Talk:2017-05-04 Dungeon Crawler Network podcast interview with creative director Steven Sharif

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Character count: 57937 | Duration in seconds:3839 | Characters per second: 15.09

[Music] [Music] welcome everyone to a very special podcast episode tonight I am Michelle OHS founder of the dungeon crawler Network and I am joined by the one the only steven sharif creative director over at Intrepid Studios and makers of well hopefully the MMO that brings back greatness to our genre ashes okay hopefully I got a preface got a preview I got a lot of faith in this okay a lot of things okay oh yeah hello chatroom thank you so much for showing up tonight we've got a fun fun show for you make sure you stick around after this interview because we are going to go ahead and jump right into our normal MMORPG news and discussion where we're going to go talking dead style and we'll probably analyze everything that you said Steven just so you know oh that sounds fun why am i why am I not on that I should be on that too now I'm just kidding that's what you can be we're just going to be light on it so let's go ahead and just jump right into these questions that we prepared for you we've broken down in several different sections we're going to talk a few things about nodes classes progression some crafting questions and a few little miscellaneous stuff that we're thrown in and if we have time Steven was nice enough to say hey we can actually add some questions from chat we'll see how we go so first off congratulations on hitting Kickstarter in like 12 hours well hey thank you it's 11 hours and 7 minutes and 22 seconds to be exact what were you sitting there with like a stopwatch just go oh yeah just like click clicking refresh refresh resident that is all that's like one of the fast is the ones I think I've ever seen happy I think we we had a discussion today with an interviewer from PC gamer and he said we were the fastest funded MMORPG Kickstarter over 500k so it is pretty exciting and we're getting close to reaching our first stretch goal as well as first backer goal that you've said so we'll talk about that a little bit yeah but before we did that you guys released a big video on metropolis is yeah like a few weeks we could share before your actual Kickstarter and one of the questions that a lot of people had was and and I don't want it like you mentioned that these things can be destroyed but the effort needs to be equal to the amount of effort to build up one of these metropolis absolutely yeah a hundred percent we don't we don't want the we don't want them the mechanic that allows for meaningful conflict to catalyze change in the world to be something that's lightly undertaken if you're going to institute change for a system that involves as much as the node system involves then you're going to have to commit as much resources as it took to create that node and and what this means is you're going to see I mean if you're talking about the metropolis stage you're going to see a battle on the server that's representative of potentially months worth of work and you know it's going to be something that is epic it's server defining and and that's something that we wanted players to have the opportunity to to do what rises can fall but it can also successfully defend itself you know so yeah absolutely I mean like you said everything that players do they will be contributing to their home node instance or not instance but you know their home node where they're planning their routes everything they're doing but this could bit take like you techniques or even months of effort so absolutely and I know a lot of the finer details will probably be hammered out via alpha beta as they always are but with rod scope of things like how are you seeing the state like the the siege mechanics taking place like are people going to need to quest in order to earn experience or their sees or do you know any of that yet or gather well I mean there's there's so let me preface everything obviously we say is this is pre alpha discussion obviously and and the reason for alphas and betas is tis to test these these systems these mechanics so you know everything I'm going to tell you is is subject to that condition but currently the way that it is working is as you are a citizen of a node and you're developing that city and advancing the the mechanics of that city there are certain buildings that are available certain quest lines that are available there are systems in place to allow you to dedicate resources time commitment questing you know guilds have a role to play individual players have a role to play in preparing for certain events and one of those events as you said is a potential siege against another node so there's there's a lot of different systems that that build build into that culmination of a fight against another nodes citizens so yes just a short answer is there's a lot of systems in place that players will go through who are participating and preparing for that siege ok excellent excellent yeah I know it's something that kind of I don't want to say bothers me but when I see some of these more PvP oriented players coming in going this game is going to be you know like I'm going to remember this from Dark Age of Camelot or no I'm like yeah those things click and every minute is going to absolutely no no no no this is something so the the concept of PvP in our game falls under a pillar that I refer to as meaningful conflict and something loses meaning if it is so whimsical if you're capable of changing you know a server with with the the flick of a wrist you know then that's something that's not meaningful to people that's just something that's overly repetitive it's going to be redundant and and just not not hold any actual impact on on people in this game I wanted this type of system to reflect a lot of hard work so you know it needs to be a payoff mechanic you know it needs to be a a time sync relay drew satisfaction because in my opinion that couples well with our philosophy of risk versus reward you're risking that time you're risking that that that development and you know without that risk the reward is just not that sweet absolutely absolutely I can tell you if I can lose the keep or a castle or a town you know in a day like I wake up and it's gone I'm not going to want out actually yeah in this time right absolutely so just to just explain a little bit further on this mechanic you know different stages of nodes have different declaration periods so when an individual will complete the necessary prerequisites towards initiating that declaration they'll go to lay the declaration a period of time will exist between that declaration and the actual siege and that period of time is dependent on the advancement of the note if you are at a stage 3 village node that time period maybe one or two days you'll have a one or two day notification a server wide notification that a siege has been initiated against this node the citizens have time to prep they have time to call for allies and they have time to allocate node funds towards enhancing the defenses of that of that node and prepare for this assault if it's a metropolis