Dear Intrepid, you are unnecessarily killing a lot of people's desire to test the game for you.

The start of phase 2 has been badly handled I think. It's like you forgot the perspective of your testing base.

My assumption is that you want to keep a lot of testers happily engaged and testing in the future as well, and that this isn't some social experiment in misery. In order for that to happen, the fun has to outweigh the suck at least a little. For the EU base, you really missed the mark. I don't know how bad it is on the NA servers.

1. End of phase 1
The drop off in the amount of active players you saw near the end of phase 1 wasn't people generally losing interest in testing the game. It was primarily because of the incoming wipe. Instead of playing, they spent time planning where to go and what to do in phase 2. Many big PvP guilds were going to Lotharia and more casual PvX guilds were going on other servers etc. Less than 24 hours before phase 2, all those plans were completely disrupted by the announcement that EU only got one server (and NA one or two). That alone caused disappointment and a loss of people's desire to test the game for you.

2. Content drought
It's blindingly obvious that the current content in the game cannot support this number of players on one server, even without the bugs causing mobs not to respawn. This was obvious during phase 1. Sure, the servers might be close to be able to handling the number of people, and you definitely need to test that and iron out those bugs. But you are shooting yourselves in the foot by making that the default and only option for the testing base.

Once both the desert and the tropics are fully populated with content and nodes, will there be enough content for this many people. Right now that is clearly not the case

Punish us on PTR. We like that. Take the regular PROD servers down for a week and mash us all into one big family on one server to really stress everything server related. That's fine too. But creating only one testing environment you have to have known wasn't ready content-wise as the only testing option, is not. You are killing the desire for people to test for you.

3. People are much less likely to write /bug reports
The scarcity of mobs and resources cause people to feel a sense of urgency in what they are doing. We have 2+ full groups of people contesting spots that can only really support 3-4 players. The sense of urgency and competition doesn't give people any incentive to stop and type /bug. It's rather the opposite. You have access to the numbers, but I bet the avg. number of bug reports per player has gone down a lot in phase 2 compared to previous phases, and it's not because the game is now bug free at all. Especially during prime time. People are just too busy contesting the poor mobs and resources. You are killing the desire/time for people to report bugs.

I don't want this to be a wall of text, so I'll end it here. Please Intrepid, take this feedback, and the feedback from many similar posts, to heart. I want to test, my friends want to test, people are happy to test, but not at any level of suck if the fun doesn't match. I am guessing we'll see a fairly large drop in testers in the next few days/weeks, and it'll largely be because of this, not because the game as it is right now can't also be fun with the right amount of testers per server.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

Conflict over trash mobs is not meaningful conflict. Fighting over world bossed, Node wars, best is slot rare crafting resources, relics. Now that's meaningful conflict. When you have walked away and taken something good you can point at.

There cannot be an objective standard for "meaningful conflict." At best, it’s an aspirational concept.

When I fight someone over a copper node, it feels meaningful enough to me.

More importantly, I’m having way more fun now.

That’s what Ashes is all about: "Vhaeyne's fun."

While it is true that fun is subjective (which is basically what you are saying), you have a major issue here.

Your fun is PvP related. This means you need other players in the game, and the game needs to be fun for everyone, not just for you.

If a game is only fun for Vhaeyne, then only Vhaeyne will play it. I don't think that game will remain fun for Vhaeyne for very long after that.

With game design, the more people your design requires to function, the broader you need to make its appeal.

If fighting over basic gameplay is considered meaningful, that will turn most players away. You may enjoy that fight over basic gameplay, but you will stop enjoying that fight when the people you would have fought over have gone off to play another game.

This is what I don't get about so many people thst want Ashes to have these niche systems. Ashes needs masses of players to be the game these people want it to be more than it needs these niche systems.

Laetitian

Noaani wrote: »

Vhaeyne wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

Conflict over trash mobs is not meaningful conflict. Fighting over world bossed, Node wars, best is slot rare crafting resources, relics. Now that's meaningful conflict. When you have walked away and taken something good you can point at.

