Talk:2019-04-17 Steven Sharif Interview - Ashes Pathfinder

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00:10

welcome to Ash's pathfinders everyone you dedicated Ashes of Creation podcast now running 47 episodes strong where we dig into all questions concerns comments thoughts and news related to Ashes of Creation I am joined here today with my co-host Daedalus welcome is always sir hello and of course the man the myth the legend himself Steven Sherif welcome Steven thank you for having me I'm excited definitely really excited to have you here it's been a while last time I actually got to have a conversation with you of this magnitude was probably back when I visit the studio was a really great time it was so on we did a little one on we did a little one on one that too yeah we did we did and got a really cool tour of the studio and everything was a lot of fun yeah so I know we had talked a little bit kind of about what's on the agenda today I have a lot of questions we gathered from here within the crusade community which is my community on that which D live everywhere else and I know Daedalus gathers and questions and then we gathered some from the forum so we're really gonna try and do our best to get through as many of them as we can but by all means like I said if you got a little more information by all means feel free so we just had this blog post that dropped literally within like an hour I think of this going live and the iron lion Daedalus and I talked about it a little bit and I'm really curious so notice that it looked like it was a social organization potentially I'm not sure if that's gonna be accurate within the kale are not the devale loon right that's correct yep and so it looked like dampening magic marshal combat seems to be their forte but we haven't we had a little bit of curiosity about that we wanted to ask about since it was dropped today and some of that is you know are those cosmetics that we saw are they are noble via like a reputation quest line these particular armor sets are erna Balcon x within the world this is an organization this is a military organization that resides specifically within the KLR race what you saw in today's blog post was really three distinct variants of that particular armor set that would be worn by the guards of the organization and as a member if you choose to participate in the quest line that the organization of the iron and the iron lion has to offer then you would be able to as part of your rewards earn the access to wear those types of cosmetics well so we were curious it's not this isn't gonna be specifically tied to race and this is gonna be something that pretty much any user can correct anybody can participate but the the lore that you're reading today you know resides within the kala race because that's the origin of this particular organization cool yeah they recruit members from you know anyone who is willing to take up arms in their cause but you know their lore and their history is derived from that of the kale our Empire outstanding we had another question about that too which was just out of curiosity if I was a magic user and I was to interact with them let's say coming across the no quest line maybe participating with them as a as a player and I'm a magic user would there be like a different reaction from that organization or from some of those NPCs etc so while we do intend to have reputation influencer interaction for NPCs I'm not sure if that's going to be as granular as a class indicator for that specific interaction so I don't think that based on your class you'll you will see a different quest narrative that you would receive from these individuals now that isn't to say that there aren't other quests that relate specifically to your class there absolutely are but I'm not sure in this society that you'll see that that's fair so I want to go ahead and dig into some questions we kind of categorize these somewhat in in that way of the questions that were oriented based on the questions we got kind of categorize them so we can make them a little easier to get through so we related to nodes we had some questions here do you expect to see any any type of synergy with like the library and tavern mechanics mentioned previously like all maps etc you maybe expand a little bit those are two distinct systems the tavern can exist as a building regardless of node type so I don't see that there is any interaction that's dependent on a connection between the library and the tavern there are somewhat independent of each other yeah right on and so what one incentives if any would there be for balancing or leveling different type of nodes like for example maybe not allowing there to be too many of one type especially with like the scientific mode we discussed recently in the blog post knowing that we have airships right that could potentially come to pass if you have maybe more than one metropolis like level six scientific may tell you so the benefits to having a broad base of developed diversity among the different types is that each type as we continue on with our blog series on you know diving into what makes these times unique you'll see that each type has a specific route for either advancing or expediting progress within certain types of mechanics and systems within the game for example with regards to the scientific node you know that all relates primarily to you know artisan ship and construction the scientific realm of how those things work and granting particular benefits to you to the stones that go into augmenting weapons and/or armors capabilities granting certificates for building types and whatnot while they may be achievable outside of the scientific node developing to those stages it's significantly expedited and the speed has increased accessibility is is is wider should that know in advance so what you would see if you didn't have a diversity among node types on a specific server is that that particular servers population may lag a bit in unlocking and/or advancing specific progress paths forward whether it relate to you know items building of freeholds classes subclasses augments you know all these different things relate in some way shape or form to one of the know types and and accessing those services like that I had a question here about the library card which was mentioned recently right what are some of the steps to that can a non-citizen get one and yeah if that's the case and at what point would non-citizens be eligible for that so one of the things that we do with regards to to citizenship as it is a flag that's present on any character