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.
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There is a difference between meaningful and convoluted or tedious. I have played complex crafting games that were fun and intuitive. Ashes has done that with their combat system very well.
Crafting for instance low level gear, potions and the rest of it should be easy to figure out and within an hour of playing have something meaningful to progress your char for the next few levels.
The next round of crafting should add the next level of complexity and build on what you have already learned. Should take a little more effort. These systems should be fun as well. When you design to be complex first, you miss what gaming is about, fun first. Once you have designed something fun, ask how you can add depth and complexity.
This type of process should be applied to all areas of the game. I am 100% sure when they designed combat, that's the process they followed.
So, a question for both of you.
In an MMORPG where one of the many longer quest lines takes 6 to 8 hours to complete assuming you have an open wiki page, three times as long as that if you don't - you don't consider that to be content?
I can see an argument that "kill 10 rats" type quests aren't content. However, that is the bottom end of quests, the equivalent of base population (which I don't consider content). The top end of quests though, i can not see how one can not consider that to be content.
Quest is just a pointer to the mechanics themselves, and then those mechanics are what I consider content.
The Questboard ? Tiny Content.
Questlines from Storylines ? Class-Stories ? Now THAT's something different ... ...
✓ 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".
Questboard is tiny nice content
storylines arent, stories arent, etc nearly everything npc related isnt content
Content to me is mostly drama, player interaction, player stories, situations perceived differently by each player and so on
That is literally not content.
There are two definitions of what content can mean in a computer game.
The first is that it includes all audio-visual aspects of the game.
The second is that it includes everything developers create for players to do.
What you are talking about is player interaction, not content.
If you consider quests to be content, then that is fine since you don't understand what content means.
However, if you are only doing a piece of content because a quest pointed you towards it, then that quest should count as content as much as the thing the quest pointed you at.
I'd rather just have the content itself.
I'm surprised for that, do you not 'care about' the context of things in Genshin, for example?
Even if Quests are not 'content' for some, good quality ones are at minimum, context. RP-ers benefit from these in Fantasy games, where the player is often insular and the world doesn't change as much. This might be your L2 bias again (I have a matching FF11 bias).
But the effort to 'give you a context' can transform a normal activity.
One of the bigger examples of this in somewhat recent history was in Metro Exodus. There's a location deeper into the game where you can follow the main quest or go a slightly different route. I obviously went to that other route and after several hours of exploration I came to a location that was supposed to be deeper in the storyline.
But devs accounted for my playertype and it the game just flown as if this was completely fine, even though I missed several fairly important character interactions and exploration points on the other route. I LOOOOOVE when games can do that, because it directly tells me that my playstyle is not just viable, but seen and is accounted for.
In more linear games, like AC6, I mostly enjoy the minute-to-minute gameplay. I'll still usually explore everything and go through text/audio logs and I will find them interested overall, but I mostly do that due to my completionist nature and steam achievement whoring.
But in pvp games (and I attribute mmos here, because those are the mmos I wanna play) - players are content. And in a PvX game like Ashes or L2 - players AND mobs are content. I added puzzles to that list, in my original response to Noaani, mostly cause Genshin created a certain love for them in me, so if there's some interesting puzzles in the world - I'll see that as content as well.
But as I said, if my preferred content is locked behind quests in an mmo - I'd rather if it wasn't. Though, on that note
I'm more than fine sitting through text or npc walking or whatever, because, as I'm sure both you and Noaani know, I'm all about middlegrounds. If all that additional stuff keeps more people in the game - better for me, because the world will feel more alive, and I play mmos for that kind of world.
I was planning on making a video (and still might, though who knows when) about early stage player markets in Ashes, in the context of L2's newest trendy server. Here's me running through the markets in a few starting towns. Server was 3 weeks old at this point and in terms of player progress, I'd say even the hardcorest dudes are somewhere around "lvl20" (in Ashes terms).
But markets are huge, ranging from starter gear all the way up to "lvl20" stuff. And a shiiiitton of materials trading, with ranging prices of "people buying for cheaper in starting towns, while buying for noticeably more in higher lvl ones".
I start showing stuff in the Elven starting village and go up to town where lvl10-20 people hang around. Didn't show lvl20+ town cause its market is way smaller, and also I kinda forgot about it in the moment
But to me THIS is also content. Playing the market, participating in it, simply benefiting from it - all of that is just "players are content", as, imo, it should be in a pvx game (Xness comes in from the fact that all of those items are from mobs that can be/have been contested).
I kinda treat PvX mmos like I did dota. There's mobs, there's players, there's secret/side shops - all of them are content and player-driven content happens around them.
All the non-PvX mmos I treat like story games. When I played a bit of WoW classic and FF14 - I read all the quests, interacted with pretty much every npc I saw, explored the world as much as I could and did every quest I could find.
This is kind of my point. I get you don't want to be doing quests in an MMORPG, thats fine. However, to say they aren't content at all is factually incorrect.
The fact that you are interested in this kind of thing in other games should kind of be a hint to you that it is just the context of an open world game that you aren't wanting to do quests, rather than them not being content.
If mobas suddenly started having quests during matches, I'd imagine that a lot of people would complain, cause they'd get in the way of the game's content.
If you're craving a burger, come to a burger joint and order a burger, the icream that the establishment sells won't be all that interesting to you. It'll factually be food, but you didn't come to that place to have an icecream. You can still go to an ice cream place, get an ice cream and enjoy it to the fullest there, but when you've come to a burger place cause you want a burger - having to eat an ice cream before that would not be pleasant.
