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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.
The Problem With Ashes of Creation Biomes
GreatPhilisopher
Member, Alpha Two
First, I want to say I appreciate the devs and their work, like adding zones quickly and constantly touching them up. This isn't meant to take away from their work — it's just feedback (and a bit of a rant), and it's going to be a little long.
After looking at the zones for quite a while now, and with the addition of the first pass of the Jundark (well, more like Junlight), I sadly have to say that none of them seem to capture the feeling of what they actually are, due to a few problems.
1st: The Riverlands
The Riverlands is the most complete zone out of all of them, but it's just so boring and uninteresting. It feels flat, and everything looks the same — same trees, randomly scattered everywhere, no zones with different types of trees, no open lush grassy windy fields, nothing. There are POIs, but none of them make you stop and think, "Wow, that looks cool, I want to explore that."
The only one that gives a little bit of that feeling is Carphin, and while it will change, right now it's just a fancier-looking cave (aka a pocket dungeon) where you aimlessly grind mobs.
That's the Riverlands, and the problems of randomness, lack of interesting POIs, and the whole zone looking the same instead of having unique areas inside the biome carry over into the Tropics and the newly added Jundark. The desert has another problem too.
2nd: The Tropics
Same problem as the Riverlands — it all looks the same. There's nothing interesting. This one barely has any POIs (and I get that comes later), but there's no point if they're going to end up like the Riverlands ones. I also get that there aren't many different types of tropical environments you can make, but they didn't even try to begin with.
There's another problem that adds to all the zones looking the same, which I'll touch on later.
3rd: The Jundark
The newly added biome — while it's a first pass — you can already tell it has the same problems. It's just one tree repeated everywhere. Right now it looks more like a new part of the Tropics than a jungle.
I understand they can't make it super dense because of performance reasons, but they don't need to do that. It's all about atmosphere and presentation.
All they had to do was make giant trees with big leaves, vines and branches intertwined with each other, covering the sky and barely letting any sunlight through. Smaller, but still bigger-than-normal trees should fill the lower levels, with tall grass and vegetation like banana trees, totems, and whatever else fits a jungle.
A jungle should be dark and green everywhere you look. It should barely have any light — it should be dark, gloomy, wet, damp, and feel dangerous all the time. It should be filled with tall and lush vegetation that blocks your view, where you can easily get lost. It should have dark clouds above it 90% of the time, be rainy most of the time, and have fog constantly filling the area.
And it already feels scarce; whatever POIs and roads they add will only make the "jungle" part feel even more non-existent with how much space those nodes take up.
4th and lastly: The Desert
I can tell they put more effort and thought into this one — finally, a biome that doesn't look exactly the same all over and has different, mini-like desert biomes inside it.
Yet, none of them get to shine. Why? Because they're all mashed into each other — a piece of this here, a piece of that there, etc.
Why is that though? I can see there are different types of deserts within the biome — why not make each of them their own mini-biome instead?
You could've made a big Grand Canyon with a node on top of it instead of that random node on top of a random rock in the middle of the sandy desert.
You could've had caves under it with spiders, snakes, etc., even a pocket dungeon or an actual dungeon deep below.
Then at the end, it could transition into an area with dry ground and lots of desert trees and cacti where the Minotaurs are, and place a node there.
Then that could go into a giant area of sand and dunes (which, by the way, looks like Play-Doh instead of sand???), where if you go right, you find an oasis with a node area nearby.
If you go left, you find an area filled with the bones of giant monsters and a node nearby that meshes with that boney aesthetic. Same with the rest of the nodes — mesh them into their environment.
If you go forward, you find that god spike with a dangerous atmosphere and lots of dunes and monsters leading to it, etc.
Remember the desert showcase? It felt good because it showcased those areas properly and let them shine — not like what we have right now.
while i admit that a part of the lack of interest in the POIs that exist is already knowing that there is nothing to do there other than grinding mobs that is still just a small part of the problem.
