Talk:2019-03-29 Livestream

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hello everyone welcome to our ashes of creations livestream I'm Margaret Crone at your community marketing lead and with me is Steven she's very good I am the creative director and chief executive officer and I am Jeffrey bard lead game designer for ashes creation and today we're gonna be going over notes stuff we kind of kicked off the month after our creative directors letter after our live stream from that talking about notes and putting up some content and we put out a video so we'll be talking about all of that but and then we also have some questions so we actually went to the community and we had you guys submit some questions we had our content creators submit questions we had our French German Russian communities all submit questions as well as our English communities so we have a whole slew of them to go ever and when I try to do our best to get through as many of them as possible today but for a quick updates we want to talk about some of the things that have been happening as you knew we were at GDC so there was about a week that we were kind of a few of us were off doing that stuff so Steven you want to talk a little bit about GDC yeah absolutely we had a great time at GDC myself Margaret Jeff went Bryan our new lead producer went we had our other Jeff there yeah that's the one that people might not recognize the hidden Jeff I think Marc people didn't know either oh yeah people were like these are the three new people I didn't know they didn't know who Jeff was they didn't know who Mark was and they and marks that new camera he wanted those look like a yoga instructor no he just doesn't want a martial art yes no we had a great time at GDC for those of you don't know Game Developers Conference really it's a largest Conference of game developers in the industry it's in San Francisco it's almost entirely business-to-business we had a lot of great meetings you know that revolve around the future launch of Ashes of Creation a lot of I mean it was like back to back from 8 a.m. to like 9:00 yeah we did not stop talking about it was good it was actually one of the smoothest gbc's i've been to because I just rode around everywhere and it came to us yes that was very nice we were booked back-to-back every hour and I had to be like alright we have 10 minutes left in this meeting and so you learn about some of those discussions in the future right we may have some yeah and I think that the other ones that you guys might notice the community and marketing side are you know cool giveaways and things of that sort cuz wouldn't it be neat to have like a full set of peripherals that are all ashes wouldn't that be cool some things like that so there's definitely some contests that toast and I have been talking about and will be you know trying to get some cool things in the works for everybody so think that kind of covers GDC yeah it's a lot of stuff that we can't really talk about it cuz it's business-to-business stuff we don't really want to you know throw people out there when we're not fully committed to things right our next thing is Stephen wanted to talk a little bit about some of our positions as you notice we've been putting out some posts that are like hey we're hiring come check it out so if you see something on there you know people who might be good for a position have them apply oh yeah so we are really stepping up the hiring in fact our next hiring phase has just begun I think we have 17 positions we're trying to fill within the next like 30 to 60 days tops we want to be getting those positions filled we're gonna have a release for those positions as well they're obviously on our careers page at Intrepid Studios calm now for you guys in the community the best way you can help us and the project is really to get out there and tag you know people who you like in the industry work that they've done before and say hey intrepid is hiring this is a great new MMORPG if you haven't heard of it send your resume we are looking for the best I mean I've you know i'm unabashed in that sense III think that we should you know tell everyone lots of violence anywhere absolutely and and for us you know this project is huge and we need to hire quite literally hundreds of people so you know these hiring phases will be pretty aggressive moving forward and you'll be getting regular updates and link in the community but as well as our normal ways to reach out to developers talented people I'm gonna have to schedule lots of new hire photos yeah to make sure that those things are kept up to date on our site so you know you can always check them out although we will be do revamping some of our website stuff as well but we have some higher priority tasks that the web teams are working on currently um now let's hop in and talk about node stuff so I think the first thing that we want to talk about is the video that we released works you're gonna play it again so we can all relive the experience we'll chat a little bit about that video we'll talk a little bit about the articles that we've posted we're not gonna go in deeper depth about them because obviously you can go read them and check them out we want to get to your questions so that we can answer those in regards to your follow-up questions from the from the articles so first and foremost let's check out the video [Music] my name is Ted Erlich and I'm a senior environment artist here and trêpa students primarily I am in charge of building the objects the environment building out the environments placing objects materials for the objects and anything that is not a person or a creature running around I take part in that the golden note system was to make sure that every place with special energy to make sure that every node to go into offer something different in different way in a different place and then have that same system facilitate all the races whether you're going to know that's human going to know that elven or when it's dwarven each one will be supported by the system and only that but also it provides procedural randomization throughout the entire world so roads bridges all that stuff that can all be randomized and made different every time you get through this area and it builds up when you enter into a city you're going to notice that the buildings the placement of NPCs that the services that you can access are unique to that particular city part of the tool that Todd has been designing really has been to accommodate a procedural method by which each city can have its own identity one of the key things that I enjoy in games is a sense of discovery and sense of exploration and I feel like having a system that provides so much variety means that when I find a new place it's always going to be special you know I'm always finding something new and different and isn't it the same cookie cutter stuff just drawn all over the world as a player I've experienced a lot of MMORPGs and it's interesting everyone I've experienced has the same type of railroaded structure that you go from quest a to B to C and it's really you know something of my desire that I've had to create a system that would be dynamic in the creation of your world to kind of mix you know the civilization building aspect with the RPG element I just think it goes hand-in-hand that if we extend this role-playing game mechanic into the development of cities that creates a really interesting gameplay that players can participate in and part of what this node tool provides is for each city's character and identity to be unique to the to the players that develop it part of the technology that's being developed here at intrepid Studios really relates to our desire to create a world that is developed by the players and this allows you to see in real time the changes that you're affecting on the world around you and not just log in to the same static game every day this takes what the community is doing and it presents it in real-time to the players so that they can see the effect of their changes we wanna make it special when a player finds a node and a node is grown and builds that it's different from every other node in the world so that they can claim that this node is their special place and we know that someone on the other side of the world isn't going to have a node remotely like it I would say the thing I like most about working intrepid is the fact that it's such a small cohesive company everyone else in Iraq with everyone else there's far fewer layers to get in the way of that co-production it's about making the product and getting it done and then as good weekend and I like the simplicity [Music] and so that video went out it seems like people have been enjoying it I did get some feedback that people would like to see more of the tech stuff and talk a little bit more in depth about it so we'll try to do our best as we move forward for future ones our next one is gonna be the housing tool so I'm excited we've already pushed that in our article if you read our article I have that a little bit at the end letting you know what's the next one so we're gonna be releasing the dev diaries videos once