Amazing world, painfully dull grind

One thing Ashes of Creation really needs to address is the grind, and I get it, before anyone jumps in with “but it’s Alpha,” let me just say: yes, it’s Alpha, but that’s exactly why this feedback matters now.

Right now, the path to max level in Alpha feels like a chore. Grinding mobs for hours on end is the core way to level, and that’s not engaging gameplay... it’s exhausting. There's very little meaningful content in the early to mid-game that introduces you to the world, its systems, or even gives you a sense of progression outside of mob density and XP bars.

Compare that to something like Elder Scrolls Online, where levels 1-50 serve as a structured and immersive tutorial. You’re still learning the game, but you’re doing it through main story quests, world events, dailies, and public encounters. It makes leveling feel rewarding without forcing repetition. And importantly, it brings the world to life from the moment you start playing.

With Ashes, it feels like all the attention has gone into endgame systems; node sieges, caravans, raid bosses. But the early game lacks the foundation to draw players in. Verra is supposed to be this rich, dynamic world, but right now it doesn’t offer that sense of wonder or discovery early on. New players should be excited to log in, not burned out from killing the same mob type for three hours straight just to hit a soft milestone.

If Intrepid wants this game to succeed long-term, they need to make the journey to the endgame just as compelling as what waits at the top.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Aszkalon

Ludullu wrote: »

Steven has already said "yeah, we'll have some grind".

" ... ... don't ... ... "

After butchering and butchering a felt " MILLION " of Goblins ... ...

... ... ... my Weapon slowly starts to look beautiful in ANOTHER way than before ... ... ...

Uncommon Sense

Ludullu wrote: »

Uncommon Sense wrote: »

I hope Bard's legacy holds true...

It will not, cause, since he left, Steven has already said "yeah, we'll have some grind".

I don't really see how they even CAN get the "~225h to max lvl" design w/o grind. That would be an insane amount of questing, if you tried making that path non-grindable. And both mob and artisanry leveling is just grind.

"Not the primary way to lvl" and "some grind" are partially the same responses.

either perspective I would like to assume suggests less than %25 grind

Ludullu

Uncommon Sense wrote: »

either perspective I would like to assume suggests less than %25 grind

I can assure you, it will be waaay more than 25%.

And Steven's "some grind" is simply a sugarcoating of bad news that there will be a lot of grind.

The game's design does not work (as Steven wants it) if there is no grind. If people are not present in grind spots - there's no reason to fight for them. If people are not out there gathering - there's no one fighting for them.

Steven loves "soft friction", but that friction can only happen when people are out in the open world grinding locations. Everything else is either a predetermined pvp event or people living in their own little world doing quests.

Azherae

Ludullu wrote: »

Uncommon Sense wrote: »

either perspective I would like to assume suggests less than %25 grind

I can assure you, it will be waaay more than 25%.

And Steven's "some grind" is simply a sugarcoating of bad news that there will be a lot of grind.

The game's design does not work (as Steven wants it) if there is no grind. If people are not present in grind spots - there's no reason to fight for them. If people are not out there gathering - there's no one fighting for them.

Steven loves "soft friction", but that friction can only happen when people are out in the open world grinding locations. Everything else is either a predetermined pvp event or people living in their own little world doing quests.

Those who are very used to grinding do not always understand the distinction others make when they say it (obviously because so many people have so many different perspectives on it).

But if the game offers enough Tasks, Commissions, and Social Org incentives, then the thing that will happen is not classified by most players as 'grind' and will also still be able to create some friction.

People who define 'grind' as 'needing to kill 25+ mobs in a single targeted activity' will obviously be disappointed at some stage, but I can at least say that I don't know anyone who considers that to be 'grind', especially if you change location/target, or have the fun of 'combining multiple objectives' (a good efficiency feeling that is randomly available).

Ashes only needs to meet the bare minimum of this gameplay type to not count as grind to anyone I know, both those who like it and who don't like it as much. So I don't agree that this game needs grind to achieve its goals.

And Ashes of Creation is not a 'bare minimum' style of game.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

But if the game offers enough Tasks, Commissions, and Social Org incentives, then the thing that will happen is not classified by most players as 'grind' and will also still be able to create some friction.

And I call those people sheep, who are easily lied to. If you need to farm mobs over and over again - that's freaking grind. Those people themselves would call it grind. But as long as there's some keys dangling in the form of "omg, this npc told me to farm those mobs, so it's totally not grind" - they're completely fine with it...

Misdirection is such a mighty tool.

But either way, if commissions will be enough for people to not call the game grindy - hell yeah, more people in the game.

