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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.
So... how "real" is everyone by now for the longevity of Ashes?
Dripyula
Member
Time to link something unpopular, with a timestamp... which sums up my whole point.
Watch from 15:38
https://youtu.be/GKrzarYr_E0?si=5vTD0gANjPR5YqIJ&t=938
^
Watch from 15:38 and about a minute or so, then your conclusion please.
I know a lot of people try to hype themself up about Ashes being a "good old traditional type of MMO" with hu~e grinds and focus on teamwork for the biggest types of content.
Which is cool and all when it comes to teamwork, but lets face it.
It should not appeal to the no-lifers only or else it will go down in flames and I really do not want to see that happen.
Throwing these wise words not-so-wise-words of mine into the wind here, since we all technically do not know what the endgame will be, or the final balances of progression in general at this point.
But I just hope that the developers will be flexible and "openminded" about a possibly inevitable storm of moaning and whining when the grinds will be too timeconsuming.
I have played WoW back in 2004/2005 and had lots of fun.
Nowadays I would not play it again.
Cuz my life has changed and I have other dutys now.
My freetime is not just my own anymore and I must put time asside for my family.
As I believe many MMO players which are "old hands" by now do.
The MMO genre is a fickle thing.
Those who desire a return to the "good ol' times", they often find they do not even have that much time anymore for a single day to log in.
Once again I suggest lots of contact with the community when whatever final approaching versions release.
Or the official release version.
Leave a big, fat & nice button in the menu option, call it "developer polls" or whatever, with eternal polls that never truly close but where you can sign somewhere which reflects your current opinion... and regarding to what the topic is about, you need to have at least played for xx to xxx hours to be able to even voice a legitimate opinion, based on actual and more indepth experience.
My waryness is eternal.
My vigilance is never ending.
Only in death does duty end.
For the Emperor.
But also for Steven and Ashes yeah.
Watch from 15:38
https://youtu.be/GKrzarYr_E0?si=5vTD0gANjPR5YqIJ&t=938^
Watch from 15:38 and about a minute or so, then your conclusion please.
I know a lot of people try to hype themself up about Ashes being a "good old traditional type of MMO" with hu~e grinds and focus on teamwork for the biggest types of content.
Which is cool and all when it comes to teamwork, but lets face it.
It should not appeal to the no-lifers only or else it will go down in flames and I really do not want to see that happen.
Throwing these wise words not-so-wise-words of mine into the wind here, since we all technically do not know what the endgame will be, or the final balances of progression in general at this point.
But I just hope that the developers will be flexible and "openminded" about a possibly inevitable storm of moaning and whining when the grinds will be too timeconsuming.
I have played WoW back in 2004/2005 and had lots of fun.
Nowadays I would not play it again.
Cuz my life has changed and I have other dutys now.
My freetime is not just my own anymore and I must put time asside for my family.
As I believe many MMO players which are "old hands" by now do.
The MMO genre is a fickle thing.
Those who desire a return to the "good ol' times", they often find they do not even have that much time anymore for a single day to log in.
Once again I suggest lots of contact with the community when whatever final approaching versions release.
Or the official release version.
Leave a big, fat & nice button in the menu option, call it "developer polls" or whatever, with eternal polls that never truly close but where you can sign somewhere which reflects your current opinion... and regarding to what the topic is about, you need to have at least played for xx to xxx hours to be able to even voice a legitimate opinion, based on actual and more indepth experience.
My waryness is eternal.
My vigilance is never ending.
Only in death does duty end.
For the Emperor.
But also for Steven and Ashes yeah.
2
Comments
But an MMO only for Grind-Devils is also not going to be successful.
An MMO for PvE'ers only will work better i think than an MMO for only PvP'ers - but only a good Mix between the two guarantees good selling and Subscription Numbers.
So what to do, so that Ashes of Creation will not be the biggest Disappointment in Sir Steven's Life ?
I wonder if People should orientate themselves a little bit in World of Warcraft before the End of Legion. You know? Before the Storyline became the biggest pile of Horse-shit ever in the History of Blizzard.
Ashes will not have Battlegrounds. Okay. But City- and Node-Sieges. Also lawless Zones like the Oceans. No Idea if additional Lawless Zones will still exist after Launch.
No Idea how easy it will get to level up Professions/Artisancraft. In the past it seemed IMPOSSIBLE to level up completely because Tools for Mining Ore's for example above Novice were impossible to create for me. Jepp. No Pickaxe above Novice-Quality/Degree/Capability.
Mounts ? The Horse was just AWFUL. Just awful. I feel like i am barely faster than on foot.
