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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Let the player control their immersion (Cosmetic Filtering)
ArchivedUser
Guest
TLDR - AoC needs a system that allows a player to define substitute textures / mounts for cosmetics that they deem immersion breaking.
I need to start by saying that I believe cash shops and cosmetic items are an unavoidable and necessary part of the longevity of any modern MMORPG. While there are many examples of how not to do cash shops in the market, if AoC sticks to true cosmetics that offer no advantage and aren't consistently preferable to in game looks, then it should be a welcome addition to the game. Subscriptions, as noted by FFXIV producer Naoki Yoshida, provide consistent and predictable income which allows for regular maintenance and content updates to the game and should be primarily use its own resources (developers, artists, etc). The cash shop should have its own resources and provide more sporadic injections of cash to the project which should be used to both maintain the flow of content in the cash shop and fund bonus/experimental/or niche content for the game, resulting in a more robust game overall.
With that being said, even if executed perfectly, the influx of cosmetics into the MMORPG has inadvertently broken the RPG immersion of the genre. When telling a story in a RPG the rules of the game-world should be grounded in reality. That reality can be fantastical and imaginative but the world should have rules and make sense to the player to help immerse that player in the world. Once you add the MMO element on top of the RPG certain aspects of that immersion slip but developers have found ways to help with those. Example: Undead rogue named LankyBones hurting your immersion for a non-lore based name? No problem, turn off other player's names. Cosmetics should be no different, and should have a solution that gives players the option to preserve their immersion. It is not fair to a player to tell them they can't have a cosmetic because it breaks the immersion of someone else, but it's equally unfair to break someone's immersion to allow access to a cosmetic.
, etc. Hopefully the system outlined below is something AoC will consider implementing as a way to lead the industry in further empowering player agency in the genre.Texture Filtering System -
From what I understand, and I am not a game developer, every texture is stored on my machine, and a table somewhere in the game files points to that texture location with a reference ID as a key. When another player needs to be rendered, their data, including equipment texture IDs, is sent to my machine from the server, it then uses that ID to lookup the texture location from the table, which it retrieves and then processes.
From a technical standpoint, what I am proposing is simply having another table that is looked at first, which contains reference IDs for textures that I want my client to substitute and the location of the substitute texture. So when a player wearing a maid outfit runs by, the ID is looked up in the substitute table, where it is found and returns the location for a generic robe bypassing the lookup in the normal table. This should also work for mounts because I imagine the mount reference is looked up first before any animations or sounds.
I just wanted to put this idea/opinion up to see if others agreed with the lack of control over immersion that inherently gets pushed on players whether they participate in the cash shop/cosmetics or not, and if so I hope that AoC is listening and the first to address this.
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Comments
Either you see people how they want to be presented, or you get them all in a default standard.
What you are asking for would be resource intensive.
When you consider how many things the game client needs to look up in order to render a character, having it load in two different items for each visible inventory slot is not exactly a draw on resources.
I know a particular game that had two character model types for almost all races, each model with full customization. Players were able to select which of the models they wanted displayed for each gender of each race. On top of this, the game still allowed players to chose to display either the wardrobe or equipped slot exactly in the manner you have deemed resource intensive.
Basically, this game was pulling enough data to render two full characters per actual character, and then left it up to the user as to what they actually saw.
On top of this, the game in question is almost 15 years old.
Fortunately, *many* of the development team at Intrepid worked on that particular game, and so know it was fairly easy to pull off over a decade ago, and so should be no harder today.
"Ew Ew I know, I know"
EQ2
I am still amazed how far ahead of the curve that game was in many respects.
Just because it does not fit your view of immersion does not mean it is breaking lore or the world around you. For example, you could have a festival just for mushroom where everyone dresses up like a mushroom. It may look odd as all hell but as it has lore its okay.
I have been an RPer for almost 20 years and for me, lore is the most crucial thing in a game like ashes, and that is what grabs you into the game world. The difference between a true RPer and an average person is the degrees of separation or how far you a willing to dive into this new world. The more in-depth the lore, the more we have to use which in turn helps us to create our own stories and not just follow the pre-laid path.
.... that Bear is a real mount ?
I have been playing RPGs tabletop and otherwise just as long and love when the lore of a game creates a world that feels alive but that doesn't mean anything in this conversation.
Because its fantasy you can come up with a ton of off the wall reasons for that bear mount, or other cosmetics to exist, though based on your explanation I would argue its such a personal and emotional thing to that one summoner he isn't mass producing them for there to be that many in the game.
The fact is you can have your mushroom festival with mushroom hats, summer swim suit beach event, or any other not-to-far-out-there cosmetic and that is fine. But when I am out fighting ferocious beasts in the wilds and other people are still wearing those as wardrobe pieces while fighting you are breaking immersion, and being able to turn them off for "my" game world would be beneficial.
The Boston cosmetics and the bear mount can be immersion breaking, maybe not for everyone, but that is less the point than what they represent. If before the game is even out there are cosmetics that exist that require the player to perform mental gymnastics to justify, then it's safe to assume they are not going to be the worst offenders as the game grows. I don't want to stifle the creativity around the cosmetics they can design and have spent more money than I care to admit on items that definitely don't fit the lore of games I've played, but most of the time if the lore is good I wish for a way to preserve that immersive experience. This system could provide that and the basics of the system would exist in the wardrobe slot functionality and the ability to "re-skin" a mount so this isn't even a large addition to the game.