Talk:2019-08-15 Dungeon Crawler Network podcast interview with creative director Steven Sharif

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welcome to from the ashes the dungeon crawler Network podcast all about ashes of creation by intrepid Studios bear witness to the rebirth of the MMO RPG genre from the ashes of an industry has left the gamers behind I'm jealous founder of the dungeon crawler Network and we're coming to you live from the mighty beard tavern and Stephens joining us hey thank you for having me I'm excited I can't I can't believe it it's a hundred episodes it's crazy 100 episodes we have hit the big 100 and before I introduce the rest of my coasts I do want to say like I know some people really don't think too much about this if they're not a real big podcaster thing but most podcasts really don't hit this number a lot of them pod fade after only handful of episodes we've seen that happen through well ever since I've been doing this so it's pretty awesome that I have some great co-hosts to help support do this show and also a pretty amazing game that we're excited about so keeps us going we are joined on this 100th episode by the one and only storms Lord how are you sir doing awesome excited today excellent and alpha soul doing great and ready to start with the show and the one and only mr. crow Jack now that we've hit a hundred you know we have to do right we have to go for a thousand it's the next evolution we have to go for a thousand if it's a thousand robust if we don't hit a thousand we failed that's pretty much it and I actually started seeing people go you know one of our favorite favorite people in all the world mentioned I love how ashes of creation and from and from the ashes always start promptly on time I started seeing a lot of soon TMS and I was like oh great Stephens gonna sue us because we're stealing as soon TM I was I wasn't the first to use the soon TM that's been around for a long time it has been okay well we've got a fun show planned for you guys this is obviously our celebratory episode for one hundred and actually someone did a little bit of trivia I saw in our in our discord or I was actually in the official discord the if you got to our YouTube and watch our from the ashes playlist it would play for over four days geez Oh mm-hmm wow that's a lot of hearing that's crazy yeah that's a lot of time it has it's it's nuts all right and Before we jump into all that fun stuff we use we do have fun Q&A; and but we have some patrons as well I want to thank our newest patrons Michael D and Doctor Who Dat to 1-9 for supporting the show if you're interested in ESO Doctor Who that she's a fantastic lady I love her she's a great stream where she streams on the ps4 just a really really genuinely nice person so if you want to check out her streams you should definitely do that and also we got a new 5 star review on iTunes and this one's great and I thought I'm gonna read this because it's very apt to what we're doing right now fantastic show full of great content so I love this show watching these guys break down all the info on the game I'm waiting to get my hands on is if is the fresh air I need each week all the men have their own insight into different parts of gaming and bring different views to each topic it's the best especially for someone like me who doesn't know a lot but sure does enjoy learning about it it's one of my favorite podcast and the game info is pretty sparse at the moment so you know Steven that's what said imagine that stuff imagine the stuff they will talk to us about when they get closer and closer yeah this is true awesome be good keep up the stellar work we appreciate y'all's hard work bringing the news to the people see you on Thursday for episode 100 that's why it was very I couldn't more with that review I really you know for me personally I obviously watch pretty much everything out there from any Content that gets created or articles that get written whatever it is you know I I pretty much see it and I thoroughly enjoy every time you guys have your show I think you guys do great conversation great Theory crafting great point in counterpoint conversations and I think you all keep it within the realm of constructive and insightful and I think that's a really cool testament to your guys as content that you create so Bravo to you guys on your hundredth episode and I hope you guys keep it going to a thousand oh my god thousand episodes that's 900 weeks from now let's get real like oh my god well I mean if the game is really good listen we had this conversation krojack about other MMOs that consumed our lives if we do weekly episodes yeah we could probably get that high I could see it yeah Oh easily Wow and thanks Bob doli for gifting me some creation twitch with a sub to us that's great and of course that review was from gray Jedi I see them in chat right now and they also interact on our YouTube all the time I love seeing their comments they're great people all right all the boilerplates done it's time to jump right on in to the interview cuz Steven decided to join us much to his peril we different questions asked him because we wanted to we have a bunch that we did then we asked a bunch of questions in our community discord as well if you have time we'll get to those and as everybody knows as you guys knows I never I never pre-screen questions so I'm gonna be just as surprised as the audience is I want to point out that I have sent you questions every time we do the every time you just refuse in transition I apologize every time I do one of these shows I send you questions so that way I always do this as an interviewer because I don't like as a listener to hit a question where they go yeah we're not ready to talk about that yet you've never done that or you've at least given us something else but we can't talk about that yet we're not ready to talk about that yet you know those no-comment things are just not fun to listen to so I try to give questions so you can weed those out - Steven X credit he's never done that but we try so yeah and there was something else oh right right there was something that we were gonna do we talked about a giveaway didn't we yes we did we're gonna have a giveaway at the end of the show so stick around and the awesome people at intrepid Studios were kind enough to get us a bundle of Ashes of Creation goodies includes a hoodie a t-shirt a lanyard and a hat I believe so we'll be given that away at the end of the show so stick around for that that way they don't leave right away you know wait till the end that way they look at the reward yeah all these people showing up are just for the giveaway that's why we wait till the end yeah I am like a dog chomping at the bit right now we ready to go yeah we are go ahead girl Jack yes okay let's start with a really small question a tiny piece of news recently steamed do you guys have partnered with steam the big question basically is a two part of one why steam will have a benefit do you guys receive from partnering with steam from your game on that platform and two you don't have to be specific with this there's a possibility will we see the MMORPG potentially on Steam as well down the road well so I mean we didn't really ever plan to be on steam with any iteration of Ashes of Creation as an MMORPG but as you guys know and as probably the viewers know you know our alpha one testing kind of evolved into a standalone test ground that became you know the three modes of apocalypse and then eventually became it's sort of standalone game with that respects and you know as we evaluated this earlier in the year pristine we kind of came to inclusion that we wouldn't need to do that necessarily because our intentions weren't to really market the game so to speak apocalypse that is but as we you know kind of started to approach this back-end reworking getting done we decided that it would make sense for us to really hammer the servers as hard as possible and we didn't want to devote much marketing towards you know release of a POC so to speak and steam really provides a great platform that reaches a lot of different users all of which you know exists in different demographics and interests and it makes sense from a matchmaking game standpoint for a game like a POC to really funnel as many players as possible because it gives us the most amount of data it allows us to kickoff matches very regularly and it also introduces people who might not normally be introduced this early on to what Ashes of Creation is as a as a IP as a MMORPG development it gives us access to those people so that was really kind of what led us to you know change our minds with regards to our approach to steam with with apocalypse with regards to the MMORPG there are currently