Talk:2020-01-30 Livestream
Nyers átirat
[Music] Hello everyone! Welcome to our development update for January. We hope that you've had a wonderful break. We definitely have. We're revived. We apparently are blinded by the Sun. We're nerds we don't go outside, but we hope that everything's being wonderful with you all. we have been excited, 2020 is gonna be an amazing year for us. We have so much planned and so many things that have happened just within the last three to four weeks, it's been a whirlwind but in a good way. First and foremost, introduce yourself and then we'll talk about what we're gonna be doing today and then we'll get into it all cuz that's what you guys want to see right. I am Stephen Sharif creative director on the project Ashes of Creation actually i really don't go to beach ever even with the sandals that's true like you're always dressed for the beach I only actually do hate the Sun and we were saying we weren't vampires but I actually can't family-sized I would go to the beach everywhere cloudy like hazy day yeah who you are and what you do for anybody who's just tuning in and is new to our community I am Jeffrey bard lead game designer I do like going to the beach to go all them usually a dog beaches we like to bring your dogs there's a dog return upon del Mar oh yeah we go there all the time you can't have him off leash during the summer I'm yeah but I saw some dogs at one time I was I am Margaret Krohn I'm your community and marketing leader so I run community marketing stuff it's fun we've been having a lot of fun with social media and doing some cool things that we have some more stuff planned in the future so today what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna go over the state Stephens gonna do that and talk a little bit about the creative directors letter I think this is the first live stream since then so we'd like to like just talk a little bit about it and then we will do a design update we actually have a new person who's joining us fun and it'll show well it new person yeah and then so and that's gonna take us down a UI art path which is a little bit different than some of the other designs that we've talked about and then we're gonna go into character art which we actually have another person who's joining us one of our senior animators a new face that you haven't seen on the live stream yet who will be going through all of the wonderful things they've been working on as well and their team has been and then of course they can will be joining us back on the from the environment team talking about all the cool things that it has been doing um fortunate unfortunately a lot of attention here's our sick who are normally on our cast and the rest of them refused to be on the live stream so I don't want to force them to although Steven I guess could but I wouldn't I would know for them coding yeah but we try not to put people on if they don't want to there's been a lot of faces that you all want to see but if they're not comfortable being on camera we don't want to make them so we won't have an engineering update today but next time hopefully so quick updates we obviously had a creative directors that are go check it out it's up on our page Ashes of Creation.com slash news definitely go check that out and then of course we have a dueling falcon which had the video go out we have a little more Flair of them when I was cool really pretty little dude yeah I think though it's so perfectly on your shoulder he does and I think he I could imagine like that type of creature having the two wings just how like agile they would be in the air so I'd really love to see some animations to reflect that agile nature of the creature that I think it's pretty cool when they were doing like a little jump at the end yeah yeah June she was having fun with that and she's still every like up until the last moment that you should say can you swap that animation I sought this because she's like everyone's a perfectionist they're just trying to like fix the little tiny things but obviously it's all work in progress so there's still more to come and I there are those comments regarding like the character model we are gonna have new character models for a lot of our racism stuff like that oh absolutely yeah I want to cut the gun there but cut the gun well jump the gun okay cut the rope I'm just going to say I think some of the exciting Stephanie that we mentioned even in the creative directors letter with regards to March that's coming up is the opportunity to see some new races we're gonna make a big deal about those so stay tuned we'll show like the creation process of them a lot of the behind the scenes the design that went into the process that went into them and a little bit of story and lore so stay tuned but we won't give it away all of it away because just a little bit just a little just a little and then some things that we have coming up in February that we definitely want you to get and part of so stay tuned for them is the new dev discussion we've been loving all of your guys's feedback on that. the day we did internal discussions and arguments based on your heads are ya know it's really good it's been really cool and those are all questions that come from design because of the things that they're trying to tackle so all of your feedback really is actually funny funny point on that I think the last question we had talked about or opposed to the community was with regards to content scaling and that question actually came from a little bit of a discussion with two sides on the design. We were like hey let's get community involved and have them pose this to the players and get their feedback I think we actually swapped that one for a different one because we're trying to get it in there earlier yeah and then we have a really fun Valentine's Day things happening so stay tuned for that our graphics designer Mike Mike has been networking and some we're gonna booty off making some really cute assets so stay tuned for those and then we have our multi Cosmetics offer coming up so all fun things so let's get right into it Steven give us the update top model yeah oh gosh like what did that even say long month what did I say that I feel like it's been at least six months okay yes no I remember a little bit we put a little bit of a treat in the creative directors letter for those of you who probably most of you have seen the world map that we revealed of Mara which is pretty fun thing for us to reveal obviously you guys are going to be able to see parts of that come March with with our alpha one preview that we're going to be doing at GDC and that'll be interesting but I've been I've been really enjoying watching a lot of the theory crafting that's come of the reveal for that world now they're like it's great to see how the theory crafting it's really been fun to actually see a lot of you guys say hey I want to put my homestead my freehold down there I want to go on this island how are the trade routes gonna work we've and also forgot to remove some UI oh I totally forgot to have that removed but it was it was yeah that was good too I like to see your guys's take on what those starting areas are assigned to which races and stuff like that and I will say a few of you have gotten them right I mean there's only so many varied as possible but yeah a few of you guys have gotten those correct now they're gonna be like they're to take their little wire but otherwise we we're still preparing for our studio move which should be coming very very very very shortly also we have some new additions to the team one that started this week with another one started an extra website so if you go check it out their backgrounds are different than the rest of ours we're actually gonna do a full photo shoot for everybody in the studio especially once we've moved to the new studio it's gonna be a nice gray light light green backdrop and everyone's gonna the same lighting it'll be it will be fantastic these are the things I dream about yes so we have to use space I started this week and next week and a few more starting even a few weeks after that as well we did post and Margaret and Sarah been great about helping with this is posting on some of the job opportunities here at intrepid and the positions that we have open you can check out the Intrepid Studios.com if any developers in the industry that you are fans of and you want to say hey take a look at this project wink wink nudge nudge you're welcome to do so we'd appreciate that we've been utilizing some of our CS peeps doing other things at tasks because obviously we don't have as many tickets right now so which is nice to know that we don't know tickets the ticket process has been really fast so if you ever do put a see a statement and hopefully you're getting responses pretty quickly but yeah so we've been she's been helping out with some of the like the social media stuff I should say yes things are looking up busy first year oh very different really different yeah I feel like I actually have been here for a year now because January 7th was my universe my in work over Surrey and toast has been here for a year now - yeah and it feels like it's been we actually sometimes I blink and I'm like it's been a year what just happened it's like whenever you work in an atmosphere where more startup feel and there's a lot going on all the time which is nice because you get to wear lots of different hats but also things move really fast so you blink and you're like what happened it's almost like playing Sims I just lose myself so I think that's do you have anything else you want to talk about that's jist of it now I will take my sunglasses off and so that I can see the content we're going to be showing it was so sure going away we're bringing on Ryan Ryan is one of our newer team members we have talked about him a bit on a previous stream as well and I even talked about welcome Ryan excited to be here so first of all tell people who you are and what you do on our team sure obviously you're new here yeah so I am the UI artist and designer I guess my very important role by the way as all of you guys know we were all discussing me and him we're discussing this because he's like well I applied for just a UI design position but I am a UI artist so it's like an interesting position because you do an element of art design and those hats many times I'm not in frame I apologize yeah well Ryan's a little bit of a unicorn because you're actually unbelievably talented in both of those areas both from an understanding and it we bring on the best net intrepid and Ryan is the best but he has a talent both on the art side and on the design side which is great spent 12 years of Blizzard doing everything from art to design to even some technical art stuff yeah I coded a little bit on the same projects good guy I worked on battlenet for about eight years and then I went over to Diablo for four years I did everything from the PC version to