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
No, you'll discuss this with anyone you think agrees with you.
That is all you have done - form an opinion and then argue (not debate, argue) with anyone that disagrees. You keep bringing in random things and then complaining if people expand on them at all, complaining that they are not talking about the correct topic.
In regards to the actual topic, at best you have provided questionable data from a single region that is considered Ashes 5th most important region, and have completely ignored any discussion on any of the 4 more important regions, simply because none of them (well, actually, potentially one of them) agree with your pre-concieved opinion.
You set out in this thread to expand the time it takes to level, and have then since essentially claimed some form of "success" when Steven said that the time to level is still where it has always been.
You're a child, basically.
You call me a child without even realizing that you actually belittle yourself, as "child" has broken down and obliterated tons of your nonsense here already.
While it is hard to do, my opinions on things do change when I am presented with a good argument. An example of that which can be fairly easily found is in relation to the name of the tank class. I was initially against it, but was convinced that it really didn't matter. Another example is the games corruption system - I originally thought it still needed a lot of work, but was convinced that the system as a whole doesn't, as it has built in levers that can be used to tweak it in any way that may be required.
So, my position absolutely will change in the face of a good argument against it.
You haven't even come close to making me think twice reconsider my actual position. You have once made me reconsider one aspect of something I disagreed with you on, but as it was only one aspect of many, it wasn't a reconsideration of my opinion at all.
You've not "obliterated" any argument I've made, as you don't even seem to understand half of them and distract yourself on the other hald. You get too tied up in the notion of whether the initial attack on a castle is a raid or a siege and lose focus of the fact that the point is that either way it is content that is locked behind the level cap.
You do this often, and then claim others are draging the discussion off topic.
If you wanna talk to me, come to 1v1 podcast. Otherwise, get lost
Player retention and longevity are the main reason when Ashes needs leveling to be longer. Even if you ignore everything else from the list, that reason alone is more than enough to adjust leveling. He brought up a relevant and a decent fact, however, I'm not sure that enough percentage of the forum population is capable of acknowleding it.
150h to reach lvl 25 and choose your class - Yeah, if I have to play something for 100+ hours, to figure out if I like it or not, then I'm sorry, but no. Imagine I spend 150 hours leveling a Mage, I finally get to unlock my secondary class and pick augments, and then I realize... wait I don't like any of these and I just wasted 150h playing the game, and I have to start all over again now.
I agree on the rewards part. But when we talk about a key gameplay element like your class choice, it only makes sense to have it unlocked early on into the game, and not midway through. Obviously you won't unlock all abilities, but you need to get a general feel and idea of how it's going to look and play like, and waiting 150 hours for that, just so that you can realize you picked the wrong class is just a moment where people will quit the game.
I have to make a comparison to Throne and Liberty, as it is my latest MMO that I'm still playing.
I hate that the leveling is so fast, that it throws you into "endgame grinding loop" so quickly. But the thing is, if you just made leveling longer in that game, just for the sake of it, it just wouldn't work.
You need content all the way through the leveling journey. Some games do it with a good story, some do it with many different gameplay options (content). Ashes will obviously be the latter, so it needs to have many systems and pieces of content players can interact with from early on. Those same systems have to be valid throughout the entirety of the game. Because what's the point of interacting with a system, just so that it becomes forgotten after you reach max level.
Also, ~500h is more than I've spent playing probably 80% of MMOs I've ever played.
Game needs to not lock content behind max level, because people will want to access that content, and they will be frustrated that it takes soooo long to get to it.
Overall, I'm fine with their current plan, and I think anything more is just ridiculous.
If anything, I don't think leveling should be just linear. Rather, it should be akin to an exponential curve, where it leveling might go smooth early on, but it slows down drastically the closer you get to max level.
So while it might take you 50h to get to level 30, lvl 30-50 might take you 150h.
Parts of that opinion are factually incorrect. Specifically the part about it being healthy for players to be spread over different levels - It is healthier to have players as close together as possible. Yeah, because that worked to make L2 a successful game in the markets Ashes is aiming at.
Oh wait, no it didn't.
Not even 20 years ago, when people were more forgiving of this kind of thing.
If you don't want to discuss this game on this forum, if you would rather do that elsewhere, why are you posting here?
As to people needing to seek attention - I'm not the one that bolds all my posts.
Lineage 2 still has a 6-digit number of players across official and private servers in all regions. Not that many MMOs have that.
Get lost, clown
Since Intrepid is making a product they want to pull a profit from, private servers absolutely do not count.
If anything, they are a negative in this discussion.
