Talk:2018-06-04 Livestream

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[Music]

We're on

We're on

Hi everybody

Hello

Jeff: Welcome to the Ashes of Creation livestream I am Steven Sharif

Peter: I'm Jeffrey Bard and

Bacon: I'm Peter

Excellent

We did it

Perfect so lineup is a little bit different this one or this afternoon because we are actually trying to get us some video got videos into your guy's hands we're doing a play test right now with some of the new stuff that we've been working on and hopefully that will all come together really soon and Steve will join us at that point but yeah so we've been working hard like always continuing to progress and push the genre forward so because we're doing things a little bit backwards today we're probably going to start with questions I think unless you guys have anything to add this is actually Michael bacon and this is actually Peter in case people are new to the stream I'm Jeffrey barred there's always new people which is we're always glad to bring you into the fold

And John is running the board.

He's turning into a little AV guy so Jeff and I will check these questions since we're gonna front load with questions today so

How's the sound?

Oh can they hear us?

It looks like they can I'm interested they can unless I hear somebody yelling at me you help me John if this doesn't work okay one of the questions from the forums is and if we don't happen to answer your question it's usually not because we don't like the question it's just that we're not ready to answer it at this point yet

We don't answer them 'cause we don't like them well it's not always right

Michael may not go but but I I like everybody so there's there's no reason for me to gloss over it but like in the forums for instance there's a couple of questions at the top that we don't quite have answers for explicitly yet so it'd just be a lot of kind of riffing on our parts but we'll start with are you at your bigger studio yet could we get a tour? obviously we are still at our old studio but we are bursting at the seams we have people up in the balconies they're kind of working out of their cars so we do need a new space very soon but we haven't gotten there yet

2:18

Santi182 asks what are the other ways besides death to get rid of corruption?

So the only other alternate way that we've talked about so far is doing quests to get rid of it where there are sort of religious focus quests that send you through like ways of getting rid of that corruption and becoming you know part of the world again and getting rid of that corruption it's it's kind of looked at as a time sink so it's not going to be easy or quick but it is probably going to be the only other way to get rid of corruption other than dying than dying you got any for me Pete?

2:59

The channel is a little slow wait there we go

Nagash asks when can we expect to hear about new lore we were just talking about this not too long ago we want to start getting blogs out regarding lore again though we're really focused on this next milestone so that's kind of why you haven't seen too much on the blog side going up I know people are still waiting for notes part three but it's it's really kind of a matter of putting people in the best place to get stuff done here once we get past this milestone I think we'll get a lot more regular in terms of what we expose to the public and lore as part of that

3:43

There's a question here from Agent Rando what is your favorite feature of AOC that has already been implemented and if possible what are your most basically what is the yet-to-come feature that you're looking forward the most?

Oh goodness that's a good question question yeah Michael

Another baby bear backpack scene yes

Oh my gosh

That's right [cross-talk]

Remember Michael Bacon is on the podcast so everything here is #baconconfirmed well what's what's your favorite part of the game so far?

My favorite part of the game so far I don't know I guess the environments are cool [Laughter]

Peter?

Let's see I think the thing I'm looking forward to most is implementing the economy and seeing how that works with a much larger populous because it's one thing to think about things when you have you know a hundred or a few hundred people on server and it's another thing to think about it when you have thousands and thousands

Yeah when you actually have an at scale and you start seeing how things really work versus how you imagine them working

Right yeah and that's what it becomes super fun

It's also when you figured out whether you've done a good job or not

It's all kind of at once but so far I mean I'm really enjoying the dungeons and the raids that's been super fun getting people together and kind of you know winning those battles has been really rewarding so that's my favorite thing so far

It's been fun just traveling around in the town

Ya know I mean it's it's cool seeing what stuff there is to do what stuff we've snuck in there and people are finding which is cool but I'd say for me the most enjoyable part and this is kind of because I you know as a designer I've always usually worked in content which is story in quests and sort of like the events that happen in the game but I've been able to get my hands dirty with the ability system here that's mostly under Akil but but being able to work on that side of things on the system side it's been a lot of fun for me and then also playing with those abilities that I've made has been a crap ton of fun one of the abilities I just worked on was was the starkness ability which removes the ability for people to actually see in the game and it's a lot of fun to like see it play out and have people react to it and not know what's going on it's effective and it's fun it doesn't do any damage and that's one of the things I really love about it one of the things I'm looking forward to the most though is is the narrative system it's the thing that I put the most work into and it's the thing I think I'm most excited about to see how how again like the economy how something works at scale and and how you know the the storytelling visual that I have in my head how that ends up playing out to players who haven't we don't know all the pieces that go with it I'm really excited to see how that goes [cross-talk] Oh we have sound issues? John is just turning random buttons at this point [inaudible]

7:25

Let's see let's see if there's another one

Sure I'll look too

So one kind of philosophical question WoxEs asks how hard is the game and they comment MMOs are known to be mind numbingly easy

Yeah I mean that's that's a tough question right like we want there to be kind of accessible content for every player right so difficulty really just depends on what you're going after you know there is difficulty in running a guild right there is you know difficulty in fighting creatures there is difficulty in finding all of the resources you need to make a really epic weapon right and and there are greater and lesser versions of all of those things so it's I hesitate to call it a hardcore game right because it's not it's not hardcore for all people all the time right people who put more time and effort into it are definitely going to get more out of it but that doesn't mean that person who logs in once a week won't be able to have fun so it's just a matter of the scale of stuff that you're going after

And what avenue you're going after if you think about you know the idea of interaction and how we talk about interaction all the time not just like peer to peer but with the server itself I mean there's a there's a ton of room for difficulty on whatever scale you're trying to talk about right because you're gonna like you said you're gonna scale up guilds are going to be fighting other they're not gonna be making it easy right you're gonna be out there hunting for spots something for you know resources or you're gonna be trying to run Caravan routes you know those things though if it was in a vacuum might be easy you know in a living world everything becomes much more difficult right so I hope that kind of answers

Yeah with lots of different answers to those questions right like you know running a caravan is not gonna be the same thing every time you do it you might be able to find like a super secret path that nobody knows about and maybe I don't know about it right and you find it and you exploit it for a while and nobody knows and then eventually somebody sees you and suddenly that route becomes a lot more difficult so you know that's kind of the way we really want that emergent gameplay to kind of come out of those options that we give you guys and a lot of it is gonna come down to other players making it more or less difficult for you so

Sorry trying to read question

It's okay I will look at questions too so Michael tell me about the baby bear backpacks what was the idea behind those?

