Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Concerns about the adaptive narrative design and impact of newcomers.
ArchivedUser
Guest
I have only just recently discovered this game and even though I've been overwhelmed with excitement after reading about the core mechanics of the game and watching the developers describe a; quite frankly, revolutionary approach to a large-scale MMO, some of the mentioned features seem to pose some restricting drawbacks.
Now I do understand that much has yet to be revealed, and our knowledge of the game is far from complete, but as it stands, it seems that players joining the community post-launch will struggle to partake in truly [i]world-altering[/i] events as anything be a mere footman. Basically, the underlying concern originates from experiences with other MMO's sharing a similar [i]living world[/i] vision (*cough* Guild Wars 2 *cough*) and not living up to that feeling of personal impact. In Ashes of Creation's defense, the project does propose that all players will get that immersive feel of importance as they make decisions on their adventures but given the amount of players that will most likely be active for the game to function, everyone cannot be the hero of a non-repeating adventure. An MMO mimicking a real breathing world would require the majority of the population to settle as artisans of crafts and commerce, which I doubt the majority of the playerbase would, so what does that leave you with? Well it leaves you with a world overpopulated by adventurers, looking for a chance to make a difference.
Personally, I see two ways for the developers to compensate for such a skewed population. Either the world will be vast enough for small communities to continuously rise, develop, and force conflict, or the developers will work their asses of 24/7 to release new PvE content to assert a feeling of urgency and danger without making repetitive narratives. In my opinion, the vast world would be ideal as well as the only feasible long-term option but with the glimpse of the worldmap from the kickstart trailer, the number of nodes seem to suggest that a realm would be controlled by a mere handful of (probably) hardcore guilds. Assuming this turnout, why would a new player decide to join anything but one of the prominent guilds on the server? If the world settles in a state with only a few large guilds dominating the world, they would probably wipe out competitors as they arise so players might as well avoid wasting time developing communities of their own only to be destroyed in an unfair battle, right? What you'd end up with in a game like this, isn't an adapting narrative where every player makes a difference, you end up with elite heads of large guilds panning out the dynamics of the server, with the vast majority of players being left as [i]props[/i] for the story of those guilds to be untold.
I doubt that the experience of being a peasant (or [i]props[/i]) would appeal to many and it seems like this is the most limiting hump in the MMO-genre at its current state. It stands as what differentiates a board game DnD RPG from an MMORPG because you simply cannot give thousands of players a major role in an adventure. To wrap it up, I guess I'm wondering how exactly AoC aims to avoid falling into the same situation as Guild Wars 2, Black Desert Online, EVE online, and many more, all of which shared similar ideas of [i]player driven narratives[/i].
TL;DR:
How will AoC incentivize players to progress the narrative, and how will AoC provide meaningful decisions for newcomers without forcing them into large-guilds (becoming a [i]prop[/i] to tell the story of the few people in charge)?
Now I do understand that much has yet to be revealed, and our knowledge of the game is far from complete, but as it stands, it seems that players joining the community post-launch will struggle to partake in truly [i]world-altering[/i] events as anything be a mere footman. Basically, the underlying concern originates from experiences with other MMO's sharing a similar [i]living world[/i] vision (*cough* Guild Wars 2 *cough*) and not living up to that feeling of personal impact. In Ashes of Creation's defense, the project does propose that all players will get that immersive feel of importance as they make decisions on their adventures but given the amount of players that will most likely be active for the game to function, everyone cannot be the hero of a non-repeating adventure. An MMO mimicking a real breathing world would require the majority of the population to settle as artisans of crafts and commerce, which I doubt the majority of the playerbase would, so what does that leave you with? Well it leaves you with a world overpopulated by adventurers, looking for a chance to make a difference.
Personally, I see two ways for the developers to compensate for such a skewed population. Either the world will be vast enough for small communities to continuously rise, develop, and force conflict, or the developers will work their asses of 24/7 to release new PvE content to assert a feeling of urgency and danger without making repetitive narratives. In my opinion, the vast world would be ideal as well as the only feasible long-term option but with the glimpse of the worldmap from the kickstart trailer, the number of nodes seem to suggest that a realm would be controlled by a mere handful of (probably) hardcore guilds. Assuming this turnout, why would a new player decide to join anything but one of the prominent guilds on the server? If the world settles in a state with only a few large guilds dominating the world, they would probably wipe out competitors as they arise so players might as well avoid wasting time developing communities of their own only to be destroyed in an unfair battle, right? What you'd end up with in a game like this, isn't an adapting narrative where every player makes a difference, you end up with elite heads of large guilds panning out the dynamics of the server, with the vast majority of players being left as [i]props[/i] for the story of those guilds to be untold.
I doubt that the experience of being a peasant (or [i]props[/i]) would appeal to many and it seems like this is the most limiting hump in the MMO-genre at its current state. It stands as what differentiates a board game DnD RPG from an MMORPG because you simply cannot give thousands of players a major role in an adventure. To wrap it up, I guess I'm wondering how exactly AoC aims to avoid falling into the same situation as Guild Wars 2, Black Desert Online, EVE online, and many more, all of which shared similar ideas of [i]player driven narratives[/i].
TL;DR:
How will AoC incentivize players to progress the narrative, and how will AoC provide meaningful decisions for newcomers without forcing them into large-guilds (becoming a [i]prop[/i] to tell the story of the few people in charge)?
0
Comments
The early metropolises will not last long. they will be rushed, poorly planed and easy to take down. So new players will allways get to partake in building metropolises and destroying them
I kind of see where the OP is coming from..... who wants to start reading a book halfway through ?
This is actually why I think dynamic content is the way to go rather than scripted. in the case of AoC that woudl have to be scalable dynamic content to go with node progression.
I think intrepids view is there will be so many choices that are conditional on so many parameters, the chances of kicking off the same effect will be unlikely. But 'we' simply dont know.
The more conditional the events are..the more dynamic it is at the end of the day.
Developers, developers, developers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8fxmOrAspw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlhcVW-k_5M