Talk:2024-03-29 Livestream

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תמליל גולמי

Intro

• 00:00

hello everyone and welcome to our glorious ashes of creation march development update

• 00:21

we hope that you've been having a wonderful month we have been so busy we have a very very

• 00:29

long live stream for you so oh my gosh buckle in grab your snacks but yeah get some popcorn

• 00:37

make sure to get some refreshments margaret and i are actually talking about whether or not we

• 00:40

should include a mandatory intermission in the showcase today like a little five minute get up

• 00:45

potty break thing our video editor and community folks and social folks were like maybe we should

• 00:50

have like a little intermission in between but oh my gosh i know that you don't you don't want

• 00:56

any pauses um but

• 00:59

uh we will also we have a lot we have a lot planned um so hopefully you are prepared like

• 01:05

i'm saying if you want to go get some snacks now i highly recommend it um but as you can see below

• 01:10

today's plan is we have a few reminders we have our fighter archetype preview which i know a lot

• 01:16

of people have been really excited about it is the i think one of the longest archetype previews

• 01:22

we've had i think someone posted a snapshot of all the links of all of them they just keep getting

• 01:29

well i mean as you know this is this is a byproduct of active development right as things get more

• 01:35

fleshed out there's more stuff to talk about and to show you guys you know as you've been watching

• 01:41

are going to see you know back from the early fighter you know basic melee to the ranged weapon

• 01:48

to the cleric to the you know ranger and tank like each of these are more and more fleshed and now

• 01:54

you're getting an idea of what alpha 2 you know is going to consist of from an archetype perspective

• 01:59

this one this fighter archetype preview uh is very detailed and we actually we even get into

• 02:04

more of the work that brian's been doing and the combat team has been doing on weapon uh progression

• 02:10

skills as well and those are pretty detailed now so and we mostly show about an hour and 40 minutes

• 02:16

of of archetype uh preview no no worries i just blurred their ears off i was trying to fix myself

• 02:21

a little bit i'm trying to adjust my audio to match yours um and i might have just pushed it

• 02:28

a little too loud

• 02:29

um but yeah we are sure are only showing with the great sword um in the weapon skill trees but

• 02:35

i think that it will still be exciting for y'all to see and check out um and then after that we do

• 02:41

want to just do a quick studio update and then we have some art uh updates as well for y'all and

• 02:47

we'll do a little q a we'll probably try to get through that pretty quick because it's going to be

• 02:51

a long one today um but let's get right into the reminders

Reminders

• 02:59

of uh the first thing we have here today is of course our youtube spotlight don't forget

• 03:04

to subscribe to our youtube and follow us in all the places if you subscribe to us over

• 03:09

on our youtube channel and leave a comment on our dev update version of the live stream your

• 03:15

your spotlight could be or your comment could be spotlighted that was a mouthful um so this one is

• 03:21

from rybe's genesis who wants to know we know that normally that the normal death penalty incurs a

• 03:27

myriad of penalties for the player but we don't know the number the numbers behind the penalty

• 03:33

for instance what percentage of materials do players drop what percentage of glint is dropped

• 03:38

how severe is the skill and stat dampening and what is the average time it will take a player

• 03:43

to work off xp debt from one death that was a lot of questions in your one comment they were

• 03:49

cramming it um okay so so just just recap real quick there we're talking about percentage lost

• 03:57

time to recoup that percentage um the material percentage uh sunk versus um

• 04:04

uh lootable and then what was the last one uh glint drop and then uh your stat dampening

• 04:11

stance dampening got it got it got it um okay so first i want to say that the most important

• 04:18

most important part of this question um is you're asking about values right you're asking about

• 04:26

percentile values

• 04:27

you're asking about time that it takes to recoup the percentage and whatnot any time that we're at

• 04:34

a stage we're in now and that in alpha 2 we're going to be testing this those values are the

• 04:41

most subject to change um so to be clear like we're going to do best estimate best guess kind

• 04:48

of balance pass for alpha 2 with the full expectation and understanding that the purpose

• 04:57

is uh and take into consideration player interaction with those numbers uh and what

• 05:03

feels best so so just off the bat like those values are not what we should be focusing on

• 05:10

at this stage uh but to give you an idea kind of where we are um first of all like when we're

• 05:17

talking about dropping um items that are in your material inventory whether that be glint or that

• 05:25

be other material types you know we're going to be doing more of that in the future if we're going

• 05:26

to do more of that in the future we're going to be doing more of that in the future we're going to

• 05:27

we're talking roughly between anywhere from 20 to 30% of a stack is going to be

• 05:35

lootable on a per death basis. Now, that is a value that can change based off of the types

• 05:45

of bags that you are using to carry those materials. In addition, there's other progression

• 05:54

that can allow you, and some stats I believe, that can allow you to mitigate that value also.

• 06:00

When we are talking about the percentage that's lost, or excuse me, not lost, the percentage

• 06:06

of your level that is accrued as experience debt from death, generally you can expect that that's

• 06:13

going to live around three to four percent of the level in accrued experience debt per death.

• 06:19

However, additionally, there is a way to mitigate that

• 06:23

percentage of your level that is accrued as experience debt per death.

• 06:24

And that is through the resurrection ability that's provided to clerics. So clerics have the

• 06:31

ability to resurrect their allies, and that resurrection will return a percentage that

• 06:38

would have been accrued as experience debt. And that return percentage is predicated on the

• 06:45

investment into the resability, as well as the stat of the cleric that is tied to the resurrection

• 06:53

effect as well. So those can return percentages, so you can mitigate that to a degree.

• 07:01

How long will it take you to recover that, and what stat dampening kind of occurs?

• 07:06

Anywhere within a level, if you acquire 100% experience debt for that level,

• 07:13

you max out the experience debt, essentially, you don't ever buy that down, you're probably

• 07:19

looking around a 20% stat efficacy dampener.

• 07:23

So on average, if you're at 100% debt for a level, and you got to work all that off before

• 07:30

you can start progressing at the level again, you're at around 20% overall stat dampening.

• 07:37

Time it takes you to regain that debt is predicated on the level you're at, right,

• 07:42

and how you exp. So that's a highly variable value. Yeah, I think those hopefully answer

• 07:50

all your questions. Yeah, and I know that that one's one that people have,

• 07:53

heard a little bit before leads elements of it, I think Glint is a new element of that,

• 07:59

that wasn't there before when we've answered it. But you know, not everybody's, some people are

• 08:05

newer to our community. So that will be handy for them. And of course, if you want your comments

• 08:10

spotlighted on YouTube, head on over to our YouTube channel, to get your spotlighted,

• 08:14

we pull them at random. And just to be clear, you know, I just want to comment, you made a great

• 08:18

point there, Margaret, you know, some people may not be very familiar with these systems.

• 08:23

To be clear, the philosophy and ashes of creation is that we are a bit more difficult of a game

• 08:30

experience. That is what we're trying to accomplish. We've all played a lot of MMOs,

• 08:35

where you're either always a winner, or it's very easy to fall and get up again. And that's okay,

• 08:40

like those games need a place to exist. And a lot of people enjoy playing them.

• 08:45

I historically as a as a dungeon master, and my tabletop campaigns can be a bit ruthless.

• 08:53

And I think that it's interesting if the difficulty level you're faced with in this

• 08:59

open world with many other players, forces you to think critically about strategy, or about

• 09:07

cooperation and teamwork, right, and that the challenges you face are not easily surpassed

• 09:17

or bypassed. And so in that regard, you know, a system like, you know, experience debt,

• 09:23

doesn't necessarily de level, you don't want to de level player, but we do want to make the the fear

• 09:30

of loss palpable. We do want to make this the the failure real. And that can be an encouragement to

• 09:40

perform better. Because when you do succeed, it will feel that much better.

• 09:47

Yeah, so, you know, keeping those things in then. And of course, we have continued to

• 09:53

gather your guys's feedback as we move forward and things. And just wanted to make one more note

• 09:59

on the questions for the q&a segment on the forums, we do try to only pull newer questions. And we do

• 10:04

try to give people the answers. If you've asked a repeated question that we've answered before,

• 10:08

we try to give you where you can find those answers or even answer them for you in the

• 10:12

forums. So just keeping that in mind, but the q&a one for the spotlight for the comment is,

• 10:16

you know, it's a special outlier. We do have dev discussions, though, we're constantly trying to

• 10:23

give us feedback on various different things, whether that's through our game, game play loops,

• 10:28

or our future gameplay loops that we want to showcase. But this one that we put out is

• 10:33

regarding time dedication. And we asked you how much time do you think someone should invest in

• 10:38

order to become an expert at an MMORPG? What are the differences between an expert player versus

• 10:43

a casual player, time commitment, skill, game knowledge, etc. And we gave you some other prompts

• 10:48

as well. So definitely, if you have some thoughts on this, you want to give us your feedback,

• 10:52

your suggestions,

• 10:53

or you hop into that thread and pop that over because Roshan and Vecna are going to be compiling

• 11:00

the data on that soon and sending that over to your development team. So please, please head on

• 11:04

over there. And our next one that we're going to be going over is going to be about item drops. And

• 11:08

I know y'all, y'all better have some thoughts on that, because I know you do. That is one of the

• 11:14

biggest things is progression with items. So definitely, definitely stay tuned for that. And

• 11:20

without further ado, we'll get straight into the fighter archetype preview.

• 11:23

But with that, I'm going to let Steven do his preface before the preface. But I do want to

• 11:31

preface that it is very long. So buckle in, make sure you have your snacks, take your potty break

• 11:35

right now. But go ahead, Steven. Yeah, absolutely. And just to

• 11:41

just to also say that we did experience success last month in our preview where we launched the

• 11:48

YouTube video at the same time on the stream. We'll be doing that again today,

• 11:53

but it's going to be live on YouTube. So those of you who wish to watch the video in in 4k or 2k,

• 12:00

I'm not sure which one we uploaded it and have the opportunity to do so on our YouTube channel. So

• 12:04

that's going to be going live momentarily with us. However, remember, please stick around on stream,

• 12:11

make sure you give us your commentary and feedback here. It is a bit of a ritual for me to go back

• 12:17

and watch the live stream again and kind of read through the commentary as I don't get to see it.

• 12:21

Well,

• 12:21

during the live stream, because I'm actually chatting with you guys. But,

• 12:23

yes, so to preface this, obviously, the same is true. This is a work in progress. We are working

Fighter Preview

• 12:31

towards Alpha 2, particularly UI, balance, big time balance. When you guys go into watching

• 12:40

these abilities, please understand that these are very finger in the wind approaches to some

• 12:47

of the numbers and values within these abilities that's going to get tinkered with just before

• 12:53

we get into Alpha 2. There's going to be a, you know, final kind of balance phase before the Alpha

• 12:58

2 begins. And then we'll be iterating on that, obviously, as Alpha 2 is continuing.

• 13:06

In addition, performance, right? We are still working on performance. There are still some

• 13:10

lighting changes that need to be done. And the other thing that I want to talk a little bit

• 13:16

about is like, when you're thinking about feedback, talk about the things you both enjoyed

• 13:21

and the things you would like to see.

• 13:23

And then, of course, you're thinking about the things that you would like to see done differently,

• 13:24

right? In particular, we're talking about mobility of the class. We're talking about utility of the

• 13:30

class. We're talking about, you know, it's role in combat, right? What you expect to see out of the

• 13:37

class fantasy that is a fighter. You're going to see the abilities. I think there's 17 or 18

• 13:42

abilities probably here with this fighter. We're going to go through those in the first, like,

• 13:48

45 minutes or so, or each ability one by one. We're going to talk about them.

• 13:53

We're going to talk about their expansion trees as well. And then we're also going to talk about

• 13:58

the great sword and weapon progression. So, hour and 45-ish minutes or what is it?

• 14:05

Hour and 38 minutes.

• 14:07

Hour and 38 minutes. This is a big one.

• 14:10

And we'll have the 4K video going up live and it will be in premiere mode as well. So,

• 14:13

I think that's already, we're getting that started for you guys. So, we'll see you in a moment.

• 14:17

All right, guys. Enjoy.

• 14:23

Hello, everyone, and welcome to yet another day in the world of Vera. And we have an exciting

• 14:46

update for you today. We are going to be showing off one of the most beloved archetypes in

• 14:53

fantasy MMORPGs, the fighter archetype. And there has been a lot of work that's been done

• 15:00

in progressing this. Obviously, the last time we showed anything remotely fighter related,

• 15:04

it was, I think, almost two years ago when we did our first basic weapon, melee weapon revamp from

• 15:12

Alpha 1. And there were a couple abilities, obviously, that we showed off, but nothing like

• 15:17

the showcase we have stored for you today. You are going to get some pretty in-depth understanding

• 15:23

of how this archetype has been redesigned, um, and the progression that's going to be available

• 15:29

as part of Alpha 2. And we have joining us to talk through that today, two of our absolutely stellar

• 15:35

and glorious senior designers on the combat team, Trad,� Brian. How are you guys doing?

• 15:42

Doing pretty good here. Glad to be back on stream.

• 15:46

I'm doing great. Happy to be here.

• 15:47

Happy to have you both. I know you guys have put in a lot of work and, and I think really,

• 15:52

representing pretty well what a lot of people who played fighters and other MMOs love about the

• 15:58

class. I'm excited to chat with you about the direction you guys have taken. And obviously

• 16:03

helping to make that a reality, feature team owner on the combat side, as well as one of our senior

• 16:09

engineers. Keenan, how are you doing, buddy? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. And now that

• 16:16

you mention it, I think that original fighter stream was actually my first stream. Was it

• 16:20

really? Yeah, I think so. I think it was. I think you're right. Yeah, that was a lot of work that

• 16:25

went into kind of obviously changing the direction of melee and combat in general at that time.

• 16:30

And now we are seeing some of the fruitful persistence in that direction. So one other

• 16:39

thing I want to let you guys know is obviously we are here back again in the Riverlands. And we are

• 16:45

actually in front of Oakenbane Keep, which is an area you guys saw at the beginning of the

• 16:50

the end of the last live stream, from the Commission's live stream, and right when we

• 16:56

ended that live stream, a story arc began in this area called An Ancient Violence, and

• 17:01

we're going to be going in there and taking a look around, but first, I think what we

• 17:06

should do is something that we have successfully done in the past with these showcases, is

• 17:11

kind of show off each individual ability first, talk about what they do, and give you guys

• 17:16

a sense of the archetype and the abilities available to us before we get in to combat

• 17:22

with some freaky goblin town stuff.

• 17:27

So, do I have a volunteer today that could help tank some blows, potentially?

• 17:33

Yeah, I'll help.

• 17:34

Nice, awesome, alright, very cool.

• 17:38

So, which should we start with first, what do you guys think?

• 17:46

Start with Blitz.

• 17:47

Blitz?

• 17:47

Alright, let's see, Blitz is the first one on the bar.

• 17:49

Yeah, let's go down the bar.

• 17:51

Alright, let's do it.

• 17:54

Actually, you know what, I'm sorry, why don't we first start with Momentum?

• 18:00

That sounds like a good idea, because Momentum is obviously going to be referenced in Blitz,

• 18:04

I was just looking at that, and as well as a number of other abilities, and Momentum

• 18:08

is essentially a class energy system, is that right, Tread?

• 18:13

That is correct.

• 18:15

Talk to me about Momentum.

• 18:16

Yeah, I'll go into a little more detail about that.

• 18:18

So, one thing that we feel adds a lot to just class identity in general is something that

• 18:25

is beyond just an ability, in this case, it's a class, or in this case, an archetype resource

• 18:29

called Combat Momentum.

• 18:32

So, in your top left of the screen here, you'll see that you've got your standard health bar

• 18:36

and your mana bar, and then a third empty bar that you'll see kind of build up in combat

• 18:40

as we play, that you build up through all the different actions that you're doing through

• 18:45

the kit, and you can use this resource to get passive power to your character based

• 18:52

on which form you are in, which we'll get into in a little bit here, and you can also

• 18:57

spend it for certain unique, especially powerful bonuses.

• 19:01

So, and guys, just to remind everyone, obviously, everything you're going to see here is still

• 19:06

a work in progress, we are working towards Alpha 2, especially as it relates to the UI,

• 19:12

as it relates to the effects.

• 19:15

Designs will change, balances will change, so keep that in mind, what we're looking for

• 19:20

is kind of direction, right?

• 19:22

Direction on this archetype, what do you think looks cool, what other fighter influences

• 19:28

have you had in other MMOs that you think could be incorporated as well, that's all

• 19:31

part of the discussion.

• 19:33

Okay, so Momentum is that class energy ability, and as you guys have seen, obviously, other

• 19:37

classes, Trad is talking about, has some similar kind of class energy mechanics.

• 19:44

Momentum is definite.

• 19:45

Definitely, it looks like it is as it sounds, right, I mean, this is something that just

• 19:51

passively is generating increased stat bonuses, and those stat bonuses, we'll get to in a

• 19:58

little while, how they can be applied based on some individual buffs.

• 20:02

So, now that we know what Momentum is, and it's good to generate that, let us talk a

• 20:06

little bit about Blitz.

• 20:07

What is Blitz as an ability?

• 20:10

Yeah, Blitz is your gap closer, your bread and butter gap closer.

• 20:15

You pick a target, and you charge to the target.

• 20:19

There's also a spec option that interacts with the resource if you choose it, that generates

• 20:24

some combat momentum, so it lets you kind of open the encounter with a little bit of

• 20:30

resource to start.

• 20:31

Okay, so I'm going to charge the target directly, and I'm going to deal damage on a rival, which

• 20:37

is physical based, and this spec option says that it generates 20 additional combat momentum.

• 20:44

Now, presumably, combat momentum...

• 20:45

Does not overflow after it hits the maximum 100 points, is that correct?

• 20:52

That's right.

• 20:52

Yeah, okay, cool.

• 20:54

And then I see under it, there is an additional spec option that says, killing an enemy with

• 21:01

lethal blow will reset the cooldown of Blitz.

• 21:03

So, the more I kill, essentially, if I use lethal blow, I can just keep that momentum

• 21:08

up, generating additional combat momentum, so I can use a little bit after, you know,

• 21:14

potentially landing on the target.

• 21:15

And replenish that quickly after with executing lethal blow on the target as a kill, and then

• 21:23

raging Blitz into the next.

• 21:25

Yeah, it turns you into more of an aggressive, mobile character if you go with that.

• 21:29

Like, you're killing enemies, and then you need to pick a new target.

• 21:31

He might be far away.

• 21:32

You charge to him, kill him, rinse and repeat.

• 21:34

Cool.

• 21:35

All right, let's take a look at this.

• 21:39

Ooh, nice.

• 21:41

Okay, that was cool.

• 21:43

And presumably, this also scales...

• 21:46

Verticality as well.

• 21:50

Let's test it.

• 21:51

And guys, for the purposes, obviously, of this demonstration, I've set my cooldowns

• 21:54

to zero so that I can more repeatedly use...

• 21:57

Oh, here we go.

• 21:59

We got some...

• 22:00

Kill those little mushrooms, huh?

• 22:03

I don't want to spoil the skills.

• 22:04

I'll nuke them for you.

• 22:08

It's a kind of stormy day with this ancient violence in the background.

• 22:13

Oh, and by the way, we are playing...

• 22:15

For the first time in, I believe, in-game, the Ren'kai orcs.

• 22:23

Got my trusty Mohawk going on.

• 22:26

It is probably the most appropriate race-class combination.

• 22:34

I thought so.

• 22:37

All right, so I'm going to try to jump...

• 22:38

I'm going to try to scale this thing on you.

• 22:40

Let's see here.

• 22:42

Oh, man.

• 22:43

Now, that is cool.

• 22:45

That was awesome.

• 22:47

Let me do that again.

• 22:49

Yeah, this is kind of an answer.

• 22:51

You get to, like, that archer on the ledge that's just free-shooting on you, and it's

• 22:54

like, oh, I'm just going to get up there with you.

• 22:57

Oh, my bad there.

• 22:58

Let me try this one more time.

• 22:59

One more time.

• 23:02

Oh, very nice.

• 23:04

Okay, so by default...

• 23:07

So now...

• 23:09

Let me try this.

• 23:09

Oh, did you just die?

• 23:11

I think that was a bad nuke.

• 23:13

My bad.

• 23:14

From someone.

• 23:14

My bad.

• 23:15

No, that was for sure my bad.

• 23:20

That feels really good, by the way.

• 23:23

That feels clean.

• 23:25

Very clean.

• 23:25

Oh, there's...

• 23:27

Did somebody else die over here?

• 23:29

Just a little mushroom.

• 23:31

Oh, a little mushroom.

• 23:32

Okay.

• 23:33

Okay, Blitz feels really good.

• 23:34

Well done with that.

• 23:35

I like that.

• 23:36

It's super smooth and fluid, it feels.

• 23:39

You know, there's not really any movement interruption either on contact or at the initiation.

• 23:45

Which is obviously one of the most, you know, ideal feeling points of any mobility skill, right?

• 23:51

Is that fluidity throughout.

• 23:56

Okay, let's talk about the next one.

• 23:59

So, we have Brutal Cleave.

• 24:03

Yep, this is probably your most bread-and-butter AoE attack.

• 24:06

You can...

• 24:08

It does a medium amount of damage.

• 24:09

It's not one of your more spectacular AoEs, but it's your primary AoE resource.

• 24:15

So, you're going to be using this a lot to build your momentum.

• 24:19

And you also weave this a lot between your weapon combos, because your weapon attack finishers will reset seconds off of this cooldown.

• 24:28

So, if you're, like, going back and forth between cleaves and weapon attacks, you get to do more of them and have more uptime.

• 24:36

Okay.

• 24:39

Yep, that's pretty cool.

• 24:40

Alright, so this does...

• 24:41

Also, the more targets you hit.

• 24:42

So, that's why it's really good in AoE situations, is you get more momentum.

• 24:45

Based on how many targets you're hitting.

• 24:48

Got it.

• 24:49

So, after jumping in with Blitz, especially if there's multiple targets, going with a Brutal Cleave is just going to really ramp that momentum.

• 24:58

And then it looks like also that this ability, it says, shares a cooldown with overpower.

• 25:07

And it says also the weapon combo finisher will reduce its cooldown by eight seconds.

• 25:14

Yep.

• 25:15

So, you'll be resetting overpowers more frequently, because if we want to just jump over to that one, that's the single target counterpart to this attack.

• 25:24

It's more...

• 25:25

It's just a single target hit, but it is a shorter cooldown, so you can reset them more frequently.

• 25:29

And it's also generating your resource.

• 25:31

So, it kind of...

• 25:32

You're choosing which one to use based on what your enemies are.

• 25:38

Very cool.

• 25:40

That looks great, by the way.

• 25:42

Scott did a...

• 25:42

Scott and Siva have done an amazing job.

• 25:45

Yeah, I'm really happy with how the effects turned out.

• 25:49

Like, making physical look this cool, like, you know, it was a feat.

• 25:59

Oh, my bad.

• 26:02

Okay.

• 26:03

All right.

• 26:03

Very cool.

• 26:04

I like that.

• 26:05

This Brutal Cleave is awesome.

• 26:07

Let's talk about MAME.

• 26:09

Here, let's go over here a little bit.

• 26:11

Right here.

• 26:14

Talk to me a little bit about MAME.

• 26:15

MAME.

• 26:17

So, this is a more powerful AOE attack in the kit.

• 26:21

Do you have a spec right now for the range?

• 26:23

Yeah, let me take a look here.

• 26:24

Let me take...

• 26:25

And, by the way, Brutal Cleave, I apologize.

• 26:27

There's no additional functionality, it looks like, on Brutal Cleave.

• 26:30

But we did talk also about...

• 26:35

Overpowers on the right column.

• 26:37

It's an auto-granted ability, so it's not going to be in this tree.

• 26:41

Oh, got it.

• 26:41

There you go.

• 26:42

Okay.

• 26:43

So, it doesn't have any spec options either.

• 26:45

That's right.

• 26:45

But MAME does.

• 26:47

And should I turn MAME off?

• 26:48

Let me turn the spec option off first, because this actually extends the distance of the projectile

• 26:54

by essentially launching that piercing projectile.

• 26:58

Is that right?

• 26:59

Yeah, let's take a point out of that first, and then we'll just kind of look at the base effect.

• 27:04

Okay.

• 27:05

So, this is just a cone in front of you.

• 27:07

You're hitting in a cone in front of you.

• 27:08

It's a pretty heavy hitter.

• 27:10

You're not resetting the cooldown of this, so you need to be more...

• 27:13

You know...

• 27:15

Aware of when you're using this.

• 27:18

But it also has the added effect of it will do more damage against recently tripped enemies.

• 27:24

So, that's where you really want to save this, is if you've tripped someone, or if someone else has tripped an enemy,

• 27:29

you capitalize on it by basically smashing down on them with this.

• 27:35

That looks so good.

• 27:37

Love it.

• 27:38

That is awesome.

• 27:39

Okay.

• 27:39

So, let's spec into the projectile.

• 27:45

Now, this is going to give you, obviously, a lot more range.

• 27:51

Oh!

• 27:53

This adds a piercing projectile on top of the attack.

• 27:58

So, you're still getting that frontal AOE hitbox that's staying the same, but you're adding a projectile on top of it.

• 28:04

And the cool thing here, too, is the projectile gets the damage bonus from the trip.

• 28:09

So, you could actually combo into a target that you see trip from range with this as well.

• 28:14

One reason this is a spec option is some fighters will want to be using this in a way that, you know, you don't want to pull a mob in the distance.

• 28:22

So, it's just kind of an added layer of skill if you're using this in, like, a really cluttered environment.

• 28:27

But it's kind of a trade-off.

• 28:30

That feels really good.

• 28:33

That is awesome.

• 28:35

I'll give myself some mana.

• 28:40

There we go.

• 28:42

Okay, cool.

• 28:43

I love MAME.

• 28:44

That is an awesome ability.

• 28:45

Let's talk about Battle Cry.

• 28:49

This is definitely one of my personal favorites.

• 28:52

It doesn't do damage, but it's got some really cool effects going on with it.

• 28:57

So, do you want me to start talking about it?

• 29:00

Yeah, sure.

• 29:01

Use it first.

• 29:02

Okay, cool.

• 29:03

So, I love this as an AOE opener.

• 29:06

What it does, it does a few things.

• 29:07

One, it riles your allies, specifically your party members.

• 29:11

It will also apply a status effect called Shroud.

• 29:14

So, it will be shaken to your enemies, and then it will generate a certain amount of combat momentum per ally that you riled.

• 29:25

And then, just to elaborate, because people are like, what is shaken?

• 29:29

What is riled?

• 29:30

Well, shaken right now is a debuff on enemies that whenever they take damage, they have a small chance to become tripped.

• 29:38

So, there's some good combos with this where, like, you go into, like, a multi-hit AOE, and you can cap them off.

• 29:43

So, there's some good combos with this where, like, you go into, like, a multi-hit AOE, and you can cap them off.

• 29:44

So, there's some good combos with this where, like, you go into, like, a multi-hit AOE, and you can cap them off.

• 29:44

So, there's some good combos with this where, like, you go into, like, a multi-hit AOE, and you can cap them off.

• 29:45

And then, by triggering tripped status, that flows into maim really well.

• 29:50

So, that's one of the combos I like to do, is shout into, like, a whirlwind, which you'll see in a bit, into, you know, maim to do extra damage against targets that have procced that effect.

• 30:03

Oh, these are feeling great.

• 30:05

Wow, I do like the battle cry.

• 30:08

That is, like, probably the most standard feeling, like, you know.

• 30:14

Unexpected action on behalf of the fighter, some type of battle cry effect, and this one captures it well.

• 30:22

I love that, that's cool.

• 30:24

Okay, we saw whirlwind back a while ago, and talk to me about what's changed about whirlwind.

• 30:34

So, whirlwind is actually pretty close to what it's always been.

• 30:38

It's an AOE channeled attack that ramps up in speed.

• 30:42

The longer you hold it, there's also a spec option on the right, if you want to pick that, that gives a final upward swing at the end, that has some additional bonuses to it.

• 30:53

Okay, so let's do it without the spec first.

• 31:02

Alright, cool.

• 31:04

So, it exits out after, essentially, the spinning there, let's see.

• 31:08

Yep.

• 31:09

I'm out of mana.

• 31:10

There we go.

• 31:12

Let's try it again.

• 31:16

Yeah, you're also able to move during it, as you're seeing here.

• 31:20

So, it's pretty nice to be able to just kind of, like, use this while you're moving through a pack of mobs.

• 31:25

Got it.

• 31:26

So, let me spec now into the option that I could invest additional points into this particular skill if I wanted to give myself a finishing blow, essentially.

• 31:42

Oh, nice, okay.

• 31:44

So, you get a big hit at the end.

• 31:46

Also, you can stop this at any time, so you're seeing him do the full channel, but if it's like, oh, I want to, you know, cancel out of it early, like, let's say one thing I'll do from time to time is, if I shake in enemies and then this ability's kind of good at tripping enemies because it's hitting really rapidly, you might see a trip and you can cancel out of it into a maim early, if you want to show off that combo.

• 32:10

Into a maim?

• 32:11

Yep, let's do it.

• 32:12

There you go.

• 32:16

Oh, nice, that's cool.

• 32:18

That feels good, let's see.

• 32:24

Oh, that's so cool, that's awesome.

• 32:28

Alright, cool.

• 32:29

Whirlwind feels good, too.

• 32:31

Alright, Cataclysm is another one that we saw a while ago.

• 32:34

What's changed with Cataclysm?

• 32:36

Yeah, a lot has changed with this one.

• 32:38

It used to be, like, this big, like, hammer that would appear over your head.

• 32:42

And then it hit, like, an AoE kind of far away from you.

• 32:45

Overall, it ended up feeling a little awkward to use.

• 32:47

We wanted to turn this more into, like, your big frontal AoE damage.

• 32:51

So this is, like, the other end of the spectrum, like, stronger than maim.

• 32:55

It's just a big ultimate, like, AoE attack, essentially.

• 33:00

It's pretty straightforward.

• 33:01

Alright, no additional spec options here.

• 33:04

And by the way, for those of you out here, you know, that are wondering about kind of how augments, even though we haven't seen a lot of augment work,

• 33:12

being done, a lot of this tech is foundational in applying these types of spec options, which augments, essentially, are as well.

• 33:22

But they can more radically change, fundamentally, what the ability is.

• 33:25

So that Whirlwind, you know, adding an additional component to the ability, which is that climactic Whirlwind, essentially,

• 33:35

could be considered functionally as an augment, an additional effect applied to the ability.

• 33:40

Um, okay.

• 33:42

Let us showcase that new Cataclysm.

• 33:46

Oh, that feels much better.

• 33:51

Yeah, that's cool.

• 33:55

This is also another way to apply Shaken to enemies as well.

• 33:59

It and Battlecry are kind of on separate longer cooldowns, so you might find yourself sort of going back and forth between these interchangeably.

• 34:07

And you can change the direction here mid-windup.

• 34:11

Yep.

• 34:12

Nice.

• 34:16

I like that.

• 34:17

Obviously, the granularity in that.

• 34:19

Yeah, it gives you a little more agency.

• 34:21

Like, you're not just locked in place.

• 34:23

Because it is a full-rooted ability.

• 34:25

You cannot move during this.

• 34:27

But being able to turn, like, gives you a little bit more, you know, control over what happens as things might change mid-cast.

• 34:34

Okay.

• 34:35

Yeah.

• 34:36

I totally agree.

• 34:37

I love the freedom feeling there.

• 34:40

Um.

• 34:41

That, you know, is a philosophy and a standard that's taken across a lot of the classes as it comes to, like, you know, rooted ability use and whatnot.

• 34:49

That freedom of agency, that movement is core to kind of the melee experience and general skill usage.

• 34:56

All right.

• 34:57

Next up we have Rupture.

• 34:59

Yep.

• 35:00

So this is an interesting one.

• 35:02

It's a single target attack.

• 35:04

And it puts a temporary debuff on your target where if they are moving.

• 35:10

While that effect is on them.

• 35:12

They will build up wounded stacks.

• 35:14

Oh my god.

• 35:16

We can talk about that status effect in a moment here.

• 35:19

Can we talk about the fact that he should have, like, literally zero blood pressure remaining after rupturing that much blood?

• 35:26

Oh my god.

• 35:27

We can build in that mechanic.

• 35:29

But also you'll notice at the end of it he takes a big hit of damage.

• 35:34

And the idea is that that damage will scale with how much wound they have.

• 35:38

So this will have kind of some inter synergy going on with itself.

• 35:43

But also there will be other sources of wound that you could kind of synergize with this further for that big delayed hit at the end.

• 35:51

Wow.

• 35:52

Okay.

• 35:53

So the wounds are essentially these stacking debuffs that get applied.

• 35:58

And that's going to, you said, decrease their healing received.

• 36:04

Correct.

• 36:05

And also increases damage dealt.

• 36:07

Increases damage taken from all sources?

• 36:10

From physical sources.

• 36:12

From physical sources.

• 36:13

Got it.

• 36:14

Very cool.

• 36:16

Yep.

• 36:17

And the more you build that up, because this is actually a stacking thing.

• 36:20

It's not just, like, a single status effect.

• 36:22

So the more you're wounding the target, the more and more debuffed their healing, incoming healing becomes.

• 36:30

So it's one of those things where if a fighter is, like, on your target that you're trying to keep alive, you want to peel a fighter off that stack.

• 36:36

You want to peel a fighter off that target, because the longer they get that uptime, the harder it's going to become to heal them up.

• 36:48

That's cool.

• 36:50

That's awesome.

• 36:51

Okay.

• 36:52

Love rupture.

• 36:53

Also love the, an insane amount of blood that's happening.

• 36:59

Overpower.

• 37:01

Talk to me about overpower.

• 37:02

What do we got here?

• 37:04

We talked about this one.

• 37:05

Oh, that's right.

• 37:06

The resource generator.

• 37:07

That's right.

• 37:08

That's right.

• 37:09

And that one doesn't have any additional spec options.

• 37:11

The rupture also looks like, did that one have spec options?

• 37:17

It does not.

• 37:18

But if you go in, so you will see kind of to the right of rupture, there are some things that it unlocks.

• 37:26

Like, what's, oh, sorry, below it, maim, actually.

• 37:29

If you go to maim and then to the right, there are some things over here that you get to unlock as well.

• 37:33

Which kind of synergize with what I was talking about.

• 37:34

Yeah, synergize with rupture.

• 37:36

For example, brutality allows you to start applying wound stacks through your weapon combos.

• 37:42

So if you really want to lean into that utility, like I'm a heal debuffing spec fighter, right?

• 37:49

Like, that's my thing that I do.

• 37:51

You could go into this and now your weapon attacks, in addition to generating momentum, are also applying wounds to the target.

• 37:57

Love it.

• 37:59

And then this one, this one adds more wound specialization.

• 38:03

If you go down.

• 38:07

Oh, wow.

• 38:08

Okay.

• 38:09

So this gives overpower and brutal cleave wound application.

• 38:12

Yeah.

• 38:13

It's basically what it's kind of doing is it's tying your wounds to the way that you're normally building momentum if you want to kind of dual spec into both.

• 38:22

That's cool.

• 38:23

Wow.

• 38:24

Strong.

• 38:26

Okay.

• 38:27

Let's talk about this apparent crippling blow.

• 38:31

Okay.

• 38:33

Yeah, sure.

• 38:34

So crippling blow.

• 38:35

This one's pretty simple.

• 38:37

This is a standard single target snare.

• 38:40

So a pretty common combo you'd use is like blitz into a crippling blow if you're like getting on top of a target that's trying to kite you.

• 38:51

Like if you're charging up on a ranger who's like the last thing they want is you in their face, like snaring them is going to force them to maybe use a gap opener because they're not able to outrun you.

• 39:01

That's cool.

• 39:12

So crippling blow is pretty strong, actually, especially when it comes to PvP.

• 39:15

I mean, that's a pretty significant reduction in movement speed.

• 39:22

Yeah, it is single target.

• 39:24

So you do have to choose wisely who you are snaring.

• 39:27

But it's pretty nice to be able to just lock a target.

• 39:29

Yeah.

• 39:30

Not like hard CC, but just make it easier to stick on top of them.

• 39:42

Very cool.

• 39:43

All right.

• 39:44

Crippling blow.

• 39:45

And then we have lethal blow.

• 39:47

This is another one of my favorites.

• 39:49

This is the execute of the kit.

• 39:51

It's single target as well.

• 39:53

But the lower health they are, the harder it's going to hit.

• 39:58

So this is really like you're trying to do as much damage with your other abilities as possible.

• 40:03

And then when you get them within that kill threshold, you're just going to hit him with this, hope for a crit maybe, and finish him off.

• 40:15

Use it.

• 40:17

There you go.

• 40:18

Oh, my God.

• 40:21

This does have a couple of spec options as well.

• 40:24

One you kind of went over.

• 40:25

If you kill them with that and you have the spec that resets splits, you could immediately blitz again, even if it was off cooldown when you got the kill.

• 40:37

But if you want to open your skill tree here, we can look at the other one.

• 40:40

Let's talk about it.

• 40:41

And the, sorry, crippling blow did not have any spec options, but lethal blow does.

• 40:48

Yeah.

• 40:49

So a lot of the time, you know, I've played games where, you know, executes hit really hard.

• 40:54

You waste a lot of the damage, and it kind of, it's like, oh, I saw a cool big number, but it didn't really do anything.

• 40:59

It's kind of wasted.

• 41:00

This spec option lets you make use out of that.

• 41:03

So it turns any overkill damage into, like, health and mana returned to you, the caster.

• 41:08

Oh, that's awesome.

• 41:09

And you know what I love about that, at least as it relates to PvP, is that you do not have granularity insight to the opponent's hit points.

• 41:18

So you're really rolling the dice if you want to maximize efficacy on this consuming lethal blow.

• 41:23

Yeah.

• 41:24

I know.

• 41:25

I've been using it a lot.

• 41:26

Like, sometimes I pull it off, other times I don't.

• 41:28

Love it.

• 41:29

That's super cool.

• 41:30

I like that interaction there.

• 41:32

Okay.

• 41:33

Let's go up here.

• 41:34

We've got blood fusion.

• 41:36

Yeah.

• 41:37

So kind of like that lethal blow spec we were using, this is another way for the fighter to get health and mana back to itself.

• 41:45

That's kind of one way that the fighter sustains itself, because it's in the thick of things, right?

• 41:50

It's a primary target.

• 41:52

You've got to be in danger.

