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.
[Feedback Request] Alpha Two Event System Update Shown in September Livestream
Hello glorious community,
We’d like your feedback on the Alpha Two Event System Update shown during the September 2023 Development Update Livestream.
To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:
We’ll be compiling a report for the design team on Friday, October 13, 2023, so please try to get your feedback into this thread by then!
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading all the feedback you have to share!
We’d like your feedback on the Alpha Two Event System Update shown during the September 2023 Development Update Livestream.
To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:
- How do you feel about the Event System Update so far?
- What excites you about playing and interacting with the Event system?
- Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Event System Update?
- Are there any particular Events you hope to see in-game?
- Are there Events you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
We’ll be compiling a report for the design team on Friday, October 13, 2023, so please try to get your feedback into this thread by then!
Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading all the feedback you have to share!
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Comments
That´s awesome!
But , steven mentioned losing these events is the only trigger.
That doesnt sound the propper incentive for participation
-PvP Events are awesome. Go all out with different kind of rule sets like CTF, King of the Hill, battle royal and so on.
Also use different scalability for the events .
E.g. level 2 military node event involves 2 parties with 20 players in total,
and a level 3 military node event involves 4 parties with 40 players in total.
-The fact that public events are eventually tied towards the local story arcs is awesome.
Sounds like a world that truly evolves with the narratives.The posibilities are endless.
-Not sure how to feel about the scaling in. On the one hand it diminishes the accomplishment, as it seems to be tailored to the player strength and its hardly a challenge to overcome, but on the other hand it seems to be the only way to prevent people from abusing it and have unintended experiences.
-The second to second gameplay didnt look fun. Hardly any player mechanics or decision making involved into PvE right now, other than spamming your abilties into a big blob of red health bars.
-Im also worried about combat in large scale. Currently it has little to none of the characteristics we have seen in good RVR type of mmos, which seems to become already an issue in 4 man parties in AoC
Do you have any plans to defend against players deliberately joining events to make it harder but not helping so it fails on purpose?
Most open world pvp mmos dont have these and in most pve mmos they get zerged down in split of seconds.
People might expect deep mechanics in everything, but that's unreasonable. The events shown are good enough because they are ON TOP of the rest of the game with it's meaningful conflict and world building.
I hope that the rewards will be normal mats that people can use or sell, instead of specific vendor npc currencies and gimmicks.
The more universally used the rewards from the events are, the broader the participation.
Why control player behaviour in an owpvp mmo in which player choices affect the shaping of each server?
Feeling decent. My standards are too high from past experiences to judge 'fairly', but the fact that it even gets close, compared to the many other games that really don't, is a positive.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Event system?
Nothing specific about what was shown, since I'm used to such things in the games I play, but just having it as one of the many components of what will make Ashes of Creation the best MMO of all time, is heartening. No 'thinking the game is great but missing something and having to go back to another game to get the feeling'.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Event System Update?
Nothing concerning, it all looks good enough within the core flows of the game, I really hope that the Development Team can really enjoy making these, it's always really fun to experience the small bits of flavor that they add, particularly since I personally think it bridges the gap well between those who Roleplay by reacting, and those who Roleplay by making connections to lore and then building their own structure.
Are there any particular Events you hope to see in-game?
I can't think of anything offhand... other than maybe maybe a Fishing Contest, I quite like those. Events having variety is what really keeps them going.
Are there Events you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
I have no idea how to keep this short...
Like:
Kiting the Beastman Generals in Campaign Battles is fun. I used to greatly enjoy 'controlling the battlefield'. When not fighting them, the events to gather intel were also good (these are separate from the missions to do so).
Everyone loves a good Siege, but I also sorta consider the aftermath of sneaking into their Strongholds to rescue prisoners to be a type of Event.
What was showcased in the stream was a lot closer to a basic Garrison type event. I enjoy these mostly when they tie into the world really well, which elevates them from 'the equivalent of random group content' to the same level as 'choosing a side when dropping on a Convoy Dispersal Threat signal in Elite Dangerous'. Seeing things respond to the world changes is good, and of course, the reverse too.
A few others come to mind, but I'm not at Liberty to say much about them.