Other problems with the biomes:
1. The same-looking random rock formations that are in every zone and take up way too much space for no reason.
2. The grass and lack of vegetation — so scarce. And whatever happened to the tall, lush grass we saw in all those showcases? If their fix to the view distance was to have these small, short, bad-looking patches of grass all over the world, then I'd rather have less view distance but better-looking vegetation. Also, it didn't even fix the problem because most of it still disappears at just a little bit of distance. It's supposed to be a world that no man set foot in for hundreds or thousands of years, yet it looks like it's been maintained and mowed on a weekly basis...
3.The nodes — right now, the nodes lack the assets and layouts needed to blend and combine well with their environment. They and the zones also lack ambient effects, small wildlife, thick vegetation, etc. I get that the node thing is something that will come with time, so it's not really a big problem for now, but I hope they do it right.
4.Last but not least: it's like Intrepid forgot that this is a fantasy world — high fantasy, last time I checked the wiki. They're not chained to making only real-life, realistic assets, areas, and POIs. There's barely any fantasy feel to any of these zones and areas. Just because the Tropics in real life don't have much variety, they could still create their own tropical areas with a touch of fantasy — same with the other zones.Same with the mobs — a huge amount of them are just real-life animals: elephants, rhinos, lions, bears, otters, and a huge number of random human bandits who somehow seem to have entered Verra before everyone else... If you're going to add those, at least give them a fantasy look and make them bigger. We have spiders, scorpions, and frogs that are huge and have a fantasy look to them, so why are the elephants, rhinos, and hippos look normal and so tiny by comparison? If I wanted to look at real-life animals, I would just go to a zoo. Please make more weird, huge, and small creatures!
5. pick a style : the environments are too cartoony , the sand in the desert feels and looks like play-dough instead of sand while the characters look horrible like skinny ugly realistic looking drug addicts.
6. i dont know if this is just me but the scale of everything dosent look right , espically the environments they just feel and look smaller than they should be
7: another positive of having mini biomes where nodes reside instead of the same looking place everywhere is that it would lessen the fatigue of seeing the same view over and over again as more likely than not like at least 60-80% of nodes gonna be the same human looking nodes instead of other races but if at least the area a node is in is different from the node next to it and so on, with the unique area seeping into the node it self it will make it look and feel a lot more unique and more personalized to the citizens of that node.
Apologies if this went a bit too long or felt a bit ranty — and for any mistakes, since English is not my first or second language so i did use an AI to fix any mistakes and make it better presented.
While I might have forgotten to add or missed some stuff, this should conclude what I think about the biomes so far.
After looking at the zones for quite a while now, and with the addition of the first pass of the Jundark (well, more like Junlight), I sadly have to say that none of them seem to capture the feeling of what they actually are, due to a few problems.
1st: The Riverlands
The Riverlands is the most complete zone out of all of them, but it's just so boring and uninteresting. It feels flat, and everything looks the same — same trees, randomly scattered everywhere, no zones with different types of trees, no open lush grassy windy fields, nothing. There are POIs, but none of them make you stop and think, "Wow, that looks cool, I want to explore that."
The only one that gives a little bit of that feeling is Carphin, and while it will change, right now it's just a fancier-looking cave (aka a pocket dungeon) where you aimlessly grind mobs.
That's the Riverlands, and the problems of randomness, lack of interesting POIs, and the whole zone looking the same instead of having unique areas inside the biome carry over into the Tropics and the newly added Jundark. The desert has another problem too.
2nd: The Tropics
Same problem as the Riverlands — it all looks the same. There's nothing interesting. This one barely has any POIs (and I get that comes later), but there's no point if they're going to end up like the Riverlands ones. I also get that there aren't many different types of tropical environments you can make, but they didn't even try to begin with.
There's another problem that adds to all the zones looking the same, which I'll touch on later.
3rd: The Jundark
The newly added biome — while it's a first pass — you can already tell it has the same problems. It's just one tree repeated everywhere. Right now it looks more like a new part of the Tropics than a jungle.
I understand they can't make it super dense because of performance reasons, but they don't need to do that. It's all about atmosphere and presentation.
All they had to do was make giant trees with big leaves, vines and branches intertwined with each other, covering the sky and barely letting any sunlight through. Smaller, but still bigger-than-normal trees should fill the lower levels, with tall grass and vegetation like banana trees, totems, and whatever else fits a jungle.
