Talk:2020-11-30 Livestream

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• 0:13

hello everyone welcome to our glorious Ashes of Creation november development update we hope that you all

• 0:21

have had a wonderful thanksgiving if you celebrate it um if not you know we hope that you had a

• 0:27

great week and weekend how are you guys doing i think i see everyone's got the holiday

• 0:32

spirit going steven's got creepy stuff oh i thought you're talking to the stream how this is

• 0:38

like wait yes i know exactly what all of your houses look like right now i'm creeping into them yes

• 0:45

i'm doing much better i've regained my power as my beard has come back in

• 0:50

um i'm no longer diminished so i'm doing good do that grew back fast

• 0:55

yeah it did grow back pretty quick jeff i see you have your tree up and margaret i can't tell if that's a green

• 1:01

screen or your your actual home what do you think

• 1:08

but i did a good job of finding like the perfect uh positioning but no people people are

• 1:14

asking where's thomas oh yeah where is thomas who's thomas i don't know oh i see

• 1:20

oh my god i see him he's creeping he's creeping in the bottom right oh i don't know if you can see them oh

• 1:26

they kind of can a little bit not too much um all right well we have we're having a little bit of fun um

• 1:32

first and foremost i'm margaret crone i am your community marketing lead and with me today is stephen sharif our

• 1:38

creative director as well as jeffrey bard who is our lead game designer we hope that you all are ready for some

• 1:44

a lot of action we've got a lot of stuff to cover so um just to go over all of the things that we'll be doing today we have our

• 1:50

quick updates our studio update from stephen our design update and our environment update as well as character art

• 1:56

and then we have a little q a uh which our lovely community manager lieutenant toast has put together so

• 2:02

thank you all so much for submitting your questions if your question doesn't get answered toast does do a grand job of trying her

• 2:08

best to uh answer as many of them as possible and i think stephen i'm still coming through your microphone

• 2:14

uh oh are you i'm sorry a little bit a smidgen it's low for me um and with that i'm just to go through

• 2:21

our quick updates real quick uh this is going to switch over to a scene here

Quick Updates

• 2:26

we have our november um dev discussion coming up and our

• 2:33

november dev discussion just happened which was about over gearing and aka twinking and our new one is going to

• 2:39

be on boss difficulty so stay tuned for that jeff and his team are going to be really curious to see what you all have

• 2:47

to say about that topic we've had some interesting discussions about

• 2:52

i'm so sorry wait now i'm like is mine muted no i don't know oh let me i can put it

• 3:01

back yeah there you go um and of course uh we we do have

• 3:08

um a lot of internal discussions so we've kind of talked a little bit about the over gearing and seeing all the feedback that you guys

• 3:14

had provided to us and it was interesting to hear what people internally had to say about that

• 3:19

as well so it definitely gets some heated discussions going on within our even within our studio

• 3:24

um beyond that we of course have our harvest harvest dawn cosmetic swap over

• 3:32

that will be happening on december 2nd 2020 at 11 a.m pacific and we might have a little teaser today

• 3:38

later in the stream about what's going to be in the next set um because people have been asking

• 3:43

how we design these what's the process uh how does this help our team etc

• 3:48

um margaret i just sent you a link we'll grab that and of course we wanted

• 3:53

to extend a huge huge thank you for your generosity during our Extra Life 2020 charity live stream

• 3:58

we know it's been a difficult year for many folks and everyone who was able to tune in and those of you who

• 4:04

are generous and donated have helped a lot of children we were able to raise over 88 thousand dollars

• 4:10

this year steven shaved his beard we had a dinosaur battle again

• 4:15

um we got the pie steven in the face and of course we have a lovely recap of that about like 30

• 4:21

minutes of it because we don't want to upload the whole thing but you can watch the whole thing over on our twitch channel

• 4:26

if you would like to or you can watch like the fun recap also stephen is a singer jeffrey barr

• 4:32

margaret is a singer no jeffrey bard you have some contestant here

• 4:37

like steven can definitely sing we're like what

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no margaret margaret blew it away for sure no it was bad amazing no um

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yeah but definitely go check out that stuff it was a lot of fun for us and of course we raised a lot of money um i didn't sleep it was it was grand it

• 4:57

was grand um and then of course beyond that we do have our alpha one preview of the cleric

• 5:03

archetype which uh has an article that went live over on our news channel we always post our articles over there so

• 5:09

definitely check that out and it also covers um the there's also a video that covers the

• 5:16

class as well so definitely watch that we know there's a lot of feedback that has been provided to us there's a lot of feedback that has

• 5:22

been provided the in the thread and we're definitely taking all of those things into consideration we kind of talked about it

• 5:27

previously too was there's a lot of discussion in regards to um

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how bright the the particle effects were and stuff like that we wanted to note that you know obviously we're in alpha

• 5:38

things will change as well as animations and things of that sort so yeah and then last but not least

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we do have our journey to alpha one we've been doing a fun social media thing if you haven't been part of it definitely go check it out

• 5:53

we've been taking a little bit of a journey and you all have uh kind of shared with us what you would

• 5:59

like to do and it's been a really really exciting we've gotten up to our chapter 4

• 6:07

which is a little bit of a battle so it's interesting it'll be interesting to see who you think should go first our cleric

• 6:14

our mage or our tank i personally think our tank because you know the first person you want to battle is

• 6:19

probably your tank but we'll see what people say and we'll get to see where our journey

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goes as well as of course our alpha one play test dates we have available to you all this was

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posted in our creative director's letter in quarter three i believe um stephen shared these so reminder that

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our next uh alpha one preview pre-test the first one will be december 18th

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coming up here through december 21st so right in time for the holiday season we hope that you'll join us

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those who are able to that which is all of our bravers and intrepid pack holders so braver of

• 6:56

worlds and above and intrepid pack holders and you'll be getting an email from us regarding that and

• 7:01

all the information so stay tuned that's like what two weeks three weeks it's not it's not

• 7:08

a long ways from now that's for sure it's coming up yeah sorry we had so many

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uh quick updates but we had a lot going on this month and of course december's not even uh it's going to be

• 7:19

here soon so i'm going to toss it over to steven to talk a little bit about

• 7:24

the studio and how the studio is doing absolutely oh and by the way i noticed a question in um

Studio Update

• 7:30

chat by gayla says why doesn't the long alpha one test say full wipe um the reason for that is essentially uh

• 7:36

as we continue moving forward past those dates there might be spot testing that will open up and we may want to have

• 7:43

um on that particular alpha server people at the progression points that they were at in order to test certain

• 7:49

things so we're not definitively saying those will be a full wipe on those alpha servers that doesn't mean that you know it's

• 7:55

going to progress into the beta's betas the betas will for sure have a wipe from alpha so just to answer that

• 8:02

uh yeah studio update we are continuing to to work from home um we have updated

• 8:08

kind of our time frame when we expect to be back in the studio um which is hopefully going to be around

• 8:15

i would say february of next year you know obviously we're watching the updates with covet if you're not in the united states you'll know that there's

• 8:22

you know things um things going on here and and we're trying to get this thing under control

• 8:29

and it is uh not progressing in the direction that we want it to progress um so with that being said we're kind of

• 8:35

just staying um you know nimble and oh do i have music

• 8:43

oh yeah um but on the hiring front we have we've had a tremendous um hiring round

• 8:48

that you know started in the middle of july of this year and uh we just kind of finished it

• 8:54

uh we brought on board i believe 23 people in that period of time which is um

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which is very good our next hiring round which you guys will be getting messaging about will be in the middle of probably january

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um we're probably going to be targeting around 30 new positions at the studio to bring on board during that hiring round

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um and things are progressing right now the team is just has their heads down we're focusing on

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um the alpha test that's coming up december 18th uh there's a lot of excuse me

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there's a lot of work to be had still um so we are we are down and focused on

• 9:29

that um but otherwise there's not really too much else on a studio update front

• 9:40

all right i guess uh with that we will move on to our

• 9:47

design stuff yeah so like steven said we're very

Design Update

• 9:53

hard at work right now trying to get everything buttoned up and ready to go um obviously we have a whole new zone um

• 10:00

so that's required a lot of population a lot of new quests a lot of new creatures which is

• 10:05

pretty neat you guys will be seeing a lot more variants and sort of the population of

• 10:10

our our creatures in the world and some of the stories that are going to be told there so that's really

• 10:16

exciting we are hard at work doing a big stats revamp which you won't see in this um

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this uh december test but hopefully um the february one and for sure the march one um

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so a big rejiggering of all of our stats and how they work and how they relate to each other

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um something that will be a lot closer to what our final form of stats will be um so we're trying

• 10:42

to button up the last few things on that and then it'll be implementation time um we're also i have a small

• 10:49

team split out uh doing some combat prototypes so they're going to be creating um i

• 10:55

feel like we've got a pretty good foundation for our combat but in terms of um

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like really making it sing and really making it feel like you know the the core experience that we want

• 11:06

from the game it's not there yet um so this team is there kind of trying to find the final answers there to

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to really bring combat up to sort of the aaa experience that we expect from the

• 11:17

game so um they're working on that you probably won't see too much work from them in again in this december thing uh but you

