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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.
Comments
1. NPCs can actually go to sleep during night, close their shops and generally be less (or not at all) available (unless their houses are broken into and then they will be very unhappy). Different NPC may start to emerge, particularly criminals and other shady characters, and guards to keep those at bay.
1.1. Same goes for wildlife, nocturnal predators are active only during night.
2. Lower visibility during nighttime means easier hiding and sneaking. Light sources, like torches, lanterns, and magical whatnots can help reveal hiding people, but they are will also make their bearers an easier target.
I personally think its perfect. As we can see on the video they provide for us with enough light during the night so we can play without using any nigh vision goggles
What aspects of the day & night cycle w/ constellations are important to you?
Hmm the only game I played with constellations is Black Desert online there they have a different approach. I think they should exist in Ashes they are important in a way for me I would love seeing buff for examples depending on what constellation did you find and how can that benefit your team not only yourself.
Are there examples of day & night cycles in other games that you feel are done well? If so, in what ways?
I`ve also played a lot of MMORPG during the years and I`ve seen almost everything but I cant say that I`ve notice something special regarding the day and night cycles. I believe some skills or characters can be buffed during the night for example I can give you the nightwalker in Dota he get movement speed, faster attacks and life steal during the night maybe that can be implemented in a way for some type of monsters, spells or even weapons. Certain mounts can be faster during the night and slower during the day as the water once should be. Maybe they can unlock a skill as well. I want to say something regarding constellations like I said earlier I`ve played Black Desert online few years now and their way regarding constellations its pretty good there is zodiac on every character you crate and choose from there you have something called amity that depending on the zodiac you have you have better understanding of people with same zodiac so you can upgrade your amity by talking with this NPC in creating a little story with every NPC in that way that NPC gives you more quests and task to do for him so in the end you become friends with it and being rewarded for it.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the day & night cycle w/ constellations?
In general I`m pretty open for new ideas and I would love to see how it will go with day and night cycle and constellations. I don`t have any concerns because I believe that event if you guys took any wrong decision or a decision that player doesn`t like you are way more open than players and you are welling to change it as soon as you understand what they actually like or dislike.
I am eager to see constellations empowering abilities. But I'd also like to see abilities that are permanently augmented by constellations, but only gaining one constellation effect at once. This encourages people to travel and seek out constellations for their movesets.
I'd count augmenting and empowering to be separate. With Augmenting being a permanent buff to the ability so long as it is set to that constellation, and empowering being an immediate bonus from casting it under that constellation at the time.
It's brighter than WoW and ESO.
How about if you make around the player a little brighter, and then as things get further and further away, they get darker and darker until they're just silhouettes.
Other than that, it's looking pretty good.
Day & Night Cycle w/ Constellations
Other Thoughts
I think this is the most inspired I've been by a game in early development. Thanks!
I think this strikes a nice balance between what was shown in the video vs. how dark some survival games can be:
To increase the vision at night I could imagine seeing different foods like (carrots or sweet potatoes), potions, scrolls or archetype specific skills. Maybe even headgears in different grades that increase the light radius. To my mind it would add another fun layer to the ecosystem, make certain professions more important and make the night time more meaningful.
I could also imagine that certain moon or star constellations which occur in certain seasons lead to different gatherables (like flowers, gemstones, etc.) or that wood harvested in the winter at a specific moon will lead to resilient wood which will be very valuable for ships, buildings or siege equipment.
The constellation system is incredibly cool and makes for a great opportunity to reward exploration when players discover secluded/out of reach areas that have unique vantage points toward the skybox, to reveal interesting constellations.
Gameplay implications:
There is definitely some fun to be had with this. I think this system should be used to really emphasize rewarding the player for:
1. Skill-based exploration
2. Skill-based mystery solving
3. Progression within these
1. Using constellation chasing to encourage exploration gameplay:
Jumping/terrain based puzzles are an excellent way of providing fun and skilled exploration. These can also be utilized to encourage the player to become familiar with the lay of the land, encouraging them to map out routes and locations, which can be used to add a sort of "cartography" type of skill to the exploration- through allowing players to add custom icons to their maps to mark different kinds of routes/locations. This also adds skill through the combat as well, since players with a better understanding of the environment will have an advantage during fights- which means that players who master both exploration and combat will have an advantage, which reflects the risk/reward of investing time and resources into progressing at both. This would also be a great opportunity to introduce group-based jumping/terrain puzzles, to access constellations that require several people to reach a specific location.
Crosscode is a game that did all of these things masterfully in its area design, as explained here:
2. Using constellation gameplay to encourage clue finding, secret discoveries, and mystery solving-
This is another very fun type of gameplay that could be leveraged through the constellation system.
There could be clues within the quest system that also tie into the constellation system- and these could provide clues about where/how to find specific constellations or what that constellation is rumored to do, as far as benefits they might provide- these clues could maybe be recorded in a book that details all the info who have about the constellations so far. This would reward players who investigate throughout the whole experience, even in separate game systems, and could help them prioritize different constellation locations that they want to try to visit sooner.
