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Explore and challenge

What I am looking for is the exploration aspect, I want the world to feel huge to be able to go out get lost and discover new areas. Areas that change on conditions like time of day, weather, population size. 

I originally played Everquest back in the late 90s early 2000s.  what I loved about it was the exploration. At 10th level i am running through level 30 zones sneaking and seeing things exploring. Running through a forest and night time came and all the crazy creatures came out. Or having to take ships journey to discover new lands. 

The problem with alot of games today is instant refried dungeons that you have to do over and over again for 1 certain drop. Instead have contested dungeon where you have to group up to explore and survive against monsters and other players. I would much rather see monsters drop rare parts that you either sell or convert into usable equipment. That the gear is tiered and only opens up have you have explored and unlocked certain boundaries

The world of running the same zone 200 hundred times to get different loot options on tables sucks. Let us build the items we use from the monsters we hunt. If you kill a dragon use it scales to make armor its bones to make weapons. Blood and part for spells or potions. 


Just my opinion the internet is full of them  

Comments

  • The map size is estimated to be around 30x the size of Skyrim, which is the go to example used they "those in the know" of what is considered a large offering. Flying is restricted to .001% of a max population, max developed metro-wise server. There are almost no fast travel options planned. No port to friend, no summoning stones, no queue for dungeons and instantly ported to them. The limited fast travel they do plan for the game is directly tied to a single node type and only becomes available as a possible option at metro level and is only zoi in scope. All of these should contribute to keeping the game map feeling larger and wonderous.

    Nodes change based on population size, more people in them doing actions, more exp it gains, and the faster it levels. Conversely, as areas become stale and people move to other areas in search of new challenges, those nodes experience a lack of resources and will shrink. Content is based on node type, how it was leveled through combat, gathering or crafted exp being the primary factor. There is no fixed capital city, using WOW as an example, like Ironforge for dwarves, that is a ghost town except for people starting new characters and bothering to run the same old starter quests that have been available for years. None of that is set.

    People need to drop their pre-conceived notions of themepark mmos and stop applying them to this game if the vision is truly developed as stated. You will not be going from zone 1 at level 1-10, then moving to zone 2 at level 11-20. There will be a mix of variable level dungeon content for the classic pve'er who can't get into an off-the-rails experience, but none of this "I am level 15, so for the next 3 levels I have to queue with random people and run Stormwind Stockades to get the silk cloth I need to level my first aid."

    Gear will be a mix of dropped and crafted. Unlike other games where dropped gear is always better than crafted, we have been promised parity. To craft that gear will require components from corresponding level mob drops, and since not everyone can be a master crafter of everything you will need others to get stuff done. There is a plan of extremely limited amounts of BoP or soulbound items. Pick something up, or craft it, tire of it or outlevel it and feel free to sell it or give it to an alt or friend.

    There are day/night spawn table cycles planned. It is ok to have concerns and express you opinions about what you want to see in game, but when those concerns have been already addressed it only gives out false impressions to new people who come to the boards for information. "OMG, I went to their forums, and some guy was talking about XYZ, fuck that game, I'm outie." when XYZ are never planned to be in the game in the first place.

    Here is a quote link, with categories, of pretty much everything that has been said by the developer over the last year relating to systems and mechanics, vision of the game. While, of course, any of it could change, it most likely will not. Hell, they could just say "We decided making the game was too hard, so thanks for the cash, but we have decided to make a tabletop game instead." Once again, very small chance.
    https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/10158/quotebin-quotes-of-intrepid-team-from-discord/p1
  • Totally agree with you , hence Im putting all my eggs in the AOC basket to see if they can break these typical MMO chains!! I have faith based on Stevens passion alone and the talented team around him.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited February 2018
    This is the first I've heard about the world size estimation being 30 times the size of Skyrim and if that's correct its interesting to consider in practice. Skyrim is 37.1 square km or 14.3 square miles and 30 times those values is 1113 square kilometers or 429 square miles. That is absolutely massive for a game aiming for 10,000 concurrent players (according to the discord quote) over multiple servers. To put this size into perspective, it would make AoC's world the third largest videogame world ever crafted (non-procedurally generated). This beats out Just Cause 3 at 390 square miles and nearly 3 times the size of the BDO world at 154 square miles.

