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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.
Comments
In Lineage 2, gear -both armor and weapon- were the biggest contributor by far to player power (that and buffs+songs+dances+chants, etc). The game was fantastic and lasted an entire decade. It was absolutely successful, loved, even while being directly competing with WoW which had ALL of the focus and marketing. Lineage 2 is still loved today and there's literally over 1M players still playing L2 in private servers.
So once again... this "gear shouldn't be the focus because it' can't succeed" that you are trying to push, is just you making up random bullshit because you don't want gear to matter as much. It's like the 5th time you pull something right out of your ass in this thread and then try to make it seem like a fact. Absolute cringe when somebody comes with literally 0 experience in a game like AoC wants to be and tries to pass their BS as factual information. Also, what you just said directly goes against what AoC wants to be. By having gear being the main focus, it makes bosses and places where you get those drops far more important, which leads to more contesting, more fights, more mass pvp for everyone, more drama, AKA more fun.
Stop posting.
This is actually a good Example i admit i have never thought about before.
Jeah, right. Why shouldn't High-LvL Players attack Caravan's of lower Level Players ? But we all know ... ...
... ... ... it is going to happen anyway, right ?
Right ?
This is why i keep saying to Everyone : " SEARCH. ALLIES. "
It's - an - MMO. Playing together with others in a Team and having social Skills should be fundamental. And no One in their right Mind would ever act like he is above that. It's not beneath ANYONE to ask others for Alliances and be it the very Top Number 1 Battle Badass Player on the whole Server.
One Argument regarding such Caravan Issues could be -> encourage Players not to necessarily engage into Caravan Content before hitting Maxlevel -> but we all know the far better Solution, right ?
Band together already even before the first People hit Max Level. And try to always have as many Defenders as possible around when doing a Caravan Transport.
I also dare to say - > it will be naive to think that the " RISK " will automatically lessen the Moment the Majority of all Players reach Maxlevel.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
In RPGs that don't have system similar to Nodes, that's still going to max out similar to Adventurer Level and leave players at Endgame for 1-2 years or more.
I think Infinite scaling with soft-caps are a way to stop things from "maxing out". I forget what games do this, but if you hit the soft-cap for max level (say level 60) you can still keep grinding and getting XP and level up past level 60, but at a certain point the amount of mobs you'd have to kill would be insane to level up.
Same thing with like Weapon skills or blocking as a skill, or healing/evocation magic skills you could potentially increase your damage, heals, blocking, etc. by leveling up the skill, but it would take a lot of time to do it and it's not game-breaking nor does it stop vertical progression.
I think in Tibia as a Knight vocation you would be considered "good" if you had 75 sword fighting and 75 defense. And you would be good with axe fighting at 90/65 (because you could train one skill faster than the other with axes while swords were more balanced). However there were maniacs who grinded skilling up to like 120 sword fighting and 115 defense (which took ages to do).
Obviously Intrepid would need to innovate on the system as it's a really old system, but it's another option for vertical progression.
Once again, I'm not saying it has to be done with whatever I say. I trust Intrepid to make a good call on design, but in my personal opinion item level/gear score is the fundamental issue when it comes to MMOs and vertical progression.
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Current Member of the Gray Sentinels.
Yeah, that's exactly my point. They give you something every expansion, every year, instead of just making good, fun, interactive gameplay. I think Intrepid also brought in variable progression with nodes and other systems like XP debt and caravans for economy which means that the game doesn't end with horizontal gameplay or vertical gameplay.
However the vertical gameplay loop that WoW and other MMOs have will break Ashes as it will separate the main player-base from the new/returning player-base just like Lost Ark did with new Raids and their vertical progression BECAUSE of the node/caravan system.
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Current Member of the Gray Sentinels.
I think I prefer to pursue horizontal progression rather than over-maxing vertical progression.
Ashes' wide variety of Augments sounds infinitely better.
Endgame is the fundamental problem with MMORPGs.
Focusing on increasing Gear Score during Endgame is a fatal flaw. I agree.
Node progression is an excellent solution. In addition, Ashes has numerous progression paths and a plethora of Augments - rather than an exclusive focus on Gear.
