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
Just tell me the date and time that works for you and I'll be there.
You contradict yourself quite a lot.
So, my points are vaild.
I think you can pick a date that's good for you.
We can do that on Discord, though.
So you joined the "professional Dygz Agitators" ... ... ...
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
I didn't get it
Slowly watching your level tick upwards isn't what makes progession fun imo. I don't want leveling to take an arbitrarily long amount of time just for the sake of it. Leveling should be fun as a side effect of the gameplay being fun, so leveling should take as long as it needs to based on the gameplay aspects of teaching players mechanics, adventuring out into the world, experimenting with different types of content, etc.
That being said, time commitment should be relevant due to time being a necessary currency to spend when actively trying to improve as a player. I dont think time itself should be an arbitrary time-gated barrier for progression just to reward people who happen to have more free time than others. The game shouldn't boil down to a time sink and a grind fest. So, yes time commitment should be important, but not due to its own intrinsic gameplay value, but more because the fact that time investment should surface itself if the gameplay has enough depth and skill that requires large amounts of time to master.
Within this context, the only significance of time is how long it actually takes for players to grow their individual skill-levels, to learn the game, or how long it takes to get to experience fun (whatever their definition of that is). As far the ability to become skilled and the time it takes to do so, this will vary depending on each player. Either way, just because a player isn't at their maximum potential doesn't necessarily mean they aren't having fun, so even if the game is extremely complex to where it takes a long time to master the gane mechanics, players can still be having fun at earlier stages if progression if it is still skillful and challenging to a degree, or if there are different types of fun content to choose from and to enjoy.
So, even if there is a correlation between the amount of fun you are having and the more time you are spending to play, understand, and master the game; it should still be fun enough along the way, to the point at which a leveling time-sink would still be deemed as irrelevant, due to the experience and journey being enjoyable regardless of level.
I think the concern for leveling time started to become an issue when games focused less on fun, and more on a race to endgame, because there really was no substance or fun, it was just a carrot on a stick, and thus the destination is the "fun" part, so once you get there it is no longer fun, meaning players want to extend this time frame as long as possible.
However Ashes has no traditional endgame, it has more gameplay loops that open up the more you progress, so things get more emergent, with more choices, and more options, for more overall fun to experience. This means really the full experience is reached once you fully progress through the tutorials and can engage with all the play loops, at which point the relevance of time has the reverse effect where its actually more fun towards the end of the game, and players want to avoid the "grind" of leveling and learning the game as much as possible so they can engage with and enjoy the full experience at max progression.
Thus I don't really see the significance of the arbitrary time-frame of leveling within the context of Ashes, because its more about the experience of your ongoing journey in Ashes, which should be fun throughout, regardless of how much time you put into the game.
I think if you are hyper-fixated about the specific number of how long leveling takes, you probably just don't understand the design intent of Ashes enough, or have a wierd reason for caring that I don't understand or relate to. You probably think you care, but you really don't.
You are right in that leveling should take as long as it takes to understand gameplay mechanics and such. Ashes is never going to have more han 20 hours worth of this learning though - despite it being claimed to have around 225 hours of leveling.
What are we doing with the other 205 hours?
That is the significance of it.
If I thought for a second that there would be even 100 hours worth of what we should be gaining - as players - from leveling, then 225 hours would be fine.
Ashes has completely disconnected the time they want players to spend leveling from what the actual point of leveling in an MMORPG is about. They have just slapped a random amount of time and said "yep, we want it to take this long".
Exactly!
Thank you.
I would say it's not really even about the full experience of max progression.
Max progression is just a stopping point for how much the devs can complete before a release; it's not really supposed to be a thing for players.
It shouldn't be a race to max Level and it doesn't need to be a race to the next Level. But, it also shouldn't be, "Uh... why is it taking me hours and hours and hours and hours to get to the next Level??"
The answer to that should never be, "Oh! We want the journey to Endgame to be very long so that players won't leave as soon as their main character reaches max Adventurer Level."
What about the debate though? I pinged you on CC Discord server, yet got no reply
The concept of Leveling just being about learning combat tactics came about after the arbitrary Hell Levels got nerfed and players could reach Endgame in 8-12 weeks... and then would be stuck in Endgame doing Dungeons/Raids for 12-18 months, while waiting for the next Expansion.
For Ashes, 225 hours to max Adventurer Level is a reasonable number, considering that by the time most people get there at a pace of 3-4 months and pursue other progression paths and participate in some City/Metro Sieges... that should be close to when the devs drop a Seasonal Update with a new Story Event and a new content.
Two weeks before:
It's funny how you contradict your own words attempting to prove your "point". You probably don't remember that 2 weeks ago you were saying almost the opposite of what you said today, but oh well... Internet never forgets.