• 11:23

definitely will by uh by that final date um so yeah it's it's uh

• 11:28

design has been a lot of fun there's we've got a pretty solid big team right now so um it's nice being

• 11:34

able to you know have different subgroups work on on these different systems and as we get bigger we'll continue to do that

• 11:40

um and uh yeah it's been a lot of fun it's definitely a little bit stressful seeing that we are so close to that december date

• 11:47

but um so far so good things are doing well we're on track um so it should be pretty exciting

• 11:52

to see what you guys think about it

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yeah and i think we might have

• 12:03

some footage we can play in the background maybe i'm getting that set up right now transitioning whoo all right that's why

• 12:10

there was music we're doing it live um so yeah we'll play that video

• 12:16

uh in the background i meant to do it while um he was chatting but i think oh we can

• 12:22

still see about it right yeah because so this is we are the biome that we're working with right now is very

• 12:29

tropical jungly um so you'll see that kind of reflected in the foliage and some of the creatures that you'll be

• 12:34

seeing um here we've got a big war beast um kind of in the distance uh you should

• 12:40

be able to hear this people are saying there's no sound you should be able to hear us oh can you hear us talking yeah there shouldn't there's not supposed to be a

• 12:46

music testing as long as they can hear us talk yeah there we go oh okay there's no there's

• 12:52

not supposed to be sound on the video sorry guys there was just music in the video it's yeah yeah just to give

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you guys an idea what you're seeing here as jeff was saying is one of the new biomes um this is kind of a more tropical oriented

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area uh but you're also seeing um some of the lighting changes as well this is all obviously in

• 13:10

in game so you're seeing a cinematic you know camera on these particular shots um but you're getting

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to see some of the foliage changes you're seeing some of the lighting differences here you can see some little pygmy goblins

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and their little tribe and shaman that's kind of there waiting to to come across any

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wayward adventures in their lands i love his mask he's so cute it's so good

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yeah um but our animation team does such a good job

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giving our creatures character they really kind of can stand on their own and tell their own story just by looking

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at them yeah it's really really good stuff and you might have seen a sneak peek of that video

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uh when we we tweeted some stuff out and put some facebook things out so if you if you're following us on social you

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might have seen some screenshots from that or a screenshot of that or from it which was pretty amazing so

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great job uh tristan putting that lovely video together um yes it's good stuff

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all right well we are excited for alpha one we've got a lot of things going on with that and um one of the other things that

• 14:23

people have asked a lot about are um like the the design process for like

• 14:28

the cosmetics and how they interact with uh the world and um

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we do have some other questions that are in our uh q a as well um so i'm just going to kind

• 14:40

of go over like the process of creating uh the cosmetics and also

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answer some frequently asked questions like one of the questions that we get a lot is you know how does this help the world that we're

• 14:51

creating here um and i think one of the things that we constantly tell people is that

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what these do is these help us create the creatures in the world they help us create the mpc garb that you're going to

• 15:02

see and things like that you're not going to see the exact ones that are we're doing for the cosmetics because those are exclusive to those who

• 15:08

help us but you'll see variants of those in the world now those variants are for npcs those variants are for creatures in

• 15:14

the world those variants will not be attainable by other players just to make that very clear they are exclusive to you but the variance of

• 15:21

them will be in the world not attainable but that's not to say that we won't have things that are similar uh that you can get of the same like

• 15:28

style necessarily i hope that answered that question because we get that a lot um but yeah so jeff sometimes will be

• 15:35

like hey i'm designing something for a jungle maggie make me some jungle stuff and i'll be like okay cool

• 15:40

but we'll make a different variant of it for the cosmetics for the monthly cosmetics so i'm just going to go over kind of the

• 15:46

process and i'm going to use one of the items from the next set which is december so you get a teaser of what the next set is

• 15:52

and also we'll just show you all of them as well since we're very close uh they'll be launching on december 2nd but

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um hopefully this answers your questions and if you have more in chat please just let me know so what i

• 16:03

normally do is i send over presentation to jeff that is i'm not going to show you in the entire presentation i'm going

• 16:09

to show you like one item example but i'll send him like my december cosmetic request and i usually

• 16:14

do this like months in advance um we have a tone that we're going for so for this december's

• 16:20

uh tone we were going for gritty cold and icy so that was kind of really the tone and what i like to drive home is with

• 16:26

ryan richmond who is our kind of like lead character artist i always tell him like go back to that concept concept

• 16:32

yeah concept sorry uh for instance like when we had the previous set for november i was like this needs to be

• 16:38

more jovial because it started looking really dark and kind of creepy like like the house and stuff and i was like no no this is

• 16:44

supposed to be like happy and festive and so like they kind of brought up the tone and the brightness on the colors

• 16:50

so for the first one i'm going to kind of show you it's a little sneak peek that's not what

• 16:55

i meant to do um here we go this is what i'm looking for so

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i usually send over one of these things and basically this tells you what it's for it's like an accessory i know i

• 17:06

leaked uh it's a frozen gauntlet um and what i like to do is provide what our

• 17:12

armor slide it's going to be in so this will be in your hand slot uh what armor type it's going to be so this is a plate

• 17:17

what race influences it is and this is renkai what materials are going to be available

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so copper plate ice that's really what like we're going for and on the right hand side you can kind of see the color

• 17:28

palette that i'm going for for all of the cosmetics you can also see the textures and materials and i try to provide really

• 17:34

good examples of those and then i kind of give like a little bit of details of what i'm thinking so for instance i was like copper colored

• 17:40

plate with armored gloves plate has intricate designs on it that are engraved in it encased in like a

• 17:46

light blue ice this eye should be part of the armor almost like an enchantment and then the fingernails uh area of the

• 17:52

gloves should look like a creature of sorts and kind of i gave you some examples of these as well for them to

• 17:58

to be able to see what this is like now i'm going to show you the process of this basically all the different stages that

• 18:03

this goes through so the first stage that i got was the left one it was really very intricate and

• 18:10

i did kind of like it but i was like oh it needs more ice um to kind of differentiate it from what

• 18:17

the other one was so they added more ice and then we're like i don't know if that's really gonna work for us because it looks too much

• 18:24

like uh the costume which is not showing up right now

• 18:29

so please moment figure out why it's not showing up oh

• 18:35

man come on i tested this before i promise

• 18:41

um let me grab that real quick

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oh they're like not here some reason we had a lot of obs bugs today

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yeah i don't know what's going on with obs today but it is not having i think i got the

• 19:07

update and it just kind of like derped out on me um all right well

• 19:15

maybe i can get mike to send those over yeah because none of them are showing up here for me

• 19:24

so yeah um stephen why don't we have you talk a little bit about the other part of it which is the other

• 19:29

part of it was we're going to talk a little bit about the diversity in visuals across absolutely choices and

• 19:35

then i will grab those other things and i'll kind of explain more of the process sorry that the this that's okay yeah not

• 19:41

a problem so um basically you know through this process one of the most important things

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obviously is going to be um you know we have a lot of visual diversity across the cosmetics across the biomes

• 19:53

in the world you know all of these things uh really there's a there's a large portion of

• 19:58

diverse elements and part of the artist's jobs really is to kind of um make sure that they're all congruent

• 20:04

that they you know all look like they fit together in this world and that's that's a really delicate

• 20:11

process it starts really at the conceptual phase and as it moves into the environment artists or the character

• 20:18

artists you know they're they're taking into account the types of materials and textures that need to be used and have

• 20:23

to be kind of co-located to certain regions so that they make sense um another thing that you know people

• 20:28

brought in the past is like hey there's a lot of different building skins that could potentially be on freeholds and all of that is taken into account so

• 20:35

i think what you're going to start seeing as we move into the alphas and betas and these types of these types of

• 20:42

different assets come online in these different phases is you may initially see

• 20:47

some um you know some contending looks uh but over time that's going to

• 20:52

be fleshed out it's going to be blended better together and it's going to create not just a rich

• 20:58

and diverse you know universe of of possible assets that players can achieve attain

• 21:05

but also that fit together within this world now the objective obviously starting at

• 21:11

the concept stage and moving forward is for us to keep the world immersive so you're not going to see like people wearing jeans and t-shirts and

• 21:18

you know kind of non-immersive uh assets through exactly club where in the game as we may

• 21:24

have experienced in other mmorpgs because while we want to have fun we also want to make sure that you know

• 21:31

the immersive nature of this world which is you know very visually aesthetic beautiful world uh is maintained um and

• 21:39

uh that's kind of the you know target objective obviously so you know and as as margaret really

• 21:45

kind of goes through with jeff and and um you know comes up with these different thematic sets

• 21:51

throughout the the months the artists take those sets which are constructed and as mark was saying they will create

• 21:59

uh alternatives that get introduced through npcs that get introduced through enemies you may face

• 22:05

and in addition there's going to be alternatives that can be achieved in game you know these aren't cosmetics

• 22:10

that are purchased necessarily but they can also be achieved uh in-game through kind of rewards and achievements

• 22:17

and stuff um and that creates a a large diverse capable essentially

• 22:25

structure for the world that the artists have access to as they're creating you know new assets

• 22:30

moving forward in the development of the game

• 22:35

sorry was that going on you're good i think we have to keep going okay got

• 22:42

it i will keep going got it set up here and then why don't

• 22:48

you talk about um as design has been essentially populating these 12 different zones

