Feedback on design decisions that might kill the game.

Let me start by saying that I haven't followed the forums/discord discourse until now. So if the points raised here have already been thoroughly discussed in the community and are the way they are for good reason, I apologize for wasting everyones time.
There is a lot to like about Ashes of Creation, so anyone reading this shouldn't take this post as me not liking the game. Anything not mentioned here you can assume I either like or at least don't think is a major issue. However, there are some design decisions I can't really see the benefit of, but seem to have large enough downsides that they might literally kill the game long term.

1. Death Penalties
The first major issue to me are death penalties. I can't for the life of me see the benefit of general purpose death penalties, but the downsides seem significant.
First of all it is a huge turnoff to most casual players, who either don't enjoy or don't have the time to smack their head into a wall untill it breaks. And lets be realistic here, casual players are the vast majority of MMO players. You need those players for the game to survive. So even if those penalties are not that severe, the perception alone might turn casual players away. Additionally, death penalties a) disincentivize players from playing together and b) disincentivize players from playing certain types of content.

a) It is an issue in MMOs across the board, that players are somewhat unwilling to play with less experienced teamates for efficiency reasons. In most MMOs, if you want to get into harder content, you are usually required to show proof that you've already completed the content the group is about to attempt. This is understandable, since experienced players don't always want to carry or teach inexperienced players. They just want to get their run done so they can get their reward. Now imagine how much worse this will get if it's no longer just about time efficiency, but actually involves a tangible cost to all players if a party wipes. Players will be heavily incentivized to shut out anyone that might not already be at the top of their game.

b) Death penalties also disincentivize players from playing any type of content they are ansure about being able to complete. Since there will be a cost to wiping repeatedly, players are incentivized to simply not attempt difficult content or participate in PvP. Again, more casual players not daring to set foot into difficult PvE content or participate in PvP is already an issue in MMOs with a more modern design philosophy. We want people to get into PvP, we want people to just say "fuck it, lets try this boss and if we wipe, who cares". Giving people an extra incentive to stay safe and leave the difficult stuff to the handful of hardcore players seems like a bad idea.

Now it should be mentioned that I have no issue with very significant death penalties for corrupted players. They chose to be a dick and it's fine that they have to live with the consequences. But for everyone else I just can't see the upside, while the huge downside is that it sets all the wrong incentives. And while it might sound a bit dramatic to claim that this might kill the game, it is very much those kind of unnecessary frustrations that keep casual players away from otherwise well designed games. So unless there is a very significant upside that can not be accomplished in any other way, I would seriously think about whether death penalties are a good idea (at the very least in PvE).

2. XP, kill and loot sharing
While maybe not quite as detrimental to the player experience as death penalties, I again think this is designed in an unnecessarily frustrating way.

Especially the way XP sharing and kill participation currenly work seems to have mostly downsides to the player experience. If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed. Players should be incentiviced to play together, rather than compete against and stealing progress from eachother. While in some situations this competition can incentivise players to chat and join a party, in many situations that is either not possible (e.g. when a party is already full) or impractical (e.g. a high but constantly changing player density trying to kill quest mobs). And while I understand that ashes to an extend is designed with competition in mind, that's what PvP is for. You don't need XP/kill stealing for that. Making it so that everyong is simply happy for every new friend that shows up to help, rather than seeing them as unwanted competition, seems a healthier design philosophy to me. And if you really are there to take something from an enemy group, kill them!

Loot sharing is the point I am the least bothered by and it wouldn't be that big of a deal to me if it stayed the way it is. While it feels somewhat outdated to me that people have to fight over items, rather than droping personal loot, I wouldn't view that as a huge issue in and of itself. However, it might become an issue if XP sharing and kill participation are handled in what I would consider a healthier way. If anyone can just join in as described above, it no longer makes sense to share XP and loot between participants, since you no longer have control over who gets to join your activity. It might be inevitable to move to personal loot and 100% XP for everyone participating, if those systems are changed as suggested.

I think what it ultimately comes down to is this: While I dislike many of the modern MMO design directions (like making the world irrelevant through flying mounts or fast travel), some things have changed for good reason. We shouldn't go back to how it was done in the olden days just for the sake of it. I think Ashes of Creation does a lot of stuff right, but on the points mentioned above I am not so sure.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Everyone is of course welcome to tell me why I'm wrong.

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nanfoodle

I also hope the pillars of this game remain intact. Feedback is important that the creative design vision stays intact. But I do hope there is some changes as well.