Also, as I said above, "all regions" doesn't mean anything to Intrepid. They have a target market, and it is only that market that matters. Since they are going to offer lower subscriptions in many other markets, that target market is actually going to have to support those other markets - making them even more important.
Basically, NA/EU is all that matters in this discussion, as that is where the money that will be used to support other regions will come from.
How are L2's NA/EU official servers currently doing?
EU + RU regions combined (RU is technically EU) - official servers only maintaing ~40k CCU now, same as back in 2010. And I'm not even talking about private servers that have more (as if your chicken brain could comprehend that people playing the game on private servers are still playing the game)
Don't know about NA though, never checked it and I don't know where to find it
The reason population of the game is even a discussion is because high population is required for the game to be profitable. Since people playing on private servers don't give the developer of the game any money, private servers are simply not a valid part of this (or any) discussion.
People playing the game isn't what matters. The developer making money from them is what matters - something about chicken brains or what ever.
Right, so, you don't have EU numbers, you have EU+RU numbers.
You also don't have NA numbers.
In other words, you have nothing of value.
What matters is that the game on offciail servers managed to retain the ~the same number of people throughout 12 years.
According to whom? A local ignorant spammer? Couldn't care less. Go farm forum posts elsewhere, nobody cares about your nonsense
I mean, you keep talking about RU numbers for Ashes, but do you even know if Intrepid are able to operate in Russia itself? How much of the Russian region is left when you exclude Russia itself?
That is why your RU numbers don't matter.
You don't have EU or NA numbers, which are the ones that do matter - because that is where Ashes will be sold at full price (and probably also Oceania, though that is a small market so I would never consider it as important).
From what Steven has said, every other market will have some form of lower pricing.
Thus, the markets that matter are the EU and NA market. These two markets will be supporting every other market.
This is blatantly obvious to everyone else - but if you want to carry on blindly denying it, that's cool.
Dude, you can keep shifting the conversation as much as you want, I couldn't care less.
Player retention is crucial. Period.
Longer leveling leads to better retention. Period
Ashes is a subscription-based game. Fact
Ashes needs longer leveling for the reasons mentioned in the first comment. Period
People paying is the point - and achieving that in Russia right now is... problematic. There is a reason Steven hasn't talked about the RU region in general for years.
WoW, ESO, FFXIV and FFXIV games all disagree.
EQ2 specifically has the highest retention of any MMORPG in NA/EU. If you want player retention in that region - that is the game to look at (Intrepid should not look to EQ2 for player retention - Ashes simply will not have the lifespan that EQ2 has had).
This is the problem here - you are sticking to this notion that you have nothing to back up. You have a limited view of MMORPG's, and that view only exists in one region. You only know what you have seen, and what you have seen is limited.
Even at it's best, you are talking about L2 having 6 figure players world wide - where as faster leveling games released around the same time still command millions of concurrent players 20 years on.
The evidence simply doesn't suggest that you are correct - it is only the limited view that you have that agrees with your opinion.
ESO and FF14 have 13k and 22k 24-hour peak CCU. L2 has more on official servers alone. And I'm not even comparing the all-time highs. Those games are mid in terms of online, not dead/dying and not huge. They found it's niche and that's about it
Standard is 60-100 hours.
So... 225 hours to Level 50 Adventurer is not fast.
The Ashes design already has better ways to retain players than arbirtarily extending the already long Leveling time to Level 50 Adventurer past 225 hours.
Sometimes its a fact, depending on player style and game, that fast leveling is expected. So we have different facts now - depending on the context.
I personally (now its an opinion) like slower paced leveling for the first time I experience a new game, a new world, new characters, new story, new skills, new everything. I dislike it at the third attempt. For me, already mentioned it, 225h are fine. Also 250 or 200 would be fine, idc about mathematics when it comes to emotion. So, I like to differentiate here.
I‘ve played The Witcher 3, with both DLCs, about 190 hours, nearly 100% map completion, done every quest, collected every set and weapon, reloaded sometimes due to change in decisions. Rewarding journey, I loved this ~200 hours. Sure, that's another game, a singleplayer fantasy (A)RPG, but still in some core points a comparision is valid - and not every hour was "leveling". Same thing for 500 hours? No, I don't think so - again, personally. It was just fine in that way. I never played The Witcher 3 a second time. Would I still play The Witcher if new content is coming out? For sure. Would I like to level once again for 150 hours? Hell, no - for what reason? Once again: Just my personal opinion.
