Talk:2023-05-31 Livestream

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תמליל גולמי

Intro

• 00:00

Yeah.

• 00:21

Hello and welcome.

• 00:22

Glorious as a creation

• 00:23

community. We hope that you are

• 00:24

having a wonderful month. Of

• 00:27

course, it's been a long time

• 00:28

since we've had a conversation

• 00:30

with you. Um it has been a wild

• 00:32

month for us. I feel like I say

• 00:34

that every single time, but

• 00:35

it's just like we do say it. We

• 00:37

say it every time. And then we

• 00:38

also say after we say it every

• 00:39

time that we say it every time.

• 00:40

The wild thing to me is that

• 00:43

we're almost halfway through

• 00:44

the year, which is nuts. Um

• 00:47

that actually is great. I'm sure

• 00:49

everyone else is feeling that

• 00:50

way as well. Almost everyone I

• 00:51

talked to you feels that way.

• 00:55

Um, I'm your host, Dr.

• 00:57

Margot Krone, your director of

• 00:59

communications. We hope that you

• 01:01

are excited for today. I know

• 01:03

we've been teasing a little bit

• 01:04

of what's what's to come. But

• 01:07

as always, what we're going to

• 01:08

be covering today is reminders.

• 01:09

We will also be showing off our

• 01:13

Cyclops combat. We also have a

• 01:15

guest star the kitty cat. Oh,

• 01:17

yes, this is George George.

• 01:19

George is literally floating on

• 01:20

a cloud. He's lounging. I know

• 01:24

he's floating on a cloud. He's

• 01:24

like, Oh, she's she's Lucy.

• 01:30

Lucy. They've been over to our

• 01:32

to our house a few times for

• 01:34

the love for the live streams.

• 01:36

She's purring. Yeah. Oh, um,

• 01:38

trying to get her to not stand

• 01:40

in my my monitor way because

• 01:40

she keeps doing that. Um and

• 01:44

then we'll have our art update

• 01:46

and studio update and of course

• 01:48

a little Q and a from our

• 01:48

forums because you all have been

• 01:52

watching. We'll be talking a

Reminders

• 01:55

little bit about reminders, and

• 01:57

we've got our spotlight today

• 01:59

for our YouTube comment. So if

• 02:01

you would also like to be

• 02:01

spotlighted as a YouTube.

• 02:04

Comment You just need to

• 02:05

subscribe to our YouTube

• 02:07

channel. Make sure that you

• 02:09

have your subs visible so that

• 02:11

we can see that you're a sub

• 02:13

and then leave us a comment on

• 02:15

our development updates. So for

• 02:16

May's development update, we

• 02:17

will be selecting somebody for

• 02:21

our YouTube channel. And then

• 02:23

we'll have our live stream

• 02:25

update. So if you would also

• 02:27

like to be spotlighted as a

• 02:29

YouTube comment. Make sure that

• 02:31

you have your subs visible so

• 02:33

that we can see that you're a

• 02:35

sub and then leave us a comment

• 02:37

on our development updates. So

• 02:39

make sure that you have your

• 02:41

subs visible so that we can

• 02:43

see that you're a sub and then

• 02:45

leave us a comment on our

• 02:47

development updates. So make

• 02:50

sure that you have your subs

• 02:52

visible so that we can see

• 02:54

that you're a sub and then

• 02:56

leave us a comment on our

• 02:58

development updates. So if

• 03:00

you would also like to be

• 03:02

spotlighted as a YouTube

• 03:04

comment. Comment You need to

• 03:06

subscribe to our YouTube channel

• 03:08

to be notified about our

• 03:10

future developments and

• 03:12

content. Comment You need to

• 03:14

subscribe to our YouTube channel

• 03:16

to be notified about our

• 03:20

enjoy doing the things that they tend to stay away from, how long they tend to do those things,

• 03:26

and a lot of companies use just that data to kind of inform direction over design choices.

• 03:33

I'm very much a believer that you need to have correlating data that is essentially feedback

• 03:39

directly from the player base in addition to the logging and metrics that you can find

• 03:47

from player activity to create a navigational array moving forward. Now to your question,

• 03:54

which of those stats will we expose to the player side? I think we have a lot of intention to,

• 04:01

and we've talked about this in the past, to have a lot of these things shown to the players and be

• 04:07

able to for those players to choose to share them or not through their character page on the website

• 04:13

that we've talked about in the past as well. And those will include a lot of what you mentioned

• 04:18

there. I think it's a really cool component that as a player, I get to see how I stack up against

• 04:23

other players and the achievements that I've accomplished in game. And there's ways to make

• 04:30

that a bit more time focused to where you're not just getting the gross data, but you're also

• 04:36

getting like seasonal, essentially seasonal data or partition via time. I think that's something

• 04:41

that's super cool and it helps provide motivation for players to achieve things in game. So yes,

• 04:47

we will be embracing those types of leaderboards and stats exposed to the players for Ashes.

• 04:54

Yes, it will be a lot of fun. We have many dreams that we want to do with game to web and game to

• 05:01

mobile in regards to showing stats and making things shareable for you. We know how social

• 05:07

media works, how sharing content with friends works. But you know, those things will come in

• 05:12

due time and just a fair warning on that front. And of course, if you have things that you'd like

• 05:17

to see, I think we did do a dev discussion in the past regarding kind of like what features you'd

• 05:22

like to see in a mobile app or things like that. Those things would be super helpful. So if you

• 05:27

want to head back over there and give us some comments, we would appreciate it. And of course,

• 05:31

we have been doing dev discussions. Our latest one was on the mage. So if you have not gotten a

• 05:37

chance to toss your feedback in there, I know we already started compiling all of that feedback,

• 05:43

but you're welcome to still pop in there. Even if the discussions have already been wrapped up,

• 05:47

we don't want you to stop the conversation. Please continue.

• 05:49

And by the way, I just I just do want to comment real quick. Yeah. For those of you who have been

• 05:57

participating in that discussion along the mage showcase from last month, really exemplary job.

• 06:05

I mean, that discussion was well done. I was reading through the responses. It was well

• 06:12

articulated from very from a lot of you around the things you enjoyed, the things you'd like to see

• 06:17

improvements on examples from other games that you enjoyed. Like that thread was a treasure trove

• 06:23

of player feedback. And I just want to say you guys, those of you out there who participated in

• 06:28

that discussion, kudos to you. Thank you very much. It is a very instrumental tool that the

• 06:32

community team has an opportunity to to concisely bring together and provide the developers.

• 06:38

It is very helpful. And those of you who didn't participate in those discussions, totally fair,

• 06:44

but I would encourage you in the future to get engaged because there's nothing more valuable

• 06:49

than hearing from you guys what you enjoy and what you'd like to see done differently. And I

• 06:54

would I would say today's demonstration is not going to be any different. So as you guys kind of

• 06:59

watch what we show you today, it's going to be very helpful for you to jump back in on the forums

• 07:04

and across social media and give us your thoughts, because that's why we are doing this transparent

• 07:10

development process is to collect that feedback. Yeah. And we've also been doing an office hours.

• 07:16

We recently started advertising that on our social medias as well. And, you know, Vackner and Roshan

• 07:23

have been doing a great job with that pilot program. So if it's something that you're

• 07:27

interested in where you can actually like come in and talk and answer some of the questions as well,

• 07:32

instead of just posting on the forums, you have that avenue. We know not everybody wants to type

• 07:37

up a forum post. So if you'd rather talk and speak, that's another opportunity for you as well. Yeah.

• 07:42

And one of the last thing and, you know, forgive me if I stand a little bit on a soapbox, but I,

• 07:48

you know, as a player of MMOs as well as we all are here at Intrepid, I get excited about

• 07:54

announced projects and upcoming games that are coming out. And, you know, sometimes through

• 08:02

normal development, there is not a level of transparency or insight into the moment to moment

• 08:11

gameplay that's being expected on behalf of the players side. And I think that that's a really

• 08:17

missed opportunity. And I would speak to the executives out there to other developers who have

• 08:25

a voice in the projects that they're participating in to try to champion this thought of engaging with

• 08:32

your community earlier on. And the reason for that is because it's very difficult to pivot away from

• 08:39

a direction when that direction has been manifest, has been created, is ready to ship. And it's,

• 08:47

I know there's downsides to it and there's a level of investment that's required. But if something

• 08:54

gives you an opportunity to early on understand what the customer wants, that is a golden holy

• 09:02

grail available to you. And it is doing nothing but servicing the genre. And the people, the beloved

• 09:12

gamers who spend their free time, their hard earned free time enjoying these games, for them not to

• 09:20

be surprised when the game comes out. Nobody wants to be surprised by what they're looking forward

• 09:26

to. And a lot of time the hopium that we have around something we haven't seen before or what

• 09:33

we're expecting is it lives up to our highest mountain peak of hope in our minds. And then when

• 09:41

we see that thing, sometimes it's a bit deflated. But if you provide insight during development so

• 09:49

that players have an understanding of what to expect when that game launches, then you mitigate

• 09:56

a significant portion of the risk that's entailed in the creation of these massive projects because

• 10:02

you can identify where your approach resonates with a consumer base. And again, I know it's a

• 10:11

soapbox, but I just feel recently, I had hopes as well and I feel like it's a good point to make.

• 10:19

The hopium, I like that. Yeah, I mean, and this is one of the things that I have loved about

• 10:29

working at Intrepid and working for you and you specifically, Steven, is that I've worked at a lot

• 10:34

of companies where community is not respected. And what a community team does and the feedback

• 10:41

that they can relay and the social media team, what their feedback can provide to the development

• 10:44

team. Developers don't take that. I mean, you don't have to take every like you don't to take

• 10:49

it word for word, like just because people think something is overpowered doesn't mean you have to

• 10:52

take action and make it more make it underpowered. Right. It's kind of thinking about that feedback

• 10:57

and reflecting on it and making better decisions about what you're doing moving forward. Not

• 11:02

necessarily saying you have to do exactly what the players want. It's analyzing and assessing that

• 11:07

feedback. Yeah. And, you know, I see in chat some people saying, oh, shots fired. You know, they're

• 11:12

mentioning some of the other games. I'm it is not in any way, shape or form my intent to shoot shots.

• 11:19

If that's what the proper phrase is. My my desire is to help the genre and the executives that make

• 11:27

this these decisions, because, you know, a lot of times we think, oh, it's the developers. Well,

• 11:32

it's not really the developers. It's the executives or the executives that kind of make

• 11:38

these decisions. And for, you know, they're constrained. They have to share responsibilities

• 11:42

to shareholders. They have projects and they need to keep track of like the proprietary information

• 11:47

and designs and the KPIs, all those things understandable. But if one thing can be

• 11:53

demonstrated through Ashes of Creation's development process, it's that we have garnered

• 12:00

a large community of interested and resonated gamers who want to play this game. And we have a

• 12:07

very clear picture of where that interest lies. We know who who doesn't want to play it. We know the

• 12:13

negative feedback we receive. We try to act on that negative feedback, right? But without the

• 12:19

lines of communication being open, all of that is in the dark. And it's just not a place where

• 12:28

a development that can take five, six, seven, eight years should ever be before launch is to be

• 12:36

in that dark place. It's just it's so antithetical to this concept of made for gamers by gamers like

• 12:46

that is the core philosophy behind the development of a game like this. And and to keep those doors

• 12:53

shut just doesn't make sense. And it creates an insurmountable mountain of risk when that game

• 13:01

eventually launches. So I'm not shooting shots. Yeah, absolutely. No, totally. We don't show open

• 13:08

development to there. And to be perfectly honest, like we don't show gray box levels and like our

• 13:15

fundamental prototyping, like because it just it doesn't convey something that we can elicit a good

• 13:21

response from. Right. We want to show the things where we can collect actionable feedback that we

• 13:26

can parse through. Right. And that we can say, OK, this is the direction we were already on.

• 13:30

Good thing it resonated or wow, we were really off base here. We need to change some things up

• 13:35

and we better do that because the lifecycle of our game and the longevity, the lifetime value

• 13:41

of the customer is at stake for that reason. So, you know, I just I want to take this opportunity

• 13:46

because it's not often that I have the opportunity once a month here to speak with you guys, but also

• 13:52

to potentially speak with any executive that might be listening. This is not a bad thing to engage the

• 13:58

customer earlier. These players, MMO players understand to a degree what development entails,

• 14:05

and especially if you invest a bit in that conversation, you have the directors participating,

• 14:13

you have an investment in community teams earlier on before the community is actually playing

• 14:18

something to help garner that feedback and to parse it for the developers. Like there is a

• 14:23

treasure trove of information to be had amongst your consumer base, engage with it and then you

• 14:29

can mitigate the risk. So I'm not trying to shoot shots. This is not a me shooting across the bow in

• 14:35

the industry. I have love and respect for my fellow developers and fellow companies. I am just

• 14:41

trying to offer what I feel is constructive feedback to help ensure that the genre gets the

• 14:46

games it deserves. Yeah. And people, you know, developers want to make a great games. Like

• 14:52

Stephen said, it's not always on the individual. Sometimes you're doing what is asked of you. So

• 14:58

it is a struggle on both sides of the front. But of course, we have so much more to show you

• 15:06

and I'm sure we'll have many more so boxes in the future as well.

• 15:13

I think we will. We have thoughts. We have things that we want to do. And I think that we want to

• 15:18

make the industry better as best as we can. And you know, like Stephen said, right now, this is

• 15:24

our platform that we have. But, you know, we'll be doing more streams in the future as we get closer

• 15:30

and closer to launch and post launch. But my final reminder is that we do have our Legion of the Rose.

• 15:38

It's scheduled for June 14th at 11am Pacific. We'll be swapping it over with the next set.

• 15:43

And of course, these are all things that you'll see as NPCs, creatures, buildings in the world.

• 15:48

They help us build out the world of Vera. We'll have different variants of them. And actually,

• 15:52

you're going to see some stuff in our this week, which is really exciting. That is similar to some

• 15:58

of those things. And with that, let's talk a little bit about Cyclops. And if you want Stephen,

Cyclops Combat Preview

• 16:05

I know you wanted to kind of do a little preface. I do want to preface this. And I think guys and

• 16:11

gals out there, it is very important that you help convey this message to those who might discuss

• 16:20

what they see here and across social media and discords. The purview of this demonstration is the

• 16:30

first world boss you will encounter in the Riverlands area. There are four starting areas

• 16:35

and ashes of creation as you're well aware. But this is a level 30 Cyclops raid boss,

• 16:42

which means its intended encounter design is between levels like 22 and 3435. And

• 16:52

you're going to see a host of abilities you're going to see in try to keep an eye out for this,

• 16:58

right? You're going to look you're going to try to find some tree strikes, some kicks and

• 17:02

tree slams, a totem charge of the root shear, some spore sprays, a stumps and call spirits,

• 17:08

the enraged root prisons and the root fissures and the enraged phase with his roar and stomp frenzy

• 17:16

and the totemless charge. You know, there's there's calling of dire spirits. There's a lot of

• 17:21

different actions that can be taken by this raid boss. What we want to elicit from you is when

• 17:29

when you've encountered the raid bosses in other games, what did you enjoy most about those? Where

• 17:34

do you see that occurring in this demonstration and where do you see room for improvement? One

• 17:40

thing I do want to convey these three points is earliest raid boss you see two is we're all GMs.

• 17:48

It's it's intended for a full raid, but we have two groups that are fighting it because it's a

• 17:52

little bit difficult for us to corral all of our developers internally to jump in and

• 17:57

and yeah, I know right to jump in and take away time from the development. So so we use a little

• 18:03

bit of overpoweredness there. But then the third thing is is the ambience the how this boss moves

• 18:10

around the world, right? It's not just in a centralized location. That's its arena per se.

• 18:15

Like this is a roaming monster. So take those those three things as you're watching. Think about

• 18:21

what did you enjoy? Where you clarify though, because people are saying GMs are

• 18:25

not using GM hacks, though. And no, no, no, no, just to be clear, he's just saying we're GMs,

• 18:29

and all of these are developers that are going to be like, we're all game masters. We're not players.

• 18:35

And we're powerful, very powerful, but not just hacking. No, we just know all the mechanics. So

• 18:42

yeah, exactly. We know what we know what we're coming up. Yeah, exactly. So we had a lot of fun.

• 18:48

I think you guys are going to enjoy it. And yeah, we'll be on after to chat with you about it. All

• 18:57

right. We'll see you guys in 20 minutes. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another live

• 19:22

stream in the world of Vera. I am joined today by three glorious developers. Actually, we have

• 19:28

quite a few of our developers are participating in today's live stream. I'm not going to go through

• 19:33

everyone. You'll see their usernames, their game handles on the top left side and our RAID UI.

