Most of us DO NOT WANT SOLO AREAS or SOLO GAMEPLAY. Steven has touted L2 Influence which was heavily influenced by CO-OPERATIVE content. Can you solo some stuff? sure. But be fast and efficient with it? HELL NO.
I played a great part of that game solo, because to be honest it's exhausting to have to be in a party all the time to do anything. Nobody wants that.
I think your in the wrong category of game. Solo content is not what MMO's are suppose to be based on. The purpose is to group up and be in a massive world to do content.
Solo play is RPGs. Why play an mmo to play an RPG. yes sure solo stuff is fun but that's not the point of the MMO. Plenty of people want group content where you need to be grouped up to do stuff.
Just know you're addressing someone who has played MMORPGs literally since the beginning. I played MUDs prior to the first MMORPGs becoming available. I know quite well how they work and who they're for. Nobody has more experience with the games than I do, because I have played them for their entire existence.
No MMORPG has ever required 100% group play. That has never existed. The games that require the most group play are ones that require you to be in a group for any kind of meaningful progression. That's what I am hoping for in Ashes of Creation.
Let me be honest... If you're saying you want a game that requires you to be in a group to do anything, I frankly don't believe you. Or you don't know what you're actually asking. I think you're making a badly-formed or disingenuous argument.
An MMORPG with absolutely zero solo content will fail. Period. It's the reason why you've never heard of one. You'd have to be pretty stupid to try. Making all of the challenging content require a group, that's a different story.
Let's consider WoW. Most people would agree it's a very solo-friendly game. Yet that game does have raids and dungeons you just can't do unless you are so overpowered that you're not going to get anything meaningful out of them. (I've soloed dungeons and raids in WoW just to get achievements and gear cosmetics.)
So just scale outward from there. Add difficult enemies in the open world that require a group to take down. Add quests that require a group. Put in many events that require a group. Rather than limiting people to always being in a group, instead put the majority of things a person would want to do in a situation where you need to be in a group.
That's where I see Ashes going. With sieges, caravans, node wars, monster token events, rather than eliminating all solo content they are just putting in a TON of group-required content.
My expectation is that you can try to play solo but you'll miss out on most of the game and your progression will be very slow. You also won't be able to get the best gear, titles, achievements, cosmetics, mounts, and so on.
And that's the way to do it. If there's a day where you just want to log in and be by yourself for a bit, maybe just go gather some materials and work on crafting, maybe do a few easy quests or grind a bit, you can. But that wouldn't be the majority of your play experience or you'd find the game to be very shallow and unsatisfying.
Most of us DO NOT WANT SOLO AREAS or SOLO GAMEPLAY. Steven has touted L2 Influence which was heavily influenced by CO-OPERATIVE content. Can you solo some stuff? sure. But be fast and efficient with it? HELL NO.
I played a great part of that game solo, because to be honest it's exhausting to have to be in a party all the time to do anything. Nobody wants that.
I think your in the wrong category of game. Solo content is not what MMO's are suppose to be based on. The purpose is to group up and be in a massive world to do content.
Solo play is RPGs. Why play an mmo to play an RPG. yes sure solo stuff is fun but that's not the point of the MMO. Plenty of people want group content where you need to be grouped up to do stuff.
Just know you're addressing someone who has played MMORPGs literally since the beginning. I played MUDs prior to the first MMORPGs becoming available. I know quite well how they work and who they're for. Nobody has more experience with the games than I do, because I have played them for their entire existence.
No MMORPG has ever required 100% group play. That has never existed. The games that require the most group play are ones that require you to be in a group for any kind of meaningful progression. That's what I am hoping for in Ashes of Creation.
Let me be honest... If you're saying you want a game that requires you to be in a group to do anything, I frankly don't believe you. Or you don't know what you're actually asking. I think you're making a badly-formed or disingenuous argument.
An MMORPG with absolutely zero solo content will fail. Period. It's the reason why you've never heard of one. You'd have to be pretty stupid to try. Making all of the challenging content require a group, that's a different story.
Let's consider WoW. Most people would agree it's a very solo-friendly game. Yet that game does have raids and dungeons you just can't do unless you are so overpowered that you're not going to get anything meaningful out of them. (I've soloed dungeons and raids in WoW just to get achievements and gear cosmetics.)
So just scale outward from there. Add difficult enemies in the open world that require a group to take down. Add quests that require a group. Put in many events that require a group. Rather than limiting people to always being in a group, instead put the majority of things a person would want to do in a situation where you need to be in a group.
That's where I see Ashes going. With sieges, caravans, node wars, monster token events, rather than eliminating all solo content they are just putting in a TON of group-required content.