a month and that's something I have been really excited about I've been working really hard on this project and I'm glad Steve it approved it and I do want to do a shout-out to a few of the other developers who have helped up obviously all the people who are on the interviews and talking and they're very nervous tab is very nervous they killed it yeah and he was really nervous but he doesn't come off as nervous at all I think that you know bacon helped with some of the recording what I thought he did you know he did a really good job he didn't really appear nervous made a lot of the guys you know you're you're such a good question you know yeah Michael is to be like don't don't worry about the cameras think about it as like we're research and the things that you do and the things that you love and for you guys you know obviously the the intention of these videos is to give you a closer look and a more in-depth look on who's behind the project from a developer standpoint actually making these key systems you know from a design standpoint you know we give these developers the objective with these tools and then they go and they hear craft how to make these things with the engine they're using with custom proprietary technology that we're developing and we can reveal some of that stuff to you guys as the as the viewer but we can't get really too far in depth on how exactly these systems work because that is proprietary information competitive and it's competitive so just keep that in mind take it with me he's like I worry a little bit about these articles like that's that's the flip side of being a open development right I mean obviously speed to market is something that's important and I'm giving you guys just a little bit of discussion on the business aspect of it but speed to market is a little bit of the sign of things because what we are doing is is something that really hasn't been done before in the market and it hasn't been done because other projects are unwilling to take the risk they want to stick closely to what has been tried tested and true and that's why we end up with kind of a stagnant market that we have as players we want to see something new but you have to understand usually there are investors in other projects and boards and they have to approve those risky type of endeavors and they don't do that unless an another project comes forward and takes that risk themselves so just to give you guys a little bit of a look inside that so and for the recording of these vacant health with cameras and stuff cameras and audio and I was I was basically asking questions and monitoring audio and Tristan did the editing Tristan still alive I sent that video to tristan by the way he wasn't dying so I think you know we do have a lot of other things in the works we're trying to get some cool stuff out to you guys and we hope that you all like them yeah I'm glad people are liking because I was like so nervous it's great yeah it shows well you know gives people a look at what's going on behind the scenes and that's what everybody wants so I think I think it's a win-win for both of us yeah well use always nerve-wrecking when you put out a new cereal because you already have like some of the other video stuff prepped you pair lightly like this okay is the second one actually gonna come out in the series now let's go chat we'll chat a little bit about some of the news posts that came out we did have quite a few this month but primarily I think the ones that people were focusing on were the basics which covers what are nodes how do they work no types Bassel nodes content within that that provides experience and stone of influence as well as the next one following that which is the advance and destroy how you build and develop a node and then also developing air I did want to touch on one key point that I noticed in the chat and there were a lot of people who question with regards to some of the footage that was shown in that video the node school video was recorded back in January and there's some older footage you might even see in future videos and that's because you know in in attempts to showcase these things we have developers tend to record their development sessions so that we can come back later and put it into a marketable Hormats so I have been planning the I guess we'll stop Plus what I was doing I hadn't planning the dev Diaries series since the first month I was here so I proposed a lot of things I have might have over home steam and I don't know and we started working on it so I think a lot of it was like I was writing all the scripts and I was getting well not scripts with like bulton scripts of like who's gonna be in what scene and that kind of stuff and they were capturing footage so a lot of it is people capturing footage of their work while they're working getting people who are doing animations or modeling or you know working on different products to be while they're doing the thing recording it so that we have it ready whenever I need it for the videos that are coming out later so yeah it's kind of an interesting thing because if we're working on it and then the video comes out later I just wanted to give people insight and the second article that we had was the advance into story it covers how you advance and build up an ode developing areas note stages gaining experience experience from facile knows culture cultural experience events and accomplishments and then also how you can D level and destroy a node which would be talking about node atrophy node D leveling and no destruction so we have covered a lot of those things they should it's all up to date if anything changes I will be going back and editing that based on what design has so and I'll let you guys know there was one adjustment that did happen to an article to the secondary article regarding I think it was deconstruction so we had mentioned and when one spot I think where it was a potential that after a siege nodes could do level instead of being completely destroyed that was obviously a topic for design that we had discussed very early on in our and our design talks but we decided to go and at least our first iteration of testing sieges that it will be completely destroyed upon a successful siege so that would be if you're a metropolis and your siege is and the siege is successful that metropolis will go down to zero zero at least for now right like there's still a lot of a lot of you know runway left for us to make changes right and adjust things but right now this is what we're happy with yes and everything we discuss with you guys from a design standpoint I mean these are our design decisions moving forward into alphas and betas but there is always the opportunity for change that's the purpose of testing that's why you guys are going to get in and testing systems because we're gonna watch those design logs we're gonna see how these systems interact with live players and we're gonna make adjustments as necessary to make the gameplay fluid fun and what you guys want and I think that's kind of all I want I don't want to go into details about this I highly recommend you go over to ashes of creation.com slash news read all of the articles there will continue to be putting some of the next article in that know your node series is going to be specifically about scientific know types and that will be going more in depth about that which has a lot of information that no one has seen before so I'm excited to share that I know the first two were kind of like some people like well I know some of this already well I need it on the site to be in a place that like everyone can go new players can I see it and I think a lot of the content creators had already mentioned this is definitely for like the new people that are kind of coming up but there were little tidbits of stuff that was interesting that was for our more og players I think I'm old school I just like say oh gee so let's get into your questions I think oh we have a lot of them we have contact creative questions we have French German Russian and English questions so we're just going to go through them all first of all I'm going to go through the content creator questions and if you were a twitch chat and you're asking questions toast is being lovely over there and she's tossing me some of your questions that are different than any other questions that are here because she knows it's all on the list so I will be asking those intermittently so first of all we have the jalan always he's always the first he says here's an example members of guilt AR citizens of both node a and B and the mayor of node a declares a war state with no B are the members of guilt a now hostile towards each other or do guild membership supersede a nodes so there's definitely an affiliations hierarchy that exists in game based on a number of affiliations you may have right there's no citizenship there's guild there's Alliance there's party there's raid there's family all of these types of affiliations have a hierarchy the highest of which is your node affiliation so your citizenship is your greatest superceding relationship which means if you were a part of a guild and the guild has