Food for thought regarding content releases over the lifetime of AOC.

When designing Raids, Dungeons, etc, and facing player complaints, the IS team should ask, "Is the content we designed of good quality?" Some players may dislike certain types of content or encounters, but if the quality is high, others will enjoy it. Over time, this variation will make specific content in AOC memorable for individual players, which is important. I wanted to share this perspective on the forums because I believe it is valuable.

The best highs are made by the lows.
I just see a lot of hate for content releases sometimes even when the quality of the release is still really good and the players who don't like it are really just complaining about the type of content.

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Dygz

Yeah. Because otherwise the devs will release content they believe is of bad quality.

daveywavey

So, basically: Release good content.

Well worth a thread. Good job.

Voxtrium

daveywavey wrote: »

So, basically: Release good content.

Well worth a thread. Good job.

Dygz wrote: »

Yeah. Because otherwise the devs will release content they believe is of bad quality.

You are probably right they will always try to release quality content. However it is highly likely that at some point they release content that is very poorly received, when that happens it would be good for them to keep in mind that players enjoying the content to varying degrees is actually a good thing and reinforces the good memories of other content for players. The highest highs are made by the lows kinda ordeal. Otherwise releasing content that is always popular will likely lead to the same type of content.

Ludullu

In other words, don't listen to the whiners, if you believe that you did your best

SnowElf

Hmm. It could depend on what kind of new systems Intrepid may create down the line with these content drops, such as new types of PVP or PVE events/concepts that could really rope the players in or may make some want to sit out. Once you feel that you've done most that you can do in Verra, having a strong, non-boring, repetitive type of content that players don't get easily bored with is important imo, hence why I often float over to PVP once I've scratched the itch of exploring nearly everywhere in a video game.

So what kind of repetitive content would one really like to see that would have them wake up morning after morning and want to engage it over and over again.

George_Black

Here is your typical mmo player these days and their view of new releases:

"Why do I have to grind these boring instanced raids to complete the next meta gear for my 10000 alts? Just give me more brain dead MQS (with bad plot and writting), and new collectables.

Here is your L2 players and their view of new releases:

"After a year of satisfying character progress, guild gameplay and meaningful pvp, I cant wait for new areas in which I will keep fighting my rivals, new castles to attempt to own, new RBs with epic gear which will slowly empower my guilds champions and will bring more pvp, new skills and items, all of which will require group effort and juicy gameplay sessions."

Mmos live and die by proper expansions and new level caps. Not braindead, solo questlines which put you to sleep with their lack of challenge.

Noaani

George_Black wrote: »

Here is your typical mmo player these days and their view of new releases:

"Why do I have to grind these boring instanced raids to complete the next meta gear for my 10000 alts? Just give me more brain dead MQS (with bad plot and writting), and new collectables.

I'm not sure if you understand how incredibly specific this is to ESO - but it is literally only applicable to ESO.

Keep in mind, ESO is not a particularly good MMORPG from the perspectove of combat, content or character progression. The reason the bulk of the players in that game play (literally everyone in my MMO circle) is because they love the Elder Scrolls world, and they want more story.

So, in a game where the bulk of people are playing for the story, are you really surprised that they just want more story?

I do, however, completely agree with your last paragraph - MMORPG's live and die by the content they add to their game, at least in the west. This is why EQ and EQ2 are still live - despite their comparitively small population. This is one of the reasons Archeage is dead in regards to NA/EU.

@Voxtrium

I agree with your general point, to an extent, but there are other aspects to consider as well.

For example, if your game has a large population of PvP players, but no one running top end PvE raids, adding fantastic PvE raids to your game is probably not the best idea - you need to still add content of a type that appeals to your existing players.

If you have groups of players that run PvE raids, and others that run PvE group content, if the bulk of those running group content are done with the content they have but the bulk of those running raids are not, it would be a bad idea to add more raid content and not also add more group content.

While the content you add needs to be objectively good, it also needs to be targeted at existing groups of players that need content.

