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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Npcs and lore characters are not as important as people
That's an interesting thought and I like it.
What journal?
or... one part of the story, and access to a specific area, can be granted by more than one node...
I'm sure the server story log will just show players what cities have been built and destroyed and which castles have been won and lost. so it probably wont matter in the end
I know the game seems to take a long time, but I wouldn't bet it's because the devs are designing 52.2 million individual combinations of nodes advancement.
If I was to guess, I'd say it will be "limited" to a mix of node types, stages and biomes. And since a node 6 was once a node 5, a node 4 before that, and so on, it won't be that unpredictable to see what will happen to a node once we've seen that progression for a certain biome.
Don't get me wrong, we'll get to see a lot of different evolution from server to server, but it will always be kind of similar, or at least familiar.
I'd go one step further - or back.
IMO, dungeon locations will be set in place, and their population is based on the node that has control over the area - starting from node stage 4.
Thus, the dungeon will have a total of 12 states, including a total of 4 states of level capped content. The same will be true for major PoI's in overland content (boss mobs etc).
Overland base population content is a little more challenging, but it isn't as if Intrepid need to place mobs for each potential node state - all they need to do is code each node state in to spawners.
Let me use an unfairly unflattering example. Parking lots. They all have their own configuration in layout and the vehicles type. Some are underground, others under the open sky. Bare earth or concrete floor. Crowded full or empty... Millions of variations, yet all similar and familiar somehow.
I don't want to diminish the game world to a vacant lot waiting for its carts and caravans. I do think we'll see a lot of variations from town to town, server to server, and player agency will play a big role in how nodes grow. Every server, every town will have it's personality, they'll all feel a bit different, they'll all look a bit different. But on the macro/meta side of things, which is what matter for the min-maxing this thread is about, the small variations matter little so long as they don't go against the desired "goal".
In the node section of the wiki...
For various reasons, some locations will be preferred by players. And as the node types will be the same on all servers for this location, there could be echoes on all server development. This doesn't prevent variations, and which node win the growing race to restrain its neighbours expansion will play major role.
IF min-maxing was really a big threat, that's where the focus will have to be put. Grow the "right" node first before the region falls under the influence of another. I say "if" because I'm not really worried about this: all it takes is a disastrous siege for the race between the vassals to start anew and change the dynamic of the region. Node type dominance is always temporary.
Yet, the basics will be figured out in time. What services are "the best" and which node type provide it and at what stage it becomes available. Theoretically, a meta of the best combo of nodes-types-stages for each biomes could be devised. Execution is the problem since it requires long time coordinating of lots of players and, well, it's more or less the same as trying the herd cats. Not impossible, but rather unlikely in the early years after launch.
As a side observation, even if most servers ended up somewhat similar, it's wouldn't be dramatic. Let's be honest, most players tend to play all their characters on a very small selection of servers, not to say only one. The illusion of having an infinite number of possibilities is more important than the exact reality. And it's not as if your own server was static itself, enough changes witnessed at home to worry about how different or the same it is elsewhere.
I'm not worried about this.
yes, I know, amazing feedback right.. ;P
Any village, town or city has to be similar or familiar somehow - else they would not have those labels.
But, no... the residents of the various towns and cities and Metros on each server will have different goals.
U.S. East
I don't want to give too much away, but I wanted to let y'all know that this is also a concern of mine, and it's something that we have some ways to address. The things we're trying to consider include:
1) That Min/Maxing and making large guilds that have lots of power and sway is a feature of the sandbox parts of our sandpark. When a large guild sets out to make a big change in the world, that will also apply to story arcs.
2) That we, as much as humanly possible, want to have balanced rewards whenever there are branches and avoid having one branch in a story arc have rewards that are universally better than the other rewards in other branches. Like quests in most other MMOs, story arcs will never provide best-in-slot loot, as that is the purview of other game systems (look to crafters, raids, etc for that). I'd consider the system functioning well if players are more concerned with the state of the world or PoI they're working around than the explicit loot rewards.
3) That we must provide enough of this content at varying scales such that it isn't worthwhile or economical to control every single story arc in the world. Some will be smaller in scale and production value, and thus, will move faster and have shorter cooldowns before they're reintroduced.
4) That story arcs normally progress according to the passage of real-time, which is clearly indicated in your quest journals. Even if a zerg guild throws all their resources at a story arc, they can't lock anyone out of participating by doing all the participation on their own. You'll have the time indicated in your quest journal to finish the content available in that chapter.
5) That you can't no-life your way to an outcome you want here. The quests aren't infinitely repeatable within the same phase, and are only completable once per arc playthrough. We are also testing ways that smaller guilds and individual contributors can level the choice-game playing field with larger guilds.
6) That these systems are story- and lore-first. They interface with other systems for sure, but they aren't the best way to gain experience, gold or character power. If we accidentally lock something extremely valuable behind a single branch of a single storyline, then that'll be a mistake on our part. The cursed spiritbloom that we talked about in the livestream is available throughout the duration of the story arc regardless of the branches players take, for example.
