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.
Replay value of Dungeons and Game
consultant
Member
Well the purpose of this post is to discuss well retention. I already posted on this subject but since there was a comment about how low drop rates increase the replay value well decided to expound more on the subject. I want to point out that retention is a real issue most MMO Games get releases and peak the player cont and after that player population declines. Also expansions come out Player count peaks and steadily goes down hill. Think Old School RuneScape and Final Fantasy 14 are only exceptions.
Keeping people online with gear could be done with attainable gear not really low drop rates.
So lets say game comes out and there are really cool bows to get with a 3 to 6 month grind.
Well A while back statement was made about putting content out ever three months or however many months it could be 4 or 5 or 6. Think Ashes of Creation will still be really busy even after game comes out. So all you have to do is put in a couple of new bows to farm whenever content comes out. After a while the bows just kind of add up. You can replace bow with gear or mounts or pets or cosmetic items or gear with magical abilities.
Another way to keep people onine is being a collector of magical items. in the World of Dungeouns and Dragons there like Items that every player wants. Like Boots of Speeds. Vorpal Weapon,
large array of very fun and potent potions to choose. There are people that RolePlay in dugeouns for the only purpose of having a large magical item collections. A long time Ago I was reading the encyclopedia for maigical items (4 volumes) really interesting read for me and items in those books were pretty epic. Thing is some MMO gear or items in general are more like stat sticks and not magical weopons/items.
Sorry have to go will finish post later.
Keeping people online with gear could be done with attainable gear not really low drop rates.
So lets say game comes out and there are really cool bows to get with a 3 to 6 month grind.
Well A while back statement was made about putting content out ever three months or however many months it could be 4 or 5 or 6. Think Ashes of Creation will still be really busy even after game comes out. So all you have to do is put in a couple of new bows to farm whenever content comes out. After a while the bows just kind of add up. You can replace bow with gear or mounts or pets or cosmetic items or gear with magical abilities.
Another way to keep people onine is being a collector of magical items. in the World of Dungeouns and Dragons there like Items that every player wants. Like Boots of Speeds. Vorpal Weapon,
large array of very fun and potent potions to choose. There are people that RolePlay in dugeouns for the only purpose of having a large magical item collections. A long time Ago I was reading the encyclopedia for maigical items (4 volumes) really interesting read for me and items in those books were pretty epic. Thing is some MMO gear or items in general are more like stat sticks and not magical weopons/items.
Sorry have to go will finish post later.
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Comments
The retention is done by continually doing EVERY aspect of the game to get the materials to craft, and ultimately enhancing that gear. At some point you start risking that gear by over-enchanting. If you fail a higher level over-enchanting the gear breaks and you'll need to farm materials/gold again.
Some games like FFXIV scale the players stats when they queue for random dungeons for in game currencies, increasing the replay value of dungeons exponentially.
Other games release epic dungeons or even tier their dungeons with keystones like World of Warcraft.
I don't know much about Intrepid's plan to have queue systems in the game. I think a lot of the dungeons are going to have to be walked to manually in order to deep dive into them, which I fully support this type of gameplay. It's tedious, but it's rewarding and makes you work for it. To be honest, a life of leisure where all you can do is queue for dungeons while waiting in a major city like in WoW can become really boring and feel somewhat lackluster.
Devs could include rare crafting materials in dungeons that need to be farmed repeatedly or even rare cosmetic items that people may want to farm... Lots of different stuffs!
80% of the dungeons are open world. Those rare materials are indeed in the open world dungeons.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Dungeons
Furthermore, items won't just be dropped in this game, especially when it comes to the best items, those will be craftable.
Additionally, item collecting won't be much of a thing from all I read so far. The space in your housing is limited to present items in, the storeage house has only limited space and all storage options are subject to destruction during a successful Node siege, leading to gear being lost completely or being taken away by the besieger.
