Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
I just made two new characters today and have had no trouble finding random groups. Just go to a spot and start inviting people.
Plus you can get 1-6, hell even 7 or 8, pretty easily by yourself right now.
Crafters and Processors stick to towns, because you can't progress either path out in the wilds to any significant degree.
Gatherers are out in the wilds to gather and need to learn how to PvP, same as they need decent enough gear and skill to get through mobs between them and the resources they want to harvest.
Gameplay-casual players aren't really the demographic Ashes is looking to appeal to. Time-casual maybe, but not gameplay-casual. Your nodes and progress in them all live and die by PvP.
Ok, its designed for a specific audience with a particular game play preference....
I sometimes see this phrase used as a rally cry that this game should be PvP-centric, period. That may not be what you are stating, but all the PvP "let me kill everyone with no consequences is what my brain hears.
Then, you see Steven state "killing low levels is not a thing and I will ban you" and the same group loses their minds... as this isn't the game for them.
As a gatherer, crafter, and solo player, I love the current balance. I am fine with the game rewarding grouping.
I think overall for the minimal alpha content that is in, it isn't bad. We don't really have the designed "null sec" places or whole mechanics even in yet (high seas), hence alpha and partial information.
There are some classes that are good 1-10 and then fall off. There are some classes that are bad 1-10 and then get strong. There are some people starting to flag more often. There are new players that pick up from an ashes pile and immediately flag and realize that is bad.
I prefer the "show me" then "tell me", and sometimes I think certain PvPers are really hanging onto the "tell me" way too much and being wrong.
However, when you use Steven's phrase, you need to realize it is OK for Steven to say that. Steven has a vision and almost no one else is going to mean the same thing when he says it. It is more clear for you to state "this game should lean heavier on PvP in "this way". That is good and something to discuss.
Having a mantra call that doesn't mean what you think it means (to everyone) is not helpful and just seems like mob mentality.
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."
If you want a PVE tailored MMO experience I can point you to the last 10 years of MMOs
there are currently no PVX MMOs and if any are still around P2W has likely made them a husk of what they used to be.
There are plenty of potential oldschool gamers just waiting for 'thier game' the question is can Intrepid attain/retain new players with no prior PVX MMO gaming experiences or MMO preconceptions.
A game that tries to appeal to everybody inevitably appeals to nobody.
Honestly? Baiting people into going corrupt is more of a grief than forcing pvp on people who don't want it. Going corrupt is such a punishment it's not worth doing (and that's a good thing)
Reduce your player base, great business model. I guess we'll find out in a few years.
That's a weird quote, player travel 15/20 minutes to gathering spot, spend 40 minutes gathering. Come back to their bank - that's a 20 minutes. So let's say an hour and half is the minimum time you'll likely spend on gathering at any given time.
Just because you focus on killing people who are 20 level bellow your character don't tell them they are idiots please !
They should be doing an official game pillar statement for MMO. I've been reading this one to figure out the overall direction, but it would be nice if the official site could hold a page for the design philosophy behind the game. : https://fr.ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars#:~:text=Ashes%20of%20Creation%20is%20a%20PvX%20game%20built%20on%20the,game%20will%20never%20be%20changed..
Personally I don't disagree that reducing your player base is kind of great business model. By focusing on what you wanna do, instead of how many player it is likely to attract, you'll be likely to keep your designated player base happy and stay in business longer. If you start catering to everyone like and dislike your game is likely to become generic and overall you'll start to cater unknowingly to a specific audience. Then you might still have a game, but your game will be dead.
Isn't it a PVX focus game ? I mean, I do agree that people who missed DAOC and stuff are looking for the next PVP focus MMO, but I don't believe this is it either. The PVP is likely to enter inside the risk vs. reward category as well and some player who are looking to reign supreme as they get into the PVP are also likely to feel like the game wants their death.
From experience, when a game start to say that it has a robust PVP system in mind, you'll start seeing a part of the community's eye turn red with blood - like shark smelling blood in the water - and they'll usually stop thinking about anything else which might have be said and just start believing PVP will rule the world.
Like don't get me wrong PVP game are OP on the steamchart, but you don't loose your Fortnite's skin when you loose a game. The risk vs reward system that MMO have to build-in in order to achieve balance is delicate when it comes to PVX and not "Realm vs. Realm" type of game.
At this point, it is likely that PVP will see nerf (PVP is actually incomplete at this point which is why corrupt system work this way ATM, from what I read. We are not a great place to start using our thinking cap, but still
The key things all popular PvP games have in common is that they are all non-persistent.
A game where you enter in to a single match specifically for PvP, play through said match and then have no real consequences affecting your future gameplay is a very different thing to a game where you can be logged in to do something other than PvP, have PvP forced on you, and the results of that PvP has lasting effects on the game going forward for both of you - that is a very different thing.
If you are looking at "just PvP games" and not looking in any deeper than that, then I would say that it is you that has no idea what you are talking about.
they learn not to gather 2 hours straight without banking a single time
This is kind of an incompatible notion to the idea of long travel times.
It now doubles (or more) the amount of time a player needs to spend gathering to get the same result.
I'm not offering a solution here. I'm just pointing out that this game has many inconsistencies and incompatibilities in its design. These things can be designed around, but designing around inconsistencies and incompatibilities usually results in jank in comparison to having g a grand over all design for the game that doesn't have those inconsistencies and incompatibilities.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Corruption
risk vs reward. balance changes needed when we have all systems online eventually.
Not sure what you think this fixes in terms of the inconsistency of a game that asks you to keep your harvested materials stored away while also asking you to travel a comparatively long time to get to those harvestable materials.
Corruption isn't just a "fix all" system.
Long travel times? there a bank within 2 minutes ride of anywhere in the map pretty much i stockpile shit in local banks till there a bunch of shit to carry at once to organise in main bank
You know built up nodes on alpha are more dense than they could be on live, right?
IF you can make it so the smaller guilds are not made irrelevant due to locked items/progression then people will stay and play..
IMO hyper competitive pvp is only fun with games where you have session based pvp ( where skill is a bigger factor than gear and progress resets for each session/game )
In a persistent world, if you make characters exponentially stronger AND lock progression behind pvp, then you will inevitable make a setting where only the minority gets to be effective in pvp and this will destroy pvp altogether.. Sine pvp will not be fun for people who were locked out of progression ( they will be 1 shot ) it will also not be fun for the majority of the top guild ( since 1 shotting people is not fun in the long term)
IF you make the world big enough and where you have plenty opportunities to progress then it could be good. BUT then you also have the issue where guilds just dont interact.. No idea how to balance this haha
While I do agree with what you are saying, the above is essentially the core game design of Ashes.
So really, what you and I are saying is that the biggest issue with this game is that the focus of the core design of the game is bad.