Talk:2017-09-04 - Mithical Entertainment - Interview with Ashes of Creation designer Jeffrey Bard

Transcripción

00:00, Mithrandiel:

Mithrandiel here at PAX West 2017 at the wonderful Ashes of Creation booth.
Who am I joined by today?

00:08, Jeffrey Bard:

I am Jeffrey Bard, I'm the lead designer of Ashes of Creation.

00:12, Mithrandiel:

Excellent, so tell us a little bit about Ashes of Creation for people who might not be familiar with this game or why you might have such a huge presence at PAX this year.

00:21, Jeffrey Bard:

So we are making an MMO "Ashes of Creation". It is intended to kind of bring the "massive" back to "massively multiplayer".
We are a community focused game.
We kind of broke down what makes MMOs good, why are people attracted to MMOs and what do MMOs do differently than other types of games. We all have single-player experiences, we all have 64 men death matches, but MMO is a really different kind of beast.
So we want to kind of take a look at what makes an MMO an MMO and figure out what we can do to kind of enhance that massiveness of it. So what we did is we kind of examined what brings people together and what causes conflict because those are the two things to kind of drive a community.
You have in groups you have out groups and we wanted to kind of make those things more fluid. We didn't want to tell people hey you are side A and you are side B. We want people to be able to kind of make their own side, decide who their friends are decide who their enemies are and figure out how to go from there.
So at it's core Ashes of Creation is built on the node system. That's kind of the thing that really makes us different, that gives us tools to keep the world changing and moving and not static.
Our goal is to have day one be different from day two be different from day three.
We want somebody who logs in two years down the road to not experience exactly the same game that the people who were there at launch experienced. We want it to be a different experience.
Without that living changing breathing world things get old and and I think when we all think of what the MMO promised we all could see like a living world that changes with our actions. Something that makes our choices meaningful and so that's where the Node system comes in.
So when you when you first arrive on the planet of Verra you'll find a small starting area that'll get you used to how the game plays. but beyond that there's there's nothing but wilderness points-of-interest old ruins there is no civilization it's up it's up to the players to create that civilization.

02:28, Mithrandiel: You're not wandering Azeroth.
Just wandering from one metropolitan area to the next.

02:34, Jeffrey Bard: Right you're not going from the level one zone to the level two zone to the level three zone it's kind of open season at that point. And so our whole world is built into zones right just like any normal.
Those zones are broken down into nodes, there is no space on this world that has no Node. So what a Node does is it's always listening to the player activity that's happening inside of it. So if I'm killing monsters or find harvesting resources or find completing quests and the experience that I get is also given to the Node. Once a Node reaches the first level which is the camp level it grows and NPCs realize "Hey there's a lot of player activity here we're going to set up shop and maybe we can take advantage of that", so that's where the camp comes in. A couple of merchants come in and quest NPCs show up and now the activity in that zone changes.
It can grow from a camp into a village, from a village into a city, from a city into a metropolis, and every time it grows the nodes zone of interest kind of gets bigger. It gobbles up the other Nodes that are around it that haven't leveled and prevents them from leveling up.
So a city might grow and that means that none of the other nodes that are around it can ever grow into a city at that point, they're locked out That node that leveled up to a city has specific content associated with it, has certain types of dungeons associated with it. So the world is going to kind of change based on player activity and sort of how players approach the story, is going to change based on where they're approaching the story from.
So whatever grows, whatever can be built can also be destroyed and this is where change comes in. Because a city has such a fixed influence on what's going on there, players might not always want that. Citizens of that node get certain benefits citizens outside of that node don't get.
So there's going to be incentive for players who are outside that to be like "Hey, this is not cool we don't want the world to go on this way we want to change it. So we're gonna seize the city we're gonna destroy the city and we're gonna level up a Node somewhere else".
So once that happens you can see that there's a lot of reason for people to defend their territory, there's a lot of reason for people to destroy that territory, and so we've got this engine of change that's going to start going and continue to keep that world moving and changing and feeling like it breathes.

05:03, Mithrandiel: That's a lot to unpack right there.
I've got like a lot going for this way that I can explain and that all sounds extremely fascinating so a couple things: As these nodes expand and change, how does it affect the world map?
Because in MMO one of the big things of course is a map.
How players will orient themselves within that world, how they know where to go next and things like that? So as these nodes expand into cities and metropolis is etc will the map reflect that dynamically?

