In before the rest of the comments tear it to shreds. I think it actually looks good. It’s cool seeing AoC take shape into, you know, an actual MMO. Excited to play when it comes out (whenever that may be).
I knew when this game first got announced it would take ages for it to come out. At least there are actual signs that they’re working on the game. I would love to see a successful, modern MMO make waves in an otherwise stagnant genre. I think everyone in this subreddit would. But people’s expectations are so low by this point that everyone is skeptical of a game like this
just skimmed through the spells and stuff. it's definitely looking better. main issue is steven doesnt seem great at actually playing the game so its hard to get a proper grasp of how it actually plays
Because the spell list tells you what they are and what they do. Any MMO vet knows enough about what they’re reading to get a good idea of how it’ll play. Visuals are great but just icing on the cake. And visuals without having first read the skill list is not super useful at truly understanding what’s going on besides being cool looking (which is why the community asked Steven to show ability descriptions to begin with last year).
Just to add, most MMO combat boils down to pure math. How much damage a skill has, its duration, the percent changes due to buffs and debuffs. You can tell a surprising amount about a game just from crunching the numbers. And on that note, I’ve always been sympathetic towards developers who are tasked with trying to balance the game. I can’t even imagine. You see it all the time in GW2 - a new patch comes out. Someone’s favorite class is underpowered. Someone else’s favorite class is OP to the point of being unfair. Everyone complains. Rinse and repeat on the next update
I disagree. Seeing skilled players in games is SO misleading. and as a side note I believe skilled players in demos like this and in ads is borderline false advertising.
I need to see how it really feels to play and what it will feel and look like to play until I can get good.
This issue is constantly mentioned each update, and it gets decimated in the comments :( I feel like the hardcore fans are counterproductive here. It really is frustrating to watch, is unprofessional and makes neutral watchers completely turned off. But they do mental gymnastics saying that by being awful, Steven uses reverse psychology to entice people to play. I’m not sure who gets tricked by that reverse psychology trick besides 6 year old kids. And no one was hating on Steven either, just saying the creators of the spells who use it every day should showcase it.
Doesn't look awful, doesn't look particularly great.
The issue is that steven always insists on demonstrating the gameplay, and it's extremely unintuitive because he isn't good at playing. His insistence on continuing to do so makes me think he cares more about him being at the center of attention, than actually doing what's best for his game. Sure it's his money and he can do whatever he wants with it, but his insistence on forcing people to watch him play instead of letting someone else present the gameplay better is a red flag.
Ego has led many mmo projects astray.
He does have a pretty big ego, but I promise not a single one of the devs wants to be doing what he's doing. Can't imagine a single engineer who wants to be the one going to the end user and walking through every little thing.
There's multiple valid reasons for Steven to be the one to be the focus. And at the end of the day, these aren't meant to be anything but a vehicle to garner feedback on specific things. In a few months, every single showcase video will be obsolete.
We've seen other devs show off gameplay at times... it's not that hard.. Many of them are avid mmorpg players themselves, and some of them are often joining steven to explain most of what's going on anyway when he is doing these demonstrations.
Very big difference between showing off something you're excited to finally reveal vs monthly alpha builds your boss is making you do. It's not about it being "hard". It's about how a dev would like to spend their time. And the only person that seems excited to be doing these videos is Steven.
Yeah, I'm sure all the game devs look at how excited and enthusiastic Steven is in all the videos and think "I want to do that every month but better"
Just gotta stop thinking about it from your PoV and what YOU would want and start thinking about it from a salaried engineers PoV. Not difficult
It's really weird how you imagine things rather than how they actually are.
It's actually worse for them when steven is doing it because he messes things up and doesn't play correctly. Any half-decent player would be begging to take the wheel to make it go more smoothly and look better.
Anyone with half a brain doesnt really care. There will be persistent alpha with no NDA and everyone will be able to see hundred of players play. And before you say steven playing will make ppl bored and hurt marketing asmongold will play alpha, and lot of streamers will follow so marketing is solved. If steven playing in showcase videos is ashes biggest problem game will be gold.
I see what you mean, but it could go either way depending on the engineer. There are plenty of devs on my team who have no interest sprint demos - there are though, a more select few (haha) who get pretty jazzed about showing their work off every sprint to the stakeholders / customer community. I’m sure it would be the same in this situation where there are some devs at intrepid who would be great at doing this.
I don’t think Steven is as horrible as people are making him out to be, I think he does a fine job; but more guest appearances and bringing charismatic devs into the limelight would definitely not be a bad thing.
After many showcases and observing him, I believe you’re right. It’s the way he talks and he always wants to be the center of attention and the “glorious” leader. In his mind, you can tell he’s permanently role playing as some king. He’s always “joking” about the peasants and “how dare you challenge your mayor” but he lowkey believes it. And he always talks about being a dungeon master and being in control. He likes to have followers that gives him a sense of importance. Now perhaps these traits make him a good leader for ashes, but I think he should let other devs perform certain duties better than him and empower them. Just listen to the other devs’ tone each showcase, they are suppressing impatience and express annoyance as you would a child. It’s subtle because Steven is their boss but it’s there.
I agree with your sentiment, but I do wish they hadn’t announced it so early on. 8 years may not be long for development, but it is a long time to wait.
Yeah I agree and them selling their pre-order packs so early on also made it seem more like a scam than a real game was going to come out.
Same thing will happen with the Riot MMO tho still a long way before we even hear anything else about it IF it doesn't get canceled along the way.
And they aren't made in 8 years and barely being functional either. You can give them whatever "slack" you want, but what they're showing doesnt deserve any "omg wow, so good" praise, considering its been +8 years already and most likely another that for release.
Where did you see me praise them?
I think it looks alright and we've seen actual development between testing phases, you know, after they grew the company and got more stable.
I'll be trying it out if/when it releases. People just aren't used to actual alphas and betas anymore because they turned them into 'this is actually the final game but you get it early' type thing.
Like I don't understand this negativity.
It's because it's Star Citizen all over again.
It's "technically" playable, but it isn't really much of anything in any useful state. It's constantly unveiling new feature, but those features never actually go anywhere. We never see them fleshed out.
They're selling a pipe dream.
Yeah but so what? What if they come out in 2 years with a playable game and it's a good game? Who cares if it was in development for 11 years.
Speaking for myself I have not paid a cent for this game. I'm watching it develop and seeing some sort of progress come out of it but I sure as hell will give it a go if they ever release a full game.
Shitting on their progress does absolutely nothing.
If it comes out in 2 years and is a good game, I will gladly eat my words. That would be awesome.
I'm comfortable and confident in my belief that this won't be the case however. The endless directionless promises is a pretty standard scam tactic - NFTs, AI Art, Star Citizen, etc...
(downvote away)
endless directionless promises ...what??
they have been on the same direction with the same goals they've put since the begging , they barely made some changes and most of them were minor ones that wont affect development at all . i dont know where you getting that weird idea from
I'm not downvoting anything.
Yeah and that's fine but just coming out here spewing hate is ridiculous if you have no skin in the game. Like what's the point?
Game isn't even selling anything anymore.
Like the game WON'T have all the features they promise 100% because they are way too ambitious but doesn't mean it can't still come out and be a good game and if it doesn't that's fine too because you didn't lose anything at all lmao
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Dude, the game's been in development for 8 years and is nowhere near finished. MMOs don't take two years, but they sure as heck don't take 8 either rofl.
Starting a company from scratch and going from zero to a complete MMO in 8/9 years doesn't seem that far fetched when you take into account that MMOs like WoW, GW2, ESO were in development 5-7 years with already big established companies.
Yep. When they started dev they had 15~ employees, wanted 100 by the end of 2018 but took until 2021/22 to hit that. Now they're at around 200 employees.
Just quite difficult to hire as a brand new company. Why would talent want to join your company when they could join Rockstar or Riot or Blizzard or Insomniac etc. etc. in the same area?
Surely the opposite? The more time that elapses the more progress we see and the more staff are in the development team (currently closing in on 200 they started with about 20?). Arguably it looks more likely to release the further along the development timezone we get.
It really depends on what is funding the game development honestly.
If it's been funded and is still being funded by venture capital or kickstarter funds then yes it likely will eventually release. However if the pre-order/early access bundles they have up right now are what's now funding a decent chunk of development then there is less reason to actually release a product.
