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Author Topic: Trials of Ascension: a 99-death MMO: come join the pre-Kickstarter community!  (Read 8945 times)

Naturale

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lol It's funny that in most cases, people see permadeath and are turned off (whaaaat I don't wanna lose my character why would I play that?) but you two are complaining that its not permadeath enough!  :D

Well, first of all the 100 lives is up for debate still.

I don't know how Wurm plays.

I would say wizardry online is not true permadeath. It's hard to die in that game when all you have to do is sacrifice gear to increase your chances of living. I don't like that system. In this game though, it's just a limited amount of lives. One thing to note, it's not the kind of game where you can grind gear in order to get 10 million health. Peoples HP for the most part will be very similar. Think along the lines of Chivalry or Mount and Blade. Directional targeting and all that. Heavy armor makes you slower but gives you more defense / cloaks make you faster, you get the idea.

Still though, it's not really a pvp focused game even though it has non-consensual PvP and full-loot. You can't see how powerful other people are. A guy in rags might be a powerful mage. It's more a survival game. You can starve. Crossing hot deserts without water can kill you, freeze to death etc if you aren't wearing the right stuff. Travel is harder than pressing W until you get there.

No floating names. Sneaking is more realistic not 'click to turn invisible'.

No global chat.

Nights are really really dark without a torch.

Player-run everything with couriers (mail system), player ran merchants, treasury etc etc

To mine you have to dig and build mine shafts.

No automatic healing spells. Learn how to bandage / heal critical wounds.

Amazing line up of races. At first it'll just be humans but there will be a few as kickstarter goals. There are like 12 total races and each one is actually a race not just a skin.  For example Pixies can usually get one or two shot but they're small, they can fly, and use different pixie dusts. Dragons are very powerful but they start as baby hatchings that have to survive for a long time before they're grown. Dragons could basically be like raid bosses because their scales will be very valuable. Dragon hunting ftw.  Gryphons, Centaur, Raknar (spiders), dwarves, Gargoyles etc. Races all have different diets, some more resistant to heat / cold or whatever / some food is poisonous while to others beneficial. Some races can act as mounts for other players. Lots of stuff to this game.

Overall an interesting survival rpg if that's what you're into.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2013, 05:19:56 am by Naturale »
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Sensei

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This seems like a good alternative to, say, Haven and Hearth in that it still has structures and territories and communities and high stakes.

Frankly, I want to play it now :P What kind of time scale are we looking for development of this, provided it's funded? I hear it's been a stagnant project for a while?
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Naturale

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The idea for this game is not new. They got going for a while with the original design, but couldn't find investors that were willing to go along without compromising aspects of the game to make it more mainstream. They refused to compromise and had to shut down due to lack of funding in like 2006. Now they're back with a scaled-back version of the game in order to get it out as soon as possible. Some things that were cut include ships, islands, Religion, less types of structures, smaller world, mounts (which might make it into launch, if not shortly thereafter). Nothing permanently cut, just for now so they can focus on getting the main game out.

Right now they are just trying to get more attention out before they launch kickstarter so anyones guess is valid. No one knows. Probably not for a good while. The fate of the game is in our hands. It would be foolish to kickstart prematurely after all they've been through for years.

Assuming it gets funded, Brax (lead designer) off handedly made a comment recently stating that it's "much less than 4 years" in response to someone saying "it's probably still a good 4 years away". Any more detail than that, is unknown. Come join us. :D
« Last Edit: March 12, 2013, 05:50:37 am by Naturale »
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Azated

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lol It's funny that in most cases, people see permadeath and are turned off (whaaaat I don't wanna lose my character why would I play that?) but you two are complaining that its not permadeath enough!  :D

Probably because permadeath generally means... well, permanent death.

Permadeath means one life, no exceptions. Whether you live for years and die in a glorious battle with the biggest, baddest beasty of the untamed wilds, spawning legendary tales of your many heroic conquests, or you go for a pee, fall off a mountain, break both legs and die of internal bleeding, it's still all one life. I've got to admit that I'd laugh my ass off if that happened to me, but with the kind of laughter you have when you're seething with so much anger that you're ready to kill someone with an un-buttered bread roll.
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Sensei

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Well, I created a thread. Come and Sign the Magma Carta!

I'm intrigued by the fact the developers have decided to scale the game back. Frankly, games of this sort rarely have that sort of discretion.
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TurnpikeLad

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Actually, I also wish the game would have less lives.  I'm a fan of one-death permadeath.  There's nothing like going out in the world knowing that _any_ day could be your last.

In the past they mentioned that they might set up a one-life server for people who wanted to live in that kind of world.