• 19:39

But I have three amazing developers who are joining us today, that have all taken part in

• 19:45

helping to design the Cyclops and the combat that goes around it. I know you guys in the community

• 19:50

have been very excited to kind of see today's demonstration. We're not going to get too elaborate

• 19:55

in the designs of the Cyclops, right? Because we don't want to spoil it for you. But just as a

• 19:59

disclaimer, this is one of the very first World Raid bosses that will be available for players

• 20:05

to participate in. So this is not super end game, but it is going to give you some insight into how

• 20:10

we're designing these encounters. And first up, we have one of our senior designers, Mr. Doug. How

• 20:15

are you doing, Doug? Good evening. I'm doing pretty well. I'm excited to show this off. We've been

• 20:21

working on it for a while. I'm super excited for you guys to show it off, too. I know you guys have

• 20:26

been hard at work on this one and a lot of other creatures. And this is your first time joining us

• 20:30

on the stream, isn't that right? That is correct. I have not streamed before. Super exciting. We

• 20:35

have a stream virgin with us. Very cool. We also have with us one of our glorious senior technical

• 20:42

designers, Mr. Jason. How are you doing, Jason? Hey, how's it going? And you are the... This one's

• 20:50

your baby, right? This Cyclops was kind of your design. Yeah. Been plucking away at him for a

• 20:56

while. I remember the first time we chatted about this guy. You had such a great kind of premise for

• 21:03

his backstory and the design elements of it. I thought it was super cool. I love the detaching

• 21:09

tree, which our viewers are going to see in a little bit. So I'm super excited that you have an

• 21:12

opportunity to kind of talk with the community about this and get their take on some of these

• 21:16

designs. And then we have one of our regularly occurring senior designers on the combat side,

• 21:22

Mr. Trad. How are you doing, Trad? Doing great. Good to be back as always. Yes, welcome. So we

• 21:28

find ourselves here in the Riverlands and it appears to be a winter time. It's beautiful.

• 21:37

Actually, I really like it. So one of the first things I would love to chat with you guys about

• 21:43

is kind of how you set up this particular raid boss, the Cyclops, in the Riverlands. Talk to me

• 21:50

a little bit about his pathing. Where does he live in the world? What's his backstory? Just

• 21:55

tell me things about him. Yeah, I think you could take this one, Jason.

• 22:00

Oh, yeah. The Cyclops, his name is Tumak. And a long time ago, he is from the land of Sujoma,

• 22:13

and that's where all the Cyclopses are from. He decided it would be a good idea to try to align

• 22:20

himself with the ancients that invaded Berra. And he took some of his followers to follow in

• 22:27

those footsteps and that didn't work out so well for him. He's the last remaining Cyclops of his

• 22:37

people he took to try and join the ancients and the rest of his people exiled him for that and

• 22:44

they didn't want him back. So it's kind of all on his own and has kind of paid for some of those

• 22:49

mistakes of misaligning himself. Okay, so he's got a little bit of a backstory, some pain in there,

• 22:55

maybe some betrayal, and I guess he kind of turned against his fellow citizens of Berra.

• 23:00

Where are you guys at, by the way? I know we have a couple parties that are hanging back at the camp.

• 23:04

Oh, there you guys are. Why don't you come join me over here? I want to talk a little about,

• 23:08

you know, kind of his pathing and I noticed that there are also some like winter spiders

• 23:13

over here or something. What is going on over here? Yeah, so there are some giant spiders over

• 23:18

here and one thing that we'd like to demonstrate today is that, you know, not every enemy in Berra

• 23:24

is going to just behave like they're simple, you know, aggro immediately and beeline for you.

• 23:30

The giant spider might not necessarily want to engage these scary looking adventurers,

• 23:36

so he's going to stand off and, you know, hope that you, you know, back away.

• 23:41

And that is so creepy. I love the anim for this. So he's kind of not necessarily aggroing,

• 23:47

but he's just like, don't come any closer. Like, yeah, backing back off. Get away from me.

• 23:54

He is kind of peacocking. I'm set to invulnerable because I want us to be able to kind of walk with

• 23:58

the Cyclops as we see him start to path here. But I... Wild animals just, you know, not every single

• 24:05

wild animal is going to immediately beeline for you. And so that's the kind of behavior we want

• 24:08

to capture. Some more ambient behaviors you might not expect to see them. Maybe some creatures

• 24:13

hunting each other, you know, these kinds of, you know, more believable behaviors from wild animals.

• 24:18

That's super cool. Yeah, I like them. That's awesome. It adds an element of immersion, I feel like.

• 24:25

So if you do stay, if you do stay within their range or get too close to them, then, you know,

• 24:30

they might defend themselves. So that's super cool. So talk to me a little bit about the Cyclops

• 24:36

and its path and how you guys kind of determine, you know, where this guy's going to roam and why

• 24:41

it's an important aspect that the boss is kind of roaming through the woods, you know, or through the

• 24:46

world. Yeah, so we work with the world team to decide what that path is going to be. And we want

• 24:54

to make sure that there's something of interest, you know, no matter where you go.

• 25:00

I just hope you're vulnerable just in case. I'm sorry. Go ahead. You're good.

• 25:05

Yeah, no matter where you look, no matter what path you go down, that there's always a chance

• 25:09

you're going to see something you didn't expect or you didn't see before. So...

• 25:13

Oh, I love this guy. He's so massive. And I like how he kind of walks through

• 25:20

the trees, triggering their destruction.

• 25:26

That's so cool that he interacts with the environment like that.

• 25:30

Yeah, definitely going to help you to listen. You can just listen in the woods. And if he's

• 25:35

patrolling around, you're going to hear him. Oh, my gosh, this guy's huge. Now, oh, sorry,

• 25:41

my bad. I thought for a second there he was going to aggro me. But just so you guys are aware in the

• 25:46

stream, I've set myself to invulnerable so that we can kind of just walk near him and see his

• 25:52

massive nature. And Doug, Jason, talk to me a little bit about the inspiration for this guy as

• 25:58

a character model. Like, what were you guys, you know, working with the character teams to kind of...

• 26:04

I noticed he has this massive tree. Talk to me a little bit about that element.

• 26:07

Yeah, I think that was actually a little bit improvised in the design based on what the

• 26:10

character came back with. Jason, if you want to talk about that.

• 26:14

Yeah, when the character artists were making this, they had this cool idea of just having this

• 26:19

giant tree weapon that a cyclops would hold. And we took that idea and just kind of embraced it,

• 26:26

make it part of his character and the embellishments that he wears and using that to kind of inform

• 26:32

what type of encounter that he might be. So we ended up making the tree like a pretty core part

• 26:39

of it and it informs some of his combat abilities and phase transitions even in the fight.

• 26:46

Yeah, I mean, it's a collaborative process. Sometimes it's design asking for something

• 26:49

specific from art and sometimes art is what informs the design.

• 26:52

So, oh, he looks great. Character did a great job with this. Do you know who's

• 26:57

the character artist that worked on this? Was it Keith? I think it might have been Keith.

• 27:01

I think Keith or could have been Gen Z or somebody.

• 27:04

Yeah, they did a great job, by the way. I mean, it looks phenomenal. I know we have a couple of

• 27:09

parties that are going to assist us with this particular fight. Talk to me a little bit about

• 27:15

this encounter as a raid boss. You know, what is the expectation from the actual raid size that

• 27:22

you guys are anticipating for the design? I think that's going to vary depending on

• 27:27

the level of the raid, obviously, and then sort of how geared they are. But we're kind of aiming

• 27:32

for somewhere between 16 and 32, probably depending again on level of equipment.

• 27:40

Very cool. So this guy's a really early kind of world boss and we want to introduce players early

• 27:47

to the idea of these raids. And by the way, as we're kind of chatting about this, those of you

• 27:51

who are going to be helping us defeat this guy with our two parties, if you want to start heading

• 27:57

over to the arena, we are waiting here for you. I will set myself off of the GM and vulnerability

• 28:04

here. Let me see. There we go. Hopefully I don't aggro him. You know, it's important as we were

• 28:13

talking about to kind of introduce players into what raiding really means in Ashes and talk to me

• 28:19

a little bit about kind of the general design approach that you take with creating these types

• 28:24

of encounters. You know, there are obviously phases, there's different elements in those phases

• 28:28

that kind of change dynamically the way you want players to interact. What are we going to see here

• 28:33

a little bit? Yeah, this is definitely like a more introductory raiding experience. So it's not going

• 28:39

to be too complicated, but I think there are some really interesting mechanics regardless. And I

• 28:43

think Jason can talk about those. Yeah, so when I first started designing this guy, you know,

• 28:51

we had Trav and the other guys on the archetype team looking at, you know, forming the classes

• 28:57

that people have been seeing over the live stream. And, you know, really before those kind of come

• 29:03

to fruition and knowing, you know, what the full abilities are and everything, I started the design

• 29:09

with the core training in mind. So the roles are very obvious. Tanks will tank, healers will heal,

• 29:17

and DPS will try to take down the targets that they need to. And starting from there, I try to

• 29:24

keep that in mind, not to overcomplicate it so that they always have that like individual training

• 29:31

idea amongst the different mechanics. Yeah, so we've got some classic staples in here. We've got,

• 29:36

you know, adds that off tanks are going to have to peel off and crowd control that's going to need

• 29:41

to be applied to those adds. We've got priority targets that are going to pop up that need to be

• 29:46

killed. We've got, you know, damage that's going to be unavoidable so that, you know, even with the

• 29:51

expert group that can dodge all of his avoidable attacks, you know, the healers are still going to

• 29:55

have work to do to keep everyone alive. Very cool. Very cool. Love it. You guys will notice,

• 30:01

obviously, on the stream that there have been some updates to a little bit of the nameplates

• 30:08

that Colby and the UI team have implemented, as well as some of the targeting plates as well.

• 30:13

But who do we have as our tank today? That would be me. Doug will be tanking.

• 30:19

Doug will be tanking. All right. All right. Very cool. And then we also have,

• 30:24

I'll be playing as a mage, but I will be trying to capture some good shots of the encounter to

• 30:32

a degree. Trad, what are you playing? I am a mage as well, just like you.

• 30:37

Oh, okay. Very cool. And then how about you, Jason?

• 30:40

I'm playing the cleric. Nice. Well, Doug, I don't want to stand in the way of your greatness. So,

• 30:47

please, by all means, sir, you may commence when ready. All right. Leroy Jenkins.

• 30:53

Leroy, let's do this. Yeah, try not to let me die, Jason. Yeah, no promises.

• 31:00

Oh, he's an angry Tumak. Oh my God. That looks like it hurts.

• 31:07

Yeah. If you don't block that, you get smushed.

• 31:12

Oh, I love his animation. So, talk to me a little bit about some of these attacks.

• 31:16

What do you got going on here, Jason and Doug? So, yeah, his first phase here, he has a lot of

• 31:26

physical attacks, but he also employs a lot of attacks using his tree like we see there

• 31:30

with the roots hitting us. And right now, you can see he's pulling some fungus out of the tree and

• 31:38

using that to heal himself. He has a tank spike attack where he smashes the tree into the tank

• 31:45

that Doug was blocking earlier and generally does a lot of AOE splash damage that other melee will

• 31:54

want to avoid not standing together. Yeah, he's not a particularly complex raid boss, but he's

• 32:01

a great example of what we want to do with large creatures and ashes. Having them interact with the

• 32:06

environment, having that camera shake, those knockdowns that make it feel like he is here

• 32:13

and he is crushing you.

• 32:14

Oh, he looks, oh my God, he keeps just charging there. I'm just barely missing him. Now, talk to

• 32:23

me a little bit about kind of the raid boss designs. Like, you guys are working with multiple

• 32:29

stages. I noticed that right now he's just kind of, you know, roaming around. He has different

• 32:34

targets on his hate list. He's got a lot of different attacks. He's got a lot of different

• 32:40

abilities and he's just kind of, you know, roaming around. He has different targets on his hate

• 32:45

list. Tell me like, what's your general philosophy? How did you guys approach this?

• 32:51

Yeah, so I think Jason ended this a little bit earlier, but we designed this boss pretty early

• 32:57

on when a lot of the classes were still their sort of nascent form. So, we really just wanted

• 33:01

to focus on the whole, the Trinity, you know, making sure that everyone has a purpose in this

• 33:06

who's focused on CC, whether you're a tank, a healer, a DPS, you know, giving those classic

• 33:11

mechanics to give everybody a job in the raid. Like right now, for instance, he's put this tree

• 33:16

down and there are going to be these healing caps that appear and those are going to be a priority

• 33:21

objective for DPS to take down before they grow to full size because if they do, he's going to go

• 33:26

over, he's going to stomp them and he's going to get healed for a huge percentage of his health.

• 33:29

Wow. So we got to take this tree out because he's just going to keep healing.

• 33:39

Yeah. And you definitely got to switch over to those healing caps when they appear.

• 33:47

That's super cool. So he heals off of the mushrooms as well?

• 33:52

Yeah. And as a player, if you destroy them or even if he stomps on them, if you happen to be

• 33:56

nearby when they blow up, you can get that heal as well. So if you're taking some damage from

• 34:01

the thorns from the tree or you got hit by one of his large, you know, stomp attacks,

• 34:06

you know, you might have a chance to get healed up if you run over to those mushrooms before they

• 34:09

blow up. Okay. We almost have this tree down. Come on guys, focus it down. Focus major DPS on the tree.

• 34:16

Let's try to kill this thing. It's almost done. Get it, get it before he picks it up. Yes.

• 34:23

Everything, release it all. Oh, well done. Oh, oh my God. Why is he so mad?

• 34:34

He does not like when you break his weapon. What the heck? I mean, who would?

• 34:41

Jason, where'd you get the idea for that, for the kind of tree totem?

• 34:45

A lot of that came from the original design that we got from character art in that we really

• 34:52

enjoyed the way that it's energized with his looks. We wanted to employ the use of the tree

• 34:58

as like a core part of his encounter. We ended up using it as like a magical, like a magical tree

• 35:07

where he gets a lot of his abilities. But without that, he seems to get really mad and his more

• 35:11

primal cyclops giant nature comes back as we see here.

• 35:18

Oh, that's cool. So talk to me about those kinds of slams that he's doing. And also, I noticed like

• 35:24

as he's running around, the trees are falling, the stone obelisks are kind of getting destroyed.

• 35:30

Is there intent for these kind of environmental hazards to exist as well as part of the raid

• 35:37

design? Yeah, absolutely. For our large creatures, you know, cyclopses, dragons, things like that,

• 35:42

we want to make sure that the world feels dynamic and it's reacting to their big size. You know, if a

• 35:48

huge, you know, 20 meter tall beast is walking through the woods and not knocking down a single

• 35:54

tree, that just doesn't feel believable. So we want to make sure that, you know, you're going to

• 35:59

hear that and that's going to be a way you can know in the distance there's something that you

• 36:03

want to go and investigate. That is super cool. I died, but I'm on my way back.

• 36:15

Those slams hurt really bad. Yeah, one of the aspects of the phases in this fight is actually

• 36:22

that he has those healing abilities when he has his totem tree, his nature magic, but and he is

• 36:29

more primal when he's in this phase. As a result, you can take him down a little quicker when he's

• 36:33

enraged, but it's also going to be a lot more incoming damage for your healers to work through.

• 36:37

So depending on your raid composition, your, you know, equipment level, you might want to

• 36:43

sustain longer in that earlier phase, even if it takes a while through all that healing,

• 36:48

because if you push him too early, you might just wipe.

• 36:51

I love it, guys. Here it goes again. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 37:00

I was getting crushed. It's right under his fists.

• 37:05

Oh, this poor guy. Look at him. His little eye. Wow. That was very cool.

• 37:16

Well done, guys. That was awesome. Does he have any loot? Can we loot him? I wonder.

• 37:24

Sword of the Briarholm, a longbow, a shortbow, and a mace. Ooh, very nice. Well, that was a lot

• 37:33

of fun. Very well done. I thought that that was very cool. Guys, as you guys are watching this,

• 37:38

remember, obviously, this is one of the earliest ones in the game. I'm not going to be doing any

• 37:41

more of this. But give us your feedback. What are the raid bosses you enjoyed in other games that

• 37:47

you've played? What about the mechanics? What about the phases that you thought were cool? What

• 37:52

did you enjoy seeing here today? And what would you like to see in the future?

• 37:57

Well, I think the first thing I'd like to do is to thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this

• 38:02

video. If you did, please hit that like button. And if you haven't already, please hit that subscribe

• 38:06

button. And I'll see you guys next time. Bye.

• 38:47

Welcome back. We hope that you all enjoyed it. It seemed like you did. I wanted to clarify

• 38:52

a few things because I know that there were some comments in regards to a couple things.

