An alpha is made to figure out a system’s mechanics, and we’re currently pre-alpha. So everything I say is subject to that condition.
- If it’s a metropolis that time period might be a week before the sieges take place. When the siege is complete, if it’s successful, there will be a cool down period. So a metropolis level node will have a cool down of about a little < 8 weeks.
- Taxes are held in a node / city fund, and then officials can then allocate those funds to certain mechanics; i.e… defense spending, building up a marketing place. They can’t just access the funds and take them.
- Node types will be predetermined, but you will be able to tell what the node is upon stage one – so if you don’t want to be in a military node, and you see soldiers show up, you can make the decision to spend your time in another node.
Classes
- We’re still discussing whether primary classes can be changed. We know that secondary class can be changed, but I don’t know yet about the primary.
- If you choose the same class for both primary and secondary, you are basically doubling down on your class. We made secondary classes so you could have better control over how your primary classes would perform, and if you’re going with the same archetype class, you’re just going to make your primary class more powerful.
- There will be a degree of focus within a certain role, and your customization of the character, your choice, skills, and augments will play within that degree.
- Our hybrid system uses elements of tab targeting, and positioning and movement. We utilize Keystroke time-frames, as well as dodge and move mechanics. It’s a culmination of all of those things into one. We wanted a mix of skill and strategy.
Character Progression
- Our game kind of breaks down from a progression standpoint into your adventuring class, your artisan class, and then different components in regards to what religion you focus on, how your race advances, what your guild may progress as, what you may have individual achievements as a solo player…and all of those can offer different augment abilities. And they’re not all vertical, some of them are horizontal. There are a lot of different ways for you to augment that archetype you’ve chosen, aside from just your secondary class.
PVP Progression
- There are a lot of different systems that relate to PVP: castle sieges, node sieges, caravans, guild wars…these battlegrounds that exist in the world, our arena system – rankings that exist within the arena system – and as our players advance through the arena your advancements in other PVP areas might expand. We’ll see.
PVE Progression
- We feel the group limit will be eight, and the raid size will be around 40.
- People think that we’re a PVP centric game, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. When one part of the game is stronger than the other, the game really suffers, so our PVE will be the bread and butter of what makes that PVP meaningful.
- Gear will no be differentiated between PVE and PVP. There will only be one type of gear.
- We are considering using pets to pick up stuff, it’s something we’re looking into.
- Raids should involve very specific mechanics – problem-solving mechanics for raids to overcome. It should be a challenge. A real challenge, not just zerg and complete, raids should have specific mechanics that players will have to learn, and test, in order to complete.
- I think with community being such a central point, we want to incentivize players to group. The game is being built around for that group perspective, while at the same time keeping in mind solo players.
Crafting
- The mechanic we’re moving towards with the artisan craft and crafting is: you can deconstruct this boss gear and potentially re-craft it as a master crafter.
- Your artisan class falls into three categories. There’s an interdependence between the classes that calls for a reliance on all three. (Example: if you’re a crafting artisan, you have to go to someone to get the “parts” your items
- Gatherer
- Processor
- Crafter (an item creator)
- Resource gathering can be both manual and automatic.
- Right now we are discussing harvesters. If you’re a citizen of a node that has a Zone of Influence (ZOI) – and in that ZOI there’s a vein of mithril, of iron, or a forest – if you own a freehold you have the ability to place down a harvester to give you a return of that item over time, potentially, until that vein is depleted.
- But there’s also a manual thing as well; if there’s an item that’s a one time harvest you’ll need to harvest it manually, you can go out and harvest veins manually. We wanted to add bonuses to the gathering class that reflects your citizenship of an area as well.
- There should be functionality for you to bring a dropped item to a crafter and have them augment it for you.
- We’re leaning towards a very unbound [item] system.
- Gear will degrade and break. If we’re going to have a system that includes primarily unbound gear, then you’re going to have to have some kind of sync? To counteract the creation of items.
- So if an item breaks, you’re going to have to take a percentage of the materials it took to make that item back to a crafter in order to repair it.
Misc.
- For me, the story is very important to immersion. This game is more than just an MMORPG, it will become a franchise that expands beyond the game, and its story will translate to many different iterations, I believe, over the coming time. (I suggest removing this part.)
- Our flagging mechanic revolves around death penalties in general. Now, you can’t de-level from dying but you can accrue negative experience. And this experience debt reflects certain penalties that you’ll experience from a combat effectiveness perspective (both PVE and PVP.)
- Statistic degradation: lowered health and mana,
- Less proficiency in gear and equipment etc.
- The more you accrue, the more difficult it will be to perform.
- But this can all be done through adventuring, simply the normal things you’d do as you play the game.
- We want people to be able to exercise agency in the world, but at the same time, there has to be a risk vs. reward.
- If you die as a non-combatant, you’re going to experience a “normal” death penalty.
- If you die as a combatant, you’ll experience less [significant] death penalties.
- If you die as a corrupted player, someone who has murdered a non-combatant, you will experience an exponent of the normal death penalty.
- Guilds will bind to your character, not your account.
- Having run a large guild for 14 years, I wanted to make sure aspects of guild play in AoC are very in depth.
- Leveling guilds, skills associated with the guild, achievements guilds can have, guild halls and their functionality, castle systems.
- Castles exert control, to a degree, over the economy that is under its influence. There are, as it stands now, five castles in the game, and those castles have a domain that they control – to a degree.
- Owning a castle, a guild might be able to
- Allocate some of those taxes for increased defense spending in nodes, separate of the node’s taxation policies.
- They may activate certain events and abilities that can progress citizens of certain nodes.
- They may unlock certain types of buildings.
- Castles have dedicated nodes around the castle that exist outside of the [regular] node system, that is build-able to a certain stage, by the guild that owns the castle and the guilds that have alliances with that castle.
- There are a lot of different mechanics that relate to our castle system.
- There will be cosmetics that will be achievable in the game, and they will be on-par with the cosmetics in the cash shop; both will come with high degrees of customization. There will be unique cash shop items: limited time, holiday specific, etc.
- Weight doesn’t relate to currency. Weight relates to materials, goods, gather-ables, items, etc.
- AoC will have VoIP in relation to the party, raid, and guild systems.
- We’re working with Discord to make that happen. I think we’re at the point, technologically, that we can do that and do it well.
- I want to have a good functionality in the U.I. for players to really capitalize on these systems.
- Considering API implementation for web-based uses.
This was all taken from an interview Steven Sharif, Creative Director of Ashes of Creation, had with Aggelos from Dungeon Crawler Network.
Kickstarter Updates (Updated 5/5/17)
- Parlor Games
- Can only be played in a tavern. And must be played between 2 or more people.
- The tavern will take a cut of the game.
- These parlor games will have a variety of types, depending on the racial influences of the node. Some involving dice, others cards and some less savory.
- Players will be able to wager in-game currency against other players.
- These games will involve aspects of both chance and skill.
Gaming Crisis 