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
Its very logical because you have a whole season to do it, that is multiple months depending on their time frame for seasons. And as the season gets further in the time to finish becomes faster as you have more options to get xp if you are trying to min max.
If you are playing a game you aren't going to be really counting hours until you get a skin. You are going to be playing the game and getting rewards along the way.
Getting free money is always a great so people don't need to spend money. Though this is the kind of system that i would see being a grind. And again why the BP method is better since playing the game gives general xp which levels up battle pass. Over going to a bored and grinding out test for minimal currency. I may as well go fill out surveys .
I've said this multiple of times this is a business at the end of the day, its going to make sense for whatever their objectives are. Your solution doesn't sound great for the player, and i feel a business would go with what already works being a BP if they so decided to do one.
BP also gives more control over what is being given out, over a board that would cause frustration if they changed that whole system (and i really don't think they need to add another system).
What?!?!?! Why are you talking about riot of all companies...
Except in my suggestion the person can choose which cosmetic they want first, instead of a BP system where you have to wait until your BP levels up to the point of your preferred cosmetic.
The entire mechanic is entirely the same on the player's side.
BP only points out content in the game. My board does literally the same damn thing. You log into the game and the BP says "you gonna get 300 XP if you pick up 5 flowers". The board would do the same.
If the bulletin board tasks are the same for everyone - the rumor board would have those tasks as well, so the subscriber would know what tasks there are on their login.
All the more reason for Intrepid to NOT use all the bullshit that's trendy in the industry right now. By the time the game comes out Ashes would stand out in the best way possible.
So then say you are fine with a BP and you want different functionality in progression. And we can talk about what makes sense for that part.
That would be up to IS and their purpose and how they want to approach it. Personally I believer you can't just get to the best part of the fruit and skip the rest. There should be a balance. I liked the concept of the wayfinder one where you got to pick where you went on the board (so like a skill tree kind of thing) technically you can fast track towards the items you want and skip of bunch of other things.
At the same time i don't really expect if IS does a battle pass to try to redefine anything and just have things being standard. As you already have the traditional gearing system in game and the BP wouldn't be p2w. So they might want people putting in those 100 hours. Or coming later on during the battle pass with some element of fomo though it takes them like 20-40 hours to finish it since they have more options to get xp.
Granted again they can just have it so BP doesn't go away but you can only have one active which makes the most sense to me.
You can have both.
Hopefully there's something else that gets figured out in the next ~13 pages.
Don't worry we can do new circles tomorrow.
Edit* I'm sensing things will be controversial
Yeah, we both know that, but one can hope, right?
If they don't want to do more than 9 hours per week they don't have to finish the BP if they don't want to.
Anf they don't have to purchase the paid BP if they don't want to.
And... if it's like WoW, they would still be able to get the items they want in later BPs.
Not really because BPs typically have a free path and a paid path.
So, he'd really be saying, "Don't pay for the paid path of the BP."
Nobody is forced to pay for the paid path of a BP.
There are a couple of other way for Intrepid to make money. Both of which will make more money than the paid path of a BP in any case.
A paid BP path is an additional method for Intrepid to make money - and it's OPTIONAL.
The has no purpose. No purpose whatsover. Other than the fantasies you concoct in your own mind because you don't understand how BPs actually work.
This thread is 17 pages long, NiKr has been making a solid effort to try and understand the perspective of those that want a battlepass (both of you). Yet, you still claim that he doesn't understand the system you are talking about.
That means one of two things need to be true - either you are absolutely horrible at explaining things, as in, the worst person on the planet at it, or the system is needlessly convoluted.
I'm going with the notion that the system is needlessly convoluted.
The big thing for me that I still don't get is - if the developers have the time to create a battlepass, why does it need to be it's own convoluted system? Why not simply add those shit quests to the game and have the free rewards be a part of those quests, and have the paid for rewards be on the store?
Like, the entire notion for why battlepass even needs to exist just doesn't make sense outside of obfuscating behavior that is anti-consumer.
It still just isn't needed at all, the content can just be added to the game as a part of regular updates - if that is the content Ashes players want added to the game.
The Stockholm Syndrome with you and Mag is really strong on this one - battlepass in other games has clearly taken you hard, yet you are going well out of your way to defend it.
It's actually getting to the point where the justification and arguments you guys are making are interesting - not because they are good arguments or anything, but because of how absolutely taken by this objectively horrible, anti-consumer system you guys are.