is a lot of these systems from accessibility standpoint you know we have the the designs we're going to enter into alpha 1-4 and how we believe the different systems and mechanics should be accessible to either citizens or non-citizens but it's really something we're going to test heavily in alpha 1 and alpha 2 which particular system should be present for citizens or non-citizens so as we get into alpha 1 and alpha 2 you're going to see which of these particular benefits are available for citizens and non-citizens yeah I just had someone in chat that was saying ashes library's gonna be more use than IRL libraries that's probably pretty accurate imagine I mean the library is is such a it's such an interesting feature I mean it really not just the library all in all the different types but it's it's cool I haven't experienced in another MMO I've played where you have real-time updates that are dependent on community interaction to grant other other players this information this knowledge of a system that should be constantly changing so you know what resources are available where and how many are remaining you know those types of information are very relevant to a specific group of players within our community right the the grant the gatherers the crafters people who are playing that that that aspect of the game and for them to have real time information granted by other players experience available to their map especially when that map has a large fog of war type of system involved is is a defining characteristic of the library system and it's something that I think players will be able to utilize very well when it comes to dominating your local area and being able to you know take from it what you need I'm sanding so another question and I know we're just kind of rolling through these you all had a lot of questions in the community I'm really trying to ensure we hit as many of these as we can with the time we have today so this one I thought was a good one it's something I was I was actually curious about to which was given that citizenship supersedes all other affiliations how will it work if two players in the same guild or citizens of two different nodes that are at war with each other with one another so I mean you know it's I know some people are like ain't no guild should be first and other people are like no it's great citizenship is first the bottom line is while we have this affiliate structure present within the game a hierarchy of what affiliation is most important the bottom line is the player can actually dictate that themselves should a member of a guild not like that they their node is at war with with another members node they can always renounce their citizenship and not participate in that in that sense or they can renounce their guild affiliation for the time being the bottom line is though that when it comes to you know what amount of effort is put forth the node represents the most significant amount of gameplay that a player will experience is going to most likely be devoted to a particular node and when it comes to the severity of loss as with respect to sieges for a node or node wars that is most significant on the citizenship side of things so for us you know making the citizenship of a No paramount in your affiliation hierarchy really just made sense and you know those those types of conflicts will come to pass and and and it is normal for there to be you know conflict among family friends whatever you know guild mates and it kind of shakes things up a little bit it makes things interesting for me as a player when I was you know leading my guild I would often times actually have drama or you know okay just as an example I was a big fan of lineage two and I love playing lineage two and there was not a month that went by where some guild member got angry at another guild member and they would drop party and lie or drop guild and PK them or something along those lines right now some some crazy drama and then of course he knows upon the guild leadership to kind of hash it out yet get things kind of resolved or whatnot but I thought this is a great mechanic for guilt specifically where there might arise conflicts for them to burn off some steam in a orchestrated kind of system like a node war it shakes things up a little bit and it makes things interesting and then afterwards when all things are said and done you can reminisce about who was the victor in this little conflict so I'm actually gonna bypass some of these questions cuz I'm looking at our time on to make sure we kind of hit on some of these yeah actually may have one more on the node topic and then at the dermal at Daedalus kind of asked them about some of the artisan questions that we had received talking about node Wars like can they be at any time unlike sieges and castle sieges that are scheduled yes so node wars are currently designed that they can occur at any time with a defined win and loss objective for either side to to experience okay they listen to maybe ask him some of the questions of ours and ship sure sure so just kind of speaking of professions will there be any crossover benefit to progressing as an artisan like for example in some other MMOs there's been bonuses for artisanship like a racial bonus for example so I'm sorry just to define the question a little bit further you're asking are there benefits that relate to other systems based on your progress within the artisan ship tree correct yes yes there are there are benefits that are yielded across the spectrum of progress paths and systems within the MMORPG that relate in some way shape or form either to your progression within one of the three trees of the artisan ship system or with your that relates to certain professions within those different trees of the artisanship system like that so when we're talking about artisanship mastery certifications and profession mastery certifications that kind of came up in the scientific note blog specifically for note levels five and six do you have to be a citizen of that COI for that node to be able to achieve those certifications or can anyone travel to that particular node and obtain that certification so there are there are there are three states of access when it comes to services that nodes have to offer there is the non affiliate state and that is basically you're not a citizen you're just a person passing through can you access a certain service or system those exist then there is the affiliate state which is basically like I have progressed either with an organization that's present in this city but I'm not a citizen or I have