Number of Questions Asked in the Livestream Forum Post by Month

People have probably figured out that alpha2 is ways off (as was confirmed in the last stream) and they have no reason to stick around on a forum of a non-existent game. And super oldschool players might be running out of unanswered questions or have learned that their super specific/hardball question just won't get answered until waaaay later.

All of those things would lead to a decrease in the amount of questions. And obviously interest in the game has gone down since the huge 2020 wave so there'd be just fewer people visiting the forums to even know when to ask their questions.

Generally I expect that most people lost interest. But for the non-anecdotal data, everyone I know did.

There were also some changes that I would have expected to drastically reduce interest in the game from certain demographics. That's totally speculation, though.

I'll say that regardless of the specific reason, I'm not surprised that this has been diminishing. Some other forms of engagement in the regular forum have diminished too, certain types of questions aren't asked much anymore.

One thing I can add is that I do watch a Throne and Liberty Content Creator who occasionally does comparisons or mentions Ashes, and the general trend in those comments is also one that I'd think indicates less interest in Ashes relative to TL, and not just because TL is likely to be soon, it's moreso the same sort of thing that causes my interest to tilt that way sometimes.

There's probably some confirmation bias there though, so just another anecdote for the pile.

Azherae wrote: »

One thing I can add is that I do watch a Throne and Liberty Content Creator who occasionally does comparisons or mentions Ashes, and the general trend in those comments is also one that I'd think indicates less interest in Ashes relative to TL, and not just because TL is likely to be soon, it's moreso the same sort of thing that causes my interest to tilt that way sometimes.

My distrust of NCsoft still makes me think that any potential hype for TL comes purely from the fact that we barely know anything about the game. Maybe I just haven't gone deep enough into my research on that game (even though I followed "Lineage 3/Eternal" for pretty much the last decade), but I feel like I know more about Ashes than I do about TL. And not knowing things lets us come up with all the cool ways that the little info we do have could be used or designed in.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

One thing I can add is that I do watch a Throne and Liberty Content Creator who occasionally does comparisons or mentions Ashes, and the general trend in those comments is also one that I'd think indicates less interest in Ashes relative to TL, and not just because TL is likely to be soon, it's moreso the same sort of thing that causes my interest to tilt that way sometimes.

My distrust of NCsoft still makes me think that any potential hype for TL comes purely from the fact that we barely know anything about the game. Maybe I just haven't gone deep enough into my research on that game (even though I followed "Lineage 3/Eternal" for pretty much the last decade), but I feel like I know more about Ashes than I do about TL. And not knowing things lets us come up with all the cool ways that the little info we do have could be used or designed in.

This is part of the problem from my perspective.

A casual partaker of content knows more about TL than about Ashes if you remove everything that is 'speculation by an Ashes-heavy content creator'.

TL Content is normally analysis of things we have been explicitly told and shown, with some speculation, most of which is quickly confirmed whenever NCSoft releases new data, so the loop for TL is 'analysis' -> 'speculation (usually positive)' -> 'confirmation'.

The loop for Ashes is 'speculation' -> 'disruption' -> 'analysis of the reason for the disruption (which fails)' -> 'new speculation (half and half positive/negative'.

I think Intrepid knows this and that's why Steven is doing another Q&A. It's a good way to disseminate lots of information about stuff that is 'closer to confirmed but less people are asking about' because us 'regulars' have 'learned not to ask' except in the 'analysis of disruption' phase.

Azherae wrote: »

This is part of the problem from my perspective.

A casual partaker of content knows more about TL than about Ashes if you remove everything that is 'speculation by an Ashes-heavy content creator'.

I think Intrepid knows this and that's why Steven is doing another Q&A. It's a good way to disseminate lots of information about stuff that is 'closer to confirmed but less people are asking about' because us 'regulars' have 'learned not to ask' except in the 'analysis of disruption' phase.

Yeah, I guess pretty much all info about Ashes is just promises of what's potentially to come and any extrapolations from those promises, while TL's info is more concrete even if there's seemingly way less of it.

Though I found it kinda funny that TL sent out an email to the amazon workers about the internal "alpha testing", while the game is supposed to come out in 2023 (iirc even the first half). And we have Ashes with more than a year before alpha2 and years more before release. As much as I consider Steven's constant reiterations of "this is a developmental alpha which is why the game is far from done" almost a marketing defense tool against any potential haters, the use of "alpha" by other dev companies definitely reinforces the belief that there's no real differentiation when it comes to testing phase naming schemes these days.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

This is part of the problem from my perspective.

A casual partaker of content knows more about TL than about Ashes if you remove everything that is 'speculation by an Ashes-heavy content creator'.

I think Intrepid knows this and that's why Steven is doing another Q&A. It's a good way to disseminate lots of information about stuff that is 'closer to confirmed but less people are asking about' because us 'regulars' have 'learned not to ask' except in the 'analysis of disruption' phase.