A jungle should be dark and green everywhere you look. It should barely have any light — it should be dark, gloomy, wet, damp, and feel dangerous all the time. It should be filled with tall and lush vegetation that blocks your view, where you can easily get lost. It should have dark clouds above it 90% of the time, be rainy most of the time, and have fog constantly filling the area.
And it already feels scarce; whatever POIs and roads they add will only make the "jungle" part feel even more non-existent with how much space those nodes take up.
4th and lastly: The Desert
I can tell they put more effort and thought into this one — finally, a biome that doesn't look exactly the same all over and has different, mini-like desert biomes inside it.
Yet, none of them get to shine. Why? Because they're all mashed into each other — a piece of this here, a piece of that there, etc.
Why is that though? I can see there are different types of deserts within the biome — why not make each of them their own mini-biome instead?
You could've made a big Grand Canyon with a node on top of it instead of that random node on top of a random rock in the middle of the sandy desert.
You could've had caves under it with spiders, snakes, etc., even a pocket dungeon or an actual dungeon deep below.
Then at the end, it could transition into an area with dry ground and lots of desert trees and cacti where the Minotaurs are, and place a node there.
Then that could go into a giant area of sand and dunes (which, by the way, looks like Play-Doh instead of sand???), where if you go right, you find an oasis with a node area nearby.
If you go left, you find an area filled with the bones of giant monsters and a node nearby that meshes with that boney aesthetic. Same with the rest of the nodes — mesh them into their environment.
If you go forward, you find that god spike with a dangerous atmosphere and lots of dunes and monsters leading to it, etc.
Remember the desert showcase? It felt good because it showcased those areas properly and let them shine — not like what we have right now.
while i admit that a part of the lack of interest in the POIs that exist is already knowing that there is nothing to do there other than grinding mobs that is still just a small part of the problem.
Other problems with the biomes:
1. The same-looking random rock formations that are in every zone and take up way too much space for no reason.
2. The grass and lack of vegetation — so scarce. And whatever happened to the tall, lush grass we saw in all those showcases? If their fix to the view distance was to have these small, short, bad-looking patches of grass all over the world, then I'd rather have less view distance but better-looking vegetation. Also, it didn't even fix the problem because most of it still disappears at just a little bit of distance. It's supposed to be a world that no man set foot in for hundreds or thousands of years, yet it looks like it's been maintained and mowed on a weekly basis...
3.The nodes — right now, the nodes lack the assets and layouts needed to blend and combine well with their environment. They and the zones also lack ambient effects, small wildlife, thick vegetation, etc. I get that the node thing is something that will come with time, so it's not really a big problem for now, but I hope they do it right.
4.Last but not least: it's like Intrepid forgot that this is a fantasy world — high fantasy, last time I checked the wiki. They're not chained to making only real-life, realistic assets, areas, and POIs. There's barely any fantasy feel to any of these zones and areas. Just because the Tropics in real life don't have much variety, they could still create their own tropical areas with a touch of fantasy — same with the other zones.Same with the mobs — a huge amount of them are just real-life animals: elephants, rhinos, lions, bears, otters, and a huge number of random human bandits who somehow seem to have entered Verra before everyone else... If you're going to add those, at least give them a fantasy look and make them bigger. We have spiders, scorpions, and frogs that are huge and have a fantasy look to them, so why are the elephants, rhinos, and hippos look normal and so tiny by comparison? If I wanted to look at real-life animals, I would just go to a zoo. Please make more weird, huge, and small creatures!
5. pick a style : the environments are too cartoony , the sand in the desert feels and looks like play-dough instead of sand while the characters look horrible like skinny ugly realistic looking drug addicts.
6. i dont know if this is just me but the scale of everything dosent look right , espically the environments they just feel and look smaller than they should be
7: another positive of having mini biomes where nodes reside instead of the same looking place everywhere is that it would lessen the fatigue of seeing the same view over and over again as more likely than not like at least 60-80% of nodes gonna be the same human looking nodes instead of other races but if at least the area a node is in is different from the node next to it and so on, with the unique area seeping into the node it self it will make it look and feel a lot more unique and more personalized to the citizens of that node.