I like that one can not tackle and attack every Place alone. Teamwork is forced - which isn't necessarily bad.
Still don't know if in the Future gaining EXP-Points to level up the own Levels and not just Artisancraft will also be able to get won by mining Ore's, chopping Wood - or "fishing Fish" - or whatever.
If Hours which feel like countless Hours of Genocide on Mob Populations stay the only Method to level up at all, the Game will also be kinda dead sometime after arrival. This was the greatest Minus i experienced.
Heard the Level-Experience was improved since/after Phase 1. But i have no Idea by how much.
I heard People complain that "Guilds" can not even wage War against each other efficiently. No idea what that means : but it should be tackled as well.
✓ 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".
As to how long I think the game will last, I can't answer that, because I have no doubt the game will have some major changes to things that will effect this.
If it doesn't, the game will last 3 - 6 months before the plug is pulled. With a few changes, it could last 3 - 6 years.
While I can see the servers staying online a good while, I think it will be at about the 2 year mark when new players stop coming to the game all together, and things are only held up as long as the existing playerbase is paying enough to keep the server (singular on purpose) on - leaving the only question to ask "how long" those players can keep the server on.
For years we've been giving feedback to try and balance out the design NOT just in the pvp's direction. What we've got instead is more and more pvp, but also pvp in the worst way possible. I'm real hyped for the advertisments to start running, cause oooohhh boi I can't wait to see all the glooorious feedback Intrepid will get from outside the "golden cohort".
... ... ...
I can't imagine that he WANTS to see his own Game flop, though ... ... ...
✓ 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".
I think a lot of people where looking for a more living breathing world then what is currently presented. With the world presenting new challanges everyday and needing players to decide how to interact each day.
I also don't see major room in the market for another decent themepark leaning MMO.
New world had its bad but also had its good , like the sounds,life skilling,world from look to scale (not characters or armors that was almost as bad as ASHES hence nobody cared about their shop lol) ...etc
like its current leveling is great in term of flow even though they made it a little too fast imo ...but yea mainly there was just not enough content.
ArcheAge suffered from something similar, it had a decent balance for the PVE,PVP and PVX ,wasnt perfect by any means but it was good enough that pvp had their fun and pve people played in peace most of the time and didnt mind some pvp sometimes since losing wasnt such a horrible thing ,u lost some xp that u can get back and some weapon durability and a little bit of time since you could teleport and if you lost packs , you could recover your vehicle easily and you still get enough money from the stolen packs to basically cover your gold loss.
AA could of had more diverse quests and a little more ones that required teaming up with players but not too much that it becomes a deteriment of course just enough to add to the experience.
at the end what killed AA was the 1: the labor system which made the RMT,ALTs..etc problem a lot worse, 2:the horrible gearing system that took ages to not be an ant for someone who have a little bit higher Gear Score . 3: lastly the lack of content after getting to the end levels ,after that everything became PvP oriented and with the problem of point 2 most casuals even the ones that wanted to try pvp couldnt keep up so they just became cannon fodder and while the life skilling stuff was nice like fishing,mining,houses and all the stuff that comes with it to keep players for a while...they werent nice enough to keep players for a long time when a lot of these stuff included PvP where most people get destroyed and one shot, you also had sweats rushing to buy land which fucked with the pvers/casuals too...etc stuff like that. and the p2w stuff obviously didnt help either.
now what does all of this have to do with ashes ..well ashes seem to be doing whatever it can to make the worst unfun and tedious systems ever , its like they saw what worked in theses games and decided to do the exact opposite instead of taking what worked and adding to them or straight up taking something that worked and making it so much worse (think caravans) ever wonder why no one does them despite crates being as bad most people doing crates cuz no one wants forced PvP ,no one wants to grind for 50 years so their snail caravan that takes 1 hr for a trip get destroyed by someone feeling bored in a minute and you can do nothing about it , u dont get anything back from it literally nothing, so why would anyone do them..etc thats the mindset they are using to make everything in this game.
so yeah unless they do a very big change ashes will be dead if it ever releases
Ashes has potential to be long lasting. Being inspired from AA, L2, Eve (in some sense). Those games did last and they were 'old school' grindy.
Wildstar failed for a number of reasons, if the only issue was just the target audience of hardcore raiders then it would have been fine. But it had a terrible launch. The masses left early then they swap from sub model only a year in to free to play. Once an mmo like that goes free to play you lose that hardcore player base. Hardcore games don't exist in a free to play world, there's too many pay to win options and most hardcore players avoid those, at the very least don't take them serious. Also in 2014 there was more competition. People went back to wow or jump to other games. That doesn't exist right now.