concluded some quest lines that grant me specific access that non affiliates might have within the city and I have access to those things but I'm still not a citizen and then there are citizenship based benefits that's where I am a citizen and I have access to certain benefits that the or services that the node has to offer with regards specifically to the mastery qualifications that certain cities will offer those can be accessible either through the citizenship benefit structure or through the affiliate benefit structure the affiliate benefit structure if you are not a citizen you may have to complete several rounds of questions in order to access that benefit or service from the city so you're not completely locked out but the but the barrier to entry is a bit higher where it might not have that barrier of entry for a specific citizen if I make sense a tiered system depending on what affiliation you have now speaking of the enchantments that you talked about that were available at certain node levels are those on par with what players themselves can craft so there's there's now when you say enchantment are you referring to the enchantment scrolls or are you referring to stones the enchantment stones okay so the stone so the power stones nemesis are those on par with what can be crafted yes they are on par with what can be crafted what they do however offer is a horizontal spread of additional abilities and/or benefits for the armors and/or weapons so and those abilities and benefits are going to be reflective of the identity of that particular node and relate to its kind of to its type but they are on par with other crafted stones yes and similar to the tears we talked about with the certifications do you expect the ruining power stones or enchantment stones to be gated by some sort of tiered system or citizenship and the scientific node yes they will be gated in some way shape or form to progression of the other node itself okay but it wouldn't necessarily be gated by citizenship or those affiliations that you were talking about before at least that's not the plan currently some may be gated by that yes okay and and also to be clear on those stones there are tears of there are grades of stone as well so there are multiple grades that offer a vertical progression on the stones power and those grades become accessible and craftable both at a higher end type of hunting and or crafting and require even deeper material assets a higher grade material assets all right in kind of this maybe wrapping up on the enchantment and runic power you know will this be done through a combination of you know things that you need to do or will there be a consumable resource think of it like destroying you know two basic swords to come up with a plus one sword bonus or something of that nature or will you also include some sort of additional reagent that you need to purchase or find in the world so the consumption of stones get socketed into the weapons available and open sockets so there will be a process to consume the stone in order to socket it into the weapon or armor and then should you want to restock it that particular power stone you will need to go through a process that will require materials in order to remove the previous enchantment and and place the new stone okay and that would apply gas and stones which I think you mentioned in the blog were permanent that would apply as well correct okay okay just talking about a couple of other just kind of random questions related artisanship in the PAX West panel you brought up potentially a tattoo artists profession can you provide some details on this like for example will the tattoos be permanent can they be replaced as there is tattooing a separate profession or is it more like a specialization path so it would be a it would probably be more similar to like a specialization path in the sense that it's not it so necessarily profession but it's something that's accessible to pretty much anybody and I view the tattoos as sort of like a character character socket so to speak so you have these tattoo sockets on your character that you can fill with different again tiers and grades of tattoos that have kind of a give-and-take relationship where you you get you know enhancements in one area of your character in exchange for a deficit elsewhere and that's kind of your decision as a as a player where what you want to you know enhancer or where you want to specialize and yeah so I know there was a lot of questions about the navel aspect of Ashes of Creation do you think a profession like shipbuilding will be around at launch is that the plan currently yes that is the plan currently

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okay that's my artisan ship question Sam once I head back over to you for some more on your end so yeah I did have some other questions here this one is really kind of gonna be brief this category anyway but this is something that a lot of people were asking about a related freeholds what kind of free whole adjacent adjacency bonuses do you expect to have four respective nodes that's a big question and that is actually prop that is something that's gonna be part of a future blog series that we're going to focus on with every old system so I probably saved those answer to that that's fair that's fair what defines a legendary Freehold schematic and how it's different from other free old schematics you know this was something that I think Daedalus and I on the podcast Monday or regular scheduled podcast we were kind of curious about was you know it's gonna different tiers have like more placement for buildings on them or what how does that distinguish like in different tiers or levels so the idea that I had behind how legendary buildings will work is going to relate to the zone of interest that a freehold exists within so as you know freeholds are these parcels of lands that you control and on those lands you get to build up buildings that relate to you know whether you want it to relate to housing or crafting or processing whatever it may be and that's kind of your decision and direction now each building type and the service that it renders you the the significance it has for you will have a legendary feature that can be unlocked and the idea behind the legendary feature is that it's going to be granted to two specific freeholds within the node zone of influence remember these freeholds have to be associated with a particular node must be placed within that node zone of influence and it pays taxes to that node in order for being present there so each node will have an allotment