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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
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Splinter Topic: Narrative Design Hell Is Other People
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Just shifting out some responses to a specific, great post by Ace1234 in a specific thread:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/67715/ashes-terrain-topography-and-cohesion
Full text of post below:
Yes, the title is a reference to the literary work/play, heavyhandedness is unfortunately subjective. Very meta. It was either that or something about a "Three Body Problem".
MMORPG Devs are limited by the idea that they should make most of their players at least feel good. But unlike single player games or even competitive team games, MMORPGs are big and very few players care about all their aspects. The concepts laid out for the above area and related interactions are incredibly cool and perhaps even realizable in some modern games, but from what I know of MMORPG players, a nightmare for feedback from a certain subset.
Imagine a player who goes online, reads the guide-history created by the first player to achieve the "Revealer" status, and follows it, then realizes that this guide/experience wasn't about 'making them also be a Revealer' or changing the world somehow, but just so that they could experience the story/concept.
They're able to have the experience, but not the reward of either the title or the recognition.
Or, you can imagine being in the pitch room for such a content type, having to argue against the manager who says how useless it is to make this content which effectively serves one person (in their eyes) and 'doesn't even have anything to do with combat or competition'.
Or the Community Team subjected to the dozens if not hundreds of complaints or even 'bug reports' about how X player didn't care about all this stuff, just wanted a gearpiece they saw in a Guide (because at least one person per Server might have it, and given Ashes' design, there may be another chance to get it, it wouldn't be ridiculous to have the Revealer or similar actually lose any reward item if they are killed while Corrupted, the world could even revert somewhat).
"What's the point of making this content that I personally can't achieve?"
Anyways, my heart goes out to all the Narrative/Lore designers and Devs trying their best to juggle the different player types, but this thread is mostly so my group can contain their 'ranting' to a more relevant thread...
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/67715/ashes-terrain-topography-and-cohesion
Full text of post below:
Vaknar
Sometimes I worry my posts are a bit too theory heavy and lack specific comprehensive examples, so I ran my post through chat gpt to come up with an area concept that reflects some of the things I mentioned, and thought it sounded pretty cool, enjoy.
🌑 Zone Concept: The Weeping Hollow
📍 Setting Summary:
A gloomy, sunken forest nestled in a crescent-shaped valley, constantly shrouded in mist. Once home to a reclusive sect of moon-worshippers, it was sealed off centuries ago following a catastrophic event known as the Lament. Now it’s overrun by strange flora, ghostlights, and corrupted wildlife.
This area evolves over time, reacts to player choices, and contains deep lore hidden in its terrain, making it a narrative sandbox for exploration, discovery, and role-play.
🧱 Core Concepts from the Post on Display
1. Worldbuilding / Narrative Integration
🔹 Visual Lore & Structure:
The forest layout itself follows lunar geometry — winding paths mirror crescent shapes, and ruins are arranged around a ritual basin in the shape of a full moon crater.
Statues of a three-faced moon goddess appear, each face turned toward a different cardinal direction — hinting at philosophical divisions among the ancient sect (Truth, Memory, and Mystery).
🔹 Layered Narrative Access:
Early on: Players find tablets and murals hinting at a ritual to “drown memory in moonlight.”
Later in story (or via exploration): They learn the “Lament” was a failed ritual to erase a collective trauma — the goddess divided into aspects as punishment.
The more players uncover, the more their understanding of the forest shifts — it’s not a cursed place, but a spiritual scar.
🔹 World-state storytelling:
If a player sides with certain factions, statues begin to "weep" starlight or blood.
Interacting with a certain hidden shrine unlocks a hidden history, changing dialogue in future quests across the world. NPCs may now recognize the player as a "Lament-Touched."
2. Mystery and Discovery
🔍 Non-linear Exploration:
The mist changes dynamically — obscuring and revealing new routes based on time of day, season, or player attunement.
Day: Wildlife aggressive, few landmarks visible.
Night: Ghostlights appear, statues rotate, secret glyphs glow.
Full Moon Event (monthly): A door in the hollowed tree opens to a hidden sanctum.
🧠 Knowledge-based Gameplay:
Puzzle shrines scattered in the zone require interpretation of moon phases, statue orientation, and lore clues.
An abandoned observatory on a hill lets players align its telescope to the glowing craters to reveal glyphs on nearby trees. These glyphs unlock an optional class-specific skill if deciphered.
🧩 Environmental Interactions:
Certain rare herbs only bloom under specific moonlight cycles — they can be used to brew elixirs or unlock alternate dialogue options in key storylines.
A rare creature, the Velumbra Stag, can only be summoned if players lure it with moon lilies planted during a prior seasonal event — encouraging long-term mystery-solving.
3. Atmosphere
🎧 Audio-Visual Integration:
Ambient audio includes whispering wind that changes pitch with proximity to hidden lore markers.
Leitmotifs evolve with player progress: a soft harp theme becomes more dissonant or hopeful depending on story paths chosen (e.g., embracing the memory vs. erasing it).
Lighting is volumetric, diffused through fog. As players solve more mysteries, the fog starts to part more frequently, letting in beams of moonlight — giving the sense that the forest is “responding” to the player.
🎨 Theming:
Visuals support the theme of half-remembered history — half-built bridges, statues with missing faces, trees growing upside-down.
Optional role-play tents exist for players — e.g., they can meditate at shrines to receive visions that influence story arcs, even if they’re not on the “main path.”
🧭 How It All Comes Together in Different Player Journeys
🧙♂️ Player A: The Scholar Path (Truth)
Focused on learning the forest's history.
Solves puzzles, finds the sealed library under the lake using moon glyphs.
Discovers the true nature of the Lament and shares it globally — this causes the mist to thin permanently for their server, changing visibility for all.
World perceives them as a “Revealer.” NPCs treat them with reverence, and certain items cost less or become unlocked.
⚔️ Player B: The Purger Path (Control)
Wants to purge the corruption and harness power from the Weeping Hollow.
Sides with a fire-worshipping order that believes in cleansing the land.
Burns down one of the spirit groves. Mist recedes temporarily but angers the Velumbra Stag, who now appears hostile in future encounters.
This creates dynamic conflict: future players must choose to appease or destroy the beast — affecting future seasonal events.
🌙 Player C: The Role-Player (Mystery/Memory)
Focuses on immersing in the mood, meditating at moon shrines during full moons.
Unlocks secret dialogue options for key NPCs in far-off cities (thanks to hidden memories gained in visions).
Over time, becomes a member of a secret roleplay-only cult of the Three-Faced Moon.
Special cloak reward only available through this long-form spiritual RP path.
🧩 Final Layer: Systemic Interdependence
The map is designed to reflect all of this: layered topography with fog/mist effects, persistent weather conditions, landmark visibility lines, and timed events.
The zone’s design encourages return visits under different world-states, with multiple optional storylines and character build effects tied into the area's mysteries.
✅ TL;DR
The Weeping Hollow showcases:
Worldbuilding via lore-rich landmarks and layered history.
Mystery & Discovery through exploration, hidden systems, and player choices that change perception and access.
Atmosphere via coordinated audio-visuals, emotional theming, and symbolic layout.
And most importantly, all these elements interlock dynamically, reacting to player agency, faction alignment, roleplay, time, and story progression — just as the original forum post envisions.
Yes, the title is a reference to the literary work/play, heavyhandedness is unfortunately subjective. Very meta. It was either that or something about a "Three Body Problem".
MMORPG Devs are limited by the idea that they should make most of their players at least feel good. But unlike single player games or even competitive team games, MMORPGs are big and very few players care about all their aspects. The concepts laid out for the above area and related interactions are incredibly cool and perhaps even realizable in some modern games, but from what I know of MMORPG players, a nightmare for feedback from a certain subset.
Imagine a player who goes online, reads the guide-history created by the first player to achieve the "Revealer" status, and follows it, then realizes that this guide/experience wasn't about 'making them also be a Revealer' or changing the world somehow, but just so that they could experience the story/concept.
They're able to have the experience, but not the reward of either the title or the recognition.
Or, you can imagine being in the pitch room for such a content type, having to argue against the manager who says how useless it is to make this content which effectively serves one person (in their eyes) and 'doesn't even have anything to do with combat or competition'.
Or the Community Team subjected to the dozens if not hundreds of complaints or even 'bug reports' about how X player didn't care about all this stuff, just wanted a gearpiece they saw in a Guide (because at least one person per Server might have it, and given Ashes' design, there may be another chance to get it, it wouldn't be ridiculous to have the Revealer or similar actually lose any reward item if they are killed while Corrupted, the world could even revert somewhat).
"What's the point of making this content that I personally can't achieve?"
Anyways, my heart goes out to all the Narrative/Lore designers and Devs trying their best to juggle the different player types, but this thread is mostly so my group can contain their 'ranting' to a more relevant thread...
Stellar Devotion.
2
Comments
And people ask for that stuff mostly because they believe that THEY will be the one to have that ability. THEY will be cool and strong enough to stand out. And then when reality comes in and they realize that there's always a cheater/kid/3rd world country grinder for money player that is always better than them - they start complaining and try to make these special ablilities available to their own skill/time lvl.
