Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Thanks for the response.
My point on September 13, 2024, prior to Alpha 2 that dynamic world might slow it down a bit, but it won't be that big of a deal at all.
For future me reading this: so, were you right or wrong?
No problem. I am for corruption in game just like you. I was just pointing out a flaw with it is all
Taken from a post I made from another thread.
Would it be beneficial to inflict corruption on each person that did damage to the non combatant while he was fighting a mob, and the mob ends up killing him?
I do see the valid point of not seeing the non combatant hit bar if you are the aggressor. It would make you guess on how many Hit points are left and if you want or do not want corruption. One other factor to be involved in the guesswork by the aggressor is the level difference. The greater the level difference, the more corruption one gains if he is a higher level.
I think your party members (non aggressor party) should be able to see the non combatant hit points however and if they wanted to heal their party member they could. However, I am not sure if healing a party member that is under attack, even if in a non combatant mode would flag the person healing the non aggressor.
Would it be beneficial to inflict corruption on each person that did damage to the non combatant while he was fighting a mob, and the mob ends up killing him?
It could be a good deterrent for griefing. If a player attacks another player, even non combatant, he should plan on killing him, not just hitting him continuously trying to provoke him. I think this (the attacking but not killing him) is a byproduct of corruption because of the penalty, and they resort to this. But yes, I can see both sides. I think its worthy of discussion and maybe could iron it out a bit.
Edit: Now if the damage is gone, and the hit points that are taken from the non combatant by the aggressor are healed, then he should not be flagged or corrupted if the mob kills him.
My point is that it might affect it a bit, but it's not gonna be anything serious. The point is based on Steven's words that "they expect players to reach level cap when probably ~25% of nodes evolve to stage 3". Obviously, the percentage may vary from server to server, but anyway
My point of view which I shared in dozens of threads before that one is similar to your.
Reaching max lvl is way too fast. At this point we should all start the game directly at max level.
Why do we need to pay for or farm some lengendary trash gear lvl 30 if we will use it only 24 hours ? All the economy will be based on max level gear.
In other words, any legendary items under level 50 will be trash.
After a certain update in L2, boss jewelry started to lose out in vertical stats to crafted jewels of higher lvl, but their horizontal stats were waaaay better, so any class that could utilize those would always do. Ashes could have the same approach to legendary craftables (or legendary boss drops) from lower lvls.
If anything, this would be a good balancing tool, cause those horizontal stats would be great at the time of you being at the same lvl as the item, but the higher you go - the harder your enemies would start hitting you, cause the vertical stats on your items wouldn't be as good. But despite receiving bigger dmg, your overall build would still be stronger than if you replaced those legendaries with basic stuff from higher lvls.
There might also be a potential scenario that creates demand for such gear - some mid-level boss that drops something valuable and players making alts of a certain level specifically to farm that boss. I've seen that happening in Lineage, but I'm not sure whether it will happen in Ashes.
I never played L2 so it's hard to understand clearly how does it work but if there is such a system, it's a good point.
I'd like a legendary level 20 stays something useful and costing always a good price without fast depreciation because of the low level.
Ok but when salvaging becomes better than selling it means the item is trash. It means there will be a market for mats but not for low level gear.
I'm not making an assumption that a player with alts of different Classes will have to learn how to play each Class. Playing a Templar is not going to teach someone how to play a Necromancer. And, by design, that Necromancer will not be battling the same mobs the Templar battled. The player won't be learning how to deal with the new mobs for the Necromancer any faster than they did for the Templar. That's not an assumption.
That is a different point that has nothing to do with what Diamaht said, nor my quote to which you replied.
Steven expects some Hardcore-Time players will be able to rush to Level 50 Adventurer before the last Node hits Level 3, before even half the Nodes have reached Stage 3, before even probably a quarter of the Nodes have reached Stage 3.
But how quickly Hardcore-Time players can rush to Level 50 is irrelevant to this topic.
225 hours to reach max Level Adventurer in an MMORPG is not too fast.
Especially when there will still be plenty of other stuff for Level 50 Adventurers to do.
No need to Farm Legendary Gear at Level 30.
Craft Level 30 Legendary Gear if you stumble upon Legendary Resources to do so.
But there is no need to waste time Farming for that at Level 30 - unless you enjoy Farming.
- lvl10 legendary ring has 10 m.def and gives you 40% decrease in stun duration on you
- lvl40 basic ring has 50 m.def and gives you 5% bleed dmg increase
You lose out on m.def with that lvl10 ring, but you could now use less stun resistance on other items because this ring alone pushes you close to the diminishing returns limit.Stuff like that.
