Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
State of the Game
BluArcher
Member, Alpha Two
Hello Intrepid Studios,
You asked for input and here are my thoughts so far. Love the game, but this game has significant problems and its current state is a BIG mixed bag. Visuals are great, performance is faltering. characters are pretty much the same as they were in Phase 1, skills are pretty much the same but they have moved location on the skills list. There has been some minor balance work but I find very little improvement and considering it’s been over a year and we’ve been hearing about improvements and you are working on it but not many of the ones we’ve been asking for are addressed. Maybe it’s just me, but I hear the same from a lot of players I talk to. I want this to succeed, most people want this to succeed. They’ve been waiting for something like this for a VERY long time.
Content - I fear for the game because of many reasons. The biggest is that it lacks content and has far too much time sink. Most games survive because of “casual” players, those that play 5 -10 hours a week on average over a month. Those that get together with their friends have a game night or get together a couple days on weekends and hang out to conquer a dungeon or something. Content is King. For Alpha and Beta, if there is no content improvement in these Phases, those casual players won’t stick around and you will lose their voice and the game will develop based on a lack of information. The gaming world is full of games that died due to lack of content or are very niche games with very specific player bases, I don’t think that this game is going to be one of those games. When this game goes live at release and the players realize all of the time sinks, they will become frustrated, bored and will leave. End result is a dead game. If this is a money rush, mission accomplished because it has serious potential and people will come to see it. But will they stay? Not without content. Right now, I don’t see the content and the servers are dying. This phase has been around for a month and it’s already nearly dead. It’s the same as the other phases with little real improvement or addition. And I don’t see the invasions or the summoner saving this Phase. The invasions will be a bump for a week maybe 2 weekends and the Summoner will be a two week (at most) bump while people level to 25. It won’t take too long to determine the ins and outs of the class. The Anvils are visually great but is a dead zone because there is no content and is too far from everyone else. Markets are another issue that I’ll talk about later. You can also say the same about the desert, turquoise sea and jundark. Hell, you can say it about all the other towns in the riverlands. They are very dead besides Winstead and that is because of the market. Even in other phases the towns outside of the riverlands didn’t grow because they were behind the development curve, but I’ll get into that again later. Back to content and the zones, the only reason we go to the desert is to get resources and mounts. We don’t even go for the POIs anymore because the big guilds have them on timers and lock down for the names that have decent drops. I’m going to throw in my plug for instanced zones with boss and mini-boss kill times. If you are in the zone for the boss kills you should get locked out for X amount of time. It will help the economy and give everyone the same opportunity. Also, have multiple bosses or even mini bosses in a POI to set those timers and reduce the ability to manipulate the POI or the instance. I’ve always liked them and would help make the other zones more lively and relevant if there was a reason to go there.
I’m not sure I want to grind to 25 or even beyond without significant content and fixes. I’d rather sit out for a year or so if all I’m going to do is grind in the same places for the same stuff and time sink my way to the next phase.
Anyway, I hope you get the idea and please provide some content at all levels in all zones.
Crafting - Gamers like their achievements, whether that is Named kills, dungeon completions, level dings, drops or crafted items, you won’t retain players if you don’t have these. In this phase we have crafting that is broke to the point that you can’t even use recipes that you have acquired, can’t craft appropriate level items on the appropriate level benches and the volume of resources and gold needed to do the little crafting you can do, turns this game into a harvesting game. I’m looking at you Leatherworking. There are apprentice level items that I need a Master level bench to craft. WHY? Oh and the master level bench is broken. But this could be any craft for that matter, it’s that prevalent, I just happen to be most frustrated with Leatherworking at the moment. But as I said, it could be any craft, they are all broken and all we are getting is lip service and no fixes. And by the time you get the fixes in, the people will be gone to truly test those fixes. And so, next phase we stat off with a still broken crafting system that hasn’t been truly tested and repaired. For something that is a basic tenant of the game and one that is supposedly vital to this game, it’s not good at all.
I can’t stress this enough, you’ve screwed this up SO bad, it’s a detriment to the entire rest of the game. FIX IT! It should be number one on your list. It literally affects everything else in the game! Unless you were one of those that got the full sets from Carphin or Steelbloom, everyone else got screwed.