It always makes me laugh when older players, who played a shitton in their youth, start asking to be pampered and catered too, even though when they were young - they woulda hated if the old people of that time were the ones pampered.
In other words, as cool as these kinds of designs might seem in our minds or in different media - they do not work in real world practice, due to human psychology. And if you try to create something special for literally every player in the game - you'd need SAO-lvl AI that can rebuild the world at will and create all of that content. But alas, for now we only have a text generator that people rely on WAY TOO FUCKING MUCH.
@Azherae
I think that might be "missing the forest for the trees" a bit. The idea of special recognitions is such a small aspect of the reasons behind that type of design, and worst case scenario that particular aspect could be left out altogether. But im personally not one for participation trophies, so I wouldn't be one of those who would complain. Obviously some would, but that doesn't seem like it goes against Ashes philosophy in general (Ashes is not for everyone, blah, blah) and there are already similar planned systems as the one who highlight as being a problem (such as the limited legendary weapons on a server). So, if Ashes sticks to its philosophy and target audience, I think this kind of things adds value rather than detracting from it.
The real problem is the one Azherae mentioned, where you have to constantly balance and consider the perferred content types of various player types. But there are solutions for this imo which Ashes has already taken for other systems as well (like seperating content relating to macro vs micro competitions for example). I don't think there always has to be the problem of having "competing ideas", so I think you could definitely can have content for different types of players without necessarily having to sacrifice the quality given smart design. Worst case scenario is they don't have the resources to do it all and have to choose who to cater to, in which case great, but that might be something worth getting feedback or testing data on to see what would be worth investing into (unless Azherae you are saying your data implies it would not be worth it), I personally don't have enough info/experience on this particular perspective to have an opinion either way so I would just take your word for it.
And also, creating a 3d model, a stat stick and a bit of description for it is not that much dev work. Creating an event/quest/storyarc (M O D U L E) where several different people can make several different choices, with several different outcomes and several different rewards (even if just titles, though the npcs calling you that would also have to be a separate code-based hook) - THAT is a lot of work.
There's a reason why the instanced dungeons in the game will be the story ones. Steven wants to tell his story and wants as many people as possible to experience it, while also keeping the dev costs as optimal as possible. Making a branching story is difficult even in single player games (ME3 3-color lightbeams were a massive indicator of that). In an mmo that's even harder, because you gotta account for all the future interactions with those players, cause if you don't then the immersion and the effect of the story strongly diminishes.
I'd probably be all for this kind of thing post-release, but that would highly depend on whether Ashes is successful enough to support that level of development.
We should probably all be 'afraid' of a future in which junior Narrative Designers with less oversight are implementing ChatGPT questlines outright, but on the other hand, it gets right back to the core of it all. For a lot of people, more content is better than 'waiting for good content', and not just because 'they don't really care about the content that much'.
(as for 'what my experience tells me', it's only that people complain, but because they complain asymmetrically, I wouldn't want to draw conclusions, for that, you have to look at games that have strong modding scenes or private servers)
My interpretation of the Story Arc system is that the open world would have a degree of story reactivity. Yes, it is a lot of work but the emergence, reactivity, and storytelling envisioned is also a core aspect of what Ashes is trying to be. Regarding the potential outcomes/possibilities, that is basically what the story arc system would already be accounting for, and there is already loads of complexity planned for the world predicates, events, and branching stories of the server. So I personally don't see much of a difference in what has been shown/explained to already be planned, vs. the potential ideas I presented.
Regarding interest from non-competitive types, I am unsure of this. Seems like a good question for @Dygz. Does something like this seem interesting to you as a player?
The closest we have to a "you'll have a unique personal story" is this
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Story_arcs
It is possible for some storylines to relate to a darker/evil path, if a character should choose.[18]
But that was stated back in 2017, and I'm sure you know just how many things have changed in the design since then - most of them towards the side of making development easier and design more straightforward.
As much as I'd love a massive sprawling M O D U L E, with several impacting endings and full player choice on what kind of interaction they'll get out of that ending - I expect all of this to just be statistical. 100 players chose to speak to npc A and did its quest. 95 players did npc B's quest. M O D U L E progresses down path A. Rinse repeat.
We'll also, supposedly, have one-off M O D U L E S that don't even repeat once they're done, so I'd at least hoooope that we might get the interactions your post mentioned, where npc can address you based on the decisions you made during that quest chain, but we'll have to see if Intrepid will go that deep.
Yeah, we are the locusts, we do consoom. Ashes definitely has quite a few systems where "waiting for good content" is almost the intrinsic nature of the content, so we'll see how the majority of players react to that.
Players ask for things, and then proceed to completely skip them. Which causes a pain for devs who truly love their work (Tico from TL talks about this a bit in an interview) and is a detriment to the very same players. There's no point in asking for content to consume if you're bad at consuming. That's the core of my problem with players.
I will provide a few examples, see if you can find yourselves reflected in any of them. Because if you do, it means you have, hopefully unintentionally, contributed to the design hell.
1) While some players hide their problems by just having maxed gear, late night Dimensional Circle runs in TL (instanced dungeon run with boss at the end) often involve less geared players, which will result in the following: players skip literally all non-mandatory mob fights on the route to the boss like usual, then someone messes up some execution element and the angry swarm of mobs catches up and kills someone. Then people get mad at each other and someone leaves, and we have to search for new members. I've had this process take literally 3 times the time it would've taken to just clear the dungeon once, the normal way
2) I once had a Dimensional Circle run in the orc region and in order to unlock the boss area, we had to defeat a few orcs on a narrow bridge. One of the orcs got pushed by a player ability on the rocks under the bridge, making it impossible to advance. In order to resolve this, I climbed down to beat it. For various level design reasons, climbing back up takes a bit even if trying to kill oneself and respawn. As thanks, my party started without me, and I got locked out of getting any rewards. Please take a moment to process what this means on the design side. Are we expecting devs to design every single square meter of their content with the base assumption their playerbase is made of scummy weasels? Do we even pay them enough for that?
3) In a separate run, I've had a player complain the entire time that the party was being weird or weak (we were about 10-15% slower than usual peak hour tryhard comp) and focused on dropping really unpleasant comments instead of working on the teamwork. When I finally had enough and asked them to stop so I wouldn't block them, their reaction was along the lines of "lol I don't know you, what are you going to do about it?". This might be hard to see at first, but in order to minimize these kinds of reaction, devs need to work really hard on making sure those gaps are not large or frequent for most of the playerbase. Can you do that? I'd quit before I started.
4) I recently had a new member join our guild. They were a returning TL player who had the same standard experience of their party members skipping everything and taking the most direct routes to the boss. When our guild proceeded to full clear the dungeon run, they discovered new and interesting parts about dungeons they'd already done many times before. How's that for asking for content you won't consume?
So here's my tl;dr: from all of my gaming experience, the kind of people that devs need to design around the most is like that toxic rival party in isekai animes. When we watch those shows we root for their downfall, when we play MMOs we become them. How do you design for that?
In many ways for me, design hell isn't other people, it is 'other genre's/niche's that feel entitled for THIS game to be THEIR game'. In an mmo, if you have fishing fishers will ask you to make it a fishing game. If you have pvp gankers will ask you to make it a gank box. If you have team vs team fights herofighters will ask you to make a moba. If you need funding from angel/demon investors, the investors will ask for you to have loot boxes and a heavily monetized shop front. The magic of mmo design in particular (or any crossgenre game for that matter) is learning how to make a game for a niche that fills multiple audiences rather than a single audience. But what a lot of those various audience members don't seem to understand is that if you, the dev, listen to every member in the audience the reasonable conclusion will be to not build an entire game but many smaller ones. I would argue there is a path in game design where you can make a skeleton that holds a bunch of different games but it won't feel like a game with 'identity'.
This isn't to say the 'experts' of that 'genre' shouldn't be listened to when making the game, it means that they should be listened to with a removal of self centered requests from their feedback. It must always be measure by what is the most essential for the core experience first. Additions are at the behest of what would lead to the world feeling most alive that doesn't become exploitable or obstructive to other audiences. You can't make crafting the only way to progress through an mmo that isn't trying to be solely about crafting. It bogs down the gameplay for many and takes them away from 'the fun part'. That is why econ design and marketplaces are essential! They help you solve problems for other audiences so that everyone can 'get along'. The worst kind of feed back, the hell, comes from other people telling other audiences that not only they are wrong, but that their most selfish wishes should be prioritized 'if the game really wants to succeed'.
I think this is my biggest gripe with people who come into mmo forums with WoW as their foundational background. They played 'the most succesful one' for so long that they don't realize that people NEED not just want or 'expect' the game to NOT be WoW. Yet because of the success of it, it is easy to think this is 'the only path'. Many suggestions by this cohort end up eroding the identity of so many games. I'm not saying you need to play a wide variety of games or that all WoW player advice is bad. There are definitely good WoW players who know what design hell looks like and are benevolent and good contributors. But it is COMMON. And I am sorry to say, but if you don't have a wide enough mmo experience it is hard to know when you are being someones 'design hell' or when you are requesting something 'selfish' in the design space.
