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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.
Fix pve content.
Andretious
Member, Alpha Two
I'm level 21 right now. I've grinded in ROS. Looking to move onto carph, but no one seems to want to do carph. I'm told the reason is, is because you can just enchant level 10 gear to plus 8 and it's better than the carph drops and enchanting carph gear takes too many resources?. My suggestion would be to not allow enchantment of items that are level 10. Only 25. If the level cap is raised, then also raise the cap for enchanting items. To a new player (me) it seems the game is just a crafting sim passed level 21. Imo pve content needs to be strong with lots of dungeons ,raids. My feedback , for what it's worth...
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Comments
🔹 Why This Happens (And Why It’s a Problem)
1️⃣ Enchantment Scaling Issues – If +8 Level 10 gear is stronger than Carph drops, then there’s no reason for players to grind dungeons. This leads to a situation where crafting > PvE and discourages dungeon participation.
2️⃣ Resource Sink Imbalance – If Carph gear costs too much to enchant, while low-level gear is cheaper and stronger, players will naturally skip the dungeon grind.
3️⃣ PvE Content Devaluation – If dungeon rewards aren’t worth the effort, it reduces the incentive for group play, making PvE feel optional instead of rewarding.
🔹 Possible Fixes to Keep PvE Relevant
✅ Limit Enchantment on Low-Level Gear – Just like you suggested, restrict how high Level 10 gear can be enchanted so it doesn’t overshadow dungeon gear.
✅ Buff Dungeon Drops – Carph gear should naturally outscale enchanted low-level gear to ensure dungeon progression remains valuable.
✅ Lower Resource Cost for Mid-Tier Gear Enchantment – If Carph gear is too expensive to upgrade, players will avoid it. Balancing resource requirements can make dungeon gear more viable.
✅ Introduce Unique Dungeon Perks – Instead of just stats, dungeon gear could have exclusive effects (like bonus damage to certain enemies, PvP resistances, or passive abilities) that make them worth grinding for.
🔥 Ashes Needs Strong PvE, Not Just Crafting
I completely agree—if Ashes of Creation is designed to be a living, breathing world, then PvE content needs to feel meaningful. Right now, if enchanting + crafting outshines dungeons, it turns the game into a crafting simulator rather than a balanced MMO experience.
Your feedback is absolutely valid, and I hope Intrepid considers adjustments to maintain dungeon relevance.
Thanks for bringing this up! Would love to hear if other players feel the same way.
You have a new friend AKA REHOC
What is more/better pve exactly? What do we mean by "not just the grind"? Do we perhaps mean something challenging mechanically, that requires you to stay on your toes and use everything you got in your arsenal effectively?
I'm asking seriously. One of the core issues of game development is that the players do NOT actually want the things they are asking for. Here's an example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/throneandliberty/comments/1jbe65o/umbrakan_is_umbroken/
That particular boss was added recently to TL and it is a salt mine. It offers the players of that game what you seem to be asking for, yet many of the reactions of the playerbase seem to be the type you can preserve foods with.
Also, Ashes styles itself as a shotcaller MMORPG. In other words, decision making, coordination, reaction speed, quick teamwork should all matter significantly more than gear, or at least as much as. In other words, making it easier for more types of players to engage in pvp because of the gear they are supposed to get in pve would not actually have as much of an impact as you expect. Training exercises and friendly war games (once again I have to thank TL for the idea) are way more likely to get pve players into pvp. You gotta remove the jitters before the +5 damage can mean anything.
And on that note, you know who more/better pve is likely to help if not done well? Bots. In every single MMORPG out there, there's an overlap between bots used for RMT and weak pve players who cannot grind the more difficult content for drops. The more accessible you make the good gear, the more you increase that overlap. Your weaker players get it, and the good bots also do. This is an unavoidable challenge for MMO designers and you're basically asking them to make that challenge bigger for themselves for unclear benefits in terms of player enjoyment (once again, I am referring you to the link).
TL;DR: it's exhausting for a game dev to have players ask for things they don't want.
The other part of the issue is power disparity between item rarities of the same item, and the even more massive disparity with how enchanting effects those items. There needs to be set boundaries for each tier, each rarity, and the span of enchantment upgrades to establish healthy overlap of power gain between each level tier. So maybe a fully upgraded legendary level 10 item would be about the equivalent of a fully upgraded level 20 blue item.
Ive also made a past post regarding limiting rarity to level tiers to help with this issue
All of this is linked to terrible TTKs
Blown past falling sands…
Problem is the only thing matters is your power level. Your mage is the same as every other mage, your skills are all the same. Your BIS is what has the highest magic power level. This is too simple ever make unique builds and interesting combat. The combat is fluid and fun, but that novalty wears out after you've kill your 1 million mobs to get to 25.
solution:
1. is to give more value to attributes and possible create a couple new attributes for advanced game play mechanics.