Dygz keeps repeating that the directly added seasonal content ends dozens of hours before the BP can be completed. And I say I dislike that, because if the content ran out - why must I keep playing the game. But they're so used to this system that they don't see this as a bad thing.
And on the casual side, they'll never understand a pov of a person who can't play every single day, so to them "9h a week" is super casual. And they also don't understand that "100h to complete a BP" is not casual, because 100h is a shitton of fucking time. I've seen countless posts/videos where people complain about how games these days are either super long or require players to play them for way longer than they did before.
Dygz still hasn't said if he did play for 7h a day when he cleared the BP in 2 weeks. Yes, he said "I cleared the BP in ~100h", but that's a dodge of saying "I played the game for a ton of time a day, which allowed me to complete the BP". This is not casual.
And Mag is even more fun, just saying "if you can't play the game at hardcore times, you shouldn't even play it". And it's super funny cause he's been the one who kept saying "BPs make more money for the company" and then goes a full 540 noscope on his own argument and tells people not to give Intrepid money
No one is saying this
I don't care about Raiding BiS Gear, so I stop playing after I've completed all the Quests and uncovered the entire map with 2-4 characters.
You can dislike that the content runs out in 20-30 hours. But, you are going to play for 100+ hours anyway.
Just as you (and people with your playstyle and people who like to Raid) are going to keep playing more than 100 hours after the end of a full expansion.
So you might as well get some free Cosmetics and Embers from the free path of a BP for continuing to do the stuff you like to do after the new content dries up.
And, if you want a bunch more Cosmetics at a huge Discount (rather than paying full Shop prices) and you want even more Embers - you can pay for the paid track of the BP for ~$10 which tends to be around the cheapest price of a Cosmetic in the Shop.
If you don't want to purchase the paid track of the BP - don't purchase the paid track of the BP.
Why did you add "super"?
For MMORPGs, 7-10 hours per WEEK is Casual Time.
100 hours in 3 MONTHS is Casual Time for an MMORPG.
100 hours in 3 months is Casual Time for completing a full MMORPG Expansion once.
And, yeah, Ashes taking 45 days to hit Max Level is going to be closer to 175 hours.
Longer than the typical MMOPRG.
But... the Holy Grail of an MMORPG is that it will be a Neverending Story and the content will never end.
It's just that, with MMORPGs, gamers can race to the end of new content faster than devs can create it.
7 hours a DAY is Hardcore Time.
7-10 hours per WEEK is Casual Time.
If you don't want to play the BP, don't play the BP.
Just as I don't Raid for BiS gear.
If you don't want to pay extra for extra stuff, don't pay money for extra stuff.
Just as I mostly ignore the NW and WoW Item Shops. And just as I only play the free paths of the NW and WoW Battlepasses.
You can ignore the free path of a Battlepass, too... you'll just still be wracking up BP XP and Cosmetic Coins (Embers, vBucks, Trader's Tender) anyway by coincidentally completing BP Tasks as you play the game.
Passes that include cosmetics are always appreciated, too!
Anything else is needlessly convoluted.
Having a "free path" and a "paid path" is needless convolution.
Also, I'm not quite sure what is meant as "not in the game".
You have to do activities in the game world in order to earn the Cosmetics. And then the Cosmetics will be used in the game world.
With a company - especially a publically traded company - anything other than paying for a product and getting all of that product exists as a means to screw people out of more money for what they would have otherwise have recieved.
There is no reason at all that WoW needs to charge anything other than a subscription and box price for expansions. Anything else is taking content out of either expansions or free updates, and charging people for it as an individual product.
I've already explained why Battlepasses exist.
The Cosmetics Shop is already outside of the game world. I dunno why there should be a complaint about a cheaper way to gain Cosmetics that is typically a bridge between Quests in the game world and direct purchases outside of the game world.
Battlepasses help entice players who are motivated by doing a variety of Tasks beyond combat to earn Cosmetics (but who are not motivated to primarily repeat Dungeons and Raids in pursuit of BiS gear) to play many hours after the new "content" in the DLCs has been completed - where "content" refers to Quests, NPCs, mobs, gear.
Battlepasses are going to appeal more to Casual Challenge players than to Hardcore Challenge players.
It's a stupid argument, don't make it again. Why should these people pay extra?
I don't pay extra for raids, you don't pay extra for quests, crafters don't pay extra, PvP'ers don't pay extra - why are these people paying extra?
Everything that is in the battlepass should be a part of free game updates - there is no argument or excuse that exists that can refute this.
