Questions about Age of Ascent

First I want to say I am interested in a space based game with the same sort of play style as Illy, absolutely. I'm in.

Next, I want to address the complaints about new Illy content vs. bug fixes. Bugs are, at best annoying and when they crop up have often hindered enjoyable game play. There have been many instances in which a bug has made the difference in a battle and I believe have turned a war more than once. New content will inevitably bring new bugs. This game (Illy) is great right now and will sustain itself for a long time to come without the benefit of new content.

As for tournaments, they are all fine and dandy but seriously, only large alliances (in alliance tournies) or large players (in player tournies) have any shot at showing, much less placing or winning. I believe most players don't partisipate at all. Many of those that do only do so because their alliance leaders urge them too. Tournaments are only missed by a vocal minority of long term players who dislike war. I get that but I don't think it should be a major concern nor a priority.

The promise of TBL was a mistake, and given the continuous Dev stance of "Soon", it seems like it should have been a no-brainer... "sometime in 2013" probably looked like it was doable but... well, as they say about 20/20 and so forth.

Personally, I am happy with Illy as it stands but I am glad to hear that AoA development will speed up development in Illy. I have been anticipating Pathfinding and Battle Magik among other promised content. I do hope AoA will help with that.

Finally, alliance limits should not be messed with. In my opinion, Rill pointed out the major issue, that being a communication system. Robust chat and mail are a must right now. It is just nearly impossible, time wise to juggle an alliance's membership with the system as it stands. My alliance peaked at around 50. I can't imagine the difficulty I would have keeping communication going with 100 members. 600? Just, no. If an alliance cares to grow beyond the limits, there are external tools that can be (and are) used to do that. In game, I just don't see the point. Confederations do that already.

Edited by abstractdream - 09 Mar 2014 at 03:50

On the alliance front, 100 players is a good limit. If we have alliances with 600 people, it will lead to even big numbers of permasats.

Are there even enough active players left in the game for alliance size to be an issue?

GM Stormcrow wrote: ... On the alliance front; I'd love to get feedback on this from you guys.  Is there a big difference between having 6 alliances of 100 players, or 1 alliance of 600 players?  I understand that it might make communications a bit more difficult etc, but that seems like a kinda artificial constraint.  Is there a good reason why we shouldn't raise the cap on alliances (in AoA, or indeed in Illy).  I'd love to hear thoughts on this. ...

So...any chance they answered if there will be muskrats? I don't really have the time to watch an hour long Q&A video. >.<