Talk:2023-08-31 Video - Ashes of Creation Alpha Two Village Nodes Update

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

ﺔﻴﻟﻭﺃ ﺔﺨﺴﻧ

• 00:00

And welcome everyone to another live stream here in the world of Vera and boy do we have

• 00:27

an exciting stream today. We are back again looking at one of the most defining features

• 00:36

of Ashes of Creation, the Node system. And I am joined today by RegularFace on the live stream,

• 00:47

one of our glorious senior designers, Mr. Chris. How you doing Chris?

• 00:51

I'm doing swell. I don't know if I'd say regular though.

• 00:54

Well, I mean, well, you know, there's once before.

• 00:56

There was one other time.

• 00:57

That's regular. Now it's two times. That's a regular thing, right?

• 01:01

I don't know. I feel like you're a regular on the streams.

• 01:03

That's true. That's true. That's true. All right. I apologize. We are joined

• 01:07

once again by one of our glorious designers, Mr. Chris.

• 01:11

How you doing buddy?

• 01:13

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

• 01:15

And for those of you who don't know, Chris is our resident expert when it comes to nodes. He

• 01:21

lives, eats, breathes, and any other normal bodily function that's required

• 01:27

revolves around the node system. So I'm glad to have you with us because

• 01:34

you know what there needs to be known about nodes.

• 01:37

Where are we?

• 01:40

Yeah, lots of things need to be known, but we're outside of a beautiful node that's around the

• 01:45

corner a little bit. Okay. And I believe I am the self-appointed mayor of this node for the purposes

• 01:52

of what we're going to be demonstrating a little bit later. Yeah. The citizens aren't super happy

• 01:56

that you, you know, invalidated the election process, but. Wow. Wow. It's not an invalidation.

• 02:04

It's a reaffirmation of the correct election process.

• 02:10

So tell me what we're doing out here today. What are we going to be showcasing here? It's been a

• 02:13

long time since we've actually taken a look at nodes. As many of you know, the last time we saw

• 02:20

nodes was back during alpha one in August of 2021. Wow. And nodes during that time were, you know,

• 02:29

relatively early functional version. They had a lot of the core systems and functionality present

• 02:34

that we saw, which was, you know, constructing buildings and participating in quest hubs.

• 02:39

Uh, they were able to purchase housing and become citizens. Um, there was all that there, but they

• 02:45

were a very early representation of it and definitely not visually or aesthetically what we

• 02:51

wanted to present. That's going to be part of what we're showing, but what are we doing out here

• 02:54

today? And let me, while you tell me what we're doing, I'm just going to adjust to some of the,

• 02:58

uh, the winds. Yeah, for sure. Um, well today we're going to walk through kind of the general

• 03:05

process of what it takes to build a building. Um, you know, we're going to get some materials, uh,

• 03:10

we're going to get the node, some materials, we're going to get the node, some money, um,

• 03:14

and we're going to build ourselves a little service building. Nice. So we're going to go

• 03:18

generally around the loops that players can expect. And obviously nodes are a huge system.

• 03:24

They are, as I said, one of the defining features of Ashes of Creation, what sets us apart from

• 03:28

other MMOs. They reflect the change that exists within the environment based off of player

• 03:33

activity, player actions, um, and players have governance over these nodes, both from a mayoral

• 03:38

perspective and the way that citizens interact with the decisions that the mayor is, is, is

• 03:43

utilizing. And as a mayor, one of those core loops is, as you mentioned, buy orders. Tell me,

• 03:49

should I be starting one of these? How would I go about doing that? Yeah, so you probably should do

• 03:53

that. Um, there is a lovely menu you can open with the node button N. Okay. All right. Oh,

• 04:01

I see the node here. Um, and then you're going to go to the treasury page. Got it. I am on the

• 04:07

treasury and I see there's a number of different items in our node inventory. Yeah. So these are,

• 04:13

these are node commodities. Um, and they're the resources the node uses for lots of things like,

• 04:19

um, siege defense. They're going to use it for maintenance. They're going to use it to build

• 04:23

buildings. They're going to trade it with other nodes. Cool. And these are, these are essentially

• 04:29

the resources that the node are going to be using in order to initiate those activities

• 04:34

and like construction projects you were mentioning or trading with other nodes and how, what is the

• 04:39

method by which we actually acquire as a node these goods? Because these goods are not things

• 04:45

that exist within player inventories, but rather they are generated by players interfacing with the

• 04:51

environment in some way, shape or form, and then bringing those materials to the node to get

• 04:55

transitioned into these node, uh, inventory items. Exactly. So we're going to do what's called the

• 05:01

buy order. So if you look in the bottom left of your treasury screen, you're going to see a little

• 05:06

plus button. Um, you can click that and it'll open you up to a big list of commodities that you can

• 05:13

select to, um, kind of get some settings on the buy orders. Okay, cool. This is looking good. And

• 05:20

just always as usual guys, um, everything that you see is a work in progress. We are moving towards

• 05:26

our alpha 2, so you get to see as part of our open development, you know, things that are still works

• 05:30

in progress like the UI. Uh, this is a functional UI system, but it is not the version of our, of our

• 05:36

final UI artistically. Um, same is true for everything you see in the environments and in the

• 05:40

world. Um, so what should I be selecting today? What do we need? What are we trying to build?

• 05:47

You're going to need some bins of stone. We're going to build a forge today or a smithy. We renamed it.