XP Grind – I get it, you don’t want people to get to max level in 2 days. Don’t ruin the game to stop a few because it doesn’t matter what you do, people will find a way to get to max level in the shortest amount of time possible. But, if you make it slow for them you are making it glacial for your long-term player base. Remember, most of those that get to max level in the shortest amount of time won’t stick around anyway. They aren’t your long-term paying customers. But if there is content all the way up, people will stay and play it will reduce the griefers. Right now people go to the same places to do the same grind to level fastest. I don’t know why, there isn’t much to do at max level, besides grinding some more with the same ‘ol content.
PVP - Fix the griefers! FFS, you say you fixed it and it’s still there. We still have people pulling mobs on people or tricking them into flagging so they can get kill the lower-level players and steal their stuff. We had a rogue siting in a corner invis and would loot people when they died and run away. How fun is that? We’ve had people drop their mount in the middle of a fight and we kill it with AOE by accident and end up flagged and they kill us but we can’t fight back because we didn’t flag up properly or half our party isn’t flagged. I don’t PVP often because I like the battle grounds PVV and I don’t like random ganks. Can I fight like that, yes I can, but not with a chance of winning while I’m under geared and lower level. I really think you will lose people because of this problem. I believe it will be more than you will gain from people that want to do PVP. Maybe a poll of different types of PVP and see what people want for PVP or have diff types of PVP around the world. Let people that don’t want to PVP not have to PVP and those that want a specific type can find it in a specific place. I don’t even mind the city wars if I know they are coming. Sieges are another story and I am NOT a fan. It might be fun but the costs will keep people from playing if it becomes too much.
Economy – Economy is broken at the start of every phase. The speedy people go grind zones and sell what they get for drops at high process. Got it, it happens in every economy and time will rebalance things. But you gave some a serious advantage when you stopped drops after the have got theirs. I get it, live and learn, it is rebalancing and time will fix this aspect. But, the market system needs to be worldwide. The number one reason for this is that the time sink to run to all the nodes to check their market is DUMB. I spend literally hours trying to find something and ran everywhere to find it and wasted my game time for the day to do that. Then I have to get back without dying and losing what I just spent an hour running to that zone across the zone and now I need to get back without losing it. DUMB, give me fun and let the little stuff be taken care of easier. Right now, the other nodes markets are so dead that everyone runs to Winstead to sell and buy stuff. No one uses the Anvils so there is an entire side of crafting and recipes that aren’t being used or made or sold. With the way you have crafting set up now those items won’t see the light of day with how people play. Please allow us to sort by craft or type of item to see what is truly available. If I don’t know the exact name of a specific type of armor, I will never see it without looking through 10 pages of sellers and may miss it, More time sink. Let me look for Adept heavy armor or radiant short bows. God, if I can just see all the other markets and then buy it and then run to just that one node to pick it up it would be an improvement, but still an enormous waste of time. It would save some time and I think people would love it for a few weeks and then start to complain about the time sink.
Other random thoughts from previous versions of this letter:
You want gear, you can’t craft it so you have to get it in drops. But wait, we let the sweaty players grind up and get drops in the usual places and then we took the drops away. Leaving more casual players having to grind glint to get the gold for the excess armor the sweaty players deem worthy to sell. And you can’t craft it because the crafting is BROKEN.
But wait, there’s more! Let’s open a new starter area with no content! No real POIs, No real way to level past late Tier 1, and no real way to level one of the “Nodes”, mostly because that feature was broken and the population is so low that we can’t level cities so 90% of the server lives in one “Node” and crashes the game at peak play time.
I’ve been through this grind 4 times, and there really isn’t much difference between the first time and this time. The graphics are a little nicer, the Nodes are basically the same except for the “Town” look, because you wanted to test it and gave one town the ability and ruined the economy and all the other towns for a month, but we won’t mention that right now.
Speaking of the Node, why in gods name did you decide to have all the characters on an account have to have the same node citizenship? So, my leatherworker has to have the same citizenship as the Tailor even though the Journeyman stations are in different towns. WTF? And if you want me to support a “Node” allow me to do everything in that “Node”. Make me want to support it. Right now if there is a “Node” war, I log out and go play something else until it’s done. If you aren’t Max level with very good gear, you get crushed and griefed. Fun F’ing game! Remember my frustrated casual gamer that will be paying the monthly subscription fee? They just quit and went to next game up.
I watched the propaganda about what is to come and I’m excited about what I heard but based on past your performance, I’m very skeptical that we will get enough to keep me interested in another grind to 25. Why don’t you just keep a persistent character list and run it like PTR? You know, where the real testing is happening.