NW was a failure for a number of reasons. Too many to list. Comparing Ashes, or any MMO that Ashes takes inspiration from to NW is pointless.
A lot of people who played vanilla WoW are retired now, they got lots of time. But any game or hobby can be hard to do if you're too busy. So times you just can't partake as much as you want. And that's the big question.
"Is Ashes going to have enough for the causals to stick around?"
No mmorpg is going to last without a causal player base, so they have to be made happy. They need to be able to partake in end game content. The barrier to entry can't be too steep. This is easy to do with PvE content, it's easier to scale dungeons and raids. But the PvP content can easily be trashed by exploits, abusive massive groups, RMT, ect.
I see Ashes challenges as so in this order pretty much.
1. RMT and exploits, all cheating. Will kill the game, it'll be DOA.
2. Network and Performance. Network meshing has to work. The Performance in towns needs to be better. This will kill the massive PvP and open world boss battles. Town performance is bad probably because the assets/meshes aren't baked into the world but dynamic/changeable.
3. Appeasing the PvP and PvE player bases at the same time. Is PvX going to work?
4. Progression balance, the grind has to exist, but it needs to be justified and fun. Will it take 2 days to max level or 3 months? Compare that to Settlements, Guilds, Artisans, ect. It's way out of balance right now. Tune this too fast and players burn through content, tune it too slow and the content grind becomes stale.
5. Class depth. Classes are fairly flat and uniform.
6. Stats and balancing. The stat of Physical Power or Magical Power is dumb. Derive that from the attributes. It's just too simplistic for a game that strived for such complexities.
They fail at #1, then the game fails the first month or so.
Fail at #2 or #3, it starts to die within 6 months. About the time it could be a Realm Reborn moment.
Fail at #4 or #5, 1 year maybe.
6, you got some time, after players have maxed all character slots, they'll get bored. Even with new content. Being able to build the same class different ways adds a lot of replay-ability.
Those who listen, have the highest chance of success.
If the industry as a whole still had Devs who could succeed from the start without needing to listen, we wouldn't be here.
Most people will play other games instead of Ashes.
It isn't impossible, sadly. Might happen.
✓ 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".
If Ashes was complete and released in early 2020, it would have made a killing.
having some nice classes (even though they are struggling with the base ones to begin with so i doubt its happening) wont make this huge or anything close to it when the rest of the game is horrid
Feedback has been given for a long time , over and over and over again and they took almost nothing if nothing at all every time they changed something (like the whole artisan/economy that been done 3 times in a row , took 0 feedback from players and it got tremendously worse every single time), they got so much feedback they could of already fixed the systems and made the greatest game ever but they got sick of our feedback that STEVEN came out and straight up told people "WE DONT WANT YOUR FEEDBACK, WE JUST NEED COMPLAINING" and so we are complaining
Welcome welcome, Grimm.
Nice to see that You decided to join us when You comment so super-rarely.
Well it is exactly as you say.
It is an Alpha.
It is our Job to provide feedback.
We are doing exactly that. Seeing what we see, find, like, etc. all as good on the early Game in Development : plus of Course what we find lacking.
SPOILER !!!!!!
What many of us find lacking, sooner or later dies. The only Exception usually being Worst of Warcraft - because it has A.) the most addicted Adultchildren of all Time unable to part ways from it, (lol)
and B.) because it has the (former) Franchise of Warcraft III backing it for most of the Time EVEN WHEN it started becoming a huge pile of Trash Storywise after the Expansion Legion,
- > but ... ... ... ... ... ... even that is slowly running out.
At this Point you could ask yourself if EVEN HOUSING will be enough to keep the Game truly alive.
Ashes has the Potential to be more than that.
More than a piece and pile of shit that is only being kept alive so-so all the time. But if Ashes doesn't keep up with the times,
and will be EVEN. WORSE. regarding Levelling than WoW Vanilla was before even the first Expansion of Burning Crusade,
then the Game will be mediocre at best - or die a quick death at worst.
And too many People here - are simply too long already here - to want to see it fail. Some of us are here since the likes of 2016 to 2018.
We do not want to see it fail.
This would be the unfunniest Joke since a loooooonnng time of Video Games.
What You hear are Concerns.
Concerns GREATLY WENT ON MY NERVES during Mid-Year around June to August, i want to admit.
But slowly - you know ? It is getting late ... ...
Slowly it is now time to be ACTUALLY concerned. The Balls is dropped again and again even a little bit more still, with every Delay.
With every missed Opportunity to address what People (Testers and Fans and so on) talk most about.