• 41:53

You've got to be in danger to be doing a lot of what your kit does.

• 41:56

And this is like one way the fighter can stay in the fight.

• 42:01

And if you pop this, it's a big cooldown.

• 42:04

But for the next six seconds, any damage you do will have a percent returned as health and mana to you.

• 42:11

Okay.

• 42:12

So let me...

• 42:14

Somebody nuke me for like 500.

• 42:18

You can go ahead, Shred.

• 42:19

Okay.

• 42:20

I don't want to do it all at once.

• 42:21

Multiple 500.

• 42:22

There you go.

• 42:24

And then I am going to deal some damage here to see how much I get back.

• 42:37

Yep.

• 42:38

So that last hit missed the window.

• 42:40

But you got a good chunk from your other attacks.

• 42:43

The value of this is super variable based on when you use it.

• 42:47

So if you pop it in the right moment, you've got a lot of targets around you.

• 42:51

You're like popping your AOEs.

• 42:53

Like this is going to get a ton more value.

• 43:00

That's cool.

• 43:01

I like that.

• 43:02

So it's an instant cast that can happen in the middle of any ability activation.

• 43:06

Right.

• 43:07

Nice.

• 43:08

You could like start your Cataclysm and then pop that right before it lands.

• 43:13

That's cool.

• 43:15

That is super cool.

• 43:17

Um...

• 43:21

Oh yeah, I see that.

• 43:24

Okay, very nice.

• 43:25

And I like the effect.

• 43:27

The effect looks great.

• 43:30

It's got more of that blood theme.

• 43:32

Yes.

• 43:33

I also love the audio for it.

• 43:35

It's like you're consuming it a bit.

• 43:37

All right, let me grab whatever this is.

• 43:43

Oh, a bunch of stuff.

• 43:45

I think that was on your corpse.

• 43:46

I'm sorry, Brian.

• 43:47

You didn't do that right in front of me.

• 43:48

It was disrespectful.

• 43:49

My loot!

• 43:50

Okay, cool.

• 43:52

Let's skip Exert for now.

• 43:54

Let's go to Lunging Assault.

• 43:56

Yeah, so this is like going to be one of your first spenders of your resource.

• 44:02

This spender is more for mobility.

• 44:05

It's a smaller spender.

• 44:07

But whenever you use this, you will dash forward a short distance and do an attack at the end.

• 44:12

And it's pretty freely usable.

• 44:15

It doesn't have a very long cooldown.

• 44:17

It's just spending your resource.

• 44:18

So the more resource you're generating,

• 44:19

the more you're able to kind of reposition and dash around the battlefield

• 44:22

and get some extra damage out there.

• 44:24

I see.

• 44:25

Now, obviously, utilizing the resource with Lunging Assault,

• 44:28

because you're dealing instances of damage to enemies that you impact,

• 44:33

you have an opportunity, if executed well situationally,

• 44:37

that you can actually probably have a net gain with this

• 44:43

if there's a huge amount of enemies, like a train or something, right?

• 44:47

Yeah.

• 44:48

Yeah, it would probably take a lot of enemies to actually get a profit,

• 44:51

but you can at least mitigate the cost through that spec choice.

• 44:55

If you're hitting enemies, you can get resource back,

• 44:59

and therefore you're getting to do this more,

• 45:01

and you're also not losing the value of your resource

• 45:04

that you're getting passively through your forms,

• 45:06

which, again, we'll get to soon.

• 45:08

Cool, cool.

• 45:10

Okay, let's try this.

• 45:12

And now I don't need a target for this.

• 45:14

I can just kind of...

• 45:15

Nope, freely.

• 45:16

It's a reposition.

• 45:18

All right.

• 45:25

That's cool.

• 45:28

Oh, okay.

• 45:31

So it's kind of not too far a distance there.

• 45:37

Yeah, it's meant to be more of a repositioner

• 45:40

where you're dancing around your target.

• 45:43

You might be zipping back and forth between different enemies in melee.

• 45:46

Right.

• 45:47

Whereas you have other tools for going longer distances.

• 45:50

You have Blitz.

• 45:51

You have the next one that's about to come up from here.

• 45:54

So those are going to be more of your long-distance mobility skills.

• 45:58

All right.

• 45:59

Let me try this more long-distance mobility skill here.

• 46:02

Talk to me about Leap Strike.

• 46:07

Yeah, so this is the most free mobile...

• 46:13

Look at that distance.

• 46:14

Yeah, it's very far, and it doesn't really matter.

• 46:16

It's very far, and it doesn't require a target, unlike Blitz.

• 46:20

And you're also going to basically deal damage and AOE around it.

• 46:23

So it's just a more powerful but less frequently usable gap closer slash opener

• 46:29

if you even decide to use it as an opener.

• 46:34

Oh, my God.

• 46:38

I am the Jokernaut.

• 46:42

Oh, that was so cool.

• 46:44

I love that.

• 46:45

Yeah, that's a fun one to use.

• 46:47

Holy smokes.

• 46:49

Definitely more AOE focused.

• 46:51

And again, guys, I am using zero cooldowns right now just so I can demonstrate the abilities.

• 46:55

Well, I know you're all thinking, like, what?

• 46:57

This character's just going to fly around the battlefield.

• 46:59

That's not what's happening.

• 47:01

Little rocket.

• 47:02

I know.

• 47:03

You can actually use this, too, to go up on ledges.

• 47:06

Like if you were to try and get up on one of these ledges we were trying earlier...

• 47:10

Yeah.

• 47:11

...you don't even need a target to use it.

• 47:13

Let me just check.

• 47:14

Are there any spec options here?

• 47:18

Not currently, but there will be.

• 47:21

All right.

• 47:22

Let me try to jump up on here.

• 47:26

Oh, that was too short.

• 47:28

I was too short.

• 47:29

My bad.

• 47:30

Hold on.

• 47:31

Let me try it again.

• 47:32

I'll try it again.

• 47:33

Actually, usually I've had more success when I'm covering gaps rather than actually, like,

• 47:38

trying to go up different verticalities.

• 47:41

But sometimes, yeah, it works.

• 47:42

Oh, we did it.

• 47:43

We did it, boys.

• 47:47

It happened.

• 47:49

Very cool.

• 47:51

All right.

• 47:52

Let's talk a little bit about...

• 47:56

You know, I thought I fixed time of day, but it feels like it's getting darker.

• 47:59

I don't know.

• 48:02

Let's talk a little bit about...

• 48:05

Next up.

• 48:07

These different forms that I'm seeing here.

• 48:11

Yeah.

• 48:12

Yeah, so these are probably the biggest contributors to your combat momentum resource.

• 48:22

You can spend momentum, but it's a resource that's primarily meant to be built up and maintained

• 48:29

because of the bonuses that these forms provide.

• 48:32

So if we want to just look at one of the first ones here, we can go into a little more detail on how those work.

• 48:37

I'm actually going to make it a little bit... Whoops.

• 48:40

My bad. I want to change the time of day slightly.

• 48:45

Get some better light over here.

• 48:48

There we go. Apologies.

• 48:51

Okay. Which one am I switching to?

• 48:54

Any one you want. We'll get through all of them.

• 48:56

Let's go to... You know, I am playing a Ren'kai, so Ferocity sounds good.

• 49:02

All right. So now you'll notice in the top left here, he is in this form.

• 49:09

So...

• 49:10

As long as you don't change forms, you will permanently remain in the form of Ferocity.

• 49:16

We actually renamed this recently, so you'll see Tempest there, but that went through a rename.

• 49:22

So while in this form, your momentum will increase your attack speed the higher your momentum is.

• 49:30

So for every point of momentum that you've got, your attack speed is going up.

• 49:33

So you're basically ramping up that attack speed as you generate.

• 49:37

So I see right now I'm at 86.9.

• 49:40

Yep.

• 49:41

Let's generate some momentum.

• 49:47

Your weapon combos are pretty good for generating momentum as well, especially your finishers.

• 49:53

There you go.

• 49:56

Okay. 86.9 has gone to 99.2.

• 50:01

Yep.

• 50:02

Up and it's dropping. Very nice.

• 50:05

Yep. You got to stay in combat to keep the resource going.

• 50:07

Yep.

• 50:10

And that's really what the fighter is all about, is like ramping up, being in that combat momentum, hence the name.

• 50:17

And when the fight's...

• 50:18

Wow. It feels like the attack speed is even increasing each individual ability speed as well.

• 50:26

Yep.

• 50:28

That's huge.

• 50:32

That is super cool.

• 50:34

So if you were to change forms, you would lose the attack speed bonus, but immediately gain the bonus.

• 50:39

Yep.

• 50:40

And then you would lose the corresponding form.

• 50:51

All right. There you go.

• 50:54

So if you want to shift V into maybe a form of celerity here.

• 51:00

All right. And that is on Shafi.

• 51:04

There you go.

• 51:04

Now run around.

• 51:06

You might have to blitz him again.

• 51:08

You probably need to get some mana and then...

• 51:10

Build it up a little more, but...

• 51:11

Oh, my bad. I'm going to get mana.

• 51:14

But this one increases your movement speed.

• 51:16

So this lets you just move around the battlefield a lot more nimbly.

• 51:23

So if you need to, like, you know, close the gap a little bit and your gap closers are on cooldown or whatever,

• 51:28

this is a good way of traversing the field a bit faster.

• 51:32

Yeah. Wow. This is...

• 51:33

Yeah, this is pretty quick.

• 51:36

That's a significant speed boost.

• 51:40

And then the third one is more of a defensive option.

• 51:48

A bit more situational, but it is a disable resistance form.

• 51:57

This is a form of fluidity.

• 52:00

And while you're in it, you are much more difficult to be CC'd.

• 52:05

So you'll be more resistant to stuns, to roots, trips.

• 52:10

Pretty much anything that falls into the CC category.

• 52:13

Are you trying to sleep me or something?

• 52:16

Sure, I'll give it a shot.

• 52:17

There's a chance that I'll still hit you, but let's see.

• 52:21

I can't, actually. I'm in your party.

• 52:22

Oh, okay. No, that's okay. That's fine.

• 52:24

All right. So this is basically when you want to literally be unstoppable through CC effects.

• 52:30

Like, this is going to be a 40% reduction on that.

• 52:32

That's pretty powerful.

• 52:35

Yep. And again, all the numbers are kind of in tune or being tuned.

• 52:39

We just...

• 52:40

When we're testing these out, we want them to feel impactful just to validate that they are, you know, cool things.

• 52:47

And then we start to balance to tone that back down.

• 52:51

Very cool.

• 52:53

All right.

• 52:55

All right.

• 52:56

Last, but most certainly not least, is an ability called God Mode.

• 53:05

I mean, excuse me.

• 53:06

What's it called? I'm sorry.

• 53:08

Exert?

• 53:08

This is Exert.

• 53:09

Yeah.

• 53:10

It's my earlier practice.

• 53:12

I know. Your Segway.

• 53:12

Actually, it's a great Segway.

• 53:14

So speaking of balance and what will be happening, obviously, with Alpha 2 and even before Alpha 2,

• 53:20

we'll be balancing some of this stuff.

• 53:21

So just keep that in mind.

• 53:23

However, Segway here into God Mode, a.k.a. Exert, we have what?

• 53:30

So if we go over here in the skill tree to the left, Exert, this is a very high cost, very high payoff.

• 53:38

Like, essentially.

• 53:40

It's a super mode that you can go into, and you're rapidly spending your momentum while you're in this form.

• 53:49

It's all or nothing.

• 53:50

You can't turn it off.

• 53:51

Once you pop this, you will stay in this mode until your momentum is fully drained, and then you're going to have to build it all the way back up again.

• 53:58

Meanwhile, you're getting increased attack speed.

• 54:01

You're getting CC immunity and whatever else it says in here.

• 54:08

We've got 20%.

• 54:09

Increased attack and movement speed and immunity to disabling effects while active.

• 54:17

So if you can kind of draw the connection, this is like you're taking the three forms, which are CC resistance, movement speed, and attack speed,

• 54:24

and getting just all three of them in a huge burst for a small window of time.

• 54:28

Very small window.

• 54:29

Yes.

• 54:29

And that small window is potentially, as it states here, at least it would be about five seconds if you're fully charged up.

• 54:39

On momentum, because it's essentially ticking at 20% per second.

• 54:45

Is that right?

• 54:46

Yep.

• 54:47

And again, all the numbers are super tuned.

• 54:50

Absolutely.

• 54:51

We will be tuning these numbers, but we're just kind of putting them in a place where we can playtest them.

• 54:55

And as we get more effective with these, it's like, okay, now we're seeing the ceiling of how powerful these things are.

• 55:00

We're going to bring it back a little bit.

• 55:01

Let's talk about its spec options.

• 55:04

Yep.

• 55:05

So we've got one that resets your cooldown.

• 55:09

It's based on how much momentum you had at activation.

• 55:12

So if you use this at 50 momentum, you would take about half of your cooldowns off.

• 55:19

But if you use it at full momentum, you would reset all your cooldowns.

• 55:22

So you could just go straight into your rotation upon popping this.

• 55:26

And then this one lets it act as a CC break as well.

• 55:32

Okay.

• 55:34

I like this.

• 55:34

This is a nice combo.

• 55:35

So you get increased combat momentum.

• 55:39

With movement, attack speed, and the immunity to disabling effects.

• 55:43

And it becomes a CC break on activation if you're under the effects of CC.

• 55:49

And depending on the amount, percentage-wise, of momentum you have available at time of activation,

• 55:56

potentially will reset your ability cooldowns as well.

• 55:59

This is obviously, guys, I know a lot of you out there right now are just probably going insane in chat.

• 56:06

And I'm just going to, I'm assuming that.

• 56:08

This is where we bet.

• 56:10

Everything's going to be balanced, right?

• 56:11

This is just the initial find the fun.

• 56:14

And we're going to work around balance here.

• 56:17

But this is a cool ability.

• 56:20

This is literally like super I am a fighter, hear me roar, glory.

• 56:27

Have you used it?

• 56:28

No, I haven't.

• 56:29

Gotta show it.

• 56:31

Yeah, let's do this.

• 56:32

Let's do this.

• 56:34

So I guess in order to properly do this, I should actually set my cooldowns back.

• 56:39

Do you have it fully spec'd?

• 56:41

I do.

• 56:41

I have it fully spec'd.

• 56:43

Keenan, do you have condemn on your bar?

• 56:47

I can grab it real quick.

• 56:48

Okay.

• 56:48

Yeah, that's a stun.

• 56:49

We could kind of, we'll have Keenan condemn you and then you'll just like break out of it after your full momentum.

• 56:55

Yeah, let me get some, let me start generating that.

• 56:59

Love that shield effect.

• 57:03

Oh, and you know, I got to get off this form of fluidity.

• 57:06

Let's go to.

• 57:09

Do ferocity.

• 57:11

Yeah, let's do ferocity.

• 57:16

You can probably blitz him for a head start on momentum into an overpower.

• 57:24

Keep an eye on your mana.

• 57:30

Let me know when you're ready to be stunned.

• 57:35

Okay, I'm almost up there.

• 57:39

But before you stun me, let me start doing some abilities.

• 57:45

I am feeling that wound.

• 57:50

Wait, just don't kill him.

• 57:52

I'm not.

• 57:56

All right, now you can stun me.

• 57:59

All right, stun him up.

• 58:02

All right, use it.

• 58:04

Oh, you don't have, did you not spec it?

• 58:05

Oh, I thought I did.

• 58:08

I thought I did spec it.

• 58:10

Let's try it again.

• 58:11

Well, let's check the tree.

• 58:13

If there might be an issue there.

• 58:16

And I spec it.

• 58:17

Did I spec it?

• 58:18

I do.

• 58:18

I do have it spec'd.

• 58:19

That's weird.

• 58:20

We didn't that used to work.

• 58:21

Let's double check.

• 58:22

Hold on.

• 58:23

Let's try it one more time and I'll I'll click on it this time.

• 58:27

Okay, so there was some finger shenanigans happening.

• 58:29

All right, I'm ready.

• 58:30

I think.

• 58:35

Yeah, I hope I had an expression failure.

• 58:37

Sad.

• 58:38

All right, well, let's use it with.

• 58:39

Out that that's that used to work.

• 58:41

My bad, guys.

• 58:42

Welcome to bugs.

• 58:44

Yeah, that's okay.

• 58:46

Okay, let's show.

• 58:48

Yeah, now it's balanced.

• 58:50

See, the game wouldn't even allow that level of imbalance.

• 58:52

I'm just kidding.

• 58:54

Okay.

• 58:54

Let me generate this up again and get some.

• 59:09

Okay, I'm gonna give myself some mana and now let's use shift two.

• 59:26

Oh, that's cool.

• 59:35

I love that effect.

• 59:36

That effect looks great.

• 59:37

Yeah.

• 59:37

Yeah.

• 59:38

Yeah.

• 59:38

Yeah.

• 59:39

Yeah.

• 59:39

Let me show the effect one more time.

• 59:40

Well, I'm not kind of moving around and doing stuff.

• 59:44

Okay.

• 59:45

And then we set my cooldowns real quick one more time.

• 59:48

And is there can I get myself Max?

• 59:50

Uh, there's a there's a debug ability for it, but I would just say blitz into overpower

• 59:56

and then weapon combos.

• 59:57

The best way to do it.

• 1:00:02

That's me.

• 1:00:02

Uh, you're a button.

• 1:00:09

All right, hold still.

• 1:00:20

I just keep this going all the time.

• 1:00:21

I got no cooldowns.

• 1:00:25

Now we're cheating.

• 1:00:26

That is so good.

• 1:00:27

Oh, it's so good.

• 1:00:28

Very cool.

• 1:00:29

All right.

• 1:00:30

Well, that was a good one.

• 1:00:31

Yeah.

• 1:00:32

Yeah.

• 1:00:33

Yeah.

• 1:00:34

Yeah.

• 1:00:35

Yeah.

• 1:00:36

Yeah.

• 1:00:37

Yeah.

• 1:00:38

Yeah.

• 1:00:39

That is a very let me just say, I'm sorry, let me speak on behalf of what I assume is

• 1:00:44

our audience saying, holy shit.

• 1:00:47

That is a cool class.

• 1:00:48

I mean, the archetype feels great.

• 1:00:51

The movement, the fluidity is there.

• 1:00:56

It feels really good just to play with these these skills.

• 1:01:00

Well done, guys.

• 1:01:01

Well done for Alpha two.

• 1:01:02

This is feeling nice as a fighter and as melee.

• 1:01:05

Obviously, that mobility is going to be king when it comes to traversing the battlefield.

• 1:01:09

And being that juggernaut class fantasy feeling, I think is really captured well here.

• 1:01:17

What do you guys say we take a look at Oakenbane and kind of work through that area and show

• 1:01:22

people off a little bit of the world of Vera?

• 1:01:25

Yeah.

• 1:01:26

Let's put the kit to the test.

• 1:01:27

Did you want to talk about the weapon first?

• 1:01:29

Oh, my God.

• 1:01:30

You're right.

• 1:01:31

Thank you.

• 1:01:32

Yes.

• 1:01:33

Okay.

• 1:01:34

Obviously, see here, we have got a pretty beefy looking sword that I have equipped.

• 1:01:40

And Brian and the combat team have been working a lot on skill progression trees for weapons.

• 1:01:47

You saw a hint of that in its very bare bones form with the Ranger update.

• 1:01:54

But there's been a lot of work towards that weapon tree.

• 1:01:57

Let's talk a little bit about it.

• 1:01:59

Yeah.

• 1:02:00

So we've been revamping the weapon tree.

• 1:02:03

So the first point of progression here is we wanted to give people a choice in how long

• 1:02:09

their weapon combo actually is.

• 1:02:12

So you've got the base weapon combo that you start with on the Greatsword, which is three

• 1:02:16

attacks.

• 1:02:17

And you can extend that out into four attacks if you want.

• 1:02:21

In addition to that, both the third hit and the fourth hit can have proc finisher attacks.

• 1:02:28

And those proc finisher attacks can trigger additional attacks.

• 1:02:32

Okay.

• 1:02:33

So you can trigger additional effects on you, such as an additional heal effect, a boost of momentary attack speed.

• 1:02:43

And I'm looking here, Brian, so when I go over to the left-hand side and it has me kind of an option, right,

• 1:02:48

I'm unlocking this node and selecting down one of these four choices.

• 1:02:53

And for those of you who are watching and perhaps don't recall the use case here of these weapon skill trees,

• 1:03:00

these are separate progression trees.

• 1:03:02

These are progression trees that you unlock and advance within as you are using and adventuring with a particular weapon type.

• 1:03:12

Right, Brian?

• 1:03:13

Correct.

• 1:03:14

And, yeah, they'll advance faster than your archetype tree.

• 1:03:17

So you'll be able to level up a couple weapons as you're going along.

• 1:03:21

Yeah.

• 1:03:22

And that's a lot of fun to do, actually.

• 1:03:24

Yeah.

• 1:03:25

And that section that you're looking at now is probably the most work-in-progress part.

• 1:03:29

I still need to revamp this passive thing.

• 1:03:31

This passive section, it's pretty weak overall.

• 1:03:34

But, yeah, this version zero, you can choose between different modifications that best fit your class.

• 1:03:41

You can choose between a little bit of deflection bonus, which is avoidance, some, I think, crit damage, accuracy.

• 1:03:51

So each node you're kind of choosing a different – oh, I see.

• 1:03:55

Very cool.

• 1:03:56

Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:03:57

Yeah.

• 1:03:58

Right now they're all the same.

• 1:03:59

I'm going to mix up.

• 1:04:00

I'm going to mix up that a little bit and make it more interesting with some different capstone passives and such.

• 1:04:07

But, yeah, this side's way more interesting, way more fleshed out.

• 1:04:10

So what you just clicked on there is the first proc that you'll get access to.

• 1:04:15

And you have a choice between three of these things.

• 1:04:18

The first is Swordmaster's Swiftness.

• 1:04:20

This is a temporary boost of attack speed.

• 1:04:23

So if you get this proc and then you can instantly use another ability or continue in your combo if you want.

• 1:04:29

And it'll trigger that next ability all the quicker.

• 1:04:32

And to talk a little bit about, you know, obviously reiterating again kind of, you know, these proc effects.

• 1:04:37

These essentially are the incentive loops for why weapon combo attacks, which are basic weapon attacks, are the fillers between rotational effects.

• 1:04:48

Because you are getting, you know, as you unlock progression within these trees, you are getting substantial benefit from procs that occur by using the basic weapon combo.

• 1:04:59

Right.

• 1:05:00

I should speak on that a little bit more in like a general concept.

• 1:05:03

So we want to encourage weaving between abilities and weapon combo attacks.

• 1:05:07

And we're going to do that in a few different ways that you'll be seeing in this stream.

• 1:05:11

The first way is archetype weapon combo interactions.

• 1:05:14

You've already seen some of that where the finishers give you a burst of momentum.

• 1:05:18

And Overpower and Brutal Cleave get reduced or reset cooldowns on combo end as well.

• 1:05:24

The second type of interaction is weapon combo to ability proc synergies.

• 1:05:28

Such as direct damage on the next ability hit after a combo finisher or a status effect set up for ability use.

• 1:05:35

And the third version is ability to weapon combo proc synergies.

• 1:05:40

So this is deeper in the tree.

• 1:05:42

Your abilities will have a chance to set up your next weapon finisher with additional effects.

• 1:05:47

Very cool.

• 1:05:48

That is awesome.

• 1:05:49

So let's see.

• 1:05:50

Which one should I go for here?

• 1:05:52

I'd go with the swiftness for the fighter.

• 1:05:54

All right.

• 1:05:55

Let's do it.

• 1:05:58

Effect duration, huh?

• 1:06:01

Yeah.

• 1:06:02

That's actually really strong because it's a very short burst of attack speed.

• 1:06:05

So the duration is really good there.

• 1:06:07

And also the proc chance.

• 1:06:08

I'd probably max out the proc chance one in the middle.

• 1:06:12

And then get the duration.

• 1:06:14

That's probably strongest for the swiftness.

• 1:06:18

All right.

• 1:06:20

And now I've already gone and unlocked this path here of the extended finishers.

• 1:06:28

Yeah.

• 1:06:29

You could probably take some points out of the extra damage nodes and then put them into...

• 1:06:34

I've never heard you say that before.

• 1:06:35

This is vastness.

• 1:06:36

Well, it's only because you're getting even more damage through the procs potentially.

• 1:06:41

Okay.

• 1:06:42

It's all more math and less math, right?

• 1:06:45

Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:46

And another thing here is it all depends on your build.

• 1:06:50

All depends on your build.

• 1:06:51

And you'll see that more in this next choice here, which is a lot more interesting.

• 1:06:56

The first one was like a kind of introduction to the proc system.

• 1:07:00

It's kind of a more just additive extra thing.

• 1:07:04

This is kind of forcing the...

• 1:07:06

Well, not forcing the weaving, but encouraging the weaving a little bit harder.

• 1:07:09

So first we've got a second strike.

• 1:07:11

So your next ability use after a weapon combo finisher has an additional damage proc that occurs.

• 1:07:20

And then another good choice for DPS is the one right below that, which is perfect damage.

• 1:07:26

Perfect timing.

• 1:07:27

So the next ability you cast will have reduced cooldown.

• 1:07:30

So it's kind of like, do you care about that reduced cooldown for your rotation or do you not?

• 1:07:35

And you just take the additional damage.

• 1:07:37

And the third option there, unfortunately it's not working yet.

• 1:07:41

This is expanding upon that status effect interaction stuff.

• 1:07:44

That's what we're working on imminently, getting that built into the weapons.

• 1:07:47

But whenever this is working, it'll apply burning to your target and have additional interactions for the mage.

• 1:07:52

I love that.

• 1:07:53

That's cool.

• 1:07:54

That's awesome.

• 1:07:55

You guys are starting to see, obviously, a lot of these progression trees getting implemented now.

• 1:08:02

And you're not just, this is not just obviously for the greatsword,

• 1:08:05

but you have done this in parity with the other existing weapon classes for part of A2's entrance criteria, correct?

• 1:08:14

Yeah.

• 1:08:15

That's one of the really cool things about our game is the amount of weapon choice that's going to be present.

• 1:08:20

All the weapons will be hopefully viable for...

• 1:08:25

almost every archetype because you can specialize it in a certain way that will benefit you and what your archetype role is.

• 1:08:33

There will obviously be certain things that are better for other things, like a two-hander is going to do a lot of damage, for instance.

• 1:08:40

And you might want to shield if you're taking a lot of the damage.

• 1:08:43

But still, if you want to break that mold a little bit, you'll have options available.

• 1:08:48

Just to expand on that a little bit too, it's not even just inter-archetype and weapon synergy.

• 1:08:54

But also, it's like you're building based on your expected or intended comp that you're often going to be running.

• 1:09:02

It's like, let's say your friend rolls a mage, and it's like, I want to build with my friend so I know they are a fire mage.

• 1:09:09

And that's where your burning blade example comes in.

• 1:09:12

There's going to be more stuff like that so that you're just kind of playing off each other.

• 1:09:16

That segues really good into the next proc that we have here.

• 1:09:19

So this is your ability setting up your next weapon.

• 1:09:23

So we've got three options here.

• 1:09:25

The first is Keen Edge.

• 1:09:27

So whenever this procs, your next weapon combo will have a 100% chance to crit.

• 1:09:31

The next option, which if you have a bard in your party, you might not want this one.

• 1:09:38

But it causes your next ability finisher to restore some mana to yourself.

• 1:09:43

And then the third one is, and we're not sure about where this is going to end up.

• 1:09:50

It might get moved over to the tank tree or the mage tree.

• 1:09:52

But it procs a bit of temp health on the next weapon finisher.

• 1:09:57

It's a pretty sweet tank option.

• 1:09:59

Yeah, that's pretty good.

• 1:10:00

I think I'm going to go for the Keen Edge, though.

• 1:10:02

Yeah, that's a solid choice.

• 1:10:04

Oh, attack speed crit.

• 1:10:06

Yup.

• 1:10:07

Yeah, I feel like I want to reinvest it in over here, too.

• 1:10:10

DPS beast mode.

• 1:10:11

Okay, I expect this out now.

• 1:10:14

Very cool.

• 1:10:15

That's awesome.

• 1:10:16

Awesome.

• 1:10:17

Yeah, this is a, I think people, you know, just the complexities that you guys are talking about.

• 1:10:21

Like, obviously, we've been talking about weapon skill trees and archetype design, you know, since we first were talking about Ashes back in 2017.

• 1:10:32

And now we're seeing in fruition to, you know, part of the systems that we are going to be debuting as part of Alpha 2.

• 1:10:39

You guys are going to be able to get your hands on this and kind of give us that active feedback.

• 1:10:43

You know, how does this level of depth and complexity grant you, the player, more granular control?

• 1:10:50

And choice over how your role that you're playing fits into the greater comp of the party setting, the raid setting, or solo gameplay and your itemization selections, right?

• 1:11:04

Like, all of that is a level of depth, I think, that players want to exist in space-wise because it gives them the freedom to really define the way they're approaching this, the difficulty challenge that is the game.

• 1:11:19

Yeah.

• 1:11:20

And that is combat in general.

• 1:11:22

That's super cool.

• 1:11:24

And especially, like, this breadth of options, right?

• 1:11:27

Even the horizontal choices here.

• 1:11:29

Like, that creates a very interesting playground of rock, paper, scissors effects between the multitude of archetype skill progression and weapon type skill progression that you're going to experience even in a PvP setting.

• 1:11:44

And it also is just more levers that we get to pull on the encounter design section as well.

• 1:11:49

For PvE.

• 1:11:51

Very cool.

• 1:11:52

Well done, guys.

• 1:11:53

This is, I think, again, I speak for the community when I say great progress.

• 1:11:59

Very great progress.

• 1:12:00

And Alpha 2 is shaping up to be not just a great testing experience but a lot of fun, I think.

• 1:12:06

You know, obviously the world and the combat design here is significant.

• 1:12:10

The last thing I want to highlight is the work that we've done on the animation side with the weapon combos.

• 1:12:16

Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:17

So if you actually do your weapon combo in place here, we can see it.

• 1:12:21

We can see whenever you get, so you got a stab hit there.

• 1:12:25

Whenever you get stab hits on the third and the fourth hit, those are actually procs.

• 1:12:29

So if you connect with the second hit of that proc hit, you'll receive the additional effects.

• 1:12:36

But you actually have to connect with a monster or player to receive the effect.

• 1:12:41

And I think the proc rate is at a static 25% right now.

• 1:12:46

We're looking at other ways to scale that.

• 1:12:48

Like maybe it scales with a stat or maybe it scales with additional nodes.

• 1:12:53

But right now it's kind of low.

• 1:13:02

Especially if you're unlucky like Steve.

• 1:13:03

I know.

• 1:13:04

Really?

• 1:13:05

What's going on here?

• 1:13:07

Come on.

• 1:13:08

I'm sure we'll see it in combat.

• 1:13:10

There it is.

• 1:13:11

There it is, bro.

• 1:13:12

Okay.

• 1:13:13

And these guys, we're still missing something.

• 1:13:16

We're missing some effects that are going to help drive what this...

• 1:13:20

Smoked.

• 1:13:21

Oh, my God.

• 1:13:22

I'm so sorry.

• 1:13:23

I just was like, relentless attack.

• 1:13:25

Yeah, the momentum and the bonus attack speed on the greatswords stacking together smoked me.

• 1:13:30

That was good.

• 1:13:32

Let's see.

• 1:13:34

I'm so sorry.

• 1:13:35

He's also level 15.

• 1:13:37

Did I go corrupt?

• 1:13:38

You did.

• 1:13:39

Oh, no.

• 1:13:41

It should be fine as long as we're in a party.

• 1:13:43

Speaking of which, we should form the party.

• 1:13:46

Yes.

• 1:13:47

Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:48

Let's get this going.

• 1:13:49

We can talk more over.

• 1:13:50

Yep.

• 1:13:51

Are you guys disbanded?

• 1:13:52

Yep.

• 1:13:53

Yeah, we are.

• 1:13:54

Yeah.

• 1:13:55

Another thing we can talk about when we're moving is we did revamp the animation a little bit.

• 1:14:00

We made it work with the weight of the greatsword a little bit more so you'll see more precise pose holding.

• 1:14:08

And it's less of a lumbering beast than it once was.

• 1:14:11

We're kind of leaving that space for the mace and the axe.

• 1:14:15

But it really feels like a sword now to me.

• 1:14:19

It's awesome.

• 1:14:21

Can I also show off one other thing?

• 1:14:24

Sure.

• 1:14:25

The environment team and the engineering team, and Keenan, I think you were part of this as well, obviously, between the ability system and the interactable environments.

• 1:14:31

Something that I have not seen happen really very often as part of MMO level design is destructible assets.

• 1:14:41

We have that in and running.

• 1:14:43

I want to see if I can destroy these two tents here real quick.

• 1:14:46

Oh!

• 1:14:47

Wait.

• 1:14:48

Somebody else destroyed them.

• 1:14:51

They just got hit by the cone of cold?

• 1:14:53

I think so.

• 1:14:54

Oh, that was good.

• 1:14:55

That was hilarious.

• 1:14:57

I'll find some other tents.

• 1:14:58

I'm sorry.

• 1:14:59

Hold on.

• 1:15:00

I'll find another one.

• 1:15:01

Here we go.

• 1:15:02

Don't forget to put your helmet on.

• 1:15:03

Oh, should I put my helmet on?

• 1:15:04

Do I want to put the helmet on?

• 1:15:05

It's a cool looking helmet.

• 1:15:07

All right.

• 1:15:08

I'll put the helmet on.

• 1:15:09

Let me see.

• 1:15:10

Hold on.

• 1:15:11

That's a cool way to solve props getting in the way.

• 1:15:12

Yeah.

• 1:15:13

That's true.

• 1:15:14

Always wear a helmet.

• 1:15:15

No.

• 1:15:16

I meant you could just kill him.

• 1:15:17

If he had been wearing his helmet when you were attacking him.

• 1:15:22

Oh!

• 1:15:23

Love it.

• 1:15:24

Oh, we need to talk to the scout first, don't we?

• 1:15:31

Yeah.

• 1:15:32

We should grab the quest.

• 1:15:33

Is there a scout over here?

• 1:15:34

That's right.

• 1:15:35

All right.

• 1:15:36

Let's clear a room.

• 1:15:37

Okay.

• 1:15:38

So you guys remember at the end of our commissions livestream last month, this was

• 1:15:42

Oakenbane Keep.

• 1:15:43

I just kind of came up to the entrance here.

• 1:15:45

I didn't want to go inside because this story arc...

• 1:15:48

Let's see if I have actually information on this story arc.

• 1:15:52

Here we go.

• 1:15:53

So we are part of the ancient violence story arc, which is an inhuman threat in the Riverlands.

• 1:16:04

And so it talks about a little bit...

• 1:16:05

The settlers of Vara have known of a constant struggle with the goblins that overran the

• 1:16:10

ancestral Kalar lands.

• 1:16:13

And while we know nothing about their capabilities, it is important that we now find them throwing

• 1:16:21

themselves at Lionhold's paltry defenses.

• 1:16:25

Lionhold being one of the introductory locations right near the portal area in the Riverlands.

• 1:16:34

And Captain Avon...

• 1:16:36

Avonmore...

• 1:16:37

Needs help assessing the Kalar lands.

• 1:16:39

Okay.

• 1:16:40

Let's see if we can find the scope of that threat.

• 1:16:44

Interesting.

• 1:16:45

And we also have here what appears to be a side quest.

• 1:16:47

Scout Yoren.

• 1:16:51

Let's talk with Yoren.

• 1:16:52

What does he have here?

• 1:16:54

Once a great place of our ancestors, now is overrun.

• 1:16:58

We shall do something about this.

• 1:17:02

All right.

• 1:17:03

He's been charged with observing.

• 1:17:06

I would be happy to take some of your dispensation as pay.

• 1:17:09

So he wants us to kill 20 of the goblins here in Oakenbane.

• 1:17:15

We've already dispatched a few of them.

• 1:17:18

All right.

• 1:17:19

Accept that.

• 1:17:20

Okay.

• 1:17:21

We got the ancestral revenge.

• 1:17:22

Let's do this.

• 1:17:23

What have we got going on over here?

• 1:17:24

Some glint.

• 1:17:25

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:26

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:27

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:28

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:29

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:30

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:31

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:32

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:33

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:34

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:35

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:36

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:37

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:38

Oh.

• 1:17:39

Oh.

• 1:17:40

He's just kind of— He's just kind of flippin' around over there.

• 1:17:43

Oh, this is feelin' moody.

• 1:17:49

It's feelin' moody.

• 1:18:00

All right.

• 1:18:03

Not too bad.

• 1:18:06

So now, of your guys' experiences in MMOs,

• 1:18:09

how many of you actually mained as a fighter?

• 1:18:15

Me.

• 1:18:16

I think I'm the only one here.

• 1:18:18

I know everyone here has played fighter,

• 1:18:20

but I love playing fighters.

• 1:18:23

Like, they're kind of my first choice.

• 1:18:26

You know, I'm going to...

• 1:18:27

Oh, hold on.

• 1:18:28

I see that there is a spirit nearby.

• 1:18:34

Oh, my God.

• 1:18:34

I already popped my blizzard, too.

• 1:18:42

I got drags here. Nice.

• 1:18:44

Oh, yeah, this is a named mob.

• 1:18:46

It's a named mob.

• 1:18:47

We'll have to be sure to loot them after we kill them.

• 1:18:51

Yeah, Steven needs to loot them, though.

• 1:18:52

Not anyone else.

• 1:18:54

Why are you guys saying that?

• 1:18:56

Yeah, it's almost like, so, the guy.

• 1:18:58

Yeah, we don't have any, like, ninja looters in this group, for sure.

• 1:19:02

Now, some of you guys are seeing that

• 1:19:04

at the F1.

• 1:19:04

That is still effects of that big explosion.

• 1:19:07

That is still effects

• 1:19:08

that are being authored right now,

• 1:19:10

but that is specifically a progression.

• 1:19:13

Oh, that guy was pretty strong.

• 1:19:15

That is specifically

• 1:19:16

a status progression, is that right?

• 1:19:20

Which one?

• 1:19:21

Oh, I got something.

• 1:19:22

Wait, wait, wait. Okay, yeah, there we go.

• 1:19:24

Did I get something?

• 1:19:27

I got something that looked like a...

• 1:19:30

Let me see if I can find that.

