Game difficulty

Ashes of Creation will be on the higher side of difficulty when it comes to engagements.

Adventuring is not easy in Ashes... The intent is that encounters are difficult. The world is dangerous. It is not a cakewalk to progress within Ashes. – Steven Sharif

Tumok the Wretched Alpha-2 world boss.

Raid bosses are aware of the number of combatants within an area in proximity to them and that awareness is part of an indicator to which behaviors they're going to utilize as part of their behavior tree. So as it's assessing the types of combatants that are facing it, the number of those combatants, the position of those combatants, the abilities and totals of those combatants, it weighs certain actions in its behavior tree and then it acts on those actions; and in the scenario where you're bringing overwhelming odds to a particular fight, that might weigh heavier the AoE options that the boss has access to, where they're utilizing a lot more AoE abilities during an engagement due to that overage of of players. So in that sense it's a bit adaptive. It's a bit dynamic based on the encounter scenario. – Steven Sharif

The difficulty of PvE content, such as raids and dungeons will adapt based on the performance of the raid or group against previous bosses in that encounter.

• Higher performance in earlier phases will increase the difficulty of subsequent phases of the encounter.
  • Certain AI behaviors might activate based on progress within an encounter.

• Bosses and mobs will not auto-scale based on group size, but AI behaviors may dynamically adapt to the number and types of combatants in proximity to the encounter.

• There will be mobs who's level is above the player level cap.

Both in Alpha-2 and when the game launches, there will be monsters whose technical level is above that of the cap; and the intent there is obviously again to provide some level of challenge that exceeds a comparable level challenge rating.{livestream|2023-11-30|1h53m50|V9F_AJl9ozY}} – Steven Sharif

• The higher the difficulty, the better the loot tables will be.

Q: How challenging will raid boss mechanics be given the given that players may need to simultaneously fight other players while also fighting the boss?

A: It depends. The great thing about our encounter system is that it has a wide scalability from encounters that some might consider easy given their composition to encounters that some might consider impossible until they get their gear level to a certain stage. The level of interaction with other players is really predicated on the encounter itself. We may have some encounters that are in instances although the predominant portion of those will be in the open world, in which case they do have the potential being contested; and these encounters, especially the big ones that might land in contention, are giving some of the best-in-slot gear you can get in the game. So it's important that they are contested because it is a significant victory point; and one of our core pillars is risk versus reward: and the higher that risk the higher that reward should be. So those two things seem fitting and then in addition we do have the concept of winners and losers. Not everybody in Ashes of Creation is going to be a winner; and that sucks if you're not I guess, but there is opportunity for you to continue to excel and become one. But it gives much more meaning to an achievement when not everybody gets the achievement. That's our philosophy. – Steven Sharif

Q: So it's the sort of thing where it might be, we're going do a dungeon that's oops, all fire golems, so if everybody straps up with plate armor and fire resistance, you don't have to worry about the magic fire: you've got the fire resistance for. And when you start getting punched around, that's why everyone's come in with plate?

A: The encounters design team presents a particular type of challenge rating- for those you're familiar with playing DnD or whatever, challenge rating gets informed by a few different vertical power levels, but then there's also the horizontal perspective: That is, what tools does your party have to address the challenge rating of the situation and some of the horizontal progression exists within how you kit your equipment slots. Some of those can be enhancements or stones, as you're discussing with fire resistance. Some of those are base stats that exist on a particular item, such as physical damage mitigation versus magical damage mitigation and what subtype of damage is incoming based on that. These are the ways that we emphasize that more rock-paper-scissors type of interaction with balance to where it's okay to have asymmetric imbalance if there are horizontal methods by which you achieve the challenge rating. – Steven Sharif

Level scaling

Levels, stats, or skills will not be scaled to allow low level players to participate in encounters with higher level players or world bosses.

Q: Will world bosses scale when it comes to player levels and is it based on players or the zone itself leveling?

A: They will not scale based on player level, no. – Steven Sharif

Mentor program

Algumas das informações a seguir não foram confirmadas recentemente pelos desenvolvedores e podem não estar no roteiro de desenvolvimento atual.

There will be a mentorship program where upper-level players are able to benefit from partying and/or helping lower level players; and getting them situated in the game.

