Dransik Rebirth

[RUFIO [?]]

How many of you OG's want the old or early version of Ashen Empires?

They calling it "Dransik Rebirth" nowadays, already asked steam support to add that missing piece of this amazing puzzle thats Dransik and Ashen Empires.

Got answered to look up new coming updates for future content, but nothing on Dransik Rebirth mather.

[Aramax]

*Raise hand*

[Chocbomb]

Would be cool if you elaborated on the version ERA and why they were cool, for the sake of the excluded new people who wouldn't know the difference.

[imperialxs]

99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% chance this will never happen. games on life support.

[Tsysin]

To put this conversation in context the creator Jason Ely (Had to search in the way old memories) created Dransik, it's a pretty cool Ultima IV type sprite set. He then along with another person whos name I forgot (think it may have been 'one eye' on the forums start to upgrade the graphics to basically try to make Dransik 2.0. There was some internal strife or such where eventually Dransik 2.0 was rebranded Ashen Empire and the game was sold off (along with the original Dransik 'classic' as it was rebranded. I do know that Jason was making a new game 'Etherlands' based on the similar mechanics as the original Dransik that was not in competition with Ashen Empire or would put him in breach of the contract. So that will likely never happen as you're talking two different 'Organizations'

[Tsysin]

Well crap... it even has it's only wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashen_Empires

[dr46onfusion]

As great as the nostalgia factor is in those games, the horrible bore elements also surfaces because well, it's memories you buried in the back of your mind while the positive ones comes to a forefront.

I'd like a nice retro game to be a remake rather than bringing back the same code and assets which could be riddled with bugs and you may be spending more time fixing things in a loop than developing the game further.

Hence making a brand new game makes sense, but you should not replicate everything on a 1 to 1 basis and make design changes where needed, and learn new lessons to apply to it.

It's one reason why I would never touch Runescape anymore, even if they remade the graphics and gameplay elements, the key aspect I wanna avoid is the stupid community and the rampant focus on botting, cheating, or exploitation.

If Ashen Empires were to have a 'proper' version of itself, it'd have to be redesigned from the ground up with a better concept and perspective with the game mechanics in mind...
For instance the progress from 'grinding' levels, the adjustments of difficulty and how to impose a fun factor in everything you do.

You gotta learn from other MMOs and games and figure out what makes those ones successful and fun, rather than being laser focused in your own project. The more frustrated you are developing your game, the more likely you will design it to frustrate your playerbase.

They all learned from experience, so the successful game directors are survivors of a dozen failed or less successful game projects.

I see issues in today's AE, with item progression and the whole looting system... It's completely RNG here and there... You can get a lv70 loot off of a lv30-50 monster.
Meanwhile item crafting is merely for the sake of making money so you can spend it on buying advanced skills or such.

Essentially, the design issues snowballs into a design flaw the more and more you pile content on top of content without a revision of your game. Granted, this happens to all MMO, this is why the few successful MMOs all have game directors who have a 100% knowledge of what they WANT to design and put into the game from day 1. They literally composed literal 'notes' and lore and built the world in their head already and wrote it down how it should be like. The moment you start developing your game further and you ran out of ideas, that is where you start to go into a steep decline as you start 'grasping' around for more ideas.

This is why game directors, you don't see them outright programming here and there, or drawing art, or motion capturing, etc. They are there to 'direct' the flow of the creative concept, not to obscure their directing by getting sidetracked.

[dr46onfusion]

The advantage of a top down simple Dransik game is that it's simple.
Adding too much mechanics and it starts to go 'dwarf fortress' on you, making the game harder to manage or balance.

I think with simpler MMOs like that, the scope of the game world should be smaller, but wider. You should have set cities and regions, but add them in sequence so it feels bigger.
But with traditional MMO styles, you generally can never beat the game, you grind to high levels only to focus on a pvp endgame, the story, the bosses, etc don't matter as much at that point.