Talk:2020-07-08 Steven Sharif Interview - Paradox Gaming Network
Nyers átirat
Jahlon: so where are so you're in your hallway so clearly some shoes for you some issues for me yeah
Steven: I I still have not replaced the USB ports so I have a I have another computer that's set up here right next to my office my actual I don't here I'll see if I can show this kind of there's my office setup I know it's dirty right now but this I'm right next to it and this is another computer
so yeah I feel you're paying this morning I've done to demo checks because the audio for me I've been having some audio issues since the last Windows 10 update and then this morning it just completely it just completely shut down on me oh man that's like the the perfect gremlin scenario right before you're going to do something everything breaks that happens to me all the time perfect rim once I believe it's referred to as Murphy's Law it is so we said last year that the way we were gonna get around that is I'm just gonna come to the studio every here into the people hey that'd be cool you'd be welcome to although I suppose during these kovat times it might not be the best idea well I'm gonna jump well am I gonna jump ahead I I did want to say it's great to have you back again and I'm gonna start a little video so this little video going will loop back to that again but uh it's great to have you back after a year uh I do appreciate it I know uh you know with Jalan might be a little like taking a test like a little worried ya know I think um I think that usually you know for me there's just there's so many moving parts to an MMO especially that of ashes and part of my job is to make sure I know every moving part right and that sometimes can be a little difficult when pulling up parts that maybe have you know either been already developed and I have not touched them in a while or you know haven't been spoken about for a considerable amount of time so I noticed that on the last stream you know I made a couple of mistakes I am human and went back to rectify but usually what that stems from is you know I don't pre-screen like questions and whatnot I I just you know they come as they are and I access my data banks in my mind in real time in that regard so today I did request last week that you forward over some of the you know questions so that I can make sure that if I need to reference stuff I have that available yeah and I you know I think the last time after that last live-streaming you had made a couple of mistakes you and I spoke right away and we were able to just you were able to get that light bulb turned on over your head and you're like wait I wait what did I do and I really I mean you're probably be most down-to-earth developer because I'm following all the games and development and like you're here just hanging out with a small content creator talking about stuff we we had that real quick meeting and it shows that you're not I mean I know you beat yourself up on that one last time but it shows that you're not pre-screening those questions so we're not just cherry picking out the easy ones you're getting into the batter's box and you're taking the hard balls yeah you know I think I think there is obviously and we're not the only studio that that is this way I don't think but there's a benefit to having you know someone who's controlling the company and the project and them also being passionately a gamer I think that's where the the type of interaction that you see with me and perhaps with some other you know studios is this is I mean Ashes of Creation right now is my life that is a hundred percent of what I do pretty much every day in and out is Ashes of Creation so when you're passionate about something and it's it's a the only thing you ever do you know for these past years it's no skin off my back to jump on and talk about things you know I love talking about ashes and you know with regards to the the content creator standpoint you know we haven't really done any marketing for Ashes everything that we have you know cultivated from a community standpoint has really been a result of the community spreading the word you know we haven't entered that marketing phase so you know we provide regular updates and whatnot and it's always exciting to get the feedback from the community but engaging with you know the smaller content creators now and I wouldn't say you know so much smaller I mean you've grown over time and your coverage with ashes and that's see I think that's great you know it's it's awesome to leverage the community in such a way that you can produce quality content and I've seen your content grow from you know to to a good quality standpoint which i think is awesome but you know my ideal interaction is to interact with everybody whether they be big small whatever you know it doesn't matter to me I'm watching everything I possibly can any good any Content that gets created and you know a lot of people a lot of people don't know this about you but you do watch all the content you can you've found stuff like I know a lot of people watch the first couple of minutes they like other people I work with on other projects they watch the first couple of minutes of my videos and they're like okay it looks good but you have pluck'd like math errors out of like minute 18 and I'm like wait why so yeah I mean I want the audience to know that you do watch as much as you can well yeah usually that type of responsibility for most companies gets delegated to you know marketing teams which then you know responsible for that and we have it we have a great marketing team we have great community team and Margaret Sarah Danielle and you know kind of my position on what you just described I think is it's important to keep the pulse of the community and you know the best marketing person is a person who understands their audience and in order to understand your audience you have to be intimately involved with with the opinions and content that they create now that that obviously you know brings up a separate point of not allowing the minority loud voices to dictate you know direction or iteration and that's not my intent but rather just to make sure that every possible opinion that's had whether it be from smaller communities or larger voices you know they have an opportunity to reach my ears and eyes and then that's where I get discerning and you know how to essentially interpret those positions and opinions so uh it we got buried but I did want to say publicly happy birthday Stephen and you're giving the community the present today because you're taking time not only out of your day but out of your birthday to do an interview I didn't want to put out that happy birthday thanks buddy appreciate that yeah it's a it's a surreal birthday because I think this might be the first birthday that I didn't have you know plans with friends on my birthday so to speak but these are the crazy times that we live in and you know I I love anything ashes related so it's no it's not something this is this is enjoyable so I'm actually happy I'm doing it on my birthday because I got something to look forward to so outside of my normal day-to-day work oh yeah I believe me I know I know and then I saw I wanted to make sure that I showed these [Music] you guys just put these out this morning or the morning your time I you know the cosmetics have just gotten so much better over the years that we've been following the monthly cosmetics I Margaret had mentioned she has been doing the concept designs for a while not the art but like the the description of like the direction yeah yeah I think she's done a great job you know usually what that process entails is there's you know some brainstorming sessions that happen between designers and Margaret and you know other people and we kind of like put you know ideas for themes on the board for months going forward that kind of adhere to the categories that are established for production and then Margaret really takes those settled on brainstorming ideas and starts referencing you know different arts and and ideas on like the you know the types of creatures or you know caravans or buildings that that adhere to the essentially the theme for that month and then she goes back and forth between the artists and you know I take kind of final look and approval and we spit those out and I think they've been doing a great job I mean I kind of I kind of how do I put this I kind of think of it as a as a television show you know the first season