Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
They could just not play hahahaha this is very true, but i think we are all here talking on this forum because we know ashes has the potential to be a MMORPG that hasn't been realised before and the content in that will bring a lot of people to the game to try it at least. to give the game its turn on the wheel. the systems here might require a change in mind set with regards to MMO's. and if anything its very clear that the corruption system and the PVP in general needs to be shown off in a working state i hope for in alpha 2 so it can be tested in a long term environment.
That's not why I'm here.
I'm mostly here because my group insisted something close to the opposite.
I am here to remind Intrepid that they don't have Originality on their side either and need to step it up. I am here to offer whatever I can to help them do that. But if the PvP part of the game is holding back that potential, saying that the PvE players are the ones that have to change is a rough sell.
Caravan Trains.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
You mean players payed a lot of money to access Alpha 2 without knowing what they get into?
Those who didn't purchased access, will not join later either.
What some call grief, in AoC is not, because is declared as an intended game mechanic.
There are so many Games out there, where One can bore himself to Death. For Example World of WoW-Tokencraft. (lol)
Why should the World of Verra be exactly the same ?
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Mostly because there are also lots of games out there where you can PvP each other to death, but for some reason, they have really low populations...
The "its not fun to die" thing is to easily used, its fine to die in a lot of the games we player as gamers and we get on with the game regardless. what you mean is its not fun to die in a way that has felt unfair or uncounted for. now that i can agreed is nearly always unfun. but if you put a meaning to your death it becomes a part of the game play and you move on with it regardless. maybe this needs a change in the mind set of PVE players, and is the balance that IS is going to have to get right or lose alot of players....
Is not like Steven is unaware. He wouldn't have highlighted that
"So that's an intended part of the PvX design of Ashes. It's a core philosophical point. And just to be clear, that is not for everyone. We are not trying to make a product that appeals to every MMO gamer."
He should not betray the core pillars of the game. That's what he sold.
I agree completely.
I only personally care because if this game does anything close to what I've experienced from other games like it which I like, there will be one server, probably on the West Coast, and my ping will be at least somewhat frustrating, even with the game's relatively (for me) average combat.
I just need it to appeal to enough MMO gamers for all the systems in it to work, and also not just get the 'one megaguild' effect.
I'll really feel sorry if you will not be able to enjoy the game because ping reasons.
I am however optimistic that the so called PvX will not push players away as much as the full PvP mmos.
AoC has so many variables where balance can be adjusted...
Players will have to find their place in the world and "role play" being a common player, not a hero which can kill everything without concerns and to become rich by repeating everything daily.
But it will definitely push away some players.
I don't wanna argue too much (though this thread is a good place for it), but I will point out that this is one of the biggest 'market demographic' failures/fallacies Ashes seems to be riding on.
For a laundry list of reasons, the specific design of Ashes 'PvX' at this moment does not hold any more appeal to the 'common player' than pretty much any upcoming (or often, old) option.
The biggest problem I ever have 'convincing' anyone else about this game who I think even partially fits into this demographic is a lack of convincing aspects to point to.
Or a better way to put it would be, I'm gonna take a harsh stance here and say 'No, Ashes does not have a lot of variables for adjusting balance while still being appealing, and thinking that it does, will be the downfall of this game'.
I tell what is going to happen.
People who want to play Ashes of Creation like a bunch of Pansy's - > will suffer.
And then something else will happen.
- > The Players will either accept their Fate and man up - > or they will leave the Game.
But it will come even "better" - Apologies for my Sarcasm here.
Players who WANT to be in somewhat strong or at least dependable Groups and Guilds - you know People with who you could ACTUALLY defend your own Node with, instead of losing it every few Weeks and start at Zero over and over again,
will move to Groups in which they can feel secure that they might not waste their Time by joining them and participating in holding certain Nodes with them.
Even IF others attack these Nodes.
Yes. And if they need to visit the mysterious Plane outside Verra, known as Discord. (lol) Or Teamspeak. Or whatever else.
Being able to put up at least "some" kind of fight is not even hard. You know you WILL lose more, if you don't even attack back your Attacker and then die while being flagged Green, right ?