of legend excusing each metropolis will have an allotment of legendary freehold bonuses that can be granted out to the freeholds that exist within its zone of influence and those will be for a period of time you'll have access to the legendary upgrade for a certain period of time and it'll be it'll be a mixture of first come first serve kind of citizenship benefit as well as some type of qualifying either quest related factor or combat-related factor performance some type of performance related factor that allows acts to the legendary upgrade now once you have the legendary upgrade you may apply it then to your freehold you will you will benefit from whatever it offers you as a benefit for a period of time at which points the process to claim that legendary will revert back to the node and citizens will go through the process again of trying to claim it so what makes it a legendary upgrade is that there are only a limited amount available to the citizens within the node and it is up to that system to claim that particular certificate wow that's fantastic news so how about in relation to getting a freehold all right like how is the freehold distribute is it something that you earn like the lore and story or is it more of like a purchasable thing like within within the metropolis or that no nice so the freehold granting the freehold flag basically you get this kind of flag that you get to place in the open world and that's that defines your perimeter of the freehold in that location that flag be is available to be granted at state starting at stage 3 and there is a quest line and material component cost for the player to fulfill before being granted the flag from the NPC at a stage 3 or higher Wow so this question we're kind of shifting to a bit of cosmetics we have some questions on cosmetics one is will all races be able to wear all cosmetics for example elves being able to apply the Nick wha I hope I'm saying that right is that the correct way to say that by the way Nick ooh ah Nick ooh ah okay so would an elf be able to wear a costume like that you know for example like the one that was most recently at least so all of the cosmetics that are released on the website now to launch monthly those are inter race changeable yes there will be racial and organization specific and again guild specific and node specific uniforms that may only be worn when the satisfying requirement is available on the character that flag is turned on so for example you may have you know a crown that can only be worn by a player if they are a king or queen meaning they own a castle there will be you know guild specific armor that even you there I think my laptop fell asleep okay Stephen a reminder in about 20 minutes - yeah it's cool it's okay so yeah back to that question about the UH


Oh yet well I think you were expanding on the cosmetic question right yeah where did where did I where did I fall off on that I'm gonna be honest I'm not sure if that caught me off guard we can be king kind of sure just just to reiterate one more time the monthly cosmetics that are sold on the website leading up to launch those are really worn by any race but there are absolutely condition set cosmetics that are required in order to wear certain types cosmetics so you know crowns for kings and queens guild apparel for a specific guild you must be part of guild or organisations you must be within the organization at a certain title there it is you got back on to chat was reminding us where he left off gotta love them


25:47

Simurgh: so yeah it's looking at caravan cosmetics some of them seem rather large so in the PvP zone that's around the caravan how much of the caravan itself would be used in combat some examples they gave were climbing on top of it cutting around it will have a different kind of hitbox or a lot you know can you line-of-sight using it hitboxes at all just something like that regarded tactics

Steven: so all caravans conform to a specific hitbox maximum and minimum so there there there is some degree of difference in the sizes of certain caravans but they'll never exceed a certain structure that we've we've set forth for their creation will I'm sorry what was the second part of that question talking about like their hitboxes things like that being able to kite around them how would they be used in a PvP scenario yeah so these are so there's you know two to types of care of answers their system-generated caravans for quests escort duty no trade diplomacy that kind of stuff and then there's player-driven caravans where the where the player actually drives a caravan you know their hit point polls become one the character assumes the defense mitigation and mobility of the caravan itself as he's moving it around the battlefield can you use it to try to kite play you know keep on just truck and yeah you can try that players can follow you and then can you try to have you know defenders use line-of-sight with the caravan yes you may do that it is a line-of-sight object cool


so that's we had some questions related to customization for armor and no we talked about that the you know the outfits and things like that going to be diable will you be able to kind of mix and match pieces of sets etc like that it's like an meet something it's gonna be available certain certain armors so it depends right there are costumes there are certain costumes that are full-body costumes you won't be able to mix and match pieces there but there are there other armor most armor is going to be on a per item basis so you know there there are a number of items that are on the character paper doll and you may mix and match between the different armors and so this is another question this would be the last one related to kind of appearance cosmetics but in the character creation program can we expect some custom creations by the staff instead of like generic mell female placeholders so you're asking are there going to be character presets within the character creation right yeah there will be absolutely there will be character presets that'll be present with regards to hair facial features body these types of presets will be you know if you want to just go through and make a quick character that you know our character team has kind of predetermined mix and match well these different settings you can absolutely do that right there and I think Bayless is gonna ask a little bit about some of the politics and kind of cultural questions we had gotten our hands on yeah yeah so I'm not sure if this was a sore answered already I thought there was mention of racial specific spell effects a long