Apologies if this went a bit too long or felt a bit ranty — and for any mistakes, since English is not my first or second language so i did use an AI to fix any mistakes and make it better presented.
While I might have forgotten to add or missed some stuff, this should conclude what I think about the biomes so far.
4
Comments
NW comes out. People yell from the rooftops about how cool it is that every tree is choppable. They yell at Intrepid after A1 only had certain trees choppable. Intrepid make a change in their design and now we can cut down all trees.
Now you can't really have "huge trees that create massive canopies", because cutting them down would directly influence the canopy and would also be a massive hit to the performance, because now instead of a static model (like a passive rock) it's gotta be an interactable thing with falling physics.
Desert nodes don't have any uniqueness to them and no proper integration into their surroundings, because neither of those things have been developed proper yet and they're just in their basic functional states.
There's not enough grass because optimization.
There's not enough unique looks to the POIs because we only have 3 node lvls, no proper weather-based progression and no story arcs (which are now called "M O D U L E S" btw) - all of which are meant to add some visual progression to the entire POI (see Story Arcs showcase around Carphin).
From what I've seen in some videos, Tropics have some kinds of underground caverns that are either icy or full of crystal structures. If that is not both "unique different tropics" and "high phantasy" (i.e. ice in the tropics) - I dunno what is.
Mob variety comes with future development and potentially both node progress and modules.
So now I come back to the gif at the start of this comment. This is still an Alpha. Yes, we're all tired of it being one. Yes, plans were for it to not be one by this point. Yes, delays. Yes, we still got years to go. Yes, it's all bad. No, there's nothing WE can do but wait. Yes, that waiting can come in the form of taking a break from closely following the development and just chilling in some other game (god knows there's fucking thousands of them).
Yes, I know this answer is pointless, overused and annoying. No, there's no better answer for this type of OP, unless you're willing to call devs hacks and scammers (which you, OP, are obviously not).
its like you are replying about stuff i already made clear like the node point where i said it will be better with time so its not a problem, dunno who cried about trees in A1 when the system wasnt even in the game and i literally said keep a good amount of trees that are choppable just bigger than the small ones we have right now, just have some that are huge intertwined and cover the areas to actually give the vibe and atmosphere of a jungle they dont need to be intractable instead of having random useless rock formations that serve literally nothing and take a big amount of the map space.
maybe actually read what is written first...
Because if every other tree in the game is choppable, but then suddenly there's some random ones that are not - it will not only confuse people, but also directly break the immersion.
And if you do make them gatherable - you're now creating another issue that I described in my initial comment, because I did exactly this
And addressed pretty much all the points you made - all of which come down to "it's still alpha, but I dislike that it's still alpha" (as we all do).
And if you wanna say "well, this was just feedback, so that Intrepid knows that their game is not finished" - I'd imagine they already do
wasnt most trees being gather able the design they were going for anyway and when i said it wasnt there i meant the system as what was in it was a place holder and it was bugged where you couldnt even cut trees most of the time.
having giant trees that will obviously not be gatherable isnt gonna confuse anyone ,in fact i am confused of the random rock formations that serve no purpose at all.
my point isnt "its still alpha" my point is the base of these systems is not good , riverland been out for ages, so is desert you could say they make them look better but have they actually changed anything massive in them , no they did not they still look the same as when they came out with some better polish , they didnt fix most of the problems these biomes came out with that is in their base design rather than the lack of content or polish.
a year from now the jungle will still look like Tropics plus than a jungle just looks a little nicer , tropics will still look boring and empty and riverland will still be the same, even if they add story arcs and quests the boring uninteresting zones with barely any fantasy feel to them will still be there , the biome will still look the same everywhere , the desert despite actually having actual different looking mini biomes in them will still be done in a terrible way that wastes them ...etc
on the note o giant tree's there are a couple out there if you know where to look near forge specifically. Though I don't think the interact with most everything is actually a limitation unless you make it one. Easily you could see a system I've seen people looking for of group gathering for any tree above a certain size. and one of the things I'd be interested to see is an age system for trees and plants that they can grow to that size if enough time passes. Also put this in the gathering dev discussion but I feel like trees should grow in a forest generating pattern of spreading from frown trees. Again wanted systems to make the biomes look better just think they are working on to many different base things right now.
