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
The point is that there's more than one way to make a battle pass. Call of Duty's just use the normal experience you gain from a match to progress and provide optional challenges for bonus XP (at least that's how it used to work, I know they've revamped them more than once). Why couldn't AoC just do something similar? Have a new "tier" or a piece of the battle pass currency take a specific amount of XP to get and then there could be in-game vendors to get the rewards. It isn't a new concept and you would just naturally be progressing it by doing literally anything in-game that provides XP. In Helldivers 2 you can even find the battle pass currencies themselves while in a match in hidden supply caches.
As for being an additional cost, I would rather see the rewards earnable completely free in game without a reduced xp modifier. If it has to have a paid component, offer that for free to anyone who spent the minimum price for a skin.
If I could just get additional currency from a Bulletin Board to purchase Cosmetics from an NPC, I would always ignore PvP Tasks and possibly always ignore Tasks like "Make 10 Kills with a Bow".
Also, "Make 10 Kills with a Bow" is a strange task for a Bulletin Board. Typically Tasks on a Bulletin Board are going to care about what you Kill and, ostensibly, that will have some impact on the Town or world.
A Battlepass Task is kinda more about how you play - and are designed to entice players to try gameplay modes they might not normally try.
Battlepass Tasks overlap with Quests and Bulletinboard Tasks.
No. I think with the WoW Season Pass, you have to pay your subscription to participate in the Season Pass.
I think it's been 8 months since I last played the Season Pass in WoW, so I would need to re-check what kinds of Tasks the Season Pass offers.
WoW Season Pass does give Cosmetic Currency just for visiting the Traders Post once each month.
That means you need an active subscription, I think.
And then some Tasks are:
Imbibe Zanzill's Poison 50 points
Show Some Love (emote) To Fallen Dragons 50 points
Complete 10 Quests 50 points
Complete Quests in Outland 100 Points
Defeat 25 Raid Bosses
Kill 10 Dragonflight Raid Bosses
Complete 10 Dungeons
Earn 7500 Honor
Fulfill Public Crafting Orders
Yep. No need to have a monologue for an NPC.
And it is definitely an easier method to keep players playing while the work on new Quests that include NPCs and Dialogue. Not much different than trying to get gamers to repeat Dungeons/Raids over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to get a full set of BiS gear.
The Battlepass just works better for retaining players rather than gamers.
You can easily do the battle pass style of random; to do quests, without time limits and seasons or any of the fomo tactics and monetization
But, part of the fun is getting Seasonal themed Cosmetics by doing Seasonal themed activities.
The outdated Dailies and Weeklies from several years ago have typically been much more fomo - where progress is reset to the beginning if you skip days or weeks.
what if the game is fun and engaging, but also uses a battlepass?
Battle passes don't have to work that way. BPs in Helldivers 2, Halo Infinite, and Halo MCC for example don't have any fomo because you can just switch to any of the previous passes or unlock content from them whenever you want.
If the game is bad enough that they need to go F2P in the future at some point, well, that's obviously bad, but that is also when they can consider a battlepass IMO.
When the Devs want to hold some 'event' that will lose 'narrative' relevance after a bit, but they want the players to just play the game normally in order to participate in that event. I.e. that they don't have time to make specific content for the event.
Similar to a BDO monthly-type event.
Different games call this different things. But then the battlepass 'version', if you can swap between them, allows players to go back and spend more time doing 'normal' content to get specific rewards, while also giving them the option to just skip it.
So event of 'Tame Horses because Event Reasons! Get reward!' is fun and immersive for the Event, but you can always tame horses. They didn't FOMO you by making 'special Event only Horses'. So in the end, to me it's just implementation. Battlepass, Event, Community Goal, I don't really care what it's called. If it is 'do common content X amount of times to get some reward you signed up for', it's okay.
I'd prefer this to be woven throughout the game in Ashes specifically because of what Ashes is, but for basically all other MMORPGs, I'm fine with this implementation. And for Ashes, I only care because it risks some homogenization of experience that I think isn't so great. (in Elite, for example, at least you have to all go to the same place to do a Community goal, and the difference in experience is where you COME from).
Hmm... can I request that you work on your salt levels for a bit?
A lot of your recent stuff has been pretty unnecessary and is starting to reach the 'just tearing at the game for no real benefit to anyone'.
I'm not asking you to stop, just... maybe dial it back a bit?
i am sorry you dont like the game. I am sure you can find a project or game that suits your "style".
Intrepid... please stop pretending that Dygz is an Ashes content creator.
Intrepid knows and accepts that they failed to hit the "Before 2020" date.
Adding a Battlepass as a feature for a contemporary MMORPG released after 2022 is not much different than updating to UE5.
You can unnecessarily add more context than that if you wish.
I like the game.
It's not perfect.
I acknowledge their failures as well as their successes.
"Before 2020" is a failure. That is a fact.
The Open Seas is not a failure. Adding it to the design is a success for the Target Audience.
Edit: prefer neither.
You have a lot to learn besides video editing.
it will take a bit. Incoming. i watch every Theory Forge episode. lol. hehe... cant wait. I will call it the "Dygz dislikes Ashes Anthology". currently planning on using the "You have a lot to learn besides video editing." post in it. (i have a screenshot, just in case.)
Quickly prepared background music.
https://suno.com/song/33cae59c-076a-4e6e-a0d9-f4ee061bae46
Actual footage of themepark/gachs/cosmetics-collector players encouraging begging daddy corporate to suck out their souls and feed them back a portion as a reward. Thoroughly brainwashed.
(I won't ever be able to make this statement free of stereotypes.
I just don't get what needs to have happened in someone's life that leads them to actively advocate for brainrot battlepass menus. I doubt it can be a good thing.)
Let me know if i need more... check out around 57 seconds in. It is fun having you around though.
It wouldn't be mandatory nor effect your progress int he game, if you don't like what it offers you just don't buy it. If you like what it offers its usually just a big discount on items rather than spending 100$.
Whole point is just so there is more to do for people or they have something to grind. If they battle passes don't make money from people not buying them then they won't do it. And will just push single outfits selling, or if they aren't making enough money on the game slow down content creation. ?
People should just be happy there is no p2w.
If I disliked Ashes, I wouldn't even test the Alphas and Betas. And there would be no way to get me to explore Verra after launch.
And I would be saying that Ashes has an objectively shitty design.
Kinda reminds me of my grandma's "spaghetti". Spaghetti noodles with tomato paste and sugar.
I lived with my grandma while I went to college. I started cooking on my own on a frequent basis after college.
I could eat a couple platefuls of my grandma's "spaghetti". It was decent tasting pasta. But it wouldn't satisfy my craving for spaghetti.
Spaghetti would at least have to be on the level of my mom's which would include a bottle of Ragu sauce and some cooked ground beef.
During my starving artist summer in NYC, after college, I discovered spice shops and began incorporating freshly chopped or recently dried spices into my cooking.
My own spaghetti might also include some freshly chopped tomatoes, fresh basil and oregano and italian sausage along with ground beef. And then I'd also craft dishes with various forms of pasta besides just spaghetti.
After my mom tasted my spaghetti, she adjusted he recipe to become closer to mine.
I didn't dislike my grandma's "spaghetti" but I consider that to be pasta, rather than spaghetti.
And, if I had a choice of recipes, there's a bunch of others I'd prefer over hers.
If hers was the only "spaghetti" available, sure I would eat it. Because I don't dislike it.