Oh just that you can kill a baby bear pull out all their stuff [cross-talk]

T-Elf asks do we need blueprints we've lost the stream I think we're still on there though [cross-talk] everything's fine we're just we're just looking at a blank screen right now

10:41

So Chris asks are there going to be completely unique legendary quests or bosses that will loot drop completely unique items skills or titles?

That is something we definitely want to do I think I think legendary the idea of legendaries of you know there is one thing one momentous event that happens once I think that makes those events a lot more special than you know sort of everyday kind of events things that you know maybe we spend a lot of time on it maybe everybody gets to experience it only once but you know the memories that last from that I think you know they're a little bit cooler [cross-talk]

I am I am steering steering us towards victory

I'll just start the test okay so that should take about 15 minutes ish and then about another five minutes to send that over to the stream machine so you guys will begin to be able to see a little bit of the progress we've been making on the phase one an alpha one a little bit of a mock siege at a castle that Bacon built

Building work in progress

It's very work in progress very early as you know we did quote quarter four for the release of the castle siege mode first phase at alpha 1 so this is where we're at now and you guys get to see this early iteration and when it comes out you'll be able to see you know that progress so we're working on it

Yay

Yay yeah also one other caveat to put about that is that these are using the old characters from alpha zero this doesn't include kind of the new stuff that we've been working on on that side so once we get to that point I think it'll be really exciting the whole game's gonna look pretty different pretty rad yeah not that it doesn't look rad already but but you know what was I saying before I was in the middle of a thought I think?

Legendary

Legendary's! yes so you know one of the my favorite moments from EQ is when the sleeper was killed right like that was that was a huge thing that only happened once on a server because the sleeper never respawned and it is something that went down in the kind of like the legends of EQ is the downing of this super powerful raid boss that only woke up once and then it was done and then the whole dungeon changed it was kind of that idea of like hey things change in the world in the world kind of reacts to what you're doing and what you do have has consequences killing sweet sleeper had consequences and so doing more of that I think is really exciting and doing it in a way where it's not just killing a boss right it might be finding a recipe it might be you know finding a magical mount that you can't get anywhere else you know these sort of singular momentous events is something that we look forward to doing

And where do you need to put that stuff when you find it?

Yeah hopefully I would want to put it you know in my house you know display it really nicely

No but once you would acquire that object you have to get it to your house

I mean if it was a mount I would you get on the mount and then I'd start riding it

Dude you want a baby bear back pack I know you do [laughter]

We almost have to do it now

14:13

So Guav asks can you run your own pub in a tavern and can you get an NPC to play host?

Yes yes Inns and taverns are part of our sort of the idea of the the RPG space right where we give players sort of reasons to be in social spaces and sort of benefit from them and take part in them right and so owning a tavern that's that's a building that you can put on your freehold is something you can do you know your hopefully going to put a lot of thought into where you put that tavern so that you know you can maximize the amount of traffic that you get in there and then having an NPC bartender who can you know distribute the drinks that you've made for that tavern it's all part of what we wanted to do with that system y

That's pretty cool

And people can play cards there and hang out and chat and get some rest

Gamble

Yeah wait no not gamble can we gamble

Not real gambling

Gambling games

Yeah virtual gambling it doesn't involve loss of anything

Let's see

So weird we don't have us it's distracting me when I see just a really nice pretty that's Hong Kong or something with the screen saver [inaudible]

15:48

There was a question I saw do we need blueprints to build our freehold and if so how do we obtain them? placing down your free hold itself just the generic plot of land that you get is not gonna require a schematic or anything like that but the buildings that you build on your freehold will so so those are things that you can either get from other crafters or find in the world or other various ways of getting them so I think establishing there might be some citizenship requirements to place a plot down we're not entirely certain right now

16:23

So I have a question here from Hedocean how will the tank class be balanced that's a pretty large question typically mobs are made where they are easily defeated where anyone can solo them without a tank or too difficult where you need to have a tank for basic level grinding if there will be a level scaling can you explain how that works so basically you know like how do we plan on striking the balance between the absolute necessity of a tank for everything and then never needing for anything?

Right you know so we expect tanks to be used in sort of party situations right so that may or may not include overland mobs you know it depends on what zone you're in kind of what's going on in that zone what events are active so you will need a tank more or less depending on what's happening in the environment certainly in dungeons you will need a tank absolutely I don't I don't picture us creating any encounters that wouldn't need that sort of control now we're not just focused on aggro in terms of control and managing mobs there's lots of other ways that things can do that and one of that is by modifying the battlefield itself so that's something that we look to our tanks to do and we we're back for a brief second but then we disappeared again it scares me every time I see it like oh the stream is great but thankfully solid so that's sort of the direction which we're going there it's not just about mitigating damage although that's a part of the sort of calculus there but it's also about making sure that the mobs are doing what you want them to do so so that's kind of how we approach it you know and again it like like everything that we talk about there's sort of like the micro scale and the macro scale and at the macro scale certainly tanks are going to be very important

For sure yeah it's I mean from the way we've talked about it it sounds always like to me the way I think about it is that the tank setups victory conditions for the party like they're able to you know do things on the battlefield do things to the creatures to set up the path for their party to really hammer it right you know in more ways than just you know [cross-talk]

I have aggro on this one creature

Let's see if there's another one I have other ones do we have background music dude does music play while we're like no

