Greetings, glorious testers!
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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Dev Discussion #38 - Holidays
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 - Holidays
How do you feel about in-game holidays involving real-world aspects? Do you prefer that your game world have a Christmas celebration, or would you prefer to keep your real-world holidays away from the keyboard?
Keep an eye out for our next Dev Discussion topic regarding Griefing!
UPDATE: Hi again friends! Thank you all for taking the time to stop by and share your thoughts on holidays! We had a blast reading through them all! Check out some of the top notes you shared with us below:
- Many players would like in-game holidays to mirror IRL calendar holidays, but they would like them to be immersive - centered, supported and adapted by the ingame world. Specifically, they would like to see in-game holidays that revolve around regions, races, religions, and perhaps even guild and server development with events and activities that are not monotonous nor repetitive from year-to-year.
- Players are curious about how the calendar year will work in-game as opposed to the normal IRL 12 month calendar year. Will they see Verran holidays and seasons celebrated at a different cadence or parallel to the IRL calendar year and seasons?
- There are also many players that would enjoy totally unique holidays, created entirely from Verran lore and having little to nothing to do with IRL holidays.
- While some players wished to avoid national holidays as an inspiration altogether (ex. American Independence Day), others felt that there was an opportunity to feature cultural holidays from all around the world.
While there was some fantastic feedback and discussion in this thread, I think this quote sums up all we could ask for, at the end of the day. ^_^
Hey, as long as there is good ale and happy friends i'm all for celebrating anything anytime in a dank tavern near you.
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Comments
I would also recommend to stay away from any national holidays like 4th of july. You'd want to stick to the events that are very popular all around the world.
If there is going to be rewards from holidays they should always come back the next year. You should not have to decide between going on a vacation with your family or playing to not miss a timed exclusive cosmetic. This would expand the rewards over time and give people who like collecting something to be able to complete. Being able to actually complete a collection is important to goal driven players.
Holidays are usually associated with seasons and on the wiki it says:
but I kind of feel that is a week is a bit too short. I think it would be better to have a season last a month and a full seasonal rotation would take 4 months. Which would then mean during Christmas time in real life (December) would line up with a Christmas / Festive themed event in game (assuming spring is the "start" and "winter" is the end)
I know the 1 week seasons doesn't mean the last week of the month will always be a Festive event, I mean it more so as the seasonal change. (for a least a month out of every Season) will line up with the RL seasons and therefore the holiday event could be during that time.
I'd also quite like it if we don't have gimmicky 'tokens' to collect to allow us to purchase certain skins or mounts. Not everyone likes to grind and I feel like a questline for the season/specific holiday would allow people to take things slightly more at their own pace and not have to spend the entire time grinding incessantly, as it often just feels like a way to pad content.
Edit: I also agree with the above comments that talk about not wanting real-world holidays to be in the game. I'd much rather have holidays that are in-universe and backed up by lore. As an example, I'm not an American, so things like Thanksgiving and July 4th just aren't holidays I celebrate. I think that adding real-world holidays to the game might exclude certain people from celebrating them, or feel that certain people have more prominence in the community.
Edit 2: It might also be nice to allow the players of a server to make their own holidays to commemorate certain things that happened during play, like the victory of a particularly difficult siege/gruelling battle, or some mighty beast that was slain by a guild. A way of allowing us to commemorate those through a 'yearly' celebration would be quite nice.
In FFXIV the different Holidays don't share real world names, Halloween is called All-Saints Wake, and Christmas is called Starlight Celebration! It fits better with the game lore, and I love it!
(Below are additional Comments and ideas concerning Holidays and Housing)
I really like decorating my in-game houses for each Holiday!
l keep the downstairs level of one of my houses in FFXIV decorated for Halloween year round! The upstairs changes with every Holiday. It's one of my favorite things to do in game! Some things I want to see in Ashes, is the ability to add holiday light strings to the house and large furnishings indoors and especially outdoors!
Even if you had to modify it to match the game lore, you could make them multi-colored Fireflies, luminescent flower vines, or both! Being able to add fluttering bats, wandering yard ghosts, and flickering candle lit Jack-o-Lanterns during Halloween would be very cool! I'd also like to be able to flock my outdoor furnishings and buildings with snow during winter, or year-round too!
If you're not going to use your reactive environment tech for indoor/outdoor housing decorations as the seasons change - to save on inventory space - it would be very helpful to be able to toggle between 4 different season versions of an item to display, then place the version you want. That way you only need 4 trees, instead of 16 trees in your storage.
I am not big on these seasonal events with their associated rewards. I see many people worn out during them and instead of enjoying this extra time, they act as if it is work.
The game itself is the reward. I would rather see spontaneous little events with whatever results organized on the spot, and with little notice, from live GMs, instead of coded, patched NPC hunt/reward/vendor crap.
Any holiday decorations and names can be during real life holidays, but they must be part of Verra, not the real world.
When games put in santa hats, snowmen and christmas trees in their worlds they are ruining and disrespecting their own creation. It looks silly and lessens the illusion that you play as an adventurer in a wild and war torn land.
A main reason I like this is because it feels fun when real life holiday times line up with in-game ones to me personally. I love going on Winter Break from college and hopping on Overwatch to the sound of holiday music and skins while all my friends get on too. Feels so nice!