that time period maybe a week before the siege actually takes place so you have this this this type of gosh how do I describe it it's just anticipation if you are either an attacker or a citizen and I want people to feel that type of anticipation and it's going to be you know that weak period of time now when the siege is complete if the defenders were successful there will be a cooldown period between when a siege can be initiated again and that cooldown period will likely equal around ten times the declaration time so a metropolis level node is really only going to be able to experience one siege / you know for fire way about eight weeks now less than eight weeks a little less than eight weeks very nice very nice you mentioned that city leadership would have control over taxes in a node zone of influence or zeal I think you need to advance the stage now here's something I was really curious when I first heard this do you guys have envisioned any kind of controls in place that would prevent absolutely yeah no no it's not it's not like it's not like you're an elected official and you can just impose from the council you know like I've taken all the money and leaving no no so like mechanics are in place for nodes to excise taxes on freeholds on services within the node and even to collect taxes from services and freeholds that exists within sub nodes that are under you know the region like if you have a metropolis that metropolis within as EOI is going to have villages and towns and potentially cities and they're going to have taxes as well and it's going to flow to the government of the metropolis and and so on down the down the stage tree but these these taxes get they get held in a in a in a node fund and in a city fund that can only then be allocated to certain mechanics within the city for example if you want to dedicate defense spending you can allocate those funds towards guards towards barracks towards towards city walls and defenses you know if you want to if you want to build up your marketplace and increase the the the funding towards the the stock options of the city or or trade routes that need to be developed between other nodes you know that you as a city official who've been elected you have domain over those allocations you actually cannot take the funds for yourself excellence yeah that's what I was kind of worried about Lynn's I heard I'm like this just going into one giant Bank that at the end of my term I'm like well I'm getting elected out of here so I'm sure that everything and run that would be you got to have a little more faith in us from a design aspect you know I definitely know that the industry has led you to believe otherwise but again I am NOT an industry background I'm a gamer so I have the same thought you would have and I've made sure to account for that good see you were already prepared for that like right I'll have that case as a gamer I jumped there and you're like no I won't on that as you mentioned before these nodes being a massive undertaking will take portions of entire server community doing activities in a certain node zone of influence to build it up can you tell us a little bit more about you know what kind of content within an oboe players have access to to help the nodes overall effort you know like what types of feelings agile should cut out there a little bit I'm sorry could you repeat that question sure sure I'm curious about the day-to-day activities that players are going to be able to do within a certain node in order to grow like you said you mentioned stuff like for various quest yet tasks and write narrative quests and stuff like that you know like the average player coming out and doing his work in the day like what things can we do well that's a good question I mean this is a this is a MMORPG obviously and there's a lot of things that go into an MMORPG there's there's character advancement there's community advancement there's tasks there's events you know there's narrative play and and as nodes advance I'm sorry hold on Gary once I got a little out in the background sir sorry my team was getting a little out okay so anyways they're working on the game it's all guy now they are we're kind of game but anyways there are there are these you know Oh anything you can think of in regards to adventuring and class development there there is a religious class you can advance there's a artisan class that you can advance there's resources that you need to be able to collect there's free holds and housing that you need to be able to develop there's there's processing plants for industry there's trade between nodes there's monsters to kill there's there's storylines to explore there's me there's narratives that relate to you and the overarching world there's there's dungeons and raids there's I mean there's a whole bunch of stuff that falls into what makes an MMORPG great that's going to be in this world absolutely excellent yes and so people are pointing out since they wanted to see it my cat she shows up in every single podcast I can't see you'll have to watch a video afterwards every bad cat she just died off this time being here so we actually have another question here about different types of nodes but I'm actually going to ask the same question from chat because it fits in here this is from D ygz question was or not not sorry not that one just yet Dante 9 109 because ask about is there a chance for an island node and with that the question was will these nodes be seamed around zones racist people that show up are will players have a choice either via vote or a GUI system determine the aesthetic of their city are the types of quest tasks that they can do in so that's it that's a good question so first part of that will there be nodes on islands well there are islands that exist in the game and and nodes cover the entirety of the map so it is fully possible for a node to appear on an island and given that there is enough activity there from the player base to warrant that no development in regards to the flavor of the architecture and a node the way the node system works is if you're a character who's collecting experience you have markers that denote your race and when you give experience to the node by just doing your normal activities that experience is tagged with your racial marker and when the node develops it will represent in its architecture what the predominant racial marker was in contribution to its development so to answer your question short yes nodes will reflect the predominant race in its development okay excellent excellent all right scrolling back I'll add a bunch of questions the chat room is just jumping to there's so much hype for this now how will the type of node be determined you know you mentioned there scientific military divine economic will these be predetermined by the node or will they be determine later at the node progresses based on the players and what they're deciding to do so as it stands now types are predetermined based on certain location factors as I said knows exists all throughout the world and the location of said node will determine its type but this type will be will be a noticeable it will be gosh what's the word it will be seen at the