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
And the onboarding process had those newbies join a part of the guild, which was not subjected to the guild's wars, but was still a part of the chat, so any newbie could ask about the game, the guild, the gameplay, whatever.
And in my personaly experience I've gotten quite a lot of newbies into the guild proper once they were done with the mentorship, because they were cool people that were just newer to the game or to the server.
I believe Ashes could greatly benefit from a similar system, especially if they expand on L2's design.
Except, if you think about it, WoW has lost way more millions of players than L2 ever did. So who's really the deader game here?
Doing that for your mirror only (but you are not aware of that since days). My arguments and opinions and explanations are all in my postings, there is missing not even one point and if that's the case, than I've decided to leave it because it's not worth discussing it.
I use "cause Steven wants it" as an argument against huge changes to huge systems because it's HIS game. The game that he has invested millions into. The game that he keeps saying "will not change its core pillars". So when someone comes in and says "your core design is shit, I got a better one" - yes, I will answer "it's Steven game and it should stay the way he designed it to be".
Well no, it's our game. We are the market. No you alone, not Steven. That's no echo chamber, you know. It will not survive if he will be stoic and he will not listend to the MMO players out there.
You will not have an advantage if playerbase shrinks fast, believe me. The game will be dead also for you then.
I will continue to state "L2 is dead", just because it's a fact and the result that this game desired, obviously. And IF the market really would like to have this L2-copy believe me it already would be out there since years.
You lack an open minded approach for different experiences, ideas, opinions and critical feedback once it is out of the bubble and not just "wow, that's amazing".
I followed several live streams.
In on live stream (guess just the one end of August) he was talking about weopens. First he said, he will not explain the entire page (and I thought: Good thing man, because thats basics in EVERY MMO and also skill-tree stuff is just like in New World) but they guys in the chat were hyped and euphoric as the heard this the first time ever in their life. It was so otherworldly and incredibly strange.
And as hundres of guys asked for the spear (obviously a weapon liked from the community, well it is a very very cool weapon in new world, really) he was not even reacting. He was talking about having one-hand maces in the game. Like MMO have them since year 2000+. I mean, what to say. Blind followership.
And I don't need to know how a game w/o pvp works, because that's literally every single player game out there, except there's a ton of annoying people around that are trying to get the same resources as you and you can't even do anything about it. I know that I dislike that even w/o trying the game. But I confirmed that opinion by playing WoW and NW.
As I keep saying and you keep ignoring - this will be a niche game. Niche things exist and are successful within their niche. Steven knows it's gonna be a niche game and he's ok with that.
I order something from the menu and before I can even taste, you say that's going to taste like crap and you try to convince the chefs to bring me something different than what I ordered.
And I'm saying... at least let me taste what I ordered first so I can determine how well I like it. After I taste it, we can give the chefs tips on how to tweak the meal to better suit what I like.
It's Steven's restauraunt. It's Steven's chefs. It's Steven's menu.
If you look at the menu and decide you won't like the food - there are other restaurants out there.
I would like to taste what Steven has on the menu before people start demanding changes to the menu.
Such games got easy solutions for that when it comes to respawn time, location or also like "resource is not gone just because someone else gathered it before". There is a huge field of meaningful options that gets fun into the game and not limits, disappointments and waste of time.
Niche games are not successful, not popular and all of them die a slower or faster death.
No serious human would accept that and still would be, like a child, insist of not listening and learning.
Still only agree to disagree. And this will not change. But go on :-)
The exact same applies to Ashes and other mmos. I'm not interested in spending ungodly amounts of time just to "not just launch them". I'd rather play a game that I like and am interested in. And I want Ashes to be that game.
Yes, and as you said, there's already a ton of games with those exact mechanics. I'm not interested in them. I want a competitive mmo where I gotta fight and compete for my rewards. Ashes promised to be such an mmo, which is why I got interested in it.
Yes, metal has not been a successful genre of music. Which is definitely why it has survived for over 50 years.
And stuff like EVE definitely hasn't survived for more than 2 decades being a hardcore owpvp mmo.
Also, if your only measurement of success is WoW and FF14, then that means that literally every other mmo is dead, because none of them came even close to either of those games. And considering that there's been way more pve mmos out there, I guess pve mmos have died way more than the pvp ones.
"metal" is a comparion like "MMO". If, you must talk about bands within metal. And there are bands doing it 50 year (the WoW, FF14, GW2 and ESO bands) and bands that are dead or only heared from 1% of all humans. Nobody cares, really.
Btw., I'm listening to metal. But also other music. Broad experience in music and different genres, you know. That's helpful if you know more than one or two topics in life, because it changes perspectives, knowledge, point of views and helps for better differentiation.
exceptions prove the rule.
