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First-time user experience

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Alpha-2 First-time user experience UI.[1]

A first-time user experience (FTUE) system / tutorial system is intended to be in place for Alpha-2.[2][1][3][4][5]

This is for entrance criteria of Alpha-2: a trigger response when players engage with certain systems for the first time, or when they are entering a certain area for the first time, or entering a node for the first time, that they will be able to be prompted with information about how they should go about first-time user experience sort-of-thing. That is going to obviously help orient players to the different systems within the game, because there are many.[3] – Steven Sharif
  • The FTUE system is triggered based on player actions in the game, rather than being a traditional tutorial system.[1][3][4]
Rather than like a really guided tutorial, it's more based off what you're doing in the world and the first time you encounter something.[1] – Bill Trost
The first-time user experience is something that's going to have a lot of love and attention during Betas, but is not going to have much attention during Alpha-2. But it is intended for us to have a very in-depth first-time user experience to introduce players to the number of different systems. They're not going to be super in-depth. We don't believe that first-time user experiences should handhold players through all of the processes and reveal the world, so to speak, but just to give them a shallow touch for these systems so that they understand the concepts and essentially how to navigate.[4] – Steven Sharif

Game difficulty

Ashes of Creation will be on the higher side of difficulty when it comes to engagements.[6][7][8]

Adventuring is not easy in Ashes... The intent is that encounters are difficult. The world is dangerous. It is not a cakewalk to progress within Ashes.[6] – Steven Sharif

Learning curve

Ashes of Creation will be easy to understand yet hard to master.[9]

My stance on participation trophies is that things should be hard, people should fail, the bitter taste of defeat is what makes success that much more rewarding. Helping other players learn encounter strategy, and fine tuning their play style for high end content is an important part of eliminating participation trophy. Growing together is a good thing, and that include failing together as a means to drive for success together.[10] – Steven Sharif
Q: How important will knowledge and deduction be in the game, and will you avoid tedious data gathering methods?
A: Knowledge and deduction should be pretty important, both from an encounter design perspective with regards to enemy NPC behaviors, but also certain puzzles and questlines. The intent there is to create an interactive style of gameplay that requires problem solving, deduction across the board, especially as it relates to certain crafting results. I mean that's something that's riddled across [the] general design playing field for a lot of our systems. We don't want it to be tedious. If it's something that you're doing that doesn't feel fun, then from a relevant standpoint it's not what we want to incorporate in the gameplay loop.[11] – Steven Sharif
  • Nodes are expected to play an important role in onboarding new players by providing points of early social interaction with other players, as well as facilitating a range of services and content that they can explore.[12]
Q: How do you envision the new player experience for those entering Verra at launch?
A: One of the things that Ashes as a design has that speaks specifically to this new player acquisition statistic is that each of the realms is going to be different and that we onboard players to social experiences very quickly. And the reason for that is, in a lot of MMOs that we've played that are further down the road than their launch date, your new player experience is completely devoid of player-to-player interaction. And that's because you're going through all the early game content when the rest of the player population has moved on beyond that. So, what do nodes provide uniquely from a world building perspective with regards to those starting areas that players are being onboarded on? It allows them to immediately interface and visualize that social environment of the world, because these node locations that are generally going to be starting earlier in your leveling experience, because those will be the first that get traffic, are going to have reasons for other players to return to them, to engage with services in them; and to watch the points of interest around them dynamically change spawner sets that make them relevant hunting grounds intermixed with the low-level populations. So, in addition to that, there are going to be certain systems that ensure low level populations have a place within the world economy and have a place within the world development scene in how certain buildings get made, torn down, and made again to satisfy the interest of the traffic that's relevant to that particular node. So there's a level of complexity that exists in how new player onboarding is integrated across systemically the world design that I think nodes as an approach help facilitate significantly.[12] – Steven Sharif

Target demographic

The developers want Ashes of Creation to appeal to both younger and older generations of MMO gamers.[13]

I think our target demographic, obviously we have a very high graphic fidelity in the game that's attractive to younger players, but at the same time we have a very roleplay game orientation - a a play back to that pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons feel that perhaps younger generations may not know but is very near and dear to the hearts of older gamers. So I think we have a broad appeal from a demographic standpoint.[13] – Steven Sharif

