Inspiration for Ashes of Creation by Asraiel

Inspiration for Ashes of Creation by Asraiel

This Topic serves only to inspire the Developers at Intrepid Studios San Diego

During my journey of playing PC Games for over 2 decades, I experienced countless content and mechanics in relation to MMO-RPG. I wanna share my experience with Intrepid. Even if the post may be seen as suggestions, it’s not. I choose this way to give some Inspiration to the project. Whatever is mentioned in this post is not what I would like to see beeing copy paste into Ashes but maybe one or two things make it into the game. I personally know it's late and before all is set I wanted to give it a try. I'm kinda sad I didn't know of the project sooner, but better late than never.

What Ashes goes for I did experience by playing MMO-RPG titles like Aion from NCSoft and Entropia Universe from MindArk.

From Aion I loved the massive skill selection it had/has sadly over the time the game itself partly died due to p2w happening but also due to story progression that removed old content and increased about once a year the level cap which meant a ton of grind again and againö. also the removal of the crafting and player 2 player trades. I started Aion in 2012 after it became f2p lvl cap 50-65 stopped with the first server merges.

In Ashes alpha one there were only limited placeholder skills in and even though I like them a lot I have to mention I miss some effects on skills. i didn't see any skills that did apply on group or raid, it had area effect and friendly effect skills.
but skills like a group heal, a group buff, or like on target heal that spreads to friendly entities close to the target, also no charge skills i could find that could be released early or cast to get the max out. On the resurrection only cleric had a skill sadly no items from merchant that would allow other classes to resurrect as well by using the item (which gets consumed) or mass resurrection, or pre resurrection buff so if the target with that buff on can directly resurrect.
or passive active skills that may apply buffs for the group, or simply self buff skills, also a lot of ccs and other stuff i couldn't find.

This is a technical Alpha so that's probably why i couldnt find them but are already in the making for the real skills or at least some ideas are prepared but nothing is finally at the current state that's why I hope I'm not too late with this topic.

Aion featured every class with around 80 different skills but with a selection on what path a player wanted to play so around 40-50 skills had a selection of if you use this you can't use that selection on it. auto attacks were not a thing only skill in fights and all skills were also target select.

To acquire a skill one had to reach the level and go to the class merchant and buy the skill as a skill book which then unlocked the skill and many did get a better version over time so a lot of buying skill books. For some skills it also gave special skill skins as drops in dungeons, sadly with increasing the cap these skins became useless because the skills reached higher tiers.

In addition to skill using mana, each class ah access to a limited amount of special skills that had a cooldown of 30-60 mins and used a power that could be accumulated during battle, these special skills could if used correctly turn the direction of a battle because they were really powerful but very limited in use. Aion did call it Divine Power or DP short. it gave a consumable which did charge this power instantly but also that item had a high cd. if such a power makes its way into ashes i would rather have it without a consumable to charge.

now here the Skills of the classes of Aion i dont list them all so i link the wiki for the 8 main classes i leave the later added 4 additional classes out:

Templar
https://aion.fandom.com/wiki/List:Templar_skills

Gladiator
https://aion.fandom.com/wiki/List:Gladiator_skills

Ranger
https://aion.fandom.com/wiki/List:Ranger_skills

Assassin
https://aion.fandom.com/wiki/List:Assassin_skills

Sorcerer
https://aion.fandom.com/wiki/List:Sorcerer_skills

Spiritmaster
https://aion.fandom.com/wiki/List:Spiritmaster_skills

Chanter
https://aion.fandom.com/wiki/List:Chanter_skills

Cleric
https://aion.fandom.com/wiki/List:Cleric_skills

The Game Entropia Universe is also a f2p title but it's unique in the MMO-RPG genres it's Sandbox based and has a real money economie. which takes fun partly away also the make something together is rarely seen in there cause everything has Real Money value giveing a item to someone it equal with giving money to that person. but even if this kind of economy isn't for everyone it maintains a stable playerbase. The game doesn't have character level nor classes. leveling isn't made by gaining exp. It's a learning by doing system. so the more you do something the better you get in doing it it supports a lot of skills which allows the better use of weapons. but also dodge or evade is learned by doing at start very hard cause its random if you evade but the higher your skill gets the more often you do it and so leveling up better. but it has over 200 levels per skill and no one ever has achieved that high skill. it would problaby take 20 years of hardcore gameing to achive it.

