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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.
Improving game downtime
Xeeg
Member, Alpha Two
It would also be nice if we could improve the user experience during typical game downtime, like traveling, resting, waiting for groups to form, waiting for respawn. This game has many potential situations that lead to downtime
1. Dueling
Dueling would be huge. Duels at Embersprings, OMG people would love that shit. People are dying to PVP without having to suffer for it. All the PVP systems discourage PVP rather than encourage it. Give us duels/party duels, please.
2. Traveling
Auto-path for your mount between Embersprings.You can afk, bathroom break, or type in chat. Very nice "value added" feature that respects the player's time. Maybe we can also get some kind of food that can be crafted on horse?
3. In -Game Database UI
I am a big fan of games that have in depth tutorials, item guides, crafting guides, monster guides, and everything available inside the game UI itself. Searching through these is a great way to spend game "downtime" and enhances the user experience by helping them identify new goals as far as item acquisition, monster grinding, professions, etc.
Say we got a group of level 8s waiting at the Church Emberspring for a Tank to show up. Imagine if during that downtime, we could be crafting, dueling, or looking up what kind of level 10 gear we want. Maybe we see that, to fill our slots with BIS on the way to level 19, there are a couple level 10 crafted items, a couple level 10 node ticket purchased items, and a couple quest items that can all end up being BIS. We see that an axewielding goblin with low magic resistance drops a material we need, and this goblin is located in a heatmap in each node. We ask our mage buddy if he wants to go duo over there after the Church run.
People may say that this is too much information, but its not. These are all things the players want to know, its just about how to get the information to them. Right now we have to run 30m across the map in order to find out something doesn't work. That gets old fast. Then what, run 30m back? Great... So what, wait until Ashes Codex gets it all, or Ashes Wiki?
We could also have all of the lore for all of the quests and game content, cut scenes, NPC dialogue, EVERYTHING in an in-game searchable UI. Then we could also spend our naturally occurring downtime actually READING the quests/lore. No one wants to read the quests while they are too busy DOING THEM! =D
1. Dueling
Dueling would be huge. Duels at Embersprings, OMG people would love that shit. People are dying to PVP without having to suffer for it. All the PVP systems discourage PVP rather than encourage it. Give us duels/party duels, please.
2. Traveling
Auto-path for your mount between Embersprings.You can afk, bathroom break, or type in chat. Very nice "value added" feature that respects the player's time. Maybe we can also get some kind of food that can be crafted on horse?
3. In -Game Database UI
I am a big fan of games that have in depth tutorials, item guides, crafting guides, monster guides, and everything available inside the game UI itself. Searching through these is a great way to spend game "downtime" and enhances the user experience by helping them identify new goals as far as item acquisition, monster grinding, professions, etc.
Say we got a group of level 8s waiting at the Church Emberspring for a Tank to show up. Imagine if during that downtime, we could be crafting, dueling, or looking up what kind of level 10 gear we want. Maybe we see that, to fill our slots with BIS on the way to level 19, there are a couple level 10 crafted items, a couple level 10 node ticket purchased items, and a couple quest items that can all end up being BIS. We see that an axewielding goblin with low magic resistance drops a material we need, and this goblin is located in a heatmap in each node. We ask our mage buddy if he wants to go duo over there after the Church run.
People may say that this is too much information, but its not. These are all things the players want to know, its just about how to get the information to them. Right now we have to run 30m across the map in order to find out something doesn't work. That gets old fast. Then what, run 30m back? Great... So what, wait until Ashes Codex gets it all, or Ashes Wiki?
We could also have all of the lore for all of the quests and game content, cut scenes, NPC dialogue, EVERYTHING in an in-game searchable UI. Then we could also spend our naturally occurring downtime actually READING the quests/lore. No one wants to read the quests while they are too busy DOING THEM! =D
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Comments
2. The overarching stance is solidly again automation of any game actions. There are also mobs on the paths which would make afk'ing during the trip a bad idea.
3. Not a bad idea on its face, but the amount of information bloat that would cause makes me lean on the side of 'please don't'. You claim say it's not significant, but this is solely the alpha, lacking the vast majority of quests, crafting content, breeding systems, particularities of crafting, etc.
It's just too much stuff that doesn't need to be hosted for anyone to retrieve 24/7. On top of that, if you can just search the solution for quests in-game, well, why bother having puzzles? Or anything that would require someone to think a little bit? It's one thing to go to out-of-game resources (Intrepid can't control that), but feeding it to players with full endorsement to bypass challenge and personal investigation leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
1. I went around trying to duel half the day yesterday and most of the people didnt want to. One person, I accidentally went corrupted on because i thought they were dueling but i guess they werent? Then after all the duels i had like 20% exp debt. Sucks balls bro.