My expectation is that you can try to play solo but you'll miss out on most of the game and your progression will be very slow. You also won't be able to get the best gear, titles, achievements, cosmetics, mounts, and so on.
And that's the way to do it. If there's a day where you just want to log in and be by yourself for a bit, maybe just go gather some materials and work on crafting, maybe do a few easy quests or grind a bit, you can. But that wouldn't be the majority of your play experience or you'd find the game to be very shallow and unsatisfying.
No i understand where your coming from and can agree with this more than before.
I was assuming you were advocating for the reverse of what you stated above, basically an easy solo game.
I can see we are very close on a few things in common.
and in the video, he states the intention of things.
He stated they are ok making content that can be done with few numbers, who will have an EAISER time then they did cause of Pots and other supplies / gear.
WIP or not - THAT IS A RED FLAG when you state an intention.
Not a red flag that is literarily every mmorpg.... using other items will be a benefit for you it is open world dungeons it doesn't mean you need exactly 8 people every time. Doesn't mean that some content will be easier than others with the different dungeons and challenges out there.
Stop trying to look for peak end game raiding they are lvl 15....nor was that advertised in what they were showing.
sorry, I dont play shit mmo that provides my little pony ease content.
Instead of players trying to rush to end game for "peak end game raiding" - the entire game should be hard. Why do we gotta wait till end game to experience "peakness" when you make everything as equal to end game.
and YES he did say that and advertised - feel free to re-watch that YT video.
If you are designing a 8 man content, it needs to be a 8 man content. He shouldnt have said, it is doable with less and it will be easier for players to do the content because of other supplies and pots. that just showcase content is gonna be a joke and it shouldn't be.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
It's irrelevant right now that a 4-player team of suped-up GMs beat content that will eventually be aimed at 8-player teams. They haven't balanced the combat values yet. We haven't had the Alpha-2 testing of combat yet. They haven't even made all of the archetypes yet. The combat system itself, and the damage values included in it, haven't been fleshed out, completed, tested, refined, re-tested, re-refined, etc. Why let yourself get caught up on tiny details like that, when you can just enjoy watching it come together piece by piece?
My main issue is them saying "this is an 8-man location, but we're 4". Why state that? Why incept our minds with thoughts of "ah, this game will be pisseasy for a normal group of people"?
Like, this would literally not be an issue did Steven not say that this was meant to be a location for more people. Alternatively this could've been a "proper difficulty" that would pretty much be the same on release, but then this would not be an 8-man location. If content is this easy then any full group will just go to places with better drops, even if they're supposed to be harder.
At this point Steven's kinda infamous for saying a ton of unneeded stuff. Be it on purpose or not. And I consider that particular statement to be quite unnecessary, exactly because of the context of "10 fucking prefaces of THIS IS AN ALPHA!! NOT DONE YET!!" Just don't address the difficulty at all and you'll have no problems with people assuming what that difficulty would be on release.
This - I havent really given out my opinions on the actual TANK related stuff that was discuss. I would have still made a comment calling out the difficult but not as hard as I have been going at it. More like, raising my hand and voicing a concern, a yellow flag maybe, knowing it may not be tune or intended.
but Steven actually opened his mouth and said things that ended up having me to raise a red flag and fight anyone on the forum over it.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
@Atama it's so sad how many gamers these days have never even heard of MUDs.
Talk about passion and the opposite of devs driven by Financials.
MUDs taught me how to type 150 wpm,
how to code in C++, and that given a position of power, humans are infinitely fallible.
Sitting around talking with friends on OOC about how one day we'd be playing a graphical version of the game.
Those were really the days.
discord.gg/pFCdaWM
Building a community specifically for Ashes of Creation.
Looking for members of all kinds to really pour
our all into the Alpha 2, Betas, and then launch.
and in the video, he states the intention of things.
He stated they are ok making content that can be done with few numbers, who will have an EAISER time then they did cause of Pots and other supplies / gear.
WIP or not - THAT IS A RED FLAG when you state an intention.
Not a red flag that is literarily every mmorpg.... using other items will be a benefit for you it is open world dungeons it doesn't mean you need exactly 8 people every time. Doesn't mean that some content will be easier than others with the different dungeons and challenges out there.
Stop trying to look for peak end game raiding they are lvl 15....nor was that advertised in what they were showing.
sorry, I dont play shit mmo that provides my little pony ease content.
Instead of players trying to rush to end game for "peak end game raiding" - the entire game should be hard. Why do we gotta wait till end game to experience "peakness" when you make everything as equal to end game.
and YES he did say that and advertised - feel free to re-watch that YT video.
