Talk:2020-04-30 Livestream

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Nyers átirat

hello how are you all do and welcome to Ashes of Creation our development update for April our next home edition version of this it's been an interesting ride for us so you may hear kids hollering in the background family welcome behind us doors opening and closing whatever it may be dogs cats meowing do you say cats on the ceiling The Simpsons oh wait that was a pig there there may be sounds that you'll hear from our house so just keeping that in mind as we move forward yeah we will be we'll be doing all the things so we have a lot of stuff for you all today a whole bunch of goodies but if you're new here and you're curious about who we are we'll go into that first and then we'll get right into all the goodies we've so much stuff so today we're recon we're gonna have Steven covering our studio update we'll go into design stuff we actually have some really cool footage like actual live gameplay footage I know you thought last time was the only footage we'd have but we have more and then we have our character our update we have so much art from character from the character team and same with environment we have a whole bunch of environment stuff and you're actually gonna see some of the environment art in the videos during the design portion and then you'll get to see the screenshots as well so it'll be very cool to see boats juxtaposed and then we just wanted to kind of give you guys quick update we have our new dev discussion coming up so stay tuned for that we're really excited to read all of your previous ones from the last one which was what are some of your favorite things to do in online games that aren't progression related and you all have some really interesting suggestions and things of that sort and a lot of those things were already doing so that was cool to see I think that for us that's always nice and then of course we have extended our monthly cosmetics so just keeping that in mind that will be June 3rd if those days change we'll let you know so to kick things off I guess Steven if you wanna kind of talk about who you are and then start off with the studio update steven sharif great director at intrepid Studios on Ashes of Creation studio update is we are chugging along here in our new reality of working from home from the pandemic that all of us are having to navigate through this interruption to our lives but i think we're doing a great job the studio has definitely risen to the occasion we've been doing a really really productive time so far this this pandemic so i'm really excited actually the the progress that the team has made in in prepping the alpha one client for our testers our players to jump in starting in may within the next few weeks this is gonna be an interesting road towards our alpha one that we intend to have by fall so i know a lot of the team are excited to start squashing bugs and getting player feedback and you know doing this kind of soft rollout testing for alpha one yeah there might be i think some people are just talking about like audio stinks and stuff like that we are working from home so we have kind of a weird setup so we apologize if there's any like weirdness with the stream but hopefully it all sounds good and you can at least understand what everyone's saying i go for go forward steven yeah sorry about that but so yeah so things are going well we are still hiring you may have noticed that there are hiring announcements that are made on our company's linkedin that the community team's been putting out so that is up and running feel free to help us share those things but yeah ultimately i think thats extent to the studio update right now that's what we're all focused on our onboarding has been interesting it's got to be weird from like i think it's weird from our perspective but it's got to be even weirder from somebody's perspective who's just starting right like just not even like not even having met in person your bosses a little weird right yeah so you you're like alright what's their tone what's this like especially since we do use voice a lot more than like on camera stuff so I think that's it's it's just very interesting times we live in but in general yeah I think like Steven said we've been kicking booty working really hard obviously there you know what there are some things that are just a little bit odd like our live stream but I think we're making it it's awesome that we can still do all of our work and I think we are very fortunate I know Stephen has talked about this in the past we're very fortunate that we work and you know in a place where we can work from home and everyone has what they need and we've been trying to accommodate for all of those things alright I know our our I tease guys been personally chatting with everybody and trying to get everyone was set up so if there's anybody who needs something specifically for their home set up that we're making sure that they have what they need but yeah I noticed somebody asked if there's a position for remote janitorial work we don't have any remote janitorial work available at this time I like that you answered that more seriously yeah moving on to our next thing so we'll just get right into handing it over to the lovely bard here are you gonna sing Jeffery bar bars like late at night Jeff actually brought us well we have a lot of footage for you all so we're gonna kind of toss it switch over to that scene and we're gonna talk about the development and how things have been going while we watch some of this footage so take it away yeah recorded this a little late last night it's just a couple of dungeons keep in mind as you're watching this footage while we kind of chat we're just giving this to you guys to see in the background but as you're watching this everything is still a work in progress this is our first you know very early early part of the first alpha rollout so you're gonna see you know I don't know if they're sound associated with it either that's going to play lightly in the back it will lightly play along okay cool but you'll see things that you know still need polishing so don't don't consider this an end product just consider this a showing you guys development and stuff yeah I mean this is just kind of like our playground where we check out the systems that we've built and kind of play through and make sure that it's fun and see what we need to fix and see what things need to change and you know figure out what's fun and what's not so that's more gathering right there that you just saw yeah for sorry that's my daughter in the back no it's fine yeah like I say that's why I gave them professor for people is like they're gonna be kids they're gonna be cast like every dogs is you know yeah so this is like our hybrid combat system kind of 2.0 that's certainly not our final iteration there's stuff that needs to be fixed and stuff that needs to be changed but you'll see that that there is a nice mix of both tab targeting and action skills happening in these fights we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the best controls are we haven't quite nailed it yet but I think we're getting pretty close so this is basically a a dungeon that should be tuned for freight players but I think they're going through with five players right now we kind of turn things down a little bit so that you know we don't want the whole whole studio play testing at the same time every day so we just go in with small groups and we kind of get notes and take notes and go back and fix things and yeah and just to kind of add here I know you guys would be noticing the effects I mean we have an amazing effects artist Jim who you know just to get kind of give you guys an idea of how effects get implemented you know we kind of run what are called first passes to get something in the world that can be present for these effects and then as we kind of run through that first pass on all the skills and abilities then we take additional time to go back and do a second pass and a third pass and during each of those