Talk:2017-05-12 Livestream

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Character count: 54216 | Duration in seconds:3911 | Characters per second: 13.86

4:10

Last five seconds the long

Oh is Jeff's mic live?

I think we're on

Anyway I want to take Jeff's off okay there we go hey guys hello welcome to our what day is today Friday oh my gosh lack of time welcome to our Friday stream we have a special guest with us today from massively OP .com we have MJ with us MJ can you hear us?

I can hear you hello

Hi how are you?

I'm doing pretty good how are you all doing?

Oh we are busy busy busy as usual just another day here at Intrepid Studios you may notice that Jeff is not sitting with us at the moment and it's because he is at his station getting a build finished so we can do some live gameplay today on the stream after hour after hour QA with you MJ

Wow that sounds good

I know as you may have seen and our viewers saw last this this Wednesday we released our excuse me our cinematic game trailer of the predator class

Mhm

And I believe in that he infiltrated the metropolis and we got a relic and there's little seeds kind of thing going on at the end well we're gonna take you through the metropolis today in game with the predator and just take a look around for you know about ten minutes and that's what Jeff is getting up and running but MJ you have me and Peter here and we would love to hear some of the questions that you have for us

You guys you guys did walk out like five or six hours for me right?

Oh no I think we did at least

Right

Don't don't don't tempt us we could go for a long time

Trust me so can I start getting into a virtual world sandbox yeah okay we're in my land now

6:11

Now you're speaking our language

Alright so okay I've got to say that you can tell people are obviously pretty darned excited about your project right so you guys are like the kool-aid man punching through all of these different funding walls [laughter]

Speaking of kool-aid man I believe there's an ice cream truck outside

There's an ice cream truck outside yeah

We should take a break on the stream and grab some alright sorry go ahead MJ

You guys trying to derail me look at that look at that

So so you talked about the game being already kind of funded you going to Kickstarter to get more to make it bigger and all that stuff right so how exactly was it paid for date and what how are your goals looking your worst case scenarios and and really I want to know where do you think this is gonna end you have so many days to go on your Kickstarter what do you guys see do you are you just too blown away right now that ever number or are you anticipating [cross-talk] steps now

Well we definitely went into Kickstarter anticipating certain things we had certain goals and objectives you know as far as funding goes you know I'm personally funding the project it is a it's a passion of mine I have a lot of resources to ensure that that our core viable product is completed the the with the mechanics that we've discussed the the adventure we're going on and what we want to attain in the node system the caravans you know the open-world the sandbox you know the server capacity all those things are a core product the reason we went to Kickstarter is you know Kickstarter has kind of evolved as a platform you know it went from from from a a core capital standpoint of startup ventures to achieve what was necessary for them and a lot of projects went in there you know hinging on what they could perform with that crowdsourcing money and today I think it's kind of transformed a little bit it still provides capital it definitely assists in creating that that product but for us it was it was important that with the the nature of credibility that Kickstarter in the video game industry has suffered over the past several years that it be shown through our project that there was a degree of of production already in place that there was a plan of action already determined to complete the product and that whatever we raised in Kickstarter was going to be used to either hasten the production time or increase the the the scope of the project and make it bigger and better for certain systems that we wanted to include but didn't have budgeted for the for the core product and in addition another form that that Kickstarter assists in is that Community Development aspect I mean it is a it is a huge broadcasting platform specifically for communities that are invested in independent projects I mean there's no better way to tell an industry hey take a look at what we're doing and see how it resonates with the community then through crowdfunding because when you have a community that comes to support a project that is laying out a vision and goals that relates to what they want and it resonates with them and they show up in the form of funding that communicates very well to the existing studios and industry out there and I think that everyone involved in Ashes of Creation can kind of agree that the reason why our project excuse me I'm sorry a little cough the reason why our project resonates so well with with this genre then in the community is because we are hitting certain points that the industry has moved away from over the past several years and there's no greater way to say look you guys moved in the wrong direction this is where the community for the MMORPG genre wants to be they do not want that pay2win aspect they do not want the cash grab monetization they do not want you know systems in place that take away from player agency they want a project like Ashes of Creation and and I think that crowdsourcing allows us to drive that point home to them where it is most seen which is in their pocketbook that's that's for big corporations that have giant boards you know they're always looking at the bottom line and if their bottom line is not performing on most recent ventures and projects it's for a reason and it's because they're not producing the content that players want right and you know having a studio that's run by a player not an industry you know veteran is is something that I think sets us apart you know we have industry veterans here that are developing the project but it's it's it's from the the viewpoint the standpoint of myself as a gamer

11:03

Okay so you gonna lead into this next bit a little bit so you're talking a bit about staffing so how is this search for staffing going and some things like oh people are curious what are the different leads bringing from their past game experiences especially okay this is not to cast any kind of a a pallor or a a curse upon you guys but EverQuest Next obviously yeah that was something really looked forward to some of those aspects feel like some of those anticipated things seem to be showing up in your game a little bit what kind of things are the staff that you have now bringing to the table with this and how is your search for more staff going?

