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
Some people would like to destroy the castles you build
Anyways the Alpha 2 may be longer than we think and you will test.
People save money form battle passes so idk what you are on about. You sound more emotionally attached than me as for me it doesn't matter if they have a BP or not. But I'm not going to be surprised or mad, about it in the slightest.
You sound so much younger!
no because battle passes give you things other than cosmetics as well.
There is multiple purposes for the battel pass, you are trading saving money with being active on the game for a certain amount. And not just logging on buying things on sale and jumping off.
Honestly prob just a different mic.
Literally everything is the same, people pay the same low price, but there's no BP.
Which then implies that, in order for casual players to make full use of the BP - they gotta play daily. Otherwise they'd need to play more than casually.
And this is one of the reasons why people keep saying that BPs have dailies. Because their structure inherently rewards daily gameplay. Fortnite's current BP rewards 60k XP for doing dailies. And you need 90k XP a day, if you want to clear the BP within its season.
And here's an example from 2 years ago.
Both of the first 2 require you to survive a fight with another player, which requires skill. And the third one requires you to either find an abandoned player structure or destroy one during a fight (which also requires skill). And that's 20 pieces of buildings as well, so it might take some time if your skill is low or if you're unlucky.
If you could screenshot your dailies from the Lego version of the game, that'd help show the other side of the game, cause I assume BR's dailies are usually smth along these lines.
And unless Ashes rewards BP XP for purely login into the game - people's gameplay might not match the daily quests. Yes, there are random mini tasks that you can do, but those don't reward the same amount of XP as dailies. And if they did reward as much - they'd probably have to be limited in daily quantity, so that people don't burst through the BP in a day (which defeats your presented purpose for BPs).
No, you're definitely missing a really meaningful difference here, or at least, if not, you're willing to accept a thing that I think would make Dygz and Mag7 right, in my group's view...
The BP is a simple, consolidated place to see all the tasks and the rewards without having to slowly work it all out 'organically'. It's a checklist that remains.
This makes it different from missions/commissions because of that. You don't have to 'find the NPC', you don't have to 'wait for people to run around and randomly find the quest-starter and tell you where it is'. You just come back to the game after however long, even just your day of work, and open the BP menu and immediately you get the "I have goals now".
Do you want an NPC that does this exact function? Because this is the thing non-BP games are not providing to players, so even the minimally invasive, completely ignorable BP (all cosmetics, just getting cosmetics early and avoiding some RNG, etc) is doing this function.
If I had to choose between a single NPC who does this (or even a building full of different NPCs who do it), or a menu-based battlepass, I'll grudgingly take the BP.
While doing those tasks, the player would also get random events out in the wild or come across people/npcs/quests that might interest them and lead them to more activities. All of this is doable w/o any groups of people, so would apply to solo players too.
This is one of the main reasons why I'm against a BP in Ashes. We already have a tool that can serve all of BP's purposes, especially if Intrepid tie cosmetics acquisition to those tasks.
A Bulletin board is per-node.
So it doesn't help a certain demographic in the same way.
It doesn't get pirates/privateers to come to shore. It doesn't get miners or processors who spend long periods out in the mountains near a Freehold to move. It doesn't affect people who camp out at dungeons as guides unless they log in on an alt.
If you want Bulletin Boards to be magically 'subscribe-able', then I'll take that over the BP (note, not for me, I'm the equivalent of the person who puts things ON the Bulletin board and I still don't care, even if less people see it because they would have to go into the Node for it).
If BP gives them some randomized tasks that require them to move away from their preferred gameplay - what's the difference from them just visiting a nearby node?
I'd personally also prefer if bulletin boards could provide quite a few tasks at the same time, so players could load up a ton of them and have leftovers for future days if they don't clear everything in one gameplay session.
Battlepass is 100 hours in 12 weeks.
Which is about ~9 hours per week.
I skipped the first couple of months because I was playing Nightingale.
So. No. You do not have to play daily - unless you wait until the very last couple of weeks.
I explained that to you already.
There are Daily Tasks.
But, I didn't play for the first 10 weeks, so I missed 10 weeks of Dailies and I was still able to complete the Battlepass.
Primarily because each Weekly gives much more XP than a Daily. And I was able to complete 4 Weeks of LEGO Weeklies in 2 Weeks.
There are more Tasks than just the Dailies.
There are also Weeklies.
There are also Milestones.
There's also BP XP exploration.
Also... I think you're probably just looking at the BR Dailies (from 2 years ago??)
Here are today's BR Dailies:
There are also Dailies in the LEGO Mode.
There are also Dailies in the Rocket Racing Mode.
There are also Dailies in the Fortnite Festival Mode.
They all contribute to the Main Battlepass progression.
Also, I just noticed a Fortnite Festival Battlepass with a free and paid track.
