Re: Risk, Reward, Difficulty & FUN: What Intrepid is Missing

(only responding to the 'ping', no intention to derail, because it only helps the discussion if people actually have all the information)

Nebula Island?

I don't think you will like it. Your understanding of Nebula is correct.

Throne and Liberty is still, and will continue to be, a game for a demographic that is adjacent to, but does not generally overlap with, the demographic that wants to play Ashes of Creation.

But neither TL nor Ashes is 'where they should be' yet. TL needed things like Nebula Island just as much as Ashes needs to not have them. TL needed their Housing update, to match all those people who want to decorate their house but don't want to deal with what that means in Ashes.

On issues of things like 'Economy Type' and 'Enhancing/Enchanting' the two games could be the same, or there could be a third game that splits the difference (I can't say I know of anyone from either side who would be the target audience of that game since I haven't met anyone who thinks Ashes economy/enhancing is good, but I assume those people are just silent).

There's no reason I can think of for you to go back to/retry TL. Everything I understand says 'that game is not for you, and that's ok'.

What I will add is some Nebula Island information just so that we do not think that a certain approach is a solution.

Nebula Island has multiple sections, 1 Peace, 4 PvP always. You can navigate freely from the 'Peace' one to three of the others. The last one has a gate so 'winner takes all' for a time.

You can flee from the edge of the PvP ones into the peace one, even enough so that there is a bit of PvE to be had.

Most areas have the same drops, but the Peace area's mobs are sparse compared to the PvP areas.

All of that works. Because if you find a time you are alone or your party is the only party in Peace area, you do almost as well as you would in the PvP area. If the PvP area is clear, you can PvE farm it and maybe form up with people around who don't want to PvP you and would rather cooperate. If you choose one of the easier navigation points you can PvP area and when you lose fall back to the PvE area, catch your breath, then dive in again for another chance at PvP-ing whoever is there.

The mobs are basically no challenge except stacked up (I can solo the entire PvE camp next to the PvP area) but this is 'fine' because the drops aren't great anyway in either area.

And yet, this still didn't work for the reason iccer stated. Big guilds monopolizing. You can only spend X hours per WEEK in this area, Peace or PvP. But they used to have recharge stones you could sell on AH, and that was how it happened.

Now those can't be purchased. There is no matchmaking, but it's at least clear that if you get pushed out of an area, calling your whole guild to stop whatever they are doing to teleport in to help you push out someone else at the cost of their own time isn't ideal.

This is the 'equivalent' of 'the disincentive to travel' found in games like BDO and maybe one day Ashes. TL also now has bigger dungeons that are too big to lock down (and not necessarily worth it), but I'd bet that as soon as the next expansion releases, the first dungeon to open in that zone will be monopolized every ingame night by whatever guild wins, unlike now, where I can see shouts for grouping in dungeons during game night-time (disclaimer, I don't play on the most cutthroat server of the region obv).

tl;dr - The only difference between Nebula Island working (for what it was) and not working, was 'the ability of strong guilds to sit there indefinitely and lock out others', and they did this even when it cost them money, to the point where I have heard that some players would 'swipe' just to pay to stay longer. Bear in mind this game has PvP events that do encompass whole zones, WarGames, and arenas. This was not 'Oh I came online and I want to PvP but can't find a place to do it'.

We have not received permission from RonDog98 to share the quoted post.

Well, you see, Steven wants losers to suffer. Soooo, your situation was exactly what the game is designed for.

It's not really that there's no one, but that everything is so off-the-rails that there's too little to say.

We'd need better clarification on goals.

I was so hoping to not be doing this for another 3 years...

We have not received permission from RonDog98 to share the quoted post.

One of the biggest constant problems in design is figuring out just how much the client is influenced by nostalgia, since you must sometimes weigh familiarity/nostalgia against good design, and then you sometimes have to go back and check if removing it alters a different aspect of design that you took for granted.

Basically we'd need to find someone who could explain the reason for 'Hell Levels' other than a nostalgia bomb, and then hope they could have a full discussion on it. No matter what 'we who hate them' dream up as 'the reason', it'll probably be biased.

For example I'd guess that it's the standard 'I achieved a huge task that others didn't have the dedication for, elevating my status relative to them' nostalgia. This is mostly an unnecessary and semi-toxic one though, so I have to assume that I'm just the one being toxic, for now, until an articulate Hell Level enjoyer discusses it.

Maybe we can poke one of the CM team to see if they can track down who on staff enjoys/sees design value in those.