Well you know part of developing both the experience and culture here at intrepid Studios is making sure that our that our growth that that that's a Dawn Breaker runnin across the screen is making sure that our that our growth is is timed appropriately and is in is done correctly so that our team can communicate the way we're developing the project to new hires to new people we bring on to the project and you know a lot of I think we have four who are from Sony Online Entertainment I think there's four there might be five but there's four or five who came from Sony Online Entertainment some of whom worked on EverQuest next the majority of them however worked on EverQuest one EverQuest two and you know they they come with gosh I don't want to get into like a bashing another company or anything but from what I understood as as a gamer and and having chatted with my team a lot of the faults of the of the EverQuest Next debacle resulted from a management perspective the developers you know no fault to their own it was the management that really led to the demise I think of that project and it goes towards something that I think a lot of people understand which is too many chiefs not enough followers

Sure right

I was going to say Indians I can say that right

Braves

Right right

Exactly

But you know our people here on the team at Intrepid Studios have have very a wide variety of backgrounds and SOE and the EverQuest Next project you know we brought on board Jason Crawford who you know worked at Sony Online Entertainment worked out Sony Interactive and has a lot of experience as a as an engineer just as an amazing engineer and a lot of what we're doing revolves around that back-end part of UE4 and doing our own custom networking code to achieve the the types of things we want in the game and he brings a lot of experience in that regard when it comes to to expanding I think we just didn't we just post up our new ads for jobs actually yesterday and today and day before I think we put up we're opening up eight or nine new positions eight or nine new positions here at the studio this is going to take us up to about 24 in the in the studios and then we're in a relatively short time afterwards we're going to be bringing on another I would say within the next three to four months another ten personnel to bring us up to about 34 35 in the studios but you know when we bring on board people we're looking for them to have and I don't like using this term but AAA studio experience we want them to to come from a background where they've shipped a title that has that that shows their passion both as a developer as an individual who understands the MMORPG genre the community and the development side because MMORPGs are a completely different beast when it comes to creating a game I mean it is it is argumentatively the most difficult video game to produce I think you know it has so many different components to it oh Jeff welcome

Hey guys

How'd that build go good?

Ah we had some technical difficulties but I think we're okay now

Okay good good good

[Cross-talk] change up a couple things we're planning and doing for this stream but oh let's take a quick pause after we're done with this interview

Okay got it

Okay sure

15:23

Okay that sounds good so and something that MJ was asking was about the team and their experience at EverQuest and do we have Jeff's mic [cross-talk] okay okay there we go and kind of the experience that the team has I know we have four or five people came from SOE

Yeah

I was just explaining about how MMORPGs are such a huge project and it's great to have a team that has the experience with MMORPGs specifically because it is such a niche market in the gaming development industry you know and it's just designing for an MMO is is very different from designing from pretty much any other game even even multiplayer games like small you know five-on-five kind of multiplayer games because you really have to think about the really big picture and there's so many things that you just it can easily forget to prepare for or design for and if you're you're not prepared for that you're gonna be surprised on launch day so

And I think that you know the three-part components to our development team being you know art design and engineering that we have people in key positions here at the studio who have vast experience in that I mean you yourself of ya know in the gaming design aspect of the industry for how many years

Oh god it's been at least it's going on thirteen now

Thirteen years yeah mister Baconator over there you were back on you were artists on what Duke Nukem back in the day on the console version

Saints Row, Saints Row 2 some of my favorite games

You know we have I made sure that that when we were building this team that one of the most important aspects for me coming into the industry not having industry experience but having gamer experience was that I was able to rely on professionals in the industry who had specifically MMORPG experience so that when I say hey I'd like to have this done I can get a response and trust that response that either it can be done or can't be done right right and I think that that that what we've laid out as our our vision for Ashes of creation are all things that that really aren't innovative from a technology aspect but just from a design aspects like putting those pieces that already exist together in a way that shapes and forms what we're trying to accomplish when it comes to you know player agency in the game

And being able to do it on that scale right like that's that's you know it's easy to talk you know buzzwords but it's difficult to actually implement them but you know having that experience to draw from having people to talk to you and people who have been through that before you know makes it a lot clearer on what you can and can't do and how how to get somewhere versus somewhere else

17:42

Yeah

All right well leading a bit into that so I'm gonna throw in some questions that the chat through in a little bit before this started so we're gonna be bouncing off of that the whole thing you notice I'm kind of following a wave here so first of all someone's asking is there any chance there will be a grappling hook type of utility so people can hide in the trees for ambushing?

