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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
You're effectively just saying that you want 'background' content, though, which is great, but it doesn't scratch the itch for certain types of players who explicitly want the A-B-C step process that Quests give them. Also, for others, who experience games through a lens of being led around by the objectives that the game gives them, providing them with repeating objectives that are also rare and yet don't have high immediacy, seems to lead to them either losing interest in the game itself, or constantly demanding new 'immediate' content.
Since players are on a spectrum for this, you can't even just throw it out there that some specific amount of engagement is 'correct'.
Those two player types make up the bulk of MMORPG players, I'd say. Ashes should absolutely have good 'background' content, but it will have basically no effect on their enjoyment.
Think of it as the difference between someone who wants to go to a Crafter's Market every weekend because it's part of their routine and they like the atmosphere, vs someone who wants to visit an amusement park with infinite unique rides (or at least rides that change somewhat every time they visit).
Best to just make the amusement park and use it to surround the Crafter's Market.
I agree with you, but...what if the majority of players who are going to play ashes don't really care about quests and they just want the most simple / minimal amount of quests since their focus is pvp events?
I think if that's the majority of players of Ashes, certain devs will be sad.
That's the only reason I care about that, really. If that happens, Riot can handle the rest.
but the devs are at the service of the game, not the other way around...
Entirely true. I always say that Steven should make whatever he wants, I just want him to be clear about it. Why have a bunch of quest writers and (PvE-ish) Story Arc devs on staff for content that 90% of your playerbase isn't going to care about?
And even if it is no harm at all to have them and you 'might as well' have them, then we're back to this conversation being valid. Even if only 5% of Ashes players care about any of that, the people hired to do it should still care about doing it as well as possible, probably?
Honestly I guess that's not really required, so yeah, I see your point in the end.
it was a hypothetical. also, I'm not against the quests. i don't like questing, I just hope I'm not forced to quest to progress (at least not too much). i prefer mob hunting.
agree that if you gonna add quests (or anything really) they should be good. always try to make good things, not half assed things.
You do have a point there, I kind of forgot about the regular old quest givers still dotted around the landscape. But at the very least, it was a minimal number of them. I think some filler is fine. As I said before, it's not outside the realm of the imagination for someone in need of help to reward you for killing 20 bandits, or collecting 15 flower samples, or returning 5 pristine wolf pelts, etc.. I just hope those quests won't be the majority of open world content.
I guess I don't fully understand storybricks. Is it a system where an AI of sorts is tracking and simulating interactions between NPC factions and making events evolve dynamically in deeply nuanced ways? I guess I'm not looking for these events to feel so real and automatically advancing that it feels like the game would play itself if everyone logged off.
When I say "How NPCs are programmed," what I mean is, their programmed pathing and animations. So making them do something actively alarming that makes you want to intervene rather than just having them standing around doing nothing. That's already been done w/ GW2's dynamic events. When I say "What they get up to when I'm not looking," I basically mean the same thing. Not that they're really deeply communicating with each other and thinking to themselves, just that they're programmed to appear as though they are (even though they each are only animated and pathed to do a couple different things). When I say "Variety of ways to contribute," what I mean is, the events should usually, though not always, be more complex than just "kill twenty gnolls to fill the bar," but rather, "rescue the farm," which you can do by killing some gnolls, helping some downed guards, busting their getaway wagons full of pilfered goods, putting out fires, etc. That's also already been done w/ GW2's dynamic events. "Objective presentation" would be running up to the action and having a brief sidebar flourish into view that gives you a brief explanation of what to do rather than needing to run around looking for the quest giver in an active danger zone. "How progress is tracked" would just be more progress bars than "x/y thingamabobs", sort of like how Steven likes the idea of health bar segments rather than raw numbers. It's simply more immersive. All of those things have already been done before.
Again though, I'm fine if some quests are checklists. A fair number of them, even. I just hope that when the events and story arcs do pop up, they actually feel at least as visually dynamic (pathing, animation, etc) and have at least the same variety of participation methods as dynamic events in GW2, and lean harder into visual storytelling rather than leaning so hard on the UI to tell you everything that could just be shown to you in the game world.
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I don't know if all these different desires and perspectives on "content completionism" v.s. maximum length of wonderment and discovery, and ease/consistency of access to quest content v.s. dynamically available events with varying consequences v.s. mob/profession grinding as preferred primary content could be boiled down into a poll, but I'd really love to see what the results of one would look like if given to every major AoC hub and bundled all together into one data sheet.
It's obviously because the game is still in development and hasn't necessarily demonstrated the pie chart of all included content types yet, but this forum, at least, certainly has a far more diverse body of video gamers than any game-specific forum I've ever been on. And I'm glad for that. But it does make it difficult to discuss the merits and potential pitfalls of various design choices when several people on the same forum for the same game disagree on which are which.
