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
You know, even capitalism needs the masses to work.
Does Ashes work if all the players are hardcore and the server is small?
That is true, but I would argue that beyond preservation and family duty, desire and greed fuels capitalism. As long as desire and greed exists in AoC I think it will do just fine.
Desire needs a reasonable path to realization.
If players look at a game like Ashes, find things in it they desire and then decide that the path to those things is too rough, they will leave the game faster than if they didn't find those things.
If nothing else, they will look at other games for a similar system.
Part of me is wondering if Ashes is actually a marketing ploy for Archeage 2 - because if their housing is anything like the first iteration, that is where a lot of people looking at freeholds in Ashes but not being willing to put that work in will go.
He also said they plan for AoC to be the best MMO out there. So again, "pandering to casual players" will be required. You can't rely on your existing fan base to carry revenue for the game for years to come. Getting new players will always be the goal for growth. That's HOW YOU KEEP INVESTORS. And majority of those new players will be casuals.
thats why you have user personas and segmentation. do you really think people who play fortnite and call of duty all day are the same people who play mmorpg all day? or the 13 years old watching netflix adnd tiktok all day will be the same people who plays mmorpg all day? XDDDDDDDD
@NiKr Do you want them to change direction to heavily cater to casual players, or is this statement wilding out?
There ways to limit some top lvl content only to hardcore players w/o limiting low-mid tier of that content for casuals.
If in the node stream we learn that there's gonna be less than 50k apartments and that in-node processing is super limited in some way - I'll agree with others that Ashes is on a downwards road. I'd like to believe that Intrepid can make designs that are better than just "1% has everything while 99% a beyond poor".
I've always seen artisanry as a super casual thing that was meant to appeal to the masses. I hope that is still the case for all professions. Steven said that it is, but his vague nature of speaking definitely didn't help in reassurance of his words (with the "largely" and whatnot adjectives).
I want to be a tank that protects and helps the weak players in my node. If there's only 2k people on the whole server, all of whom are hardcore pvpers - I'll have no one to protect. And those 2k could be a reality if Steven keeps making the "this game is not for you" circle ever bigger.
That isn't what i mean, they are having some middle ground and not making things as hardcore (which is a good thing). They are open to feedback and it doesn't mean they won't scale back some things a bit if it makes sense.
What im asking is do you agree they need to change direction to capture the fortnite and LoL crowds with casual gameplay mechanics that will make them play the game and not quit do to more hardcore-ish elements. Ie open world pvp, and anything in related to loss or things being limited, faster progression etc.
And Noaani then said that Intrepid just gotta appeal to those people who it considers a good TA. Those would, usually, be mmo players. And considering the current state of the genre, mmo players have quite the range of preferences. And if Intrepid provide a great game to those players, it'll succeed to a much greater extent.
honestly. ugg. we have lost our collective minds.
Just relax... take a breath. if you are concerned, start asking questions, bringing up concerns... not making definitive, uneducated, ignorant statements with little or no basis in fact. This is not a personal attack, which seems to be a big deal on this forum on certain days, I am attacking your weak-as* argument.
I am sad for humanity. I wish I could do a dmca strike to stop all the crazy, but very factually stated, arguments. But, I cannot. My morals will not allow it.
This seems like a personal attack on Steven. I would ask forum moderation to address this. @Vaknar
You really going out of your way to defend him here. I could explain in detail why its a bad take, but if you believe they all share the same fan bases and they are competing with each other so be it.
Do you have a hobby? Literally anything? Fucking walks in a park would suffice. When Ashes comes out it will compete for your attention and time with that hobby. You'll have to think "do I like my hobby or Ashes more?" when you decide what to do on any given day.
That is what Noaani was talking about. It's not about defending his points or any of that shit. It's god damn common sense. We don't have infinite time to spend, as much as I want that to not be true (even if I do literally have all the time I'd want).
why do people watch bad movies and enjoy them or play games that arent 10/10?
if things were as simple as that, no one would play a game that isnt a 10/10 after seeing the reviews, except the folks who play games to review them. why play a 7 or an 8 when i can play a 9 or a 10? specially nowdays where getting a game is really easy. you dont have to go out anymore and buy it, u just go to amazon or steam and click a couple of times.
