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
Immersion is really important for me because I think it is one of the major things that is lacking in the MMO genre.
To me, "immersion" means "being a part of the world". This can be broken down into three different areas: the environment, gameplay, and story.
Story
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- MMOs have never really had immersive stories. As a player I cannot make decisions that affect the trajectory of the story or the outcomes. I am really just a bystander watching the events as they happen. This is one of the main reasons that I never really become truly invested in stories within MMOs.
Environment
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- I think MMOs have done better and making immersive environments. An immersive environment really takes the lore and brings it to life with a changing and growing world.
- Small things like night/day cycle, ambient noises, game music, dynamic weather that affects how mobs behave and even the types of mobs that spawn, environmental hazards, dynamic seasons etc... really make me want to stay and explore the world.
- When games don't properly handle environmental interactions like stepping on lava or being in freezing waters, it just makes the world feel fake and unimportant.
- Furthermore, cosmetic items and mounts that don't fit into the world and that are over the top are one of the main reasons I will quit a game. For example, I only got an hour into TERA before I quit due to the ridiculousness of the character cosmetics I saw other players wear.
Gameplay
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- For me immersion in gameplay is more about believability.
- Over the top ability and spell effects with lots of glowy textures and particle effects really turns me off from a game. Furthermore, stiff animations and unrealistic movements can make it hard to get into combat.
- Another pet peeve of mine is when games don't care about how abilities or spells would affect things in a real living world. For example, trying to kill a fire elemental with fire should be next to impossible or hitting a frozen enemy with fire should melt it. I think FFXI did a pretty good job with this. Using water spells during rainy weather would increase the effects of the spell, but damaging a water element with water damage would heal it etc...
- Mobs that don't really have any advanced behavior or react to players combat decisions really makes them feel pointless and doesn't make the world feel alive. However, almost all MMOs have these trash mobs whose only point is for exping or are there as an annoyance.
I think bag space should be heavily limited to make gathering worth it for those who decide to specialize in it.
Example in WoW:
1. The legendary Lich King is finally dead. No king rules forever.
2. Bolvar takes over as LK, became jailer of the damned.
3. Tirion gets a statue in Dalaran.
4. Ahhh, the scourge is finally over. The long, long battle with scourge since Warcraft 3 is finally over.
5. Next week - raid reset! be on time to kill Lich King AGAIN or no lootz for you!
Example in GW2:
1. Kills Tequatl
2. Some Hylek: A fine home! For all Hylek! Spread the word! All tribes are welcome.
3. A few hours later (next event window): Something's in the waterrrrrrrrrr
Duh, actually I dunno why Teq's still respawning over & over again years after Zhaitan's dead (and its death magic energy absorbed by other elder dragons)
It just really breaks immersion.
Yet in an MMO's case this seems unavoidable, there needs to be contents, and players need rewards, farmable loots being an important part of it. And for devs spending countless hours to create a boss that can only be killed once by everyone seems ... not cost efficient? Although that's almost always the case in single player RPGs - you kill a boss, it stays dead.
So I'm not sure what can be done about it. May be design the bosses such that their revival seems natural & inevitable? e.g. A certain dungeon is so packed with dark energy that a shadow monster boss will always spawn once in a while?
Although that doesn't solve problem for the named, lore-related bosses
Excessive API in a fantasy game
Thought I should mention this coz I saw "API's under consideration".
Eve Online has a large set of API that basically allows you to pull data related to kills, market data (sell / buy orders across the whole universe), character / corp info (if you have their apikey) etc. etc. This heavily incentivize players to build tools, pull as much data as they can, and analyze / game the shit out of it. e.g. identifying active pvp regions and profitable trade routes without even being near the systems involved.
These made sense for Eve Online coz it's a space-age Sci Fi game. It makes perfect sense that players can use information technology to their advantage.
But it would utterly break immersion in a fantasy game. How do I justify the information I've found online on a market 10 nodes away? magic?
2- Lack of physics.
3- Overuse of particles. I dislike medieval setting looking like a mall or a set of Blade Runer.
Immersion is something everyone is effected by every time they watch TV. If you loose immersion in what your watching the picture gets small and your eyes start seeing everything around the TV, but when your experience immersion your mind deletes everything around your screen and draws you in.
