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Dev Discussion #54 - In-Game Content
Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.
Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!
Dev Discussion - In-Game Content
What are you looking forward to most in-game?
An example may be a game system, a fantasy you hope to carry out, or a specific activity with other players!
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I guess nodes and owpvp that would influence them.
I joke, but seriously, I am excited to experience all that has been teased, and discover all that they've done and not spoken about, which i think is probably a lot more. I am as Hyped as I can possibly get!
I'm really looking forward to the crafting. Adventuring/questing is also at the top of the list. I'm hoping the PvP aspect really shakes out to be meaningful (not a gank-fest). Caravan raids, sieges, etc. are going to be epic!
Advancing a node with the community will be pretty cool. I can't wait to get that sense of awe when seeing the first metropolis.
PvP Content
Crafting
UI
What I am looking forward to is to be able to organize/participate in large impactful things. It can be either fun events or world changing events like destroying a metropolis.
I hope the game will have an alliance system that allows guilds to band together and share places/resources.
Even having some player factions would be cool. Not as static as in other mmorpgs. But for example having a religious metropolis form a religion that is opposed to some other player faction created somewhere else.
Even having the ability to form certain societal rules. Like forbidden races or you have to participate in certain events (Going to church) every x days otherwise you loose your citizenship.
I know this isn't planned. So I just say participating in epic things is something I look most forward to.
I also hope very much that the armors have many variants or mutations, as well as improvements to them, obviously this is included in the reward system of pvp, dungeons or quests. You need to improve the combat system.
EDIT: Guys, I hope that the magics have a unique system, such as getting the magics in dungeons, difficult quests, etc. It would be very fun.
Sorry my english.
What I like most in mmorpgs is testing my builds against the toughest pve activities. Doesn't matter if it's a raid, dungeon, arena, etc. In every rpg I ever played I always enjoy min/maxing and trying to hit leaderboards with activities like that. So if a solo arena was ever implemented I'd spend majority of my time in that, but in a game like this I don't know if it would fit the theme. So I'm going to be leading raid and dungeon groups instead.
That's another part of it that I like doing and am looking forward too. Leading not just other min/maxed players but new ones too. A lot of people don't get to experience the harder content in games like eso, destiny, etc. because once people get a couple of completions under their belt they no longer want to group with people who haven't done it or don't have the best gear. I love leading new groups and getting people their first completions. I'm hoping yall make the tank interesting to play as.
And playing truly support classes, like bard and helping others play their characters.
1) Group: duels (8v8), OW PVP for the best places to farm
2) Guild: Legendary Bosses, Sieges
Outside of server prime time:
1) Solo: account progression, test builds, data parsing, minmax in Excel
no randoms \ no rp \ no alts \ no gathering \ no chatting
Ok, I got a bit, probably short (for me).
We are looking forward to heading to some temperate forest/rainforest biome near maybe a mountain and a lake or a mountain and a coast, and trying to integrate into (or since we'd be among the first, I guess) building a community there with our usual 'murderous carebears' style.
If things go well and we do well for ourselves and the node community in the area isn't unpleasant enough to make us leave, then probably upgrade to protecting caravans, more likely those of other people or who pass through, encourage them to shop in the Node or show them to good spots once we've decided to trust them.
I think given how little else we really know, that's all I can say without lots of speculation. For that, see below, I guess.
- Our Ranger loves to explore and help others and just be in nature, as you'd expect. He'll be happy as long as the area we end up being able to exist properly in, isn't counter to his feelings. Would probably unfortunately quit if the community is too cutthroat, or if the battle system was low on synergy.
- Our Mage is similar, by her own admission like a loyal hound that follows others to do battle. She'll be happy as long as others mostly are, and she's already seen the Mage kit enough to have some ideas. She'd probably really like Crafting, especially if we could get some good drops, but isn't expecting much of that given the game's design. Hopefully she's 'wrong'.
