Racial influences

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Alpha-1 Village node layout.[1]

We have essentially sets that exist across all races; and each race that dons those armor sets is going to have their own racial influence on the presentation of those particular sets. So that's something that's unique in how each of the races get diversified. Additionally, the more that one particular race contributes to a node's development, it's going to manifest in that particular node's architectural influences. You're going to see the architectures of those races become manifest within the nodes as well: That's another way that we diversify each race and we present each race's culture in the game as through those architectures, through those props that exist, through the tailoring of the armor sets that the NPC might wear, to the different factions that exist. Factions will have their own affiliation with different races as well. Each race will also have some different nomenclature when it comes to the lore, or comes to locations in the world. They're going to have their own language influences as well: The way they speak is something that's going to be distinct between races; when you have dialogue trees with particular NPCs. So all of those things really go into setting an immersive world where the cultures have their own identity.[2]Steven Sharif

Cultural influences manifest in many ways, from node and gear aesthetics to NPC languages and lore.[2][3][4]

There is an attrition and that attrition on experience and influence is heightened based on the performance of the race in the world. So if all these nodes are Orc nodes then their attrition rate is very high to compete with the cultural establishment of new nodes because they have more influence in the world and a popular opinion is against them in their outlying regions that they do not have influence in.[5]Steven Sharif

Artistic influences

Asian influenced Ren'Kai architecture.[6]

Character races are super important. These are the choices that we make at the onset of our adventure in an MMORPG: what race- not just mechanically aligns with our decisions, if those races have game mechanics behind them from a stat perspective, but visually and culturally and historically: What are these? What do these races represent? So it's important that visually they're distinct. And everyone's seen fantasy games do Elves, so everyone's seen them do Humans, everyone's seen them do Orcs: There's an established expectation almost behind what these traditional fantasy races represent; and there's a risk, because whenever you're creating a new IP or a new story or a new world- a new Universe; a realm in which things don't have to always be the norm, you can take a little bit of creative liberty to redefine some of the aspects of a particular race; and that can be a good thing, because it's something that is new to players. It's something that is unique to the realm that we're building- the surroundings that you have. So what we wanted to do was push a little bit more on the unique side of what the Py'rai would look like from a visual perspective.[7]Steven Sharif

You will see in the different races that are available from a player character standpoint a lot of different influences that reflect many cultures in the world: Not just European, not just Africa, not Mesoamerican. These cultures are going to be present in many of the races.[17]Steven Sharif
The idea is just to find a base component in the real world as a starting point and then to begin to fantasize.[8]Steven Sharif

Node layout and style

Racial architecture of the same Village (stage 3) node on different servers. Dünir Dwarven influence (top). Kaelar Human influence (bottom). Alpha-1 Non-NDA screenshot.

The layout and architecture within a Node’s development area are determined by influential race. For example, a stage 3 Node with the majority of player contribution being Py'rai would have a Py'rai village with Py'rai architecture. Most NPCs would be Py'rai elves, and offer questlines within the Py'rai narrative.[18]Margaret Krohn

Each player’s contributed experience is flagged with their character race and other identifiers. When a Node advances, the race with the highest experience contribution determines the Node’s style and culture. This style and culture change can happen at every Node Stage. For example, if a Node advances to Level 2 - Encampment Stage and 51% of all experience was earned by Ren’Kai players, the Node will be a Level 2 Ren’Kai Node. If that same Node advances to a Level 3 - Village Stage Node, but the Py'Rai contributed 62% of all the experience earned, then the Node will be a Level 3 Py'Rai Node.[4]Margaret Krohn

Node layout and style is determined by several factors:[19][20]