Depraved

askii wrote: »

Let me start by saying that I haven't followed the forums/discord discourse until now. So if the points raised here have already been thoroughly discussed in the community and are the way they are for good reason, I apologize for wasting everyones time.
There is a lot to like about Ashes of Creation, so anyone reading this shouldn't take this post as me not liking the game. Anything not mentioned here you can assume I either like or at least don't think is a major issue. However, there are some design decisions I can't really see the benefit of, but seem to have large enough downsides that they might literally kill the game long term.

1. Death Penalties
The first major issue to me are death penalties. I can't for the life of me see the benefit of general purpose death penalties, but the downsides seem significant.
First of all it is a huge turnoff to most casual players, who either don't enjoy or don't have the time to smack their head into a wall untill it breaks. And lets be realistic here, casual players are the vast majority of MMO players. You need those players for the game to survive. So even if those penalties are not that severe, the perception alone might turn casual players away. Additionally, death penalties a) disincentivize players from playing together and b) disincentivize players from playing certain types of content.

a) It is an issue in MMOs across the board, that players are somewhat unwilling to play with less experienced teamates for efficiency reasons. In most MMOs, if you want to get into harder content, you are usually required to show proof that you've already completed the content the group is about to attempt. This is understandable, since experienced players don't always want to carry or teach inexperienced players. They just want to get their run done so they can get their reward. Now imagine how much worse this will get if it's no longer just about time efficiency, but actually involves a tangible cost to all players if a party wipes. Players will be heavily incentivized to shut out anyone that might not already be at the top of their game.

b) Death penalties also disincentivize players from playing any type of content they are ansure about being able to complete. Since there will be a cost to wiping repeatedly, players are incentivized to simply not attempt difficult content or participate in PvP. Again, more casual players not daring to set foot into difficult PvE content or participate in PvP is already an issue in MMOs with a more modern design philosophy. We want people to get into PvP, we want people to just say "fuck it, lets try this boss and if we wipe, who cares". Giving people an extra incentive to stay safe and leave the difficult stuff to the handful of hardcore players seems like a bad idea.

Now it should be mentioned that I have no issue with very significant death penalties for corrupted players. They chose to be a dick and it's fine that they have to live with the consequences. But for everyone else I just can't see the upside, while the huge downside is that it sets all the wrong incentives. And while it might sound a bit dramatic to claim that this might kill the game, it is very much those kind of unnecessary frustrations that keep casual players away from otherwise well designed games. So unless there is a very significant upside that can not be accomplished in any other way, I would seriously think about whether death penalties are a good idea (at the very least in PvE).

2. XP, kill and loot sharing
While maybe not quite as detrimental to the player experience as death penalties, I again think this is designed in an unnecessarily frustrating way.

Especially the way XP sharing and kill participation currenly work seems to have mostly downsides to the player experience. If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed. Players should be incentiviced to play together, rather than compete against and stealing progress from eachother. While in some situations this competition can incentivise players to chat and join a party, in many situations that is either not possible (e.g. when a party is already full) or impractical (e.g. a high but constantly changing player density trying to kill quest mobs). And while I understand that ashes to an extend is designed with competition in mind, that's what PvP is for. You don't need XP/kill stealing for that. Making it so that everyong is simply happy for every new friend that shows up to help, rather than seeing them as unwanted competition, seems a healthier design philosophy to me. And if you really are there to take something from an enemy group, kill them!

Loot sharing is the point I am the least bothered by and it wouldn't be that big of a deal to me if it stayed the way it is. While it feels somewhat outdated to me that people have to fight over items, rather than droping personal loot, I wouldn't view that as a huge issue in and of itself. However, it might become an issue if XP sharing and kill participation are handled in what I would consider a healthier way. If anyone can just join in as described above, it no longer makes sense to share XP and loot between participants, since you no longer have control over who gets to join your activity. It might be inevitable to move to personal loot and 100% XP for everyone participating, if those systems are changed as suggested.

I think what it ultimately comes down to is this: While I dislike many of the modern MMO design directions (like making the world irrelevant through flying mounts or fast travel), some things have changed for good reason. We shouldn't go back to how it was done in the olden days just for the sake of it. I think Ashes of Creation does a lot of stuff right, but on the points mentioned above I am not so sure.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Everyone is of course welcome to tell me why I'm wrong.