Player types

Ashes of Creation will cater for a variety of player types from Raiders or PvPers to Role players and Crafters.[14]

The most compelling design argument for how those different sects of gamers interact with each other is dependant from the design standpoint of interdependencies in the systems. So, for example if as a Raider or as a PvPer you're looking for the best gear, you're going to devote your time towards leveling up and going out and participating in the things you enjoy like pvping, perhaps going for caravans or sieging cities and castles and all that type stuff. If you want the best gear, you're going to have to rely on a person who's devoted their time towards crafting potentially; and they may not be a PvPer but they have a place in your wheelhouse because you need their services. And then that crafter is going to need a person who is either a gatherer or plays the economy as a merchant in the nodes with the auction houses that are regionalized. They're going to have to work with a person who specializes in trade that takes caravans with either mercenary groups or other guilds that are PvPers between the nodes to get the resources they need. Building dependencies on different groups or factions of players that exist within a large world like this MMORPG is what solidifies the bonds that allow for them to exist either harmoniously, or at least in a way that they know you need those types of players.[14] – Steven Sharif

Casual vs. hardcore players

The multiple progression paths in Ashes of Creation are designed to suit different playstyles and offer different "lanes" for players depending on the time they have available to play.[15][16][17][18]

  • Some progression paths will be more immediately achievable, which are more suited to casual players.[16]
    • Triggered events such as cravans and sieges will allow casual players to participate in impactful events without significant time investment.[19]
    • Lower level characters will have usefulness in mass combat that does not depend on their level, such as manning siege weapons, helping repair fortifications, bringing proximity-based buffs to key positions, using stealth or scaling walls. These types of things are relevant to the tide of battle and do not require the player to be max-level or have high combat stats.[20]
There are events that are happening in the world in the game that you won't need to be a hardcore player to impact and join. For example, the triggered events from the PvE standpoint against the cities; the trades of the caravans; those natural battlegrounds that exist; the castle sieges you can login for. There is a lot of systems that are at play where a person can simply log in, participate, have fun, be impactful and then log out.[19] – Steven Sharif
  • Other progression paths will require a significant time investment, which casual players will take longer to achieve than hardcore players.[16]
    • The contribution of a large mass of casual players working together may have a greater impact on node progression than hardcore players. Hardcore players may be able to progress into to late-game content faster than casual players, but may lack the numbers to influence the nodes in those locations as quickly as the larger population of casual players.[16]
Traditionally in MMORPGs you're going to see a larger population of casual players than you do of hardcore players; and that's just the way the cookie crumbles from a population standpoint. And because of that and the way that nodes collect experience and advance as a result of player activity, those casual players will actually have more impact on node progression than the hardcore players will: at least as I predict, because of the sheer quantity disproportionate between the two different groups of people... You may see in Ashes the smaller hardcore group of players progress further into the late-game content, right. But they don't have the numbers to influence the nodes in those locations as quickly as the more casual... larger population has near the outskirts.[16] – Steven Sharif

PvE difficulty

Tumok the Wretched Alpha-2 world boss.[21]

Raid bosses are aware of the number of combatants within an area in proximity to them and that awareness is part of an indicator to which behaviors they're going to utilize as part of their behavior tree. So as it's assessing the types of combatants that are facing it, the number of those combatants, the position of those combatants, the abilities and totals of those combatants, it weighs certain actions in its behavior tree and then it acts on those actions; and in the scenario where you're bringing overwhelming odds to a particular fight, that might weigh heavier the AoE options that the boss has access to, where they're utilizing a lot more AoE abilities during an engagement due to that overage of players. So in that sense it's a bit adaptive. It's a bit dynamic based on the encounter scenario.[22] – Steven Sharif

The difficulty of PvE encounters in Ashes of Creation is anchored to the PvX design of the game, which takes into account the unpredictable nature of other players into the encounter design. Ashes of Creation is not trying to directly compete against purely PvE oriented games.[23][24][25][26][27][28]