The way that the node system is built is that they can exist across a spread of 18 biomes, but at the same time have to represent the cultural influence of these cultures that are intrinsically a part of a specific biome.[21]Steven Sharif
Currently the way that the platform system is set up, is it's capable of adjusting the topography of the node's footprint, regardless of the surrounding terrain. So the reason for that is we want to have flexibility in the presentation of the node's layout and how it is essentially both from an aesthetic standpoint as well as a mechanical standpoint with node sieges- how it's constructed and that construction should have the ability to take on a variance of different types of topography. So it shouldn't be dependent on the surrounding area. Now that's not to say that the surrounding area isn't going to have some influence over. So for example... we're experimenting a little bit with the platform tech and putting up a node up against the side of a mountain or on the edge of a cliff or something that has a beautiful vista. Those are things that we're going to test out obviously as we continue to work on the node tool and how that platform system works, but the idea is to have the node independent of the surrounding terrain.[22]Steven Sharif
Some parts are determined by the area it's in. Some parts are determined by the type it is. Some parts are determined by the race it is; and then the rest of it is determined by the mayor.[20]Jeffrey Bard
All nodes, whether they're associated with a castle or associated with normal node structure, has cultural influences that replicate over to the buildings that are produced and the NPCs that are present.[27]Steven Sharif
  • The rest is determined by the node's mayor.[20]
    • It should be possible for a node to complete several building projects within a mayor's one month term in office.[28]
Q: How long would you say it will take players on average to fill/build up a node completely from wilderness to metropolis?
A: It's one thing to get a node to a certain level: it's another thing to develop the node; and I can't really give you an on-average expectation, because there's a lot of variables at play. There's how many citizens does the node have attracted to it; what's the type of traffic that the node is attracting to it based on things like its tax rates, or the specialization that it chose to spec into, based on the building types it's chosen to build. All of those things are variables that can affect the quote-unquote "average build-out time" of a particular node. So it's difficult to give you an average when there's so many variables along those lines. But the idea is that if there is a particular project that players are interested in in developing based on the node stage, that they would have the ability to complete several of those projects as within a single term of a mayor; and a term of a mayor is one month.[28]Steven Sharif

Node advancement

Citizen and non-citizen player activity (questing, gathering, raiding, etc.) within a node's ZOI counts toward that particular node's advancement (progression) to a higher node stage.[4][30]

The advancement of a node unlocks its unique content, which comes at the cost of locking out an increasing ring of neighboring nodes from progressing to the next stage.[31]

  • Nodes advance to the first stage quickly. This enables NPC services such as vending or banking items.[32]
  • The more advanced the node is, the larger its ZOI becomes.[33]
  • Less advanced nodes (referred to as vassal nodes) that fall within a more advanced node's ZOI can still gain XP, but must remain at a lower advancement stage than the dominant node.[34]
  • Certain quests, such as story arcs, may not be able to be turned in after a node has advanced.[37]
  • The territory expansion algorithm takes into account the nearest coast, neighboring nodes, and the heatmap of players in surrounding areas over the last weeks or month.[38]
    • Due to the way the progression algorithm calculates territorial (ZOI) expansion during node advancement, there is a small possibility that two nodes of the same stage end up being close to each other.[39]
The way that the algorithm expands the territories takes into account a few things: One it takes into account the coast like where's the closest coast. Two it takes into account the neighboring nodes so it can take over and essentially vassal state those nodes, but what's more important is essentially the initial population based on like how players choose their races. Because we have nine different races and four different starting points that branch out, each server's population density is going to dictate essentially the first few nodes that are highly populated and then that initial seed is what's going to determine the node structure as it moves inland into the into the world essentially; and based on the performance and successes of different sieges will determine which nodes that got locked out from the previous the initial advancements what nodes can now be available to advance further. So I really think that with so many variables that are present in the equation of how nodes advance and stay existing with the more variables you have, the higher likelihood there is for there to be a significant diversion in world progression.[38]Steven Sharif
Normally the algorithm that's applied to the node territorial expansion will prevent significant nodes from being in close proximity to each other... There could be a perfect storm where all of the algorithmic progression of territory leads to having these nodes very close to each other because there's certain requirements that should that need to be available to satisfy node vassal takeovers; and it's possible that two nodes would never take each other over as vassals and end up close together and spanning their territories in opposite directions: The Tale of Two Cities thing.[39]Steven Sharif
  • A node does not receive XP from the nodes within its ZOI until these nodes have reached their cap.[34]
  • Citizens of one node can contribute to the advancement of other nodes.[40]
  • Node experience gain opportunities will be equitable across the four node types.[41]
    • The exact percentage of advancement from obtaining items or killing monsters is not going to be explicitly known to avoid "gaming" the system.[42]
Different people have different resources invested in nodes progressing and it would be a little "gamey" if you could know exactly what was necessary at that point because that would disincentivize people from participating.[42]Steven Sharif

Node advancement spawns a series of animations and visual effects (within the footprint of the node).[43][4]

  • Players within the node are teleported to a safe location, likely a respawn area near the node.[43][44]
  • Supplies will spawn around the node and system driven caravans are spawned to bring these supplies into the node. These caravans are not able to be attacked.[43]
  • NPCs will begin construction activities.[43]
  • Players outside the node will see the new facade of the node pop into existence as the node advances in stage.[43]
The Development Area of a Node is where civilization will appear as the Node advances. As the Node Stage increases, different buildings, NPCs, and services will become available in the Development Area. The higher the Node Stage, the more complex and populated the Development Area becomes. Development Areas will also vary depending on the Node Type - Economic, Military, Scientific, or Divine.[4]Margaret Krohn

