Servers

The world will be the same on each server, but צמתים will develop differently. Different servers will have different narratives. Things that happen on one server may not happen on another.

To answer your question about "what stops all servers from from progressing the same nodes," the answer to that question is "other players." Certain content is locked behind different nodes that develop. If we assume that at some point all of the information regarding node progression is available, not all players on a server may agree on what content they want access to, or that they want other players to have access to. Even if a certain perks from node progression are considered "best value" to players trying to solve a node meta, that doesn't mean all players on a server benefit from that in the same way. Because of this, some players make act against your best interests, because it isn't their best interest. Nodes define (and redefine) the world around you, influence points of interest, world quest lines, story arcs, drop tables, resource pools, and even spawn tables for NPCs and bosses. The cycle of nodes leveling and triggering events is something we expect to see play out in a variety of different ways, across different servers, based on how players choose to play Ashes of Creation. – Ry Schueller

• שרתים will be named after the champions of the great battles that led up to the fall of Verra.

• There will be a multitude of servers located throughout the various regions of the world.
  • Server selection will show the region where the server is located and/or the ping to that server.

With regards to live launch when the server's go live, you'll be selecting a server to play on; and that will be your character's home; and that server you'll be aware of where that server is located usually by either a ping or a region that's notated on next to the server. – Steven Sharif

• The developers may occasionally release stats relating to server populations and archetype/class makeup, but there isn't going to be an official page that surfaces this information.
  • Stats are available on a per-guild basis, subject to a permissions structure.

• Server-firsts will be able to be captured and collected on memory fragments that players can collect in-game so they may relive their experiences.

Regions

Ashes of Creation will launch with the following server regions:

• North America (NA).
• Europe (EU).
• Asia/Pacific (SEA).
• Oceania (OCE) (Australia).
  • The likelihood is very high for Sydney or Melbourne based OCE servers.
  • OCE servers may not be provisioned until Beta for Ashes of Creation (the MMO) and live launch for Ashes of Creation Apocalypse.

At this stage we do not have numbers on how many different servers will exist for different regions. We've said in the past 8-10,000 concurrent users per server is what we'd like to aim for. Obviously, the number of servers that exist in a region are going to be dependent on the population that's playing. – Steven Sharif

Other server regions will be considered based on interest.

• South America is under consideration due to traffic from that region.

Once we get closer to launch we'll update this information, which may include additional regions.

Certain regions will have "harmonized" subscription prices that better reflect their local economies. These regions will be segregated from other regions.

• Players will be able to make characters on any server they wish. There will be no region locking (outside of harmonized regions).

Folks have always been able to make characters on any server they wish. We are not region locking anyone. – Margaret Krohn

אוכלוסיית השרת

Population limits will be enforced on each server.

• Around 8-10k concurrent users per server is projected.
• Initially there will be a limited number of registered accounts (approximately 15,000) per server to help mitigate login queues.
  • This limit will increase over time to around 50,000 registered accounts per server.
• There may be queues to get into high population servers, but the aim is to avoid excessively long queues.
• The developers intend to carefully manage server populations via the use of character creation throttles to avoid the need to merge servers.
• The developers may occasionally release stats relating to server populations and archetype/class makeup, but there isn't going to be an official page that surfaces this information.

Population based scaling

The prices that דמויות ללא שחקן sell items for will scale based on the economic activity on a server. Prices will rise to combat inflation and fall as a population diminishes.

The node system allows the developers to scale the experience needed to level a node and the attrition that affects a node based on activity.

Things that NPCs buy and sell scale based on the economic activity that exists on that server... As inflation rises, prices rise and everything ends up being equal, even though there might be a couple of extra zeros. So that can go up and it can also go down so as a population leaves, things become less expensive and players don't have to do as much to earn that. On the other side of things we look at the node system and the node system is set up in this really flexible way that allows us to scale the experience needed to level a node and the attrition that delevels a node to scale based on activity too. So it's just a matter of adjusting a couple of constants and that goes up and down and the server can watch it and change those on the fly as it needs to. – Jeffrey Bard

Server-wide announcements

Goblins attacking a עיירה (שלב 4) node due to a triggered event.

Enemies can only really grow stronger as the node grows, becoming outposts essentially for exiled or rivals of the existing order. – Steven Sharif

There will be local, regional, or global (server-wide) announcements/notifications of important events.

• מצור על טירה.
• מצור על צומת.
• Legendary world boss spawns.
• Mob attacks and Monster coin events.
• Dungeon opportunities.

Event notifications will utilize different methods depending on the stage (scope and level) of the event.

• Local events
  • Local events (such as caravan PvP) may prompt players via the UI asking if they wish to participate or not.
  • Other local events may offer audible or visual cues without any UI notifications.
  • Local events that have not been addressed may start to expand regionally or even globally.