• 38:56

And then there were quite a few questions. So Stephen will answer some of those as well.

• 39:00

But for clarifications, obviously, we recorded this in 4K. We will be uploading it in 4K on YouTube.

• 39:05

I know there were some comments regarding graphics. You saw that this time we showed

• 39:11

three different perspectives of different folks. So we kind of had to figure out a different

• 39:15

recording system in order to make sure everybody's quality was the same level

• 39:21

because they're different PCs. So just keep that in mind. But we will upload that after this stream.

• 39:28

In regards to the node GM comments, I meant, no, we didn't use commands during the Cyclops fight,

• 39:34

not necessarily before that. Because as soon as I saw that, Stephen, you used the thing to walk

• 39:38

next to him and went, crap. I didn't want him to aggro me. So I wanted to get a perspective.

• 39:44

He turned that off because obviously he wanted, he had to be able to fight. And you saw that,

• 39:49

you know, Stephen died a couple times there. Yeah. And I was looking at the UI.

• 39:52

I might have been the only person that died. But just to be clear, remember that we are still

• 39:59

in our journey to alpha two. And as a result of that journey, the phase of development that we

• 40:05

are currently in with the project doesn't really emphasize polish or performance or optimization.

• 40:12

So you're going to see some, oh, I have my pen because I was taking notes from chat.

• 40:17

You're going to see some, you're going to see some room for improvement there, right?

• 40:23

Also, I'm running this, you know, on a 4k monitor and 4k stream and I'm streaming at the same time,

• 40:27

or excuse me, recording at the same time. So, you know, some of the FPS is going to get improved.

• 40:32

It'll be, it'll be, it'll be much better, but yeah, let's get to some of the questions that

• 40:38

you guys had in chat about the boss. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I know we had mentioned that

• 40:44

we were talking about whether Keith had designed or designed the model and Keith did design the

• 40:49

model. So just wanted to clarify in that front. But the first question we have here is Tumac

• 40:54

didn't leave footprints behind like our player characters did. Will big creatures like that or

• 40:59

any creatures leave behind footprints? Yeah. So general overpopulation mobs will not leave

• 41:07

footprints. However, the larger monsters like this and raid bosses and dungeon bosses, they will have

• 41:15

footprints. They were just not enabled for him in this showcase yet. And then what are the respawn

• 41:21

rates on world bosses? That's a very generic question. Yeah, it depends. It depends on the

• 41:28

world boss. You know, we want to, the general philosophy is that respawns will be variable.

• 41:34

We don't want to have set specific times in which respawns will occur so that they can be kind of

• 41:40

camped and farmed, but there'll be variable location respawns as well as variable time

• 41:45

respawns. And then that's kind of, you know, provides opportunities for different parties to

• 41:51

engage at different times and locations. Cool. And then I'm also playing this in the background,

• 41:58

so you guys are getting to see it a little bit more while we talk. Next one here is,

• 42:06

will Tumac destroying trees affect the growth and replenishment of trees in the world? And also,

• 42:11

if animals hunt one another, will that affect respawn rates of those animals? Astute observation,

• 42:17

whoever asked that question. Yes, the answer is yes. There are land management systems that we've

• 42:24

talked about in the past, and there is certain interactions that can occur that can affect those

• 42:31

systems. So yes, if knocking down trees too long is not going to be a good thing for the area.

• 42:37

Yeah, so you probably want to, as much as he was just going for a stroll, because I saw someone in

• 42:41

chat, I was laughing, I told Stephen, I was like, I love this comment. Someone in chat was like,

• 42:46

of course he's mad and raging. He was just going for a walk, a little stroll, and you guys are

• 42:51

killing him. You're monsters. Hey, this guy is responsible for some pretty horrific things. So

• 42:58

he's not just an innocent cyclops out for a stroll, let's be clear. He's siding with the baddies. Yeah.

• 43:05

And the next one here is, will ground shake for large bosses be something that we'll see in the

• 43:12

future? Can you turn off the screen shake? Yeah, you know, there is something to be had there about

• 43:19

those types of screen shake effects. We want them to be present when we're emphasizing certain

• 43:25

things, but we don't want them to be a nuisance or annoying or too plentiful. And having screen shake

• 43:31

apply to every step would probably be too abundant. Will players have control over those

• 43:38

on-screen type effects? Yeah, I think so. I think that's something we want to provision as a

• 43:43

customizable option for players to be able to turn off because it can be somewhat nauseating for

• 43:47

certain groups of people and a distraction from what's happening in the world. And then, will world

• 43:56

bosses become different or higher level as a node levels? How will these world bosses

• 44:00

scale when it comes to player levels? Is it based on players or the zone?

• 44:06

Players or the zone? So the question was, sorry, I missed the first part. Yeah. Will world bosses

• 44:12

become different or higher level as nodes level? Oh, I see. Yes. Okay. So world bosses are pretty

• 44:22

defined in their challenge rating. And we don't have an approach that is scaling for content,

• 44:31

right? We feel that that kind of cheapens the content when you apply a scaling mechanic so that

• 44:37

this content is constantly relevant. There are ways that the world responds and changes to the

• 44:45

nodes development. Those are prescribed. Those are curated. Those are meaningful and we want them to

• 44:52

be experienced by the players, but not all content is going to be scalable like we've seen in some

• 44:57

modern MMOs. And then the other part of that, yeah, I guess was, will world bosses scale when

• 45:03

it comes to player levels? And is it based on players or the zone itself leveling?

• 45:10

They will not scale based on player level. No. So this is a level 30 boss and he will be relevant

• 45:17

for a nine level spread up or down from that level 30 position. Okay. And then people are wondering,

• 45:23

will bosses or the Cyclops actually get voice lines or things of that sort?

• 45:30

Yeah, bosses, certain bosses will have audio cues that might be in the form of language

• 45:37

and might be in the form of indistinguishable sounds. But yes, bosses and some even creatures

• 45:44

will have audio cues to use. And then I do see some folks asking in chat regarding about,

• 45:52

you know, if this is an open world boss, then that means other players could attack me and my and

• 45:59

my homies and also attack the monster that I'm attacking and how we plan to do that.

• 46:05

Attacking and how we plan to address that situation in regards to maybe large guilds coming in and,

• 46:12

you know, murdering people and stealing their boss. Yeah, absolutely. So we've talked about

• 46:16

this in the past. Content in Ashes of Creation is divided into open world content and instanced

• 46:22

content. The ratio of content division there is about 80, 20, 80 being open world, 20 being instance.

• 46:29

That remains true. When we talk about the ability for competition to exist around limited resources

• 46:36

or scarcity, world bosses fall into that category of scarcity and or limited resources. They are

• 46:43

essentially a resource that you can defeat in order to acquire things you need for your character

• 46:49

progression. And as a result of that, it is healthy to encounter potential friction and or

• 46:55

competition with other groups of players who are interested in acquiring that scarce resource.

• 47:00

And we don't want to address that situation. That is the element of the game design that is risk

• 47:07

versus reward. You're taking the risk and encountering this open world content and your

• 47:14

reward for successfully doing so are the resources you can acquire by by that effort. Now there are

• 47:20

mechanisms, there are tools, there are systems that allow for you to establish reputations with

• 47:29

these other groups of players to pursue them outside of this encounter to hinder them in such

• 47:34

a way where they might think twice whether or not they want to engage with your group. There are

• 47:40

avenues that can be taken both political as well as systemic where players can engage with those

• 47:46

factions, and it's important to note that Ashes of Creation is a non faction based game. What that

• 47:53

means is you're not told who your enemy and your friend is. You are not restricted with the players

• 47:58

that you can participate in content with. Instead, that choice is left to you, the players, and that

• 48:06

is an element of the sandbox environment that we're trying to create with Ashes of Creation.

• 48:10

All right, and then the next question here is less about the Cyclops boss and people

• 48:16

were noticing that folks were carrying around these blue or be type of things and they were

• 48:21

wondering what those are. Oh, I believe a good call. I think that's the first time we've actually

• 48:27

shown those. Yeah, so those are sigils. I'm sorry, not sigils. My mind is totally blanking right now.

• 48:38

Those are those are essentially acumen instruments that you can use to enhance your your spell

• 48:44

casting. They replace a shield offhand item that players can somebody in slack. If you can remember

• 48:50

the name of those things, shoot it over to me real quick on a DM. But yeah, those are those are

• 48:56

essentially offhand items that players can use in order to enhance their casting ability and or

• 49:00

healing and whatnot. They are called focuses. Thank you. Yeah, spell focus. Thank you.

• 49:05

And that is it. We're going to have many, many by the way. OK, real quick. The spell focuses can

• 49:13

take many different forms. You saw an orb there. The spell focus could be a book. It could be a

• 49:17

shrunken head. It could be, you know, something kind of really interesting, but it's a way for

• 49:24

non shield users or non sigil users to incorporate an element into their offhand if they want to be

• 49:31

a one handed weapon user. And of course, we could be here all day if we answered questions forever,

• 49:39

but we do have some other things to show you all, and we do have some other questions to get to from

• 49:43

the forums. But as always, we would love your feedback. We will have a combat, a Cyclops combat

• 49:50

preview, a slash livestream feedback thread that's going to be over on our forums. Please definitely

• 49:55

go check it out and give us some thoughts. As Stephen said, this helps us ensure that, you know,

• 50:00

we're moving forward in the right direction. So please, please, please give us some of your

• 50:06

thoughts. And I know sometimes it can be hard because you're like just watching something

• 50:09

versus experiencing it. But when you get into Alpha 2, you'll be able to experience it and give

• 50:14

us that side of the feedback as well. So we'll get both ends of it, but at least we can address

• 50:20

some of your concerns just from visually seeing it as well. And with that, unless you have anything

• 50:25

else, Stephen, I'm going to head on over to our character goodies. No, I don't think so.

• 50:30

Hard. Yeah. All right. Moving on. As you've maybe noticed, we've been doing some profession

Art Update

• 50:40

goodness. You've been seeing some trees and lumberjacking and you know, we're working towards

• 50:45

some good old fishing. There are a lot of fish that have been being created. Some of them are

• 50:51

very strange looking, as I'm sure you all will see here. But Chris, Jan, Ginsey and Priscilla and

• 50:59

Keith have been making a ton of them. So the seas of Vera will be plenty. You will definitely be

• 51:07

getting your fill of good fishies to cook and fish up and trade. I'm excited for y'all to see those.

• 51:15

They're gorgeous. I love the little fish. They're so good. Some of them are a little horrifying.

• 51:24

As rightfully they should be.

• 51:29

A few of them I feel like the chat is going to have thoughts about. Like the land of the fish.

• 51:35

They say that the night is dark and full of terror, but what they really forget is that the

• 51:45

seas are deep. Yeah. Have you ever gone scuba diving or anything like that?

• 51:51

I have. I have. One time we had a guild. We had a guild. So my guild, I always used to have these

• 51:59

like trips that we would take some of our officers and some guild members and stuff. And one year we

• 52:04

went to Hawaii and there was like 13 of us and none of us had scuba dived before except for one

• 52:08

person I think at the party. And I chartered this boat to take us out to go scuba diving. And they're

• 52:12

like, well, you have to go through this process, the certification thing. I was like, just take

• 52:18

us out somewhere that's cool and we'll just kind of jump in the water and do our thing.

• 52:22

And so one of our friends who is a big boy, he got into his swimsuit and he gets in with this

• 52:28

snorkel and they're teaching him the little device, the buoyancy thing that takes you up

• 52:33

or down, you press the button and they're teaching him the hand signals are like,

• 52:36

this is swimmers. Okay. This is like not okay. Or, you know, whatever, right. And we're underwater

• 52:42

and he's like floating up here. He can't get his mask thing on very well. And he's pressing the

• 52:47

button because he's kind of sinking. And as he's slowly sinking under the water, he's pressing the

• 52:51

wrong button and he doesn't know. Yeah. He's pressing the button to make it go up.

• 52:55

Yeah. No, he's pressing the button to make him go down, but he thought he was pressing the button,

• 52:58

make him go up. And so his face is just falling like under the water. He doesn't have his mask on.

• 53:04

And in his last words of moment, he just says, I'm going to need some help here. But a little

• 53:09

bit, he goes under the water and my ear was bleeding. And like John wanted to swim to shore.

• 53:15

We're like a mile and a half out. It was just a terrible, this sounds like a nightmare. I had a

• 53:21

lovely time, uh, scuba diving complete opposite of that. But I think one of the things that is,

• 53:26

cause you talk about, you were saying how like it's dark and full of tears, but I think that

• 53:31

the beauty of being underwater is it's like so quiet, but there's like a lot of life going on

• 53:38

around you, which I think is really exciting. Some of them which want to eat you.

• 53:42

Yeah. There were some sharks, like tiger sharks that swam by us, but the people that we were,

• 53:48

we were with that were taking us were, they were like, they're not interested in you. They have

• 53:53

enough food here. So as long as you're not, I have a fear of like wide open spaces and anytime I

• 53:59

can't see what's beneath me and it's just like darkness that scares me. And so being in the water,

• 54:07

um, out in the middle of the ocean where I don't have a corner to back against and just like, see

• 54:11

where my threat lives. Like, I just feel like at any moment, some giant shark is just going to

• 54:16

come out of the depths of darkness and eat me or something. A crack and just comes up and takes

• 54:20

you. No, totally. Like my mind, just the amount of fantasy games and movies that I've watched,

• 54:25

like I just go to a dark place immediately and thinking about some crack and like monsters.

• 54:30

See, I have the opposite. I think for me in the water, I think because I can swim and move and

• 54:35

maneuver, I'm okay. It's heights for me because I can, I can see what's down there and I can see how

• 54:41

far away it is to me. And it horrifies me that I might fall and to my death. I'm with you on the

• 54:46

heights to. Yeah, sure. All right. Moving on from that. Now that we're all horrified by underwater

• 54:53

creatures and heights, we also have piglets. You've been seeing sheep, cows, piglets. We're,

• 54:59

you know, getting getting the farm in and profession stuff going, which is really exciting.

• 55:03

I'm I'm super excited for free holds and farms. I love farming and games. It's so fun.

• 55:09

Next up, we've got a Tidebreaker Riverlands variant. I love their beards. They're so cute.

• 55:16

They're so good. They're so cute. They look like just grumpy otters and I'm into it.

• 55:25

The next one here is our Hydra Swans. And then we also have like a variant of it. So for those of

• 55:30

you who have the regular Hydra Swan, which, you know, thank you for supporting us. We also have

• 55:36

the variant here. And Steven, I saw that you gave a story behind how this thing, how this came to be.

• 55:43

You talked about on Twitter. I don't know if you want to share that with folks who maybe don't use

• 55:47

Twitter. Oh, I just, you know, geese and swan in general are just wretched creatures like they're

• 55:53

beautiful, but they're mean as all hell. And when I was a kid, we used to live on a lake or live near

• 56:00

a lake and I would go feed these things. And when they had babies, I didn't know that they got

• 56:07

protective and they would fly and attack me as I'm trying to climb away from them and peck me in the

• 56:12

back. And just, I vowed from that day forward that if I ever created an MMO at seven years old, I was

• 56:19

thinking to myself, that I would create this as a creature. No, actually I made it in our Ashes of

• 56:25

Creation original Pathfinder campaign, a Hydra Swan. That was, I just took the template of the

• 56:32

actual Hydra monster and I gave them a bunch of beak attacks. So they were like D6 is minus two

• 56:37

or something. And it's like level two party. And they're like, Oh my God, it's a Hydra Swan. I'm

• 56:40

like, yeah, don't feed it bread. That's really funny. I love that. I might have to pull that on

• 56:48

one of my people in the future. For one of my campaigns, we got this lovely little,

• 56:54

we got this lovely snake boar. I love that they did the apple thing with it.

• 57:03

The animations that our team always comes up with for things is amazing. The little intricacies.

• 57:11

And then we've got the seventh Lancer uniform. Oh, it looks great. Yes. It looks so scary.

• 57:25

I have those backwards. We've got the diadem for our Royal folks out there.

• 57:31

Oh, very short conveyor. Super cool. Got some arcane garbs.

• 57:44

Oh, who made the arcane garbs? The arcane garbs were by Jan. Oh, Jan, those are great.

• 57:54

I have all the names for everybody this time because Stephen always asks me and I'm like,

• 57:59

I don't know. There's a million art pieces. Who did the variant for the

• 58:07

Otter? The Hydra Swan? No, no, the Otter. Oh, that's ginsy. That's ginsy work right there.

• 58:12

Love it. This is the Gloomroot. We've got the Jade Sigil. Comment of fruition.

• 58:22

Oh, that looks great. The Mercenary one looks really great. The Jade Sigil one was Jan as well.