Many, many different ways to play Fortnite and gain xp on the Main Battlepass.
Like I said...
On the new Battlepass which began Friday... I jumped into LEGO Fortnite to build a Wasteland fortress gate.
And I hit Level 5/100 on the Main Battlepass in 45 minutes without even checking to see what any of the Dailies and Weeklies were.
LMAO
It's kinda cute the way you try to tell me how the Fortnite BR and the Fortnite BP work - when you haven't played them!!
Skill is not required to survive a fight. As you can see from my APOC video.
Also, you don't have to be in a fight to Restore Shields or Restore Health.
There are other ways to damage Shields and lose Health besides being in a fight.
That being said....running away also works for taking damage and then Restoring both Shields and Health.
I mean... for some reason you are focused just on the Dailies, but...
Here is a Battle Royale Weekly - I would probably do these before the Dailies:
Here are the Battle Royale Milsestones - it doesn't take skill to complete most of them.
I would save the Eliminate 25 Enemies for last, but it doesn't take much skill to kill 25 players in 3 months.
You can see that I made some progress in one of the Milestones - all I did was jump in and out of a Match to screenshot the Dailies.
I expect there to be some Battlepass XP just for logging in to the game.
Again, Battlepass Tasks are much more than just a handful of Dailies. And a Handful of Weeklies.
Which is why I told you that they don't really fit well with a Bulletin Board UI (also because Complete xx Bulletin Board Tasks would probably be a BP Task).
There are some gates on the BP that limit how quickly they can be finished.
But, it's still going to be 80-100 hours in 3 months. And that is about 9 hours per week.
Which is pretty Casual gaming time.
I also told you before that if there is a Task I'm not interested in doing, I just ignore it.
You don't have to complete all the Tasks.
You don't have to complete every Daily Task. You don't have to complete every Weekly Task.
Just do the Tasks you like - some you will complete even without looking at what the Tasks are.
Or ignore the BP.
In Minecraft pigs can fly
https://youtu.be/i5IhxDoA6KU?t=1267
So I'm going to say that Dygz is right that you're specifically not getting it.
You consistently speak about the BP as if it is a thing that affects the way players play the game, and possibly is rewarding enough to disrupt their playstyle.
It is absolutely accurate that modern BP from basically any sensible company do not do that. And you can burst through the BP quickly a lot of the time.
YouTube content is often, as Dygz says, skewed, by the fact that people who have a specific mindset, experience them a specific way, then conclude they should be done differently, better, etc. Those people are often 'not experiencing the BP as intended'.
The only way a BP affects Ashes negatively based on that, is if they move real content out of it, which isn't a thing that modern BPs do.
You now have reference for the sort of thing BPs require, the Ashes ones would probably be even 'flatter'. And tiered.
"Visit 1 Node." - 10 BPXP
Next tier in that slot 'Visit 3 Nodes'. - 25 BPXP
"Walk 1000 Units." - 10 BPXP
That sort of stuff.
Sure you can design bad versions of even these, but as much as I hate them, it's hard to argue that this approach of 'hey we'll remind you that there's stuff to do in our game' will ruin it other than maybe 'retaining players with mindsets that some don't like'.
So it seems that you can get ~450k XP a week from dailies + weeklies. And milestones max out at 700k (unless there's more of them than in that screenshot?). You need just under 8mil to complete the basic BP, which means that even if you grind out all the milestones - you're still restricted by doing dailies and weeklies.
There's also bonus goals for milestones, which, I thiiink, reward ~1mil overall. And obviously all the general gameplay gets you some additional xp across your 100h of gameplay.
But judging by this screen from a year ago, milestones seem to increase in a non-linear way as well
So the grind becomes even slower the further you go, which pushes the burden of XP gain even more towards dailes and weeklies.
And yes, you keep saying that 9h/w is casual time, but again, it is only casual if you don't miss days and if you have a ton of free time on weekends if you do miss a few days of dailies. And from what I can see, bonus goal rewards also provide quite a bit of XP, but, outside of milestone bonus goals, you gotta be doing dailies and weeklies if you wanna get those bonuses. So, again, if you miss out on a good chunk of those - you're shit outta luck and gotta grind hardcore time.
In other words, I think you're viewing this from too deep of a hardcore-time player's perspective. And also from a perspective of someone who'd be willing to ONLY play one game, if they were casual. Because if they don't - they miss out on BP rewards.
Also, another question on the missing out part. You say that some cosmetics will supposedly return. How would that work in the context of a BP? Would it be a "two items per lvl slot" situation or would it just be "this is pretty much a repeat of a previous BP, in terms of rewards"? Cause if it's the former - sooner or later it'd have to be "several items per lvl slot", right? Otherwise the fomo stacks in the long term. And if it's the latter - why would players who have already gotten all of the rewards in the previous release of this BP play the game for the 3 months of the rerun?