Dislike:
From my studying of BDO I've learned that I really hate events that are just a distribution-to-all attention grabber type, but I don't count those as events much. I realized that the reason I hate them, though, is that if they are important for everyone to experience for whatever, reason, they get stuck in starter areas and this doesn't feel properly dynamic or fun.
This is separate from things like festivals or seasonal 'events', but I think that's not quite the topic being discussed here. Still, I very slightly dislike those too, because they often feel like they 'separate' the NPCs from the players, and in heavily player driven games, they kinda 'get in the way' of players using their own imagination to interpret data such as the Elite BGS in their own way to come up with 'Events', such as the running 'joke' of my faction's weekly massive fish fry. I think I just don't like when there are too many of these.
I dislike when events are common 'for the sake of giving new players something to do or be part of'. They should have enough things to do via the design itself.
That's probably enough, since I'm not so able to distinguish between an 'Event' and a 'World State' due to my experiences, but it looks like Ashes won't make me do even that, so as always, keep rocking it, Intrepid Dev Team.
Looking forward to my Node's Summer Fishing Contest and Fish Fry Festival, and fighting off the inevitable party crashers.
I love the concept that Steven is quite adamant about that an MMO is meant to be MM! Automatically grouping other plays into a group when participating on the same side of an event is a great way to facilitate that. I actually just had some follow-up thoughts on expanding that concept, and bringing the social aspect back to the MMORPG genre!
1. Ensure that there is clear notifications when automatically grouping people, and the conditions required to reform your group (Regardless of both things likely being quite obvious)
2. Add some additional reason for communication during the event, such as providing important information to individuals that can cause the event to complete with a higher chance of success
3. Most importantly Provide reasons for that group to stay grouped. Start events nearby in a sort of string of continuous events, inform players in the group that there's a nearby dungeon they could clear, give reasons that a solo player shouldn't just immediately leave party the second the event concludes.
Aside from those things I believe this system is set up for success. There are a lot of games, and from what I know best Guild Wars 2, that the purpose of completing open world quests.. is to get exp and gold, and that's it. Is there are more impact to actually completing these things, it will feel less like an arcade machine, and more like participating in the massive world.
What I really liked was how you described it being tied into the world. It wasn't just a fixed event that occurs once in a while with some random bandits spawning in. It sounded like there was an actual bandit camp nearby, and that the state of that camp and the surrounding area in general could affect how this event happens.
I hope I am not reading too much into it, but if you can make all the events believable and tied into the game world in a way that players can come across an event, see bandits attacking, and from that alone deduce that there has to be a bandit camp somewhere not too far off, you will have struck gold. Especially if there are multi-branched success and fail states to these events.
If every single event makes sense to us players, and if every single event trigger can be affected by our actions, you will have come a very long way in creating a believable, living, breathing, dynamic world in a way that I don't think we've seen before. "Dynamic world" is one of those buzzwords we always hear about MMOs, but I have yet to really experience one that seemed believable.
Will we be able to solo these events?
If we are out in the world alone will these not spawn for us if we are solo?
Or do we have to be in a group?
And if we can solo will the difficulty be automatically downgraded to make it easier?
It was not apparent where you go to collect the reward or talk to the NPC. There should maybe be a glow around the NPC and Chest so that the players know where to go to collect the reward and talk to NPC to be able to continue the chain quest or next part of the event.
Are there any particular Events you hope to see in-game?
I would love to see events where you have to help escort travelers to other towns or maybe protect a king or queen get to their city.
Corruption events like New World would be great. Cleansing an area so it does not overtake the node. cleansing the undead and corrupted.
Music adds a lot to these events which i know your working on but would have loved to hear an example of some battle music in the showcase.
member of Gray Sentinels
2. Randomness of the encounter and players that choosing the other side. Players that sided with caravan fighting people that sided with bandits.
3. Possibility of making a wrong choice. Bandits are actually starving people fighting for survival and the caravan are rich people that caused their current misfortune.
