Group-Based PvE MMORPG Embers Adrift is Launching October 15th 2022 | MMORPG.com

Slapshot1188 · October 2022

OG_Solareus said:

Slapshot1188 said:

OG_Solareus said:

Not having pvp , miss step imho.

Yes. Clearly THAT is the one missing piece here.

Imagine finding an ember having to find a place to protect it from other players. Holding up in a cave while your guild begins to build a structure like in Conan Exiles to protect the ember. People can't build without an ember like a bane tree in shadowbane.

So yes, I feel running around looking for something that has no real engagement once it's retrieved seems like a miss step.

If you think their target audience is Conan Exiles or Shadowbane (both games I played and like) I think you are trying to force a square peg into a round hole

OG_Solareus · October 2022

Slapshot1188 said:

OG_Solareus said:

Slapshot1188 said:

OG_Solareus said:

Not having pvp , miss step imho.

Yes. Clearly THAT is the one missing piece here.

Imagine finding an ember having to find a place to protect it from other players. Holding up in a cave while your guild begins to build a structure like in Conan Exiles to protect the ember. People can't build without an ember like a bane tree in shadowbane.

So yes, I feel running around looking for something that has no real engagement once it's retrieved seems like a miss step.

If you think their target audience is Conan Exiles or Shadowbane (both games I played and like) I think you are trying to force a square peg into a round hole

I'm not saying "core" , I'm saying opportunity."

[Deleted User] · October 2022

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Slapshot1188 · October 2022

OG_Solareus said:

Slapshot1188 said:

OG_Solareus said:

Slapshot1188 said:

OG_Solareus said:

Not having pvp , miss step imho.

Yes. Clearly THAT is the one missing piece here.

Imagine finding an ember having to find a place to protect it from other players. Holding up in a cave while your guild begins to build a structure like in Conan Exiles to protect the ember. People can't build without an ember like a bane tree in shadowbane.

So yes, I feel running around looking for something that has no real engagement once it's retrieved seems like a miss step.

If you think their target audience is Conan Exiles or Shadowbane (both games I played and like) I think you are trying to force a square peg into a round hole

I'm not saying "core" , I'm saying opportunity."

And I am saying: No.

If this game is/was to succeed they just had to deliver what they said they would do, and do it well. A group based PvE game. That was always the pitch. Adding Conan Exile or Shadowbane type stuff is not what this game is about.

They don't need PvP. They just need to deliver on what they promised. Whether they can do that or not remains to be seen, but in a few weeks we will know.

bcbully · October 2022

Finaly a PvE only, sub only game.

PvE only, want sub only people say it sucks.

Scot · October 2022

bcbully said:

Finaly a PvE only, sub only game.

PvE only, want sub only people say it sucks.

Not even you say that every cypto-game is good, you have told us some suck, the genre and monetarization method guarantee nothing about how the game compares to others of its like.

cheyane · October 2022

bcbully said:

Finaly a PvE only, sub only game.

PvE only, want sub only people say it sucks.

Very tricky of you but the fact that the game has only PvE has nothing to do with why players may shun a game. Many players to this day play Everquest , WoW and FFXIV on basically PvE servers.

A game has to have engaging content and that standard is non negotiable.

Kyleran · October 2022

cheyane said:

bcbully said:

Finaly a PvE only, sub only game.

PvE only, want sub only people say it sucks.

Very tricky of you but the fact that the game has only PvE has nothing to do with why players may shun a game. Many players to this day play Everquest , WoW and FFXIV on basically PvE servers.

A game has to have engaging content and that standard is non negotiable.

I would go so far as to say that at least for me, if a game has engaging, good quality content the payment model doesn't really affect my decision whether to play or not.

Except for crypto/ NFT, a game would have to be the equivalent of Ready Player One for me to consider that model, anything less, a hard pass.

Yeah, I'm a Crypto/ NFT Hater ...and proud of it!

Scot · October 2022

Kyleran said:

cheyane said:

bcbully said:

Finaly a PvE only, sub only game.

PvE only, want sub only people say it sucks.

Very tricky of you but the fact that the game has only PvE has nothing to do with why players may shun a game. Many players to this day play Everquest , WoW and FFXIV on basically PvE servers.

