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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.
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Because i. NEED. Flavour in RPG Games, Noaani.
And not just me.
People in for Example WoW - made their Dwarf (and Gnome)-Guilds now since WoW Vanilla. Just more or lesser strong depending on Region and Server.
You will never see an awesome, huge Group of Nightelf-Sentinels or Ironforge-styled Dwarf-Troops or Dwarf Clans if you don't organise it.
I am still excited and curious to see if People are in the Mood for an awesome, Viking-styled Kae'lar Node.
In you know ? One of the colder Biomes where Vikings would make more Sense.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
For example if Tulnar are creating 8% of the global XP then that percentage of all the nodes in the world (7) which have the highest local tulnar percentage get their style even if they are not a majority locally. The maths are a bit complex with multiple minor races but basically you assisgn a 'parity' race to a node such that the disparity is at a global minimum.
This would allow any slight concentration of a minor race to result in that architecture being expressed. It's also possible to blend this with the local majority on a sliding scale, and to introduce an 'inertia' factor that just gives weight to what ever the existing style is.
So a formula like 75% Local XP generated in the last month + 10% existing style + 15% Global parity weighting could be created. Though this no long guarantees minor race styles get expressed it makes it a lot easier for them and the inertia prevents overly frequent style changes as well.
An example, lets say Tulnar are 8% globally and Empyrian elves (which look to be the most popular) are hitting 22% globally, a big imbalance. If spread evenly their would be no Tulnar nodes at all if only local XP were used. But under the mixed formula if the Tulnar start to concentrate themselves just a little and get 10% in node which is currently Empyrian style then the global parity modifier switches to them and we get.
16.5% Empyrian + 7.5% Tulnar + 10% existing Empyrian +15% Parity Tulnar = 26.5% Empyrian, 22.5% Tulnar
So the node remains Empryian in large part due to the inertia factor.
But if Tulnar can reach 16% of the Local node XP (which means they have significantly concentrated to double their normal rate but are still outnumbered by Empryrian by a substantial amount) then...
16.5 Empryian + 12% Tulnar + 10% Existing Empyrian + 15% Parity Tulnar = 26.5 Empyrian, 27% Tulnar and the Node style flipps and will now stick their due to inertia unless the Tulnar drop sustantially.
That's a lot of backend dice-loading that's simply not needed. The reason 'majority rule' is the design is because it makes sense narratively and most accurately reflects what players have chosen. If most of the people building up the node are Py'Rai then obviously they'll be building it in their cultural style.
If Tulnar are only 8% of the population, then I wouldn't expect or particularly want there to be Tulnar nodes because they haven't actually had a significant hand in building up the world in that particular server. If they all concentration in one node, then they'd have a decent shot of it, but there's not a need to artificially boost their contribution just because of the aesthetic preferences of a small amount of players.
I could see that coming into play, yeah.
The point is, that according to player choice, there will be dominating races. Thats the point - and issue, because one can foresee this domination - especially because race choice cant be balanced with racial perks, because they doesnt really matter.
But more, because once you offer options, they will be used. So also a human dominated realm will start, just for variety reasons, to use other cultural styles. So no, I disagree, you can, as a developer, control and balance this variety a bit, if you provide additional choices to reduce the same looking (getting boring and redundant) all over the nodes.
The choice was provided, already said I'd be fine if players could choose a separate node style preference than their chosen race's default.
I don't see any issue with the majority of nodes being what the majority have picked, either through race choice or specific style choice alongside the race.
They could make it so every single race has a set node in their style, but they shouldn't. They could put a hardcoded cap on how many nodes can be in a particular style, but they shouldn't.
There is no mechanical reason that it should happen, and they shouldn't reduce the impact of player choice because of the minority opinion's aesthetic preferences.
Like sorry, not sorry that you don't like the human architectural styles, but you're genuinely going to have to get over the game not providing you your preferred aesthetics over the preferred aesthetics of the rest of the people living in and providing exp for that node.
The hyperbole is unneeded and unlikely in the first place. I've got zero doubt that there will be plenty of furries rolling Tulnar in Ashes to go along with the thus-far popular Empyrean elves. I'd have bigger worries for the darker human race Vaelune not having a visible presence than the Tulnar.
You dont. Others do. Its about sharing different opinions, right? Not about having the „right“ opinion. I personally disagree, its an issue if everything looks equally.
Its no discussion about mechanical reasons at all.
It adds choices and variety, its not about reducing them. If, due to dominant races, it can be foreseen that majority of the nodes of the realms will look the same, just because of the only choice done in the character editor, then its reducing choice for all years afterwards. Not the other way round.
Not talking about me personally in terms of humans or whatever, just talking about the topic in general: The more offer and choices, the better. It brings more variety, instead of seeing 80% of the nodes in same style. That will start to be boring and it will question all the desgin efforts from intrepid that they‘ve done during the years. Its a MMO meant for decades. Choice is needed, believe me. It shouldnt be bound to the character creation screen at release day.