• 05:53

It's not a forge anymore. Okay, cool. Uh, and uh, you're need bins of stones for it. All right. So I

• 06:00

see bins of stone in the industrial goods section and over on the right hand side, I see that I have

• 06:07

the ability as the mayor to customize, um, the buy order and what elements of this would I want to

• 06:14

customize and why? Yeah. So, um, the first thing you see at the top is the recipe, right? Um, the

• 06:21

recipe is going to change the mins and maxes of the parameters you see below, how much you can pay

• 06:28

players for these items, how long you can keep them active. And, um, the ingredients are options

• 06:35

you have for, um, the recipe that you've picked, right? For different materials. So obviously,

• 06:41

not all materials are going to be local to all locations. So kind of picking the right things to

• 06:48

either incentivize players from a long distance to bring things to you or, um, picking things local

• 06:54

because you need them now and you need them fast and you need them for a low amount of, uh, investment.

• 07:00

Okay. So the first thing I'm looking at is this purchase price. And is this what I'm paying players

• 07:06

essentially from the node treasury, uh, on a per item basis of these, of these materials?

• 07:12

So, uh, a buyer comes as a package. So players, uh, deliver them as a package. Um, so, and they,

• 07:19

you are paying per package functionally, but that is not in gold. It's in node currency,

• 07:24

which is the primary way that nodes are going to reward players. Okay, cool. And, um, so when I'm

• 07:32

purchasing that package, is it that I'm buying one basalt and one halcyonite and that is a package,

• 07:38

or am I buying 50 basalt and 50 halcyonite and that is a package? Uh, that's going to depend on

• 07:43

the recipe. Um, but, uh, so it's not exactly always going to be the same amount of each. Um, and it,

• 07:51

the amounts it's per package will vary based on the amount of investment the node has to,

• 07:56

um, put into the buy order. Okay, cool. All right. So I'm going to set this, um, you know,

• 08:03

because I am a benevolent mayor and, uh, I believe that people should be rewarded for their hard work

• 08:09

and effort and helping to establish what the node, uh, that we are collectively part of needs.

• 08:15

And I'm going to set that to two, right? Just above the minimum. Um, just, and I will say,

• 08:20

the more you pay, the more it will cost the node's treasury. Oh, okay. Maybe I'll set this back down

• 08:28

to one. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Now you see why the citizens are mad. Wait a minute.

• 08:35

They're not mad. They're perfectly happy. We just had a election last week. There's a 99%

• 08:41

approval rating for me. So, and that 1%, they mysteriously left the node. I don't know where

• 08:46

they went. They were in a plane. Uh, no, I'm just kidding. Okay. So all right. Duration wide, uh,

• 08:52

duration wise, let's see three days. Now, is this the amount of time that players have the opportunity

• 08:57

to kind of turn these, these things in? Exactly. So, um, the last slider that you have there is

• 09:03

quantity. Um, and basically when you initiate a buy order, the node is paying for it, right? Um,

• 09:09

so regardless of whether players finish it, uh, you've paid for it. So the longer it's up,

• 09:15

you know, the more likely you are to get paid out. Um, but the shorter windows allow people to

• 09:23

kind of capitalize it, you know, capitalize on it. Sure. You know, the early bird gets the worm.

• 09:27

And just to be clear, I know exactly what many of the people in the audience are thinking

• 09:33

that if I was the mayor and I knew what types of buy orders I was intending to

• 09:39

launch at some date, I could inform, you know, via some type of insider trading, uh, what that is

• 09:46

going to be so that people had time potentially to bring those resources to the node in advance

• 09:51

and purchase out all the buyers. Yeah, that is definitely true. The mayor does have some power to,

• 09:58

um, give people warning, but they also have the power to pull the rug out from under those people

• 10:04

too, right? Tell them you need bins of stone and you're gonna, you need, you know, basalt and

• 10:11

halcyonite, but you actually use, uh, iron. Okay, interesting. And then that way, if they are

• 10:18

bringing those things, usually via caravan, given that a lot of the quantities for these types of

• 10:23

buy orders are going to be relatively large in order to accommodate the necessary, uh, material

• 10:27

components that the node requires, um, they might be subject to attack potentially, right? And so

• 10:33

reputation matters here. So I see that that in choosing quantity, I'm choosing 116 different

• 10:38

packages, which means I'll get 116 basalt and 116 halcyonite, and that will help us to

• 10:45

finish this project, yeah? Correct. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and schedule this order,

• 10:51

uh, order details. Okay, yes, let's see. Great. Okay, so this package has a, it's not a one-to-one

• 10:58

per se. This is 117 packages, which will constitute a total of 696 basalt and 232 halcyonite.

• 11:06

Um, total reserve cost is 25. I'm gonna confirm this. All right, there we go. All right, so it's

• 11:13

kicking off. All right, so I assume you've brought me out here, and I don't normally participate in

• 11:19

direct menial labor as the mayor of this node, but for demonstration purposes I will help you, uh,

• 11:25

collect some of these resources. Yes. I see we're out here in a beautiful part of the world. This is

• 11:32

obviously the Riverlands, which many of our audience are accustomed to seeing. This will be

• 11:38

one of the primary locations that we will be testing for Alpha 2. It is expansive, it is large,

• 11:44

it is probably larger than most MMOs, just as a single biome that people have participated in,

• 11:50

uh, but I see we have some familiar halcyonite here. Yep, I've got some insider information

• 11:55

from the artisanship team on where we need to go. Nice, very cool.

