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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
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Like scratching a whole Node-Stage (Town or City) helps in making the Nodes quicker. They don't have to design so many looks for every single Node, right ?
But i hope the Nodes are not halfway made to a Joke now. Maybe this is just my fears talking here.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
I am in the guildless Guild so to say, lol. But i won't give up. I will find my fitting Guild "one Day".
Yea they removed staggering and dumbed down the combat system because mmo players never played or were willing to learn souls-like or esque or whatever mechanics. Stagger was good, it made combat consequential, emphasis on attack dodge, startup frames, ending frames, were rewarding and fun and challenging. People wanted more brain soothe content and it blew.
If you want a deep dive into answering this, I recommend parsing through this thread:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/67736/splinter-topic-narrative-design-hell-is-other-people#latest
In this thread (especially later in it) we go in-depth trying to answer the question on how to bridge the gap between different player types, including pve, pvp, and pvx (pve+pvp intergated) enjoyers, as well as the balance of power/content segregation between large and small player groups, as well as talking about where Ashes should sit in the pvx spectrum, to allow for different player types to coexist, what the ideal target audience might look like, and how to satisfy these distinct audience subsets, for a sustainable player base.
Hi Ace. I was mulling something related to Throne and Liberty design issues recently and then in another thread something @Ludullu and Arya_Yeshe said really stuck out to me relative to this. It is very much in the 'design hell is other people' frustration I have with modern gamERS that I think also targets the 'not for everyone' concept.
So to give you a little background as to where my mind is: Currently at this time Throne and Liberty is running into a problem both in Korea and Global versions (but more so Global) where they have a lot of what I will call 'hard content' and by hard i don't mean difficult I mean 'mechanically involved in the systems design intended for CORE progression of a character'. This content in TL's case is world bosses, instanced dungeons, raids, and various PvX and PvP battlegrounds. You could even argue that the open world dungeons also falls into this category but I might get that later into our conversation if it goes that direction. Notably in TL if you have good mechanical skill at the game you get noticeably statistically stronger by doing this content more quickly, consistently, and efficiently than anyone else. There is also a 'hard content' related system with guild progression that heavily rewards the people who are successful at this content. By putting such a heavy emphasis on this, a lot of the less skilled players both 'feel they need to do cutting edge content' but also do a lot of the 'questing' and open world interactions when they can't manage it. This has lead to a social disconnect between the 'strong' and the 'weak' that is rapidly eating away at the overall player base.
I think this issue happens in many games, but in Throne and Liberty they have it much worse and I'll tell you why. Many of the 'strong' and a few of the devs on staff have at least PRIORITIZED development in a way that would make 'quests are not content' ring true to this cohort.
Part of an rpg is roleplay for many people. Quests in particular give rpers and life skillers a framework that leads to higher satisfaction, better stepping stones to making their own content, and generally a down time activity that let's you stay immersed in the world without leaving it. I will call this knock on effect 'soft content' because it's not really the quest itself that makes it content (although you can make very engaging dynamic repeatable quests into a whole SYSTEM e.g. Assault from FFXI in the Tales of Aht Urgahn expansion) but the head space and interactivity this creates for the more casual, rp, and life skill involved person.
The 'design hell' for me is that often games feel a need to cater a lot more to 'hard content' in the way that Arya proposes in that thread, but so many other mmos have this underlying fall back of this 'soft content' that keeps the 'weaker' or 'less time available' people to keep progressing and positively contributing to the game. This happens to also be why I originally thought Ashes COULD be really successful as they had originally prioritized that type of 'soft content' and that community in the Alpha 1 era development.
When I think of Arya like people and I think about what makes a game sustainable in the long term, I think that some games without 'hard content' only style design are 'not for everyone' in a more fundamental way than games with a mix of soft and hard content. Design hell for me, therefore is the people who are 'the strong' that 'thrive easily with only hard content systems' the 'sweat lords who excel at the game in both skill and time' that ALSO then demand that the game be very SOCIAL and codependent on PvP rather than PvE serving as a fundamental force that unites the player base. They constantly stomp on and undervalue the 'soft content' and this leads to the developers feeling uneasy about adding it at all even though it in terms of collective man hours adds WAY more. This is a fundamental issue I see with TL's raid system in particular. It took a lot of resources to create this system, but ultimately with the same amount of dev time they could have made thousands of hours more if they had focused on 'soft system' content that helped amplify and enhance their existing building blocks.