and most television shows are kind of like you know a little interesting and weird I said I know this especially would like Star Trek but it's kind of like recurring theme for each type of you know Star Trek series that the first season is funny I think that's similar in production and in concept like we're you know a lot of the artists and like the ideas are getting established and the you know the guidelines are getting kind of established and as it moves forward it continues to get better and better and better and I think that's been demonstrated I think you know with these concept pieces and the art there it's been five long years for you like I've I've kind of watched you like kind of get tired being like the same way you watch a president get tired because you interpret was founded in 2015 if if memory serves and then development on Ash is really kind of it was like commingled there at the beginning and then you guys have really been going full-court press since the Kickstarter yeah I would say Kickstarter is when it really started to you know ramped up I think so 2015 we started the company in May of 2015 but we didn't hire our first you know group of people I think until it was about October no Sorrows December December of 2015 so really you know pre-production and planning started I would say the first of 2016 and we about until mmm up to May of 2017 we got up to about thirteen or fourteen people so you know just kind of establishing the base stuff but from Kickstarter days - today we've yes that's when really production started kicking off like crazy so about three years now major production stuff and actually like as we move forward even into the you know next alpha and beta is it just continues to ramp up because we haven't even hit our peak yet so I'm gonna jump ahead I was gonna ask some staff questions but since you brought that um I did want to make sure everybody knows the staff page at intrepid Studios comm used to show everybody and then just today while I was checking some stuff you guys have deliberately chopped that down to just team leads in like time people yeah I think you know I think that was done maybe a week ago I'm not sure but I know I was asked about it a week ago and I gave approval for it essentially you know some of the things that I think the community and who may not have a lot of maybe business experience or understanding of the industry it's a very competitive market out there not just for headhunters that that you know try to poach from studios that are doing things that get on the radar of other studios which I believe you know ashes even though we haven't entered marketing phases we are pretty well known in the MMORPG space as an anticipated project and we have a lot of eyes on us so you know when I take off my community hat and I put on my business hat you know we have to take certain safeguards in order to mitigate the potential for larger companies like you know in Amazon or you know whoever to to take notice of what we're doing and then take interest in our team that's a reality of business is there's you know there's concerns on that front so you don't really find a lot of studios that post all of their developers especially Studios of our size and the size we're moving into and you know the decision was made that you know it'd be its best to try to mitigate that potential yeah I just wanted to make sure everyone understood that because I didn't want anybody to I didn't want anybody to go to the website and say oh my god they've they've pulled the blanks to do and they've just cut down to 11 people you still have a robust team you've just made that there was a conscious decision there it's not a web page error and it's not your shrunk you just deliberately moved towards maturing a bit as a company yeah I think you know there are different stages in which companies obviously exist not just in this industry but across the board and you know as you begin to move to over you know 50 60 70 in-house people you're starting to enter kind of the middle realm of a company size especially for you know game development and projects now once we start entering into our full our our full kind of goal of having you know 150 in-house and having you know another 150 or so that are out sourced or contracted you know that's when we're kind of playing with the big boys and you know Intrepid started out as an independent studio and in the in the sheer sense of terminology I suppose we are still an independent studio with that regard but you know the product we're producing the budget that we have is a triple-a product and budget so you know that's going to attract you know a lot of interest from from other teams out there that have an opportunity to gain insight not only to you know that like I've always said Oh a transparent development is a double-edged sword there's a lot of things that are positive a lot of things that are negative one of the negative things is that speed to market is a very important aspect of a project and there's a reason why many games in development do not show up showcase their active designs and they're active you know staff and they're you know their timelines and they're a lot of different things the reason why they don't do that is because you have to be cognizant of that competitive market so you know we try to show as much as we can in order to benefit from the good side of the sword while trying to also mitigate to that side yeah so I mean I'm not gonna unfortunately interpret is like stalked by lots of people in your community yes so so in respect to that I do I mean you've seen I know some of the new people but you've chosen not to name them so I'm not going to name them because that's you've moved in that direction but you know the how many people last April we had about 60 people you had about 60 people in San Diego when this when the pandemic eases off and everybody can get into that new studio how many people ballpark do you have ready to report to work in September I think that when you know at and the September timeframe were probably going to be staffed up to around I would say 70 that doesn't include our independent contractors as well as our contracted companies that are working with us as third-party companies but I think in-house and then once we have the ability to ramp up you know the additional hiring phases as we've been promoting on social media which by the way you know everybody out there who is watching who helps us repost that follows on socials all of that helps us recruit so by all means continue to do so and if you haven't done thus far please take an interest in potentially doing that but you know the goal is to very quickly ramp up on the production size so I'm not gonna give you necessarily specific growth numbers but you know the aim is in September we're up to around 70 maybe a little bit over 70 in-house and speaking of that new studio he last time you were here we didn't interview last year and I would reference people to that but we were still overcoming my deafness into anybody if it sounds like I'm in the middle of a rain forest now it's been dry as a bone here for the last 10 days and now I've got a thunderstorm during the one-hour window I'm in it really knew but uh you guys had horrible luck trying to move out of your old studio and get into a studio and you finally did it and it was man I know I felt sad when you posted that video of you talking in the studio and you could see where all the desks were but how was it for you as a leader being like the last person how leaving like your real like your first home it was a it was a surreal moment definitely because you know you if you spent I mean so you spend five years at a place and you know a lot of memories get made during that time and you know there were definitely some fun you know her late nights you know having ordering you know food for the developers who were staying late I mean we were there sometimes to like you know to 3:00 in the morning and it definitely I think you know creates that Brotherhood type feeling with your fellow you know developers and team and you know this the surreal moment comes when that place that that tangible place now is in the past and there's a future ahead of us so I think it's just a nice moment that you kind of pause and reflect on the time that you spent you know with that your team at a certain location I mean the location is you know just there's nothing truly unique about it but it is a place where those memories