Patreon: www.patreon.com/CopiumInhaler greetings fellow copium addicts! I am extremely tired ended up staying up for 30 hours to finished this one! Sorry if there's any dumb editting mistakes! The Watch party is all set up and you can accept the invite in the discord using this link here: (hope to see you there!) discord.gg/muwNp8NhbB
For looting visuals I always wanted my character to pull out a pouch and put something into it, and glow different colors depending on the rarity. Like you're actually putting something into a magic bag of holding.
One of my most vivid memories of my MMO gaming history is playing Everquest 1 and getting lost in Kithicor Forest with my brother as we were trying to cross the zone by foot so we wouldn't have to pay another player to teleport us to the city we wanted to go to, because we were too poor. In a time before easily accessible ingame maps, we had to ask other players and rely on landmarks to navigate Kithicor Forest, and due to our own issues (low Sense Direction skill, doh!) we lost our bearings and ended up hiding in a random building we found, thinking it safe enough to wait out the night and resume our journey during the day. You see, during the ingame night time period, Kithicor Forest turns from a relatively ho-hum low level zone into a slasher horror movie. Very high level mobs spawn and start roaming the zone, killing every low level player they see. We tried to hide thinking that being in a building would break line of sight and let us survive the night. We proceeded to shit our pants as a giant spider (who wouldn't agro by default!) waded through the wall and casually walked out the other side, disinterested in eating our delicious innards. We were spooked not just because being in Kithicor Forest at night is nerve wracking, not just because holy shit giant spiders fuck that, but also because we realized that the monsters of the game weren't constrained by the boundaries of buildings like player characters were. They could walk right through them, and more likely than not, we realized to our dawning horror, SEE through them. Just as we fully internalized this exciting and fascinating discovery of the mechanics of the game, a horde of zombies and werewolves bounded through the wall and started painting the inside of the building with our guts. We ended up having to pay a Necromancer to summon our corpses to the zone edge for fear of getting lost and dying again. Such was life in the dangerous wilderness of Everquest 1! I've always wanted to see ingame journeys capture that feeling of danger, uncertainty, and excitement like Everquest 1 did. It did so through lack of perfect information (you could get lost), lack of perfect safety (high level monsters to worry about), and mechanics that meaningfully punished death (you had to find your corpse or lose your stuff). The MMO genre needs to remember that without the risk of a bad time, you won't remember any good times.
Ahhh Kithikor. The memories. I also remember the shouted Griffin warnings as it slowly flew over the Commonlands picking off the odd newbie here and there. When death penalties mean something, through loss or inconvenience, players respect the world and mobs. These days convenience removed all that and players ram raid blindly through 'content.'
Ingame maps+GPS style is TOO convenient for MMOs. The fact that you could get lost in a zone or had to ask a seasoned player for directions helped quite a lot with the social aspect and immersion of the game. It also meant you had to actually explore and learned the areas. Games like Embers Adrift are coming out with this old concept, altho somewhat improved, but sadly it won't have PvP. Looking forward to Ashes of Creation system getting it right ;)
to the perfect information point that time is gone. we have the internet now. unless you play at the beginning you're gonna have the perfect information available to you regardless. in regards to losing gear on death WoW didn't have that and it was pretty memorable. you need to meaningfully punish death but that doesn't mean you need to lose your stuff on death. Theirs more than one way to do something.
@@HumanArtifact71 all good, you're use to seeing me commenting on your channel 😂 but since he was in your stream he probably watches your ashes of creation videos when you post them 🤔 so your competition is scouting you out 😱
I’m really excited about the lack of transportation and convenience. I know the rp community is small but seeing stuff like this actually makes it feel like light rp is something everyone will be able to enjoy and will be rewarded for. I hope that this mindset stays and is not something that will change. I’m really excited to not only explore the environment but communities as well. I really hope meeting and conversing with other players will be a key asset with the lack of convenience.
Compound that with the fact that boats will be player-run just opens further opportunities for player interaction, RP, and entire businesses based on transporting other players, completely agree with ya on this.
ashes of creation is essentially being designed ofr those who atleasy enjoy abit of mild RP. I can only imagine how fast the tryhards will ruin the game for themselves
One of the most memorable moments in MMOs for me where back in WoW when you - as a nightelf druid - had to travel to the eastern kngdoms in order to get your water travel form. Unless you asked a mage to create a portal for you, you had to undertake a long journey through zones way above your current level and it took time. You got through zones you haven't yet explored and because the creatures on the way were dangerous, you probably died on the way. After I had achieved this, I helped some others to make this journey. Heck, we even walked instead of running and had a nice chat. This was an experience that made me avoid fast travel options as long as I didn't make my friends waiting - even in other games, like in GW2 where I avoided using the waypoints as much as possible during my initial playthrough. The important thing is, to make the travel interesting and worthwile. Which works well in GW2 due to all the dynamic events and interesting spots in the environment. I think it is sad that quite some players miss all this due to the massive use of waypoints and mounts. I can't nail it down why, but when I do the traveling in BDO I don't get the same feeling most of the time. In FF14 on the other hand I can clearly say, that I rarely see something in the open world that seems interesting enough to move away from the path the MSQ or maybe the sidequests dictate. Addtitionally, most of the time it is empty. I wouldn't label convenience as pay to win, but it still has its drawbacks. Same as cosmetics. But sub fee games also have a tendency to implement enough time gating, to keep you subscribed instead of implementing fun things to do that keep you interested. You just have to choose your poison here, and I don't see any system that guarantees founding for the ongoing development for a game that doesn't have drawbacks and can not be exploited by either side.
man I just didn't get that feeling in GW2 or BDO. most of the side stuff wasn't that interesting to me. for GW2 90% of the side stuff I did was for exp. the 10% i did was cool. but it was just the platforming puzzles. that stuff was cool. but most was just exp.
@@weirdo3116 I have watched some people having this kind of feeling when it comes to map completion and I think the reason you don't get to enjoy it that much is within the mindset: When you are there to tick of all the boxes for map completion and gain the xp, you don't care much about what you actually get to see there. This is especially true when the POI / HP you wanted to get to is locked behind a dynamic event. This event then just feels annoying. If you, on the other hand, just happen to be in the area and follow such an event to an area usually not accessible it feels a lot different.
The title made me think of a discussion I had on thr Ashes discord. There was this guy saying he wanted a convenience feature (yes, he used the word) that would allow him to see the prices at every auction house. After some pushback he reduced that to one that would allow a guild to see the prices at any auction house a guildmage had visited recently. Thing is - checking auction house prices and finding those sweet deal margins *is the game* for economic players. He basically wanted to automate away the very thing that drives players who play the market. All on the name of 'convenience'
Crafting being RNG as apposed to being skill based is one "convenience" system that I hate. Spam crafting bulk items to get that BIS roll or as close as possible instead of allowing players to use time, patience and skill to create the perfect item is horse shit and leads to the richest players getting richer as they can afford the mats to spam bulk quantities, while the poors struggle to get a half decent roll.
as someone who always uses a game controller in mmos, whenever possible, hell no i do not want some requirement to use a mouse to click on a loot. it is really annoying to move a cursor with a controller stick.
Time wasting of the sake of time wasting is not content, and I'm not talking about traveling itself, I'm talking about this mentality that you need to waste time for everything to get to the fun parts of the game. If traveling in ashes is NOT fun, then it will be a waste of time, so it's on them to make it fun if they don't want fast travel.
Right. You can still go to the bathroom regardless of whether you're stuck on a flight path or you get up once you click teleport. Traveling is fun and immersive when you are newly discovering an area. After that, it's tedious. He talks of giving the player agency but advocates for the game requiring the player to spend time on aspects that aren't actually fun.
I used to think that I was a side quester player in MMOs but I just realised that I was doing things to go out and explore more. I love finding little hidden nooks and crannies with some treasure or Easter egg.
Gw2 is pretty good with that imo. Follow an event chain and they can take you to pretty little places, sometimes even make them accessible in the first place.
That sounds nice, so long it is a choice. If exploration is forced upon the player, then it becomes monotonous grind and will force some to resort to bots. If the game's focus is adventure, then that's a different arguement. But Ashes isn't an adventure RPG, it's an MMO RPG. Raids, bosses, PvP, dungeons. And if I have to spend half an hour to get to my content of interest, then you've lost my interest.
I fell in love with MMORPG, I know exactly the exact point in time. I fell in love, the second... I ran on Everquest, from Freeport to Qeynos, spend I think over 10 hours.... many deaths... just to get to Qeynos. The zone into Qeynos... the feel of touch down. is the greatest feeling in the world. That was my first hook on MMORPG.
I'm always shocked at the amount of content and the quality of content that you pump out for a game that hasn't even been released yet! Can't wait to watch when the game is released!
Very, very valid points on the psychology of gameplay and why we actually enjoy MMO's. Dopamine bombardment is exhausting and Intrepid bringing back the Everquest "slower", adventure-feel will hopefully be a relief. Very excited for a game to actually almost force exploration and socialize.
Everything inventory/looting related felt really good in Classic WoW. If Ashes does something very similar, but with a bit more QoL features, I think it's going to be a positive experience.
And vanilla WoW had unique items even before max level. Around Wotlk and after that it just became the "leveling gear" with the same appearance and same boring stats.
yeah the only thing I think would really improve it is aoe loot. single target loot worked fine in classic because you didnt really kill a ton of things at once but based on the footage we have seen of ashes that wont be the case
@@AndrewIHanna I dunno, Blizzard mage leveling really made you run around to loot everything though most should be dying in the same location. Depending on your way of grinding/leveling AOE loot was a thing. E.g. in a group pulling mobs onto a tank etc. or AOE farming. I like the AOE loot, but more than that I would not like perse. Then you have game like ESO with bottomless ingredient bags which were pretty much P2W, I don't want this.
@@skoltr i dont know what perse is. Also, I wasnt saying the lack of aoe loot was an upside for classic, just that for the majority of players the lack of it wasn't impactful frequently
The real convenience that destroyed MMO communities was player match making system design. This is the biggest offender in turning multiplayer games into single player experiences. Who needs friends or communication skills when you can just queue up with 4 other random bots like you're playing a moba, then ditch them after you wipe to the first boss because it's faster to queue again hoping the next set of bots can carry you through the mechanics instead of expending that initial effort to learn them. *Back in my day* you had to advertise for your groups, players had to create social hubs in the world nearby the content they wanted to do. Then you had to beg a warlock in Barrens chat to please help summon your idiot friend who decided to roll Troll from the other side of the world, all just to enter the first dungeon. People wanted to stick around to do the fights right because god forbid they'd have to go through the time and effort required to form a group themselves. I love the idea that Ashes is focused on their open world and sincerely hope that the instanced content will be somewhat measured in their use of player matchmaking.
