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.
Guild Gathering #8 - App Integrations
Glorious Ashes community - we're excited to continue our new series called Guild Gatherings! Guild Gathering topics are a "reverse Q&A" similar to our Dev Discussions, where we ask you about your thoughts on everything related to guilds.
Our team has compiled a list of questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding guild tools, gameplay, your previous experiences, and more. Join in on our Guild Gatherings and share how your gaming family is special to you!
Guild Gathering #8 - App Integrations
If you had a phone app that integrated with your guild, what sorts of things would you want from it or be useful?
Keep an eye out for our next Guild Gathering topic regarding management tools!
Hi again friends! Thank you all for taking the time to stop by and share your thoughts on the app integrations! We had a blast reading through them all! Check out some of the top notes you shared with us below:
- The majority of players say they want notifications of events happening in-game. Ex. node and siege events, general guild information, guild wars, and alerts from guild leadership.
- Many players express the desire to be able to use guild chat in real time with logs.
- Players share interest in accessing character information such as their armor, skill trees, portraits, builds, general information, and an interactive image of their character from the app.
- Guild leaders of Verra would love leadership capabilities within the app that allow for bank management with bank logs, leader permissions such as starting/ending guild wars, and the ability to push notifications.
- There are players who would like to access their in-game and guild calendar as well as see where guildmates are on the map along with their activity status.
All in all, we thought this image summed up many of your sentiments quite well
something like:
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Comments
Gathering games: park our character somewhere safe in game, then “farm” from that spot in a mini game on our device all day, such as a fishing game, an armor crafting game, a pet breeding/grooming game, etc
-API for third party programs that includes an Armory/Arsenal about Characters, Server Events (Notes or a Dungeon opening) and Guilds.
- UI Addons. Let users create UI's.
An API is a better catalyst for community engagement than a potentially mediocre phone app.
If you are going to make an app, make sure it shows a 3d model of our characters. Otherwise, no point.
Character inspection.
We able to control bosses timers, castle siege etc. In case you wana have some off´time away pc and come back with perfect timing on the timed events.
Map overview with node levels and some important content of your server, since each is different.
(More features can be added but a lot of unkown systems for us and we can't develop
Same as above except authorize various guild functions such as start/end guild war and whatever else might require guild leaders' to sign off on.
Edit: I just had a random thought. What if the app activity is in-game moderation? My image of this is you review report cases and give a verdict.
-History for Bank logs: Finding out what is going in and when it is being taken out in real time.
-Chat logs for guild chat in game: Sometimes drama happens and it is good to have access to that even when you are away from your PC.
-Guild Chat access in real time: Who hates missing out on social time, I know I do.
-Calendar access: Able to put up events on the go so all members can be notified when a raid, roleplay event, or siege will begin. This also could work as just a hang out time or community events.
-Notifications: Sending out information to members is huge like when meetings will be, when someone is calling for help against a ganker, or if people are looking to group up or trade within the guild.
-Officer chats: Only set for certain members to use.
-Ability to promote or demote from your phone as sometimes GMs and officers do take vacations and it would be nice to be able to do some admin work from a distance.
-Guild Cosmetic designer: A set of guild armor has been discussed in the past, it would be cool if guilds could design their own transmog set that was unique to their guild as a set costume. The ability to do this on the go would also be cool as sometimes you are inspired at work or bored and fashion is the endgame for many people in MMOs.
member of Gray Sentinels
Calendar with guild events, as well as server events (sieges, known boss spawn times, etc).
Guild war status. How long until we can declare war against what ever guild.
Allow notifications to be set by players, but have none as the default.
A forum or similar for general guild chat, meme'ing etc, and/or a connection with Discord
I would also want some personal things integrated on such an app, including a full account inventory search (so I can find what character and in what chest I left that random thing I put aside three years ago knowing I'd need it eventually).
Access to our in game store, or anything else we have set up an NPC to do.
All node interactions should be available on an app, so node chat, if there are any votes, all leadership decisions, information about node wars etc.
View of guild and alliance banks, as well as permission to alter/edit permissions for those that have that ability in game - as well as a full log of all guild bank transactions.
Full combat tracker for the guild, because why not.
1. Guild Chat
2. Guild Event Calendar
3. Invite/Kick
4. Guild Bank logs
5. Full member list with last login
I'm loving the idea of the companion app, by the way, and am terrified of how addicted to it I'm going to be.
As a social guild member, it would be cool to be involved in live chats when you're on the train/vacation/etc.:
- in-app chats that are synchronized to in-game chats
- in-app profile shots of people based off our in-game character models
- It would be really cool if the app lets you "emote" your profile picture with the comment you send (this won't display on the in-game chat, but you could add a tag for the emote instead e.g. "yeah.. I dunno [shrug]".
something like:Apart from an in-app chat live synced to the game, It would be cool to have:
You had waaaaay too much fun with that! hahahaha
- broadcast events to guild members, inform the guild whether you will participate
- in-game guild chat
- character overview
- a tool that allows you to experiment with different builds and maybe even save them as a template, so you can apply them as soon as you are back in the game.
- If you logged out "close" to an auction house (like 100m or so), enable trading through that auction house.
But I think a major thing could be some kind of discord integration for the game that allows getting into voice chat quickly once you've found a group for a dungeon or so. (However, thinking about the doxxing stuff that happened in other MMOs, this might be a double-edged sword).
Node, Religious, Social Organization chats in read-only modes. Or maybe no access at all for those 3. Whichever is best for the social aspects of the game long term.
Calendar! Synchronized to ingame calendar as well of course, with events filtered according to family, guild, alliance and node.
Character browser, possibly with an inventory management feature. No trading, equipping, or putting in and out of storage or anything, just being able to browse and sort inventory for each character.
