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Addons, DPS meters, and threat meters will not be supported.[1][2][3][4]

My decision is not to allow DPS meters nor add-ons. I feel we have adequate measures in place to prevent a majority of potential third party trackers. I know this subject has passionate voices on both sides and I respect the various opinions and positions many of you have expressed.[3]Steven Sharif
  • The developers do not want addons/mods to be necessary to experience the game.[5]
  • The developers believe that DPS meters (parsers) can cause toxicity and other negative behaviors.[2][6][4]
What role DPS meters provide in online communities that I've noticed in the past my experiences: they can be a bit toxic, they can be a bit exclusionary; and that's why we don't want the DPS meters.[2]Steven Sharif
  • Threat meters will also not be present in the game. There will instead be visual in-game cues to indicate threat.[2]
Meters in my opinion are a removal from the game immersion; and what I mean by that isn't necessarily even the fact that having the meter takes you out of the game per-se, but it is- there's a lot of diegetic approach that you can take that doesn't rely on UI elements like a meter to indicate how you should do a thing; and when you're not utilizing those types of meters you can do different types of strategies and encounter design. You can have things that can be more subtle and aren't going to be immediately given away by a meter indicating something; and that's the type of gameplay that we think that I believe we want to emphasize; and for that reason, we're not going to be including threat meters. What we will be including however are animation indicators. We're going to be including ability indicators to show the tank "hey I might be losing aggro here." I'm observing in the world these immersive elements that are not tied to any specific type of UI, but indicate to me that this monster might be moving off to attack somebody else in a very immediate future; and now I should be using the abilities that I'm saving to regain that aggro, or to lock them down with a taunt or something. That to me is a bit more representative of the type of gameplay we want to to bring in our encounter design.[2]Steven Sharif
info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.
  • There will be integrations available for streaming services such as Twitch and a few other services, but it's not something that will be exposed through an API just yet.[7]
  • The design of the game API is still under consideration.[8]

User interface design

Alpha-2 UI customization.[9]

The UI implementation will be highly customizable, whether it be from resizing, a movement, recoloring, different types of UI flavors that will be presented and offered to players as well. We want to have a very very robust UI system so we know that that's something that's more personally oriented in people's preferences rather than something that can be a one-size-fits-all.[10]Steven Sharif

The Ashes of Creation user interface (UI) and HUD is built with customization in mind, rather than being one-size-fits-all.[12][10][13]

  • Users will be able to quickly customize UI elements on-the-fly to suit the PvX nature of the game and different styles of combat.[12]
Customization of UI elements, especially there on the HUD is a top desired aspect of our UI team.[12]Steven Sharif
  • Users will be able to save and load UI profiles, such as switching to a custom UI profile for raids.[14]
One of the first things we did when we were starting to block in the very base features of our HUD editor was talking about saving and loading profiles. We're going to have options for, when I'm in a raid automatically change my UI to this UI.[14]Colby Marchi
  • The user interface in Alpha-2 will have options to support hover-over casting and double-tap application of AoE effects on the cursor location.[15]
One of the big goals of our UI team and our design team is to accommodate a whole host of different types of user options that they're capable of setting, because we all have different play styles; and in that regard those include things like hover-over casting, double-tap application of AoE effects on cursor location- just a lot of different options, because people like to play different ways.[15]Steven Sharif
It's very important to note that in Alpha 1 you are not going to see a solid UI presentation and that's because our UI currently is still very placeholder very work-in-progress.[16]Steven Sharif

Combat logs

There are combat logs in Ashes of Creation.[18]

We will be providing combat data for individual players in their chat window, that players can filter and analyze for themselves. The goal is to mitigate and make the practice less prevalent through the ease that DPS meters provide. Also to place actionable enforcement for players who attempt to circumvent the decision by use of 3rd party programs, for which we will be monitoring.[19]Steven Sharif

Macros

The issue with macros is that from an anti cheat metric perspective it's difficult to define what a macro is against a script. And in order to catch all scripts sometimes you have to prevent the macro usage. So really that's a that's a data issue. If we allow for macros then we lose our ability to precisely ban script users, botters.[20]Steven Sharif