the console version too and I guess talking about your history in your background in what was like your favorite thing and project to work on I'd have to say I worked pretty passionately and closely on and the the Blizzcon demo reveal the fireplace and everything I like what I do like here is I make gray box stuff and I make it like shadows and stuff to make sure people get an idea of what I'm looking for oh yeah and that was one of the first things I drew it was like it's got to be around a campfire it's gotta be the classic characters and the skull it's to sell it yeah it really works and that's actually one of the great things about Ryan's procedure when theorycrafting out a lot of the UI design for the MMORPG you're able to very quickly iterate on these great bones versions of these different types of capabilities we can demonstrate in the UI now obviously designing for some of those other games that projects that you worked on and now designing for apocalypse and Ashes of Creation and looking at the differences in those like what is your approach when you're when you're looking at a project I'm a big fan of form following function like if it's designed well it's gonna play well it's gonna it's got to be fun it's got to be fully interactive if that's my bones it's like I have to make sure everything is is good before I go on to the art portion of things because everything you make anything look pretty but if it doesn't work that just breaks everything yes so you actually have a bunch of assets for us to talk about the process we wanted to guide you guys through like the development process and how creating UI works so this doesn't necessarily mean that these are the final UI elements these are just going to walk you through the process so the first part here is talking about bringing a UI asset from start to finish so we have a few assets to describing this process and I don't mind sure so I was tasked with trying to come up with how to represent siege engines and their ammo how much they had left a health meter all kinds of different things and so I just started iterating I threw a bunch of gray box assets that they're just getting my thoughts down and figure out how I wanted it to go and I came up with the interact button which was little because that's how you get into it and then it would have like this fan of bullets or some wooden stakes or whatever they're the projectile was and that would be represent your ammo meter and it would tick down as you fired it then you would also have the health bar around it and so it created this interesting little dynamic where the bama was going one way and the health was going the other way so it actually communicated what was going on you going to see it I also added some color in there so you would represent with when the siege agent was at 50% and when it was at almost dead and the core principle here in representing all of that information in one centralized location right yes that's that's really that's very important aspect of that is very important and that's that's one of the great things that resonated me even when you were interviewing right is it like that philosophy of keeping these things centralized and easily communicative to the players yeah that's a very important aspect especially for an MMORPG because there's so many systems that are interacting with each other and it just becomes so easy to get lost in UI because it's it's easy to say we'll fix it with UI and just staple stuff right it just suddenly it's very muddy very fast exactly so that that's something that really spoke to me about your capabilities as a designer from a UI perspective is to understand that that aspect of it is so important because a lot of people really don't yeah like explain a lot in a very small space I think is awesome keeping it very simplistic I mean we look at a lot of UI and mmo's and we're like what is happening as like a like a first time person if you're coming into it it can be a little overwhelming I mean obviously there's gonna be elements that are gonna be a little bit much because it is mmm oh there are a lot of systems a lot of things happening all the same time especially when it comes to like rating and healing and things of that sort so it's gonna be an interesting tackle for all of you - it's true yeah Mike my thought is I want to play our game I want to play the frames like that I think we even had some people asking specifically about like health bars and like as a healer some people like playing that health bar game so it's gonna be a fine balance when it comes to like the hybrid combat I think that even even in in our discussions about the understanding of how the UI for the MMORPG is going to work right is is a Russian doll theory in the sense that initially at the face value it's this one piece but you can continually open up and you have the prerogative as a player how much you want visible to you right but essentially it's going to be still a streamlined experience where information is easily communicated I'm a big modular yeah like like the play themselves we'll be able to customize absolutely yes that's nothing I want to give the players wants to play the game as possible but I also want them to be able to make it how they want right and it's funny because MMO players are very very different across the spectrum of what they want represented to them from an information standpoint some of them want to be completely immersed in the world around them and travelers want to just have a tiny little window where they see the game and everything else is information which is fine I mean if that's what they want to play it right I'll let you play them and our designs are meant to be modular like you were saying so that players have that Parag which is really nice and I think especially from a streamers perspective like I scream a lot so for me it's like being able to move those elements and places where they don't cover my camera or that thing that's really nice yeah cool now we're going to go into talking about how you prototype things and you show off different layouts and you explain how these work and you show them to Stephen and you guys walk through the process of figuring out which one you want to finalize well showcase these on the screen and if you can walk us through yeah so for this one I was working on how to represent capture points and siege because we want to do this thing or we put the points on the compass itself so you could see them being captured in real time and how to communicate that and obviously the easiest way of doing is the tried-and-true red and blue came up with red and blue icons and have them sort of burn away or depending on what the current state of that point is so alright so transition effect yeah yeah that was very important mm-hmm and I wanted to sort of be visceral so my right it's still gray box so it's not exactly finished but I kings of the effects guys they were excited about burning banners so I don't know what that's about but yeah it was fun so we got a I came up with a mock-up word show the the bomb men are sort of burning away as it was being captured then be unfurled so that it would be your new banner so hopefully that gets in right and there you have a mixed representation both of the static location that present with the banner itself as well as what is actively on going through the effect that's occurring on that static icon so those are those are examples of transmitting up-to-date information with activity as well as a staple location of these effects yeah now you have a couple different options so let's go through those options and then yeah so with this one it was a working that idea that this was the compass in action and that if we wanted to have all the objectives on the compass that's fine but what if it's off-screen how would be represented in the world we could have it work was the point dean arrows being shown you which is way to turn your camera so that if it was like a 180-degree arc anything behind on the side of your behind you would be in the wings of your UI and what you guys are seeing here by the way are very early iterations as I'm alive from from a few months ago some of our PI members have had an opportunity to see these in action even in our in our p i-- test that we had with castle c we actually had a random purple don't forget about the bottom bar that was just me goofing around and trying to come up with a way of condensing everything into that senators apportion these are just to give you guys an idea of how iteration occurs with these different UI and mock-ups very cool love it and i think you have one more yeah this is the yeah oh no i thought there was one more version of that capture one thing but that's okay oh we can stop yeah there's we just skipped two things it's mine let's talk about this and let's go forward so let's talk about some of the MMO stuff that you've been working on and help like the improv so I've been trying to come up with a way of making it our our game so it's not like just carbon copying every MMO that's already out there so I was thinking about how to represent the character sheet and make your character look just as cool as possible and what came to mind was having the camera just flip around and the character she would fly in so you can see your character live in real time and see yourself adding an armor on and so you'd be a opening up your inventory just basically dragging dropping or right-clicking or however we're gonna do it still to be determined now give you guys context also here what you're seeing is actually a character and zone from the alpha zero client some of you guys may be familiar with it from some of the footage we showed early on a couple years ago but that's what's being used here to mock up the inventory screen yeah and this doesn't mean necessarily that this is how it's gonna play out that you're gonna stop and you're gonna have to like turn the UI but you're just gonna showing off like yeah well what it could be right these are just different iterations obviously it's it's very cool to see the different directions that are possible with these designs for UI and then you guys will get to see the final quality in March will not file but it's alliterative but you'll get to see the progression of the UI come March you everyone's probably screen shot I mean like are these all the slides and that'll probably not changing completely by the time we get to Mars there so you still you're all still designing like a mutation process and finalizing criteria how many slots we have yeah so we're gonna backtrack a little bit and we're gonna talk about establishing the behavior of individual elements and how that works and you had this here to depict that so I don't know if you want to walk us sure so I'm during siege there was a moment where there was just so many icons on the screen that it got overwhelming because we had them super large and I wanted to sort of rein it in a bit and I