And lastly: I think "replay value" as defined by other game developers is not even needed in Ashes as much. The thing that is supposed to keep Ashes interesting is changing accessibility and player actions to bring about that change in access. You had one Node dominate the whole South for a year? Some players will inevitably be bored from the dungeons, story arcs, etc that this opened up, while remaining curious about what would happen if that small Node at the edge of the Metropolis ZOI would open up... if it just could be upgraded. The stagnation through the Node dominance brings more and more players to the side of the enemies of that Node, eventually it will be destroyed in a siege, all the related content "shuts down" and new dungeons open up as all the newly free Nodes race towards regional dominance, unlocking new content around them. (Btw this is why I think the Alpha will at least last 2 years to see how Node succession etc plays out)
However there are other ways to increase replay value of dungeouns.
Consumable items. One consumable item is gold but already made post about that. But there can be other comsumable items. That dungeouns drop. Minor monster coins. Crafting material. Really how many reasons are there for players to do open world dungeons. One of the activities player like to do is treasure hunting or loot hunting. One thing you could put in a dungeoun are rare mobs that drop loot. Really simple infact, but let take a look at how to do it properly.
First of all, the mob cannot spawn in the same place all the time. This way player has a sense that he is looking/hunting for that mob. Also there is no reason to tie that mob to one dungeoun or area. Could be tied to let say three related dungeouns or areas were it would make sense for mobs to spawn so players would not have to do them same content over and over again.
Next drop rate and spawn rate would have to decent. Not one of those things were you spend two hours looking for it and it does not drop anything. Should be like after you get a certain amount of crafting you get to make an item.
Really with all the Devs at Ashes of Creation, they should be able to come up with 10 or 15 ideas of what to put in dungeouns and implement the best ones suited for this game.
Next thing I want to talk about is game modes. Well what is a game mode?
Hardcore WoW is game mode. Iron man Mode is a game Mode. Timed run is a game mode. Doing achievements is a game mode. I going to mention certain elements that could be included in a game mode
One Element that could be put in a gamee mode is and Achievement game mode were toons get to do acheivements at appropiate level. (skill based achievments)
So let say you have a dungeoun with 4 mini bosses and 1 final boss and they all had their various achivemetns. Can you get all the achievements in a row with out wiping.
Another Element that could be put in game mode is how good are you at avoiding raid
mechanics. Can you do one dungeoun without standing in the fire. If yes well can you do a group of dungeouns with out standing in the fire. Lets say they are 4 undead dungeouns that are related that are at lets say heroic can you do all those dungeouns in a row without standing in fire.
Another element is mortality ratio. How many dungeouns can you do without dying.
In hardcore servers you die ounce and toon gets deleted; Well toon does not have to get deleted to make things interesting. What is your ratio of attempt vs wipes. Could vary a lotif you have different difficulty settings.
But the most important element and this is a repost. Already mentioned in another post is. How accessible is this type of game play to the general public. If you come out with a game mode and only 5 percent of population can do it because of difficulty (win for players can do it and enjoy that type of content) then it is a fail as far as RETENTION is concerned. So at least 50 percent of the population should be able to participate and complete this game modes and not get stuck at certain level.
And for the veteran hard core players well all you have to do is make a more difficult version of the game mode, catered specifically for them.
People start alts but do not send gear and recieve help from other players have to grind everthing themselves just like starting a new toon for the very first time that could be a setting and achievement. Think that is part of Iron man Mode, as far as that is concerned how many times did you die before reaching max level if you. If you die ounce so what. You still keep going to how many deaths you have when you reach max level.
So with with the aformention criteria the devs should be come out a decent game mode and increase the replay value of the game.
This thing about low drops rates increasing the replay value of dugeouns is a myth. That is not the reason players play MMOs Very low drop rates as far adding roleplaying value to the game, is possible depending on how they ar presented.
And the content inside the Dungeons are dynamic, rather than static - so we don't really replay the exavts same content over and over and over again.
In addition to Events and Seasons affecting gameplay.
In addition to seasonal Narrative changes that drop new content from the devs.
But, the entire map changes as Nodes rise and fall - and a new Town that returns after a Node is destroyed also won't have the exact same layout or content.