you know God had so have you done your Captain Picard of the enterprise II your walk-around of the new studio now like that have you like have you like soaked in the new studio like wow my dream is really now solid reality so no not really not yet that's not probably going to take place until I would say around the middle of August our goal which unfortunately is looking more and more like it's going to be have to be adjusted because you know what's happening right now in the United States with the spiked with Cova has rolled back us some of the you know reopening 'z and you know we're not an essential business that requires people be on site per se as a matter of fact we've had some productive uptick in working from home with that regard regardless of the you know onboarding process of the actual development process so now I haven't had an opportunity yet but you know yeah I like your like your reference it is sort of like the captain of you know Captain Picard I remember the specific episode in the next generation I do I keep referencing Star Trek but I'm sorry it is one of my favorite series many although series in the best of both world episodes you know before they kind of go into battle he walks around the ship ain't no kind of thing that was how I did kind of feel like that at the studio when I was leaving just walking around even though John and and Zim did literally like almost all of the moving work you know I came in there for like the the final day and just kind of did one final walkthrough and then we went into battle so I noticed he says Star Wars better than Star Trek I don't know if I'm a mod on your channel but if I were the ashes of creation okay it's a mod on my channel believe it or not it whenever you're here you're a mod on my channel but moving into servers for alpha one is some of this stuff I want people to know some of this stuff have the regulars on the discord you've heard this some of this I'm doing so that we have audio bytes for reference to the wiki my website a couple other places you've announced for Europe there will be a EU servers for alpha 1 and those will be housed in Germany if I recall correctly yeah that's correct I believe the servers are located in Frankfurt for alpha 1 yeah I know some people just wanted to hear that they don't always believe us when we say Stephen said on the discord and I know I know launch is still a long ways away but some people didn't believe the North American plan because those those prime time events are so time-sensitive you play Dark Age and being a west coast there you were doing like the prime time events at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon because they were all geared for like 5 o'clock East Coast you had originally said you were gonna have the North America was gonna have multiple regions so that that prime time window varied is that still the case yeah I think the goal is you know to essentially when when you you know one thing I think is beneficial for server selection is that servers have time essentially primary prime time descriptions next to the server names right so you know west coast and east coast times obviously are significant different differential the ability of players to participate in some of these events so if we're able to essentially timestamp certain servers as either being primarily west or east coast for at least United States or North America I think that's beneficial and then partitioning them accordingly now people can still obviously choose to play tour server they want but I think that's beneficial yeah and I mean definitely because you don't want you don't want people pulling EVE Online seating nodes at two o'clock in the morning you've spoken you oh yeah you want the respectful of prying time yeah so the the mechanics that revolve around player instigated events those adhere to the server primetime rules so when players have an opportunity let's say to initiate a siege against a node which is one of the primary you know player agency type decisions about timing there's a window that's respective of the server time for the region and players must declare that siege within that window now there's gonna be some variable there obviously it's not going to be hey you can only declare the siege and it occurs at you know seven o'clock you know Eastern Time or something instead it'll be probably between like 4:00 and like 9:00 you know and they can place any time at that point right a window but you're not you're not gonna have to be getting up at two o'clock in the morning to defend your node correct and then I know the again you've talked about on this scored but oceanic in Southeast Asia you are cognizant that there's a big Australian population you're just not at the stage where you can make specific statements about that region but I mean you haven't forgotten them but you just can't give them a definitive where the server's are gonna be yet well you know I think there is a so there are definitely going to be oceanic / Southeast Asian servers now whether or not those servers are going to be located in Singapore or in Melbourne you know that's some that's the decision that has yet to be made but the the Australian you know player base are not going to have to connect to a West Coast server in order to play the game they will have a Southeast Asian or oceanic server that they can connect to all righty and then I think let's talk about my dog games for a minute because this is probably the one area that people are the most unhappy about specifically the cosmetic purchases now you and I've talked about it and viewers don't know this but you and I talked of I bring a lot of stuff to you and I get a hundred percent answers I don't always get like I always get a hundred percent acknowledgement you take everything I bring you under advisement but the my dot games people just want to know maybe not today but is there a plan for how they're gonna be able to buy monthly cosmetics and that's kind of towards the and I'll throw these up when these when these cosmetics are on sale on July 15th the North American intrepid account holders they have a month to decide if they want them if we don't buy them in that month they're gone they're gone forever but how are the European players gonna ever be able to buy individual cosmetics it's kind of what they're looking for so you know we have a few ideas on how best to approach that I'm not going to necessarily elaborate at this time on those ideas because I don't want to necessarily give you no false hope on if those decisions don't get you know actually approved by either myself or you know we haven't had the full discussion on how to approach that yet there is going to be an answer to it it is something that will become you know available at some point but and you know it's important to note that at this stage and development and I know we have this the cosmetic you know plan here and that there are European users who want to be able to partake at this time in that it's just going to take a little bit of patience it is a you know relationship that we're continuing to cultivate and you know we are understanding that not everything is going to be perfect on the first go-round but it is always been you know our objective to make sure that there is an appropriate method or means by which these types of these types of things get solved and then one one concern for a lot of people is Oh or is Intrepid going to make sure that it North American players intrepid accountholders can't port to my dot games back purchase old cosmetics and then come back to North America so yeah no I mean any type of any type of solution will incorporate a validation of the accounts eligibility essentially so you know that would not that would not be a feasible mechanic and for the people that might say oh that sounds great I I will say that working with Margaret in toast and I'm sure it came past your desk that was first month's where the database migrated you guys did an excellent job of validating I mean I've seen people try to make a purchase from those December 2018 January 2018 Cosmetics they've like oh I want to buy that and they try and they come back later they're like I'm not eligible well yeah you weren't eligible you didn't know in a pack so you guys successfully did that one so people hearing you say you're gonna have a plan you guys are gonna have a plan oh absolutely I mean you know part of establishing the initial infrastructure of the account database in systems is