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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
FFXIV and WOW both do it... They may call it something stupid, but FFXIV both have Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Halloween. Decorated trees, pink hearts, and jack-o-lanterns are in both games. Guild Wars one had Christmas. I think I remember fighting the grinch in one of these games...
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Well, in Guild Wars 1 it was called Wintersday, and while the Grentches were decidedly Grinch-like, I don't recall any specific mention of anything RL-ish. Even Canthan New Year had its own in-game traditions.
The only real world holiday I am willing to except in any game is Festivus.
I am particularly fond of the "Airing of Grievances" part...
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I can see a "The Purge"/"Return Of The Archons"/murder-hobo event beginning to form...
I think the further into Ashes own religous practices the games holiday events are the better. I don't mind rl paraphernalia when it comes to color schemes and ornaments. But it would be pretty lazy to draw strictly from rl when they have a bunch of religions to really go ham on immersion. Sell the religions to me IS! (but please don't send me pamphlets.)
Therefore @Vhaeyne my thought about the weird time issue was that it has more to do with the gods and astral alignment of the stars and planets granting the relevant deities an edge over other gods to receive extra strength from their followers prayers/worship at those times. This also means holiday events can be at slightly different timings each year depending on the best time to do server maintenance or w/e.
If there is a full seasons cycle in a month on Verra, how any offline holidays can be integrated to make sense?
Winterfest every month? Oh no, it is only celebrated once every 52 winter!
This is interesting, coz it means that Ashes could have an interesting "astrology" kind of system, where the alignment of celestial bodies actually affects the world of Verra.
- Also when in game Holidays align with IRL holidays it helps ppl who may be alone on that holiday be able to celebrate and spend time with friends in game while having that holiday spirit around them in game.
Two main things: A holiday event shouldn't interfere with normal gameplay, and a holiday event shouldn't interfere with IRL celebrations. The new Krampus event in CoD for example: people can't play the normal game because the holiday celebration is forced on them. Also, don't have a specific event on christmas day that would make you want to play the game instead of spend time with family.
One of my favorite things about events is the chance for unique gear. I love getting to strut around in my christmas sexy costume from 4 years ago christmas theme kind of thing, ya know? Also it should provide activities that differ from the norm. Like unique events such as chasing down yeti with a group and killing him for off chance of rando exclusive gear. Riding Santa sleigh to deliver gifts to all the children. Making fireworks for the new year celebration from goblin guts and wyvern bones and chance of random loot falling from the exploded firework... so on so on. Even better if you can make it where Guilds can provide some of the action and or activities. Guild provides quests that stem from Guild leader. Has to spend to be able to offer it but if high enough percentage of players in guild participate, then you earn the money back plus some and included items so as guild saddle(guild design on an attached flag or on the side of saddle.)
Thanks,
Locustbb
1. In game holidays are shifted, so that they start the day AFTER the main corresponding RL holiday, if any, ends, and then build up to their main content about a week later before drifting off. This lets gamers enjoy their offline family time and their 'online family' time near enough to each other to keep the spirit going, but not conflicted.
2. Line up with the ingame calendars somehow. Ashes has an easy way to do this mentioned by someone already. There are multiple deities, assign each one to a holiday and then do a sort of 'Chinese' year system so that, for example, March is the 'year of the Phoenix' and so on, and that way you can have a celebration that happens every '12 years', and then just leave out some of them so that you don't have one every month.
I too, would prefer the 'standard' 4x Speed for ingame time vs RL time, but if we're definitely changing seasons every week instead of every 3 weeks, then this works well to line up with holidays at least. I don't care if they line up, much, since you can just stick the 'Year of the _____' celebration in some appropriate timeframe.
Basically I'm not gonna fuss if October 1st to 22nd is Spring but you still put 'Deity of Cold's Solstice celebration' to run Dec 26th-Jan 2nd.
My 2 cents.
When it comes to content during events, i prefer it if its rewards arent related to power, but cosmetics/achievements. Would also be fun if there are minigames unique to that event.
1) All events should be re-themed to AoC stuff; No Santa (wrong elves), no Jesus (in AoC, he would have just respawned immediately, instead of facing a 3-day cooldown), and no Easter Bunny
2) Any wierd-looking items (bat & vampire fangs, jack-o-lantern helmets, Valentine's Day Cupid wings, etc) should only be wearable DURING THE EVENT
3) No over-powered, must-have-it-to-win a fight items; Two otherwise evenly-matched players should not find one of themselves at a disadvantage because they didn't get the chocolate cherries during a Valentine's-like in-game holiday-event.
I do, however, hope for seasonal celebrations where it makes sense. Harvest festivals, launch day annual celebration, Sour Sandal Saturday...
A jolly gift giving person who rides in a sleigh and hands out gifts, pumpkins/costumes/candy, etc. are all bland and feel disconnected from fantasy worlds.
Brewfest and Dark Moon Faire are excellent examples of how to do in game holidays/events annually with a fun and possibly cultural spin for each race - meaning let’s say you do a Brewfest type thing - (Yeah I get it’s Octoberfest) - but that’s fine, maybe all of the races have their own unique versions that players can visit….like for dwarves it would be stout ales and drunken brawling, while for humans it would be wine related, for elves it would be bottles of milk because it’s almost their bed time (jk) - but you get the idea.
All of this to say that I personally prefer uniqueness, and honestly think carbon copies of real life holidays would be a disservice to the exceptional world you are creating.
The only thing I would want were no static events. In GW2 and other games, these events are always the same every year. (Same quests, almost no new things. Just copy + paste each year.)
-I would also like to have events like "Evil Santa Boss" that only appear once or twice in the entire event and are also difficult to kill. Something like a legendary world boss. Who only shows up briefly for 4 hours.
- Event dungeons.
-Event castle for PvP players.
etc.