multiple nodes in which it's its members are citizens of if there was a war between two of those nodes the members of those nodes would be first and foremost citizens who defend that note even against their own guild members think about it like if you were if me and Jeff were both part of a Thieves Guild right and we're underground doing some cool things but we were all both live in different towns right we still are part of those towns as well as part of the good right right I hope that kind of help the town represents my home right and so we always want home to kind of be the most important thing for a player organizations come secondary to that so you know as a guild number you're gonna have to make choices in terms of like how do you deal with that yeah that's interesting yeah I kind of view it as like I mean you think about you know the American Civil War you have a nationality right and that's your quote/unquote guild affiliation but then you have your home which is like your statehood right and sometimes you know you can have a separation along lines that puts family against family you know it's unfortunate and we hope that you know there's great cooperation but that's that's the type of objective we're having our next question is from Richie and Richie says will there be a way to see what type of note you are contributing to military economic etc starting out that way you can focus on developing one type over another this this is covered in the article but I did want to add it in there just because I think you know others might have that question as well but read the article so what a note first starts you'll be able to tell what type of note it is based on the NPC's that are there so whenever there's an encampment you'll see either you'll see types of NPCs that indicate a note type yeah so I mean there will be some like you know indications you're not gonna see on the map like oh this is a scientific no to your contextual clues will kind of tell you what's going on but we're not gonna be like super err yeah if you come up with on one and you see a camp and it is a merchant you'll know that that is an economic note in the starting so if you want to help make that economic note grow you'll start doing stuff and helping but you really have to pop that to level one to see that right yeah there's some you won't say that look nothing is seen at that zero but I love a one you'll see indications based on quests based on merchants based on NPCs that are present those all of those things will give you an immediate indicator and it's not just about making a conscious I mean yes you make a conscious decision whether or not you want to aid that node by doing activities around it however those activities will also relate to your focus in the game so you know an economic moment note is going to have more economic oriented kind of questline and opportunities opportunities exactly gotta get that money no issue are you doing resources though I guess chase wants to know if a metropolis locks out its surrounding Bassel nodes at Stage five preventing them from leveling up and then later that metropolis is destroyed during a siege how is it decided which of these surrounding five stage five nodes turns it into a level six before the other so there is a hierarchy that exists within the node structures and that is maintained even when parent and vassal relationships are established and if that parent relationship is removed through a successful siege the hierarchy remains and get becomes detached like you may have let's say a stage five note as to stage four nodes beneath it in the hierarchy if the stage five node disappears those two stage four nodes will become independent of one another to separate quote-unquote nations right and they will be competing for control over the other from that point forward right yeah it's going to be a process nothing is gonna pop immediately to that that next slot right so if there's a little five node a little six no a little 6 note goes away that little five no doesn't automatically reload it to six there's that experience right see that bit that's experience isn't banked it's not there you're going to have to earn that experience to pop it up so it becomes a race at that point becomes a race a race that has and we kind of you know I put this in that advance in the story article which was events and accomplishments that allow players to influence the modifier that's placed on incoming experience into a node right so for example if you have the the parent node of those two stage four nodes disappears those two stage four nodes are likely going to be at odds with one another when it comes to trying to reach stage by first right and there are many ways by which the citizens independently can try to subvert the advancement of the nearby node through declaring war through competing quest lines that revolve around patron organization and or guilds there's you know achievements with the rate bosses with the society systems all of those things can go to hinder or excel the collection of experience based on them citizens of that particular node so you know while we ran on faction based game there are many systems that allow for these pseudo factions to appear and give players identities that can be either cooperative or adversarial it's up to the players okay I'm gonna grab a question from the twitch chat so you're live you can ask those two as well the question is from Nixle TV and they want to know I'm sorry if I put your people's names in advance do you plan ahead what happens to nodes when you need to do a server merge or are you planning you guys already know what you want to do Enterprise to servers so there's two scenarios we talked about this we have talked before so I'll go over very quickly there's two scenarios when it comes to the potential of server merges obviously every MMO would like that we don't have to address this and that the server's will stay healthy forever but as a contingency we have two scenarios the first scenario is where one server will become the dominant server and the other server will have the player population merged into the existing structure and development of that server right that's the first the second is the two populations of the servers will join a new server that has a fresh start so to speak and those are those are generally the ideas you'll keep your proof you'll keep your progression on your character you'll keep your assets and whatnot but the node structure will be reverted to zero and the placement of buildings and properties that are owned will be reverted you'll keep schematics you'll keep materials necessarily but it'll be a fresh start those are going to what you're thinking right those are the two kind of ideas that we have on a competitor we still need a game that stuff out it's a very challenging problem but we'll get there mmm okay moving on to more questions from our content creators we have a gloss who's asking given that the world size has been stated at 480 square kilometers with 103 nodes can you tell us the approximate land amount that each node state would encompass town city match etc to give us an idea of scale for each city yeah you know probably that's not information I think that we would want to give out honestly I think we want to keep that a little bit more immersive and not as mechanical I guess in this in its sense there is definitely obviously there's obviously an amount of area that is accommodated by a single node but that area is large it's going to feel very very distinct in that sense as well what the specific kilometer by kilometer size is I don't think it goes from small to big the last thing I want to do is have like players pacing out step by step okay we know that this nodes like parameter is this far we want more you to see your actions get basically change the world and you can react to that visible you know they're gonna walk it we're sure it will be for sure you'll figure it out however one of the great things that I have as an MMORPG player is not knowing everything at the start of a server and sometimes unfortunately you know people find all that stuff out and they post it online and whatnot which is fine but I think it's interesting if I get to explore and find things out myself a little bit there will be a sense of players being the first to see stuff and we definitely want that to be part of the game and part of the history of the game yeah so our next question that's here is from David Daedalus who says since we know that nodes will offer class and augmentation progression services for players well character progression class or augmentation be gated behind the level of the node is it expected for players to travel between different node types to improve their class versus augmentations yes it will be gated there will be world development that's necessary in order to access particular content this is part of the incentive tree that's used in order to encourage cooperative development of the world right each destruction and cooperation accusing destruction and advancement each have their own set of incentives right and in what the players interests lie will determine