Off-Topic: Why I'm Excited By Ashes Of Creation, the Upcoming MMO

Channel:

sirgog

Subscribers:

52,300

Published on July 27, 2020 12:00:13 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO4pdeNshpc

Game:

Ashes of Creation (2019)

Duration: 27:53

2,324 views

76

Ashes of Creations caught my eye after a recent video by Youtuber The Lazy Peon video. It's well worth a watch.

Peon's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s82xJnx1EY

A quick note: This channel will remain about Path of Exile, this is intended as a one-off video on something else I'm excited about.

Features that some might call dealbreakers:
- Meaningful PVP in which other players can inflict genuine setbacks upon you
- Monthly sub fee
- Serious social integration requirements. Like EVE, I can't see this game being playable at endgame without a guild.

Comparison to EVE Online
- EVE shows there's a niche for a competitive sandbox game.
- EVE has awful PVE, but the PVP is incredible, mostly because your enemies are unpredictable. There is a reason that a very simple game like chess can be exciting when played against another opponent - you can't just learn their 'AI' and exploit holes in it. You need to constantly react to both the good decisions AND the unpredictable mistakes and bad choices made by a human being.
- Most of the thrill of PVE in EVE centres around the prospect of another player popping in and attacking or goading you. This tension is the same tension you experience watching a horror movie.
- Often nicknamed Everyone Versus Everyone or Sociopaths In Space, EVE is a game in which the fun is in interacting with (sometimes fighting) other players. Some will stab you in the front, others will stab you in the back, and still others will remain loyal.
- EVE has conflicts that become legendary, and sometimes the actions of one individual can shape the entire future of the game world. Possibly the biggest war the game has ever seen, Band of Brothers vs Goons around 2009, was decided by a single leader of BOB switching loyalties in the middle of the war, and before they were detected carrying out a massive act of sabotage against their former side.
- In my opinion, EVE has, unfortunately, gotten to a level of pay-to-cheat that I can't recommend it.
- Ashes seems to dissect the parts of EVE that work well, while discarding many other systems.
- Fundamentally, in EVE, there's a tension between people who 'want to be left alone' and people who want to fight other players. If you are a miner in EVE, you want to avoid PVP but you want your rivals - other miners - to suffer losses to it. In Ashes, this dynamic seems less important, as the most important steps of creating new civilizations appears to involve a good deal of 'PVP on' time.

Ashes and Nodes:
- It's fundamentally the node system that has me excited here.
- As a group in Ashes, you can establish settlements. Settlements have exclusion zones around them, and the larger the settlement, the larger this exclusion zone is. You can dedicate your settlement to militarism, science, religion or commerce.
- This will drive tension as players have a genuine incentive to disperse other settlements to maximize their own growth. Doing so will require major quests that culminate in massive PVP battles. But where in EVE Online you can bring an army of three thousand to crush an enemy who can field fifty, in Ashes it seems to be a 250 player cap per side.
- For instance if you are near a volcanic caldera and your settlement is focused upon militarism, this might unlock a red dragon raid. Were you commerce based instead, your settlement might unlock something else entirely, like a mine filled with obsidian.
- Losing these sieges will be a serious setback, but not a 'game over' moment. Where in EVE winning a war decisively requires actually sapping your opponents' will to log in, in Ashes, your opponents should be better placed to regroup somewhere else, because fundamentally you are fighting over territorial control, something that EVE's mechanics didn't do all that well.
- Additionally, losing a siege hurts your guild but lets you regroup, rather than in EVE where losing a war badly tends to hurt guild members a lot as individuals.
- Sieges are at a set time based upon servers. No timezone tanking, EVE players know what I mean here.
- Building up nodes requires caravan runs, which seem like an interesting mechanic for guild group activities. Mostly they'll be calm and you'll sit around with a beer and some mates chatting. Then boom, rival guild attacks, and it's time to immediately defend your caravan, or even to flee, regroup and counterattack. If done even halfway well, this will capture EVE's sense of tension.

Ashes and Pay-To-Cheat
- Like Path of Exile, Ashes is being made by a gamer with some money behind him (albeit a lot wealthier than Chris Wilson was when GGG started - the CEO of Intrepid is seriously RICH)
- He's gone on record saying he hates what pay to cheat does to games.
- I'm optimistic that this will be adhered to. But I can make no promises.

Conclusion
- I'm somewhat excited. If the schedule works (with POE2's release) I'm keen to take a serious look into the game.

Other Statistics