Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
You also forgot to mention the possible REWARDS for exploration as well. With risk there should be a pay off should you be successful. Maybe you are the only one who has managed to navigate a treacherous area of the map and you can now sell that tidbit to others....for the right price
Here is what I proposed in another thread. I know, not well written. I got excited.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/46522/idea-cartography
Source:
-https://ashesofcreation.com/news/2019-04-10-know-your-nodes-scientific-node-type
-https://ashesofcreation.com/news/2019-05-32-know-your-nodes-economic-node-type
I think it isn't really the sense of being lost that we all look for, and that's incredibly difficult to provide anyways, but rather a sense of uncertainty and mystery. I made some posts in the old forums about the use of imperfect information to drive this sense of exploration but I'm too lazy to dig them up. I do have something of the sort in this iteration of the forums (https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/42537/lost-opportunity/p1).
Just a brief TL/DR of my thoughts in those old threads and this one: since initially Intrepid said the game would use imperfect information to drive intrigue I envisioned a rumor system that would be perfect and only possible with the evolving world of AoC. Since when nodes level up the world changes and new points of interest may be available, it would be cool if when you talked to NPCs you could learn about rumors that they may have heard about the world. Now these rumors may 1) be false 2) be true or 3) be currently false but could be true if the state of the world changed e.g. the node level up revealing the rumored location. This sense of uncertainty about the information provided by rumors + a changing world would have you going back to zones and taking off to explore to try to find out if the rumors are true or not and have some cool adventures on the way. But alas it feels like with the node-specific perks this is not really going to be possible or supported .
but that would only be for the vassal nodes and metro area. cartography would cover everything else
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
That would be fairly poor game design to have a profession that is only useful in some cases and redundant otherwise. Especially when you consider that the whole world will be covered by the ZOI of 5 metros. I just don't see it having long term utility and would become obsolete quickly, I don't know.
Not if the maps just displayed what it was like at the time of drawing.
Maps should be very in-detail, including all the monsters types, roads, dungeons, resources you see but not change depending on the development of the world.
If the nodes on your map are LvL3, but they have developed to level 5, then the old map should not display that, should not display the new roads, dungeons, monster spawns, events etc. That should require a newly created map.
I think this is one of those cases where it sounds good, but would get really annoying really fast. I'm not personally a fan of this concept, but to each their own I guess.
Please do leave some subtle hints that would lead a dedicated explorer to them though.
A degree of randomness (regarding when, where, how these secret quests spawn & despawn) would be even better.
Nowadays quest information / guides in most newly released mmos are quickly posted online, and that kinda ruins the exploration fun. Of coz one can refuse to visit such quest-guide sites and insist on exploring everything blindly, but then one will also be forced to start at a disadvantage.