• 1:19:31

Hold on.

• 1:19:33

What do I got here?

• 1:19:34

A torch.

• 1:19:34

Toy soldier legs.

• 1:19:38

Legs of an ancient toy soldier

• 1:19:39

that survived well past

• 1:19:41

when it ought to have,

• 1:19:43

thanks to ancient magics within,

• 1:19:46

can be reassembled with other pieces.

• 1:19:48

Okay, cool.

• 1:19:53

So, sorry, I was talking

• 1:19:54

about the conflagrate.

• 1:19:57

Yeah, so

• 1:19:58

one thing you'll be noticing a lot on the mage

• 1:20:00

is I'm throwing out different

• 1:20:02

elements of projectiles, like here's...

• 1:20:04

Here's a fireball, and then after that,

• 1:20:06

you'll see my weapon combo is throwing out

• 1:20:08

little fire projectiles.

• 1:20:10

As we showed in the previous mage live stream,

• 1:20:12

that is elemental empowerment and how it works.

• 1:20:14

However, we've changed a little bit how that works.

• 1:20:18

Now,

• 1:20:19

on the finisher attack

• 1:20:20

of every combo,

• 1:20:22

you get the element based on

• 1:20:24

what your infused element is.

• 1:20:27

And then you can use certain

• 1:20:28

abilities to promote that from burning

• 1:20:30

to conflagrate in the case that you were seeing here.

• 1:20:33

Oh my god.

• 1:20:34

There's a lot.

• 1:20:42

So you'll see me doing that here and there.

• 1:20:44

I'm gonna give myself some mana.

• 1:20:47

And that's a concept that we're applying

• 1:20:48

to all the classes.

• 1:20:51

On the tank we recently

• 1:20:52

moved, they used to generate courage

• 1:20:54

and apply stagger on every hit.

• 1:20:57

We moved that all to the combo

• 1:20:58

end as well, which

• 1:21:00

is really nice because that allows us to

• 1:21:02

normalize these effects across

• 1:21:04

multiple different weapon types and really

• 1:21:06

make true our promise of weapon choice.

• 1:21:10

Yeah, it's like we don't want to

• 1:21:12

put too much emphasis on attack speed

• 1:21:14

for proc rate. And there's other ways to do that.

• 1:21:17

You can normalize chance and all that stuff.

• 1:21:18

But we also just thought

• 1:21:20

from a gameplay perspective,

• 1:21:22

it is really cool to make you

• 1:21:24

have to commit to that final

• 1:21:26

hit. It just kind of makes it feel a little

• 1:21:28

bit more

• 1:21:29

like you're working towards something rather than

• 1:21:32

just getting something on every attack.

• 1:21:35

Yeah, the initial thought

• 1:21:37

was that the additional flexibility

• 1:21:39

was good with the tank play style,

• 1:21:41

but having that additional thing

• 1:21:43

to chase mid rotation

• 1:21:45

is turning out pretty well.

• 1:21:47

I've got an NPC here.

• 1:21:52

I found this dude.

• 1:21:54

Looks like some. Oh, this is a.

• 1:21:57

This is we saw this guy

• 1:21:59

before he was in our

• 1:22:02

um, last time.

• 1:22:04

We showed up in Bain Keep.

• 1:22:08

An armored shade floats before

• 1:22:10

you, incapable of speech.

• 1:22:14

It, however, does extend a translucent

• 1:22:16

arm. To hand you

• 1:22:18

a corporeal letter.

• 1:22:21

Oh, I've received a letter.

• 1:22:24

OK, let's take a look at what this letter does.

• 1:22:27

The paper in this letter is inked on

• 1:22:30

what feels so old

• 1:22:32

that it could disintegrate against

• 1:22:34

time and your gentle handling.

• 1:22:36

It holds together.

• 1:22:38

That sounds like I should open this letter.

• 1:22:43

Though the letter is ancient,

• 1:22:44

the text in it is clearly legible.

• 1:22:48

Papa.

• 1:22:49

Oh, no, wait, no, Papa.

• 1:22:51

Mama says we won't be able to visit anymore

• 1:22:54

after we've through the portal.

• 1:22:56

Oh, should I mess that up?

• 1:22:58

I should have read this before.

• 1:23:00

C minus.

• 1:23:00

I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

• 1:23:02

OK, wait, wait. Papa.

• 1:23:03

Mama says we won't be able to visit anymore

• 1:23:06

after we leave through the portal.

• 1:23:08

Didn't feel right to leave you alone,

• 1:23:10

so I'm leaving you my bravest toy soldier.

• 1:23:12

Oh, that was the toy soldier piece we found.

• 1:23:15

To help you and the others here fight off

• 1:23:17

the demons coming for us.

• 1:23:20

I hate to tell you, kid, I don't think that toy

• 1:23:21

soldier is going to help.

• 1:23:23

I'm getting too old for toys.

• 1:23:25

I know, I know. His name is Troy.

• 1:23:27

Oh, I love always Troy.

• 1:23:28

We have respawns here.

• 1:23:29

The word Og is written in blood across the back of the paper.

• 1:23:33

Four distinct times.

• 1:23:34

Sounds interesting.

• 1:23:35

Oh, he's going to give me some experience.

• 1:23:39

Deliver the toy to the forgotten soldier's memorial site.

• 1:23:43

OK, so we need to find a memorial site.

• 1:23:46

Oh, that's sad.

• 1:23:49

What history?

• 1:23:50

What history lives here?

• 1:23:53

Love the banners.

• 1:24:01

Oh, man.

• 1:24:03

We've got a I love the I also love the ambiance here of the like goblins.

• 1:24:25

We're mopping these goblins up.

• 1:24:31

Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:33

Yeah, we've been doing a lot of playtest cycles in this area.

• 1:24:38

Getting it in the good.

• 1:24:40

So we're pretty experienced.

• 1:24:43

Yeah, we have had many deaths in this area, but

• 1:24:47

yeah, what kills you gets you stronger, right?

• 1:24:50

Yep.

• 1:24:51

I think that's how it goes.

• 1:25:01

That wasn't close.

• 1:25:03

But, you know...

• 1:25:07

No.

• 1:25:08

No.

• 1:25:11

No.

• 1:25:12

Guys, I want to talk about another thing that we always are keeping in mind towards Alpha 2.

• 1:25:15

Oops.

• 1:25:22

Keeping in mind towards Alpha 2 is performance testing.

• 1:25:23

That's something that PI has been helping us test and there's another PI test happening,

• 1:25:28

I think, next week, which is both the visual performance testing and the visual performance

• 1:25:29

testing.

• 1:25:30

And that's something that this team has been working on.

• 1:25:31

And we have they've been working on two things.

• 1:25:31

the visual performance that you're seeing within the game world from a rendering perspective as

• 1:25:37

well as from a networking perspective on the servers as well so keep that in mind there's

• 1:25:43

going to be a lot of benefits there because it is something that is happening now and

• 1:25:50

teams have been putting a lot of work towards that

• 1:25:53

might want to get a little mana back there i know i have no mana i'm so sorry

• 1:26:02

i'm just grabbing cheating grabbing mana we need a we need a bard in this party

• 1:26:07

well you do have blood fusion if you so choose oh that's right i forgot about blood fusion i

• 1:26:12

should choose that yeah next aoe pack you could use that with uh so that gives 50 percent back

• 1:26:18

of damage done as mana yep so round all these guys up and pop it and start aoeing

• 1:26:23

you

• 1:26:23

oh yeah you're tall i forgot about that

• 1:26:31

nice

• 1:26:36

by the way this area looks great during the ancient valance

• 1:26:49

all right it looks like we got something up here on our right

• 1:26:52

wolves up front

• 1:26:53

wolves up front

• 1:26:53

wolves up front

• 1:26:53

let's get them let's do this what do we got incoming

• 1:26:57

looks like we got alpha wolf up top try to pull him down i see this alpha wolf up there

• 1:27:06

i'm going for him

• 1:27:20

oh

• 1:27:21

oh

• 1:27:21

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:23

Who's alpha?

• 1:27:25

Who's this guy talking about alpha?

• 1:27:32

Flayer on me.

• 1:27:39

Okay, I'm getting that mana back.

• 1:27:43

Oh, what do we got here?

• 1:27:45

Flayer?

• 1:27:47

Yep, he's dead though.

• 1:27:53

Nice.

• 1:28:02

Oh, do I need to loot that alpha?

• 1:28:04

Yeah, let's loot him.

• 1:28:06

Where's he at?

• 1:28:08

Right here.

• 1:28:10

He has an alpha severed head.

• 1:28:12

Alright.

• 1:28:14

Like crafting material.

• 1:28:16

They have like a little den here, how sad.

• 1:28:18

Let's go behind the den maybe.

• 1:28:20

Sneak in.

• 1:28:23

Yeah, come around from kind of like the wall side.

• 1:28:26

Infiltration.

• 1:28:29

We need a camouflage.

• 1:28:32

How should we go up here?

• 1:28:35

Go along the walls?

• 1:28:37

Let's try it.

• 1:28:38

I think there's mobs up there too, but we can give it a shot.

• 1:28:43

No, it looks like there's a break in the wall.

• 1:28:45

Further down.

• 1:28:47

Oh yeah, there's a Flayer up there too, be careful.

• 1:28:49

That's a good plan though.

• 1:28:51

Foiled.

• 1:28:55

Okay, here we go.

• 1:28:57

Want to pull these?

• 1:28:58

There we go.

• 1:28:59

Yep.

• 1:29:00

Alright, sleeping.

• 1:29:03

Okay, I'm going to jump on them.

• 1:29:05

Hold up.

• 1:29:06

Oh!

• 1:29:13

Get some damage.

• 1:29:17

There we go.

• 1:29:19

Got a trip there.

• 1:29:20

We doing it?

• 1:29:21

You can kill me from the back.

• 1:29:22

Yup.

• 1:29:23

We got another.

• 1:29:24

We got a friend.

• 1:29:25

Oh no, he's hurting.

• 1:29:26

He's hurting.

• 1:29:27

Alright, he's frozen.

• 1:29:28

I'm going to get him.

• 1:29:29

No!

• 1:29:30

No!

• 1:29:31

No!

• 1:29:32

No!

• 1:29:33

No!

• 1:29:34

No!

• 1:29:35

No!

• 1:29:36

No!

• 1:29:37

No!

• 1:29:38

No!

• 1:29:39

No!

• 1:29:40

No!

• 1:29:41

No!

• 1:29:42

No!

• 1:29:43

No!

• 1:29:44

No!

• 1:29:45

No!

• 1:29:46

No!

• 1:29:47

No!

• 1:29:48

Dead.

• 1:29:49

Got him!

• 1:29:50

I feel bad for the wolves, actually.

• 1:29:51

They didn't want this.

• 1:29:52

They're just in their little dens.

• 1:29:53

Wrong, wrong place, wrong time.

• 1:29:54

These dens smell nasty.

• 1:29:55

Big pull.

• 1:29:56

Big pull?

• 1:29:57

Well, I guess that's every pull in the area.

• 1:29:58

Yeah.

• 1:29:59

Yeah.

• 1:30:00

Yeah.

• 1:30:01

Yeah.

• 1:30:02

Yeah.

• 1:30:03

Yeah.

• 1:30:04

Yeah.

• 1:30:05

Yeah.

• 1:30:06

Yeah.

• 1:30:07

Yeah.

• 1:30:08

Yeah.

• 1:30:09

Yeah.

• 1:30:10

Yeah.

• 1:30:11

Yeah.

• 1:30:12

Yeah.

• 1:30:13

Yeah.

• 1:30:14

Yeah.

• 1:30:15

Yeah.

• 1:30:16

Yeah.

• 1:30:17

Yeah.

• 1:30:18

Yeah.

• 1:30:19

Yeah.

• 1:30:20

Yeah.

• 1:30:21

Yeah.

• 1:30:22

Yeah.

• 1:30:23

Yeah.

• 1:30:24

Yeah.

• 1:30:25

Yeah.

• 1:30:26

Yeah.

• 1:30:27

Yeah.

• 1:30:28

Yeah.

• 1:30:29

Yeah.

• 1:30:30

Yeah.

• 1:30:31

Yeah.

• 1:30:32

Yeah.

• 1:30:33

Yeah.

• 1:30:34

Yeah.

• 1:30:35

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

• 1:31:00

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

• 1:32:00

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

• 1:32:05

Yeah.

• 1:32:06

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

• 1:32:09

Yeah.

• 1:32:10

Yeah.

• 1:32:11

Yeah.

• 1:32:12

Yeah.

• 1:32:13

Yeah.

• 1:32:14

Yeah.

• 1:32:15

Yeah.

• 1:32:16

Yeah.

• 1:32:17

Yeah.

• 1:32:18

Yeah.

• 1:32:19

Yeah.

• 1:32:20

Yeah.

• 1:32:21

Yeah.

• 1:32:22

Yeah.

• 1:32:23

Yeah.

• 1:32:24

Yeah.

• 1:32:25

Yeah.

• 1:32:26

Yeah.

• 1:32:27

Yeah.

• 1:32:28

Yeah.

• 1:32:29

Yeah.

• 1:32:30

Yeah.

• 1:32:31

Yeah.

• 1:32:32

Yeah.

• 1:32:33

Yeah.

• 1:32:34

Yeah.

• 1:32:35

Yeah.

• 1:32:36

Yeah.

• 1:32:37

Yeah.

• 1:32:38

Yeah.

• 1:32:39

Yeah.

• 1:32:40

Yeah.

• 1:32:41

Yeah.

• 1:32:42

Yeah.

• 1:32:43

Yeah.

• 1:32:44

Where is he?

• 1:32:50

He is right on top of our tank back here.

• 1:32:55

I'm going to sleep off shortly.

• 1:33:00

Yeah, me too.

• 1:33:05

All right, bring that wolf down.

• 1:33:18

It's a man I hear real quick.

• 1:33:27

All right, let's start.

• 1:33:29

I got some howling wolf garb.

• 1:33:33

Nice.

• 1:33:34

Nice.

• 1:33:35

Nice.

• 1:33:36

And I found a toy soldier arm.

• 1:33:39

We have the we have the arms now and the boots.

• 1:33:44

We're doing speed halfway perfect.

• 1:33:46

Whoa.

• 1:33:47

Every time.

• 1:33:48

Sorry.

• 1:33:49

Every time.

• 1:33:50

Yeah.

• 1:33:51

As from the left.

• 1:33:52

Yeah.

• 1:33:53

Yeah.

• 1:33:54

Yeah.

• 1:33:55

Yeah.

• 1:33:56

Yeah.

• 1:33:57

Yeah.

• 1:33:58

Yeah.

• 1:33:59

Yeah.

• 1:34:00

Yeah.

• 1:34:01

Yeah.

• 1:34:02

Yeah.

• 1:34:03

Yeah.

• 1:34:04

Yeah.

• 1:34:05

Yeah.

• 1:34:06

Yeah.

• 1:34:07

Yeah.

• 1:34:08

He's asleep.

• 1:34:09

Careful to the left here.

• 1:34:19

Try and pull them back.

• 1:34:30

You.

• 1:34:30

Yeah, we got fudge fudge over here. Let's rest up. All right, let's make sure there's

• 1:34:55

no ads over here to our right. Jump, jump.

• 1:34:57

See where the wall kind of sticks out back there? I think we need to go that far.

• 1:35:00

Wolf right here. He's patrolling. Let's kill him.

• 1:35:06

Oh, we got ads. Let's just go to the wall. Go to the spot.

• 1:35:13

Okay. I'm going to sleep him as we pull. All right, sleep dropping now.

• 1:35:25

I think that LOS'd me.

• 1:35:27

A lot of wolves just passed that, so if we end up having to move a little bit, don't

• 1:35:31

go any further than this.

• 1:35:33

Yeah, dragging him to the corner.

• 1:35:41

All right, this player's down.

• 1:35:45

My favorite place of any tank, a corner.

• 1:35:51

Wait, I'm going to die.

• 1:35:56

Wait, I might pull a cooldown. I'll bring him back.

• 1:35:58

All right, it's just him now. Burn him.

• 1:36:01

I'm bringing it back to the wall.

• 1:36:03

Nice. Good pull.

• 1:36:08

That shield is strong.

• 1:36:21

I'm going to die.

• 1:36:22

I'm going to die.

• 1:36:24

I'm going to die.

• 1:36:26

I'm going to die.

• 1:36:27

Oh, man.

• 1:36:29

Here we go.

• 1:36:30

C'mon.

• 1:36:31

Man it back, here we go.

• 1:36:32

I wonder if those wound stacks are reducing the shields, though.

• 1:36:33

Should be.

• 1:36:34

Oh, there's a trip.

• 1:36:35

Can you maim him?

• 1:36:36

Mamed him.

• 1:36:37

Nice.

• 1:36:38

Come on.

• 1:36:39

Get him.

• 1:36:40

Get him.

• 1:36:41

Get the shield down.

• 1:36:42

What a clutch skill.

• 1:36:44

95.

• 1:36:45

Unbelievable, that shield.

• 1:36:48

I know.

• 1:36:50

Almost like it's scripted to do that.

• 1:36:53

Sweetie.

• 1:36:54

Nice kill.

• 1:36:55

Yeah.

• 1:36:56

a goblin skull sweet very nice

• 1:37:04

all right now what were we looking for something

• 1:37:10

yeah uh so i think in here is going to be the last two goblins we're trying to find

• 1:37:20

yeah they are up this ramp this way i think

• 1:37:26

watch out there's both left and right here i was trying to thread the needle and uh

• 1:37:34

sleeping the shaman

• 1:37:38

focus on this pack here

• 1:37:43

oh you just destroyed that tent yeah tanya if you destroy the homes they won't come back

• 1:37:56

i'm on the shaman freezing in

• 1:38:12

all right careful up here this is like super danger area

• 1:38:16

i'm gonna pull some of these back i think yeah you could probably yeah

• 1:38:22

um

• 1:38:26

i'm just keeping the flare

• 1:38:31

okay we got the other flare too now

• 1:38:37

i got him knocked down

• 1:38:54

what's happening

• 1:38:54

all right

• 1:38:56

keep an eye out lags he's right there on the left he's pathing just kind of wait it out

• 1:39:02

we want to clear up here the flag's the last one there's a flare above us

• 1:39:06

flare right here to the right while we wait and then pull him while we're

• 1:39:10

okay they're pulled leave this one that's close to us trad yeah i'm waiting them to round them up

• 1:39:16

because they're also got the next step they're all coming all right sleep dropping now drop that

• 1:39:21

sleep oh my god it's not much use if that happens

• 1:39:26

two can spin at this

• 1:39:32

res they they bumped my first one second one coming okay keep guiding keep guiding

• 1:39:40

i'm back out

• 1:39:42

stable

• 1:39:56

heading

• 1:39:58

you got more

• 1:40:04

oh

• 1:40:06

oh

• 1:40:08

oh

• 1:40:10

oh

• 1:40:12

oh

• 1:40:14

oh

• 1:40:16

oh

• 1:40:18

oh

• 1:40:20

oh

• 1:40:22

oh

• 1:40:24

oh

• 1:40:26

oh

• 1:40:28

oh

• 1:40:30

oh

• 1:40:32

oh

• 1:40:34

oh

• 1:40:36

oh

• 1:40:38

oh

• 1:40:40

oh

• 1:40:42

oh

• 1:40:44

oh

• 1:40:46

oh

• 1:40:48

oh

• 1:40:50

oh

• 1:40:52

oh

• 1:40:54

oh good kill on the chamois

• 1:40:56

oh

• 1:40:58

oh

• 1:40:59

oh

• 1:41:00

oh

• 1:41:02

oh

• 1:41:04

oh

• 1:41:06

y

• 1:41:08

oh

• 1:41:10

oh

• 1:41:12

oh

• 1:41:14

oh

• 1:41:16

oh

• 1:41:18

oh

• 1:41:20

oh

• 1:41:22

oh

• 1:41:24

And then we can spawn him.

• 1:41:27

What if he wants to bring him in?

• 1:41:34

I think his response isn't too bad.

• 1:41:35

It's actually pretty quick.

• 1:41:37

Was it? Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:41:40

All right. Well, let's talk about how this fighter has been performing

• 1:41:45

exemplary performance by the fighter, if I don't say so myself.

• 1:41:48

I mean, really just unbelievable.

• 1:41:51

Top tier. Top tier.

• 1:41:54

I do love the area.

• 1:41:56

I love how each of the areas just dramatically change

• 1:42:01

as story arcs come online visually.

• 1:42:04

Right. The atmospherics alone are significant.

• 1:42:08

Not not to mention the obvious sound ambience and everything.

• 1:42:12

These goblins, I love their vocals.

• 1:42:16

Yeah.

• 1:42:16

The little evil laugh like the big guys do right before they spin the wind on you.

• 1:42:21

Oh, yeah.

• 1:42:24

It's a nice like audio telegraph, too.

• 1:42:33

All right, now freeze the player.

• 1:42:40

They're starting to respawn here.

• 1:42:50

Back is back.

• 1:42:52

It's.

• 1:42:52

It's.

• 1:42:52

It's.

• 1:42:53

It's.

• 1:42:54

It is the main guy.

• 1:42:56

No, it's not.

• 1:42:56

Over here.

• 1:43:06

So what are some of the things, Trad, that you look for from the community

• 1:43:11

or Keenan or Brian as it relates to kind of everything we talked about today?

• 1:43:15

Right.

• 1:43:15

What are what are the things you want to hear people kind of opining on?

• 1:43:19

And you know, our different social media forums and whatnot.

• 1:43:23

This.

• 1:43:23

We've got a lot.

• 1:43:25

Right.

• 1:43:25

I mean, coming flags.

• 1:43:28

Oh, well, yeah, let's get him first and we can chat about that.

• 1:43:31

I mean, this is this is actually an interesting one is like, you know,

• 1:43:40

just these areas like, you know, the density, the respawn rates like,

• 1:43:45

you know, this is this is intended for a larger group.

• 1:43:47

But this is the kind of farming that you would want to see

• 1:43:52

or what you would want to see.

• 1:43:53

Or, you know, what are your preferred, you know, grinding experiences in games from MMOs you've played?

• 1:44:01

Also, just, like, how do you feel the fighter plays from the Melee perspective?

• 1:44:07

Like, you know, what are fighters that you've really liked playing in games?

• 1:44:11

And how did you enjoy them more?

• 1:44:14

Or what do you like more that you're seeing here that you didn't see in fighters on other games?

• 1:44:19

Like, all that kind of stuff.

• 1:44:21

Yeah.

• 1:44:21

Yeah. Building on that a bit, one thing I really like is criticism from our fans.

• 1:44:26

Like, what's missing? What doesn't look so hot?

• 1:44:31

We're all experienced developers. We can take the heat. It's fine.

• 1:44:34

You're not going to hurt our feelings. We just need to know what sucks.

• 1:44:38

Yeah, absolutely. I think the critical feedback loop is very important.

• 1:44:42

I think, you know, one of the things that is super important anytime you're offering any critical feedback

• 1:44:47

is to be very specific in the things that don't mesh well.

• 1:44:51

Or, you know, that you're looking to see improved.

• 1:44:54

And a lot of that stuff validates already what we have, you know, intentions for as we move forward in development.

• 1:45:02

But that validation is important, right?

• 1:45:04

Because it means that you as the player are thinking about the same things that we're thinking about.

• 1:45:09

And we can prioritize that stuff.

• 1:45:11

Obviously, combat being one of the biggest takeaways from Alpha 1,

• 1:45:14

which you can see here, we took to heart and are iterating upon and continuing to develop with.

• 1:45:21

So, you know, I think that's a really good thing that we're working on right now.

• 1:45:24

Another good thing would be, you know, this is a half group.

• 1:45:27

Like, how do the visuals look?

• 1:45:30

Like, you know, the fighter effects look really awesome, in my opinion, especially when we're showcasing them.

• 1:45:36

How does that hold up, you know, with the mage effects in parallel and also the cleric and the tank?

• 1:45:42

Like, a lot of that stuff, you know, how does it look, you know, when you're looking at it from a very controlled, isolated standpoint?

• 1:45:51

And how does that hold up or break down when you enter all those archetypes together into the mix?

• 1:45:59

You ready for the final guy?

• 1:46:01

Ooh, slag slags.

• 1:46:03

Did I loot the other dude?

• 1:46:05

I looted him again, so I spawned us a new one.

• 1:46:09

Oh, Jesus.

• 1:46:12

I can't help it.

• 1:46:13

Where is the new one?

• 1:46:15

Right here.

• 1:46:17

Years of ninja looting experience, I guess.

• 1:46:19

Oh, my God.

• 1:46:20

This is the fighter ship.

• 1:46:21

Okay, it's not the rogue.

• 1:46:23

Oh, sorry.

• 1:46:25

Oh, it's funny.

• 1:46:27

Is this him?

• 1:46:29

All right.

• 1:46:30

Yes.

• 1:46:31

Watch for Kenan just looted again.

• 1:46:32

Oh, my God.

• 1:46:33

I know.

• 1:46:34

There we go.

• 1:46:35

Okay.

• 1:46:36

We have the flare blade fragment and the toy soldier torso.

• 1:46:39

Yay.

• 1:46:41

We have the torso now.

• 1:46:43

Kenan has two torsos.

• 1:46:44

I have a single torso.

• 1:46:46

I have three.

• 1:46:47

Oh, my God.

• 1:46:49

Okay.

• 1:46:50

When you guys are ready, I'm going to charge.

• 1:46:52

What do I do here?

• 1:46:53

You want me to do a sleep bowl?

• 1:46:55

Well, they're incoming.

• 1:46:56

All right.

• 1:46:57

I'm sleeping now, so we'll see which one I get.

• 1:47:00

There are two shamans in the back.

• 1:47:03

I'm going to focus on them.

• 1:47:13

I'm up here on the platform.

• 1:47:20

What's this?

• 1:47:35

All right.

• 1:47:43

All right.

• 1:47:45

What you want, buddy?

• 1:47:46

Let's go.

• 1:47:47

Oh, he's tripped.

• 1:47:48

Yeah.

• 1:47:49

I think with the fighter looking as cool and spectacular as he does, it's a good opportunity

• 1:47:57

to talk about how visually interesting each ability should be, and whether people think

• 1:48:10

it's too much or too little, or whether they feel like it's about right for the gameplay

• 1:48:16

experience that they enjoy.

• 1:48:18

Absolutely, visuals, the visual effects for these abilities are in a playable state, we

• 1:48:30

want to get your guys' feedback on that, you know, I definitely want a lot of feedback

• 1:48:41

around what people want out of group grinding areas.

• 1:48:44

I know we're developing a lot of that.

• 1:48:46

Yeah.

• 1:48:46

We're developing a lot of those right now, and that would make sure that we're giving

• 1:48:49

everyone what they want, or at least taking it into consideration with what we're building.

• 1:48:56

Like things like respawn rates, density.

• 1:49:02

Do we want to complete the quest here?

• 1:49:03

You should have all the pieces.

• 1:49:04

Alright, so in your inventory, you should have all four if you looted Zags.

• 1:49:08

Yes.

• 1:49:09

Put it together, see what happens.

• 1:49:12

Just right-clicking one of them?

• 1:49:16

Oh, reassemble the doll!

• 1:49:19

The goblins must have broken up the toy soldier.

• 1:49:21

If I have all four parts, I can try reassembling it.

• 1:49:25

Looks like there's something over here.

• 1:49:26

They stabbed together, I have a reanimated toy soldier!

• 1:49:31

That sounds like a Chucky doll or something.

• 1:49:34

Creepy.

• 1:49:37

Let's get rid of it.

• 1:49:38

Yeah, I was about to say that.

• 1:49:39

We're going to get respawned.

• 1:49:40

Better turn in.

• 1:49:41

Yeah.

• 1:49:42

Where are we going?

• 1:49:43

We got a tombstone from the same guy.

• 1:49:44

Oh, the forest.

• 1:49:45

Yeah.

• 1:49:46

Oh, the forest.

• 1:49:47

Oh, the forest.

• 1:49:48

The warlord and the hero's memorial.

• 1:49:49

Let me see here.

• 1:49:50

We have a memorial for all the heroes that could not be buried and will always be remembered

• 1:49:57

here.

• 1:49:58

I place the action figure by the memorial.

• 1:50:01

I can feel a grateful presence in the air.

• 1:50:04

Suddenly notice this.

• 1:50:05

Hey, this was a- this is a graceful- graceful-

• 1:50:09

The goblins don't seem to care.

• 1:50:12

...small parcel.

• 1:50:13

Here, the memorial that I didn't see before!

• 1:50:14

Oh, here it is.

• 1:50:15

he gave me a glowing glint and some dim glint and he had leftover currency from the ancient times

• 1:50:25

and hopefully a lot of xp right yes a significant number of experience delivered the toy

• 1:50:30

we have succeeded

• 1:50:32

yay look at that it happened we did it amazing holy smokes well that was fun i enjoyed that in

• 1:50:45

the area obviously looks beautiful the class plays remarkably well um feels very good um

• 1:50:51

keenan brian trad and all the goblins around us that are incredibly vocal

• 1:51:00

thank you guys

• 1:51:02

this was a lot of fun i enjoyed this i know the community did um everyone out there in the

• 1:51:07

community as you guys have seen the fighter class is is getting very close to ready for alpha 2

• 1:51:13

along with all the other archetypes that you that you've seen give us your commentary give

• 1:51:18

us your feedback talk on the youtube channel in the discord on our forums

• 1:51:21

what did you enjoy about the presentation uh today oh my gosh these guys are just completely

• 1:51:32

we can just move persistent yeah i was gonna say maybe just a new thing they come they're almost

• 1:51:38

good we'll nuke any future yes future goblins but um everyone out there talk to us about what

• 1:51:44

you enjoyed today in the presentation um we obviously enjoy sharing these updates with you

• 1:51:48

obviously ashes of creation is still a work in progress we are continuing to develop towards

• 1:51:52

alpha 2 uh we are hard at work doing so uh but the combat team loves your guys's feedback

• 1:51:57

so please give it and keenan trad uh brian thank you very much for joining

• 1:52:02

us today and showing off all the hard work that your guys's teams have been working on

• 1:52:07

yep yep thanks for having us it's been an adventure yes an adventure all right guys

• 1:52:13

we will see you back on stream and we are back I'm going to um play the video in the background

• 1:52:26

whilst we talk we're gonna grab some questions from chat throughout the um we've been watching

• 1:52:32

you

• 1:52:32

uh Wagner and roshan are wonderful community managers have been we have like a party that's

• 1:52:37

happening on Discord and we've got a Twitch chat so we've definitely been keeping an eye

• 1:52:41

out for you guys's questions and trying to snag all of the details so first and foremost I think

• 1:52:47

Steven you wanted to kind of address performance and I know that's something we are working on

• 1:52:51

drastically even with our PI users we've been getting all the PC specs and stuff like that and

• 1:52:57

working towards that yeah those and you know those the initial performance work that's being done

• 1:53:02

right now

• 1:53:03

is is mainly on the network side but what you guys are noticing on the FPS and the client bed

• 1:53:08

rendering you know that is stuff that we are you going to be working on over the next few months

• 1:53:14

you should see some very significant lift in those areas you know sometimes it can it can

• 1:53:21

get a little bit unruly while we're in active development certain assets can get certain places

• 1:53:26

that might need to be adjusted we might be getting draw calls from across the map you know you might

• 1:53:30

have some cloth simulation that's justすごい awesome maybe you can show those off some all the time if people were interested that's great

• 1:53:31

stimulation that's just a little heavy on some hair like there's you know a few things obviously

• 1:53:36

that that are kind of low-hanging fruit um uh that our performance teams will focus on you'll see

• 1:53:42

that get better obviously as we get closer to to alpha 2 uh so it is on the top of our minds we do

• 1:53:48

definitely uh address that we recently released also um some of our mint spec and recommended

• 1:53:53

specs for alpha 2 you can take a look at that on the website um yeah you go to our support section

• 1:53:59

and look at our kb articles or uh yeah our knowledge base articles sorry call it kb uh but

• 1:54:04

our knowledge base articles and just type in you know specs and it should be there for you so um

• 1:54:09

we have all that information already there and keep in mind that is just for alpha 2 we will be

• 1:54:13

changing that as we move forward in beta 1 and beta 2 and then launch we're obviously going to

• 1:54:17

keep optimizing from to give perspective most games are not worrying about performance and

• 1:54:23

optimization this early on usually you're just developing like crazy and then you do the

• 1:54:27

performance stuff later towards when you're doing the performance stuff and then you're

• 1:54:29

doing the performance stuff later towards when you're doing the performance stuff and then you're

• 1:54:29

you're ready to open for beta um or the alphas these days which are basically like beta ones

• 1:54:35

so just kind of keeping that in mind because we're in open development it's a little bit different

• 1:54:40

for us um you know in development process the next question we have here the rest of them are

• 1:54:45

more fighter based uh the next question here is will the battle cry sound effect change based on

• 1:54:50

your race and uh yes yeah and and that's not just obviously for battle cry but any type of um

• 1:54:58

you know incantation uh is generally going to adhere to a certain style of vocal that's

• 1:55:05

respective of the character customization options that you've selected yeah and you'll hear those

• 1:55:11

audio voices and other things that we do in the future are any of these abilities change or

• 1:55:17

abilities changed based on weapon choice so example if i have a bow equipped will whirlwind

• 1:55:23

be different based on that no so um in

• 1:55:28

one thing that we've changed which uh since alpha one is we now have a dedicated ranged slot and a

• 1:55:35

dedicated uh main hand off hand for melee slots um and so if you use an ability that has that is

• 1:55:42

utilizing your ranged slot um you will you will spawn that weapon as you're using the ability and

• 1:55:48

then go back to your your uh basic weapon selection um toggle and you can toggle back and forth between

• 1:55:58

the melee weapon slot or the melee weapon slot uh for your basic weapon attacks

• 1:56:03

all right and then the next one here is what percentage of currently complete fighter abilities

• 1:56:08

don't require a target uh something that folks noticed is that uh you were in action comment a

• 1:56:14

few times uh throughout this as well so i don't know how you want to explain yeah absolutely i

• 1:56:19

tried to play a little bit of action there i saw some of the commentary about my uh

• 1:56:23

my playing i just want to say that um you know in advance there was that's totally

• 1:56:28

fine like hey i want you as the viewer to look and say man i could play way better than you

• 1:56:36

right and then get in here and show it now for two no i'm just kidding i'm like steven you were

• 1:56:42

wandering around over here the boss is there somebody on discord today said that i'm a boomer

• 1:56:48

and i said technically i'm a millennial but i play like a boomer so i guess i'm a millennial

• 1:56:53

and they were like just stop i saw that in the discord

• 1:56:57

so good

• 1:56:58

okay uh what was the actual question oh what percentage are uh templated attacks versus uh

• 1:57:05

requiring a target um that's a good question i would say off the top of my head i think there's

• 1:57:11

probably four or five abilities right now that require a single target and then i think the rest

• 1:57:19

are either like on self or uh some you know template tonal attack or something yeah fighter's

• 1:57:28

aoe heavy um will there be a limit to the stacks on bosses uh so there was a lot of debuffs and

• 1:57:36

um what do we call status effects and things like that that were being stacked on things

• 1:57:40

um and they're curious if there's limits to certain stacks um and also

• 1:57:45

uh can you for instance an example would be can i one shot a boss by stacking wounded for an hour

• 1:57:52

no yeah yeah absolutely there's diminishing returns uh there are max stack counts um

• 1:57:58

you know uh those are types of things that kind of depend on the target we're talking about

• 1:58:03

um bosses are obviously going to have the higher end of resistances and and you know immunity

• 1:58:09

returns and immunities absolutely um so the intent is not to provide an infinite stack count

• 1:58:15

absolutely and um to follow up on that just because i know there might be some

• 1:58:20

subsidiary questions of that which is would those stacks be per arc or per person or per archetype or

• 1:58:28

per the type of status effect those would be predicated on the status effect type so so not

• 1:58:36

respective if you put burning on it it would be everybody in the raid it has to adhere to that

• 1:58:40

limit that's correct yep for context okay um and then and just to be clear like like that is

• 1:58:46

absolutely something that we're that we're going to be testing um we've on the design team we've

• 1:58:51

had a number of discussions with regards to how to surface kind of individual stack application

• 1:58:58

kind of onboard something a lot of it is only for the kind of help of the alpha 2 where uh

• 1:59:05

different people come up with different access options for them so if anybody has a very leveled

• 1:59:10

issue in alpha 2 like like and what we have been hearing right they just don't have tools or

• 1:59:13

information to to allow for actual mount sales and usage in alpha one testing has a very limited

• 1:59:18

number of options for us at this moment and wefest is now pretty Congrats to everybody

• 1:59:22

that is out here this morning on Africa monument so check that out this spring and you know we're

• 1:59:24

soon professionally opening up our offer so stay tuned to that linkedin patreon website 그래서

• 1:59:28

come back and few more episodes like you know group and choose a combative program like you know

• 1:59:28

with us your thoughts we'll be making changes and balancing things as we move forward um how will

• 1:59:34

augments work to help a fighter hold aggro if their secondary archetype is a tank and i know

• 1:59:40

that that's like going deeper into secondary archetypes um folks are curious about it i mean

• 1:59:46

just to give a general response there without getting into too much of the specifics because

• 1:59:50

obviously augments are something that we are still kind of outstanding in our um in our uh development

• 1:59:57

slash you know inspection there the idea is that you know obviously threat generation is a core

• 2:00:04

component of the tank archetype so as a fighter if you're selecting the tank as your secondary

• 2:00:10

archetype you're going to have certain spheres of augments that you can apply to your abilities

• 2:00:16

to help maintain threat to potentially even momentarily take aggro from a particular target

• 2:00:26

in order to

• 2:00:27

better service that role of the tank in combat now what that will specifically equate to you know i

• 2:00:35

don't have an answer for you now that's something that we'll be testing in the future um but you

• 2:00:40

know know that the goal with providing those selections to the fighter will be to service

• 2:00:47

a secondary um threat generation you know effect um yeah and then the next one is

• 2:00:56

uh

• 2:00:57

is momentum being generated while under the effects of exert

• 2:01:03

uh say that i'm sorry i was getting distracted everybody in chat saying stare

• 2:01:07

why are they saying stare i don't know maybe someone rated us or something like that

• 2:01:12

is momentum being uh generated while under the effects of exert

• 2:01:16

is momentum being generated while underneath yes absolutely uh that's part of the mechanic that

• 2:01:21

is currently incorporated into exert is that you can activate exert while

• 2:01:27

max momentum and then depending on the effectiveness of you utilizing your skills

• 2:01:33

and damaging targets you can continue to keep that momentum up while under the effects of exert to

• 2:01:41

extend its lifetime uh beyond what the you know six seconds initially are we appreciate the raid

• 2:01:49

we always do from everybody we just are also trying to be conscious of folks time so we don't

• 2:01:54

always uh mention them we're always trying to be conscious of folks time so uh we don't always uh

• 2:01:56

mention them uh the next one is will ranged archetypes have ways of gaining distance to

• 2:02:02

compensate for fighter distance closers uh would you keep doing this until both players have

• 2:02:08

cooldowns for their mobility and i just want to say we haven't balanced everything yet so there

• 2:02:13

will definitely be adjustments so the question is are there are there gap creators in addition to

• 2:02:19

the gap closers that we see on the fighter or it's will ranged archetypes specifically like

• 2:02:26

like your mage your ranger your what we see arranged well they have yeah they have ways

• 2:02:31

to gain dis gain distance to compensate for how well the fighter can gap close yeah yeah

• 2:02:37

absolutely that's that's the cat and mouse of these abilities right like we've seen with the

• 2:02:42

ranger they have a backflip they have um their um their airdrop ability the mage

• 2:02:49

has teleportation um you know there are going to be abilities that are tit for tat right and

• 2:02:58

managing the resource of those abilities and the timing of when you use them to either correlate to

• 2:03:06

your opponent's use of those things um or to save them for yourself when you want to get away like

• 2:03:13

that's part of what makes the engagements dynamic and different each time yeah and if you go back

• 2:03:19

and you watch a game that's more of a drag race uh the the the the the uh the the the the the the

• 2:03:19

our major archetype preview or our range ranger specific archetype preview you will see that they

• 2:03:26

also have some abilities to slow snare you know keep their their targets at in place and also to

• 2:03:34

get themselves more mobile especially the ranger has a lot of mobility as well so and then we

• 2:03:38

balance we're not in the balancing state um so obviously right now every every class we show

• 2:03:44

they're like sop but right now we're trying to find the fun so sometimes the fun is a little op

• 2:03:49

but the balance will come into play and of course absolutely you'll see these abilities move around

• 2:03:54

too some of them might move into secondary archetypes or augments and things like that

• 2:03:58

so just keep that in mind uh the next question is do do destructibles respawn because one of the

• 2:04:04

things that you had said in there was like oh maybe they won't come back home

• 2:04:08

and like someone was like i wish that was the case but yeah i was just being a little role play

• 2:04:12

um yes destructibles so you know obviously not a lot of mmos that we have

• 2:04:19

probably played um are intending to provide a heavily destructible environments um these

• 2:04:29

obviously these set pieces like the you know the different props you saw in this demonstration the

• 2:04:34

huts um the totem poles and stuff you know those are unique to the goblin tribe the muck ma tribe

• 2:04:42

and part of our dynamic world is that as population tables change so too

• 2:04:50

do the corresponding prop sets that are utilized within the area to better reflect

• 2:04:55

that dynamic change of the world and from a level design perspective when you're curating

• 2:05:02

these spaces for players to engage in combat either in pve or in pvp there is an element of

• 2:05:10

uh strategy that gets introduced when that environment has destructibility as well so you

• 2:05:17

can clear those spaces make them more developed you know to make the environment as good as possible

• 2:05:19

make mobility a bit better serviceable for you, or vice versa, you could utilize, you know,

• 2:05:27

line of sight and, and interruption to kind of create interesting engagements. So those can be

• 2:05:34

destroyed. And then they do respond after a period of time, I believe currently that period of time

• 2:05:39

is set to like 10 minutes for the response of those. Yeah. And I think the community just got

• 2:05:49

a bingo. They have the cat on the bingo card. I didn't make it happen. She came over here.