The argument that this content wouldn't exist without a battlepass doesn't hold weight - Blizzard specifically (I can't speak for Epic - but I can for Blizzard) have not added additional developers to create battlepass content or cosmetics, they have simply allowed less work to be spent on the rest of the game.
Edit to add; your argument seems to be completely focused on what the battlepass contains. The opposing argument is that what the battlepass contains should be in the game, rather than bracketed in a battlepass. You don't need to defend WHAT is in the battlepass, you need to defend WHY it is in a battlepass.
So far, no one has managed to do this - I am unsure you even understand that this is the issue.
A direct purchase store should require no gameplay to get the item that you bought, which, to me, separates the bought cosmetics and the in-game stuff, so it's not as immersion breaking. But if I need to pay for the BP outside of the game and then this BP (which will supposedly be either on login screen or in launcher, cause it might be account-wide) tells me to do gameplay to earn what I paid for - that's immersion breaking to me, because my actions in the game are dictated by something outside of the game.
You cannot get BiS gear without doing stuff inside the game even though you paid the subscription outside of the game, so I dunno why all of a sudden BP Tasks from the Login Screen is more immersion-breaking than the Cosmetics Store.
It could be that looking at the Tasks in a UI that you access before you log into your character is "immersion-breaking" for some people (like my one friend who doesn't like chocolate), but it's really not much different than checking on Achievements Tasks.
In WoW, all the Battlepass Tasks can be accessed from the Traveler's Log, similar to how you access the Achievements UI and similar how you can look at Quests and Raids you want to do.
And, yes, there is an NPC near that Chest where you can use Trader's Tender to purchase the Cosmetics you want.
You do not have to pay for the WoW BP outside of the game.
So, I especially don't understand how the WoW Battlepass is immersion-breaking.
If you don't want to pay for it; don't pay for it.
Exactly.
So... if you don't want to "pay extra" for extra Cosmetics and Embers... you would be doing Raids like you normally do and coincidentally earning Embers and Cosmetics from the free BP track.
And gamers who are ignoring the free BP path would be coincidentally earning Cosmetics and Embers from the free BP path.
They just might not earn enough Embers or XP to be able to collect all of the Cosmetics and rewards at the end of the BP path.
Even so, at some point they would have enough Embers to use in the Cosmetics Shop and where-ever else Embers are used.
Just by coincidentally playing the free BP path.
No argument or excuse is needed since a free path is usually offered on the Battlepass.
The APOC Battlepass had a free path, so I expect an Ashes BP to also have a free path.
If you want a bunch of extra Embers and Cosmetics in addition to the free ones, pay for the paid Legendary Path.
If you don't want a bunch of extra Embers and Cosmetics in addition to the free ones, don't pay for the paid Legendary Path.
I don't know what you are trying to say here.
The Traveler's Pavilion where you get your Season Pass Cosmetics is new content. It would not exist without the WoW Battlepass. And there are some BP Tasks that are created specifically for the month - especially related to holidays but also related to the Seasonal Content - whatever the theme of that month is.
I dunno what you mean by "less work to be spent on the rest of the game" since BP Tasks and Cosmetics don't take much work. Designing a full Quest with dialogue and Gear with stats is going to require a bunch of work and testing. A Task to "Eat 3 Food" or "Complete a Mythic Raid" does not take a lot of work. Especially does not take as long as a full Expansion.
Which is the entire point of a BP - entice the players who quit at Endgame to play several more hours by doing Casual Challenge Tasks for Cosmetics - as opposed to Dungeons and Raids for BiS Gear.
(Although, doing Dungeons and Raids will also earn BP XP, even coincidentally)
I don't know what that is supposed to mean.
In WoW, the BP is in the game world.
In NW and Fortnite, it's more part of the Login Screen UI. Similar to the Cosmetics Shop(s).
I don't need to explain why that design is OK for me. That's the way the devs have designed it and it works for me - just as Quests work for me and just as I'm OK with the Cosmetics Shop not being in the game world - but I'm not motivated to pursue BiS Gear via Endgame Dungeons and Raids. I can be motivated to do a bunch of other stuff in the game in pursuit of Cosmetics. And I don't mind spending $10 for a bunch of heavily discounted Cosmetics + Embers/vBucks/Tender's Trade.
I expect Ashes will have a BP. I kinda expect it will be similar to the APOC BP.
But, the APOC BP was 3 years ago. By the time Ashes releases, it could be similar to the WoW BP.
Except I'd simply go back to me saying "why even have this, when we already have tasks that can do the literal same thing and just reward cosmetics as well".