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Will the overall aesthetic suffer due to each race contributing to the city aesthetic?

ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
edited June 2018 in Ashes of Creation Design
[6-27-2018 Addition]
For those concerned, I did find a quote on this today.  It addresses the issue pretty well:


[/Addition]

I've asked this question before in some different ways, but I don't know if my point has ever entirely come across—so I figured instead of in the discord I'd ask it here, where I can elaborate a bit more.

I have some concerns about the "aesthetic" of the game suffering due to one particular game mechanic: "The contributing race will determine the aesthetic of the city".  For my purpose, I'd like to point out the Nikua who, in my mind, are the greatest examples of this:



The most important question to ask is "Why does that look the way it does?".  Yes, a lot of the style is particularly cultural, a sort of "shared style" between people—but it's also entirely practical as well.  This is an amazing housing style for a tropical climate.  It's light, it won't keep in a lot of heat, the sides are open for further ventilation, it's made of readily available resources such as dried palm leaves/grass, wood, twine, and stones.  It's also fairly simple to rebuild if something happens to it, which given the nature of things such as tropical storms, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, heavy rain, famine, and so-on—this is absolutely crucial as well if they come from a tropical island/shore sort of environment.

Some are even specialized.  Built on platforms that are suspended above the ground to prevent exceptionally high tides, waves, and flooding from washing away the home (or at least its contents).

Now, we have to ask:  "Would this house work well in an arctic climate?  Would the design of this home keep the people inside sheltered from the environment?  Is it built to face having snow built up on top of it?  Will it keep in the heat?  Do they even have the same materials to be building the same way in the arctic?  Is there something that would serve their purposes better up there?"

The point I'm raising, is that Nikua homes would not make sense in an arctic environment if one were to use the example image above.  They would be built from different materials, they would harm the inhabitants if they tried to live in them long-term as they are now.  This is why these things look like they don't fit in different environments.  There would be a way to make a Nikuan styled home built for an arctic environment, but it would require a lot of variation of the housing styles to "make sense" for most environments.

I've been wondering for quite some time if this is being considered with the city designs.  Are we going to potentially be seeing a Nikua metropolis with straw roofs and open-aired designs in the middle of a tundra because more Nikua happened to be there?  Are we going to be seeing heavy settlements of another race meant to keep in the heat and survive the snow in the middle of a desert?

I trust the team, this just hasn't been discussed at all when the talks of racial influence on city have come up so I was wondering if it's something that's been accounted for.

Thank you for your time!

Edit:

And something else I forgot to add is another concern that is just as large: Due to a race being much less popular than others game-wide, we may never see a settlement larger than a village of certain races in any server.  Wouldn't that be a waste of time invested making those things instead of doing something simpler like switching out banners/statues/NPCs/music/textures but keeping an overall theme to the node based more around its type combined with its environment (Military, Economic, Religious, Scientific)?

Given the types of races people tend to play, we can probably assume most will be Human and Elven cities—which means there's a chance on most servers you might not get anything but those as metropolises.  I suppose I'm just worried we won't get to experience much variety at all in terms of aesthetics due to how the design sounds.

Comments

  • I wouldn't worry too much about nikua in the tundra. Those are concepts and they can always capture the same aesthetic but make them more closed. 

    To me, the potential rarity of a certain city aesthetic is more interesting then them forcing certain cities to belong to certain races. If a group makes a high level node with an unpopular race it's going to mean something. 
  • This is an interesting subject, i too was wondering about this. Some races buildings might look off unless they keep the style but change the designs to fit the environment and thats what route i think they go.

    This is just a side thought on the subject:
    In my opinion i sincerely hate the idea of everytime a node changes its the races majority that reflects what the node will look like. I know the theme is change in ashes, but i feel like some nodes should be a permanent to reflect culture as some races might be way more dominant then others.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited June 2018
    It could be like how major cities are in our world we have areas for different race and creed. like a city may have a china town. you basically have a small town from another culture in your city so the main city would look like the main race but district would have a area for them.
  • I wouldn't worry too much about nikua in the tundra. Those are concepts and they can always capture the same aesthetic but make them more closed. 

