Solutions for Steven - Identify Problem, then give solution

1970merlin

Problem: Boredom. Too boring to test.

Solution: Turn the respawn rate up in general. Quest specific: Currently you can't even do the quests because the respawn rate for named mobs is so long. We understand the game is designed to take work to have a sense of accomplishment. But, until the game has enough content to maintain interest you are going to have to make it a little more rewarding to have enough people interested to test. Also, I and many other players are very worried about the long term effect of a bad experience now (and the experience now is very bad.)

Problem: Communication and expectations.

Solution: Tell us what we are testing. If you just don't have anything done just say it. This would be better.

Problem: Game built around PvP & Group play alone will not get the player base to pay for PvP and group game.

Solution: There are simply not enough players to support a PvP/group only mmorpg. Development must be a two-track approach. PvE and single player path have to be an option as much as most of the current testers are not looking for this. I personally am much more interested in PVP and group play, but I also want enough players to support the game when it releases.

Problem: So many systems.

Solution: Sadly, You need to hold people's hands. Intrepid is going to have to develop a level 1-10 quest line that takes players thru literally everything if you want group participation. This means quests for registering as a citizen, for helping build the first building in a node, for freeholds, literally for every game mechanic. I'm assuming there are already plans for this, but writing this just in case. People, who have just followed the game a little have little idea how to participate and it is only going to get worse as more systems are introduced. I have seen new streamers lost and unable to figure out what to do next. I understand the desire not to hold people's hands, but it just has to be done. So just accept it and move on. You cant expect people in their teens and 20s to figure things out when every other game they have ever played led them thru like children. You can't fight this as much as this appalls Gen X. It is already important, but as more Alpha 2 keys are sold, (these are people not steeped in years of development videos) having these quests is a must or these new people will be lost and angry. I would get them in the game now to avoid a bad first impression.

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Vhaeyne

@Noaani

The siege timing issue is a valid concern, but it’s one that has been addressed in other games. There are several known solutions that Intrepid can draw inspiration from, along with Ashes-specific solutions yet to be discovered.

Off the top of my head, once the mayor selects the defending party, that party could vote on a time for the siege to go vulnerable within the next 24–48 hours. It’s not a perfect system, but there are ways to schedule a large fight in a timely manner.

The key takeaway here is that I’d rather have an imperfect system than end up with a bunch of dead regional servers.

As for the 1,500 players per server point, I have to disagree. Steven mentioned on Saturday during his impromptu Twitch stream that Vyra had around 4,000 players. As we all know, 4,000 players in the Riverlands feels a bit cramped for some (though personally, I’m loving it). That said, I’ve abandoned any faith in pre-Alpha 2 server numbers—it was all just napkin math for Intrepid up to this point. I’m thinking 2,000–3,000 players per biome might be more realistic. Otherwise, players are going to be too spread out for my taste.

Noaani wrote: »

It's funny, the reason Steven made this game is because he looked at Archeage and thought to himself "this game could have been so much more" - which is exactly how many people are already looking at Ashes.

I would downplay the importance of ArcheAge. It’s well-documented that I’m a Lineage 2 fanboy, but I never had any real interest in ArcheAge. The pay-to-win (P2W) aspect was a complete dealbreaker for me.

In some ways, ArcheAge undermined the things Lineage 2 got right. I’m not going to link the inspirations page because I know you’re already familiar with it, but realistically, the only notable features we’re directly inheriting from ArcheAge are caravans and naval combat. I don’t believe Jake Song (Lineage 1 and ArcheAge developer) truly understood what made Lineage 2 so great for so long.

Anyway, you’re free to spend your time however you like, but personally, if I didn’t like the direction a game was headed, I wouldn’t bother with the forums.

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Noaani
The siege timing issue is a valid concern, but it’s one that has been addressed in other games. There are several known solutions that Intrepid can draw inspiration from, along with Ashes-specific solutions yet to be discovered.

Sure there are other solutions, but we are now changing a fundamental aspect of the game that is a reason for many people buying in to it.