1- the death penalties are great. this is a game with owpvp. when you don't get penalized you just keep going and going and smacking your head against the wall, as you said, no repercussions. this puts a stop to that.

don't leeroy jenkins everything

also, how do they disincentivize grouping? its harder to die as a group, and if you do, you get dressed by a priest. it literally incentivizes grouping.

if you are talking about doing some run or whatever, this isn't a game where you log in, do your run and leave...also, in a game like that, even with no penalties, why would a hardcore, experienced player take a noob anyways? you don't want people messing up your run, taking 2 hours to do something that can be done in 15 mins. its frustrating. if you want to learn the run, learn it with players who are learning it too. but again, this isn't one of those games where you do your dungeon run and log off, no dailies or weeklies. minus points to your argument.

2- looting and exp distribution are fine. share your loot with your party, learn to play with others. and as a group, you can fight higher level mobs and get more exp to make up for the small exp loss per member joining the party vs soloing.

BaSkA_9x2

Let me start by saying I started following the game about 6 years ago, bought a package and want it to remain as close as possible to what was "sold" to me when I invested my money. Moreover, there are a multitude of design decisions I very much can see the benefits of, which obviously have downsides and upsides as everything in life, but will hopefully be worth sticking to in the long term.

1- I like death penalties and hope they keep them, maybe even increase them.

2- I stopped reading after "If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed" because you've either never played a MMO before or you're just a troll and having a good time.

Thankfully, if one dislikes death penalties, almost every other MMORPG is safe to die in, so there's plenty of options out there. Also, if one wants to play a co-op game with friends and happiness and share everything and don't compete for anything, I think Stardew Valley has multiplayer.

Now, don't get me wrong: this game needs a healthy player base to survive and I'd rather play a worse version of Ashes than don't play Ashes at all, but I don't want Intrepid to yield to carebears before they absolutely must.

Depraved

BaSkA_9x2 wrote: »

Let me start by saying I started following the game about 6 years ago, bought a package and want it to remain as close as possible to what was "sold" to me when I invested my money. Moreover, there are a multitude of design decisions I very much can see the benefits of, which obviously have downsides and upsides as everything in life, but will hopefully be worth sticking to in the long term.

1- I like death penalties and hope they keep them, maybe even increase them.

2- I stopped reading after "If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed" because you've either never played a MMO before or you're just a troll and having a good time.

Thankfully, if one dislikes death penalties, almost every other MMORPG is safe to die in, so there's plenty of options out there. Also, if one wants to play a co-op game with friends and happiness and share everything and don't compete for anything, I think Stardew Valley has multiplayer.

Now, don't get me wrong: this game needs a healthy player base to survive and I'd rather play a worse version of Ashes than don't play Ashes at all, but I don't want Intrepid to yield to carebears before they absolutely must.

plenty of people like games like this. op seems to think that only casual time casual challenge players are the only ones playing mmorpg.

if bob doesn't play the game, its fine, bill will, or max or sarah. any of the people who like these type of games will take their spot.

askii

Depraved wrote: »

1- the death penalties are great. this is a game with owpvp. when you don't get penalized you just keep going and going and smacking your head against the wall, as you said, no repercussions. this puts a stop to that.

don't leeroy jenkins everything

also, how do they disincentivize grouping? its harder to die as a group, and if you do, you get dressed by a priest. it literally incentivizes grouping.

if you are talking about doing some run or whatever, this isn't a game where you log in, do your run and leave...also, in a game like that, even with no penalties, why would a hardcore, experienced player take a noob anyways? you don't want people messing up your run, taking 2 hours to do something that can be done in 15 mins. its frustrating. if you want to learn the run, learn it with players who are learning it too. but again, this isn't one of those games where you do your dungeon run and log off, no dailies or weeklies. minus points to your argument.

2- looting and exp distribution are fine. share your loot with your party, learn to play with others. and as a group, you can fight higher level mobs and get more exp to make up for the small exp loss per member joining the party vs soloing.

I don't disagree that the argument against death penalties is not as strong for PvP. If you would want to keep it for PvP deaths specifically I wouldn't mind that too much. But even in PvP, if you are involved in consensual PvP, I don't see what's bad about someone who keeps "going and going". And as I said, for corrupted players penalties are fine anyway.

As already stated, I don't mind experienced players not wanting to bring less experienced players, that's understandable. But I see no reason for why players should be further incentiviced to behave this way beyond the normal and relatable reasons.

In regards to loot and XP, I'm not sure your answer is an argument for anything. Of course people can do all those things, I simply laid out why I think this could be done better. No one is losing anything by giving all players that participated credit.

