Ashes of Creation - new open world MMORPG

[Coffeh]

It hit its 750k kickstarter goal in less than 12 hours. That's pretty crazy.

[Champagne Supernova]

It hit its 750k kickstarter goal in less than 12 hours. That's pretty crazy.

It's well above it's goal now. They've added stretch goals now, though for common features i guess but it's something.

[Lillpapps]

I would not spend any money on this game right now. Game looks to be a pyramid scheme.

[Kyanion]

I would not spend any money on this game right now. Game looks to be a pyramid scheme.

Ooh this is quite the interesting read. Some of the things I am getting out of this is that they have a lot of 'senior game designers' but not many or any people to do the actual work to make this game. Still reading through all of this but wow this sounds like a potential GreedMonger/ToA if this is true.

This is quite the interesting read: https://www.ashesofcreation.com/referral-program/ that looks scammy as all hell even highlighted by parts like "There is no requirement for an account holder to participate in the game to use our referral system." But the big one is this nugget: "Over the lifetime of the account, whenever your friends who registered under your unique referral code spend money in Ashes of Creation, including on Kickstarter pledges, you will receive 15% of their account purchases back in either in-game credits or cash back, your choice." So people putting money in the Kickstarter are going to give some people a 15% cut of the Kickstarter money before anything starts to happen? Holy fucking shit. So if Joe Youtuber gets suckers to chunk money into this Kickstarter he is getting a nice 15% kickback before ANYTHING goes to actually making this game??

[TriHard]

I would not spend any money on this game right now. Game looks to be a pyramid scheme.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AshesofCrea...s_not/dh1912j/

I assume this is the guy's response.

Yeah, it's the guy in question. I think he provided fair answers and was pretty transparent.

I am going to hold off a bit on supporting the game just because I've been burned by kickstarts in the past, but definitely going to keep my eyes on this game.

[Kyanion]

I assume this is the guy's response.

Hah so his whole family was involved in this Xango pyramid scheme. Yeahhhhh he claims he was just a normal signup of this company and made it big over time. Later he admits the owner of OnlyMangosteen, the principal product that is sold by Xango is his mother. I mean what the holy hell. Also this guy loves using <3 and in his posts which is just weird.

- - - Updated - - -

I think he provided fair answers and was pretty transparent.

I don't know how you would call that fair answers and being pretty transparent. He is deeply involved with a prior pyramid scheme and is now setting up a referral system that has many resemblances to a pyramid scheme. This game is supposedly fully funded and yet it needs a Kickstarter as insurance? BTW as I said earlier 15% of that Kickstarter money is going to this referral thing. So if they get 1 million dollars through KS, KS will take their cut and THEN 15% of the remaining money is handed out to people. That is insane. You think that is fair? I believe KS takes 5% off the top so going on the prior example: 1 million funded, 50k goes to KS leaving 950k. 142.5k goes to referral people. So nearly 200k of that 1mil is gone before they even use it to supposedly make this game.

[TheFirstOnes]

GOD DAMN IT!

That was the name for the MMO I wanted to create. I have a rough draft, and everything. Welp, time for rough daft 17.

[Aurimas]

I hold out no hope for faction based MMOs that have tangible benefits... like holding a castle to improve the surrounding land... (I hold very little hope for new mmo's, but that's another argument, and "little" is greater than "zero")

Everyone just gravitates toward the winning side. Games like wow have very little rewards. An easier time to grind reward points, and a slightly better chance of making it through a zone un-ganked... yet almost all servers are quite polarized.

Losing massive resources (or the inability to gain them) just feels too frustrating and causes people to quit. Alternatively, it causes them to gravitate to the winning side. Either way, it culminates with the feeling of a boring, or dominated, or "bad" game. These games quickly fail. Even if the game itself is far from bad.

There's also no viable solutions. Buff the losing side until they win: That feels arbitrary and frustrating "the game just decided it was my turn to lose". Do nothing and get the scenerio above. Either case winds up the same. People quitting. Whether because it's boring to play a faction based pvp where everyone plays on the same side. Whether it's because it's stupid to lose your resources becasue "it's their turn". Whether it's because it sucks to never gain those rewards.

It's a great system. It's a great idea. It's the most realistic thing imagineable. "Here's your fucking world. Create it. Fight for it. Defend it". The reality is that the losers feel no compulsion not to strap a bomb to their chest, get on a bus, and quit playing the game. The digital reality is that those games tend to fail.

That's why those kickstarters skyrocket. That's why the hype train mobilizes so fast. The idea is great, the execution is near impossible.