Short answer:
Add Content
Fix crafting
Remove time sinks
Remove the Grind
Fix the griefers
Add Content
Oh, and sorry Margaret, Intrepid’s communications and follow ups in game are significantly lacking. What you talk about (updates) doesn’t come to the game or it doesn’t get advertised. Also, no one I know of has talked to any of you. You talk to streamers and answer what they want to hear but have you had a stream with some random gamers? I’m pretty sure you could set that up. Each month invite some random players to a stream. Let them ask their questions and get your feedback. Then you could post those streams on the website. Casual players aren’t represented in you communications. Or at least I don’t see much of it. Even your events are made for sweaty players and they are the ones to get the perks and skins etc. Throw us a bone. Pretend you hear us. Pretend you care. Pretend we matter. Because WE (the casual gamer) will be what keeps this game alive as we pay our monthly fee to play our casual hours.
That said, this game has so much potential and is the hope of a lot of people to be the next long term game. I don’t mean to add pressure but a lot of people are behind you, they like most of your ideas and accept the ones they don’t like. Like I said, content is king but balance is a very close second.
You asked for input and here are my thoughts so far. Love the game, but this game has significant problems and its current state is a BIG mixed bag. Visuals are great, performance is faltering. characters are pretty much the same as they were in Phase 1, skills are pretty much the same but they have moved location on the skills list. There has been some minor balance work but I find very little improvement and considering it’s been over a year and we’ve been hearing about improvements and you are working on it but not many of the ones we’ve been asking for are addressed. Maybe it’s just me, but I hear the same from a lot of players I talk to. I want this to succeed, most people want this to succeed. They’ve been waiting for something like this for a VERY long time.
Content - I fear for the game because of many reasons. The biggest is that it lacks content and has far too much time sink. Most games survive because of “casual” players, those that play 5 -10 hours a week on average over a month. Those that get together with their friends have a game night or get together a couple days on weekends and hang out to conquer a dungeon or something. Content is King. For Alpha and Beta, if there is no content improvement in these Phases, those casual players won’t stick around and you will lose their voice and the game will develop based on a lack of information. The gaming world is full of games that died due to lack of content or are very niche games with very specific player bases, I don’t think that this game is going to be one of those games. When this game goes live at release and the players realize all of the time sinks, they will become frustrated, bored and will leave. End result is a dead game. If this is a money rush, mission accomplished because it has serious potential and people will come to see it. But will they stay? Not without content. Right now, I don’t see the content and the servers are dying. This phase has been around for a month and it’s already nearly dead. It’s the same as the other phases with little real improvement or addition. And I don’t see the invasions or the summoner saving this Phase. The invasions will be a bump for a week maybe 2 weekends and the Summoner will be a two week (at most) bump while people level to 25. It won’t take too long to determine the ins and outs of the class. The Anvils are visually great but is a dead zone because there is no content and is too far from everyone else. Markets are another issue that I’ll talk about later. You can also say the same about the desert, turquoise sea and jundark. Hell, you can say it about all the other towns in the riverlands. They are very dead besides Winstead and that is because of the market. Even in other phases the towns outside of the riverlands didn’t grow because they were behind the development curve, but I’ll get into that again later. Back to content and the zones, the only reason we go to the desert is to get resources and mounts. We don’t even go for the POIs anymore because the big guilds have them on timers and lock down for the names that have decent drops. I’m going to throw in my plug for instanced zones with boss and mini-boss kill times. If you are in the zone for the boss kills you should get locked out for X amount of time. It will help the economy and give everyone the same opportunity. Also, have multiple bosses or even mini bosses in a POI to set those timers and reduce the ability to manipulate the POI or the instance. I’ve always liked them and would help make the other zones more lively and relevant if there was a reason to go there.
I’m not sure I want to grind to 25 or even beyond without significant content and fixes. I’d rather sit out for a year or so if all I’m going to do is grind in the same places for the same stuff and time sink my way to the next phase.
Anyway, I hope you get the idea and please provide some content at all levels in all zones.
Crafting - Gamers like their achievements, whether that is Named kills, dungeon completions, level dings, drops or crafted items, you won’t retain players if you don’t have these. In this phase we have crafting that is broke to the point that you can’t even use recipes that you have acquired, can’t craft appropriate level items on the appropriate level benches and the volume of resources and gold needed to do the little crafting you can do, turns this game into a harvesting game. I’m looking at you Leatherworking. There are apprentice level items that I need a Master level bench to craft. WHY? Oh and the master level bench is broken. But this could be any craft for that matter, it’s that prevalent, I just happen to be most frustrated with Leatherworking at the moment. But as I said, it could be any craft, they are all broken and all we are getting is lip service and no fixes. And by the time you get the fixes in, the people will be gone to truly test those fixes. And so, next phase we stat off with a still broken crafting system that hasn’t been truly tested and repaired. For something that is a basic tenant of the game and one that is supposedly vital to this game, it’s not good at all.