still no plans for the MMORPG to be on steam I mean not everybody's familiar kind of with the business side of what the game industry entails but platforms like Steam you know they do have a revenue share that that comes from the games that utilize their platform now Apocalypse is a free-to-play game and the MMORPG is a subscription-based game we plan to have heavy marketing ramped up when the MMORPG approaches its betas and we feel very confident with the ability for us to pull a large amount of people and interest as publishers of the MMORPG for North America and beyond that we will be able to set a tiss fie kind of that marketing requirement without having to necessarily utilize platforms like Steam so currently still our position on utilizing Steam as a platform for the MMORPG is still that we don't intend to do them who and and you're not worried about any negative reviews I mean we've already seen like you said we had in our pre-show about reddit's opinion reddit's opinion we don't know is its full name here the site we do not name yeah like I mean they're just they're not a happy group of people anyway the MMORPG community as a whole has gone through yeah twists and turns that kind of substantiate the jaded miss that we might see in certain you know communities like reddit or MMORPG calm you know it's understandable and and you know that's partly the reason and motivation why I even created intrepid and Ashes of Creation as a project in the first place was because I was one of those jaded people so I don't really look to those types of comments as a necessarily a swing or demotivating point for me in actually I'm kind of weird in that regard because I look at the negative comments sometimes on reddit or the speculation and the doubters and whatever and I kind of use that as fuel a little bit I'm I'm very competitive in nature you know and I tended to enjoy a lot of PvP games you know as I was growing up so any type of like trash talk or doubt earnest or whatever it is usually for me I use it as fuel so to speak like I'll show them you know that's kind of like my position but a level or there's a difference and people have actually come to me in the past asking like oh they started content creation got hate and I know krojack and I talked about this a lot to where people want to hate for no greater reason than to hate and I and I've taken to new content creators and I actually even saved emails where people have sent me like death threats and stuff and I'm like I said this to a buddy who just started and I said listen here's the difference there's people who are gonna hate for no greater reason than just to hate if there's no valid criticism they're ignore it it's not gonna do anything but seeing negative comments and stuff like that we've taken negative stances on things you guys have done but we will look at from a very constructive point of view and it struck tip I absolutely yeah if it's all positive you'll never get better absolutely and I've always said this even to you know those who may not be aware in the audience but you know we do have a content creator program you're watching one of our official content creators here at dungeon-crawler network as well as Kojak but you know we we me personally I don't like white knights I also don't like dark knights so to speak but I like people who present their opinion in a way that's constructive with ideas that are alternatives or what they think is better because many voices when the when the listener is discerning can be beneficial you know I'm not saying we listen to every voice per se but I'm saying that these voices you can find the diamond in a rough when it comes to these types of opinions right yeah no definitely any MMO got a little Aladdin on there sorry about the time oh [Music] all right so this episodes over we are now going to talk about the live-action fantastic well yeah no the MMO industry as a whole has really been screwed and we're looking at you are caged calling you out so alright continue on guys all right so for this one we're gonna totally change topics what details can you go into about the architectural changes that made you step back and redo that well there are there were a large amount of changes that needed to be done at a very fundamental level in the way that we replicate communication communication across the server to the other clients in a single zone there was a lot of ways that you know unreal does it out of the box and changes that we had made as well that just didn't jive necessarily and and and I think you know from our perspective originally we wanted to utilize as much as possible that unreal provides out of the box in addition to our custom changes that we make as well as our third-party partners that we utilize them in in that regard but we really just had to go back and and and do the whole shebang so to speak with regards to some custom back-end networking and and that's kind of what we learned from the December testing the January testing that we had and actually it was you know I know we said this before but it's very beneficial that we learned that earlier on then we would have had we waited to have a more complete and/or representative of an MMORPG as a whole because there's a lot of systems that need to be made before that testing can begin to really push our network and back-end changes so you know partly that's what apocalypse originally was decided on to be a testbed for were the were the back-end solutions that we were creating and you know that that that's what we got insight to early on but to give you a little bit more details really it had to do with the way we were as I said replicating network traffic between from the from the player to the server and then back to all the players trying to achieve the very high number we wanted to achieve early on okay okay can you tell us now from your I I know we already talked a little bit about a pot coming out here in five days can you tell us from your internal testing what kind of numbers you're seeing now are we seeing a marked increase in an improvement that you've seen from your internal testing oh absolutely so with regards to the testing that we're going to see on the 20th or Apocalypse um you know we have the matches that are designed for a hundred players and originally you know our server framerate was operating at you know between anywhere between like 12 fps and you know 15 to 20 FPS with a hundred players all with a net relevancy of each other and that's really not good when it comes to a performance standpoint you know kind of gets sluggish it feels you know very rubber band II you don't get your input doesn't get recognized by the server as quickly as it should also it's not very beneficial for players that have you know high latency or at least a mid-range latency right now you know in in the internal testing and some outsource testing that we've done with QA you know we've had a hundred players in our matches and our server framerate is steadily at 60 frames which is its cap and that's where you get the really smooth feeling happening so that's it that's a extreme extreme change with these back-end changes that we've made additionally you know it's not just a matter of 100 players but you know we're pushing the limits when it comes to preparing for the castle sieges so we have you know our internal QA tools such as you know bots that we add to simulate network traffic that we would expect from players you know they move around they do attacks they use skills they jump all that kind of stuff as one of our QA sources and with those tools that we've been utilizing we've seen regularly in the number of hundreds you know I think our last test we saw was over 350 that we had in a single server and we were still above 30 FPS so the once we have time to optimize based on data that we see from apocalypse and the hundred players because we don't need to necessarily have our target goal of 500 or thousand players in a single zone in order to optimize that network traffic the packets that we send the stuff that we replicate we can take the data that we collect from under player matches and we can start trimming the fat we can start making sure that you know only players that need to be network relevant to you based on the direction the the calling algorithm you know we have a heuristic algorithm that we use based on distance on on field-of-view on you know they tag party or they not are the enemy all of those things become logic that we use to increase performance votes from a network standpoint and from a client standpoint to questions that already popped into my head already what are you actually looking at capping the FBS at 60 are you gonna let that on cat in the in the game later well so I'm sorry when I say