If you are designing a 8 man content, it needs to be a 8 man content. He shouldnt have said, it is doable with less and it will be easier for players to do the content because of other supplies and pots. that just showcase content is gonna be a joke and it shouldn't be.
This take is so bad, this is a ALPHA this is not the final game why are you looking at it as the final game with this kind of view point.
Based on your view point if you are level 1 you need to be struggling with the game out of the gate to meet your requirement of it being hard for you. The take is so bad its insane, you don't know the learning curve they are setting nor the actual difficulty of the game.
YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE hand crafted elements of end game tier content at the start when you don't even have access to your whole kit. You need to realize it takes time to develop content, if it is that easy to make end game raid content there would be a lot more of it in all games.
You are looking through things as a consumer without realizing this is an alpha or how game development goes and the time it takes to make content.
Effectively what you are saying again is all the game should be end game content without even thinking the time it takes to make that..
Honestly if you can't handle the disclaimers of this is alpha balancing is not final, not all skills are in the game and working, not all mobs are doing what they could be doing, etc just chill and wait for alpha 2 to release before trying to rant about the game. I don't think your heart can handle an actual development process.
Post like this take away from giving more informative information, you could have literally made a post talking about mechanics and stuff you want to see... instead you are ranting an unfinished alpha is not doing what you want...
1) We're very fortunate to have such transparent development, let alone direct access to the Creative Director.
2) I'd happily watch a 2-3 hour development update, every month. Am very glad for the insights that we receive.
3) We got both weapons-combat updates and the Tank preview, since October. These are not just "spit out" elements; They took some time to tune and form.
4) He's making a display of the gameplay. Were they supposed to do it 10 times and choose the best take, or something?
5) These are real, live people - not actors.
6) These are pre-launch, to-be Alpha areas; They may not even be areas in the live game. Even if they are? We'll have fine-tined these areas and their difficulty via extensive testing.
4) He's making a display of the gameplay. Were they supposed to do it 10 times and choose the best take, or something?
They don't need to do it 10 times, a basic story board, rough run through to ensure they know what to expect in the fights then a run full run through so they aren't caught off guard. ideally not recorded day of so Margaret and the Comm team have time to watch the video an check for any comments that were said off the cuff that are mistaken or misleading. and to add in some relevant media in post.
2) I'd happily watch a 2-3 hour development update, every month. Am very glad for the insights that we receive.
I wouldn't, I'd rather watch a concise to the point 30-45 minute update of quality than a rambled 2-3 hr dev update.
Given the scope of the project, they could easily spend as much time as they wanted on the dev updates. Of course, nobody wants to watch a rambled mess, whether it's 30 mins or 3 hours. There are so many potential topics. I'd really like to see a little more structure to the Character and Environment Art sections. Perhaps each month (for the next 9 months) do a little section on each of the Character races.
4) He's making a display of the gameplay. Were they supposed to do it 10 times and choose the best take, or something?
They don't need to do it 10 times, a basic story board, rough run through to ensure they know what to expect in the fights then a run full run through so they aren't caught off guard. ideally not recorded day of so Margaret and the Comm team have time to watch the video an check for any comments that were said off the cuff that are mistaken or misleading. and to add in some relevant media in post.
The entire run, they rarely had mana issue outside of the tank and ranger occasionally. After every fight, most of their HP was fine, when things went south - it was mainly due to HoT tick putting cleric in aggro when he was trying to top off Steven b4 he ran into make a pull w/o communicating to his team.
The last boss fight was a joke, he tank the boss, someone else face tank the add and they were never in any danger both in terms of HP and MP.
Having to rest after every group of mobs to regen mana really destroys the game flow. Running out of mana is an outdated mechanic, the only time one should run out of mana is when fighting a boss that is above their current gear level or after several packs to regen both health and mana. This is excluding main healers of course.
Why should a wipe occur after pulling one mob when there are respawns? It should make things more difficult, yes, but again that is just tedious, especially as this is in an introductory area.
And if every class besides a tank is wet paper to enemies whats the point of bruiser variants such as the fighter?
The entire run, they rarely had mana issue outside of the tank and ranger occasionally. After every fight, most of their HP was fine, when things went south - it was mainly due to HoT tick putting cleric in aggro when he was trying to top off Steven b4 he ran into make a pull w/o communicating to his team.
The last boss fight was a joke, he tank the boss, someone else face tank the add and they were never in any danger both in terms of HP and MP.