BaSkA_9x2 wrote: »

Let me start by saying I started following the game about 6 years ago, bought a package and want it to remain as close as possible to what was "sold" to me when I invested my money. Moreover, there are a multitude of design decisions I very much can see the benefits of, which obviously have downsides and upsides as everything in life, but will hopefully be worth sticking to in the long term.

1- I like death penalties and hope they keep them, maybe even increase them.

2- I stopped reading after "If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed" because you've either never played a MMO before or you're just a troll and having a good time.

Thankfully, if one dislikes death penalties, almost every other MMORPG is safe to die in, so there's plenty of options out there. Also, if one wants to play a co-op game with friends and happiness and share everything and don't compete for anything, I think Stardew Valley has multiplayer.

Now, don't get me wrong: this game needs a healthy player base to survive and I'd rather play a worse version of Ashes than don't play Ashes at all, but I don't want Intrepid to yield to carebears before they absolutely must.

You ok buddy? Maybe take a break from the internet some time.

And just for clarification, in every MMO I've ever played I eventually ended up in PvP since PvE doesn't pose much of a challenge long term. But there is a difference between making the game challenging and making the game needlessly frustrating.

Arya_Yeshe

I didn't like the mob nests, they follow the game design pattern from the Ultima Online era. You kill a mob and then x amount of seconds later the mob spawns back
:'(

BaSkA_9x2

askii wrote: »

You ok buddy? Maybe take a break from the internet some time.

Are you okay, buddy? If your suggestions are dogwater, it's not my fault.

askii wrote: »

And just for clarification, in every MMO I've ever played I eventually ended up in PvP since PvE doesn't pose much of a challenge long term. But there is a difference between making the game challenging and making the game needlessly frustrating.

Thanks for proving my point: you clearly have absolutely no experience with MMORPGs (although I still think you're trolling and I'm actually biting the bait).

Cheers

Noaani

Depraved wrote: »

1- the death penalties are great. this is a game with owpvp. when you don't get penalized you just keep going and going and smacking your head against the wall, as you said, no repercussions. this puts a stop to that.

don't leeroy jenkins everything

Keep in mind, every decision a game developer makes has pros and cons - it isn't helpful to just champion the pros if no one is mentioning the cons.

In the case of a more intense death penalty, the cons are that people won't experiment as much, won't take risks, won't participate unless victory is basically a sure thing.

In an MMORPG in general, this will manifest in game as people being less willing to go off meta - experimenting with a new build that turns out to not work well will be incredibly costly, and so most people just won't.

Whether one likes the death penalties in Ashes or not, there is always going to be a question as to the wisdom of having a death penalty system that discourages experimentation, but a class system that encourages it.

In regards to a PvE MMORPG, a harsher death penalty results in players not taking on more challenging content, but rather progressing to the point where that content is easier. This is the optimal way to play such a game, but it results in the game being significantly more boring.

In Ashes specifically, this won't be an issue because PvE will be little more than different looking HP pinatas.

In an open world PvP MMORPG, a harsher death penalty results in more people running from potential PvP. A game like Ashes will see open world PvP be more about the chase than the fight.

There will always be questions as to the wisdom of basing a game on players fighting each other, but then penalizing half of those players when they do. There is a reason they have taken most of the death penalties away from PvP events like sieges - they understand the above to be absolutely true. They want people fighting in those events, and understand that their death penalties will prevent people from doing so.

In other words, the death penalties exist in Ashes with Intrepid knowing it will discourage people from participating.

Pyrolol

Just sounds like a skill issue to me 😂

nanfoodle

I don't like anyone can loot your body that has nothing to do with PvP. I think your body should become lootable unless PvP happenes in the kill.

Lodrig

nanfoodle wrote: »

I don't like anyone can loot your body that has nothing to do with PvP. I think your body should become lootable unless PvP happenes in the kill.

@nanfoodle You really need to proofread your posts better before making them, your meaning is frequently lost entirely in mismatched negatives, in this case I think you ment to say "shouldn't become lootable".

nsys

As much as people rail on the guy, I think Asmongold said it best: "Not succeeding is punishment enough". Dying itself and having to retry is already enough punishment. Look at how much people rage at bad dungeon groups in WoW for example. I have seen guilds shut down because they lost their precious WBs due to one mistake. Now imagine being punished even more.

All it takes for a player to quit the game is one bad day. Especially in MMOs. And remember, you WILL have bugs and exploits. At some point, people will be murdered by the thousands by some PKers figuring something out. They might say "Alright, I guess I'll come back when it's patched". But they never will come back.