• 58:29

Jan, great job. And same with the Merc set here. Oh, wow. Very nice. And then we've got

• 58:35

another plate set. Jan's just killing it. Get some Jan. And then we've got the Trowler's,

• 58:46

the part of the Trowler's outfit. I believe I have an MP. Yes. Speaking of fishing.

• 58:55

Yes. This set was really fun to design. Can you use the hat as the thing you carry,

• 59:01

but you just flip it over and put all the fish in it and hold it up?

• 59:04

I was thinking you could either put fish in it or you could float in it was my thought when I

• 59:08

was designing it because sometimes they would use these to get fish in. Yeah. Or just scoop the fish

• 59:14

up. Oh, yeah. That's a good call. It's a good call. Well, you put the fish on the net on the outside.

• 59:21

Oh, okay. And then you. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. And then we have the Iceheart corsage

• 59:29

being worked on. Still work in progress. Very nice. And I believe that is it from the art

• 59:37

department. By it. I mean, like they've got a lot of stuff. But that is what we'll be showing today.

• 59:44

Thank you. Amazing. Killing it as per usual. Moving on to our forum questions. I will also

• 59:51

just keep the video of a Cyclops fight in the background. So you can have something to look at

• 59:57

whilst I ask the questions. First question is from Nick. Oh, wait, actually, let's do

• 1:00:02

studio updates. First. Oh, studio. Yeah, let's talk with you. And then I'll Yeah.

• 1:00:07

Next question. What's been our studio updates for this month? Well, I think our general studio

Studio Update

• 1:00:15

has been that we're continuing to hire. We hired a lot within like even the last month.

• 1:00:21

I know. Yeah, I think we've hired 20 like seven people this year so far. Yeah. Great,

• 1:00:30

great talent added to the team. Amazing individuals. Thank you guys for your help out

• 1:00:35

there and spreading the word for the project and you know, supporting us because that obviously

• 1:00:42

helps talent get attracted to to working on this this awesome game. We have so many people where

• 1:00:49

we have to expand for we're getting another correct. Another floor incoming another 30 some

• 1:00:56

odd thousand square feet. It'll be nice. We got some construction that'll be starting here in the

• 1:01:02

next month or so. That's going to be an interesting juggling act. But yeah, I don't know. Help me.

• 1:01:11

Is there anything that I'm missing in the month of studio updates? I think I don't know. It's

• 1:01:16

just been heads down. Yeah, it's just been hiring a lot. It's been everybody working really hard

• 1:01:23

towards our milestones. I know we talk about these and you guys don't have context of like

• 1:01:27

the timelines for them. But we have sprints and then we have a certain amount of sprints within

• 1:01:34

a milestone. And so like those are these are ways for us to track in order to see how far we're

• 1:01:38

coming along and we have like a big milestone coming up end of July. Yes, or end of June, early

• 1:01:45

July. So, you know, people are just powering through this last sprint working really hard and

• 1:01:53

getting prepared for it. So, you know, we're working hard to make sure that you guys get Alpha

• 1:01:58

two, that's obviously our next milestone that's going to be external for you guys to be able to

• 1:02:02

play test and experience and you know, there will be some pre test before Alpha two that

• 1:02:07

PI and you know, other folks will be able to enjoy and test out with us, probably more NDA and then

• 1:02:15

we'll get into more of the testing that's expansive that everyone gets to see and check out.

• 1:02:22

I noticed someone said something about a mug and

• 1:02:27

the mug looks so small back there when Steven put it down. I was like, it looks so tiny. And then he

• 1:02:31

picks it up and it's like a baby mug. Yeah, I'm really excited for merch. I know that people have

• 1:02:39

been asking about it. I think it's a balancing act of some folks want it. Some folks are like,

• 1:02:43

why are you selling merch? But we're working towards it homies. Yes, we are working towards

• 1:02:49

that. And in addition, I will give a brief kind of statement that in the near future over the coming

• 1:03:00

I would say few months, we will be discontinuing our pre-order packages. We'll be making that

• 1:03:12

announcement when it happens. But the number of participants that we have for Alpha two as it

• 1:03:17

stands currently is significant. And until we are certain that we want to host additional players,

• 1:03:24

at some point in the next three months, I would say probably we will be discontinuing those packages

• 1:03:30

and we'll have updates if we want to offer different packages at some point in the future

• 1:03:34

after the Alpha two testings succeed. So look forward to that announcement. We'll give you

• 1:03:40

ample time ahead of time so that if there are individuals who still want to participate,

• 1:03:44

they'll have an opportunity to do so. But I did want to give that heads up. Right. And as Stephen

• 1:03:50

said, we will give heads up. We'll make it a news post about those things. We'll make you guys clear.

• 1:03:55

We always do an FAQ for those types of things as well usually. So we try to answer the questions

• 1:03:59

in advance or if questions come up, we update our FAQ to include that. So we will give more

• 1:04:04

information as those things come online and come to fruition. But we have been hearing your feedback.

• 1:04:09

There are things that Stephen and I and Brian Langford, who you've seen on the channel before,

• 1:04:15

and Jacob, who's our lead producer. I think I caught Margaret off guard. We didn't intend to make that announcement.

• 1:04:21

You didn't tell me that. I wanted to give enough lead time, you know, just saying.

• 1:04:26

I think preemptively giving people expectations. Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's definitely something that we're

• 1:04:30

working towards. And obviously, I've been bringing this to Stephen's attention for a long time of

• 1:04:35

folks' feedback in regards to it. But there are reasons why we do have the cosmetic packs.

• 1:04:40

And they have been assisting us in many ways. So thank you all so much for helping us. And it's also pushing forward a lot of the content.

• 1:04:46

So we'll still probably have some semblance of cosmetics, but maybe they'll be less exclusive and more rotational, things like that.

• 1:04:53

So if you do have thoughts, feel free to, you know, let us know. We're always interested in hearing them.

• 1:04:58

We've definitely been reading your feedback. We've heard it. And we're going to be making some adjustments.

• 1:05:04

Yes. All right. Yes. This is the thing we've been discussing. I was not prepared for that. I know. I'm so sorry.

• 1:05:10

I mean, we know the direction. We know what we're going to do. So I just thought I'd give the heads up.

• 1:05:14

Yeah. Because I know people like to watch and see what the cosmetics are before they choose to whether or not they want to actually purchase a package.

• 1:05:20

Yeah. I wanted to let them know, like, we're months away from that being discontinued.

• 1:05:24

So if you are interested in something, you know, watch for the things. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:05:29

For sure. For sure. And then next up, we do have our Q&A, so we'll get to that.

• 1:05:35

As I mentioned before, I'll have the Cyclops fight in the background. So our first question here is from Nick about party dynamics.

Outro and Q&A

• 1:05:42

Can we hit our party mate to wake them up from slumber, perhaps if both of us are flagged?

• 1:05:48

So I guess if someone gets slept.

• 1:05:51

Not your party mate, because you can't flag against your party mate.

• 1:05:55

That is a restriction that's not allowed. However, if you were not at a party, yes, you could attack them to wake them up and break the sleep.

• 1:06:03

In addition, there will also be spells that can be cast to break enchantments and sleep is one of the one of the enchantments that can be broken through the spell cast.

• 1:06:11

So if you have a cleric in your party or bard, they'll have an ability to kind of to remove the negative debuff.

• 1:06:19

Yeah, and kind of going back to the previous discussion we had in the studio update regarding cosmetic packs.

• 1:06:29

If you have a Kickstarter pack, you can still upgrade that. So that'll still be upgradable.

• 1:06:35

And as we've said in the past, before we decide to discontinue the upgrade paths for the Kickstarters, we will give ample notice as well for that.

• 1:06:43

Yes, and then volts wants to know about PVP quests. Will there be quests that players can put that put players against each other slash encourage PVP, for example, an organization's quest for the Traders Guild contradicted by a Thieves Guild quest?

• 1:07:02

Yeah, absolutely. There are quests that interact with PVP.

• 1:07:05

PVP is not a secondary component of the game. PVP is an equitable component of the game.

• 1:07:13

Remember, we are a PVX game, which means that we emphasize both PVP quest lines and story modes and content as well as PVP.

• 1:07:24

It is an intended design theory for Ashes of Creation that the world is not filled with just your friends.

• 1:07:30

The world is also filled with adversaries. And because of that, we will provide opportunities to encourage social friction.

• 1:07:36

And that may be in the form of these PVP oriented quest lines.

• 1:07:41

All right. And then our next one is about looting from Azuray.

• 1:07:45

Will it be possible to kick a player from a party or raid just before killing a boss or to deny them from their share of the loot?

• 1:07:53

Will it be possible to, I'm sorry, say that last part.

• 1:07:55

Will it be possible to kick a player from your raid, like right before you do loot so that they don't get to be part of the loot?

• 1:08:02

Yes, technically, it would be possible for you to kick a player prior to acquiring loot.

• 1:08:08

However, again, because we are a game that relies on social interactions, there are reputations to be had.

• 1:08:16

And if you acquire a reputation as a raid leader or as a party leader of doing something dirty like that, then it's unlikely you'll be able to garner the support of future party members and or raids to lead efforts against these raid bosses.

• 1:08:32

So keeping that in mind.

• 1:08:34

And Hrothgar wants to know about respawning.

• 1:08:39

Will there be a custom respawn or will there be custom respawn points that can be placed by players in the open world or only checkpoint based respawn points like the nearest graveyard slash city to respawn?

• 1:08:54

Yeah, there will not be custom respawn points that can be placed in the world.

• 1:09:00

And then Gartok wants to know about open world distractions.

• 1:09:03

Since travel times are important, what is there to discover that will distract you from going straight to your initial destination?

• 1:09:11

What makes traveling adventurous in Vera?

• 1:09:15

Well, aside from threat and opportunity, which are probably the two biggest distractions that you can encounter while traveling through Vera, you know, those come in different forms.

• 1:09:27

Threat in the form of monsters and events, opportunities in the forms of resources and POIs.

• 1:09:36

There's also achievements that are based around exploration.

• 1:09:39

There's treasure maps that can be found.

• 1:09:41

There's, you know, there's a lot of different things that kind of intersect with travel.

• 1:09:46

The movement of resources, the storage of those resources in which locations, what are available to be sold and purchased at different locations.

• 1:09:52

They might make a detour for you.

• 1:09:58

You know, all of those things kind of contribute to why I would go somewhere and instead change my direction.

• 1:10:06

And then Kestai wants to know about double jumping.

• 1:10:11

Have you considered implementing double jumping into the game at all?

• 1:10:15

Maybe not with player characters, but possibly with mounts since there is already flying and gliding.

• 1:10:20

Yeah, we have. We've considered double jumping for as essentially as a mountability as well.

• 1:10:29

We've considered double jumping as an option. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:10:33

Like frogs and bunnies.

• 1:10:35

Get a little Smash Bro actions in there too.

• 1:10:38

A little triple jump.

• 1:10:40

Next up, we've got DougBug27, which is just an adorable username.

• 1:10:44

Ranged melee is their topic.

• 1:10:47

After watching the mage yield the great sword, I wondered if the arranger archetype will have melee oriented abilities to allow for more balanced fighting style or will the bow always be bay?

• 1:11:03

So arranger definitely exemplifies range, meaning that the majority of their skill tree will likely be abilities that are based on range.

• 1:11:13

However, that does not preclude them from having options in their skill suite to spec into melee based ability types, right?

• 1:11:22

We're not creating a very singularly focused ranger.

• 1:11:27

They will have the opportunity to comprise a skill rotation set that includes melee options, utilities, mobilities, ranged options as part of the class kit.

• 1:11:40

And then Goled wants to know about AoE dynamics.

• 1:11:44

In many PvP MMOs, AoE spam can quickly become the meta and be difficult to balance with simple damage adjustments.

• 1:11:51

More recent MMOs solve this problem by not having the same layered AoE stack damage at all.

• 1:11:59

What is Intrepid doing to combat AoE spam?

• 1:12:03

We have a few ideas on how we want to approach AoEs.

• 1:12:10

There's a vein of thought that is regarding diminishing returns, maximum number of targets. I'm not a huge fan of that.

• 1:12:17

There is diminishing return as it applies to damage conveyed.

• 1:12:23

There is just the fact that we're a collision based game and there's a limited number of bodies that can be located in a particular choke point or in proximity.

• 1:12:33

There's still things that we're testing as part, especially as part of Alpha 2, that we'll likely be testing and wanting to get player feedback on as it relates to curbing the AoE approach of most raid comps.

• 1:12:48

A lot of different games have done a lot of different things to achieve that. We're going to be testing a lot of these different directions and finding which works best for Ashes.

• 1:12:57

Sunscript wants to know about dual wielding.

• 1:13:01

If the dual wield system is flexible, will there be a reliable way to activate the weapon procs of the offhand weapon?

• 1:13:10

If the dual wield specs are flexible,

• 1:13:14

will there be a reliable way to activate the weapon procs of the offhand weapon?

• 1:13:20

So, dual wielded weapons, I believe, have a designated weapon skill tree that's based on the combination of dual wielded weapons.

• 1:13:37

And so, based on the type of dual wield weapons, will determine the available procs in the weapon skill tree.

• 1:13:46

Will there be a way to reliably ensure that procs take effect? Is that the question?

• 1:13:53

Because no, I would say that you can't reliably create a scenario where the proc takes effect.

• 1:14:01

Now, that's not to say that there aren't certain skills that you can use as part of a rotation that might create a scenario where you're ensured your next weapon attack will trigger a proc.

• 1:14:13

There could be synergies there between the skill rotation and the weapon skill tree.

• 1:14:19

But I would say no, by the very nature of what a proc is, they're not reliable.

• 1:14:24

That's why they proc.

• 1:14:26

That's why they proc. And Phantom MX wants to know about crafting. How close are we to seeing a showcase on crafting?

• 1:14:37

We are pretty close.

• 1:14:41

Yeah.

• 1:14:42

Pretty close.

• 1:14:43

I think you've been seeing kind of some of those things coming.

• 1:14:47

We had it. We had it.

• 1:14:49

We had like what it was like six months ago we did a the gatherables one, but the crafting one is pretty close. So stay tuned.

• 1:14:58

Yeah, we're, we're planning and planning.

• 1:15:01

And with that, that's our last question for today.

• 1:15:04

Oh my goodness.

• 1:15:06

I know it's not.

• 1:15:08

Sometimes we have like two hour long streams.

• 1:15:11

Margaret was like, don't make an hour long video and I was like, wait, what?

• 1:15:16

I'm always like, try to make it like 15 to 20 minutes.

• 1:15:19

Here's your run a show. And then it goes chaos.

• 1:15:25

But you guys enjoy it. You always enjoy watching them.

• 1:15:28

Hopefully you've been enjoying the new format that we've been doing recently and liking that.

• 1:15:33

We always take your feedback. So please send it our way.

• 1:15:36

And we hope that you have enjoyed getting a little sneak peek at one of our boss fights.

• 1:15:42

We want your feedback. So definitely head on over to forums.ashesofcreation.com and send us your feedback.

• 1:15:48

We will also have a boss mechanic dev discussion coming up that will be not specific to Cyclops.

• 1:15:54

So we would love, love to get your thoughts on that.

• 1:15:57

Make sure that you read those prompts.

• 1:15:59

You don't necessarily have to give feedback just on those prompts, but give us feedback on that so that we can report that to the development team.

• 1:16:07

And of course, we want to extend a huge thank you to you all for coming here and watching us live.

• 1:16:12

Or if you're watching us on YouTube, we appreciate you.

• 1:16:15

And of course, to the developers who joined us today, you know, Trad, Jason and Doug, we appreciate you all joining us.

• 1:16:23

And of course, Steven, we know that your time is very, very valuable.

• 1:16:27

So we hope that you all, you know, are staying safe and healthy.

• 1:16:31

And reminder that the VOD will be up on the 4k VOD will be up on our YouTube channel shortly.

• 1:16:38

So stay tuned. And we'll also have the full development update over on our YouTube channel tomorrow.

• 1:16:43

And if you leave a comment on the full development update and you're subscribed and you have it so that we can see that you're subscribed, you may get your comments spotlighted.

• 1:16:52

So, yeah, you could be spotlighted on the next stream.

• 1:16:55

And of course, follow us on all of the social platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever, whatever is your jam.

• 1:17:02

We try to keep you guys up to date and share lots of goodies with you every almost every day.

• 1:17:07

So if you're interested in more ashes and barren goodness in your life, come check it out.

• 1:17:13

And with that, we're going to wrap up for today. We hope that you have a great rest of May.

• 1:17:19

The rest of this day. That's it. We're in June, you guys.

• 1:17:23

It's madness. And we'll see you for our June development update.

