suggestion: Sub-Saharan African inspired weapons and armor?

There aren't really any sub-Saharan African influences that seem to be planned besides skin color and hair. (Basically the black characters are getting the Elder Scrolls Redguard treatment) but I'm fine with that i guess.

Though considering there are so many african influences on the environment's climate, wildlife, and even some mounts, (from what I've seen from concepts and the Alpha 1) it would be cool to have some of the cultural aspects, even if its just for armor/weapon designs from monster loot.

Lore-wise, these could be explained away as a lesser human culture from the past that had been extinguished by the Apocalypse? Or Maybe the Tulnar could have a few of these cultural aspects?

There are some pretty nice shield and sword designs from sub-sahara that i would love to see in an mmo for once!

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Dygz

Haha!
The devs have liked my Twitter suggestions for tribal weapons, like blowguns.
I expect to see African inspired gear... especially after MetaHuman Creator gains more of a foothold in the next couple of years.

We don't need special lore to explain it. African themed gear already fits well with Pyrian, Vek, Ren'Kai and Niküa cultural aesthetics.

Vhaeyne

Dygz wrote: »

Haha!
The devs have liked my Twitter suggestions for tribal weapons, like blowguns.
I expect to see African inspired gear... especially after MetaHuman Creator gains more of a foothold in the next couple of years.

We don't need special lore to explain it. African themed gear already fits well with Pyrian, Vek, Ren'Kai and Niküa cultural aesthetics.

I have been on a bit of a vacation for the last few weeks. I have seen you mention the MetaHuman creator twice now. Did the Intrepid say anything about using it in Ashes? If so, that is fantastic news. I was able to play with the preview of MetaHuman and came away thinking it is the future of MMOs.

Dygz

It's an Unreal Engine product. Steven says that the final Character Creator will be as good or better than the BDO character creator, so I expect the Ashes devs will be looking into using it.

Vhaeyne

Dygz wrote: »

It's an Unreal Engine product. Steven says that the final Character Creator will be as good or better than the BDO character creator, so I expect the Ashes devs will be looking into using it.

I see.

While it is logical to conclude that they are aware of the tool and may use it.
I was hoping for a reference to a statement from intrepid about MetaHuman.

They may not want to use the tool out of fear that many games may be using it over the next few years, and it might not make the game stand out in the future. That, or it might have far too many polygons per character face for a game aiming at 250 v 205+ siege battles.

Dygz

Most likely -at the very least- the artists and programmers will be crafting proprietary tools to recreate some features from MetaHuman Creator.
It's not really even so much about number of polygons, but the ability to fairly quickly create a composite using several different presets. Which makes it easier to infuse, for instance, African facial features and hair styles/textures across all of the player races rather than having Elves primarily look like Europeans.
This makes it easier to have African or Meso-American armor and weapons fit with Pyrian, Nikua, Ren'Kai and Vek architecture.
We don't have to imagine Pyrian culture only coming from "European" forests just because Pyrian have "European" facial features.

The challenge for the artists is how to provide character creator tools that allow players to easily create the characters they want. And just playing around with MetaHuman Creator will introduce the artists and programmers to novel solutions. They don't necessarily have to literally incorporate MetaHuman Creator itself into Ashes, but playing with it will very likely result in inspiration that takes advantage of the concepts, if not the literal code.

"As a project in development, We're always keeping as up-to-date as we can in moving forward with updates that are made. It's very beneficial for the project in general. With regard to the new Unreal Engine (UE5), it's obviously something we take a look at. It's something we're going to evaluate, as we do with all new technology."
– Steven

"Unreal engine makes it really fast to iterate... Compared to other gaming engines, I can do something in a hour that would take eight hours to do in another engine."
– Jeffrey

"We're ripping out most of the network code that Unreal has and putting in our own just so that it works with our game and so everything is as efficient as possible. We're not going to have any replication problems because we're building it ourselves."
– Jeffrey

234Graph

Dygz wrote: »

Haha!
The devs have liked my Twitter suggestions for tribal weapons, like blowguns.
I expect to see African inspired gear... especially after MetaHuman Creator gains more of a foothold in the next couple of years.

We don't need special lore to explain it. African themed gear already fits well with Pyrian, Vek, Ren'Kai and Niküa cultural aesthetics.

I think that would fit better for the Tulnar cultural aesthetics. The other one's alredy have their own artistic influence, but I think tribal weapons like the one's you mentioned would fit the Tulnar.

Dygz

It doesn't really matter which race since any race can wear any gear and wield any weapon.
Biome is probably more important than race.

What gives you the impression that African inspired gear fits Tulnar culture??

234Graph

Dygz wrote: »

It doesn't really matter which race since any race can wear any gear and wield any weapon.

Biome is probably more important than race.

What gives you the impression that African inspired gear fits Tulnar culture??

Because it's the only race that doesn't have any pre determined artistic influence we know off of so far so I thought it'd fit best. I get your point now and you're right.

I think we are pretty far in development for this, but In case devs want any inspiration:

Benin warrior armour:

The Ikwla:
A short stabbing spear, used primarily hand to hand for thrusting at opponents. Its name stems from the sucking sound ut made when withdrawing the weapon from a victim.

Mambele:
A hybrid knife-axe weapon can be used in close combat as a hatchet, dagger or more typically as a throwing weapon

Ngulu:
An execution sword tho could be used as anything

The Ida sword:

Zulu axe:
Primarily used to tear apart shields

Egyptian Axe:
Use for penetration.

Iwisa:
large bone crushing knob at one end and can be used for throwing at animals in hunting or for clubbing an enemy's

Zulu Shield:

Quilted mounted Bornu warrior gear:

Some other African inspired armour:

Murdach

We dont need specific lore for this type of gear and it does not have to be a remnant of subhumans. Gear should reflect a biome as one person stated or a religion.

superhero6785

Dygz wrote: »

It's an Unreal Engine product. Steven says that the final Character Creator will be as good or better than the BDO character creator, so I expect the Ashes devs will be looking into using it.

They already showed off their own custom built in house character creator. They said they will not use MetaHuman. They have to build their own because it will be used for the Animal Husbandry system as well, which MetaHuman cant do. So their creator will be much more powerful than UE5's

Dygz

superhero6785 wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

It's an Unreal Engine product. Steven says that the final Character Creator will be as good or better than the BDO character creator, so I expect the Ashes devs will be looking into using it.

They already showed off their own custom built in house character creator. They said they will not use MetaHuman. They have to build their own because it will be used for the Animal Husbandry system as well, which MetaHuman cant do. So their creator will be much more powerful than UE5's

That prediction was 11 months ago...
And, they did what I expected them to do - "Most likely -at the very least- the artists and programmers will be crafting proprietary tools to recreate some features from MetaHuman Creator."
95% of what I was hoping for.

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