    To me, the potential rarity of a certain city aesthetic is more interesting then them forcing certain cities to belong to certain races. If a group makes a high level node with an unpopular race it's going to mean something. 
    Right, I'm just wondering if they do plan to make variations based on climate or if they're going to be left as-is.  Basically what their plans are to solve it, since every style has some potential issues in that regard.  Are they going to be making architectural types for every climate combination?  That's a lot of work.  Though with the base concept art they have there, a lot of them can be made to fit in different environments with a little bit of editing, there is still the element of "Where did they get these palm leaves in the middle of a pine forest?"  Stuff'll stick out if they aren't careful, but textures can be shifted around and all that.

    I would agree on the potential rarity of a certain city aesthetic, except that in most cases the % difference tends to be pretty extreme.  For instance, if 5% of people happen to play a Nikua, it isn't realistic to think that they'll ever be able to pool up the people to make anything big.  I suppose it's my inner skeptic speaking along with past experiences—but I do truly believe that we may just never see a Dwarf/Orc metropolis.  It'd require the majority of the participants to be Dwarven/Orcish, and based on the timeframe it would mean it would have to remain majority Dwarf/Orc for months.  If a bunch of humans run over to help or follow the activity of all of the stuff they're unlocking, they're going to boot out that influence and make it another human town once it levels up.

    And we know that once a metropolis is up, we can expect it to stay up for a while.

    The one thing that might pressure for this (or would have) is the starting zones of different races being in different places.  If all Orcs start at one portal, you'd get majority orcs everywhere outside of that portal.  But I believe last they heard they were going to let people choose which portal they go to, so I suspect humans/elves everywhere.
  • Yea i think humans and elves might be the dominant race, but that dosent mean us orcs cant pool together to make a smaller node. It could be our secret village and that might be a thing cause thiers supose to be so many smaller nodes in between the metropolises that we will have a place.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited June 2018
    I'm wondering if there will be smaller areas within a city to reflect the structures of the past or if it is more of a bulldoze everything and just start over?

    An example of what I mean is if a group of elves found a camp and upgrade it to settlement it'd be elven in nature. Now what if there is a large influx of tulnar which cause the next node upgrade to reflect Tulnar... would there be a small area within the settlement that is still elven or is everything Tulnar? Now what about the Tulnar and Elves moving out to a better region only for some orcs to take over and get the next upgrade. Will it be orcish with a small part tulnar and a small part of the tulnar section elven? Or will the orcs destroy the entire settlement to build a fresh, oricsh city?
  • Loyheta said:
    I'm wondering if there will be smaller areas within a city to reflect the structures of the past or if it is more of a bulldoze everything and just start over?

    An example of what I mean is if a group of elves found a camp and upgrade it to settlement it'd be elven in nature. Now what if there is a large influx of tulnar which cause the next node upgrade to reflect Tulnar... would there be a small area within the settlement that is still elven or is everything Tulnar? Now what about the Tulnar and Elves moving out to a better region only for some orcs to take over and get the next upgrade. Will it be orcish with a small part tulnar and a small part of the tulnar section elven? Or will the orcs destroy the entire settlement to build a fresh, oricsh city?
    I remember that this was answered with a NO. That each phase the architecture may change and that it would be a city-wide change, no mish-mash of previous styles. May have something to do with how the node stores information, no idea. But it was answered at some point.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited June 2018
    I've been discussing this in depth even more, and I've come to the realization of just how powerful the disparity between races can be.  An example would be this surveyOr this oneOr this one.  I had been using the example of "what if 5% of players are Nikua", but based on race distribution in other games it's actually entirely possible that, by dividing up the dwarves into half (and that's being generous), we could be seeing something like 2% of people playing a Nikua.  Across all games there is one standard:  Humans are always either in #1 place or very close to it.  (The only game they aren't is in FFXIV.  If you Google Miqo'te 'why' should seem obvious.)