• 1:17:29

Bye, everyone. Toodles.

• 00:00

Yeah.

• 00:21

Hello and welcome.

• 00:22

Glorious as a creation

• 00:23

community. We hope that you are

• 00:24

having a wonderful month. Of

• 00:27

course, it's been a long time

• 00:28

since we've had a conversation

• 00:30

with you. Um it has been a wild

• 00:32

month for us. I feel like I say

• 00:34

that every single time, but

• 00:35

it's just like we do say it. We

• 00:37

say it every time. And then we

• 00:38

also say after we say it every

• 00:39

time that we say it every time.

• 00:40

The wild thing to me is that

• 00:43

we're almost halfway through

• 00:44

the year, which is nuts. Um

• 00:47

that actually is great. I'm sure

• 00:49

everyone else is feeling that

• 00:50

way as well. Almost everyone I

• 00:51

talked to you feels that way.

• 00:55

Um, I'm your host, Dr.

• 00:57

Margot Krone, your director of

• 00:59

communications. We hope that you

• 01:01

are excited for today. I know

• 01:03

we've been teasing a little bit

• 01:04

of what's what's to come. But

• 01:07

as always, what we're going to

• 01:08

be covering today is reminders.

• 01:09

We will also be showing off our

• 01:13

Cyclops combat. We also have a

• 01:15

guest star the kitty cat. Oh,

• 01:17

yes, this is George George.

• 01:19

George is literally floating on

• 01:20

a cloud. He's lounging. I know

• 01:24

he's floating on a cloud. He's

• 01:24

like, Oh, she's she's Lucy.

• 01:30

Lucy. They've been over to our

• 01:32

to our house a few times for

• 01:34

the love for the live streams.

• 01:36

She's purring. Yeah. Oh, um,

• 01:38

trying to get her to not stand

• 01:40

in my my monitor way because

• 01:40

she keeps doing that. Um and

• 01:44

then we'll have our art update

• 01:46

and studio update and of course

• 01:48

a little Q and a from our

• 01:48

forums because you all have been

• 01:52

watching. We'll be talking a

• 01:55

little bit about reminders, and

• 01:57

we've got our spotlight today

• 01:59

for our YouTube comment. So if

• 02:01

you would also like to be

• 02:01

spotlighted as a YouTube.

• 02:04

Comment You just need to

• 02:05

subscribe to our YouTube

• 02:07

channel. Make sure that you

• 02:09

have your subs visible so that

• 02:11

we can see that you're a sub

• 02:13

and then leave us a comment on

• 02:15

our development updates. So for

• 02:16

May's development update, we

• 02:17

will be selecting somebody for

• 02:21

our YouTube channel. And then

• 02:23

we'll have our live stream

• 02:25

update. So if you would also

• 02:27

like to be spotlighted as a

• 02:29

YouTube comment. Make sure that

• 02:31

you have your subs visible so

• 02:33

that we can see that you're a

• 02:35

sub and then leave us a comment

• 02:37

on our development updates. So

• 02:39

make sure that you have your

• 02:41

subs visible so that we can

• 02:43

see that you're a sub and then

• 02:45

leave us a comment on our

• 02:47

development updates. So make

• 02:50

sure that you have your subs

• 02:52

visible so that we can see

• 02:54

that you're a sub and then

• 02:56

leave us a comment on our

• 02:58

development updates. So if

• 03:00

you would also like to be

• 03:02

spotlighted as a YouTube

• 03:04

comment. Comment You need to

• 03:06

subscribe to our YouTube channel

• 03:08

to be notified about our

• 03:10

future developments and

• 03:12

content. Comment You need to

• 03:14

subscribe to our YouTube channel

• 03:16

to be notified about our

• 03:20

enjoy doing the things that they tend to stay away from, how long they tend to do those things,

• 03:26

and a lot of companies use just that data to kind of inform direction over design choices.

• 03:33

I'm very much a believer that you need to have correlating data that is essentially feedback

• 03:39

directly from the player base in addition to the logging and metrics that you can find

• 03:47

from player activity to create a navigational array moving forward. Now to your question,

• 03:54

which of those stats will we expose to the player side? I think we have a lot of intention to,

• 04:01

and we've talked about this in the past, to have a lot of these things shown to the players and be

• 04:07

able to for those players to choose to share them or not through their character page on the website

• 04:13

that we've talked about in the past as well. And those will include a lot of what you mentioned

• 04:18

there. I think it's a really cool component that as a player, I get to see how I stack up against

• 04:23

other players and the achievements that I've accomplished in game. And there's ways to make

• 04:30

that a bit more time focused to where you're not just getting the gross data, but you're also

• 04:36

getting like seasonal, essentially seasonal data or partition via time. I think that's something

• 04:41

that's super cool and it helps provide motivation for players to achieve things in game. So yes,

• 04:47

we will be embracing those types of leaderboards and stats exposed to the players for Ashes.

• 04:54

Yes, it will be a lot of fun. We have many dreams that we want to do with game to web and game to

• 05:01

mobile in regards to showing stats and making things shareable for you. We know how social

• 05:07

media works, how sharing content with friends works. But you know, those things will come in

• 05:12

due time and just a fair warning on that front. And of course, if you have things that you'd like

• 05:17

to see, I think we did do a dev discussion in the past regarding kind of like what features you'd

• 05:22

like to see in a mobile app or things like that. Those things would be super helpful. So if you

• 05:27

want to head back over there and give us some comments, we would appreciate it. And of course,

• 05:31

we have been doing dev discussions. Our latest one was on the mage. So if you have not gotten a

• 05:37

chance to toss your feedback in there, I know we already started compiling all of that feedback,

• 05:43

but you're welcome to still pop in there. Even if the discussions have already been wrapped up,

• 05:47

we don't want you to stop the conversation. Please continue.

• 05:49

And by the way, I just I just do want to comment real quick. Yeah. For those of you who have been

• 05:57

participating in that discussion along the mage showcase from last month, really exemplary job.

• 06:05

I mean, that discussion was well done. I was reading through the responses. It was well

• 06:12

articulated from very from a lot of you around the things you enjoyed, the things you'd like to see

• 06:17

improvements on examples from other games that you enjoyed. Like that thread was a treasure trove

• 06:23

of player feedback. And I just want to say you guys, those of you out there who participated in

• 06:28

that discussion, kudos to you. Thank you very much. It is a very instrumental tool that the

• 06:32

community team has an opportunity to to concisely bring together and provide the developers.

• 06:38

It is very helpful. And those of you who didn't participate in those discussions, totally fair,

• 06:44

but I would encourage you in the future to get engaged because there's nothing more valuable

• 06:49

than hearing from you guys what you enjoy and what you'd like to see done differently. And I

• 06:54

would I would say today's demonstration is not going to be any different. So as you guys kind of

• 06:59

watch what we show you today, it's going to be very helpful for you to jump back in on the forums

• 07:04

and across social media and give us your thoughts, because that's why we are doing this transparent

• 07:10

development process is to collect that feedback. Yeah. And we've also been doing an office hours.

• 07:16

We recently started advertising that on our social medias as well. And, you know, Vackner and Roshan

• 07:23

have been doing a great job with that pilot program. So if it's something that you're

• 07:27

interested in where you can actually like come in and talk and answer some of the questions as well,

• 07:32

instead of just posting on the forums, you have that avenue. We know not everybody wants to type

• 07:37

up a forum post. So if you'd rather talk and speak, that's another opportunity for you as well. Yeah.

• 07:42

And one of the last thing and, you know, forgive me if I stand a little bit on a soapbox, but I,

• 07:48

you know, as a player of MMOs as well as we all are here at Intrepid, I get excited about

• 07:54

announced projects and upcoming games that are coming out. And, you know, sometimes through

• 08:02

normal development, there is not a level of transparency or insight into the moment to moment

• 08:11

gameplay that's being expected on behalf of the players side. And I think that that's a really

• 08:17

missed opportunity. And I would speak to the executives out there to other developers who have

• 08:25

a voice in the projects that they're participating in to try to champion this thought of engaging with

• 08:32

your community earlier on. And the reason for that is because it's very difficult to pivot away from

• 08:39

a direction when that direction has been manifest, has been created, is ready to ship. And it's,

• 08:47

I know there's downsides to it and there's a level of investment that's required. But if something

• 08:54

gives you an opportunity to early on understand what the customer wants, that is a golden holy

• 09:02

grail available to you. And it is doing nothing but servicing the genre. And the people, the beloved

• 09:12

gamers who spend their free time, their hard earned free time enjoying these games, for them not to

• 09:20

be surprised when the game comes out. Nobody wants to be surprised by what they're looking forward

• 09:26

to. And a lot of time the hopium that we have around something we haven't seen before or what

• 09:33

we're expecting is it lives up to our highest mountain peak of hope in our minds. And then when

• 09:41

we see that thing, sometimes it's a bit deflated. But if you provide insight during development so

• 09:49

that players have an understanding of what to expect when that game launches, then you mitigate

• 09:56

a significant portion of the risk that's entailed in the creation of these massive projects because

• 10:02

you can identify where your approach resonates with a consumer base. And again, I know it's a

• 10:11

soapbox, but I just feel recently, I had hopes as well and I feel like it's a good point to make.

• 10:19

The hopium, I like that. Yeah, I mean, and this is one of the things that I have loved about

• 10:29

working at Intrepid and working for you and you specifically, Steven, is that I've worked at a lot

• 10:34

of companies where community is not respected. And what a community team does and the feedback

• 10:41

that they can relay and the social media team, what their feedback can provide to the development

• 10:44

team. Developers don't take that. I mean, you don't have to take every like you don't to take

• 10:49

it word for word, like just because people think something is overpowered doesn't mean you have to

• 10:52

take action and make it more make it underpowered. Right. It's kind of thinking about that feedback

• 10:57

and reflecting on it and making better decisions about what you're doing moving forward. Not

• 11:02

necessarily saying you have to do exactly what the players want. It's analyzing and assessing that

• 11:07

feedback. Yeah. And, you know, I see in chat some people saying, oh, shots fired. You know, they're

• 11:12

mentioning some of the other games. I'm it is not in any way, shape or form my intent to shoot shots.

• 11:19

If that's what the proper phrase is. My my desire is to help the genre and the executives that make

• 11:27

this these decisions, because, you know, a lot of times we think, oh, it's the developers. Well,

• 11:32

it's not really the developers. It's the executives or the executives that kind of make

• 11:38

these decisions. And for, you know, they're constrained. They have to share responsibilities

• 11:42

to shareholders. They have projects and they need to keep track of like the proprietary information

• 11:47

and designs and the KPIs, all those things understandable. But if one thing can be

• 11:53

demonstrated through Ashes of Creation's development process, it's that we have garnered

• 12:00

a large community of interested and resonated gamers who want to play this game. And we have a

• 12:07

very clear picture of where that interest lies. We know who who doesn't want to play it. We know the

• 12:13

negative feedback we receive. We try to act on that negative feedback, right? But without the

• 12:19

lines of communication being open, all of that is in the dark. And it's just not a place where

• 12:28

a development that can take five, six, seven, eight years should ever be before launch is to be

• 12:36

in that dark place. It's just it's so antithetical to this concept of made for gamers by gamers like

• 12:46

that is the core philosophy behind the development of a game like this. And and to keep those doors

• 12:53

shut just doesn't make sense. And it creates an insurmountable mountain of risk when that game

• 13:01

eventually launches. So I'm not shooting shots. Yeah, absolutely. No, totally. We don't show open

• 13:08

development to there. And to be perfectly honest, like we don't show gray box levels and like our

• 13:15

fundamental prototyping, like because it just it doesn't convey something that we can elicit a good

• 13:21

response from. Right. We want to show the things where we can collect actionable feedback that we

• 13:26

can parse through. Right. And that we can say, OK, this is the direction we were already on.

• 13:30

Good thing it resonated or wow, we were really off base here. We need to change some things up

• 13:35

and we better do that because the lifecycle of our game and the longevity, the lifetime value

• 13:41

of the customer is at stake for that reason. So, you know, I just I want to take this opportunity

• 13:46

because it's not often that I have the opportunity once a month here to speak with you guys, but also

• 13:52

to potentially speak with any executive that might be listening. This is not a bad thing to engage the

• 13:58

customer earlier. These players, MMO players understand to a degree what development entails,

• 14:05

and especially if you invest a bit in that conversation, you have the directors participating,

• 14:13

you have an investment in community teams earlier on before the community is actually playing

• 14:18

something to help garner that feedback and to parse it for the developers. Like there is a

• 14:23

treasure trove of information to be had amongst your consumer base, engage with it and then you

• 14:29

can mitigate the risk. So I'm not trying to shoot shots. This is not a me shooting across the bow in

• 14:35

the industry. I have love and respect for my fellow developers and fellow companies. I am just

• 14:41

trying to offer what I feel is constructive feedback to help ensure that the genre gets the

• 14:46

games it deserves. Yeah. And people, you know, developers want to make a great games. Like

• 14:52

Stephen said, it's not always on the individual. Sometimes you're doing what is asked of you. So

• 14:58

it is a struggle on both sides of the front. But of course, we have so much more to show you

• 15:06

and I'm sure we'll have many more so boxes in the future as well.

• 15:13

I think we will. We have thoughts. We have things that we want to do. And I think that we want to

• 15:18

make the industry better as best as we can. And you know, like Stephen said, right now, this is

• 15:24

our platform that we have. But, you know, we'll be doing more streams in the future as we get closer

• 15:30

and closer to launch and post launch. But my final reminder is that we do have our Legion of the Rose.

• 15:38

It's scheduled for June 14th at 11am Pacific. We'll be swapping it over with the next set.

• 15:43

And of course, these are all things that you'll see as NPCs, creatures, buildings in the world.

• 15:48

They help us build out the world of Vera. We'll have different variants of them. And actually,

• 15:52

you're going to see some stuff in our this week, which is really exciting. That is similar to some

• 15:58

of those things. And with that, let's talk a little bit about Cyclops. And if you want Stephen,

• 16:05

I know you wanted to kind of do a little preface. I do want to preface this. And I think guys and

• 16:11

gals out there, it is very important that you help convey this message to those who might discuss

• 16:20

what they see here and across social media and discords. The purview of this demonstration is the

• 16:30

first world boss you will encounter in the Riverlands area. There are four starting areas

• 16:35

and ashes of creation as you're well aware. But this is a level 30 Cyclops raid boss,

• 16:42

which means its intended encounter design is between levels like 22 and 3435. And

• 16:52

you're going to see a host of abilities you're going to see in try to keep an eye out for this,

• 16:58

right? You're going to look you're going to try to find some tree strikes, some kicks and

• 17:02

tree slams, a totem charge of the root shear, some spore sprays, a stumps and call spirits,

• 17:08

the enraged root prisons and the root fissures and the enraged phase with his roar and stomp frenzy

• 17:16

and the totemless charge. You know, there's there's calling of dire spirits. There's a lot of

• 17:21

different actions that can be taken by this raid boss. What we want to elicit from you is when

• 17:29

when you've encountered the raid bosses in other games, what did you enjoy most about those? Where

• 17:34

do you see that occurring in this demonstration and where do you see room for improvement? One

• 17:40

thing I do want to convey these three points is earliest raid boss you see two is we're all GMs.

• 17:48

It's it's intended for a full raid, but we have two groups that are fighting it because it's a

• 17:52

little bit difficult for us to corral all of our developers internally to jump in and

• 17:57

and yeah, I know right to jump in and take away time from the development. So so we use a little

• 18:03

bit of overpoweredness there. But then the third thing is is the ambience the how this boss moves

• 18:10

around the world, right? It's not just in a centralized location. That's its arena per se.

• 18:15

Like this is a roaming monster. So take those those three things as you're watching. Think about

• 18:21

what did you enjoy? Where you clarify though, because people are saying GMs are

• 18:25

not using GM hacks, though. And no, no, no, no, just to be clear, he's just saying we're GMs,

• 18:29

and all of these are developers that are going to be like, we're all game masters. We're not players.

• 18:35

And we're powerful, very powerful, but not just hacking. No, we just know all the mechanics. So

• 18:42

yeah, exactly. We know what we know what we're coming up. Yeah, exactly. So we had a lot of fun.

• 18:48

I think you guys are going to enjoy it. And yeah, we'll be on after to chat with you about it. All

• 18:57

right. We'll see you guys in 20 minutes. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another live

• 19:22

stream in the world of Vera. I am joined today by three glorious developers. Actually, we have

• 19:28

quite a few of our developers are participating in today's live stream. I'm not going to go through

• 19:33

everyone. You'll see their usernames, their game handles on the top left side and our RAID UI.

