Design pillars

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The design of Ashes of Creation adheres to five main pillars.[1]

  1. Boeiend en meeslepend verhaal
  2. Reactieve wereld
  3. Speler interactie
  4. Speler agentschap
  5. Risico vs. beloning

In designing Ashes of Creation, we adhere every detail to five main pillars: Engaging and Immersive Story, a Reactive World, Player Interaction, Player Agency, and Risk vs Reward. Even in the environment, everything you as the player do will tie into these pillars, while everything your guild does, everything your server does will ultimately keep the world fresh, ever-changing, and most importantly... exciting.[1]

Design

Ashes of Creation.[2] (AoC) is een aankomende MMORPG die zich afspeelt in een high fantasy open wereld.[3]

Ashes of Creation is een aankomende MMORPG die zich afspeelt in een high-fantasy wereld waar de keuzes van de spelers de wereld om hun heen vormen.

Ashes of Creation is een unieke take op de MMO-ervaring. Onze wereldstructuur is dynamiek en gebouwd om te reageren op de acties van onze spelers. Steden zullen rijzen en vallen, de bevolking is gebaseerd op het verleden van de wereld zoals de spelers het gevormd heeft. Quests zullen vrijkomen wanneer de bevolking verzamelt, hun behoeften groeien en geheimen gevonden worden.[4]

Als de NPC-structuur van de wereld live vastgesteld wordt, zullen de spelers de mogelijkheid hebben om hetgeen wat zij gemaakt hebben te verwoesten, de weg vrij makende voor nieuwe ontwikkelingen, nieuwe bevolkingen, een echte verandering. Politieke strijd en intrige zullen een hele echte rol spelen in de structuur van je wereld.[4]

Weg zijn de dagen van statische werelden, verandering is hier om te blijven.[4]

In order for sandbox mechanics to mean something, there must be curated content to accompany the player’s choices. Which means, as the developers, we must create that Themebox style content but for every possible path the community may take.[5]Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation is a PvX game built on the foundational principle of risk versus reward. The developers may seek feedback and make changes to portions of the game, but the core design pillars of the game will never be changed.[6][7][8][9][10]

We will refine systems, we will iterate on systems, but we will never change the core identity of the intent and philosophical approach to what Ashes of Creation as an MMO brings to the MMO genre space... What we want to do is express that Ashes of Creation is endeavoring to build a risk-versus-reward centric PvX style game. And that intent and purpose will be delivered upon, and it will not change.[9]Steven Sharif
  • Ashes of Creation is referred to by the developers as a "themebox" or "sandpark" game as they aim to create a reactive player-driven world accompanied by curated content.[3][5]
When it comes to how MMO’s have been traditionally designed, most gamers are familiar with two distinct types of gameplay loops: the “theme park”, and the “sandbox”. The vast majority of MMO’s we’ve all seen come and go in the gaming industry have been of the theme park variety – these games put the player onto a specific path, guiding them along, with plenty of pretty sights in between the same old quest hubs, very little in divergent paths, virtually no freedom in player progression. Recently the MMO genre has seen some games of the sandbox nature come onto the scene, but despite the ultimate freedom the sandbox affords players, many are left wanting more, as there is by definition no pre built world content, no human touch, just the vastness of the “sand” for lack of a better term. Thus many MMO players often find themselves caught between the repetitive rock of the theme park or the vast dead spaces of the sandbox’s hard place. This chasm between the state of MMO gameplay loops is where we intend to inject Ashes of Creation’s Node system.[3]
Q: How do you go about designing some of the more old school systems such as XP debt, minimal fast travel, and open world raiding that have really gone away for the most part in modern MMOs?
A: When looking at the reasoning behind why some of those old systems existed, a lot of it was centralized around the idea of risk versus reward. I mean, let's take a look at the three that you name, XP debt, minimal fast travel, and open world raiding. Experience debt is a cost of failure. Experience debt is the bite of not achieving success. If I die to a monster because my strategy was bad, because my performance was bad, because my planning was bad: all of that means that debt is the cost I pay for the bad choice... Minimal fast travel: My location matters; and the time it travels there is the cost I pay. Open world raiding: I'm not the only person interested in completing this objective. I have competition. That competition represents pressure. That pressure represents a desire to succeed and perform. All of those are touch points on player emotional connectivity. There is a reason why I want to succeed: Part of that reason can be incentivization through reward; part of that reason can be distance; it can be incentivization through failure. So that I think are one of the core fundamental philosophies as to how you design some of the more old-school systems.[11]Steven Sharif

Inspiration

Ashes of Creation has taken inspiration from various other MMORPG titles.[12]

