Talk:2017-06-30 Livestream
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Character count: 54241 | Duration in seconds:3496 | Characters per second: 15.52
again hey guys sorry about that we had a little bit of sound mix-up anyways welcome to our regularly scheduled livestream it's been two weeks since we last saw each other and we have a new guest joining us today one of our newest additions here on the team mr. keel Hooper hi everyone nice welcome welcome we're excited to have you tell us a little bit about yourself Akil your history in the industry and how you came to be a part of the Ashes of Creation team so I've been in the game industry for 16 years I started at Sony Online in the in the customer service department I start as a GM and then worked my way up through there did a few years at SOE did a little bit of everything I was a lead designer for eq2 for a little while I went off to obsidian entertainment and I worked on the cancel game there for a little bit and then we shipped Fallout New Vegas and a couple of the fallout in Vegas DLCs and then after that another stint back at Sony Online where I joined up the EverQuest II team again and then took over EverQuest in EverQuest 2 as creative director for both projects and for the last few years after that I've been working at Disney Interactive on a mobile game that was called enchanted tales and now I'm here wow that's a pretty crazy road well we're happy to have you here I mean it's exciting times yeah very cool well guys as you know before we get into some q and A's and we have a little video today that's gonna kind of have an overview of our character creation process we are going to talk a little bit about the summer store excuse me the summer store that we opened up on I'm gonna open that June 21st I think ish oops we have a focus issue I'm no longer in focus okay where is it that oh I just I was lured on my face that's the way he looks to us all the time that soft focus is just the way most of us eat yeah we'll try to fix that but we have the summer store that opened and we we are going to be running that until July 21st I believe we haven't done just to give an explanation we didn't do a lot of marketing for that or just publicity for the summer store because it was primarily intended for those in our registered users who didn't have an opportunity to back through Kickstarter because they didn't offer PayPal so you know we also wanted to get some account integration stuff done so that people who participated in our Kickstarter would be able to okay there we go look at that we're focused we wanted to get the the code registration account syncing and referral rewards program activated and and representing stuff which you can expect to see code sent out over the weekend possibly Monday or Tuesday at the very latest but I expect that we'll get those out as soon as possible in addition what was the other thing was about this store or the code process we got the core process we have packs that's coming up two months and two months are you gonna say tomorrow tomorrow we have packs that's coming up in two months and we're going to have a pretty awesome experience for everybody who's gonna be at PAX and this is an in Seattle it's PAX Prime we have a very large set up there we're gonna be on the main floor we're going to have two experiences for our players huh they'll be pretty self-contained experiences one's going to be a PvE experience one's gonna be a PvP experience kind of to give you kind of a broad sort of sense of what's going on right so like we're gonna have two two groups available for people to to run through you know starting out in a town you know doing an escort duty with a caravan you're gonna see the town be able to progress and it's staged as a node you're going to go through a dungeon delve and you're going to to experience four classes will be playable huh we're going to have the primary archetypes not with any secondary classes but just the primary archetypes and that's going to be a tank it's going to be a ranger it's gonna be a mage and a cleric uh-huh and we're going to go over in a little bit today about some of the skills that are going to be seen yep some of the the combat systems we're gonna explain a little bit about the combat systems that people will see there as well as some of the utility systems and and ultimate abilities yeah after we show the character customization video the flip side of that coin is players will also be able to experience on the other side we'll have eight stations set up where players can participate in a team versus team battle in an arena right yeah yeah pretty simple pretty just to get your feet wet and kind of get a feel for what we're doing here get a sense of what it's like to fight another player and not just the environment we thought having both of those are important since both of those are important to our game and we want to make sure that everybody kind of gets an experience on that we're really self-contained you know it's not it's not the broader game it's it's just a very focused very quick kind of driven experience and we're going to also have some merchandise at PAX for those of you who will be at PAX Prime in Seattle there will be unique merchandise specific to pax and there'll be some broader ones that will be offered later on in the store online so we have a pretty busy schedule over the next few days we're never stopping here there's a lot going on right now for sure but it's gonna be a lot of fun so I think what we're going to do now is go ahead and show the video that we recorded just an hour ago I'm talking a little bit about the character customization process and what that entails with one of our senior character artists Matt broom and I hope you guys enjoy this ten-minute little video yeah [Music] all right so mr. Matt Broome hello senior character artists okay I'll take that so you've been building the base I guess character model that's gonna be used for the humans yeah and and people are going to when they get into the character customization screen when they first log into Ashes of Creation they're gonna be be referencing from this point how they want their character to look sure right sure yeah they're gonna be they're gonna basically start with this generic male right you know who was an incredibly good shape and then they're gonna make decisions on what's perfect to them right right because he's not already perfect in this no no different perfect right no way nobody wants overrated so you're taking that that the perfect model and then people can grow into you know an overweight person if they oh yeah a skinny non muscular person yeah like if they're that tanked class we want to get an ability to turn into the tank