• 19:39

But I have three amazing developers who are joining us today, that have all taken part in

• 19:45

helping to design the Cyclops and the combat that goes around it. I know you guys in the community

• 19:50

have been very excited to kind of see today's demonstration. We're not going to get too elaborate

• 19:55

in the designs of the Cyclops, right? Because we don't want to spoil it for you. But just as a

• 19:59

disclaimer, this is one of the very first World Raid bosses that will be available for players

• 20:05

to participate in. So this is not super end game, but it is going to give you some insight into how

• 20:10

we're designing these encounters. And first up, we have one of our senior designers, Mr. Doug. How

• 20:15

are you doing, Doug? Good evening. I'm doing pretty well. I'm excited to show this off. We've been

• 20:21

working on it for a while. I'm super excited for you guys to show it off, too. I know you guys have

• 20:26

been hard at work on this one and a lot of other creatures. And this is your first time joining us

• 20:30

on the stream, isn't that right? That is correct. I have not streamed before. Super exciting. We

• 20:35

have a stream virgin with us. Very cool. We also have with us one of our glorious senior technical

• 20:42

designers, Mr. Jason. How are you doing, Jason? Hey, how's it going? And you are the... This one's

• 20:50

your baby, right? This Cyclops was kind of your design. Yeah. Been plucking away at him for a

• 20:56

while. I remember the first time we chatted about this guy. You had such a great kind of premise for

• 21:03

his backstory and the design elements of it. I thought it was super cool. I love the detaching

• 21:09

tree, which our viewers are going to see in a little bit. So I'm super excited that you have an

• 21:12

opportunity to kind of talk with the community about this and get their take on some of these

• 21:16

designs. And then we have one of our regularly occurring senior designers on the combat side,

• 21:22

Mr. Trad. How are you doing, Trad? Doing great. Good to be back as always. Yes, welcome. So we

• 21:28

find ourselves here in the Riverlands and it appears to be a winter time. It's beautiful.

• 21:37

Actually, I really like it. So one of the first things I would love to chat with you guys about

• 21:43

is kind of how you set up this particular raid boss, the Cyclops, in the Riverlands. Talk to me

• 21:50

a little bit about his pathing. Where does he live in the world? What's his backstory? Just

• 21:55

tell me things about him. Yeah, I think you could take this one, Jason.

• 22:00

Oh, yeah. The Cyclops, his name is Tumak. And a long time ago, he is from the land of Sujoma,

• 22:13

and that's where all the Cyclopses are from. He decided it would be a good idea to try to align

• 22:20

himself with the ancients that invaded Berra. And he took some of his followers to follow in

• 22:27

those footsteps and that didn't work out so well for him. He's the last remaining Cyclops of his

• 22:37

people he took to try and join the ancients and the rest of his people exiled him for that and

• 22:44

they didn't want him back. So it's kind of all on his own and has kind of paid for some of those

• 22:49

mistakes of misaligning himself. Okay, so he's got a little bit of a backstory, some pain in there,

• 22:55

maybe some betrayal, and I guess he kind of turned against his fellow citizens of Berra.

• 23:00

Where are you guys at, by the way? I know we have a couple parties that are hanging back at the camp.

• 23:04

Oh, there you guys are. Why don't you come join me over here? I want to talk a little about,

• 23:08

you know, kind of his pathing and I noticed that there are also some like winter spiders

• 23:13

over here or something. What is going on over here? Yeah, so there are some giant spiders over

• 23:18

here and one thing that we'd like to demonstrate today is that, you know, not every enemy in Berra

• 23:24

is going to just behave like they're simple, you know, aggro immediately and beeline for you.

• 23:30

The giant spider might not necessarily want to engage these scary looking adventurers,

• 23:36

so he's going to stand off and, you know, hope that you, you know, back away.

• 23:41

And that is so creepy. I love the anim for this. So he's kind of not necessarily aggroing,

• 23:47

but he's just like, don't come any closer. Like, yeah, backing back off. Get away from me.

• 23:54

He is kind of peacocking. I'm set to invulnerable because I want us to be able to kind of walk with

• 23:58

the Cyclops as we see him start to path here. But I... Wild animals just, you know, not every single

• 24:05

wild animal is going to immediately beeline for you. And so that's the kind of behavior we want

• 24:08

to capture. Some more ambient behaviors you might not expect to see them. Maybe some creatures

• 24:13

hunting each other, you know, these kinds of, you know, more believable behaviors from wild animals.

• 24:18

That's super cool. Yeah, I like them. That's awesome. It adds an element of immersion, I feel like.

• 24:25

So if you do stay, if you do stay within their range or get too close to them, then, you know,

• 24:30

they might defend themselves. So that's super cool. So talk to me a little bit about the Cyclops

• 24:36

and its path and how you guys kind of determine, you know, where this guy's going to roam and why

• 24:41

it's an important aspect that the boss is kind of roaming through the woods, you know, or through the

• 24:46

world. Yeah, so we work with the world team to decide what that path is going to be. And we want

• 24:54

to make sure that there's something of interest, you know, no matter where you go.

• 25:00

I just hope you're vulnerable just in case. I'm sorry. Go ahead. You're good.

• 25:05

Yeah, no matter where you look, no matter what path you go down, that there's always a chance

• 25:09

you're going to see something you didn't expect or you didn't see before. So...

• 25:13

Oh, I love this guy. He's so massive. And I like how he kind of walks through

• 25:20

the trees, triggering their destruction.

• 25:26

That's so cool that he interacts with the environment like that.

• 25:30

Yeah, definitely going to help you to listen. You can just listen in the woods. And if he's

• 25:35

patrolling around, you're going to hear him. Oh, my gosh, this guy's huge. Now, oh, sorry,

• 25:41

my bad. I thought for a second there he was going to aggro me. But just so you guys are aware in the

• 25:46

stream, I've set myself to invulnerable so that we can kind of just walk near him and see his

• 25:52

massive nature. And Doug, Jason, talk to me a little bit about the inspiration for this guy as

• 25:58

a character model. Like, what were you guys, you know, working with the character teams to kind of...

• 26:04

I noticed he has this massive tree. Talk to me a little bit about that element.

• 26:07

Yeah, I think that was actually a little bit improvised in the design based on what the

• 26:10

character came back with. Jason, if you want to talk about that.

• 26:14

Yeah, when the character artists were making this, they had this cool idea of just having this

• 26:19

giant tree weapon that a cyclops would hold. And we took that idea and just kind of embraced it,

• 26:26

make it part of his character and the embellishments that he wears and using that to kind of inform

• 26:32

what type of encounter that he might be. So we ended up making the tree like a pretty core part

• 26:39

of it and it informs some of his combat abilities and phase transitions even in the fight.

• 26:46

Yeah, I mean, it's a collaborative process. Sometimes it's design asking for something

• 26:49

specific from art and sometimes art is what informs the design.

• 26:52

So, oh, he looks great. Character did a great job with this. Do you know who's

• 26:57

the character artist that worked on this? Was it Keith? I think it might have been Keith.

• 27:01

I think Keith or could have been Gen Z or somebody.

• 27:04

Yeah, they did a great job, by the way. I mean, it looks phenomenal. I know we have a couple of

• 27:09

parties that are going to assist us with this particular fight. Talk to me a little bit about

• 27:15

this encounter as a raid boss. You know, what is the expectation from the actual raid size that

• 27:22

you guys are anticipating for the design? I think that's going to vary depending on

• 27:27

the level of the raid, obviously, and then sort of how geared they are. But we're kind of aiming

• 27:32

for somewhere between 16 and 32, probably depending again on level of equipment.

• 27:40

Very cool. So this guy's a really early kind of world boss and we want to introduce players early

• 27:47

to the idea of these raids. And by the way, as we're kind of chatting about this, those of you

• 27:51

who are going to be helping us defeat this guy with our two parties, if you want to start heading

• 27:57

over to the arena, we are waiting here for you. I will set myself off of the GM and vulnerability

• 28:04

here. Let me see. There we go. Hopefully I don't aggro him. You know, it's important as we were

• 28:13

talking about to kind of introduce players into what raiding really means in Ashes and talk to me

• 28:19

a little bit about kind of the general design approach that you take with creating these types

• 28:24

of encounters. You know, there are obviously phases, there's different elements in those phases

• 28:28

that kind of change dynamically the way you want players to interact. What are we going to see here

• 28:33

a little bit? Yeah, this is definitely like a more introductory raiding experience. So it's not going

• 28:39

to be too complicated, but I think there are some really interesting mechanics regardless. And I

• 28:43

think Jason can talk about those. Yeah, so when I first started designing this guy, you know,

• 28:51

we had Trav and the other guys on the archetype team looking at, you know, forming the classes

• 28:57

that people have been seeing over the live stream. And, you know, really before those kind of come

• 29:03

to fruition and knowing, you know, what the full abilities are and everything, I started the design

• 29:09

with the core training in mind. So the roles are very obvious. Tanks will tank, healers will heal,

• 29:17

and DPS will try to take down the targets that they need to. And starting from there, I try to

• 29:24

keep that in mind, not to overcomplicate it so that they always have that like individual training

• 29:31

idea amongst the different mechanics. Yeah, so we've got some classic staples in here. We've got,

• 29:36

you know, adds that off tanks are going to have to peel off and crowd control that's going to need

• 29:41

to be applied to those adds. We've got priority targets that are going to pop up that need to be

• 29:46

killed. We've got, you know, damage that's going to be unavoidable so that, you know, even with the

• 29:51

expert group that can dodge all of his avoidable attacks, you know, the healers are still going to

• 29:55

have work to do to keep everyone alive. Very cool. Very cool. Love it. You guys will notice,

• 30:01

obviously, on the stream that there have been some updates to a little bit of the nameplates

• 30:08

that Colby and the UI team have implemented, as well as some of the targeting plates as well.

• 30:13

But who do we have as our tank today? That would be me. Doug will be tanking.

• 30:19

Doug will be tanking. All right. All right. Very cool. And then we also have,

• 30:24

I'll be playing as a mage, but I will be trying to capture some good shots of the encounter to

• 30:32

a degree. Trad, what are you playing? I am a mage as well, just like you.

• 30:37

Oh, okay. Very cool. And then how about you, Jason?

• 30:40

I'm playing the cleric. Nice. Well, Doug, I don't want to stand in the way of your greatness. So,

• 30:47

please, by all means, sir, you may commence when ready. All right. Leroy Jenkins.

• 30:53

Leroy, let's do this. Yeah, try not to let me die, Jason. Yeah, no promises.

• 31:00

Oh, he's an angry Tumak. Oh my God. That looks like it hurts.

• 31:07

Yeah. If you don't block that, you get smushed.

• 31:12

Oh, I love his animation. So, talk to me a little bit about some of these attacks.

• 31:16

What do you got going on here, Jason and Doug? So, yeah, his first phase here, he has a lot of

• 31:26

physical attacks, but he also employs a lot of attacks using his tree like we see there

• 31:30

with the roots hitting us. And right now, you can see he's pulling some fungus out of the tree and

• 31:38

using that to heal himself. He has a tank spike attack where he smashes the tree into the tank

• 31:45

that Doug was blocking earlier and generally does a lot of AOE splash damage that other melee will

• 31:54

want to avoid not standing together. Yeah, he's not a particularly complex raid boss, but he's

• 32:01

a great example of what we want to do with large creatures and ashes. Having them interact with the

• 32:06

environment, having that camera shake, those knockdowns that make it feel like he is here

• 32:13

and he is crushing you.

• 32:14

Oh, he looks, oh my God, he keeps just charging there. I'm just barely missing him. Now, talk to

• 32:23

me a little bit about kind of the raid boss designs. Like, you guys are working with multiple

• 32:29

stages. I noticed that right now he's just kind of, you know, roaming around. He has different

• 32:34

targets on his hate list. He's got a lot of different attacks. He's got a lot of different

• 32:40

abilities and he's just kind of, you know, roaming around. He has different targets on his hate

• 32:45

list. Tell me like, what's your general philosophy? How did you guys approach this?

• 32:51

Yeah, so I think Jason ended this a little bit earlier, but we designed this boss pretty early

• 32:57

on when a lot of the classes were still their sort of nascent form. So, we really just wanted

• 33:01

to focus on the whole, the Trinity, you know, making sure that everyone has a purpose in this

• 33:06

who's focused on CC, whether you're a tank, a healer, a DPS, you know, giving those classic

• 33:11

mechanics to give everybody a job in the raid. Like right now, for instance, he's put this tree

• 33:16

down and there are going to be these healing caps that appear and those are going to be a priority

• 33:21

objective for DPS to take down before they grow to full size because if they do, he's going to go

• 33:26

over, he's going to stomp them and he's going to get healed for a huge percentage of his health.

• 33:29

Wow. So we got to take this tree out because he's just going to keep healing.

• 33:39

Yeah. And you definitely got to switch over to those healing caps when they appear.

• 33:47

That's super cool. So he heals off of the mushrooms as well?

• 33:52

Yeah. And as a player, if you destroy them or even if he stomps on them, if you happen to be

• 33:56

nearby when they blow up, you can get that heal as well. So if you're taking some damage from

• 34:01

the thorns from the tree or you got hit by one of his large, you know, stomp attacks,

• 34:06

you know, you might have a chance to get healed up if you run over to those mushrooms before they

• 34:09

blow up. Okay. We almost have this tree down. Come on guys, focus it down. Focus major DPS on the tree.

• 34:16

Let's try to kill this thing. It's almost done. Get it, get it before he picks it up. Yes.

• 34:23

Everything, release it all. Oh, well done. Oh, oh my God. Why is he so mad?

• 34:34

He does not like when you break his weapon. What the heck? I mean, who would?

• 34:41

Jason, where'd you get the idea for that, for the kind of tree totem?

• 34:45

A lot of that came from the original design that we got from character art in that we really

• 34:52

enjoyed the way that it's energized with his looks. We wanted to employ the use of the tree

• 34:58

as like a core part of his encounter. We ended up using it as like a magical, like a magical tree

• 35:07

where he gets a lot of his abilities. But without that, he seems to get really mad and his more

• 35:11

primal cyclops giant nature comes back as we see here.

• 35:18

Oh, that's cool. So talk to me about those kinds of slams that he's doing. And also, I noticed like

• 35:24

as he's running around, the trees are falling, the stone obelisks are kind of getting destroyed.

• 35:30

Is there intent for these kind of environmental hazards to exist as well as part of the raid

• 35:37

design? Yeah, absolutely. For our large creatures, you know, cyclopses, dragons, things like that,

• 35:42

we want to make sure that the world feels dynamic and it's reacting to their big size. You know, if a

• 35:48

huge, you know, 20 meter tall beast is walking through the woods and not knocking down a single

• 35:54

tree, that just doesn't feel believable. So we want to make sure that, you know, you're going to

• 35:59

hear that and that's going to be a way you can know in the distance there's something that you

• 36:03

want to go and investigate. That is super cool. I died, but I'm on my way back.

• 36:15

Those slams hurt really bad. Yeah, one of the aspects of the phases in this fight is actually

• 36:22

that he has those healing abilities when he has his totem tree, his nature magic, but and he is

• 36:29

more primal when he's in this phase. As a result, you can take him down a little quicker when he's

• 36:33

enraged, but it's also going to be a lot more incoming damage for your healers to work through.

• 36:37

So depending on your raid composition, your, you know, equipment level, you might want to

• 36:43

sustain longer in that earlier phase, even if it takes a while through all that healing,

• 36:48

because if you push him too early, you might just wipe.

• 36:51

I love it, guys. Here it goes again. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 37:00

I was getting crushed. It's right under his fists.

• 37:05

Oh, this poor guy. Look at him. His little eye. Wow. That was very cool.

• 37:16

Well done, guys. That was awesome. Does he have any loot? Can we loot him? I wonder.

• 37:24

Sword of the Briarholm, a longbow, a shortbow, and a mace. Ooh, very nice. Well, that was a lot

• 37:33

of fun. Very well done. I thought that that was very cool. Guys, as you guys are watching this,

• 37:38

remember, obviously, this is one of the earliest ones in the game. I'm not going to be doing any

• 37:41

more of this. But give us your feedback. What are the raid bosses you enjoyed in other games that

• 37:47

you've played? What about the mechanics? What about the phases that you thought were cool? What

• 37:52

did you enjoy seeing here today? And what would you like to see in the future?

• 37:57

Well, I think the first thing I'd like to do is to thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this

• 38:02

video. If you did, please hit that like button. And if you haven't already, please hit that subscribe

• 38:06

button. And I'll see you guys next time. Bye.

• 38:47

Welcome back. We hope that you all enjoyed it. It seemed like you did. I wanted to clarify

• 38:52

a few things because I know that there were some comments in regards to a couple things.

