Node Wars, DOUBLE your framerate, and new Female models? ALL leaks + info that you might've missed & Website Launch!
With the recent Node Wars Livestream, and other leaks from Steven Sharif himself, we've collected ALL the information you need to keep up-to-date with Ashes of Creation!
The May Development Livestream has just wrapped up, and here’s all the major points you need to stay up-to-date on all things Ashes of Creation!
Zerg Node Wars!
Let’s start with the Node Wars livestream, which is a type of PvPvE Conflict that can be initiated by a Mayor, but has to be funded by the many citizens of the Node themselves. This creates a situation where the Mayor must have the buy-in from it’s citizens before committing them to a Node-wide PvPvE event.
Players can then give resources to the Node Commission, gaining individual rewards (glint, Reputation Scores, etc.) as well as contributing to the War Declaration. Competing Nodes can disrupt these efforts, through espionage, tactics, limiting resources, etc. This can provide multiple levels of political intrigue before a Node War is even intiiated.
The commission will go on cooldown whether or not it succeeds. This removes the that individual slot from the several slots available that the Mayor has to give buffs or resources to the Node for the duration of the cooldown. This makes each decision the Mayor makes in choosing a commission even more important, because if the any commission fails (e.g. not enough resources provided by citizens), the Mayor is limiting their own growth, and is reflected in the satisfaction of the citizens. This creates a symbiotic relationship, where the Mayor is incentivized to choose commission their citizens want, and not only what the Mayor wants.
The actual Node War shown in the livestream is the Territory Control type, but there will be more than one available on launch. This Territory Control event has multiple phases, including mining Rubies, killing bandits, and channelling into a Godspike. During this entire time, typical Death Penalties will be removed for particpants (no exp loss, exp debt, or corruption), but material loss will still be in effect. So make sure you empty out your inventory before jumping in!
The Mayor will have access to major buffs only during this Node War for their citizens, so Mayors are incentivized to participate directly. The Mayoral mount (which is only accessible to the current Mayor) has special abilties, but player mounts will also have basic abiltiies on a much smaller scale (on Alpha 2 launch!).
There will also be a scoreboard available for your own activities after the Node War, showing your own stats, but this will be expanded upon before launch to allow players to see the stats of other players as well.
Most of the development stream is various back-and-forth between both nodes, so I highly suggest if you’re interested in how a large-scale PvPvE event looks (in the early stages), to check it out.
Note: The UI, and performance, are extreme works-in-progress, and are all functional in design. There are many hitches, player frame loss, and minimal UI elements, so try your best to ignore it and focus on the systems available, as these will most likely need the most feedback.
As the Miraleth node won that phase of the Node War, they gained control over the area Highwayman Hills, which resulted in a Luck Buff to the Miraleth Node citizens. This increases your loot drop chance. This is only procced while in that area, so it incentivizes the citizens to flood the newly gained area and occupy the enemy’s previously owned boundaries.
Zergs, New Testers, and Phoenix Initiative
One topic that was brought up was protections against Zergs in large-scale PvP events. In some events, separating simultaneous objectives across large distances, while also rewarding a fixed amount of rewards can help mitigate how effective Zergs can be. However, it was mentioned that during some events, for example channelingthe Godspike at the end of this Node War phase, is meant for Zergs to come together. This is due to some players enjoying Zerg combat, and providing an avenue for them to naturally occur. You can hear more on this topic here.
It was mentioned by Steven that the Alpha One testers will be joining testing soon, as was promised earlier in the year. These Alpha One Testers are the last spot testing before Alpha Two spot testers will be invited, prior to open Alpha 2 Launch. So if you have Alpha One Access, keep an eye on your Ashes of Creation email!
Lastly, Phoenix Initiative Testers (Kickstarter donators who have donated at least $2500) have been actively joining testing during these livestreams, and more, and are under strict NDA. Steven mentioned how vital their help and commitment has been, so it’s great there are people willing to spend dozens of hours in testing just to provide these development livestreams, and valuable feedback.