ensuring that you know all types of metrics that we have available to us in order to essentially serve as customer service requests or to you know backdate and and fix certain issues account related that information is available to us and we can always query the database in order to facilitate that approval process so there's no concern there on that front I mean it is it is you know really more along the sides of along the lines of a business decision to ensure that we're fair in our approach on how we accommodate either you know missteps or things that need to be accounted for that weren't developed at the time so yeah so the next one and I know you're not gonna like me the referral system it's been a long time since it worked right and so the first question is people wanted to know is this gonna be a might out games thing or is this gonna be any only or is it too early to know how that's gonna work giving you law I just had somebody ring my doorbell and I don't know who it is I hope John can grab it so the question I'm sorry I was the doorbell who got you could you repeat that question just one more time is the referral system only for North America or is that gonna work for my dog games or is it too early to know how that's gonna work for the European community so the referral system - the the cash portion of it will be will be for sure available through my games the cash I don't have an answer yet for European Union residence that's something that from a legal standpoint needs to be determined if you're an intrepid account holder and you have participated in the in the program then all features will be available regardless of whether or not you know you're an EU citizen or not that's sir intrepid we have to come - I think we have yet to come to an announcer bowl a guideline for the community on the might out game side and then the the big one the old referral system it gave you a lot more information showed you how many like what your people were purchasing how much you were owed and then you guys you read digital back-end on your web page but I mean it's you know three years in I switched places with me for a second your your cell in my dream you're out there making content you're hustling and you're literally looking you have no idea I know how much I was owed like a couple of years ago and I have no I have no idea now so I know you guys are trying to hire a web developer is that like when maybe are we gonna get a full update so I mean first of all I understand absolutely you know the dilemma of not having as much insight to the metrics that the old system had from an information standpoint everything is there from an from a from the ability to continue to use and accrue referrals and track expenditure that's all still present it's just not displayed currently now that's that's the first part of the question second part of the question is with regards to development and essentially exposing that type of dashboard functionality and additional information to the referral and therefore the referral person there's a lot of stuff that is is on the plate of platform from a development standpoint and you know like all companies we have you know people that come and go and you know I've had to let go people and that can interrupt a little bit of the schedule especially on the platform side so you know we're in the process of attempting to continue to hire additional platform team members and you know that that is a very competitive market from a hiring standpoint because you know those individuals aren't games specific they're not gameplay you know coders they are platform engineers and they're applicable across the spectrum whether it be Facebook Google Amazon and we're in a very competitive area competitive environment that regards so it's a little bit more of a process to to onboard and to recruit those individuals which then delays you know the functionality and and unfortunately that the referral program takes a significant backseat to as well as even the eggs Ola changes those takes significant back seats to the game related account services the CS tool services you know the server instances and architectures and setup of our micro services the kubernetes work and docker that needs to be complete I mean all of those things take priority over the community facing stuff and that's because and it's not because we you know the community takes a backseat but it's because the focus has to be on the game development so I try to continue to give updates on that you know we're still trying to work towards that we're trying to onboard additional people that can help with those those types of you know back seeded tasks but you know right now it's just going to have to it's going to require some patience all right you get you get to take a big deep breath now all the painful questions are over we can move to the fun stuff okay so I'm gonna switch the video here and I'm gonna put up housing for the time being because you played our gauge and you seemed to be really passionate about making a housing system that works yeah I'm very passionate about housing since I think it's a very significant backbone of you know how not only players get to enjoy their time within a game like you know Ashes of Creation but also is a complimentary piece a progression to certain economic / crafting oriented systems in the game so when it comes to EndNote housing in note housing specifically is there gonna be an artificial system Durbin cap on the real estate or is it just free market economy you can sell your house for whatever you want to sell it for yeah there's no there's no cap essentially in player originated sales those can be those are determined essentially by supply and demand as it is within the game and there's no artificial barrier to how high that demand can go and then I have to say III I was a little upset for a while because the housing we're gonna show housing we're not showing housing we're gonna show housing hah we're not showing housing I'm glad you guys waited because the housing last month the what's being shown right now it was worth the way and you so many people were excited that the in node houses have Gardens like the little icon popped up what else can you do with an endowed house because at some point you talked about taverns shops but that's the the taverns and the shops those aren't tied to in known housing are they no the taverns and the shops are not tied to in note housing there are freehold related businesses that can be established but each of the different types of housing have certain benefits that are granted to the owners and additional benefits that get granted to those owners who are citizens of the note as well so it's um you know I there's a lot of things that I could go on elaborating about but essentially you know as we get further down the road on the blog side I know that's kind of slowed down a little bit but as we get further down the road you know - getting closer to beta and whatnot there will be some in-depth blogs that kind of showcase some of the stuff obviously my intent always is never to reveal everything so we kind of just give a tip of the iceburg T's of some of these systems without you know essentially spoiling the discovery and surprise of what I'm about launch is so yeah yeah that's uh that's hard for me that that's hard for my style of content creation because people I I got so many questions that were so much further in the weeds than I would go and I respond to people like he's not gonna tell us that he's just like kind of tell us that yeah I mean if you think of I mean think about it like this like you know you follow a lot of games and I think if you compare just over these excuse me just over these three short years that we have been you know interacting on the community front and you go and you take a look at like let's say a Wikipedia like the one that Lex has has so so graciously been a part of creating there is a absolute shit ton of information about besides elections so you know I don't think we've been short on providing design mechanics and and essentially content creator material but we do have to be cognizant of you know revealing revealing too much and going back to that you know competitive market idea as well outside of just spoiling the surprise and discovery for our fans you know I think that many of us have seen recently some games that need not be mentioned have taken a look at some of our designs and have implemented them so most definitely yeah