Talk:2017-05-08 TheLazyPeon - Ashes of Creation MMORPG developer Q&A

This transcript is auto generated and has not yet been reviewed and formatted. Please help us format raw transcripts.

ﺔﻴﻟﻭﺃ ﺔﺨﺴﻧ

Character count: 43437 | Duration in seconds:2734 | Characters per second: 15.89

so a few weeks ago I posted an overview video for the upcoming MMORPG Ashes of Creation and it turns out the vast majority of you are very interested in this game and like I said if you add enough questions I'd organize a Q&A video of one of the developers so that's what we're doing today this is more of a podcast II video but there'll be random footage in the background if you're interested before we start though ashes recently launched on Kickstarter and reached its funding goal in something crazy like 16 hours which is by far the fastest I've ever seen an MMO get funded before due to everything I've seen and heard about the game I actually decided to become a BAC of myself as this is currently my number one MMORPG that I'm excited for even though it's a long way off in case you're interested in helping ashes hit more of its stretch goals I'll leave a link to the Kickstarter in the comments below additionally if you want to help support my channel I'll be leaving my referral link to the game in the description too with that being said let's begin the video so I suppose the first thing we should do is you should introduce yourself what do you what do you do at Intrepid Studios and the FAMAS all leading to the first question what drove you as developers to create Ashes of Creation why an MMO and are there any specific mmo's that you're drawing inspiration from to help create aoc all right well I'm Stephen Sharif I'm the creative director here at intrepid Studios and founder what drove me to to create Ashes of Creation well that is a big question so you know I spent the last 25 years of my life being a gamer and the genre that always interested me the most was MMORPG genre it's something about the aspect of that massive community that you really don't experience anywhere else in any other game the ability to interact with thousands of people from across the world people who you would never have gotten to meet or spoken with before and you know I've been playing MMORPGs since I was able to sit tall enough in a chair and reach up to the keyboard I think my first MMO was was never winter nights on on AOL back in like 9 9211 I put seven years old and it was six dollars by the hour to play different times totally different times and you know like as my gaming history progressed and I grew older you know I got to play and some pretty much every MMORPG Under the Sun and and I just I loved always that community aspect of what made Emma Mo's great so you know over the past several years I was kind of upset with the way that the the industry was was treating this genre you know was it became like super pay2win and this is like total cash grab atmosphere and it felt like and it just felt like they were not putting the tender love and care that was the genre was deserving and I and I just I wanted to to change that you know I just wanted to to represent the gamers passion from a development perspective yeah I think I saw one video from a youtuber called fever where he's talking about Ashes of Creation he shows you in our cage as a guild leader I think it was doing some kind of epic speech okay I might I will admit I like to RP a little bit I mean I think it's you know our PG is a huge part of the MMO experience it's an MMORPG genre yeah and I think it's just it's fun for my community of my guild to experience their leader you know doing a little RPE kind of speech before the battle actually I took that speech that he showed was from Independence Day and I just kind of changed it to be more reflective of the game oh that's what yous just coming up with that as you was going nah no I took I took the end of Penance Day speech and I replaced you know some of the words to reflect locations in the game and our guild and all that kind of stuff and it was yeah it was a lot of fun that was good good good times awesome so the the next question we have is as you're probably aware combat is a core aspect to any MMO and in the past we've seen it can really make or break a game can you tell us a bit about the combat and Ashes of Creation and your design principles behind it ya know that's a huge part of of what our design philosophy entails when creating Ashes of Creation is is how to find that comfortable blend between combat that reflects both the players skill as well as their progression in the game and a lot of times in the past MMOs have either been too far on one end or the other but we want to create a very very healthy balance between what players are capable of in combat that includes strategy that includes skill and includes progression and we don't want to have it too balanced on one end or the other so no you're not going to see you know somebody who's epically geared just you know pooping on a marathon everybody I think doesn't who may not have the skill associated with that gear you're going to see a potential for people who are skilled to compete with people who are epically geared you know there's there's going to be a plateau to what gear can do so are you thinking more along the lines of action combat subsolid saying or somewhere in between that's a good question so we're doing a little bit of a hybrid and we have a hybrid between positioning movement dodge skills that are more action friendly and then we also have elements of the tab targeting included as well that can involve a little bit more strategy on the battlefield you know a huge issue with going primarily one way or the other is that both system have has their faults and and we want to kind of include the aspects of both systems that are positive in the way we're developing Ashes of Creation so it's it's really comfortably a hybrid between tab targeting and action-oriented okay so in a way will it depend on the class you're playing will casters for example maybe be more tab targeting oriented and then it's not really dependent on the class specifically all classes are going to include a healthy