Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Now this was mainly supported by the inability of high lvl players to get any drops from lower lvled mobs. Iirc it was a 9 lvl limit. So high lvls physically couldn't just go and farm what they wanted and had to either trade with others or have a low lvl guildmate/alt.
So with that mechanic in mind, I'm curious how Intrepid will design the game that will supposedly allow players of all lvls to have equal "fun" and relevancy.
As long as it looks different than the L2 low level gatherer system I will probably be happy as I don't really like the idea that it's "in my best interest" to have one max level main, and then forever low level alts. Obviously I can just buy from the auction house or whatever if I don't want to do that (and I won't) but I just think that is bland design and I am hoping Intrepid has worked on a way to make this more interesting for all players of all levels.
Do people actually hate the 'option to fight the same mobs at many levels', in this context?
I hear it referred to as a negative, but mostly relative to blandness.
Like... you beat up a level 5 Toucan and get Bird Meat for cooking, when you're level 20 you don't get that anymore and have to go into the jungle to find Macaws IF you really don't want to use the Auction House for it. The 'main/better' level 20 content isn't Macaws, but you have the OPTION.
Extrapolate to Terrifying Toucan and Murderous Macaw which live on high level islands or something at level 44. Again, not 'the best spot to farm drops' and probably 'out of the way' but certainly 'enough that the Bird Meat Market doesn't collapse when there are no lowbies around'.
I'm not sure if the complaints I have seen are 'I don't believe that high level versions of low level mobs should ever exist in a game' or 'I don't want to grind Macaws for half the game'.
My personal opinion is that I don't mind if I can get X or Y mat (bird meat in this example) from Terrifying Toucans instead of level 5 toucans even if it is at a mild inconvenience, or if the level 5 toucans will drop the same mats for me at max level. But as far as I am aware the way this is solved in current games is "everything other than the rarest variation of this mat is 0.0000001 cents and trash" or the you need the base mat "synthesized" to a rarer variation in which case you need bird meat to the nth degree in which case I am farming macaws for 75% of my gametime (most recent example is NW with iron).
Also in truth I am not much of a gatherer, in most games my friends are heavy crafters and I am more the mule/worker that feeds them materials so this is a type of topic that is low on my "Intrepid needs to get this right" list, but there are games that have made a crafter of me instead of me finding it not worth the effort.
This to me stands out as the least annoying way to implement this as if I decide to take up cooking and level it I at least have a way to find this content instead of bulk buy from the auction house or have mats fed to me.
Suffice to say, I am not an artisan/gathering main and my opinion in this subject is variable and unreliable at best but I am hopeful that Intrepid find a way for me to be excited about aspects of crafting and interact with it as someone who doesn't immediately jump at this content in most cases due to blandness and that doesn't require me to have 6 alts to "be a crafter".
As you can see, there's ways to farm the resource at pretty much all lvls, with the best mobs being at higher lvls, but it is waaaay better to just Spoil mobs at lower lvls because they bring in so much more of the resource.
This way even low lvl gatherers can make a ton of money, because the resource is required throughout all crafting tiers and top lvl players don't really get it in huge numbers while farming.
I really hope Intrepid can manage a system similar to this. It mainly works if high lvl players always have something valuable to do and get money from it, while low lvl players can concentrate on gathering and make a ton of money from it.
This is also the reason why I'd prefer for gatherer professions to have a similar setup, where high proficiency artisans have "better" things to do, so the low tier mats are left to the low proficiency players. Though this has other implications for the longevity of the game and potential design workarounds required for this type of system to work.
Yes and no.
L2's crafting and itemization is pretty limited/simplistic. I'd go so far as to call it bad, with my bias.
It's a really long explanation how, but doing this in the way you pointed out leads to poor PvE.
That's why I asked about the specific case I did. It is one of only two ways I know of to make this actually work. L2's works because it's a 'PvP game' with ONE 'crafting class'.
Not gonna fly in Ashes, they have to do better than that, and by 'better' I mean 'don't do that'.
In other words, I just want any potential newcomer to be able to get some early money through whichever means they prefer. If the only way to make money on a well-established high lvl server (both artisans and adventurers) is to just do quests and maybe farm mobs - I feel like the whole design of the artisan system will have failed.
Do you agree with that kind of design or do you think it's just not as big of a deal as I think it is?
I'm referring specifically to 'Spoils on low level ones'.
Low level characters don't need any incentives to stay low level, right?
Low level mobs often die faster, are closer to towns, etc.
So I wasn't really addressing the point of 'low level artisans gather low level materials because high level artisans have better things to do'. I completely agree with it, I was pointing out that L2's system, to someone looking at it with a very critical econ-eye, doesn't actually seem to do that, so the example might be confusing.
