Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Obviously bug reports throughout, just realise that there will be bugs in all kinds of areas, and some parts of the game will be reworked so thoroughly that there's no point in having that bug fixed directly.
Which part of that do you struggle to be able to do, and why?
They hired many developers over the last year or two.
Steven have to use them efficiently now. I doubt he intends to keep them working 8 years until release.
He will rather reduce node count, number of biomes, map size and will release the game with whatever quality is reached in 2 years.
Then will start subscription and continue adding features.
What do you expect as a casual player on the first days of a test server launch when you are surrounded by competitive players?
You expected the quality level of an early access game on Steam, where studios might care for review rating?
Steven and Margaret told players repeatedly during streams to wait for release if testing is not their cup of tea.
Might be Steven's mistake, to give access to everyone. People will get bad experiences now and by the time the game is ready for release, they'll be playing other games, pulled away by their brothers and friends.
Or maybe Steven has no choice but bring to an end this many year monthly streaming about a future game and deliver what he can.
At least all these over-hyped non-testers supported the development with money. Many probably are fine with that.
The massive amount of competition on the server is really bringing people out of their shells.
I have flagged up more times in these last few days than all of A2P1.
It truly is great. We are flagging up over basic one star mobs and gathering nodes.
My only worry right now is with xp rates being so high. It feels like people will cap and be gone. There are already a bunch of level 25s out there.
I am excited for node wars and the constant battles a "SAND-park" game can have, but I don't think the themepark MMO tourists will stay for all of this phase.
The good news is with only three servers the populations should not get that low on any server.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
There cannot be an objective standard for "meaningful conflict." At best, it’s an aspirational concept.
When I fight someone over a copper node, it feels meaningful enough to me.
More importantly, I’m having way more fun now.
That’s what Ashes is all about: "Vhaeyne's fun."
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
The whole point of a testing in Alpha is to test the systems they are working on and give feedback so they can fix and improve things.
Saying there is a "Content Drought" in an Alpha game is asinine. They have been very clear about what the Alpha is and what to expect at each stage. It is not early access to a basically finished game. It is access to help TEST a game that is still HEAVILY under development.
Necromancy is when you raise the dead. Necrophilia is when the dead raise you.
Yeah, that's all obvious stuff and not the point of this thread.
- metal nodes (copper, zink, tin, iron etc) are too small, this makes finding them a pain a world full of detail and terrible viewing distances for many objects
- I would like to see what is their respawn timer atm, but I suspect they are way too short
- I have seen one copper node and dozens iron and tin nodes. I get it copper is the only node which is likely gatherable atm, but maybe its time to rethink the approach to how resource nodes work?
Coming from games like GW2 and especially New World I genuinely enjoyed going out to gather resources there. In New World gathering felt just right and I felt like I'm making progress. In GW2 crafting was also satisfying. Here I feel I'm getting robbed of my time and just do not want to interact with those systems.How are we expected to test the economy and crafting and actually ENJOY those systems? People have personal life outside the game and limited free time. I'm not wasting hours of my time on a wild goose chase and attempting to compete with dupers.
Learn how to respect free time of your testers and soon players/customers Intrepid, or they will become as rare as copper.
Blown past falling sands…
I really think that one major factor in gathering right now, especially for copper nodes, is the mayors having access to the flying mounts. They should honestly be downgraded to gliding mounts for now. Its really just not balanced for these mounts yet. One guy flying around with a mining setup can gather a large amount of copper in a very short amount of time and I bet you anything this is one of the bigger reasons for the shortage for players, but "acceptable storages full of copper" that steven and team were seeing.
While it is true that fun is subjective (which is basically what you are saying), you have a major issue here.
Your fun is PvP related. This means you need other players in the game, and the game needs to be fun for everyone, not just for you.
If a game is only fun for Vhaeyne, then only Vhaeyne will play it. I don't think that game will remain fun for Vhaeyne for very long after that.
With game design, the more people your design requires to function, the broader you need to make its appeal.
If fighting over basic gameplay is considered meaningful, that will turn most players away. You may enjoy that fight over basic gameplay, but you will stop enjoying that fight when the people you would have fought over have gone off to play another game.
This is what I don't get about so many people thst want Ashes to have these niche systems. Ashes needs masses of players to be the game these people want it to be more than it needs these niche systems.
That isn't a question I would want to answer.
I can say when something is completely off (such as needing to fight over basic content), but I wouldn't want to attempt to define the correct answer.
