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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.
AoC isn’t Punishing its Frustrating
RonDog98
Member, Alpha Two
Let’s start with this:
Life is finite and free time is evermore finite. There is NOTHING more punishing/frustrating than wasting a players time.
I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I finally decided to make a post after watching this JoshStrifeHayes video.
https://youtu.be/5H16ixwysA0?si=C0AlTVPCSIGhfdW8
Ash’s is al about risk reward and making the journey meaningful in a way that MMOs haven’t been in a while, but in attempting to do that they’ve overshot by a long ways.
Ash’s is a game with XP debt
At least 25% material loss on death
And some of the most insane travel time in any game.
First one is objectively bad game design
Second one, in my opinion, should be tweaked so that you either don’t lose materials on PVE death or make it so you can recover 100% of dropped materials.
I’m a actually a fan of long travel, but it has a compounding affect with the first two.
Again, there is NOTHING more punishing than wasting a players time.
There’s a reason challenging games have moved away from long run back times and XP Debt and have chosen to focus on enjoyable difficultly like a bosses individual mechanics.
Spending 5+ minutes to run back to a corpse or 20+ minutes to get from point A to Point B is already an obstacle in and of itself, there’s no reason to add insult or injury and give the player XP Debt and have them lose materials as well.
Life is finite and free time is evermore finite. There is NOTHING more punishing/frustrating than wasting a players time.
I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I finally decided to make a post after watching this JoshStrifeHayes video.
https://youtu.be/5H16ixwysA0?si=C0AlTVPCSIGhfdW8Ash’s is al about risk reward and making the journey meaningful in a way that MMOs haven’t been in a while, but in attempting to do that they’ve overshot by a long ways.
Ash’s is a game with XP debt
At least 25% material loss on death
And some of the most insane travel time in any game.
First one is objectively bad game design
Second one, in my opinion, should be tweaked so that you either don’t lose materials on PVE death or make it so you can recover 100% of dropped materials.
I’m a actually a fan of long travel, but it has a compounding affect with the first two.
Again, there is NOTHING more punishing than wasting a players time.
There’s a reason challenging games have moved away from long run back times and XP Debt and have chosen to focus on enjoyable difficultly like a bosses individual mechanics.
Spending 5+ minutes to run back to a corpse or 20+ minutes to get from point A to Point B is already an obstacle in and of itself, there’s no reason to add insult or injury and give the player XP Debt and have them lose materials as well.
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Comments
I do not feel having a death penalty or lack of fast travel wastes my time.
I do think we will see more emberstones but I find that may be problematic as well.
The primary issue I see with a 5 minute run back to a body is that the pvp timer for someone that looted you will be off and they will likely be gone. As loot was once not a pvp flag, perhaps they could make a death pile unlootable for the first minute or so and pvp timer extended to 3 min or so for anyone looting.
The death penalty gives that risk vs reward feeling Steven strives for and is one of the core features of the game he is trying to build. Steven has repeatedly stated that he wants to produce a feeling of loss on failure and the death penalty certain accomplishes this. If you remove the items frustrating someone (like xp loss or running back), you are essentially reducing the risk. With that said, this is test so some deaths are going to result from things outside our control like server crashes, people exploiting bugs, overtuned corruption system that has bugs and missing mechanics, server performance issues, players training mobs ect that will produce a higher level of frustration but we are all aware of these sort of issues when signing up for an alpha test and frankly, the xp debt is pretty easy to work off.
As far as fast travel, I believe the primary reason this exists is to not only mimic the feel of some of the older style games, but to also make it more difficult for zerg groups to zerg. In fact, I am sort of concerned for family travel and the potential abuse of it when it is implemented down the road.
I think the real issue is that there are many more participation trophy players in our society now that demand games be tailored around them. People get upset when Steven states that this game might not be for everyone but in reality, the guy sunk over 50 million of his own money into it, so he has a right to build any type of game he wants. Now, if that means there will be less players than if he build around the wishes of everyone else, well, we have seen this play out with the majority of the games over the last decade and most of them crashed and burned quickly when straying from their vision and trying to please everyone else so......