George_Black

Noaani wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Here is your typical mmo player these days and their view of new releases:

"Why do I have to grind these boring instanced raids to complete the next meta gear for my 10000 alts? Just give me more brain dead MQS (with bad plot and writting), and new collectables.

I'm not sure if you understand how incredibly specific this is to ESO - but it is literally only applicable to ESO.

Keep in mind, ESO is not a particularly good MMORPG from the perspectove of combat, content or character progression. The reason the bulk of the players in that game play (literally everyone in my MMO circle) is because they love the Elder Scrolls world, and they want more story.

So, in a game where the bulk of people are playing for the story, are you really surprised that they just want more story?

@Voxtrium

I agree with your general point, to an extent, but there are other aspects to consider as well.

For example, if your game has a large population of PvP players, but no one running top end PvE raids, adding fantastic PvE raids to your game is probably not the best idea - you need to still add content of a type that appeals to your existing players.

If you have groups of players that run PvE raids, and others that run PvE group content, if the bulk of those running group content are done with the content they have but the bulk of those running raids are not, it would be a bad idea to add more raid content and not also add more group content.

While the content you add needs to be objectively good, it also needs to be targeted at existing groups of players that need content.

Same for all instanced treadmills.

In Tera too, gearing was a treadmill from PvE instances to BG pvp.
Owpvp gave very little insentives for guild gameplay and rivalry. The joy of victory was just in BGs. Why raid 1000 times just to return to the same isolated BG scrippted fights?
People do not care for new gear and level caps because all they do is fight in BGs.
They will play and finish the new MQS in a few days.
They will experience the new raid scenarios and environments and be bored with them after the second run.
They dont look forward to having their gear become obsolete because there is no joy in gaining/crafting them.

In good owpvp mmos you enjoy everything. You dont get burned out by the constant boring raiding. Every day something new can happen in the new areas that expansions bring, just like with the original game at launch.

Eso wow tera. All boring instanced treadmills with story driven (yet 0 challenge) expansions.

Different people just expansions differently.
But some people have to common sense to know what products they enjoy and what comes with them.

It has nothing to do with ESO.

George_Black

Expansions in AOC should focus on the open world adventure (pvx) and character progression.

Instanced content, no matter how good the scenario and design and how challenging the gameplay:
Gets boring too quickly
Should not interfeere with the player driven economy and the dynamics of owpvp.

Noaani

George_Black wrote: »

It has nothing to do with ESO.

Your quote had everything to do with ESO.

In WoW, for example, when an expansion drops, people want more group and raid dungeons. No one (well, a very small minority) complains about getting them. That is because that is what WoW is.

Same with EQ and EQ2 - their expansions are more of what the game is.

Same with L2 - it's content additions (can't call them expansions - far too small) were more of what the game was.

To many ESO players, the game is the story - so that is what they wanted more of.

Your made up statement of how L2 players react to new content is the same as how most WoW, EQ, EQ2, FFXIV et al players react to expansions - they are getting more of the game they love, and so they are (largely) happy.

Even the complaints about WoW expansions when they happen support this - the complaints are largely due to expansions that change the game, rather than about expansions that just add more of the game.

So yeah, your comments were incredibly specific to ESO.

Noaani

George_Black wrote: »

Expansions in AOC should focus on the open world adventure (pvx) and character progression.

Instanced content, no matter how good the scenario and design and how challenging the gameplay:
Gets boring too quickly
Should not interfeere with the player driven economy and the dynamics of owpvp.

I almost agree.

Expaions should indeed focus on open world aspects of Ashes (which makes expansions incredibly hard - but that is the bed Steven has made for Ashes).

However, instanced content should not be outright discouraged. Instances perform a function, if it turns out that Ashes is lacking in a way where that function becomes needed, then there should be no hesitation at all in adding instances.

Your last comment confuses me, however. I agree that they should't impact open world PvP, but if instances are added to the game, they become a part of the games player driven economy - that is unavoidable.

Apok

I don't even think the content has to be good more than it needs to be well thought out, Having new gear that stays in par with old gear is usually well thought out. Jacking up item levels to force people to pretty much farm their stuff over again isn't.