passes you know they become more you know closer to the final product right you're going to like right now you just saw a template that was you know very very large for a specific ability that's it very chunky right here or you see you know some of the brightness or some of the size of the effects or some of the you know templates are there all that stuff gets refined so keep that in mind as you're seeing stuff yeah Jim does deserve a raise he's been doing a fantastic job I think I think these he's made our game look pretty incredible so we're excited to have him and it's been a lot of fun working with him but yeah so other things we've been working on we've got sort of a rudimentary gathering and crafting system in we again it's a pretty rudimentary right so it's just we're putting the skeleton together so first the first kind of foundational layout of of those systems you know tracking items tracking resources tracking all those things in the database that's sort of what we've got set up now there's some really relatively simple ways of interacting with those but but you know you start with the bottom and work your way up and for those asking if there's gonna be any information about classes yes we have a plan to basically put out quite a few articles and video content and pieces as we move into alpha one they will all be part of an alpha one series that we'll talk about each of those things what you're going to what you can expect from alpha one and the current state that they'll be in and what kind of feedback we're looking for and then also looking to the future so keeping that in mind we will have some pieces coming out we implore you actually if you look at the links down right below me if you can follow us on Ashes of Creation on Twitter on Facebook on YouTube right here on twitch we'll be sharing a lot of cool information for you and as we move into alpha and as we move out of the NDA portion we will be streaming more of that content too so keeping that all in mind yeah and this dungeon here is actually a lower level dungeon so this is something you'd probably tackle around the global 5 or level 10 right another thing to keep in mind about what you're seeing here is that this is actually us at level 10 so you know those of you who have our MMORPG veterans you know there's a very limited select amount of skills that are available you know at that type of level actually what you're seeing here is probably more Skills than you would typically have in another game in another MMO at level 10 I mean you see we have a practically a full hot bar if I recall correctly most of the mmo's I played at level 10 you maybe have three four skills tops to kind of play with from an active standpoint but you know just keep in mind the intended top level for releases level 50 so there's still a you know a much greater way to go when it comes to the skill fidelity and interactions and and a synchronization that's available for players yeah and also we're just trying to establish like the core identity of these classes too so that's why we're starting with like a sort of limited kit just so we can kind of figure out like okay this feels good for the cleric let's make sure that like we kind of keep this going up through the levels so that we don't lose that flavor or that that feeling of making a cleric filled cleric II so we do that with each class just to make sure that like okay these skills fit well together or these skills this one doesn't quite match the rest of what there's going on there and it doesn't make sense in sort of how I play so let's maybe take that out and give that to another class or something along those lines so that's why we small start with a small group of characters first and then we kind of build out from there and there's question here asking does that mean that it's going to be a relatively longer process to get to level 10 than a typical MMO that we've played before yeah I mean one of the things I would say with regards to like leveling times is if you were to kind of classify I mean for those of you out there who had a lot of MMO experience if you were to kind of classify our leveling time to more casual or more hardcore I would say we're towards the more hardcore leveling time but we're not you know as far as some of those very grindy games but we're definitely not going to be a max level in under a week type game this is something that we want you know players to need to invest some some time and effort into there's going to be many different paths towards leveling it's not going to all be housed within your adventuring class and going out and killing monsters so in that way obviously many of you guys know if you've been Ashes of Creation you know our ideal is to give a lot of progression paths so that you know different playstyles get cater to and are relevant so but the amount of time to to level is something that's going to be more on the hardcore side but but not you know all the way and I'm switching over to our next little dungeon here that we played through if you want to talk a little bit about that there are quite a few other questions in chat regarding specifically mana and how that's going to work is it going to be typical as like other types of mmo's where as a cleric you're gonna have to manage that resource excetera yeah any resource that we give you is going to be something that is managed right if we don't want you to manage it then you wouldn't put it in the game right so mana will be consequential it won't be just a bar that you don't pay attention to you know if you're a mage or your cleric or even if you're a tank right it's a resource that you can draw on to to do things to the world and you have to be careful about how you use it yeah some of the early discussions that you know Jeff and I had back in you know 2016 I think when we would do our 8 hour long roundtable discussions was the relevance of you know downtime basically and a lot of the older MMOs that we've been accustomed playing you know you kind of mana oriented classes run through their mana and then have to kind of like sit down to regenerate exactly and you know that that wasn't very I will say at first in that discussion I was a little bit on the side of like yeah but there should be a cost-benefit ratio between your effectiveness and combat and the amount of downtime that you should have and and I think Jeff maybe illuminated a little bit more to me you know the idea of having you know compelling gameplay that's present through a majority of your experience and not and and sitting is not very compelling so I think we've we've kind of you know incorporated that philosophy within the core gameplay loop of managed Riven classes as well as health driven classes and you know incorporated mechanics that I think eliminate the sitting quota downtime as opposed to two otherwise yeah but still make shit make it something that's something you have to manage right like you weren't you stealing right exactly are and that bar is still very important to you we have another question that is what is the oneplus after the enemy's audience it's mostly for for us to understand like the population in the world but it means that this troll is one level higher than you and it is an elite right so typically the way that we would communicate that type of information once the UI is fully implemented would be basically the set dressing of the nameplate so if you were to select a monster or a mob you would notice the nameplate either would have a different color that would illuminate you kind of to what its level position is based on yours in comparison and then additionally if it were an elite or a dungeon boss or a world boss you would have additional filigree around the actual nameplate itself that would kind of designate hey this guy's a little bit you know beefier this grows a little bit beefier than then your typical trash mob and others are asking can I have all the skills of my class or will I have to pick and choose one so build your character to make choices by choosing something you're giving up something else and