• 12:01

Ah, we've added some blue smoke, I see, to the, uh, to the, to the effects here.

• 12:08

Looks very good. I see some, there's some basalts here as well. And so players who,

• 12:13

who are interested in seeing this kind of update at the node, um,

• 12:17

of the, the necessary, uh, materials requested, not all the time will those materials be in the

• 12:25

locality of that node, right? That's, that's, as you were mentioning, a bit strategic for the node

• 12:30

to either select material components that yield the type of node inventory items necessary or

• 12:35

commodities necessary based on the geolocation of that. Correct, and, uh, they might not even have

• 12:42

access to bioters for certain, uh, node commodities that are local to them, right?

• 12:49

Okay. So higher tier commodities will be, uh, you know, further away. Very cool.

• 12:56

And will players around the world have an opportunity to inspect the types of bioters

• 13:01

that are currently listed at a, um, at a particular node? Yeah, they will be able to.

• 13:07

Cool. Very cool. So those of you who are traders and are interested in kind of, I'm going to start

• 13:12

moving down this road now. Those of you who are traders and are interested in, um, in actually

• 13:18

capitalizing on the supply and demand of, of nodes and, you know, their competing interests and what

• 13:23

they're trying to accomplish will have an opportunity to, uh, to move those goods around

• 13:28

the world, take that risk potentially, uh, but receive a high reward, um, as a result.

• 13:34

Yeah, exactly. Oh, I see we have someone up ahead here. Who is this? Oh! Looks like

• 13:47

a lovely guard. A guard doing his duty! Let me, let me pay him a visit and tell him how wonderful

• 13:54

of a job he is doing. Fare thee well, God! Hello! Stop when your mayor is talking. Hey! Listen,

• 14:05

they're busy people. Does he not recognize my authority? And he, is he stretching in front of me?

• 14:13

Do I bore you? Unbelievable. I'm gonna have to talk with his commander. This is a beautiful area.

• 14:21

I mean, the environment team did a phenomenal job, obviously, always. And I think one of the big

• 14:27

things that people are going to be in for a surprise here as we showcase, uh, this glorious

• 14:34

node... Where are we going? By the way, this is Winstead. This is the lovely Winstead node. So,

• 14:39

one of the biggest differences that people are going to notice today, and of course it's very

• 14:45

important to keep in mind... I'll go into walk mode here. I don't run into my own node. It's very

• 14:52

important to keep in mind that nodes in Alpha 1, the last time we saw them, were very placeholder.

• 15:00

Right? As I said, they were core functionality, but artistically they did not represent the aesthetic

• 15:04

of nodes that we were intending to create. And the environment team has been hard at work in

• 15:12

creating, obviously, the different stages of these nodes, but also in representing the type of visual

• 15:17

fidelity that we want to represent within the cities of our game. And I believe that we have

• 15:24

arrived at Winstead, and we are joined by some additional glorious members of the development

• 15:32

team. I see two of them here. We have Mr. Tristan, our lead environment artist. Tristan, how you doing,

• 15:38

buddy? Hello, welcome. Doing very well. How are you? I'm doing very good. We just went for a

• 15:43

little stroll, got some resources, and now we're showing up back to the node. You got everything we

• 15:47

need? I do. I think I have everything we need. We also have with us, I see, Adam. How you doing,

• 15:54

buddy? I am good, thank you. Another one of our glorious environment artists. Yes, and there's one

• 16:02

more missing. He's around here somewhere. What? Where is he? Is he over here? What is this?

• 16:07

Is this the caravansary, by the way? It is the caravansary. Oh, very cool. I'm going to come look over there,

• 16:16

but let me just take a look at what's going on in here real quick. Beautiful. And this is where

• 16:23

players will have an opportunity to reserve certain caravan stalls. They'll be able to kit out,

• 16:28

and we'll be showcasing this in a future live stream, probably a couple months away or so,

• 16:32

where you can kit out your caravan with different components. You can upgrade these,

• 16:36

and that is a default building, correct? The nodes don't select and create those by agency,

• 16:42

but they come by default. Yeah, that is a building that comes with the node, though it is

• 16:46

upgradable by the node. I see. Now, where is our third? Where is James? Hello. Oh, we have found him!

• 16:56

Welcome, James. Hey, I was just doing some stuff at my house. I wasn't really a citizen. I was able to get some real estate.

• 17:04

Very nice. Okay, look at that beautiful little house you have there. It's quaint. I think that's

• 17:11

the appropriate term, right? Quaint? Are you paying your taxes on that? You don't really pay us enough, so...

• 17:16

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. It is not the mayor's job to assign these salaries. This is a purely

• 17:24

capitalist society. Those are that you need to speak to your your corporate head.

• 17:27

I didn't vote for you. Oh no! We'll be talking after this stream. I gotta hit with some bad news.

• 17:38

James is invisible. Oh, James, where are you? I drank a potion of invisibility. Oh, very nice. I can

• 17:47

see you, James. I think you look very nice for me. That's because you're the mayor. Yes, that is correct.

• 17:53

I see all. I'm the mayor of Sauron. No, I'm just kidding. Well, let's head into the node and

• 18:00

take a look here. This is, I mean, truly a sight to see. I love the layout. I love the aesthetic.

• 18:09

You guys did a phenomenal job with actually representing, I think, what we want out of the

• 18:16

out of the node. I mean, visually, it's just... It looks great. Oh, look at the little piglet.

• 18:21

Yeah, you might find a few little small farm animals to hang out with around the town.