framerate I'm specifically talking about the server side for okay I'm not talking about your client render yeah that's a different story so client render framerate really has to do with like how many things are you seeing on your screen that your GPU has to render right and and that and at what quality are you seeing them how many you know how many players are there how many textures are you seeing all that kind of stuff I'm talking more about on the server side you know we we want the server to perform at a high rate because as its transmitting those packets back to the players and giving them relevant information that's important based on like what's the movement position of an opponent nearby or the part of our remember how does their HP change did you score a hit is that you know B all of these things have to be adjudicated by the server and the server needs to be able to process those things in a way that's performant so you know we're really optimizing the backend systems not the front-end stuff that's that's really yeah we've been optimizing that as well on the on the client-side you know on a mid spec machine I think at an odd gtx 960 our last benchmark was around 80 80 FPS at high settings hi excuse me no.not hi excuse me I'm sorry epic settings we were seeing at 80 FPS on a mid spec machine on a 960 not direct on a 960 so another aspect of what a POC provides is we get to really you know optimize the environmental standards the character standards all these Poly's they are seeing these textures that you're having to load you know we have really defined the the streaming distance on on levels so that that's optimized you know we've perfected our H LOD systems our LOD systems all of these things go into providing a better experience for players on a on different spec machines hmm okay next question based on the fact you just talked about this and I know you guys are using I believe it's AWS for cloud computing have you used any BOTS from outside your geographic region and what kind of responses are they getting if you are yes we have you spot so the way we kind of spin up BOTS is you know we we basically take virtual machines on the AWS ec2 instances and you know we can create 50 to 100 BOTS per you know ec2 you know c5 or mc5 or c4 group machines and we start spinning up thousands of those and throwing them into our matchmaking process into our server load balancing into all of these different back-end systems so you know we are definitely getting results that allow us to tune basically what what we've set up so it's very beneficial to have those types of tools available to both the engineers and our to a team hmm okay and I'm seeing actually chat and this is one that I was gonna get to as well but they're mentioning how how quickly I guess they're calling tickrate on here the server to the client side of you guys measured that yet so there's multiple tick rates right I mean it really depends on what type of tick we're talking about on a world ticks you know standpoint and again while I have learned a great deal about engineering I obviously am no you know technical director with that regard but I can speak a little bit about it yeah so it depends writes some tick rates have a very high priority and they and they'll be running you know every every frame so to speak you know and that usually revolves around movement I mean movement is obviously the the heaviest component of any tick rate on the server because you need to to know where players are at all times especially excuse me players that are within the net relevancy range you need to know what they're doing at all times so right now in Apocalypse our net relevancy is 350 meters and that's because the max distance on our weapons is 275 meters so we want you to be able to see players and then you know in any field of you have you know exactly so you know the movement is is the highest she's the highest cost when it comes to that you know we have our garbage collection we have you know we don't play animations on the server we don't play effects on the server we try to trim all that stuff down you know tick rates vary really it depends on what we're talking about yeah and for those of you who don't have the tech background and found that interesting you just found out the max range on one of the highest weapons so there you go [Laughter] and oddly enough the number of viewers went up during that not down yeah who call that is ago all right guys continue on all right so you're moving on to the next question so what percentage done would you say that the AIPAC battle royale is excluding bugs on things of that nature now that we're going back into it Apoc Battle Royale so yeah I mean so there are there are different departments obviously right from a design perspective a POC Battle Royale is I would say 98% complete from an environment perspective I would say it's a hundred percent complete from a well I'll say 98% complete from a character perspective I would say it's about 95 92 percent complete and then from an engineering perspective I would say it's probably 90% complete and the reason I say 90% now I know he said we were like 10 percent away from having the reworking done on the back end features well well the reason why is now even though the the rework is complete and it's gone through some some QA things are going to need to change post live ops because we will see data trickle in and we utilize that data to refine obviously our our our code so that we can learn from it and move forward from it right so yeah I would say that the BR is is relatively complete gotcha okay we need to step away from the technical stuff for a little bit all right we're gonna back it up and we're gonna ask a really interesting question Steven with the Battle Royale testing just around the corner you played it it's her baby what excites you the most about some of the changes we've seen from the first iteration of it about a year ago so now like what changes to the abilities what changes to the graph is what changes really excites you with the game I mean there's there's two things really about I mean okay let me let me preface this I am not really a batter out player however you know when it when it came to and I don't want to rehash it but when it came to getting something out that we can collect live data from this was the best option and it was the fastest option so we went with it however I will say that it is a lot of fun and you know players in the studios when we QA our QA test our external QA test you know we've been utilizing some of the GPT and network as well for some of our external nd8 QA but players seem to have a lot of fun with the spells the effects the fantasy aspect and nature of it one of the exciting things for me about you know any iteration in the Ashes of Creation universe is the ability to see the world to see what is coming to understand the immersive nature from an art direction from from the from the style guides we've created for these different cultures getting to understand some of the lore even through the Apoc testing you know the background of some of these civilizations and the the way that Vera ended you know the apocalyptic ending it had those types of things are exciting to me because I like to be pretty story driven in my experiences as a player and I think it's really cool to get immersed in in this universe that you're getting into and Ashes of Creation has a very rich and diverse universe so you know that's probably the most exciting thing for me as a player as a business owner as a developer you know the the performance and the metrics that we gain and learn from these types of tests are very great to see because you can literally see the progression of a product based on you know feedback data collected you know refinement process and polish and then the cool thing about that is you now can see that as we step forward on the MMORPG progress as well we get to take everything we learn and move and move it there as well so it's the exciting thing there is that we get to offer a a better experience moving into alphas and betas because of the bad experiences or exactly the the learning experiences we have with the the predecessor that is a POC in that regard and I wanna I want to highlight something here for chat just so people are aware and anyone who's listening to show later I know there's people asked about MMO news but I think people need to understand this is MMO news I know there's a reason why we ask all those tech questions they might not be very pretty but they held a wealth of information that leads to what we're all hoping for which is the MMO all those things all those not pretty things that we talked about all lead to making a game that actually is a massive multiplayer MMO otherwise