Fighting back against Player-Attackers is encouraged. You can be confident it will be no different when your Node is at Stake,
you know the "Thing" you maybe managed to get a static House or even Freehold at ? 🙄 . 🙄 . 🙄
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
I probably don't want to argue much either.
What I noticed is that players are blind at detecting and understanding other player's play styles and needs when they play an MMO.
One can see from posts that each is somewhat close to expert in some aspects of mmos.
There are many who are silent and we don't know what they want. It is not easy to get their data.
Also I have sometime doubts / am curious about the golden cohort size but even a small one is ok for me as long as the core pillars remain intact. For me a game is not a failure if it's target audience is happy and Steven is ok with smaller profits too. He takes a risk and we will see what rewards will get.
lol, did I just see "man up" and "join a stronger guild" (to hide behind) in the same post?
Completely generalizing the the PvE enjoyers is just lazy.
Aren't we all sinners?
But there's a difference between Caravans, sieges, and naval battles and just randomly getting ganked while mining ore.
I think that is the line people care about.
You are right. Steven says that we need PvE to build the world and PvP to change it. Caravans and sieges don't seem to be the problem for people that only wants PvE servers. I just think they don't want to be killed while mining, hunting or even killing a boss, because that would be against casual players mostly.
And to take that further, I don't even think it's the occasional fight over "hey you took my (random material here), imma fight you for that.". It's the guy that says I'm not going to gather, I'm just going to go kill gatherers to get materials. Or they guy that kills the person half his level multiple times because he thinks it's funny.
Those are they types that I hope the corruption system really reins in, because they're the problem.
Why does the term PvX continue to get thrown around. Is it to hide the term PvP in hopes that somehow PvE players will be more tolerant of the discussion? If that is the case I don't think it is going to work. They don't care or worry about PvX. There are already numerous games that exist with PvX. They care about forced PvP. It is that simple and this version of PvX includes that. Ask any PvE player with reservations about Ashes and that is what they will tell you. Saying "well you just don't know what PvX is" means nothing and will do nothing. I see PvX as a gimmick or marketing term to try and shoot the middle of two very different groups, hoping to bring some of them closer together.
We hope that corruption will be a deterrent to PKing and for most people it will be. But all it takes is a small number of people that like the challenge of playing as corrupted to break the backs of the many people not wanting to partake in PvP during that particular play session.
Corruption does little to ease the frustration that a player not looking for PvP has when they get killed doing something they are having fun with. They are not going to feel eased by the fact that someone "turned red." Add on top of that they lose items, experience and most importantly the time they have invested and that frustration quickly gives way to anger and anxiety about playing, potentially driving them away.
I agree that there are two different forms of PvE players. You have purists and you have those that like to have some PvP with their PvE. And the later group will likely be a little more tolerant of forced PvP. But at the end of the day it comes down to whether or not they get to chose to engage in PvP and when and for many people this will be a deal breaker. What is not entirely clear is how many.
This is not a casual versus hardcore conversation. You can have casual and hardcore players in both worlds.
This is not a who gets to be a hero discussion. All of us play to feel powerful, to feel that growth, to be proud of our accomplishments. This includes those trying to dominate other player characters. It gives you a feeling of power, of strength, of heroics.
PvP is most certainly an intended mechanic and one that is needed to make nodes and with it world change work correctly. Some will call it griefing, others will not. Many people will probably get the term griefing wrong or make it mean what they want it to mean. But it really does not matter what anyone calls it. Anyone who understands the goals of Ashes understands the need for PvP to exist. And anyone that understands the goals of Ashes understands that there will be a group of players who will not play because of it. And that is ok. I guarantee Intrepid has an internal number of players that they think they need to hit in order to have their systems work as intended. I also guarantee that they feel they can meet or exceed this number.
What everyone needs to understand is that at this point in the development of Ashes of Creation the target audience has been chosen. If you are happy with the current design, congratulations you are the intended audience. If you are unhappy with the current design pillars then sorry but in the immortal words of Steven the Great: Maybe this game is not for you.
AoC tries to distance itself from giving this kind of feeling as reward.
If that would be AoC's objective, it would not create resource scarcity.
It would not give legendaries and flying mounts just to very few people.
Everybody would get freeholds, even instanced if needed.
The problem is that players were educated to feel like you described and AoC wants to make players to want to cooperate under the node citizenship structures.
