Mixed community gameplay?

I've played lots of MMOs with community gameplay. Personally I tend to play healer. Some of the peeps tend to be obsessive pvp fans. Others more builders, crafters and pve fans. My question is will this game keep us all happy or allow for server customisation or are we likely to look at community collapse and migration to other games in short time?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Azherae

You're obviously gonna get a lot of highly opinionated comments on this one.

The shortest answer I can give you is this:

"The sort of person who tends to be concerned about this, is currently trending toward believing that the game will not last long or have a large consistent community."

"The sort of person who has experienced and stuck with the sort of game that is similar to this one, in the past, is trending toward believing that the game will have a big enough community to not collapse."

Or, since a picture is supposedly worth a thousand words and a meme is worth over nine thousand:

Dygz

I think there's a good chance that while Ashes will be niche, there will be plenty of PvP gamers to keep the servers running for at least a decade.

I expect it will not really be a "mixed community". The vast majority of Ashes player population will be gamers for whom PvP is a very key draw to playing Open World MMOs. With the RPG elements being a low motivation.

Hinotori

Ashes is for everyone, as long as you enjoy risk.

Taleof2Cities

Hinotori wrote: »

Ashes is for everyone, as long as you enjoy risk.

Risk versus reward? I think I've heard that somewhere ...

Dygz wrote: »

I think there's a good chance that while Ashes will be niche, there will be plenty of PvP gamers to keep the servers running for at least a decade.

Considering the amount of bait in the question, I would not have given an answer as stoic as this.
Bravo.

AnimusRex

The game will have something for everyone but won't be a complete game for everyone.

The quantity of the something is your personal motivation.

Garrtok

Of course it will be possible to focus more on pve content, BUT if you don't like pvp at all, aoc is the wrong game for you.

TheDarkSorcerer

I support this game and will most likely enjoy it, even as a solo PvPer. I think it's a matter of asking; Is this a game everyone will want to play or is this a game a niche group will play. It's probably the latter.

I don't have insight or data with what customers are interested in for gaming. But you can't go against data. Ex, if there is clear data that Nike customers aren't interested in buying yellow shoes and only buying black, you can't force yellow shoes on them, no matter how hard you try. It's naive to think otherwise. So from a growth side, if only a niche group end up playing Ashes, you may want to introduce elements/playstyles where other's feel welcome to play as well. Because otherwise... how are you going to see growth?

HughJardon

It's a new concept of game, generally. There's something for everyone, really.

Fantmx

The statements of "this game might not be for you" and "core concepts will not change" increased greatly over the past 1 to 2 years. In my opinion this means they have a specific target audience and that is not everyone.

oOKingOo

Ephasius wrote: »

I've played lots of MMOs with community gameplay. Personally I tend to play healer. Some of the peeps tend to be obsessive pvp fans. Others more builders, crafters and pve fans. My question is will this game keep us all happy or allow for server customisation or are we likely to look at community collapse and migration to other games in short time?

That's the question, indeed! Personally, I come from a PVX sandbox MMO, so I know for a fact that it is totally possible to blend all these player bases. When I started, I referred to myself as an MMO player, not a PvP/PvE/crafter, etc., because I didn't even know that you could differentiate these.

For me, this differentiation started when I began playing games like WoW (didn't play much), SWTOR, ESO (played the longest out of these 4), Guild Wars 2, etc., where these player bases are clearly separated.

Even when I started playing ESO, coming from that PVX game (Age of Wushu/Wulin), at first, I was a PVX player doing dungeons and quests as well as Cyrodiil. Then, I got converted into a PvP player because the PvE in ESO to me is just not rewarding and fun. It was basically too easy (you run a 4-person dungeon with 4 DPS, and you still aren't even close to dying once; if you want any challenge at all, you need to specifically look for that challenge in trials or vet dungeons, etc., but the base PvE that everyone gets exposed to is just a boring chore to me), so I focused more on Cyrodiil.

When I first understood how the game even works with gear sets, etc., I basically had to make a choice of what kind of player I wanted to be because in ESO, many sets that are good in PvE are bad in PvP and vice versa. I'm not trying to bash ESO; I had a lot of fun in that game, but you could essentially release two different games. That's how different PvP is from PvE. All your damage/healing is halved in PvP, for example. And it's similar in other games. For example, GW2. In GW2, whenever I play it, I just play to level 10, and from then on, I do arena only because everybody has the same gear, and you get to choose whatever build you want as if you were suddenly max level.

As someone who loves PvP and likes PvE (if it's challenging), why would I even participate in PvE in games like that? I don't need gear since everyone gets the same, and I don't need to level up since everyone is artificially max level. So there is zero reason to take part in the PvE, ergo I'm a PvP player.

For me, I enjoy when I can do challenging PvE, which then also makes me better in PvP. What I don't like is having to do boring PvE to be able to be competitive in PvP.

For an example from Age of Wushu, I would run school instances (dungeons) because they would drop certificates which you can exchange for skills from the tier 4 skillset of my school. I could then use that skillset in PvP. But I wasn't forced to do it; I could just use my tier 1/2/3 skillsets, and they are not necessarily worse than the tier 4 ones; it was more about what you prefer to play. If I liked the tier 4 set, this would then motivate me to do PvE. Also, the dungeons were more challenging back when they came out. You would actually die if you messed up, and having someone that can tank was kind of a must-have. Systems like that blend the player bases and create PVX players.

Child Item