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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Alts as NPCs on Freeholds
superhero6785
Member, Alpha Two
It would be cool if our characters hang out on our freeholds as NPCs while not being played. Maybe they can be assigned jobs, or just stand around looking cool.
Even better is if your characters act as NPC guards for your freehold during Node sieges or other events. That would give people a nice reward for leveling Alts.
Even better is if your characters act as NPC guards for your freehold during Node sieges or other events. That would give people a nice reward for leveling Alts.
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Of course, this could awkward if your alts decide to unionize.
As for Alt NPC Guards, that one is quite unreasonable, and Ashes doesn't seem like the type of game that will incentivise Alts as it kinda goes against their sense of "Community interdependability" they are aiming for.
Aren't we all sinners?
Things like citizenship and artisan mastery are account wide, not independent of characters, so Alts have no affect on community interdependability. If Ashes doesn't want you to play Alts, then don't give people more than 1 character slot - simple. Now, they've already said you will have plenty of character slots available, which tells me they encourage playing Alts and trying different classes. As for NPC Guards, that's already something Mayors will be able to spend tax money on to defend a node during sieges, so the mechanics of NPC Guards will already be in the game, so now it's just a matter of using your character with their items instead of some default equipped NPC.
Additionally, I think it would add to the 'endgame loop' if to get the most out of your freehold you could level all of your Alts to max level and create your own sort of 'freehold army'
Citizenship yes, artisan mastery i really don't think so.
Unless you have a quote to go against this:
Characters within a single account (Alts) may have different professions. From wiki.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Artisan_classes
At 32:10
It's not that "Ashes doesn't want you to play Alts" it's just that they doesn't seem to encourage players to have them as a direct source of Main Character advantage over who doesn't have them.
And yes there will be Mayors/Castles NPC Guards, but they are just that, NPCs that atleast currently are just supposed to have its default NPC Stats and you don't throw gear at them.
So in Conclusion, do i Believe Freehold NPC guards would be ok? Yeah
Freehold NPC Guards with your alts model/skins? Yeah
Freehold NPC Guards with your alts Gear/Level/Stats? Hell no
As it would be a direct advantage of having alts(specially very geared ones) over people who don't want to have alts, basically forcing you to having them for that amazing extra advantage.
Aren't we all sinners?
From the Wiki:
"Artisan classes allow a player to specialize in one or more of the following skill trees.[1]
Gathering
Processing
Crafting
Within each of these three artisan classes lies different professions.[2]
Characters within a single account (Alts) may have different professions.[3]"
Artisan Classes will be account wide. So you can only master Gathering, Processing, or Crafting. Within an Artisan Class, there will be multiple Trees. Those trees are the Professions (carpentry, ship building, armor smithing, etc.) which each of your Alts can choose to master a different Tree (profession) within the Artisan Class you have chosen. But even if you choose to be a Master Crafter and each of your Alts specializes in a different Profession, you will still be reliant upon Master Gatherers and Master Processors. There's been lots of different discussions on this but if I remember correctly this is what they were going for because the "loophole" that was brought up was that someone could "multi box" around it and Steven basically said they weren't going to stop someone from multi-boxing and if they wanted to do that then they technically could.
The other replies in the thread are pretty spot on ... so I'll just echo what has already been said:
- Would it be cool to have NPC versions of your Alts? Yes.
- Should NPC versions of Alts have passive in-game rewards? Definitely not.
- Does Intrepid have developer time for this idea? Probably not before launch. Maybe as a feature of an expansion or DLC content.
Hmm, it seems that you didn't watch the video part of the wiki quote, where at 32:35 they explicitly say "the experience isn't going to be account wide" So even if the "Artisan Classes" would be account wide, even tho we don't have a quote on that (atleast that i've seem) it is still separated in their professions.
But going back to the main point, do you see how having your OP alts as guards would be an insane advantage provided by alts to not only your main character but your account in general?
Aren't we all sinners?
I don't think multiboxing will help alts play together. Technically alts are on the same account as the main.
Multiboxing will be with separate accounts.
Seems very likely that we will be able to create minions that look exactly like our alts.
We will have to see what kinds of attributes the minions can have. We might be able to get them very close to our alts, even if we can't switch our alts to be NPCs.
It's not an advantage to have alts as guards as long as everyone can do it.
It's a great question to ask the devs.
Anyhow, I agree @Dygz it's not an advantage if everyone can do it. It's simply a reward to those who spend the time leveling alts, just as anything you do rewards you for your time.
However, I can see the argument that it's too OP to have 8 NPCs max level and fully kitted in Epic gear defending your freehold. Maybe being "guards" is not realistic. Mainly I wanted my freehold to feel alive by seeing my Alts walking around, gear included.
That was my thought exactly, but the others seem to be vehemently against it
People don't need to have to have NPC guards for the Freeholds and Caravans, either.
Might be easier to create NPC guards than it is to level alts, so...
Just because alts can become NPC guards, that doesn't mean everyone will want to use that method to create NPC guards.
Whether random NPC or player alt as an NPC they’re still limited by how good the AI is when compared to a real player.
I too agree that it would be neat to have my alt working on my freehold tending the garden and such when I’m not playing it.
Hopefully, but no matter how much they try I can guarantee there will never be "enough content" to satisfy everyone. My thought is - if the leveling process is fun, if the classes offer unique gameplay experiences, if there's enough incentive to do multiple playthroughs and you don't feel like you're wasting your time on an Alt, then why would that be so bad? Many games are praised for their replayability. Not to mention it would ensure there are active players at nearly all levels of the game for a long time to come. So players who are much slower or just enjoy taking their time will have an active player base, it just might be someone's 2nd or 3rd playthrough while they're still on their first.
It won’t be:
“Characters within a single account (Alts) may have different professions.[3]”
“A character may only master one of the three parent artisan classes.[2]“
And in the live stream for reference point 3 they clearly say “the experience is not going to be account wide, it’s on a character”
Now that I've seen the character creator, I plan to have at least twice more alts than I was originally planning.
I'm going to need an enterourage of alts of various races and genders and classes hanging out at my Freehold and guarding my Caravans.
I'm an actor. I'm not just trying to be myself in a fantasy game.
Although, my version of RP is just playing the game as much as possible from the perspectives of my character(s).
I'm not a fan of the "RP" that includes an in-game dungeon master trying to direct players in a non-dev-curated story.
I dunno that we will need an RP server since it will be natural for us all to discuss the changes occurring in the world around us.
If you can set them up as quest-givers for a passerby. Almost like a buy order on the market, you can offer a gold reward to turn in X number of mats. A quick and simple way to dump some extra resources from your inventory if you just so happen to have it on you and want to clear some inventory space. The mats would go into your freehold storage and you would need to have enough gold in the storage as well to pay out.