that's always going to be the case in Nash's creation and then there's some other questions regarding is there gonna be are there going to be hard CCS specifically they're asking in regards to PvE hard cc's as in crowd control like complete block down yeah absolutely hard CCS that are available yes but keep in mind you know in my opinion right when when you have to balance between the application of a skill in PvE versus PvP one of the biggest components obviously from cc perspective is going to be mitigating returns or diminishing returns you know those are something that are going to be very prevalent not just from a PvP perspective but also from a PvE perspective as well and we've gotten this question before but people are sorry I got confused actually people are wondering if they're gonna be able to see targets targets so in a lot of games you can see like the targets target absolutely oh yeah yeah assisting basically as I call that right assisting being able to target off a target that's a very important component of group of based combat whether it be PvE or PvP additionally group leaders and they'll be able to delegate this responsibility to other party members will be able to apply over-the-head icons to targets as well so that they can designate essentially like hey this is a your attack target this is the CC target this is the tight target you know kind of that and I know this is the one that we've gotten a few times before people are wondering if the max size party is going to be 5 or what is what is planned primarily just cuz they're seeing five years ago it's 8 yeah we've said is 8 that is kind of you know how were we are designing group combat as a round and eight player party based off of our eight different Ark types those are because that's that's our design philosophy there and then people are noticing that the mini-map has little blips for enemies are there going to be abilities or ways people for people with respect to get more information on the mini-map or what that information always be available to a user that's something we want to do with our utility skills so seeing the the mobs on the mini-map it's probably not going to be a thing that everybody gets access to that will probably be relegated to certain classes and certain abilities of certain classes that's mainly just there for us to kind of figure out what our population is actually doing in the level at glance so it's more for us than it is for for people especially like in a dungeon like this we don't really necessarily want to give away where all the mobs are unless you are a class that is very good at figuring out where the mobs are people have a lot of questions today so I'm trying to grab them when I can see them but is there anything else that you want to kind of share Jeff that you guys that you all have been working on I know it's been a very long process you of this huge list of things that you guys have been just pumping out it's been really cool for us like on the community and like marketing side cuz you know we're getting to see all the cool stuff that we get to share with everybody for instance like I said this livestream Michael a little longer than an hour yeah it's really good to start feeling stuff kind of come together like in aggregate right it's not like any one given thing although I'm pretty stoked about how the May just turned out so far it's really fun class to play you know I think just overall just kind of seeing where we've come has been kind of the most fulfilling part for me I'm a very long way in a very short amount of time and we continue to make pretty incredible strides you know every couple of months so yeah it's been a lot of fun yeah I think it's been just a bit go I'll go for record stars do sorry I was just gonna say you know I think one of the biggest communication points from you know us as a studio to our community you know obviously being appreciative of the support and you know you guys giving feedback and participating in discussion on discord on forums on reddit you know on different social channels those are all very important participating our dev discussions it's all very important but you know I think the most important aspect from us to you is our goal is to make sure that this game answers all of the promises obviously that we've made from a mechanic's standpoint at launch and additionally most importantly from a quality perspective that our launch is something that is how to say you know above reproach is is is is flawless right Steven expects a lot from you know what I think I think that we've been able to put together an amazing team that can answer that call you know one of one of the things for me as an MMO player that I've experienced in the past is the launch day is of such an important day I mean especially in games that have long tail type progression and player driven mechanics launch day is the foundation for you know those things so as we go through this alpha one and as we go through alpha two you know our goal is to make sure we get it right and that that obviously might involve additional time but we're going to keep you a part of the process every way as we as we continue to develop and iterate that's that's you know the promise we've made to to the community especially for a group that's relatively unknown right we're not Blizzard we're not activision you know we have to really make sure that we put all our ducks in a row and have a really good Lodge so it's it's really important to the whole team that don't do this right yeah and I think obviously we're gonna move into talking about our character stuff but I think from our perspective you know we're we might not be always showing exactly what you want to see all the time I think it's kind of a thing that I just want to put out there because it is a process but obviously we're showing our development process for showing some of the gritty stuff and it's been I think interesting to see Jay Steven and Jeff and bacon because we're all kind of perfectionist and when they look at stuff they're like oh that's not ready to share and it's like oh the whole goal for us has been to share the process of development and so I think from our perspective we also want to do that in a very professional manner so hopefully the way that we've been doing it through our creation videos our dev Diaries we have more of those planned and obviously through our development update post here we hope that we can share those things with you all in a way that also presents it professionally for us as well I guess is that the right way to explain it trying to yeah so we have a lot of assets here and I think I'll kind of let Jeff and Steven talk a bit about this so the first topic here is going to be about the heads that are being created for the different races and then also hair as we move into that yeah I think what you're seeing here unfortunately I didn't have a chance to go through the assets I might not I don't know about the color of the background but I think what this is trying to communicate is there's a great variation that's going to be available from a a character standpoint when creating your character especially around the face whether it be the shape the jawline the the cheeks the ears the nose the lips you know we want to provide a lot of a lot of options and an agency to the player to to customize their character appearance so here you're kind of seeing the scale across you know that deformation that's available to the player when they're in the character creator screen he looks a little red for this one specifically catkins what I mean or Chris Atkins the one he's been on our stream a few times if you want to check that out he kind of was telling me that this is like the process of you know Stephen and them having discussions regarding hair and getting it to the point where they're happy with it and we'll kind of show off some of those pairs or we've been showing those off through our social as well right a lot of art I mean just to communicate to you guys again the process a lot of art goes through what's what are called