The world you're building requires a lot of player retention to function. If the peasants aren't happy, the kings will starve, remember that.

nanfoodle

Lodrig wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

I don't like anyone can loot your body that has nothing to do with PvP. I think your body should become lootable unless PvP happenes in the kill.

@nanfoodle You really need to proofread your posts better before making them, your meaning is frequently lost entirely in mismatched negatives, in this case I think you ment to say "shouldn't become lootable".

I have a rare form of dyslexia. Letters and words float around the page for me. I can reread things 10 times and it looks different every time. The more tired I am the harder it is to stop the words and letters from moving around on the screen. I just do the best I can.

Githal

The answer of both your concerns is: Risk vs Reward. Which is 1 of the core principles in AOC.

You risk having smaller group of players doing tough content, to get the reward of more loot for each.
And you mitigate the risk by bringing zerg group, but then only few of your group will get loot.

Same as death penalties. You risk doing harder content, and the risk is that if you die - it will hurt.
But if you dont die, then you get good reward.

As Steven said countless times: AOC wont be a game for everyone. The game wont bend its principles if some group of players dont like particular thing. Because this way the game will lose its identity (like almost all other MMO games), No matter how hard you try, you will never make a game that everyone likes. But in trying to make everyone happy, you will lose the core players that love the game for what it is.

FlowerGirl1964

askii wrote: »

Let me start by saying that I haven't followed the forums/discord discourse until now. So if the points raised here have already been thoroughly discussed in the community and are the way they are for good reason, I apologize for wasting everyones time.
There is a lot to like about Ashes of Creation, so anyone reading this shouldn't take this post as me not liking the game. Anything not mentioned here you can assume I either like or at least don't think is a major issue. However, there are some design decisions I can't really see the benefit of, but seem to have large enough downsides that they might literally kill the game long term.

1. Death Penalties
The first major issue to me are death penalties. I can't for the life of me see the benefit of general purpose death penalties, but the downsides seem significant.
First of all it is a huge turnoff to most casual players, who either don't enjoy or don't have the time to smack their head into a wall untill it breaks. And lets be realistic here, casual players are the vast majority of MMO players. You need those players for the game to survive. So even if those penalties are not that severe, the perception alone might turn casual players away. Additionally, death penalties a) disincentivize players from playing together and b) disincentivize players from playing certain types of content.

a) It is an issue in MMOs across the board, that players are somewhat unwilling to play with less experienced teamates for efficiency reasons. In most MMOs, if you want to get into harder content, you are usually required to show proof that you've already completed the content the group is about to attempt. This is understandable, since experienced players don't always want to carry or teach inexperienced players. They just want to get their run done so they can get their reward. Now imagine how much worse this will get if it's no longer just about time efficiency, but actually involves a tangible cost to all players if a party wipes. Players will be heavily incentivized to shut out anyone that might not already be at the top of their game.

b) Death penalties also disincentivize players from playing any type of content they are ansure about being able to complete. Since there will be a cost to wiping repeatedly, players are incentivized to simply not attempt difficult content or participate in PvP. Again, more casual players not daring to set foot into difficult PvE content or participate in PvP is already an issue in MMOs with a more modern design philosophy. We want people to get into PvP, we want people to just say "fuck it, lets try this boss and if we wipe, who cares". Giving people an extra incentive to stay safe and leave the difficult stuff to the handful of hardcore players seems like a bad idea.

Now it should be mentioned that I have no issue with very significant death penalties for corrupted players. They chose to be a dick and it's fine that they have to live with the consequences. But for everyone else I just can't see the upside, while the huge downside is that it sets all the wrong incentives. And while it might sound a bit dramatic to claim that this might kill the game, it is very much those kind of unnecessary frustrations that keep casual players away from otherwise well designed games. So unless there is a very significant upside that can not be accomplished in any other way, I would seriously think about whether death penalties are a good idea (at the very least in PvE).

2. XP, kill and loot sharing
While maybe not quite as detrimental to the player experience as death penalties, I again think this is designed in an unnecessarily frustrating way.

Especially the way XP sharing and kill participation currenly work seems to have mostly downsides to the player experience. If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed. Players should be incentiviced to play together, rather than compete against and stealing progress from eachother. While in some situations this competition can incentivise players to chat and join a party, in many situations that is either not possible (e.g. when a party is already full) or impractical (e.g. a high but constantly changing player density trying to kill quest mobs). And while I understand that ashes to an extend is designed with competition in mind, that's what PvP is for. You don't need XP/kill stealing for that. Making it so that everyong is simply happy for every new friend that shows up to help, rather than seeing them as unwanted competition, seems a healthier design philosophy to me. And if you really are there to take something from an enemy group, kill them!