You keep dying in pugs? Find yourself a guild with a constant party.
You keep losing mats because you're trying to gather in a dangerous location? Ask people to protect/help you.
Truly dificult pve usually requires constant repetition to beat it, hence why the games that have that kind of pve just let you respawn right back at the mob and attempt it again. Ashes, so far, has not shown pve with that kind of difficulty, so, instead of spending your time on repeating the mob over and over, the penalty for potential failure comes from material loss and timer requirements for coming back to the same spot.
Also, respawning super close to the same spot would kinda destroy the pvp part of the game, because when your enemy can just endlessly respawn right where you killed them - what's the point in killing them? Even now, the respawn points are waaaaay to close to POIs imo.
That's wishful thinking. Most players already know what kind of playstyles they like and are unlikely to radically change the way they play only to fit a game ecosystem.
They may try to mitigate the risks to some degree, but I'd be surprised if it was to "play it the proper way", for lack of better term. They'll exhaust the solutions within their playing preferences first, a few will try to adapt, but a large portion will conclude the game isn't for them, which they were often warned of, and move on.
Games don't have to adapt to every players, and neither do players need to adapt to every games.
Psychologically, this genre has been around long enough for those people to already be looking for their game, and we are getting these posts because Ashes is not for everyone.
Ashes' problem doesn't come from its design, it comes from the way it was 'marketed' to people so far (and perhaps an overly ambitious concept of the playerbase that will play the game as apparently intended).
Source: The Fighting Game Community (Response to Street Fighter V launch)
I do see this point, but currently - the final version of Ashes might be an entirely different story, but we can only discuss the current state of the game - there is little reward available. To be more precise: There are lots of games that follow in a similar fashion a "risk vs. reward"-approach, e.g. run-based games such as Rogue-likes where you constantly have to decide if you continue a run, possibly gaining more rewards, or abort it to save what you've got so far. Or games with very difficult but optional boss fights and the potential of XP-loss, such as Elden Ring and such.
However, so far the stakes in Ashes are very low and the challenges themselves are not designed in a transparent fashion, nor are there any valuable rewards corresponding to the risk. What I mean by that is, that currently there are various ways to die in the game which are more 'obscure' in nature than actually 'challenging', e.g.
None of these activities are based on 'risk vs. reward' because these scenarios don't include any reward - you're just playing the basic gameplay loop. Regarding your point, if you keep losing mats in a dangerous location - e.g. because of players killing you - it surely matters if we're talking about a lvl 5 player who just wants to find some most basic mats for his profession, or if we're talking about a designated dangerous area well-known for precious but rare mats. If the later, 'risk vs. reward' does apply: You can get some rewards worth your time, but there's a risk attached to it. If we're talking about the first however, I don't think that just playing the game as a lowbie - or simply being logged into the game and minding your own business - can be considered a 'reward' that's worth the 'risk'.
If everything is high risk - even just mining basic stuff like copper - then nothing truly is. I mean, there are reasons the first mobs in Ashes don't one-shot you. It sure would be high risk to even leave the starting building, but it wouldn't be any fun.
Yeah - I agree with this point. I'm a little torn on the relative nature of risk. If everything is high risk, everything can still be high risk because of what may be at stake (e.g. xp debt, loss of key mats, loss of gear, etc etc). Certainly, if everything is on a blade's edge the experience just isn't fun. I mean - it's a game after all.
You are looking at risk vs reward in one direction. Almost everything we do in test has risk vs reward attached, including the 4 examples you provided but I would not call everything high risk.
Take example 1 - You are gathering high risk materials knowing the reward is the high risk material most players in game want and can use. The risk is that you while roaming around in this PVX game where pvp is possible at any time, you risk death and dropping 50% of those materials.