• 22:54

that are in the alpha one location um you know how fun it's been to work with a more diverse set of creatures that you've

• 23:01

been throwing in there it's real nice like it's kind of hard to tell a story sometimes when you've got

• 23:06

like six different variants of creatures that you've got we've got a ton now and it really kind of you know amps

• 23:13

up the story we can set up zones to have you know a particular population and

• 23:19

relationships between the populations that are there that we couldn't really do before it helps us to kind of establish an

• 23:25

identity um you know this is a rather large tropical area

• 23:30

um and what we use some of the creatures for is kind of like establishing character for different parts of this tropical

• 23:37

place so that even though like it's all the same biome it feels different when you're going from place to place based on what's

• 23:42

there um and sort of like how those things are interacting with the environment so um to expand on that just a little

• 23:48

bit by the way guys from an expectation standpoint when you're going to start seeing stuff out of alpha one

• 23:53

we actually just recently i think as of like two weeks ago or a week ago uh switched

• 24:00

off of the alpha zero island build from the map perspective and have started

• 24:05

actually now in the um the testing that we're doing internally moved over to the full alpha one map

• 24:12

which is about i think if you include the exterior areas it's almost 100 square kilometers of of it's

• 24:20

it's pretty big so it's intended to be between one-fifth and one-quarter the size of the map but it's very large now

• 24:27

the location we chose for alpha one on the main map is more of an island tropical

• 24:33

area um i don't know if we've actually revealed where it is on the main map i don't think we have

• 24:38

actually okay well i'll give you a hint it's in the top left-hand corner

• 24:44

uh area um on the world i know they're all gonna be looking and the in the world map and

• 24:51

um uh we don't actually have we're hoping to have ships online by december we will have some ship

• 24:57

usage available in the later tests like february under march for sure um but in december we're going to be

• 25:04

testers will notice that there's going to be some teleport npcs that are going to be present because there's a lot there's intended to be a lot of island

• 25:10

hopping and there's not a vehicle to hop with at the moment yet so at least that's not working reliably um

• 25:17

so in december you're going to see some teleport usage between the different islands and stuff like that yeah try not to get used to it

• 25:23

because it's a it's a temporary fix for the water problem once we once we get ships in then

• 25:29

the teleporters will be pulled out teleporting yeah but we just want to be able for you to be able to test things

• 25:35

quickly there will be some swimming mounts you you could technically swim but that would be quite a trick um on a mount without a ship so yeah the

• 25:42

distances are pretty great um that's important how far from one end to the other would it be you think

• 25:50

you mean um of this current map that they're gonna be able to test on in

• 25:55

kilometers or in time traveled both

• 26:00

i think it's probably um i think it is 10 kilometers

• 26:08

it's 10 kilometer trek across right if you're not going diagonally and then it's that that

• 26:15

would probably take about i don't know if you're moving at a distance

• 26:21

yeah i'd save at least 30 on the mount there you go all right i can show the

• 26:29

thing now i got it all set up sorry about that oh okay cool if you guys are good for that

• 26:35

um yeah so going back to where i was sorry about that um obviously these are the two phases um

• 26:42

and this was kind of what i had asked for but i think as we were looking at it um i ended up

• 26:50

thinking that maybe we wanted to it was too close to what our set looks like

• 26:58

so this is the costume set um for this month and that accessory looked a little bit

• 27:03

too much like it and so i actually was talking with ryan richman and i was like i think that maybe this is kind of the

• 27:10

direction i'd like to go is making it more like the creature for the set which is the pet and i'll

• 27:16

show you the pet so this is the pet and i was like what if like you took the pets like aren't like

• 27:21

their arm and made it into like an armor like an armored glove like how epic that would be and so we went with

• 27:27

that and we had dave who's the who's the concept artist um swap over to that and that's when we

• 27:33

ended up with this so that's kind of like the process it goes a little bit back and forth sometimes there's a lot more back and

• 27:38

forth than other times but um there will be like two or three different phases of what an item looks

• 27:44

like for instance i know you guys love the snores like aka our lovely snail horse looking thing um

• 27:52

and that went through a couple different phases and actually i had it more of like a like translucent pearlescence kind of

• 27:59

color and steven popped in and was like oh i think it should be like more colorful than that and so we kind of swapped the color on

• 28:05

it so sometimes it's just a color change sometimes it's like a completely different item like this looks completely different than the

• 28:10

original one not to say that we wouldn't make one that's like the original but the original to me looked too much like the costume

• 28:16

set and i wanted to kind of give it its own look and of course we're just going to show you the other ones

• 28:22

just because you know so the the uh building that we're going to have is

• 28:28

this really icy cold building here if we got some renkai out

• 28:35

there or aspiring renkai orcs this will be probably your jam or i think this is more vec than renkai

• 28:43

yeah this is vec yeah got some vec folks out there um i was like

• 28:49

actually this looks like and this is the mount continuing that icy theme

• 28:56

and one of the other things is that we also have uh some body types and rigs that i'm working with too so

• 29:02

chris atkins and chris myers um kind of give me all the options i have they're like these are the

• 29:08

the kind of bodies that you can use so i try not to differentiate too far from those things so that um i'm not putting extra work on

• 29:14

them to create new models unless they are like down with it for instance like the

• 29:20

the fox i had the the fox one i had to be like two tails is that okay because

• 29:27

technically we don't have a rig for two towels but they they were down with it because they were both like it's too cool we

• 29:32

need it um and of course the caravan pulled by our lovely

• 29:40

oh my god it's a lot of lumber yeah a lot of lumber so if you're thinking about being a lumberjack or

• 29:46

something of that sort this is probably a cool skin for you to have on on your caravan for sure yeah so that's

• 29:53

kind of like the design process i don't know if you have anything to add to that jeff because really me and you go back i mean i think

• 29:59

you're covered right like it's it's mainly about establishing theme and making sure that you know we haven't

• 30:04

repeated ourselves and um you know that we're always kind of pushing the story forward too

• 30:09

um we sometimes find out some neat things about the story as we're we're creating these these items um oh

• 30:16

yeah and we can yeah so there's always a lot of lore that we go back and forth on and making

• 30:21

sure that you know we're staying within established canon and we're not we're not pushing it out too far but um it's

• 30:27

it's really a lot of fun you find out a lot about the story through these items um especially uh

• 30:33

with where we're at in the process it's been a lot of fun yeah and sometimes it's it's like uh i go hey i really want to make like a

• 30:39

witch or something like that and then uh jeff will will go hey but this doesn't

• 30:44

make this is kind of what witches are like in our world and so like i have to kind of uh create something and design something

• 30:50

that's going to fit well with what his vision is as well as far as like the lore um

• 30:55

goes as well so it's like a lot of back and forth and sometimes like jeff was saying we the lore gets created through these

• 31:01

things too so it's a lot of fun uh going back and forth between those yeah especially when we're talking about

• 31:06

like holidays and stuff and it's like okay what do the people on vera like what do they think about this time of year right how do they

• 31:13

approach it how do they think about it um so it so it forces us to like think a lot more about like the cultures

• 31:18

of what we're building um in a sort of i don't know more intimate way than we would otherwise which is nice

• 31:24

yeah like the verdict keeper kind of was created uh like a couple years ago or a year ago or i think it's a year ago uh when we were

• 31:30

talking about what that festivity is going to be like and um you know we came up with all these little tiny things that the

• 31:36

verdict keeper does and what things happen during the that's that fall season and coming into the holidays and things

• 31:44

like that so it's definitely um kind of fleshes out other things too so

• 31:50

it's yes you're helping support the game and a lot you know in a very in a plethora of ways through lore

• 31:56

through creating the world itself through these items and these creatures um so it's not going

• 32:01

to waste because a lot of people are like why are they spending time doing this it's like well you're it's not really wasting time it's all stuff we're

• 32:06

going to do anyway this is how you this is how you build the world yeah and this is how people get to be a part of that process

• 32:12

so um you know it goes hand in hand with the transfer the transparent development process you guys getting a look inside

• 32:19

you know the creation of an mmorpg and you get to see every step of the way

• 32:25

yeah um and of course if people have questions they can let us know we'll be able to easily dye your armor

• 32:31

or other colors i think we've talked about that before um some pieces will be diable in certain

• 32:37

parts um so yeah we'll we'll have dyeing on certain armor some won't some will you'll have to yeah

• 32:44

by the way i noticed everybody saying my lighting looks like i apologize but um for some reason in the december and

• 32:50

january time frame of the year like the sun just hits the perfect spot in the window that can't like be

• 32:56

obstructed and it burns me like i'm like a vampire normally but uh this just burns me

• 33:02

so i was gonna say your lighting's always messed up unless it's night i know you need to stream during the night time

• 33:07

that's like the best time for steven um uh okay all right anything else that

• 33:13

you want to add on the design side we talked a bit about uh the journey to alpha one things that

• 33:18

that are going on on the design slide we showed off like a cool video of in-game uh some footage of that as well as

• 33:25

obviously talking about the process of creating cosmetics because people have been asking about those we're not even cosmetics just items in general

• 33:32

um so moving on to environments super cool with that sounds good to me cool all right we've

• 33:38

got a lot of stuff for environment uh so i'm gonna move on over to that so first and foremost you guys remember

