Player movement

Player movement in Alpha-2 combat against a Bonebinder Kidnapper (3 star) elite.

• Sprinting (default C) is a universal skill that is able to be unlocked by all archetypes.

• There is a toggleable walk (RP walk)/run capability (default .).

• Autorun is toggleable (default Numlock).

• Players will have the ability to auto-follow another player, but this will be on a timer.

• There is not going to be any "go to waypoint" (auto-pathing) mechanics.

• Back-peddling (walking backwards) and strafing are slower than normal movement speed.

• Double-jumping has been considered as an option for player mounts.

• Mantling (climbing onto objects) is present in the game.

Mobility

Revamped Alpha-1 Mage Fireball ability.

The general approach that we're taking based on a lot of feedback and just good combat design in general. You know philosophy is that we want to give more agency in the hands of the player and the antithesis of that is locking the player down for really long amounts of time. The sort of concept behind that is like you could make an animation effects as glorious looking as possible but if it's taking away control of the player, none of that really matters. Especially the 100th or thousandth time you're using the spell you're tired of that happening you don't feel powerful: You feel the opposite of powerful. So we're trying to like give a lot of control back to the player while they're using these abilities so they can still control their movements, they can react simultaneously while they're taking actions; and we just want to get overall more of a fluid flow, I guess, of combat. And that's the general design philosophy we're using to approach the overhaul. – Tradd Thompson

• The revamped combat system features split-body animations, where the character's upper body can be locked by weapon attack animations while the lower body is free to continue moving.

A lot of abilities you have the capability of moving while casting. It's going to decrease your movement speed significantly or depending on the type of ability. We do reserve the cost- and that's really what it is when you tie ability usage to mobility- we do reserve the cost of requiring the character to remain stationary on some big effect type abilities. – Steven Sharif

• Most abilities in Ashes of Creation are capable of being cast while moving. Some abilities may slow the caster down during the cast, but only rarely will the player be rooted in place.
  • Movement speed can decrease significantly depending on the type of ability.
  • Weapon weight can also affect mobility.
  • Skills with the greatest power may require the caster to remain stationary while channeling them. This is a risk vs. reward mechanic.

Most abilities you'll find in Ashes of Creation are capable of being cast while moving. Some of those abilities might slow your movement during the cast, but you can continue to move. Very rarely, and depending on obviously the importance of the ability or the power level of that ability, you might be rooted in place. So, for example, the AoE ability [Chains of Restraint] has a lot going on. It has damage ticking over time, it is an area of effect, it also has a status condition application; and in those instances the player character gets rooted. – Steven Sharif

• Ranged archetypes will have gap openers to counter gap closers from archetypes like the Fighter.

That's the cat-and-mouse of these abilities. Like we've seen with the Ranger, they have a backflip, they have their Airdrop [sic] ability. The Mage has teleportation. There are going to be abilities that are tit-for-tat; and managing the resource of those abilities and the timing of when you use them to either correlate to your opponent's use of those things, or to save them for yourself when you want to get away, that's part of what makes the engagements dynamic and different each time. – Steven Sharif

• Unreal Engine 5 has enabled improved forms of locomotion, such as crouching, tilting and mantling.
  • Crouching may or may not be in the game.

• The ability to prone is not be in the game.

• Moving backward will likely not affect block and parry.

• Player movement speed during combat is balanced for both PvE and PvP.

There's a balance in the game design between your movement speed on attack and the movement speed of your opponent. When you have a game that is both PvE centric as well as PvP centric, you have to make sure that combat is blended for both approaches; and we can always run into problems where, if you're significantly hampered in your movement speed, that has an effect on how we expect player versus player engagements to interact; and we don't want to restrict a player's ability to be mobile if they're the target of an attack. And as a result of that we need to make sure that we don't restrict the movement abilities of the player who is doing the attacking as well. So we want it to be relatively free for you to stay with each other. Your opponents move around the battlefield together and if we're hampering you on the attack action, we have to then implement some type of snare, or slow, or cc effect essentially on your opposing target; and that's not the approach we want to take for for PvP. – Steven Sharif

• Melee archetypes will offer various mobility and CC counters against ranged archetypes, such as the Ranger.

If we're talking about Fighter, they're going to have a lot of heavy gap closers. They can probably be a little bit more liberal in the use of their gap closers because they have so many of them, versus let's say a Ranger that needs to choose when to use their escape abilities, because they have fewer of them. The same would be true for a melee character like a rogue. Their approach vector is going to be more stealth-driven than it would be perhaps let's say from a gap-closer perspective. – Steven Sharif

Q: If a ranger is super mobile, what are the melee's options in order to catch them?