15000 server cap for 100 nodes and the sea is the design.
The current ratio is atrocious. But its good for stress testing. But you will lose testers and players.
It's not meaningful. I have never been flagged on, and pvped over a spot. What I have had are groups mass pull mobs, and use threat dropping mechanics to dump enemies on us. That is not meaningful pvp, or at least, not what is generally considered meaningful pvp. In most MMOs that is considered griefing and is bannable. What I think is the flagging/corruption mechanic is too severe, and needs to be toned down, so we can wild west the mob spawns, instead of just doing this coward type stuff.
Some of the most agregious examples.
I have no issues with Bugs that are inevitable and unavaoidable. Server instability, glitched mobs, inadaquate resource spawns, even dupping bugs are inevitable and expected and are not the result of a half-assed implementation. My concern is SPECIFICALLY for Intrepid not even bothering to program in their own clearly repeatedly described exploit preventing guard-rails, which were for the most part blatantly obvious to everyone who has ever played an MMO (hense why people asked about them many times to elicity Intrepids responses). The implementations we have gotten are frankly UNFIT for testing in a non-wiping environment which is what the Alpha is supposed to be now.
I am becoming concerned that these exploit-bait placeholder implementations are being made and pushed out in some misguided attempt to satisfy percived content checklist so Intrepid can say it has delivered roadmap features when infact it is only fooling itself if it thinks that. Alpha is supposed to be where you implement your original design and then test it to see where it breaks both technicaly (the computer code is not creating the intended design) and where it has a gameplay break (the design is not fun), and use mass testing to find UN-Obvious exploits so you can cover them or if nessary do a full redesign. What we have now is like 'testing' a boat with sections of hull (which are in the blueprints) missing, it just sinks right away for the obvious reasons and it dosn't even tell you if the design is flawed.
This is what I don’t understand about so many people wanting Ashes of Creation to have mass appeal.
Open-world PvP and mass appeal might as well be mutually exclusive.
Steven has consistently pitched the game as a niche experience. Yet, people seem to disregard everything he says, even though he frequently emphasizes 'risk vs. reward' and 'player friction.'
Oh, and let’s not forget: 'This game isn’t going to be something everyone likes, and that’s okay.'
Accept the reality that no MMORPG needs mass appeal. All it takes is a single server with an active population and dedicated fans.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
It depends. There are certain MMOs that can easily cope with a small player base, e.g. games which are built upon static and content-driven systems with only a few system that require player activity. Typical themepark MMOs do - in theory - not need a lot of players, because there are hardly any systems that are designed upon player interaction. For example, games such as WoW, GW2 and the likes can be virtually played alone during the levelling phase and even in the endgame you basically only need a handful of players, because all of the meaningful content is PvE. That's in theory, of course. In reality it's especailly those content-driven MMOs that need a large player base, because constantly developing new content to keep your audience entertained is expensive.
From what I understand, Ashes is heavily designed around systems and it's these system that cannot properly function with only a small playerbase. The scope of the world is huge - unless they cut it down - and the servers will require a high player density because all of these systems are player-driven. So, yeah. In theory one active server with one active playerbase could be enough; though I don't think that's what Intrepid is going for and I don't think you can finance the on-going development of the game with that few players. If you want the currently 220 developers to make ends meet, finance the further development of the game after its release and want to have enough players to engange with all the player-driven systems, I don't think one active server with about 8K players is enough to maintain an MMO.
So I don't think Ashes needs mass appeal, and it doesn't have that anyway. Too many system are old-school in a way that many modern games - for good reason - don't want to re-live, e.g. dropping resources on death, XP debt, etc. But especially Ashes will need to maintain a healthy playerbase and that usually equals also being attractive to a certain extent (!) to more casual players. Casual-ish players are the vast majority in MMOs, not the dedicated guild-leading no-lifers (no insult intended).
Under no circumstances is the number of employees a company has the customers problem.
These statements are not how you get a massive player base. These are the words of a mad lad with a very specific dream for very specific people. If that means the game has a lower population post launch so be it.
Steven seems to be okay with that risk.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I had such a discussion some time ago
Ashes needs enough players to populate 85 nodes and have healthy populated servers at least 3-4 years after release.
Indeed.
Except it needs this in every region.
If the game is set to have a Brazil region, that region needs enough players to support 85 nodes. Same with an Oceania region.