Obviously with the greater amount of investigation/interaction in different systems, the greater the risk- so I think the more clues the player finds and more info they discover about all of the constellations as a whole, this could lead to a greater reward and over mystery relating to mastery over the entirety of the constellation system.
This might manifest through having something like a planetary model (maybe as a part of an upgraded scientific node within the node library), that resembles something like the star-map in the mmo "Warframe"- and this star-map could organize the aggregate information collected on different constellations, so gaining info on different constellations could contribute to the accuracy of this planetary model. This could give predictive aspects to more major constellation related events- such as something like a "lunar eclipse" or something of that nature where a temporary beam of light to reveal a hidden door at a specific location. At this door it could have keyholes that are needed to open this door, with the keys being something like gems found at each of the many different constellation locations.
3. Progression:
It is an mmorpg, so progression should be a part of each gameplay experience. I think it is important for progression to provide an advantage, but not neccessarily invalidate players earlier in the progression path. Thus, for the example I provided about the planetary model, that would be a form of progression that is used to encourage fun gameplay and accounting for risk/reward, with the gems being the advantage provided for those further along in the process. This would be an "advantage" because even though they would be necessary to open the door, a player who has never even seen a single constellation should be able to sneak through that door while it is open, if the players who opened it weren't careful. I think this should be the approach taken for progression in these types of systems.
I think that it would probably be best to encourage everyone to engage with the entire constellation system and its type of gameplay experience- so it might be best to have rewards for finding constellations be customizable (like generic talent points), rather than tieing specific bonuses to specific constellations- otherwise they would be inclined to only visit a handful that benefit thier specific class, rather than enjoying the whole experience. Or there could be both custom and class-specific rewards that are inspired by the identity of the constellation. That way there is incentive to visit all of them, but they also have their own flavor, such as having the "taurus" constellation unlock a tank active skill, but also provide talent points that could be spent on any class/any skill.
-In conjunction with the premises above, other possible rewards could include
1. summons inspired by the different constellations
2. Unlocking synergies available to different classes that have different constellation-based skills that they specced into
Day/night cycle
-Implications of the level of darkness
I think allowing for the end result to look very clear and visible is very important to the combat gameplay- but this doesn't mean it automatically has to be that way. There is also fun to be had in assessing/avoiding/hunting threats before the fight. Thus- there could be some skill involved in having to carefully navigate a darker night, through utilizing light abilties/lanterns to create the current lighting effect. These lights should counter those who try to hide and ambush in the dark- but it would allow for those types of situations for those whose are careless, and give the stealthy option to players who want to sneak around in the dark and try to avoid players who aren't managing their light well. I think this would create a fun and unique experience in the dark and add to the immersion/instensity/and risk of traveling at night time.
Nameplates
When visibility is the goal- I think it is important to avoid visual clutter, while still achieving visbility. The information that is absolutely essential for moment-to-moment decision making, should be visible at all times, but the other info should be hidden until the player attempts to access it, such as scrolling the cursor over another character's body.
Just like my point in about the darkness of night- I think it should always be possible to acquire info about other characters, if enough strategy is used. But it should still be possible to obscure your info as a player, but be negated through counterplay- to allow for those fun situations if a player mis-manages their ability to assess the situation.
Unique mechanics
Steven mentioned opinions on unique mechanics such as goblin slavers dragging you to a cage.
This sounds really cool- it really helps make the world feel alive and immersive, and really gives the characters personality.
Its really cool to give different characters unique behaviors and allow them to interact with each other to create that "emergent gameplay" when players clash systems together in unexpected ways, this is really fun for people to experiment with, and helps achieve that "reactive world" design pillar.
Another aspect of this that I love, is the idea of adding risks like this to add tension and make traveling more suspenseful and fun and force the players to think ahead and be deliberate in their actions- Don't miss the opportunity to make the entirety of events like this fun and not too scripted.
I feel like this would be fun to allow for bounty hunters do something like this, and have a non-traditional prison system, where corrupted players who were caught and brought to prison have to try to escape other players/npc guards.
For the visual effects-
As I heard someone else say- the fog can be confused with blurriness, so just a nitpick about that.
Hello Vaknar, regarding your questions, here my answers in order:
1) It looks cool, by a lot.
2) I liked the change of the sun and the dusk, the Moon movement also. The concept about the stars is something I read a lot in the lore of many stories, but on the gameplay side, I have rarely felt anything. I'm curious about the impact of the darkness of the night and the stars.
3) Not really an exert, but here my first examples:
Dying Light: the environment becomes very dark, the character’s view becomes way less than the day, monsters are more aggressive and stronger predators come out.
Gothic: I still remember when I played it for the first time in 2001: going out, doing some hunting, returning to the village at night time to sell the goods, but the vendor wasn’t in the same spot, like any other NPC. Then I found him in his room, sleeping in his bed. That was my first time seeing an NPC with a Day/Night cycle.