first stage of development when the first stage when a node propagates real-time assets in the world is basically these NPCs these merchants that come into an area and they offer services and/or you know of stores or whatever the deal may be you will see the flavor of the node from those merchants so if it's a military node you'll see military people if it's a merch if it's an economic node you'll see merchants if it's a scientific one you'll see scholars and if it's a divine one you'll see priests and clerics so players will have a very firm understanding of which which node is which type in order to know how they want to progress excellent oh that's a good one I'll get to that in a second de trapo so tropas also from Tamriel foundry had a question about epi later we'll add that to the end again alright moving on here talking about classes at this point from what we got predetermined for people in chat room I see we're getting tons of questions I'm trying to write them in as we get them but I'll hold your questions till as you get closer towards the end that way we can ask them if we have time I have a couple of them written in but we're getting tons of them because a lot of people are excited classes earlier you mentioned there 8 starting classes tank fighter summoner road ranger mage cleric and bard with the abilities sub class and swap and be able to swap the subclass least that's what you were thinking originally do you know if there's going to be a way to switch the main class Comet akin to like Final Fantasy 11 or 14 with their job system or is that character locked in for its lifetime I don't have an answer for that one yet that's still a discussion that we're we are looking into so I know that there's going to be versatility on the players and for changing the subclasses I don't know if that's going to to be a function available for the primary class it's very likely that it will through potentially you know some kind of quest system that allows you to basically subclass your primary class and get a different subclass on the on the main character so yeah we'll see excellent excellent yeah I was just curious playing that one so now when you're adding a subclass and this is something that kind of it goes into a little bit more combat mechanics hmm you're saying it's we're adding a secondary class class yes that's alright class okay whatever you want to call it you know I'm for instance I'm going to be like you said a fighter who has a chargeability mage and now becomes like a teleport uh-huh um yeah now you're saying you're not going to add any new skills but you're said you're going to augment the current class skills correct one yeah um it's been noted like in various place such as community discord as well as some of the forms stuff about people saying well what about going the same class for both main and sub yeah is that a pop game what kind of benefit I was you actually see by going like mage mage for instance so when you choose your secondary class the same as your primary you're basically doubling down on your role you're doubling down on what your archetype represents so you're going to to experience augments that will enhance a primary skills a purpose so to speak and and it really just lets you specialize in your and your build you know the flavor that a sub that a second I got me saying so plus but a second day that a secondary class offers is is to customize your primary classes archetype in a way you want it to to perform and and if you're going with the same archetype class for your secondary class then you're just as I said doubling down on your on your role okay all right all right very cool because yeah I'm sitting there going I wonder what what these benefits would actually do now have you guys thought about in mechanic's wise how these things are going to function like are different classes going to have a different feel and play style like are they going to be aimed more towards a very specific niche role like such as a rogue you bring a rogue along to pick traps they do maybe some CC related self he's like are you looking at it in that classes are going to be more specific in their roles and then you can hold and we are I think I think we are doing that I think that that it may not be as niche as you said but it there will be a degree of within a certain role and your customization of the character and choice and skills and augments will play within that degree but yes I think that that's that's a good description of how our classes will play and in that role of different archetypes okay seeing more of a tab well not tab target but we'll say a hybrid system between tab and action you're not a full action which thank goodness for that I write they become sorry for anyone who likes full action but those tight end define them to be very boring because when you can just spam action stuff a lot of the challenge comes out of a lot of the fighting especially PvE content because it's just a it's just a Sam slam your face against your keyboard hope you hit the right buttons but can you tell us a little bit about how classes will function differently such as like tab target working well for a mage and maybe melee but how is this hybrid system going to work between melee and range classes so our hybrid system uses elements of tab targeting and of positioning and movement it also includes some some keystroke time frames as well as uh dodge and move mechanics it kind of is a culmination of all of those things into one it's it's very it's kind of difficult to explain without actually you know you playing it but it is I hit it or offer I think you have an outfit I do Payton I know but you know I wanted to reach the appropriate blend between skill oriented combat as well as a functionality of targeting ability certain abilities and using strategy so I mean there's there's two forms of combat their skill and strategy and sometimes when you're too heavily on the action side of a targeting action targeting you lose the strategy aspect of it I mean that's just my personal opinion so you know I think it's a very comfortable blend as a hybrid system between action oriented and positioning and and strategic choices yeah it's difficult to explain and words I don't know no I I get what you're saying and actually I'm going to try to pronounce the name Shaw's auctioneer and chat made pretty much my next question exactly being a hybrid system with hitboxes how are these going to work our dodge is more of like a like a cool-down thing will it be kind of like an invincibility frame like when you hit dodge there might be a character animation dodge but you're just invincible similar like how Guild Wars 2 does it that's a good question that's a very good question my-my-my lead designer who is who is an expert in our blueprints would have a good answer for that be the that I know that I know that our dodge and movement mechanics are going to include you know templated skills in in positioning and if you're not under that template as it progresses then you're not going to be hit and dodge will allow your character to move from that template obviously so it's kind of like um I don't know that's I would have to have Geoffrey explain a little bit