There cannot be an objective standard for "meaningful conflict." At best, it’s an aspirational concept.

When I fight someone over a copper node, it feels meaningful enough to me.

More importantly, I’m having way more fun now.

That’s what Ashes is all about: "Vhaeyne's fun."

If fighting over basic gameplay is considered meaningful, that will turn most players away. You may enjoy that fight over basic gameplay, but you will stop enjoying that fight when the people you would have fought over have gone off to play another game.

This is what I don't get about so many people thst want Ashes to have these niche systems. Ashes needs masses of players to be the game these people want it to be more than it needs these niche systems.

So how much PvP is justified for a mainstream-adequate PvX system? Caravans plus one boss a week with PvP competition, and one siege and war a month, rest neatly separated?

Noaani

Laetitian wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Vhaeyne wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

Conflict over trash mobs is not meaningful conflict. Fighting over world bossed, Node wars, best is slot rare crafting resources, relics. Now that's meaningful conflict. When you have walked away and taken something good you can point at.

There cannot be an objective standard for "meaningful conflict." At best, it’s an aspirational concept.

When I fight someone over a copper node, it feels meaningful enough to me.

More importantly, I’m having way more fun now.

That’s what Ashes is all about: "Vhaeyne's fun."

If fighting over basic gameplay is considered meaningful, that will turn most players away. You may enjoy that fight over basic gameplay, but you will stop enjoying that fight when the people you would have fought over have gone off to play another game.

This is what I don't get about so many people thst want Ashes to have these niche systems. Ashes needs masses of players to be the game these people want it to be more than it needs these niche systems.

So how much PvP is justified for a mainstream-adequate PvX system? Caravans plus one boss a week with PvP competition, and one siege and war a month, rest neatly separated?

That isn't a question I would want to answer.

I can say when something is completely off (such as needing to fight over basic content), but I wouldn't want to attempt to define the correct answer.

Endowed

bloodprophet wrote: »

brita wrote: »

I've dropped the game for the time being. The massive contesting for resources, mobs or other stuff is draining, especially with people flagging to kill others who "crowd" their spots.

This is the intended design. Stated from the very start.
Scarcity and meaningful conflict.

15000 server cap for 100 nodes and the sea is the design.
The current ratio is atrocious. But its good for stress testing. But you will lose testers and players.

foxstalvind

bloodprophet wrote: »

brita wrote: »

I've dropped the game for the time being. The massive contesting for resources, mobs or other stuff is draining, especially with people flagging to kill others who "crowd" their spots.

This is the intended design. Stated from the very start.
Scarcity and meaningful conflict.

It's not meaningful. I have never been flagged on, and pvped over a spot. What I have had are groups mass pull mobs, and use threat dropping mechanics to dump enemies on us. That is not meaningful pvp, or at least, not what is generally considered meaningful pvp. In most MMOs that is considered griefing and is bannable. What I think is the flagging/corruption mechanic is too severe, and needs to be toned down, so we can wild west the mob spawns, instead of just doing this coward type stuff.

Lodrig

My biggest complaint is that Intrepid is introducing such blatantly exploitable 'placeholder' systems into the Alpha which should not have left the PTR without BASIC common sense exploit preventions on them. And when these systems are PvP or war related they have the potential to utterly destroy ALL other playtesting and to drive people right out of testing long term. And Intrepid is not even learning anything useful from pushing these systems out of PTR either because they not even fufilling the the designs they intend.

Some of the most agregious examples.

Citizenship at nodes with no protection against alts or flooding in citizens after votes start, despite that having been an explicit part of the design, thus resulting in mass alt ballot stuffing.
Guild/Node Wars with no limit and no delay, and only a kill count result in 'assasin' wars in which they are declared inorder to kill some afk people in town or a respawn point over and over. Again the current implementation bears no semblence to the stated design or objective based battle showcases.

