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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.
Difficulty level
I'm very interested about this game. Wondering if this game will be as easy as Black Dezert?
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Comments
well as this game is still early in it's life cycle I doubt we can answer that question however I am certain that it won't be as simple structured because of the node system which ties in many aspects of the game (access to different resources, events, abilities as a whole node community if you will, etc. etc. - like access to world boss events with nice rewards I guess or better crafting stations, better npc protection, access to merchanting, access to a variety of mob spawns lower nodes won't have, access to better, longer and/or more rewarding quest chains and so long and forth).
Also both games will feature different combat styles (subject to change along the progress) as well as the class systems differ from each other.
well as this game is still early in it’s life cycle I doubt we can answer that question however I am certain that it won’t be as simple structured because of the node system which ties in many aspects of the game (access to different resources, events, abilities as a whole node community if you will, etc. etc. – like access to world boss events with nice rewards I guess or better crafting stations, better npc protection, access to merchanting, access to a variety of mob spawns lower nodes won’t have, access to better, longer and/or more rewarding quest chains and so long and forth).
Also both games will feature different combat styles (subject to change along the progress) as well as the class systems differ from each other.
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I meant the level of difficulty everything for example questes, monsters and dungeons, if you played Black Dezert I'm sure You have not encountered any difficulties and game was to easy.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/difficulty-level/#post-9194" rel="nofollow">Bell wrote:</a></div>
in which context? PvE? PvP?
well as this game is still early in it’s life cycle I doubt we can answer that question however I am certain that it won’t be as simple structured because of the node system which ties in many aspects of the game (access to different resources, events, abilities as a whole node community if you will, etc. etc. – like access to world boss events with nice rewards I guess or better crafting stations, better npc protection, access to merchanting, access to a variety of mob spawns lower nodes won’t have, access to better, longer and/or more rewarding quest chains and so long and forth).
Also both games will feature different combat styles (subject to change along the progress) as well as the class systems differ from each other.
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I meant the level of difficulty everything for example questes, monsters and dungeons, if you played Black Dezert I’m sure You have not encountered any difficulties and game was to easy.
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ah okay. Well again it is early so I'm not really sure how to say it.
From the looks of it there might be a normal difficulty involved as well as world bosses require the normal number of players to get it done. I wouldn't really expect a miracle from the devs in terms of AI for example.
In terms of environment interaction I read on discord or on the forum (can't remember, sorry) that there will be puzzles involved. Not sure what that means but we can only speculate anyway.
I mean I didn't play Black Desert but from the videos of it, challenging content is something else so yeah I guess it will be a bit harder than that.
Sorry its time to stay with Difficulty leveling and time consuming leveling. I do agree the Tutorial needs to be easy to help people learn the basic interface and how the game works then ramp up the toughest.
Seriously what kind of game systems make the player base generally think rolling a low level alt with less valuable gear to fight the world bosses is a solid plan?
Seriously what kind of game systems make the player base generally think rolling a low level alt with less valuable gear to fight the world bosses is a solid plan?
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Easy content serves no one. If players can group up 100 mobs and AOE them down they will never learn anything more than that. If they cannot take more than a single mob on at a time and have to pay attention to whats around them they will become better players or go back to WOW. If you copy and paste WOW into Ashes people will come here like they do for every new MMORPG, see that its exactly the same as WOW and just go back to WOW. We need to go back to a time where you didnt just face roll shit unless you are so over geared or over level.
Therefore, the game needs simple tasks that you can do while chatting on Discord, or while doing your boring office job. I imagine the Gathering Artisan class will provide a big part of that, there should also be some ezpz mob farming things you can do. I mean this IS an MMO (and not Minecraft) where combat is the biggest element of gameplay and there's 64 combat classes; even super-casual players should be allowed to enjoy that combat. There's no reason to shunt the people who are after that kind of relaxed experience. They make the community more complete.