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Current Member of the Gray Sentinels.
Horizontal progression is seen as optional. Getting it doesn't open up any new content for you to do, so there is no real point in spending any time on it.
Not in PvP+Social MMOs. Example: A decade of Lineage 2 with trash content added but the game was always hype. I probably contested over 150 Valakas +150 Antharas. Those mass PvPs never get old.
Horizontal gear progression is absolute trash and people get bored after a month cause there's literally nothing to strive for. Why would I go to war and die 50 times in a week fighting every clan if the gear isn't going to give me a big boost of power? How am I going to convince the 300 players in my alliance to bash their face into PVP and death and fight for 6 hours, lose a level and a half of EXP... for gear that gives almost the same power as what they're all currently using? LMAO. I swear to god, some people still don't understand this is a game about contesting and fighting over bosses, loot, rare and expensive mats, nodes, and all of that NEEDS a massive incentive, a massive reward and it since it's a MMORPG, the only answer is more power.
Suggesting horizontal gear progression for AoC has to the dumbest shit I've ever read in these forums.
"My favorite game was fun for me."
OK tell us something we don't know.
Just to be clear, I did not support horizontal Gear progression for Ashes.
Big BOOST of POWER should not always be required to motivate players - especially not in an RPG.
If you are stuck at Endgame in a static world with no new content for years, sure.
Boosts of power are not going to be enough to interest me in fighting the same exact mobs over and over and over and over again 50 times per week. But, that works great for some playstyles, sure.
I guess you convince your PvP pals to continue to play however you wish.
I want to play new content. I am 87% Explorer on the Bartle Scale. I want to explore new stuff.
If I'm going to be fighting - I want to fight new types of mobs or similar mobs with different abilities.
Doesn't necessarily have to be more powerful abilities if I don't have the gear to ward of their attacks.
Which means my gear does not necessarily have to be more powerful - rather it needs to be differently effective.
In Nightingale, I sometimes play the Malificent Card - which throws the Biome into perpetual night, allowing me to farm Zombies. But my Health is constantly being depleted just by existing in a Biome under Malificence.
Therefore, it's best to have Gear that is Crafted to resist the Malificent effect.
I am not obssessed with power. Rather I am obsessed with exploring different experiences.
Which is really neither here nor there.
That's just different playstyles.
Ashes has many different progression paths besides Gear progression.
Node progression
Social Org progression
Religious progression
Racial progression
Artisan progression
Naval progression
Bounty Hunter/Bandit progression
Ashes will have vertical and horizontal Gear progression
Ashes will have a plethora of horizontal Augment progression and plenty of vertical Augment progression, too.
You don't always have to write in opposition.
You can sometimes acknowledge where we agree.
Lil bro, until you FINALLY realize that in Open World PvP MMOs like AoC the endgame IS THE PVP and the drama, the sieges, the wars, contesting ultra rare bosses with epic 0.5% drop rates of a crazy legendary item, NOT the content added by Intrepid, we can actually try having a conversation. Doesn't matter if Intrepid add 10 new Raid Bosses, the endgame will still be contesting them. You need to understand that because that's what AoC will be.
That other guy (not you Dygz) @Lloyd needs to realize NOBODY will risk multiple deaths which can lead to deleveling (and multiple times if the fights are long enough), nobody will risk dying 50 times in a mass PVP between 2 giant alliances unless there's a chance they get something crazy powerful. Leveling will be hard, so basically losing two levels will be like losing at least a week of exp grind. Would you? You wouldn't. I wouldn't. NOBODY WOULD.
How are we going to motivate a giant group of players to risk losing so much exp in mass PVP unless the reward is power? Give me your best suggestions. Whatever you can think of, it's not enough. It has to be gear and it has to be crazy good.
If you are going to argue with either myself or Dygz, you need to be factual.
Also, in regards to being factual, you may want to pay some attention to death penalties around objective based PvP - that should answer your question of "how do you motivate a giant group of players when blah blah...".
Ashes doesn't have an Endgame.
The drama, the Sieges, the wars and contested content start way before Endgame.
