Questions when talking with Steven

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?

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Ludullu

morphwastaken wrote: »

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.

Well yes, of course I had those, but those are outside of your issue with the flagged penalties. People not fighting back for whatever reason is their choice and their own risk/reward equation to solve.

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.

morphwastaken

NiKr wrote: »

It's risk/reward all the way down.

Taking a risk to kill such player doesn't achieve anything, other than making them more pissed, which has no value to me. They pose no threat, and offer no reward.

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.

iliketoeatjam

OlympusBurns wrote: »

Totally agree. Questions from that perspective aren't asked enough. Anytime they are though, it's the "how will you stop big guilds from owning everything" question. That question has been beaten to death.

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.

OlympusBurns

iliketoeatjam wrote: »

OlympusBurns wrote: »

Totally agree. Questions from that perspective aren't asked enough. Anytime they are though, it's the "how will you stop big guilds from owning everything" question. That question has been beaten to death.

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.”

OlympusBurns

Noaani wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Alright here is another one:

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".

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.

No idea what this has to do with anything here.

morphwastaken

I see where i was wrong now. I assumed that change is aimed at irrational players - those who decide to neither try to avoid a conflict, nor to resolve it (through negotiation or PvP), by trying to push them towards PvP. But that would require them to think rationally, and if they did that - they would not be in this group to begin with. This is why i though this change would not achieve it's goal.

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.

Depraved

morphwastaken wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

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

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.

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.

Ludullu

morphwastaken wrote: »

Taking a risk to kill such player doesn't achieve anything, other than making them more pissed, which has no value to me. They pose no threat, and offer no reward.

I mean, you had a reason for attacking that person, right? Or are you purely talking about situations where you simply wanted some random pvp and went around attacking people until someone fought back?

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.

morphwastaken

NiKr wrote: »

I mean, you had a reason for attacking that person, right?

I don't know how to reply

Killing him was ultimately pointless. He was wasting his time, and trying to waste mine. I could either deal with it, or take a risk of going red and hope he would leave. Rational person would not do what he did. He had nothing to lose or to gain in-game. It's hard to deal with a person who has nothing to lose. It was a design flaw in BDO that pushed it to an extreme. I did ask him to stop before resorting to killing, to be clear.
Anyway, i was wrong previously, no point in this discussion.

Mag7spy

morphwastaken wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

I mean, you had a reason for attacking that person, right?

I don't know how to reply Killing him was ultimately pointless. He was wasting his time, and trying to waste mine. I could either deal with it, or take a risk of going red and hope he would leave. Rational person would not do what he did. He had nothing to lose or to gain in-game. It's hard to deal with a person who has nothing to lose. It was a design flaw in BDO that pushed it to an extreme. I did ask him to stop before resorting to killing, to be clear.
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,.

Dygz

OlympusBurns wrote: »

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.

LMAO
It's not unprecedented. Theoryforge has been doing interviews with MMORPG devs for 10 years.
But, yeah....
Those are some great guidelines.

OlympusBurns

Dygz wrote: »

LMAO
It's not unprecedented. Theoryforge has been doing interviews with MMORPG devs for 10 years.
But, yeah....
Those are some great guidelines.

Yeah. I was trying to be charitable to a recent event, but you're right.

Veeshan

Dont ask questions that are already answered on the wiki

people love doing that -.-

Balrog21

One of the most important questions that hasn't been asked yet, which I tried to get dyggs to ask during their interview is.

As far as Intrepids internal time line. Are things still on track? Are the milestones being met within your scheduled dates? Or have you hit some snags or setbacks?

Depraved

i need to interview steven since i want my question answered >:

Dygz

Balrog21 wrote: »

One of the most important questions that hasn't been asked yet, which I tried to get dygz to ask during their interview is.

As far as Intrepids internal time line. Are things still on track? Are the milestones being met within your scheduled dates? Or have you hit some snags or setbacks?

That is not something Steven is going to answer in any meaningful way.
The obvious answer is Yes. Because Ashes failed to release before 2020.
So... the farther away from 2020 we get, the more snags and setbacks there are.

Also... the Know Your Nodes articles for Divine Nodes and for Military Nodes were supposed to be released in 2019. Every time I ask about them (and I have asked every year since 2019), Margaret says they were completed but there have been changes to the design so Steven is not ready to sign off on them yet.
If they can't even release articles due to changes in the design - that means there are snags and setbacks.

Also... notice that we have seen no demos for Summoner or Bard...
We also have not seen the Rogue demo yet. And the Rogue was supposed to be included in Alpha 1.
Which means there is some snag or setback associated with the Rogue Primary Archetype.

So... as alluded to in the OP... there are some questions we won't ask because we know we aren't going to get a meaningful answer from Steven.
(Any changes made to the design will cause a snag/setback.)

daveywavey

Balrog21 wrote: »

One of the most important questions that hasn't been asked yet, which I tried to get dyggs to ask during their interview is.

As far as Intrepids internal time line. Are things still on track? Are the milestones being met within your scheduled dates? Or have you hit some snags or setbacks?

If they release their internal timeline, then it's no longer an internal timeline. The reason it hasn't been asked is because it's really really not an important question for us. For them, yes, and I'm sure they're asking it internally. But, we shouldn't expect to know all their internal comms just because they give us a livestream each month.

Dygz

The internal timeline will always have delays and adjustments.
Still useful for the devs.

Fantmx

A few things.

These are not easy to do. All of the creators feel the weight of trying to do right by the community while also trying to have fun in getting to have a conversation with Steven.

Notice I said conversation. These are not rapid-fire interview sessions. These are 1 to 2 hour conversations between gamers who love mmorpgs that just happens to be live for all to see. Many viewers come in and watch with the wrong mindset of what to expect.

I think all of the creators have done a good job, and that most of the people complaining would also be complained about if they did this themselves.

My advice is to not post "Place your question here" threads anywhere as this will always lead to people being upset that their question did not get asked or that the "wrong" question was asked out of the list.

Raven016

I think it is the developer's decision and responsibility to explain / reveal what thinks is important.
Some things can change. Makes sense for the developer to avoid questions which cannot be answered with high enough accuracy.
Soon enough we will test them anyway.

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