Of course that doesn't mean the game should be dominated by easy content. I'm just saying that it needs to exist. Ideally there should be like 25% easy shit, 40% normal difficulty content (where you can easily chat while fighting, but still have to pay attention), 25% hard challenges, and 10% hardcore, full-time, top-raiding-guild kinds of content. (I could write 2 more paragraphs about why I think that is a good difficulty curve, but I don't think anyone wants that.)
Therefore, the game needs simple tasks that you can do while chatting on Discord, or while doing your boring office job. I imagine the Gathering Artisan class will provide a big part of that, there should also be some ezpz mob farming things you can do. I mean this IS an MMO (and not Minecraft) where combat is the biggest element of gameplay and there’s 64 combat classes; even super-casual players should be allowed to enjoy that combat. There’s no reason to shunt the people who are after that kind of relaxed experience. They make the community more complete.
Of course that doesn’t mean the game should be dominated by easy content. I’m just saying that it needs to exist. Ideally there should be like 25% easy shit, 40% normal difficulty content (where you can easily chat while fighting, but still have to pay attention), 25% hard challenges, and 10% hardcore, full-time, top-raiding-guild kinds of content. (I could write 2 more paragraphs about why I think that is a good difficulty curve, but I don’t think anyone wants that.)
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No Ashes does not need Easy shit because it brings in the thousands of WOW players that want easy shit then when Ashes caters to these players and makes everything easy. Once everything is easy your Core MMORPG players leave the game and all the WOW players go back to WOW because its just WOW in a new Skin. Then the game is dead like every other MMORPG out there expect maybe a handful. The cycle must stop. Look at Pantheon, legends of Aria and CoE. None of them are catering to the EASY players. Yes there are more of them out there BUT they keep going back to WOW because that is what they do.
Its time that we get rid of the easy mentality and get back to shit being hard. Yes if you think you are going to whack a mole 2 or 3 mobs you should be killed over and over and over again until you learn that you need to take on a single mob at a time and pay attention to what is around you.
I do not want EASY Weekend Warriors in Ashes because they will be the ones bitching this is not WOW after a month and just go back to WOW. Its time we Ignore that entire crowd. If they want to play this game they either step up and play an MMORPG which NO is not made for everyone look at why WOW and other MMORPGs are having massive issues with subscription bases. The Easy crowd is a casual crowd that will not commit to any dam game their for they sub for a month or two and then move on. I want players like myself who YES have a casual schedule but will commit time and effort when I can to grow within the game. I will stay not MMORPG jump like I have been because of EASY Single player type MMORPG games. We need MMORPGS to go back to when MMORPGs were good you can even look at Vanilla and TBC WOW. The content was not EASY yes it was EASY for its time But it is not today's mindless MMORPG game play.
O and BTW Easy players will not want to lose XP. But guess what if they dont want to there are other games that are well WOW.
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that would be the worst lol. dark souls hard is soul destroying. :)
A good game must have a very good balance between time spend / reward. And of course, if you're creative or do something smart you can shrink the time needed to get the rewards.
I would like to see, deep dungeons, with multiple flours that have different difficulties. Or towers, like the first Sword art Online. The progression trough the towers, gearing up. That people will look up, and be aspired to conquer them all. Or seeing a someone thats in the top guild looking bad-ass. So you could think, aah i want that. Or a very successful business man. A game kills the fun if there's nothing to dream about to achieve.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/difficulty-level/#post-9194" rel="nofollow">Bell wrote:</a></div>
in which context? PvE? PvP?
well as this game is still early in it’s life cycle I doubt we can answer that question however I am certain that it won’t be as simple structured because of the node system which ties in many aspects of the game (access to different resources, events, abilities as a whole node community if you will, etc. etc. – like access to world boss events with nice rewards I guess or better crafting stations, better npc protection, access to merchanting, access to a variety of mob spawns lower nodes won’t have, access to better, longer and/or more rewarding quest chains and so long and forth).
Also both games will feature different combat styles (subject to change along the progress) as well as the class systems differ from each other.
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I meant the level of difficulty everything for example questes, monsters and dungeons, if you played Black Dezert I’m sure You have not encountered any difficulties and game was to easy.
