We have not received permission from MargaretKrohn to share the quoted post.
An oft-overlooked but critically important part of any game is its ambiance. A ton of factors contribute to this. From the worldbuild to the design of combat and the layout of zones; from costumes and world chat to the things the game guides you to focus on, and even in what order. Every decision affects a game's ambiance in some way, both large and small. From your choice of combat style, to exactly how fishing works or how NPCs initiate conversations. Different players have different preferences, and WoW feels nothing like FFXI, feels nothing like FFXIV, feels nothing like TL. This isn't just the mechanics, but the intersection of the world itself and the mechanics.
When you watch all of the wonderful streams and demonstrations we've seen over the years, you start to get a very clear idea of the ambiance Steven envisions for Ashes. What it's supposed to feel like to play the game, to live in the world, and to interact with others within it.
There's no doubt you have your work cut out for you, Intrepid. You have chosen some very difficult paths, but I am glad to see the enthusiasm with which you pursue it, and I hope that it pays off for you as strongly as you're dreaming of. But one of the critical parts of making sure that happen is ensuring that you create the ambiance that you and Steven envision and that you keep it consistent throughout the game, throughout the world, and throughout the time a player spends in it.
It's easy to hold on to the intended ambiance when it's just you, but it's easy to lose track of as you start to expand your target audience, take feedback, and try to cater to additional types of players.
Not everyone who might want to play your game cares about the ambiance of the world, or of the game itself, but it's important for roleplayers and people looking for immersion and the opportunity to really live in Verra and if it gets disrupted or weakened, it will negatively impact their experience no matter what they're interested in doing in the game overall, and quickly lose its ability to cause the feelings of nostalgia you can get from truly comfortable games.
There are people out there who are interested in your game (or perhaps
would
be interested) who don't care about your ambiance. Either because they want a different one, or because they will ignore it anyway. These players will ask for changes to make the game work better for them without regard to how it would affect your preferred ambiance, or perhaps even with the explicit intent to change or remove it. They will make a variety of otherwise good or reasonable suggestions which ultimately have a negative impact on that aspect of the experience. You need to be mindful of this when choosing who to listen to, and to what extent.
One major area where this can happen is in discussions of convenience and friction. One very important factor of a game's ambiance is where the friction is. Players who do not care about your intended ambiance will ask you for QoL features, or to adjust things (or even rework systems) to reduce friction and inconvenience that they perceive as just in their way or annoying. You need to make sure you understand which friction and inconveniences are important to creating the ambiance and experience you are aiming for.
Over the course of FFXI's second decade, many additional small conveniences or 'easy modes' were added to the game.
In the early days, the auction houses in every major city were separate, and players would often need to travel to sell certain things. If you wanted to sell wood quickly, you would sell it in San d'Oria, where the Woodworking Guild was based. That big boss drop? Your buyers will be looking in the central city of Jeuno. You could sell these things anywhere, but there were biases, and these gave you reasons to travel and to think about the economies of different regions. (With some additional opportunities for certain observant or savvy players.) At some point, for player convenience, the auction houses around the world were linked. No matter where you were, anyone in any city could buy your goods. It was no longer necessary to travel based on (or even think as much about) the economic specialties of the different regions and where different players did their work. This was absolutely convenient, but it would be difficult to argue it did not affect the ambiance of the game, particularly as players became accustomed to thinking of all markets as the same, and the dynamics of trade shifted overall.
In the early days, there was minimal fast travel in Vana'diel. Getting your Airship License at Rank 5 was a big deal. You could now ride the regularly scheduled airships between Jeuno and each of the cities. Before that, you would ride your chocobo whenever you wanted to travel long distances. (Getting your Chocobo License was an equally important milestone.) Travel between the cities would easily take 20 minutes. Either because you had to wait for the airship schedule (and then journey), or because you needed to guide your chocobo through the varied and sometimes circuitous terrain of Vana'diel.
There were some alternatives, but this still fundamentally shaped the way players interacted with the world.
- You could buy a Scroll of Instant Warp from a gate guard at home or your nation's embassy abroad, or get a Black Mage to cast Warp II on you to return you to your current respawn location (or 'blood warp' by finding something to kill you).
- You could be teleported (from your home nation only!) to regional outposts you had previously delivered supplies to while your nation controlled that area. (Opportunities to unlock the ones near other cities were therefore very rare, and often required a dedicated and focused effort from a large number of players, so airships were still a primary of travel for many people.)
- White mages had the ability to teleport their parties to specific locations approximately half-way between each of the three cities, and Jeuno, and you could rent a chocobo there. Many were willing do this for you, for a fee. (There were tricks one could use to avoid going along with the rest of your party when casting 'Teleport-XYZ'.)
- Occasionally, for a week or so at a time every few months, players would happen to activate a world-buff that enabled fast travel between the three starting cities for a fee. This was always convenient, and you would absolutely plan around taking advantage of it when it happened.
All of this affected how players would group up for content, where and when crafting or trading was done, and basically every aspect of the economy. You always had very good reasons to think about where you were, where you wanted to be for your future plans, and both how you intended to get there and what else you could get done along the way or should take care of before you left.
In around 2021, if this wiki reminds me correctly, players were given the ability to teleport, rather cheaply, between any two respawn locations they have ever visited, anywhere in the world. A bit later, more such respawn locations were added to almost every zone around the world, and other forms of regional teleportation were added. Eventually, they even added up to four such locations within
each zone
in the main cities. Not only did you not have to walk from one district to another, you didn't even always have to walk from one side of the district to another.
You could be anywhere, any time. You no longer needed to think about any of these things, or adapt your plans around them. In under a minute, you could be anywhere in the world, for just a handful of gil. Once again, the way players thought about the game fundamentally changed, and the feeling of the world changed with it.
These are two major and obvious examples of what disinterested players could consider 'unnecessary inconvenience', but which defined the entire feeling of the game, and defined how players thought about the world and their time in it. It affected how they made plans, created opportunities for specialization, and what they paid attention to. It defined the world itself and how living in it felt.
There are any number of small examples as well. I picked the big ones that had enormous, immediately obvious impacts, but I'm sure many people can think of that one time the devs changed something (small or large) about their game that affected the ambiance of the world and what it felt like to live in it, or what living in it even meant.
These changes do suit certain types of players with certain types of goals, but it is unquestionable that the ambiance of the world was diminished, and the feelings of playing the game were changed.
It isn't just casual players, or just hardcore players that seek these types of changes. Everyone wants to decrease the friction they experience when interacting with games. The difference between people is what they're willing to trade for it. When listening to feedback, please make sure you are choosing to listen to people who care about your game's ambiance, and believe it's worth the cost.