• 18:26

Those guys are great. A little piglet. Talk to me a little bit about what it what it took to bring

• 18:31

this node online and to the to the visual fidelity that we wanted to. A lot.

• 18:41

There's far more than just making the art here look good. It's also anticipating how we're going to

• 18:47

approach eight different races or more in terms of the amount of assets we have to create. So it's

• 18:54

more of a it's not just an artistic problem, it's a logistic problem. Right. So we have so much to do

• 19:01

when it comes to the world in terms of the biomes and making this all work and functional

• 19:07

because all this is dynamic. You know, this isn't set in stone. This is something that's going to be

• 19:11

spawned and created by the players and built up out of players. And that, of course, makes it entirely

• 19:17

more complex. Oh, yeah. 100%. Like, yep. We had to develop new systems for how we develop the art,

• 19:24

how we lay out the art, how design can use the art, just so that, you know, it can be dynamic,

• 19:30

it can be different races, and it can show up in different biomes. Yeah. Yeah. Not to mention we

• 19:37

had to build up a new aesthetic to, you know, really sell an Ashes of Creation look.

• 19:45

Stephen, before you go any further, can I show you something real quick? Yes, absolutely. Right back

• 19:50

over here. You just come back here. I am on my way. Where? Oh, this is cool. So there's like these

• 20:00

little back alley areas where... You know, Tristan, why don't you go with him? No, no. Yeah, no, it's

• 20:05

okay. We posted something up here. Oh, what is this? Who's that little fella? Who is Tristan?

• 20:14

Have you seen me? Who is that guy? Is that Tristan? Yeah. Is that Lord Snot himself? Oh, wow.

• 20:25

I am currently on the missing board. You're on the missing board. It's all right. At least people

• 20:31

care about me. Hey. Aw. They're sad that I'm missing. No, you have a bounty on your head.

• 20:37

Yeah, the reward is 10 cents. Well, I'll take it. At least somebody's paying attention to me

• 20:45

and where I am and where my whereabouts are. That is hilarious. So talk to me a little bit about,

• 20:53

you know, we're going to get back to the systems real quick in a second, guys, but I want to just

• 20:57

kind of go over what are some of the unique hurdles that we are accomplishing through the

• 21:03

development of these nodes, especially considering that they have to go through multiple different

• 21:07

stages of development from, you know, crossroads to encampment to village to town to city to

• 21:14

eventually these large metropolises and how that makes this a very complicated process for you guys.

• 21:22

Yeah, I mean, essentially we have to plan for the buildings being able to expand to get taller to

• 21:27

get bigger. And that has to happen from day one. Right. Like we need to talk to concept

• 21:33

and figure out how we get from, you said, camp to metropolis and then kind of work within those

• 21:40

bounds. And, you know, there's been a lot of discoveries and pain and jubilation along the way.

• 21:48

And this guy just died. I don't know. But yeah, it's, you know, it's a work in progress like it

• 21:56

is for every stream. Right. Like, but I think we have a good start here and we'll be able to

• 22:02

really kind of push forward and show progress. Yeah, it's beautiful. Absolutely. It is.

• 22:09

It is a beautiful view, this area. And I know that, you know, there's been some changes kind

• 22:16

of in how we anticipated node expansion working and utilizing a more district oriented approach,

• 22:26

where expansions kind of are previewed or at least telegraphed to the node as development continues.

• 22:34

As expansion grows, players start to see construction taking place within the node

• 22:40

to represent those expanding areas. Yeah, that's right. As the mayor and the citizens start, you

• 22:48

know, bringing more online with their node, you'll start to see the outskirts of, say, like this

• 22:53

village, for instance, start to have little construction projects. Grass will be cleared.

• 22:59

You'll start to see scaffolding and other things being placed as well as materials. And you'll

• 23:04

start to see the village expand into a town and then a town into a city and so forth and so on.

• 23:12

And it's really exciting to be able to kind of build those systems and visually

• 23:17

they'll have them look, you know, well, you can see how it looks. Yeah, absolutely. And it's not

• 23:24

just, you know, obviously for those of you who might be a little bit newer to the audience in

• 23:29

the project, the systems that are in place to accompany this node progression, these city

• 23:36

progressions across the world, are really intended to be defined by player activity, player action,

• 23:44

player choices. Whoops, I have a little bit of a weird mesh issue over there, but that's okay.

• 23:52

They're really meant to reflect the player choices, right? And that includes building construction.

• 23:57

And as we were talking about earlier, these buy orders are the primary method by which

• 24:03

nodes can procure the resources necessary. One of the other methods by which nodes can help

• 24:12

kind of utilize that expansion is through treasury acquisition with taxation, with trade agreements

• 24:19

and other nodes. Chris, we have some resources we've collected. Where are we going to head to

• 24:24

next to kind of utilize that? Well, if you'll follow me over here, we're going to go to the warehouse.

• 24:33

All right, I'm on my way with you to the warehouse. Now this is a building that you're going to,

• 24:40

you know, manage your material and item storage. You're going to obviously interface with the

• 24:46

buy order manager. I think he's called the requisition agent these days. All right. Cool.

• 24:55

So if we're going to want to talk to this lovely fellow over here. This guy here? Yep. All right.

• 25:04

Let's see here. Okay, here we go. All right, and as you see kind of the portrait still,

• 25:08

you know, outstanding, you're going to see that some of the UI. Greetings, citizen. I am tasked with

• 25:13

purchasing goods, which how dare him refer to me as a citizen. We need to fix the greeting tables.

