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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.
Feedback on design decisions that might kill the game.
askii
Member, Alpha Two
Let me start by saying that I haven't followed the forums/discord discourse until now. So if the points raised here have already been thoroughly discussed in the community and are the way they are for good reason, I apologize for wasting everyones time.
There is a lot to like about Ashes of Creation, so anyone reading this shouldn't take this post as me not liking the game. Anything not mentioned here you can assume I either like or at least don't think is a major issue. However, there are some design decisions I can't really see the benefit of, but seem to have large enough downsides that they might literally kill the game long term.
1. Death Penalties
The first major issue to me are death penalties. I can't for the life of me see the benefit of general purpose death penalties, but the downsides seem significant.
First of all it is a huge turnoff to most casual players, who either don't enjoy or don't have the time to smack their head into a wall untill it breaks. And lets be realistic here, casual players are the vast majority of MMO players. You need those players for the game to survive. So even if those penalties are not that severe, the perception alone might turn casual players away. Additionally, death penalties a) disincentivize players from playing together and b) disincentivize players from playing certain types of content.
a) It is an issue in MMOs across the board, that players are somewhat unwilling to play with less experienced teamates for efficiency reasons. In most MMOs, if you want to get into harder content, you are usually required to show proof that you've already completed the content the group is about to attempt. This is understandable, since experienced players don't always want to carry or teach inexperienced players. They just want to get their run done so they can get their reward. Now imagine how much worse this will get if it's no longer just about time efficiency, but actually involves a tangible cost to all players if a party wipes. Players will be heavily incentivized to shut out anyone that might not already be at the top of their game.
b) Death penalties also disincentivize players from playing any type of content they are ansure about being able to complete. Since there will be a cost to wiping repeatedly, players are incentivized to simply not attempt difficult content or participate in PvP. Again, more casual players not daring to set foot into difficult PvE content or participate in PvP is already an issue in MMOs with a more modern design philosophy. We want people to get into PvP, we want people to just say "fuck it, lets try this boss and if we wipe, who cares". Giving people an extra incentive to stay safe and leave the difficult stuff to the handful of hardcore players seems like a bad idea.
Now it should be mentioned that I have no issue with very significant death penalties for corrupted players. They chose to be a dick and it's fine that they have to live with the consequences. But for everyone else I just can't see the upside, while the huge downside is that it sets all the wrong incentives. And while it might sound a bit dramatic to claim that this might kill the game, it is very much those kind of unnecessary frustrations that keep casual players away from otherwise well designed games. So unless there is a very significant upside that can not be accomplished in any other way, I would seriously think about whether death penalties are a good idea (at the very least in PvE).
2. XP, kill and loot sharing
While maybe not quite as detrimental to the player experience as death penalties, I again think this is designed in an unnecessarily frustrating way.
Especially the way XP sharing and kill participation currenly work seems to have mostly downsides to the player experience. If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed. Players should be incentiviced to play together, rather than compete against and stealing progress from eachother. While in some situations this competition can incentivise players to chat and join a party, in many situations that is either not possible (e.g. when a party is already full) or impractical (e.g. a high but constantly changing player density trying to kill quest mobs). And while I understand that ashes to an extend is designed with competition in mind, that's what PvP is for. You don't need XP/kill stealing for that. Making it so that everyong is simply happy for every new friend that shows up to help, rather than seeing them as unwanted competition, seems a healthier design philosophy to me. And if you really are there to take something from an enemy group, kill them!
Loot sharing is the point I am the least bothered by and it wouldn't be that big of a deal to me if it stayed the way it is. While it feels somewhat outdated to me that people have to fight over items, rather than droping personal loot, I wouldn't view that as a huge issue in and of itself. However, it might become an issue if XP sharing and kill participation are handled in what I would consider a healthier way. If anyone can just join in as described above, it no longer makes sense to share XP and loot between participants, since you no longer have control over who gets to join your activity. It might be inevitable to move to personal loot and 100% XP for everyone participating, if those systems are changed as suggested.