• Certain node buildings and organizations offer quests that can be initiated by a mentor to assist new players. Rewards are offered to both the mentor and the mentee upon completion.
  • Leading a mentee through a dungeon.
  • Meeting at pre-arranged locations.
  • Escort quests for NPC caravans.

There will be activities that are present for higher level players to mentor lower level players. Let's say you have a friend who joins later on and you still want to do things with them, there will be things to do. Will he be able to enter a dungeon of your level and participate? No, because we don't want to inflate or deflate characters and manipulate that type of skill or power. We want that to be something that makes sense for them in a progression standpoint. – Steven Sharif

The mentorship program provides individual quests that can be initiated by the mentor based off of what node that they are part of. So these are like quests that are determined by either certain buildings and/or organizations or the mayor; and there are specific ones that are available for mentors to provide mentees; and they can also participate in some of those quest lines as well: Whether that be leading your mentee through a dungeon or providing a location for them to arrive with you at, or escort quests for the NPC caravans. These types of things, when done together with your mentor, will provide benefits both for the mentor and the mentee as well, so you're incentivized to participate with new players. – Steven Sharif

Learning curve

Ashes of Creation will be easy to understand yet hard to master.

My stance on participation trophies is that things should be hard, people should fail, the bitter taste of defeat is what makes success that much more rewarding. Helping other players learn encounter strategy, and fine tuning their play style for high end content is an important part of eliminating participation trophy. Growing together is a good thing, and that include failing together as a means to drive for success together. – Steven Sharif

Meta

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A efetividade das classes, skills e equipamento irá depender do adversário ou do encontro. Irão existir builds melhores para certos tipos de desafios ou níveis de dificuldade. Esse design tem como objetivo evitar metas óbvios ou builds padrões no Ashes of Creation.​

• Diferentes desafios são apresendados aos jogadores baseado na progressão e destruição dos nodes. As situações que são baseadas em um design de pedra-papel-tesoura irão incentivar a busca por gear. Esses desafios dinamicos irão mudar de mês a mês, causando uma mudança na demanda da economy a medida que diferentes builds passam a ser necessárias para novos conteúdos.

• A dificuldade crescente inspira uma progressão vertical mais tradicional que é comum em outros MMOs.

Muitas vezes você apenas tem uma escala de poder muito vertical e isso determina essa busca, mas quando você tem uma variedade de relevância entre certos tipos de adversários e essa variedade muda com o tempo por causa da atividade do jogador - e então isso afeta a economia e o sistema de crafting e quem estava produzindo o que para qual demanda - e tudo fica abalado. Esse é um ambiente muito divertido para existir nele apresenta uma situação mais dinâmica do que uma seleção mais padrão. – Steven Sharif

Casual vs. hardcore players

The multiple progression paths in Ashes of Creation are designed to suit different playstyles and offer different "lanes" for players depending on the time they have available to play.

• Some progression paths will be more immediately achievable, which are more suited to casual players.
  • Triggered events such as cravans and sieges will allow casual players to participate in impactful events without significant time investment.
  • Lower level characters will have usefulness in mass combat that does not depend on their level, such as manning siege weapons, helping repair fortifications, bringing proximity-based buffs to key positions, using stealth or scaling walls. These types of things are relevant to the tide of battle and do not require the player to be max-level or have high combat stats.

There are events that are happening in the world in the game that you won't need to be a hardcore player to impact and join. For example, the triggered events from the PvE standpoint against the cities; the trades of the caravans; those natural battlegrounds that exist; the castle sieges you can login for. There is a lot of systems that are at play where a person can simply log in, participate, have fun, be impactful and then log out. – Steven Sharif

• Other progression paths will require a significant time investment, which casual players will take longer to achieve than hardcore players.
  • The contribution of a large mass of casual players working together may have a greater impact on node progression than hardcore players. Hardcore players may be able to progress into to late-game content faster than casual players, but may lack the numbers to influence the nodes in those locations as quickly as the larger population of casual players.