But I also see how 100 lives serves their design.  For one, it allows you to die a few times due to lag or internet loss, or other RL circumstances.  100-death permadeath still does a lot of good permadeath things, like reducing high-end character bloat, affecting how people think about risk, fostering community.

Also, as Naturale said, 100 is a number that will be adjusted during testing.  The goal is to give characters enough lives so that they can have enough time in the world to participate in unique ways - so that each character's life is a unique story - but still be close enough to expiring that the game never functionally feels like a game without permadeath.  The number will be adjusted based on how frequently people end up dying... in a game like Wurm, I can imagine the number being scaled to 10 or 20.
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Dariush

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Aaaand another dream project. It's kinda sad that we can't have a simple HnH clone with realistic goals, finite development times and sane developers, and instead get all this bloated crap with tons and tons and tons of promised, sometimes oddly specific and, quite frankly, useless features (I mean, lack of floating names? WT fucking F, seriously?!) and nothing done beyond a couple of screenshots that are made of generic (yay trees!). :-/
« Last Edit: March 12, 2013, 09:01:57 am by Dariush »
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TurnpikeLad

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Aaaand another dream project. It's kinda sad that we can't have a simple HnH clone with realistic goals, finite development times and sane developers, and instead get all this bloated crap with tons and tons of promised features and nothing done beyond a couple of screenshots that are made of generic. :-/

Well, it's a lot less of a dream project than it was ten years ago... pretty much everything has been pared down to a form that they are pretty confident they can release if they get kickstarter money.


Amazing line up of races. At first it'll just be humans but there will be a few as kickstarter goals. There are like 12 total races and each one is actually a race not just a skin.  For example Pixies can usually get one or two shot but they're small, they can fly, and use different pixie dusts. Dragons are very powerful but they start as baby hatchings that have to survive for a long time before they're grown. Dragons could basically be like raid bosses because their scales will be very valuable. Dragon hunting ftw.  Gryphons, Centaur, Raknar (spiders), dwarves, Gargoyles etc. Races all have different diets, some more resistant to heat / cold or whatever / some food is poisonous while to others beneficial. Some races can act as mounts for other players. Lots of stuff to this game.


Well, all of those cut features are intended to go back in at some point.... races, religion, boats, mounts... but I didn't want to emphasize them because they won't be in the basic, pared down kickstarter proposal.  Some races will probably appear as stretch goals though.. 
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Dariush

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It was in development for ten years? Can I have a confirmation or something?
« Last Edit: March 12, 2013, 09:01:34 am by Dariush »
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TurnpikeLad

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It was in development for ten years? Can I have some prooflink or something?

From 2002:  http://web.archive.org/web/20020925163929/http://shadowpool.com/
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Gassy The Goblin

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Great post  :) !   Hope people check it out!

Don't mind Gassy, he's quite nice if you can stand the.. periodic.. miasma...
TurnpikeLad speaks the truth !!
And what an awesome forum, great responses/questions, and cool avatars !


http://trialsofascension.com/forum/forums/general-discussion.2/
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Naturale

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lack of floating names? WT fucking F, seriously?!) and nothing done beyond a couple of screenshots that are made of generic (yay trees!). :-/

Yeah, so you can hide better and shit   8) But also, knowing someones name can give you an advantage when interrogating them (for innovations).

Development just started. The old design is dead. Stopped flopping like a fish out of water ages ago. The current design has not been in development for 10 years if you want to be technical. It's been a few months, that's it. You would know that if you read the thread.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2013, 11:01:01 am by Naturale »
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Neyvn

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Sounds interesting, tickle me piked to put some coin down...
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Shadowlord

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Every time I see a permadeath game, I make the mistake of thinking it sounds fun, only to discover that it never is.

I decided after Wizardry Online to stop making that mistake, so I can't see supporting or playing this myself.
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TurnpikeLad

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How names work is that instead of each character having a single name that everyone can see, you'll have to name characters according to what they tell you their name is, or what you want to call them so that you can remember who they are.  Floating names aren't visible if you just look at someone, but if you mouse over or click on someone within a certain distance from your character, you'll see the name you gave that character pop up. 

It's an interesting system... a big component of stealth in the game is supposed to be actual hiding and camouflage, so having a big glowing name above you kind of gives you away in that circumstance.  Also, only knowing the name you give someone means that you have to take someone's word for who they are, what their affiliations are, etc.  I believe the disguise skill is still in (it may have been cut)... where you can try to make yourself look like a stranger, so that people lose their name associations with you while you're disguised.

If you break a settlement's laws inside the settlement's boundaries, you get a rep hit with that settlement, which is visible to people who look at you regardless of whether they know your name.

The old design had a doppelganger race that could make itself look like any other race... you would lose your name association with a doppelganger if they changed their appearance.  Doppelgangers may still be a long-term goal, so the naming system is still there to support that as well.
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