it's just a single-player instance so you need to understand that all the stuff we're asking now even though they're directed towards a POC because I'm coming out soon and that's our testing ground they all apply to the MMO otherwise building-block yep we'll have Vera that's massive and takes you know you can run around do quests but you can only ever see 10 people on the screen because the neck so there's that's not an MMO sorry yeah and we're better unless you're smaller then 10 players on the screen is all you can actually handle if you played a game called bless you'll understand the importance of that yeah yeah I mean there you can actually tell when a game does not have good net code you can feel it and that's why so many games focus on instancing so heavy because they can't handle a large amount of stuff at one time so yeah that's that's that's a very good point actually agile osis you know one of the other important features about the MMORPG as a whole is the fact there's very very little instancing you know the the vast majority of Vera and the experiences we'll have exist within the open world and that's it's a fundamental design aspect of our MMORPG and in order to accomplish that you need to be able to anticipate the player population moving together into zones at at quantities you may not want to see but contingencies you must prepare for absolutely so all of these all of this testing really prepares us and allows us to get you know necessary insight into what architecture we have developed to accommodate those things right absolutely all right I just had to address that before we continue as I seen a chat and I'm like I gotta put a stop to that because you know so you just answered other questions that's okay well we'll skip that one right so we'll get more technical again just because I like to geek out on that so from an automated but performance testing perspective is that something you if you can tell me is that something you've entered out or is that something you brought in develop how did that work now we have we have in our engineers internally tools engineers basically that create a lot of these automated systems and there are there are varying degrees of bot testing that we do right you know there are different levels of access that you want the bots to hammer just from the initial connection into our account services to connecting into our matchmaking services to load balancing across our server network to simulating player packets to the server and network traffic you know BOTS get to to to render quality on client on client side all of those things really are different levels that these tests get to permeate and and you know our our tools engineers have been amazing with regards to standing up these these internal tests post post our December open beta that we had with apocalypse you know part part and I would say as a retrospective on December just a little bit more with a POC you know we didn't have all of those tools in place prior to that a POC launch we were really depending on who's that impact I beta we're really depending on on utilizing it really as a as a naked test so to speak we were relying on players to fill what should have been the rules of some more developed tools at the time but we were so I don't want to say hasty but we were so excited to get something in the hands of our community that we could we could collect live data from that we were a little bit too hasty in that regard and so you know one of the benefits of sometimes you know I hate to say the word failures but failures is that they're the greatest learning experiences and you know when we moved forward as a studios we were able to learn from the mistakes that were made leading up to the December test and we were able to course-correct as was necessary and that all goes to serve the better purpose of the MMORPG development because we take with us the practices we learn from those situations and we ensure a better quality product moving forward all right thank you yeah all right so next question kind of shifting bits to the forums specifically I notice you guys have this Deb discussion series I think you guys are up to like eight or nine or seven or eight something like that it's a it's a great way to get feedback from players and it's good to hear what people think on a particular topic I'm wondering has any of the player responses affected you know your development in any way and if so how and are you getting rid of elders erase the only back I provide no we're not going to redevelop and you know with regards to the developer Diaries that you know Maggie and the team have been so so great at providing the community we obviously take all feedback into consideration what I would say is that where that feedback tends to shine is post developer diary comments that are made post developer discussions on the forums you know we circulate that Sarah circulates that to this using lieutenant toasts circulate sect to the rest of the team post those discussions and people get in there in their leisure time you know and they're not developing they get to kind of look through that stuff and and take into account some of that stuff in it and in some of those discussions you know come into the roundtable that we have here at the studios I can't necessarily pinpoint you know specifically if if people necessarily say hey this person specifically said this but I do know that you know insight is gathered from those from the input that players provide in those discussions so it does show itself at our developer discussion tables nice nice Crowe Jack I think you're okay I have a question and we're gonna start going back towards the MMORPG here talking about Mayors and running metropolis is running cities will the mayor be able to delegate other people maybe in his guilt or whatever to do certain tasks around the town or is the responsibilities of running that town solely on his shoulders the jell-o's wants to run his own town I want to run a coup d'etat to take over we'll see what happens but delegate a little bit and share the load with some guild mates so the mayor really doesn't have if I recall the mayor really doesn't have the ability to delegate roles the roles that become available that are not necessarily mayoral but that become available within the within the node are are achieved through title and rank advancement through this through the different organization systems right so so as players progress they can achieve like high priest of the temple or you know ahead merchants of the merchants guild or you know those types of thing and when they do achieve those it comes with it certain certain duties that exist and/or mechanics that become now available to the player within the note additionally those types of titles come with them roles that exist within certain military activities during sieges they may carry with them skills and/or you know additional buffs that could be had you know what we want to make sure ok so just on a siege perspective or even during advance remember how we have events that get triggered when some something happens in the world the note might advance or you know a grand temple may be built or something along those lines might trigger events like the dragon from the mountain or the hoard of zombies attacking the city during those types of events and during the sieges these title players and that have achieved this title they become they become very heroic even more so than the normal heroes around them they may gain additional damage mitigation they might gain additional hit points they get they may gain battle valor and battle cries - you know motivate the the citizenry around them during these events and or sieges so those are those are some of the ways that we kind of approach having additional player roles within the node that don't necessarily aren't necessarily the mayor interesting but the caution of allowing a mayor to appoint people is that it will it will boil down to them appointing their guild and we want to make sure that there's a you know in in the real world operations of church and state well in the game we want to have sort of a separation of state and guilt so you know the idea there is that we don't want guilds to control nodes guilt in their own gameplay they have their they have castles that they can vie for they have you know guild halls that they can control and guild wars and they you know they have guild quests and guild skills that they can level up though that's a very in-depth system for gilts to have the node system is really more focused around the inter guild of the world a population that exists we want we want players to to have the opportunity to be adversaries or friends uh through through not necessarily the guild