4. Consequences of wrong choice. You shouldn't always win. Difficulty shown was perfect.
5. Chain events. Example: Save caravan->destroy bandit camp-> you find who funds them or what caused them to raid->destroy true leader of bandits-> You find out there is more nefarious purpose than simple raiding-> dungeon?
Opposite for evil ending if you side with bandits.
6. Concerns are basically repeating events. You cant save caravans forever.
7. Sure. Guild Wars 2 is full of events that get boring over time. Defend this, escort someone, kill the waves of this and that.... IT GETS REALLY BORING!
Best event that I ever witnessed was actually a bug and it was a plague in wow that lasted for days. Entire city was filled with corpses and skeletons.
Some instanced stuff that happened in dungeons too. Like burning of entire city of Stratholme while you were in it.
Random events.
-I remember going to sleep in one of the ships in Elder Scrolls Oblivion and waking up in a middle of an ocean and entire ship was sieged by pirates.
-Add carriage like in Skyrim for transportation that follow roads. It would be a relief for players that hate to traverse large distances from node to node and you could use it to spawn bandit attacks.
-Falling through a ground while walking in random direction. You are walking, suddenly ground breaks and you are falling into a den of snakes and spiders. Not all events should be marked and not all events should be triggered by other event.
-Random swoop of a giant flying creature like griffin, Gargoyle, dragon or cockatrice triggering group boss fight. You find out it was rabid because red corrupting crystal was imbedded in its chest. You pull out the crystal, that is now humming only when you turn to certain direction. It leads you to corrupted grove across the map. Triggers a miniboss fight.
-You see a sword in a stone and you think its a good idea to pull it out even if its surrounded by graves. Well, you have done goofed. That triggers every fallen knight in vicinity to wake up from its eternal slumber.
-Spawn ghosts across the world that you can interact with only if you know language of the dead. You listen to their story or you help them to release their mortal coil.
Only once you learn language of the dead you can trigger event. Don't get me wrong, heatmap of players is genius, but there should be some events that are rare and have more convoluted prerequisites. Inspiration for this were Dungeon Siege 2 ghosts.
-Events that draw and pit players against each other. You accidently were drawn into certain location that was actually a portal to Hell in which you fight for you life against other players for some demon/devil lord entertainment.
Event only triggers if there is a certain amount of players in the event circle which suddenly turns into burning pentagram.
Honestly, I could go on for days and I will-Tomorrow.
The event you showcased was kinda dead imo. PROPS to your sound designer who kept that event alive.
Things that ruined it it for me and this just might be because its alpha:
-One NPC just standing there like he is not currently being raided by bandits
-NPC just covering in fear. No screaming, whimpering or begging for their life.
-No dialogue from enemies or NPC during a fight. Even in Guild Wars 2 mobs/bosses have something to declare out loud at various points during a fight.
-If NPC are going to have 2 dialogue option that basically do nothing to improve the story you might as well not have them. Which is a waste. If you are gonna take good stuff from Pathfinder, threat players as, well, players in a campaign. Game would greatly benefit from Persuasion, Intimidation and Bluff checks.
-Someone who is not proficient in disabling traps, disabling them and using them.
- appears to be heading in the right direction
- so long as the systems is used sparingly and strategically so it does not become mundane, then fully with the idea
- concerns are if the vast majority discover a meta approach to responding.. ie drop everything in the region and zerg the event..
- would like to see scaled and strategic result paths based on size, effectiveness of the groups, duration and perhaps even previous experience
- a good variety
- best events sparing, infrequent and memorable
- Everquest next were going to monitor player movements and make mobs spawn to make certain areas more precarious with mob groups, road blocks and a range of other events - AoC systems appear to be taking that direction great! - New Worlds night meteor event was a welcome supprise - lighting up the night skies, visual and aural impact as hit and a great mini event - ESO`s portal events were great before they became too frequent - L2 had an event in its early days, the mobs swamped the city and it was either everyone come out and fight together or if not enough players online, stay and shelter in the city.
It like a rare spawn but for events like imagine an even player do allk the time to kill say minotaurs but then suddenly a dragon lands seeing a small feast and starts attacking everyone
Hey if you want a event to fail so you kill everyone then that is great, but abusing a system to passively force a fail on others who are trying to complete it is lame.
