Narrative events

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Narrative Events help shape the story of Verra based on the choices that players make during key questlines. While narrative story arcs take time to develop across a server, Narrative Events will show players that their choices play a bigger part in shaping the world around them through individual actions.[1]Peter Bisulca

Narrative events allow players to shape the story arcs that unfold on their server through the choices they make in key questlines.[1]

Narrative

Narratives (Meta-stories) that play out on a particular server are driven by various story arcs.[5][6][7][8]

There is of course a meta-story. That meta-story gets informed by regional stories and regional outcomes; and depending on how players progress within their personal stories, that could be either racially based or could be their class-based. They could be a per-node basis. All of those things support a grand structure of the meta-narrative.[6]Steven Sharif
Q: What is your vision for the overall player story when comparing the more emergent personal stories versus the more curated story arcs?
A: The narrative keeps in mind what the meta narrative is of the server; and that's something we have generally kept relatively close to the chest. It's something that we don't want to spoil leading up to our testers participating in Alpha-2 and Beta and eventually launch. It is however true that there is a meta narrative that exist within Ashes. There is a purpose why you are on Verra again; and the supporting narrative structures are there to reinforce what that meta narrative is. So, players will have insight into that as they travel and adventure within the world.[5]Steven Sharif

Player driven narrative

One of the major goals I feel like we have is to allow player decisions to have consequences and to have meaningful results from the decisions that they make, so it seems like people can really create their own stories.[9]Aimi Watanabe

The world of Verra will be the same on each server, but Node-ok will develop differently. Different servers will have different narratives. Things that happen on one server may not happen on another.[10]

We want as many people as possible to experience the main server Narrative. These will branch at different scales, but largely at the personal level. Where things change is at the Node level – different parts of the story will be unlocked based on where and when Nodes grow. Unlocking a part of the story in a certain way locks out progression of the story in a different way. You’ll see different antagonists, different NPCs, and different calls to action depending on what’s happening with the server at that time.[12]

It redefines what the players will experience in an MMORPG to come into a wilderness that is devoid of really any structure outside of what the community creates themselves; and then what can be created can be changed, if they want to experience a storyline that's been seen on another server, but you're fighting a dragon because you're near a mountain and the other server's fighting a Kraken because they're near the coast and you want to fight that Kraken because of its drop table. If you want to meta it or because you just want that under your belt: to be the server first to take out that Kraken and you have yet to develop the node there, it's incumbent upon you to manifest that in the game.[13]Steven Sharif

Szerver történelem

Minden szerver történelme fel lesz jegyezve, és látható lesz a játékosok számára.[14]

We're gonna keep track of the history of the world so that we can tell people the story up to the current day. A player who's brand new, who's come in at the six-month mark can take a look at each server, what each server has done, how each server has tackled the storyline; and they can decide for themselves what community they want to join; what version of the world that they want to take part in.[14]Jeffrey Bard

Történet szálak

Történet szálak felelnek egy vagy több küldetésvonalért az Ashes of Creation-ben.[8]

  • Személyes küldetésvonalak.
  • Kulturális küldetésvonalak.
  • Regionális küldetésvonalak.

All of the events are based around storytelling. All of the narrative quests are based around storytelling. All the organizational quests are based around storytelling. You know the game is built from a story basically, so we want to make sure that there's context and relevancy for all of the actions that you're doing in the game.[15]Jeffrey Bard

A mindent átívelő narratíva az, hogy a játékosok Verra gyermekei, akik hosszú idő után visszatérnek oda. Nem lesz mindenki "megmentőként" kezelve.[11]

Even player driven mechanics will still have story components. There will be a reason why the player driven mechanic is available or required of the player; so every system that's created touches a story.[15]Steven Sharif

Every stage a node develops it's unlocking narratives, storylines, it's changing the spawn population of the area around it, changing what bosses exist, it's triggering events where you may have legendary dragons attack the city. It's basically writing the story of the server based on the actions and determination of the players. So, you may experience a dungeon one month earlier and have a completely different story that relates to this location the next month, because something has changed either geopolitically or from the node standpoint.[16]Steven Sharif