And, there is a completely other reason for that, maybe just unkown for you: It's no high fantasy game with sword & board and magic, but sci-fi, so a completely different setting. And that's why those sci-fi fans like it.
I would defenitly add GW2 and ESO but all the rest. Yes, is dead. They are from no good quality, no good design, nobody wants to play them. So yes, in all means, that's a fact.
Awesome, then I suggest you go play wow, ff14 and maybe even gw2 and eso, if you only care about the successful mmos.
It's funny that you keep mentioning elitism and how it's soooo bad, but then you disregard dozens of games that thousands upon thousands of people love, purely because not enough flies has landed on their particular sort of shit
I did, really really cool games. Thanks for your suggestion. Or maybe I'm still playing it?
Does this mean I'm not allowed to play something else or different? If yes, why? You will tell me this?
I propose: Play L2. Oh, I'm sorry.
Or the rest of it still being available..? Private servers or something? Just go for it. That's your game. There is no need to copy it again, as we empirically know what will be the result later on.
Don't do exlcusion just some more experienced MMO players are coming to get into Ashes.
Flies have a reason why they land there. There is no reason the land somewhere irrelevant.
In large scale MMO the amount of players counts, that's the main goal. Get a lot of players and keep them. It's not meaningful from business point of view or gameplay point of view to have only a minority of players in a game depending on having a lot of players doing different stuff that things are working together. Your niche talk (only to follow holy Steven) just makes no sense for the health of the game. For you only the bubble and echo chamber counts. If there are only 500 players but they are the hardcore pvp elitists than everything is perfect. But it's not. You know what happens to MMOs like this. Just look on the market, beside the ones I've mentioned to you, all the rest is the real shit, that shit, that even flies don't want to land there
I've already listed the games whose players would be more than interested in Ashes. And collectively those players would be more than enough to let Intrepid keep developing the game for years to come.
Play L2, really. If it was not good enough for you, you should have learned out of that experience why that is the case and why it will happen again, if the same is repeated. Vas from Farcry would call that insanity.
"Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change... That. Is. Crazy."
But they still play EVE because they like it and its not dead (for instance). And it's in a completely different setting (also already mentioned that to you, read carefully). The rest... BDO? Really?
And I keep telling you, that feedback has already been given years ago and every damn year since. Nothing will change during A2. No new type of feedback will be given, because Intrepid have already heard it all, and they still want to make the game that Steven designed.
All those other players can play dozens of mmos that are designed exactly how they like. Ashes will be designed for the people that have similar tastes to mine.
Have you heard of PirateSoftware? He already has over 10k people interested in his plan for Ashes. That's already a full concurrent server just from him alone. And a ton of those people come from EVE, because EVE's devs have been making dumb decisions as well, just as NCsoft did which inevitably led to the decline of L2.
And I mentioned BDO (and other "dead" games) exactly because they had players with similar tastes to mine, but failed those players because the dev company kept making shitty decisions.
Steven's goal is to avoid those shitty decisions, while making a game that appeals to players that have been forgotten by their devs. Changing Ashes into a yet another WoW would simply betray all the promises Steven has made throughout the years and would also make it die within a few months, because a wow-like only appeals to wow-like players, who will inevitably leave to their owner, who'll keep beating them with a stick, as Blizz have been doing for a decade now.
Time will show. You don't like everything in Ashes, that's valid also for other players.
I've heared all the viral critism about it when it comes to mega guilds dominating everything which will disadvantage all others. And 10k is a forecast, will only be a fact and true if that's happening at release in 2-3 (?) years. Things change. Life and humans change. We will see
Yeah, that's sounds familiar if thinking about some design decisions in Ashes. Very true. Let's hope that they learn from that from games that didn fail.
Still room for improvement.
Not the ones who love Ashes as it is, not the ones who 'want to see where it goes.
If you're coming onto the forums concerned that Ashes is making mistakes and needs to change something, check if TL has already 'done it the way you want it'. In the end, even though these two MMOs are almost certainly going to converge over time, both games are better served by choosing a side, and so is the market for players.
If you hate TL, wait for Ashes, if you think Ashes is making mistakes, play TL. Encourage complainers in either game to go to the other. Only then would we have a chance of even getting to discuss actual issues in either game instead of 'stuff someone doesn't like'.
I've only been following for 4 years and I've already seen pretty much every possible complaint about pvp, big guilds, freeholds, open dungeons, leveling speeds, class design, skillsets, gear design, loot rules, monetization, etc etc etc.
And Intrepid have had all that feedback summarized by their mods and presented to the team. And yet even in these past 4 years Steven has went even deeper into those designs, with the open seas change, with making freeholds a lvl50 auction thing, node ruins being a pvp zone, glint and commodities that can multiply through caravans which are inherently party-based - all of which will be hated by the pver WoW crowd.
