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.
Comments
Let's say it is 50k heck even 100k, it's insane to think that the retention for concurrent players is that much less than it was at launch (on steam 900k so by your logic quite a lot more).
My point still stands that if the retention for concurrent players is that low, will it impact the game? Or am I just barking up the wrong tree?
I did the math on your numbers, I just think 200k is extremely optimistic
I'm just making sure you have accurate numbers for your point.
New World didn't release with a Console Version, it's just a matter of concurrent players now that is different because it has one now (so it's 900k vs 50k basically)
Situations are similar for other games.
I'd say 10% retention for an MMO is pretty good personally, but if you don't think it is, then yeah, the numbers support your point (I'm also not saying New World had good retention, or was generally good, nor that TL is, even though I personally believe that, my data isn't intended to convince you, just to make sure you have clearer numbers.
I don't think there's a single popular current MMO whose Steam numbers are representative of more than 60% of the playerbase, if even that much.
Similarly I agree that a million buy-ins for an Alpha only shows how much people want a new MMORPG to play for a bit, doesn't really indicate that they would actually stay.
As do I.
If the server capacity is to remain as it is now, I can see Intrepid struggling to maintain 1 server in each major region populated long term.
Smaller regions such as Brazil and Oceania have literally no chance of a long term server at that capacity.
Its seen as just an attempt by someone to try to play devil's advocate.
More than half the world isn't even in. Are quests going to be a big thing in Ashes? I don't think so. I think there's going to be a main story line, and maybe a few side quests to do. But I don't think you're going to see the WoW style quest hub locations. So a main story and some good side quests is great. None of those should be go kill X or go collect Y. There are a few quests that get you out into the world already, they don't really explain much true, but now really isn't the time for that. There's bigger issues, than quests. Stability and performance issues are still being worked out. Features are still being fleshed out. Questing framework is in and works (mostly), the actual story and lore can be added later, because none of it matters if the game doesn't work.
I like the work orders and adventurer style work boards. I can go collect jobs for the dumb stuff like kill 20 goblins, go do it and turn it back in, I don't need a shallow back story about it, or a special npc setup for that. But if their going to write me a whole Goblin Slayer style side quest then hell ya lets have it. The work orders from settlements are nice to for crafters. For all the boards there needs to be more jobs. I should be able to target jobs that take me to the same area. A PvP board could be a cool idea too.
You can be confident it might stay like this until the End of 2027, tho. No kidding. No Hate.
✓ 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".
Isn't that moreso because they made their money from box sales though?
New World doesn't have anywhere to 'go' in its development, they tried one last big burst on Console by rebranding as an Action RPG (which for many people means a small, single player campaign style thing) and then basically delivered that.
There was barely anything 'MMO' enough in New World to justify continuing to try to find places to develop more.
New World was never built for retention. It was barely built to function, they did an amazing job managing to stretch it out as long as they did, but it definitely isn't the sort of game that holds people or 'makes them want to log in randomly' compared to what Ashes intends to be.
Running crates and cutting trees won't make people want to log in randomly, ashes P3 retention is probably as bad as it could possibly be
I'll accept your disagreement based on previous things you've said.
Even if I tell you 'no, I know a ton of people who will log in for that', I expect your response will be that I'm just lying.
What matters if if Intrepid believes that, and if they are willing to build a game based on believing that.
Granted New World's business model was its initial box sale which at 20 million copies sold would have been a revenue of between $700m - $1 billion with an approximate initial development & marketing cost of $200m.
So you're telling me with a potential profit of $500m - $800m they could only continue to sustain the game for 4 years after launch and couldn't feasibly generate other sources of revenue to sustain it through cosmetics, new expansions etc? Or do you think they have seen it's population dwindling and they are cutting their losses to retain profit, knowing their player count & cosmetic sale conversion is too weak to sustain it's development and upkeep? I think the latter.
Edit: This is also a studio that in theory could host it's servers for negligible costs on the back of AWS.
@Azherae Out of interest, where do you think ashes has to go in it's development post launch that New World couldn't?
I definitely don't think that's how the bulk of MMO players think. I have a really specific bias/opinion that I'm just 'watching the current game crop test out' though.
I believe that most MMORPG players don't play more than 10h a week.
I believe that these players will still give the studio some money either as a sub or some other interesting aspect if those 10h can be fun.
I don't believe that certain repetitive or 'troublesome' aspects of older MMOs can retain players because of something else.
There's a very real subset of players who will not play an MMO unless it gives them about 20h of main story quest, usually played alone or nearly alone, and takes them to max level or near max level via that (and maybe a few more quests), often giving them loot the whole way.
Those players then run through all the current 'endgame' content in the game until they either find a challenge that frustrates them, and then stop, or they clear it all, and then stop. A good studio can make those players happy without compromising much in any direction, but it can't keep them. No matter how good the studio, building an open world always-on-PvP MMORPG cannot satisfy these players, by definition it can't keep most of them. They are 'there to play a single player game with Discord that they can discuss with other people online for 3 months'.
What I want is for MMORPGs to put less effort into changing experiences intended for long term players, trying to hold onto that audience. I know it's a bad bias, but when I see people talking about how Questing isn't rewarding enough and that the questing isn't interesting, yes, some of that must be on thd Devs too, but I don't expect those players to actually stay even if you make a game they enjoy.
This is the type of game New World got turned into, because if you take the PvP out of the 'main purpose' of a PvP game and tell most Devs 'add PvE', this is what they understand. But you can only do this so many times. Seasons are a way to retain 'pattern matchers' and to sometimes re-grab the attention of someone like the above who at least logs back into your game for the novelty of new content (depending on the game and how social it is, it might need to be new single player content).