- Our Paladin really, really likes mining, and defending others. Surprise surprise. A 'heart of gold' type person who you can generally count on, who really wants to tank some interesting content, and use the tools he's used to across gaming (but doesn't much like the current kit, hoping for better!)
- Our Bard is pretty jaded right now, but it's not hard to make her happy. Wood. Fish. Bow. Songs that do proper buffs even if short. The ability to absolutely kick someone's face in personally once every so often by herself or as part of a Synergy, and not having to deal with certain types of people without being able to stab them (or having to worry about being harrassed out of Node for doing so). Would also like Freehold. Might eventually become Queen or something if we somehow rise to the top.
- Our Rogue cares not one whit about this anymore except if he sees some Weapon Focus Gauge action soon, so I keep reminding that we still don't think that's been cut. Has no interest in playing 'another game with weak Teamwork' and is usually our Enforcer so the combat system matters the most to him.
- Our Fighter is similar but more likely to follow us regardless, wants to actually see some proper Augments from Mage, not terribly keen on the combat so far but at least in Alpha-1 she was good at it (this is kinda the reason, she found it a little too easy). Will probably get frustrated if this turns into one of those dumb situations where strength leads to constant ganking/challenges since she hates pointless battles.
- Our Summoner wants her Tavern, idk if we can even get a Freehold far less 'afford to put a Tavern on it', but she's probably more willing than most others to stick with it if we have to move to a different region because of politics or something. She'll definitely quit if her class sucks though. She's the one most likely to run for Mayor if the nearby Node gets big and cool, so there's that. Also very RP driven, so kinda sensitive to RP-ruiners, so looking forward to seeing how Intrepid handles that, and really wants some good Abyssea level PvE content, she's waiting to hear from Bill at the moment.
I was supposed to talk about other stuff like how we're looking forward to the Node play loop being at least somewhat similar to Elite or FFXI Conquest system, or hopes for mob design being interesting, or of course for myself, 'how much I really want to have an Economic experience that gets somewhere near proper design from older games and not just what it's sounding like it will shape up to be'.But this post is long. And probably overdoing it. And full of speculation that barely matters.
Our Cleric (hi) just wants to not spend another year having 'PvE vs PvP' discussions. I can't think of anything I'm actually looking forward to based on what I actually know right now. I'm too hard to please compared to most of the community as I know them now.
I want Intrepid to live up to their majestic vision. Or maybe just to whatever I think that is. And also to be High Priestess of the Celestial Dragon God Tatzelwyrm, Shadow Disciple of the Holy Draconic Greed (yes, Greed, not Creed, I misspelled nothing).
I hope that my contributions to forums have been enough over the time I've been here that I can skimp on detailing that at this point.
The player politics and watching the server evolve over time.
Given that I like everything, I have to chose only one thing which is "the most"?
Also because I do not know how certain things will be balanced, I prefer not to "look forward" to them and stay open to adapt to whatever the development team decides.
Beside that, I cannot be 100% sure and give good feedback without testing out.
That being said, I look forward to test things out in Alpha 2 and show the game to my guild members who will probably wait for release.
If I play after release, I look forward to buy a freehold and make a screenshot with the cosmetic I bought, before I lose it again at the first siege. But I will buy more cosmetics to have for the 2nd and the 3rd freehold too
Taming mounts will be the main activity and helping whoever needs a help on their ship.
Be sure you make the game so that I have customers to sell my mounts. Make enough mount sinks.
From this it can leads to much internal discussion on how as a guild (Aurora) can organise ourselves, what we think will be viable and a ton of testing and theroycrafting for optimising combat across call classes in all scenarios, and whilst I will most likely be thinking PvP when doing this others could be thinking of builds that could possibly assist with crafting or PvE elements as well, we could have builds for Dungeons and specific group comps.
A dream or vision of mine varies depending on what I will find once we finally get our hands on things but A few I have had was a full rogue primary archetype team all working together out in Verra and depending on augments they could even be tanking and healing as a full group of rogues.
My first answer would be the class system. I have high hopes for what it could turn out to be, and some of the discussion around it has sort of confirmed my hopes.