Not necessarily, if your actions as a resident of one node influence the yours or theirs?
Could be just commerce, strategy or war?
So smth like "you defended that caravan successfully, but now the attacker's boss is angered, so he'll go ruin a nearby POI". And then, even if you succeed at stopping that boss, all the activity in the POI awakens some ancient boss.
I'm just talking about joining a event but not participating to artifically make it harder.
1. Route must be established between Nodes so political trade agreement.
2. Bandids Camp must be still in the area, Story Arc can change this.
3. Player activity in the area.
Its nice way to meet, a new players and make some friends. Like they say "best way to know the man is in combat".
I just have one feedback because it was hard for me to find this Elite Boss. His nameplate dont differential enough from other mobs in fight. When its targeted then yes You can see it clearly on the top of the screen.
[Question] Ariach is name of the God? Or You Guys just protected worshiper of some Evil Creature?
You did an outstanding job by communicating the presence of the world event to us with the environment.
So why is this obnoxious popup necessary?
The act of noticing the event should be left to the player, and the UI should only be there to facilitate joining it.
You already have that other UI component that allows you to join the event, I think you should use just that.
This top of the screen popup is worse than just unnecessary UI bloat, it makes things feel very game-y which is a detriment to immersion. After spotting an interesting POI from a distance and running up to it, having this pop up in your face removes the illusion of exploration and reminds you of the artificial nature of this scenario.
If the popup is an accessibility feature, that's fine, just please disable it by default.
Otherwise great job, hope you can nail the scaling metrics/algorithm!
Feels okay.
* What excites you about playing and interacting with the Event system?
Hard to tell. It feels similar to dynamic event in other games like GW2.
* Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Event System Update?
I feel the difficulty is just base on how strong or density or type the enemies being set up in the world or event just like every other RPGs did. Not saying it’s bad, it just I was looking forward to see smarter enemies that will react to player’s action that force players can’t brainlessly repeat rotations and need to react to different combos from enemies, for example like tank type enemy may randomly use stun on healer(or others players that can’t tank) then assassin or ranged type enemy may have medium to high chance to follow up the stun to deal a serial of damage on the healer and tank or others need to react to it to help the one who was marked on. Another example mage's aoe rotation may trigger ranger or control type enemies to use snipe or interrupt ability to try to kill the mage or stop the rotation, if players want to forcing the aoe rotation the team need to react to enemy's action to help the mage able to do aoe rotation.
And I’d like to see that the more times players complete the same event the more difficulty it stacks and to a point will give better rewards than normal difficulty, and no matter players complete the event or not will trigger other event chains that may synergies to the event.
Update:
Also the event notification UI is not very satisfying. I was looking forward to see something like when player’s character find there is an event happening near by the area no matter through seeing/hearing/feeling it, should have different visual notification. For example, like FPS shows the direction where the attacks came from, you can make your version to show the direction that player’s character notice there is an event happening: if the notification is a visual one like smoke then limit it only give notification when the smoke is in character’s sight, if it’s a sound then you can just copy paste from FPS games to show where the sound came from, if it’s just a feeling like fear you can make a heart beating animation put it on player’s character to show the direction where the fear came from. And instead of telling there is a event happening and pop a big notification show what the event is and what should you do directly to players, I feel to make(let) players to find out what is waiting them in fonrt of thier journey and don't spoil it is important.
It shows a foundation that can potentially be reused to create other content with, which seems valuable. If you understand what is being showcased; the event mechanisms (which Steven prefaces exhaustingly, although necessarily) the update probably hit its mark. Everyone would have loved to see some new assets or even another class without going into it just for the hype. Without anything new it doesn't distract from the event mechanics or new assets but again this is a little disappointing from a personal/hype perspective.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Event system?
I love the idea of being able to take sides and that having impact on subsequent event spawns.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Event System Update?
Personally I prefer more focus on CC and actually needing control instead of just grouping and bursting down mobs. To me the highwaymen didn't really feel threatening at all, there were just a lot of them. What also worries me, like other people, is GW2 type event 'trains'. I do believe countering this doesn't have to be too hard though. For example: If the events are hard/rewarding/used sparingly (they become meaningful), you don't have to have one up in the area all the time and when they do they are exciting (because rarity and effort->reward payoff). We have to test in A2 where the balance is between just exploring the world/doing your thing and trying to run a train on the events.