Not even mentioning that the first quote is another ridiculous assumption that is based on absolutely nothing.
I'll just leave it here:
Doublethink is a process of indoctrination in which subjects are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality.
I read a Comment around a few Months ago here in this Forum.
Someone said something like " I am a professional Dygz Agitator " back then - and it was a tiny bit funny.
Then someone else wrote something like : " I hate him, too. " - and i had no Choice but to burst out into a giggle - when i saw that THAT COMMENT - got a like from Dygz himself.
I noticed that in quite many Topics -> Dygz answers People. And apparently gets into Discussions with them which can look quite heated. Part of me to think that Dygz loves this Game in Development immensely and is always excited to talk abotu it.
But since his Avatar looks so serious, he looks grumpy at times. (lol) - and People seem to discuss often with him in a way that looks rather wrangling Arguments sometimes.
I admire Dygz's Stamina to never back down.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
This is also a valid point about teaching the mechanics. I already uninstalled TaL coz I knew since the beginning it wasn't my cup of tea and just wanted to try it. But I can tell that a longer leveling would be appreciated in that game to learn about how to use the skills/combo properly. In few hours, I already had a long list of skills and felt like I was playing Tekken.
How many hours does it take to reach the end of the Story/Questing?
In my opinion, focusing on both horizontal and vertical progression is important. Even if I only gained one level in a day, I’d still want to feel like I’ve accomplished other things—whether through participating in open-world events, exploring the game world, or having meaningful interactions. This is where systems like adventure progression, life-skilling, etymology research, and general exploration come into play.
There also need to be better ways of teaching the game to players more organically, allowing them to learn the mechanics while maintaining a sense of freedom, rather than placing them on a rigid, story-driven path. Streamlining these systems is a must, instead of bombarding players with too much information at once. Good game design should focus on managing and improving these systems in a way that enhances the experience without overwhelming the player.
Additionally, there should be more incentives at lower levels to group up and encourage social interaction early on. It needs to feel like a true MMO, where you’re not just playing solo all the time.
I don't know, I stopped before to know. TaL is designed for an audience that get endorphins each time something is leveled up. So there are millions of things to level up in a very short time and you get lost in it. Everything is designed to avoid frustration and to make only good choices : No classes, all stats work the same and increase damage, whatever you do it will be a good choice.
I know many people like it but I hope we will not see such artificial progression in Ashes.
Off topic : Still, not regarding the leveling, ToL has many fun mechanics and the graphics are good. I didn't play enough to PvP but I've read that it is well designed too.
The crafting system is another huge letdown. You don’t gather specific materials from mobs or items to meet a blueprint for crafting; instead, crafting items are predefined and randomly drop from mobs. This takes away the sense of accomplishment or purpose in crafting.
What games desperately need is a system like an ecology or monstrology book, where you can uncover lore or information about monsters, materials, or items, which could then be used in crafting recipes. Monster Hunter handled this perfectly, with actual monster parts that could be carved and repurposed for weapons or armor. While I understand different games have their own styles, the principle still applies—if a dragon drops scales or hide, those should logically be used in crafting recipes for armor or weapons. It would add depth and meaning to both combat and crafting, which many games sorely lack right now.
It plays like a Tab Target version of BDO, and that specifically means that it 'Feels like a fighting game' in many ways.
That's why you are given all your abilities early and not 'introduced one step at a time', because the thing you are supposed to learn as you play is 'concepts of usage' and 'nonstandard situations'. It doesn't suit the type of oldschool MMO player that looks to WoW and by extension Ashes (which is, as I say, WoW+L2).
TL's leveling reflects a similar philosophy. Leveling up in games like BDO and fighting games is not a thing one experiences in the same way, and certainly not at the rate that the average MMO player is comfortable with, WoW-head or not.
I would definitely advise anyone who has any of the following three reactions to not go into that game expecting to enjoy it unless they are specifically trying something new:
1) BDO is too mashy/I don't want to play a fighting game in my MMO
2) Movement must be fluid, I don't want movement-based consequences for my actions on smaller things
3) Proof of skill in the game should be about how much I understand the basics/can adapt to the specifics of the mechanics more than other people
TL's accessibility is built for 'my' demographic. If you take nothing from this post, once again:
TL;DR - People who quit TL quickly are often the same type of people that play only the Arcade Mode of a fighting game/play only long enough unlock all the characters in a MOBA, and then complain about the lack of content. The DR is still 'don't reference'.
@Dygz based on data from others on this forum, the story and related questing must be at least 25 hours, probably more. I based this number on the gap between 'the people on the forum who I know would skip to max level'/some online complainers and JustVine's/my numbers. Since we never skip story and we actively pursue basic exploration and quest activities, but are otherwise high-efficiency players, I would guess that you can approximate the time spent doing those things by subtracting the playtime of those likely to skip it.
