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.
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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
I love this and really hope it is the case. I want far travel to feel far, for the world to feel big not just be big.
Obviously, socializing is more important to me than zergs.
Well it looks like travelling through a node by mount will take about 3.5min. So if your friends are 3 nodes away that's a 10.5min run by mount. It's a lot of running, but probably not that bad. It's a bathroom break, small snack and getting the coffee made with a fresh cup. Achievable in a 2 hour session.
A 3-5min queue time for many games is reasonable, from when you boot up the game to when you get in the action.
If you only want to socialize online with a group of people then that is what discord is for, and can be done at any time everyone is around. Ashes of Creation is a game first, and games are fun because of the rules/restrictions. If you only want to socialize/roleplay with a 3d character running around in a virtual world there are plenty of Roblox games that are free to play, have open worlds with 0 combat, and you can RP all day without any interference. Pick your theme; wolves, horses, western, medieval, magical...There is no real "game" there, but that isn't required for roleplay.
My belief is that for the "game" designers, the game play should come first.
The vast majority of Ashes players aren't going to be setting up impromptu social events with the devs. They are going to be playing "the game".
It's like sitting down to play a game of cribbage with a friend. The game's rules don't have anything to do about socializing or talking or anything. It is simply how the cards work and the pegs move, that's "the game". The players create the socializing while playing "the game".
If "the game" results in pvp zergs, as many games have, it can be next to impossible for a small group of players to even play most of the content in the game. It's the game of cribbage, but the other side gets more cards every round. Now "the game" starts to lose its appeal to many players. This has happened enough in other games that they are trying to limit the prevalence in Ashes.
I'd say this is a much more important aspect to deal with, for the health of "the game", than impromptu social events.
As a casual MMORPG, when able to be side tracked multiple times and/or just pickup unplanned things on the way made the journey all the more enjoyable.
Do you mean that you enjoyed the journey in New World? I didn't play it at launch (thankfully), but when I did pick it up recently I actually quite liked it. The world felt full of things to pick up/gather, and it felt like doing so was a good thing to do. So yeah, travel didn't feel that bad.
But also, there was instant travel to different waypoints on the map. I'm sure if that wasn't there the travel would have felt more like a slog at some point.
Travel times are 'long' only for people who have very strict access to game time. For a person with 'a need to do other things', 'Travel Assist' is sufficient in my experience.
And if we choose to believe that corruption will be a meaningful deterrent to standard unprompted kills, I'd assume 'nonhostile person obviously using Travel Assist' would be one of the safest, so we could just divide the 'expected attack rate' by 2 or 3 for them.
We don't need fast travel or reduced traveling time, we have that in WoW and most modern MMORPGs where you just teleport where you need to go and do the stuff and that's it. What's the point of the world in that case?
In Ashes traveling will be a journey, it will allow players to feel like going from one corner to another has a purpose and is an accomplishment on its own. Fast travel would also kill pvp since big guilds would be allowed to instantly get to any conflict within a short time, thus giving them even more power.
NO FAST TRAVEL AND NO REDUCTION OF TRAVEL TIMES.
My argument here is not against the current design of travel times. It's more about how travelling time ends up being a large % of player time.
If its 250 hours to level 50, and 125 hours of that is just pure travelling, then the game designers should be just as invested in making that content enjoyable and fun and not just the combat aspect, which could be 75 hours of it.
Mario cart is fun, racing games are fun, roblox jumping obbies are fun, controlling mounts with abilities is fun... There are lots of ways to make travelling/movement fun. That's the point I am trying to make.
People can complain about WOW all they want, but the dragonflight expansion was very well designed and the travelling was great AND FUN. The flightpaths aren't "teleports" and I mostly used them when I wanted to go to the bathroom or the dragon's abilities were on cooldown. Otherwise the dragon flying was even better than the flight paths!
Sounds like Ashes may have some fun systems with their mounts too. I am fine with that.
A HUGE part of this game is travelling. That is fundamental to the game design. It should be fun, or we are spending most of our time not having fun.
All of these other systems they are showing are things that we aren't even expected to be spending the majority of our time doing.
I wonder if their democratic vote style will prove superior compared to the other ones.
Explorer 87%; Socializer 73%; Achiever 47%; Killer 0%
I typically play 5-8 hours per day, so I could be much farther across the map than 3 Nodes away.
Socializing is more important to me than combat. Yes. As you can see by my Bartle Score.
