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Do you like the theme/lore of the world?
joshisanonymous
Member
I gotta say, I like a hell of a lot about the direction and game design of Ashes of Creation, but the one thing I just can't get into is the theme of the world. It just feels painfully generic high fantasy. Obviously, as someone who's been playing RPGs in one form or another since the early 90s, I certainly enjoy high fantasy, but in the case of Ashes, it just feels like something is missing, and I'm not quite sure why.
It might be that I don't really see what the core "story" or backbone that everything revolves around is? There's obviously lore, but it's feels like a loosely connected set of necessary lore items, like "well we have to have gods and we have to have a creation story," but those things all feel sort of ancillary to nothing. Is there actually some central issue or fact about the world that's unique, specific, and always at least somewhat present? For some games, this might be a factional conflict or a natural disaster that's impacted the whole world or everyone being marooned on a mysterious island that defies scientific laws or whatever.
I'm thinking that the more generic the game world is, the more important it is to have some central focus, some twist, whatever it is, just something to give the world its own unique character. The only successful MMOs I can think of that don't have that something instead have very non-generic worlds, like GW2.
What do y'all think?
It might be that I don't really see what the core "story" or backbone that everything revolves around is? There's obviously lore, but it's feels like a loosely connected set of necessary lore items, like "well we have to have gods and we have to have a creation story," but those things all feel sort of ancillary to nothing. Is there actually some central issue or fact about the world that's unique, specific, and always at least somewhat present? For some games, this might be a factional conflict or a natural disaster that's impacted the whole world or everyone being marooned on a mysterious island that defies scientific laws or whatever.
I'm thinking that the more generic the game world is, the more important it is to have some central focus, some twist, whatever it is, just something to give the world its own unique character. The only successful MMOs I can think of that don't have that something instead have very non-generic worlds, like GW2.
What do y'all think?
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But outside of that base lvl of theming, the main "lore" of the game will be the stuff the players do in it. I'm sure a lot of people have heard stories from EVE that sounded incredible. All the scheming, betrayal, years-long planning, absolutely massive defeats and toppling down of huge corporations, etc. Imo that's the "lore" of EVE. And AoC has a huge potential to have the same things happen here, just on a smaller scale and with more variety because each server will have their own story.
There are 9 races or whatever so that will help build the world though.
Hopefully the non-player races/ monsters will be fleshed out quite a bit.
I hope cohesion and depth is not an issue but it should be OK. Last 20% of work and effort always pushes things from bottom 1% to top .1% though so hopefully no one gets lazy.
Yeah, it's early in development, but the major thematic focus of the lore of an MMO usually isn't the last thing developers figure out as far as I can tell. I mean, they have to choose a setting for their game from the very beginning, and I would think that's when they ask themselves, "Why this time? Why this place? What's the point of this setting?" The answer could be "because", sure, or "I guess we'll figure that out later", but this is sort of an essential question to answer as soon as possible for creative works of pretty much any type, otherwise the result tends to end up being messy and uninspired.
The idea that each of these younger factions has a parent race (Aela Humans, Dunzenkell Dwarves, Kaivek Orcs and Pyrian Elves) Is fertile grounds for dynamic relationships between different world actors.
Steven is articulate, passionate and (self-described as a little long-winded at times) which are great qualities for any Fantasy writer (If you know the genre).
I do think it would be fun for Intrepid to have a small lore dump at the end of each week with a Dev Update on the final Friday of the Month. Nothing too crazy... just a small article, infographic, or image with a bit of info regarding the different cultures.
A good example of a company that does this well is Games Workshop. They have multiple articles up on their Warhammer Community website every day (usually shilling products obviously) but they have fun little articles talking about aspects of the many, many different factions across their IPs.
I don't like that the 10 gods split into good and evil instead of 3 factions.
But maybe there is a 3rd faction too, who protected the Tulnars.
No more anime underaged girls, overly sexualized armor, bunny years or flying swords as mounts! I couldn't be happier
I’m interested to understand more what ‘good’ and ‘evil’ means in Steven’s universe. Both concepts are usually relative to a religion. I’m wondering if the regions will be squabbling about their own petty differences while corruption gobbles up Verra.
Does the make corruption objectively evil (as it results in destruction and death), objectively good (as maybe it’s a necessary precursor to the dawning of a new age), or is it objectively neutral (like black holes in our universe, just cleaning up the random star matter)?
As Crow said above they are keeping most things f the lore super secret. Everyone and then Steven gets excited and leaks things and Margaret gets nervous.
What we know is listed well on the wiki.
Something/someone caused a cataclysm. Most fled through the Divine gates to Sanctus. Thousands of year later the gates open and people start exploring the world.
That is where we come in as explorers going through the gates to reclaim Verra and figure out what happened.
Is based on Steven's home game of Pathfinder.
Yes, I'm really hopeful it maintains its grounded and focused direction and doesn't try to incorporate all manner of silly ideas and designs (looking at you, fantasy automotive shit) just to try to hook some additional percent of the market. Build a game around a world, not the other way around.
Ashes is based on a Pathfinder campaign, so... you should expect gods to exist in the game world.
We'll have to see how generic the gods actually feel in game, but from what we know so far, they seem intriguing. Goddess of Creation as the leader of the pantheon is not as generic as some sky daddy - like Zeus.
Ashes had a supernatural disaster - the Apocalypse. And there is also the supernatural disaster of Corruption.
The threat of Corruption has been diminished enough that the gods have allowed the player races to return to Verra after millennia on Sanctus. When players first arrive, they will have to kick the Ancients out of the 5 Castles.
Ashes doesn't necessarily have generic factions, like the Horde or Alliance in WoW - but players will form Castle factions and Node factions and Guild factions. Players will probably have Religious factions and Social Org factions... possibly Naval factions.