first pass iterations right where you want to get something into the engine you know to kind of represent the direction that we're going to go and and then as time goes on and you've gotten a lot of that first passes and then you go back and do the second and third passes so you know initially we had hair that we weren't you know obviously was first pass hair and we wanted to continue to refine this would be probably kind of the second pass refinement it's going to go through many different iterations to kind of make that hair you know higher fidelity a little better better-looking available to the character and you'll see some of those examples but you know these are kind of the beard styles I think that you if you guys been following on on social media we've shown a few of these on Twitter and stuff that are available this would be the VAE loon the VAE looms kind of having you know varying degrees of beards that become available hey yeah so we've been kind of showing a lot of all the different beards and hair types and things of that sort so definitely a stay tuned and you know watch us on social we definitely share things and then the next topic we're going to be going into is a lot of the armors that have been being worked on and you know we may have shown a little bit of progress on these in the past but now we're continually iterating on them and I'll let Steven and Jeff kind of talk over the over these as I go through them yeah I mean just to give you guys kind of an idea on you know how armors get incorporated you know obviously because we're allowing the players to mix and match different pieces of armor you know they're not just a pre constructed one set that's going to be available these pieces have to kind of be able to live naturally with each other as well and not look out of place when you have you know a lion set with a wolf set you know pauldron and chest right they have to they have to still look good together so as the character team kind of determines these these Geo's that get created of the different pieces from the pauldrons to the guards to the chest to the leggings to the boots to the gloves you know all of these things have to be constructed in a way that they live naturally with the other pieces of different geo that exists within the same tiers so obviously our you know our character armor sets are going to live within different tiers you know you're going to have a different silhouette of armor at levels 1 through 10 than you will have at 40 through 50 though they're going to progress get naturally more ornate larger you know different kind of presence that's relevant not just from a visual standpoint but also from a player threat assessment if I see someone in the distance you know I get a pretty good understanding of what I'm getting into based off of the silhouette is it a plate armor where is it a cloth armor where are they going to be level 50 you know those are types of information that I can gleam just from sight of a character at a distance so you know the character team has been rock stars here and in creating well rock stars in the sense of the urban stars let me just say to the stars they've been stars in the sense of kind of creating this these different sets that are available that then the kind of concept and design team says okay you know I want to see you know a a golden wolf you know leather set and thematically they'll take the geo pieces that they've pre-constructed for a varying degree of representations of this armour they'll mix and match to create the you know the golden wolf armour set and then they'll apply a somatic components they'll change out the materials they'll change the colors to kind of match what the design direction is in that regard a lot of these looks you're seeing right here are all like relatively NPC looks so those things there'll be things you see across there that's the next let me see things you'll see across town we really want to make sure that the sort of NPC population feels really diverse and these places are metropolitan and kind of exciting and have you know a full a full character to them so our character team has been knocking these out like crazy and they're amazing yeah they've been killing it and making the world feel really vibrant which is nice and all the colors it's cool to see more of the colors coming in yeah we've got more of those now the next thing we've showed off fishing and our play through last time but I kind of also wanted to show off the process of creating these things because although you know you see the fishing and you see us doing this casting and you see the fish in the water you don't realize sometimes how much work goes into all these tiny little pieces so I wanted to kind of show the progress of this and if you all want to talk over it while I kind of showcase that that'd be lovely sure I haven't seen this yet so I'm waiting I'm waiting to see what the content is before I start talking over so it's it the fishing it's the creation of the fishing pole and then the fish Oh gotcha okay cool yeah I think that you know part of of creating these systems especially systems like fishing that have a specific progressive route requiring higher-level equipment harvesting tools so to speak before you're capable of actually harvesting specific types of fish that yield greater materials for players I mean that's all part of the progression of that system accompanying that obviously is going to be the detail behind you know those tools reflecting the more ornate and higher profession quality that players have so you know in these you're seeing well we're going are we running a video or something I can I'm just going I'm just going through them while you're talking oh no no yes so I mean here you're here you're seeing you know different types of fish obviously these all exist probably within the same tier of the fishing profession and then as you know the as the profession levels up you're going to have access to larger you know fish to even perhaps more dangerous fish we'll see these are things that players get access to as they level up that progression and tongs I love the tongs they look so cool I just had to throw them in here so you see tongs oh the tongs the tongs are really more of an ambience type item at least with regards to their application for for alpha-1 these are things you're going to see NPCs having from a prop standpoint that just kind of gives you know more detailed life to the world around you you know it's easy to slap a NPC there and call them a blacksmith it's an it's an extra step if we include specific tools for the tongs for the specific NPCs that kind of set dressed some nicely for the world right it's all about immersion we're going for a very high quality type of presentation when it comes to the world and this is just an example of that that quality and sorry my cats making a lot of noise in the background they're playing with the toy together the next thing is going to be a little bit of a video a couple videos actually of mounting horses obviously this is still work-in-progress so I want to keep that have you set that preference for you our precedents for you all but you've seen us mounting the horses whenever we did the long playthrough before and there was an amount in dismount animation those are all in the works they're coming in so again they're in the early process so we'll show a little bit of that cool a little dwarf guy is mountain yeah I mean to to give some context here you know going back obviously to the first path second path type thing but direction on the mounting the time to mount you know the game is a little bit more faster paced than probably you know most of the older mmo's out there that we've experienced and in that regard we want to make sure that that it's not cumbersome to to kind of quickly mount a steed and start moving especially you know not just from a raid component aspect I mean obviously a lot of a lot of raids include positioning and we want players to be able to quickly position you know as far as their skill is determined but also from a