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.
Comments
The compass worked well; an excellent replacement for the mini-map.
This is just an idea, maybe it doesnt make sense to do, but maybe something cool could come from it. Like maybe you dont want other regions to get an update so you stake out the bird and kill it, so they have to send another one. Idno just riffing at this point.
i wouldn't mind having a little minimap... but it is the "hyper local" of what you can see. almost like driving with the gps map zoomed down to a hundred feet around you
Formerly T-Elf
You basically don't want a scenario where players feel the need to keep a 3rd party map up all the time on on their second monitor, so they don't feel like they are missing out on big events and such.
Some initial thoughts I had:
As for the specifics about how the map should update, I am not really sure what I want yet. Some cartography skill and/or libraries in scientific nodes are things that have been mentioned before about the game, so those are the obvious bases to work from though.
Your map is updated to a certain amount by
But much more of a fan of some of the hyper-real maps done in some of the Skyrim mods
Furthermore, I see information brokers in a lot of fantasy and anime/fantasy/mmo space which would indicate on some level players want to be able to explore the world and sell their efforts as explorers.
However, if this idealized version doesn't play out in testing, I am also happy with a status quo world map. I would rather have fun than realistic in my fantasy.
I feel like this would make the most sense. A general idea of the regions default, maybe even a seasonal variant, but not the active weather.
Professional Skeptic, Entertainer, and Animal Enthusiast
As far as the world map changing I use World of Warcraft's Cataclysm as what I think of when major changes happen. I however didn't enjoy the phasing they implemented. I felt it broke the immersion and made it difficult for friends or party members to enjoy the world together when the world would appeared differently for some who were at a different progression in whatever part of the main line story.
I feel the world if changed should appear the same for everyone, even those just joining the game. I think it gives the game a history and a sense of immersion that allows for future story telling by devs and players that have experienced older versions. I feel this is a positive because the game world would be truly ever changing.
Not sure if the information is correct but I was under the impression that the scribe would be making maps and also magical augments for weapons and armor. I would like to see, say the profession scribe be the one who can make, sell and share maps with libraries anyway. This way the scribe always has something to do and there are a few avenues to update your map without having to actually run there across the world lowering the tedium but keeping the maps dynamic.
I don't know if I heard this from a stream but I thought the map might need to be updated every week. I don't know if I would make fog of war refresh every week but if the seasons change the landscape perhaps that would be necessary.
I know there will be some things that never change as things develop organically, and that would be the gates perhaps they would be the one constant that doesn't have fog of war.
There was a very nice add on for ESO I loved. It showed the locations on the map where you last saw a node of gathering materials. It wasn't always there in the exact same place but usually close by when I went looking for that material again. It would be neat if we could have residual markers we could choose to apply to the map like this. I would love to see labels for reminding myself what mobs spawn in areas too but this could be dynamic as the world evolves too. In that same vein I would like to have some kind of marker to know how much an area has had its resources depleted. Something to help know if we have gathered too much from an area or are getting close even if it is the environment changing as a que for people to pay attention.
All in all I do not like the idea of static maps with markers all over. This is a dynamic world ever evolving and it should require some dedication and risk to stay on top of the best information.
I did like an idea someone posted earlier about having a shared guild map players could contribute to but that does take away from the scribe profession, so I'm on the fence.
Perhaps the map is greyed out and we have basic topography until we explore.
I would like map markers for group members to show on the map for members to find each other.
Nodes should be auto-update to some range, but entrances to dungeons or caves should be marked by players who then could sell those maps. Or players could mark some places and points of interest and put them to library in scientific node and other players could then buy those maps or transcript them to their own map? Maybe citizens of scientific node or scholars could get those maps for free?
It could be interesting that the only way to get maps from across the sea is from a travelers who came from there and marked stuff.
Piggy backing on this comment, I agree there should be no mini-map, but I also think there should initially be no indicator on you world map for your location besides a compass. You use terrain and world markers to figure out where your location is. That's a bit too hardcore in my experience. But, if you gave all players a spell like "echo" with a 10 minute cooldown, with the spell's effect revealing your world map location at the time of the spell, then I think a lot of the burden is lifted. You could also include consumable items with a CD that have the same effect. I'd love to see something like that tested in A2.