I totally agree that quite a few videos will be clickbaity and more opinionated than is required. Which is why I've been trying to get factual info about the game. Dygz provided great info on that, which I then applied to the XP calculator and tried finding videos of people deeper into the BP progression.
And Dygz himself confirms that completing a BP requires ~100h. Except, unless I'm mistaken he was talking about BP lvl100. While paid BP has even more rewards after lvl100, so anyone who decides to purchase a BP is required to play even more.
I'm all for better pointers to content. I'd just prefer if they were more organic, on top of paid cosmetics not being gated behind dozens of hours of gameplay, even though I've already paid for them.
Those parts, I absolutely agree with and is why I'm also fairly against BPs.
There are not a lot of things BDO does well, but this is among their better ones.
MMORPGs, to some extent, 'need' padding content for the retention of players who do not care about the 'whole game'. This is the parallel to MineCraft/Terraria that you can take away from it the most.
Dygz cares about 'experiencing a story', and Dygz also seems to be self aware enough to know 'this game won't hold my attention fully if it can't provide story fast enough but I want something that makes my brain remember-want to play it'.
Organic markers to content sadly do not work as well as many people wish they did. We can be 'mad at the average human brain structure' and refuse to play along, or we can suck it up and accept Events/BattlePasses/Season Content/External Motivation Datasources from Guild/Node Leaders.
You're just talking to someone who is in the camp of approximately "I want the GAME to tell me what to do, no one else gets to dictate my time."
Ashes have stated that DLC will cost nothing more than the subscription cost of the game.
Them then releasing paid for tasks that are not a part of the games subscription is them going against what they have said.
You can argue that the tasks aren't "real content", but you wouldn't win an argument in regards to whether it would technically be dowloadable content - it very obviously is.
If Steven were to decide that he actually was going to go back on what has been stated in this regard, that he was going to add paid for content in the form of battlepass, then why can't he then also go back on other things he has said, like to pay to win in the cash shop, or reselling past cosmetics?
If they decided that since it was only "minor" content in a battlepass it was fine - that would be a real hit to their reputation. What's to then stop them only adding "minor" pay to win items in the cash shop? It is the same argument.
If Intrepid set the standard of "no paid for DLC", then it is on Intrepid to stick to that. The tasks above, as bullshit as they are, technically are content (not content I would ever want or ever play), Intrepid have already said no to charging for it.
And those activities are gathered from players who went out to find stuff on their own. And these players can contribute info about their exploration for cosmetic currency (that is, MORE currency than other means of acquisition).
That info would be smth along the lines of "starting npc; general requirements (if any); length of gameplay; reward". And if we ever have quests/tasks that have a cycling reward structure (potentially based on seasons/weather/whatever) - the info would include that stuff as well.
The reward for submitting info would probably be either purely first come first serve, or at least have diminishing returns on subsequent submissions of the same info.
Do you think this could appeal to the BP wanters? And, Dygz, would a system like this interest you in an mmo, as a BP replacement (I'm not talking about Ashes here)?
The Main Battlepass is 80K XP to reach the next Stage for all Levels.
I finished the LEGO Rebel Battlepass in 2 weeks and then the the Main Battlepass 3 days later.
It was not a grind because I was the Tasks I chose were quick and easy to do while also mostly focused on doing stuff I like to do in the game.
LMAO
You keep trying to math it in a way that fits your claim without actually playing it.
I told you already that the Weeklies are more important than the Dailies. And the Weeklies don't disappear if you miss them. And a set of Weekly Tasks only takes about 20 minutes to complete.
There really is no such thin as "missing a chunk" unless you literally try to play the final 2 weeks out of 3 months. But even then.... you can just go do the Dailies and Weeklies an Milestones and free Battlepasses in the other Game Modes... they all contribute to the Main Battlepass.
You complete some BP Tasks just by logging into the other Game Modes of Fortnite.
"Try Rocket Racing" - I completed that Task just by hopping in and then hopping back out before the Race started.
It is not a grind to hop into the BR, emote before you parachute down to the map and then hop out 10 times.
That takes 10 minutes and then I can move on to a different BR Task.
"Thank The Bus Driver" 0/10 Stage 1 of 20
If I had to Kill 200 Enemies in the BP - that might feel like a grind to me because I don't like to PvP very much.
But, I can play the BR, ignore all the Kill Tasks and still easily complete the BR.
Instead I could do Tasks like "Drive Two Different Types of Cars in One Match" and at the same time complete "Travel Distance In a Vehicle 5K" Stage 1of 20
It's not about my perspective.
It's about you not understanding how modern BPs work and then trying to find flaws so you can still think they suck.
The only time modern BPs have fomo is if you start them the last 2-4 weeks out of 12 weeks.