time back so curious if that's still a possibility I mean we really want to see some variety here yeah well I think there's a lot of every a lot of right but with regards to the racial variance there are still plans to have racial specific augments I believe that are present and passives that are present as well the passives you won't see as much from a visual standpoint but the augments you will be able to you know notice that perhaps similar skills have racial augments or modifiers assigned to them even before the sub class stage enters into effect kind of giving players an early look at how the augment system will work before they hit that sub class or assume that secondary class standpoint those be racially determined very cool all right so talking about the political potential of notes do you expect that would be expanded after release so for example considers have the room nobility so I can be kind of a prince of a note of my wife a princess you know can we go a go full Game of Thrones and have a court and drama and intrigue within the note from a politics employee so I would say that you know I don't I don't necessarily you know want to reveal what our plans are for expansions and whatnot but I would say that one of the key development and design standards we hold with regards to nodes is that this is going to be one of the main vehicles of expansion and updates right so the way we're constructing this system you know going forward into our office of betas is with the understanding that as we launch and move to regular updates post launch we will be utilizing that system as a primary source for new content so part of our expansion and update standpoints moving forward past launches you know you're going to have new areas you're going to have good points of interest you're going to have you know level updates you're going to have skill up to class update stuff like that but then aside from those things the note is really where we want to get into the nitty-gritty of storyline of mechanics and intrigue for both the political scene and the government scene you know the artisan ship updates the crab all of those things all relate in some way shape or form to the note so I would tell you that keeping that in mind yes it is absolutely on our radar to expand pretty much every facet of the nodes you can see post-launch okay all right so kind of going more on the racial slant here we'll each of the races have a unique language or the sub races have a dialect that other races may not be able to understand and if so can you learn another races language that is not currently in our roadmap no the link a language system that's diverse between nine separate races is not something that we have Road mapped right now and I don't I don't foresee that being a feature okay now in Sims last Q&A with you Steven he mentioned you mentioned something that about the toner having a caste system could you ask you know how you're thinking that will affect telling our players so the caste system really more relates towards towards the lore of the cult of the tone are I'm not so sure from a mechanical standpoint where it will play a role in either character development or or normal game mechanics and systems but from from a lore standpoint and a background behind their particular race you know that caste system came about because of that diversity that exists in the many different races that culminated to create the taller so moving kind of from that to more role-playing focused questions one of the questions that came through was really on tools in game that will kind of help augment role play improve quality of life for role play and there was a for a world of warcraft called total role play that had options like being able to do detailed character sheets profile creation biographical data kind of some tools to help you toggle in and out of character and have a profile you could save and share is that something like that plan for in-game tools for roleplay so from a platform standpoint when it comes to the accessibility of basically your character sheet from an online perspective and and perhaps even from their in-game as well you know I love those types of features I think they're very conducive to immersive gameplay they allow players that have an interest in roleplay to really deep dive into to their online persona their characters persona I think that's a that's a it's a great flavor for what MMORPGs are intended to be and while everyone may not be interested in that degree of roleplay it I think enhances the general gameplay of all players really so from our perspective you know the more features we can include that help to augment the ability for role players to roleplay within the game the better and all of the above you just mentioned I love those systems specifically you know I I personally have enjoyed them in the past and I would love to accomplish as much as we can from that perspective but right now you know we're focusing on getting the foundation in place first and we'll see how many of those we can incorporate by launch if not after launch is always a possibility for those types of things

35:07

great great that's good to hear that that's you know you you're thinking about those types of things I think that does really improve quality of life for players kind of along those lines too or you know I think this was mentioned before but just to confirm will there be custom tech stomach in you know a moat something to another player and have a custom text versus a standard you know animated mo I don't think no we do have plans for that as it stands but to be honest I don't think we've done a deep dive yet into the emote system or chat okay and then along those lines are you planning to have any type of rolling commands I guess no there will be some rolling creatures for sure yes there will be roll features and they come in the command syntax for the chat okay soon I think you've got some more questions for Stephen let's let's move to those mm-hmm so all right so there are a few questions here kind of relevant or related to rather characters and LU so if if as an individual I go up against two to three players who have similar stats compared to me if you're more skilled or I'm more skilled as a player going up against these two to three other players with similar stats what's the chance that I'm gonna be able to help lay them with that being the scenario so you're asking what role does level class composition and gear component play against the the variance of skill yeah so right now you know I wouldn't want to give a hard number on that