Traditionally in MMORPGs you're going to see a larger population of casual players than you do of hardcore players; and that's just the way the cookie crumbles from a population standpoint. And because of that and the way that nodes collect experience and advance as a result of player activity, those casual players will actually have more impact on node progression than the hardcore players will: at least as I predict, because of the sheer quantity disproportionate between the two different groups of people... You may see in Ashes the smaller hardcore group of players progress further into the late-game content, right. But they don't have the numbers to influence the nodes in those locations as quickly as the more casual... larger population has near the outskirts. – Steven Sharif

Target demographic

The developers want Ashes of Creation to appeal to both younger and older generations of MMO gamers.

I think our target demographic, obviously we have a very high graphic fidelity in the game that's attractive to younger players, but at the same time we have a very roleplay game orientation - a a play back to that pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons feel that perhaps younger generations may not know but is very near and dear to the hearts of older gamers. So I think we have a broad appeal from a demographic standpoint. – Steven Sharif

Player types

Ashes of Creation will cater for a variety of player types from Raiders or PvPers to Role players and Crafters.

The most compelling design argument for how those different sects of gamers interact with each other is dependant from the design standpoint of interdependencies in the systems. So, for example if as a Raider or as a PvPer you're looking for the best gear, you're going to devote your time towards leveling up and going out and participating in the things you enjoy like pvping, perhaps going for caravans or sieging cities and castles and all that type stuff. If you want the best gear, you're going to have to rely on a person who's devoted their time towards crafting potentially; and they may not be a PvPer but they have a place in your wheelhouse because you need their services. And then that crafter is going to need a person who is either a gatherer or plays the economy as a merchant in the nodes with the auction houses that are regionalized. They're going to have to work with a person who specializes in trade that takes caravans with either mercenary groups or other guilds that are PvPers between the nodes to get the resources they need. Building dependencies on different groups or factions of players that exist within a large world like this MMORPG is what solidifies the bonds that allow for them to exist either harmoniously, or at least in a way that they know you need those types of players. – Steven Sharif

Combate

Pvp combat gameplay in Alpha-1 castle sieges.

Combat is the most tactile system in the game. It's the thing you will experience most often; and outside of the systems and mechanics that are going to be present for the overarching core gameplay loop, combat needs to feel responsive. It needs to not feel floaty. It needs to feel mobile. It needs to be fluid. It needs to give a feeling of satisfaction. The audio components, the effects components, the animations themselves, the types of skills and those types of things: All of those are really our objective in fine-tuning the approach for our combat in Ashes of Creation. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-2 solo PvE ranger combat.

Combate in Ashes of Creation is focused on strategy and tactics.

• Combat is the most tactile system in the game. It needs to feel responsive, mobile and fluid. It needs to give a feeling of satisfaction.

We will continue to iterate on combat until it is in a place that collectively we as a community can say 'this may not be my particular combat, but this combat is good.' That is the driving force and factor behind the development of combat; and that is how we are going to continue to iterate upon it, utilizing of course the player feedback from our community, but also keeping you guys informed and up to date as we continually iterate on combat. – Steven Sharif

• Combate is animation-driven to ensure it is impactful and responsive.
  • VFX and sound effects are an important part of selling the weight and immersion of combat.
  • Camera effects such as screen shake and radial blur are used to "sell a lot of the weight without being too over the top".

I think one of the things that helps set Ashes apart from an effects perspective is that we want VFX to be dynamically generated. We want them to interact with the world. We want them to feel like they are part of the combat. – John Kent

We're building a singular tool that all of the teams can use to build abilities and tweak their sound effects, visual effects, animation design, engineering: All using the same tool grounded in animation to build these abilities. – Keenan Reimer

A revamped combat system will be rolled out during and post Alpha-1 testing.

• Alpha-1 combat was focused on core functionality rather than combat balance.
• Alpha-2 combat will include archetypes, significant ability support, augments, split-body combat, weapon attacks, and many additional items, among other things.
• The developers will be testing whether or not to use global cooldowns GCDs on different types of abilities during Alpha-2.

• The game isn't focused around cover-based combat mechanics.

I might be on a rampart or behind a wall and that could be destroyed removing my cover, but not like a Gears of War or something, where I slide up to a piece of rock, or the corner of a wall or something. – Steven Sharif

Read more...

Combat logs

There are combat logs in Ashes of Creation.