I can’t stress this enough, you’ve screwed this up SO bad, it’s a detriment to the entire rest of the game. FIX IT! It should be number one on your list. It literally affects everything else in the game! Unless you were one of those that got the full sets from Carphin or Steelbloom, everyone else got screwed.
XP Grind – I get it, you don’t want people to get to max level in 2 days. Don’t ruin the game to stop a few because it doesn’t matter what you do, people will find a way to get to max level in the shortest amount of time possible. But, if you make it slow for them you are making it glacial for your long-term player base. Remember, most of those that get to max level in the shortest amount of time won’t stick around anyway. They aren’t your long-term paying customers. But if there is content all the way up, people will stay and play it will reduce the griefers. Right now people go to the same places to do the same grind to level fastest. I don’t know why, there isn’t much to do at max level, besides grinding some more with the same ‘ol content.
PVP - Fix the griefers! FFS, you say you fixed it and it’s still there. We still have people pulling mobs on people or tricking them into flagging so they can get kill the lower-level players and steal their stuff. We had a rogue siting in a corner invis and would loot people when they died and run away. How fun is that? We’ve had people drop their mount in the middle of a fight and we kill it with AOE by accident and end up flagged and they kill us but we can’t fight back because we didn’t flag up properly or half our party isn’t flagged. I don’t PVP often because I like the battle grounds PVV and I don’t like random ganks. Can I fight like that, yes I can, but not with a chance of winning while I’m under geared and lower level. I really think you will lose people because of this problem. I believe it will be more than you will gain from people that want to do PVP. Maybe a poll of different types of PVP and see what people want for PVP or have diff types of PVP around the world. Let people that don’t want to PVP not have to PVP and those that want a specific type can find it in a specific place. I don’t even mind the city wars if I know they are coming. Sieges are another story and I am NOT a fan. It might be fun but the costs will keep people from playing if it becomes too much.
Economy – Economy is broken at the start of every phase. The speedy people go grind zones and sell what they get for drops at high process. Got it, it happens in every economy and time will rebalance things. But you gave some a serious advantage when you stopped drops after the have got theirs. I get it, live and learn, it is rebalancing and time will fix this aspect. But, the market system needs to be worldwide. The number one reason for this is that the time sink to run to all the nodes to check their market is DUMB. I spend literally hours trying to find something and ran everywhere to find it and wasted my game time for the day to do that. Then I have to get back without dying and losing what I just spent an hour running to that zone across the zone and now I need to get back without losing it. DUMB, give me fun and let the little stuff be taken care of easier. Right now, the other nodes markets are so dead that everyone runs to Winstead to sell and buy stuff. No one uses the Anvils so there is an entire side of crafting and recipes that aren’t being used or made or sold. With the way you have crafting set up now those items won’t see the light of day with how people play. Please allow us to sort by craft or type of item to see what is truly available. If I don’t know the exact name of a specific type of armor, I will never see it without looking through 10 pages of sellers and may miss it, More time sink. Let me look for Adept heavy armor or radiant short bows. God, if I can just see all the other markets and then buy it and then run to just that one node to pick it up it would be an improvement, but still an enormous waste of time. It would save some time and I think people would love it for a few weeks and then start to complain about the time sink.
Other random thoughts from previous versions of this letter:
You want gear, you can’t craft it so you have to get it in drops. But wait, we let the sweaty players grind up and get drops in the usual places and then we took the drops away. Leaving more casual players having to grind glint to get the gold for the excess armor the sweaty players deem worthy to sell. And you can’t craft it because the crafting is BROKEN.
But wait, there’s more! Let’s open a new starter area with no content! No real POIs, No real way to level past late Tier 1, and no real way to level one of the “Nodes”, mostly because that feature was broken and the population is so low that we can’t level cities so 90% of the server lives in one “Node” and crashes the game at peak play time.
I’ve been through this grind 4 times, and there really isn’t much difference between the first time and this time. The graphics are a little nicer, the Nodes are basically the same except for the “Town” look, because you wanted to test it and gave one town the ability and ruined the economy and all the other towns for a month, but we won’t mention that right now.