decided to try something that many of the games have tried and that was a using icon to represent the class and then having their instant read of their health bar on there and where they are in the world also some behavior like if this player is far far enough away that I can't see them it'll disappear yeah or if it's if it's an enemy and it's near me and I can see him I'll be able to see his icon so different behaviors like that then there's a bunch of stuff in there the text is a little too small to read but know someone's pretty screen chatting it already sure hoping it and leave it yeah I took bad words in there yeah so I guess this walks us through the process and like what you what you have going on and obviously we're gonna and the inventory stuff because I'm like what you're trying to really tackle math yes what's that process when you get a piece of loot and how that works and where you're putting in and how it's gonna look on your character yeah so it would be basically picking up off the ground go into your inventory if we go with the direction where I have the flyout in there the inventory screen would pop up in the middle when you hit the inventory button you'd be able to just have it right over your carry over top of your character and toggle it so it disappears or comes back up or however we're going to do it you would be able to drag to drag and drop that right on to your inventory slot and lo and behold your character with something to look a lot cooler because he'd have a new item on or something yeah yeah so working on the process how's it been it's been awesome I'm I'm happy to be here that like this is a different change for you to because you've been your history Oh giant companies yeah very intimate Oh just mean all the new people and stuff and just having any blast making a game that's gonna be cool well I think if there's nothing else you want to share with us today I'm sure we'll have Jana in the future as there's gonna be plenty of other UI elements and things of that sort that we're gonna want to walk through people through and sure to talk about one of the things that players are really curious about is how the artisan classes are gonna work because that's usually a very you eye heavy elements we're gonna switch over to another new new new folk here we've got Dave who will be joining us so many new faces first and foremost tell the community who you are what you do at our studio hi I'm Dave ochres I'm been at intrepid since September September 9th was my first day for months now and I'm a senior animator been animating in games since 2000 an extraordinary animator by the local thing everything I've seen come out of Dave it's absolutely extraordinary and you guys will think the same yeah I got I got my start down here in San Diego at Sony Computer Entertainment America oh my god and worked on the market free which is a very stylized fighting game single-player your big giant Samoan looking dude going around and and trying to solve this magical dilemma that he's in yeah and that game was absolutely just totally fun I mean my background is 2d animations hand-drawn stuff and yeah totally old school and the whole animation team on that project goes all 2d animators so it was back in the day that we did a lot of even game design animations were done like yeah sure on it but this was all 3d so it was imagined a bunch of people that only know how to do pencil and paper learning the computer together yeah it was awesome it was a really fun time and then a group of us split from Sony to start our own company and that was awesome yeah it was it was a roller coaster like you want to believe I mean because and we did a we did a couple of games there and then the third and final game that I was on got cancelled and unfortunately closed the doors to that place and then went over to try own Studios which was right down the road from here yeah we're San Diego studios yeah yeah and worked on defiance which is a action MMO RPG and they have a TV series that was with it to it which is yeah yes yeah that was that was that was yeah but that was really fun and after that I went to Amazon Game Studios and worked on countless games and countless games that one of them actually made it out to market probably a really interesting experience being able to it was fantastic I would not change a thing had learned so much at every place that I've been at though the winds the fails that everything it's just been such a great ride yeah and then now I'm here and this place in one word to sum up the studio is family oh you just come into work and everyone is so close we have we have the food and yeah it's just amazing and everyone contributes to it and then I try to like have a theme some months we're not gonna have a theme but like trying to and it's getting crazy everyone at the studio actually we should just open up a restaurant no that was a serious thought in one of the studio moves we were going to do was putting a restaurant in the middle of the studio I was like we should just get a chef yeah it's just a shot of IV for caffeine oh yeah like so let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing here at intrepid and the projects that you've been working on oh yeah so when I first got here I think you guys were finishing up the a POC yeah so I came on the very tail end of it and I got to work on the dude swinging the two-handed axe mmm so that whole combo I didn't do the animation but I helped clean it up and go back to idle and do all that thing which was great because I got my feet into not just the animation cuz i normally use my ax but i got to learn MotionBuilder and then I also got to learn so I started getting into the blueprints and that was just fantastic yeah and it was not it really neat because it's very visual yes which is a different experience from what I'm used to which is very much like I type of what your words and hope that I didn't put a comma in the wrong spot yeah and and so after that that that went out there's a lot to play test so yeah play games that work I went on to the scale runner which yeah great what's let's go through all the assets first performance so we have actually the community was asking about daggers we actually have a dagger that a husband's being worked on so we're like let's show my dad so this one is pretty awesome so duel deck yeah yeah so this this was modeled by Carson and the concept is by Jeff mm-hmm and just looks amazing and then Brad Constantine did a whole combination animation yes character yeah building those things I don't have those for you yet yeah because they weren't finalized but I definitely wanted to show you the dagger toast was telling me y'all we're talking about daggers so I was like boom and we're gonna show you show you some dagger action yeah coming along we have a lot of different weapons that are being created oh yeah items for itemization for the quests that or you're gonna be completing and the content that's gonna be in alpha one so stay tuned for all the awesomeness that you're gonna achieve and these dual weapons will be enough for one nice alright and I'm moving from there one of the things that I really wanted to talk about was how we create creatures and last episode of our livestream we talked a little bit about it but now I want to show it one of the things that you all have been asking us about and we talked about it last month was that we have all these monthly cosmetics or these creatures and how that plays into the entire world and creation of Ashes of Creation and really it does it helps us a ton what you're helping us do is create you're creating a bear or creating a raptor and now those things can become creatures in the world so it's not just one creature that we're creating one offer for this this item we're really going to create hundreds of creatures just from one not only just creatures from them but also variants of those creatures so I wanted to showcase that and actually show you what that looks like so the first one that we're going to show is one of them I don't know which one he is in the order so we'll just go check them out so look at the creature variants he's got he's got some problems but yeah so what we're going to be showing today is the we have a bear so if you saw that we had a blue bear we have multiple different versions of the bring bear that are coming up yeah and then we also have the curse charger we'll have variants of that so here's here's some differences and so now to give you an idea right this is using the base template of the the core bear right which is like the general geo its skeletal rig right the animation set that's been authored for that particular bear and then what we do is we take a variance whether it be adding a layer of additional fur changing the colors that are possible even swapping out potentially some of the attachments as we have for the animal husbandry system with whether it be feet or head all here we're making it exactly as long as it fits within the confines and parameters of the end of authored animation so we'd have to go back and necessarily retouch it majorly you have a whole lot of runway of potential variants that are capable to populate the world so when players see us demonstrating the the animals that we've we've the animals the creatures that we've sold through either Kickstarter or the monthly cosmetics we're demonstrating here's our promise list that we've already given out to players but additionally here's what it's capable of creating more so for the games population yeah and you think about bears there's not just one type of bear in the world and we're gonna have all different types of biomes and Bacon's gonna come on talk a little bit more about that and some of the biomes they're creating but we're gonna have creatures that need to live in those biomes and so I think that the artists are trying to do for us is being like okay we have these new biomes coming what do we need to populate those and then they're like okay we'll look at this bear like we need we need this so I love it so much it reminds me of one of the cosmetics packs that I get to design which was really pretty very earthy reminds me of like that turtle and neverending story that comes out like I could see this guy just resting in the ground so yeah I'm getting to see that and like where these creatures here's a cursed charger variant you guys saw the curse charger Snow Leopard II look we did a creation video on that and here's some of the variants that exist for maybe like a Plains tiger thing going on but yeah so I hope this gives you a little bit of an understanding of how these creatures work and like what goes into them these are also already being modeled yeah there's a SwiftKey next time I'll actually I'll show you the final of these as well yeah these are these are a lot of concepts mm Ryan yeah so Ryan made these concepts and Carson's already working on a bunch of the variants of Asus so this guy's called the pox claw