balance of both the tab targeting systems and action action system so we want to make sure that like if you're playing a Marshall class that's that's that's a melee class you know you're going to be able to to exercise that action-oriented combat system on the battlefield while at the same time having a comfortable blend of certain tab targetable skills okay nice so moving on your kickstarter page mentions enhanced naval content and exploration can you give us more of an insight as to what this means we'll be able to find underwater treasure and what would be the benefits of participating in ocean content well personally you know my most recent experience with MMORPGs you know what's that game that you mentioned and one of the great appeals I felt of that from an MMO perspective was the the naval experience yeah and obviously that's not for everybody but at the same time it's a pretty cool extra aspect to have in a game and I was happy to have as one of our stretch goals which it looks like we're going to be achieving either today or tomorrow but the the expanded ocean content is going to include different classes of ships that players can can utilize on the open seas and and conflict on the high seas and it's going to take our Caravan system and move it to see trade routes it's going to include expanded environments under the water that players can participate in whether it be dungeons or treasure finding you know it's going to include aquatic monsters aquatic mounts that people can have it's we really want to we would we just want to take the design from the land and start to to focus on on what it can be done in the water nice so they'll be like islands and stuff you can travel yeah cool absolutely yeah okay I think the next question you've already touched on it says what it says would you describe Ashes of Creation as a skill based or gear based game I think you already touched on that Dania yeah I did it's important to emphasize both to a degree we want we want progression to mean something and we want skill to mean something as well and and finding that comfortable balance between the two is important when we're designing our combat yeah ashes seems to be a very player focused game and fly that it needs a lot of players to really be a living breathing game are you afraid of that oh and do you have any plans in place in case one server doesn't have enough population to function as intended well I'm definitely not afraid of it being a player focus game yeah I do want I want ashes to have a high population obviously because you're right a lot of the systems that we're focusing on revolve around having a pretty substantial player base and I think that's important because as I said MMORPGs what makes them so unique is that the first M that massively experience and when designing Ashes of Creation we wanted to cater you know our system our design philosophy towards being a massively multiplayer game if if ever in the future you know there was a circumstance where one server might experience some population decline we have definitely considered how we could go about integrating that server population into another server doing a server merge so to speak it's definitely something that we we don't want to have to experience but it's something that we've accounted for and what would would be able to fix ok great so as Isis of creation is more of a sandbox MMO how do you plan on expanding the game's content after release without making the old content irrelevant if you know I mean we'll have extractions or patches absolutely we plan to have a lot of expansions and it kind of caters towards what our node system is like how our node system works the expansion content that we would include in the game would would be potentially new areas or a new race or expanding the the avenues of content from node development so at each stage there would be additional quests that become available there would be additional bosses there would be additional lore and arcs that could lead away from the story and the narrative there could be additional battlegrounds and just really like we want to make sure that being a subscription model game means that there has to be continual development of the of the game itself so we have regularly planned after launch expansions and chapters that are going to to build upon the game and not make it this this stale or stagnant type of we want to make sure there's a lot of fresh content that's going to be coming out on a regular basis good to hear so as you've already mentioned Ashes of Creation is going to be a subscription-based MMO and it's also going to have a cosmetic cash shop with no box cost what made you go of the decision to go the subscription model route in a time when most new MMO is coming out are free to play well probably the most important aspect of that is I do not want any way shape or form there to be pay2win in Ashes of Creation or there even to be paid to convenience um or any type of cash grab scenario so usually you see and this is my big gripe with recent development in the MMORPG genre you see these free-to-play games come to market and then they they put you know player player advancement in the game behind a paywall yeah and they put these these highly incentivized items that you can get from the cash shop that are like just blatant pay to win monetization strategies yes good boy exactly and it makes me so mad like what's playing me games I was I mean the part of being a part of a community and in a game like this is that you're a problem solving you're advancing you're progressing together with a community and if you got one guy that just jumps in and okay he's at the top of the food chain now because he spent five minutes purchasing things in a marketplace is like what are you kidding me so like the subscription model allows us to move away from that right yeah keeps funding coming in to the company that we can constantly give new updates and new chapters and new content in the game while at the same time not having to rely on any of these monetization gimmicks of the pay to win and cash-grab scenarios that we've been experiencing now not I hate to like pounce on the industry because I'm I'm