I think what Ashes is doing by having a mix of checklist quests, organically spawning quest hubs with greater narrative focus, and multi-day story arcs is a good change to the usual time-fodder checklist quest barrage we get in most MMOs. I'm willing to accept that they have plenty of other newfangled things on their plate to figure out first, so it's fine, though I hope they're at least willing to look at what's already been done before to push open world content further than simple checklist quest with static NPCs.
Content state in Ashes will be tied to node state.
Once players understand the relationship, they will know what the content state of a given PoI is just by looking at the nodes around it.
Exploration in Ashes will happen more on wikis and in forums than in the game.
Also, I never once said content needs to be static.
Right, so, you are arguing yourself in to a circle.
You are now talking about inconsequential content.
Which again is my point - so far no one has managed to design impactful content that is also actually, objectively fun in an MMORPG setting. When you tip the scales to the content mattering, it becomes a chore, an obligation, and is not fun. When you tip them the other way and make it not feel like a chore, it becomes inconsequential as a result.
It is so far unclear if there is a perfect balance.
That is all I am saying here. I am not saying content needs to be static, I am not saying Ashes need to change anything they are doing.
Essentially, this thread is you saying "wouldn't it be great if..." and then me coming in and saying "sure, but here is reality".
When I played EQ in 1999, I marveled at how advanced the graphics were and how amazing it felt to basically be playing D&D in a 3D world.
When I watched some EQNext fans play EQ for the first time 10 years ago, I was aghast at the graphics. I think my mind had kind of replaced my memory of EQ graphics with my memory of EQ2 graphics.
Looking at EQ graphics 15 years after launch, I was think, "OMG! The graphics look like Doom!" Which makes sense because because development for EQ began just 3 years after Doom.
I played EQ2 a couple weeks ago... and now I can see how close those graphics are to EQ (from a tech standpoint).
I can see how the GW2 presentation could make it seem like it's far advanced from "Kill 20 Goblins" even though it has quite a few Quests that are similar.
I'm still waiting for MMORPGs to have AI and Events similar to Storybricks.
And, even with Storybricks, I expect to see some form of "Kill 20 Goblins" because in an RPG, there should always be some NPCs that want someone to "Kill 20 Spiders" or "Kill 20 Skeletons" or "Kill 20 Goblins".
But, hopefully, we can, fairly soon, get NPCs and mobs with more complex motivations and interests than we typically see in MMORPGs.
(I love the AI conversations in Suck Up! )
Ashes is not striving to be as ambitious with AI and Events as Storybricks, but the primary reason I backed the Ashes Kickstarter is because Nodes seems like Storybricks-lite and I want to support devs working on systems similar to Storybricks so that it becomes quicker and easier for them to implement these systems in future Online RPGs.
I hope the Ashes Events are at least as good as GW2 Events.
I just don't think that will completely negate "Kill 20 Goblins" Quests.
Nor am I sure that it should.
A game that does not include any "Kill 20 Goblins" Quests is probably some other genre than RPG - similar to how Soccer is different than Rugby.
I feel you but....
GW2 has tons of mobs just standing completely still, doing absolutely nothing.
Bandits, Moa, Orchard Spiders NPC Quest givers... all disturbingly immobile. Worse than even EQ2 and WoW.
GW2 does also have some NPCs who roam around and do stuff, like run over to a farm and burn Crops.
D&D also has a DM who can send the "20 Goblins" to you.
But, it's closer to having a progress bar rather than a numerical counter the players track. And it's the DM who is tracking the kill count.
Again, grinding is killing individual mobs without a Quest that will give bonus xp and rewards.
Sure, MMORPGs have an insane amount of hit points and levels compared to D&D.
But, also, it can take years to get a character to Level 15.
MMORPGs are not intended to point towards Level-Cap Endgame.
But gamers are going to be obsessed with beating the game as quickly as possible and race to Level-Cap. Faster than devs can provide new content.
That has negatively impacted MMORPG game design.
I didn't say Kill Quests are inherent to RPGs.
Quests are inherent to RPGs. And some Quests will be Kill Quests.
It's just that MMORPGs focus heavily on combat and killing stuff, so the vast majority of Quests are going to be Kill Quests.
Eesh, if there's a 'kill 20 goblins' quest in a campaign, I'd really question that DMs or module writer's imagination.
Well, I'd argue that grinding is somewhat relative. Killing endless mobs for xp is one form of grinding. Running the same instances over and over is another form of grinding. Dailies are another form of grinding. PvP battlegrounds for honor and conquest points for a baseline gearset to Rated-BGs is grinding. It's all busy work for some players, and there are players that see this as their main enjoyment.
Ok, but let me bring in something my buddy Dygz said about that...
I agree with Dygz.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
The difference with MMORPGs is that the kill count for an encounter is tracked by the Player so that the Player has a clearer indication of what they need to do to get sufficient XP. And so they can better plan their game session time. And to help them move from encounter to encounter.