As you can see, we're trying to strike a balance that feels good and closely fits in with how our game works. It's something that we are very open to feedback on, as well, and we'll be watching this closely come A2.
I'd be slightly concerned about the immersion, but honestly Elite manages to handle this sort of thing well using most of, if not all, of the principles you noted.
However some parts of this thread might have been moreso about the way the world itself shapes up as a result of players aiming to get specific Nodes up, in the sense that by 'refusing to raise certain nodes', some Story triggers never happen.
When you get a chance/it's okay to say, letting us know if different nodes can spawn 'equivalent' or 'the same' events, or even influence something in a different part of the world for some reason, would probably clear up a lot of people's concerns about it.
Always appreciate the work and hope to hear from you again sometime @skotty !
Thanks for taking the time to type this out.
This has put to rest a few of my fears. Thankyou so much for this input.
Most story arcs have multiple ways to unlock them. The Blood Still Due arc in the livestream requires any Riverlands node at level 3, for example, which means there are a lot of options that can enable the arc. It'll also be limited by the number of major arcs happening in the Riverlands, and even if conditions are right for it, it may need to "wait its turn" to start.
There are some exceptions for things that are intentionally rare or special.
And that would be one incentive for the Tulnar on that server to strive to have a Tulnar Metro.
Yes, or, it could be that most of the Tulnar on the server heard a story about how the Tulnar Metro doesn't trigger quests, POIs or raids that have the loot that most of the min-maxers want for their builds, and the entire community as a whole just 'agrees' to never pursue a Tulnar Metro.
But even then, it wasn't about WHO raised the node, but WHERE it was raised, and so on.
Though the OP definitely was focused on 'rewards from Storyline', there are other concerns such as 'Unlock these Nodes in this order to get the optimal endgame dungeons!'
Or even, as noted by skotty in another thread, issues with Story Arc related materials:
"Everyone wants the Corrupted Fangor Pelt to repair their high level armor, but it only triggers if a Jundark Node is at level 5, and the easiest Jundark Node to raise to level 5 for convenience is the one right at the entrance with a big vassal space so we're not accepting any Metros in that area other than that one or an Adjacent node."
Dynamism still available, but good luck getting it? (if this is the part of this post you disagree with, you can probably just skip any advancement of the interaction, standard disagreement in bases between you and I)
Well, either way, I really appreciated the additional answer from skotty in this thread as well. It sounds like it will definitely come down to the skill with which the arcs themselves are written, and we know they have people who can reach the quality level I consider good (hi Heidi! Everyone else, I'm believing in you as well!).
I'm completely fine with requirements for story arcs being quite precise, personally, it makes it easier to put together too. But the received answer definitely implies that the concern posed in this thread will either not matter (most content will happen either way and the 'story' being referred to is the Player Content/Node Development type) or be too 'unrewarding' as a whole for anyone to apply 'ulterior non RP motives' to their choices.
We should expect that on some servers, there won't be enough Tulnar to achieve a Tulnar Metro.
Most likely, there will be at least one server where enough Tulnar congregate to achieve a Tulnar Metro.
Min/Maxers are not all going to have the same attributes that they want to min/max.
Ashes doesn't have an endgame.
So, does this mean that node state doesn't have any impact at all on what raid content is available?
That is fairly big news if it is the case.
Would it be clear to each player which choices they made successfully influenced the world?
As for the concerns over meta-chasers, I feel like there are so many options for horizontal/artisan based changes that people are focusing too much on "do this to open this raid up so we can farm BiS"
As you've said, I highly doubt Intrepid wouldn't understand if one objective opened a raid and the other didn't, that the majority of players would choose the raid one. I'm much more interested in how widely story arcs are disseminated. Would it be possible to know of an ongoing story arc in a place you've visited but haven't been back to in a while?
I’m saying that quest rewards won’t compare to raid drops and crafted gear in terms of power gained, and we won’t lock our best loot behind the disparate encounters at the end of story arc branches when an arc offers multiple world boss options. Not saying anything here about how nodes and raid availability interact at this time (if at all).
Fair enough, cant comment on things that you cant comment on.
What I will say is - if Ashes attracts actual top end MMO players - if node state matters to raid content, there will be a very real attempt to maximize raid content over time. Both working to get content and rewards we want, as well as working to prevent content and rewards rival guilds want.
If raid content and story arcs have different triggers, this wont be an issue at all.
On the other hand, working on the assumption that raid content is always triggered by metropolis level nodes, top end players will only have an effect (or potential effect) on story arcs triggered from metropolis level nodes. Since metropolis level nodes are well out of the scope for a single guild to have a direct effect, the impact top end guilds will have on the story of a server as a whole is limited to the influence they can have on working with others to siege a metropolis level node.
I'm sure you guys know all this - I am just pointing it out to everyone else.
What makes you think every server is starting off the same?