It is funny, in a way I feel like AoC and TL are in somewhat similar places right now with their fan base but Ashes is doing all the stuff that would really 'attract the TL type top enders' and TL is doing all the sort of stuff that would really 'attract the AoC type top enders'.
As a person who thrives off of making 'soft content' challenging through various self limitations to help me improve my core fundamental skills for the 'hard content' I find myself constantly in the presence of design hell when people turn around and tell me the content I am clearly spending dozens of hours on is somehow not content. I'm doing it and it is leading to tangible interactive skilled gameplay am I not? In a way I find it a 'skill issue' but in another I recognize that 'the game I want is not for everyone and vice versa'. But it sure is design hell. How do you keep people like me and people like Arya happy? Well I thought AoC had the answer originally but they went in a direction that seems no longer to involve my audience demographic type.
Hell, my main pve-related desire is for mobs to be able to lose their corruption and become interactible npcs with quests. If that ain't immersive rp potential - I dunno what is.
I think everyone wants good combat and good mob design/ai are a huge core part of that. So I agree. It is part of why I like certain areas of Throne and Liberty so very much. At least pre-Talandre there was a lot of good spots where you could really master fighting the mob in a meaningful and deep way. I think Talandre has less of this and it is less diverse but just the other day I was duoing the open world dungeon, what is generally designed for full parties, and there was some stuff to teach them they had never thought about before because they are used to the group play kind of papering over some of the unique challenges that come with the level design. Idk if THEY found it interesting, but that is certainly a big deal for me in my gameplay. Having quests that involve challenging mobs I'm not naturally going to steam roll is a big deal for me personally.
Hey JustVine, interesting topic to bring up.
To reiterate what I believe you are talking about:
Basically the idea of more tangible and tactile skill-based systems ("hard content") as optimal progression paths, vs. the more role-play/feeling based experiences ("soft" content like questing, role play/moral expression/philosophical engagement, narrative/story arcs influence) and allowing those systems to be equally viable progression methods (basically the issues that arise if making those content paths suboptimal progression routes, since they would then be unviable options to anyone who is competitive)- thus forcing different player types down the skill-based paths (due to "removing" that content choice), and splintering the playerbase (people who dont like that way of playing/not being skilled enough to take that path), causing friction and long-term playerbase decay.
I think this is a great point to bring up when talking about the distinct audiences that Ashes appeals to, and how to make sure different types of players are able to enjoy different types of content and to coexist together, since that is a big part of what player agency, engagement, and immersion is all about. As well as it being important to make sure the development is perceived to be giving equal/equitable treatment, in addition to actually doing so.
I like that you brought up the idea that sometimes certain content can become undervalued on its own (and sometimes rightfully so depending on the design goals), but that people underestimate the role that specific content type plays in other design pillars and key content, such the example you gave of the role that PVE plays in role-play and story experiences, and subsequently how that affects the sociability aspect (players discussing different role-play experiences, choices, and unque story paths, boosting player-to-player engagement). So if you include pve role play content (such as unique biome narrative integration), then it needs to be accessible by role players in both small and large groups alike to facilitate that social culture across the entire target audience (Hense one aspect of what we talked about in the above linked thread).
I think this is an example of kind of a design paradox (at least in my opinion). Because I generally view skill and strategy as something that should be rewarded and incentivized, which means innately favoring the more "hard" style content, wheras that also innately means punishing "soft" content progression paths (through being less viable options) which again hurts the ability to bring those different player types together (unless the soft content is designed to be more skillfull/interactive, which would kind of redefine that as "hard" style content at that point).
One underlying premise this relies upon is that the role-play players are "competitive" in way, since the players that would be willing to leave the game if the "soft" content progression paths aren't as viable as the "hard" style content paths; meaning that they are trying to optimize their progression similarly to the "highly skilled" players. You would think if this is the case, that those player types wouldn't have an issue tryin to "git good" and deal with the more demanding skill-based gameplay systems in order to optimize their progression.
