Talk:2023-09-29 Livestream
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Необработанная стенограмма
Intro
- 00:00
the
- 00:17
Hello everyone and welcome to our ashes of creation September update.
- 00:23
We hope that you are excited. I'm cozy. I've got my like, I know autumn sweater on. It's
- 00:31
this is the season is the season now we are finally in the autumn. Yes. It's my favorite
- 00:37
season. I love it so much. But of course, we have a wonderful show for you today. We
- 00:43
hope that you are excited. You've been waiting for a month. We've been waiting for a month.
- 00:47
We've got a lot of stuff that we've been doing internally. Maybe we'll talk a little bit
- 00:52
more about that on the studio update as well. But of course, today is a temporary agenda
- 00:59
is we have our reminders. We have an event update. And if you've been following us on
- 01:03
social, we've been letting folks know that is going to be a wave based combat. So get
- 01:07
excited for a little bit of combat action. I know folks are excited for that. I had a
- 01:12
lot of fun playing so yeah, we like like a mofo. And we've got our studio update.
- 01:22
Art update and Q&A as per usual. So jam packed. But hopefully today won't be as long. So you
- 01:31
know, just hopefully you have a good amount of snacks, some water. You don't need to buckle
- 01:36
in this time. We'll be a little shorter than normal. But of course, first we have some
- 01:42
quick updates and reminders. The first one here is that we do have a comment. So today's
Reminders
- 01:48
comment spotlight from our YouTube video from our last development update is the idea behind
- 01:54
all these nodes are awesome, but I wonder how it will actually play out in the live
- 01:59
version. The problem is having player run or the problem with having player run towns
- 02:04
is that people come and go in video games. So will towns die out, etc. And this is from
- 02:09
name is too. So thank you name is for, you know, subscribing to our YouTube channel and
- 02:14
leaving a wonderful comment. Yeah, this is a good question. And fundamentally, you get
- 02:19
it a lot too. Absolutely we do. And it is it is something that's at the forefront of
- 02:24
how we, you know, design systems that are intended to provide player interaction and
- 02:30
player agency and player direction, right? One of the I wouldn't say downsides, but risks
- 02:37
of those types of mechanics and systems is that you do have the potential for either
- 02:42
bad faith actors. Excuse me, or just people who come and go as you said. And so, you know,
- 02:54
we incorporate as part of those designs, certain fail safes, certain protections, certain automated
- 03:01
progression that takes over when some of those decisions are lacking or are not made. And
- 03:07
those decisions can be defaulted. Now, of course, that would have a deleterious effect
- 03:13
on kind of the direction that a particular node might want to go because they're going
- 03:17
to be doing default behaviors or default actions as opposed to something that might be in line
- 03:21
with the strategic objective of that particular node or the specialization that the node has
- 03:26
previously been attempting to do. But that is why we have a regularly recurring election
- 03:32
period where players can take the reins of power and can elect someone else to come in
- 03:38
and participate and rewrite the ship, so to speak. So it is absolutely a component of
- 03:46
having player driven mechanics that there is an opportunity for things to be less than
- 03:50
ideal or less than strategic when certain bad faith actors or people leave. But there
- 03:58
are safeguards in place. Perfect. Hopefully that suffices for you. Name is too. I'm sure
- 04:08
you'll let us know what your thoughts are on it. And of course, if you do have thoughts
- 04:12
on any of these things, you can head on over to forums. We are very diligent about taking
- 04:16
player feedback. The next thing, speaking of player feedback, segue, we have some dev
- 04:24
discussions. The one that is currently out, we have our dream nodes. So if you have some
- 04:29
thoughts on what you would like your dream node to be, head on over and toss us your
- 04:34
feedback. And up and coming, we also will have a dev discussion about basic attacks
- 04:39
as well. So definitely, we would love to hear your thoughts. And this is a combination of
- 04:45
basic attacks and auto attacks as well, because I think in different games, people consider
- 04:50
these different things. So we have a lot of questions from the development team in regards
- 04:54
to how you would like to utilize those, whether you want to kind of stream them in between
- 04:59
your abilities or if you're not interested in that at all. So there will be a lot of
- 05:04
questions for you to answer there. And I do just want to emphasize that these dev discussions
- 05:10
are of critical importance to the development team. Obviously, the reason why, and I have
- 05:16
echoed this over the course of many years and then these development updates, but the
- 05:23
reason why it's so beneficial for us to partake in a transparent development process is because
- 05:28
it affords us the opportunity to collect that real time feedback and experiences and direction
- 05:34
to a degree from the consumers that we are creating this product for, from you guys,
- 05:40
the gamers, our community, right? So if you have the time to go and kind of give your
- 05:45
commentary on the things that you expect to see out of these types of systems, the experiences
- 05:50
that you've had in different games, what you've enjoyed about them, what you'd like to see
- 05:53
done differently, it is great because our community team and Margaret helps to shepherd
- 05:59
kind of all of these comments into an easily digestible format that the developers then
- 06:05
have an opportunity to see what you guys are saying. And that's something that I think
- 06:09
is super important to make sure that those touch points of communications between the
- 06:12
community and the development team is of critical importance to the development.
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And I will say this as somebody who's worked in this industry for a very long time, I love
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that Steven affords us that not every team gets, you know, two Q or two community managers
- 06:28
to be able to help with that. But Roshan and Bacchanar have been doing an amazing job and
- 06:32
getting resounding love from our development team in regards to their reports. So they
- 06:37
do a very diligent job in reading everything you guys post in all the spaces. So we really
- 06:43
appreciate it. And of course, to put a caveat on that as well, because I know there's the
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counteract of that is that, of course, we're not going to do everything that players say.
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You know, we do have a vision and direction of our product. And so we're going to try
- 06:57
to make the best decisions for us and what we want to create. But it is always nice to
- 07:01
make sure that we're all on the same page, because for the most part, that is that has
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been the case. So just keeping that in mind.
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Yeah, just to touch on that point real quick, the the elegance of filtering out the expression
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from our player base who don't have, of course, in many cases, the experience of developing
- 07:20
a product like this, but have the experience of playing them and know what they like and
- 07:25
dislike. That is where the community team comes in and helps to filter out, you know,
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kind of that feedback so that not only is it digestible, but that it's cohesive and
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can make sense from a development perspective.
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Yeah, it's, it's very well done. So thank you. Keep giving us your feedback. You know,
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I think a lot of the times when you're a player of a game, you're like, why did they make
- 07:47
this decision? Well, we're sharing the journey with you. We're telling you why we're making
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those decisions. And we're showing you each little bit as we move forward. So be a part
- 07:55
of it if it's something that you really want. And if you don't step away, it's okay. You
- 07:58
don't have to either, you know, make a decision that's best for you. Next up, of course, is
- 08:03
what are you giggling about? I'm sorry. I just saw someone in chat that's put in a picture
- 08:11
of me that ages over time into into gray.
- 08:15
You haven't seen that before?
- 08:16
No, I haven't seen that before.
- 08:17
Yeah, they've been using it on Discord too.
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That's concerning and scary.
- 08:19
There's a lot of Steven memes out there. So some of them are pretty intricate videos
- 08:29
to Steven. He's like, I don't want to know. Next up, this is just a reminder, of course,
- 08:36
that the Unseen Order cosmetics, they are going to be our last preorder pack set. We
- 08:42
have an FAQ on our article or in our article. You can check that out at ashesofcreation.com
- 08:48
slash news and you'll see the Unseen Order section. This is the last preorder pack set
- 08:54
and it is going to end on January 17th, 2024 at 11am Pacific. This does not mean that we're
- 09:01
not going to ever do cosmetics ever again. Or that you're not going to ever have access
- 09:06
to Alpha 2 or Beta 1 or Beta 2 again, but there will just be different forms of how
- 09:11
you get access to that pending whether we think we can support more players for those.
- 09:16
Absolutely. And I do encourage as Margaret has in the past, take a look at the FAQ section
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of that. You know, I went through the FAQ and provided as intricate as detailed answers
- 09:26
as I could regarding the potential for future pack sales. Obviously, that's predicated on
- 09:32
our internal and external testing periods that we will be incorporating over the course
- 09:36
of the coming time. It's important to note, the intent of these packages is not to elicit
- 09:43
a fear of missing out response by our community. That is why this last pack will be extended
- 09:50
to January 17th. January 17th. You got a lot of time. There's a lot of time there. In addition,
- 09:58
Alpha 2 will be a non-NDA'd testing period that you will have an opportunity to watch
- 10:06
and partake in from a viewership perspective, even if you're not participating from a playing
- 10:10
perspective. Alpha 2, I can't reiterate this enough, Alpha 2 is not an intended game experience.
- 10:18
It is a testing experience. It is something that players who are participating in Alpha
- 10:24
2 are assisting in the development of it. There may be wipes, there will be periods
- 10:29
of time where we're taking it down and we're iterating upon it. It is not intended to be
- 10:34
a fun experience per se, although I believe it will be a fun experience.
- 10:37
I think it will be fun.
- 10:38
I think it will be fun. But it is intended to test our core systems. It is intended to
- 10:44
test our network architectures. It is intended to prepare the game for an official launch,
- 10:50
so our prepares for betas.
- 10:52
And our core systems.
- 10:53
And our core systems. And to that end, do not feel like if you are not participating
- 10:58
in Alpha 2 that you're missing out on something. This is not integral to the play experience
- 11:05
you will have when the game launches. And so that's something that's very important.
- 11:08
I mean, look at the journey that we've had so far, right? See where the game was before
- 11:12
and where it's at now. Or if you saw the Alpha 1 footage, which is, you know, you can Google
- 11:18
that because that was also non-UNDA'd. You can see how far we've come from that, too.
- 11:24
Absolutely.
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There's definitely going to be a journey here. And you can be part of that whether you're
- 11:30
in game or being able to watch and tell someone else what you want them to do.
- 11:36
Sure.
- 11:37
Maybe we can get the programmers to do a chat character where like you chat, try to make
- 11:43
the character do things would be fun. Maybe not for Alpha 2, but that could be a cool
- 11:48
experience. But yeah, just wanted to remind people that there is an FAQ. Make sure you
- 11:52
check that out, that this will be the last pack set for now. And we are thinking about
- 11:59
how we want to move forward with other potential shop stuff as well. I know exclusivity has
- 12:04
been a problem that people are concerned about. And I think in future shop items, we will
- 12:09
kind of remove some of that element so we can rotate in things. So if you missed it,
- 12:14
there will be an opportunity for you to get it again later rather than right now where
- 12:17
everything's very much exclusive. But that's kind of how we've had stuff set up. And with
Event Update
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that, I think we are on to our events update if you're ready.
- 12:29
Yes, I'm ready for it. Absolutely. So I didn't do a lot of prefacing this time in the video
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to my dismay after the recording was completed because now of course that's a standalone
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on YouTube and some people may not hear that this is a work in progress. But hopefully
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I've said it enough prior to that, that it just carries forward.
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I know.
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But regardless, I know. But regardless, I do want to preface now that what you guys
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are about to see is a bit different than what you saw with our story arc system. And it
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is different from our commissions system. This is our event system. And to be clear,
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what you're going to see is an example of the event system that showcases types of content
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that can be popped up in the world around you based on predicates of what's happening
- 13:23
in the world. And this particular event that you're going to see a pop up of is with regards
- 13:29
to a destructed caravan that's having some wave assault by some bandits. And the reason
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for that event kicking off is because in the background there might be negotiations, there
- 13:43
might be advancement in relationship status between nodes that cause the thematic element
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of this pop up event being a automated caravan moving throughout the world or whatever that
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hit the snag of the bandit encounter and players in the area around it have an opportunity
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to participate. Now there's a lot of different predicate systems that are involved in the
- 14:05
event system and they correlate in some way, shape or form to some other types of world
- 14:11
states that are happening within Vera at the time and that give players an opportunity
- 14:16
to interact with those events and receive rewards and receive experience and receive
- 14:21
gold and receive some loot tables off of that. And these pop up kind of around the world,
- 14:26
right? So you're going to be seeing an example of that here in the upcoming Alpha 2. And
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this is a video that Clayton and Scott and Aimee and a lot of others have obviously helped
- 14:38
to stand up the event system so that it is a very versatile way to deliver content to
- 14:44
the players. So as a disclaimer, of course, this is all a work in progress. This is still
- 14:49
an alpha state. The UI is pending additional development as is the visual effects and some
- 14:55
of the performance indicators. But this gives you an idea of what you can expect coming
- 15:00
in Alpha 2. So we do have an article of other events too. So if you want some more event
- 15:07
action, you can check that out. Oh, and real quick. Yeah, sorry. One last thing. I know
- 15:12
some people are constantly asking us about Alpha 2. We are going to have a little bit
- 15:18
of an announcement here at the end of the stream. Not too much hype, just giving a little
- 15:22
bit of direction with regards to expectations for Alpha 2. But we will talk about that after
- 15:27
the event showcase.
- 15:28
All right. See you on the flip side.
- 15:53
Hello everyone and welcome to another live stream from the glorious world of Vera. And
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we have an exciting showcase to give you all today. We're going to be talking about our
- 16:05
event system. And I am actually joined by three of our absolutely wonderful developers
- 16:12
with whom you've spoken with in the past on some other live streams. We have one of our
- 16:17
glorious engineers, Clayton. Clayton, how you doing buddy?
- 16:20
Absolutely wonderful, glorious. What an introduction. I'm doing great. I know. Really, really, really
- 16:25
so many words to show off all of our hard work. So very excited to see it with you and
- 16:31
excited to chat with the community about it. I know you guys have been doing a lot of hard
- 16:35
work on this. We also have two of our wonderful designers. Scott, how you doing buddy?
- 16:41
Excellent. I'm very excited to be here.
- 16:43
Yay. And I'm me. I mean, how are you doing?
- 16:46
I'm good. Last time I was here, we took down two mocks, so I'm ready today. I'm playing
- 16:51
cleric again. So yeah, I got your back.
- 16:56
Thank you. Okay. So you heard it here first, folks. If I die, it's of course not my fault.
- 17:04
It would be the cleric's fault. No, but okay. So where are we? We are in a familiar biome.
- 17:11
Many of you guys should be expecting where we are. We are in the wonderful riverlands.
- 17:16
We are a little bit east of the last live stream location, which was the windstead node.
- 17:22
Yeah, I see carfen in the distance.
- 17:24
Yep. Carfen is even further east from windstead. So we're kind of sandwiched between windstead
- 17:28
and carfen right now. No big curse happening right now. So it's a nice day out.
- 17:33
Okay. So it's a nice day out. There's not like any type of blood curse or undead roaming
- 17:37
the area.
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No, not at the moment. No.
- 17:39
Okay, very cool. And what are we doing here in the riverlands? Talk to me a little bit
- 17:45
about what has brought us out here. And I'm going to jump off my glorious steed here while
- 17:50
we talk about that.
- 17:51
Absolutely. So we're actually just out here to kill some mobs, grind some experience,
- 17:57
get some resources maybe out of the land here. And eventually the world should react to that
- 18:03
and we could potentially create an event here.
- 18:07
I see a web weaver. So okay, so our objective right now is we're going to be showing off,
- 18:14
obviously, the event system. And part of that event system is that it can take a whole host
- 18:20
of different predicates to kind of kick off different types of events. Clayton, talk to
- 18:24
me a little bit about what that means.
- 18:26
He's on me. He's on me. Yeah. As soon as I'm not dying. But yeah, so the event system,
- 18:34
it can query a lot of different aspects of the dynamic world state. Right now it's actually
- 18:40
just tracking player activity in the world and for this event in particular. And it's
- 18:48
looking for us to kill some stuff. So we're out here killing some stuff and eventually
- 18:51
the event should trigger once it's detected enough player activity.
- 18:57
Very cool. And this type of predicate that is essentially the activity map for killing,
- 19:04
yeah, the activity map. That's not the only way that these events can get kicked off.
- 19:08
There's a whole host of different ways that they can also get kicked off.
- 19:11
For sure. Yeah. So we have a really, really awesome system that the designers have access
- 19:15
to that lets them hook into really any dynamic world state and use that to inform the instantiation
- 19:24
or even just like the progression of any event.
- 19:28
Very cool. These spiders are gross.
- 19:34
Scott, what are some plans that you have for different predicates for instantiating some
- 19:41
of these events? Yeah. So obviously we just got this kind of
- 19:45
generic sort of kill one here that we can use for all sorts of different things for
- 19:49
tracking player activity. Nope, big bear time. We also are looking at the amount of resources
- 19:55
that players can harvest as a predicate. We have story arcs that are going on. So active
- 20:01
stories to cause different events to start. Yeah. Great caravans happening, relationships
- 20:06
between different nodes and also just the state of the nodes themselves.
- 20:10
Oh, you and let him beat me up here because it's kind of cool.
- 20:15
He's charging you. Oh, he will throw you around. Those bears can really catch you off guard
- 20:23
if you let them. Okay. So I see that a nearby event has started.
- 20:30
The predicate has been met. Oh, and I see now on the mini map we have
- 20:34
a little bit of a location for it. Yeah. So just south of us here, we were just
- 20:40
kind of the event has kind of kicked off because of the just us killing stuff around in the
- 20:45
area here. And we might see some visual indicators over
- 20:50
the hill here in a second. And so when one of these events kick off,
- 20:55
it's not just obviously notifying players based off of their proximity with the mini
- 20:59
map and with the UI toast that pops up. But also, as you said, Clayton, we have a visual
- 21:04
indicator in world that's also rooting the the event as well.
- 21:08
Yeah, for sure. You know, Scott can probably touch on, you know, the diegetic nature of
- 21:13
all of our narrative content and the the goals there. But oh, wait, hold on. Before we get
- 21:21
too close. I'm seeing that there's some gray shore archers and a gray shore swordsman.