Commands

info-orange.pngThis section contains information from Alpha-1 testing. It will be updated when new information is made available.
Command Function
/say Chat command.[21]
/party Chat command.[21]
/yell Chat command.[21]
/global Chat command.[21]
/tell (playername) Chat command.[21]
/roll Simulates a dice roll.[22]
/e, /emote, /me[23] Textual emote.[24] Example: /me chuckles
Invite a character to join your guild.[25]
Add a character to your friends list.[25]

Security systems

Security systems will be in place to combat cheating, exploiting, botting, gold selling/real money transactions (RMT), item duplication and other things that affect the economy starting from Alpha-0.[26][27][28][29][30][31][32]

  • A broad spectrum of approaches are going to be utilized in order to try to protect the integrity of the game once it launches. Testing of these systems will begin leading up towards Alpha-2.[27]
Security is always at the top of any concern when you have a closed system like an MMO is... We've seen a lot of MMO is launch without security in place and the economy gets ruined as a result thereafter. And every band-aid that's slapped on top of that wound is just making things worse. And so part of why you take the time in order to ensure that things are done correctly is also the security component of things; and that's where testing with a live audience is a bit different also than testing with a Q&A audience as well, because you're going to get those bad actors- and we call them bad actors because ultimately they're attempting to destroy the fun for others... So what we've done is we've hired some security experts who've worked on massive other MMOs like World of Warcraft and other games, and they bring with them lot of experience; and we're going to be testing that in leading up towards Alpha-2. It's a very important part of Alpha-2. It's not something that we really addressed with Alpha-1 because again, that was a much more barebones functional testing experience. We did see some issues during Alpha-1 and we made it important for Alpha-2 to test those systems. We have a broad spectrum of approaches that we're going to be utilizing in order to try to protect the integrity of the game once it launches.[27]Steven Sharif
  • These systems collect user data and flag abnormal activities for investigation. This combined with player reporting functions generates a live "heat map" that draws attention to unusual behavior.[26][28][29][32]
We do have already built into the game on the outset is essentially behavioral metrics. So in the game, as a player does normal things and they acquire normal gold, that's all good and well, but if there starts to be item IDs that appear on the player account that are out of the norm, like either a large amount of gold, or significant legendary items, what it does in the back-end it flags the account for view so that we can take a look at where did this item come from. Is it coming from a known gold seller or a flagged bot, or whatever; and then we investigate. So we're going to be pretty hard on the ability for players to subvert the natural economy systems by RMT or botting.[29]Steven Sharif
  • Botters, cheaters, gold sellers, and RMTers, will face severe penalties from the active GM/community team.[26][33][34][32]
It's important to note that there is a sanctity that must be protected within the game from RMTing; and let me just go into a little diatribe about this: But in games that I've played where the company or the publisher does not enforce rules, it becomes the standard that you buy gold if you want to be competitive. If you want to compete at the top tier levels in certain games, and everyone's buying gold, you almost either have to buy the gold or you're just not going to be able to compete with those people and that's a really shitty feeling to have. Excuse my French, I apologize. That is sucky; and in order for that not to be the case it is the responsibility of the publisher or the developers both to make sure that we have stringent practices from a CS- from a customer customer service perspective- to enforce our rules and to make sure that players are aware if they partake in this there is a huge risk in doing so. It's not going to be a slap on the hand. It's not going to be a "we told you once, we told you twice, we told you three, four, five six times okay. We're just taking some gold away", that thing. We have got to ensure that it is feared to do those things because that ashes has active GMS, it has active customer service, it has an active community team.[34]Steven Sharif

Two-factor authentication

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Token-based two-factor authentication (2FA) was expected to be in place for Alpha-1.[35]

Game masters

Game masters (GMs) will be present and active on Ashes of Creation servers.[28][36][34][37]