We will be providing combat data for individual players in their chat window, that players can filter and analyze for themselves. The goal is to mitigate and make the practice less prevalent through the ease that DPS meters provide. Also to place actionable enforcement for players who attempt to circumvent the decision by use of 3rd party programs, for which we will be monitoring. – Steven Sharif

Game balance

The way that the systems are being designed from a balancing standpoint we're taking into account how we would like the nodes to change per-se how often and we've designed attrition systems for certain cultures that may have more dominance over others. These are things that in Alpha and Beta we will be testing and watching and making sure that our objective is achieved from a gameplay standpoint and if it's not we'll come back and recalculate. – Steven Sharif

Class balance

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As sessenta e quatro (64) classes são divididas em oito arquétipos primários. O balançeamento de habilidades ativas se relaciona apenas a estes oito arquétipos primários.

• Há quatro grupos primários de aprimoramentos atribuídos a cada arquétipo base. O balanceamento dos aprimoramentos está relacionado aos quatro grupos de aprimoramentos para cada um dos oito arquétipos.

Embora os aprimoramentos mudem radicalmente a forma como suas habilidades ativas funcionam, ainda há um foco principal no arquétipo base em si e não em todas as 64 classes. – Steven Sharif

Não estamos realmente falando de 64 classes distintas, estamos falando de oito classes com 64 variantes... Não há tanta variação entre as 64 classes como vocês podem pensar. Não é como se você conhecesse 64 versões diferentes de... classes radicalmente diferentes. – Jeffrey Bard

O balanceamento em Ashes of Creation é focado em grupo não é baseado em combate 1vs1.

• Encontros de 1vs1 terão uma dinamica de pedra-papel-tesoura onde uma classe é superior a outra.

Haverá encontros de 1vs1 onde uma classe será superior a outra; e essa será uma dinâmica de pedra-papel-tesoura. Queremos que hajam "counters" entre as diferentes classes. Em vez disso, será um equilíbrio focado no grupo, onde, enquanto houver diversidade de classes presentes, será um campo de jogo igualitário. Vai ser muito dependente de habilidade e estratégia. – Steven Sharif

Alguns arquétipos secundários serão capazes de "encurtar a distância" que tem os seus counters.

Alguns arquétipos são capazes de compensar a desvantagem de suas contrapartes. Se eu sou um arquétipo de Tanque e um Mage é meu counter, eu posso pegar um Mage secundário e diminuir a distância; e então chegar ligeiramente mais perto. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 testing é inicialmente focado na funcionalidade base em vez de combate ou balanceamento.

Siege balance

There are points of balance that we want to incorporate, such as the defense mechanisms that the defenders have, the types of buffs that are acquired through completing killing the bosses, or capturing control points, the stages before a siege when it comes to those node progressions in the preceding weeks: Those are all going to be balanced considering all things being equal between the two sides. But obviously we're not going to control the state of gear acquisition that one side might have as an advantage over the other. There might be a much better geared team over there. There might be a much better coordinated team. There might be a higher number of individuals who are part of the attacking or the defense. Those are components that we aren't necessarily going to put on railroads so-to-speak. But the aspects of design that we can talk about like the hit point health of a particular wall or door, or mercenaries that can be hired; what's their cost, what's their damage output: Those are things yes we're going to balance. But obviously anything that's player dependent or that has player interaction and activity and determination you can't always balance; and you don't want to balance. Those aspects you leave those to the players. – Steven Sharif

Power creep

The developers intend to limit power creep via item sinks, the lack of gear binding, and the absence of pay-to-win or pay-to-convenience in Ashes of Creation.

Read more...

Progressão

Progressão occurs through a variety of pathways.

• The objective is to provide both vertical and horizontal progression.

Having the ability to gain power at a sacrifice... That's a way to reach a horizontal type of progression. It may not be entirely, because there could potentially be a meta if balancing isn't done correctly; but the objective there is to make sure we have both vertical and horizontal progression in the game. – Steven Sharif

• Different progression pathways are designed to suit different playstyles.

Multiple playstyles should be relevant and viable. Additionally, you have a spread between casual players and hard-core players; and most of us exist somewhere on that spectrum. The progression path in a society or religion is more conducive to the time we have to play. Whereas, someone else may be playing several hours a day, and they have a better opportunity for the raid/level progression that might require some more dedication. So we want to have these different progression paths available to accommodate the different times in our lives that we have to play the game. And all of those types of progressions will make us relevant in some way shape or form to the general world. – Steven Sharif

• Progression pathways in Ashes of Creation are per-character.

