What features you dislike in MMOs and hope Ashes won't have?

As each MMORPGs have some good features (GW2 mounts, crafting system of SWG, housing of Wildstar *RIP* etc), they have some bad ones as well. They tend to have very similar features to WoW and other traditional MMORPGs which most people dislike and think they're outdated. There are two features I see in MMOs and despise. One of them is the 'artificial' feel most of MMOs in which case you just click stuff to do things with the mouse pointer (kills the immersion and looks ugly tbh). The other is boring and non skill based combat (both action: spamming abilities in order and tab: pressing buttons at the right time...) So, what features you don't want to see in Ashes of Creation?

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leamese

I was going to make a similar post!

a no-go for me: Spawning of object in the environment when i am only 10 meteres away from them.

Joseline

- Upgrade system. I dont want to see a number behind my weapon. This number behind a weapon never did anything good other than encouraging power creep and P2W-mechanics. Even if they stay away from the P2W thing Im afraid that there will be updates like "Oh we increased the max. upgradelevel from +7 to +9", do this 3 more times and the power creep cant be stopped anymore
I hope for a simple crafting path from common to legendary weapons with basic enchantments instead of weapon upgrades.There are other ways to increase a weapons streanght other than making it +15
- Easy raids and raids that demand too many players. I like challenging raids that you have to try over and over and over and over again until you finaly beat them. I dont like however raids that require you to get 50 people for a single run. Smaller guilds should be able to beat them as well
- No auto travel. Its poor game design if you have to walk for 30min straight to get from PointA to PointB. One of the major mistakes Bless made (well they made a lot of major mistakes..). More than 50% of bless's gameplay experience was walking from A to B. Autowalk was certainly needed in that case but it shouldve showed the Devs that theyre doing something wrong
- PvP zones that force you into PvP and cant be avoided. That was a thing in Cabal. Lv100+ maps were marked as war zones and players from 2 diffrent fractions could attack each other on sight. While this sounds like a fun thing to do it was annoying if youre leveling a twink in those areas and someone from the opposite fraction sees you. You either had to pray that its a nice guy who just passed by or youre dead and couldnt play the game until youre alone again
- power creep. Nuff said. This always happens in every game, never not seen it happen but one can hope

leamese

Maybe make a list in your starting post?

Magic Man

leamese wrote: »

Maybe make a list in your starting post?

@leamese I did mention 2 things.

1- Artificial feel
2- non skill based combat.

There are of course many others but these two are the most important ones for me.

Armando

Too much dailies, no thanks.

Classes gender locked

Pay 2 Win instead of micro transactions being cosmetic only

Wandering Mist

@Joseline regarding power creep, this probably won't be an issue in Ashes for quite some time, as power creep only really appears when you add new content to an existing game, like a new expansion. Yes it is a problem but it's also very hard to avoid once you start creating new content. After all, the easiest way to provide progression for higher level players is to increase their stats, but as you pointed out this can cause power creep very quickly.

This happens pretty much every time WoW brings out a new raid or expansion, the previous raids become redundant unless you are farming transmog gear. The trick is giving higher level players a sense of progression without producing power creep.

Joseline

wanderingmist wrote: »

@Joseline regarding power creep, this probably won't be an issue in Ashes for quite some time, as power creep only really appears when you add new content to an existing game, like a new expansion. Yes it is a problem but it's also very hard to avoid once you start creating new content. After all, the easiest way to provide progression for higher level players is to increase their stats, but as you pointed out this can cause power creep very quickly.

This happens pretty much every time WoW brings out a new raid or expansion, the previous raids become redundant unless you are farming transmog gear. The trick is giving higher level players a sense of progression without producing power creep.