I know a good number of people in other games that lost out due to things happening at times when they couldn't be online. A lot of it was me and my guild doing it to them, but still, people don't want to play a game where they put time and effort in to a node or castle, only to have it taken from them at a point in time when they can't log on. People knowing what time that is going to be before hand only leads to people that know they can't easily log in at that time simply ignoring that aspect of the game (which in Ashes, would mean dropping the game).

There is no viable way to make it so NA, EU, SEA and Oceania players can all compete over the same resources at the same time.

Vhaeyne wrote: »

As for the 1,500 players per server point, I have to disagree.

With the size the game world is set to be, yeah, they can't have that many people per server. The game world size was determined by the number of people they wanted per server though, and the final decision on that size was made after the server capacity was decided on.

Again though, that is kind of my point. The game is a mass of decisions that may well have been made correctly in some aspects, but when combined don't actually work well together.

I'm sure you remember me saying years ago that this game is a mess of contradictions...

AirborneBerserker

Laetitian wrote: »

You did the maths so dirty, I'll have to go shower after this. Your statistics are disregarding overlap between the categories. For every group that's heavily encompassed by another (and thus creates a disproportionate relationship between the percentage the categories represent within each other compared to what they represent of the entire world) you'd have to nearly disregard those overlapping factors in your calculations, because those people are already nearly encompassed by the previous factor.

That's especially crucial in the 0.1 and 0.2 factor, at least the higher of which might be nearly eliminated by this overlap. That's nearly an extra 400% on top of your result just from this one cleanup, and if the same applies to several of the other factors to varying degrees (keep in mind this cleanup applies multiplicatively just like the factors in your original calculation), that might be the difference between 100k players and 10 million players.

Your either talking about a Union, a person that occupies more then one category at a time, which wouldn't make any difference. Or what your trying to say is the categories are larger then the numbers I used. My question to you would be which one?

PvP? Nope notoriously small, I'm certain I wont get an argument on that one since most of the people here know that's the case.

Sand Box? Again, well known that Theme park games do much much better. Sand box games just aren't nearly as popular because PEOPLE don't like them as much.

Hard Core? Extremely well known that it's about 20% of players.

Hardcore? Again, a notoriously tiny group, especially within the MMORPG community. But even in gaming in general.

MMORPGs account for 3% of the total number of gamers

Laetitian wrote: »

Part of which is because WoW has tainted the public image of the market and not allowed it to grow into something other than its stereotype. You can't exclude the possibility that another percent or two might simply open up for a new successful game with a different hype and deeper game mechanics. Ashes might not deliver on that, but it shouldn't lead you to forget about the possibility, because otherwise there's no point in ever trying anything new, and you could just go play WoW or forget about the genre.

Which would be a good point if this game was actually trying some thing new. Which it isn't it's taking old shit giving it a fresh coat of paint. That's not new, problem is this game doesn't have hordes of people pining for the good ol' days.

@Noaani Unfortunately this game doesn't have the luxury of having almost no competition. It has mountains of competition that's the problem. There are loads of Fantasy games out there for people to choose from. At 36 months I'll be surprised if this game has 3,000 players, let alone 30,000. That's being the result of two things having lots of competition and so many systems that reward toxic behaviors of the worst possible kind.

Noaani

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Noaani Unfortunately this game doesn't have the luxury of having almost no competition. It has mountains of competition that's the problem. There are loads of Fantasy games out there for people to choose from. At 36 months I'll be surprised if this game has 3,000 players, let alone 30,000. That's being the result of two things having lots of competition and so many systems that reward toxic behaviors of the worst possible kind.

Without a quote, I have no idea what comment of mine you are referring to here.

I don't recall talking about how much competition I expect Ashes to have.

RonDog98

Vhaeyne wrote: »

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Except we aren't talking about ducks were talking about Steven, and your inability to accept that he is a human being and is just as fallible as anyone one else. "We need to adhere to his vision" is some thing a cult member would say when someone criticized their "dear leader".

Or... I enjoyed many of the same games Steven is using for inspiration.

I also don't care if the game attracts massive numbers. That’s Intrepid’s problem, not mine.

As long as there’s at least one well-populated server, I’m fine with that.