I don't know about the trees but there's definitely a grappling- [laughter]

I'm just imagining like a forest full of bears like hanging out

We couldn't do it in like a thin tree forest i'm just saying there is for sure I think a grappling hook utility item that we're considering as a traversal mechanic

When we first started talking about utility skills the grappling hook was the first one that came up so so there we're we're still working on the implementation of that but but it's definitely a direction we're going in

Yes

Okay good good and that's so back into one of the systems that was really feeling a bit reminiscent of a system I was really looking forward to your guys's nodes resemble rallying cries a bit to me now I see a lot of people I think are a bit confused about your node system so the politics and how each node is gonna have kind of its own story going on around it and everything what how would you explain to someone exactly what the use of the node okay the stuff jumping across the screen I need to not be watching this is distracting [laughter]

That's the Baconator

That's why I kind of keep my eyes level to the floor

That's a good idea so how would you how would you explain these nodes so a player comes in how are players gonna work together on building this node can they be kicked right out of the node the node expanding shrinking how is the politics gonna work in it it's just it's kind of a big idea and it sounds really neat but

Well okay so I mean we've done we've done a if for those of you who still are trying to grapple with ahh with what the node system entails we've actually done two parts to our four part series on nodes and how they work it gives a great kind of overview on it and I think combine those two videos are roughly sixteen minutes I'll try to very quickly condense the concept of the node because I know we have a lot of viewers who have definitely heard what the nodes all about and you know just to give you a quick overview everywhere in the world is is undeveloped when you get into the game and when you start moving out into the wilderness and taking civilization with you and you're doing you know normal MMORPG activities such as gathering or questing or you know killing evil things and you know whatever you're going to do as your player gains that experience it also lends that experience to it a node within whom's within the ZOI that you're present in so a node exists and has a zone around it that's called a zone of influence and anybody who's in that zone of influence when they gain experience the no gains experience as well as a node gains experience it advances in stages from nothing all the way up to a metropolis and in between you know you have a village of the town you have a camp stuff like that at every stage a node progresses it will offer new quest lines NPCs will appear and offer you know new shops and new services it's going to offer housing it's going to offer a political system that's driven by the players it's going to increase its zone of influence as it advances in stages as well so it's going to involve more more influence over the world around it it's going to affect events that occur in the open world as a reaction to civilization encroaching on its territory there's a lot of I mean this the the node system is intricately developed into every aspect of the game so that you as a player you have the ability to build up civilization there's also an ability to tear down civilization and to to re-determine the course of the server and opening up new storylines and new narratives that players have the agency to determine themselves it's not just a static world you're going to exist in it's a world you're going to create and that's that's probably one of the foundational I mean the most foundational aspect of Ashes of Creation is allowing the players to determine the narrative of the server as well as determine the structure of the server itself

22:21

I would say it's no I mean as a succinct as we can probably get again we are gonna have another video coming out in a couple weeks probably on the nodes and then after that probably another couple weeks after that but yeah we understand that the node system can be a little bit hard to grok but I think when it comes down to it the system's themselves are really simple right so so if you

What is grok?

It's like understand it's like I get it

Oh I've never even heard of grok okay I like it sounds like an evil warlord

No no I understand this

So you can switch your nodes of influence right you could say I'm not liking this where this one's heading I'm gonna head to another part of the world and I'm gonna start exercising my XP gathering there

Yeah no 100%

Yeah absolutely that's exactly what it's intended to be do yes done like you are not locked in to know that you started or how to start you know it's the world is about exploration and checking things out and changeability so you know we totally foresee situations where you're hanging out on a node and the whatever's happening there is just not not for you right so then you go find another group of players that you better you know relate with or that you know you go start working on some node that hasn't been developed at all so there's a lot of choices there and that's that's what we want to give players there's a lot of choice

You gave a perfect example MJ if you don't want to participate in that node's development there is a giant world out there with many nodes that you can go and lend your expertise your activity your jumping jacks if you want to do them yeah to develop that night when

Lend man I want to go take them over

Okay well that's a whole different story

My node man my node

Yeah so the whole idea of the politics going into the enemy I seriously I could talk and ask things for hours and hours hours all right now we're gonna slide over a little bit into talking about PvP because a lot of people will go yes open virtual world yes sandbox yes your decisions matter and you know there's PvP so I'm serious yes I'm serious because so many games just they don't do it right and it seems to drive people out or kind of crush the whole idea of the game one of your pillars is narrative you know so I guess my questions are leaning towards who is who is the audience for your game are you looking for sheep are you looking for wolves do you want sheepdogs do you want

Is there such a thing as sheep wolves?

Sheep wolves? Wolves in sheep's clothing

And and what kind of ideas do you have in place for the inevitable influx of some notorious gank squads that want to hit a server and totally dominate and destroy things

Mm-hmm well okay so what type of player do we want you know our our game is designed for a PvX mentality right it is it is a lot of both worlds and what we just described in the node system as being a way to develop the world the second pillar being meaningful conflict is our catalyst for change so if if a world has nodes that are starting to get developed in and citizens start claiming areas and you know they have their freeholds out in the realm and their castles that have been taken in dungeons that lay claim to all those types of things PvP in our game has has meaning to a based on the systems that its involved with so when we have castle sieges when we have node sieges when we have caravans when we have battlegrounds and arenas there's a purpose that performance on the players end in participating with those events and it has real-world effects you know it's not just a gank we're not creating a gank box we're not creating a murder box there are there is a flagging system that's in place that highly disincentivizes just outright murder we however do want to see conflict erupt and we do want to see that conflict have a system to to to see out what the result will be