Ashes is a Themebox. Steven will tell you that the Naration/dev-curated content is a major design Pillar, crucial to the enjoyment of Ashes.
PvP/Risk v Reward is also a major design Pillar.
But, again, what I'm hearing is that the RPG aspects of MMORPGs are so boring that they can mostly be ignored if PvP combat is added to the gameplay... because PvP is the most interesting aspect of gameplay.
(I don't understand how a crazy legendary item is not "content added by Intrepid.")
But don't you realize that it's much more efficient for high-level players with max experience to farm these resources?
Even if there's a loot penalty, nothing stops them from creating a dedicated, overgeared alt for this purpose.
Regular players will be pointless in comparison.
No matter how much you think about it, the value and usefulness of low-level players will always be minimal. If this benefit exists, it will be abused by those who are already at a higher level and better in knowledge.
It's not that high-level items should require low-level resources, but low-level resources are essential for building the next tier in item which drives the price of low level materials to actually matter within the economy.
So you'll need 8 flax, 6 cloth to build silk and it costs 8 silk to make that robe you want for a really basic example. Of course you could just farm silk off [higher level] spiders or something as well would be an alternative option.
Obviously gear would get more complex to craft and the best items in the game are built via crafting, but that's not what my discussion was about. I like this suggested system.
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Current Member of the Gray Sentinels.
In my responses, I try not to base my judgment solely on "I like it this way" or "I want it this way."
Let's look more realistically considering that any MMORPG needs to 1- retain current players, and 2 - attract new players.
Many games struggle with either the former or the latter. Objectively speaking, MMORPG can't survive just on hardcore players, unfortunately, they are not as numerous as one might think.
And indeed, objectively speaking, there is a problem with vertical progression both in its essence and in its resolution.
Namely:
If a game is based on vertical character progression that gives an undeniable advantage:
1. This will reduce the desire of any new players to join the game, as they will never catch up with those who started a few months ago, not to mention those who started six months ago.
2. It may lead to a reluctance to play among people who have full-time jobs, family vacations, etc. - they can fall behind in progression during a two-week vacation, and generally, with no more than 30 hours a week to play, they might feel that they cannot compete with professional players.
3. Developers trying to attract new players by devaluing the current progress of players is a direct way to lose a significant portion of players, as was the case in BDO, where items that took months to obtain became accessible to newbies in just a few days of gameplay. This direct devaluation of player contributions can result in a significant exodus of potential regular players, but due to the reasons mentioned above - it does not bring the necessary increase in players q-ty.
What are the solutions for these aspects? Overall, I hope that the developers recognize these issues and find a way out of this situation.
But here is how I see it:
1. Equipment should be a significant advantage, but skills should be paramount. For example, if we take two players who are equally skilled at controlling their character and have fully mastered it, their equipment will be the deciding factor, that's right.
However, if a character with average equipment and perfect mastery is compared to someone with top-tier equipment but only average mastery, they should be on equal footing.
In short, equipment should not be an overwhelming advantage.
I can also give an example from L2, as a positive: in older classic chronicles (like Interlude), having a full set of S-grade +6 equip (only top hardcore players have +6, in my opinion) did not guarantee a win over an opponent with all+ 3 A grade equip (basic good gear player, A gr was below S gr).
The same goes for epic jewelry. Even having a complete set of this jewelry, which dropped one item once a week server-wide, did not give a 100% chance of victory. It shouldn’t be a case of “I can kill 10 people with one skill because I have an epic sword upgraded to +100.”
2. There needs to be sufficient horizontal progression. As an example, GW2 is a project that one could look to regarding horizontal progression. This needs to be well thought out as one of the ways to retain players while maintaining a steady influx of new players.
3. I believe that the process to achieve a maximum level should be accelerated. Leveling up should be relatively quick to reach a level where you can fully utilize the potential of your class, and then focus on developing your skills as a player.
The character lvling that requires several months to reach top content already deters new players, not to mention the aspects mentioned above.
Nowadays, it's unlikely you'll find an MMORPG where it takes several months to level up and still has an active influx of new players.