In terms of what came before, we're trying to figure out who did what best and take inspiration from that: Move the genre forward; keep things updated and bring it into the 21st century.[12]Jeffrey Bard
A lot of the systems in Lineage 2 were based around a concept that got lost today in mmorpgs, and that's risk versus reward. You know this idea that the more you risk the greater potential reward should be present is a complete paradigm shift away from everyone's a winner, everybody gets a participation reward, and here you go, congratulations you're a player in this game; and that's boring. It gives nothing for a person to aspire to achieve something, or to feel the bite of loss when you fail. Those are the driving forces of why people want to play games and it's a reason why new games when they come out have such a short lifespan, because they are always competing with WOW. You don't have to compete with WOW. You don't have to be a WOW killer. You can focus on something that is different from a philosophical design standpoint; and I think that's just what a lot of studios today don't want to take the risk on.[14]Steven Sharif

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.[16][17]

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.[16]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.[17]Jeffrey Bard

Boeiend en meeslepend verhaal

Onderwerpen die het verleden en het heden weergeven van Verra.

Reactieve wereld

Onderwerpen die beschrijven hoe de wereld van Verra evolueert op basis van speleractiviteit.

Ashes of Creation zal een levende, ademende, interactieve wereld worden. Jouw daden zullen de Invloedszone vervormen, nodes levelen om grootse steden te vormen, en het verhaal van de wereld creëren dat iedereen zal ervaren.[20]Margaret Krohn

Speler interactie

Spelsystemen en mechanica die interactie tussen spelers bevorderen.

We besloten om onze focus te leggen op de mechanica die het gemeenschapsidee naar voren brengt. Om mensen zinvol met elkaar in contact te brengen - niet alleen om een raid boss te verslaan, of om wat geld van een gezichtsloos veilinghuis te halen, maar om misschien een stad te redden. Een stad waar alle buurtbewoners een aandeel in hadden. Een stad waar spelers weken of maanden aan gewerkt hadden; de verdediging van die stad, de aanval op die stad! Of het samen opbouwen van een wereld, als een gemeenschap, om samen met vrienden ons eigen lot te zegelen. We geloven dat dit een veel gedenkwaardiger en veel betekenisvoller verhaal voor spelers zal worden dan zo ongeveer alles wat we zelf kunnen bedenken.[24]

Speler agentschap

Systemen die je ervaring in het spel vormgeven en laten groeien.

We hebben veel beschikbare content, maar deze zullen achter de schermen via een agentuur, namens de community, toegankelijk zijn. In traditionele zin zijn we geen themapark, maar we zullen waarschijnlijk meer inhoud hebben dan een themapark, van oudsher. Alleen maar omdat, om ervoor te zorgen dat die keuzes zinvol zijn, er zinvolle inhoud moet zijn achter de deur die je kiest.[25]Steven Sharif

Risico versus beloning

Activiteiten die gewaagde avonturiers belonen en zinvolle conflicten aanmoedigen.

De risico versus beloning relatie, als je, laten we zeggen, tijd hebt besteed aan het bouwen van een node en andere spelers hebben equivalente tijd besteed aan het belegeren van de node, zal er een gevecht plaatsvinden tussen die spelers ... Ze spenderen die tijd omdat ze zich er enorm over bekommeren om toegang te hebben tot die content.[27]Steven Sharif

Paginageschiedenis

There were originally four design pillars: Economy, Nodes, Meaningful conflict and Narrative.[28]

Q: Are there any mechanics or systems that you wanted to add to the game but haven't because you wanted to ensure that your development schedule stays on track? And if so, what are they?
A: There's a lot. We- generally when we're doing our internal meetings and reviews and a great idea comes up, we throw it in the backlog post-launch. That's our- generally our MO when it comes to great ideas. Because the reality is, as we continue to go through features, we develop those features, we test those features and iterate on those features, a lot of new ideas and opportunities come about for the team to think about. Well, wouldn't it be great if this feature actually did this and interacted with another feature over here that did this. And so we're trying to make sure that another feature over here did this. And in some situations we'll evaluate and determine whether or not that type of interaction is really necessary to demonstrate what the core loop of a particular system might be trying to demonstrate and we'll make the changes necessary. But in the majority of cases, we try to stay cognizant of, hey, here is our MVP necessary list of core integrated systems in order to achieve the identity of the game that we're in the core gameplay loops that we want players to experience. And we work towards that end from a launch perspective; and anything that's added that sounds good, or we want to incorporate, we throw it into the expansion bucket. There's an opportunity for us to- we need stuff obviously for us to expand upon and for us to continue development post-launch, so that's generally our MO with regards to new ideas and stuff.[29]Steven Sharif

Zie ook

Referenties