system in that regard so we have the different election processes based off the know type a the religion has a way of letting their leader and the merchant has a way of letting their leader are these sub jobs also differently elected or differently chosen based off of the no-trump so those aren't necessarily elections excuse me those are achievements so you know there are requests there are quest systems that revolve and many of the organizations that revolve around advancement right Orman's the advancement in performance within those organizations dictate the leaders so to speak not necessarily elections cool interesting Peter they saw we're good we're good awesome Wow beard has appeared I see it's pretty cool um and actually that goes into if the mayor is elected and then you have these other groups that may that will have leadership positions based on different tasks I'm assuming it's based on whatever roles that those particular organizations offer do they have checks and balances that work against the mayor does the mayor have de-facto balance facility there is okay so that's a great question Angeles because there are some give-and-take roles that exist within these different titles that are in the node system and and in a way that simulates what is the politicking of a mayor they have they have to create relationships with these title holders within the node system in order to progress certain systems not all but certain forward so if there is conflict there if there is you know non agreement present then that can stifle progress for the note all I saw was a vote of no-confidence in chat and that so I can have my coup d'etat my overthrow of via jell-o's tyranny you know vote him out is impossible I mean you could do to vote him out sure that's leading a campaign in Rio but that's through the normal election man yes what you can do again is stifle progress similar in the United States how we have a you know a bicameral Congress and we have three different branches of government you know if different parties control these separate branches there can be really a halt in progress and sometimes actually that's that's a good thing not necessarily a bad thing you don't want one part yeah well not even just a government basically a stopgap that requires compromise and if there is no compromise then nobody wins so that's exactly that's the type of fundamental you know real life functionality we see that we want to duplicate in the game as well I love seeing that player relationship being so important for the progression of cities of nodes of civilizations of the entire game that's so important and it's missing in a lot of them of the votes I'd love to see that two questions one I know it's it's getting really dark in here myself and like my head is just existing in my body floating in space two questions one are there gonna be any tools to help me fight a mutiny within my own guild because that's apparently fulminating right now zero oh yeah no that's pretty bad these different positions within cities or they're gonna be a set number of actual counterbalance positions based on how prevalent a organization is based on the node are they locked like if it's a religious note are there three Pope's essentially like no no that the the ancillary title positions that we exist within a note are tied to two primary developments one the size the the development level of the note and then that dictates the availability for particular buildings and/or projects to get to get initiated when those buildings and our projects relate to certain organizational benefits that can bring online those other titles now with those additionally with those projects and our buildings that can be and that's kind of you know the ultimate power resides within the mayorship because the mayor gets to dictate which buildings and/or projects come online so you know he could potentially have a devout you know religious guild come to him in the city and say hey you know we really we are going to provide all of the materials and focus on building up you know this temple to you know this particular religion because that's what our guilds all about and you know we'll take the pressure off of you for making sure that those assets come to the fruition of that project and in in response you know the mayor's may say sure you know but I want to make sure I will have your support for this particular systems benefits to the node that whoever the elect who ever the achieved leader is within that organization gets to dictate policy for right so let's build that relationship so to speak and that's kind of how these titles come online is that the mayor dictates which buildings are are established within the node and though in those buildings when they have participants in those organizations they get to achieve those titles I love this all sounds fantastic we have more questions gentlemen are we new yes two more questions two more questions that look what Bryan brought because right now we're pulling like 12 14 hour days at the studio and he just brought so what is that the podcast is there enough for the entire tavern because they don't know awesome alright let's continue alright okay so early on you guys mentioned the ability to track track in like record different statistics and data kind of like as a foundation of your game right are there any plans to potentially expose any of that on the character level what I'm thinking of is things like for example an option you know within the library within some game system or even just on the character tab to be able to see what a player has done or participated in within the world so that you can make better judgments on whether or not to recruit that player or just find out better information on the players history you know like what exactly like that's Eve is what kind of what I'm looking at and thinking of so we definitely have some grand plans that might not be available you know pre-launch or suzune for launch but maybe come online you know post launch and some of those plans do relate to you know the character profile system and you know those types of achievements you discussed that players would have an option to kind of turn on for others to see and kind of boast for you know whatever whatever the deal may be and having that system you know linked in through the website as well so that you can have a profile page you know and even linked you know into the mobile companion that we want to eventually have available for Ashes as well so yes there is a desire to do that on our end but obviously you know when it comes to scheduling that that is something that takes a backseat to the more fundamental aspects of launch gotcha gotcha okay question to make sure because I know many people are gonna harp on her not hard but just cling to the mobile companion of hardline word we discussed you know very early on you know our desire to have the opportunity for players to you know have some management applet over their property they may own over their processing over you know some of the activities they may be able to do within the note that they are a citizen of or organizations that they're proud of or have you know gilded or connected chat features and/or notification stuff like that family stuff that's all part of what a mobile companion is and you know it's not not something that is you know don't you have phones it's more [Laughter] this is this is a great tool to use when you can't be at your computer so we'll follow up question to the the website that showcases some player statistics like a profile is that going to be also showing gear profiles or gear sets or achievements that they've accomplished like what kind of depth you in said I'm going into with that kind of we have to be careful about the gear thing I'm asking goes back to the API to like you know jpr yeah we have to be careful about some of that stuff because you know those things can really partition communities and and it's not to say that that the partition can't happen without us exposing those types of things because it obviously can and it and it's it's really a scale of effort that the that the you know guild leader or you know constant party wants to go through in order to vet you know people that they may play the game with and they can absolutely say you know send a screenshot said you know you got or whatever but what I want to encourage as a community as a whole is to is to really look beyond the gear score look beyond you know the skill aspect of it and encourage people to play together for mutual progression a mutual benefit and to expand the horizons of you know perhaps the more elitist guilds that become present in the MMORPG community but particularly in a Western atmosphere because there are a lot of