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Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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.
meaningful systems and fun game mechanics
Chicago
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
having put quite a few hours into phase 3, one of the biggest concerns i have about the game is who is the core audience supposed to be?, we hear all the time '' this game may not be for you '' but i am curious who this game is actually for?
The game as a base has a lot of potential and there has been quite a lot of changes since the start of phase 1, ( i don't know if i would say improvements) But definitely changes,
the direction of the game seems to be geared towards every single system being so grindy and tedious it basically removes any sort of casual player.
steven once stated that systems make games fun, and i 100% agree with him but basically every system in the game at the moment even in an alpha state is so far off being fun and engaging that people are leaving phase 3 in herds
The pve - once stated to have meaningful bosses that would change their mechanics based on how fast you killed them to become more difficult has been reduced to killing ravens and goblins for hours with nothing to show for it
Loot has been totally removed ( un sure if this is for testing or intentional) but i would guess it is more the latter this far into alpha 2, there is no way in my mind that removing loot in an MMO is a good thing, Loot and crafting can co-exist
Pvp is just dead, ignoring the absolutely Ludacris times it takes to even gear up your character at lvl 25, there are no fun meaningful pvp loops in the game to really play, i personally think that there should be some sort of instanced opt in pvp, i know not everyone agrees with this but the open world pvp is just grief city, that is just run by zergs. Unless its organized scrims its basically just whoever has the most numbers wins
the world still feels extremely dull removing any real reason to want to explore, i know that the game can look nice if you have a 5090 and run everything on cinematic, but even if it looks pretty the world is flat, dull, boring, and with tree's/rocks native to the biome they are in, it sort of ruins immersion as each zone has basically 1-2 types of trees, it feels like 90% of the world and mobs have been made and placed with AI, not with love.
i will also add that with every single material in the world gatherable it makes the world look insanely bland and basically all the biomes feel like a copy paste of the last, this feeling feels 10 fold when you add the insane travel times it takes to travers between biomes. it not only makes the world feel terrible, as nothing fantasy has really been added just boring trees from earth, but it also absolutely destroys performance, as someone pointed out in another post, unless you have a 900$ graphics card, don't bother playing this game, it really feels like anything designed on UE5 feels like an AI universe with no unique art style, no love shown for any parts of the world, even mob placement is blatantly obviously done by ai, i would also guess that the recipes and material costs are all done by AI as no dev would think 1100 copper for a sword is a good idea, wich begs the question .. if the entire world is being made/designed by ai, what is the team doing
Re watching the latest livestreams it really feels like the intention of the end game is running crates, Fishing has been turned into crates, The new corruption event is running crates, Building a node is running crates, gold making is running crates and even as per steven in his copium clinic interview, the religion system will be .. you guessed it, running crates. As a base mechanic its probably one of the most boring systems i have ever interacted with so its concerning that this seems to be the vision of the game, the new corruption event is going to flop because it is lawless, even though i would love to have lawless zones that may yield better drops, materials and exp, i don't think lawless events are a good idea in a game that cant find a way to tackle the zerg meta
and then there is the issues of player feedback being basically ignored at this point, we have had rollback after rollback, but for some reason it was allowed that the first players to hit lvl 20 could have an uncontested farm of gear for the first week, gearing their entire guild with blue armor/weapons, just to then have the system totally removed when 95% of the player base actually caught up leaving an extremely unfair advantage for basically the rest of the phase
so i really do ask and with good intentions i want this game to succeed, we all do, we all want a good mmo we can sink 100s of hours into, but who is this game for? the pvp crowd are not happy with the direction, the pve crowd are not happy with the direction, there is no meaningful lore or quests or exploration, the systems are so grindy and un fun that only someone in their 70s or unemployed would have time to actually interact with them, after 2 alphas and 3 phases of alpha 2 we should be seeing some sort of direction by now
The game as a base has a lot of potential and there has been quite a lot of changes since the start of phase 1, ( i don't know if i would say improvements) But definitely changes,
the direction of the game seems to be geared towards every single system being so grindy and tedious it basically removes any sort of casual player.