their course of whether they want to build the world or they want to destroy and change things so the idea is to make sure we place those incentives in each category yeah was last part of my question the last part was it expected for players to travel between different node types to improve their class for class versus oddness so that is related to citizenship right so you will travel to other nodes if you're like hey I don't like these augmentation types that are available in this city I like the augmentation types that are available in this other city right you'd give him up based on your citizenship based on where you travel so it's not about like going and collecting all the skills and heritage from all the different nodes right it's more about this city has a set of skills available that I would like to have and so that's where I want to put my citizenship absolutely and the other thing is it's important to note that you know these nodes they have conditions that can be set by the citizens and the mayor that relate to diplomatic relations whether it be conflict or cooperation with other nodes and in that choice there lie certain progression points available based on how those things organically become created so as a citizen you may need to travel to a adversarial node and accomplish some type of objective in order to advance in a particular quest line and/or class progression portion to access certain things yeah I'm gonna grab another question from chat which is from Zane Redding and they are asking what are your thoughts on the node degradation length how long do you think it will take to go down to node level will higher level nodes take longer to degrade yes yes the actual timespan is gonna be related to the amount of time it takes actually build up a node you know they'll it will be a shorter amount we want players to be active and doing things to help the health of their node the exact timelines we don't have right now until we start getting real big populations in the game right that that's absolutely right and then in addition to that part of the infrastructure we have set up on the server with regards to player interaction and activity will relate to what's currently happening on the server so we want to find a median between how many players are present how much active activity is activity is happening on the server and then that that will relate to the degradation rate to the advancement rate and those types of things it could change per server it will definitely change absolutely that's actually cool yeah um makes it a little bit hard for some people to game of I though because I know that they like doing that our next question is from Diggs and they want to know can we get a clarification on how underwhelmed anodes interact with surface nodes for example if there were one under elm metropolis would that mean that there could only be for more metropolis total or can there be five under l metropolis --is and five service metropolis there can only be five metropolis asunder realm or over that's a collective pool and then there is interaction between the surface so surface nodes or under roam nodes will control space in both right so if you're if you're in the under realm and you have a node that advances there's going to be bleed over into the surface area so that's that's why the you know those two land masses are combined in the in the in the sense of influence and zone of influence basically so yeah there's only five so if you have let's say you have a metropolis on the under realm the above roam area that is encompassed by that bull-baiting that okay cool just wanted it like reiterate that it's a cool question and that might be a little bit of a departure from our design in the past I know originally you know like two-plus years ago we were discussing how those would be independent of each other but I think as we further defined the layout of the world map itself you know it made more sense for those to have some interaction and influence that's combined it's also more interesting I think when you don't necessarily know what's going on below ground and you have to really be aware of what's happening on both levels you know I think the other portion is that like one of the ideas that I was chatting with the environment team about from an art direction standpoint was to include influences of the under realm that are seen above ground if it's an under elm node that's influencing the above population to vert so you have those bioluminescent kind of images reach out into the world I'm just gonna how this like if you're new and you don't you're coming into ashes accretion you don't know what we're talking about the base layer that you come into as a player is kind of like the the normal realm that you would see in most games and that kind of this looks more realistic whereas the under realm is like the underground layer of our world so with two layers and that is more like bioluminescent and I'm just imagining a city being soapy oh yeah like the art direction for that that is kind of like again we're trying to be high fantasy here and you know we really want to capture that sort of fantastical sense that you are not on earth that this is actually like a new world all right our next question is we have a lot of questions to go through I think we're going to be going so we're probably gonna go longer than an hour we have neat nimi who is asking if I'm a citizen of a vassal node why should I remain there and not go to the parent node or higher level if higher level nodes give access to higher hunting grounds why would I remain in a lower level node instead of getting more experience by going to that other node so as a vassal citizen you are contributing to the development of your parent node should you reach the apex of a contribution to your her node current your vassal node so you can still go to the hunting areas and you'll still have you know perks as a vassal citizen there's going to be a perk structure that's present for vassal citizens as well the most important thing when it comes to the relationship between parent and vassal nodes is that there is an up/down relationship between services that get established for the citizens of each so for example one one system is work orders citizens of a parent node can request certain work orders that can only be performed by citizens of vassal nodes and there needs to be a vassal support structure for these parent nodes in order to fulfill those work orders so work orders can only be established for a particular stage of vassal node and those relate to a whole array of different things from certain quest lines to crafting certain material weapons and armors and items to processing particular gather Buhl's and raw resources to the building of particular structures there is a relationship and a a structure between the support of vassal notes to parents and vice versa also as a vassal citizen you're going to be eligible for those work orders that can have certain perks associated with them and give you an advantage from an economic standpoint as well being the only ones to kind of fill those things yeah and I mean there's there's also a lot of other questions involved there too right like there may be a specific kind of resource that's available in that particular area that you want to stay close to you could just like small town living there is you know it may be a lot more expensive to live in the city and you want to keep your costs down there's a there's a lot of stuff there and we also want to sort of maintain a little bit of friction there between the vassal and the sort of in control node to so there's a lot of stuff involved there there's definitely going to be reasons to wanna be in a Bassel node there's gonna be one of reasons to try and assert the masternode so there's a lot of stuff there are some questions regarding that coming up so we'll get into more details of that too so a tropic atropos wants to know could you talk about the types of behaviors or habits that you hope that NPCs within nodes may demonstrate that can improve the authenticity or immersion of the node as a hub of civilization yeah that's a that's a that's a big question there's a lot of things that we're wanting to accomplish when it comes to NPCs and their interactions with player characters you know a lot of those systems relate to kind of the relationship that player characters can establish with NPCs through repetitive visiting of the city through accomplishing certain feats through the questing system and or social organizations and that can change the way you interact with NPCs that are present and merchants along those lines if you establish a reputation in the city you know the NPCs are going to know that they may have a different greeting they may have different price points for you they may have revealed' quest lines and or story points that you hadn't seen before earlier in a relationship with them I mean those are our you know goals when it comes to how we can establish the AI for NPCs to relate to characters and make the world more immersive in that sense have a lasting reputation in history that relates again to why players want