I think that is why I love Ashes audience based approach, at least in the past, they tended to really talk to people who had very different mmo backgrounds. This let them get to the real heart of what Ashes could be and developed a distinct brand for a time despite Steven's relatively limited mmo experience. I think Steven genuinely enjoyed that period of Ashes development as well. He seems most at home talking to other mmo players about the topic they love most. But at the end of the day, I think if you suffer design hell long enough it's hard not to come to your own devilish impulses. It's hard to make a game, but even harder to fight for an audience that isn't your own even if that same audience is responsible for creating the unique identity and feel of your game.
Lawless zones definitely 'changed the entire genre of the game' for me so I don't think I really disagree with you.
Complaints are asymmetrical, both due to 'culture/behaviour type' and expectations.
I'll use a Throne and Liberty example here because it's so simple and so incredibly ... 'not nuanced'?
Soon after the release of the expansion (perhaps with it, I should check but I'm in a flow) they halved the respawn rate of basically every mob in the world.
Blanket change. Everything just respawns twice as fast. Who asked for this? If we assume it needed to be done because of increased player count, sure. It makes the world feel silly in a lot of places, but whatever, it's not that big a deal...
If it's temporary.
It's still there. The world still feels silly. Some events don't work quite 'right' anymore. Some PvP for spots is just ... entirely weirdly unbalanced now. One off-to-the-side area has mobs respawn almost faster than certain classes can kill them.
This definitely feels bad, and basically since the population distribution is back to 'normal', it's no longer serving any real purpose. But I bet that the number of people who 'complained that the mobs didn't respawn fast enough' (assuming there were any) was higher than the number of people who bothered to give feedback to complain that they respawn too fast now.
This also illustrates the cultural difference. @Ludullu pointed it out in a different post to someone else recently, that a certain subtype of player just 'goes along with changes they don't like as much' because they understand certain needs (I can't say they're actually more patient, but all the ones I personally know are). Whereas impatient people who prefer/seek quicker gratification don't see the validity in 'soft' needs of others.
Basically, you'll get more PvP players complaining that the Devs spent any time on Fishing, than Fishers complaining that the Devs spent time balancing PvP. Both are important, but by 'volume'...
This is a place where data gathering doesn't help as much. You can gather a lot of data about PvP because PvP is competitive and people won't 'give up' their PvP territories just because Balance is currently swingy (looking at you still, Ravagers and ubertanks). But I'm still here fishing up Nature's Jade and unable to make them into anything that makes me enjoy Fishing more, because even if I did yell about how X item needs to have a crafting recipe to make this game more fun, it's not as visceral as 'your balance is shit, NCSoft, fix your game!' from 40 random people.
And I'm not going to respond to those 40 people by going 'shut up, the balance is fine, I need them to focus on Fishing!' because that's stupid.
But I'm sure you know that there are definitely people who respond to Fishing improvements with 'who the fuck even fishes in this game? Why are they wasting time on this?' (verbatim from World Chat).
The people who would enjoy the Weeping Hollow get to do it a few times or 'occasionally', and it's part of their love and experience of the genre, but they're not going to kick up as huge a fuss when someone else yells about how 'this quest isn't rewarding enough, it's such BS', nor possibly even when some Dev changes the Quest/world to be more 'accessible to more players'.
Honestly one of the greatest validations I've received from my time with Ashes of Creation is to get to see all those people passionate about things like immersion and economy before they give up on the game, to remember that they're still at least equal measure if not a majority. When someone next asks "Why did this MMO fail, what was wrong with the playerbase?" I can actually say 'nah, crafting was bad/nonexistent/ignored so game was cooked' and not worry so much that I'm just projecting my biases.
Well, either Intrepid/First Spark will save us, or we wait a few years and some AI will.
Oh absolutely, I don't know if you remember or not but this was actually my initial point I made that sparked a huge discussion in that "My pvx != your pvx" Chibibree thread. To quote my first 2 comments from that thread:
But I think this is just the egocentric nature of a lot of people in general, and an inherent problem of pretty much any game in general because there will always be people who have different preferences no matter how slight or nuanced, they will find something to disagree with and complain about even if the rationale for the design decision was actually good for certain subsets of players and better for the game as a whole. This is just much more magnified for something as diverse as an mmo audience.
I think addressing this problem isnt as much of a concern, because some players will just not play a game at all regardless unless every decision/dev action is EXACTLY what they want, and you can't really do much about that unless you want to make the game for that 1 specific person. But I feel like most people won't outright leave a game just because "im a pvper and the devs spent some time developing fishing". So in this example I think its more about just making sure the pvpers have enough dev resources spent on them to where they are happy enough, even if that means kinda annoying them by dedicating some time to other things. Thats my perspective at least.
I'm gonna read this after our live stream.
Probably my favorite WoW story arc was working as a Druid to dampen the fires raging on Mt. Hyjal.
The reward was having my actions as a Druid affect the world/region in a meaningful manner.
In Ashes, Sieges are intended to accomplish some of that. I dunno that I need to acquire a Title, but it would be nice to gain a Tag that causes NPCs to recognize my participation.
I dunno that it's necessary to be recognized as THE Chosen One. Would be good enough to be recognized by NPCs as having been helpful. Also, can be fun to be recognized by NPCs for doing something harmful.
Ashes has the potential for engaging Meaningful Conflict, where there is tension around a Metro being governed by Nikua or by Pyrai. Especially if the Pyrai Town turns into a Nikua Metro when it advances from Stage 4 to Stage 5. That's the kind of PvP that intrigues me way more than Steven's obsession with Risk v Reward in Lawless Lands. I consider the Open Seas and the Lawless Lands to be meaningless conflict.
I would hope in the Weeping Hollow story arc, different Classes could pursue different paths - maybe working towards the same goal or working towards contrary goals. Same for Races. Possibly the same for different Artisan Professions. Possibly for citizens of different Node types.
Could be that associated Augments would be better rewards thanTitles, but we have yet to see any Augments in 8 years so... who knows.
Story Arcs is a great feature, but, really...
The Open Seas and Lawless Lands are still dealbreakers. I don't think Story Arcs would really be enticing me to play a game so heavily focused on Risk v Reward.
Ashes was intriguing for an MMORPG set to release before 2020.
No longer particularly intriguing after the 2022 updates to the design - with the addition of the Open Seas.
Especially after WoW: Dragonflight dropped in Nov 2022.
At this point, I already have way too many games I love playing - including WoW (I refused to play WoW between 2012 - 2020). I think those of us who play EQ and WoW on PvE-Only servers will be focused on playing other games by the time Ashes releases. But, I'm hoping that Ashes fulfills its goal of being a fun haven for MMORPG fans who love PvP and Risk v Reward... especially since relatively few MMORPGs cater to that playstyle.
@Ace1234 a question then given your perspective, because I think we've 'soft-disagreed' before on whether or not PvX 'means' integration or not.
Ashes is the game where you are forced to consider both halves of the content all the time. There are games where you aren't, where the distinction is closer to what you describe, where the games themselves describe as 'PvP and PvE' (could easily be because PvX isn't a term that has caught on yet).
But in those games, if you decide to do most PvE things, you can only be delayed by PvP, not 'forced into it' (i.e. the area becomes PvP and you have to wait, or try to PvP a bit).
I would argue that the type of Story Arc content or even Biome-based gameplay that we were discussing in the parent thread fits better in those games than in Ashes, because PvP does not have the capacity to utterly overrun a progressing narrative in those games.
I'm sure Ashes could be designed such that PvP can be suppressed out of 'existence' by doing the narrative/preparation really well (Elite Dangerous works like this for instance, mostly), but it keeps shifting away from that design space so the 'concept' that spawned this thread still seems to apply.
I've been obsessed with LEGO Fortnite Expeditions the past 10 days.
Fascinating for me because I typically hate speed runs but I find myself speed-running a lot, frequently completing Missions in 10-15 minutes instead of the full 40 minutes. I do also enjoy taking the full 40 minutes sometimes.
The first few days, I was hoping to have close to 200 Kills each Mission.
This weekend, I noticed I'm averaging 30 Kills. I'm more focused on having high Citizen Rescues (12).
I will kill the NPCs if they pile up on me too much. I kill dynamite throwers on sight. But, I mostly just try to outrun and dodge my attackers rather than kill them.
I enjoy city defense for up to 60 minutes and I don't neessarily care whether the attackers are NPCs or players, so Sieges have the potential to be a fun form of PvP for me. Same with Caravans.
If I'm on offense for a City, I prefer to do Stealth, recon and sabotage, rather than direct kills. Or, if it's NPCs, use Charisma to bypass combat.
I'm an explorer first and foremost. So I would need Corruption in play everywhere instead of there being pockets of the map where Corruption is turned off (assuming that Corruption were enough of a deterrent to have me comfortably playing. Which seems more and more unlikely the way Steven has been empasizing the necessity of Risk (of PvP) since 2022.
I play RPGs for the story and cooperation with players, against NPCs, rather than for competition and rivalry with players.
So, I do actually fall within that "Ashes is not for everyone" camp after the additon of the Open Seas and Lawless Lands. And that is OK. I don't have to play every MMORPG.