In terms of MMORPG's, if Ashes is going to have the population to support these regional servers, it can't be a niche game. One Oceania server is equal to 15 NA and perhaps 8 EU servers, and 2 BR servers. That means support for a concurrent login of over 250,000 players - that is no niche MMORPG.
Ashes just isn't going to hit this level of popularity, which means (among other things) the notion of regional servers is kind of a joke.
While earlier this year I was suggesting people should be asking for Ashes to be made with a slightly broader appeal, the game is at the point now where 95% of MMORPG players seem to have noped out of the game, for various reasons (too much PvP, not enough PvP, too much PvE, not enough PvE, and a few other things). It's too late to try and get a broader appeal - the game is what it is, all that can really be done now (or all that should be done now) is ironing out the wrinkles.
That being said, there is not logical reason to expect 100'000 + gamers to fight over spawn points and to top it off not give us LFG tools. People willing to test the game in its current state. Willing and wanting to. Are killing themselves just to find a team and a spot to test.
Im in a large guild that's organized and I'm struggling to find a place when I log in. DPS classes are sick of struggling to find a place that comes close to the consistent exp they get from solo. This makes it harder for Support classes to level.
There needs to be some changes.
I don't think they will have trouble starting with well over a million.
In terms of sustained population (3 - 4 years after launch is the window Otr mentioned), I don't see more than 50k players.
I know almost 50 people with access to the current alpha. I am the only person of that group that has down loaded the client. People that want to test the game are just not bothering. While some of this last group can be put down to the alpha state the game is in, the foundational reason people are leaving (as you say) is lack of access to content, and thst is essentially a core component of this game.
The game has chased off people that at one time were excited about the game. It will chase off people that are less excited about it at a similar rate.
Part of me wonders if that's by design. Less people less server costs. Only thing that makes sense to me.
"Needs" is a overly strong word in this context.
It would be nice, but it is not a need.
If the audience is not strong enough in a region to support itself then they just wont have servers in that region.
This is a reality that Australians have to live with in nearly every game they play.
They are aiming for multiple servers in every region, but the game could be "successful" with one server for the entire player base.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
To me, this qualifies as "needs".
If a region doesn't have thst population, that region won't exist.
As to whether the game could be successful with one server for the whole playerbase - not with the current design.
If we drop down to one server, that means the game will cease to be played outside of NA, due to other regions not being able to participate in sieges, events or the important parts of guild and node wars. People outside of NA would be getting a third of a game, basically.
I think it's more a miscalculation of the size of the population that is exactly like Steven.
It's really weird when I talk to the few people I know working on this game. Game developers are usually quite excited to talk about the games they are working on. I talked to someone working on PoE2 a while ago, and their excitement for the game was palpable. Talking to people working on Ashes, they are kind of luke warm on it at best. The people I know at Intrepid (can't speak to others) really don't expect this game to be popular - they expect it to launch, but not much past that.
What a pointless post
Quick maths post year 1.
50,000 x $15 = $750,000
$750,000 x 12 = $9,000,000
Cash Shop ($5,000,000 P.A based on 50,000 X average spend per year of $100)
Approximate Yearly revenue post 1st year = $14,000,000
Just some rough figures that's 4.5 years of no further development costs to get a return on $100,000,000 investment (which I think is conservative).
I seriously think that the game does need to appeal to the wider audience with a player base retention of 100k + otherwise I don't think you'll see much more content out of the team after the 2nd / 3rd year of launch.
With the current game design driving players towards conflict over the most basic of gameplay loops I think that you will struggle. Look at Helldivers 2, an extremely successful launch given the size of the studio, hugely viral marketing campaign, AAA engaging combat experience and extremely positive reviews worldwide. The game peaked at around 500k players but has since struggled to retain 100k concurrent players a year after it's release date. Even with the economics of this game at a staggering $1.3 billion in sales with a large share of that coming purely from it's box sale, content updates have come few and far between with reports that the studio has had lay offs recently after the initial hiring wave post launch.
Ofcourse the above also doesn't take into account additional costs of development from now until release and also additional key sales / cosmetic sales. They have noted that cosmetics will not look as good as obtainable gear, so I expect that cosmetics will be less inticing to those who are struggling to heat their homes & feed their kids.
(A little note, not really looking for feedback on my post, I'm just publicly muttering some math notes I made whilst drunk over Christmas.)
This weird ass limbo between being a player and a tester needs to stop.