[Feedback Request] Alpha Two Commissions Preview Shown in February Livestream

Hello glorious community,

We’d like your feedback on the Commissions Preview shown during the February 2024 Development Update Livestream.

To help guide this conversation, here are a few thought starters you can choose from:

How do you feel about the Commissions Preview?
What excites you about playing and interacting with the Commissions system?
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Commissions Preview?
Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
How do you feel about the way Commissions, side quests, and story arcs worked together during the Commissions Preview?

Please don’t feel limited by the thought starters above. Feel free to share anything you’d like about Ashes of Creation’s Alpha Two Commissions Preview shown during the February Development Update

We’ll be compiling a report for the design team on Friday, March 15, 2024, so please try to get your feedback into this thread by then!

Everyone here at Intrepid Studios looks forward to reading all the feedback you have to share!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydYFqNMQGkM

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Finov

NiKr wrote: »

edit: holy hell the amount of stuff Steven dropped on death was crazy. Is that the current setting on death penalties?! Cause ooooh boi.

Yes, let there be a complete waste of resources.

KhaosTheEmpty

Cant wait!

Finov

I think it would be interesting to add pvp quests. Let's say 2 NPCs have the same quest. One group of people takes this quest and runs to complete it, and the second group of people should interfere. Killing mobs, collecting and surrendering resources, and anything else. That is, such a quest is launched when, for example, a group of 1-5-10 people takes, for example, such a quest and waits for the opposite group to be found. After confirmation, the quest starts. Accordingly, the system must take into account character levels for balance.

Solvryn

How do you feel about the Commissions Preview?

It was alright it wasn't particularly special to me, it's nice to see something for all ranges of time available to play the game. I didn't have an expectation of commissions being anything other than advanced dailies.

What excites you about playing and interacting with the Commissions system?

I don't particularly care for townboard/advanced dailies. And while its neat to see quests be a "mini epic", they'll still only ever be a quest. There is no emotional evocation within me at all about them.

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Commissions Preview?

So when a solo player and casual has invested this time into these missions and state building, what do you think they're going to do when they lose their node? What do you think will happen if your answer is to restrict node wars to a specialty event that doesn't occur enough to as apart regular PvP activities? I would like to see where it all ties in and your answer to this. I have a good idea of what the casual player who does these quests and then in turn loses that node. So I hope there is much more planned to this system and this was only truly a peek in the window at the system, otherwise if casuals lose their city they'll quit and if the world isn't changing enough the PvPers will be dissatisfied.

Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!

A daily is a daily no matter how you try to spin it and a quest is a quest no matter how many times you try to upgrade the wheel. If you do them once in one game you've done them in all games. Townboards are townboards no matter what game they're in. I'm indifferent towards it because they're not interesting.

What makes anything interesting in terms of a quest is the combat, class, and AI interesting along the way and we're a fart way off from seeing those three things receive a lot of polish.

Tab - it's at the limits of what devs can do with it because it's seen every iteration under the sun. 20 more years of WoW, ArcheAge, and GW2 does not have any appeal or I'd be playing those games. I'd like to see an Ashes of Creation hybrid combat system and not another combat clone, there's nothing about the system that particularly has "Intrepid Studios" stamped on it so far.

Classes - I'm more confident that you guys are going to make Summoner interesting and ignore feedback that makes Summoner like every summoner spec seen before it. (Which is the path you should take for every aspect of the game, while like the rest of the archetypes are wholesale generic, is looking to have an Intrepid Studios stamp on it, which is what I'm particularly excited for.)

How do you feel about the way Commissions, side quests, and story arcs worked together during the Commissions Preview?

If they're the path I have to take to get to fun interactive PvE and PvP then so be it, but so far I'm indifferent.

Syreena

]How do you feel about the Commissions Preview?

Overall I love questing, dailies any type or guided gameplay, I am always a fan of. I like that its called Commissions to set it apart a little bit from other typical questing even if its at its core the same thing.