Azherae

Ludullu wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

But if the game offers enough Tasks, Commissions, and Social Org incentives, then the thing that will happen is not classified by most players as 'grind' and will also still be able to create some friction.

And I call those people sheep, who are easily lied to. If you need to farm mobs over and over again - that's freaking grind. Those people themselves would call it grind. But as long as there's some keys dangling in the form of "omg, this npc told me to farm those mobs, so it's totally not grind" - they're completely fine with it...

Misdirection is such a mighty tool.

But either way, if commissions will be enough for people to not call the game grindy - hell yeah, more people in the game.

Even considering your preferences, there's more to it than that.

A Commission can be many things, taking similar amounts of time and effort, some of them even 'making it so that a certain single mob is allowed to give you way more exp than usual if you did some other things'. Those other things are enjoyable to people in specific ways but 'would be sometimes too repetitive or easy to bot' (incredibly inefficient to bot but reasonable and fun for a player).

Making it a Commission helps limit those bots whose only advantage is infinite time. It genuinely isn't just 'point me at this these mobs instead of these mobs'. There are multiple mechanics in nearly any MMO that lend themselves well to this, but the one I'd use as a main example would be:

Imagine an area full of mobs that are not innately more rewarding but are for some reason more dangerous than most mobs but also not aggressive.

Now add a quest or Commission where you have to move something past those mobs (it can just be in your inv, or treated as a status effect) that makes them all aggro you. Now you have a sneaking task that could also be a fighting one in the right conditions, opportunistic to clear if you know a party is going up there, etc, while generally making any single bot trying to loop this activity either have difficulty or be really obvious.

Yes, if you 'just repeated this one Commission hundreds of times' it would be grind, but that's not what 'I don't want to grind' people are imagining.

They complain later, when they've played 5h a day for 3 months: "I've done that Commission a thousand times and now it's getting stale."

EDIT: I realized that some readers may never have played a game where mobs move around or you have to dodge aggro or mobs can move you around if you fight them incorrectly. Please note that the example is supposed to be viewed in terms of that type of game, where the PvE targets are not loot pinatas waiting for you to break them.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Now add a quest or Commission where you have to move something past those mobs (it can just be in your inv, or treated as a status effect) that makes them all aggro you. Now you have a sneaking task that could also be a fighting one in the right conditions, opportunistic to clear if you know a party is going up there, etc, while generally making any single bot trying to loop this activity either have difficulty or be really obvious.

I'd expect this to be a proper quest kinda thing. Unless I'm forgetting something, commissions in Ashes is simply "go kill/gather this". And they're meant to be repetitive as hell, because that's kinda their point.

This is why I said that a proper questing approach to leveling would be insane, because, considering the size of the world and all the node-related quirks of the game - creating enough quests for all the people (or even just the majority) to NOT level through grind would be an insane undertaking.

Azherae wrote: »

Yes, if you 'just repeated this one Commission hundreds of times' it would be grind, but that's not what 'I don't want to grind' people are imagining.

They complain later, when they've played 5h a day for 3 months: "I've done that Commission a thousand times and now it's getting stale."

And that's exactly what I meant when I said that it's all pretty much grind and people will only be fooling themselves if they believe otherwise.

There's only so many good, even semi-unique, quests a team like Intrepid could fit into Ashes to fill up ~170h of gameplay (if we assume that 25% of the 225h is pure mob/artisanry grind). And there's gotta be even more of them, cause what happens if a good quest is located in t3 Miraleth, while Miraleth is at t1 and will be blocked off for months.

Afaik, legacy mmos have taken yeaars of updates to get up to high hundreds in hours of questing. No matter how much I believe in Intrepid - I do not see them creating that amount of quest-related content for a sandpark game. And, imo, telling people "well, you can take commissions from the board and treat them as quests" is just lying straight to people's face and will only result in a mass exodus of questers who were told "yeah, you can definitely level mostly through questing".

As I see it, this is simply the "not for everyone" kinda deal and leaning on the sand of the design would be more benefitial to the game in the long run.

Azherae

I'll continue to disagree, I guess.

Firstly, you might be confusing Commissions with 'Tasks', there is an entire separate Commissions Board in the game right now that sends you off to find places, deliver things (I think), defeat specific mobs, etc.

That's at least 15m per, so they 'only' need around 600 unique ones, and yes, some number of those will be mob killing.

But that's still only like 20 per 'area' (where 'area' can mean a lot of things depending on the game, I don't think that the basis of my 'disagreement' is based on us not being able to agree on what an 'area' would be in Ashes relative to this) to get most people 'to level cap' (assuming a fixed FTUE such that you only really do a bunch of these after level 11 or so).