Immersion has three important parts.
- Story Telling
- Graphical Believability
- Contextual Sound Design
I would reference the Trine Series for having great immersion designed around multiplayer or Dragon Age Orgins for designing great companion stories
The biggest thing about MMOs that break immersion for me is other players. Players race from point to point mindlessly spamming through quests and ignoring the story. They power-level to give them an advantage and when they get board they tend to grief others or loiter in taverns.
When it comes to Immersion I believe that an innovative MMO will design a normal level system to show character progression, but also a hidden 'Rank System" to honor a players personal goals.
For instance you might become a level 50 character, but if all you ever did was spam your way through a personal story for XP instead of following through with your side Quests or honoring commitments to a NPC you might only be a low ranked adventure who might not even see rare quests.
It would be more immersive for me from a story point for the game to acknowledge times when I might cheese the monsters like leashing them or pat me on the back for doing a ridiculous optional quest to make the Mayor of such and such town some Toast. (Just learned that mayonnaise makes incredible toast today)
At the end of the day quests with voice acting and limited side banter can make and break immersion, but for an MMO it is mindful to be aware how a player is playing and who they are playing with.
Being able to skip means you learn nothing and makes all quests seem like a job you have to do to progress.
There would be haters, but let them hate.
The last mmo i played was BDO. All i did was run up to a quest, spam the button to accept it and run to where the arrow pointed, completely disconnected from what I was doing it for apart from getting EXP.
It sucks to say this because I am extremely pro player agency. I want as many options and tools for customization as possible. However, literally every creative choice you give players is a area where immersion will be taken from the world. You want to design a sweet system so that players can upload a guild logo so they can have flags and shields with their own unique coat of arms? Well you have just created a way for players to put memes and anime girls on all their stuff.
Immersion breaking player names, guild names, and logos will all be things that are pretty unavoidable. The only solution I have ever seen work to correct this is to have a system to report non-RP names and logos. Most people don't want to deal with that, and I can understand why. It would be cool if AoC had a immersion/RP server with strick name and logo rules, but I am not sure enough people would want such a thing.
Immersion is not the most important thing to me, but if a MMO was even going to seriously attempt it. The above issues would have to be addressed first.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I So agree, like the quest says to go find Susan's daughter and to bring her to the mother, she is worried/time for dinner etc. and the daughter is a couple meters from her. Or Aunt May ask you to go collect 5 "medical roots/herbs" for granpa Joe who is sick. She says they are growing in the vicinity of the farm that she is standing right next to. ugh lady just go walk 5 feet from you.
A wizard is never late, he arrives precisely when he means to.
Tank does not sound like an in-universe term for skilled practitioners of any sort, it just sounds like a video game term.
2) When I RP and have to move my character to look at someone, my face should turn to look at the character that walks up to me. Elder scrolls and oblivion did it so well; when you walked up to an npc and they would say well met. and even stayed looking at you until you left their Point of view.
3) All characters during character creation looking the same, We have fat people in real life, we should be able to make a big character in game, everyone should not have to pick b/w skinny/lean/muscular.
4) Interactable features, not just a few emotes like wave, sit, blow kiss. How about let our characters RP with a Wooden Tobacco Smoking Pipe while sitting on a stool telling a story through proximity voice chat. How about RP reading a book in a tavern or in the library etc. audible laughing RP sounds. So many RP options than just the regular wave/smile. (also marriage rp options such as asking other player's characters for a kiss/hug and they can accept or decline.
A wizard is never late, he arrives precisely when he means to.
I disagree with this, infact this really boots me out of immersion. The reason is simply that the text scrolls way too slowly. When we read in our heads it's significantly faster than how people speak. I prefer it when the text appears all at once so I can read it at my normal fast reading speed. The problem with what you did in BDO was simply because the quests were super boring and didn't suck you in. You also made the concious choice to do that, so its on you not the game. In WoW I've played where I just skip the text, go to place etc, but I've also hit many points where I've been really interested in the story it's trying to tell so I've read every bit and been incredibly immersed. On vanilla servers its just a case of you click NPC, and then go get a drink or something. It feels like being stuck in the mud.