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I mean black desert revolved around guilds world pvp and sieges. There wasnt any raids in the first place, it wasnt like wow or your other generic go to a dungeon with 5 man trinity party style of end game content. If black desert was easy and you didnt encounter any difficulties then surely your guild controlled all the castles at same time right? If not fuck off, because they way u frame this is completely dishonest and makes me wanna kik you in the dick.
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And you got exactly what WOW and FFXIV are today. O and neither of them can keep their population stable.
[quote quote=9498]A game should have something for every gamer. It should have multiple layers, easy, medium and hard. So every player can do something on his/her skill level. If a game is only for the elite hardcore players that have more then 40 hours to spare in a week. The game will probably remain a niche and die when the next, game comes. Very stupid business plan and very selfish . I think every game developer wants to share there creativity with as many people as possible.
A good game must have a very good balance between time spend / reward. And of course, if you’re creative or do something smart you can shrink the time needed to get the rewards.
I would like to see, deep dungeons, with multiple flours that have different difficulties. Or towers, like the first Sword art Online. The progression trough the towers, gearing up. That people will look up, and be aspired to conquer them all. Or seeing a someone thats in the top guild looking bad-ass. So you could think, aah i want that. Or a very successful business man. A game kills the fun if there’s nothing to dream about to achieve.
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No they shouldnt. Do you see Pantheon. They are building that game to replace EQ1. They are making the game Grouping Centric where people have to group to do anything in that game. Guess what. They game will be successful and it will not cater to everyone. Do you see WOW? It Caters to everyone and has done so since WOTLK and you know what outside of before an expansion and the release of an expansion Subscriptions do not increase they decrease because while they cater to everyone the largest part of their population just does the easy shit gets the gear then quits until new easy shit which they will be done with inside of a month is out.
O and BTW. "The progression trough the towers, gearing up. That people will look up, and be aspired to conquer them all. Or seeing a someone thats in the top guild looking bad-ass. So you could think, aah i want that. Or a very successful business man. A game kills the fun if there’s nothing to dream about to achieve." No one gives a fuck about this today. Sorry but it is true. Look at BDO when they implemented a gear setup that ONLY THE BEST would get this gear. Special snowflakes got pissed off and left. Bye bye subscription numbers if that happens here.
No one since 2008 cares what other people have outside of why can I not have that with easy content. Its a hell of a lot better to cater to dedicated MMORPG gamers than Easy Content leeches. Because that is all they will consume is Easy Content then unsub until the next easy content comes out. Time to end that revolving door. Besides what you dont seem to realize that when you die you will lose XP? Would you call a game like that a CASUAL game? I wouldnt. WOW is a Casual game. I would call this a Normal of the road MMORPG. A hard MMORPG would be more like Eve where you could lose all your shit or UO.
I think that it is a must that you need to be careful of leaving towns if you aren't you would likely die from corrupt players or from not paying attention to your surroundings either from taking on 5 mobs that you weren't ready for or a stone falling on your head :3
( or from a trap that i dug and hid xD would be awesome)
As for the problem with corrupt players, the bounty hunters will take care of them , hopefully .. it depends on how much of the % of the players on the server like playing bandits or heros .. :P
and i think that the manager of the town can hire guards to patrol the roads around the town . though i'm not sure.
but in this games a solo player taking on 10 mobs and aoeing them down ? No thank you . i would more like it that i could take on 2 mobs at a time and only 3 mobs i'm lucky or plan before hand :)
For one thing, the games is going to have trinity classes. Tank, DPS and Healer. Probably have massive battles for zones. I am curious to how there are going to balance it. Big change that one or a few zones are going to be the Biggest and the best. So no real fun there if they don't watch out. probably have a few organized guilds that dictate which zones are being developed.
So difficulty should come from ? Normal questing would be annoying, nobody wants to fight a regular mobs that is a pain in they ass. It will become bothersome really fast. Dungeons and Raids with multiple levels of difficulty ?
Shinigamiqt wrote:
I mean black desert revolved around guilds world pvp and sieges. There wasnt any raids in the first place, it wasnt like wow or your other generic go to a dungeon with 5 man trinity party style of end game content. If black desert was easy and you didnt encounter any difficulties then surely your guild controlled all the castles at same time right? If not fuck off, because they way u frame this is completely dishonest and makes me wanna kik you in the dick.