right you know I mean because you have to see it to believe it and so we want to be able to people have that kind of customization if they want to be a skinnier character you want to let them do that that's where a lot of character comes from - right it's just that like what your physical presence is you've got that kind of gives you a really quick picture of who this person later oh absolutely - you want that big imposing silhouette but then you know some want to be that stealthy fine right right and I see that this on the screen I don't know if you guys can see it behind us this is just an early rendition of that character right yeah basically what we did was we got a technically sound base character to start with and what we're doing now is making that lean you know very Fight Club type body type right and then that becomes a target to get us to the tank or to get us to that stealthy care yes like your your Anatomy guy 101 but we're really focused on realism right so right right now we're sculpting in the details to get to that you know Fight Club level but then what you'll see as we get towards the finish line is muscles we come more relaxed more organic more like you would see a real person it's really cool and what type of customization functionality of people going to have when they start determining these body type so they're gonna be able to put like scars we want them to put scars on there we want them to to be able to like change the musculature of the face like have a longer nose oh yeah we gotta give them all of that we got to give them all that I mean we want them to be able to go in there you know put a scar on one I've want to have one blue eye one red I want to let them get in and make each one of these characters exactly what they want you know give them different eye types for instance would be something cool that we could do oh yeah you know and on an armor we could beat it up make it pristine and perfect change little details you know we want people to feel like an army but we want to have you know little details that say a little bit something about their journey right is this the the base face that I have on there as well yeah this is the base face in progress right so this is I love the fact that we're showing some of this early stuff because this is really the early days of the clay sculpt so this is about how strong the character is this is about the region of the world the characters from and since this is our universal male you really want him from everywhere but what you're gonna see is when we start getting to other races you know some of the Anglo characters and African characters middle-east and characters Asian characters the structure starts to change right right start to sink eyes get smaller eyes get longer you know jaws get wider with that European mouth so this is the center of our universe before we scale out right say things like you know European male Asian male Middle Eastern male it's not that we have those in our game right that you know those are the inspiration we're drawing right when creating this human carrot it goes back to the character customization screen right is you're gonna see a face on the screen it's kind of like your neutral target like you do in most games then you're gonna start moving sliders around it ultimately you're gonna identify that person that you're playing with so it's about flexibility in customization as opposed to pigeon holding a character specifically with just one character time right and a lot of the stuff up here that that is in the background it looks like we are talking about like sort of how we get from that base male to like something a little bit more radical like add darkness over there right yeah this was a complex design meeting that we're having where the you know the designers really talk about you know everybody's gonna have you know these amazing armor sets and then how can we put details on those armor sets and the discussion was how we would drive that from a base mell start adding different layers of customization details and then the front end system on how we could get hairstyles skin colors and how we can get some of the underground race you know the tone are mixed in with the humanoid Mel's and the million so this was about how do we pull that universe together give the flexibility that felt like you're getting a lot of customization to the players but not break the visual integrity of what what what you're establishing here and working on this master mesh basically is that as we were discussing earlier if you need to change something you go back to the original back to the master yeah that's a great point so the whole idea what this was a couple of things which is we're driving all of our techno decisions from a technically sound male mesh and female mesh and that allows us to scale up to these humanoid mammalian characters and then we're talking about the fact that we have a few material types that drive the three complex parts of the system represented as number one number two and number three which is the base character race with no armor the character with this armor details and then ultimately the accoutrements and the gear that you can put on that character so you mentioned the taller the tall are very different from our other races within the game the other races aren't going to be able to bring in reptilian or mammalian or humanoid attributes and scale them for their character customization like the tone art will what is the means by which in our character creation screen we're going to be implementing those types of scales to bring in the mammalian fur perhaps on some of the texture it's gonna be awesome because it'll drive from the same system because to the end-user it looks like fur to us it looks like three-dimensional geometry right so we're really just changing the details of the geometry then at runtime we're telling what material to put on the geometry and that's what's so great about our system is we're building a system that doesn't make the decisions for the end-user we're building a system that supports many choices to the end-user and I think that's one of the things that's exciting about ashes is every single decision that we're making early on is to make sure that we're not telling the users who to be what race to be what to wear and how to wear it we're trying to give as much flexibility as possible and they could be the in decider I'm really excited about this I mean this the the the power of this system and just the ability on a design level right to really be able to pull from all sorts of different things you have some characters they don't really pop on the the NPC side of things and on the story side of things I mean it just makes my