Regardless of any claimed benefits of having mid-level players, this does not change the fact that 80% of players will skip everything they can just to reach the maximum level as quickly as possible.
In reality, only 10-20% of the leveling time will be instructional, necessary, but the rest will be grueling for players, striving to reach the maximum level as quickly as possible to get to the top content.
Longer leveling might have its place at the release of a project to allow everyone to gradually settle in, but definitely not on a continuous basis, as no new player will want to spend a couple of months leveling up to join a friend who invited them into the game.
4. Players should be engaged with content, not grinding. There should be enough activities for players to engage in besides their vertical progression. Typically, there will always be players who have reached the pinnacle of progression and due to a lack of content will leave. Similarly, if progression is made infinite, those who realize they simply cannot catch up with other players will also leave.
I agree with most of what you said and you very clearly articulated some of my points I was trying to make, so thank you. The thing I disagreed on was namely:
But that is on the premise of your point in #4. If the content is engaging, then they won't be grinding whilst leveling up. However it does raise the question: "How does one keep engaging leveling whilst caravan and node content is particularly catering to players that have reached the 'end-game'?"
And while I agree that leveling should not be a grind for MONTHS I think there should be a sufficient amount of strife in leveling as well. I'm not sure where I sit on how long that is personally, but I plan to give my feedback in the alpha.
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Current Member of the Gray Sentinels.
As stated in the 2017 and 2020 Lifestream and interview approximately 45 days if playing 4-6 hours per day.
I think this might be a problem for game due to the reason I mentioned above. Almost all players will strive to reach the maximum level and then engage in endgame content.
For example, what's the point of wasting a few days to get top-tier gear for level 20? (you really won't need it at level 50)
What's the point of pursuing leatherworking at level 25?
What's the point of pursuing crafting at level 30?
What's the point of caravans at level 35?
All of this and other activities make much more sense and its more productive at max level and we can't do anything with it.
Therefore, everyone will speedrun to max level.
For hardcore players, this might not be a problem. But two months after the project's launch, not a lot of people will want to spend 45 days just to get a taste / try the endgame content.
I just think that reaching a level shouldn't be a strife. It should be a way to learn the game and your character (class).
Caravans and Node content do not cater to players who have reached Max Level Adventurer.
Ashes does not have an Endgame.
And, Ashes has many progression paths besides just Adventurer.
Node progression prevents speedruns to Max Level Adventurer.
Questing/Leveling in itself is generally classified as a grind. It doesn't appear to me that you share this perception with majority of players and honestly that's something to be praised.
In terms of balance, Caravans and Nodes would indeed cater to Max Level Adventurers. Corruption does not affect them for killing other players lower level than them and they would have an inherent advantage in combat--which in turn gains them an advantage economically as well since they will be able to run caravans with more safety than lower level adventurers.
I would agree that Ashes does not have an end-game, but we're talking about Max Level Adventurers being "end-game content".
As for progression paths outside of just being an adventurer (such as crafters), they will still rely on Max Level Adventurers for some of these systems and if node progression prevents speedruns to Max Level, then what happens to adventurers who are new to the game when there is already a metropolis?
I'd be willing to talk to you with this over voice chat or whatever too. I think you have solid insight from what I've watched of your content.
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Current Member of the Gray Sentinels.
Also, who will be faster and more efficient at gathering resources for a node, a level 20 player or a max-level player?
I think the answer is obvious.
In your opinion, the ability for a character to use the rarest resources from high-level dungeons and locations, farm high-level dungeons, craft high-level gear, and take on level 50 world bosses - not endgame content?
It's great that there are many paths, but objectively, all of these paths will be much more effective and productive at max level, especially when it comes to interacting with high-level resources, high-level crafting, and high-level PvE.
This could be an interesting experience, as I wrote earlier, when the game launches.
But what will it be like for a new player to level up for ~45 days in a game world where everyone is already level 50 and engaged in high-level content?
I don't think players will care and they will quit because of it and the crutch of Ashes of Creation being successful is player retention and player population, which would make it a fatal flaw if you don't at least design systems that will curate these experiences to be fun and interactive and give players a lot of agency.
