Arenas

Pre-alpha arena combat footage from PAX West 2017.

Pre-alpha arenas.

Arenas are instanced PvP scenarios and are not part of open world PvP.

The arena system as we've spoken about before is going to have ladder systems where people can progress within certain seasons based on their win/loss ratios. The importance of arenas are obviously that players have an opportunity to participate [and] practice out certain builds from a PvP perspective and can compete with one another within the system. – Steven Sharif

• Arenas will have 1 man, 3 man, 5 man and possibly 20 man Free-For-All (Deathmatch) group sizes.
  • There won't specifically be guild vs guild arenas but team-based matchmaking allows teams to face other teams.
• Arenas will have a minimum level requirement to participate.
• There won't be bifurcated brackets with separate player pools.
• There might be some form of an ELO system that gets flushed on a seasonal basis.
• There will be an arena ladder system.
  • Rewards for arena ladders will be revealed at a later time.
  • Titles can be received from arena play.
  • Arena points that can be used to buy gear are not currently in the design.
• Mayors of military nodes are chosen from citizens through last man standing (gladiatorial arena style) combat.
• The arena system may support cross-server combat.
• Arena style combat is instanced but spectators may be possible through an interface.

Alpha-1 testing modes

Alpha-1 battleground mode

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse battle royale lobby screen.

In Apocalypse you have a scene where you have a squad in, or are solo or whatever. That scene will eventually become your house. Your freehold, exactly; and you will earn furniture to place in that freehold and you can build out your house and what-not through special achievements. – Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse battle royale victory screen.

Why did we go with Battle Royale as the first testable arena mode? And the answer for that is honestly, as we're testing and getting people into matches on our servers and testing the replication among players in a battlefield; and making sure that tech is present and capable for hundreds of players on the battlefield: We wanted to have a game mode that was still fun for players to test in: An environment that was fun to test in. – Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse battle royale (also referred to BR mode) was a Battle royale testing mode consisting of up to 100 players.

• This is a last man standing PvP combat mode.
• Weapons and armor found in the world have unique skills associated with them. These interact with the terrain from defensive, offensive and utility standpoints.
• Players can build buildings and structures such as watchtowers, defensive pillboxes and arcane structures.
• Everything in the world apart from rocks and trees is destructible.

It's going to have a lot of high octane energy and activity. It's going to be very streamable. It's going to be no NDA. There's going to be a lot of different weapons and skills that were going to be testing. Each of the weapons and armor that you can find in the world are going to have unique spells and skills associated with them that interact with the terrain from a defensive standpoint, from a utility standpoint, from an offensive standpoint. It's going to be able for you to build buildings, complete structures, watchtowers and defensive pillboxes type structures: Arcane structures. You're going to have a lot of fun activity there. – Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse battle royale early access testing ended on March 10, 2020.

• It was previously available for download on the official website and on Steam.

Alpha-1 castle siege mode

Alpha-1 preview castle.

Trebuchets in the Alpha-1 preview castle siege attackers headquarter camp.

Alpha-1 preview castle siege gameplay.

Alpha-1 castle sieges are based on Ashes of Creation Apocalypse castle sieges.

• Players will be able to join guilds. These guilds can register for the siege events.
• Castle siege events will be 100v100 battles that occur daily and will last for three hours.
• Attackers will start on the opposite end of the map (from the defenders).
• Attackers will be able to use trebuchets to drive to and assault the castle.
  • Trebuchets have a single primary fire that does a small amount of damage to players and heavy damage to buildings.
  • Trebuchets will be fully physical when they are being driven.
• When the attackers have breached the castle they will be able to channel a cast on the relic in the throne room to try to capture the castle from the defenders.
• The victors of castle sieges will receive benefits, such as cloaks, flying mounts for guild leaders and potentially also for guild officers.
• Alpha-1 castle sieges are in a separate zone that is accessible via a NPC teleporter.

  Currently the siege zone is actually in the open world, but separated by mountains and off in the sea a bit. There is actually no instancing in A1, although the siege zone will only be accessible in A1 through a registration NPC teleporter. – Steven Sharif

  • This zone includes the following raid bosses.
    • Elder Dragon of Flame
    • Elder Dragon of the Tundra
    • Elder Dragon of the Wood
  • These bosses will also appear in the open-world (outside the siege zone) with slightly different mechanics.
• The opposing team is notified when these raid bosses are being attacked.
• Teams who get the last hit on these bosses will receive buffs that will help them in the siege battle.

Last year, I spoke of attempting to incorporate sieges into the Alpha One experience. This has obviously been a goal of mine because it provides considerable data and a consistent event within the world that players can participate in to help stress test the deployment. Well, I am happy to say that it is appearing more and more likely by the day! Initial implementation of the Apocalypse siege code has been migrated into the Alpha One client, and we should begin internal testing next month. I will caveat this expectation with the fact that we are cutting it a bit close from an internal QA standpoint, but I have some confidence that the system will be online and capable of inclusion for the Alpha One test in the month of June. The siege component will obviously not be representative of what the siege system will be at launch, or even in Alpha Two. – Steven Sharif

• Destructible structures (such as walls and gates) are present in Alpha-1 castle sieges.
  • The ability to repair structures (and siege weapons) is a long term design goal that will not be present during Alpha-1.

Alpha-1 horde mode

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse horde mode is an Ashes of Creation Apocalypse testing mode where 50 players defend a city against waves of incoming NPCs and player controlled monsters.

• Each wave is more difficult than the last.
• Between waves, players collect experience, money and weapons to take back to their hold to defend against the next wave.
• Monster coins enable players to join the game as part of the horde.