PvP perspective it's important you know that there are components there where mobility is a factor and steeds play a very important role in mobility so yeah and then of course next up we have all of the lovely things from our environment team unless y'all wanted to talk about anything else character related I know before the stream started a lot of people are asking about work stuff so I don't know if you want to like talk a little bit about that Steven at all yeah you will be seeing orc stuff in the future you know there's a lot of stuff we have yet to roll out you know and and that stuff orcas are really excited again I'm hyped we've we've definitely been excited to see those because it's very very different but moving on to our environment team the lovely bacon has and his team has shared with us a whole bunch of stuff so the first thing is this niku in naval caravan you've probably seen some of the cosmetics that we've made that are similar to this so I'll let you talk a little bit about that before we move on to the new kueh structures sure so what you're seeing here I believe these are I believe these are yeah but are they're water-based caravans so this is this is when so okay so to give you guys an understanding you have land-based caravans that carry Goods obviously and get initiated by yourself you can you you you are essentially the caravan at that point you drive it and direct it caravans are capable of transitioning from land to naval Caravan so if you're if you start out as a land-based Caravan and you move to the coast and you want to move into the water there's gonna be a little transition period there it's gonna be a little construction kind of site you're not gonna have to do anything it's just gonna be a timer right so that you can't quickly move between land and water it's gonna be probably in the matter of you know a minute to two minutes there's a little bit of vulnerability in that regard but when you do transition then from land to water you know this is these are examples of some some water-based caravans skins that are available and what that looks like a little bit obviously the size of the capacity might change the size of the vessel that you have from a merchant standpoint by default players are going to have you know representations of their caravans that are based off of race so that's kind of influence the types of animals that are that are carrying the caravan are moving the caravan forward and then they'll be able to apply caravans skins as necessary that will change that appearance cool and next up we have a whole bunch of structures now you've seen a lot of the concept of these structures you've seen the concept of the vibe in the feel of what they're trying to go for with with the the villages and the towns and so on and so forth as for the Nakoa but now you're getting to see the actual structures that have been created and you know I will agree with bacon the structures are almost very similar to the to the concepts it's they did such a good job it's amazing yeah we have a great pipeline when it comes to our concept team providing both character and environment you know the the direction and the details of specific items but at the same time also you know our character and environment teams have had to work without gods apart in just kind of description and direction from myself or Jeff or something so you know they they pull it off amazingly well and these specific assets were created from I believe it was Ryan's Ryan's concept on the Nakoa asset so you know all of these things go to construct the the type of environment and reflect the culture of these specific races and I mean that's it's such a huge project just with regards to the number of races that we represent and it's not so much the fact that we have nine races but the fact that those nine races are coupled with specific cultures that have to be architectural II represented in each of the node stages of development so when your crew when we are creating you know these cultures we're creating the camp assets to the encampment to the village assets that are more you know a village size with thatched roofs and stuff like that to transition to a town which are more rubric oriented and solid material States to cities and metropolis metropolis is which then just take it to the next level of size you know just kind of representing these large metropolitan fantasy areas having to do that nine times over from an asset production standpoint with these different races is a very large order and the environment team has been doing an exceptional job yeah presenting them it's not even just the structures right like it's all the props the support boxes and bookshelves and furniture so all that stuff has to be represented too and be culturally themed so it's it's gigantic and like Stephen said our government team is just kicking ass yeah doing amazing stuff and moving on from there we have some cool plants that have been created right so I think this is Mia del Casino she has been working on some of the harvest apples that are present in alpha-1 there's obviously because we have such an in-depth artisan ship system you know that requires a very very wide foundation from a material and resource and gathering standpoint there's a large crafting game and Ashes of Creation and you know starting the work on presenting these resources in the wild from from a raw gather Bowl standpoint you know really has a lot of assets that need to be created and she's gotten started on the floral aspects of those I'm not sure if she did also the or related stuff as well yep and then we have yarrow truth which is she did these right because she's done a lot of the trees Oh amazing and just you know I think I think some of the things that you know we want to approach from a visual aesthetic standpoint is making sure that these harvestable exist naturally within the and within the scene you know because a lot of times I think and we're going to go back and revisit kind of the effects that that are related to this we kind of put a little bit I think over effects on then but we want players to be attracted and kind of test these systems out in these stages but you know making sure that this is an immersive environment and includes making sure that the harvestable czar also a part of that environment all right and then we've got this beautiful castle some people may have seen that castle before mm-hmm yeah that's uh that's uh that's actually the old castle set that bacon made that was actually part of alpha zero as well I think it's been revamped a little bit it's now a stronghold in the alpha zero island but and I think also that's an old picture of the volcano that's got completely revamped no he shared this with me I think specifically for the building probably yeah and then you saw a lot of the dungeon pictures there working a lot on the lighting so this is kind of to give the mood of the lighting and I'll let Steven and Jeff kind of talk over this as I just go through all these photos because there's a lot of them and you saw strutting through this dungeon as well but these are kind of like the more high-res photos yeah so this is what we're calling internally the junior dungeon there's it will have an official name later but one of the things that we want to have in our dungeons and sort of our playable spaces is a sense of verticality so you know it's a little bit boring to just experience a one level dungeon and having lots of nooks and crannies and heights to play with allows us to do some more interesting things gameplay wise so that's a thing you're gonna see over and over again and this this dungeon kind of does a pretty good job of explaining that I think one of the you know one of the most important aspects of the graphical representation of the game obviously is lighting and you know Devon has been doing amazing job with regards to kind of setting the lighting in these different areas to make them very moody I think that's that's one of probably the adjectives we would use to describe you know the environments is is that moodiness