Having to rest after every group of mobs to regen mana really destroys the game flow. Running out of mana is an outdated mechanic, the only time one should run out of mana is when fighting a boss that is above their current gear level or after several packs to regen both health and mana. This is excluding main healers of course.
I would have to disagree with you. This adds to the difficulty of the game and makes you as a player think about what you are doing.
Plus it can be implemented and if you don't like having to sit, then bring Pots not to. This mechanic of the game is not that big of a deal to those who know how to use it and leverage it.
I appreciate Steven's willingness to showcase everything and I particularly enjoyed the Tank Preview.
While I have long believed that the streams lack challenge, I did notice that they struggled and died a bit during the Tank Preview.
However, I do not think that the game is currently designed to be challenging. The mobs simply exist to populate the area and allow players to test the game's systems and aid in its development. It would be unfair to demand a significant challenge at this time, as the game is not yet at that stage.
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
The entire run, they rarely had mana issue outside of the tank and ranger occasionally. After every fight, most of their HP was fine, when things went south - it was mainly due to HoT tick putting cleric in aggro when he was trying to top off Steven b4 he ran into make a pull w/o communicating to his team.
The last boss fight was a joke, he tank the boss, someone else face tank the add and they were never in any danger both in terms of HP and MP.
Having to rest after every group of mobs to regen mana really destroys the game flow. Running out of mana is an outdated mechanic, the only time one should run out of mana is when fighting a boss that is above their current gear level or after several packs to regen both health and mana. This is excluding main healers of course.
I would have to disagree with you. This adds to the difficulty of the game and makes you as a player think about what you are doing.
Plus it can be implemented and if you don't like having to sit, then bring Pots not to. This mechanic of the game is not that big of a deal to those who know how to use it and leverage it.
So let's introduce a problem that is easily fixable with a generic consumable. Why have it in the first place? That isn't making the player think about whata they're doing. If you want the player to think then the class should have a resource. Some skills that aren't as powerful but regenerate your resource, then skills that deal damage or sunder etc, with an increasing resource requirement the more powerful the ability.
Comments
No MMORPG has ever required 100% group play. That has never existed. The games that require the most group play are ones that require you to be in a group for any kind of meaningful progression. That's what I am hoping for in Ashes of Creation.
Let me be honest... If you're saying you want a game that requires you to be in a group to do anything, I frankly don't believe you. Or you don't know what you're actually asking. I think you're making a badly-formed or disingenuous argument.
An MMORPG with absolutely zero solo content will fail. Period. It's the reason why you've never heard of one. You'd have to be pretty stupid to try. Making all of the challenging content require a group, that's a different story.
Let's consider WoW. Most people would agree it's a very solo-friendly game. Yet that game does have raids and dungeons you just can't do unless you are so overpowered that you're not going to get anything meaningful out of them. (I've soloed dungeons and raids in WoW just to get achievements and gear cosmetics.)
So just scale outward from there. Add difficult enemies in the open world that require a group to take down. Add quests that require a group. Put in many events that require a group. Rather than limiting people to always being in a group, instead put the majority of things a person would want to do in a situation where you need to be in a group.
That's where I see Ashes going. With sieges, caravans, node wars, monster token events, rather than eliminating all solo content they are just putting in a TON of group-required content.
My expectation is that you can try to play solo but you'll miss out on most of the game and your progression will be very slow. You also won't be able to get the best gear, titles, achievements, cosmetics, mounts, and so on.
And that's the way to do it. If there's a day where you just want to log in and be by yourself for a bit, maybe just go gather some materials and work on crafting, maybe do a few easy quests or grind a bit, you can. But that wouldn't be the majority of your play experience or you'd find the game to be very shallow and unsatisfying.
No i understand where your coming from and can agree with this more than before.
I was assuming you were advocating for the reverse of what you stated above, basically an easy solo game.
I can see we are very close on a few things in common.
Thanks for the follow up
The Wolves of Verra
are recruiting: https://discord.gg/4bFySwxS
sorry, I dont play shit mmo that provides my little pony ease content.
Instead of players trying to rush to end game for "peak end game raiding" - the entire game should be hard. Why do we gotta wait till end game to experience "peakness" when you make everything as equal to end game.
and YES he did say that and advertised - feel free to re-watch that YT video.
If you are designing a 8 man content, it needs to be a 8 man content. He shouldnt have said, it is doable with less and it will be easier for players to do the content because of other supplies and pots. that just showcase content is gonna be a joke and it shouldn't be.
This - I havent really given out my opinions on the actual TANK related stuff that was discuss. I would have still made a comment calling out the difficult but not as hard as I have been going at it. More like, raising my hand and voicing a concern, a yellow flag maybe, knowing it may not be tune or intended.
but Steven actually opened his mouth and said things that ended up having me to raise a red flag and fight anyone on the forum over it.