On the other hand, if that player type isn't competitive to that degree, then you would think those player types would have no problem sacrificing efficiency for the "preferred experience" of the "soft" content, even if that means progressing at suboptimal rates.
Alternatively, if that player type is both competitive and they prefer the playstyle that "soft" content provides, then that opens up the possibility for certain facets of the overall game to include a more integrated style of content that combines those "soft" role-play experiences with the "hard" style skillful gameplay systems, where the role-play aspects are baked into those more skillful progression paths. (Such as quests with role-play opportunities and integrated skill-checks as optimal progression options). This would allow for competitive role-players to have meaningful content without sacrificing efficiency and playstyle preferences.
If you choose not to do this, and go the route of segregating the "hard" and "soft" content styles, you are forced into that paradox I mentioned earlier (unless you just choose to not reward more skillful gameplay within this progression path context, and decide to go the route of efficiency equity in both progression/content styles, similar to what you described- "role-play content progresses at equal rate as more skillful gameplay systems"). This paradox would exist unless you either integrate the "soft" content with skill-based content (per the earlier example)- or unless you somehow find a way to measure "good role-play" to properly justify rewarding those players with an equal rate of progression as "hard" content enjoyers. How would one measure "good role play" when players are engaging with questing, narrative influence/story arc systems, etc., when these are intended to be organic role-play experiences that are more about individual expression than competition?
The other aspect/premise behind this issue, is that there might also be a bias in a lot of people who have never truly experienced quality rp content, so when they hear "quest" the thing that comes to mind is something like a "boring non-interactive fetch quest". So this could very well still be a real dilhemma (or opportunity depending on how you look at it) Ashes might have to deal with if they underestimate the amount of RPers interested in the game, but this would depend on how many players would actually enjoy proper role-play/"soft" content experiences if exposed to them, (looking at you Arya
However, I'm forced to use similar examples since Throne and Liberty is the only Ashes-like game playable by the public at the moment, so...
Another simple binary. TL has a rudimentary 'level cap' system, that they have recently disabled. Understandable, since it did not work that well within the next expansion, there were multiple ways to tweak characters to benefit. The important thing about this is that it was never actually applied to dungeons anyway, and TL is a 'gearscore' based game.
This means that a 'new' soft content enjoyer who gains positive experiences from trying to do a level 50 dungeon at around level 50, particularly the first 'wave' of those dungeons expected to be done by players of a certain gearscore, basically cannot get that experience anymore.
The dungeon is intended to be done by 6 people, the 'fun' of it for some would be the challenge of coordination, teamwork, etc. Since no level sync or cap exists, it can be obliterated by 2 top-geared players before the boss has time to activate a single 'mechanic'.
The design invalidates the content for the 'soft' content enjoyer by making it easier for the 'hard' content enjoyer (they can skip it and only go back when it will only cost them a few minutes). This isn't a binary thing since if they had a fully working Level Cap/Sync (think FF11 or GW tier, whichever style) it could simply be a toggle, and the player could decide which experience they wanted.
Then it would be up to the community, as long as it was clear enough. Some would join 'Capped' versions of the Dungeon, some would not (the debate, incentive-wise, about if that should have extra rewards, is right back to considering how much to reward the 'hard' content enjoyer).
This is why it's not quite accurate to equate 'hard' with 'skilled'. It's moreso a 'cutting edge' vs 'already conquered' problem. Certainly it's true that a first wave Dungeon or BCNM30 or whatever is well known, the sort of thing a player can just look up and perform, but Ashes will face this same problem for everything about it in 6 months just as every other MMORPG does.
If the audience of the game leans too far toward cutting-edge content enjoyers only, the 'already conquered' content gets invalidated, and for an open-World PvX game this happens way faster (e.g. I can't imagine year-2 players of AoC ever getting to really feel what it is like to fight Tumok).
Also, some enemy types can't practically be scaled up to match this, and even if one did, it still 'clumps the cutting-edge competitors with the experience-seekers'.