steven once stated that systems make games fun, and i 100% agree with him but basically every system in the game at the moment even in an alpha state is so far off being fun and engaging that people are leaving phase 3 in herds
The pve - once stated to have meaningful bosses that would change their mechanics based on how fast you killed them to become more difficult has been reduced to killing ravens and goblins for hours with nothing to show for it
Loot has been totally removed ( un sure if this is for testing or intentional) but i would guess it is more the latter this far into alpha 2, there is no way in my mind that removing loot in an MMO is a good thing, Loot and crafting can co-exist
Pvp is just dead, ignoring the absolutely Ludacris times it takes to even gear up your character at lvl 25, there are no fun meaningful pvp loops in the game to really play, i personally think that there should be some sort of instanced opt in pvp, i know not everyone agrees with this but the open world pvp is just grief city, that is just run by zergs. Unless its organized scrims its basically just whoever has the most numbers wins
the world still feels extremely dull removing any real reason to want to explore, i know that the game can look nice if you have a 5090 and run everything on cinematic, but even if it looks pretty the world is flat, dull, boring, and with tree's/rocks native to the biome they are in, it sort of ruins immersion as each zone has basically 1-2 types of trees, it feels like 90% of the world and mobs have been made and placed with AI, not with love.
i will also add that with every single material in the world gatherable it makes the world look insanely bland and basically all the biomes feel like a copy paste of the last, this feeling feels 10 fold when you add the insane travel times it takes to travers between biomes. it not only makes the world feel terrible, as nothing fantasy has really been added just boring trees from earth, but it also absolutely destroys performance, as someone pointed out in another post, unless you have a 900$ graphics card, don't bother playing this game, it really feels like anything designed on UE5 feels like an AI universe with no unique art style, no love shown for any parts of the world, even mob placement is blatantly obviously done by ai, i would also guess that the recipes and material costs are all done by AI as no dev would think 1100 copper for a sword is a good idea, wich begs the question .. if the entire world is being made/designed by ai, what is the team doing
Re watching the latest livestreams it really feels like the intention of the end game is running crates, Fishing has been turned into crates, The new corruption event is running crates, Building a node is running crates, gold making is running crates and even as per steven in his copium clinic interview, the religion system will be .. you guessed it, running crates. As a base mechanic its probably one of the most boring systems i have ever interacted with so its concerning that this seems to be the vision of the game, the new corruption event is going to flop because it is lawless, even though i would love to have lawless zones that may yield better drops, materials and exp, i don't think lawless events are a good idea in a game that cant find a way to tackle the zerg meta
and then there is the issues of player feedback being basically ignored at this point, we have had rollback after rollback, but for some reason it was allowed that the first players to hit lvl 20 could have an uncontested farm of gear for the first week, gearing their entire guild with blue armor/weapons, just to then have the system totally removed when 95% of the player base actually caught up leaving an extremely unfair advantage for basically the rest of the phase
so i really do ask and with good intentions i want this game to succeed, we all do, we all want a good mmo we can sink 100s of hours into, but who is this game for? the pvp crowd are not happy with the direction, the pve crowd are not happy with the direction, there is no meaningful lore or quests or exploration, the systems are so grindy and un fun that only someone in their 70s or unemployed would have time to actually interact with them, after 2 alphas and 3 phases of alpha 2 we should be seeing some sort of direction by now
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Also, the intention of this: is to be filled with pvp. It's not just "running crates", it's existing in a dangerous situation at all times, ideally together with your friends and against other people with their friends.
That is the premise and people who like that premise are the target audience. And kinda always have been.
"I progress by doing more stuff, then I win, and if I don't, I lose, and losing is less fun, so I should do the maximum amount of stuff the game allows me to do."
Steven hates the systems that are usable as the secondary solution.
The good news is that other games are instead experimenting with simply setting the limits in that type of system high enough for 6-8h a day of play instead. Is it working? idk, people are weird.
which will never work lol
i agree unfortunately, i think that an mmo needs those things, but they are not systems
If Archeage proved one thing, it is that the audience of people that want this as their only real means of progression is vanishingly small.
That game offered this as the foremost form of progression, but had layers under it with less - and even no - risk of PvP. The vast, vast majority of players, the vast, vast majority of the time, opted for one of the lesser options.
Guilds would organize nights around running these higher risk activities was common, but the game offered a LOT to do outside of that - Ashes doesn't.
The question I have for you is - with the way Ashes is looking, if I am looking to play a game on a night where my guild hasn't organized people to be on for a specific task, why would I log in to Ashes rather than play literally any of the hundreds of games I have on Steam?
You could do quests, do artisanry, pug up on mobs, solo farm some mobs, explore the world, play the market, do solo pvp attacks on small groups, help other players (which could include any of the above actions).
Outside of the world exploration (cause the world was static), that's the list of activities a player w/o a currently active guild would do in L2. And supposedly L2 had EVEN LESS stuff to do than AA and sure as hell less stuff than Ashes will supposedly have.
In other words, if you want to ONLY be optimal at ALL times - yes, there's nothing to do if you don't have your guild's support. Otherwise there's gonna be more than enough to fill your time out.
exactly that, i've seen people log in years in AA just to tend to their house and land despite having nothing else to do (another big problem with AA, no actual content after a certain level + horrible gearing system that require ages to be able to join the available end game activities which are almost fully pvp)
It isn't about being optimal per se, it is about a player sitting down at their computer after a long day at work and deciding what game to play.