26:42

Yeah the game the whole I guess design of the game really doesn't function too well unless there's a way for players to destroy it and and that's that's where the PvP comes in where you know if a node is built that's cool and then another note is built that's cool eventually all the nodes that can be built will be built and then our game is just a static theme park at that point right we need the ability for people to have conflict right to have a reason to tear things down and to pit players against each other it's it's definitely a part of the game we realize people are you know concerned about it but again I don't think we're gonna see guilds coming in and just wrecking a bunch of newbies because it's gonna be hard to do it's it's it's the flying system does a lot to prevent that there will be people who do gank other people it's going to happen they're going to find ways to do it well but it's not going to be widespread and we're going to do a lot of testing to make sure it isn't you know the numbers we're using right now are just test numbers but alphas and betas do bring us closer to something that is close to perfect it will never be perfect there will always be situations where you find yourself you know on the wrong end it was a sword that's also part of the game

But the best way we can we can at this stage say is our intent is to make sure that Ashes of Creation is not a gank box right

We want every every interaction to be meaningful

Yes absolutely and another thing that's important is is that in in our design philosophy risk versus reward is an extremely important component when it comes to satisfaction and achievement and if there are systems in place both from an economic standpoint and a development standpoint that involve no risk there's very little sort of satisfaction gained from players that's when when when in our opinion players become detached and it becomes a stagnant storyline that has no there's also no evolution [cross-talk]

It's it's important that there is a game and part of that game comes from the conflict with other people

And that doesn't mean I mean it's very important to note that that our belief is that in order for PvP to matter you must have a grade A plus quality PvE world I mean you have to have some epic PvE content in order for that PvP to even matter and vice versa right

I don't think we view like the in the purpose of the question with the three buckets of players being wolves sheeps and sheep dogs I think that we don't view those as isolated bucket right that is the population of a server right those people are gonna work together we want them to work together right is a place on the server to do things [cross-talk]

Yeah I think that's a very good point actually it it's it's important to note that in the MMORPG genre as you said there's not just three distinct buckets I mean very rarely do you actually see a majority of players fall on one end of that spectrum instead majority people kind of coalesce into the middle of that where they want to experience a little bit of both or have the opportunity to experience a little bit of both

And also like you got to think about like and again how this is going to play out is entirely theoretical but like there's there's nodes right and these nodes provide an identity for people that's my town I helped build that I own a home they're like these are places that that we belong to and these are these are a community right these are people who are working together to accomplish something and that that's going to provide a very different environment than only a lot of solo people running around trying to accomplish their own individual goals right there's always going to be a greater goal in mind for any given group of people

30:10

Are you drinking this?

I'm not

Oh thank you

Have it

Hmm so yes that's our PvP

I hope I hope that that's a good answer I don't sometimes we start rambling and it's hard to tell about

Well some folks had some questions about combat so questions about like how will mob tagging work will it be a first tag or is that everybody who's participating is getting XP how will looting work and then questions on the field of combat and cooldowns or no cooldowns or

Those are those are some pretty specific questions

Yeah as far as the whole tag system we don't we haven't really nailed down how we're gonna do we know where we want to go

Right those those specific things like as time goes on over the next couple of months we'll probably be releasing developer blogs that kind of hone in on specific questions like that specific mechanics like that I think that that another thing that's important to note is like you know we're well aware of what kind of things people want to see with the combat system and and it is one of the most important systems in the game outside of the outside of the grand systems that are kind of overarching systems combat is is probably the most intimate system for a player

It's really the system you're interacting with the most

Absolutely yeah and and we want to make sure ooh there's our

that's beautiful

That was pretty and that it is it is probably the system that the players are most interested to see done well and we are most focused on doing well right which is why you know we're a little bit hesitant to show it in early production because when you show a system like the combat system to the majority of players they're not going to look at it and say oh this is pre alpha state you know there's five there are only 5% into its production they're gonna look at and say oh this is a finished product right

Right

And there's some rough edges but we're very focused on creating an excellent combat system I mean as we said it's the most intimate system for a player it's one they're most interactive with around their gameplay so you know we want to make sure we nail down that system to a very finished polished product before we really showcase it

Yeah

I mean we can speak to some of those things right we can we can say like as far as combat goes there will be cooldowns that is something that will exist it's not there's not gonna be a lot of standing around and casting something we're not gonna root people very much it's gonna be a very mobile kind of game it's going to be fairly fast-paced we don't want it to be be quite at the frenetic level you know we wanted to have feel fast enough that it's fun but not so fast I can't control it we also don't want it to be really slow and ponderous either so these are all words that we are using [cross-talk]

Skill will play a very important role

32:53

And right yeah positioning and timing and you know maintaining the correct distances and that sort of thing

Okay

Battlefield control is going to be pretty big

So this one might be a little too specific too but this one was from the community they were interested and when you were talking about the spyglass mentioned as the utility skill the ability now was that going to be something that is focused more on like primarily or only a rogue or our other classes going to be able to gain access to these type of utility skills?