our guys are behind people said yesterday there that this should be called the pox clock yeah because when he attacks you get a disease oh yeah get the pox the pox it's strange-looking but I love it oh I just imagined oh yeah you're not supposed to do the eggs egg probably looks like that's see there's gonna be some quest in the game to steal the pots claws eggs and they're going to look like that Sam write that down yeah so it's been cool seeing all of those creatures coming into fruition and I hope that showcases what I was talking to you about I was trying to explain it last episode and that people liked that explanation and I'm like seeing that but you want to see what it really looks like in play so here just wait oh yeah so you have a bunch of other things like this like we have a few different deer we have a few different other creatures but I figured I would show you something that we were actually actively working on right now which we don't always show all the variants that we're working on cause like they're based off a creature that you've already seen before but going forward we have floating armor concepts that we're gonna showcase so Steven this was a direction from you I don't if you want to talk a little bit about that so this is something that players probably you guys have seen from alpha zero we had some floating armor within the dune hime dungeon that Bacon created and this is taking variant armor sets and replacing the the body mesh with this energy and or ghost-like appearance so that these animated armors represent these the soldiers of old that would have protected these these locations from potential looters and treasure hunters so these are different variant type energies that can inhabit the the armors themselves yeah and that gives you an idea you might be fighting them someday so stay tuned for that which one's your favorite let us know and then of course the thing that you've been working on that you're excited to share with us which is the scale runner we're gonna shoot my baby actually I'm gonna show the scale before I think you did use you can easily do that nicholae did it and share it in discord so some people may have seen some but not this video not this video none of this footage this is all new footage this is a scale runner so he's running around showing off some of the animations and yeah so what you have here is the writer on the scale runner and so this is you navigating around the world and then you'll eventually at one of these points you'll stop moving and you'll see some of the different idle areas we might have removed some of those codes like you're staying there for at the end and there are the idols those are the best part there's they require such finesse when that's that's many personalities I think a band here too but I don't know if the camera pans back yeah he's so much fun to animate um and he moves really fast he does yeah yeah so he's very low to the ground so if you're on the the de Strider you're up in the sky and this guy's so low so to go the same speed it's got to move extra quick like a little lizard yeah what this feels like a normal person I don't know the other way I don't know what references you use and authoring the animations but what it reminds me of is in the Star Wars I think it's like episode 2 or something obi-wan Kenobi's riding that along he's trying to kill I can't remember his name but the robot dude yeah that's when he gets killed and they shoot him right he falls down it's like execute order 66 that guy falls down but that's what this reminds we have a little bit from an animation standpoint yeah yeah there was a couple of really good videos where they're hunting down like giant deer I'm like oh my these things are like monster dinosaurs yeah living today so alligators scary too when you're do you still get to keep any videos of those now in your search I do yes yes yeah my eye up in my YouTube page and there's like all these animals now this is like a different attacks and things of that sort for combat yeah so we were animating this guy for the MMO doing all these different attacks and things that can happen I thought wouldn't it be fun to put a writer on him and see if you can have a writer now don't don't interpret this players out there that this is necessarily going to be mounted attacks for you as a player character rather you might see an NPC enemy mounted on this and then it would have attacking dreams how to combat comes with a whole different if we make that if we make that the the bar to rise to every mounts gonna have to have a writer gonna make could you imagine gosh the animation team okay look what you've done but this has been really cool and you do have you did have a set of animations too without a writer on it yeah that's alright so we wanted to show them off because this is something a little bit different and your your baby that you've been working yes yeah it was my first which animation is your favorite I like the the tails white that one in the I'm sorry to say it I love the death because they both fall down and if he only the camera was closer you would see his little tongue sticking out um I like the roar there yeah that one was good and the designers are like once we get the once I get these creatures there then like having behavioral intelligence put it into the game for each of them and so you're fighting them and it's it's cool to see that stuff yeah yeah I also had a video where it didn't look good because they're all on top of each other but I dropped like eight of them into one level no and then I put the character in there and they're all just attacking oh man it was so chaotic awesome oh yeah people are gonna people are gonna fight them and then make so next up we have a shadow dragon pet and I think we showed concept potentially of this in the past referee didn't even check but jesse has been creating this personally I don't think this is a dragon because dragons require four legs and then the wings are also dependent in my opinion by me types of dragon we don't need to be dragon elitists I'm a dragon elitist dragon like a shadow pseudo little technical things on the on the side it's so weird dragon yeah it looks like a bat like a bat dragon bat dragon really pretty I love the color of it yeah Sarah will probably love the color of this because Tosta loves purple the other thing is I think because this is a shadow dragon I mean this is gonna come with a lot this is just the model it's gonna come with a lot of like shadowy effects that are going to inhabit the body additionally I could see some type of opacity applied to the to the mesh on the back end so that it's somewhat transparent you can see through it a little bit and then it will have that shadow effect so I would probably love that yeah it's neat seeing them seeing these pictures like this and then having our effects artist like he gets to play around with all these different fun things he has so much on its way we need more effects artists hey so I think I got something okay that I was gonna say we have a video it's been in around I'll do that I just wanted to see what see it just for the record I want to animate this I do good I think just animated the fade dragon one yes ow yep and I looked amazing - it's cute so moving from here we also have the soothe roots satchel which you've seen a concept art of but now this is the 3d model of it and Stephen has talked a little bit about how belts and stuff will work with attachments and being able to attach different things on it absolutely these are the idea is to move away from the mundane application of belts and previous mmo's where they don't really have a lot of character so to speak but in reality as an adventurer you come with a lot of tools and things that you have to use out in the wild in order to achieve what you're trying to achieve so we wanted to present that on your character and give you something that you can actually be tangible for your character and see their and I think it adds a lot of character and flavor to your to your identity. This was one of the first monthly cosmetic items that I actually get to design so seeing it in a 3d model is really cool from my perspective because I was trying to go for the like leafy leather look and it's been really cool seeing this is Carson do this right yes it is Carson did a great job with this and speaking of that pack there actually is the stag of the book bows and this I just like so happy to see this created like it's so pretty you really are a ginseng fan aren't you come on the stream we want we've been trying our communities and my office engine see fan mail but I'm specifically because this creature is one of the ones that I got to design first so I think it's really pretty it's really neat yeah she's already making variations of it too so that's cool see that was as well which we don't have so I was ready to share yet but I really like that with this particular mount there is such a grand nature too it's it's its antlers it really communicates and I think the reference here for me at least is in the hobbit when you see the king of the elves with his giant stag right and that's just such such a grand appearance this I think communicates a little bit of that as well and I think that's what we're going for was like regal for that pack which was really nice and then the pattern that's actually on the creature if you read the Lord that we put out for it is that's the clan of the deer so or this creature the stags so all of the clan and of this all of the deer of this clan will have that same pattern which is really cool and she's working on other patterns for other clans that will be variants which is really nice and then we have this is a little sneak peek into some stuff that we're working on catkins has been fixing up the starter outfit for the MMO and so you're gonna get a little sneak peek of the male version of this he also has the female version that he's working on which is a little different but so this is I don't want to walk through how like this process works a little bit this is a yeah I wish I could walk through those guys have so much technical knowledge that is going into here because you got to balance the male with the female and how is it gonna progress through the whole thing and catkins and and Myers are just like sitting down together and figuring out the folder structure and all these technical things and inside extras like if you zoom in on this image it is amazing looking at like that leather texture oh yeah so I mean what you're seeing here really is an example of a starting clothing set that players will wear when they enter into the world so to speak and one of the great things about how our character team is tackling all of these pieces and components of of the different armors and clothing that are possible is a very modular approach so that mixing and matching different pieces that a character could potentially wear is going to be possible and