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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.
ASHES SHOULD REMOVE THE VISUAL "1-50 CLASSIC MECHANIC FOR LEVELING
Syblitrh
Member
The problem with the leveling system is that it divides players based on the time it takes to increase a number attached to their name. Some players have jobs, some are casual, and others are hardcore, each with different expectations based on what they have achieved and the time they’ve invested to reach a specific level.
In a dynamic game like Ashes of Creation, having a traditional level number next to your name undermines the game’s replay-ability and enjoyment. My suggestion is to remove the "1-50" leveling system entirely. This would eliminate the pressure or frustration for all types of players, allowing them to focus on the game's core dynamic features instead of chasing numbers. I believe this would be a win for Intrepid Studios, as it could attract a wider range of players.
Since AoC already bases many of its systems on time progression or percentage completion, showing a level number isn’t necessary. This would give the developers flexibility to adjust the time or effort required to unlock features, without being tied to a leveling system. Players could progress naturally, following whatever path they prefer, without feeling discouraged by seeing other players at higher levels.
Instead of increasing a number with experience from killing monsters, it could simply fill a bar or percentage towards unlocking something. Similarly, gear should not be tied to a level; the difficulty of obtaining it already provides an "invisible level" based on the challenge faced.
Another issue with traditional levels is the mentality of “What will I do once I reach level 50?” Removing the level system altogether would shift the focus away from reaching a particular number and encourage players to enjoy the journey. You could still implement ranks based on achievements or milestones, but these ranks wouldn’t have visible levels attached to them, so the time required to reach them remains unknown, allowing everyone to progress at their own pace.
In a dynamic game like Ashes of Creation, having a traditional level number next to your name undermines the game’s replay-ability and enjoyment. My suggestion is to remove the "1-50" leveling system entirely. This would eliminate the pressure or frustration for all types of players, allowing them to focus on the game's core dynamic features instead of chasing numbers. I believe this would be a win for Intrepid Studios, as it could attract a wider range of players.
Since AoC already bases many of its systems on time progression or percentage completion, showing a level number isn’t necessary. This would give the developers flexibility to adjust the time or effort required to unlock features, without being tied to a leveling system. Players could progress naturally, following whatever path they prefer, without feeling discouraged by seeing other players at higher levels.
Instead of increasing a number with experience from killing monsters, it could simply fill a bar or percentage towards unlocking something. Similarly, gear should not be tied to a level; the difficulty of obtaining it already provides an "invisible level" based on the challenge faced.
Another issue with traditional levels is the mentality of “What will I do once I reach level 50?” Removing the level system altogether would shift the focus away from reaching a particular number and encourage players to enjoy the journey. You could still implement ranks based on achievements or milestones, but these ranks wouldn’t have visible levels attached to them, so the time required to reach them remains unknown, allowing everyone to progress at their own pace.
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Comments
In other words, removing this visual indicator would make the game way harder for all the casuals that need their hand held through the game. Ashes is already hardcore enough, so I don't think we need this kind of hardcore approach as well.
Levels are still needed in gaming.
A visible level indicator also leads to significant drama with updates. When new gear comes out with higher level requirements, it clearly signals that older gear is now obsolete. By removing the visible level indicator, you reduce these expectations and mental barriers. Players will be more focused on enjoying the progression and adapting to updates naturally, rather than feeling discouraged by numbers and the time required to reach them.
Personally, I prefer a gear-progression system like the one in Albion Online, where you level gear by using it. In this system, wearing and actively using a piece of gear leads to progression, and as you level up, you unlock higher tiers (e.g., after advancing a chest piece, you gain access to Tier 2 or Tier 3 gear). This method offers players more freedom and flexibility, enhancing the MMO experience by steering away from the often restrictive, linear, vertical character-leveling seen in more narrative-driven RPGs. In Albion Online, the progression feels more horizontally aligned, allowing for a more dynamic style of play. Plus, there’s a unique sense of identity and strategy in Albion, as you literally “are what you wear.” Your gear defines your role and capabilities, making the system feel more immersive and reflective of your choices.
However, I’m not entirely sure how a class system would function without character leveling and relying solely on gear progression. It becomes tricky to integrate weapon skills with character skills and augments, as these are often tied to character development. Balancing gear-based progression while keeping meaningful skill advancement would be a challenge that needs thoughtful design.
