Template:Story arc chapters

Quest journal showing story arc chapters.^[1]

Within the context of these story arcs, there are specific points that they can pivot to tell a different story. That different story can be based on predicates that are in the world: from a player decision standpoint, from a cultural representation standpoint, from situational to which node gets developed. There's a lot of different components that interact with the way the dialogue and narratives play out on a particular server; and what that means is- and I've said this from the beginning many sandbox MMORPGS, they do not create as much curated content as theme-park MMORPGS; and their excuse for doing that is because they incorporate player-driven mechanics. But that's a bit of a cop-out and it's the opposite approach that we've taken with Ashes of Creation; and the reason for that is, if you give the player a door and there's nothing behind that door then opening the door is meaningless. So what we have to do is we have to create a very functional story arc system that provides content in many different ways, but is behind a door of world progress or world development that is then executed by the player population. And that's how we construct our narrative systems.^[2] – Steven Sharif

Each chapter (phase) in a story arc can cause changes across the entire server, such as environments, monsters, Неигровые персонажи, Quests, and pathways.^[3]^[4]^[5]^[2]^[6]

Players can progress a chapter by completing story arc quests within the timeframe that each chapter is active.^[3]
- Phase timers are shown (in the quest UI) to indicate how much real-world time is available to complete the quests in each phase.^[7]
- If the player completes all quests in a particular chapter, they will need to wait until the next chapter to obtain further quests.^[8]
- Story arcs can branch into different stories with multiple possible endings depending on the quest objectives that players complete during each chapter.^[9]^[7]

It's not just a matter of completing the laundry list of things that the NPC has you do, but you pick from a whole bunch of objectives, many of them optional. Some of them, if not most of them, hidden when you first undertake the quest. So go dig up a guide, or blaze your own trail, or whatever; but depending on which objectives you complete, those are the things that help the server aggregate what is going to happen in later phases of the story arc. And that's across all of the players participating during that time frame: what objectives they decide to complete.^[7] – Skott B

Story arcs can last for days, which reduces pressure to log in daily to remain competitive.^[10]

Story arcs normally progress according to the passage of real-time, which is clearly indicated in your quest journals. Even if a zerg guild throws all their resources at a story arc, they can't lock anyone out of participating by doing all the participation on their own. You'll have the time indicated in your quest journal to finish the content available in that chapter.^[11] – Skott B

Most story arcs will repeat with a cooldown, but major story arcs will only occur one-time: These can be replayed, but in a non-interactive way where any choices made do not impact the world.^[10]^[12]

The cooldowns between arcs repeating will also be quite long- proportional to the length of the chapters, but we're still in pursuit of the right numbers there. You can't do the individual quests again until the entire arc restarts.^[8] – Skott B