more detail on that understand III didn't want it like side strike use some of these now okay got 11 questions like when you said Hybrid a lot of people are like what does this mean and it looks like chat's pretty happy with a lot of these so that's that's that's really cool so we're going to go ahead and move on from from this part we're gonna move on to progression character progression we know the game uses a standard leveling system I say standard but you know you get it you know one to fifty whatever but what other kind of character progression will there be like do skills receive experience do they level up as well are there plans for a sort of alternate advancement in the future are some sort of horizontal progression once you actually there is yeah so I mean our our game kind of breaks down from from a progression standpoint into your adventuring class your artisan class and then there are different components in regards to what religion you focus on how your race advances what your guild may progress as what you may have individual achievements as a solo player for your story narrative and all of those can offer different augment abilities and they're not all vertical some of them are horizontal and there are there are racial structures in place there there's a hierarchy and in the church you know there's there's a lot of different options that allow you to augment that that primary archetype you've chosen with augment abilities that reflect different progression types not just your secondary class but but what religion you're using or you know just a lot of different customization excellent all right I'm really excited because a lot of Chad's just loving these questions right now I'm so excited that people actually are enjoying some of these oh it's going to get off this ever and my team is going to come and hit me with a club now I'm just like you're giving away all the information what a podcast it's like a well as I said before you know when when when my bill comes in for the Kickstarter well we can do our next podcast we'll both have black and blue eyes or something there we go oh yeah all right so PvP progression I'm trying to keep these quick and we gotta move on for PvP focus player what kind of PvP progression is there going to be will there be ranks to advance three or four more PV the more you PvP are engaged and ours are more of a karma based system where your karmic standing is affected by PvP actions similar like how Ultima Online did you know example being blue versus red players no I think that that PvP I mean obviously there's a whole bunch of different types of PvP in the game there's a lot of different systems that relate to PvP whether it be the castle sieges the node sieges the caravans the guild wars you know these battlegrounds excuse me hold on a second these battlegrounds that exist in the world there's also our arena systems and in rankings and ladders that are associated with our arena system and as players progress in the arena system specifically they're going to accumulate a sort of a sort of legacy these legacy points that that relate to to how you can progress with with with different in-game PvP items that might be accessible with PvP related potion and advancements it's just kind of stuff that relates to to more the arena system and and that might expand outside into some of those battleground stuff as well we'll see nice PvE progression for the PV what types of PvE progression will be available players you know like dungeons and raids oh my gosh limit been set or status I mean we're thinking that the group limit is going to be 8 to reflect to reflect the a dark types we're thinking that the raid side is going to be around 40 obviously that none of the stuff is set in stone but yeah that mean that the PT content we're looking at dungeons that are that are either solo able or even can condense ins that are applicable to obviously the group dungeons that might be raid dungeons epic bosses I mean for me in order for I think that there's a yin and yang and MMORPGs between PvP and PvE and if one is stronger than the other then the then the game suffers so you know a lot of people think oh this is a very key VP centric game well it couldn't be further from the truth our PvE is really going to be the bread and butter of what makes that PvP meaningful so we're going to build the heck out of these raids and these dungeons that are going to be applicable and I mean it's just going to be so much content there that's that's available content also that's that's chosen by the players and how they develop the world excellent a couple questions from chat that kind of directly relate to this and I'm going to try to pronounce these names if anyone's watched any show I've ever done name pronunciation is probably the worst thing I'm at so please don't be offended abdi man sorry I asked can you ask if there's going to be PvP gear or PvE gear I think you mentioned it before that it's pretty much this on like everyone just gear excellent gear is epic just in and of itself it will not be epic PvP or PvE gear it's just going to be you know what gear you have perfectly love it I think this is elite Leu ie sorry I can't pronounce it can you ask about the purpose of pets and looting do they pick things up for you or will they so Ludington we did have something along like like we're getting close to the cute kittens and puppies pet yeah oh my god yeah oh so the question is are there gonna be pets to pick up stuff um we we were talking about that actually a couple months ago about having pets that pick things up I mean picking stuff up can be a bit monotonous and you know obviously that's a functionality that a lot of players like and it's something we're considering right very awesome only so now we were mention about opening world open world stuff as well um because like in one of your first note videos which I loved by the way I love the art style you said about the epic dragon coming out which you probably a world boss at that point right right oh yeah how do you guys plan and this is the eternal MMO question right the Zerg mentality that open world bosses tend to have that people just rush in they can negate pretty much all mechanics is do you have something no yeah no no I don't like that that's that's I mean those those raids should should involve very specific mechanics that that are problem-solving mechanics four four four raids to overcome I mean that's half the fun is is a challenge not from a challenge that you can just serve and complete because that's not a challenge that's just getting the people together this is this this raid should have specific mechanics that that players will have to learn and test in order to complete so yeah I wouldn't say that that's a worry of mine at all that that content can just be Zerg down thank goodness because I know that was you know a little sell story here but you know Guild Wars 2 had this whole thing they actually got better near the end so don't don't give that first like they're having these big epic world bosses and they were very big and pretty but when you got down to it if you had enough players you didn't even really have to pay attention alright later on they