Anyone who is taking Ashes seriously as what it sells itself as will probably visit at least 5 nodes on their way to level cap, and if we go by the 'standards of the industry' (about 50 Commission type content pieces per Node) that's 250+ pieces of content, at around 15-20m each, easily 80h and each Commission can absolutely be 'allowed' to then give between 10% of exp in the 11-20 range all the way up to '10% of exp in the 30-40 range' for more difficult ones (or ones that open up when the nodes level).

The reason this works is simply because most people don't get bored of an area from just 3 visits, and designers can definitely get 2-3 unique things into each area, sometimes 'per visit'. When you have a lot of world-space (and Ashes certainly does) the goal of a good team is to use it. Use every bit of it you can manage to use without it being ridiculous. Recycle, reuse, refactor, retell stories. If you have an open plain doing nothing in your MMORPG in 2025 fill that with some random thought from a cool dev.

The reason people don't hear about/know about this massive source of content is that some people don't experience even half of it (me, for example, I am literally too busy in TL to consume all their side-content quickly), and those that do enjoy it, but don't have much need to talk about it because it's so personal to them.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Firstly, you might be confusing Commissions with 'Tasks', there is an entire separate Commissions Board in the game right now that sends you off to find places, deliver things (I think), defeat specific mobs, etc.

Unless I'm misreading this part or Lex is lying to us, Commissions ARE tasks.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Commissions
Commissions (previously called Tasks) are simple types of system-generated quests with singular objectives that enable characters and nodes to gain XP.[4][1][5][6][7][8][9][10]

And yes, I am referencing the "talk to the board, get the "kill this" or "gather this" mission and go do it" stuff.

Azherae wrote: »

That's at least 15m per, so they 'only' need around 600 unique ones, and yes, some number of those will be mob killing.

There's only so many mobs and so many gatherables within each given node to have that uniqueness. And then if we assume the logical approach of "reskin this mob into a different region/biome and maybe give him another ability or two" - to me, that's still fighting the same mob. I sure hope that the majority of players will see this as something unique.

Then on top of that, if Intrepid DO decide to go for something more unique than just "kill/gather" missions - they'll need 50 of them per node, cause supposedly/hopefully/allegedly each node will have at least one POI valuable enough for people to visit it. And each node can grow to each stage of progress, so the game's content must be ready to be there if it does.

This is why I said that it's either just repetitive commission grind or the volume of unique things to do in the game is insane (for the scale of the team and their development timeframe).

I would totally support smth like "each node has 5 truly unique commissions and the rng always presents at least one of them, if you haven't done them yet at that node". But even that is 400 unique things, outside of all the other quests, M O D U L E S and story-related stuff.

I just think that my definition of grind is simply waaay too broad, while my preferred standards for quests and their uniqueness are way too high

Definitely hope that majority of players are on the completely opposite end of the spectrum and will be more than glad to just repeat the same "kill dudes" stuff over and over, w/o thinking "ugh, this grind is booooring".

Azherae

Hm... I guess so? I can't tell where, if anywhere, the disconnect is.

I think of MMO developers as being able to make literally thousands of relatively unique mobs, but maybe that's a matter of the definition of 'unique' for you vs me.

And because mobs that are 'targets of commissions' don't have to live up to the absolute quality of 'challenging group content', they can use a lot more of the 'hey this thing is trivial because it doesn't have any mechanics that threaten a DPS once a Tank is there' designs that have to otherwise get 'thrown out'.

I guess for you 'Lion' that stuns, circles you, applies bleed, is immune to sleep and taunt, and 'Tiger' that fears you when it roars, charges head on, not affected by/lesser effects of movespeed down and chills (among other things, just assume 2 more differences) are still the same mob?

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

I guess for you 'Lion' that stuns, circles you, applies bleed, is immune to sleep and taunt, and 'Tiger' that fears you when it roars, charges head on, not affected by/lesser effects of movespeed down and chills (among other things, just assume 2 more differences) are still the same mob?

Ultimately yes.

You saw my AC6 gameplay. Did I play too differently against different kinds of bosses? Cause it also might just be my own blindness towards variety in my gameplay. Cause I think that AC6 has so far been the game with most varried mobs for me, but, at least iirc, I fought them in pretty much the same way and with the same build.

A mob is a mob. A person is a mob too, because they're also in the game. I either win or lose against them. I miiight be doing something slightly different here and there, when it comes to my ability usage or encounter approach, but in my mind it's literally all the same shit.

Azherae

That's probably a derail of epic proportions, because I am aware that certain people just don't notice things, or as my guildie says:

"I greatsword, I hit things" (no, I am not exaggerating this).