I am also considering if a Freehold status overview, where you can check on your farm and animals breeding and smelters and such, is a good idea. Browse mode only. It might make it too easy for people to not be ingame, only to log in for 5 minutes to do stuff and then log out again. Actually, the more I think about it, I don't think it's a good idea. If people want to see the status, let them log in.
If going for API support for people to make their own apps and such, at least go the Eve Online route and do it through API keys, with limited or full access depending on what you want to do, but I am honestly not sure I would want this for security reasons. I certainly would never let any API key allow access to any of my chats or calendar events in 3rd party apps. I wouldn't trust them.
I would be ok with support for reskinning the app. To put a guild twist and logo on it, for example.
I would also hate having to type in username and password for the account in the app. That should definitely be based on generating a key on the website instead. And then just adding pin code/fingerprint security to open it on the phone. Or an even safer solution I am not aware of, as long as it never involves the actual user/password on the account. Obviously some 2FA authentication.
Support for IOS/Android phones and tablets, with a proper UI for the larger screen on a tablet of course, including running on Windows 11 through the Android app support it'll have. The latter so we can better procrastinate on work computers instead of working.
Absolutely nothing that has anything to do with in game mechanics like gathering, crafting or economy that should be in game only at all times.
Any integrated app should be providing some use that can’t already be obtained from a guild discord server. Guild Bank logs, application approval/denial processes, roster management, event scheduling/notifications, etc
Pretty much - if the app is going to be useful, I think the focus should be on how it sync's to what is happening in the game.
Any independant functions are probably better established elsewhere.
That is the biggest problems with apps on mobile, they have limitations for what you can do, and then you put it down and lose interest.
Have phone tasks that tailor to different skills people have, repetition, intelligence, intuition, perseverance, and of course, luck. Always keep the player intrigued, unfinished and wanting more, and making a difference.
Allow it to manage a farm plot on your property or in a guild.
Manage and process gathered mats
Allow Crafting (slower than in game) of mats into items
Allow trade
Allow watching guild player location on map on app.
Anglais/ English
Hi everyone, I totally agree with this!
Otherwise I think the main mechanics (except collecting, crafting and economy) should be concisely listed, for example: The progress/event of all the nodes (or only the ones we are interested in)
Have access to :
- Graphs on our progress on the game can be interesting too (Finance, Equipment, Hunting, Harvesting, Trade)
- Ranking
I think that everything related to collecting, crafting or economy should stay only in game! (even slowed down or limited)
Français/French
Bonjour tout le monde, je suis totalement d'accord avec ceci !
Sinon je pense que les mécaniques principal (exception pour la collecte, l'artisanat et l'économie ) devrait y figurer de manière concise, exemple: L'avancement/évènement de tous les nœuds (ou seulement ceux qui nous intéressent)
Avoir accès à des :
- Graphes sur notre avancé sur le jeu peut être intéressant aussi (Finance, Equipements, Chasses, Récolte, Métier)
- Classement
Je pense que tout ce qui concerne la collecte, l'artisanat ou l'économie devrait rester uniquement en jeu ! (même ralenti ou limitée)
While I am ingame I don't want to rely on discord for chatting with other people. It takes me out of the game. I want to write in guildchat while ingame, and it would be cool if people can write me using the app as well, if they need direct contact there and then.
Voice chat is different. That can be discord or whatever, because that doesn't take me out of the game.
But if you really want to do so them lets have:
- A Guildchatt
- share Skill builds
- Boss Timer
- Guild wiki
- anouncements
- Buy/Sell from AH
Something like that
If you did get around to it, I'm sure what problem this would solve?
1. If they can interact without playing your game, are they actually playing your game? Depending on how far you go this could make your game a weekly login for x event then just use the app to manage the tedious bits in between. Which can mean less interactions and they are siloed into only communicating with their guild and not the broader community.
2. Most larger guilds that need offline communication already have discords, websites with calendars and forums to have distributed discussions.
3. Does this help the guild-less player that is just starting out? Seems another notch in the join a guild or you won't have fun with this game.
4. There is enough distraction with our phones and don't need another reason or feel you have to use this app if you are in a guild to be "productive, efficient, because guild requires it etc..."
5. You get stuck making two apps as you have ios and android
6. Depending on guild size limits may limit large guilds from having a single place to interact as they may have to split across several guilds.
If you generalize it and take out the guild part and just have an app you could:
1. node status on your specific server, crafting stations, controlling guilds
2. voting in elections (could be more turn out)
3. account details(sub time left, individual character stats and gear)
4. notifications of server wide events
5. pvp rankings and leaderboards
Direct communication doesn’t mean much when the person using the app can’t directly interact with any game mechanics. So you whisper them directly, you wait for them to check their phone, best case you’re still online when they check in and answer your question but they can’t actually do anything to assist you. Worst case they don’t look at their phone until you’ve already logged off or it’s past the time you needed their input.
A lot of the time guild chat is between people not actively playing together in a group anyway. I would actually wager to say that most of the time by far, guild chat is used by people not playing together at that moment. If they are actively playing together they are using voice chat or group chat.
Having an active guild chat has been really important to the well-being of a guild overall in my experience. The spread of voice chats and discord and such hasn't really fundamentally changed that in the 22 years I have played these games. There are many people that can't or won't hang out in voice chats all the time while playing, and who rely on written social interactions to feel connected to the guild. A dead guild chat can result in people leaving the guild to find a guild with more social activity.
Guild chat isn't only for organizing stuff ingame, it's a chat for talking about anything usually. From "how has your day been?" to laughing at stupid jokes and memes, and sometimes more serious stuff. None of those require all parties be ingame, and the guild would benefit from people being able to participate even when they are not able to log in.