You might have fun if you hop in, you don't actually need to do much of the 'fighting game' stuff to enjoy that aspect, but you will need to group for a few things (the game will organically push this for a few things, so you're likely to be fine). It's 'Arcade Mode', you don't have to take on any of the Hardcore-type challenges unless you're counting navigation. That said, as noted above, I don't advise it beyond that for your mental structure type (as you've described it).
And ofc, to tie back to this topic, it's the same thing.
'Arcade Mode' in a fighting game takes even a beginner maybe 2-4 hours. Long enough to figure out 'this button does this and is useful for this' and 'how to trick the low level CPU into doing something they can counter easily'. They need very little understanding of stuff beyond the FOOS.
Some games literally give those people an entire longer game mode now where they can level up and get more 'abilities' (passives, since you generally have all your 'skills', though they lean into even that now, too). It's the single-player experience used by the company to get sales. People like me ignore it.
Depending on how good it is, it may transition a few players into deeper gameplay, at least they already own it and have basic experience.
Making leveling long in Ashes is the equivalent of 'trying to make every player learn to play a Fighting Game properly, but doing it by making them play Arcade Mode over and over', perhaps with the occasional increase in CPU difficulty.
It rewards a mindset that isn't very optimal in non-MMOs right now.
Ah that makes a lot of sense thanks for the summary of TL and the progression differences and needs of each game. Hopefully I interpreted your points correctly.
For whatever its worth, I might be an outlier within the fighting game crowd, because I enjoy learning the mechanics through pve to then apply the knowledge in an environment that demands a deeper understanding, mastery, and application of the mechanics, such as a pvp setting. I disagree hard with fighting game players who think there isn't enough overlap in learning potential between an "arcade" pve setting and a pvp setting. I often have way more hours in training modes than in actual pvp and can go into a pvp fight against someone who has more actual hands-on pvp experience with that particular character matchup and still win due to the theory crafting and application of that knowledge learned within an "arcade-like" setting, such as learning the use-cases of abilities, even if I didn't have to actually leverage that knowledge within that pve setting due to the simple A.I. and often intentionally low challenge.
Even though the player element is missing in the pve setting, the npcs still follow the same rules and have access to the same options and mechanics as actual players, the differences are more about the dynamicsm in combat situations presented, which stems from the reaction and adaptation that real players tend to leverage better than npc opponents.
Based on this, I enjoy when the game "teaches you through an arcade experience" because I am able to carry that knowedge over into a more challenging environment, even if that means applying that knowledge in ways I haven't actually been required to do up until that point.
This is basicaly what armored core 6 did by preventing pvp access until you beat all the bosses at least once, which I thought was enjoyable and think there might actually be a solid market for players who enjoy that approach. It also helps make sure that your experience at max progression (where its about the player leveling up rather than the character) becomes more enjoyable because you are going up against players who have generally a better idea of what they are doing, because they have already done their experimenting and failing earlier on in tbe experience during that arcade content.
Also, there is the aspect of whether the "arcade experience" is really actually all that different than the experience you might have at max progression where you are improving as a player. I think better A.I. could help to simulate a pvp learning experience through presenting a similar type of gameplay and challenge that a real player might provide, through reproducing that dynamicm of combat situations that are presented to the player through more specific reactivity and adaptation that npcs normally aren't designed to have.
So, overall for players who enjoy that max progression content and who enjoy chasing that deeper understanding and application of the mechanics to level up as individual players, I think you can still have a "forced arcade experience" during progression while still appealing to these player types, by either better simulating that experience earlier on (like better A.I.) or by just appealing to the market of players who are fine with learning through a more arcade-like progression system, due to that player's ability to transfer that knowledge over to more complex and demanding systems.
The implications of this are that I don't necessarily think that this might be the case:
At least in black and white terms, because it ultimately depends on the size of the market you are trying to attract obviously, but mmo players are different than fighting game players as a general community so there is probably some validity to this.
Like wtf is this?
Your bs makes me want to extend my apologies to certain people for calling their opinions nonsense, because a true nonsense is your weird AI-generated garbage
I can tell you that the reason I don't agree with you is that my group's primary fighting game experience and content for the last 7-10 years has been specifically 'trying to optimize the method of teaching the basics of fighting games (other than Smash) to beginners and people who don't enjoy the genre'.
Any discussion on the matter with me will absolutely devolve into minutiae related to multiple thousands of man-hours of experience, data collection, and content production, because our entire goal was not 'to be the best' but 'to make it possible for people who don't know how to enjoy those games, to enjoy them'.
You would not be our target audience from the sound of it, because you are one of the 'fortunate kind' who naturally enjoy certain aspects of these games and know how to think about them already. If you want to go into that, PM me, but obviously, I say all this because I absolutely stand by my assessment.