everything is created in a way so that you can the characters have the character team has the ability to create many different types of outfits and styles and variations mixing and matching these base components and pieces yeah it's been really cool seeing everything that everyone creates I love looking at it it's amazing we did have a question that came in from Zabaleta asking will mounts have their own emotes that they can activated by the player the idea is for mounds that twofold one is mounts will have certain types of skills that will become available as the mount reaches certain levels and those types of skills will have actual application in the game they'll have mechanics associated with them whether it be like a charge or stun or sword some maybe some we'll have attacks but then the other thing is definitely thought about the ability to give them emote so that they can have interesting interactions I don't know if that's going to be fit into our launch approach but it would be something we'd love to have I just don't know if it'll be done live absolutely a lot of animations and other stuff [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] yeah yeah so talk to us a little bit about what your team has been working ok so even coming off of well bug fixes on castle stage so we're finally through all that and on while we're not on duty we've been working on the MMO bummer all hands on deck hands on batch is great no more no more Castle siege stuff really other than yeah so one of the things that they've been doing is you guys have been prepping current innocence making sure that they're ready for ya so because we put the the hex system the node system like that's all coming together now which is neat we have some assets to show us but as really yeah so as we're doing that everything has to be prepped for that specifically which is like we were using a prefab system which didn't really work well it worked but it was but that was one of the great things that apocalypse illuminated for us we utilize that prefab system within apocalypse and saw the downsides of the prefab approach and instead we were able to iterate on that approach for the MMORPG based off of the information we took from aqua yeah talk to us about what that means cuz from some players perspective what does prefab meanings well pretty file was a way that we collected the assets and put them in so we can like the so a house would have all the population in the house all that stuff had to be sort of contained in a container that then we would use we would just place the house with all the free as is already in place in that thing so yeah so what didn't work with that just so I mean as far as the development setup it was like you would save the prefab but then you'd have to go and save resave over the levels and he's any prefab that you change ended up having to manually go through the levels and change all that stuff it was dumb little just annoying little nitpicky things it just didn't work cohesive to doing something yeah so now walk us through the new process and what you guys are gonna be doing with that and obviously we have some images here to show as well yeah so anyway the note system I mean the way now we're using blueprints and those are the containers and so then we could do a lot more with them because we can actually attach a lot of code to them and and blueprints within blueprints it's a lot of it embedded sort of assets on top of each other and that thing but it lets just a lot more control be able to swap things out a lot easier and then we can also add scenarios like the node system stuff like when we go through different races we want to be able to swap the assets that are inside those houses and so those are containers that contain like specific types of things in them that might be specific to a race or whatever and then now we have the control to be able to swap those out like in real time as we're working out as it is you're going into a town we switch the town now it's building switches and switch the stuff into the building and depending on like maybe wealth levels or something we can swap things out from like lower poverty great exactly and that can be based off of certain data points that accrue on the in the back end showing what's been the total did I get brought water yeah thank you how did he know who thank you sorry I ran out of water so no I'm sorry going back to there's a lot of data that gets collected on the status of a node right and now we can pull from that data and we can reflect change in real time as you were saying demonstrating what the wealth of a city is what the predominant culture we already do that but yeah a lot of different things and then as you were saying implementing that the hex grid system previously in alpha 0 we brute forced the way the layout of our node system was we manually created these templates and location of these nodes which really wasn't something that could be duplicated for just the vast amount of nodes that will exist in the world so great thing about the environment team is they came up with an approach to answer the call for having such diversity having all of these representations that are procedurally as well as authored to represent the different types of nodes that exist yeah I mean we'll be able to control like wait things suppose anything sort of like you got a a no that's pretty good like a city level or whatever the town center will be primarily in a certain specific location to dictate that and then a lot of the things that are around is sort of more randomized so when they come in it's like a different layout finalizing the feel of each of these yeah and then on top of that like with the using blueprints it's like we're not using two different systems or a prefab system it's like different and then it's like we're keeping it consistent I'll everything from prop placement all the way up to structures and the actual hex that these things are on they're all containers inside of the blueprints another great thing about the hex based system and the procedural generation of these types of things is that even though the procedurally portion of them is procedurally generated there are confines and parameters that are allocated to the generation of these types of nodes that fit what the design needs are from a siege perspective from as you said the centralized location of the public of the city hall of the culture of this of the node as well I mean all those things are parameters that are input into the procedural system yeah exactly and now you are gonna show a little sneak peek of some animation testing they took some of the answers that we had and I'm sort of bump them up so they're more detailed we've been I've been implementing like decals and through that which are we were able to take the walls and stuff and put a lot more detail into them so it's not just generic or just grand yeah it's added so they're a lot more do you feel a lot more textural and these some people may recognize the general structure of these types of buildings from their time playing and testing and apocalypse but the great thing again about apocalypse that transition into the MMORPG is you took those assets and you define the ceiling and it turns out that you could actually put more detail you could put more props in there because from a from an optimization standpoint yeah Norman standpoint yeah there was room yeah exactly and on top of that like I took like a lot of the beating work is we were done playing around the fantasy thing and some of those you I pushed them back more into a realistic realm where like the beam work wasn't so right and things like so yeah so in there tighter it's what they're a lot tighter now so so anyway it happy with well happy where the way they turned out and yeah and as we're we're going through the assets older assets and that's we're prepping them and putting them into the MMO yeah we're just taking a pass on that and making sure they're greater faster like I've asked him for like these biomes that he's like they're not ready yet so yeah he wasn't one windy and wow you yeah but he does have a little sneak peak of this animation that he was willing to share showcasing like oh this is just starting to come to concept out like and you this is basically like dreamers all coming up and right so this will obviously get a little bit more detailed with some effects and maybe even some like and to give you guys an idea of where this is starting to go in the game whether you're constructing something on your freehold or whether you're participating in a city project for creating a new building within your node there's going to be obviously stages of development for that particular building that's going to be represented within the game to give this aesthetic of an actual construction of during the time that it takes so what we're seeing here is the bare-bones obviously of that but it's gonna have effects and it's gonna have some NPCs and you're gonna be bringing materials and components to the building and you're gonna see it construct in real time which is something really cool because not a lot of games have that I mean I've seen obviously games like like that I played in where they have different stages but I haven't seen progression from stage to stage so it's cool like actual animated progression we're still doing stage two stage but we're having animation right there's a transition between there's a blending between those different stages which is something that's cool there's a little sexier stuff you don't actually see stuff being constructed absolutely it being all static and stop stances the Inklings of the starting Margaret was criticizing you for I actually and I like that that I attention to quality I convinced him on this one but the other one I think it's cool to see the progress and when you show us the final stuff it's gonna be even better and obviously I agree with you on the other one that you didn't want to show cuz I think you're right it's gonna be really sexy which we'll talk about um it's looking really cool but it's like I wanted the first times where you want where it's like yeah this is cool I'll show it whatever and then other times like now next up I mean you've been showing a lot of the different notes like feels and vibes for each of the stages and now we have with a loom concepts to show you all this is talking about where he's they're building up all these tools I do love like seeing this this desert town does a copy yeah it's very golden oh yeah I mean the veil ooh we really wanted to have these types of warm color combinations right because it represents that culture traditionally right yeah yeah pastel a color like the bully cops in this they're very different from the other ones oh yeah for sure sure and then I think we have one more yeah and that's yeah that's like village center and then we have yeah into the town the other thing I would say and you guys you look crotch outcry