to keep the advancement of these nodes a thing and defend this property against it you know would be invaders and/or destroyers because you have a vest an interest in making sure that what you have built there from a reputation standpoint from a building standpoint from a traits or whatever it is everything relates back to that node and you need to make sure that that keeps advancing and I mean each of those NPCs will have their own path like padding and and what their story is right yeah so like I mean not every and that would be amazing I would love to do that maybe if but yes I mean it's it's we really want to make sure that the city feels alive right that it's not just alive with players but it's alive with NPCs who have their own wants and needs and that you know react to what you're doing what the nodes doing and kind of the state of the world okay our next question is from furless wolf who wants to know can you provide more information on the relationship between Bassel nodes and parent nodes specifically are there ways to prevent an parent node from taking over your nose this was kind of going into that right so I think we touched on both points in that question previous questions specifically more like if I'm in a Bassel node and the parent node is trying to take over can I not can i if I'm going to node that is potentially going to be a vassal node of a parent node is there a way for me to block that from happen I described I described that a few questions ago with regards to the ability to modify incoming experience that can either slow down the growth of a competing node or not that would be the main method but there is no like you're not welcome here do not we cannot be taken okay we cannot be take it over that's that's like you know core to the way these cultures kind of expand the territory of the node expands there is an algorithm that we use when it comes to the expansion of nodes that relates to knows wanting to move closer to the cultural borders of other nodes that's like the first and foremost civilization reaches out to other civilization that's like the intrinsic kind of backbone of trade and economy and then also like moving towards the coast you know that's another aspect of what nodes want to do because that again is a source of kind of trade and the ability to move goods around the world is a good follow-up to a question that's coming in from chat which I think we've talked about quite a bit already in previous live streams as well which is from Altidore saying well notes and capital Aesop in cap see capsulate sorry I don't know I can't talk on a large part of the sea if they are on the shore will the whole sea be part of a node so there's definitely territory that can move out into the sea because there is sea content that's available it's not going to you know reach out into the to the outside of the coast it's going to try to stay along the coastal area right but it will encompass a portion of that sea out kind of thing there will be international waters and there also be waters that are one of the touch on that last question the one before this one where there's no like Stephen said there's not a hard way to prevent other people from doing it from taking over your node right but you know the responsibility is on that node to prevent others from from leveling faster than you right like that's kind of the goal if you are not paying attention if you let this other node grow bigger than you there's nothing you can do to stop it at that point right but you have to do it have to be proactive about it yes okay so we can solve a lot to go through and we have a short run time so sort it we might go a little longer today but I'm gonna try so our next question groups are all from our French community I don't have the player names for these translated English so I'm gonna ask these questions there's about 1 2 3 4 5 6 for them and they said will there be any hitting quest I already know the answer such as being able to resurrect a dragon if you have five necromancer's in the party then integrate it as a defense system for know there are hidden quest there are 10 questions whether or not there's a quest related specifically to MEK romancers and raising the dead of NPCs and having I don't I don't know of any quest along those particular lines however there are a hidden quests are out the world that really kind of promote exploration and your ability to maybe even reach things first this is sort of like in my wheelhouse where I love hidden quests I love being able to discover something that nobody else has figured out yet you know the hope is that we'll get to you know your five and there's still some stuff that we launched with after the creation our first launch and that haven't been found yet so I'm going to say this there's something in apocalypse that no one has found yet it's true can we have more details about military nodes of functionalities what can we expect from class combat training and I think I'm gonna go over the military nodes in an article it'll be like a full article about it but I don't know what all you guys would want to share regarding them what more details so would you guys want to share about the functionality of many nodes so military nodes as we kind of stipulated in them I think was the first knowyour note series is that they kind of odd meant your ability to perform in combat whether it be PvE or PvP and that ability really stays in the zone of influence of that node I mean that's we kind of want you to encourage those players who are being trained from a combat standpoint to kind of perform around the node and do those things around the node you know it relates to kind of passives like your gear proficiency the ability to utilize particular passive abilities that kind of augment your combat capabilities yeah and each node type will also have its own special ability or special building and superpowers so we'll talk about more of those things in those articles so stay tuned for those and follow our social media so that you don't miss out on them the next question that we have here is will we be able to organize our troops positions during assaults like in total war so we can create squadrons led by other players it would it would be cool it would be a different game but we do want to give making total I do enjoy that yeah we want to give you know rate leaders and and people who are who are running player run groups the tools to be able to pull that off right but we will not be prescribing like you know everybody sand arm to arm and forward right right now will be rank-and-file companies do that if you talk to each other you're right that will be up to individual commanders to sort of like organize that many times everybody line up right I would even go before the siege because I was gonna record and put like you know gold on the ground for positions a lot of fun no but there won't be a total war aspect to controlling things there are definitely the the idea is to have the npc mercenaries that are present during battles and one of the games I played in the past which was lineage two if you were a castle owner you could place down mercenary tags in the castle area that would then spawn into NPC's in the location there and they would have a specific a I like you know you had a cleric and I see they would move even routes you had mobile or stationary so I mean I like that that was kind of fun and cool I think that from a mercenary standpoint we definitely want to have a I that's that's kind of built in and makes sense from a siege perspective course but it won't be total war okay next question is about node I'm excited about node creation well we have the choice about where each building will be or it or it will be automated so kind of like when you know there's two components there there's the procedural aspect which players do not have agency over there are certain buildings that are by default present when a node does level up and those building locations are determined by the procedural tool that were utilizing in the developer tool below you can see that a little bit and then there are locations which are basically building footprints that will exist from a construction standpoint that the community will have agency over through the election of a mayor and the determination of what buildings and services they want to offer they can start building prod which will then spawn a constructible location that will have quests related to material acquisition that the citizens must participate in in order to construct that video and render its services accessible by the players yeah and we've talked about that in these live streams and there will be an article talking about governments and and going into a little bit details about that too okay just like base base level stuff will come with a note players are going to be choosing that stuff specific specific buildings will be what the mayor's decide to build you know and I conclude things like banks or you know that kind of thing so next up we will have will we be able to find tribes such as elf tribes in the forest with whom we may be able to create a commercial road after increasing our