- 21:27
Oh, OK. All right. Oh, should I join this event as a defender team?
- 21:32
I should definitely. Yes, that'll allow if some other players do come around while we're
- 21:38
playing, that'll allow them to join the event raid group with us. So we've effectively taken
- 21:45
the party that we had preformed and merged that into a new raid group.
- 21:52
OK, I slept a couple of these of the highway captains. There's some of them on the settlers
- 21:59
right now. OK, and the settlers are an objective type that exists within this particular archers.
- 22:07
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, my God. There's a lot of no, they're sniping from up on top
- 22:12
of the rocks. Thanks, Amy. Oh, I see. I'm sorry. I'm going to go for the long guns down.
- 22:19
Oh, God. Oh, no, no, no. The event difficulty did change, though. That's why the event difficulty
- 22:27
is a good thing. It means we got back up. There are people here to help us. And oh,
- 22:31
yeah, I see them on the hill. They're coming down. They joined the raid.
- 22:35
We were we're distracting the bandits from the settlers right now. So that's good. None
- 22:41
of them have died. Caravan integrity is good. OK, I see the caravan integrity on the on
- 22:51
the event. No, no, no. It looks like they're mostly just going for the settlers right now.
- 22:57
Oh, no. Those poor settlers. We've we've kept them up. Nope. I just saw one die. Oh, God.
- 23:03
Two of them. Two of them went out at once. All right. I shouldn't have mentioned it.
- 23:11
They would have been fine. So our objective here is to protect the settlers while we eliminate
- 23:16
twenty times. OK. OK, but there's probably another wave coming. Yes, there's still some
- 23:26
shore. There's still some great shore people. Well, I see some of them coming from northeast.
- 23:32
There's an arsonist coming. There we go. There we go. Oh, and some from downhill northwest
- 23:37
too. Scott, why are they coming from the north? So we're actually pretty near one of our POI,
- 23:44
which is actually under bandit control. The aptly named Highwayman Hills is just over the
- 23:50
corner, just around the corner here. So they'll be attacking NPCs kind of in this area until
- 23:55
such a time as players deal with it via story. And the settlers are trying to keep these
- 24:04
guys alive, right? OK. All right. We did it. OK. OK. OK. So it says prepare for the final
- 24:13
assault. This is this is staged based off of our kind of our progress, our activity,
- 24:19
our success. What is this? Yeah. So we we defeated the requisite number of bandits there,
- 24:27
which is going to progress the stage here. And during this stage here, we can reset some
- 24:32
of the traps that the bandits used to initially destroy the convoy and we can use those against
- 24:37
the bandits in the next phase, which is actually more difficult. So. Yeah, we'll definitely
- 24:42
need them whenever they the bandits do come with reinforcements, they're probably going
- 24:48
to be bringing their best, so. Especially because we have more players now, so the difficulty
- 24:53
of the event will be more when there are more players. And of course, like all things in
- 24:57
Ashes, the more difficult the challenge, the better the rewards. And also, you know, our
- 25:03
clerics can have some time to heal up the the settlers and, you know, hopefully set
- 25:09
us up for success whenever the next round does come in. And how do we how do we leverage
- 25:15
the reward system? How are people, you know, getting calculated what rewards they should
- 25:19
get for events like this? We have kind of a number of metrics that we can use. I think
- 25:26
we're going to be doing a lot of testing to figure out what the best metrics are, because
- 25:29
there are some ups and downs using like the amount of damage you've done, you know, in
- 25:33
the in the raid and stuff like that. And we're also like more relaxed things like how much
- 25:38
time you spent participating in the event, whether that's doing damage or healing allies
- 25:42
and things like that as a as a percentage of the total time of the event. They all have
- 25:47
their drawbacks and benefits. Some are, you know, we got to be careful about. Yeah. But
- 25:52
yeah, we'll just count up the contribution, however we end up balancing that. And then
- 25:57
we have different tiers of rewards that are given to each individual player based off
- 26:01
of their contribution score in the event. As it works right now, it is just simply a
- 26:06
matter of how much time you've participated in the event as a percentage of the total
- 26:10
time of the event. Very nice. And so as that kind of as that winds down, people will be,
- 26:17
you know, granted a gold, silver, bronze tier kind of reward status, and that will be the
- 26:22
entitlement for the types of rewards they get from these events. And really, that's
- 26:26
just going to determine the reward table that they're going to get. And then each player
- 26:29
is going to roll their own reward table independently. Very nice. I hope I'm going to get rewarded
- 26:35
for all the healing I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you deserve it. Raid leader. Yep.
- 26:42
Our timer is up and Corvin, the crusher appears to be on the way. Oh, God, he's coming. All
- 26:50
right. We're going to need healing almost immediately. Oh, my God, there's a lot. I'm
- 26:57
going to try to sleep some of them. Oh, never mind. There's multiple balls of lightning.
- 27:03
See if I can line this up right. You can try and use the wraps as best I can. Man, this
- 27:16
is really great. I am on fire. We have them in a choke point right now. We definitely
- 27:20
want to keep them away. Oh, there's birds. We want to keep them away from the caravan
- 27:23
and in this choke point. I got him to trigger the trap over here. I'm hitting them with
- 27:27
a lot of A.O.E.s right now. And the only objective here, as you can see from the tracker, is
- 27:34
to kill Corvin. So until Corvin goes down. Yeah, I'm trying to prioritize their healing
- 27:40
and DPS so that we can have a better chance here. I think with the raid group of eight,
- 27:48
we seem to be set up for success here. Corvin, the crusher. I mean, Scott, would either of
- 27:55
you want to touch on the event difficulty tier and what we intend to do with that as
- 28:00
more players join the event? Well, as soon as people join in, I yeah, it just gets more
- 28:08
difficult. I don't know if you saw, but we had a toast saying that the event has progressed
- 28:18
from its original state as a group event to a raid level event. It was a veteran, veteran
- 28:25
level. And of course, that comes with more challenges, more optional objectives, but
- 28:30
also more rewards. So it's never it's never going to be like a bother to have other people
- 28:38
join you. It's it's all part of part of being in a like multiplayer environment is, you
- 28:45
know, the more friends join up with you, the better. Yeah, you know, I think it's cool
- 28:53
that you touched on the rewards because, yeah, the designers have have the ability, you know,
- 28:59
from a technical perspective to use the difficulty to your however they like in the event. They
- 29:03
can modify any aspect of the events difficulty or even, you know, the reward that you're
- 29:08
getting. They can query that in the reward table data. We're doing pretty good here.
- 29:13
This caravan hasn't really been taking much damage at all. Yeah, the tank was able to
- 29:18
intercept him at that choke point. So yeah, that seems to be working to this elite healer
- 29:24
is rough. Yeah, they should be very hard to kill. Some of the great shore swordsmen and
- 29:31
the archers are still alive. We can change that. We have the technology. There we go.
- 29:39
Oh, we did it. We win. Congratulations. The reward. Well, you know, there's also a grateful
- 29:48
settler here presenting us the reward. Maybe something to say. Let me talk to him. Greetings,
- 29:56
grateful settler. Praise Ariok. They might have killed us without your intervention.
- 30:03
Please help yourself. I will help myself. Thank you. What type of supplies are we talking
- 30:08
about? Oh, you're one of those heroes. Unbelievable. This is a difficult, difficult task. You know,
- 30:16
you just head over to Highwayman Hills and join the bandits. Even unbelievable claim.
- 30:22
Unbelievable. I am a hero in this. I'm a mayor of a local. No, my God. A shame it came to
- 30:29
violence. We are hopeful we could leave that behind on Sanctus. Okay. Yeah, I'm I'm hopeful
- 30:34
of that too. But you know, sometimes we can't just get what we hope for. So, whoa, we got
- 30:39
some wool. Yep. We got some wool. Okay. I got some wool. You're also granted on the
- 30:47
events completion. You're granted like a little stipend of golden experience just right away.
- 30:51
But items that can be looted off your body, they have to come from like a reward chest.
- 30:55
So every event will have its own reward cash at the end of it. You'll grab your materials
- 30:59
items from. And I actually got some ash and timber as my reward. Why'd you get Tim ash
- 31:05
and timber? Well, that rolled. I got that reward from my reward table. Maybe I participated
- 31:11
better than you. So I got a better resource. How dare you? I was out there doing a lot
- 31:16
of work. And it's got this. This NPC is also configured to actually interface with some
- 31:22
of the story art content to write if the story arcs were online. It's true. Yeah, I think
- 31:26
they it is online. Actually, it's just not active. Check it again. Oh, okay. Where am
- 31:32
I going? Talk to the guy again. I think you might have missed a dialogue option or it
- 31:35
didn't pop up. Okay. Okay. The top one. Who are these people? Why were they? Who are these
- 31:39
people? Let's see. They're desperate folks who prowl the hills. Captain Udoxia in Lion
- 31:47
Hold is looking into the matter. I should seek her out and find if there is a better
- 31:51
way I could help around here. You know what I will do. Okay, here we go. I see a lot of
- 32:02
different placeholder rewards. A bridge too far. Yeah, the rewards for the for a lot of
- 32:08
the quests are still not fully done yet. But the events do hook into all of our story
- 32:15
art content. So if there are story arcs online, we can like since our quests are nonlinear,
- 32:20
this can help you kind of into those quests. If they're online, this event can happen whether
- 32:25
or not the story is online. But if it is, you can pick up the like, leave in to that
- 32:31
quest from him. If you're not, you know, if you haven't been to Lion Hold in a while since
- 32:34
the story arc has started. Very cool. And so obviously, you know, people saw a little
- 32:40
bit during this event that the adaptive difficulty was predicated on the number of participants
- 32:46
that opt in to to to partake in this event, right? Correct. Yes. So as more players join,
- 32:56
the event does get more difficult with we went from the regular mobs to the elite mobs
- 33:02
in Corvin's Entourage. Some of them can be, you know, more, more enemies to fight. Some
- 33:09
can have completely different stages or mechanics, depending on which what the event actually
- 33:13
is and what your objectives are for that event. And these these events are based off of different
- 33:21
predicates within the world state. So, for example, this particular event was a caravan
- 33:24
that was moving throughout the world. And as you as we said in the beginning, it was
- 33:27
based off of the activity heat map of players within this area. But this type of event,
- 33:33
this caravan event that was transiting goods popped up because nearby nodes may have either
- 33:38
been advancing the relationship between each other or there might have been a trade caravan
- 33:43
that got kicked off in the past. And we're representing kind of that that theming within
- 33:49
the world by these event types. Correct. Yes. So events are predicated by things that players
- 33:54
are doing, whether that is node development, trade agreements between nodes, all of that,
- 34:00
like relationships between nodes. I mean, so it could be more than just that could be
- 34:04
war states or anything like that as well. So I noticed that even though we succeeded
- 34:10
in the event, we're still in our event raid group. Scott, what's the thought behind that?
- 34:13
Are we supposed to go and adventure with our new group right now? If we so desire, if we
- 34:18
so desire? Yeah, the event ending doesn't dissolve the open party for the event. The
- 34:23
open parties have some sort of default like party configurations that can't be changed.
- 34:29
So they'll be stuck with a group and stuff like that. But we do try to encourage people
- 34:33
to continue to stick together and play together. The game the game is hard. So it's good to
- 34:39
put it's good to play friends. Yeah, I just left the raid. I don't want to play with you.
- 34:45
He's going to join the bandits. I called it. Yes, I'm looking for the highway men who bandage
- 34:49
it. Very cool. Okay. And then obviously we saw during the event, there are obviously
- 34:55
multiple stages that exist. Each of those stages having unique mechanics associated
- 34:59
with them. There are a lot of different types of events. I mean that you and the narrative
- 35:04
team and Scott that you guys are working on creating each of those event types will have
- 35:08
different similar stages like we saw there was a trap stage here that we can set up.
- 35:13
Is it intended that these stages are going to provide players with kind of downtime to
- 35:17
recuperate and also perhaps set up and strategize how they want to address the upcoming challenge?
- 35:23
Well, I don't really know about you, but I'm my heart's beating right now. I feel like
- 35:28
we've been challenged and of course there's going to be moments where there are like less
- 35:36
less challenges which rely less on your class kit than usual. But I think that in general,
- 35:44
if you want to like really get down and understand the story and appreciate the world, then probably
- 35:52
you're going to want to focus more in the story arcs where you can take things at your
- 35:56
own pace. We have we have some events that do other things like there could be some that
- 36:01
are just puzzles. We have an event in here that is actually just like you can attend
- 36:07
a funeral for just an NPC that can pop up and there isn't actually any combat to do
- 36:12
in that one. Rewards are adequately scaled. There are events in here that are just kind
- 36:17
of for flavor and for fleshing out the world a little bit to that you can participate in
- 36:20
and learn more about. Yeah, I think there are going to be some moments where where you
- 36:24
might be like frustrated that an event is like obscuring something that you want to
- 36:28
get to like a NPC that you need to talk to for your quest or something. So then then
- 36:34
gathering people to help you is going to be really useful. Awesome. Very cool. And that
- 36:40
that event there at the last stage had kind of like a little mini boss dude. Is that kind
- 36:46
of a component of all events that you guys are intending to incorporate or just kind
- 36:50
of some events will have those mini bosses? Some will have them. There's going to be a
- 36:55
whole lot of these and they're going to be at different tiers of challenge and you know,
- 37:01
kind of, I guess, like power level tiers. You know, they're not all going to be, you
- 37:08
know, defeating the, you know, and all dragon being at the end. Some are just, you know,
- 37:15
about helping people. There's some are about just building up the world of Verra, which
- 37:21
is a very difficult and challenging place as people are trying to resettle it. There's
- 37:25
there's all kinds of tiers for different levels of heroism. I'm helping the small time people
- 37:29
to downing giant foes. And these are obviously a bit different than what people have seen
- 37:36
previously with Carfinn where we showed off kind of the story arc system that fundamentally
- 37:40
changes a particular location or area for an extended period of time that exists within
- 37:46
stages that are might be multi days in length. These are more bite sized, kind of digestible
- 37:52
end to end 20 minute gameplay, right? Right. Definitely shorter than a story arc, which
- 37:58
yeah, as you said, as you mentioned before, is meant to be taken kind of at a slower pace.
- 38:02
Can your individual path through the story arc is a little bit more measured, like you're
- 38:06
less reliant on like the pace of the actual story arc. It's more about your own personal
- 38:12
paces through the quests. And then as the story arc advances over time, like over the
- 38:17
course of days, then you can dive back into it and get more involved in it again. Very
- 38:23
cool. And then if there are people who might be problematic to a particular event, like
- 38:33
this Jindrak guy. Oh, OK. I think it's triggering again. Like this Jindrak guy, we could like,
- 38:40
you know, attack them or something. Oh, we could. Yes. If you were aligned with the bandits,
- 38:46
maybe. And there are some events that do have you pick sides in PvP. Yeah. You know, whenever
- 38:52
Steven joined this event, he had one option to just merge us into the event raid group.
- 38:56
This was a PvE event. But there are going to be events with sanctioned PvP where there
- 39:03
are multiple team options to join. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. OK, very cool. Well,
- 39:11
I'll let Jindrak live this time. Guys, that was a super exciting event showcase. I know
- 39:17
that the community loved to kind of see this stuff. Obviously, events are an integral component
- 39:21
of making the world feel kind of dynamic and representative of what is happening around
- 39:26
the area. It gives people insight into particular locations and the type of activities that
- 39:32
might be occurring. But it also gives really interesting ways for us as players to interact
- 39:36
with that environment and effect change as well and be rewarded for that activity. I
- 39:42
think it's super cool. You guys did a great job with standing up the event system and
- 39:46
populating the world with really compelling activities. So thank you for showing us a
- 39:50
little bit of the work you guys have been doing towards Alpha 2. I know that the community
- 39:54
loves it and we'll be back on stream to talk a little bit more about this. All right. Thanks
- 40:00
for having me, Stephen. Bye. Thanks, Stephen. Absolutely. Bye, everybody.
- 40:05
Whoops. Welcome back. Why'd you say whoops? Oh, my light went out. In the office, it went
- 40:18
out right at the end there. Oh, no. Hopefully the Internet's going to be OK. It's just light.
- 40:24
I will play the video in the background so you all can watch that. We do have some questions
- 40:29
from chat about some things. So one of the things was to kind of set expectations for
- 40:36
parties. We did talk about how when you disband a party or when you end it, you know, we do
- 40:44
encourage you to group up and stay together. But people are wondering if they have to like
- 40:49
fully reform their parties or what the plan is in regards to that.
- 40:53
Yeah. So there is an option, as we said at the end, to kind of stick around in that raid
- 40:58
and to go off and do some additional things with each other. Obviously, we want to encourage
- 41:02
players to kind of cooperate and work with one another. That is an MMO after all. And
- 41:07
that is the name of the game. But at the same time, if people want to convert back into
- 41:11
a party or if they want to move from that raid, they are more than welcome to do so.
- 41:15
Right. And then what happens if someone joins the event and then like goes MIA, goes to
- 41:22
get a coffee, goes to the bathroom, leaves? Does that still keep the difficulty?
- 41:29
Yeah. So there is a way that we kind of heat map player activity during the event to help
- 41:35
inform that difficulty. It's not just going to be based purely off of the number of participants
- 41:40
within the area or within the raid. That's something that is dynamic and scales accordingly.
- 41:46
But the idea here is that, you know, we can't necessarily predict the number of players
- 41:50
that are going to be participating in these types of events, of course, because not only
- 41:54
is it opt in, but it's also kind of situationally and locationally relevant to the player activity.
