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

Azherae wrote: »

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.

I'm indifferent to them, but I could see their value if loot design is built around them and Hell Lvls are placed right before new grades of gear. If T1 of this next gear requires mats from the previous grade (potentially at higher tiers) - the hell lvl could give you time to collect those mats and enter the new grade with a near-full set of crafting mats for your new set of gear.

But Ashes sure as hell is not designed that way and I'm not sure if other games with HLs were.

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

I don't have the space on my PC for it and my electricity goes out for 4h after every 1.5h, so can't really help with the tests, but I've seen a fair bit of people say that there's positive movement in the development.

The direction is still kinda the same though, so if you didn't really like that - it hasn't changed much from what I've seen.

Here's a post from someone who has enjoyed current PTR
https://old.reddit.com/r/AshesofCreation/comments/1p1u0zg/feedback_regarding_starting_experience_lv_110/

This is a comment under a new No1 video.


Really can't wait to see all the pvpers dominate the realms even more than before, cause they can now craft Leg items easily, if this design sticks

Ludullu wrote: »

This is a comment under a new No1 video.


Really can't wait to see all the pvpers dominate the realms even more than before, cause they can now craft Leg items easily, if this design sticks

I really hope this isn't misinformation, at least.

Not that I like this implementation, I think it sucks, but imagine how much more it would suck if this sort of thing spread through the PvX-lover grapevine at this point of development... but wasn't even true...

Azherae wrote: »

Not that I like this implementation, I think it sucks, but imagine how much more it would suck if this sort of thing spread through the PvX-lover grapevine at this point of development... but wasn't even true...

If I had a better PC and at least a bit more time with electricity being on in any given day, I'd check it myself, but I don't have over 100gigs to just throw away on a client that will barely work on my PC and whose updating usually takes longer than I have electricity on

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

Ruzzia

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

Maybe cause it was a link to old reddit? Try this one

https://www.reddit.com/r/AshesofCreation/comments/1p1u0zg/feedback_regarding_starting_experience_lv_110/

I just really hope this Harbinger event thing works.

It's not that I don't care about it, but I'm so aware of why things of this basic type don't work well on me...

Super sandbox games require all your care to be about other players, but if you make it about combat/winning combat, then MMORPGs aren't really the best option...

So I think devs have to assume that they have to design it to have some storyline behind it even if maybe only half of their audience cares about any of it. Maybe a recognizable NPC or NPC group. Something you have to care about.

My example for this is that Throne and Liberty has recently started 'event-testing' their equivalent of FF11 Besieged and despite being mechanically on-point (I had the fortune of going to one with only like 30 players instead of 250), it lacks the gravitas, because there's minimal chance of losing (even with only 30-50 player defenders) and no NPC Generals or similar to worry about or protect.

This is a general 'shortfall' of that game at the moment, not quite enough 'time spent seeing how some character you have some connection to, is existing or relaxing in the same space as you'. They're working on it, but Ashes doesn't even really have that option right now.

It could just be that the intended audience isn't the type who is expected to care about characters like that, it's just a slightly weird (to me) approach to an MMORPG with this much Lore.

Without that, this event sounds like it will be almost entirely about players 'calculating what gives them the most gain personally' and then the masses who just follow whatever they're told, doing that, after all that would be the correct/reasonable response. If you only care about your guild/what your guild leaders say, and your Guild Leaders care about Dire Materials and Corrupted Drops more than 'stopping the incursion' or whatever, it might fall flat for 'my' demographic, unless it's genuinely a challenge and maybe even then.

TL isn't hitting the mark because it's not quite 'challenging' either, but like I said, it's more of an event-testing thing (they literally didn't even explain it, it's just 'hey here's a cool thing with some solo-player-ish rewards, jump in or don't) whereas Harbingers are a whole 'big update' for Intrepid.

As a tangent from something you said here regarding your feeling of what an event feels like when failure is all but guaranteed not to happen:

This is something that I've been considering a lot lately. More and more on forums and discourse in game dev youtube channels I watch. Over arching player sentiment seems to be shifting to being sick of the 'never lose' design structure of modern games and are coalescing more and more to ones that facilitate it. Like simplified art style for UI menus, a lot of decisions in the wider 'corporate' gaming industry are made by people who can't take risks due to the shareholder system of defining success.

You don't want to give your boss weapons to use against you. This is true at every level of decision making including chief executives. Devs know people hate losing or looking like a fool, but many of them assume (or worse, are forced to take erasing failure as the easier way to solve the problem due to timelines or job security) that means they don't want losing to be possible. This flattens games, but it also flattens product differentiation!

Often how you lose and what failure looks like shapes the identity of your game almost as much as winning and success. When you choose to take that out of the equation, you end up with a game that is more similar to other games that make that same decision.

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

Then you should definitely not look at discord

Also don't worry, he only responds to glazing on reddit. And raaarely to bad info in OPs.