Loot sharing is the point I am the least bothered by and it wouldn't be that big of a deal to me if it stayed the way it is. While it feels somewhat outdated to me that people have to fight over items, rather than droping personal loot, I wouldn't view that as a huge issue in and of itself. However, it might become an issue if XP sharing and kill participation are handled in what I would consider a healthier way. If anyone can just join in as described above, it no longer makes sense to share XP and loot between participants, since you no longer have control over who gets to join your activity. It might be inevitable to move to personal loot and 100% XP for everyone participating, if those systems are changed as suggested.

I think what it ultimately comes down to is this: While I dislike many of the modern MMO design directions (like making the world irrelevant through flying mounts or fast travel), some things have changed for good reason. We shouldn't go back to how it was done in the olden days just for the sake of it. I think Ashes of Creation does a lot of stuff right, but on the points mentioned above I am not so sure.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Everyone is of course welcome to tell me why I'm wrong.

I follow you, - i have not yet played the game, and will not play november 8. even though i have bought acces. What i have seen so fare makes me wait. I am so dissapointed over how bad the game looks and feels. Only positive thing is the combat. When you log into WoW, you know right away that it's WoW; it is unique. What makes AOC unique when you log in; - i really can't tell! I know many in this forum will defend the game with there life, but it's EA and this is my overall feedback. But i cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Novacadian

My first regular MMO experience was in MUDs (Multi User Dungeon) back in the late 80s. My haunt was kingdoms.se for any from that period.

The death penalties were cruel on the MUD. There was not only random amount of XPs losses, complete EQ drops to the ground; but also a thing called essence , which could be lost at a random amount each death. This was a feature of all deaths. If a character ran out of essence then the character was permanently killed. Wiped in other words. One could be given essence from a cleric which came from their own essence pool which would build over time on all characters.

It seems to me AoC has fine tuned the death system to have given it the right amount of risk to reward to put that same excitement in game play which the MUDs of old afforded me.

PvP attacks and the degree of risk one can suffer in them seems to have been well thought through by Intrepid. Having been PvP'ed 3 times over this last test weekend the only consequence seems to have been equipment durability issues caused by the death process. Due to not turning on PvP and fighting back there was no EQ or item loss. It seemed just a small risk to keep one on one's toes in my opinion and keep the blood thirsty PvP'ers satisfied. Keeping it real if you will.
'
'From my perspective Intrepid seems to have done things right on what appears to be this well designed PvP/Death issue.

Rym

I have read your feedback in a TL;DR manner.

I personally heavily disagree with your points of view, and here is why.

On the first point, death having consequences in my opinion is a good thing. It's an incentive for players to be wary of their surroundings and group up. No doubt you've noticed, unless you're a pro, even 2 normal mobs pulled wrongly can kill you. I looted some 200 glint or whatever it was called from dead players because they thought they're tougher than they are. Some players dropped stacks of 30-50 glint, losing 3-5s at lower levels is quite a bit of invested time in farming.

I think this is excellent design, why should mobs be loot pinatas that deal no damage? It never made sense to me.

The consequences of mortality, in my opinion, actively incentivize grouping up. You'd be surprised just how much easier content becomes if only one more player joins your group.

The second point about loot sharing I think directly complements death penalties by incentivizing group play. Quests are done faster, mobs are killed faster, and the ever present threat of death is greatly diminished. Additionally, the chances of being attacked by players are greatly reduced.

Remember, everyone being buddy buddy with each other is a starting zone illusion. At any point in time, any player outside of your group can suddenly and unexpectedly decide to kill you and loot your ashes, especially in remote areas far away from spawn points.

Depraved

askii wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

1- the death penalties are great. this is a game with owpvp. when you don't get penalized you just keep going and going and smacking your head against the wall, as you said, no repercussions. this puts a stop to that.

don't leeroy jenkins everything

also, how do they disincentivize grouping? its harder to die as a group, and if you do, you get dressed by a priest. it literally incentivizes grouping.

if you are talking about doing some run or whatever, this isn't a game where you log in, do your run and leave...also, in a game like that, even with no penalties, why would a hardcore, experienced player take a noob anyways? you don't want people messing up your run, taking 2 hours to do something that can be done in 15 mins. its frustrating. if you want to learn the run, learn it with players who are learning it too. but again, this isn't one of those games where you do your dungeon run and log off, no dailies or weeklies. minus points to your argument.

