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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.
No quest related waypoints.
Vissox
Member, Alpha Two
I think the number one worst thing about modern MMOs is they show you exactly where to go. No-one is confused about where to go, so naturally people don't group up, there is 0 incentive to read the quests because it's unnecessary for completing the quest and you could spend that time you would be reading getting ahead of everyone else in levels and content.
(If anyone doesn't like that mindset, I hate to tell you that the best guilds pay attention to who levels the fastest and who gets attuned the quickest, ect. Whether or not you get in raids week one or week three depends on how fast you do content.)
I have no idea whether ashes plans to have waypoints for quests or shown quest areas, but I'm pleading that they DO NOT.
Let us not feel disadvantaged for reading the quests, and let people be a little confused as to where to go sometimes. That extends the shelf life of, in my opinion, the best part of the mmorpg experience; Leveling.
TLDR:
No waypoints=
+Reading quests
+More Groups
+Longer Leveling
Waypoints=
+Mindless quest training like New World
+People only group once they realize they can't do something solo
+Faster leveling=Faster Endgame Meta
(If anyone doesn't like that mindset, I hate to tell you that the best guilds pay attention to who levels the fastest and who gets attuned the quickest, ect. Whether or not you get in raids week one or week three depends on how fast you do content.)
I have no idea whether ashes plans to have waypoints for quests or shown quest areas, but I'm pleading that they DO NOT.
Let us not feel disadvantaged for reading the quests, and let people be a little confused as to where to go sometimes. That extends the shelf life of, in my opinion, the best part of the mmorpg experience; Leveling.
TLDR:
No waypoints=
+Reading quests
+More Groups
+Longer Leveling
Waypoints=
+Mindless quest training like New World
+People only group once they realize they can't do something solo
+Faster leveling=Faster Endgame Meta
3
Comments
If a quest giver NPC (specifically, it can't be a book, it can't be a random tablet or inscription) has a quest for you, and you have a map, most of the time that person is going to be able to mark for you on your map where you need to approximately go.
I basically feel that the game can have both, they can make a few quests for explorers and 'historians' that don't give you any way to know exactly where to go.
But the majority of 'go here do this' quests, even though I absolutely prefer when the location is not marked and I get a mild positive feeling from 'Oh I know where that is!'... It's not unrealistic that you 'know exactly where to go'.
They could do the BDO thing where your map isn't accessible when you're in areas that are supposed to be properly confusing to navigate, though. And of course, the 'fog of war' style map intention could be used to resolve this, by making it so that players who don't have the 'fog' for the area cleared, don't have the marker.
Everything else should probably be handled by changing spawn locations, imo.
The only ones who'd enjoy this are the RPers who want to "live" in this world and people who enjoy reading/story. Everyone else will be annoyed and will immediately go look up where to go.
This then leads to that very speedrunning that you want to avoid, because the smart people will realize that if they make guides first - that's views and that's money.
I love reading quests and immersing myself in the game's world, but those wow addons were made for a reason. And the reason is - the masses don't want to immerse themselves, they just want to "win".
That is enough context for a player to find something, and it requires them to take a second to read the quest, and in turn understand why they are doing what they are doing. All of those seconds add up to extend the leveling experience in a non artificial way, that for lore enjoyers like me is also fun. I don't want to have to choose between leveling efficiently and understanding why I'm doing what I'm doing.
This is off topic, but this is the type of map finding I enjoy.
Those sites always exist, it's true, but that doesn't mean that the developers have to give up on an immersive experience before the game has even begun. It also takes a while for those types of addons and websites to get developed. In Vanilla Wow, thotbot is what people used and it had a lot of missing entrys because people still had to do those quests. it wasnt untill TBC that their database was actually flushed out and developed to the extent of the game.
I'm also uninterested in what the masses want. That's why we want this game isn't it? It's for the niche of people who actually like to play true RPGs, where your class can't do everything and you need to be one with that.
Funniest part is when GPS gamers still cant figure out the quest lol. but all they had to do was read and/or listen....
I'm not too sure what kind of indicators they'll have in the game for quests and objects but I'm hoping it's minimum and not dramatic/immersion breaking.
Imo there should be at least some limit to how niche the game should be. Simply so that it can survive monetarily.
I agree with Azherae's suggestion of simply having a variety approaches to questing, and that npcs would most likely simply point to your map and say "ah, it's there".
Thats same logic could apply to raids/dungeons/world bosses too. Should the game provide exact details and instructions on how to beat each of those categories because add-ons and guides will tell people exactly how too?
Imo yes, because the gameplay itself should be super hard, so even if you've gotten info about the encounter (through npcs, or written lore, or whichever in-game source) - you'll still have to work super hard to overcome the boss.
Big disagreement here.
From what I'm seeing, you're suggesting the game should be brainless in leveling until we get to "raids" which is the real point of the game. And raids should be all about mechanics, and being awesome.
I think what AoC is trying to do (and what I hope it's trying to do) is make an immersive MMORPG where you actually do care about the world. Not necessary care about lore/chars, but feel like you're a part of something bigger.
And quest markers (and even worse, arrows) are there really for only one reason. It's the devs being afraid that if a player doesn't know immediately where to go for his next objective, that distraction will cause him to realize he's not having fun, and put aside the game.
If you notice, most games today constantly bombard you with very easy to follow directions, and space out dopamine hits accordingly. They throw in dailies, and almost anything else, to guarantee that you are always super busy with something. And it works. But it also doesn't make for a game that "I can't wait to play".
