New open world mmo kickstarter: Ashes of Creation

[Norfleet]

The generic MMO pvp "baddie" marking system can only mean three things:
A) The non-node-PVP is completely dead, in which case everyone brings up the question of why the developers even bothered/bother with it
B) The non-node-PVP scene is entirely composed of the non-combatants and self-defense combatants getting dicked by every ruise and "clever" abuse of the mechanics, forcing them to become a pile of bones or a corrupted pile of bones with their hard earned loot on the ground
C) The developers have managed to fix both of these issues and are celestial beings with an IQ higher than any possible number I could write on this board, and are wasting their time with creating an MMORPG

You can't fix these issues. Fixing B necessarily implies A. So yes, this is what I expect would happen as well. A punitive design goal as such makes it so that successful implementation of the punishment effectively extirpates the behavior, relegating it to the realm of things people try to trick others into triggering.

I can think of several issues already:

1. If corruption fades with time, then someone can just go and wait it out, offline, or naked.

2. If corruption fades on death, then someone will just suicide to clear it. Either through having a teammate kill you, or naked kamikaze run after stashing your valuables.

If it doesn't, then you're going to see corrupted characters used as missile busses: Fitted out with a payload, launched at the designated targets, then de-fuelled and put back in storage. Either way tihs is not offering much to the targets struck.

Additionally, since loot is only dropped by baddies, there's no actual mechanical reason to do this other than griefing. Which tends to give us case A, except when some asshole is deliberately out to ruin your day.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The longer I play MMOs, the less I want (direct) PvP in them unless they're inherently a PvP-based MMO(DAoC, Warhammer, etc.,) It just creates headaches. PvP will either be incredibly unbalanced or the rest of the game(especially the RPG part) will suffer to try to hammer balance into a genre that is inherently unbalanced.

You can still have conflict without having the players directly fight.

 

[thesecret1]

Corrupted will be very few and will not last long. Even if you are the most skilled player on universe, the whole worrld will unt you down. I think there will be even a marker on map signaling the location of corrupteds for bounty hunters. Unless some big chinese guild goes rogue and decides to go corrupted and kill every player, there is no incentive in doing so, it's not a full loot game and they will be stripped by all their gear by other coalized guilds

Get a high level guild together, block an important road, and demand a toll. Kill everyone who doesn't pay. Sounds like it could be fun, both as the bandit and as the victim. Hopefully the game leans towards being organic enough to accomodate this kind of playstyle, with player robber barons and the like

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

Alpha One begins today, in roughly half an hour. No NDA, so many big Twitch streamers will stream it.

Very limited version of the game of course. Only 3 classes etc.

https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Ashes of Creation

 

[Smigle]

So did Elyon, formerly knows as AIR start with a Kickstarter and it didn't end well for them. Went from an interesting project to just another shitty korean game from the worst korean publisher. Remember kids, never sell yourself out.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

This weekend was only an Alpha One preview weekend actually. Ended yesterday. But the actual Alpha One launches July 14th.

Very happy with the progress so far. The best part of the current build is likely the world itself -- it's huge and well crafted, with different biomes. Great water effects, long line of sight, etc. Exploration kinda reminded me of ELEX.

Much of the gameplay systems (combat, crafting, etc.) are rudimentary placeholders so far though. It's very much an early alpha. But I'm glad to help test it.

 

[Caim]

So nodes are all in fixed locations and it's determined by the levels of their neighbours how high they can go, right? So what's going to stop the neckbeards from crunching the numbers to figure out what the most optimal way to unlock everything is to get the most (and the most optimal) conttent and hand this information off to the powergamers, who redefine the world based on this data and harshly punish those who try to uproot the optimal status quo?

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

So nodes are all in fixed locations and it's determined by the levels of their neighbours how high they can go, right? So what's going to stop the neckbeards from crunching the numbers to figure out what the most optimal way to unlock everything is to get the most (and the most optimal) conttent and hand this information off to the powergamers, who redefine the world based on this data and harshly punish those who try to uproot the optimal status quo?

What will stop them is what happened in the closed NDA alpha I played. Some autist decided based on location that this one node was the best and got his guild to level that. Everyone else was pissed because they all had nodes they liked better. So over the week or so of testing there was a lot of wars to delevel various nodes. Which kept things balanced. There will always be ways to upset the status quo.

 

[Myobi]

Is there still an open beta happening or some shit?

The base combat doesn't look bad, but everything else looks boring as hell, wondering if there is a way to give it a try without "bla bla preorder" shit.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

Is there still an open beta happening or some shit?

The base combat doesn't look bad, but everything else looks boring as hell, wondering if there is a way to give it a try without "bla bla preorder" shit.

I think Alpha 2 is expected to start around summer 2022.

 

[Azdul]

Darkfall was a PvP gankbox piece of shit where people jerked themselves off over who was the most "hardcore" until everyone else left.
How do you connect that to Ashes of Creation which is almost entirely PvE? Genuinely curious.