A barrier to doing content is toxic to a game were making that content accessible but hard to achieve is different. Nothing upsets people more than being left out. Why would anyone create a game spending all that time effort and money to make end game content where 95-99% of the players would never see or experience it? I would rather have that content be a beast of a challenge then barred from trying it. Lost Ark has this issue. Elder Ring was a great example of a game where you could access everything but wining the fight was a completely different story. Therefore, having different challenge levels and mechanics in Ashes of Creation Raids is huge. Not only does it open the content to a lot more players, but it also rewards those who can drive that end game to the hardest levels to be the best of the best. Dynamic scaling is huge when you add harder mechanics to increase challenge and reward. Face rolling every mob is fun but gets mind numbingly boring after you do it over and over and over every week. Raiding becomes a job not fun. AS for traveling, New World was a great example of what not to do. Take 10-20 minutes running from point A to point B to gather or kill 5 things that take 1 min then run back. GW2 does it right with all the random events that pop up all over the place so exploring is fun. Ashes seems to be stating that you will have to plan ahead if you want to do spacific world bosses and content. You cannot just port in when the boss timer is about to start like in Lost Ark or GW2. Honestly I would rather have freedom of movement via mounts and convinionce add to lession repetitive boring tasks than what New World did. I agree with Ashes that not allowing you to instantly port from one cotenent to the next to take on all spawning World boses in a clock work fasshion is a good thing. I agree that a sub bassed monization of the game is key. Lost Ark is pay to win or pay to see content or have to grind 24/7 with multiple accounts feeding your main. GW2 has fast travel but has so much content going on that you cannot be everywhere at once so you still have to plan out what you want to do. Good topic Narc, it is going to be interesting to see how this evloves in Ashes.
i actually love idea of no teleports..as an example i can say...i remember 90% of old wow zones...now i dont know even 10%..because most of the time i dont leave city..and even if i do..its "num lock" and run to where arrow shows "quest objective"...and i would love them to make quest and side quest stories somehow easy to get into..again based on wow..."quest window" in wow makes me eyes hurt just by looking at it...i tried to follow story starting from blood elf zone..i was dying by the time i left starting zone..and in other type of games i LOVE LORE
I used to know all the WoW zones like the back of my hand. By the end of Wrath it seemed like half the playerbase had never explored more than a little bit. Like you said, most never leave the city except to teleport to the dungeon and back. Many didn't even know how to find the dungeons since had only ever gotten there by being teleported. I thought they should do away with all teleportation except hearthstones, warlock summon and mage portals. They should also go back to hearth cooldown of 60 minutes.
And you love the game eating your time away. You know what’s funny, is you think the nostalgia of one of the orig big MMOs meant that it’s systems were good. Everything felt good, wasting your time running around exploring felt good. It rarely does now. MMORPGs aren’t new anymore .
@@Yor_gamma_ix_bae exactly lmao. People see these MMOs with massive nostalgic goggles. They think it's the developer's fault for not providing them with those feelings 15 years later when in reality it was just them being exposed to this new big thing for the first time. Old school MMOs are dead because many of their unique elements and mechanics are not a novelty anymore and are seen as products of their time. Few escape this. If you think convenience ruins a game, then avoid the conveniency. Do everything manual if you truly think it will enrich your experience.
@@Yor_gamma_ix_bae Lmao but I still love exploring? Just because you don't like exploring doesn't mean other people don't. What a cringe line of reasoning. "No one actually enjoys vanilla/tbc/wrath its all nostalgia!" isn't an argument its just you projecting.
Just keep in mind that not all convience is created equal. A couple systems I would love to see in Ashes is a separate bag thst is double or higher in size for harvesters. And secondly I would like to see a "Who's Online" panel in chat similar to that in GW2 without any group making ability. It is just a way to see who is online to send a message to.
Class based loot in the Diablo franchise. Never getting gear for a different spec or class was initially appealing, but then I realized that I LIKED being able to grind gear for other characters on my main, and there would be times I would find something so amazing it would give me an incentive to try a different class.
Loved the video Narc. A convenience thing that I kind of like is the ability to be summoned to a dungeon entrance. It's nice not having to wait 20 minutes for someone to run to the dungeon and I don't think it detracts from other parts of the game as you can still be killed at the stone while summoning.
another one is, instead of having a pure matchmaking system for dungeons and raids, you can have the same system that both Guild Wars 2, and to some extent, FF14 uses for finding parties, a Party finder where you advertise your group with a short description with some specific criteria if needed
Not sure about the active looting. It was obnoxious to have to run around to every corpse in BDO and loot it - having the pets was critical (the pets being a P2W and especially the hamster or woodchuck or whatever it was that was essentially a requirement to be a top gatherer notwithstanding) because looting was otherwise slow and unfun.
Another thing that makes traveling interesting is fear. If you play rust on a busy server, travelling from base to a monument, or even chopping down trees and mining nodes becomes thrilling. Because always have to be on guard and pay attention.
that hardly matters if you have pvp mode turned off tho. a big complaint about black desert was lack of fast travel. spending 20 minutes traveling from one side of the map to the other is very tedious and not fun. and probably leads to a lot of people going afk because they are playing another game or anything that has their time occupied by something more engaging. if these things aren't broken then don't fix them. just give good reward for people doing these other things rather than forcing them on players and giving no choice.
@@vincentdarkrosrayne I guess that’s my point. Travel is only interesting or “fun” if you need to pay attention or you die. Unlike Rust though, I hope you have a little more control over whether you die or not. Getting headshot by an assault rifle 100m away right after a tree falls down doesn’t really give you a way to stop it.
@@MATCHLESS789 i think you missed my point. i'm saying pvp always being turned on and there being no fast travel would result in a lot of people getting killed while they afk to reach their destination. that's why i say, either toggle pvp or keep it on for certain instances, or allow fast travel. the world is WAY too big to travel on foot AND watch your back while doing it.
I definitely lean more toward the boomer mindset. I love retail WoW for what it is; speedrunning to endgame, gearing up and parsing. But the best times I've had in MMOs is from games in which I never touched endgame. Whether it was the world, quests or professions; the grind kept me compelled. Lineage 2, priston tale, silk road, even eso
I am going to half way split with you on this topic. Yes I agree that the whole blink and you are at the next place doing the next thing stuff is CRAP! But also see how a transport system could be built into the game for more immersion, by transport I am NOT meaning a spell but a "public transport" style. Node 3's you can buy a ticket for a carriage ride at something like +50% of run speed and you get to just look around, node 4 port cities a nice boat ride (better be ready to defend yourself!). Between the node 5's a blimp Etc. and in order to EARN the rights to buy those tickets you need city reputation on BOTH sides earned by doing work, quests, donations to the civic authority or whatever for points or it costs the same as that snickers bar on your prison pillow costs "in the end"....those points slowly drain away if you ignore them, or could possibly get wiped out if you do not defend your city. Whats that? Another way for players to take a vested interest in the game world AND PVP as well as earn the privilege of sitting there watching out the window? How many other systems can we link into this? City quests for materials to build the system? That just added in all 3 levels of the crafting professions.
For me personally, the biggest change in "convenience" has always been the decline in difficulty. Watered down, so everybody can complete stuff. I HATE it. I need a challenge. Something that stares at me, making me think "shit, I need a buncha great players to get it down". Most content is fucking easy mode and it pisses me off. I want to be able to outshine others by putting in the effort to learn encounters, learning builds and playstyles. Not stacking in a group, facerolling until healthbar hit 0
No fast travel only truly feels "right" when you have a world worth traversing, if the world exploration/traversal sucks, this is usually when Fast Travels becomes a necessity, and with how big that open world is gonna be... I dunno if it's gonna fly chief, the only MMO to my knowledge who DID manage to get away with next to no fast travel is Black Desert, but that game just have shit everywhere. I love FF14, but if that game had no fast travel, it would be a damn pain in the ass because its zones simply aren't especially "Fun" to traverse, they are very much textbook MMORPG zones that serves a very limited purpose. On the other hand, you have Guild Wars 2, a game with TONS of fast travels everywhere but with also TONS of reasons to simply explore the zones and "complete" them, which is why it just feels right to just... not fast travel in that game, because there is ALWAYS PoV that needs to be completed or just dynamic events popping out constantly
GW2 imo does it best because you have options. If you wanna fast travel, you have plenty of choice. If you wanna adventure there, you'll find plenty of things to do on the way.
Because of the way they built mounts unless im traveling to literal continents away ill just hop on raptor or my gryphon/drake and run in the direction i want. If it wasnt limited to zones with load screens and managed to be 1 big world i wouldnt even have noticed it was divided up.
I recently decided to completely abandon any TH-cam guides etc. to reclaim that feeling of discovery and it works wonders. I would love to see a lack of a fully uncovered minimap and especially the "arrow chasing simulation". I hate how mundane questing becomes, when it's just "Run from point A to B to C marked on the minimap and click on the highlighted NPC. I loved the need to read the description of where I need to go, or with whom I need to speak in the journal and navigate based on those (Morrowind). "Leave the city through the northern gate and follow the road till you cross the stream. Look for the strange looking tree" Something that I haven't actually seen anywhere and it really spoils immersion for me are the names floating above player and NPC heads. You shouldn't know more than a "Drunkard", "Cross-eyed girl" unless you speak to NPCs or add a tag to the player to resemble you recognizing them. It could also bring some new mechanics as going into enemy/ other faction territory unnoticed/ masked or changing your appearance to reset those tags for others.
I think runescape and ff14 got fast travel right. There's a few waypoints on every map in ff14 that are close enough to things to get you around and the maps are a few minutes to travel across and entering new areas to see how they're affected by the story is cool! Runescape has set teleports and as you progress the game and level you will unlock more teleports through quests and items you craft as well as magical spells. The world is massive and you will do PLENTY of running even with teleports while shortening the things that matter!
I'm on board for reducing convinience but showing gw2 while talking about games where you need to use irl money to get unlocks. Yes, you have to pay with gems, but as long as you have one expasion you can change in game gold for gems
I think something new mmo have really whatered down is team content and interactions: I recent mmo most of the pve content can be done joining a group automatically and without need of talking with your group (because things are too easy and straight forward). Also, they simplified classes so now they not as different between each other.
I wholly agree with Narc’s idea regarding: “manual” mouse-interaction looting. It should be a willful decision to pick up resources & items. Furthermore, we should also visually see the items we are about to select. This might bear further weight when looting other player’s bodies; as you may wish to select one type of resource (high-value) over other common resources.
I'm the kind of person who finds relaxation in spending hours farming mobs for hide/leather. But I feel like now a days, there is soo MANY mobs, and there is usually a limited challenge to them. So just kill, skin, look up, kill, skin... I think it would feel much better if the mobs were less plentiful, but could take a bit more of a beating and took a bit longer to harvest, but in return yielded much more resources/loot/experience.
The way I see it, it reminds me of when I would play a single player game and then turn on cheat codes, after that the game gets boring super quick and going back to normal is ruined. But at the same time if its too much of a chore that feels meaningless and unsatisfying then it will also be really bad. If there is something that requires more effort or time then it should be satisfying and enjoyable, otherwise make it fast and painless.
Convenience didn't ruin MMOs. It is merely a symptom of the actual ruination of MMOs. Profitability ruined them. When WoW hit and had a million users on day one in 2004, that was the beginning of the downward slide. Up until that point MMOs were trying new things. As soon as WoW shown to be a massively profitable venture, the corporate overlords took notice and had to jump on that train. A market was discovered that was completely overlooked prior to 2004. After the holiday season of 2004 when all the corpos came back to the office at the beginning of 2005 all kinds of discussions started happening. How can we get in on this? There's millions to be made! Convenience is just a means to an end. Can't make things too hard as that won't have wide enough appeal to meet our Q1-4 projections. So here we are with the current state of MMOs. Let's hope AoC can bring us back to pre-2004 again. 👍
His point about the sub fee was spot-on. A game I really looked forward to was swtor. When it released, it was NOTHING like it was described in the teasers and dev interviews. It was in many respects a completely generic, cookie-cutter mmo with a Star Wars skin, yet still I enjoyed it a lot. I liked the storyline, and I really enjoyed doing instances. Then it went "free" to play, with all that entails, and turned into a complete garbage game. Keep the sub fee. NEVER go p2w.