And like I said, I'm fine with having both in one place, but my personal preference would be to just have the burger.
Its all good if it isn't you saying that you don't think quests are content, however, my point is as much that this position shouldn't exist outside of people that are mistaken about the facts of the matter - and people that are mistaken about the basic facts should not be taken seriously on a topic.
As such, the notion that "some people" don't consider quests to be content is not something that should ever be stated in a discussion on MMORPG development.
The notion that some people do not LIKE quests is valid, but the notion that some do not consider quests to be content is not valid as a point of discussion.
If a person doesn't touch a single quest in the game, would they consider quests content? Cause you can easily do that even in the current Alpha. It'll potentially be even easier on release.
So how would those people consider quests content if they've never cared/interacted/tried said content? The sound might be there, but there's no one to hear it.
It did make a sound and they are content. I didn’t play Arena in wow, Arenas still existed.
Sure, but relative to the thread (and to the post that brought up Quests), it's still kinda valid.
That poster said most of Ashes' issues can be solved by adding content (in the form of quests).
We have objects data most people like quests. Maybe I’m missing the argument, but not having quests in 2025 is suicide.
Most people also like Toggled PvP flagging and instanced content. Every aspect of a game needs to fit with the rest of the game and to some extent with the intended audience of that game.
I'm not arguing against quests or anything, I think decent/great quests are a no-brainer if you have the manpower for them (which Intrepid afaik does). But this is a game where 'adding a lot of quests' isn't necessarily going to fix most of the problems in your original post, and the reason for that is 'the percentage of the audience that isn't interested in that content'.
EDIT: Technically I guess it's moreso them combined with the number of people who will use quests as a pointer towards other players to kill in order to stir up conflict, which to them is the content.
I disagree and I’d be happy to elaborate more after work
I just mean that there are more people like this:
In the audience. (Also Arya and Ludullu already indicated two other potential 'demographics').
I believe that people like quests. I also believe that people who play 'hardcore' Always-on PvP MMORPGs with a heavy focus on larger groups have a lower percentage of people who like quests.
If Intrepid add some text and pointers to mobs/puzzles/bosses, none of that will make those mobs/puzzles/bosses better mechanically. Mob AI is still trash. Mob skillsets are still poor. Artisanry is still in its infancy, so economy can't really be as deeply intertwined with everything as it should be, and minute-to-minute artisanry is literally pressing a button>waiting>running to another place>repeat. Weapon skill trees are basic as fuck. Weapons themselves barely differ from each other. Node interactions don't exist. Node-based mob lvling doesn't exist. Node currency trading is useless outside of a single case, and even that is poorly designed. PvP events don't exist because they've been nerfed to the ground. PKing doesn't exist cause it's been nerfed to the ground. Mob training still exists (afaik) cause mob AI is still shit. And we've now come full circle w/o even mentioning, like, 60% of all the other mechanics that were promised for the game.
Quests would address none of that. They would just add a distraction from testing the systems that should be getting added into the game. Hell, we can't even properly test proper quest hooks or M O D U L E S - cause node-related systems are not in. How do npcs spawn when a node falls or lvls up? How do quest hooks respond to that, if at all? Do commissions respond correctly to those changes? What about M O D U L E related changes to the world? Monster attacks on nodes that might disable buildings or kill npcs? Boss awakening due to a node lvling up and npcs responding to that in a proper manner, and ideally giving us quests related to it?
What would quests solve here exactly? I simply do not believe we're in a stage where adding quests would do anything truly good to push the game's testing forward. Well, outside of proofreading the text, telling Intrepid that their font is still shit and should be customizable and that AI voice is trash. Though we did all of that back in P1 already.
If the game has content specific to some races, does that mean players will consider content of races other than their own to be content? If players only solo, does that mean they consider raids to not be content? If players only PvP, does that mean they consider all PvE to not be content? If players do not wish to craft, does that mean they will consider all crafting to not be content? If someone plays only to decorate their house, does that mean they consider the rest of the game to not be content?
These are all, quite franky, silly notions. As silly as not considering quests to be content.
The way they can consider it to be content is because other people are doing it.
Your analogy of the tree falling isn't all that apt here (analogies can be hard). People saying quests aren't content are more like people saying a tree fell and *I* wasn't there to hear it, even though many thousands of others were, how do I know it made a sound?
Claiming the tree didn't make a sound only because you didn't hear it even though many others did, and saying quests aren't content even though many others are actively spending time on them are statements that are on par with each other, and represent an over inflated sense of self importance.
The reasonable person in each situation would say "quests are not content that I participate in", and "I wasn't there so I didn't hear the tree".
And also, my answers to all of those questions is yes
And yes, I am that self-absorbed and have the inflatediest sense of self importance, because I do not speak for other people and only speak for myself. And to me that is not content
Content is not a subective term.
Content you enjoy is subjective, the notion of what content *IS* is an objective t erm.
It's like if you really enjoy coffee, but someone else tells you their hot drink of choice is tea. Your position here is you telling them that tea isn't a hot drink at all, because to you, coffee is the hot drink.
There is no "this is what content is to me" statements to be made. You can't have a "to me" notion on an objective thing.
This is still not a correct definition of what content is.
Content is an objective thing, not something you can have your own opinion on.
You can have your own opinion on what content you like, just as you can have your own opinion on what car you like, or your favorate Care Bear. However, you do not get to have an opinion on what counts as content, just as you do not get to have an opinion on what counts as a car, or what counts as a Care Bear.
i agree on everything