• 2:05:57

Can we? Yeah, for those of you who are new to our community, if you head on over to our discord,

• 2:06:01

our community always does like, they make up a little bingo card. It's cute.

• 2:06:07

Can we toggle nameplates for mobs, especially you show them outside of combat. So one of the

• 2:06:11

things they noticed when you were playing is that when you're roaming in the world,

• 2:06:15

you didn't really see nameplates until you had them targeted.

• 2:06:18

Yeah, that that was a set.

• 2:06:19

Setting that I had enabled, just because. Oh, so first of all, the question version, you guys,

• 2:06:25

right? I know. I know. I'm sorry. I'm not I do like the immersion. It helps fulfill the,

• 2:06:32

the fantasy of the world. But I also like to see nameplates from time to time. Anyways,

• 2:06:39

it is entirely customizable. Currently, that that customization option is already in game.

• 2:06:45

You can set nameplates to always appear, you can set it to only appear,

• 2:06:49

on targets, you can set it to only appear on targets that have taken damage, you can set it

• 2:06:53

to only appear on targets that are aggroing you or your party members. You can set it for your allies

• 2:06:57

for yourself, or, you know, whatever, there's, there's a lot of highly customizable options

• 2:07:04

that are currently in the game. All right, and we're gonna have color options to for some for

• 2:07:11

certain things for colorblind folks, too. I think it was one of the things that we've worked towards.

• 2:07:15

So we're gonna, we're gonna try to give you guys a lot of customization. I think even in

• 2:07:19

alpha two, you'll be able to like move and adjust your UI around. So yeah, keep that in mind. The

• 2:07:26

next question is, our mob sounds like the Goblin stock placeholder or intrepid made audio a lot. We

• 2:07:33

got a lot of comments about people really digging the audio. So good job, audio team. I know you

• 2:07:37

guys work hard. Yes, specifically, that was Andrew, one of our audio designers. He recorded those

• 2:07:43

Goblin sounds and implemented them into the game. Yeah, those are not stock. Those are, those are our

• 2:07:49

audio designer Andrews. His, his nightly routine before he goes to bed, he does those incantations,

• 2:07:55

screams into the ether. Exactly. No, he did a great job on those. They were really good. I mean,

• 2:08:04

obviously, and that's unique, right to to, to obviously certain faction types, the ones that

• 2:08:09

can can have language, you know, having those kinds of spelling incantations, I think, add a

• 2:08:14

lot of character. And he did a great job with those. Yeah.

• 2:08:19

And then, of course, does the fighter have any specific weapon dependent abilities? So, you know,

• 2:08:26

something that we are allowing people to do in Ashes of Creation is you can use any weapons and

• 2:08:31

armor. But obviously, there will be some that will be better for certain specs. So I don't know if you

• 2:08:36

want to talk more about that. Weapon dependent, like you have to use a specific weapon for specific

• 2:08:43

things. I don't think the fighter had I could be wrong on that. But I don't believe the fighter has

• 2:08:48

a weapon.

• 2:08:49

Dependent ability, other than like, using ranged weapons with melee specific abilities, right?

• 2:08:57

Right. And even in those situations, I still think you can use the melee abilities, you just won't

• 2:09:06

have a weapon equipped when you do that.

• 2:09:10

It's like punching or something. There's, we'll have to sort that out. But of course, those are

• 2:09:15

kind of we're not, we won't, we'll be here all day if we ask, ask and answer.

• 2:09:19

All of the questions. So definitely, whenever we put up our next q&a for next month, make sure you

• 2:09:25

put your questions in there if you have follow up questions for us. But we also have a thread up on

• 2:09:30

our forums, you can go check it out right now. It is regarding our fighter archetype preview. So if

• 2:09:35

you do have feedback for us regarding the archetype, definitely go give us as much as you want over

• 2:09:40

there. And it doesn't have to just be about the fighter. I think Keenan brought up some great

• 2:09:45

questions in the in the gameplay section, which was also,

• 2:09:49

not only been Keenan, but about like group play and the density in which we had mobs around there

• 2:09:55

and all that kind of stuff. So anything that you saw in the in this preview, please feel free to

• 2:10:00

share feedback with us as our wonderful community managers will be going through everything. They

• 2:10:05

read every single comment you guys make. Even our social media team. Peter goes through that and

• 2:10:11

also provides anything that's, you know, additional, so we give them as much as we possibly

• 2:10:15

can on that front in regards to what?

• 2:10:19

y'all are thinking and how you're feeling about things. So they don't have to read all of it,

• 2:10:23

they can focus on making the game. With that, we'll move over to studio.

Studio Update

• 2:10:28

By the way, just just to just be clear, I want to give another shout out. Tori also worked on the

• 2:10:33

goblin vocals as well. So it was Tori and Andrew, they split those up a bit. So those of you who

• 2:10:38

are loving those sounds, big props to Tori and Andrew on that it was it definitely immersed me.

• 2:10:43

Yeah, let's get some some claps and chat some hearts. We appreciate it.

• 2:10:49

Next up, let's talk a little bit about studio stuff. We have a lot of roles that are up for

• 2:10:57

for hiring industry is crazy right now. You went to GDC talk a little bit maybe about that as well.

• 2:11:06

Yeah, I did. I did go to GDC. I went to GDC, I tried to fit all of my meetings into just two

• 2:11:12

days so that I could get back to the studio as quickly as possible. So I was there for Tuesday

• 2:11:15

and Wednesday. I did announce while I was there on Twitter, I was there on Twitter, I was there on

• 2:11:19

Twitter, kotting all the more or less, because there was this extremely valuable interview that

• 2:11:20

sort of brought it up. And I hang around with a lot of the people on Twitter that I would sit down

• 2:11:24

and that that St. Regis Lobby from like nine to 10 on Tuesday and four to five on Wednesday and boy,

• 2:11:28

did we have a turnout of people. That was a lot of fun to chat with everybody and where they are

• 2:11:34

in their careers and their passion for Ashes and MMOs in general. I had a great time chatting with

• 2:11:41

a lot of different people went on to the Expo floor Wednesday in the afternoon for about an hour

• 2:11:46

and that was like, boy, we've seen a lot.

• 2:11:48

Yeah.

• 2:11:49

Yeah.

• 2:11:49

got to meet just a lot of people who came up and were aware of Ashes. And that helped recharge my

• 2:11:56

motivation batteries, which was great. We are hiring. We have some lofty hiring goals over

• 2:12:05

the next 60 days. And you guys in the community who are watching and help spread the word for

• 2:12:13

Ashes and the company, you already have done an amazing job. I told you the story about

• 2:12:18

some interviews I had where their gamer friends, after they had been laid off, said now's your

• 2:12:24

chance. Get over to Ashes, right? I would call upon you once again to help spread the word.

• 2:12:33

We have got, I think, like eight or nine design positions that are open currently.

• 2:12:40

We have a number of production positions. We have a number of engineering positions.

• 2:12:47

And Intrepid is...

• 2:12:48

A stellar place to work. And the project is a very fulfilling and exciting one.

• 2:12:54

So as you are aware of people in this industry that you look up to or that you admire or

• 2:13:00

whatever it may be, send them our way because...

• 2:13:05

And some of those roles on there, we're hiring for multiple people of those roles. So if you're

• 2:13:10

like, but I only see three there, it's because we're hiring like four of that one role or

• 2:13:14

whatever it might be. So...

• 2:13:16

Absolutely.

• 2:13:17

Yeah, it is.

• 2:13:18

We need a lot of people to make this project. It is a lofty one.

• 2:13:24

Yes.

• 2:13:26

I think that's all I had. Things that I wanted to make sure that we mentioned. Is there anything

• 2:13:30

else that you can think of, Stephen?

• 2:13:32

No, I think the only other thing that I would love to touch on is the team is very heads down

• 2:13:39

right now working towards getting what we want to get ready for Alpha 2 ready.

• 2:13:46

And I would say that, you know, we have a wonderfully beautiful, glorious community who have

• 2:13:54

stood with us many steps of the way on this journey. And it is a journey that's not for

• 2:14:02

everyone. Watching a game that's in development, you know, constantly being teased every month

• 2:14:07

about the product you want to play, but can't touch yet, right? That takes a different level of

• 2:14:15

patience.

• 2:14:16

Right? That not all of us are probably accustomed to. And, you know, sometimes that patience can

• 2:14:23

wear thin, and that's fair. But what I can tell you is that that patience is going to yield

• 2:14:31

something, I think, distinct in our genre. What we're creating with this game, and it's been a

• 2:14:41

long road, if I would quote Star Trek Enterprise and their intro.

• 2:14:46

It's been a long road, and there's still a long road ahead of us. But, you know, when I go to sleep

• 2:14:58

at night and wake up in the morning and spend my, you know, waking hours, everything Ashes related,

• 2:15:06

what I think about is that execution. And I think about what it would mean on a launch day of either

• 2:15:13

Alpha 2 or a launch for the game. And I think about that execution. And I think about what it would

• 2:15:16

mean as a launch day of a game where we didn't do what we needed to do in order to make the game good

• 2:15:21

enough. And I'm not, you know, I'm not a perfectionist. Right. I don't believe in waiting until

• 2:15:28

a product is perfect, but I do believe in waiting until the product is good enough. And

• 2:15:35

that is always my northern star. That's my guiding light when I think about the decisions that need

• 2:15:41

to be made, you know, regarding production, regarding the production, the collection. And there's

• 2:15:42

some of that that needs to be done. And again, that's something that I think about as well. I've

• 2:15:42

been a lot of success in, you know, the development of the game. But I think that there's still a lot of

• 2:15:43

things that need to be done that need to be done. And I think about what there's so much that has to be

• 2:15:44

production regarding marketing regarding uh you know development and design decisions like

• 2:15:52

that is my guiding light always from the player's perspective so i just want to impress upon you

• 2:15:57

all in the audience is that you know when we when we hear our our friends our fellow mmo gamers

• 2:16:05

talk about you know wanting to either see something now or you know hear something now

• 2:16:12

or um you know whatever that might be um take it with the understanding that you can help

• 2:16:19

communicate to them intrepid is trying to do things differently and that's okay that is a good

• 2:16:27

thing that is what this genre needs is in my opinion this level of engagement this level of

• 2:16:35

transparency i think is a very important one and it's been nice to kind of help pioneer that a bit

• 2:16:40

for the genre

• 2:16:42

and i'm happy to see other projects take that take that on it's not an easy one to do i know

• 2:16:49

i had a couple of discussions at gdc with some other with some other project directors

• 2:16:55

thinking about doing this it is not absolutely it is not because you know at the end of the day like

• 2:17:02

this takes a level of investment and a bit of an atypical approach to development that that that

• 2:17:10

that allows us to stand up

• 2:17:12

and be able to do this kind of development update process every month right um and and that

• 2:17:18

investment is significant but the reward is that we get a community along the way who is also

• 2:17:25

invested in ensuring that the product outcome is what the community wants and i think that cost

• 2:17:35

is worth it obviously but what i want to say is that when you come across you know fellow mmo gamers

• 2:17:42

who are impatient or who you know might not say the nicest things about the product that's okay

• 2:17:48

it is okay right let them come back and take a look when we do get to alpha 2 or when we exactly

• 2:17:55

correct um so don't don't jump down the throats uh just you know be prepared open arms smiling

• 2:18:03

faces and uh as we continue to stay on the road towards development um if you build it they will

• 2:18:10

come

• 2:18:11

that is a that is a

• 2:18:12

lifelong message i take home if you've followed us over the years you've seen our progress like

• 2:18:16

we continue to make progress um that is one of the beautiful things about having open development the

• 2:18:23

hardest thing is keeping that trust and building it right we understand that we're gonna make

• 2:18:27

mistakes everyone does right but it's how we communicate those and how we share that information

• 2:18:32

with you guys so um we appreciate you thank you so much for being here with us and motivating and

• 2:18:40

providing us feedback

• 2:18:42

and you know feedback does take time to fix and iterate on so that is another thing too so just

• 2:18:47

keep those things in mind and normally you know folks are developing mmos you know 10 15 20 years

• 2:18:53

in darkness so they don't have that continual feedback and you're not

• 2:18:57

sitting there waiting for 10 20 years you know alongside of developers um and early

• 2:19:03

on in development you have a lot less staff because you're not you know doing the nitty

• 2:19:07

gritty and as you get further along you're you're staffing up you're working towards bigger pieces

• 2:19:12

when things start moving fast so just thank you for your patience and continued patience

• 2:19:17

and patience with other people who maybe don't have it absolutely and with that we'll move over

Art Update

• 2:19:24

to our wonderful art update we have you guys got to see the rankai in game too which is cool we've

• 2:19:31

shown the models before um but we did show the heavy armor in game and last time we showed you

• 2:19:39

the medium armor for carfin and this is the or light armor in this is the medium so these are

• 2:19:46

all all the carfin armor that you've been seeing and the weapons and stuff like that those are all

• 2:19:50

attainable in-game things from carfin so um get excited for looks great love it steven didn't

• 2:19:58

want to put his helmet on in game i know i was really enjoying the orc mohawk yeah mohawk

• 2:20:06

just hide your helm homie i know

• 2:20:09

um and then the next one here is a turntable of that which looks amazing

• 2:20:19

that does look really good who worked on this oh i didn't put the names on the i'm sorry

• 2:20:27

it was a bit of a i think this might have been i think this might have been eli

• 2:20:32

did eli work on this i normally do probably i don't know

• 2:20:40

um and then nikku one we are now sharing you with you this is the starting gear for the nikku

• 2:20:48

and oh yeah the niku and models and the starting gear yeah you've seen the um concept of the models

• 2:20:55

this is like a three these are 3d models now with their starting game and you've been starting to

• 2:21:01

see some of the starting gear from all the other uh races so we've been sharing them as we're moving

• 2:21:05

along

• 2:21:06

And then we've got some cool VFX that we're being worked on.

• 2:21:15

Some of these you might have seen in game or you will soon go through different iterations

• 2:21:23

of them.

• 2:21:24

Now, those are those, I believe, are effects for the god spike and the.

• 2:21:30

Yeah, the Torin god spike.

• 2:21:32

Yeah, and I actually have the Torin spike.

• 2:21:35

I was going to say it for last, but I realized I should have put the VFX with that after.

• 2:21:40

So we'll just share that next year.

• 2:21:43

These are some of the concepts for them.

• 2:21:45

Obviously, this is not the end model, but do you want to talk a little bit about what

• 2:21:50

the Torin god spike is for or just leave them?

• 2:21:53

I think you tease people.

• 2:21:54

They're like, what does that mean?

• 2:21:56

Yeah, no, I talked a little.

• 2:21:57

This is something you're going to be seeing next month in our discord.

• 2:22:01

Yeah, we talked about, you know, the Torin Empire was a was an ancient empire.

• 2:22:05

On Vera before the aliens and the imperial, the aliens and the period empires got stood

• 2:22:11

up.

• 2:22:12

There was an empire of half elves that their demise came under the rule of King Atrax.

• 2:22:20

And the god spike was a particular interesting artifact that could help to to initiate essentially

• 2:22:27

this this essence fissure that would spawn in certain areas.

• 2:22:34

And.

• 2:22:35

Would be able to kind of sap into and and siphon out the essence that laid within Vera.

• 2:22:44

So not to get in too much detail, but it is an interesting ancient artifact that can be

• 2:22:48

used as part of certain war declarations that you may get some insight to in the coming

• 2:22:54

month.

• 2:22:55

I was running my cat.

• 2:22:56

Yeah, they both just ran in the room.

• 2:22:59

I was like, oh, my gosh, yeah, you're going to get to see that next next month.

• 2:23:04

So.

• 2:23:05

Get some I want to hear some some theories of what you guys think next month's the topic

• 2:23:10

is going to be.

• 2:23:12

And the next thing that we have here is some little spider links that are looking adorable

• 2:23:18

with a big spider.

• 2:23:20

So apologies for anybody who doesn't like scooters, I won't keep them up on screen too

• 2:23:24

long.

• 2:23:25

I know we've got a lot of people out there who are like, I don't like spiders.

• 2:23:29

It's OK, you could defeat them.

• 2:23:31

And then we have some concept art pieces.

• 2:23:34

We have some work that's being done towards academy nodes, alien highways, alien ruins

• 2:23:42

and the Kailar walls.

• 2:23:46

Those are great.

• 2:23:47

And of course, you guys have seen a lot of the cats are just yelling in the background.

• 2:23:55

You guys have seen some of these concept pieces in the past with us, and then we've shown

• 2:23:58

you the in-game world and a lot of people are like, it looks like the concept.

• 2:24:02

Our artists are amazing.

• 2:24:03

We try to give them a little showcase every week.

• 2:24:07

It's never enough, I'm sure.

• 2:24:10

And with that, I think we'll just wrap up with our Q&A as per usual, and I will play

Outro, Q&A

• 2:24:16

some more of the fighter preview whilst we do that to the in-game part where you guys

• 2:24:24

are fighting all the monsters.

• 2:24:27

Let's see what it's a question.

• 2:24:31

So.

• 2:24:32

Questions.

• 2:24:33

What do we have?

• 2:24:34

We have some some some spicy ones.

• 2:24:37

No, they're not too spicy.

• 2:24:38

Oh, spicy.

• 2:24:39

Well, maybe some of them are spicy.

• 2:24:42

Harry Glenn wants to know about buffs.

• 2:24:45

Will there be long term individual or group buffs unique to certain archetypes and classes?

• 2:24:50

And this is in lieu of, you know, when you think about general rating where you go and

• 2:24:55

you're like, I'm going to put this hour long buff on somebody.

• 2:24:57

Are those types of things going to be something that you're going to have experience like

• 2:25:01

everybody group up?

• 2:25:02

We're going to rate.

• 2:25:03

We're going to buff up.

• 2:25:03

Yes, those are definitely an intended experience.

• 2:25:08

I think actually, though, our longest buff right now is intended to be 30 minutes.

• 2:25:12

So I'm not sure we have hour long buffs.

• 2:25:15

If we do have hour long buffs, so they would likely come in the form of of edibles of well,

• 2:25:21

excuse me, it's probably wrong.

• 2:25:22

Wrong term.

• 2:25:23

Food.

• 2:25:24

Food.

• 2:25:25

Rations.

• 2:25:26

Steven, the chat's just like laughing.

• 2:25:27

Yeah.

• 2:25:28

Yeah.

• 2:25:29

Yeah.

• 2:25:30

Yeah.

• 2:25:31

Yeah.

• 2:25:32

Yeah.

• 2:25:33

Yeah.

• 2:25:35

Yeah.

• 2:25:36

Yeah.

• 2:25:37

Yeah.

• 2:25:38

Yeah.

• 2:25:39

Yeah.

• 2:25:40

Yeah.

• 2:25:41

Yeah.

• 2:25:42

Yeah.

• 2:25:43

Yeah.

• 2:25:44

Yeah.

• 2:25:45

Yeah.

• 2:25:46

Yeah.

• 2:25:47

Yeah.

• 2:25:48

Yeah.

• 2:25:49

Yeah.

• 2:25:50

Yeah.

• 2:25:51

Yeah.

• 2:25:52

Yeah.

• 2:25:53

Yeah.

• 2:25:54

Yeah.

• 2:25:55

Falketh wants to know about naval risks.

• 2:25:56

What?

• 2:25:57

What's the repair cost for destroyed ships and components?

• 2:25:58

Is it risky to venture into the ocean knowing repairs might be costly or is it manageable

• 2:25:59

enough to encourage frequent exploration?

• 2:26:00

No, this is coming from people seeing our caravan exploration.

• 2:26:01

Sure.

• 2:26:02

and traveling across the seas is not an easy adventure.

• 2:26:08

So when you suffer either damage or destruction,

• 2:26:12

obviously those will each contain different levels of risk.

• 2:26:16

The damage will be much more manageable

• 2:26:19

if actively attempting to repair that while at sea,

• 2:26:23

which you will have options to do on ships,

• 2:26:25

is actively repair.

• 2:26:26

Your crew can actively repair

• 2:26:28

if they have the appropriate materials.

• 2:26:30

But if you do unfortunately suffer some major mishap

• 2:26:35

or completely destroyed,

• 2:26:38

the cost will be great in reconstituting your vessel.

• 2:26:43

All right, the next one is from OTR Odor

• 2:26:45

that wants to know about coastal node ZOIs.

• 2:26:48

Will the deep ocean be encompassed

• 2:26:51

into these zone of influence of coastal nodes?

• 2:26:54

I feel like we've talked about this before,

• 2:26:55

but it might've been with PI.

• 2:26:57

I'm sorry, repeat that last part of it again.

• 2:27:00

I'm sorry, repeat the last part of it again.

• 2:27:02

Will the deep ocean be encompassed

• 2:27:05

into the zone of influence of coastal nodes?

• 2:27:07

So the coastal nodes, will the deep sea be part of that?

• 2:27:11

Oh, I see, I see, I see.

• 2:27:12

And I think we've said no before, but.

• 2:27:13

Yeah, no, the deep sea,

• 2:27:16

while it exists technically as part of a zone of influence,

• 2:27:20

it does not contribute to those coastal node areas.

• 2:27:24

So,

• 2:27:25

um the coast does not the deep sea but it is primarily the land uh environments that are

• 2:27:33

going to be contributing to the nodes uh experience grant there you have it

• 2:27:40

and that obviously might change right we'll see kind of how that plays out uh during alpha 2.

• 2:27:46

and then we've got leonardo who wants to know about server culture knowing that there won't

• 2:27:51

be pvp or pve only servers how will new players find a server that fits their play style culture

• 2:27:57

expectations and i don't think we've ever said there won't be pvp or pve only servers but i

• 2:28:05

think that's what people are under the impression we haven't i don't think we've officially said

• 2:28:09

that but there won't be pvp or pve servers the intended design is that pvp events are

• 2:28:19

the primary method by which consensual

• 2:28:21

pvp exists for players they opt into those and then non-consensual pvp is governed through our

• 2:28:27

flagging system which is highly dissentivizing players to engage in non-consensual pvp through

• 2:28:33

the act of corruption and gaining so the question was how will players get to choose

• 2:28:42

their pvp experience

• 2:28:46

yeah well if you're new and let's say maybe you're a pve

• 2:28:50

primary player

• 2:28:51

or how will i know which server to join like what culture oh i see i see i see i see um ashes is a

• 2:28:59

pvx game um and so in that regard you know your ability to wholesale disconnect from the pvp

• 2:29:08

elements of the game are likely not going to be entirely successful now does that mean that you

• 2:29:14

can reduce your exposure to pvp a hundred percent right and there are multiple play paths and

• 2:29:20

progression points that players can elect uh

• 2:29:24

instead to be more pve focused but by the sheer nature of risk versus reward and risk including

• 2:29:32

not being able to predict how other players might impact your gameplay that is an element

• 2:29:37

of the innate risk that exists in the multiplayer environment of a pvx setting

• 2:29:44

so you know not everybody is going to like that and we accept that right and we're not trying to

• 2:29:49

build a game that everybody is going to like because everybody it's doing that absolutely

• 2:29:55

doing that is not going to be successful um because they're just people with different

• 2:30:01

interests and you know we accept that and we're very kind of on the nose about what we're trying

• 2:30:05

to achieve right the idea is not to create a gank fest is not to create a grief fest that is not

• 2:30:12

what pvx is um and so because of that we have certain mechanisms um and systems that govern

• 2:30:20

the way players engage in pvp and majority of those are opt-in but there is always that element

• 2:30:29

of risk that's governed by the flagging system and so if you're interested in that i would take

• 2:30:33

a look at the wiki and look up what flagging is and look up what corruption is my experience tells

• 2:30:38

me and my expectations of the system are that they will signal

• 2:30:42

significantly reduce a player's exposure to non-consensual pvp but that risk is always going

• 2:30:48

to be present to some degree my recommendation make friends that's right get in a guild um it's

• 2:30:58

an mmo it's not meant to be a solo playing experience not that you can't it's just that's

• 2:31:04

more risky so if you like risking it for the biscuit that's your your call um and then lineker

• 2:31:10

and emily uh kind of were asking about biome

• 2:31:12

development will we see other biomes outside of the riverlands i think we've seen a lot of the

• 2:31:17

riverlands lately um and then what biomes are planned for the start of alpha 2. so as we get

• 2:31:25

closer to alpha 2 i will have a better answer for the expected biomes at the start of alpha 2.

• 2:31:32

you know we have probably completed the assets for about seven biomes i think roughly

• 2:31:39

and what i mean by that is we're talking about terrain we're talking

• 2:31:42

about foliage different tree types we're talking about um you know geological features and

• 2:31:49

different types of stone work and whatnot you know from a environment standpoint um you know biome

• 2:31:56

creation uh is more advanced but biomes are like they're essentially zones right and zones require

• 2:32:04

more to be complete than just the environmental assets they require content creation that's point

• 2:32:10

of interest development

• 2:32:12

um those are environmental sets that are needed um to sell kind of the uh the ancestral ruins

• 2:32:22

there is narrative and quests that are required to populate a zone uh there are creatures and

• 2:32:28

creature design that's required to populate a zone so um if we're talking about biomes

• 2:32:33

from an environmental perspective there's been a lot of progress made towards towards

• 2:32:38

our overall bio i think it's more intense the question here is really when will they see the

• 2:32:42

biomes and what's the future of those biomes well we've shown the desert biome they've seen the

• 2:32:49

jungle biome in alpha 1. they have seen some of our tabletop mountains we have we've shown obviously

• 2:32:57

the riverlands um you know we will continue to show those those biomes in the future at some

• 2:33:04

point right when they're ready to show and when it comes to what's expected at the beginning of alpha

• 2:33:10

2 that's something that when we're when we are certain of what that will look like we're going to

• 2:33:12

be um because content is excuse me development can be fluid right we're in the progress of

• 2:33:18

development um so you know i would say stay tuned for when we're ready to share what that's going to

• 2:33:25

be yeah and i think on the front of what you can expect from alpha 2 and the guide for that we will

• 2:33:30

put out an article that kind of gives you an overview of what features and systems and areas

• 2:33:35

will be available um we've done that before we've given you like a map and the key binds and all and

• 2:33:42

so we will do that again for you guys again in the future so just stay tuned and as we get closer

• 2:33:47

to alpha 2 you're probably going to see more of that information coming to play the next one here

• 2:33:51

is from tyrannothoraxis and they want to know about ship and combat collision how will naval

• 2:33:56

combat and rating work if ships cannot be moved or blocked how will naval combat work if ships

• 2:34:05

cannot be moved or blocked yeah ships can be moved um

• 2:34:12

yeah i think that's what they mean okay um yeah the intent is that um you know we adhere to some

• 2:34:19

semblance of real physics feelings right with regards to these vehicles um and so ships do

• 2:34:25

have the potential to be pushed in different directions and out of the way for each other

• 2:34:30

um that is an intended collision experience that we want ships to have but it should come with

• 2:34:35

significant risk and potential damage to the vessel so yeah i think that's what they mean

• 2:34:39

um

• 2:34:42

all right and then the next one here is from hutchy1989 and they want to know about commission

• 2:34:50

credit will one get credit for for quest objectives or for completing a commission when in

• 2:34:57

a raid we talked about yes if you're in a party you can you can get um you know a commission

• 2:35:04

credit but what about if you're in a raid oh i see um that's a good question uh and i think

• 2:35:12

in the majority of cases if we do allow progression within uh narrative systems like a

• 2:35:19

quest or commission um i think that's something that's going to be distributed based on the number

• 2:35:25

of raid or party participants right so killing a particular monster is not going to get everybody

• 2:35:31

a check mark on their progress towards killing 20 right it's going to be one person's going to get

• 2:35:37

that progression it'll be and then it'll continue to the next person and so on and so forth uh if

• 2:35:42

we're talking about you know some quest lines uh like story arcs or events um that have phases or

• 2:35:50

that have you know overall participation by many members then that progress can be shared at a

• 2:35:56

party raid level so there's different settings depending on what objective there is within a

• 2:36:02

quest some of them will share some of them will be distributed right and then apop wants to know

• 2:36:08

about shipbuilding so if we don't we have a lot of naval questions y'all are very curious

• 2:36:12

about naval stuff shipbuilding so if we don't have a coastal node leveled up are the sol on are are

• 2:36:19

we sol on building and launching ships so are we just like helpless in that so if we don't if we

• 2:36:25

don't personally have a coastal node set up can we not build and launch ships no you can absolutely

• 2:36:32

build and launch ships um coastal nodes are not where ships get built and launched harbors are

• 2:36:38

where ships get built and launched and harbors are essentially dilapidated

• 2:36:42

points of interest that progress when a node nearby coastal or not

• 2:36:49

adopts that point of interest or that harbor then the node can contribute towards building up the

• 2:36:55

harbor and players who may not be citizens of that node can still go to that harbor and access

• 2:37:00

its services and then we are in our penultimate question here we're almost to the end uh so thank

• 2:37:06

you all for staying with us uh apolfis wants to know about active blocking spells how will active

• 2:37:12

blocking function when it comes to spells will players be able to parry spells we talked about

• 2:37:17

active blocking in melee occurrences but they're curious about more spell oriented

• 2:37:23

um hold on one second before i get to that question let me give some clarity um so the

• 2:37:27

question i saw from ashes of narrer was so a group of eight will have to kill eight times 20 goblins

• 2:37:34

um no in in regards to like it depends on the objective if it's a kill objective then being

• 2:37:40

in a in a group of eight or in a group of eight or playing in a goblins

• 2:37:42

which competition based on personality is where one team is more likely to kill somebody than another team is more likely

• 2:37:42

it's only a group of eight people in an evidence level so getting the focus it's more likely to think about action

• 2:37:42

being able to play more allowing one team to have many players and working in vertex competition based on

• 2:37:42

potentially in a raid, everyone will get credit for the kill if it's a drop that's required like a quest drop off of a loot container or a monster and one person grabs the quest reward not everyone will get the quest reward from that individual drop.

• 2:37:58

So just want to clarify, it depends on the correct exactly. I just want to clarify, it depends on the objective, right, the intent is not to give healer classes or support classes.

• 2:38:12

You know from getting those things. Yeah. Okay, sorry. What was that Margaret the last question no problem. It's good to clarify. How will active blocking function when it comes to spells will players be able to parry spells.

• 2:38:28

Active blocking so yes, it depends. So active blocking is a part of our universal skill tree and active blocking depending on what piece of equipment you have equipped.

• 2:38:41

Some will be catered to.

• 2:38:42

Some will be catered towards magic in blocking and some will be catered towards physical damage in blocking. So if you have a physical shield, you're likely going to have little efficacy against active blocking for against a spell.

• 2:38:55

However, if you have a sigil equipped which is the essentially the arcane variant of a shield, and you actively block then you might have good efficacy against the spell.

• 2:39:08

All right.

• 2:39:09

And our final question for.

• 2:39:11

This development update is from Livu who wants to know about mount use cases will players need multiple mounts on their skill bar for various purposes like immunity gliding combat and escaping or will the gameplay be more focused on using just one mount.

• 2:39:29

I'm really excited for us to show mount abilities in the future because I know that's something that's on the plate.

• 2:39:35

Yeah.

• 2:39:36

Yeah.

• 2:39:37

So the intent is that mounts have.

• 2:39:40

Varying abilities.

• 2:39:43

And it's expected that you will have a number greater than one of mounts available to use.

• 2:39:50

Now whether or not that number is influenced or governed by a stable system.

• 2:39:55

That is something that is still in active design and development.

• 2:39:59

It is likely that you will not be able to carry every mount you own and be able to use them all at the same time.

• 2:40:06

There will probably be some governor to that.

• 2:40:09

And it will likely be serviced through a default building that exists in every node which is the stables.

• 2:40:16

And then to the second part of that question.

• 2:40:20

Is it intended that mount abilities are providing a matrix of choices options or strategy to the player the answer would be yes.

• 2:40:30

Because we have these abilities and different stat blocks that are that are governed through the animal husbandry system.

• 2:40:37

The desire is to make sure like any other piece of equipment or itemization choice.

• 2:40:44

That strategy is carefully considered when determining the appropriate mount use.

• 2:40:51

All right.

• 2:40:52

And that gets us to the end.

• 2:40:53

We made it.

• 2:40:54

It has been a very long one for us all.

• 2:40:57

So thank you so much everybody for bearing with us.

• 2:41:01

Sticking around.

• 2:41:02

Hopefully you had lots of snacks.

• 2:41:04

Maybe got a potty break in there.

• 2:41:06

But of course we do want to mention again to head on over to our forums.

• 2:41:12

Forums dot ashes of creation dot com.

• 2:41:14

Give us your feedback.

• 2:41:15

We have a thread over there already for the fighter archetype preview.

• 2:41:18

If you have any thoughts definitely share them with us.

• 2:41:20

We will be compiling that and sharing that with the development team.

• 2:41:23

And of course thank you so much to our development team.

• 2:41:26

Everybody has been kicking butt.

• 2:41:27

But of course an extra special thank you to Trad, Brian, and Keenan for joining us for this specific showcase.

• 2:41:33

And of course Steven for your time.

• 2:41:34

I know this is a long one.

• 2:41:35

This is a lot for you.

• 2:41:38

He's been a busy busy bee.

• 2:41:40

And of course we thank you all for being here.

• 2:41:43

And we hope that you have another wonderful safe and healthy month as we kick butt and work towards our next livestream that's coming up here.

• 2:41:53

And of course internally we have some big sprints that are coming up which is very exciting for us.

• 2:41:59

We are preparing our butts for Alpha 2.

• 2:42:02

And I'm telling you.

• 2:42:03

We've been prepping a lot.

• 2:42:04

And getting a lot of things in place.

• 2:42:06

And even some polish time for us.

• 2:42:08

So that's been a big big thing for us is making sure that you guys have a great experience.

• 2:42:12

And lots of performance work as Steven had noted before.

• 2:42:15

Of course we will have the video up on the 4K video will be up on YouTube today.

• 2:42:20

So stay tuned for that.

• 2:42:21

And of course we will have the full development update for you up tomorrow pending YouTube cooperates with us.

• 2:42:28

Make sure that if you want your comments spotlighted to make a comment on that development update.

• 2:42:33

Video and leave a comment there.

• 2:42:35

Make sure that it shows you publicly as a subscriber.

• 2:42:38

So that when we pick random it shows you up there.

• 2:42:41

And of course follow us on all the places.

• 2:42:43

We are Ashes of Creation.

• 2:42:44

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

• 2:42:46

All the places.

• 2:42:47

Snapchat.

• 2:42:48

We try to post everywhere.

• 2:42:49

So thank you so much for joining us.

• 2:42:52

And we will see you all next month for another update.

• 2:42:55

Bye everybody.

• 2:42:57

See you guys.