I would also argue that this could be immersion breaking to have in. For example a fat rogue who is based on agility would be like beverly hills ninja. A skinny (no muscle) berserker with a gigantic 2h weapon. It might be interesting if they had some kind of player health system but that brings too many problems where people feel like theyre being shamed for having lower stats because they aren't peak physical health in real life. I think they could probably give you some reasonable min and max parameters where your character always has at least a bit of muscle so you cant be too skinny and you can have a bit of body fat too (more if you increase muscle by more)
The moment people can calculate the most dmg they will and the game will be more of a mathematical thing instead of just having fun with your character.
- Downtimes after some fights are good!
Yes, it might seem odd, but if you have some downtime where you need to drink or eat to get your health/mana back up, you will have some time to get social, maybe write something in global chat or w/e. If you don't need to stop once in a while, the game will feel like you are in a constant rush to get as many stuff as possible done.
- No transmog
I think this is clear...
I could think of dozens more, but the core thing is, that immersion comes from socializing with the people you play with. I think this should be the most important criteria for almost every decision made in a mmorpg.
Im really hoping for weather to feel strong and heavy, rain,storms, fogs.
In WoW they mostly removed it all , nights are just dark blue skybox.
You can additionally let professions craft things such as lanterns/potions to help with vision in certain situations, instead of reducing or flat out removing the heavy effects.
As for other immersion breakers, i feel like costumes and mounts that overall dont fit the artistical theme of the game.
Entering a town and being barraged by gold selling ads, people talking about real world politics or a football game doesn't really allow for a good immersion.
I don't really see a solution for this except being able to disable chat, which really limits gameplay.
Also really flashy or out of place cosmetics, but this one can easily be solved by a allowing users to toggle others cosmetics on or off.
1. In the real world I don't see nameplates, healthbars, markers everywhere, so I don't like any of these while playing. I know it's necessary in a game, but design it in a way that blends into the world. Harsh red and green bars, terrible font choices for text, big glowing circles around my target hurts my eyes.
2. Unrealistic gear progression. Let us start as a nobody, and don't give us floating shoulderpads at level 20. Same with the story progression. When my faction leader tells me I'm the hero of the world, right after I did a grind questline at level 12, it makes future achievents less satisfying.
3. Faking open world. Just don't do it, it's always obvious. If you make an open world game, do it without lame restrictions.
4. When monster locations doesn't make sense. When there are 200 wolves in a small area, all circling around quest givers and boars, like they are not even there, it hurts the immersion. If I have to kill wolves, I would love to track down the pack, which attacks the wildlife when they passing by.
5. When NPC-s and locations always need to be tied to quests. Why? Just make a lake with unique mobs in a random corner of the map for players to discover it. Let me hang around it without watching levelers grind everything for a quest. Also add friendly NPCs who feels like inhabitants of the world, without asking me to free them from slavery, escort them to their family and so on. Make them say "Greetings, traveller", and keep working on that corn field
6. Zones with never ending battles. I just can't visit old zones and chill when there is a siege that seems to never end. In WoW after finishing the last quest in Westfall, Sentinel Hill burns down, and the flames will never go away. It totally ruins the zone.
2. A lack of some realism. What makes MMOs grounded in my opinion is how they draw parallels to our real life and then break certain stereotypes and aspects by introducing something fantastical. What tends to ruin it for me is when certain realism is completely thrown out the window and the game devs start including chainmail bikinis for tanks to wear and cars for players to drive around in - in a medieval MMORPG. Remaining consistent to the graphical style of the game is in my opinion crucial for players to feel connected and part of the world.
Lets say you play a fury warrior, but according to the latest simulation craft results this class has the lowest DPS. Good luck finding any group for anything.
Everything is defined from the very start, which makes the game feel cold and worn out. However, Im pretty sure that Ashes of Creation will not have this problem
I personally, it should remain realistic in a certain way and also adhere to the laws of physics.
Here are my thoughs (some of these have certainly been discussed before):
Armor
As a clasic example are the armors for female characters - the fact that such a half-naked female axe swinger can take as much as a male counterpart with full armor always makes my head shake. There should also be a difference between light and heavy armor (agility, jumping, swimming etc.).