great people that play MMORPGs people who you do not have you know necessarily the luxury of meeting if it weren't for an MMORPG and and I don't want us to encourage that partitioning by making it easier through these accessible tools so that's kind of where I stem from that might be very idealistic I understand that it might be naive but you know I I think if if you know the whole point of me starting this company and this project is because I want to espouse the ideals that I hold true and people you know if they agree with them we'll see how it works and if they don't you know we'll take the feedback and we'll go back and reassess fair enough cool cool all right we got a few more minutes yet and we actually had a few questions from our community as well I'm gonna try to lightning around a few of these the best I can some of them are pretty funny some are not first up where's our leek Stephen it's our hundredth episode we need a leek more something about a mobile thing that's no no we're not watching her from twitch right now yeah that was back in kick-started days yeah okay I think I can leak something maybe I can give it to you in discord maybe and we're not going to sear I have to say that laptop has has a slack and it does mmm hold on and then from slack I can grab I can we see like hold on wait we're in it I wish this thing had a scroll where I don't have a regular Mouse so I have to like go up manually hmm hold on oh you definitely want that one that's not good some of the team loves to put gifts and stuff mm-hmm and some of them are you know oh I see wait okay here we go I think I found it ah did I find it wait for it no I did find it here we go I can't wait to see this let me let me copy image and then let me put it in here control V see if that works wait for it okay that did work wait for it everybody gonna blow up alright guys at the end of the show now just to give context you should show you should probably show the concept art first anything no we're not yeah we're literally the podcast let me grab the this is pretty amazing and frankly you know oh here we go seeing this right now so wow yeah I found it on Google so I can copy this image and then I can put this in discord again and you can show this first okay so people see the process of what it looks like a concept in game what a difference all right let me let me get that up here we'll do that real good concept for ya the concept will put the contrast first before Maggie shoots me or like your internet connection goes out she just started a DDoS I have never once suspected the cleanse of any foul doing just so everyone's aware of that oh my gosh here we go pull it up on the screen let's go Oh top of the screen alright so I know it's kind of a little pixel in but you can see this this is something that they showed this is one of the early concept from one of the earlier package this is the Swift claw Raptor mm-hmm and then what we have been shown oh what do you know my computer crashed that's a shame timed I know like it was worth a shot guys I know everyone's really excited about seeing this image but I'm afraid it's gone Oh too bad I'm just see how angry Chow is at me at this point leaving unsub yeah alright we'll show this right now let's check that that is the swift claw Raptor in the game ladies and gentlemen Swift just lights like that light in the shadows and the light rays and just texture on the skin like that's fantastic and that's on the mount yes that's correct that is my mount heck with the horses I'm so glad I actually bought that too I'm going to say this again this has already been in the store this is no longer available for purchase and we're now seeing just how wonderful it is and we can't buy it that is true that is true I'm sorry about that you know I would love to have rendered models complete for the you know for for when cosmetics go up but you know there there is a backlog and eventually it will catch up but there is it there is a backlog and we are and we are going through that right now but we're making great progress unbelievable you should see its animation set I think Margaret has a whole debut for that plan soon they get to see all the animations everything it's really cool those Swedes well hopefully we get a chance to talk about it in episode 101 but at this point Margaret may have me assassinated there might not be a one-on-one so that's a thing okay let me get in some of these communities real quick cuz I know we're running out of time but hopefully Steve doesn't mind first up this is from ley first he has a comment say keep up the great work guys you rock thank you so much for that question I Stevens coming from a different background than gaming industry what is the most stupid thing he said thought wanted to do and we're Jeff are Margaret at this point had to slap him in the face and Stevens own sandal and tell it like this this is not how it works that's not possible please don't oh well I think I'm I think that very early on so one thing one thing I will say to my to my benefit if I Pat my own back here is I catch up I can't very quickly and you know I've been able to do so from all manner from all departments relatively quickly in the process because I I do like to be involved in literally every discussion and meeting and sometimes I can definitely be very very flavor intensive but it allows me to learn things very quickly but I would say I don't know the stupidest thing I think I've thought of early on pretty much we can even just use that week right there as something that you know I can't do yeah I would say probably the dumbest thing I have I have said it I got one for you you might not go member this is actually from when we were on a show the other yes this is one that when I got you to talk about the group summoning on livestream and everyone in everyone those with you Jeff Peter were like you weren't supposed to say that yet cuz I think yeah this actually was on the official live stream I remember during our questionnaire I asked you whether or not summoners would be able to do any seed so much you're like oh yeah we'll be able to some big golem in and not everyone in the chat just looked at you like dude just leaked already I know no I would say probably the the the biggest mess-up moment I've had in in so far is probably the hot mic that happened at one of the paksas yeah that I don't want to necessarily go through the word that was and that was bacon small bacon sitting right there and he knows totally his fault let's just say there was another company that was talking some you know some not some good things about me when I was playing one of their games and I walked over to bacon during a live stream and he had a mic in front of him and I walk over to him and I start I started just laying into them that was pretty bad that was the back it's like that was gangster that was that was pretty awesome actually I remember I was listening to that when that was going on so that was great next comment this is from TL thank you so much TL they left us a comment - that's so sweet DC n has been the best source of Ashes info and discussion and I highly recommend that anyone is interested in crashes watches all of their episodes again that trivia it's four days worth of content enjoy a lot since this has been your first time develop developing an MMORPG what has been the biggest lesson you have learned so far about the process that's a very good question honestly and I hate to say this but you know the biggest lesson I think I've learned if I if I could do it all over from start to finish again I would I would have a serious contemplation about whether or not I would have revealed the project early on or if I would have gone through development and done the normal process of just revealing it when we're ready for beta you know we never we never went to you know I I did it because I came from a heart of like join me in the journey and like you know be a part of the process and we get to collect feedback and and that's all still very true and and you know I'm not saying I wouldn't do it over again but I'm just saying that the biggest contemplation I've ever had during the process is is whether or not that was a right decision because you know from a player's perspective you I never really understood the development process you know I I definitely helped developers to a very high standard you know I didn't give him a lot of leeway when you know thing you know needed to change or you know went wrong or scuse me I'm sorry because they only friendly tag you know that that that was definitely something that I didn't understand as a player but you know being a developer it is it is a harsh reality of London meldman process is what software development is in general and you