2. increase skill tree choices for more specialization, you shouldn't be able to select everything, or near everything. Increase synergy skills and attributes for mix builds. As it now there's no point to mix a magic power level class with a physical power level class. You'll be gimped.
3. drop power levels stats from the gear, use attributes to calculate a power levels. different classes generate different amounts of powerlevel from different stats.
why?
increasing complexity will increase the types of gear types/stats that can drop in different areas which will give more value to 'dead' areas. Essentially there's 1 place to go to get the best drop half the classes. maybe this is design to encourage more pvp.... but that really isn't needed... but it completely devalues the world. As the world gets bigger it doesn't actually increase the places to go to get your BIS.
Can the game still be fun with a single stat to measure? For me, not for long. The massive grind to increase my power level isn't going to fun for long. I won't get a sense of accomplishment from seeing my power level go from 350 to 400. That's the soul thing you're chasing in the game, you HAVE to increase it because you HAVE to PvP to actually play the game.
I mean this isn't at the level of Tic Tac Toe complexity...
Lots of dungeons and raids are fine. FFXI and TL show that good dungeons and raids can help carry a lot of water, but they also show that this alone doesn't fix PvE. In a game where the openworld matters at all, then you gotta make the open world be pleasurable content! TL overworld is bland and mindless before Talandre. After Talandre it is fine but it encounters the 'outleveling' and 'out enchanting the complexity' that you mention in your op very quickly. I get we need casuals to enjoy the game and the open world can't be too difficult but danger and difficulty are NOT ACTUALLY THE SAME. Difficulty is a matter of execution, time, and effort. Danger is a matter of strategy, knowledge, and 'fighting the "right" thing in the '"right" place'.
As an example, let's take FFXI which does in fact have a lot of good dungeons/raids and challenging open world stuff. When I'm going through the standard journey to 75 (let's not touch on the modern level cap or we'll lose all details) I have a ton of zones where I'm forced to pick my specialty. Every zone has an ecology and that ecology of enemy type was intended to correlate to what each class was intended to specialize in For example, as a Red Mage I mostly focused on things like plantoids and arcana. This was because I could burst through most of their healing/big dps, but I could also really feel the meaning of my buffs and debuffs. I could fight a morbol, to be more specific, but there was also bigger more complex morbols in the zone (usually an elite mob) that would fucking own me even though I was at level for the content. But fighting the lower morbols DID help me learn how to beat the nm's. And eventually I got 'mastery' to handle any situation like a random social aggro or bad pull where I had multiple morbols. As a puppetmaster, on the other hand these enemies fucking destroyed me and I was 'forced' as a puppet master to learn how to fight birds and beetles. Less complex, but the evasion and defense respectively required a different set of skills that would cause my poor Red Mage to tear her hair out.
That's a lot of words to say that PvE in a good game requires scaling complexity IN ZONE. Not 'by level'. Otherwise everyone, and I mean this with all the respect I can muster, will ignore the mobs you spend a lot of time on to make interesting and cool looking and flavorful for the setting (side eyes are happening here Throne and Liberty, great job with the Black Anvil zone though that was a great example of positive improvement.)
So now that I've established that PvE requires good mob design and different levels of complexity in a zone to truly fix PvE let me now explain why it must be this instead of dungeons and raids (as the sole issue). Tl;dr modern players whine about hard content being too strong and requiring a party. In FFXI this happened too, but for open world areas! So it's not a new problem. But you know what happened once they started designing even more complex zones? The players moved on to new things to whine about! It's a solved problem! Because you know why? And this is entirely speculation on my part. They probably stopped sucking at fighting morbols and got to be in a party to fight the cool morbol bosses in a party because they stopped dragging down the party's they joined you know? In TL they tried to fix this by having a weaker version of their morbol equivalent to 'practice on' but while that works for already established groups it makes for TERRIBLE PUGing. And in fact this was possibly the number one complaint for TL before Talandre. There were too many people struggling with dungeons and getting kicked out of groups and that killing a lot of ability for players to progress. In an open world design the stakes are lower than a dungeon. You just have more freedom to fail and learn. And the developers due to both budget and sensible design, tend to give you a progression of things to fight if the game is good.
even with no enchanting during the PTR siege, TTK was still too fast. roughly 4 to 6 seconds in 1v1s
sure, but it's too early for any of that
I congratulate you. I burned out completely after my first Character reached LvL 11.
I am a bit disappointed from myself. But dang the Game sure is cool and will be even cooler still. Only the Grind flattened me completely last time.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Maybe i look after a Guild sometime soon
What I want is a game which advertises itself as a sandbox experience with a lot of pvx content, which is accessible to everyone who plays it, and not just 1% of the rejects who will literally live in the game. There is plenty of us who are interested in the game, and realise that a lot of its content is build around player conflict. Sadly as I see it atm, most of the game content is gatekept behind a wall of pve grind. This isn't early 2000s Intrepid.