Hey, interesting question. So to give some important context, my perspective on a "potential approach" to pvx or "my version of pvx" (may or may not be what Ashes will end up pursuing) is that basically you would have pve content (corruption enabled zones 'to a certain degree'), pvp content (arenas), and pve+pvp (integrated) content (lawless zones or similar bespoke systems/designs/areas that encourage integration) all as seperately available experiences to 'opt into' for players to modulate their experience as desired.
So to address what im assuming to be your concern of "narrative content integrated into content made for pvp players, of which those player types don't care about said content", my perspective is that it depends on who that piece of content is meant for. So my answer (based on the context of your data implying that pvp focused players thinking narrative integration is a waste of time) would be "to intentionally design the narrative aspects to be integrated within game loops/content meant for either pve players or pvx players", and for "pvp focused content to not affect narrative outcomes". Different games within a game basically.
So, if you are trying to appeal to pvp players, then yes, (according to your data) the narrative aspect would infringe on the experience, so don't design arenas to require pvpers to understand some kind of ongoing narrative. (Basically your "suppressing out of existence" point)
But if it is a pvx (pve+pvp integration) intended zone, then by definition the players who are seeking out these types of zones (this could include me in this category based on how im feeling that day) would be fine with having narrative integration in something like a lawless area where both pvp and pve can occur at any given time.
That kind of goes back to one of my initial points in this thread in terms of potentially having bespoke areas where a design like "The Weeping Hollow" is used, rather than trying to 'unify the design' all the time, in addition to making sure each player type and experience is has enough content quality and quantity to satisfy each subset.
Hopefully that answered your question, if not then feel free to elaborate.
You seem to be even moreso the person who wants the other type of design direction for this game type, than I originally thought.
I don't think Steven intends to make that game, but it's already been made, so thankfully, he doesn't have to.
Hey thanks for the thoughtful response. I like that your brought up additional aspects of storytelling/roleplay like classes, races, nodes, etc.
I also would enjoy these aspects as optional role-play/storytelling devices, and I think this further highlights the complexities of designing these types of areas within an overarching and ever-shifting game world. It also highlights the limitations of using chatgpt to generate these types of zone concepts, due to all of the factors that designers have to intentionally consider at any given time.
Since this is relevant to your questions you asked as well as just being interesting in general I figure @Vaknar might want to take a peek if you want.
Also thought maybe @Azherae might think this is a fun read at least if you are bored.
1. Additions made to the design philosophy behind The Weeping Hollow
The poster argues that classes should be more than mechanical gameplay roles—they should matter narratively, both in terms of:
In-game character identity (lore, ideology, story, history), and
Real-life player expression (role-play style, personal growth, choice-driven storytelling).
They explore how class identity and storytelling can be blended in a way that enhances immersion, encourages role-play, and supports both curated stories and emergent experiences.
🔍 Section-by-Section Breakdown
1. Character vs. Player Storytelling
Key Question:
Are you role-playing a pre-existing character with a backstory? Or are you expressing yourself through the character?
They advocate for a hybrid approach:
Each class has themes, lore, and role-play “tendencies” (e.g. Bard = charisma, Tank = protector).
But players retain freedom to interpret or subvert those tendencies (e.g., play a selfish Tank or a cowardly Bard).
This supports:
Narrative depth via class stories.
Player agency and expressive role-play.
World reactivity: NPCs, quests, and environmental storytelling should respond to class choices.
They reference a Game Maker’s Toolkit video on Mass Effect, which explores similar ideas of blending authored narrative with player choice.
2. Class Storytelling as Player and Character Progression
This section divides storytelling into three layers:
A. Character Progression (In-World)
Lore and origin of the class.
In-world mentors, rivalries, goals.
Questions like: Why does this class exist? What does mastery mean? Who respects/fears them?
B. Player Progression (Meta-Layer)
How the player themselves improves through mastering the class fantasy.
Storytelling becomes experiential—you don’t just read a class fantasy, you live it.
Example: A Tank class isn’t just about holding aggro. The player’s story might involve learning what it means to protect others, or choosing not to.
C. Shared Story Progression
Use of in-game systems (quests, class challenges, moral choices) to merge both player and character growth.
Examples include:
Class dojos: trials that challenge both mechanics and philosophy.
Reactive abilities: like a Bard unlocking new songs based on their personal quest history.
Class societies or secret factions (hidden Bard enclave).
PvE and PvP mastery paths.
Class quests that adapt to how you play, not just what class you chose.
3. Environmental Storytelling
The world design itself should reinforce class fantasy and moral decision-making.
Examples:
If a boulder is rolling toward NPCs, a Tank might have the opportunity to stop it. But they could also let it happen—creating a moment of personal role-play and moral choice.
These environmental story beats give players a chance to define what their class means to them, and let the game react accordingly.
They cite a GMTK video on level design storytelling to back this up.
4. Sound Design and Leitmotif
Music should reinforce class storytelling.
Borrowing from Final Fantasy IV, the idea is that musical themes (leitmotifs) tied to specific classes can evolve over time to reflect narrative change.
E.g., a Bard’s music could shift in tone depending on their personal choices or class-related story outcomes.
✅ Summary of What the Post Argues For:
1. Narrative Significance for Classes
Each class should feel like it belongs to the world with rich, reactive lore and philosophy.
But it should not lock players into a rigid role.
2. Freedom of Expression
Players should have the freedom to embrace, reject, or redefine their class’s traditional narrative.
3. Experiential Storytelling
Use gameplay mechanics, environmental design, music, and reactive quests to tell the class story through doing, not just through text.
4. Synergy With Game Design Pillars
This aligns with:
Player agency (freedom to define your identity).
Reactive world (NPCs/world respond to class, choices).
Risk vs reward (decisions carry narrative weight).
Social interaction (classes interact with others differently).
Immersive story (classes aren’t just mechanics—they mean something).
🧠 Takeaways
This post is very aligned with emergent narrative design—where developers provide thematic, mechanical, and narrative tools that encourage unique, player-driven stories, rather than dictating fixed outcomes.
In essence:
“Don’t just play a Bard. Live the journey of becoming a Bard, shaped by your actions, beliefs, and failures.”
It’s a philosophical and systems-oriented pitch for a class-driven narrative design that supports meaningful role-play and deep immersion.
How might these concepts manifest as tangible specific examples and practical design approaches?
Great question. The forum post you shared is deeply conceptual, so translating it into concrete, actionable game design is the next logical step—especially in a PvX MMO like Ashes of Creation where systems must balance narrative depth with scalability, player agency, and mechanical function.
Below is a breakdown of how the post’s ideas could manifest as specific features, quest types, mechanics, or world elements, grouped by core concept.
🔨 PRACTICAL DESIGN APPROACHES
1. Class-Themed Quests and Role-Play Arcs
Design Idea:
Each class (or class archetype) has quest chains rooted in its class ideology, fantasy, and world role, but the player has narrative control over how they express it.
Examples:
Tank class quest:
You're tasked with defending a caravan under attack.
→ You can protect it (selfless defender), abandon it (coward), or extort the traders for protection (mercenary).
→ NPCs and future quests react differently based on your choice.
Bard class quest:
Help a village retell an ancient story through performance.
→ Option to tell the truth, embellish it, or rewrite history completely.
→ Later, the version you told becomes canon to that village, impacting local culture, NPC reactions, or even unlocks new bardic abilities (e.g., "Ballad of Lies" vs. "Song of Truth").
2. Reactive Class Identity in the World
Design Idea:
Classes are recognized and responded to by the world—through NPCs, factions, and locations. Your class affects your social interactions and access to content.
Examples:
Secret Organizations:
A rogue-only guild hidden beneath a city, requiring stealth and reputation to enter. Completing their trials unlocks unique stealth tools or lore about rogue history.
Cultural Differences:
In one region, summoners are revered as priest-like figures, in another they’re feared as necromancers. Quests in each region offer different dialogue, opportunities, or even risk of persecution.
3. Class Dojos / Mastery Trials
Design Idea:
Physical, in-world spaces that serve as training grounds, philosophical testing chambers, and story hubs for each class.
Examples:
Tank Dojo:
Defensive gauntlets where you're outnumbered and must keep NPCs alive.
Also includes moral dilemmas: save villagers or comrades?
Pass trials to earn unique titles ("Guardian of the Line") or access rare augments (e.g., Taunt that also buffs allies’ defense).
Bard Dojo:
A puzzle-based trial that requires knowledge of past quests you've completed.
Maybe it asks: “Which tale did you tell about the Dragonfall War?” and locks out players who didn’t experience (or lied about) that event.
4. Abilities Tied to Story Choices
Design Idea:
Class abilities evolve or unlock based on your personal story path, not just XP.
Examples:
Bard Saga System:
After surviving a siege where you held the line and saved dozens, you unlock “Ballad of the Last Stand” which buffs allies when outnumbered.
This saga is only unlocked for players who made that choice.
Tank skill evolution:
If you consistently choose selfless acts, your Shield Wall becomes a group-wide aura.
