Ashes of Creation Dev Tracker

Balance in an Alpha is like a pendulum. With this introduction it will swing slightly in a different direction. We will introduce more changes until the systems work as intended.

I’m someone who played in the older days. We never ran around the starting zone griefing new players so that the game was unplayable. That is an easy way to kill a game. Whoever thinks that is the purpose of our PvP systems should see themselves out of the community. I have said this throughout development, griefing is an actionable offense, whether the target of the harassment is a streamer or not.

First, the caravan is the definition of opportunity. It is also an opt-in PvP system. If a streamer or non-streamer is running a caravan, they are an open target.

Don’t conflate griefing a level 1 who is logging into the game for the first time, with PvP. Some people I notice offer the false dichotomy of “either allow griefing or remove PvP entirely”. This is not the way. Exercise good judgement on what harassment is vs legitimate PvP.

I provided 3 warnings to the individuals. They ignored it.

We have plans to introduce safe zones around shrines and the starting area for next weekend. We had previously targeted phase 2 for this tech.

Our tech for PvP suppression zones around starting areas and respawn shrines is not yet in the game. It was targeted for next phase, however, I will prioritize it for next weekend.

I don’t care if the person that was getting griefed was a streamer or not, it is actionable to abuse our PvP systems to harass other players in an effort to make them quit the game. Any testers that are upset by the no griefing rules, please save me the CS time, and find a different community.

The open world flagging system in Ashes is intended to provide risk. When this system is used as a result of political conflict, resource competition, or opportunity, then it is serving its purpose.

We are aware of the character data corruption. It’s affecting about 2% of the character records. We are currently investigating

That feature will not be online until phase 2

That tech is not yet online, we intend to ease players out of the starting zone with PvP protections. But that won’t be in till phase 2

I want to be clear. Our PvP systems are intended to provide risk to the open world experience. When PvP is a result of political conflict, resource competition and/or opportunity... then we have hit the mark we are looking for. However, what I watched today with a streamer, however big or small, was a desire to grief this player from being able to play the game. That is, and will always be, an actionable offense. PvP = Good, Griefing = Bad

We are all investigating. Eta 30 min

What country are you connecting from, and do you use a vpn. We are currently fighting a DDoS attack and certain mitigation strategies can block whole countries and our ip ranges.

👋 We are excited to welcome our First Wave Bundle testers to Alpha Two tomorrow! While we’re not doing a wipe, we’ve added two new fresh start realms for people who want to experience Verra with a clean slate.

🔗 Find out more here: https://ashesofcreation.com/news/preparing-for-alpha-two

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Having friends will absolutely make the play experience optimal. We are an mmorpg after all. But the current solo experience is lacking complimentary systems like a fully fleshed corruption system. More quest structures, more population options and economic structures like auction houses etc. There is a lot of content and gameplay polish that is scheduled for phase 2 and 3.

Greetings brother. I’ve been very clear over the years about many of the old school designs I employ across our systems. That approach will hold true. However, I would advise waiting to make judgements about content. Especially solo play. I cannot say this enough, phase 1 is not a content test. It’s about performance and stability. We will introduce and expand on features and content as we enter into phase 2 and 3

From my perspective, I often see a few things from people that could be better informed about either; Game development as a whole, or our project and our goals.

First, while it is true that Ashes has been in development for 8 years, it is important to put into context that nearly the first 4 years was in a different engine and codebase. While we are able to carry over much of the art and gameplay code, we rewrote our backend, which required overhauling the gameplay code that uses that backend. It is also disingenuous to compare the first few years of pace to development to the pace we have now, given that the studio size grew from only a handful of people, to the over 200 developers that now work on Ashes. Much of that growth began after Covid.

Second, many who are unfamiliar with software development, expect that progress always moves in one direction. This is not always the case, as the complexity of the code, and the systems grow new bugs get introduced. And alth...

Hey brother, I understand there are a lot of people who want Ashes nao... but as the world grows and content gets introduced both in the form of new code, and new assets, you can see new bugs get introduced which take time to hunt down and that is the purpose of these tests.. Most projects of our size and following would never dream of including the community in stages such as phase 1. But it is a path I have chosen as I believe it will make the game better.

So I recommend to people who feel we are failing, or not delivering, to take a break and come back when we are closer to launch. If instead people want to help test or give feedback on how certain systems are working... that is what we want from our audience at this phase, since it will help us iterate <3