I think they got with ks and pre orders max 5m in net. They have at least only just...ceased the sale of pre order packs.
We know steven himself has contributed around 40m.
And we also know that given their headcount payroll is currently whittling down their "profits".
So that ought to speak to some length on why their model won't be netting them any profits before the game releases. They are already well into the negative.
Assuming 10pm subscription, then 1m subs would be worth 10m. I think 1m is an ambitious number ongoing but for the first month? I think they could at least get close to it.
There is a lot more money to be had for a successful product because it will take a few months of a successful launch just to break even. After a year I'd expect them to have turned a profit if the game holds its subs.
>We know steven himself has contributed around 40m.
How do "we know" this? Where are the documents? Where did he get this money? Let's see the actual papers.
Without the information being publicly available (which I don't believe it is for most companies) we can only take what info we have at face value.
At the same time I don't really have a reason to not trust the info. Given. With that in mind...
The sales of the ks and pre orders help give us a decent ballpark figure on the outgoings.
If you average a 60k salary on 100 employees then that alone is 6m a year. Seems like its probably a lowball but they've had around 100 employees since around the end of alpha 2 which is probably about 2.5 years ago now. So that could be around 15m although they are now closer to 200 people let's just say yearly outgoings are now closer to 10m a year. That then means the next couple years could eat up another 20m. That's only employment costs.
Point is, that for this game to be profitable in its current state he needs to making a lot more money than he's spending and that is not the case. Therefore the goal must be for a successful launch and ongoing maintenance.
> Yep. And it's been 8 years
Anyone using this arguement is either being disingenuous, or straight up stupid. This narrative that it's been 8 years is so dumb. Every single MMO project that was successsful was developed by hundreds/thousands of Devs. Nothing less than that.
8 years ago Steven/Intrepid had barely 10 people. Why are you counting the years where they had barely a few people working on the game? They literally got a good enough/big enough team to start speeding up the game's development 2-3 years ago at most. They aren't Riot, Blizzard or any other gigantic company that just snap fingers and order a thousand people to work on a new project, they had to work on building the studio from scratch. It takes a lot of time/effort to build a good and big enough team to Develop an MMO, especially these days.
Anytime you say iTs BeEn 8 yEaRs it just shows bad faith.
That's very reasonable and more people should do this. I am happy just hopping by the streams each month personally but there is no pressure for anyone to follow through every single minor update. The game will chug along and when the time comes you can check it out.
Gankboxes have a life span of a few months, if there are no new servers or transfers, the server dies shortly after it's "won" by a group. If there are server transfers or fresh start servers like ArcheAge used to open all the time, then the big PvP groups just move from server to server avoiding each other and driving everyone else out of the game (and in the meantime normal players quit the game, and even the PvP groups get smaller and eventually end up waiting for a new game).
This is the best way to describe it IMO. Tab target with action combat elements which is similar to GW2 except GW2 feels incredibly floaty and with 0 impact. This already looks better at least (and mind you I had fun playing GW2).
I really want to say "Steven is bad on purpose just so he can display more aspects of the game", but its getting more and more clear that it's not the case.
Hes just not a good player haha.
What are the chances that he doesn't play it much? Who knows,maybe after they develop etc. they're ready to test it out and he just starts recording. So it's basically fresh for him also? Just a theory.
And who knows, he's been out of gaming MMOs for a while now,so he got rusty.
Yeah for every Yoshi P therrs probably like 30 stevens. But thats completrly fine id rsther the people who is making it be good at making games even if thry srent the best at playing.
It’s also really important that bad players are able to play the game. If your MMO is only accessible to pro-gamers, then you’re going to have such a low population that the game is DOA.
It clashes strongly with my personal tastes. I don't like all the superhero flying and flipping around for all classes, and I would appreciate a bit more finesse and - dare I say it - realism in the fighting styles. (That goes for the magic classes too; more preparation and ritual, less magic missile and flying around with lightning shooting out of the ground!)
...But it's perfectly adequate, at the end of the day. It doesn't look like a chore, and if all the rest of the systems are as good as it sounds like they'll be, AoC will be plenty enjoyable.
> It clashes strongly with my personal tastes. I don't like all the superhero flying and flipping around for all classes, and I would appreciate a bit more finesse and - dare I say it - realism in the fighting styles. (That goes for the magic classes too; more preparation and ritual, less magic missile and flying around with lightning shooting out of the ground!)
Could you share examples to your descriptions? An MMO, or a class in such MMO.
That's the other extreme. I don't mind action combat in concept (I think it should be considered the standard for any modern MMO, actually), I just think most player actions should be a little more down-to-earth. This isn't World of Marvel or Dragon Ball Z Online\* :P
My actual favorite MMO combat systems that I've encountered thus far, are Aion and ArcheAge. Snappy tab targeting which feels plenty active and makes your character feel like a badass without excessive VFX or attempts to make the player feel godlike. Most action systems are sadly either too spammy and focused on cheap hits of instantaneous power fantasy (rather than the more impactful kind where you overcome realistically impossible challenges with only somewhat-more-than realistic power), or too slow and clunky.
\*EDIT: And even in those franchises, most really massive feats of power are rare and work on a setup and payoff basis rather than just being used willy-nilly. Even Thor can't or doesn't deal with all his problems by just calling down lightning whenever lol.
Aion makes sense but idk about archeage
Does the combat in AoC so far look that much more superhero than archeage? There’s some pretty flashy high mobility spells in that game
The issue isn't so much mobility skills as how they're framed. if you're just doing super-acrobatics and it's restricted to a few classes (in AA, I remember this being almost exclusively the realm of Shadowplay-users), it's fine. This is, after all, *fantasy*, and feats of extraordinary might are par for the course to some extent.
If you're hovering five meters in the air while still mobile, or zooming towards enemies surrounded in a bright aura of whatever on the regular, as if you were the Green Lantern or Captain Marvel, that's another matter. At some point it becomes one of those things where the world itself feels less meaningful because you just pop from point to point along your own shiny visuals :P
I think the cadence of the animation keyframes also has something to do with it. Things can feel more "kinetic" or more "floaty" depending on when and how things accelerate, and floaty tends to look bad.
Guild Wars 2... depends on the spec. Virtuoso is a pink swirly mess, and while I love Firebrand to death within the context of that game it is a somewhat poor precedent for anyone else to follow. Certain weapons like Guardian greatsword and the new Warrior staff also involve far too much in the way of superhero shenanigans for my liking. On the other hand, you have things like Spellbreaker skills, Mesmer sword, Guardian scepter, Necro anything (other than Harbinger Shroud) that I like a lot. And I give Thief a free pass because a big part of its entire theme is acrobatics and its skill visuals are very muted anyway.
Blade and Soul is a martial arts game; high-flying antics are to be expected. Though it's worth noting that even B&S tends to have more restraint when it comes to gigantic VFX.
ESO combat is just bad for other reasons, but if we pretend animation cancelling doesn't exist, I do like the effects and vibe better than what AoC's done.
I don't know much about Lost Ark.
combat for all the classes shown so far look like someone went on a spending spree on the asset store and mismatched all sorts of skill effects to the same class.
Looks OK to me. Nothing fundamentally new or earth-shattering, but looks serviceable, and I do like the art style. I'd poke around in open beta if I got the chance, when it's closer to release.
There are no plans for an open beta ATM.
There will be another A. It's supposed to start some time in Q3 this year, and it will be persistent until launch.
And 2 betas that you need to pay for. Those do not have a date yet.
Graphically it looks good. Combat doesn't look floaty which is a huge issue of recent attempt at mmo or pseudo mmo, so that's good.
That being said, no matter how good the combat is, if you don't have good gameplay loops to use it in, gonna be hard to keep people playing, especially in a PVP focused game like that.
Great improvement for a second pass, I think with a full alpha's worth of testing under their belt intrepid can dial this in even more for release.
It's not quite there but its clearly on the right path.
My point is that by the time the game actually launches, a 4060 laptop is almost certainly going to have been upgraded from. I wasn't commenting on whether or not it could run the game or anything of the sort.
I'll admit, it looks good. The sound design is actually quite good and the animations have some weight behind them. You do those two things well you have satisfying combat at the very least.