I enjoyed seeing how the Commissions took you out to an area and then there were other things to engage with quest wise and discovery wise.

What excites you about playing and interacting with the Commissions system?

I am excited for the exploration it promotes. I hope along the way there will be achievements, things to collect like view points or discovery locations. I like to wander and I hope that the commissions will encourage that type of wandering and discovering of the game.

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Commissions Preview?

I will focus on concerns for this one since I wrote about excitements in the previous question. I am concerned about the nature of the board. I can imagine in a popular node there being TONS of players huddled around this board on a regular and with only 8 selectable commissions I am worried about population around these questing areas. I understand as nodes progress their will be more boards and hopefully each board has different commissions to choose. How many of these commissions can one take?

Also I am concerned about getting quests mostly from a board. In a node that is living and breathing with townsfolk and people trying to repopulate a world I want to fall in love with those townsfolk. If I am not engaging with them then who are they but just that guy who walks down the street with a log? I want to have a connection to the towns people and the town itself and I feel the board does take away from that. I dont mind a board in addition to folks in town giving quests,

Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!

It feels similar to New World in a way. In New World a mayor will be able to dictate what procs on the board for activities and they also refresh on a regular basis. You feel obligated to preform these tasks for the good for the town but in reality your doing the same thing as every one else in the town. It feels like we are all sheep doing the same thing for the same goals. I would like to see diversity of choice.

How do you feel about the way Commissions, side quests, and story arcs worked together during the Commissions Preview?

Once you head out on a commission I would love it if the side quests in the area gave more "Choose your own adventure" vibes. Maybe you could choose to give that polis to that brother minotaur or you could have chosen to bring it to another minotaur who then would know that the exiled minotaur is trading with him and rat him out or something. I am not sure but I would like to see players get to do things other then just the same thing. Maybe instead of us all killing minotaurs some people had a commission in the same area to get totems from their camps or to chop down minotaur touched trees that only grow in that area. But over all they still give exp. to the same story arc that will trigger the storm. So the players are all doing things in the same area to contribute to a collective goal but its not pigeon holed into the same activity. So if me and a friend start in town and the board has me going to kill minotaurs maybe my friend gets collect totems so we can work together to get both of our activities completed in a more timely fashion. It feels a little linear currently by all having the same activity to complete.

SongRune

How do you feel about the Commissions Preview?

It looks about normal to me. This is what I'm used to from other games I play.

What excites you about playing and interacting with the Commissions system?

The problem that I tend to see in games with this system other than FFXI, ED, TL, is solved easily enough by connecting commissions down through vassal chains and trade relationships, something Ashes is poised to do.

In all of these games I have my usual play areas and cycles, but the organizations and game structures will sometimes send me outside of my home turf, to make deliveries, or handle some matter in the neighboring regions, or areas I don't tend to go to very often. This then has the effect of making me notice the changes in situation there, and having a concrete connection (even if just RP) between the status in that area and the reason I was sent over there in the first place, or something else that matters to me in my normal flows, even if only for context.

In Elite Dangerous, I'm sometimes asked to do a delivery or an "investigation" in a further away system that I don't spend time in. In the process of this, I might find out that that system has a famine, or security issue, which may be either related to, or incidental to, the reason I was sent out in the first place. It can also be very easy to find RP reasons that my faction's leaders sent me over there. Whether because I'm a specialist in X or Y activity, or it's something that one can easily perceive as linked to my factions own politics, internal state, broader goals, or similar things. I find myself having a compelling personal reason to spend time, even if only briefly, in a different environment, as well as a concrete feeling of how it relates to either my personal interests, or those of my "node".

In FFXI, the status of the Crystal War shifts on a regular basis, and sometimes, depending on the positions of our forces, and the forces of our allied nations, operations tend to open up in forward areas, or even allied just areas that we are covering for them this week (this happens occasionally). I get new types of missions available that are specific to those forward areas. Even if the mission types are familiar, the means of executing them may be very different depending on the terrain and structure of that region. It provides a new perspective on areas that I am familiar with, and a reason to visit some that I haven't been to recently, while still integrating this with my regular game flows to provide a sense of a more living world. Even if I don't think too much about the changes in my local area, I notice more clearly the same level of changes elsewhere, if only simply because more change has happened in total since the last time I saw it.