Guys, are you really rejecting the data from L2 private servers? This is just ridiculous. They are much better than the official ones. The reason is that the official servers with each update (after GoD) turn their favorite mmorpg into a pseudo-mmorpg loot box machine. Popular private servers focus on improving the best versions (~C4, ~GF, ~HF5). Online statistics speak for themselves - even in the conditions of censorship from copyright holders (streams on Twitch and videos on YouTube are blocked if they become somewhat popular) players choose private servers. This stupid conflict and the turn of the official L2 development towards an anti-mmorpg path is one of the reasons why so many L2 players want AoC to successfully adopt the best mechanics from L2: we heard that Steven is familiar with the spirit of some of the most successful versions of L2 and we want to help
Ok I see. The utility is based on the perks. It usually works for jewelleries. But for weapons or armors, Im not sure it will be still be profitable use a low level gear.
Cool. Happy to stand corrected by a trusted source, as opposed to someone posting shit that is both difficult to search and posted without context.
The stats on gear we've seen so far indicate that higher rarities might simply have more instances of perks/effects in them, and with crafting dials being a thing, there's a fairly high chance that a legendary low lvl item that's somewhat "easy" to acquire would provide you with waaay more benefits than the value of a slight dmg increase that a basic higher lvl item would bring.
Either way, we can't know for sure until we see the full crafting cycle in A2.
Not at all - I am the first person to point out that post count means nothing.
Now that I have some context for the charts you provided (I still do not trust the first, but will accept the second), I am going to reconsider my position. It is unlikely that it will be that I agree with you, as even with that chart being accepted it is scarce data that goes against decades of experience and academic study on the matter.
If you google smth like this, then the official site pops up as 4th (with a video from cadmus and the official telegram link as the first 2)
But I'd imagine that the fact that it's 4th might've come from me visting that site today already.
Yeah, Google is shit.
While I'm known for not providing sources, if I say anything on these forums that I think could be questions, I always google to see if the information is easy to come by (you know my position on encouraging people to look for it themselves).
Information that can't be googled and isn't properly sourced then needs a trusted corroborate - which is why I pinged you.
I hope this at least allowed you to consider the probability of my point ending up being right not just purely theoretical like 1%
Talking about the flow of this discussion (the whole thread), that is probably a better data point than the charts you posted.
In regards to your point, I'm going to agree with something else NiKr said (even though this wasn't his context for saying it].
It may well be that if you want to target a Russian market, maybe a longer time to level is a good thing.
However, it is fairly blatantly obvious that this is not the case for NA/EU/KR players. I am unsure about BR players as a general rule.
The evidence for this is in games that exist, and have existed.
WoW, ESO, GW2. These games all have a fairly fast leveling speed, and are all very popular in the West. I can't speak to FFXIV (that would be where i would refer to @Azherae ). EQ and EQ2 are popular enough (more popular than L2 in the West), but have a longer leveling time. However, it is still on the dozens of hours, not hundreds.
BDO is fairly fast to level up in, especially compared to what Ashes is stated to take. I can't speak for Albion, but my understanding is that it isn't slow at all (I don't actually know anyone that plays it).
Archeage is another example. While the game is closed in regards to NA/EU servers now, for a few years it was the most popular PvP focused MMORPG in the west. It's failures were not related to its leveling speed, despite the fact that you could get to the level cap in one play session.
In fact, not only was leveling speed not an issue, it was considered a very good aspect of the game. People liked the fact that they could get a friend to start the game at the start of the week, and have them leveled up and with serviceable gear ready to join the fight by the weekend.
This is why a slow leveling speed isn't considered a good thing - at least not in the west. Leveling has no value past learning,so leveling should only take as long as it takes to learn the basics of the game and your class. Once you have that information, you want to be where the bulk of other players are, which is at the level cap.
I think we can say that the majority of games are kind of copy-paste of each other, at least to a certain extent. Obviously, Ashes takes inspiration from multiple games as well, but their vision and approach are somewhat unique, nowadays - for sure. At least, I would say so. But there is another factor to take into account which is the average player retention. Were those games just games for a couple of months for an average player? Or they managed to retain them for years?
So maybe, just maybe, there is a probability that with that many various activities in game which most likely won't let players get bored, this is at least an idea to consider?
I'm not saying that Intrepid must change leveling speed like right now, immediately. I wanted to raise this topic, so that there is an active discussion with valid arguments in favor of or against it, that can be taken into account and analyzed later. Fortunately, we still have years of testing ahead, so we'll just keep our finger on the pulse. Eventually, Intrepid will accumulate data from Alpha 2 and maybe find more trusted and relevant information about this topic from other games. And I hope that my suggestion, no matter whether you agree with it or not, at least makes some sense.
The question then becomes (and always has been) why would you want to increase player segregation?
As a developer of an MMORPG, the thing you want most of all for your players is meaningful interaction with other players. This is what keeps people in MMORPG's, this is the basis for the memories people have from games, this is what developers want to foster.
Since most meaningful player interactions happen between players of similar level, why would a developer do anything that makes it more difficult for players to be at a similar level?