A: Different class kits will provide different gap closers. They'll provide different mobility skills. They'll have lockdowns. They'll have chains to pull back. They'll have a lot of different things in the rotation. That's part of what an MMORPG experience is. You're not just restricted to three or six skills, you have a rotational suite; and depending on the type of challenges you face is going to help determine which of those rotations you spec into from your skill tree. – Steven Sharif

Skill	Icon	Origin	Description
Air Strike		Ranger	Leap a great distance forward and into the air while firing three projectiles in a line along the path, each dealing (150%🢆) Physical damage to targets hit. Targets hit that are Snared become Rooted , and all Snared stacks on those targets are consumed.
Berserk		Fighter	Consume your Combat Momentum rapidly, gaining 30% more physical power and movement speed and immunity to disabling effects while active. Must have at least 20 Combat Momentum to activate, and the effect ends when all Combat Momentum is fully depleted.
Blink		Mage	Instantly teleport 20 meters in the direction you are moving. Breaks all rooting effects.
Blitz		Fighter	Charge directly toward target enemy, dealing (100%🢆) Physical damage to the target on arrival.
Call of the Wild		Ranger	Remove all Snared and Chilled statuses from the caster, and increase movement speed by 20% while becoming immune to all movement impairing effects for 8 seconds.
Caravan Trail Speed Bonus		Caravan	Minor speed boost for travelling on a simple trail.
Charge		Tank	Channeled Ability: Charge forward in the direction you are facing. Enemies you collide with take (50%🢆) Physical damage damage and become Staggered . Charge will be canceled if another ability is activated or if the Charge key is pressed again.
Disengage		Ranger	Quickly strike enemies in front of you while backflipping in the opposite direction. Targets hit by the strike take Physical damage and acquire 1 stack of Snared for 10 seconds.
Epic Melody		Bard	Nearby party members gain Epic Melody Melodies can be played concurrently with other abilities. Multiple instances of the same melody do not stack.
Exert		Fighter	Consume your Combat Momentum rapidly, gaining 30% more physical power and movement speed and immunity to disabling effects while active. Must have at least 20 Combat Momentum to activate, and the effect ends when all Combat Momentum is fully depleted.
Flourish		Bard	Slide forward gracefully in your aimed direction and gain Pep . Can be used concurrently with any other ability. Dance Mastery: Energy Dance Mastery: Power
Form Of Celerity		Fighter	While in this form, the caster receives +2% Movement Speed per 10 Combat Momentum, up to a maximum of +20%. Overpower and Brutal Cleave apply Staggered to targets hit. Shifting form costs 20% of current Combat Momentum and triggers cooldown for all Combat Forms. Triggers cooldown for 10 seconds when deactivated.
Form Of Fluidity		Fighter	While in this form, the caster receives +1.5% Evasion and +2.5% Disable Evasion per 10 Combat Momentum, up to a maximum of +15% and +25%, respectively. Overpower and Brutal Cleave apply Shaken to targets hit. Shifting form costs 20% of current Combat Momentum and triggers cooldown for all Combat Forms. Triggers cooldown for 10 seconds when deactivated.
Leap Strike		Fighter	Leap to target location and deal (225%🢆) Physical damage around you while applying Staggered to targets hit. Apply 3 stacks of Snared to targets hit that were Shaken .
Lunging Assault		Fighter	Spend 15 Combat Momentum to lunge in a direction a short distance and perform an upward swing upon arrival, dealing (125%🢆) Physical damage and applying Snared to enemies in front of the caster. The caster is immune to hard disabling effects while lunging.
Party Stride		Ranger	Applies Strider to all group members within 30 meters. Strider Increases ground movement speed of target by 10%.
Pulverize		Tank	Move to your target and strike them for 225% physical damage. Generates 300% additional threat.
Shield Assault		Tank	Lunge forward and deal 125% physical damage while applying Staggered to enemies in front of you. If a target was hit, gain 25 courage. Generates 300% additional threat.
Shield Slam		Tank	Lunge forward and deal 150% physical damage while applying Staggered to that target. Gain 25 courage on hit. Generates 300% additional threat.
Speed Boost		Caravan	Gives the caravan a temporary speed boost.
Whirlwind		Fighter	Channeled ability: Deal (45%🢆) Physical damage to all enemies around the caster with each spin while channeled, increasing the spin rate the longer it is channeled. The caster is immune to hard disabling effects while spinning. Activate the ability again to end channeling early. Deals 20% additional damage to Weakened targets.
Wings of Salvation		Cleric	Sprout phoenix-like wings and dash to target ally, granting Wings of Salvation to the caster and target on arrival.