• 38:56

And then there were quite a few questions. So Stephen will answer some of those as well.

• 39:00

But for clarifications, obviously, we recorded this in 4K. We will be uploading it in 4K on YouTube.

• 39:05

I know there were some comments regarding graphics. You saw that this time we showed

• 39:11

three different perspectives of different folks. So we kind of had to figure out a different

• 39:15

recording system in order to make sure everybody's quality was the same level

• 39:21

because they're different PCs. So just keep that in mind. But we will upload that after this stream.

• 39:28

In regards to the node GM comments, I meant, no, we didn't use commands during the Cyclops fight,

• 39:34

not necessarily before that. Because as soon as I saw that, Stephen, you used the thing to walk

• 39:38

next to him and went, crap. I didn't want him to aggro me. So I wanted to get a perspective.

• 39:44

He turned that off because obviously he wanted, he had to be able to fight. And you saw that,

• 39:49

you know, Stephen died a couple times there. Yeah. And I was looking at the UI.

• 39:52

I might have been the only person that died. But just to be clear, remember that we are still

• 39:59

in our journey to alpha two. And as a result of that journey, the phase of development that we

• 40:05

are currently in with the project doesn't really emphasize polish or performance or optimization.

• 40:12

So you're going to see some, oh, I have my pen because I was taking notes from chat.

• 40:17

You're going to see some, you're going to see some room for improvement there, right?

• 40:23

Also, I'm running this, you know, on a 4k monitor and 4k stream and I'm streaming at the same time,

• 40:27

or excuse me, recording at the same time. So, you know, some of the FPS is going to get improved.

• 40:32

It'll be, it'll be, it'll be much better, but yeah, let's get to some of the questions that

• 40:38

you guys had in chat about the boss. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I know we had mentioned that

• 40:44

we were talking about whether Keith had designed or designed the model and Keith did design the

• 40:49

model. So just wanted to clarify in that front. But the first question we have here is Tumac

• 40:54

didn't leave footprints behind like our player characters did. Will big creatures like that or

• 40:59

any creatures leave behind footprints? Yeah. So general overpopulation mobs will not leave

• 41:07

footprints. However, the larger monsters like this and raid bosses and dungeon bosses, they will have

• 41:15

footprints. They were just not enabled for him in this showcase yet. And then what are the respawn

• 41:21

rates on world bosses? That's a very generic question. Yeah, it depends. It depends on the

• 41:28

world boss. You know, we want to, the general philosophy is that respawns will be variable.

• 41:34

We don't want to have set specific times in which respawns will occur so that they can be kind of

• 41:40

camped and farmed, but there'll be variable location respawns as well as variable time

• 41:45

respawns. And then that's kind of, you know, provides opportunities for different parties to

• 41:51

engage at different times and locations. Cool. And then I'm also playing this in the background,

• 41:58

so you guys are getting to see it a little bit more while we talk. Next one here is,

• 42:06

will Tumac destroying trees affect the growth and replenishment of trees in the world? And also,

• 42:11

if animals hunt one another, will that affect respawn rates of those animals? Astute observation,

• 42:17

whoever asked that question. Yes, the answer is yes. There are land management systems that we've

• 42:24

talked about in the past, and there is certain interactions that can occur that can affect those

• 42:31

systems. So yes, if knocking down trees too long is not going to be a good thing for the area.

• 42:37

Yeah, so you probably want to, as much as he was just going for a stroll, because I saw someone in

• 42:41

chat, I was laughing, I told Stephen, I was like, I love this comment. Someone in chat was like,

• 42:46

of course he's mad and raging. He was just going for a walk, a little stroll, and you guys are

• 42:51

killing him. You're monsters. Hey, this guy is responsible for some pretty horrific things. So

• 42:58

he's not just an innocent cyclops out for a stroll, let's be clear. He's siding with the baddies. Yeah.

• 43:05

And the next one here is, will ground shake for large bosses be something that we'll see in the

• 43:12

future? Can you turn off the screen shake? Yeah, you know, there is something to be had there about

• 43:19

those types of screen shake effects. We want them to be present when we're emphasizing certain

• 43:25

things, but we don't want them to be a nuisance or annoying or too plentiful. And having screen shake

• 43:31

apply to every step would probably be too abundant. Will players have control over those

• 43:38

on-screen type effects? Yeah, I think so. I think that's something we want to provision as a

• 43:43

customizable option for players to be able to turn off because it can be somewhat nauseating for

• 43:47

certain groups of people and a distraction from what's happening in the world. And then, will world

• 43:56

bosses become different or higher level as a node levels? How will these world bosses

• 44:00

scale when it comes to player levels? Is it based on players or the zone?

• 44:06

Players or the zone? So the question was, sorry, I missed the first part. Yeah. Will world bosses

• 44:12

become different or higher level as nodes level? Oh, I see. Yes. Okay. So world bosses are pretty

• 44:22

defined in their challenge rating. And we don't have an approach that is scaling for content,

• 44:31

right? We feel that that kind of cheapens the content when you apply a scaling mechanic so that

• 44:37

this content is constantly relevant. There are ways that the world responds and changes to the

• 44:45

nodes development. Those are prescribed. Those are curated. Those are meaningful and we want them to

• 44:52

be experienced by the players, but not all content is going to be scalable like we've seen in some

• 44:57

modern MMOs. And then the other part of that, yeah, I guess was, will world bosses scale when

• 45:03

it comes to player levels? And is it based on players or the zone itself leveling?

• 45:10

They will not scale based on player level. No. So this is a level 30 boss and he will be relevant

• 45:17

for a nine level spread up or down from that level 30 position. Okay. And then people are wondering,

• 45:23

will bosses or the Cyclops actually get voice lines or things of that sort?

• 45:30

Yeah, bosses, certain bosses will have audio cues that might be in the form of language

• 45:37

and might be in the form of indistinguishable sounds. But yes, bosses and some even creatures

• 45:44

will have audio cues to use. And then I do see some folks asking in chat regarding about,

• 45:52

you know, if this is an open world boss, then that means other players could attack me and my and

• 45:59

my homies and also attack the monster that I'm attacking and how we plan to do that.

• 46:05

Attacking and how we plan to address that situation in regards to maybe large guilds coming in and,

• 46:12

you know, murdering people and stealing their boss. Yeah, absolutely. So we've talked about

• 46:16

this in the past. Content in Ashes of Creation is divided into open world content and instanced

• 46:22

content. The ratio of content division there is about 80, 20, 80 being open world, 20 being instance.

• 46:29

That remains true. When we talk about the ability for competition to exist around limited resources

• 46:36

or scarcity, world bosses fall into that category of scarcity and or limited resources. They are

• 46:43

essentially a resource that you can defeat in order to acquire things you need for your character

• 46:49

progression. And as a result of that, it is healthy to encounter potential friction and or

• 46:55

competition with other groups of players who are interested in acquiring that scarce resource.

• 47:00

And we don't want to address that situation. That is the element of the game design that is risk

• 47:07

versus reward. You're taking the risk and encountering this open world content and your

• 47:14

reward for successfully doing so are the resources you can acquire by by that effort. Now there are

• 47:20

mechanisms, there are tools, there are systems that allow for you to establish reputations with

• 47:29

these other groups of players to pursue them outside of this encounter to hinder them in such

• 47:34

a way where they might think twice whether or not they want to engage with your group. There are

• 47:40

avenues that can be taken both political as well as systemic where players can engage with those

• 47:46

factions, and it's important to note that Ashes of Creation is a non faction based game. What that

• 47:53

means is you're not told who your enemy and your friend is. You are not restricted with the players

• 47:58

that you can participate in content with. Instead, that choice is left to you, the players, and that

• 48:06

is an element of the sandbox environment that we're trying to create with Ashes of Creation.

• 48:10

All right, and then the next question here is less about the Cyclops boss and people

• 48:16

were noticing that folks were carrying around these blue or be type of things and they were

• 48:21

wondering what those are. Oh, I believe a good call. I think that's the first time we've actually

• 48:27

shown those. Yeah, so those are sigils. I'm sorry, not sigils. My mind is totally blanking right now.

• 48:38

Those are those are essentially acumen instruments that you can use to enhance your your spell

• 48:44

casting. They replace a shield offhand item that players can somebody in slack. If you can remember

• 48:50

the name of those things, shoot it over to me real quick on a DM. But yeah, those are those are

• 48:56

essentially offhand items that players can use in order to enhance their casting ability and or

• 49:00

healing and whatnot. They are called focuses. Thank you. Yeah, spell focus. Thank you.

• 49:05

And that is it. We're going to have many, many by the way. OK, real quick. The spell focuses can

• 49:13

take many different forms. You saw an orb there. The spell focus could be a book. It could be a

• 49:17

shrunken head. It could be, you know, something kind of really interesting, but it's a way for

• 49:24

non shield users or non sigil users to incorporate an element into their offhand if they want to be

• 49:31

a one handed weapon user. And of course, we could be here all day if we answered questions forever,

• 49:39

but we do have some other things to show you all, and we do have some other questions to get to from

• 49:43

the forums. But as always, we would love your feedback. We will have a combat, a Cyclops combat

• 49:50

preview, a slash livestream feedback thread that's going to be over on our forums. Please definitely

• 49:55

go check it out and give us some thoughts. As Stephen said, this helps us ensure that, you know,

• 50:00

we're moving forward in the right direction. So please, please, please give us some of your

• 50:06

thoughts. And I know sometimes it can be hard because you're like just watching something

• 50:09

versus experiencing it. But when you get into Alpha 2, you'll be able to experience it and give

• 50:14

us that side of the feedback as well. So we'll get both ends of it, but at least we can address

• 50:20

some of your concerns just from visually seeing it as well. And with that, unless you have anything

• 50:25

else, Stephen, I'm going to head on over to our character goodies. No, I don't think so.

• 50:30

Hard. Yeah. All right. Moving on. As you've maybe noticed, we've been doing some profession

• 50:40

goodness. You've been seeing some trees and lumberjacking and you know, we're working towards

• 50:45

some good old fishing. There are a lot of fish that have been being created. Some of them are

• 50:51

very strange looking, as I'm sure you all will see here. But Chris, Jan, Ginsey and Priscilla and

• 50:59

Keith have been making a ton of them. So the seas of Vera will be plenty. You will definitely be

• 51:07

getting your fill of good fishies to cook and fish up and trade. I'm excited for y'all to see those.

• 51:15

They're gorgeous. I love the little fish. They're so good. Some of them are a little horrifying.

• 51:24

As rightfully they should be.

• 51:29

A few of them I feel like the chat is going to have thoughts about. Like the land of the fish.

• 51:35

They say that the night is dark and full of terror, but what they really forget is that the

• 51:45

seas are deep. Yeah. Have you ever gone scuba diving or anything like that?

• 51:51

I have. I have. One time we had a guild. We had a guild. So my guild, I always used to have these

• 51:59

like trips that we would take some of our officers and some guild members and stuff. And one year we

• 52:04

went to Hawaii and there was like 13 of us and none of us had scuba dived before except for one

• 52:08

person I think at the party. And I chartered this boat to take us out to go scuba diving. And they're

• 52:12

like, well, you have to go through this process, the certification thing. I was like, just take

• 52:18

us out somewhere that's cool and we'll just kind of jump in the water and do our thing.

• 52:22

And so one of our friends who is a big boy, he got into his swimsuit and he gets in with this

• 52:28

snorkel and they're teaching him the little device, the buoyancy thing that takes you up

• 52:33

or down, you press the button and they're teaching him the hand signals are like,

• 52:36

this is swimmers. Okay. This is like not okay. Or, you know, whatever, right. And we're underwater

• 52:42

and he's like floating up here. He can't get his mask thing on very well. And he's pressing the

• 52:47

button because he's kind of sinking. And as he's slowly sinking under the water, he's pressing the

• 52:51

wrong button and he doesn't know. Yeah. He's pressing the button to make it go up.

• 52:55

Yeah. No, he's pressing the button to make him go down, but he thought he was pressing the button,

• 52:58

make him go up. And so his face is just falling like under the water. He doesn't have his mask on.

• 53:04

And in his last words of moment, he just says, I'm going to need some help here. But a little

• 53:09

bit, he goes under the water and my ear was bleeding. And like John wanted to swim to shore.

• 53:15

We're like a mile and a half out. It was just a terrible, this sounds like a nightmare. I had a

• 53:21

lovely time, uh, scuba diving complete opposite of that. But I think one of the things that is,

• 53:26

cause you talk about, you were saying how like it's dark and full of tears, but I think that

• 53:31

the beauty of being underwater is it's like so quiet, but there's like a lot of life going on

• 53:38

around you, which I think is really exciting. Some of them which want to eat you.

• 53:42

Yeah. There were some sharks, like tiger sharks that swam by us, but the people that we were,

• 53:48

we were with that were taking us were, they were like, they're not interested in you. They have

• 53:53

enough food here. So as long as you're not, I have a fear of like wide open spaces and anytime I

• 53:59

can't see what's beneath me and it's just like darkness that scares me. And so being in the water,

• 54:07

um, out in the middle of the ocean where I don't have a corner to back against and just like, see

• 54:11

where my threat lives. Like, I just feel like at any moment, some giant shark is just going to

• 54:16

come out of the depths of darkness and eat me or something. A crack and just comes up and takes

• 54:20

you. No, totally. Like my mind, just the amount of fantasy games and movies that I've watched,

• 54:25

like I just go to a dark place immediately and thinking about some crack and like monsters.

• 54:30

See, I have the opposite. I think for me in the water, I think because I can swim and move and

• 54:35

maneuver, I'm okay. It's heights for me because I can, I can see what's down there and I can see how

• 54:41

far away it is to me. And it horrifies me that I might fall and to my death. I'm with you on the

• 54:46

heights to. Yeah, sure. All right. Moving on from that. Now that we're all horrified by underwater

• 54:53

creatures and heights, we also have piglets. You've been seeing sheep, cows, piglets. We're,

• 54:59

you know, getting getting the farm in and profession stuff going, which is really exciting.

• 55:03

I'm I'm super excited for free holds and farms. I love farming and games. It's so fun.

• 55:09

Next up, we've got a Tidebreaker Riverlands variant. I love their beards. They're so cute.

• 55:16

They're so good. They're so cute. They look like just grumpy otters and I'm into it.

• 55:25

The next one here is our Hydra Swans. And then we also have like a variant of it. So for those of

• 55:30

you who have the regular Hydra Swan, which, you know, thank you for supporting us. We also have

• 55:36

the variant here. And Steven, I saw that you gave a story behind how this thing, how this came to be.

• 55:43

You talked about on Twitter. I don't know if you want to share that with folks who maybe don't use

• 55:47

Twitter. Oh, I just, you know, geese and swan in general are just wretched creatures like they're

• 55:53

beautiful, but they're mean as all hell. And when I was a kid, we used to live on a lake or live near

• 56:00

a lake and I would go feed these things. And when they had babies, I didn't know that they got

• 56:07

protective and they would fly and attack me as I'm trying to climb away from them and peck me in the

• 56:12

back. And just, I vowed from that day forward that if I ever created an MMO at seven years old, I was

• 56:19

thinking to myself, that I would create this as a creature. No, actually I made it in our Ashes of

• 56:25

Creation original Pathfinder campaign, a Hydra Swan. That was, I just took the template of the

• 56:32

actual Hydra monster and I gave them a bunch of beak attacks. So they were like D6 is minus two

• 56:37

or something. And it's like level two party. And they're like, Oh my God, it's a Hydra Swan. I'm

• 56:40

like, yeah, don't feed it bread. That's really funny. I love that. I might have to pull that on

• 56:48

one of my people in the future. For one of my campaigns, we got this lovely little,

• 56:54

we got this lovely snake boar. I love that they did the apple thing with it.

• 57:03

The animations that our team always comes up with for things is amazing. The little intricacies.

• 57:11

And then we've got the seventh Lancer uniform. Oh, it looks great. Yes. It looks so scary.

• 57:25

I have those backwards. We've got the diadem for our Royal folks out there.

• 57:31

Oh, very short conveyor. Super cool. Got some arcane garbs.

• 57:44

Oh, who made the arcane garbs? The arcane garbs were by Jan. Oh, Jan, those are great.

• 57:54

I have all the names for everybody this time because Stephen always asks me and I'm like,

• 57:59

I don't know. There's a million art pieces. Who did the variant for the

• 58:07

Otter? The Hydra Swan? No, no, the Otter. Oh, that's ginsy. That's ginsy work right there.

• 58:12

Love it. This is the Gloomroot. We've got the Jade Sigil. Comment of fruition.

• 58:22

Oh, that looks great. The Mercenary one looks really great. The Jade Sigil one was Jan as well.

