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
There's a recent demo that showcases Commissions.
And we've already seen Quests in A1 and also in demos.
It's all public knowledge.
I perceive what you call 'public knowledge' as saying 'what we have seen is what we will get'.
I choose to see it as 'here is a demo of what we have in mind/where we are now'. That 'faceplate' we have been shown could be the 'faceplate' of either what you described, or a BGS style/tier of thing. I know this because FFXI Campaign doesn't even look as 'good' as what Ashes showed, but has the complexity type that the OP is talking about.
I think therefore that your answer is 'no this isn't from a Dev, this is my interpretation of what we've seen so far', and I should, in fact, add more data if Sengarden cares (it would be 'my advice/experience about how players respond to these things, which might hold no weight to the discussion OP is trying to have).
Intrepid is not planning to make the AI as ambitious as Storybricks, but I backed Ashes of Creation to support devs working on systems like the Nodes system so that they will be easier to implement in future MMORPGs.
I dunno. I saw a bunch of mobs just standing still. I couldn't tell if I was supposed to attack them or not if they weren't in my Quest Log. And I don't recall seeing the Bandits burning hay bales until after I got the Quest. Or maybe that phased in after I reached a high enough level.
I killed a bunch of Centaurs before talking to my first NPC and that did not appear to initiate a Quest. More Centaurs just kept popping up. I finally spoke with an NPC and then killed a bunch of Cantaurs until the Quest prompted me to move to a different area and speak to a different NPC.
It didn't feel much different than WoW or Neverwinter Online to me.
But, I agree... it would be nice to get more robust AI 20 years after WoW and EQ2 and 10 years after NWO and GW2. I don't think Ashes is trying to be that game based on what Jeffrey Bard told us, but...
That was 7 years ago, when they game was planning to launch Before 2020.
By the time Ashes actually launches - UE6 might be able to implement robust AI quickly and easily.
Yes. I'm not expecting Ashes to be that game.
And my pipe dream would be would be to play an MMORPG where my character can also change the world with non-Combat Class Skills.
My dream would be for different Goblin Factions to have different goals... but it would also be nice for Ashes to launch Before 2030.
Yep.
We can't talk meaningfully about how the design might change - or how the actual implementation might be different than what was originally designed.
It is from a dev.
Just as when Steven stated that Ashes would not have areas like the Open Seas
And then he changed his mind and added the Open Seas.
I'm always talking about the current design. When the devs change the design, we can then talk about the changed design.
"Ashes will []"
"Ashes is going to []"
My group would appreciate it.
I am not changing my style of communication.
But... I do agree wholeheartedly with Sengarden that we really haven't seen much of anything that isn't a generic UE5 MMORPG feature.
Just looking at the demos, there's nothing yet that screams, "OMG! This is a game-changer compared to other MMORPGs I've seen!!"
The largest impact I felt was in Swtor since it has a single player driven element, though did not really impact anything too largely.
You are always going to have some form of the number you need to kill of enemies. We need to remember this is a mmorpg with tons of other players around. Both as a time investment and the fact other players are doing the exact content as well.
I understand the element of dynamic events and such where you have something that happens if you are successful or unsuccessful can be fun and feel like you have a impact on the world. (to some degree AoC will be having that) thing is that gets repetitive because its not based on one players but all the random amount of players on the game. It is a lot more difficult to do loss conditions when you are taking into account all those players (though i guess technically there would be a way to do it under the hood.)
Generally i feel most people would end up being successful and make things to binary.
It be better to have things based on player choice in the story / dialogue options and have that data be used to help influence the state of the world as a better sample.
~~~
Back to killing 20 mobs though complaining about that I feel is honestly silly. As long as the game has enough depth in other systems that is where you will get your dynamic feeling from. There needs to be a lot of quest in a mmorpg, you aren't going to get some same quality as a single player game.
Also single play games literally make you kill 20 mobs, they just don't say it on the screen. When you are told to kill all the mobs in the area and there are 20 mobs what do you think that is lol?
That youtube video has a terrible take they didn't acknowledge any dynamic event stuff and talked about the killing mob thing from a repeatable quest. Trying to knock AoC for commissions which is literally their fodder level board dynamic quest. Is pretty silly, if they are going to go after AoC atleast don't pick the thing that is meant to be fodder repeatable quest.
I felt like I changed the world in WoW when my Druid Healed a bunch of diseased Zebras.
Cataclysm was my favorite WoW Expansion because we eventually healed Mt Hyjal.
Changing the world does not have to be accomplished individually.
I just wish the changes were not always via combat and killing stuff.
Or stripping the land of Resources.