Weather
(origin post: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/35416/influence-by-weather-seasons-and-time)
I’ve made some thoughts how can the seasons/weather/time influence the char. To be honest, nobody would wear a t-shirt/short at sub-zero temperatures, so why should your char do?
My suggestion is, to add an extra-slot, where you can equip special gears.
For example:
During the winter season, your char will get the debuff "getting cold", which decrease your movement by x%. To avoid this, you have to equip a cape or a fur coat with the buff "keeping warm", which remove this debuff.
But if you wear this cape/fur coat during the summer season, it will get you the debuff "starts sweating", which decrease your power abiity by x%. So you have to unequip it to remove this debuff.
The other point is the weather and day-night-time.
For example:
During rain, fog or night, your char can hardly see other players/NPC's and by clear weather or day, it's hard to hide from someone.
Map
(origin post comment: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/41156#Comment_41156)
A cartographic-system like in "Miasmata" would be cool. You have to spot three POI's and then draw your own map by yourself. Same for dungeon-maps. And you have to update your map (e.g. cities changed or destroyed or replaced by another city).
Inventory
Should have a cap for everything (weapons, armor, ressources etc.). And the weight of the objects should have an influence on the mobility.
For me to get immersed, the world needs to have things to be stumbled on and reward you for finding them, e.g. you go in a cave and there is an enemy occupied encampment, you spot a blood trail leading off and abruptly stopping at a wall, you go to the wall and find it's an illusion, you go through and find a survivor, they give you a key and ask you to retrieve something from a chest in the encampment.
This is one of the very few things I don't like about what we know so far! This MASSIVELY breaks immersion on the social AND gameplay aspects. Getting around the banning is easy - the guild ban applies to the account ID instead of the char ID
I really hope they decide to change this to account based. I want to meet some like minded people and stick with them, make good relationships. Not be in 7 different Guilds with half hearted relationships and no loyalty
For example when you dismantle an end game gear for enchants you are supposed to get enchant of high value not lower.
I think a lot of the issues modern, highly-popular MMO's run into is that every new addition adheres to gear acquisition, class optimization, balance, etc. where I think fleshing out the world, in unconventional but meaningful ways, (like holidays, allowing alcohol/drug use, allowing cosmetics to be created by players like tailors or such, a plethora of emotes/dances, the ability to play instruments, etc.)actually helps draw a player in and keeps them playing and living in a world instead of logging in for content and right out again once it's over.
MMORPGs mean different things to different people - to some it's a game to become the best at, or a fun timesink to make your character look their best in; to others it's an escape from this world and an opportunity to get lost in one completely new, to make new friends and take on new challenges while learning a new lore and history. For me, seeing someone with a punny name or something totally off-kilter like "pwnologist" or something breaks my immersion, but I can get over that if there's other fleshed out aspects of the game that I can get lost in after I'm done dungeoneering, or geting up to whatever other conventional methods of progression there are.
- Maintenance: Maybe a better description is "make what you have done matter!". For example, most games are all about moving forward and never looking back. Immersion to me would be having to provide materials for town/wall upkeep, or cleared areas/monsters regaining strength if not "maintained", or ?
- Viable path options: ability to enjoy the game at "your" pace without being "disadvantaged" along the way. For example, if time to play the game is low and leveling slower, it would not be fun to be a constant victim to those who can level faster. Or if a person is able to level faster, they are not "just done" or having to wait on others to level
- Crafting matters: Should be able to make gear, with investment, which is competitive to pve/pvp.
a big thing for immersion is the feeling, that your actions are done without a delay, they need to be fluid.
immersion also has something to do with the sense organs. since we can't feel, smell or taste the game, it at least should have good looking and modern graphics (beautiful environment, charackters, monsters etc.) as well as realistic and impactful sounds. the monsters and charackters abilities shouldn't be too flashy though, since we need to see what's happening in the game, especially in a (big) fight.
sorry for my bad english
I agree when u say mmo s arent the perfect example for game immersion but details like inventory space dont impact it that much, only a small amount of people would like to have realistic weight carrying system anyways. I think the main objective of the team should be to accomplish the building of a world that feels alive and meaningful wether in story telling and the environment over all. And seeing how the development is progressing I think they will be able to achieve that.