I have no issues with Bugs that are inevitable and unavaoidable. Server instability, glitched mobs, inadaquate resource spawns, even dupping bugs are inevitable and expected and are not the result of a half-assed implementation. My concern is SPECIFICALLY for Intrepid not even bothering to program in their own clearly repeatedly described exploit preventing guard-rails, which were for the most part blatantly obvious to everyone who has ever played an MMO (hense why people asked about them many times to elicity Intrepids responses). The implementations we have gotten are frankly UNFIT for testing in a non-wiping environment which is what the Alpha is supposed to be now.

I am becoming concerned that these exploit-bait placeholder implementations are being made and pushed out in some misguided attempt to satisfy percived content checklist so Intrepid can say it has delivered roadmap features when infact it is only fooling itself if it thinks that. Alpha is supposed to be where you implement your original design and then test it to see where it breaks both technicaly (the computer code is not creating the intended design) and where it has a gameplay break (the design is not fun), and use mass testing to find UN-Obvious exploits so you can cover them or if nessary do a full redesign. What we have now is like 'testing' a boat with sections of hull (which are in the blueprints) missing, it just sinks right away for the obvious reasons and it dosn't even tell you if the design is flawed.

Vhaeyne

Noaani wrote: »

This is what I don't get about so many people thst want Ashes to have these niche systems. Ashes needs masses of players to be the game these people want it to be more than it needs these niche systems.

This is what I don’t understand about so many people wanting Ashes of Creation to have mass appeal.

Open-world PvP and mass appeal might as well be mutually exclusive.

Steven has consistently pitched the game as a niche experience. Yet, people seem to disregard everything he says, even though he frequently emphasizes 'risk vs. reward' and 'player friction.'

Oh, and let’s not forget: 'This game isn’t going to be something everyone likes, and that’s okay.'

Accept the reality that no MMORPG needs mass appeal. All it takes is a single server with an active population and dedicated fans.

Terranigma1

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Accept the reality that no MMORPG needs mass appeal. All it takes is a single server with an active population and dedicated fans.

It depends. There are certain MMOs that can easily cope with a small player base, e.g. games which are built upon static and content-driven systems with only a few system that require player activity. Typical themepark MMOs do - in theory - not need a lot of players, because there are hardly any systems that are designed upon player interaction. For example, games such as WoW, GW2 and the likes can be virtually played alone during the levelling phase and even in the endgame you basically only need a handful of players, because all of the meaningful content is PvE. That's in theory, of course. In reality it's especailly those content-driven MMOs that need a large player base, because constantly developing new content to keep your audience entertained is expensive.

From what I understand, Ashes is heavily designed around systems and it's these system that cannot properly function with only a small playerbase. The scope of the world is huge - unless they cut it down - and the servers will require a high player density because all of these systems are player-driven. So, yeah. In theory one active server with one active playerbase could be enough; though I don't think that's what Intrepid is going for and I don't think you can finance the on-going development of the game with that few players. If you want the currently 220 developers to make ends meet, finance the further development of the game after its release and want to have enough players to engange with all the player-driven systems, I don't think one active server with about 8K players is enough to maintain an MMO.

So I don't think Ashes needs mass appeal, and it doesn't have that anyway. Too many system are old-school in a way that many modern games - for good reason - don't want to re-live, e.g. dropping resources on death, XP debt, etc. But especially Ashes will need to maintain a healthy playerbase and that usually equals also being attractive to a certain extent (!) to more casual players. Casual-ish players are the vast majority in MMOs, not the dedicated guild-leading no-lifers (no insult intended).

Vhaeyne

@Terranigma1

Under no circumstances is the number of employees a company has the customers problem.