Modern MMOs educated PvE players to became more and more selfish. They'll hate even each-other when the loot is grabbed by other PvE players.
And that is not the problem of the game but the problem of the players who are stuck in that mentality.
First, this is a minor point from my post and unrelated to the main conversation. I only mentioned it because it had been brought up in the thread so this should probably be a different post.
Second, why would anyone play a game to not feel increasing power and growth and accomplished at what they are doing? That is the core of personal growth in the virtual world and the real world. To create something that does not allow you to feel growth, power and pride in your learning is a massive misstep and doomed to fail. Why ever do something that leaves you feeling less than when you started?
I took that fragment from your post because I was considering making a post myself here about this but you mentioned it yourself before.
I think it is an important thing to understand.
In real world humans also teamed up in groups, tribes, union of tribes and eventually creating states and rules to follow.
In a game where players have the freedom to kill you or even to not help you, it can be a great feeling to see them actually helping you. That feeling would not be present if the game would set hard rules and force them to behave in a certain way.
This concept is described as a core pillar:
"We decided to focus on mechanics that bring the idea of community to the forefront. To get people to interact with each other meaningfully – not just to conquer a raid boss, or to get some coin from a faceless auction house, but to maybe save a city. A city that all the local residents had a stake in. A city that the players had spent weeks or months developing; the defense of that city, the attack on that city! Or building a world together as a community choosing our own fate with our friends. We believe that’s going to be a story far more memorable and far more meaningful to players than just about anything we can come up with.[24]"
Why is important to understand this?
Because it changes the way how players feel the game, where their satisfaction comes from.
Other mmos capitalized on player's greed, on desire to become rich or having best gear, telling us that this is what "being good" means.
AoC breaks them apart. If you are very good PvEer, you can become a mayor in a divine node but you get no money from that. If you want money, you go an economic node. If you want to be mayor you must give your money away.
Traditional mmos give all these as reward just to keep players in the game. They even dumb down the crafting so every player can do that.
Why Steven has chosen a different concept? Because some players will like it.
Who will not like this concept? The PvE-ers who feel that PvPers interfere and prevent them achieving this "good" feeling you described. Even PvPers will have eventually to focus on helping their own node or even cooperate with other nodes in the metropolis network to buy good gear.
If you understand this, you will also see the PvX a bit differently, maybe not even as a PvX but just a way how Vera will function, what kind of players will come to play and why others will go and grind dailies and raids in other MMOs.
It's certainly an interesting question. One likely without an answer that will please everybody.
I enjoyed reading through this thread. It's a conversation that comes up often, so there are plenty of Steven quotables to share here (of which some have made their way here!)
My favorite is this: "...One of the defining elements of our world-building approach and being a PvX game is that PvE builds the world and PvP changes the world." - Steven elaborating on this here
That's what drives this game and the decisions. PvX is a term used to increase players/money.
People overthink "PK" in games. Like, think about it guys, think about it.
You are on your own alliance's ZOI, on a map which is 6 times the size of WoW Classic Azeroth.
Enemy alliance is half away across the planet, occupied in a border war with your alliance's sweaty front line.
Who is gonna PK you so deep behind the front lines. Like, yes, PK exists, but it will most certainly be used as a last resort between Carebears as they fight over "spawns". The sweaty PVPer is fighting on the front lines on the area-wide battlefronts.
Yeah this is pretty much true, at least as far as the people who know they won't play the game. The segment of people who just don't like non-consensual PvP, especially when they can lose stuff on death, won't play. Simple as that. Some of my friends like Ashes, and some won't touch it because of that. It doesn't matter what it's called, or if they are hardcore or casual or good or bad at games. It's not about educating anyone. I don't like jazz. I try to avoid it. Some of it I would barely call music. No amount of "educating" will make me like it or start listening to it. Same thing.
People who can't "man up", can't be relied on.
People who search for a stronger Guild to join -> can't find a Group that helps them getting better, at "FOR EXAMPLE" PvP, when Nobody is around who did "man up".
Hide behind Guilds ? You can do that if You have no Confidence, SongRune. I am not even blaming You if that is your Mindset.
Just do something. " SOMETHING ". More than starting to cry and run around hysterical when People attack your Node, your Allies, your Guild, your everything.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)