adjusted and did some things that actually made it a little bit more difficult a super hard so it's kind of hoping that was something you guys had mind oh absolutely excellent final question here for progression what are the main sources of experience for players as they level layer we look inquest is the grinding more dungeon like obviously during alpha beta you guys will probably be looking at the numbers and going Dungeons give too much experience we got to cut that back but will there also be a type of group aspect that actually encourage you to play with other players this is an MMO after all right I think so I think I think community being such a central pole right you know we want to incentivize players to to group I think that that the game is being built you know for that group perspective while at the same time keeping in mind solo players but I think the short answer to that would be tentatively yes yeah sure I mean hey there's got to be something you're still early development so this is about as pre-alpha as you can get ladies and gentlemen the game with us already but it's you know anyone who knows anything about development these things take time and as you're going through iterations of things you may have a plan for something but when you get there going doesn't quite work we gotta gotta gotta shake this up a little bit a hundred percent drafting I love crafting alright you guys mentioned that top quality gear will be able to be crafted and dropped and from PvE bosses how do you intend to structure the gear economy so that both remain relevant that one doesn't take over from the other well I think that our that our that our gear is a blend between boss gear and crafting gear I think that um that are the mechanic we're moving towards with the artisan class and crafting is that you can deconstruct this boss gear and and potentially craft it as a master crafter obviously there's a give-and-take there between using what you've achieved to to gather an ability to prefer to produce more of those things but I think there needs to be a comfortable blend between what you can achieve as a server with these epic bosses and then also rewarding people who master their craft in class with the ability to produce you know top-tier gear um will this this this crafting class is uh that you mentioned is this actually separate from your main class like you can pick it up in conjunction with or is this something that you dedicate to no this is this is something that you this is something separate from your adventuring class this is your artisan class falls into three categories you can progress in the artisan class as a gatherer you can progress as a processor or you can progress as a crafter an item creator and the the comfortable aspect between those three kind of kind of resembles that of a Trinity class system but for crafters there's an inner dependency between the roles of a gatherer processor and an item creator that that creates reliance on on all three categories of the artisan class okay so you you're essentially if you said you're picking one of these three things for your for your crafting and that's what you focus on a couple questions kung fu kung fu masa masa I love that name to add on to the crafting question will player will player 2 player trading be available to help different nursing classes so if you're if you're an artisan but you're not a gatherer you're going to need to get it from somewhere right absolutely oh yeah player trading exists 100% of the economy is is dependent on you know what what Jonathan can do over in region 1 and how Steven and region 2 can benefit from Jonathan's time excellent you actually asked I love that you mentioned that because you actually asked one of my questions about gathering but a few other questions that we're at meet meet this meet our M EEP I am us sorry will resource gathering be a manual a spec like players actually hitting a resource notification of automated generation that's a very that's a very good question so it right now we have discussion about about harvesters and if you're a citizen of a node that has a Zeo I and in that voi is some vein of misrule or vein of iron or you know a forest or whatever you if you own a freehold you have the ability to place down a harvester for those things and that will give you a return over time for resources potentially until that vein is depleted and there will be you know limited spots and veins pop up around the region that are kind of randomly and then also it's a manual thing as well if you come across something that's that's either one time harvest and it's not that kind of vein situation you can harvest it manually you'll be able to go to the vein yourself and harvest it manually as well but you know we wanted to add bonuses to the gathering class that reflect your citizenship of an area as well right will crapper be able to take like boss drops example being epic dragon saying you know our holy sandal whatever I don't know and use it to either crack or augment current gear to make it more powerful so like will this be tasks only available from player crafters and not NPCs like if it's possible so I'm sorry repeat that one question more I just said like pop up on my photos that go ahead actually one more time more or less epic crafting material drops from a boss will and the player who gets it will say he's not a crafter can he take that to a crafter and say can you please augment my bow yes yeah for sure I think that there's going to be functionality for that right and we mentioned about like you said the the Trinity of crafting what you know will you you know we got the artisan we got the processor and we got the gather will there be specializations for these three like I am the best of swordsmith I am the best at mining or I'm the best lumberjack you know stuff like that like can you specialize they're sort they're sort of is yes there are professions that lie within each path and and you can be you can dedicate you know further double down on your focus by by progressing some of those professions okay and finally when you have that epic piece of crafted gear or drop gear MMO goat in chat ask we'll armor weapons be unbound our bound are both we're leaning heavily towards a very unbound system in the game we'll gear degrade and break yes gear can degrade and break and not the kind of meaningless degradation that you've seen in other MMORPGs if we're going to have a system that includes a lot of includes primarily unbound gear then you have to have some sort of sink to counterbalance the creation aspect of items so we're going to see gear degradation and potentially even breakage that then would require a portion of the materials and a craft are capable of crafting that item in order to repair it I feel like you need a golfclap right now because that's it's fantastic news a lot of things that make economies so stale and modern emmos is that bane of the bound items that never braaap so loosely what's the point like the innovation gets nuts like you I have an epic piece of gear that never breaks I'm never going to need anything else why would I buy that drop that you just got when this epic sword is better and will be win forever that's