Powercreep can never entirely be stopped, that much is clear. Powercreep on its own however doesnt necessarily need to destroy gameplay. You can increase stats as you like and release new features but its also important to never do big changes to how the game is played
I think BnS did a decent job at handling powercreep. During release you had about 10k~20k DPS with "maxed out" EQ. Before I quitted the DPS was around 500k. This wasnt only because of higher stats but NC (devs) also released a bunch of items with some pretty ridicoulus effects but they did a decent job at only "buffing" DPS and not changing the gameplay AND keeeping bosses as strong as they used to be (well they also got more complicate) so you never felt like youre too strong for high end content but also felt your DPS going up and your burst started to really hurt even the strongest bosses. Cabal did this in a simliar way. More EQ = easier high end bosses but you still werent able to do anything on your own and Cabal never really got rid of its original gameplay idea (except HFB. RiP HFB)
A bad example of powercreep would be Els. At its release you used primary a weak and a strong base attack and used skills to clear out mob groups. Even speedrunning required you to use your skills effectively as Mana was limited. Nowadays Elsword consists of spamming pots and only using skills. This is because KoG released more and more diffrent potions to encourage spamming and also made it easier to upgrade weapons (as well as increasing the upgrade cap) in addition to a lot of other stuff that increases your damage, they even invented completly new stats to further increase DPS. To compensate this powercreep they buffed all mobs and bosses to a point that the game became extremly furstrating if youre not "abusing the powercreep"

I guess powercreep is one of those things that show wether or not a Dev team understands the game theyre creating. Basically, Im kind of worried that AoC will take the same path Els did

.. I wrote too much

leamese

kayra wrote: »

leamese wrote: »

Maybe make a list in your starting post?

@leamese I did mention 2 things.

1- Artificial feel
2- non skill based combat.

There are of course many others but these two are the most important ones for me.

I mean a summary from the points made by "everyone"?

Blackhearted

I hate dailies. Being compelled to do x amount of dailies to probefore you can actually start playing is beyond ****.

I hate casino gear upgrade systems.

Morashtak

Having just been able to compare Classic WoW with retail WoW one can see just how hand-holdy and "pull tab-ish" the game has become and the direction AoC should never take -- If this game is to be in the same vein as OSRS, EQ, and Classic WoW then it should be mentally challenging.

Modern WoW makes me lazy - I can pull multiple mobs and easily survive. Pull multiple mobs in classic and I'd better run or be a warlock that is the master of "Fear juggling".

AoC should strive for a level of challenge that makes the rewards (even Uncommon "green" level items) feel worth while.

Wandering Mist

@morashtak When comparing the difficulty of Classic WoW vs Retail WoW, the main difference is that in Classic WoW you are limited by what your character can do, whereas in Retail WoW you are limited by what you, the player can do. In Classic WoW, it doesn't matter how good you are as a player, if you try to fight more than 2 mobs your own level at the same time you will die. Your character is simply incapable of defeating multiple opponents solo.

In Retail WoW on the other hand, you are more limited by your skill as a player, since your character is practically a god that can kill 5-6 mobs no problem as long as you use your cooldowns properly. The result is that in Classic WoW the world is much more dangerous and you have to be a lot more careful, whereas in Retail WoW you are never really in danger unless you purposefully try to fight 10+ mobs at a time.

T Elf

I'm hoping for game play that is more character centered than player centered.

Joseline

wanderingmist wrote: »

In Retail WoW on the other hand, you are more limited by your skill as a player, since your character is practically a god that can kill 5-6 mobs no problem as long as you use your cooldowns properly. The result is that in Classic WoW the world is much more dangerous and you have to be a lot more careful, whereas in Retail WoW you are never really in danger unless you purposefully try to fight 10+ mobs at a time.

In what regard is managing cooldowns a skill one has to master?
The only thing you really have to think about when creating a skillset in an MMO like WoW is in what order you want to use them but thats mostly just a one-time thing and after a few weeks of learning this once created combo there is not much skill into it

Managing cooldowns isnt exactly skillfull once you know your skills and their duration. I guess thats what a few people here also meant when they were talking about "skillfull gameplay"
In traditional HacknSlash you can put all your skill into a macro because there isnt any real skill but only a combo you loop

Classic WoW takes moer skill in that regard because you have to actually think about what you are going to do rather than how youre doing it as the how is more often than not just choosing one of a few loops to.. loop

Wandering Mist

@Joseline I think it's safe to say that dps rotations in Retail WoW are far more involved than they are in Classic WoW. In Classic WoW most dps classes will use 2-3 abilities at the most. Just as an example, let's compare Frost mages from Classic WoW and Retail WoW. In Classic WoW the rotation is as follows:

Frostbolt -> Frostbolt -> Frostbolt until you either go oom or have too much threat, then get out your wand and shoot away.