Currently, the risk the other person takes that feels like one-shotting you, is far greater as they could fail in a few different ways which therefore minimizes your actual risk. One is if you fight back and beat them, two if they flag up and are not aware of other players around them that might then kill them, and the most important, if you do not flag back they end up one-shotting you, that risk just went through the roof for them because with the currently over-tuned corruption system, he is now red and will likely be losing a lot of xp, stats and gear before he can work the red off.
Example 2 - You are likely playing in an area that provides good xp because this is where other players are typically training mobs on others. Your reward is the nice xp gains for playing in that popular area and the risk is the higher chance that another player will train mobs on you.
Every one one of your examples has a basic risk vs reward concept attached, even the dungeon where by attempting it, you will be gaining xp, glint and possible drops and where the risk for these rewards is death while trying to learn it and the loss of xp and materials from inventory.
The AFK thing is simply that you took the risk of going afk rather than going to a safe area or logging out and gambled that a mob wouldn't spawn or another player wouldn't kill you with one. Your anticipated reward was convenience and you gambled and lost.
I try to minimize my risk in game and suggest others do the same. I will make frequent trips back to storage when gathering rare materials or excessive glint. I do not carry any materials with me when I go grind for xp. If I was worried about dying to mobs because someone trained them on me, I would likely avoid the high risk areas for this like HH, seph, SB, carphin ect. I personally am not worried about this so I do go to these areas but I am constantly watching for this to happen and have taken proactive steps when people have done this to remain alive- situational awareness counts for a lot with survival.
Bottom like, while there is always risk (many would not play without it), there are many ways to lessen and avoid it.
But, as you said, the game's not done yet, so some of the balancing designs are not implemented properly yet. But suggestions to fix an alpha don't always match with the final product. Yes, it's shitty to lose a ton of mats to a, say, war enemy, even though war kills shouldn't even give you penalties outside of gear decay, but if you then try to come up with solutions to that particular situation - you'd be wasting your time cause it's not a problem in the planned design already.
We all signed up to test the game, but not all features are in the client yet, so we can't even test them. And so we gotta make do with what we have rn and try giving feedback in either the planned context of the game or about the things that ARE in the alpha rn and are as close to what we're supposed to get at the end as possible.
Well, at least that's been my approach to feedback. I've seen enough people trying to drastically change the design already. And while Alpha is pretty much the time to try and do that - I'm here not to get another game. I'm here to get the Ashes that I've been hearing about for the past 4 years.
No fast travel (we'll have to test family summons of course). Heavy death penalties (I've explained in the previous comment why I agree with them). Party and guild centered design. 80/20 dungeons. And at least at some point there was a promise of hardcore pve. If that hardcore pve IS implemented - I'm totally fine with it being instanced and respawning people right at the restarting point. But it should not give out truly tangible rewards, cause "non-grindability" of instances was also one of the promises.
Not at all, we have a very large number of autobattlers, 'basically chat rooms', 'pure sandbox games without the best graphics', and single player stories with highly customizable challenge ratings to choose from, as gamers.
When the genre expanded, these types were necessary to please all the people who liked the medium but not so much the time-pressures built into the dynamics of getting good after the Arcade era.
It's fascinating historically. Anyway, nah.
I’m not saying any one of these is bad in a vacuum, I’m saying that all three together suck and will discourage a large number of players.
Also, there’s a difference between “participation trophy players” and players who don’t want their time to wasted.
XP debt is an outdated mechanic and there’s a reason that almost no games utilize it. It is not a rewarding type of difficulty and it psychologically not fun.
Also, nothing about removing XP debt goes against any of the core pillars of this game.
Hell, I think making all your materials recoverable on death also doesn’t go against it.
Again, I like the run time I think it’s necessary and fine.
I’m even saying dropping some materials is okay, but I think they should all be recoverable if you make it back in time.
XP debt is bad design and should be gone, especially given everything else in AoC meant to punish you.
What a useless comment. As a tester I’m giving feedback on a core part of the game I disagree with.
That’s the literal purpose of these forums.
Removing XP Debt and changing it so that you can recover all your loot if you make it back in time doesn’t affect the core principles of this game.