One important thing to note about events in general is notifications are sent to the players. Players can opt into these events in a similar way that you would into a quest. You're going to be presented with a 'would you like to participate' but they might not always be that way. You might hear trees falling in the forest and that may be an audio cue to tell you something's happening over there. It's out of the ordinary. This is not normally an audio cue that I hear in this area and i'm gonna go investigate that thing. So it might not just be always that UI window represented with a 'participate or not' but I'm going to go investigate and in that sense it could be stage driven. So you might have the more local stage where it is just the visual or audio cues and you get to go participate in that stage; and then when it advances, or if you don't answer the problem in time, then it starts to expand regionally and then it might send out particular notifications to either citizens of the node from which it falls under its purview or even broader than that. It could be global driven events and then it could have things that are are visual cues that are really big like a giant blizzard that's affecting the zone, because the event hasn't been addressed; and that can affect the crop rotations or it can affect passages and roads and how caravans move. There's a lot that the predicate system informs to the event system and then the event system reacts to those types of predicates. – Steven Sharif

• Node-based events
  • Certain node-based events will be broadcast to node citizens, others, such as caravans, will not be announced and will instead rely on player word-of-mouth.
  • פיתוח צומת notifications will be broadcast depending on the node's stage.
    • משלחת (שלב 1) and מחנה (שלב 2) nodes will announce within proximity of the node.
    • כפר (שלב 3) nodes will have region-wide announcements.
    • עיירה (שלב 4) and higher will likely broadcast world-wide.
  • New citizens of a node may be announced in a dedicated node citizen chat channel.
  • Election notices will be mailed to the accounts of citizens.

Whether it be like a siege or a triggered event against a city or like a unique dungeon opportunity... those types of things are going to involve notifications. Especially to the citizens of the city; where you'll be informed of an impending event. Basically it will give you time. – Steven Sharif

• Regional or global events
  • Wider events may be broadcast regionally or even globally.

Server history

Map concept art.

חלק מהמידע הבא לא אושר לאחרונה על ידי המפתחים וייתכן שלא נמצא במפת הדרכים הנובחית של הפיתוח.

The history of each server will be tracked and visible to players in a node's library.

• This design may have changed.

We're gonna keep track of the history of the world so that we can tell people the story up to the current day. A player who's brand new, who's come in at the six-month mark can take a look at each server, what each server has done, how each server has tackled the storyline; and they can decide for themselves what community they want to join; what version of the world that they want to take part in. – Jeffrey Bard

• Scribes may be able to collect and record information about the events of the world as they see it from their point of view.

Server instancing

There won't be server channels (sharding) on a server.

Dungeons and Raids

אלפא-1 כניסה למבוך בעולם פתוח .

80% מהתוכן שיהיה בAsehs of Creation יהיה בעולם פתוח ויש לכך סיבה ספציפית. בגלל הדרך בה נוצרות חברויות או אויבים במשחק כך שלאנשים יש את האפשרות ליצור חברים או אויבים משלהם, אנחנו רוצים שזה יבוא לידי ביטוי גם מעמדה של תחרותיות. אז הרבה משטחי הציד או הבוסים הפשוטים שלאנשים תהיה ההזדמנות להרוג, יהוו למעשה מוקד תחרות בינך לבין האויבים שיתכן שיצרת במשחק או שתוכל לעבוד יחד כדי ליצור בריתות במטרה להגן על מוקדי התחרות הללו. – Steven Sharif

אפר היצירה יהיה חוויה של עולם פתוח רציף.

• אין זמן טעינה או מסכים נטענים במעבר בין סביבות.

תהיה חלוקה של בערך 80/20 בין עולם פתוח לעומת מופעים של התקלויות.

• יכולים להיות מופעים של מצור (Instances) בתוך מצור על טירה ומצור על צומת כך שקבוצות ספציפיות יוכלו להשתתף בקרבות קטנים, קצרים, ובעלי מטרה אובייקטיבית עבור נקודות ציון ספציפיות.

• יהיו מופעים כחלק מהעולם הפתוח וגם פשיטות. השאיפה היא לשמור על התחושה של עולם פתוח ובנוסף לנצל את היתרונות של מערכת המופעים.
  • מופעים יווצרו רק במבוכים מסויימים איפה שיש צורך יותר גדול בסיפור מסגרת. חוץ מזירות שכאלו לא יהיו יותר מידי מופעים במקומות אחרים.