Too many of my past sandbox MMOs with open and semi-open pvp have failed because the game studios behind them disregarded concerns about pvp balance and grind, and few moths up to a year after the launch lost majority of their playerbase.
I'm fine with slower progression, but gear grind AND massive power gap between geared and ungeared players at the same time is a formula for a dead game. Most of the potential players will quickly lose interest if this trend continues. Most of us have lives outside the game. If the game allows for a massive power gap between players, the pvx nature of the game content will prevent people from progressing and participating in the core gameplay mechanics. I don't see people paying a sub to get steamrolled. Balance the pvp fundamentals intrepid.
Blown past falling sands…
PvP balance and grind/farming satisfaction are almost directly opposed, though. It's incredibly difficult to get away from that fact and have it still feel like an MMO at all.
I say this only because sometimes it isn't 'disregarding', it might be 'choosing their poison' or even just 'giving up after a long battle with it'.
Intrepid's philosophy is basically 'fail faster but never the same way twice' (paraphrasing) so, if you had to give up most of one or the other, which is it?
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Blown past falling sands…
Why do you think multiple MMORPGs made these mistakes?
Are the entire game industry generally idiots? No. It's simply that whatever you feel best playing seems like the correct answer to you.
So if 300 people leave a game because 'farming regular enemies doesn't feel good and the game feels like it doesn't respect their time', and the remaining players respond with any equivalent of 'their problem'/'players too soft'/'game isn't about that', then the devs have chosen their poison. Will it kill their game? Depends on if they know the correct combination of poisons to drink.
Right now, Ashes feels bad to me and Throne and Liberty felt good, but I know that TL needs to cater to less invested/immersed casual players soon (or technically, already has done so for this update) and will feel worse to me.
Not because 'the game is worse', but because it stops doing the thing I like in order to do something someone else likes.
A sandbox PvP MMORPG is a buffet of 'poisons'. You can't tell the devs 'just make the food good'.
Anyway, I guess I'll assume you 'prefer that progression feels bad to most people' until you clarify otherwise. I too, 'prefer that progression feels worse but Devs focus on enjoyability of the game whole' (ArcheAge) over 'progression feels good but the MMO part falters' (Black Desert).
Ashes is currently on the BDO side, and so far, it seems intentional. I'm just gonna pray that TL works a bit harder and falls on the other side.
"Making common mistakes while innovating/combining things is not a matter of laziness in design."
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Interesting take, Azherae. I appreciate your perspective, and I think you're right about one thing, MMOs are full of trade-offs, and every design decision caters to a different player type. But I don’t think Ashes is 'repeating mistakes' so much as it’s making intentional choices for the kind of game it wants to be.
🔹 Ashes isn’t trying to appeal to everyone—on purpose.
Intrepid has been pretty transparent from day one: Ashes of Creation is not meant to be a fast-paced, convenience first themepark MMO. It’s a long-term, high-investment sandbox, where risk vs reward and player agency define the core gameplay. That means sometimes progression feels slower or more demandin, but that’s exactly the point.
🔹 Progression isn’t only about stats.
Yes, gear and power progression exist, but Ashes aims to create meaningful progression through exploration, social interaction, politics, and territory control. It’s not just about numbers, it’s about how your place in the world evolves over time. That’s something a lot of modern MMOs don’t even try to offer anymore.
🔹 On 'mistakes' from past MMOs:
Sometimes what feels like a mistake to one playerbase is actually a deliberate shift in direction. Games like Black Desert or Throne & Liberty cater to different priorities. Ashes is going for depth over instant gratification, and naturally, that’s going to alienate some players who prefer a different style of progression.
At the end of the day, it’s okay that not every game is for everyone. The important thing is that Intrepid stays consistent with their vision, and from what we’ve seen, they’re doing just that. Whether that vision succeeds will depend not on avoiding all “mistakes,” but on attracting the right audience that shares the same values in gameplay.
AI generated responses in a forum for a game that is not even released yet is insane
I like forums, I'm passionate about the project, and I enjoy making friends. A hug for you. The topic to discuss here is Fix PvE content.
I never asked you about your preferences or what you enjoy, so I'm not why you decided to list those things, but interesting and thanks for sharing!
However, you could have just replied to the original post with "I agree" and moved on, but instead you decided to copy paste a post that would take you 10 seconds to read into ChatGPT, just because you're that passionate. Makes sense.
1. I agree with what REHOC says about capping the levels for enchanting. (and yes he is very passionate about forms and this game. you should read some of his other posts they are very enlightening.) The game is still in alpha, my own party of 4 got wrecked by a lv.13 mage with plus 8 gear (we are all 20+ with ok gear) which is why a cap is important.
2. When the rest of the game comes out there won't really be a need to super enchant early game gear to high levels, why would you need to when you could get a high level drop for an easy to kill mob. The gear will only last till so long when the player gets to a higher level.
TLDR; they need a enchantment cap just for the alpha but will people really want to enchant gear that will fall of at late game?