I understand that @Noaani feels strongly about the game needing enough success to support good servers in every region, but I’d be content with just one solid server, similar to EVE.

Worst-case scenario: the game crashes and burns, and I move on to another PvX game. It wouldn’t be as big of a loss for me as it would be for Intrepid.

The reason I mentioned a random L2 private server and EVE was simply to point out that there are respectable numbers of players out there enjoying PvX on random single servers for very old games in 2024.

I’m not sure why you went off on a rant with made-up percentages—it’s not particularly useful or insightful to me.

I like your enthusiasm but those numbers don’t sound very impressive.

RonDog98

What I don’t underratand is the people that think this will be a clone from a few small tweaks.

Meaningful PVP in this game will be predominantly Endgame focus unless intrepid temporary scales up players to be equal level for node/gild wars.

Otherwise, low levels who have no roll to play will just slaughtered.

Intrepid should mitigate the harshness of a lot of its early game punishments to players arw more incentivized to stick it out for the good stuff later on.

AirborneBerserker

Noaani wrote: »

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Noaani Unfortunately this game doesn't have the luxury of having almost no competition. It has mountains of competition that's the problem. There are loads of Fantasy games out there for people to choose from. At 36 months I'll be surprised if this game has 3,000 players, let alone 30,000. That's being the result of two things having lots of competition and so many systems that reward toxic behaviors of the worst possible kind.

Without a quote, I have no idea what comment of mine you are referring to here.

I don't recall talking about how much competition I expect Ashes to have.

Noaani wrote: »

Truth be told, his end result is about where I expect Ashes subscription numbers to be 36 months after launch - under 100k players, but enough to support a total of 2 servers worldwide of the capacity Intrepid want for this game.

Laetitian

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Laetitian wrote: »

You did the maths so dirty, I'll have to go shower after this. Your statistics are disregarding overlap between the categories. For every group that's heavily encompassed by another (and thus creates a disproportionate relationship between the percentage the categories represent within each other compared to what they represent of the entire world) you'd have to nearly disregard those overlapping factors in your calculations, because those people are already nearly encompassed by the previous factor.

That's especially crucial in the 0.1 and 0.2 factor, at least the higher of which might be nearly eliminated by this overlap. That's nearly an extra 400% on top of your result just from this one cleanup, and if the same applies to several of the other factors to varying degrees (keep in mind this cleanup applies multiplicatively just like the factors in your original calculation), that might be the difference between 100k players and 10 million players.

Your either talking about a Union, a person that occupies more then one category at a time, which wouldn't make any difference.
Or what your trying to say is the categories are larger then the numbers I used. My question to you would be which one?

PvP? Nope notoriously small, I'm certain I wont get an argument on that one since most of the people here know that's the case.

Sand Box? Again, well known that Theme park games do much much better. Sand box games just aren't nearly as popular because PEOPLE don't like them as much.

Hard Core? Extremely well known that it's about 20% of players.

Hardcore? Again, a notoriously tiny group, especially within the MMORPG community. But even in gaming in general.

[No, that wasn't my point.]

Yes, it does. Massively so. As I laid out in fairly clear terms. If you still feel compelled to disagree, use the medical professional comparison I gave to argue your case, because it should make the problem fairly clear.
And, again, keep in mind this problem applies multiplicatively each time it happens in your calculation. So even what you might assume to be negligible (and realistically it's not negligible; the 0.2 and 0.1 factor probably overlap nearly 1:1) still accumulates to a massive change of the result across the 7 factors you picked.

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Laetitian wrote: »

Part of which is because WoW has tainted the public image of the market and not allowed it to grow into something other than its stereotype. You can't exclude the possibility that another percent or two might simply open up for a new successful game with a different hype and deeper game mechanics. Ashes might not deliver on that, but it shouldn't lead you to forget about the possibility, because otherwise there's no point in ever trying anything new, and you could just go play WoW or forget about the genre.

Which would be a good point if this game was actually trying some thing new. Which it isn't it's taking old shit giving it a fresh coat of paint. That's not new, problem is this game doesn't have hordes of people pining for the good ol' days.

