Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five 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 five 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
Death is supposed to be negative. The player should have a negative feeling when their character dies.
In Ashes I have not died often enough to feel like I'm going backwards. Rather - it just adds 10-15 minutes to my Leveling time. If your character dies a bunch of times, you probably should feel like the character has "gotten worse" for a while. The character DIED.
Waste is a subjective term but in the purest sense, anyone this concerned about wasted time should consider avoiding games all together and stick to real life.
I found humor in your statement that xp debt is wrong because 'it is not fun or meaningful' and that dropping loot is okay but you want it all recoverable. The fact that you feel a risk/penalty should be fun and you think that there should be no risk to dropping loot, just demonstrates your confusion on what a penalty is.
XP debt is not an outdated mechanic but by your suggestion that almost every consequence is bad (xp debt, dropping materials not against core ect.), I see why I might have hit a nerve bringing up participation trophy types of players. 😉
Sorry Mate, people are already doing this XPdebt is annoying but again players value time more than anything.
XPdebt serves no purpose but to be annoying.
Couple of notes, Fromsoftware has actually moved further away from long run backs with every new game. Why? Because it’s not fun difficulty. Elden ring for example barely has run backs at all after boss wipes. You now have a company renowned for hard difficultly they both took out run times and XPdebt.
That being said, it’s one I’m fine with in Ash’s.
Also. Travel time so long often time mobs ro respawn when you die. Also, have you played a souls game? It’s incredibly easy to run past almost all the Mobs because of how tight their hot bosses are. It’s way more dangerous to try and run past mobs in ashes and it isn’t event close.
I would like to restate my main point which is: travel time, XP debt, and partly not recoverable loot is too much all together.
I would get rid of XP debt and make it so 30% of loot drops on death not 50 and as long as you make it to your corpse first, you get all of it back.
I wish you the best and hope you find the joy in life you are so clearly lacking. God speed, brother.
We do not recover all materials lost, only 25%
(I haven't checked to see if we lose anything actually - I barely even look at my Inventory.)
I'll try to clarify what I meant a bit more because I agree with you, Throne and Liberty originally had exp debt, then they removed it in favor of something more sensible for their version of a strong PvX game, and I don't think anything was negatively affected at all.
What I'm saying is that Intrepid believes they have a design where Exp Debt is important to shape player behaviour in the way they want. We aren't seeing that design in full, but it's a good 'signal'. If you 'show players' that you want to create a game where that sort of feeling is important, and the players can decide in advance "I don't like those feelings" then great, they will go play Throne and Liberty.
But a game like EVE has a powerful 'cost' to dying that is necessary for the feelings of its sandbox nature. Ashes is also a similar type of game, if you don't like that type of game, then what exactly do you want that isn't provided by another game?
Removing exp debt can drastically change the formula of a game, we just haven't had any games recently that were built with the base design that can actually be affected. EXP Debt is a deterrent from certain approaches to problems. The 'problems' in AoC are an entirely different type than most other games.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Mob strength pushes people towards grouping up, and we've yet to see mobs difficult enough to make groups wipe on them over and over again, so until then pve death penalties are not really all that much of a factor.
You say that like it is a good thing.
Mitigation if risk means lowering risk. It means keeping things as easy as you can. It means not taking on content that poses a risk, because the penalties are too high. Putting thisnin players hands means people are going to - generally speaking - stick to easier content, that is inherently more boring.
This isn't good game design. It literally makes for a game where no one is challenging themselves.
And yes, I know your usual repsonse of "people will just go play other games these days".
That's probably because L2 was fun within its niche at the time.
Ashes suffers from the identity crisis of (originally) marketing itself as a game for many types of player to enjoy.
We all know how this part happened, but in the end, that whole 'the strong persevere' thing only happenswhen there is not any other accessible game offering similar experiences while still also giving the 'weak' a place.
I guess you can lmk if you just don't put any stock in the observations of behaviours of competitive players from other genres, but if you do, we now have literal decades of data about it. MMORPGs were the genre 'most lacking' that data because they 'played it safe' for a decade.
Of course there will always be people who push, there are still hundreds of people playing Mortal Online 2 right now.
But Ashes completely lacks the incentive structures required to be terribly different from MO2 at this time, so you will obviously get a lot of people saying 'we should have a less challenging game since you are't actually incentivizing the challenges'.