Environment Art Update

• 33:43

that big rock that was in our previous one well now it's in game um and also in the far right you can see a

• 33:50

little tiny gray box ship and that is the size of your ship

• 33:55

so this kind of gives you the scale of how massive this thing is um so yeah i think i have

• 34:02

a couple images of this yeah and this is kind of like this is this is just an example

• 34:08

of you know how strategically environments are created right these

• 34:15

level designs so to speak uh to incorporate what we anticipate players are going to encounter

• 34:20

right as they're here in these areas so it's likely that um based on the node placement

• 34:26

around this particular structure that some type of harbor will be forming

• 34:31

uh if players manage to develop nodes in this area and those harbor locations will be

• 34:38

strategically placed uh in order to utilize these types of structures should there be shipping raids on trade

• 34:46

ships should there be conflicts should there be node sieges you know there's now going to be an

• 34:51

interesting element of uh essentially these these these structures

• 34:58

that can inhibit ship movement that can provide cover that can you know do a lot of fun things

• 35:04

for the players to kind of take advantage of or utilize um so you're going to see this you know prevalent across the world really but

• 35:10

here's one of the examples in this particular alpha area alpha area that uh

• 35:16

is gonna be a lot of fun i think for ships yeah it's really cool so yeah i'm excited to

• 35:23

for everybody to experience these things in in walking around in the world not to

• 35:28

mention the gliding opportunities here you know if you have gliding mounts right some mounts can glide and you jump

• 35:34

off of that thing with your gliding mount i think that'll be pretty cool don't jump off of it without it because you might die

• 35:41

people get like falling damage uh yes there's fall damage um and moving on from there we

• 35:48

have some really cool um kind of like jungle plants and things of that sort

• 35:55

oh mia yeah she always knocks it out of the park and like some of these are like growing on rocks and stuff it's so sick

• 36:01

um and i think i have one in here i can't tell if that's a picture like a real life picture or if that's the game

• 36:08

it's definitely the game but you can see the little guy the little person and the scale of how massive some

• 36:13

of these are so yes very lovely um stuff coming from the wonderful mia and

• 36:21

of course we have some kayla tents so we have some kayla things being built

• 36:26

you've probably been seeing a lot of kayla armor and things like that too so slowly venturing out um

• 36:33

you've been seeing a lot of dwarf stuff lately but now we're moving on to kayla and imperium things as well so here are

• 36:39

some tents that are being created yeah and as as you're kind of looking at these particular assets you can go back

• 36:45

you know about a year ago maybe a year and a half ago and take a look at some of the you know camp assets

• 36:52

that we used to use um for klr and kind of see how the art and assets progress further

• 36:57

right like these are much more detailed um and uh they moved forward with the project right

• 37:04

and it's pretty i think an interesting an interesting idea to kind of see progression of of the world and how how these

• 37:10

cultures are continuing to come to life yeah and especially with our node work that's going in um

• 37:16

actually i don't know if you guys have talked about how many nodes people are going to experience do you want to talk a little bit about that for the

• 37:21

alpha in this alpha i think we talked didn't we talk about it was that the pi

• 37:27

oh okay um yeah it's going to be nine um nine nodes throughout this area of space

• 37:34

um that players will be able to to interface with now it is important to note that these

• 37:40

node locations will change after alpha 1. um you're really not going to see

• 37:47

the definitive node placements until probably the first beta i would say um

• 37:54

and and we're okay with that because you know while it's beneficial for us to

• 38:00

test at the same time we want to make sure that we're not really kind of revealing so much to the

• 38:07

player base prior to the game launch um then we have to so to speak and we in

• 38:12

a beta obviously we have to and that's nine for the alpha one test that's nine for alpha one that's correct

• 38:18

april yeah just being clear not in the december time well i believe actually i believe some remember there's nine as well oh okay yeah

• 38:24

perfect just wanted to make sure yeah all right moving on from there we also have a

• 38:30

miscellaneous items so this one is a kind of little fireplace uh obviously our junior brethren have

• 38:36

created this this wonderful piece um and then got another one a little

• 38:44

cooking place oh yeah yeah all these little little these are

• 38:51

these are examples of in-housing um furniture craftables uh some of these

• 38:57

um that players are capable of of adding to their home um and each of them will have their own

• 39:05

you know specific benefit that aids in either profession work or just daily

• 39:11

adventuring um that as you build up your infrastructure you'll have access to as

• 39:16

a player and then of course we have a well beautiful way and a bathtub because you know everybody

• 39:25

needs a golden bathtub heck yeah the bathtub is great i know i

• 39:30

want this bathtub like iro like one of the great things that i

• 39:35

that i have you know would love to see in a game and it's really more rpg oriented than so much you know mmos we've experienced

• 39:42

but like let's say you do craft this particular bath and perhaps you know as a your alchemist

• 39:48

profession you've concocted some special type of soap right if you use those if you use those

• 39:54

two things in conjunction maybe you get a buff as a player for a

• 39:59

period of time after a good spelling bee good smelling right and it unlocks unique shop items with

• 40:06

npcs that you interact with or gives you different quest opportunities in within your

• 40:12

organizations and societies like these are the things that i think add a flare to the rpg element the kind

• 40:19

of immersive role playing side of things that are really fun to experiment with everybody's going to be bathing

• 40:25

themselves in fountains and stuff like that now like maybe i might get a buck if i just go into this fountain i will

• 40:31

warn you don't go in the water that looks like green and foggy though you will die this is true modifier i'm just saying

• 40:39

you will die and then of course we have some more chests and stuff like that you've seen quite a few of these obviously we we're

• 40:46

going to be making a lot of them because you're going to want to put lots of chests in your house to keep all your fat loot um

• 40:53

so yeah these are yeah these are just examples of the different ornate types of chests that players will be able to

• 40:58

to both craft through their furniture uh side of things and or purchase along with their home um and obviously

• 41:06

the the different capacity and ornate setting the the the the ornate um nature of the chest

• 41:13

will determine its capacity and and and maybe it's a mimic and then it jumps out

• 41:18

and eats you oh my gosh that's ruthless

• 41:24

and we have one more thing which is going to be a video uh so i'm going to play all this video and i actually would love for you

• 41:30

guys to kind of like talk a little bit about this obviously i know this is more of the environment folks um but this video to preempt to

• 41:37

pre-emphasize it is more of like how the lighting process works and things like that so yeah we'll show this off so you'll

• 41:46

see um in a moment um the placement of like where the sun is and things of that sort and and like

• 41:52

where it rises and you can kind of see how it affects the world and shadows just just to put in context this is not a

• 41:58

cinematic camera that you're seeing right now this is actually footage in editor so i

• 42:04

think this is devin uh who is going through and showing the dynamic lighting settings of

• 42:11

the world right um so essentially in previous testing we've kind of kept that light that time of day static

• 42:18

because you know for those of you who don't know lighting is a very very important element of really how textures

• 42:24

and materials look in an environment and sometimes when you're still kind of nailing down how

• 42:31

that lighting is going to work it can affect the process of your production artists your your character

• 42:37

artists and your environment artists who are creating props for the world who are creating foliage and trees and you know armor sets and skin skin tones

• 42:45

uh hair you know lighting really touches all of that um so we kind of kept it static in the

• 42:51

past because we weren't yet nailed down you know we didn't have we didn't have it as much of a priority

• 42:57

to touch the lighting early on and this has been this has been some of the work done on the dynamic aspect of

• 43:03

not just the clouds and the skyline but also you know the different times of days that are going to be experienced through

• 43:09

the through the world essentially and you know we're not going with a baked lighting aspect we're going with a

• 43:16

dynamic lighting aspect so you know it can be a little bit costlier but at the same time it really adds a

• 43:21

type of mood that you would come to expect with the aesthetic that you're seeing here in a game like Ashes of Creation um

• 43:29

so yeah yeah i thought this would be kind of a cool thing obviously i'm trying to continually take you guys behind the

• 43:34

scene but at the same time it has to be something that steven approves and that the team is happy with and they want to share

• 43:40

um but i thought this was kind of a cool behind the scenes of how like lighting works uh from the design or for the

• 43:46

development side of things uh jeff did you want to say something oh i was just gonna say the way that it lights up the clouds is just phenomenal

• 43:53

yeah i love it especially the sunset time like that's so beautiful yeah who did

• 43:58

the work on the clouds i think that's brian gans i think was working on the clouds yeah i

• 44:04

think so him and him and jim were working together yeah we we tried early on in

• 44:09

apoc to touch the clouds a little bit and we just found that the the it was very

• 44:15

costly to create these very volumetric you know flying

• 44:21

through the clouds per se so we couldn't get away with some of the you know more gimmicky kind of

• 44:27

presentations when you don't have to fly through the clouds per se um but here i really like the the look

• 44:33

of these clouds they kind of give it they set a good mood i think especially in in that sunset kind of

• 44:39

perspective it's beautiful i want to live there let's go on an island vacation

• 44:44

all right and with that we are going to swap over to our character art oh i would like to

• 44:52

clear something up um that uh their their the the varan planet is not flat

• 44:59

um so you may not see a curvature on the horizon in this um but from a lore perspective