And this is a guess could the rocks be bases for veins for mining but not introduced yet.
One of the jobs of a Director (and in some cases Producer) is to make the work that the staff is capable of doing as efficient as possible. For a product that has an endpoint, there's not a lot you can change, but for software, especially games, you have a lot of freedom if your Director knows how to maximize interim 'profit'.
"Everything looks the same' is the obvious first step, and giving that first step to testers to keep them engaged is among the best things you can do, I think. Even with the weird reputation Ashes has, it's still better. Even live MMOs do this.
Because if there is any way to both entertain your playerbase and collect some money with a half-finished product, you should do that.
Some games call it 'Open Beta' of the feature (Elite Dangerous), some games stick their indev stuff into playable instances or events (Throne and Liberty, Black Desert Online), some games use modular approaches where a boss has some abilities that they need to get a lot of data on for some other boss or more indepth thing (Final Fantasy, Throne and Liberty again, Neverwinter).
And so, an Alpha which has already told people it's an Alpha, just one that is possibly entertaining enough to be worth $$ upfront, should probably give their tester-players 'whatever won't break and won't make the game less fun unnecessarily'.
Some will see the potential in the spaces left bare/repetitive, some won't. You apparently clearly see the potential, @GreatPhilisopher, but from the perspective of someone who has been (and sorta still is) in the role I mentioned, it's not a helpful post, it basically seems to either be saying 'hurry up' or 'I can see all this unfinished stuff is unfinished'.
Even the current mineral/plant gatherable design exists in the same design frame (along with rare trees).
I agree with lamina's point that those rock outcroppings could be potential indicators of mineral veins, so that when players scan the horizon for things to mine - they can look out for that environment feature and put their survey pylon there.
Forests were supposed to be like that, but now we've got all the trees as gatherables, yaaay. As for the confusion of big uncuttable trees - I direct you to the desert debacle, where uncuttable trees were used as an indicators of "omg, desert isn't even real, cause I can't interact with this tree".
There's a plan to give us multi-player tree gathering. If a massive-ass tree isn't screaming at you "it's gotta be cut by multiple people" - I dunno what can. And now we go back to what I said about this above.
But that's exactly the point. We don't even have the full base system.
You sound like people that are complaining about the corruption system, and are giving their "solutions and fixes" to it. But we don't even have that system properly implemented yet.
Riverlands are also not done yet, because, as I said from the start, nodes don't grow and story arcs don't exist. Both of those things are literally meant to change the environment. A node growing to lvl6 is supposed to have a chance to trigger a massive event with a dragon attacking the lands, or smth like that. A sotry arc (M O D U L E) is supposed to change a whole damn POI.
Yet we don't even have the Carphin module, that they showcased in a stream.
Or a year from now we could get nodes and story arcs that could summon a huge ice dragon that literally freezes the entire region over for a week, which then spawns new HIGH FANTASY mobs. Or maybe the kraken takes over the local seas and everything gets covered with a thiccque layer of miasma and eldtrich horror mobs roam the lands. Or an underground volcano grows out of nowhere, the water is now boiling and trees are constantly on fire.
Even the sky is not the limit, when it comes to that kind of design. But you gotta believe that the devs can achieve something like that. AND YOU GOTTA HAVE YOUR BASIC SYSTEM IN PLACE, before they can even attempt achieving it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AshesofCreation/comments/1k8miks/the_jundark/
I haven't been in Jundark, so I was mostly discussing general ideas about the game, but ISN'T THAT LITERALLY A MASSIVE TREE in the 5th pic? And also a fairly dense canopyin other pics?!
I’ve read some of the replies, and yes, the ground textures aren’t great at the moment probably because they’re unfinished. But if we’re not allowed to comment on anything under the excuse of “it’s not done yet,” then we might as well come back in a couple of years, right?