specifically but I would say that from a balancing standpoint you know I want to take all of those into account and I believe each of those have a relevant place within the the interaction of players you know skills should definitely play an important role especially when we are aiming for a hybrid system of combat that incorporates action based mechanics because skill is a determining factor specifically with regards to that entire portion of combat but at the same time you know class composition should matter from a balanced standpoint so that you know the the the the trifecta of balance that is the Holy Trinity plays a role and is present because that creates interesting kind of strategic gameplay from class composition in the world the gear composition is a is an indicator of progression and success and time dedicated towards the game and we want to reward that aspect of it as well as you know basically just we want to make sure that each of those systems are relevant is there a hard number I can give you with regards to how much skill we'll play over those other three no I don't think there is necessarily a hard number but I would say the term is relevant with regards to skill that's fair so I know I know this this comes from someone in the community who who has really had a lot of questions about the potential for mixing tab targeting in action combat concerns on how the experience would play differently as like a hot guy for example in a pot Castle sieges compared to the range of predator maybe with a 75% action combat in the MMO in terms of like gameplay well that's a question how would that experience be different between between between the predator and the hawk I like a punk and the hawk I got it so you know it really it really depends on how you build those those classes because I don't want to say you know here is the predator experience and here is the Hawkeye experience and it can only be played in these two fashions but the way that you're really going to focus on you know those two particular kinds of of classes that the directions you could take them in because there should be multiple routes that they can go in is that a predator is going to use stealth and and it's kind of burst ability to to get in and take down particular classes that it's best against right whereas a Hawkeye is going to potentially keep its distance in the fight and lay down a consistent kind of DPS against again particular targets that their best against the idea isn't that there is a set path on any class specifically but that the player has some customization over what their role in combat could be and you know the idea when you when you get into whether it be PvE or PvP you know you have certain classes you have certain roles regardless of the class you have certain roles you have support lines that kind of stay protected in the backend and give their DPS you know buffs or heals for their tanks that are trying to control the battlefield or or take on incoming damage you know you have these tanks that want to get up front and be the focus of the DPS is target so that they can take the heat off of their of their DPS line and then you have the DPS that are trying to take out the support so that the other types of wolves can go down quicker you know the idea behind the Trinity system and and how our class counterplay should work is that you will have certain classes that can excel best in certain types of roles and there's some diversity amongst those wolves and and and how you can best perform what you're trying to achieve so I don't want to say necessarily again that predators are how guys need to go in one direction but as an example that that is what I would envision you know one rule could be for those two classes outstanding so we had another question - and this one was with something I was brought up because it reminded me of the mention of this mentorship system that you had actually mentioned it was middle early xx last 2018 last year all right but there gonna be a system where players can command others for their contribution a way of build reputation something that can be displayed numbers or just anywhere there's definitely gonna be you know tracking systems for definitely for contributions among players the mentor system really kind of relates to you know what are the one of the key issues that MMORPGs have had in the past that I've recognized as a player is that mo RPGs typically have you know their start date and then from a new player acquisition standpoint if if players do not traditionally start within a number of months of that of that MMORPG start date the MMO is great for retention of existing players but after those two months periods you traditionally don't see a high retention among new users for established MMORPGs and the reason for that in my opinion one of the reasons for that in my opinion is that mmo's traditionally have this starting area dilemma where you know at the beginning of the game's life that starting area is very popular there's a lot of stuff going on one of the greatest aspects of an MMORPG is the social aspect so you have a high you know fluidity of social interaction with other players because there's a high population within those areas after a few months go by new players come into an empty zone they come into a dead zone this now zone is irrelevant the player population average level has moved on to you know near closer to an Mader endgame whatever the point of life cycle is you come on in the MMORPG one of the things that our MMO is going to do well in my opinion because of the node system is going to be maintaining relevancy for four areas and zones throughout the lifecycle of the MMORPG making sure that population is still present and relevant within those starting areas because the nodes help to level up those areas and keep players coming back for quests lines for services for citizenship benefits whatever the case may be so that as new players enter into Ashes of Creation they get to enter into a hustling bustling city now they will not experience the same type of you know build development rush of the world that was present early on but our experience is intended to be a linear experience not the same cookie cutter experience that every player will have throughout the lifecycle of the game because that's the established curated content that's present quest a to B to C to D instead they're going to experience a history of the server that they get to participate in they get to have a role in defining you know that's that's the objective of the node system and what makes it so appealing in my