• 45:05

uh the universe and vera does adhere to some uh basic physics uh and laws of physics

• 45:11

that we experience in the real world which means uh it is not flat i'm sorry it's gonna be a group of people who are going to name

• 45:17

their guild i know society absolutely no i i anticipate that i'm here for it

• 45:22

do it our peers i know you're going to do it i'm into it toast will make sure that we are

• 45:29

they let us know um i love it oh one of the other things that people

• 45:34

were asking is never mind i forgot what it was going to be if i remember it i'll ask again

• 45:41

um i try to like remember like a lot of the things that you guys ask because you ask a lot of similar questions um moving on to

• 45:47

character here um you've seen the broad uh the the bog brute it's cool for me because i

Character Art Update

• 45:54

like design these creatures and then i get to see them and they look so cool um here here's the the bog brute in

• 46:02

vision of him look how magical he looks he's awesome i'm like i always think about this

• 46:08

creature when i was designing it i was thinking about like a creature that is under the water or like lives under

• 46:13

the water and like walks under and like all you see is like the top part with like little bits of like

• 46:19

seaweed almost and little mushrooms and then you're standing on it he just stands up and you're like

• 46:24

oh standing on top of this giant thing um but likely it's just going to be a

• 46:30

little pet and it will be tiny you know you'll see the full size ones

• 46:36

in the world yeah yeah you'll see full size examples it's kind of different than this because it'll be a different variant of him

• 46:42

but yeah he's pretty beefy boy i love it so cool um and then of course

• 46:49

we have a new little guy here which is our noble war horn going off little sides of war horn

• 46:57

i love this face like look at that the detail oh yeah wrinkly boy who's working on

• 47:04

this is this danny uh i think so it's one of the newer folks

• 47:10

yeah yeah it looks good i like the detail on the model the t-pose makes the towel look really

• 47:16

funny and then our next one is our forest dragon and i think you've

• 47:23

seen this dragon in a more like fiery look like almost like a lava dragon vibe but

• 47:31

now you're seeing it in its forest yeah so this this well the lava one that was a different

• 47:38

dragon model yeah so this is more of an elder dragon look um that other dragon had some different

• 47:45

types of influences it had more of a kind of a bat um

• 47:50

kind of look to it it had that kind of thin wings and it also had it where the wings were really used in kind of

• 47:57

movement and walking this however is a far more traditional elder dragon look this is a uh particularly within a biome

• 48:04

of a forest and or jungle type location

• 48:09

so i don't know if you have any of the movement slides for him either okay that's fine that's fine yeah but

• 48:15

he's much more weighted his animations are much more weighted he's heavier he's slower um you know he is a

• 48:23

he is a he's a very big boy chris myers is a perfectionist i don't think he was

• 48:28

ready to share those yet with me um but yeah this is pretty sick

• 48:33

and then moving from here we're gonna move on to some armor so first we're going to be looking at some

• 48:39

kayla cloth and i think we've shown some um

• 48:44

versions of these in the past uh like work in progress as well as um concept art

• 48:53

but now you're seeing them actually here so there's cloth and then you have leather now these are

• 48:59

i believe these are level 2

• 49:04

10 or 20 i don't know jeff do you know um i think they're 5 and 15 5 to 15. okay so these are these are not

• 49:11

a part of any cosmetic set so these are i think in-game achievable kind of armor pieces

• 49:17

um that players can can get um and this is the more traditional kind

• 49:23

of kailar influence and then we have the imperium i'll switch over to this so this is the tier one set right here

• 49:32

and then i have the tier two which you can see like definitely gets a little bit of a armor

• 49:40

upgrade there yeah absolutely these look great yeah the empyrean influence is here and then

• 49:46

you did see in the previous one the kind of cape overflow um we did recently i think brian ganz also was

• 49:52

working on the capes a little bit and got them back up to speed from where they were in apoc

• 49:59

but for the mmo perfect and then from there we've got

• 50:06

the turnabout for the empyrean you can see it in 3d and also the

• 50:13

lighting it's so cool i love how you can like almost see your reflection in other people's armor and this is this

• 50:21

is level 20 i believe is that yeah this is the tier 2. yeah um and then we have

• 50:27

some more empyrean armor here like the tier one and then the level up

• 50:35

i think this one's still a work in progress so yeah be aware of that but you can see

• 50:41

kind of the individual pieces here between the chest plate the wrists you know the pauldrons that you have

• 50:47

the um um the belt you know these are these are all

• 50:52

obviously created in such a way that players can mix and match as they achieve different armor pieces

• 50:58

within within the game and really diversify i think the customization options that players have

• 51:03

when kind of determining their outfits obviously there are set bonuses and the set bonus is scale with

• 51:09

each piece kind of that you add to the set itself so you can mix and

• 51:14

match and get some you know minor uh minor set benefits based on the complement of that

• 51:20

particular set you're wearing so you could potentially see like you know three or four set minor bonuses or you could go full

• 51:26

throttle with you know one one set and its maximum bonus benefits and there will be a system like

• 51:31

a transmog like we have talked about i mean people keep asking like you will be able to add a cosmetic onto certain pieces so if

• 51:39

uh if an item has a cosmetic slot you'll be able to put a cosmetic on there so if you want

• 51:44

to make your armor look like a different piece of armor you can kind of do that to some extent it depends on what it is

• 51:50

yeah like there's there's you can you can take individual pieces and some of them will have the ability

• 51:57

to transpose uh the visual appearance of that piece with another piece uh or you'll have an

• 52:02

overarching visual change which is a one-piece costume that

• 52:09

is potentially you can achieve and or purchase and that will override the visual appearance of all set pieces

• 52:16

and then this last one um i don't know if i have to i want to make sure i get stephen's approval on it is as the staff

• 52:22

of the ancients if you're okay with me sharing that we have teased a lot of uh ancient stuff um if you tune in to

• 52:30

our live stream there were some goals that were achieved and you guys knocked it out of the water we reached all of them

• 52:35

and so steven um showed a little bit of the art of the ancients and talked a bit

• 52:41

about it which is in our recap so definitely go tune in to that if you want to check that out and listen so this is just one

• 52:49

weapon by the way it's not the staff of the ancients per se

• 52:55

yeah yeah okay right pretty

• 53:04

yeah so um you know what you what you kind of see in the staff design obviously

• 53:12

there's a there's an emissive component that reflects kind of that corrupt nature of

• 53:17

the ancients uh but you'll see that it actually lines you know through the curvatures of the staff as well and

• 53:25

you know i had spoken in the past about how souls act as conduits

• 53:30

for essence essentially which is the the energy that's used to manipulate magic either for good

• 53:36

or for evil but um some of the you know as those conduits can be

• 53:42

re-structured in a sense they can be molded shaped and changed um to have

• 53:49

focuses on particular types of magic and here in the curvature and design of the staff

• 53:54

you'll see that it has a very specific and unique looking type of of of mold

• 54:01

so to speak so there could be some relationship between these designs of the staffs and or

• 54:06

weapons that you'll see which are used to harness and focus the use of the essence or magic

• 54:12

and and how perhaps those those um those structures relate to the types of

• 54:18

magic that those creatures are using all right and with that we are

• 54:24

on to our q a so um our first question is going to be from

Q&A

• 54:31

neurotax and etc we had two people who asked this which is about over gearing uh based on

• 54:36

the recent dev discussions regarding overhearing what are the team's current thoughts on gear use

• 54:42

access and constraints um i think we're going relatively

• 54:49

traditional in the gear access points by kind of being driven by

• 54:54

level tier that players will have access to so as you advance in your adventuring

• 55:00

class you will begin to unlock the ability to equip gear of a higher level um i don't know

• 55:07

jeff if you want to expand on that at all no i mean that's the plan currently um there's there's a lot of

• 55:12

discussions we've had back and forth in terms of of um you know how we want to manage uh

• 55:18

player power um and so that's that's sort of where we've landed right now um you know it's it's a easy way to

• 55:24

throttle and set expectations for what a given character's power level can be at a given level um

• 55:31

obviously we i think all of us love you know over gearing i think it's a lot of fun there's a lot of games that have done it

• 55:36

really well um but uh with with the number of levers that we already have on this game we kind of wanted to make it

• 55:42

easier on ourselves in order to uh help create like power level

• 55:48

expectations for a given character and sort of have mins and maxes that we can balance around

• 55:54

um so that's where we are right now now that doesn't mean that won't change you know later on down the road but that's kind of where the team is at

• 56:02

and our next question is from sakski and logan from the forums as well and this

• 56:07

is about cosmetics could you please elaborate on the philosophy behind why cosmetic skin

• 56:13

can only be applied to one character at a time yeah absolutely so

• 56:20

cosmetics when we're talking about purchasable cosmetics really the idea there is the meaning of

• 56:28

those cosmetics in some ways augmented by its exclusivity and that exclusivity translates not only

• 56:36

in sometimes a limited quantity and or limited time frame but also in limited application as well

• 56:43

we want to make sure that when because we're a non-box purchase game meaning there's no box

• 56:50

price to play Ashes of Creation it is only a subscription that's beneficial because it reduces the barrier of entry

• 56:57

and we want a high population obviously but at the same time one of the ways we augment uh

• 57:03

the revenue flow to sustain constant updates and new chapter releases and you know additional content within the