• 25:19

I mean really the disrespect. Okay, I'm tasked with purchasing goods which the node uses to

• 25:26

construct and maintain its varied services. Would you like to see our current requisitions? I would

• 25:30

indeed. Exchange rate. Okay, all right. And so now anybody who is participating as a citizen or as

• 25:40

just a player in the game can go to these locations and they can fulfill these buy orders. So right now

• 25:45

I'm seeing that I can adjust the quantity of goods that I'm going to be offering to the node.

• 25:52

And we might have a little bit of a problem here because it's saying that the total value of goods

• 25:55

I want to contribute are 232 currency worth, or gold worth, to the node. Well you're exchanging

• 26:02

two for every, you're getting two for every package you're fulfilling. And you can fulfill all of them

• 26:09

it looks like. Should I do that? I mean do you want to share the love?

• 26:18

Okay, I'll do that. So exchange, confirm, let's see here, total materials,

• 26:22

process this order for 232. I will confirm that. Boom! Done. So now I have acquired node currency

• 26:31

in exchange for this, for these materials. Correct. Also you did all of it. You didn't share anything.

• 26:41

Uh-oh. What does that mean? Well the currency is bound so you can't trade it with anyone.

• 26:48

So you fulfilled the whole buy order and you took all the reward. Oh! I thought you meant share as

• 26:56

in like I would take that and then later I would use what I received and give those to other people

• 27:03

in other means like through you know servitude as a servant oriented type leader. You know what I mean?

• 27:09

Like I didn't know you meant actually not fulfill the order. Listen I need some node currency.

• 27:14

Oh. I'm sorry I didn't know that's what you meant. I thought you meant share as in like me give more

• 27:21

resources. Okay, will that be a problem or are we good? No we're good. We're good. Okay.

• 27:27

I'm just a little hurt. Oh I'm sorry I didn't know that. Well I can speak with a guy. I know some

• 27:31

people here at this node. Okay, okay for sure. Hook me up. All right so we've fulfilled this buy order.

• 27:37

What is next in this loop? So now we are going to talk about taxes. You just spent as a node 25 gold

• 27:46

to initiate that buyer to buy order right? Yes. Eventually we're going to need. I see the treasury

• 27:52

says I have 75 remaining. Yeah and that should be enough to build the building but you probably want

• 27:57

to start replenishing now right? Yes. So you're going to open up your node panel again. Okay.

• 28:04

And take yourself to the treasury page. Done. And you're going to look there's a taxes area.

• 28:10

Taxes area. It says tax rates. Oh I see that. Okay. You're going to be able to adjust those

• 28:18

as the mayor. So I want to go to advanced details. Yep. Okay. Oh I see. Okay perfect. And so this is

• 28:25

I see that there are a number of different potential modifiers. These probably are going to be

• 28:32

offered out as either the node levels up or as upgrades. How does that work? Talk to me a little

• 28:42

bit about these. Yes so at a high level in early node development you're not going to get access

• 28:51

to a lot of these right? This is probably pretty close to what a node level three is going to end

• 28:55

up getting. And we've broken the things that cost money in the node into different categories right?

• 29:00

As the node levels up you're going to get access to kind of deeper controls on the taxes so that

• 29:07

you as a mayor can kind of incentivize players to come to your node to do certain things right? If

• 29:14

you're a node that loves you know smithing you're probably going to want to lower your taxes on

• 29:20

artisanship to incentivize players to be here. But then you might want to drive up taxes and other

• 29:26

avenues that players aren't necessarily coming to your node for but are using out of convenience

• 29:31

right? Okay cool so we need to generate some more income. Yep so I would recommend cranking those

• 29:39

taxes. Oh my god. Oh man not again. Oh here we go. This is not me. This is it takes a village

• 29:49

literally. That's what we're doing right now. It takes from a village. It takes from a villager.

• 29:54

And it goes to the roads right? Yes it goes to the potholes in the roads. There seems to be quite a

• 30:01

lot of them here. I have adjusted the tax rate to 75 percent. All right now if we go over here to

• 30:07

this guy. All right. You can go ahead and buy some stuff and 75 percent of the base cost of these

• 30:16

items is going to go to the uh is going to go to the treasury. Let's see here.

• 30:33

This is a bit grayed out for me. Maybe I don't guys again you're going to see some placeholder

• 30:37

stuff. It looks like I don't have room for some stuff so I'm just going to be killing some things.

• 30:44

Nobody pay any attention to the non-existent icons. Yeah some of that art is still pending.

• 30:54

Okay I will now interact with this gear vendor and let's see if he can sell me some items.

• 31:03

You know these are grayed out for me. Do you have any money? Oh my god I have no money.

• 31:09

It looks like you probably only have node currency. I need some money.

• 31:16

I'm going to use a cheat panel. Nobody look this is a little bit of a cheat panel. Okay you're going

• 31:21

to see where I can. You're saying your mayor's broke right now right? We'll just pick somebody.

• 31:28

Yeah nobody sees anything. Maybe you did need that node currency more than I did. Yeah so what

• 31:35

do I do? Character gold. Let me get some gold. Give gold. You know I'm going to give myself a thousand

• 31:45

and I will now speak with this individual again who was so rude and curt with me when I tried

• 31:50

to buy stuff from him. Didn't know who I was as the mayor. Okay cool so we want to generate some

• 31:58

currency for the node. We're just going to demonstrate here making some purchases.