My all time favourite MMO game, back when I started playing it, had no mini-map, no world map, no quests, no tutorial, no inherent infrastructure. When you die, you drop (virtually) everything you had on you. (there are no grave markers). It took several years, (yes IRL years, not game years) for the first player to get to 100 in a skill. What does one do, in such a game, I hear you ask (or maybe it is just 'the voices' coming back) well, you can do anything you want to do, for the most part. Some people have built their own islands, and they built magnificent palaces on said islands. some people have hollowed out mountains, and built a fortress inside. For my part, I always enjoyed collecting rare and endangered animals, and building them a safe home, where people can come and see them, if they want to. There is no fast travel (beyond breeding a (slightly) faster mount), they did add a system that allows you to select what server (island) you want to travel (sail) to, when you leave your current map, however that was as much a result of the number of servers (islands) getting to the point that it was motivating players to not inhabit the areas that were multiple maps away from the central (oldest) areas. The game has been running for well over a decade, and not to long ago they added special new skills that allow you to search for the remnants of player made settlements that were long since abandoned, and reclaimed by the forests. Obviously, if you want the newest, best, and shiniest graphics, and effects you won't find them in a game this old. On the flip side, you can, and many do, run multiple clients at the same time, as this can be useful in many regards. (Sometimes you need to take the smooth with the rough, as they say.) There is no fast travel, and any travel is inherently dangerous. However there is almost always another player (or three) who will help you with any questions or problems you may encounter. It is the game that I compare all other MMOs to, and they always fall short. I have called it 'the sandiest sand box, that ever boxed sand', and that is very much an accurate way of describing it. (Now that I think of it, you could, literally, box sand in the game, as sand is a resource, and storage boxes are indeed a thing. lol) There is lots of (what many people seem to call ) grind in the game, however to me, the (so called) grind, IS the game. Hunting monsters, exploring, locating, collecting, and then transporting rare resources (marble, gold, silver, etc) then using them to plan a build a temple to one of the in-game gods, so that priests and followers can have a place to gather, study, and train. That IS the game. A few times I have spent a few weeks building a new road, or fixing (improving) an old one, so that people can travel more quickly (and hence more safely). Helping a new player find a homestead, and making sure they have the seeds they need to start farming so they can feed themselves, and showing them the location of the resources they will need to build and expand their homes. Having the freedom to do anything, is, to me anyway, worth playing a game that has older graphics. Back doing one of my degrees, I read a study that was done, to determine what common trait/habit did the people with the closest knit, most enduring relationships have in common. Quite unexpectedly, the activity on the top of the list, as camping. They went on to discover that what build/creates and strengthens those bonds, is experiencing shared 'hardships/adversity', the more things that go wrong, the more problems you encounter/overcome the better that relationship becomes. In terms of MMOs, the 'plague of convenience' has stolen that away from the players, so they don't (can't) connect as well with the game itself, or each other. Pressure makes diamonds, hardship and adversity makes memories, and also friends.
Regarding "fast travel" I would like them to go back to the original Granddaddy of MMORPGs, Ultima Online, and use runestones, where In order to "fast travel" you need to... a) have been there before AND b) put a location print on a runestone, AND c) have the skill to be able to teleport (or portal if you want to take a group of friends), AND d) have the reagents required to cast teleport or portal, OR d) buy the runestone or portal from a player that can do it (and hope it doesn't go to some nefarious place).
Answer to your question: Stop color coding item rarity. Make players read the item and it's description to figure out if it's valuable or not. ( I don't believe in trash items either...but that's another topic.)
The best time I ever had in an MMORPG was in Everquest 1 before they added the teleporter BS. Yes I had to run my paladin from Queynos to High Keep Hold for 30 minutes to get somewhere that allowed me to fight and lvlup, but it was a fun thrill and made the following hours of combat so much more meaningful lest I die, can't get a ress and have to do the whole journey through lethal Kithicor Forest again, but naked and helpless. It made classes with ress feel a lot more meaningful too, and classes with teleport spells. If you spend an hour a day gaming, it doesn't matter what it is you do so long as you are having fun. If you spend half your time on a thrilling journey that makes the entire hour a more memorable experience, it shouldn't matter that you weren't grinding 99% of your gametime.
For me it is not so much about player fast travel, but item fast travel. Sure player fast travel can be detrimental, but I always think in terms of cargo. If you can teleport _stuff_ from one corner of the earth to another, then all the prices will be same. No meta-trading, no caravans, no economic domination. I always like when games have different prices for stuff in different cities.
- Skills just popping up in your skill book or whatever after leveling up. I enjoyed learning skills for my character being it class quests, vendors to find, achievements to complete or (because you being completely without skills might be a bit too much) at least prioritising which skills you want to learn first because of limited resources (skillpoints, exp, money for trainer, etc...) - Crafting professions where you get everything you need in the most recent expansion content. I enjoyed picking up recipes from all over the world through quests, drops hidden vendors and the like. Also lower level craftables can be useful for high level characters as well, materials for craftables being spread through multiple zones of various levels, made revisiting old zones a nice low intensity trip while also being beneficial for the economy - Gear actually having somewhat unique effects. Yea it might be a hell to balance but it is just so boring to basically just have a "power" stat and maybe a few others or always having the same dozen of stats that are on every item. Gear is much more interesting when you try and are able to find gear that supports your play style/class fantasy instread of just looking which of the hand full of stat choices provides more power to my spec. - Pets that are just bonus DPS. I really enjoyed leveling my pets (yea no auto leveling if you want to have more than one companion), finding out what food they like, how to train then and what to train them so I could adapt to certain situations. Over all just the experiance that this is my characters companion or servant (guess thats the tamer view, necromancer or so might be a lot different but there is also room for similar content). I ll propably find a lot more but a lot of it boils down to commitment and also roleplay which I really miss in the current mmoRPGs.
Massive open worlds can be utilized to create content. Maybe a husbandry system that allows you to tame, breed, and train very fast ground/flying mounts with abilities you can learn/teach them to help traverse the world
New World devs need to watch this. They are killing the game and mm experience by giving whoever’s loudest anything and everything they want. People think the game is getting better, which it is in some ways, but the devs keep trying to appease all the boomers and snowflakes who would prefer to just open a game up to a “You Win” screen and then close it. They are abandoning the journey of the game to give people who complain about “fairness” the destination. As for Ashes, I hope they focus as much as they can into open world PvP.
When it comes to map exploration, GW2 does it like no other. I haven't played a single MMO where exploring the map is so important and engaging. It massively encourages you to wander, and rewards you very well for it. Dynamic events can block certain parts of the map, getting harder the more people show up and sometimes spawning rare monsters that temporarily unlock jumping puzzles, spawn unique gathering nodes, etc. Everything in GW2 feels seamless and organic and not like barriers the devs decided to implement just because. Why the fuck would you want the auction house to be more complicated to access? Getting rid of fast travel in a modern MMO it's just a lazy, artificial, and outdated way of extending the game time. Since there's no level scaling, after outleveling the monsters in the area, walking around will just feel like a pointless chore after the few first times. It's like skinning an animal in RDR2. It's fine at first, but after doing it for 100 times, those 30 seconds you wait start becoming extremely annoying; to the point where you loathe thinking about it. If you truly want to immerse yourself in the game's world and walk 15 minutes just to talk to an NPC and then come back, then don't use the fast travel stations. If you want to walk 10 minutes to a city just to see the buy price of an onion, then be my guest. I don't understand this archaic viewpoint where everything has to be manual, rough, and time-consuming. If you want players to participate in the world and explore it, encourage them, not force them. Having 4000 hours in a game where 50% of that was just walking to places is not rewarding. If you do, then I challenge you to walk to work everyday and tell me if your job is now more fulfilling because of it.
I have not played the new expansions of GW2, but GW1 did exploration and map design very well. It had hard map completion mechanics which required some fun exploits. Maps were design to have ways to bypass parts of the main story line, for those who like exploring. Maps also had cool ,unmarked, scenic areas like the floating castle and areas that added to the mystery of the world lore. There were even towns hidden around, I believe some quest may bring you them them. Yes I know GW1 is mostly a multiplier RPG than an MMO but it has precursors elements. Its sad how much GW2 ignored the lore direction of GW1, since GW1 lore was very rich in potential.
I haven't played gw2 in a few years. You had to go to a major city and interact with an auction house npc to list/withdraw gold. Is it changed to be able to do it from anywhere now?
I picked up GW2 and have around 60h in it. The leveling was pointless, I used boost from dragons when I 100% the first zone you start in (as a human, if that matters). Played a few days at max level, haven't loged in since.
I can tell you that the feeling danger and fear during traveling is one of the best things I have ever experienced on an mmo, this was when playing Tibia on a PvP server where falling through a hole without a rope to climb back up and being forced to explore and risk your loot is an amazing feeling
I think the problem with people complaining about convenience in games is a symptom of the game not being made to be challenging based on the technology at hand. Things are only worth it if you work for it . I think we need to add as much non payable convenience also know as quality of life but push the the content to complex play without just designing problem into it . Escape from tarcov and elven ring do this well in different ways . Eft makes you loss items so you can earn them back in the next skill fight or rating raid .
Preach it. We want it now and can't wait for it. We only punish ourselves for not waiting. It's like saving up for your first car or home and finally you and you alone are able to purchase it. Now imagine someone just handing it to you without the journey.
I got a question io dont know if its been shared or asked.. but will the combat be simular to eso,bdo where you can swing your weapon how u want.. or is it tab target.
Common items on lineage 2 are a good example of a piece of shit convenience feature, even if they had disadvantages they made equipment progression feel like crap. I am so surprised with all the traction that AOC is getting that pretty much nobody talks about lineage 2 being that the game where many of the ideas for the systems are coming from. I’d have expected all private server lineage 2 players to come out of hiding as a consequence of this game but on every video I watch it feels like they’re all dead. Everything I love about ashes of creation is exactly everything I loved about lineage 2 over the ~10 years I played it
Im hoping early group travel will be a thing with the animal husbandry system. Having a group of 4 friends help you get the materials to build a cart and strap all 4/5 horses to it to go faster then normal horse speed would be a good group activity and allow for a alternative to a lack of complete fast travel. It takes resources, multiple players, multiple proffessions and a little time, but it pays it back by saving time further down the road if only temporarily(item usage requiring repairs) and could be a resource storage option to bring farmed goods to a major hub to begin a caravan quest. Especially with their pvp post recently it could be a good boon to gatheres willing to sink in the time.