• 2:42:58

Just got to find the end screen.

• 2:43:03

Bye.

• 2:43:04

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• 00:00

hello everyone and welcome to our glorious ashes of creation march development update

• 00:21

we hope that you've been having a wonderful month we have been so busy we have a very very

• 00:29

long live stream for you so oh my gosh buckle in grab your snacks but yeah get some popcorn

• 00:37

make sure to get some refreshments margaret and i are actually talking about whether or not we

• 00:40

should include a mandatory intermission in the showcase today like a little five minute get up

• 00:45

potty break thing our video editor and community folks and social folks were like maybe we should

• 00:50

have like a little intermission in between but oh my gosh i know that you don't you don't want

• 00:56

any pauses um but

• 00:59

uh we will also we have a lot we have a lot planned um so hopefully you are prepared like

• 01:05

i'm saying if you want to go get some snacks now i highly recommend it um but as you can see below

• 01:10

today's plan is we have a few reminders we have our fighter archetype preview which i know a lot

• 01:16

of people have been really excited about it is the i think one of the longest archetype previews

• 01:22

we've had i think someone posted a snapshot of all the links of all of them they just keep getting

• 01:29

well i mean as you know this is this is a byproduct of active development right as things get more

• 01:35

fleshed out there's more stuff to talk about and to show you guys you know as you've been watching

• 01:41

are going to see you know back from the early fighter you know basic melee to the ranged weapon

• 01:48

to the cleric to the you know ranger and tank like each of these are more and more fleshed and now

• 01:54

you're getting an idea of what alpha 2 you know is going to consist of from an archetype perspective

• 01:59

this one this fighter archetype preview uh is very detailed and we actually we even get into

• 02:04

more of the work that brian's been doing and the combat team has been doing on weapon uh progression

• 02:10

skills as well and those are pretty detailed now so and we mostly show about an hour and 40 minutes

• 02:16

of of archetype uh preview no no worries i just blurred their ears off i was trying to fix myself

• 02:21

a little bit i'm trying to adjust my audio to match yours um and i might have just pushed it

• 02:28

a little too loud

• 02:29

um but yeah we are sure are only showing with the great sword um in the weapon skill trees but

• 02:35

i think that it will still be exciting for y'all to see and check out um and then after that we do

• 02:41

want to just do a quick studio update and then we have some art uh updates as well for y'all and

• 02:47

we'll do a little q a we'll probably try to get through that pretty quick because it's going to be

• 02:51

a long one today um but let's get right into the reminders

• 02:59

of uh the first thing we have here today is of course our youtube spotlight don't forget

• 03:04

to subscribe to our youtube and follow us in all the places if you subscribe to us over

• 03:09

on our youtube channel and leave a comment on our dev update version of the live stream your

• 03:15

your spotlight could be or your comment could be spotlighted that was a mouthful um so this one is

• 03:21

from rybe's genesis who wants to know we know that normally that the normal death penalty incurs a

• 03:27

myriad of penalties for the player but we don't know the number the numbers behind the penalty

• 03:33

for instance what percentage of materials do players drop what percentage of glint is dropped

• 03:38

how severe is the skill and stat dampening and what is the average time it will take a player

• 03:43

to work off xp debt from one death that was a lot of questions in your one comment they were

• 03:49

cramming it um okay so so just just recap real quick there we're talking about percentage lost

• 03:57

time to recoup that percentage um the material percentage uh sunk versus um

• 04:04

uh lootable and then what was the last one uh glint drop and then uh your stat dampening

• 04:11

stance dampening got it got it got it um okay so first i want to say that the most important

• 04:18

most important part of this question um is you're asking about values right you're asking about

• 04:26

percentile values

• 04:27

you're asking about time that it takes to recoup the percentage and whatnot any time that we're at

• 04:34

a stage we're in now and that in alpha 2 we're going to be testing this those values are the

• 04:41

most subject to change um so to be clear like we're going to do best estimate best guess kind

• 04:48

of balance pass for alpha 2 with the full expectation and understanding that the purpose

• 04:57

is uh and take into consideration player interaction with those numbers uh and what

• 05:03

feels best so so just off the bat like those values are not what we should be focusing on

• 05:10

at this stage uh but to give you an idea kind of where we are um first of all like when we're

• 05:17

talking about dropping um items that are in your material inventory whether that be glint or that

• 05:25

be other material types you know we're going to be doing more of that in the future if we're going

• 05:26

to do more of that in the future we're going to be doing more of that in the future we're going to

• 05:27

we're talking roughly between anywhere from 20 to 30% of a stack is going to be

• 05:35

lootable on a per death basis. Now, that is a value that can change based off of the types

• 05:45

of bags that you are using to carry those materials. In addition, there's other progression

• 05:54

that can allow you, and some stats I believe, that can allow you to mitigate that value also.

• 06:00

When we are talking about the percentage that's lost, or excuse me, not lost, the percentage

• 06:06

of your level that is accrued as experience debt from death, generally you can expect that that's

• 06:13

going to live around three to four percent of the level in accrued experience debt per death.

• 06:19

However, additionally, there is a way to mitigate that

• 06:23

percentage of your level that is accrued as experience debt per death.

• 06:24

And that is through the resurrection ability that's provided to clerics. So clerics have the

• 06:31

ability to resurrect their allies, and that resurrection will return a percentage that

• 06:38

would have been accrued as experience debt. And that return percentage is predicated on the

• 06:45

investment into the resability, as well as the stat of the cleric that is tied to the resurrection

• 06:53

effect as well. So those can return percentages, so you can mitigate that to a degree.

• 07:01

How long will it take you to recover that, and what stat dampening kind of occurs?

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Anywhere within a level, if you acquire 100% experience debt for that level,

• 07:13

you max out the experience debt, essentially, you don't ever buy that down, you're probably

• 07:19

looking around a 20% stat efficacy dampener.

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So on average, if you're at 100% debt for a level, and you got to work all that off before

• 07:30

you can start progressing at the level again, you're at around 20% overall stat dampening.

• 07:37

Time it takes you to regain that debt is predicated on the level you're at, right,

• 07:42

and how you exp. So that's a highly variable value. Yeah, I think those hopefully answer

• 07:50

all your questions. Yeah, and I know that that one's one that people have,

• 07:53

heard a little bit before leads elements of it, I think Glint is a new element of that,

• 07:59

that wasn't there before when we've answered it. But you know, not everybody's, some people are

• 08:05

newer to our community. So that will be handy for them. And of course, if you want your comments

• 08:10

spotlighted on YouTube, head on over to our YouTube channel, to get your spotlighted,

• 08:14

we pull them at random. And just to be clear, you know, I just want to comment, you made a great

• 08:18

point there, Margaret, you know, some people may not be very familiar with these systems.

• 08:23

To be clear, the philosophy and ashes of creation is that we are a bit more difficult of a game

• 08:30

experience. That is what we're trying to accomplish. We've all played a lot of MMOs,

• 08:35

where you're either always a winner, or it's very easy to fall and get up again. And that's okay,

• 08:40

like those games need a place to exist. And a lot of people enjoy playing them.

• 08:45

I historically as a as a dungeon master, and my tabletop campaigns can be a bit ruthless.

• 08:53

And I think that it's interesting if the difficulty level you're faced with in this

• 08:59

open world with many other players, forces you to think critically about strategy, or about

• 09:07

cooperation and teamwork, right, and that the challenges you face are not easily surpassed

• 09:17

or bypassed. And so in that regard, you know, a system like, you know, experience debt,

• 09:23

doesn't necessarily de level, you don't want to de level player, but we do want to make the the fear

• 09:30

of loss palpable. We do want to make this the the failure real. And that can be an encouragement to

• 09:40

perform better. Because when you do succeed, it will feel that much better.

• 09:47

Yeah, so, you know, keeping those things in then. And of course, we have continued to

• 09:53

gather your guys's feedback as we move forward and things. And just wanted to make one more note

• 09:59

on the questions for the q&a segment on the forums, we do try to only pull newer questions. And we do

• 10:04

try to give people the answers. If you've asked a repeated question that we've answered before,

• 10:08

we try to give you where you can find those answers or even answer them for you in the

• 10:12

forums. So just keeping that in mind, but the q&a one for the spotlight for the comment is,

• 10:16

you know, it's a special outlier. We do have dev discussions, though, we're constantly trying to

• 10:23

give us feedback on various different things, whether that's through our game, game play loops,

• 10:28

or our future gameplay loops that we want to showcase. But this one that we put out is

• 10:33

regarding time dedication. And we asked you how much time do you think someone should invest in

• 10:38

order to become an expert at an MMORPG? What are the differences between an expert player versus

• 10:43

a casual player, time commitment, skill, game knowledge, etc. And we gave you some other prompts

• 10:48

as well. So definitely, if you have some thoughts on this, you want to give us your feedback,

• 10:52

your suggestions,

• 10:53

or you hop into that thread and pop that over because Roshan and Vecna are going to be compiling

• 11:00

the data on that soon and sending that over to your development team. So please, please head on

• 11:04

over there. And our next one that we're going to be going over is going to be about item drops. And

• 11:08

I know y'all, y'all better have some thoughts on that, because I know you do. That is one of the

• 11:14

biggest things is progression with items. So definitely, definitely stay tuned for that. And

• 11:20

without further ado, we'll get straight into the fighter archetype preview.

• 11:23

But with that, I'm going to let Steven do his preface before the preface. But I do want to

• 11:31

preface that it is very long. So buckle in, make sure you have your snacks, take your potty break

• 11:35

right now. But go ahead, Steven. Yeah, absolutely. And just to

• 11:41

just to also say that we did experience success last month in our preview where we launched the

• 11:48

YouTube video at the same time on the stream. We'll be doing that again today,

• 11:53

but it's going to be live on YouTube. So those of you who wish to watch the video in in 4k or 2k,

• 12:00

I'm not sure which one we uploaded it and have the opportunity to do so on our YouTube channel. So

• 12:04

that's going to be going live momentarily with us. However, remember, please stick around on stream,

• 12:11

make sure you give us your commentary and feedback here. It is a bit of a ritual for me to go back

• 12:17

and watch the live stream again and kind of read through the commentary as I don't get to see it.

• 12:21

Well,

• 12:21

during the live stream, because I'm actually chatting with you guys. But,

• 12:23

yes, so to preface this, obviously, the same is true. This is a work in progress. We are working

• 12:31

towards Alpha 2, particularly UI, balance, big time balance. When you guys go into watching

• 12:40

these abilities, please understand that these are very finger in the wind approaches to some

• 12:47

of the numbers and values within these abilities that's going to get tinkered with just before

• 12:53

we get into Alpha 2. There's going to be a, you know, final kind of balance phase before the Alpha

• 12:58

2 begins. And then we'll be iterating on that, obviously, as Alpha 2 is continuing.

• 13:06

In addition, performance, right? We are still working on performance. There are still some

• 13:10

lighting changes that need to be done. And the other thing that I want to talk a little bit

• 13:16

about is like, when you're thinking about feedback, talk about the things you both enjoyed

• 13:21

and the things you would like to see.

• 13:23

And then, of course, you're thinking about the things that you would like to see done differently,

• 13:24

right? In particular, we're talking about mobility of the class. We're talking about utility of the

• 13:30

class. We're talking about, you know, it's role in combat, right? What you expect to see out of the

• 13:37

class fantasy that is a fighter. You're going to see the abilities. I think there's 17 or 18

• 13:42

abilities probably here with this fighter. We're going to go through those in the first, like,

• 13:48

45 minutes or so, or each ability one by one. We're going to talk about them.

• 13:53

We're going to talk about their expansion trees as well. And then we're also going to talk about

• 13:58

the great sword and weapon progression. So, hour and 45-ish minutes or what is it?

• 14:05

Hour and 38 minutes.

• 14:07

Hour and 38 minutes. This is a big one.

• 14:10

And we'll have the 4K video going up live and it will be in premiere mode as well. So,

• 14:13

I think that's already, we're getting that started for you guys. So, we'll see you in a moment.

• 14:17

All right, guys. Enjoy.

• 14:23

Hello, everyone, and welcome to yet another day in the world of Vera. And we have an exciting

• 14:46

update for you today. We are going to be showing off one of the most beloved archetypes in

• 14:53

fantasy MMORPGs, the fighter archetype. And there has been a lot of work that's been done

• 15:00

in progressing this. Obviously, the last time we showed anything remotely fighter related,

• 15:04

it was, I think, almost two years ago when we did our first basic weapon, melee weapon revamp from

• 15:12

Alpha 1. And there were a couple abilities, obviously, that we showed off, but nothing like

• 15:17

the showcase we have stored for you today. You are going to get some pretty in-depth understanding

• 15:23

of how this archetype has been redesigned, um, and the progression that's going to be available

• 15:29

as part of Alpha 2. And we have joining us to talk through that today, two of our absolutely stellar

• 15:35

and glorious senior designers on the combat team, Trad,� Brian. How are you guys doing?

• 15:42

Doing pretty good here. Glad to be back on stream.

• 15:46

I'm doing great. Happy to be here.

• 15:47

Happy to have you both. I know you guys have put in a lot of work and, and I think really,

• 15:52

representing pretty well what a lot of people who played fighters and other MMOs love about the

• 15:58

class. I'm excited to chat with you about the direction you guys have taken. And obviously

• 16:03

helping to make that a reality, feature team owner on the combat side, as well as one of our senior

• 16:09

engineers. Keenan, how are you doing, buddy? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. And now that

• 16:16

you mention it, I think that original fighter stream was actually my first stream. Was it

• 16:20

really? Yeah, I think so. I think it was. I think you're right. Yeah, that was a lot of work that

• 16:25

went into kind of obviously changing the direction of melee and combat in general at that time.

• 16:30

And now we are seeing some of the fruitful persistence in that direction. So one other

• 16:39

thing I want to let you guys know is obviously we are here back again in the Riverlands. And we are

• 16:45

actually in front of Oakenbane Keep, which is an area you guys saw at the beginning of the

• 16:50

the end of the last live stream, from the Commission's live stream, and right when we

• 16:56

ended that live stream, a story arc began in this area called An Ancient Violence, and

• 17:01

we're going to be going in there and taking a look around, but first, I think what we

• 17:06

should do is something that we have successfully done in the past with these showcases, is

• 17:11

kind of show off each individual ability first, talk about what they do, and give you guys

• 17:16

a sense of the archetype and the abilities available to us before we get in to combat

• 17:22

with some freaky goblin town stuff.

• 17:27

So, do I have a volunteer today that could help tank some blows, potentially?

• 17:33

Yeah, I'll help.

• 17:34

Nice, awesome, alright, very cool.

• 17:38

So, which should we start with first, what do you guys think?

• 17:46

Start with Blitz.

• 17:47

Blitz?

• 17:47

Alright, let's see, Blitz is the first one on the bar.

• 17:49

Yeah, let's go down the bar.

• 17:51

Alright, let's do it.

• 17:54

Actually, you know what, I'm sorry, why don't we first start with Momentum?

• 18:00

That sounds like a good idea, because Momentum is obviously going to be referenced in Blitz,

• 18:04

I was just looking at that, and as well as a number of other abilities, and Momentum

• 18:08

is essentially a class energy system, is that right, Tread?

• 18:13

That is correct.

• 18:15

Talk to me about Momentum.

• 18:16

Yeah, I'll go into a little more detail about that.

• 18:18

So, one thing that we feel adds a lot to just class identity in general is something that

• 18:25

is beyond just an ability, in this case, it's a class, or in this case, an archetype resource

• 18:29

called Combat Momentum.

• 18:32

So, in your top left of the screen here, you'll see that you've got your standard health bar

• 18:36

and your mana bar, and then a third empty bar that you'll see kind of build up in combat

• 18:40

as we play, that you build up through all the different actions that you're doing through

• 18:45

the kit, and you can use this resource to get passive power to your character based

• 18:52

on which form you are in, which we'll get into in a little bit here, and you can also

• 18:57

spend it for certain unique, especially powerful bonuses.

• 19:01

So, and guys, just to remind everyone, obviously, everything you're going to see here is still

• 19:06

a work in progress, we are working towards Alpha 2, especially as it relates to the UI,

• 19:12

as it relates to the effects.

• 19:15

Designs will change, balances will change, so keep that in mind, what we're looking for

• 19:20

is kind of direction, right?

• 19:22

Direction on this archetype, what do you think looks cool, what other fighter influences

• 19:28

have you had in other MMOs that you think could be incorporated as well, that's all

• 19:31

part of the discussion.

• 19:33

Okay, so Momentum is that class energy ability, and as you guys have seen, obviously, other

• 19:37

classes, Trad is talking about, has some similar kind of class energy mechanics.

• 19:44

Momentum is definite.

• 19:45

Definitely, it looks like it is as it sounds, right, I mean, this is something that just

• 19:51

passively is generating increased stat bonuses, and those stat bonuses, we'll get to in a

• 19:58

little while, how they can be applied based on some individual buffs.

• 20:02

So, now that we know what Momentum is, and it's good to generate that, let us talk a

• 20:06

little bit about Blitz.

• 20:07

What is Blitz as an ability?

• 20:10

Yeah, Blitz is your gap closer, your bread and butter gap closer.

• 20:15

You pick a target, and you charge to the target.

• 20:19

There's also a spec option that interacts with the resource if you choose it, that generates

• 20:24

some combat momentum, so it lets you kind of open the encounter with a little bit of

• 20:30

resource to start.

• 20:31

Okay, so I'm going to charge the target directly, and I'm going to deal damage on a rival, which

• 20:37

is physical based, and this spec option says that it generates 20 additional combat momentum.

• 20:44

Now, presumably, combat momentum...

• 20:45

Does not overflow after it hits the maximum 100 points, is that correct?

• 20:52

That's right.

• 20:52

Yeah, okay, cool.

• 20:54

And then I see under it, there is an additional spec option that says, killing an enemy with

• 21:01

lethal blow will reset the cooldown of Blitz.

• 21:03

So, the more I kill, essentially, if I use lethal blow, I can just keep that momentum

• 21:08

up, generating additional combat momentum, so I can use a little bit after, you know,

• 21:14

potentially landing on the target.

• 21:15

And replenish that quickly after with executing lethal blow on the target as a kill, and then

• 21:23

raging Blitz into the next.

• 21:25

Yeah, it turns you into more of an aggressive, mobile character if you go with that.

• 21:29

Like, you're killing enemies, and then you need to pick a new target.

• 21:31

He might be far away.

• 21:32

You charge to him, kill him, rinse and repeat.

• 21:34

Cool.

• 21:35

All right, let's take a look at this.

• 21:39

Ooh, nice.

• 21:41

Okay, that was cool.

• 21:43

And presumably, this also scales...

• 21:46

Verticality as well.

• 21:50

Let's test it.

• 21:51

And guys, for the purposes, obviously, of this demonstration, I've set my cooldowns

• 21:54

to zero so that I can more repeatedly use...

• 21:57

Oh, here we go.

• 21:59

We got some...

• 22:00

Kill those little mushrooms, huh?

• 22:03

I don't want to spoil the skills.

• 22:04

I'll nuke them for you.

• 22:08

It's a kind of stormy day with this ancient violence in the background.

• 22:13

Oh, and by the way, we are playing...

• 22:15

For the first time in, I believe, in-game, the Ren'kai orcs.

• 22:23

Got my trusty Mohawk going on.

• 22:26

It is probably the most appropriate race-class combination.

• 22:34

I thought so.

• 22:37

All right, so I'm going to try to jump...

• 22:38

I'm going to try to scale this thing on you.

• 22:40

Let's see here.

• 22:42

Oh, man.

• 22:43

Now, that is cool.

• 22:45

That was awesome.

• 22:47

Let me do that again.

• 22:49

Yeah, this is kind of an answer.

• 22:51

You get to, like, that archer on the ledge that's just free-shooting on you, and it's

• 22:54

like, oh, I'm just going to get up there with you.

• 22:57

Oh, my bad there.

• 22:58

Let me try this one more time.

• 22:59

One more time.

• 23:02

Oh, very nice.

• 23:04

Okay, so by default...

• 23:07

So now...

• 23:09

Let me try this.

• 23:09

Oh, did you just die?

• 23:11

I think that was a bad nuke.

• 23:13

My bad.

• 23:14

From someone.

• 23:14

My bad.

• 23:15

No, that was for sure my bad.

• 23:20

That feels really good, by the way.

• 23:23

That feels clean.

• 23:25

Very clean.

• 23:25

Oh, there's...

• 23:27

Did somebody else die over here?

• 23:29

Just a little mushroom.

• 23:31

Oh, a little mushroom.

• 23:32

Okay.

• 23:33

Okay, Blitz feels really good.

• 23:34

Well done with that.

• 23:35

I like that.

• 23:36

It's super smooth and fluid, it feels.

• 23:39

You know, there's not really any movement interruption either on contact or at the initiation.

• 23:45

Which is obviously one of the most, you know, ideal feeling points of any mobility skill, right?

• 23:51

Is that fluidity throughout.

• 23:56

Okay, let's talk about the next one.

• 23:59

So, we have Brutal Cleave.

• 24:03

Yep, this is probably your most bread-and-butter AoE attack.

• 24:06

You can...

• 24:08

It does a medium amount of damage.

• 24:09

It's not one of your more spectacular AoEs, but it's your primary AoE resource.

• 24:15

So, you're going to be using this a lot to build your momentum.

• 24:19

And you also weave this a lot between your weapon combos, because your weapon attack finishers will reset seconds off of this cooldown.

• 24:28

So, if you're, like, going back and forth between cleaves and weapon attacks, you get to do more of them and have more uptime.

• 24:36

Okay.

• 24:39

Yep, that's pretty cool.

• 24:40

Alright, so this does...

• 24:41

Also, the more targets you hit.

• 24:42

So, that's why it's really good in AoE situations, is you get more momentum.

• 24:45

Based on how many targets you're hitting.

• 24:48

Got it.

• 24:49

So, after jumping in with Blitz, especially if there's multiple targets, going with a Brutal Cleave is just going to really ramp that momentum.

• 24:58

And then it looks like also that this ability, it says, shares a cooldown with overpower.

• 25:07

And it says also the weapon combo finisher will reduce its cooldown by eight seconds.

• 25:14

Yep.

• 25:15

So, you'll be resetting overpowers more frequently, because if we want to just jump over to that one, that's the single target counterpart to this attack.

• 25:24

It's more...

• 25:25

It's just a single target hit, but it is a shorter cooldown, so you can reset them more frequently.

• 25:29

And it's also generating your resource.

• 25:31

So, it kind of...

• 25:32

You're choosing which one to use based on what your enemies are.

• 25:38

Very cool.

• 25:40

That looks great, by the way.

• 25:42

Scott did a...

• 25:42

Scott and Siva have done an amazing job.

• 25:45

Yeah, I'm really happy with how the effects turned out.

• 25:49

Like, making physical look this cool, like, you know, it was a feat.

• 25:59

Oh, my bad.

• 26:02

Okay.

• 26:03

All right.

• 26:03

Very cool.

• 26:04

I like that.

• 26:05

This Brutal Cleave is awesome.

• 26:07

Let's talk about MAME.

• 26:09

Here, let's go over here a little bit.

• 26:11

Right here.

• 26:14

Talk to me a little bit about MAME.

• 26:15

MAME.

• 26:17

So, this is a more powerful AOE attack in the kit.

• 26:21

Do you have a spec right now for the range?

• 26:23

Yeah, let me take a look here.

• 26:24

Let me take...

• 26:25

And, by the way, Brutal Cleave, I apologize.

• 26:27

There's no additional functionality, it looks like, on Brutal Cleave.

• 26:30

But we did talk also about...

• 26:35

Overpowers on the right column.

• 26:37

It's an auto-granted ability, so it's not going to be in this tree.

• 26:41

Oh, got it.

• 26:41

There you go.

• 26:42

Okay.

• 26:43

So, it doesn't have any spec options either.

• 26:45

That's right.

• 26:45

But MAME does.

• 26:47

And should I turn MAME off?

• 26:48

Let me turn the spec option off first, because this actually extends the distance of the projectile

• 26:54

by essentially launching that piercing projectile.

• 26:58

Is that right?

• 26:59

Yeah, let's take a point out of that first, and then we'll just kind of look at the base effect.

• 27:04

Okay.

• 27:05

So, this is just a cone in front of you.

• 27:07

You're hitting in a cone in front of you.

• 27:08

It's a pretty heavy hitter.

• 27:10

You're not resetting the cooldown of this, so you need to be more...

• 27:13

You know...

• 27:15

Aware of when you're using this.

• 27:18

But it also has the added effect of it will do more damage against recently tripped enemies.

• 27:24

So, that's where you really want to save this, is if you've tripped someone, or if someone else has tripped an enemy,

• 27:29

you capitalize on it by basically smashing down on them with this.

• 27:35

That looks so good.

• 27:37

Love it.

• 27:38

That is awesome.

• 27:39

Okay.

• 27:39

So, let's spec into the projectile.

• 27:45

Now, this is going to give you, obviously, a lot more range.

• 27:51

Oh!

• 27:53

This adds a piercing projectile on top of the attack.

• 27:58

So, you're still getting that frontal AOE hitbox that's staying the same, but you're adding a projectile on top of it.

• 28:04

And the cool thing here, too, is the projectile gets the damage bonus from the trip.

• 28:09

So, you could actually combo into a target that you see trip from range with this as well.

• 28:14

One reason this is a spec option is some fighters will want to be using this in a way that, you know, you don't want to pull a mob in the distance.

• 28:22

So, it's just kind of an added layer of skill if you're using this in, like, a really cluttered environment.

• 28:27

But it's kind of a trade-off.

• 28:30

That feels really good.

• 28:33

That is awesome.

• 28:35

I'll give myself some mana.

• 28:40

There we go.

• 28:42

Okay, cool.

• 28:43

I love MAME.

• 28:44

That is an awesome ability.

• 28:45

Let's talk about Battle Cry.

• 28:49

This is definitely one of my personal favorites.

• 28:52

It doesn't do damage, but it's got some really cool effects going on with it.

• 28:57

So, do you want me to start talking about it?

• 29:00

Yeah, sure.

• 29:01

Use it first.

• 29:02

Okay, cool.

• 29:03

So, I love this as an AOE opener.

• 29:06

What it does, it does a few things.

• 29:07

One, it riles your allies, specifically your party members.

• 29:11

It will also apply a status effect called Shroud.

• 29:14

So, it will be shaken to your enemies, and then it will generate a certain amount of combat momentum per ally that you riled.

• 29:25

And then, just to elaborate, because people are like, what is shaken?

• 29:29

What is riled?

• 29:30

Well, shaken right now is a debuff on enemies that whenever they take damage, they have a small chance to become tripped.

• 29:38

So, there's some good combos with this where, like, you go into, like, a multi-hit AOE, and you can cap them off.

• 29:43

So, there's some good combos with this where, like, you go into, like, a multi-hit AOE, and you can cap them off.

• 29:44

So, there's some good combos with this where, like, you go into, like, a multi-hit AOE, and you can cap them off.

• 29:44

So, there's some good combos with this where, like, you go into, like, a multi-hit AOE, and you can cap them off.

• 29:45

And then, by triggering tripped status, that flows into maim really well.

• 29:50

So, that's one of the combos I like to do, is shout into, like, a whirlwind, which you'll see in a bit, into, you know, maim to do extra damage against targets that have procced that effect.

• 30:03

Oh, these are feeling great.

• 30:05

Wow, I do like the battle cry.

• 30:08

That is, like, probably the most standard feeling, like, you know.

• 30:14

Unexpected action on behalf of the fighter, some type of battle cry effect, and this one captures it well.

• 30:22

I love that, that's cool.

• 30:24

Okay, we saw whirlwind back a while ago, and talk to me about what's changed about whirlwind.

• 30:34

So, whirlwind is actually pretty close to what it's always been.

• 30:38

It's an AOE channeled attack that ramps up in speed.

• 30:42

The longer you hold it, there's also a spec option on the right, if you want to pick that, that gives a final upward swing at the end, that has some additional bonuses to it.

• 30:53

Okay, so let's do it without the spec first.

• 31:02

Alright, cool.

• 31:04

So, it exits out after, essentially, the spinning there, let's see.

• 31:08

Yep.

• 31:09

I'm out of mana.

• 31:10

There we go.

• 31:12

Let's try it again.

• 31:16

Yeah, you're also able to move during it, as you're seeing here.

• 31:20

So, it's pretty nice to be able to just kind of, like, use this while you're moving through a pack of mobs.

• 31:25

Got it.

• 31:26

So, let me spec now into the option that I could invest additional points into this particular skill if I wanted to give myself a finishing blow, essentially.

• 31:42

Oh, nice, okay.

• 31:44

So, you get a big hit at the end.

• 31:46

Also, you can stop this at any time, so you're seeing him do the full channel, but if it's like, oh, I want to, you know, cancel out of it early, like, let's say one thing I'll do from time to time is, if I shake in enemies and then this ability's kind of good at tripping enemies because it's hitting really rapidly, you might see a trip and you can cancel out of it into a maim early, if you want to show off that combo.

• 32:10

Into a maim?

• 32:11

Yep, let's do it.

• 32:12

There you go.

• 32:16

Oh, nice, that's cool.

• 32:18

That feels good, let's see.

• 32:24

Oh, that's so cool, that's awesome.

• 32:28

Alright, cool.

• 32:29

Whirlwind feels good, too.

• 32:31

Alright, Cataclysm is another one that we saw a while ago.

• 32:34

What's changed with Cataclysm?

• 32:36

Yeah, a lot has changed with this one.

• 32:38

It used to be, like, this big, like, hammer that would appear over your head.

• 32:42

And then it hit, like, an AoE kind of far away from you.

• 32:45

Overall, it ended up feeling a little awkward to use.

• 32:47

We wanted to turn this more into, like, your big frontal AoE damage.

• 32:51

So this is, like, the other end of the spectrum, like, stronger than maim.

• 32:55

It's just a big ultimate, like, AoE attack, essentially.

• 33:00

It's pretty straightforward.

• 33:01

Alright, no additional spec options here.

• 33:04

And by the way, for those of you out here, you know, that are wondering about kind of how augments, even though we haven't seen a lot of augment work,

• 33:12

being done, a lot of this tech is foundational in applying these types of spec options, which augments, essentially, are as well.

• 33:22

But they can more radically change, fundamentally, what the ability is.

• 33:25

So that Whirlwind, you know, adding an additional component to the ability, which is that climactic Whirlwind, essentially,

• 33:35

could be considered functionally as an augment, an additional effect applied to the ability.

• 33:40

Um, okay.

• 33:42

Let us showcase that new Cataclysm.

• 33:46

Oh, that feels much better.

• 33:51

Yeah, that's cool.

• 33:55

This is also another way to apply Shaken to enemies as well.

• 33:59

It and Battlecry are kind of on separate longer cooldowns, so you might find yourself sort of going back and forth between these interchangeably.

• 34:07

And you can change the direction here mid-windup.

• 34:11

Yep.

• 34:12

Nice.

• 34:16

I like that.

• 34:17

Obviously, the granularity in that.

• 34:19

Yeah, it gives you a little more agency.

• 34:21

Like, you're not just locked in place.

• 34:23

Because it is a full-rooted ability.

• 34:25

You cannot move during this.

• 34:27

But being able to turn, like, gives you a little bit more, you know, control over what happens as things might change mid-cast.

• 34:34

Okay.

• 34:35

Yeah.

• 34:36

I totally agree.

• 34:37

I love the freedom feeling there.

• 34:40

Um.

• 34:41

That, you know, is a philosophy and a standard that's taken across a lot of the classes as it comes to, like, you know, rooted ability use and whatnot.

• 34:49

That freedom of agency, that movement is core to kind of the melee experience and general skill usage.

• 34:56

All right.

• 34:57

Next up we have Rupture.

• 34:59

Yep.

• 35:00

So this is an interesting one.

• 35:02

It's a single target attack.

• 35:04

And it puts a temporary debuff on your target where if they are moving.

• 35:10

While that effect is on them.

• 35:12

They will build up wounded stacks.

• 35:14

Oh my god.

• 35:16

We can talk about that status effect in a moment here.

• 35:19

Can we talk about the fact that he should have, like, literally zero blood pressure remaining after rupturing that much blood?

• 35:26

Oh my god.

• 35:27

We can build in that mechanic.

• 35:29

But also you'll notice at the end of it he takes a big hit of damage.

• 35:34

And the idea is that that damage will scale with how much wound they have.

• 35:38

So this will have kind of some inter synergy going on with itself.

• 35:43

But also there will be other sources of wound that you could kind of synergize with this further for that big delayed hit at the end.

• 35:51

Wow.

• 35:52

Okay.

• 35:53

So the wounds are essentially these stacking debuffs that get applied.

• 35:58

And that's going to, you said, decrease their healing received.

• 36:04

Correct.

• 36:05

And also increases damage dealt.

• 36:07

Increases damage taken from all sources?

• 36:10

From physical sources.

• 36:12

From physical sources.

• 36:13

Got it.

• 36:14

Very cool.

• 36:16

Yep.

• 36:17

And the more you build that up, because this is actually a stacking thing.

• 36:20

It's not just, like, a single status effect.

• 36:22

So the more you're wounding the target, the more and more debuffed their healing, incoming healing becomes.

• 36:30

So it's one of those things where if a fighter is, like, on your target that you're trying to keep alive, you want to peel a fighter off that stack.

• 36:36

You want to peel a fighter off that target, because the longer they get that uptime, the harder it's going to become to heal them up.

• 36:48

That's cool.

• 36:50

That's awesome.

• 36:51

Okay.

• 36:52

Love rupture.

• 36:53

Also love the, an insane amount of blood that's happening.

• 36:59

Overpower.

• 37:01

Talk to me about overpower.

• 37:02

What do we got here?

• 37:04

We talked about this one.

• 37:05

Oh, that's right.

• 37:06

The resource generator.

• 37:07

That's right.

• 37:08

That's right.

• 37:09

And that one doesn't have any additional spec options.

• 37:11

The rupture also looks like, did that one have spec options?

• 37:17

It does not.

• 37:18

But if you go in, so you will see kind of to the right of rupture, there are some things that it unlocks.

• 37:26

Like, what's, oh, sorry, below it, maim, actually.

• 37:29

If you go to maim and then to the right, there are some things over here that you get to unlock as well.

• 37:33

Which kind of synergize with what I was talking about.

• 37:34

Yeah, synergize with rupture.

• 37:36

For example, brutality allows you to start applying wound stacks through your weapon combos.

• 37:42

So if you really want to lean into that utility, like I'm a heal debuffing spec fighter, right?

• 37:49

Like, that's my thing that I do.

• 37:51

You could go into this and now your weapon attacks, in addition to generating momentum, are also applying wounds to the target.

• 37:57

Love it.

• 37:59

And then this one, this one adds more wound specialization.

• 38:03

If you go down.

• 38:07

Oh, wow.

• 38:08

Okay.

• 38:09

So this gives overpower and brutal cleave wound application.

• 38:12

Yeah.

• 38:13

It's basically what it's kind of doing is it's tying your wounds to the way that you're normally building momentum if you want to kind of dual spec into both.

• 38:22

That's cool.

• 38:23

Wow.

• 38:24

Strong.

• 38:26

Okay.

• 38:27

Let's talk about this apparent crippling blow.

• 38:31

Okay.

• 38:33

Yeah, sure.

• 38:34

So crippling blow.

• 38:35

This one's pretty simple.

• 38:37

This is a standard single target snare.

• 38:40

So a pretty common combo you'd use is like blitz into a crippling blow if you're like getting on top of a target that's trying to kite you.

• 38:51

Like if you're charging up on a ranger who's like the last thing they want is you in their face, like snaring them is going to force them to maybe use a gap opener because they're not able to outrun you.

• 39:01

That's cool.

• 39:12

So crippling blow is pretty strong, actually, especially when it comes to PvP.

• 39:15

I mean, that's a pretty significant reduction in movement speed.

• 39:22

Yeah, it is single target.

• 39:24

So you do have to choose wisely who you are snaring.

• 39:27

But it's pretty nice to be able to just lock a target.

• 39:29

Yeah.

• 39:30

Not like hard CC, but just make it easier to stick on top of them.

• 39:42

Very cool.

• 39:43

All right.

• 39:44

Crippling blow.

• 39:45

And then we have lethal blow.

• 39:47

This is another one of my favorites.

• 39:49

This is the execute of the kit.

• 39:51

It's single target as well.

• 39:53

But the lower health they are, the harder it's going to hit.

• 39:58

So this is really like you're trying to do as much damage with your other abilities as possible.

• 40:03

And then when you get them within that kill threshold, you're just going to hit him with this, hope for a crit maybe, and finish him off.

• 40:15

Use it.

• 40:17

There you go.

• 40:18

Oh, my God.

• 40:21

This does have a couple of spec options as well.

• 40:24

One you kind of went over.

• 40:25

If you kill them with that and you have the spec that resets splits, you could immediately blitz again, even if it was off cooldown when you got the kill.

• 40:37

But if you want to open your skill tree here, we can look at the other one.

• 40:40

Let's talk about it.

• 40:41

And the, sorry, crippling blow did not have any spec options, but lethal blow does.

• 40:48

Yeah.

• 40:49

So a lot of the time, you know, I've played games where, you know, executes hit really hard.

• 40:54

You waste a lot of the damage, and it kind of, it's like, oh, I saw a cool big number, but it didn't really do anything.

• 40:59

It's kind of wasted.

• 41:00

This spec option lets you make use out of that.

• 41:03

So it turns any overkill damage into, like, health and mana returned to you, the caster.

• 41:08

Oh, that's awesome.

• 41:09

And you know what I love about that, at least as it relates to PvP, is that you do not have granularity insight to the opponent's hit points.

• 41:18

So you're really rolling the dice if you want to maximize efficacy on this consuming lethal blow.

• 41:23

Yeah.

• 41:24

I know.

• 41:25

I've been using it a lot.

• 41:26

Like, sometimes I pull it off, other times I don't.

• 41:28

Love it.

• 41:29

That's super cool.

• 41:30

I like that interaction there.

• 41:32

Okay.

• 41:33

Let's go up here.

• 41:34

We've got blood fusion.

• 41:36

Yeah.

• 41:37

So kind of like that lethal blow spec we were using, this is another way for the fighter to get health and mana back to itself.

• 41:45

That's kind of one way that the fighter sustains itself, because it's in the thick of things, right?

• 41:50

It's a primary target.

• 41:52

You've got to be in danger.