    In all of these cases the most popular races are the ones most close to idealized human physiology and appearance in face (seemingly most important) and body.  What we've also done is taken these and divided them.  So let's say 8% of players play an Orc.  That means that the % of Orcs will be split, and they will be competing against each other.  So you will need to outnumber subraces with the one you want, not just racial categories.  If evenly divided you may see 4% of players are Ren'kai and 4% of players are Vek.  If not-so-evenly divided, we might see something as dramatic is 6% of players are Vek and 2% are Ren'kai.  When taking into account one of the races least likely to be played often (Dwarves) this could be catastrophic for the least popular subrace's category.  Even in places largely dominated by their general race, their sub-race is still much less likely to get the numbers needed.

    You could have a Niküa player doing 24 hours of work to try to get their racial EXP to contribute the most to a node—but if there are 3 Dünir doing 10 hours of work, it doesn't matter how much the Niküa works, they cannot win without booting out the Dünir and making it a Niküa-majority node.  This isn't feasible or realistic.  As I pointed out before, developing nodes are likely to bring people from all races in.  All it takes is 10% of the server paying attention to your node (they don't even have to live there, they might just run in and start gathering and questing before returning home) and it would demolish the race with the smallest %'s chances of making that their node.

    Unlocked dungeons, different monsters, more higher-tier resources, guild halls, places to craft, homesteads (which can only be obtained at a T3 or higher), quests, markets, and so-on will all draw in people from across the map.  And this isn't even factoring in that in those cases, the race will not all be centered in one town—they'll be as spread out as anyone else.  That demographic of players will never all be concentrated in one node.  Even if you worked together to get 20% of the Ren'kai to work at making a node Ren'kai, 5% of the Kaelar population could outnumber that and all they have to do is continue passing through and quest, craft, and adventure.

    All of this means a massive waste of resources and time on the development team's part, as the chances of the least populous subrace hitting the metropolis stage across any server is slim to none.  A metropolis requires the collective work of hundreds/thousands over the course of months.  A very small % of the player population (remember, could be as low as 2%) can't realistically hope to hit the metropolis stage with all of this factored in.  It'd require an unrealistic amount of effort, coordination, and complete isolation with no outside forces interfering.
    Pinkberry said:
    Yea i think humans and elves might be the dominant race, but that dosent mean us orcs cant pool together to make a smaller node. It could be our secret village and that might be a thing cause thiers supose to be so many smaller nodes in between the metropolises that we will have a place.
    You'll have to make sure it's one kind of Orc as well.  I don't doubt that Orcs might hit the village stage somewhere, though!
    Loyheta said:
    I'm wondering if there will be smaller areas within a city to reflect the structures of the past or if it is more of a bulldoze everything and just start over?

    An example of what I mean is if a group of elves found a camp and upgrade it to settlement it'd be elven in nature. Now what if there is a large influx of tulnar which cause the next node upgrade to reflect Tulnar... would there be a small area within the settlement that is still elven or is everything Tulnar? Now what about the Tulnar and Elves moving out to a better region only for some orcs to take over and get the next upgrade. Will it be orcish with a small part tulnar and a small part of the tulnar section elven? Or will the orcs destroy the entire settlement to build a fresh, oricsh city?
    @nagash suggested something to that effect (the smaller areas within a city to reflect the structures of the past), and honestly I don't recall if anything specifically was said about that or not.  If that ends up being too strong it may end up being rather strange, as the buildings that were there from the beginning end up becoming the huge mansions and the massive central structures like we see in the Vaelune node in the kickstarter video.  So it becomes a question of "would that look weird, to have a huge elven spire and mansions surrounded by Tulnar architecture, despite Tulnar being the most populous?".  It could be cool, until you factor in something like a giant Nikua straw-and-wood structure and mansions surrounded by, say, smaller stock medieval European homes.

