Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
To me, this is the reason the argument of "but they were from the middle ages" doesn't work.
If we look at history, guns were never great until the 18th centaury (17th for cannons). Sure, they existed before then, but they weren't all that good.
Now, if you are in a world with magic, which works great already, why would you invest the equivalent of billions of dollars (in todays money) in to continuing to develop this thing that will still take hundreds of years to be viable to even use in combat, let alone how long it would take for them to be better than the magic that is already in use.
Looking through history, if actual governments (most notably Portugal) didn't do literally everything they could to improve guns, we likely wouldn't have them today. They only put the effort in because it was the best option available. If magic were available, undeveloped guns would not be the best option available, and so would not have that effort put in to them.
So, even if gunpowder itself were discovered in a world with functioning magic, it would likely never occur to anyone to spend the massive amount of effort needed to turn it in to a viable weapon.
I mean honestly, if we could launch projectiles of elemental energy with magic or mana, why would we ever even attempt to launch projectiles with an expensive imported resource, let alone seek to develop it.
I don't understand the desire for guns to be in the game
I love guns myself but this romanticizing of old school black powder in high fantasy is just silly to me when magic is an option.
Shooting black powder is fun but also very sketchy at times. Not exactly a consistent effect every time. sometimes works or sometimes get a delayed fire 3-10 seconds. Sometimes get a complete misfire and need to clear it.
Also not as accurate as some people think. Pre-rifling the ball could drift a lot really quickly.
Not what they show in the movies.
Personally I am happy Intrepid said no gun powder.
They could machine the outside of the gun barrel to be like a heat sink with a bunch of fins to add surface area. Thus allowing the speed loading speeds to keep progressing... Stupid compared to bullets, but it would be cool to see how fast people could speed load.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
And agreed is a poor way to do stuff compared to today's way of doing things.
yea! thats what i Want! i think it would be cool to have weapons that are far more powerful than a bow but at the cost of being expensive and hard to use multiple times in a row! ik you meant that as a jab and a point as to why to not do it but thats exactly what i was trying to sugget since thats another flavor of weapon and a different way to augment how we all play the game!
you do know that the way bows are supposedly going to work is that you take shots from ACTUAL range right? the devs kinda of wnat this exact thing for rangers anyway and i would agree since you cant use your distance abilities if your too close to your target meaning that the long reload time would work as you take one shot and if you miss because the guns would also be inaccurate while dealing a lot of damage than you should have the time to reload the rifle and take all 3 shots and perhaps only need 2 if your target is by themselves and beyond when it comes to blunderbuss shotguns and flintlock pistols it again isnt a issue because they are weapons i think would work better as naval back up weapons to either deal a lot of damage and maybe 1 shot boarding parties or for a fighter for example they could run into the backlines with the blunderbuss and blast a fuckin healer clerics ass out in 1 shot than switch to a sword to continue their flank assault or perhaps that same fighter instead could go in and do the burst damage and say the miss 1 of the 2 abilites they tried and so the person is only low but managed to get on a mount with the pistol could offer a single shot to try to finish them before they get away.
dude i literally suggested those same effects and brough up fucking rifleing already as muskets, blunderbuss', and flintlock pistols didnt have that and said they should be innacurate because of that and honetly if they add a misfire feature than i think that offers the chance to make guns do EVEN MORE damage and often times be 1 shots because its kinda like either a rng back maybe you save yourself and have both good aim and luck or perhaps a ranger at distance can do serious damage and make vital picks or just deal absurd damage to bosses or clusters of players like say a lot of grouped up tanks
The problem here is, as inaccurate as those weapons are, they still only came after damn near 1,000 years of innovation in guns.
The weapons you are talking about are only any good against a dense mass of targets. You can aim all you want, but you will almost never hit a single person if they are more than about 20 paces away. However, if you are firing at 100 people, you're probably going to hit someone.
A weapon that had an innate chance to just miss your target most of the time isn't exactly a great fit for an MMO, regardless of the technology.
you miss a key point of difference between our world and vera tho and thats that the lore is that they literally left their world and now are returning to rebuild implying there was some long enough stretch of time before what we see and more than that the people and more importantly, inventors of vera have damn good reason to advance that technologhy as far as it will go faster than we ever would have done it as they have monsters breathing down there necks 24/7. monsters... as in literal massive firebreathing dragons and drakes or horrifying dinosaurs basically and so on and so on of creatures that only the strongest of the strong adventures could ever dream of defeating with a sword with adventurers not being guards menaing that they literally have no actual defense against these things until a adventurer arrives and i feel that is MORE than enough reason to do the simple enough when your really think about what goes into it, research to advance firearms to the point of flintlocks, matchlocks, and etc. the fact in our world where the worst that would likely happen is a bunch of bandits likely with about as much training as any other commoner raiding towns or the occasional army raiding small towns as they either went to war with that towns nation or went to war with a neighboring towns nation and i guess theres also things like bears and wolves to worry about but really when you consider that to the pressure that the people of vera would be under to improve their everything faster its kinda not a competition even.
I don't find it silly at all.
Lore-wise, training a half-decent mage might take years and cost 50.000 gold coins.
Meanwhile, training a half-decent musketeer will take a few weeks and cost 200 gold coins.
Supplying a mage on the front might also cost far more than supplying a musketeer.
Yes the reload time is great... but so is the damage. And that's what I think could make guns such a unique weapon.
