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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.
Economics using the example of transport.
Podgnil
Member
I think most of us agree that fast travel is evil, and fortunately the developers also spoke out against such systems. But I wanted to know if the game will have a public transport system between nodes? will the nodes be able to communicate with each other? Will they build these routes (ships, ferries, roads) with their own money, and then make a profit from the sale of travel tickets?
If so, then the question arises: will players be able to be shareholders of such projects and invest their own funds in them in order to make a profit? For example, a rich player, a citizen of a last-level node, invests his money as a profit in a communication between two developing nodes in the distance. And the question of investment extends not only to the construction of roads; in principle, on a commercial basis, can someone outsider participate in the development of other people’s territories with the aim of further making a profit.
If so, then the question arises: will players be able to be shareholders of such projects and invest their own funds in them in order to make a profit? For example, a rich player, a citizen of a last-level node, invests his money as a profit in a communication between two developing nodes in the distance. And the question of investment extends not only to the construction of roads; in principle, on a commercial basis, can someone outsider participate in the development of other people’s territories with the aim of further making a profit.
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Comments
Yes, much evil.
How dare people think they could do activities in a game that they actually enjoy doing!
No peasant, you will not have fun, you will walk!
Opting for a method to solve them that essentially cuts large amounts of fun for people paying to play a game (ie, paying to have fun) seems somewhat counter productive.
In regards to resources specifically, making it so they are hard to get, rather than tedious to get to, is a far superior means of solving that particular puzzle.
You are adding fun, rather than subtracting it.
Sure, Ashes is going for nearly no fast travel, but that doesn't mean they made the right decision.
If there are multiple scientific metropolises, then an airship will provide faster travel between those scientific metropolises for citizens of those nodes and their vassal nodes, so long as the metropolises are not at war.[31]
Hard agree. Im not all for fast travel but they need to make it somehow enjoyable/easier so that we wont spend tens of minutes going back and forth to complete a quest.
By the way, one thing that pisses me off is when there is a mountain, steep way, hill in front of us that our character cant just go above so we have to walk all the way arround that obstacle. This is one of the many reasons why i quit NW lol.
Ye.. it will be.... maybe...
When you die 3 times by being chased by wolfs during your 10 min travel (making it 20 min travel with the deaths). you will have your fun
Most games has this. Even Wow is like this before you get your fly mount.
Surely I will, surely..
I already enjoy it playing classic Warcraft. Sometimes knowing that the cemetery is far away, oh how you don’t want to die. You use up all your cooldowns, drink all the potions you have, so as not to die in the middle of nowhere. Risk versus reward. And the “I pay for entertainment - I want to have fun” approach has already turned some well-known MMOs into games services. And it gave birth to a trend in which 90% of new MMOs are released as services, AoC positions itself as a counterbalance to this phenomenon, and wants to be an mmorpg. And not the place where you open the menu, you poke the dungeon and you’re there, you poke into the area with ore and after 2 minutes you’re dripping ore...
Well, the thread is not about fast travel, but about the economy, and the opportunity for players to invest in the development of other people’s nodes in order to make a profit)
You mean those games with 10 times the population that Ashes will ever have?
The other point with your argument here in regards to not wanting to die in WoW, that is also not necessarily a factor of fast travel in a game.
If you are running content that has the potential to kill you, you are already at the point where you are having the fun you paid for. If a developer wants to make it so there is a risk vs reward element in relation to a time penalty in getting back to where you were should you die, all they need to do is be strategic with respawn locations.
Again, every argument against fast travel is it's own puzzle that is best solved via other methods. A game is better off if the developers develop those other methods in to their game, as they have the potential to add fun to the game, rather than remove it.
As they say:
You should enjoy the travel, instead to take it as some burden until you reach your destination.
(not talking about games only)
also i expect AOC to have greater population than any other mmo, but we shall see.
Happiness, like fun, has a price; when everyone is made strong, no one is strong; when everyone is made happy, no one is happy. When the fun is very simple, it quickly gets boring.
As to enjoying the journey, that isn't something you do just because people tell you that you should.
If we are to enjoy the journey, that should be because the developer of the game made the journey enjoyable. If the journey is enjoyable, there is no reason to have things like dungeons.
Fact is, travel is travel. It is what you do to get to the thing you want or need to be doing. If I am heading out to a show, or to a sports game, or for some bowling, or for dinner with friends, I'm not planning on enjoying the journey - the journey is the thing I do in order to get to the thing I want to be doing.
Same in games, the journey isn't fun. It is what you do to get to the fun. It should be minimalized in terms of the time players need to spend on it.
Well from what i am seeing the journey itself will be fun. With unexpected quests or events happening near you while you are on your way to finish a quest. World boss appearing, or some pvp caravan event. and ect.
The quests themselves will lead you to points of interests where things are happening.
And dont get me wrong. We all know there will be drop of players from the launch of the game.