- 42:01
Now, those events kicked off based off of local player activity. As you saw here, we're
- 42:06
killing the bears, we're killing the spiders. That was one of the predicates that kind of
- 42:09
kicked this local event off. The event was then thematically relevant to kind of activities
- 42:14
that were happening around the zone. And that was like relationship between nodes that was
- 42:18
progressing that caused this theming to be about a caravan being assaulted by bandits
- 42:25
for supplies. And so it kind of gives you a touch point to the rest of the world and
- 42:29
what's happening there. But we want to scale that difficulty to a degree, right? And we're
- 42:35
not talking about like scaling up the players power or scaling down the power of the NPCs,
- 42:40
but rather how many additional spawners start to activate, what different types of NPCs
- 42:45
start to join? Are they going to be elites? Is there the boss? Right? Those types of those
- 42:49
types of things are scalable as part of the event system.
- 42:54
Cool, and then are you able to heal the caravan settlers and things like that? I know that
- 43:01
you were, but we want to clarify like that you do need to protect them to some extent.
- 43:08
Are there implications for if you don't like if a bunch of people die that you're supposed
- 43:12
to be guarding? Will you get less reward? What's the for sure there is the ability to
- 43:17
fail. I know that that is a strange concept for a lot of us nowadays playing more modern
- 43:23
games, but there is absolutely a way to fail. And some of those ways include how you're
- 43:30
going to expend resources, not just for your fellow players, but for some of the objectives
- 43:35
that might be present within the event as well. And those resources that mainly being
- 43:40
your mana in this circumstance with regards to healing those those NPCs is, I think, a
- 43:47
relevant and interesting component that makes it a little bit more dynamic.
- 43:50
All right, and then do the events have cooldowns or could players force the event to spawn
- 43:58
endlessly? Events absolutely do have cooldowns. They cannot be forced to spawn repeatedly
- 44:05
over and over again. Those cooldowns are not just something that's based on a timer. They're
- 44:10
also predicated on certain actions occurring within the world once more or at different
- 44:16
times. And so again, the most important thing about this system is that when we're talking
- 44:22
about being out in a hunting grounds or being out, you know, transiting across the world,
- 44:29
these events are constantly popping up around the zones, right? And they kind of follow
- 44:34
player activity and movement. And there's a whole host of different types of events
- 44:39
from a content standpoint that reflect to the state of the world. And so it's important
- 44:46
that like as players are doing these things, these are additional levels of experience
- 44:51
grants and reward tables that can be accessible based off of cooperation with other players
- 44:57
in the area. All right, and then the last one here is what
- 45:04
would have happened if the raid group failed the event? I know that you talked a little
- 45:08
bit about this before, but would something have happened if we wouldn't have saved?
- 45:14
Yeah, so so events that get kicked off. If you would not have saved everybody, if this
- 45:20
event would have failed and actually it failed many times in testing, but if this event would
- 45:27
have failed, it would have contributed to a world state tracker, right? And and events
- 45:32
kind of can roll. The event outcome can inform other events as predicates as well, right?
- 45:42
And when you get enough events that are being failed. When you get enough events that are
- 45:48
being failed, that can trigger a bigger event. And when a bigger event fails, that can trigger
- 45:54
potentially a story arc and that can trigger potentially atrophy events like there's it's
- 46:02
a cascading foundational system that serves to predicate how other instances of dynamic
- 46:12
reactive world. Activities respond to player choices, player efforts, player successes
- 46:21
and failures, right? What we're building is a very comprehensive, responsive world, and
- 46:26
I know a lot of times in different games you hear the buzzwords of like dynamic and responsive
- 46:30
and reactive and you know whatever, but we are building the mechanics to inform those
- 46:37
systems from a very scaling foundational perspective which can culminate into big. Server changing
- 46:47
things happening right and this is at the very ground level of that overarching system.
- 46:54
You guys saw a little bit of the story arc system with carfin and how it fundamentally
- 46:59
changed the visuals of that of that area. But what can help inform carfin story arc
- 47:06
kicking off is how these smaller feeding events what the outcome of those are right so so
- 47:13
that's that's how we get the world that feels. Respective of player action. Yeah, there's
- 47:20
things that happen that have a domino effect of other things happening and depending on
- 47:25
how that thing happened it may change and it doesn't always have to be the same things
- 47:30
that are always happening. This is why when we said that every server will kind of pretty
- 47:34
much be very very different from another server it would be very very unlikely that they will
- 47:40
be exactly the same and in the same state because you have to take very specific actions
- 47:46
at the same time to make those things line up that way. Of course the video that we have
- 47:53
will be up in 4k so if you want to see that you can head on over to our YouTube channel
- 47:57
after the stream. I'm going to stand up and move around so I can get my light. Yeah, because
- 48:01
the motion lights. Someone should someone at the office come wave around. It will not
- 48:10
pick me up even though I'm moving around. That's funny you don't move fast enough you're
- 48:14
like sloth mode. And of course we also have a forum event update feedback thread as well
- 48:21
so if you have any thoughts after watching this and of course after you're able to like
- 48:26
kind of move things around on the live stream or watch it either on Twitch or YouTube you
- 48:30
can feel free to toss your feedback our way. We of course will be compiling a report for
- 48:35
development in order to ensure that they get all the information from what you guys what
- 48:40
your thoughts are so share those with us. And with that we shall move over to studio
Studio Update with Alpha Two Clarifications
- 48:47
update. Studio update yes. It's funny actually I was watching in chat somebody said how can
- 48:57
I become a developer for this? Yeah, come work with us. That's a nice little segue.
- 49:06
Yeah studio update things are going great at the studio. We are continuing to grow.
- 49:11
We are ending our our milestone actually this week actually I think it ended the end of
- 49:17
last week. We are currently transitioning into our next milestone right now. It ends
- 49:21
the 29th today. 29th oh it ends today that's right. And next week we are having about 20
- 49:29
of our remote employees are flying in for our milestone seven preparation and kickoff
- 49:34
in San Diego and we're gonna have some fun events with the team doing some bowling nights
- 49:41
and some full day reviews of our milestone and play testing and it is an exciting time
- 49:49
here at the studio and I wanna take a moment to. I wanna take a moment to talk a little
- 49:59
bit about the state of our industry and you know be respective of the fact that you know
- 50:07
not everywhere in the gaming industry in the tech industry in general right now the economy
- 50:11
is obviously a point of concern. There's a lot of layoffs that have been happening and
- 50:16
and it is a it is a very unfortunate and terrible thing. Of course I made a little bit of a
- 50:21
statement on Twitter yesterday and on LinkedIn you know our hearts go out to those individuals
- 50:27
and and it is an it is an incredible experience to be a part of teams that create the magic
- 50:33
that games are because really they are magical. I mean games are games are a very important
- 50:40
part of our lives right. It is important to have a work life balance and part of of everyone
- 50:46
out there who are in this audience that that get to have downtime and experience games
- 50:51
with their friends and their families and and and and kind of de-stress with that. It
- 50:55
takes a lot to make those things and it takes a lot of effort and dedication and commitment
- 51:02
and when things outside of your control and outside of your power impact your ability
- 51:07
to do that it's obviously a moment of pause and reflection and Intrepid intends and strives
- 51:13
to be one of those places that takes that takes sustainable growth practices as part
- 51:22
of building up our company and our team in the efforts to deliver this product. Now of
- 51:28
course MMOs are the biggest game you can make. Our MMORPG is probably one of the more ambitious
- 51:36
ones and from the get-go we knew and you guys knew from a community perspective that this
- 51:42
was going to be a journey and it continues to be that but every time we onboard a new
- 51:47
person to this company to our team to our Intrepid family and I know that's a hot button
- 51:52
they should even use that word sometimes in a work setting but I that is the type of feeling
- 51:58
we we we try to achieve at Intrepid. Every time we onboard someone new we do so with
- 52:05
the conscious effort to to to know what the end goal is in our development journey and
- 52:13
to treat that team member that family member with the type of of respect for their work
- 52:21
and and participation in this project right and so if you know somebody that's been impacted
- 52:30
by these layoffs recently if if you guys are in the ecosphere of of Twitter and or LinkedIn
- 52:37
of these developers who are some of your favorite developers that have worked on projects in
- 52:40
the past and you've seen the the product of their toils then make sure to send them a
- 52:46
message and let them know that we exist that Ashes of Creation is a project and that we
- 52:51
have a lot of positions that are open and if they don't see a position that's open they
- 52:56
can go to Intrepid Studios.com to our careers page and they can submit their resume and
- 53:00
their portfolio and experience and we will spend the time and effort in order to evaluate
- 53:07
their potential on the team so you know that is that is something that I think is important
- 53:12
and it's a it's a rough time out there right now for sure and our hearts go out to the
- 53:16
people that are impacted by some of these layoffs but but things are looking good here
- 53:21
at Intrepid Studios and we continue to move forward and their next milestone is going
- 53:24
to be a big one and with that being said well I would yeah I think that I have some notes
- 53:33
here too from our HR team which I'm not going to share everything they gave me because some
- 53:36
of that is like private information for us but I think one of the cool things is I'm
- 53:40
a data junkie as someone who does a lot of marketing stuff we have an insanely great
- 53:48
attrition rate comparatively to the industry so I mean for us we're at like 3.4% people
- 53:54
are going to come and go they're going to have reasons why they want to maybe they're
- 53:56
going to get paid more in another company or they they want a different type of job
- 54:00
and we don't have that available for them although we do accommodate quite greatly for
- 54:04
people or they want to be somewhere else.
- 54:07
3.4% though that's not bad what's the industry average?
- 54:10
The software development or the the global average is 38.9% and the software development
- 54:20
specifically is 57.3% so we are we are extremely low because people really do enjoy working
- 54:28
here and I know it is cliche when it sounds cliche when you say family but Steven and
- 54:32
John really treat us all like family like there is love and care there that I have not
- 54:37
always had at other companies so thank you.
- 54:41
Well absolutely we we love you and we love our team and it is something special that
- 54:46
I think we built here at this company and it definitely feels like that.
- 54:51
I think it would be great for us to talk a little bit about a common discussion point
- 54:58
that obviously you and the community and we're going to do that before the art oh before
- 55:02
the art oh okay okay my bad I'm sorry we can do it no we can do it if you want okay okay
- 55:06
yeah do it now.
- 55:08
So wildin you guys.
- 55:10
As you guys know we have reserved our announcement for dates until we are certain that we can
- 55:20
hit them we've we've been burned in the past with that we took our licking so we learned
- 55:24
and no more date Steven until correct it's happening I've been a good boy I've been a
- 55:29
very good boy without having said any haven't said any dates and what I would like to do
- 55:35
is as I see often in the community with a lot of different conversations with content
- 55:43
creators you know when is Alpha 2 going to be is it this year is it next year is it you
- 55:48
know 2030 you know kind of wild speculation that I think I have attempted to address by
- 55:56
saying Alpha 2 is not years away but it's also not right around the corner and so as
- 56:03
we grow closer to Alpha 2 we will give a definitive date the next time you hear from us about
- 56:11
when Alpha 2 is going to be it's probably going to be delegated to a particular quarter
- 56:15
and then when we're probably a few months away we will have the date in mind but for
- 56:19
now I can definitively tell you that Alpha 2 is going to be and cue the video.
- 56:34
That wasn't too bad that's pretty good so guys we can say that from now on when people
- 56:54
talk to you about when Alpha 2 is going to be it is no longer a question of if but when
- 57:01
next year Alpha 2 will be rolled out for public testing we have a number of different testing
- 57:07
events that are going to be participating over the.
- 57:09
Can I make some clarifications for things?
- 57:11
Absolutely.
- 57:12
It includes some of that so the exact date as Stephen said will be provided in the future
- 57:17
and of course when we do provide that date we will also give you guys further information
- 57:22
in regards to testing schedule what's included in Alpha 2 because I know that that's where
- 57:26
this is going to go next and also the NDA spot testing that will be before Alpha 2 we
- 57:35
will have first one with our PI members then we'll have some with our Alpha 1 users and
- 57:41
then our Alpha 2 users and of course Alpha 2 will not be NDA'd but that spot testing
- 57:47
will be NDA'd so keep that in mind and then note that Alpha 2 is only accessible for players
- 57:53
who have Alpha 2 access so just because you had Alpha 1 access does not mean that you
- 57:57
will have Alpha 2 access so make sure that you do have Alpha 2 access in your inventory
- 58:02
it'll say Alpha 2 if you do but you will be able to partake in pre-tests because that's
- 58:08
technically still Alpha 1.
- 58:10
Yes, absolutely and guys I want to talk to you a little bit about setting expectations
- 58:15
right appropriately anytime you're delivering a software as big as even what Alpha 2 is
- 58:25
there's going to be bumps, there's going to be hiccups, there's going to be things that
- 58:28
we don't account for and that's just the nature of the beast part of that is many communities
- 58:36
don't have an opportunity to see those bumps and hiccups because projects keep things very
- 58:40
tight to the chest we have since the get-go decided not to take that approach and instead
- 58:46
take the good, bad, and ugly approach which is you guys get to see that stuff and so as
- 58:54
we're moving towards Alpha 2 in 2024 you can expect to see part of our development updates
- 59:00
we'll be showcasing of course continually these systems you know some of those systems
- 59:04
will be very big some of those systems will be smaller but our intent is to get feedback
- 59:08
on them and kind of get experiential feedback especially so that we can help inform the
- 59:13
revisions and the iterations that we do to them that's why we do these development updates
- 59:17
right it's not just Margaret and I love being here with you guys and being a part of this
- 59:22
process but we don't do it because we love it we do it because it is an integral component
- 59:27
of making a good product right and that is our philosophy.
- 59:32
So with that being said I can hopefully now put to rest some of the question marks that
- 59:39
arise out of the when is Alpha 2 going to be we definitively now.
- 59:43
I mean they're still going to ask.
- 59:44
I know I know of course now.
- 59:45
As soon as January 1st goes they're going to be like so what date is it?
- 59:49
We have moved the discussion out of the realm of years into the realm of months which month
- 59:54
is it going to be right?
- 59:57
So that is I think a positive outcome.
- 59:59
And like what Stephen said we will our next update will give you a quarter and then we
- 1:00:03
will provide dates after that so just keep that in mind there is going to be a progression
- 1:00:10
of that information.
- 1:00:11
Absolutely absolutely.
- 1:00:12
Yeah very cool what a time to be alive.
- 1:00:16
I know it has been it has been wild a wild time in general for all of us but yeah does
- 1:00:24
anything else on the studio update?
- 1:00:26
Yeah I think we got we caught everything so art stuff look at pretty art stuff let's do
Art Update
- 1:00:31
it yeah let's do it let's look at art.
- 1:00:34
No I just got a message from our web team that the website is currently getting hit
- 1:00:38
hard oh no.
- 1:00:40
Great probably because everyone's like let's buy a package.
- 1:00:45
The packages are going to be available till January 17th so so it'll be okay.
- 1:00:51
I probably shouldn't have said that on the stream then it would just exacerbate the problem.
- 1:00:56
Or the the career page people might have been going to that too.
- 1:00:59
So first and foremost we've got the deep wood syrinx syrinx I think is what it's called
- 1:01:06
it's like an instrument of some sort which is really cool and that now has has its model
- 1:01:12
and you may have seen these little potion traps on the ground that were created.
- 1:01:19
I love seeing the work in progress images so I always like sharing that stuff with you
- 1:01:24
guys and so that's what.
- 1:01:27
And this is what you saw in the game yeah.
- 1:01:31
Very cool.
- 1:01:33
And then we've got the.
- 1:01:35
By the way notice the kind of styling of the magical fantasy the kind of magical realism
- 1:01:42
not so much too far on the steampunk side not too much magic tech side but you know
- 1:01:48
it's still keeping even doesn't like a fantasy.
- 1:01:51
You know it's not that I don't like it I think that there's a lot of really cool interesting
- 1:01:55
kind of steampunk iteration that's done in these games it's just I'm a I'm a high fantasy
- 1:02:01
guy.
- 1:02:02
Yeah we had some like designers who were trying to like plot out steampunk I was like no that's
- 1:02:08
not Ashes of Creation move on.
- 1:02:12
But next up we've got the Legionnaire outfit which now has a model as well.
- 1:02:18
I think it should rotate.
- 1:02:20
I believe I have a turntable for this as well.
- 1:02:25
Very different type of armor I know some people weren't sure how they felt about this set
- 1:02:30
but the lore for it is really cool and some of the other pieces that they have for this
- 1:02:34
set are coming along really well.
- 1:02:36
So I'm excited to share those.
- 1:02:40
Next up is we've been working out some options for Vec plate and this is kind of a little
- 1:02:45
preview of one of the directions.
- 1:02:48
Oh I love the Vec models and the plate looks so good.
- 1:02:53
Yeah I think Jan has been working on this and killing it.
- 1:03:00
Yeah that looks great and then we have the face masks the helmet looks the helmets.
- 1:03:07
We have the turntable for this people can kind of see how that looks.
- 1:03:12
And look you can see the model looks great.
- 1:03:15
So this is the female model and then I will also show you it on the male.
- 1:03:25
And remember guys as you guys are seeing these different armor sets you know the armors that
- 1:03:32
we work through of course gradually increase in tier right based off of kind of the level
- 1:03:38
that we're provisioning the armors for.
- 1:03:41
Now is this a cosmetic set or was this this is not armor.
- 1:03:44
No so this is in-game achievable.
- 1:03:48
And I believe that this armor judging off of its silhouette is probably going to be
- 1:03:53
about a tier two armor from a tier five system right.
- 1:03:57
So this would probably be something as a Vec that you would have access to between levels
- 1:04:02
like 15 to 25 ish roughly.
- 1:04:05
Yeah beyond knows he can DM me and I can update it but yeah very very cool.
- 1:04:12
And then of course we've got the silk fur dune hunter that Jinsey has made the model
- 1:04:17
for and it looks so cute.
- 1:04:19
I mean they just make like the concept art look exactly like the character.