Nodes are new. Their implementation isn't perfect, and I'm not here to argue Ashes is perfect, or that it will suffice to take over the industry. But that's not a reason to pretend that its concept couldn't be viable enough to fill its niche, and in theory sweep the industry if the execution was better. (Remember your claim was that a "hardcore" PVP MMO CANNOT succeed. You even tried to prove that it was a statistical impossibility.)

AirborneBerserker

Laetitian wrote: »

Yes, it does. Massively so. As I laid out in fairly clear terms. If you still feel compelled to disagree, use the medical professional comparison I gave to argue your case, because it should make the problem fairly clear.
And, again, keep in mind this problem applies multiplicatively each time it happens in your calculation. So even what you might assume to be negligible (and realistically it's not negligible; the 0.2 and 0.1 factor probably overlap nearly 1:1) still accumulates to a massive change of the result across the 7 factors you picked.

Okay no a Union would make a difference, just as much as an Intersection wouldn't make a difference. Because they posses multiple aspects doesn't mean anything. They have to posses ALL of the factors.

As for Nodes being new, its not. There have been games where you build your own towns SWG comes to mind.

Finally if you think the categories are larger which one. Exactly which one. Do you think PvP is more then 30%, Hardcore is more the 10%, Sandbox is more then 30%, or if Hard Core players account for more then 10%?

Noaani

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Noaani Unfortunately this game doesn't have the luxury of having almost no competition. It has mountains of competition that's the problem. There are loads of Fantasy games out there for people to choose from. At 36 months I'll be surprised if this game has 3,000 players, let alone 30,000. That's being the result of two things having lots of competition and so many systems that reward toxic behaviors of the worst possible kind.

Without a quote, I have no idea what comment of mine you are referring to here.

I don't recall talking about how much competition I expect Ashes to have.

Noaani wrote: »

Truth be told, his end result is about where I expect Ashes subscription numbers to be 36 months after launch - under 100k players, but enough to support a total of 2 servers worldwide of the capacity Intrepid want for this game.

Ok, not sure where I was talking about what competition the game would have when it goes live. I don't think the game has much in the way of competition.

Vhaeyne

RonDog98 wrote: »

I like your enthusiasm but those numbers don’t sound very impressive.

They don't have to be.

If they wanted impressive numbers they would just make a WOW clone.

Intrepid believes strongly enough in their design that there is room in the market for what they are offering to take the risk in it.

Let them take that risk is all I am saying.

RonDog98

Vhaeyne wrote: »

RonDog98 wrote: »

I like your enthusiasm but those numbers don’t sound very impressive.

They don't have to be.

If they wanted impressive numbers they would just make a WOW clone.

Intrepid believes strongly enough in their design that there is room in the market for what they are offering to take the risk in it.

Let them take that risk is all I am saying.

What I’m saying is they don’t need wow numbers, but I worry anything less than 200k players wouldn’t be able to sustain the development cost of a game like this

AirborneBerserker

Noaani wrote: »

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Noaani Unfortunately this game doesn't have the luxury of having almost no competition. It has mountains of competition that's the problem. There are loads of Fantasy games out there for people to choose from. At 36 months I'll be surprised if this game has 3,000 players, let alone 30,000. That's being the result of two things having lots of competition and so many systems that reward toxic behaviors of the worst possible kind.

Without a quote, I have no idea what comment of mine you are referring to here.

I don't recall talking about how much competition I expect Ashes to have.

Noaani wrote: »

Truth be told, his end result is about where I expect Ashes subscription numbers to be 36 months after launch - under 100k players, but enough to support a total of 2 servers worldwide of the capacity Intrepid want for this game.

Ok, not sure where I was talking about what competition the game would have when it goes live. I don't think the game has much in the way of competition.

Just because you don't talk about the tornado about to hit your house doesn't mean it's not going to tear it to pieces.

The Fantasy MMORPG dosent have much competition? Are you serious right now?

Azherae

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

Noaani Unfortunately this game doesn't have the luxury of having almost no competition. It has mountains of competition that's the problem. There are loads of Fantasy games out there for people to choose from. At 36 months I'll be surprised if this game has 3,000 players, let alone 30,000. That's being the result of two things having lots of competition and so many systems that reward toxic behaviors of the worst possible kind.