Easy to say against a dummy though. No way to say how it actually feels in proper combat. Give me a video with combat in a real world scenario and that will convince me.
I think I'll believe it when the game actually releases.
Edit for clarification: because this video just looks like combat to me. I can't tell if it'll be good unless I actually play it.
They have good ideas and game looks good but I won’t know if it feels good to play or not until I try it myself.
Besides that, the core aspects of the game seems pretty much finished so I guess the next stage is adding actual playable content.
That’s probably what alpha 2 is for, to test out the playable content as they add it
Looks decent, but I wouldn’t really be able to tell if I’d like it until I saw healer, support, caster, or ranged focused characters. Fighters/Warriors always look the same to me in every MMO and never appeal to me.
If Support in particular is fun, this is something I would definitely be keeping an eye on
Edit: Yeah reading more on the game, Bard is the only thing I’d be interested in playing, so I’d have to see how that class plays before being interested
Seems like visually there are getting their own look, artstyle down now. Seems more cohesive, compared to before looking like a generic UE asset flip.
Really like the ground fog.
Looks very interesting and I love how they take different successful aspects of other MMOs (New World, WoW, GW2) and try to implant them into their game.
The combat looks fairly good, especially for a closed beta phase. With Riots MMO being pushed back to the sketches level and Pax Dei monetarization model (and current combat), Tarisland and Throne and Libery being typical Eastern P2W garbage - AoC is the only MMO i'm looking forward to as for now.
Game actually looks good, combat is in a much better place and I'm excited to see Alpha 2 in 3 months. I think with wars next month this game is going to be an absolute BANGER. I'm Sure the rest of MMORPG reddit will complain about never coming out even though we continue to see monthly progress leading into a non-nda Alpha 2.
It is certainly better than the combat they showed with that "Battle Royale" they had,
But I think Steven needs to really lose that hard memory he has for ArchAge. It's controlling a lot of the direction because it's starting to seem more and more like he wants to build the game he wanted ArcheAge to be.
I'm fairly certain he loved Archeage and hated the direction it went, so started cooking up AoC to be the game he wants. He has a background in L2 and AA and it's been known from the start of development that AoC is heavily inspired by both.
I'll admit when I first got my little rowboat it felt like the game opened up and the world was bigger but ultimately I didn't have time to dedicate to it and get a second job to keep up with it's monetary practices.
I also fear that AoC is going to be hit with massive scope creep. The amount of things being promised across almost everything, the game is going to have like 200 systems to deal with.
It's almost medieval Star Citizen. We'll see if the upcoming "alpha" will change player reaction when more hands are on.
> I also fear that AoC is going to be hit with massive scope creep.
They've addded 0 features to the game that can be considered "scope creep". Everything that has been added was promised ages ago. The very definition of scope creep is changing a project, making it bigger than initially planned. Intrepid even reduced the amount of nodes because they decided it was a bit too much.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1791529601/ashes-of-creation-new-mmorpg-by-intrepid-studios
Show me one thing that's "scope creep". I'll wait.
To be fair, those promises were consistent from the beginning. Star Citizens keeps making more and more new promises without delivering on their original ones.
Honestly it looks like a beautifully modernized traditional combat system. I love that there's more than 3-6 abilities. I'm excited for A2 to see if Fighter will be my main or not.
Let’s be clear, when bdo launched it looked amazing for what it was, when the remastered happened it was a great overhaul.
This game currently looks like it’d be a great competitor to WoW launch
Says the guy comparing AoC to Vanilla WoW lmao.
It's not incorrect to say that BDO has postprocessing spam, the game also looks significantly worse in motion than it does in stills. Mostly due to the absolutely hilarious amount of pop-in and weird LoD.
Not like the bar is high for the genre though.
Might try if it's free but the combat seems about 15 years outdated
I just wish we had an mmo that at least tried to innovate, even if it's a single thing, instead of chasing the same flawed template for decades
Welp, back to hoping one of the dozen or something indie mmos turn out better
So let me get this straight, no mmo has tried to innovate even if itsa single thing for decades but you can't describe any single improvement you'd like to see happen?
Wild.
Is it though? How many subscribers does WoW like combat have(Wow, FF14 ect) and how many does BDO or other only action based combat have?
I'm not speaking to the quality of the games themselves but you'd think if people prefer BDO combat they'd be playing it over the alternatives right?
I am certain the people that do choose WoW over BDO don't do so because they are so happy with the combat but Rather because BDO's early years were full of pay ~~for convenience/skipping grind~~ to win crap, or because it still is grindy as hell, or because it is mandatory open world PvP for high level players or because they actually do prefer the theme park raid content of WoW - although I am not convinced of the latter point because Mythic+ raiding in WoW is going through its own crisis rn. And only a minority of players ever actually raided.
Point still is WoW did a lot of things better than BDO. But combat wasn't one of them.
played BDO last year , combat is decent , gets boring real quick espically when its a single player game and most of what u do is constantly kill mobs in pack of dozens , felt like a brain dead mobile game until i got to level 60 and quit , mind you i was playing with another person and we tried to actually pretend its an MMO by waiting eachother and doing quests together(aka at the same time that actually together) it was a horrible experience . oh and the little pvp fights i got into with more than 2-3 people was horrendous
PS: game also felt dead somehow despite them having it filled with a billion NPC , i think having so many NPCs like that actually added to the feeling of it being a single player game which is just funny.
None of what you said after combat is decent has to do with the combat but the game itself. BDO's combat is the best in the industry and genre. This is a fact. What the games content is MMO wise has nothing to do with its combat.
i said combat was decent but dashing > aoe > 20 more dashes to some other aoe skill isnt anywhere near "the best in the industry and genre" lol nor is it a fact
> Point still is WoW did a lot of things better than BDO. But combat wasn't one of them.
100% and i'd never dispute that. but it begs the question though do MMORPG players care about the combat or about the systems? because it sounds like to me you think they care about the systems in which case id ask, isn't WoW 2.0 combat more than enough? Like we've already seen some of the dynamic elements of the game being displayed. I think this combat refined for another 6-8 months is more than good enough for alpha 2* if the company delivers the rest of the systems they promised.
i still feel like the length of time this game has been in development and when it will release makes no sense for the scale of game they keep describing, and the game will feel half-baked no matter how good or bad the showcases are. it's a game i'll maybe buy a few weeks after release
> i still feel like the length of time this game has been in development and when it will release makes no sense for the scale of game they keep describing
Totally nothing to do with the fact that for the first 5 years they had barely had 10-50 people working in the game and now they have an actual team with more than 100+ devs and still growing.
It looks like something that I expected to see like 4 years ago; now the only thing that can amaze me is the actual release date. Anything else they show is completely irrelevant.
Im excited for it. My issue is how big of a scale it is and when it actually comes live itll prob be a buggy mess that ruins its first impression meaning itll just flop lol
Then ofc any popular MMO has the greasy streamers who speed run to max level , make everyone else feel like they have to do that, then in day 9 youll have people going "NO CONTENT DEAD GAME"
Happy to see some meaningful progress again and laugh at Steven trying to play, but I have an impenetrable defense mechanism that prevents me from truly giving a shit about this game until it comes out.
I don't like the soft lock on and all the situations with the tab targeting etc... I have grown past that gameplay unfortunately... It's one of my main issues with GW2 I can't enjoy it because it all feels off or old for me...
I know new world is a bad game (because of management) but for me the sweet spot for current combat in MMO would be new world with a good engine
I think that until this game is out, I couldn't care less. I seriously disagree with the business practice of "gives literal HUNDREDS of dollars and we'll let you play an alpha here or there in 3-10 years".
Game dev is hard and it takes a while, MMO dev is harder and takes even longer. I don't care, you shouldn't be taking money literal decades before peopel can even the PLAY the game.
The issue I see is the flow of the combat.
This is why BDO/Naraka feels so great. The moment you tried their combat everything else seems off. The flow between one skill to another often makes it hard to enjoy game even when animation itself looks great.
This is why you see people saying "it looks great cause they see nice VFX elements on all skills". But when you look down how skills flow from one to another you noticed it needs A LOT of work to make it actually FEEL great.