• 32:02

Oops I probably need to hold on sorry my bad. I'm going to select some of these

• 32:15

different items. How do I make that purchase?

• 32:21

So I'm just selecting these items. Yep you should just be able to right click them.

• 32:25

Right click oh there we go yeah yeah my bad. Okay how much gold do we need for the node right now?

• 32:33

This is more not for you to just make a bunch of gold right away but just to make sure we're

• 32:37

getting more gold over time. We have enough to make the building. Okay let me check the node

• 32:43

treasury. The node treasury now has 112. That should be plenty. So now you want to

• 32:52

build a building Steven? I want to build a building. All right well let's go have a nice

• 32:57

little waltz. Well actually open your mayor panel here for us. Okay mayor panel is open.

• 33:05

And you're going to hit n and go to the buildings tab. Done. Now here you're going to see a list of

• 33:12

all the buildings we currently have constructed. Since this is a pretty new node all of the buildings

• 33:19

in this list are what we call default buildings which means they come pre-constructed with the

• 33:25

node. But if you scroll all the way down to the bottom you're going to see the empty plots. Okay

• 33:31

very cool. And just to be clear the default buildings are offering default services as you

• 33:38

were saying apartments, warehouse for storage, or the caravansary for the caravan.

• 33:46

And reception of those caravans. All nodes will have a base default list of services that are

• 33:53

offered regardless of type. And then what we're doing now is we're specializing the node

• 34:00

to cater specific services in order to draw traffic of players to us. Correct yeah all the

• 34:06

services that come default with the node we've kind of as a design team deemed essential.

• 34:11

We want caravans to move around the world so everyone should have a caravansary. We want

• 34:17

players to have storage so everyone should have a warehouse. But that doesn't mean those default

• 34:21

buildings can't be upgraded and specialized themselves. Awesome. But the empty plots are

• 34:28

where you really get to start specializing your node. All right and I see a smithy under artisanship.

• 34:36

Correct. Okay I've selected the building. Yep. Oh okay here we go we have a little bit of a tree

• 34:44

here that talks about its expansions. Yeah so buildings can expand and as I kind of alluded

• 34:51

to with the default buildings they specialize as they expand right. So this isn't like a traditional

• 34:56

field tree it's exclusionary more like a tech tree right. So selecting the next upgrade for it

• 35:04

will lock out the other two paths right. So as you get better with the building it will continue

• 35:11

to narrow which allows lots of nodes to carve out lots of niches in the world. Very cool and so

• 35:19

because of this because it's exclusionary it would be relevant for certain nodes in order to achieve

• 35:26

a broader spectrum of upgrade potential within a particular building type to potentially build

• 35:34

multiple of these buildings. Yeah exactly right if you want to be the home to weaponsmithing in your

• 35:40

node you're probably going to have to have a lot of different tools to do that. Yeah and

• 35:45

if you want to be the home to weaponsmithing in your node you're probably going to have three

• 35:50

smithies to capitalize on slashing bludgeoning and piercing weapons right. And then there are

• 35:58

other things you can do with the policy system or with the relic system to kind of amp that up even

• 36:03

further. Very cool very cool and so let's say and I know we don't have this or I'm not sure if we

• 36:12

implemented but let's say for example I as the mayor I'm about to start this

• 36:17

build right. Do I just click on this build right now? Yep. All right okay here we go construction

• 36:24

requirements so I have the bins of stone and it looks like we have the cords of wood. Yep. Citizen

• 36:32

contribution so the citizen contribution that is in reference to when this construction project

• 36:37

begins citizens will need to come to the building and contribute resources to aid in its development.

• 36:44

Yeah so unlike buy orders you're not directly rewarded for this right as a player this is

• 36:52

kind of our way of ensuring that citizens want the thing that the mayor is asking them to do or

• 36:58

spending resources on right. So if you're a mayor and you're just like I'm going to build a bunch of

• 37:03

this building that no one wants then players aren't going to contribute to it and they're

• 37:09

not going to get built. Good call very cool all right let me confirm this. Players will have two

• 37:16

million days to provide the resources for construction. Well that's good you know I want

• 37:21

to be a lenient mayor and I you know as many in the audience know we expect Ashes to have a very

• 37:28

long and fruitful lifespan as a product and two million days is a bit on the you know maybe

• 37:36

conservative side of what we'll actually see overall but I think it's a worthwhile time.

• 37:43

Are we good with that? What do you think Chris? Yeah that's that sounds great. Okay two million

• 37:47

days it is. Okay where do we go to see this building? So we've constructed it over here

• 37:56

if you want to follow me this way. All right I'm following I don't normally run in my own town but

• 38:03

I will I will run. Listen up I got places to go people to see. People to see you work at the

• 38:11

behest of the mayor. So I notice there's a gentleman here you can talk to and this is the

• 38:17

Does he also work for me just to be clear? He's a fool. He does he does technically he works for the city.

• 38:22

I am the city. I am the law. I'm just kidding. And this gentleman is the construction foreman so this is where players will get to go to donate resources to the construction of a building.

• 38:35

Okay all right let's see here so he has nothing of nothing acquired. Well what is it you say you do

• 38:42

here Mr. Construction Foreman? He hasn't collected yet any resources? You just initiated it.

• 38:49

Do I have to do everything myself? Should I give him a hundred of the oak log? I mean I think that's a

• 38:55

fair thing to do. All right let us donate. We shall donate to the foreman. Oh it's beginning to construct.