A game has to have engaging content and that standard is non negotiable.

I would go so far as to say that at least for me, if a game has engaging, good quality content the payment model doesn't really affect my decision whether to play or not.

Except for crypto/ NFT, a game would have to be the equivalent of Ready Player One for me to consider that model, anything less, a hard pass.

Yeah, I'm a Crypto/ NFT Hater ...and proud of it!

I agree but my Achillies heel is graphics, I advocate that gameplay is all that matters, then see the graphics and am like "hmmm...bit old".

TheDalaiBomba · October 2022

Kyleran said:

cheyane said:

bcbully said:

Finaly a PvE only, sub only game.

PvE only, want sub only people say it sucks.

Very tricky of you but the fact that the game has only PvE has nothing to do with why players may shun a game. Many players to this day play Everquest , WoW and FFXIV on basically PvE servers.

A game has to have engaging content and that standard is non negotiable.

I would go so far as to say that at least for me, if a game has engaging, good quality content the payment model doesn't really affect my decision whether to play or not.

Except for crypto/ NFT, a game would have to be the equivalent of Ready Player One for me to consider that model, anything less, a hard pass.

Yeah, I'm a Crypto/ NFT Hater ...and proud of it!

I extend that rule to F2P, and I've yet to run out of great games to play.

Arkangel32 · October 2022

OG_Solareus said:

Not having pvp , miss step imho.

This may be a surprise to people like you, but there are a lot of people who just enjoy PVE and teamwork. The devs do not have to spend their time and money catering to pvp whiners, "This isnt blaanced" "this isnt fair", "Stop nerfing my class"

Regardless this is a day and age of entitled whiners and complainers.

I would rather play this PVE focused game which focuses on teamwork, and good social interaction.

The oh old days of EQ, UO and DAOC, where azzhats were shunned and kicked. Miss those games.

Dattelis · October 2022

Arkangel32 said:

OG_Solareus said:

Not having pvp , miss step imho.

This may be a surprise to people like you, but there are a lot of people who just enjoy PVE and teamwork. The devs do not have to spend their time and money catering to pvp whiners, "This isnt blaanced" "this isnt fair", "Stop nerfing my class"

Regardless this is a day and age of entitled whiners and complainers.

I would rather play this PVE focused game which focuses on teamwork, and good social interaction.

The oh old days of EQ, UO and DAOC, where azzhats were shunned and kicked. Miss those games.

Pretty true. If FFXIV removed pvp tomorrow, there wouldn't be a noticeable decline in the game's player-base.

Ungood · October 2022

Quizzical said:

Ungood said:

Gamers: We need group based content to build community, it's the only way to build a good MMO.

Also Gamers: This MMO is forced group content, fuck that, it's fail sauce.

See.. this shit is why we don't have any "good" MMO's coming out.

So you're saying that different people have different opinions?

People don't want just a game that checks off several features that they like. They also want a game that is actually good.

I wish I was saying Different People have Different Opinions.

I am saying, It's the same people, having direct contrarian stances.

Uwakionna · October 2022

Part of that isn't contradiction as much as it's issues with the provided "solution".

Group content based on making activities a slow grind that gets accelerated by headcount, is one of the weakest solutions to facilitating group play.

Dattelis · October 2022

Uwakionna said:

Part of that isn't contradiction as much as it's issues with the provided "solution".

Group content based on making activities a slow grind that gets accelerated by headcount, is one of the weakest solutions to facilitating group play.

A lot of the time I agree with you. However, looking at it through that framework causes games to become the state they are in today. Most mmorpgs on the market are structured around either solo play or forgettable group play, thus resulting in a huge drop off after content is released. The content that does 'require' a correndinated group is often make irrelevant after a few months because its either nerfed or replaced with similar content with a different skin. Of course it can be argued that the content is just poor, but honestly most content from 10+ years ago was 'poor' but the 'slowgrind' added a extra 'step' as it were to get to that point. When you 'cut' things down, it just further shows the shallow element of whatever it has always been. The 'draw' to certain kinds of content that 'require headcounts' is kind of the fact that you can get the people to do it or you just dont do it, which a lot of people either can't do or don't want to. It further gives people that do it a 'sense of accomplishment.'