Are there any particular Events you hope to see in-game?
For fighting mobs:
- Rare conditions (weather, location, largest religion in the raid, combat metrics (that rotate so you cant force it) that cause an enemy to call, summon, morph, flee etc. That increases/changes the difficulty and reward.
- Elusive enemies that are incredibly rare and have big chance to flee under certain conditions (Teleport/time-wanderer/flee's to areas that are hard to get to), which you have to track/hunt down (monster hunter like). Giving players who completed the first stage event markers/tracks
PvP events
- player from another node are deforesting your node! Defend!
Trading/Profession/Merchant
- Lost Ark has a wandering merchant that shows up randomly in the world a couple times per month I think. If you happen to run into him he sells cool wares for your profession or instruments or w/e. He disappears after 15 or 30 minutes so you can call your homies in the area. Unknowingly running into them or just knowing he COULD be somewhere is exciting by itself if the reward is good. (Kind of like time-lost-protodrake except no specific spawn/route).
Are there Events you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
The boss events in GW2 were really well made. Especially the Tequatl, the Shatterer and Claw of Jormag. Inquest golem, fire elemental and shadow Behemoth are also pretty good. The best thing about them was how amazing the events looked, what mechanics (turrents/rocketlauncher) there were (although they coudlve been more challenging) and how it rallied other players.
One thing they also did well was having a signalling period for the event which is a super cool concept. In GW2 it was mostly simplistic, but right before the event having the Shatterer flying over the area, roaring and casting a huge shadow is something I never forget experiencing for the first time. For big events, before something takes place or a big mob appears you can drop hints something is going to happen. The weather changes, wildlife starts to flee or get anxious, music get gloomy, NPC get anxious and start talking about feeling uneasy or spotting some weird shadow/hearing something strange.
The worst thing about GW2s implementation of this, which ruined the events for me, was the frequency in which they appeared and that they had timers so they became just a farming spot to rotate to. It was so sad to see all that work being reduced to a grind.
All in all a good showcase from a developer/testing standpoint, but I can't help but to feel underwhelmed as a player.
"...from ashes to empires..."
I really like that line during the 2024 announcement!
1. How do you feel about the Event System Update so far?
It was a very good update. The less I assume, and the more I come to actually know about the game, the better I feel about Ashes.
2. What excites you about playing and interacting with the Event system?
For me it would be interacting with the other players, joining in a common cause, getting some fairly quick action, and moving on, or pursue new options the Event provides.
3. Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Event System Update?
I was pleased to hear of varied, dynamic event types, including PVP. These Events take place in the Open World, and rival nodes may chose to interfere with each others Events, or cause them. As a wannabe citizen of some Node, I am excited, and concerned by this.
4. Are there any particular Events you hope to see in-game?
Events on the Open Seas! From small to large, to give even more reasons to go there.
If i tell You that i see an Opportunity for more exciting Battles with this, would You believe me ?
Of Course, outright trolling and sabotaging Events should be either punishable somehow - or something needs to be implemented then that such Players can get temporarily banned to be able to "join Events",
meaning making the Difficulty go up. Imagine You do this one or several Times and then Players can flag/report You for it.
BOOM !! Unable to join such Events for a few Days. Maybe One or Two Days for "first-Offenders".
If then of Course, it stacks up - People should be able to get banned from joining for a whole Week. Like when You can't join - it doesn't matter for Example if you STILL fight the Bandits to some Extent. You don't get any Loot from for Example thankful Caravan Survivors. (lol)
What should the highest Time-out/ban to join Events be ? Two Weeks ? Three Weeks ? I think Three Weeks would be already quite high. I think everything about a Month or more might start to be Overkill.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
Imagine if all of them has this debuff that showed that they are mind controlled and that you could dispel it with some dispel magic, lets say, by cleric.
So different approach would be tanks tanking dmg, while cleric or subclasses of cleric dispel magic leading to peaceful resolution to both the parties, maybe even leading to better rewards because it ended that way.