- 1:04:24
It's wild to me how amazing they are.
- 1:04:28
Who else is excited to ride this like oh my gosh so cute.
- 1:04:36
And with that we're ready to head on over to our Q&A.
Outro and Q&A
- 1:04:41
I'll play the video in the background just so you have something to watch whilst we answer
- 1:04:48
some of y'all's questions from the forums.
- 1:04:51
The first one here is from plastic lemons.
- 1:04:54
Don't eat those.
- 1:04:55
I asked about Mayor history.
- 1:04:58
I once tried to eat a plastic grape when I was a little kid.
- 1:05:02
It did not go well.
- 1:05:03
I did the same thing.
- 1:05:05
I didn't try to eat it though I just chewed on it.
- 1:05:07
Yeah well I couldn't eat it so I spit it out but yeah I was chewing on it.
- 1:05:11
I thought it was a real.
- 1:05:12
I used to love those little plastic grapes.
- 1:05:14
I would just grab them and chew on them.
- 1:05:16
Oh just like okay.
- 1:05:18
Interesting.
- 1:05:19
You learn something new every day.
- 1:05:23
See somebody just said lol same.
- 1:05:26
Really?
- 1:05:27
Yes thank you.
- 1:05:28
Thank you Rakers maker.
- 1:05:29
Oh my gosh.
- 1:05:30
Maybe you guys are teething or something.
- 1:05:31
You're like a little chew toy.
- 1:05:32
Somebody else said that explains a lot.
- 1:05:33
That's so good.
- 1:05:34
There's too much sharing.
- 1:05:35
Too much TMI.
- 1:05:36
We have Mayor history which is will players have a way to see who past mayors of their
- 1:05:51
node were like a little like a log.
- 1:05:54
That'd be cool.
- 1:05:55
Yeah absolutely yeah so something.
- 1:05:57
And all their actions.
- 1:05:59
Well maybe not all their actions but.
- 1:06:02
We can dream guys.
- 1:06:04
It is something that we do intend to provide obviously historical references within the
- 1:06:08
game of not just the mayors of nodes but also you know server first downs of certain bosses
- 1:06:16
and this first like guild achievements and guild hall ownership like we want to you know
- 1:06:22
the achievement system should record things of note so that people are able to etch their
- 1:06:31
name or their guild in the history in the in the in the history of the server and mayorship
- 1:06:37
would be one of those things.
- 1:06:39
Very cool.
- 1:06:43
It would be cool if mayors could like leave a little note and then all the new mayors
- 1:06:47
get to see all the past notes.
- 1:06:48
Margaret was here just like etched in the desk.
- 1:06:55
Some might be helpful some might not be.
- 1:06:57
It's like what's that game.
- 1:06:59
Anyways moving on as a from node about node government wants to know are there plans for
- 1:07:06
official game supported node positions other than the mayor like a stable master or a procurement
- 1:07:13
officer.
- 1:07:14
That word's hard to say.
- 1:07:16
Are there other node based positions basically.
- 1:07:20
Yes there are other node based positions.
- 1:07:23
Some of the most of them relate to social organizational structures like the temple
- 1:07:30
and the social organization building that the node might construct.
- 1:07:35
Those are ladder systems of achievement that players can work through on a seasonal basis
- 1:07:40
to achieve the highest level of that for the particular node and by doing so they will
- 1:07:44
then have titles bestowed upon them which grants certain types of powers and benefits.
- 1:07:49
Nice.
- 1:07:50
Speaking of which I'm going to forward to one of the questions here from Caddack in
- 1:07:53
regards to social organizations.
- 1:07:55
Will progression in social organizations be permanent or must it be maintained like PVP.
- 1:08:02
There will be a portion of your social progression that does remain static but then when you
- 1:08:09
move into a section of the ladder system that's more competitive that section of achievement
- 1:08:18
will be ticking and seasonal and you'll have to repeat efforts there.
- 1:08:22
So you can achieve a certain status rank that will be permanent unless you choose to leave
- 1:08:26
the system and then there will be a section that's ladder based.
- 1:08:31
And then the next one here is about music.
- 1:08:34
DougBug27 wants to know cities in MMORPGs tend to have iconic music to match the aesthetic
- 1:08:43
of locations.
- 1:08:45
How do you expect Ashes of Creation and Bear McCreary specifically to create music to fit
- 1:08:50
nodes when they will be changing all the time?
- 1:08:54
And easy answer, predicates.
- 1:08:57
Well yeah it's a great question.
- 1:09:00
So Cat and Bear obviously we have a great process by which there are different levels
- 1:09:11
of associated soundtracks based off of defining features in the game.
- 1:09:18
So if we're talking about nodes then we're talking about what's the cultural representation
- 1:09:21
of that node.
- 1:09:23
Soundtracks and theming music will then be accompanied based off of the culture that
- 1:09:26
the node expresses.
- 1:09:28
If we're talking about biomes and we're talking about POIs, each of those will have distinctive
- 1:09:32
themes that are associated with them.
- 1:09:34
So when you're out in the wilderness or you're out at a specific POI, those will have soundtracks
- 1:09:38
that will play as well.
- 1:09:40
Each of those systems will encompass a layered effect that can reflect the stage of certain
- 1:09:48
types of events within an area.
- 1:09:50
So for example the POI that is Carfin, that will have a general theme for Carfin that
- 1:09:56
will play as you move into the area.
- 1:09:58
But depending on the effects of a particular story arc, we may weave in a layer of the
- 1:10:06
soundtrack that reflects perhaps the voice of the raid boss when she's present.
- 1:10:12
And if she's not that layer won't be weaved in.
- 1:10:15
So those soundtracks are constructed in such a way obviously where you can get a lot of
- 1:10:19
usage out of them and there are components and themings of those that can weave together
- 1:10:24
and layer together and it's intended to be something that not just as pleasant but informative
- 1:10:29
of the world as well.
- 1:10:31
And different states right?
- 1:10:32
Like if you're in combat.
- 1:10:33
Yes, correct.
- 1:10:34
There's combat.
- 1:10:35
Absolutely.
- 1:10:36
There's combat states as well.
- 1:10:39
Yes.
- 1:10:40
Speaking of music, our next question is from Song Rune and it's about bards.
- 1:10:46
What equipment slot does a bard's instrument take up?
- 1:10:51
It takes up the instrument slot.
- 1:10:54
Yes.
- 1:10:55
So there will be an instrument slot that can be available as well and the bard can equip
- 1:11:02
something there.
- 1:11:03
But that is obviously subject to change.
- 1:11:04
It is something that has been of heavy discussion within the combat team and the player character
- 1:11:09
team and how we want to facilitate instrumentation.
- 1:11:13
And it's something that we haven't yet really delved into from development perspective.
- 1:11:16
It's a little bit later on our prioritization list.
- 1:11:20
But the intent is that there would be an instrument slot.
- 1:11:22
All right.
- 1:11:24
And Killjoy from the forum wants to know about node taxes.
- 1:11:27
Since taxes are set by the mayor, is there going to be a way to see the tax rates in
- 1:11:33
different nodes from like a world map or something like that?
- 1:11:36
So you can decide like, hmm, where should I take my strawberries today?
- 1:11:40
Yes, absolutely.
- 1:11:41
Yes.
- 1:11:42
If you want to take your strawberry somewhere where the man isn't trying to pinch every
- 1:11:46
dime out of you, you can go into your world map and you can hover state over certain
- 1:11:50
nodes and you'll be presented with some basic information of which of course, taxation will
- 1:11:55
be a component.
- 1:11:57
And then as you arrive in that node, you will also have additional UI interface that can
- 1:12:02
present you with more granular data such as active items on the warehouse and active items
- 1:12:09
on the auction house in that location and different types of services presented by the
- 1:12:14
service buildings.
- 1:12:15
All right.
- 1:12:16
And then we've got from Grand Serpent about active blocking.
- 1:12:22
Has the team considered grapples or guard breaks to go along with the potential active
- 1:12:28
blocking?
- 1:12:29
So kind of like what the player is looking for and wondering is if there will be ways
- 1:12:33
to interrupt or cancel another player's active blocking.
- 1:12:36
So I'm blocking you.
- 1:12:37
Yeah.
- 1:12:38
For sure.
- 1:12:40
There is intended to be an interaction between different types of reactive and predictive
- 1:12:47
skill sets of which if a player is in a state such as an active block or an active tumble
- 1:12:53
state, there will likely be some types of abilities that interact with reacting to those
- 1:12:59
types of states and will either overcome, surpass or cancel out those states, particularly
- 1:13:05
as it relates to not just active blocking, but also potentially passive blocking as well.
- 1:13:09
And that would be something probably related to physical penetration values as a stat or
- 1:13:17
even CC breaks that could be relevant as well for those types of things.
- 1:13:21
I think that's on the radar for the combat team, but it's something they haven't or they
- 1:13:25
actually are, I think, exploring.
- 1:13:29
Exploring active blocking, right?
- 1:13:30
Yeah, I know.
- 1:13:31
You're not sure if the final answer is that we will have active blocking or not.
- 1:13:34
Well, I just had a discussion with the combat team last week with Trad and with Brian about
- 1:13:41
how we're going to implement the active blocking into the Alpha 2 kits.
- 1:13:47
And that is something we are moving forward with right now.
- 1:13:50
That's going to be tested with a stamina based system, which is universal energy, of course,
- 1:13:53
across all the different classes.
- 1:13:56
And yeah, that'll be something we showcase in a future live stream, I think.
- 1:14:00
Right now it's very much in development.
- 1:14:02
So stay tuned, everybody, in regards to that.
- 1:14:04
I know that that's a hot, like, I was like, we also probably should address active blocking
- 1:14:09
as a whole, because I know last time we talked about this, we were like, we're exploring
- 1:14:13
it.
- 1:14:14
Yes.
- 1:14:15
And of course, we are not only exploring it now, we are actually actively developing
- 1:14:19
for it and we'll be testing with it, I believe, this sprint.
- 1:14:21
And things may change from Alpha 2.
- 1:14:23
I mean, that's why we want you guys to get your hands on it, test stuff, give us your
- 1:14:26
feedback.
- 1:14:28
And we'll be looking at data for that as well.
- 1:14:30
Our next question here is from Go, asking about world map information.
- 1:14:36
Will players be able to view their server's current VASL node networks on a world map
- 1:14:42
through a general filter, a special node building or other means?
- 1:14:46
Like, can they filter and find things?
- 1:14:48
Like if I'm looking for a specific building, can I figure out which node has that?
- 1:14:52
So I know where to go.
- 1:14:53
Yeah.
- 1:14:54
The only real question there is kind of how that how the user collects that information,
- 1:14:59
whether or not it's readily presented to the player just by being a player in the world,
- 1:15:05
or if they have to travel to locations and update that locations.
- 1:15:07
In the past, we talked about having a library that was capable of facilitating players exchanging
- 1:15:12
information for map data like that.
- 1:15:15
But we've moved a little bit more in a direction of just presenting that information upfront
- 1:15:18
to the player because travel is such a meaningful portion of the game and we don't have fast
- 1:15:23
travel.
- 1:15:25
So I think that for Alpha 2, what's planned is that we're going to be showcasing kind
- 1:15:30
of the intricate details of services offered at these node locations from just a UI presentation
- 1:15:37
standpoint within the map.
- 1:15:40
And that's going to service players being able to kind of strategize about their about
- 1:15:45
their travels.
- 1:15:46
All right.
- 1:15:48
And then Imoxsator wants to know about gear bonuses.
- 1:15:52
Will there be equipment gear bonuses for either single pieces or entire gear sets that offer
- 1:15:58
unique abilities that could change how a class is played?
- 1:16:03
And I think there's like two part from our end.
- 1:16:08
So I guess the fundamental of that question is, are there certain types of bonuses that
- 1:16:13
could impact the way you play your class?
- 1:16:16
I think the answer to that is yes.
- 1:16:19
Because anybody can wear any armor.
- 1:16:22
Correct.
- 1:16:23
Yes.
- 1:16:24
But at the fundamental is like if I were to get a set bonus that gave me a 10 percent
- 1:16:31
crit modifier on my waterfall stat and now I'm like, you know, critting often with my
- 1:16:36
weapon attacks or with my abilities, like I might lean in more towards being a crit heavy
- 1:16:41
focused class because of that particular bonus.
- 1:16:45
Whereas what I think what they're asking for is, am I going to get a item that gives me
- 1:16:51
like a fundamental new ability chain rather than augmenting my existing ability sets?
- 1:16:58
Right.
- 1:16:59
And I don't think the intent is to provide something new from an ability perspective
- 1:17:03
with majority of our set bonuses.
- 1:17:05
Right.
- 1:17:06
The intent is that we are augmenting existing waterfall stats with set bonuses and there
- 1:17:11
are going to be active skills that do get associated with certain types of pieces of
- 1:17:16
armor and or weapons.
- 1:17:18
Those will be much on the higher end if they're an active ability that comes with those things.
- 1:17:23
But I still don't think that the intended impact of those types of abilities is for
- 1:17:27
us to radically redefine the way a particular archetype might play.
- 1:17:34
Those determinations are made within the archetype kit and within the secondary archetype kit
- 1:17:39
as well.
- 1:17:40
All right.
- 1:17:42
And then Lashing wants to know about experience.
- 1:17:44
Apologies real quick.
- 1:17:46
One person asked, what is a waterfall stat?
- 1:17:48
A waterfall stat is a derivative of an attribute, right?
- 1:17:51
So if dexterity is your attribute stat and a waterfall from dexterity is critical rate,
- 1:17:57
that would be considered a waterfall stat, the critical rate.
- 1:18:00
Yeah, that terminology.
- 1:18:01
I'm sorry.
- 1:18:02
Usually I'm pretty good about catching that.
- 1:18:06
The next question is about experience debt from lashing.
- 1:18:09
Does experience debt at max level interact with rested experience?
- 1:18:14
So let's say I have experienced at max level.
- 1:18:16
Will I be able to use rest experience to gain that experience back?
- 1:18:21
Yes.
- 1:18:22
Yeah.
- 1:18:23
Rested experience is a modifier that occurs when you first receive the experience.
- 1:18:27
And then after that modifier happens, where that experience goes to buy down the debt
- 1:18:32
is what happens.
- 1:18:33
So if you have rested experience and you have experienced debt and you go out to collect
- 1:18:36
experience, you will be working that debt off faster because of the rested experience.
- 1:18:41
All right.
- 1:18:42
Cool, cool.
- 1:18:43
And with that, we have answered the questions from the forums.
- 1:18:46
Thank you all for submitting questions.
- 1:18:49
Every development update, we put out a new questions forum post.
- 1:18:53
So if you would like to get yours chosen, we pick 10 at random.
- 1:18:58
So make sure that you get your questions in and only ask one question.
- 1:19:03
Follow the rules.
- 1:19:05
And we will be selecting those for the next time.
- 1:19:09
But of course, as we wrap up today's, I can't believe if I feel like we've done so many
- 1:19:13
really long ones, that this feels very weird to be ending.
- 1:19:19
This was a this was a breathing stream.
- 1:19:22
And then next stream is going to be an exhale stream.
- 1:19:26
Yeah, I'm like, what is our next one?
- 1:19:31
Just kidding.
- 1:19:35
We do tease stuff on our social and things like that.
- 1:19:37
So if you want to know in advance, sometimes we do share that information earlier or on
- 1:19:42
our Discord and forums and things like that.
- 1:19:43
So definitely follow us in all the places where ashes of creation were super easy to
- 1:19:47
find our wonderful Peter, who is our social media manager does an amazing job keeping
- 1:19:52
that filled with content that you guys can all consume and interacting with you all.
- 1:19:57
So please, please go check those things out.
- 1:19:58
And of course, we're going to upload the full development update video tomorrow pending
- 1:20:03
the internet cooperates with us.
- 1:20:05
And of course, the 4k video for the gameplay segment will be out today.
- 1:20:09
And you can find those over on our YouTube channel.
- 1:20:11
And of course, on our next development update, if you want to be spotlighted for a comment,
- 1:20:15
make sure that you leave a comment and subscribe to our channel.
- 1:20:20
That way we can select you.
- 1:20:22
Oh, little little hint there.
- 1:20:25
Sorry, they said give hint.
- 1:20:29
There's your hint.
- 1:20:31
And of course, please head on over to our forums forums.
- 1:20:33
Ashes of creation.com.
- 1:20:35
We have a whole bunch of feedback requests over there to development updates that will
- 1:20:39
be our dev discussions that are going to be there for you to fill out as well as the events
- 1:20:44
update as well.
- 1:20:45
So event update forum thread, give us your feedback feedback.
- 1:20:50
The hint is that it's in the riverlands.
- 1:20:52
No, I'm kidding.
- 1:20:55
Too good.
- 1:20:56
I love it.
- 1:20:59
And then we also have the unseen order cosmetics that will be ending on July or January, January
- 1:21:04
17 2024 at 11am Pacific.
- 1:21:07
There's an FAQ with all the details of that.
- 1:21:09
And of course, as we noted here, alpha two is coming in 2024.
- 1:21:14
We are excited to have you all join us next year and is going to be very fun.
- 1:21:18
Our development team has been kicking butt and working hard and we are continuing to
- 1:21:23
do so.
- 1:21:24
And it is very exciting.
- 1:21:26
Of course, thank you so much for tuning in today.
- 1:21:29
We hope that you will come watch our next development update.
- 1:21:31
And thank you to Clayton, I mean, Scott, and all of the developers who have helped with
- 1:21:36
the events, event, event stream, and just Ashes of creation as a whole.
- 1:21:41
And of course, Steven for your time.
- 1:21:43
And we will see you all next month.
- 1:21:46
Bye everyone.
- 1:21:47
Bye.
- 1:21:48
Bye.