In WoW I leveled my first char within ~6 month, together with a friend, but also played a twink in between when he was not online (ofc he did the same, so in the end we had two chars on max level appr. at Christmas time in 2004). That was cool and rewarding. In the end of my WoW „career“, which was with a break from end of WotLK until mid of Legion than finally over at the beginning/mid of Shadowlands) I had all chars at max level (was able to do that during BFA addon), two maintained in a good state (content- and gear wise), because I've always maintaind my rogue and my warrior quite equally. If leveling the third, forth, and so on, time, its not reasonable to level slow, because its getting boring and beside skills of the new character/class main parts of the game is aleady known, so not new. Behavior is changing then, also opinions, perhaps facts. It seems that we have a common sense (somehow) here, that the first leveling and "getting things to know" experience is somewhat different to the second, third - and so on.
If a game increases content and possibilities at „max level“, so „end game“, then players tend to reach that max level fast (although some of them do share my opinion, that slower leveling for the first time is a good journey). Ashes is no sandbox-only game, but, as a sandpark game, we can and should assume (and because it's a sub-fee MMO) that new content is showing up, so it is a reasonable goal to get you character to max in a meaningful time, especially in the second or maybe third attempt, because game is 2 years old and new content is available and you want to get your second or third character to that stage.
For Ashes we are in the „everything is new“ state. But Ashes has different races, classes, professions. Its highly likely (just my opinion) that several players will level alts/twinks bevause of that fact, that there are several character options. Want to be a mining, blacksmithing dwarfen tank (yeah, rare, I know!) - play it. Want to be a lion/cat like sneaky Tulnar rogue? Go for it. Third one? Up to you.
Do you want to level about 700 hours for it? Maybe. My personally: No. First time, sure, its fine to enjoy the journey. Second time. Hm, will be repetitive a bit. Third time? Ok, will probably start to get boring.
Do not assume that all million players out there base their „facts“ on L2 experience or on the experience only to play 1 or 2 chars. You dont? Thats good. Because it would potentially be a wrong assumption. Do you think you can compare L2 and, for instance, and WoW content with each other? Or L2 and Ashes content or content options?
If I remember correctly, you've been playing L2 for 12 years and a bit New World? Is that correct? Is this your MMO experience and your basement of arguing and debating around MMO game designs and level and end game content experience?
I played Lineage 2, New World and LOTRO & Aion for a few months each (but very a long time ago)
Speaking of other games, I didn't find them particularly interesting enough to play
Ashes is 225 hours of focused Leveling to get ot Level 50 Adventurer... and also a bunch more hours Leveling in other paths plus participating in Sieges and Wars and Caravans and Naval Battles and Dev curated Story Events. Plus dynamic Dungeons/Raids.
Plus a little bit of of LOTRO and Aion, I think.
Flanker seems to think that the vast majority of MMORPG fans have the L2 playstyle... even though there is a reason that most modern MMORPGs are in the 60-100 hours range to get to max Class Level. Also, the devs for Lineage II and Archeage have chosen the fast end of the spectrum rather than even the mid-range of the spectrum.
And Ashes is already at the slow end of the spectrum at 225 hours. Which is fine.
In terms of retention - Ashes is already going to retain the L2 audience - even at 225 hour to Level 50 Adventurer. Significantly longer/slower Leveling speed than 225 hours would make Ashes even more niche than it currently is... and drive even more players away to play MMORPGs that are less tedious and grindy.
It is very likely that even if anecdotal, Noaani has better access to better numbers for these than you.
I probably don't have as direct access and must use estimations and other statistics, but:
FF14 has about 80k CCU during release cadence peak times, which, btw, is their stated business model.
If you randomly sample people in that game right now, about 50% of them have PSN IDs. I do not have data for if this fluctuates relative to PC during peak months, but if we assume the numbers stay equivalent, i.e. that there is not a specific 'greater interest among PC players', then that's 150k.
Since your quick-check measurement and use of this number is slightly misleading, I chose to add the additional info, note that I have no particular interest in discussing anything involving numbers with you, this is the equiv of 'Readers added some context'.
I specified that it was "a few months" for each one. Which is not much imo when it comes to MMOs
No, I don't. And I never said that
And how many out of those modern MMOs are subscription-based? I can see the reason why New World doesn't really need long leveling - studio doesn't really care if the player plays in for a week or a year, as the game has a box-cost and they already got their money (obviously, they have skins but that's secondary)
Huh?
How do you know Ashes is gonna be tedious and grindy though?
See, you are mistaken.
You can't use Steam for L2 numbers - but for reasons I am sure Flanker is about to tell us all, you can use Steam numbers for other games.