so true I mean like I said you know I came in to to to make Ashes of Creation because I as a gamer was just getting fed up with certain mechanics that were becoming so prevalent in the genre that I love you know whether it be that pay to win cash grab or these bound items that that make an economy worthless in such a great game it's like why I just kept playing games and every night I would think to myself why are these developers doing those why is this designer like do these people even know it artists I would get so heated absolutely that it kind of just drove me to say you know whatever I'm gonna do it myself no one else could do it right I'm gone it's there all right and I know obviously there's a you know there are people that enjoy different things I am aware of that you know we're not we're not aiming to be a game that's going to to make everyone happy that you can't do that if you set out to do that you no matter what you're going to fail what we're doing is you know we're taking specific examples and seeing who does this resonate with in the MMORPG community and it's been very apparent that these past couple days pick this this resonates with a lot of people a real absolutely does I mean if you're looking at chat room right now they're just going nuts like they're they're excited fantastic so that's going to end our crafting side we got a few miscellaneous questions and if we still have a little bit of time we'll open up two more directed I've got a couple questions out of chat chat room you guys have been fantastic I know you guys been asking tons of questions I've been trying to grab the ones that are relevant to the line of questioning then we'll get into more freestyle last little bit of questions from us and then we'll we'll go from there this was coming from a role player perspective so what kind of extensive lore e modes world building will there be what kind of role player support or even thought was put into the production of Ashes of Creation so before I even you know got a team to help build this project you know lore was in my mind like how what what happened to this world where did its people go and and what brought them back and obviously for me story story is is very important to to immersion and I I've been very careful not to reveal too much about the lore and the story and I know that people are just hungry for it I understand that because I myself love Lauren story but I feel like sometimes if you if if you reveal that aspect of a game it's like watching a trailer for a movie that just tells you the whole movie upfront and says you know here's the end of the movie don't bother watching us like I want players to experience this storyline does this lure and I'll elaborate a little bit more on the setting as time develops but just to be clear this this this Ashes of Creation game is more than just an MMORPG it will become a franchise that that expands beyond the game and its story will translate into many different iterations I believe over the coming time there we go excellent excellent um it's funny you say it because I think one of the very first questions I think I even asked you was what kind of war is there I think I was one of the first nights religious so like our first interaction was where's the lore man and I do understand what you mean one of my favorite aspects of of some games like particularly Elder Scrolls series was the lore that you tried to find out but they never told you the answers to such as like the Dwemer disappearance right I really knew but every game you're just like I can't find out why no I'm glad they never told me because that was just something that that's a great hook yeah absolutely it's a great hook all right so given that there's a karma system in the game we talked about you know if you're attacking a noncombatant player that's not in a PvP area you're going to be a baddies so you know it's very red player blue player also online now with that being said with karma is this going to extend into like maybe a some form of stealing system aka like Elder Scrolls online for PvE are more like TV or PvP side and Ultima Online where you could possibly steal resources that a person's carrying or maybe a looted item that's not bound to them that's in their bag or something well are you talking about if you were to if you were to kill a player are you talking about just like I can walk up next to and take something let's go with the latter part first and I'm curious about the killing someone too you know okay so the latter part no there is not a theft mechanic for you to walk up to a player that's alive and steal something that's not in the game and the first part of it is you know our our our flagging mechanic revolves around basically you know death penalties in general like what type of death penalties occur in the game and and while you cannot be level from dying you can accrue negative experience and and this experience debt reflects certain certain penalties that you'll experience from a combat effectiveness both in PvE and PvP stat degradation lowered health and mana less proficiency and gear equipment and being able to do things the more you accrue the the more difficult it will be to perform which is why through death you need to recover that negative experience and you can do that by continuing to adventure to you know do quests to do it based practice a combatant you're going to experience a normal death penalty if you die as a combatant a person who's involved in PvP you will experience less less less unless you like it you'll experience less death penalties if you die as a corrupted player a person who has murdered a noncombatant someone that was not participating in PvP with you then you're going to experience three or four times the death penalties and and we want to obviously give players the opportunity to exercise some agency in the open world but at the same time there has to be a risk versus reward and if you're going to go around murdering someone you're going to be become completely ineffective over time if you just continue to do it furthermore if you are a corrupt player and you are you're killing other other players people who want to track you down that have that bounty hunter status you know which is going to be a toggleable skill that will have a cool-down associated with it so you just can't go back and forth to try to find them and you know you're not susceptible to attacks on them they can go out there and they can they can track down these these murderers and they can kill them and in addition to the death penalty you'll be if you're corrupt you will have the ability to drop your gear your actual gear if you're corrupt so there's there's again risk worse versus reward we want to deter people from making the game at gank box it's not going to be a game it's not going to be a murder box you know just from the stringent deterrence of our of our corruption system and flagging system I know it won't be I played similar games that had similar flagging systems and it wasn't that gank box but at the same time we mean set of eyes players to to have that meaningful conflict you know we're unabashed about that aspect absolutely all right so we're nearing the end