Speaking of the Node, why in gods name did you decide to have all the characters on an account have to have the same node citizenship? So, my leatherworker has to have the same citizenship as the Tailor even though the Journeyman stations are in different towns. WTF? And if you want me to support a “Node” allow me to do everything in that “Node”. Make me want to support it. Right now if there is a “Node” war, I log out and go play something else until it’s done. If you aren’t Max level with very good gear, you get crushed and griefed. Fun F’ing game! Remember my frustrated casual gamer that will be paying the monthly subscription fee? They just quit and went to next game up.
I watched the propaganda about what is to come and I’m excited about what I heard but based on past your performance, I’m very skeptical that we will get enough to keep me interested in another grind to 25. Why don’t you just keep a persistent character list and run it like PTR? You know, where the real testing is happening.
Short answer:
Add Content
Fix crafting
Remove time sinks
Remove the Grind
Fix the griefers
Add Content
Oh, and sorry Margaret, Intrepid’s communications and follow ups in game are significantly lacking. What you talk about (updates) doesn’t come to the game or it doesn’t get advertised. Also, no one I know of has talked to any of you. You talk to streamers and answer what they want to hear but have you had a stream with some random gamers? I’m pretty sure you could set that up. Each month invite some random players to a stream. Let them ask their questions and get your feedback. Then you could post those streams on the website. Casual players aren’t represented in you communications. Or at least I don’t see much of it. Even your events are made for sweaty players and they are the ones to get the perks and skins etc. Throw us a bone. Pretend you hear us. Pretend you care. Pretend we matter. Because WE (the casual gamer) will be what keeps this game alive as we pay our monthly fee to play our casual hours.
That said, this game has so much potential and is the hope of a lot of people to be the next long term game. I don’t mean to add pressure but a lot of people are behind you, they like most of your ideas and accept the ones they don’t like. Like I said, content is king but balance is a very close second.
3
Comments
Yes, now is the time to test, identify and fix things rather than at release. As it stands, new and more casual players have no chance of being able to compete for a POI or PVP with the core sweaties. As the rest of the test audience drops away Intrepid gets a very skewed set of test results and feedback.
Yes, it needs to be controlled; it’s a test and the hardcore players put in a lot of hours. The current server populations and need to advertise for more players go to show AoC won’t just survive on that audience on release, and certainly won’t have people paying $10 a month.
I’d hate to see Ashes fail. I’ve primarily enjoyed my time testing and playing over the last year. Sadly, it genuinely feels less fun than it did in phase 2 right now.
Now is the moment to balance things and bring the more casual players into the family. Get their perspective and encourage a balanced game experience.
The last thing Blu posted above is the most telling. Intrepid may already do it, but if not, schedule a stream/Teams/Zoom call with a random selection of the player base who are not in one of the typical big guilds or streamers. The feedback you get may not be as informed or balanced; it may even be ambivalence or a rant, but you’d undoubtedly get a snapshot of how the Alpha is progressing from the point of view of a potential customer who wants to play a fun game for a few hours a week.
Surely that can’t hurt, even should the feedback feel ill-informed- that’s still something to take on board.
I hope things pick up. I get that Intrepid needs the underlying infrastructure to work before the customisation, fine-tuning, and flavour are then layered over the top. But now feels like an inflexion point, running the risk of driving people away who have paid 100+ dollars and are your greatest fans and resource.
Love the game, love the vision,P3 was to be the turning point we all wanted, it failed. The last few are hanging on for the Nov update and summoner, anything we can do to help I’m sure folks are up for, but we’re rapidly approaching "Camelot Unchained" territory.
Next up, I'm sure, will be tranches of “TLDR” and “It’s an Alpha” posts. Please understand that many testers love the game, want to help, but feel their voices are not heard.
Those threads would always have a very wide range of questions and from a very wide range of player types.
It is what it is, though, and at least the team would get the flavour.
This could/should be small-scale and not even streamed; it's part of a feedback loop rather than marketing and entertainment, although I'm sure it could be followed with an Intrepid public post/stream covering some thoughts on the feedback they're receiving. People can marshal their thoughts and make notes before a call to deliver well-reasoned, pertinent points, even if they're not confident to write a more formal, public feedback post they fear may be open to potential ridicule and argument.
The format of a small back-and-forth conversation sparks debate and takes things in directions it's simply not possible to get from one-way written communication with no social cues, warmth or nuance. A conversation allows for clarification, extrapolation and interaction.
It's a suggestion to take feedback from solo players, small guilds, and casual testers who otherwise may not feel confident enough to offer an opinion. It's a different dimension to feedback and should be valuable, whatever it is.