יהיו כמה מבוכים פתוחים שיהיו בהם בוסים בקצה המבוך. יהיו כמה מבוכים פתוחים שיהיו בהם פשוט המון בוסים, לא בהכרח של פשיטות עולמיות או משהו; ויהיו הרבה חדרים שונים והם יהיו ממוקמים בצורה פרוגרסיביית במובן כזה שבחלקים המוקדמים יותר של המבוך הם יהיו ברמה נמוכה יותר ואז בחלקים המאוחרים יותר של המבוך, עמוק יותר למטה, הם יהיו ברמה גבוהה יותר ורמת הקושי תעלה; וזה יוצר שוב, לדעתי, מערכת אקולוגית שבה לשחקנים על פני מספר מגוון של רמות תהיה הזדמנות להתקיים ביחד באזורים מסוימים בעולם; וזה טוב לדינמיקה החברתית. זה טוב לדינמיקה של הגיוס. זה טוב רק מהמובן של החיות והרלוונטיות של אזורים מסוימים. ככה שלא נגיע למצב שמרגע שאתה עובר רמה מסויימת, המקומות האלה יהיו ריקים. – Steven Sharif

• לא היו שום מופעים באלפא-1.

אנחנו ככל הנראה הולכים ליצור מופעים רק במבוכים מסויימים ובזירות. ככל הנראה לא תוכל לראות יותר מידי מופעים בכל מקום אחר. מה שאתה רואה יהיה מה שתקבל. – Jeffrey Bard

מערכת סימון PVP תהווה הזדמנות לסכסוך פתוח.

ש: כשאתה מגיע לבוסים במבוך בעולם הפתוח, יכול להיות שהמשחק יקפיץ אותך? (למופע נפרד)

ת: לרוב אם יש בוסים בסוף של מבוך, אפשרי שתקפוץ. – Steven Sharif

PvP Arenas

תרום-אלפא arena combat footage from PAX West 2017.

תרום-אלפא arenas.

זירות are instanced PvP scenarios and are not part of open world PvP.

The arena system as we've spoken about before is going to have ladder systems where people can progress within certain seasons based on their win/loss ratios. The importance of arenas are obviously that players have an opportunity to participate [and] practice out certain builds from a PvP perspective and can compete with one another within the system. – Steven Sharif

• זירות will have 1 man, 3 man, 5 man and possibly 20 man Free-For-All (Deathmatch) group sizes.
  • There won't specifically be guild vs guild arenas but team-based matchmaking allows teams to face other teams.
• Arenas will have a minimum level requirement to participate.
• There won't be bifurcated brackets with separate player pools.
• There might be some form of an ELO system that gets flushed on a seasonal basis.
• There will be an arena ladder system.
  • Rewards for arena ladders will be revealed at a later time.
  • Titles can be received from arena play.
  • Arena points that can be used to buy gear are not currently in the design.
• Mayors of military nodes are chosen from citizens through last man standing (gladiatorial arena style) combat.
• The arena system may support cross-server combat.
• Arena style combat is instanced but spectators may be possible through an interface.

Server vs server

חלק מהמידע הבא לא אושר לאחרונה על ידי המפתחים וייתכן שלא נמצא במפת הדרכים הנובחית של הפיתוח.

The arena system may support cross-server combat.

• There may be monthly competitions where the winning server and winning team receive beneficial buffs for the month.

We definitely like cross-server play. I think it's cool because it is something that players get to participate in. – Steven Sharif

When you're talking about Arena play especially, one server might not be able to support that depending on what's going on with it, but across all the servers then we've got a really great pool for matchmaking. – Jeffrey Bard

Server types

• There won't be separate PvE and PvP servers but some servers may be more PvP focused than others.

• There won't be separate roleplaying (RP) servers.

Procedural generation

Ashes of Creation will predominantly have curated content, but procedural mechanics will be leveraged in a places where they don't appear to be 'procedural'.

• Verra's map will not be procedurally generated, but starting resource points may be different on each server.
• Node locations and types are predefined and are the same on each server but they will develop differently on each and drive different narratives and storylines.
• Node layout and style is determined by several factors, such as Environment (biome) and location, Node type, and Race.
• Roads are both pre-generated and player influenced.

Wherever we can leverage procedural mechanics in such a way that does not appear procedural we should. There's a healthy blend between the things that we do in having defined parameters for it and then incorporating a procedural component; and in that sense it will be perceived well, but where we the predominance of what we're implementing should be curated or by design. – Steven Sharif

Server transfers

Server transfers, outside of server merges, will not be possible initially.

• The developers intend to assess the impact on housing and other systems closer to launch.

Testing server wipes

Alpha and Beta servers will be wiped prior to launch.

• Servers may be wiped between individual tests.

As a general rule, if the testing phase contains the word Alpha, it is safe to assume there will likely be wipes. – Steven Sharif

See also

• אפר היצירה
• תאריכי שחרור