Dodging

Dodging in Alpha-1 early combat.

Another thing that's important about these action combats is the ability to dodge and moving out of the way of certain skill shots. – Steven Sharif

Active dodging is a universal skill that is able to be unlocked by all archetypes.

• Stamina is a universal resource that is utilized by active blocking, Active dodging, and sprinting universal skills.

• Dodge rolling type skills were previously housed in the action skill sets of agile classes such as Rogues or Fighters.

• Dodging will not use I-frames (invincibility frames), but it may affect accuracy and mitigation stats when used.
  • Previously it was stated that hybrid combat will likely have true evasion skills relating to action-oriented combat and also have I-frames that apply to tab targeting.

So you see an animation windup that's a telegraph on what's coming; and then you have response actions that you can take as a result of that in order to dodge, weave, move, do whatever. It is both a combination of what your rotation is but also how you have reaction abilities ready to go that you save for certain circumstances that are important. – Steven Sharif

- None -

Jumping

Jumping puzzle inside the Aelan ruins in the Riverlands. In-game screenshot.

Jumping puzzle in an early Alpha-1 dungeon entrance.

Jumping puzzles occasionally feature in the world.

• Jumping puzzles were shown in the Alpha-2 Tower of Carphin preview.
• Jumping puzzles were present in early Alpha-1 dungeon gameplay footage.
• Jumping puzzles were present in the Alpha-0 Dünheim dungeon.

Swimming

Alpha-1 swimming.

Tidesnapper early Alpha-1 water animations.

Underwater content will be accessible, not cumbersome.

• Characters are able to utilize their abilities while in the water.
• Stamina does not limit swimming, however breath does.
• Navigational instruments are available to allow ships to detect movement under the water, such as aquatic mounts.

Treasures may be obtained through fishing and by exploring naval content.

Player collision

There are player and spell/projectile collision mechanics in Ashes of Creation.

• Inertia and momentum physics will help prevent blocking doorways/access points. This is based on a character's direction and movement speed, and can be used to push people out of the way.

• The Bard's Flourish skill turns off collision.

It turns off your collision so you can not get blocked or trapped. – John Collins

• Mounts and players cannot stop caravans and other vehicles from moving. Nothing can move or block ships.

• Specific ranged skills will have a pushback effect but this is not inherent to all ranged abilities.

• Player collision inherently limits the number of individuals that can be affected by AoE skills.

• Not all projectiles can be body-blocked.

Not all projectiles can be body-blocked. Some potentially can, but there will be certain abilities and effects, like a shield wall, that can that can be brought up and that will obscure line-of-sight to the target as well; and it will restrict some of those attacks from occurring. – Steven Sharif

Armor characteristics

Kaelar armor.

You're not going to get one set of armor that's going to be situationally relevant for every encounter you might face- that's crazy- and as a result of that you're going to have to succeed in acquiring sets that are situationally relevant for the types of encounters you are intending to face. – Steven Sharif

Light, medium, and heavy armor weights have different characteristics.

• Stat values will be predominately the same but may be able to be adjusted by crafters who are capable with that type of armor.
  • Physical Defense Mitigation.
  • Magical Defense Mitigation.

• The stat values on armor can include both damage dealing and damage mitigation stats.

Certain armor types are going to have certain type of predominant stat values. So there's going to be certain waterfall stats and/or certain primary attributes that are available on certain armor types; and then if you want to have the one that's not more prominently available- those will be rare to get- you'll have to elicit the services of a crafter who's very capable within that particular type of armor in order to get the non-traditional stats and/or waterfalls available. So there's still the ability to get whatever on these but they're going to be more predetermined for certain types of stats and waterfalls. – Steven Sharif

• Set bonuses are granted to wearers of exclusively one "type" of armor, for example: all cloth, or all plate.

There'll be certain types of set bonuses granted across specific full sets or partial sets of armor types. There will be a similar function in how damage is mitigated based on the type of armor you're wearing and how that relates to physical or magical incoming damage. So that's something to keep in mind. It's going to be situational what type of adversarial foe am I facing and what armor is the best against that to mitigate damage. – Steven Sharif

• The "type" of armor (cloth, leather, plate) a character is predominantly wearing is visible in their nameplate.
  • There will be strengths and weaknesses for armor sets that opponents can exploit with gear enhancements, for example.

You're going to have certain strengths and weaknesses of armor sets and those can be specced into by your opponents. For example, I might place some type of elemental enhancements on my weapon that horizontally changes my outgoing damage and that's going to reflect based on the opponent on my target opponent and what type of armor they have available to them to counter that. – Steven Sharif

• Itemization choice may potentially play into universal skill sets such as Dodge, Parry, and Active blocking.