people were wondering one thing people were upset about the the node changes its architectural style based on the race that contributes the most XP and then there's a lot of other systems to make sure we don't end up with a hundred percent Veck orc dynamics but people were asking since you're already gonna be doing the toggle to stop your house from growing when this when the node grows you can keep your house you can keep a cottage if you buy a cottage and then the node goes from stage three to stage four you can lock into stay a cottage you don't have to upgrade to the next bigger size they wanted to know have you put any thought into allowing the person to lock their racial style so if I if I buy a cottage in a Veck this you know node and then it goes to you know elves dirty elves can i lock my architecture style to stay a Veck cottage the answer there is no and the reason for that comes primarily I mean it comes from to two points really first from an aesthetic standpoint you know the cultural identity of nodes we want to be fairly consistent from a visual standpoint and there is such a shift in the visual presentation of one culture versus another from an architecture standpoint that it really would present a sore thumb so to speak in the overall appearance of the node so with that regard from a visual standpoint the answer's no and then additionally you know there's something to be said right our philosophy on game design is risk versus reward well one of the motivating factors for a homeowner to participate let's say and the advancement of that node and you know do these do significant amount of questing for the node so to speak so that they can assist in presenting what they want to players should have that agency and as a community you know you may be outnumbered from a specific race and I think that that's that's part of the the paradigm of what agency has it has to have a result it has to have a consequence or a reward based on your perspective some other ones just be pretty much certain we know the answers to these but you've never actually given them you can't change like the windows and walls in your house you're just decorating them right structurally no you won't be able to change structurally the location of those windows or walls you'll be you'll be decorating essentially the layout that is predetermined by the building itself and then somebody wanted to know can will stir be exterior decorations on the exterior walls or like garden gnomes or are you keeping it just interior decoration yeah so items decor items and/or you know different types of items have flags on them where the appropriate placement can be right so you know you won't be able to place a painting on the floor you won't be able to put a chair on the roof there will be a garden slash property or deck patio related furnitures and furnishings that can be placed you know use the example of a garden gnome absolutely there are little statues that can be put out in the yard you know the the property line itself is encompassing not just of the actual house of at least if we're talking about EndNote housing it's not contained to the house per se but actually there's a plot there where the player has the ability to to essentially you know affect the landscape the place down specific items that that are flagged for those locations and then for the pre decoration of houses is that going to be on par with what you've shown in this video or is it going to be less or are you going to take player feedback on just how much pre decoration you're going to get so one of the things excuse me one of the things that I would love to see and I believe this is part of the design for in node housing at least and even apartments as well is that there are different excuse me the different sizes and or qualities of either the apartment housing or the in note housing will determine the applicable pre furnished types of furniture essentially so you could choose at the purchasing of the house to upgrade the pre furnished set that the house comes with and a cost and then that cost obviously lends itself to the to the the taxes of the the town and augment such Treasury oh that's that's actually that's gonna make a lot of people happy because some people were upset at how much furnishing you were showing but no it that'll make them happy but to be clear those furnishings are almost entirely visual and aesthetic the furnishings that we that grant in game functionality and or augment in game mechanics those are restricted almost entirely to the the carpentry profession that creates these furniture okay so you've jumped ahead then what sort of bonuses can we expect not the whole life just to be clear I glanced over the questions that you gave me I don't know the order per se I apologize I forgot no it's okay yeah you're not running down the script because I've been dropping some but uh you got a teaser like what sort of bonus we can expect sure I mean I see one of the examples is let's say you know you're a cook and you're utilizing you know a crafting station essentially to create these you know recipes of meals that you want to either sell to other players or use yourself in order to grant you a temporary buff one of the types of furnishings that might interact with let's say the cooking profession would be a you know some specific type of graded stovetop or you know a cooking facility and you could take a finished product like let's say a small you know tenderloin meal or you know some some fresh halibut or whatever they catch out in the ocean and you could eat that for its normal buff but based off of the quality and grade of the constructed cooking equipment that you would place in your home you could take those meals up to a certain amount right based on the quality of the of the furniture you can place it to be processed within that piece of furniture and when you receive the item there will be a freshness period on that on that food that if you use it while it is fresh it will give you an Augmented benefit that is higher you know it's better maybe it gives you additional stats or additional time period or you can kind of focus what some of these is what some of these items will do okay that that's awesome that's that's enough then we're going to do theory crafting on that for days now I'm gonna switch to freeholds in this freehold video was amazing like one one piece of property and Ashes of Creation like I'm more excited to get in and play with my freehold than I am like when I had huge estates in ArcheAge oh yeah absolutely because you know and not to go off on a tangent but in with regards to our cage outside of the like crafting equipment he required other regal stuff you know it was really for the most part you know an RP kind of experience like what the furnitures it wasn't super functional yeah there was maybe some like bed stuff there and storage equipment was great but you know ultimately like it was you were just decorating for most part so on freeholds there was a piece of confusion some people are convinced that freeholds get bigger as they level up and I'm pretty certain that the freehold size is static and that by leveling up the you were talking a while back about your tavern would grow from a level 1 to a level 2 tavern not that your freehold would like double in size yeah the the footprint of the land that is granted through the freehold system really doesn't change there's been some thought on the design side about excuse me the Guildhall related freeholds that guilds can achieve at a certain level and whether or not those might have expansion related components for ancillary buildings that augment the guild the guild benefits from the guild hall we haven't decided on that direction so I wouldn't say that that is a thing yet but essentially the personal freeholds those don't change in their in their size from a land standpoint now the the building development the building development really those those footprints also are maintained within the freehold plot so you laid out a blueprint it's not going to change in size however as it upgrades you're going to see changes occur to the building to kind of reflect that better you know quality higher level building you may see in certain cases the verticality of the building change a little bit of make grow taller in that regard it could add an additional story you know that's just the general silhouette of the building will change not the footprint of the building on the property one question