just coming at it from a gamers perspective and I don't want to say you know all the stuff has been crap that they've come out with because there's definitely been stuff that that has caught my attention for a period of time but at the same time you know I recognize that this is a reverberating trend among us as a community what gamers want to see and it just the wilderness don't see this so Ashes of Creation is coming on the scene saying yes you know we're going to be a subscription model game and we have to be because we don't want to see pay to win cash grab strategies Institute another reason why is from a security perspective it is a much higher wall to scale for gold sellers and botters if they have to subscribe to a game yeah and while we're going to have very strict very good security measures in place when it comes to behavior algorithms and and and watching what accounts are doing we also have a high wall for them to first pass which is you know having subscribed accounts so I think that just goes to make a better player experience you know coming from from myself who's been experiencing these games yeah I think a lot of people watching this video going to be very happy with that response I was paid to win does seem to be the biggest concern with the nmo RPG community in general right for sure yeah so on to the next question can you tell us a little bit about the character customization in ashes will I be able to make my character look completely different from everybody else so we want to definitely make sure that that in our MMORPG ashes creation you as a character can stand apart from other people I don't want Joe sword 1 and Joe sword 2 to be standing in this beautiful immersive world and then these characters look you know the same thing yeah we want to have a lot of character customization our character creation suite is going to be extremely versatile and there's going to be a lot of ways for players to have their own identity represented through their avatar through their character so do you mean things like costumes tattoos lots of different costumes cat ooze hairstyles brooches pins jewelry you know you're going to see different representations of armors and and trans ma transmog they're going to see a lot of a lot of custom stuff too that like crafters will have the ability to change the appearance of kind of unique to themselves on these items I mean there's a lot of great technology that's available today I mean it's it's not your MMORPG from 15 years ago ten years ago we have the ability especially with Unreal 4 and our own customized back-end to create these this this different realm of character customization and you know there are some games out there come out recently that actually have done this very well and you know we plan to be the best in that regard nice so like everything my characters wearing will be pretty much visible oh yeah we have I think eight distinct armor pieces that have visibility yeah we have we're definitely planning for a high customization point yeah yeah this next question might be a difficult one but I thought throw it in there anyway can you give us a rough idea of what the system requirements will be and do you plan on adding any optimization modes for people with mid to low end rigs right so I mean that is a little bit of difficult question because we're still you know a year and a half two years away from a live launch and and we you know the system requirements at that time I don't know what the answer that question is right now I think that the answer is you know something that's been built in the past four years is going to be playable obviously four to six years I think is what my technical director told me but you know the answer to that is unreal four offers a lot of customizable options on the players end you know what you want to render how you want to render it how you're going to scale it down so players will have the ability to scale either the the most beautiful amazing graphics you've ever seen in your life because because we have that already or scale that down to something that's more performance oriented yeah so yeah I think that Unreal 4 allows us to have a lot of customization to unlock a lot of customization for what what players are going to be seeing in the game okay this isn't a question that I've got written down or anything but well so on the topic what made you choose Unreal Engine 4 in comparison to other engines because I can't really think of any other MMOs that run that so far right so I mean Unreal Engine 4 gives us access to the source code we can use the front-end and get up to running quickly on on presenting on presenting a world and then at the same time on the backend we can just rip out everything and build our own back-end for specifically our networking needs because of how we're we're designing this game to include huge battles on the siege field of either nodes or castles and have these battlegrounds that are going to exist where hundreds of players are going to be participating yes that hasn't been done with Unreal 4 before from an MMORPG perspective but you know we're not using unreal fours back back-end we're creating our own and we have two amazing engineers on the team Kevin and Jason Crawford who have spent over 15 years specifically on MMORPGs having having built the backend systems of EverQuest 1 EverQuest two Vanguard Star Wars Galaxies these guys know what they're doing and and all of our back-end and networking code is is going to be facilitating these design theories in the game ok great so as a reason we've had a lot of east and mmo's primarily coming over to the west and i know something a lot of people are quite interested in is how much of a role will rng play in ashes I had I have a man I tell you what so as a gamer dealing with rng just made me go crazy there would be and coupled with especially like a pay2win aspect yeah not going to name I'm not going to name the game but there wasn't there was an IRA team on it there's an orangey box and in this box was this bear and the bear didn't do anything for you in the game it was just a really cool-looking bear and I wanted the bear so I I don't even know I spent like