If you play selfishly, it becomes a self-buff with a taunt, but doesn’t protect allies.
5. Environmental Storytelling Triggers
Design Idea:
The world design presents situational moral tests aligned with your class fantasy, creating opportunities for emergent storytelling.
Examples:
Rolling Boulder Event (from post):
A timed public quest where a boulder is about to crush NPCs.
Only a tank can stop it—but no reward is guaranteed unless the townsfolk survive.
Let it happen, and maybe a questline about guilt or public scorn opens.
Hidden Areas Only Certain Classes Can Enter:
A ranger discovers animal tracks others can't see, leading to a sacred glade.
A mage identifies an arcane rift in the world that reveals hidden knowledge.
6. Story-Based Skill Progression Paths
Design Idea:
Unlocking advanced class skills requires completing ideologically or morally themed trials, not just grinding.
Examples:
Tank Path of the Protector vs. Path of the Conqueror:
Both culminate in unique skill augments, different lore, and armor visuals.
Once you choose a path, certain NPCs treat you differently.
Bard: Tales of Chaos vs. Harmony:
Influence towns through song.
If you destabilize a faction with satire, you unlock chaos-aligned buffs (debuff enemies).
If you soothe tensions, you gain harmony buffs (party-wide inspiration).
7. Player Expression Through Sound and Visual Themes
Design Idea:
Leitmotifs or reactive music that changes based on class and personal choices.
Examples:
Class Theme Changes Over Time:
Bard's theme becomes more somber if they fail key moral decisions, or more triumphant if they succeed in diplomacy.
The music that plays in combat or travel subtly reflects their internal arc.
Visual Flourishes on Abilities:
A tank who betrayed a village gains dark red effects on his shield skills—visually cueing narrative choice.
A bard who redeemed a town uses glowing gold notes instead of silver.
8. Shared Progression Systems: PvE + PvP + RP
Design Idea:
Class storytelling exists across all systems.
Examples:
PvP tournaments for class mastery:
Champions receive not just loot but titles and renown—which NPCs reference.
These titles can alter dialogue, grant class-specific quests, or shape world events (e.g., an NPC seeking the “Grand Duelist of Verra”).
Guild vs Guild Reputation by Class:
Rogues from warring guilds might have unique infiltration missions.
Tanks could be called to protect key NPCs during siege events.
🧩 DESIGN PRINCIPLES TO APPLY
Branching but Non-Restrictive Paths
→ Let classes suggest ideologies, not force them.
→ Encourage archetype-aligned paths (protector, manipulator, trickster), but allow subversion.
Systemic Integration of Class Fantasy
→ Don’t isolate class story to one quest chain. Spread it across combat, NPC interactions, puzzles, exploration, factions, PvP, etc.
Emergent Outcomes, Not Binary Morality
→ Avoid “good vs evil.” Design choices that reflect values (loyalty, power, selflessness), then let the world respond organically.
Class Identity = Cultural + Personal
→ Classes have lore and stereotypes in the world, but the player creates their personal take on it.
Progression Mirrors Growth
→ Design progression (mechanical or narrative) to feel earned, not just unlocked.
2. Practical example of player-story/class narrative integration (in a vacuum)
Character-driven lore
Player expression and agency
World reactivity
Progression across PvE, PvP, crafting, and role-play
Environmental and audio storytelling
Let’s call it:
“Legacy of the Archetypes” System
A reactive, thematic, and player-driven narrative and progression framework for class identity in an MMO world.
🧱 SYSTEM FOUNDATION
Each class (or archetype) in the game has a Legacy Path—a layered narrative and progression structure made up of:
Origin Quests – Introductory lore-based content introducing your class's place in the world.
Philosophical Trials – Thematic branching quests reflecting moral/ideological decisions.
World Interaction Hooks – How your class interacts differently with environments, factions, and NPCs.
Mastery Challenges – Class dojos, combat gauntlets, utility puzzles, or social tests.
Mythic Echoes – Signature class abilities or augments earned via personal, story-driven milestones.
Echoing Identity – Story-based environmental and musical cues that evolve with your journey.
🎭 EXAMPLE: THE BARD’S LEGACY
We’ll walk through this system using the Bard class as the prototype.
1. 🪕 ORIGIN QUESTS (Character-Driven Lore Start)
You begin your Bard story in Mel’Caris, a town known for storytelling, surrounded by oral history keepers.
The opening quest: Choose a philosophical tradition to follow:
The Taleweaver (truth-seeker): “Preserve history with accuracy.”
The Echocrafter (shaper): “Stories are tools to shape the world.”
The Tricktongue (satirist): “Lie boldly to reveal deeper truths.”
🌱 These choices introduce core themes that influence future story beats, affect your saga unlocks, and NPC reactions.
2. ⚖️ PHILOSOPHICAL TRIALS (Player-Driven Role-Play Branches)
Later, you perform for a court. Your saga will determine the trial's outcome. You can:
Tell the truth about a noble's betrayal.
Twist the story to avoid offending the court.
Mock everyone, exposing corruption through satire.
Each choice:
Alters reputation with regional factions.
Unlocks new saga fragments (story-based abilities).
Sets the tone for how NPCs across the world view you:
“The Bard Who Speaks True”
“The Tongue-Twister”
“The Rebel Rhymer”
3. 🌍 WORLD INTERACTION HOOKS
Bards unlock:
“Whispers” in towns – hear hidden rumors or manipulate NPC behavior during town events.
Lore anchors – musical shrines across the world. If you know the right saga, they react:
Reveal secret locations.
Alter weather temporarily (like lifting a storm with a sun song).
Offer buffs to nearby players who hear your performance.
NPCs:
React differently to bards based on fame and moral choices. A bard known for causing revolts is banned in some cities but revered in rebel camps.
4. 🏛️ MASTERY CHALLENGES (Dojo + Progression Spaces)
The Hall of Echoes is the Bard’s class dojo—a mystical amphitheater in a hidden glade.
Challenges include:
Musical riddles from ancient instruments—test memory of past events.
Dueling another bard in a “Performance Battle” (PvP + RP event judged by NPCs and players).
Inspirational Trials: rally NPCs in a demoralized war camp using sagas earned from past victories.
Rewards:
Custom saga slots – build your own narrative ability using fragments.
Mythic Instruments – e.g., a harp that channels a storm if you performed the “Ballad of the Sea King.”
Advanced storytelling augments (e.g., your healing buff grows stronger the longer allies hear your song).
5. 🌌 MYTHIC ECHOES (Experiential Ability Unlocks)
Your Bard abilities are not just skills—they are stories you’ve personally forged.
Example:
You chose to mock the corrupt king in your origin story.
You later rallied rebels using satire.
After defeating the king in a siege event, you unlock:
Saga: “Fall of the Gilded Throne”
– AoE debuff that lowers enemy morale (attack speed, movement). Only unlocked by this unique narrative sequence.
This creates a bespoke build and echoes your personal journey.
6. 🎶 ECHOING IDENTITY (Sound + Environment Feedback)
As you evolve, your combat and idle music changes—major chords for hopeful Bards, minor or dissonant if you’ve taken darker paths.
In towns where your story is known, NPCs sing your song or whisper about you.
The color palettes of your saga abilities shift depending on past moral choices (golden for truth, crimson for revolution, blue for peace).
🔁 OTHER CLASS EXAMPLES (In Brief)
🛡️ Tank – “Oath of the Unbroken”
Origin: Choose between Warden, Mercenary, or Redeemer paths.
Trial: Let the town burn to save your squad or die protecting strangers.
Dojo: Gauntlet scenarios where you must choose who to protect under stress.
Mythic Skill: “Last Wall” – becomes stronger if you’ve died protecting others multiple times.
Visuals: Shield begins glowing when allies are low HP, if you took the “Protector” path.
🕵️ Rogue – “Whispers in the Veil”
Origin: Loyal agent vs selfish thief vs revolutionary.
Environmental Hook: See through false walls, hear "invisible" dialogue.
Trial: Steal a cursed item that reveals your worst memory (instanced solo challenge).
Dojo: Infiltration puzzle with timed stealth sequences + faction-aligned objectives.
Sound: Class theme becomes syncopated and unsettling if you lie or backstab too much.
⚙️ CROSS-SYSTEM INTEGRATION
PvE:
Class quests tied to boss encounters (e.g., bard earns a dragon saga only if they perform during a raid with specific timing).
PvP:
PvP tournaments with class-only brackets.
Unique titles, story banners, and skills unlocked based on class victories.
Crafting:
Class-specific crafting outcomes.
Bard crafts Mythic Quills using rare ink.
Tank forges Sigil Shields with legacy inscriptions.
Housing:
Personal quarters display class relics, story achievements, and echoes (like a statue that replays your unlocked sagas).
🧩 SYSTEMIC STRENGTHS
Principle- Player Agency
Implementation- Narrative forks with real consequences, reactive abilities
Principle- Reactive World
Implementation- NPC behavior, music, environment evolve based on class path
Principle- Social Interaction
Implementation- Players' class choices affect faction politics, group dynamics
Principle- Immersive Story
Implementation- Class lore + player choice = living, breathing personal legend
Principle-Risk vs Reward
Implementation- Moral and gameplay consequences embedded in class path
✅ FINAL THOUGHT
In Legacy of the Archetypes, every class has a soul, and every player helps shape that soul’s place in the world.