Also, those sites will not be up day 1. Also, those sites will not be used by everyone. And since there is no addons allowed, people will at least have to pay attention to what's happening ingame while following those guides.
As for the argument of people using addons even if it's against the rules, that argument can be made for anything. It's the minority who break rules and use 3rd party addons, unless the devs do a bad job of enforcing the rules.
Disable the map too and see if you can find the 2nd boss.
As for the boss stuff, as I said, all that info would be "hidden" in texts, npc interactions (ideally even related to npc relations values) and other in-world representations. So it would literally require you to go through all that stuff, or, obviously, go to a site and look it up.
In other words, I'm simply saying there can be a middle ground between "you have 0 info outside of the quest text" and "you have a pixel-precise arrow above your head". Making people alt tab to another window is in no way a good method of immersing them in the game, and people WILL alt tab if they have near-0 info on what they need to do.
In general, I'm not against map marking. What I'm against is exclusively map marking. The occasional quest showing you spot on map is fun. Every single quest teaches the player to not read quests, just accept them, and look to map as default. Understand the difference I'm trying to point out?
"Who sent you?" ... "Ah, that NPC is a liar. You have to go the opposite direction".
There are tons of quests that make you travel to tons of places for stupid reasons. Remember "One small favor" from Runescape?
I never played that game but I know it is old. And you remembering the quest name says something
I don't think we agree when you say "I love reading quests and immersing myself in the game's world, but those wow addons were made for a reason. And the reason is - the masses don't want to immerse themselves, they just want to "win"."
Just because everyone uses them, doesn't mean those addons make for a better game. Most gamers will optimize the fun out of a game if they are given to tools to do so.
I can tell this is some kind of sarcasm, but your defeating your own point, because you remembered what Valheim even is, so it was obviously a memorable experience.
EDIT: LOL
How can you come to the same conclusion and miss the point entirely. That is some sweet irony.
You can go look through the videos I linked in another post. I played classic w/o addons, even though my friends were constantly telling me to use them. I like Ashes because it won't have any of that shit, but I also know for sure that people will come up with ways of going around limitations and rules, because that's just how people are.
As of Alpha-1, Intrepid's quest writer(s) were top notch in my opinion, and I have minor reasons to believe that will continue.
MMO devs seem to be learning more and more that quick cash-grab experiences are not the best thing for them to be trying to deliver (relative to the demographics and other genres). But at the same time, it's hard, it seems to require years of training in how to write quests and story beats, for those staff members to consistently create good enough stuff that doesn't frustrate players, and then the reaction of the engineers to 'frustrated players' is to add the markers.
This is entirely my speculative opinion from observation of things I don't have internal data on, though (and a few devs that outright tell us their reasonings for making changes of that type).
Basically to me this is a tradeoff, between having a lot of quests written by 'any staff member with an idea for how to flesh out the world', and 'a few quests written by specialists who know all the writing techniques'. Ashes could probably afford to take the second approach, I think.
Was a suggestion and also a hope that you will confirm you did that already.
Having the map disabled you also cannot ping on the mini-map to see the direction you have to navigate.
I literally use addons in WoW Classic. I use them because they make the game easier and more efficient. Would I have more fun with less addons? Probably. Why do I use them? Because they're available and other people use them, and if I don't, I'm at a disadvantage.
Imagine if WoW launched with a button next to your character that said "Instant level 60". What % of people would not click it? Most would. This objectively makes the game worse, but guess what, people click it because it exists.
Some games, it's a big deal, some games, it's a small component that a small subset of players inflates into a big deal.
A dynamic game with Nodes as a basis changes the situation so that there's a subset of players whose role is to provide the playerbase at large with updates to the unpredictable dynamic part. That's also still a form of community.
Basically as long as someone has to go in and manually update the add-on data because the game can be random enough to require that, it's fine. Quests can be the same way if Intrepid wants.
In A1, there was a cool quest in a cave, where you have to go and pick some flowers. A very specific number of flowers, if you just kept spamming expecting the quest to update and send you back, you would die, because of the poison, which was hilarious.
Then when you got back to the NPC, if you asked too many questions about what the heck a healer needs poisonous flowers for, and didn't accept the answer 'to help people....sleep', the NPC revealed criminal nature, and killed you to keep you from talking.
That, imo is immersive. There was still map markers on where to go, but you had to pay the heck attention or you lost half your stuff.
You are missing the point entirely.
No-one here is denying that addons and websites and guides will be a thing, the point is that the developers of MMORPGs should not make a worse game to subvert that.
If people want to go look up guides and sites and addons, that's fine, having a braindead navigation system in the game because (?) I don't know why, because they want people to not go to those resources? Like you said, that shit gets made no matter what.
So when waypoints are not in the game people have to go get invested in websites and addons for the game.
When it is in the game people just speed through the leveling experience.
Are you really suggesting that intrepid should pick the latter, just go doomer mode and say "fuck it, we don't care about a paced leveling experience and players can just follow a dot on their screen all the way to the end game."
Your entire argument just sounds like you know that addons are happening anyway so they should give up,
so trying should be harmless in either case.
I'm just saying that npcs can give a rough location that will show up on your map, with maybe giving a few more details in text, for those who'll read it. But having pure text-based questing will just exacerbate the addon/site issues.
As Gaben said about piracy - it's about the quality of service. If you make something hard enough, people will just look for an easier way of doing it, instead of simply going the hard way. So you gotta meet people half-way and be better off because of that.