probably 300 bucks on this stupid box like just buying a whole bunch of these boxes and I couldn't get the frickin bear from the box and I was so upset and I finally got the bear and literally the next week they released the bear on the cash shop Wow we're like relax for like 5 bucks and I was I was I mean literally I was ready to just throw my computer away I was so mad so you know RNG is not going to play a role in Ashes of Creation I mean there are going to be some systems that when it comes to maybe maybe and this isn't decided yet maybe when it comes to over enchanting certain things that could have an element of RNG but when it comes to crafting when it comes to to items in the game there's not going to when it comes to even cat cosmetics there's not going to be any RNG associated with it there might be some RNG associated with the drop tables of yeah obviously but other than that no like crafting we'll have set recipes and achievements and all that kind of stuff that's good to hear it seems to be more free to play than those that are heavy on the RNG you can kind of like pay to over weather usually absolutely so we already know ashes will have many different types of weather seasons and terrain will this affect a gameplay in any way or is it just purely aesthetic no it will it will affect gameplay a hundred percent so in part of our seasons our seasons are kind of they're non-static like they are static but they're also non static so zones will experience different seasons based on their location in the world and they'll be going through these seasons and you'll have different types of crop cycles rotations that are associated with seasons you'll have passing that opens up when summer comes that is closed when winter approaches you'll have you'll have solid water where you can walk on the water and you won't have access to what's under it if it's in winter but you know you the water will be open when it's summer and spring and whatnot and then you'll have events that bring with it weather and like you know if some some winter you know dragon appears because a node has developed to stage 4 and that dragon brings with it you know the eternal winter and if players don't kill that dragon the winter stays you know any day like there's there's and that's going to affect a lot of different gameplay stuff so yeah we want to really make the environment immersive and actually affect gameplay yeah that's really good to hear so it's more like you're in a real living breathing world rather than just something that an MMO says basically right yes yeah that's a real living world that reacts to you and and needs your activity to change it yeah great will this game be IP blocks and what server regions will they game have available such as EU u.s. oceanic so we're planning to launch with EU na and oceanic servers Wow yes on launch and in addition what was the question IP blocks no yes IP box I don't think we're going to be planning IP blocks no I do not think we are yeah I think you're so Publishing ashes on you so that's usually for acting to do with publishers isn't it if you that unless we checked yeah that's right and we are planning to self publish yes brilliant if you have to reveal one concern about the game what would it be I know that's a really hard question that is a tough question actually you know that's not too tough of a question my concern you know recently about and this isn't about the game this is a little bit about the direction that I felt the company should take in regards to to how the game is marketed and how it interacts with players and we took and we took this approach to a referral reward system that that kind of takes it's not something it has been done like this has been happening for the over a decade with influencers and media outlets and and advertisements on Facebook and banner ads and all that kind of stuff where where these people will will negotiate a special deal with a company and you know myself coming into the industry and recognizing how marketing and advertising works I felt that that it was unfair to restrict that Avenue of the game to just people with large social influences or media outlets with you know a website that talks about games yeah I wanted to democratize the marketing of a game so that everyone can participate and I know that I know that the majority of people are not going to have you know a hundred people that they can refer to the game they're going to have maybe five you know a few people but the MMORPG genre is inherently a social John Ruth at that relies on the community to spread the word to everybody else about upcoming projects and I just felt like this is something the community is doing anyways why should they not have an option to play for free in the game if they help to spread the bird of the game so that's where the referral system came from and it's been it's been sad for me to see you know over the past week that that there have been a few loud voices that come out and say things that are just completely untrue and and just spread misinformation and it hasn't been very prevalent but you know it's important for people to recognize that we want players to have the option to benefit from there from there spreading the news something they already do something the community MMORPG is inherently focused on yeah and and that can come in the form of playing the game for free without having to deal with the the monetization gimmicks of free-to-play so you can pay for your entire subscription if you were far enough people absolutely if you refer seven people to the game you are playing for free okay so that's a nice alternative for the people that are really stuck for money and I know a lot of people they're just naturally going to bring their friends into again because that's what people do within those right absolutely I mean it is a system that's designed for the MMORPG genre specifically I mean you know first person shooters single-player RPGs you know MOBAs those types of things aren't aren't as community-centric community driven as the MMORPG community that's really the most unique aspect of the MMORPG community and something that's already being done with media outlets