• 39:10

Now Bruno and Scott did a great job with this construction animation of visual effects

• 39:17

as you will see you're going to see a sped up version of this here but typically Chris talked

• 39:22

me a little bit about the time expectation for these types of projects and of course how that's

• 39:27

a variable depending on the stage of the node and the building type itself. Yeah so you know we want

• 39:34

this to be an exciting thing so once materials are kind of contributed to it and it's ready to finish

• 39:42

there's going to be you know any kind of variable from like 15 to 20 minutes to even a couple of

• 39:48

days for it to finish constructing depending on kind of the power that the building offers to the

• 39:53

players right. Very cool and James, Adam, Tristan talk to me a little bit about how you guys go about

• 40:03

constructing these different more modular sets of building creation and what it takes to kind of

• 40:12

you know master that across the multiple different cultures that we're anticipating

• 40:18

to present within these villages.

• 40:23

Yeah sure I mean it's a lot of trial and error but you know it took a lot of practice to figure

• 40:30

out you know what the correct size of the buildings and the plots the walls the doors all

• 40:36

those things are and then to dial them in so that going forward any future races it's all kind of

• 40:45

somewhat plug and play as long as we're making them to those specs. The big thing is the aesthetic

• 40:51

and how that will change between races which is you know still a work in progress.

• 40:57

Like this for example this one is a lot of anglo-saxon type architecture influence.

• 41:03

Yeah the calar absolutely. Yeah but that's how it works for the most part and it's all modular

• 41:11

so we can make these buildings and mostly any size we want so it could reach all the way up to the

• 41:18

sky multiple floors if we wanted to not saying we would but we're going to make it modular.

• 41:25

Not saying we would but and that's that's the idea so then this right here will construct those pieces

• 41:33

for the player one piece at a time. Very cool very cool yeah I love the you know we previously had a

• 41:42

different version of this and oh look it has little fireworks playing above the building

• 41:48

that's awesome so it's drawing attention kind of to the to the construction. We had a version of

• 41:54

this obviously in in alpha one and you know that was very sped up for what we were trying to

• 42:02

accomplish there this technique is you know meant to more represent that that longer period of

• 42:10

construction requirement. Yeah and a lot of what you see right now it's technically being generated

• 42:17

procedurally by the tech from our tech art team which is Bruno has been putting together which is

• 42:23

like basically we kind of took a an approach similar to other games that you might see in

• 42:28

like strategy games and stuff like that so there's a scaffolding approach that kind of builds things

• 42:32

up and forms around and you'll see some people kind of working and hammering it's very rudimentary at

• 42:37

this current point in time but yeah no the the goal is to have it be as versatile as possible

• 42:43

so that when we actually need to make a hundred of variations of these we don't have to sit there and

• 42:50

make animations one by one which we did in the past which gets very complicated very expensive

• 42:56

but in this case it's more of a procedural you know you plug and play like right but I do

• 43:02

I do want to clarify that we're not saying that these nodes are fully procedurally generated it's

• 43:09

the building aspect is but the nodes themselves they'll have a handmade aspect to it. Right

• 43:18

correct yeah this is all just for the construction phase so we can kind of have things done in a way

• 43:23

that feels natural but doesn't really take years and years to actually complete the final product.

• 43:28

Right awesome absolutely very very impressive work so Chris now that we have constructed

• 43:38

this smithy what are we doing do you have a little duckling following you?

• 43:45

The ducklings are very aggressive right now. I have one following me right now.

• 43:48

Oh my god. But that can be fixed. No no no no no no no no. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it now.

• 43:59

Do not kill that duck. Oh my god. Oh god. What are you doing? What are you doing? Did you just

• 44:09

murder that duck? You just murder our tax rate. Just oh my god you can't kill innocent animals

• 44:16

over your disgruntledness tax rates. I would I would say that's more for food for the village but

• 44:21

I'm you know rebellion I'm trying to. What have you done? You can't even eat that there's not

• 44:28

valuable meat on this creature yet. I just got a hunting certificate so.

• 44:36

Oh you're dead. The goddess of creation herself has smote you. Fair enough.

• 44:45

All right it needs to be done. Chris what are we gonna do with this smithy? Well what do you want

• 44:50

to do? We can do some armor smithing, we can do some weapon smithing. I honestly think after that

• 44:56

heinous act against that duck you really needed some better weapons to defend the beautiful

• 45:02

creatures of this node. Agreed. I am so angry I could just scream. Oh. Sorry. Well over here is

• 45:11

the weapon smithing station. All right cool. I was looking at this a little bit earlier. Whoops I

• 45:17

turned off my UI. All right what do we have? Well I hear the artisanship team hooked you up with the

• 45:24

ability to make a blood sword. Oh do I have materials? Oh I do have some materials. What should

• 45:31

we do? Oh the sandals of holding back. It's like infinite space. That is a GM bag. Okay so I do

• 45:40

have some materials. What do we want to do with this material? Well do you want a blood sword or

• 45:45

not? Well I mean I don't know. Do I want a blood sword? Is a blood sword good? Is it better than what

• 45:49

I already have? Where's the blood sword? Crystallized blood sword. Okay I see. It's gonna be a pretty spicy sword.

• 46:02

Okay very cool. Um yeah let's try this. What are we gonna do here?

