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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
No, nodes are used differently in Ashes still than in most other games.
For example, if a node in Ashes was at level 0, the equivalent area in a different MMORPG wouldn't be called a node, even if they did use that term.
On the other hand, if you had a town, it would probably be made up of many nodes. If the game was using the term "node" to define a part of the game world assigned hardware, then a games market NPC may well be the center of its own node, as will other important frequently visited areas.
In Ashes, the term "node" is referring to a pre-determined portion of the game world that may contain thousands of players, thousands of mobs and/or dozens of NPC's, or may be desolate.
No other game on the market does that. This isn't a bad thing, I am simply pointing out to you that you can't just transpose the term "node" from other games and use it in the same way in Ashes.
I said nothing of the way they plan on adding new content to the game, because none of us know how they plan to add new content.
I was talking about the way I can see them adding it.
You really need to not just substitute in your own words. People use the specific words they use because those words in that order are what they are actually trying to say.
Now, back to the point. I can see Intrepid adding more dungeons and dungeon states to the game first. This is what will have limited appeal - because it is proven to have limited appeal in every other MMO in history.
People want new land, not just new dungeons. New dungeons and such is great - but it has limited appeal and can't be the only thing added to a game long term.
In order to add new lands in Ashes, Intrepid have four options. They can add new land with new nodes, accepting the impact this will have on old nodes, they can add new land without nodes, going against the general concept of the game, they can add new lands expanding the range of the outer most nodes, ignoring the fact that this makes these node the most powerful in the game, or they can add new land and redistribute nodes.
None of these options are ideal for Ashes - yet at some point they will have to pick one.
Just enjoy the Experience of being in a wondrous World you haven't explored since Ages, other like in WoW or other MMO's.
It will be worth your while. Promise. At least if Ashes of Creation is a Game for you in the first place.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)
For sure - different people will have a different point at which they are happy with re-exploring old areas as opposed to exploring a new area. As far as I am aware though, everyone does have that point where they are over re-exploring old areas though.
Nothing in life is ever static, no discovery ever gives you a permanent leg-up, no mastery over a subject is ever complete, no list of experiences is ever finished. Why some people fantasize about the virtual world they spend their free time in having the nuances, evolution, and dynamism of life dumbed down and be made more boring for themselves, I’ll never know.
It keeps things interesting. It makes sure there’s always a reason to keep exploring. It breathes new life in an organically fluctuating way into places that might have laid stagnant for too long. It keeps surprising you. That’s what makes me excited about playing Ashes.
It doesn't have to be said word for word. The stated opinion indicates a desire for most, if not all the content in the game to be readily available like a giant checklist that's ready for you whenever you are, so that you can make your way through all of it in a neat and tidy fashion, completing it all zone by zone as efficiently as possible, leaving behind not a single reason to ever go back to any place you've already been - other than mindless resource or mob grinds, passing through in your caravan, or changing the node you live in - exploring the world and learning everything there is to know about it with no major changes or anything unexpected until every encyclopedia is bound in leather and every corner of the map is filled in.
Once you've done it all, you... what, exactly? Do the same type of "end-game" content in the world you already understand that never changes or presents any new challenges or opportunities for discovery or wonder, just like everyone does in every other MMO on the market? It's a live service MMORPG with a focus on dynamic geopolitical shifts and content availability. The sense of wonder and discovery is supposed to last a long time. If everything was available right off the bat at will, and nothing ever changed, people would make their way through all the content in a matter of months, then never be surprised or left in wonderment over anything in the game again until a new major content patch is dropped a year or two later, which would take even less time for people to gobble up than the content in the initial launch if it was designed in the same way.
Your suggestion that Ashes should approach new content drops with new landmasses only reinforces the point I'm making. Adding new landmasses as content expansion highlights encourages everyone to go spend all their time in the new zones, or push conflicts towards the new zones to capture them and little else, abandoning the old world and leaving it to rot. If players lose interest in the old world due to its abandonment post-launch in favor of expanding or adding newly discovered landmasses where everyone will dogpile into to spend all their time (because they already discovered everything in the old world, because it's piss-easy to see it all) then the game becomes an island hopping simulator from expansion to expansion, where large swaths of the old world become little more than largely dead leveling zones. Now THAT is a waste of content.