The way that Ashes is constructed is there are multiple paths of progression from a from a PvX perspective, a wide net perspective that players have interest in; and you're not going to be able to become the master of everything. So you're going to have to pick and choose, but even picking and choosing that gives you a place within that aspect of the world at a place that's going to be something that you can build up a reputation around. – Steven Sharif

• The ratio that various progression systems influence player power will evolve over time. In the early game adventuring level may be the dominant influence on player power. Gear may become more influential on player power closer toward endgame.

Q: Could you explain in detail what you mean by 50% of player power when talking about gear influence on player power?

A: That's just a general allocation of what players can expect to pursue when enhancing their player character power. Now obviously, the distribution and ratio of those types of influences, whether it be itemization, whether it be level, whether it be, augments choices, and/or skill tree choices: those influences and ratios change through the leveling curve. So, at lower levels your character level is going to be more influential over character power than itemization will be, but at endgame or higher levels, or at the end of the adventuring level progression, that's when itemization really gets an emphasis for its ratio of player power. – Steven Sharif

• Repetition will not be part of progression in Ashes of Creation.

The game hosts a wide array of progression paths, and some of those paths will grant additional paths to augmenting your threat generation. This can be in the form of enchantments and stats ... and even in the form of augments granted from societies and religions. Gear and skills choice are also a big component. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-1 early iteration of the level-up effect by Jim Sanders.

One of the cool abilities we all love seeing and gives us a major dopamine response is when our character levels up. – Steven Sharif

Nivelamento won't follow a traditional linear path, although classic mechanics for leveling exist.

Leveling: the act of of going out and adventuring, of killing monsters, and combat in general is the most tactile and moment-to-moment type of gameplay that you're going to experience in Ashes of Creation; and I think at every step of the way in that adventure it should be fun, and it should be something that you enjoy doing, and it should be something that's rewarding, and it should be something that teaches you more about the immersive world that you're in and allows you to follow a compelling storyline. – Steven Sharif

• Players will have the option to rush their vertical progression to level cap or spend time building infrastructure through horizontal progression.

• Experience (XP) is gained through a variety of vertical and horizontal progression paths, such as Pvp, PvE, Exploração, Coleta/Processamento/Fabricação, Events/Missões, Grinding mobs.
  • XP will be awarded for participating in objective-based PvP on a diminishing returns basis.

• A character's level is visible to other players.

• Some levels may offer more rewards than others.

I think you can emphasize some levels more than others and that's a great way to do progression. But I think ultimately that you should see a reward for your progress or effort spent. – Steven Sharif

• There will not be level boosts or auto-leveling (AFK leveling).

As part of our ideals as a game we're not going to give boosts away. We're not going to auto-level up a character. You have to spend time acclimating yourself to what this game is, to what the world that you're part of is; and that's an investment- a time investment; and that plays towards our ideas of risk-versus-reward; and I've always said our game's not going to be for everybody and that's okay. – Steven Sharif

• There won't be any damage dampening due to differences in levels in either Pvp or PvE.

If I have a skill that does a thousand damage to a target of equal level I don't want my skill to do zero damage to a target that's five levels above me. – Steven Sharif

• A player could in theory level to max level at a single node, providing that node was at a high-enough stage, but it would not be the most effective means of leveling.

Read more...

End game

Ashes of Creation will not have a typical end-game where content is essentially static and repetitive. Instead, max-level characters will be able to engage with many different gameplay loops that open up based on how the world progresses over time.

Endgame to me communicates static. It is static structure. Okay, you've entered this loop, now and this is your end-game loop that you will repeat over and over. Whereas instead, the approach for Ashes is you have now reached a point where all of these loops are relevant; and the loops are present to you depending on how the community engages the world. And it's up to you to identify the most promising loops because you have a finite amount of time and resources in which you can engage with them. And that's then where strategy becomes a part of the picture: How will I choose to engage with these loops to maximize my return, or to maximize the specific benefit I wish to bring in individual, group, myself, or guild. – Steven Sharif

Part of the whole experience with nodes is that there is no real end-game, in that the world is constantly shifting every day. Month one is going to be really different from month two; and that's for the level 50s and level 1s. – Jeffrey Bard

Level cap

The level cap at launch is expected to be level 50.