The class system is an important and core part of an MMORPG, and for me, it has to offer a lot of meaningful customization options.
What is "meaningful" in this case? For me, it's having the ability to customize your class, so that it would play differently based on your choices, or that it would have different visual effects, and an overall different theme/fantasy/identity, all while not locking out your ability to select which abilities you want to use. I want to pick and choose which abilities I'm going to use, so I want a lot of options to select from.
In the last decade, not many MMOs have really made a good class system. Archeage was different, and it was decent, but other than that I genuinely can't remember a game that had a great class system (Before that we had Rift, which was also unique).
I'll use a few examples from my recently played MMOs here:
- GW2 - deceitful. It looks good on the surface, but it's really not great at all. There are different specs for each class, though you're mostly picking between different presets, based on whether you want to be power dps, condi dps or supp/heal. Not much there in terms of customizability, except for the rune system.
Abilities that you pick are also locked behind weapons, so it's more of the same, picking different presets, and each weapon is designed for either power dps, condi dps, supp/heal, or PvP. No real ability to pick your own style of abilities that you like, instead you have to use presets of 5 abilities preselected for you.
- Lost Ark - Meh. There's the ability to pick between different specs, but overall, not much uniqueness between them, and definitely not enough customizability in terms of abilities/passives. There's just enough of it, but not enough for me.
From those 3 examples, I think you could take away that I like to build my own class, in a way. I like to take the base that's provided to me by the game, and I like to use that to create something somewhat unique. Archeage allowed me to do that. And judging by the way augments will work in Ashes, it's also going to be the case in this game.
I definitely think there's no need to have 25+ abilities on your hotbar, because it's simply overwhelming, and it's too much. I would actually prefer to have a hotbar of max around 16-20 or so abilities, but then I do want to make the abilities I choose to use matter. I also want an expansive passive system (not to the levels of PoE) which will allow me to further specialize into certain themes and playstyles.
So theorycrafting (not to the point of minmaxing, but instead trying to create unique themed class builds) is the thing I'm looking for the most.
Besides that, there's the gameplay loop itself. I liked Archeage a lot because of this (well until I had to do dailies). I had the ability to do dungeons, to PvP in the open-world, to do 1v1 arena PvP, to farm stuff on my plot of land in the open world, to sail across the ocean, and farm stuff on the other continent, to farm mobs for drops/gold, to explore the world, looking for illegal farms to harvest, to do trade runs, and in general to get rich by doing stuff I like (which in turn would make me more powerful, with better gear). There was A LOT to do.
I also feel Ashes will offer me that, although I have some concerns with the Freehold system.
For this example I'll use the 3 games I used earlier:
- GW2 - honestly there is stuff to do, but in the end all feels pointless to me, due to there not being any sort of real vertical progression (it's easy to reach the exotic gear, and ascended is not that much better, while also being relatively easy to obtain). Raids are left to rot, fractals are somewhat in between. There are strikes, the open-world events (which get boring after a while, because you're just repeating the same events all the time). But honestly, there isn't that pull factor that will keep me playing for long.
- Lost Ark - Awful. The gear treadmill is insane, the gear upgrade system is p2w, and insanely grindy. You spend months of grinding the same content every day (because there's 0 variety in the endgame), just to get a +1 or to fail the enchant. You don't even feel the impact of succeeding the enchant. Oh and you have to participate in the treadmill in order to unlock more raids and stuff. Overall, there are a lot of things to collect, but there's no meaningful content to do, just dailies, and a weekly raid or two (that is unless you play with a dozen of alts that are also required to be successful).
And lastly, it's honestly the overall experience. Those previous games I've mentioned all have some great stuff about them, but they aren't amazing overall. I feel like Ashes will overall be an amazing experience, or at least I hope it will be.
GW2, I've had ~500h of fun, I enjoyed doing the events for a bit, but the way they're headed with their balance and killing any class identity honestly threw me off, especially the lack of rewards and the lack of vertical progression. There's a lot of unique stuff about the game that's good, but there's also a lot of unique stuff that's just done for the sake of being unique, and I feel like that stuff is bad and unnecessary.