Anytime NW or FFXIV releases a new dungeon or whatever it feels like a reskinned version of what they already done. FFXI has slight alterations on how you do endgame, too much to explain without ranting but for example one area was limbus with a cost to enter, a cooldown on entry and a time limit. You kill to open new areas and could target certain areas and do raids or go into the same area and farm as a duo/trio as long as the currency you made was valued at more then what you spent to go in. A seperate area was Nyzul tower where there's 100 floors and a boss at ever 20th. you do 5 floors and either save and leave or keep going. if you wiped you went back to floor 1. FFXI endgame had a lot of flavor to it for being a game designed around the PS2

George_Black

You must be an eso player for playing ff14.
Noanni what do you think?

Apok wrote: »

I don't even think the content has to be good more than it needs to be well thought out, Having new gear that stays in par with old gear is usually well thought out. Jacking up item levels to force people to pretty much farm their stuff over again isn't.

Anytime NW or FFXIV releases a new dungeon or whatever it feels like a reskinned version of what they already done. FFXI has slight alterations on how you do endgame, too much to explain without ranting but for example one area was limbus with a cost to enter, a cooldown on entry and a time limit. You kill to open new areas and could target certain areas and do raids or go into the same area and farm as a duo/trio as long as the currency you made was valued at more then what you spent to go in. A seperate area was Nyzul tower where there's 100 floors and a boss at ever 20th. you do 5 floors and either save and leave or keep going. if you wiped you went back to floor 1. FFXI endgame had a lot of flavor to it for being a game designed around the PS2

Apok

George_Black wrote: »

You must be an eso player for playing ff14.
Noanni what do you think?

Apok wrote: »

I don't even think the content has to be good more than it needs to be well thought out, Having new gear that stays in par with old gear is usually well thought out. Jacking up item levels to force people to pretty much farm their stuff over again isn't.

Anytime NW or FFXIV releases a new dungeon or whatever it feels like a reskinned version of what they already done. FFXI has slight alterations on how you do endgame, too much to explain without ranting but for example one area was limbus with a cost to enter, a cooldown on entry and a time limit. You kill to open new areas and could target certain areas and do raids or go into the same area and farm as a duo/trio as long as the currency you made was valued at more then what you spent to go in. A seperate area was Nyzul tower where there's 100 floors and a boss at ever 20th. you do 5 floors and either save and leave or keep going. if you wiped you went back to floor 1. FFXI endgame had a lot of flavor to it for being a game designed around the PS2

played 14 cause I played 11, tried to give it a chance for years but eventually gave up. NW is the only more recent MMO I've put hours in I usually play Ark survival evolved pvp, PoE, or starcraft II.

A lot of these MMOs that come out feel like over glorified battle arena style games to me. idk why but pvp survival games give me the same feel older MMOs did

Noaani

George_Black wrote: »

You must be an eso player for playing ff14.
Noanni what do you think?

Apok wrote: »

I don't even think the content has to be good more than it needs to be well thought out, Having new gear that stays in par with old gear is usually well thought out. Jacking up item levels to force people to pretty much farm their stuff over again isn't.

Anytime NW or FFXIV releases a new dungeon or whatever it feels like a reskinned version of what they already done. FFXI has slight alterations on how you do endgame, too much to explain without ranting but for example one area was limbus with a cost to enter, a cooldown on entry and a time limit. You kill to open new areas and could target certain areas and do raids or go into the same area and farm as a duo/trio as long as the currency you made was valued at more then what you spent to go in. A seperate area was Nyzul tower where there's 100 floors and a boss at ever 20th. you do 5 floors and either save and leave or keep going. if you wiped you went back to floor 1. FFXI endgame had a lot of flavor to it for being a game designed around the PS2

No, that post doesn't come across as someone playing ESO.

The reason your post was so incredibly specific to ESO was because the things you talked about were only complained about in ESO, and MQs is a term that is only really used in ESO among modern MMO's - and literally only ever used in ESO in the specific way you talked about it.

Fact is, your post was specific to ESO. I don't get why this is a sticking point for you - you know you were only talking about ESO.