• On release the developers anticipate max level should be attainable in approximately 45 days if playing 4-6 hours per day.
• The developers estimate that players will reach level cap before a quarter of nodes reach
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[[{{{2}}}]] (estágio 3).

• Alpha-1 had progression to level 15.
• Alpha-2 expects progression to level 30 (subject to change). Previously this was stated to be level 35.

Lower level characters will have usefulness in mass combat (such as Cercos de base) that is not directly dependent on their level, such as manning siege weapons, helping repair fortifications, bringing proximity-based buffs to key positions, using stealth or scaling walls. These types of things are relevant to the tide of battle and do not require the player to be max-level or have high combat stats.

The idea is not to be a game where somebody can essentially no life for a week and be max level. The idea is to incorporate some significant chunk of time but still respect the casual player, because the way we respect the casual player is not everything is driven in our game through the adventuring progression line. Not everything is driven through your class level per-se. There's a lot of different progression paths that are available and make you relevant within certain systems and mechanics within the game; and some of those paths are more casual friendly and some of those paths are more hardcore friendly. So with regards to the adventuring class, the idea is to make sure that investment needs to be pretty significant and that the reward then is respective of that investment. – Steven Sharif

Grinding

Repetition will not be part of progression in Ashes of Creation.

• There will be no "grindy" quests.
• There will not be repetitive quest lines through a single dungeon to obtain gear.
• The aspiration is to have more things to do in the game than a player has time to do.

AFK leveling

There will not be AFK leveling (auto-leveling) in Ashes of Creation.

We want this game to be played. If there are things that you can do to not play the game and still progress, we've done something wrong. – Jeffrey Bard

Class progression

À medida que um jogador progride com seu modelo primário, ele terá a oportunidade de escolher um modelo secundário para modificar suas habilidades primárias com efeitos do modelo secundário. A combinação de modelos primários e secundários constitui uma classe.

• Um jogador poderá escolher seu modelo secundário quando chegar ao nível 25.

Se um Lutador escolhesse Mage como seu modelo secundário, esse lutador se tornaria um Spellsword. Essa combinação abre espaço para modificações que podem ser aplicadas às habilidades da árvore de habilidades primária. Lutadores têm a habilidade Investida que permite que eles avancem contra um alvo; ao chegar nesse alvo, eles causam uma certa quantia de dano com a chance de derrubar o oponente. A modificação Mage's escape poderia ser aplicada à habilidade Investida, que agora teleportaria o jogador para o alvo , eliminando o tempo necessário para avançar até o inimigo.

Cada habilidade na árvore primária terá diversas opções de modificação vindas árvore secundária. Esse é um exemplo de progressão horizontal.

• Modificações em habilidades primárias mudarão fundamentalmente a maneira como as habilidades funcionam - adaptando o que a habilidade fazia para incorporar a identidade do segundo modelo/classe.

• Uma classe secundária não ofereçerá habilidades adicionais.

Os jogadores recebem pontos de habilidade quando sobem de nível. Esses pontos são usados para aumentar o nível das habilidades na árvore de habilidade.

• Não será possível maximizar o nível de todas as habilidades em uma árvore de habilidades.

Zonas e progressão

Masmorras, Raids, Chefes mundiais, Mobs, Missões, Eventos, Recursos, Narrativas e outros conteúdos dentro da ZOI de uma bases terão uma variedade de níveis diversa, mas escalarão com o estágio daquela base e com sua influência racial.