• 57:10

game is through a cosmetic only marketplace that means absolutely no pay to win whatsoever

• 57:15

and that will be adhered to forever but kind of providing these limited options

• 57:22

that um you know a lot of collectors out there like uh when it comes to achieving and or

• 57:28

purchasing cosmetics it means something uh i think when

• 57:33

when players make that decision to either purchase or they go through the rigorous portion of achieving those things in game

• 57:39

um that it is not just everywhere around them and becomes meaningless at that point uh

• 57:46

you know could i guess i guess the the question is you also

• 57:51

need to have an item before you can put these cosmetics on it so like you can't just put this cool looking armor on like a level one armor

• 57:58

like you'll have to attain the same level armor and we'll have more details about like what those are

• 58:03

as we get further along too so the costumes actually just to be clear the costumes

• 58:09

don't really have a level restriction on them you could apply them to lower lower level armor transmogs there will

• 58:16

be specific um rules when it comes to taking different armor pieces and applying

• 58:21

those visuals to certain armors and the same is true for let's say mount

• 58:27

skins mount skins do require yes there there to be a specific type of

• 58:32

mount achieved but yeah i hope that gives a little bit of explanation cool uh did you have anything to add to

• 58:39

that jeff you had like a stinky face for me nope i was i was thinking and then

• 58:44

stephen stephen answered what i was gonna say so okay perfect sorry i might have given a little bit of not context there with my answer um

• 58:52

jalon wants to know actually let me i'm sorry let me just add that too one last thing sorry

• 58:57

um sorry is it true that as a company we could make more money if we did not

• 59:05

have limited time um cosmetics and those cosmetics could be purchased at any point going forward

• 59:11

absolutely you know from a pure business standpoint we could but i'm a collector at heart and um

• 59:18

in games i've played in the past i i have been just looking at your creepy nails too oh

• 59:24

what classic creepy dolls yeah exactly those are john's collections sorry

• 59:30

i have been duped in the past right i've told this story in the past there was with this one game i played and there

• 59:36

was this bare skin and i really wanted the bear mount to like you know because i had like two or three

• 59:42

other types of bears and this was a i'd never seen this bear before and i was like i want that bear

• 59:47

and they only gave it through um through boxes you had to buy a bunch of boxes

• 59:52

and they were like i don't know like ten ten dollars a box or something and i think i had spent like 400 bucks and i

• 59:58

didn't get the freaking bear and i was super i don't know how much i spent i spent a lot of money on it and uh they released the bear again like

• 1:00:05

two months later on the marketplace you could just buy the bear directly for like twenty dollars i was so

• 1:00:12

mad i was so angry i don't know if i quit at that point no i quit when they introduced something else sorry

• 1:00:18

um but uh i was so pissed so one thing that yes it's true we could make more revenue as a company from a

• 1:00:25

business decision standpoint if we continue to sell cosmetics that we create later on and stuff but we're not going to do that and

• 1:00:32

because the reason we're not going to do that is because from a collector's spirit it you want exclusivity and limited

• 1:00:38

aspects of these things because it's cool to know that you know there's a downside to it

• 1:00:44

too because if you didn't find out about the game until you know months later yeah your your sol but at the same time

• 1:00:50

like you want that type of integrity in the company that's providing this game because you know that when future stuff comes out

• 1:00:55

you will be safeguarded from what i had to go through in another game it's the same thing with sales and knowing like when to put them up like

• 1:01:02

if you sell something full price the first week and then like you're like on sale the next week the people who

• 1:01:08

bought it the week before are going to be upset right like it's yeah yeah there's a lot of

• 1:01:14

companies that will be really cheesy and um it feels gross as a player i will say i will say

• 1:01:21

however that that experience i had with the cosmetic thing that wasn't the worst experience of a company

• 1:01:26

the worst experience i had was when um stephen's decision is yeah you know i'm not even gonna get

• 1:01:33

into it i'm not gonna i'm not gonna get there sorry go to the next one you can if you want nope wasn't john's question all right

• 1:01:39

jalon the question is loot rules um can you share more details on loot rules such as

• 1:01:46

why there is no free-for-all looting and how need before greed will work if

• 1:01:52

any class can use any weapon and armor there will be free-for-all yeah by

• 1:01:58

free-for-all you mean essentially uh on pickup whoever picks it up yeah that's an option go ahead jeff

• 1:02:05

oh i was just gonna say like uh the the loot rules if you're talking about the previous uh previous alphas that you may have

• 1:02:11

played um yeah we didn't have those set up um but they are they should be coming online here uh

• 1:02:16

if not this one i don't think it's yeah it's definitely not december i think actually has been working on

• 1:02:21

them but um i don't think they're ready i think i d prioritize that for december i think that's going to be either february or march

• 1:02:27

um yes but the idea behind loot mechanics is to have um as wide a range

• 1:02:34

as you've probably ever experienced in mmos previously so we're either going to be at that level or wider but

• 1:02:40

the idea is for there to be a lot of administrative function that's delegated to either the party leader um or by i think there's even going to

• 1:02:47

be a by vote option or the raid leader um and you can determine those looting rules

• 1:02:52

they really want to know stephen they really want to know what you're doing oh my gosh i think

• 1:02:58

i've told this in the story in the past but okay i will do it real quick um

• 1:03:03

there was a shop in this game that i played and there was a particular resource that was

• 1:03:10

in the game that players had to harvest through normal means of acquiring

• 1:03:16

you know seeds to you know plant trees and these trees could be converted

• 1:03:22

over to a particular type of tree that was like the base resource mechanic for progression within

• 1:03:30

these tractors and vehicles and whatnot and people built their entire economy in

• 1:03:36

the game and it was a player-driven economy they built their entire economy in the game around being able to

• 1:03:42

you know capitalize on the low chance of these of trees becoming this

• 1:03:48

particular resource and the company i guess you know needed money or wanted money or whatever and they

• 1:03:55

decided to introduce a particular type of tree through the cash stop shop that

• 1:04:01

had like a 60 yeah they had like a 60 or 70 percent chance of additional

• 1:04:06

procking into this particular resource and it's just you know i'm sure made a lot of money for them but it

• 1:04:12

completely destabilized the economy and whenever you destabilize an economy

• 1:04:17

you lose your player base and when you lose your player base it's just a compounded issue because it's a highly guild driven game

• 1:04:23

when friends leave the game you other friends lose interest in playing the game and it's just a cascading effect of

• 1:04:30

failure uh that can occur now the game was already super you know pay to win whatever you kind of had to pay to win

• 1:04:36

in order to become relevant in the game but it was just uh the final straw i think in the back

• 1:04:42

of letting players progress for a year or two years in a particular economic

• 1:04:48

uh uh point of the game and then introducing something to the cash shop that was instrumental within the game and was

• 1:04:55

just such a terrible decision i don't know anyways and obviously on our end

• 1:05:00

uh you know as developers being able to drive our own product uh we don't want

• 1:05:07

players to experience that so we have vowed that we won't have play to win

• 1:05:12

or pay to win you have to play to win correct you have to play yes um

• 1:05:19

you know just a little a little heart to heart there our next question here is from mick shave and dark

• 1:05:26

firia who wants to know gears and this is about gear stats will certain combat stats be tied to

• 1:05:32

specific gear uh example agility only on leather or will all gear have a chance to have all

• 1:05:38

stats i think all gear will have an opportunity to have

• 1:05:43

all uh stats and or certain types of influences sorry crafters will be able to rejigger

• 1:05:50

stat blocks um and there'll be a couple of other ways to kind of move things around to kind of

• 1:05:55

create the both the look and the stat block that you're looking for it's not always going to be easy

• 1:06:01

there'll be a lot of challenges involved with that but but yeah the goal is to you know give you guys the option to

• 1:06:07

customize your gear the way you want them to right and remember the the whole reasoning behind that is because

• 1:06:14

from a player agency and customization standpoint you know you're not particularly restricted to any type of

• 1:06:20

gear for your archetype choice or your class choice through the secondary choices you make

• 1:06:26

and the the purpose of the class system is to allow you to kind of flirt with those

• 1:06:33

traditional trinity roles and as such you are going to have an opportunity based on the circumstances

• 1:06:39

of the encounter you're facing um to want to have uh you know either

• 1:06:44

plate or leather or cloth gear so we want to make sure that you know part of that decision is placed

• 1:06:51

in the crafters hands and then there's there's very little restrictions on those types of set

• 1:06:56

bonuses and or ancillary bonuses and our next question is from gunman

• 1:07:02

dude 2. i like that name uh nude uh nude

• 1:07:08

no questions send notes this is about node relations oh my

• 1:07:15

goodness what are some of the ways that players of different nodes can wage indirect war against each other

• 1:07:23

perhaps based on their node type example military node sending raid parties and

• 1:07:29

an economic node disrupting trade in the chat it's killing me right now i missed the

• 1:07:36

first part of that question the first part of the question was what are some of the ways that players of different nodes can wage indirect war against each

• 1:07:44

other i see i mean i think we are a non-faction-based

• 1:07:51

open world flagging based system type of pvp there's opportunities with caravans

• 1:07:58

to interrupt trade in and out of a city uh there's opportunities

• 1:08:04

for citizens to kind of come together and stop certain achievements like downing of a rate boss uh