No just for the intro screen

We could sing some music

18:57

Autumn leaf asks Autumn Leaf is a band that I really like will there be teleportation magic and/or magical barriers? teleportation magic won't exist at the macro scale for the most part we've talked about when certain types of nodes you know there's the scientific node at the at the metropolis level may be including some teleportation magic on the macro scale for that region but sort of for the individual we certainly will have teleportation magic that's one of the base base skills that we have for the mage right now is blink and then magical shields and barriers and stuff is also a part of that although that probably won't necessarily be the mage exclusively it'll probably be tanky [cross-talk]

19:48

Since we'll have this is Bacha pocha says since we'll have two weapon slots primary we can switch to secondary will all the weapons show on our characters whether we are currently using them or not for example if I have my sword and shield set currently but I have my great sword secondary set showing on my back that's gonna depend sort of on what slots those weapons take we do want to show weapons on characters and give players the option to kind of toggle on and off but it gets really weird when you have like cape and a bow and a great sword and a polearm right like we don't want to show all of those on the character at the same time because that's gets pretty goofy pretty quick so they'll be sort of like you'll be able to sort of say on your character which things you want to show and then there'll be a priority system behind that that'll determine you know you know do I show the bow if the great sword is unequipped or do I show the polearm if the great sword is unequipped so we do it that way

20:52

There's a there's a question that caught my eye because I like the question Generalcat asks will there be dual wield shields dual wielding shields

This is something that Peters been pushing really hard throughout the design process is to do the goofy style to see two shields that is not going to be in the cards

Heard it here first

No we won't we have talked about

We have talked about it yeah it's come up let's see so

What if I have spikes on it?

There you go

Yeah I mean so [cross-talk]

It's a weapon right?

21:37

Will gear be enhance-able anyway for example magic stones to slot in your weapon to boost attack power etc?

Yes that is definitely a part of the whole like sort of progression the equipment progression we are very likely going to have a rune system and then we'll have the ability to sort of enchant weapons outside of that too so

Especially with a focus on crafting like more things that let you separate yourself from another person yeah for just it's one of the main parts that we think about with our systems

Yeah and so and then if that's not always going to be like a vertical progression it's going to be you know some of it's going to be giving up something to get something else so maybe I do less physical damage but more magical damage that kind of thing

22:27

When you talk about the world changing based on player actions how much of that is coded into the game to read and react and how much is based on developer actions and will there be a game master a GM in-game who can make changes on the fly?

So a lot of this is a sort of designer prescribed these are events that we've set up in the world that react to other events so you can get a whole chain of things going on based on how certain events were dealt with in that progression so that's that's the main way we've talked about doing GM run events here and there but our focus really is making these systems so that they can live on their own they're not dependent on somebody being here to handhold it I do think GM run events are really fantastic and they kind of add a little bit of spice that you wouldn't otherwise but that's something we kind of have to talk about later on you know the nice thing about that is that the event system right now works in such a way that we could do that pretty easily with a GM our tools will support that but it's it's more of a

We're trying to make it actually be living and breathing rights you know we've talked about it before but you know not as much change in a switch and more so the player changes that scratch we've said we've made the switch

Right and that's up to you to kind of figure out which switches to flip and how that changes the world

Absolutely

Yeah

24:15

We had .. this is Kandy: we had a small talk today about crouch and prone systems in other games is there going to be anything like that in the game since it would add immersion to the stealth system PS send nodes we are working on the nodes but in terms of crouch and prone we're definitely gonna crouch in the game we have discussed some bits on how that's going to interact with the stealth system so yes as far as prone goes I'm not entirely sure it's something that we could definitely add but that that requires another level of animation yeah so it's something that's on the radar but we haven't made a hard decision on that yet

25:04

EosiTV asks if there will be a glamour system so I guess using that word akin to [inaudible]

Yeah it's it's not gonna be glamour in like I cast a spell or write like a pie at like a temporary buff on myself it'll probably be in the form of equipment slots that you know change the appearance of my equipped helm I put another equipped helm or another helmet in that slot and that overrides the appearance of it now we've talked a little bit in terms of like how that's going to affect sort of threat assessment and we haven't come to a good decision on that yet but we want to give enough clues to players to still be able to accurately tell like hey this guy is is wearing plate even though he looks like he's wearing robes

25:50

Exactly you know I mean we all love having players look how they want to look so you know that's glamour it's a smart system and I think we've all enjoyed it in games that we've played as well so let's see

Confessed Oak 205: you talk a lot about how positioning plays an important role in combat how much does mobility play into that and how mobile is a Rogue for example in compared to a Tank I guess you know balancing mobility and things like that

Yeah actually mobility is very important especially when it comes to like you know sort of seeing how the opposing player is doing something and then reacting to that fast enough so that you can get out of the way of it our Ranger right now is actually highly mobile I don't think all of those abilities are active in alpha zero yet but when we were doing the PvP playthrough for our last PAX it was really noticeable how effective the Ranger could be just through their mobility skills we didn't load him up with a whole lot of DPS skills but their mobility made up for that a lot if you knew what you were doing yeah

It was interesting to see especially during you know the PAX runs seeing people once they've played the PvP scenario like a few times seeing the Ranger and like going in and out of combat

Yeah they became a really good skirmisher which is what we wanted right but it's always cool to see that kind of in play and people getting it

27:28

So this is a pretty good one :Sasha asks or comments I guess: a little bit of both what I've found lately is a lack of incentive to open world PvP and most MMOs and battle arenas and etc take away from that he says I know a system and EQ2 worked was a title system and you would earn points toward gaining or losing your title depending on if you killed or died to an opponent basically a level or below you so you know what things are we planning to add into the game that will hopefully incentivize open world PvP or you know keep PvP kind of in the zeitgeist of our player base without disincentivizing actual open word PvP?

Right right well I mean I think the the big thing there is the fact that you can get resources off of somebody they killed there is always sort of a financial economic reason to engage in PvP and again we'd also agree with the fact that we don't want PvP to really be happening in arenas outside of like sort of a competitive atmosphere right where it's one team versus another team and we have something to prove right there's something fun there to get out of it in the open world we want there to be a reason for you to be fighting over something and that could be a really good resource spawn that could be a caravan that could be somebody developing a node in a place you don't want to node there's a lot of like economic reasons to engage in PvP outside of just the competitive aspect of it you know if you engage it should be because you want something and if you run away it's because you might loose something so that's kind of how we look at that

Yeah for sure yeah I think the world is filled with open world reasons for

Titles and stuff like that though are also really great motivators and it's something that the system probably will have I think that's in the document somewhere

Is there any oh did you have one?