Veeshan

I hope they keep some content they add a secret when making additions for players to discover. Lets say they add a new weapon for example they dont tell anyone that and they only way to know it been added is if u open X dungeon and discover a secret wall or something that takes you to the vault where lets say a lost weapon blueprint is located discovering this blueprint will unlock crossbows for the guild/players who discover it, a week later the crafters of the guild home node can then craft it and a week or 2 after that everyone else can as the technology spreads around the world.
Same thing could be done with new classes/skills/pets/mounts/armor recipes and so on. Add them to game dont tell them how to unlock it and let them figure it out.

A class might get a secret skill for example however that doesnt get unlocked till a specific class does a hidden goal like kill 5000 of x mobs or players and then they unlock the skill for a week or 2 before everyone else can learn it as a little reward for unlocking it

George_Black

Noaani wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

You must be an eso player for playing ff14.
Noanni what do you think?

Apok wrote: »

I don't even think the content has to be good more than it needs to be well thought out, Having new gear that stays in par with old gear is usually well thought out. Jacking up item levels to force people to pretty much farm their stuff over again isn't.

Anytime NW or FFXIV releases a new dungeon or whatever it feels like a reskinned version of what they already done. FFXI has slight alterations on how you do endgame, too much to explain without ranting but for example one area was limbus with a cost to enter, a cooldown on entry and a time limit. You kill to open new areas and could target certain areas and do raids or go into the same area and farm as a duo/trio as long as the currency you made was valued at more then what you spent to go in. A seperate area was Nyzul tower where there's 100 floors and a boss at ever 20th. you do 5 floors and either save and leave or keep going. if you wiped you went back to floor 1. FFXI endgame had a lot of flavor to it for being a game designed around the PS2

No, that post doesn't come across as someone playing ESO.

The reason your post was so incredibly specific to ESO was because the things you talked about were only complained about in ESO, and MQs is a term that is only really used in ESO among modern MMO's - and literally only ever used in ESO in the specific way you talked about it.

Fact is, your post was specific to ESO. I don't get why this is a sticking point for you - you know you were only talking about ESO.

What I wrote was repeated by this ff14 player.

Noaani

George_Black wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

You must be an eso player for playing ff14.
Noanni what do you think?

Apok wrote: »

I don't even think the content has to be good more than it needs to be well thought out, Having new gear that stays in par with old gear is usually well thought out. Jacking up item levels to force people to pretty much farm their stuff over again isn't.

Anytime NW or FFXIV releases a new dungeon or whatever it feels like a reskinned version of what they already done. FFXI has slight alterations on how you do endgame, too much to explain without ranting but for example one area was limbus with a cost to enter, a cooldown on entry and a time limit. You kill to open new areas and could target certain areas and do raids or go into the same area and farm as a duo/trio as long as the currency you made was valued at more then what you spent to go in. A seperate area was Nyzul tower where there's 100 floors and a boss at ever 20th. you do 5 floors and either save and leave or keep going. if you wiped you went back to floor 1. FFXI endgame had a lot of flavor to it for being a game designed around the PS2

No, that post doesn't come across as someone playing ESO.

The reason your post was so incredibly specific to ESO was because the things you talked about were only complained about in ESO, and MQs is a term that is only really used in ESO among modern MMO's - and literally only ever used in ESO in the specific way you talked about it.

Fact is, your post was specific to ESO. I don't get why this is a sticking point for you - you know you were only talking about ESO.

What I wrote was repeated by this ff14 player.

No - they were very different complaints.

You stated that "typical MMO players these days" complain about having dungeon content to run, that needs to be run many times in order to gear all their alts, and that players just want MQ's.

First of all, even just the term MQ is fairly specific to ESO. It's like someone saying they aren't talking about EVE when they refer to corps instead of guilds.

Second, the complaint about FFXIV was in regards to the form the content took. The complaint wasn't that there were dungeons to run, but that the conditions around the content were unfun (reading the basic outline, I agree).

