Game design

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.

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. – Steven Sharif

El diseño de Ashes of Creation se adhiere a cinco pilares principales.

1. Historia atractiva y envolvente
2. Mundo reactivo
3. Interacción entre jugadores
4. Impacto de los jugadores
5. Riesgo vs recompensa

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.

Inspiration from other titles

Ashes of Creation se ha inspirado en otros MMORPG.

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. – Jeffrey Bard

• Eve Online, con su economía por regiones y el riesgo vs recompensa en el transporte de caravanas.
• ArcheAge, con sus sistemas de construcción, transporte and combate naval.
• Star Wars Galaxies, con su sistema de crafting.
• Lineage II, con su sistema de riesgo vs recompensa, asedios a castillos, flageo de jugadores, PvP de mundo abierto y progresión de guilds.

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. – Steven Sharif

PvP background

Esta traducción puede estar desactualizada.

Aunque Ashes of Creation se inspira en Lineage II (y otros juegos) también ha corregido varios fallos en la implementación de esos juegos. El planteamiento del sistema de marcado (flaggin) en Ashes of Creation es desincentivar aún más el "griefing" y, al mismo tiempo, permitir que el sistema mantenga el riesgo en el entorno de mundo abierto.

First and foremost, PvP in Ashes exists in both opt-in systems and events, as well as our open world flagging system. And while it is true that I enjoyed and took much inspiration from games like Lineage 2, we have innovated and adapted our approach to Ashes’ flagging system in order to further disincentivize griefing while still allowing the system to keep risk relevant in the open world setting. The overwhelming majority of player’s experiences with PvP in Ashes will be through consensual systems like caravans, sieges, wars, the open sea and other events. Players will make a choice to participate in those systems or not. And if they choose to participate there will be significant rewards for success. – Steven Sharif

• El Pvp en Ashes of Creation existe tanto en sistemas de participación voluntaria (por objetivos) y en eventos como en PvP de mundo abierto con un sistema de marcado (y corrupción).

In the open world, when competing for the scarcity of resources, raids, dungeons and or hunting grounds, an important element of risk vs reward is introduced through our flagging system. Players must be aware of their surroundings and the reputation of other players who may be in proximity. The flagging system is intended to always provide an element of risk in all settings, but also architected to ensure that griefing and PK’ing is almost never worth it. The subtleties of this system are complex, which is of course why it will require considerable testing and feedback. – Steven Sharif

• La acumulación de corrupción tiene en cuenta la diferencia de nivel entre el atacante y el jugador asesinado. Cuanto mayor sea esta, mayor será la corrupción acumulada. Las penalizaciones por corrupción se producen a medida que se gana corrupción.

These are all things that I've changed in the system that help to safeguard some of those loopholes. Now of course, as we said, we can't and we don't want to 100% remove the ability for that risk to be alive- for that risk to be realized. But what we do want to do is make sure that those occasions are few and infrequent, and are not the majority of a player experience, let's say in the open world; and we do so by incorporating all of those risks and costs into a decision to gain corruption and then PK another player in the open world. It's just not going to be done often and that is my expectation and opinion. It's also the goal of the system is that griefing is not a viable option or play style. And as a result of that desire for the system, we will fine tune it in such a way through testing that that outcome is achieved. And that is the intent and purpose of the design. – Steven Sharif

• Aumentar la puntuación de corrupción añade niveles progresivos de debilitación de habilidades para el combate PvP.

• Eliminar la corrupción ganando experiencia lleva mucho más tiempo que en Lineage II.

• También hay un sistema de recompensas que revela la localización de jugadores corruptos en el mapa.

• Las habilidades con efectos de CC no se aplican a los noo-combatientes. Esto impide que los jugadores inicien ataques que aturdan a los jugadores no marcados.

• Los jugadores que curen, potencien, o apoyen de otro modo a jugadores corruptos serán marcados como combatientes.

• La puntuación de la corrupción tiene un impacto gradual en el debilitamiento de habilidades y estadísticas que, en última instancia, los hará ineficaces en PvP. Este debilitamiento solo afecta al combate Pvp.

• Los no combatientes pueden atacar a los jugadores corruptos sin marcarse como combatientes.

• Hay un temporizador de 60 segundos para desconectarse mientras se está corrupto. Forzar la desconexión del cliente durante el enfriamiento dejará al personaje en el juego hasta que pase ese tiempo.

Estilo artístico

Esta traducción puede estar desactualizada.

Ashes of Creation tendrá una mayor fidelidad gráfica que la mayoría de los juegos occidentales. No será demasiado estilizado ni "caricaturesco".

We can push the limits a little bit on the graphical fidelity, especially using Unreal Engine 4... My desire was not to see very cartoony games. I'm not a big fan of highly stylized art. – Steven Sharif

• El juego no tendrá elementos steampunk.