are calling out you the other thing I would say guys is like and our experiences as MMORPG players the MMOs we play don't usually have such a wide array player player character cultures that have to be represented especially from the standpoint of how each note can represent the full progression from Camp to metropolis in each of these different cultures we may see experience in a game player character cultures of four maybe five at max when you get above five we don't really see that usually in the mmo's we play it I mean it's usually that's about max we have nine different cultures we have to represent amazing the challenge evidence is trying to get to like so diverse yeah yeah just differentiate themselves and I think we've been doing a really good job and that's why originally when I was like imagining the inspiration for these nine different cultures I rooted that within real-world references because I mean obviously the best representation you can have in you and you can really exactly is something from a real-world weapons that then you can amplify with fantasy the grounding take me there yeah so this is like the town where we started getting into cobblestone streets and not sidewalk and cobblestone like what you see in this city civilization but it still keeps them the essence of that actually find it hard like going from like visitor gets finite going from the village I think there's like thirty major transitions they need to accomplish but the problem is we have three additional you can go from camp village and town but then getting to like city and metropolis or camp two and camp mentally those are where's the differentiation exactly it's like good yeah so yeah so in the heavy definition for defined elements of like it between like a town and a city to the streets with sidewalks and you're sitting on and and I really in your structure where you guys have found a comfortable blend between those transition periods that might have been difficult is really just amplifying that buildings of that particular stage so to speak from village to town or city to metropolis just amplifying adding volume man do city yeah I didn't a lot of contrast was right we're trying to pull all to come so you're in the village state or you're really in village really it's it's really rundown and as it reaches into the city in metropolis level its pristine Bacon is a perfectionist I would say the benefit here's the thing about game development I mean obviously projects of this size are going to experience delays and we've had our fair share of delays thus far but our goal isn't to be perfect our goal is to have a quality that makes you guys proud and makes us proud right and we can iterate further as we launch and release and we change things but you I do see like the element of like you said you have like all these different races that you're really trying to confine in and then when I see feedback that you're giving you people you're like okay this doesn't really fit that well this because we're trying to we're trying to build in divides where it's like you really this race does not look like this you really have to differentiate so yeah you have to put those those fire lanes in say no and of course we are definitely gonna be over time so thank you all for hanging out with us we still have 20 more minutes of questions probably but we'll see how well Sarah can gosh we're so over time it's great we have you guys don't we don't mind we have been every time they love it right so know so you want to touch on one last thing which is you want to talk about like just to talk a little bit about the biomes that are in production and that you're going to showcase by maybe next live stream know the grasslands in the medic right now we're focused on the grasslands in the magical forest so but we can actually go save that for now would be like then I have much more to talk about so instead of like say it now and then have to like read these two questions and then we'll swap over we'll have Sarah join which was back to the I like it going back to the outfit that we had I killed hearts wanted to know please clarify I thought we could get we couldn't we wouldn't get such traditional clothes as starting outfits because the people who made it through the gate in the lore were the elites hence they hence why they had flashy outfits earlier on in the cycle has that changed no it hasn't changed when you achieve armor within the game at early stages it's probably going to look a little bit more grandiose than you might be used to for a starting armor so to speak from other games that you played but at the same time there's still going to be general clothing appearances that are going to be starting clothing before you get your starter armors and stuff we just wanted that transition so you can see from us from a civilian who's entering a new world nothing about to immediately being thrust into this type of a danger role that's out there in this undiscovered country so to speak Star Trek but yeah you you'll transition and that starting clothing will give you that that that anchor of sense all right and then one more question which is any news on the usage of chaos system from Unreal Engine we've moved away from that we think there's a lot of potential with that system but for an MMORPG optimization is such a key component of making a massively multiplayer game that we want to see a little bit more established technology within that system before we begin to implement it I mean they've launched it in a sort of status meeting but they haven't officially said it's ready to go right it's always potential in the future and we are definitely in our ideas yeah definitely gonna move forward like yeah we're not going back to the apex system right yeah we did implement a system that works well for yeah well we currently have and I ask the sage but yeah I mean done yeah we have no intentions of not we're constantly going to be looking at new technology that comes out and checking it out and seeing if it works for us yeah the camp system just wasn't ready for prime time taking over host and Jeffrey is gonna be joining you all see you later what this mic is thanks to the amazing quaternion Slurp you may have had him answer some of your support don't worry his other half she also has a perfect well it was because these sunglasses came from know her okay mr. Issa to be clear I saw these songs I think I saw these on the table just before the stream and I said what we should wear sunglass yeah so decisions are made around yeah yeah so without further ado thank you guys for joining us so far in the stream we have a whole bunch of questions from you guys that we asked for on the forums in advance so we have this forum Q&A; thread that we put out a week in advance before this treatment we gather all the questions from you in the community we ask you to please keep them short and sweet and only post one question in there and all a lot of you guys are really great about that and you only post one question a couple folks get really passionate and posted questions which is awesome and we want to get a chance to answer them all but we want to make sure we get questions from everybody I also took some time yesterday when I was going through all these questions and I've some of you posted repeat questions on the forums that we may have answered before I went ahead and tagged you and wrote a little note and let where you can learn some more information about it where we talked about it before so you have time and a lot of those links actually come from an amazing wiki that is curated by our community and by Lexus which is Ashes of Creation wiki which has collected a lot of awesome info over the years so if you want to go back and when exactly on a live stream did we say this one particular thing about both I guarantee you it's out there so without further ado we'll dive right into these questions all right the first one is from Jalan and it is about the map since everyone is excited about the map that they saw in the creative directors letter he is asking can we please get some clarification on the world map specifically how much of that 480 square kilometer map is land and how much is water so they were looking at the map it out I don't know I don't know we haven't exactly figured it out but when we talk about 480 square kilometers we talk about playable area right there are there areas on the edges that we really wouldn't consider to be playable but but yeah I don't know I don't know the exact the exact amount that is land versus water but the water is playable area as well and it's gonna have content and it's gonna have creeps and trade areas and things to discover rooms to discover and treasure all sorts of things all right next question is from Gilgamesh and also from will of these who asks will there be an emphasis on visual clarity as a core design principle for PvP not so much effects glowing everywhere or what's our focus on the plan is to leave that up to the player to decide give people plenty of options to determine how clear they want the battlefield to be or how important that is to them and in terms of how they play yeah clarity as a design principle is important to us when we talk about we want you to be able to read what's going on in the situation and understand it the most important aspect at least from a design I think principle with regards to PvP is offering the the players threat assessment a very easily visible threat assessment whether that be understanding that there are certain color palettes assigned with certain energy types that certain classes will have certain principles of skill usage and effects types that are present that certain armor types will have a specific silhouette that's easily recognizable and the idea for PvP is that from a distance you as a player should be able to ascertain what exactly the threat you're getting involved in and make a snap decision based off of that information so we want it to be very clear and present to the player mm-hmm all right Kamin asks will there be surprise encounters with epic beings that are part of era where the only thing you can do is watch them and enjoy or just ignore and move on so not world bosses where you have to fight that let's say there it's like a giant tree creature that just goes traipsing through the forest and you just look at it I think that's that's a great aesthetic and even early on when we showed the giant screen creature yeah the concept there was that this is a world that exists even without you and sometimes you're not the central component of that world you're an observer so I think that it's a great component of storytelling when we have those types of events existing for for players to just observe and get immersed in yeah and it's I'll tell deeper story right we were actually just having this conversation about a specific type of public event and whether or not we should consider it a public event because there wasn't