As for human: I will play one, so again, its not about me or specific about one race or culture. I thought you already got that?
You've already said you don't like majority rule, but the only other option is to ignore what most players chose in favor of what less player chose. You'll never ever please everyone, so it's better to please the most people you can while maintaining the core pillars of the game.
Variety will exist in the world in biomes, dungeons, raids etc. If the player base of every single node in every server overwhelmingly picked one race, then they alone are to blame for the majority of nodes sharing a style.
'A vast population of humans has populated Verra with primarily their settlements' makes perfect sense.
'A wildly varying population of adventures has populated Verra with a variety of settlements' also makes perfect sense.
'A vast population of humans has populated Verra with just as many elven and dwarven settlements as human settlements' does not make sense.
There will be dwarven nodes, and elven nodes, and human nodes if the players want there to be, and making choices to enable that aesthetic preference starts at character select, not with rigging the dice against popular choice.
Why should intrepid invest so much time into racial designs for nodes?
And monsters. Weapons. Mounts. Etc.
Just has nothing to do with this topic. Nodes are very central. If from 85 nodes 70 are the same race its just boring. And if a realm is dominated like this, it will not change for decades unless intrepid includes race changing services. So this is reducing variety, diversity and choice. And all three aspects are bad.
Why should your choice of race bind you for your entire time with the game to a certain node style ? I don't think that should be the case.
Your "the players are to blame then" only works if you accept the current concept as set into stone with not a nuance of change possible.
<snipped out all the runaround>
They are designing racial style because those racial styles are going to appear. Demographics are never evenly dispersed, and based purely on the polls for this niche group on the forums, there's gonna be decent variety throughout the world.
I find it extremely unlikely that there would be any case that 90% of nodes would share an architectural style.
Your choice of race doesn't bind you to a style, you can always move nodes if the aesthetic style is a deal breaker for some reason.
What your character contributes to a node is set though because Ashes is an MMORPG and the races actually have an inbuilt culture they're bringing to Verra in this resettlement.
Claim it's 'just' 440 people, but this is the most likely population to stick with ashes here, and it's a healthy population split
Edit: on second thought, reddit is actually a more 'everyman' population than any poll here would be, so it's a better representation
First it is not 'majority' it is PLURAILITY, aka the highest percentage, and it's likely to be no where near a majority in ANY node given that they did away with racial starting gates.
Also 8% is not really much of an under representation. 11% is what each race woud be if their were a perfectly equal distribution of picks. If thouse players were evenly spread then 88% of players don't match the node they are in. The survey results I've seen show Empyrian to be the most popular single race at close to 20% (the overall Elf levels are highest because Py Rai are coming in at a respectable 10% so the combined elf totals are close to 30%) which is more then enough to dominate EVERY node in the world even against races which are at or modestly above the 11% mean, and completly shuts out races that drop into the single digits (Ren Kai, Velune and Nikua look to be the least popular) and if players are evenly distributed so we would have a total monoculture of Empyrian architecture and have 80% of players shafted.
That would simply be a total waste of development time in creating all these different archetecture types.
Should minority races need to concentrate in a location to get it to express their architecture, YES, should they need to concentrate SO MUCH that they actualy out number that one race that is most popular on the server, I say no. It is not at all difficult or complex to have a system which boosts the minor racial influence to get them to atleast a few nodes and it is a completly sliding scale for what we want that point to be.
I presented some hypothetical numbers for how to do that. But what ultimatly matters is the final distribution and how far we can get from a monoculture of 1 architecture. I'd be satisfied if the top race could be kept to less then HALF of all nodes and the top 2 races to less then three quarters.
This is for the benifit of ALL players because your game world actually looks different as you travel around it.
The terminology doesn't change that the race that contributes the most exp to the node should be what determines that node's architecture. This is consistent with the narrative of rebuilding Verra and having differing races with differing cultures all competing to do so.
Your scenario is also just doomsaying at the moment.
'Elven' is not a node option. The style is based on sub-races.
Node style is determined by exp contributions, not by population number alone. If 15% of the population is dedicated players using Vaelune characters, that's gonna beat out 20% of the population casually playing Empyrean characters. It isn't needed to outnumber the population of the server-wide common race, it's not even needed they outnumber the local population, just that they contribute more.
If all these players are picking Empyreans, what makes you believe that if given a vote, they'd pick a Tulnar, or a Ren'kai? What makes you believe they would be happy to 'lose' the racial style they chose despite having contributed the most exp to it?
Sure, we'd have no way to know one way or the other if there was a genuine win in the exp contribution contest, but it has no bearing on gameplay even if (and it's a massive, giant, capital I if) somehow 90% of nodes ended up the same.