TL is also doing a good job of this, for what it is worth, but I expect that since many MMO players don't like raw skill checks (progression only via skill and not gear), because the game lets you skip doing basically any of Taedal's Tower until the end, they would not experience it nor spend time on it.
Okay that makes more sense in that context.
Basically just sounds like your saying I am an outlier, which is what I kind of assumed already because my approach to fighting games is not even remotely common from my experience or even really accepted even amongst other hardcore players. But given my example of Armored Core I thought there might be a semi-large but silent group of others like myself (whether or not thats enough players its another story), but obviously that example alone doesn't prove anything as there are other factors and explanations going on behind the scenes. More of an observation I suppose.
It was succinct enough, I get the message.
bruh tnl doesn't require that much skill. open up on someone, do 12345 (or 1233444 if u have a bow) then wait 30 seconds, now its their turn to combo u. ur 30 seconds are over before his 30 seconds, open up again and kill them. its a stat check more than skill check. hell Ive won 100% of 1v1 with a full support wand / bow build because I can heal back to full before their 30 seconds are over (their cooldowns are back) and just auto attack them to death or use curse explosion when they are half hp.
mass pvp is similar. root someone (or pull > root) then everybody press 12345. I can keep people alive with my skills but only for so long.
maybe things are a bit different now with the extra skills and passives you can attack to your skills, but the only similarities to a fighting game (been playing fighting games since street fighter and mortal kombat in super Nintendo back in the early 90s) is that you play some semblance of neutral then do your 12345 combo then its the opponents turn to attack and you just have to defend. >_>
edit: I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the game as a whole, even though its too PVEie for me, but I'm not playing it cuz ashes is right there around the corner ;3 it was just gonna be a temporary game for me until a2 came out. and no, tnl isn't l3. it isn't remotely similar to l2.
another edit: doing the solo tower is more fun if you do it as you level up instead of doing it at max level. but you can also ignore some mechanics if you play wand main...
"How much do you need to learn the other parts of the game to be successful at leveling?"
Because that's often a clearer metric of whether or not a person enjoys or expects a long leveling phase. The things that feel good 'when leveling' are often related to feeling progression based on one's success in other aspects of gameplay.
But that makes those aspects of gameplay 'required' a lot of the time. The more 'things you must do other than kill mobs' to continue successfully killing mobs, the longer the leveling phase can be, paradoxically. Because you get to experience more change in your character, as I attempted to lay out before.
But as a self-contained system, making leveling itself longer only works if you make 'grinding for gear' longer, or add the FF11/TL concept where you actually have to use your chosen weapon or skill to improve at it (and killing higher level enemies doesn't rapidly translate to higher gains in that, in FF11, though it kinda does in TL and some other similar game I forget right now).
Quinfall gets this wrong in their current builds because they're a BDO-expy so they just give you , Eternal Tombs does better but only because it's EQ-throwback tier in terms of grind experience and speed. Bizarrely, both of them feel 'good' to me, because one is about trying to 'sneak through' the system based on your understanding, and the other is about that raw timesink-slog that spawned this thread's concept.
In L2, you needed to understand relatively little compared to most MMOs, because it had fewer (afaik) noob traps. In FF11, you needed to understand a medium amount, but it looked like a large amount because of the number of noob traps.
That 'fake large amount' understanding requirement is what 'let' FF11 have a long leveling phase. As soon as people understood not to do certain things, the leveling became 'too long' and was shortened in the early levels. Then, more story was added to make up for this. (Note that FF11 does not grant combat/adventuring-level exp for story or crafting).
I find it too short, but I am also aware that I'm on the side of that curve that should always feel that.
I've quoted the part of your post that I consider actually relevant to anyone.
I consider your opinion on fighting games to be equivalent to that of Mag7. There's no benefit to bringing them up in conversations with me, I'm simply never going to be convinced that you have any idea what you're talking about, and your inability to grasp the underlying point of what I was saying in the post reinforces that perception of mine.
You seem to be getting confused.
Most of the people that work at Intrepid, on Ashes, are people I would consider experts at game design. I say this with actual first hand knowledge, as a number of them are people I have known personally for over a decade.
Steven is not.
He is not an expert on game design, he just purchased his way in to being the lead of this games design.
Talk to any of the long standing contributers to these forums and they will tell you that this has always been my stance.
So far, the only indication we have for how long it will take to level up in Ashes is from Steven - the non-expert.
You not being aware of it does not mean it is "doublethink" or what ever, it just means you don't understand.
I also consider your opinion on fighting games irrelevant 8D
btw lost ark is more similar to a fighting game than tnl
Yeah, bot both are kind of shit.
you are right but you are missing something. steven has team of experts that challenge his ideas or bring them to life.
a good movie director cant act, but he can extract a great performance from a good actor.