I think that Intrepid needs to solve that big challenge of 'how do I build a good MMORPG around the backbone of this mostly single player game that the masses want?"
Because those players aren't going to stay. They will come and go, and maybe a few of them will discover "oh wait I might actually like MMOs!" (the MMO part).
For that, I think games need to give people something to 'attach' to, and New World wasn't built for that from the start. Unbalanced factions, low Concurrent User Count limits, PvP without any purpose other than domination, and a few Econ Rant tier things.
I don't know exactly what the answer is, but I definitely believe that 'content consumer' type MMO players (People who do not enjoy grouping much, or get frustrated by it, or by the gameplay being based on challenges or planning) don't stay as a sustainable audience for these games, basically no matter what you do.
And I don't think that an MMORPG built around PvP and Grouping can hold them even if it adds the core aspect they want. So I think that it's always unfair to compare games that work primarily like this, to other MMORPGs. I think that both as Devs and Players we need to stop looking at the supposed 'success' of MMORPGs that are basically 'single player games with lobby-dungeons at the end' as the standard for the other MMO type in terms of their performance.
New World was originally the 'other type' of MMORPG and then rebranded itself as basically 'a single-player Action game with grouping'. I would expect development on New World to last about as long as development on Monster Hunter World or Elden Ring.
I say all that to say that the definition of 'success' is different, and that I don't think Ashes needs to go anywhere different than what they said originally (not where they are now).
I believe a lot of players are interested in that sort of gameplay, they're just 'sitting in their old MMORPGs waiting for another one like those'. That's what I think brought so many people here. New World changed demographic and therefore followed that path. It isn't a 'failed MMORPG' now. Now it's a successful Action RPG that has reached the natural end of its development lifespan.
Obviously there's also this, New World did have one aspect that crippled it.
Because it was built as a PvP game, the 'backbone' of the game was competition, not cooperation. But there were so many exploits and failures in the Competitive part of the game, they couldn't complete their 'pivot' until almost every single one of those had been fixed.
Until then, it was just 'Western BDO' at best. Some people would run around hitting trees and watching numbers go up, and waiting to be given loot that they weren't competitive enough to get. Lots of games become this, but New World could never 'build on that' because there were too many exploits and messed up behaviour from Optimizer-Abuser types that they didn't have a handle on.
That's where Ashes is now, but they might fix it before launch.
I personally feel Intrepid are going to start angling for alpha 2 testing to "merge" into an early access game to keep development alive with these new "titled" content patches like harbingers, feels very "mini expac" esque. Maybe going down this route will provide them with enough time to get it right. Do I agree with the practice? No, but do I think it could buy them valuable time to whittle out the flaws they have built for themselves? Maybe.
But to be sustainable, Ashes would most definitely need more things to attract other players, which Azherae already explained really well.
This is also a studio under Amazon, that's going through it's "AI can do everything in the world" phase and massive layoffs across the board because of that. NW wasn't the only thing on the chopping block, so I fully believe that the game's success (or lack of) had literally nothing to do with it being killed.
The only thing that might've saved it was insane lvls of income, but that ain't happening with an mmo in current times.
Yeah basically this. There's a very specific structure that I'm absolutely confident modern MMOs need in terms of their playerbase strata, which only four games currently even try to target (six if you count games no longer in active Dev which happened to build that strata solidly beforehand).
I'm happy to rant about it but it is almost PvX time. Gotta go stab an undead berserk Orc Priest with his medication while dudes with greatswords try to decapitate me, so if I do rant about that, it'll be later.
That person with zero self awareness (or maybe infinite selfishness?) who tells other people to quit when they lose. Those same people, though 'hear that in their own mind' when they fail, and they often can't stand to hear it from others better than them.
Which means that if they're not the top themselves, they usually don't last long. If they hear that too often, they're even more vulnerable to it than the 'casuals' they are saying it to.
But as long as they have other people to look down on, they will keep saying it, even if they aren't that great themselves. So if you give me a PvP competitive MMORPG and you teach the playerbase to play through quests and get to max level using 'linear' content where they are given progression for being able to understand basic instructions, and then throw them into that shark tank, they obviously leave. Even if they wanted to 'git gud', they don't have that kind of time because the 'good' is relative.
This happens in challenging PvE just as often, but in PvE when you have a Tank who is just failing stuff and being a moron, you can usually tell based on the mechanics. In order to do this in PvP you have to be really good and really confident in your understanding.
Average player doesn't have that kind of time, either for oldschool style complex/unpredictable PvE, nor balanced/group style PvP. You have to give those players something to strive for or attach to beyond 'getting enough skill/gear that they don't have to listen to this player type'.
Lots of players will aim to get good enough at playing their role[ that if you find a way to make that the focus, they will 'endure' some number of these people, but when a game doesn't aim to spend most of its time letting you learn that role properly, then throws you into it at the end, it's basically a lost cause. Not to mention the many issues of meta builds, progression disparities, and the gap between people that play 10h a week and people who play 50h.
That repetitive content that we like needs to be backed up by incentives to actually learn, that also help to keep most players out of the 'range' of the player type I mention until they feel like they actually understand, because if not, they will fall victim to all those idiots who do the wrong thing, then complain that the outcome was someone else's fault. Those people get away with it when the 'someone else' hasn't been taught the game enough to know the idiot is wrong.
Ashes needs to provide incentives for players to learn how to do things that they will need to do later rather than incentives for players to get to max level quickly, but the common MMORPG design focuses on the latter. If a player doesn't enjoy their role (however broad) within the game/the competition enough to endure a few idiots, they won't stay.