The things you've mentioned aren't missing...
Rather Non-Corrupted v Corrupted.
But, seems like Ashes does have Good v Evil. Specifically, pursuit of immortality being objectively Evil in the lore.
I don't watch and read everything that comes out. In fact, I don't watch or read the vast majority of what comes out. For someone like me, most of what you said is not apparent from looking through the web site or Wiki.
It will be very interesting to discover how the lore for the Vera vs. Sanctus is portrayed. Thousand of years of exile on Sanctus can't be shrugged off, the time there should have shaped the cultures of the different races compared to their origins on Verra. Will the return be presented as a return to normal (albeit a corrupted normal) or as a continuation of the life in Sanctus? How has Sanctus changed the people? How did people interact on the other side of those gate? Peaceful coexistence or did the gods let them fight all the time?
And then there are the Tulnar.
It will be interesting, not sure how much it will be part of the gameplay vs. how the world is presented, but I'm sure it will be a fun journey.
Agreed.
Tulnar are the ones that didn't get through the gates and lived underground and mutated.
Rest are all good questions and we probably won't know till after launch.
This is great...
"I don't read or watch most of the stuff"
"Why is it missing all this stuff???"
LOL, Deary me.
But hopefully you did read somewhere that the game is still in Alpha … ?
Everyone is immortal, everyone can use magic (judging from the skill showcases, even fighters are constantly casting spells), every other armor set is a ridiculously overdesigned masterpiece fit for a king, every other monster is a bioluminescent magical hybrid something-or-other, etc. etc.
Maybe it's just a side effect of their current marketing being all cosmetic-focused, but I hope the final product shows a little more restraint.
I find myself in a similar situation, with respect to Lore. Can't really put my finger on it though. It might just be the names given to everything...like The Ten, The Ancients, The Three -> The Others, but it is likely the Lore that we need to uncover in game.
We have a very rich lore on the pantheon of gods, but it's something that I want to make sure players discover in-game, not told about.[9] – Steven Sharif
Everquest pantheon of Gods similarities.
We have a little bit of Warhammer Realm of Chaos goin on, with the Void and corruption.
We have a little bit of Lord of the Rings going on, with delving into the deep, darker creatures arise.
Some King Arthas(WoW) and Naggash(Warhammer) vibes with King Atrax
This is a good point. Not every animal needs to be a crazy new unique creation. Not every furniture item needs to be some special bespoke racially augmented royal artifact. Not every POI needs to be some supernatural amazingness. Not every building needs to be an architectural marvel.
I felt a little this way when we saw the "Tower of Carphin" off in the distance in the recent Dev stream. They mentioned that it is under some kind of curse, so perhaps the weird lava-type stuff is that curse, but honestly, I thought it kind of just looked like an unrendered object or graphical glitch rather than a cool tower. I'm sure we will learn more... but it felt very... removed.
I love high fantasy but have always felt that the best high fantasy, is that which also contains a fair amount of "gritty realism". A foundation of "normal" on which cathedrals of craziness can be built.
....Personal feelings?
It's a very good choice for game-setting, and I'll justify the statement/claim. For starters?
Reclaimations are such a *RIPE* and excellent choice of game-setting! Do you realize that the original 1988 DnD video game "The Pool of Radiance" mirrored this setting, nearly dead-on? A major city-state(Phlan) - devastated by un-fathomable disaster - is being re-settled by both common folk and Adventureres alike! Un-told horrors await the bold and the intrepid(ah-ha!), as the horrors of the Old World are finally tamed, after a LONG period of darkness....
We're in the unanimous role of a people coming to a world of popular, visual, self-evident *MAGIC*, from a world where such a thing is only legend and myth(or at least as far as any of you mortals are concerned). Everyone will - at the launch of the game - share one thing in-common: We are all Sanctans - as have been our ancestors, for about the last three millenia.
Will this change, in-time?
Quite possibly! Yours truly genuinely feels that AoC has the potential to grow into the most-populated and long-lasting MMORPG of this age, and can set the precedent for online games, for years to come! By selecting quality over quantity, the business model of the game distinctly favors long-term players and subscription retention - DEFINITELY something to get behind! If we last long enough? 10+ years in, there may be a whole breed of incoming player that identifies as people born on Verra.
You're not making any predictions about the future-to-come; You're taking modern imagination and applying it to a setting of the past. In doing so, there is no wrong - in that you're NOT making any predictions about things to come. Instead? You're making time-less observations about how our modern technology and thinking (and concepts about fantasy-magic!) would've changed the world that our ancestors inhabited for the better.... At least in our minds.
There will be no retrospective on how right-or-wrong AoC was about the fantasies we had in our time about the future; It will instead be a unique artwork that represents the modern gamer's reflections of what online, interdependent gaming should evolve to become!
We got
- deserts
- forests
- jungles
- volcano lands
- undead lands
- icelands
- mountains
- sea coasts
- islands
etc
if these are well implemented, sure, it will be amazing
Ya got me. I don't spend hours salivating at every piece of information I can find on the game. I don't make sure to fit every hour and half stream into my schedule.
But that also doesn't make my impression less valuable for the developers since the vast majority of potential players are also not salivating over every released detail at every moment. Believe it or not, but having a hook beyond "open world MMO" is important for drawing in people to play.
Nor did I ever say "why is it missing all this stuff????" I actually said:
Which is a far cry from making a claim that anything is definitely missing. But on that point, there were several responses about how of course there are gaps in the story and theme because "this is alpha", which implies that I'm not the only one who hasn't picked up on what that core story of the world is.
This was addressed already in this thread, but I appreciate the tongue in cheek response.
That could very well be what my issue is, as well. Everything I've seen is very glossy, and I'm very much a fan of worlds that have some rough edges.