Affiliations

An affiliation tree determines which entities can participate in attacks against other entities within its hierarchy.

• Corrupted players can be attacked regardless of other affiliations. This is something that will be tested during Alpha-2.
• Node citizenship.
• Alliances.
• Guilds.
• Parties.
• Raids.
• Family.
• Religion.
• Society.

There's node citizenship. There's guild. There's alliance. There's party. There's raid. There's family. All of these types of affiliations have a hierarchy. The highest of which is your node affiliation: So your citizenship is your greatest superceding relationship, which means if you were a part of a guild and the guild has multiple nodes in which its members are citizens of, if there was a war between two of those nodes, the members of those nodes would be first and foremost citizens who defend that node, even against their own guild members. – Steven Sharif

All of these things have some hierarchy; and within that hierarchy there's the ability to participate within certain systems. So for example, if you have a node that has fallen under your vassal state and you're a citizen of the parent node, then you could participate in a siege against the vassal node but if you're a citizen of the vassal node you could not participate as an attacker against the parent node; so there's a hierarchy, unless you were to renounce your citizenship. – Steven Sharif

Group dynamics

Group dynamics aim to bring players together.

One of the main philosophical pillars behind our design was that PvE must be impactful and inclusive. We want solo players, small groups and large groups to all have a home within our system.

Ashes of Creation is in development. These systems could change through playtesting and player feedback.

Group sizes

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

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.
• 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 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.

Content isn't locked behind guilds.

• Mechanics exist within larger conflicts for small groups and even solo players to impact the battle.
• This includes systems that will likely focus on single group sized participants while the larger battle is occurring.

Intuitive grouping

There are systems such as quests, events and monster coins that lend themselves toward intuitive grouping, but no specific decision has been made to include this functionality.

See also

• Group dynamics
• Alliances
• Player flagging