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Current Member of the Gray Sentinels.
Sure, high level players could - but why would they?
We are talking about easy to access resources here. Why would someone that is in a position to complete content that rewards high level (and thus high value) items spend that time instead on low value items?
In practice, when a game requires low level resources for high level items, players making high level items tend to just buy those low level resources off the games market.
It was actually fairly common in Archeage on NA/EU servers for players to create characters on the other region to which they played (which gave them a labor pool there) and use that low level character to farm low level materials, sometimes refine them a little, sell them and use that money to buy Apex, which then was used to keep the account subscribed to the game.
As someone that is usually playing MMO's at the top level, I wouldn't waste my time with low level resources if I am able to purchase them.
What developers need to do is inform the playerbase months ahead of time that they are going to do a push to get new players. Let them know so they can get their friends excited to play the game, but also let them know what the plan is to assist new players in that time to get leveled and/or geared up. Then you also tell your playerbase that a few months after this push for new players, there will be a new tier or two of progression for them.
What this does is it gets players excited to get their friends in to the game, tell friends that used to play the game that there is a window coming up that would be great to use to check it out again, gives those new and returning players a leg up in catching up to people, gives people that have fallen behind a change to catch up a bit, gives existing players time to help out these new and returning players if they want - and then gives everyone new progression to go after when that is all over.
Then you do it all again the next year.
As long as newcomers/lowibes can just play the game normally and get some mats along the way - they'll benefit from the system requiring those lowbie mats.
I know this from direct experience of both, playing as a newcomer in a market with this system and playing as a highbie that mad several alts at several lvls to farm particular mats at the most optimal speeds.
I needed that second setup because those mats were so damn useful that they'd rarely appear on the market, because everyone was either buying them up directly from the source or farming them on their own. So instead of waiting for those mats to pop up, I just farmed them myself.
And, as should be evident from that example, any newcomer who was just leveling up and farming said mats along the way could then sell those for a VERY good price and have some money to buy some gear.
Indeed, no.
Caravans and Node content is something that begins the moment we leave the starting areas.
Caravans and Nodes cater to all levels.
Corruption has Stat dampening and Gear degradation and Resource drops even for Max Level Adventurers.
Even Max Level Adventurers cannot Trade while Corrupted, so it's flase that Corruption does not affect Max Level Adventurers.
You are talking about that, but it's not really an actual thing in Ashes.
What happens to newbie Adventurers when there is already a Metro depends on how many Metros there are at any given time, who runs them and whether the server sas a Metro with the desired Type and Racial government. And whether there is a Metro that has the type of Services that newbie desires.
Crafters will rely on players of all Levels; not just Max Level Adventurers.
👍🏾
For one thing, Sieges and Caravans begin way before anyone can reach Max Level anything.
For another, Sieges and Caravans are always going to be a mix of Levels.
And they are massively multiplayer events. Ashes isn't really about 1v1 Duels.
Don't be misled just because the current Caravan demo only had 20 players.
Nope. That is not Endgame content. Endgame content is static, repeating content.
Endgame is when you are stuck repeating the exact same Dungeons and Raids over and over and over again.
Ashes doesn't have that.
Max Level content is not the same thing as Endgame content.
At Max Level Adventurer in Ashes, players will be doing similar activities they were doing before they reached Max Level Adventurer: Building and Sieging Nodes, Sieging Castles, pursuing Artisan, Naval, Social Org, Religious and Racial progression paths, Attacking and Defending Caravans and Raiding - but the content will dynamically change - just as it will for all Adventurer Levels.
Sure, the "Max Level content" will have the highest challenge rating because there is a Level Cap. That has nothing to do with being catered to differently than other Levels.
Yeah. Higher Levels will be more effecttive than lower Levels. That has nothing to do with being catered to.
Ashes doesn't have "lack of content" or static, repeatable content once players reach Max Level Adventurer.
Old content disappears and new content is added as different Nodes rise and fall.
That is true for Villages and Towns and Cities and Metros - and is also determined by how those Nodes interact with each other.
Old and new content for all Adventurer Levels.