This is all entirely aesthetic preferences, not driven by gameplay concerns at all, because the artistic style of buildings isn't gameplay, and has no bearing on available content.
So you think people that roll humans only want to live in only human cities? Now I get your disconnect.
Begging you to actually read my posts in this thread or you'd realize how stupid this is.
Also all of you do some reading on nodes. Ctrl+F and search 'Node layout and style'
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Nodes
They've already thought of these concerns and made multiple comments on them you can go find at your leisure.
You pick your race knowing what your character will be contributing. Either live with that choice knowing you won't be boosting your odds to have your node be your preferred aesthetic like I already plan to, or roll a different race that will contribute to the aesthetic you want to see in your local node.
You get that most people playing this game will have no idea the impact of their race choice when it comes to the node they will be living with. Do you reliaze that in MMOs human is normally the most populated race? That means what? Most nodes in Ashes will most likely be human nodes.
I don't need teaching on what nods are. I have been following this game before the kick starter. What I know in my many years of MMOing is as you travel around any MMOs we get these things...
1. Cities and towns for some distance, normally many zones are in a set architectural style.
2. Move to new areas your eye sight has new input to take in.
This causes pleasure to people and most don't get that it happens. They just know the feeling. It's also the opposite of that. You leave an art style and come home to yout home city you love. You get a rush of feelings. You will get less of both of these in this game with how node art styles will be presented.
You feed the same visual input for to long. You won't even know why you are not simulated anymore.
This thread has posts and links that already proves you wrong about the human thing.
Anyway, read the Node wiki, because clearly you've missed things between the kickstarter and now. Node layout is not identical between nodes. Landscapes are not identical, even if both use the same racial style for the buildings.
Read the wiki, follow the source links. Literally all these complains are already addressed.
And yeah, I do expect choices to matter even with race choice. It already matters too little for my personal preference after they've pushed the importance of their variation so much in the narrative sense, but whatever. Ship sailed.
Very easily done to communicate the races' respective architecture style choice by putting it in the backdrop of the character creator scene.
Here you are both right and wrong. 440 is enough of a sample. Like in polling you do also get stats from different groups and collect that to get a cross sample to get a real glimpse and even then the numbers will not reflect reality in the end. So we got 440 from the small minority that follows Ashes. The ones that come later will be a larger crowd and may think differently.
Its not just about the aesthetic variety, its about the social aspect of rewarding groups of players who make a concerted effort of banding together and establishing a node. I see this is a way of applying this to players of the same race who band together for racial role-play purposes.
I see this as a skill-issue if you are not able to take advantage of the huge number of nodes and get a decent amount of other players together to establish a node matching your group preferences.
This is about making choice matter, by allowing players to craft their own home location and leave a mark on the world, but they have to earn that reward, which is how it should be imo. Thats basically your home, you can visit other race nodes if you want to change the view.
Also, if things get too stagnant for too long, that is literally the purpose of the world manager and the other systems in the game that drive change. So even without a concerted effort you still have that RNG element of mixing up player groups and possibly getting different node aesthetics the next go around.
This isn't a black and white thing, its a give and take and accomodation of different player playstyles and preferences. You can't satisfy every single player in every way at all times, sometimes you have to understand certain constraints of a game, and learn when not to be extra nitpicky about certain things when a game is for such a diverse group of players, such as an mmo. Also, when there are paradoxical design aspects its important to know when its important to prioritize certain game aspects over others.
Also it is silly to expect players to be uprooting themselves from their nodes, where all their playerhousing, connections and leveling experience has been to move to other nodes which may be undeveloped just to get to see some asthetically different architecture.
That's a classic positive externality underinvestment. Diversity of architecture is a good that everyone playing the game recives, not just thouse who did the work, but their is no incentive for the players who need to congregate to make it happen. Even if thouse Tulnar all get together and make 1 Tulnar node, the rest of the world is still a monoculture. Hell their uniqueness probably brings in non Tulnar tourists that dilute the population and then undo the very thing they came to see.
If their was ANY kind of mechanical advantage how ever small to having your race match the architecture then it would encourage concentration but as of now their is none.
Congrats, you've stumbled upon the point.
Race population alone doesn't dictate the style, contributions do. There is currently no overwhelmingly more popular race shown in polls we have access to. Obviously you can see how it's not anywhere remotely near 'unlikely' that you'll see nodes in plenty of styles.
See this entire post too:
Right, I get that this is your argument, but I still haven't seen an notion as to why this is an issue.
You yourself state that Intrepid can't balance races by using racial traits, because there aren't any. Since there is no bonus, it doesn't matter to people which race they pick outside of aesthetics.
How is this situation with nodes any different? It doesn't matter which racial influence the node has, because there are no benefits. As such, there is no need to balance it out, just as there is no need to balance out races.