somebody said could you use 100% of your freehold footprint to build a mansion out in the wild no you won't be able to have a hundred percent of it to build a mansion there's definitely going to be variable sizes of the home building essentially that you're discussing right from small to medium to large to a mansion size but at most I believe really the goal there is probably to achieve maybe a 50 percent usage with the mansion of the freehold size so and then beyond that you're going to be able to utilize that space you know for all of the other mechanics moving into you CeCe's you flipped your position on user created images and you played again ArcheAge lots of inappropriate stuff people are saying what's gonna happen if you upload something that is you know offensive are what would be what's gonna happen to your account if you just get vulgar or offensive with your you see sees well I mean there is that you know obviously there's that risk and being the internet you're going to see that kind of stuff happen the the benefit of I think the direction that I'm taking intrepid as a company in is that a significant portion of the revenue created by the game you know goes into not only creating additional content and updates for the game but also goes into I think caretaking as I like to call it and that caretaking is multiple things it's having active and present GM's on servers it's having a an interacting community team that is always present and on and you know on-call for participating in forum discussions and streams and updates and stuff and you know with regards to this UCC question I think when you have an active an active GM team that you know you are you have directed to care take the product you're going to mitigate a lot of that functionality you don't want to see out of this custom image system people who incorporate or excusing people who look to let's say meme the system are going to be met with the type of enforcement that they don't want to have on their account and being a subscription-based product and being a risk versus reward and maybe a more old-school approach to character development and progression I think they're gonna take a significant risk in doing things that we don't want them to do which will result in the jeopardy of their account so I think that is not going to deter a hundred percent of things that I think you ever can deter a hundred percent of things unless we go away from custom images but I think that we can achieve some parody of essentially enforcement versus infraction ratio that's going to be liveable for everybody well I think that you know following a standard approach to an escalation system where you know certain infractions are immediate and automatic you know bands and you know some infractions provide a path forward where action is taken that might ban the account or route or strip the account or you know provide some chat bans or the ability to play over a week or so you know those types have some some pretty standardized escalatory a plan at which we're going to incorporate so if you buy gold and depending on the the seriousness of the infraction you could go anywhere from being stripped and to being banned for a period of time to being permanently banned so yeah sorry the community didn't hear the question the mic didn't open for them it was what happens if you buy gold and you just heard Stephen say there's a there's a sliding scale that you could get banned we got a couple of minutes left divine in military note blogs what happened man you've left his hanging yeah so I think back when we were doing those blogs right the divine and military mechanics were in an active design discussion point where there was a potential for it to and it did actually four to go a few different ways so you know they will be released in the future at some point but essentially I want to make sure as we release blogs even though there's always a subject to change during this period and development that they're pretty firm footed in their application and implementation so that's essentially what happened those yeah because you talked about on the discord the military node election system kind of changed because you're not balancing pvp for one versus one you're balancing pvp around group play there would be some classes that would struggle to be the mayor of a military node if they had to compete as their class so you talked about the build a champion system and I know you don't want to like tip your hat on that but you did you kind of listen to community feedback over the years and you're like hmm yeah you guys might have a point yeah I think on that I mean I'm on the military node front right I believe it was a keel who had brought up essentially the champion system and you know for me there was always in the games I played where there's gladiatorial arenas there's many different you know approaches that games have taken to try to curtail the problem of one verse one balancing as you just described you know they have like equalization where your gear doesn't count or they have where you're categorized only against your other fellow class you know or a lot of different things there it was difficult excuse me it was difficult to you know kind of I think solve a problem that's been present since day one with those types of systems you know many people have tried so I really liked the idea of the champion and that has to that has to kind of go through obviously testing and whatnot but essentially what that system was is you know upon citizenship of a military node you gain a champion and you get that champion out and you gear him out based on progression with certain systems whether that be quest related whether it be essentially like a combat pet that's out when you're leveling or you know whatever and when the arena system begins your champion faces other champions essentially where you control sort of that that champion so you know that's that's kind of I think the the next direction at least on the electoral method of the military node system you know that just gives you an example of kind of how designs get changed as they're further fleshed out all right we had a conversation on the discord that caused more confusion than clarity and it was stalls shops markets and marketplaces everybody's clear on shops now why people wanted to know if all modes have player stalls so do all modes have a way for players to sell goods yeah so all nodes do have the ability to to spawn player stalls if you're not an economic node and you don't have a market that's essentially your unique building then you can construct essentially what is I guess would be called a action house excusing a marketplace and that marketplace will then come with you know certain services and it will come with the the certain number of stalls the economic node as I recall has the ability to construct an auction house and the auction house serves through the economic means the ability to list and sell items and that comes with additional stalls as well for the players so just because Lex and I we were trying to we're trying to clean this up economic nodes get the unique building that starts at market non economic nodes have a maori o building called the marketplace correct yeah that would be right so the marketplace i think comes online at stage 4 which is essentially when you say merrill building it's essentially a constructible we call them constructible x' right so the correct term for the maori o buildings is constructible yeah sorry those it yeah so essentially these are buildings that the mayor has agency over determining whether or not they should be a constructed project so these constructible buildings can be selected at open plots that are gained as the as the node advances if they elect to begin construction of one of these types of buildings one of which is the marketplace it'll grant certain routine trade benefits as well as some stalls that the part citizens may participate it all righty that is perfect now it has been an hour so I don't want to I think right now we can we can go over I know you didn't get to you know get to some of your questions and I was I was a little late I think and connecting with you I think I connected with you on discord at one o'clock so I did it to me two years in a row man I'm like where is he I unfortunately I was like trying to get off my call I was like I need to go I need to go I need to go and then his questions keep coming so daring sieges we know apartments can be