know it's not that it's not any fault of the players because how can they be expected to know that necessarily mmm but but it can be it can be it it can it can be tough motivating you know a tough to motivating factor to read some of the comments and to you know have to worry so much about you know public relations during a development process and you know people you know catch when a decision gets changed when something you know something needs to change right you don't want to have to be a completely open book from from a business standpoint from a development standpoint because that takes a lot of effort to make sure it's communicated right and you know you want to have the the feeling of being able to be open with the community and they understand that you know you're talking to a live development and there's an understanding that things can change in that regard and you know I think that's that's probably the one thing I would say looking back what I would you know what I would have a tough time deciding again to do the right decision to make so it well I appreciate yeah I can say from our group obviously you know hey you're on our show so but you know you know we're not gonna suck up completely but we do appreciate the fact that you are a completely open with it I mean Steven knows this I was actually against his decision to go public I've told him already like that was not good but you know I can understand your passion behind it wanting to share with your your passion project with the players that they know it's happening I just have less faith in humanity and go you need obnoxiously thick skin for this kind of a thing and there's one benefit to this that I'm looking forward to looking on and that is the documentation of the process looking back three four five six years from now at this entire process and saying you know what we are here and this is everything we went through to get here and it's all documented I think there's value in that but right this second it can be very difficult I may have a habit of whenever I see people on reddit and stuff like that posting about how ashes is vaporware I do a rumble yeah if you remind me for like two years so I can come back and post screen this is screenshot screenshot what a big old folder yeah and don't get me wrong I I have a pretty thick skin I can I can handle that stuff my concern really actually only mainly lies in in my team that I bring on board and I don't I don't want them to get too motivated when they go and read comments like that because you know not everybody does have in thick skin and and people want to be people people take pride in their work and people are here working on I mean it's you know it's almost it's 7:30 here almost 7:30 here right now and you know people have been here almost 12 hours because they're passionate about this project and making sure that it's given at a quality level that people expect that's gonna make them proud of it too and they take pride in their work and I don't want them to go out and read or watch some video that's that literally is from somebody who has absolutely zero clue whatsoever about the development process of a game because I can say that because I had zero right and over the past years I've learned it is and it is one hell of a process so yeah that's yeah anyway sorry no no but that's true but I will say I love our community I love the ashes community you know the the the the you guys the people that are in discord people on the forums you know people who are who are really hopeful of the project you know they are they are a great stimulating force when it comes to you know waking up every morning and spending your every living breathing you know breath in creating quite literally a universe you know playing God so to speak in creating this universe so that people can enjoy what you've built yeah all right well well that's just a few more questions because we're already over time if Stephen if you don't mind I'm just trying to get through circle these gray jet I asked first will there live streams ever go back to them talking while running around the MMO world and also grats on 100 yeah absolutely we will of course have you know when the MMO world is ready to be run around in a way that people who are first-time viewers can understand what they're looking at that is absolutely something we will do on a regular basis it's actually something I can't wait and I know Margaret and Sarah can't wait we're looking forward to doing those things you know we're just gonna be very conscientious of getting to that point right absolutely I'm trying to find another question sir oh this is perfect I'm glad you actually talked about this happy had two questions I'll ask you what are the working conditions like at intrepid since there's also been a lot of stuff in the news about developer burnout we've seen that already I'm glad you talked about your developers not necesary heard of it but any developer can take negative criticism and burnout from it how are you facilitating a pleasant work environment so there's I mean there's definitely truth behind what the game industry has a systemic problem with when it comes to what's called crunch you know I think that here at intrepid you know we've had times where we've had to crunch in the past and those usually come around you know unexpected delays or unexpected marketing opportunities like you know going to PACs or just a drive and a desire to you know get something in the hands of players and and kind of collect data for we've had those things in the past but one of the one of the fundamental fundamental processes that you know we've refined moving forward is having a production team and you know our leads that can that can work together in a way that's responsible from a schedule standpoint and an expectation milestone standpoint that is not going to create a crunch atmosphere because we don't want to be known for that as this video we want to attract talent that has a lot of experience and and and you know our veterans in that regard and you know sometimes you can't get that that talent if you're known in the industry for being a crunched Bo so you know it is definitely a systemic industries those articles who are are true but you know for intrepid we try to we try to move court avoiding those things and if we do encounter them we try to make it you know something that's you know Pleasant we we take into account that you know our team can some of them can work from home during hours that they need to be with their families or stuff like that or you know we always if there's ever any additional time that needs you know I always provide dinner from game every night and you know these types of things that just try to cushion those those periods of time if they come up but yeah I think that culture here at the studio is is a great one you know everybody has a voice product they they they have an opportunity to kind of express what excites them as a gamer as a develop and and being allowed to really really have that type of influence is exciting and you know we're very a reach across the aisle kind of over-elaborate it open atmosphere you know we have a flat well you know that that I think contributes to people's creativity there that creative process and excitement and and and desired approach in do your cutting out a little bit there Steven I'm not sure I'm sorry can you hear me okay yeah yeah we got the gist I just want to make sure we hammered that out and plus he also lets beer in the studio I just saw it so thank you that always helps with uh I see I see I see a scheme says if your days are 12 to 14 hours you're at studio so you know there like I said there are times where you know the 12 to 14 hours can happen there are times where that can happen if a milestone is coming up and and we're behind on on you know bugs or features or whatever then sometimes that can occur but really try to mitigate that as much as possible through to responsible scheduling and and our production team and that happens to me like mm-hmm yeah averages across the the length of a year or so whether or not you're crunch absolutely yeah you know you'll know when you're in a crunch studio absolutely yeah it's a consistent thing that's different yeah you know yes absolutely yeah no I did see that as well and we do have a conspiracy theory that the reason why your mic is breaking up is Margaret is actually trying to stop you from leaking all right this will be our last question and this often from happy against the

1:12:34

Steven Sharif has spoken in the past about objective-based Guild Wars that can include other types of conflict besides castle sieges what is Intrepid's current plans regarding objective based Guild Wars and how will they function?