Q: How do you intend to satisfy those who love difficult end-game PvE content, such as hard mode trials of ESO, ultimate raids of Final Fantasy 14, or Word of Warcraft mythic plus dungeons?
A: To be honest with you, I'm not sure that we're trying to compete with those games and the content that they provide in that arena, because we're a different game. We're a PvX game, which means the types of challenges that PvE players can expect from us will oftentimes revolve around the additional component that players- that you can't predict their actions- provide the encounter design. So that's something that's systemically built in a PvX approach.[23] – Steven Sharif
Q: Could you explain if there are mechanisms particularly during boss fights that protect players from PvP interactions, such as room locks, or are all raids intended to remain fully open to PvP?
A: Some dungeons do have instancing. Some boss rooms are instanced. In those locations, yes they will be serviced either through a room lock or some other mechanism that protects the engagement- the environment of that encounter to who is intended to be there, but the majority of our encounters can be interrupted. They are open-world; and in those events where you have two groups that are coming together that might be at war with one another, where open flagging is not necessary, they are just flagged combatants with one another. They're going to have to manage the battlefield between what they're achieving in the PvE encounter versus now what they are experiencing in the dynamic player versus player encounter.[24] – Steven Sharif
Q: How challenging will raid boss mechanics be given the given that players may need to simultaneously fight other players while also fighting the boss?
A: It depends. The great thing about our encounter system is that it has a wide scalability from encounters that some might consider easy given their composition to encounters that some might consider impossible until they get their gear level to a certain stage. The level of interaction with other players is really predicated on the encounter itself. We may have some encounters that are in instances although the predominant portion of those will be in the open world, in which case they do have the potential being contested; and these encounters, especially the big ones that might land in contention, are giving some of the best-in-slot gear you can get in the game. So it's important that they are contested because it is a significant victory point; and one of our core pillars is risk versus reward: and the higher that risk the higher that reward should be. So those two things seem fitting and then in addition we do have the concept of winners and losers. Not everybody in Ashes of Creation is going to be a winner; and that sucks if you're not I guess, but there is opportunity for you to continue to excel and become one. But it gives much more meaning to an achievement when not everybody gets the achievement. That's our philosophy.[26] – Steven Sharif
Q: So it's the sort of thing where it might be, we're going do a dungeon that's oops, all fire golems, so if everybody straps up with plate armor and fire resistance, you don't have to worry about the magic fire: you've got the fire resistance for. And when you start getting punched around, that's why everyone's come in with plate?
A: The encounters design team presents a particular type of challenge rating- for those you're familiar with playing DnD or whatever, challenge rating gets informed by a few different vertical power levels, but then there's also the horizontal perspective: That is, what tools does your party have to address the challenge rating of the situation and some of the horizontal progression exists within how you kit your equipment slots. Some of those can be enhancements or stones, as you're discussing with fire resistance. Some of those are base stats that exist on a particular item, such as physical damage mitigation versus magical damage mitigation and what subtype of damage is incoming based on that. These are the ways that we emphasize that more rock-paper-scissors type of interaction with balance to where it's okay to have asymmetric imbalance if there are horizontal methods by which you achieve the challenge rating.[30] – Steven Sharif
How does the state tree of the NPC respond to the actions of the players? Well, it weights certain actions and behaviors based off of what the players are doing and as it weights those things, it makes decisions that will be unique according to the encounter that's occurring in front of it. So, each time might be different as a result of that. That's one section. In addition, when we talk about the adaptive scaling- this isn't scaling in like power relation to the level of the player- this is scaling in the quantity of participants; and that means that it starts to weight the behaviors that include AoE actions higher than others as a result of the number of players who are present. This intrinsically increases the challenge rating of the encounter, because those AoE abilities are providing a higher return on DPS overall to the to the raid encounter for the monster.[34] – Steven Sharif
Attunements are a gatekeeping mechanism. They are a way to mitigate the potential PvX interaction that could interrupt your raid, because there is some level of effort that must be exerted by antagonists who would hope to interrupt your efforts. Now that was a specific narrative mechanic in A1. Is it possible that we will see those throughout the rest of the game? Absolutely, 100%. That is a valid design mechanic.[39] – Steven Sharif
  • There will be mobs who's level is above the player level cap.[31]
Both in Alpha-2 and when the game launches, there will be monsters whose technical level is above that of the cap; and the intent there is obviously again to provide some level of challenge that exceeds a comparable level challenge rating.[31] – Steven Sharif