I love that sort of integration. I also would like to pay tribute to WoW's Hallows End, although it is a little cheesy, they used to have events spawn within certain villages where the headless horseman would enter towns & try to burn it to the ground, springing up quests to put out the fires & defeat him at the end. I think these kinds of interactions bring a lot to the game world, particularly if the antagonists are built into the storyline & the events are interactive. E.G The Easter Puirgel which lays it's eggs & has never been seen, but should you ever find it, your wildest dreams come true, springing up easter egg hunts where you can turn the eggs in to the Easter Puirgel for a special mount but finding the Easter Puirgel is super rare & only occurs a set number of times over the holiday? Who knows! the choice is yours =D (P.S Gimme a job xD)
I also like the idea of having some items only available during the winter, when it's raining, or when there's a full moon out.
There will be some real world references, particularly with regards to potentially real world holidays as well as some historical events or cultures. For example the PAX East kind of ship that was named Eleanor that we released a cosmetic of, you know, being a reference to the Eleanor ship that the tea was thrown off of; or kind of colonialesque look.[6] – Steven Sharif
Has this game design changed? If so, what other things do you plan to change when it comes to design? With the constant "We are working as hard as we can to get the game done!" mantra being repeated on blast, this does not inspire confidence when basic issues that were seemingly decided and put to rest years back keep cropping up as "Hey, whatcha think about this?"
Beyond that,, how do holidays / traditions factor into lore and into the various nodes and their ore that pops up with them?
100% This!! Couldn't have said it better...
Outside of that, I think unique in game holidays would be cool. Not opposed to in game holidays coinciding with real world ones, if they're implemented correctly. Maybe hybridize/combine the real world ones that fall in the same time frame?
If you are going to do real holidays in game, you need to include a story in game to make it work.
Given the portals we go through, and the types of people on Verra (lore wise), it would need to be damn convincing storytelling.
Second, if you are going to do holidays, you have to do them for everyone. If you do something for 4th of July or for Thanksgiving, you also should be doing something for other countries with major in-game populations.
It would be really weird (and stupid) to have Brazilian servers, located in Brazil populated by Brazilian players, and the have a celebration for 4th of July but not for Sete de Setembro.
Basically, if you commit to this gold in game events to real world holidays, in order to do it properly you need to be prepared to do all holidays from all over the world.
If that isn't on the cards, I vote for not bothering at all. On the other hand, if you can pull it off, go for it.
I've always enjoyed events/celebrations in MMOs which match real life holidays: they're usually fun and welcome, as long as it doesn't hurt the game and it won't take time from development or bug fixing.
OSRS's holiday events/quests come to mind, those are cool and usually enjoyable if you ask me.
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2 thoughts that add nuance:
In summary:
PROS:
- Brings the community together, increases community longevity
- Really natural way to create events (minigames) that put high level and low level players on an equal playing field
- Natural opportunity to give away event cosmetics, and have cosmetic sales ($$)
- Time-limited content creates memories and opportunity for exclusive items
CONS:If you can do them, great! Just don't do copy-paste events. Content updates are more important and are an alternative if you don't have enough resources to do novel events.
Most of them are religious holidays, or specific to a particular country, and are not shared by the rest of the world.
copying what other games do is simply a lack of originality
ashes of creation must be unique
the parties, the events in game, must be related to the lore of the game, and not to real life !
otherwise you destroy the game rp and its interest
we are here for the story of ashes of creation not to dig stupid pumpkins
don't sink in the ridiculousness like on the other mmo with their Christmas tree
imagine in-game events based on the story of ashes of creation
be creative
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Also i think there should only holidays that were celebrated in many countrys . (Christmas, New Years Eve)
Halloween and Thanksgiving would be possible as Halloween is getting more popular in Europe and many countrys have at least a Holidays thats close to /kind of Thanksgiving.
4th July, etc. wont really make sense for non americans.
That being said, instead of Christmas, a similar themed event can take place, same as in DnD, like "The Festival of Giving", instead of Halloween you have "Spooky Skeletons Day", that sort of stuff. Keep the theme, but rebrand it to make sense in-world.
HOWEVER, there should be in-game holidays that are not reflections of IRL holidays. Events just for Verra. Pick times where there is nothing else going on and create an event. For example:
-make the launch week of the game a "Anniversary Week" event
-give each race 1 holiday just for them, when they celebrate what makes each race unique
-give each node a separate celebration day that is specific to the node, where they celebrate their history and achievements (this could be tied into the scribe profession in some way). Those can be smaller and take place just in that specific node. Make it a festival of some kind, with different quests that pop up (similar to what happens before a siege, quests in preparation of the festival)
-have holidays that mark important events in a server's history (first dragon death for example)
Not all holidays should be happy happy time. There should be some events that are somber or even sad. Marking the death of a hero of legend or the last time the volcano erupted, event which destroyed a node.
Use holidays to build up the lore, make the world feel more alive and use them to make all players realize that it has a history. If done right, those events will add to the immersion of the players and make them want to engage with the world even more.
There should be substantial breaks between holidays, don't jump from one into another instantly. Most events should only last for a day or 2. Also, add quests that can be done in preparation for a event of any kind is needed. Maybe for one holiday there is a specific food that is considered "traditional" (like lamb for Easter), so now there are a lot of quests to go out and gather that food.
Holidays give you as devs the chance to set the tone for a period of time. Use it properly
There are two "holidays" somewhat tied to the real world I'd like to see celebrated in-game though. One celebrated on the day the game launched. The second one, of lesser importance, celebrating the day on which the server launched, if different from the main launch.
Day of the Arrival. Day of the Return. Something in that spirit.