This is the reason most games have a fairly fast leveling speed, and why it is made even faster still as the game gets older. Developers want those meaningful interactions, which means they want everyone around the same level, and that same level has to be the level cap because that is the only point players stop leveling.
Ashes has plenty of other progression paths for players to pursue, after spending 225 hours to reach Level 50 Adventurer.
But, if you want to take 450 hours to reach Level 50 Adventurer, you can put 225 hours into those other progression paths before you reach Level 50 Adventurer.
Also, the Ashes game design includes Seasonal content updates. And that is the current trend for MMOs.
So, Intrepid should be able to meet that goal.
If the time it takes to reach the next Class milestone feels unecessarily tedious, I'm going to abandon that game and go play a game that feels fun, rather than tedious.
These days, MMORPGs have plenty of other fun stuff to do after max Level Adventurer.
And I keep doing that stuff until the next Seasonal update for the game drops. Or until a Seasonal update for another game I like drops.
There are better, more fun, ways to retain players after reaching max Level Adventurer than the devs arbitrarily extending the time it takes to reach max Level Adventurer past 225 hours.
And Intrepid already has several of those baked into the Ashes game design.
1. A certain degree of segregation will always exist in any game. Whether it's significant or not, it depends on the game itself.
2. Ashes has little to no content locked behind a certain level requirement. That reduces the segregation.
3. Steven said himself that lower level characters will have usefulness when it comes to events, sieges etc. even if they don't have the best gear.
4. In a much more segregated environment of Lineage 2, I can't remember a single case of players complaining about it. Maybe it's a feature of MMO players from CIS region. Normally, if we like the game - we play, if we don't like it - we don't play it. But we rarely complain as it is mostly considered weak. You forget that meaningful interaction does not necessarily mean "positive interaction". One side or even both side can have a negative outcome from a certain interaction, yet it would still be meaningful.
For example, one group raiding another group's base in Rust - is a meaningful interaction, but for one side it will be postitive, for another side it will be negative.
Or one group might attempt to raid and fail to success, but still destroy half of the other's group base. This interaction is net negative for both sides, but the interaction is still meaningful.
I mention this in an older video on my channel, where I talk specifically about griefing, but here is the thing. Negative interaction may be unpleasant at the moment. However, it may turn in a funny memory in the future. Simple IRL example: people often through some kind of bs while serving in army and while going through it - it might not feel great. Years later people remember that and have a good laugh.
Personal example: the leader of my static group in L2 accidentally used the wrong enchanting scroll on a unique piece of gear that was the only one on the server at that point and broke it. If we wanted to RMT that for example, we could make like $3000-5000 for that item. Obviously, we were not happy when that happened. Later though, it became a meme and we will probably never forget it. Not necessarily, but mostly yes. However, as I mentioned, due to Ashes design, I wouldn't expect segregation to be that significant compared to other games. Players perfectly existed in their own level clusters in L2 and it wasn't a problem at all as you had different things to do on different levels. This may be one of the many reasons, but definitely not THE reason. It's a topic for another discussion and this post is already pretty long.
But, more importantly, the number of people you have to undertake the remaining activities with increases exponentially.
As a trade off, having 15 things to do but only 10% of the server population to do them with, vs having 14 things to do but having 90% of the servers population to do them with is kind of a no-brainer. This is a factually incorrect statement.
That is why I took exception to you claiming I said something similiar earlier.
In regards to events and such, while it is true that lower level players will have things they can do, if your node is being sieged and you come along as a level 20 player wanting to defend, if you are taking up the spot a level 50 would otherwise take, it is in your best interest to stand aside and let that level 50 join the siege. If you insist on taking up that spot, you're alienating the bulk of your node.
If you take up a spot that a level 50 would have filled without you and we only just lose, I'm blaming you - whether that is fair or not.
No I'm not.
If an interaction is negative, but is also meaningful, that is something that keeps people in the game. This is the very basis that Tarkov was built to exploit, just as one example.
Your own example of a negative interaction is proof of this - but that interaction wouldn't have happened if you and your guild leader weren't both of a high enough level to do what you were doing. If one of you were stuck at level 10, that whole interaction would never have happened.
Edit to add; an interaction between a level 10 and a level 50 that is negative for that level 10 is probably not a meaningful interaction.
My statement is not factually incorrect and here is why. Take New World where the leveling is fast, so the majority of players are at max level. However, the same best players predominantly participated in wars with rare exceptions.This is a reason why many people complained that one of the coolest gameplay parts of New World - wars - was permanently unavailable for them. Hardcore players will always have an advantage over casual players and it doesn't matter whether leveling is fast or slow.
I'm not sure how you think this proves your point.
The comment that your statement was incorrect and my following statement about events and sieges were two different statements. While there is a small connection, it was not a followup statement to the first comment.
It is factually incorrect to state that there is little to no content locked behind level requirements.
Also;
In regards to events and such, it is true that lower level players will have things they can do.