Bizonyos történetszálak a hirdetőtábla rendszerben elérhetőek. Bizonyos kritériumoknak kell megfelelni, egyes történetszállal kapcsolatos küldetések megkezdéséhez.[17]

Story arc chapters

Quest journal showing story arc chapters.[18]

Within the context of these story arcs, there are specific points that they can pivot to tell a different story. That different story can be based on predicates that are in the world: from a player decision standpoint, from a cultural representation standpoint, from situational to which node gets developed. There's a lot of different components that interact with the way the dialogue and narratives play out on a particular server; and what that means is- and I've said this from the beginning many sandbox MMORPGS, they do not create as much curated content as theme-park MMORPGS; and their excuse for doing that is because they incorporate player-driven mechanics. But that's a bit of a cop-out and it's the opposite approach that we've taken with Ashes of Creation; and the reason for that is, if you give the player a door and there's nothing behind that door then opening the door is meaningless. So what we have to do is we have to create a very functional story arc system that provides content in many different ways, but is behind a door of world progress or world development that is then executed by the player population. And that's how we construct our narrative systems.[7]Steven Sharif

Each chapter (phase) in a story arc can cause changes across the entire server, such as environments, monsters, NPCs, Küldetések, and pathways.[19][20][6][7][8]

  • Players can progress a chapter by completing story arc quests within the timeframe that each chapter is active.[19]
    • Phase timers are shown (in the quest UI) to indicate how much real-world time is available to complete the quests in each phase.[21]
    • If the player completes all quests in a particular chapter, they will need to wait until the next chapter to obtain further quests.[22]
    • Story arcs can branch into different stories with multiple possible endings depending on the quest objectives that players complete during each chapter.[23][21]
It's not just a matter of completing the laundry list of things that the NPC has you do, but you pick from a whole bunch of objectives, many of them optional. Some of them, if not most of them, hidden when you first undertake the quest. So go dig up a guide, or blaze your own trail, or whatever; but depending on which objectives you complete, those are the things that help the server aggregate what is going to happen in later phases of the story arc. And that's across all of the players participating during that time frame: what objectives they decide to complete.[21]Skott B
  • Story arcs can last for days, which reduces pressure to log in daily to remain competitive.[24]
Story arcs normally progress according to the passage of real-time, which is clearly indicated in your quest journals. Even if a zerg guild throws all their resources at a story arc, they can't lock anyone out of participating by doing all the participation on their own. You'll have the time indicated in your quest journal to finish the content available in that chapter.[25]Skott B
  • Most story arcs will repeat with a cooldown, but major story arcs will only occur one-time: These can be replayed, but in a non-interactive way where any choices made do not impact the world.[24][26]
The cooldowns between arcs repeating will also be quite long- proportional to the length of the chapters, but we're still in pursuit of the right numbers there. You can't do the individual quests again until the entire arc restarts.[22]Skott B
  • Some events will only be available while story arcs are in certain chapters.[22]

Story arc quests

Story arc quests (Storyline quests/Narrative quests) contain objectives for each chapter of a story arc.[23][21][19][27][8][28]

  • Players can progress each chapter by completing story arc quests within the timeframe that each chapter is active.[19]
    • Phase timers are shown (in the quest UI) to indicate how much real-world time is available to complete the quests in each phase.[21]
    • If the player completes all quests in a particular chapter, they will need to wait until the next chapter to obtain further quests.[22]
  • Story arcs can branch into different stories with multiple possible endings depending on the quest objectives that players complete during each chapter.[23][21][27]
You can't really farm the quests in any meaningful way, because once you've done the quests in a chapter, that's it until the next chapter. Whether 1000 people participate or 10, the chapters will stay active for the same length of time, and as long as you participate in the clearly-marked time frame in your quest journal, you're good. The only thing that a concentrated effort can help with is influencing the narrative paths through the arcs.[22]Skott B
  • These quests stages can be failed. The ability to retry a failed quest depends on Node progression.[27]
There will be many different quests that actually have stages of the storyline; and these stages can actually be failed. You can actually fail a storyline; which sucks when you think about it, but at the same time that risk makes your investment that much more important.[27]Steven Sharif