specifically targeted and destroyed does the Luton side become like spoils does the apartment building become a big loot pinata so essentially excuse me so essentially what is lootable is as we know raaah gather bowls and process goods right and housing has storage capabilities right the storage containers that exist within the end node housing or within the apartment buildings do not become lootable unless the city Falls if the city Falls then there lootable if this if the building is destroyed or damaged and the city successfully defends itself then essentially the service or NPC offered through that building is not available until the repair project is complete so what you're going to see is these buildings can be attacked they have hit points they can be damaged once they enter a damaged state threshold which you know is probably gonna be around 25% damage taken once the siege is over that there's going to be a construction essentially another construction project but in this case it's a repair project right and citizens will be required in order to re-establish those services they'll be required to contribute as they did during the construction phase resources to the building in order to repair it upon its successful repair the building becomes open again and available so what about in node housing can in note housing be targeted during a siege yeah so in node housing can be targeted and essentially depending on the building type in node housing would be the least required resource standpoint form from a repair standpoint depending on the size and of the building and its stage right but it's leveled up or whatnot will determine how much resources are required so yes in node housing can be attacked but they'll be very manageable to repair even for a small group of people to do so it's not going to require a large community effort to repair a house as it would let's say an alchemist and then during anode siege we know and we could spend like three hours talking about the node system but normally you can't have two nodes of the same level next to each other because of the way they block each other out but if you had a level five node with a level four vassal and that level five node were to atrophy can it atrophy to a four and violate the two nodes of the same level next to each other or I know I'd ask this question once and you were like we're not ready to talk about it are we still not ready to talk about that so I can give you some some general information right about that like yes normally the algorithm that's applied to the node territorial expansion will prevent significant nodes from being in close proximity to each other that is that is accurate it's not impossible there there would be a storm of what what's a caller there could be a perfect storm where where all of the the algorithmic progression of territory leads to having these nodes very close to each other because there's certain requirements that should that need to be available to satisfy node vassal takeovers right and it's possible that two nodes would never take each other over as vassals and end up kind of close together close together and spanning their territories in kind of opposite direction The Tale of Two Cities kind of thing so that that is a capable thing the second part of your question which was gosh I just my mind just went blank what was the second part of the question when a level-five atrophies and a little for parent but there'd be able to be two fours next to each other that way but you kind of just you kind of just hit on that then yes the algorithm could push their zones of influence away from each other and they're looking ones looking east one's looking west for its territory yeah so I will say that the atrophy designs are going to be the most uh with regards to how nodes progress territorially and how they D level atrophy being the primary mcann that is that actually the only mechanic that allows a node to D level as opposed to be destroyed the atrophied design needs some significant testing there are there are intrinsic problems with reducing a nodes level as opposed to removing the node and it may be possible I'm just gonna say now that we don't actually atrophy nodes to D level but rather accrue atrophy points that must be replenished over time and if not it begins to disable services and further a further compound the atrophy problem at which point when it reaches a certain atrophy point then the node would just disappear and so like I in my opinion based off of because the problem is when a node levels up so many systems start to come online a lot of connections get made people own houses you know there's issues with just de leveling a node because you've got to go back and reverse all of that and and that is that is a that is a difficult you know idea from a design standpoint in my mind I'm thinking hey I would love for nodes to be level from a practical standpoint it's a it's a difficult achievement so instead what we may do because the siege mechanics require that nodes can be destroyed right we may take the atrophy mechanic and we may reduce it to that being the end result but then expand the the atrophy required to actually get there yeah and then Ford somebody had asked do nodes require materials to start off atrophy or just experience like you build your Metro you 100% love how it is jalan spent mayor for like nineteen months we've never had to kick him out we've never been sieged do I still need materials every month or just XP so in an indirect way yes you can use materials the way that the indirect method of essentially combating atrophy is the mayor has at his discretion certain tools to initiate quest driven systems that non-citizens can come to participate in and he can use a portion of the Treasury and/or goods that the node has available to him as an incentive for those quests to be completed so essentially you will be able to interface with the with a applicable node that you want out in the world and see hey what's available at this node for me to do and what's the reward and mayor's can drive those rewards up within an acceptable window that make it more advantageous for you as a player to go there and participate in that and that's one of them and then some of those quests might have material you know components as you just asked and so indirectly then yes materials could be applied in a way to curtail attrition and then everybody's favorite system of
1:05:30
Jahlon - The corruption system I we've been successful in getting people to understand that they may not like it but let's test it before we don't like it in last year you and I talked about it and you gave me a really frank answer you like yes I hear you but please test it first and then tell me But healers are really worried and you played Archeaage and you knew how much it sucked when some bonehead in your raid flagged in you were throwing out an AoE heal and then you healed that you healed the bonehead and then everybody could kill you because you were legal because you were blood lusted in in that in that game uh
Steven - right
Jahlon - In in Revelation online they had the ability for the healer to set a flagging stance of right no I don't want to heal you stupid because you went combatant or you went corrupted have you thought about because you've played obviously healers in the past have you thought about specifically healer love for that the flag
Steven - I mean it's actually it's not even healers actually it's also any type of AoE class right where you may be out there you know dropping a meteor or doing a you know a whirlwind attack or you know whatever and some you know griefer wants to come up and flag when he anticipates you're going to do that in order to get you to flag and then kill you right so to answer this question in a shorter way yes absolutely there will be an option that by default is available to the player which prevents them from essentially receiving a third party flag now the way that that is achieved is anytime you activate a skill right there are certain calls and checks that get made on the backend that you don't see and one of those on on activation is to check hey are there any members that are currently flagged and if there are and you have that check box for flagging with your AOEs and and heels available then you will flag if you do not have that box checked then on completion of the skill it will not flag you because the check was made at the start that there was a flag party member and then he will not he or she will not receive the beneficial effect as a result or the damage if it's an offensive spell