Compare that to the Retail WoW Frost mage, which I can't be bother typing out so just refer to this guide:

https://www.wowhead.com/frost-mage-rotation-guide

There is no contest. That's why in Retail WoW you can have 2 players with the same gear using the same spec doing vastly different dps (sometimes up to 20% difference). In Classic WoW this difference is far less.And yes, knowing when to use your cooldowns is an important skill to master, particularly in mythic raiding. Using your big cooldowns at the right time and always having them synced up with you need them takes a lot of practice.

Is one harder than the other? Not really. I've said this before that comparing the difficulty of Classic WoW and Retail WoW is like comparing the difficulty between Chess and Starcraft2. Both present their own challenges to the player. Classic WoW challenges the player by giving them less tools to use and a generally weaker character, forcing you to think very carefully about each move you make. On the other hand, Retail WoW challenges the player by forcing them to learn to use a lot more tools in order to be effective.

Noaani

Things I don't want to see...

Quests that have you helping someone build a "thing", and then not seeing that "thing" get built, even after 10 years. There is a Halfling in EQ2 that I helped find exhibits to put in his soon to be built museum way back in 2004, and 15 years later there is still no museum.

Daily quests, tasks or lockouts - or anything that makes players feel like they are missing out of they don't log in each day. I don't want the feeling of having to log in each and every day to any game, and that is all daily tasks actually seem to do. I'd be willing to accept a weekly count on things like this, as if I don't log in one or two days in a row I can easily make that up when I do get on.

The feeling of *having* to log in each day or you will fall behind leads to player burnout, so is bad for the games population in the long term.

I don't want to see any form of progression - other than PvP specific progression and contested fights - where another players actions can halt your progression for an extended period of time. This means that any contested kills needed for quests need to flag anyone involved in killing the encounter - even if they are not in the group or raid that gets loot from said encounter.

In a game like Ashes, if a group of players *can* block the progression of another group of players simply by maintaining a lock down on one rare spawn encounter, they *will* do that. The developers need to be sure that doing that isn't an option.

If we have limited ability slots, I don't want to see buffs use those slots up at all. With only 10 active abilities, I want 10 abilities to use during combat, not 3 buffs to cast pre-combat, a recovery ability for after combat, a utility ability and then only having space for 5 combat abilities.

Another thing I don't want to see are near worthless crafted consumables. Make them expensive if you have to, but make them worth using.

Plateau

In reply to some other people's mention of daily quests, I think they're important to have in any MMO, and they're only problematic when they are done wrong.

Having a bazillion daily quests, half of which are mundane and boring, is just an abusive way to encourage players to spend way too much time on the game.

Dailies are supposed to have the exact opposite effect. You're supposed to feel rewarded even if you only have an hour or two to play. And they're supposed to limit how much progress you can make from grinding after the daily bonus is gone, so that players with more time don't get too far ahead. And to a lesser extent, they encourage players to try different content because there's usually a daily bonus for each one.

So I think the concept of dailies is still valuable. Weeklies are probably better though, at least for players with inconsistent schedules.

Noaani

leonerdo wrote: »

So I think the concept of dailies is still valuable. Weeklies are probably better though, at least for players with inconsistent schedules.

This is exactly why I don't want dailies.

Putting in a means to curb (though not halt) progression for power gamers is fine, just not at the expense of making people feel like they *need* to log in every day to keep up.

My understanding is that the servers for Ashes will go down for an hour or so each week (general maintenance and season changing iirc). To me, this would be the perfect time to reset a weekly count for lockouts and limited count quests.

I would much rather have a week to do one quest 7 times - or even 10 times - than one day to do one quest once. If I have a week, it is still limiting the power gamer, but it means that if a regular player can't (or doesn't want to) log on for a day or two, they are not penalized for it at all.

