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Bets on next significant update content?
akabear
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
The last couple of major content updates / showings were quite inspiring. (character creator & landscape/weather)
Place your bets on what content do you think will be the next significant update / showing ?
Place your bets on what content do you think will be the next significant update / showing ?
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I will say combat 2 months after that, so in September. And i might be ambitious.
In my case, I`m happy to see how combat goes but have wanted to see the BoH sides.
We saw a glimpse of UI style in development perhaps sometime when sieges were being first shown and nothing since. How we navigate the content is what I would like to see next.
But I think next to actually be see, in a few months time, will be back to combat!
1: Artisan skills. We haven't had a major crafting and gathering update yet and it's going to be a major focus of the game. It's a system I think they'll want somewhat fleshed out before alpha 2
2: Combat. The updated combat will obviously be a MAJOR update. Once we get it I think it'll be a sign alpha spot testing is only a few months out
3: A second Node system update. I think we'll get a update on Nodes and government within nodes and that'll be the sign testing will be announced within the month.
Honorable mention: Naval system update. I don't think this system really needs to be fleshed out before the start of alpha 2 so they'll show it off when it's ready, could be next month, could be a year from now. Kind of like the weather system update we just got it'll be a pleasant surprise when it comes up.
My other bet is a part 2 to 'weather' which is 'seasons' mostly on the basis of various twitter and discord hints that this was the intended theme.
Other than that? Not expecting much. Not because they 'can't make a lot of progress in a month' but they are STILL without a replacement for Jeff or a lead Systems designer and seem to be avoiding making basic decisions as a result of this (cosmetics clarification anyone?) Until they announce Jeff's replacement or at least get a lead systems designer to make a bunch of backlogged confirmations, I'm not expecting anything big other than 'seasons' and 'more character creator stuff'. They are kind of stuck without that big hole being filled and have covered most bases as of the last stream.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Combat would be nice, but I'll think they'll be working on that up until launch. I feel like we won't see combat nearing it's final form until the betas.
If they really put in a naval 'update' I'm willing to put fake money on the table that it's just going to be a ship sailing around and maybe some physics and npcs onboard to demonstrate the physics out at sea (which they were still working on a year ago.) Maybe some cannons firing for show and sparklies at Betty the Fish to make people feel spectacle even though it's a really shallow showcase. Naval is such a systems oriented part of AoC's design that its really hard for me to imagine something more than that ever coming up in an update without a Jeff replacement. Not only that I'm also willing to double my bet that Jeff hardly touched Naval combat design when he was still with IS. Maybe they were praising Sea of Thieves in a vain hope they were watching to get developers from that game >.>
Part of what makes naval such an appealing aspect of the game is the interplay between nodes/caravans, crafting, points of interest, large mobs, underwater combat, and the entirely separate 'profession' system for operating a vessel. Notice how a lot of those aspects need their own core 'how the gameplay actually mechanically functions' decisions to be made and how many of them would require their own ui interfaces or at the very least some form of clear mechanics of npc's interacting with each other/mobs to show off the core concept in order to actually talk about them.
This isn't to say they won't EVENTUALLY do a huge naval showcase. I'm quite looking forward to it in fact. But there are a lot of decisions that have to be made for the actual footage they need to show to make sense. There is a lot of ui elements relative to crafting, sailing, and combat they would have to show that need some very big and well made decisions as well as a lot of polishing. And if we have learned anything about what intrepid feels about showing new ui elements over the past year, it's that they hate doing so without having something that looks closer to a finished product. You don't get that type of thing without a replacement for Jeff first.
Now what I think we will see before that is maybe an update on Caravans, a system I'm more confident that Jeff has left notes on and Steven has a stronger idea of what systems design is 'ok to show''. I think other than the things I've listed in my own post, it is the most likely to be 'shown off' without a Jeff replacement, although still unlikely and I would expect it to be more of a 'teaser preview' of the kind we got in the 'event system' stream or the animal husbandry stream. Some reiteration of design notes with a very light reveal of some systems updates to make it feel fresh and a simplistic cinematic to make it feel like 'progress'. If we got that sort of stream, I think a naval stream would definitely be closer on the timeline than I currently think it is. I currently expect that kind of thing as a month or two before or after Alpha 2. For now, I sit and wait hoping they get a systems dev so I can ride my ship sooner into Alpha 2.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
I’m hoping for combat. Picking a direction on combat would unlock progression on a number of other core systems.
Freeholds.
It's the natural progression in my mind, because it's so unlikely that they worked on weather without accounting for the freeholds, and it would be a great way to KEEP weather changes and such in people's minds. It's also the sort of thing that, as far as I understand it, is at least visually required to be ready by Alpha-2 and could be tested by many things, and a lot of which relies on the art team.
So I will of course bet on Intrepid doing what I would do, because I'm a genius like that.
If I had to guess I'd say maybe naval stuff. We saw the ships in the weather reveal. Was that a purposeful tease or just thrown in coincidentally?
I think we are 4-6 months out from combat AT THE MINIMUM even being shown. It's just too big of a system that has alot of fingers in many pies. I hesitate putting a number on it because frankly we don't know, but this is a "speculation" thread, so I let it rip.
Just ruling out systems that depend heavily on Combat, which we can securely assume isn't done yet (or else we'd have seen it and Steven would have teased it) it's very likely we see one of the following for the next big content stream. Maybe not NEXT stream, but the next one that shows a big update on par with Weather or Character Creation.
1. Social Organizations Or Guilds
2. The economy (this COULD include the Artisan system but this is a huge system that likely will need it's own stream)
3. Nodes
It pains me, but I don't think we will see Naval systems until after we see combat, just because ships are going to be a way to PVE and PVP, and have many interconnections with Raids and Sieges, both of which require a fleshed out combat system.
These are all just my speculation, based on ruling out anything I think needs combat working to show us. I think until then, our window of focus is pretty narrow, and the 3 above are what I think would be most likely to be shown in the coming months.
The big updates always seem to come out of left field, so I doubt it will be anything we've gotten hints of
I would like to see that too. Let's hope we get some good character stuff in the next livestream!
Jeremey Soule interpreted artistically via Metallica