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.
Dev Discussion #31 - Environments
LieutenantToast
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.
Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!
Dev Discussion #31 - Environments
What are some of the elements that make for a more “realistic” or “lifelike” world when you play a game, from NPCs to environments and beyond? How much does realism matter to you generally?
Keep an eye out for our next Dev Discussion topic regarding guilds!
Greetings again friends! Thank you all so much for stopping by to share your many thoughts on environments, and what elements can make them feel more immersive and lifelike to you. After reading through all your comments for our team, check out a recap of some of your top feedback below:
- Many agreed that day/night cycles, including NPC routines to match them, contribute to making a world feel more alive
- Others highlighted the importance of ambient sound in setting the stage
- Smaller environmental details (critters, wind, dust, raindrops, footprints, etc.) can help prevent an expansive world from feeling static
- Some shared that realistic mob scaling, including enormous and difficult world bosses, sparked their senses of wonder and danger
- A few provided their thoughts on when realism went so far as to be annoying, such as carry weight or hunger/thirst mechanics
Our team also enjoyed this quote that we thought shared a similar sentiment to what you all expressed:
When you are consistent with how the world looks and functions and not necessarily in a realistic way, you can still create an immersive world that feels very believable.
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Comments
The important part for me is build a coherent play between moving, audible and believable npcs and environment.
Vibrancy
The key part to accomplish a vibrancy I'd say is any kind of ambient movement, so even in a mostly static world elements like moving grass/trees, ambient animals, birds and dragons flying far overhead, can be placed. There should be something keeping everything live. It could be moving clouds or a fish jumping where a fishing spot spawned.
Detail
The environment doesn't need every detail, it needs some details done well. A player can latch onto a few things here and there and the fill in the rest: the blade of grass in a corner to show nobody steps there is more important than hundreds on the side of the road.
Sound
Then there is sound design. Similar to the above distant sounds and ambient sound should be attached to a believable context that is actually connected to what you can experience with your eyes.
NPCs
Make us feel npcs are not a means to an end.
Please place NPCs with schedules and actuall reason to exist - not only in town, but outside of it too. Make it possible to encounter fishermen or hunters early in the morning, or in the evening when they go back to the town with their catch. Maybe the market will close some of it´s services at noon because the npcs did go home.
Mobs
Please don´t pit monster into clumps that are supposed to be aoe grinded with a 30 seconds respawn rate. This is probably the most obvious for mmos! The entirety of the environment is designed to host as many mobs so that everyone can kill to move on the next ride and forget about it for the rest of the experience.
I´d prefer a more complex interplay where you need to look for certain animals and hunt them. Dears roaming the forest fleeing at slightest hint you approach them. Maybe even predators that prey on them and are especially strong and valuable to kill at night due to a wolf boss that howls at the midnight´s moon and buffs his pack.
Edit:
Please make crabs spawn in masses at sunset and make em rave when they move towards the shore
I think a mmo that does some of that really well is BDO. Especially in cities you feel you are part of a living world, rather than an empty shell of clustered houses with a few npcs that are essentially interaction hubs for hundreds of players simultaneously.
Edit: MMO´s unfortunately have a high pressure to produce a quantity of content, so some of the stuff might be out of scope. But some of it is actually doable especially with a solid world manager.
Let me explain. A hill giant shouldn’t be a level 10 creature that you see early game. It should be a near end game creature that does massive damage and takes hits like a tank. Same concept for rats or small critters, they shouldn’t be placed in high levels zone as filler mobs with end game levels. It doesn’t make sense. Every creature should have a limit cap based off their innate race. A fare few can break that cap and exceed their limitations, such as rare spawns that drop equipment, or the equipment being the reason they are more powerful.
Just my thoughts.
I've enjoyed (even partially) voice acted NPCs to bring life to the world, though I understand that's out of the scope of the project. Other than that, I find that having NPCs and enemies engaging in daily life rather than just randomly patrolling through the world seems much more lifelike. A cultist eating a meal in a hideout makes more sense than a cultist walking the same 10 feet back and forth. The wolf chasing a rabbit makes more sense that a wolf standing still in a field.
In short, the more realistic and life like the world is, the better experience people will have not only from an emersion standpoint, but mechanics (pvp or otherwise) one as well.
For me, what makes me interested in the world and fill it's alive are: different enviornment/biomes without repeating too many assets. Each place has its own "thing". NPCs should do different stuff around and not always the same, as well as interact in different ways. Nothing major or complicated. Something like the blacksmith is not always hammering the same thing in the same spot over and over.
The sound imo is a MUST. Sound FX and environment is too powerful to not pay attention it. In fact, sometimes with a great sound design, you save yourself a ton of work of inserting visual details. I remember loving the combat in BnS because when you hit a mob with flesh, sounded like a punch, when it had metal, you heard a CLANK.
The consequences of the world or the fact that you're not a super saiyan hero, that's something else too.