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No :) my guild didnt control all the castles at the same time and not everything was easy. I do not claim the game is bad, for my opinion Black Desert is one of the most visually cool looking MMORPGs, I just expected something more from PVE which I guess is more important to me.
<blockquote>This game needs to be challenging, without a doubt. I’ve tried BD and Tera, and It was incredibly boring and repetitive. The fact that I could kill basically anything at any time and have no sense of threat was extremely dulling. There was absolutely no sense of achievement whatsoever. I’m hoping that this game will have every player making wise decisions. For the people that want the game to be easy, let me ask you, while you are out there finding rare monsters and discovering dungeons and solving puzzles, do you really want it to be so easy that everyone else also finds those rare monsters, discovers those dungeons, and solves those puzzles? I mean, this is suppose to be an adventure, right? This, hopefully, will be a game that will have you wanting to come back the next day. The devs are talking about dynamics in the world of AoC. This means that the rarities of the world of AoC will change through the week which is exciting as hell. No more static. So no, this game should not be “easy” for anyone. If you cant simply learn the game and adapt to it then this type of game isn’t for you. There are plenty of other games that allow for quick progress and no effort. Thank you.</blockquote>
+1
For one thing, the games is going to have trinity classes. Tank, DPS and Healer. Probably have massive battles for zones. I am curious to how there are going to balance it. Big change that one or a few zones are going to be the Biggest and the best. So no real fun there if they don’t watch out. probably have a few organized guilds that dictate which zones are being developed.
So difficulty should come from ? Normal questing would be annoying, nobody wants to fight a regular mobs that is a pain in they ass. It will become bothersome really fast. Dungeons and Raids with multiple levels of difficulty ?
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The Developers already said this game will not be for everyone. If this game spends somewhere around 30 Million Dollars on Development and has some money from the Kickstarter they will be fine. This game is not looking to spend $100 Million like every other fucking MMORPG out there. So NO this game Does not have to cater to every player. They ALREADY said this will not happen. If they have 500K players which is VERY possible if you go back to old school MMORPG type games they will make 7.5 Million a Month, that is 4 months to pay off the initial investment and then the rest of paying for operation and development of new content. Your BS about that it has to cater to everyone is FALSE. That is Exactly what RIFT, SWTOR, ESO and WILDSTAR did and they failed. All were $100 Million+ in an investments. Wildstar and ESO approach $400 Million in investments. Yes if you spend that much money you will fail as an MMORPG
It's a Joke that you keep bringing up 40 hour a week players and raiding. Ashes will not be that type of game like Wildstar was. The Difference is not how many hours a week you have to play which Casual Players have a huge mental block on for some reason. No it comes down to skill and expecting that content will take you months if not a year to play it all. Which is the PROPER way to play an MMORPG. Not like WOW. Players SHOULD have to pay attention to what is going on around them, they already will with PKers in the world, if you have whack a mole easy mobs in the world you will get lazy and bitch when someone kills you because you are trying to play the game like a single player game. No Content Difficulty is you needing to pay attention and use your abilities to over come content NOT spamming AOEs and moving on.
If you do not want that type of game there are dozens of these type of games out there for YOU. You are looking at Ashes is a PVE advantage being Vanilla WOW raiding taking 6 weeks to over come a single boss. No one here want that If you read, people like me want flat gear, no instanced treadmills for gear and the main focus about the game doing what ever the hell you find fun. Very much like SWG was. SWG was the same you didnt just run into the sandpeople's little base and grab up 10 of them and kill them all. Nope you grab 1 at a time and trying to kill them and they could kill you if you didnt play your class well. That is a GOOD thing.