- 00:00
the
- 00:17
Hello everyone and welcome to our ashes of creation September update.
- 00:23
We hope that you are excited. I'm cozy. I've got my like, I know autumn sweater on. It's
- 00:31
this is the season is the season now we are finally in the autumn. Yes. It's my favorite
- 00:37
season. I love it so much. But of course, we have a wonderful show for you today. We
- 00:43
hope that you are excited. You've been waiting for a month. We've been waiting for a month.
- 00:47
We've got a lot of stuff that we've been doing internally. Maybe we'll talk a little bit
- 00:52
more about that on the studio update as well. But of course, today is a temporary agenda
- 00:59
is we have our reminders. We have an event update. And if you've been following us on
- 01:03
social, we've been letting folks know that is going to be a wave based combat. So get
- 01:07
excited for a little bit of combat action. I know folks are excited for that. I had a
- 01:12
lot of fun playing so yeah, we like like a mofo. And we've got our studio update.
- 01:22
Art update and Q&A as per usual. So jam packed. But hopefully today won't be as long. So you
- 01:31
know, just hopefully you have a good amount of snacks, some water. You don't need to buckle
- 01:36
in this time. We'll be a little shorter than normal. But of course, first we have some
- 01:42
quick updates and reminders. The first one here is that we do have a comment. So today's
- 01:48
comment spotlight from our YouTube video from our last development update is the idea behind
- 01:54
all these nodes are awesome, but I wonder how it will actually play out in the live
- 01:59
version. The problem is having player run or the problem with having player run towns
- 02:04
is that people come and go in video games. So will towns die out, etc. And this is from
- 02:09
name is too. So thank you name is for, you know, subscribing to our YouTube channel and
- 02:14
leaving a wonderful comment. Yeah, this is a good question. And fundamentally, you get
- 02:19
it a lot too. Absolutely we do. And it is it is something that's at the forefront of
- 02:24
how we, you know, design systems that are intended to provide player interaction and
- 02:30
player agency and player direction, right? One of the I wouldn't say downsides, but risks
- 02:37
of those types of mechanics and systems is that you do have the potential for either
- 02:42
bad faith actors. Excuse me, or just people who come and go as you said. And so, you know,
- 02:54
we incorporate as part of those designs, certain fail safes, certain protections, certain automated
- 03:01
progression that takes over when some of those decisions are lacking or are not made. And
- 03:07
those decisions can be defaulted. Now, of course, that would have a deleterious effect
- 03:13
on kind of the direction that a particular node might want to go because they're going
- 03:17
to be doing default behaviors or default actions as opposed to something that might be in line
- 03:21
with the strategic objective of that particular node or the specialization that the node has
- 03:26
previously been attempting to do. But that is why we have a regularly recurring election
- 03:32
period where players can take the reins of power and can elect someone else to come in
- 03:38
and participate and rewrite the ship, so to speak. So it is absolutely a component of
- 03:46
having player driven mechanics that there is an opportunity for things to be less than
- 03:50
ideal or less than strategic when certain bad faith actors or people leave. But there
- 03:58
are safeguards in place. Perfect. Hopefully that suffices for you. Name is too. I'm sure
- 04:08
you'll let us know what your thoughts are on it. And of course, if you do have thoughts
- 04:12
on any of these things, you can head on over to forums. We are very diligent about taking
- 04:16
player feedback. The next thing, speaking of player feedback, segue, we have some dev
- 04:24
discussions. The one that is currently out, we have our dream nodes. So if you have some
- 04:29
thoughts on what you would like your dream node to be, head on over and toss us your
- 04:34
feedback. And up and coming, we also will have a dev discussion about basic attacks
- 04:39
as well. So definitely, we would love to hear your thoughts. And this is a combination of
- 04:45
basic attacks and auto attacks as well, because I think in different games, people consider
- 04:50
these different things. So we have a lot of questions from the development team in regards
- 04:54
to how you would like to utilize those, whether you want to kind of stream them in between
- 04:59
your abilities or if you're not interested in that at all. So there will be a lot of
- 05:04
questions for you to answer there. And I do just want to emphasize that these dev discussions
- 05:10
are of critical importance to the development team. Obviously, the reason why, and I have
- 05:16
echoed this over the course of many years and then these development updates, but the
- 05:23
reason why it's so beneficial for us to partake in a transparent development process is because
- 05:28
it affords us the opportunity to collect that real time feedback and experiences and direction
- 05:34
to a degree from the consumers that we are creating this product for, from you guys,
- 05:40
the gamers, our community, right? So if you have the time to go and kind of give your
- 05:45
commentary on the things that you expect to see out of these types of systems, the experiences
- 05:50
that you've had in different games, what you've enjoyed about them, what you'd like to see
- 05:53
done differently, it is great because our community team and Margaret helps to shepherd
- 05:59
kind of all of these comments into an easily digestible format that the developers then
- 06:05
have an opportunity to see what you guys are saying. And that's something that I think
- 06:09
is super important to make sure that those touch points of communications between the
- 06:12
community and the development team is of critical importance to the development.
- 06:16
And I will say this as somebody who's worked in this industry for a very long time, I love
- 06:21
that Steven affords us that not every team gets, you know, two Q or two community managers
- 06:28
to be able to help with that. But Roshan and Bacchanar have been doing an amazing job and
- 06:32
getting resounding love from our development team in regards to their reports. So they
- 06:37
do a very diligent job in reading everything you guys post in all the spaces. So we really
- 06:43
appreciate it. And of course, to put a caveat on that as well, because I know there's the
- 06:47
counteract of that is that, of course, we're not going to do everything that players say.
- 06:53
You know, we do have a vision and direction of our product. And so we're going to try
- 06:57
to make the best decisions for us and what we want to create. But it is always nice to
- 07:01
make sure that we're all on the same page, because for the most part, that is that has
- 07:05
been the case. So just keeping that in mind.
- 07:09
Yeah, just to touch on that point real quick, the the elegance of filtering out the expression
- 07:15
from our player base who don't have, of course, in many cases, the experience of developing
- 07:20
a product like this, but have the experience of playing them and know what they like and
- 07:25
dislike. That is where the community team comes in and helps to filter out, you know,
- 07:31
kind of that feedback so that not only is it digestible, but that it's cohesive and
- 07:35
can make sense from a development perspective.
- 07:37
Yeah, it's, it's very well done. So thank you. Keep giving us your feedback. You know,
- 07:44
I think a lot of the times when you're a player of a game, you're like, why did they make
- 07:47
this decision? Well, we're sharing the journey with you. We're telling you why we're making
- 07:50
those decisions. And we're showing you each little bit as we move forward. So be a part
- 07:55
of it if it's something that you really want. And if you don't step away, it's okay. You
- 07:58
don't have to either, you know, make a decision that's best for you. Next up, of course, is
- 08:03
what are you giggling about? I'm sorry. I just saw someone in chat that's put in a picture
- 08:11
of me that ages over time into into gray.
- 08:15
You haven't seen that before?
- 08:16
No, I haven't seen that before.
- 08:17
Yeah, they've been using it on Discord too.
- 08:18
That's concerning and scary.
- 08:19
There's a lot of Steven memes out there. So some of them are pretty intricate videos
- 08:29
to Steven. He's like, I don't want to know. Next up, this is just a reminder, of course,
- 08:36
that the Unseen Order cosmetics, they are going to be our last preorder pack set. We
- 08:42
have an FAQ on our article or in our article. You can check that out at ashesofcreation.com
- 08:48
slash news and you'll see the Unseen Order section. This is the last preorder pack set
- 08:54
and it is going to end on January 17th, 2024 at 11am Pacific. This does not mean that we're
- 09:01
not going to ever do cosmetics ever again. Or that you're not going to ever have access
- 09:06
to Alpha 2 or Beta 1 or Beta 2 again, but there will just be different forms of how
- 09:11
you get access to that pending whether we think we can support more players for those.
- 09:16
Absolutely. And I do encourage as Margaret has in the past, take a look at the FAQ section
- 09:22
of that. You know, I went through the FAQ and provided as intricate as detailed answers
- 09:26
as I could regarding the potential for future pack sales. Obviously, that's predicated on
- 09:32
our internal and external testing periods that we will be incorporating over the course
- 09:36
of the coming time. It's important to note, the intent of these packages is not to elicit
- 09:43
a fear of missing out response by our community. That is why this last pack will be extended
- 09:50
to January 17th. January 17th. You got a lot of time. There's a lot of time there. In addition,
- 09:58
Alpha 2 will be a non-NDA'd testing period that you will have an opportunity to watch
- 10:06
and partake in from a viewership perspective, even if you're not participating from a playing
- 10:10
perspective. Alpha 2, I can't reiterate this enough, Alpha 2 is not an intended game experience.
- 10:18
It is a testing experience. It is something that players who are participating in Alpha
- 10:24
2 are assisting in the development of it. There may be wipes, there will be periods
- 10:29
of time where we're taking it down and we're iterating upon it. It is not intended to be
- 10:34
a fun experience per se, although I believe it will be a fun experience.
- 10:37
I think it will be fun.
- 10:38
I think it will be fun. But it is intended to test our core systems. It is intended to
- 10:44
test our network architectures. It is intended to prepare the game for an official launch,
- 10:50
so our prepares for betas.
- 10:52
And our core systems.
- 10:53
And our core systems. And to that end, do not feel like if you are not participating
- 10:58
in Alpha 2 that you're missing out on something. This is not integral to the play experience
- 11:05
you will have when the game launches. And so that's something that's very important.
- 11:08
I mean, look at the journey that we've had so far, right? See where the game was before
- 11:12
and where it's at now. Or if you saw the Alpha 1 footage, which is, you know, you can Google
- 11:18
that because that was also non-UNDA'd. You can see how far we've come from that, too.
- 11:24
Absolutely.
- 11:25
There's definitely going to be a journey here. And you can be part of that whether you're
- 11:30
in game or being able to watch and tell someone else what you want them to do.
- 11:36
Sure.
- 11:37
Maybe we can get the programmers to do a chat character where like you chat, try to make
- 11:43
the character do things would be fun. Maybe not for Alpha 2, but that could be a cool
- 11:48
experience. But yeah, just wanted to remind people that there is an FAQ. Make sure you
- 11:52
check that out, that this will be the last pack set for now. And we are thinking about
- 11:59
how we want to move forward with other potential shop stuff as well. I know exclusivity has
- 12:04
been a problem that people are concerned about. And I think in future shop items, we will
- 12:09
kind of remove some of that element so we can rotate in things. So if you missed it,
- 12:14
there will be an opportunity for you to get it again later rather than right now where
- 12:17
everything's very much exclusive. But that's kind of how we've had stuff set up. And with
- 12:24
that, I think we are on to our events update if you're ready.
- 12:29
Yes, I'm ready for it. Absolutely. So I didn't do a lot of prefacing this time in the video
- 12:38
to my dismay after the recording was completed because now of course that's a standalone
- 12:43
on YouTube and some people may not hear that this is a work in progress. But hopefully
- 12:47
I've said it enough prior to that, that it just carries forward.
- 12:50
I know.
- 12:51
But regardless, I know. But regardless, I do want to preface now that what you guys
- 12:56
are about to see is a bit different than what you saw with our story arc system. And it
- 13:04
is different from our commissions system. This is our event system. And to be clear,
- 13:11
what you're going to see is an example of the event system that showcases types of content
- 13:17
that can be popped up in the world around you based on predicates of what's happening
- 13:23
in the world. And this particular event that you're going to see a pop up of is with regards
- 13:29
to a destructed caravan that's having some wave assault by some bandits. And the reason
- 13:38
for that event kicking off is because in the background there might be negotiations, there
- 13:43
might be advancement in relationship status between nodes that cause the thematic element
- 13:50
of this pop up event being a automated caravan moving throughout the world or whatever that
- 13:56
hit the snag of the bandit encounter and players in the area around it have an opportunity
- 14:01
to participate. Now there's a lot of different predicate systems that are involved in the
- 14:05
event system and they correlate in some way, shape or form to some other types of world
- 14:11
states that are happening within Vera at the time and that give players an opportunity
- 14:16
to interact with those events and receive rewards and receive experience and receive
- 14:21
gold and receive some loot tables off of that. And these pop up kind of around the world,
- 14:26
right? So you're going to be seeing an example of that here in the upcoming Alpha 2. And
- 14:33
this is a video that Clayton and Scott and Aimee and a lot of others have obviously helped
- 14:38
to stand up the event system so that it is a very versatile way to deliver content to
- 14:44
the players. So as a disclaimer, of course, this is all a work in progress. This is still
- 14:49
an alpha state. The UI is pending additional development as is the visual effects and some
- 14:55
of the performance indicators. But this gives you an idea of what you can expect coming
- 15:00
in Alpha 2. So we do have an article of other events too. So if you want some more event
- 15:07
action, you can check that out. Oh, and real quick. Yeah, sorry. One last thing. I know
- 15:12
some people are constantly asking us about Alpha 2. We are going to have a little bit
- 15:18
of an announcement here at the end of the stream. Not too much hype, just giving a little
- 15:22
bit of direction with regards to expectations for Alpha 2. But we will talk about that after
- 15:27
the event showcase.
- 15:28
All right. See you on the flip side.
- 15:53
Hello everyone and welcome to another live stream from the glorious world of Vera. And
- 15:59
we have an exciting showcase to give you all today. We're going to be talking about our
- 16:05
event system. And I am actually joined by three of our absolutely wonderful developers
- 16:12
with whom you've spoken with in the past on some other live streams. We have one of our
- 16:17
glorious engineers, Clayton. Clayton, how you doing buddy?
- 16:20
Absolutely wonderful, glorious. What an introduction. I'm doing great. I know. Really, really, really
- 16:25
so many words to show off all of our hard work. So very excited to see it with you and
- 16:31
excited to chat with the community about it. I know you guys have been doing a lot of hard
- 16:35
work on this. We also have two of our wonderful designers. Scott, how you doing buddy?
- 16:41
Excellent. I'm very excited to be here.
- 16:43
Yay. And I'm me. I mean, how are you doing?
- 16:46
I'm good. Last time I was here, we took down two mocks, so I'm ready today. I'm playing
- 16:51
cleric again. So yeah, I got your back.
- 16:56
Thank you. Okay. So you heard it here first, folks. If I die, it's of course not my fault.
- 17:04
It would be the cleric's fault. No, but okay. So where are we? We are in a familiar biome.
- 17:11
Many of you guys should be expecting where we are. We are in the wonderful riverlands.
- 17:16
We are a little bit east of the last live stream location, which was the windstead node.
- 17:22
Yeah, I see carfen in the distance.
- 17:24
Yep. Carfen is even further east from windstead. So we're kind of sandwiched between windstead
- 17:28
and carfen right now. No big curse happening right now. So it's a nice day out.
- 17:33
Okay. So it's a nice day out. There's not like any type of blood curse or undead roaming
- 17:37
the area.
- 17:38
No, not at the moment. No.
- 17:39
Okay, very cool. And what are we doing here in the riverlands? Talk to me a little bit
- 17:45
about what has brought us out here. And I'm going to jump off my glorious steed here while
- 17:50
we talk about that.
- 17:51
Absolutely. So we're actually just out here to kill some mobs, grind some experience,
- 17:57
get some resources maybe out of the land here. And eventually the world should react to that
- 18:03
and we could potentially create an event here.
- 18:07
I see a web weaver. So okay, so our objective right now is we're going to be showing off,
- 18:14
obviously, the event system. And part of that event system is that it can take a whole host
- 18:20
of different predicates to kind of kick off different types of events. Clayton, talk to
- 18:24
me a little bit about what that means.
- 18:26
He's on me. He's on me. Yeah. As soon as I'm not dying. But yeah, so the event system,
- 18:34
it can query a lot of different aspects of the dynamic world state. Right now it's actually
- 18:40
just tracking player activity in the world and for this event in particular. And it's
- 18:48
looking for us to kill some stuff. So we're out here killing some stuff and eventually
- 18:51
the event should trigger once it's detected enough player activity.
- 18:57
Very cool. And this type of predicate that is essentially the activity map for killing,
- 19:04
yeah, the activity map. That's not the only way that these events can get kicked off.
- 19:08
There's a whole host of different ways that they can also get kicked off.
- 19:11
For sure. Yeah. So we have a really, really awesome system that the designers have access
- 19:15
to that lets them hook into really any dynamic world state and use that to inform the instantiation
- 19:24
or even just like the progression of any event.
- 19:28
Very cool. These spiders are gross.
- 19:34
Scott, what are some plans that you have for different predicates for instantiating some
- 19:41
of these events? Yeah. So obviously we just got this kind of
- 19:45
generic sort of kill one here that we can use for all sorts of different things for
- 19:49
tracking player activity. Nope, big bear time. We also are looking at the amount of resources
- 19:55
that players can harvest as a predicate. We have story arcs that are going on. So active
- 20:01
stories to cause different events to start. Yeah. Great caravans happening, relationships
- 20:06
between different nodes and also just the state of the nodes themselves.
- 20:10
Oh, you and let him beat me up here because it's kind of cool.
- 20:15
He's charging you. Oh, he will throw you around. Those bears can really catch you off guard
- 20:23
if you let them. Okay. So I see that a nearby event has started.
- 20:30
The predicate has been met. Oh, and I see now on the mini map we have
- 20:34
a little bit of a location for it. Yeah. So just south of us here, we were just
- 20:40
kind of the event has kind of kicked off because of the just us killing stuff around in the
- 20:45
area here. And we might see some visual indicators over
- 20:50
the hill here in a second. And so when one of these events kick off,
- 20:55
it's not just obviously notifying players based off of their proximity with the mini
- 20:59
map and with the UI toast that pops up. But also, as you said, Clayton, we have a visual
- 21:04
indicator in world that's also rooting the the event as well.