By this, I mean simply that the strong can easily absorb the strain and challenge associated with exp debt, while the weak suffer disproportionately for trying to get stronger without receiving handouts/pity from them. And that isn't something people like as much. No matter what you remember from the good days, remember that this is not L2, the suffering involved in being weaker is definitively greater.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Mainly exactly for the reason that all the players who might've been competitive in the mmos in the past (or others with similar mentality) have left for other games, which then created their own behavioral patterns and cultures.
And this is why I've always tried suggesting middlegrounds for systems. The "BHs should be returning the victim's loot to them", "event-based pvp should remain as promised, with minimal penalties, while also highly accounting for the possibility that the strong ones will always try to bully the weak ones", "proper hardcore pve should be instanced and with limited-to-no penalties on death" - are a few of those suggestions.
In other words, I'm a professional fence-sitter, trying to have and eat all my cake on my fence.
It isn't often you are objectively wrong, so I'm assuming this is a misunderstanding.
People (not gamers, every one) will naturally limit the amount of risk they put themselves under. Some people will allow more risk than others, but everyone has their limit.
This is the basis of gameshows like Deal or No Deal. This is the basis for poker. This is the basis for blackjack. Needless to say, this is known and understood.
If you put someone in a situation where they can risk $5 for a 10% chance of winning $100, most people would take those odds. If you increase the amount of money people have to risk from that initial $5 up to $10, many people will opt out. Increase it up to $15, and almost everyone will opt out.
This translates to MMO's just fine too. EVE's mantra of "don't fly what you can't afford to lose" is literally the same concept - people self regulating risk by simply not putting themselves in a situation where they are likely to lose more than they want to lose.
In a game like Ashes, that shows up as people taking more people than the content itself dictates, or taking on easier content even if the reward isn't as good.
Now, you may want to say something along the lines of " but some people will still take risks", which is why I think you are misunderstanding. Yes, people will still take some risks, because everyone has their own level of risk acceptance.
However, even the people that would qualify as "the strong" in your post above are subject to this. They may be taking risks that others aren't, but there is still a point where they would stop and rethink. They would have to, because they stand to lose too much if they don't constantly consider the risk.
These people aren't going to walk up solo to a raid boss thst is 30 levels above them and just have a go. There is a line somewhere between that extreme and putting themselves at zero risk for everyone, even these people. However, the greater the penalty, the lower that line will be - self preservation has to be a consideration for everyone
This is something that EQ2 is a great example of. The game launched with a reasonably death penalty. Not too harsh, but enough for people to be risk averse. People would only run groups with close to an optimal mix of classes, and with gear that was basically on par with what the content offered. Raids at the time were quite simple by design, as they needed to be.
The developers removed the bulk of that death penalty half way through the initial content cycle (ie, before the first expansion). Their argument at the time was basically "if a gamer doesn't feel a sense of failure for dying, a death penalty isn't going to make the feel that sense of failure".
All of a sudden, people were not just running that same content with sub-optimal groups, they were attempting it with less than full groups. Sometimes it worked, but sometimes it didn't - in a spectacular fashion.
The content was exactly the same, the player characters were exactly the same, but due to less of a penalty, players were able to take risks trying things out, not stressing if it didn't work.
This massively increased the amount of fun players could have. It is a big part of the reason the game has (or had, I can't speak to it now) such an incredibly low level of toxicity.
Now, you could then go on to say "but that isn't what Ashes is, Ashes is a game about risk, and that risk is coming from its death penalty". As a statement, this is something I completely agree with. My initial point wasn't that Ashes needed to change, it was that it is bad game design - and it IS bad game design.
The thing is, Ashes is being built on a foundation of bad game design.
Cause I'm sure it's bad for the majority, otherwise WoW wouldn't be the go-to mmo in people's minds. But, as been discussed countless times here, Ashes will be for the minority. And I don't think that the current penalties or difficulty of the game is anywhere near to even put a dent in that minority's willingness to risk that penalty for a good reward.
I’ll be clear, I will play ash’s regardless of XP debt or not. My opinion on it is dying already is frustrating, and when I get hit with XP debt I’m like man this is stupid but whatever.
I’m a hardcore MMO fan and I think ash’s has enough going for it I can overlook some bad design choices here and there. I’m not most players though, and I would like most players to stick around so I can have a more meaningful experience down the road.