Instead of "picking a class," players pick a legacy to create, carving out a living myth that reflects their decisions, challenges, victories, and failures—all interwoven with reactive systems that make the world respond to their personal evolution.
3. Updated Weeping Hollow overview (Integrating the above aspects: storytelling and role-play of player-progression, class, node/faction alignment, race, artisanship, etc.)
🌕 Design Concept: The Shattered Vale
🎯 Vision Summary:
The Shattered Vale is a mysterious, reactive, and deeply layered zone designed to embody player agency, class-driven narrative, exploration-based discovery, social conflict, and emergent storytelling. It acts as a narrative crucible where player choices, class identity, and shifting world state intertwine — serving both mechanical progression and emotional storytelling across all levels of gameplay: adventuring, crafting, politics, religion, and role-play.
📍 Zone Identity Overview
🧭 Setting:
Once a harmonious convergence point of celestial and elemental energies, the Shattered Vale fractured after a failed ritual shattered time itself in the region. Now split between multiple reality phases, time behaves inconsistently, revealing different versions of people, terrain, and history depending on when, how, and who explores it.
The Vale contains:
Temporal echoes of the past, present, and divergent futures
Factions with contrasting worldviews and goals
Mysteries that evolve based on class, node affiliation, player decisions, and faction alignment
Story systems that reflect both character identity and player journey
🔗 Core Design Pillars Integrated
1. 🧑🎭 Character-Class and Player-Role Interplay
Each class in the Vale reflects a theme (e.g., protector, deceiver, seeker, judge), which is expressed in lore, quests, and gameplay systems, while still allowing full role-play flexibility.
✅ Implementation:
Class-themed story arcs tied to values/tendencies (e.g., tanks encounter moral dilemmas about sacrifice, rogues uncover secrets that question loyalty).
Class mastery dojos hidden in the Vale teach advanced mechanics, philosophy, and class history (e.g., a Tank must choose whether to defend innocents or preserve their strength for a bigger threat).
Class-based augments are unlocked not just by leveling, but through completing “role-tests” that align with or defy class themes.
Player expression choices layered atop class story (e.g., the Bard can betray their muse or follow it to enlightenment).
2. 🧠 Layered Narrative Systems
Story in the Vale unfolds in tiers of understanding:
Narrative Layer: Surface Story
Access Trigger: Node storylines, zone quests
Example: Learn about the Vale’s fracturing
Narrative layer: Personal Lore
Access trigger: Class quests, vision meditations
Example: Learn how your class contributed to the ritual
Narrative layer: Truths & Deceptions
Access trigger: Exploration, factional choices
Example: Realize multiple timelines and truths exist
Narrative layer: Meta-Perspective
Access Trigger: Cross-zone influence, philosophy
Example: Realize your player decisions shape reality
📖 Techniques:
Dialogue and NPC behavior change over time based on player choices and class.
Events trigger different versions of reality (e.g., day/night, season, class, node leadership).
Dynamic reactivity — burning down an ancient tree changes the zone’s questlines and visuals.
3. 🧩 Environmental Storytelling & Discovery
The Vale is designed for non-linear, environmental narrative exploration.
🌲 Practical Elements:
Three Temporal Biomes overlap:
The Verdant Past: Overgrown, vibrant — hidden relics and peaceful spirits.
The Fractured Present: Warped terrain, shifting weather, unstable portals.
The Fated Future: Bleak and silent, with collapsed ruins and echoing memory-wraiths.
Triggerable environmental events (e.g., interacting with glyphs under a full moon reveals hidden paths)
Exploration-based puzzles (rotate ancient runestones to “attune” with a timeline)
Weather and season-based content (mist clears only at dusk on new moons)
4. ⚔️ 🏛️ Social Systems Integration
Every layer of the zone has social implications:
Node types affect region perception (e.g., a Scientific Node interprets the Vale as a temporal anomaly, while a Divine Node sees it as holy punishment).
Faction allegiances offer different interpretations of the Vale’s history — each unlocks different dungeons, dialogues, and NPCs.
Player agency creates regional effects: If enough players restore a timeline, it becomes dominant on the server — shifting terrain and NPC behavior globally.
🧱 Examples:
Artisan content: A relic crafter unearths temporal tools — different timelines yield different crafting ingredients.
PvP objectives: Competing timelines fuel wars over control of relic forges.
Guild competitions: Class trials for each archetype occur in fractured "echo arenas."
5. 🔮 Mystery & Emergent Storytelling
At its heart, the Vale is designed for mystery and evolving truth:
One player's success may change the narrative for all (e.g., solving a puzzle reveals a zone-wide event).
Riddles & Obscure Lore in the environment drive cooperative discovery.
Temporal visions allow for layered interpretation of events based on alignment and class — players see different “truths.”
🎼 6. Atmosphere, Theme, and Audio Integration
Visual motif: Shattered moons in the sky; bent trees and inverted waterfalls.
Leitmotif: Adaptive music tied to class or faction themes (e.g., a rogue hears strings, a mage hears chimes).
Environmental audio: Whispered memories, temporal rifts humming in resonance with certain spells.
Lighting: Fog reacts to quest states, becoming thinner when mysteries are unraveled.
🧙♀️ Player Journeys: Practical Examples
🎻 The Bard (Memory-Seeker Path)
Learns from echoes of lost songs.
Uncovers hidden shrines where they "perform" sagas to change regional mood.
Song choices subtly influence local NPC behavior and node policies.
🛡️ The Tank (Protector-Failure Path)
Fails to defend a village; receives vision showing the village becomes a rebel haven.
Learns the cost of strength is choice, not perfection.
Unlocks a choice-based augment: Shield of Atonement or Blade of Reversal.
⚒️ Artisan Player (Chrono-Smith)
Collects materials that only exist at certain moon phases.
Unlocks unique gear effects based on “when” the gear is forged.
Can reverse item degradation via attunement to the timeline of its origin.
🧩 Replayability & System Interdependence
Every aspect of the zone — visual, sound, quest, faction, class, weather — interacts across systems.
Players must revisit under different conditions to access new lore, crafting ingredients, or quest branches.
The zone can even become a battleground, or shift into a PvE/PvP conflict zone based on narrative outcomes.
✅ Summary
The Shattered Vale is a dynamic, reactive sandbox zone that blends:
Deep class-role storytelling
Player-driven world and character progression
Environmental storytelling
Discovery-based gameplay
Social/political complexity
Emotional and atmospheric narrative delivery
It's not just a location — it's a living crucible for immersive storytelling, character embodiment, role-play, and philosophical inquiry that adapts and reflects the player's actions, roles, and beliefs.
4. Deeper explanation of story aspects/interactions in the zone
🧠 1. Meta‑Narrative of Player Performance & Progression
Player failures and successes—especially as tied to class-themed ideals—are tracked, reflected, and reframed across systems:
Tank failure example: Escorting a caravan fails → NPC dies → World-state logs it.
Meta:
You earn no XP for protection.
A mentor voiceover comments on your “shattered resolve.”
You unlock “Heavy Heart” skill reflecting that failure.
Thus, your performance isn’t hidden—it becomes part of your story and shapes both mechanics (skills) and narrative.
🎭 2. Intersection With Class, Race, Node, Faction
Your performance becomes colored by your affiliations:
Class: A rogue’s failure to pick a lock isn’t shame—it’s opportunity, unlocking “Door of Opportunity” skill if resolved cleverly.
Race: Elves see failure as wisdom; Dwarves view it as weakness. Dialogue changes accordingly.
Node: A Military Node praises quick thinking; a Divine Node interprets failure as a test of faith.
Faction: If aligned with the Memory Coven, your failure becomes a spiritual lesson; if aligned with
the Obsidian Court, it becomes propaganda about weakness.
→ So the same event reframes across affiliations, reinforcing your identity within each narrative lens.
🌍 3. Biome Lore & Environmental Integration
The Vale’s fractured timeline visually mirrors your personal progression:
Zones change appearance depending on your past performance:
Succeed at memory puzzles → fog lifts in deeper zones.
Fail class dojos → ghostly echoes appear in corresponding biome areas.
Biome lore (like moon phases, ritual echoes) is accessed or blocked based on your tracked performance and affiliations—embedding your journey into the world itself.
🔁 4. Story Progression & Recontextualization
The Vale’s narrative evolves around you. Through story beats, past events are reinterpreted:
You failed to protect the caravan → later reveal that caravan carried a weapon smuggling ring.
Now your failure is seen as morally complex, prompting faction NPCs to debate your moral compass.
After you succeed in a class trial, an NPC references your previous failure in a different light:
“You once failed to hold the line—but now, the line holds because of you.”
These moments call back to your journey, reframing what you once saw as failure as growth, or vice versa.
🎲 5. Role‑Play & Branching Player Choice Integration
At every key interaction:
Class choices filter dialogue options (“Shatter the relic for power” vs. “Preserve it for history”).