Tons of other players should also be able to change the world together by other means than killing and destroying stuff.
But, you know...
I'm a commie, hippie, Boomer, Carebear.
Can't really get more repetitive than killing everything in sight.
Its a stretch but maybe like i was saying they could take peoples dialogue options and the majority has a influence on starting/ influencing a story arc.
That is the best way I see a mmorpg doing things as technically its not tied to killing, its tied to player choice / rp etc.
Which i feel would be better because killing is too binary to get interesting options, and usually players are always successful until they get bored.
I want my Class to have Skills and abilities that can change the world - that isn't just about what I killed or destroyed.
But... that's not going to be Ashes.
Yeah, my main complaint with the dynamic events in GW2 is that they were consistently way too easy. You never got to see the loss conditions. You never felt tense, worrying that things wouldn’t end the way you wanted them to, feeling that fire under your ass to push for the finish line. Even if you did lose, the loss conditions were hardly impactful.
With all that in mind, what made me quit GW2 was that because all the dynamic events were always defeated and nothing really changed when you lost, they basically just felt like normal quests with a bar instead of a checklist and multiple ways to complete some of them rather than just kill/collect.
As was said earlier, if you make loss conditions too impactful and the content too difficult, then it just becomes a stressful chore. But I think there is a middle ground somewhere that A2 should be the perfect testing ground for. I just haven’t seen any proof that Intrepid cares enough about the dynamic nature of the actual content to do that, the only dynamic nature of the systems I’ve seen are the way they spawn each other. Which is cool, and better than something like WoW or FF, but still not that impressive, given the technology available in this day and age.
Dialogue response polling to determine event progression is… okay, I guess. But it’s a seriously distant cry from “dynamic content”.
The YouTube video my quote was from is a terrible take in general, I agree. I just meant that there’s some merit to the statement that every guy who needs something done straight up giving you a checklist to kill 20 goblins, do 10 of this, bring me 15 of that, for every kill/collect scenario in a static environment that feels staged and fake and low effort in its execution gets a bit old after 20+ years of MMOs.
There is always going to be grindy quest in mmorpgs that is just the nature of the genre (aka kill mobs) on top of the balance of again it being a mmo game with other people, and content needing to work for everyone.
I think mmorpgs are the last place to be looking for single player feeling driven content. It doesn't make sense to have a gnoll attacking burning a place infinitely with that kind of narrative. And a person begging for help randomly with 20 other people already have killed everything.
I had just talked about this before but if we bring up a game like mass effect or even Baldur's gate 3. In combat you are set to kill a certain amount of enemies it just doesn't tell you that value. They could hide the number in a mmorpg but it just wouldn't feel intuitive.
That being said Aoc is aiming for a more dynamic feeling so they should lean into that (ie village overrun by goblins randomly or other creatures) and sudden events popping up that were not there before. That is what is going to help wit the feeling of gameplay as you are exploring the world and taking on challenges. And not feeling the world being so static all the time.
Doesn't mean killing 20 goblins, etc can't co-exist with everything else and lean on each other. (though i doubt you are going to see random villages (human elves, dwarfs, etc) around since nodes and all are player driven so you won't have that NPC feeling / tool to use as strongly.)
Ashes is trading part of its elements with more pvp related interactions between nodes.
Yes, please. Because by implying that they are AI and tech limitations on something that has not only already been done, but that I can do by myself in a week, it is the equivalent of saying that the Intrepid developers are incompetent.
You can easily do things like generating a cloud of 'controlled points' to represent what factions (player or otherwise) control a given area, and drop them into a spatial tree data structure (there's plenty) to let you efficiently pull out the nearest marked point to ask things like "who controls the space I'm standing in?" or "what enemy race has the most influence at this point where I want to spawn something?". You can do some pretty detailed borders in only a few hundred points per node-sized area, since you only need real density on the borders. Recalculate the entire thing even every 5 minutes if you like. It's only gonna take a few seconds, even if your 'influence adaptation' algorithm is rough.
I'll spare you a diatribe on clustering events and generating gradients of influence in real time, but I could do the "control graph" in a day, and the rest in a week. Intrepid can definitely pull it off.
The real question is the creativity to decide how you want the world to behave, not the tech to pull it off.
I don't like when you claim things like "Ashes won't be that game", simply because there are a lot of hard-working developers at Intrepid that you are basically disparaging for no reason, if you don't have some word on this from them directly somehow.
I’m willing to accept that some quests are just checklists, especially bulletin board requests that send you out into the wider world so that you can stumble into the other, more organic and dynamic content. I just don’t think it needs to be the majority.