There will be a wide variety of utility skills across classes each class is going to have its own kind of way of doing that the

And its own niche like right what a classic sells item regards to utility

Right so so the spyglass will be probably unique to the rogue I don't see us giving it to anybody else except for maybe the Ranger but but yeah it's it's we want to kind of use the utility to help create identity for the classes and to give everybody a role in deciding how we progress as a group and and what role everybody has it's not going to be just you know am i the tank but it's also going to be like how do we navigate this area

And and there's a there's a wide array of utilities and those utilities relate to the wide array of hazards that exist within the world right and and you know it's one thing to have skills and classes associated with with combat roles it's another thing to have skills and classes associated with adventuring rails right we want to get back to that feeling that sense of adventure

Adventure and exploration

And exploration exactly and that's what those utilities really lend themselves towards is providing that role for certain classes yeah

34:36

Okay one I'm just gonna throw this plug in for another community member who is saying as long as as long as you've got a good fishing system

We talked about fishing last time

As long as we will have a good fishing system I think it's all three of us we're all fishers [cross-talk]

We're all fans of fishers yes exactly so

It's definitely gonna be something fishing is going to be OP so [cross-talk]

And I've grabbed a couple from chat as they've gone by so this one is a back to PvP questions have you considered adding a system allowing specific guilds to enter a war or conflict mode only with other guilds out in the rest of the world like

Yes

Yes we do have a guild war system absolutely

Yeah where two two guilds declare against each other and they're both considered combatants against each other but only against each other unless other people [cross-talk]

And they're not flagged in the open world for that they're just considered combatants against each other

Right against each other

Yeah and there will be objectives potentially within that war there could be surrender mechanics there can be a victory condition mechanic you know where guild using guild I lost my train of thought I forget now

Well you said two guilds there now one of my favorite memories of all time is actually the war ring that we had in Star Wars Galaxies where we had 10 or so guilds actually in on this entire ring so are you gonna be able to do it more than just two guilds

So the question would be and we're discussing this whether or not that guild war mechanic could extrapolate into an alliance war mechanic as well right because we will have alliances in the game and they're good there could be a mechanic that involves a war between the alliances

Right yeah yes also guilds can have wars against more than one other guild too so

Yeah

You could have three directional Wars and that kind of thing seven okay so

36:45

Fun okay so now I've been getting some questions from folks about endgame raiding kind of things what what can you say about that what kind of ideas do you have for those so are you thinking there's no such thing as in-game it's just gonna continue to move forward?

So endgame is is a bad word to me I have strong feelings that the whole game should be fun right it shouldn't be this race to an end game where the fun actually starts so we've got a lot of focus on making a lot of the stuff extensible throughout your entire play session that being said I mean we are going to have raids we're going to have raids at every level there's going to be a strong focus on epic content it takes a lot of people to overcome and it's not just going to be you know a one event that one guild gets to experience but that multiple multiple people can experience

Right and I think I think the most important reason as to why endgame is a bad term for us is because the way that Ashes of Creation is is structured as a game is so that there are there's content that's constantly being revealed to you based on

Right [cross-talk]

A decision of the community and server

It's more about the evolution of the server than then just getting max level and then going off to the raid system and never touching the rest of the game again

Yes

So you know we want to try to maintain relevancy throughout you know the entire world so that you know the first zone you start in hopefully you'll be seeing it over and over again it's not just gonna be something that you play in for 10 minutes and then and then go off to to greener pastures there's go always gonna be a reason to explore an adventure everywhere and that includes rating and that includes dungeoneering and that includes a lot of the big world losses that we have planned so so there's there's gonna be a wide breadth of things to do we don't want people to get bored we want we want there to be different things for people to do every day because you know what you want to do every day changes you know you might walk in one day and want to just do battlegrounds for a half hour and then be done with it or you might want to go and work on your crafting for two hours and then be done with it I mean that should change everyday and we're going to have lots of different things to offer to kind of feel that those needs

Right

39:01

I kind of like this question that I saw scroll by a little bit ago do you guys have any story brick like system planned or in-game something that NPCs are going to react to players differently or anything like that?

So story bricks was a very ambitious project and we are not going to be quite that ambitious we do have a system in place for our quests that it's going to allow branching on the local level so the individual player and then on the global level so the server itself will actually be experiencing stories in different ways depending on what players are choosing as far as you know having roving bands of orcs that decide oh my our food is low so we must go you know running around and find food and that creates you know a story that players start get into we probably won't go that detailed but we do have events and events are our sort of base around our nodes where stuff similar to that will happen but in a little bit more structured manner so so that we can actually tell a story about it the difficulty with having the roving band of orcs that you know has its own AI that's deciding okay the food here isn't any good so we're gonna move over here and harass this group over here like it's cool conceptually but it's difficult for us to to tell a story around so so events are going to be the main drivers and it's going to feel maybe similar to what story bricks wanted to do but it's it's not going to be that exact [cross-talk]

I think it'll be I think it'll feel similar without the cumbersome design aspect of story [cross-talk]

I mean if if that came out next it would have been brilliant

But but I think like for example I mean if you talk about how you know a node might develop in an area and and that zone has has structured events that are designed to react to the development of certain types of buildings right and/or development node stages and then it will spawn a horde of zombies that will move towards the stables to you know eat the horses right into the stable and that disables so stable for a period of time I mean those are easily done from a design perspective not that's nothing like what what is needed for right now but it can still give that feeling