Uwakionna · October 2022

Dattelis said:

Uwakionna said:

Part of that isn't contradiction as much as it's issues with the provided "solution".

Group content based on making activities a slow grind that gets accelerated by headcount, is one of the weakest solutions to facilitating group play.

A lot of the time I agree with you. However, looking at it through that framework causes games to become the state they are in today. Most mmorpgs on the market are structured around either solo play or forgettable group play, thus resulting in a huge drop off after content is released. The content that does 'require' a correndinated group is often make irrelevant after a few months because its either nerfed or replaced with similar content with a different skin. Of course it can be argued that the content is just poor, but honestly most content from 10+ years ago was 'poor' but the 'slowgrind' added a extra 'step' as it were to get to that point. When you 'cut' things down, it just further shows the shallow element of whatever it has always been. The 'draw' to certain kinds of content that 'require headcounts' is kind of the fact that you can get the people to do it or you just dont do it, which a lot of people either can't do or don't want to. It further gives people that do it a 'sense of accomplishment.'

That's the problem of removing an element rather than offering a better solution.

Just removing the "slowgrind" is taking part of the game out. Of course that just leads to different problems when you create a hole in your systems.

What's necessary is other methods of facilitating group play. Challenges that require specialization and run in tandem. Mobs that can have variance in their behavior and weaknesses that pushes players to react or require different combat setups.

The problem under all this is something you said in passing here. "When you 'cut' things down, it just further shows the shallow element of whatever it has always been."

Games designed with shallow core game loops, will always be shallow games. Extending that by making you grind your way through mobs as a zerg, doesn't add depth or complexity or challenge. It's just a content gate to what is still fundamentally shallow content.

It's also an exceptionably weak concept of "group" activity as a social experience, just being one more head in a zerg.

Hence why it's "one of the weakest solutions", because it's the path of least resistance to dragging out a gameplay experience without making a game that's actually more engaging or creating any depth to it's game loops.

Dattelis · October 2022

Uwakionna said:

Dattelis said:

Uwakionna said:

Part of that isn't contradiction as much as it's issues with the provided "solution".

Group content based on making activities a slow grind that gets accelerated by headcount, is one of the weakest solutions to facilitating group play.

A lot of the time I agree with you. However, looking at it through that framework causes games to become the state they are in today. Most mmorpgs on the market are structured around either solo play or forgettable group play, thus resulting in a huge drop off after content is released. The content that does 'require' a correndinated group is often make irrelevant after a few months because its either nerfed or replaced with similar content with a different skin. Of course it can be argued that the content is just poor, but honestly most content from 10+ years ago was 'poor' but the 'slowgrind' added a extra 'step' as it were to get to that point. When you 'cut' things down, it just further shows the shallow element of whatever it has always been. The 'draw' to certain kinds of content that 'require headcounts' is kind of the fact that you can get the people to do it or you just dont do it, which a lot of people either can't do or don't want to. It further gives people that do it a 'sense of accomplishment.'

That's the problem of removing an element rather than offering a better solution.

Just removing the "slowgrind" is taking part of the game out. Of course that just leads to different problems when you create a hole in your systems.

What's necessary is other methods of facilitating group play. Challenges that require specialization and run in tandem. Mobs that can have variance in their behavior and weaknesses that pushes players to react or require different combat setups.

The problem under all this is something you said in passing here. "When you 'cut' things down, it just further shows the shallow element of whatever it has always been."

Games designed with shallow core game loops, will always be shallow games. Extending that by making you grind your way through mobs as a zerg, doesn't add depth or complexity or challenge. It's just a content gate to what is still fundamentally shallow content.

It's also an exceptionably weak concept of "group" activity as a social experience, just being one more head in a zerg.

Hence why it's "one of the weakest solutions", because it's the path of least resistance to dragging out a gameplay experience without making a game that's actually more engaging or creating any depth to it's game loops.

This really depends on what is considered 'better' compared to the 'point' of group play.

Many people like group play for a variety of reasons, ranging from the social aspect to the challenge aspect. The problem is, not many of those reasons line up with each other and further conditioning people to float towards one reason to the other instead of trying to accommodate both.