29:28

I had a good one actually Calron says: since traditionally Invisibility is just a combination of really good hide and move silently skills will NPCs patrols guards creatures monsters etc have eyes and ears to see heroes I think I think a baseline of how creatures are no way or attack you based on hearing you or seeing you in the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild so yeah that's something we've talked about and something we actually have in the game right now but we haven't really taken advantage of it yet but it's there it exists as a system and that's different perception modes for different NPC's right one of the I think one again is the best was Final Fantasy 11 back in the day where you had sent you had sight you had magic like there's all sorts of different things that you had to like protect yourself against so that certain mobs couldn't see you and you could maintain that ability to like kind of sneak past easily and I thought that was always really cool I've made those those monsters unique and gave them character outside of just how much damage they did to me you know trying to run away from bogeys is

Or being on the level and like trying to go to a group in the dunes

Yeah I'll remember that forever yeah so that's something that we have right now we will have many different perception modes and just going invisible won't necessarily make you immune to be seeing from everybody mm-hmm and Rangers actually will probably have a good anti invisibility counter of some some some wavelengths

30:59

Yep okay any chance at a Giga Stuffertons world boss?

Ahh Bacon?

What?

McStuffertons

Stuffertons?

世界頭目

World boss Stuffertons? Yeah why not how big how big of a world boss?

I would assume huge

Like Stay Puff Marshmallow Man size of thing?

Yeah the world actually exists within Mc Stuffertons

Oh wow yeah

31:37

So it's a lore leak let's see will the Lord's gods or almighty powers have a strong or week control on the world's events or battles that is faction buffs location access special abilities okay I'm trying to think what that actually means in parse that because the Lord's part could be players right the gods part could just be the server I guess were the devs right I'm trying

I'm not sure if it's metaphorical right

Yeah but I mean players will definitely have a lever there on the world's events in that by doing something or not doing something things happen right and there's always a decision there for you know kind of cleaning up as we've alluded to them like you know playing packs I know leading players do that talking about bosses spawning and just events in the world in general solving a problem can maybe cause a solution or a reward or cause another problem right so I think in that way if we think about it and approach it that way definitely there's agency everywhere for players to affect the world in general

Yeah it's not gonna be just you know a handful of guilds kind of deciding what server happens right unless everybody on the server is a member of one of those guilds right which I don't think is gonna happen you know there's always going to be chaos that can happen due to the actions of one individual right so like if you keep in mind like how our government system works it usually comes down to one or two players being in a guild isn't going to necessarily help you win in a militaristic note right it's going to be whoever the best player is at that moment in time against however many other players decide to take part in that brawl so there's always an opportunity for for people who are not in charge to kind of rise up and change things

33:35

Right absolutely which is one of the cool thing is that just no matter what your station you're able to do something in the world so Blackhole asks: how do you plan on making questing interesting traditionally MMOs have mainly been kill X mobs or such Y items

Yeah so that is one movement so MMOs live and breathe by their content right and sort of having goals kind of at every every level and the way I've looked at that is those like go kill five wolves is is a filler quest right it doesn't really have any relationship to the overall narrative and it doesn't really have any impact one way or the other right so the idea is to take those turn them into sort of like you know goal oriented tasks that have no narrative associated with them you're not going to save the world by going to kill these wolves but you might have some knock-on effect on the node to like take care of that right so that's something you're going to see throughout the world as we continue continue to build it you'll be out in the wild and you'll get tasks and these tasks will just let you know that hey there's an interesting thing happening over here you might want to take care of it and so that's where we put those kinds of quests at is in the tasks system really low narrative we just need some context and then a goal and then you can go handle it or not and then the narratives are going to be way more focused on like telling a story and they'll be multi-part and there will be no killing of five wolves there will be you know trying to accomplish something so

It would be interesting if of you like implemented like compound quests right you know or like you start with this and then I'll sudden it turns into something else and turns into you with a multi-stage right kind of development where as you're going through it you know that the story is unfolding as you're kind of you know handling this quest and then what you end up at the end is like this is awesome

Yeah right and that's that's exactly the intention of the whole system is to kind of create the ability to not rely on those tasks to tell the story but actually tell the story right and that's that's our goal if you went to PAX and you play through that narrative right like that's that's what you can expect from from our storytelling from from our narrative quests is that sort of you know you're not going out to just do this one simple thing and then come back and then do the thing over and over no we're gonna run over again it's gonna be about going out and doing something going out and changing the world in some way whether it's in a large way or small way but yeah I have feelings about that

36:11

One question more I guess more high level right is it's a all-caps that's why I looked at so the first word is crafting comment will it be inspired by you know games like Star Wars Galaxies in terms of complexity so I guess more conceptually how complex do we think our crafting system is gonna be compared to the field?