NPC racial interaction

Template:NPC race

Storyline quests

Story arc quests (Storyline quests/Narrative quests) contain objectives for each chapter of a story arc.[45][46][47][48][49][50]

  • Players can progress each chapter by completing story arc quests within the timeframe that each chapter is active.[47]
    • Phase timers are shown (in the quest UI) to indicate how much real-world time is available to complete the quests in each phase.[46]
    • If the player completes all quests in a particular chapter, they will need to wait until the next chapter to obtain further quests.[51]
  • Story arcs can branch into different stories with multiple possible endings depending on the quest objectives that players complete during each chapter.[45][46][48]
You can't really farm the quests in any meaningful way, because once you've done the quests in a chapter, that's it until the next chapter. Whether 1000 people participate or 10, the chapters will stay active for the same length of time, and as long as you participate in the clearly-marked time frame in your quest journal, you're good. The only thing that a concentrated effort can help with is influencing the narrative paths through the arcs.[51]Skott B
  • These quests stages can be failed. The ability to retry a failed quest depends on Node progression.[48]
There will be many different quests that actually have stages of the storyline; and these stages can actually be failed. You can actually fail a storyline; which sucks when you think about it, but at the same time that risk makes your investment that much more important.[48]Steven Sharif

See also

References

  1. Livestream, June 26, 2020 (45:32).
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Livestream, March 31, 2022 (4:57).
  3. 3.0 3.1 Interview, February 7, 2021 (33:00).
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Blog - Know Your Nodes - Advance and Destroy.
  5. 5.0 5.1 Interview, May 11, 2018 (1:00:19).
  6. 6.0 6.1 Livestream, October 31, 2019 (40:27).
  7. Livestream, February 25, 2022 (49:42).
  8. 8.0 8.1 Interview, October 20, 2018 (3:47:17).
  9. dunirinfluence.png
  10. 10.0 10.1 10.2 Interview, May 11, 2018 (1:03:21).
  11. Podcast, May 11, 2018 (31:35).
  12. Livestream, September 30, 2022 (1:08:24).
  13. Livestream, February 25, 2022 (44:28).
  14. py'rai archetecture.jpg
  15. Livestream, October 16, 2017 (15:58).
  16. 16.0 16.1 Podcast, May 11, 2018 (31:35).
  17. Interview, May 11, 2018 (1:04:27).
  18. Blog - Know Your Nodes - The Basics.
  19. 19.0 19.1 19.2 Livestream, October 30, 2020 (39:17).
  20. 20.0 20.1 20.2 20.3 20.4 20.5 Livestream, September 27, 2018 (53:06).
  21. 21.0 21.1 Livestream, February 25, 2022 (41:00).
  22. 22.0 22.1 Livestream, February 26, 2021 (1:12:18).
  23. Podcast, April 11, 2021 (29:47).
  24. Interview, May 11, 2018 (54:34).
  25. Livestream, May 26, 2017 (21:23).
  26. Podcast, April 11, 2021 (23:36).
  27. 27.0 27.1 Interview, May 11, 2018 (47:27).
  28. 28.0 28.1 Livestream, July 29, 2022 (1:13:09).
  29. Video, February 29, 2024 (33:57).
  30. A reactive world - Nodes.
  31. Video, April 20, 2017 (0:02).
  32. Npc vending.jpg
  33. Node series part II – the Metropolis.
  34. 34.0 34.1 Livestream, October 16, 2017 (50:20).
  35. steven-quote-neighboring-nodes.png
  36. jahlon-steven-vassal-nodes-quote.png
  37. Livestream, February 29, 2024 (53:58).
  38. 38.0 38.1 Interview, July 18, 2020 (10:04).
  39. 39.0 39.1 Interview, July 8, 2020 (1:00:15).
  40. node xp.png
  41. Livestream, September 24, 2021 (1:21:23).
  42. 42.0 42.1 Livestream, May 26, 2017 (28:16).
  43. 43.0 43.1 43.2 43.3 43.4 Livestream, October 14, 2022 (55:13).
  44. Livestream, November 17, 2017 (55:27).
  45. 45.0 45.1 Livestream, April 7, 2023 (58:39).
  46. 46.0 46.1 46.2 Video, March 31, 2023 (14:20).
  47. 47.0 47.1 Video, March 31, 2023 (12:47).
  48. 48.0 48.1 48.2 48.3 Interview, October 20, 2018 (2:36:25).
  49. Livestream, January 18, 2018 (39:08).
  50. MMOGames interview, January 2017
  51. 51.0 51.1 skotty-story-arc-3.png
  52. Livestream, March 26, 2021 (1:12:51).
  53. Livestream, July 25, 2020 (1:50:20).