I would really like to see over arching quests/phases to servers in AoC. E.g. settling phase in which you go out, explore as much as possible and start to develop nodes. Then, after a certain % of the map has been settled, a defensive stage in which monster attack events become extremely common, then perhaps after the first city has been built and proper defenses constructed, a fighting back stage. I like the idea of a set goal for players to work towards that is more of a guide and suggestion to give the players at least some direction and something to work towards. It's not complete railroading or theme park based, it encourages exploration and interacting with the mechanics the world offers such as nodes, and team play to defend nodes n such. I kinda feel odd, at least as mainly a wow player rn, that every player is treated as unique and in their own story. I don't know how many times combined we've rescued baine from the maw, but it's definitely more than once. Yeah, it's great to see the story of the world and at least you don't get so much fomo, but it's rather immersion breaking and doesn't give the achievement any significance. Happy bed time story Narc. Hope my nerding out puts you to sleep as much as sitting in a lecture hall and listening to someone speak does for me. Feed the algorithm! More must know of Narc's disturbing Steven faced underwear!
I think the flightpoints/zeps/limited teleportation is fine. As long as transportation of any meaningful quantity of goods requires the use of trade routes and the fast travel locations are few and far enough in between, you'll still be able to properly see and experience the world without hindering your progress. I just hope the flying mounts will remain a niche thing.
Even though new world died very fast it brought a bunch of my friends into the mmorpg genre and I am 14. Classic wow is in almost every way a more enjoyable game even without the nostalgia. Gen z 's don't want microtransactions but it has sadly become the gaming industry standard. We want AoC to succeed and be a perfect mmo. Alot of people say Gen z have no time for mmos but me and my friends all got 70 in classic tbc and enjoyed it and did raiding very casually. TL;DR Gen z's have lots of time for mmos and actually enjoy them more then you would think
Like I said on Asmongold's channel, this is one thing I love about Star Citizen. It doesn't care about convenience, it cares about realism and immersion. Of course it also cares about accessibility, which is, one could argue, the moderate version of convenience. In other words CIG tries to find ways to make things not needlessly tedious to maintain a balance between realism/immersion and accessibility, and that's the best way to do it IMO. Too bad Star Citizen is barely a finished game yet, but I can't wait to see this approach in AoC too.
Grinding is a chore, and most people don't like chores, they do them because they need to. Chores aren't fun. The way the node system of AoC is set up killing mobs and doing quests becomes a goal, and once that goal is achieved there's a noticeable result, the advancement of the node. Or it could be that the quests done unlock a specific building for your node, or advance you along your path in a group you belong to, like thieve's guild or a religion, which gives benefits to your character, and for some advance their RP. All these are bonuses which build your character, home, or some other aspect of gameplay. ALL are dopamine hits, and the completion adds to that chad feeling of having achieved something after a lot of work, not to mention it can be something which makes you more advanced than others or helps you be more of an asset in a group, which are also dopamine hits. That's why these mechanics are so important for an MMO. Grinding to achieve something is exactly as Amongold described it, once done it's a relief, which means that the item you achieve carries a negative feeling for you so it feels worse to have it than it would if it was a goal completed instead of a chore finally done.
The middle ground is to "earn convenience". You don't get the fastest travel. the biggest bags, the boosted alts, the best crafting etc straight out of the gate. You earn them. In game. Often requiring tens of hours of gameplay to unlock certain features. WoW made the mistake of tying too many of these features into the economy. You can buy the biggest bags, buy heirlooms. Which is fine. But then they broke the economy.. On purpose. By allowing WoW tokens. Suddenly that convenience and ease of use was a quick trip to your wallet away. Then the hollow feeling many players get that the additions were not earned in game. It was devalued emotionally. I pick WoW as an example. But SWtoR actually did it worse by allowing subscribers to create very high level characters who can farm the best materials, take the best professions, quickly gather all the best fast travel points in a matter of a few hours. EvE ISK and PLEX sales also has gone some way to devaluing the game. Buy success rather than play for it. In the long run - it doesn't work
@@skoltr The final result for me will be this. You disable most fast travels mechanics but add an interesting path beetwen Point A and Point B? Fine by me. Going from point A to point B is just going forward for 5 minutes while watching a video in the other monitor? Then you are wasting my time with pointless riding. Give me something, an excuse to deviate from the path to do something that makes me forget about the 5 minutes walk. Maybe random events like FFXIV fates, that you only see when close (maybe you have to kill some wolfs and the reward is more pelt that you would get killing that amount of enemies normally), rare gathering nodes that also spawn randomly so you find them casually while passing by. I dont know, im not game designer. Also, similar to this topic (maybe they said this already, idk) add mounts that are not just a different skin, but that they are good for different reasons. Every mount gives the same ms but they have a bonus for each biome. Mounts good for plains, deserts, forests, oceans, lakes/rivers, rocky mountains (maybe higher jump distance so you can travel easily that kind of terrain), snow... Idk, something that gives you an incentive bigger than just collecting skins.
even in old school runescape when there is a valuable drop its just a different color text which will give you that satisfaction. This is also with the runelite add-on which lists the value on the grand exchange so you don't really need to know the exact value to know you just hit big.
When wow added group finder, the game was ruined for me and I switched to exclusively pvping. Then in cata, the dungeons were so hard that you just HAD to talk to your party and coordinate, so I loved dungeons again. They later made dungeons brain dead again so I switched to pvp, but then they started messing with the classes too much so I had nothing left but the quests. Now the game is so bad that even the quests retcon everything and suck. Like... literally nothing's left in that game. Everything is shit.
I HATED how they kept completely changing classes. I preferred how the original talent trees worked. If they wanted to keep tweaking the trees a little for balance, fine. The WORST was the addition of multispec. I didn't even like the idea that you could re-spec for gold--if you made a bad decision, live wth it. If you want to try a different spec, make a new character. A doctor doesn't get to decide at age 70 he'd rather have been a lawyer.
When classic WoW came out I started playing immediately. I missed the vanilla days when it took a long time to get to 60. In vanilla, all the mobs in the area leading up to a dungeon were elite. It took a good group HOURS to crawl through Deadmines, and sometimes a group of the proper level (i.e. NOT escorted by a max level) just couldn't beat Vancleef and gave up. In vanilla, I ran Shadowfang Keep A DOZEN TIMES to get the robes of Arugal because I knew they'd still be great gear up through early/mid thirties. But somehow in classic, the twenties didn't last long enough to run SFK that many times. The mobs around dungeons were all easy trash mobs, and most dungeons took about 30-45 minutes at most. Most dungeon gear wasn't worth getting at all because I blew through levels so fast. In vanilla, the Robes of Arugal were useful for about a week of my life--in classic they became obsolete the same night that I got them. Still, I enjoyed the nostalgia, so I went back for pre-Wrath and started leveling a new character. Oh look, you can "boost" a character--NO THANKS. In classic you already blow through levels too fast...and on top of that, for the pre-Wrath weeks they added the 50% xp bonus, making even more content pointless.
This is one of the reasons I love BDO. Lots of long term goals and things to do in the sandbox, and all those things progress your account in some way. One thing that really killed a lot of mmos for me was having my gear constantly made irrelevant every patch as it was replaced with the new patch's gear. Long-term progression is vital to MMOs.
I would like to see loot be in the form of a chest sometimes and bigger and more ornamental with the rarity of the item it contains like in Everquest 2
Pizzapepsi guy and the other steampunk guy are going to be forever ingrained in my brain when hearing of Ashes of Creation. How can one make so much (good) content about a game that's not even in beta yet xD
I'm a bitter old man who enjoys the pain and suffering of a good grind. Please give me a meaningful reason to go zombie mode and enjoy my favorite 90's/early 2000's trance music for hours on end. The key here being "meaningful" though. Classic WoW was my jam in terms of convenience and immersion, and I think it hit a decently good balance between world size and travel time. That 5 minute flight time or wait time at the zeppelin, was a good excuse to stretch the legs and make a copa coffee. More importantly, I didn't feel like a jackass for waiting that time, because it was on equal terms with everyone else. An endgame raider had to wait just as long as the level 9 newbie, which in turn also added to the sense of community, by having to wait side by side. On another note, what I hope is that AoC will maintain a proper value of ingame currency and resources (time), were the most efficient way to play is to actually play, and not go to work irl. They can do this by enforcing strong rules on RMT and botting, and not introducing a "AoC token" like WoW.
If you are going to watch just about 30 sec of this video, watch these: 11:18 till 11:55. I'm going to quote this when talking about alot of other games!
Ok I don't comment on videos often but your comment about being lazy and ain't got no time or being a bitter old man who likes the pain and suffering of a good grind got me, lol! I'm 44 but have been the latter since 2003 when I first played Final Fantasy 11 Online. Keep it up you Narc, lol!
Looks like I bought some cope convenience and skipped a permanent ban. Also imo i think convenience that is bought with real world money is a form of p2w, it may be very subtle but still p2w
I think the best option would be a toggle for looting types. Different people come from different games, us boomers with chromosome trouble can enable right-click 1 mob at a time, maybe some giga cheeto encrusted cookie crumb covered neckbeard wants only the most efficient method of looting so he gets aoe loot & tap f, some action combat people will want tap f for each individual piece, some others will just want auto-loot (maybe even with a filter type?).
Looting: You should have to manually click EACH mob, reason is anyone can loot kills, and this way some ninja can’t just one click loot everything from you. or am I wrong about anyone looting?
Patreon: www.patreon.com/CopiumInhaler
greetings fellow copium addicts! I am extremely tired ended up staying up for 30 hours to finished this one! Sorry if there's any dumb editting mistakes!
The Watch party is all set up and you can accept the invite in the discord using this link here: (hope to see you there!) discord.gg/muwNp8NhbB
@@CoStarkGG you're good now bro sorry i collapsed after uploading
It's not convenience equal bad, it's how you use it to challenge gamers. Forcing convenience is bad.
For looting visuals I always wanted my character to pull out a pouch and put something into it, and glow different colors depending on the rarity. Like you're actually putting something into a magic bag of holding.
this could get extremely repetitive though.
One of my most vivid memories of my MMO gaming history is playing Everquest 1 and getting lost in Kithicor Forest with my brother as we were trying to cross the zone by foot so we wouldn't have to pay another player to teleport us to the city we wanted to go to, because we were too poor.
In a time before easily accessible ingame maps, we had to ask other players and rely on landmarks to navigate Kithicor Forest, and due to our own issues (low Sense Direction skill, doh!) we lost our bearings and ended up hiding in a random building we found, thinking it safe enough to wait out the night and resume our journey during the day. You see, during the ingame night time period, Kithicor Forest turns from a relatively ho-hum low level zone into a slasher horror movie. Very high level mobs spawn and start roaming the zone, killing every low level player they see. We tried to hide thinking that being in a building would break line of sight and let us survive the night. We proceeded to shit our pants as a giant spider (who wouldn't agro by default!) waded through the wall and casually walked out the other side, disinterested in eating our delicious innards. We were spooked not just because being in Kithicor Forest at night is nerve wracking, not just because holy shit giant spiders fuck that, but also because we realized that the monsters of the game weren't constrained by the boundaries of buildings like player characters were. They could walk right through them, and more likely than not, we realized to our dawning horror, SEE through them.
Just as we fully internalized this exciting and fascinating discovery of the mechanics of the game, a horde of zombies and werewolves bounded through the wall and started painting the inside of the building with our guts. We ended up having to pay a Necromancer to summon our corpses to the zone edge for fear of getting lost and dying again. Such was life in the dangerous wilderness of Everquest 1!
I've always wanted to see ingame journeys capture that feeling of danger, uncertainty, and excitement like Everquest 1 did. It did so through lack of perfect information (you could get lost), lack of perfect safety (high level monsters to worry about), and mechanics that meaningfully punished death (you had to find your corpse or lose your stuff). The MMO genre needs to remember that without the risk of a bad time, you won't remember any good times.