• 41:53

You've got to be in danger to be doing a lot of what your kit does.

• 41:56

And this is like one way the fighter can stay in the fight.

• 42:01

And if you pop this, it's a big cooldown.

• 42:04

But for the next six seconds, any damage you do will have a percent returned as health and mana to you.

• 42:11

Okay.

• 42:12

So let me...

• 42:14

Somebody nuke me for like 500.

• 42:18

You can go ahead, Shred.

• 42:19

Okay.

• 42:20

I don't want to do it all at once.

• 42:21

Multiple 500.

• 42:22

There you go.

• 42:24

And then I am going to deal some damage here to see how much I get back.

• 42:37

Yep.

• 42:38

So that last hit missed the window.

• 42:40

But you got a good chunk from your other attacks.

• 42:43

The value of this is super variable based on when you use it.

• 42:47

So if you pop it in the right moment, you've got a lot of targets around you.

• 42:51

You're like popping your AOEs.

• 42:53

Like this is going to get a ton more value.

• 43:00

That's cool.

• 43:01

I like that.

• 43:02

So it's an instant cast that can happen in the middle of any ability activation.

• 43:06

Right.

• 43:07

Nice.

• 43:08

You could like start your Cataclysm and then pop that right before it lands.

• 43:13

That's cool.

• 43:15

That is super cool.

• 43:17

Um...

• 43:21

Oh yeah, I see that.

• 43:24

Okay, very nice.

• 43:25

And I like the effect.

• 43:27

The effect looks great.

• 43:30

It's got more of that blood theme.

• 43:32

Yes.

• 43:33

I also love the audio for it.

• 43:35

It's like you're consuming it a bit.

• 43:37

All right, let me grab whatever this is.

• 43:43

Oh, a bunch of stuff.

• 43:45

I think that was on your corpse.

• 43:46

I'm sorry, Brian.

• 43:47

You didn't do that right in front of me.

• 43:48

It was disrespectful.

• 43:49

My loot!

• 43:50

Okay, cool.

• 43:52

Let's skip Exert for now.

• 43:54

Let's go to Lunging Assault.

• 43:56

Yeah, so this is like going to be one of your first spenders of your resource.

• 44:02

This spender is more for mobility.

• 44:05

It's a smaller spender.

• 44:07

But whenever you use this, you will dash forward a short distance and do an attack at the end.

• 44:12

And it's pretty freely usable.

• 44:15

It doesn't have a very long cooldown.

• 44:17

It's just spending your resource.

• 44:18

So the more resource you're generating,

• 44:19

the more you're able to kind of reposition and dash around the battlefield

• 44:22

and get some extra damage out there.

• 44:24

I see.

• 44:25

Now, obviously, utilizing the resource with Lunging Assault,

• 44:28

because you're dealing instances of damage to enemies that you impact,

• 44:33

you have an opportunity, if executed well situationally,

• 44:37

that you can actually probably have a net gain with this

• 44:43

if there's a huge amount of enemies, like a train or something, right?

• 44:47

Yeah.

• 44:48

Yeah, it would probably take a lot of enemies to actually get a profit,

• 44:51

but you can at least mitigate the cost through that spec choice.

• 44:55

If you're hitting enemies, you can get resource back,

• 44:59

and therefore you're getting to do this more,

• 45:01

and you're also not losing the value of your resource

• 45:04

that you're getting passively through your forms,

• 45:06

which, again, we'll get to soon.

• 45:08

Cool, cool.

• 45:10

Okay, let's try this.

• 45:12

And now I don't need a target for this.

• 45:14

I can just kind of...

• 45:15

Nope, freely.

• 45:16

It's a reposition.

• 45:18

All right.

• 45:25

That's cool.

• 45:28

Oh, okay.

• 45:31

So it's kind of not too far a distance there.

• 45:37

Yeah, it's meant to be more of a repositioner

• 45:40

where you're dancing around your target.

• 45:43

You might be zipping back and forth between different enemies in melee.

• 45:46

Right.

• 45:47

Whereas you have other tools for going longer distances.

• 45:50

You have Blitz.

• 45:51

You have the next one that's about to come up from here.

• 45:54

So those are going to be more of your long-distance mobility skills.

• 45:58

All right.

• 45:59

Let me try this more long-distance mobility skill here.

• 46:02

Talk to me about Leap Strike.

• 46:07

Yeah, so this is the most free mobile...

• 46:13

Look at that distance.

• 46:14

Yeah, it's very far, and it doesn't really matter.

• 46:16

It's very far, and it doesn't require a target, unlike Blitz.

• 46:20

And you're also going to basically deal damage and AOE around it.

• 46:23

So it's just a more powerful but less frequently usable gap closer slash opener

• 46:29

if you even decide to use it as an opener.

• 46:34

Oh, my God.

• 46:38

I am the Jokernaut.

• 46:42

Oh, that was so cool.

• 46:44

I love that.

• 46:45

Yeah, that's a fun one to use.

• 46:47

Holy smokes.

• 46:49

Definitely more AOE focused.

• 46:51

And again, guys, I am using zero cooldowns right now just so I can demonstrate the abilities.

• 46:55

Well, I know you're all thinking, like, what?

• 46:57

This character's just going to fly around the battlefield.

• 46:59

That's not what's happening.

• 47:01

Little rocket.

• 47:02

I know.

• 47:03

You can actually use this, too, to go up on ledges.

• 47:06

Like if you were to try and get up on one of these ledges we were trying earlier...

• 47:10

Yeah.

• 47:11

...you don't even need a target to use it.

• 47:13

Let me just check.

• 47:14

Are there any spec options here?

• 47:18

Not currently, but there will be.

• 47:21

All right.

• 47:22

Let me try to jump up on here.

• 47:26

Oh, that was too short.

• 47:28

I was too short.

• 47:29

My bad.

• 47:30

Hold on.

• 47:31

Let me try it again.

• 47:32

I'll try it again.

• 47:33

Actually, usually I've had more success when I'm covering gaps rather than actually, like,

• 47:38

trying to go up different verticalities.

• 47:41

But sometimes, yeah, it works.

• 47:42

Oh, we did it.

• 47:43

We did it, boys.

• 47:47

It happened.

• 47:49

Very cool.

• 47:51

All right.

• 47:52

Let's talk a little bit about...

• 47:56

You know, I thought I fixed time of day, but it feels like it's getting darker.

• 47:59

I don't know.

• 48:02

Let's talk a little bit about...

• 48:05

Next up.

• 48:07

These different forms that I'm seeing here.

• 48:11

Yeah.

• 48:12

Yeah, so these are probably the biggest contributors to your combat momentum resource.

• 48:22

You can spend momentum, but it's a resource that's primarily meant to be built up and maintained

• 48:29

because of the bonuses that these forms provide.

• 48:32

So if we want to just look at one of the first ones here, we can go into a little more detail on how those work.

• 48:37

I'm actually going to make it a little bit... Whoops.

• 48:40

My bad. I want to change the time of day slightly.

• 48:45

Get some better light over here.

• 48:48

There we go. Apologies.

• 48:51

Okay. Which one am I switching to?

• 48:54

Any one you want. We'll get through all of them.

• 48:56

Let's go to... You know, I am playing a Ren'kai, so Ferocity sounds good.

• 49:02

All right. So now you'll notice in the top left here, he is in this form.

• 49:09

So...

• 49:10

As long as you don't change forms, you will permanently remain in the form of Ferocity.

• 49:16

We actually renamed this recently, so you'll see Tempest there, but that went through a rename.

• 49:22

So while in this form, your momentum will increase your attack speed the higher your momentum is.

• 49:30

So for every point of momentum that you've got, your attack speed is going up.

• 49:33

So you're basically ramping up that attack speed as you generate.

• 49:37

So I see right now I'm at 86.9.

• 49:40

Yep.

• 49:41

Let's generate some momentum.

• 49:47

Your weapon combos are pretty good for generating momentum as well, especially your finishers.

• 49:53

There you go.

• 49:56

Okay. 86.9 has gone to 99.2.

• 50:01

Yep.

• 50:02

Up and it's dropping. Very nice.

• 50:05

Yep. You got to stay in combat to keep the resource going.

• 50:07

Yep.

• 50:10

And that's really what the fighter is all about, is like ramping up, being in that combat momentum, hence the name.

• 50:17

And when the fight's...

• 50:18

Wow. It feels like the attack speed is even increasing each individual ability speed as well.

• 50:26

Yep.

• 50:28

That's huge.

• 50:32

That is super cool.

• 50:34

So if you were to change forms, you would lose the attack speed bonus, but immediately gain the bonus.

• 50:39

Yep.

• 50:40

And then you would lose the corresponding form.

• 50:51

All right. There you go.

• 50:54

So if you want to shift V into maybe a form of celerity here.

• 51:00

All right. And that is on Shafi.

• 51:04

There you go.

• 51:04

Now run around.

• 51:06

You might have to blitz him again.

• 51:08

You probably need to get some mana and then...

• 51:10

Build it up a little more, but...

• 51:11

Oh, my bad. I'm going to get mana.

• 51:14

But this one increases your movement speed.

• 51:16

So this lets you just move around the battlefield a lot more nimbly.

• 51:23

So if you need to, like, you know, close the gap a little bit and your gap closers are on cooldown or whatever,

• 51:28

this is a good way of traversing the field a bit faster.

• 51:32

Yeah. Wow. This is...

• 51:33

Yeah, this is pretty quick.

• 51:36

That's a significant speed boost.

• 51:40

And then the third one is more of a defensive option.

• 51:48

A bit more situational, but it is a disable resistance form.

• 51:57

This is a form of fluidity.

• 52:00

And while you're in it, you are much more difficult to be CC'd.

• 52:05

So you'll be more resistant to stuns, to roots, trips.

• 52:10

Pretty much anything that falls into the CC category.

• 52:13

Are you trying to sleep me or something?

• 52:16

Sure, I'll give it a shot.

• 52:17

There's a chance that I'll still hit you, but let's see.

• 52:21

I can't, actually. I'm in your party.

• 52:22

Oh, okay. No, that's okay. That's fine.

• 52:24

All right. So this is basically when you want to literally be unstoppable through CC effects.

• 52:30

Like, this is going to be a 40% reduction on that.

• 52:32

That's pretty powerful.

• 52:35

Yep. And again, all the numbers are kind of in tune or being tuned.

• 52:39

We just...

• 52:40

When we're testing these out, we want them to feel impactful just to validate that they are, you know, cool things.

• 52:47

And then we start to balance to tone that back down.

• 52:51

Very cool.

• 52:53

All right.

• 52:55

All right.

• 52:56

Last, but most certainly not least, is an ability called God Mode.

• 53:05

I mean, excuse me.

• 53:06

What's it called? I'm sorry.

• 53:08

Exert?

• 53:08

This is Exert.

• 53:09

Yeah.

• 53:10

It's my earlier practice.

• 53:12

I know. Your Segway.

• 53:12

Actually, it's a great Segway.

• 53:14

So speaking of balance and what will be happening, obviously, with Alpha 2 and even before Alpha 2,

• 53:20

we'll be balancing some of this stuff.

• 53:21

So just keep that in mind.

• 53:23

However, Segway here into God Mode, a.k.a. Exert, we have what?

• 53:30

So if we go over here in the skill tree to the left, Exert, this is a very high cost, very high payoff.

• 53:38

Like, essentially.

• 53:40

It's a super mode that you can go into, and you're rapidly spending your momentum while you're in this form.

• 53:49

It's all or nothing.

• 53:50

You can't turn it off.

• 53:51

Once you pop this, you will stay in this mode until your momentum is fully drained, and then you're going to have to build it all the way back up again.

• 53:58

Meanwhile, you're getting increased attack speed.

• 54:01

You're getting CC immunity and whatever else it says in here.

• 54:08

We've got 20%.

• 54:09

Increased attack and movement speed and immunity to disabling effects while active.

• 54:17

So if you can kind of draw the connection, this is like you're taking the three forms, which are CC resistance, movement speed, and attack speed,

• 54:24

and getting just all three of them in a huge burst for a small window of time.

• 54:28

Very small window.

• 54:29

Yes.

• 54:29

And that small window is potentially, as it states here, at least it would be about five seconds if you're fully charged up.

• 54:39

On momentum, because it's essentially ticking at 20% per second.

• 54:45

Is that right?

• 54:46

Yep.

• 54:47

And again, all the numbers are super tuned.

• 54:50

Absolutely.

• 54:51

We will be tuning these numbers, but we're just kind of putting them in a place where we can playtest them.

• 54:55

And as we get more effective with these, it's like, okay, now we're seeing the ceiling of how powerful these things are.

• 55:00

We're going to bring it back a little bit.

• 55:01

Let's talk about its spec options.

• 55:04

Yep.

• 55:05

So we've got one that resets your cooldown.

• 55:09

It's based on how much momentum you had at activation.

• 55:12

So if you use this at 50 momentum, you would take about half of your cooldowns off.

• 55:19

But if you use it at full momentum, you would reset all your cooldowns.

• 55:22

So you could just go straight into your rotation upon popping this.

• 55:26

And then this one lets it act as a CC break as well.

• 55:32

Okay.

• 55:34

I like this.

• 55:34

This is a nice combo.

• 55:35

So you get increased combat momentum.

• 55:39

With movement, attack speed, and the immunity to disabling effects.

• 55:43

And it becomes a CC break on activation if you're under the effects of CC.

• 55:49

And depending on the amount, percentage-wise, of momentum you have available at time of activation,

• 55:56

potentially will reset your ability cooldowns as well.

• 55:59

This is obviously, guys, I know a lot of you out there right now are just probably going insane in chat.

• 56:06

And I'm just going to, I'm assuming that.

• 56:08

This is where we bet.

• 56:10

Everything's going to be balanced, right?

• 56:11

This is just the initial find the fun.

• 56:14

And we're going to work around balance here.

• 56:17

But this is a cool ability.

• 56:20

This is literally like super I am a fighter, hear me roar, glory.

• 56:27

Have you used it?

• 56:28

No, I haven't.

• 56:29

Gotta show it.

• 56:31

Yeah, let's do this.

• 56:32

Let's do this.

• 56:34

So I guess in order to properly do this, I should actually set my cooldowns back.

• 56:39

Do you have it fully spec'd?

• 56:41

I do.

• 56:41

I have it fully spec'd.

• 56:43

Keenan, do you have condemn on your bar?

• 56:47

I can grab it real quick.

• 56:48

Okay.

• 56:48

Yeah, that's a stun.

• 56:49

We could kind of, we'll have Keenan condemn you and then you'll just like break out of it after your full momentum.

• 56:55

Yeah, let me get some, let me start generating that.

• 56:59

Love that shield effect.

• 57:03

Oh, and you know, I got to get off this form of fluidity.

• 57:06

Let's go to.

• 57:09

Do ferocity.

• 57:11

Yeah, let's do ferocity.

• 57:16

You can probably blitz him for a head start on momentum into an overpower.

• 57:24

Keep an eye on your mana.

• 57:30

Let me know when you're ready to be stunned.

• 57:35

Okay, I'm almost up there.

• 57:39

But before you stun me, let me start doing some abilities.

• 57:45

I am feeling that wound.

• 57:50

Wait, just don't kill him.

• 57:52

I'm not.

• 57:56

All right, now you can stun me.

• 57:59

All right, stun him up.

• 58:02

All right, use it.

• 58:04

Oh, you don't have, did you not spec it?

• 58:05

Oh, I thought I did.

• 58:08

I thought I did spec it.

• 58:10

Let's try it again.

• 58:11

Well, let's check the tree.

• 58:13

If there might be an issue there.

• 58:16

And I spec it.

• 58:17

Did I spec it?

• 58:18

I do.

• 58:18

I do have it spec'd.

• 58:19

That's weird.

• 58:20

We didn't that used to work.

• 58:21

Let's double check.

• 58:22

Hold on.

• 58:23

Let's try it one more time and I'll I'll click on it this time.

• 58:27

Okay, so there was some finger shenanigans happening.

• 58:29

All right, I'm ready.

• 58:30

I think.

• 58:35

Yeah, I hope I had an expression failure.

• 58:37

Sad.

• 58:38

All right, well, let's use it with.

• 58:39

Out that that's that used to work.

• 58:41

My bad, guys.

• 58:42

Welcome to bugs.

• 58:44

Yeah, that's okay.

• 58:46

Okay, let's show.

• 58:48

Yeah, now it's balanced.

• 58:50

See, the game wouldn't even allow that level of imbalance.

• 58:52

I'm just kidding.

• 58:54

Okay.

• 58:54

Let me generate this up again and get some.

• 59:09

Okay, I'm gonna give myself some mana and now let's use shift two.

• 59:26

Oh, that's cool.

• 59:35

I love that effect.

• 59:36

That effect looks great.

• 59:37

Yeah.

• 59:37

Yeah.

• 59:38

Yeah.

• 59:38

Yeah.

• 59:39

Yeah.

• 59:39

Let me show the effect one more time.

• 59:40

Well, I'm not kind of moving around and doing stuff.

• 59:44

Okay.

• 59:45

And then we set my cooldowns real quick one more time.

• 59:48

And is there can I get myself Max?

• 59:50

Uh, there's a there's a debug ability for it, but I would just say blitz into overpower

• 59:56

and then weapon combos.

• 59:57

The best way to do it.

• 1:00:02

That's me.

• 1:00:02

Uh, you're a button.

• 1:00:09

All right, hold still.

• 1:00:20

I just keep this going all the time.

• 1:00:21

I got no cooldowns.

• 1:00:25

Now we're cheating.

• 1:00:26

That is so good.

• 1:00:27

Oh, it's so good.

• 1:00:28

Very cool.

• 1:00:29

All right.

• 1:00:30

Well, that was a good one.

• 1:00:31

Yeah.

• 1:00:32

Yeah.

• 1:00:33

Yeah.

• 1:00:34

Yeah.

• 1:00:35

Yeah.

• 1:00:36

Yeah.

• 1:00:37

Yeah.

• 1:00:38

Yeah.

• 1:00:39

That is a very let me just say, I'm sorry, let me speak on behalf of what I assume is

• 1:00:44

our audience saying, holy shit.

• 1:00:47

That is a cool class.

• 1:00:48

I mean, the archetype feels great.

• 1:00:51

The movement, the fluidity is there.

• 1:00:56

It feels really good just to play with these these skills.

• 1:01:00

Well done, guys.

• 1:01:01

Well done for Alpha two.

• 1:01:02

This is feeling nice as a fighter and as melee.

• 1:01:05

Obviously, that mobility is going to be king when it comes to traversing the battlefield.

• 1:01:09

And being that juggernaut class fantasy feeling, I think is really captured well here.

• 1:01:17

What do you guys say we take a look at Oakenbane and kind of work through that area and show

• 1:01:22

people off a little bit of the world of Vera?

• 1:01:25

Yeah.

• 1:01:26

Let's put the kit to the test.

• 1:01:27

Did you want to talk about the weapon first?

• 1:01:29

Oh, my God.

• 1:01:30

You're right.

• 1:01:31

Thank you.

• 1:01:32

Yes.

• 1:01:33

Okay.

• 1:01:34

Obviously, see here, we have got a pretty beefy looking sword that I have equipped.

• 1:01:40

And Brian and the combat team have been working a lot on skill progression trees for weapons.

• 1:01:47

You saw a hint of that in its very bare bones form with the Ranger update.

• 1:01:54

But there's been a lot of work towards that weapon tree.

• 1:01:57

Let's talk a little bit about it.

• 1:01:59

Yeah.

• 1:02:00

So we've been revamping the weapon tree.

• 1:02:03

So the first point of progression here is we wanted to give people a choice in how long

• 1:02:09

their weapon combo actually is.

• 1:02:12

So you've got the base weapon combo that you start with on the Greatsword, which is three

• 1:02:16

attacks.

• 1:02:17

And you can extend that out into four attacks if you want.

• 1:02:21

In addition to that, both the third hit and the fourth hit can have proc finisher attacks.

• 1:02:28

And those proc finisher attacks can trigger additional attacks.

• 1:02:32

Okay.

• 1:02:33

So you can trigger additional effects on you, such as an additional heal effect, a boost of momentary attack speed.

• 1:02:43

And I'm looking here, Brian, so when I go over to the left-hand side and it has me kind of an option, right,

• 1:02:48

I'm unlocking this node and selecting down one of these four choices.

• 1:02:53

And for those of you who are watching and perhaps don't recall the use case here of these weapon skill trees,

• 1:03:00

these are separate progression trees.

• 1:03:02

These are progression trees that you unlock and advance within as you are using and adventuring with a particular weapon type.

• 1:03:12

Right, Brian?

• 1:03:13

Correct.

• 1:03:14

And, yeah, they'll advance faster than your archetype tree.

• 1:03:17

So you'll be able to level up a couple weapons as you're going along.

• 1:03:21

Yeah.

• 1:03:22

And that's a lot of fun to do, actually.

• 1:03:24

Yeah.

• 1:03:25

And that section that you're looking at now is probably the most work-in-progress part.

• 1:03:29

I still need to revamp this passive thing.

• 1:03:31

This passive section, it's pretty weak overall.

• 1:03:34

But, yeah, this version zero, you can choose between different modifications that best fit your class.

• 1:03:41

You can choose between a little bit of deflection bonus, which is avoidance, some, I think, crit damage, accuracy.

• 1:03:51

So each node you're kind of choosing a different – oh, I see.

• 1:03:55

Very cool.

• 1:03:56

Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:03:57

Yeah.

• 1:03:58

Right now they're all the same.

• 1:03:59

I'm going to mix up.

• 1:04:00

I'm going to mix up that a little bit and make it more interesting with some different capstone passives and such.

• 1:04:07

But, yeah, this side's way more interesting, way more fleshed out.

• 1:04:10

So what you just clicked on there is the first proc that you'll get access to.

• 1:04:15

And you have a choice between three of these things.

• 1:04:18

The first is Swordmaster's Swiftness.

• 1:04:20

This is a temporary boost of attack speed.

• 1:04:23

So if you get this proc and then you can instantly use another ability or continue in your combo if you want.

• 1:04:29

And it'll trigger that next ability all the quicker.

• 1:04:32

And to talk a little bit about, you know, obviously reiterating again kind of, you know, these proc effects.

• 1:04:37

These essentially are the incentive loops for why weapon combo attacks, which are basic weapon attacks, are the fillers between rotational effects.

• 1:04:48

Because you are getting, you know, as you unlock progression within these trees, you are getting substantial benefit from procs that occur by using the basic weapon combo.

• 1:04:59

Right.

• 1:05:00

I should speak on that a little bit more in like a general concept.

• 1:05:03

So we want to encourage weaving between abilities and weapon combo attacks.

• 1:05:07

And we're going to do that in a few different ways that you'll be seeing in this stream.

• 1:05:11

The first way is archetype weapon combo interactions.

• 1:05:14

You've already seen some of that where the finishers give you a burst of momentum.

• 1:05:18

And Overpower and Brutal Cleave get reduced or reset cooldowns on combo end as well.

• 1:05:24

The second type of interaction is weapon combo to ability proc synergies.

• 1:05:28

Such as direct damage on the next ability hit after a combo finisher or a status effect set up for ability use.

• 1:05:35

And the third version is ability to weapon combo proc synergies.

• 1:05:40

So this is deeper in the tree.

• 1:05:42

Your abilities will have a chance to set up your next weapon finisher with additional effects.

• 1:05:47

Very cool.

• 1:05:48

That is awesome.

• 1:05:49

So let's see.

• 1:05:50

Which one should I go for here?

• 1:05:52

I'd go with the swiftness for the fighter.

• 1:05:54

All right.

• 1:05:55

Let's do it.

• 1:05:58

Effect duration, huh?

• 1:06:01

Yeah.

• 1:06:02

That's actually really strong because it's a very short burst of attack speed.

• 1:06:05

So the duration is really good there.

• 1:06:07

And also the proc chance.

• 1:06:08

I'd probably max out the proc chance one in the middle.

• 1:06:12

And then get the duration.

• 1:06:14

That's probably strongest for the swiftness.

• 1:06:18

All right.

• 1:06:20

And now I've already gone and unlocked this path here of the extended finishers.

• 1:06:28

Yeah.

• 1:06:29

You could probably take some points out of the extra damage nodes and then put them into...

• 1:06:34

I've never heard you say that before.

• 1:06:35

This is vastness.

• 1:06:36

Well, it's only because you're getting even more damage through the procs potentially.

• 1:06:41

Okay.

• 1:06:42

It's all more math and less math, right?

• 1:06:45

Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:46

And another thing here is it all depends on your build.

• 1:06:50

All depends on your build.

• 1:06:51

And you'll see that more in this next choice here, which is a lot more interesting.

• 1:06:56

The first one was like a kind of introduction to the proc system.

• 1:07:00

It's kind of a more just additive extra thing.

• 1:07:04

This is kind of forcing the...

• 1:07:06

Well, not forcing the weaving, but encouraging the weaving a little bit harder.

• 1:07:09

So first we've got a second strike.

• 1:07:11

So your next ability use after a weapon combo finisher has an additional damage proc that occurs.

• 1:07:20

And then another good choice for DPS is the one right below that, which is perfect damage.

• 1:07:26

Perfect timing.

• 1:07:27

So the next ability you cast will have reduced cooldown.

• 1:07:30

So it's kind of like, do you care about that reduced cooldown for your rotation or do you not?

• 1:07:35

And you just take the additional damage.

• 1:07:37

And the third option there, unfortunately it's not working yet.

• 1:07:41

This is expanding upon that status effect interaction stuff.

• 1:07:44

That's what we're working on imminently, getting that built into the weapons.

• 1:07:47

But whenever this is working, it'll apply burning to your target and have additional interactions for the mage.

• 1:07:52

I love that.

• 1:07:53

That's cool.

• 1:07:54

That's awesome.

• 1:07:55

You guys are starting to see, obviously, a lot of these progression trees getting implemented now.

• 1:08:02

And you're not just, this is not just obviously for the greatsword,

• 1:08:05

but you have done this in parity with the other existing weapon classes for part of A2's entrance criteria, correct?

• 1:08:14

Yeah.

• 1:08:15

That's one of the really cool things about our game is the amount of weapon choice that's going to be present.

• 1:08:20

All the weapons will be hopefully viable for...

• 1:08:25

almost every archetype because you can specialize it in a certain way that will benefit you and what your archetype role is.

• 1:08:33

There will obviously be certain things that are better for other things, like a two-hander is going to do a lot of damage, for instance.

• 1:08:40

And you might want to shield if you're taking a lot of the damage.

• 1:08:43

But still, if you want to break that mold a little bit, you'll have options available.

• 1:08:48

Just to expand on that a little bit too, it's not even just inter-archetype and weapon synergy.

• 1:08:54

But also, it's like you're building based on your expected or intended comp that you're often going to be running.

• 1:09:02

It's like, let's say your friend rolls a mage, and it's like, I want to build with my friend so I know they are a fire mage.

• 1:09:09

And that's where your burning blade example comes in.

• 1:09:12

There's going to be more stuff like that so that you're just kind of playing off each other.

• 1:09:16

That segues really good into the next proc that we have here.

• 1:09:19

So this is your ability setting up your next weapon.

• 1:09:23

So we've got three options here.

• 1:09:25

The first is Keen Edge.

• 1:09:27

So whenever this procs, your next weapon combo will have a 100% chance to crit.

• 1:09:31

The next option, which if you have a bard in your party, you might not want this one.

• 1:09:38

But it causes your next ability finisher to restore some mana to yourself.

• 1:09:43

And then the third one is, and we're not sure about where this is going to end up.

• 1:09:50

It might get moved over to the tank tree or the mage tree.

• 1:09:52

But it procs a bit of temp health on the next weapon finisher.

• 1:09:57

It's a pretty sweet tank option.

• 1:09:59

Yeah, that's pretty good.

• 1:10:00

I think I'm going to go for the Keen Edge, though.

• 1:10:02

Yeah, that's a solid choice.

• 1:10:04

Oh, attack speed crit.

• 1:10:06

Yup.

• 1:10:07

Yeah, I feel like I want to reinvest it in over here, too.

• 1:10:10

DPS beast mode.

• 1:10:11

Okay, I expect this out now.

• 1:10:14

Very cool.

• 1:10:15

That's awesome.

• 1:10:16

Awesome.

• 1:10:17

Yeah, this is a, I think people, you know, just the complexities that you guys are talking about.

• 1:10:21

Like, obviously, we've been talking about weapon skill trees and archetype design, you know, since we first were talking about Ashes back in 2017.

• 1:10:32

And now we're seeing in fruition to, you know, part of the systems that we are going to be debuting as part of Alpha 2.

• 1:10:39

You guys are going to be able to get your hands on this and kind of give us that active feedback.

• 1:10:43

You know, how does this level of depth and complexity grant you, the player, more granular control?

• 1:10:50

And choice over how your role that you're playing fits into the greater comp of the party setting, the raid setting, or solo gameplay and your itemization selections, right?

• 1:11:04

Like, all of that is a level of depth, I think, that players want to exist in space-wise because it gives them the freedom to really define the way they're approaching this, the difficulty challenge that is the game.

• 1:11:19

Yeah.

• 1:11:20

And that is combat in general.

• 1:11:22

That's super cool.

• 1:11:24

And especially, like, this breadth of options, right?

• 1:11:27

Even the horizontal choices here.

• 1:11:29

Like, that creates a very interesting playground of rock, paper, scissors effects between the multitude of archetype skill progression and weapon type skill progression that you're going to experience even in a PvP setting.

• 1:11:44

And it also is just more levers that we get to pull on the encounter design section as well.

• 1:11:49

For PvE.

• 1:11:51

Very cool.

• 1:11:52

Well done, guys.

• 1:11:53

This is, I think, again, I speak for the community when I say great progress.

• 1:11:59

Very great progress.

• 1:12:00

And Alpha 2 is shaping up to be not just a great testing experience but a lot of fun, I think.

• 1:12:06

You know, obviously the world and the combat design here is significant.

• 1:12:10

The last thing I want to highlight is the work that we've done on the animation side with the weapon combos.

• 1:12:16

Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:17

So if you actually do your weapon combo in place here, we can see it.

• 1:12:21

We can see whenever you get, so you got a stab hit there.

• 1:12:25

Whenever you get stab hits on the third and the fourth hit, those are actually procs.

• 1:12:29

So if you connect with the second hit of that proc hit, you'll receive the additional effects.

• 1:12:36

But you actually have to connect with a monster or player to receive the effect.

• 1:12:41

And I think the proc rate is at a static 25% right now.

• 1:12:46

We're looking at other ways to scale that.

• 1:12:48

Like maybe it scales with a stat or maybe it scales with additional nodes.

• 1:12:53

But right now it's kind of low.

• 1:13:02

Especially if you're unlucky like Steve.

• 1:13:03

I know.

• 1:13:04

Really?

• 1:13:05

What's going on here?

• 1:13:07

Come on.

• 1:13:08

I'm sure we'll see it in combat.

• 1:13:10

There it is.

• 1:13:11

There it is, bro.

• 1:13:12

Okay.

• 1:13:13

And these guys, we're still missing something.

• 1:13:16

We're missing some effects that are going to help drive what this...

• 1:13:20

Smoked.

• 1:13:21

Oh, my God.

• 1:13:22

I'm so sorry.

• 1:13:23

I just was like, relentless attack.

• 1:13:25

Yeah, the momentum and the bonus attack speed on the greatswords stacking together smoked me.

• 1:13:30

That was good.

• 1:13:32

Let's see.

• 1:13:34

I'm so sorry.

• 1:13:35

He's also level 15.

• 1:13:37

Did I go corrupt?

• 1:13:38

You did.

• 1:13:39

Oh, no.

• 1:13:41

It should be fine as long as we're in a party.

• 1:13:43

Speaking of which, we should form the party.

• 1:13:46

Yes.

• 1:13:47

Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:48

Let's get this going.

• 1:13:49

We can talk more over.

• 1:13:50

Yep.

• 1:13:51

Are you guys disbanded?

• 1:13:52

Yep.

• 1:13:53

Yeah, we are.

• 1:13:54

Yeah.

• 1:13:55

Another thing we can talk about when we're moving is we did revamp the animation a little bit.

• 1:14:00

We made it work with the weight of the greatsword a little bit more so you'll see more precise pose holding.

• 1:14:08

And it's less of a lumbering beast than it once was.

• 1:14:11

We're kind of leaving that space for the mace and the axe.

• 1:14:15

But it really feels like a sword now to me.

• 1:14:19

It's awesome.

• 1:14:21

Can I also show off one other thing?

• 1:14:24

Sure.

• 1:14:25

The environment team and the engineering team, and Keenan, I think you were part of this as well, obviously, between the ability system and the interactable environments.

• 1:14:31

Something that I have not seen happen really very often as part of MMO level design is destructible assets.

• 1:14:41

We have that in and running.

• 1:14:43

I want to see if I can destroy these two tents here real quick.

• 1:14:46

Oh!

• 1:14:47

Wait.

• 1:14:48

Somebody else destroyed them.

• 1:14:51

They just got hit by the cone of cold?

• 1:14:53

I think so.

• 1:14:54

Oh, that was good.

• 1:14:55

That was hilarious.

• 1:14:57

I'll find some other tents.

• 1:14:58

I'm sorry.

• 1:14:59

Hold on.

• 1:15:00

I'll find another one.

• 1:15:01

Here we go.

• 1:15:02

Don't forget to put your helmet on.

• 1:15:03

Oh, should I put my helmet on?

• 1:15:04

Do I want to put the helmet on?

• 1:15:05

It's a cool looking helmet.

• 1:15:07

All right.

• 1:15:08

I'll put the helmet on.

• 1:15:09

Let me see.

• 1:15:10

Hold on.

• 1:15:11

That's a cool way to solve props getting in the way.

• 1:15:12

Yeah.

• 1:15:13

That's true.

• 1:15:14

Always wear a helmet.

• 1:15:15

No.

• 1:15:16

I meant you could just kill him.

• 1:15:17

If he had been wearing his helmet when you were attacking him.

• 1:15:22

Oh!

• 1:15:23

Love it.

• 1:15:24

Oh, we need to talk to the scout first, don't we?

• 1:15:31

Yeah.

• 1:15:32

We should grab the quest.

• 1:15:33

Is there a scout over here?

• 1:15:34

That's right.

• 1:15:35

All right.

• 1:15:36

Let's clear a room.

• 1:15:37

Okay.

• 1:15:38

So you guys remember at the end of our commissions livestream last month, this was

• 1:15:42

Oakenbane Keep.

• 1:15:43

I just kind of came up to the entrance here.

• 1:15:45

I didn't want to go inside because this story arc...

• 1:15:48

Let's see if I have actually information on this story arc.

• 1:15:52

Here we go.

• 1:15:53

So we are part of the ancient violence story arc, which is an inhuman threat in the Riverlands.

• 1:16:04

And so it talks about a little bit...

• 1:16:05

The settlers of Vara have known of a constant struggle with the goblins that overran the

• 1:16:10

ancestral Kalar lands.

• 1:16:13

And while we know nothing about their capabilities, it is important that we now find them throwing

• 1:16:21

themselves at Lionhold's paltry defenses.

• 1:16:25

Lionhold being one of the introductory locations right near the portal area in the Riverlands.

• 1:16:34

And Captain Avon...

• 1:16:36

Avonmore...

• 1:16:37

Needs help assessing the Kalar lands.

• 1:16:39

Okay.

• 1:16:40

Let's see if we can find the scope of that threat.

• 1:16:44

Interesting.

• 1:16:45

And we also have here what appears to be a side quest.

• 1:16:47

Scout Yoren.

• 1:16:51

Let's talk with Yoren.

• 1:16:52

What does he have here?

• 1:16:54

Once a great place of our ancestors, now is overrun.

• 1:16:58

We shall do something about this.

• 1:17:02

All right.

• 1:17:03

He's been charged with observing.

• 1:17:06

I would be happy to take some of your dispensation as pay.

• 1:17:09

So he wants us to kill 20 of the goblins here in Oakenbane.

• 1:17:15

We've already dispatched a few of them.

• 1:17:18

All right.

• 1:17:19

Accept that.

• 1:17:20

Okay.

• 1:17:21

We got the ancestral revenge.

• 1:17:22

Let's do this.

• 1:17:23

What have we got going on over here?

• 1:17:24

Some glint.

• 1:17:25

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:26

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:27

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:28

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:29

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:30

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:31

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:32

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:33

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:34

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:35

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:36

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:37

Oh, that guy.

• 1:17:38

Oh.

• 1:17:39

Oh.

• 1:17:40

He's just kind of— He's just kind of flippin' around over there.

• 1:17:43

Oh, this is feelin' moody.

• 1:17:49

It's feelin' moody.

• 1:18:00

All right.

• 1:18:03

Not too bad.

• 1:18:06

So now, of your guys' experiences in MMOs,

• 1:18:09

how many of you actually mained as a fighter?

• 1:18:15

Me.

• 1:18:16

I think I'm the only one here.

• 1:18:18

I know everyone here has played fighter,

• 1:18:20

but I love playing fighters.

• 1:18:23

Like, they're kind of my first choice.

• 1:18:26

You know, I'm going to...

• 1:18:27

Oh, hold on.

• 1:18:28

I see that there is a spirit nearby.

• 1:18:34

Oh, my God.

• 1:18:34

I already popped my blizzard, too.

• 1:18:42

I got drags here. Nice.

• 1:18:44

Oh, yeah, this is a named mob.

• 1:18:46

It's a named mob.

• 1:18:47

We'll have to be sure to loot them after we kill them.

• 1:18:51

Yeah, Steven needs to loot them, though.

• 1:18:52

Not anyone else.

• 1:18:54

Why are you guys saying that?

• 1:18:56

Yeah, it's almost like, so, the guy.

• 1:18:58

Yeah, we don't have any, like, ninja looters in this group, for sure.

• 1:19:02

Now, some of you guys are seeing that

• 1:19:04

at the F1.

• 1:19:04

That is still effects of that big explosion.

• 1:19:07

That is still effects

• 1:19:08

that are being authored right now,

• 1:19:10

but that is specifically a progression.

• 1:19:13

Oh, that guy was pretty strong.

• 1:19:15

That is specifically

• 1:19:16

a status progression, is that right?

• 1:19:20

Which one?

• 1:19:21

Oh, I got something.

• 1:19:22

Wait, wait, wait. Okay, yeah, there we go.

• 1:19:24

Did I get something?

• 1:19:27

I got something that looked like a...

• 1:19:30

Let me see if I can find that.