and influencers it just seemed unfair for me not to democratize that and open it up to everybody that they're capable of actually getting rewards that can relate to a playing the game for free and even beyond that it was just a no-brainer from my perspective yeah okay what races do you plan to release and will there be any benefits of picking one race over another we are releasing eight total races well they're eight eight sub races that are part of four parent races so you know the lore behind Ashes of Creation is that long ago you know Millennia's ago this world suffered a great calamity and and and nobody really knows outside of legend and lore why that calamity occurred and the peoples of this planet fled as four great races and then over time those races kind of split those four races kind of split into become eight total now as you're returning to this this land as these great divine portals have opened to bring you back your recolonizing your your rebuilding and repopulating this world you can come back as one of those eight races and races play an important role in the game there are specific so our game is stat oriented which means that that your stats relate to your abilities your your damage your your chance to land something you know it's a stat oriented game and the races have different values for stats so some races are going to be you know probably the meadow race when it comes to to a certain class that doesn't mean that classes are restricted to race you can be any class in any race oh so there is no race locking for for the classes and but a we wanted players to be able to experience the game as as the type of class you want to play with the type of race you want to as well and races are also going to offer certain flavors to all the classes certain racial augments that are available to your primary skills associated with an archetype yeah I think something that will not surely happen with that system is like I'm sure you are aware most MMO players they do like to mend Mac's right your people will just pick and racer today the most other class well that's that's that's there's a versatility with our class system as well let's say for instance you want to be a tank well there are different types of tanks there are tanks that are good against you know really good against magic as well as go but really good against magic or there are tanks that are against physical damage there are tanks that are evasion tanks there are tanks that are just like straight damage mitigation there are reflect damage tanks there are you know Agri oriented PvE tanks there's a lot of different types of a class right classes can play specific roles out in the game and you know there may be a meta for like what race combination with that class is good for which role you're wanting to go but at least it leaves a diversity among that specific class with all the different races okay to what extent will there be offline / Idol progression in this game such as hiring an NPC to work with the player if any um we are that's a good question that's a very good question so we're definitely experimenting with our Freehold system and having if a node progresses to a certain amount and the player run government takes it in a certain direction your freehold which is where your farms will be where your industry would be where your you know you could own a tavern or an inn there and like if players visit your tavern or in and they eat your food that you've crafted or they sleep in your you know bed or whatever they would have a certain time worth of benefit while in proximity to your freehold if they're out x being or doing quests and whatnot so it's kind of like a player run economy a little bit with the freehold system but we're discussing potentially while you're being offline that you could have NPCs that like manage your crop rotations or that like will sell the food for you and that kind of stuff and we might even be able to have an API or excuse me an interface with a mobile system that allows you to to manage those NPCs while you're offline and what crops they're laying down or or what inventory you're allowing for sale and stuff like that right so it's not going to be the kind of game where you constantly have to be online just doing something afk because the main MMO I'm currently playing is exactly like them always have to be online just doing something it's not for others definitely no there's definitely things that can be done for the player while they're offline and and that will be seen mainly through economy aspects okay that's good so it's not not like a full afk game in like crafting and stuff that's good no no no no great what form of transportation will ashes have and will there be teleportation well another thing that that we're kind of sticking to when it comes to the design of the game is we don't want people to be able to fast travel everywhere we don't even want really fast travel in the game there is a there is a potential for fast travel only for certain region that advance there a scientific node to the metropolis stage which could which could take months to do but that would be even specific only to that region and to the nodes within that region but other than that application there really is no fast travel in the game so we want we want distance to mean something we want we want players to to travel the world because the world is constantly changing and what was there yesterday might not be there tomorrow and that's kind of the take we have on our travel yeah that sounds good because I know a lot of mmo's they introduce really convenient things when it comes to transportation and teleportation people just end up sitting in a main city all day long just teleporting and finding groups from a menu or something yeah I know that is not going to be a case yeah this isn't a question I've got a Maya on my thing but it's just something I'm wondering while stir on the topic will you have some kind of group find out like some kind of menu I'm sorry I'm sorry say that one more time we'll have a group find a menu like World of Warcraft for example where you can just press a button and find a group we are not planning to include a group