imagination kind of go crazy because I'm not like hey Matt can you spend two months making this character for me I can just be like hey these are the details I grab I can make somebody really cool-looking somebody that hasn't been seen before and and I can do that really quick and the best games come from those designer decisions right right I mean people don't play games with depth to you know get more art they are getting art that supports the role and the story that they're telling the gameplay so our job ultimately is to get the options and get the flexibility to the designers that support their vision of the world right and that's exactly what this is doing it's so cool I can't wait start playing yeah I think that one of the one of the great things and eyes are saying the mission of Ashes of Creation and our other designs and systems mechanics is that that unique player driven customers oh yeah yeah we're the construction of the world comes from it it only makes sense that we're going to have the most capability possible in our character creation system that's going to allow players to really have a unique identity that they're capable of creating for themselves through their avatar for their writer and you know it's also really performant to write like that's that's something we've been talking about a lot where where we do want that variation we don't want that variation to kill the player experience right right and that's what this allows because it's all coming back from one place yeah right one space we don't we don't blow up our memory we don't bring a machine to tears you know right this is all right something that that is super doable you can make the most amazing youtube videos ever at the end of the day we have to deliver the game to the players right it's got to work exactly you know we're not playing it like we do every day right now we can't deliver game yeah it's gonna work I know we were talking earlier about potentially once we get our character creation system set up and ready to go for certain races perhaps that's going to be something we will open up for the player yes yeah files data would be awesome there was another there's been a few other games that have done it but I've really enjoyed contests around unique character creations yeah I think that just people can do yeah Tina Fey I don't know yeah yeah if we give these tools to the player base it's it's just cool because it's you know it's another layer of transparency right it's another way to get things in front of the players as fast as possible to get feedback as fast as possible and what is more exciting than getting a snapshot real-time of who you're going to be in the world and it just builds anticipation to go explore the universe yeah it's one important thing about Ashes of Creation is the fact that we really are spending a lot of time and effort towards making a fully in-depth character creation system yeah and I think our players are going to really enjoy that it's gonna be great yeah it's gonna be a pretty fantastic yeah thanks yeah we thought it was fun let's do it again all right [Music] alright guys I hope you enjoyed that little sneak peak discussion about the character customization process and what its gonna feel like for you guys to get in there and really make your identity with your character yeah yeah it's really important to us um you know we put a lot of thought into how we want to structure this and how we want to bring as many options to the player as possible and so you know that's it's all about the basics and I hope you guys enjoyed it because I mean these are the kind of kinds of conversations we always have behind closed doors and kind of kind of show you what our thought processes and how we get to where we were going yeah I think it's pretty cool to open that door and give you guys a glimpse so one of the things we're gonna do now is we're gonna talk to you a little bit about the experience that we're going to be offering players at PAX talked a little bit about the classes and their combos and their skill abilities and and how just the interaction between these four classes that will be present packs kind of just jives with each other yeah so we wanted to make sure that we chose classes that that compliment that make a full party that can represent sort of the Trinity system that we're going for and also give them a kit that functions well and and make sense with what we're doing we want to make sure that you know you guys aren't spending a lot of time like choosing abilities and stuff that you get to just go into the game and start running immediately right I'm so you won't see things like you know a skill tree and stuff but you will see a pretty solid kit that will allow you to have a lot of fun I think yeah these are kind of pre-built yeah it's been pretty fun figuring out how to project what the game is gonna feel like in this small and this small little segment of gameplays yeah I'm excited for what we're doing absolutely yeah it's been fun to to just give this experience to the players at PAX I think we're gonna have a really cool just fun time there for people yeah even people that haven't heard of the game that are gonna see this this experience I think it's gonna be crazy we're gonna get a lot of a lot of great positive responses out of this event so let's go over the first class that's going to be present the first primary archetype that that players will have access to in this group is going to be the tank the tank and that's kind of of course the the the cornerstone of any good party is a good tank we've got a keel working on a lot of the abilities right now so yeah I've been digging into a couple of abilities figuring out how they're gonna work in the game trying to get them prototyped and running so we could start playing with them yeah so it's you're gonna see some really basic functionality there like you're going to have a taunt you're going to have our ability let's slow down okay about the time let's talk about the time all right cool all right so we got a little in depth on that so a Todd basically traditionally for people that play tanks or played with tanks and fantasy driven games in the past is the ability for that tank to draw aggro from a target right and that ability sometimes can be through a single target ability or or in a direction or column target or an AoE around the player that's going to allow the tank to to kind of control what threats are being distributed to their party members right again also beyond that it's also gonna give us a bit the tanked ability to control the battlefield and make sure that the players and the targets on the place is what I need to be to take damage that's direct this you will see that some of