What I am saying, there should be different ways to resolve the event. That could be interesting.
I believe that dynamic events should have a bit more randomness to them. There should be multiple places where the same event can spawn. This way it becomes more of a random fun and cool encounter that can't be minmaxed as easily and which also won't start feeling repetitive too fast.
It would be awesome if the caravan would despawn after a while and the next time the event happens, the caravan would appear somewhere else.
Even better, for the caravan event specifically, I think it'd be really awesome and engaging if the event would be part of a chain, where the caravan starts moving from a certain location towards another where players get to protect it along its way. From there on two options would emerge for example:
In scenario 1: If players succeed in defending the caravan, at some point one of the wheels gets broken and the caravan is immobilized. Players have to defend while the settlers repair the broken wheel before continuing to the end of the journey. Players are given their rewards at the end of the journey and this is the option that yields the most rewards.
In scenario 2: If players fail to protect the caravan, it gets broken down wherever it is at that point and the event shown in the video takes place. Succeeding to defend the caravan gives players rewards that are lower than those from scenario 1, and after a short while the settlers flee the scene, abandoning the broken caravan which will despawn in a few minutes (it could totally burn up if you would like to keep the whole immersion OR maybe after 10-15 minutes have another event pop-up where players have to come and gather the remains of the caravan and deliver them to a certain village ).
All in all, I think that the current system shows potential, and congratulations to the team for the work done this far, but I would love to see longer events, events with more steps, and events that can't be predicted easily if possible. I believe that this is what would make events fun and spontaneous.
- it’s looking good! Definitely in a rough draft. Killing X monsters to spawn a completely unrelated event is simple. It’d be cool to see a direct effect from your actions be what spawns the event, like: chopping down 50 trees in a region causes the local dryads to emerge, upset that their home is being destroyed.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Event system?
- the knowledge that going to X is NOT always going to produce Y is awesome! With events, performing a certain activity can lead to lots of different things, making each activity feel fresh with possibility.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Event System Update?
- MOB AI. I believe that what we saw is not the end, but the mob AI was VERY basic. Not trying to move out of the way of attacks, running forward until they met some obstacle, etc. if I’m fighting intelligent mobs (bandits), then I want/hope the combat to be somewhat like a PvP encounter.
Are there any particular Events you hope to see in game?
- Events that don’t just have one solution. An example of an event: killing X number of bandits spawns an event, causing them to converge to consolidate their strength. Some of those bandits took X (villagers hostage, supplies from a caravan they raided, etc.) when they retreated to a central, temporary POI. The event starts with a person coming to you (or several people coming to multiple people/groups in an area) asking for help retrieving whatever the bandits took. You now have several options to proceed: kill all the bandits, sneak in and steal back X without being seen, diplomacy, bribing, etc. Events that have multiple paths to their resolution that put the choice in the players hands are great.
Verra, environmentally speaking, was once again looking nice, but I still found it to be lacking in visual identity and "Punch". Some different tree types denoting enchantment (perhaps white leaves, glowing branches, glittering butterflies) would add visual dynamism.
More gatherables that look exciting! Players should feel like a kid in a candy shop whilst in Verra, "Oh what's that?" "What does that mean?" "I want to explore that!" "look how cool that is!" Verra should illicit feelings of wonder and awe. Not just "That's a nice environment competently executed." The flora and fauna of Verra is a creative space where the devs can let their imaginations run wild. Of course, there should be a standard canvas to act as a backdrop to let the special stuff shine, there just isn't enough special stuff.... yet.
(A final point on Fauna, having small rabbits, birds, fairies, butterflies, insects, foxes, etc running about and scattering like the birds from the Ranger update would help breathe more life into the world, I know these things are planned and we are still alpha but I can only comment on what I see)
The Mobs were decent, although sparse (I like the spiders) I just think there is more room to make them interesting a varied. Trigger points that when crossed open trap doors that spiders lurch out from and when certain trees are passed have spiders descend on webs from above. Add smaller spiders that swarm and crawl all over the place. We saw some webbing but it was very understated. Dial that shit up!