a resolution to it and it was just moving the story forward and whether we should consider that a cinematic sort of thing or a thing that should actually be a triggered public event so so those are the kinds of things that we are talking about and we want to use to help tell that story show rather than just telling all right nervous asks will the healing archetypes suit a variety of play styles for example direct first healing versus heal over time or a damage mitigation healer versus like a healing for damage yes so just a variety of different yes yeah I mean we've talked a lot about building your play style right and we're the the goal is to give you as many options as possible in the skill tree and have you be able to decide how you want to play and most of those play styles will be represented okay meowww who asks what class has been your favorite to play so far and why I will take the Fifth Amendment on that because I feel answering that will give a inappropriate disposition towards one class I don't want to buy it I don't want to buy us the community I'm always surprised at how fun well I guess I shouldn't say surprised right but the Ranger plays really fun it did the tactical piece of that so you being in and out of melee combat like is exciting and fun in a way that I didn't expect from it so now I will say that I would target the Ranger on a battlefield because attempt yeah well because Rangers have been the bane of my favorite classes existence alright let's see and then Magic Man asks well gathering involve simply clicking and waiting for a bar to fill or more of an interactive real-time process like holding down key user having to move the camera or anything like that we don't really want to inundate that process with a lot of interaction because sometimes gathering can be a relaxing thing that crafters and gatherers want to be able to do without having to worry about a lot of QuickTime events or interactions yeah it's it's definitely not a place that we were looking to put that interaction and we're probably not gonna reinvent the wheel on that exactly I mean crafters and gatherers enjoy the relaxing state it is to just go out and explore and you're watching a twitch stream while you're right we want to cater to that to that play style because people that tend to gather are the people who enjoy all right mayhem asks do you have any plans on keeping players interested in playing apocalypse after level 50 such as additional levels prestige or achievements for cosmetic items so this is specifically about apocalypse right yes they were asking if we have plans on keeping players interested in playing apocalypse after level 50 so what each system or your upcoming seasons apocalypse was really something that was meant to to gather information for us moving forward with the development of the MMORPG and it and it's definitely satisfied that purpose we're going to evaluate what we're going to implement with apocalypse moving forward and we're definitely going to let the community know what that results in but right now we don't necessarily have an answer. Talans asks, "We know that there will be legendary weapons what about the possibility of legendary spells that are equally as rare?" I love it we've talked about augments being in that category we really have to see how that fits in though there are things about abilities that are a little bit different than items in terms of sort of maintaining parity in balance but it's something that we are exploring something that early on and I think we've moved away from this idea was saying early on that I really loved the idea of in other games that I played you get legendary weapons that have some type of activatable skill that you that is available and those are usually the most sought after because they added a different different dimension to your to your class so to speak but having some type of legendary scroll with limited to use or a time that could be dropped from a boss it gives access to a spell component or that can be applied as an augment as you have said is something I thought is is a dynamic that I haven't seen explored in a lot of other games and I think it would be really cool to have an option to do that but I don't know if we're going to implement that or not all right carefree cactus asks can a summoner summon a dragon or something similar if the proper class was picked not as a mount just for combat yeah I think dragon species are definitely a viable summon component that is something that you will have access to the other cool thing about the summoner that we want to implement is a summon creation suite where you can customize the appearance potentially based on what you found in the world exactly exactly exactly I think that's that's something that's already going to be on something's already gonna be implemented something that's already gonna be implemented with the animal husbandry system and there's no reason why we can't take that technology that that system and apply it elsewhere such as with the Summoner alright but how viable will PvP arena or open-world to be for gearing up so for example many other games take this as you'll get a PvP currency for participating in PvP which then you can use to get gear and be on a similar level of someone who was raiding talk to you reading or something like that so someone just wanted to go all into PvP we're definitely gonna have rewards that you achieve through the arena system in PvP right but we don't want to overly incentivize or or make that a one-stop shop where you can just disassociate from the open world and environment because that de populates the server and the interaction of those of those players from the rest of the community and then they become their own clique of PB peers that are separate from putting demand on the crafting system in the gathering system and we want to still that there's a healthy connection between those players and the economy of the world and not just make it a one-stop shop within the arena so no it's not going to be viable for equipping your character but it will absolutely be capable of adding augmented power through your performance and success within the PvP system but it's again like crafting is the main economic driver in this game and and the main way of itemizing this game so we really don't want to have like a separate market just for all right ishka asks well our weapon auto-attack have an actual use in combat so some games you're a one shooter we don't we don't have an auto attack we have our combo system um and that replaces what the auto attack is and that is a thing that you can spec into and you can spec into weapon abilities that change what combinations you have available to you based on the weapon and in acts I mean it acts similar in the sense of the core loop of what an auto attack is so to speak where typically your other skills have a cooldown period they have a rotation or whatever our combo system is a repeatable skill effect that you can continually attack with but it's a little bit more involved than what a traditional auto attack is right and it has components from a from an advancement standpoint when it comes to the types of procs that your weapon can have during that combo system it's not going to have the QuickTime event that you guys saw early on it packs and gave great feedback on but it is going to have development with regards to the power of the weapon the type of weapon you're using the additional proc effects that you can skill into those types of things are going to make it a little bit more complex of a system capture all right so Damocles asks you've mentioned that there will be open world battlegrounds do open world dungeons count battlegrounds no when I say open world and that obviously terminology can can vary between players and and their experiences but when I say open battle open world battlegrounds what I mean is our objective system that was demonstrated to our p.i members in the castle siege system is the ability for an event to take place in the open world where players can go and go there and participate and in that event will be spawned objectives and spawned rule sets that players will be able to utilize to have victory or failure so that's what I mean by open-world battle yeah those are like specific events in the world right they're like an open-world battleground where where it is it is a sequence of events that that happens in the world yeah whereas an open-world dungeon is more like a contested dungeon there are battles that can happen there certainly guilds will I'm sure fight over bosses that is a thing that also happens but it's not prescribed and it's not an event that takes place where the specific rules all right horrendous asks if I have a camel or goat cosmetic well I need something other than a horse to place it on so I think this is specifically for caravans that they're asking I'm sorry if I have a if you have a camel or goat cosmetic well I need something other than a horse to place upon so we have three tiers discussed in the past three tiers of our of our mounts that are available and cosmetic skins applied to different tiers per se so it's not the type the exact it's the two tiers so horses will exist as a creature within all three tiers actually there's going to be legendary horses leg of pegasi in the Royal tier and a secondary horse that's going to be probably some type of Clydesdale and then a more like gelding horse in the in the first tier but as long as you have the appropriate tier for the for the cosmetic skin you'll be able to apply it to that tier all right rakh asks can players cause natural disasters through summoning rituals or special items so like we know that there will be natural disasters that happen as parts of events or weather system but can players cause them maybe through actions that they take it's it's more like let's say a public event happens and it is resolved in a negative fashion there might be a natural disaster that results as as an exam result of that right but it won't be like players directing those I don't have a scroll of hurricanes so indirectly players do right but not a direct cause-and-effect gotcha all right lord Ashbourne asks will may just be able to specialize in a certain element for example using straight flame and being a flame age you're using only frost skills and being a frost mage uh that's the goal like there there are definitely places where I could take a large majority of my skills to the fire base right I probably wouldn't say that you want to do that like exclusively you will probably want other supporting skills but these scenarios or absolutely right on supporting skills but there would be scenarios where from an energy descriptor standpoint you would want to focus on bringing on specing into skills that are a particular energy type because when you apply certain equipment augments through the stone system or something else you might be able to increase the potency houghton