• 1:08:10

ex you know trying to interrupt citizens of a separate node um you know there's i think there's a

• 1:08:17

lot of ways in which players can utilize the mechanics existing within Ashes of Creation

• 1:08:23

to influence change without the hard necessity of a declaration of war

• 1:08:30

per se the declaration of war is obviously a natural progression of those efforts and it's likely that if your intent is

• 1:08:37

to you know restrict progression for a group of people whether that be

• 1:08:43

guild dependent node dependent you know race dependent whatever there's opportunities for

• 1:08:48

you to to start at a point and escalate it doesn't always have to start

• 1:08:54

at war um and i think you know players will have a fun time exploring what those

• 1:09:00

mechanics are uh entire tyranter wants to know and

• 1:09:06

this is about flagging will players have the option to manually flag themselves as combatant status without attacking or

• 1:09:13

aoe aoeing anyone first should they choose no so the flagging system is no so you

• 1:09:20

can you you can you can you can i'm sorry let me clarify there's two components to the i know i

• 1:09:26

know i think so so you can you can create a way where

• 1:09:32

you allow yourself to attack an opponent but the actual purple flag doesn't occur until

• 1:09:37

you strike an opponent um we have a way that we toggle pvp

• 1:09:43

through gm command in the current server environment where we can turn everyone purple um

• 1:09:49

but technically the flagging component is you're allowing your character to strike another character otherwise

• 1:09:54

you're you like if i targeted you and i did not activate my force attack command i

• 1:10:00

couldn't attack you right but i have to press ctrl f or i have to um hold ctrl or alt when i attack and then

• 1:10:07

that will allow me to attack you and that turns me purple when i do attack you

• 1:10:12

right i thought that you could flag yourself and set yourself

• 1:10:18

as being a combatant and just live there right like i thought right that was no so okay got it yeah so

• 1:10:27

this is very my inspiration for the flagging system is is kind of comes a lot from what my

• 1:10:32

experience in lineage too um and the idea here is that you must

• 1:10:38

attack the opponent in order to flag so everybody is a non-combatant by default correct okay

• 1:10:46

yeah yeah and and the and the idea there is and the reason for that is um

• 1:10:54

you know there's a benefit and a downside to flagging first the benefit of

• 1:11:01

flagging first is that you have landed a strike on an opponent in some way shape or form that strike is

• 1:11:08

going to likely damage them to a degree um but the

• 1:11:14

downside is is that anybody else around you now is car blush on destroying you

• 1:11:19

without any penalties right so you're opening yourself up to attack per se uh the other downside of that is

• 1:11:26

you are not unless you're in a party or raid with the opponent you're attacking um in which case you then could attack

• 1:11:32

them but you will not see their hit point value so there's a little bit of a risk

• 1:11:37

if you're you know attacking an individual um that you could kill them with the attack as well

• 1:11:44

and if you did kill them with the attack and they were a non-combatant you would gain corruption and nobody wants to gain corruption because corruption is a

• 1:11:50

severely debilitating uh for a player um so yeah

• 1:11:57

okay and then um sarah was saying our lieutenant toast our community manager was saying that some people were

• 1:12:04

asking for a follow-up on the need before greed part of looting and how it will work in regards to if

• 1:12:09

all weapons and armor are able to be used by all classes how does the need before greed system work

• 1:12:15

since anyone could claim need so if people are claiming need and

• 1:12:23

you know they don't actually need it it's going to be up to the party to kind of um adjudicate that situation and be like

• 1:12:31

hey stop rolling on this item that's stop rolling at everything and if you

• 1:12:38

don't you can find a group elsewhere and we're not going to invite you to future parties um there's obviously downsides and

• 1:12:44

upsides to any type of loot protocol that the party's going to choose um and it's just going to be on the party to

• 1:12:50

kind of um to to uh to go through that yeah we're not saying

• 1:12:56

any given piece of gear belongs to any given class right um gear will make sense more

• 1:13:03

with certain builds of the class as opposed to you know all rangers get

• 1:13:08

dex gear right um there will be there will be other situations where that ranger might want

• 1:13:13

different types of of gear they might want strength they might want wisdom um there's there's a whole lot of stuff that that might work for their

• 1:13:20

particular build so all right and i just want to go back for one second to the to the flagging uh discussion i notice a lot of people

• 1:13:27

in here saying lineage two had the best flagging system i agree actually uh for a non-faction based game i do believe lineage 2 had

• 1:13:34

the best flagging system of any mmorpg i've ever played and

• 1:13:39

i thoroughly enjoyed it there were some downsides and i believe i've addressed those downsides in our flagging system

• 1:13:46

when it comes to um you know not allowing for pk alts or

• 1:13:51

griefers um in you know in the kind of way that we saw them um in lineage 2 at least

• 1:13:58

but i believe that the system you know pvp is intended to exist within formal systems that be the

• 1:14:05

caravan system the castle siege the node siege the guild wars the node wars those systems don't use the flagging

• 1:14:10

system they all use instead an organized event system which uh

• 1:14:16

which turns you into an attacker or a defender and you have other attackers or defenders and you do not receive the same type of

• 1:14:22

death penalties that you would normally receive through the flagging system the flagging system is is intended to

• 1:14:29

provide a way by which players can exercise their agency in the

• 1:14:34

open world outside of those events um in a non-normal environment

• 1:14:40

so like you know i have beef with this person you know we're not in a guild or we don't have a guild of war but you know

• 1:14:46

they're mining some unique ore and i'm going to take advantage of the situation i'll take the risk

• 1:14:51

i'll get the corruption whatever you know my emotional investment level is so high

• 1:14:57

that i don't care about the problem side of that thing but generally corruption is a deterrent to griefing

• 1:15:04

corruption will be a deterrent to people decaying because um

• 1:15:09

they're not going to want to take those added death penalties they're not going to want to uh take a risk of losing completed gear

• 1:15:16

and items um you know the idea is to present risk versus reward in the open world

• 1:15:21

and that's what this type of system provides right we have about four more questions

• 1:15:27

to go through here uh before we wrap things up i know it's been a long q and a um but we have you know we're trying to

• 1:15:33

make sure that we're thorough with these um our next question is from drexus who wants to know about music

• 1:15:39

do you plan to support the ability for players to make custom music in-game like the music macro language

• 1:15:47

we have talked about it yeah but scope-wise i don't know if that's

• 1:15:52

that's in the comments or maybe an expansion for bards later yeah possibly um it's it's very cool like it's it's i

• 1:16:00

think we could do some really fun things with it but um it's a lot of engineering time and design work uh to get a system like

• 1:16:06

that feeling really good right and our next question is from akatosh

• 1:16:11

about raids and they want to know with open world raids how do you plan to prevent groups of larger than 40 players

• 1:16:18

from trivializing the difficulty

• 1:16:25

so there's going to be opportunities in the open world obviously where a

• 1:16:31

larger portion of players can come together and try to complete content now in the

• 1:16:37

creation of these encounters if we're talking about world bosses there's going to be a large amount of

• 1:16:43

environmental hazards aoe effects and the more players that are present

• 1:16:48

you know there's an opportunity there where the amount of damage taken significantly goes up

• 1:16:54

um and you know becomes what you think would be easier to accomplish with a large amount of

• 1:16:59

players might be harder might be more difficult to manage that number of you know damage being taken by a

• 1:17:05

significant portion of people but ultimately that's one of the downsides of an open world

• 1:17:11

mmorpg is there is opportunities for you know large amounts of players to

• 1:17:16

come together outside of what the typical encounter expectation is there's some scalability

• 1:17:22

uh you know that can be had in that respect you can activate based off of the number of player

• 1:17:29

characters within the within the boss room or something you can activate additional environmental hazards additional aoe usages you can

• 1:17:35

incorporate that into the behavior tree of the monster um you know all those types of things we're not really decided per se on what

• 1:17:41

route we're going to take at least on the scalability side i know we had a question that was posed to the community i don't know a few

• 1:17:47

months ago on on on scalability in that regard but it's something that we're going to

• 1:17:52

test in alphas and betas you know when we want to confine an encounter to a particular number of players that's

• 1:17:59

when it goes instanced for the most part um and that's where you know whether that be an overarching

• 1:18:05

encounter of the primary narrative um or we want to contain because the you know

• 1:18:10

loot drops are special in some regard um you know that's when we'll likely use that 80 20 rule on instancing versus

• 1:18:16

non-instancing uh and we can control the player count but but generally i would say you know where i lean in and jeff i

• 1:18:23

don't know you can probably jump in here as well but where i lean in is that um i'm okay increasing the

• 1:18:29

environmental hazards and the use of aoe effects when we have a player count that exceeds what the

• 1:18:35

intended encounter design is for um and i think that's a that's a safe way of scaling up without making it feel like you're

• 1:18:42

not immersed in this world and the ai is responding to you you know what i mean i

• 1:18:48

i don't like that artificial feeling of like hey i never progress because i'm always facing the same

• 1:18:53

difficulty level versus a monster i hate that type of scalability personally i think that's not a fun and i don't

• 1:18:59

like it in games but if it were like oh this monster is like freaked out because there's a rate of 40 people and now the monster's like