Yeah I mean Star Wars Galaxies is a great example of it I think Star Wars Galaxies had a great crafting system it's it's lots of things can be said about that game but the resource gathering and the crafting system altogether as a whole really was I think way beyond its time it did a lot of really cool things that I think a lot of people were surprised about and unfortunately hasn't really been copied since at least not in sort of like any big way but that's kind of the direction we want to go where where there's choices to be made in the crafting system and those choices change what you end up with right but it's not just about doing X recipe to get Y item you know there's actually thought involved in it and there is you know a market to be captured based on those decisions

37:25

Yeah for sure this is actually a good question I think because actually almost specifically because we cannot answer it what percent of the game will be PvP to PvE or are you trying to have them both run hand in hand? so I think personally the answer is more so it just depends on what type of player you are we're trying to give as much as we can you know to everybody on the server right that you know typically in my MMO experience in games that have allowed me I will PvE until I hit max level and then just PvP for the rest of my career right and then there's other players who will only PvE you know 100% of time you know so I think in our game especially it's really about the split of what the players you know actual personality type is

Yeah what their goals are right you know I we could certainly see a situation where I start the game as a crafter and that's what I want to do and that's kind of where I want to spend my time and I really don't engage in PvP at all if I don't want to right there there will be opportunities for me to right if if my node gets attacked where I've I could I could bring up a sword and start participating and start helping it out or I could just go somewhere else right like I don't have to participate in that you know the goal in building the game is to have them be equal right that that PvE builds things up PvP brings things down in order to create the opportunity for new things to be created so from our perspective like from our like philosophical perspective we look at them as equal things but we certainly don't want all players to experience 50% PvP and 50% PvE so

For sure let's see

So Peters looking at discord I'm looking at forums

Sorry I'm trying to read these here

39:26

Psym3x the game has a very promising premise thank you but that premise is very dependent on the server's population to work correctly can you give some examples of solutions you have in place for a small population early or later in the game's life? so a lot of this is in terms of a the economy and B the notes right for the economy it really just depends on one of the things that we've talked about for that is is having things that NPCs buy and sell kind of scale based on the economic activity that exists on that server right so that you know as inflation rises prices rise and everything kind of ends up being equal even though there might be a couple of extra zeros so that can go up and it can also go down so as a population leaves things become less expensive and players don't have to do as much to earn that on the other side of things we look at the node system and the node system is set up in this really flexible way that allows us to scale the experience needed to level a node and the attrition that delevels a node to scale based on activity too so you know it's just a matter of adjusting a couple of constants and that goes up and down and the server can watch it and change those on the fly as it needs to so

I mean we have you know target numbers for these types of things okay so it's like when you mention attrition or the building up of them no the creation of a node you know though we have target times for those target numbers and you basically have to see if those targets are met if they're you know if we overestimate if we underestimate and it's the same thing with the economy right you're gonna you get to inflation you have games that okay I had a million gold and now I have ten billion gold right and as long as you have target numbers and are able to dial that in further or back usually you're able to handle that as long as you're on top of it so we

And again it's about building those systems early so they you don't have to deal with that problem later

41:24

Absolutely you don't want to play catch-up ever will there be a secret cow level? I like that question

Secret cow level

Cow level?

Like in Diablo

Oh gotcha there's gonna be some secrets

There you go like that

It may not be cows

41:54

There is another question here that reminded me about that economy question it was along the lines of let's see you ever find it what kind of plan do you have to implement a robust anti cheat system in the game? this is from Xyladon since the economy is going to be such a central element with no soul binding of most items protecting the game from exploits and bots used to accumulate wealth it's critical for the game to survive launch this is something that we totally agree with and again like the nature of the game being so in the hands of players is something we take very seriously and all of us have come from a background of MMOs so we've seen economies rise we've seen economies fall we've seen bad player behavior and we've learned how to deal with it and so that's one of the things that we are implementing from the very beginning it's in the game right now and it's about we can't tell you exactly what those are because we don't want them to be defeated easily but like part of it is watching behavior of players in the game finding errant behavior and having those thing the surface to us in a way that's automated and can allow us to address those things like as it's happening you know so that could take the form of automatic bans it could take the form of like a review process but that information is there and we can see that information in real time so as soon as something gets weird as soon as somebody you know starts showing bot behavior we can zone in on it within a matter of minutes so people are not gonna have an opportunity to get away with too much

I think that since the beginning you know we've always talked about being data-driven and being able to figure out why things are happening the way they are not just for you know people who cheat but for figuring out how the systems are actually being used by players you know it's it's invaluable information to know what players are actually using from races you make to you know how they're using it to know how much input is going there how much output is going there and all that goes into not just cheating but into actually how players are using the game in a legal way so it's just it's it's super important to be data-driven and be cognizant of how much that helps development and the cheating [cross-talk]

I mean it's one of those things like if you you know as a designer you're like ah this quest is gonna be awesome and you don't know that everybody's not taking this quest right and there's you know you know there's supposed to be this really awesome reward that you should be giving out but like you're looking at the data and you're like nobody is taking this stupid quest and you were so excited about so you gotta dig into why are they take not taking it and you know it might be that it's too hard it might be that the reward that you thought was awesome really isn't that awesome it might be that the quest giver is broken and they can't take it so all those things like we can see and it's pretty cool

44:40

Balrog asks will there be any hidden classes or unique unlockable classes?

Probably not hidden classes so not like in terms of like Jedi or actually Jedi is the only one I can think of right now from Starwars Galaxies but but yeah we want sort of everybody to sort of have an equal playing field on that side of things but when it comes to augments that might be a different story we have different organizations we have different guilds we have different religions and all of those things have the opportunity to offer augments to skills and if some of those happen to be hidden and some of those might be you know super secret and you might end up with the tank who has a skill that nobody else has that's totally in the realm of possible

45:30

Are public transport caravans planned where people can go AFK while being driven from town?

Say that again sorry Steven was distracting me he's dancing

Are there public transport caravans planned where you can go AFK and be driven somewhere?

Ahh that's a really interesting idea yeah we actually will we will have some of those 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 so yeah it also might be something now that you say it might be something that could be player-driven you know we're sure to have a taxi system you know where you load up a couple people and you drive them somewhere while you AFK

Hello!

Steven you're back!

How are you doing?

Doing pretty good answering a lot of questions

I see the stream hasn't burned down yet so you've managed well

It's still there

That's good

There's a five second delay so

Oh really what are you guys up to answering questions?

Answering lots of questions yeah

We get through the forum questions this time I know last time we forgot the forum questions [cross-talk]

I've been I've been I've been looking forums

Okay

Coming back and forth

Good awesome well we finished the play test

Fantastic was it good?

It was very good yes it worked you know this is really there's no as you know there's no design elements in the castle just yet from those aren't systems aren't ready yet but this was us at the castle you know I let a little raid into the castle there were some defenders there we had some brawl

So it wasn't it wasn't a peaceful meeting of minds

No it wasn't a peaceful meeting suffice to say the diplomacy didn't work out so well

I see I see

But you know it's okay

Did you win?