2- looting and exp distribution are fine. share your loot with your party, learn to play with others. and as a group, you can fight higher level mobs and get more exp to make up for the small exp loss per member joining the party vs soloing.

I don't disagree that the argument against death penalties is not as strong for PvP. If you would want to keep it for PvP deaths specifically I wouldn't mind that too much. But even in PvP, if you are involved in consensual PvP, I don't see what's bad about someone who keeps "going and going". And as I said, for corrupted players penalties are fine anyway.

As already stated, I don't mind experienced players not wanting to bring less experienced players, that's understandable. But I see no reason for why players should be further incentiviced to behave this way beyond the normal and relatable reasons.

In regards to loot and XP, I'm not sure your answer is an argument for anything. Of course people can do all those things, I simply laid out why I think this could be done better. No one is losing anything by giving all players that participated credit.

BaSkA_9x2 wrote: »

Let me start by saying I started following the game about 6 years ago, bought a package and want it to remain as close as possible to what was "sold" to me when I invested my money. Moreover, there are a multitude of design decisions I very much can see the benefits of, which obviously have downsides and upsides as everything in life, but will hopefully be worth sticking to in the long term.

1- I like death penalties and hope they keep them, maybe even increase them.

2- I stopped reading after "If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed" because you've either never played a MMO before or you're just a troll and having a good time.

Thankfully, if one dislikes death penalties, almost every other MMORPG is safe to die in, so there's plenty of options out there. Also, if one wants to play a co-op game with friends and happiness and share everything and don't compete for anything, I think Stardew Valley has multiplayer.

Now, don't get me wrong: this game needs a healthy player base to survive and I'd rather play a worse version of Ashes than don't play Ashes at all, but I don't want Intrepid to yield to carebears before they absolutely must.

You ok buddy? Maybe take a break from the internet some time.

And just for clarification, in every MMO I've ever played I eventually ended up in PvP since PvE doesn't pose much of a challenge long term. But there is a difference between making the game challenging and making the game needlessly frustrating.

ofc u want harsh punishment for the pvpers, but not for the pvers .-.

imagine if I went to ff forums and asked for more severe punishment for the pvers...

Laetitian

This needed to be 2 separate threads so badly. Can we just pretend the first point was never made and make the thread about the second one? Not like any serious player will consider the first suggestion in a game where Risk-Versus-Reward is a core design pillar.

Rym wrote: »

The second point about loot sharing I think directly complements death penalties by incentivizing group play. Quests are done faster, mobs are killed faster, and the ever present threat of death is greatly diminished. Additionally, the chances of being attacked by players are greatly reduced.

Remember, everyone being buddy buddy with each other is a starting zone illusion. At any point in time, any player outside of your group can suddenly and unexpectedly decide to kill you and loot your ashes, especially in remote areas far away from spawn points.

This is all fair enough, but this gameplay loop of being careful around other players will manifest itself anyway, so the system doesn't need to protect it.

it would still be beneficial for the community if it was possible to *ease into* groups by cooperating spontaneously and testing the waters. A decent system for loot sharing won't do anything to harm competition, because competitive players will still control the objectives and territories they don't want to share. But the system will make natural progression into finding players to team up with more feasible. In a game that (rightfully) doesn't have LfG systems, that makes the community less tribalistic and forced into random preselected guilds, and instead allows players to find like-minded players to ally with organically when they find themselves doing the same thing as someone else.

I personally don't mind sending out party invites, but less socially open players get scared of commitment very easily, and need some time to ease into the idea of doing something with other people.

Also, even if you're willing to party up with someone, a damage-contribution-based XP or loot distribution system could even apply in party in order to make sure the more active & skilled players get rewarded.

Podgnil

askii wrote: »

Let me start by saying that I haven't followed the forums/discord discourse until now. So if the points raised here have already been thoroughly discussed in the community and are the way they are for good reason, I apologize for wasting everyones time.
There is a lot to like about Ashes of Creation, so anyone reading this shouldn't take this post as me not liking the game. Anything not mentioned here you can assume I either like or at least don't think is a major issue. However, there are some design decisions I can't really see the benefit of, but seem to have large enough downsides that they might literally kill the game long term.