Right and that's that's something that is our goal throughout this whole write process is to to make the world feel reactive to to make it feel like oh there is a consequence to us building this node here you know there are things that are happening around it that are contextual but we're building those in to those areas manually it's not being generated procedurally and it's not you know dependent on an AI so

Yeah

41:41

And actually work where we might have to go to the videos

Yeah we should what time is it uh-oh MJ I think we might have run over a little

Can we do one last one last question then

We have one last question

Ooh that's like half the half the quest- I told you I had a million of them so actually you were talking about as the nodes advance and you're given more tasks and stuff to do or anything resembling like lots of daily dailies that's that's kind of a I don't know if I'm setting you up for something or not here but will there but [cross-talk]

Dailies suck we hate them

Little daily things that you've got to grind out over and over and over to her for whatever purpose to to build up or what-have-you

So we never want to make you feel like you're grinding something otu

Right we don't like we don't want we don't want the game to feel like work right

That's a failure

And dailies have their place and there's there's a good reason for them right but when they're the same thing over and over again it starts to get really repetitious and when the only consequence of doing them is you get you know some alternate currency that you can use to build a sword you know three weeks hence if you do it every day you know it starts to feel like work it doesn't feel like you're doing anything so that's our event system is actually broken well so there's the narrative there's events and then there are tasks and tasks are kind of what fill in that that hole right there they're the low narrative things but they're sort of like stuff that's happening around the node on a given day like

And they serve a purpose and and they're not tasks that are repetitive every single day the same thing they're more along the lines of like something has happened in the world

I need to go do something about that if I don't go do something about it something negative happen exactly or the reverse right yeah something cool happens if I don't take advantage of it I don't get to take advantage of the cool thing right so

But we don't want you to be a zombie at your computer you know dying to log in to do your every single day daily they say the same exact thing over and over

Like I'm feeling that stress of like oh god if I don't log in today I'm not gonna get that token and now I have to wait two more weeks [cross-talk]

Watching my wrist we're gonna miss out it starts [cross-talk] oh no no no [laughter]

Well thank you guys so much for answering all of these questions and work

Thanks MJ

For making this game for us you know there is a lot of hype and a lot of excitement for this and what you guys are proposing to bring to us so

Well thank you for joining us today MJ we absolutely know there's a lot of hype out there I think that it's kind of contagious it comes from the offices started yeah yeah and you know everyone here is really excited and we're really happy to see that everybody out there is excited too because it means a lot to us

And we're going to keep moving forward with this right gonna make to the finish line

Absolutely beyond

Beyond to the finish line and beyond

Oh the finish line I like that

Oh yeah

Thank You MJ we appreciate it

Thank you all you have a wonderful day and get back to work soon show us all [Laughter]

Take care MJ

Bye bye

Alright guys

We're going to have to go offline for a very brief second

Okay well in the middle of it?

Well we'll just we'll just show the screen right Michael?

Which screen?

Right okay yeah sounds good okay so we'll just hang tight we'll be back in like one minute with some in-game live play playing

Yeah yeah okay cool so hang on one sec

47:29

All right so Peter how's it going buddy?

Really good I feel really involved

What are what are we gonna be seeing here are we going to go in game we're gonna be seeing this metropolis that we showcased in the in the video on Wednesday do we have footage of that can we cut to not footage but okay so actually why don't you cut back real quick and don't don't move anywhere just and cut back to the feed the video the stream and let's show Tristan behind us oh yeah back to the

We're gonna move

48:12

Back to us there we go this is Tristan Tristan's going to be driving the rogue today in the metropolis all right cut to that we can cut now back to this [cross-talk] alright so here we have the metropolis that was seen in both our metropolis part two node series as well as the as well as The Art of War

Yep

And we're gonna take you in to that metropolis everything it's important to note that um well you can go ahead it's important to note that everything you saw in the art of war is you know in in the engine it is a little tumble I like it it is in the engine right and this is the environment you'll be playing and this is the character you're gonna be playing those are the skills you're gonna see the only difference that's in art of war none of it is CG none of it is pre-rendered it is it is all created in this engine yeah and you're playing the game now and you get to see pretty much all the stuff you saw they're just we're gonna take you through this is an invisibility invisibility

Invisibility

An invis ability [laughter] and it is a rogue primary skill we are I believe we're Team Viewering in this so you might see some some a little bit of motion blur and choppiness no no it looks good I think it's looking good so where are we right now?