Speaking of Mobs. I have mentioned this before but... the models look nice, the animations are cool, but they have some serious jank going on when moving and attacking. It's a combination of stuttering, stopping, erratic pathfinding and awful FPS. It's a shame when as I said the models and attacks are good, they just don't get a chance to shine with so much movement jank. Not sure what the solution is, but it is a real problem watching through the VOD.
(A final point on Mobs, they should be gatherable. When a spider is killed a player should be able to approach with a skinning knife and harvest its carapace, or when the bear is downed, skin it for meat and hide)
The event trigger was decent (slow the smoke lol), I would personally like to see a glowing ring around the caravan (similar to the ones around the traps) to show the actual area, and for the NPCs to have much clearer legibility. The bandits were fine but the "boss" should have been much larger, like a brute, you should be able to see at a glance which is the big bad guy. (and they should be scary)
The UI (joining the event and merging parties was great) Although I do have a final fairly straightforward complaint. The nameplates are bad. The HP bars look good but the 90's text above players, Mobs, and NPCs looks awful. I really hope that more development is done on the nameplates.
Happy to see a 2024 Alpha 2 statement (fingers crossed)
So as I said. A good stream. With lots of room to make some future GREAT streams (Build out the Art section to be something great! Having something from the character team and the environment team, show concepts, and have an artist on for a short section talking about their designs and workflow, perhaps even a snippet of audio or music)
Anyways. The post is way too long as is. I hope I have provided some useful food for thought. Peace.
It noticeably had a couple of minor bugs, but nothing that seemed un-fixable nor game-breaking. The spider NPCs in-particular early on/on the way seemed to 'jump' location, which is usually a server-to-client reporting issue, for NPC location. Have seen it plenty in other games, and will likely be resolved before launch. The pathing and goals of the NPCs seemed pretty well-constructed, though the allied/friendly NPCs did seem a tad un-responsive, early on.
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Event system?
I would really like to get some options for manually setting, triggering, and *hosting* custom events. The scaling system is really promising, and is ahead of or on-par for modern MMORPGs.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Event System Update?
Allied support NPCs should probably be given a larger/longer detection range, in the case NPCs get past the player-party. Am looking forward to coming upon already-triggered events in the open-world, while exploring. Seems like a good way to meet your neighbors!
Are there any particular Events you hope to see in-game?
Not that we saw here. Things like mount-races, fishing competitions, and resource-gathering competitions certainly spring to mind, for guild/group activities and events, but it'd be nice to have a hosting-system asides from just doing these as individually-hosted guild events. For example: being able to set an NPC for a race that would track all participants' time to finish a race would be REALLY handy.
Are there Events you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
In SWG, yours truly both participated in and hosted many dozens of space-PvP events. Naval content will likely be the closest equivalent in AoC. Any player-events in SWG were largely un-supported by NPCs and in-game tools; any supported ones were done by live, in-game Devs. It'd be GREAT to have events-hosting tools in AoC. I.e. - if I wanted to host a naval battle and it ends up being chaotic? The ability to have pre-set a sphere/area wherein the battle is to happen and to be able to pull up a post-battle report to see which side lost the most ships, which side had the most players in-attendance would be quite handy.
Races in *most* MMOs are also a chaotic affair, wherein the VISUAL WINNER of a race may not have been the real winner; Things like racing NPCs with a couple of *modes* of races and the ability to set custom race-waypoints have been the best tools available, in past games. I.e. - In one race, we might be looking for who completed a course the fastest, in another type of race, everyone starts on an NPC-controlled line, unable to move until the race begins; Whoever hits the last waypoint first wins. In a timed race, being able to know that while PlayerToo *appeared* to cross the finish line to half the players, that PlayerWan really won with 3.48976 minutes versus PlayerToo's 3.51000 seconds would certainly set the tools a step ahead, versus games of the past.
Q: If the event is proc by a party of lv 15 (or in a "low level area/zone"), What appends if a player level 30 ( or just highly higher level) come ?
1) does he just can't join ?
2) can he join and can solo the event ?