1. Death Penalties
The first major issue to me are death penalties. I can't for the life of me see the benefit of general purpose death penalties, but the downsides seem significant.
First of all it is a huge turnoff to most casual players, who either don't enjoy or don't have the time to smack their head into a wall untill it breaks. And lets be realistic here, casual players are the vast majority of MMO players. You need those players for the game to survive. So even if those penalties are not that severe, the perception alone might turn casual players away. Additionally, death penalties a) disincentivize players from playing together and b) disincentivize players from playing certain types of content.

a) It is an issue in MMOs across the board, that players are somewhat unwilling to play with less experienced teamates for efficiency reasons. In most MMOs, if you want to get into harder content, you are usually required to show proof that you've already completed the content the group is about to attempt. This is understandable, since experienced players don't always want to carry or teach inexperienced players. They just want to get their run done so they can get their reward. Now imagine how much worse this will get if it's no longer just about time efficiency, but actually involves a tangible cost to all players if a party wipes. Players will be heavily incentivized to shut out anyone that might not already be at the top of their game.

b) Death penalties also disincentivize players from playing any type of content they are ansure about being able to complete. Since there will be a cost to wiping repeatedly, players are incentivized to simply not attempt difficult content or participate in PvP. Again, more casual players not daring to set foot into difficult PvE content or participate in PvP is already an issue in MMOs with a more modern design philosophy. We want people to get into PvP, we want people to just say "fuck it, lets try this boss and if we wipe, who cares". Giving people an extra incentive to stay safe and leave the difficult stuff to the handful of hardcore players seems like a bad idea.

Now it should be mentioned that I have no issue with very significant death penalties for corrupted players. They chose to be a dick and it's fine that they have to live with the consequences. But for everyone else I just can't see the upside, while the huge downside is that it sets all the wrong incentives. And while it might sound a bit dramatic to claim that this might kill the game, it is very much those kind of unnecessary frustrations that keep casual players away from otherwise well designed games. So unless there is a very significant upside that can not be accomplished in any other way, I would seriously think about whether death penalties are a good idea (at the very least in PvE).

2. XP, kill and loot sharing
While maybe not quite as detrimental to the player experience as death penalties, I again think this is designed in an unnecessarily frustrating way.

Especially the way XP sharing and kill participation currenly work seems to have mostly downsides to the player experience. If players work together to kill enemies, why should it matter whether they are in a party or how much damage they contributed. Players should be incentiviced to play together, rather than compete against and stealing progress from eachother. While in some situations this competition can incentivise players to chat and join a party, in many situations that is either not possible (e.g. when a party is already full) or impractical (e.g. a high but constantly changing player density trying to kill quest mobs). And while I understand that ashes to an extend is designed with competition in mind, that's what PvP is for. You don't need XP/kill stealing for that. Making it so that everyong is simply happy for every new friend that shows up to help, rather than seeing them as unwanted competition, seems a healthier design philosophy to me. And if you really are there to take something from an enemy group, kill them!

Loot sharing is the point I am the least bothered by and it wouldn't be that big of a deal to me if it stayed the way it is. While it feels somewhat outdated to me that people have to fight over items, rather than droping personal loot, I wouldn't view that as a huge issue in and of itself. However, it might become an issue if XP sharing and kill participation are handled in what I would consider a healthier way. If anyone can just join in as described above, it no longer makes sense to share XP and loot between participants, since you no longer have control over who gets to join your activity. It might be inevitable to move to personal loot and 100% XP for everyone participating, if those systems are changed as suggested.

I think what it ultimately comes down to is this: While I dislike many of the modern MMO design directions (like making the world irrelevant through flying mounts or fast travel), some things have changed for good reason. We shouldn't go back to how it was done in the olden days just for the sake of it. I think Ashes of Creation does a lot of stuff right, but on the points mentioned above I am not so sure.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Everyone is of course welcome to tell me why I'm wrong.

I disagree with you on all points. I’m very glad that the mechanics work this way. I’m too lazy to describe in detail why, but if you want to play giveaways, there are a lot of projects. This is exactly the case here.
The enemy group has the best manamanegment - they have excellent time to pull packs faster at the spot and farm them. If your group has not yet recovered, why will your warrior gain experience for interfering with the other team's gameplay, while his healers sit and drink mana? Don't think this is nonsense. And Death penalties are the basis of the concept of risk versus reward. If you're not sure, don't hit. If you think that this monster is very dangerous, bypass it. Granny called when you were putting together a big pack with the group - get it.
So your 'game-killing mechanics' are just your personal casual desires.

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