see of a particular energy type and so for that reason it could be beneficial for you to really focus but the dog but there's a downside to that because effectively people call so put resistance is against certain energy type and if I if you're a major player let's say in the game or fire as a predominant predominant skill set within your server so to speak a lot of players might spec into the fire resistances in which case you'd be I don't eat without a paddle yeah right all right well hello asks will there be evade frames iframes on dodge we're still playing around with this it's looking more and more likely but we're having we're having finalized it yet okay yeah I would say it's a safe bet with regards to how we're approaching the hybrid combat that not only are gonna have true evasion skills that apply to more action-oriented skills that are coming your way but you'll also have iframe type skill that would apply perhaps to a tab targetable seal coming your way right so I think you're gonna have a healthy balance of both with it when it comes to skills that you can spec into and yeah all right private asks with the PvE revolving around questing do you have any plans to prevent it from taking away the sandbox elements from the game so making sure that the main story quests requests aren't taking away from players building I mean it's built around the idea of it being a sandbox right the quests aren't built sort of in the sort of traditional linear mode that that other MMOs have done it's it's meant to be a modular sort of narrative so so it is it builds itself based around the choices the players make and where the POE those players have made those choices so it should hopefully reinforce that idea that sandbox rather than take away from me yeah I think when we talk about questing we talk about the experiences that players will have in the game all of it boils down to the decisions of the community so to speak really the overarching quest line even also accommodates the way that the world gets developed and the decisions that the players make because you may see a certain elements based on what players have built up and more so also we also allow for our quest system to interact with the direct building of freeholds and businesses or professions players make that will spawn ancillary quests that they can participate in all right rustic also asks will the adapted AI be used on all the mobs so they become more challenging and fun or will it just be for dungeon and raid bosses I mean it's it the goal is to keep things as adaptive as possible while also retaining like sense of character to those things we definitely will leverage it a lot more on the bosses because those are the big moments in the game and those are the places where the most drawers are available for and that's one of the directions that you want to do where we don't have the sense of being on farm because it can change from a counter to counter but but we will see some of that for the for the lesser marks and I was just gonna say with regards to how our behavior trees are going to be designed right they're they're compartmentalized into two different attachments of a particular NPC what it can utilize what's in its repertoire of responses and I think that's going to scale based on the elite level of the NPC right you may have the grunt that's going to have the most minimal type of behavior tree possible whereas you have then a group leader and eventually an elite mob and then a dungeon boss and then a world boss each of those at every step you're adding additional components to their behavior tree that represent that type of adaptive AI sorry no my job all right my I was just looking at the time something we're 30 minutes over two hours oh my gosh alright I'll try to jump around a little and see if we can get to more of the questions that are towards the end here let me go to ravu to-- we'll start from the bottom now who asks our class specific utility skills a strict requirement to unlock certain content for example the mage dispelling a dungeon door or the ranger revealing tracks or are there other ways around it yes like are there certain things that are locked - they're gonna need to have it almost certainly will never be a one-way solution for any given problem it may be the easiest way to solve an encounter or an environmental obstacle but if I'm oh no means will be the only way to solve that all right Shadowman asks due to limited fast travel can crafting stations be mobilized / moved and can they be placed anywhere in the world or only locations depends on the crafting station they're going to be different tiers of crafting stations that represent the quality of item you're looking to create within that specific profession there's going to be crafting stations that can be utilized by players within their freeholds and then compensations that are resigned only to the development of particular nodes within particular area a particular building right exactly so there's a wide variety of those things to make it a more dynamic experience and and something that caveat how players decide to build the world and what the value of those things are exactly right can big us asks will there be armor for specific crafting and gathering professions so this is my fishing there will likely be yes there will there will almost certainly be that this is this is something that that provides an additional layer of expertise and devotion to that particular profession from the players who would spend the additional time necessary to to achieve those things and we obviously want that type of progression available to those types of players I'm think I'm gonna try to pull maybe if three more questions off this list and give you guys back some time in the days no we're not gonna - ants to go through all these today thank you guys for submitting your questions you gave us so many alright I'm gonna pick three more randomly. Let's go we're gonna pick let's go with Corpier who asks, “What kinds of tools will we have to manage our friends lists such as organization favoriting people can I be invisible to my friends and invisible to other people?” so we've talked about build organization I would say that we're taking a little bit of a standard approach to the friendslist we're definitely going above and beyond with regards to the guild management system and stuff like that but I don't know how much further you can go into the friends lists kinda yeah it'll be pretty standard how would you two excuse lists or stuff like that yeah I mean yeah sure there's gonna be a way and is and those types of things but munstervan asks “Regarding the PvP flagging system, are players able to repeatedly attack non-combatants until they reach low health (but not kill them) and receive no corruption for doing so?” Because presumably the corruption happens upon you actually killing someone, so can I just sit there and poke a newbie until they don't die well let a mob take the last hit and go yeah there's definitely a risk associated with that obviously because being a higher level character there's a potential to easily kill a lower-level character and there is added detriment for doing so so you're not only is it risky that you might actually gain the corruption but if you were to kill them you would gain significantly more corruption because they're much lower level the Delta knows yeah exactly so with regard to how the flagging system actually works no you won't gain corruption just by attacking another player you will flag for PvP can you attack another player while they're engaged with a monster or a boss yes you could but again that's added risk because you can't necessarily time perfectly the damage or understand even the health of the player unless you were in their party you cannot see an opponent's health as well so that's another component that adds risk to that type of action but yeah would you be able to see their health percentage but maybe not their health number what happens with regards to to seeing another player's health is their name plate will deteriorate or give you an indication of like hey they've taken damage they're significantly injured but you're not going to get a percentage you're not gonna get an exact bar value unless you're in their party or in their raid and you can see their status all right okay and then we will pick one more out of here and we will wrap up for today so thank you guys all again for submitting your car your questions. Let's see, will guild halls have parlor games on other tab like system so they want to know if the big guild halls can also incorporate those what no because that ties into the business system that we want to to keep within that particular type of building type and the guild hall really is something that's a separate it's a it's a benefit component of guild members it grants them certain accesses to services within the node that its present in but we're going to keep the tavern game system within the business associated with buildings and and make sure because those are a major machine mechanic of those business gaps yeah we don't want it we want guild people who are in a guild to not just necessarily be in their guild right you want them to do so yeah play some tavern games with us I'm gonna run the best bar stop spoiling people will it be in the valley plenty it won't be all right thank you guys all for joining us for another one of our monthly development update live streams just a couple of quick final reminders here we had a creative directors letter that came out at the end of the year so if you haven't had a chance to read that yet it's got the map in it that we've been talking a little bit about today so you can take a look in there we also have the creation of the dune winged Falcon video that just got released yesterday so if you haven't had a chance to watch that yet you can see how this creature came to life it's lovely for wings all across Farah and also we have a new dev discussion that'll be coming up in February this one is going to be about your favorite and ideal classes listen there's gonna be a fun conversation about your favorite stuff you've never played and then we also have some fun Valentine's Day content as well I think magnitude I'm excited hope you guys like puns alright and I think we also have a monthly cosmetic swap over coming soon as well so thank you guys again for joining us we have had Jeff with us we've had Steve with us we also had rye with us and dear Ryan URI URI and Dave and we had Bacon with us as well so thank you to all of our guests and for you guys as well we'll be posting the video for this up on YouTube later today and we'll be highlighting it on Twitch so go ahead and check out our YouTube channel if you've missed any part of the stream take a look at that. Make sure you follow us on social where Ashes of Creation everywhere come join the discussion on discord it's a lot of fun we have a good time. Are you not entertained?