of our questions here so I'm going to be asking a few that were from chat but last one that I have is you mentioned that in the past that you're not doing the multi gilding option which thank goodness I I hate that it really it will it takes away from the community aspect when you're like I can be a part of just a million gilt you know like right you know you join a guild because it has one thing we do you interact with the members now you don't care you're only there for whatever reason you're not building a community so I'm glad you decide to go with that route but with that being said like how are you how are you going to do guilt are they going to be tied to a character are they going to be tied to accounts like if I join the dungeon crawler network guild that we in the game am I tied to that when all my characters are just the character no no no just just on your character you join with yeah so if you have alt alts in your in on your account those alts could join another guild I mean you got to remember if you're having an open world non faction based game intrigue espionage is a very important role intelligence gathering and and that's a an aspect that maybe us who are part of guilds don't really enjoy but it is a legitimate aspect of the game and people who create alt characters they could join you know inconspicuously on an enemy guild or something and gather intelligence i wouldn't restrict ever your guild association with your account your gills association is for your character you are playing that character that character is its own person and can do you know is here's a part of me go absolutely with that being said this is from chat jg 4wd and these names will there be Guild Wars can i there are absolutely yes you can wage war and those those guild wars aren't going to be you know 30 minutes or an hour that they'll be as long as well there won't be as long there I don't know exactly like them it may take days to complete the guild war so to speak but there will be Mechanics for surrendering and winning and that kind of stuff nipple booty and jackets nipple booty I can you go into depth on guild guild hall anything to pretty much do with guilds liberty so so you know myself you know I've run a large guild for 14 years and hmm I wanted to make sure that that the aspect of guild play and Ashes of Creation is very in-depth and that includes leveling guilds and skills associated with the guild and and achievements at guilds Ken hat can have guild halls and their functionality castle systems I mean it's going to be there's going to be a lot of things you can do as a guild not to say that that as a player who doesn't want to be a part of a guild can't have a lot of things to do as well it's just going to be specifically in regards to guild yes there is a great depth of functionality there all right excellent um Cash Shop related I was mentioned that Cash Shop Cosmetics would be recolors of existing items you can earn in-game is this true is you know is that something that's going to happen will there be a balance between what is in the cash shop versus what is in in-game because obviously some of these more modern game Cosmetics every new attic was cow I don't like that I don't like that so so obviously there are cosmetics that will be achievable in the game and they will be on par with cosmetics that are achievable through the cash shop we're going a very hard no pay2win stance on the game and that means that our cash shop is going to reflect cosmetic items will we will we just gut the cosmetics in the game so that we can incentivize and monetize the cosmetic something in the cash up no that's a that's a version of cash grab that we don't want to do I mean yeah I'm against so obviously there's going to be a great degree of customization and cosmetics that are going to be available in the game and then there's going to be some unique ones that are also available in the cash stop and those cash shop ones might be you know limited time they might be holiday specific they might be you know that kind of thing not to say that that that there's not that availability and the came though gotcha all right ladies and gentlemen we I'm going to stop taking questions at this point because I got about eight more to go and we're running short on time and I want to be respectful of Stephen at times he's been amazing and taking so much of these questions and answers so I have about eight more questions I got from Jack are you are you still good with that yeah now that's I that's I guy one of the big ones sorry everyone it's just yeah I don't want to hold you I can hold you here all night but and I sure would like all night I've got tons of stuff but I got got to be respectful of that and of course you know we have our dungeon crawlers where we're going to pretty much analyze everything you said in detail um so this is from profit WTF he asked very early on even before the show started actually so I want to make sure I got this in how many characters will a person be able to have on an account and per server you know like I think World of Warcraft for one allowed you have like panel on a server and like 50 across your account that's a great question I don't really know the answer to that right now I will tell you it's not going to be an obscene small amount there there will be a comfortable level of character slots available to to us to players because we are a subscription model game mm-hmm absolutely let's see here nib Hawk in chat he asked whether we could ask about castles since there's quite a few people and I did see this a lot people were asking about why would guild want to compete for these castles that are available so so castles exert control to a degree over the economies of nodes under its influence there are as it stands now five castles in the game and those castles have a domain that they control to a degree owning a castle the guild may be able to allocate some of those taxes for increased defense spending in nodes separate of the nodes taxation policies and and coffers and they may activate certain events and abilities that can progress citizens of certain nodes they may unlock certain types of buildings they may you know castles have dedicated nodes around the castle that exists outside of the nodes system that are that's buildable to a certain stage by the guild that owns the castle and the guilds that are in an alliance with that castle there's a lot of different mechanics that that relate to our castle system excellent d ygz in chat ask what is going to happen to seizures if they back out of a commitment without actually attacking well then they would lose all of the time and effort that they spent in attacking but I don't I guess so I don't know if that's in reference to castles or in reference to notes but if it's in reference to nodes you know I remember fielding a question a while ago about you know what's to stop the node from initiating their own siege so that they can go on the cooldown timer well I mean first of all if you're spending that amount of effort in time to initiate a siege it becomes an open siege for anyone who's not a citizen or a registered ally or defender for the for the node so you would be doing the