A lot of the systems in Lineage 2 were based around a concept that got lost today in mmorpgs, and that's risk versus reward. You know this idea that the more you risk the greater potential reward should be present is a complete paradigm shift away from everyone's a winner, everybody gets a participation reward, and here you go, congratulations you're a player in this game; and that's boring. It gives nothing for a person to aspire to achieve something, or to feel the bite of loss when you fail. Those are the driving forces of why people want to play games and it's a reason why new games when they come out have such a short lifespan, because they are always competing with WOW. You don't have to compete with WOW. You don't have to be a WOW killer. You can focus on something that is different from a philosophical design standpoint; and I think that's just what a lot of studios today don't want to take the risk on.– Steven Sharif

A game like Ashes is very direct about what it's trying to be. We are telling you what we're trying to build. Now, the results of building that we may not always hit the mark, and that's where we come back and we iterate on something and we take the player's feedback. But what we're trying to do will stay consistent and that is really a dynamic world that is fraught with danger, both player and environment: and that's at the crux of what Ashes is. And on the dynamic world side, things that aren't going to change ever is that a lot of our systems are predicated on player activity; and those predicates are usually surfaced through the node system, are usually surfaced through the world spawn systems; and seeing a world that changes day to day is also the intent. So those are the things that really aren't going to change the dynamism that we predicate world activity off of, as well as the player versus X approach. – Steven Sharif

These statements are not how you get a massive player base. These are the words of a mad lad with a very specific dream for very specific people. If that means the game has a lower population post launch so be it.
Steven seems to be okay with that risk.

Otr

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

This is what I don't get about so many people thst want Ashes to have these niche systems. Ashes needs masses of players to be the game these people want it to be more than it needs these niche systems.

This is what I don’t understand about so many people wanting Ashes of Creation to have mass appeal.

Open-world PvP and mass appeal might as well be mutually exclusive.

Steven has consistently pitched the game as a niche experience. Yet, people seem to disregard everything he says, even though he frequently emphasizes 'risk vs. reward' and 'player friction.'

Oh, and let’s not forget: 'This game isn’t going to be something everyone likes, and that’s okay.'

Accept the reality that no MMORPG needs mass appeal. All it takes is a single server with an active population and dedicated fans.

I had such a discussion some time ago

Noaani wrote: »

Otr wrote: »

In the last stream Margaret said AoC is a niche mmo.

Baulders Gate 3 was thought to be a niche game as well.

If a game is truely great, it isn't a niche game.

People that want Ashes to be the best game it can possible be should want the game to be wildly popular - not because that means more players, more servers, longer life, more additional content and all those things - but because if the game is truely great, it will attract a large audience. If it is average, the game will attract a percentage of the PvP MMORPG population. If it is exceptional, it will attract a percentage of the BR, FPS and MOBA population as well.

If the game remains niche after launch, it the population remains small, that means the game is average - even if a handful of people really like it.

Ashes needs enough players to populate 85 nodes and have healthy populated servers at least 3-4 years after release.

Noaani

Otr wrote: »

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

This is what I don't get about so many people thst want Ashes to have these niche systems. Ashes needs masses of players to be the game these people want it to be more than it needs these niche systems.

This is what I don’t understand about so many people wanting Ashes of Creation to have mass appeal.

Open-world PvP and mass appeal might as well be mutually exclusive.

Steven has consistently pitched the game as a niche experience. Yet, people seem to disregard everything he says, even though he frequently emphasizes 'risk vs. reward' and 'player friction.'

Oh, and let’s not forget: 'This game isn’t going to be something everyone likes, and that’s okay.'

Accept the reality that no MMORPG needs mass appeal. All it takes is a single server with an active population and dedicated fans.

I had such a discussion some time ago

Noaani wrote: »

Otr wrote: »

In the last stream Margaret said AoC is a niche mmo.

Baulders Gate 3 was thought to be a niche game as well.

If a game is truely great, it isn't a niche game.

People that want Ashes to be the best game it can possible be should want the game to be wildly popular - not because that means more players, more servers, longer life, more additional content and all those things - but because if the game is truely great, it will attract a large audience. If it is average, the game will attract a percentage of the PvP MMORPG population. If it is exceptional, it will attract a percentage of the BR, FPS and MOBA population as well.