reputation with so when you say tribes I'm assuming they mean NPCs and I would call those specifically miner races right so you know there are there's that there's a tier of interaction with NPCs right you have major race NPCs and those are the the you know people you're going to see in cities and and perhaps your prospectors outside of the cities and whatnot that you relate to there's minor races NPCs and these have their own unique cultures you know these are the centaurs these are the you know Fae and whatnot that live out in the wilderness there are the antagonist NPC structure which are going to be monsters and you know perversions of nature that relate to corruption and the and the ancients and those are present and then there are you know pets and stuff so yes there are minor races that will exist I mean that's part of the lore it's part of the world it's part of the explorative process for you as a player to kind of reach out to those and make relationships whether or not you can have like a particular trade I mean those will exist within the quest structure you know there's gonna be quests yeah so I was gonna say it's more related to quest stuff that it would be like they are not major players in this world right the players are the players of this world and so we want to make sure that players feel that way there will be some choices to be made regarding them but it's not going to be a things like creating trade routes do that you know financially viable really so to to do that so it's not going to be your notes will take over their land so I mean take it over as a park yeah well they'll interact with them right and that interaction will yield additional services and quests and whatnot that'll take you out to those locations yeah but you could take but you're not gonna subjugate the culture into yours and with an iron fist I want to be the tribe leader Margaret walks up to the Centaurs like I am okay we saw that NPCs on siege weapon would join the fight once the walls are destroyed will the NPC participation to node wars or will NPCs participate in node sieges and will there be will they have strategic impact yes no right like there will definitely be NPCs will participate in castle sieges NPCs will participate in node sieges the extent to which they do depends on the health of that node or that castle so there's definitely interaction also between the castles and nodes right that's it that's a core feature of the castle system like castles exert pressure over nodes to pay them taxes those taxes then can be allocated to specific court game systems one of those core game systems is the defense ability of a node because it benefits the castle to make sure that nodes are a high level and have the advantage that they keep paying taxes some of those benefits are the allocation of mercenaries they're the allocation of specific buildings that become available the heightened defenses on walls and gates the additional can't think that now top mines the schematics that are present for different siege weaponry from a defense ability standpoint and also granting nodes the ability certain abilities over wars between different notes there's a lot of systems that go into how castles interact with notes that we want to achieve and those and those systems can be seen through yeah and I think what they're asking is more so about NPC's is so it can an NPC use a like a what a siege weapon can they like man a trebuchet it helps play a more important gonna be skill-based and NPCs you know have a a particular AI that isn't necessarily very skilled again we want players to be the heroes you don't want em PCs yeah I just think that that's more of what they're questions now we're moving on to our German community and what's an oven or good to not sorry so our first question here is will players be able to steal items etc from other players so like I'll be able to steal players freehold items or things of that sort so you can't just steal stuff from other people and what we do have is you know there are death penalties and there are repercussions for the loss of a siege and those really relate to raw resources and or the certificate system so when a player dies there is a portion of their raw resources that relate to you losing those to the other player a portion of them and and if you were to have let's say storage on your freehold you could lose a portion of that storage if they were raw resources to another player or players should they destroy your freehold same is true for raw resources that may exist within the storage facilities of notes and or caravans or on your person right okay it's not gear I'm sorry just to be clear not gear not completed items unless you work on they're just arbitrary unless you are corrupt now if you have corruption score which is gained through the killing of other player characters then that score doesn't go away until you die and if you die there's a chance to drop completed gear our next question is since religions are a part of the node system would that hint to future Crusades or missionary work certainly like that that is you know the history of kind of religions fighting against each other are is a real one right and there's while we probably won't be doing Crusades right there will be conflict between the different religions who want what no nothing the EOB conflict and end points of friction between the different religions different religions will want the same thing whoever gets it first wins and so yes some kind of conflict is inevitable one thing that might not be present at launch but is an interest of mine to incorporate in a future expansion and/or update would be how religions relate from a patron ship for particular nodes and kind of offering incentives for that node to either cooperate with other nodes that follow the same patron deity or to react in a negative way through war to destabilize nodes that don't follow necessarily a patron deity now I wouldn't call those Crusades but they definitely have a religious undertone or like missionary legwork is really aggressive missionary work yeah actually missionary work may end up being part of the religious nodes government going out and trying to get converts to your religion maybe part of that system right interesting vein differently yeah moving on to our next question is how can small guilds build up a node compared to larger bills what's gonna be the difference here yeah so I mean really I think the key point and I know we've had this kind of question before guilds don't necessarily build nodes right communities build nodes and guilty' our smaller portion of what a community is but you may have a guild that might go out into the world and at the start of the game they go out further and explore deeper into you know into the into the world and they established like you know encampment or something but I don't think guilds are going to be able to compete with the gross activity of the server at large to kind of establish you know towns cities or metropolis as they can get the legwork moving they can establish that smaller you know no to get advanced a little bit and that might then attract community more community activity to come and experience the quests that have been unlocked in that area and whatnot but when it comes to guilds building nodes necessarily it really is a larger effort than just what guilds can do and we don't want to make it so that you know any particular guilt can have influence in what smaller guilds have really unique influences over larger guilds is that in the guild progression structure there are guild skills that we spoke about in the past and as you progress your guild through these levels you can choose to either be more expansive in allowing more players to join or you can be more acute in allowing specific skills and abilities be given to your members there are unique quests activities and/or objectives that become present during a lot of systems that are more tailored towards the small and focused guild niche then there are the larger ones and then there are also certain activities that are limited in number of size that can participate which are more geared toward smaller organizations as well all right now we're going to move on to our Russian community questions the question that we're gonna ask is how how many buildings can I build on my freehold gee I don't know exactly it's like I don't know specific number of buildings because part of the system well part of the system you know Jeff is that you have kind of architected with the freehold system is a space game right is is not space in the sense of going into space but rather like allocating space within the footprint of the freehold parcel as is necessary to accommodate growth in structures that allow access to higher tiered processing power or business abilities you know kind of love it's all about finding efficiencies in the space that you have right and so yes you could probably put a good number of buildings down that just don't make sense together and don't really give you a whole lot right it's really more about finding the synergies between the buildings between the environment you have placed your freehold