The social aspect will be the most engaging. Make systems that by design force players to work together while at the same time aren't so cumbersome that the game becomes unplayable without them. Quests like https://www.wowhead.com/classic/quest=685/wanted-otto-and-falconcrest in mid tier zones are great ways to facilitate social engagement without forcing it.
Well unless things have changed 20 percent of dungeouns will be instance mode. 16 and 40 man raids will be instanced or they would be open world raids not 16 and 40 man raids. Besides timed run, Game modes could be developed for open world dugeouns. Even if they are temporary.
I remember the creative director saying that as the nodes progress there would be new content available do not remember anything about previous content being unavailable. Do have any references to that, or do you actually remember him saying that as node progresses the low level content will becom unavailable.
Even of they are temporary devs could come up with game mode. Bosses will still have raid mechanics to avoid and still have a mortality rate do can they finish dungeoun with out dying and so on.
They just change location essentially which means there will still be the same amount of dungeons usually just different based on location, node level and theme accordingly.
Well that would be lock outs so if you have a 40 man raid in the open world cause of lock outs then it could still be stadardized for a game mode does not make game mode impossible just has to be customized for 16 or 40 players.
Thing typically players do dungeouns get gear and move one. Objective is simply do dungeouns and get gear. It is not skill based. For example in LoL there are metrics that measure your gameplay and from those metrics the engine calculates a grade.
S, A, B,C, and D and have + and minuses like b+ and b-. And there is a huge incentive to get S grades (super rated). So it should not be enough just to do a dungeoun but a player should have a huge incentive to do aqdungeoun well. To be lets say a master or grand master as far as dungeonerring goes. So if you had six tiers of dungeounering levels. Like novice, avid, master, grand master, legendary and godlike dungeering titles. (some titles taken from League of Legends) Then people would be inclined to do them.
Lets say you walk into a dungeoun and you are at the achieved the higers grade or titlefor that dungeoun or raid. Completed all gamemodes and achievements and that gets announced when you enter that dungeoun giving players recognition for the pve skills; think that would be huge incentive to do dungeouns until you get those titles and achievements.
in one sentence, Make a skill based system for dungeouns that has goals and rewards to increase the replay value of dungeouns or raids.
If the game works as intended, we won't be talking about the "replay value of the endgame stuff", we'll be talking about the value of the constantly evolving server stories, where nodes and guilds rise and fall, and where running dungeons and killing bosses are just a means to an end. Hopefully fun and interesting, with the potential PvP elements added to them, but not the main point of the game by any stretch of the imagination.
What keeps people playing pvp games is a feeling of fairness and enjoyment in game design, and the belief that they can win if they try hard enough. So instead of content patches, pvp games typically just require balance patches to keep the user base interested.
The leveling, gearing, and game lore aspects are the front end of this game that help you develop your character identity and understanding of the world. To develop enemies and friends. To become immersed in the world. To accumulate power and assets. Once your character is strong enough, the main thing will be nodal/guild politics and warring against other regions. Maxed characters will be doing activities around protecting their nodes/alliances, helping allies, and building up resources to attack others.
You can always roll an alt and very likely experience a completely different content path from 1-50 than your first char.
I already stated this but it canf also work for open world dungeouns just not timed run.
For this to be the case as far as nodes and sieges are concerned there would have to be an increase to the frequency of sieges not just every 20 or 30 days really while your post is interesting, it is totally irrelavant. I mean stated game modes can stilll be implemented and replay value of open world dungeouns still an issue it
As for PvP well as it turns out that wil be centered around battle grounds. There will not be enough Noded vs Node or Caravans these are just events. Stuff you do like three times a week if you can.
In fact there is no open world pvp in Ashes of Creation. Even ehough every one is flagged for PvP. If you do you get punished so....
Not enough Node PvP Not enought Caravan Pvp Not enough reds for bounty hunters to hunt ( as far as a PvP game mode). Unless they change the game machincs there will be very little open worl PvP. In other words you cannot do these things all day.
Most PvP will be in battle grounds which could be I guess open world in a way.
Do not expect to play Ashes of Creation and do Node vs Node all day or Caravans All day.
Unless they change the game mechanics basically no Open World PvP due to scarcity other than battlegrounds.