Adding new zones without nodes doesn't work, because node development is largely how content availability is controlled. Expanding coastal zones doesn't work, because it skews power in favor of coastal nodes. Adding new land and then redistributing the nodes is exactly the same as just adding new landmasses with new nodes lol, someone's node is going to end up on the new landmass and cause the same problems as the first suggestion.
However this game succeeds long term, it's not going to be by doing things exactly the same way every other MMO does things. That's all.
This thread is about exploration of the world.
To some people, that is a lot of the game, to others, it is a small part of the game.
The things you are talking about are absolutely not at all what this thread is about. Not even close.
That wasn't a suggestion I was making.
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Skim reading threads and then thinking you understand enough to reply doesn't alwats work.
Perhaps a bit paranoid that everything will change, but the polar opposite of asking for most locations to never change.
From what we have seen so far, the intent seems to be to have Points of Interest that monuments and ruins from before the Apocalypse, they just won't be Cities and Metros.
Case in point, the 5 Castles will always exist. They do not get destroyed after successful Castle Sieges, so...
Ashes will have at least 5 iconic Points of Interest that don't change much.
I might've gone a little hard too fast there, but I largely maintain my point. I apologize to @Turjilin , upon re-reading your post, I understand that you're excited for the system but are worried you'll be left wanting for perhaps at least one memorable constant in, say, every biome, for example. I can understand that. Personally, I think a lot of people have a tendency to feel happy being comfortable with the familiar - even if it eventually grows boring and you'd actually have more fun doing something different. You're just (understandably) scared to let go of that comfortable place you remember from back in the day. I think that once the game launches and we all get into the swing of things, it'll be a shift to a totally different mindset. It will feel less "game-y" in the sense that the world actually responds to your actions and the economy actually demands consistent effort from the players to keep things moving, which all breeds change. It will, hopefully for many, simply be an adjustment period.
As for the content of my replies to @Noaani , I again will admit I jumped into my point pretty quickly, but I largely maintain that point. You're all talking about exploration and being concerned that the changing nature of the world will make that exploration feel meaningless. Well, guess what? The world doesn't change. Not really. The content in it changes. The closest thing to the world changing is the rise and fall of node architecture, and that's all player built anyway. So when you're talking about exploration, what you're really talking about is consuming content. You can explore the geography and develop mastery over it all you want, I don't think it's supposed to change at all. But what you're advocating for is for the content in the world to remain largely static and unchanging, because all there is in the world to discover through your exploration that's currently planned to be dynamically available is content. If the majority of the game's content is static, unchanging, and constantly available, so that completionists can feel cozy and accomplished in their superior knowledge of an eternal split second in time across the majority of the game, then yes, the way players will interface with the game's content and its subsequent content patches will proceed just like any other MMO as I described before, which doesn't seem to be what most people following this game are interested in.
As for the land expansion thing, you literally just said it's something the devs "will have to do eventually". I understand you also said earlier that it's not something that really makes sense given the nature of the game, but since you, personally, can't come up with any better ideas, the devs have no other choice but to do this thing that'll never work in Ashes that other games always do? You know, the games people left in order to come play this game? I don't know everything they'll do to expand content over time, but again, I'm sure it won't be the same thing that most other MMOs do. Just because you can't think of the solution right now doesn't mean self-sabotage to supply short-lived, cheap dopamine hits for the player base is Intrepid's only option.
I'm simply stating how this game is as far as we know, and what I think that will mean for players that enjoy exploration more than other aspects of the game.
Yes, I was talking about how I see post launch content going - not how I would want it to go, or how I would advocate for it to go, but how I actualyl see it going.
That has nothing at all to do with how Intrepid will do it, it is simply how I see it going.
Yeah, I can't come up with better ideas - which is why this is how I said I can see it going.
You keep talking about other MMO's as if they are some dirty pile of laundry or something. 90% of what Ashes is has been done in other MMO's, and that last 10% Intrepid are just iterating on existing things.
How that add new content to the game absolutely will be the same as how some other game has done it.
You are putting too much weight on my opinion.