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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.
How will the node system affect Verra's history?
The node system lets us make our own history by building cities where we want, naming cities what we want, destroying cities if we want and defending against dragons ...whether we want to or not.
In a traditional mmo you would see big cities with lots of history behind them. They are used in storylines and quests.
How is Ashes going to be able to have a proper story and city/country-related quests if the world is constantly changing and nothing is predetermined?
In a traditional mmo you would see big cities with lots of history behind them. They are used in storylines and quests.
How is Ashes going to be able to have a proper story and city/country-related quests if the world is constantly changing and nothing is predetermined?
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What was the history of Antarctica when we began exploring there? What was the history of the moon when Apollo 11 arrived?
The awesome thing is that we make the history. Maybe the NPCs talk about the recent siege. Maybe a quest is to spy on a nearby node.
The only ways I can think of making this work is either:
A. Adding predetermined points of interest such as maybe a city or two and some significant locations from which you create the majority of story-driven content.
B. Scripting unique stories for each node-type and its surrounding node-types, similarly to how classes work but more complex. For example; if a military node is next to a node full of ugly bandits, the game would pick the appropriate story for that relation.
Both of these come with great problems, however. A. completely goes against the idea of the game and would result in people not bothering creating business in a new node when they already have a completed city they can use. Even if they just have points of interests, I'd feel like a complete waste to have your game's story not involve any of the major cities what so ever. B. Is most likely the way Ashes will try to do it, but in my eyes it's simply way too complex to do well for such a small studio, not to mention in such a short amount of time. I'm talking dialogue, storyline, scripting, characters, cinematics for each possible combination. I'm expecting to see very simple stories in quests and no major story-mode at all.
But of course I'd love to be proven wrong!
Who has control of which Node or Castle.
Quests and mob tables will also be controlled by the rises and falls of Nodes - and the specific structures within the Nodes that players choose to build.
The history will be the rise and fall of guilds and their influence. Any MMO I've ever player, there's a "server history" that usually includes things such as "Guild A was the dominant PvP guild, and they fueded with Guild B, who allied with Guild C, ect..."
I feel in Ashes this will be similar but regions will be tied to the history as much as guilds will be. We saw some of this in Archeage where guilds would set up set up shop in certain regions as well as owning castles. People who had been around for a while remembered the orignalo owners of the castles, which guild took it and how and so on. I feel with the node system we will see something similar for sure.
Quests will be based on landmarks. For instance, deep in the heart of Mt. Phoochee is a smelly yellow stone. Bring it to me and I will grant you The Spear of Immense Power.
My dad went to find work in ______ or ______ or ______ and hasn't returned. Find my father and I will give you his golden bow. Then on the way to _____ or_____ or _____, whatever it's called, you are attacked by robbers led by the boy's father. You don't actually get to the city so it isn't part of the quest.
You unearth a god and it says "Build unto me a great city, and in this city build a temple that bears my name. If you hold the temple for 100 days I will bless the city and everyone therein." So you build _____or _____ and place a temple to the god in it. After 100 days you get a reward.
There's lots of ways to get the story in the game without static cities.
I think you have some presumptions based on your experience with theme park mmos where you go from one hub to another with a story to complete in each one and maybe an overarching one that connects them. You are thus concerned that there can be no specific story or questline tied to a location because it is so fluid.
Well Steven has said quite explicitly that because of this fact, because of the fluid state of nodes, a game like AoC is actually more work than theme park mmos. A dynamic world does not mean an empty one with not enough things to do. AoC aims to operate (for the purposes of what we are discussing here) like a gated theme-park mmo. You need to unlock the quests and story lines available in a particular node by leveling it up. I think overall you are worried about a dearth of content but based on Steven's word, I would expect more content than theme park mmos by a large margin.
As @UnknownSystemError said the map is static, so a node near a mountain where there is a sleeping dragon will have quest lines and stories around the dragon. But you can only access the full story by leveling up that node (and protecting it from mobs and players alike). Think of WoW but instead of having all these cities with quests in them, you need to build (level up) the cities first and only some can exist at a time so you constantly have to move around the world and destroy/build new nodes to experience all of the content.
Butt Fart City will not be a thing.
Steven mentioned multiple possible "villains" depending on how the server goes. We may face off with different ones than another server might based on server decisions of which nodes are developed etc. Pretty sure the ultimate villain(s) will still be the same but the road leading up to some clash with gods or w.e it is, will be riddled with dynamically selected antagonists based on our choices.
with this alone i kinda refuse to believe that there is no hidden lore of the world, ruins of cities however small the ruins may be, some almost forgotten knowledge that has been passed down by word of mouth through the underworld that may have been warped through the passage of times and we have to properly research and investigate in order to find out what part of that knowledge is actually true. options exist for hidden lore, but it'll be our job to find it.
Yeah you are right.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Lore
Hidden lore and ruins of the old civilization and all that jazz are also confirmed. I'm gonna shamelessly plug my thread about what the potential of this hidden lore is:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/41011/lore-hunting-in-game#latest