Honestly, conditioning is at the forefront of all of this. People were conditioned to think 'slowgrind' group play was the best way to play a game for a variety of reasons that resulted from it. Over the past 10 years or so, people have been conditioned to think getting people in and out is the best thing for themselves and gaming as a whole. The problem comes when the people from the 'days of old' can't (or choose not to) assimilate to the change. Does that mean one is honestly 'better' than the other? Not really since each idea was perceived 'good' at the time they occurred. Unless you're able to recondition people to think something else, they'll always hold their view of what is 'best.' This also means that it doesn't matter to them if a game's core system is shallow as long as they were drawn to whatever it provided.

Uwakionna · October 2022

It's not necessarily about slow vs fast, a slow game can be as engaging as a fast one, assuming it provides actions and choices within that which engages the player(s).

The problem as it's presented with this game, is that there is no such element. It leans relatively hard against mobs with more HP/damage to push the need for more players to solve a really basic numbers game, instead of going for a more interactive level.

That's not a dichotomy specifically of new vs old. Even older MMOs had some meta to it like twisting spells/skills in EQ, that I've not seen from this game. Not like that added a ton of depth, but some is more than nothing.

This is more so showing that there were certain lessons not learned, and an abstraction of surface level content without really understanding deeper mechanics that made it actually work.

And that's why this doesn't work. It doesn't have the foundation to make group play more interesting than zerging mobs. While not all of them carry over, there are many challenges that can make solo play interesting, which also scale into multi player. The crux is making sure players have a meaningful choice to make in fights. Doesn't matter how fast or slow, but when the game relies on gating things specifically through large HP pools and making that the primary/sole impetus to group up just to average your numbers out, then they've missed the mark no matter the type of game in question.

Slapshot1188 · October 2022

Uwakionna said:

It's not necessarily about slow vs fast, a slow game can be as engaging as a fast one, assuming it provides actions and choices within that which engages the player(s).

I had a single encounter recently in a virtual tabletop DnD game that ran for 5 hours

It was fun as hell and the centerpiece of months of gaming.

Like you say, it's all about being engaged.

lotrlore · October 2022

Slapshot1188 said:

Uwakionna said:

It's not necessarily about slow vs fast, a slow game can be as engaging as a fast one, assuming it provides actions and choices within that which engages the player(s).

I had a single encounter recently in a virtual tabletop DnD game that ran for 5 hours

It was fun as hell and the centerpiece of months of gaming.

Like you say, it's all about being engaged.

The DM in me is shuddering at keeping my player's attention for 5 hours...

Like, that is a herculean effort by your DM and should be praised!

Uwakionna · October 2022

Think problem may have been I referred to it as a "slow grind" initially, which understandably can be open to interpretation since it has slow in the statement.

The slow in and of itself isn't the issue, but when you combine slow with grind (which for me is some kind of mindless repetitive activity that does not engage the player), the result is a game that's taking perhaps the worst part of it's user experience and making it even worse.

Games that don't engage the players are rather rough experiences for me to invest myself into, as if I've mentally checked out of a game then I have a hard time justifying even playing it. Sort of defeats the purpose of being an interactive experience.

It's all the more pointed of a problem when it's exacerbated by lazy solutions to scaling the game loop(s), like making mobs more spongy for the sake of necessitating zerg mentality. It's a lowest common denominator problem for this game, and unfortunately that's not something that they are going to be able to easily fix in the long term, if at all.

Slapshot1188 · October 2022

lotrlore said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Uwakionna said:

It's not necessarily about slow vs fast, a slow game can be as engaging as a fast one, assuming it provides actions and choices within that which engages the player(s).

I had a single encounter recently in a virtual tabletop DnD game that ran for 5 hours

It was fun as hell and the centerpiece of months of gaming.

Like you say, it's all about being engaged.

The DM in me is shuddering at keeping my player's attention for 5 hours...

Like, that is a herculean effort by your DM and should be praised!

Yeah it was a massive battle... drawn out because my cohorts were... a bit blood thirsty.

Brainy · October 2022

Here is my problem people saying Embers Adrift's failure will prove people don't want Old School games.

This game claims to want to appeal to old-schoolers but what are they doing to win them over. When a game makes a very shoddy second rate game why do you expect it to be successful?