We're playing a little bit with the idea of these universal skill sets, such as dodge, parry, block, active blocking, stuff like that; and progression within those areas. There is something to be said I think for incorporating itemization choice as part of that system as well; and how it might affect that system. That's something that I think is going to be coming up in the pitch phase here shortly from design as we implement those universal skills. So you can look out in the future for more information on that. – Steven Sharif

Inventory (weight)

Alpha-2 materials inventory user interface.

Inventory for A2 will exist in two categories, spatial and non-spatial. The spatial inventory system will only exist for materials and gatherables. The non-spatial system will be the normal single slot inventory that is used for all completed items IE gear, consumables etc.. The spatial system is intended to provide limitation and progression when everything in the open world is gatherable, requiring players to strategize which things they choose to gather or not. These spatial inventories will be shaped in various ways that make the bag types more conducive for certain types of gatherables allowing players to specialize their capacity. Auto sort is a feature – Steven Sharif

Inventory capacity has quantity (stacking) limits based on the type of item. Backpacks offer varying stack sizes and/or spatial inventory shapes that are optimized for carrying different items.

• A player's inventory has sections for different types of items. Quest items, for example, will not fill a player's regular inventory capacity.
  • Materials and resource bags have spatial ("Tetris" style) slots for items with different shapes and sizes.
  • The spatial inventory system is intended to mitigate the potential for players to diminish land management scores by stripping resources from particular zones as well as provide a challenging gameplay layer for players.

Inventory is split into two separate management systems. The first is your non-material, non-gatherable slots. Those are your standard single slot, not-space-constrained system that's a standard inventory: you just have a single slot, and you can pull completed items and/or consumables and quest items or whatever into that slot. And then, when you're talking about materials, specifically processed goods and gatherables: those exist within the Tetris type uh inventory system. – Steven Sharif

• Items are placed into the most suitable inventory slots by default.

All those materials actually sorted nicely in the appropriate bags based on your stack sizes. – Alex Khudoliy

• There will be a healthy number of slots for gear in a player's inventory.
  • Completed item inventory slots are not space constrained (by the tetris system).
  • Completed items, such as gear are also not subject to weight limits.
  • Gear loadouts can be swapped using a hotkey when out of combat.

• Inventory capacity will be relatively limited for new characters. Additional capacity may be increased by obtaining higher quality backpacks from crafters.

We want to have very unique progression when it comes to the construction of resource bags; and those resource bags will have certain benefits, like increasing stack size count of particular types of resources; or of having a additional delay time necessary to interface with with your corpse, should a player try to take the resources you might have dropped in PvP; or having passive benefits and unique structures of spacing that makes it more a better bag for wood gathering because woods are three-by-one; or a better bag for mining because mining is always two-by-two. The idea is to make your intent as a gatherer when you go out into the wild specific right not just that you're going out into the wild and gathering everything you can because it's there; and that's what we don't have like a labor system that limits it. We have a space constraint system so when you leave your node and you go out into the wild you need to be conscientious of what you're choosing to interact with and take resources for, because you have a limited space constraint to that degree. – Steven Sharif

• Inventory capacity is subject to quantity rather than weight limits.

In my opinion, and this is of course subjective, but weight management is not a compelling mechanic for players to have to deal with in an MMO setting. – Steven Sharif

• Players will have the ability to search for items they have stored in various locations (such as personal storage and node warehouses).

We want you to know where the things are; and then the meaningful aspect of that thing is traveling to those locations to access some of those things, particularly as it relates to materials and raw gatherables. – Steven Sharif

• Inventories will be able to be sorted.

Q: Why did you go for a spatial inventory system for resources?

A: There's a number of different methods that we can use in an effort to mitigate, or again throttle, the amount of success that players can have in any one trip out in the world. Now, we're using a combination of three things: We are using progression gating through your profession level; so you need to have a certain level to access certain resources. We are utilizing the spatial inventory space as a limitation on how much things you can gather before you need to go back to town. And then lastly we have a tool predicate where you need to have a tool that is relevant for the resource you're gathering; and those tools have a decay value after each use. Weight is obviously an approach that we could take if we wanted to limit. However, the spatial system works in concert with a number of other types of systems. For example, we want to have itemization drop on death specifically as it relates to material items; and we want there to be an additional layer above just weight that introduces complexity; and where there is complexity there is choice and there is strategy and there is planning required on behalf of the player in order to set themselves up for the best possible success in certain situations. – Steven Sharif

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

• Mules can carry roughly 10 times more than backpacks. Caravans can carry roughly 10 times more than mules.