- 21:08
Yeah, for sure. You know, Scott can probably touch on, you know, the diegetic nature of
- 21:13
all of our narrative content and the the goals there. But oh, wait, hold on. Before we get
- 21:21
too close. I'm seeing that there's some gray shore archers and a gray shore swordsman.
- 21:27
Oh, OK. All right. Oh, should I join this event as a defender team?
- 21:32
I should definitely. Yes, that'll allow if some other players do come around while we're
- 21:38
playing, that'll allow them to join the event raid group with us. So we've effectively taken
- 21:45
the party that we had preformed and merged that into a new raid group.
- 21:52
OK, I slept a couple of these of the highway captains. There's some of them on the settlers
- 21:59
right now. OK, and the settlers are an objective type that exists within this particular archers.
- 22:07
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, my God. There's a lot of no, they're sniping from up on top
- 22:12
of the rocks. Thanks, Amy. Oh, I see. I'm sorry. I'm going to go for the long guns down.
- 22:19
Oh, God. Oh, no, no, no. The event difficulty did change, though. That's why the event difficulty
- 22:27
is a good thing. It means we got back up. There are people here to help us. And oh,
- 22:31
yeah, I see them on the hill. They're coming down. They joined the raid.
- 22:35
We were we're distracting the bandits from the settlers right now. So that's good. None
- 22:41
of them have died. Caravan integrity is good. OK, I see the caravan integrity on the on
- 22:51
the event. No, no, no. It looks like they're mostly just going for the settlers right now.
- 22:57
Oh, no. Those poor settlers. We've we've kept them up. Nope. I just saw one die. Oh, God.
- 23:03
Two of them. Two of them went out at once. All right. I shouldn't have mentioned it.
- 23:11
They would have been fine. So our objective here is to protect the settlers while we eliminate
- 23:16
twenty times. OK. OK, but there's probably another wave coming. Yes, there's still some
- 23:26
shore. There's still some great shore people. Well, I see some of them coming from northeast.
- 23:32
There's an arsonist coming. There we go. There we go. Oh, and some from downhill northwest
- 23:37
too. Scott, why are they coming from the north? So we're actually pretty near one of our POI,
- 23:44
which is actually under bandit control. The aptly named Highwayman Hills is just over the
- 23:50
corner, just around the corner here. So they'll be attacking NPCs kind of in this area until
- 23:55
such a time as players deal with it via story. And the settlers are trying to keep these
- 24:04
guys alive, right? OK. All right. We did it. OK. OK. OK. So it says prepare for the final
- 24:13
assault. This is this is staged based off of our kind of our progress, our activity,
- 24:19
our success. What is this? Yeah. So we we defeated the requisite number of bandits there,
- 24:27
which is going to progress the stage here. And during this stage here, we can reset some
- 24:32
of the traps that the bandits used to initially destroy the convoy and we can use those against
- 24:37
the bandits in the next phase, which is actually more difficult. So. Yeah, we'll definitely
- 24:42
need them whenever they the bandits do come with reinforcements, they're probably going
- 24:48
to be bringing their best, so. Especially because we have more players now, so the difficulty
- 24:53
of the event will be more when there are more players. And of course, like all things in
- 24:57
Ashes, the more difficult the challenge, the better the rewards. And also, you know, our
- 25:03
clerics can have some time to heal up the the settlers and, you know, hopefully set
- 25:09
us up for success whenever the next round does come in. And how do we how do we leverage
- 25:15
the reward system? How are people, you know, getting calculated what rewards they should
- 25:19
get for events like this? We have kind of a number of metrics that we can use. I think
- 25:26
we're going to be doing a lot of testing to figure out what the best metrics are, because
- 25:29
there are some ups and downs using like the amount of damage you've done, you know, in
- 25:33
the in the raid and stuff like that. And we're also like more relaxed things like how much
- 25:38
time you spent participating in the event, whether that's doing damage or healing allies
- 25:42
and things like that as a as a percentage of the total time of the event. They all have
- 25:47
their drawbacks and benefits. Some are, you know, we got to be careful about. Yeah. But
- 25:52
yeah, we'll just count up the contribution, however we end up balancing that. And then
- 25:57
we have different tiers of rewards that are given to each individual player based off
- 26:01
of their contribution score in the event. As it works right now, it is just simply a
- 26:06
matter of how much time you've participated in the event as a percentage of the total
- 26:10
time of the event. Very nice. And so as that kind of as that winds down, people will be,
- 26:17
you know, granted a gold, silver, bronze tier kind of reward status, and that will be the
- 26:22
entitlement for the types of rewards they get from these events. And really, that's
- 26:26
just going to determine the reward table that they're going to get. And then each player
- 26:29
is going to roll their own reward table independently. Very nice. I hope I'm going to get rewarded
- 26:35
for all the healing I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you deserve it. Raid leader. Yep.
- 26:42
Our timer is up and Corvin, the crusher appears to be on the way. Oh, God, he's coming. All
- 26:50
right. We're going to need healing almost immediately. Oh, my God, there's a lot. I'm
- 26:57
going to try to sleep some of them. Oh, never mind. There's multiple balls of lightning.
- 27:03
See if I can line this up right. You can try and use the wraps as best I can. Man, this
- 27:16
is really great. I am on fire. We have them in a choke point right now. We definitely
- 27:20
want to keep them away. Oh, there's birds. We want to keep them away from the caravan
- 27:23
and in this choke point. I got him to trigger the trap over here. I'm hitting them with
- 27:27
a lot of A.O.E.s right now. And the only objective here, as you can see from the tracker, is
- 27:34
to kill Corvin. So until Corvin goes down. Yeah, I'm trying to prioritize their healing
- 27:40
and DPS so that we can have a better chance here. I think with the raid group of eight,
- 27:48
we seem to be set up for success here. Corvin, the crusher. I mean, Scott, would either of
- 27:55
you want to touch on the event difficulty tier and what we intend to do with that as
- 28:00
more players join the event? Well, as soon as people join in, I yeah, it just gets more
- 28:08
difficult. I don't know if you saw, but we had a toast saying that the event has progressed
- 28:18
from its original state as a group event to a raid level event. It was a veteran, veteran
- 28:25
level. And of course, that comes with more challenges, more optional objectives, but
- 28:30
also more rewards. So it's never it's never going to be like a bother to have other people
- 28:38
join you. It's it's all part of part of being in a like multiplayer environment is, you
- 28:45
know, the more friends join up with you, the better. Yeah, you know, I think it's cool
- 28:53
that you touched on the rewards because, yeah, the designers have have the ability, you know,
- 28:59
from a technical perspective to use the difficulty to your however they like in the event. They
- 29:03
can modify any aspect of the events difficulty or even, you know, the reward that you're
- 29:08
getting. They can query that in the reward table data. We're doing pretty good here.
- 29:13
This caravan hasn't really been taking much damage at all. Yeah, the tank was able to
- 29:18
intercept him at that choke point. So yeah, that seems to be working to this elite healer
- 29:24
is rough. Yeah, they should be very hard to kill. Some of the great shore swordsmen and
- 29:31
the archers are still alive. We can change that. We have the technology. There we go.
- 29:39
Oh, we did it. We win. Congratulations. The reward. Well, you know, there's also a grateful
- 29:48
settler here presenting us the reward. Maybe something to say. Let me talk to him. Greetings,
- 29:56
grateful settler. Praise Ariok. They might have killed us without your intervention.
- 30:03
Please help yourself. I will help myself. Thank you. What type of supplies are we talking
- 30:08
about? Oh, you're one of those heroes. Unbelievable. This is a difficult, difficult task. You know,
- 30:16
you just head over to Highwayman Hills and join the bandits. Even unbelievable claim.
- 30:22
Unbelievable. I am a hero in this. I'm a mayor of a local. No, my God. A shame it came to
- 30:29
violence. We are hopeful we could leave that behind on Sanctus. Okay. Yeah, I'm I'm hopeful
- 30:34
of that too. But you know, sometimes we can't just get what we hope for. So, whoa, we got
- 30:39
some wool. Yep. We got some wool. Okay. I got some wool. You're also granted on the
- 30:47
events completion. You're granted like a little stipend of golden experience just right away.
- 30:51
But items that can be looted off your body, they have to come from like a reward chest.
- 30:55
So every event will have its own reward cash at the end of it. You'll grab your materials
- 30:59
items from. And I actually got some ash and timber as my reward. Why'd you get Tim ash
- 31:05
and timber? Well, that rolled. I got that reward from my reward table. Maybe I participated
- 31:11
better than you. So I got a better resource. How dare you? I was out there doing a lot
- 31:16
of work. And it's got this. This NPC is also configured to actually interface with some
- 31:22
of the story art content to write if the story arcs were online. It's true. Yeah, I think
- 31:26
they it is online. Actually, it's just not active. Check it again. Oh, okay. Where am
- 31:32
I going? Talk to the guy again. I think you might have missed a dialogue option or it
- 31:35
didn't pop up. Okay. Okay. The top one. Who are these people? Why were they? Who are these
- 31:39
people? Let's see. They're desperate folks who prowl the hills. Captain Udoxia in Lion
- 31:47
Hold is looking into the matter. I should seek her out and find if there is a better
- 31:51
way I could help around here. You know what I will do. Okay, here we go. I see a lot of
- 32:02
different placeholder rewards. A bridge too far. Yeah, the rewards for the for a lot of
- 32:08
the quests are still not fully done yet. But the events do hook into all of our story
- 32:15
art content. So if there are story arcs online, we can like since our quests are nonlinear,
- 32:20
this can help you kind of into those quests. If they're online, this event can happen whether
- 32:25
or not the story is online. But if it is, you can pick up the like, leave in to that
- 32:31
quest from him. If you're not, you know, if you haven't been to Lion Hold in a while since
- 32:34
the story arc has started. Very cool. And so obviously, you know, people saw a little
- 32:40
bit during this event that the adaptive difficulty was predicated on the number of participants
- 32:46
that opt in to to to partake in this event, right? Correct. Yes. So as more players join,
- 32:56
the event does get more difficult with we went from the regular mobs to the elite mobs
- 33:02
in Corvin's Entourage. Some of them can be, you know, more, more enemies to fight. Some
- 33:09
can have completely different stages or mechanics, depending on which what the event actually
- 33:13
is and what your objectives are for that event. And these these events are based off of different
- 33:21
predicates within the world state. So, for example, this particular event was a caravan
- 33:24
that was moving throughout the world. And as you as we said in the beginning, it was
- 33:27
based off of the activity heat map of players within this area. But this type of event,
- 33:33
this caravan event that was transiting goods popped up because nearby nodes may have either
- 33:38
been advancing the relationship between each other or there might have been a trade caravan
- 33:43
that got kicked off in the past. And we're representing kind of that that theming within
- 33:49
the world by these event types. Correct. Yes. So events are predicated by things that players
- 33:54
are doing, whether that is node development, trade agreements between nodes, all of that,
- 34:00
like relationships between nodes. I mean, so it could be more than just that could be
- 34:04
war states or anything like that as well. So I noticed that even though we succeeded
- 34:10
in the event, we're still in our event raid group. Scott, what's the thought behind that?
- 34:13
Are we supposed to go and adventure with our new group right now? If we so desire, if we
- 34:18
so desire? Yeah, the event ending doesn't dissolve the open party for the event. The
- 34:23
open parties have some sort of default like party configurations that can't be changed.
- 34:29
So they'll be stuck with a group and stuff like that. But we do try to encourage people
- 34:33
to continue to stick together and play together. The game the game is hard. So it's good to
- 34:39
put it's good to play friends. Yeah, I just left the raid. I don't want to play with you.
- 34:45
He's going to join the bandits. I called it. Yes, I'm looking for the highway men who bandage
- 34:49
it. Very cool. Okay. And then obviously we saw during the event, there are obviously
- 34:55
multiple stages that exist. Each of those stages having unique mechanics associated
- 34:59
with them. There are a lot of different types of events. I mean that you and the narrative
- 35:04
team and Scott that you guys are working on creating each of those event types will have
- 35:08
different similar stages like we saw there was a trap stage here that we can set up.
- 35:13
Is it intended that these stages are going to provide players with kind of downtime to
- 35:17
recuperate and also perhaps set up and strategize how they want to address the upcoming challenge?
- 35:23
Well, I don't really know about you, but I'm my heart's beating right now. I feel like
- 35:28
we've been challenged and of course there's going to be moments where there are like less
- 35:36
less challenges which rely less on your class kit than usual. But I think that in general,
- 35:44
if you want to like really get down and understand the story and appreciate the world, then probably
- 35:52
you're going to want to focus more in the story arcs where you can take things at your
- 35:56
own pace. We have we have some events that do other things like there could be some that
- 36:01
are just puzzles. We have an event in here that is actually just like you can attend
- 36:07
a funeral for just an NPC that can pop up and there isn't actually any combat to do
- 36:12
in that one. Rewards are adequately scaled. There are events in here that are just kind
- 36:17
of for flavor and for fleshing out the world a little bit to that you can participate in
- 36:20
and learn more about. Yeah, I think there are going to be some moments where where you
- 36:24
might be like frustrated that an event is like obscuring something that you want to
- 36:28
get to like a NPC that you need to talk to for your quest or something. So then then
- 36:34
gathering people to help you is going to be really useful. Awesome. Very cool. And that
- 36:40
that event there at the last stage had kind of like a little mini boss dude. Is that kind
- 36:46
of a component of all events that you guys are intending to incorporate or just kind
- 36:50
of some events will have those mini bosses? Some will have them. There's going to be a
- 36:55
whole lot of these and they're going to be at different tiers of challenge and you know,
- 37:01
kind of, I guess, like power level tiers. You know, they're not all going to be, you
- 37:08
know, defeating the, you know, and all dragon being at the end. Some are just, you know,
- 37:15
about helping people. There's some are about just building up the world of Verra, which
- 37:21
is a very difficult and challenging place as people are trying to resettle it. There's
- 37:25
there's all kinds of tiers for different levels of heroism. I'm helping the small time people
- 37:29
to downing giant foes. And these are obviously a bit different than what people have seen
- 37:36
previously with Carfinn where we showed off kind of the story arc system that fundamentally
- 37:40
changes a particular location or area for an extended period of time that exists within
- 37:46
stages that are might be multi days in length. These are more bite sized, kind of digestible
- 37:52
end to end 20 minute gameplay, right? Right. Definitely shorter than a story arc, which
- 37:58
yeah, as you said, as you mentioned before, is meant to be taken kind of at a slower pace.
- 38:02
Can your individual path through the story arc is a little bit more measured, like you're
- 38:06
less reliant on like the pace of the actual story arc. It's more about your own personal
- 38:12
paces through the quests. And then as the story arc advances over time, like over the
- 38:17
course of days, then you can dive back into it and get more involved in it again. Very
- 38:23
cool. And then if there are people who might be problematic to a particular event, like
- 38:33
this Jindrak guy. Oh, OK. I think it's triggering again. Like this Jindrak guy, we could like,
- 38:40
you know, attack them or something. Oh, we could. Yes. If you were aligned with the bandits,
- 38:46
maybe. And there are some events that do have you pick sides in PvP. Yeah. You know, whenever
- 38:52
Steven joined this event, he had one option to just merge us into the event raid group.
- 38:56
This was a PvE event. But there are going to be events with sanctioned PvP where there
- 39:03
are multiple team options to join. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. OK, very cool. Well,
- 39:11
I'll let Jindrak live this time. Guys, that was a super exciting event showcase. I know
- 39:17
that the community loved to kind of see this stuff. Obviously, events are an integral component
- 39:21
of making the world feel kind of dynamic and representative of what is happening around
- 39:26
the area. It gives people insight into particular locations and the type of activities that
- 39:32
might be occurring. But it also gives really interesting ways for us as players to interact
- 39:36
with that environment and effect change as well and be rewarded for that activity. I
- 39:42
think it's super cool. You guys did a great job with standing up the event system and
- 39:46
populating the world with really compelling activities. So thank you for showing us a
- 39:50
little bit of the work you guys have been doing towards Alpha 2. I know that the community
- 39:54
loves it and we'll be back on stream to talk a little bit more about this. All right. Thanks
- 40:00
for having me, Stephen. Bye. Thanks, Stephen. Absolutely. Bye, everybody.
- 40:05
Whoops. Welcome back. Why'd you say whoops? Oh, my light went out. In the office, it went
- 40:18
out right at the end there. Oh, no. Hopefully the Internet's going to be OK. It's just light.
- 40:24
I will play the video in the background so you all can watch that. We do have some questions
- 40:29
from chat about some things. So one of the things was to kind of set expectations for
- 40:36
parties. We did talk about how when you disband a party or when you end it, you know, we do
- 40:44
encourage you to group up and stay together. But people are wondering if they have to like
- 40:49
fully reform their parties or what the plan is in regards to that.
- 40:53
Yeah. So there is an option, as we said at the end, to kind of stick around in that raid
- 40:58
and to go off and do some additional things with each other. Obviously, we want to encourage
- 41:02
players to kind of cooperate and work with one another. That is an MMO after all. And
- 41:07
that is the name of the game. But at the same time, if people want to convert back into
- 41:11
a party or if they want to move from that raid, they are more than welcome to do so.
- 41:15
Right. And then what happens if someone joins the event and then like goes MIA, goes to
- 41:22
get a coffee, goes to the bathroom, leaves? Does that still keep the difficulty?
- 41:29
Yeah. So there is a way that we kind of heat map player activity during the event to help
- 41:35
inform that difficulty. It's not just going to be based purely off of the number of participants
- 41:40
within the area or within the raid. That's something that is dynamic and scales accordingly.
- 41:46
But the idea here is that, you know, we can't necessarily predict the number of players
- 41:50
that are going to be participating in these types of events, of course, because not only
- 41:54
is it opt in, but it's also kind of situationally and locationally relevant to the player activity.