finder option there will be in cities these centers where you can go and potentially make a listing and people if they're in that city at that time can can go to the center board and look for certain you know advertisements made by the players on like what class they could play or who they are there could potentially even be a guild recruitment poster in the center of towns and stuff that players can rent to to advertise their guild and stuff but just a straight like dungeon finder group finder a interface we're planning probably not to have that's good because it really does kind of kill the social aspect to analyze I think yes I agree that when a node is destroyed or D leveled how will it affect its zone of influence in terms of difficulty and available content so with each stage of development for a node there is new content ad that becomes available you know in that content can relate both to the overarching narrative of the game or individual narratives and quests that are become available processing of certain materials the transit of certain Goods it really you know alters the landscape of that region if a node gets D leveled the same is true but in retro action you know those quest lines become now unavailable that that content becomes behind the barrier of development again and and that's that's not a bad thing because nodes law the progression of nodes lock out the development of nodes that are adjacent to that node yeah and content relates specifically to which node gets developed you know if a city pops up near the coast as opposed to the node that could have popped up near the mountain you're going to experience more sea based content you're going to know you're going to have to go to that dungeon under the water as opposed to that dungeon within the mountain that have separate stories and separate drop tables and separate spawn tables associated with those with those arcs so when when one node goes down that again opens the potential to develop another node which is going to unlock new content so that's kind of how the the d leveling works okay nice you've mentioned a lot about Ash's having a good mixture of PvP and PvE content I think I've explained quite a bit about the PvP system previously but what could we expect from the raiding in ashes that's a good question um so for me you know as a gamer having a blend of PvP and PvE really the first step is making the world from a PvE perspective really diverse and very engaging you have to have a strong PvE game if you're going to make PvP matter which is why a large focus of our development in this game is including those epic raids those those 40-man raid groups that are going to take out the the giant boss the epic world boss and having you know problem solving play a role mechanics that players have to overcome not just serve the content because that doesn't matter you you have to have a very specific strategic gameplay involved with some of these giant raids and at the same time you know it's not just all about the raids it's going to be about the dungeons as well and it's going to be about the open-world you know out in the out in the plains and the valleys being able to party with other people and accomplishing certain goals that relate to the development of the world so our PvE game is is going to be very in-depth it's going to be very social centric community centric is going to revolve around big guilds and small guilds you know we want to have content that relates to everybody who's playing the game okay so would you describe raiding in ashes as something you would do more endgame just something you can only do an endgame or are there going to be large group based content as you're leveling up there will be large group based content at every stage of the game yes okay Wow so will is use the Holy Trinity of tank healer or DPS or maybe something else we definitely have influences from the Holy Trinity there that's for sure a part of our class structure to agree but you know it's it's kind of its kind of more than just that you know there's there's so much customization available to the player that when they're forming their class their primary and secondary classes and I actually you know I may explain this now our class structure is you choose a primary class and that primary class comes with your active abilities and and you choose from one of eight archetypes you for marshal and for arcane when at a certain point later on you get to choose a secondary class and the secondary class doesn't come with new abilities new actives instead it comes with augments and these augments reflect the flavor of that archetype now you can double down on your class and choose as your secondary the same primary class you have and that will make you you know more focused on on what your role is and your archetype or you can choose a different one like let's say for example you know you're a fighter and you have a rush ability and you choose a rogue as your secondary archetype and you apply the stealth - your rush skill well the health augment you know previously you would you know have a target you would charge in that direction over time and then when you reach to the target you would deal X damage and potentially some like knockdown modifier stun whatever if you choose the secondary rogue type and you apply that stealth mechanic when you initiate the charge you go stealth and then you appear when you reach the target so it's kind of like a subtle change to these two these skills that you have from your primary class that reflect the flavor of your secondary class and and does that fall into a Holy Trinity perfectly no it doesn't does it have some resemblance of the Holy Trinity yes it does okay so if for example I wanted to be a tank I could pick the fighter class or what that weather design classes and have a few abilities from like the healing class for example and I could be a self-healing tank if you chose the fighter as opposed to the tank and what whether you attend classes and then all the tribulation yeah yeah the tank so we have tank fighter rogue Ranger we have mage cleric summoner and bard those are the those are the eight archetypes so if you chose a fighter