Haha! I love the idea of zones changing difficulty etc. based on time of day or year. That is a pretty awesome story :-)
Ahhh Kithikor. The memories. I also remember the shouted Griffin warnings as it slowly flew over the Commonlands picking off the odd newbie here and there. When death penalties mean something, through loss or inconvenience, players respect the world and mobs. These days convenience removed all that and players ram raid blindly through 'content.'
Ingame maps+GPS style is TOO convenient for MMOs. The fact that you could get lost in a zone or had to ask a seasoned player for directions helped quite a lot with the social aspect and immersion of the game. It also meant you had to actually explore and learned the areas.
Games like Embers Adrift are coming out with this old concept, altho somewhat improved, but sadly it won't have PvP.
Looking forward to Ashes of Creation system getting it right ;)
to the perfect information point that time is gone. we have the internet now. unless you play at the beginning you're gonna have the perfect information available to you regardless. in regards to losing gear on death WoW didn't have that and it was pretty memorable. you need to meaningfully punish death but that doesn't mean you need to lose your stuff on death. Theirs more than one way to do something.
You would love mortal online 2
10/10 intro I’m glad your the face of the ashes community, not the face we asked for but the one we deserve.
Hardly the face of the community
@@christucker9566 hes carrying the game harder than the marketing team, if they even have one
We only want to save you time but it's going to cost you 💰🙄 really?
Jojo
Pure gold!
who's hyped for new livestream in 2 days?
me
Me!
Really hanging out for it, yeah
Me!
Your mom is
that damned mammoth....means the world that someone of your caliber noticed my stream...thank you. also keep up the good work
Nevermind you did already see it 😂😂 congrats for him noticing you 🥳🥳
@@Tilley53 I went to heart it but I realized I couldnt
@@HumanArtifact71 all good, you're use to seeing me commenting on your channel 😂 but since he was in your stream he probably watches your ashes of creation videos when you post them 🤔 so your competition is scouting you out 😱
What was the castle though?
@@RyveGenesis I dunno the mammoth killed me before I got to it. Lol I think it was a raid entrance
I’m really excited about the lack of transportation and convenience. I know the rp community is small but seeing stuff like this actually makes it feel like light rp is something everyone will be able to enjoy and will be rewarded for.
I hope that this mindset stays and is not something that will change. I’m really excited to not only explore the environment but communities as well. I really hope meeting and conversing with other players will be a key asset with the lack of convenience.
Compound that with the fact that boats will be player-run just opens further opportunities for player interaction, RP, and entire businesses based on transporting other players, completely agree with ya on this.
Lol this game will fail if it’s just a walking stimulator
@@meurumtrain4747 RP is a big part of MMOs 🤔 final fantasy and wow live off RPers 😂 so idk what you are talking about
ashes of creation is essentially being designed ofr those who atleasy enjoy abit of mild RP. I can only imagine how fast the tryhards will ruin the game for themselves
@@Tilley53 you honestly believe that? There’s forms of lore that majority won’t enjoy and that’s walking. At least it seems you’ll get a mount quickly
One of the most memorable moments in MMOs for me where back in WoW when you - as a nightelf druid - had to travel to the eastern kngdoms in order to get your water travel form. Unless you asked a mage to create a portal for you, you had to undertake a long journey through zones way above your current level and it took time. You got through zones you haven't yet explored and because the creatures on the way were dangerous, you probably died on the way. After I had achieved this, I helped some others to make this journey. Heck, we even walked instead of running and had a nice chat.
This was an experience that made me avoid fast travel options as long as I didn't make my friends waiting - even in other games, like in GW2 where I avoided using the waypoints as much as possible during my initial playthrough. The important thing is, to make the travel interesting and worthwile. Which works well in GW2 due to all the dynamic events and interesting spots in the environment. I think it is sad that quite some players miss all this due to the massive use of waypoints and mounts.
I can't nail it down why, but when I do the traveling in BDO I don't get the same feeling most of the time. In FF14 on the other hand I can clearly say, that I rarely see something in the open world that seems interesting enough to move away from the path the MSQ or maybe the sidequests dictate. Addtitionally, most of the time it is empty.
I wouldn't label convenience as pay to win, but it still has its drawbacks. Same as cosmetics. But sub fee games also have a tendency to implement enough time gating, to keep you subscribed instead of implementing fun things to do that keep you interested. You just have to choose your poison here, and I don't see any system that guarantees founding for the ongoing development for a game that doesn't have drawbacks and can not be exploited by either side.
man I just didn't get that feeling in GW2 or BDO. most of the side stuff wasn't that interesting to me. for GW2 90% of the side stuff I did was for exp. the 10% i did was cool. but it was just the platforming puzzles. that stuff was cool. but most was just exp.
@@weirdo3116 I have watched some people having this kind of feeling when it comes to map completion and I think the reason you don't get to enjoy it that much is within the mindset: When you are there to tick of all the boxes for map completion and gain the xp, you don't care much about what you actually get to see there. This is especially true when the POI / HP you wanted to get to is locked behind a dynamic event. This event then just feels annoying. If you, on the other hand, just happen to be in the area and follow such an event to an area usually not accessible it feels a lot different.
The title made me think of a discussion I had on thr Ashes discord. There was this guy saying he wanted a convenience feature (yes, he used the word) that would allow him to see the prices at every auction house.
After some pushback he reduced that to one that would allow a guild to see the prices at any auction house a guildmage had visited recently.
Thing is - checking auction house prices and finding those sweet deal margins *is the game* for economic players. He basically wanted to automate away the very thing that drives players who play the market.
All on the name of 'convenience'
Crafting being RNG as apposed to being skill based is one "convenience" system that I hate. Spam crafting bulk items to get that BIS roll or as close as possible instead of allowing players to use time, patience and skill to create the perfect item is horse shit and leads to the richest players getting richer as they can afford the mats to spam bulk quantities, while the poors struggle to get a half decent roll.
as someone who always uses a game controller in mmos, whenever possible, hell no i do not want some requirement to use a mouse to click on a loot. it is really annoying to move a cursor with a controller stick.
God this is so insanely high quality, keep it up Narc, these videos are amazing!
Time wasting of the sake of time wasting is not content, and I'm not talking about traveling itself, I'm talking about this mentality that you need to waste time for everything to get to the fun parts of the game.
If traveling in ashes is NOT fun, then it will be a waste of time, so it's on them to make it fun if they don't want fast travel.
Right. You can still go to the bathroom regardless of whether you're stuck on a flight path or you get up once you click teleport. Traveling is fun and immersive when you are newly discovering an area. After that, it's tedious. He talks of giving the player agency but advocates for the game requiring the player to spend time on aspects that aren't actually fun.
I used to think that I was a side quester player in MMOs but I just realised that I was doing things to go out and explore more. I love finding little hidden nooks and crannies with some treasure or Easter egg.
Gw2 is pretty good with that imo. Follow an event chain and they can take you to pretty little places, sometimes even make them accessible in the first place.
That sounds nice, so long it is a choice. If exploration is forced upon the player, then it becomes monotonous grind and will force some to resort to bots.
If the game's focus is adventure, then that's a different arguement. But Ashes isn't an adventure RPG, it's an MMO RPG. Raids, bosses, PvP, dungeons. And if I have to spend half an hour to get to my content of interest, then you've lost my interest.
I fell in love with MMORPG, I know exactly the exact point in time. I fell in love, the second... I ran on Everquest, from Freeport to Qeynos, spend I think over 10 hours.... many deaths... just to get to Qeynos. The zone into Qeynos... the feel of touch down. is the greatest feeling in the world. That was my first hook on MMORPG.
I'm always shocked at the amount of content and the quality of content that you pump out for a game that hasn't even been released yet! Can't wait to watch when the game is released!
Very, very valid points on the psychology of gameplay and why we actually enjoy MMO's. Dopamine bombardment is exhausting and Intrepid bringing back the Everquest "slower", adventure-feel will hopefully be a relief. Very excited for a game to actually almost force exploration and socialize.
Everything inventory/looting related felt really good in Classic WoW. If Ashes does something very similar, but with a bit more QoL features, I think it's going to be a positive experience.
And vanilla WoW had unique items even before max level. Around Wotlk and after that it just became the "leveling gear" with the same appearance and same boring stats.
yeah the only thing I think would really improve it is aoe loot. single target loot worked fine in classic because you didnt really kill a ton of things at once but based on the footage we have seen of ashes that wont be the case
@@AndrewIHanna just give me the GW2 looting method and we’re fine
@@AndrewIHanna I dunno, Blizzard mage leveling really made you run around to loot everything though most should be dying in the same location. Depending on your way of grinding/leveling AOE loot was a thing. E.g. in a group pulling mobs onto a tank etc. or AOE farming.
I like the AOE loot, but more than that I would not like perse. Then you have game like ESO with bottomless ingredient bags which were pretty much P2W, I don't want this.
@@skoltr i dont know what perse is. Also, I wasnt saying the lack of aoe loot was an upside for classic, just that for the majority of players the lack of it wasn't impactful frequently
The real convenience that destroyed MMO communities was player match making system design. This is the biggest offender in turning multiplayer games into single player experiences. Who needs friends or communication skills when you can just queue up with 4 other random bots like you're playing a moba, then ditch them after you wipe to the first boss because it's faster to queue again hoping the next set of bots can carry you through the mechanics instead of expending that initial effort to learn them.
*Back in my day* you had to advertise for your groups, players had to create social hubs in the world nearby the content they wanted to do. Then you had to beg a warlock in Barrens chat to please help summon your idiot friend who decided to roll Troll from the other side of the world, all just to enter the first dungeon. People wanted to stick around to do the fights right because god forbid they'd have to go through the time and effort required to form a group themselves.
I love the idea that Ashes is focused on their open world and sincerely hope that the instanced content will be somewhat measured in their use of player matchmaking.
A barrier to doing content is toxic to a game were making that content accessible but hard to achieve is different. Nothing upsets people more than being left out. Why would anyone create a game spending all that time effort and money to make end game content where 95-99% of the players would never see or experience it? I would rather have that content be a beast of a challenge then barred from trying it. Lost Ark has this issue. Elder Ring was a great example of a game where you could access everything but wining the fight was a completely different story. Therefore, having different challenge levels and mechanics in Ashes of Creation Raids is huge. Not only does it open the content to a lot more players, but it also rewards those who can drive that end game to the hardest levels to be the best of the best. Dynamic scaling is huge when you add harder mechanics to increase challenge and reward. Face rolling every mob is fun but gets mind numbingly boring after you do it over and over and over every week. Raiding becomes a job not fun. AS for traveling, New World was a great example of what not to do. Take 10-20 minutes running from point A to point B to gather or kill 5 things that take 1 min then run back. GW2 does it right with all the random events that pop up all over the place so exploring is fun. Ashes seems to be stating that you will have to plan ahead if you want to do spacific world bosses and content. You cannot just port in when the boss timer is about to start like in Lost Ark or GW2. Honestly I would rather have freedom of movement via mounts and convinionce add to lession repetitive boring tasks than what New World did. I agree with Ashes that not allowing you to instantly port from one cotenent to the next to take on all spawning World boses in a clock work fasshion is a good thing. I agree that a sub bassed monization of the game is key. Lost Ark is pay to win or pay to see content or have to grind 24/7 with multiple accounts feeding your main. GW2 has fast travel but has so much content going on that you cannot be everywhere at once so you still have to plan out what you want to do. Good topic Narc, it is going to be interesting to see how this evloves in Ashes.
i actually love idea of no teleports..as an example i can say...i remember 90% of old wow zones...now i dont know even 10%..because most of the time i dont leave city..and even if i do..its "num lock" and run to where arrow shows "quest objective"...and i would love them to make quest and side quest stories somehow easy to get into..again based on wow..."quest window" in wow makes me eyes hurt just by looking at it...i tried to follow story starting from blood elf zone..i was dying by the time i left starting zone..and in other type of games i LOVE LORE
I used to know all the WoW zones like the back of my hand. By the end of Wrath it seemed like half the playerbase had never explored more than a little bit. Like you said, most never leave the city except to teleport to the dungeon and back. Many didn't even know how to find the dungeons since had only ever gotten there by being teleported. I thought they should do away with all teleportation except hearthstones, warlock summon and mage portals. They should also go back to hearth cooldown of 60 minutes.