Have you played much of GW2? As I said before, it’s far from perfect, but to a large extent, what I’m suggesting be done for large swaths of open world content has already been accomplished, and could certainly be improved upon by creative developers, which I’m sure Intrepid has, given how picky they seem to have been with their hiring rate over the years. They’re still filling several lead positions as well, I believe.
In any case, my point in asking you about GW2 is that in that game, dynamic events don’t just stand around and last forever. That’s my exact point. I’m tired of constant conflicts, always exactly the same looking, never ceasing, never changing, 24/7, no matter how many players come along to “save the day”. The average GW2 dynamic event starts and finishes in about 10-30 minutes, depending on the scope. Some are simpler, some are more complex with end-of-event bosses that require many players to defeat. But they end after a little while. Then the enemy is pushed back. Sometimes you can pursue them further after a while, other times you just have to keep them in check, or else they’ll grow in strength and lash out again. Because you move through the world as you level, and rarely see the same places every day at max level, your perception of how frequently the events occur is much lower than they actually are, because the odds of the 10-30 minute event occurring while you happen to be in the area are very low. This brief window of opportunity to engage the enemy is made up for by having several potential enemy factions and tug-of-war event cycles happening in the same zone on and off at the same time, with a handful of simple quests thrown into the mix for a bit of consistent filler.
So the gnolls aren’t attacking a burning place infinitely, they burn it for as long as it takes for them to burn it down and succeed in their attack, or fail the attack and have the fires put out. The farmers aren’t screaming for help when there aren’t any gnolls around. They’re tied to the event programming. The NPC programming can tell how many gnolls are left, whether the barn is still on fire, and respond accordingly with appropriate speech bubbles, pathing, animation, or voice lines. This isn’t magic anymore. It’s perfectly doable - yes, even in an MMO.
You do make a good point though that with the narrative of the world being about the reforming society being player-driven, there aren’t like to be NPC settlements very frequently in the open world. I still think there should be some, there’s no reason why you couldn’t find the odd farm, processing facility, boat launch, wizard’s tower, etc after the node/server has leveled up a decent amount.
1: Storybricks-caliber AI has not yet been done.
2: Choosing not to have super-robust AI is a design choice; not incompetence.
3: If you could do this in a week, we would already be playing your games.
I don't see the relevance.
You don't have to like what I say.
I'm just informing you what the devs have said. Disparaging Intrepid is a bias you are adding which has nothing to do with that I actually said.
Intrepid is not prioritizing innovative AI in regard to "Kill 20 Goblins". As stated by Jeffrey Bard.
They have no plan to be so innovative that there are no Quests similar to "Kill 20 Goblins"
If Steven has changed that, you can expect further delays for release in terms of several years.
Intrepid already has their hands full with the innovative mechanics they are focused on, like Nodes, and not-so-innovative features, like the Rogue Primary Archetype.
You implied that GW2 already solved that issue 10 years ago.
But, I played GW2 last night and their AI and tech is not so advanced that they did not have the equivalent of talking to an NPC and getting a Quest similar to "Kill 20 Goblins".
Intrepid choosing to include Quests like "Kill 20 Goblins" is not an indication of incomeptance.
Your preception that that is incompetance is just an indication of your bias.
Not as simple in an MMORPG because there are thousands of players and hundreds of Groups that would need to put out the fires. The Gnolls would need to be attacking the burning place for several days if not weeks. In some games that might be doable via Phasing, but I'm pretty sure Ashes is not supposed to have Phasing.
The Events system will have something similar to Gnoll invasions that works differently (and is kinda more organic) than asking an NPC for a Quest.
We've already seen some of the Side Quests that become available just by being in the vicinity.
We already know that Ashes has stuff like that in the design.
That's the whole point of Nodes and World Events.
It just doesn't negate Quests that are similar to "Kill 20 Goblins". Just as GW2 had Quests similar to "Kill 20 Goblins".
If you analyze the content you are talking about, you'll notice that the state in which players initially encounter it is fairly un-urgent. If you know what is happening on the farm and then go off for a few days and come back, it is reasonable to assume the farm would still be in that exact same state.
This is something that is required for a game world to make sense and still be fun.
The other options are for it to not make sense (your suggestion but if you ignore the farm and come back tomorrow everything is still the same), or make it not fun because players would know that if they ignored that farm and came back tomorrow, they would miss out on content (thus making players feel they need to go to that farm right away).
This now becomes an inefficient way to use developer time. If you were in charge of a game and you had a portion of time your developers could spend making content, would you opt to make content that players would feel compelled to unwillingly participate in once every 4 months, or content they could participate in via their own will every few days, or every week?
One of these is a good decision to make, the other is not.