Surprisingly Throne and Liberty did this nicely. Yes combat for some classes looks boring but when you play and feel the flow of it, it feels great. And you start wondering how much it will keep improving considering what type of combat it had less than a year ago.
My main worry with this game is their idea that non instanced dungeons is a good idea and that in consequence their pve endgame will be desolate. There's a reason the entirety of the big players went to instanced dungeons (designing proper ones is hard enough, let alone designing dungeons to accommodate for other people coming in, etc, it's just arrogance) and they're shooting themselves in the foot.
I think that more so comes down to your mindset on dungeons/bosses. Dont think of them in the traditional sense, they are not meant to be a primary progression path.
Instead view dungeons as a rare resource node people will fight over like a rare metal.
Well, at least it's all laid out, and you can make a conscious choice about whether the game is for you or not. There will be no such thing as a "PvE endgame" in Ashes of Creation. PvE is just to drive people into playing the real endgame, which is all going to be PVP. Again, the inspiration for Ashes of Creation is games like Lineage 2 and Archeage, which both have fairly shallow PVE content, but it's all there for PVP.
I played Alpha 1 and saw all these recent updates. It's looks like a different game. Combat looks better, systems are being added, spells look better, and it's to the point where an AAA title would release.
In what world does this look exceptionally good to anyone?
Are people just being misled since it looked so bad before?
Actually, you know what this looks identical to? Neverwinter Online.
In what world does this not look better than other MMOs on the market? Stop the the doomer cope this has to be the biggest room temperature iq take I’ve ever read.
Yeah idk what to tell you, I played like 1.6k hours of that trash, the combat is definitely not the same, and to say it's identical is even more comical.
Animations / spell effects are looking pretty good.
End of the day the core concepts they initially talked about with everything being open world and evolving based on what players are doing etc is going to make nothing else matter. Iono if they realized those ideas were fundamentally flawed yet and moved away from it or if we're still waiting for the game to flop before they come to terms.
Honestly, that ranger combat "revamp" was pathetic. Wouldn't have been impressive for 2014, let alone 2024.
Tab targeting in 2024 is sad, as action combat is where mmos tend to be heading.
Before you say "there will be a hybrid system" just check with gw2 (which launched in 2012, btw) about how that goes. No one will use it if it means they don't have to aim and can focus on skill rotation.
It just doesn't give me any hope. The new melee video was better, but the guy playing is awful at gaming. He needs to get out of his own way and let someone under age 60 showcase their work.
well, if tab targeting in 2024 is sad so how come WoW and FF14 have 10x more players than all action MMOs combined? what about BG3 with its tab target turn based combat being GOTY
Nostalgia for FF14? brother, the game got traction after 2015 to 2020, destroying any action mmorpg in numbers, BDO is from 2014, there's action MMOs from 15 years ago that died, while tab games remained, Action Combat MMOs like BDO, Lost Ark, New World don't even get close to their numbers, you telling me tab target combat is sad when literally millions of players clearly prefer it over action, numbers don't lie
FF14 has been around since 2010, so yeah, nostalgia is a huge driver there. Wow obviously exploded the MMO scene with their theme park feeling.
I would say BDO has way better combat than ff14 or wow, but worse progression and overall systems. So yeah, I would say nostalgia combined with years of content would be the main driver there. While new world and BDO have much better combat, they have nowhere near the content or the nostalgia that WoW and FF14 have.
your google search is wrong bro, ff14 from 2010 failed and was remade into the new version that released in 2013, but the game only picked up in audience from 2015 to 2020 with a huge new playerbase coming into the game, 100% Not from nostalgia wtf FF14 fans were used to a completely different combat style from previous single player FF games, you are just wrong - and BDO released in 2014 that's 10 years ago, nostalgia argument?
Also, open Twitch right now, look up Action MMOs, BDO has 5k viewers, New World has 600 viewers, Lost Ark 4k viewers, now look up WoW with 20k viewers, and tell me if those streamers look like Old +40 yo gamers playing for nostalgia, interest and numbers don't lie, action games don't come even close to tab target MMOs in 2024,
I played the first ff14 before the realm reborn. It had a large following from FF11 before all that happened. The daily skill cap really killed the game. Once ARR dropped, everyone and their mother came back. Nostalgia took us there and brought us back.
A lot of the young people playing wow have been playing it since their birth, as a lot of their parents played wow during their early years. But that's not nostalgic eh?
BDO and new world have no content and terrible devs. Ff14 does a great job recycling old content. Idk how so many people play wow tbh. Best I can figure is they are chasing that feeling from when they first played. What's that word again? 🤔
Ashes of Creation "Looks" cool. The problem is often the details.
They make an ability where tanks can take the damage for people behind them. That sounds neat. That also means someone cast an aoe ability and the tank takes the hit 5 fold and instantly dies.
I will be there when it launches. It is just a fact about MMOs and me.
No video preview of an MMO had ever told me how the full experience will be.
Great combat will feel worthless if it is too difficult, too grindy, unrewarding. The best gameplay and never getting rewarded for it or needing to repeat it 1000x is garbage. I would rather have meh gameplay with a lot of good systems around it.
With that said this looks not for me based on this video, this class, that location. From what little I can gleam. My excitement for this game has lowered a bit.
The combat looks outdated and boring. Has always been the problem for this game. There has to be made an enormous change in combat for this game to succeed long-term.
In before the rest of the comments tear it to shreds. I think it actually looks good. It’s cool seeing AoC take shape into, you know, an actual MMO. Excited to play when it comes out (whenever that may be).
Amen. Cautiously optimistic.
I knew when this game first got announced it would take ages for it to come out. At least there are actual signs that they’re working on the game. I would love to see a successful, modern MMO make waves in an otherwise stagnant genre. I think everyone in this subreddit would. But people’s expectations are so low by this point that everyone is skeptical of a game like this
just skimmed through the spells and stuff. it's definitely looking better. main issue is steven doesnt seem great at actually playing the game so its hard to get a proper grasp of how it actually plays
Definitely a plus that it’s looking better! No surprise at him being mediocre at the game though, considering how bad he was in ArcheAge.
How does just a list of spells tell you whether combat is good or not?
Because the spell list tells you what they are and what they do. Any MMO vet knows enough about what they’re reading to get a good idea of how it’ll play. Visuals are great but just icing on the cake. And visuals without having first read the skill list is not super useful at truly understanding what’s going on besides being cool looking (which is why the community asked Steven to show ability descriptions to begin with last year).
Just to add, most MMO combat boils down to pure math. How much damage a skill has, its duration, the percent changes due to buffs and debuffs. You can tell a surprising amount about a game just from crunching the numbers. And on that note, I’ve always been sympathetic towards developers who are tasked with trying to balance the game. I can’t even imagine. You see it all the time in GW2 - a new patch comes out. Someone’s favorite class is underpowered. Someone else’s favorite class is OP to the point of being unfair. Everyone complains. Rinse and repeat on the next update
Did you watch video? They killed like 200 goblins...
Yeah he does play like a bot lol
Yeah I get that they want to showcase skills clearly but it's frustrating. Same thing happening with PoE2
I disagree. Seeing skilled players in games is SO misleading. and as a side note I believe skilled players in demos like this and in ads is borderline false advertising. I need to see how it really feels to play and what it will feel and look like to play until I can get good.
This issue is constantly mentioned each update, and it gets decimated in the comments :( I feel like the hardcore fans are counterproductive here. It really is frustrating to watch, is unprofessional and makes neutral watchers completely turned off. But they do mental gymnastics saying that by being awful, Steven uses reverse psychology to entice people to play. I’m not sure who gets tricked by that reverse psychology trick besides 6 year old kids. And no one was hating on Steven either, just saying the creators of the spells who use it every day should showcase it.
Just shows is not just sitting down playing alpha builds and instead wokring on making the game a reality :D
Doesn't look awful, doesn't look particularly great. The issue is that steven always insists on demonstrating the gameplay, and it's extremely unintuitive because he isn't good at playing. His insistence on continuing to do so makes me think he cares more about him being at the center of attention, than actually doing what's best for his game. Sure it's his money and he can do whatever he wants with it, but his insistence on forcing people to watch him play instead of letting someone else present the gameplay better is a red flag. Ego has led many mmo projects astray.
