Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
Steven's concepts of what PvEers want is only slightly better than his concepts of what RPers want.
And Steven's RPer concepts are abysmal.
(We still don't have a new Lead Game Designer)
We now know that what that really means is, "Ashes is a PvP-centric game, similar to EvE Online, ArcheAge and Lineage 2, primarily designed for gamers who love PvP combat."
I don't know enough about Lineage 2 to use that as a measure.
So... yes... we now have more clarification than we did in 2018 (when Jeffrey Bard was still the Lead Game Designer).
What is "Corruption balancing"??
Balance of corruption gain and clearing values. Also its scaling in relation to your PK count. The stat dampening values and the whole BH system details too.
All of those are balancing tools for the owpvp and the pvpness of the game will depend on how all of those end up being designed on release.
You are here because Steven has game playing roots in L2. There is no game development roots from L2 or Archeage, just a guy that played those games and enjoyed them. Many others are here because of the roots from the page linked above that Intrepid actually publicized right back from day 1.
Those games are the real and actual roots of Intrepid - if not of Archeage.
Anyone that was around looking at the game in 2017, left and came back in 2023 would be totally forgiven for thinking it was a totally different game.
Obviously other devs and designers will influence the development, but unless Steven really says "fuck it all, I'm selling this piece of shit to some venture capital company and bouncing" - I doubt the core principles would change.
And as Steven has said in the past, their onboarding process is quite rigorous and they talk to the potential employees on several topics before deciding whether Intrepid wants them. I'd imagine that sharing at least a part of Steven's vision would be one of those topics.
In other words, just as any logical person would expect some shitty monetization practices from Blizz, because they're controlled by greedy execs, I think it's quite logical to expect L2/AA-like mechanics from a game that's not only led but also paid for by a dude who loved those games.
Yeah, for sure.
But if someone that loved L2 hires a bunch of ex-WoW developers to make a game that has features like L2, that games roots would be in WoW, not L2.
Neither that fictional game nor Ashes has any actual connection to L2, and so no roofs in said game. Just a desire to copy some of its features.
Keep in mind though, Steven's intention to make L2.2 wasnt really.clear until 2019 or so, it absolutely wasnt clear in 2017.
What I dont understand at all is - why didnt Steven hire any ex-L2 developers? If I was in the position to develop an MMO, the first thing I would do is send the 20 or so ex-EQ2 developers I know (well, know well enough to have an email address for) an email...
What I absolutely wouldnt do is hire a bunch of developers whose work had been on games completely different to the one I want to make, proudly advertise that fact and expect it to all be fine when the game I am making doesnt really appeal to the people that played the games I advertised my team as having had experience in.
Basically, if I am saying my team has experience in a given game, it would be because I am making a game players of those games would be interested in playing.
So yeah, this was the piece of info I was missing then.
I dunno how many western devs L2 had early on, outside of Richard Garriott. Some of them might've shifted specialties or quit completely or are just working on other games and don't wanna leave those companies.
Professionals are still just professionals, so imo it's completely fine to hire a person with a great background in another game to make a new game that's quite different from their previous work. I'd imagine that Steven's the one who dictates the core design of the game. We obviously had Jeff as the lead and I'm sure he pushed for better and deeper designs too, which is why we might get several great systems that were nowhere near L2, but in the Intrepid's situation of "this is Steven's baby that he wants to release no matter what" I wouldn't really rely on other devs' experience to try and predict what the game will be.
That kickstarter section is just a marketing ploy to decrease any potential scam alerts for people. Just as people trusted Double Fine with their money cause they knew that name from previous games, seeing big mmo names on an mmo kickstarter builds trust in people's minds.
But as you said, I guess the L2ness of the game wasn't really evident back then, so I understand why oldschool followers would think that the game started leaning more towards pvp.
As I'm sure you are aware, I expected the "change" to both ocean and freehold PvP - due purely to my time in Archeage.
Rather, the issue is the seeming drop of PvE aspects.
As I have said many times, a game as a whole need not pick between PvP and PvE, they just need to pick between the two at specific points. There is no reason at all as to why the MMO with the best open world PvP on the market couldn't also be the MMO with the best instanced raiding on the market.
Intrepid initially took people from the games with the best PvE content on the market.
when you say roots, what do you mean by that?
so if I make a platformer, then I make an RPG, the RPG has its roots on the platformer? and if I make a puzzle games, it has its roots on the other 2 games?
shigeru Miyamoto made Mario, then he made zelda. so zelda has its roots on Mario? zelda is inspired on Mario? other than "save the princess" (which most games were back then) they are completely different.
the developers don't dictate the direction of the game. the director does. remember when you talked about skills in games being 2 types: do damage to your enemies and undo damage to your allies. well, the developer implements those following the direction of of the director. the director then picks and discards.
IS has developers that worked in NW, does that mean aoc will be similar to nw?
when it comes to designers, all they do is implement design patterns, things like "don't add a long, empty corridor with nothing at the end of it on your scene as an alternate path". all design patterns can be applied regardless of what games you made before.
aoc is 80-90% L2. steven probably didn't hire any l2 developers because they are all Korean and most likely don't speak english
While the franchises have gone in wildly different directions, the first iteration of each was no where near as different as they are now.
However, they are different. Zelda back in the day wasnt advertised as "from the developers of Mario". This is the distinction here.
Ashes WAS advertised as being "from the developers of EverQuest 2". And this was back before Steven had made public his intent to make it L2.2
Are they advertising this fact?
If they are, then people that enjoyed New World (all three of them) would have reason to expect Ashes to be somewhat similar.