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Commissions Preview?

What do you mean "the additional lightning damage in rain isn't implemented yet"?

Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!

Covered above.

How do you feel about the way Commissions, side quests, and story arcs worked together during the Commissions Preview?

I liked the BDO x Netflix "Cursed" collab too. I don't feel like the showcase did a great job of telling me how they worked together, but obviously I can imagine, and my main experience with non-static (sorta) "breadcrumbs" writing of this quality that comes from the game, and not my RP leader, is from that collab, and these.

Cadac

I like that players can put in some quality time, when they are short on it.

Azherae

Ok! While talking to group I figured out how to keep this short.

Econ Whining
I know why I don't have faith in Ashes economy yet, now.

In FFXI, EVE, Elite, your goal is money or fun factor, and levels are incidental. Leveling doesn't, in itself, pay money, at best it multiplies your gains a little bit. FFXI manages because it's a PvE game, EVE manages because it is 'full destruction' PvP, and Elite is in the middle, where you can't lose a LOT, but you also don't gain a lot because 'levels' are nowhere near the same type of thing.

These systems shown are great if Ashes is that type of game. Where you can just 'not bother to level up, but go out and gather and kill mobs in competition or niche to make money, and the thing you want, due to scarcity, is money.

If you don't want money, it's usually because the thing you want to buy isn't on the market and you have to go get it yourself. This is the core mental state of the three games I mentioned, as I experience them, actually. You want something, you go get it. If you have something you enjoy getting more, you get that and sell it and buy the thing if available.

Similarly, if a quest does not reward something you like, and isn't very fun for you, you just don't do it. You don't necessarily 'look for a different quest that does' either, because questing for mats and similar is only efficient when no one else wants to do it.

My advice is don't incentivize Commissions too much, basically. It might seem like a good engagement tool, but I feel it'll mess your game up. In Elite, my allied faction, by itself, acts in 20+ star systems. The Emperor controls thousands. Each and every one of these has its own 'Commissions board' equiv. Technically every single station or port has a separate one. I'm supposed to feel like sometimes 'I just don't care about this, it's not my thing'. And it works because just within one random sector, I know there are over two thousand missions I could choose from just by flying around for between 10 and 20 minutes (give or take 400 - Average of 7 missions per faction, 7 factions per system, 3 ports per system, 20 populated systems in what I'm calling a 'sector').

One team member noted as her feedback to pass on, that if she was your Econ designer she'd be mad at you for this. As 'our' Econ designer I don't entirely agree, even with my cynicism, but in explaining to her why, I realized what I needed to say on her behalf, i.e. the above.

Oh, also, being able to kill people for loot the moment they try to kill a boss is bad. Not a 'make it instanced' or 'protect PvE players' suggestion, though. Just be careful with the conditions under which the PvX happens. The Stormcall event is a prime example of a spot in the game where a very specific type of unnecessary pain-point occurs. Not because of the PvP, but because you created a situation where the goal is for functionally unprepared players to randomly engage in PvE and then effectively broadcasted their intended location to everyone in the area. So please solve this by changing the reward system/structure for sidequests that have area-tells.

It's not clear what happens if someone else just kills off the Stormcaller, anyway, so maybe I'm just whining here too, but there you go.

Arya_Yeshe

This seems to be the most promising system regarding content; it's brilliant to issue commissions based on world data and direct players to what's relevant.

Weather events are fantastic, and I anticipate more occurrences like that, including earthquakes and volcano eruptions, I want to see mayhem on the land.