down and kind of getting the most bang for your buck out of the space thing I like Arctic's Arctic's in chat says playing Tetris with building yes that's exactly that's a great way to use the example of you know inventory space and how you have to like in certain games where you have to be like okay this weapon fits in this space it's in here and so kind of like it's kind of it's almost so about like this weapon makes this shield better right like like if it's right next to each other and then the specific configuration so hopefully that kind of answers your question well cities have unique names can we change them cities will have names they're not going to be player two they're not gonna be player created names but they will be player chosen name right from a list of available based on the race type and based on Jen that kind of in the last article you said that nodes will be completely destroyed of sieges successful are there other options can we only D level a node without destroying it know through a siege you destroy a node and currently that is the plan now moving on to our English community we've got yes these are these ones are already we've hi Russians nobody's in our next questions are from our English community no it's like it's from reddit this is from Cal Spartan who says the blog post states that vassal nodes will be unable to declare war against their parent nodes or other sister nodes and under the same zone of influence will there would be no way for civil war without renouncing citizenship and moving elsewhere in order to declare war and this was one of the top highly voted up questions okay got it so will there be a way for civil war without announcing citizenship no there is not currently a structure that's in place that allows for sister and or vassal parent nodes to declare war on each other and I don't have any plans for that Carlene yeah the best thing to do is to revoke your citizenship that will undermine the tax base of that vassal thing go find a no that that will help you destroy that node and then go try to take it over I hate blow down but the idea is that like a true Civil War isn't really possible without players making an effort to kind of get rid of their citizenship first right our next question is from serial acheron who wants to know what constraints does a.parentnode impose on its vassal nodes in contrast to free nodes and what freedoms does a vassal node still enjoy after it becomes about so the majority of restraints really do not apply to the general citizenship population as a matter of fact a parent and vassal relationship actually increases certain activities and availabilities for the citizens to participate in the major restraints really only applied to the mayor and what duties and capabilities and choices they have available to them must most of that relates to diplomacy and kind of by default the vassal nodes will adopt the diplomatic relations of the parent node there are also specific tax rates that apply there are some there's a few other key systems that relate to what mayors are capable of doing and those get superseded by the government of the parent node all right next question is from red specter and also Aaron from Facebook so reddit red specter and Finn Aaron on Facebook said according to the ASC wiki under under realm nodes and nodes directly above them are related but do not exist in the same zone of influence how our surface nodes and under realms related how do they influence each other so I guess we've kind of talked about this a bit so maybe talk about how they relate to each other more so as I said previously in the stream we kind of departed a little bit from the shared choosing from a shared zone of influence and how those nodes relate to the above ground and below ground so that might need to be updated on that old wiki but what was the question then how are they so so you got a note down here and note above this zone of influence is independent from this zone of influence it's not like they're part of the same zone of influence but what ends up happening is we consider adjacency right in three dimensions so this one would be adjacent to this node so this node if it hits level three and this is level two could take over that alert to how this road here above here could affect this one right so so yeah sorry so that's that's correct in saying that they do have independent zones of influence but that they can take over the reins yes cool we have briar eighty men Mandy from red it says I don't know why I read it that way will there be portions of the world maps that are outside the note system spaces in between where actions do not affect another node I mean that's still so coastal areas of the sea are falling under that zone of influence deep water see stuff out in the international water so to speak that some I don't even know yeah actually we because we have two scenarios the scenarios are it does and we do have a separate expansion rate that relates to international waters right and then the other point of that question is it might not that's something that we're going to experience in alpha that we need to test alpha two probably will test that particular question for the C stuff but on land not so much no on land there's no area that will fall outside of his own influence the only the only potential caveat there is international waters but that's a question we need to answer in alpha two and even then like it will still be influenced by notes regardless of what that question is and our next question is from reddit ad is Eric and our Facebook friend named Josh can we get more details on how the level of a node impacts the level scaling of nearby bumps so how the level of the node is the world around I think we've discussed this before but but to be real quick I mean there is a there is a spawn table and there are spotters that exist in the world that spawn monsters and the spawn table has allocations for a wide range of available difficulties and a level so to speak as a node advances it may increase and level up some of those portions of the spawn table and even introduce potentially new levels that are present the idea behind the Ashes of Creation world is traditionally in MMORPGs you experience a circular kind of development for worlds that that lend inward away from where the starting areas are and you have these kind of zones that become obsolete because the player demographic has moved on to the higher level content and that's really a bad thing for MMORPGs because part of what makes them so great is you have a highly social dynamic and if an MMORPGs lifespan has progressed far enough that demographic that social aspect has moved inward to the world and left new players to enter a basically void area of social dynamics so what we wanted to do when it comes to the implementation of nodes and how it influences areas that exist we want to have a diversification of all node Susan of all relevant content and monsters that are capable of being fought everywhere by any level so that as new players enter in there they're entering into what will likely be the most developed location near the starting areas of certain notes yeah we also make it that oh so there's a couple things that kind of results from that right is that a level one player could travel potentially if they're careful anywhere across the map right like there will always be some paths of relative safety that they can find their way through and the other one is that the train but it's also that each node kind of has its own ecosystem in terms of like what these creatures are and that they will all kind of make sense related to each other so it's a little bit difficult to be really specific and answering this question because it's gonna be out of node by node bubble but the big takeaway is that there will be a gradient of levelled mobs from one to whatever our max level is throughout each note right there will be something for everybody in each area right okay no matter what the level of the nodes the next question is they're very they're very very oriented and if you notice I'm not yelling at them today we move the microphone [Music] on your ears hopefully I'm sorry for those headphones right now our next question is from reddit as well which is done data asking will there be a node bound gear or will there be no bound gear or recipes like armored weapons that identify the culture theme of a node culture so I don't think we've ever actually mentioned this before but part of the system that relates to kind of guilt based gear as well like having you know personalized gear that represents Guild tags and whatnot will also be a system that's present in the node system as well so if you're a citizen and you want to you know Don the shield of your node you'll have your nodes crest present and available and you can represent that way if the node were to go away then so would the ability to use that particular appearance appearance our next question is from Malta 69 from reddit asking will quest in particularly in particular nodes and ask or will quest in particular nodes ask players to travel through the land ie other nodes to complete compete yeah