work of the attacker just to give them an open door and say come on in and try your best so you know it's it's such a degree of effort involved with seating either castles or nodes that I don't see that being an issue gotcha let's see here Grisham toward a pinch a task with a wait with the with the wait system if you have to store your in-game money in a bank or a particular node will you lose the node if the art will you lose the money you will lose the node if the node is destroyed we will lose the money if you know which has regional everything so wait doesn't doesn't relate to currency I will say that to begin with wait relates to you sounds like you need a refreshing Red Bull I know right I'm so sorry Daisy not gone out all day wait will will relate to materials relate to goods gather Buhl's items that kind of thing they're not going to relate to currency okay excellent Shai then in chat sorry if I pronounced that wrong see eiv ENT I've heard the discord is going to be integrated with Ashes of Creation where you have a sort of proximity chat voice or we have a sort of proximity voice chat ours just going to be go through discord that's like that's a great question and it's one of my very early systems that I wanted to make sure was included in Ashes of Creation and that's going to be a voice over IP that relates to the party system and the raid system as well as integrated into the guild system as well if you know we're working with this cord to achieve that I think it's achievable and the codex I think will be good that you'll be able to hear well I know some other games have tried it in the past and it just the song surrounding technology wasn't quite there yet but I think we have achieved that in the industry now and that Ashes of Creation is going to do it very well obviously there's going to be functionality for you to move people if you don't want to hear them talk or you not to participate in that and you know there'll be abilities and raids for commanders to appoint talkers and stuff like that you know I want to have a good functionality in the UI for players to really capitalize on these systems excellent my buddy at robos Nick's over there awesome guy is he's a very talented adilyn creator he was doing a lot of that for yes so he had a question does intrepid have any initial thoughts about supporting api's to supporting api's to support community developed web tools are even in game UI enhancements I think on the web tools question the answer to that is tentatively yes in in regards to the to the in-game systems I I don't have an answer for that at this time okay excellent if you do he's fantastic I mean I got shot him out because he did one of my favorite add-ons for ESO has to get that so got a shout him out with that finally tell car gaming asked and he did this long before so again we want to talk about the Kickstarter you've been doing fantastic with this Kickstarter I mean I just looked at your your where of what like 250 new backers away from the small cute small pet reward and very good lair very close to the group mounts do you have any details about some of the larger pledge packages like what some of the large ones have do I have details on the pledge packages oh yeah absolutely I thought you're talking about the stretch goals no no like pledge packages yeah what do you want to know what questions yes I guess more specifically for some of the higher ones I mean specifically probably when I threw myself into Phoenix initiative being something as well as monthly q and A's you guys been doing is that happening to anyone who supports at those levels we're going to talk about it yes a hundred percent so so the month so the monthly q A's what level is that again I can't recall uh it's the Royal line right line got it okay so the monthly Q&A was really going to be an interaction between those pledges you know being able to to actively get their their topics discussed and and interact with us as the devs and part of that monthly Q&A the Phoenix initiative is is a very very unique system that's going to involve certain convenience not pay2win at all in any way shape or form but certain convenience aspects and elite status in the game that you'll be able to access an instance at the city hall of any node and be with other Phoenix initiative people and just like a private area that's going to include some pretty cool like cosmetic access like specific cosmetic trees that you could achieve potentially as being a part of that Phoenix initiative based on your advancement in the game and then what type of resources you can come across but they'll have and that will always get updated and so it's a it's a pretty cool I think system that that makes your player kind of stand out right and finally I guess here's one name reservation these are always a big thing how is that going to be handled it's gonna be handled like from like the top tier people get their first pick and it goes down or is it just like a free-for-all for whoever put it in first like yeah because that's that's a good question I think I think it's going to go from the top down I think I think different pledge packages above the name reservation are going to have first dibs and cascade down all the way to the the entry for a name reservation you podcasters who talked to creative directors get their name saved I don't know about that now I'm just kidding I don't know now you got a you got to get a line with the rest of the backers all right well thank goodness I know where I'm at at least all right excellent well Stephen thank you so much for this amazing interview I know chat has been going nuts with the answers you've been providing it's fantastic I'm honored and thrilled to at least have this opportunity to talk to you as well as support this project because I can tell you what being the MMO lover that I am these past few years have been very depressing looking for that MMO home looking for a place that I can go I don't need to look for other games I got my last one you know legit yes and that's absolutely I show you on that and honestly with what you're creating like I said is long you know if you're keeping up with your promises don't ever go free-to-play or anything like that you got absolutely you know welcome something looks like you're going to be with us for a long time then I already told your community managers be prepared for me to bug her constantly okay good she's prepared and ready to go thank you so much thank you everyone who watched this this podcast now it's going to be available both on our RSS feeds YouTube and all those fun place as well so you can watch it again Stephen fantastic work Congrats on the Kickstarter here hopefully restate it Ellen and thank you very much if anyone is interested our normal MMORPG podcast the dungeon crawlers is going to be taking place right after this show or take a few minutes so I can set up everything and we'll come right back live and we're going to talk about everything we learned in detail as well as a bunch of other little fun stuff to stick by from the discussion that's something we like Thank You Stephen good thank you guys good bye hi everyone [Music] 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