Performance history unlocks unique meta-dialogue:
“I remember when you saved—no, failed—that village.”
Node affiliation can activate exclusive branches:
A Scientific Node lets you analyze timeline fractures; a Culture Node invites you to record bardic sagas about them.
Faction allegiance may let you rewrite history—with faction-approved narrative versions appearing on marble plaques in towns.
Your available options are the result of every decision you’ve made, from class trials to faction donations.
🔄 6. Systemic Interdependence: Branching by Design
Let’s trace a full example:
Performance: Tank fails to prevent bridge collapse.
Tracking System: This triggers “Failed Protector” state.
Skill Reward: You gain “Heavy Heart” augment.
Faction Reaction:
Memory Coven grants your failure meaning.
Obsidian Court brands you a failure.
Environmental Impact:
The bridge is now blocked; a drifting ethereal echo stands guard.
Story Recontextualization:
Bard song changes line to: “He faltered—but held hope.”
NPC dialogue echoes this theme.
Role-play Opportunity:
Your Tank dojo mentor offers a private trial: regain honor or embrace cynicism.
You choose → unlocking different arc endings.
Biome & Node Shift:
Spiritual Node erects a stone shrine over the bridge, commemorating your lesson.
Military Node reroutes troops, altering map access permanently.
Meta-Reference:
A future quest checks your “Protector” theme progression:
“You chose to heal your regret and stand again… Now stand for all.”
The Vale’s final phase reflects your cumulative story:
If you embraced redemption, the Vale’s timeline coalesces into a healed reality.
If you embrace failure/cynicism, the present fractures further—echoing your inner journey.
✅ Summary: The Meta‑Narrative Web
Player performance (success/failure) becomes mechanical rewards and narrative triggers.
These choices intersect with class identity, faction/race, and node affiliation, altering available content and dialogue.
Biome lore and environmental transitions reflect and adapt to player history.
Story beats recontextualize past events, referencing your specific path (e.g., “I remember when…”).
Branching systems ensure that each twist locks in further divergence—ensuring replayability and narrative cohesion.
The result is a meta-level story: not just what happened, but how that reflects you, who you are in the world, and what reality you’re helping shape.
This approach creates a living narrative arboretum where player agency, system mechanics, lore, and world state all reflect—and reshape—each other in a richly interwoven dance.
Absolutely — here's a comprehensive and cohesive overview of the design concept (The Shattered Vale), with a clear and explicit breakdown of how each major pillar integrates and how they all interlock at both narrative and systemic levels. The goal is to make the following aspects more obvious:
Meta-narrative of player performance
Class/Race/Node/Faction integration
Biome-specific worldbuilding
Recontextualized storytelling over time
Systemic interdependence
Role-play and branching outcomes
Meta-level narrative awareness
🌌 Zone Concept: The Shattered Vale
A fractured, mist-covered rift valley where time, memory, and truth have splintered due to a failed god-tier ritual. Every player experiences it differently based on class, performance, roleplay choices, and faction alignment. The zone acts as a living narrative mirror, evolving in both visuals and storytelling as players progress — reflecting not just what the character does, but how the player thinks, chooses, and performs.
🔁 1. Meta-Narrative of Player Performance
Key Principle:
Success and failure aren’t just mechanical results — they reshape your story, world perception, and future opportunities.
Example:
A Cleric fails to prevent an NPC's death in a timed escort quest.
This failure is recorded, triggering:
An alternate dialogue path where the NPC’s sibling blames you.
A unique passive skill: Echo of Regret, enhancing healing under pressure.
A bard’s song referencing your sorrow.
Later in the story, it’s revealed the NPC was corrupt.
Your failure saved others. The meaning of your past performance is now recontextualized.
🔍 Meta-layer: The game references your story as a player, not just as a character. You are performing a role — and the game tracks, reacts to, and reflects that performance in dialogue, mechanics, and world state.
🧙♀️ 2. Class / Race / Node / Faction Intersections
Every system-affiliation you hold colors how your story is told.
Examples:
Class (e.g. Mage): Gains unique lore from magical glyphs only they can decode.
Race:
Dwarves interpret the Vale’s crumbling ruins as a warning of hubris.
Elves treat it as sacred memory and will act more peacefully within it.
Node Affiliation:
A Scientific Node can deploy scholars to study time anomalies.
A Divine Node sees the Vale as a test of faith and builds pilgrim shrines.
Faction Alignment:
Memory Coven seeks to preserve fractured memories.
Obsidian Court seeks to overwrite them with new doctrine.
💬 Dialogue, quest choices, skill unlocks, and NPC responses shift dramatically depending on these alignments.
🌿 3. Biome Lore and Environmental Storytelling
The Vale is a dynamic biome rich in secrets, built to reflect emotional and narrative states.
Features:
Mist shifts based on player progression, time of day, and faction activity.
Landmarks include:
Broken moon dials (showing different times based on player actions).
Crystalline roots that "remember" player-triggered events.
Biome-reactive flora/fauna:
Creatures appear only under specific conditions (e.g. full moon + faction control).
Certain herbs only bloom if the player previously showed mercy to a spirit.
🌒 The zone tells a story without words — one that reflects what you’ve done and who you are.
🧩 4. Story Progression Recontextualizes the World
Your earlier actions change meaning as you uncover deeper truths.
Example Arc:
Early quest: A spirit begs you to free them by burning an effigy.
Mid-game: You discover that act erased a culture’s last memory.
Late-game: That erased memory was hiding a weapon that a rival faction would’ve exploited.
🌀 The player is forced to rethink their choices. The story doesn’t just move forward — it loops back, altering your understanding of your own role.
🔄 5. Systemic Interdependence
Each subsystem is interlocked, forming a web of consequences.
Systemic layer: Player performance
Impact on zone design: Alters quests, skill unlocks, visual themes
Systemic layer:
Node control
Impact on Zone design: Physically changes geography (bridges, fog gates)
Systemic layer: Faction alignment
Impact on Zone design: Modifies shrine functions, triggers world events
Systemic layer: Season/time cycle
Impact on Zone design: Affects access to hidden paths, summonable creatures
Systemic layer: Class-specific lore
Impact on Zone design: Unlocks faction routes or dungeon shortcuts
Systemic layer: Role-play rituals
Impact on Zone design: Grants long-term vision/story buffs
🔁 The Vale evolves based on who the player is, what they’ve done, and how they’ve done it — systemically and narratively.
🎭 6. Role-Play Depth & Branching Outcomes
The Vale includes optional spiritual roleplay arcs, activated through specific interactions:
Meditation at shrines under moonlight → unlocks memories tied to your failures.
Class-based Dojos → each class interprets the Vale’s truth differently.
Faction ceremonies → allow rewriting past world events (but at a cost).
🧙 For instance, a Bard who roleplays the truth of their failures can gain:
Custom song unlock
Access to an alternate ending where the Vale becomes a monument to memory rather than a sealed wound.
🧠 7. Meta-Level Narrative Awareness
The game is aware that you’re playing a game, making choices through a player lens.
How It References This:
NPCs may say:
“Is it fate you return? Or did you reload your will until it aligned with the world?”
The final boss doesn’t fight — they debate your past, pulling records of your performance, failures, and allegiances into the dialogue:
“You saved no one at the shrine. You burned the truth for favor. And now you wear your scars as virtue?”
🧠 This creates a layered storytelling device:
The character is judged by the world.
The player is judged by the story they chose to write.
The systems remember — and reflect — that journey.
✅ TL;DR Summary of Design Harmony
Element How It’s Represented
Meta-narrative of performance Success/failure alters story, mechanics, and perception
Class/Race/Node/Faction Each offers unique dialogue, mechanics, and worldview on events
Biome Lore Visual, mechanical, and thematic representation of memory and choice
Story Recontextualization Player history is revisited and altered as new truths are revealed
Systemic Interdependence All systems affect and reflect each other (quests, environment, world-state)
Branching Roleplay Custom storylines and unlocks for immersive players
Meta-awareness Story comments on your identity as a player shaping the world
Lots of tells of its 'ignorance' there, but ofc, if there isn't enough openly available data on it, that's what it can do.
After reviewing a good chunk of it I have encountered the problems I generally encounter unfortunately, but that's nothing 'bad on you' it is just that prompt engineering is an actual skill that needs a lot of practice to get the ai to do a good job. However there was one thing I found worth reacting to here down below:
Reaction: 'hybrid approach to pre-existing character vs player expression' I reject this. Games with pre-made character backstories almost always have lower roleplay freedom. Even when you go as simplistic as PoE tends to, it interferes with rp flexibility. It gives a crutch to less creative people, but that is the main benefit. I preffer games with strong NPC character writing to give the 'crutch' through 'emulation' basis. For example, in FFXI you really get to know Shantoto and a noob rper would 'learn how that behavior interacts with others and you can learn to mimic it from there'. Player expression designs are just flatly better for mmos.