On the customer service side, we do plan to have in game GMs. We do plan to service people in the best way possible. And we will grow our service team as much as we need as our player base grows.[36]Margaret Krohn
The direction that I'm taking Intrepid as a company in is that a significant portion of the revenue created by the game goes into not only creating additional content and updates for the game but also goes into I think caretaking, as I like to call it; and that caretaking is multiple things: It's having active and present GM's on servers. It's having a an interacting community team that is always present and on-call for participating in forum discussions and streams and updates.[37]Steven Sharif
  • There will be a standard escalation system, where different actions are taken based on the seriousness of each infraction. Actions could range anywhere from being stripped (of the illegitimate items or currency) to being banned for a period of time, or being permanently banned.[37]
Following a standard approach to an escalation system where certain infractions are immediate and automatic bans and some infractions provide a path forward where action is taken that might ban the account or strip the account or provide some chat bans or the ability to play over a week or so... If you buy gold and depending on the seriousness of the infraction you could go anywhere from being stripped and to being banned for a period of time to being permanently banned.[37]Steven Sharif
  • Botters, cheaters, gold sellers, and RMTers, will face harsh penalties from the GM and community teams.[34][32]
When a player takes their play experience to the point of harassing another player, and doing so on a repetitive basis, in order to diminish their play experience, it is a ticketable offense. If you are following around a streamer or you're following around a player and your intent is to keep them from playing the game or to force them to quit, that is a dirty player mindset. It's a bad player mindset. It's a griefer's mindset. It's not something that's desired in the ecosphere in the community of Ashes of Creation. And as a result, it is a serviceable customer service situation. That is where warnings are given and actions can be taken against the account holder of an individual whose sole purpose is to disrupt and affect negatively the gameplay experience of the game.[36]Steven Sharif
I believe that so far in development we have demonstrated the level of customer service and community engagement that will be on display after our live launch. You are right however in saying that many of these problems that can arise on the fringe of certain systems will require an active GM support team available to address problems that the user base encounters[40]
  • The volunteer moderator program will continue (post-launch).[41]

Multi-boxing

The current policy on multi-boxing (multi client) is that players are allowed to own multiple accounts, but may not launch multiple game clients from the same computer. Players may not use any software to automate character actions or mimic keystrokes.[42][43]

  • This was previously stated to be: If a user has a legitimate account and is not botting or using complex scripting then multi-boxing will be permitted.[44][45][46][47]

Multiple accounts and multi-boxing, that's a little bit difficult for me because it could be conceived as pay-to-win, because you can progress on a second character and you can then gift that progression to your primary character. In that scenario yes I can see the argument. However if the character progresses with the same amount of effort and time needed by the person who's playing and they maintain that progression on that character, then I don't consider it pay-to-win. I consider it a second account. So initially what I'm going to say is having multi-boxing capability will be allowed within Ashes of Creation. There are a few safety nets that I put in place that restrict the ability for abuses that we've seen in other games.[46]Steven Sharif

Mobile/web application

info-orange.pngSome of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

A companion app (mobile app/web interface) allows players who are not logged into the game to have authority over certain services and mechanics.[48][49] Some functionality may come post-launch.[50]

Specific dates that you can have running as reminders in your guild UI, this will also be something that I would like to be available on the mobile companion app as well. So essentially you can receive notifications via a calendar update on guild events that the leaders or the officers have the ability to pin within the game will also give you notifications on the mobile app as well. That's my intention at least.[54]Steven Sharif
Some of it may come post-launch... but we do want people to interact with the game on their phones when they're away from the computer; and we're going to do as much as we can to make that cool.[50]Jeffrey Bard

Controller support

The Ashes of Creation MMO is not designed around controller support.[56]

Controller support will likely be something we work on closer to launch.[58]Steven Sharif

Accessibility settings

There will be settings to aid colorblind players.[59][60]

  • User interface elements will utilize textures and icons to distinguish them, in addition to color.[59]

Emblem, logo and symbol editor

The user interface will allow emblems, logos and symbols to be designed in-game.[62][63][64]

Q: Do nodes provide their citizens some kind of clothes or ornaments, capes, tabards, or something that they can basically represent their node?
A: I mean technically the node does have a sigil or insignia and there will be certain armors that you can customize insignia and/or symbols on, so yes you could probably achieve that.[65]Steven Sharif