• 1:19:31

Hold on.

• 1:19:33

What do I got here?

• 1:19:34

A torch.

• 1:19:34

Toy soldier legs.

• 1:19:38

Legs of an ancient toy soldier

• 1:19:39

that survived well past

• 1:19:41

when it ought to have,

• 1:19:43

thanks to ancient magics within,

• 1:19:46

can be reassembled with other pieces.

• 1:19:48

Okay, cool.

• 1:19:53

So, sorry, I was talking

• 1:19:54

about the conflagrate.

• 1:19:57

Yeah, so

• 1:19:58

one thing you'll be noticing a lot on the mage

• 1:20:00

is I'm throwing out different

• 1:20:02

elements of projectiles, like here's...

• 1:20:04

Here's a fireball, and then after that,

• 1:20:06

you'll see my weapon combo is throwing out

• 1:20:08

little fire projectiles.

• 1:20:10

As we showed in the previous mage live stream,

• 1:20:12

that is elemental empowerment and how it works.

• 1:20:14

However, we've changed a little bit how that works.

• 1:20:18

Now,

• 1:20:19

on the finisher attack

• 1:20:20

of every combo,

• 1:20:22

you get the element based on

• 1:20:24

what your infused element is.

• 1:20:27

And then you can use certain

• 1:20:28

abilities to promote that from burning

• 1:20:30

to conflagrate in the case that you were seeing here.

• 1:20:33

Oh my god.

• 1:20:34

There's a lot.

• 1:20:42

So you'll see me doing that here and there.

• 1:20:44

I'm gonna give myself some mana.

• 1:20:47

And that's a concept that we're applying

• 1:20:48

to all the classes.

• 1:20:51

On the tank we recently

• 1:20:52

moved, they used to generate courage

• 1:20:54

and apply stagger on every hit.

• 1:20:57

We moved that all to the combo

• 1:20:58

end as well, which

• 1:21:00

is really nice because that allows us to

• 1:21:02

normalize these effects across

• 1:21:04

multiple different weapon types and really

• 1:21:06

make true our promise of weapon choice.

• 1:21:10

Yeah, it's like we don't want to

• 1:21:12

put too much emphasis on attack speed

• 1:21:14

for proc rate. And there's other ways to do that.

• 1:21:17

You can normalize chance and all that stuff.

• 1:21:18

But we also just thought

• 1:21:20

from a gameplay perspective,

• 1:21:22

it is really cool to make you

• 1:21:24

have to commit to that final

• 1:21:26

hit. It just kind of makes it feel a little

• 1:21:28

bit more

• 1:21:29

like you're working towards something rather than

• 1:21:32

just getting something on every attack.

• 1:21:35

Yeah, the initial thought

• 1:21:37

was that the additional flexibility

• 1:21:39

was good with the tank play style,

• 1:21:41

but having that additional thing

• 1:21:43

to chase mid rotation

• 1:21:45

is turning out pretty well.

• 1:21:47

I've got an NPC here.

• 1:21:52

I found this dude.

• 1:21:54

Looks like some. Oh, this is a.

• 1:21:57

This is we saw this guy

• 1:21:59

before he was in our

• 1:22:02

um, last time.

• 1:22:04

We showed up in Bain Keep.

• 1:22:08

An armored shade floats before

• 1:22:10

you, incapable of speech.

• 1:22:14

It, however, does extend a translucent

• 1:22:16

arm. To hand you

• 1:22:18

a corporeal letter.

• 1:22:21

Oh, I've received a letter.

• 1:22:24

OK, let's take a look at what this letter does.

• 1:22:27

The paper in this letter is inked on

• 1:22:30

what feels so old

• 1:22:32

that it could disintegrate against

• 1:22:34

time and your gentle handling.

• 1:22:36

It holds together.

• 1:22:38

That sounds like I should open this letter.

• 1:22:43

Though the letter is ancient,

• 1:22:44

the text in it is clearly legible.

• 1:22:48

Papa.

• 1:22:49

Oh, no, wait, no, Papa.

• 1:22:51

Mama says we won't be able to visit anymore

• 1:22:54

after we've through the portal.

• 1:22:56

Oh, should I mess that up?

• 1:22:58

I should have read this before.

• 1:23:00

C minus.

• 1:23:00

I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

• 1:23:02

OK, wait, wait. Papa.

• 1:23:03

Mama says we won't be able to visit anymore

• 1:23:06

after we leave through the portal.

• 1:23:08

Didn't feel right to leave you alone,

• 1:23:10

so I'm leaving you my bravest toy soldier.

• 1:23:12

Oh, that was the toy soldier piece we found.

• 1:23:15

To help you and the others here fight off

• 1:23:17

the demons coming for us.

• 1:23:20

I hate to tell you, kid, I don't think that toy

• 1:23:21

soldier is going to help.

• 1:23:23

I'm getting too old for toys.

• 1:23:25

I know, I know. His name is Troy.

• 1:23:27

Oh, I love always Troy.

• 1:23:28

We have respawns here.

• 1:23:29

The word Og is written in blood across the back of the paper.

• 1:23:33

Four distinct times.

• 1:23:34

Sounds interesting.

• 1:23:35

Oh, he's going to give me some experience.

• 1:23:39

Deliver the toy to the forgotten soldier's memorial site.

• 1:23:43

OK, so we need to find a memorial site.

• 1:23:46

Oh, that's sad.

• 1:23:49

What history?

• 1:23:50

What history lives here?

• 1:23:53

Love the banners.

• 1:24:01

Oh, man.

• 1:24:03

We've got a I love the I also love the ambiance here of the like goblins.

• 1:24:25

We're mopping these goblins up.

• 1:24:31

Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:33

Yeah, we've been doing a lot of playtest cycles in this area.

• 1:24:38

Getting it in the good.

• 1:24:40

So we're pretty experienced.

• 1:24:43

Yeah, we have had many deaths in this area, but

• 1:24:47

yeah, what kills you gets you stronger, right?

• 1:24:50

Yep.

• 1:24:51

I think that's how it goes.

• 1:25:01

That wasn't close.

• 1:25:03

But, you know...

• 1:25:07

No.

• 1:25:08

No.

• 1:25:11

No.

• 1:25:12

Guys, I want to talk about another thing that we always are keeping in mind towards Alpha 2.

• 1:25:15

Oops.

• 1:25:22

Keeping in mind towards Alpha 2 is performance testing.

• 1:25:23

That's something that PI has been helping us test and there's another PI test happening,

• 1:25:28

I think, next week, which is both the visual performance testing and the visual performance

• 1:25:29

testing.

• 1:25:30

And that's something that this team has been working on.

• 1:25:31

And we have they've been working on two things.

• 1:25:31

the visual performance that you're seeing within the game world from a rendering perspective as

• 1:25:37

well as from a networking perspective on the servers as well so keep that in mind there's

• 1:25:43

going to be a lot of benefits there because it is something that is happening now and

• 1:25:50

teams have been putting a lot of work towards that

• 1:25:53

might want to get a little mana back there i know i have no mana i'm so sorry

• 1:26:02

i'm just grabbing cheating grabbing mana we need a we need a bard in this party

• 1:26:07

well you do have blood fusion if you so choose oh that's right i forgot about blood fusion i

• 1:26:12

should choose that yeah next aoe pack you could use that with uh so that gives 50 percent back

• 1:26:18

of damage done as mana yep so round all these guys up and pop it and start aoeing

• 1:26:23

you

• 1:26:23

oh yeah you're tall i forgot about that

• 1:26:31

nice

• 1:26:36

by the way this area looks great during the ancient valance

• 1:26:49

all right it looks like we got something up here on our right

• 1:26:52

wolves up front

• 1:26:53

wolves up front

• 1:26:53

wolves up front

• 1:26:53

let's get them let's do this what do we got incoming

• 1:26:57

looks like we got alpha wolf up top try to pull him down i see this alpha wolf up there

• 1:27:06

i'm going for him

• 1:27:20

oh

• 1:27:21

oh

• 1:27:21

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:22

oh

• 1:27:23

Who's alpha?

• 1:27:25

Who's this guy talking about alpha?

• 1:27:32

Flayer on me.

• 1:27:39

Okay, I'm getting that mana back.

• 1:27:43

Oh, what do we got here?

• 1:27:45

Flayer?

• 1:27:47

Yep, he's dead though.

• 1:27:53

Nice.

• 1:28:02

Oh, do I need to loot that alpha?

• 1:28:04

Yeah, let's loot him.

• 1:28:06

Where's he at?

• 1:28:08

Right here.

• 1:28:10

He has an alpha severed head.

• 1:28:12

Alright.

• 1:28:14

Like crafting material.

• 1:28:16

They have like a little den here, how sad.

• 1:28:18

Let's go behind the den maybe.

• 1:28:20

Sneak in.

• 1:28:23

Yeah, come around from kind of like the wall side.

• 1:28:26

Infiltration.

• 1:28:29

We need a camouflage.

• 1:28:32

How should we go up here?

• 1:28:35

Go along the walls?

• 1:28:37

Let's try it.

• 1:28:38

I think there's mobs up there too, but we can give it a shot.

• 1:28:43

No, it looks like there's a break in the wall.

• 1:28:45

Further down.

• 1:28:47

Oh yeah, there's a Flayer up there too, be careful.

• 1:28:49

That's a good plan though.

• 1:28:51

Foiled.

• 1:28:55

Okay, here we go.

• 1:28:57

Want to pull these?

• 1:28:58

There we go.

• 1:28:59

Yep.

• 1:29:00

Alright, sleeping.

• 1:29:03

Okay, I'm going to jump on them.

• 1:29:05

Hold up.

• 1:29:06

Oh!

• 1:29:13

Get some damage.

• 1:29:17

There we go.

• 1:29:19

Got a trip there.

• 1:29:20

We doing it?

• 1:29:21

You can kill me from the back.

• 1:29:22

Yup.

• 1:29:23

We got another.

• 1:29:24

We got a friend.

• 1:29:25

Oh no, he's hurting.

• 1:29:26

He's hurting.

• 1:29:27

Alright, he's frozen.

• 1:29:28

I'm going to get him.

• 1:29:29

No!

• 1:29:30

No!

• 1:29:31

No!

• 1:29:32

No!

• 1:29:33

No!

• 1:29:34

No!

• 1:29:35

No!

• 1:29:36

No!

• 1:29:37

No!

• 1:29:38

No!

• 1:29:39

No!

• 1:29:40

No!

• 1:29:41

No!

• 1:29:42

No!

• 1:29:43

No!

• 1:29:44

No!

• 1:29:45

No!

• 1:29:46

No!

• 1:29:47

No!

• 1:29:48

Dead.

• 1:29:49

Got him!

• 1:29:50

I feel bad for the wolves, actually.

• 1:29:51

They didn't want this.

• 1:29:52

They're just in their little dens.

• 1:29:53

Wrong, wrong place, wrong time.

• 1:29:54

These dens smell nasty.

• 1:29:55

Big pull.

• 1:29:56

Big pull?

• 1:29:57

Well, I guess that's every pull in the area.

• 1:29:58

Yeah.

• 1:29:59

Yeah.

• 1:30:00

Yeah.

• 1:30:01

Yeah.

• 1:30:02

Yeah.

• 1:30:03

Yeah.

• 1:30:04

Yeah.

• 1:30:05

Yeah.

• 1:30:06

Yeah.

• 1:30:07

Yeah.

• 1:30:08

Yeah.

• 1:30:09

Yeah.

• 1:30:10

Yeah.

• 1:30:11

Yeah.

• 1:30:12

Yeah.

• 1:30:13

Yeah.

• 1:30:14

Yeah.

• 1:30:15

Yeah.

• 1:30:16

Yeah.

• 1:30:17

Yeah.

• 1:30:18

Yeah.

• 1:30:19

Yeah.

• 1:30:20

Yeah.

• 1:30:21

Yeah.

• 1:30:22

Yeah.

• 1:30:23

Yeah.

• 1:30:24

Yeah.

• 1:30:25

Yeah.

• 1:30:26

Yeah.

• 1:30:27

Yeah.

• 1:30:28

Yeah.

• 1:30:29

Yeah.

• 1:30:30

Yeah.

• 1:30:31

Yeah.

• 1:30:32

Yeah.

• 1:30:33

Yeah.

• 1:30:34

Yeah.

• 1:30:35

Yeah.

• 1:30:36

Yeah.

• 1:30:37

Yeah.

• 1:30:38

Yeah.

• 1:30:39

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

• 1:30:58

Yeah.

• 1:30:59

Yeah.

• 1:31:00

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

• 1:32:00

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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• 1:32:05

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• 1:32:06

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

• 1:32:12

Yeah.

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• 1:32:14

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• 1:32:15

Yeah.

• 1:32:16

Yeah.

• 1:32:17

Yeah.

• 1:32:18

Yeah.

• 1:32:19

Yeah.

• 1:32:20

Yeah.

• 1:32:21

Yeah.

• 1:32:22

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

• 1:32:25

Yeah.

• 1:32:26

Yeah.

• 1:32:27

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• 1:32:28

Yeah.

• 1:32:29

Yeah.

• 1:32:30

Yeah.

• 1:32:31

Yeah.

• 1:32:32

Yeah.

• 1:32:33

Yeah.

• 1:32:34

Yeah.

• 1:32:35

Yeah.

• 1:32:36

Yeah.

• 1:32:37

Yeah.

• 1:32:38

Yeah.

• 1:32:39

Yeah.

• 1:32:40

Yeah.

• 1:32:41

Yeah.

• 1:32:42

Yeah.

• 1:32:43

Yeah.

• 1:32:44

Where is he?

• 1:32:50

He is right on top of our tank back here.

• 1:32:55

I'm going to sleep off shortly.

• 1:33:00

Yeah, me too.

• 1:33:05

All right, bring that wolf down.

• 1:33:18

It's a man I hear real quick.

• 1:33:27

All right, let's start.

• 1:33:29

I got some howling wolf garb.

• 1:33:33

Nice.

• 1:33:34

Nice.

• 1:33:35

Nice.

• 1:33:36

And I found a toy soldier arm.

• 1:33:39

We have the we have the arms now and the boots.

• 1:33:44

We're doing speed halfway perfect.

• 1:33:46

Whoa.

• 1:33:47

Every time.

• 1:33:48

Sorry.

• 1:33:49

Every time.

• 1:33:50

Yeah.

• 1:33:51

As from the left.

• 1:33:52

Yeah.

• 1:33:53

Yeah.

• 1:33:54

Yeah.

• 1:33:55

Yeah.

• 1:33:56

Yeah.

• 1:33:57

Yeah.

• 1:33:58

Yeah.

• 1:33:59

Yeah.

• 1:34:00

Yeah.

• 1:34:01

Yeah.

• 1:34:02

Yeah.

• 1:34:03

Yeah.

• 1:34:04

Yeah.

• 1:34:05

Yeah.

• 1:34:06

Yeah.

• 1:34:07

Yeah.

• 1:34:08

He's asleep.

• 1:34:09

Careful to the left here.

• 1:34:19

Try and pull them back.

• 1:34:30

You.

• 1:34:30

Yeah, we got fudge fudge over here. Let's rest up. All right, let's make sure there's

• 1:34:55

no ads over here to our right. Jump, jump.

• 1:34:57

See where the wall kind of sticks out back there? I think we need to go that far.

• 1:35:00

Wolf right here. He's patrolling. Let's kill him.

• 1:35:06

Oh, we got ads. Let's just go to the wall. Go to the spot.

• 1:35:13

Okay. I'm going to sleep him as we pull. All right, sleep dropping now.

• 1:35:25

I think that LOS'd me.

• 1:35:27

A lot of wolves just passed that, so if we end up having to move a little bit, don't

• 1:35:31

go any further than this.

• 1:35:33

Yeah, dragging him to the corner.

• 1:35:41

All right, this player's down.

• 1:35:45

My favorite place of any tank, a corner.

• 1:35:51

Wait, I'm going to die.

• 1:35:56

Wait, I might pull a cooldown. I'll bring him back.

• 1:35:58

All right, it's just him now. Burn him.

• 1:36:01

I'm bringing it back to the wall.

• 1:36:03

Nice. Good pull.

• 1:36:08

That shield is strong.

• 1:36:21

I'm going to die.

• 1:36:22

I'm going to die.

• 1:36:24

I'm going to die.

• 1:36:26

I'm going to die.

• 1:36:27

Oh, man.

• 1:36:29

Here we go.

• 1:36:30

C'mon.

• 1:36:31

Man it back, here we go.

• 1:36:32

I wonder if those wound stacks are reducing the shields, though.

• 1:36:33

Should be.

• 1:36:34

Oh, there's a trip.

• 1:36:35

Can you maim him?

• 1:36:36

Mamed him.

• 1:36:37

Nice.

• 1:36:38

Come on.

• 1:36:39

Get him.

• 1:36:40

Get him.

• 1:36:41

Get the shield down.

• 1:36:42

What a clutch skill.

• 1:36:44

95.

• 1:36:45

Unbelievable, that shield.

• 1:36:48

I know.

• 1:36:50

Almost like it's scripted to do that.

• 1:36:53

Sweetie.

• 1:36:54

Nice kill.

• 1:36:55

Yeah.

• 1:36:56

a goblin skull sweet very nice

• 1:37:04

all right now what were we looking for something

• 1:37:10

yeah uh so i think in here is going to be the last two goblins we're trying to find

• 1:37:20

yeah they are up this ramp this way i think

• 1:37:26

watch out there's both left and right here i was trying to thread the needle and uh

• 1:37:34

sleeping the shaman

• 1:37:38

focus on this pack here

• 1:37:43

oh you just destroyed that tent yeah tanya if you destroy the homes they won't come back

• 1:37:56

i'm on the shaman freezing in

• 1:38:12

all right careful up here this is like super danger area

• 1:38:16

i'm gonna pull some of these back i think yeah you could probably yeah

• 1:38:22

um

• 1:38:26

i'm just keeping the flare

• 1:38:31

okay we got the other flare too now

• 1:38:37

i got him knocked down

• 1:38:54

what's happening

• 1:38:54

all right

• 1:38:56

keep an eye out lags he's right there on the left he's pathing just kind of wait it out

• 1:39:02

we want to clear up here the flag's the last one there's a flare above us

• 1:39:06

flare right here to the right while we wait and then pull him while we're

• 1:39:10

okay they're pulled leave this one that's close to us trad yeah i'm waiting them to round them up

• 1:39:16

because they're also got the next step they're all coming all right sleep dropping now drop that

• 1:39:21

sleep oh my god it's not much use if that happens

• 1:39:26

two can spin at this

• 1:39:32

res they they bumped my first one second one coming okay keep guiding keep guiding

• 1:39:40

i'm back out

• 1:39:42

stable

• 1:39:56

heading

• 1:39:58

you got more

• 1:40:04

oh

• 1:40:06

oh

• 1:40:08

oh

• 1:40:10

oh

• 1:40:12

oh

• 1:40:14

oh

• 1:40:16

oh

• 1:40:18

oh

• 1:40:20

oh

• 1:40:22

oh

• 1:40:24

oh

• 1:40:26

oh

• 1:40:28

oh

• 1:40:30

oh

• 1:40:32

oh

• 1:40:34

oh

• 1:40:36

oh

• 1:40:38

oh

• 1:40:40

oh

• 1:40:42

oh

• 1:40:44

oh

• 1:40:46

oh

• 1:40:48

oh

• 1:40:50

oh

• 1:40:52

oh

• 1:40:54

oh good kill on the chamois

• 1:40:56

oh

• 1:40:58

oh

• 1:40:59

oh

• 1:41:00

oh

• 1:41:02

oh

• 1:41:04

oh

• 1:41:06

y

• 1:41:08

oh

• 1:41:10

oh

• 1:41:12

oh

• 1:41:14

oh

• 1:41:16

oh

• 1:41:18

oh

• 1:41:20

oh

• 1:41:22

oh

• 1:41:24

And then we can spawn him.

• 1:41:27

What if he wants to bring him in?

• 1:41:34

I think his response isn't too bad.

• 1:41:35

It's actually pretty quick.

• 1:41:37

Was it? Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:41:40

All right. Well, let's talk about how this fighter has been performing

• 1:41:45

exemplary performance by the fighter, if I don't say so myself.

• 1:41:48

I mean, really just unbelievable.

• 1:41:51

Top tier. Top tier.

• 1:41:54

I do love the area.

• 1:41:56

I love how each of the areas just dramatically change

• 1:42:01

as story arcs come online visually.

• 1:42:04

Right. The atmospherics alone are significant.

• 1:42:08

Not not to mention the obvious sound ambience and everything.

• 1:42:12

These goblins, I love their vocals.

• 1:42:16

Yeah.

• 1:42:16

The little evil laugh like the big guys do right before they spin the wind on you.

• 1:42:21

Oh, yeah.

• 1:42:24

It's a nice like audio telegraph, too.

• 1:42:33

All right, now freeze the player.

• 1:42:40

They're starting to respawn here.

• 1:42:50

Back is back.

• 1:42:52

It's.

• 1:42:52

It's.

• 1:42:52

It's.

• 1:42:53

It's.

• 1:42:54

It is the main guy.

• 1:42:56

No, it's not.

• 1:42:56

Over here.

• 1:43:06

So what are some of the things, Trad, that you look for from the community

• 1:43:11

or Keenan or Brian as it relates to kind of everything we talked about today?

• 1:43:15

Right.

• 1:43:15

What are what are the things you want to hear people kind of opining on?

• 1:43:19

And you know, our different social media forums and whatnot.

• 1:43:23

This.

• 1:43:23

We've got a lot.

• 1:43:25

Right.

• 1:43:25

I mean, coming flags.

• 1:43:28

Oh, well, yeah, let's get him first and we can chat about that.

• 1:43:31

I mean, this is this is actually an interesting one is like, you know,

• 1:43:40

just these areas like, you know, the density, the respawn rates like,

• 1:43:45

you know, this is this is intended for a larger group.

• 1:43:47

But this is the kind of farming that you would want to see

• 1:43:52

or what you would want to see.

• 1:43:53

Or, you know, what are your preferred, you know, grinding experiences in games from MMOs you've played?

• 1:44:01

Also, just, like, how do you feel the fighter plays from the Melee perspective?

• 1:44:07

Like, you know, what are fighters that you've really liked playing in games?

• 1:44:11

And how did you enjoy them more?

• 1:44:14

Or what do you like more that you're seeing here that you didn't see in fighters on other games?

• 1:44:19

Like, all that kind of stuff.

• 1:44:21

Yeah.

• 1:44:21

Yeah. Building on that a bit, one thing I really like is criticism from our fans.

• 1:44:26

Like, what's missing? What doesn't look so hot?

• 1:44:31

We're all experienced developers. We can take the heat. It's fine.

• 1:44:34

You're not going to hurt our feelings. We just need to know what sucks.

• 1:44:38

Yeah, absolutely. I think the critical feedback loop is very important.

• 1:44:42

I think, you know, one of the things that is super important anytime you're offering any critical feedback

• 1:44:47

is to be very specific in the things that don't mesh well.

• 1:44:51

Or, you know, that you're looking to see improved.

• 1:44:54

And a lot of that stuff validates already what we have, you know, intentions for as we move forward in development.

• 1:45:02

But that validation is important, right?

• 1:45:04

Because it means that you as the player are thinking about the same things that we're thinking about.

• 1:45:09

And we can prioritize that stuff.

• 1:45:11

Obviously, combat being one of the biggest takeaways from Alpha 1,

• 1:45:14

which you can see here, we took to heart and are iterating upon and continuing to develop with.

• 1:45:21

So, you know, I think that's a really good thing that we're working on right now.

• 1:45:24

Another good thing would be, you know, this is a half group.

• 1:45:27

Like, how do the visuals look?

• 1:45:30

Like, you know, the fighter effects look really awesome, in my opinion, especially when we're showcasing them.

• 1:45:36

How does that hold up, you know, with the mage effects in parallel and also the cleric and the tank?

• 1:45:42

Like, a lot of that stuff, you know, how does it look, you know, when you're looking at it from a very controlled, isolated standpoint?

• 1:45:51

And how does that hold up or break down when you enter all those archetypes together into the mix?

• 1:45:59

You ready for the final guy?

• 1:46:01

Ooh, slag slags.

• 1:46:03

Did I loot the other dude?

• 1:46:05

I looted him again, so I spawned us a new one.

• 1:46:09

Oh, Jesus.

• 1:46:12

I can't help it.

• 1:46:13

Where is the new one?

• 1:46:15

Right here.

• 1:46:17

Years of ninja looting experience, I guess.

• 1:46:19

Oh, my God.

• 1:46:20

This is the fighter ship.

• 1:46:21

Okay, it's not the rogue.

• 1:46:23

Oh, sorry.

• 1:46:25

Oh, it's funny.

• 1:46:27

Is this him?

• 1:46:29

All right.

• 1:46:30

Yes.

• 1:46:31

Watch for Kenan just looted again.

• 1:46:32

Oh, my God.

• 1:46:33

I know.

• 1:46:34

There we go.

• 1:46:35

Okay.

• 1:46:36

We have the flare blade fragment and the toy soldier torso.

• 1:46:39

Yay.

• 1:46:41

We have the torso now.

• 1:46:43

Kenan has two torsos.

• 1:46:44

I have a single torso.

• 1:46:46

I have three.

• 1:46:47

Oh, my God.

• 1:46:49

Okay.

• 1:46:50

When you guys are ready, I'm going to charge.

• 1:46:52

What do I do here?

• 1:46:53

You want me to do a sleep bowl?

• 1:46:55

Well, they're incoming.

• 1:46:56

All right.

• 1:46:57

I'm sleeping now, so we'll see which one I get.

• 1:47:00

There are two shamans in the back.

• 1:47:03

I'm going to focus on them.

• 1:47:13

I'm up here on the platform.

• 1:47:20

What's this?

• 1:47:35

All right.

• 1:47:43

All right.

• 1:47:45

What you want, buddy?

• 1:47:46

Let's go.

• 1:47:47

Oh, he's tripped.

• 1:47:48

Yeah.

• 1:47:49

I think with the fighter looking as cool and spectacular as he does, it's a good opportunity

• 1:47:57

to talk about how visually interesting each ability should be, and whether people think

• 1:48:10

it's too much or too little, or whether they feel like it's about right for the gameplay

• 1:48:16

experience that they enjoy.

• 1:48:18

Absolutely, visuals, the visual effects for these abilities are in a playable state, we

• 1:48:30

want to get your guys' feedback on that, you know, I definitely want a lot of feedback

• 1:48:41

around what people want out of group grinding areas.

• 1:48:44

I know we're developing a lot of that.

• 1:48:46

Yeah.

• 1:48:46

We're developing a lot of those right now, and that would make sure that we're giving

• 1:48:49

everyone what they want, or at least taking it into consideration with what we're building.

• 1:48:56

Like things like respawn rates, density.

• 1:49:02

Do we want to complete the quest here?

• 1:49:03

You should have all the pieces.

• 1:49:04

Alright, so in your inventory, you should have all four if you looted Zags.

• 1:49:08

Yes.

• 1:49:09

Put it together, see what happens.

• 1:49:12

Just right-clicking one of them?

• 1:49:16

Oh, reassemble the doll!

• 1:49:19

The goblins must have broken up the toy soldier.

• 1:49:21

If I have all four parts, I can try reassembling it.

• 1:49:25

Looks like there's something over here.

• 1:49:26

They stabbed together, I have a reanimated toy soldier!

• 1:49:31

That sounds like a Chucky doll or something.

• 1:49:34

Creepy.

• 1:49:37

Let's get rid of it.

• 1:49:38

Yeah, I was about to say that.

• 1:49:39

We're going to get respawned.

• 1:49:40

Better turn in.

• 1:49:41

Yeah.

• 1:49:42

Where are we going?

• 1:49:43

We got a tombstone from the same guy.

• 1:49:44

Oh, the forest.

• 1:49:45

Yeah.

• 1:49:46

Oh, the forest.

• 1:49:47

Oh, the forest.

• 1:49:48

The warlord and the hero's memorial.

• 1:49:49

Let me see here.

• 1:49:50

We have a memorial for all the heroes that could not be buried and will always be remembered

• 1:49:57

here.

• 1:49:58

I place the action figure by the memorial.

• 1:50:01

I can feel a grateful presence in the air.

• 1:50:04

Suddenly notice this.

• 1:50:05

Hey, this was a- this is a graceful- graceful-

• 1:50:09

The goblins don't seem to care.

• 1:50:12

...small parcel.

• 1:50:13

Here, the memorial that I didn't see before!

• 1:50:14

Oh, here it is.

• 1:50:15

he gave me a glowing glint and some dim glint and he had leftover currency from the ancient times

• 1:50:25

and hopefully a lot of xp right yes a significant number of experience delivered the toy

• 1:50:30

we have succeeded

• 1:50:32

yay look at that it happened we did it amazing holy smokes well that was fun i enjoyed that in

• 1:50:45

the area obviously looks beautiful the class plays remarkably well um feels very good um

• 1:50:51

keenan brian trad and all the goblins around us that are incredibly vocal

• 1:51:00

thank you guys

• 1:51:02

this was a lot of fun i enjoyed this i know the community did um everyone out there in the

• 1:51:07

community as you guys have seen the fighter class is is getting very close to ready for alpha 2

• 1:51:13

along with all the other archetypes that you that you've seen give us your commentary give

• 1:51:18

us your feedback talk on the youtube channel in the discord on our forums

• 1:51:21

what did you enjoy about the presentation uh today oh my gosh these guys are just completely

• 1:51:32

we can just move persistent yeah i was gonna say maybe just a new thing they come they're almost

• 1:51:38

good we'll nuke any future yes future goblins but um everyone out there talk to us about what

• 1:51:44

you enjoyed today in the presentation um we obviously enjoy sharing these updates with you

• 1:51:48

obviously ashes of creation is still a work in progress we are continuing to develop towards

• 1:51:52

alpha 2 uh we are hard at work doing so uh but the combat team loves your guys's feedback

• 1:51:57

so please give it and keenan trad uh brian thank you very much for joining

• 1:52:02

us today and showing off all the hard work that your guys's teams have been working on

• 1:52:07

yep yep thanks for having us it's been an adventure yes an adventure all right guys

• 1:52:13

we will see you back on stream and we are back I'm going to um play the video in the background

• 1:52:26

whilst we talk we're gonna grab some questions from chat throughout the um we've been watching

• 1:52:32

you

• 1:52:32

uh Wagner and roshan are wonderful community managers have been we have like a party that's

• 1:52:37

happening on Discord and we've got a Twitch chat so we've definitely been keeping an eye

• 1:52:41

out for you guys's questions and trying to snag all of the details so first and foremost I think

• 1:52:47

Steven you wanted to kind of address performance and I know that's something we are working on

• 1:52:51

drastically even with our PI users we've been getting all the PC specs and stuff like that and

• 1:52:57

working towards that yeah those and you know those the initial performance work that's being done

• 1:53:02

right now

• 1:53:03

is is mainly on the network side but what you guys are noticing on the FPS and the client bed

• 1:53:08

rendering you know that is stuff that we are you going to be working on over the next few months

• 1:53:14

you should see some very significant lift in those areas you know sometimes it can it can

• 1:53:21

get a little bit unruly while we're in active development certain assets can get certain places

• 1:53:26

that might need to be adjusted we might be getting draw calls from across the map you know you might

• 1:53:30

have some cloth simulation that's justすごい awesome maybe you can show those off some all the time if people were interested that's great

• 1:53:31

stimulation that's just a little heavy on some hair like there's you know a few things obviously

• 1:53:36

that that are kind of low-hanging fruit um uh that our performance teams will focus on you'll see

• 1:53:42

that get better obviously as we get closer to to alpha 2 uh so it is on the top of our minds we do

• 1:53:48

definitely uh address that we recently released also um some of our mint spec and recommended

• 1:53:53

specs for alpha 2 you can take a look at that on the website um yeah you go to our support section

• 1:53:59

and look at our kb articles or uh yeah our knowledge base articles sorry call it kb uh but

• 1:54:04

our knowledge base articles and just type in you know specs and it should be there for you so um

• 1:54:09

we have all that information already there and keep in mind that is just for alpha 2 we will be

• 1:54:13

changing that as we move forward in beta 1 and beta 2 and then launch we're obviously going to

• 1:54:17

keep optimizing from to give perspective most games are not worrying about performance and

• 1:54:23

optimization this early on usually you're just developing like crazy and then you do the

• 1:54:27

performance stuff later towards when you're doing the performance stuff and then you're

• 1:54:29

doing the performance stuff later towards when you're doing the performance stuff and then you're

• 1:54:29

you're ready to open for beta um or the alphas these days which are basically like beta ones

• 1:54:35

so just kind of keeping that in mind because we're in open development it's a little bit different

• 1:54:40

for us um you know in development process the next question we have here the rest of them are

• 1:54:45

more fighter based uh the next question here is will the battle cry sound effect change based on

• 1:54:50

your race and uh yes yeah and and that's not just obviously for battle cry but any type of um

• 1:54:58

you know incantation uh is generally going to adhere to a certain style of vocal that's

• 1:55:05

respective of the character customization options that you've selected yeah and you'll hear those

• 1:55:11

audio voices and other things that we do in the future are any of these abilities change or

• 1:55:17

abilities changed based on weapon choice so example if i have a bow equipped will whirlwind

• 1:55:23

be different based on that no so um in

• 1:55:28

one thing that we've changed which uh since alpha one is we now have a dedicated ranged slot and a

• 1:55:35

dedicated uh main hand off hand for melee slots um and so if you use an ability that has that is

• 1:55:42

utilizing your ranged slot um you will you will spawn that weapon as you're using the ability and

• 1:55:48

then go back to your your uh basic weapon selection um toggle and you can toggle back and forth between

• 1:55:58

the melee weapon slot or the melee weapon slot uh for your basic weapon attacks

• 1:56:03

all right and then the next one here is what percentage of currently complete fighter abilities

• 1:56:08

don't require a target uh something that folks noticed is that uh you were in action comment a

• 1:56:14

few times uh throughout this as well so i don't know how you want to explain yeah absolutely i

• 1:56:19

tried to play a little bit of action there i saw some of the commentary about my uh

• 1:56:23

my playing i just want to say that um you know in advance there was that's totally

• 1:56:28

fine like hey i want you as the viewer to look and say man i could play way better than you

• 1:56:36

right and then get in here and show it now for two no i'm just kidding i'm like steven you were

• 1:56:42

wandering around over here the boss is there somebody on discord today said that i'm a boomer

• 1:56:48

and i said technically i'm a millennial but i play like a boomer so i guess i'm a millennial

• 1:56:53

and they were like just stop i saw that in the discord

• 1:56:57

so good

• 1:56:58

okay uh what was the actual question oh what percentage are uh templated attacks versus uh

• 1:57:05

requiring a target um that's a good question i would say off the top of my head i think there's

• 1:57:11

probably four or five abilities right now that require a single target and then i think the rest

• 1:57:19

are either like on self or uh some you know template tonal attack or something yeah fighter's

• 1:57:28

aoe heavy um will there be a limit to the stacks on bosses uh so there was a lot of debuffs and

• 1:57:36

um what do we call status effects and things like that that were being stacked on things

• 1:57:40

um and they're curious if there's limits to certain stacks um and also

• 1:57:45

uh can you for instance an example would be can i one shot a boss by stacking wounded for an hour

• 1:57:52

no yeah yeah absolutely there's diminishing returns uh there are max stack counts um

• 1:57:58

you know uh those are types of things that kind of depend on the target we're talking about

• 1:58:03

um bosses are obviously going to have the higher end of resistances and and you know immunity

• 1:58:09

returns and immunities absolutely um so the intent is not to provide an infinite stack count

• 1:58:15

absolutely and um to follow up on that just because i know there might be some

• 1:58:20

subsidiary questions of that which is would those stacks be per arc or per person or per archetype or

• 1:58:28

per the type of status effect those would be predicated on the status effect type so so not

• 1:58:36

respective if you put burning on it it would be everybody in the raid it has to adhere to that

• 1:58:40

limit that's correct yep for context okay um and then and just to be clear like like that is

• 1:58:46

absolutely something that we're that we're going to be testing um we've on the design team we've

• 1:58:51

had a number of discussions with regards to how to surface kind of individual stack application

• 1:58:58

kind of onboard something a lot of it is only for the kind of help of the alpha 2 where uh

• 1:59:05

different people come up with different access options for them so if anybody has a very leveled

• 1:59:10

issue in alpha 2 like like and what we have been hearing right they just don't have tools or

• 1:59:13

information to to allow for actual mount sales and usage in alpha one testing has a very limited

• 1:59:18

number of options for us at this moment and wefest is now pretty Congrats to everybody

• 1:59:22

that is out here this morning on Africa monument so check that out this spring and you know we're

• 1:59:24

soon professionally opening up our offer so stay tuned to that linkedin patreon website 그래서

• 1:59:28

come back and few more episodes like you know group and choose a combative program like you know

• 1:59:28

with us your thoughts we'll be making changes and balancing things as we move forward um how will

• 1:59:34

augments work to help a fighter hold aggro if their secondary archetype is a tank and i know

• 1:59:40

that that's like going deeper into secondary archetypes um folks are curious about it i mean

• 1:59:46

just to give a general response there without getting into too much of the specifics because

• 1:59:50

obviously augments are something that we are still kind of outstanding in our um in our uh development

• 1:59:57

slash you know inspection there the idea is that you know obviously threat generation is a core

• 2:00:04

component of the tank archetype so as a fighter if you're selecting the tank as your secondary

• 2:00:10

archetype you're going to have certain spheres of augments that you can apply to your abilities

• 2:00:16

to help maintain threat to potentially even momentarily take aggro from a particular target

• 2:00:26

in order to

• 2:00:27

better service that role of the tank in combat now what that will specifically equate to you know i

• 2:00:35

don't have an answer for you now that's something that we'll be testing in the future um but you

• 2:00:40

know know that the goal with providing those selections to the fighter will be to service

• 2:00:47

a secondary um threat generation you know effect um yeah and then the next one is

• 2:00:56

uh

• 2:00:57

is momentum being generated while under the effects of exert

• 2:01:03

uh say that i'm sorry i was getting distracted everybody in chat saying stare

• 2:01:07

why are they saying stare i don't know maybe someone rated us or something like that

• 2:01:12

is momentum being uh generated while under the effects of exert

• 2:01:16

is momentum being generated while underneath yes absolutely uh that's part of the mechanic that

• 2:01:21

is currently incorporated into exert is that you can activate exert while

• 2:01:27

max momentum and then depending on the effectiveness of you utilizing your skills

• 2:01:33

and damaging targets you can continue to keep that momentum up while under the effects of exert to

• 2:01:41

extend its lifetime uh beyond what the you know six seconds initially are we appreciate the raid

• 2:01:49

we always do from everybody we just are also trying to be conscious of folks time so we don't

• 2:01:54

always uh mention them we're always trying to be conscious of folks time so uh we don't always uh

• 2:01:56

mention them uh the next one is will ranged archetypes have ways of gaining distance to

• 2:02:02

compensate for fighter distance closers uh would you keep doing this until both players have

• 2:02:08

cooldowns for their mobility and i just want to say we haven't balanced everything yet so there

• 2:02:13

will definitely be adjustments so the question is are there are there gap creators in addition to

• 2:02:19

the gap closers that we see on the fighter or it's will ranged archetypes specifically like

• 2:02:26

like your mage your ranger your what we see arranged well they have yeah they have ways

• 2:02:31

to gain dis gain distance to compensate for how well the fighter can gap close yeah yeah

• 2:02:37

absolutely that's that's the cat and mouse of these abilities right like we've seen with the

• 2:02:42

ranger they have a backflip they have um their um their airdrop ability the mage

• 2:02:49

has teleportation um you know there are going to be abilities that are tit for tat right and

• 2:02:58

managing the resource of those abilities and the timing of when you use them to either correlate to

• 2:03:06

your opponent's use of those things um or to save them for yourself when you want to get away like

• 2:03:13

that's part of what makes the engagements dynamic and different each time yeah and if you go back

• 2:03:19

and you watch a game that's more of a drag race uh the the the the the uh the the the the the the

• 2:03:19

our major archetype preview or our range ranger specific archetype preview you will see that they

• 2:03:26

also have some abilities to slow snare you know keep their their targets at in place and also to

• 2:03:34

get themselves more mobile especially the ranger has a lot of mobility as well so and then we

• 2:03:38

balance we're not in the balancing state um so obviously right now every every class we show

• 2:03:44

they're like sop but right now we're trying to find the fun so sometimes the fun is a little op

• 2:03:49

but the balance will come into play and of course absolutely you'll see these abilities move around

• 2:03:54

too some of them might move into secondary archetypes or augments and things like that

• 2:03:58

so just keep that in mind uh the next question is do do destructibles respawn because one of the

• 2:04:04

things that you had said in there was like oh maybe they won't come back home

• 2:04:08

and like someone was like i wish that was the case but yeah i was just being a little role play

• 2:04:12

um yes destructibles so you know obviously not a lot of mmos that we have

• 2:04:19

probably played um are intending to provide a heavily destructible environments um these

• 2:04:29

obviously these set pieces like the you know the different props you saw in this demonstration the

• 2:04:34

huts um the totem poles and stuff you know those are unique to the goblin tribe the muck ma tribe

• 2:04:42

and part of our dynamic world is that as population tables change so too

• 2:04:50

do the corresponding prop sets that are utilized within the area to better reflect

• 2:04:55

that dynamic change of the world and from a level design perspective when you're curating

• 2:05:02

these spaces for players to engage in combat either in pve or in pvp there is an element of

• 2:05:10

uh strategy that gets introduced when that environment has destructibility as well so you

• 2:05:17

can clear those spaces make them more developed you know to make the environment as good as possible

• 2:05:19

make mobility a bit better serviceable for you, or vice versa, you could utilize, you know,

• 2:05:27

line of sight and, and interruption to kind of create interesting engagements. So those can be

• 2:05:34

destroyed. And then they do respond after a period of time, I believe currently that period of time

• 2:05:39

is set to like 10 minutes for the response of those. Yeah. And I think the community just got

• 2:05:49

a bingo. They have the cat on the bingo card. I didn't make it happen. She came over here.