In Eve Online, since 2023, there's been the Opportunities system, which is entirely player-driven. In short, the CEO of a corporation creates quests and uses the corporation's resources to reward their members, both for PvP and PvE. CCP plans to expand the system, but currently, you can't create a public opportunity, which is a downside. I'd love to be able to launch public opportunities so that random people in the region could work for me and receive payment. Would be great castles and guilds having their own comissions board with player driven comissions.

DarkestLink

How do you feel about the Commissions Preview?

The system looks like it has a lot of potential! It sounded like some side quests may be hidden / hard to find, especially due to the fact that some quests won't be available depending upon the world's state. Encountering new side-quests should hopefully make commissions feel a little less grindy when you're sent to the same area multiple times.

What excites you about playing and interacting with the Commissions system?

I think it would be really cool to have multiple ways to complete certain side-quests. For example, when the minotaur handed the healing poultice over to Steven, my first thought was, "A random stranger just handed you a valuable object. Can you just keep that and use it for yourself?" I like the idea of being able to decide whether I want to be good or evil.

It wasn't mentioned in the stream, but I also like the thought of having secret quest completion options. Imagine that there was another NPC in the area that was dying and would accept the poultice as well. Finding the wounded NPC and choosing to give them the healing poultice instead, could lead you down a different quest chain with better rewards. I think that finding those types of secrets would feel really rewarding!

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Commissions Preview? How do you feel about the way Commissions, side quests, and story arcs worked together during the Commissions Preview?

One major concern I have is in regards to the pacing of the world state. Its really cool to have my interactions have effects upon the world, but in order for those interactions to mean anything the world has to stay in a particular state for a meaningful period of time. On paper, the idea of killing enough minotaurs to summon the stormcaller chieftain sounds really cool. However, I think this might be really frustrating in practice. If the chieftain has a high respawn rate, then the area will always be stormy and the event of summoning him won't feel special. On the other hand, if his respawn rate is too long, then I think most players will feel really conflicted. Do I grind minotaurs indefinitely, hoping the chieftain isn't on a 6 hour respawn cooldown, or do I just move on and pick up new commissions to level more efficiently?

Another concern I have is regarding quest sharing. Steven said that all quests are currently shareable. I hope he meant that all quests are shareable if the player is eligible to complete them and within a certain range of the quest sharer. Otherwise, you'll see some weird shenanigans from players. Guilds will park a player at the node's commission board and use quest sharing to avoid having to come back to town to get new commissions. Also, you might see players holding onto epic and legendary commissions so that they can share them with others. I can imagine my guild telling me that I'm not allowed to complete my commission because the tank isn't online tonight and he needs the reward from my epic commission.

Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!

The commission boards look very similar to the ones in New World. In that game, you quickly learn that certain commission types have much better reward/effort ratios than others. Even though you're given many different options, I found myself completing the same few commissions repeatedly. It would be nice to see diminishing returns when repeating commissions to encourage gameplay variety.

I also found myself picking up commissions and purposely waiting to complete them because waiting for the boards to reset was often more efficient. If I had a commission to loot chests in a certain area, I wouldn't complete it until the board reset and gave me the commission to kill mobs in the same area. I don't have a solution, but playing commission roulette to try to optimize your grinding efficiency is annoying so I hope you can find a better way to handle this issue.

Nerror

Quick bug-report since I am re-watching the video: The name of the recipe for the Stormcaller's Axe has a typo in it "Recipe: Stromcaller's Axe".

Veeshan

Gaul_ wrote: »

Great stream. I only have a couple points of feedback.

I did not like the presentation of the commission board. I know the UI is a work in progress, however, the UI direction was very mobile game looking. I think a different style should be considered. Maybe something that incorporates the node's racial aesthetic and the bulletin board's appearance with the paper hand bills?

Otherwise, I loved the monster ability VFX, and the event and story arc spawning nearby with the weather changes. The resurrection VFX was very nice as well, that was brilliant.

UI for it was literaly just the New world townboard quests

Veeshan

Finov wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

edit: holy hell the amount of stuff Steven dropped on death was crazy. Is that the current setting on death penalties?! Cause ooooh boi.