Baldur’s Gate 3: not really a night stuff, but characters with Darkvision can see better during the dark than others that don't have it.
4) I have some thoughts about it, here my list:
On the characters direct gameplay:
- Does it influence characters' stats in some ways?
- Does it influence skills?
- Will the vision field be less?
- Do Races/Class/Gear have some mechanics to better look around, move, spot enemies/resources or hide during the night?
- Will there be some kind of Perception stat that could help to see better during the night?
On the environment/monsters:
- Do stronger enemies or predators actively sneak and hut during the night?
- Do NPC have a cycle depending about the day and night
- Will be harder to spot enemies in the dark?
Other stuff:
- For naval gameplay: ages ago the sailors would check the stars to help them to navigate. Now we would mostly check the map, see where we are and the direction we are looking for. Will there be any impact for the naval gameplay?
- Will there be quest related and things to do during the night, and by studying the stars?
- Will there be some gameplay related in the Nodes, like the religious or scientific?
I hope I did not repeat other posts!
Look good however i think the night needs more weight for starters
- its way to bright
- there needs to be better ambience, done through music ane maybe different animal noises
- maybe you can see wind moving the trees and leaves slowly falling creating a spooky atmosphere, it wasnt scary at all especially for a graveyard
- many moons are nice but might be over kill, one moon done well with good graphics and lighting would be better than three mediocre moons
- maybe increase monster level during night time to give a danger element
- the skybox was beautiful however i feel it could be improved apon ( i know its not even alpha 2 yet and not polished"
- the fog needs alot of work, maybe make it higher, more realistic, make it feel cold
- a flashlight accesory would be pretty cool, maybe a candle or something
All in all was really well done, definitley needs alot of improvments but it is lookong beautiful
I was hoping that constellations would be visible in the night sky by looking up and they would have their own movement across the night sky and be use for transportation and prophecy. Not too crazy that they can only be view from ground locations.
I like how EQ2 does day & night cycles.
Formerly T-Elf
Also interested to see if the buff is during certain hours of night (like just a few hours around midnight) or throughout the entire night ?
Is there anything, in particular, you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the day & night cycle w/ constellations?
Namely the darkness and overall lighting quality. In short I feel it needs to be slightly darker and if graphically possible have better local illumination from light sources. EXAMPLES below:
Scene 1
Original
With General Levels
With Local emission improvement
Scene 2
Original
With General Levels
With Local emission improvement
My counter to the notion that we need to see everything for ease of gameplay is that lighting design should be part of gameplay. It is more realistic and carrying a light source (even if it out toggled as a lamp attached to your belt) is far more immersive. Finally, to service those who want it brighter, why not be able to increase brightness if really needed?
Cheers,
Great work as always
I really like the idea of constellations, I think it would be a great way to upgrade or get new summons.
To upgrade a summons you would have to summon you pet at a specific place, at a specific time, under a specific constellation. And if your augment was summoner, you could take a scroll and use it under a specific constellation. I'm sure there will be tons of other ways to use them. I can't wait to see what the devs come up with.
What would be nice to round out the night sky is some distant planets. And maybe have some constellations that are only available to be seen by the player or can trigger a special buff or game event when these planets align with the stars. The planets would have separate orbits, so this would occur much less frequently. The planets could also align with one another in some ways.
I can imagine constelations having an effect on boss spawns, resource spawns (like when we had "lightning struck tree", we could have "XYZ's light touched XYZ resource")
Other than that I wouldn't like to be forced to travel around the map to see the right constellation at the right time to do something significant (other than some achievement).
Also, one concern I might have that You might want to make "darkness" a thing influencing PvE (like forcing players to get closer to notice a node) and/or PvP which will immediatly be nullified by client side mods.
Imagine if, when going on the open sea, there is no availability of traditional game navigation such as a map that shows a marker of where you are. Instead in this case you would have to use the constellations (or something else visible in the game world). I got some feeling that location played a role in what constellations you could see. Lets say depending on the time, since the stars move on the night sky, kist a few constellations are visible and you learn as a player in what way they are pointing. In this way you can determine where you are going. And during the day you might have some crafted tool to see the constellations.
As a player this type of knowledge feels good to posses. And you might even want to teach others about it.
Building deep complexity into the world that is not explained through explicit game systems (UI driven), i think, gives it immense character. This also engages the community to share and experience things from and with eachother
I would like to see more of these immersive RealLife/Rollplaying aspects for this game, since only new game development provides such a great opportunity.
It is easy to put every aspect of a game into systems, that are interfaced through the UI. But imagine if you instead use the world itself as an UI.
Continue the good work, love your vision, mindset and passion!
The thought of traveling through the dark woods on some quest to deal with a ghost who only shows up at night, while hearing the growls of dark shadows in the nearby bushes just sounds awesome.
Currently reminds me more of a brighter twilight with the current lighting/shading presented. I can obviously notice the lack of forest/flora to cover and blanket the environment more from the moonlight but maybe geography/season plays a role in that more?
Everything looked pretty good though in relation to day and night cycles so far.