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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
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Splinter(?) Topic: The Comfort/Nostalgia Login
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
More random data brought to mind by:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/64441/dev-discussion-70-music-in-mmorpgs#latest
If you haven't given Intrepid your thoughts on music in MMORPGs, please do so in that post. This one will touch on music but not necessarily a lot. As usual this is just giving thoughts that might as well be visible to someone rather than just within my guild.
At some point I gave the feedback that the music in AoC, especially in Joeva node, was 'comfortable', but I don't think I ever got around to elaborating why. It's comfortable because when I haven't heard it in a while, it 'makes me want to log in'. Joeva node itself does this, but the music helps quite a lot.
At least for me and the people I know, this effect is a large part of retention of interest in games, but we've played enough games to know that it isn't just 'I liked this game so I get nostalgic for it'. It's made up of some specific things:
That "Home" Feeling
This isn't just 'a location' either, it has to be 'your' location. The most interesting thing so far from studying TL is that it doesn't absolutely have to be 'a location you got to decorate' personally (TL is currently working on Housing but their test case is very comfortable and triggers the feeling a little, especially if you attempt to associate the location of the Amitoi House with some specific house in the world that is 'yours'.
BDO allows multiple (I don't think this is strictly necessary), FF11 gives you 'a room in each nation' but you can only decorate your actual home, and Elite somehow has some slight effects too. Ashes has planned for this, I bring it up only to 'remind' that until it's further along, the game is missing one such trigger.
Connection of Combat
Combat can feel 'comfortable' without even being 'good', and for some, it can obviously be 'good' without being 'comfortable'. Comfortable combat seems to make us want to log in just 'when you have the urge to act on something in the world' and is usually about 20m burst. TL events are good for it.
From Paragon/Predecessor, we've learned that this absolutely can be PvP, but most good PvP takes longer to play out in that game. Ashes will probably never get comfort login effect from us for its combat, but I mention it because even if the game does a big spin on combat design, without some system for moving to PoI more easily, or the implementation of something akin to the Catacombs, that 20m is usually going to be 15-20m away. We don't need Fast Travel in Ashes, but this is probably the main use of the Family Summon for us. One person with more time goes out to the PoI and hopefully lives long enough to get others there even if just for this.
Immersive Itemization Memory
Always suspected that this was fairly important, since Onigiri definitely felt like it should have 'held' us more than it did, but eventually that game drifted toward 'level up gear! Only gear matters!' and this effect wore off. Food, Fishing, and Housing systems help, but from the difference between BDO and TL we think we know more precisely why FF11 always 'wins'.
It's related to the feeling that things in the world are used by other residents of it. Doesn't have to be NPCs, but usually players aren't active enough to support the feeling in weaker economy games. FF11 'wins' because you literally always feel like someone is going to use whatever you bring back. TL will get there probably (that 'Gear drops->Furniture' conversion I talk about sometimes, I'd bet, I'm looking forward to turning Helmets into Kettles and whatnot). BDO doesn't because they have too many obfuscating layers. Adding these in Ashes might be fine, if the playerbase is 'right', so hopefully we'll have positive things to say about that in Phase 2.
'Micro-POI' Dynamism
First note is that 80% of players are not dynamic, and PvP doesn't make them more dynamic. So, games that rely on other players to provide this often don't do well. This is known already, that's why this is a Sandpark and not a Sandbox, presumably.
This ties into the weather and the way weather interacts with things, but it can be other things too.
TL is currently relying on weather and events, I've mentioned somewhere in the past that the DNA of that game unfortunately locked them into a bit of an issue with this (the legacy of Astral Hunting means that their area designs and mob distributions cause homogeneity and they have to rely on events and Gigantrite). For now, we're using certain Dungeons (co-op type actually) to trigger this feeling, though at least Sauro can manage.
BDO has never really been good at it, and their playerbase has never been particularly vocal about caring about it either, maybe it's better now, but that game didn't hold our attention after Ashes started to ramp up, precisely because the comfort login urge was way too weak.
Onigiri interestingly has a little of this, but it comes from 'the oddness of that world and the associated open world questlines' that are more memorable than most standard MMOs can get anywhere near. I mean real MMOs where you need multiple people to do something. But TL and Onigiri face the same problem here. Having a cool memory of a story I experienced once in an area does not make me want to return to that area unless something/someone in that area is fun to interact with 'post-story'. Ashes is almost certainly gonna 'win' here because it will have proper [Whatever y'all want to call Elites/Notorious Monsters'] but if they have TL tier respawn rates then they are just 'Elites'. Hopefully Hunting will manage to contribute to this and not end up like BDO.