the other abilities we're going to talk about are going to play off the tanks ability to position and manage the battlefield that's a good point it's it's again for our for our tank our tank is about battlefield control changing up the environment you know forcing the confrontation to happen on their turn right so taking control basically now that threat is followed by you mentioned a wall yeah a wall so we've talked to before about how the tank can kind of change up the battlefield with you to force enemies to engage him and that's not only through a taunt right like a taunt is is kind of the most basic functionality but how else can we make a tank interesting to play beyond just being like a massive HP this is going to be a skill where the we'll have the ability to basically like slam his foot on the ground and and and and construct this this immediate wall behind him or on him or in a direction that he may choose based on how he's facing and then that wall is going to have a secondary effect for the period of time that it exists it will incur a condition modifier to any target that comes into contact the idea is that a NPC will come running after Clarke for example in it he'll run to cleric and then fall to the ground I think bashes into that wall yeah that's pretty generate a little bit look damage a little bit of aggro back to the tank nice that's pretty cool I love the wall yeah and the great thing about these things is that they're all PvP PvE agnostic right so so all the cool things that the tank gets to do in PvE are also cool things are gonna be able to do in TV absolutely that's that's that's the general design architecture of classes in the game is that they are agnostic of a PvP or PvE occurrence basically these are going to be cross cross mechanics so to speak after the wall we have a pole effect a pulse skill lasso skill get over here get over here exactly and that that kind of drives well again with that wall and having a a secondary condition that gets encountered if the target interacts with that wall so you can you can spawn the wall right and immediately pull a target into the wall that target hits the wall falls down gets lassoed by you it's brought back to you you now have control over it again yes that is that is an awesome skill to the the shield bash a staple sword and board tank kind of skill ability and our tank at PAX will have a sword and board yeah yeah and this shield bash allows it may even have the legendary sword of Geoffrey right now exactly but that shield bash is going to be kind of like a damage-dealing X damage as well as condition stun effect or something Evan off the ground right perhaps yet another knock to the ground now there's another thing that the tank can do with that shield you can also offer eight you can't you can't and how does he do that hehe he puts that shield up into the sky he lets his gods know that hey this party's mine and while he's doing that any damage that his party members and ticking gets shunted back to him or a percentage of its not gonna be all the damage but right so he offers kind of damage mitigation to party members that are within a certain proximity of the shield cover yeah right and the things gone really wrong yes then then he is gonna be taking a portion he's gonna share that that life with them so to speak and he'll be taking that damage that's a very I love that also if you're being clever about it you might be able to use it in terms of an off tank who kind of you know goes and takes one enemy and there's a lot of different applications for the skills that we're making yes now something that actually has not been described before is one of the aspects of our combat system so we have we have a skill input a keystroke time frame that activates based off of your weapon use so every every person's going to have a weapon and that weapons going to influence the damage that they're capable of doing it's gonna have other conditions and stats associated with it but one of the most integral part of of having a weapon is your weapon use ability and that weapon use ability contains within it a keystroke driven precision type combat system that then allocates energy to the ability to use a certain ultimate skill that your class is going to have and for the for the for the tank he is using that sword and board so he's going to initiate an attack with his his weapon and that's gonna be some slash effect that's gonna come down and while he maintains parity in relationship to the target of distance he's going to have the opportunity to keystroke within a certain window of time during the animation effect while he's slashing another keystroke that will initiate a combo effect where he will then hit the target with his shield and then there will be a second combo opportunity another window that will populate again for him to keystroke at the right time and he'll do a final smackdown the with the sword right and this system is is is prevalent in all weapon mechanics all weapon based skill effects that you're going to be using in the game is going to share this type of functionality where you make combo into additional strikes right right and and you know these these additional strikes can have different riders they could have different abilities based on what kind of weapon you have what kind of skills that you expect into there's a lot of different ways that you can change those up and it kind of takes the place of you know the boring Auto Attack right like like this is kind of a primary damage component of your character and then all your your ability is kind of supplement that right and you don't have to participate in the combo effects but if you wish you can just activate the attack and let that be your rack but you have an opportunity to to to keystroke at the right window of time and when you do that you will be generating energy for a another skill and that other skill is going to be an ultimate effect basically something that's going to be very powerful it's going to imbue your role your class role and for the tank we have an ultimate effect that is called we're calling the super hero jump right now yeah come up with a better name later on but right now we're thinking of that you know the the tank jumps up in the air and slams down like a superhero and does oh does a big lasso for all the targets around it feels like a massive battlefield control yes so that's gonna be when when he has prompt enough combo effects and generated the energy necessary to be able to activate the skill he's going to perhaps lunge Florida forward in a jump that you said and within a forward arc he's going to initiate that lasso effect for multiple targets drawing them close to each other so it may be conducive to to some