Anyway, just my 2c for what it may, or may not be worth - I'm sure Steven, Margaret and the team know what they are doing.
Except maybe with a bit of ridicule in the chat.
If the suggestion is for this to be purely between the devs/GMs and singular people from the community, and for this to be a repeatable thing - that's an insanely tedius way to gather feedback. The amount of prep and workhours it would take to do all of this is simply not feasible, when compared to a q&a forum thread or a more collective event like the Dev Hours.
Intrepid have also said they're planning to have some form of "council", or whatever, for a similar purpose. Though I highly doubt we'll see any casuals on said council.
And maybe I'm just too special of a snowflake, but I cannot comprehend how can a person NOT be able to write out their thoughts in whatever timespan they need, cause they're supposedly shy or smth, but they CAN get on call with someone from Intrepid and PRESENT their thoughts in a spoken manner.
And as for ridicule or arguments against those points in a public forum - that is how good ideas get filtered. Intrepid have already listened to waaaaay too many personal thoughts of certain people, w/o those thougts being ridiculed or argued against by the masses. And now we've got what we've got in Ashes. Anyone from POLAR could pretend to be a "casual", get on call with Intrepid and shower them with their stupid lawless zone ideas. And w/o anyone else present, Intrepid might think that lawless zones are a good idea for the casuals in the game.
Are Q&A forums easier, yes. Do they provide a true cross section of the player base. Not even close. Does it provide what the average player wants to say. Flat out no.
Look at how the council will be formed and who will be on it. If it isn’t based from the masses it is worthless. If it has a majority from any one player group, it’s already biased. Random conversations will provide a better cross section when it’s based on play times. You can have them from all levels of play. From the hard core 20+ hours a week players to those that play a few times a week. Each of them will be paying the same amount to play the game, and when one of them is left out, you lose that player base and income. Balance is a major tenant of mass appeal. All get some, not some get all.
As far as people not being able to write out their thoughts, you can see that written word is one of the LEAST informative forms of communication. There is no context and takes too much time to carry out a conversation. If you’ve read this forum you already see that 3 people have created a massive amount of words on a few posts and many will bypass this thread because of it. But anyone can join a conversation and if given the time to provide their thoughts you generate an opportunity to ask questions immediately and then continue with thoughts to gather real depth of meaning. Words on paper can be misunderstood, emotion is missed, and thought is misinterpreted. Conversation with context and non-verbal is the best. I would much rather talk to Intrepid in a small group of people that post on this thread. I literally have pages of comments that don’t make it to this forum for exactly what is happening here. My idea and that of a responding person that supports my thoughts is being attacked. Why would I want to be part of that?
Good ideas don’t get filter through ridicule. Good ideas get put down by ridicule. And if you’ve been in an argument, you should know that no one wins an argument. And as far as “POLAR” yes they could but using the information, they could easily filter through accounts and see which guilds they are from and what their play times are. Pretty simple. And if they are part of the conversation, in a small forum they can moderate the conversation much easier to ensure that all have an equal voice. Those that try to dominate get shut down by the moderator. If your moderator isn’t doing their job than the information you get isn’t valid. It’s pretty easy to see when that happens. I do this a lot, and I would chose my recommendation over anything that has been suggested or used so far.
If the data is faulty and the game is directed by that data the game will be faulty and die relatively quickly. It’s just that simple.
So I don't see how their current mod team supposed to do what you're suggesting. And hiring more people for this singular task would most likely not bring in as big of a benefit as it might seem, especially considering that Intrepid have stated multiple times that their devs always wear several hats, which implies that they are short on staff.
Also, don't forget the internationality of the game. I've been fucking begging Intrepid to get an EU mod, for almost years now. We've gone through several months of dangerous spam threads on the forums that remained here for HOUUUURSSS, all because they were posted at EU times. And even now that we've gotten an EU realm, maintenance still happens on US time, which often completely fucks over the EU players - all because Intrepid operate on US time.
Now imagine your suggestion pulls in several EU people (let alone SEA/AU regions). Who exactly would hold their talks and when, if no one on their team can even manage to delete a few spam threads on the forums?
You say it yourself, your organization has 80 fucking thousand people. Of course you have enough employees to run this kind of operation. And I'm sure it works well for a properly structured operation. I personally don't see it working with absolute random players across the world, across random lvls of involvement in the game.
But even if I did believe that it'd work - I don't believe Intrepid can MAKE it work. But they're surely free to attempt it