I would way that Ashes is primarily a competitive PvP game with a heavy focus on Risk v Reward.
Which is why Steven is paranoid about zergs, while zergs are a much lesser concern for me.
Ashes is designed to cater to Steven's playstyle not mine.
Which is why I merely shared an opinion rather than criticize the Ashes design.
Typically, players don't set up social events with devs. True.
Typically devs initiate social events with players. Usually after Livestreams.
Also, it's fairly common for players to initiate social events with players after podcasts. So that really depends on how frequent such podcasts are - which remains to be seen.
Again, I don't really expect that to have an impact on the design of Fast Travel in Ashes because Steven wants to do everthing possible to reduce the impact of Zergs. Especially on PvP combat.
It doesn't really have anything to do with that.
Poor analogy. But moot in any case.
Yep.
Yep. That was a long and windy and oddly oppositional way for you to basically say, "Oh. We agree."
Depends on how each individual allocates time for activities during their play sessions.
For instance, how much time does it take to travel to a Dungeon or Raid v how much time the individual stays at the same Dungeon or Raid during their play session.
And how much of a concern it is to an individual will depend on playstyle.
It may be less of a concern for a playstyle that is: Explorer 87%; Socializer 73%; Achiever 47%; Killer 0%
It may be a great concern for a playstyle that is: Killer 87%; Achiever 73%; Scoializer 47%; Explorer 0%
Especially if the travel time is 30% or more of the game session and the playstyle is Explorer 0%
Well the analogy is that the game itself doesn't need to create rules that hinder the game play in order to have socializing.
If someone wanted to add the rule "Every 5 peg movements, players must take a 2 minute break to socialize." to cribbage in order to encourage "socializing", it would add nothing to "the game".
Apologies. I took your original comment as an attack at the game design and was being oppositional by defending the anti zerg vs impromptu social event argument. I'm not sure we agree, seeing as I do not value the social aspect of fast travel versus the game play that results from Ashes' design.
Sure, I was using the 250 hours to level 50 as a baseline. I doubt Intrepid is allocating 100 hours of that to pure socializing. If you want to socialize 70% of the time, it may take you 450 hours to get to level 50. But the travel time will remain.
It won't be possible to get to level 50 without travelling, but you can socialize while travelling or doing anything in the game. Or you can socialize while standing in town doing nothing to advance in the game. Socializing is independent of the game. People can socialize standing at a bus stop, or the grocery store check out, or in the forums for a game that is in development.
And the travel time is not just "exploring". Much of the travel time will be travelling places you have already "explored". There are likely way more people who enjoy "exploring" versus travelling the same route over and over and over for years. By the time Ashes launches, most of the Alpha 2 players will have explored a lot, and what is left is the game play.
My main argument in this thread is that regardless of your Bartle score, if you wish to get to level 50 you will be required to travel a certain amount. Due to the lack of fast travel, much of that travel time will be repetitive A to B style and not "exploration". Therefore, the game designers should make the travel enjoyable somehow.
I am imagining mounts with fun cooldown abilities, but I am not proposing any specific solutions. Just pointing out that this is an important area for the devs to focus on, just like biome design, questing, combat and crafting are important in the context of the journey to level 50 and beyond.
I also don't think the solution to this is just "more obstacles" when your game objective is to get from A to B. When your objective is to "explore" then all of the cool game systems already shown are great. But after you explore, your bags are full, and you want to get from A to B, cool gatherables and mob packs aren't going to make the journey more fun.
This is why I am saying that the act of travelling itself should be a fun experience, regardless of the other systems. Exploring new areas, stopping to gather things or look at the scenery is irrelevant. Many games have just a basic mount that moves faster than running, but you can just click auto run and mildly mouse steer your character. This gets old after a while, and especially when doing it for long periods of time.
That is a moot point.
Who said anything about adding a rule - other than you?
The game design is very good for the target audience.
So. We agree.
And it's worthless to use as some standard measure.
Explorer 87%; Socializer 73%; Achiever 47%; Killer 0%
Killer 87%; Explorer 73%; Socializer 47%; Achiever 0%
Killer 87%; Achiever 73%; Socializer 47%; Explorer 0%
If the individual player's playstyle is Explorer first and Killer last, 70% travel time probably would not be a concern.
If the individual player's playstyle is Killer first, and Explorer second, 70% travel time probably would not be a concern.