I think what it ultimately comes down to is this: While I dislike many of the modern MMO design directions (like making the world irrelevant through flying mounts or fast travel), some things have changed for good reason. We shouldn't go back to how it was done in the olden days just for the sake of it. I think Ashes of Creation does a lot of stuff right, but on the points mentioned above I am not so sure.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Everyone is of course welcome to tell me why I'm wrong.
There is a lot to like about Ashes of Creation, so anyone reading this shouldn't take this post as me not liking the game. Anything not mentioned here you can assume I either like or at least don't think is a major issue. However, there are some design decisions I can't really see the benefit of, but seem to have large enough downsides that they might literally kill the game long term.
1. Death Penalties
The first major issue to me are death penalties. I can't for the life of me see the benefit of general purpose death penalties, but the downsides seem significant.
First of all it is a huge turnoff to most casual players, who either don't enjoy or don't have the time to smack their head into a wall untill it breaks. And lets be realistic here, casual players are the vast majority of MMO players. You need those players for the game to survive. So even if those penalties are not that severe, the perception alone might turn casual players away. Additionally, death penalties a) disincentivize players from playing together and b) disincentivize players from playing certain types of content.
a) It is an issue in MMOs across the board, that players are somewhat unwilling to play with less experienced teamates for efficiency reasons. In most MMOs, if you want to get into harder content, you are usually required to show proof that you've already completed the content the group is about to attempt. This is understandable, since experienced players don't always want to carry or teach inexperienced players. They just want to get their run done so they can get their reward. Now imagine how much worse this will get if it's no longer just about time efficiency, but actually involves a tangible cost to all players if a party wipes. Players will be heavily incentivized to shut out anyone that might not already be at the top of their game.
b) Death penalties also disincentivize players from playing any type of content they are ansure about being able to complete. Since there will be a cost to wiping repeatedly, players are incentivized to simply not attempt difficult content or participate in PvP. Again, more casual players not daring to set foot into difficult PvE content or participate in PvP is already an issue in MMOs with a more modern design philosophy. We want people to get into PvP, we want people to just say "fuck it, lets try this boss and if we wipe, who cares". Giving people an extra incentive to stay safe and leave the difficult stuff to the handful of hardcore players seems like a bad idea.
Now it should be mentioned that I have no issue with very significant death penalties for corrupted players. They chose to be a dick and it's fine that they have to live with the consequences. But for everyone else I just can't see the upside, while the huge downside is that it sets all the wrong incentives. And while it might sound a bit dramatic to claim that this might kill the game, it is very much those kind of unnecessary frustrations that keep casual players away from otherwise well designed games. So unless there is a very significant upside that can not be accomplished in any other way, I would seriously think about whether death penalties are a good idea (at the very least in PvE).
2. XP, kill and loot sharing
While maybe not quite as detrimental to the player experience as death penalties, I again think this is designed in an unnecessarily frustrating way.
Especially the way XP sharing and kill participation currenly work seems to have mostly downsides to the player experience. If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed. Players should be incentiviced to play together, rather than compete against and stealing progress from eachother. While in some situations this competition can incentivise players to chat and join a party, in many situations that is either not possible (e.g. when a party is already full) or impractical (e.g. a high but constantly changing player density trying to kill quest mobs). And while I understand that ashes to an extend is designed with competition in mind, that's what PvP is for. You don't need XP/kill stealing for that. Making it so that everyong is simply happy for every new friend that shows up to help, rather than seeing them as unwanted competition, seems a healthier design philosophy to me. And if you really are there to take something from an enemy group, kill them!
Loot sharing is the point I am the least bothered by and it wouldn't be that big of a deal to me if it stayed the way it is. While it feels somewhat outdated to me that people have to fight over items, rather than droping personal loot, I wouldn't view that as a huge issue in and of itself. However, it might become an issue if XP sharing and kill participation are handled in what I would consider a healthier way. If anyone can just join in as described above, it no longer makes sense to share XP and loot between participants, since you no longer have control over who gets to join your activity. It might be inevitable to move to personal loot and 100% XP for everyone participating, if those systems are changed as suggested.
