(Gaming) MMO - Trials Of Ascension

[insanity]

Good morning, afternoon or evening,

 

You may or may not have heard, Trials of Ascension is finally live on Kickstarter.

 

The general premise is more realistic, open world PVP, with a form of perma-death (don't freak out, they do it right) that brings back the challenge of MMOs. Almost everything is player controlled, from building your city, to hiring NPCs to run your stores. It's what I've been looking for in an MMO since quitting WoW, and since it's an upstart company I'm trying to get the word out. Oh... and a stretch goal is to have playable dragons, that are every bit as powerful as you would imagine.

 

Here's a guide, it goes into detail about many features of the game

http://trialsofascension.com/guide/

 

The perks of permadeath (This seems to the least understood part)

http://trialsofascension.com/news/perks-of-perma-death

 

Here's their Kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forgedchaos/trials-of-ascension-a-truly-innovative-mmorpg

 

So take a look around, troll through the forums, ask questions (both the designers and community are quite friendly), and maybe I'll see you in game.

[Frost of the Gloaming]

Yea I can see myself being sucked into this game; I'm going stay away for now

[insanity]

That makes two of us, been staying away from games completely for school, the benefit is it's got a while before release.

This was posted on the forums not long after I wrote the OP, it pretty much sums up ToA, for those that want a quick summary first.I take no credit for this.

"Let's face it: Perma-death is a terrible selling point. So is an absolutely dark night, the lack of any way to identify the power of the person or monster about to attack you, a lack of defined level regions for monster spawns, and insanely difficult to obtain but way overpowered magic. This is why Trials of Ascension will succeed. Any of those features by themselves would kill most modern MMORPGs in a heartbeat but when you combine them all (and the many other unique features that ToA has) you actually manage to come out with something that works, and works fabulously.

You will eventually lose the character you spent so much time on. That's how perma-death works. But let's try looking at the other side of the coin. The side that involves magic. Magic is difficult... no, near impossible to obtain. You must face arcane demons without any assistance and defeat them time and time again. You must learn spells that do more than just wilt nearby flowers and you will face the constant fear of having a bounty on your head for attempting to become a powerful wizard. You will be hunted, hated, and feared. Your powers, when you finally come into them, will be desired by warlords and kings, militia and armies. But you will not last forever. There will come a day where your life counters peter out and your magic flows no more. You will rise and you will fall. Will it have been worth it? You may have turned the tide of war, defeated vast hordes of monsters, conquered the magical demons that haunt your every step.... you will have been a mage. That is your experience. Now go, create a new character. Lead a settlement or a kingdom, build a vast wall to save your people, or discover an invention that rocks the world of TerVarus.

Dynamic spawning means that any monster can spawn basically anywhere provided the requirements for spawning the monster exist. You may step out of your settlement as a fresh level 1 newb and find yourself face to face with a harmless caterpillar or with a fearsome dragon. This would be bad if it weren't for the fact that you have no way of knowing how difficult either of those monsters is. The caterpillar may very well be the most difficult monster in the game and the dragon could be one that just wants to cuddle. There's no "Level 1-10" area for you to go hide in and no max level area for you to sit around grinding the same mobs repetitively to max out some mythical notoriety system. End result: you treat both monsters with the same amount of respect and well earned fear. Of course, without perma-death you would just charge in to see if you could kill either one of them but instead, perma-death gives you pause to consider the consequences of your actions.

Ordinarily, with free for all open world player versus player combat, you see a lot of what is referred to as "ganking" - high level players running around killing every low level player they can get their grubby buttons around. But wait... that man wearing nothing but a loin-cloth may not be just another level 1 newbie wandering around gawking at the scenery. He could be the most powerful wizard on the face of the planet and you might only have 20 life counters left. Is it worth a life counter to find out? Whoops. You took too long to decide. The guy hiding carefully behind the stand of tall grass just shot an arrow through your knee. Too bad it wasn't night, you could've slipped away quietly and never had to worry about any of that because they couldn't see you.

There is no map or minimap with little icons to indicate where things are and you can't just tab target a person to track where they go. You need to learn the lay of the land, find out as much as you can about your surroundings, keep a decent supply of food, water, and shelter available, and all of this while dodging not just monsters but other players who may be after your gear. You need to keep an eye out for GM run dynamic events such as the appearance of a small cave or the sudden attack by a horde of marauding ogres. You need to be available to alert your nearby friendly settlement of incoming enemies and help them man the walls to stave off destruction. You need to pay the guards so they keep working for you and safeguard the players that provide raw materials to your settlement. You need to build walls and houses, ramps and tunnels, workshops and farms. You need to cooperate with other craftsmen to create epic swords that cannot be forged alone and you need the help of your clan to build a watchtower in any reasonable amount of time.

So yes, taken separately, most of these features would make for a terrible, boring, and annoyingly realistic game that nobody would ever want to play. But. Merge them all together and you will find yourself with a game that is unlike any other game. A game that requires a lot of hard work and perseverance, a game that rewards the unity of cooperation, a game that focuses on the here and now of playing rather than planning for the future of your character. Oh, and on the plus side, everyone has a chance to be the best because even the best won't stay the best for long. Even the best of us die. Take advantage of the opportunity and race for the best that TerVarus has to offer you. If you die, race again but make sure you enjoy each and every race you run. No other game gives you this many opportunities to win. "

[Rathrune]

This all sounds well and good, but unfortunately, it doesn't target or recognize the current MMO audience. 