but i really liked the learning by doing leveling and thought how this could be used in a more player friendly system. In the end it's a fusion of how skills were acquired in aion and how to level them in entropia.

you reach a certain level and can now go to your class school and learn the skill firebolt. now you can use firebolt but your level is apprentice, everytime you use the skill in combat the skill does level you start at 0% once you reach 100% you have mastered the skill and can use the skill perfectly no malus on cast time, mana cost and dmg anymore. but now you can learn the next step at your class school with increases the skill base dmg and your now a rank higher than apprentice but you start again at 0% but if you get the skill again on 100% you may repeat the training at the class school maybe for every skill 5x 0-100% leveling by use in combat until its fully maxed out. and if you don't use a skill often it doesn't level up as fast as others. that could lead to a longer journey than the vanilla system farm exp, level up, get skill points and select skill and have full use over it instantly.

The thing with such a system is that i adds more traffic to the game and servers and on lager player amount it may be better not having it for the sake of a stable game with hundreds or thousands of players in the same area (sieges).

With reading this so far some might think my goal is to turn ashes into a new aion, but it's not. shure, I had a very nice time while playing aion with the holy triangle, dungeoning, grinding, crafting and massive PvP battles on the ground and up in the air with raids with well over 200vs200. but the game did change and also the playerbase did change its no longer what it once was sad but true.
This topic really only serves the purpose of giving Inspiration to the team.
Steven bring knowledge of lineage 2 and other mmo-rpg the team worked on planet side 2 and in game studios where other games were developed, i can't say but i dont think one of the developers worked for ncsoft (since it's primarily in japan or south korea)
I just had time to play games and watch anime. I do have the pc diploma but never worked in that direction and once i tried to do some coding i felled asleep cause the screen was full of codes. but my idea fabric (brain) works on 150% permanently.

Well then time to come to a end

Thank you for your time to read this post and if there are questions from the team i'm glad to help, even considering sharing my aion login data since i don't use it anyways.

Best regards Asraiel

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Asraiel

Addition to the main post

Learning by doing progression

I did get some deeper thoughts about Leveling and skill/profession progression
so i gonna use it in a example using the skill Smite from the class cleric of the game aion:

standart the skill has 5 different levels and can be activated once the char reaches the level to unlock the specific state of the skill

Smite 1, unlock at level 1, 97-164 dmg, 18 MP, 1.5 sec cast, 2 sec cd
Smite 2, unlock at level 10, 187-254 dmg, 36 MP, 1.5 sec cast, 2 sec cd
Smite 3, unlock at level 22, 274-352 dmg, 48 MP, 1.5 sec cast, 2 sec cd
Smite 4, unlock at level 40, 420-487 dmg, 74 MP, 1.5 sec cast, 2 sec cd
Smite 5, unlock at level 56, 595-595 dmg, 74 MP, 1.5 sec cast, 2 sec cd

now changing into a learn progression system

learning adds a depts to the skills itself so that every skill starts a 0% and over the time of using it it will progress to 100%, now to keep the example easy the skill starts with
-50% Dmg
+50% MP
+50% Cast
+50% CD
that means for smite 1 that the skill starts at
Smite 1, unlock at level 1, 48.5-82 dmg, 27 MP, 2.25 sec cast, 3 sec cd

Smite 2 now not only needs the level 22 to be unlocked it also needs the mastery of smite 1

that enlarges the character design and progression and adds more depth to it. but a other way around is to have it even deeper, so that the cd is counted for all skill levels so it may start even higher at:
+100% CD
and every step of mastery only reduces the cd by 20% so after mastering all 5 steps of the skill the cd is again down to 2 sec.