They were allowed to post some great screenshots from this recent livestream in discord, with some even in Ultrawide, so if you’d like some non-youtube level in-game screenshots, check out the Ashes of Creation Discord! I’ve posted some at the bottom of this post, with their credit, for those that don’t have access yet.
Some other notes that were mentioned in relation to Node Wars include:
Certain War Scrolls/Types may induct allies of the Node into the Node War, and some may not
Node Wars are not capped, and citizens can jump in and out at will
This may change depending on the War Type
Some possible benefits of winning a phase, or entire Node War, include:
Disabling services in the enemy node
Siphoning Gold from the enemy node
Temporary Mayorship control over the enemy node
Reducing taxes in your own node
Stealing node experience
Spawning a Raid Boss for the winning node to kill for loot
Mayoral mounts are initially intended for max level node, but this will be temporarily lowered for purposes of testing in Alpha 2
Mayoral mount is still temporary as long as they are mayor
Currently, Vassal Nodes cannot declare war on their parent node, but there may be a method to do so in the future (post-launch)
This and more were discussed in the 2 hour+ livestream, so be sure to give it a watch!
Performance Updates
During the livestream, it was repeatedly mentioned that performance is going to be a focus in the coming months leading the the Alpha 2 release. However, one of the developers mentioned some of the recent work they’ve done on that front. This includes finally implementing NVIDIA DLSS into Ashes of Creation! As mentioned, this has shown to effectively double the framerate in testing machines on 4000-series NVIDIA cards.
As DLSS is available also on 3000-level NVIDIA cards, it is expected that there will also be a performance increase there, but this is great news for those worried about performance and optimization. With an expectation that DLSS will help those who are going to be on a 3000-level card at the minimum, it provides a framework to aim for in the coming months/years until release.
New Female Models
During an episode of Tangents of Creation, a topic of discussion is how the current female models shown in-development have left many people feeling it doesn’t give as much of a feminine look they are use to in fantasy MMORPGs. This was a common complaint in New World as well, and tends to exist in Western MMORPGs, as Eastern MMORPGs more often commit to much more feminine character customization options, from body-type to facial structure.
Steven Sharif jumped in during this discussion in the comments, and mentioned that this is something actively being worked on and looked into. This will be great news to all who like to play with a specific type of character. We can’t wait to see the improvements to character customization in the future, especially since the character creator will be available before launch for all to play with for hours to create their perfect character!
Rogue Stealth Counters
With Steven mentioning during the previous AMA that Rogue’s will have True Stealth, that left a few wondering how they might be able to counter this mechanic.
Now, we know that Rogues won’t be available on Alpha 2 launch, but this is a class that many have a love/hate relationship with. Rogues are an important class to get right, as one of the best counters to squishy ranged-characters, but also can be overpowering if left unchecked.
Steven jumped into discord to give people reassurance that they are committed to the rock-paper-scissors PvP system that lets all classes have natural counters.
Ashes Moments Officially Launched
We have officially launched our website! This will be where you can submit YOUR Moments to share with the world. All your hilarious bugs, amazing outplays, and crazy RNG drops. We can’t wait to see what you have to share!
And for those wondering, this WILL be live for Alpha 2, so make sure to record your clips and come visit the website to submit your moment!
We will open up submissions a day before Alpha 2 launches. Make sure you subscribe to the newsletter as we will let you know exactly when it’s open, as well as when Alpha 2 is available. Any issues with login queues, or status updates, will also be shared through the newsletter, so if you have access to Alpha 2, subscribe to stay informed.
And for those that see themselves playing on-and-off, we will update you on ALL the major patches as well. So for those Summoner or Rogue players that only want to play their favourite class, we’ll let you know once they come availalble!
May Livestream Phoenix Initiative Screenshots
Thanks to the testers for sharing!