And again, it doesn't mean giving everything out for free or anything of the sort. It just means having a better scaling to availability instead of "you either have or have not" and then decreasing the "have" part with each update to the game.
People do what they like you are correct.
What is it that draw people to fortnite, does not equal what draw people to a mmorpg...or the type of mmorpg AoC is going to be.
So are you saying that AoC needs to add gameplay loops to capture fortnite audience based on what they like about fortnite?
Again you don't need to defend him there is 0 reason for you to, guy will use you just cause.
The whole reason we are into it is because the vision is going for what we want in a game, not selling out to the corpos....
exactly, but there's more to it ;3
How is this a hard fucking concept to comprehend. People can enjoy different things on quite a big range of genres too. And all of those things can be equally fun and interesting to those people. So Ashes will have to compete with all of those things if it wants to survive.
I'm not fucking defending Noaani I just agree with his point. If you for some reason thought of me as an ally on this matter you can switch that off in your brain. Though it'd be better if you just started to try and understand other people's point. I know that I now sound exactly like the people whose points you haven't been understanding and you'll probably reject me saying this, but I hope you'll understand it in time.
I'm not sure I get your point. It is true the gaming commodities are easier to obtain but the let's plays are now more prevalent. Ashes is very reliant on the let's plays, streamers, livestreams and interaction with the community.
I'm sure Steven and the devs will provide some sort of system to appease the negative stances but I'm not sure what such a system will entail.
there is just the marketing part. you cant make one product for everyone, thats how you end up making it for no one. you said it yourself, someones 8 can be anothers 10, so you focus on those people, and keep them in the game. thats what i meant
Yeah I get your point but wouldn't you rather have more players than less in an mmo? We don't have to cater to everyone but we should try to cater to those people who stood behind the sea pvp change because those people are great for a pvx game.
I can only interact with 9999 players, so the other millions or hundreds of thousands are basically nonexistent. Everything is relative. I just need the game to have enough players so that the servers don't close. how many is that? not sure...but I can tell you that if the majority are antisocial loner casuals who hate pvp and competition, the game might shift in that direction since it's harder to acquire new customers than to keep existing ones.
id rather have 100,000 social and competitive players than 1,000,000 antisocial whiners and have the game shifted towards them.
robs the people who like the sea pvp change are the people who arent complaining about freeholds xD i mean lets be honest, most people arent complaining..otherwise you would see at least 100,000 users in the forum commenting. tis just a small minority.
like ive said multiple times, people never call their internet provider to thell them the service is great and praise them, because thats what expected. people only call when there is a problem, and its only a minority with the problem.
i mean look at the forum threads. theres maybe 3 threads praising the game and dozens of threads of people complaining, yet the game has millions of pre registrations (according to steven. so most people arent in here
It's not a case for you to be able to state these players are anti social. They want to produce things for people, run taverns for people and pay taxes to nodes. They want ways to express their desires much like you.
It's true you might never meet one if you tried hard enough but server mergers will be a real pain for those of us who gamble with the amount of issues being created right now.
The vast majority of people have accepted they won't own a freehold. Those people have given up. There are a few fighters who have not given up and those are the people I'd fight alongside in a node war or node siege too.
But I'd rather have a higher standard for them and believe that they can find a way to satisfy both sides, which will not only increase their profits but will also make the game better for everyone. 100k players might keep the lights on, but 500k will not only fill out servers much better, but will also let Intrepid keep making great content for the game for years to come instead of just staying in one place.
Cant really be a personal attack if I am just agreeing with him.
When my guild left Archeage, some went on to play FPS games. One of then went deep in to DotA (think it was DotA2, not sure). One or two of then went in to casual BRs for a few years.
Some of us went deep in to Factorio (I have over 10k hours played in that game). Some have been playing Cities: Skylines (a game every MMO developer could learn a thing or two about).
Some of them formed an online tabletop D&D game that met three times a week. One of them joined a bowling league (and won himself a few trophies).
Two of them went in to racing sims. We've not heard from them since.
We all also started watching either shows or movies and discussing them among ourselves (ie, we spent time we would normally have been playing an MMO watching Netflix instead).
All of them would rather be playing an MMORPG if there was a decent one out there.
The idea that all of these activities aren't competing with MMO's is simply unfounded. If people aren't enjoying any MMO they have access to, they will instead do something else they enjoy.