You can skip many weeks worth of Dailies and still complete the Main Fortnite Battlepass.
That's even just by only playing the LEGO Fortnite Tasks or only playing the BR Tasks.
Especially because if you jump in to the game on Week 10 of 12 - you will still have Week 1- Week 9 waiting for you. And that would take you maybe 3 hours maximum to complete - though probably less because some of those Tasks Stack.
But, even if thought for some reason that you needed/wanted a bunch of Dailies - you could do the Dailies (and Weeklies) in the other Game Modes and quickly rack up a bunch of XP for the Main Battlepass.
I mean... some rewards on the BP are vbucks. There is always one slot for 100 vbucks on each of the 14 Pages of the Main Battlepass.
As I said, Battlepasses come with a Story Chapter.
I think there was a Marvel Comics Story Chapter in 2020, 2023 and another one in 2024.
Battlepass typically comes with 14 Skins - 7 of them are base/original skins and 7 of them are variants.
Of the 7 base/original Marvel Skins on the 2024 Battlepass, 5 might be brand new, 1 might be from the 2020 BP, 1 might be from the 2023 BP. And then each of those 7 would have a variant that matches the theme of the Season. Like, in the current Wasteland BP, which is a mix of Mad Max + Fallout, there is a Wasteland Magneto variant.
Also, the BP Skins from years earlier ocassionally rotate into the Item Shop.
It's not going to be the entire BP returns. Rather it's going to be that some of the items may return in a future BP with the same theme or some of the items may appear in the Item Shop after many months or 2+ years.
I dunno what you're trying to say by "the fomo stacks".
I've told you before that in Fortnite, the BP has very little fomo. There might be some if you drop in the final few weeks of the 12 week Season.
In Fortnite, the fomo is all in the Item Shop. Because those items rotate in and out daily. And there's no way to anticipate which ones might stay multiple days and which ones will only stay one day. Some of them will rotate back in every month, but when you first see them - there's no telling when you might see them again.
I mean some of the holiday Skins you can anticipate seeing every year, sure.
I was talking about the possibility of several items being rewarded per BP lvl slot. Obviously that's not the case so this doesn't matter.
As for the fomo, to me, waiting months if not years for a theoretical rerun of a cosmetic is fomo being belief. Because you never know what might happen to you or to the game in the meantime. If you can't play at the exact moment the rerun happens - you've completely missed out on enjoying that cosmetic for several years. If the game goes away before the rerun - you've still missed out, but just on a smaller time scale.
I'm glad that you don't see long periods of time of not enjoying something as "missing out", but I personally do.
I'm interested in RPing through a story. So, yes, I want the Story to continue telling a story with new adventures - typically via Quests. BP Tasks are close enough to Quests which provide rewards.
Typically, Quests run out at Endgame. And I'm going to be done with the story after I've played through it 4 or 5 times from different character perspectives - especially if I'm always receiving the exact same rewards from the exact same quests.
A BP doesn't really tell me what to do - it just gives me a large list of things to do while moving me closer to rewards I want. But I still choose what I want to do. The game doesn't choose for me.
Usually, I hit Endgame and I'm looking for new Quests/New stories and/or new reasons to do stuff.
BPs offer that since they are basically mini Expansions that drop quarterly - and they offer the type of items I prefer - which lend more towards Story/RP than they do function/power.
The new Quests and content that drop with a new Season is typically around 20-30 hours. I'd probably be done with that after 20-60 hours. A BP could keep me playing for about 100 hours.
Again, Nodes are technically supposed to cause enough dynamic change that BPs would be unnecessary.
Ashes is not supposed to have an Endgame.
But, also, Ashes is supposed to have Seasonal DLCs, so I expect the form of the Seasonal DLC will be a BP.
Though it doesn't really matter to me because I would be ignoring an Ashes BP in any case.
That's basically it to me. Either you are asking for battlepass in a way that it is content - which is a no-go, or you are asking for battlepass in a way that isn't content - in which case, why?
If a battlepass could do as effective a job at keeping people in the game as you say, then that content should be a part of the games regular content updates that are a part of our subscription. However, now we are in that realm of daily tasks which players have already said we don't want, so battlepass would need to be implemented in a way where that isn't happening.
Fact is, what keeps people in a game is content. Developers just need to add more content. Fortnite and WoW both do a horrid job of adding more content (their shareholders do not allow them to put enough developers on new content for the games in question). Battlepass/season pass is simply a means by which to keep people in their games via the least amount of work possible.
I'm highlighting this part moreso as a 'clarity point' than because I have any disagreement with it or ignored the other stuff you said.
The wordings that the rest of us use don't seem to match yours (and I'm not asking you to change either, just noting it for those who read my posts).
And the quoted line is the primary reason why they don't seem to match.