Level scaling

Levels or stats of bosses will not scale due to player levels or numbers, however boss AI is able to adapt to player numbers through the selection of mechanics and behaviors.[40][41][42][43][44]

Q: Will world bosses scale when it comes to player levels and is it based on players or the zone itself leveling?
A: They will not scale based on player level, no.[42] – Steven Sharif

Mentor program

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

There will be a mentorship program where upper-level players are able to benefit from partying and/or helping lower level players; and getting them situated in the game.[44]

There will be activities that are present for higher level players to mentor lower level players. Let's say you have a friend who joins later on and you still want to do things with them, there will be things to do. Will he be able to enter a dungeon of your level and participate? No, because we don't want to inflate or deflate characters and manipulate that type of skill or power. We want that to be something that makes sense for them in a progression standpoint.[47] – Steven Sharif
The mentorship program provides individual quests that can be initiated by the mentor based off of what node that they are part of. So these are like quests that are determined by either certain buildings and/or organizations or the mayor; and there are specific ones that are available for mentors to provide mentees; and they can also participate in some of those quest lines as well: Whether that be leading your mentee through a dungeon or providing a location for them to arrive with you at, or escort quests for the NPC caravans. These types of things, when done together with your mentor, will provide benefits both for the mentor and the mentee as well, so you're incentivized to participate with new players.[46] – Steven Sharif

Visuals

  • 2024-10-15

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Video, September 27, 2024 (6:26).
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Interview, October 14, 2024 (6:29).
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Livestream, April 30, 2024 (1:10:16).
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Livestream, November 30, 2023 (1:51:22).
  5. ↑ Blog: Creative Director's Letter, October 16 2020
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Livestream, February 29, 2024 (1:26:45).
  7. ↑ Livestream, December 2, 2022 (1:05:51).
  8. ↑ Livestream, June 4, 2018 (7:25).
  9. ↑ Podcast, May 11, 2018 (33:09).
  10. ↑ Ashes of Creation Forums - No participation trophy.
  11. ↑ Livestream, July 31, 2024 (2:28:04).
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Interview, October 16, 2024 (48:29).
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Podcast, May 11, 2018 (33:09).
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Video, April 5, 2018 (44:06).
  15. ↑ Livestream, December 23, 2021 (1:32:10).
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 Podcast, April 11, 2021 (18:35).
  17. ↑ Livestream, 2018-04-8 (PM) (28:38).
  18. ↑ Livestream, May 19, 2017 (51:52).
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Video, April 5, 2018 (48:03).
  20. ↑ Interview, July 8, 2020 (1:12:51).
  21. ↑ Newsletter - June 2023.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 Livestream, January 27, 2023 (1:34:06).
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Interview, October 16, 2024 (29:32).
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 24.5 Podcast, May 10, 2024 (46:50).
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Podcast, May 10, 2024 (10:16).
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Livestream, May 27, 2022 (1:20:35).
  27. ↑ Livestream, June 1, 2017 (39:21).
  28. ↑ Livestream, May 22, 2017 (20:59).
  29. ↑ steven-instancing.png
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Interview, July 9, 2023 (1:40:41).
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 31.2 Livestream, November 30, 2023 (1:53:50).
  32. ↑ [to https://twitter.com/AshesofCreation/status/1571960759894286336 Twitter - Creature resistances.]
  33. ↑ Livestream, June 25, 2021 (1:08:23).
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 Podcast, May 10, 2024 (48:54).
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Interview, June 13, 2021 (22:20).
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 Livestream, November 30, 2020 (1:16:09).
  37. ↑ Interview, July 19, 2020 (17:12).
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 Interview, July 19, 2020 (14:51).
  39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 Podcast, October 12, 2024 (47:01).
  40. ↑ Livestream, August 30, 2024 (1:01:40).
  41. ↑ Video, August 30, 2024 (36:44).
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 Livestream, May 31, 2023 (43:55).
  43. ↑ Interview, June 13, 2021 (24:14).
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 Video, April 5, 2018 (40:08).
  45. ↑ steven-loot-level-disparity.png
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 46.2 46.3 46.4 Livestream, September 30, 2020 (1:07:22).
  47. ↑ Interview, August 24, 2018 (8:52).
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