 

MMO players don't want it more difficult.  The "casuals" as they're called, have flocked to MMO's and WoW, SWTOR, and others have catered to them so that they make up the majority of the MMO population.  They want things quickly and easily for an enjoyable experience.  These games have catered to both hardcore and casuals by having most content easy enough for casuals, but specific small content incredibly difficult for the hardcore players. 

 

Plus, the trolling and griefing alone with a "permadeath" type of situation will cause incredible amounts of whining.  Who wants to work incredibly hard on your character only to die because some 13 year old had a bad day in middle school?  Doesn't make sense. With "permadeath" it means there is no reputation, you won't know the trollers, the gankers, the guys who cheat you, the scrubs, etc...everyone is completely anonymous because their names will change and they can treat everyone like complete garbage...even more so than normal MMO experience....with no consequences. 

 

- Rathrune

[insanity]

This all sounds well and good, but unfortunately, it doesn't target or recognize the current MMO audience.

 

MMO players don't want it more difficult.  The "casuals" as they're called, have flocked to MMO's and WoW, SWTOR, and others have catered to them so that they make up the majority of the MMO population.  They want things quickly and easily for an enjoyable experience.  These games have catered to both hardcore and casuals by having most content easy enough for casuals, but specific small content incredibly difficult for the hardcore players. 

 

Plus, the trolling and griefing alone with a "permadeath" type of situation will cause incredible amounts of whining.  Who wants to work incredibly hard on your character only to die because some 13 year old had a bad day in middle school?  Doesn't make sense. With "permadeath" it means there is no reputation, you won't know the trollers, the gankers, the guys who cheat you, the scrubs, etc...everyone is completely anonymous because their names will change and they can treat everyone like complete garbage...even more so than normal MMO experience....with no consequences. 

 

- Rathrune

 

I agree it doesn't target the current majority audience, it's more trying to target those that like games such as DayZ.. it's not for everyone and it's not trying to be. There are a lot of people out there that want this style of game, but most game designers seem to be going for the low-hanging fruit.

 

As for the griefing, the lack of levels means that you're not gonna have level 60s running around ganking levels 10s. There won't be low level and high level areas so you can't simply go to a low level area and play the odds.

 

There's no conning, so you can't just click on someone and see that they're a level 50 mage and you know you're the counter to that, the guys wearing rags for armor may be a warrior that'll stomp you, you simply don't know, add into that no floating names and people become a bit harder to find.

 

You'll be able to make notes on people who attack you, so you could put a note saying "Ganked me on Oct 13" and that way you'll know that if you see him again, you can exact revenge.

 

If someone does get you, and they're too strong for you, then reviving is designed in such a manner than you can rather easily get away since you can rez a rather long distance from your body.

 

Overall permadeath has been made with that as a central idea, not simply added on as an afterthought that most games seem to do, resulting in the "Weeks gathering gear only to lose it to a PMSing 13 year old"

 

Even for the ones that are doing the ganking, there are penalties in that they'll earn a reputation hit against the city to which the person they attacked belongs, and if they do it enough they'll be kill on sight for even the guards of that city, and if word gets around they could end up as kill on sight for multiple cities which would make life for them that much harder.

 

Is this going to stop all ganking, no... will it stop gank squads, no... but I think it'll help, plus beating the gank is half the fun of PVP.

 

Again, it's not for everyone, but they're not the ones I'm putting this up for.

[insanity]

Update: Darkness that's actually dark, the spider in the video is also a playable race now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohsc1XI-Y6s

[Clear]

This looks pretty good. I feel I will need a break from FF 14 and it looks like ToA has some of the things I miss for Shadowbane.

[Nytebane]

I am all for open-world PvP and consequences for PvP.  Not sure about permadeath but I would like it if gear dropped if you were killed etc.  But I could deal with permadeath.  I loved the way PvP was for DAoC on their PvP servers.  This game sounds interesting.  I hate PvE to be honest, I'd like to level through PvP =) and I also hate controlled PvP areas like arenas or battlegrounds.  Open world PvP is way more fun.

[insanity]

I am all for open-world PvP and consequences for PvP.  Not sure about permadeath but I would like it if gear dropped if you were killed etc.  But I could deal with permadeath.  I loved the way PvP was for DAoC on their PvP servers.  This game sounds interesting.  I hate PvE to be honest, I'd like to level through PvP =) and I also hate controlled PvP areas like arenas or battlegrounds.  Open world PvP is way more fun.

 

I'm generally the same way about permadeath, but my only experience with it is in games like Diablo, which really isn't built around that idea. As for gear dropping, does full loot count for ya?

 

You'd also like the Raknar (spider thing in the concealment video), as of now, the plan for them is to level their skill (No levels in game) by laying eggs in the recently slain bodies of humans, and then devouring the spiderlings... and with minimal NPCs, most humans are going to be a PVP fight.

 

Dungeon Crawling..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5nA2sQN6IA