    It might just end up looking too weird, though it depends on how they'd go about it too.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited June 2018
    And now as @UnknownSystemError has pointed out, we won't be seeing a mish-mash of previous styles.  So a race could, feasibly, be entirely wiped off of the map in terms of racial influence outside of lower-tier nodes.

    As for solutions, my suggestions would be something along the lines of these:
    1. Make the nodes set in appearance aside from less major elements that can be shifted by race.  This could be done with a mind as to which climate suits the nodes, as well as which race is most likely to be there.  (Example, a Kaelar node directly outside of the Elven portal would make no sense.)  This, however, eliminates player impact and you might see some weird things like a Kaelar-style node entirely inhabited by Tulnar with Tulnar banners and statues around.
    2. Limit which races contribute to a node's resulting aesthetic.  By this I mean that a certain desert node might have three options:  Dünir, Vaelune, Tulnar.  This levels the playing field and gives people a more direct shot.  A certain tropical node might only have two options: Vek and Niküa.  Another node just outside of the Orc portal may be only Ren'kai and Vek.  Special mind could be given as to where these are located, and it could give many races a more fair shot while not wasting all of the development team's work on making every race's version of a node.  This could be highlighted by making the T1 stage a mixture of the possible outcomes, so people can see "There are only Dünir, Vaelune, and Tulnar at this camp, so that's what the node could become."
    3. Allow people to change their racial contribution to something else.  This is messy and would require a lot of cooperation, but it could mean that Human players of a developing node could be asked to shift their "influence flag" to Ren'kai.  It could be as simple as a drop-down menu in the character sheet, where someone can choose what influence they give.  This puts more power in the hands of the players, but as I said it could get very messy.  People might decide they don't like a race's aesthetic, but we would definitely see more variety.
  • I definitely like the idea of people being able to chose where their influence is given regarding node development racially. 

    I also don't see a big deal with having orc style buildings in a predominantly elven area.  We see varying displays of architecture around our world that have been influenced by different cultures and time periods.


  • This is a cool and interesting idea, adds variety to in game zones. However, I'm afraid all this "race domination" might create issues in the player community. Not everyone takes a game as a being a game only. Hopefully it won't provoke hate and all sorts of personal attacks and threats toward each other. I've seen it in games where race dominance is not even present in the game mechanics... yet it stirs up a very nasty storm due to in game character races. It is a very delicate aspect to play with. We will see how it turns out, hope for the best.
  • Lex1961 said:
    I definitely like the idea of people being able to chose where their influence is given regarding node development racially. 

    I also don't see a big deal with having orc style buildings in a predominantly elven area.  We see varying displays of architecture around our world that have been influenced by different cultures and time periods.
    I work in Seattle, in the International District.  I see this kind of thing in real life every day.

    A city with every style of every building being consistent is what would seem odd and unrealistic to me.
  • Atama said:
    I work in Seattle, in the International District.  I see this kind of thing in real life every day.

    A city with every style of every building being consistent is what would seem odd and unrealistic to me.
    The cities are currently exactly that (the entire architectural style shifts when the node levels up, depending on the main contributors), it isn't exactly what's being discussed.  It would be much harder for them to implement things that way, so I understand why it's being done the way it is.
    Lex1961 said:
    I also don't see a big deal with having orc style buildings in a predominantly elven area.  We see varying displays of architecture around our world that have been influenced by different cultures and time periods.
    For clarification: What I was initially pointing out is not any issue regarding "orc style buildings in a predominantly elven area".  What I was drawing attention to are circumstances like open-air tropical structures with little protection from the cold situated on a glacier, because the race's "style" is that.

    Imagine this architecture (actual Ashes concept art for the Niküa dwarves):

    Built someplace like this (source):


    Everyone living there would freeze to death, because of their architectural style.
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