Yikes
And you love the game eating your time away. You know what’s funny, is you think the nostalgia of one of the orig big MMOs meant that it’s systems were good. Everything felt good, wasting your time running around exploring felt good. It rarely does now. MMORPGs aren’t new anymore .
@@Yor_gamma_ix_bae exactly lmao. People see these MMOs with massive nostalgic goggles. They think it's the developer's fault for not providing them with those feelings 15 years later when in reality it was just them being exposed to this new big thing for the first time. Old school MMOs are dead because many of their unique elements and mechanics are not a novelty anymore and are seen as products of their time. Few escape this.
If you think convenience ruins a game, then avoid the conveniency. Do everything manual if you truly think it will enrich your experience.
@@Yor_gamma_ix_bae Lmao but I still love exploring? Just because you don't like exploring doesn't mean other people don't. What a cringe line of reasoning. "No one actually enjoys vanilla/tbc/wrath its all nostalgia!" isn't an argument its just you projecting.
Just keep in mind that not all convience is created equal. A couple systems I would love to see in Ashes is a separate bag thst is double or higher in size for harvesters. And secondly I would like to see a "Who's Online" panel in chat similar to that in GW2 without any group making ability. It is just a way to see who is online to send a message to.
Class based loot in the Diablo franchise. Never getting gear for a different spec or class was initially appealing, but then I realized that I LIKED being able to grind gear for other characters on my main, and there would be times I would find something so amazing it would give me an incentive to try a different class.
Loved the video Narc.
A convenience thing that I kind of like is the ability to be summoned to a dungeon entrance. It's nice not having to wait 20 minutes for someone to run to the dungeon and I don't think it detracts from other parts of the game as you can still be killed at the stone while summoning.
another one is, instead of having a pure matchmaking system for dungeons and raids, you can have the same system that both Guild Wars 2, and to some extent, FF14 uses for finding parties, a Party finder where you advertise your group with a short description with some specific criteria if needed
What if...Summoning stones requires some kind of reagent? (like runes of portals in classic WoW) It would also be a nice lore-"Flavour" item
@@retromastery7010 They explicitly said no group finder.
Not sure about the active looting. It was obnoxious to have to run around to every corpse in BDO and loot it - having the pets was critical (the pets being a P2W and especially the hamster or woodchuck or whatever it was that was essentially a requirement to be a top gatherer notwithstanding) because looting was otherwise slow and unfun.
We need a Dev discussion about Looting!
I'm hopeful that family TP wont be busted.
Another thing that makes traveling interesting is fear. If you play rust on a busy server, travelling from base to a monument, or even chopping down trees and mining nodes becomes thrilling. Because always have to be on guard and pay attention.
that hardly matters if you have pvp mode turned off tho. a big complaint about black desert was lack of fast travel. spending 20 minutes traveling from one side of the map to the other is very tedious and not fun. and probably leads to a lot of people going afk because they are playing another game or anything that has their time occupied by something more engaging. if these things aren't broken then don't fix them. just give good reward for people doing these other things rather than forcing them on players and giving no choice.
@@vincentdarkrosrayne I guess that’s my point. Travel is only interesting or “fun” if you need to pay attention or you die.
Unlike Rust though, I hope you have a little more control over whether you die or not. Getting headshot by an assault rifle 100m away right after a tree falls down doesn’t really give you a way to stop it.
@@MATCHLESS789 i think you missed my point. i'm saying pvp always being turned on and there being no fast travel would result in a lot of people getting killed while they afk to reach their destination. that's why i say, either toggle pvp or keep it on for certain instances, or allow fast travel. the world is WAY too big to travel on foot AND watch your back while doing it.
I remember how exciting it was to level up and i would literally stay up all night just to reach the next level, i dont feel that excitement any more
I definitely lean more toward the boomer mindset. I love retail WoW for what it is; speedrunning to endgame, gearing up and parsing. But the best times I've had in MMOs is from games in which I never touched endgame. Whether it was the world, quests or professions; the grind kept me compelled.
Lineage 2, priston tale, silk road, even eso
I am going to half way split with you on this topic. Yes I agree that the whole blink and you are at the next place doing the next thing stuff is CRAP! But also see how a transport system could be built into the game for more immersion, by transport I am NOT meaning a spell but a "public transport" style. Node 3's you can buy a ticket for a carriage ride at something like +50% of run speed and you get to just look around, node 4 port cities a nice boat ride (better be ready to defend yourself!). Between the node 5's a blimp Etc. and in order to EARN the rights to buy those tickets you need city reputation on BOTH sides earned by doing work, quests, donations to the civic authority or whatever for points or it costs the same as that snickers bar on your prison pillow costs "in the end"....those points slowly drain away if you ignore them, or could possibly get wiped out if you do not defend your city. Whats that? Another way for players to take a vested interest in the game world AND PVP as well as earn the privilege of sitting there watching out the window? How many other systems can we link into this? City quests for materials to build the system? That just added in all 3 levels of the crafting professions.
For me personally, the biggest change in "convenience" has always been the decline in difficulty. Watered down, so everybody can complete stuff. I HATE it. I need a challenge. Something that stares at me, making me think "shit, I need a buncha great players to get it down". Most content is fucking easy mode and it pisses me off. I want to be able to outshine others by putting in the effort to learn encounters, learning builds and playstyles. Not stacking in a group, facerolling until healthbar hit 0
No fast travel only truly feels "right" when you have a world worth traversing, if the world exploration/traversal sucks, this is usually when Fast Travels becomes a necessity, and with how big that open world is gonna be... I dunno if it's gonna fly chief, the only MMO to my knowledge who DID manage to get away with next to no fast travel is Black Desert, but that game just have shit everywhere.
I love FF14, but if that game had no fast travel, it would be a damn pain in the ass because its zones simply aren't especially "Fun" to traverse, they are very much textbook MMORPG zones that serves a very limited purpose.
On the other hand, you have Guild Wars 2, a game with TONS of fast travels everywhere but with also TONS of reasons to simply explore the zones and "complete" them, which is why it just feels right to just... not fast travel in that game, because there is ALWAYS PoV that needs to be completed or just dynamic events popping out constantly
GW2 imo does it best because you have options. If you wanna fast travel, you have plenty of choice. If you wanna adventure there, you'll find plenty of things to do on the way.
Because of the way they built mounts unless im traveling to literal continents away ill just hop on raptor or my gryphon/drake and run in the direction i want. If it wasnt limited to zones with load screens and managed to be 1 big world i wouldnt even have noticed it was divided up.
I recently decided to completely abandon any TH-cam guides etc. to reclaim that feeling of discovery and it works wonders. I would love to see a lack of a fully uncovered minimap and especially the "arrow chasing simulation". I hate how mundane questing becomes, when it's just "Run from point A to B to C marked on the minimap and click on the highlighted NPC. I loved the need to read the description of where I need to go, or with whom I need to speak in the journal and navigate based on those (Morrowind). "Leave the city through the northern gate and follow the road till you cross the stream. Look for the strange looking tree"
Something that I haven't actually seen anywhere and it really spoils immersion for me are the names floating above player and NPC heads. You shouldn't know more than a "Drunkard", "Cross-eyed girl" unless you speak to NPCs or add a tag to the player to resemble you recognizing them. It could also bring some new mechanics as going into enemy/ other faction territory unnoticed/ masked or changing your appearance to reset those tags for others.
Man, I was missing those intros, always so entertaining
I think runescape and ff14 got fast travel right.
There's a few waypoints on every map in ff14 that are close enough to things to get you around and the maps are a few minutes to travel across and entering new areas to see how they're affected by the story is cool!
Runescape has set teleports and as you progress the game and level you will unlock more teleports through quests and items you craft as well as magical spells. The world is massive and you will do PLENTY of running even with teleports while shortening the things that matter!
I'm on board for reducing convinience but showing gw2 while talking about games where you need to use irl money to get unlocks. Yes, you have to pay with gems, but as long as you have one expasion you can change in game gold for gems
You always make me laugh Narc - Love the vids and can't wait to see what we get on Friday from the livestream :)
just wanna say how much I enjoy your intros now, every single one is better than the last
Excellent! I was missing the intro's on the past few videos
7:00 so, do you mean that AoC should be a Strand Type Game?
I think something new mmo have really whatered down is team content and interactions:
I recent mmo most of the pve content can be done joining a group automatically and without need of talking with your group (because things are too easy and straight forward).
Also, they simplified classes so now they not as different between each other.
I wholly agree with Narc’s idea regarding: “manual” mouse-interaction looting. It should be a willful decision to pick up resources & items.
Furthermore, we should also visually see the items we are about to select. This might bear further weight when looting other player’s bodies; as you may wish to select one type of resource (high-value) over other common resources.
I'm the kind of person who finds relaxation in spending hours farming mobs for hide/leather. But I feel like now a days, there is soo MANY mobs, and there is usually a limited challenge to them.
So just kill, skin, look up, kill, skin... I think it would feel much better if the mobs were less plentiful, but could take a bit more of a beating and took a bit longer to harvest, but in return yielded much more resources/loot/experience.
High mob density also makes the world feel small.
The convenience of teleporting into dungeons killed WoW for me. The world ceased to be a real place.
The way I see it, it reminds me of when I would play a single player game and then turn on cheat codes, after that the game gets boring super quick and going back to normal is ruined. But at the same time if its too much of a chore that feels meaningless and unsatisfying then it will also be really bad. If there is something that requires more effort or time then it should be satisfying and enjoyable, otherwise make it fast and painless.
Convenience didn't ruin MMOs. It is merely a symptom of the actual ruination of MMOs. Profitability ruined them. When WoW hit and had a million users on day one in 2004, that was the beginning of the downward slide. Up until that point MMOs were trying new things. As soon as WoW shown to be a massively profitable venture, the corporate overlords took notice and had to jump on that train. A market was discovered that was completely overlooked prior to 2004. After the holiday season of 2004 when all the corpos came back to the office at the beginning of 2005 all kinds of discussions started happening. How can we get in on this? There's millions to be made!
Convenience is just a means to an end. Can't make things too hard as that won't have wide enough appeal to meet our Q1-4 projections. So here we are with the current state of MMOs. Let's hope AoC can bring us back to pre-2004 again. 👍
His point about the sub fee was spot-on.