Without a quote, I have no idea what comment of mine you are referring to here.

I don't recall talking about how much competition I expect Ashes to have.

Noaani wrote: »

Truth be told, his end result is about where I expect Ashes subscription numbers to be 36 months after launch - under 100k players, but enough to support a total of 2 servers worldwide of the capacity Intrepid want for this game.

Ok, not sure where I was talking about what competition the game would have when it goes live. I don't think the game has much in the way of competition.

Just because you don't talk about the tornado about to hit your house doesn't mean it's not going to tear it to pieces.

The Fantasy MMORPG dosent have much competition? Are you serious right now?

The top-down-hierarchy city builder GvG sandbox-ish Western-style Fantasy Class-Defined MMORPG with an explicit winner-loser dynamic and always-on PvP does not have much competition right now.

"People actually wanting a different product" isn't 'competition' unless for some reason you want to copy that product or the product fulfills most/all of the same needs for that group of people.

In which case, not a chance.

(meanwhile some of us out here refusing to play different installments of the same series far less 'within same genre')

Noaani

AirborneBerserker wrote: »

The Fantasy MMORPG dosent have much competition? Are you serious right now?

Sure, there is some competition if you look that broad, but you shouldn't look that broad because the bulk of players interested in "fantasy MMORPG's as a whole would not be at all interested in Ashes.

Rather, Ashes is specifically a somewhat punishing, time consuming, guild focused PvP MMORPG. The term "fantasy" doesn't really play a part in terms of competition, but these three that I have used here do.

In this segment, there isn't really much competition. So, to the kinds of players that would consider Ashes, there isn't that much competition.

Arya_Yeshe

I like a lot the nodes system, weather, caravans systems and character customization; everything else is generic or bad, specially war stuff is very bad, the pve nests are horrendous..

Saabynator

Vhaeyne wrote: »

@Saabynator

The game should not be a a near sandbox game. That game should be what they planned for it, not what you want for it.

It's kind of difficult to parse your meaning when they’ve been marketing the game as a "sandpark."

My take is that it’s just marketing BS.

The majority of the systems and gameplay loops are clearly sandbox. There are a few elements, like quests and story arcs, that lean toward the theme park style, but those don't seem to be the primary focus. If they were we would be testing them sooner than later and they would talk about them a lot more.

In my opinion, Ashes would still be Ashes without a single NPC with dialogue or quests.

They’re calling it "sandpark" while showcasing a game that’s currently 99% sandbox and might drop to 85% sandbox at most once development is complete.

What I’m saying is, whether they admit it or not, they seem to be creating the best sandbox MMORPG of our time.

Dude the game is in alpha stage 2, yea? Tons of systems, quest chain etc are not in the game yet. How do you see the final product there?

MissionCreep

blktauna wrote: »

In all honest perhaps PVE should just be random bots of certain towns going out and farming so the PVP only gang can hunt and grief them all they like. Like a more focused Mob. Then what you loot from them goes into your guild's coffers and that allows certain gear to spawn for you in the guild store, thus eliminating the whole need for any pve players and it can simply be non stop pvp.

Just have the game copy actual characters on the server and change the name but nothing else. Then spawn them as bots to be gank bait.

I guess it would be too obvious when none of the bots had a guild name attached, though.

MissionCreep

This is basically the mobile game dilemma of whales versus fish.

Not related to income (that's a separate issue), but you need a critical mass of fish or the whales will leave. So you have to provide content and rewards for the fish to enjoy; you can't just crank out whale stuff or your game will collapse.

You also need fish for the whales to beat so they can feel good about all the money they spent to show off to the fish. But the fish need other fish so they don't feel totally worthless.

I don't know what the ratio of whales to fish is, probably 1 to 1000 but PvP to PvE probably needs to be 1 to 10 or something like that. If PvE isn't enjoyable (perhaps due to PvP and griefing tactics;spawn camping, etc) then PvE will leave, and when they leave, everyone leaves.

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