there and that gets conveyed predominantly from these different lighting these different atmospheric effects that become present and and that's a very important part of the process and setting these areas apart from each other yeah I love that like some of these it's hard to tell if it's a concept piece or no it's it's oh yeah they're all in-game screenshots these are not concept pieces but there it is beautif so yeah that's it for the environment side of things been an interesting journey I'm going to kind of switch over to kind of showing off the gameplay footage again while we answer some questions if y'all are okay with that unless you have something else you want to add on the environment side keep kicking ass environment yeah I think our teams are have done an amazing job just as the design team has and the engineering team has mean there's no shortage of work I will say that you know everybody has on the team is I just continually am impressed and I hope you know you guys are by the progress you're seeing you know in in creating bringing Ashes of Creation to life all right let me grab the questions we'll start answering them um we will grab some questions from the chat as well but I want to get through all the questions that are from our community forums we always put these out early so if you want to be part of that make sure you're following us on all of our social channels specifically Twitter and Facebook and on our forums because we always post the thread there a week in advance so that you have some time to ask your questions toast is amazing and she goes through and gives you your answers so if even if your question is not answered live on the stream it's usually because we've already answered it before and she gives you those answers in the in the threads so I just want to give her a shout out for taking the time to sit there and answer all those questions because there there's a lot so the first one we have here is from Jalan and they said you've mentioned castle regions that are static and zones of influences that are more flexible but can you go into more details about the economic region regions specifically so the economic regions as well as the castle regions share the same static boundaries and those are more geographical in nature so they align with with mountain passes with with rivers with oceans you know these these are kind of the graphical divisions of the world and that we will utilize to determine yield rates of Caravan trades and the transit of goods and kind of the boundaries of these these warehouse deposits the influence of the castle to apply tax rates to nodes within its region these are static because we as the design team want to be able to set more definitive interactions from an economic standpoint as well as from the castles influence standpoint now the way that contrasts with respects to the nodes zone of influence and its boundaries and how they progress those are more fluid and are more determined by the surrounding events of other relational nodes do they have a competing node near them is that node about to threshold to the next stage can I take that node over is there a closer border to a coast do I have you know there's there's a lot of different components of that algorithm so yeah hopefully that eliminates a little bit of the differences between the two alright our next question is from Magic Man and the question is can we expect to see a reticle like in Apocalypse which would be tied to Mouse movement alpha-1 or will it be added later on it's there right now I don't know if these guys actually ever went to action modes we have two modes you know the MMO mode and then the action mode and the action mode will bring up reticle stuff that can be targeted that way will point toward the reticle and it will be very close to a third-person action game at that point or you can just press the toggle button and switch back to MMO mode and everything kind of goes back to tech targeting hey can we put the gameplay on full screen mode while we answer question I know that we have beautiful faces but they're probably tired of seeing them I'm just getting my fuzzy face the next question that we have is from solarium and the is will the character creator allow for elves to appear bulky and tanky to match their class or will they be limited to more sleek agile options as depicted in other media so there's going to be a degree of acceptable deformation when it comes to the different races and there's got also going to be kind of body types that you can cycle between to start them at the middle of that deformation range but generally to ask your question there are going to be confinements to the degree at which you may manipulate erases a body type you're not going to turn your elf ya there you're not gonna be able to turn your elf into the the size of a Ren Kai right yeah so you know that's that's something to keep in mind our next question is from I apologize if I pronounced people's names wrong his Yoram and they want to know will there be wheel double banners ala Guild Wars either summonable through skills or as an ordinary weapon you can just buy an own there won't be a banner that you can buy as a weapon there may be specifically for certain variants of the bard archetype there may be banner oriented skills that from a flavor standpoint kind of use the banner idea there there might also be a position within a guild that can be assigned as part of an officer ship that have active skills if the guild progresses if the guild chooses to spec out those types of skills that would have a flavor of banner 'dom that could be present on a battlefield battlefield as well this this would help you know some of the ideas I had early on about guild skills is you know it's one thing to just in the previous games we've all probably played to go to a guild roster and say hey you're an officer and what does that mean okay well you have certain you know limited functions from a permission standpoint access the guild warehouse maybe interact with the guild hall you know that's kind of the extent of it but I think you know one of the things that I wanted to achieve early on about the roles of a guild to have it mean something on the battlefield to relate to this question banners represent kind of a cohesive nature on a battlefield traditionally to kind of rally the troops they inspire they they provide you know boost to people's courage so if that were to be something that were incorporated as an active skill that could only be used by certain officers that are allocated in the guild roster then they would have a significant role in the positioning of troops when it comes to a castle siege field or a node siege field or a battleground you know players are going to be cognizant of hey where is my officer at and if I am near that officer when he uses that quote-unquote bannard skill I am going to receive a benefit or a buff those are important things all right and our next question is from Adeline and they want to know will bosses months and or monsters give a visual representation of their degradation while fighting like armor breaking wounds appearing etc could be not there may be some special cases where we do something like that but generally and that stuff is really expensive from a like development standpoint and a time and manpower kind of place it would be great if we could but we will we will probably do that in some cases where it's really important but not generally all right our next question is from ven Thorian and they would like to know what will happen to stored materials and notes such as in banks or warehouses not in freeholds after a successful node siege and destruction depending on the type of item if it's a material based item if it's a akin a crafting component or raw gather Abal or processed good those specific types of items will become lost a portion of that will be lost and will become available to the victors of the siege as as spoils of war there's a declaration you know probably there is a declaration period that exists the way that we prohibit players from moving