Maybe MMOs in general discarded the 'experience-seeker' demographic because they aren't profitable enough, but I genuinely don't believe that it's even my bias that makes me think that the problem can't be that they aren't numerous enough.
i.e. if someone shouts for 50-Cap DCNM in TL, I'll go, to help them have that experience, and because I like to occasionally relive it, whereas now, the 'barrier' to that is quite high on both sides.
@JustVine
Apologies for the delayed response, been busy-
That makes sense, I took that a slightly different direction, so let me try this again- does this better summarize what you are talking about?:
Basically by "soft" content you actually mean role-play in its most broadstroke interpretation (basically just "playing the game in its intended way" in any way that is not defined as "hard" type content, at that point), so it is any kind of "intended experience" of which unfortunately has the potential to be undermined through players who chase efficiency in order to optimize for that content, such as a boss fight that is meant to be role-played/experienced in whatever way the design intended (like experiencing your class fantasy/the intended combat fantasy/achieving flow-state/etc.) but instead "hard content" style players "optimize the fun" out of the content through things like chasing "number porn", exploiting mechanics, and trying to do things like OHKO bosses through gear advantages, all as a part of this player types expressing their own personal fantasy/goals within the game. This "efficiency as a gameplay chase", or "power fantasy" you are referring to as "hard" content (basically exploiting the mechanics/progression to dominate content), which happens to include the downside of "optimizing the fun" out of the experience unless you happen to specifically enjoy the power fantasy itself (such as when redoing completed content while outside of its intended level range) The design challenge is creating a cohesive experience that doesn't alienate either player subset (experience-seekers vs optimizers/power fantasy).
Personally (from a player perspective, rather than a design one) I kind of always "rejected" games that allow players to exploit/optimize the "fun" out of the game. To me that is the entire point of a game is to experience the "fun" as a reward of optimization, rather than to exploit the actual "game" part out of the game itself. Basically I like the idea of "earning the fantasy". I am defintely both an optimizer, and an experience seeker (i'll spare you the Bartle score haha), so I do think there is overlap in these player types (I would venture to say that the majority of "players in general" are within the overlapping category, could be wrong though, on this I speak more from personal biased experience rather than access to objective player schema data), if this is the case, then in a perfect world the design issue might solve itself through designing content in a way that allows players to both optimize content while retaining the integrity of the experience. (Basically "clumping" these two subsets like you mentioned, which would also bypass the conundrum of who to better "reward/incentivize", by just incentivizing players to play the intended way, and allow them to optimize within that context). However if these two audience subsets are both large enough and distinct enough to warrant seperate content (as is the case with TL's audience supposedly), then there would need to be a more dynamic approach to content provision in order to satisfy each player type.
Like you pointed out, this becomes a challenge in an open world setting where older content is accessible by players who have "outgrown" that content. Two possible approaches you mentioned include either a toggle that would allow players to level sync to the intended level of that challenge to "re-experience" it, or instead, to have challenges that scale with the player's current stats/progression.
To get a bit more nuanced on this for a second- two ways you could scale content are stat wise and skill-check wise. You already touched on some of the issues and impracticalities of content scaling.
First, is scaling content stat wise (Basically pairing all positive feedback loops with all negative feedback loops). If all the content scales in stats to counter your progression, then entire world and all the content will feel similar and makes the progression system basically pointless to a degree (what is the point of leveling if the content just matches your level, its basically just an arbitrary number increase at that point). One benefit of a progression system is that it allows players to experience a power fantasy when they are more powerful than certain content stat wise, so this basically eliminates this option if you want to want to have both playstyles be optional, unless there is bespoke content which doesn't scale, to include some power fantasy content. Low-risk, low-reward, pockets of enemies.
Another way of scaling includes skill-check wise.
Scale the challenge of the encounters to match any differences in player stats/skill. (Doesn't matter how strong your stats are if you cant hit the target). Dynamic/adaptive A.I. can provide this. Same issues though as far as content "sameness" if all content becomes as challenging as it needs to be to "meet you where you are at", why even have different content? Your skill gets better, the content gets harder, your skill stays the same, the content stays the same. Again, unless you have bespoke non-scaling areas then this wpuld eliminate any power fantasy content. It would also be extremely difficult to design such enemies who have that versatile of kits/mechanics and branching behavior trees to accomodate such a thing.