type of skill combos where he will be generating that power he'll have the ultimate a bit ability ready he'll summon the wall perhaps and he'll move back and activate the skill where he pulls everyone into the wall yeah or or he gets everyone close and then some of the other classes have some abilities that they can chain off of that right absolutely yes that's a good point the other thing that that all of our classes are going to demonstrate at PAX is going to be a utility skill something that that isn't necessarily dependent on a combat situation but actually grants the players the ability to interact with their environment and hazards that may exist within that environment and not having it be in a combat situation right and and it's it's all about trying to integrate you know the world and the roles of the player and kind of get to give them a feeling that I am contributing something that's not just damage that's not just you know heals it is information I can get more information from the world than any other player can in my particular like point of view one of things I love about the utility effects is I feel like it's gonna make the world feel more alive right that's a player's gonna interact with it maybe they'll get a little bit of story maybe a little advanced to a dungeon it's gonna make it feel feel feel less like a static MMO that is unchanging you're gonna have some real interaction with the environment and I think that's pretty cool that's a good point yeah so the the tanks utility is a is basically a perception check it's a detection threat detection and this is going to be where where the tank is going to determine an area at some degree of distance beyond what is normal for him to interact with and he's going to determine what actors are present there that may prove may may provide threat to the party right right so it's about you know determining what what kind of creatures are aggro and also whether there may be any ambushes in in that particular area so so you know we have all sorts of triggered events and all sorts of triggered encounters and and the tank will have a better chance of being able to be prepared for those those kinds of events right and and because of the node system the world's not always gonna be static right so something like this is gonna be important as you're exploring around because a place that you were at before might not be safe anymore there might be an ambush there that wasn't there yesterday and so you hit your perception you'll see like oh I need to pay attention when I go down that road absolutely another thing that's important about these utility effects is that they're not something that's spammable these utility effects are going to have to be strategic with the placement and use of these utilities because they're going to have cooldowns associated with them where you may not be able to disband them back to that right and different different classes are going to have different utilities so let's move on to the the next class I didn't miss anything with the tank today no that's pretty much it good so our next class we'll go to is the cleric and the cleric is is a class that archetype is the master of life really right right we're trying to think about like what does it mean to be the healer in the party right like what what abilities should a healer have right it's it's where does it come from it's their control of life so we wanted to make sure that we're not putting this this character in the back row and all he does is watch the party window and just click buttons alright I'm not watching the fight anymore I'm just watching over here exactly and part of that is because they're kit usually is pretty boring right like they have a heal they have a group heal they have hots they have you know there's all of these heals they have but they're all feels right it's a one dimensional and we don't want the Clara to be one dimensional so the first and most important thing about the cleric is that the cleric at PAX is going to be a staff wielding cleric so that means that clerics gonna be upfront and personal with any enemies that they may encounter and that's going to give the cleric the ability to to perform outside of just the healing aspect of it but it's also going to relate to their abilities because some of their abilities are going to require them to be up close and personal right really want to get max effectiveness out of it so one of the first abilities that the clerics going to demonstrate is going to be a targeted spot heal an ability to to take a target party member and heal them up but in addition to that healing effect you're going to also give them a heal over time a hot that will act as both a heal for the target and also as a proximity based damage over time for any nearby enemy targets so you know you're going to have two dimensionality there you're going to be doing damage and at the same time you're going to be healing up a party member right yeah that's a pretty pretty cool aspect I mean you'll see that tie into their ultimate in just a second the other ability that the the cleric is gonna have is sort of this kind of I don't want to say vampiric but it is it is kind of like a life balance a OE that the cleric is going to lay down as a template on the battlefield and enemies within that template are going to to suffer damage and then have life removed and allies within that template are going to have life restored based on the life removed from the enemies right right and you'll see a lot of this kind of balancing of life force because you can't really generate something from nothing you have to draw it from something else yes yeah that's a good point so after that that AoE kind of template thing you're going to see a group balance life effect and what this does is it allows the the cleric to basically take the hit points percentages of the party and and and balance them to two AAA a metric that is equal across the board so it's just averaging out everybody's hit points right absolutely so if you have your tank that's suffered a lot of burst and spike damage and they're reduced to 10% half and you've got a backline that's full up exactly you can cast that balanced life effect and you can bring everyone to a nominal percentage this one the next skill ISM is a pretty cool one so this is a chain heal effect this is something where you're going to to target a member and you're going to to launch a line of heals towards them and it's going to arc based on proximity to any nearby allies from that target and it can continue to jump from allied members and the more times this heal effect jumps it's going to also deal damage burst damage to nearby enemies within proximity of the target and for every stack of