Ashes of Creation – The MMORPG Ashes of Creation clarifies its “event system”

The Ashes of Creation universe will be evolving and dynamic: the Intrepid studio presents the MMORPG’s event system, which will generate public quests, PvE or PvP, of varying scale and adapted to the context and the players.

One of the main originalities ofAshes of Creation rests on its evolving universe. As we know, the world of Verra is divided into “nodes”, regions that evolve and develop according to the activities of the players (the more players invest in a region, the more it develops and a camp will become a village, then a city and finally a megalopolis).
Beyond player actions, the studio Intrepid also intends to energize and bring the game universe to life through events that may occur if certain conditions are met. This “system of events” was the object of the last live stream monthly dated developer.

Concretely, the world of Verra is not fixed and different types of events can occur if specific “triggers” are activated :

• events linked to specific phenomena, more or less taking the form of public quests;
• others according to a narrative evolution: the equivalent of scripted quest lines;
• others specifically linked to a region: they are triggered when the players are present and reveal more about the place concerned;
• still others depending on the date (a season, a real or in-game period of the year);
• or even PvP events.

The developer delivers some examples of events, such as raids by monsters or bosses on a city, but also climatic changes or catastrophes (a snowstorm, a forest fire or a volcanic eruption), or an epidemic for example. And these events could be local, regional, or even global – considering that a local event that would be overlooked by the players could grow in size and become regional or even global. Thus, an undefended city could be ravaged by an attack of monsters which could then proliferate in several regions. Ditto with a fire that would start in a remote forest, spread to block trade routes and therefore the passage of merchant caravans. A local event may have wider consequences.

The mechanism is thus intended to “fluidify” the quest system of the MMORPG and enhance player immersion. Players will not all seek the same quest by talking to an NPC (although there will also be NPC quests), they react to events that occur around them and mobilize for their country.

Involve players in the game world

For consistency, these events are dynamic and depend on both the environment itself and the actions of the players. Concretely, the monsters have a specific behavior, some are motivated by personal reasons (narrative), others have favorite targets (when monsters launch a raid, they can target specific buildings in a city). Similarly, some events will only trigger if players have been active enough in a region to evolve it to a specific level. For example, a node develops enough for access to a dungeon to be unlocked: players can venture there but will wake up a boss who will launch a raid on the region. Or else, if the node developed scientifically (one of the four possible orientations of a node), monsters will take advantage of the region’s technological development to craft more formidable weapons than their counterparts in other regions.

The developer also states that events have a level. If level 25 players evolve in a region, eliminate level 25 monsters, the system will unlock a level 25 event adapted to the players present in the region. Events are not not high-level content and all players will be able to get involved.

PvE and PvP events

Similarly, the developer also sees an opportunity to make PvE and PvP players live together. Events are more of a PvE mechanic (boss raids seem to play an important role in this). But if a city suffers a monster raid (PvE), the players of an opposing country could be vigilant and take advantage of their enemy’s weakening to coordinate an attack (PvP). The event then becomes PvPvE.

Similarly, the studio imagines PvP events, linked to open-world “battlegrounds” (these are not instances). When a PvP event is triggered, players in the area are brought into the “battlefield” and they can fight each other without incurring PvP penalties – a player who does not want to take part in the fight can walk away of the area. The studio sees it as a way to multiply skirmishes for small groups of players in different areas of the game universe and each objective would have local consequences in a global conflict. Larger guilds could coordinate these different goals around the world, smaller groups could participate more spontaneously.

It is understandable that Ashes of Creation’s event system aims to energize the game universe by immersing players in an evolving world, while renewing the traditional methods of distributing quests – in favor of a method that triggers missions linked to a context and to the actions of the players. We will no doubt be curious to test this system on part as part of the next alpha-test phases.