A DM/GM should help that feel more organic. Sure.
It's only relative due to language drift.
Again, in MMORPGs, we're really not intended to run the same instances over and over again. We got to that point because gamers were able to race through content more quickly than devs can introduce new content.
Anything that repeats can be considered busy work while waiting for new content. Sure.
Ehhh... I mean language might be part of it, but I think it's really the player's goals that define grind v. content.
- If I'm aiming to be raid ready by Sunday evening, I'm going to grind what instances or rep or whatever necessary to be as effective as possible - that's a grind. If I have an hour to play while my daughters are out shopping with my wife, I'm going to see if I can run an instance just to have fun, that's not a grind.
- I want to have a 2400 rating in 3s, well I first need to get some basic honor gear, so I'll grind 15k honor in a day - that's a grind. Now, I don't do arenas and I just enjoy pvp bgs for what they are, that's not a grind.
It's how my objectives turn content into a means - where I put my head down and push - that creates grind, not necessarily just the words I use. IMO a good RPG doesn't have grind because the means ARE the ends. In an MMO, grind will always be present because players have so many different ends to achieve.
"I'd like a Coke."
"What kind of coke do you want? Pepsi? Mountain Dew? Fanta Orange? Root beer?"
"Defend 20 caravans" could be a quest. But with the 20 being an implicit number to level up rather than explicitly specified.
Count should depend on something you get because you need it for something else rather than a declared requirement from an NPC.
But other quests can be equally boring, like go save my kid. Then the next player has to save it again. And everyone in the ZoI might doing that. Then you roll an alt and you encounter these quests again.
The good thing will be if you can somehow mindlessly know what you have to do without reading the text. Just press "accept" and go on your way to do things while watching youtube or looking around if anyone follows you (depending on how corruption is balanced)
And in such state, when I actually don't care anymore to read the quests, I would prefer them to not exist at all. I can go and do things even if I am not told, but because I need or I am curious what happens if I try to influence things.
But then, what I said so far fits a solo experience. In a group is hard to focus on anything else than solving clear group objectives. If I am with others in discord, if they read or comment the story, I listen to them rather than focus on getting it from what I see in the environment (reading notes or waiting NPCs to finish their dialogue).
Count is there to help set some short term goals and move on to doing something different.
Can't get more boring than earning xp via individual mobs in comparison to the bonus xp that comes with Quests for killing the same number of mobs.
You don't have to read Quests.
To spin this slightly, 'Defended 20 Caravans' sounds like an achievement to me. The quest is something like 'OTR we desperately need your help to ensure our supplies can reach the kingdom before our citizens starve. Please go investigate what's happening to our caravans and keep our supply lines safe.' The quest would have a range - where you can defend multiple caravans even though MVP would be 1. Hence the achievement.
Not really, it's the difference between asking for a Coke because you want to specifically enjoy a Coke for a minute, and asking for a Coke because you need caffeine to ensure you're 'on' for a presentation you're giving. Means as End v. Means to an End.
If I get an achievement I cannot avoid thinking that I do that activity because Steven wants so. Which is not fun.
By logging into Ashes, whatever activity you're doing is because Steven wants it, soooo... choose accordingly.
Just as the meaning of Coke has changed over time to become more generic, the meaning of grind as related to MMORPGs has changed over time to become more generic.
I think it depends on your location. In the South Coke means 'any soda' in the West Coke means Coke (though everyone always has Pepsi - blegh). But I don't think it's as much a case in MMOs. I think grinding has always been - I'm doing something repetitive and tedious to get to the next stage.
Like that Spirit-something skill in UO that literally got higher by pushing the same button over and over. That's was a grind - no mobs needed.
Where I am from, coke means coke, nothing else.
This is why it is important to know if the way you are using words is a local thing, or a universal thing. If it is local (which can be a physical thing, or in relation to your online circle), then it is on the speaker to be sure they have communicated what they mean by the words they say.
If you are in a situation where there has been local language drift, you can't expect everyone to be on the same page.
Kind of like a game where the opponents aren’t just like bowling pins you knock down and set back up again.
The more you work against a particular enemy, creature type or monster faction then the more dangerous it should escalate with corresponding rewards. Like what if those nasty goblins actually put a bounty on you. Or those campaigns where there are wheels within wheels. Hitting the goblins too hard disrupt the boss’s mission, which means either more goblins show up or bigger, badder things arrive to take care of those meddlers.
Grinding has not always been doing something repetitive and tedious to get to the next stage.
Originally grinding meant killing individual mobs for minimal xp rather than Questing for bonus xp and rewards. It meant Leveling by objectively the method that provides the least amount of xp rather than the method that provides bonus xp.
And later language drifted to mean anything a player subjectively deems tedious or boring.
That sounds more like an exploit than a grind.