Imo, "realism" is not the same as making the world interesting and making it feel alive. Because if you go for "realism" you have to care for animations, expressions, actions, cloth physics, etc etc. A lot of things that we know we can't have all at once in the game unless we play at 4 fps. WoW is a great example where you had cows in 2 legs as a playable race. That is not realistic AT ALL. But it made sense within the wow universe, it's accepted. And then also the world had plenty of things to do around. The distribution of space of activities and monsters, around a location, trying to find the balance between 'action packed' and 'exploration', is key for me. You don't want a zone that is too convoluted with things, specially if it's a high density zone between mobs, quests/npcs, settlements, other players. But you also don't want to have a desert with literally nothing that you have to run through for a long time.
One last thing about environment that I truly love to make it feel like it's got its unique thing, is in zones where you deliberately put nothing (say, a cliff, or a zone in the desert that is just sand) put something hidden. Some item, some treasure, a hidden mob, something that you come up across only if you're one of those Asmongolders trying to break the game going above and beyond.
This can mostly be achieved through quest. By foreshadowing a significant place or NPC that they will later discover it can increase the feeling of "connectivness" in a world.
If a player learns about some piece of lore and then later more or less organically finds this place/NPC it can create really cool moments. The less contrived the chain of events is the better. If it happens "on rails" its less rewarding.
The best way actually to experience this is by learning of a lore place through some other means and then later finding it in the game.
Passing by a waterful and you can hear it go by, or you can tell where a mob is based on your camera position. I want to get lost in the world and really BE my character.
The other major one for me is surprise while exploring. Anything you can do to the environment to make things feel alive and changing gives us that realistic feeling.
Trees swaying, flowers blooming and dying, random mob pathing when they are not normally there. I want to see and hear the game world LIVE. Nature isn't static.
Interactions between NPC/AI, some animals being hostiles to others etc...
Voice acting. Everything. Has. To. Be. Voiced. Maybe I got spoiled by ESO, but any silent dialog feels very very odd to me now.
Nothing breaks immersion like seeing a world full of stuff that's just background. Windows and doors that open ( even if it's breaking the law ), being able to pick up things, move them.
(2) Busy streets. Hopefully, there will always be enough players to come across whenever you take a ride from one town or city to another, but when that's not the case you should see at least 1-10 NPCs walking the path in different directions (depending on the time of the day and size of the town/city). These NPCs could be just someone to talk to or be part of some scripted event you could become part of if you choose to.
(3) Music that fits to the situation: Walking or riding, being in a small town or a big city, fighting a small mob or a dragon. Being in a desert or a forest. All of this should make a difference in regards to the music being played.
1. The correct footstep sounds, especially if scuffing sounds on dirt change to mud squelch in the rain.
2. The aforementioned rain, wind, snow, and other weather patterns, particularly if they can appear to at least some extent in settlements and aren't automatically excluded there (day/night cycles and related mob spawn behaviours are already planned)
3. Relatively higher respawn times on enemies, and group behaviours for certain enemy types.
4. Higher amounts of 'prey' or 'food' animals that can still fight back decently, with the related drops for defeating them.
5. More specific fish per area, and capacity to find fishing spots, even if these don't randomize much.
6. Multiple foods, some 'regional', made using these fish and prey animal parts, that are distinct and have somewhat notable effects.
7. Good NPC and quest writing (this is vague but eh - can I interest you in a Giant Pile of Gushing Praise?)
8. Branching or secondary objectives during quest lines.
9. Special monsters in the open world with conditional spawns such as only spawning approximately once per day, being triggered by aggregate player actions, or lured by other items. Also things like hierarchies in Sapient enemies.
10. Lore and signs of interaction occurring between other players and NPCs.
11. Slightly shifting prices or numbers of items available through some monitoring of supply and demand.
12. Bulletin boards or other methods of communication in towns that let players see things like Bounties or requests.
13. A tendency for enemies, particularly humanoid ones, to be designed as if they follow the same rules as players, even if not in HP values.
14. A diffuse lightning model with more change to color balance than brightness.
15. Lots of effort put into things like the specifics of crafting systems to stick to some specific real-world or at least 'consistent' analog. e.g. if players get something like 'Pot Ash' when burning wood for smelting or cooking and then are able to use this in all the ways one uses this irl.
That's... probably enough, I'll leave environmental design commentary to my team's artist.
It would nice to see stalls with consumables laid out on a display, weapons and armor laid out on a table to view etc. It would help give it the local irl Sunday market feel for farm fresh food and also not feel so much of a digital transaction.
In Puzzle Pirates it was neat that you could go in a store who sold clothes and try on the weapons or garments on your character like a preview before you bought them. It added a cool dimension. All of the garments they had would be on a rack and it was actually a lot more interactive than any shopping experience I've ever had in a game.
For me this means the rustling of tree branches, responsiveness of foliage to wind/movement are not high priority but are definitely awe inspiring to see (bonus features with wow factor)
Whereas assets that draw your attention should be interactable. If there are glowing berries on the wall, can I do something with them? The town has a bell tower, can I ring it? There's a giant tree growing in this area, can I climb it? If there's a sigil etched into a slab, can I cast a spell or do a quest with it?
In general, even 1 basic interaction with objects (like in Animal Crossing) goes a long way to making objects feel more real.