The force of will we used diplomacy

I see which is which is a [cross-talk]

Yeah absolutely absolutely no yeah so Tristan's loading that video up I know that we have some also some art that we can show while that's being loaded this stream may go over slightly today which is fine as reparation for the delay we're sorry about that but we thought you guys would be willing to wait in exchange for some progress report visually of what we're working towards which is those Castle siege systems the city siege systems all in preparation for phase one of alpha one so everything's going swimmingly with regards to development [cross-talk] which I'm sure did you guys talk about a little bit about that at all?

Not really

48:07

No okay well as you guys may have heard we did just finish two straight weeks of alpha zero testing which was an accomplishment for us at the studios because

It means the server's were up for two weeks

Right the servers were up for two weeks straight now as you guys also know it is the one-year anniversary of Kickstarter being complete and we're actually pretty proud as a team about that accomplishment having those servers up for two straight weeks with over 2000 participants throughout that time on the alpha 0 testing environment because that is not heard of [cross-talk]

That was solid man

Yeah that it's it's really it's not heard of that that type of development speed is achieved with an MMORPG

yeah not at this stage not now

And I played alot of MMOs I've been a part of a lot of alphas as I'm sure many of you have I've been a part of a lot of betas you typically don't even see that type of event past like yeah three years of development

It's because of what we focused on right like we've focused on the fundamentals of making sure that you know we have all our ducks in a row we're making this really great game and it would be a shame if we launched it and our service crashed oh

Right

Right like those are the that's the backbone that's what they have to [cross-talk] so really focusing a lot of our attention on that and you know it's it's it's cool to be able to use our launcher and to download it and have it hosted and all of these things work seamlessly and [cross-talk]

ANd on top of all those things being player centric like our focus is getting something in the hands of the players that we can iterate on test on get feedback on make you guys a part of the development process not be shuttered away for a three four or five years in the darkness and then we come out with something that people don't like right so I mean the bottom line you know from from our top down we are all about providing an experience that allows us to iterate based on feedback from the players right and the only best way to do that is to get something in their hands [cross-talk]

Actually get it to the players

Absolutely a hundred percent so we're pretty proud of that we did bring on seven new team members who we will be announcing at the end of June are we in June it's June

We are in June June 4th today yeah

Oh my gosh that's crazy time flies we'll announce those individuals the end of June we do have some other interesting developments that you'll likely be hearing about throughout June

Yeah a lot of stuff on the business side of things

Yes a lot of stuff on the business side going on so that's interesting what else?

Capital I

Capital I what else is going on just a general awesome you know past development cycle we've been really proud with with where things are so it's pretty cool what can we show what we got hey Jason can you see if you can help Michael with that parrot with the parrot sorry I can't see what we're going to look at hold on we have our technical director M Mr. Jason Crawford who's an avid magic player and I will add a magic player that plays to not to win just so others get angry [laughter] so you know those of you who play magic know that that color is called blue right which is what Jason loves to play with so yeah that's a interesting tidbit about Jason right now reveling in this information [Laughter]

52:20

All right so what we are looking at right now is concept armor that Mr. Mat Broome lead character artists worked out that there's new armor we're looking you're not gonna see this in the play test right now because it hasn't been implemented yet although this is this set has been modeled yeah it's working on materials right [cross-talk] next week I think we should have that in game yeah have seen these this is a robe concept which was model which was a concept of Mat but modeled by Keith Kovach yeah and this is also being implemented next week right yeah yeah that's pretty cool yeah

Yeah and all the details you're seeing is almost entirely modeled so like you're not just seeing cool like textures on that but like you're actually going to be able to feel the detail

And the great way that that you know Mat and the entire character team has really implemented the construction of these costumes these excuse me these armor pieces is that many of those attachments those designs that are present on the armors they can they can be used to create multiple pieces and rearranged and look completely different on different sets so thematically there's a wide diversity of capable visuals in the game you're not going to see these uniform everybody kind of looks the same you get to a certain level and everybody has this exact looking same pieces right and that's kind of what we want to do it's a new it's a it's a different approach to what probably you're used to but also the important thing is that you know armor that looks good and myself as a player this is important to me armor that looks good and I'm talking like really good is achievable in game doesn't have to be purchased through a paywall okay and I know there are many of us who have played some games that need not be mentioned where the armor you can achieve looks like this and then the armor you have to buy looks like this and that's not very cool

It's not

It's not rewarding

Especially when you're an adventurer right like you're out in the world you're trying to earn your keep and you just killed this awesome boss and I look like garbage afterwards like it should be an epic moment it should reward you for that

I look like I'm wearing a plant suit

Yeah

Do you know what game that is?

Yeah

Rhymes with GBO [laughter]

I have no idea what game you're talking about

55:05

Okay this is actually a modeled weapon so that's the model

We call this weapon a bow

This is a bow what people use to shoot arrows really cool I like it alot I love the that's obviously as you can tell there's some Empyrean influences there with some of the winged accent pieces on the weapon you're likely going to see some of this because I believe the last milestone that you're seeing here had Empyrean influences same here this is elusive crossbow which I believe was shown last stream accidentally but this is the modeled version or was that the potion Lancer launcher

It was both

What do we have here a morning star this is a mace this is a modeled weapon so this is what's going to be in game

Crazy detail

Looks awesome I literally don't really play characters that often use morning stars or maces but I would just for that weapon the detail is amazing what else we got here ooh this is a nice one a longsword some kind of longsword looks like Excaliber that might be copyrighted so it is not [laughter]

I don't think you can copyright Excaliber it's gotta be in the public domain by now

It's been like 500 years

56:30

This is this looks like a piece of environment this is an in-game environmental area I mean I will not say the name of this area but I will say that this was an area done by Mr. Javier Perez awesome environment and material guy senior environmental artist here at Intrepid this is inside that area that shall not be named this is more of that area that shall not be named which looks great some of the rocks those jagged awesome looking rocks that give that whole aesthetic a quote yeah it's okay

