Steven, Please Rethink “Not for Everyone”

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Reminding as usual that Steam does not count Console players.

My estimation of the ratios for New World and TL, both 50% Console players (rising in both cases).

I've put minimal effort into this estimation this time.

Also to the poster quoted, that number is 'online right now', the number of players 'subbed' is like 47-55x that number.

If you want to know the number of active players in a game, use Guild/Company leaderboards. The audience for this type of game is out there.

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Yeah, which is exactly why Steven literally created an environment for an open gank fest

Steven is very logical in his statements. Yes, mhm, surely.

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I mean, we'll be getting more lawless zones, for hours at a time. Zones that let you murder anyone else within it, for absolutely free, with 0 penalty. Just bring all your friends and kill anyone you see there. Fun for allll!

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Wars.
https://youtu.be/e9FAU32C-Yk?t=41

Literally all raids/high value spots will be farmed by people in guilds. All Intrepid need to do is design a proper, in-depth, complex system of wars that allows to have the kinds of stuff in that video above.

Add onto that proper anti-zerg mechanics, so that the boss can't just be overtaken with numbers, add good mob AI, so that the boss/mobs/adds/etc could interact with differently flagged people in different ways, and add in-depth aggro and mob manipulation mechanics that would create a true pvx experience.

That's how you address this situation. But all of that is so much harder than just plopping a damn ffa genocidal circle, putting fingers in your ears and yelling "blah-blah-blah-blah, can't hear your complains about zergs fully controlling these areas and this content, blah-blah-blah"

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He's obviously not afraid of that, cause he literally created a system that allows exactly that in the least kosher way possible. Literal genocide en masse w/o any risk, cost, prevention system or anything. All with bigger rewards than the normal state of the location.

As for how you design those wars. Do them inside out. Instead of their target being another guild, make the war related to the content. POIs will have quests and NPCs related to them. Make those NPCs know the respawn window of the biggest thing in the POI and/or have a quest related to the POI as a whole. The big target would require a higher wardec cost, while the general POI contest wardec could be cheaper, but with a more limited potential list of targets.

The guild that's present at the POI within the respawn window can declare war on several other guilds right on the spot, by using an item they get from npc/quest. Those items are limited in use by power differences between warring guilds, by POI's value, lvl of content, etc etc. They also have prerequisite costs related to them, either by doing something for the POI's node or by going through a guild-quest.

Using those items creates several "monuments", around the POI, that can be activated by the wardec targets. These monuments enable certain mechanics on the boss or around the POI in the vicinity of the wardeccing guild. This could range from environmental hazards to full boss buffs with adds and stuff.

If a single guild become a target of several such wardecs, they get the right to use secret passages through the POI (these could be tunnels, invisible paths on top of walls, etc).

If the game registers massive acitivity of players, with several warring guilds active in the POI - the entire place becomes a last mang standing arena, with all monuments activated and external entrances only being open one-way and single-use, so anyone who dies within the POI (being in one of the warring guilds) can resurrect outside and re-enter the location once (could be several times, but that's up to testing).

Once only one guild remains - the boss' spawn timer could be shortened or the spawn itself started, but with the place on lockdown, this boss would now be stronger (+the monument activations).

To me THIS sounds like a PvX encounter, where people on all sides agree to participate, where random people who're still inside the dungeon could still remain there, but would be in great danger because high player activity has "awakened the eeeeevil". And hell, you could even have extra rewards related to monument activation, so that everyone in the POI gets the appropriate lvls of risk/reward balancing.

And this is just a random idea that I came up with right on the spot. Obviously it's not ideal and it's nowhere near balanced. But it's also obviously way more complex than just "duhhh, pvp zone, duuuhhh", so it'd require a ton of coding, quest/event hooks, environment design/layout, mob AI and pathing, proper anti-zerg mechanics, proper boss design - all with, ideally, ONLY GEAR DECAY AS DEATH PENALTIES. People would have already paid to participate in the war and there'd be a lock out, so there's no damn reason to make players lose stuff!!

I bet there's like 10 other equally as in-depth and interesting (and more) ideas out there - all infinitely better than fucking lawless zones.

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What I suggested could effectively be a zerg fuckfest, because it could involve hundreds of people in a single POI.

My main issue with the lawless zones is a complete absence of risk or cost for the zergs, the strong guilds and the gankers - all while they get the best rewards in the game AND get to enjoy their preferred gameplay.

Now imagine if tomorrow Steven came out with something like: "we're adding instanced pve event with higher drop rates on best items in the game".

Do you think the pvpers would sit quietly and not complain? Cause oooooh boi I sure doubt they would But that is effectively what Steven has now created for pvpers, even though the game had already had a shitton of pvp systems, interactions, reward structures, etc.

This is why I'm saying that Ashes is turning into a pvp game. Every damn change we've seen so far has been an appeal to and an appeasement of pvpers.

And yeah, sure, my suggestion would be quite difficult to implement and probably even more difficult to balance well enough for it to really feel fun and interesting. But you know what else is that way? PvE. You know what we've barely heard any dev speak about? PvE. Yet we keep getting easy pvp systems (well, system) and Steven keeps mentioning soft friction with almost every damn new system he introduces (crates? gathering pylons? I'm sure I'm forget some other recent addition that was also presented in the form of "this creates soft friction in the world").

And then you combine that with his statement about the pvp event death penalty change of "losers gotta suffer", and you start to understand why he loves his pvpers so much.

And I will be nothing if not super happy when/if Intrepid start releasing properly complex and cool PvE encounters. When mobs will get good AI. When we start seeing deeper mob interactions in our abilities (ight come w/ summoner?). When we get proper node-lvl-based mob leveling rather than "jundark is meant to be a lvl50 zone". When we get way more great and difficult bosses.

All of that will make me really happy. But I fear that by that point Ashes audience will only be comprised of pvpers, who won't give 2 shits about any of that content and will only ask for even more pvp systems from Steven. All because adding lawless-type super simplistic pvp systems will push away all the pver feedbackers, while keeping the pvpers there and vocal. Which will just create a vicious cycle of one-sided feedback.

And imo we've already been seeing that throughout the last 3 years. And it all started with the Open Seas change.

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Yep, that is exactly why I keep pushing for all the other systems. All because they can be controlled and balanced in a much easier way than somehow trying to limit a literal genocidal circle.

And I'll be reallll curious to see how all the "pvpers" react to the crate system where you have to..... PK?!?!?!.. other people? Like, literally yesterday Zybak released a video about all these changes and his first thought about crates is "well, I don't like it cause people will PK-bait"

That's all you need to know about the "pvper" reaction to that system.

My only hope is that the crate system will push Steven to balance corruption better, but I somehow doubt that'll happen.

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Oh, we're far beyond what "he's sold for years" at this point.

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Yep, that's my belief as well. This lawless crashout is probably my last attempt at making my voice heard on this topic. If nothing changes or, hell, gets worse - I'll still try the game out, cause there's other cool systems in it, but it will no longer be an mmo that I could truly enjoy to the same extent as I did L2.

And as I mentioned in another replay today, it's not like I have rosecolored glasses for "the past" of those mechanics. I experienced the same open world pvp joy in L2 just some time ago, so nothing changed on that front (both with me AND L2 players). But Ashes is obviously going for something completely different now.

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And that's exactly why, I'm sure, you can understand why I'm so damn worried about all of these changes. I'm watching the "last mmo" turn into something that it wasn't before and something that I dislike quite a bit.

Hope they manage to deliver on the other promises w/o changing them completely too. The potential is huge, so they just gotta not fuck it up.