I think what it ultimately comes down to is this: While I dislike many of the modern MMO design directions (like making the world irrelevant through flying mounts or fast travel), some things have changed for good reason. We shouldn't go back to how it was done in the olden days just for the sake of it. I think Ashes of Creation does a lot of stuff right, but on the points mentioned above I am not so sure.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Everyone is of course welcome to tell me why I'm wrong.
6
Comments
1- the death penalties are great. this is a game with owpvp. when you don't get penalized you just keep going and going and smacking your head against the wall, as you said, no repercussions. this puts a stop to that.
don't leeroy jenkins everything
also, how do they disincentivize grouping? its harder to die as a group, and if you do, you get dressed by a priest. it literally incentivizes grouping.
if you are talking about doing some run or whatever, this isn't a game where you log in, do your run and leave...also, in a game like that, even with no penalties, why would a hardcore, experienced player take a noob anyways? you don't want people messing up your run, taking 2 hours to do something that can be done in 15 mins. its frustrating. if you want to learn the run, learn it with players who are learning it too. but again, this isn't one of those games where you do your dungeon run and log off, no dailies or weeklies. minus points to your argument.
2- looting and exp distribution are fine. share your loot with your party, learn to play with others. and as a group, you can fight higher level mobs and get more exp to make up for the small exp loss per member joining the party vs soloing.
1- I like death penalties and hope they keep them, maybe even increase them.
2- I stopped reading after "If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed" because you've either never played a MMO before or you're just a troll and having a good time.
Thankfully, if one dislikes death penalties, almost every other MMORPG is safe to die in, so there's plenty of options out there. Also, if one wants to play a co-op game with friends and happiness and share everything and don't compete for anything, I think Stardew Valley has multiplayer.
Now, don't get me wrong: this game needs a healthy player base to survive and I'd rather play a worse version of Ashes than don't play Ashes at all, but I don't want Intrepid to yield to carebears before they absolutely must.
plenty of people like games like this. op seems to think that only casual time casual challenge players are the only ones playing mmorpg.
if bob doesn't play the game, its fine, bill will, or max or sarah. any of the people who like these type of games will take their spot.
I don't disagree that the argument against death penalties is not as strong for PvP. If you would want to keep it for PvP deaths specifically I wouldn't mind that too much. But even in PvP, if you are involved in consensual PvP, I don't see what's bad about someone who keeps "going and going". And as I said, for corrupted players penalties are fine anyway.
As already stated, I don't mind experienced players not wanting to bring less experienced players, that's understandable. But I see no reason for why players should be further incentiviced to behave this way beyond the normal and relatable reasons.
In regards to loot and XP, I'm not sure your answer is an argument for anything. Of course people can do all those things, I simply laid out why I think this could be done better. No one is losing anything by giving all players that participated credit.
You ok buddy? Maybe take a break from the internet some time.
And just for clarification, in every MMO I've ever played I eventually ended up in PvP since PvE doesn't pose much of a challenge long term. But there is a difference between making the game challenging and making the game needlessly frustrating.
Are you okay, buddy? If your suggestions are dogwater, it's not my fault.
Thanks for proving my point: you clearly have absolutely no experience with MMORPGs (although I still think you're trolling and I'm actually biting the bait).
Cheers
In the case of a more intense death penalty, the cons are that people won't experiment as much, won't take risks, won't participate unless victory is basically a sure thing.
In an MMORPG in general, this will manifest in game as people being less willing to go off meta - experimenting with a new build that turns out to not work well will be incredibly costly, and so most people just won't.
Whether one likes the death penalties in Ashes or not, there is always going to be a question as to the wisdom of having a death penalty system that discourages experimentation, but a class system that encourages it.
In regards to a PvE MMORPG, a harsher death penalty results in players not taking on more challenging content, but rather progressing to the point where that content is easier. This is the optimal way to play such a game, but it results in the game being significantly more boring.