So the objective-based Guild Wars really revolve around what type of actions that that Guild has participated that one of the guilds has participated in right there will be default objectives and then there'll be objectives that relate to the activities that the Guild has had right so you know let's say for example you know the guild recently became owners of a guild hall on a freehold somewhere so the objective might be related to proximity of that Guildhall it might be related to you know capturing a quest item only visible to the warring guild within the guild hall or around the guild hall per se that requires some type of channeling time you know and or if the guild has participated recently in a raid there might be objectives to to achieve one of the quest items that that the guild may have received from the raid and steal that thing or to kill a particular member there might be a bounty objective on a particular member and that member might have increased damage mitigation and/or health against the warring guild and can call for help in that regard to kind of stimulate the the fight and the PvP action that may exist between guilds. There's really a lot of ideas when it comes we haven't coded the system of the guild objective based systems we've done that for our castle sieges obviously I mean the guild objective base is designed to be more fluid I don't know if you can hear that car in the background just a little bit [Laughter] but there's a lot of ideas with with how we can get a wide variety of wide array of really fluid examples of guild war based objectives and then we'll see what what makes the cutting work

sure excellent thank you so much everyone for coming out thank you so much to everyone who's been in chat you guys have all been amazing tonight yeah it really does mean a lot that everyone came out for our hundredth episode I know this was a big thing for us and I was telling Steven even before this and even my crew how you would think after a hundred episodes which this isn't even my first step you know I have another show that's 211 episodes and these milestones still make me I say nervous they say excited so this was really cool seeing the the amount of messages we got from people who just enjoy the show it means a lot to us as content create it's fun to know like we're doing this as a passion project for us we like doing this show we do we wouldn't do it for a hundred hundred episodes if we didn't enjoy doing it so hey that is a thing and we will get to the giveaway in just a second actually so I just want to say thank you to everyone thank you for listening it's been great and here's to 100 more so Stephen you guys gotta get working all right thank you guys I appreciate it I really love as I said I love this appreciate you guys inviting me on here to be a part of it thanks Stephen okay so what we're gonna do is for this giveaway we are going to pick a random person who types FTA 100 in chat will pick one of you randomly I'll give you guys a few seconds to do that and that person will get your information will get you everything there we'll let that roll look at that chat go there type in Margaret you have to type FTA 100 so we can try to win the prize yes so you can give it to your creation account wins it I call rigged like yeah all right oh man okay fun question since I said I was gonna ask Stephen this one while we're waiting on this to actually finish up the rumors that our cage is coming out with like a classic sub-base sort of river let's just assume what they're essentially doing is bringing our cage back as it was in the alpha testing so I used to not only when I was a player but when I first started intrepid I used to talk with you know Scott Hart's Minh and their lead producer and I would tell them you know well I think I remember one particular event where I was out with a lead producer and it was that's like GDC and we went to dinner or whatever and I was like listen man if you guys did sub based whatsoever server I guarantee you that it would make more money over the long run and have higher retention than the flash in the bucket that the pay to win tactics have gotten you thus far with your fresh start servers and you know they would say no no in fact one of their and one of their I don't probably shouldn't be saying this but well anyways one of their investors you know I roast I was even talking to him and I was saying hey you give me the rights to our cage in North America and I will have a sub base server and you can do your free to play server and I guarantee you will compare at the end of a two year period which perform better from a churn and and retention standpoint and overall you know gross profit standpoint then a fresh start with your normal pay to win scenarios and and he was like okay I'll take you up on that offer okay well never actually happened but if it if it was that you know our cage had a lot of great potential and I'm sure mark is gonna kill me for you know talking about a game that is is in the same genre as ashes but you know I was I was a I was a are cage player and I enjoy you know a lot of the a lot of the components that are cage had I obviously I don't like faction I don't really like faction based games i I don't like being told who my enemies are who my friends are kind of like to make that you know determination myself as a player but you know they were and I do I do I do like the risk that our cage had with like Pat creation and movement and stuff but I didn't like you know that I'd also didn't like that there was no real feeling of loss when you lose an engagement you know I wanted there to be some type of risk associated that wasn't just centered around the packs and I didn't like that you could like summon your ships again out in the ocean and it was just like a never-ending battle I want there to be like you know decisive victory that have you know kind of consequences but there was a lot more than I enjoy it as well and you know if they did this if they did this the right way that would be cool but on them I mean it's it's it's a great it's a great thing to see in the industry if the pendulum does start to swing back away from the free-to-play monetization tactics that include the pay to win are paid to commence later buddy and you know you start to see these companies are really with in my opinion started with a lot of any projects kind of espousing this feeling including you know us Ashley the creation but it would be cool if publishers and developers and not a lot not allow this is dictated by developers really it's dictated by suits and executives but it would be cool if if there was a reamer gence resurgence of of this you know what makes MMO such a unique game in the industry is that it has high retention and longevity its supposed to that's what MMOs are all about that's why that's why there's a high price tag in the development of these types of projects is because it's supposed to stand the test of time and you don't want monetization inhibiting the potential for the game to exist as a long retentive you know experience and monetization I think mess set up but it'd be cool to see the pendant pendulum swing back and I hope they hope they do it if they if they are doing this I don't know what they're really doing but I hope they do I hope they do that I would highlight this but dungeon crawler network should do a monthly official Ashes of Creation livestream all right guys we have picked a winner and the winner is var Koon 47 Wow Congrats mark and send me a DM on Twitch I'm gonna get your information and we'll get that over to Margaret who can take care of you got through travel to the studios by foot yep and receive your byes by hand grats so much and thank you again intrepid Studios you guys are great Thank You Steven for coming on the show as always thank you for the leaks cuz that was absolutely I loved it thank you for having me we'll have to have you on on 200 again hopefully before that but will yes we'll mark you down for 200 because you can't get away it was absolutely alright okay thank you so much guys I want to thank my awesome co-hosts we got storms or digital Piper studios check out all of his stuff over there just Google search it or go do digital paper studios.com check out alpha sol he's been releasing a lot more ashes of creation content actually he does more than us I think at this point mhm yeah crazy man yep check that out youtube.com slash the underscore Alpha were Sol and of course mr. krojack everywhere that's mr. krojack YouTube Twitter Facebook I don't know I don't know about Facebook whatever I just started going into my own thing twitch check out all of his stuff amazing content creator you'll love them as much as we do there you go anyway you follow everything we do over at dungeon-crawler network.com there you find links all of our social media including twitch YouTube Twitter and Facebook see ya brought it back in be sure to check out our patreon program patreon.com slash dungeon crawler Network if you want to help support the show but how you can really help us is by leaving us a five star review on iTunes so people know that we are a real podcast that we say real words sometimes they matter thank you so much for joining us on this big 100 episode of from the ashes and we'll see you next time thanks guys bye everyone [Music] you