Chief Developer Steven Sharif took the time during a major AMA session to answer various questions about Ashes of Creation. Especially exciting were the new insights into the dungeon and raid challenges of the ambitious MMORPG.
What was this question round about Ashes of Creation (short: AoC)? The Ask-me-Anything event took place on May 11, 2024, lasted a little over an hour, and among the participants were not only Creative Director Steven Sharif but also streamers Jamie Kaos, LoreForged, NyceGaming, and Vlahdus.
A variety of topics were brought to the table, such as dungeons and raids, the rogue class, story arcs, player trading, and the passive skills of guilds. You can check out the nearly 68 minutes on YouTube. However, we also summarize the most important points for you below.
The latest gameplay presentation of Ashes of Creation showcases impressive mage spells:
Dungeons and Raids in Ashes of Creation
Regarding the dungeon and raid challenges of the MMORPG, Steven Sharif explained:
- While most gameplay content of AoC is in the open world (including dungeon and raid challenges), there will also be instanced challenges for solo players, groups, and raids.
- As an example, Steven Sharif talks about the Tower of Carphin. Surrounding the tower, there is a city where various groups of three to five players can tackle the quest objectives.
- The Tower of Carphin serves as a dungeon with its six levels, where three to four full groups can move around relatively easily at the same time. If it gets busier, there could be disputes over the limited opponents.
- In an instanced zone, groups are protected from attacks by other players. This is different in the open world, for example, when two raids encounter a raid boss while being at war.
- Characters who die in such a PvP battle receive a stackable debuff. This eventually prevents them from effectively disturbing the other group in their fight against the boss.
- The difficulty of raid bosses is influenced by a dynamic system that takes into account the number of participating players. The larger your raid, the more damage area attacks cause, for example.
- In AoC, not all participants in a group challenge receive a personal reward. Instead, the raid leader distributes the loot among the participants. The more players participated, the smaller each piece of the cake is. Those who master difficult group challenges with small teams will therefore be more rewarded.
- While there are nodes for player economy (with auction houses), all nodes provide buildings for trading. Alternatively, you can also obtain permission to open a player shop anywhere in the world, for example in a dungeon, to supply other players with consumables.
What exciting information was there?
- The goal for AoC is to integrate the most important tools for guild management directly into the game. For example, there should be the possibility to involve players in communication even offline from within the game, such as via SMS messages. Additionally, guild leaders should have access to various data, such as player performance in guild events.
- In AoC, there are story arcs that specifically target high-level players. However, you can also expect story-driven quest lines for a broad player base. In such a story arc, for instance, the progress of low-level heroes affects what higher-level characters must accomplish in the subsequent part of the storyline.
- By providing class and role skills/talents, all aspiring tanks, healers, and hybrids with tank or healer focus should start playing differently at the beginning of the leveling phase. From level 25, players will then choose their secondary archetype through a quest to further specialize.
- Later, you can switch from one secondary archetype to another. However, before making the decision, there will be no opportunity to try out all the archetypes to make a decision afterward. Your primary class cannot be changed at any time.
- If players intentionally torpedo the experience of others around a controlled node through their behavior, you can respond to this aggression with a guild or node war. You can also set policies for your controlled nodes to protect your area from griefing.
- Guilds in AoC consist of a core of players and additional groups that can be individually set up and managed. The strongest passive guild bonuses can only be activated for this core, so smaller guilds do not suffer too much of a disadvantage compared to large guilds.
- In PvP duels, it will take about ten to 30 seconds for a defeated player to lie on the ground, depending on which classes are dueling. In group situations, multiple damage dealers can eliminate a focus target much faster.
- On a guild’s plot, the guild management can assign certain areas to specific members so they can, for example, engage in farming.
- Rogues have a true stealth mechanic and are expected to land on servers in the upcoming alpha phase.
- The different weapon types have their own talent trees, with users of two one-handed weapons like swords, maces, or daggers receiving an extra tree for dual wielding. Shields do not get their own talents, but are optimized through the passive enhancements of certain archetypes.
The essentials about Ashes of Creation in less than a minute:
What else do I need to know about Ashes of Creation? Ashes of Creation is a sandbox MMORPG set in a fantasy world, which takes place in a vast open world. You fight against world bosses and engage in PvP battles against each other. In addition, there should be a system where you level up areas and thereby improve cities and change parts of the game world – the so-called “Nodes”.
The development of the MMORPG began as early as 2015. The last major milestone was Alpha 1 in August 2021. There are detailed developer updates every month. The next alpha testing phase is expected to start in the third quarter of 2024. More about this here: 170 people are working on an exciting new MMORPG – What Ashes of Creation plans for 2024