If it wasnt going to be somewhat similar, why advertise the fact? Once again, that is the point.
well, they advertised they had devs from eq..for marketing purposes. to give people confidence that they had experienced people. its a frame of reference.
i guess I still dont get what you mean by roots. zelda is nowhere near similar to any mario game and vie been playing Mario and zelda since the first one on nes, and also the 2 Mario games in arcade, one with donkey kong, and one either cooperating or competing with luigi in a 1 screen level with 2 pipes trying to beat levels (forgot the name)
As a reminder, much of what we show prior to Alpha Two is subject to further testing and feedback, especially during Alpha Two! ^_^
I just don't expect to play Ashes if it's too close to Lineage 2.
Because I have no interest in playing games like Lineage 2.
I especially won't play games like EvE Online or ArcheAge.
I mean Corruption is not really a deterrent for PvP on the Open Seas, so...
I'd say that "Corruption balancing" can not counter-act PvP on the Open Seas.
Mostly this. While I'm happy to play Ashes if it is close to L2, I actually just don't feel like it really can be.
I'll be happy for Intrepid to prove me wrong, but the 'skeleton' of this game doesn't seem to match the 'meat on the bones' intended, to me, still.
And as Dygz says, a lot of that comes down to the fact that the Open Seas PvP exists. It's similar to Albion in that regard.
Albion wouldn't need to be 'not Full Loot' to be palatable to me (it already kinda is) because that would just change the structure of the power dynamics. Albion would need to have a structure where the 'the real game' didn't start in the always-flagged/no penalty area.
I do love taking a break of every game sometimes, if I do this in AoC, when I come back I could pretty much have only my gear and bank
There's this brutality in AoC that people don't seem to worry about, people mostly show being worry about small ganks instead of thinking about how it's gonna be when you are wiped clean
That's the thing, I don't know if we're just weird, but no one I know cares about that, because that's part of the dynamism of the world, it's what one signed up for.
And there's other reasons, related to the overall difficulty of things like Node Sieges, it being part of the story, and so on. I don't care if the node gets destroyed, it's a little frustrating, but it's part of the experience in a way that 'just being relegated to second class because you can't win against whatever the latest weird cheap or broken tactic' isn't.
Macro-activity isn't as annoying, this even applies to ganking and PvP to an extent. If I know that it took 8 coordinated people to achieve the 'gank' and set me back, then it's not the same as the general flow that you get from 'yeah this situation just loops because you're the wrong class and your friends aren't on'.
I don't think it's healthy for MMOs to have the 'problem' that MOBAs have where you just 'don't play because your friends aren't on and it's no fun to play with toxic randoms'.
So while that might not make a lot of sense, we're definitely much more concerned with 'small random ganks' than coordinated GvG or 'the loss of a Node'. Losing your Node restarts the gameplay loop with different conditions. Being ganked (in the case where you fight back because that's what you're supposed to do') and the opponent just keeps trying to make your play session 'meaningless' doesn't really restart the loop at all.
Yes. And... Steven had a ton of fun playing Lineage 2 and ArcheAge.
At first, I bought into his hype about the importance of making players who normally play on PvE-Only servers feel comfortable.
More importantly, I thought that hiring mostly EQ devs, including Lead Designer Jeffrey Bard, was a good indication that IS would want to retain EQ players who normally play EQ on PvE-Only servers. But, after JB left Intrepid Studios, Steven's been steadily moving the bar farther from a middle of PvP-Optional server closer to a PvP server.
And we still don't have an experienced Lead Designer who might mitigate Steven's zeal for PvP - even though he thinks he wants PvErs to play. Just as, Steven will tell you that Ashes will support RPers - but when RPers ask for details, STeven says weird and confusing stuff, like, "You will be able to RP inside of Taverns." Last time he was asked about RP support, Steven was completely confused and said something like, "Sure! You will be able to use /commands to type in chat."
So... yes... I would have more confidence if the devs (and when they finally hire one, the new Lead Game Designer) had the experience and clout to influence Steven's vision, since this is Steven's first game.
Maybe the gank is too personal and the person feels violated and humiliated
I will agree on you about "people are weird", since you can escape hundreds of ganks but an army bashing your structures is by far more dangerous
Because in terms of resources, losing your structures could be equivalent being ganked hundreds or thousands of times
It is perhaps worth pointing out that my stance on this thread as it is now is that I can fully understand how people may have come to this game with a misconception of what it is intended to be.
The original advertising had nothing at all to do with L2. There was no.mention at all that the developer was taking ideas from it or trying to recreate it.
That didnt happen for a solid years after the original kickstarter.
Basically, they advertised the game as being from developers of one type of game (EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, SWG), and then a year later they said "actually, L2 and Archage".
People that were around in the beginning and came in based on them saying EQ, EQ2 etc have every right to feel pissed off imo. Just as I would say that people that came to Ashes for its L2 copying would have every right to feel pissed off if Intrepid pivoted and decided to copy WoW.
It is the same thing.
Smart people will not be wiped clean from a siege.
Sure, they lose their freehold - but they gain a blueprint of their freehold that they can place down once they have a new node.
Further, sieges all have warnings. Days of warning. If you are somewhat hostile to an organized group of players, you could argue that you have two months warning of a siege if you live in a metropolis.
Essentially, all you stand to lose if your freehold is destroyed in a siege are the resources stored in your freehold. With days of warning, that should be minimal. With two months of warning, that should be zero.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/55319/freeholds-do-you-want-a-pvp-settings-for-your-freehold