Talk about passion and the opposite of devs driven by Financials.
MUDs taught me how to type 150 wpm,
how to code in C++, and that given a position of power, humans are infinitely fallible.
Sitting around talking with friends on OOC about how one day we'd be playing a graphical version of the game.
Those were really the days.
discord.gg/pFCdaWM
Building a community specifically for Ashes of Creation.
Looking for members of all kinds to really pour
our all into the Alpha 2, Betas, and then launch.
This take is so bad, this is a ALPHA this is not the final game why are you looking at it as the final game with this kind of view point.
Based on your view point if you are level 1 you need to be struggling with the game out of the gate to meet your requirement of it being hard for you. The take is so bad its insane, you don't know the learning curve they are setting nor the actual difficulty of the game.
YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE hand crafted elements of end game tier content at the start when you don't even have access to your whole kit. You need to realize it takes time to develop content, if it is that easy to make end game raid content there would be a lot more of it in all games.
You are looking through things as a consumer without realizing this is an alpha or how game development goes and the time it takes to make content.
Effectively what you are saying again is all the game should be end game content without even thinking the time it takes to make that..
Honestly if you can't handle the disclaimers of this is alpha balancing is not final, not all skills are in the game and working, not all mobs are doing what they could be doing, etc just chill and wait for alpha 2 to release before trying to rant about the game. I don't think your heart can handle an actual development process.
Post like this take away from giving more informative information, you could have literally made a post talking about mechanics and stuff you want to see... instead you are ranting an unfinished alpha is not doing what you want...
2) I'd happily watch a 2-3 hour development update, every month. Am very glad for the insights that we receive.
3) We got both weapons-combat updates and the Tank preview, since October. These are not just "spit out" elements; They took some time to tune and form.
4) He's making a display of the gameplay. Were they supposed to do it 10 times and choose the best take, or something?
5) These are real, live people - not actors.
6) These are pre-launch, to-be Alpha areas; They may not even be areas in the live game. Even if they are? We'll have fine-tined these areas and their difficulty via extensive testing.
I wouldn't, I'd rather watch a concise to the point 30-45 minute update of quality than a rambled 2-3 hr dev update.
They don't need to do it 10 times, a basic story board, rough run through to ensure they know what to expect in the fights then a run full run through so they aren't caught off guard. ideally not recorded day of so Margaret and the Comm team have time to watch the video an check for any comments that were said off the cuff that are mistaken or misleading. and to add in some relevant media in post.
you're point?
The Wolves of Verra
are recruiting: https://discord.gg/Rt8G3sNYac
Given the scope of the project, they could easily spend as much time as they wanted on the dev updates. Of course, nobody wants to watch a rambled mess, whether it's 30 mins or 3 hours. There are so many potential topics. I'd really like to see a little more structure to the Character and Environment Art sections. Perhaps each month (for the next 9 months) do a little section on each of the Character races.
Could not have said it better myself
The Wolves of Verra
are recruiting: https://discord.gg/4bFySwxS
This is the only thing I found to be correct in your entire post.
Having to rest after every group of mobs to regen mana really destroys the game flow. Running out of mana is an outdated mechanic, the only time one should run out of mana is when fighting a boss that is above their current gear level or after several packs to regen both health and mana. This is excluding main healers of course.
Why should a wipe occur after pulling one mob when there are respawns? It should make things more difficult, yes, but again that is just tedious, especially as this is in an introductory area.
And if every class besides a tank is wet paper to enemies whats the point of bruiser variants such as the fighter?
I would have to disagree with you. This adds to the difficulty of the game and makes you as a player think about what you are doing.
Plus it can be implemented and if you don't like having to sit, then bring Pots not to. This mechanic of the game is not that big of a deal to those who know how to use it and leverage it.
The Wolves of Verra
are recruiting: https://discord.gg/4bFySwxS
While I have long believed that the streams lack challenge, I did notice that they struggled and died a bit during the Tank Preview.
However, I do not think that the game is currently designed to be challenging. The mobs simply exist to populate the area and allow players to test the game's systems and aid in its development. It would be unfair to demand a significant challenge at this time, as the game is not yet at that stage.
So let's introduce a problem that is easily fixable with a generic consumable. Why have it in the first place? That isn't making the player think about whata they're doing. If you want the player to think then the class should have a resource. Some skills that aren't as powerful but regenerate your resource, then skills that deal damage or sunder etc, with an increasing resource requirement the more powerful the ability.