As for the jungle, it lacks verticality. We need large, non-harvestable trees. What’s the issue with that? Other games also have resources that can or can’t be gathered. A jungle should feel dense, filled with rivers, ferns, difficult terrain, lost cities, and deep exploration. That’s the real expectation here creating something unique. Yes, it’s hard work, and yes, it takes time, but if the goal is to build a great and unique MMORPG, this is the only path.
Right now, there are areas where you get a bit of that jungle vibe, but as soon as you start feeling immersed, you’re thrown back into open plains with palm trees it just doesn’t make sense. Every biome needs unique points of interest that fit its theme: desert cities, fishing villages, hidden ruins in the jungle…
The lighting is also too harsh and overly bright in the jungle. There are still so many details to refine in the game. We’re just giving feedback that seems logical to help the game’s development. Right now, they’re mainly working on the broad geographical layout of the zones, and modeling and customization will come later—which is great! But in the meantime, we’re offering ideas and suggestions to help improve Ashes of Creation.
my problem isnt the lack polish or the lack of systems (which are mostly land managment), its that the base all of those systems at is just bad and boring , other than the POIs being not interesting and got 0 hint of magic or fantasy in them , its that the biomes feels and looks like they got 1 tree and slapped it all over the place , thats all.
its nothing like the desert which got different looking areas in it even if the execution of it is bad they at least had the right idea with it, its not the lack of systems , not the lack of polish or time or any of that stuff, but i saw the riverlands for a year or so nothing changed other than making some places have better lightning or other small changes , then they added other biomes and they all suffer the same problems and whatever will come after will suffer the same, Archeage suffered from somewhat of a similar problem with a lot of its zones being samey lookin or lack of fantasy in them however they did manage to get some right at least.
as for the giant and huge amount of random rock formations taking up a lot of space , there is no indication of them being used for anything but if they intend to like make them have cave ins and open up to big ore mines and whatnot , even if it might still be too much same looking i will welcome that change of scenery at least.
all in all my biggest problem is that i want the biome to have ; more interesting terrain , POIs that acutally feel like magical and a high fantasy to make you interested and want to explore even if there is literal nothing in them yet, have varied looking mini biome inside the actual biomes like the desert but excuted better and considering that we already can guess most nodes gonna have human aesthetics if the zones these nodes at are actually different and unique looking it would help a lot with the fatigue of lookin at the same zone,more fantasy and magical cratures instead of random irl animals that look out of place most of the time.
lastly and this is something that comes with time so again not a problem just hope they do it right , is making the nodes fit well with the unique environment they are in from assets to animals and ambient effects and such even if the look of the node itself dosent scream a desert node or an elf node i still want the enviroment they are in to show itself in these nodes so they dont standout and feel out of place.
from what i remember the design even before alpha 1 was that most/a big amount of stuff will be gatherabe and what was in A1 was a placeholder not the other way around.
i dont know what you are talking about unless its something to do with narc stuff , but trees in desert not being cuttable was only at the start and it was obvious they would of been later.
there is big trees that need more than one person to cut and t hen there is GIANT TREES that are there to make the zone feel alive and give it the proper look and atmospheres.
again my problem isnt with the systems not being there my problem is with the biome , their base design and look and how boring,bad and uninteresting it is and the scale of everything being so small and weird , i dont care if there is a billion system that arent there or if they look like pixles on screen , in fact there is plenty of games with pixley and such artstyles that managed to capture environments , their feel , look and atmosphere so good , its not about how dense it is not like most mmos were able to make densly packed biomes but they made them right , they had the right terrain , right atmosphere right execution with what little they could have even if they were made by 1 dev ... so why is a team of 200+ people cant do that.
yes nodes and story arcs are gonna change the environment but they arent gonna change much , an ice dragon making a part winter is basic but at that point i'd let the dragon stay just to see something different, and even if story arcs and nodes change a zone well enough it will still be a tiny part of the biome as the rest of it will still look the same with all of their problems .
at the end if the Base they made looked great even while not polished and being far away from complete you can easily tell it will end up great but the base they have is not it and whatever they gonna add to it later it still wont mask or remove all the problems said base have.
the tree in the 5th pic should be the normal one which is what i mean with smaller similar trees and have variations some smaller some a little bigger but it being the majority and what is most of the jungle area is made of at the very least, they should of picked trees with bigger leaves too and when i say giant trees while i wish it would be something like the one you can see from the lionhold starting area even if at least there is 1 of them in the biome , the rest of the ungatherable trees(or maybe u can cut one of them with a lot of people via a story arc or a quest ..etc) should be similar in size to the tree we had in alpha 1 or even the one from the tank showcase with those living armor mobs or the commission streams
If you compare Ash’s jungle to any of the Zones in GW2’s heart of thorns, it’s ludicrously less cool and explorable.