I think the general problem with having no mini-map with a world map, is that people typically just end up spam opening their world map to compensate instead of learning the terrain.
Personally I would be ok with no minimap, but I'd want a compass instead at least. Hell, I could probably do without a map at all, like DAoC in the pre-ToA days
Not having a minimap would unnecessarily turn people away from the game, for not enough benefit, IMO. All that happened in New World was that players made an unsupported mod for NW that gave them a minimap. I'd rather not see that for Ashes.
So I would like to see a mix. I could imagine that under certain conditions you can see alternative versions of a place... something like traveling in time by magic or moving through old memories by magic where e.g. a castle ruin is still standing and we as players can possibly experience the downfall of this castle. Or there are also beliefs and religion... why not areas that from time to time is influenced by religious magic and thus changes temporarily.
The bottom line is that I think it's great to explore a world and then just know it on the other hand I think it's great to discover new things in a known world. But I also see problems when a world is only expanded by new areas... then quickly comes the feeling that one area is too similar to another because you can not reinvent the wheel. But different versions of an area that are separated by different events (already mentioned above) have this problem less because you are happy if you can recognize that and then draw conclusions between the two areas.
ps. I hope you can understand what I wanted to say here my English is not the best.
I think AoC is ambitious and innovative enough with all its complex systems that this is something that doesn't necessarily need groundbreaking innovation.
I know what i know, and if i take the time to record these findings i am rewarded , If i don't know such things or am out dated the risk is great .. without a relatively updated map do I really want to plot my caravan through that mountain pass? Did the winter make it unpassable, perhaps a ranger has sold some scribblings to a local vendor, perhaps there has been sightings of unthinkable beasts that has recently taken home to the forest paths i look to travel? Certainly the mystery of far lands should remain such. Do i hire a guide? Perhaps a black market map that details the thieves guild underground tunnels and entrances. Do I risk life having such items in my possession? Ashes has been clearly stated that it is a model of Risk and reward. Where would we be without our modern day navigation systems or paper city maps. My nav is updated by the min in RL why should a fantasy realm have better systems then that? Until the Vera street view magic crystal ball app drops I vote for the additional challenge of preparing for the unknown and everything being an adventure to be discovered anew and the option to become a world renown cartographer that spends life wandering the worlds and creating amazing and wonderful cartographic masterpieces that only the wealthy can afford.
I never know what to expect when i just step out my door unprepared. I'm excited by the unknown, the chaos, the change to discover. I travel in my city or my town or my country and every sunrise is different and unexpected and full of mystery. Lets keep Verra the same
Have a look at this Website for the game Mortal Online 2 a game that also doesn't have a classic MMORPG map: https://mortalonlinemap.info/
This is an interactive map tool made by the community that people can in real-time mark and search for every POI including the most recent PvP fights going on that people add to the map, it can be used for rescources, new content, community event is happening and so on. Imagine something like this in Ashes, with a page to sort by server, and guilds updating this in real-time with information on the nodes, the boss spawns, where guilds are at, and so on - same as everyone does in MO2.
There is also Discord, and many other tools that people Will use and Intrepid has absolutely no control over nor would they be able to ban since this happens on 3rd party websites/platforms, and can pretty much make all these cartography ideas completely irrelevant - why pay gold or level a profession that a discord server or a website can do better?
This game is already doing a lot and has awesome design ideas, so messing around with all this Map and Cartography idea is just something not worth the time since people will be doing this outside your game anyways.
A classic MMORPG map, with maybe some fog of war is enough, don't spend time with this and focus on other parts of the game that you can have control over so we can get the core viable product delivered before Archeage 2 comes out.
My full thoughts in case anyone is interested.
Now to the question at hand: it depends on what "more innovative ways of keeping maps up-to-date" means.
When I think of World Maps, many games come to mind, but I have fond memories of one game in particular: WarCraft III and its minimap with fog of war: if you visited an area and there was an enemy base there, it would be marked on the minimap as such. However, if that base was destroyed, the map would only update if you visited that area again.
Generally speaking, I don't believe a character's World Map should automatically update when anything and everything on the other side of the world happens, even if they have visited that place. I would like for this to be similar to WC3's minimap.