It's not to say that people can't do steampunk well. I've enjoyed some steampunk stuff. I'm a very high fantasy oriented type of storyteller; and the inspiration for Ashes obviously comes from my pathfinder campaigns that I ran long ago; and those are always set in a high fantasy world. So it just compromises what I believe is the perspective of the storytelling in the environment. – Steven Sharif

• Intrepid Studios no usa IA para la creación de arte.

We do not use AI for production, except in unique internal cases when communicating fast reference material. – Steven Sharif

Esta traducción puede estar desactualizada.

Las razas de los personajes son muy importantes. Estas son las decisiones que tomamos al principio de nuestra aventura en un MMORPG: La raza no solo se alinea mecánicamente con nuestras decisiones. Estas razas tienen mecánicas de juego detrás de ellas desde un punto de vista de estadísticas, además de visual, cultural e históricamente. ¿Cuáles son? ¿Qué representan estas razas? Así pues es importante que sean distintos. Todo el mundo ha visto juegos de fantasía con Elfos, Humanos y Orcos; casi hay una expectativa establecida detrás de lo que cada una de estas razas de tradicionales en la fantasía representan; y existe un riesgo, porque cuando estar creando una nueva IP o un nueva historia o mundo en un nuevo universo, un reino en donde las cosas no tienen que seguir la norma establecida, te puedes comtar ciertas libertades creativas para redefinir ciertos aspectos de una raza en particular; y eso puede ser algo bueno, porque es algo nuevo para los jugadores. Es algo único dentro del mundo que estamos construyendo y del entorno que tienes. Por lo tanto, lo que queríamos hacer era impulsar un poco más como se verían los Py´rai desde una perspectiva visual. – Steven Sharif

• La arquitectura aelana está muy influenciada por la Francia del medievo.
• Los Dünir estan influenciados por las culturas nórdicas.
• Los Empyreanos tienen influencias Greco-Romanas.
• Esta traducción puede estar desactualizada.

Los Kaelar tienen influencias Europeas.

• Los Niküa tienen influencia de las culturas polinesas.
• Los Py'Rai están influenciados por los Nativos Americanos del pueblo Navajo. La arquitectura Py'Rai está inspirada en las zonas boscosas.
• La arquitectura pyriana tiene influencias Greco-Romanas
• Esta traducción puede estar desactualizada.

Los Vaelune tienen una influencia de Oriente Medio.

• Esta traducción puede estar desactualizada.

Los Vek están influenciados por las culturas mesoamericanas.

Los jugadores verán las distintas influencias de las culturas del mundo real reflejadas en las distintas razas del juego: No sólo influencias europeas, africanas o mesoamericanas. Estas culturas estarán presentes en muchas de las razas. – Steven Sharif

La idea es encontrar un componente base en el mundo real y tomarlo como punto de partida. A partir de ahí empiezas a fantasear y construir. – Steven Sharif

Referencias culturales

Habrá referencias culturales del mundo real, sobre todo en relación con fiestas y acontecimientos históricos del mundo real.

• No se verán fuera de lugar en términos de inmersión. Serán homenajes.

There will be some real world references, particularly with regards to potentially real world holidays as well as some historical events or cultures. For example the PAX East ship that was named Eleanor that we released a cosmetic of, you know, being a reference to the Eleanor ship that the tea was thrown off of; or colonialesque look. – Steven Sharif

Desarrollo abierto

Intrepid Studios ha adoptado un enfoque de desarrollo abierto (transparente), en lugar de compartir información a través de comunicados de prensa y anuncios cuidadosamente elaborados.

• Algunas características del juego estarán más pulidos que otros antes de ser presentados.

The delicate blend between a transparent development process, but also understanding that [the] majority of your player audience will not grasp, or will not take into context, what a work in progress looks like. So certain things we have to polish to the point where they're presentable; where they can be understood- again in its own context without my verbal support or Margaret's verbal support. – Steven Sharif

I think that we live in an age where it's easy to be transparent if you're not trying to hide something. The downside is if you're showing something that's not a completed or finished product, it is incumbent upon the viewer to understand that fact. – Steven Sharif

• El objetivo del desarrollo transparente es permitir la participación y los comentarios de la comunidad sin necesidad de comprar el acceso a las fases de prueba.

The whole purpose of our development process being transparent being open is that you don't have to buy a package actually to participate. You can be a voice from the community. You can observe people playing. You can give your experiences and feedback. – Steven Sharif

I don't answer to a board. I don't answer to a publisher. We answer to our players; and we try to be as transparent as possible with showing our progress; and showing it in a timely manner. – Steven Sharif

• Ciertos aspectos del juego no se revelarán antes de tiempo para evitar spoilers.

There are obviously going to be some aspects of the development that we will not reveal, like lore and some system mechanics in order not to spoil the game for release. – Steven Sharif

Ver además

• Pilares del diseño
• Ashes of Creation