The rests of the points in that part of the post are 'standard game design' and not really an expansion relative to most mmo story telling. I think that is why Azherae is having the reaction above. So it is 'correct' but also 'not worth discussing if you have played an mmo with good story telling and quest design before'
MMO story telling really depends on the goal of the over arching 'pinnacle' play experience. If your game is heavily about tactical 'team composition' battles you can rely on 'the player is using a pre-written character' as the players personal journey is less relevant to the content. If your 'pinnacle' is say, 'gvg siege' then that personal journey is way more important because PERSONAL DRAMA is the bigger player. If 'npc factional conflict' is more important, the thing I was talking about irt 'having strong npc character writing to give people characters they can emulate or project specific types of social behaviors and personality traits onto' is even more important than the 'personal drama'.
Interesting, thank you for your thoughts.
Yeah I realized the same thing since I have been messing around with GPT, it seems like it assumes certain things through the user's prompt wording, which can plant certain contexts/biases that you may not neccessarily want, which I think also plays a role in how people perceive GPT and its "imperfections" when a lot of the time its just user error tainting the information. I find it also tends to oversimplify sometimes which is good for when you want that but annoying when you want something both comprehensive and specific, which is why I added that last section that did a deeper dive into the specifics.
Was there a certain "tell" that made you think it was my bad prompting, so I can work on fine tuning that? Because I thought after poking and prodding with it for a little bit that the end result was relatively on target, even if it didn't interpret my intent perfectly and lacked some specifics in some areas.
I think I agree with your sentiment assuming I am interpreting it correctly, but I also think this might be a symptom of some games not doing it optimally, which I went into in my original post (storytelling with archetypes post). I think the purpose of the pre-made content is to provide a spine in the narrative to allow for curated content to exist (like a tank being about courage lets you curate a narrative around that idea). Obviously that spine existing can limit role play potential like you mentioned (like if I don't care about how others perceive my courage and want to role play some other idea), but I think that why it is also important to have multiple "spines" to choose from (to represent different story ideas you would like to role-play around) and have full flexibility to bend or break them to role play how you want (like a quest around being courageous allows you to instead show how much of a coward you can be if thats how you want to role-play). So I do truly support the kind of emergent storytelling and role play that you are alluding to, but I think that content is necessary to have some form of curated narrative progression (similar to the idea of having branching story arcs, but at a smaller scale, and you can dynamically "hop between spines" and they reference each other in their respective storylines based on your role-play choices), but there should absolutely also be enough story paths to account for a wide variety of role-play options (which would be a monumental task to fully capture this kind of story breadth and depth).
For example, in both zone concepts Gpt made that I posted (The Weeping Hollow and The Shattered Vale) there is a section with examples of Player Journeys such as "The scholar's path" or The Tank's "Protector-failure" path. These are options for role-play based on how you want to behave in that area, nothing on rails or forced story paths or anything like that. But these illustrate how based on your choices and personal performance, you can still experience a curated story with layered narrative access, and also how those paths can be recontextualized based on other interdepend factors (such as node or race choices impacting that role-play and story path). So these examples are just individual "Spines" within the narrative design that are a culmination of a wide variety of other predicates that are impacted by your personal totality of role-play choices. But in order for those story paths, story recontextualization, and world-state reactivity to happen, there has to be that core story progression within each spine, but that doesn't mean there can't be multiple spines that interact with and reference each other, and it doesn't mean you have to stick to a single spine throughout your playthrough. Like, you could make a "scholar" choice one moment, then a "purger" choice the next (full role-play flexibility), regardless of your class/race, but the context of your class/race can add to how that story might play out when you make those choices of which either align with or defy those predetermined traits. They simply give some identity and context to inform some interesting ways to take that narrative path to form a narrative spine (like playing off the idea that you are a tank who chose to stick with your core values of protecting the innocent) which allows for more interesting story progression through how that curated narrative can play off those story ideas and your choices, and shift based on other predicates and new story contexts over time (like recontextualizing what it means to be a protector? who really is innocent? Who should you actually be protecting as a tank? What happens if you failed to protect them? How does that play into the ideas of that zone's lore, your race's values, etc.?). Its not "rails", its just content and context that reacts to and evolves with your choices (if done right).
I might be wrong though, because this is definitely not my forte by any means, just some things I picked up on over time, so I could always change my mind on the nuances surroundng this.
If you want a better explanation it might give you some important context to better understand my prompt, if you read through my original post (storytelling with archetypes), which gpt had access to and knew what I was going for with that quote that you brought up.
Yes, I agree, but I tend to still point out the obvious because sometimes people either forget, or its not as obvious as one might think (because there are definitely games that get it wrong). Its also important to flow back and forth between the "obvious" design principles and how that might manifest in a more specific way, in addition to how those things interact and layer with other game design aspects, which is where things tend to get "way less obvious" and a key reason for why I posted about these topics to begin with, but I could certainly understand why you guys might have that reaction, considering the kinds of games you like to play and talk about.
Yes, as with anything its situational and contextual, generally with my posts you can assume I am referring to "within a certain context", instead of a sweeping generalization to apply to all content.
So first of all I think that we don't necessarily disagree but we might be considering things differently. I'm not sure what you mean by the spine (and am too lazy to look it up rn sorry) but I think I can assume you don't necessarily mean this has to be a character, but rather 'a premise' based on your example and that is something I agree with. It can be easy to forget that the genre you pick in the first place to make your game in kind of limits the design space on it's own due to the tropes and design expectations that come with selecting that genre. Obviously it is fine to break those and there is a lot of power in that but I think you have been around Ashes long enough to know how whiny people can get if you try to do something unique/different >_> That's an aside although I think one directly relevant to this splinter topic.
No worries, it is after all best practice to go over said basics in this forum given how uh... sideways people can come at you disingenuously or not. I was more so referring to the fact that Chatgpt itself was doing that, not necessarily you. Let's just assume both you and know what we are talking about and we know that each other knows what they are talking about >.>
True but I was more so trying to explain the premise of 'how that contextualization works' since it is in contrast with the Chatgpt output to highlight the difference. Unfortunately without knowing the prompt itself it can be difficult to gauge a posters intention. Which brings us to your aside questions.
First of all the tell: Basically if you don't specify the template/format of an answer you want, Chatgpt has a few defaults. The one you posted here seems to be a variation of one of them. If you told Chatgpt to give the answer in that format, then you are probably the 'universal average' that causes it to be that way and there is no problem with it, but it does tend to give too much detail relative to the goal you might have intended. So relative to that specific issue really think about how you want your answer to be structured format wise. If you do a lot of writing elsewhere study your personal responses and try to describe hallmarks of that to Chatgpt and give general framework that incorporates them. I also find that arbitrary word count limiters help a lot. Just like with a human having a limit on how many words you can use to describe something keeps Chatgpt on task more often than not.
Part of the reason I don't find Chatgpt very helpful is that the prompt engineering required to get something that cuts out most of the bs and sounds relatively sane and doesn't distract from your personal goal with the output, tends to be about the same 'planning' process that is necessary to make a good piece of writing in the first place. That is usually the biggest amount of 'work' required to write well. I find it is better at critique or modifying your personal rough draft and enhancing a piece with feedback.
For the purposes you were using it though, I think the main thing I'd do is try to give it a reference set like a certain website that might be in it's domain, or a set of articles that explain the various ideas you want to use for the prompt. I'd also make sure I set what tone, voice, and level of formality I want the post to have. If my memory is correct I feel like you might have done this? Part of the thing I found most interesting about the output you posted was how it seemed to kind of lack clear examples of mmo writing which was what made me 're-explain' the different types of story telling relative to the goal of the mmo in particular. You'd think that'd be one of the easiest things for them to steal. Fortunately for creatives, there seems to be a hurdle in a lot of subgenres relative to Chatgpt's refrence set that make its output feel really generic and unhelpful.
Yeah I edited in an explanation just now, im gonna read through your reaction in the meantime if you want to check it out.
After reading your new edit I think I can post to something really specific and it's shameless self promotion
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/49859/character-creation-tips-for-an-mmo
Yes, exactly
Absolutely. I think because of the ambiguity (to me at least) in where Ashes is in the design "spectrum" or how far up and down they are willing to "move the sliders" for certain aspects, and which subsets of their overall audience they prioritize and what that ratio is that drives their design decisions, it is tough to filter my ideas in terms of "what is likely to be in Ashes", so I basically coming from a place of "what is possible to be in Ashes" and "what I personally would like to see in Ashes", to basically throw things at the wall to see what sticks, if not at least to give them that data even if it is disregarded.
Okey
Understood- While this is true, I also wanted to highlight that, like I was talking with Azherae about, even if in this particular instance GPT's "failed" to adapt these concepts within a particular overarching design context, it is possible to have "sub-contexts" where it might be applicable (not neccessarily referring to anything specific about the gpt post just moreso making a point about the overall potential "design ecosystem", not sure if I am making that very clear or not, but its hard to explain what I mean I guess.)
Interesting, makes sense, thank you.
Yeah, in the past I had some kind of wierd conversations with GPT and had it introspectively explain to me how its "training" was done and how it functions, processes info, and tailors its responses, lol. This helped me realize that it tends to assume a certain audience, and can also resort to the "lowest common denominator" of information unless you specify otherwise by providing your own context, explanations, and examples for it to use as a framework, but im sure I could get better at this.
Nice, i'll check it out