3) does the event scale to him (as in it count the level and spawn mobs "just" for him or augment the level of the event a litle like a mean or any math that count him ) ?
4) do the event down scale the "power" of the player ?
5) do you scale Event like TESO ?
6) None of the above ?
[*] How do you feel about the Event System Update so far?
A: I thought it looked neat. I wonder if there is an upper limit on players. That wasn't really mentioned. I hope that events can support massive groups of 50+. I'm thinking of launch and guild stuff.
[*] What excites you about playing and interacting with the Event system?
A: I really like the scaling challenge. It reminds me of the event system to some degree in Destiny, which is a great model of a fairly decent event system if you remove the repetitiveness of it.
[*] Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the
Event System Update?
A: I really like how it feels like it has the potential to immerse you in the game more. Simultaneously, I'm worried it will be too prevalent or too repetititve. I feel like events should have a lot of impact or reason for occurring.
[*] Are there any particular Events you hope to see in-game?
A: Cataclysmic world events that can destroy whole nodes if they aren't dealt with. Like a serious reset on a node. "Perma" Terrain altering during an event would be insane.
[*] Are there Events you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
A: I think destiny 2's event system was good. I felt that New World and FFXIV's event systems were too repetitive and didn't feel like they were worth the rewards. They were just tedious and felt like grind-fests with no sense of fulfillment.
The big issues in event systems for me is that they often get: monotonous, tedious, and often feel dissatisfying from either a challenge or reward perspective (sometimes both). Daily events that have enough currency tied to them that you feel forced to log in to stay relevant are also unpleasant because then you feel you HAVE to play if you want to be relevant at all for hard content.
Please don’t feel limited by the thought starters above. Feel free to share anything you’d like about Ashes of Creation’s Alpha Two Event System Update shown during the September Development Update!
I really like that events can be triggered by node activities. I hope that there will even be things like events because more players chose to kill the wolves instead of the deer or vice versa all the way up to big decision stuff. I like that there will be missions where players can join both on the attacker and defender's side. Real time pvp consent where you can go in prepared mentally and spur of the moment. Sounds exciting!
I love that triggering an event in one place can have far reaching effects and I like that it can clue you in to quests in places you might not have been to yet or in a while. Heck it seems like they can trigger quests too which would be super cool. Getting Bofuri (max out defense) anime vibes on this front. Not sure if you can really create unique quests for only those who trigger it but that would be dang cool if there were many opportunities for such.
I really feel that more impactful and relevant events will keep people excited but daily events or events that are just rinse and repeat and without meaning behind it will only capture a small percentage of the crowd.
- I don't like the beard on the horse because it will soak it in the water each time it drinks.
- I am concerned that events will be under players control and there will be no novelty in following these chain of events except very fist time.
- Event triggers linked to players killing any kind of NPCs should NOT spawn a half destroyed caravan.
It takes away from having a living world.
[*] Are there any particular Events you hope to see in-game?
A living world for me would be one where the caravan moves independently of players for whatever reason and often arrives at it's destination. And it becomes half destroyed if some other things change, like NPC relationship with humans or NPC migration while the caravan was by chance in that area doing it's thing. That means other players following the caravan should see the transition to a half destroyed caravan in a meaningful way and being able to prevent it's first destruction stage if they want.
[*] What excites you about playing and interacting with the Event system?
The rewards while cooperating with players.
[*] Are there any particular Events you hope to see in-game?
I would like to see also events which give absolutely no reward to players involved but reward the node or just change things around, where you can influence relationships between NPC factions, convince them to move to your node, or help them build fortifications against other NPCs. And those events should not be tasks handed to players in a node by the mayor but be discovered and understood by players while they explore. And the understanding should come by paying attention each time to small details.
NPCs should also lie and be deceitful maybe also depending on player history. I wouldn't mind events where players are even captured as prisoners.
[*] Are there Events you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
I will not play AoC to see things I've seen before in other games but hoping to see things I've not yet seen.
[*] How do you feel about the Event System Update so far?
I think the core is there, now you have to show that you can be a better story teller than others. I feel that those who create these events are influenced by what already exists in similar games and cannot think out of the box. But trying to, they end up adding a huge beard to a horse.