goods out of the depositories within a knowed post siege declaration is those those specific Goods become locked during the declaration period so that incentivizes even further the necessity of players to contribute to the defence of a city it it also elevates the need for that city to politically gain allies among other nodes so that they can protect the collective goods of the citizens it also keeps people from hoarding and sure that stuff continues to go into economy right important things about the concept of risk versus reward which is a very central tenant in all of the philosophical designs we have for the game is that you know something can't you know if you have a fewer citizen of a node and you ride that note all the way to Metropolis stage and you Bank everything you own you put all your eggs into that basket that's a very high risk now it's a high reward as well because it centralizes your access to certain things and you know there's a benefit that that comes with it but you know risk and opportunity often times go hand in hand so we wanted to convey that that type of design in the game anything else you own add-on that print okay knocked has our next question which is what is the team's stance on moving while casting is it more like World of Warcraft where it's the exception or Guild Wars 2 where it's the rule I think that that generally we want to tend to be more mobile in our classes I think that it's a it's a fundamentally old-school philosophy to have a lot of stuck in place type skills that isn't to say we won't have skills that that that have mobility restriction on them that require you to channel or require a casting time where you can't move but I think it's a it's a blend between the two it's it's neither extreme I think they're going to be examples Jeff obviously you can land examples of both in all the classes yeah I mean it'll be something that you can speck around to again it's gonna be a risk/reward thing we put a lot of thought into what skills are overpowered or or have kind of this overpowering nature to them and those are the kinds of skills that will generally find that will be like in place type of skills where you are now at risk if you were going to cast a spell but there's a big reward if you do manage to get it off right Zola's question is as a dedicated citizen can I donate my obsolete gear to my node in order to help upgrade the defensive abilities of NPCs or bolster the strengths of caravans not directly you won't be able to just directly give gear to the node in that regard you can indirectly participate in helping bring resources to the node that helped to boost defenses maybe strengthened the the walls and/or the gates that help to level up you know the barracks that might then in turn level up the mercenaries that the that the mayor has the ability to purchase or hire but no you won't be able to directly just say you know there's my old gear I'm giving it to you now there are deconstruction options that are available that that break down old gear into certain base components that are integral in enchantments and in different gear upgrades and and those can also again indirectly aid but yeah and be or has our next question which is what is your take on rollbacks last resort only or something to be used frequently if problems and bugs appear I'm gonna let you know from the development side is generally like even not just from like the players side but from a technical side like especially like when you're talking about like and all that kind of stuff I think that you know some of the ways that we are we are setting up the the architecture for our database and the persistence of you know items and progression in the game allows us to be able to address more granularly the issues that might come up I think that obviously roll backs as a last result really are utilized when the effects of a specific exploit and/or game breaking bug are so prevalent and widespread within a server that it does not make sense to try to run through with a fine-tooth comb the implications of said exploit or issue that is the scenario in which you would utilize a rollback so it's not to say that there there couldn't potentially be a problem that would force our hand to do so but again as Jeff said that's the last resort alright moving on to the next question which is from grizzly chips which is a funny name I like it will there be criminal activities for PvP content like stealing from shops or pickpocketing NPCs oh absolutely there there will be there will be a whole host of of cool and fun interactions that relate to the storylines either of specific organizations or quests or you know you know kind of kind of fun skulduggery that occurs in those things right Jeff skulduggery is like my favorite work I love that right yeah it's a really fun work but yeah you'll probably see it more as like quest related kind of skullduggery rather than like open Skyrim lifestyle like I'm gonna go pickpocket everybody in this town right kind of thing but there will be definitely aspects to that especially related to the organization the air part of I also like the word spelunking it's just fun to say this is a fun word well you can see in the game I think we're spelunking right now so true right kind of are yeah mine shaft I try like when we went around the corners like I think it's this way Bob's your uncle has our next question which is how big can we expect the group mounts unlocked through the Kickstarter stretch goals to be Rhino elephant-sized perhaps [Music] even specifically with regards to some of the group mounts that we had displayed from the Kickstarter rewards they were elephant-sized in fact I think they're a large or maybe a little larger than L yeah but the the group I mean the group kind of MA the group mount is gonna be a very difficult mount to achieve but once achieved it's gonna be very fun and and pivotal I think Mount in gameplay so the idea there is to have them grand yeah alright and our next question is from birdie-birdie sorry rivet up who wants to know when thinking about moving resources will players be able to get storage in different cities or only in the node there are citizen of no you'll have access to the storage facilities of other cities you can visit the warehouse of other cities and you can you can store items there the important thing about storing material goods processed goods crafting components raw gather bowls those specific types of items have a risk in transit so whether they're on your person your body or character or they're in a mule or they're in a caravan the death of it either of those things will result in the partial loss of those goods or even full loss depending on the transit style so getting those things to a specific node may be difficult - from a transfer standpoint however if you're out in the open world and you're doing things and you come across these items and you get them and you don't want to you know get back to your home base yes you can interface with the warehouse of different nodes without having to be a citizen and we have a question from Jaz heurists who wants to know can you give us an example of what additional character creation customization options Kickstarter backers may have access to that non backers will not I don't we want to give the specifics of that right now but I think we probably will send out something in regards to that specifically Kickstarter backers have additional character creation customization options and they want to know what those customization options would be oh so yeah that stuff will be defined further out once we get into probably I would say I would probably say after alpha to those particular cosmetic Kickstarter options additional Kickstarter options will be revealed and expand explained yeah and if you are a Kickstarter backer who has a reward that is specific like statue or things of those sorts we will give you information far in advance you'll get an email you'll get notifications that those emails went out things of that sort and for the ones that we need information back from you from will