No game other than ESO has players complain about getting dungeons and such - even if other games may sometimes complain about the form they take. Your lack of experience with PvE may not be conducive to you understanding the difference, I am absolutely keeping that in mind.

Texas

The raid boss in Alpha 1 was instanced, but only the boss room. I think the design philosophy should be to make instances as small and last minute as possible, but I'm not sure 'no instancing ever' is really feasible. People are going to want instanced bosses for the same reason that people are going to want instanced arenas. Because at a certain point, the fight itself is supposed to be the thing.

People don't hate dungeons and raids. Those are easily the most anticipated new content. A lot of MMOs have turned into lobby games with a world attached because players will still stick around even if the only thing the game does well is dungeon and raids.

Lineage 2 is not an example of a successful MMO.
It was never as popular as Lineage, it collapsed shortly after launch with many players actually returning to the OG Lineage, which continued to be the more popular game until it closed. L2 has long been a skeleton MMO scraping by off Russian-bots, P2W, and RMT. Can you still have fun playing it? Sure, but don't pretend that it's something that it's not.

Still, I think there are enough people who want MMOs to be more than lobbies. They do want the old feeling of a sandbox world, but with themepark systems, and updated combat, boss design, and graphics.

Hinotori

NiKr wrote: »

don't listen to the whiners

Well someone had better listen to my whining. I'm not whining for myself you know. I'm whining for the game, in that weird piqued high pitch in the hope that it will pierce someone's skull and the memory of the thing I'm whining about stays there and something is done to fix it.

ExiledByrd

Whine away @Hinotori ! This game isn't done and I think everyone here wants it to be the best game possible. (Now if only we could agree what the best game looks like.)

Aszkalon

Voxtrium wrote: »

Some players may dislike certain types of content or encounters, but if the quality is high, others will enjoy it. Over time, this variation will make specific content in AOC memorable for individual players, which is important. I wanted to share this perspective on the forums because I believe it is valuable.

The best highs are made by the lows.

I don't want to sound entitled, here, but one Approach is always a good Approach.

1.) What Intrepid is doing already -> always listening to the Suggestions, Wishes, Ideas, of the Fanbase (and later Playerbase)

2.) Trying the best to create some Stuff, Content, things People wish to be in the Game -> so that mostly Everyone is happy.

3.) Despite Number 1. and Number 2. -> of Course it is always the best Course of Action to primarily release the Updates, Contents, Expansions and Stories, that they want to release in the first Place.

You can always try your best to give all Players exactly what they want -> but never forget to realise your own things into the Game which You always plan anyway, to keep the Game going and the ingame World growing Piece by Piece.

Dygz

SnowElf wrote: »

So what kind of repetitive content would one really like to see that would have them wake up morning after morning and want to engage it over and over again.

Ashes is a dynamic world - shouldn't really have much repetitive content.
If the Node system fails... what's the point of playing Ashes rather than any other MMOPRG?

Aszkalon

Dygz wrote: »

Ashes is a dynamic world - shouldn't really have much repetitive content.
If the Node system fails... what's the point of playing Ashes rather than any other MMOPRG?

On Danger of sounding either a little bit stupid, or like a Weisenheimer, or both, here ... ...

I think whatever takes so long -> and in fact already "took so long" since/between 2018 and now, is not necessarily Graphics, or the massive Open World.

Despite of Course no way to deny that this is taking a lot of time, too. But Nope -> what truly takes so long, is to design the Node-System and that they want it to work so well.

So in the Past there "were" over 100 Nodes planned for the Game, right ?
Then i heard/read it got cut down to 85 Nodes. One of the Arguments if my Memory is correct, is that Sir Steven himself said,

that they don't want People to run into another Node like Two Minutes after they left their own Node, right ? Jeah, that would be very weird if most of the Open World is like within City/Palisade-Walls and not Nature and Stuff.

Excluding the Oceans, of Course.

But EEEIIIGHTY-FIVE Nodes or so ?? In Need of being designed, like :

- > That EVERY Nook and Cranny, every House-Corner made out of Wood or something else, looks nice ??