Have a portion of the world and create a dozen different populations. Perhaps a few different factions of goblins, some gnolls, owlbears, undead, what ever. Have the game spawn in three of them, and then have them fight it out a bit. Players can befriend any faction they wish, and fight any faction they wish. If one faction is diminished too far, they die off and a new faction spawns in their place - potentially with an initial push that evens out the other two factions.
Then this is content that isn't some immediate thing players need to participate in, it is something that can be put in to a game and go on and on for as long as the game is alive.
And I especially like the idea that a Goblin Invasion might eventually Siege a Player-built Town or City.
A small, Player-built farm might be too vulnerable.
But... the combat I prefer is defending objectives, like homes and villages.
And, at that point, I don't really care if it's PvE or PvP. I'm mostly focused on the defense.
That being said, I would also want there to be some non-combat, diplomatic ways to convince Goblins to stop the invasion.
I'd probably also want Fast Travel of some sort to be a feature - precisely because the danger is immediate enough that it would cause me to stop exploring the other side of the world and race back to defend the town I built.
That's the kind of thing that excites me the way Risk v Reward excites Steven.
I don't think we're on the same page... thousands of players and hundreds of groups that would need to put out the fires? This hypothetical event, just like the events in GW2, don't just stay happening non-stop with instant enemy respawns for however long it takes for every player in the game to do the event. It has a short lifespan, like 10-30 minutes, is accessible to whatever players happen to be in the vicinity while it's happening, succeeds or fails, then happens again at some point in the future. A degree of chance is infused into what events you'll experience while leveling up and at max level, but there can always been rewards for people of any level participating to make sure you're always compensated for doing content, even content targeted at lower level players. GW2 did this as well, in a way, with level scaling.
This has nothing to do with phasing, it's not something that's happening in every player's "version" of the game world until they encounter it. It happens for everyone, whether you're there or not, then goes away, then will come back again at an unknown (to you) time in the future. That's how the events in GW2 function.
Same as with Dygz, I don't think we're on the same page at all. If I see a farmhouse burning down and fields being pillaged, ignore it, and then come back 30 minutes later, that event should be over by then. Either some other players who weren't so preoccupied stopped the gnolls and saved the day, leaving the NPC farmers to begin a 'repairing the barn and farmhouse' animation/pathing routine for a while until the barn and farmhouse change back to a restored state, and potentially opening up a follow-up event to seek out, or, by skipping the event, your absence left the remaining players without enough firepower to take down the gnolls, and the bastards succeeded in filling up their bar before the players did theirs. In such case, the farmers are driven off their land, gnoll reinforcements arrive from over the hillside from the stronghold they have over yonder, creating an even more hostile environment than it was before, the fires subside but the farmhouse and barn are still a scorched mess - now, simply filled to the brim with vicious gnolls who like to swarm passing travelers and caravans.
It seems like you're operating under the belief that dynamic content is not fun. You're saying that everything in the world, the way you see it for the very first time, should always stay exactly the same in order for it to "make sense and still be fun." I absolutely, wholeheartedly disagree and I think the vast majority of gamers would agree with me.
Your argument about missing out on content is understandable, but that's what makes the game world worth re-exploring after you've already seen an area once. It keeps everything fresh. That's particularly important for a game like Ashes where there are no true, consistent level-ranged zones. The world map will always be in flux. Therefore, it makes sense that the majority of open world content be bite sized events like this that last for a half hour or so, with some larger 1-2 day-long events like the goblin encampment/summoning scenario with harder content and more serious consequences for failure and better rewards for success sprinkled in here and there.
In both cases, what the player actually wants to do isn't really being taken in to account.
I am almost - but not quite - saying this.
What I am saying is that no MMORPG so far has managed to make imactful content fun - and it isn't technical limitations that have prevented this.
That isn't to say that it couldn't be made - but there is so much more to it than what you are talking about. It is something that people are writing PhD's on, so the notion that you or I could come up with how to make it work seems unlikely.
What I am mostly doing is pointing out the issues in what you are talking about, purely so that you (and others reading) gain an understanding that it is indeed a very difficult thing to do.
And, even in GW2, the Quests are basically "Kill 20" to get individuals to move on to something else after they have killed 20 of the specific mobs.
Again. You are talking about Events. Kill 20 Goblins is a Quest.
And, those Events you are talking about have to occur frequently enough that thousands of people can do them - if there are no "Kill 20 Goblins" Quests.
Again... probably because you are talking about an Event.
While we are talking about Quests.
Ashes has some of that.
We saw a bit of that in the PvE Caravans demo.