A game I really looked forward to was swtor. When it released, it was NOTHING like it was described in the teasers and dev interviews. It was in many respects a completely generic, cookie-cutter mmo with a Star Wars skin, yet still I enjoyed it a lot. I liked the storyline, and I really enjoyed doing instances. Then it went "free" to play, with all that entails, and turned into a complete garbage game.
Keep the sub fee. NEVER go p2w.
My all time favourite MMO game, back when I started playing it, had no mini-map, no world map, no quests, no tutorial, no inherent infrastructure. When you die, you drop (virtually) everything you had on you. (there are no grave markers). It took several years, (yes IRL years, not game years) for the first player to get to 100 in a skill.
What does one do, in such a game, I hear you ask (or maybe it is just 'the voices' coming back) well, you can do anything you want to do, for the most part. Some people have built their own islands, and they built magnificent palaces on said islands. some people have hollowed out mountains, and built a fortress inside. For my part, I always enjoyed collecting rare and endangered animals, and building them a safe home, where people can come and see them, if they want to.
There is no fast travel (beyond breeding a (slightly) faster mount), they did add a system that allows you to select what server (island) you want to travel (sail) to, when you leave your current map, however that was as much a result of the number of servers (islands) getting to the point that it was motivating players to not inhabit the areas that were multiple maps away from the central (oldest) areas.
The game has been running for well over a decade, and not to long ago they added special new skills that allow you to search for the remnants of player made settlements that were long since abandoned, and reclaimed by the forests.
Obviously, if you want the newest, best, and shiniest graphics, and effects you won't find them in a game this old. On the flip side, you can, and many do, run multiple clients at the same time, as this can be useful in many regards. (Sometimes you need to take the smooth with the rough, as they say.)
There is no fast travel, and any travel is inherently dangerous. However there is almost always another player (or three) who will help you with any questions or problems you may encounter.
It is the game that I compare all other MMOs to, and they always fall short. I have called it 'the sandiest sand box, that ever boxed sand', and that is very much an accurate way of describing it. (Now that I think of it, you could, literally, box sand in the game, as sand is a resource, and storage boxes are indeed a thing. lol)
There is lots of (what many people seem to call ) grind in the game, however to me, the (so called) grind, IS the game. Hunting monsters, exploring, locating, collecting, and then transporting rare resources (marble, gold, silver, etc) then using them to plan a build a temple to one of the in-game gods, so that priests and followers can have a place to gather, study, and train. That IS the game. A few times I have spent a few weeks building a new road, or fixing (improving) an old one, so that people can travel more quickly (and hence more safely). Helping a new player find a homestead, and making sure they have the seeds they need to start farming so they can feed themselves, and showing them the location of the resources they will need to build and expand their homes.
Having the freedom to do anything, is, to me anyway, worth playing a game that has older graphics.
Back doing one of my degrees, I read a study that was done, to determine what common trait/habit did the people with the closest knit, most enduring relationships have in common. Quite unexpectedly, the activity on the top of the list, as camping. They went on to discover that what build/creates and strengthens those bonds, is experiencing shared 'hardships/adversity', the more things that go wrong, the more problems you encounter/overcome the better that relationship becomes. In terms of MMOs, the 'plague of convenience' has stolen that away from the players, so they don't (can't) connect as well with the game itself, or each other.
Pressure makes diamonds, hardship and adversity makes memories, and also friends.
I think this is my favorite intro of all your videos! You GIGACHAD
Regarding "fast travel" I would like them to go back to the original Granddaddy of MMORPGs, Ultima Online, and use runestones, where In order to "fast travel" you need to...
a) have been there before AND
b) put a location print on a runestone, AND
c) have the skill to be able to teleport (or portal if you want to take a group of friends), AND
d) have the reagents required to cast teleport or portal, OR
d) buy the runestone or portal from a player that can do it (and hope it doesn't go to some nefarious place).
Answer to your question: Stop color coding item rarity. Make players read the item and it's description to figure out if it's valuable or not. ( I don't believe in trash items either...but that's another topic.)
"Its not pay to win, its pay for convenience!"
-Cried the clown 🤡
The best time I ever had in an MMORPG was in Everquest 1 before they added the teleporter BS.
Yes I had to run my paladin from Queynos to High Keep Hold for 30 minutes to get somewhere that allowed me to fight and lvlup, but it was a fun thrill and made the following hours of combat so much more meaningful lest I die, can't get a ress and have to do the whole journey through lethal Kithicor Forest again, but naked and helpless. It made classes with ress feel a lot more meaningful too, and classes with teleport spells.
If you spend an hour a day gaming, it doesn't matter what it is you do so long as you are having fun. If you spend half your time on a thrilling journey that makes the entire hour a more memorable experience, it shouldn't matter that you weren't grinding 99% of your gametime.
For me it is not so much about player fast travel, but item fast travel. Sure player fast travel can be detrimental, but I always think in terms of cargo.
If you can teleport _stuff_ from one corner of the earth to another, then all the prices will be same. No meta-trading, no caravans, no economic domination.
I always like when games have different prices for stuff in different cities.
- Skills just popping up in your skill book or whatever after leveling up. I enjoyed learning skills for my character being it class quests, vendors to find, achievements to complete or (because you being completely without skills might be a bit too much) at least prioritising which skills you want to learn first because of limited resources (skillpoints, exp, money for trainer, etc...)
- Crafting professions where you get everything you need in the most recent expansion content. I enjoyed picking up recipes from all over the world through quests, drops hidden vendors and the like. Also lower level craftables can be useful for high level characters as well, materials for craftables being spread through multiple zones of various levels, made revisiting old zones a nice low intensity trip while also being beneficial for the economy
- Gear actually having somewhat unique effects. Yea it might be a hell to balance but it is just so boring to basically just have a "power" stat and maybe a few others or always having the same dozen of stats that are on every item. Gear is much more interesting when you try and are able to find gear that supports your play style/class fantasy instread of just looking which of the hand full of stat choices provides more power to my spec.
- Pets that are just bonus DPS. I really enjoyed leveling my pets (yea no auto leveling if you want to have more than one companion), finding out what food they like, how to train then and what to train them so I could adapt to certain situations. Over all just the experiance that this is my characters companion or servant (guess thats the tamer view, necromancer or so might be a lot different but there is also room for similar content).
I ll propably find a lot more but a lot of it boils down to commitment and also roleplay which I really miss in the current mmoRPGs.
Some people can even boost to basically skip an entire game without understanding it. 🤨
Makes you wonder why these people bother to play at all. 😗
that one i can agree with.
Massive open worlds can be utilized to create content. Maybe a husbandry system that allows you to tame, breed, and train very fast ground/flying mounts with abilities you can learn/teach them to help traverse the world
I think top speed mounts will be the primary money maker for animal tamers / animal husbandry. Really excited to see how that system is utilized.
Hey naaaarc what do you do when Ashes of creation fails?
Wow king you hit 40k super fast nice job! What threshold will be your next milestone event, like at 30k?
New World devs need to watch this. They are killing the game and mm experience by giving whoever’s loudest anything and everything they want. People think the game is getting better, which it is in some ways, but the devs keep trying to appease all the boomers and snowflakes who would prefer to just open a game up to a “You Win” screen and then close it. They are abandoning the journey of the game to give people who complain about “fairness” the destination. As for Ashes, I hope they focus as much as they can into open world PvP.
i can smell those old pizza boxes from across the world
When it comes to map exploration, GW2 does it like no other. I haven't played a single MMO where exploring the map is so important and engaging. It massively encourages you to wander, and rewards you very well for it. Dynamic events can block certain parts of the map, getting harder the more people show up and sometimes spawning rare monsters that temporarily unlock jumping puzzles, spawn unique gathering nodes, etc. Everything in GW2 feels seamless and organic and not like barriers the devs decided to implement just because. Why the fuck would you want the auction house to be more complicated to access?
Getting rid of fast travel in a modern MMO it's just a lazy, artificial, and outdated way of extending the game time. Since there's no level scaling, after outleveling the monsters in the area, walking around will just feel like a pointless chore after the few first times. It's like skinning an animal in RDR2. It's fine at first, but after doing it for 100 times, those 30 seconds you wait start becoming extremely annoying; to the point where you loathe thinking about it.
If you truly want to immerse yourself in the game's world and walk 15 minutes just to talk to an NPC and then come back, then don't use the fast travel stations. If you want to walk 10 minutes to a city just to see the buy price of an onion, then be my guest. I don't understand this archaic viewpoint where everything has to be manual, rough, and time-consuming. If you want players to participate in the world and explore it, encourage them, not force them.
Having 4000 hours in a game where 50% of that was just walking to places is not rewarding. If you do, then I challenge you to walk to work everyday and tell me if your job is now more fulfilling because of it.
I have not played the new expansions of GW2, but GW1 did exploration and map design very well. It had hard map completion mechanics which required some fun exploits. Maps were design to have ways to bypass parts of the main story line, for those who like exploring. Maps also had cool ,unmarked, scenic areas like the floating castle and areas that added to the mystery of the world lore. There were even towns hidden around, I believe some quest may bring you them them. Yes I know GW1 is mostly a multiplier RPG than an MMO but it has precursors elements. Its sad how much GW2 ignored the lore direction of GW1, since GW1 lore was very rich in potential.
I haven't played gw2 in a few years. You had to go to a major city and interact with an auction house npc to list/withdraw gold. Is it changed to be able to do it from anywhere now?
@@lakewood2535 you can list and buy items anywhere. You still have to go there to withdraw stuff tho.
I picked up GW2 and have around 60h in it. The leveling was pointless, I used boost from dragons when I 100% the first zone you start in (as a human, if that matters). Played a few days at max level, haven't loged in since.
I can tell you that the feeling danger and fear during traveling is one of the best things I have ever experienced on an mmo, this was when playing Tibia on a PvP server where falling through a hole without a rope to climb back up and being forced to explore and risk your loot is an amazing feeling
I think the problem with people complaining about convenience in games is a symptom of the game not being made to be challenging based on the technology at hand. Things are only worth it if you work for it . I think we need to add as much non payable convenience also know as quality of life but push the the content to complex play without just designing problem into it . Escape from tarcov and elven ring do this well in different ways . Eft makes you loss items so you can earn them back in the next skill fight or rating raid .
Preach it. We want it now and can't wait for it. We only punish ourselves for not waiting. It's like saving up for your first car or home and finally you and you alone are able to purchase it. Now imagine someone just handing it to you without the journey.
I totally agree about the physically clicking on items. Having grown up playing the Diablo series, I am very used to this and prefer it.
I got a question io dont know if its been shared or asked.. but will the combat be simular to eso,bdo where you can swing your weapon how u want.. or is it tab target.
Woohoo another fun intro! Love it and appreciate your video(s). Keep up the great content.
Common items on lineage 2 are a good example of a piece of shit convenience feature, even if they had disadvantages they made equipment progression feel like crap.
I am so surprised with all the traction that AOC is getting that pretty much nobody talks about lineage 2 being that the game where many of the ideas for the systems are coming from. I’d have expected all private server lineage 2 players to come out of hiding as a consequence of this game but on every video I watch it feels like they’re all dead. Everything I love about ashes of creation is exactly everything I loved about lineage 2 over the ~10 years I played it
Im hoping early group travel will be a thing with the animal husbandry system. Having a group of 4 friends help you get the materials to build a cart and strap all 4/5 horses to it to go faster then normal horse speed would be a good group activity and allow for a alternative to a lack of complete fast travel. It takes resources, multiple players, multiple proffessions and a little time, but it pays it back by saving time further down the road if only temporarily(item usage requiring repairs) and could be a resource storage option to bring farmed goods to a major hub to begin a caravan quest. Especially with their pvp post recently it could be a good boon to gatheres willing to sink in the time.
I would really like to see over arching quests/phases to servers in AoC. E.g. settling phase in which you go out, explore as much as possible and start to develop nodes. Then, after a certain % of the map has been settled, a defensive stage in which monster attack events become extremely common, then perhaps after the first city has been built and proper defenses constructed, a fighting back stage. I like the idea of a set goal for players to work towards that is more of a guide and suggestion to give the players at least some direction and something to work towards. It's not complete railroading or theme park based, it encourages exploration and interacting with the mechanics the world offers such as nodes, and team play to defend nodes n such.
I kinda feel odd, at least as mainly a wow player rn, that every player is treated as unique and in their own story. I don't know how many times combined we've rescued baine from the maw, but it's definitely more than once. Yeah, it's great to see the story of the world and at least you don't get so much fomo, but it's rather immersion breaking and doesn't give the achievement any significance.
Happy bed time story Narc. Hope my nerding out puts you to sleep as much as sitting in a lecture hall and listening to someone speak does for me.
Feed the algorithm! More must know of Narc's disturbing Steven faced underwear!
I think the flightpoints/zeps/limited teleportation is fine. As long as transportation of any meaningful quantity of goods requires the use of trade routes and the fast travel locations are few and far enough in between, you'll still be able to properly see and experience the world without hindering your progress. I just hope the flying mounts will remain a niche thing.
Could we PLEASE have a timestamp so we can skip the intro and cut to the chase? Ty
Such a great channel and a surprising amount of wisdom coming from one so young.
It's hard to believe he's only 19 with this quality content. I wonder how far he'll be in a few years.
@@Tryolz loool I thought he was 30+
All those pizzas and soft drinks ain't making any good.
Even though new world died very fast it brought a bunch of my friends into the mmorpg genre and I am 14. Classic wow is in almost every way a more enjoyable game even without the nostalgia. Gen z 's don't want microtransactions but it has sadly become the gaming industry standard. We want AoC to succeed and be a perfect mmo. Alot of people say Gen z have no time for mmos but me and my friends all got 70 in classic tbc and enjoyed it and did raiding very casually. TL;DR Gen z's have lots of time for mmos and actually enjoy them more then you would think
dont do level skips, likw gw2 autoleveling seems silly.
Like I said on Asmongold's channel, this is one thing I love about Star Citizen. It doesn't care about convenience, it cares about realism and immersion.
Of course it also cares about accessibility, which is, one could argue, the moderate version of convenience. In other words CIG tries to find ways to make things not needlessly tedious to maintain a balance between realism/immersion and accessibility, and that's the best way to do it IMO.
Too bad Star Citizen is barely a finished game yet, but I can't wait to see this approach in AoC too.
Grinding is a chore, and most people don't like chores, they do them because they need to. Chores aren't fun. The way the node system of AoC is set up killing mobs and doing quests becomes a goal, and once that goal is achieved there's a noticeable result, the advancement of the node. Or it could be that the quests done unlock a specific building for your node, or advance you along your path in a group you belong to, like thieve's guild or a religion, which gives benefits to your character, and for some advance their RP. All these are bonuses which build your character, home, or some other aspect of gameplay. ALL are dopamine hits, and the completion adds to that chad feeling of having achieved something after a lot of work, not to mention it can be something which makes you more advanced than others or helps you be more of an asset in a group, which are also dopamine hits. That's why these mechanics are so important for an MMO.
Grinding to achieve something is exactly as Amongold described it, once done it's a relief, which means that the item you achieve carries a negative feeling for you so it feels worse to have it than it would if it was a goal completed instead of a chore finally done.
The middle ground is to "earn convenience". You don't get the fastest travel. the biggest bags, the boosted alts, the best crafting etc straight out of the gate. You earn them. In game. Often requiring tens of hours of gameplay to unlock certain features.
WoW made the mistake of tying too many of these features into the economy. You can buy the biggest bags, buy heirlooms. Which is fine.
But then they broke the economy.. On purpose. By allowing WoW tokens.
Suddenly that convenience and ease of use was a quick trip to your wallet away. Then the hollow feeling many players get that the additions were not earned in game. It was devalued emotionally.
I pick WoW as an example. But SWtoR actually did it worse by allowing subscribers to create very high level characters who can farm the best materials, take the best professions, quickly gather all the best fast travel points in a matter of a few hours. EvE ISK and PLEX sales also has gone some way to devaluing the game. Buy success rather than play for it.
In the long run - it doesn't work
You’re right about only certain loot items causing flashing banners. If everything is a dopamine hit, then we will become desensitized to it.
They could add some tps (from big city to big city or something) but limited to your gear inventory. You can't transport any material bia tp
I believe there were some plans for portals between node siblings when a certain path was followed. Then this still limits it to an area of course.
@@skoltr The final result for me will be this. You disable most fast travels mechanics but add an interesting path beetwen Point A and Point B? Fine by me. Going from point A to point B is just going forward for 5 minutes while watching a video in the other monitor? Then you are wasting my time with pointless riding. Give me something, an excuse to deviate from the path to do something that makes me forget about the 5 minutes walk. Maybe random events like FFXIV fates, that you only see when close (maybe you have to kill some wolfs and the reward is more pelt that you would get killing that amount of enemies normally), rare gathering nodes that also spawn randomly so you find them casually while passing by. I dont know, im not game designer. Also, similar to this topic (maybe they said this already, idk) add mounts that are not just a different skin, but that they are good for different reasons. Every mount gives the same ms but they have a bonus for each biome. Mounts good for plains, deserts, forests, oceans, lakes/rivers, rocky mountains (maybe higher jump distance so you can travel easily that kind of terrain), snow... Idk, something that gives you an incentive bigger than just collecting skins.
even in old school runescape when there is a valuable drop its just a different color text which will give you that satisfaction. This is also with the runelite add-on which lists the value on the grand exchange so you don't really need to know the exact value to know you just hit big.
Damnitt Narc!
That's like 3 videos in a row from you on the exact topic I was thinking about doing. Get outta my head man!
Is...is his beard growing more majestic with each vid? Is he power leveling his beard?
When wow added group finder, the game was ruined for me and I switched to exclusively pvping. Then in cata, the dungeons were so hard that you just HAD to talk to your party and coordinate, so I loved dungeons again. They later made dungeons brain dead again so I switched to pvp, but then they started messing with the classes too much so I had nothing left but the quests. Now the game is so bad that even the quests retcon everything and suck. Like... literally nothing's left in that game. Everything is shit.
I HATED how they kept completely changing classes. I preferred how the original talent trees worked. If they wanted to keep tweaking the trees a little for balance, fine.
The WORST was the addition of multispec. I didn't even like the idea that you could re-spec for gold--if you made a bad decision, live wth it. If you want to try a different spec, make a new character. A doctor doesn't get to decide at age 70 he'd rather have been a lawyer.
When classic WoW came out I started playing immediately. I missed the vanilla days when it took a long time to get to 60. In vanilla, all the mobs in the area leading up to a dungeon were elite. It took a good group HOURS to crawl through Deadmines, and sometimes a group of the proper level (i.e. NOT escorted by a max level) just couldn't beat Vancleef and gave up. In vanilla, I ran Shadowfang Keep A DOZEN TIMES to get the robes of Arugal because I knew they'd still be great gear up through early/mid thirties.
But somehow in classic, the twenties didn't last long enough to run SFK that many times. The mobs around dungeons were all easy trash mobs, and most dungeons took about 30-45 minutes at most. Most dungeon gear wasn't worth getting at all because I blew through levels so fast. In vanilla, the Robes of Arugal were useful for about a week of my life--in classic they became obsolete the same night that I got them.
Still, I enjoyed the nostalgia, so I went back for pre-Wrath and started leveling a new character. Oh look, you can "boost" a character--NO THANKS. In classic you already blow through levels too fast...and on top of that, for the pre-Wrath weeks they added the 50% xp bonus, making even more content pointless.
This is one of the reasons I love BDO. Lots of long term goals and things to do in the sandbox, and all those things progress your account in some way. One thing that really killed a lot of mmos for me was having my gear constantly made irrelevant every patch as it was replaced with the new patch's gear. Long-term progression is vital to MMOs.
I would like to see loot be in the form of a chest sometimes and bigger and more ornamental with the rarity of the item it contains like in Everquest 2
I legit deleted my account a year ago after 15 years I honestly had enough, but dang man 10/10 I was dying consider a new sub. Love from Canada.
Oh yeah love me some manual looting. 👌
I need sounds when moving stuff around too.
Pizzapepsi guy and the other steampunk guy are going to be forever ingrained in my brain when hearing of Ashes of Creation. How can one make so much (good) content about a game that's not even in beta yet xD
I'm a bitter old man who enjoys the pain and suffering of a good grind.
Please give me a meaningful reason to go zombie mode and enjoy my favorite 90's/early 2000's trance music for hours on end. The key here being "meaningful" though.
Classic WoW was my jam in terms of convenience and immersion, and I think it hit a decently good balance between world size and travel time.
That 5 minute flight time or wait time at the zeppelin, was a good excuse to stretch the legs and make a copa coffee.
More importantly, I didn't feel like a jackass for waiting that time, because it was on equal terms with everyone else.
An endgame raider had to wait just as long as the level 9 newbie, which in turn also added to the sense of community, by having to wait side by side.
On another note, what I hope is that AoC will maintain a proper value of ingame currency and resources (time), were the most efficient way to play is to actually play, and not go to work irl. They can do this by enforcing strong rules on RMT and botting, and not introducing a "AoC token" like WoW.
By the way, do you sell the Copa Cola koozie?
If you are going to watch just about 30 sec of this video, watch these: 11:18 till 11:55. I'm going to quote this when talking about alot of other games!
Actually stopped what i was doing and had to look over at the screen when the copa cola sections rythm was off. I have been trained by Narc. omg..
10/10 video mate . love the videos
Ok I don't comment on videos often but your comment about being lazy and ain't got no time or being a bitter old man who likes the pain and suffering of a good grind got me, lol! I'm 44 but have been the latter since 2003 when I first played Final Fantasy 11 Online. Keep it up you Narc, lol!
Looks like I bought some cope convenience and skipped a permanent ban. Also imo i think convenience that is bought with real world money is a form of p2w, it may be very subtle but still p2w
Great video!
I think the best option would be a toggle for looting types. Different people come from different games, us boomers with chromosome trouble can enable right-click 1 mob at a time, maybe some giga cheeto encrusted cookie crumb covered neckbeard wants only the most efficient method of looting so he gets aoe loot & tap f, some action combat people will want tap f for each individual piece, some others will just want auto-loot (maybe even with a filter type?).
Looting:
You should have to manually click EACH mob, reason is anyone can loot kills, and this way some ninja can’t just one click loot everything from you. or am I wrong about anyone looting?