The power gamer may log in right after the server comes up and knock out all of their weekly quests in a few hours. This is fine for me, if that's what they want to do, they are welcome to it. The normal player though, the person working a 9 - 5, maybe with family commitments or such, then has the choice of doing a little bit each day, or maybe they can find one significant block of time during the week - any day that suits them - and either way they do it, they are able to keep up in terms of limited time questing. May be one night they do three or four, or may be they just do them all over the weekend, either way, it is still limiting how often these things can be done, but offers players a lot more freedom before they start missing out.

This allows players to not be penalized for taking their child to an activity, or take their significant other out for dinner and a show. Simple things like this keep players in a specific game much longer.

Sure, people that are away for a whole week will be missing out, but I personally think that's more than fair.

Wandering Mist

@leonerdo The problem I have with dailies is they contribute to the skinner box that compels players to log on every day even when they don't enjoy what they are doing. In my experience, dailies are a punishment mechanic for NOT logging on every day, because if you don't do them every day you will fall behind. In the case of WoW dailies you feel forced to do the dailies purely for the rewards. This is especially true for mythic raiders who need the dailies in order to get enough AP for their raids.

I haven't met a single mythic raider who said they enjoyed doing dailies, but they all do them because they have to. It turns the game into a chore where you have to log on every day with a list of things to do, not because you want to do them, but because you HAVE to do them in order to do the one thing you enjoy doing (raiding).

FFXIV has a daily dungeon finder roulette that follows the same principle. The rewards it offers you are required to remain competitive at end-game which forces you to do it every day even when the daily content itself is very boring. The problem with FFXIV's dailies is that they are necessary for the functioning of the game, since players are required to do certain dungeons in order to progress through the story. If the dungeon finder roulette didn't exist, nobody would queue for a dungeon after they had done it once, and this would stall newer players from progressing through the story.

Wandering Mist

Joseline wrote: »

- Upgrade system. I dont want to see a number behind my weapon. This number behind a weapon never did anything good other than encouraging power creep and P2W-mechanics. Even if they stay away from the P2W thing Im afraid that there will be updates like "Oh we increased the max. upgradelevel from +7 to +9", do this 3 more times and the power creep cant be stopped anymore
I hope for a simple crafting path from common to legendary weapons with basic enchantments instead of weapon upgrades.There are other ways to increase a weapons streanght other than making it +15
- Easy raids and raids that demand too many players. I like challenging raids that you have to try over and over and over and over again until you finaly beat them. I dont like however raids that require you to get 50 people for a single run. Smaller guilds should be able to beat them as well
- No auto travel. Its poor game design if you have to walk for 30min straight to get from PointA to PointB. One of the major mistakes Bless made (well they made a lot of major mistakes..). More than 50% of bless's gameplay experience was walking from A to B. Autowalk was certainly needed in that case but it shouldve showed the Devs that theyre doing something wrong
- PvP zones that force you into PvP and cant be avoided. That was a thing in Cabal. Lv100+ maps were marked as war zones and players from 2 diffrent fractions could attack each other on sight. While this sounds like a fun thing to do it was annoying if youre leveling a twink in those areas and someone from the opposite fraction sees you. You either had to pray that its a nice guy who just passed by or youre dead and couldnt play the game until youre alone again
- power creep. Nuff said. This always happens in every game, never not seen it happen but one can hope

@Joseline Just returning to this point, while looking on the wiki I found the following article for systems that are designed to combat power creep:

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Item_sinks

Dunno how effective it will be, if they do actually implement it though.

grisu

In regards to the debate of skill in classic and retail.
Dont forget that people mostly didnt know how to play in the first place. It was a lot of exploration of mechanics.
The legendary nerf of warriors ehich were considered garbage at the time was a great example. It needed just one guy showing how absolutly broken it was.
Hunters are another example the autoattack mechanic was a lot more skillfull then people expected. The broad mass didnt understand even way into burning crusade that you have to play around auto attacks. (Which is completely dumbed down and trivialized by now) you had to time every skill in a way that it doesnt interfer with auto attacks. Move stop attack in tact to not miss an auto attack.
Its hard to retroactively say >>in general<< wether classic was more or less skillfull then retail. People just didnt explore it fully at the time and using only frostbolt could have been one of those things that were done just because it worked.

Hunters would be one example tho that needed far more skill in classic then in retail.

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