That said, if someone could develop a modern gear-progression system that better suits MMOs, it might strike the right balance. However, I understand that character levels help certain players, offering them visual cues and a sense of progression that can be reassuring. For those who appreciate being guided or “hand-held” through clear progression stages, a character-level system has its advantages.
Having few big goals that you need weeks to accomplish wont be good for retaining players.
Ofc AOC may introduce some new small goals instead of the leveling system, but the levels is something that has proven that it works for the last few decades. So i dont think leveling system is the problem here.
As something which i could suggest is to cap the levels at the start of the game. For example at game launch the level cap is lvl 20. So no matter if someone plays 24 hours per day, or someone plays 4 they will reach same level and one wont be with 40 levels ahead.
And the level cap can increase with the development of nodes. So the moment THE FIRST NODE IN THE SERVER advances to lvl 3, the Global lvl cap of all players on the server becomes 30, on node lvl 4 you get lvl 40, and at metropolis you unlock lvl 50.
2. It's much easier to change one's perception instead of hoping that Intrepid will remove a system that they will never remove
What I'm interested in is what sources of xp will contribute to "adventure level", and what will contribute to other level systems (i.e. artisan skills, market usage, node contribution factors).
They did it in Counter Strike, I can confirm that PvP is fun.
A player that's 'filled up a bar' 10 times will be better off than a player that's only 'filled up a bar' 5 times, because that's just leveling up without calling it that.
Horizontal progression will exist alongside the standard character level, but numbers are the most effective a succinct way to communicate how much time you've spent in one area of the game or another.
Then... why do you have two threads and more than 2 hours worth of videos suggesting slower, longer Leveling speeds???
That helps guage the spent on progression in each play session.
Jealousy over people being a higher Level than you seems to me like a personal problem.
Mostly, since 8 Levels difference is going to cause an issue with gaining xp - we need some way to know the Levels of the people we're grouping with.
Also helps us figure out what Level of encounters/challenges our Group will be trying to complete.
Division based on Level disparity will happen in any case.
Probably better to be sooner rather than later?
Why wipe a bunch of times while trying to complete Level 20 challenges before realizing it's because 3 people in the 8-person Group are Level 10 instead of Level 20.
Yeah. It's a good thing for people to be able to see that Gear Score is low in order to help people acquire Gear that increases their Gear Score - instead of just assuming the player sucks at combat.
Level indicators already help players enjoy progressing and adapt to updates "naturally".
Feeling discouraged by numbers, again, is a personal problem... really has nothing to do with game design.
Counter Strike is an FPS; not an RPG.
Asking for Class Levels to be removed from an RPG is like asking to be able to use your hands more often in Soccer because it's fun to do that in American Football.
Ashes has many other progression paths besides just the Adventurer path:
Artisan, Social Org, Race, Religion, Node, Guild, Naval, Highwaymen, Bounty Hunter... in addition to Sieges and Wars and Caravans and the Story EVents system.
Also, new content is planned to drop every 3-4 months.
Unlike something like this this which clearly is not happening as it would require reworking a lot of systems for no serious reason.
The number itself is just a way to measure/compare the relative strengths of characters (theoretically). More or less a p*ssing contest for some. Could go old school and have levels capped at 10, although progression at each level would need to be pretty steep. Unless you structured character level based off of leveling in individual skills/abilities until you met the prerequisites for the next level. That’s more in line with the career path structure of Warhammer Fantasy RPG, for example.
Players, I am pretty certain although can’t speak for all of them, want something tangible to show and reward progress. And the more frequently the “pay off” the better. Kind of like a slot machine. They want the bells and flashing lights within so many spins to keep them putting those coins in (subscription) and pulling the lever (playing). I think it also has to happen after max level or they lose interest. That’s the challenge most games are facing these days. Used to be that we grognards would grind for weeks to gain minor increments of progression that today’s player wouldn’t bother with. Shorter attention spans. It’s part of the whole instant information/social media deal where you don’t need to wait for the morning paper the next day to see how your team did or what some bozo on the other side of the world did. Everything today is now and boring after a few minutes. It’s a billion emails at work about mostly nothing whereas in the past communication was better thought out and expressed (well at least they tried to be). But they also want those rewards to be meaningful and not just a digit increase.
