This past Friday saw a developer livestream from the Ashes of Creation team with the aim of providing a bit more context on just what good a battle royale mode is for a sandbox MMORPG. Most notably, the stream brought up discoveries in Apocalypse testing that can be applied to the MMORPG proper.
For one thing, Apocalypse has helped the engineers of Ashes of Creation learn how their server backend stands up to multiple players, resulting in a reported reduction of rubberbanding. Apocalypse has also been a test bed for new blocking mechanics that sees player characters stumble when their stamina hits zero from blocking. The battle royale mode has also been instrumental in refining hierarchical level of detail (HLOD) to make sure distant objects swap from low-poly versions to higher resolution ones when players get close.
Apocalypse’s benefits extend to combat as well, specifically with tracking time to kill (TTK). Overall, the average TTK has been increased in Apocalypse in order to get a better data set to gauge how Ashes of Creation’s hybrid combat works and to see which abilities can make it into the game’s hybrid system.
The livestream also provided a few words on mount creation and a look at some critters like the Pridestalker and Emberstorm Dragon, along with a Q&A session between players and devs. The livestream also mentioned that AoC’s first alpha may well be arriving before the Horde mode’s launch. You can get the complete stream below or check out this synopsis if you don’t have an hour to kill.
