Yes, castle siege mode in Ashes of Creation is still coming. The first half of the latest livestream from the Intrepid Studios devs was almost exclusively about siege mode, laying siege to castles, siege attacks on Nodes… siege, siege, siege. Business business business.
According to a livestream transcript, the devs have “the final piece of the puzzle from the destruction side of things” for castle siege, putting Unreal Engine’s Chaos physics system to the side in favor of an aesthetics-based form of destruction. This more visual form of wall breaking will allow players to get through a barrier once it reaches a certain “stage” of destruction, but is still promised to be appealing to look at even on low settings.
Siege isn’t only about making walls into rubble, though. The team is also working on systems that can halt Node progression if a certain building is attacked. For example, if a faction wants a rival’s Node to not hit its fifth stage of progress, that faction’s players can simply assault a specific building instead of trying to focus on annihilating the entire Node. Even if the siege fails, that Node will need to devote resources to repairing the building, which can still be counted as a small victory.
The livestream also showed off a variety of creatures, talked about time-to-kill in battle royale mode versus the MMORPG, and took a number of player questions. You can check out the full video below or look over the transcript if you don’t have a lot of time.