- > In like Eight to Nine DIFFERENT RACES regarding how the Node can look dependent on which Race is the most dominant in how the cultural Infrastructure of the Buildings look ?

- > In like at least Four Stages or so ?? Or maybe even SIX in Case the Encampments are also racially/culturally influenced, too ?

For amazingly many Buildings ? And EVERY - SINGLE - NODE - can have a different Number of FREEHOLDS around them, from like/between Stage Three to Stage Six ?
: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Node_stages

Plus Apartments, Taverns, etc. - all of this wants to be programmed, right ? When right now, the Developer Team from Intrepid has not all of the Open World ready - that means the Nodes affected in these unfinished Areas of the Game World are also not ready and programmed yet, right ?

So Yes. They want it all nice and running,
and i can understand why it needs so much Time to get it done.

Yuyukoyay

I just prefer for the story to be down to earth. If you are going to insist on adding god tier enemies to the game I think the FF14 approach to their implementation is the best. So far most MMO stories just completely suck. I hope that Ashes of Creation can fix that, but if I had to pick one FF14 is too far ahead of everyone else in terms of interesting stories.

WoW's overall stories generally all suck, but their zone stories are pretty good. Their overall stories generally ignore all lore before the MMO, but the zone stories take that lore into account. Those games started as RTS. So they have a ton more starting lore than Ashes of Creation is going to start with.

Basically I won't want to put up with the boring quests if there is no interesting story payoff for it. So from the start the game needs to have a somewhat interesting premise for me to care about the rest of the game. Being invested into a story is important for all content going forward.

Also Racial relevance. If there are racials in the game I would like them to be designed so that they are always useful for all future content no matter what they may be. However, I also wouldn't want it to restrict wanting to pick the race and class you want just because they don't synergize at all either.

Those are 2 things all MMOs just outright fail at. It would be nice if this game did it right from the start and maintained it.

Depraved

Noaani wrote: »

While the content you add needs to be objectively good, it also needs to be targeted at existing groups of players that need content.

while I agree with this, I'm extremely surprised seeing you say this, since you are always saying that ashes wont have top pve content and needs top pve content.

ExiledByrd

Yuyukoyay wrote: »

I just prefer for the story to be down to earth. If you are going to insist on adding god tier enemies to the game I think the FF14 approach to their implementation is the best. So far most MMO stories just completely suck. I hope that Ashes of Creation can fix that, but if I had to pick one FF14 is too far ahead of everyone else in terms of interesting stories.

I don't know, FFXIV story line mission is a bit... off? Lots of teleporting and talking to people, lots of cutscenes that don't add much to a text block, and it's kinda weird. Last expansion you time travelled to learn that the world was being destroyed by a sad space canary. So you had to go to the moon and convince the rabbits that live there to let you use their space ship.

I would prefer the GW2 story style. Start a narrative with the first game and slowly expand it. Base game is all about recovering the planet, second game we've gone a little bit farther and discovered all the undead and we have to defend what we built plus building up new nodes and maybe node types. Third game the water rises and destroys all of the Tulnar cities underground. And so on.

Noaani

Depraved wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

While the content you add needs to be objectively good, it also needs to be targeted at existing groups of players that need content.

while I agree with this, I'm extremely surprised seeing you say this, since you are always saying that ashes wont have top pve content and needs top pve content.

If it doesn't have it at launch (or within the first three months), there is literally no point in adding it later.

Content additions do not attract entire population segments to your game - you need to attract them from the start, and then work at keeping them.

If Intrepid has top end raid content at launch, then it needs to add top end raid content with it's content additions - along with group content, PvP content, crafting content, naval content etc. If it doesn't have it, it doesn't need to add it, and would be a waste of resources to do so.

I have always said Ashes needs top end PvE content to be successful (more successful than, say, Archeages NA/EU servers). Me saying this is something that it needs to break above that level of success hasn't changed.

However, I have no reason to think that Ashes will reach the success Archeage NA/EU had.

Dygz

Seasonal content does not need to be as robust as Expansions.

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

Seasonal content does not need to be as robust as Expansions.

Doesn't need to be, but it should still be.

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