05:33, Jeffrey Bard: Yes, yes it will.
Yeah, so once the city comes into being, that city has a name associated with it, it'll show up on the map.
People will know "Hey there's a city there I can go take advantage of its markets, its resources, whatever else it might provide".

05:45, Mithrandiel:

And so as these cities get built up and these metropolis get built up, and as you mentioned there's also this incentive to break them down essentially.
How does the history of this world get preserved? How is there an element where there's like a historian or the lore?
How does the lore get integrated into all this?
Because I think that was something based on the trailers that I've seen, that Ashes of Creation is alluding to as well.

06:12, Jeffrey Bard:

Right, so again that's relatively difficult to explain concisely, but basically we log all the events that are happening in the game and we will keep a running history of what's going on.
So let's say two years down the line you are new player to our game, and you're like "Hey, I need to choose a server, I need to figure out what's going on!".
You can look at the server, you can look at the server's history and you can kind of see what kind of community it has based on the events that they've unlocked, based on how they progress their own particular story.

06:42, Mithrandiel:

All right, so the the world and the map and the nodes, that all sounds very fascinating in unique for an MMO. What about the character classes the people were playing as?
What makes Ashes of Creation unique in the combat and things like that?

06:57, Jeffrey Bard:

Okay, so we are going for as far as combat goes, right. We're going for kind of a hybrid action-oriented tab-targeting system. We want players to play the game, we don't want people to rely on their rotation.
I think the rotation is kind of an old vestigial part of the MMO. It's how it started, but then it never changed. We want players to play the game.
Like, it's a game, so we want them to react to what's happening, we want them to have different tactics based on different situations. So we've gotten rid of the auto-attack. We have replaced it with a combo system.
That combo system will generate focus as you succeed in your combos, and that focus allows you to use ultimate abilities which kind of changes pretty drastically how an encounter goes.
The combo system is based on whatever your weapon is when you've got it equipped. So a great sword is going to have a different set of combo abilities than a staff.
Crafters are going to be able to kind of increase the number of combos that are available to a weapon. They can also change out kind of what combos are associated with that weapon.
So you might have a longsword that is equipped with the first two combo abilities, control abilities, and the last three are damaging abilities so that you can kind of tailor your experience.
Our crafters can help you to tailor your experience based on what's going on. And then you also have some class based combo abilities, that you can also slot into your weapons.
We really want customization and building your character to feel like you have options, that not everybody follows a cookie cutter build. You are building to do something specific in the game.

08:39, Mithrandiel:

When it comes to gameplay a big element of MMOs is of course the dungeon and raid mechanics, later on the game endgame content.
What's Ashes of Creations philosophy regarding endgame content, because it kind of runs the gamut you've got people who are like you know "Only hardcore gamers should deserve the best gear that the game has to offer" etc.
Whereas other people would argue "Well, you've got a broader base". How are you going to appeal for the broader base unless you make those things more accessible?
So where does Ashes of Creation fall in that mindset?

09:13, Jeffrey Bard: Okay, I really don't like the term endgame content. I really believe that your game should be fun from levels 1 to level 50.
The game should start at level 1, and we do that by kind of making the content dynamic. Things change every day, so there's always something for you to do.
You can set your own goals when you log in, and those those goals don't necessarily have to be "I'm gonna go do this raid". Because that raid may have never been unlocked on your server, it might be this other raid that's been unlocked on your server. You might have a node that has a world boss that's coming down to attack it, and even multiple raids to deal with it. We want things to be changing every time that you log in, so that you have something that's meaningful to do.
It's not just "I'm chasing my gear, I am chasing the experience". That's kind of what we want people to do.

10:02, Mithrandiel:

So you bring like, you said, it's funny, I saw some red hats out there with with white letters that said "make MMOs great again", so from the sounds of it you know classic people remember vanilla WoW and things like that.
You know that those times that you spend in the early levels were an exciting time. They were fun and now like you said it does seem like it's more working for the weekend, so to speak working towards that and endgame content which is where it gets really "fun".
Whereas Ashes of Creation sounds like it wants to bring the fun back to the leveling experience and the experience of the game itself.