And it's exactly this doubling down that leads me to believe that none of the core pillars will change simply because people outside of AoC's target audience scream at Steven to change them.
Sure, and this will go on, but the major part always will be the pvp part and thus all the consequences in all surrounding contents and design. If that part disadvanteges and harasses players more than they benefit, then they will quit and the overall health of the game decreases due to a lack of players - players, that are needed, that those systems work. It's a vicious circle and intrepid must watch it with responsibilty - not ignore it in an artificial bubble.
Most of this stuff seems fine in general for me (WoW pvp and pve player
And there's been at least 100k people that have already liked the current design enough to monetrality support it.
And the only monetary impact that dislikers will have on the game will happen after release, at which point it's gonna be too late to change the game as drastically as they would want. And before release there's no way for those people to somehow influence Intrepid monetarily (well, other than buying the keys, which is a positive influence).
Oh, right, I completely forgot, like, the biggest oldschool design part of the game
And I'd be real interested in seeing how exactly you'll avoid interacting with anything that can kill you in the game, when pve will supposedly be hard enough to do that and pvp will inevitable do that
We will refine systems, we will iterate on systems, but we will never change the core identity of the intent and philosophical approach to what Ashes of Creation as an MMO brings to the MMO genre space... What we want to do is express that Ashes of Creation is endeavoring to build a risk-versus-reward centric PvX style game. And that intent and purpose will be delivered upon, and it will not change.[11] – Steven Sharif
Nice for singleplayer games, very bad for a MMO.
Money was not enough - see Alpha Keys ("game is already financed")
It's not survival game, correct. Wasting and stealing time of the player is by defalut bad design. If someone is masochistic that's understandable, but it will not transfer this to normal behaviour. The majority of players don't like regression and frustration, but progression and fun. Nothing special about it also here, but just normal.
Artisanry is great! Whats wrong with it?
Searching for a mass guild with 24/7 unemployed guys that will carry me with mass-scale zerg pvp trough all the content.
But, as this thread shows: There is enough pve, solo and whatsover content so I don't understand your concerns. This game is for everybody!
I jused again checked the slogan on the offical website: This sounds like the perfect hardcore elitis pvp game I'm searching for. Good thing there is something on the market like this, because that's what everybody is searchin for and thats why this slogan should attract them all! That's a good thing, phu.
It's 100k people that spend $250 at the least. Which is the same as having 1.6mil subs on release. And I do believe that 1.6mil people is more than good for an mmo.
That Steven is rich is something fully irrelevant for me, several game developers are rich (or meanwhile rich). You probably now Swen Vincke?
It's 100k people that spend $250 at the least. Which is the same as having 1.6mil subs on release. And I do believe that 1.6mil people is more than good for an mmo.[/quote]
Player amounts at release are fully irrelevant for any MMO out there. Fully. Proven every time. What is important is only how many players are playing the game still after 6 month. As you can see on the MMO market, the answer is simple.
And while they were lucky enough for those investors not to mess up their vision, for most games that is not the case. And Steven being a very rich person matters here, exactly because he can avoid that investor influence. And he can keep saying the stuff that Ayevee posted.
And the 25mil from those 100k people (and whoever knows how much more from other pricepoints) is simply player-based "investments" saying "make your game".
And as for player retention - that usually depends on the quality of the game rather than purely its designs. A good release would pull in a ton of people, which is a ton of money, which means that the studio can survive past the inevitable drop of players.
We've had a million concurrent in NW and LA in the recent years. Both of those games fumbled their release. One through numerous bugs, broken servers and broken client, and the other through countless bots that ruined any semblance of economy (also one of the biggest reasons why L2 died in the west). And there's been no other recent mmo of good quality to truly show what a "normal" playerbase decline looks like in this day and age.
Also, NW's downfall was at least partially due to its very late shift in design direction due to all the same feedback you're implying Ashes will have. That shift led to devs not having enough time to properly restructure the game, which resulted in the stuff I mentioned above and the absolute lack of good content. The game lost all its niche appeal by trying to attract all the modern gamers.
And implementing the kind of changes that the "majority" will ask for would lead to either the same fate as NW or to godknowshowmany additional years of development. We're already 7 years deep, with maybe 3-4 of those being proper good years. Making a huge shift would add another 3-4 at the very least, because any kind of balancing that Intrepid might've planned for the current design will have flown out the window and they'd need to start from scratch.
We all know it will not be a SOLO Player Game.
And we all also know that we will find out the true Extent of the Game Play only in Alpha Two at earliest.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)