Ally that it jumps to it's going to deal additional amounts of damage it's going to power up a slightly and that's why it's beneficial for the cleric to be upfront and personal income because they will be an additional stack of that damage right yeah it's also good to know where everyone is on the field and position everyone around I know where your enemies are so more that more that tank controlled battlefield movement absolutely tactics are really going to be important in this game in down life this is going to be resurrection styles you know but just in case anybody dies right a little different though endow life is going to be a short duration buff that will resurrect a party member upon death so basically and a life can work in two ways if your target is a living member it will act as a buff that will last for maybe five seconds or maybe a little bit longer and if they were to die within that time they will have a resurrection ability after death or it can be used on a dead party member and at that point in time it is a long cast effect right so it's something that if the cleric is aware and watching what's going on and they see some you know backline remember taking spike damage and they can quickly instantly cast this ability on them while they're still alive that would mitigate the time necessary to have two res them if they were to die right right yeah so again it's about the healer being kind of on top of kind of the total party status right now the ultimate effect and that again is based off of that combo system of skill in put in a window precision window the alternate ability for the cleric is going to be a divine form and this divine form grants party members who are within proximity of the cleric as well as the cleric themselves a heal over time it it also increases the amount of heals that the cleric will do as well as their damage output as well for this period of time it's going to give that damage over time proximity based damage to each party member so if they're around enemies it'll damage those enemies over time as well for the duration of this divine form it's going to have a the clerk's gonna kind of rise up on on their feet and kind of you know during this five seconds just be floating there and doing their stuff that they're doing it'll be a pretty cool little look to it and then it's also going to give a hot that I mentioned you did okay so that's gonna be the ultimate ability and that again will last for probably around five seconds ish I would imagine enough to turn the tide exactly after that the goal for these is for them to be strategic and game-changing so you want to you want to build them up and but you want to save them for the right time that's right yes that is true so after oh the clerics utility I did not mention the clerics utility is an environmental cleansing it's a purge basically so let me explain a little bit about what type of hazards they may encounter in this area yeah so the thought behind the purge is you walk into an area that's been cursed by an evil mage and normally your party would go in and you take it you take damage over time from that curse but your Clair could come in clear out the curse and it would be safe for your party to go in it so the purging basically cleansing of that environment is perfect very claire guest now we may want to go to Q&A is now oh really i mean we keep talking about this but that'll take the rest of that oh this dream well what is the stream watch do you want us to tell you about the mage and ranger or do you want us to go to q and A's so mage and Ranger or q and A's the voting starts the voting inactive now something tells me it's gonna be nothing but mage and Ranger what does it look like we might we might have some time okay okay so moving on to the mage the mage is going to be using a spell book as a weapon and and this spell book allows the mage to kind of draw arcane energies these like little magic missiles and addresses from the spell book against their targets it's a ranged DPS weapon and again that combo effect is going to allow the mage to build up their ultimate ability it's gonna be something that's available to them the first skill that a major is going to be working with drumroll please nobody's expecting this the fireball is a is a fast cast targeted spell that deals Splash Damage in an AoE template so you're going to be choosing a point of impact for this fireball and it's going to be doing a source of fire damage basically that has the potential to and we may not see this at peck's but it has the potential to to light targets on fire if they have certain conditions maybe if we're in an arid or hot environment it's summer it may have a condition modifier right back to fire spells stuff like that they're all really elemental based selves yeah after the fireball is a longer casting route called ice prison I think I'm calling it ice prism the ice prison basically allows the the mage to to lay down shards of this ice that that trap right it's basically a full route right yeah and now that's not going to be doing any damage or currently it doesn't okay alright so there you go it's a control after that we have a a lightning bolt so lightning bolt is going to be a line templated attack that's going to involve you determining the direction of the lightning bolt and striking targets within that line red lines template right okay and that's gonna do that's gonna deal damage it's going to project out for the mage so you can see a kind of a combo there you're gonna ice prison someone and then you got them lined up so they're not moving or dodging out of that direction to land your lightnings but yeah so that's pretty cool not to mention an addition should the tank be able to trip opponents with their wall the mage is gonna be ready to line that attack they do their ultimate ability and pull in all enemies kind of close together yeah then that's like prime opportunities is that lightning ball or the lightning bolt another thing for the mage is going to be a skill that's a self teleport it's gonna give the mage some ability obviously that's an important aspect of being a backline DPS kind of a little bit less able to withstand damage if you need to move quickly you can move quickly and then you could blink out through a wall and pull the tank give the tank a chance to save you exactly exactly and that's going to be dependent on the direction of the mage and where they're facing so they're going to whatever direction the mage is facing they're going to teleport and we may even have some teleports at a later date that that come in where you know you can back teleport assign a help or stuff like that you might even be able to change the direction on top where the mage is going to