Recently heard of AoC and have a few questions
Having learned about this title about 30min ago, I haven't had the time to watch all the vods and such. So, until I get enough freetime to do so, I had a couple questions.
1. So it is said that you can build your own house in the open world. Are personnal houses going to be accessible for anyone to destroy or grief? or are they protected? Are they protected in some area/node or whatever and not in others?
2. Is the map big enough so that it won't be drown by too many random guilds and players houses (a bit like Rust start out nice and eventually looks like a clusterf of unfinished/raided buildings)?
3. Is there going to be progression based endgame raids/dungeons? By that I mean traditional instanced style of hard max level content. I personally do not enjoy open world bosses/dungeons much because they are often extremely easy due to being just a massive zerg event. Thinking about BDO, GW2, WS, etc. I do not really enjoy or want the gears treadmill progression, but rather a skill (mechanics are actually more precise and require more organisation/planning) or story based (finishing this raid unlock that raid) progression, a bit like WS had to offer, minus the mandatory gear upgrade.
1. So it is said that you can build your own house in the open world. Are personnal houses going to be accessible for anyone to destroy or grief? or are they protected? Are they protected in some area/node or whatever and not in others?
2. Is the map big enough so that it won't be drown by too many random guilds and players houses (a bit like Rust start out nice and eventually looks like a clusterf of unfinished/raided buildings)?
3. Is there going to be progression based endgame raids/dungeons? By that I mean traditional instanced style of hard max level content. I personally do not enjoy open world bosses/dungeons much because they are often extremely easy due to being just a massive zerg event. Thinking about BDO, GW2, WS, etc. I do not really enjoy or want the gears treadmill progression, but rather a skill (mechanics are actually more precise and require more organisation/planning) or story based (finishing this raid unlock that raid) progression, a bit like WS had to offer, minus the mandatory gear upgrade.
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2. We don't know. The world is supposed to be quite large but it is such a very long time from release that map size is really unknown to most of us. Mainly been told it is really big.
3. beats me but the world events are not going to be repeatable on days 'x' and 'y'. The people making the game are gamers, financed by gamers and I think everyone wants to avoid the grind and treadmill style progressions.
a breathing world is actually a welcomed change for sure. WildStar has been my favourite mmo of all time, simply because the combat system is there best there is in any MMO (to my taste) and the raids are extremely well done and focused on individual player skill/reaction time/concentration rather than a big gear check like WoW/FFXIV. But as much as WS excelled in combat/raids, the rest of the game was completely useless due to power creep from gear. So an ever changing world is something I am looking for.
That said, to me meaningfull PvE progression is also very important. I don't really mind if the raids are ever changing, or depending on the current state of the world, as long as you need to get with a solid group of friend or guild and bash your head agaisnt a raid to progress. Redo the bosses ten to hundreds of times because they are mechanicly difficult, etc. I guess they didn't release enough informations yet on that subject but ty for the comments so far.
Rather than re-type everything I've said in other threads, I'll copy/paste from one of them. You can read the rest of that discussion here.
"...the game is focused on player-driven "content". Ashes is not going to be the same sort of theme park game that WoW is.
My analogy for WoW vs. Ashes of Creation is a comparison of the toys parents buy for their kids.
WoW is like when parents buy their kids all the latest, greatest "hot item" toys that are popular but don't have enough substance to provide staying power. These toys have specific things they do, and that's it. They soon gather dust or end up in the garage sale.
Ashes is more like the toys that are open-ended in what can be done with them. Toys that don't do specific things, but rather offer children the opportunity to explore with their imagination. Toys like Legos, erector sets, art related "toys" like Playdough (or just clay), Etch-A-Sketch, paints, crayons, etc. Basically, anything that is limited only by the imagination of the child.
Personally, I truly hope Intrepid never caves to pressure to keep adding stuff for the people who can't figure out how to entertain themselves. They're giving us a dynamic game world where the only real limitation is how imaginative we are in what we choose to do with it.
There won't be a content drought because we create/drive the content. We ARE the content."
Though this is a very idealistic view of what it can be. I am a very logic oriented person, and not an idealist type of person, so I take everything with a grain of salt.
The thing is, there are, in everygame ever created, 2 types of content and a variation of in between.
Static content, dungeons like in regular themepark, there is one fixed instance that never change. The good thing is that they can be tuned to be truly challenging, as everything is controlled and stays the same. But, once you've done it, you've done it. It loses its initial spark and can be learned and practice to become easy, etc.
Then you have randomly generated content. These instances will always vary. Different mobs at different places with different layout, etc. While they are always feels a bit different and you can't expect everything, you eventually see a pattern. Look at No Mans Sky, endless possibilities, but everything feels the same regardless of being different. Or bloodborne chalice, that always have different mobs, and a different layout, but all feel the exact same despite being different. Or even minecraft, endless open world where you see patterns and know what to expect at some point, because the game doesn't have endless lines of code.
My fear is that the pve content will eventually feel blend, because we still play in a fix world with a limited amount of possibilities. PvP will always stay pvp... some people like to play the exact same game of LoL, or CSGO, or whatever. If the combat and sieging is fun, then pvp will always be fun. But I'm more of a PvE type of person and randomly generated or open world PvE content in MMOs are generally boring as hell.
I'm not saying the game will be bad or good. It has immense potential, but also seems too ambitious. Leaving everything to the players means there can be a lot of grief, or people being lazy and not doing what has to be done to unlock fun event/contents, etc.
I'm also not the type of person who enjoys working on something to have it get completly shred into pieces :P
Anyway I'm praying for the best because I like what I see and hear so far but I stay cautious nonetheless.
I agree that every game ultimately is a closed box with limited new content or skills etc etc...however if you have a butterfly personality such as myself and constantly need new content and new things to learn, I'm feeling very hopeful about Ashes.
It's not just that EVERYTHING that EVERY player does in game drives and unlocks content...
But also that each server will likely ends up being driven in a different way because of different player activities... got bored of this server? Become a server tourist.
And that the team are (if everything works as planned) going to be able to continually drop in new general content, but also regularly overview the servers to see how far they've got to unlocking all the planned content on the path they're on... then pre plan and drop in the next steps...(to ALL the servers. Once a pathway is unlocked somewhere, then even if you never walk down that path, the possibility is open)
I'm not sure if any of this makes sense to you, but I hope in some way that it might encourage you to feel a little more hopeful about Ashes