On the other hand, I believe some events could automatically update the World Map or somehow be informed to characters that already visited that area (maybe get a mail/post from an NPC who lives in that area) or else only people who live in that area or visit it very often will know there's something going on (apart from metagaming like server forums, server Discord, etc., obviously).
Depending on how the game tackles exploration, one thing I'm not a big fan of is not knowing if I completely explored a sub-division/region (whichever size it may be) of the World Map after exploring it. I would like the game to explicitly tell me if I have completely explored that region or not.
To be clear, I'm not saying "point me exactly to where each cave, secret NPC camp, mountain parkour and hidden quests are located at", that's not what I mean. What I mean is simply tell me I have explored 80% of that region, but no need to show me where the missing 20% are located at. Hell, don't even make the "secret spots" part of the exploration percentage of regions, make it so that it's possible to have completely explored Region X, but still have missed all of the "secret spots". I'm just not a fan of not knowing if I have completely explored that region, leave aside "secret spots", for the sake of completionism.
Lastly, I hope that exploring Verra will be part of an in-game achievements/collection log for people to show off and have fun, even if the world (map) is on an ever-changing state.
People are going to do what they're going to do, there's no controlling that. Every game has guides, maps, cheat sheets, 'best builds', best this, best that. It's sad, but it's just the way things are today. Even so I don't think the development of the game should change just because of the way certain people choose to play it. As long as it's made well, there will not be a need for external maps. Libraries are essentially one of these community map tools but in game, except you won't have to open another application to access it. Also, there will be potentially hundreds and hundreds of players updating this regularly for their node on their own particular server. Why would you bother spending all that time developing and updating a 3rd party map, unique for EVERY Server, if an equivalent or better system already exists in game? In this sort of thinking, you're also assuming people will be willing to give out this information freely about their homes in a PvP focused game to potential enemies, revealing locations of resources, key node buildings, fortifications, freehold locations, ETC. There will be some I'm sure, but I think most people are not that naive.
While I agree a Cartography profession is a bit much and unnecessary, there are apparently plans for a Scribe crafting profession that is intended to perform similar roles through libraries so maybe it would be best suited for them. My problem with a dedicated profession for maps is how would you even benefit from being a high level map maker? What could you possibly do with maps that everyone else can't? I don't think anything related to maps should be locked behind a profession, or that there should be higher level maps that provide more information or give special benefits. Just give everyone the tools to do that on their own. This is something that doesn't need to be overly complicated otherwise it WILL drive players to use 3rd party maps like Liniker has suggested.
As far as the reality check ya fully recognize that folks will dive in create all kinds of goodies outside of the game. Intrepid and crew have an ideal to try and keep the plugin external world out of the game as to achieve the best possible immersion that they can offer the community. We all suspect that the gaming community will figure out a way .. its just the way of things and ya there will be spreadsheets and graphics and wiki's and discords and all of the RL components that operate outside of the game , however, Intrepid has pledged to deliver nothing less then a bold and some have said impossible standard for Ashes that no other game in this genre has been able to deliver. To date I must admit statements like put your money where your mouth is , walk the walk if your going to talk the talk , don't write a cheque your body can't cash etc. etc. have been uttered.
I think we can all admit that they are doing a FANTASTIC job curing our skepticism of what can be done, of how a game could fully immerse us. Some ideas can come to life that haven't been delivered, some of these motivations include not only financial but simply some games just were not' up for the challenge to take the simple mechanics (like world map systems or a robust guild system or many of the dev discussions we've seen tabled) or any number of similar flavor bits and weighed their importance not on a dollar value but on a player experience value. So do i think that external stuff will fill the gaps, perhaps but not if Intrepid fills them first and better and I think we call agree that we can see this as a real possible.
Our comments and discussions fuel their fire.
Bring on the mystery of the worlds, attempt to deliver a new dawn everyday we play, allow us to live in a world that breaths in unpredictability and intrigue. Their biggest challenge , remove the science of gaming and allow us a chance to play again!
When we all touch back down on the world, day one, perhaps we'll have some generalized maps of the terrain redrawn as blank slates from the last time we were there. The essential structures - mountains, valleys, large lakes, major rivers. I think that to start, the more detailed geographic elements should be left out - similar to most MMO map systems where the fog of war is uncovered as you explore a new area.