Lost Ark, good combat system and raid/boss design, the islands were also interesting, but god the rest of the game is absolutely awful.
-Traveling everywhere. I wanna explore every nook and cranny and know of secret places nobody has ever found-Hidden caves you can only access by diving below the sea or lake, rooms inside hollow trees, secret entrances inside abandoned hallways of ancient ruins only accessible if you have certain items (keys, goggles, passwords), secret world hidden within a painting, caves so dark that are impossible to explore without a torch or some magical light source, labyrinths, Rooms that open via engaging puzzles that require real thinking and maybe several players etc.
- I wanna duel outside of cities for hours, fight in arena, bet on combatants (players) in arena, play dice/card games in tavern.
- What I would especially love is to get so drunk that I wake up in a random location, triggering a certain quest or a scenario.
-Jousting. A game where you must balance between speed (represented bia bar with a middle point in between) and targeting. Ofc, jousting should be on rails and you only control the speed of a horse and a spear.
- Make an assassin guild via contract system.
- I wanna be in jail if you make it interesting.
- Raiding caravans by climbing a tree and dropping on it. Like a ninja. You could even give certain classes an ability to jump from a tree to tree. Make it interruptible by doing damage to a player so it doesn't be too OP.
-I wanna devise a plague that will linger on a server for days.
I could go on for days.
Aside from that, I plan on getting involved in PvP content and practicing to the point where I can compete with most other players.
I hope the castle siege system is good, epic, and rewarding due to its difficulty, with the weekly events to get the castle-nodes up, the gold caravans escort I hope those give us a lot to do while we prepare for the castle siege in the 4th week,
I really hope castle sieges stay at 250vs250 with the 300 guild member cap, or even better, a 300vs300 matching the max guild cap, I don't really like the idea of forcing the castle siege battle to be an alliance thing it should be the ultimate Guild vs Guild content, 500vs500 would make it an alliance content, and thats bad, and we already have the weekly siege preparation events to be more alliance oriented - I hope A1 dragons and PVE raid bosses stay out of castle sieges, its the ultimate PvP content, make it PvP, the instanced battlegrounds during the siege is an amazing idea to replace raid bosses tho, it brings skill play and organization, make sure the buffs that comes from those are very, very important!
One thing it's very important is for PvP is the TTK to be done right, starting at A2, I want to see a 30s to 60s or more time to kill in PvP, small numbers on players! one of the worst things about Archeage and other Korean MMOs is how you can get killed in 3 or 5 seconds without any proper reaction time, skills that hit for more than 20% of your HP shouldn't be a thing, this sucks, and makes mass pvp even worse when 2 meteors or 3 fireballs obliterate you, I want long skilled battles, from 1v1s to mass, player to player damage should be on the lower side even for glass-cannon builds, this is the number 1 thing in PvP for me, I hope intrepid gets this right,
I hope leveling takes time... a lot of time.... I will be playing Ashes full time on launch, and like myself, a lot of players can put in +400 hours in the first month, It should take at least 400h to 500h of active questing/griding/XP acquisition for a player to reach max level, otherwise we will get to level 50 in 2 weeks, and that's not good, every new level you get should feel amazing, as a big achievement,
Also I'm looking forward for guild identity and customization, being able to upload guild logos to gear, flags, frames, barding, sails, and pretty much everywhere possible - having a solid dye system allowing us to dye every single gear set with 2 colors including the pre-order cosmetics, mount barding etc with no limitation so I could have any set using the 2 dye colors I picked on my character sheet
Also, for default-player-appearances that are forced on due to performance in mass battles - give guilds the option to set a 2 color scheme for their default player appearance so we can still have some visual identity during that,
Extras that I'm really looking forward to are: SA Servers, No ALTs/Multi-account meta, no RMT, and of course... Alpha 2 to start ASAP
The biggest thing? Playing an mmorpg for the first time again. There's nothing like playing for the first time, when everything is new and no-one knows everything. They all just know a piece of the puzzle, and you are incentivized to go out and meet people and hear about their adventures and everything they have learned.