Não temos uma zona exclusiva do nível 25. Em vez disso, uma certa zona pode ter algumas criaturas níveis 10 próximas da estrada, outras criaturas nível 20 dentro da floresta, e ainda outras níveis 30 nas montanhas. Essa escala vai mudar de acordo com as Bases próximas, e no geral a escala fica mais perigoda à medida que a Base evolui. Toda essa civilização atrai a atenção de Coisas-Que-Não-Deveriam-Existir. Isso não quer dizer que regiões selvagens sejam seguras. Talves sejam menos perigosas, mas em todo lugar haverão perigos até para os aventureiros mais experientes. – Steven Sharif

Game design

Quando se trata de como os MMO's têm sido projetados tradicionalmente, a maioria dos jogadores está familiarizada com dois tipos distintos de loops de jogo: o "Theme park", e o "Sandbox". A grande maioria dos MMO's que todos vimos entrar e sair na indústria de jogos tem sido da variedade de theme parks - estes jogos colocam o jogador em um caminho específico, guiando-o, com muitas vistas bonitas entre os mesmos velhos quest hubs, muito pouco em caminhos divergentes, praticamente sem liberdade na progressão do jogador. Recentemente o gênero MMO tem visto alguns jogos da natureza sandbox entrarem em cena, mas apesar da liberdade final que a sandbox proporciona aos jogadores, muitos ficam querendo mais, pois não há por definição nenhum conteúdo mundial pré-construído, nenhum toque humano, apenas a vastidão da "areia" (sandbox) por falta de um termo melhor. Assim, muitos jogadores de MMO muitas vezes se encontram presos entre a rocha repetitiva do theme park ou os vastos espaços mortos do lugar duro do sandbox. Este abismo entre o estado dos loops de jogo MMO é onde pretendemos injetar o sistema de Nodes do Ashes of Creation.

Para que a mecânica do sandbox tenha algum significado, deve haver um conteúdo curado para acompanhar as escolhas do jogador. O que significa que, como desenvolvedores, devemos criar esse conteúdo no estilo themebox, mas para cada caminho possível que a comunidade possa tomar. – Steven Sharif

Pilares de design

O design de Ashes of Creation adere a cinco Pilares de Design.

1. História imersiva
2. Mundo reativo
3. Interação entre jogadores
4. Agência do Jogador
5. Risco vs Recompensa

Ao projetar o Ashes of Creation, nós aderimos cada detalhe a cinco pilares principais: História Imersiva, um Mundo Reativo, Interação entre Jogadores, Agência do Jogador, e Risco vs Recompensa. Mesmo no ambiente, tudo o que você, como jogador, faz, vai amarrar a estes pilares, enquanto tudo o que sua guilda faz, tudo o que seu servidor faz, no final das contas, vai manter o mundo fresco, sempre em mudança e, o mais importante... excitante.

Addons/mods

Addons, DPS meters, and threat meters will not be supported.

My decision is not to allow DPS meters nor add-ons. I feel we have adequate measures in place to prevent a majority of potential third party trackers. I know this subject has passionate voices on both sides and I respect the various opinions and positions many of you have expressed. – Steven Sharif

• The developers do not want addons/mods to be necessary to experience the game.
• The developers believe that DPS meters (parsers) can cause toxicity and other negative behaviors.

What role DPS meters provide in online communities that I've noticed in the past my experiences: they can be a bit toxic, they can be a bit exclusionary; and that's why we don't want the DPS meters. – Steven Sharif

• Threat meters will also not be present in the game. There will instead be visual in-game cues to indicate threat.

Meters in my opinion are a removal from the game immersion; and what I mean by that isn't necessarily even the fact that having the meter takes you out of the game per-se, but it is- there's a lot of diegetic approach that you can take that doesn't rely on UI elements like a meter to indicate how you should do a thing; and when you're not utilizing those types of meters you can do different types of strategies and encounter design. You can have things that can be more subtle and aren't going to be immediately given away by a meter indicating something; and that's the type of gameplay that we think that I believe we want to emphasize; and for that reason, we're not going to be including threat meters. What we will be including however are animation indicators. We're going to be including ability indicators to show the tank "hey I might be losing aggro here." I'm observing in the world these immersive elements that are not tied to any specific type of UI, but indicate to me that this monster might be moving off to attack somebody else in a very immediate future; and now I should be using the abilities that I'm saving to regain that aggro, or to lock them down with a taunt or something. That to me is a bit more representative of the type of gameplay we want to to bring in our encounter design. – Steven Sharif

Algumas das informações a seguir não foram confirmadas recentemente pelos desenvolvedores e podem não estar no roteiro de desenvolvimento atual.

• There will be integrations available for streaming services such as Twitch and a few other services, but it's not something that will be exposed through an API just yet.
• The design of the game API is still under consideration.

Ver também

• Combate
• Pvp