Yes, let there be a complete waste of resources.

its only half ur material drops on death

Veeshan

Weather needs a bit of work for example when u jumped off the cliff portion the rain suddenly went up instead of down cause u were falling

But other than that it seemed pretty good

i kinda wouldnt mind seeing some more chase for much further than they currently do. If there a few mobs that chase for much longer or even until kills or till you get to settlement it add a bit more diversity/threat to encounters. You can just add certain mob names would chase you for a long long time like minotaur hunters or bloodhounds for example where player would learn from experience on what mob names will pursue for much longer than normal mobs or you could just have a universal suffix or something to indicate the threat that wont give up the chase as easily. I kinda miss thing like mob trains in Everquest it added a real dynamic danger to things like dungeons for example.

BraydenS

A few questions and a bit of feedback in no particular order or theme...

Questions:
What happens when a node levels up while you are in the location that updates? Let's say I just cleared out a ruin of mobs. My health is low but I calculated my fights accordingly. Suddenly the node levels up. Am I now surrounded by a new set of mobs to fit the new event? Do I simply die and accrue exp debt because of something I couldn't control?

When happens to quests that you for an event that ends, or commissions after the 30 minute period? Do they disappear from my journal? Do I get partial rewards for however much I did complete? Am I still able to complete them and turn them in if I run into the event again?

Feedback
I love what I saw with the dynamic quests that can show up around you as the world progresses, but I do worry that it may get overloading and stressful for some players. We can already see where you can get overwhelmed with quests from watching Steven play. He starts leaves Miraleth with 2 commissions, and then in less than 30 minutes he has been sent on errands, killed a miniboss, killed mushrooms, and even missed another side quest at the start. While I am excited about the prospect of always having something to do and some quest drawing me in, I always worry that I personally will get overwhelmed when I suddenly am getting pulled in 5 different directions with 5 new quests and each quest that I complete leads me to 5 more quests. I'm not sure what you could do to alleviate this, or if you should do anything, but I figured I'd leave this here as food for thought.

I really liked seeing how mobs tether. I always hate it when I accidentally go out of the tether range of a mob when it's at 1% health and then I have to watch it run back to its initial position and regain all of its hitpoints. I think having them run back and slowly heal while remaining vulnerable is a nice compromise and I'm excited to see how it plays out in real scenarios.

The lighting in the rain felt off to me. It still felt far too sunny. Shadows were too well defined. I liked the wind and the rain effect itself, but the lighting killed the illusion for me.

Overall I'm impressed as always and I'm eagerly awaiting the Alpha2 release. Keep up the good work! Intrepid is a light in the industry. I have great faith in your entire team and have no doubt that you'll deliver a game that you all can be proud of.

Liniker

Good stream, happy with everything that was shown today about commissions, cant honestly think about anything I dislike or I am concerned about it, just good job! This is the right path.

VFX are looking awesome, love the new ice and lightning skills on the mage, blink as well, rez on the cleric, overall very well done with those vfx looking like a finished game. The weather was great, the environment looked awesome,

something I noticed is that you shouldn't ever be able to outrun mobs like Steven did, that makes it so that if you are in a mount or playing a more mobile class you will just ignore everything, mobs should have CCs and slow you down when you get hit in the back,

also something thing to point out, based on a game I am currently playing, MoE, its such a shame when developers put in the work to make a game look great at high settings but allow players tu just turn off grass/fog/shadows that give you a significant PvP advantage being able to see loot/things on the ground and spot players easily with graphics turned down... I really hope intrepid thinks about this, playing on ultra should not put you at any disadvantage in a pvp game, you want players and streamers enjoying and showcasing the looks of the world at high settings, so please don't allow for fog/shadows/vegetation to be removed think about different ways to optimize the game in lower settings.

finally, combat-related... I'm not sure why it seems we moved back to full split body with no movement reduction when using a greatsword, but its looking a lot worse than what was shown back in 2022 with how the melee basic attacks used to be, its bland and slow now, used to be snappy and made sense with a partial body animation and reduced movement based on the weapon, I hope what you have now is just placeholder but I'm not sure why would that be the case since it used to be a loot better and was working just fine,

KingDDD

How do you feel about the Commissions Preview?
Its a a Public Quest system with a little more depth. PQs themselves just dont feel as exciting as they did 15 years ago.