However, I don't think all of us would make the best map makers were we to be thrusted into, effectively, a new world for the first time. We might be able to accurately detail remnants of old roads, new rivers and bodies of water, natural river crossings, newly forested areas, node settlements as we pass by them or newly built bridges they've funded, etc, essentially the equivalent of a painterly, stylized satellite view of Earth without many detailed labels.
As we get better at map making, we might be able to have more detailed illustrations and notation when we enter a new zone, or the next time we pass through the same areas again - some ruins we discovered, a cave entrance we scoped out, a tavern we passed by.
Progressing further, we perhaps begin to make notes on our maps of where we've found certain resources in the past, where we've seen potential for certain types of node growth, where we've personally encountered rare creatures spawning.
This could be managed through a sort of passive skill where you gain experience in relation to your exploration of the world and overall advancement of your character. When you level up your cartography skill, you can spend skill points on a tree that allows you to customize the things you focus on as you update your maps with things you 'see each day'. No one would really be able to track absolutely everything.
There could be talent choices for marking locations for flora, minerals, cooking ingredients (fish, game, foraged produce), tameable creatures, rare spawns, and more, so that you can choose what's most important to your navigation experience and get some visual perks to aid you in those endeavors. I don't think they should be sprite pins showing the pinpoint locations of gatherables or creature sightings though, but maybe rough highlights with a fade. Customizable colors can help to differentiate between different node types. These map highlights / gatherable locations could all be toggleable filters so they didn't unnecessarily clutter your map when you're just trying to find your way to another city on a caravan run or something. There could also be a menu that lets you pick something you have the ability to track and flip through your various maps to find all their known locations, kind of like flipping through search results in a document after hitting ctrl+f.
As for how the maps should be presented to the player, they will not only change based on player interaction, but also seasons, especially in regard to gatherables. Therefore, I think when the season changes, there should be a small UI color scheme shift or something in the map menu to signify that you're using a unique map for each season. Realistically, I think you would! Now, how would these flow together? There would be a base level of consistency between maps that remains updated across all seasons simultaneously. Bridges, nodes, buildings, water sources, mountain ranges, roads, etc. Depending on your cartography level, whatever you're capable of recording in your current season, those records will simultaneously transfer to your stored maps for the other seasons. The key differences will be navigational blocks in the winter, and changes in node spawns. These differences in map records will, I think, create a huge opportunity for players to continue exploring the world throughout all the seasons in pursuit of completionism and feeling like they've mapped out their unique perspective of Verra in all it's glory.
Now, let's talk about major geographical shifts. Maybe a node levels up and rumors spread of a new village nearby. Perhaps a volcano erupts and destroys half a nearby forest, spawning some new gatherable nodes. A dragon attacked after the eruption and the citizens of the closest node weren't able to defend against its attack - the node de-leveled and is no longer the thriving metropolis it once was. A local player has purchased a license for a new business on their freehold. These events can be tracked and stored, then linked to a message board accessible in any node settlements of a certain level, perhaps restricted to the events within their zone of influence. Or you could make it a bit more accessible and just give every message board access to every change in the entire world since you last used one. When a player rides into that node, they can visit the message board and have a little fog of war pop up on their map wherever something is reported to have changed. In order for the player's map to be accurate again, they're essentially encouraged to go explore all the things regularly changing throughout the world.
Video game maps are the standard for how we see and experience the world, both in retrospect and in foresight. In a fantasy RPG, the stylization and customizability of that medium can help it carry a greater role in player immersion than it often gets credit for, and can even bolster the expression of player perspective through a passive skill system and selective cartography perks. Additionally, a system in which world events, territory shifts, and property changes are tracked, tied to nearby message boards, and are made accessible for all players to interact with provides consistent encouragement for us to continue exploring the world even after our maps have been filled out.
skyrims map is actually real time and although its so far out you cant see anything other than towns and clouds you would theoretically be able to see the random events moving around the world like travelers and i think a version of that would work really well
if the map would change season wise, weather wise, show towns growing, but keep the forestry and other natural areas and npcs static (or something to that extent) i feel it could be very immersive and a good experience to have
but if you ever have to re-explore the map thats where it might become a chore
tldr a cross between a better dynamic skyrim map in a WoW like world viewer