There's enough space for this, I wouldn't worry about it.
Ashes Node areas are really large, and even with a higher population of players than many games, supposedly, it will work out, at least based on the feel from all the games I've played. Maybe it only works for me, but I can say that I don't really feel this is a problem except for the general playstyle of MMO players (ignoring stuff that doesn't progress them at high speed).
What? Firstly, this isn't a problem. With that out of the way...
They specifically mentioned the entire pipeline of how they update these and how they plan to deal with it in the future.
Did we watch the same livestream?
Like, I think they literally responded to this thread and a few other comments about this topic.
also darker sure as for massive trees... lets see what they consider massive hopefully not making the trees actually to scale instead of now with how tiny they are..well and most of environment.
edit checked the stream again , they said nothing about other than wanting to make jundark more dark and add some smaller canape trees or smthn.
you'd think they would use the forums yet the only thing they take questions or problems from is one thread they make and 99% of the time pick the most obvious or already answered and usually from more known people like their PTR testers
Seems time stamped videos don't paste over so heres the time frame
55:03 - 55:41
yea its literally what i said
Ahhh i see i missed they said nothing about OTHER than loool, missed the other and thought you where saying they where not going to do the things you wanted them to lel
..
Though I'll add i feel like the zones are almost to big, if everything was more condensed there would be pois and cool areas to explore around every corner, but I do not want to go exploring get somewhere cool and then get 2 hit by a mob 5 levels under me that's 2 stars and i drop half my glint/mats due to fact that the mob reset distance being literally the size of 3 football fields
Without a doubt.
This is not something I ever doubted - having known a good number of MMORPG developers.
To be fair though, it's the same with almost all games. The only real exception seems to be games like BG3. This is less to do with the game itself and more to do with the way the developers communicate with the testing/early access community.
We've 'learned from ArcheAge' that the zones should be this big.
If one hasn't played AA or another game with a really strong economy focus (not saying you have or haven't) then one might not be as familiar with the tradeoffs between 'exploration engagement' and 'economic feelings' in world design.
Basically players, especially solo or in smaller groups, need to have enough space to organically encounter others and not immediately think of them as direct competition (i.e. it's a choice, at least), and 'larger groups' need to experience the economic drags experienced by needing to cover larger areas (if they stay clumped they get less profit, if they spread out, then smaller groups can compete with them in short bursts).
POIs are the current solution to this and it sounds like there will definitely be enough of those, imo.
its funny you mention Archeage since it had similar problems but nowhere as bad.
AA had some biomes suffering the same look with no interesting POIs and lack magic/fantasy in them and flatness to a degree while also did some good areas that had little problems and one thing for sure is they did get the atmosphere at least for a decent amount of them, Like Hasla was beautiful, hellsawmp actually felt like a jungle so did silent forest ,white arden even Ahnimar which actually felt like what a riverlands should be...etc
they had a lot of gatherables while also not confining themselves with them so they had actual giant trees and other stuff to set the tone and atmosphere of things , a lot of the biomes just felt good to explore even when there was nothing , it was fun that at one point i found the highest mountains in the game and spent hours climbing them and i eventually did and to my surprise i actually got an achievement for it, it was so high that after that with my dragon mount i flew(glided) over the 3 continents and back twice until i hit the ground, all of that just for fun.
anyway while archeage biomes were a mixed bag at the very least even for the worst of them they got the vibe and atmosphere for them right despite having way less freedom to make them with the technology at the time
I know that this is a meme question at this point, but if we don't believe that Intrepid can deliver on a good vision/design of things - why da fuck are we here?