See also

References

  1. Interview, September 10, 2023 (34:51).
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Livestream, February 24, 2023 (1:19:29).
  3. 3.0 3.1 Ashes of Creation Forums - No Damage Meter?
  4. 4.0 4.1 Livestream, May 10, 2017 (20:02).
  5. Interview, October 20, 2018 (6:29).
  6. Livestream, April 30, 2020 (1:28:19).
  7. Interview, May 11, 2018 (49:03).
  8. Livestream, May 10, 2017 (21:41).
  9. Video, July 28, 2023 (37:19).
  10. 10.0 10.1 Livestream, August 28, 2020 (1:27:01).
  11. Video, May 31, 2023 (0:37).
  12. 12.0 12.1 12.2 Livestream, October 28, 2022 (3:34).
  13. Livestream, May 5, 2017 (20:02).
  14. 14.0 14.1 Livestream, February 24, 2023 (28:45).
  15. 15.0 15.1 Livestream, December 2, 2022 (1:00:30).
  16. 16.0 16.1 Livestream, June 25, 2021 (29:09).
  17. Blog: Creative Director's Letter, October 16 2020
  18. Ashes of Creation Forums - No Damage Meter?
  19. Ashes of Creation Forums - No participation trophy.
  20. Interview, August 8, 2018 (27:53).
  21. 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 chat-commands.png
  22. Livestream, May 24, 2017 (39:48).
  23. The specific implementation of the / command is TBD.
  24. Livestream, April 29, 2022 (1:02:22).
  25. 25.0 25.1 Livestream, December 22, 2020 (1:09:38).
  26. 26.0 26.1 26.2 steven-anti-cheat.png
  27. 27.0 27.1 27.2 Interview, July 9, 2023 (1:47:04).
  28. 28.0 28.1 28.2 steven-rmt.png
  29. 29.0 29.1 29.2 Interview, July 19, 2020 (1:12:37).
  30. Livestream, November 17, 2017 (38:35).
  31. Massively OP, 2017-06-1
  32. 32.0 32.1 32.2 32.3 Livestream, February 9, 2018 (20:40).
  33. steven-penalties.png
  34. 34.0 34.1 34.2 34.3 Livestream, August 26, 2022 (1:32:45).
  35. Interview, August 21, 2018 (40:44).
  36. 36.0 36.1 36.2 Livestream, October 28, 2022 (29:32).
  37. 37.0 37.1 37.2 37.3 Interview, July 8, 2020 (48:30).
  38. Livestream, October 28, 2022 (13:53).
  39. steven-aggro-griefing.png
  40. steven-gm-tickets.png
  41. Forums - Livestream Q&A 2022-08-26.
  42. Ashes of Creation Forums - Poll + Bonus Dev Discussion - Multiboxing.
  43. steven-multi-boxing-3.png
  44. steven-multi-boxing.png
  45. steven-multi-boxing-2.png
  46. 46.0 46.1 Livestream, July 25, 2020 (48:28).
  47. Livestream, May 10, 2017 (22:39).
  48. Livestream, January 18, 2018 (30:18).
  49. 49.0 49.1 Livestream, November 17, 2017 (11:00).
  50. 50.00 50.01 50.02 50.03 50.04 50.05 50.06 50.07 50.08 50.09 50.10 Livestream, May 4, 2018 (54:09).
  51. Livestream, May 9, 2017 (28:57).
  52. Livestream, November 17, 2017 (9:49).
  53. Livestream, November 17, 2017 (11:53).
  54. 54.0 54.1 Podcast, November 15, 2020 (52:50).
  55. Intrepid Studios Snapchat, 2018-11-30.
  56. Livestream, November 17, 2017 (21:24).
  57. controller.png
  58. Livestream, 2018-04-8 (AM) (18:04).
  59. 59.0 59.1 Livestream, October 30, 2020 (30:36).
  60. Livestream, July 18, 2017 (52:42).
  61. Livestream, July 30, 2021 (53:15).
  62. 62.0 62.1 62.2 62.3 62.4 Livestream, May 17, 2017 (55:40).
  63. 63.0 63.1 guild emblem.jpg
  64. 64.0 64.1 Livestream, October 31, 2018 (47:44).
  65. 65.0 65.1 65.2 Livestream, October 31, 2023 (1:34:37).
  66. 66.0 66.1 66.2 Interview, October 20, 2018 (3:35:54).
  67. Livestream, July 29, 2022 (1:06:39).
  68. Livestream, July 29, 2022 (1:06:15).