What excites you about playing and interacting with the Commissions system?
Should be good to promote foot traffic to specific areas, and make me personally invest in the areas I play in most.

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Commissions Preview?
Level ranges for commissions are gonna be hard to balance. Are there any that promote pvp?

Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
Its the public quest system from Warhammer. For those interested here's a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeqJFPH7jWE&t=592s

How do you feel about the way Commissions, side quests, and story arcs worked together during the Commissions Preview?
Should be fine

Please don’t feel limited by the thought starters above. Feel free to share anything you’d like about Ashes of Creation’s Alpha Two Commissions Preview shown during the February Development Update
its kinda a standard feature nowdays. Id like to see comissons have a little more spice to them. Maybe not every quest selected switches every 30mins. but instead some stick around until specific requirements are met. Maybe the ability to fail them affecting what cards come up at a later time. Just somethign to make them a little more.

-T0Mb-

I liked very much this livestream! This comission system looks promising and interesting. Also I liked the quests what we saw on the preview. The new armor sets looked stunning especially the dungeon light armor set!

Only thing that stood in my eye was the animations when the summoner minotaur was killed and it's summoned spirits just wanished without any death animations. It would look better if the spirits would vaporize when their master dies. I think this is temporary thing and will change in the process but I just wanted to give some feedback.

Overall this stream looked fantastic and I can't wait for the next livestream!

Lash

I would prefer way less information given to the player by the map. Events popping up on the map showing the player where to run to in game is what kills exploration in games. At the least you should have to see something in game before you get a map icon. A players eyes should be focused on the world not on the map. It is perfectly fine if a player misses an event appearing or a small side quest. Missing things adds replay value to the game.

As far as commissions go I would prefer if you had to go back to the node and get your rewards from a Commissions officer NPC or something like that. I do not like when rewards are collected from a UI anywhere. Also because they can be shared by other players you should but the friction point on rewards collection not picking up the commissions because it is a more logical place for it. I do not want this to be a system where 1 guy goes back to town and mass shares their commissions to a raid and they never have to leave an area.

The chest spawn at the boss event for the "everyone gets a reward" will encourage large groups to just stomp this content for a quick reward and move to the next thing to stomp. Rewards MUST be limited to a certain number of players and hit diminishing returns for large groups very quickly. Event trains with huge groups are are not fun.

Not sure about the timer on commissions. I think I would actually prefer a refresh with a node currency cost instead so it would not feel like dailies. Not sure how that would be done though. This is something I want to play test to see how it feels.

Side note about the minotuar summoner. I think the summons should not instantly despawn but start draining health after their master dies. It is odd that there is no reason to attack them.

SnowElf

How do you feel about the Commissions Preview?

I think this is a fantastic concept that will allow players to remain engaged with the environment, allowing for them to earn additional rewards and possibly even discover small pockets of Verra that can trigger real-time events and add to the immersion of the game overall.

What excites you about playing and interacting with the Commissions system?

Since these commissions rest on a repeated loop over time, I have a feeling that with how creative intrepid is, they will find a way to make it so that rare commissions appear during certain times. I also enjoy the extra crumbs of lore that these commissions will provide.

Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Commissions Preview?

I am excited to see as nodes progress, how the commissions may change, or even possibly offer rare cosmetics or other resources to the players.

Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
How do you feel about the way Commissions, side quests, and story arcs worked together during the Commissions Preview?

I have seen certain systems such as crafting writs, or other boards you can approach in MMOs which offer somewhat of a similar concept. One thing that I often loathe in gaming though is reputation grinding, but with commissions, it may make that a little bit easier on the player, which I am all for!

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