Yeah all you see is our necks now normally we can look straight ahead and see

Oh I'm so sorry yes okay there's some reason this isn't working and you don't know this but behind you is a large TV that shows us what you're seeing so that we know what to discuss that's okay how are we doing on the video because we can also chat oh video's ready what what's the matter? oh that's okay this is a mage tower tower mage tower that's a kitty this is John another senior environmental artist here did this mage tower which looks awesome the interior is cool I think you guys did see the University oh yeah yeah customer but university had that large statue that was placeholder statue but that was like the interior of the university which would be attached to this mage tower

58:09

All right we got video so why don't we make sure that when you have the audio source for the video then we turn that way down so we can continue to talk over it okay yeah

I've not seen this yet I don't know what's Steven has done

So guys as you can see here this is a small little attack squad that I was leading just moments ago this is a one of the castles in our alpha zero environment right now in preparation for first phase of alpha one this is very early very very very very early

Steven was it early?

I don't know is it early looks early all of you know the from animations to effects to skills to everything these are first passes you know the purpose of our our testing is to iterate perfect get ready for launch we're going to have a very smooth launch because we're gonna be testing a lot and it's in it's gonna be the smoothest launch

Oh god we shouldn't say that

Oh no what am i doing where's wood find wood okay we're good I knocked on wood we're fine

We're working very hard to make that happen

Yes that is right I mean that is a you know what I'll be honest with you every single MMO I've ever played has had a rocky launch I think it's just a part of MMOs I'm not going to say we won't have obviously things that are come up at launch they're gonna be issue at launch but the most important thing is twofold one testing testing testing two listen listen listen so you test and you listen to your community and you do those two things you should be shipshape

Yeah I agree 100%

So I was hiding admittedly but there was a lot going on in that first area

It's a little scary in there

It was a little a little bit scary and guys I want to impress upon you one more time I know you know this but I'm telling you right now this is we're one-year anniversary from Kickstarter one year anniversary from Kickstarter and this is the degree to which we are testing which is great because the more you test the more opportunity you're hands-on and you can see what needs to change we haven't implemented you're not seeing any implemented combat changes in this right now so those are all being worked up and they're in a separate branch right

Yeah they're not quite ready for primetime yet

You probably will see some of the new combat stuff that we're working on in about a month to a month and a half-ish will start to show [cross-talk]

I think that's probably fair [cross-talk]

Some of that stuff you know in this test environment we have mainly focused on traditional tab targetable systems you know because that's what's easy to get up and running first it lends to that test environment but now we're getting our hands on currently the action oriented stuff and finding the blend the medium between those two play experiences and how they can blend together

Right and how we can use them in tandem

Right so you've seen some type of targetable stuff in the in the future you're gonna see heavy emphasis on action-oriented stuff and then once we nail that we're going to blend the two together

Yeah the action stuff is coming out real fun yeah we've been doing some play tests internally and like what we have so far is pretty exciting

Now I know you that you guys have been you know working with both projectiles and ray cast right

Yep yeah it's it's a different way of doing things than the traditional way but it allows us to do some really fun stuff yeah tactics that are you normally wouldn't see in a MMO and it makes the experience it it gives you a little bit more ownership of your character and what they're doing

You know one one really cool thing you guys are seeing here obviously UI is placeholder however I will say that we did just recently about a month ago implement a new UI tech that we're going to be housing our final UI in and we also brought onboard a new UI engineer as well as outsourcing some UI art immediately but we'll be having internal UI art so but that's going to be shown off probably and again about a month and a half to two months we'll have some iterations on the UI all of this UI's placeholder obviously but really cool thing about being a part of the community for Ashes of Creation is being able to see the project as it progresses and I think it's really cool to go back a year ago and look at what we put out a year ago remember that okay remember we did the the mmm what was that first one that we did it was I can't remember the name of the video it was like two to three months before Kickstarter yeah and it was just he was just swinging remember that he was just swinging and I was like and I think we actually took that video down after I did yeah

Yeah that was those we got some we got some flack on that one

Right now for us it was like hey we've been in the project for less than a month that we're showing you what could be done less than a month like you know whatever and it's just like guys the purpose of a transparent development window is to let you see the process from start to finish now obviously that's risky I've said before it's a two-edged sword a double-edged sword but it's something I truly believe that community needs to see because you become invested in a project you get to see it from start to finish you're not surprised

And it also becomes a touch point right because then you can look back and go like yes wow this has come a long way right it's us didn't form out of nothing right there was a lot of work done to get it to the point where it is now

You know the great thing is I don't think I ever took the video down I think I just privated it so let's say a year from now or six months from now we unprivate that kind of cool

Be nice April Fool's [laughter]

Yeah absolutely I'm sorry I'm I think I'm not a I'm not a good player of our my own game [laughter]

What have you done

I think I died multiple times just a lot I was very tempted to put on some GM armor somebody black holed me but I didn't I should have it was unfortunate and Jeff you weren't in this play test so I didn't have my my right-hand man to protect me

Yeah I'm sorry where were you I failed my Cleric abilities

Where were you? I was looking for a healer yeah

No you put me on this livestream so that you could do that

That's true this is true

Can't be in two places at once although it might have been kind of fun to just show them me playing

Do like live yeah I was thinking about that but for some reason I think the framerate doesn't look good when you live

It doesn't yeah that's a really a point

1:05:42

Yeah although frames in this test were pretty good I think we had about almost 40 people total playing in the test and I was getting capped FPS client-side and I know server was operating at above 60 fps oh that's good

I love those numbers

I know wait until we get a few hundred people fighting in there it would be pretty cool that would be pretty awesome yeah so we're pretty pretty proud with this progress so far what else has been been going on?