Jahlon - perfect I think you just made every healer like really happy
1:07:56
Jahlon: Then the last one I'm gonna ask you people a couple of years ago you gave us a quote that the target was 45 days to reach max level and then people start breaking it down to well is that four hours a day is that eight hours a day is that really 1080 hours to reach max level some of those sound bites are three years old before you got like the baptism by fire as your 45-day marker kind of shifted or did we keep that or we'd throw it out and just wait till we see it you know I don't actually recall the number of hours that was used in that that calculation that I was deriving that answer from but what I would say is the 45-day comment was at least in leveling your adventuring class to max level at launch which is 50 that is is in particular to a person who's complaining who is playing a a considerable amount of time per day and I'm not talking like 12 hours per day I'm talking like you know maybe 4 to 6 hours a day and I want to give us don't take that with a grain of salt because I don't recall what the our figure no absolutely yeah but the idea is not to be a game where somebody can essentially you know no life for a week and be max level the idea is to incorporate some significant chunk of time but still respect the casual player because you know the way we respect the casual player is hmm not everything is driven in our game through the adventuring progression line right not everything is driven through your class level per se there's a lot of different progression paths that are available and make you relevant within certain systems and mechanics within the game and some of those paths are more casual friendly and some of those paths are more hardcore friendly so with regards to the adventuring class the idea is to make sure that that and investment needs to be you know pretty significant and that the reward then is respective of that investment you know trying to explain what you just said to people like you have an adventuring class but then you have a brick okay so you have your adventuring class and at first you and I had discussions about locking the main adventuring class and I hated the idea and ashes is like the only game I'm looking forward to that has a locked primary class aren't sorry primary archetype because you've included so many things like bryggen or perv and defender am i a highway robber or a caravan defender I make that choice say luring skills what am I gonna do on my ship what am I gonna do for my am I gonna be a member of the Thieves Guild or the mages guild or the scholars Academy do you've created a game where you're never gonna run into your doppelganger it's gonna be almost impossible to run into your exact I'm gonna play the cleric cleric with a high women and I'm gonna be a cannoneer on the ships and I'm gonna be a member of the Thieves Guild and I'm gonna live in an economic node so I'm gonna have those augments like you're never gonna find your pure doppelganger yeah I think you know to that to the point of that question part of my frustration as a player before starting this project was that sandbox terminology really wasn't what it should have been in actuality a lot of and this is no bash on any particular developer but a lot of designer slash development use sandbox as an excuse not to curate a lot of content right and not to create that that complex type of systems and support but rather to then to fall on players or quote unquote player driven content that is you know entry political whatever Rebecca that can get very boring if there's an if if you if you're given eight doors and you're told hey make a choice and your choice is gonna matter but you open the door and there's nothing behind it from a Content perspective you know then what does my choice really matter I just made a choice about nothing so the idea behind you know ashes is that yeah sandbox is a is a great game philosophy if it is accompanied by more content into almost more content than what a theme park has right that's that's the way you make success in my opinion at least and we'll see how it works lashes but that's in my opinion the way you create successful sandbox experiences I noticed somebody in chat said you know if I'm lower level because leveling takes a significant chunk of time am I going to be relevant in let's say a node seeds or cj's or mass combat kind of stuff the answer to that is that sieges are not a one-dimensional or two-dimensional type of experience it's not just going to be hey your class versus their class on the field and that's what's going to matter there are many different roles that are present in sieges whether it be firing the stationary siege mechanics a siege siege weapons helping to repair the walls or the gate bringing relevant of proximity-based buffs from the town center and NPCs out to where the people on the ramparts are or out on the field stealth thing you know into the encampment or headquarters a lot of different things that as reliant on your adventuring classes level but rather provide a role and opportunity to affect the tide of battle that are specific to certain things players are interested in from a role standpoint if I would kind of be rogue I want to scale you know a wall or you know use a siege weapon and drive it around those types of things are relevant to the tide of battle and they don't require you be max level or high combat stats all righty well we have gone for over an hour and we have so much information like there's so many little things but one thing I wanted to hit on I wrote it down you don't call ashes a sandbox you call ashes a theme park right a set I call it a theme park or a theme box game box sorry theme box I caught a theme box or a sand park yeah exactly because the there's just so many things in here and it's like it there's so much we're gonna be talking about now like you you gave us enough that we're gonna be I think we're gonna be satisfied I mean I'm gonna lie I'm gonna say we're gonna be satisfied for a month but the truth is your community is gonna devour all this in like a day but I'm not the first to use that term obviously you know I've heard it described for other games as well but I think that were probably the first that are actually going to implement it you know what I mean like yeah I think yeah without expanding on that I don't want to get into specific other games but I think that I think that we're the first that are really going that are targeting that type of combination between the theme park theme park in the sandbox elements well I I know I know it's your birthday and I know you want to go run like a birthday 5k but uh yeah can we get our happy birthdays for Stephen and Chad just because I mean he did take he took a chunk of his time out today you know the community community loves when you do these they really do well I appreciate the happy birthday wishes I feel very loved today even though I'm all in my all by myself here just John and I no plans because of the stupid coronavirus whoa I I saw your dog Silas right oh yeah Silas yeah I saw I saw Silas when you were getting your water I saw Silas walking with you oh that's true you have the girls on the other one Silas and I us and Riley Riley yeah I had I think they might have gotten me some presents that might maybe was that doorbell we'll see anyway I'm gonna let you go I'm gonna talk to the community a little bit I saw a bunch of things people probably ask me stuff in but you go enjoy your birthday you go into that like kitchen that cost more than my house and cook something I don't know I don't know if I'm cooking tonight I think John's good night but I appreciate it thanks buddy I appreciate that all right well we will talk to you again soon all right take care everybody thanks for thanks for tuning in thanks for the interview jalan appreciate it buddy keep up the good work on your channel thank you and if you guys aren't subscribed go subscribe to Jalan Shanley's a very good content creator like many of our content creators oh look at that thanks Steven waiter buddy what are you still doing here nobody ever stays this long this is the end screen well since you're here there's a couple other videos I think you should check out and all those names those are my patrons over at patreon I couldn't do this without them so big thanks to them for all their support