So right now what do you mean where are we oh we're right in front of the temple is where we're at

Okay good oh yeah cool okay so we're in front of the temple this was in the art of war video where he went into this temple and some of you were wondering what was that relic that the yeah that relic that looked like a Bebilith or something was the that was a a protective relic that the city had that was preventing attack basically so once he grabbed that relic he enabled the siege and that's when the trebuchet started firing

Oh very cool I like it so another important thing to note here is that you'll see these kiosks that kind of exist out in the metropolis and I know we talked a little bit about this last week at its fever you know these kiosks are rentable and it's the mechanic that that players can set up shop for with their inventory that they want to sell things and their crafters or processors or gatherers and they can rent that shop for that kiosk for a period of time you know they're great too for a day they can render for the night they go in for whatever period of time and it allows them to just kind of show their goods and you'll see there's some people there haggling with that marketplace

51:03

You know one day that'll be real people I'll be you the players

One day one day very soon these are another important thing to note about the metropolis is that you'll see buildings like that right there where you're looking at now Tristan and those are like a mansion style home and the way that static homes within the node work and you can just keep us kind of looking at that area the way that the static homes within the the node work is that if this node were to develop into a village stage and you were to purchase you know a small dwelling within the village as that node progresses and you got in early that static home is going to progress with the node it will be that mansion here near the center of town right

Right so that's that's one of the the biggest reasons to get into a node early and to you know kind of figure out where your home is going to be because that's going to give you the opportunity to really own the coolest looking buildings I think probably on the server

Yeah I agree

You really get to feel like you're part of the city

Another and these are this is like would be an apartment complex so this would if you can just keep us here yeah this would be like the players I believe it's at Stage four it might be stage five I believe it's stage four the player government has the ability to to begin construction on an apartment complex and this apartment complex allows for instanced housing within the node if players weren't able to participate in purchasing a static node or didn't have the ability to to build a freehold for whatever reason they can come here and they can rent these apartments which would allow them to claim citizenship within the node and obviously the more apartments that become rented the higher the price scales you know there's a soft kind of not necessarily limit but just a greater expense that's necessary if there's already a lot of citizens within the node and that kind of scarcity drives you know competitiveness for real estate and you know

Right it gives you a reason to go out and find that other node

Exactly

If that one comes too expensive yeah but this is the marketplace this is I think our artists knocked it out of the park with this particular area

Oh the marketplace yeah oh this looks good so another thing we were discussing last time was that nodes within a region may share a a bulletin board in the town center and that bulletin board may be a search method for you to look for certain types of items you won't be able to necessarily purchase that item from an auction house so to speak but you would have the location in a market place that you would need to purchase the item from yeah and that helps to create local economies and local markets that are dependent on the supply of of resources gatherables and ability excuse me and items that are within a local marketplace you can see and as you can see here the UI is very basic it is a very basic UI this is this is a placeholder UI you have the health bar in the bottom left there a menu option pop top right you know we haven't begun to work at all on our UI

Yeah it's functional for us it's not functional for players I mean I guess it would be functional for players but that's all it would be as functional all right it's there to make sure that you know when we're in game and we're making sure our stats are scaling correctly and that you know what I equip something my strength goes up and that sort of thing

Yeah

Yeah when I get hit my HP goes down

Mm-hmm absolutely very cool

First floor here

You want to take us up to the first floor you want to go invisible so they don't try to kill you sweet I love this temple oh by the way this area here was created by our artists John and Michael mm-hmm they did this metropolis the scene itself the level itself was set up by Tristan our one of our level designers you want to take us into the temple when we go into the temple take a look at what's in that door where is the front door ask one of the guards were the front doors [laughter] it's a it's a big the you know our metropolis actually node footprint is I believe 0.25 kilometers and radius just about I think

Yeah I think it's bigger than that

Isn't it it's a point five diameter I thought

Point five radius

Oh wow really

Pretty sure

I hope we got a delivery FedEx is here

Hang on you're gonna hear some sounds doors open

Thank you all right I think this is where people saw the the top the relic was at the top of this building so I think we're running out of time so let's get some questions in after this

Thank you Tristan for that

Thank you Tristan

Yeah very cool all right what more questions do we have from the community where do we have those questions

Umm

Don't know [cross-talk]

56:10

Is at the top captain Brownbeard asks will devs be in-game with other players and if so will they be interactive?

I would like to wander the countryside a potato sack and sandals on [laughter]

That's amazing that is amazing

A traveler on the winds

That is amazing so I that's that's really gonna depend on where we're at when we get to launch I know one of the coolest parts of some of the games that I've played in the past GM run events and things that are really organic and have a lot of role play involved that's something I would very much love to do both as a player and as a designer the question will be is how many people can we staff for that and make sure that everybody gets the kind of like attention it deserves

I think the answer is tentatively yes you're going to see GM's in the game interacting to a degree I know that that our Phoenix initiative which is one of the components of a package I believe we have on Kickstarter is going to be an area that's exclusive to those members who are part of the Phoenix initiative and in that area you will see when GM's are online they'll be in that area doing their daily activities and

More likely that'll be the base place where they log in

Exactly so yes tentatively

We can harass them there

Woah no harassment [laughter] I'm just a man in sandals leave me alone who's this guy?

Welshinaor

I wonder if he's Welsh?