WIth the list of things you have given that you believe people will be able to do in Ashes, I don't see why many people would put this game at the top of their list. There will always be something more enjoyable to do.
This is as I have been saying for a few years, a game isn't judged to be good or bad based on the best activities it offers, it is judged based on the worst activities it offers. WIth that in mind, Ashes is really bad right now.
Yeah, i did this for about 2 years. My farm was about half of one of the Auroria zones, and I just farmed archeum and regrade materials. It was technically "dangerous" as I could be attacked and lose the packs needed to farm those products, but i took that risk knowing that if I lost them, there were other things I could do with my land.
This is what kept me in the game after my initial guild decided the game was shit (its content was shit), and until I found another guild that suited me.
While Ashes freehold system is clearly trying to copy farms in Archeage, it literally offers none of that.
Archeage got a lot wrong, but it also got a lot right. It's variety of things for players to actually do, things with differing levels of risk, differing types of risk, was something it did better than any other PvP focused MMO that I am aware of.
Steven seems to want the same type of risk for every activity in Ashes, and largely the same level of risk. This makes Ashes an incredibly one dimensional game.
yea thats the difference , while AA had some terrible systems like the gearing , the balance of "classes" where like 4 of them were viable same with weapons..etc it still did a lot of right things like you said the balance where people could log in for an hour have a couple of things to do and log off after achieving progress , you cant do that in ashes,same with the risk vs rewards stuff in other systems especially the caravan,fishing ...etc grouping,pvp and all of the grind and tedious stuff wasnt forced on you
i never played AA but i decided to watch some videos after reading your comments, the thing that stands out to me that is absolutely crucial imo that intrepid fix, is the world even in some of these old games feels so much more immersive than vera, its honestly really bugging me that everything in vera feels scaled so poorly and out of place, i think its so important to be able to explore the world and feel like you are going on an adventure and i feel like ashes misses the mark on so many levels in this aspect ( given it could be alpha issues, but at this point i think its intended ). i honestly wish we just developed onto what we had in A1
I wasn't in A1, but I've heard that quite a lot, lately.
Edit: Now the direction makes sense.
ever since jeff left , this game went...well frankly "to shit"
It did not. Most of what we are seeing now was gonna happen either way. I'm as big a fan of both Jeffrey Bard and 'Classic Ashes of Creation' as anyone else around here but this game's problems come from stuff that is missing and occasionally Steven's 'Risk vs Reward' obsession.
And it's Alpha so stuff is missing. That stuff would probably still be missing at this stage even if Jeff was around.
yea the world, scale, mobs ..etc its all horrible , it looks like a soulless UE assets , flat biomes, made of 1-2 small trees, same rock model covering so much of the biomes , designs that makes no sense..etc i made more than one post about it , barely any changes, for example after all the drama about the jungle and the trees barely anything changed , they added a couple of slightly bigger trees and some grass called it a day then you look at other games new,old ..etc games that have no where near the amount of foliage they shoved into the jundark and yet they look and feel way more like actual fantasy jungles than ashes will ever be, the desert the only biome that have actual different looking places where they could of used that by making them like mini biomes each with their own node and mats..etc yet they just slapped them together in a way that make no sense and put the nodes randomly in them...etc as i said its all feel so "SOULLESS" and "AI Generated"
You could try playing AA classic or ArcheRage , you will get a decent idea of how it is , might be a nice experience for you imo
gain more popularity/money for the game or the design completely shifted since Jeff left.
I'm sure that the econ design would still be a problem even with Jeff, cause Jeff is not an econ designer, but several other things in the game (all of which are usually related to econ) are a mess, seemingly, because he left.
But it's the 'Risk vs Reward' implementations being bad (and lack of Social Orgs) that are ruining the PvP.
Even Lawless Zones are only stupid because they insist on them being more rewarding as a whole and not just 'more rewarding for PvP things' or 'more rewarding for political/military things'.
Caravans don't work for similar reasons. Caravans would work in TL because they wouldn't make them 'Risk vs Reward' shoehorned garbage, they would just be a PvP Payload event for some Guild Resource like Abysstones.
This game is only 'a PvP MMO' because of three things that they can turn off by changing a variable. That's not quite on the level of 'the game went to shit', that's 'someone fucked up an Incentive that they could change tomorrow'.
Nothing that 'relies' on any of that is even in the game.
EDIT: Basically, if a Private Server could spin up with a proper implementation of something in less than two weeks, the game is not broken.
