Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
They haven't even mentioned any of his influence on the team or direction or anything else. We've just heard "well he's getting accustomed to the game's design and the team..." Awesome, great. That was months ago at this point.
Game launch did not shift from "Before 2020" until after 2020.
You have to use Ms. or Mrs.
omg she did!, for classic. damn I didn't know Margaret worked for ncsoft!!!
that doesn't matter. someone who works at coca cola and goes to work for Pepsi, wont make pepsi similar to coke. he will make pepsi like Pepsi.
the dev is at the service of the game, not the other way around. working on past big mmorpg shows experience. doesn't mean you have to do things like you did in that other mmorpg...
a game dev can make you 3 different games of the same category and they will all be different...
I've never heard her say it. maybe it was before I started watching them. i haven't been watching them since the very beginning T_T
But will such a dev be able to make a PvP, PvE and a PVX game and all feel great?
And this is all Speculation.
So many People said " Freedom " is gonna kill the Game. And then i saw People wandering off in Droves on my Server, when Lattice was forced upon us all.
Never again we had a Percentage with what the Vanu, our Faction, could do something with. Thanks Sony Online Entertainment. For absolutely nothing, lol.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
yep. there are design patterns. you learn those when you are learning design. hard to memorize them all so you will always go back to check references.
Anyway, it can be something as simple as "can people read the text in game or do we need to increase the font size"?. then you have other stuff such as the use of a mini map, that's a design pattern. combat, that's another pattern. the use of cameras, that's another one. you get the idea. patterns are proven solution to common problems.
when it comes to the flavor part (lets say mortal combat or street fighter, but are fighting games with different flavors, or Mario kart vs diddy kong racing) that's more of a job for the artists and the director.
then, you have the programmers. doesn't matter if you worked in a pve, pvx, or pvp game. all that matters is that you can write (clean) code and implement stuff. you pretty much have the same stuff in every game.
and then, you have some support roles, such as economists, salespeople, marketing, managers, etc.
look at Shigeru Miyamoto, he created Mario and zelda. both completely different games, different genres, different gameplay, different everything... and they are both great games.
having worked in eq, doesn't mean you will make ashes similar to eq or for eq players. that's like saying a gu who worked in lineage 2 will make ESO like l2 or targeted at l2 players...nonsense!
I’m losing brain cells just reading them.
wait, you had them? O_O
Ah yes, you are right.
I had doubts because last week I told a colleague that a developer cannot make a great game if he doesn't like playing that kind of game because will not feel which decisions are good or bad.
But in AoC's context, developers just do what they are told to do. It is Steven who has to understand and like PvE and PvP to make good decisions.
Outside of the significant delays and changes from the Kickstarter.
But it is good that the game has not become vaporware already.
... ... and who is working on a grand Game " together " - with others. For now about Eighth Years or so(?).
I am confident Sir Steven picked up quite a bit of things good to know, in such a good Chunk of Time in which he never gave up. Be prepared (lol), a Man who never released a Game before MIGHT release one of the best MMORPG's that the World has ever seen.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
When you are developing a new product though, it is inevitable that you will take on the DNA of previous products that your staff have worked on. That is literally the point in hiring people with experience - you want them to bring what they know in to your company.
So You are " Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter " - and " Alpha One ", but You still have such a negative sounding View on things ? o_O
Or is this a negativity which came over the Years since the Game takes and takes and takes and takes and then takes and takes even more Years to finally arrive ? ^.^;"
I mean i get it. This is a noticeable Chunk of Lifetime. About Eight Years and still going. ^.^;"
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
That's... kinda oversimplifying it?
Taking it out of Ashes realm altogether, the person in charge of Console BDO right now (and I think sorta BDO in general) is a person who, if they were given their own MMO to make I would back it instantly.
But I don't like BDO. There used to be a person at Intrepid who worked alongside Steven who was like that, who left years ago. So for Dygz, (and maybe for me but I'm still not sure yet), that person was the one you could have the confidence in, for keeping the game in a space where one would play.
That's why you'll keep getting that explanation 'But Jeffrey Bard left'.
People complained about the healers having dps skills and bitched till they nerfed the healers so they wouldn't be asked to dps and after that people still complained about the classes.
Playing new world there was a guy I was guilded up with who would complain whenever it came to pvp, it was a skill issue and kept demanding a guide to some all powerful build that would make him badass. He kept complaining till he finally quit the game.
You can't pander to everyone because in the end you'll always have people who are never happy with what they got and constantly complain no matter what.
It's honestly one thing that scares me about ashes open development. You can make some bad decisions listening to the outspoken minority and ignoring the silent majority
I think Ashes is going to be a great game for the fans of L2/ArcheAge/EvE.
One of the BEST MMORPGs the World has ever seen is hyperbole and very unlikely.