In Ashes specifically, this won't be an issue because PvE will be little more than different looking HP pinatas.
In an open world PvP MMORPG, a harsher death penalty results in more people running from potential PvP. A game like Ashes will see open world PvP be more about the chase than the fight.
There will always be questions as to the wisdom of basing a game on players fighting each other, but then penalizing half of those players when they do. There is a reason they have taken most of the death penalties away from PvP events like sieges - they understand the above to be absolutely true. They want people fighting in those events, and understand that their death penalties will prevent people from doing so.
In other words, the death penalties exist in Ashes with Intrepid knowing it will discourage people from participating.
@nanfoodle You really need to proofread your posts better before making them, your meaning is frequently lost entirely in mismatched negatives, in this case I think you ment to say "shouldn't become lootable".
All it takes for a player to quit the game is one bad day. Especially in MMOs. And remember, you WILL have bugs and exploits. At some point, people will be murdered by the thousands by some PKers figuring something out. They might say "Alright, I guess I'll come back when it's patched". But they never will come back.
The world you're building requires a lot of player retention to function. If the peasants aren't happy, the kings will starve, remember that.
I have a rare form of dyslexia. Letters and words float around the page for me. I can reread things 10 times and it looks different every time. The more tired I am the harder it is to stop the words and letters from moving around on the screen. I just do the best I can.
You risk having smaller group of players doing tough content, to get the reward of more loot for each.
And you mitigate the risk by bringing zerg group, but then only few of your group will get loot.
Same as death penalties. You risk doing harder content, and the risk is that if you die - it will hurt.
But if you dont die, then you get good reward.
As Steven said countless times: AOC wont be a game for everyone. The game wont bend its principles if some group of players dont like particular thing. Because this way the game will lose its identity (like almost all other MMO games), No matter how hard you try, you will never make a game that everyone likes. But in trying to make everyone happy, you will lose the core players that love the game for what it is.
I follow you, - i have not yet played the game, and will not play november 8. even though i have bought acces. What i have seen so fare makes me wait. I am so dissapointed over how bad the game looks and feels. Only positive thing is the combat. When you log into WoW, you know right away that it's WoW; it is unique. What makes AOC unique when you log in; - i really can't tell! I know many in this forum will defend the game with there life, but it's EA and this is my overall feedback. But i cross my fingers and hope for the best.
The death penalties were cruel on the MUD. There was not only random amount of XPs losses, complete EQ drops to the ground; but also a thing called essence , which could be lost at a random amount each death. This was a feature of all deaths. If a character ran out of essence then the character was permanently killed. Wiped in other words. One could be given essence from a cleric which came from their own essence pool which would build over time on all characters.
It seems to me AoC has fine tuned the death system to have given it the right amount of risk to reward to put that same excitement in game play which the MUDs of old afforded me.
PvP attacks and the degree of risk one can suffer in them seems to have been well thought through by Intrepid. Having been PvP'ed 3 times over this last test weekend the only consequence seems to have been equipment durability issues caused by the death process. Due to not turning on PvP and fighting back there was no EQ or item loss. It seemed just a small risk to keep one on one's toes in my opinion and keep the blood thirsty PvP'ers satisfied. Keeping it real if you will.
'
'From my perspective Intrepid seems to have done things right on what appears to be this well designed PvP/Death issue.
I personally heavily disagree with your points of view, and here is why.
On the first point, death having consequences in my opinion is a good thing. It's an incentive for players to be wary of their surroundings and group up. No doubt you've noticed, unless you're a pro, even 2 normal mobs pulled wrongly can kill you. I looted some 200 glint or whatever it was called from dead players because they thought they're tougher than they are. Some players dropped stacks of 30-50 glint, losing 3-5s at lower levels is quite a bit of invested time in farming.
I think this is excellent design, why should mobs be loot pinatas that deal no damage? It never made sense to me.
The consequences of mortality, in my opinion, actively incentivize grouping up. You'd be surprised just how much easier content becomes if only one more player joins your group.