complete or are the quest geographically limited to the node I think we kind of are you yeah so it's definitely not geographically limited to the node we want to be sending you kind of all over the world there's plenty of places that we you know it would be very limited for us to just send you and quests that are local right like yes there's a quest interesting there's gonna be questions any local there's gonna be quests that send you far and you're not ripping that so we have one from coming in from twitch that's new this is from high priest cannon I like it will nodes near the three starting portals have a slower level of progression than nodes deeper in the world due to the masses spawning next to them so there are four starting nine gateways and an atoll nursery and it's almost certain since no development is based around activity and population movement it's almost certain that nodes in these starting areas will see development faster than nodes out further away now that there is a potential that you know one servers has ever get together like hey we're just gonna run straight out into the continent and just start an outpost away from sir I mean that's attempt that's a potential so we can't say definitely that it will be that case but depends on your server it depends on the culture of your your server and again we want this stuff to feel organic and feel like this is a natural reaction to what players are doing in the world right so we're not gonna bias anything in that way unless it becomes super problematic and I don't expect it will be these these nodes will rise and they will fall and that's okay haha our next question is from Cyclops tick and they want to know from reddit as you've stated a leadership will be about able to customize what gets built and the predominant races will influence the bit architecture beyond that how different are the metropolis or a high level higher level nodes going to be and can you give any details are we going to see additions like canals running through port nodes multiple elevations such tears like in ministry Terrace or are we going to see or are we going to be seeing essentially the same layout just with different player influences as stated above I think every metropolis will be different every metropolis they will not have the same layout every node yeah whether metropolis or not yeah and no the same layout when it comes to the introduction of player agency for geographical markers like rivers and canal I mean canals potentially but rivers you know there's not a plan to change that based on node progression that's gonna be based on where the node progresses right if there's a river that river will be there right we'll just have a bridge now however the BRIT for the procedural process of the node tool allows for things like bridges or potentially canals to be randomly placed and different each time a node develops you know that's part of what the node tool accomplishes that tech for procedural rendering of these of these assets yeah as nodes level up there's a sense of history to that specific instance of that node right so we get to level three there's a merchant here and it gets to level five there's gonna be a shop in that general general area right so there will be there will be a sense of progression as a history as a note gross but then when that note is destroyed we start that whole process over with a new layout new configuration new stuff going on in that note so every time that note builds in that same spot it's going to look different yeah but you could you could potentially have that metropolis be there for a really long time if you continually defend it and and it grows and you're gonna have this history it's gonna become an iconic piece of I guess architecture in that world yeah and every node will be different from one another as well as when they like we transform and wreck it to construct it so I hope they answer your question the next question we have is from Twitter from obviously err and they want to know since no types are predetermined how will vessel nodes of different types affect the node under the same parent node say a military node a military parent node level six has an economic vassal node level four well that level four nodes still have the advantages of any other of its kind or be a military node it will retain its identity yeah so little for military node will remain a regardless of who kind of controls that area what regardless of who its vassal to it will retain its military sex we're that sort of kind of changes is when you've got in a metropolis level that grants its superpower that usually affects everything in that node so there will be some aspects of an economic node that can be found throughout that whole region one other thing too I think maybe the idea of parent and vassal nodes needs to be a little bit more hammered home with regards to it expanding what's capable for these citizens it's not very restrictive right it doesn't it doesn't take away services or prevent services it just takes those services in a different direction so you know had that node continued to advance and become a parent right it would have parent oriented services if it becomes a vassal state of another note than it has vassal oriented services it's not restrictive in the sense that it takes away yes has it stuff it just also gets benefits from its parents yes yeah I think whenever we get into the government and citizenship and things of that sort we can kind of delve a little bit deeper and I'll try to make sure that those articles also encompass some of that because it seems like a lot of those questions were related to that and I think some of those will be answered in those systems but we'll try to make sure that it's very clear so that kind of wraps up all the questions that the major questions in the questions there's a lot of questions we got through them all I removed some of the ones that were repeated repeats that we could find I'm glad I don't look at these questions beforehand because I have this like fresh take win it it's against my nature hey I mean you know I'm all for it and just you know it's up to you so I think that that kind of wraps up all the questions we have those articles up on the site so definitely go check them out we're gonna be having a scientific node type coming up next and we'll be going into all the others economic military and divine as well and then going into government and citizenship so we're gonna cover a lot of those systems and if there's other things that you'd like to hear from us about please let us know I know people have asked about classes and races and all that kind of stuff and all religions and those are all on my list so if you have other ones be sure to live there is going to be I'm just thinking right now I'm sorry I think next it's next week that the next cosmetics that comes out oh yeah next week and and in that cosmetic sect you will see the Nakoa race and absolutely we'll have a little bit of lore bits coming out I think right but I know we haven't I don't think we've shown the coup before maybe we have I don't know stay tuned for that very like tribal coastal tribal it's kind of really cool I think I'll have an article that goes out that will talk a little bit about the little lower blurbs and stuff of that so definitely check it out and yeah I'll let you guys know whenever those items are swapping over because I know people who were asking about the next item set so I think that's kind of it our final reminders are that we will have another live stream next month well you guys know in advance one that's coming usually we're trying to aim for the last Friday of every month the last Friday of this month I ignore the next month I actually am on pto so I don't know if we're going to swap that date up a little bit or not leave if not but maybe we'll have a toast taken over and show host a toast a toast toast a toast do we have to bring toast to that stream I think we have actual and we have to throw the tips so thank you to Steven and Jeff of course for joining and for all of you thank you guys and we appreciate your report and patience in this giant MMORPG that we're creating everybody here is is so thrilled to really be creating these systems because at heart as you guys know we are MMORPG players and we get very excited to share with you guys on stream you know what we're building and all of these systems because they answer the call we have had for many years from a game that we want to play that game we know that vitalizing have that call too so thank you for tuning in and thank you for your support and love yeah we'll be we're planning to have new articles every week so stay tuned for those on our social media and you can follow us here on Twitch so that you don't miss out on our future streams as well as the if you go check on over to our youtube channel subscribe to us over there we'll have this video up over on our YouTube channel and a Twitter and Facebook and Instagram will keep you up-to-date on all of the things a Shazz of creation I also try to put little Lord tidbits on instagrams so you should definitely go follow us on that so we'll see you guys