If the game remains niche after launch, it the population remains small, that means the game is average - even if a handful of people really like it.

Ashes needs enough players to populate 85 nodes and have healthy populated servers at least 3-4 years after release.

Indeed.

Except it needs this in every region.

If the game is set to have a Brazil region, that region needs enough players to support 85 nodes. Same with an Oceania region.

In terms of MMORPG's, if Ashes is going to have the population to support these regional servers, it can't be a niche game. One Oceania server is equal to 15 NA and perhaps 8 EU servers, and 2 BR servers. That means support for a concurrent login of over 250,000 players - that is no niche MMORPG.

Ashes just isn't going to hit this level of popularity, which means (among other things) the notion of regional servers is kind of a joke.

While earlier this year I was suggesting people should be asking for Ashes to be made with a slightly broader appeal, the game is at the point now where 95% of MMORPG players seem to have noped out of the game, for various reasons (too much PvP, not enough PvP, too much PvE, not enough PvE, and a few other things). It's too late to try and get a broader appeal - the game is what it is, all that can really be done now (or all that should be done now) is ironing out the wrinkles.

nanfoodle

I personally think Ashes won't have a problem sustaining 250k players. They sold over 100k A2 keys. The vast majority of gamers don't even look into a game till its close to launch. Allot of gamers won't consider even a early access game.

That being said, there is not logical reason to expect 100'000 + gamers to fight over spawn points and to top it off not give us LFG tools. People willing to test the game in its current state. Willing and wanting to. Are killing themselves just to find a team and a spot to test.

Im in a large guild that's organized and I'm struggling to find a place when I log in. DPS classes are sick of struggling to find a place that comes close to the consistent exp they get from solo. This makes it harder for Support classes to level.

There needs to be some changes.

Noaani

nanfoodle wrote: »

I personally think Ashes won't have a problem sustaining 250k players. They sold over 100k A2 keys. The vast majority of gamers don't even look into a game till its close to launch. Allot of gamers won't consider even a early access game.

I don't think they will have trouble starting with well over a million.

In terms of sustained population (3 - 4 years after launch is the window Otr mentioned), I don't see more than 50k players.

I know almost 50 people with access to the current alpha. I am the only person of that group that has down loaded the client. People that want to test the game are just not bothering. While some of this last group can be put down to the alpha state the game is in, the foundational reason people are leaving (as you say) is lack of access to content, and thst is essentially a core component of this game.

The game has chased off people that at one time were excited about the game. It will chase off people that are less excited about it at a similar rate.

nanfoodle

Noaani wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

I personally think Ashes won't have a problem sustaining 250k players. They sold over 100k A2 keys. The vast majority of gamers don't even look into a game till its close to launch. Allot of gamers won't consider even a early access game.

I don't think they will have trouble starting with well over a million.

In terms of sustained population (3 - 4 years after launch is the window Otr mentioned), I don't see more than 50k players.

I know almost 50 people with access to the current alpha. I am the only person of that group that has down loaded the client. People that want to test the game are just not bothering. While some of this last group can be put down to the alpha state the game is in, the foundational reason people are leaving (as you say) is lack of access to content, and thst is essentially a core component of this game.

The game has chased off people that at one time were excited about the game. It will chase off people that are less excited about it at a similar rate.

Part of me wonders if that's by design. Less people less server costs. Only thing that makes sense to me.

Vhaeyne

Noaani wrote: »

Except it needs this in every region.

"Needs" is a overly strong word in this context.

It would be nice, but it is not a need.

At this stage we do not have numbers on how many different servers will exist for different regions. We've said in the past 8-10,000 concurrent users per server is what we'd like to aim for. Obviously, the number of servers that exist in a region are going to be dependent on the population that's playing. – Steven Sharif

If the audience is not strong enough in a region to support itself then they just wont have servers in that region.

This is a reality that Australians have to live with in nearly every game they play.

They are aiming for multiple servers in every region, but the game could be "successful" with one server for the entire player base.