On YouTube.
In this Forum.
Wherever else.
I know, right ? Hard to believe for some here,
but we are getting old ... ... ...
I heard from the Game first when i was around 32 Years old. (lol)
Now i am 40 Years old. I start to sense that i will not be here forever.
SO!!!
WHO IS in the Mood to wait yet ANOTHER Eight to Nine or up to Ten Years for Ashes ?????
Is it You ?
Is it Me ?
Is it ANYONE else here ?
Geez. I can't wait and be excited for the Answer, hahahahahahahah.
Jokes aside.
When People are "STILL" being concerned and warning about what they think is lacking in 2025 -> when they STARTED to warn and share their Opinions and Concerns around 2020(!!) or even before,
then something is going very, very wrong.
Uuuumm. NO !
We are not here to be Doomsayers. We are actually here only because We care for how the Game will turn out or HOW IT MIGHT turn out.
Please don't be One of "those People" who for Example react similar when Folks like me critizised "Double-Gunning" in Sea of Thieves and why it is a shitty Mechanic,
meaning defending EVERY - SINGLE - shxXXy - Decision - ever - made - by a Developer Team.
I am not accusing You of something here.
But it kinda "has this vibe".
And maybe You are a bit irritated. Yes, Grimm - > the Game is not even out yet.
You can not come and "defend" a bad Decision that IS. ALREADY. made.
But ... ...
... ... ... what is thiiiiiis ?
Are You ALREADY kinda in a "defend Bullshit-Decisions"-Mode when those Decisions HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN MADE YET ????
You can't be serious ... ... ...
Just admit when You don't like that People say :
" Umm !! Better make the Game how "i" want or how "i" think it is good - or the Game will fail. "
Because it is okay if You see us as such People.
You can see us as Whiners if you wish.
But this Behaviour like : " I am a Shill and i will defend ANY. SHITTY. DECISION. because i don't like how YOU want to have Influence on how the Game is gonna be " - is not only annoying and never helped any Videogame in Videogame History,
no - it is also childish.
There were People like that in Planetside 2, as well.
Well well well - and where is Planetside 2 now ?? TRASH !!!!!!
I told it,
oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh how i told People that " LATTICE " will be Trash and kill the Game.
" Addiction " to such a huge Shooter was what kept that Game mostly alive for Years. "NOT" the Illusion that it was a good Game.
It was a good Game before Lattice.
Before the "Nerf" of the Drop-Pot Spawn-Beacon that turned the Distance into Shxt which was there as Freedom where to go down as a Drop-Shock Soldier.
The Game was good at first and THEN it was turned into a Meatgrinder.
A PAY - TO - WIN - Meatgrinder.
From there on - > it was trash. Another good Game ruined because People think they do not need to listen to those who want to have FREEDOM inside a Game.
Some Games are only Fun because People have FREEDOM inside of them.
When there is no Freedom - > People will leave the Game.
Ashes' Success hangs very much in the Balance if Sir Steven will allow more Freedom in the Game than there is now - > or if the Game will stay as it is right now and crash and sink with flying Colors.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what You do.
Call me Names.
Call me obstinate.
Say i am wrong ... ...
... ... ... i am not.
I am not Asmongold - > but I - TOO - > was never wrong. Some Games took a bit longer to crash and burn than i predicted when i say they follow the Path of Ruin,
but until now it always came true.
Worst of Warcraft being - UNTIL - NOW - the only Exception - because this Corpse of a formerly great Game is being artificially kept alive with several Details which other MMO's never had.
One of them being "WoW Classic".
One of them being the ENDLESSLY addicted Adultchildren-Players.
But everything (lol) must come to an end one Day. No King rules forever.
Ashes better CATCH that Crown right now that is about to fall to the Ground. New World will probably not be the only Game that will fall in the next Years.
RIGHT NOW is actually a good Opportunity to buy/hire competent Developers which were fired by Amazon Games because they could not satisfy that Corporation's Greed.
✓ 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".
Where the feedback is coming from different sides BUT only one side feels like it is being listened to which is the PvE side. For a PvX game it really does need to be tit for tat so the systems can be developed cohesively with each other.
It feels like to me AoC is taking the development stance where PvE comes first then the features of PvP will get squeezed in afterwards making it a PvE game with a side of PvP but they want PvX and that is really not what is being tested RN.
Most of them won't exist until the game is live.
To me, however, all I need to do is look at the games combat. It is blatantly obvious that the combat in this game is designed as PvP first, and PvE only existing because it has to exist.
A game that is built for PvE first would have a much more enjoyable combat system.