class and you then chose the tank secondary yes you could be a tanky fighter so if I chose the tank main role and the cleric secondary role I could heal myself as a tank so you would have some augments that could heal yourself that could sustain yourself in combat for sure that would be that would be our paladin class so the tank with a with a cleric secondary would be a paladin and the paladin wouldn't be able to to heal the party necessarily but he would have some self sustaining abilities through these augments on his primary skills okay well so this is probably another quite hard question the MMORPG community has been burned so many times in recent years by games that promise a lot that fails to deliver is there anything you'd like to say to the people that are skeptical about Ashes of Creation so that's a great question I mean no that is that is I think hits the nail on the head there has been and this is partly what drove me to come out and do Ashes of Creation is just getting fed up with with how we as a community have been kind of burned by these recent developers and it's not I'm you know I'm not trying to cause any problems in the industry I'm very nice other developers that might be listening to this but the fact of the matter is you know I have been there and I have been promised things that didn't get delivered and I have been upset with with the way that the MMORPG community has been treated and that's what led me to do this so what's different about Ashes of Creation and intrepid Studios is that it is being run by someone who has been jaded from recent development and at the forefront of everything that we are doing at intrepid Studios is keeping that in mind we make sure that we're not going to make promises that we can't deliver on we make sure that we're going to have delivery dates that we can keep to we make sure that we're keeping the community at the center and that we're transparent and that we're in communication at all times which is why you know me myself I am on reddit I am on discord I am on our forums you know as the head of the company I am doing that kind of thing and it definitely takes time and you know there's times necessarily where I can't be there because we're doing design discussions or we're developing the game basically but I want to make sure when I'm laying in bed with my phone to my face I am talking to the community on discord or you know whatever I could find the time I am making sure to get be in touch with a community I think that's what kind of sets apart intrepid Studios from other developers yeah I think that something we've definitely been in great need of there's been a feud song so I've been looking at the discord and you sometimes jump in and answer some questions from people it's a quite an involved approach yeah that's because I've been there I have experienced it and there's nothing more frustrating than being a person who has devoted time and money and effort to a project just to see that project like give you the hand and say no thanks you know I'm not going to talk to you about why we delayed this you know timeline I'm not going to talk to you about why we didn't include this thing we promised and you know what if you have a customer service issue good luck go find your own way you know like that for me has been such a blatant smack in the face of a community that a hundred percent it's at the forefront of what we're doing here at intrepid Studios yeah so the final thing I want to end with is briefly why should we play Ashes of Creation over games like World of Warcraft what makes your games so different that's a good question - okay so I mean Ashes of Creation intends to turn this industry kind of upside down both from the perspective of you as a player and how you can interact with the world and have the world react to your decisions I think that's probably the most central core philosophy of our design is that we're not creating new technology in the industry we're using technology that's already been creating but in a different way that includes a choose-your-own-adventure and impact the world around you and become a part of a big community that can influence those changes I want to see servers have different stories I want to see people on those servers interact with each other and explain how they got to fight this giant dragon and change that the chapter of this narrative and another server is like well we got to kill this huge kraken in the sea and you know it destroyed a hundred of our ships you know it's like I want there to be something that reacts to the community's decisions and that's I think a little bit different than what a theme park has to offer I mean a theme park kind of creates these stations these rides that you get to go from point A to B to C to D to D you know whatever and you're kind of just experiencing this curated content obviously we have curated content but it's behind a decision wall it is behind a wall that the players have to choose to open that door and experience that content and and I think that better reflects what the MMORPG experience should be for for for playing these games yeah well personally since hearing about the game I've just been so incredibly excited just sounds like the game that I've been waiting for and I know I can speak to myself and most of the MMORPG community when I say we're behind you and we really really want you to make a big success of it so thanks for taking the time to talk to me and really best of luck with following up and making this game reaches full potential thank you we appreciate it Thank You Pierre so that's it for this video guys I really hope you enjoyed it before we end I want to give a shout out to a small youtuber called deaths proxy who's made a ton of Ashes of Creation videos talking about many different aspects of the game so go check out this channel for more a OC videos I'm going to do a live Q&A with the ashes devs sometime next Monday on Twitch so follow me over there and keep an eye out for that I'll probably post a now live video before it starts so you don't miss it thanks for watching this video though I hope you all had a great day and I'll see you again really soon you [Music]