Especially by the time Ashes releases, there will likely be several other MMORPGs less niche and more popular.
As Azherae hints at, I would say that Ashes has become more niche in the last two years - after Jeffrey Bard left.
Feels to me that Jeffrey was trying to have a more diverse Target Audience than just Steven's playstyle.
When I go back and watch vids from the early years with Jeffrey and Steven, there are times when Steven is speaking, but it seems like the spin he's giving was heavily influenced by Jeffrey.
Like, I think "Ashes is not made for everyone." is straight up Steven.
In the early years, we could see Steven say that MMORPGs need diverse playstyles...
but now I think he was just kind of parroting what Jeffrey told him, "A MMO lives and breathes on its community and we don't really want to give short shrift to any one of those types. All of them are important: the RPers are important, the people who just want to hang out in the Inn and talk are important, they all add to the game and so we want to make sure that we take care of all of them..."
So... I wouldn't quite say I'm negative.
I do think that the current Ashes design is not the game that was described when Jeffrey was the Lead Game Designer.
That's not really a bad thing - especially not for MMORPG fans who love Open World PvP.
steven isn't in charge of the details. the people with the appropriate technical expertise are in charge of the details. steven just makes sure everyone goes in the same direction. that's what a director does.
steven doesn't balance the game. recent example. mobs ttk was 30 seconds, now its 6~ 30 felt wrong, 6 felt better. he asked his team to lower it to 6. he didn't tell them "how", just "what". steven isn't concerned with design patterns, since he isn't a designer. he just tells the team what he wants, and the team is concerned with how to accomplish that. he lays out the problem, the team finds th
the CEO part Is more about managing the company itself.
why you don't like bdo? just curious
also, if that person made an mmorpg similar to bdo, would you still back it, given that you don't like bdo? o-o
I liked bdo a lot at least when I played ;3
didn't pearl abyss make another mmorpg and that one kind of bombed? o.o not sure tho and don't wanna google xD
pvers always ruin everything >:
It's a long explanation, but if I try to make it short, it's because BDO is very Korean.
There's a narrative lately that says 'Korean gamers don't like TL because it isn't P2W enough'. This sounds ridiculous at first, but it's not entirely wrong, because P2W also comes with the idea that you have rare chances of getting relatively large jumps in power or things other people envy.
Spend more time and those chances go up. The dopamine hit is bigger.
The person who 'heads BDO's design' right now, Je-seok Jang, is one of my favorite designers/team leads, making lots of decisions that I feel would make even some of the most critical people happy, but BDO's base is very hard to pull 'back' to a good spot. As of my last check, he was still trying.
But every time he tries, to add interest, challenge, or even just grouping content to the game, just some scrap of something with 'meaning' beyond 'grind here and hope you get ahead of all the other people', the playerbase complains about something (because the playerbase of BDO can roughly be split into whales, lifeskillers, and grinders, or at least this was true before Land of the Morning Sun) being too technical, difficult, or involved (and maybe not profitable enough).
BDO PvE-ers want most of the game handed to them (difficulty wise), and so, every attempt to improve an actual gameplay system gets pushback within a month. I call it pushback because Je-seok occasionally gives interviews/Dev Discussions with fairly specific details about his goals, and usually, the things that get implemented don't get 'removed', they get massively undermined.
Now, it could be that it's all just a ruse/act and he doesn't actually care about the design things he says and he is himself the one designing the things that undermine the 'interest grabbing' designs and appeasing the whales. I just don't get that impression from him.
Anyways BDO sucks for the same reason that TL doesn't suck yet. The game's 'paying' audience barely wants to play an MMO to begin with.
I'd whine about the economy too, but I think everyone knows my opinion on the BDO 'economy' already.
tl;dr I would trust Je-seok Jang to rip out the broken base of BDO and install a new one, or to make a new MMO from scratch, but they will never let that man actually fix BDO because what is left of its 'paying' community wouldn't want it if he did.
I wish him the best in someday getting a chance to do that.
And that's the real reason PvE players don't like PvX for AoC.
ah I get it. and yeah people don't like p2w in the west, but they do in asia xD
its kind of respected too in some circles and a sign of success (also to show off) I met this dude in a game called revelations online (I played in a Chinese guild in USA, they had played in china) and his guild leader had spent over a million in American dollars (he also spent on his guild members, not just himself) and his in game rival guild leaders had spent a similar amount to fight each other xD. and that was a sign of success to them ;3
regarding bdo, its hard to go back on a direction after the game has been out for years. if anything, make an expansion then change everything..but people will complain because they were playing a game made for them, now they are playing a game not made for them ><
XDDDDDDDDDD
afaik those dudes were businessmen irl. they competed irl and also in game lmao but yeah different cultures