TL;DR

• Season technology revealed
• Riverlands biome shown
• Season changes will impact economy
• Season changes affect abilities
• Herd mechanic explained
• Capital city (starting area) revealed

May development update was art-themed. Even though we saw gameplay and the technology behind season and weather changes, much of the emphasis was put on the design, the art, and the feeling that the world is supposed to convey in order to provide that full immersion.

Large-Scale Siege Management

The development update kicked of with a community-member posed question. Because Ashes Of Creation team discussed sieges recently, the community wanted to know “What is Intrepid doing to help people communicate during these big events (sieges)?” It is known that it’s hard managing one party, or raid, let alone an event such as castle or node siege, where there’s supposed to be 250 people. The answer was not quite detailed, but Steven did say that players will have tools like markers and symbols to mark points of interest. In addition to that the team “is working on a lot of cool UI tools,” some of which will be tested in Alpha 2 testing phase.

How Season And Weather Changes Impact The World?

Many of the games tried to introduce season and weather changes as one of the major systems, but many of those failed. In the end, it turned out to be just an aesthetic part of the world, without real impact. Will Ashes of Creation face the same?

Well, according to Steve Sharif, Creative Director of Ashes of Creation, the world of Verra will be significantly impacted by this system. Steven mentioned that all these systems being introduced to Ashes have to make sense. They have to introduce some sort of gameplay loop, otherwise they will, in fact, end up just as a side-thing of the world.

The video that was shown during the livestream, walked us through Riverlands area, where we could see new creatures, boats, and how season and weather affects the environment.

What Will Be Affected By Season And Weather Changes?

Things that will change along with the seasons can be heavily summed up in a couple of points:

• Gameplay dynamic
• Economy, which includes rotation of goods, crop harvest
• Skills and abilities will be affected
• Overall look of characters, monsters, and environment

Economy is one of the pillars of a successful MMORPG, and Intrepid believes season changes can get it to the next level. Season mechanic is supposed to introduce some balance between the regions of Verra, and force transition of goods. “Imagine that one area can no longer produce certain type of crop or material due to season change. This should in theory urge players to use transit system to transport goods from other areas.” This will heavily shift resource prices around, as players will have to travel places to min/max their economy progression. Hopefully, seasons being too short (one week at the moment), won’t render this system completely useless, as players will just wait one week to buy and sell goods.

Skills and abilities will slightly change due to weather conditions. While we could not see this in action during the showcase, it’s explained that things like AOE radius may change. For example, Fire mage’s fire AOE may get smaller in rain conditions. Related to skills, resistances and weaknesses will also increase and decrease accordingly. In addition to abilities side, crafting and gatherables, vehicles and ships, loot tables will also suffer weather conditions. While this mechanic could give some fascinating gameplay to things like gathering, crafting, it may very easily negatively impact combat, where people do not find it fun as it may restrict their character and put unnecessary disadvantages.

Vegetation and environment will be another layer to strenghten the immersion of this system. Biomes will experience dynamic seasons that change the state of biomes at different times. Meaning there will not be global season change that happens in all biomes at the same time. At the moment, internal testing’s seasons exist on a one week timeframe. This timeframe could be too short to have major impact on the economy, but as mentioned, it will be tested and tweaked during next testing phases. To solidify the immersion further, players will be able to tell when season change is happening based on weather changes. So there will not be abrupt change in the environment around, but rather a gradual change. One more impact to mention here, is that certain passages may be blocked across the map due to heavy snow (e.g. mountain pass), so players have to find alternative route. Each biome will have seasons presented in a different way. For example, desert’s winter season may introduce more wind, while Riverlands will experience traditional season changes.

Armor is another component in making weather and season changes realistic. Armor set in the viideo reacted to the wind, which blew the character’s cape and hat. However, amor won’t have larger visual changes, as it introduces performance issues, especially with large number of players around.

Season Changes Determines Monster And Resource Spawners

Another component that will react to season changes, and ties in into economy is resource spawning. As explained, there will be significant impact on herbology (plant gathering), crops players plant and harvest. It won’t affect changes in some bigger resource spawners (e.g. ore vein), but season changes may affect access to those type of resources (path blockages). One side-bit of information we got here relates to animal herds. Similarly to how players can stumble upon bigger chunks of iron, gold, etc. (resource veins), this mechanic will be introduced to animals as well. Meaning, people will stumble upon herds of animals, which they can hunt for resources.

Ultimately season change should have major imapct on the economy.

Technology Behind Season Changes

The development team emphasised how important this technology is, and how much it differs from other games. As already mentioned, its purpose is not just visual, but to also provide some reactivity to the world. Steven explained that season changes we saw in the gameplay video were sped up quite a bit to clearly present the capabilities of this technology. In regular circuimstances, transitions will ocurr across several hours.

One of the developers explained all the parts that play role in making a season and weather system work. From terrain material change to asset placement, particles, volumetric clouds, fog and wind effect. There are quite a few moving pieces to make this system seem as real as possible. To further demonstrate how intricate the system is, the spring transition includes particle effects of bees, butterflies, insects. Leaves and flowers along with some animals change color, and ambient sound changes to match the environment.

Steven also explained that beside regular season transitions, environment changes and transitions can also be triggered by certain events, such as raid boss spawn, relic being acquired, node underoing changes, etc. These events may make it so seasons last longer if players don’t deal with whatever caused its change. Season tech also provides a trigger effect, which allows spawners to spawn different types of creatures for different seasons, and at different locations.

Capital City (Starting Point) Revealed

Character Art part of the stream showed us a couple of monster designs and concepts, but one thing that stuck out was concept reveal of a Capital City that is supposed to server as one of the starting points in the world of Verra.

Riverlands will be a major area of Alpha 2 testing, and while current state of season technology looks very good, there is still more polish to come. If you would really like to experience how immersive season changes are, you can check it out on Ashes of Creation’s official livestream.