- 42:01
Now, those events kicked off based off of local player activity. As you saw here, we're
- 42:06
killing the bears, we're killing the spiders. That was one of the predicates that kind of
- 42:09
kicked this local event off. The event was then thematically relevant to kind of activities
- 42:14
that were happening around the zone. And that was like relationship between nodes that was
- 42:18
progressing that caused this theming to be about a caravan being assaulted by bandits
- 42:25
for supplies. And so it kind of gives you a touch point to the rest of the world and
- 42:29
what's happening there. But we want to scale that difficulty to a degree, right? And we're
- 42:35
not talking about like scaling up the players power or scaling down the power of the NPCs,
- 42:40
but rather how many additional spawners start to activate, what different types of NPCs
- 42:45
start to join? Are they going to be elites? Is there the boss? Right? Those types of those
- 42:49
types of things are scalable as part of the event system.
- 42:54
Cool, and then are you able to heal the caravan settlers and things like that? I know that
- 43:01
you were, but we want to clarify like that you do need to protect them to some extent.
- 43:08
Are there implications for if you don't like if a bunch of people die that you're supposed
- 43:12
to be guarding? Will you get less reward? What's the for sure there is the ability to
- 43:17
fail. I know that that is a strange concept for a lot of us nowadays playing more modern
- 43:23
games, but there is absolutely a way to fail. And some of those ways include how you're
- 43:30
going to expend resources, not just for your fellow players, but for some of the objectives
- 43:35
that might be present within the event as well. And those resources that mainly being
- 43:40
your mana in this circumstance with regards to healing those those NPCs is, I think, a
- 43:47
relevant and interesting component that makes it a little bit more dynamic.
- 43:50
All right, and then do the events have cooldowns or could players force the event to spawn
- 43:58
endlessly? Events absolutely do have cooldowns. They cannot be forced to spawn repeatedly
- 44:05
over and over again. Those cooldowns are not just something that's based on a timer. They're
- 44:10
also predicated on certain actions occurring within the world once more or at different
- 44:16
times. And so again, the most important thing about this system is that when we're talking
- 44:22
about being out in a hunting grounds or being out, you know, transiting across the world,
- 44:29
these events are constantly popping up around the zones, right? And they kind of follow
- 44:34
player activity and movement. And there's a whole host of different types of events
- 44:39
from a content standpoint that reflect to the state of the world. And so it's important
- 44:46
that like as players are doing these things, these are additional levels of experience
- 44:51
grants and reward tables that can be accessible based off of cooperation with other players
- 44:57
in the area. All right, and then the last one here is what
- 45:04
would have happened if the raid group failed the event? I know that you talked a little
- 45:08
bit about this before, but would something have happened if we wouldn't have saved?
- 45:14
Yeah, so so events that get kicked off. If you would not have saved everybody, if this
- 45:20
event would have failed and actually it failed many times in testing, but if this event would
- 45:27
have failed, it would have contributed to a world state tracker, right? And and events
- 45:32
kind of can roll. The event outcome can inform other events as predicates as well, right?
- 45:42
And when you get enough events that are being failed. When you get enough events that are
- 45:48
being failed, that can trigger a bigger event. And when a bigger event fails, that can trigger
- 45:54
potentially a story arc and that can trigger potentially atrophy events like there's it's
- 46:02
a cascading foundational system that serves to predicate how other instances of dynamic
- 46:12
reactive world. Activities respond to player choices, player efforts, player successes
- 46:21
and failures, right? What we're building is a very comprehensive, responsive world, and
- 46:26
I know a lot of times in different games you hear the buzzwords of like dynamic and responsive
- 46:30
and reactive and you know whatever, but we are building the mechanics to inform those
- 46:37
systems from a very scaling foundational perspective which can culminate into big. Server changing
- 46:47
things happening right and this is at the very ground level of that overarching system.
- 46:54
You guys saw a little bit of the story arc system with carfin and how it fundamentally
- 46:59
changed the visuals of that of that area. But what can help inform carfin story arc
- 47:06
kicking off is how these smaller feeding events what the outcome of those are right so so
- 47:13
that's that's how we get the world that feels. Respective of player action. Yeah, there's
- 47:20
things that happen that have a domino effect of other things happening and depending on
- 47:25
how that thing happened it may change and it doesn't always have to be the same things
- 47:30
that are always happening. This is why when we said that every server will kind of pretty
- 47:34
much be very very different from another server it would be very very unlikely that they will
- 47:40
be exactly the same and in the same state because you have to take very specific actions
- 47:46
at the same time to make those things line up that way. Of course the video that we have
- 47:53
will be up in 4k so if you want to see that you can head on over to our YouTube channel
- 47:57
after the stream. I'm going to stand up and move around so I can get my light. Yeah, because
- 48:01
the motion lights. Someone should someone at the office come wave around. It will not
- 48:10
pick me up even though I'm moving around. That's funny you don't move fast enough you're
- 48:14
like sloth mode. And of course we also have a forum event update feedback thread as well
- 48:21
so if you have any thoughts after watching this and of course after you're able to like
- 48:26
kind of move things around on the live stream or watch it either on Twitch or YouTube you
- 48:30
can feel free to toss your feedback our way. We of course will be compiling a report for
- 48:35
development in order to ensure that they get all the information from what you guys what
- 48:40
your thoughts are so share those with us. And with that we shall move over to studio
- 48:47
update. Studio update yes. It's funny actually I was watching in chat somebody said how can
- 48:57
I become a developer for this? Yeah, come work with us. That's a nice little segue.
- 49:06
Yeah studio update things are going great at the studio. We are continuing to grow.
- 49:11
We are ending our our milestone actually this week actually I think it ended the end of
- 49:17
last week. We are currently transitioning into our next milestone right now. It ends
- 49:21
the 29th today. 29th oh it ends today that's right. And next week we are having about 20
- 49:29
of our remote employees are flying in for our milestone seven preparation and kickoff
- 49:34
in San Diego and we're gonna have some fun events with the team doing some bowling nights
- 49:41
and some full day reviews of our milestone and play testing and it is an exciting time
- 49:49
here at the studio and I wanna take a moment to. I wanna take a moment to talk a little
- 49:59
bit about the state of our industry and you know be respective of the fact that you know
- 50:07
not everywhere in the gaming industry in the tech industry in general right now the economy
- 50:11
is obviously a point of concern. There's a lot of layoffs that have been happening and
- 50:16
and it is a it is a very unfortunate and terrible thing. Of course I made a little bit of a
- 50:21
statement on Twitter yesterday and on LinkedIn you know our hearts go out to those individuals
- 50:27
and and it is an it is an incredible experience to be a part of teams that create the magic
- 50:33
that games are because really they are magical. I mean games are games are a very important
- 50:40
part of our lives right. It is important to have a work life balance and part of of everyone
- 50:46
out there who are in this audience that that get to have downtime and experience games
- 50:51
with their friends and their families and and and and kind of de-stress with that. It
- 50:55
takes a lot to make those things and it takes a lot of effort and dedication and commitment
- 51:02
and when things outside of your control and outside of your power impact your ability
- 51:07
to do that it's obviously a moment of pause and reflection and Intrepid intends and strives
- 51:13
to be one of those places that takes that takes sustainable growth practices as part
- 51:22
of building up our company and our team in the efforts to deliver this product. Now of
- 51:28
course MMOs are the biggest game you can make. Our MMORPG is probably one of the more ambitious
- 51:36
ones and from the get-go we knew and you guys knew from a community perspective that this
- 51:42
was going to be a journey and it continues to be that but every time we onboard a new
- 51:47
person to this company to our team to our Intrepid family and I know that's a hot button
- 51:52
they should even use that word sometimes in a work setting but I that is the type of feeling
- 51:58
we we we try to achieve at Intrepid. Every time we onboard someone new we do so with
- 52:05
the conscious effort to to to know what the end goal is in our development journey and
- 52:13
to treat that team member that family member with the type of of respect for their work
- 52:21
and and participation in this project right and so if you know somebody that's been impacted
- 52:30
by these layoffs recently if if you guys are in the ecosphere of of Twitter and or LinkedIn
- 52:37
of these developers who are some of your favorite developers that have worked on projects in
- 52:40
the past and you've seen the the product of their toils then make sure to send them a
- 52:46
message and let them know that we exist that Ashes of Creation is a project and that we
- 52:51
have a lot of positions that are open and if they don't see a position that's open they
- 52:56
can go to Intrepid Studios.com to our careers page and they can submit their resume and
- 53:00
their portfolio and experience and we will spend the time and effort in order to evaluate
- 53:07
their potential on the team so you know that is that is something that I think is important
- 53:12
and it's a it's a rough time out there right now for sure and our hearts go out to the
- 53:16
people that are impacted by some of these layoffs but but things are looking good here
- 53:21
at Intrepid Studios and we continue to move forward and their next milestone is going
- 53:24
to be a big one and with that being said well I would yeah I think that I have some notes
- 53:33
here too from our HR team which I'm not going to share everything they gave me because some
- 53:36
of that is like private information for us but I think one of the cool things is I'm
- 53:40
a data junkie as someone who does a lot of marketing stuff we have an insanely great
- 53:48
attrition rate comparatively to the industry so I mean for us we're at like 3.4% people
- 53:54
are going to come and go they're going to have reasons why they want to maybe they're
- 53:56
going to get paid more in another company or they they want a different type of job
- 54:00
and we don't have that available for them although we do accommodate quite greatly for
- 54:04
people or they want to be somewhere else.
- 54:07
3.4% though that's not bad what's the industry average?
- 54:10
The software development or the the global average is 38.9% and the software development
- 54:20
specifically is 57.3% so we are we are extremely low because people really do enjoy working
- 54:28
here and I know it is cliche when it sounds cliche when you say family but Steven and
- 54:32
John really treat us all like family like there is love and care there that I have not
- 54:37
always had at other companies so thank you.
- 54:41
Well absolutely we we love you and we love our team and it is something special that
- 54:46
I think we built here at this company and it definitely feels like that.
- 54:51
I think it would be great for us to talk a little bit about a common discussion point
- 54:58
that obviously you and the community and we're going to do that before the art oh before
- 55:02
the art oh okay okay my bad I'm sorry we can do it no we can do it if you want okay okay
- 55:06
yeah do it now.
- 55:08
So wildin you guys.
- 55:10
As you guys know we have reserved our announcement for dates until we are certain that we can
- 55:20
hit them we've we've been burned in the past with that we took our licking so we learned
- 55:24
and no more date Steven until correct it's happening I've been a good boy I've been a
- 55:29
very good boy without having said any haven't said any dates and what I would like to do
- 55:35
is as I see often in the community with a lot of different conversations with content
- 55:43
creators you know when is Alpha 2 going to be is it this year is it next year is it you
- 55:48
know 2030 you know kind of wild speculation that I think I have attempted to address by
- 55:56
saying Alpha 2 is not years away but it's also not right around the corner and so as
- 56:03
we grow closer to Alpha 2 we will give a definitive date the next time you hear from us about
- 56:11
when Alpha 2 is going to be it's probably going to be delegated to a particular quarter
- 56:15
and then when we're probably a few months away we will have the date in mind but for
- 56:19
now I can definitively tell you that Alpha 2 is going to be and cue the video.
- 56:34
That wasn't too bad that's pretty good so guys we can say that from now on when people
- 56:54
talk to you about when Alpha 2 is going to be it is no longer a question of if but when
- 57:01
next year Alpha 2 will be rolled out for public testing we have a number of different testing
- 57:07
events that are going to be participating over the.
- 57:09
Can I make some clarifications for things?
- 57:11
Absolutely.
- 57:12
It includes some of that so the exact date as Stephen said will be provided in the future
- 57:17
and of course when we do provide that date we will also give you guys further information
- 57:22
in regards to testing schedule what's included in Alpha 2 because I know that that's where
- 57:26
this is going to go next and also the NDA spot testing that will be before Alpha 2 we
- 57:35
will have first one with our PI members then we'll have some with our Alpha 1 users and
- 57:41
then our Alpha 2 users and of course Alpha 2 will not be NDA'd but that spot testing
- 57:47
will be NDA'd so keep that in mind and then note that Alpha 2 is only accessible for players
- 57:53
who have Alpha 2 access so just because you had Alpha 1 access does not mean that you
- 57:57
will have Alpha 2 access so make sure that you do have Alpha 2 access in your inventory
- 58:02
it'll say Alpha 2 if you do but you will be able to partake in pre-tests because that's
- 58:08
technically still Alpha 1.
- 58:10
Yes, absolutely and guys I want to talk to you a little bit about setting expectations
- 58:15
right appropriately anytime you're delivering a software as big as even what Alpha 2 is
- 58:25
there's going to be bumps, there's going to be hiccups, there's going to be things that
- 58:28
we don't account for and that's just the nature of the beast part of that is many communities
- 58:36
don't have an opportunity to see those bumps and hiccups because projects keep things very
- 58:40
tight to the chest we have since the get-go decided not to take that approach and instead
- 58:46
take the good, bad, and ugly approach which is you guys get to see that stuff and so as
- 58:54
we're moving towards Alpha 2 in 2024 you can expect to see part of our development updates
- 59:00
we'll be showcasing of course continually these systems you know some of those systems
- 59:04
will be very big some of those systems will be smaller but our intent is to get feedback
- 59:08
on them and kind of get experiential feedback especially so that we can help inform the
- 59:13
revisions and the iterations that we do to them that's why we do these development updates
- 59:17
right it's not just Margaret and I love being here with you guys and being a part of this
- 59:22
process but we don't do it because we love it we do it because it is an integral component
- 59:27
of making a good product right and that is our philosophy.
- 59:32
So with that being said I can hopefully now put to rest some of the question marks that
- 59:39
arise out of the when is Alpha 2 going to be we definitively now.
- 59:43
I mean they're still going to ask.
- 59:44
I know I know of course now.
- 59:45
As soon as January 1st goes they're going to be like so what date is it?
- 59:49
We have moved the discussion out of the realm of years into the realm of months which month
- 59:54
is it going to be right?
- 59:57
So that is I think a positive outcome.
- 59:59
And like what Stephen said we will our next update will give you a quarter and then we
- 1:00:03
will provide dates after that so just keep that in mind there is going to be a progression
- 1:00:10
of that information.
- 1:00:11
Absolutely absolutely.
- 1:00:12
Yeah very cool what a time to be alive.
- 1:00:16
I know it has been it has been wild a wild time in general for all of us but yeah does
- 1:00:24
anything else on the studio update?
- 1:00:26
Yeah I think we got we caught everything so art stuff look at pretty art stuff let's do
- 1:00:31
it yeah let's do it let's look at art.
- 1:00:34
No I just got a message from our web team that the website is currently getting hit
- 1:00:38
hard oh no.
- 1:00:40
Great probably because everyone's like let's buy a package.
- 1:00:45
The packages are going to be available till January 17th so so it'll be okay.
- 1:00:51
I probably shouldn't have said that on the stream then it would just exacerbate the problem.
- 1:00:56
Or the the career page people might have been going to that too.
- 1:00:59
So first and foremost we've got the deep wood syrinx syrinx I think is what it's called
- 1:01:06
it's like an instrument of some sort which is really cool and that now has has its model
- 1:01:12
and you may have seen these little potion traps on the ground that were created.
- 1:01:19
I love seeing the work in progress images so I always like sharing that stuff with you
- 1:01:24
guys and so that's what.
- 1:01:27
And this is what you saw in the game yeah.
- 1:01:31
Very cool.
- 1:01:33
And then we've got the.
- 1:01:35
By the way notice the kind of styling of the magical fantasy the kind of magical realism
- 1:01:42
not so much too far on the steampunk side not too much magic tech side but you know
- 1:01:48
it's still keeping even doesn't like a fantasy.
- 1:01:51
You know it's not that I don't like it I think that there's a lot of really cool interesting
- 1:01:55
kind of steampunk iteration that's done in these games it's just I'm a I'm a high fantasy
- 1:02:01
guy.
- 1:02:02
Yeah we had some like designers who were trying to like plot out steampunk I was like no that's
- 1:02:08
not Ashes of Creation move on.
- 1:02:12
But next up we've got the Legionnaire outfit which now has a model as well.
- 1:02:18
I think it should rotate.
- 1:02:20
I believe I have a turntable for this as well.
- 1:02:25
Very different type of armor I know some people weren't sure how they felt about this set
- 1:02:30
but the lore for it is really cool and some of the other pieces that they have for this
- 1:02:34
set are coming along really well.
- 1:02:36
So I'm excited to share those.
- 1:02:40
Next up is we've been working out some options for Vec plate and this is kind of a little
- 1:02:45
preview of one of the directions.
- 1:02:48
Oh I love the Vec models and the plate looks so good.
- 1:02:53
Yeah I think Jan has been working on this and killing it.
- 1:03:00
Yeah that looks great and then we have the face masks the helmet looks the helmets.
- 1:03:07
We have the turntable for this people can kind of see how that looks.
- 1:03:12
And look you can see the model looks great.
- 1:03:15
So this is the female model and then I will also show you it on the male.
- 1:03:25
And remember guys as you guys are seeing these different armor sets you know the armors that
- 1:03:32
we work through of course gradually increase in tier right based off of kind of the level
- 1:03:38
that we're provisioning the armors for.
- 1:03:41
Now is this a cosmetic set or was this this is not armor.
- 1:03:44
No so this is in-game achievable.
- 1:03:48
And I believe that this armor judging off of its silhouette is probably going to be
- 1:03:53
about a tier two armor from a tier five system right.
- 1:03:57
So this would probably be something as a Vec that you would have access to between levels
- 1:04:02
like 15 to 25 ish roughly.
- 1:04:05
Yeah beyond knows he can DM me and I can update it but yeah very very cool.
