Shelving Content For Expansions

Just for the course of discussion, I feel a good portion of content could be shelved for future expansions. Everyone LOVES to do a million different things in an MMORPG, but the bar is so low in this genre that this game will be a smashing success with fluid combat, a working node/siege system, professions, dungeons, and player housing. Outside of that, religion, naval combat, Tavern Mini-games, etc. aren’t terribly needed for day-one of the game going live.

I know people will roast me alive, but I feel an entire expansion could be made for Naval warfare and Religion!

I understand with this project that the scope hasn’t crept much, but with 5 years down in development and not a clear production date...some of this content needs to be re-evaluated and shelved for later expansions!

By all means, take my money in later expansions. However, if the core of the game isn’t great no one will care how much time/resources were put into captaining a ship.

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Dreoh

Or... hear me out on this wild opinion...

We be patient and wait for a full complete game to release?!

Edit:

Naval content is a core part of the game, as travel is a core part of the game, and there are many waterways
5 years of production on a game is not as much as you think, ESPECIALLY an MMO. In fact, usually developers don't announce or show progress of games until after the 5 year production mark. AoC is a rare exception to that
You're definitely jumping the gun hard on this opinion. Patience is a virtue.

Asgerr

The issue is they promised to deliver something specific for the game's launch.

If you shelve it to then release it with an expansion (possibly a paid one) then it's no different than companies like EA selling you half the game and expecting you to buy the rest of it.

People would be up in arms if everything that was promised isn't there at launch. And they'd be right.

Marcet

Things like instruments, tavern minigames, furniture, etc. could be added on a later patch after release, like training dummies, guild castle features and all that. I agree. The core systems and movement/combat should be perfect from launch.

Dygz

Asgerr wrote: »

The issue is they promised to deliver something specific for the game's launch.

If you shelve it to then release it with an expansion (possibly a paid one) then it's no different than companies like EA selling you half the game and expecting you to buy the rest of it.

People would be up in arms if everything that was promised isn't there at launch. And they'd be right.

Well, some stuff were stretch goals. Launching an MMORPG is a difficult road, so people should understand that it can be better to launch with the vast majority of stuff and then put the rest in later.
It would have to be like NMS, where those expansions are free.
And, yeah, there will be people complaining in any case.
Steven hyped a bunch of promises he probably shouldn't have hyped, but... that is the naivete of a gamer hoping to give other gamers everything they want before understanding the game dev perspective.

Talents

I 100% disagree with the people saying naval content should be added after release. Naval content is a core part of Ashes and under no circumstance should be held until after launch. I wouldn't mind if they forgoed the underwater content but not the actual Naval content.

There's plenty of other filler things they could add after launch if need be.

Khronus

@Ridik Are you just wanting to play the game sooner? I understand that they can come out with an awesome naval expansion.....but I completely disagree with that. It needs to be part of the games launch.

neuroguy

The thing is a lot of this can be worked on in parallel and it's not about resource allocation since people's job description and expertise don't always overlap (you can't pull design artists from character creation to make the node system less laggy for example) and even if they do, you can't have 100 people working on the same problem, it will get you messy code and confusion. I think given the size of the team now things will move fast, we just don't see that yet because core parts of the game are not yet polished so no point/hard to add in the stuff that goes on top of it like naval stuff.

Edit: I think around alpha 2 once servers are stable and node system is fleshed out we will get a better gauge of how fast other game systems get added.

RocketFarmer

The factor at play with the incremental release approach is after release they will require dedicated resources for operations and maintenance of the game, which means fewer resources on development. That’s the trade they have to make.

The level of ambition is really high and so are the player expectations. People will be disappointed. Whether the disappointment is due to the lack of promised or expected features or due to continuing delays.

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