But, there would still be the issue that thousands of players are relying on Quests to help Leveling not be a grind. Events would still be in addition to the "Kill 20 Goblins" Quests.
Again, as I said, this is what keeps the world worth exploring long after you’ve already visited a place once, twice, three times, etc. Ashes, as far as I understand it, is not going to be the kind of game where you can zoom through every “zone”, completing every quest in order, and “finish it all” for an achievement like you can in a game like WoW. The territories of the world are going to be constantly in flux, as well as the levels of all the nodes, which all influence the content that’s available in any given ZOI.
The availability of content will already be dynamic. So I don’t know what you’re going on about with content needing to be in a static state for everyone forever in order for it to be fun. That’s the exact opposite of what the team wants to do. I’m just arguing that the content itself can and should be more immersive than that of the MMOs we’ve been playing for two decades in how people engage with and overcome challenges, more visually dynamic, and more noticeably consequential with longer series of event chains in the tug-of-war with enemy factions.
In the example of the goblin siege, that’s something that could go on for multiple days, giving everyone the chance to be a part of it. To be honest, it could even be relatively easy to defeat, with pretty much the only time it succeeds being when it attacks a node that’s already mostly deserted and at risk of atrophy anyway, and I wouldn’t care. It would just be awesome to participate in something like that. To see it happening and be a part of it.
In the example of the gnolls burning the farm down and taking it over, it’s hardly so consequential that anyone would be upset at the game over it happening. Maybe you lose a few ingredients available for purchase at the local node vendor and run the risk of getting your caravan attacked driving past it unless you take a detour. It’s not like they’re going to burn down your house and steal all your money. If it bugs you enough, and you wanna crush some gnolls, then get some buddies together and take them out! This could even be the sort of failed event that spawns a commission board posting from the local guard. You go out, fix what was done, and that spawns the next event you can engage in, which is to take out their home base, similar to what Steven talked about in the showcase recently.
I’m pretty sure that whole series of events sounds like a fun, engaging, constantly evolving world to be a part of, and I don’t need a PhD to figure out why. You aren’t really bringing up any specific points other than holding onto this FOMO argument, as if it’s a bad thing for people to feel a sense of urgency when they see a farm being burned down by gnolls, or as if missing the event once means you’ll never see it again. The event actually happens fairly regularly, as long as any failures to succeed in it also get reversed regularly. You just don’t see it that way because you aren’t always around. Odds are, if you miss it once, you’ll probably get the chance again before too long if you pass that way on a regular basis. Don’t worry though, there are plenty of other events happening when that one isn’t to keep you occupied. That’s the point.
You are focused on discussing Event mobs - but even GW2 had Quest mobs just sitting around.
Even after you finish a quest, those mobs remain sitting there for other players to grind and to initiate Quests for those who have not completed the associated Quests yet.
And that's because there are thousands of players who need to do something else other than just the Events.
Again - that sounds like Storybricks. And Intrepid is not trying to be as innovative with AI as Storybricks.
That will be some other game. Probably several years from now.
The Ashes design already has World Events and content dynamically changing due to the rise and fall of Nodes, and Weather and Seasons.
It's likely that all of that will be at a GW2 level - unlikely it will be at a Storybricks level.
But, the "Kill 20 Goblins" Quests aren't outdated, yet for Online RPGs. And it's not something that GW2 solved since GW2 still has those kinds of Quests. It's not something Ashes is striving to solve.
But, the addition of Events helps make the world more interesting. Yes.
GW2 was pretty good at replacing the ‘kill 20 goblins’ quest with the percentage-based event. Which was by design from the beginning, I forget the creative lead’s name, but I remember him explicitly stating that they want to create a game where ‘quests’ weren’t some NPC standing around with punctuation over their head as goblins burned their farm.
You’re right about events being different from quests in Ashes, but in the context of GW2 they were intended to be synonymous,
And Quests can be started with NPCs. The have circular indicators rather than exclamation points.
The NPCs do stand around while Bandits are burning their farms.
The Quests can be initiated without speaking to the NPCs but that kinda breaks immersion for me.
Kinda like when gamers far away Whisper to ask about joining a Group. At least buy me a drink first.
GW2 basically has "Kill 20 Spiders" and "Kill 20 Bandits" and "Kill 20 Centaurs". But it's measured by a progress bar rather than by a numerical value.
GW2 does also have mini Events and Events that pop up. But they are not the same thing as Quests.
I think sure, the "Kill 20 Bandits" Quest included "Gather Lost Supplies" and "Rescue Lost Moa Hatchlings".
But, the "Kill 20 Spiders" Quest didn't have alternatives - and then it did trigger a "Kill Giant Spider" mini-Event.