Some things I think players want with respect to progression:
1. Increased health/HP to last longer in combat.
2. New skills, improved skills or bonuses, or more options for their character. Do more things, break more things.
3. Ability to face tougher opponents, which can include aspects of #1 or #2.
4. Better gear or access to better gear.
5. Progression towards a class story arc.
6. Progression towards an overall story or event arc.
7. Progression of a guild association.
8. Progression of node association.
9. Access to resources.
10. Gathering, processing or crafting progression that leads to #4 or #9 (wrt tools).
11. Achievements, more aligned to the character story arc the better (or what could be referred to a story arc since this is a game not a novel). However Balders Gate 3 demonstrates how this can be done, I don’t expect Ashes to do that.
12. Availability of player choices. As a game progresses I believe players would prefer a broader range of options for play rather than reducing the number of options (example of reduction is end game raids and dungeons as the only real content).
13. Increased player ranking in the chosen areas of interest.
14. Increased reputation (player/family/social org/guild/node).
15. Building an empire, physically, socially or economically.
16. Building an intelligence network.
17. Content for streaming.
18. For some, a glorious death…or many glorious deaths.
19. Obtaining every in game mount or every in game gear set. In other words, the collector.
20. Exploring new regions/nodes.
Pretty sure there’s more than that.
it doesn't ;3
also, if there is progression, hardcore players will always be ahead. showing a progression bar or whatever to unlock something is the level bar that its already shown 8D. hardcore players will always be ahead in progression, no matter how you disguise that progression.
Syblitrh also believes their suggestion would be a net positive for the game.
And then, by the time you graduate from high school, it's sometimes a miracle to be able to play 4hours per month.
As opposed to Ashes, where Steven theorizes gamers who play 4 hours per day can hit Level 50 in 45 days.
There's no shame in having a life outside of gaming, just as there's no shame in having gaming as your life. Expecting both to have/show the same in-game progression, though, seems an unusual take.
I am not that sure about this.
And while we know that with development of nodes, new content and stronger monsters will appear, This doesnt exclude the option that outside the Starting Zones, there may be higher level areas by default. Or some dungeons and ect.
Tho there is some chance that there wont be any high level content until nodes develop (but i doubt this)
Sure, their could be areas beyond Node influence, like the Open Seas, that have static Levels.
But, for the vast majority of game space, we don't move from static region to static region as we out-Level low Level spaces.
> Check what I wrote
> Realize it has nothing to do with it
> Make up another excuse
> Repeat
TL;Couldn't compehend: Both 2% and 0,01% are small chances, yet the first one is 200x higher.
separating the players isn't a bad thing. in fact, it is made on purpose. you don't want 10000 players in the same spot ;3
there are other mechanics in mmorpg that also do this, but no one complains about those.
Remove levels from RPGs so that everyone can feel comfortable. What else can you do for overall comfort? Take away everyone’s weapons so that they don’t beat each other, and cancel the red mobs so that they don’t get aggressive and the player himself can choose who to attack))) It’s hard to imagine anything more absurd.
It funnels you into all sorts of senseless chasing - grind level, grind gear to get higher dps, grind, grind, grind.
I can't imagine an innovative system that makes this obsolete however AoC can instead just focus more on the social aspect of the genre. Make low, mid and endgame quests and leveling require you to find find friends in order to complete them but not just because you need to meet the stat requirement in order to do them. That should be only one part. They should also require you to think, problem-solve, brainstorm together, coordinate, etc.
Make social events for players.
Also focus on the RPG aspect of the genre - make lore something which you can discover ingame, not necessarily tied to the main-quests, but parts of it can be hidden, make the storyline memorable, make exploring fun and engaging, not just a theme-park scene watching. Actually make players go and search for hidden things in walls, make them click on plants to learn more about them and once learned give you the ability to combine certain plants in order to trigger ingame events etc. Make it puzzling. Quizzical.
Thats the main problem of MMORPGs. They never went next-gen. WoW vanilla when it released back in early 2000, was overwhelming for everyone in exactly this way. It had so many things that were fresh, never before seen and done. Even gathering quests, mindless mob farming quests, etc. felt like an adventure because it was all novel. Ever since then though MMORPGs just never innovated. WoW expansions only gave us re-skins of all the quests gathering/farm quests and raids. Basically they theme-parked it till the end(up to this day) and feared to innovate because they all wanted to keep to the golden cash-cow formula from early 2000 WoW. Other MMORPGs just gave us re-skins of WoW, keeping to teh formula in an inferior way.
That's the problem. MMORPGs never went next-gen in their MMO and RPG aspects. Up to this day they rely on just two things:
1.Re-skin old content
2.Make number go big(level, damage, etc)
completely ridiculous comment, if they did not use that yard stick they would use another.
Makes you wonder how people think, or if they actually do!