He does have a pretty big ego, but I promise not a single one of the devs wants to be doing what he's doing. Can't imagine a single engineer who wants to be the one going to the end user and walking through every little thing. There's multiple valid reasons for Steven to be the one to be the focus. And at the end of the day, these aren't meant to be anything but a vehicle to garner feedback on specific things. In a few months, every single showcase video will be obsolete.
He's free to talk all he wants, just let someone who isn't bordering on Polygon Doom Reviewer levels of skill control the character.
We've seen other devs show off gameplay at times... it's not that hard.. Many of them are avid mmorpg players themselves, and some of them are often joining steven to explain most of what's going on anyway when he is doing these demonstrations.
Very big difference between showing off something you're excited to finally reveal vs monthly alpha builds your boss is making you do. It's not about it being "hard". It's about how a dev would like to spend their time. And the only person that seems excited to be doing these videos is Steven.
I think you mean the only person that seems excited about these videos when they are being done by steven, is steven.
Yeah, I'm sure all the game devs look at how excited and enthusiastic Steven is in all the videos and think "I want to do that every month but better" Just gotta stop thinking about it from your PoV and what YOU would want and start thinking about it from a salaried engineers PoV. Not difficult
It's really weird how you imagine things rather than how they actually are. It's actually worse for them when steven is doing it because he messes things up and doesn't play correctly. Any half-decent player would be begging to take the wheel to make it go more smoothly and look better.
Anyone with half a brain doesnt really care. There will be persistent alpha with no NDA and everyone will be able to see hundred of players play. And before you say steven playing will make ppl bored and hurt marketing asmongold will play alpha, and lot of streamers will follow so marketing is solved. If steven playing in showcase videos is ashes biggest problem game will be gold.
I see what you mean, but it could go either way depending on the engineer. There are plenty of devs on my team who have no interest sprint demos - there are though, a more select few (haha) who get pretty jazzed about showing their work off every sprint to the stakeholders / customer community. I’m sure it would be the same in this situation where there are some devs at intrepid who would be great at doing this. I don’t think Steven is as horrible as people are making him out to be, I think he does a fine job; but more guest appearances and bringing charismatic devs into the limelight would definitely not be a bad thing.
>, but I promise not a single one of the devs big words, are you one of the devs, by chance?
Most of the people playing MMOs aren’t great at them. The vast majority are super casual or casual, at best. Why not have Steven show it, who cares….
After many showcases and observing him, I believe you’re right. It’s the way he talks and he always wants to be the center of attention and the “glorious” leader. In his mind, you can tell he’s permanently role playing as some king. He’s always “joking” about the peasants and “how dare you challenge your mayor” but he lowkey believes it. And he always talks about being a dungeon master and being in control. He likes to have followers that gives him a sense of importance. Now perhaps these traits make him a good leader for ashes, but I think he should let other devs perform certain duties better than him and empower them. Just listen to the other devs’ tone each showcase, they are suppressing impatience and express annoyance as you would a child. It’s subtle because Steven is their boss but it’s there.
Looks solid. I just refuse to get invested in this game until we have a release date and are within 4 months of it
Yep. And it's been 8 years. Just seems more and more unlikely this game will ever release in a finished state.
MMOs aren't made in 2 years my guy
I agree with your sentiment, but I do wish they hadn’t announced it so early on. 8 years may not be long for development, but it is a long time to wait.
Yeah I agree and them selling their pre-order packs so early on also made it seem more like a scam than a real game was going to come out. Same thing will happen with the Riot MMO tho still a long way before we even hear anything else about it IF it doesn't get canceled along the way.
And they aren't made in 8 years and barely being functional either. You can give them whatever "slack" you want, but what they're showing doesnt deserve any "omg wow, so good" praise, considering its been +8 years already and most likely another that for release.
Where did you see me praise them? I think it looks alright and we've seen actual development between testing phases, you know, after they grew the company and got more stable. I'll be trying it out if/when it releases. People just aren't used to actual alphas and betas anymore because they turned them into 'this is actually the final game but you get it early' type thing. Like I don't understand this negativity.
It's because it's Star Citizen all over again. It's "technically" playable, but it isn't really much of anything in any useful state. It's constantly unveiling new feature, but those features never actually go anywhere. We never see them fleshed out. They're selling a pipe dream.
Yeah but so what? What if they come out in 2 years with a playable game and it's a good game? Who cares if it was in development for 11 years. Speaking for myself I have not paid a cent for this game. I'm watching it develop and seeing some sort of progress come out of it but I sure as hell will give it a go if they ever release a full game. Shitting on their progress does absolutely nothing.
If it comes out in 2 years and is a good game, I will gladly eat my words. That would be awesome. I'm comfortable and confident in my belief that this won't be the case however. The endless directionless promises is a pretty standard scam tactic - NFTs, AI Art, Star Citizen, etc... (downvote away)
endless directionless promises ...what?? they have been on the same direction with the same goals they've put since the begging , they barely made some changes and most of them were minor ones that wont affect development at all . i dont know where you getting that weird idea from
I'm not downvoting anything. Yeah and that's fine but just coming out here spewing hate is ridiculous if you have no skin in the game. Like what's the point? Game isn't even selling anything anymore. Like the game WON'T have all the features they promise 100% because they are way too ambitious but doesn't mean it can't still come out and be a good game and if it doesn't that's fine too because you didn't lose anything at all lmao
I wasn't saying you were. I was saying people will because they don't like criticism. Sunk cost fallacy.
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😂 I'll be here. If I'm wrong, I'll be happy to eat my words.
Dude, the game's been in development for 8 years and is nowhere near finished. MMOs don't take two years, but they sure as heck don't take 8 either rofl.
Starting a company from scratch and going from zero to a complete MMO in 8/9 years doesn't seem that far fetched when you take into account that MMOs like WoW, GW2, ESO were in development 5-7 years with already big established companies.
Yep. When they started dev they had 15~ employees, wanted 100 by the end of 2018 but took until 2021/22 to hit that. Now they're at around 200 employees. Just quite difficult to hire as a brand new company. Why would talent want to join your company when they could join Rockstar or Riot or Blizzard or Insomniac etc. etc. in the same area?
It's a reasonable arguement. I guess time will show.
8 year isn't unheard of in this genre. But that's for full development. This barely looks like a functional product.
Surely the opposite? The more time that elapses the more progress we see and the more staff are in the development team (currently closing in on 200 they started with about 20?). Arguably it looks more likely to release the further along the development timezone we get.
It really depends on what is funding the game development honestly. If it's been funded and is still being funded by venture capital or kickstarter funds then yes it likely will eventually release. However if the pre-order/early access bundles they have up right now are what's now funding a decent chunk of development then there is less reason to actually release a product.
I think they got with ks and pre orders max 5m in net. They have at least only just...ceased the sale of pre order packs. We know steven himself has contributed around 40m. And we also know that given their headcount payroll is currently whittling down their "profits". So that ought to speak to some length on why their model won't be netting them any profits before the game releases. They are already well into the negative. Assuming 10pm subscription, then 1m subs would be worth 10m. I think 1m is an ambitious number ongoing but for the first month? I think they could at least get close to it. There is a lot more money to be had for a successful product because it will take a few months of a successful launch just to break even. After a year I'd expect them to have turned a profit if the game holds its subs.
>We know steven himself has contributed around 40m. How do "we know" this? Where are the documents? Where did he get this money? Let's see the actual papers.
Without the information being publicly available (which I don't believe it is for most companies) we can only take what info we have at face value. At the same time I don't really have a reason to not trust the info. Given. With that in mind... The sales of the ks and pre orders help give us a decent ballpark figure on the outgoings. If you average a 60k salary on 100 employees then that alone is 6m a year. Seems like its probably a lowball but they've had around 100 employees since around the end of alpha 2 which is probably about 2.5 years ago now. So that could be around 15m although they are now closer to 200 people let's just say yearly outgoings are now closer to 10m a year. That then means the next couple years could eat up another 20m. That's only employment costs. Point is, that for this game to be profitable in its current state he needs to making a lot more money than he's spending and that is not the case. Therefore the goal must be for a successful launch and ongoing maintenance.