2. I care more about in game experience than some dogmatic stance against something. They have only said they are against fast travel. This would still be slow travel, it would just allow for some afk time while still being productive, like fishing. It's still slower than just running somewhere directly, and there is a risk of being attacked.
3. They can still have some secrets, treasure hunts, and puzzles. I'm talking the difference between knowing that a boss in the tower of carphin drops something you need, or dont know it. "Discovery" loses its appeal when you can literally waste 20 hours at a level "discovering" that there is no way to get level 20 gear as a duo/trio.
Then people tell you that you have to kill tower of Carphin to get any gear upgrades. I didn't discover that shit bro, I was just directly told it, talk about frustrating and lame. Go around "Discovering" the game with a duo. I guess "discovery" is a guilds only activity? I finally got a group going to check out the tropics and all they wanted to do was circle grind some island, no one wanted to go explore the place. The damn island we found only dropped these stupid level 10 goblin masks, woopidy doo. What a waste of time.
In game like these, you can only ever "discover" content that is weak enough for your party to defeat. Anything above that is out of "discovery" range. The only way to know that is to roam around and push your group until they die. At that point people start leaving group and then you waste more time reforming. The amount of time wasted to "discover" what a boss drops is ridiculous. The reward is the item, not the "discovery" process.
With things like Ashes Codex or Ashes Wiki, its only a matter of time until all this stuff is public knowledge. Might as well do it in the game itself.
We are already standing around wasting our time for groups to form, at least we can spend some of that time "discovering" and planning shit in the game, through an in-game UI. People already bitch that no one reads the quests or studies the lore, this is also the perfect time to do it.
Use our natural in game downtime to our advantage and respect the player's time. We already lose fast travel, so make up for it in other ways please.
2. Non-automation isn't a dogmatic stance at all. You personally might not find it convenient, but there's a reason Intrepid want people to have to be behind the keyboard. Even fishing shouldn't be afk; at least make people listen for an audiovisual cue.
3. Potential drop information would be fine, provided it's accessed from node libraries, not some random UI window pulled up anywhere. Edit: Maybe a personal bestiary of things you've already encountered, shareable from other players even. Something that encourages player interaction.
The game is designed around groups of ~8 people. They've been very open about that, so anything done solely as a duo/trio is going to be much more difficult, especially when you're looking at things above your level as intended for group sizes larger than yours.
That someone from the game told you information, shared person-to-person rather than type in a search to a machine, that's a positive. I already gave my stance on Intrepid throwing up their hands and granting perfect information just because an outside source would. It's similar to allowing in-game macros just because some people will have tools outside the game to do it, or asking them to remove the fog-of-war aspect of the map for players who haven't traveled to those areas.
Reading lore stuff during the Node-to-Node afk travel service, fine.
UI to check drops instead of using a wiki? Working for me in TL so far, but generally don't use it and definitely don't normally 'pull up info while sitting in PvP zones' in the first place. 90% of the issue I have with this sort of stuff in modern games is that they don't pay enough attention to ecology/natural drop tables so you have to look up stuff instead of having sane expectations+a little memory work. FF11 and OSRS have the types of following they do for a reason...
Desperately hoping that there will actually be enough good, low stakes PvP that we wouldn't 'need' the Dueling thing, but in the end, won't be surprised if the standard PvP tendencies play out just as much if not more in Ashes. I also don't see the point in 'duels' in a proper MMO for downtime fill most of the time because, who are you gonna duel when everyone's geared for whatever you're about to do and there's no focus on 1v1 balance anyway? If we're talking about the downtime where you're sitting in town or whatever, arena areas are fine...
"Duel anywhere while waiting" is ok conceptually, but defining 'duel' is quite hard in an owPvP game if you don't want weird exploits. I guess it could be a subfunction of guilds in some way but I don't really see any other good method.
It's possible that people don't want to duel because the current system punishes the loser with xp debt and item loss. If it were possible to duel without that, i'm sure you would see many people partaking. Great for player retention during the tests, really...
This is up to them. It's just an idea, as sometimes traveling can take up alot of time, and it might be a little added bonus to grab a snack, bathroom break, or chat while running from place to place. It's just an "option", you don't have to take it. Typically the road path is much more windy and slower than directly running somewhere, so...
Hmmm... OK I actually really like where you are going with this. I still think the UI should be available everywhere, but the idea that you can "unlock" it is pretty good.
Perhaps while exploring the map you start "unlocking" lore items and monster databases that get stored in your UI. You might not want to read/access it all then, but during some downtime at some point you can catch up and make some idea.
Sure, and I get that not all of the crafting and copper ore node spawns have been working properly, and my server completely neglected the node stuff until last week pretty much. And i get that its just an alpha and the "end game content" is just stitched together at this point. And there have already been big changes, even this past weekend you could buy A LOT more with the node bucks. So they are definitely moving on this shit.