Here is a list of things old school games and MMO's have, where does this game EQUAL or even more surprising is Better than all the games from 1997-2004 which is the old school time frame they claim to want to mimic. After all these years this dev team cant even EQUAL the features from 20 years ago? People want a team to take some of the BEST features from old games and put them into one game. Yet I cant even think of any area this game does that.

Please let us all know where you think Embers is even EQUAL or better than all the other old school games in ANY area at all. Here is some areas, I have listed my rank 0-10 on the left (where are the 8-10)?.

2 Exploration

1 Loot

1 Combat

2 Interesting skills and effects

1 Economy

2 Interesting grind/leveling

1 Raiding

2 Mob skill use or mechanics

3 Crafting

4 Harvesting

3 Grouping Features

5 Crowd Control

3 Chat/Social Options

2 Storage

2 Mounts/Travel Options

0 Housing

0 Trading options/Auction House/Player Vendor

Ungood · October 2022

I don't get the obsessions' with "Old School Games"

Fuck that shit, clinging to the past is what gave us a decent into WoW Clones.

I want new shit, I want developers to give me something that is not typical, I want to get into a game and be like "This is Fucking Awesome" because I have no idea what the hell I am doing, but at the same time, it all feels intuitive, it feels natural, it feels like I can just play the game, and enjoy it.

Case in point, I want destructible worlds like Trove, but with better not "Voxel" graphics, I want to be able to make a tree and destruct that tree, or plat a seed and have a tree grow over time. I want cool shit like that, fuck old school static worlds.

I want Level Scaling, I loved that shit in GW2, and I think it could be done a bit better, but I love that sense of progress and that sense of not needing to worry about out-leveling my friends. I love that the game caps at a set level, has not raised the cap, the gear I have from 10 years ago is still good today, and that as I play the world expands, it does not shrink on me, so, next MMO out, should build a game with that kind of foresight into the system, Fuck Old School Leveling systems, Bottleneck Zones and invalidating gear every expansion.

I want the soft grouping of games like Trove and GW2, where we can all just, work together and get shit done, without needing some formal group mechanic. Get that idea mastered, work it, and improve it, that was some sweet next level shit, fuck this old school need to be in a formal group with a group leader, and some shit.

I want developers to look at a game, see what was done, and ask "Where can we go from here, what would be our next level to this" not "How can we remake the same shit we made 20 years ago, and not suck"

Slapshot1188 · October 2022

Ungood said:

I don't get the obsessions' with "Old School Games"

Fuck that shit, clinging to the past is what gave us a decent into WoW Clones.

I want new shit, I want developers to give me something that is not typical.

Case in point, I want destructible worlds like Trove, but with better not "Voxel" graphics, I want to be able to make a tree and destruct that tree, or plat a seed and have a tree grow over time. I want cool shit like that, fuck old school static worlds.

I want Level Scaling, I loved that shit in GW2, and I think it could be done a bit better, but I love that sense of progress and that sense of not needing to worry about out-leveling my friends. I love that the game caps at a set level, has not raised the cap, the gear I have from 10 years ago is still good today, and that as I play the world expands, it does not shrink on me, so, next MMO out, should build a game with that kind of foresight into the system, Fuck Old School Leveling systems, Bottleneck Zones and invalidating gear every expansion.

I want the soft grouping of games like Trove and GW2, where we can all just, work together and get shit done, without needing some formal group mechanic. Get that idea mastered, work it, and improve it, that was some sweet next level shit, fuck this old school need to be in a formal group with a group leader, and some shit.

I want developers to look at a game, see what was done, and ask "Where can we go from here, what would be our next level to this" not "How can we remake the same shit we made 20 years ago, and not suck"

Most of us would prefer there to be choices. There is no reason you cant have games that are "new shit" and games that are "Old School Games".

Believe it or not, they can actually co-exist.

What I want is a game that is fun and relatively complete at launch. Whether its old or new school is really secondary to all that.

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Group-Based PvE MMORPG Embers Adrift is Launching October 15th 2022 | MMORPG.com

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Group-Based PvE MMORPG Embers Adrift is Launching October 15th 2022 | MMORPG.com

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV