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Ashes of Creation - Another PvP Centric MMO
Stragint
Do Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered User regular
Do Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered User regular
Ashes of Creation is a pretty ambitious MMO that has a lot to offer. Your actions will have consequences from developing a location into a new village to becoming corrupted through PvP. This is an MMO that has been in development since 2015.
Think of it live Civilization but an MMO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg5qrykjgNc
There will be 100+ locations called Nodes and players that gather materials, complete quests, and kill mobs and gain exp will also help to level the node up. As the node levels it opens up more stuff in that area. Nodes will have different stages of advancement being:
It will take longer and longer to move the node up the higher it gets and by developing the node it will lock out other nodes in the area from developing so in the end there will only be a hand full of fully developed nodes that players will be able to go to. The Nodes will also take on aesthetic aspects of the race that provided the most in leveling that node.
Nodes will also have four different types and they are predetermined so players will be able to target a specific node and work together to advance it hopefully before another group might advance the nearby node they are advancing. The four node types are:
Each node will offer benefits at different stages of advancement from Divine nodes spawning mega catacomb dungeons beneath the Metropolis to Economic nodes generating a player wide auction house. Military nodes will enable Bounty Hunters which will be a title players can take to hunt down corrupted players and Scientific nodes will offer teleportation between the metropolis and vassal nodes for citizens.
Nodes are the most important aspect to the game. It basically doesn't function without them. Leveling a node will spawn new NPCs with PvE and PvP quests. The node leveling might cause a dungeon to suddenly appear or a world boss to start roaming the area because the node is too close to their lair. All of the nodes will have a zone of influence and players that gather, quest, and kill mobs in it will be giving exp to the node. As the node levels the zone of influence will grow and at a certain point if it grows once the zone of influence grows large enough it will envelop lower level nodes and take over that nodes zone of influence and create a vassal node that will always be at least 1 level below the primary node. Because of this there will only be about 5 or 6 max level nodes out of the 108 that will exist.
There will also be PvP involved with caravans. A node village might send a caravan to a vassal node and players will get a quest to protect it from other players trying to loot it.
PvE story quests will be at risk of absolute failure and will not be able to be advanced if it hits that point. There may also be race specific objectives in quests causing two players of a different race taking the same quest and starting out the same but ending in entirely different ways. Mayors will also be able to activate quests for the node to help with things like development.
Nodes will be able to be destroyed through sieges. Another node, perhaps one as leveled as another might declare a siege because they can no longer grow while the other same level node is blocking their influence from growing and through this siege they can completely destroy the other leveled up node and reduce it to zero. All the upgrades, housing, and work that went into it is gone.
There will be castle nodes for guilds to take and wage their guild wars from as well.
Speaking of citizens, players will be able to purchase an apartment/house in the developed nodes and become a citizen to take part if further advancing the node, quest and benefits only given to citizens of that node, and be able to participate in mayoral elections.
Being the mayor comes with a lot of benefits. It will be one of EXTREMELY few ways to obtain a flying mount. The mayor will also be responsible for setting the taxes of the node and setting the upgrades to the town like generic things such as a blacksmith shop or alchemy shop and even node type specific upgrades. The mayor will be decided based on the kind of node, some will holds votes, others will be chosen based on how divine they are, or military node mayors will be decided by combat.
PvP is also a huge part of the system. Citizens of a node will be able to join a trade caravan to protect it from other players trying to loot it or attack another developed node to completely destroy that node and free up the area for new node development.
The game as it currently is will be open world PvP at all times with no opt in/opt out for players. Players will have 3 PvP designations:
Being a non-combatant does not make you safe. Players can still gank you at will but a PvP enabled player that does so becomes corrupted. If a PvP enabled player kills a PvP enabled player or a corrupt player there will be no change to their PvP flag. If a non-combatant kills a corrupt player there will be no change but if they kill a PvP enabled player they will be flagged for PvP.
The way the developers plan to stop ganking is through this corruption system. As corrupt players gain more corruption through killing non-combatants and other ways they become less and less effective in PvP. The bigger the level difference between a corrupt player and their non-combatant victim the more corruption they generate. Their proficiency with weapons and armor is reduce, their stats are reduced, and the chance to drop equipped gear increases as they become corrupt. These stat effects are only active in PvP so they can still do PvE but at some point they become useless in PvP. As mentioned Military nodes will have Bounty Hunters who hunt the corrupted players and corrupt player stat impacts will not be active against Bounty Hunters so they will be full powered.
The next big thing is the penalties on dying. When a players die they a percentage of their gathered materials, they get experience debt so that needs to be cleared before being able to get exp to progress to the next level, gear will be damaged which will need crafting materials to repair, and there will be a temporary stat reduction. The items dropped will be able to be picked up by anyone if they find it before you get back to it so it is possible to lose a good chunk of times worth of gathering because of one death.
This leads into the major downside in my personal opinion when PvP gets involved. The same penalties for dying will happen in PvP so gankers will be able to take the items you drop and you will still get that exp debt, stat reduction, and damaged gear.
The next big thing to cover is the class system. There will be 8 archtypes that players will be able to choose from when making their character.
Next come the classes. At a certain level players will choose a secondary archtype to create their class. So a Tank primary could take Mage and become a Spellshield and modify their skills. Instead of charging to a target they could teleport immediately to them. A Cleric could take Summoner and become a Necromancer. Or a Rogue could take Rogue again and become an Assassin.
The class system should allow for a lot of fun builds and allow for players to play in their preferred way and still be effective in all aspects of the game.
Part of the intention in PvP is fights will essentially be a Rock Paper Scissors situation.
Right now the game is in early alpha 1 so there is a ton of time for things to change and develop and improve. There is currently a non-NDA month long alpha 1 test going on until August 13th and the price to get into the alpha 1 is real steep. The $500 package is what is needed to get into the alpha 1 now. It is very much an alpha game, it has things in place to play and it runs but right now everything is being tested so unless you REALLY want to support the game and test it the $500 price tag is absolutely not worth it. There are other bundles but none of them come with alpha 1 access.
There is also a setup to buy in-game cosmetics for bags, mounts, armor, boats (there will be naval combat), and housing. You have to have one of the packages to be able to purchase them and as of right now they are limited time availability so they have a set for 1 month and then it is gone forever after it ends which honestly is pretty lame. There also already being a cosmetic shop is also a pretty worrying sign but they do at least promise there is no P2W.
There is a lot more to the game and a ton of stuff to discuss and go over but it will be interesting to see how this develops. The game is apparently being created by a bunch of veteran MMO players/developers so who knows how this will go. There are also apparently people who were working on Everquest Next and it really shows since there are a lot of things in this game that are extremely reminiscent of Everquest Next plans.
This is a dragon a group of us killed last week during the alpha 1 test month.
Think of it live Civilization but an MMO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg5qrykjgNcThere will be 100+ locations called Nodes and players that gather materials, complete quests, and kill mobs and gain exp will also help to level the node up. As the node levels it opens up more stuff in that area. Nodes will have different stages of advancement being:
- Wilderness
- Crossroads
- Camp
- Village
- Town
- City
- Metropolis
It will take longer and longer to move the node up the higher it gets and by developing the node it will lock out other nodes in the area from developing so in the end there will only be a hand full of fully developed nodes that players will be able to go to. The Nodes will also take on aesthetic aspects of the race that provided the most in leveling that node.
Nodes will also have four different types and they are predetermined so players will be able to target a specific node and work together to advance it hopefully before another group might advance the nearby node they are advancing. The four node types are:
- Divine Nodes
- Economic Nodes
- Military Nodes
- Scientifc Nodes
Each node will offer benefits at different stages of advancement from Divine nodes spawning mega catacomb dungeons beneath the Metropolis to Economic nodes generating a player wide auction house. Military nodes will enable Bounty Hunters which will be a title players can take to hunt down corrupted players and Scientific nodes will offer teleportation between the metropolis and vassal nodes for citizens.
Nodes are the most important aspect to the game. It basically doesn't function without them. Leveling a node will spawn new NPCs with PvE and PvP quests. The node leveling might cause a dungeon to suddenly appear or a world boss to start roaming the area because the node is too close to their lair. All of the nodes will have a zone of influence and players that gather, quest, and kill mobs in it will be giving exp to the node. As the node levels the zone of influence will grow and at a certain point if it grows once the zone of influence grows large enough it will envelop lower level nodes and take over that nodes zone of influence and create a vassal node that will always be at least 1 level below the primary node. Because of this there will only be about 5 or 6 max level nodes out of the 108 that will exist.
There will also be PvP involved with caravans. A node village might send a caravan to a vassal node and players will get a quest to protect it from other players trying to loot it.
PvE story quests will be at risk of absolute failure and will not be able to be advanced if it hits that point. There may also be race specific objectives in quests causing two players of a different race taking the same quest and starting out the same but ending in entirely different ways. Mayors will also be able to activate quests for the node to help with things like development.
Nodes will be able to be destroyed through sieges. Another node, perhaps one as leveled as another might declare a siege because they can no longer grow while the other same level node is blocking their influence from growing and through this siege they can completely destroy the other leveled up node and reduce it to zero. All the upgrades, housing, and work that went into it is gone.
There will be castle nodes for guilds to take and wage their guild wars from as well.
Speaking of citizens, players will be able to purchase an apartment/house in the developed nodes and become a citizen to take part if further advancing the node, quest and benefits only given to citizens of that node, and be able to participate in mayoral elections.
Being the mayor comes with a lot of benefits. It will be one of EXTREMELY few ways to obtain a flying mount. The mayor will also be responsible for setting the taxes of the node and setting the upgrades to the town like generic things such as a blacksmith shop or alchemy shop and even node type specific upgrades. The mayor will be decided based on the kind of node, some will holds votes, others will be chosen based on how divine they are, or military node mayors will be decided by combat.
PvP is also a huge part of the system. Citizens of a node will be able to join a trade caravan to protect it from other players trying to loot it or attack another developed node to completely destroy that node and free up the area for new node development.
The game as it currently is will be open world PvP at all times with no opt in/opt out for players. Players will have 3 PvP designations:
- Non-combatant
- PvP enabled
- Corrupted
Being a non-combatant does not make you safe. Players can still gank you at will but a PvP enabled player that does so becomes corrupted. If a PvP enabled player kills a PvP enabled player or a corrupt player there will be no change to their PvP flag. If a non-combatant kills a corrupt player there will be no change but if they kill a PvP enabled player they will be flagged for PvP.
The way the developers plan to stop ganking is through this corruption system. As corrupt players gain more corruption through killing non-combatants and other ways they become less and less effective in PvP. The bigger the level difference between a corrupt player and their non-combatant victim the more corruption they generate. Their proficiency with weapons and armor is reduce, their stats are reduced, and the chance to drop equipped gear increases as they become corrupt. These stat effects are only active in PvP so they can still do PvE but at some point they become useless in PvP. As mentioned Military nodes will have Bounty Hunters who hunt the corrupted players and corrupt player stat impacts will not be active against Bounty Hunters so they will be full powered.
The next big thing is the penalties on dying. When a players die they a percentage of their gathered materials, they get experience debt so that needs to be cleared before being able to get exp to progress to the next level, gear will be damaged which will need crafting materials to repair, and there will be a temporary stat reduction. The items dropped will be able to be picked up by anyone if they find it before you get back to it so it is possible to lose a good chunk of times worth of gathering because of one death.
This leads into the major downside in my personal opinion when PvP gets involved. The same penalties for dying will happen in PvP so gankers will be able to take the items you drop and you will still get that exp debt, stat reduction, and damaged gear.
The next big thing to cover is the class system. There will be 8 archtypes that players will be able to choose from when making their character.
- Fighter
- Tank
- Rogue
- Ranger
- Mage
- Summoner
- Cleric
- Bard
Next come the classes. At a certain level players will choose a secondary archtype to create their class. So a Tank primary could take Mage and become a Spellshield and modify their skills. Instead of charging to a target they could teleport immediately to them. A Cleric could take Summoner and become a Necromancer. Or a Rogue could take Rogue again and become an Assassin.
The class system should allow for a lot of fun builds and allow for players to play in their preferred way and still be effective in all aspects of the game.
Part of the intention in PvP is fights will essentially be a Rock Paper Scissors situation.
Right now the game is in early alpha 1 so there is a ton of time for things to change and develop and improve. There is currently a non-NDA month long alpha 1 test going on until August 13th and the price to get into the alpha 1 is real steep. The $500 package is what is needed to get into the alpha 1 now. It is very much an alpha game, it has things in place to play and it runs but right now everything is being tested so unless you REALLY want to support the game and test it the $500 price tag is absolutely not worth it. There are other bundles but none of them come with alpha 1 access.
There is also a setup to buy in-game cosmetics for bags, mounts, armor, boats (there will be naval combat), and housing. You have to have one of the packages to be able to purchase them and as of right now they are limited time availability so they have a set for 1 month and then it is gone forever after it ends which honestly is pretty lame. There also already being a cosmetic shop is also a pretty worrying sign but they do at least promise there is no P2W.
There is a lot more to the game and a ton of stuff to discuss and go over but it will be interesting to see how this develops. The game is apparently being created by a bunch of veteran MMO players/developers so who knows how this will go. There are also apparently people who were working on Everquest Next and it really shows since there are a lot of things in this game that are extremely reminiscent of Everquest Next plans.
This is a dragon a group of us killed last week during the alpha 1 test month.
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Stragint on
+1
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I haven't followed the development very closely, but my understanding is that the big draw is all about the "nodes" and about how no two servers will be exactly the same, and how community involvement will shape the actual lay of the land to varying degrees. Everything I've read about sounds mostly PVE focused, i.e. helping a certain faction in X Area will cause that area to grow and boom, perhaps spawning a new town there or something, or doing a handful of Y Quests in another area might cause that area to evolve or mutate in a way other than what it is on other servers.
Maybe I just haven't read enough, but everything that has caught my attention about this game revolves around a dynamic world and community actions mattering on a macro level.
You are absolutely correct. The node system is very much a driving force in the game and essentially nothing else really works in the game without.
The idea is each of the 108 nodes will have a zone on influence and as players gather, quest, and kill mobs in the area they will provide exp to the node whose influence they are in and level it. As it levels it starts to block other nodes from leveling and takes over their zone of influence and creates vassal nodes that can level as well but always stay at least 1 level below. The architecture will take on the look of the race that added the most exp
Leveling nodes will unlock quests for both PvE and PvP including story quests which can be failed and will no longer push that storyline forward. Node types are locked though so getting a node to level 1 will show what kind of node it is and people can choose to search for a node to their liking or continue that one but there can only be a handful of max level nodes. I believe they said 5 or 6 of them.
So absolutely yes there is a huge emphasis on the actions of the players changing things and no two servers will be alike and PvE being expansive. In the alpha 1 test we have dungeons but only 1 has a boss right now, big long annoying quest chains with a ton of running back and forth long distances to turn in the quest to the NPC that gave it, and world bosses with mechanics to learn and overcome.
PvP does play heavily into the game. Guilds will be able to control special castle nodes and they will be able to declare war on other guilds. Other nodes will siege nodes they declare as an enemy and can outright destroy the node in PvP which will reduce the node to zero and any upgrades, player housing, and citizen benefits will be gone. There will be caravans between nodes that players will need to protect from other players and bounty hunting to go hunt down corrupted players.
I'll edit my initial post cause I'm realizing now I left out a lot of info about PvE but I'd say the game has a big focus on both PvE and PvP aspects of the game but with always on PvP and the game seeing to skew towards PvP for the end game I feel more confident saying the game will be PvP centric, especially when PvP is always on and there is no opt in/opt out right now and another player can come up and gank you and take the loot you drop on death.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
The comparison I haven't seen made yet is to EVE, and the possibility for fights over valuable resources/nodes leading to metagamey stuff.
As far as loot drop, unless a player is corrupted they only drop unprocessed crafting mats so it isn't really a big deal unless someone is killed while gathering crafting mats though that might just be an alpha 1 thing since the wiki mentions dropping processed goods. Though I honestly don't know if this is gonna stay or not since the possibility of griefing is so high and the amount of players who like this kind of thing isn't very large. In "instanced" PvP like sieges, guild wars, and caravans the penalty for dying is disabled at least which is nice though I am curious if corrupt players will still have the negative PvP stats in those situations.
I do think it is worse that exp debt and stat reduction still happens when dying in open world PvP though.
I'm really fascinated to see how things play out with sieges though. A node declaring war on another and one of them potentially being destroyed is pretty wild.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Yea, node goes to zero, all upgrades and player housing is gone and it could potentially be turned into a vassal node and not be able to get back to where it was previously.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Yea, it will be interesting to see how things play out and how servers develop. Since there are no inherent factions in the game the factions will basically be made by the players and I'd assume probably represented by a guild/guild alliance that decided to either take residence in the primary node for that area or control one of the few castle nodes near the primary nodes zone of influence.
It is kind of going to suck that the mayor of a node will more than likely always be from the largest guild of that node.
There are a lot of extremely interesting implications with how this game can go but I feel like a lot of it runs on good faith and expecting people not to be scummy which makes me nervous.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
To me this is the next thing to do with emergent MMO gameplay, something that EVE never quite pulled off (in EVE the nullsec and highsec world didn't intersect all that much).
In a pure themepark/PvE thing like WoW they have to turn the grind way up because no developer can put out content as fast as players can play it. But PvP can create its own content so to speak, as players try new things against each other.
I hope they don't back off the sandbox/pvp elements. I played WoW on a PvP server and enjoyed it even though I occasionally got ganked. Griefing in games really isn't that common in my experience and it's possible to counter it with design/rewards.
I think it involves too much good faith interaction between players. For some reason devs think there wont be a bunch of people who only gain fun from causing someone else to be extremely miserable.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
If faction balance is within 3-5% of each other, that’s the sweet spot and everybody on both sides gets the best rewards while equilibrium is maintained.
This is actually pretty likely. The dev team is made up of people who did dev stuff for other games. There are people who were working on Everquest Next that are working on this and there are a lot of ideas for Ashes that were shown off for Everquest Next.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
If I remember right Sony broke away from Daybreak Studio, the company that runs all the EQ stuff and then Daybreak basically couldn't afford to run their both current active games and EQ Landmark/EQ Next.
Really sucked because I love EQ and I got one of the expensive backer packs for EQ Landmark.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
That shit happened in Asheron's Call on the PVP server back in like 99-00 though. Sides developed naturally to have PVPers and allies. The Allied side was basically the different groups that didn't want to random pvp, and didn't kill each other. PVP groups wanted to kill anyone not in their group (and in one's case, even in their own group). Since both your recall and spawn point could be set to a town, groups typically "took over" towns by being able to to win any fight in said town enough to make it not worthwhile for the other groups to play there. Dungeons also could be owned on a lesser scale, often having more of a group in some major leveling areas and they would defend it heavily if someone else came around who aimed to PVP everyone.
All the things that come with that were there, including temp alliances for convenience like you say. PVP groups allied from time to time as well. The free for all of it all essentially created all this shit naturally.
There's a lot of bias in this guy's videos. In general, I think he can sometimes be too much of an unrealistic fanboy with no business sense. But the videos can still be informative. If I recall, this one addressed some of the personality conflicts that got weird:
Heck, even the couple console spinoff games they made back in the PS2 era were fantastic. I freaking loved Champsions of Norrath 1 and 2.
Everquest Next had a lot of ambitious ideas and sounded neat on paper, but I think the whole thing was missing a lot of key funding, and I also think the leadership team that was in charge of it probably weren't the most equipped to handle something of that magnitude.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Last month they also showed melee basic attacks in the combat system, and it looks like they're going for action/hotbar hybrid, which I'm good with. It seems like this might actually be a game, I just wish they'd give a date for the next alpha.
Still no date for the alpha 2.
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.