opinion so the mentorship aspect specifically is something that goes into place to capitalize on that feature that what I just discussed the mentorship goes into incentivize players that may be more established within the game world to interact with new players to interact with with new characters now some will say hey I've seen these types of mentorship programs before and players just gained that system and create new you know characters on alternate accounts in order to reap whatever benefit is present there and that may still be the case there may still be players that that tried a game that system will have some safeguards in place so that it's not just then localized and contained to you know that characters a stable of accounts but incentivizes them to interact with active other active players basically so you know the idea there is that it ought ments that notion of keeping these starting areas relevant and conducive to a social atmosphere that makes MMORPG so great I love that you know it was like six months tops probably like nine months ago sometime after you'd mentioned that and it's something I've been contemplative about regarding mentorship for a long time so that actually helped to outline a lot of some of my own questions about it more specifically that's really great to hear so here's some fun ones right I'm gonna this is about ships and this one can bounties be put on a particular ship that's it that's a great idea that gosh I think it was almost like three years ago we were talking about like a bounty system that would be cool to place on buildings and whatnot but hearing it for as from a ship standpoint yeah absolutely like that that is that is a cool system that interacts with the community makes things kind of out of the norm and and situational right now we don't have plans for that but you know there's always expansion post launch that those types of ideas are great and especially you know those types of ideas and other ideas that I've read on our forums or on discord one of the great things one of the good sides of the sword for having an open development is that you get to hear great ideas and you can take them and run with it and you know what that type of idea I love is is a is a fun and interactive so again about ships and sizes and ship skins well vessel skins be locked sighs so sighs lot rather small to small crafted large and large craft etc like a canoe skin being locked only small vessels or maybe you know can it be applied to like a galleon so there is no there are classes and within the class structure of vessel are size restrictions so you know the idea there is you know from an asset production standpoint we have to define specific category a vessel and/or vehicle you know because we have to have consistency among the different classes so yes there is a size value assigned to different class vessels I'm standing what this is a very simple question but how will summons work in game so there are three different types of quote-unquote walks I guess there's four there's four different types of quote-unquote summons right there's the mount summon so everybody can have a mount that's present in their inventory and they can you know summon up there in effect they summon up their mount right it appears next to them and they can ride them and then they can D some of them there are cosmetic pets that really the only role they have is to look pretty and those can be activated by equipping a cosmetic pet slot which is another item that you'll have in your inventory and when equipped the pet will be spawned and will persist around you for however long you have that item equipped and then there is the battle pet summon and the battle pet summon will augment will take a portion of your power in order to exist and it will take a portion of your experience gained in order to progress so these pets will will be a progression that players can level up but the idea there is not to make it a meta that you know you must have a pet because the DPS is always higher necessarily with the pet really it's to give your character kind of this horizontal power slider that you can be beneficial against particular types of foes based on the pet that you have leveled up and the benefits you know it gives you in exchange for the power you give it and then there is the summon the summoner class so the summoner class you know its primary vehicle is through a summon and there are certain summoner classes that can either summon one pet or or multiple summon pets and the idea there is it is a vertical slide of power so it adds to your power based on your progression within that adventure in class within your summoner class and you gain access to stronger summons as you level up and that's the range of quote-unquote summons we love it great information the air quotes so this question is a good old T elf she's actually dropped a lot of questions for us but I really like this one too it's uh how does money get into the game if mobs are gonna like drop materials what gives coins so coins can be rewarded for completing specific quests coins can be awarded through taxation and can also be awarded through services such as player run businesses they can be awarded through the sale of goods to the shop they can be they can be awarded for a redemption of our our ticket system basically so you know what we call it what I don't really ever discussed this before but our tickets you know I've said in the past I don't want monsters to drop coins right you know I mean unless the unless it makes sense for that particular monster like you know bandits to have point on them then then it makes sense but I kill a wolf or I kill you know a bunny or something and it drops me little bag of coin doesn't make quite much sense now so instead what I think is is beneficial and also plays towards the regionalised system of our economy is that particular monsters will drop a item that we coin a certificate or ticket right and that item could be a wolf smelt it could be you know a a bunnies you know tail whatever whatever deal may be you can collect these things now they are also droppable so if you were to die you would drop a portion of them as well so they're considered kind of gather most now you can take those tickets and er certificates and you can redeem them at the your local node nearby at a Hunter's Lodge or whatever and they'll give you coin for them the further you can also utilize those tickets as if they were gathering and you could transit them via Caravan to another region where that particular monster may not spawn you might get a higher return or value