If the individual player's playerstyle is Killer first and Explorer last, 70% travel time would very likely be a concern.
And, that's just Bartle Score - which doesn't really factor in Gathering.
Players who focus on Gathering mostly likely also would not be concerned with 70% travel time.
Ashes will have some players frustrated by the travel time and many players not frustrated by the travel time.
We currently do not have enough info about Mounts and Caravans and Science Node Fast Travel to evaluate travel time in any meaningful way.
Actually, you did when you posted on the thread.
Implicit in your comment, due to the topic of the thread, is that you would prefer a rule that fast travel was possible and give zergs a boost because it lets you socialize with devs.
Then I attempted to explain that impacting game play by making rules to promote socialization isn't required, because you can socialize regardless. My analogy was fine for that explanation.
It's coming from Intrepid, 4-6 hours for 45 days, 250 is a nice round number. Give me a break here. My original post was about how much Intrepid expects of that time to be travel time. That is the whole point of the thread.
I don't know what the Bartle Score is, but if it doesn't differentiate "exploration" from repetitive back and forth from town to depot/turn in quests, or travel time that has nothing to do with the goal of exploration, then it is irrelevant for the topic of the thread.
Hence the basis of my thread. Cheers.
since ashes is mostly a PVP game, don't you think most people who will play it will be mostly killers or socializers? players will most likely be explorers third or last...so its entirely possible that many players will be frustrated by the travel time (or as xeeg's said, not the travel time itself but how you travel) and only some players will not be frustrated by it?
seems to me that most people who will play ashes wont be the explorer type, they will be the killer type. so if the logic behind removing players frustrations is based on majority of players, something about boring traveling should be done in ashes, according to your logic.
And i don't want it to shrink.
I want that we have to use Time to travel from A.) to B.) This way fast-travel Methods are much better and feel more significant. Also, i know the World of Verra will be huge - but this would be kinda negated if the Developers would for Example create Mounts or other things which reduce the Travel-Time down to one tenth or so from what it "should" actually take to travel from Point A.) to Point B.)
It will be impossible to make "Everyone" like the Game anyway. The Developers should not cave in and let the Players have several Heart-Stones like in WoW or other Teleporation Methods.
The House/Home/Family-whatever Scroll/Spell is quite enough. Travelling should be seen as something huge ingame. Not as a Joke.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
I just checked the mounts page and they are probably already doing what I am talking about, the mounts look cool. They probably have fun abilities. So maybe this thread doesn't matter.
The whole inspiration for the thread came from playing Mortal Online 2 where running was brutal and boring AF. It had a similar "no fast travel" design.
I get the game design behind the time requirements, I just want to enjoy myself while playing the game.
You won't see anywhere in the quote where I said the design should be changed.
It's not implicit in my comment.
It's just your flawed inference.
Fast Travel is already possible via the Science Metro Super Power.
And I said nothing about actually adding anything else to give myself or zergs a boost
You attempted to mansplain a point I had already conceded.
I prefer Fast Travel so that I don't miss impromptu social events. But I also don't care about zergs.
Ashes is PvP game that is concerned about zergs - which is why it has restrictions on Fast Travel.
No where did I imply that the Fast Travel design should be changed to accomodate my preference.
I merely shared what my preference is and why I have that preference.
And then you made up a bunch of other stuff in your own head about what I "implied".
You said this:
What other inference is one supposed to make from this statement?
It really matters who has an Explorer rating close to 0%. Which is likely going to be comparitively few.
Also... again... the Bartle Score does not really factor in Gathering - and Gathering will be a major component of Ashes gameplay...
Caravans are also a major component of Ashes gameplay...
The Open Seas is also a major PvP zone...
So, the majority of Ashes players will be OK with lots of travel. It's not like you can't travel and Gather or you can't travel and PvP or can't travel and PvE.
"This is my preference - because this is my playstyle. But obviously that is different than a design concerned about zergs."
No need for you to add anything else to what I explicitly stated.
The primary punishment of Corpse Runs is the danger of losing your Inventory and Gear.
Also, typically, the deceased player is either naked and highly vulnerable to attacks or an immaterial ghost, incapable of interacting with the world around them.
The former is risky if it's possible to accrue xp debt and level loss or stack whatever the death penalties are if you die again while trying to reach your Corpse - the latter is potentially boring because it's not possible to do much that is meaningful until the player character becomes corporeal again.
General travel being innately boring is not really a factor of Corpse Run punishment.