Every 'true' MMO allows everyone to see how horrible other people truly are.

The only way to solve this problem is to create MMO in the name only - like WoW. Other players are there - but they don't really influence your experience, besides small group that joins you for limited time to clear the instance.

Ashes of Creation tries to be 'true' MMO. For example - it allows for non-consensual PvP. Sure - there are heavy penalties for that - so people will have to buy second account just for griefing. But that's nothing for most dedicated, most loyal fans - who will buy multiple accounts anyway.

In short: It will be PvE as long as you gather resources that hardcore tryhards to not want, or farm mobs that do not drop anything interesting.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Darkfall was a PvP gankbox piece of shit where people jerked themselves off over who was the most "hardcore" until everyone else left.
How do you connect that to Ashes of Creation which is almost entirely PvE? Genuinely curious.

Every 'true' MMO allows everyone to see how horrible other people truly are.

The only way to solve this problem is to create MMO in the name only - like WoW. Other players are there - but they don't really influence your experience, besides small group that joins you for limited time to clear the instance.

The problem is that the games don't reward you for unorganized cooperation, something I will admit many newer MMOs are closer to getting right.
I heavily dislike the idea of mechanics like 'mob tagging', XP splitting, etc., MMORPGs should encourage people to work together as the default.

Essentially, I agree that the PvP-focused MMOs get it right on their end. The problem is with the PvE-focused MMOs not rewarding cooperation with strangers which would help foster an overall healthier community.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

Darkfall was a PvP gankbox piece of shit where people jerked themselves off over who was the most "hardcore" until everyone else left.
How do you connect that to Ashes of Creation which is almost entirely PvE? Genuinely curious.

Every 'true' MMO allows everyone to see how horrible other people truly are.

The only way to solve this problem is to create MMO in the name only - like WoW. Other players are there - but they don't really influence your experience, besides small group that joins you for limited time to clear the instance.

The problem is that the games don't reward you for unorganized cooperation, something I will admit many newer MMOs are closer to getting right.
I heavily dislike the idea of mechanics like 'mob tagging', XP splitting, etc., MMORPGs should encourage people to work together as the default.

Essentially, I agree that the PvP-focused MMOs get it right on their end. The problem is with the PvE-focused MMOs not rewarding cooperation with strangers which would help foster an overall healthier community.

One of the big things of AoC is the Node System. It's the vector by which PvE players have the most content and are rewarded for working together. If you gather, do quests, craft, and help each other the node eventually levels. Which unlocks more features of the node. This is a way of using mechanics to reward co-operation. And the PvP people like myself are rewarded by fighting for nodes and guilds. Now, PvP is going to be a necessary part of the Node system. If a node you don't like is blocking one you do from leveling you need to do a castle siege to delevel a node. You can't spam them till you win because of time outs that can go on for months for higher nodes.

In general from what I played in the playtests the devs are actually trying to fix several issues with PvE and PvP. And people who tried to subvert the systems in the alpha ended up getting dogpilled by us in PvP in the end.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Are most PvP MMOs HC death of do you respawn?

 

[Caim]

Are most PvP MMOs HC death of do you respawn?

RuneScape has Hardcore Ironman mode which used to be permadeath but now just downgrades your character to a regular Ironman?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

So....

Not

 

[Caim]

Not quite, since an Ironman cannot profit by selling items to other players which is how Tony Stark became so rich to begin with.

 

[ADL]

Looks like a next gen indie Guild Wars 2

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Looks like a next gen indie Guild Wars 2

probably because they copied the GW2 UI style

 

[Caim]

I'd say that you'll need a 3090 to play this game, but by the time this game comes out not only are the chip shortages solved, but graphic cards with their power will be commonplace.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

The devs are doing a race stream now:
https://www.twitch.tv/ashesofcreation

 

[Ranselknulf]

I'm thinking about buying the $75 package so I can try out the Beta phase 2.

I know this is a terrible idea and goes against my firm stance against buying pre-release games.

The only reason I'm considering this is I have a bro who is interested in this game.

Talk me out of this men.

 

[Bester]

I'd say that you'll need a 3090 to play this game

The graphics shown in the video would run on a phone.

 

[Lhynn]

I'm thinking about buying the $75 package so I can try out the Beta phase 2.

Talk me out of this men.

No, Id rather mock you

 

[ADL]

Isn't the goal of Unreal Engine 5 to be far more scalable than UE4 while performing much better with higher fidelity assets using the Nanite and Lumen global illumination systems? Factor in their TAAU upscaling solution and stuff like FSR/DLSS integration and I'd imagine anyone with a GPU made in the last five to seven years would be fine (GTX1000 series/RX500 series).

I know MMO players tend to have lower spec machines but how low do you go when you're marketing this as the next big step in evolution in the genre built on an engine known for its visuals? By the time this comes out the 1000 series will be almost ten years old.