Regarding primitive pistols, you would carry many, already-loaded, on you. As many as a dozen. To compensate for the very long reload rate.
Could be an interesting possibility in AOC as well.
I'd like to see muskets and pistols because I think you can't have the pirate and naval explorer fantasy to the full extent without cannonsa and primitive guns.
I'm familiar with several medieval black powder weapons because I've used replicas or seen them used.
They are great against stationary targets or dense units of soldiers because you can light the fuse,
wait a few seconds for the bang (partially cover your ears, open your mouth!) and see an effect.
The kind of anti-personnel black powder weapons present in the 14th century were limited to small cannons on a long stick or on a small carriage.
They had the reputation of being almost more risk to the users than to the enemy.
All of them were muzzleloaders, taking A LOT of time (30 seconds?) to run through a swab, charge ram, shot ram, (stand clear), give fire cycle for 2 or 3 crew.
Running through the cycle too quickly could lead to a charge ram being ignited in the barrel removing the arm of the person ramming the charge home.
Even the idea of late medieval arquebus (15th century) being a sniper weapon is madness.
The flight of the projectile was wildly inaccurate and only useful in large numbers of troops against dense troop formations.
Rifling barrels for accuracy wasn't common practice until several hundred years later. This is when the idea of marksmen or snipers started to develop.
I understand that you want firearms, but your understanding of firearms history appears to be lacking or facts are conveniently being overlooked (no worries! we all do that from time to time!
I don't mind one bit that you are looking for a firearm game, but I honestly don't know if Ashes can offer a magical equivalent of modern day rifle or sniper rifle without destroying the credibility of every other ranged weapon type. If you throw that suggestion into the Tab combat and Action combat debate just make sure that you have your underground bunker full stocked and ready!
Ashes has been in development for 4+ years now. Community members have generated the following websites to help you get up to speed with what has already been stated by Steven and Intrepid Studios.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki
https://www.ashes101.com/
https://asheshq.com/
I hope these help you understand what Steven currently has planned. There's many hours of information to digest.
Kind of won't.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Guns_and_gunpowder
Gunpowder (black powder) weapons will not be present in Ashes of Creation.[3][4]
From what we can gather from the game so far, the only things that a mage needs are ability and their own mana. And seeing as this is a high fantasy world and not low fantasy, we can expect magic to be a common practice.
And from a game mechanic point of view, imagine having 12 weapon slots just for pistols lmao. At that point you will need to add an encumbrance debuff.
as far as game mechanics go
-you can take several shots with a bow before someone even gets a line on where you are at.
-one shot mechanics are lazy and no fun, even if they are just a chance mechanic. Thats also how you get everyone using that weapon simply because a 1 shot will be an obvious meta. Which takes away from the games ability to have several viable builds.
Lore/history wise
-You can't just drop some advanced technology into a world designed where the weapons and outfitting are old. Magic works because its magic, and able to be made up on the spot as well as its limits. Tossing guns and black powder into an age where the bow was the height of technology basically invalidates several weapons and outfitting...you know...like how they were invalidated when firearms were actually refined in real life?
-That being said, why would a gun be even dwelled upon when in high fantasy, you have magic commonly used and far more effective than a bunch of grapeshot when you can just literally melt somebody.
I posted that and a whole lot more early in this thread and it doesn't seem to matter.
Maybe you'd prefer that game more?
(Somewhat off-topic)
I have a theory that all forum threads would go out of control as soon as ppl started typing very long replies that weren't properly divided into paragraphs
I’mgoingtotrynotevenusingspaces!
-So when fighting a 100 ft magical flying lizard you'd rather have a musket than a giant magical ball of energy...mkay.
-As far as ease of use and accessibility goes... what is more efficient? The one that simply requires training and ones own energy? Or the one that requires a mechanism with moving parts and several components that arent readily available everywhere? The mechanism may be able to be taught to a peasant, but its likely expensive and much more likely to fail.
-The downfall of verra was literally because a bunch of gods went rogue and apocalypsed the world.... and good ol' phoenix goddess used magic to portal everyone out.
13th to 15th century firearms are laughable if you actually did the research, and if they didn't kill the operator and the people around it due to a misfire, it rarely hit its mark unless it was fired into a group. My previous point is that with magic, this wouldnt even need to be developed at this point because you can get a better result that is more reliable with a meteor shower, which is a confirmed ability.
2 questions. Are you ok? And are you drunk?
Please don't be frustrated, it distracts attention from your ideas, which I am happy to read. I may agree with some and not others, that's how honesty works.
If we don't focus too much on the word "firearms" then I'm sure there will be magical weapons fulfilling the ranged combat role. There was evidence of that in Alpha2 testing. However, you might want to read up on the "time to kill" expectation that Steven has set as that appears to remove the possibility of one shot kill weapons.
*BTW, My first posts here a year ago went down like a lead balloon simply because I was unaware of
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/
https://www.ashes101.com/
https://asheshq.com/
In my opinion these have become essential reading/watching if someone wants to engage in this forum and hope to engender a small degree of respect begrudging acknowledgement from long term members, many of which have been debating at length the same subject matters since 2017 and are extremely familiar with a wide range of discussions. Some of them can be quite salty if you've not done your homework. I've asked Intrepid if they can pin these links somewhere to help new members get up to speed with the current state of the game development.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/51490/help-for-new-starters#latest
Feel free to give that post a thumbs up if you think education is a positive step in the right direction.