    BDO is an MMO with a large player base and while recent total concurrent user numbers are difficult to come by, steam metrics shows about 16,000 concurrent users just through the steam client in the past month; meaning that the actual numbers are likely much higher. The population is split into instanced servers on BDO and despite the large playerbase and a third of the estimated world size of BDO, many places in the world have very very little traffic and are mostly devoid of players (from personal experience with the game).

    With this estimated size of AoC's world and the aim of 10,000 concurrent players on multiple servers I think that much of the world will be completely devoid of players. Due to the nature of the node system, people will likely being grouping around the populated nodes and leave the rest of the world virtually untouched. This would mean that it would not be hard to encounter other people near the higher level nodes, but the further one strays from these the more likely they are to not see another player for hours at a time.

    Its impossible to tell exactly how it will play out, but it seems that it lies within the realm of reason that some players will be able to go out and explore, either alone or with a small group of friends far from established nodes and be essentially uncontested in their endeavors, whatever those may be. This also means that these people will be unlikely to be able to trade any farmed materials readily as they are so far from civilization.

    Whether or not this is good or bad comes down to perspective. I think the lack of contest can be a dangerous thing in a game like this where the economy is so important, but at the same time it opens the world up to an interesting type of exploration where, even months down the line, you may be the first person to discover a specific area in the world on your server. Also back to the OP's issue with having to farm the same dungeon over and over. The world size may be a mitigating factor in this depending on how loot tables and available resources differ from node to node, but remember that these nodes far from higher level nodes with likely all be completely undeveloped.

    Another idea to make the world more interesting in areas that aren't developed would be to make low level nodes that are really far from developed nodes in the world into a special type of 'wilderness' node. The further you stray from civilization, the more powerful these wilderness nodes become with those furthest away offering a challenging high level experience and plenty of desired resources. This would make even those nodes that aren't part of the developed metropoli and towns more traversed and contested.
  • "It’s huge already – about the size of Skyrim, Sharif says – and once completed, what I'm seeing will amount to only around 1/30 of the total land area."
    http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/01/30/ashes-of-creation-hands-on-a-dynamic-world-that-allows-cities-to-rise-and-fall

  • The node system combined with massive world size is a bit concerning. I do prefer a massive world but competition is healthy for a game like this. This can be solved with more people or smaller map size. I dont know how creating a game works but i think reducing map size is easier. Im sure devs will make the right choice if people start saying the world is too big but we have to wait till beta phase for that i think. 

    Also No mans sky is the biggest and bestest of all mmos of all time hehehe. Is it even an mmo if the possibility of seeing someone is like 0.00000000000000000000000001% or something. Dont want Aoc becoming a no mans sky and i doubt it will.
  • Have you played ESO? They have a pvp hub called Cyrodiil. It is huge open spaces, and people have no problem finding each other for fights there and plenty of conflict. It also is large enough that you can sneak in and try to avoid said conflict if your goals are to get skyshards or do dungeon content. Granted the pvp mechanics in ESO leave much to be desired, but they gave it a really good effort so far. Looking at the livestream videos of Alpha 0 they have released, the area looks similar in size to what they have right now. Also while the quote says total land area, we don't know if he meant including water and underrealm as part of "total land area"
    Image result for cyrodiil
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited February 2018
    It will be interesting to see how a small dev team pulls off creating a land mass 30x the size of Skyrim without vast stretches of it being boring and meaningless wastelands populated by a smattering of common monsters. 

    If this is the case, I would expect a large portion of the game world to be covered with basic zone content that only serves to physically separate nodes. There may be a lot of area to explore, but there won't be much to find.
  • nscheffel said:
    It will be interesting to see how a small dev team pulls off creating a land mass 30x the size of Skyrim without vast stretches of it being boring and meaningless wastelands populated by a smattering of common monsters. 

    If this is the case, I would expect a large portion of the game world to be covered with basic zone content that only serves to physically separate nodes. There may be a lot of area to explore, but there won't be much to find.
    I think this is the most realistic thing to expect from a world this size in the given time frame.
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