Smite 1 cd 4.0-3.6 sec
smite 2 cd 3.6-3.2 sec
smite 3 cd 3.2-2.8 sec
smite 4 cd 2.8-2.4 sec
smite 5 cd 2.4-2.0 sec

mixing it with the system of skill unlocking currently in alpha one it would kinda look like

you reach a level and get skill points now you can skill them in skills but at first only level 1 of the skill can be activated once the skill did cycle thru the first turn of skill learning by doing cycle it will get unlocked to add an additional skill point in the skill and so on. between evers skillpoint spended into a skill the first time there's a learning period between. but if the character did master the state of the skill he keeps it even if the player removes skill points from that skill the progress ain't lost (if the skillstep is mastered). so on reskilling it later in again the mastered progression is saved and he only needs to do the missing skill mastery. but if he did fully master it. then he can freely switch between skills.

in addition could also the augmentation add into that system so that an augment on a skill also starts a learning periode.

now for gathering resources having a similar system in place that however adds directly into the profession and gives boni once mastered. so that the miner gets more ressources out of nodes, mines faster minerals or on master level can highlight the recurrence nodes. While a non professional farmer also can find and harvest minerals, he only gets the standard amount and specially for higher tier resources that may be primarily found in dungeon areas where a team of players is needed to farm efficiently, that profession holders are the best choice to get the most ressources out.
the same for all the other gather professions that the one with the skill is faster getting more and can highlight them and that in specific areas the resource density and higher tier ressources are more but always with the risk vs reward that the harder its guarded the higher the tier and so you want as a team have the best gatherer to farm those rare mats.

for minerals dungeons or caves within the dwarven realm seems to be a good spot to have high tiers
for lumberjacks or so best something in giant forests or swamp areas maybe more elven realm
for herbalism may be the open fields or high mountain areas
well fish should be clear i guess but maybe a underground water cave system that has some of the rare tiers in it

and all based on the learning by doing but that was kinda the normal thing in other games so i would wonder if it's not the same in ashes.

for professions
Professions also have a learning by doing attached to them here its an action motion style. different techniques like forging iron into iron ingot or forging 2 different ingots into a new one has for the different main categories of the smithing profession a learning by doing action motion system to it. So forging ingots, metal folding, sword and dagger smithing, mace smithing and so on, all have separate mastery progressions. These have an impact on the mats used to craft, the time of the crafting but also on the end result. it also starts at level 1 at 0% and have on the crafting a interaction menu where the crafter have to pay attention during the craft so he can react to the buttons showing on the screen to not fail the craft and losing 50% of the mats and get the crafted item. by leveling the crafting skill these events getting less and the crafting itself getting faster. once it is fully mastered no buttons will show ever again on the screen it could now also be used more automated. Also the result is often better if a master did craft an item instead of a starter. if a weapon from a starter can have between 10-20 dmg then the master only has a range between 15-20 dmg on the same item so chance to get a good craft out are higher, also may a refund be in that the higher the craft skill the higher the possibility to not use all mats or to keep the schematic.

these systems add more depth to the game alldo also be more a thinbg for hardcore gamers but having gabs for the casual players as well so if a player only plays 1 character he can even be better that someone that haveing multiple chars since the learning by doing need to focus more on one character at the time to maximize them.

I personally think that this would be a fun system and adds something more to achieve on playing your class. I didn't see a simural system yet in a game but I don't know every game there is.

Once again this is for the team as inspiration.
and a personal opinion but i'm happy with whatever will be in the game.

Best regards Asraiel

Sorcres

Its realy long topic and i read only important things but i am glad you mention Aion especialy for Summoner, i played lot of MMO and one of the best made Summoner was in Aion (atleast for me) Interesting skills, fears, debuffs and removing buffs from enemy makes this class so fun.

Aion it's definitely not best MMO, but skills and summoner was made very good. Across many MMO, in Aion was best Summoner.

Asraiel

Luckly found out that one of the developers at intrepid (Jonathan Lien) did work for NCSoft on Aion and Blade&Soul so theres some expirience allredy in.

Child Item