• 2:05:57

Can we? Yeah, for those of you who are new to our community, if you head on over to our discord,

• 2:06:01

our community always does like, they make up a little bingo card. It's cute.

• 2:06:07

Can we toggle nameplates for mobs, especially you show them outside of combat. So one of the

• 2:06:11

things they noticed when you were playing is that when you're roaming in the world,

• 2:06:15

you didn't really see nameplates until you had them targeted.

• 2:06:18

Yeah, that that was a set.

• 2:06:19

Setting that I had enabled, just because. Oh, so first of all, the question version, you guys,

• 2:06:25

right? I know. I know. I'm sorry. I'm not I do like the immersion. It helps fulfill the,

• 2:06:32

the fantasy of the world. But I also like to see nameplates from time to time. Anyways,

• 2:06:39

it is entirely customizable. Currently, that that customization option is already in game.

• 2:06:45

You can set nameplates to always appear, you can set it to only appear,

• 2:06:49

on targets, you can set it to only appear on targets that have taken damage, you can set it

• 2:06:53

to only appear on targets that are aggroing you or your party members. You can set it for your allies

• 2:06:57

for yourself, or, you know, whatever, there's, there's a lot of highly customizable options

• 2:07:04

that are currently in the game. All right, and we're gonna have color options to for some for

• 2:07:11

certain things for colorblind folks, too. I think it was one of the things that we've worked towards.

• 2:07:15

So we're gonna, we're gonna try to give you guys a lot of customization. I think even in

• 2:07:19

alpha two, you'll be able to like move and adjust your UI around. So yeah, keep that in mind. The

• 2:07:26

next question is, our mob sounds like the Goblin stock placeholder or intrepid made audio a lot. We

• 2:07:33

got a lot of comments about people really digging the audio. So good job, audio team. I know you

• 2:07:37

guys work hard. Yes, specifically, that was Andrew, one of our audio designers. He recorded those

• 2:07:43

Goblin sounds and implemented them into the game. Yeah, those are not stock. Those are, those are our

• 2:07:49

audio designer Andrews. His, his nightly routine before he goes to bed, he does those incantations,

• 2:07:55

screams into the ether. Exactly. No, he did a great job on those. They were really good. I mean,

• 2:08:04

obviously, and that's unique, right to to, to obviously certain faction types, the ones that

• 2:08:09

can can have language, you know, having those kinds of spelling incantations, I think, add a

• 2:08:14

lot of character. And he did a great job with those. Yeah.

• 2:08:19

And then, of course, does the fighter have any specific weapon dependent abilities? So, you know,

• 2:08:26

something that we are allowing people to do in Ashes of Creation is you can use any weapons and

• 2:08:31

armor. But obviously, there will be some that will be better for certain specs. So I don't know if you

• 2:08:36

want to talk more about that. Weapon dependent, like you have to use a specific weapon for specific

• 2:08:43

things. I don't think the fighter had I could be wrong on that. But I don't believe the fighter has

• 2:08:48

a weapon.

• 2:08:49

Dependent ability, other than like, using ranged weapons with melee specific abilities, right?

• 2:08:57

Right. And even in those situations, I still think you can use the melee abilities, you just won't

• 2:09:06

have a weapon equipped when you do that.

• 2:09:10

It's like punching or something. There's, we'll have to sort that out. But of course, those are

• 2:09:15

kind of we're not, we won't, we'll be here all day if we ask, ask and answer.

• 2:09:19

All of the questions. So definitely, whenever we put up our next q&a for next month, make sure you

• 2:09:25

put your questions in there if you have follow up questions for us. But we also have a thread up on

• 2:09:30

our forums, you can go check it out right now. It is regarding our fighter archetype preview. So if

• 2:09:35

you do have feedback for us regarding the archetype, definitely go give us as much as you want over

• 2:09:40

there. And it doesn't have to just be about the fighter. I think Keenan brought up some great

• 2:09:45

questions in the in the gameplay section, which was also,

• 2:09:49

not only been Keenan, but about like group play and the density in which we had mobs around there

• 2:09:55

and all that kind of stuff. So anything that you saw in the in this preview, please feel free to

• 2:10:00

share feedback with us as our wonderful community managers will be going through everything. They

• 2:10:05

read every single comment you guys make. Even our social media team. Peter goes through that and

• 2:10:11

also provides anything that's, you know, additional, so we give them as much as we possibly

• 2:10:15

can on that front in regards to what?

• 2:10:19

y'all are thinking and how you're feeling about things. So they don't have to read all of it,

• 2:10:23

they can focus on making the game. With that, we'll move over to studio.

• 2:10:28

By the way, just just to just be clear, I want to give another shout out. Tori also worked on the

• 2:10:33

goblin vocals as well. So it was Tori and Andrew, they split those up a bit. So those of you who

• 2:10:38

are loving those sounds, big props to Tori and Andrew on that it was it definitely immersed me.

• 2:10:43

Yeah, let's get some some claps and chat some hearts. We appreciate it.

• 2:10:49

Next up, let's talk a little bit about studio stuff. We have a lot of roles that are up for

• 2:10:57

for hiring industry is crazy right now. You went to GDC talk a little bit maybe about that as well.

• 2:11:06

Yeah, I did. I did go to GDC. I went to GDC, I tried to fit all of my meetings into just two

• 2:11:12

days so that I could get back to the studio as quickly as possible. So I was there for Tuesday

• 2:11:15

and Wednesday. I did announce while I was there on Twitter, I was there on Twitter, I was there on

• 2:11:19

Twitter, kotting all the more or less, because there was this extremely valuable interview that

• 2:11:20

sort of brought it up. And I hang around with a lot of the people on Twitter that I would sit down

• 2:11:24

and that that St. Regis Lobby from like nine to 10 on Tuesday and four to five on Wednesday and boy,

• 2:11:28

did we have a turnout of people. That was a lot of fun to chat with everybody and where they are

• 2:11:34

in their careers and their passion for Ashes and MMOs in general. I had a great time chatting with

• 2:11:41

a lot of different people went on to the Expo floor Wednesday in the afternoon for about an hour

• 2:11:46

and that was like, boy, we've seen a lot.

• 2:11:48

Yeah.

• 2:11:49

Yeah.

• 2:11:49

got to meet just a lot of people who came up and were aware of Ashes. And that helped recharge my

• 2:11:56

motivation batteries, which was great. We are hiring. We have some lofty hiring goals over

• 2:12:05

the next 60 days. And you guys in the community who are watching and help spread the word for

• 2:12:13

Ashes and the company, you already have done an amazing job. I told you the story about

• 2:12:18

some interviews I had where their gamer friends, after they had been laid off, said now's your

• 2:12:24

chance. Get over to Ashes, right? I would call upon you once again to help spread the word.

• 2:12:33

We have got, I think, like eight or nine design positions that are open currently.

• 2:12:40

We have a number of production positions. We have a number of engineering positions.

• 2:12:47

And Intrepid is...

• 2:12:48

A stellar place to work. And the project is a very fulfilling and exciting one.

• 2:12:54

So as you are aware of people in this industry that you look up to or that you admire or

• 2:13:00

whatever it may be, send them our way because...

• 2:13:05

And some of those roles on there, we're hiring for multiple people of those roles. So if you're

• 2:13:10

like, but I only see three there, it's because we're hiring like four of that one role or

• 2:13:14

whatever it might be. So...

• 2:13:16

Absolutely.

• 2:13:17

Yeah, it is.

• 2:13:18

We need a lot of people to make this project. It is a lofty one.

• 2:13:24

Yes.

• 2:13:26

I think that's all I had. Things that I wanted to make sure that we mentioned. Is there anything

• 2:13:30

else that you can think of, Stephen?

• 2:13:32

No, I think the only other thing that I would love to touch on is the team is very heads down

• 2:13:39

right now working towards getting what we want to get ready for Alpha 2 ready.

• 2:13:46

And I would say that, you know, we have a wonderfully beautiful, glorious community who have

• 2:13:54

stood with us many steps of the way on this journey. And it is a journey that's not for

• 2:14:02

everyone. Watching a game that's in development, you know, constantly being teased every month

• 2:14:07

about the product you want to play, but can't touch yet, right? That takes a different level of

• 2:14:15

patience.

• 2:14:16

Right? That not all of us are probably accustomed to. And, you know, sometimes that patience can

• 2:14:23

wear thin, and that's fair. But what I can tell you is that that patience is going to yield

• 2:14:31

something, I think, distinct in our genre. What we're creating with this game, and it's been a

• 2:14:41

long road, if I would quote Star Trek Enterprise and their intro.

• 2:14:46

It's been a long road, and there's still a long road ahead of us. But, you know, when I go to sleep

• 2:14:58

at night and wake up in the morning and spend my, you know, waking hours, everything Ashes related,

• 2:15:06

what I think about is that execution. And I think about what it would mean on a launch day of either

• 2:15:13

Alpha 2 or a launch for the game. And I think about that execution. And I think about what it would

• 2:15:16

mean as a launch day of a game where we didn't do what we needed to do in order to make the game good

• 2:15:21

enough. And I'm not, you know, I'm not a perfectionist. Right. I don't believe in waiting until

• 2:15:28

a product is perfect, but I do believe in waiting until the product is good enough. And

• 2:15:35

that is always my northern star. That's my guiding light when I think about the decisions that need

• 2:15:41

to be made, you know, regarding production, regarding the production, the collection. And there's

• 2:15:42

some of that that needs to be done. And again, that's something that I think about as well. I've

• 2:15:42

been a lot of success in, you know, the development of the game. But I think that there's still a lot of

• 2:15:43

things that need to be done that need to be done. And I think about what there's so much that has to be

• 2:15:44

production regarding marketing regarding uh you know development and design decisions like

• 2:15:52

that is my guiding light always from the player's perspective so i just want to impress upon you

• 2:15:57

all in the audience is that you know when we when we hear our our friends our fellow mmo gamers

• 2:16:05

talk about you know wanting to either see something now or you know hear something now

• 2:16:12

or um you know whatever that might be um take it with the understanding that you can help

• 2:16:19

communicate to them intrepid is trying to do things differently and that's okay that is a good

• 2:16:27

thing that is what this genre needs is in my opinion this level of engagement this level of

• 2:16:35

transparency i think is a very important one and it's been nice to kind of help pioneer that a bit

• 2:16:40

for the genre

• 2:16:42

and i'm happy to see other projects take that take that on it's not an easy one to do i know

• 2:16:49

i had a couple of discussions at gdc with some other with some other project directors

• 2:16:55

thinking about doing this it is not absolutely it is not because you know at the end of the day like

• 2:17:02

this takes a level of investment and a bit of an atypical approach to development that that that

• 2:17:10

that allows us to stand up

• 2:17:12

and be able to do this kind of development update process every month right um and and that

• 2:17:18

investment is significant but the reward is that we get a community along the way who is also

• 2:17:25

invested in ensuring that the product outcome is what the community wants and i think that cost

• 2:17:35

is worth it obviously but what i want to say is that when you come across you know fellow mmo gamers

• 2:17:42

who are impatient or who you know might not say the nicest things about the product that's okay

• 2:17:48

it is okay right let them come back and take a look when we do get to alpha 2 or when we exactly

• 2:17:55

correct um so don't don't jump down the throats uh just you know be prepared open arms smiling

• 2:18:03

faces and uh as we continue to stay on the road towards development um if you build it they will

• 2:18:10

come

• 2:18:11

that is a that is a

• 2:18:12

lifelong message i take home if you've followed us over the years you've seen our progress like

• 2:18:16

we continue to make progress um that is one of the beautiful things about having open development the

• 2:18:23

hardest thing is keeping that trust and building it right we understand that we're gonna make

• 2:18:27

mistakes everyone does right but it's how we communicate those and how we share that information

• 2:18:32

with you guys so um we appreciate you thank you so much for being here with us and motivating and

• 2:18:40

providing us feedback

• 2:18:42

and you know feedback does take time to fix and iterate on so that is another thing too so just

• 2:18:47

keep those things in mind and normally you know folks are developing mmos you know 10 15 20 years

• 2:18:53

in darkness so they don't have that continual feedback and you're not

• 2:18:57

sitting there waiting for 10 20 years you know alongside of developers um and early

• 2:19:03

on in development you have a lot less staff because you're not you know doing the nitty

• 2:19:07

gritty and as you get further along you're you're staffing up you're working towards bigger pieces

• 2:19:12

when things start moving fast so just thank you for your patience and continued patience

• 2:19:17

and patience with other people who maybe don't have it absolutely and with that we'll move over

• 2:19:24

to our wonderful art update we have you guys got to see the rankai in game too which is cool we've

• 2:19:31

shown the models before um but we did show the heavy armor in game and last time we showed you

• 2:19:39

the medium armor for carfin and this is the or light armor in this is the medium so these are

• 2:19:46

all all the carfin armor that you've been seeing and the weapons and stuff like that those are all

• 2:19:50

attainable in-game things from carfin so um get excited for looks great love it steven didn't

• 2:19:58

want to put his helmet on in game i know i was really enjoying the orc mohawk yeah mohawk

• 2:20:06

just hide your helm homie i know

• 2:20:09

um and then the next one here is a turntable of that which looks amazing

• 2:20:19

that does look really good who worked on this oh i didn't put the names on the i'm sorry

• 2:20:27

it was a bit of a i think this might have been i think this might have been eli

• 2:20:32

did eli work on this i normally do probably i don't know

• 2:20:40

um and then nikku one we are now sharing you with you this is the starting gear for the nikku

• 2:20:48

and oh yeah the niku and models and the starting gear yeah you've seen the um concept of the models

• 2:20:55

this is like a three these are 3d models now with their starting game and you've been starting to

• 2:21:01

see some of the starting gear from all the other uh races so we've been sharing them as we're moving

• 2:21:05

along

• 2:21:06

And then we've got some cool VFX that we're being worked on.

• 2:21:15

Some of these you might have seen in game or you will soon go through different iterations

• 2:21:23

of them.

• 2:21:24

Now, those are those, I believe, are effects for the god spike and the.

• 2:21:30

Yeah, the Torin god spike.

• 2:21:32

Yeah, and I actually have the Torin spike.

• 2:21:35

I was going to say it for last, but I realized I should have put the VFX with that after.

• 2:21:40

So we'll just share that next year.

• 2:21:43

These are some of the concepts for them.

• 2:21:45

Obviously, this is not the end model, but do you want to talk a little bit about what

• 2:21:50

the Torin god spike is for or just leave them?

• 2:21:53

I think you tease people.

• 2:21:54

They're like, what does that mean?

• 2:21:56

Yeah, no, I talked a little.

• 2:21:57

This is something you're going to be seeing next month in our discord.

• 2:22:01

Yeah, we talked about, you know, the Torin Empire was a was an ancient empire.

• 2:22:05

On Vera before the aliens and the imperial, the aliens and the period empires got stood

• 2:22:11

up.

• 2:22:12

There was an empire of half elves that their demise came under the rule of King Atrax.

• 2:22:20

And the god spike was a particular interesting artifact that could help to to initiate essentially

• 2:22:27

this this essence fissure that would spawn in certain areas.

• 2:22:34

And.

• 2:22:35

Would be able to kind of sap into and and siphon out the essence that laid within Vera.

• 2:22:44

So not to get in too much detail, but it is an interesting ancient artifact that can be

• 2:22:48

used as part of certain war declarations that you may get some insight to in the coming

• 2:22:54

month.

• 2:22:55

I was running my cat.

• 2:22:56

Yeah, they both just ran in the room.

• 2:22:59

I was like, oh, my gosh, yeah, you're going to get to see that next next month.

• 2:23:04

So.

• 2:23:05

Get some I want to hear some some theories of what you guys think next month's the topic

• 2:23:10

is going to be.

• 2:23:12

And the next thing that we have here is some little spider links that are looking adorable

• 2:23:18

with a big spider.

• 2:23:20

So apologies for anybody who doesn't like scooters, I won't keep them up on screen too

• 2:23:24

long.

• 2:23:25

I know we've got a lot of people out there who are like, I don't like spiders.

• 2:23:29

It's OK, you could defeat them.

• 2:23:31

And then we have some concept art pieces.

• 2:23:34

We have some work that's being done towards academy nodes, alien highways, alien ruins

• 2:23:42

and the Kailar walls.

• 2:23:46

Those are great.

• 2:23:47

And of course, you guys have seen a lot of the cats are just yelling in the background.

• 2:23:55

You guys have seen some of these concept pieces in the past with us, and then we've shown

• 2:23:58

you the in-game world and a lot of people are like, it looks like the concept.

• 2:24:02

Our artists are amazing.

• 2:24:03

We try to give them a little showcase every week.

• 2:24:07

It's never enough, I'm sure.

• 2:24:10

And with that, I think we'll just wrap up with our Q&A as per usual, and I will play

• 2:24:16

some more of the fighter preview whilst we do that to the in-game part where you guys

• 2:24:24

are fighting all the monsters.

• 2:24:27

Let's see what it's a question.

• 2:24:31

So.

• 2:24:32

Questions.

• 2:24:33

What do we have?

• 2:24:34

We have some some some spicy ones.

• 2:24:37

No, they're not too spicy.

• 2:24:38

Oh, spicy.

• 2:24:39

Well, maybe some of them are spicy.

• 2:24:42

Harry Glenn wants to know about buffs.

• 2:24:45

Will there be long term individual or group buffs unique to certain archetypes and classes?

• 2:24:50

And this is in lieu of, you know, when you think about general rating where you go and

• 2:24:55

you're like, I'm going to put this hour long buff on somebody.

• 2:24:57

Are those types of things going to be something that you're going to have experience like

• 2:25:01

everybody group up?

• 2:25:02

We're going to rate.

• 2:25:03

We're going to buff up.

• 2:25:03

Yes, those are definitely an intended experience.

• 2:25:08

I think actually, though, our longest buff right now is intended to be 30 minutes.

• 2:25:12

So I'm not sure we have hour long buffs.

• 2:25:15

If we do have hour long buffs, so they would likely come in the form of of edibles of well,

• 2:25:21

excuse me, it's probably wrong.

• 2:25:22

Wrong term.

• 2:25:23

Food.

• 2:25:24

Food.

• 2:25:25

Rations.

• 2:25:26

Steven, the chat's just like laughing.

• 2:25:27

Yeah.

• 2:25:28

Yeah.

• 2:25:29

Yeah.

• 2:25:30

Yeah.

• 2:25:31

Yeah.

• 2:25:32

Yeah.

• 2:25:33

Yeah.

• 2:25:35

Yeah.

• 2:25:36

Yeah.

• 2:25:37

Yeah.

• 2:25:38

Yeah.

• 2:25:39

Yeah.

• 2:25:40

Yeah.

• 2:25:41

Yeah.

• 2:25:42

Yeah.

• 2:25:43

Yeah.

• 2:25:44

Yeah.

• 2:25:45

Yeah.

• 2:25:46

Yeah.

• 2:25:47

Yeah.

• 2:25:48

Yeah.

• 2:25:49

Yeah.

• 2:25:50

Yeah.

• 2:25:51

Yeah.

• 2:25:52

Yeah.

• 2:25:53

Yeah.

• 2:25:54

Yeah.

• 2:25:55

Falketh wants to know about naval risks.

• 2:25:56

What?

• 2:25:57

What's the repair cost for destroyed ships and components?

• 2:25:58

Is it risky to venture into the ocean knowing repairs might be costly or is it manageable

• 2:25:59

enough to encourage frequent exploration?

• 2:26:00

No, this is coming from people seeing our caravan exploration.

• 2:26:01

Sure.

• 2:26:02

and traveling across the seas is not an easy adventure.

• 2:26:08

So when you suffer either damage or destruction,

• 2:26:12

obviously those will each contain different levels of risk.

• 2:26:16

The damage will be much more manageable

• 2:26:19

if actively attempting to repair that while at sea,

• 2:26:23

which you will have options to do on ships,

• 2:26:25

is actively repair.

• 2:26:26

Your crew can actively repair

• 2:26:28

if they have the appropriate materials.

• 2:26:30

But if you do unfortunately suffer some major mishap

• 2:26:35

or completely destroyed,

• 2:26:38

the cost will be great in reconstituting your vessel.

• 2:26:43

All right, the next one is from OTR Odor

• 2:26:45

that wants to know about coastal node ZOIs.

• 2:26:48

Will the deep ocean be encompassed

• 2:26:51

into these zone of influence of coastal nodes?

• 2:26:54

I feel like we've talked about this before,

• 2:26:55

but it might've been with PI.

• 2:26:57

I'm sorry, repeat that last part of it again.

• 2:27:00

I'm sorry, repeat the last part of it again.

• 2:27:02

Will the deep ocean be encompassed

• 2:27:05

into the zone of influence of coastal nodes?

• 2:27:07

So the coastal nodes, will the deep sea be part of that?

• 2:27:11

Oh, I see, I see, I see.

• 2:27:12

And I think we've said no before, but.

• 2:27:13

Yeah, no, the deep sea,

• 2:27:16

while it exists technically as part of a zone of influence,

• 2:27:20

it does not contribute to those coastal node areas.

• 2:27:24

So,

• 2:27:25

um the coast does not the deep sea but it is primarily the land uh environments that are

• 2:27:33

going to be contributing to the nodes uh experience grant there you have it

• 2:27:40

and that obviously might change right we'll see kind of how that plays out uh during alpha 2.

• 2:27:46

and then we've got leonardo who wants to know about server culture knowing that there won't

• 2:27:51

be pvp or pve only servers how will new players find a server that fits their play style culture

• 2:27:57

expectations and i don't think we've ever said there won't be pvp or pve only servers but i

• 2:28:05

think that's what people are under the impression we haven't i don't think we've officially said

• 2:28:09

that but there won't be pvp or pve servers the intended design is that pvp events are

• 2:28:19

the primary method by which consensual

• 2:28:21

pvp exists for players they opt into those and then non-consensual pvp is governed through our

• 2:28:27

flagging system which is highly dissentivizing players to engage in non-consensual pvp through

• 2:28:33

the act of corruption and gaining so the question was how will players get to choose

• 2:28:42

their pvp experience

• 2:28:46

yeah well if you're new and let's say maybe you're a pve

• 2:28:50

primary player

• 2:28:51

or how will i know which server to join like what culture oh i see i see i see i see um ashes is a

• 2:28:59

pvx game um and so in that regard you know your ability to wholesale disconnect from the pvp

• 2:29:08

elements of the game are likely not going to be entirely successful now does that mean that you

• 2:29:14

can reduce your exposure to pvp a hundred percent right and there are multiple play paths and

• 2:29:20

progression points that players can elect uh

• 2:29:24

instead to be more pve focused but by the sheer nature of risk versus reward and risk including

• 2:29:32

not being able to predict how other players might impact your gameplay that is an element

• 2:29:37

of the innate risk that exists in the multiplayer environment of a pvx setting

• 2:29:44

so you know not everybody is going to like that and we accept that right and we're not trying to

• 2:29:49

build a game that everybody is going to like because everybody it's doing that absolutely

• 2:29:55

doing that is not going to be successful um because they're just people with different

• 2:30:01

interests and you know we accept that and we're very kind of on the nose about what we're trying

• 2:30:05

to achieve right the idea is not to create a gank fest is not to create a grief fest that is not

• 2:30:12

what pvx is um and so because of that we have certain mechanisms um and systems that govern

• 2:30:20

the way players engage in pvp and majority of those are opt-in but there is always that element

• 2:30:29

of risk that's governed by the flagging system and so if you're interested in that i would take

• 2:30:33

a look at the wiki and look up what flagging is and look up what corruption is my experience tells

• 2:30:38

me and my expectations of the system are that they will signal

• 2:30:42

significantly reduce a player's exposure to non-consensual pvp but that risk is always going

• 2:30:48

to be present to some degree my recommendation make friends that's right get in a guild um it's

• 2:30:58

an mmo it's not meant to be a solo playing experience not that you can't it's just that's

• 2:31:04

more risky so if you like risking it for the biscuit that's your your call um and then lineker

• 2:31:10

and emily uh kind of were asking about biome

• 2:31:12

development will we see other biomes outside of the riverlands i think we've seen a lot of the

• 2:31:17

riverlands lately um and then what biomes are planned for the start of alpha 2. so as we get

• 2:31:25

closer to alpha 2 i will have a better answer for the expected biomes at the start of alpha 2.

• 2:31:32

you know we have probably completed the assets for about seven biomes i think roughly

• 2:31:39

and what i mean by that is we're talking about terrain we're talking

• 2:31:42

about foliage different tree types we're talking about um you know geological features and

• 2:31:49

different types of stone work and whatnot you know from a environment standpoint um you know biome

• 2:31:56

creation uh is more advanced but biomes are like they're essentially zones right and zones require

• 2:32:04

more to be complete than just the environmental assets they require content creation that's point

• 2:32:10

of interest development

• 2:32:12

um those are environmental sets that are needed um to sell kind of the uh the ancestral ruins

• 2:32:22

there is narrative and quests that are required to populate a zone uh there are creatures and

• 2:32:28

creature design that's required to populate a zone so um if we're talking about biomes

• 2:32:33

from an environmental perspective there's been a lot of progress made towards towards

• 2:32:38

our overall bio i think it's more intense the question here is really when will they see the

• 2:32:42

biomes and what's the future of those biomes well we've shown the desert biome they've seen the

• 2:32:49

jungle biome in alpha 1. they have seen some of our tabletop mountains we have we've shown obviously

• 2:32:57

the riverlands um you know we will continue to show those those biomes in the future at some

• 2:33:04

point right when they're ready to show and when it comes to what's expected at the beginning of alpha

• 2:33:10

2 that's something that when we're when we are certain of what that will look like we're going to

• 2:33:12

be um because content is excuse me development can be fluid right we're in the progress of

• 2:33:18

development um so you know i would say stay tuned for when we're ready to share what that's going to

• 2:33:25

be yeah and i think on the front of what you can expect from alpha 2 and the guide for that we will

• 2:33:30

put out an article that kind of gives you an overview of what features and systems and areas

• 2:33:35

will be available um we've done that before we've given you like a map and the key binds and all and

• 2:33:42

so we will do that again for you guys again in the future so just stay tuned and as we get closer

• 2:33:47

to alpha 2 you're probably going to see more of that information coming to play the next one here

• 2:33:51

is from tyrannothoraxis and they want to know about ship and combat collision how will naval

• 2:33:56

combat and rating work if ships cannot be moved or blocked how will naval combat work if ships

• 2:34:05

cannot be moved or blocked yeah ships can be moved um

• 2:34:12

yeah i think that's what they mean okay um yeah the intent is that um you know we adhere to some

• 2:34:19

semblance of real physics feelings right with regards to these vehicles um and so ships do

• 2:34:25

have the potential to be pushed in different directions and out of the way for each other

• 2:34:30

um that is an intended collision experience that we want ships to have but it should come with

• 2:34:35

significant risk and potential damage to the vessel so yeah i think that's what they mean

• 2:34:39

um

• 2:34:42

all right and then the next one here is from hutchy1989 and they want to know about commission

• 2:34:50

credit will one get credit for for quest objectives or for completing a commission when in

• 2:34:57

a raid we talked about yes if you're in a party you can you can get um you know a commission

• 2:35:04

credit but what about if you're in a raid oh i see um that's a good question uh and i think

• 2:35:12

in the majority of cases if we do allow progression within uh narrative systems like a

• 2:35:19

quest or commission um i think that's something that's going to be distributed based on the number

• 2:35:25

of raid or party participants right so killing a particular monster is not going to get everybody

• 2:35:31

a check mark on their progress towards killing 20 right it's going to be one person's going to get

• 2:35:37

that progression it'll be and then it'll continue to the next person and so on and so forth uh if

• 2:35:42

we're talking about you know some quest lines uh like story arcs or events um that have phases or

• 2:35:50

that have you know overall participation by many members then that progress can be shared at a

• 2:35:56

party raid level so there's different settings depending on what objective there is within a

• 2:36:02

quest some of them will share some of them will be distributed right and then apop wants to know

• 2:36:08

about shipbuilding so if we don't we have a lot of naval questions y'all are very curious

• 2:36:12

about naval stuff shipbuilding so if we don't have a coastal node leveled up are the sol on are are

• 2:36:19

we sol on building and launching ships so are we just like helpless in that so if we don't if we

• 2:36:25

don't personally have a coastal node set up can we not build and launch ships no you can absolutely

• 2:36:32

build and launch ships um coastal nodes are not where ships get built and launched harbors are

• 2:36:38

where ships get built and launched and harbors are essentially dilapidated

• 2:36:42

points of interest that progress when a node nearby coastal or not

• 2:36:49

adopts that point of interest or that harbor then the node can contribute towards building up the

• 2:36:55

harbor and players who may not be citizens of that node can still go to that harbor and access

• 2:37:00

its services and then we are in our penultimate question here we're almost to the end uh so thank

• 2:37:06

you all for staying with us uh apolfis wants to know about active blocking spells how will active

• 2:37:12

blocking function when it comes to spells will players be able to parry spells we talked about

• 2:37:17

active blocking in melee occurrences but they're curious about more spell oriented

• 2:37:23

um hold on one second before i get to that question let me give some clarity um so the

• 2:37:27

question i saw from ashes of narrer was so a group of eight will have to kill eight times 20 goblins

• 2:37:34

um no in in regards to like it depends on the objective if it's a kill objective then being

• 2:37:40

in a in a group of eight or in a group of eight or playing in a goblins

• 2:37:42

which competition based on personality is where one team is more likely to kill somebody than another team is more likely

• 2:37:42

it's only a group of eight people in an evidence level so getting the focus it's more likely to think about action

• 2:37:42

being able to play more allowing one team to have many players and working in vertex competition based on

• 2:37:42

potentially in a raid, everyone will get credit for the kill if it's a drop that's required like a quest drop off of a loot container or a monster and one person grabs the quest reward not everyone will get the quest reward from that individual drop.

• 2:37:58

So just want to clarify, it depends on the correct exactly. I just want to clarify, it depends on the objective, right, the intent is not to give healer classes or support classes.

• 2:38:12

You know from getting those things. Yeah. Okay, sorry. What was that Margaret the last question no problem. It's good to clarify. How will active blocking function when it comes to spells will players be able to parry spells.

• 2:38:28

Active blocking so yes, it depends. So active blocking is a part of our universal skill tree and active blocking depending on what piece of equipment you have equipped.

• 2:38:41

Some will be catered to.

• 2:38:42

Some will be catered towards magic in blocking and some will be catered towards physical damage in blocking. So if you have a physical shield, you're likely going to have little efficacy against active blocking for against a spell.

• 2:38:55

However, if you have a sigil equipped which is the essentially the arcane variant of a shield, and you actively block then you might have good efficacy against the spell.

• 2:39:08

All right.

• 2:39:09

And our final question for.

• 2:39:11

This development update is from Livu who wants to know about mount use cases will players need multiple mounts on their skill bar for various purposes like immunity gliding combat and escaping or will the gameplay be more focused on using just one mount.

• 2:39:29

I'm really excited for us to show mount abilities in the future because I know that's something that's on the plate.

• 2:39:35

Yeah.

• 2:39:36

Yeah.

• 2:39:37

So the intent is that mounts have.

• 2:39:40

Varying abilities.

• 2:39:43

And it's expected that you will have a number greater than one of mounts available to use.

• 2:39:50

Now whether or not that number is influenced or governed by a stable system.

• 2:39:55

That is something that is still in active design and development.

• 2:39:59

It is likely that you will not be able to carry every mount you own and be able to use them all at the same time.

• 2:40:06

There will probably be some governor to that.

• 2:40:09

And it will likely be serviced through a default building that exists in every node which is the stables.

• 2:40:16

And then to the second part of that question.

• 2:40:20

Is it intended that mount abilities are providing a matrix of choices options or strategy to the player the answer would be yes.

• 2:40:30

Because we have these abilities and different stat blocks that are that are governed through the animal husbandry system.

• 2:40:37

The desire is to make sure like any other piece of equipment or itemization choice.

• 2:40:44

That strategy is carefully considered when determining the appropriate mount use.

• 2:40:51

All right.

• 2:40:52

And that gets us to the end.

• 2:40:53

We made it.

• 2:40:54

It has been a very long one for us all.

• 2:40:57

So thank you so much everybody for bearing with us.

• 2:41:01

Sticking around.

• 2:41:02

Hopefully you had lots of snacks.

• 2:41:04

Maybe got a potty break in there.

• 2:41:06

But of course we do want to mention again to head on over to our forums.

• 2:41:12

Forums dot ashes of creation dot com.

• 2:41:14

Give us your feedback.

• 2:41:15

We have a thread over there already for the fighter archetype preview.

• 2:41:18

If you have any thoughts definitely share them with us.

• 2:41:20

We will be compiling that and sharing that with the development team.

• 2:41:23

And of course thank you so much to our development team.

• 2:41:26

Everybody has been kicking butt.

• 2:41:27

But of course an extra special thank you to Trad, Brian, and Keenan for joining us for this specific showcase.

• 2:41:33

And of course Steven for your time.

• 2:41:34

I know this is a long one.

• 2:41:35

This is a lot for you.

• 2:41:38

He's been a busy busy bee.

• 2:41:40

And of course we thank you all for being here.

• 2:41:43

And we hope that you have another wonderful safe and healthy month as we kick butt and work towards our next livestream that's coming up here.

• 2:41:53

And of course internally we have some big sprints that are coming up which is very exciting for us.

• 2:41:59

We are preparing our butts for Alpha 2.

• 2:42:02

And I'm telling you.

• 2:42:03

We've been prepping a lot.

• 2:42:04

And getting a lot of things in place.

• 2:42:06

And even some polish time for us.

• 2:42:08

So that's been a big big thing for us is making sure that you guys have a great experience.

• 2:42:12

And lots of performance work as Steven had noted before.

• 2:42:15

Of course we will have the video up on the 4K video will be up on YouTube today.

• 2:42:20

So stay tuned for that.

• 2:42:21

And of course we will have the full development update for you up tomorrow pending YouTube cooperates with us.

• 2:42:28

Make sure that if you want your comments spotlighted to make a comment on that development update.

• 2:42:33

Video and leave a comment there.

• 2:42:35

Make sure that it shows you publicly as a subscriber.

• 2:42:38

So that when we pick random it shows you up there.

• 2:42:41

And of course follow us on all the places.

• 2:42:43

We are Ashes of Creation.

• 2:42:44

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

• 2:42:46

All the places.

• 2:42:47

Snapchat.

• 2:42:48

We try to post everywhere.

• 2:42:49

So thank you so much for joining us.

• 2:42:52

And we will see you all next month for another update.

• 2:42:55

Bye everybody.

• 2:42:57

See you guys.

• 2:42:58

Just got to find the end screen.

• 2:43:03

Bye.

• 2:43:04

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