He might be Welsh

[Cross-talk] Will the game have a day and night cycle will this have any effect on gameplay? The game will have a day and night cycle

It does have a day/night cycle

And the gameplay I think you're going to see potentially different monster tables for the day and the night you're going to see perhaps a different emissive be more prevalent on night creatures and stuff

58:05

Yeah I mean it's it's gonna be cool we want I mean along with seasons right seasons are change day night is also changed it's not going to necessarily be change everywhere right but it will be changed in some places you know that might be that certain NPC we'll only be awake during certain times of the day certain mobs might get certain forest might get really terrifying at night like some game that I know if you know there's there's a lot of stuff we can do with that that we want to have a lot of fun with yeah that's relatively easy to do so

DayMonicas will players be able to build mage towers or other class flavored structures on their freehold lands? class of a class flavored structures I I don't know if it's gonna be it's not gonna be class flavored but it will be profession flavored

Right

You know and what what abilities and professions you're pursuing in your artisan class you're going to see that play out through the structures that you're building on your freehold

Right and we're gonna have skins and stuff for these things so I mean if you want to have like a mage flavored freehold oh that would definitely be a prossible

Through the skins and I think that's currently an option on our Kickstarter as well we have different tiers of skins that are available but ya know that's a good example

Redemershowa redemosah

Redeemarocha

RedeemerOSHA there we go thank you well done

Very nice will the game have voice over

So I mean that's something that we want I think everybody wants to have voice over in their game but voiceover it's very very expensive and I think on our priority list voiceover would be behind every single system and player specific [cross-talk]

Yeah its way those things it adds so much to the game but is also like a continual expense right it's not just something I do once at the launch of the game once we do at the launch of the game we kind of have to do it for all our update why

While it's a novel thing for the players to experience you know hearing a familiar voice or just having great voice acting or whatever it is you know is it above any systems no

No no

It's not at all so from an expense and budgeting standpoint every single system will come first

Right and if we happen to make it happen we'll make it happen

Right

But can't give any promises

Grizzly2016 will crafting stations only be found on freeholds or will artisans be able to craft on the go? that's a great question

Yeah

That is a great question I think it depends perhaps on on what it is that you're trying to craft

I mean right now for the most part we are considering everything to be like either in a freehold in a city in a node

At some station

At some station

Unless you're trying to make a baked potato and you have like sour cream and like cheese you want to take the potato that you just harvested like put them together and now it's a meal you can eat

That that might be a situation where you can do it on the fly but it'll probably be on a recipe profession kind of basis

Sure yeah yeah but baked potatoes on the go is a potential right

Baked potatoes confirmed

Okay

1:01:06

Unpwnd will the node locations types change from beta to release?

It's definitely possible you know we don't want that to happen obviously we want all of our design to be perfect the first time we do it right but it's very likely that we are not perfect and that we will have to change things

I mean that's the purpose of betas and alphas is that there can be changes so you know basic answer that question yes it's possible

For something like nodes it's actually kind of probably pretty unlikely

Yes we want to make sure we get that right before we're going to [cross-talk]

Right yeah but it's possible and things happen and and things always do happen

Miss Banjo oh I like banjos those are good musical instruments can you tell us more about housing will they have predetermined looks or players have full capacity full capability to create and build?

They will have predetermined looks and they will have skins that you can change those looks but if you're talking about like actually like kind of like you know Sims kind of building of houses that's probably not gonna be on the table it'll be pre-constructed floor plans and stuff

They'll be pre constructed but I think one of the aspects of housing in the game is specifically in relation to freeholds is that expanding your home will include some modular assets that you would have the ability to move around and change yeah and that in and of itself will make your house unique in addition there are going to be a lot of customizable a lot of skins a lot of degrees a lot of decorations exactly so to a degree yes they will have some capability over these

Yes but it's not gonna be full capablity

Not full no

Fullrin can we address ahead now we already did that one Aiden will there be class locked gear?

Class locked gear

Outside of utility items

Probably not yeah I mean I can see situations and scenarios for something super epic and amazing that only works for a specific type of person but those will probably be pretty far enough are far and few between

Yeah I agree um alright I think

Yeah we're at 402 we've gone over today

I think that's good I think we'll probably end it there yeah

Yeah

So big congratulations everybody out there our amazing supporters we did reach last night our 1.75 million dollars in funding which did unlock our underrealm expansion stretch goal and it's a pretty exciting day here at Intrepid Studios

Yes

Because there's a lot of people here who were looking forward to designing that aspect of it

1:03:46

I'm very very glad that I get to work on this yes it's very excited

Pretty fun

Yeah you know I would love obviously if we can get that extra race unlocked at the two points

That would be absolutely a whole different story relating to the underrealm but we are super appreciative we're absolutely grateful it is awesome to see the reception we've received we did unveil also in an update our angelic skin which is in the 1k package I believe on Kickstarter this is a racial skin that you know you'll choose a race going into the game obviously and then you will apply this racial skin and it will change your appearance to that angelic figure we we have the demonic skin coming out next week so look forward to that that's also part of the package so guys we appreciate absolutely your support we are our undying gratitude for your continued assistance and spreading the word about Ashes of Creation to all of your friends to your guilds everybody out there we're gonna make the best game possible and we can't do it without you guys we appreciate you 100%

Thanks so much everyone

Thank you everybody a great day

Have a good one