But that person, like you, also freely admits that he just powers through things and doesn't even understand them (and also freely admits that whenever anything involving coordination or complexity comes up, he basically can't manage it and relies on the rest of us).

Games often provide playstyles for that type of person precisely so that they don't have to learn that much complexity, I'm just noting that the complexity is there a lot of the time in good PvE, it's just that someone else is handling it.

And that 'someone else' is the person who appreciates the Lion and the Tiger as different targets/content, so they won't be disappointed.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

And that 'someone else' is the person who appreciates the Lion and the Tiger as different targets/content, so they won't be disappointed.

And to tie it back to grind. As I've been saying, I hope that the majority of players see those lions and tigers as completely different mobs and enjoy their commissions to the maximum extent.

I will already enjoy them because I enjoy grind, so whatever makes more people happy and stay in the game - I'm all for that.

Aszkalon

When i mine Ore's in the World of Worst of ever Story-written Warcraft,

i get EXP.
When i pick up Herbs in Worst of ever-Story-written Warcraft -> i get EXP.

I can't remember when this was patched in. But i liked it. I really really liked it. It was definitely one of the best Additions to the Content of the whole Game.

The Option to do something else than to senselessly slaughter countless Mobs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Did You Guys ever heard something,
alone the Lines of like : " Power ... ... ... ... usually always comes with a Price. "

When i - in Phase 1 during the likes of Middle-November or so,
had killed S~OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MANY Goblins - that i had the feeling between insane headache i had something that felt like a drop of blood maybe bleeding inside my brain or so,

you know a HOT-COLD-WET-"tingle" somewhere inside my brain. (

)

I decided the Prize is too high.
It is just too high.

I gave up around 5% of EXP after reaching LvL 11 towards LvL 12,

and i was disappointed into myself and felt bad for no longer being able to test. But that was my Limit.
Jepp.
Figured i better stop. I should admit it here right now.

In WoW Vanilla when levelling was insanely hard -> before Burning Crusade -> the ever first Expansion of Worst of Warcraft -> i managed to level THREE Characters up to LvL 60 back then - which was the Max-Level in WoW Vanilla,

and it was no biggie. It was doable. It wasn't bad. I don't know what was so different in Ashes of Creatio Phase 1 killing Mobs around Aela/the Starting Area.

But it felt different.
It felt like i am chained down. And i am struggling for every single Percent of EXP for every Level. Knowing fully well i would be set back should i die even a single time.

nanfoodle

Most gamers are used to no more then 1-3 min between things to see or do. This is a standard game developers have learned. Ashes is so far from that loop its shooking. I really hope this giant game space does not stay the way it is and also hope Ashes does not become a cookie cutter rush to make the game see full and alive.

Noaani

What I really don't get is how anyone could look at the leveling speed Intrepid have intended for this game, and can come to any conclusion other than a dull grind.

Githal

Noaani wrote: »

What I really don't get is how anyone could look at the leveling speed Intrepid have intended for this game, and can come to any conclusion other than a dull grind.

The way Intrepid can make it not a dull grind and keep the leveling speed is by reducing the importance of leveling, and increasing the importance of node development for example.
So for example all citizens of a node get large exp boost depending on the level of the node. This will force guild wars, commissions, crafting, caravans and ect. The leveling speed will be faster as a whole with the exp boost, but the time it takes to level as a whole wont be different, since you will spend a lot of time developing your node.

TheDarkSorcerer

Githal wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

What I really don't get is how anyone could look at the leveling speed Intrepid have intended for this game, and can come to any conclusion other than a dull grind.

The way Intrepid can make it not a dull grind and keep the leveling speed is by reducing the importance of leveling, and increasing the importance of node development for example.
So for example all citizens of a node get large exp boost depending on the level of the node. This will force guild wars, commissions, crafting, caravans and ect. The leveling speed will be faster as a whole with the exp boost, but the time it takes to level as a whole wont be different, since you will spend a lot of time developing your node.

Most new players aren’t logging in with the dream of being a background NPC helping some mega-guild build a metropolis. They’re here to grow their own character, forge their own path, and feel the impact of their personal decisions. Making node development the primary driver of progression risks turning the early game into a passive, community-serving grind that only benefits the few sitting at the top.

Tying XP gain to node level sounds great in theory, but in practice it creates a system where new or solo players are either locked out of meaningful progress or forced to follow the agenda of larger zerg guilds. That’s not fun, and it doesn’t foster true player agency. Don’t force players to care about the political drama of node wars before they even understand their class.

Caww

grind is what keeps subs on-going so business-wise, grind it is

TheDarkSorcerer

Caww wrote: »

grind is what keeps subs on-going so business-wise, grind it is

Yes, but it's not what attracts new subs.

Child Item