have a buff ability yeah that's me your image right yeah yeah that's right mirror image I'm sorry about that so the mirror image is what does that do for the main so mirror image the classic D&D spell them rip the maids cast a spell and it gets a little shimmer around them tactical mirror image and for a few attacks the mage gets some increased evasion and so the mirror breaks after a couple attacks obviously but it's a good chance for the maze to save himself I tell you when I when I run encounters when I DM and Pathfinder are D&D every boss of mine has Meriam it teleports away it comes back with more mirror that's it that's a go to spell all right so then the the ultimate effect on on the mage is going to be this this kind of earth eruption effect that's going to be a huge AoE kind of earthquake that's going to be again a line template that's casting forward from the direction that the mage will be facing and it's going to to trip and deal damage when it impacts targets yeah that's gonna be a pretty broad line in front of them it's that this is a devastating spell it's pretty cool spell what's the utility for a mage um well detect magic people with the classics here so what this is gonna allow them to do is see sort of magically hidden points of interest in their local area right so if if there is a an illusion spell that has been cast on a wall and it looks like rocks everybody else right you cast a tech magic you'll be able to see the passageway that lies behind I love that no I honestly love that having like an illusion we were talking about how a dungeon you know you can go into a dungeon and nobody takes a second guess in mmo's whether or not that wall there is actually a wall right it's just like you know it's a wall okay and you keep moving in the direction you're told to go well here there's gonna be opportunities with this type of detect magic like you said right to see paths that wouldn't normally be seen right and you know it's gonna be incumbent on the players to actively and strategically use these types of utilities to determine what paths they should take yeah what hazards it's gonna be a lot of fun it's it changes up the whole design I don't know thought process when you have those tools world buildings can be very different yeah with these tools that are disposable yeah yeah it's gonna be much more interactive Ilan behalf of the players okay cool so let's get to the last but not least the Ranger the Ranger the Ranger so the Ranger obviously is using a bow yep and he's gonna have some combo effects based on that boat mhm he's gonna be launching you know probably a primary shot maybe you know a to arrow shot after that and then some type of kind of arcane shot and shot those ARS combo of effects the the first and again similar to the fireball is a power shot yes the Ranger is going to be having a power shot ability and this is going to be a bow attack that has perhaps a longer cast time with it a longer effect time use it's going to be up to the player to decide how long that caste nice a charge oh yeah we're gonna be charging up their bow right powershot mm-hmm that's pretty cool I like that so that gives some thought process to the Ranger to determine hey do I have enough time to do this right you know I got a target incoming and one other important aspect of the Ranger is going to be the fact that while melee characters have a max distance proximity where they can eligible they're eligible to use their sword and melee weapons Rangers are going to have a minimum distance requirement right right and and that's I think important because you know they're going to have to be tactician z' on the battlefield to determine you know whether or not they're too close for combat and whether they're gonna be effective at that distance right that's an important aspect but the power shot is a charge of ability and and that's going to is it going to penetrate a target and continue moving that's not on the board right now but it's definitely in something that we've talked about so something will probably play with and see how it feels how it works out yeah I think I think that's pretty cool it ly it lines up again with like a battlefield strategy placement but kind of playing towards that ice prison or the wall and knock down effects the earthquake that's gonna be happening but if they save their power shot to to combo everything know like hey my majors gonna cast this in two seconds I'm gonna start spinning out my power and love that I'm gonna design here I think it'd be awesome if like you cast that power shot at an ice prison and then that the enemy takes damage from falling ice charge oh maybe maybe not maybe not forecast oh no okay so in addition then the Ranger is gonna have access to a snare on a target basically where they're going to be able to to fire this foot pin kind of shot yeah it's like foot pain our hamstrings and slowed them down with dr. lake yeah that's our shot to the knee I don't know how this thing oh my gosh the Ranger is gonna have an ability to mark a target basically have a mark shot that's going to debuff enemy combatant so that they will take additional damage from any other source yep okay and that's gonna have some type of condition excusing effects on the target that's gonna show your other party member hey hey this this this mark shot just happened and take advantage of go for that dude one of the components of having a minimum distance associated with the Ranger is going to be a skill that allows them to get out of close range right this is going to be a - ability that's going to pull the ranger out of a precarious situation if I've got a tank who's just on top of me as well let me go absolutely so after you're able to to basically activate this this - you're going to then use a shop immediately as well so you're gonna need to have a target with it what either within a a close proximity template or targeted and that will allow you to use this ability this - ability and then follow up with that with that point-blank shop kind of against the target the buff that the Ranger has is an ability to basically prepare shots they're going to grab some arrows out of their quiver they're gonna slam it into the ground and as long as they maintain proximity to those arrows that they lay it on the ground they're going to have boosted damage on a following four shots right it's basically gonna be double damage on that next couple shots yes that's that's pretty powerful it is but they have to stay within baby yeah they are they are stuck in that area zoos they leave got it that's it so you can you still have movement you still have ability to move but if you want to get the benefit of that buff you're going to need to to stay within that range the