So basically anyway you slice it the scaling isnt really a viable option on its own, because there would have to be a point at which it no longer scales to provide that alternative power fantasy content type (power fantasy requires non-scaled content), which at that point if the content can be over optimized, it means that the intended experience for that content can be undermined through progession (revisiting older content when stronger "ruins" experience). So really its more a matter of needing to provide bespoke content for each subset (such as both scaling and non-scaling content segregated by area).
The other option you mentioned was the level sync for existing content. This is another "bespoke content" solution, which would provide that "intended experience" that specific encounter was designed for, regardless of whether you are still in that progression range. This is a great option for content segregation (turning sync off lets you steamroll "outgrown" content if you want), would be interesting to see how this could be pulled off anything outside of instanced content in Ashes. Maybe something like an instanced arena/monster codex or something that lets you re-experience content would be cool. The incentive structure for this should prioritize the open world/pvx content (highest risk/reward), and be less incentivized as you go from more macro to micro challenges (scaling in a way that prioritizes challenges composed of the most integrated systems/content with highest player demand, then depriotizing as you work your way down to instanced/more "purist" style small scale challenges) to avoid pulling away from the open world playerbase, but still providing those content outlets. Within the open world specifically, the incentive structure would scale risk/reward style to prioritize the skilled/intended experience content over any bespoke "power fantasy" content outlets (basically nudging players towards chasing the more advanced/tougher challenges rather than farming obsolete content).
For example, basically this incentive structure would have the incentives scale by risk reward in a cross-sectional way, with each of these categories having a different "weight" (not in any particular order atm)
1. Open world vs. instanced (incentives for open world prioritized over instanced content) this category would have the highest "weight" incentive wise
2. Macro vs. micro content (more emergent/integrated content prioritized over instanced/more focused experiences- think like node wars vs like player dueling, as an example, many more systems involved in the one)
3. Later progression vs early progression (the progression chase, later progression challenges include better rewards)
4. Difficult vs easy (the harder the challenge the better the reward, meaning innately icentivizing "new content" and "intended experiences" over already completed content or "power fantasy" content)
5. Large group vs small group (should be equally viable content options, cooperation would naturally be incentived for success in certain content, but solo would come with better risk/reward)
This last bespoke content solution I can think of atm is just pumping out more content. As old content gets invalidated, new content gets created. Obviously Intrepid would need the "content economy" to make this work regarding supply and demand for this. If they can't then that would obviously be a problem.
Not sure where you wanted to take this topic as far as specific examples vs a transition into something related like solving for the "look up a guide" issue for content, so I tried to provide a few different avenues.
To summarize- these methods touch on some options for both "experience seekers" and "optimizers/power fantasy" audience subsets to coexist in the game world, in addition to dynamically providing fun/flow-state experiences to player types of various skill-levels/progression paths, and providing unique content paths to players with distinct fantasy preferences (intended experience vs. power fantasy). Content scaling also opens the door to manage challenges against varied player group sizes (zergs vs smaller player groups). Some of these methods would also still incentivize skill/strategy over more "cheese" tactics while still leaving room for those types of experiences for players who enjoy that, and discourage players from "optimizing the fun" out of the content, while still rewarding optimization approaches within the intended context.
These are all important considerations as to the question of facilitating a sustainable playerbase while providing content satisfying to various target audience subsets and staying consistent with the core pillars of Ashes.
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk 😅
I agree, and based on what you gals/guys say about FF VI, Elite dangerous, and Eve Online, I think these are examples of this content demand, along with tons of other single player games (and even non-video games that allow for RP experiences). I think its more a matter of exposure, possibly learning curve/and perception of how this kind of gameplay experience works. You see this with a lot of "creative masterpieces" where a game will come out, not enough people really understand the value proposition, nobody buys it, then you watch a video essay 10 years later about how this game was an "underappreciated RP gem", and everyone all of the sudden want to play that game. Fallout New Vegas is an example of this. Even this is within the context of a more strict definition of "RP" content, let alone the broadstoke definition we are using for this topic and player type.