Yeah, I guess pretty much all info about Ashes is just promises of what's potentially to come and any extrapolations from those promises, while TL's info is more concrete even if there's seemingly way less of it.

Though I found it kinda funny that TL sent out an email to the amazon workers about the internal "alpha testing", while the game is supposed to come out in 2023 (iirc even the first half). And we have Ashes with more than a year before alpha2 and years more before release. As much as I consider Steven's constant reiterations of "this is a developmental alpha which is why the game is far from done" almost a marketing defense tool against any potential haters, the use of "alpha" by other dev companies definitely reinforces the belief that there's no real differentiation when it comes to testing phase naming schemes these days.

That's different. Internal Alpha of this type is Localization related, and possibly a methodology for testing balance based on a different monetization.

Obviously I am not 'speaking from Amazon's perspective' here, but I can say from some experience that one does still run a 'Language Test Alpha', because the build can sometimes be significantly different due to certain aspects of dialogue trees, chat, and moderation code.

Certain database optimizations (very few, perhaps none by now, it's 2023) may also be involved.

I feel like Ashes is doing a bit 'worse' because we started from a lot of mostly concrete stuff back in 2021, even if it was subject to change, there was considerable clarity on systems. Since then there have been 6 'major' disruptions and 11 'minor', and now we have much less clarity.

We could ask for more, but I, for one, wouldn't expect to get it unless the staff are able to talk on forums more.

Hopefully skotty's recent appearance will be the beginning of a trend. Those posts were closer to 'confirmation', or at least 'responses quick and clear enough that analysis was not a long phase, and there was minimal disruption anyway'.

The way this was handled previously puts my Marketer in a bad mood, whereas skotty making just two posts basically made her go 'finally, that's better'.

Azherae wrote: »

We could ask for more, but I, for one, wouldn't expect to get it unless the staff are able to talk on forums more.

Hopefully skotty's recent appearance will be the beginning of a trend. Those posts were closer to 'confirmation', or at least 'responses quick and clear enough that analysis was not a long phase, and there was minimal disruption anyway'.

The way this was handled previously puts my Marketer in a bad mood, whereas skotty making just two posts basically made her go 'finally, that's better'.

Yeah, I also hope this is a start of a trend cause it was highly appreciated. Maybe this was an indicator that they're far along the development of this particular system that they thought it'd be fine to reveal more details? That would be a good sign too, even if alpha2 is more than a year's time away.

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This made me think of a related thing, along with Arya's claim that most EVE players in their circle don't care.

I don't want to say 'old FFXI players don't care' because I can't say that with certainty but there are three extrapolations you can make based on the responses of all the ones I know and have observed passing through the forums over the years.

1. Steven promises a lot of things and treats them as revolutionary when that specific subset of MMO players often has those same things as their foundational experience of the genre , and a lot of forum and Content Creators do the same.
2. As a result of #1, many of those people have up to a decade of experience with the period before that game fixed the pain points and irritations, so they eyeroll whenever they see the same things 'unfixed' in Ashes design for no reason.
3. Related to #3, a majority of 'serious' Ashes Content Creators are hostile to people who like Eastern MMOs in any form and the forums are now tilting that way too (a lot of interplay with the way the more invested players treat the few non-hostile Content Creators, too).

There's a bunch of stuff that actively pushes away a specific demographic of MMO player, but unfortunately it's at least somewhat the style of player this game might need.

tl;dr hot take this is a game for EVE-lover, L2-lovers and FFXI-philes on paper and it's currently slowly irritating all three those groups unnecessarily.

Every old FFXI player that has come onto the forum recently has been met with hostility (you can tell some of them because they have specific verbal 'tics' that exist because of that game's Auto-Translate function, it has preset phrases that people then start to think in and use sorta like emojis).

The EVE players get similar treatment.

Is it a problem? Maybe not. But most of the time the response to this sort of thing falls squarely in the field of 'Wait so y'all just don't want us in your game at all... oh, that's ok then."

It's a little suspicious to me at least that there aren't more players 'like me', from that perspective, but if you think about how it looks and feels it could make sense. Why would you take an MMO Community seriously when they treat stuff you consider 'basic old hat' as 'revolutionary' and go so far as to claim it's 'never been done'? (this isn't some general truth, but it's the sort of snap judgement a less involved person can easily make)

And since Steven (correctly) technically doesn't specify who Ashes is 'for', only repeats 'it's not for everyone', it gets close to being { Ashes } { Looking for Party } { No thanks. } .

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Same. I have friends who're even ready to pay for alpha2 access, but they got no interest in the forum. And everyone else is just waiting when/if the game comes out.

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I'll set up a thing to ping you the next time the thread becomes available.