ultimate ability for the Ranger is a rain of arrows this is going to be what they're gonna lay down a template out and in the battlefield and then they're going to to cast up these shots yep that are just gonna rain down in that area yep pretty classic peppering peppering I'm going to blot out the Sun nice I like that I like that thank you sir sees the utility of the Ranger yeah so what do Rangers do they see stuff attract they track and that's that's going to be kind of what what they're they're utility so for we'll be the while the the mage can see hidden magical things the Ranger sees hidden physical things so if if a creature leaves behind footprints other characters might not notice them or see them but the Ranger will nice I like that so that's that's pretty interesting because you know we have a lot of systems in the game that that have hidden things and one of those in relation to kind of like an animal husbandry thing would be cool if you had unique pets and those are not pets unique animals out in the wild that you're gonna have to find in tame if they may have with them associated tracks when they spawn that get spawned around them in a proximity and Rangers that might use this ability spot the tracks can give can be led to that or even you're in it you're in a dungeon and you pop up when your pet your track and you see some footprints going into a wall and now you know that your mage knees user revealed hidden - I like to hit wall that's a great idea see look at design alright so that's the that's the gist of the four classes that are gonna be present now again these are gonna be present at packs for players to participate either in the dungeon delve arena or have these four classes pitted against each other in an arena style gentle situation so it's gonna be really interesting to see how players interact with this you know get their first touch first experience on Ashes of Creation and just have a lot of fun at PAX so excited about that come check us out when we do the the PvE playthrough there's gonna be one of us will be there walking through it and kind of telling you how to do things and and we're gonna be streaming from pax as well actually so you'll be you'll see players you know playing in this environment you'll see the arenas you'll see us we'll have a little stage there where we'll be answering questions and they're kind of following maybe some party stuff going on it's gonna be a lot of fun and I think so if you're able to make it to pax in Seattle this first week of September upcoming first week of September we're going to likely be releasing some packages that may include some tickets for packs as well in the coming weeks so look out for that if you want to participate in are able to so we maybe have enough time for five minutes worth of questions just a couple questions tomorrow I will flip the questions here all right cool anyone want to do a song and dance while I find these here all right here we go name is Jeff my lessons but I'm singing for you that was really that was good Oh madam any time
Our first question is from Riddlin. Riddlin asks how will players running caravans know what no nodes will need for supplies?
Oh that's a good question. So when you initiate a caravan you're going to be able to determine the resources of the caravan is going to have in it. You're going to be able to determine whether or not this caravan has been initiated for a specific quest in a nearby node. You're going to be able to deliver goods for trade or to just warehouse in a new region, so that you have access to that local market.
I think the question was more along the lines of like hey I'm a node this node has certain needs, right: For the temple I need X resources right. How do we tell players that? And that pretty much is going to be through the mayor or whoever is in control of that right.
There gonna be control over dictating right.
So it's gonna be up to them to kind of communicate what is necessary. They're gonna have to kind of be in the captain's chair to tell the citizens what they need and get the citizens motivated to fulfill those needs.
Right and then when you're in a nearby node that you need to drive caravan to that Mayor initiated temple building right, you're going to have an option from the NPC within a nearby no to to dictate the caravan launch as a recipient of the temple yeah.
All right the next question is some TF TF asks will healers be able to heal people who aren't in a group without leeching experience yeah you'll be able to heal players who are not within a group I mean some skills will be group dependent such as the balance life skill that you're gonna need to be in a group balances I have to work you're gonna have to have a party member but for Spock heels you know or other types of targetable heels and drive by he'll drive by feel exactly like I run by dude he's dying to some monster I'm like you know what here you go buddy no more questions oh yeah sure I'm gonna do one more let's do one more all right the next question is from scone of doom scone of doom asks well every class be viable in multiple roles or each class have one roll they excel at they will it depends on your spec right like like it ultimately always comes down to that we've got the arc types those arc types if you double down on them they're going to be that's that's their role there right if you want to hybrid out you can hybrid out and you will be viable from as long as your build supports that and as long as your gear support I think that the primary tenant there to talk about is nice you were some type of creature the olivet point there is whether or not classes are going to be viable with different builds outside of what normally would be attributed with a role for certain classes and the answers yes you will be viable absolutely depending on whatever customization are going to go down that route you will have a place that is that is important in any class party composition and again you're gonna have to build toward that it'll take effort but but it is something that we is really important to us yeah so so guys thank you very much for joining us today we will be back with you in two weeks I believe is our next scheduled stream and we're really excited about packs if any of you guys are gonna be coming to pax look for those packages that we'll be doing and then also if you're not going to pax just tune in for the streams that will be having there as well we still have 60 days to go so I'm sure we'll be talking about it a little bit more in the future but let's let's go to pax and have fun yeah it's gonna be a good time so definitely come check us out say hi you know we'd love to talk to you guys in person then yeah thanks for tuning in guys you you