• 1:19:05

super freaked out because there's 120 people and it's like using aoes all over the place like i'm okay with that

• 1:19:10

um jeff what do you think no i totally agree like that's basically how we're approaching these uh kind of big

• 1:19:17

group open world kind of bosses is you know abilities and behaviors that

• 1:19:24

not punish and i want to say punish but that um respond or um make more difficult the

• 1:19:31

more numbers that you've brought to that fight right um there's a lot of different things that you can do

• 1:19:37

where you know 40 people it's of a certain difficulty and 60 people it's more difficult and

• 1:19:43

you can do that without relying on stat buffs or or hp buffs or things of that nature

• 1:19:49

you just make it more difficult to have that many people and you can do that with the environment you can do that with abilities you can

• 1:19:56

do that with behaviors so so there's a lot of things that you can do um on that side of things

• 1:20:01

um to to increase the difficulty without just making it a damaged sponge and that's

• 1:20:07

more interesting gameplay too like that's a thing that we want people to be thinking about um when they're fighting these big these

• 1:20:12

these open-world creatures are going to be big they're going to be terrifying and they're going to they're gonna hopefully

• 1:20:17

require a lot of skill to to take down um and so part of that calculus is going to be

• 1:20:22

how many people do we bring to this fight and i think there were some questions in follow-up to that in regards to

• 1:20:29

the solo player um and obviously those players who are trying to play do you think there's going to be things

• 1:20:36

for them to do um or because i think there's concern there's concern that they might get overrun by like groups or

• 1:20:41

large raids and things of that sort so you guys are handling that yeah no i

• 1:20:47

think from a content path standpoint there is content that's being developed for both

• 1:20:53

group play and raid play and also solo play um but ultimately at the end of the day we

• 1:20:58

have to recognize that we're building an mmo rpg which is a massively multiplayer online

• 1:21:05

role-playing game there are plenty of great single-player rpgs out there and i don't want to discourage

• 1:21:11

more solo-oriented players from playing Ashes of Creation i think they're going to have a great time

• 1:21:16

in and there'll be a lot of content for them to kind of explore single-handedly but at some point you

• 1:21:22

have to understand that the game is designed around massive amounts of players

• 1:21:28

which means that you're going to have to in a rake interact either on an economic level with kind of procuring

• 1:21:33

you know assets for your profession and or crafting if you're interested in that you're going to have to purchase things

• 1:21:39

from players and get housing and you know craft in that way there's going to be group monsters that you're going

• 1:21:44

to want to complete based off of like quest lines there's going to be raids that you'll probably want to participate in

• 1:21:50

and because we're a non-faction based game we're incorporating many what we call

• 1:21:55

pseudo-factions that get you involved in some way shape or form with a community

• 1:22:01

it doesn't have to be a community that you're super strongly bonded with per se and you can we can leave that kind of to

• 1:22:06

the player agency to determine but you're going to have a node citizen chap chat you're going to have

• 1:22:12

a organization you know scholars academy chat you're going to depending which one you

• 1:22:17

choose you're going to have a religion you know temple chat these are like micro communities within

• 1:22:23

the grand community that exist that that give you an opportunity to form friendships

• 1:22:28

form bonds form whatever you want to do and you can work with those people to complete some of the group and or non-solo content but in the same

• 1:22:36

way that we're providing solo content for solo players we are an mmorpg and there's gonna need

• 1:22:41

to be some interaction with a community in order to achieve some of the content and that's

• 1:22:46

that we're being open and upfront about that we are not trying to make a game for everyone

• 1:22:53

in my opinion when games do that they fail so what we want to do is we want to have

• 1:22:58

a very clear and concise image of what we're trying to create we are laying out our

• 1:23:03

our goals and design you know mentality here openly for the for the players um and we accept that

• 1:23:11

that's not going to be a game that everyone wants and that's okay and you know i i love the idea that

• 1:23:19

some of these communities are going to be built almost around necessity right like there might be something going on with your religion and now you have to band

• 1:23:26

together to be able to complete something and i think that that's really quite amazing and cool or like maybe you

• 1:23:32

not everybody agrees and so you have like this resource uh that's going back and forth until the

• 1:23:37

last moment and then that that trait the you know turns the tide of what happens in the end

• 1:23:43

i think it's really a lot on your shoulders to to make what happens in the world and i think that's really cool

• 1:23:50

yeah a big part of it is like you know the way what stephen was talking about is like the idea of like soft guilds where you

• 1:23:56

haven't like explicitly joined up you you're not you know it's not organized by players but it's like hey

• 1:24:02

i care about my node these people are also part of my node there's a thing happening to that i

• 1:24:08

don't care about the people you just care about your house right exactly so like you still have you know skin in

• 1:24:14

the game even if you're a pretty solo player to help protect the node and help keep the node healthy and that's the same for

• 1:24:20

organizations and religions and there's a lot of stuff that interacts that same way um so we try to make it as easy as

• 1:24:28

possible to join the community and to keep as much friction away from that so that you just kind of naturally

• 1:24:34

become a part of the community whether you kind of like it or not right and speaking of friction real quick part of what unites people

• 1:24:43

is a common enemy so to speak right um that enemy can be event driven and

• 1:24:49

npc based right or comical exactly that enemy can be event driven or npc based like uh you know dragon coming

• 1:24:56

out of the mountain to destroy your city's stables and barracks and you know whatever and you unite with people and

• 1:25:02

through that you through that uniting you can form bonds and friendship right um or it can

• 1:25:09

be a hostile player um so yeah you get talking friction friction

• 1:25:16

is also soft friction is also a necessity in a non-faction based game and that

• 1:25:22

soft friction helps to create essentially sides and i don't like two-sided servers personally

• 1:25:28

it feels like every time i've ever played an mmo it usually especially if it has ppp in it servers devolve into two-sided nature

• 1:25:35

but hopefully the way that we limit citizenship to nodes to a degree right and how those nodes are in

• 1:25:42

competition with one another and benefit the players to a degree that will help to

• 1:25:48

further promote many sides and many sides i think is a much more

• 1:25:54

fun and dynamic uh type of of of thing yeah and our next question

• 1:26:01

we'll get to it it's from skerns and they want to know about pet gear well summoners uh summons also have gear available

• 1:26:09

or only combat pets only combat pets summon summoners who summon their pets so to

• 1:26:16

speak or actually i would call them summons if we get the the nomenclature down correctly

• 1:26:21

summons i would refer to as summoner pets so to speak i would call them pets and i'd refer to pets as something that

• 1:26:28

is a inventory item that you can well not even cosmetic but an inventory item that you can

• 1:26:34

that you can bring with you and you're not a summoner um no armor and weapons um equippables

• 1:26:42

those are not on summons those are not on summoners so those are only for battle pets and

• 1:26:47

our final question here is from everest our final question here is from emperor stone uh about meals

• 1:26:52

will my party members be able to deposit items directly into my mule's bag i guess that would be like that's a good

• 1:27:00

question that's a good question i do not know um the answer to that yet i'd have

• 1:27:08

to i don't i don't know if that's the case i think probably not i think the way we would want to do

• 1:27:13

that is we would have a player-to-player trade available and then from there the owning

• 1:27:19

mule can the only player can deposit on their pet okay oh cool and i think with that

• 1:27:28

we have our um we made it a little over an hour

• 1:27:35

but we hope that um a little over an hour and a half probably uh we hope that you enjoyed our

• 1:27:42

development update we have a lot that we're still doing we have a lot of work to do all of us do today so um

• 1:27:49

final reminders we have a new dev discussion coming up for december definitely check it out uh please give us all a

• 1:27:55

feedback we really love that and toast does an amazing job compiling that

• 1:28:00

if your question didn't get answered in our q a toast also answers like a lot of them so definitely go to

• 1:28:07

the forums check that out we'll also share that on our social channels eventually as well too and also on our news post so um you

• 1:28:13

know check it your question might might have got answered just off stream and also um our november cosmetics swap

• 1:28:21

over is happening december 2nd 11 a.m pst definitely oh go

• 1:28:26

get snag up the ones that are there now if you want them and we gave you a little teaser of what's to come

• 1:28:32

um so we hope that you all enjoyed them again thank you to uh stephen and jeff for taking time out

• 1:28:38

of your day i know you're both very very very busy and i appreciate you you joining me and

• 1:28:44

of course follow us on all of the social channels uh right here on twitch if you follow us you won't miss out on any of our streams we do

• 1:28:50

those monthly and you know as we ramp up we're going to be doing more also we'll have this video up on our

• 1:28:56

youtube channel you can check that out at youtube.com ashesofcreation and we'll let you know whenever that's live

• 1:29:02

on all of our social channels so follow us there as well twitter facebook instagram snapchat i don't know everything we're

• 1:29:07

Ashes of Creation all over the place we try to keep you guys updated now there's this thing called fleeting i

• 1:29:13

don't know they just keep adding more things at us and so we just keep trying to

• 1:29:18

partake in it so once again thank you for joining us we

• 1:29:23

will see you next month for our december update i think it's going to be on another weird day so uh sorry the holidays are strange but we

• 1:29:31

hope that you are having a wonderful november and we'll see you in december

• 1:29:42

all right that was good

• 1:29:54

all right gg i'll see you guys later