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Event types

There are a variety of different types of events that are triggered due to certain conditions (predicates) being met.[32][33][1][34]

Event levels

The level of a particular event can be based on the level of the content that triggers it, or it can be set to a higher level in order to drive traffic back to lower level zones.[44]

For example, if the event takes place in a zone that has a base population of let's say average level 25, then one of the trigger conditions might be that 10 monsters of level 25 have been killed recently in that zone and the level 25 event will now spawn additional content designed for level 25 players. So these events aren't always going to be end-game they're going to be obviously appropriate based on the content in which the predicate system is informing, but they also could be something completely top level that is introduced at a lower-level area and brings population traffic of the players back to those types of things.[44]Steven Sharif
  • The more players participating in an event the more challenging the event will become and the higher the rewards will be for completing the event.[45][32][46]

Továbbiak

Hivatkozások

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 Types of Events on Verra.
  2. Interjú, 2023-07-09 (59:31).
  3. Blog: Know Your Nodes - Scientific Node Type
  4. Élő adás, 2017-05-26 (15:37).
  5. 5.0 5.1 Élő adás, 2024-02-29 (1:23:07).
  6. 6.0 6.1 6.2 Élő adás, 2022-04-29 (1:05:37).
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 Élő adás, 2022-03-31 (1:15:29).
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Élő adás, 2018-01-18 (39:08).
  9. Video, 2023-03-31 (28:11).
  10. Élő adás, 2017-05-19 (37:03).
  11. 11.0 11.1 Élő adás, 2019-12-17 (1:10:30).
  12. Interview: Ashes of Creation on Building Their Virtual World, 2017-04-13.
  13. Élő adás, 2017-05-22 (28:02).
  14. 14.0 14.1 Interjú, 2018-04-20 (9:20).
  15. 15.0 15.1 Élő adás, 2019-05-30 (1:18:16).
  16. Video, 2018-04-05 (35:01).
  17. Élő adás, 2017-10-31 (29:50).
  18. Video, 2023-01-27 (9:43).
  19. 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 Video, 2023-03-31 (12:47).
  20. Video, 2023-03-31 (6:30).
  21. 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 21.5 Video, 2023-03-31 (14:20).
  22. 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 skotty-story-arc-3.png
  23. 23.0 23.1 23.2 Élő adás, 2023-04-07 (58:39).
  24. 24.0 24.1 Élő adás, 2023-03-31 (49:32).
  25. skotty-story-arc-1.png
  26. Video, 2023-03-31 (25:20).
  27. 27.0 27.1 27.2 27.3 Interjú, 2018-10-20 (2:36:25).
  28. 28.0 28.1 MMOGames interview, January 2017
  29. Élő adás, 2021-03-26 (1:12:51).
  30. Élő adás, 2020-07-25 (1:50:20).
  31. vak-map.png
  32. 32.0 32.1 32.2 Video, 2023-09-29 (2:59).
  33. Élő adás, 2023-04-07 (37:56).
  34. 34.0 34.1 34.2 kickstarter events.png
  35. Élő adás, 2022-04-29 (36:51).
  36. Élő adás, 2017-05-10 (40:36).
  37. Video, 2023-10-31 (34:12).
  38. Podcast, 2021-04-11 (23:36).
  39. 39.0 39.1 Élő adás, 2022-04-29 (39:00).
  40. kickstarter monster coins.png
  41. 41.0 41.1 41.2 Élő adás, 2022-04-29 (40:21).
  42. Élő adás, 2021-06-25 (1:13:30).
  43. Élő adás, 2022-04-29 (41:30).
  44. 44.0 44.1 Élő adás, 2022-04-29 (44:13).
  45. Video, 2023-09-29 (12:18).
  46. steven-world-events.jpg