The second point about loot sharing I think directly complements death penalties by incentivizing group play. Quests are done faster, mobs are killed faster, and the ever present threat of death is greatly diminished. Additionally, the chances of being attacked by players are greatly reduced.
Remember, everyone being buddy buddy with each other is a starting zone illusion. At any point in time, any player outside of your group can suddenly and unexpectedly decide to kill you and loot your ashes, especially in remote areas far away from spawn points.
ofc u want harsh punishment for the pvpers, but not for the pvers .-.
imagine if I went to ff forums and asked for more severe punishment for the pvers...
it would still be beneficial for the community if it was possible to *ease into* groups by cooperating spontaneously and testing the waters. A decent system for loot sharing won't do anything to harm competition, because competitive players will still control the objectives and territories they don't want to share. But the system will make natural progression into finding players to team up with more feasible. In a game that (rightfully) doesn't have LfG systems, that makes the community less tribalistic and forced into random preselected guilds, and instead allows players to find like-minded players to ally with organically when they find themselves doing the same thing as someone else.
I personally don't mind sending out party invites, but less socially open players get scared of commitment very easily, and need some time to ease into the idea of doing something with other people.
Also, even if you're willing to party up with someone, a damage-contribution-based XP or loot distribution system could even apply in party in order to make sure the more active & skilled players get rewarded.
I disagree with you on all points. I’m very glad that the mechanics work this way. I’m too lazy to describe in detail why, but if you want to play giveaways, there are a lot of projects. This is exactly the case here.
The enemy group has the best manamanegment - they have excellent time to pull packs faster at the spot and farm them. If your group has not yet recovered, why will your warrior gain experience for interfering with the other team's gameplay, while his healers sit and drink mana? Don't think this is nonsense. And Death penalties are the basis of the concept of risk versus reward. If you're not sure, don't hit. If you think that this monster is very dangerous, bypass it. Granny called when you were putting together a big pack with the group - get it.
So your 'game-killing mechanics' are just your personal casual desires.
Not sure I follow your logic. I've never played FF14 and in the MMOs I have played I am mostly a PvP player. I guess it's just hard to imagine that someone isn't driven by selfish motivations. The reason I'm more open to death penalties in PvP is because it's far less of a clear cut case to me. For example, depending on where the next spawn point is, it might actually be relevant to keep players from suiciding in repeatedly. While I would consider fights next to a spawn point an edge case, for those kind of reasons death penalties might make more sense in PvP.
I've played FFXIV for years and that game is nothing but hand holding, the whole MMO experience is a facade, you follow the story till max level and sit in town hitting up party finder queues. the boss fights are fun but they ran out of ideas years ago so now you get these super convoluted fights where it's like everyone has to stand in certain spots and rotate 30 degrees around the boss or you wipe.
A lot of FF players are brainwashed too like when they remade the game they kept talking about their small dev team and players eat that up as if they don't have hundreds of contractors working on it too. content sucks well our chain smoking composer has lung cancer so instead of talking about the game, the game becomes one giant pity party.
the extremely over tuned and overly complex boss fights are there to gate players due to a lack of content that will never be addressed because they follow the same cookie cutter formula with every expansion they release. they even said years ago it wouldn't be a grindy game but what did they do, turned around and added "relics" to the game which made you re-run old content over and over to shoehorn players into dungeons to help lower levels through the game and keep players busy with something to do rather than add real meaningful content to the game.
the whole asmon thing where the fanbase pretended to be the "nicest players in any MMO" was the cherry on top for me cause they are all toxic as fuck. no one will talk to you if you haven't studied videos for a fight, if you have an issue with the game you will get attacked by a mob of fanboys.
Heavily disagree with everything you said.
People are interested in AoC particularly because of its risk vs reward philosophy that aims toe similar to old school mmos but not as punishing- because virtually all other modern big mmos are not punishing.
So why do you come here to suggest that this mmo be more like these shitty regular mmos that people came here to escape???
Lol, just look at OSRS. Awful movement and graphics with punishing risk vs reward, and it's the most consistently popular mmo over history.
