, and try to completely avoid the penalty, now would take the lower effort way instead, while those who didn't want to fight - still will not, and will just flag to reduce the penalty?"
cant make it so that flagged players have an increased penalty than non flagged players...or no one would flag then when they are attacked .-.
if they flag to have reduced death penalties, thats fine. you kill them and wont go red lol. you dont kill someone so they incur penalties, probably not even to take some drops from them. you kill them because you are trying to take a spot for yourself, farm a gatherable, etc etc
You think walking all the way back to where you were, without teleports, through mobs is prefered to trying to win the fight, or even never fighting back and making the other guy go Red, risking his items?
And you want Steven to answer that?
Give people a tiny bit more credit.
I'm not suggesting to add a penalty. I pointed out that not losing is enough of a motivation to actually try to win. Lower penalty based on flagging might result in some players that would otherwise be a willing combatant just to flag and die without a fight. You wouldn't argue that killing someone who does not fight back in PvP does not feel very good, regardless of the reward, would you? Motivation to flag is not the same as motivation to fight, and i suspect that the goal was the latter.
Maybe a different example can help here. When someone is presented with a choice - put in a sizeable effort and get 100$, or get 20$ on the spot, with no effort - i am afraid that most will take 20$. I could be wrong though.
Also, i'm not the one who made the change, i'm questioning it, trying to understand it's goal. Because if the goal was to make players fight back more often - i can see result being the opposite.
The point for the attacker should be the location itself. You'll have enough sources of equal pvp through caravans, wars, sieges, open seas, node ruins.
But if your victim simply flags against you to lose less of their shit on death - that's a benefit to you because you're now not a PKer. And if you were going after them purely for their loot - the choice is theirs: is the loot valuable enough to fight for it or is it fine for them to just die.
I like the change from this perspective. I don't like to get punished for resolving a conflict through PK, when it really should've been a PvP.
But i see the goal as to turn some situations that result in PK into PVP. Instead it turns PK into a consensual execution, and i worry that some of the PVP will also turn into that.
Those who are willing to fight - don't need help with that. Those who aren't - still won't. And some of those who were - may become those who aren't, because it's less(zero) effort. Maybe this affects too small of a group of players to worry about, i don't know. I'm just bringing attention to it.
Executions are inevitable in a game that lets you attack and kill anyone. Having the flag state reduce death penalties allows for both parties of the encounter to suffer lesser penalties for that inevitability.
Don't tell me you never had a situation where someone had all the reasons to fight and just didn't - to mess with you and feed you karma, while taking all the losses themself, just to annoy you, out of spite. This happened even in L2. In BDO that was all over the place because running back to where conflict happened took 10 seconds, and it was very annoying. This is what made me consider if any form of lowering death penalties is a good idea in the first place - it really was not in BDO.
They have their resources, they have their leveling progress and their current location. If none of those things matter to them more than "fucking over their attacker" - obviously they'll try to fuck over the attacker. At which point it's gonna be the attacker's time to decide whether going red is worth it at that moment.
It's risk/reward all the way down.
I am tunnel visioned at this point, now i'm talking about a tiny subsegment of a player base which should not be an issue the way it was in BDO and can be neglected.
Maybe they keep being asked because they've not been answered once and dodged every time or answered like "Hmm, maybe, but maybe not though". If this is a big issue a big chunk of the potential player base is having it would be worth taking some time and answering it properly rather than giving answers which inspire no confidence whatsoever that a counter-measure of any sort is in place.
I get that, in your opinion, we should be asking the right questions but quite frankly I don't care about the wind slider and the grass effect and the story behind it, but rather information counter to the problems they create in their streams.
I agree that repeating questions which haven’t had adequate answers is important. The question of big guilds owning everything is a recurring theme with a lot of systems based answers (see Reddit ama with Protobear). Steven has spoken about these systems so much that now it’s more of a balance question than a system/gameplay question. All balance questions are answered with “We’ll see come alpha 2 and adjust accordingly there.”
No idea what this has to do with anything here.
But the goal was probably to positively reinforce those who do think rationally, and decide to solve the conflict through PvP, if no other solution seems viable. My expectation is that some players, that were already on the edge of not taking the PvP way out of the conflict, would now decide to flag up and die without fighting. Some might, but it would make more sense for them to continue fighting. This is why i though the change would be a slight net negative.
But somehow i forgot to consider players that either avoid conflicts altogether, or negotiate solutions to them. Players in this group will now decide to solve some of the conflicts through PvP, which should easily make the change a net positive.
no..people who arent willing to fight wont flag because if they dont flag you might stop attacking them to avoid becoming corrupted.
if my goal is just to pvp, ill stop attacking them if they dont flag back. if my goal is to kill them, ill go red if they dont flag back. and no, it doesnt feel bad if they dont fight back. thats their problem. this isnt some anime episode lol. i kill them because i want the farming spot for myself, not because im interested in the actual pvp, even though sometimes i might be.
Though even in that situation you'd have better chances at finding good pvp, because sooner or later you'd run across a dude who would either attack you even before you hit him or would at least just immediately retaliate.
But this whole scenario also doesn't include ever going far enough to become a PKer, so this couldn't be it.
Which means that you did have a reason to attack and potentially kill that player, at which point you have a goal in mind and you've deemed that goal profitable enough to potentially become corrupted (just as Depraved pointed out above). So the passive kind of player would still have a reward behind them.
Anyway, i was wrong previously, no point in this discussion.
BDO pvp is about who wants to waste the most time for sure lol.
Though they use to have xp loss on death but because of the leveling in bdo the xp loss was kind of insane,.