Literally every player playing Ashes will be more risk averse in terms of their decision to run content with the players on hand, the classes on hand etc. Instead of running a piece of content with the 6 you have on hand, you will want to find 2 more to fill out your group (or, in many cases, you will want 12+ people to run content made for 8). With less of a death penalty, there is no real reason to not at least attempt to run that content with fewer people.
While Ashes is indeed going to be very different to WoW, that doesn't mean it is going to be different in every way possible.
This shouldn’t be shrugged off as a usual commit, it’s a fact. MMOs are a genre that can barely sustain its self, you need to consider how to attract as many people as possible in ways that don’t hurt the core philosophy.
Ash’s wants to have grand battles and server wide struggles for power. Those are end game systems and players need to want to stick around to the endgame.
I just hope there’s more than 100k of you to keep this game alive. I myself will, but if the game dies to too few players, we just have these forums posts to look at.
Honestly, the game needs more than 100k.
With the way events and sieges and stuff are being done, you need a server per area. This game is essentially dead in any part of the world thst doesn't have a server.
If you consider NA east and west, EU, Oceania and Brazil to the the areas in which Intrepid maintain servers, that is 250k players needed to maintain one server per region.
That’s what worries me. It needs the population or like a GW2 or ESO while trying to be infinitely more niche than those.
I would try and lessen the punishments that start from the second a character is made and focus more on meaningful endgame.
But even if it did. The ones who do risk it and go with fewer people to those locations will win more if they succeed. Risk/reward and all that. And if the choice was between "death penalties are lower, but more people are willing to die to mobs" vs "DPs are the same, but only the risk-takers are willing to die to mobs" - I personally prefer the latter one.
And everyone who's too afraid to do that content with as few people as they can, can just enjoy their lower rewards. And if this exact parts of the game, out of all the other features, is the thing that makes or breaks the game for them - so be it.
My current estimate for the 6+month post-release timeline is 200-300k monthly players worldwide. That's if the game manages to deliver on all the current promises and doesn't have absolutely game-breaking bugs/exploits on release.
I also think they might go higher in concurrents per realm, which would also increase max population of a server, so those 200-300k would be, maybe, 3-4 servers. 1 na, 1 sa, 1 sea, 1 eu. Maaybe another eu or, most likely, 1 cis server. With regional pricings that'd be smth like 3 na servers ~70k subs each. And that's roughly $36mil a year, not counting cosmetics. At 200 employees at median $150k/y, it leaves 6mil for servers. Somewhere before 2020 Steven said that their expected income per user is closer to $21 (cause cosmetics and shit), but even if that goes down due to economic bs by the time the game comes out - that's still just money on top.
And this is not accounting for potential downsizing (as A LOT of studios do after release) or potential renting of their proprietary tech which could bring in either pure profits or at least stabilize their bottom line.
They could also sell sub bundles on release, which would give them a cash cushion, and if by that time there's no good mmos - they'll most likely hit 1mil+ subs on release as well, cause people are always hungry for the next big thing.
Oh, Steven has also floated around the idea that they might go for different publishers in other regions, which would give Intrepid some more cash as well.
It will happen, but more to the point - risk aversion is a consideration in PvP as well.
Imagine the PvP in a game where people are too scared to engage unless they know they will win, vs a game where they have nothing at all to lose and so can freely engage in PvP just for fun.
I've said this before, but Intrepid know this to be true. There is a reason death penalties for sieges, wars and caravans are planned to be almost non-existent - they want people participating.
I just don't see open world pve being anywhere that difficult (even if I want it to be). And the pvp involved in that content will come either from wars or from corruption, both of which are controlled by their own limiters on the frequency of victim's losses.
There's also always the lessening of the penalty if you die flagged, so even if the pvp happens outside of events or PKs - the victims will lose less.
And if you do want to keep corruption in that kind of system, then how?
Keep in mind, while my example was PvE, this isn't a PvE/PvP thing.
It is a risk thing. Any situation in which players have a choice, and one of the options could lead to death, this whole thing plays its part.
That inherently includes PvP. However, more often than not it will be a mix of both. Players not willing to go after content without a safety net to protect them from potential PvP, for example.
There is no point in trying to break it out in to a PvP/PvE thing.
Perhaps.
However, read what you typed with a critical mind. You are saying Ashes is an open world PvP game, but where open world PvP is curtailed to the point where the game may as well not be an open world PvP game.
It's almost as if open world, always on PvP only exists in Ashes today in order to keep that box checked for marketing purposes.