for them you can hold those tickets and or certificates or a period of time and they might they might have an age factor to them that yields a higher benefit but the idea the idea there is you know this is a quote unquote resource that you're gathering with in regions and it has relevance across the economic map you know that's kind of another idea behind that as well I don't even know what the question was there I might have gone off on a huge tangent I mean you went off on a tangent but we appreciate that about you man [Laughter] so just a few final questions and we're doing pretty good on time I really appreciate you kind of like just digging into these and kind of kind of helping us kind of knock them all out like this so a few questions that are off topic and then a couple of my own so someone asks if Stephen is still running a guild in ASE which I know I know that's let's pretend it's a hypothetical purely hypothetical question if you were to run a guild in ASE which no type would you suggest your members join so first I want to say that I will not be running anything or affiliated with any guild exactly matter of fact you know is a very almost heartbreaking moment for me because I resigned as as guild leader of my guild that I had ran for you know 15 plus years and we had thousands of members and it just because I wanted to make sure there was no possible claim of nepotism you know in being a guild leader and/or guild affiliate with also being the head end developer anyways um but if I were to choose a node type I wouldn't reveal that answer the moment I say the moment I have no type you know if that becomes oh this is what Stephen would do now we have to do that so yeah yeah like include questions just for this effort yeah sure there's a nice try yes but yeah I can't so none of these are the kinds of questions that get thumped and I put them in there on purpose to like so I don't know if you can actually answer this it could be something you could hint at and I'm not even asking for a leak here but it what's the newest feature idea that's been added to the project recently that we haven't heard about a new feature what was the newest future I don't know you know from a from a feature standpoint and we try to have those as defined and laid out in a map internally so that we can you know assign them as tasks in our in our task tracker hmm and hand it out and scheduled into the development process so you know the newest feature would have been probably a long time ago I can't think off the top of my head what the newest feature would have been yeah I don't know I know it's so close yet so far no no I got a couple more here and then we'll kind of line this down that armored render leak now I was gonna say armored ender leaked it was really something you shared on the discord a while back I node analyst and I were like pretty excited I'll say from from my own personal perspective those are honestly kind of some of the types of armors I was trying to I was hoping to see kind of rendered at some point and I know that that really resonated really well with a lot of people is there any kind of timeline that you can actually share outside of what we kind of know as far as like blog post you know monthly live streams etc where we can kind of expect to see more rendered gear and just cause not even just cosmic but items buildings etc maybe maybe yeah I would say that you know part of what Margaret and the community team have been able to ally you know steady schedule of information that's weekly going forward you'll definitely see rendered material leading up to alpha one but do I have a specific date for you on with regards to armor specifically and seeing the models like you saw today I don't know the date but I know it's in the schedule so that's fair it's in the schedule so I mean okay so you can't see this you can't see this Steven but I'm a survey see this what's this uh oh this is a Blizzcon mug actually this is a mug I got from when I actually visit you all up at the studios went to Blizzcon got the mug why am i bringing up a Blizzcon mug i'd like to replace this is there like any potential opportunity here in the near future where I can buy and Ash's mug so that when I'm streaming or doing the podcast and I go to take a cup of you know a swig of my coffee here that I can there there will definitely be from a Jedi standpoint you know an expansion revamping of our merchandise but that's going to be post that'll probably be post alpha-1 without really you know our our entire momentum you know word obviously is preparing for alpha one correctly and you know from a merchandise standpoint we really want something that you know we have thousands of players in game they're testing out the game they're giving us the valuable feedback we need and then you know then we'll start to hire people who are specifically focused on you know marketing and merchandise as we have a playable game in the hands of our players they're they'll give me other things you can think of we do want to ask Steven about I know we've gone through at least my list DD everything else left yeah there was kind of one final question regarding cosmetic pets I know some of my gillies have been asking about those is there any plans to have a penguin or penguin variant there's definitely biomes that would conducive to some type of penguin pet and I do foresee that there there is a a realm of that could include something that resembles in some way shape or form a penguin yes and that's about wraps me up sim now the one and and look at this we are right on time right on time right we did good today Steven I definitely appreciate you coming on the show we have a special show today usually were on Mondays but definitely appreciate your time I know that you're very busy wearing a lot of hats so speaking and that your time is valuable so we appreciate you taking the time to come on the show thank you very much I appreciate being or you guys have an awesome gosh very crafting and I think you know you guys do a great job of it and the community appreciates it so we appreciate it to shake that thank you very much thank you yeah Steven it's been Steven Chu reap everyone CEO and creative director rAshes of Creation our most favorite MMORPG and development we are looking forward to everything asked to offer offer everyone here on the stream thanks for showing up hanging out watching this will be up on YouTube in the next couple days again Steven thank you community thank you and until next time we'll catch you on stream have a great week everyone okay thanks everyone later Steven you