This game needs to attract a healthy full player base, and XP offers nothing positive and only negative.
It is an objective negative for this game to implement it.
Sure, but I also play Throne and Liberty as my main game now, and therefore I'm not as hardcore as the people who want to play Ashes.
But that's kind of the point. It's not necessarily a negative, because people who really don't want exp Debt have an objectively better (using your logic) game to play already, considering their main playstyle profiles.
Why should AoC strive to compete with a game for an audience that is better suited for that game already? It makes no sense as even a business plan.
Yeah sure but we've been bloodporting or whatever they called it in games I didn't play, since the early 00s.
There will never be a point where it makes sense for the penalty to be so high that no one does it.
Question: Why is xp debt "objectively bad game design"?
Removing XP debt does not drastically change the formula of the game.
Also, just because a game doesn’t have an XP debt doesn’t make it an all around objectively better or more complete game.
Classic wow is very popular, if classic wow added XP debt nothing about the game formula would change, it would just introduce something 90% of players don’t want and there for it’s a negative.
It’s not fun or meaningful. No one, in real life or videos games, enjoys the feeling of going back words or getting worse at something. Is a negative feeling that serves no purpose but to make a game hardcore in a way that isn’t fun, but instead annoying.
Also, just look at history. Wow took over the world and a large part of that is credited to it having gotten rid of outdated mechanics like XP Debt or loot dropping.
Demon souls, Fromsoftwares dark souls before dark souls, had XP debt which was taken out in every subsequent game but it was deemed not fun difficulty.
If a game company known for its hardcore games decides to remove a mechanic because it’s shitty and not fun, you know might want a o take notes as to why.
Context is important here. You talk about Fromsoft games here but they work very differently to Ashes. When you die in a Fromsoft game all the enemies respawn and some of the runs from the closest bonfire to the boss you died on are brutal, usually comprising of tight corridors with lots of mobs that you have to fight through or dodge past, and every time you get hit on one of those runbacks you lose health and/or healing that you might need for the boss fight. That is the true punishment for dying in those games, so there was no need to add exp debt on top of it, which is probably why they took it out.
Ashes doesn't work like that. Not only do the mobs not all instantly respawn when you die, but it's far easier to avoid groups of mobs in Ashes than it is in a Fromsoft game, plus you don't really need to save resources for some kind of boss fight at the end of the runback. Completely different scenario.
But let's run with your idea anyway. Let's say we remove the exp debt and allow players to recover 100% of their dropped loot. What then is the consequence for dying? Is there even a consequence at all?
Following from that, if there is no consequence to dying, what purpose does death even have in the game? If death is meaningless, losing health is also meaningless, at which point we might as well get rid of the player health bar entirely. This is where I'm at when it comes to modern WoW. Outside of mythic dungeons or raids there is no consequence for dying at all. Oh sure you lose a tiny bit of time on the runback but that's it, and in fact sometimes you can abuse that by intentionally dying knowing the game will respawn you closer to your desired destination. The same applies to FFVIX, GW2, ESO, the list goes on. None of them have any true consequence for dying and because of that the world feels inconsequential and meaningless to traverse (in my opinion).
I would argue that one of Ashes biggest strengths is that the world feels dangerous. You can die very easily if you aren't careful, and death does have meaningful consequences.
EDIT: I'd like to add to this that punishment in a video game isn't a bad thing. A punishment like exp debt is the game telling you "you f***ked up, learn from your mistake" which is good, and reflects real life. The time when punishment is bad is when the game punishes you for doing things that it has previously taught you.
Here's an example. In Paper Mario Sticker Star there is a level that, in order to progress, you have to stand still in the sinking sand, which then drops you down to the exit. In the very next level, without any hint or warning, doing the exact same thing gives you an instant game over. THAT is bad game design, because the game expected you to do a certain action, then immediately punishes you for doing that same action later on.
youre just mad the game isnt noobified for people like you and want devs to change that.. hence why you called yourself player and not tester in the op, youre clueless
Steven's threshold is that XP debt is OK, but losing Levels is not.