Lots and lots of work man

Yeah

Yeah a lot of work

Yeah trying to think we do sprints in two week time periods now so you know at the end of every every two week session we do a big playthrough with the entire office and then we kind of go and take a look at what all the different departments have been doing those last two weeks and it's been really good because as honest and we get to see kind of like what we've really done in that time

Yeah I think now that we transitioned away from that waterfall into you know more agile oriented project management has been really good

Yeah and just for just for keeping you know tabs on everything like it's it's it's good to know like oh this weapon is done I can go and use it now

Right and and on top of that like if there are changes that need to be made they can be made on the run right quick right every sprint you just pop in reprioritize whatever you need to do

Oh we're back on hello

Hi everyone's

So I hope that the one hour delay was worth taking a look at our current castle look what am I saying siege it's not really a siege because there's no mechanics there but yeah just being in the castle and fighting yeah and then in a you know next month you guys will get to see progress from that point yeah so that'll be pretty cool how about some more questions we have more questions?

I don't know I think there's always more question

Probably

We are nine minutes over

Oh are we okay well let's take a couple more questions let's see I have a discord by the way I know that I have not been on discord a lot or on the forums chatting very much it's been a particularly busy past couple of months ish three months well five years for me but that's what it feels like sometimes

Things move faster at Intrepid

Yes

I've got a question

Okay go for it

Farce of nature asks or says I seem to remember at one point or another there was mention of a mobile app linked to the game could you go into details on what features you plan on implementing on this app or did I imagine the whole thing? You did not imagine the whole thing it's something that we are talking about

What was the question about?

Oh my gosh

I'm so sorry I was reading something

It's okay

I opened my phone and I saw something that stuck out

1:08:53

I seem to remember at one point or another there was mention of a mobile app linked to the game could you go into details on what features you plan on implementing?

Yes would you like to go into some details?

Sure so the idea is to make sure that like when things are happening in the world we let you know that's kind of like the big purpose of it so you know if the node you're a part of is being seiged or you know the castle that you're taking is about to go down or your crops need to be rotated events of that nature you need to shift off to your phone and by and large be able to deal with it a little bit you know when it comes to crops rotating those plants when it comes to you know city siege you might not be able to login on your phone but at least you'll know what's happening and you can run to a computer really quick

I'd like to compare the idea behind the mobile app and what systems it's going to interface with on the MMORPG with how I've kind of set up in the past D&D campaigns right like okay you have active material the active material is when you're in a session you're sitting down with other players at a table you have things to do you have roleplay to encounter you have mechanics and fights too that ensue and stuff like that when you're not at the table in the week ensues after this session you have downtime conversations with all the players and they can you know run their business they can manage their guild that they've established their leadership feat they've taken their followers they can craft they can do all that kind of stuff the mobile app kind of is akin to that idea that there is some non active mechanics that are present for you to participate in when you're not at the computer when you're out and about or on vacation or you know wherever you may be you can access that downtime stuff from your phone and that's a way for you to stay connected and that's that's kind of the idea that behind you know how we want that mobile to interface with the game

Yeah good question yeah great question

What else we got one more let's do one more question

One more

Whoever finds one first

Okay what do you got?

1:11:19

Okay I got maybe one okay weapon progression has been mentioned here there but never elaborated on what do we get from progressing a weapon can we change our weapon skill and/or unlock extra weapon skills to put on our action bar?

Yes consider a weapon to a degree a very minor degree but consider it to be its own class yeah it has its own skill progression tree it has its own equipment in the sense that you can augment a weapon you can enchant a weapon right in a way it's it's sort of its own class progression

Yeah I can totally see it [cross-talk]

Yeah and and what we want that to be for you I mean okay Ashes of Creation is all about providing providing many progression paths right the reason why we don't like the term endgame is because with the amount of progression that's available with the amount of diversity and player agency that that impacts the world but the way the node systems work there are so many things that players can do we kind of want the the a weapon system and add an element of that as well right that's just another version of a path that you can go down to better something so you know you can determine special effects that proc from currently the combo system right you can determine ancillary effects that proc based on enchantment types you can power stone weapons to add different either elemental types of damage and/or energy that kind of play rock paper scissor with player defenses right you know those are those are systems that and then you can skill tree out how those effects that are granted through the combo system work right you can make them better you can branch them off into a different direction

And change the order of them

Exactly yeah so good question yeah okay very cool well again sorry for the delay I hope you guys enjoyed the video we do have our next live stream is going to be a month from today I believe let me double check I think I had made it right oh no that's July 4th okay right so it'll likely be a we'll announce when that is oh we had one more thing that we were going to show

What was that?

Which are the new cosmetics

Oh

Yeah right do we have I think they're in I think Ryan put them into the channel thing I don't know if we can do that yeah just pop it in there it's in updates sorry guys we will give you a sneak peek the existing woodlands cosmetics will be coming down and when Peter about

After the stream right

After the stream about an hour tops probably 30 minutes ish and then these will be going up afterwards are they there? there they are yes oh my gosh I love that little dude all right so first up we have a pet oh really is it super big it's super big oh these are like dying candies nice very nice alright so there's a little pet I won't reveal everything you'll find out the names in about three hours you just get to see the images so weird this is a pet oh my

It is just black

It's gargantuan

Oh wow

This is the darkness you can purchase the darkness oh no this is uh this is the ship an awesome in the center is that sextant slash radial sundial that has some history behind it which you may find out in the description when it goes up oh this is uh your favorite

This is my favorite

This is your favorite

Face turtles

I prefer the term galactic

Oh galactic turtles oh that guy is so cool now remind me you want the the shell to only appear that cosmic material if in the shade is that what it is?

As it moves


As it moves

As it moves all the stars in the nebula you see kind of shift

Right ok very cool I love it oh this is one of the costumes or this is the costume this oracle this lover of the stars that's awesome I love the head mask on that

Yeah that really cool

That head mask is amazing I think I would just wear that to work every day

A little weird Steve

What?

I'd be a little weird

How's that weird imagine the powers it gives you

I mean we'd be in a meeting or something

Yeah and then I would turn you into dust [laughter] burying you that's awesome that is a observatory it's a skin a Vek Observatory for the freeholds and that will take place for one of the profession buildings yep that we have yet to touch on which is another one and that face mask

Another huge one

Another giant one