- 1:04:12
And then of course we've got the silk fur dune hunter that Jinsey has made the model
- 1:04:17
for and it looks so cute.
- 1:04:19
I mean they just make like the concept art look exactly like the character.
- 1:04:24
It's wild to me how amazing they are.
- 1:04:28
Who else is excited to ride this like oh my gosh so cute.
- 1:04:36
And with that we're ready to head on over to our Q&A.
- 1:04:41
I'll play the video in the background just so you have something to watch whilst we answer
- 1:04:48
some of y'all's questions from the forums.
- 1:04:51
The first one here is from plastic lemons.
- 1:04:54
Don't eat those.
- 1:04:55
I asked about Mayor history.
- 1:04:58
I once tried to eat a plastic grape when I was a little kid.
- 1:05:02
It did not go well.
- 1:05:03
I did the same thing.
- 1:05:05
I didn't try to eat it though I just chewed on it.
- 1:05:07
Yeah well I couldn't eat it so I spit it out but yeah I was chewing on it.
- 1:05:11
I thought it was a real.
- 1:05:12
I used to love those little plastic grapes.
- 1:05:14
I would just grab them and chew on them.
- 1:05:16
Oh just like okay.
- 1:05:18
Interesting.
- 1:05:19
You learn something new every day.
- 1:05:23
See somebody just said lol same.
- 1:05:26
Really?
- 1:05:27
Yes thank you.
- 1:05:28
Thank you Rakers maker.
- 1:05:29
Oh my gosh.
- 1:05:30
Maybe you guys are teething or something.
- 1:05:31
You're like a little chew toy.
- 1:05:32
Somebody else said that explains a lot.
- 1:05:33
That's so good.
- 1:05:34
There's too much sharing.
- 1:05:35
Too much TMI.
- 1:05:36
We have Mayor history which is will players have a way to see who past mayors of their
- 1:05:51
node were like a little like a log.
- 1:05:54
That'd be cool.
- 1:05:55
Yeah absolutely yeah so something.
- 1:05:57
And all their actions.
- 1:05:59
Well maybe not all their actions but.
- 1:06:02
We can dream guys.
- 1:06:04
It is something that we do intend to provide obviously historical references within the
- 1:06:08
game of not just the mayors of nodes but also you know server first downs of certain bosses
- 1:06:16
and this first like guild achievements and guild hall ownership like we want to you know
- 1:06:22
the achievement system should record things of note so that people are able to etch their
- 1:06:31
name or their guild in the history in the in the in the history of the server and mayorship
- 1:06:37
would be one of those things.
- 1:06:39
Very cool.
- 1:06:43
It would be cool if mayors could like leave a little note and then all the new mayors
- 1:06:47
get to see all the past notes.
- 1:06:48
Margaret was here just like etched in the desk.
- 1:06:55
Some might be helpful some might not be.
- 1:06:57
It's like what's that game.
- 1:06:59
Anyways moving on as a from node about node government wants to know are there plans for
- 1:07:06
official game supported node positions other than the mayor like a stable master or a procurement
- 1:07:13
officer.
- 1:07:14
That word's hard to say.
- 1:07:16
Are there other node based positions basically.
- 1:07:20
Yes there are other node based positions.
- 1:07:23
Some of the most of them relate to social organizational structures like the temple
- 1:07:30
and the social organization building that the node might construct.
- 1:07:35
Those are ladder systems of achievement that players can work through on a seasonal basis
- 1:07:40
to achieve the highest level of that for the particular node and by doing so they will
- 1:07:44
then have titles bestowed upon them which grants certain types of powers and benefits.
- 1:07:49
Nice.
- 1:07:50
Speaking of which I'm going to forward to one of the questions here from Caddack in
- 1:07:53
regards to social organizations.
- 1:07:55
Will progression in social organizations be permanent or must it be maintained like PVP.
- 1:08:02
There will be a portion of your social progression that does remain static but then when you
- 1:08:09
move into a section of the ladder system that's more competitive that section of achievement
- 1:08:18
will be ticking and seasonal and you'll have to repeat efforts there.
- 1:08:22
So you can achieve a certain status rank that will be permanent unless you choose to leave
- 1:08:26
the system and then there will be a section that's ladder based.
- 1:08:31
And then the next one here is about music.
- 1:08:34
DougBug27 wants to know cities in MMORPGs tend to have iconic music to match the aesthetic
- 1:08:43
of locations.
- 1:08:45
How do you expect Ashes of Creation and Bear McCreary specifically to create music to fit
- 1:08:50
nodes when they will be changing all the time?
- 1:08:54
And easy answer, predicates.
- 1:08:57
Well yeah it's a great question.
- 1:09:00
So Cat and Bear obviously we have a great process by which there are different levels
- 1:09:11
of associated soundtracks based off of defining features in the game.
- 1:09:18
So if we're talking about nodes then we're talking about what's the cultural representation
- 1:09:21
of that node.
- 1:09:23
Soundtracks and theming music will then be accompanied based off of the culture that
- 1:09:26
the node expresses.
- 1:09:28
If we're talking about biomes and we're talking about POIs, each of those will have distinctive
- 1:09:32
themes that are associated with them.
- 1:09:34
So when you're out in the wilderness or you're out at a specific POI, those will have soundtracks
- 1:09:38
that will play as well.
- 1:09:40
Each of those systems will encompass a layered effect that can reflect the stage of certain
- 1:09:48
types of events within an area.
- 1:09:50
So for example the POI that is Carfin, that will have a general theme for Carfin that
- 1:09:56
will play as you move into the area.
- 1:09:58
But depending on the effects of a particular story arc, we may weave in a layer of the
- 1:10:06
soundtrack that reflects perhaps the voice of the raid boss when she's present.
- 1:10:12
And if she's not that layer won't be weaved in.
- 1:10:15
So those soundtracks are constructed in such a way obviously where you can get a lot of
- 1:10:19
usage out of them and there are components and themings of those that can weave together
- 1:10:24
and layer together and it's intended to be something that not just as pleasant but informative
- 1:10:29
of the world as well.
- 1:10:31
And different states right?
- 1:10:32
Like if you're in combat.
- 1:10:33
Yes, correct.
- 1:10:34
There's combat.
- 1:10:35
Absolutely.
- 1:10:36
There's combat states as well.
- 1:10:39
Yes.
- 1:10:40
Speaking of music, our next question is from Song Rune and it's about bards.
- 1:10:46
What equipment slot does a bard's instrument take up?
- 1:10:51
It takes up the instrument slot.
- 1:10:54
Yes.
- 1:10:55
So there will be an instrument slot that can be available as well and the bard can equip
- 1:11:02
something there.
- 1:11:03
But that is obviously subject to change.
- 1:11:04
It is something that has been of heavy discussion within the combat team and the player character
- 1:11:09
team and how we want to facilitate instrumentation.
- 1:11:13
And it's something that we haven't yet really delved into from development perspective.
- 1:11:16
It's a little bit later on our prioritization list.
- 1:11:20
But the intent is that there would be an instrument slot.
- 1:11:22
All right.
- 1:11:24
And Killjoy from the forum wants to know about node taxes.
- 1:11:27
Since taxes are set by the mayor, is there going to be a way to see the tax rates in
- 1:11:33
different nodes from like a world map or something like that?
- 1:11:36
So you can decide like, hmm, where should I take my strawberries today?
- 1:11:40
Yes, absolutely.
- 1:11:41
Yes.
- 1:11:42
If you want to take your strawberry somewhere where the man isn't trying to pinch every
- 1:11:46
dime out of you, you can go into your world map and you can hover state over certain
- 1:11:50
nodes and you'll be presented with some basic information of which of course, taxation will
- 1:11:55
be a component.
- 1:11:57
And then as you arrive in that node, you will also have additional UI interface that can
- 1:12:02
present you with more granular data such as active items on the warehouse and active items
- 1:12:09
on the auction house in that location and different types of services presented by the
- 1:12:14
service buildings.
- 1:12:15
All right.
- 1:12:16
And then we've got from Grand Serpent about active blocking.
- 1:12:22
Has the team considered grapples or guard breaks to go along with the potential active
- 1:12:28
blocking?
- 1:12:29
So kind of like what the player is looking for and wondering is if there will be ways
- 1:12:33
to interrupt or cancel another player's active blocking.
- 1:12:36
So I'm blocking you.
- 1:12:37
Yeah.
- 1:12:38
For sure.
- 1:12:40
There is intended to be an interaction between different types of reactive and predictive
- 1:12:47
skill sets of which if a player is in a state such as an active block or an active tumble
- 1:12:53
state, there will likely be some types of abilities that interact with reacting to those
- 1:12:59
types of states and will either overcome, surpass or cancel out those states, particularly
- 1:13:05
as it relates to not just active blocking, but also potentially passive blocking as well.
- 1:13:09
And that would be something probably related to physical penetration values as a stat or
- 1:13:17
even CC breaks that could be relevant as well for those types of things.
- 1:13:21
I think that's on the radar for the combat team, but it's something they haven't or they
- 1:13:25
actually are, I think, exploring.
- 1:13:29
Exploring active blocking, right?
- 1:13:30
Yeah, I know.
- 1:13:31
You're not sure if the final answer is that we will have active blocking or not.
- 1:13:34
Well, I just had a discussion with the combat team last week with Trad and with Brian about
- 1:13:41
how we're going to implement the active blocking into the Alpha 2 kits.
- 1:13:47
And that is something we are moving forward with right now.
- 1:13:50
That's going to be tested with a stamina based system, which is universal energy, of course,
- 1:13:53
across all the different classes.
- 1:13:56
And yeah, that'll be something we showcase in a future live stream, I think.
- 1:14:00
Right now it's very much in development.
- 1:14:02
So stay tuned, everybody, in regards to that.
- 1:14:04
I know that that's a hot, like, I was like, we also probably should address active blocking
- 1:14:09
as a whole, because I know last time we talked about this, we were like, we're exploring
- 1:14:13
it.
- 1:14:14
Yes.
- 1:14:15
And of course, we are not only exploring it now, we are actually actively developing
- 1:14:19
for it and we'll be testing with it, I believe, this sprint.
- 1:14:21
And things may change from Alpha 2.
- 1:14:23
I mean, that's why we want you guys to get your hands on it, test stuff, give us your
- 1:14:26
feedback.
- 1:14:28
And we'll be looking at data for that as well.
- 1:14:30
Our next question here is from Go, asking about world map information.
- 1:14:36
Will players be able to view their server's current VASL node networks on a world map
- 1:14:42
through a general filter, a special node building or other means?
- 1:14:46
Like, can they filter and find things?
- 1:14:48
Like if I'm looking for a specific building, can I figure out which node has that?
- 1:14:52
So I know where to go.
- 1:14:53
Yeah.
- 1:14:54
The only real question there is kind of how that how the user collects that information,
- 1:14:59
whether or not it's readily presented to the player just by being a player in the world,
- 1:15:05
or if they have to travel to locations and update that locations.
- 1:15:07
In the past, we talked about having a library that was capable of facilitating players exchanging
- 1:15:12
information for map data like that.
- 1:15:15
But we've moved a little bit more in a direction of just presenting that information upfront
- 1:15:18
to the player because travel is such a meaningful portion of the game and we don't have fast
- 1:15:23
travel.
- 1:15:25
So I think that for Alpha 2, what's planned is that we're going to be showcasing kind
- 1:15:30
of the intricate details of services offered at these node locations from just a UI presentation
- 1:15:37
standpoint within the map.
- 1:15:40
And that's going to service players being able to kind of strategize about their about
- 1:15:45
their travels.
- 1:15:46
All right.
- 1:15:48
And then Imoxsator wants to know about gear bonuses.
- 1:15:52
Will there be equipment gear bonuses for either single pieces or entire gear sets that offer
- 1:15:58
unique abilities that could change how a class is played?
- 1:16:03
And I think there's like two part from our end.
- 1:16:08
So I guess the fundamental of that question is, are there certain types of bonuses that
- 1:16:13
could impact the way you play your class?
- 1:16:16
I think the answer to that is yes.
- 1:16:19
Because anybody can wear any armor.
- 1:16:22
Correct.
- 1:16:23
Yes.
- 1:16:24
But at the fundamental is like if I were to get a set bonus that gave me a 10 percent
- 1:16:31
crit modifier on my waterfall stat and now I'm like, you know, critting often with my
- 1:16:36
weapon attacks or with my abilities, like I might lean in more towards being a crit heavy
- 1:16:41
focused class because of that particular bonus.
- 1:16:45
Whereas what I think what they're asking for is, am I going to get a item that gives me
- 1:16:51
like a fundamental new ability chain rather than augmenting my existing ability sets?
- 1:16:58
Right.
- 1:16:59
And I don't think the intent is to provide something new from an ability perspective
- 1:17:03
with majority of our set bonuses.
- 1:17:05
Right.
- 1:17:06
The intent is that we are augmenting existing waterfall stats with set bonuses and there
- 1:17:11
are going to be active skills that do get associated with certain types of pieces of
- 1:17:16
armor and or weapons.
- 1:17:18
Those will be much on the higher end if they're an active ability that comes with those things.
- 1:17:23
But I still don't think that the intended impact of those types of abilities is for
- 1:17:27
us to radically redefine the way a particular archetype might play.
- 1:17:34
Those determinations are made within the archetype kit and within the secondary archetype kit
- 1:17:39
as well.
- 1:17:40
All right.
- 1:17:42
And then Lashing wants to know about experience.
- 1:17:44
Apologies real quick.
- 1:17:46
One person asked, what is a waterfall stat?
- 1:17:48
A waterfall stat is a derivative of an attribute, right?
- 1:17:51
So if dexterity is your attribute stat and a waterfall from dexterity is critical rate,
- 1:17:57
that would be considered a waterfall stat, the critical rate.
- 1:18:00
Yeah, that terminology.
- 1:18:01
I'm sorry.
- 1:18:02
Usually I'm pretty good about catching that.
- 1:18:06
The next question is about experience debt from lashing.
- 1:18:09
Does experience debt at max level interact with rested experience?
- 1:18:14
So let's say I have experienced at max level.
- 1:18:16
Will I be able to use rest experience to gain that experience back?
- 1:18:21
Yes.
- 1:18:22
Yeah.
- 1:18:23
Rested experience is a modifier that occurs when you first receive the experience.
- 1:18:27
And then after that modifier happens, where that experience goes to buy down the debt
- 1:18:32
is what happens.
- 1:18:33
So if you have rested experience and you have experienced debt and you go out to collect
- 1:18:36
experience, you will be working that debt off faster because of the rested experience.
- 1:18:41
All right.
- 1:18:42
Cool, cool.
- 1:18:43
And with that, we have answered the questions from the forums.
- 1:18:46
Thank you all for submitting questions.
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Every development update, we put out a new questions forum post.
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So if you would like to get yours chosen, we pick 10 at random.
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So make sure that you get your questions in and only ask one question.
- 1:19:03
Follow the rules.
- 1:19:05
And we will be selecting those for the next time.
- 1:19:09
But of course, as we wrap up today's, I can't believe if I feel like we've done so many
- 1:19:13
really long ones, that this feels very weird to be ending.
- 1:19:19
This was a this was a breathing stream.
- 1:19:22
And then next stream is going to be an exhale stream.
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Yeah, I'm like, what is our next one?
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Just kidding.
- 1:19:35
We do tease stuff on our social and things like that.
- 1:19:37
So if you want to know in advance, sometimes we do share that information earlier or on
- 1:19:42
our Discord and forums and things like that.
- 1:19:43
So definitely follow us in all the places where ashes of creation were super easy to
- 1:19:47
find our wonderful Peter, who is our social media manager does an amazing job keeping
- 1:19:52
that filled with content that you guys can all consume and interacting with you all.
- 1:19:57
So please, please go check those things out.
- 1:19:58
And of course, we're going to upload the full development update video tomorrow pending
- 1:20:03
the internet cooperates with us.
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And of course, the 4k video for the gameplay segment will be out today.
- 1:20:09
And you can find those over on our YouTube channel.
- 1:20:11
And of course, on our next development update, if you want to be spotlighted for a comment,
- 1:20:15
make sure that you leave a comment and subscribe to our channel.
- 1:20:20
That way we can select you.
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Oh, little little hint there.
- 1:20:25
Sorry, they said give hint.
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There's your hint.
- 1:20:31
And of course, please head on over to our forums forums.
- 1:20:33
Ashes of creation.com.
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We have a whole bunch of feedback requests over there to development updates that will
- 1:20:39
be our dev discussions that are going to be there for you to fill out as well as the events
- 1:20:44
update as well.
- 1:20:45
So event update forum thread, give us your feedback feedback.
- 1:20:50
The hint is that it's in the riverlands.
- 1:20:52
No, I'm kidding.
- 1:20:55
Too good.
- 1:20:56
I love it.
- 1:20:59
And then we also have the unseen order cosmetics that will be ending on July or January, January
- 1:21:04
17 2024 at 11am Pacific.
- 1:21:07
There's an FAQ with all the details of that.
- 1:21:09
And of course, as we noted here, alpha two is coming in 2024.
- 1:21:14
We are excited to have you all join us next year and is going to be very fun.
- 1:21:18
Our development team has been kicking butt and working hard and we are continuing to
- 1:21:23
do so.
- 1:21:24
And it is very exciting.
- 1:21:26
Of course, thank you so much for tuning in today.
- 1:21:29
We hope that you will come watch our next development update.
- 1:21:31
And thank you to Clayton, I mean, Scott, and all of the developers who have helped with
- 1:21:36
the events, event, event stream, and just Ashes of creation as a whole.
- 1:21:41
And of course, Steven for your time.
- 1:21:43
And we will see you all next month.
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Bye everyone.
- 1:21:47
Bye.
- 1:21:48
Bye.