BUT. no matter how "boring" the travel is. It will always be more interesting than what WOW for example provide. Wow is just some pve simulator, where you do the same Sh*t 200 times. Nothing changes. Maybe just some mythic + traits that give the mobs few more things. Everything else is the same. And you do this for 2 years every day/week until the new expansion. So ye, i do believe wow is dead after aoc launch, and not coz i expect AOC to be the best game that will ever exist, but because WOW is sh*t.
Is it possible to disagree? If I go to the cinema with my wife and children, I go to spend time with my family first of all and therefore to watch a film that I may or may not like) When I go to billiards or bowling with friends I go to spend time with friends, drink beer, laugh, tell your friend some stories. And it doesn’t matter whether I’m already at the cinema or just on my way there, whether I’m throwing a ball at the bowling alley or just meeting friends in the park. When you go to a football match, if there wasn’t an atmosphere of excitement, a street full of people with flags and shouts for their team, there wouldn’t be a full stadium of people cheering and supporting their team, it would be interesting to sit alone in the stands and walk along empty outside for a match? Would the emotions from watching such a match be equal to the emotions from going to Elclasico? Football is more convenient and enjoyable to watch while sitting on the sofa, you can see the moments better, but you go to the stadium for emotions. The path is greater than the goal)
The example i would give would be smth like:
You go to College, The goal is the piece of paper you will get (with some knowledge).
The "travel" is the 4-5 years that you will be there.
Option 1: you ignore everything else while you are entitled to reach the end of this journey.
the result - you wasted 4-5 years for a piece of paper, and knowledge that if you studied on your own you would get for 6 months the same amount of knowledge (maybe even more)
Option 2: you enjoy the college life, make friends, go clubbing at night, even the classes can be fun with the right company. The journey itself is fulfilling. In the end you get the piece of paper anyway. Ofc there should be times during this journey where you take your studies seriously to get some knowledge anyway,
And the difference between those 2 options is mostly in the way of thinking. Do you think that those 4 years are just a road to get the degree, or you think that these are 4 wonderful years of your life.
How is that fun?
If you gather a group of people together for a specific goal, the game putting unnecessary barriers in your way is not fun.
I'm not going to state whether I agree or disagree, I'm just going to point out that there are more than just these two options.
Saying "this shit thing is shit, but at least it is better than that other more shit thing" isn't an overly good defense of the initial shit thing.
Did you have the impression that i am here to defend AOC?
I am just putting my thoughts for the project. I have a lot negative thoughts for it also.
I also have big concerns about it. and the biggest of all atm is the ZERG guilds.
But also there are a lot of things, at least in the ideology of AOC that i think i will enjoy.
Else i wouldnt even be here in the comment section.
If your aim is to spend time with specific people, an activity in which you are expected to remain silent for 90+ minutes seems like an odd choice. There are better options if spending time with specific people is the goal.
The rest of your post doesn't really track for me. Yes, spending time with people is the actual goal, but we have Discord, smartphones, all sorts of other means of communicating with these same people we are playing our MMORPG with. The reason we are specifically in the game rather than one of those other commuication options (that are distinctly better if the only intention is spending online time with these people), is for the games content.
Thus, the entire argument you seem to be putting forward in this post makes no sense to me. We are in the game to play the game - just as we are at the bowling alley to bowl, or at the movie theatre to watch a movie, or at the restaurant to eat dinner.
If you are with your friends at a restaurant and they don't ever bring out your food, you aren't all going to say "well, at least we spent time together". You are at that restaurant to eat - with friends. Same with if you went to the movies and they just didn't show the movie, or if you went bowling and your lane was not functioning.
Sure, we go out to spend time with people, just as we play MMORPG's to spend time with people. However, when we go out, we also expect the thing we go out to/for to be as it should be.
We expect both to happen.
Explain why you think an MMORPG should be an exception.
I'm vocal about the things I think Ashes gets right, and the things it gets wrong.
Yep i understand this.
Just the thing about enjoying the journey instead aiming for the destination.
I think this is not connected to AOC. And this is way of thinking.
I mean... the moment you start thinking: "i have to get this over with for the next X hours, and after this i will have fun" is not how it should be, or at least thats how i think.
1)I personally don't like teleportation into dungeons from anywhere you like, so I hope there will not be any changes in plans to cater to this interface gameplay.
2)Flying between metropolices is already planned.
3)Fast mounts, including jumping and swimming ones, will play a big role.
I hope:
1)There will be portals between continents in NPC major towns. For the purpose of discovery, players should be limited to using those portals (if they are implemented) only after connecting to them. So if you want to travel from one portal to another, you first need to walk/ride/swim/fly to both of them manually and activate them.
2)Players will be able to craft and/or buy teleportation scrolls to their home and/or node they belong to.
3)More developed nodes will influence surrounding lands by producing better roads that give movement speed buffs.
4)Underdark territory can have shortcuts or fast underground streams to spice things up.
This way, I think all the game systems will remain intact, but traveling will not become tedious for veteran players.
The first sentence of your OP could have been better selected.
Since there is nothing at all planned for the kind of investment you are talking about, there is nothing left to talk about in this thread other than what you mentioned in that first sentence.