10:33, Jeffrey Bard:

Right, we want the person who first logs in, if there is a city under attack, we want them to be able to help defend it. We want them to have a role in that, you know, just because of level one in there a little bit weaker doesn't mean that they can't participate in the world as a whole.
So that's kind of where we're focused on: we are gonna have raids, we are going to have world bosses, we have open open world dungeons that players can compete against trying to race towards bosses. That'll have interesting PvP interactions between people during that time.
We'll have small group dungeons, we'll have large group dungeons, and we'll kind of some spontaneous procedural dungeons that we're gonna talk about probably in the next couple of months.

11:17, Mithrandiel:

so with the servers that you'll have will there be strictly PvE servers and PvP servers or

11:23, Jeffrey Bard:

Our world is really dependent on PvP for driving change. Without that we can't have that engine, that engine just doesn't work.
Unless we were to script a whole bunch of creatures to kind of take the players space and that we don't have unfortunately enough time and development resources to do that.
We use a flagging system similar to like maybe lineage 2 or Star Wars Galaxies that disincentivizes griefing. We don't want players to fight or to like murder each other. We want players to fight over things, we want players to fight over resources, we want them to fight over cities and castles. We don't want them to just kill each other.

12:07, Mithrandiel:

And where your server is going to be?
Region based like North America, Europe?

12:12, Jeffrey Bard:

The plan is to have them region based. We're working with various data centers to kind of work out deals there.
But I know we're planning on having an Oceanic servers and European servers and North American servers and we're kind of looking at where else we can expand to and what makes sense for us.

12:30, Mithrandiel:

One other element of gameplay, especially in MMOs that people enjoy mention a little bit about crafting, but also housing.
So is Ashes of Creation going to have a housing system, and can you give us a kind of a brief overview of what that's gonna look like?

12:43, Jeffrey Bard: Yeah, so our housing system is actually called the freehold system.
Everybody's going to get a plot of land of a specific size and it's up to players to decide what they want to do with that land. We've got a really cool system for that, again it's might take a little bit to explain, but the idea is that you have basically a grid of squares that you can place things down and there are buildings and structures relate to one another.
So I could just put down a house, I could put down a small house or a medium sized house, or a big house. The big house would fill up your entire freehold, or I could have a small house and maybe some farms there and maybe we'll have a barn to raise our animals and all of those things relate to each other.
The farm producing wheat will help the barn to grow their animals, which helps you with your animal husbandry skill. So all of the different plots of lands kind of fits together like a Tetris space, they have a synergy to them, so different combinations will result in better results, and then we're also talking about, but this is not confirmed, using the environment with that.
So that if you are a farming focused person you might want to lay down your plot of land near a river or a lake, in order to make sure that you have enough water that will help your plants grow, and so you can have a better yield than somebody who builds it somewhere in the middle of a desert.

14:10, Mithrandiel:

I think Archmage has a question for you as well.

14:13, Archmage:

So with these plots land you're going to be creating for the players to use, I'm guessing that you've also considered guilds or clans well is that correct?
And are there gonna be bigger guild halls, clan halls that are going to allow people to kind of, you know, congregate and customize and kind of with that town destruction mechanic that you were talking about before fight each others fall in a PvP aspect.

14:42, Jeffrey Bard:

Yeah, we definitely have plans for guild halls.
We think that's a really important thing for a guilds to kind of create their identity with. Guild halls are going to be more integrated into the Node itself.
Freeholds happen outside the boundaries of a city, more in their region of interest than the actual Node itself. So yeah, there will definitely be guild halls, and they will be kind of more a part of the wheelings and dealings of any individual Node. You'll be able to decorate those and get them out the way you want to.

15:10, Mithrandiel:

Well, we're just about done with our time here. But last question for you.
What is the timeline looking like for Ashes of Creation. So what phase are we in now, when can players who are so so excited for this game, when can they expect it to come out?

15:25, Jeffrey Bard:

All right, so we are in our Pre-Alpha stage right now.
We're still working on a lot of our back-end systems and sort of finalizing our systems, so that we can bring them to the players. We want to go into our first alpha, it's a locked Alpha Zero in December of this year, we will progress into our alpha kind of as we go, as we fix issues and solve issues and progress our game will open up our alphas, and then once those are solid we'll open our betas.
Hoping to go into it somewhere in the end of December of 2018 and we'll launch some time after that.

16:00, Mithrandiel:

Well thank you so much for telling us about Ashes of Creation.
It looks and sounds like it's gonna be amazing.
We're about to get our hands on it right now and we'll be happy to share first impressions.