So FF11 wins because it has 'better' Elites/NMs, but Ashes is poised to 'win' for the exact reason that TL struggles. Slow leveling, larger ecology space, potential for long respawns (assuming y'all don't tie these mobs to Commissions and invert the whole feeling, they're supposed to just 'be there').
Anyways, another long rant so we can shorthand it later to mention when something is lacking in a place that it seems it should exist/is intended to exist.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/64441/dev-discussion-70-music-in-mmorpgs#latest
If you haven't given Intrepid your thoughts on music in MMORPGs, please do so in that post. This one will touch on music but not necessarily a lot. As usual this is just giving thoughts that might as well be visible to someone rather than just within my guild.
At some point I gave the feedback that the music in AoC, especially in Joeva node, was 'comfortable', but I don't think I ever got around to elaborating why. It's comfortable because when I haven't heard it in a while, it 'makes me want to log in'. Joeva node itself does this, but the music helps quite a lot.
At least for me and the people I know, this effect is a large part of retention of interest in games, but we've played enough games to know that it isn't just 'I liked this game so I get nostalgic for it'. It's made up of some specific things:
That "Home" Feeling
This isn't just 'a location' either, it has to be 'your' location. The most interesting thing so far from studying TL is that it doesn't absolutely have to be 'a location you got to decorate' personally (TL is currently working on Housing but their test case is very comfortable and triggers the feeling a little, especially if you attempt to associate the location of the Amitoi House with some specific house in the world that is 'yours'.
BDO allows multiple (I don't think this is strictly necessary), FF11 gives you 'a room in each nation' but you can only decorate your actual home, and Elite somehow has some slight effects too. Ashes has planned for this, I bring it up only to 'remind' that until it's further along, the game is missing one such trigger.
Connection of Combat
Combat can feel 'comfortable' without even being 'good', and for some, it can obviously be 'good' without being 'comfortable'. Comfortable combat seems to make us want to log in just 'when you have the urge to act on something in the world' and is usually about 20m burst. TL events are good for it.
From Paragon/Predecessor, we've learned that this absolutely can be PvP, but most good PvP takes longer to play out in that game. Ashes will probably never get comfort login effect from us for its combat, but I mention it because even if the game does a big spin on combat design, without some system for moving to PoI more easily, or the implementation of something akin to the Catacombs, that 20m is usually going to be 15-20m away. We don't need Fast Travel in Ashes, but this is probably the main use of the Family Summon for us. One person with more time goes out to the PoI and hopefully lives long enough to get others there even if just for this.
Immersive Itemization Memory
Always suspected that this was fairly important, since Onigiri definitely felt like it should have 'held' us more than it did, but eventually that game drifted toward 'level up gear! Only gear matters!' and this effect wore off. Food, Fishing, and Housing systems help, but from the difference between BDO and TL we think we know more precisely why FF11 always 'wins'.
It's related to the feeling that things in the world are used by other residents of it. Doesn't have to be NPCs, but usually players aren't active enough to support the feeling in weaker economy games. FF11 'wins' because you literally always feel like someone is going to use whatever you bring back. TL will get there probably (that 'Gear drops->Furniture' conversion I talk about sometimes, I'd bet, I'm looking forward to turning Helmets into Kettles and whatnot). BDO doesn't because they have too many obfuscating layers. Adding these in Ashes might be fine, if the playerbase is 'right', so hopefully we'll have positive things to say about that in Phase 2.
'Micro-POI' Dynamism
First note is that 80% of players are not dynamic, and PvP doesn't make them more dynamic. So, games that rely on other players to provide this often don't do well. This is known already, that's why this is a Sandpark and not a Sandbox, presumably.
This ties into the weather and the way weather interacts with things, but it can be other things too.
TL is currently relying on weather and events, I've mentioned somewhere in the past that the DNA of that game unfortunately locked them into a bit of an issue with this (the legacy of Astral Hunting means that their area designs and mob distributions cause homogeneity and they have to rely on events and Gigantrite). For now, we're using certain Dungeons (co-op type actually) to trigger this feeling, though at least Sauro can manage.
BDO has never really been good at it, and their playerbase has never been particularly vocal about caring about it either, maybe it's better now, but that game didn't hold our attention after Ashes started to ramp up, precisely because the comfort login urge was way too weak.
Onigiri interestingly has a little of this, but it comes from 'the oddness of that world and the associated open world questlines' that are more memorable than most standard MMOs can get anywhere near. I mean real MMOs where you need multiple people to do something. But TL and Onigiri face the same problem here. Having a cool memory of a story I experienced once in an area does not make me want to return to that area unless something/someone in that area is fun to interact with 'post-story'. Ashes is almost certainly gonna 'win' here because it will have proper [Whatever y'all want to call Elites/Notorious Monsters'] but if they have TL tier respawn rates then they are just 'Elites'. Hopefully Hunting will manage to contribute to this and not end up like BDO.
So FF11 wins because it has 'better' Elites/NMs, but Ashes is poised to 'win' for the exact reason that TL struggles. Slow leveling, larger ecology space, potential for long respawns (assuming y'all don't tie these mobs to Commissions and invert the whole feeling, they're supposed to just 'be there').
Anyways, another long rant so we can shorthand it later to mention when something is lacking in a place that it seems it should exist/is intended to exist.
Stellar Devotion.
1
Comments
I love that feature in Genshin
Oh and btw, this would require either exploration or a quest or maybe both.
Doesn't matter to me. I have this in FFXI, and while I do appreciate it sometimes, it's not necessary. In relation to my discussion of contexts defined by music, reusing songs for elsewhere for your home may give you a bit of a feeling that your home is there, but even reusing my favorite neighboring zones for my house, if the music for areas is done well... It's taking you outside, and specifically because you have the other association, it will not bind your home and its feeling distinctly enough.
Oddly, you could get some benefit if you were selecting a soundtrack of a place you never go, but then again, there's probably a thematic reason you never go there, and it's unlikely you'd then want that for your home if it was appropriate for that area in the first place.
The other side of it, is when you just want to 'listen to the radio', rather than redefining the base theme of your home space. In a game like Ashes, maybe you would in fact want to listen to the song from an area that's not easy to get to, which in Ashes could easily be "most places". FFXI does it this way, and I think it would be reasonable for Ashes to as well. There is a furnishing that is basically a radio, that you can "switch on" if you want to pick a different song. This handles the immersion side of it decently. I don't find myself using this often, but it's probably not so difficult that you shouldn't add it for people who might like 'listening to the radio' more.
I could actually say a surprising amount more, but I think that clearly covers my baseline opinions on the matter.
EDIT: The FFXI 'Mog House' ("Home") theme, in case you were interested. I could go on an hours long rant on Home Themes, (how they work, why they are important, etc), but it would be exhausting, so I will just say that it is required.
If story arcs have their own melodies/songs (which I hope they do), we might never come across them again, if we managed to experience them once on the other side of the server. So I feel like having that song available at any time could be a nice way to keep that composer work relevant for way longer.
To me, this is the purpose of publishing your soundtrack. Logging into the game to listen to it has always been, to me, "extra steps". I find it much more valuable, actually, to be able to call forth the emotions and memories without having to go through the process of logging in and making my way back home. Even more so, to be able to share them with others who have had similar experiences, as reminders of certain things, or to set a specific common mood. Of course, there is no reason not to also include such a thing in game as well. I just tend not to find myself with great need of it, because I will always find the external OST.
In my opinion, it's far more important to have good names for your OST tracks, so I can figure out, or at least easily remember which is which. This is not to say that they should be named after the place, however. "Sarutabaruta" (area theme named after the area) is just as good as "Cosmic Wheel", or "Stargazing" (two other nearby area themes). Distinct, clear concept, easy association once you notice it, even if you have to hear it once to make the association with the name, etc. The clearer and more focused your music is, the easier and better everything about it gets, and names are no exception.
My personal nostalgia login feeling comes from random memories of fighting Fiora in the toplane, and random levelling with strangers in lowlevel zones. Which is really funny, because I played relatively little toplane, and in that MMO I spent 99% of my game time in PvP zones. Which may or may not have more to do with my own psychology than anything the game itself does (besides being comfortable and rewarding.)
I'd suspect you need the combat to be good in order to play it long enough to experience it being comfortable. Or even that it needs to be good, but that good just doesn't always boil down to "complex" or "challenging," nor "reactive/flashy", or even "satisfying." Sometimes good might just be "internally consistent." Balancing risk and reward. For some areas of the game that might be the main measure needed to make combat good.
Would you say that what you're describing is generally important and good for the game? It feels good therefore it is good? I think it's tough to draw the line between "feels good therefore good" and "feels good despite bad (for other players, for depth, for longevity, for real life.)"
It's possible that I'm not correctly interpreting or responding to the right aspects of what you're describing.