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

If the audience is not strong enough in a region to support itself then they just wont have servers in that region.

To me, this qualifies as "needs".

If a region doesn't have thst population, that region won't exist.

As to whether the game could be successful with one server for the whole playerbase - not with the current design.

If we drop down to one server, that means the game will cease to be played outside of NA, due to other regions not being able to participate in sieges, events or the important parts of guild and node wars. People outside of NA would be getting a third of a game, basically.

Noaani

nanfoodle wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

I personally think Ashes won't have a problem sustaining 250k players. They sold over 100k A2 keys. The vast majority of gamers don't even look into a game till its close to launch. Allot of gamers won't consider even a early access game.

I don't think they will have trouble starting with well over a million.

In terms of sustained population (3 - 4 years after launch is the window Otr mentioned), I don't see more than 50k players.

I know almost 50 people with access to the current alpha. I am the only person of that group that has down loaded the client. People that want to test the game are just not bothering. While some of this last group can be put down to the alpha state the game is in, the foundational reason people are leaving (as you say) is lack of access to content, and thst is essentially a core component of this game.

The game has chased off people that at one time were excited about the game. It will chase off people that are less excited about it at a similar rate.

Part of me wonders if that's by design. Less people less server costs. Only thing that makes sense to me.

I think it's more a miscalculation of the size of the population that is exactly like Steven.

It's really weird when I talk to the few people I know working on this game. Game developers are usually quite excited to talk about the games they are working on. I talked to someone working on PoE2 a while ago, and their excitement for the game was palpable. Talking to people working on Ashes, they are kind of luke warm on it at best. The people I know at Intrepid (can't speak to others) really don't expect this game to be popular - they expect it to launch, but not much past that.

Nemeses

lukedawuke wrote: »

"wahhh i wanna play like its a full release, how dare you test and work on your servers instead of catering to our wishes to grind and farm like everythings working aaarrghh"

What a pointless post

ELRYNO

Approx Year 1 + Key Sales & Cash Shop $35,000.000
Quick maths post year 1.
50,000 x $15 = $750,000
$750,000 x 12 = $9,000,000
Cash Shop ($5,000,000 P.A based on 50,000 X average spend per year of $100)
Approximate Yearly revenue post 1st year = $14,000,000
Just some rough figures that's 4.5 years of no further development costs to get a return on $100,000,000 investment (which I think is conservative).

I seriously think that the game does need to appeal to the wider audience with a player base retention of 100k + otherwise I don't think you'll see much more content out of the team after the 2nd / 3rd year of launch.

With the current game design driving players towards conflict over the most basic of gameplay loops I think that you will struggle. Look at Helldivers 2, an extremely successful launch given the size of the studio, hugely viral marketing campaign, AAA engaging combat experience and extremely positive reviews worldwide. The game peaked at around 500k players but has since struggled to retain 100k concurrent players a year after it's release date. Even with the economics of this game at a staggering $1.3 billion in sales with a large share of that coming purely from it's box sale, content updates have come few and far between with reports that the studio has had lay offs recently after the initial hiring wave post launch.

Ofcourse the above also doesn't take into account additional costs of development from now until release and also additional key sales / cosmetic sales. They have noted that cosmetics will not look as good as obtainable gear, so I expect that cosmetics will be less inticing to those who are struggling to heat their homes & feed their kids.

(A little note, not really looking for feedback on my post, I'm just publicly muttering some math notes I made whilst drunk over Christmas.)

Sathrago

holy moly i just watched narcs video, and I havent played phase 2 past a few levels of mage as I wanted to wait for more systems... But to find out that the desert is completely barren and we still dont have the grid server system in for testing... like what are we even doing right now? testing a bunch of placeholder systems that are also tuned to be extremely grindy and take hours upon hours to even start testing? If its a test treat us like testers and give us the proper setup to test these things. if we are gamers playing a game then give us content.

This weird ass limbo between being a player and a tester needs to stop.

Child Item