But I will give a bit more context.
Economically, games are only really fun for artisans when they get niches. I thought for a LONG time that this was just my bias, but I've since revisited my priors enough to conclude it's just true. There's a sort of 'phantom fun' that people have while leveling up, or dopamine hits, but eventually those wear off and they become increasingly aware of the other, 'better' ways to make money that everyone else is 'using whenever they can'.
This is different from 'having a niche market as your main and the standard market as your fallback'.
If items that are available to low level players are particularly important, niches form much more slowly or not at all. Like I said, this would be another LONG essay. I'm not saying you should 'just trust me on it', but maybe think about it a bit more. The low level mats market should usually be just 'annoying' enough that any new player can make a killing because yes, higher level artisans just rejoice to 'not have to do it themselves'.
But it should also be 'open' enough that there are periods where there's no lowbies around to do it and high level players have to decide 'is the current market supply bust enough to justify me going to do something that is NORMALLY not as profitable, that has another side benefit?'
Because then the people who have a niche that matches the side benefit go first, instead of 'everyone going at once'.
EDIT: Eh, I've realized that this is much less coherent than usual and not really 'answering' anything, so can just be ignored. I'll leave the post in case it helps me sort the thoughts later or becomes relevant.
And so you'd have the most basic stuff getting value from the sheer amounts of demand for it (basic trees/rocks used for sieges in huge amounts, and stuff like that), while anything of a bit higher quality would require specialization. And your progress within the specialization would also dictate the resulting quality of the product.
And as for the openness, I think that could be controlled by the world manager. At the start of the game there will be a ton of newbies farming all of the low tier stuff in huge amounts. This would put a high requirement for those resources within the overall system. In the process of farming most of those newbies would overlvl the abundant sources of those resources and move onto "better" things.
The world manager would see that there's only a few lowbies left and there's only a small trickling of newbies. Seeing that, the WM would increase the yield per resource instance, so that each newbie can get way more resources than the OG could at the same lvl. If the amount of appearing newbies increases, the WM can decrease the yield or the abundance of the resources.
And if there's no one farming some low tier resource for some time (maybe a season or two), the WM could "move" those resources up the chain by one step.
So smth like this:
Now there's probably some holes in that suggestion, but my point was mainly about the WM being able to control the resource flow across and within tiers, while also adapting to the player population/actions. And ideally this would also be interlinked with the other branches of the gathering tree (the rabbit/wolf example for the dev stream).
Would you consider that a system that addresses your concerns or did I miss a huge hole in the design that would lead to immediate falling apart of the system?
You will be able to take the 'low levels' of ANY Artisan Profession, right?
Literally everyone in the game will probably be able to hit 'basic rocks'.
Lowbies aren't required. Everyone can hit rocks. Bored people hit rocks as long as hitting rocks is profitable. Those bored people don't necessarily have 'something else to do' or 'a higher artisanship to work on'. They just hit rocks.
Do we disagree on this part?
Though, I guess, that goes directly against the "lootboxiness" of rocks, because if anyone can hit most rocks and some of those rocks can have more valuable resources - you have yourself a ton of people that could potentially mine a ton of valuable resources, even w/o leveling up their artisanry.
And if you don't give those people the valuable part of the lootbox, you're not only encouraging the griefing potential of overfarming, but also discourage all of those bored people from hitting rocks.
All of the outcomes on the BDO side are bad, as I see them. Why? It's not exactly a mystery, but it's very complicated.
If specialists gather rocks way better than newbies, they undercut the newbies if they can, to the point where the only reason newbies gather rocks is their lack of other options. This is fine, except that it leads to long periods where they don't make any money because they're being undercut. So they put in a lot of TIME, and get a very delayed reward. In a game where you need to buy tools, this starts to get troublesome.
At midlevel, you're still at the mercy of people above you. Nearly ANY system for this gets stupid pretty fast. Example:
A player hits a tree and gets 4 wood. A more specialized player hits the same tree and gets 6 wood. They spent the same amount of time.
Player A wants to sell that wood for 25 Cu each to make it 'worth their time.
Player B sells it for 20 Cu each, it's STILL more worth it to player B, and Player A often has to come down to that, 'losing money'. If they persist, and Player B really wants to make their life hard, they just go down to 18 Cu.
Still make slightly more than Player A was going to make. Player B can push Player A out of a market WHILE still making more profit than Player A was hoping to make. This leads to games where people just tell you 'might as well level to X level before you even start trying to make money with this'.
Maybe the 'time' of Player A is 'worth less' in general, but Player B is always incentivized to have money funnel to them rather than to spread out. And they're already specialized for lumbering. They don't WANT to do anything else or they'd have chosen that.