"L2P", "Get good scrub". A well-balanced game in this style would be fantastic. There's just no way to do it... or at least no company has found the formula yet. Can anyone name a successful mmo within that sub-genre?

[Nirawen]

Can anyone name a successful mmo within that sub-genre?

Dark Age of Camelot did it relatively well although there were still pronounced flaws with their system. They also seemingly had the benefit of doing it before MMO's where known/required to have such large playerbases so it was easier to balance.

[Deleted]

There is something weird going on with the Kickstarter.

$902,094 was pledged by 4,709 backers = that's an average of 191$ per person. For example other games like Pillars of Eternity gathered $3,986,929 from 73,986 backers that means $53.89 per person. Wasteland 2 gathered $2,933,252 from 61,290 backers = $47.86 per person.

191$ per backer is A LOT.

[Kyanion]

There is something weird going on with the Kickstarter.

$902,094 was pledged by 4,709 backers = that's an average of 191$ per person. For example other games like Pillars of Eternity gathered $3,986,929 from 73,986 backers that means $53.89 per person. Wasteland 2 gathered $2,933,252 from 61,290 backers = $47.86 per person.

191$ per backer is A LOT.

There are a lot of weird things about it. The amount of buzz for something getting that much money via Kickstarter is quite low. Very little posts on their reddit, not a ton of activity on their own forums to be quite frank. I don't even see that much media attention and some media outlets gave tons of coverage to shit like Trials of Ascension's scammy crap. I don't know enough about alexa but someone could plug their website in and see if it is fishy.

[Tierbook]

There is something weird going on with the Kickstarter.

$902,094 was pledged by 4,709 backers = that's an average of 191$ per person. For example other games like Pillars of Eternity gathered $3,986,929 from 73,986 backers that means $53.89 per person. Wasteland 2 gathered $2,933,252 from 61,290 backers = $47.86 per person.

191$ per backer is A LOT.

46 people have pledged over 1k, those 46 have a combined pledge of at least, 90k. I'm going to assume they are boosting it with their own money to make it seem legit.

[Coffeh]

There is something weird going on with the Kickstarter.

$902,094 was pledged by 4,709 backers = that's an average of 191$ per person. For example other games like Pillars of Eternity gathered $3,986,929 from 73,986 backers that means $53.89 per person. Wasteland 2 gathered $2,933,252 from 61,290 backers = $47.86 per person.

191$ per backer is A LOT.

A LOT of people bought the 400-500 tier. It gives lifetime sub and early alpha. The earlybird 400 sold out in like 5 minutes. That was replaced with a 425 early bird which sold out very quickly. That was replaced with a 435 early bird that sold out. Now we're at 445 early bird replacement. That'll probably sell out in a day and get replaced with a 455 tier. And so on and so forth.

[Froggy]

Something to keep an eye on when it's actually close to launch. Though 4 races is too low IMO. Vanilla WoW launched with twice that.

[Champagne Supernova]

Something to keep an eye on when it's actually close to launch. Though 4 races is too low IMO. Vanilla WoW launched with twice that.

4 actual races and 4 sub races, depends how much they differ though, not a lot i imagine, but most likely differ stat wise.

[corebit]

Hah so his whole family was involved in this Xango pyramid scheme. Yeahhhhh he claims he was just a normal signup of this company and made it big over time. Later he admits the owner of OnlyMangosteen, the principal product that is sold by Xango is his mother. I mean what the holy hell. Also this guy loves using <3 and in his posts which is just weird.

The fact that he did not mention his family's involvement anywhere in his introductory post and made his whole life sound like a rags-to-riches story tells me this guy really knows how to bullshit pretty well.

So he talks about transparency but only admits that his mother and brother are the owners of the product company after being found out by another poster.

[Ickz]

The amount of people buying into the 400-500 lifetime sub tier is actually insane. It's comes out to half of the total funded amount. I get that it's a good deal if you plan on playing for about two and half to three years nonstop, but still... For a game that we know fairly little about (including literally no real information/footage of combat), that seems really risky and just weird.

[corebit]

The amount of people buying into the 400-500 lifetime sub tier is actually insane. It's comes out to half of the total funded amount. I get that it's a good deal if you plan on playing for about two and half to three years nonstop, but still... For a game that we know fairly little about (including literally no real information/footage of combat), that seems really risky and just weird.

And their lifetime sub price is 2x that of other MMOs with LTS.

[Trollhammer]

Huehuehue. Sounds like Trials of Ascension

[Lord Pebbleton]

If MMos really are a dying genre, this game will be dead on delivery.