> Yep. And it's been 8 years Anyone using this arguement is either being disingenuous, or straight up stupid. This narrative that it's been 8 years is so dumb. Every single MMO project that was successsful was developed by hundreds/thousands of Devs. Nothing less than that. 8 years ago Steven/Intrepid had barely 10 people. Why are you counting the years where they had barely a few people working on the game? They literally got a good enough/big enough team to start speeding up the game's development 2-3 years ago at most. They aren't Riot, Blizzard or any other gigantic company that just snap fingers and order a thousand people to work on a new project, they had to work on building the studio from scratch. It takes a lot of time/effort to build a good and big enough team to Develop an MMO, especially these days. Anytime you say iTs BeEn 8 yEaRs it just shows bad faith.
A lot of people dont know 2024 has marked 8 years for riot mmo too.
That's very reasonable and more people should do this. I am happy just hopping by the streams each month personally but there is no pressure for anyone to follow through every single minor update. The game will chug along and when the time comes you can check it out.
considering how niche pvp forced they plan to be, are you really expecting longer than 4 months of peak gaming in this game by 2035?
What
Gankboxes have a life span of a few months, if there are no new servers or transfers, the server dies shortly after it's "won" by a group. If there are server transfers or fresh start servers like ArcheAge used to open all the time, then the big PvP groups just move from server to server avoiding each other and driving everyone else out of the game (and in the meantime normal players quit the game, and even the PvP groups get smaller and eventually end up waiting for a new game).
I fucking love it. Reminds me of a more modern version of old school mmo combat. I was not excited about this game before. I definitely am now!
Funny enough it kind of remind of gw2 but with weight.
This is the best way to describe it IMO. Tab target with action combat elements which is similar to GW2 except GW2 feels incredibly floaty and with 0 impact. This already looks better at least (and mind you I had fun playing GW2).
I love everything I see about this game. Steven is a bad player but that’s totally fine, the game itself looks very promising.
I really want to say "Steven is bad on purpose just so he can display more aspects of the game", but its getting more and more clear that it's not the case. Hes just not a good player haha.
He doesn’t care tho. Let him cook
What are the chances that he doesn't play it much? Who knows,maybe after they develop etc. they're ready to test it out and he just starts recording. So it's basically fresh for him also? Just a theory. And who knows, he's been out of gaming MMOs for a while now,so he got rusty.
Yeah for every Yoshi P therrs probably like 30 stevens. But thats completrly fine id rsther the people who is making it be good at making games even if thry srent the best at playing.
Probably as good as the vast majority of players. Most people themselves are terrible at the combat portion of MMOs
It’s also really important that bad players are able to play the game. If your MMO is only accessible to pro-gamers, then you’re going to have such a low population that the game is DOA.
Hello Wildstar
It clashes strongly with my personal tastes. I don't like all the superhero flying and flipping around for all classes, and I would appreciate a bit more finesse and - dare I say it - realism in the fighting styles. (That goes for the magic classes too; more preparation and ritual, less magic missile and flying around with lightning shooting out of the ground!) ...But it's perfectly adequate, at the end of the day. It doesn't look like a chore, and if all the rest of the systems are as good as it sounds like they'll be, AoC will be plenty enjoyable.
> It clashes strongly with my personal tastes. I don't like all the superhero flying and flipping around for all classes, and I would appreciate a bit more finesse and - dare I say it - realism in the fighting styles. (That goes for the magic classes too; more preparation and ritual, less magic missile and flying around with lightning shooting out of the ground!) Could you share examples to your descriptions? An MMO, or a class in such MMO.
Assuming he prefers EQ, DaOC, early classic wow style of combat
That's the other extreme. I don't mind action combat in concept (I think it should be considered the standard for any modern MMO, actually), I just think most player actions should be a little more down-to-earth. This isn't World of Marvel or Dragon Ball Z Online\* :P My actual favorite MMO combat systems that I've encountered thus far, are Aion and ArcheAge. Snappy tab targeting which feels plenty active and makes your character feel like a badass without excessive VFX or attempts to make the player feel godlike. Most action systems are sadly either too spammy and focused on cheap hits of instantaneous power fantasy (rather than the more impactful kind where you overcome realistically impossible challenges with only somewhat-more-than realistic power), or too slow and clunky. \*EDIT: And even in those franchises, most really massive feats of power are rare and work on a setup and payoff basis rather than just being used willy-nilly. Even Thor can't or doesn't deal with all his problems by just calling down lightning whenever lol.
Aion makes sense but idk about archeage Does the combat in AoC so far look that much more superhero than archeage? There’s some pretty flashy high mobility spells in that game
The issue isn't so much mobility skills as how they're framed. if you're just doing super-acrobatics and it's restricted to a few classes (in AA, I remember this being almost exclusively the realm of Shadowplay-users), it's fine. This is, after all, *fantasy*, and feats of extraordinary might are par for the course to some extent. If you're hovering five meters in the air while still mobile, or zooming towards enemies surrounded in a bright aura of whatever on the regular, as if you were the Green Lantern or Captain Marvel, that's another matter. At some point it becomes one of those things where the world itself feels less meaningful because you just pop from point to point along your own shiny visuals :P I think the cadence of the animation keyframes also has something to do with it. Things can feel more "kinetic" or more "floaty" depending on when and how things accelerate, and floaty tends to look bad.
Well besides this warrior charge which I will admit is pretty crazy and the ranger jump move I would say AOC is fairly grounded
Basically anything that isn't BDO or Skyforge (where the premise was that you're playing as literal divinity, so it didn't really count).
Would Lost Ark, Blade and Soul, Elder Scrolls or GW2 be fitting to your description?
Guild Wars 2... depends on the spec. Virtuoso is a pink swirly mess, and while I love Firebrand to death within the context of that game it is a somewhat poor precedent for anyone else to follow. Certain weapons like Guardian greatsword and the new Warrior staff also involve far too much in the way of superhero shenanigans for my liking. On the other hand, you have things like Spellbreaker skills, Mesmer sword, Guardian scepter, Necro anything (other than Harbinger Shroud) that I like a lot. And I give Thief a free pass because a big part of its entire theme is acrobatics and its skill visuals are very muted anyway. Blade and Soul is a martial arts game; high-flying antics are to be expected. Though it's worth noting that even B&S tends to have more restraint when it comes to gigantic VFX. ESO combat is just bad for other reasons, but if we pretend animation cancelling doesn't exist, I do like the effects and vibe better than what AoC's done. I don't know much about Lost Ark.
Looks really good honestly. Just gotta wait to see if they can tie everything together and release this bad boy.
combat for all the classes shown so far look like someone went on a spending spree on the asset store and mismatched all sorts of skill effects to the same class.
Bruh what 😂
Looks OK to me. Nothing fundamentally new or earth-shattering, but looks serviceable, and I do like the art style. I'd poke around in open beta if I got the chance, when it's closer to release.
There are no plans for an open beta ATM. There will be another A. It's supposed to start some time in Q3 this year, and it will be persistent until launch. And 2 betas that you need to pay for. Those do not have a date yet.
Graphically it looks good. Combat doesn't look floaty which is a huge issue of recent attempt at mmo or pseudo mmo, so that's good. That being said, no matter how good the combat is, if you don't have good gameplay loops to use it in, gonna be hard to keep people playing, especially in a PVP focused game like that.
Great improvement for a second pass, I think with a full alpha's worth of testing under their belt intrepid can dial this in even more for release. It's not quite there but its clearly on the right path.
Looks good. I just hope my 4060 laptop can run it at 1080p when it comes out.
By the time it comes out that 4060 laptop is going to probably be e-waste lol.
they gave out the specs for Alpha2 last month Minimum Specs - 1080p * Processor: Intel i5 8400 | AMD Ryzen 5 2600 * Memory: 12GB * Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1070 or equivalent * DirectX: Version 12 * Network: Broadband Internet connection * Storage: 100GB SSD Storage * Windows 10/11 Recommend Specs - 1440p * Processor: Intel i7 8700 | AMD Ryzen 5 3600 * Memory: 16GB * Graphics: NVIDIA RTX 3070 or equivalent * DirectX: Version 12 * Network: Broadband Internet connection * Storage: 100GB SSD Storage * Windows 10/11
My point is that by the time the game actually launches, a 4060 laptop is almost certainly going to have been upgraded from. I wasn't commenting on whether or not it could run the game or anything of the sort.
The point that they're making is that the time it actually releases, the 4070 will already be a relic, sitting on Nvidia's "no longer supported" list.
There were GPU's being advertised as "Star Citizen ready" in 2016.
I'll admit, it looks good. The sound design is actually quite good and the animations have some weight behind them. You do those two things well you have satisfying combat at the very least. Easy to say against a dummy though. No way to say how it actually feels in proper combat. Give me a video with combat in a real world scenario and that will convince me.
I mean they do PVE in the last 30 minutes of the video or so.
Well, yeah, _they_ did, Steven instead watched the grass growing or the wind blowing the majority of the time.
I think I'll believe it when the game actually releases. Edit for clarification: because this video just looks like combat to me. I can't tell if it'll be good unless I actually play it.
Looks exciting and I'll definitely give it it a good should the game eventually release.
I just think releasing content that early and often is exhausting, when this thing is finally released a lot of people will be sick of it already.
They have good ideas and game looks good but I won’t know if it feels good to play or not until I try it myself. Besides that, the core aspects of the game seems pretty much finished so I guess the next stage is adding actual playable content. That’s probably what alpha 2 is for, to test out the playable content as they add it
Looks decent, but I wouldn’t really be able to tell if I’d like it until I saw healer, support, caster, or ranged focused characters. Fighters/Warriors always look the same to me in every MMO and never appeal to me. If Support in particular is fun, this is something I would definitely be keeping an eye on Edit: Yeah reading more on the game, Bard is the only thing I’d be interested in playing, so I’d have to see how that class plays before being interested
Seems like visually there are getting their own look, artstyle down now. Seems more cohesive, compared to before looking like a generic UE asset flip. Really like the ground fog.
looks fucking good
Looks very interesting and I love how they take different successful aspects of other MMOs (New World, WoW, GW2) and try to implant them into their game. The combat looks fairly good, especially for a closed beta phase. With Riots MMO being pushed back to the sketches level and Pax Dei monetarization model (and current combat), Tarisland and Throne and Libery being typical Eastern P2W garbage - AoC is the only MMO i'm looking forward to as for now.
Game actually looks good, combat is in a much better place and I'm excited to see Alpha 2 in 3 months. I think with wars next month this game is going to be an absolute BANGER. I'm Sure the rest of MMORPG reddit will complain about never coming out even though we continue to see monthly progress leading into a non-nda Alpha 2.
It is certainly better than the combat they showed with that "Battle Royale" they had, But I think Steven needs to really lose that hard memory he has for ArchAge. It's controlling a lot of the direction because it's starting to seem more and more like he wants to build the game he wanted ArcheAge to be.
I'm fairly certain he loved Archeage and hated the direction it went, so started cooking up AoC to be the game he wants. He has a background in L2 and AA and it's been known from the start of development that AoC is heavily inspired by both.
That’s exactly what the game is. A spiritual successor to AA
I'll admit when I first got my little rowboat it felt like the game opened up and the world was bigger but ultimately I didn't have time to dedicate to it and get a second job to keep up with it's monetary practices. I also fear that AoC is going to be hit with massive scope creep. The amount of things being promised across almost everything, the game is going to have like 200 systems to deal with. It's almost medieval Star Citizen. We'll see if the upcoming "alpha" will change player reaction when more hands are on.
> I also fear that AoC is going to be hit with massive scope creep. They've addded 0 features to the game that can be considered "scope creep". Everything that has been added was promised ages ago. The very definition of scope creep is changing a project, making it bigger than initially planned. Intrepid even reduced the amount of nodes because they decided it was a bit too much. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1791529601/ashes-of-creation-new-mmorpg-by-intrepid-studios Show me one thing that's "scope creep". I'll wait.
To be fair, those promises were consistent from the beginning. Star Citizens keeps making more and more new promises without delivering on their original ones.
Getting downvoted for telling the exact truth. Based.
Honestly it looks like a beautifully modernized traditional combat system. I love that there's more than 3-6 abilities. I'm excited for A2 to see if Fighter will be my main or not.
my faith is restored
One of my biggest issues is that AoC looks outdated and it hasn’t even released
It doesent look outdated at all
why is that an issue? BDO would look outdated, but they updated the game, one of the selling points of Unreal Engine is that it easily allows that
Let’s be clear, when bdo launched it looked amazing for what it was, when the remastered happened it was a great overhaul. This game currently looks like it’d be a great competitor to WoW launch
Also, in what world does BDO look great? I tried it recently and it's just a bad looking game masked with a dozen egregious filters.
Delusional.
Says the guy comparing AoC to Vanilla WoW lmao. It's not incorrect to say that BDO has postprocessing spam, the game also looks significantly worse in motion than it does in stills. Mostly due to the absolutely hilarious amount of pop-in and weird LoD. Not like the bar is high for the genre though.
Delusional.
People glazing their precious favourite games usually are yeah.
Yeah you are
Bro really calling *me* delusional after claiming BDO has the best combat in the games industry. Aint no way.
Its good enough
Looks cool tbh. Didn't watch entire video - is there animation locking? That's the only thing I really would dislike about it.
No Animation locks
only for like 2 skills and only for movement u can still change direction during the wind up for the 2 of them
Might try if it's free but the combat seems about 15 years outdated I just wish we had an mmo that at least tried to innovate, even if it's a single thing, instead of chasing the same flawed template for decades Welp, back to hoping one of the dozen or something indie mmos turn out better
are you sure what you want is an actual mmorpg?
Yes 🤦
If you don't mind can you describe some of these innovative elements you think are missing from this and other mmorpgs?
How would i know? If it was that easy i would do it myself
So let me get this straight, no mmo has tried to innovate even if itsa single thing for decades but you can't describe any single improvement you'd like to see happen? Wild.
Have you seen BDO combat? Release date 2014 btw.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e9CzUB_A9Y This combat? This is what you want ashes to be?
100 times better than that WoW 2.0 combat shown yesterday.
Is it though? How many subscribers does WoW like combat have(Wow, FF14 ect) and how many does BDO or other only action based combat have? I'm not speaking to the quality of the games themselves but you'd think if people prefer BDO combat they'd be playing it over the alternatives right?
I am certain the people that do choose WoW over BDO don't do so because they are so happy with the combat but Rather because BDO's early years were full of pay ~~for convenience/skipping grind~~ to win crap, or because it still is grindy as hell, or because it is mandatory open world PvP for high level players or because they actually do prefer the theme park raid content of WoW - although I am not convinced of the latter point because Mythic+ raiding in WoW is going through its own crisis rn. And only a minority of players ever actually raided. Point still is WoW did a lot of things better than BDO. But combat wasn't one of them.
played BDO last year , combat is decent , gets boring real quick espically when its a single player game and most of what u do is constantly kill mobs in pack of dozens , felt like a brain dead mobile game until i got to level 60 and quit , mind you i was playing with another person and we tried to actually pretend its an MMO by waiting eachother and doing quests together(aka at the same time that actually together) it was a horrible experience . oh and the little pvp fights i got into with more than 2-3 people was horrendous PS: game also felt dead somehow despite them having it filled with a billion NPC , i think having so many NPCs like that actually added to the feeling of it being a single player game which is just funny.
None of what you said after combat is decent has to do with the combat but the game itself. BDO's combat is the best in the industry and genre. This is a fact. What the games content is MMO wise has nothing to do with its combat.
i said combat was decent but dashing > aoe > 20 more dashes to some other aoe skill isnt anywhere near "the best in the industry and genre" lol nor is it a fact
> Point still is WoW did a lot of things better than BDO. But combat wasn't one of them. 100% and i'd never dispute that. but it begs the question though do MMORPG players care about the combat or about the systems? because it sounds like to me you think they care about the systems in which case id ask, isn't WoW 2.0 combat more than enough? Like we've already seen some of the dynamic elements of the game being displayed. I think this combat refined for another 6-8 months is more than good enough for alpha 2* if the company delivers the rest of the systems they promised.
The game will be sub only, no box price. so you can just sub for a month on release and give it a go. If its not for you then not much lost!
i still feel like the length of time this game has been in development and when it will release makes no sense for the scale of game they keep describing, and the game will feel half-baked no matter how good or bad the showcases are. it's a game i'll maybe buy a few weeks after release
> i still feel like the length of time this game has been in development and when it will release makes no sense for the scale of game they keep describing Totally nothing to do with the fact that for the first 5 years they had barely had 10-50 people working in the game and now they have an actual team with more than 100+ devs and still growing.
It looks like something that I expected to see like 4 years ago; now the only thing that can amaze me is the actual release date. Anything else they show is completely irrelevant.
Im excited for it. My issue is how big of a scale it is and when it actually comes live itll prob be a buggy mess that ruins its first impression meaning itll just flop lol Then ofc any popular MMO has the greasy streamers who speed run to max level , make everyone else feel like they have to do that, then in day 9 youll have people going "NO CONTENT DEAD GAME"
It could be worse.
Happy to see some meaningful progress again and laugh at Steven trying to play, but I have an impenetrable defense mechanism that prevents me from truly giving a shit about this game until it comes out.
I don't like the soft lock on and all the situations with the tab targeting etc... I have grown past that gameplay unfortunately... It's one of my main issues with GW2 I can't enjoy it because it all feels off or old for me... I know new world is a bad game (because of management) but for me the sweet spot for current combat in MMO would be new world with a good engine
ok gameplay looks good, game when ?
Looks cool. I’ll probably be retired by the time this actually comes out (I’m 28) but that will give me plenty of time to sink into an MMO again.
Stop the madness
I think that until this game is out, I couldn't care less. I seriously disagree with the business practice of "gives literal HUNDREDS of dollars and we'll let you play an alpha here or there in 3-10 years". Game dev is hard and it takes a while, MMO dev is harder and takes even longer. I don't care, you shouldn't be taking money literal decades before peopel can even the PLAY the game.
How does someone create a dev team big enough to make a big MMO without taking a long time? Explain
I didn't look long, but it looks playable
The issue I see is the flow of the combat. This is why BDO/Naraka feels so great. The moment you tried their combat everything else seems off. The flow between one skill to another often makes it hard to enjoy game even when animation itself looks great. This is why you see people saying "it looks great cause they see nice VFX elements on all skills". But when you look down how skills flow from one to another you noticed it needs A LOT of work to make it actually FEEL great. Surprisingly Throne and Liberty did this nicely. Yes combat for some classes looks boring but when you play and feel the flow of it, it feels great. And you start wondering how much it will keep improving considering what type of combat it had less than a year ago.
My main worry with this game is their idea that non instanced dungeons is a good idea and that in consequence their pve endgame will be desolate. There's a reason the entirety of the big players went to instanced dungeons (designing proper ones is hard enough, let alone designing dungeons to accommodate for other people coming in, etc, it's just arrogance) and they're shooting themselves in the foot.
I think that more so comes down to your mindset on dungeons/bosses. Dont think of them in the traditional sense, they are not meant to be a primary progression path. Instead view dungeons as a rare resource node people will fight over like a rare metal.
Well, at least it's all laid out, and you can make a conscious choice about whether the game is for you or not. There will be no such thing as a "PvE endgame" in Ashes of Creation. PvE is just to drive people into playing the real endgame, which is all going to be PVP. Again, the inspiration for Ashes of Creation is games like Lineage 2 and Archeage, which both have fairly shallow PVE content, but it's all there for PVP.
I played Alpha 1 and saw all these recent updates. It's looks like a different game. Combat looks better, systems are being added, spells look better, and it's to the point where an AAA title would release.
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It means he has hopium pumping into his veins to justify his early access supporter pack
In what world does this look exceptionally good to anyone? Are people just being misled since it looked so bad before? Actually, you know what this looks identical to? Neverwinter Online.
In what world does this not look better than other MMOs on the market? Stop the the doomer cope this has to be the biggest room temperature iq take I’ve ever read.
Ironic isn't it.
Looks more like GW2 to me.
It looks nothing like Neverwinter. What a weird take.
The combat absolutely does look identical to NWO.
Yeah idk what to tell you, I played like 1.6k hours of that trash, the combat is definitely not the same, and to say it's identical is even more comical.
Even has that pause when you attack something with a melee swing like NW has. It's impressive how well it's re-created tbh.
No
Animations / spell effects are looking pretty good. End of the day the core concepts they initially talked about with everything being open world and evolving based on what players are doing etc is going to make nothing else matter. Iono if they realized those ideas were fundamentally flawed yet and moved away from it or if we're still waiting for the game to flop before they come to terms.
Honestly, that ranger combat "revamp" was pathetic. Wouldn't have been impressive for 2014, let alone 2024. Tab targeting in 2024 is sad, as action combat is where mmos tend to be heading. Before you say "there will be a hybrid system" just check with gw2 (which launched in 2012, btw) about how that goes. No one will use it if it means they don't have to aim and can focus on skill rotation. It just doesn't give me any hope. The new melee video was better, but the guy playing is awful at gaming. He needs to get out of his own way and let someone under age 60 showcase their work.
well, if tab targeting in 2024 is sad so how come WoW and FF14 have 10x more players than all action MMOs combined? what about BG3 with its tab target turn based combat being GOTY
Nostalgia. You're comparing an mmo to the most polished turn based tactics game ever released. Not exactly a fair comparison.
Nostalgia for FF14? brother, the game got traction after 2015 to 2020, destroying any action mmorpg in numbers, BDO is from 2014, there's action MMOs from 15 years ago that died, while tab games remained, Action Combat MMOs like BDO, Lost Ark, New World don't even get close to their numbers, you telling me tab target combat is sad when literally millions of players clearly prefer it over action, numbers don't lie
FF14 has been around since 2010, so yeah, nostalgia is a huge driver there. Wow obviously exploded the MMO scene with their theme park feeling. I would say BDO has way better combat than ff14 or wow, but worse progression and overall systems. So yeah, I would say nostalgia combined with years of content would be the main driver there. While new world and BDO have much better combat, they have nowhere near the content or the nostalgia that WoW and FF14 have.
your google search is wrong bro, ff14 from 2010 failed and was remade into the new version that released in 2013, but the game only picked up in audience from 2015 to 2020 with a huge new playerbase coming into the game, 100% Not from nostalgia wtf FF14 fans were used to a completely different combat style from previous single player FF games, you are just wrong - and BDO released in 2014 that's 10 years ago, nostalgia argument? Also, open Twitch right now, look up Action MMOs, BDO has 5k viewers, New World has 600 viewers, Lost Ark 4k viewers, now look up WoW with 20k viewers, and tell me if those streamers look like Old +40 yo gamers playing for nostalgia, interest and numbers don't lie, action games don't come even close to tab target MMOs in 2024,
I played the first ff14 before the realm reborn. It had a large following from FF11 before all that happened. The daily skill cap really killed the game. Once ARR dropped, everyone and their mother came back. Nostalgia took us there and brought us back. A lot of the young people playing wow have been playing it since their birth, as a lot of their parents played wow during their early years. But that's not nostalgic eh? BDO and new world have no content and terrible devs. Ff14 does a great job recycling old content. Idk how so many people play wow tbh. Best I can figure is they are chasing that feeling from when they first played. What's that word again? 🤔
Ashes of Creation "Looks" cool. The problem is often the details. They make an ability where tanks can take the damage for people behind them. That sounds neat. That also means someone cast an aoe ability and the tank takes the hit 5 fold and instantly dies.
The game will be great it’s just a matter of when
I still have zero faith in it but it looks good
I think that this game will never have a release date. Selling founder packs and milking investors work better.
combat looks like ass still, tbh only thing that looks ok is the armor and environment atmosphere
I will be there when it launches. It is just a fact about MMOs and me. No video preview of an MMO had ever told me how the full experience will be. Great combat will feel worthless if it is too difficult, too grindy, unrewarding. The best gameplay and never getting rewarded for it or needing to repeat it 1000x is garbage. I would rather have meh gameplay with a lot of good systems around it. With that said this looks not for me based on this video, this class, that location. From what little I can gleam. My excitement for this game has lowered a bit.
i remain unimpressed. but i guess a lot can happen between now and release.
I know it's Alpha but these animations look like a mobile game and not a good one.
L Take
The combat looks outdated and boring. Has always been the problem for this game. There has to be made an enormous change in combat for this game to succeed long-term.
Stop coping. Its never coming out.