O and BTW about Niche MMORPGs. MMORPGS are Niche games period. WOW was an outlier and is not the best formula for MMORPGS. Look at Pantheon, they already have 200K+ people who gave money for the game. Guess what that is an extremely niche game because you have to group all the time and they will have between 250K to 500K subs a month when the game is out. They will do just fine. They are not spending money stupidly on making everyone happy. No they made a niche game
I think steven has talked good game about what he wants to do with aoc and it sounds the kinda game i want to play, the kinda meant for more hc gamers. But so far the 10 abilities per class and half tab targeting and half action combat system, dosent exactly sound convincing to me and i really need to get to try it in alpha/beta be4 i can actually get hyped. Also another issue im worried about is that he sayd he himself is more rp/pve type of player and he has talked much more about pve features than pvp features of the game. If the combat is complicated and skillfull, both pvp and pve are relevant and gear/progression is something you have to earn, im sure there is a massive market gap for a game like this and they could make insane amounts of money if they step up and provide what they have preached.
If you dumb down the game and try to cater for everything you are just gonna compete with wow which is more established has big playerbase and company behind etc, aoc will lose.
That being said, when you talk about difficulty you are probably referring mostly to combat. I'm not sure at least how they can add difficulty to something as simple as mining lol, unless they added some mini-game to it which I'm not sure so many would enjoy. There's two videos from a Mage's perspective on the AoC youtube channel and it looks like the combat (in PvE at least) is not mechanically difficult in the sense that there's a strict rotation that must be executed perfectly. However, there seems to be a high skill cap in the sense that there's a lot of room for creativity. You can see the mage gliding over large drops or even sending a fireball at a brazier to light it up. A fight vs a dungeon boss is also shown, it doesn't look too difficult but I'm sure mistakes will be costly.
All in all, it looks like the best players will know how to respond to a given situation rather than know how to press the same buttons in the correct order. I hope that helps :)
I think steven has talked good game about what he wants to do with aoc and it sounds the kinda game i want to play, the kinda meant for more hc gamers.
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i want the world to be difficult but i can't see this game being meant for hc players . this game is gonna or i feel like is't gonna be for everyone to play.
But,
People just have to accept the change and start a new and learn what it is to play a Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Game .
People just have to completely Forget, Erase, memory vipe how they have been playing a Massive Speed level Multiplayer Gear hoarding dungeon farming money robing, Role playing ? Game ......
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/difficulty-level/page/2/#post-9808" rel="nofollow">Shinigamiqt wrote:</a></div>
I totally agree with <a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/users/helzbelz/" rel="nofollow">@helzbelz</a>. Its clear from the start this is going to be niche and more hc gamer oriented like all open world sandbox mmos, the entire genre is a niche.
I think steven has talked good game about what he wants to do with aoc and it sounds the kinda game i want to play, the kinda meant for more hc gamers.
</blockquote>
i want the world to be difficult but i can’t see this game being meant for hc players . this game is gonna or i feel like is’t gonna be for everyone to play.
But,
People just have to accept the change and start a new and learn what it is to play a Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Game .
People just have to completely Forget, Erase, memory vipe how they have been playing a Massive Speed level Multiplayer Gear hoarding dungeon farming money robing, Role playing ? Game ……
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The problem is that certain types of players think that if you cannot gather up 5+ Mobs at 1 time AOE them down and do that 100 times inside of 10 minutes the game is hardcore. For example in SWTOR people talked about some of the solo boss fights being so hard in SWTOR because they died the first time they fought the level 9 or 10 boss. It was not that the boss was hard, it was the players didnt use their class abilities to kill the boss. For example Operatives didnt want to HIDE to take less damage so they could kill the boss. They wanted to PEW PEW it down and move on.
Its time that people that want that game played stop trying to play another MMORPG and stay where they are right now because they just end up back in said game anyway. Its a cycle they bitch that a game has to be built for them, they play that game and are bored then end back up in said game.
I hate to be an ass hole but we need to stop making games for the same people that do not sick around. Yes the game should be made for more of the dedicated MMORPG players. These are the type that dont care that they cannot faceroll mobs from 1 end of the zone to the other end of the zone without the risk of dying. I want it so if I am soloing and I dont pay attention and get 3 mobs I will die. Now if I am with a few friends we can easily kill 3 or 4 mobs.