be gathering that information in advances of course because we would need your side of the thing before we can make the things so keeping that all in mind we will let you know our next questions are from our Russian team we have a constant in our Konstantin maybe that's has pronounced wants to know it start it's like the letters are different so wrong they want to know will there be different potions for the potion launcher weapon perhaps depending on the ingredients players used to craft them yeah I think I don't think it would be ingredient based it would be I think enhancement based so I think like you know if the potion launcher does indeed make a debut within Ashes of Creation the MMORPG in that scenario it would be obviously a ranged weapon but it would be one where you could perhaps augment the types of potions and or damage that's done based on the enhancements that the weapon receives and then Vladimir would like to ask will it be possible to rent a game server to create a world with personal settings very interesting would not be possible to rent a private game server to test things no potential for us to incorporate a test zone that is local perhaps on a player's client where you could try out your cosmetics or play with different skill builds and dummies and stuff you know that's that's something we've talked about in the past and we were considering incorporating into Apocalypse but oh did I lose you know I'm just not sweet keep going yeah but that may be something we incorporate in the future but we'll see if we have time for that I don't know well and I'm gonna grab a couple from chat here go Spears be primarily melee weapon or a ranged weapon cry merrily melee yep oh let's see if there's any other ones in here but we'll be wrapping up here in a moment there's a lot of questions regarding the DPS meter and I know like we have many discussions on that front and I know you talked about it already but I don't know if you want to talk on that front anymore you feel like you've you've I feel like a million times yeah and I know that it's as it is a divisive subject and there are definitely you know positions had within within the MMORPG community in general you know I am still of the opinion that those types of functions can be a bit toxic when it comes to the social aspect of MMORPGs I know that very competitive players and guilds want to achieve the best and and and in order to do so they're of the opinion that they must have the most pertinent metrics and information available to them in order to do so I think that you know if I were to direct the social interactions that should be relevant in an MMORPG at least like Ashes of Creation is that cultivating good players and increasing the skill of your guild members and your friends through interaction gameplay and Co progression is the better way and more long-lasting way to do so and I think it helps to develop that type of guild base camaraderie now I know that's very subjective but at the same time I'm making the game so I mean it's true you get to make the decisions and on that front people have been discussing in chat regarding like third-party tools and things of that sort so I know we've talked about our stance on that before but if you want to just riad ress that and then we'll kind of be wrapping up for today and obviously if you didn't get your question answered they will get Stoica answered on the forums so if you left our question if you had questions listed and you you did fill them out in time you will have your responses on the forum so definitely go check those out that means probably that your question was already asked before and so the answer is already out there and the lovely wonderful toast has already provided you the answer so definitely go check that out I'll tell it over to in fact to you Steven sure and just to I think even elaborate I saw someone say you can't push harder content without logs I I would fundamentally disagree with that I would say that you can push harder content but it becomes a function of trial and error it becomes a function of perseverance it becomes a function of continual attempts and in and of itself that is content that that hardcore players and/or more competitive players should be open to in fact you know I I really love the concept of iron mode type games you know there are certain games that I play where I play in an iron mode or iron man or iron mode whatever type setting and the reason why it's not because I like the repetitive nature of having to go and do the same content over again it's because I like the challenge of trial and error the challenge of my learning curve being based on my experience rather than a data table and obviously I can take that experience and I can convert it into a data table and data data is a great thing to drive a lot of aspects of real life but from an immersive standpoint you know in my opinion it is less an immersion factor it is less a social factor so that's that's kind of why I kind of feel that way about that all right and I just want to take one more question which is from bad potato I do want to say that there's there are no such things as bad potatoes potatoes are amazing in all forms and shapes they want to know knowing that open dungeons are available for everyone well the difficulty increase the deeper you dwell into the dungeon to the point that only serious hardcore players can do them difficulty is definitely a a a progressive component so many of the dungeons will have entrances where you know you're going to see either lower level mobs you know closer to the entrances and the deeper you delve into the the the the dungeon you're going to find rooms that have either more difficult mobs or more difficult mob mechanics so you know some rooms may have specific type of pathing mechanics or specific type of dangers that are terrain and environmentally based that coordinate and and synergize well with the mobs that are present those types of deeper darker types of interactions will be found deeper in the dungeon so yeah that can be expected awesome well that's gonna wrap it up for our April development update it has been a whole nother month which has been nuts for us maybe next time we'll be back in the office we'll see what it's like again thank you and welcome for you all joining us to our home edition of this hopefully it was still informative we gave you a lot of information a lot of cool development progress and I think you know our team's continuing to work hard and everyone is kicking butt it even during these circumstances so just a huge shout out to our teams all of them are just doing amazing work and I mean you're getting to see the fruits of that work through you know our dungeon crawls that we showcased here you get to see all of the assets that have been created on the vironment on the character side and so on and so forth and that's going to all go towards you all being able to play and experience this really immersive wonderful world that you know people have envisioned in their minds we don't have any dates but we did say in our past if you checked out the creative directors letter and if you haven't done that definitely head on over to Ashes of Creation.com slash news and read that Stephen put out a wonderful letter we also emailed it out to our team so you should have an email regarding that too that goes over all of the details of what we've been up to and what what's going on in the future and with that we will be having our first p.i playable test in May we'll be bringing them on and we'll be slowly increasing that up to braver worlds starting moving into the fall of this year so fall 2020 we will be kind of opening it up to more of an on nd8 portion of it and so you'll be probably seeing a stream a lot more at that time and so on and so forth so stay safe hope everyone's being you know taking care of themselves and their families we know that it's not always the easiest again we have extended the cosmetic swap over so we don't have any new cosmetics running during this time because of we understand people's circumstances