Horde mode will include adaptive AI boss mechanics. Rewards are obtained dependent on progress against these NPCs.

• Coins for character upgrades.
• Cosmetics.
• Pet versions of the defeated NPCs.

Horde mode will absolutely include boss mechanics, so some of the ideas behind that is going to have a wave mode of a variety of NPCs will likely include some achievable cosmetics as well in that mode depending on how far you can get and those cosmetics will include pets of the NPCs that you face, so like a little miniature version of the NPC's and we'll update those as well, that you'll have in the MMO. – Steven Sharif

Horde mode is specifically for testing.

• Testing the blackboard for the AI.
• NPCs with different adaptive AI focuses:
  • Sniper
  • Ranged
  • Melee
  • Boss

It's a way that we thought it would be fun to implement AI mechanics that we're looking to implement. Testing the the blackboard for the AI. Being able to have variable types of NPCs that have roles whether it be like a sniper, ranged, melee, boss, heroic different AI focuses for those monsters during interesting situations. – Steven Sharif

Group sizes

Party witnessing the beginning of the An Ancient Violence Story arc in Alpha-2.

We're not creating a solo game, but it doesn't mean that we don't offer gameplay that is solo centric as well: It lives in addition to the social aspect of What MMOs provide; and so part of what we do in order to to give that element of gameplay is we have quest lines that are devoted towards solo players. We have hunting grounds. Obviously one of the benefits of being a solo player is you get to keep everything that drops. You don't have to share loot with a party or with friends; that's one benefit of being a solo player. But it's going to be more difficult to overcome challenges; and those individuals who are up to taking that additional level of of difficulty are going to excel perhaps in their character progression a bit faster than those who are more group-centric. It's going to be a little bit of a roll of the dice there because there are loot tables, there are reward tables that accompany that, but it's important to note that from a content perspective Ashes of Creation is looking to fulfill both that solo-oriented mind in gameplay as well as the group and social experience; and a lot of times those paths diverge: They move apart, they come back together; and that process is going to be seen throughout the leveling in Ashes of Creation where you'll have more opportunities for solo gameplay and some opportunities for group gameplay. – Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation is designed for solo players as well as large and small groups.

• Parties have up to eight (8) players in a single group.

The idea behind an 8-person group is to allow us to really amplify party roles, and to create a need for each of the archetypes in every party.

• Raids will have 40 man groups.
• Content will be tailored for 40, 16 and 8 person group sizes.
• Arenas will have 1 man, 3 man, 5 man and possibly 20 man Free-For-All (Deathmatch) group sizes.
  • There won't specifically be guild vs guild arenas but team-based matchmaking allows teams to face other teams.
• Castle sieges are expected to have at minimum 250x250 players to be on a single battlefield, with the possibility of increasing this to 500x500 over time.

The minimum goal is 500 players on a single battlefield. I think we will be able to hit 500vs500 but we shall see. – Steven Sharif

Arena ladder

Pre-alpha Arena UI.

The arena ladder system records a player's progress within PvP seasons based on their arena win/loss ratios.

• Titles can be received from arena play.
• Other rewards will be revealed at a later time.
• Arena points that can be used to buy gear is not currently in the design.

Metrics

Ashes of Creation gathers tracking data to facilitate achievements, titles and other accolades on a server.

• Number of successful siege defenses.
• Number of successful siege assaults.
• Number of PvP kills.
• Number of PvP deaths.
• Raid participation points.
• Number of firsts.

Visibility of those types of things on the server help to promote a competitive atmosphere. If there is an attainable impression that you can work towards, so that others know your success, you have more drive to succeed. – Steven Sharif

Leader boards

Players will be able to opt-in to track certain achievements on leaderboards, such as.

• Dungeons completed.
• Raids completed.
• PvP kills.
• Caravans raided.
• Gathering activity.

Leaderboards may be seasonal.

We have many dreams that we want to do with game-to-web and game-to-mobile in regards to showing stats and being making things shareable for you. We know how social media works; how sharing content with friends works. But those things will come in due time. – Margaret Krohn

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Some leaderboards will be across all servers.

Military node arena

Military node mayors are elected based on trial by combat. During the election week the node will enter an open-PvP battleground state for hour-long periods where candidates (and their citizen supporters) compete to gain points by securing objectives. The highest point winner at the end of the week will win.

• Previously the developers were considering champions that fought in a last-man-standing arena.

Server vs server

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

The arena system may support cross-server combat.

• There may be monthly competitions where the winning server and winning team receive beneficial buffs for the month.

We definitely like cross-server play. I think it's cool because it is something that players get to participate in. – Steven Sharif

When you're talking about Arena play especially, one server might not be able to support that depending on what's going on with it, but across all the servers then we've got a really great pool for matchmaking. – Jeffrey Bard

Esports

Esports in Ashes of Creation.

Esports is not the main focus of Ashes of Creation, but the game may move in that direction if the gameplay is compelling, competitive, and fun.

What I would say as an MMO player is Esports tends to miss out on a core element that's unique to MMORPGs, which is progression; and it's difficult to represent that progression in the traditional Esports format that we see with other games and genres today. However, what I will say is that I have participated in some MMOs that have stood up cross-server competitions and I've really personally enjoyed those types of cross-server competitions where you bring the best that those individual servers have to offer with regards to groups, or teams, or constant parties as we like to call them; and you allow them to compete in an arena format, or in a castle siege format. Like that is super cool. I love that server versus server type of competition and I think that's where there is a potential to do something interesting with regards to Esports and the MMORPG genre. – Steven Sharif

Artwork

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See also

• World PvP
• Combat
• Servers