• 46:10

So I already have the materials for it. I just go to craft one quantity. Hold on it says I can't

• 46:16

craft this. Yes you gotta add your molds to it. Oh I have selected my iron weapon mold

• 46:30

and I am using that mold and crafting.

• 46:37

Oh I do have a crystal blood sword now. I shall rule with a mighty fist. Let me equip this.

• 46:42

Well do I actually have... oh I do have it.

• 46:50

Oh okay that's pretty sweet. I like that.

• 46:55

Yeah it looks great. Very cool. All right so now now that we have constructed this building

• 47:03

there are also a number of upgrade paths that players can utilize to specialize the building

• 47:09

further. We previewed that in the tech tree for the building and each building comes with that sort

• 47:14

of customizable path of upgrades that are possible and those continue to give the node a higher

• 47:23

specialization which makes it relevant for player traffic. Right and the idea with that too is no one

• 47:31

node can do anything right so it kind of is leaning into this idea that you need to

• 47:37

travel your goods around the world and go to a lot of places to do a lot of things right.

• 47:43

Yeah absolutely absolutely. This is a beautiful... I mean gosh this is just...

• 47:50

I love the atmospherics. I love the more nature oriented aspects of the interior of the node.

• 47:57

Now this node Tristan and Adam James this has a bit more topography than what we were seeing

• 48:05

in Alpha 1. Talk to me a little bit about the types of node templates and footprints

• 48:13

that we are leveraging with the design of these villages and cities. Yeah so there should be

• 48:24

kind of a handful of different types that you'll experience in the world and they all have their

• 48:27

different benefits. In this case we kind of have a plateau landscape layout for this one

• 48:34

it's not like you said the flat landscapes that we've done in the past. We've also got ones that

• 48:40

will be like rivers flowing through it and as well as like being nudged up against say like a

• 48:46

body of water or like a cliff face sort of style. So in this case it's this is a pretty one of the

• 48:53

more basic versions that you'll see for the current layout styles that we have but yeah.

• 48:58

I don't know that the the node itself will have its own type that it's best suited to you know

• 49:06

develop into. I think this one's an academic node. Yeah this one is academic so I see we have

• 49:15

kind of a placeholder node type building here. Yeah that's the town hall. Oh is that the town hall?

• 49:20

I apologize this is the placeholder one over here the kind of citadel looking one yeah.

• 49:24

Yep yeah that is a work in progress so we have that standing in for now. Beautiful so this is

• 49:31

kind of where all the activities take place for you know citizenship interactions the paying of

• 49:36

these dues the opportunity for players to kind of interface with their local government and the

• 49:41

custom quest arcs that are available based off of the surrounding POIs. You know up here is kind of

• 49:49

the city center so to speak. Right right this is where you know elections happen right normally.

• 50:04

When you don't GM command yourself mayor. Wow unbelievable I just sat down you guys told me

• 50:10

to GM myself mayor. This is also a place where you know punishments could happen. Ah where's that

• 50:18

like gallows over here or something? Yeah are you threatening the mayor? Yeah is that the type of

• 50:23

mayor that I am? Do I just have like public hangings or something? I mean if you're that type

• 50:27

of mayor you could just hang anyone anywhere. Unbelievable. Depends upon who messes with the

• 50:31

ducklings that's all. Yep I gotta go. I noticed that we have a bit of homage that we're paying to

• 50:41

the excuse me to the windmill monster that many players experienced in our pre-alpha testing.

• 50:47

Yeah you guys remember that that was like two days straight of us getting stuck at a loading screen

• 50:52

back in like 2018-2017. That was a fun time. I love the windmill. A mimic the size of a windmill

• 51:01

would be pretty. I think we actually did turn it so at some point we updated that image to be a

• 51:07

windmill monster that was eating the pre-alpha players when they tried to join. That was great.

• 51:12

It was really good. Oh it's beautiful. This is absolutely beautiful. So you know what

• 51:21

I would like to thank each of you for showing our players the update to nodes. This is one of the

• 51:30

one of many updates that players will be seeing over the course of the next time till alpha 2.

• 51:38

And as it relates to kind of the systems design of these nodes showcasing the core loops with the

• 51:45

mayors helping to initiate buy orders as well as commissions in order to generate these node

• 51:51

commodities these node these node inventory items by which then the node utilizes to kick off certain

• 51:58

either events or service building constructions that create an additional loop for players to

• 52:04

participate in. I think that this is very exciting that the node is absolutely beautiful and it hits

• 52:10

the aesthetic that we want but what's most important is to get your guys's feedback in the

• 52:14

community. You guys as our players giving us your thoughts about the visual fidelity that these

• 52:21

villages are representing. You'll have an opportunity to see additional node stages as we

• 52:26

progress. This is a lot of work that the environment team has been doing a phenomenal job in my opinion

• 52:32

in creating but you guys need to give us your thoughts. You like what you see here what can be

• 52:38

done better and then we are going to chat a little bit more about some of the system changes that we

• 52:44

have introduced as part of our road to alpha 2 as it relates to the nodes. So yes go ahead. Yeah

• 52:52

is this just nodes part four or part five?

• 52:55

Part five. I don't know this is you're gonna kill me. This is not yet nodes part four but this is

• 53:06

getting close. Okay no you guys did a great job. Yeah I'm sure everyone will get that reference

• 53:12

there. Yes exactly but Chris and I will be joining you guys in just a moment to talk a little bit

• 53:18

more in detail about these systems in just a moment. Thanks guys for joining us appreciate it.

• 53:24

Thank you. Thank you. Bye.