• Inventory expansion and weight management training certificates are available in the Galleria at City stage economic nodes.

Public transportation

There are multiple types of public transportation services where players can go AFK and be driven somewhere.

• Players can visit a node building and pay a fee to be driven via road to another node on their land mount of choice.
  • The node building can be upgraded to become a flight path, which allows longer direct connections to other nodes within a specific region that also have a flight path.

• Airships between metropolises. This was previously stated to be between scientific metropolises.
• It is possible that some public transportation services could be player-driven.

One of the nodes has the idea of an airship that can go from node to node and I'm certain that we will have harbors that do similar things with other node types... It might be something that could be player-driven... We're sure to have a taxi system where you load up a couple people and you drive them somewhere while you AFK. – Jeffrey Bard

Summoning mounts

Summoning a mount in Alpha-1.

We want to make sure that it's not cumbersome to quickly mount a steed and start moving... Steeds play a very important role in mobility. – Steven Sharif

Mounts are items that players carry then activate to summon the mount nearby.

• Mounts are generally able to be summoned during combat in the open-world.
  • There may be exceptions to this in certain dungeons, instances or other spaces where summoning mounts may not be permitted.

A mount can be an initiation vehicle; it can be an escape vehicle; it can be utility vehicle; it can be traversal. – Steven Sharif

• Animal Husbandry mounts are summoned via an item that is obtainable from a stable (husbandry stall).

Mounts are going to be items that you will be able to carry on your character and activate to summon the mount in front of you or near you; where you can then ride the mount. – Steven Sharif

• A player can dismount and have their mount follow them.
  • In current Alpha-1 testing mounts are not separate from the player, but in future mounts will be.

Right now we don't have it where the mount is separate from the player per-se. You automatically mount the mount when you summon it in the in the alpha. But in the future you'll be able to summon it and you won't have to automatically mount it. It'll just be standing next to you. It'll follow you around and then you'll be able to mount it. – Steven Sharif

• De-summoning the mount returns the item back to the player's inventory.

Fast travel

Fast travel is limited in Ashes of Creation. None of these fast travel methods allow transportation of gatherables or materials.

There is very little teleportation in the world. Some of that does get unlocked through metropolises of a certain type. Additionally there are mounts that are faster travel and there are services that are fast travel between nodes. – Steven Sharif

• Scientific metropolises offer teleportation within their vassal network, which can extend across seas, and also include islands.
• Flight paths between coastal nodes or nodes within specific regions.
• Airships between metropolises. This was previously stated to be between scientific metropolises.
• Family summoning.

Faster travel in Ashes of Creation refers to the use of player ridden mounts and flying automated creatures that connect certain nodes.

Faster travel

Faster travel in Ashes of Creation refers to the use of player ridden mounts and automated creatures that connect certain nodes.

• Public transportation via system driven land mounts or flying mounts.
• There is not going to be any "go to waypoint" (auto-pathing) mechanics (outside of these mechanics).

There will be connection points between certain nodes via the use of like flying automated creatures that you can use. – Steven Sharif

Estimated travel times

So why is travel important? We've talked about this in the past, the reasons why. We've all existed in games where teleportation is very easy to use and sometimes that can be a detriment because you may have activities like a caravan run that's happening and one person sees you from a certain guild and they do the raid callout to their guild "everyone open your portals and come here within a split second and we're going to just mob this group". No, well instead that opportunity doesn't exist. If you want to provoke or to gank an operation of another guild, you need to have foreknowledge. You need to prepare. You need to place your forces around that area; and that is an important aspect. In addition, it makes that travel meaningful. If you are having to spend time to move to a location, you're going to think about what can I do along the way? Why am I moving to that location? How is it more beneficial for me to be in that location versus where I am now? This is also in association with the fact that you are a citizen of a particular node and that node needs your assistance within its vicinity; and if you want to move outside of that vicinity there should be a really good reason for that and there's lots of great reasons for it. – Steven Sharif

Travel objective	Running.	Mounted.
From one end of a Metropolis (stage 6) node to the other	2.83 minutes	1.67 minutes
From the center of a node to the center of its direct neighbor	5 minutes	3.5 minutes
From the northernmost to southernmost points of a continent	75 minutes	50 minutes

Visuals

• 

  2024-10-07
• 

  2024-09-30
• 2024-08-12
• 2021-02-27
• 2020-08-29
• 2018-01-19

See also

• Universal skills
• Mounts
• Combat