For plants - if I see a berry/flower/fruit, I'd like to be able to harvest it. If the leaves blend into other greenery in the background, I expect it to be non-interactive.
For mobs, it's always cool to see them attack each other in the wild, but like foliage, this is a bonus feature.
Instead, I'd like to see greater attentiveness to nearby commotion in AI behaviour - they notice when one of their brothers in under attack. They stay alert if they've been attacked recently. Momma bear gets enraged if you get too close to her babies.
For mobs changing with the seasons - especially great with rare mobs. Common mobs changing is cool but not very impactful, changing some of them compliments the seasonal cycles of the rarer mobs.
Finally, I do enjoy NPCs in towns who have daily schedules, but this isn't a must-have. It does help a town feel more alive though.
City placement. there should be an obvious reason for a city to me where it is, a place for that city to get a variety of food, and a source of fresh water that is adequate for the size of the city. There should also be an appropriate number of people on the street, and an appropriate number of houses.
NPC's that man shops 24/7 is something I don't like. I'd like to see an MMO with shop keepers that are on a timer - more important shops for players can have a two shift system so they are always open, but less important shops imo should close down for half of each in-game day. Giving NPC's routines akin to Elder Scrolls games would also be a big step in making a believable world for MMO's, but I imagine that would come with it's own set of issues.
In terms of world design, I want to see a world that is clearly a planet. There should be hotter areas in the middle, tapering off to colder areas at the north and south of the game world. If the game world is large enough to have multiple continents, there should also be a distinct difference in the flora and fauna of each. Since Ashes will have seasons, they should affect the world based on latitude rather than being an over all thing - and if it is winter in the north, it should be summer in the south - a world that has the same season all over is automatically unbelievable.
Don't put a tropical rainforest next to an icy tundra without a damn good explanation of why this is the case.
Transitions from one biome to another is also something that bugs me with many games. It shouldn't be instant - there should be a gradual shift from one to the next.
Rivers should make sense. A river won't split in two and go off in totally different directions - a delta or braided river is the closest thing to this that would happen. Also, if you have two large rivers joining, then that should result in a river that is as big as those two combined. If a river needs to get narrower, ensure the speed of the water increases, if you can't increase the speed of the water, don't allow the river to get narrower. This is something Archeage got both right and wrong.
The other thing that really bugs me with world design/believability is when you have a dungeon that is populated by a race that are supposed to be intelligent, and that dungeon just doesn't reflect that at all and is not an obvious place where they would live.
If a dungeon has such a dungeon, there should be space to sleep, space to cook and eat, space for recreation, space for what ever religious activities the race takes part in, space for storage and space for any industry that may take place. The layout of these spaces should also make sense - it shouldn't be linear.
Things that are important and not well made in many MMO in my opinion :
Here are some examples:
- trees falling causing player damage.
- being able to interact with the world (sitting on things, climbing, breaking etc.)
- weather affecting abilities (i.e. fireball does less damage in the rain).
- NPCs reacting to various things (i.e. wood creatures running when hit with fire, monsters fleeing when severely injured, humanoids becoming more alert if they spot that one of theirs is dead etc.)
- NPCs doing things when idle (chopping a tree and bring the wood over to the camp, wolves attacking deer etc.)
Really, my point is that the more ways the world and NPCs interact with itself/each other and the player, the better it is.
-Water flowing from mountains, generating currents which wash things away towards a larger body of water .
-Ocean currents which change boat/swim speed
-Water level variations according to seasonal/environmental changes.
Just to show some examples
- regrowth of plants in diffrent steps
- no separation on which trees or rocks can be havested
- a ground that shapes if explosions occure or during pvp
- weather (buitiful seen in Anthem)
- realistic wather behavior so that crossing a river lets the player feel the force of the waterflow
- npcs not stationary by day at their stores but in morning or evening going to their homes and so most stores close
- npcs also do farming building materials and farming veggies or crafting
- nodes ressources buyers behave on market so the more ress of one kind is in store of the merchant the less he pays for it
reguard asraiel
NPCs doing daily activities and a good number of them in towns like in BDO.
For me, realism is paramount when it comes to creating atmosphere in nature. Realism is not so important when populating the world - better to put interesting sites closer together to make exploring interesting rather than spacing them miles apart and create large areas of bland terrain.
Preparation is the start of an adventure. The game should give players the opportunity to prepare for both known challenges and the unknown.
Bonus Ideas for dungeons that would promote community interaction.
It would be kind of cool if dungeons/locations with humanoids would occasionally spawn a caravan that moved to the location. It would be like their supply line you could intercept. You could have a raid level dungeon that was impossible at first unless enough caravans were intercepted to weaken it. This would allow a more ambitious group to try their luck and go in early to try to get the rewards while the smaller groups could focus on the caravans to claim a lesser reward.
Another idea would be something like a Frost Dragon raid boss that spawns with a frost shield that makes it impossible to beat. The players in the nearby node would have to work together to weaken the dragon's influence until the dragon is kill-able. It turns a typical raid boss into a community event where everyone gets some kind of reward.