The result is a massive surplus of resources because those with less 'valuable' time are 'fighting against' those who generate more value per unit time.
For clarity BDO has solved this issue, but it was by creating four more, so there's solutions. They're manipulative and antisocial as usual, though.
Because I feel like if the artisan system just consisted of a bunch of L2-like vertical lines, with high lvls having either no access or worse yield to the low tiers, the inherent nicheness of artisan classes would work in favor of such a system.
And the basic resources could be farmed by all, but they'd also give the smallest return on time investment, because they'd be literally "a thing you do while you're bored".
Well said! I'd like to add something that Steven said: "Not everything is driven through your class level per-se. There's a lot of different progression paths that are available and make you relevant within certain systems and mechanics within the game"
The game will also feature XP debt, which will give players another reason to gain XP as if they were leveling up!
I often disagree with you but in this we are united. See @Dygz I am not crazy in the way I think.
I have argued for years now that the character leveling process is meaningless and mismanaged. That is should be a focus on storytelling and character skills.
Which would then be inherently counter to a lot of the structures the game uses.
I think we've reached the point where any discussion on this would be better in the other thread, though.
I'm still trying to figure out if it is just my bias for FFXI that causes this reaction, but I HAVE played other MMOs and even liked some of their systems too, so I can't be sure, and honestly, FFXI's GATHERING is too restrictive and usually sucks (killing mobs for drops is ok but would never work in a PvX game).
Still, this is another case where I am constantly surprised where other people's experiences come from. This is all solvable easily by an Economy Designer, not even a super experienced one.
Generally, if you see that something that feels like a problem isn't solved, it's because the devs don't see it as a problem.
I never said you were crazy. I said no leveling is a different game type than RPG.
You are not interested in the Hero's Journey, but the Hero's Journey is what RPGs are trying to emulate.
You can have a great game with RPG elements and no Hero's Journey that is not an RPG.
And we are starting to get MMOs similar to that with MMO Life Sims, like Palia.
You just want to play football instead of soccer. Nothing crazy about wanting to play football.
I would probably call L2 a PvX game just as Ashes is a PvX game.
They are both PvP-centric - the PvPers who play will have to do some PvE.
I'm not aware of a PvP-centric MMORPG that is not PvX. Perhaps you can list some examples.
Isn't this entirely the reason why we just label PvP-centric MMOs as 'PvP MMOs'?
There's always Mortal Online tho.
Indeed it is.
Edit to add, for an MMORPG to be truly PvX, it needs to fall between the MMORPG's that are considered PvP (L2, Tera, Archeage, BDO, EVE, et al) and the MMORPG's that are considered PvE (WoW, EQ, Rift, FFXIV, GW2 et al).
Runescape is/was PvX. Ashes is PvP.
But yeah, pretty much any mmo that has open world pvp would be a pvx mmo. Oh wait, I guess Planetside 2 is the closest thing to a really pvp mmo, cause iirc there's no environmental stuff there (unless I'm forgetting or they've changed smth).
Foxhole might be seen as a pvp mmo too, cause it's a completely player-created world and any environment hazards come directly from other players.
But neither of those are rpgs, even though they have ranks and "classes" which could kinda be seen as parts of an rpg gameplay. And, if anything, Foxhole's roles are waaaay stronger than your standard pvp mmorpgs (especially recent ones). Medics were mostly purely medics (sometimes even w/o guns), logistics people could not even interact with enemies and would just play their own particular role.
If you consider a unpiloted aircraft crashing into you
Also 45 days of leveling might not seem like much to some, but to others its way to much. It is also considering 45 days to level a single character, in a game system with 64 total combinations for classes. We will be doing 8 different classes worth of leveling, 45 days each.
@Akaime mentioned Anarchy Online as a way to keep old content relevant at all time.
Can AoC learn from Anarchy Online how to offer a similar experience?
In my opinion, the character leveling up phase makes no sense and should be removed unless it is tied to something else which gives a good reason to either want to level up slowly or to have alts locked at lower levels.
The feeling that the character itself becomes more powerful as you level up is not a good enough reason to have a character leveling up in AoC. That can be moved onto the node leveling and when the node is lost, some will chose to move to a low level node and others might move to another metropolis, if they can afford the price.
I think it was never meant to be one.
Other genres of MMO, like MMO Survival games or MMO FPS games, might not use leveling.
Skill progression isn't much different than Character progression, but...
Character levels probably do make it easier to determine which mobs and challenges are fair game.
In D&D, Levels help determine Challenge Rating.
In MMORPGs, Levels help determine which regions/dungeons/raids are appropriate for hunting.
Lots of gamers these days realy only care about the MMO part and aren't at all intersted in the RPG part of MMORPG.