THAT is the problem. Do you think he'll willingly change the design of those things? Especially when the whispers in his ears, that come from hardcore "pvpers", only tell him "keep it, cause we need people to murder for free"?
Cause so far I don't see that happening. I'll be super glad to be wrong, but I don't see resistance from the devs to Steven's designs. If anything, I think Steven's hiring practices just got him a bunch of yes-men. Ain't no way that in the current industry situation there's not A SINGLE DAMN ECON DESIGNER that could fill the Principal role, especially considering that they've been looking for one FOR MOOOOOONTHS. So either Steven doesn't want to onboard someone who might go against his preferences or people are no longer interested in joining Intrepid in their endeavours. Either option is shit for the game.
That's not quite accurate, but I don't want to make claims I can't bring the receipts for. I'm gonna do it anyway though because I'm in that mood today!
It's not that there aren't Econ Designers who can, it's that none of them that I know of would want to work for Steven (or are busy working on other projects). So I agree with your other point as well, but as 'a person who could do it, I am saying that, looking at the current designs, if we assume that Steven is fine with shifting the PvP incentives to Social Org triggers at minimum, this game would be 'fixed' within a month of spinning those up.
So unless Steven has decided 'y'know what, no, Social Orgs suck/players are too stupid to understand how to interact with these', there's still nothing wrong. This game is still entirely 'fixable'.
lol , the whole steven,pvpers (doing rmt and exploiting) and rest of the playerbase, its just literally this video ngl lol
But with every damn Steven's statement of "losers have to suffer" or "we need risk/reward (always means pvp) in this mechanic" and "we're adding yet another mechanic where murderers have a full free reign on literally anyone and will be rewarded for it" - my hope dies a little bit more.
This design seems just too personal for Steven. And, by this point, he's so damn deep into this design (literal several additions/changes into this direction) that I, personally, do not see him doing a near 180 on it, just to appease the "losers".
I would 'help more' but I have a suspicion about something specific.
In the current state of the Game Industry, devs end up having to be extremely careful about doing things that can look like they 'stole' ideas from someone else. Palworld vs Nintendo type of stuff.
So if you want to 'give suggestions' in a way that can be safely 'absorbed' into an Intellectual Property, you have to be incredibly careful how you present the information or really cautious devs/companies are actually placed in a moreso bad position because Copyright Law is complicated.
So as an example, even if I thought the Devs would listen to me, I would also definitely not 'give them the Micro-Slots spreadsheet', because that would be the incorrect way to deliver the information 'legally'. The best one can do for very cautious Devs is a whole long 'so you can see that nearly anyone doing a basic search and applying common logic would come to this conclusion and outcome'.
The rate at which an external 'contributor' could assist even if Intrepid wanted the help, if that contributor was subject to the above, would be glacial.
It's easy to do for something like 'what slots should exist?' or even 'what items would be cool to see in the game?' but 'here is why this item should have this exact recipe to achieve this goal' might be... problematic.
For PvP this is way worse, because even 'describing old games' doesn't do anything useful. If anything 'describing old games' might be how we ended up where things are now.
Though maybe he doesn't care about the korean side of things, but all the solutions to all of the pvp problems are in the west or other asians countries and he IS afraid of their lawsuits
No, it's different when the game is older, because it's foundational design stuff at that point.
Though honestly Nintendo's current... 'approach' is possibly making devs worry about even that.
It's fine, players summon random mystical creatures from the Essence.
It's TL that may be in trouble, but they made sure to call it "Greyeye's Sinister Sphere" instead of "Greyeye's Electrified Orb" so hopefully they're safe.
However, just because it is technically possible, doesn't mean it will happen.
In order for this game to be fixed, Steven neds to admit that he was wrong about things that he won't admit that about, and hand over control of game design to someone else. The game is not going to be fixed with him at the helm.
So no, that isn't going to happen.
An interesting perspective I've gained in the last few days; most of the MMO developers I know personally I got to know because they played the games they were working on. I've asked a few developers working on this game if they intend to play it when it goes live, and the answers I've got ranged from an immediate, outright no, to an actual laugh at the thought.
Basically, a good number of the people making this game think this game is shit.
If they don't see the trend and think it's just because it's alpha, " embrace the Suck " approach a sore awakening is in store. The best way I can say to show the current dislike is just not test. Stay in the feedbacks like we've been doing but testing the game in it's current state should be pretty telling to Intrepid.
There is still time to course correct, but the best way to communicate that seems to be yelling in these feedback posts. Which probably isn't healthy overall for balanced development. They need some proper communication method than people arguing. There are stages in the discord I barely see get use, set up more polls. Options e