Why don't you just go play the games that have what you're suggesting???
1. Regarding penalties for death, they're not as severe as you seem to think. Even in Alpha2 where things are scaled up to absurd levels, it's not that punishing to die. Even when dying green, exp debt is a very small % of your total level exp. The material loss is more significant, but it's also not difficult to farm materials (finding them, well...) The death penalties put a little sting on you if you die, and really emphasize that you need to be fighting back in PvP to mitigate that sting, and being more cautious in PvE to prevent dying to mobs.
2. I agree than exp splits in open world are a healthier approach than the current lopsided tagging system. However, not full exp, because while generous participation credit is good for just receiving quest completions (screw you, Ted), we do not want to invite group-less zerging as the standard here any more than it already is. If a mob grants 1k exp, and 100 people are attacking it, they shouldn't all be getting 1k exp, just 10. Personally I'm more fond of the highest contributor method in various areas, damage done, damage mitigated/healed, damage taken/threat level held.
Ashes does a lot of things right. The complex crafting and lack of fast travel already make it leagues better than other MMOs for a slower pace. Honestly the only horribly archaic thing they need to drop is loot master. That's going to get demoralizing very quickly for the majority of players given how scarce meaningful drops are going to be. Even my hardcore friend watched the Firebrand stream and wondered about why he'd waste his time on that for no gain. RNG based personal drops sprinkled in with group-rolled loot would at least give some crumbs to contributors (same qualifiers as exp credit: dmg/mitigation and healing/threat held), but you'll get people crying 'care bear' and 'participation trophy' over it as you'll see in any thread about rewarding players for their skill or dedication or time invested.
Consequence free death in PvP already tends to induce anger and rage, as well as constant and loud screams for "balance NOAW"! Add penalties to that and you are brewing toxins. Death penalties in PvP genrally result in rage quit and dead or tiny "hardcore" population game.
Many of the people who defend and claim they love it will be amoung the first to quit in apoplexia as soon as they die because "That class is op! The devs refuse to fix how broken they are! This is garbage AAAHHHHH!!!".
For some reason they all think the ones dying wont be them, it'll be all the "noobs" they pwn. the thought of all those nubs rage quitting and having their day/night/life completely ruined as they smash their faces into their keyboards in rage and all the angry forum posts gives them a massive hard on.
Then suddenly things don't go thier way and they die, repeatedly, either because they're not actually gods gift to gaming or maybe due to no real fault of their own just bad luck. Suddenly "Not playing anymore this is crap! It takes no skill just luck! How could that newb have possibly killed ME, blleeurhhh!!!" <Throws keyboard out window while smashing face on desk>
When game eventually dies they snicker and laugh and say yeah it was crap the balance was horrible and they didn't do this or that or the other thing!
Never occurs to them that the real reason the game died is when many others tried to tell the devs "this is too harsh!" they screamed carebear, pussie and other such names and pushed and advocated for real and harsh consequencaces IN A GAME people play to have FUN.
Are the consequnces too harsh? I don't know will give my opinion in a few weeks from now but the above is something Devs need to be wary of.
The 1 to 5%ers are maybe at a push 7/10% of the player base, so lose the other 90/93% and you got a very dead mmo.
You won’t lose that 90% in one go, will be death, by 100 000 quits, which then snowball into…. the 90%
Game dead.
Interesting perspective when only just recently there has been a massive wave of interest in Permadeath/Hardcore modes in Some of those casual games...
Have you not experienced a corpse run or gear degradation in some of those games? would those not be considered some form of "death penalty"
The fact of the matter Death sucks, I don't expect you disagree with that in real life.
The only numpties are the ones trying to gaslight Intrepid into making a carebear MMO like the other plethora of modern MMOs already catering to "The Casual Player"
The 99% of kick start funders backed a game with a death penalty system and they are likely to be the same players paying a subscription after the 90% of casual numpties leave who probably would have left anyway even without a death penalty system in place...
As they are probably conditioned into daily login rewards and auto battler content loops...