My understanding is that Intrepid is planning to utilize scaling content to a degree (dynamic/adaptive A.I. to keep players of various skill levels/player group sizes in "flow" or the 'intended experience" of that specific encounter design) but to reiterate, since each encounter has an intended challenge-rating which doesn't scale indefintely, then the possibility of over-optimizing that encounter still exists (Revisiting that content when you are stronger becomes a different experience style). So eventually the power fantasy content will still undermine the intended experience (as you progress you lose that original experience potential), using this specific form of content scaling.
So Intrepid would be forced to either increase content production rates for later in the games life-cycle to keep up with player demand (experience seekers wanting new experiences)
Or
They would need to better utilize already existing/completed content (like level-syncing instanced versions of completed content). This would mitigate player decay of RPers/gamers seeking those original "experiences".
Though this has the issue in that revisited experiences are not "new", so it would be even better for those "level synced" challenges to have adaptive A.I. or hidden systems that incentivize replayability and mastery where players can revisit older experiences and try to further master those challenges/discover new behavior trees (risk vs reward style). This would ease player demand to give more breathing room for content production to keep up.
We see these changes occur in many games and the reasons, if even given, always seem to be based around 'we were losing players by retaining things in the game that were hard or not skippable so we changed that'.
Same. A lot of the stuff I brought up was moreso my own personal philosophy on how things should be done. Whether or not they actually do any of the things that you all or I have talked about is another story. Though the opportunity still remains, for now.
Like the example you guys brought up about TL and the idea of a level sync toggle for completed dungeons. A lot of devs would think it is a binary problem "either we remove the level cap to cater to the "power fantasy" style players who want to over-optimize the content, or we retain the level cap to cater to the players who want the intended experience", rather than just having both options to keep everyone happy to a degree. Obviously these types of decisions depend on the context of the target audience, player elasicity, incentives, and things like that, but its just the "way of thinking" that can cause unneccesary issues.
Luckily I would hope with the type of people Intrepid has on staff that we wouldn't have to worry about these types of things, but as you pointed out, it definitely wouldn't be the first time and won't be the last either.
You Guys are my Heroes. "Kinda" at least.
I knew it,
i FREAKIN' knew it, SINCE the likes of 2022 and even before,
the MOMENT you listen to these folks who want to "SHUT THEIR BRAINS OFF AND RUN IN" -> you lose.
As a Team of Developers - You WILL lose !! If you listen to these folks who don't want to put any mental Input and Effort into the Game.
And " GOD " (Steven) BLESS - the Sight of the FAILED MMO GAMES of the last handful of Years - who are all good Evidence Material and prove how to do a good MMO and "NOT" fail like all the other MMO's which came just a few Years before.
Sir Steven - CAN - NOT - give in.
He can not give in,
his MIGHTY CREW - can not give in,
the MOMENT they make the MMO so that Players can not attack/kill You everywhere,
the MOMENT they make the MMO so that Caravans are no longer as they are since the Presentations,
the MOMENT they make the MMO so that Node Wars, Node-Sieges, MONSTER-COIN Events/Sieges,
are no longer what they had originally in mind -> but a dumbed down Version of what Players want - WHO DO NOT EVEN RESPECT THE ORIGINAL VISION OF THE GAME,
that Moment -> Ashes of Creation will lose.
I don't want it to lose.
I want it to win.
I only want the soul-crushing, endless Massmurder-Genocide-Grinds of Mobs like Goblins to end. (lol)
I only want ACTUAL Player-Models and no longer these Placeholders.
I only want that the Game looks as LUSH - and "BIG" - and "AWESOME" -> as in the Presentations of the last Years.
If needed,
as an optional - well - "Option" - so that i can have these beyond-epic Views and Looks -> even if it should put me as a Player at a Disadvantage over Everyone who has not activated them.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
I am in the guildless Guild so to say, lol. But i won't give up. I will find my fitting Guild "one Day".
Can’t tell if you are kidding about the mob grinding until end game?
" I only want the soul-crushing, endless Massmurder-Genocide-Grinds of Mobs like Goblins to end. (lol) "
That was my Sentence
I want that colossal Massmurders on NPC Mobs to end.
Not as a 100% Alternative. But as alternative Methods. Similar like in Worst of Warcraft.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
I am in the guildless Guild so to say, lol. But i won't give up. I will find my fitting Guild "one Day".