I'm just saying that it's not just "more difficult" to get level 20 gear...it's "impossible" without a big team at this point. Even though big teams will be more efficient, a solo gatherer type player should still be able to level up and get gear appropriate to their level at a decent speed. Not, be completely hardlocked on their server because they arent grinding citadel/carphin. This is phase 2 stuff so I'm not even really "complaining" angrily or something, its understood they will address it. Just stating it out.
I understand what you are saying, and I know a lot of people enjoy this aspect of the older game experience. Heck i got my first mount by just asking people in lionhold "hey, how you do get a mount?" So there is something to be said about this experience.
However, Intrepid has the reigns when it comes to what kind of information they share easily, with the intent to Inspire players to plan their moves in Verra, and what kind of information they keep behind a curtain that is shared from player to player, or discovered by themselves. They are fully aware that information can/will/already is being shared on 3rd party sites. I think they do the community a disservice when they don't just do a better job than those sites and satisfy what the user is trying to achieve by using them.
Intrepid said "no" to addons not because they want players to suffer, but because they are going to do a better job of it. It is our duty to still ask for functionality we would expect from many addons that enhance the user experience.
No item deletion on death to a dueler, you drop 50% of mats. No exp debt if killed by dueler. Dueler can pick up your dropped mats with no penalties.
I dunno... I just like dueling people for fun. I could sit around for hours dueling people. It's great practice.
I'd imagine that a large part of it. Few games have significant death penalties (honestly, the only popular game that comes to mine as having huge ones is Minecraft of all things)
It wouldn't be a bad option to have, but I'd much prefer it not be a 'right now' priority. Somewhere in Phase 3 or in the beta once things are more settled.
A carriage system or pay-to-travel from specific locations that could act as a small resource sink might have a spot within Ashes. The AC:O 'follow road' thing is too automated for my tastes though.
A personal bestiary would be accessible anywhere, yeah, like a journal. Still not on board with the full collection of quest dialogue being held onto forever. There have been suggestions that scribes could log that sort of info though, but of course that was old information and could be out of date. It's something I'd like to see though.
This part I wholeheartedly agree with. The lack of incremental gear is a huge sticking point considering how much power it gives and how slow leveling is. Thankfully Phase 2 is right around the corner now which is the big artisan update, so I'm holding my feedback for Dec*20 in hopes they'll have already smoothed a lot of these pain points.
Progress has been impressive so far, which keeps me fairly optimistic.
Yeah man they are doing a sweet job! The patches and updates are moving fast and they seem to be responding to a lot of feedback. Heck, sometimes they solved the problem just as i bring it up and i feel like im being gaslit. =D
But honestly tho the "journal" idea, with lore, bestiary, crafting, etc.seems like a good way for players to dive into the knowledge aspect of the game on their own terms. Again, there is some natural "downtime" in this game which is perfect for this kind of stuff.
This is a point I really wish Steven would take to heart. There are a number of things he has talked about for this game that are more about "wouldn't it be cool if", but the realities of playing the game with them in place would kind of suck.
Some type of unattended (or lightly attended) travel would be a good thing for the game experience. If we to actually discuss this and all agreed to ignore the kotion that Steven has said he wants to limit fast travel, I don't think there would be many people arguing for no travel systems at all.
Something along the lines of a wagon or cart going between nodes.
In regards to the whole wiki thing, we would again need to ignore what he has said in the past in krder to have a discussion on this.
Steven has been clear that he doesn't want third party tools or utilities, and that he wants the games UI to have almost every reasonable thing players may want.
If this were all to be true,it stands to reason that an in game wiki would be a requirement. Without it, Intrepid are not meeting the basics of what has been said.
The easy way to do it would be to build an in game web browser (EQ2 has this), and maintain a wiki as a web page rather than in game.
While this does go against your notion of having to be at a library, if you give people the option of traveling to a library or alt tabbing to a wiki, the library will remain empty. It's a case of putting the game experience above the "wouldn't it be cool if".
There is literally no reason the game should stop people looking at any in game resource if they are - for example - sitting in their apartment.
Not only that, but the game has A LOT of natural downtime.
Take caravans, for example. On their own, they are a slow boring walk from one node to another. Add in PVP and suddenly it is exciting content. Problem is, PVP is a random, unknown and unknowable quantity for Intrepid to enforce.
I think they need to add some kind of thing for players to do while "waiting" for PVP or more exciting content. Learning game knowledge, game lore, strategizing your next moves, and chatting is a great way to spend some of this time.
A very solid UI fit for this purpose would go a long way to helping, especially for newer players post launch.
People can complain about "immersion" all they want, but once they are on their 5th caravan with no one around and no one attacking they might start getting bored.