It's like being a little kid again, everyone is a potential friend, or adversary. It's just a good time no matter what.
Ashes has the ability to put everyone in a great state of mind, and the potential to keep them there.
Really it is a lot of things.
No addons, weakauras, ect... making the game trivial and content much easier than it is intended to be. It's really annoying that this stuff is a big focus in one of the MMORPG's I play.
Next, The Classes/Subclasses. I really like the diversity Ashes is looking to be offering. Some really unique options in the game it seems and less cookie cutter/bland choices. Really looking like there are going to be a bunch of great options to pick from.
Third, a new Journey in a new game. I love MMORPG's but a lot of them just haven't held up unfortunately or add in features I don't want in the games I prefer to play. Examples being Pay to win models. I hate that and Ashes not having that is a huge positive.
Fourth, new Dungeon experiences and even Raids. I also like PvP so looking forward to that as well. But, I really want some harder modes that not everyone achieves and a rewards system that shows you are a cut above the rest. (Not that I am better than anyone) but more so just something showing the level of content I am doing.
A new social aspect to get invested in and new communities to build. I come from a guild that is now a full fledged community spread across multiple games and it will be nice adding Ashes to that list.
Most of all. A NEW MMORPG that I can really invest in. So many have fell flat so always back to the old ones that have held up all this time. I am looking forward to Ashes a lot and I know this is your page but I am also hoping Riot Games succeeds in making another great MMORPG alongside you guys. It would be so good seeing 2 new games on top in the MMORPG genre.
Other aspects i looking for in the game will be easy to join group play, I find it in lots of games when friends are not on or drop off and stop playing it is really hard to find a group. there needs to be a wat a solo player can easily jump into a group so they can be part of a party and then be able to play the activities in the game that are meant for groups. dungeon finder is great and all but there needs to be more then this one way to get into a group for something.
So I'm looking forward to having an Economy that matters, a new game where my group can synergize at least half as well as in FF11, interesting gear and build choices that go beyond the semistatic 'subjobs' I'm used to, and some immersion triggers that don't require so much effort from me that I might as well be writing Cardinal Lore.
I'd also like a good combat system but since I already don't like the bases of Ashes' combat system much, this is more of a pipe dream.
Oh, and a good customizable crafting system that's fun to interact with even when you're not the crafter, with real tradeoffs in the process, but again, I think based on what I've heard so far about the Ashes gearing system and Enhancing/Enchanting, I don't like the base, so I don't think it's worth any effort to 'make it so I can enjoy it', so I'm not sure it's fair to say that I'm looking forward to this.
Also I guess Nodes kind of, but idk... FF11 already has the absolute base version of this and I'm used to it... adding 'specific settlements' isn't super engaging to me, and their destructibility or 'need to defend them' isn't actually that compelling after years of FF11 and Elite. I just don't personally feel as much toward the whole 'you can destroy the Node itself and change the world!', that level of change does not affect me meaningfully MORE than Besieged, Campaign, or even Conquest systems. I thought it would, when I played Elite and could do it there, but I realized that psychologically for both myself and a lot of others it doesn't end up tied to the Node itself, but to the relationships you have with others around the maintenance of it, which is triggered the same way by the other noted systems, until people's interest falls off due to weak RP.
I guess I'm looking forward to RP, either as Leader or just generally, but that's not new nor even as likely in Ashes as in other games? But I can say that I'm really hoping that somehow it is moreso, even if I can't see how it would happen.
Anything I didn't mention, I don't expect Ashes to be the primary game for, but this isn't to say I'm not looking forward to those things, they're just 'obvious aspects of a worthwhile MMO' which I don't think is what the Discussion is really about, assuming that it has a purpose beyond 'hey guys what's up?'
EDIT: Previous post now edited.