Zergs

For every play, there should be a counterplay. We often see Castle Sieges turn into zerg-fests, which really doesn’t capture the epic, back-and-forth battles we wish to see in Ashes of Creation. One of our key pillars is that Choice Matters, and that applies to tactics and strategy as well. A well-formulated battle plan should win out over stat sheets and bodies. Zergs will generally be difficult to pull off, and will be eminently counterable through siege weapons, traps, and other battlefield tricks.

Zergs are empowered by fast-travel. Meaningful travel times are intended to prevent zerg play from being so much of an influence.

Encounters are designed to have meaning in terms of how boss skills and abilities relate to group compositions, tactics and strategies. Zerging is not experiencing content. There are different ways to make a fight more difficult for larger sized groups without relying solely on stat buffs or making the boss a "damage sponge".

• Raid and dungeon bosses have specific mechanics and abilities that players need to learn and react to. Zergs that are not aware of these mechanics or react to them appropriately will be wiped.
• There may be environmental hazards and AoE effects that cause more damage based on the number of players present.
• There is a give-and-take for guilds that want to see a larger number of members as opposed to a more focused group that may be a part of an alliance.

We're very cognizant of the fact that we don't want to see zerging be a mechanic that's utilized by guilds to accomplish content or just to steamroll over sieges... There are specific mechanics that we are working on that will be seen through the testing phases that relate to a degree of understanding of certain systems that can't just be overrun with numbers. – Steven Sharif

Mechanics that encourage political intrigue will play a role in destabilizing zergs.

The best way that I found in games I played previously to take down a zerg is to cause drama from within... It's that conflict inside of the politicking that happens in that big organization. If we provide opportunities for division to occur then it also provides stability to keep a server healthy away from that zerg mentality also... If we approach the castle siege and we've destroyed the walls and we're in the throne room and we're about to cast on the penultimate thing and I at this time am just so excited from what's happening that I'm like "screw it I'm gonna go for it". It's gonna be mine. I'm gonna take the taxes for the next month. I'm gonna take all the gear from the castle. I'm gonna take everything... We want that political intrigue to be present in the game. – Steven Sharif

Objective-based game play helps to balance the zerg mentality.

I always feel that if you balance based on groups that in your balance focus is to incorporate features that play well from a player versus player perspective as well as a player versus environment perspective: Having support classes, having DPS and tanks that can obstruct movement and/or create bottlenecks on the field and stuff like that. I think a well-rounded raid it will perform better against a non well-rounded raid, however then you incorporate the second aspect of numbers; and that's where again mobility, organization, leadership tactics. Having objectives in gameplay that make those important helps to balance the zerg mentality that a lot of guilds can tend to have. – Steven Sharif

Instanzierung doesn't play a major role in limiting zergs, due to 80% of content in Ashes of Creation being open-world.

• There may be instanced locations within castle and node sieges where specific groups can participate in certain objective-based waypoints.

Zerging is always a problem in a lot of these MMORPGs where you really can't control the number of participants in certain open-world systems; and in that sense instancing is a great tool that designers can sometimes use to curate a particular number of participants that you want. But the predominant amount of content within Ashes of Creation, over 80% of which is is open-world content, so instancing is very limited. – Steven Sharif

Travel times

So why is travel important? We've talked about this in the past, the reasons why. We've all existed in games where teleportation is very easy to use and sometimes that can be a detriment because you may have activities like a caravan run that's happening and one person sees you from a certain guild and they do the raid callout to their guild "everyone open your portals and come here within a split second and we're going to just mob this group". No, well instead that opportunity doesn't exist. If you want to provoke or to gank an operation of another guild, you need to have foreknowledge. You need to prepare. You need to place your forces around that area; and that is an important aspect. In addition, it makes that travel meaningful. If you are having to spend time to move to a location, you're going to think about what can I do along the way? Why am I moving to that location? How is it more beneficial for me to be in that location versus where I am now? This is also in association with the fact that you are a citizen of a particular node and that node needs your assistance within its vicinity; and if you want to move outside of that vicinity there should be a really good reason for that and there's lots of great reasons for it. – Steven Sharif

Travel objective	Running.	Mounted.
From one end of a Metropole (Stufe 6) node to the other	2.83 minutes	1.67 minutes
From the center of a node to the center of its direct neighbor	5 minutes	3.5 minutes
From the northernmost to southernmost points of a continent	75 minutes	50 minutes

Schnellreise

Diese Übersetzung ist möglicherweise veraltet

Schnellreisen ist beschränkt in Ashes of Creation.

• Reittiere bieten schnellere Fortbewegung.
• Es gibt nur sehr wenig Teleportation in der Welt.
  • Wissenschaftliche Metropolen bieten Schnellreise zu Nodes innerhalb ihrer Einflusszone.
• Es gibt keine "zum Wegpunkt gehen" (automatische Wegfindung) Mechaniken.

There is very little teleportation in the world. Some of that does get unlocked through metropolises of a certain type. Additionally there are mounts that are faster travel and there are services that are fast travel between nodes. – Steven Sharif

Siege balancing

Es gibt Gleichgewichtspunkte, die wir einbeziehen möchten, wie zum Beispiel die Verteidigungsmechanismen der Verteidiger, die Arten von Buffs, die durch das Töten der Bosse oder die Eroberung von Kontrollpunkten erworben werden, die Phasen vor einer Belagerung, wenn es um diese Nodes geht Fortschritte in den vorangegangenen Wochen: Diese werden alle ausgeglichen sein, wenn alle Dinge zwischen den beiden Seiten gleich sind. Aber offensichtlich werden wir nicht den Stand der Ausrüstungsbeschaffung kontrollieren, den eine Seite als Vorteil gegenüber der anderen haben könnte. Möglicherweise gibt es dort ein viel besser ausgerüstetes Team. Es könnte ein viel besser koordiniertes Team geben. Möglicherweise gibt es eine größere Anzahl von Personen, die Teil des Angriffs oder der Verteidigung sind. Das sind Komponenten, die wir sozusagen nicht unbedingt auf die Eisenbahn bringen werden. Aber die Aspekte des Designs, über die wir sprechen können, wie die Trefferpunktgesundheit einer bestimmten Wand oder Tür oder Söldner, die angeheuert werden können; Wie hoch sind ihre Kosten, wie hoch ist ihr Schaden: Das sind Dinge, die wir ja ausgleichen werden. Aber offensichtlich ist alles, was vom Spieler abhängig ist oder die Interaktion, Aktivität und Entschlossenheit des Spielers erfordert, nicht immer in Einklang zu bringen; und du willst nicht ausbalancieren. Diese Aspekte überlassen Sie den Spielern. – Steven Sharif

Siehe auch

• Schnellreise
• Gilden
• Vorteile von Nodes