• 58:29

Jan, great job. And same with the Merc set here. Oh, wow. Very nice. And then we've got

• 58:35

another plate set. Jan's just killing it. Get some Jan. And then we've got the Trowler's,

• 58:46

the part of the Trowler's outfit. I believe I have an MP. Yes. Speaking of fishing.

• 58:55

Yes. This set was really fun to design. Can you use the hat as the thing you carry,

• 59:01

but you just flip it over and put all the fish in it and hold it up?

• 59:04

I was thinking you could either put fish in it or you could float in it was my thought when I

• 59:08

was designing it because sometimes they would use these to get fish in. Yeah. Or just scoop the fish

• 59:14

up. Oh, yeah. That's a good call. It's a good call. Well, you put the fish on the net on the outside.

• 59:21

Oh, okay. And then you. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. And then we have the Iceheart corsage

• 59:29

being worked on. Still work in progress. Very nice. And I believe that is it from the art

• 59:37

department. By it. I mean, like they've got a lot of stuff. But that is what we'll be showing today.

• 59:44

Thank you. Amazing. Killing it as per usual. Moving on to our forum questions. I will also

• 59:51

just keep the video of a Cyclops fight in the background. So you can have something to look at

• 59:57

whilst I ask the questions. First question is from Nick. Oh, wait, actually, let's do

• 1:00:02

studio updates. First. Oh, studio. Yeah, let's talk with you. And then I'll Yeah.

• 1:00:07

Next question. What's been our studio updates for this month? Well, I think our general studio

• 1:00:15

has been that we're continuing to hire. We hired a lot within like even the last month.

• 1:00:21

I know. Yeah, I think we've hired 20 like seven people this year so far. Yeah. Great,

• 1:00:30

great talent added to the team. Amazing individuals. Thank you guys for your help out

• 1:00:35

there and spreading the word for the project and you know, supporting us because that obviously

• 1:00:42

helps talent get attracted to to working on this this awesome game. We have so many people where

• 1:00:49

we have to expand for we're getting another correct. Another floor incoming another 30 some

• 1:00:56

odd thousand square feet. It'll be nice. We got some construction that'll be starting here in the

• 1:01:02

next month or so. That's going to be an interesting juggling act. But yeah, I don't know. Help me.

• 1:01:11

Is there anything that I'm missing in the month of studio updates? I think I don't know. It's

• 1:01:16

just been heads down. Yeah, it's just been hiring a lot. It's been everybody working really hard

• 1:01:23

towards our milestones. I know we talk about these and you guys don't have context of like

• 1:01:27

the timelines for them. But we have sprints and then we have a certain amount of sprints within

• 1:01:34

a milestone. And so like those are these are ways for us to track in order to see how far we're

• 1:01:38

coming along and we have like a big milestone coming up end of July. Yes, or end of June, early

• 1:01:45

July. So, you know, people are just powering through this last sprint working really hard and

• 1:01:53

getting prepared for it. So, you know, we're working hard to make sure that you guys get Alpha

• 1:01:58

two, that's obviously our next milestone that's going to be external for you guys to be able to

• 1:02:02

play test and experience and you know, there will be some pre test before Alpha two that

• 1:02:07

PI and you know, other folks will be able to enjoy and test out with us, probably more NDA and then

• 1:02:15

we'll get into more of the testing that's expansive that everyone gets to see and check out.

• 1:02:22

I noticed someone said something about a mug and

• 1:02:27

the mug looks so small back there when Steven put it down. I was like, it looks so tiny. And then he

• 1:02:31

picks it up and it's like a baby mug. Yeah, I'm really excited for merch. I know that people have

• 1:02:39

been asking about it. I think it's a balancing act of some folks want it. Some folks are like,

• 1:02:43

why are you selling merch? But we're working towards it homies. Yes, we are working towards

• 1:02:49

that. And in addition, I will give a brief kind of statement that in the near future over the coming

• 1:03:00

I would say few months, we will be discontinuing our pre-order packages. We'll be making that

• 1:03:12

announcement when it happens. But the number of participants that we have for Alpha two as it

• 1:03:17

stands currently is significant. And until we are certain that we want to host additional players,

• 1:03:24

at some point in the next three months, I would say probably we will be discontinuing those packages

• 1:03:30

and we'll have updates if we want to offer different packages at some point in the future

• 1:03:34

after the Alpha two testings succeed. So look forward to that announcement. We'll give you

• 1:03:40

ample time ahead of time so that if there are individuals who still want to participate,

• 1:03:44

they'll have an opportunity to do so. But I did want to give that heads up. Right. And as Stephen

• 1:03:50

said, we will give heads up. We'll make it a news post about those things. We'll make you guys clear.

• 1:03:55

We always do an FAQ for those types of things as well usually. So we try to answer the questions

• 1:03:59

in advance or if questions come up, we update our FAQ to include that. So we will give more

• 1:04:04

information as those things come online and come to fruition. But we have been hearing your feedback.

• 1:04:09

There are things that Stephen and I and Brian Langford, who you've seen on the channel before,

• 1:04:15

and Jacob, who's our lead producer. I think I caught Margaret off guard. We didn't intend to make that announcement.

• 1:04:21

You didn't tell me that. I wanted to give enough lead time, you know, just saying.

• 1:04:26

I think preemptively giving people expectations. Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's definitely something that we're

• 1:04:30

working towards. And obviously, I've been bringing this to Stephen's attention for a long time of

• 1:04:35

folks' feedback in regards to it. But there are reasons why we do have the cosmetic packs.

• 1:04:40

And they have been assisting us in many ways. So thank you all so much for helping us. And it's also pushing forward a lot of the content.

• 1:04:46

So we'll still probably have some semblance of cosmetics, but maybe they'll be less exclusive and more rotational, things like that.

• 1:04:53

So if you do have thoughts, feel free to, you know, let us know. We're always interested in hearing them.

• 1:04:58

We've definitely been reading your feedback. We've heard it. And we're going to be making some adjustments.

• 1:05:04

Yes. All right. Yes. This is the thing we've been discussing. I was not prepared for that. I know. I'm so sorry.

• 1:05:10

I mean, we know the direction. We know what we're going to do. So I just thought I'd give the heads up.

• 1:05:14

Yeah. Because I know people like to watch and see what the cosmetics are before they choose to whether or not they want to actually purchase a package.

• 1:05:20

Yeah. I wanted to let them know, like, we're months away from that being discontinued.

• 1:05:24

So if you are interested in something, you know, watch for the things. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:05:29

For sure. For sure. And then next up, we do have our Q&A, so we'll get to that.

• 1:05:35

As I mentioned before, I'll have the Cyclops fight in the background. So our first question here is from Nick about party dynamics.

• 1:05:42

Can we hit our party mate to wake them up from slumber, perhaps if both of us are flagged?

• 1:05:48

So I guess if someone gets slept.

• 1:05:51

Not your party mate, because you can't flag against your party mate.

• 1:05:55

That is a restriction that's not allowed. However, if you were not at a party, yes, you could attack them to wake them up and break the sleep.

• 1:06:03

In addition, there will also be spells that can be cast to break enchantments and sleep is one of the one of the enchantments that can be broken through the spell cast.

• 1:06:11

So if you have a cleric in your party or bard, they'll have an ability to kind of to remove the negative debuff.

• 1:06:19

Yeah, and kind of going back to the previous discussion we had in the studio update regarding cosmetic packs.

• 1:06:29

If you have a Kickstarter pack, you can still upgrade that. So that'll still be upgradable.

• 1:06:35

And as we've said in the past, before we decide to discontinue the upgrade paths for the Kickstarters, we will give ample notice as well for that.

• 1:06:43

Yes, and then volts wants to know about PVP quests. Will there be quests that players can put that put players against each other slash encourage PVP, for example, an organization's quest for the Traders Guild contradicted by a Thieves Guild quest?

• 1:07:02

Yeah, absolutely. There are quests that interact with PVP.

• 1:07:05

PVP is not a secondary component of the game. PVP is an equitable component of the game.

• 1:07:13

Remember, we are a PVX game, which means that we emphasize both PVP quest lines and story modes and content as well as PVP.

• 1:07:24

It is an intended design theory for Ashes of Creation that the world is not filled with just your friends.

• 1:07:30

The world is also filled with adversaries. And because of that, we will provide opportunities to encourage social friction.

• 1:07:36

And that may be in the form of these PVP oriented quest lines.

• 1:07:41

All right. And then our next one is about looting from Azuray.

• 1:07:45

Will it be possible to kick a player from a party or raid just before killing a boss or to deny them from their share of the loot?

• 1:07:53

Will it be possible to, I'm sorry, say that last part.

• 1:07:55

Will it be possible to kick a player from your raid, like right before you do loot so that they don't get to be part of the loot?

• 1:08:02

Yes, technically, it would be possible for you to kick a player prior to acquiring loot.

• 1:08:08

However, again, because we are a game that relies on social interactions, there are reputations to be had.

• 1:08:16

And if you acquire a reputation as a raid leader or as a party leader of doing something dirty like that, then it's unlikely you'll be able to garner the support of future party members and or raids to lead efforts against these raid bosses.

• 1:08:32

So keeping that in mind.

• 1:08:34

And Hrothgar wants to know about respawning.

• 1:08:39

Will there be a custom respawn or will there be custom respawn points that can be placed by players in the open world or only checkpoint based respawn points like the nearest graveyard slash city to respawn?

• 1:08:54

Yeah, there will not be custom respawn points that can be placed in the world.

• 1:09:00

And then Gartok wants to know about open world distractions.

• 1:09:03

Since travel times are important, what is there to discover that will distract you from going straight to your initial destination?

• 1:09:11

What makes traveling adventurous in Vera?

• 1:09:15

Well, aside from threat and opportunity, which are probably the two biggest distractions that you can encounter while traveling through Vera, you know, those come in different forms.

• 1:09:27

Threat in the form of monsters and events, opportunities in the forms of resources and POIs.

• 1:09:36

There's also achievements that are based around exploration.

• 1:09:39

There's treasure maps that can be found.

• 1:09:41

There's, you know, there's a lot of different things that kind of intersect with travel.

• 1:09:46

The movement of resources, the storage of those resources in which locations, what are available to be sold and purchased at different locations.

• 1:09:52

They might make a detour for you.

• 1:09:58

You know, all of those things kind of contribute to why I would go somewhere and instead change my direction.

• 1:10:06

And then Kestai wants to know about double jumping.

• 1:10:11

Have you considered implementing double jumping into the game at all?

• 1:10:15

Maybe not with player characters, but possibly with mounts since there is already flying and gliding.

• 1:10:20

Yeah, we have. We've considered double jumping for as essentially as a mountability as well.

• 1:10:29

We've considered double jumping as an option. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:10:33

Like frogs and bunnies.

• 1:10:35

Get a little Smash Bro actions in there too.

• 1:10:38

A little triple jump.

• 1:10:40

Next up, we've got DougBug27, which is just an adorable username.

• 1:10:44

Ranged melee is their topic.

• 1:10:47

After watching the mage yield the great sword, I wondered if the arranger archetype will have melee oriented abilities to allow for more balanced fighting style or will the bow always be bay?

• 1:11:03

So arranger definitely exemplifies range, meaning that the majority of their skill tree will likely be abilities that are based on range.

• 1:11:13

However, that does not preclude them from having options in their skill suite to spec into melee based ability types, right?

• 1:11:22

We're not creating a very singularly focused ranger.

• 1:11:27

They will have the opportunity to comprise a skill rotation set that includes melee options, utilities, mobilities, ranged options as part of the class kit.

• 1:11:40

And then Goled wants to know about AoE dynamics.

• 1:11:44

In many PvP MMOs, AoE spam can quickly become the meta and be difficult to balance with simple damage adjustments.

• 1:11:51

More recent MMOs solve this problem by not having the same layered AoE stack damage at all.

• 1:11:59

What is Intrepid doing to combat AoE spam?

• 1:12:03

We have a few ideas on how we want to approach AoEs.

• 1:12:10

There's a vein of thought that is regarding diminishing returns, maximum number of targets. I'm not a huge fan of that.

• 1:12:17

There is diminishing return as it applies to damage conveyed.

• 1:12:23

There is just the fact that we're a collision based game and there's a limited number of bodies that can be located in a particular choke point or in proximity.

• 1:12:33

There's still things that we're testing as part, especially as part of Alpha 2, that we'll likely be testing and wanting to get player feedback on as it relates to curbing the AoE approach of most raid comps.

• 1:12:48

A lot of different games have done a lot of different things to achieve that. We're going to be testing a lot of these different directions and finding which works best for Ashes.

• 1:12:57

Sunscript wants to know about dual wielding.

• 1:13:01

If the dual wield system is flexible, will there be a reliable way to activate the weapon procs of the offhand weapon?

• 1:13:10

If the dual wield specs are flexible,

• 1:13:14

will there be a reliable way to activate the weapon procs of the offhand weapon?

• 1:13:20

So, dual wielded weapons, I believe, have a designated weapon skill tree that's based on the combination of dual wielded weapons.

• 1:13:37

And so, based on the type of dual wield weapons, will determine the available procs in the weapon skill tree.

• 1:13:46

Will there be a way to reliably ensure that procs take effect? Is that the question?

• 1:13:53

Because no, I would say that you can't reliably create a scenario where the proc takes effect.

• 1:14:01

Now, that's not to say that there aren't certain skills that you can use as part of a rotation that might create a scenario where you're ensured your next weapon attack will trigger a proc.

• 1:14:13

There could be synergies there between the skill rotation and the weapon skill tree.

• 1:14:19

But I would say no, by the very nature of what a proc is, they're not reliable.

• 1:14:24

That's why they proc.

• 1:14:26

That's why they proc. And Phantom MX wants to know about crafting. How close are we to seeing a showcase on crafting?

• 1:14:37

We are pretty close.

• 1:14:41

Yeah.

• 1:14:42

Pretty close.

• 1:14:43

I think you've been seeing kind of some of those things coming.

• 1:14:47

We had it. We had it.

• 1:14:49

We had like what it was like six months ago we did a the gatherables one, but the crafting one is pretty close. So stay tuned.

• 1:14:58

Yeah, we're, we're planning and planning.

• 1:15:01

And with that, that's our last question for today.

• 1:15:04

Oh my goodness.

• 1:15:06

I know it's not.

• 1:15:08

Sometimes we have like two hour long streams.

• 1:15:11

Margaret was like, don't make an hour long video and I was like, wait, what?

• 1:15:16

I'm always like, try to make it like 15 to 20 minutes.

• 1:15:19

Here's your run a show. And then it goes chaos.

• 1:15:25

But you guys enjoy it. You always enjoy watching them.

• 1:15:28

Hopefully you've been enjoying the new format that we've been doing recently and liking that.

• 1:15:33

We always take your feedback. So please send it our way.

• 1:15:36

And we hope that you have enjoyed getting a little sneak peek at one of our boss fights.

• 1:15:42

We want your feedback. So definitely head on over to forums.ashesofcreation.com and send us your feedback.

• 1:15:48

We will also have a boss mechanic dev discussion coming up that will be not specific to Cyclops.

• 1:15:54

So we would love, love to get your thoughts on that.

• 1:15:57

Make sure that you read those prompts.

• 1:15:59

You don't necessarily have to give feedback just on those prompts, but give us feedback on that so that we can report that to the development team.

• 1:16:07

And of course, we want to extend a huge thank you to you all for coming here and watching us live.

• 1:16:12

Or if you're watching us on YouTube, we appreciate you.

• 1:16:15

And of course, to the developers who joined us today, you know, Trad, Jason and Doug, we appreciate you all joining us.

• 1:16:23

And of course, Steven, we know that your time is very, very valuable.

• 1:16:27

So we hope that you all, you know, are staying safe and healthy.

• 1:16:31

And reminder that the VOD will be up on the 4k VOD will be up on our YouTube channel shortly.

• 1:16:38

So stay tuned. And we'll also have the full development update over on our YouTube channel tomorrow.

• 1:16:43

And if you leave a comment on the full development update and you're subscribed and you have it so that we can see that you're subscribed, you may get your comments spotlighted.

• 1:16:52

So, yeah, you could be spotlighted on the next stream.

• 1:16:55

And of course, follow us on all of the social platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever, whatever is your jam.

• 1:17:02

We try to keep you guys up to date and share lots of goodies with you every almost every day.

• 1:17:07

So if you're interested in more ashes and barren goodness in your life, come check it out.

• 1:17:13

And with that, we're going to wrap up for today. We hope that you have a great rest of May.

• 1:17:19

The rest of this day. That's it. We're in June, you guys.

• 1:17:23

It's madness. And we'll see you for our June development update.

• 1:17:29

Bye, everyone. Toodles.